Gender identity and transgender issues continue to haunt U.S. schools as parents and teachers sue districts

A conservative law firm is highlighting gender ideology in schools around the U.S. by taking action against many districts they claim are overstepping their boundaries with parents.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, held a press call Thursday with clients they represent from around the country who are embroiled in legal action against their local school districts.

They are backing a Colorado couple whose 11-year-old daughter was assigned to room with a boy who identified as a girl on a school trip to Washington, D.C.

They represent Michigan parents who sued their local school district for using male pronouns for their eighth-grader without their knowledge.

And they are representing a Virginia teacher who claims her district instructed her to hide student's gender identity information from their parents, among others.

'The government is taking decision making authority from parents,' Kate Anderson, an attorney on the aforementioned cases warned on the call.

'They're shifting decisions that should be in the hands of parents to themselves, and then they're hiding that information from parents, so they don't know that the school is making decisions behind their back, and that's dangerous.'

'You're hearing from each of these clients that they're experiencing really dangerous policies that are hurting kids in their districts,' she continued.

Serena Wailes, the mother who is suing Colorado's Jefferson County Public Schools for putting a biological male in the same sleeping arrangements as her 11-year-old daughter, stressed how she felt betrayed by her school district.

'We trusted these people,' Serena Wailes told reporters on a call.

'They told us throughout the whole process that boys were going to be on one floor and girls were going to be on another, and at no point during this process did they ever say that that was going to be based on gender identity, and so we trusted that.'

'We trust our school district with our kids, and they have, they have failed us.'

'It was really shocking, because I'm downstairs in the lobby with the other moms, and I get this call from our daughter, who's upstairs and she's hiding in the bathroom.'

'Her voice is quivering, and she doesn't want to hurt the feelings of all the other kids in her room, but she's like, 'Mom, I don't feel good about this.''

'So I had her come down and we went, we talked through it and had the chaperone come over, talk through it, and then found out it was true. And honestly, what I have to say is I feel deceived.'

Then Michigan parents Dan and Jennifer Mead spoke up.

They filed a lawsuit against the Rockford Public School District after discovering the school had been referring to their child using 'he/him' pronouns last year.

Jennifer described how they sought academic help for their daughter through her school counselor, and they began sharing intimate details about he student and her academic and personal life.

'And all this time, they were lying to us, changing records. They were calling her by a male name, a masculine pronoun at school, and then when they would talk to us or send anything home, it was always her, you know, are given her given name.'

'It was shocking because we felt like we were deceived as well,' the mother said.

They claim the school secretly 'socially transitioned' her before the parents caught on.

The parents found out in October 2022 when a school psychologist inadvertently included the child's masculine name in one section of a report that was sent home.

The eight-grader's name had been changed back to the birth name in the rest of the document, according to the lawsuit.

Finally a teacher spoke up to address how she is taking action against Harrisonburg City Public School Board in Virginia for allegedly muzzling her ability to talk to parents about their kids' gender identities.

She resonated with the parents' stories, and said she is victim to similar policies as an educator.

'This policy that I'm working under deceives parents and it hurts kids,' middle school teacher Deb Figliola said. 'It also requires me to lie.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13843137/gender-identity-schools-parents-teachers-sue-districts-adf.html

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It's not just populists STOKING "misinformation" --it's the elite class

There was a truly REMARKABLE revelation in the UK parliament this week and one you probably missed. But before I tell you about it let’s first remember what is happening right now across the West.

A radicalising elite class —an elite class that’s moved sharply to the cultural left over the last fifteen years, partly in response to things like Brexit and Trump— is blaming any outcome it doesn’t like on so-called “misinformation”.

The narrative goes like this. Ordinary people could not REALLY want to vote for political party and politician X. They could not REALLY want to support policy Y. They could not REALLY want to protest about issue Z. They are just “misinformed”.

They read a “misinformed” tweet. They listened to a “misinformed” populist. They watched a “misinformed” video. They rely too much on “misinformed” social media.

In short, rather than accept that millions of people might not want to live in the kind of society that’s now being imposed on them from above by an out-of-touch, insular, and hyper-liberal if not radically progressive elite class, the members of this ruling class are now smothering themselves in a comfort blanket by portraying voters as irrational, ignorant, “misinformed” lemmings, who are being pushed around by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin … [insert your preferred villain here].

It’s the populists, in short, who are stoking political chaos and carnage by cultivating and spreading “misinformation” around Western societies. Hence why the elite class is investing so heavily in politically-motivated “fact-checking”, “verifying”, and, as we now see in the UK, a growing clampdown on free speech and free expression. If you can’t change people’s minds, you can at least control the supply of information.

And nowhere is this strategy more visible than on the issue of immigration, where time and time again we are told by politically-motivated journalists, fact-checkers, and the so-called “expert class” that ordinary people expressing concern about this issue simply do not understand the facts and figures. They too are suffering from an outbreak of what we might call “misinformationitis”.

Think mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis? “Misinformed!” Think it’s driving up crime? “Misinformed!” Think it’s weakening the economy? “Misinformed!” Think it’s costing the taxpayer billions in welfare payments? “Misinformed!”

Which brings me back to that REMARKABLE revelation in parliament, which was quietly made by a renegade Conservative Member of Parliament during a committee discussion about immigration, with Nigel Farage and Reform MPs looking on. What was the revelation? Well, brace yourself because there wasn’t one but a series of bombshells, each one more mind-boggling than the last and each one underlining how it’s not populists who are stoking misinformation —it’s the elite class.

The revelations—by the respected and rigorous Neil O’Brien, Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby, and Wigston—really are devastating.

He pointed to not just a government but an entire political system that is either deliberately concealing masses of information from voters about the impact of immigration, or is doing so through sheer incompetence.

Just look at what he revealed:

The department for Work and Pensions has STOPPED publishing data on welfare claims by nationality, making it impossible for anybody to ascertain the impact of immigration on the welfare system (and the cost)

HMRC have STOPPED publishing information on the tax paid and tax credits received by nationality, again making it impossible to build up an accurate picture of how immigration is impacting on the national economy

the Home Office is now REFUSING to answer detailed questions about the immigration status of people who are imprisoned in UK prisons, making it impossible to gather information on how, if at all, immigration is impacting on crime rates and imprisonment

even worse, the Home Office actually have these data but they are deliberately REFUSING to publish them

the Home Office does NOT collect either nationality or immigration data on those people who are arrested on these islands, again making it impossible for us to know how, if at all, immigration is impacting on crime and social order

the Home Office does NOT reveal, in detail, what it is spending on hotel rooms and accommodation for illegal migrants in the asylum system, once again making it impossible to verify, dispute, or support claims being made

the Home Office says it DOES NOT KNOW how much it is spending on loans to refugees which is, once again, taxpayer money

As I pointed out on Twitter/X, in a tweet which has now been viewed by nearly 400,000 people, this, not populism, is what is breeding distrust among voters.

Either the elite class is completely incompetent, or it is deliberately concealing this information from you, the taxpayer, knowing full well that if this information was collected and released then it would likely confirm people’s suspicions about the damaging effects of illegal and legal immigration on their society –as data in other countries is already doing, including Germany, which I discuss in the piece below.

What we have then is an out-of-touch elite class that is simultaneously accusing voters of suffering “misinformation” while concealing this very information from them! How can ordinary people be misinformed when the state refuses to make critical information like this available to all? What are elites scared of?

If they are so confident in their policy decisions, in their political choices, in their continual assertion that things like immigration are an unalloyed positive for our society then why don’t they just release all the data and let us see it for ourselves?

I think we all know why. Which is why I and others will not stop drawing attention to this glaring hole in the national debate until we get the information, the transparency, and the assessments that the British people, that TAXPAYERS, deserve.

So, what can you do? Well, you could write to your local Member of Parliament and ask them why the above information is not being made public. And you could also explore submitting Freedom of Information requests. Because the status-quo, with the elite class portraying much of the rest of the country as misinformed thickoes while keeping this data and information hidden from them is, clearly, unsustainable.

But this is also bigger than one issue. As I argue in my forthcoming short film, it’s high time that the people who run our country start treating the people who live in our country and are forced to pay the costs of the elite’s disastrous decisions with the respect and decency they deserve. Too many ordinary people are being asked (no, forced) to pay the costs of radical political experiments they neither voted for nor support. The very least the elite class could do is make this information available so we can assess the impact of the decisions that are being forced on the rest of us.

Because, look, if leaders across the West do not want to continue fanning the flames of populism, polarisation, and protest then they urgently need to start treating voters with the respect they deserve —and they could start by making this information available so that we can all have an “informed” debate about what is really happening to our country. Because until they do one point will remain inescapable. It’s not just populists who are stoking “misinformation” —it’s the elite class.

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/its-not-just-populists-stoking-misinformation?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=3vtk7t&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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Melania Trump blasts FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, says it serves as ‘warning to all Americans’

Melania Trump shared a video on her X account Saturday morning blasting the FBI for the raid on her Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, and said it should be a “warning to all Americans”.

“I never imagined my privacy would be invaded by the government here in America,” the former First Lady recalled in the video.

“The FBI raided my home in Florida and searched through my personal belongings. This is not just my story, it serves as a warning to all Americans, a reminder that our freedom and rights must be respected.”

Her husband, former President Donald Trump, is set to sue the Justice Department for $US100 million ($149 million) in damages over the government’s unprecedented 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, with lawyers arguing it was done with “clear intent to engage in political persecution”.

Mr Trump and his legal team intend to sue the Justice Department for its conduct during the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, amid the federal investigation into his alleged improper retention of classified records.

“What President Trump is doing here is not just standing up for himself — he is standing up for all Americans who believe in the rule of law and believe that you should hold the government accountable when it wrongs you,” Trump attorney Daniel Epstein told Fox Business’ Lydia Hu.

Mr Epstein added that the decisions made by the DOJ and FBI regarding that raid were “inconsistent with protocols requiring the consent of an investigative target, disclosure to that individual’s attorneys, and the use of the local US Attorney’s Office”.

Mr Trump’s attorney also argues the decisions made by Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray were not grounded in “social, economic, and political policy” but instead, in “clear dereliction of constitutional principles, inconsistent standards as applied to” Mr Trump and a “clear intent to engage in political persecution — not to advance good law enforcement practices”.

“The FBI’s demonstrated activity was inconsistent with protocols used in routine searches of an investigative target’s premises,” Mr Epstein wrote, adding that Mr Trump “had a clear expectation of privacy at Mar-a-Lago”.

“Worse, the FBI’s conduct in the raid — where established protocol was violated — constitutes a severe and unacceptable intrusion that is highly offensive to a reasonable person,” he added.

Mr Epstein is also planning to sue for punitive damages.

“For these harms to President Trump, the respondents must pay punitive damages of $US100 million,” Mr Epstein wrote.

This is the second recently released video the former First Lady has posted as she is promoting her memoir, Melania.

Her book will detail “the powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has defined personal excellence, overcome adversity, and carved her own path”, according to the description. It is currently available for pre-order ahead of its October 1 release date.

“The former First Lady invites readers into her world, offering an intimate portrait of a woman who has lived an extraordinary life,” the description reads. “Melania includes stories and images never before shared with the public.”

She posted her first video on Tuesday, raising questions about the July 13 assassination attempt on the former President.

“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” Mrs Trump said in a video statement on X.

“Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to the story and we need to uncover the truth.”

Following the assassination attempt in July, Mrs Trump called for the country to “reunite”, calling for courage and common sense to “bring us back together as one”.

She said the gunman was “a monster who recognised my husband as an inhuman political machine” who attempted to “ring out Donald’s passion — his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration”.

“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realised my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” she wrote, adding that her husband is a generous and caring man.

“Writing my memoir has been an amazing journey filled with emotional highs and lows,” the former First Lady previously told Fox News Digital. “Each story shaped me into who I am today.”

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/melania-trump-blasts-fbis-maralago-raid-says-it-serves-as-warning-to-all-americans/news-story/ce3b8ec64328e9ad05f087cf90feae8c

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US media needs to step outside big-city bubble

The records of the Trump and Biden presidencies are better than Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were prepared to concede during last week’s debate about each other’s time in office.

Yet it remains accurate, if cliched, to say it is astounding that the richest, most powerful nation on the planet could not produce two better candidates.

Trump, as his debate performance showed, is a deeply self-centred person with an unfocused, undisciplined mind. He could not prosecute a simple case against Harris.

She, on the other hand, has changed her most fundamental political positions on important issues facing the US since she was a candidate for the presidency in 2020. And she has failed the main task President Joe Biden gave her as Vice-President almost four years ago: the role of border tsar.

Trump’s lack of preparation showed. Harris spent a lot of time prepping and that showed too – especially in the way she was able to bait her opponent about the size of the crowds at his rallies or suggestions the former president was an object of ridicule among military leaders and foreign heads of government.

But will it matter on the first Tuesday in November?

This column twice wrote that Trump could win in 2016 in the weeks leading up to that election. It pointed to concerns in Middle America about unchecked illegal immigration. Such concerns are even more evident in the US today.

This column also referred to the likelihood at the time that published polling was underestimating the Trump vote because of the so-called “shy conservative’’ factor.

Polling before the 2016 election underestimated Trump’s vote by 2.2 per cent, and in 2020 by 3.3 per cent.

Remember, too, Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate in 2016. She foolishly berated some of her own blue-collar voters as the usual “basket of deplorables”.

If the press underestimated Trump in 2016, it took him much more seriously during his presidency and at the 2020 election.

Republican presidential nominee, former US president Donald Trump, gestures at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles on September 13. Picture: Getty Images
Republican presidential nominee, former US president Donald Trump, gestures at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles on September 13. Picture: Getty Images
The establishment liberal media poured millions of words into the false Russiagate conspiracy story, trying to destroy Trump. It happened again in the weeks before the 2020 election as Obama-era intelligence experts claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post, since found to be true, was just more Russian disinformation.

Mainstream media business models, left and right, benefited from the flow of consumers to sources of Trump information they agreed with. The New York Times used Russiagate to build its subscriber base to all-time highs, while conservative sources such as Fox News benefited from being seen to be more open to Trump.

Yet, much journalistic wisdom about Trump is wrong.

His use of race politics against Harris and Barack Obama may have been crude, but economic history shows Trump was good for the prosperity of African-Americans. Before the pandemic hit, unemployment in black America was at its lowest point since World War II.

Trump’s claims on Wednesday about his economic success as president are also partly true – at least before the pandemic. His January 1, 2018, tax cuts did supercharge growth and employment.

But Trump’s claims the US economy is now in the worst shape in history are silly. US inflation on Thursday last week fell to 2.5 per cent; the Conference Board on August 19 said its leading indicators do not suggest recession is coming; the sharemarket is near its all-time record; and unemployment sits at 4.2 per cent, compared with a long-term average of 5.7 per cent.

Trump is on firmer ground discussing the failures of Biden and Harris in foreign policy. This column accepts Trump’s claim that both Russia and Iran have been emboldened by the weakness of the Biden presidency.

While legitimate doubts exist about whether Trump would support Ukraine, as Australia does, there is plenty of reason to believe Trump is correct to suggest that Putin would not have invaded in 2022 had Trump been president. Chinese President Xi Jinping would not have acquiesced when told by Putin of his plan at the February 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics had Biden not been president.

Similarly, Trump’s tough stands on sanctions against Iran and support for Israel probably would have prevented an attack like Hamas’s in Israel on October 7.

Polling by The New York Times at the start of last week had Trump ahead of Harris by a point. This suggests that despite the Democrats’ focus on Trump’s various prosecutions and the January 6, 2020, Capitol riots, many voters accept his claim that he has been the victim of “weaponised lawfare” from state and local Democrat administrations.

It’s an issue Harris, as a former professional prosecutor, used deftly in the debate to establish herself as a strong leader able to take on Trump face-to-face.

Harris is on much more dangerous ground on border control and her covering up, with Democrat-aligned media, of Biden’s mental decline, which became impossible to hide during the debate between Biden and Trump eight weeks ago.

While Trump returned to the border issue several times during the Harris debate, he let the Vice-President off the hook for hiding Biden’s mental state.

This column on July 7 quoted Pulitzer Prize-winner Glenn Greenwald on the number of people who had belled the cat about Biden’s mental decline in the 18 months before the 2020 election. Covid allowed Biden to escape scrutiny then, and the press, Harris and Biden’s Cabinet shielded him right up until June 28 when the Trump-Biden debate exposed the President’s decline.

Yet Trump’s decision to accept that debate was probably his biggest mistake, as election statistician Nate Silver pointed out on X shortly after the Harris debate. It was Biden’s failure then that gave the Democrats time to move Harris into the presidential nomination.

Silver rated Trump’s other big mistakes as the appointment of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick; his meandering speech at the Republican Convention on July 19 after the assassination attempt; his failure to anticipate Harris would receive the Democrat nomination; and his failure to prepare for the Harris debate.

Perhaps the harshest assessment of Trump’s performance last week came from former Republican strategist Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal.

Rove wrote: “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock’. Which raises the question: what does that make him?”

Democrats commentators argue that the public’s disillusionment with the political process took Trump to the presidency in 2016, but has dissipated today. That is wishful thinking. Americans this year have seen a political and media conspiracy to hide the mental state of their president.

David Brooks in The New York Times last week reported Gallup polling showing Americans remain disenchanted with politics: only 25 per cent are satisfied with the way the country is going. Ipsos polling shows 60 per cent of Americans believe the country is in decline – Trump’s core message.

Harris, mocked by conservative media for her giggling and “word salads”, has shown she will be no pushover. Her messages of hope for the voters sound better than Trump’s focus on himself.

Harris has been treated like a rock star by much of the media since she received the nomination. That intensified in major-city media after the debate.

Yet presidential elections are not won inside the largely Democrat bubbles of big-city America.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/neither-donald-trump-nor-kamala-harris-are-strong-candidates-but-media-must-be-careful-not-to-repeat-mistakes-of-2016-and-2020/news-story/1d5ad212c9d21b1126c79aee3f59c2f8

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My main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Keir Starmer takes on ‘broken’ NHS and warns: no more money without reforms

This is surprisingly sane for a Leftist leader. Heavy reliance on locums is absurd. There should be sufficient staff. Big tax incentives could be used to bring in the needed staff and nursing homes. And the "Trusts" should be abolished. They just add a layer of needless bureaucracy

Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to “take on” any opposition to radical changes in the NHS, saying difficult and unpopular changes are needed before it receives a penny more from the government.

The prime minister said the health service required “major surgery, not sticking plasters” and that fixing it could take a decade or more.

Risking anger from unions, he said he was not prepared to spend more money while the system was paying huge sums to agency workers, adding: “We have to fix the plumbing before we turn on the taps.”

“I’m not prepared to see even more of your money spent on agency staff who cost £5,000 a shift, on appointment letters which arrive after the appointment, or on paying for people to be stuck in hospital just because they can’t get the care they need in the community,” he said.

As he was speaking, ministers announced a clampdown on junk food advertising in a bid to cut obesity rates and reduce the burden on the NHS. From October next year, online adverts will be banned altogether while TV ads will be shown only after the 9pm watershed.

But critics questioned how far Labour was prepared to go. Former Tory health minister Lord Bethell told The Independent: “You cannot be serious about prevention and rule out a sugar tax on the same day.”

Sir Keir’s comments, in a speech to the King’s Fund think tank, following a damning independent review that found the NHS in “critical condition” with some of the worst cancer survival rates in the Western world.

Completed in nine weeks by Ara Darzi, a surgeon and an independent peer, it blamed choices made by the last Conservative government and warned the health service would take years to fix.

Government sources denied the reforms would mean more privatisation, saying the Darzi report was clear about the amount of money the NHS is currently spending badly and in the wrong places.

Health secretary Wes Streeting has previously announced plans to use the private sector to help cut NHS backlogs, and hit out at “middle-class lefties” who oppose the move, saying they risk putting ideological purity ahead of patient care.

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Streeting said the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), should stop “sabre-rattling” and work with ministers.

An “unnecessary threat” of action from the organisation’s GPs “would harm patients”, he said.

Leading scientist Professor Sir John Bell also hit out at doctors in the BMA, saying they had “been a major drag on reform of healthcare”.

Setting out a broad vision for reform, Sir Keir said his 10-year plan would include changing the NHS to a “neighbourhood health service”.

This would mean “more tests, scans, healthcare offered on high streets and town centres, improved GP access, bringing back the family doctor, offering digital consultations for those that want them, virtual wards and more patients safely looked after in their own homes where we can deal with problems early before they are off work sick and before they need to go to hospital”.

He also pledged to drive up productivity in hospitals, giving them more of a role in preventing sickness.

He said that increased use of technology, including to speed up test results in A&E, was one area where improving service was not about piling in more money year after year.

He also pledged to continue the last Tory government’s hospital-building programme.

But while he warned it was not possible to build an NHS for the future without fixing social care, there was little detail on how that could be achieved.

He said: “Reform does not mean just putting more money in… so, hear me when I say this, no more money without reform.”

He said he was "genuinely shocked" when he learned how many young children are admitted to hospital every year to have rotten teeth removed – something that is preventable.

“I know some prevention measures will be controversial but I’m prepared to be bold even in the face of opposition,” he said.

Former Tory minister Dame Harriett Baldwin criticised Sir Keir’s comments in the wake of his cuts to winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, saying the move would hurt “bed capacity over the winter to come in our NHS”.

And Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Daisy Cooper warned that “the elephant in the room is that we cannot reform our NHS without reforming social care”.

But Sir Julian Hartley, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said the NHS was “down but not out”.

“As the prime minister said today, we can’t go on like this. To build an NHS fit for the future, the NHS needs to work differently and go further and faster to improve care for patients.”

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of King’s Fund, said the government “now needs to develop a detailed strategy for reform. That plan will need to model how greater investment to primary and community services will be implemented.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-nhs-money-reform-b2611670.html

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Harris’s ‘Joy’ Would Cost US Dearly

American progressives are out of ideas. Instead of a bold economic agenda, all they have to offer is reruns of policy failures. Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent proposals are notable examples. Behind the facade of joy hides an alarming indifference to the immense costs her schemes would create if she wins the presidency. Economists have a duty to point out just how destructive these proposals are.

Exhibit A is her call for price controls on groceries. Ignore the rhetorical sleight-of-hand from the campaign and its defenders, who insist they only want to clamp down on “price gouging.” This is clearly a call for the government to crack down on retailers who are selling food at any price Harris and other progressive elites deem excessive.

Perhaps no policy has a record as consistently bad as mandatory price caps. While Econ 101 doesn’t always tell the full story, it does an admirable job in this case. Expect shortages, portion shrinkages, and discriminatory sales practices if Harris gets her way. Price controls are such bad policy that other prominent Democrats almost immediately promised that they will never happen. Yet the very fact Harris proposed them is appalling. It is too dangerous to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Next is her growth-killing tax plan. Harris is among those calling for the rich to “pay their fair share.” For starters, the rich tax skimps narrative is ridiculous. The top one percent of income earners already pay more than 40 percent of all federal income taxes. Yet she wants to raise rates anyway. This will dampen incentives to produce and innovate.

The same is true for corporate taxes. Raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent would inhibit capital formation, resulting in smaller returns for owners, higher prices for consumers, and lower wages for workers. This last point should dispel the myth that Harris and the progressive elite are concerned about economic opportunity.

Perhaps most egregious is her endorsement of President Biden’s plan to tax unrealized capital gains. Just look at the awful incentives this policy would create. Instead of keeping their wealth in capital markets, bearing risk and facilitating growth, those experiencing unrealized capital gains would likely have to divest their position to discharge their tax liability. This policy seems designed to dry up capital markets, or else provide a beachhead for future direct wealth seizures by the government.

Those objecting that the policy only applies to the hyper-rich (those with a net worth of more than $100 million) are clearly unfamiliar with the history of the income tax. Once upon a time, only high income earners paid any tax at all. Now the IRS has its tendrils everywhere. The same will eventually be true with unrealized capital gains, unless we root out this weed right away.

Lastly, her so-called home affordability plan is rubbish. Harris wants to give new homebuyers up to $25,000 in “down payment assistance.” I’m sure that phrase poll-tested well, but a subsidy by any other name is still a subsidy. If you give a family $25,000 to help purchase a home, they’ll be much better off. But the gains are much smaller if you give it to many families.

Harris’s proposal would boost market demand, further driving up housing prices. Keep in mind that housing supply is generally much less responsive to price changes than housing demand. New home construction is subject to high fixed costs, significant time to build, and zoning laws and other local restrictions. The implication is that homebuyers won’t get much of the benefit of the subsidy, since prices will go up by much more than the quantity of homes. If your goal is transferring wealth to homebuilders and existing homeowners, Harris’s plan is great. But if your goal is making housing more affordable, it’s terrible.

She keeps piling on examples. Her stated desire to throw 180 million Americans off their private health insurance plans, her eagerness to impose massive regulatory costs on energy producers, and her enthusiasm for hamstringing law enforcement come easily to mind. The result is a political-economic model guaranteed to induce malaise. Vice President Harris’s ongoing audition for Enfeebler-in-Chief proves the American left needs a hard reset. Otherwise, the “opportunity economy” they claim to want will never materialize.

https://www.aier.org/article/harris-joy-unabashedly-cynical/

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David Gerard, the tyrant of Wikipedia

Wikipedia administrator David Gerard cares a great deal about Reliable Sources. For the past half-decade, he has torn through the website with dozens of daily edits—upwards of fifty thousand, all told—aimed at slashing and burning lines on the site that reference sources deemed unreliable by Wikipedia. He has stepped into dozens of official discussions determining which sources the site should allow people to use, opining on which are Reliable and which are not. He cares so much about Reliable Sources, in fact, that he goes out of his way to provide interviews to journalists who may write about topics he’s passionate about, then returns to the site to ensure someone adds just the right quotes from those sources to Wikipedia articles about those topics and to protect those additions from all who might question them.

While by Wikipedia’s nature, nobody can precisely claim to speak or act on behalf of the site as a whole, Gerard comes about as close as anyone really could. He’s been a volunteer Wikipedia administrator since 2004, has edited the site more than 200,000 times, and even served off and on as the site’s UK spokesman. Few people have had more of a hand than him in shaping the site, and few have a more encyclopedic understanding of its rules, written and unwritten.

Reliable sources, a ban on original research, and an aspiration towards a neutral point of view have long been at the heart of Wikipedia’s approach. Have an argument, editors say? Back it up with a citation. Articles should cover “all majority and significant minority views” from Reliable Sources (WP:RS) on the topic “fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias” (WP:NPOV). The site has a color-coding system for frequently discussed sources: green for reliable, yellow for unclear, red for unreliable, and dark red for “deprecated” sources that can only be used in exceptional situations.

The minutiae of Wikipedia administration, as with the inner workings of any bureaucracy, is an inherently dry subject. On the site as a whole, users sometimes edit pages directly with terse comments, other times engage in elaborate arguments on “Talk” pages to settle disputes about what should be added. Each edit is added to a permanent history page. To understand any given decision, onlookers must trawl through page after page of archives and discussions replete with tidily packaged references to one policy or another. Where most see boredom behind the scenes and are simply glad for mostly functional overviews of topics they know nothing about, though, a few see opportunity. Those who master the bureaucracy in behind-the-scenes janitorial battles, after all, define the public’s first impressions of whatever they care about.

Since 2017, when Wikipedia made the decision to ban citations to the Daily Mail due to “poor fact-checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication,” editors have waged an intense, quiet war over which sources to ban, which to give strict scrutiny to, and which to crown as Reliable. Based on the site’s policy, it’s easy to understand why: while editors with a stake in the frame of an article have to acquiese to determined opponents bearing Reliable Sources—or at least must have long, grinding disputes about what should be emphasized and why—if they can whip a consensus to declare the sources opponents would use unreliable, they can win edit wars before they happen. This extends well beyond simple factual coverage: cite an opinion or even a movie review from one of those sources, and Gerard or other editors sweep in to remove it as having undue weight.

The battle over the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online newspaper that alternates between tabloid-style sensationalism and serious, in-depth investigative journalism provides a good example of how this works in practice: in three sparse discussions (one, two, three), a dozen or so editors opined, for example, that it “doesn’t particularly have a reputation for journalistic credibility,” with one citing two Snopes articles in support but most presenting bare opinions. As a result of those sparse discussions, Wikipedia editors treat the site as generally unreliable. Every citation to it is presumed suspect, and rather than spending time and effort haggling over each, editors are broadly free to remove them en masse after cursory examination. In practice, this means Gerard scanning through dozens of articles in the span of a few minutes, tearing out all information cited to the Free Beacon as presumptively unreliable.

Unsurprisingly, Gerard’s slash-and-burn, no-questions-asked policy has led to more than a few conflicts on Wikipedia. Editors who object to his indiscriminate removals have raised the issue multiple times to Wikipedia administrators, on talk pages, and elsewhere around the site. Each time, Gerard defends the approach of indiscriminately removing everything from Unreliable Sources, generally carrying on with removals as the disputes carry on. Each time, the arguments peter out with nothing in particular changing. In one case, another Wikipedia administrator, Sandstein, pushed to ban a user for repeatedly criticizing Gerard’s judgment on the matter.

In other words, whatever Wikipedia’s written policy, the practical day-to-day reality is that Gerard will remove Unreliable Sources en masse with terse explanations and with little consideration for actual content, digging in with elaborate justification when pressed.

Given that, it’s worth examining the reliability battles Gerard picks.

Most interesting to me is the case of Huffington Post. See, in addition to volunteering as a Wikipedia administrator, Gerard is the system administrator and owner of the Twitter account for RationalWiki, a left-liberal wiki focused on directing snark and critique towards groups and concepts the authors dislike, from effective altruists to right-wingers to woo. Gerard has edited RationalWiki upwards of 30,000 times. He updated the site’s harshly critical article on the Huffington Post occasionally, one time adding one of its most scathing critiques: “The truth is not in them.”

When it came time to comment about them on Wikipedia, though, he was rather more enthusiastic, calling the site “a perfectly normal [news organization] on this level” and raising an eyebrow when people wanted to rate its politics section as less than reliable.2

As of today, Wikipedia treats the Huffington Post as wholly reliable for non-politics content and unclear for political content.

During discussions of PinkNews, an LGBT-focused news outlet, the user gnu57 provided several examples of journalistic misconduct:

The site defamed lesbian Scottish politician Joanna Cherry, falsely claiming she was being investigated for homophobia, retracting only after Cherry pursued legal options against them.

The site falsely claimed the Israeli health minister had called coronavirus a “divine punishment for homosexuality.”

The site made salacious, misleading claims about Bill O’Reilly.

The site has a history of tabloid-esque sensationalism, clickbait, and photoshops about celebrities

Gerard, examining the outlet when it came up for comment, lauded it as highly reliable, emphasizing that “claims of journalistic malfeasance on their part didn't check out at all when we looked into them and discovered they'd actually handled them in an exemplary fashion.” Later, he pushed successfully for it to be treated as a fully reliable source despite a note from the discussion that caution should be used.

Wikipedia currently treats PinkNews as a Reliable Source.

He regularly makes similar nudges around sites like The Daily Beast (“Generally reliable - not perfect, but a normal news source, editorial processes, etc - no reason not to use it as a source") and Teen Vogue (“Their news coverage is solid - surprising for a fashion magazine, but it's like the surprise when Buzzfeed News turned out to be a good solid RS too”), as well as supporting the removal of any notes of partisanship from Vox.

What of the sources he is less favorably inclined towards? Unsurprisingly and not unreasonably, he dismisses far-right websites like Taki’s Magazine (“Terrible source that shouldn't be used for anything, except limited primary source use.”) and Unz (“There is no way in which using this source is good for Wikipedia.”) in a virtually unanimous chorus with other editors. It’s more fruitful to examine his approach to more moderate or “heterodox” websites.

He would prefer to see Quillette, Claire Lehmann’s longform magazine focused on science and cultural critique and the home of, among other things, the best-researched article I know of on gender differences in chess, banned from the site entirely: “unreliable, editorially incompetent, repeatedly caught publishing false information, conspiracy theories and hoaxes, [undue weight] for opinions.”

What about The Free Press, created by former New York Times editor Bari Weiss to cover investigative stories and provide commentary she felt was being stifled at the Times? To ask is to know the answer: “It was created not to be "reliable" in any Wikipedia sense, but to feed the opinions of the sort of conspiracy theorist who uses large words spelt correctly. If TheFP ran that the sky was blue, I'd see if I could find an actually-reliable source and cite that instead.”

While he has not yet succeeded in getting either source formally deprecated, Wikipedia considers both unreliable and he prioritizes removing citations to them in his edits.

His treatment of the libertarian flagship publication Reason Magazine (which, despite him, remains a Reliable Source even on Wikipedia) stands out the most: based solely on tendentious readings of issues from nearly fifty years ago, he warns people to “apply extreme caution,” saying he “wouldn't use it at all except where unavoidable.”

In each instance, he is backed up by a vocal contingent of equally opinionated like-minded editors, who go by pseudonyms such as Aquillion, XOR’Easter, or NorthBySouthBaranof. This is the sort of coordination that requires no conspiracy, no backroom dealing—though, as in any group, I’m sure some discussions go on—just the natural outgrowth of common traits within the set of people whose Special Interest is arguing about sources deep in the bowels of an online encyclopedia.

Wikipedia’s job is to repeat what Reliable Sources say. David Gerard’s mission is to determine what Reliable Sources are, using any arguments at his disposal that instrumentally favor sources he finds agreeable. The debate, to be clear, is not between tabloids and the New York Times, a battle the Times cleanly wins. In Gerard’s world, scientists and academics who publish in Quillette or Reason are to have even their opinions discarded entirely, while to cast any doubt on the reliability of the word of Huffington “the truth is not in them” Post and PinkNews is absurd.

From there, it’s simple: Wikipedia editors dutifully etch onto the page, with a neutral point of view, that Huffington Post writers think this, PinkNews editors think that, and experienced Harvard professors who make the mistake of writing for The Free Press think nothing fit for an encyclopedia.

As I mentioned to Substack’s Chris Best recently, I am not a blind cynic about institutions or a blind supporter of those who sing the counter-melody. Whatever the faults of, say, the New York Times, and there are many, its resources and will to remain as the paper of record remain unmatched. Outlets like The Free Press and Quillette are at their best when they act as competition and correction mechanisms for these institutions, covering areas legacy outlets overlook, and they cannot hope to compete in scope or depth. Giving the Times more weight than The Free Press makes perfect sense for an encyclopedia, but what actually goes on at Wikipedia is something else entirely.

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin

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Truths that may not be mentioned

It has been known for over a century that there are fewer women than men in the top echelons of IQ -- and in mathematics even more so. But we live in an era of such heavy censorship that any mention of that must be fiercely suppressed

In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.

Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores. There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions—and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates.

Darwin had also raised the question of why males in many species might have evolved to be more variable than females, and when I learned that the answer to his question remained elusive, I set out to look for a scientific explanation. My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species, but simply to discover a logical reason that could help explain how gender differences in variability might naturally arise in the same species.

I came up with a simple intuitive mathematical argument based on biological and evolutionary principles and enlisted Sergei Tabachnikov, a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, to help me flesh out the model. When I posted a preprint on the open-access mathematics archives in May of last year, a variability researcher at Durham University in the UK got in touch by email. He described our joint paper as “an excellent summary of the research to date in this field,” adding that “it certainly underpins my earlier work on impulsivity, aggression and general evolutionary theory and it is nice to see an actual theoretical model that can be drawn upon in discussion (which I think the literature, particularly in education, has lacked to date). I think this is a welcome addition to the field.”

So far, so good.

Once we had written up our findings, Sergei and I decided to try for publication in the Mathematical Intelligencer, the ‘Viewpoint’ section of which specifically welcomes articles on contentious topics. The Intelligencer’s editor-in-chief is Marjorie Wikler Senechal, Professor Emerita of Mathematics and the History of Science at Smith College. She liked our draft, and declared herself to be untroubled by the prospect of controversy. “In principle,” she told Sergei in an email, “I am happy to stir up controversy and few topics generate more than this one. After the Middlebury fracas, in which none of the protestors had read the book they were protesting, we could make a real contribution here by insisting that all views be heard, and providing links to them.”

Professor Senechal suggested that we might enliven our paper by mentioning Harvard President Larry Summers, who was swiftly defenestrated in 2005 for saying that the GMVH might be a contributing factor to the dearth of women in physics and mathematics departments at top universities. With her editorial guidance, our paper underwent several further revisions until, on April 3, 2017, our manuscript was officially accepted for publication. The paper was typeset in India, and proofread by an assistant editor who is also a mathematics professor in Kansas. It was scheduled to appear in the international journal’s first issue of 2018, with an acknowledgement of funding support to my co-author from the National Science Foundation. All normal academic procedure.

Coincidentally, at about the same time, anxiety about gender-parity erupted in Silicon Valley. The same anti-variability argument used to justify the sacking of President Summers resurfaced when Google engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs. For sending out an internal memo to that effect, he too was summarily fired.

No sooner had Sergei posted a preprint of our accepted article on his website than we began to encounter problems. On August 16, a representative of the Women In Mathematics (WIM) chapter in his department at Penn State contacted him to warn that the paper might be damaging to the aspirations of impressionable young women. “As a matter of principle,” she wrote, “I support people discussing controversial matters openly … At the same time, I think it’s good to be aware of the effects.” While she was obviously able to debate the merits of our paper, she worried that other, presumably less sophisticated, readers “will just see someone wielding the authority of mathematics to support a very controversial, and potentially sexist, set of ideas…”

A few days later, she again contacted Sergei on behalf of WIM and invited him to attend a lunch that had been organized for a “frank and open discussion” about our paper. He would be allowed 15 minutes to describe and explain our results, and this short presentation would be followed by readings of prepared statements by WIM members and then an open discussion. “We promise to be friendly,” she announced, “but you should know in advance that many (most?) of us have strong disagreements with what you did.”

On September 4, Sergei sent me a weary email. “The scandal at our department,” he wrote, “shows no signs of receding.” At a faculty meeting the week before, the Department Head had explained that sometimes values such as academic freedom and free speech come into conflict with other values to which Penn State was committed. A female colleague had then instructed Sergei that he needed to admit and fight bias, adding that the belief that “women have a lesser chance to succeed in mathematics at the very top end is bias.” Sergei said he had spent “endless hours” talking to people who explained that the paper was “bad and harmful” and tried to convince him to “withdraw my name to restore peace at the department and to avoid losing whatever political capital I may still have.” Ominously, “analogies with scientific racism were made by some; I am afraid, we are likely to hear more of it in the future.”

The following day, I wrote to the three organisers of the WIM lunch and offered to address any concrete concerns they might have with our logic or conclusions or any other content. I explained that, since I was the paper’s lead author, it was not fair that my colleague should be expected to take all the heat for our findings. I added that it would still be possible to revise our article before publication. I never received a response.

Instead, on September 8, Sergei and I were ambushed by two unexpected developments.

First, the National Science Foundation wrote to Sergei requesting that acknowledgment of NSF funding be removed from our paper with immediate effect. I was astonished. I had never before heard of the NSF requesting removal of acknowledgement of funding for any reason. On the contrary, they are usually delighted to have public recognition of their support for science.

The ostensible reason for this request was that our paper was unrelated to Sergei’s funded proposal. However, a Freedom of Information request subsequently revealed that Penn State WIM administrator Diane Henderson (“Professor and Chair of the Climate and Diversity Committee”) and Nate Brown (“Professor and Associate Head for Diversity and Equity”) had secretly co-signed a letter to the NSF that same morning. “Our concern,” they explained, “is that [this] paper appears to promote pseudoscientific ideas that are detrimental to the advancement of women in science, and at odds with the values of the NSF.” Unaware of this at the time, and eager to err on the side of compromise, Sergei and I agreed to remove the acknowledgement as requested. At least, we thought, the paper was still on track to be published.

But, that same day, the Mathematical Intelligencer’s editor-in-chief Marjorie Senechal notified us that, with “deep regret,” she was rescinding her previous acceptance of our paper. “Several colleagues,” she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke “extremely strong reactions” and there existed a “very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it internationally.” For the second time in a single day I was left flabbergasted. Working mathematicians are usually thrilled if even five people in the world read our latest article. Now some progressive faction was worried that a fairly straightforward logical argument about male variability might encourage the conservative press to actually read and cite a science paper?

In my 40 years of publishing research papers I had never heard of the rejection of an already-accepted paper.

https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/

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My main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Australia: Wild moment ABC reporter is swarmed by anti-war protesters as chaos grips Melbourne for the second day in a row

Being "anti-war" is childish. These "anti-war" protestors are just egotists doing self display under the pretence that they are saying something original. As a former army psychologist, I think I can can assure everyone that soldiers are anti-war too. They get shot at in wars. But like most people they can see that wars and preparations for war can be needed for defence and are prepared to do something about that instead of closing their eyes to reality

Protesters gathered for the second straight day on Thursday morning to rally against the Land Forces Defence Expo being held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

After wild scenes on Wednesday, which saw protesters clashing with police, throwing horse manure and rocks, while officers made arrests and swung batons, tensions were high on day two.

Violence was sparked when ABC reporter Stephanie Ferrier and multiple security guards were interrupted by protestors during a live cross.

It marks the latest instance a journalist has been caught up in the protests after a Daily Mail Australia journalist was shot with rubber bullets by police.

During the ABC live cross, a protester walked in front of the camera and was pushed aside by a security guard.

The protester then appeared to swing a punch at the security guard.

A second security guard then stepped in and appeared to shove the protesters.

Another attendee at the rally could be seen breaking up the fight and urging the pair to 'calm down'.

'At the moment, we're obviously trying to report on this and we're getting a little bit of difficulty here,' the reporter says.

As the reporter attempted to move away from the crowd, more people follow her.

The tense scenes come after Channel 7 Sunrise reporter Teegan Dolling was swarmed by protesters on Wednesday.

One female protester put her hand over the camera lens, Dolling pushed her arm away and what appeared to be private security guarding the reporter stepped in, but the protester managed to put hands on the camera at least one more time.

'That's not on if people are actually mishandling our reporter,' host Natalia Barr said from the studio.

In the hours after the protest, she penned a piece for 7News where she described the protest as 'vile and violent'.

'First there was the stench of OC spray in the air, then came the overwhelming smell of vomit, as protesters threw water balloons filled with sick at police, delegates and media,' Dolling wrote.

'Ducking for cover as padlocks, apples, chairs and horse manure were hurled towards anyone the activists assume held different views.'

She said Melbourne had once been the most liveable country in the world and has seen many protests, but 'none this vile and violent'.

'The aggression came in waves, as police surged towards the 2000-strong group to remove them from the road, escort members of the public to safety, or to extinguish flames,' she wrote.

Ms Dolling said protesters did not heed directions to move and reacted with attacks on police and cruelty towards horses.

It was the city's largest protest in 24 years and resulted in 42 people being arrested.

Disrupt Land Forces say they will continue to protest during the remainder of the conference this week.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13840671/ABC-reporter-anti-war-protest-Melbourne.html

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Upheaval in hate group

The Left eats its own, and it seems the Southern Poverty Law Center is no exception.

The SPLC—a far-left smear factory notorious for demonizing conservatives and Christians as being as hateful as the KKK and for spreading woke dogma in schools—has its own labor union, and members of that union overwhelmingly cast a vote of “no confidence” in SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang.

The vast majority of the SPLC Union’s voting members (141 of 156, or 90.4%) cast ballots urging the SPLC to find a new CEO. The union presented this demand to the SPLC Board of Directors on Aug. 30, and one week later, SPLC Board Chair Karen Baynes-Dunning denied the request.

According to a union press release, its members expressed a “lack of confidence in Margaret Huang and want SPLC to find a new CEO.”

The move comes two months after the SPLC Union broke the news of mass layoffs at the SPLC in June. The SPLC “gutted its staff by a quarter,” laying off more than 60 union members, including five union stewards and the union’s chair.

The union also claimed the layoffs will substantially affect various departments, including Learning for Justice (SPLC’s education arm); support staff in the fundraising, media, and legal departments; and “immigrant justice legal teams.”

What the Union Says

“From the start, the board’s lack of engagement with our union has made them complacent and complicit in all harm Huang and her leadership team create,” Lisa Wright, the SPLC Union chair who was laid off after more than 23 years at the organization, said in the news release Monday. “We believe Baynes-Dunning hired Huang in 2020 to bust our union. Huang has a proven track record of hostility toward unionization.”

“The layoffs have been riddled with inconsistencies, errors, and confusion,” Wright added. “We’ve filed multiple grievances regarding contract violations, some of which we expect to progress to arbitration and possibly litigation.”

Wright claimed that the SPLC failed to present a plan for transitioning the casework of laid-off lawyers, and that Huang gave conflicting messages about the reasons for the layoffs.

The SPLC consists of two entities: a nonprofit under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code that can’t lobby for bills or political candidates and another nonprofit under Section 501(c)(4) of the code that can engage in lobbying. Huang reportedly told the (c)(4) board that SPLC made the layoffs due to a “$13 million deficit” in the (c)(3) organization’s budget, while she told the (c)(3) board and the union that SPLC made the layoffs for strategic reasons, not financial ones.

Baynes-Dunning told the union that board members “unanimously reaffirm our approval of this strategic direction and unanimously support Margaret Huang’s ongoing leadership as president & CEO.”

According to the union, SPLC staff had expressed “alarmingly low confidence and trust in SPLC leadership in multiple organization-wide surveys.” In 2022, only 49% of staff expressed confidence in leadership; that number had fallen to 44% shortly before the layoffs.

The SPLC’s Response

“We respect the bargaining unit’s right to oppose the changes to the SPLC programs and activities, and we empathize with all employees who were impacted by the staff restructure,” the SPLC told The Alabama Reflector, an independent news website.

“These decisions are never easy, but necessary to strengthen our strategic framework and focus so that we can meet the challenges of this decade and beyond,” the organization said.

The News Guild, the umbrella union organization of which the SPLC Union is a part, urged members of other unions to sign a letter demanding that SPLC’s board remove Huang, bargain with the union to reverse layoffs, and “meaningfully involve the SPLC Union in finding, interviewing, and hiring a new CEO.”

As of Wednesday, more than 5,000 people had signed the letter.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/11/no-confidence-far-left-smear-factorys-splc-union-votes-90-oust-president-mass-layoffs/

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DeSantis Stands Firm Against Satanists’ Desire to Counsel Students

I think Satanism is just a confection but it might mislead some

It seems that the English language is somewhat difficult to learn for those who don’t apprehend it as their native tongue. One of the reasons: English has significant built-in complexities that tend to cause a great deal of confusion.

At the risk of creating an additional brushfire in the realm of political correctness, consider the use of homophones, one of the odder characteristics of English. Before you get your feathers ruffled, this phenomenon has nothing to do with sexual preferences or even the devilish cellphone.

The concept of homophones entails two or more words with the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spellings. Not only are these words difficult for beginners, but they also can cause great consternation even for those who have spoken English for their entire lifetime.

Consider, if you will, words such as flower and flour, plain and plane, male and mail, pray and prey, and so forth. There is little wonder that the myriad examples of this oddity of speech often confound even language scholars.

One of the more interesting examples of homophones came to mind just the other day while I was reading a news article from the Daily Caller related to a new Florida law allowing volunteer chaplains to be placed into the statewide school system.

Mind you, the new law calls not only for the chaplains to be volunteers at public schools, but a student may consult a chaplain only voluntarily and only with parental consent. Sounds simple enough, and the move certainly is needed based on the unrest and confusion often incurred by students in classrooms.

Nevertheless, a problem arose in the “model policy” set forth by Manny Diaz, Florida’s commissioner of education. According to that document, “religion” is defined as a group that “acknowledges the existence of and worships a supernatural entity or entities that possesses power over the natural world.” It goes on to say that “the chaplain must be recognized by their religion’s leadership and vetted by the participating school’s principal.”

Of course, this kind of “hateful” language got the panties of atheists and satanic worshippers all in a wad.

Devon Graham of the Florida chapter of American Atheists proclaimed that the definition is exclusionary because it prohibits The Satanic Temple from participating. Almost immediately, The Satanic Temple took to the social media site X with a call to its followers “to stand with us and raise hell” over the measure.

In response, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said during an April press conference that students should have the right to pursue advice from chaplain leaders if they wish. DeSantis noted that satanist groups aren’t a religion and they’re not eligible for chaplain programs.

“We’re not playing those games in Florida,” DeSantis said. “That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this. We’re going to be using common sense. … You do not have to worry about that.”

DeSantis is correct in his assessment of this illegitimate, godless claim—commonly pushed by worshippers of Satan and God-haters in general. The Founders of our great nation would agree as well. In fact, they would be appalled at the very thought that the antithesis of religion would ever be considered on equal footing in defining religious freedom.

There is nothing in our U.S. Constitution that provides a freedom from religion or in any way prohibits the voluntary promulgation of religious thought in the marketplace. To suggest otherwise is in direct contradiction to the Framers’ intent and to plain English.

Even as the atheists and satanists are bent on degrading, and even destroying, the very basis of our freedoms, we at Southern Evangelical Seminary stand with DeSantis and the good people of Florida.

Now is the time for Americans to rise up against the hordes of hell and join together with the leaders of that great state to declare an end to the foolishness that has engulfed our nation. The continued existence of our nation, or any other democratic form of government, depends upon the foundation of God-given moral standards that ought to beat in the hearts of the faithful.

Those of us who are followers of the one true Christ have an additional promise of victory. We are reminded by Jesus as he told Peter and the other disciples in Matthew 16:18: “On this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Going back to our basic English language lesson, here is another prime example of homophones being used in one sentence: While the foes of basic morality, common sense, and God may be intent on “raising hell,” Christ’s church was born for the purpose of “razing hell.”

The time for timidity on the part of Christ followers in America has long since passed if our nation is to survive the onslaught of evil and confusion now assailing our shores. We no longer can enjoy the luxury of sitting on the sidelines waiting silently for the inevitable demise of everything we hold dear. Strong winds demand bold action.

That is why we need to be ever-vigilant in the battle for truth. So with this in mind, all of us at Southern Evangelical Seminary will remain steadfast in the truth of the Gospel. Because it is the only truth that matters.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/11/desantis-stands-firm-against-satanists-desire-to-counsel-students/

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Trump’s faith advisor and emissary for freedom

Dr Ben Carson is stepping out of retirement and into a religious freedom advisory role for Donald Trump’s 2024 re-run.

As a key member of Trump’s former administration, Dr Carson will work alongside Trump as the campaign’s National Faith Chairman.

The aim of the role is to fortify against the erosion of religious liberty and to assist Trump in his – now public – commitment to protect freedom of speech.

Dr Carson isn’t new to the Left’s habit of pushing mass censorship or engaging in manipulative propaganda, lawfare, and cancel culture.

Accepting the ambassadorial National Faith Chairman advisory role, Dr Carson, explained:

‘Today in 1987, along with a very talented team at Johns Hopkins, I performed the historic operation separating twins who were joined at the back of the head.

‘Since then, God has used me to help save the lives of many children through medicine.’

To this he dedicated himself to the role, stating:

‘All my efforts are now focused on saving our country so that future generations can grow up in an America where anything is possible.’

Alluding to the MAGA vs. Marxism character of the 2024 US election, Dr Carson said that Donald Trump has to win in November because the future of the republic depends upon it. Dr Carson then said he was honoured to serve alongside the President, tweeting:

In a shared press release posted on Friday, both President Trump and Dr Carson officially announced their support for the initiative.

Calling him a ‘man of unwavering faith’, Trump said:

‘Dr Carson is the perfect person to work with leaders of the faith community on behalf of the campaign; to promote the protection of religious freedom and prosperity in our country.

‘Kamala Harris and the radical left have waged war on America’s faith community since the day they took office.

‘Her selection of Governor Tim Walz as her Vice-Presidential nominee solidifies their commitment to intensifying those efforts.’

‘Nobody,’ Trump added, ‘was a bigger champion for the faith community than me. I look forward to working with Ben Carson to fight back against Kamala Harris’ war on faith.’

Dr Carson reasserted his public comments, remarking:

‘Since America’s founding nearly 250 years ago, our country has served as a beacon of freedom, hope, and prosperity for the world.

‘President Trump believes America’s best days are ahead, and in order to reestablish ourselves as that shining city upon a hill, we must acknowledge we are One Nation Under God.’

Consistently backing Trump as President, and him running again for President, Dr Carson said:

‘There is only one candidate in this race that has defended religious liberty and supported Americans of faith. That candidate is Donald J. Trump.’

Dr Carson isn’t just an American hero, he’s a true statesman.

An outspoken Christian and retired neurosurgeon, he understands the need to preserve classical liberal freedoms, and the Christian basis for those freedoms.

This election marks the difference between a house of freedom, and a house of slavery.

As Reagan said in 1964, ‘You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children, this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/trumps-faith-advisor-and-emissary-for-freedom/

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My main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Victor Davis Hanson Rips Goldman Sachs For Propping Up Harris

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson called out Goldman Sachs on Tuesday for suggesting the economy under Vice President Kamala Harris could be more beneficial, arguing the group and others like it are pushing an agenda that could “destroy” middle-class Americans.

Last week, Goldman Sachs economists released a note suggesting Harris’ policies might provide a “very slight boost” to gross domestic product investment, while former President Donald Trump’s plans could negatively impact growth due to “tariffs and tighter immigration policy.” On his podcast, “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” Hanson questioned why voters should heed Goldman Sachs when the firm won’t face the consequences of “whatever disastrous policies” could come from a potential Harris administration.

“Why would we listen to someone who makes so much money that will be immune from whatever disastrous policies that will destroy the rest of us? And then they can afford the luxury for social or cultural reasons of supporting a neo-socialist, and that’s what we’re talking about. We really are,” Hanson said. “Reminds me of the aristocrats during the Bolshevik Warsaw revolution, who all thought that Lenin was kind of cute and neat. But that they had so much land and so much money that he would never go after them, and even if he did, it wouldn’t hurt them.”

“I don’t listen to anything Goldman Sachs says, I’m not — I have no animus toward them, but they’re just, they live in a different world, all those people,” Hanson continued.

Hanson then called out former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent endorsement of Harris, expressing concern that Cheney’s approval of the vice president also implies approval of her potential attorney general choices, such as Keith Ellison, who has received donations from left-wing billionaire George Soros.

“Dick Cheney is endorsing the Soros attorney generals, and I don’t understand the ‘Never Trumpers’ or the Goldman Sachs people, that’s what they endorse. They don’t just endorse being kind of liked by the left and kind of having better press coverage … But what they’re really doing to the middle class is they are promoting an agenda that will destroy the middle class,” Hanson said.

The senior fellow continued to slam Democrats as he stated they “lie” about wanting to push policies that secure borders, have a “low tax deregulated economy to spur investment and entrepreneurship” and are “tough” on “deterrent foreign policy.”

“The fact is, there’s two different agendas, and they’re antithetical. One agenda is 90% similar to all of the people’s, all of these characters that I mentioned to their lifelong advocacies,” Hanson continued. “So why are they rejecting 90% of what they told us was essential to give them money or to give them votes or to give them support?”

“And the answer is they got their feelings hurt. They lost their magazine, they lost their speaking fees, they lost their TV billets, they lost their authorities. No one listens to them. They’re has beens, they destroyed their careers. They committed career suicide. And they’re angry, and they blame it all on the orange man,” Hanson said.

After unveiling her economic policies in mid-August, Harris faced backlash from political pundits on both sides of the aisle, particularly over her proposal to place a federal ban on “corporate price gouging” in order to lower high grocery store prices. Critics stated that not only would the proposal potentially drive up prices but also create black markets.

Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/10/victor-davis-hanson-goldman-sachs-kamala-harris-economy-destroy-middle-class/

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Attending Church Regularly Will Lengthen Your Life More Than Diet, Exercise, Longevity Expert Says

Attending church services may open the door to eternal life—but it will also extend your life on Earth more than diet or exercise, according to the foremost expert on global longevity.

Dan Buettner, who won three Emmy Awards for his groundbreaking 2023 documentary “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones,” revealed the deep benefits that faith in God renders to those who want to live a long and prosperous life. Although America faces an epidemic of chronic diseases, “only about 20% of how long you live is dictated by your genes,” he told “Mornings with Maria” on Aug. 30. A healthy lifestyle incorporating diet, exercise, and stress management means the average person can live “12 more years in good health.”

But the statistics he shared proved that an active faith in God, including weekly church attendance, had potentially the biggest impact on extending earthly life.

Buettner’s documentary investigated regions in the world known for having the longest average lifespan. Researchers interviewed 263 centenarians—people who had lived to the age of 100—and found all but five “belonged to some faith-based community.”

The healthiest elderly had a common characteristic: “having a faith. We know people who go to church—or temple, or even mosque—and show up four times per month are living four to 14 years longer than people who aren’t.” The figure may come from a study finding regular church attendance lengthened the average American’s life by seven years—and 14 years for African Americans.

That number dwarfed other, more intuitive lifehacks, including regular exercise and diet. “For a 20-year-old, if you move away from the standard American diet towards a Blue Zone diet—which is to say whole food, plant-based—it’s worth about 10 years of extra life expectancy, and for a 60-year-old, it’s still worth about six years,” he said.

One food, particularly, stood out above others: beans. “If you’re eating a cup of beans a day, it’s worth about four extra years of life expectancy over getting your protein from less healthy sources,” Buettner said, as he raved about minestrone soup. “Every time that you mix a grain with a bean, they come together, they make a whole protein. … These are cheap foods, they’re shelf stable, and every American can afford them.”

Those in the healthiest lifestyle moved organically, about every 20 minutes, without sitting for long periods of time. But anyone can benefit from simple exercise, such as walking. “If you have zero physical activity in your life, you can raise your life expectancy three years if you just walk 20 minutes a day,” Buettner told Bartiromo.

Strong family relationships also put years in your life. Centenaries agree on “putting family first, keeping your aging parents nearby, investing in your partner, investing in your children,” he continued. “People who are in a committed relationship are living anywhere from two to six years longer than people who are alone in life.”

If you’re keeping track, you can add three years to your life with exercise, four years by eating beans, six years by being in a committed relationship, six to 10 years by eating a whole foods and plant-based diet, and seven to 14 years by going to church every week.

Another aspect of church life that may lengthen your life is stress management. A key factor in living to 100 is “downshifting: either through prayer, meditation, simply expressing gratitude before a meal.” Regular prayer incorporates “making sure our day has certain times where we lower the stress of the human condition, lower inflammation,” said Buettner, a 2011 fellow at National Geographic and muti-time grant awardee.

Environmental factors—including the people and businesses around you—also play a role. “If you live in a neighborhood with more than five fast food restaurants within half a mile of your home, you’re about 35% more likely to be obese than if there are fewer than three,” Buettner added. “If your three best friends are obese and unhealthy, you are 150% more likely to be overweight yourself.”

The study is but one of many that have found physical, mental, and psychological benefits of faith, Bible reading, and church attendance:

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a report in March 2023 stating that an epidemic of loneliness has produced health impacts “even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” Americans’ “health may be undermined” by their declining participation in “[r]eligious or faith-based groups.”

Regular “religious practice has significant effects” in reducing the faithful’s odds of dying from suicides, drug poisonings, and alcoholic liver disease, according to a 2023 study.

The Blue Zones commend cultures that promote a sense of purpose. “[R]eligious Americans tend to believe their life is meaningful more often than do those who are not religious,” found a 2023 study.

Americans who believe in God and value marriage are more likely to be “very happy” than isolated secularists, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll taken last March. While only a thin sliver of Americans (12%) consider themselves “very happy,” 68% of the happiest people surveyed say they believe in God.

An overwhelming 82% of Christians describe their outlook as optimistic and take pride in their church, according to a 2023 study.

Christians who regularly read the Bible report a higher score on the Human Flourishing Index—which measures “happiness & life satisfaction,” “mental & physical health,” “meaning & purpose,” “character & virtue,” “close societal relationships” and “financial & material stability”—than nonpracticing Christians or the Nones/religiously unaffiliated, a 2023 study found.

“Young-adult Gen-Xers in the strongly religious class across the three measurements generally reported better mental health when they reached established adulthood than those in the nonreligious class,” reported a 2022 Syracuse University study.

Women who attend church at least once a week had a 68% lower chance of dying a death of despair than non-churchgoers; men who go to church frequently lower their risk by one-third, according to a 2020 Harvard study.

Americans who attended religious services regularly were 44% more likely to say they were “very happy” than the religiously inactive, concluded a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.

A 2019 study found “robust effects of religiosity on depression that are stronger for the most depressed.”

Even if they leave behind religious practices, “people who attended weekly religious services or practiced daily prayer or meditation in their youth reported greater life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s—and were less likely to subsequently have depressive symptoms, smoke, use illicit drugs, or have a sexually transmitted infection—than people raised with less regular spiritual habits,” discovered a 2018 study from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

A 2017 study found church attendance significantly lowers the body’s reaction to stress and cuts the worshiper’s chance of dying in half. “More frequent churchgoers (more than once a week) had a 55% reduction of all-cause mortality risk compared with non-churchgoers,” reported the study.

Attending church more than once a week reduced a woman’s likelihood of dying by 33%, a 2016 Harvard study concluded.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/10/attending-church-regularly-will-lengthen-your-life-more-than-diet-exercise-longevity-expert-says/

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‘We Will bring back abortion freedom by ‘Fixing’ the Filibuster, Cruz’s Senate Rival Says

Rep. Colin Allred, the Texas Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in November, said he would support “fixing” the filibuster in part so that a hypothetical Democratic-majority Senate could pass an abortion bill that he claims would codify the Supreme Court’s 1971 Roe v. Wade abortion decision.

Tim Miller, a former Republican and podcast host for The Bulwark, interviewed Allred, a former NFL linebacker and member of the House of Representatives, at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday. Miller asked a softball question, suggesting that Allred (along with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris) is not as liberal as his critics suggest, but Allred took the opportunity to pledge to “fix” the filibuster.

“If Kamala Harris gets in there, and if the Democrats hold on to the Senate, if Colin Allred gets in there and there’s 50 Democratic senators, they’re going to kill the filibuster, they’re going to pass the Green New Deal, they’re going to socialize health care, they’re going to expand the Supreme Court to 19 people … is that realistic?” Miller asked, suggesting that anyone who predicts these radical moves from Allred would be mistaken.

Rather than taking the bait, Allred pledged to change the filibuster, a Senate rule that currently requires a 60-vote majority to pass certain forms of legislation.

“The filibuster has to change because it’s broken,” the Democrat replied. “The history of the filibuster, as many Senate observers will know, is that it was used almost exclusively to block civil rights legislation, to block anti-lynching legislation. I’m a civil rights lawyer by training. This is personal for me.”

(While opponents of civil rights legislation did use the filibuster, many others have employed the filibuster, as well, to kill countless other bills. It is no more than a legislative mechanism that can be used for good or bad purposes.)

Allred noted that a previous version of the filibuster would hold up Senate business, while the new version of the filibuster applies “to every single bill, and you have a dual track,” where the Senate can pass other legislation while senators block specific bills through the filibuster.

“It has contributed to hyperpartisanship and has actually made the Senate less functional,” he argued.

Supporters of the current filibuster, such as outgoing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., argue that the 60-vote threshold prevents radical bills from passing the chamber and contributes to friendliness in the upper body of the legislature.

“The whole point of the filibuster, like the whole point of the Senate itself, is to provide for a place where we can have considered, deliberative debate, and can forge compromise and consensus among our diverse and currently divided populace,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in 2021.

Allred noted that in the House of Representatives, where he currently serves, the majority rules. “If you’re not in the majority, you have nothing,” he said. “The Senate doesn’t operate that way, and I don’t want to see it become like the House, but the current filibuster doesn’t work.”

The Texas Democrat insisted, “I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of the Senate,” but he called for altering the filibuster in a way that would enable Democrats to “codify Roe v. Wade.”

“And so, to me, we do have to reform it. We have to fix it. We have to go back to the original formulation for it,” he said. “That is also why we will codify Roe v. Wade and make it the law of the land.”

But the Democrat did not explain how “fixing” the filibuster would help Democrats pass legislation to “codify Roe v. Wade.”

In September 2021, Allred voted with most of his fellow Democrats to pass HR 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act. He has co-sponsored the legislation, claiming that it “would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law.”

Yet the bill goes further than Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision in which the Supreme Court reinterpreted the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to include a right to abortion. The court ruled that states could not ban abortion before the term of “fetal viability,” the point at which an infant can survive outside the womb. The court overturned that decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), returning the issue of abortion to the states.

While some states have restricted abortion to early in pregnancy before babies can feel pain, others have extended abortion up until the moment of birth.

The Women’s Health Protection Act specifically states that the right to abortion “shall not be limited or otherwise infringed.” It would have allowed abortion providers to determine whether a pregnancy is considered “viable” or not, effectively enabling abortions at any point.

“Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification,” Manchin, who broke from his party and voted against the legislation, said in 2022. “It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion.”

Allred went on to suggest that banning abortion involves forbidding the removal of a nonviable fetus in an ectopic pregnancy (where the embryo lodges outside the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube). He noted that two Texas women sued hospitals, claiming the hospitals refused to treat their ectopic pregnancies for fear of Texas’ abortion law, yet he did not note that Texas law does not forbid treating ectopic pregnancy and that those procedures are not abortions.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/10/we-will-codify-roe-wade-fixing-filibuster-ted-cruz-opponent-colin-allred-says/

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Australia: Violent turn by pro-Palestinian movement a strategic mistake as police crush strong-arm tactics

Victoria Police has sent the clearest possible message to pro-Palestinian and anti-war protesters, with a series of deafening blasts and front-foot policing designed to contain violent extremism.

For the first time since the pandemic unrest, police have pulled out the rubber bullets, batons, teargas and stun grenades to put protesters back in their collective box.

By doing so, police are flagging to protesters that violence against officers and their horses will not be tolerated, regardless of the cause.

While the Land Forces 24 conference was the purported target of the protesters, the 2000 or so people who marched were united under the banner of supporting Gaza.

However, the strategy, fuelled by hard core socialists, relied heavily on violent resistance. This was a mistake.

Throwing acid, tearing down security walls, hurling stones and horse manure at police and their horses triggered the firmest anti-riot response in years.

The decision to adopt violent protest tactics was a sharp shift from the past 11 months, when most of the public pro-Palestine rallies have erred on the side of peace.

Wednesday’s rally changes this dynamic.

For much of the battle in the late morning, protesters gave the police the moral authority to strike back with force.

The protesters also lost the strategic war.

While they were hurling projectiles at police, the delegates to the conference were quietly walking into the Melbourne convention centre through a front door 150m away.

Present at the protest was Nasser Mashni, president of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, who lent his support to the Gaza cause but had no involvement in the violence.

Free Palestine Melbourne banners were common, as was the Socialist Alternative, the Victorian Socialists and Students for Palestine.

At one point the protesters chanted “the people united, will never be defeated’’, a trusty old Trades Hall chant.

In other words, the protesters were an effective anti-war coalition that mirrored Melbourne’s weekly anti-Israel parades, with leaflets being distributed for Marxism Discussion Groups at Brunswick’s Red Flag Bookstore, hosted by the Socialist Alternative.

In some ways it makes you want to smile.

But there is a danger in what has happened.

The protest leaders have sharply raised the temperature on the Middle East in what is Australia’s protest capital.

It now means that when protesters step out, they will know how to maximise attention for their cause.

This is not something that police or the Victorian or Australian governments will be looking for.

The plan has been for nearly a year to encourage respectful dialogue.

That ended the moment the protesters chose anarchy over peace.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/melbourne-protests-live-violent-turn-by-propalestinian-movement-a-strategic-mistake/news-story/e041be344cff7b50243d90427c74df90

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My main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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