The Democrats do not care a whit about democracy

Roger Kimball

The events of the last few days have made incontrovertible something that candid observers have known for some time now: that the word “democracy” in the maw of Democrats bears the same relation to really existing democracy that the Russian word “Pravda” bore to really existing truth in the Soviet era.

If you look it up, you’ll see that “Pravda” means “truth.” At least, that’s what the dictionary says it means. But anyone on the ground, experiencing the full-court press of Soviet disinformation knew that the newspaper Pravda deployed the word “truth” only to undermine it. It was necessary to pay lip service to the charade. Otherwise the Potemkin village that had been so carefully built up and that maintained the prevailing consensus might crumble, and who knows what might happen then?

In the beginning, a large part of the population, fired by ideological zeal, actually believed the fiction that was palmed off as the truth. As time passed and the contradictions between word and deed accumulated, however, fewer and fewer believed it, even if many continued to say they did. Eventually, the acrid stench of hypocrisy overcame all but the most committed ideologues — or the most cynical powerbrokers.

That is where we are now in the twilight of Bidendom. Everyone with eyes to see has known he is and has been a malign and senile puppet. But until his debate with Donald Trump a few weeks ago, we were all told to forget the evidence of our eyes and ears and join the Orwellian chorus that insisted he was “sharp as a tack,” “intensely probing,” etc.

Now that Biden — or someone writing over his name — has declared that he would not be running for reelection, thus clearing the runway for his DEI vice president, person-of-color Kamala Harris, the farce of Biden’s cognitive competence could be retired in favor of lo-cal encomia to his “selflessness” and public-spirited support of “democracy.”

But pay attention. What just happened is essentially an anti-democratic coup. Kamala Harris, who got no delegates — zero — when she ran for president in 2020 and was only chosen as Biden’s running mate because he had promised to pick a black woman, is on the cusp of being handed the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

Fourteen million people voted for Biden in the primaries. What about their votes? Don’t be naive. The voters don’t matter except as a matter of packaging. What matters is what the mostly unnamed Council of Elders wants. They wanted Biden when he was a useful proxy. When he ceased being useful, he was cashiered. Just today it was announced that those transcripts Special Counsel Robert Hur made of his conversation with Biden — the ones that prompted him to say that Biden was an elderly man with a poor memory who was not fit to stand trial — suddenly the DoJ found them and is about to release them. Expect a lot more where that came from.

But the real take away from this melancholy farce is that the Dems do not care a whit about democracy. They believe, as I have often observed, that “democracy” means “rule by Democrats.” In 2020 they managed the balancing act whereby they shouted “our democracy” while actually working to destroy it. They are hoping it will work again this time. The phoenix-like return of Donald Trump, together with the malevolent preposterousness of Kamala Harris, makes that exceedingly unlikely. And that, it may almost go without saying, is as reassuring a thing for genuine democracy as it is devastating for the fraud that goes under the nauseating title of “Our Democracy.”

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/the-democrats-do-not-care-a-whit-about-democracy/

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CBS News Implies Kamala Harris Should Be Exempt From Criticism

The bitter Sunday afternoon announcement that President Joe Biden would end his reelection bid spurred hours of live network television coverage. With all that time to talk, it was guaranteed that the TV newsers would start worrying out loud about a new Kamala Harris presidential campaign.

CBS News really demonstrated the protective liberal urges. The news wasn’t two hours old before Robert Costa warned that the Republican attacks were going to be “rough-and-tumble like we’ve never seen it.”

Costa received a text from Donald Trump Jr. “already attacking Vice President Harris, saying she owns the entire policy of President Biden, [is] even more liberal, and he’s saying she’s not competent!”

Stop. What in that statement is rougher than we’ve ever seen? The Democrats and their staunch media allies compare Donald Trump to Hitler and other mass-murdering dictators. They explicitly call him an “existential threat” to democracy. How is it then “rough” to say Harris is ultraliberal and incompetent?

The impression you get is that attacking Harris is exponentially worse because she’s a “woman of color.” She’s automatically “historic,” which apparently means “beyond criticism.”

“CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell joined in: “I remember the 2020 Republican National Convention, not the one we had last week, but in 2020 and the attacks against Kamala Harris then were very, very personal.”

But I can’t find any Harris attacks in the 2020 speeches of Trump or Mike Pence or Nikki Haley or even Donald Trump Jr., let alone a “personal” attack.

“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan then uncorked this whopper: “I can only imagine that, and a woman at the top of the ticket will take slings and arrows that a male candidate won’t. That’s just the facts and we know it.”

Once again, in 2016, journalists such as Carl Bernstein called Trump a “neo-fascist sociopath.” How is a “male candidate” somehow getting it easy? But suggesting Harris makes “word salads” or “cackles” is just beyond the pale!

An hour later, O’Donnell repeated the theme, talking about Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016: “It was personal. He called her nasty, he called her a lot of other words. I wonder whether those same types of attacks would work in 2024? There will be a different dynamic running against a black woman.”

Let’s repeat: “Nasty” is less harsh than “authoritarian” or “Hitler.”

In her 2016 convention speech, Clinton said Trump didn’t have the temperament to be president: “Donald Trump can’t even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.” Today, CBS feels the need to protect Harris from the slightest rumble.

Four hours after Biden withdrew from the race, O’Donnell recounted talking to a top Democratic strategist who said, “They are eager to have Vice President Harris run against, in their words, a convicted rapist.” That could be described as “very, very personal.”

It also can be described as false. In a civil trial—with no real requirement of evidence—a jury of New York City Democrats found Trump liable for sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, but not rape. (Naturally, they didn’t mention that Carroll also claimed in 2019 that she was assaulted by Les Moonves, the longtime CEO at CBS.)

O’Donnell said she told this Democrat strategist to recall Trump running against Hillary, and wondered: “How will suburban women in 2024 react to attacks on the first woman of color to lead a party’s ticket?”

She’s suggesting it’s political suicide to criticize Harris because of her race and gender. This is coming from journalists, who are supposed to be about accountability and democracy.

At every turn, the media make plain they are about damaging Republicans and helping Democrats.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/cbs-implies-kamala-harris-should-be-exempt-from-criticism/

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The Overreaching Power of the Bureaucracy Is Destroying Our Representative Government

The United States is a republic with decision-making power held by elected legislators representing the people. Yet many of the biggest decisions affecting the lives of Americans are made by unelected bureaucrats.

In recent years, we have seen the administrative state going to levels never seen before, making decisions that Congress never told bureaucrats to make. This includes the Biden administration continuing its student loan forgiveness efforts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s final rule to help kill off gas-powered cars.

The EPA car rule helps illustrate the extent of the problems. It’s a shocking attack on freedom to try and limit what cars people can drive, and it’s ludicrously expensive. The agency’s projected compliance cost of the rule is a whopping $760 billion. To put this cost in context, the projected cost of the 2009 stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was $787 billion.

Therefore, the EPA, without Congress speaking on whether it wants the agency to impose such a major change in policy, is imposing compliance costs in this one rule roughly equivalent to the cost of one of the biggest pieces of legislation passed by Congress in our history.

The modern administrative state has been a serious problem long before the Biden administration, though. It has undermined our republican form of government with executive branch bureaucrats often serving as the prime decision-makers rather than our elected representatives. Early 20th-century progressive leaders like President Woodrow Wilson who helped assemble the administrative state were bent on advancing executive branch expertise and power. In fact, Wilson himself had a shocking disdain for voters and specific groups of citizens.

Our country is looking more like the nation envisioned by Wilson and less like the republic envisioned by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, we must restore representative government. And reform must start with Congress, which created the agencies and the rulemaking process in the first place.

Reform is never easy. Plenty of people want to keep power within the agencies and give them a blank regulatory check to aid the ideological ambitions of those who seek greater governmental control. However, one important solution isn’t difficult: Congress should establish in law some boundaries for agency power.

For example, Congress should prohibit agencies from issuing rules outside their demonstrated regulatory expertise, unless clearly authorized to do so. After all, one of the biggest justifications for agency rulemaking is the alleged expertise of agencies. If they don’t have the expertise on certain issues, then it follows that Congress didn’t want them to promulgate rules on those matters.

That’s common sense, as are many other boundaries. For example, absent clear authority from Congress, it would be absurd to think lawmakers wanted agencies to equate shutting down businesses with regulating them, as the EPA is doing with its new power plant rule. The rule is creating infeasible requirements that necessarily will lead to plant closures.

It would also defy common sense to think Congress, without saying so clearly, is OK with an agency banning or limiting the availability of certain types of goods, such as cars; reshaping an entire industry; or doing an end-run around Congress because it’s tired of waiting on legislators to pass a law. Therefore, legislators should make it clear that such rules are prohibited unless clearly authorized by law.

It’s helpful that the judicial branch has recently put some limits on agency rulemaking power. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court got rid of what was known as the Chevron doctrine, which was a judicial creation that required courts to give deference to agencies’ often expansive interpretations of ambiguous laws they administer. This helped to make it easier for agencies to achieve their policy objectives by favoring bureaucrats over the people challenging the agencies in court.

Now that this favoritism is gone, it should make it tougher for agencies. However, make no mistake, it won’t stop sweeping and egregious rules, in part because legislation often provides vague or general authority to agencies that they can take advantage of, even if it is obviously inconsistent with congressional intent.

More relevant to putting a stop to sweeping rules is the “major questions” doctrine. The Supreme Court has said there are “extraordinary cases … in which the ‘history and the breadth of the authority that [the agency] has asserted,’ and the ‘economic and political significance’ of that assertion, provide a ‘reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress’ meant to confer such authority.” In these instances, an agency must have a “‘clear congressional authorization’ for the power it claims.”

Even with the existence of the major questions doctrine, new legislation from Congress is required because a congressionally passed law can provide clear prohibitions of agency actions and far more comprehensive protection from agency abuses than the judicial branch. Statutory language should serve as a first line of defense against agencies ignoring the will of Congress and, thereby, the will of the voters.

When asked what kind of nation the Framers of the Constitution created, Benjamin Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

If we are going to keep our republic, then we need Congress to step up with major reforms to stop the abuses of the administrative state.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/23/overreaching-power-bureaucracy-destroying-representative-government/

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JD Vance makes an interesting point

Kamala Harris' husband's ex-wife and the mother of her two step-children has broken her silence after a clip of vice presidential nominee JD Vance resurfaced, in which he refers to Harris as a 'childless cat lady.'

Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, defended the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee against 'baseless' criticisms over her lack of biological children, claiming Harris is an equal co-parent of their kids.

Her remarks came just hours after Vance's 2021 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson went viral on social media.

In the interview, Vance said the US was run by 'a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.'

'Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC - the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,' Donald Trump's newly-announced running mate continued.

'How does it make any sense we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?'

But Harris has been a step-mother to Emhoff's two * adult * children since she married their father in 2014, and has been lovingly dubbed 'Momala.'

Ella Emhoff, now 25-years-old, was an art student when Harris was picked as Biden's running mate. She has since exploded onto the fashion and art scene as her stepmom became the first woman Vice President of the United States.

But her pro-Palestine leanings have recently made waves amid the ongoing war in Israel.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13670205/Kamala-Harris-Doug-Emhoff-ex-wife-step-children-silence-J-D-Vance.html

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All 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)

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

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

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

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

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Italy: gay couple are brutally whipped with a belt and assaulted by three men and a woman who jumped out of a car and attacked them after seeing the men walk hand in hand



A reminder that homosexual behaviour is distasteful to many people. And Italians tend to be both conservative and impulsive so are not easily influenced by political correctness. And given the attire of the woman the scene, the attackers had a strong heterosexual identity

Mattia and Antonio - fake names provided by local media - were attacked over the weekend at 4am after an LBGT+ event in Rome.

Chilling footage captured the incident which saw the two men crossing the street while holding hands before two men and a woman in lingere and knee-high boots began their assault.

The two male attackers in t-shirts and shorts could be seen tailing the couple for a moment before one wearing a white top raised his leg and kicked them as they shouted homophobic insults and called them 'f******'.

The couple, seemingly baffled by the violence, attempt to retaliate but are outnumbered as the scantily clad woman begins to intervene.

She runs towards the couple before shoving one of the men, throwing punches as they attempt to fight back while also backing away.

The two male attackers become involved in the fight again after one of them punches one of the men in the couple in the head, sending him falling towards the floor next to a lamp post.

Within seconds, the woman who appears to be returning from a strip club, grabs hold of him and continues her beating while her two pals take on the other man in the couple.

One of the attackers then removes his belt and whips one of the gay men in the stomach while his friend holds him still.

As he tumbles to the ground from the impact of the swings, he attempts to shield his face with his arms as he continues to be belted by the cruel man.

After a few seconds of violent whipping across his arms, back, and stomach, the two assailants begin punching him in the head after putting him in a headlock while he remains tackled to the ground.

The man's boyfriend seems to break free from the woman's clutches across the other side of the road as he sprints past and swings a heavy punch to his partner's attacker's head.

The woman in the thong and bra is quick to start her attack again as she grabs one of the men and slaps him around the head before kicking him down as he attempted to stand up.

As cars drive by, the couple remain tackled onto the floor of the road before three members of the public finally offer their assistance to the victims.

According to the Gay Centre, which uploaded the horror footage to YouTube, the couple ended up in the emergency room following the assault.

They allegedly did not report the incident to police, but told the Italian helpline: 'We can no longer accept living in a society where violence, like the one we suffered, is still a sad reality.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13651877/Horrifying-moment-gay-couple-brutally-whipped-belt-assaulted-three-men-woman-jumped-car-attacked-seeing-men-walk-hand-hand.html

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Britain has a two-child policy?

I thought that only Communist China had such limits (now abandoned) and official Australian policy encourages extra children, so I thought I was dreaming when I heard of this. But it is a reality. Unlike China, extra children are not forbidden but are financially penalized by the welfare system. If you have more mouths to feed and you are poor, too bad for you! Your welfare pyments stay the same as if you had only two children. Making it harder to feed your children seems shocking to me

In the benefit system, entitlement and need are intertwined: the greater the need, the more benefit income a family is usually entitled to receive. But in the 2010s, two policies were introduced that delinked entitlement and need by limiting the amount of benefits some families could receive: the benefit cap in 2013, and the two-child limit in 2017.

At present, nearly half a million families are hit by at least one of these policies. Although the benefit cap affects out-of-work families only, this is not the case for the two-child limit, and six out of ten families affected by the two-child limit today contain at least one adult that is in work.

The two-child limit results in low-income families losing around £3,200 a year for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. And when 100,000s of families lose out on £1,000s of benefit income a year, poverty rates soar. In 2013-14, 34 per cent of children in larger families were in poverty, but this is projected to rise to 51 per cent in 2028-29. In contrast, the proportion of two-child families in poverty is projected to remain more or less constant over the same 15-year period, at around 25 per cent. Other outcomes are also worse for larger families: in the year 2021-22, three-quarters (75 per cent) of larger families were in material deprivation, compared to 3-in-10 families with fewer than three children (34 per cent); and 16 per cent of larger families were in food insecurity, compared to 7 per cent of families with fewer than three children.

Abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government £2.5 billion in 2024-25, rising to £3.6 billion in 2024-25 prices if the policy were at full coverage. These costs are low compared to the harm that the policy causes, and scrapping the two-child limit would be one of the most efficient ways to drive down child poverty rates. If abolished today, 490,000 children would be lifted out of poverty.

There are two especially sharp corners in the benefits system today

Over the last decade, successive UK governments have introduced two policies that undermine the core principle of connecting need and entitlement in the benefit system. The first was the benefit cap, introduced in April 2013, which puts an upper limit on the amount of benefit income out-of-work households can receive.[1] The second was the two-child limit, which prevents the vast majority of families from receiving means-tested benefit support for any third or subsequent children born from April 2017 onwards.[2] These two policies together affected nearly half a million families in Great Britain in 2022-23, including 34,000 who are affected by both (see Figure 1), up from 26,000 in 2013-14 (when only the benefit cap was in operation). [3] [4]

There are several reasons for the over-ten-fold growth over the past nine years. Consider the benefit cap, where the numbers affected have increased from around 26,000 in 2013-14 to 108,000 families in 2022-23. The cap’s real value has fallen every year since its introduction, with the solitary exception of April 2023 when it was uprated in line with inflation: it was cut in nominal terms in 2016, and frozen in all other years. As a result, by April 2024, the benefit cap will be worth £14,000 less in real terms for families outside of London, and £10,000 less for those in London, than it was at its introduction in 2013.[5] The impact of this can be seen very clearly in Figure 1: when benefits were substantially increased in April 2020 (when the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit (UC) and Working Tax Credit (WTC) was in place and Local Housing Allowance (LHA) was increased to the 30th percentile of local rents), the number of households affected by the benefit cap surged.

The numbers affected by the two-child limit are inevitably growing over time because of its design: it affects families who have a third or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017. In 2018, just 70,000 families were affected by the two-child limit; by 2023, that figure had risen to 420,000, or nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of families with three or more children. When the two-child limit is fully rolled-out and affects all families with three or more dependent children regardless of their age, it is set to affect around 750,000 families.[6]

Self-evidently, it is larger families who are worse off as a result of the two-child limit. In 2023-24, families capped by the two-child limit lose up to around £3,200 a year in benefit support for their third and each subsequent child.[7] Although a range of different families are affected by the two-child limit, disadvantaged groups are disproportionately represented: almost half of the households affected by the two-child limit are single parent families, for example.

Families with more than one child are also more likely than childless or one-child families to hit the benefit cap (claimants are also more likely to be capped if they live in areas with higher private rents). That policy results in differently sized losses dependent on circumstances, but the latest data suggests affected families lose an average of £2,700 a year if benefit capped.

However, there are key differences between the types of families affected by the two policies. The benefit cap only affects non-disabled, non-carer out-of-work families earning less than £722 a month, the equivalent of 16 hours a week at the National Living Wage, but the two-child limit applies no matter the working patterns of the parents. Strikingly, nearly six-in-ten families affected by the two-child limit are in families with income from employment.

Families with three or more children have seen their poverty rates soar in recent years

The effect of losing such a large amount of money has a detrimental effect on the low-income families involved. Figure 2 shows rates of relative child poverty by the number of children in a family. The first thing to note is that child poverty rates for larger families have been consistently higher than those for smaller families. This reflects, in part, parental employment patterns: the more children a family has, the less likely the adults in the household are to be in full-time work or to work at all (especially in the case of single parents, and parents with younger children).

But the trends in the figure also reflect the benefit system and how it operates and has changed: the gap between the child poverty rates of smaller and larger families has not been static over time. There was a large fall in the poverty rate for larger families in the 2000s, which can be attributed in large part to the significant increase to per-child payments; firstly through the Working Families’ Tax Credit and other means-tested benefits (from autumn 1999), then through the Child Tax Credit (from April 2003). In addition, employment rates for parents rose in the 2000s (until the 2008 recession), particularly for lone parents, where 9 percentage points more were in work in 2010 than 1997.

However, the child poverty rates of larger families started rising from 2013-14 and, after some blips through the pandemic years, are forecast to continue the upward trend. As a result, 34 per cent of children in larger families were in poverty in 2013-14, and this is projected to rise to 51 per cent in 2028-29. In contrast, 25 per cent of children in families with two children were in poverty in 2013-14, and this is forecast to hardly change over the next few years (we forecast a rate of just 24 per cent in 2028-29). It is well-evidenced that cuts to benefit spending during the austerity years were concentrated on child-related expenditure, while working-age benefit expenditure stayed consistent during the 2010s, and the benefit cap and two-child limit intensified the income hit for those with multiple children. It is also worth noting that for eldest children born before the introduction of the two-child limit, families receive a higher amount of child-related elements of means-tested benefits (this higher element does not exist for children born after the introduction of the two-child limit).

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/catastophic-caps/

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Small city branded 'America's jihad capital' descends into civil war - as locals reveal why they detest both Biden AND Trump ahead of election

It doesn't say much for their brains that they fail to see that HAMAS started the war by a vicious invasion that had to be answered

A city labeled 'America's jihad capital' by the Wall Street Journal has become fiercely divided over the war in Gaza - as residents refuse to vote for either candidate in the presidential election.

Dearborn, a small city near Detroit, Michigan, is home to America's largest Arab American community.

The mood amongst locals has significantly switched as the death toll in Gaza continues to mount - with little indication of a political solution in the near future.

Residents of Dearborn believe America's political leaders are playing a major role in enabling the suffering caused by ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Their apathy towards the upcoming election is dwindling by the day.

Abu Bilal, owner of Oriental Fashion - a clothing store on Dearborn's Warren Avenue, demanded to know 'where is the humanity' as he discussed the killings of 90 Palestinian civilians with The Guardian.

A man getting his hair cut at the Al-Rehab Barber Shop on Dearborn's Maple Street said - in Arabic - that he doesn't care who becomes president following the November election. It won't make any difference to him...

His barber agreed, saying that he didn't vote in 2020 and doesn't plan to this year.

Joe Biden won the battleground state in 2020 by just 154,000 votes - and the demise in political spirit could be harmful to his ability to take the key swing state come November.

Election turnout in Dearborn was 10 percent higher in 2020 than the previous election in 2016 - Biden also won 10 percent more votes than Hillary did.

These stats suggest that voters were energized in 2020, but word on the streets of Dearborn, per The Guardian, is that this year's attitudes could not be more different.

During the Democratic primaries in February, 6,432 Dearborn voters chose 'uncommitted' in protest of Biden's support of Israel's war.

Biden held a campaign rally at a school near Dearborn on Friday - but Arab Americans across the country have rejected the campaign's bid to win their votes.

'The whole community was aware [that the administration had sent campaign officials to meet with the community], and I think it says a lot, that he sees us as no more than votes and that it's been normalized for our people back home to be killed,' Jenin Yaseen, an artist whose family is from a village outside Nablus in the occupied West Bank, said.

'Dearborn is made up of people from Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere that have been directly impacted by American imperialism,' she added.

Members of Biden's election campaign team visited Dearborn in January - and were met by an empty room on one occasion because Dearborn's mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, refused to meet them.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13653127/Michigan-city-Dearborn-Jihad-capital-civil-war.html?ico=related-replace

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Stakeholders Disconnected from Corporate ESG Efforts: Research

‘While corporate activism may appeal to a small, vocal minority, it risks alienating a broader base of stakeholders, including consumers,’ said Emilie Dye.

In light of corporations increasingly engaging in social activism, new research has found that many shareholders, employees, and customers disagree with their companies’ social and political activities.

The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) has released a report (pdf) shedding light on stakeholders opinions on corporate advocacy and activism.

The study, which surveyed 2,500 Australians (1,000 consumers, 1,000 employees, and 500 shareholders), found that most stakeholders were unaware of their companies’ social and political activities.

Specifically, 58 percent of the employees, 66 percent of the shareholders, and 44 percent of consumers did not follow their companies’ advocacy for social causes.

The figures were even higher for political causes, with 83 percent, 74 percent, and 65 percent reporting a lack of engagement.

Corporate Social Activism Misaligns With Stakeholders
According to the report’s co-author Emilie Dye, over 60 percent of employees and 41 percent of shareholders felt that corporate support for political causes did not align with their personal convictions.

“Among consumers, 60 percent say the corporate political advocacy rarely or never aligns with their views,” she added.

“In fact, 6 percent of employees say they have left a job because of their employer’s activism.

“The results suggested that far from being a mass movement, driven from the ground up, these activism initiatives are considered peripheral—if not largely ignored—by most shareholders and employees.”

While younger generations increasingly wanted businesses to intervene in contentious public debates, Ms. Dye said two-thirds of Gen Z respondents (born between 1997 and 2012) preferred companies to focus on providing good service and high returns, and stay out of public debates.

The report also found that consumers were twice as likely to avoid purchasing from a company they disagreed with, compared to those who would choose a company they agreed with.

When asked why companies engaged in social activism, 24 percent of respondents believed it was to increase profits, followed by fear of public backlash (22 percent) and gaining favour with the public and politicians (20 percent).

“The data suggest that while corporate activism may appeal to a small, vocal minority, it risks alienating a broader base of stakeholders, including consumers,” Ms. Dye said.

Echoing the sentiment, Simon Cowan, another co-author, said there was a “critical misalignment” between corporate activism and stakeholder values.

“This report should give strength to managers who feel bullied into taking a public position on contentious social issues, and make those who have been convinced to do so take pause,” he said.

The CIS report comes as companies in Australia and around the globe are increasingly engaging in political, environmental, and social issues.

During The Voice movement, an initiative by the Labor government to embed an Indigenous advisory body into the Australian Constitution, it was reported that 14 of the 20 top ASX companies supported the Yes campaign.
Despite the top companies donating millions of dollars to support the movement, it was overwhelmingly voted down by Australian voters.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/corporate-activism-risks-alienating-stakeholders-research-5688909

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All 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)

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

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

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

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

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What, Exactly, Is so Great About the Mediterranean Diet?

The journal article referred to below is "Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in women with a Mediterranean diet: systematic review and meta-analysis"

At: https://heart.bmj.com/content/109/16/1208

Meta analyses are very susceptible to finding what you want to find and the hazard ratios reported were very low, indicating very marginal effects. And it appears that the authors did not even begin to look at confounders such as ethnicity and social class.

So this study is a very poor recommendation for a Mediterranean diet indeed. The diet is essentially a fad and nothing more

Healthful eating is important at any age to lower the risk of obesity and keep the heart and everything else inside the body functioning well. This becomes especially crucial later in life, because good nutrition helps reduce the risk of chronic conditions like hypertension, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.

Being smart about what you eat also can affect your mood no matter your age—ultra-processed foods that include hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup, for instance, can increase the risk of depression—and some studies even suggest that healthy eating patterns can help delay or prevent developing dementia as we get older.

One way to improve your health while also eating some really wonderful foods, says Natalie Bruner, a registered dietitian and nutritionist with St. Clair Health, is to follow the Mediterranean style of eating.

Often referred to as the Mediterranean diet, it’s not so much a “diet” in the traditional sense, which is often defined by a bunch of hard-and-fast rules such as calorie counting and macro-tracking what you put in your mouth each day. Eating Mediterranean style is more of a lifestyle.

Patterned around the foods eaten by people who live in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea—think Italy, Greece, Spain and Northern Africa—it puts a daily emphasis on plant-based dishes and heart-healthy, unsaturated fats such as olive oil instead the refined or hydrogenated oils that are so common in fast food meals and snack foods.

Half a Tablespoon of Olive Oil Daily May Protect Brain Health
The diet also emphasizes whole, minimally processed foods such as beans, seeds and legumes, antioxidant-rich fresh fruits and vegetables, and moderate portions of lean protein like chicken and seafood, with only the occasional serving of red meat.

Fish that is high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, is especially key since it can help reduce inflammation and pain caused by arthritis, which is common in seniors, as well as improve cholesterol levels.

“It’s not a diet that’s restrictive,” says Bruner. “You’re eating everything that’s good for you, which is great.”

Dietitians and nutritionists generally don’t like to characterize food as “good” or “bad” because that can lead to restrictive behaviors, she says. Yet multiple studies have shown that those who follow the Mediterranean diet have better cognitive function and brain health in old age, she says.

Because of its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and its effectiveness at preventing obesity, there also are a lot of heart health benefits, along with the prevention and progression of diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with lifestyle and diet.

For instance, according to a 2023 study in the medical journal Heart, women who follow a Mediterranean diet more closely than others had a 24 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease. They also had a 23 percent lower risk of mortality.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/what-exactly-is-so-great-about-the-mediterranean-diet-5688853?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=leisure-medium-0

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A wise woman

Feminists tell women that having a career and spending your days with people you don't particulrly like is better than staying home looking after a loving family. The woman below has seen through that idiocy. But do feminists ever feel love?

Twenty-five-year-old Grace has a unique passion: cooking healthy meals for her husband. From making biscuits and gravy to baking crescent braids, she loves it all.

Grace and her husband met six years ago when she was just 19. It was love at first sight. Today, the couple reside in their Pennsylvania home with their toddler daughter. A passionate homemaker, Grace enjoys cleaning and taking care of her daughter—and doing lots of cooking.

The young wife and mother believes her husband, who has an intense job with long hours, deserves to be fed well.

She says her daily house chores are rooted in love and the desire to glorify God. (Courtesy of @thatjoyfilledhome)
The sign above her stove proudly reads, “I Love to Feed the Patriarchy.”

“Since COVID, people, especially women, started to change their views on the home,” she said. “I have seen it shift to more and more women embracing traditional values and that includes in their marriages.

“However, societally speaking, it is still not the norm to have traditional roles in marriage. There was a pendulum swing from the 50s and 60s, from ’smashing the patriarchy' to now, more women respecting the men in their lives and coming under their headship in the home.”

‘He Deserves a Good Meal While Working Hard for Us’

Grace cooks regularly, and, to stay frugal, she plans her shops according to sales. Often, she wakes up early specifically to prepare breakfast for her husband.

She adores baking. The breakfast options include crescent braids, quiche, and baked pancakes—as well as shoofly pie, the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dessert that is one of her favorites. She also prepares lunches for her husband to eat at work.

The young mom of one lives by the age-old concept of serving her family as a caregiver. She says her husband “deserves a good meal” for working hard for the family.

“I center the meals around a protein and build from there with a carb, vegetables, etc.,” she said, using the example of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, green beans, and homemade buttered rolls. “It’s nothing fancy and probably very rusting cooking, but it’s whole-food focused and filling.”

Her husband is always grateful. “He is appreciative and after meals gives me a kiss and thanks me for cooking,” she said, adding that these exchanges have helped to strengthen their marriage.

“We both understand that neither job is harder than the other, they are hard in their own ways,“ she said. ”We don’t play a ‘tit for tat’ game, and we express appreciation for each other daily.”

Grace shares her journey to creating “That Joy-Filled Home” online, and people have responded with a wide variety of emotions.

“It usually is a mixed bag of reactions, many of which are positive, while others are angry or shocked,” she said.

While some criticized her for being “a slave” for taking care of her husband, there were also others who appreciated and recognized her traditional lifestyle.

She said: “My efforts may not be seen by the outside world, but they are seen by God, and everything I do flows out of love and the desire to glorify Him through my daily life.”

Honoring a Traditional Lifestyle

Cooking isn’t the only thing that Grace does for her family. Other chores are equally important, she says, and must be attended to daily. She keeps a list of “non-negotiables” that she gets done every day: one load of laundry, running the dishwasher, and at least three chores.

On a certain level, the young homemaker was always aware that she wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. In her sophomore year of college, however, that desire really kicked in.

She got engaged in March 2019 but put off her wedding until May 2024 because she wanted to complete her bachelor’s degree first. She was studying speech pathology and audiology but began to realize it wasn’t the path she wanted to pursue in the long run. She knew, due to the nature of the profession, that she would soon be overworked and feel burnt out.

“I knew that down the road, I didn’t want to complete a master’s degree and clinical fellowship and wait all those extra years to get married and start a family,” she said.

The young woman shared that she’s also faced pushback from others for adhering to her traditional lifestyle.

“I know it comes from a well-meaning place, but at times it was hurtful,” said Grace. “It was as if choosing homemaking was a ‘lesser’ path or that I was ’too smart‘ to dumb myself down and ’waste my potential.'”

A passionate believer in supporting all homemakers—even those who may be single or still students—Grace says she wants people to do what’s best for their family. To women who want to follow in her footsteps but are afraid of backlash, she has some candid advice.

“At some point, you have to live your life for you,“ she said, ”and not in fear of what others may say or think.”

For her, the choice to stay home has been much more appealing than a career. Serving her husband and child has produced sweet memories, and the joy of witnessing her child’s first milestones as a stay-at-home mom has made the challenges all worth it.

“I would never want to miss those moments for the world,” she said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/young-wife-wakes-up-at-5-a-m-to-prepare-meals-for-her-husband-he-works-hard-for-us-5680642?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-inspired-headline-title-0

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We live in a new world

With a Changed Meaning of Competence

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, there have been many questions concerning the competence of those assigned to prevent such an event. The key issue is whether and to what extent those charged with protecting his security displayed genuine competence at their jobs.

Some clearly did, those who put themselves directly in the line of fire, but what of the management and the advance team? This is a big issue and it goes to the heart of what is considered institutional competence in the 21st century. It has certainly changed from the past.

In normal times previously, competence meant taking initiative, achieving the goal, using creativity, being adaptive to circumstances of time and place, finding ways to be useful toward the institutional purpose, making excellent judgments even under stressful conditions, being brave and taking responsibility for the outcomes. In an ideal institutional environment, competence of this sort is rewarded.

Is this kind of competence still valued in the culture of corporate world today? In government? It seems to be ever less so. The larger the organization the more resources they have, the more they have all built elaborate systems of compliance that end up smothering all the features of employment that used to be valued and replacing them with checking boxes and not stepping out of line.

In most normal times, this suffices, which is precisely why bureaucracies, nonprofits, and corporate structures build such systems. They keep everyone in line. Provided there is no real change in the challenges or circumstances, turning workers into robotic rule followers more-or-less works. It doesn’t drive progress but it does keep everyone out of trouble.

When all is well, revenue is solid, systems are working, managers are ever more tempted to tighten rules and build ever more elaborate structures of rules, plans, routines, and compliance.

This has been going on for decades, as everyone knows.

The cartoon called “Dilbert” achieved fame by creating parodies of this culture as it affects corporations. When I first started seeing these, I took these depictions as slightly offensive to my capitalistic ideology: why was the cartoonist making such fun of private enterprise?

What I did not know is that the cartoon was realistic for millions of people. The author Scott Adams had come out of the corporate world and knew it better than I did. There was a reason why the cartoon was so popular: it connected closely with readers’ personal perspective.

In the “Dilbert” world, the path to success was being the best possible bureaucrat, helping to secure compliance as much as possible and otherwise staying out of harm’s way. Much of this involves inventing new vocabularies consisting of fancy words that have as little meaning as possible. Meetings supplant productivity. Doing as little as possible while seeming to be a good team member is the path to job security and promotion.

Not being a big corporate guy myself, I was unaware that this culture was growing up within the business world. I could imagine this in government of course. I could imagine that such a culture could be pervasive in the nonprofit world, simply because such institutions lack the discipline of the profit-and-loss system and therefore strong metrics of success that drive the mission. But I simply could not imagine how the for-profit world could become so dominated by such fakery.

Sadly, the meaning of competence has changed throughout every institution.

Some personal history, if I may. I was probably 17 and landed a nice job as a helper of some sort at a catering company. My first day on the job involved washing what seemed like 100 extremely dirty large pans from an event. They were piled high in the sink. Along with that there were several thousand plates and other items. Getting it all washed required many hours of work and I absolutely loved every minute of it.

Once that was done, I left and then returned the next day but with no clarity on what to do. So I stood around, as I recall. A few days later, more dishes would arrive and I would wash them. Each time, I got better at this and had more time to stand around doing nothing.

After a few weeks, I overheard a conversation between the owner and manager. They were complaining that I seemed lazy and unmotivated. Useless, I think I recall one person saying that. I was absolutely mortified and shocked.

The next day, I arrived with new determination. I realized that I was not always going to receive marching orders. I needed to find ways to make myself useful. As I looked around, I realized that the place was a dump. I threw myself into making a big difference. I started in one corner of the huge kitchen and started clearing, arranging, and putting stuff away. I went all the way to the other corner. I did the same with the hallways and reorganized everything. I stayed late to get it done and did the same the next day.

A few days later, the owner showed up and walked in. He was amazed at the difference I had made. He pointed out that I made some mistakes, putting some things in the wrong place but otherwise congratulated me for what I had achieved. Mostly he was happy that I had taken initiative. Later that week, he gave me a pay increase, and I stayed in the job for several more months or longer.

I took from that experience that I should always strive to make a difference and use my own initiative to see what needs to be done. Volition, perception, alertness, and action: these are the key to success. That is the lesson I took from this experience.

Such lessons seem to be the worst-possible ones in today’s organizational culture. Everyone today knows the acronyms: HR, DEI, and ESG. That’s only the beginning of it. Everything today seems to be governed by some document, some protocol, some rule, and some precedent. Success means fitting in and never doing anything you are not told to do by someone or something. This is the path to job security, exactly as described in the world of “Dilbert.”

What I had not entirely understood was how much the world of big business changed after the turn of the millennium.

There are many reasons but one traces to the new policies of the Federal Reserve. The interest rate kept being driven lower and lower, eventually to zero and then to negative territory, and for a long period of time. Economic theory can predict the consequences precisely. It amounts to a huge cash infusion, a government subsidy of sorts, to the largest of the big businesses, giving them a spigot of money with which to play, a seemingly infinite resource to tap for payrolls and expansions.

Such an environment seems to make everything possible, including replacing initiative with entitlement, derring-do with compliance, and efficiency and adaptability with sloth and waste.

This change in central bank policy created a new beast: the heavily cash-soaked corporation that could indulge in every sort of empire building over genuine enterprise and creativity. The managers and their employees simply went along.

This policy reinforced a new form of culture, one we had not seen before. Private corporations began to operate more like governments, and nonprofits did the same. The affliction hit every sector from media to medicine to tech. The virus of bureaucracy took over completely and utterly changed two generations of workers and their outlook on the meaning of their jobs.

All the old-fashioned views on what constitutes competence began to shift. Instead of taking initiative, obeying the handbook and complying with edicts became the very purpose of professional life. This new culture has eroded all the old standards and values.

Instead of productivity, we have the valorization of obedience and adherence to handbooks, Zoom meetings, dressing the part, flattering superiors, never exercising judgment without permission and oversight, checking all boxes, gaining all the correct credentials including continuing education, playing the part, and, finally the rarest of things, showing up.

Herein lies the problem. The very standards of what qualifies as competence have been upended. It would be much welcome to see the old standards restored. In the case of security agencies, which exist in the public and private sector, lives are on the line.

We have all been witness to this in the most vivid way, and it seems to have shifted the whole of the historical trajectory. This is no longer just about getting by and checking boxes. Life has suddenly become much more serious. It’s a good wake-up call to all individuals and institutions.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-changed-meaning-of-competence-5689811?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=opinion-4

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Risk of Suicide 12 Times Greater After ‘Gender-Affirming’ Surgery: Study

A recent study has found that the risk of suicide, self-harm, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for individuals who have undergone gender-transition surgeries is significantly higher than among those who have not had the surgery.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch, found that individuals who had undergone gender-transition surgery experienced these adverse effects at more than 12 times the rate of those who did not have a history of gender-transition surgery.

The study examined data from nearly 16 million U.S. adult patients between the ages of 18 and 60 who went to an emergency room for treatment from 2003 to 2023. This data came from a larger database of over 90 million patients from 56 health care facilities. Researchers isolated data from 1,501 patients who had undergone gender-transition surgery at some point in the five years before their emergency room visit and 15,608,363 patients who had no history of gender-transition surgery, as well as two additional control groups.

The data show that 3.47 percent of the patients who had undergone gender-reassignment surgery were treated for suicide attempts, compared to 0.29 percent of patients who did not have that history, a difference of 12.12 times.

While the study does not clarify at what age the patients attempted suicide or engaged in self-harm, it does make clear that it did not include minors.

The study lacks explanations as to why these patients had higher rates of suicidality, self-harm, and PTSD, and does not cite whether the patients suffered from adverse mental health conditions before surgery.

Julie Quist, board chair of the Child Protection League, said the results of the study were “deeply disturbing.” She also said it raises “serious implications” in the health industry, mental health industry, and education system, which have almost universally adopted the “affirmation only” approach as the best treatment for gender dysphoria in children and teens.

“This is a very credible study,” said Ms. Quist, referring to the large sample size and long timespan of the study.

She said she was stunned by the 12.12 times higher rate of suicide attempt risk, recalling how parents who are reportedly coerced into allowing their children to undergo these irreversible surgeries are often asked questions such as “do you want a daughter or do you want a dead son,” implying that if they don’t allow their child to medically transition, the child will be more likely to kill themselves.

“This is standard language that they use,” she said. “It’s beyond belief.”

Ms. Quist said she was also struck by the fact that the study avoided researching the rate of attempted suicide and self-harm among minors under the age of 18.

“This study has huge implications for minors,” she said. If suicide attempts for those who have transitioned are happening at this rate among those over 18, she said it’s “counterintuitive” to assume that it’s not happening at the same, if not a higher, rate among children and teens.

“Think of all of the parents who are being told that affirming is the only answer and that the surgeries are safe and prevent suicide,” she said. “It’s a tool of manipulation that is completely false and the depth of this deception is breathtaking. They’ve weaponized the idea of suicide to coerce people into doing exactly the wrong thing.”

‘The Elephant in the Room’

Vernadette Broyles is the founder, president, and general counsel for the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. She said it’s illogical to assume that minors who undergo gender transition through surgery or medication would wait until they were 18 to attempt suicide or self-harm.

“Whatever dynamic that is present in adults stressing about their sexual transition would only be exacerbated in children because they are still in the process of development,” Ms. Broyles told The Epoch Times. “Just because the study didn’t include children under the age of 18 does not mean it has no relevance to children under the age of 18. I would expect a heightened effect among children because they’re emotionally and physically more vulnerable to negative impacts.”

While she said she was impressed that the researchers had the integrity to publish their findings, she also said she was disappointed by their attempt to explain, “without any valid evidence,” that the reason for the “alarmingly higher” rate of attempted suicide among those who had undergone these surgeries is related to minority bias, discrimination, and relational stresses.

“They pulled this out of thin air,” she argued. “There is no evidence to support that, and they’re choosing to ignore the elephant in the room—that the surgery itself is causing the suicide attempts.”

At a minimum, she said the study confirms that transitioning did not bring the happiness the patients were promised.

“That’s also how parents are coerced and cudgeled into giving consent,” Ms. Broyles said. “Yet perversely, they are correlated with an alarmingly higher rate of suicide risk. If nothing else, this is one more study that removes the legitimacy and justification for giving these surgeries is that it is going to save the person from suicide.”

False Positives in Studies

The Trevor Project is a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on suicide prevention and crisis intervention among LGBT youth. Researchers from the organization published a study in 2021 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, concluding that minors who received “gender-affirming hormone therapy” had lower rates of depression and attempted suicide than those who wished to receive them but didn’t.

But another study suggests that most minors experiencing gender confusion grow out of it by the time they reach adulthood.

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands recently released the results of a study analyzing survey data from 2,772 adolescents over a span of 15 years, starting at age 11.

The study found that in early adolescence, 11 percent of participants reported “gender non-contentedness.” However, the prevalence had decreased to 4 percent by the time they reached the age of 26.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/risk-of-suicide-12-times-greater-after-gender-affirming-surgery-study-5652020?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-australia-top-news-0-title-1

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All 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)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

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

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

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A software update!

Another one! Software updates normally go through alpha and beta testing before they are implemented but are still often buggy. I resist all software updates where I can and dislike a lot of those that have gone through. They are often the work of a technical team looking for something to fix where there is actually nothing that needs fixing

The perils of a cashless society were exposed yesterday as a technology blunder triggered 'the world's biggest IT meltdown'.

In what was dubbed a 'digital pandemic', a glitch in a software update sparked global chaos as computers crashed in shops, banks and hospitals.

Train ticket machines seized up, GP surgeries were forced to cancel appointments and planes were grounded in multiple countries.

Waitrose and Morrisons were among the supermarkets unable to take card payments for a time – meaning customers who no longer carry cash could not buy food.

Critics said the havoc showed the dangers of a cashless world, with almost half of Britons now leaving the house with only their phones as a means of payment.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/global-it-meltdown-show-perils-of-cashless-society/ar-BB1qiD8a?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=8615aa87ecd2491187aad80421ac0000&ei=21

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‘Absurd’: Joe Biden’s big misstep on Donald Trump

If you want to see what is true of the Left, just look at what they say about their opponents. They are full of projection

Politics is like sport to Americans. They nail their blue or red colours to the mast with pride.

And that interest is healthy for democracy – but it can also lead to the kind of crazed assassination attempt we saw on the weekend.

So divided is America politically that a young man tried to kill a former – and likely to be returned – president in Donald Trump.

It’s all good and well for President Joe Biden to call for the temperature to be turned down but it is Mr Biden and his Democratic Party that has driven most of the division.

They have always tried to blame it on Trump. He, they claim, is the evil causing division. But it is casting Trump as evil that actually causes the division.

The Democrats are so righteously convinced of their ideology that they have set the contest as one of good versus evil. And when you’re fighting evil, then almost anything can be justified.

Trump has been compared to Hitler, with The New Republic magazine last month publishing a front page with Trump’s face morphed with Hitler’s.

He’s been compared to a dictator. Robert De Niro in May claimed that if Trump were elected in November he would “never leave” – it would be the end of elections and democracy in the US.

Mr Biden told donors, after his disastrous debate, that it was “time to put Trump in a bullseye”.

He posted to X this month that “Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one”, a gross misrepresentation of a joking response he gave in an interview, and that “we must stop him”.

A bullet could have stopped him dead.

Mr Biden has repeatedly claimed that “Donald Trump will destroy our democracy” and that “this race is about our freedom – it’s about our democracy”.

He claimed in the CNN debate that anyone who exercised their democratic right to vote for Trump in a democratic election was anti-democracy.

It is all patently absurd.

But is it any wonder, with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, that America is a divided country in which a lunatic tried to kill a presidential candidate?

Trump has never sought to divide America. His entire platform, from the beginning, was about making America great again – not splitting it in half.

His crime, the thing that has made him such an evil, Hilter-esque dictator, was to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by pointing out the divisions in the US caused by ruling elites deliberately ignoring the needs and concerns of ordinary Americans to further their own ends.

And Clinton proved the division she and her cronies had created when she referred to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” – people for whom she had no time or regard.

Divide, divide, divide.

And now Mr Biden has the gall to say, with a straight face, that we need to turn down the heat.

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/absurd-joe-bidens-big-misstep-on-donald-trump/news-story/b8af9ded6380eeb5e63377d52ec8e78f

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Trump would be ahead even without God

It's the electoral college that matters and Trump is way ahead there

Gerard Baker comments from Britain:

Providence was the real star of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. For a party in which the evangelical Christian heart beats strongly, it’s not news that Republicans claim a divine mission in their deliberations. But this year even a sceptic might grudgingly acknowledge that if there is a God, recent events would suggest he has dropped in on America, donned a Maga hat and gone to work on behalf of the Grand Old Party.

For speakers from the podium and delegates on the floor, Donald Trump’s brush with death at the hands of a would-be assassin’s bullet last Saturday was a miracle, no surer sign that the Almighty plans on putting the former president back in the White House. “On Saturday the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back on his feet and roared,” declaimed the senator Tim Scott.

You don’t have to believe in Trump’s unlikely ordination as a leonine agent of God to think that he and his party are destined for glory as the US approaches the last 100 days of the election campaign. In the past month we have witnessed not just the failed assassination attempt, but the accelerating collapse of President Biden’s campaign after his catastrophic debate performance, the melting away of Trump’s legal problems, the rapid unification of the Republican Party under his leadership, and growing evidence of a solid and seemingly irreversible shift in the opinion polls in Trump’s direction.

I have been attending party conventions since 1996 and I can’t recall a more exuberant mood among Republicans than I have seen this week in this post-industrial city on the shores of Lake Michigan - rapturous, you might even call it. Despite three presidential election victories since then, popular electoral success has eluded them. Only once in that time, when George W Bush narrowly beat John Kerry in 2004, has the party won the popular vote over the Democrats. But in 2024 they sense the tide has turned decisively in their favour.

The simple reason is a mood shift in America that seems about to propel not just Trump to the White House but for the first time in a century to give Republicans clear majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Many readers, especially in the UK, find this inexplicable. The spectacle of prominent representatives of the British media wandering around open-mouthed at the sheer awfulness of what they were witnessing in Milwaukee helps to explain why so many in the UK now view the US as on the brink of some kind of fascist takeover, at the hands of what the new foreign secretary called, a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. So let me try to explain what is actually happening.

American politics is indeed undergoing radical change in a way that favours, for now, the Republicans. But it is not an embrace of apocalyptic authoritarianism. If Trump were not the party’s nominee, in fact, with all his evident character flaws, I suspect the Republicans would be on the brink of a landslide. It is a mark of the depth of the frustration that even as flawed a candidate as Trump may be about to secure a historic win.

Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, is articulate and thoughtful. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, is articulate and thoughtful. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
The core change is the deepening of the realignment of American politics and the Republicans’ advantage in adapting to it. This was tellingly underscored by Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate. Vance is far from the Putin-puppet, democracy-overthrowing demon he is routinely portrayed in the press. He is the most articulate and thoughtful exponent of a new national conservatism that has shifted the axes of American political choice.

What Trump, in his instinctive way, started, Vance is fleshing out in ideas and policy - the opportunity represented by the fact that millions of working-class voters are turning to the Republicans in revulsion at the elitism of the Democratic Party, and in their alienation from the key institutions of the country that have so palpably failed them in the past two decades.

The list is familiar: a climate of intolerant extremism in American education, the media and culture; the opening of the country’s borders to mass illegal immigration in ways that upend traditional American life, suppress wage growth and increase pressure on services; the imposition of new norms on issues of race, gender and sexuality; the sense, even among Trump-sceptics, that the whole media, government and legal establishment was mobilised against him, first to prevent him becoming president and then to defeat him when he was; environmental policies explicitly aimed at weakening America’s extraordinary advantage in energy production; a strategic posture that sent Americans abroad to die in failed attempts to build foreign nations, even as the nation at home was for many disintegrating in violence, drug use and despair.

It’s worth reflecting on this last point to understand why conservatives such as Vance have opposed US support for Ukraine. Two decades of disastrous national security policies have squandered America’s post-Cold War advantage and dramatically constrained its global capabilities. Vance simply asks why in those circumstances, when it faces a far larger existential threat in the Pacific, America should commit resources to a conflict in Europe - where rich allies have resources between them that dwarf those of the Russian adversary, but still demand Americans contribute more.

It is too soon and the race is still too close, despite the lead Trump has opened up, to declare it over. While Republicans gave thanks to God this week, Democrats were working feverishly to get Biden to stand down, and it seems likely that will happen. Perhaps a fresh Democrat will be able to exploit just enough of the doubts people have about Trump to eke out some kind of win. But after two decades of ignoring the rising frustrations of so many Americans, the ground has shifted beneath them. Even God won’t stop that.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/trump-would-be-ahead-even-without-god/news-story/b402792a313ce3f665e7963b800ed47c

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How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience

The "woke" religion of the elite in the USA today would seem to meet most of the criteria for an established religion, so most of their edicts could be struck down as a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment

"Agreeing to Disagree", written by Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell, charts the political, philosophical, and legal history of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Contrary to the all-too-common misconception that the Establishment Clause’s function is merely to “separate church and state,” Chapman and McConnell offer a robust account of the historical evidence illuminating the original public meaning of the clause. They then explain how that meaning was lost by later generations and conclude by showing how rediscovery of the Establishment Clause’s original meaning helps clarify many of today’s most pressing religious liberty issues—from religious accommodations to school funding and church autonomy. Although written for a lay audience—and therefore perhaps a bit too familiar for those already acquainted with Chapman and McConnell’s legal scholarship— we highly recommend this accessible and thought-provoking work.

There is no question that the American public—and even many federal judges— have struggled to understand this often “contentious and misunderstood provision of the ... Constitution” (p. 1). The Establishment Clause is somewhat odd, after all. Though apparently well understood in the Founding era, an “establishment of religion” is not a familiar concept to Americans today, much less laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” Agreeing to Disagree demystifies this largely foreign concept by delving into the clause’s history, asking the all-important question: What was commonly understood by the term “establishment of religion” at the time of the clause’s writing?

Chapman and McConnell provide an answer: an establishment of religion, they say, was understood to mean “the promotion and inculcation of a common set of beliefs through governmental authority” (p. 18). Beyond this basic definition, however, they acknowledge significant variety between individual establishments. As they point out, an establishment could be “narrow ... or broad,” “more or less coercive,” and “tolerant or intolerant of other views” (p. 18). And the character of any particular establishment often changed over time. Indeed, as the authors also note, “the laws constituting the establishment” were often “ad hoc and unsystematic” (p. 18).

Even so, from their deep dive into the history of early American establishments, the authors distill six common “elements” of established churches, providing some tangible examples to supplement their general definition. These six elements are: “(1) control over doctrine, governance, and personnel of the church; (2) compulsory church attendance; (3) financial support; (4) prohibitions on worship in dissenting churches; (5) use of church institutions for public functions; and (6) restriction of political participation to members of the established church” (p. 18). In addition, the authors explain that laws “prohibiting blasphemy and enforcing sabbath observance” were widely considered to be “components of a religious establishment” too (p. 18). Laws advancing and regulating these intertwined aspects of church and state were the means by which the colonies largely controlled their established religious institutions; they gave the government authority to decide how churchgoers did or did not worship, subordinated churches to the public fisc, and restricted dissent from members of minority religions.

Chapman and McConnell also explain how these tools were used to regulate public services like caring for the “poor ... and for orphans and other homeless children,” to “impose religious restrictions on the right to vote,” and to limit “full citizenship to those who supplied proof of a genuine conversion experience” (pp. 24–27). These religious litmus tests tended to exclude many groups from full participation in public life, with this burden often falling hardest on “Catholics, Jews, Quakers,” and “Baptists” (pp. 23, 27).

By understanding these six common elements of state establishments, the authors argue, the Establishment Clause’s meaning also becomes clear. Chapman and McConnell explain—based on this common understanding of state establishments at the time—that the Establishment Clause’s plain text denies Congress the authority to create its own established church, while simultaneously preventing it from interfering with existing state establishments.

The authors’ arguments, however, become a bit more convoluted when they seek to explain how this original meaning—limited to what Congress could or could not do—was expanded by the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to all government actors (federal, state, and local). After giving the reader a taste of their arguments, Chapman and McConnell brush further questions aside, explaining that they “need not get into those complexities here, because no justice of the Supreme Court now questions the applicability of the personal rights of the Bill of Rights to the states” (pp. 75n1, 79).

This approach also points to a broader challenge inherent in a book like this one: the authors’ historical overview—covering everything from the origins of the Establishment Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment in 84 short pages—tends to both overwhelm an Establishment Clause newcomer and leave those familiar with the topic wanting more.

As noted above, when the authors address incorporation against the states (chapter 4), they attempt to make a complex topic broadly accessible in a few short pages. And while Agreeing to Disagree is largely successful in doing exactly that, the book stumbles a bit when it comes to addressing incorporation in particular. It assumes the reader understands the significance of this issue, only briefly addresses it from a historical perspective, and then ultimately throws up its hands by concluding that no one questions incorporation today—so we need not fully explore it. An unsatisfying answer, but fair enough for a 192-page book.

Not content to leave the Establishment Clause stuck in the past, Chapman and McConnell fast-forward to what they call the “modern controversies” over the clause’s application. This portion of the book is where the rubber hits the road as the authors work through the Supreme Court’s various attempts to interpret and understand the clause—starting with Everson, making a detour through Lemon, and concluding (for now) with Kennedy, American Legion, and Carson. Touching on numerous points of controversy—from government funding of religious schools to prayer and Bible reading in public school classrooms, conflicts over religious symbols on public land, and the interaction between employment laws and religious autonomy—the authors show how the Supreme Court’s decisions on these hotly contested issues have been driven by the court’s return to the Establishment Clause’s original meaning.

To take just one example, Chapman and McConnell chart the history of religious schools in the United States. They explain how a renewed focus on the original meaning of the Establishment Clause brought about, “with astonishing speed,” the complete repudiation of a whole line of Supreme Court precedent governing the relationship between government and religious schools (p. 137). According to the authors, “in all the annals of U.S. Reports, there is no example of a more complete volte-face in constitutional doctrine” (p. 137). Indeed, from the 1980s to today, the rule for religious schools went from one of “no-aid separationism” through a period of permissible neutral government aid, to (today) a rule of mandatory government neutrality between religion and nonreligion and among religions (p. 139).

Prior to this shift, the Supreme Court took a hostile approach to government aid for religious schools, imposing a requirement of “no-aid separationism”— essentially a rule that (with a narrow exception for public services like fire and police protection) mandated complete separation between church and state and barred religious schools from access to generally available government funding. This no-aid theory, according to Chapman and McConnell, reached its high-water mark in 1985 and is attributable to the Supreme Court’s misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of the Establishment Clause.

Things changed quickly, however. Agreeing to Disagree describes this shift in three stages. The first stage, starting in the 1980s, culminated early in the twentyfirst century with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), which “explicitly replaced no aid theory with neutrality” (p. 139). After Zelman, the rule in the Supreme Court was that neutral school funding was permitted but not mandatory (stage two). This state of affairs, however, did not last long. Once neutral aid was permitted (removing the Establishment Clause barrier), litigants and Supreme Court justices alike began to question whether the Free Exercise Clause, which demands (at a minimum) equal treatment of religion, permits governments to “singl[e] out religion for unfavorable treatment” when creating generally available government funding programs (p. 140).

Within two decades, the Supreme Court answered that question in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017) (stage three). Trinity Lutheran required the court to decide whether a religious school could be excluded from a government grant program for playground resurfacing solely because it was religious. The court ruled for the school, striking down Missouri’s state ban on funding for religious schools and holding that treating religious schools on equal footing with private secular schools in the resurfacing program was “not only permissible but also mandatory” (p. 141). Trinity Lutheran thus confirmed that if the government creates a generally available funding program, it has to make that funding available to secular and religious schools on a neutral basis.

Trinity Lutheran, however, created more questions than answers. Important among them: Was its rule limited to funding for facially “nonreligious” items (like playgrounds), or were governments required to treat religious and nonreligious alike even when the funds were used for things like primary school education, which included both secular and religious components?

The Supreme Court answered that question in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), holding that Montana couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition aid program made generally available to secular private school students. This decision, however, did not end the controversy. Following Espinoza, governments intent on excluding religious schools pivoted—arguing that they weren’t excluding schools based on their religious “status” (plainly forbidden after Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza) but based on religious “use” or religious “exercise.” But this supposed distinction, too, was quickly repudiated by the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin (2022), which held that exclusion based on “religious exercise” was no different from exclusion based on religious status.

For Chapman and McConnell, this “abrupt doctrinal one-eighty” on school funding reflected the court’s rapid return to the original understanding of the Establishment Clause: to ensure equal treatment and inclusion of religion in public life (p. 142). And, by starting off with a thorough account of the Establishment Clause’s history and original meaning, Chapman and McConnell attempt to persuade their reader that this swift shift—despite creating the “sense of whiplash” (p. 142)—is not only more faithful to the clause’s original meaning and purpose, but also leads to a healthier public square in which religion is not banished, but is instead viewed as a natural part of the human experience.

Agreeing to Disagree combines deep expertise with a style and structure that facilitate a comprehensive introduction to the Establishment Clause’s historical meaning and enduring importance. The authors structure the book in such a way that by the time they discuss modern controversies surrounding the clause, readers have a disambiguated understanding of its origin and purpose, leapfrogging the many decades that America and its highest court spent in confusion. Chapman and McConnell also leave readers on a hopeful note for the future of religious liberty.

They conclude by laying out how the Establishment Clause has facilitated and continues to maintain one of “the most religiously heterogenous societ[ies] the world has ever known” through the values of pluralism and neutrality (p. 188). Though lawmaking by its very nature often requires the government to take value-laden stances, Chapman and McConnell also argue that the Establishment Clause “serve[s] as a caution against the use of governmental power to create uniformity in matters of opinion” (p. 191).

They thus conclude that America needs “a broader spirit of disestablishment” to prevent the forced conformity of opinions not just about religion, but also about “other ideologies” (p. 192). While heartwarming, this attempt to wrap up the book with an appeal to a “spirit of disestablishment” that is applicable to broader cultural disagreements feels forced and contrasts sharply with the text-focused, originalist stance championed throughout the book.

Though Chapman and McConnell capture the significance of the Establishment Clause for religious liberty, the resolution of these broader cultural conflicts seems out of the clause’s reach. Nevertheless, the authors’ message rings clear: the Establishment Clause was never intended to separate religion from the public sphere; rather, it is meant to promote a freely religious society in which religious people and institutions need not fear exclusion due to difference.

https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=2005&omhide=true

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All 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)

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

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

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

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

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JD Vance Contrasts Own Biography, Youth With Biden Record

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination Wednesday night, vowing to never forget where he came from as he highlighted his life story and the failures of the Washington political class.

“America’s ruling class wrote the checks; communities like mine paid the price,” Vance, 39, said in accepting the nomination for vice president at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “For decades, that divide between the few, with their power and comfort in Washington, and the rest of us only widened.”

Former President Donald Trump announced his choice of Vance as his running mate Monday, the first day of the convention. Together, they plan to take on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, although many Democrats continue to urge Biden to step aside as their nominee.

“From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again,” he said. “That is, until President Donald J. Trump came along.”

Vance, elected to the Senate in 2022—five decades after Biden was first elected to the Senate—contrasted his youth to Biden’s while also saying Biden has been wrong on most policies and issues in five decades in office.

Biden has been the champion of “every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer,” Vance said.

“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good American manufacturing jobs to Mexico,” he said of the North American Free Trade Agreement. “When I was a sophomore in high school, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good middle-class jobs. And when I was a senior in high school, Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”

The Ohio Republican went on to highlight the struggles of Americans, especially in several battleground states in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

“Each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan and other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” Vance said.

Vance’s wife Usha introduced him at the GOP convention.

“I met JD in law school when he was fresh out of Ohio State, which he attended with the support of the G.I. Bill,” she told delegates. “He was then, as now, the most interesting person I knew. A working-class guy who had overcome childhood traumas that I could barely fathom to end up at Yale Law School. A tough Marine who had served in Iraq but whose idea of a good time was playing with puppies.”

In his speech, Vance talked about his life, chronicled in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Ellergy,” later made into a movie directed by Ron Howard. He discussed growing up in rural Middletown, Ohio, as his grandmother or “Mamaw” took care of him when his mother had addiction issues. He enlisted in the Marines after 9/11 and later graduated from Yale Law School.

He said the movement is “about single moms like mine, who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up.”

“I am proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober,” he said. “I love you, Mom.”

The crowd in the convention hall chanted, “JD’s mom, JD’s mom.”

Acknowledging that his economic views sometimes clash with those of traditional Republicans, Vance said, “Our disagreements actually make us stronger.”

“My message to my fellow Americans is: Shouldn’t we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution?” he said. “That’s the Republican Party of the next four years: united in our love for America, and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas.”

Vance also talked about the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday evening, noting: “Instead of a day of celebration, this could have been a day of heartache and mourning.”

He said Trump’s enemies have told many lies about him, but his toughness was clear after the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be stopped at all costs,” Vance said of Trump’s political opponents.

“He called for national unity, for calm,” after the shooting, Vance said. “He remembered the victims of the terrible attack, especially the brave Corey Comperatore, who gave his life to protect his family.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/18/jd-vance-contrasts-own-biography-youth-with-biden-record/

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Conservative Group Goes After Investment Giant, Accusing It of Anti-Israel Bias

The conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research launched a campaign on Tuesday going after investment firm Morgan Stanley Capital International for “embracing” an anti-Israel stance in its environmental, social, and corporate governance ratings.

The Consumers’ Research six-figure ad campaign features a new website, a national mailer, digital marketing ads, and a mobile billboard outside of MSCI’s headquarters in New York City.

The campaign came after a coalition of Republican state attorneys general opened an investigation over allegations that MSCI had implemented policies from the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.

“MSCI is yet another example of a massive investment firm pushing their anti-Israel agenda instead of following their fiduciary duty,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s especially appalling, given the attack on [Israel] last October.”

In March, the Jewish News Syndicate reported that MSCI’s ESG policies allegedly downgraded several companies that “it said committed ‘human rights violations’ simply for conducting business in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.” Soon after, the coalition of 18 attorneys general, led by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, sent MSCI Chairman and CEO Henry A. Fernandez a letter expressing “great concern” over the Jewish News Syndicate report.

“In other words, it appears that MSCI is embracing the BDS movement’s false narrative of Israeli occupation and taking actions designed to pressure companies to Boycott Israel—specifically by downgrading those companies’ EGS scores if they do business in Israel,” the letter reads.

“According to [the Jewish News Service], MSCI deducted ESG points from an Israeli company specifically because of the company’s “participation in the construction of security and surveillance barriers designed to protect Israelis from terrorists,” the letter reads. “It is unthinkable to us that MSCI would stand by this position following the terrorist attacks on Israel last October.

MSCI is not the only asset management company to receive scrutiny for anti-Israel bias. In April 2023, Consumers’ Research also launched a campaign against another investment firm, Morningstar, for also assigning ESG scores to negatively impact companies with connections to Israel.

This campaign was announced after 17 state attorneys general sent a letter in August 2022 highlighting concerns that a Morningstar subsidiary, Sustainalytics, “may be furthering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.” This letter came after then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt opened an investigation in July 2022 after Morningstar conducted an internal review and admitted to its anti-Israel bias.

Anti-Israeli bias has become more pronounced across cities and college campuses following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 7, incidents of antisemitism skyrocketed 360% to a total of 3,291 incidents, compared with the same period in 2022-2023, which saw 712 incidents, according to data from the Anti-Defamation League.

Conservative groups and lawmakers have attacked this bias within finance firms, particularly by pushing back on ESG. In July 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, proposed legislation to ban state fund managers from taking ESG practices into consideration when investing state funds, saying its been “utilized to impose an ideological agenda on the American people.”

“The American people are sick and tired of the ESG elites allowing their personal progressive politics to interfere with their legal fiduciary duties,” Hild told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If MSCI can’t do their job without applying an unfair double standard to Israel, then they shouldn’t be trusted by their customers or the American people.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/17/conservative-org-goes-after-investing-firm-anti-israel-bias/

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Subway worker is accused of refusing to serve customer for wearing a controversial t-shirt

So much hate towards Christians

Subway has been accused of religious discrimination against Christians after an outlet in Wisconsin refused to serve customers because of the anti-abortion and anti-gay messages on their T-shirts.

Street preacher David Grisham was in town for the Republican National Convention when he and three friends popped into a Waunakee branch of the fast-food franchise to grab a sandwich.

But they were forced to go elsewhere when a young woman behind the counter confirmed she was refusing to serve the group because of the messages on their T-shirts.

The world's largest restaurant operator has now been hit with a deluge of angry comments from Christians after video of the exchange went viral, with some warning the company it risks a Bud Light style boycott.

'I don't care what kind of response Subway comes up with,' wrote one. 'I will never set foot in one of their filthy little stores again.'

Grisham, from Amarillo in Texas, insisted that his group 'did not purposely try to antagonize anyone', with their neon T-shirts bearing slogans including 'abortion is murder', and a paraphrase of Romans I, denouncing gay sex as sin.

Was the employee justified in refusing service?

'A local pastor was buying us dinner and we had only been inside for less than a minute and hadn't said a word to anyone,' he wrote on Facebook.

'She just saw our shirts and blurted out profanity and said she wouldn't serve us.

Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans restaurants from discriminating against customers on the grounds of religion.

But in 2022 the Supreme Court ruled that Denver baker Jack Phillips was within his rights to refuse an order for a wedding cake celebrating the marriage of a same-sex couple.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the baker was advocating for a 'license to discriminate' that could have broad repercussions beyond gay rights.

But, in a landmark case, the court ruled 7-2 that his refusal was protected by Constitutional guarantees to freedom of speech and expression, and the free exercise of religion.

In the video, labelled 'Subway Karen refuses service to Christians in Wanaukee, WI' (sic), the woman behind the counter nods when a voice asks: 'Are you refusing to serve customers?'

'She's refusing to serve us,' the man says to his friend.

'What are you talking about?' the friend demands, 'so we have to go somewhere else?'

'I want her to say it again,' says the man doing the filming.

'I am refusing you service,' the woman confirms as she carries on preparing another customer's sandwich.

Asked why, she says 'That is a personal matter', before her thwarted customer demands 'because of my T-shirt?

'Yes,' she replies.

'OK, sure Subway Corp will love to hear that,' the man says.

Subway franchisee River Subs which operates 48 outlets filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, and some former customers seem determined that more will now follow suit.

'Subway, I recommend you get ahead of this!' wrote one. 'It's an ugly, ugly look, and Taco Bell is right across the street. Easy switch.'

'Is Subway discriminating people who wear, Hijab or Yamaka or other religious symbols?' demanded another.

'If he was wearing a gay pride shirt and an employee refuse to serve him in some states they would call the police for discrimination,' claimed a third.

'I work at Subway in Dawson Springs,' wrote Laura Gray from Kentucky, 'and anytime you are in the area, you are welcome to come here.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13645155/Subway-christian-t-shirt-wisconsin-grisham.html

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Top doctor hits out at plans to introduce a 'sin tax' on sugary drinks in Australia

Nick Coatsworth has hit out at a proposed tax on sugary treats arguing that '$8 cans of coke' will only punish the poor and fail to fix the nation's obesity crisis.

A recent Senate report recommended a 20 per cent tax on unhealthy products such as soft drinks in order to curb surging obesity rates, particularly in children.

But the prominent doctor, who became the face of Australia's Covid vaccine campaign as the national deputy chief medical officer, argues that implementing a so-called 'sin tax' is misguided and echoes the draconian government overreach seen during the pandemic.

'It's hard to escape the conclusion that sin taxes are proposed by rich people looking down on the behaviour of the sinful masses,' Dr Coatsworth told Daily Mail Australia.

'Can you imagine a can of Coke costing $8? Is that what it will take to reduce consumption?

'In regional and indigenous communities I predict it will reduce consumption by precisely zero.'

He noted that while governments can legitimately regulate things such as age of consumption of products such as alcohol and penalise people who sell harmful products to children, it should be cautious in applying such restrictions to adults.

'The recent trend to is to make penalty and prohibition the first choice and not the last resort, and this is leading to bad policy choices,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'If you're struggling to make an income and support your family there is much less capacity to make good health choices, and the 'sins' help you get through a tough day.

'A sin tax that does nothing to lift people into a position that they can make positive health choices.'

Dr Coatsworth also warned there are limits in trying to legislate people into being healthier.

'We've just been through a very disturbing episode in our lives where we criminalised or harshly penalised legitimate actions of citizens in the name of public health,' he said referring to the Covid period.

'As a basic principle public health should operate by consent of the community not by coercion.

'This applies as much to current debates as it did to Covid.'

The Australian government already imposes similar taxes on tobacco products and raises the excise every year to make it prohibitively expensive. It currently stands at about 75 per cent of the sale price.

Although the rate of smoking has decreased from above 20 per cent in 2001 to 11 per cent now, illegal vaping rates have soared along with the illicit tobacco trade.

'It's a law of diminishing returns,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'Tobacco excise had climbed so high that a black market has blossomed.'

'It's clear that the Australian Federal Police can't stop illicit tobacco coming into the country, let alone illegal vapes and it's creating a problem for state policing who now have to deal with the emergence of organised crime.

'It's bizarre that the same people who acknowledge that a 'war on drugs' is the wrong way to tackle hard drug use passionately declare that a 'war on vapes' is likely to work.'

Despite Dr Coatsworth's opposition to raising taxes on unhealthy food and drink, he does agree that there is an 'obesity crisis in Australia and that diabetes is an enormous cost-burden for our health system'.

'There is a big gap between agreeing with that and asserting that sugar taxes will have a meaningful impact on either,' he said.

'The classic behaviour of the activist is to surf a moral panic and then criticise an opponent as being an enemy of the public good.

'Labelling someone as being an enemy of public health is a very effective way of silencing debate.'

Earlier this month a Senate report recommended the federal government implement a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages and look to international examples to fix prices.

It pointed to the British example of 'tiered tax' where the levy grows with the amount of sugar in a product.

The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated applying a 20 per cent tax on all sugar sweetened drinks would bring in about $1.4billion annually

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13638369/Nick-Coatsworth-sin-tax.html

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All 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)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

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

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

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