Tuesday, March 30, 2021



Losing the Language, Losing the Argument

There’s an old saying in a debate that those who define the terms usually win the argument. That truism has been playing out on the political stage now for at least half a century, as the Right consistently concedes the language to the Left. If it seems like we’re always losing the argument, perhaps that’s because we’re always playing on their home field.

Of course, it’s true that language evolves naturally over time. Think of the word “hood,” which once referred only to a head covering. Now it’s also applied to the front of a car—the part that covers the engine. That’s a natural and logical evolution.

It’s when such shifts in meaning don’t occur naturally and aren’t logical that problems arise—when words are manipulated intentionally to make them mean things they didn’t mean before or aren’t supposed to mean. And this manipulation of language, otherwise known as propaganda, is something the Left is quite good at. In fact, rhetorically speaking, it might be the only thing they’re really good at—their entire game plan—since their arguments are rarely based on logic or fact.

Indeed, most of their arguments, like those for abortion, gun control, and “systemic racism,” are demonstrably illogical and contrafactual. But if they can get us to agree to their terms upfront, which we often do without even realizing it, then they can probably win the argument, anyway. Heck, at this point, it sometimes seems like they’ve already won the argument and all that remains for our side is rear-guard action and damage control. (But that isn’t necessarily the case).

A classic example of what I’m talking about is the word “capitalism” as used to describe our economic system. We conservatives are fond of calling ourselves capitalists or saying that we support capitalism. But in doing so, are we even aware that we’re accepting the Left’s premise—using their word? It was actually Karl Marx’s term for our system, one that he did not coin but did use extensively in Das Kapital (see?). And he certainly did not mean it in a good way.

Adopting the term as our own allows the Left to brand us as “greedy capitalists.” They can then invent pithy if nonsensical bromides like, “Capitalism is only for people who have capital.” Of course, every one of us has capital of some sort, if only our own hard work, that we can trade for goods and services in a free market economy. But since most people associate “capital” with money, it makes for a good slogan. The implied message is that capitalism is just for people with money. Everybody else can go to hell.

That’s why the other term I just used is superior: “free markets.” Free markets are something everybody can get behind because the operative word is “free.” Marxists might be able to argue that capitalism is for capitalists—it really isn’t, but that sounds convincing—but free markets are for everyone. That’s why, instead of talking about capitalism and playing right into the Left’s hands, conservatives should constantly drive home the benefits of a free-market economy.

Another example involves the labels leftists apply to themselves: “liberals” and “progressives.” I can’t imagine anything more illiberal and regressive than modern-day leftism, which seeks to deprive us of as many civil liberties as possible—including those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, like freedom of religion and speech—and re-create a system led by the elites in which the rest of us are, in Friedrich von Hayek’s memorable phrase, “on the road [back] to serfdom.”

That’s why I always cringe when I hear conservative commentators refer to today’s leftist radicals as “liberals.” They’re certainly not classical liberals—i.e., libertarians—nor are they even old-fashioned, Jimmy Carter, Sunday-school-type liberals. It is vitally important, and becoming more so each day, to call them what they really are: Marxists, Stalinists, and Maoists. Besides accurately describing their policy preferences, such terms offer the rhetorical advantage of associating those policy preferences with some of history’s worst people, and deservedly so.

Lately, the Left has become so audacious in their manipulation of language that they’ve begun calling things the exact opposite of what they really are. Take “anti-fascism,” for example, as represented by the group Antifa, whose tactics closely resemble those of Hitler’s Brownshirts. And “anti-racism,” which is itself nothing more than a form of blatant racism.

Speaking of which, there’s another great example of language manipulation. The word “racism” literally means discrimination on the basis of race. But for the Left, only one race, whites, can be guilty of racism, because they define the word purely in terms of power. And in their Marxist worldview, in which everyone is either a victim or an oppressor, only white people can have power.

That, of course, is ridiculous on its face. In today’s America, many black people hold positions of power, from local school boards all the way up to the White House. But beyond that, the bastardization of the term allows the Marxists to claim victimhood for people who are not victims and condemn as oppressors those who have never oppressed anyone.

Indeed, given such a narrow definition of “racism,” it’s not much of a leap to assert that ALL white people are racist—because, remember, only they have power in the Left’s warped universe. And of course, that is exactly what the Left is asserting today. It is the basis for “Critical Race Theory,” that vile, hateful, racist (in the true sense of the word), viral ideology now infecting our schools and other institutions.

But it all begins when we as conservatives accept the Left’s lexicon. That’s why the front line of the current culture war must be at the level of language. We cannot simply argue policy; we must also contest vocabulary and refuse to let the Marxists set the terms of the debate. Otherwise, we’ve already lost it.

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When white supremacists are brown

There’s been a lot of chatter about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. Asian-Americans are being targeted, yes—but the narrative may not be reflective of what liberal media outlets are disseminating. They want us to believe that white supremacy and Donald Trump are to blame. Calling COVID the ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ is what led to this recent spate of attacks. No, the virus came from China. That is a fact. You see the ‘my ethnicity is not a virus’ signs, though that sentiment seems to stop within lefty circles when they want to bash white people. There’s always a boomerang, folks. Whatever liberals dole out, eventually it will come back to split their lip open like a fool with a boomerang. Always. These people have no principles, only feelings that can land you in a lot of trouble.

The recent NYPD presser on anti-Asian hate crimes shows pictures of the suspects who look rather…nonwhite. I mean when that slide of those who were arrested was shown, there was not a white face on that screen.

This all stems from the horrific mass shooting in Atlanta where Robert Aaron Long shot and killed eight people, many of them Asian women. Cue the white supremacy and hate crime talk, though we don’t know yet why he did this. That’s what Andrew Sullivan noted in his piece on Substack, which relates to the NYPD presser here. We once again see the woke narrative replacing what’s factual. He goes long into the recent spa shootings committed by Long, the infusion of ‘critical race theory,’ which is worth a read, but he also notes that a good chunk of hate crimes committed against Asians in New York City were done by nonwhites. That shreds the white supremacy angle. He does say that Trump’s “China virus” rhetoric fanned the flames. I disagree, but here’s a key passage:

This isn’t in any way to deny increasing bias against Asian-Americans. It’s real and it’s awful. Asians are targeted by elite leftists, who actively discriminate against them in higher education, and attempt to dismantle the merit-based schools where Asian-American students succeed — precisely and only because too many Asians are attending. And Asian-Americans are also often targeted by envious or opportunistic criminal non-whites in their neighborhoods. For Trump to give these forces a top-spin with the “China virus” made things even worse, of course. For a firsthand account of a Chinese family’s experience of violence and harassment, check out this piece.

The more Asian-Americans succeed, the deeper the envy and hostility that can be directed toward them. The National Crime Victimization Survey notes that “the rate of violent crime committed against Asians increased from 8.2 to 16.2 per 1000 persons age 12 or older from 2015 to 2018.” Hate crimes? “Hate crime incidents against Asian Americans had an annual rate of increase of approximately 12% from 2012 to 2014. Although there was a temporary decrease from 2014 to 2015, anti-Asian bias crimes had increased again from 2015 to 2018.”

Asians are different from other groups in this respect. “Comparing with Black and Hispanic victims, Asian Americans have relatively higher chance to be victimized by non-White offenders (25.5% vs. 1.0% for African Americans and 18.9% for Hispanics). … Asian Americans have higher risk to be persecuted by strangers … are less likely to be offended in their residence … and are more likely to be targeted at school/college.” Of those committing violence against Asians, you discover that 24 percent such attacks are committed by whites; 24 percent are committed by fellow Asians; 7 percent by Hispanics; and 27.5 percent by African-Americans. Do the Kendi math, and you can see why Kendi’s “White Supremacist domestic terror” is not that useful a term for describing anti-Asian violence.

But what about hate crimes specifically? In general, the group disproportionately most likely to commit hate crimes in the US are African-Americans. At 13 percent of the population, African Americans commit 23.9 percent of hate crimes. But hate specifically against Asian-Americans in the era of Trump and Covid? Solid numbers are not yet available for 2020, which is the year that matters here. There’s data, from 1994 to 2014, that finds little racial skew among those committing anti-Asian hate crimes. Hostility comes from every other community pretty equally.

The best data I’ve found for 2020, the salient period for this discussion, are provisional data on complaints and arrests for hate crimes against Asians in New York City, one of two cities which seem to have been most affected. They record 20 such arrests in 2020. Of those 20 offenders, 11 were African-American, two Black-Hispanic, two white, and five white Hispanics. Of the black offenders, a majority were women. The bulk happened last March, and they petered out soon after. If you drill down on some recent incidents in the news in California, and get past the media gloss to the actual mugshots, you also find as many black as white offenders.

This doesn’t prove much either, of course. Anti-Asian bias, like all biases, can infect anyone of any race, and the sample size is small and in one place. But it sure complicates the “white supremacy” case that the mainstream media simply assert as fact.

And that NYPD presser complicated that narrative pretty well.

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Judge Takes Child From Mother Because She’s “Anti-Mask"

During a custody battle with her ex-husband, Melanie Joseph had her parental rights stripped after a court ruled she’s a “danger” to the child for being “anti-mask.”

Audio recording reveals Broward County Judge Dale C. Cohen telling the court he thinks the mother’s “credibility is very low.”

“I don’t believe a lot of what she testified to,” Judge Cohen said. “Um, she’s one of these anti-mask people and she’s got the audacity to post that on social media that she’s an anti-mask people.”

Joseph told Peters she isn’t “anti-mask” and had instead posted a pre-pandemic photo online.

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Under Joe Biden, Woke Banks Run Wild

During the final weeks of the Trump administration, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued an important regulation that would have required financial institutions to base their rules governing access to banking services on financial concerns, rather than political views.

According to the Trump-era OCC, "The rule codifies more than a decade of OCC guidance stating that banks should conduct risk assessment of individual customers, rather than make broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers, when provisioning access to services, capital, and credit."

The Trump administration's rule would have provided an important safeguard against large banks—defined by the OCC as those "with more than $100 billion in assets that may exert significant pricing power or influence over sectors of the national economy"—using their vast wealth and financial power to impose their ideological views on Americans.

Although it seems like the rule ought to draw significant bipartisan support—do liberals really want big banks punishing people who don't agree with them?—soon after taking office, President Biden put the rule on a 60-day hold.

The Biden administration's move is a clear signal that it intends to kill the regulation before it goes into effect on April 1.

One might be tempted to think big banks would support the Trump-era rule because it would allow them to take politics completely out of their financial decision-making process. The regulation would have provided them an excuse when special-interest groups on the Left or Right demand they get involved in controversial debates. That, unfortunately, could not be further from reality.

Large banks are some of the rule's biggest opponents, and many financial institutions have already started to roll out plans for using this opportunity to promote liberal ideology—and to earn a profit while doing so.

In Congress, many Democrats have aligned themselves with large financial institutions seeking to eliminate the rule, because they want to allow banks to impose liberalism on the American people.

Many on the left want to allow banks to discriminate on the basis of political ideology, among other things, because large banks have already used their power to promote a variety of causes favored by Democrats.

For instance, in February, Bank of America announced, "Building on Bank of America's longstanding support for the Paris Climate Agreement, the company today outlined initial steps to achieve its goal of net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its financing activities, operations and supply chain before 2050."

Pay careful attention to Bank of America's statement. The bank not only promised to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions, but to reduce emissions "in its financing activities." That means it plans to force businesses—and perhaps even individuals—who might otherwise choose to continue using fossil fuels to adopt "green" energy or else lose access to the bank's capital.

Bank of America isn't alone. Seemingly every large banking institution in the United States is now gearing up to use its vast financial resources to promote liberal causes. Earlier in March, Citibank announced commitments similar to those issued the month prior by Bank of America.

During the announcement, Citi CEO Jane Fraser said, "We believe that global financial institutions like Citi have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to play a leading role in helping drive the transition to a net zero global economy and make good on the promise of the Paris Agreement."

Institutions like Bank of America and Citi aren't stopping at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "Our commitments to closing the gender pay gap, to advancing racial equity, and to pioneering the green agenda have demonstrated that this is good for business and not at odds with it," Fraser said in the same announcement. "And we will continue to be part of the solution to these challenges and enable others to do so as well."

Many Americans believe climate change, the gender pay gap and other causes now adopted by large banks are serious problems worthy of our attention, and thus might think the elimination of the Trump-era OCC rule is a positive step forward. Think carefully, though, before coming to such a reckless conclusion.

If massive banks and financial institutions can effectively shut down any industry or even class of nonprofit organizations because they disagree with those institutions' politics, then they have the authority to control society in ways that all Americans should be extremely uncomfortable with. There would be absolutely nothing stopping CEOs at major banks from waking up in six months and saying, "You know, maybe we were wrong about that whole climate change thing. I think we'll stop providing financial services to renewable energy companies instead."

The modern banking system cannot exist without government-created central bank currency. Many large banks have, at one time or another, received massive funding from the federal government in the form of taxpayer-funded bailouts or COVID-related financial support. The government is well within its rights to require those banks to make services available to all creditworthy groups in the United States and to prevent them from playing politics.

If instead banks are permitted to discriminate against businesses and individuals that do not share their political views, their power and influence will undoubtedly become a grave threat to the preservation of our free society.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Monday, March 29, 2021



The Unaccompanied Minors

While a heart-wrenching issue -- they are a distraction from a nightmarish threat.

Americans have finally gotten a glimpse of the horrible conditions under which the Biden administration is essentially warehousing alien children who show up on the southern border in response to Biden’s words and policies.

Biden tried to block the photos and has attempted to erect a wall of secrecy around his administration to avoid being made accountable.

This is a true humanitarian crisis, make no mistake, but these children are mere pawns in the political game being played by the Biden Administration.

For all of the breast-beating by the Democrats during the Trump administration who complained stridently about the “kids in cages” we now see that the Biden administration has resorted to the use of dangerously overcrowded pens that look more suitable for holding livestock than children; and this is happening during the COVID-19 Pandemic where we are constantly told to wear masks and maintain “social distancing.”

The media will now, undoubtedly focus their attention on the children while ignoring broader issues that emanate from the immigration crisis that the Biden administration refuses to describe as a crisis. It is becoming obvious that they won’t use that term because they are getting exactly what they want: to flood America with huge numbers of immigrants for political purposes.

Flooding America with huge numbers of aliens will cause many Americans to lose their jobs and/or suffer wage suppression, pushing more Americans into poverty and reliance on government programs that the Democrats are happy to provide, thus forcing millions of Americans to vote for the Democrats--the “Party of the hand-out.”

In May of last year I wrote, For Dems to Succeed, Americans Must Fail, Many believe that the leaders of the Democrat Party seek to import huge numbers of immigrants who would ultimately vote for the their candidates. What most don’t realize that the apparent plan of the Democrat Party is far worse than that. My dad used to say that you can turn capitalists into communists by taking away their money.

However, the huge numbers of aliens who have flooded the southern border of the United States, have overwhelmed the entire immigration system; this is the obvious goal of the Biden administration.

The current situation should surprise no one given the statements made by Mr. Biden even before he was sworn in and given his selection of Alejandro Mayorkas for Secretary of Homeland Security, as I noted in my article that was published on December 7, 2020, Biden's DHS: Department of Homeland Surrender: Alejandro Mayorkas, architect of DACA, picked by Biden to head DHS.

In reality, the immigration system has been overwhelmed for decades. The key to imbuing the immigration system involves much, much more than simply hiring more Border Patrol agents.

The immigration system desperately needs to have ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents to imbue the immigration system with meaningful integrity.

Back in May 2019, during the Trump administration, I wrote an article, Jihad At The Border that focused on how the border crisis back then facilitated the entry of terrorists.

My earlier article included this passage that is certainly even more relevant today than it was then:

Thus the ability of the already beleaguered U.S. Border Patrol to secure our porous and dangerous southern border has been diminished by 40%.

Those who study history, specifically World War II know that “D-Day,” also known as “Operation Overlord” was only successful because of a diversion created by the Allies known as the “Calais Deception” that was officially labeled “Operation Fortitude.”

General George Patton was put in charge of a phantom division that consisted of inflatable tanks and trucks that from the air, created the elaborate but false illusion of a large contingent of soldiers preparing to attack Germany at the Pas-de-Calais rather than at Normandy where the attack would actually be mounted.

The Germans were thus conned into splitting up their defensive forces, leaving Normandy vulnerable to the Allies on June 6, 1944.

Today our Border Patrol and, indeed, the entire immigration system, is being inundated by huge numbers of illegal aliens forcing the Border Patrol to deploy many of its agents to assignment that remove them from the primary mission of securing vast stretches of unsecured border.

This was why the border wall was so important, not to block people and commerce from entering the United States, after all, the wall did not block off ports of entry, but to funnel all commerce and people seeking entry into the United States to the ports of entry so that they could be vetted and a record of their entry created.

Today the Border Patrol is so overwhelmed that, on March 20 the National Review reported: CBP Asks to Fly Migrants to Canadian Border for Processing amid Surge: Report.

The very next day, on March 21, 2021 Fox News reported, Border Patrol in Rio Grande Valley releasing illegal crossers into US without court date.

What happens on the border does not stay on the border. Once past the border these aliens are free to travel across the United States and settle in towns and cities across the United States.

Sanctuary cities further entice aliens who have criminal backgrounds to set up shop in those towns where the can continue their “criminal careers.” This also applies to terrorists.

It is more than ironic that while Nancy Pelosi has demanded a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, she and her political cohorts blatantly violate the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission where immigration is concerned.

The mainstream media is no better, ignoring the nexus between immigration failures and the ability of terrorists to enter the United States, embed themselves and go about their deadly preparations that were clearly laid out in The 9/11 Commission Report and the companion report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

The latter report addressed the importance of the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States:

Page 54 contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot.”

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.

Page 61 contained this passage:

Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists

In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.149 Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.150 With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel.

On February 11, 2021 The Epoch Times reported, Terror Threat Across Southern Border ‘Elevated and Escalating,’ Expert Says.

On February 4, 2021 The Epoch Times reported, Border Patrol Agents Arrest 11 Iranians in Arizona Who Illegally Entered US

Biden’s immigration policies have sparked uncontrolled immigration to an extent that it could be categorized as an invasion.


https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/unaccompanied-minors-while-heart-wrenching-are-michael-cutler/


Baltimore Will No Longer Prosecute Drug Possession, Prostitution, and Other ‘Low-Level’ Crimes

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby declared the “war on drug users” is over and her office will no longer prosecute low-level crimes like drug possession and prostitution.

The program has been in place for the last year and was designed to reduce the population in city jails during the pandemic. Yesterday, Mosby made the policy permanent.

“Today, America’s war on drug users is over in the city of Baltimore. We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero tolerance policing and no longer default to the status quo to criminalize mostly people of color for addiction,” said Mosby in an official press release.

Mosby said her office will no longer prosecute drug and drug paraphernalia possession, prostitution, trespassing, minor traffic offense, open container violations, and urinating and defecating in public.

CNN:

Her decision was supported by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison. But Republican state Sen. Robert Cassilly told CNN affiliate WBFF that while he supports prosecutorial judgment, Mosby’s decision is closer to making the law rather than enforcing it.

“Prosecutors take an oath to uphold the constitution in the state of Maryland and the constitution says the general assembly sets the policy, not the prosecutors,” Cassilly told the station. “I respect the whole prosecutorial discretion. That’s not prosecutorial discretion, that’s an exercise in legislating. That’s what the legislature is supposed to do.”

Baltimore, already a very unpleasant place to live, is about to get worse. When mayors don’t care about the “quality of life” issues like public urination and prostitution, they invite behaviors that make the city unlivable.

Mosby said the state’s attorney’s office is also working with the Baltimore Police Department and Baltimore Crisis Response Inc. (BCRI), a crisis center dealing with mental health and substance abuse issue, to offer services instead of arresting individuals committing these lesser offenses.

“Rather than arrest and prosecution, BCRI will connect individuals with services in areas such as mental health, housing, and substance use,” according to the press release.

Decriminalizing certain behaviors and activities will only encourage those same activities. Just ask San Francisco residents what happened when the city stopped prosecuting people for public urination and defecation.

“This is not compassion for the homeless. It’s condemning people to the consequences of squalor,” wrote the editor of the police blog Law Officer.

I am a Southern Californian, but relocated to Texas upon retirement from law enforcement. I have family members who live in the Bay Area, so we’d frequently visit San Francisco. However, a few years ago I said I’d had enough after the overly aggressive panhandlers spoiled a sightseeing day at Fisherman’s Wharf. Yet the coup de grace for me was entering a public restroom near the BART station and witnessing a vagrant—high on heroin—taking a crap in the sink—when public stalls were available.

“I’m done with this city,” I declared when I returned to my waiting family.

As police forces shrink and crime grows, this policy will probably be forced on all major cities. It’s what the radicals want. And Baltimore will suffer the consequences.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/28/baltimore-will-no-longer-prosecute-drug-possession-prostitution-and-other-low-level-crimes-n1435502


Cancel Culture Comes to Medicine

The Journal of the American Medical Association is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world and is regularly cited as an authority on everything from cancer to erectile dysfunction.

Now JAMA is embroiled in controversy over a podcast on racism and medicine that didn’t include any black panelists. After hundreds of black doctors complained, the AMA fired the deputy editor of JAMA and suspended the editor-in-chief, Dr. Howard Bauchner, pending the outcome of an investigation.

The subject of the podcast was racism in healthcare which has been much in the news in recent months as racism has been blamed for the disparity in Covid deaths between blacks and whites.

Associated Press:

“The decision to place the editor-in-chief on administrative leave neither implicates nor exonerates individuals and is standard operating procedure for such investigations,” the committee said in a statement.

Dr. Phil Fontanarosa, JAMA’s executive editor, will serve as interim editor.

“It’s a reasonable first step but it should not be seen as mission accomplished,” Dr. Raymond Givens, a Black cardiologist in New York, said Friday. He has been a vocal online critic of a lack of diversity among editors of JAMA and other prominent medical journals.

There are several possible explanations for why more blacks died proportionately than whites and most of them have to do with income disparities, not racial animus. Poor people are generally less healthy. They tend toward obesity, which makes them more susceptible to heart disease and diabetes. Black people also smoke at a higher rate than whites, which is a known factor in lung diseases like COPD and emphysema.

It’s also a fact that whites spend more on healthcare in general than blacks. And clinics and hospitals are more accessible in rich suburbs than in the poor inner city.

All of the above conditions are prime contributors to serious illness and death from Covid-19 so it stands to reason more blacks would die of Covid as a proportion of the population than whites.

What makes this podcast issue so silly is that the recording was “a discussion for skeptics” of the idea that there is racism in healthcare. Apparently, even discussing the possibility that there were other factors involved in the disparities in outcomes in healthcare proved too much for some.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/27/cancel-culture-comes-to-medicine-n1435402


A Christian Church Just CAVED To Leftists, Made MAJOR Change To BIBLE

The Swedish church hardly exists. It has very few communicants

Progressivism is infesting just about everything in Western society, and the latest casualty is the Christian Church.

The national Church of Sweden has capitulated to social justice warriors demanding everything be gender neutral as to not offend transgendered people or non-binary, gender fluid creatures of intermediate sexuality and made a massive change to the one thing that should remain sacred in Christianity – the Lord’s Prayer. In what can only be described as a totally insane move, the national Evangelical Lutheran Church has decided that God will no longer be referred to as “He,” but instead only the gender non-conforming term of “God.”

It gets worse, according to Yahoo! News.

When speaking of God, pastors are instructed to use phrases like “the Holy Trinity” rather than “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” and avoid other masculine terms when speaking about our Lord and Savior.

“We talk about Jesus Christ, but in a few places we have changed it to say ‘God’ instead of ‘he’,” Church of Sweden spokesperson Sofija Pedersen Videke told The Telegraph. “We have some prayer options that are more gender-neutral than others.”

“A wide majority of people decided on the book,” she said, adding that she had heard of no priests who objected to the new linguistic framework.

The Church of Sweden is headed by Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who was elected Sweden’s first female archbishop in 2013.

Archbishop Jackelen defended the decision, telling Sweden’s TT news agency: “Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human.”

The defilement of God comes as the Church is attempting to “modernize” its handbook outlining how services should be conducted. However, not everyone in the Christian community is happy about the decision, and rightfully so.

All throughout the Bible, God is referred to as “He,” “Him,” and other masculine terms, so these progressive lunatics in Sweden are attempting to rewrite God’s doctrine. Christer Pahlmblad, an associate theology professor at Lund University in Sweden, agrees, telling the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad the decision was “undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches.”

“It really isn’t smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage,” he said.


My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

Sunday, March 28, 2021


Biden cops some friendly fire

Meghan McCain has slammed the mainstream media for its fawning response to Joe Biden's first press conference, saying the new President is being treated far more lightly than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Biden held his first press conference on Thursday - more than two months into his Presidency - where he answered questions on immigration, China, and gun control.

But while Biden made a series of factually incorrect statements and was seen referring to prepared notes, the media's response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Speaking on The View Friday, McCain said the reaction was evidence of media bias, and claimed that Biden only answered a series of softball questions.

'We're still in a pandemic, there are still a bunch of crises, and I don't think he answered nearly enough questions that I, for one, would have liked to see him answer and I think the coverage has been really disconcerting,' the conservative co-host stated.

'I was watching some shows this morning - there's no need to slobber all over Joe Biden right now. He's still the president of the United States. And I think our role in the fourth estate is to hold his feet to the fire and to ask serious questions and 'give him time, let him be president,' yes, but we didn't give this [leeway] to President Obama or to President Trump.'

McCain also added that Biden didn't take questions from journalists who may have been prepared to ask him harder questions. 'He didn't answer any questions from any media that didn't agree with him,' McCain explained. 'Peter Doocy, was not called on, Fox News wasn't called on, which I think is a huge miss for President Biden yesterday.'

She also stated that the press deliberately ignored Biden's recent stumble up the stairs of Air Force One and reports that a gun registered to Hunter Biden was disposed of in a trash can outside a Delaware supermarket in 2018.

'If President Trump had fallen down Air Force One or if his son was involved in some very serious reports involving the Secret Service and a handgun, I believe we would be having a very different [discussion] today,' McCain stated, trying to point out the perceived double standard.

McCain has been long been a family friend of Joe Biden's. Her father, the late John McCain, worked alongside Biden in the Senate for decades.

'I love President Biden as a person. I think he's a truly decent human person, and a wonderful family man and I have great love and admiration for him on a personal level,' McCain clarified on Friday.

'But I believe our role in the fourth estate as journalists and commentators is hold the president and the press's feet to the fire and I have to separate my emotions from calling balls and strikes on this.

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For the Left, Bigotry Is a Tool

This week, a white man shot to death eight people in Atlanta-area spas, six of them Asian American. According to Atlanta police, the man said he was targeting brothels and blamed the women for his alleged sex addiction. The gunman stated that he had visited two of the spas before and had planned to drive to Florida and target the pornography industry. So far, there is no evidence that the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus, making hate-crime charges unlikely at this point.

Nonetheless, the establishment media and Democratic politicians quickly began reflecting the lie that the shooting was an anti-Asian hate crime, the latest outgrowth of a major uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes -- all driven supposedly by "white supremacy." White House press secretary Jen Psaki connected the alleged increase in anti-Asian sentiment to former President Trump, stating that his "calling COVID 'the Wuhan virus' ... led ... to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair." Racial grifter Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: "Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror." Nikole Hannah-Jones, pseudo-journalist and de facto editor-in-chief at The New York Times, tweeted in solidarity: "I stand with my Asian-American brothers and sisters, just as so many of you have stood with us. I grieve. We must own all of this history -- ALL OF IT -- and determine to fight for a truly multiracial democracy where we all can be free."

This is cynical politicking at best.

The same sources decrying anti-Asian sentiment have spent years expressing anti-Asian animus in the form of discriminatory college admissions standards: President Biden's administration dropped a discrimination case against Yale University just a month ago, clearly thanks to the administration's position that affirmative action for black students outweighs Asian American success in a pure meritocracy. The same people blaming "white supremacy" for anti-Asian hate crimes have militantly ignored the location of the crimes -- largely major metropolitan areas, with a large number of such crimes coming not from white Americans but from black Americans (a plurality of overall violent crimes targeting Asian Americans, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, were committed by black Americans in 2018). The same establishment media sources blaming Trump for anti-Asian hate cheer on the active closing of merit-based magnet schools in New York and San Francisco, thanks to those schools' disproportionate Asian American attendance: Hannah-Jones tweeted last year that it was "disingenuous" to talk about "specialized high schools being majority POC" (people of color) when referring to Asian Americans.

Here, then, is how the narrative works, according to the left: No matter the antecedent to any statement, the conclusion must be that America is systemically racist. When we are discussing Asian American economic success, Asian Americans must be treated as beneficiaries of a white supremacist system; when we are talking about hate crimes against Asian Americans, Asian Americans must be treated as people of color victimized by a white supremacist system. When a white person harms Asian Americans, as Trevor Noah explained, intent doesn't matter -- animus can be assumed. When a black person harms Asian Americans, as NBC News reported, "experts say it's important to evaluate each case individually."

All of this is morally base. Anti-Asian animus is anti-Asian animus, whether it comes from woke school administrators or street criminals. To treat such animus differently based solely on the identity of the offender is to make obvious that you simply don't care about anti-Asian animus. For the left, it's just the latest club to wield against the broader American system, facts be damned.

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Follow The ‘Science,’ They Said

Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).

In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.

The Godheads of COVID-19

The medical pandemic godhead of the Left has been octogenarian Dr. Anthony Fauci. His twin chief public relations explainer has been liberal darling New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Both were always supposed to be on top of “the science.”

Dr. Fauci has not just been flat-out wrong on the science of COVID—in his assessments of the origins and possible dangers of COVID-19, of when we can get back to normal, of when the vaccinations would appear, and of which particular governors have been doing the most or least effective management of the disease. He has also, by his own admission, deliberately lied.

That is, Fauci has rejected science, as he knew it, to mislead the public. For our own interests, he adopted the Platonic “noble lie” on occasion. So, for example, he conceded that he had downplayed the value of masks (he now seems to approve of wearing one on top of another) in order to prevent too many wearing them, and thus the public shorting the supply available to more important health care workers.

Fauci also proverbially moved the goal posts on herd immunity, from the high 60s to the low 90s as a percent of the population, either vaccinated or with antibodies, necessary to achieve a de facto end of the pandemic. Again, Fauci defied the science on the theory he knew better, in assuming that the childish public would become too lax when and if it believed herd immunity was on the horizon.

Unspoken, is that Fauci usually errs on the side of what is deemed progressive orthodoxy. In contrast, Dr. Scott Atlas warned us that extended and complete lockdowns in any cost-benefit analyses might well inflict more human and economic damage than the virus. And he added that an opened-up Florida and Texas might do no worse virally than a locked-down California or New York, while avoiding the severe recessionary collateral damage.

Yet Atlas was damned for “not following the science” for the crime of working for Trump and for following the science: while targeted wearing of masks and social distancing and quarantining of vulnerable populations are necessary, complete quarantines of the entire population and extended closing schools are counterproductive.

Little need be said of Cuomo other than the applicable Roman dictum he created a desert and called it peace. When the federal government delivered a tent-hospital and a huge hospital ship, they went unused. When it sent ventilators, Cuomo raged that they were too little, too late.

When his own record in New York of COVID mismanagement became public (currently over 2,500 deaths per million population, the second highest state in the nation and about 35-40 percent higher than the open, but hated Texas and Florida), he lied about his own redirection of COVID patients into pristine long-term care facilities that resulted in a proverbial bloodbath.

In his adherence to science, Cuomo received an Emmy for his narcissistic press conferences and adeptness at blame-gaming. That he was brought low not by his lethal politicking, but by serial allegations of being rude and handsy with female staffers suggests that his unscientific approaches to the pandemic were of little concern to his “scientific” supporters.

The “Science” of Quarantines

Consider another scientific debacle. In the midst of the quarantine, when governors and mayors were threatening to jail any who violated social distancing, mask wearing, or assembling en mass outdoors, hundreds of thousands hit the nation’s streets in crowded phalanxes of screaming and saliva-projecting protestors—all supposedly in violation of “the science” of epidemiology and public health.

The reaction of our elected officials—not just silence but open approbation—is to be expected, given the political class is so often timid and simply genuflects to perceived voter pressure groups. But “the science” on spec also came to the rescue of the quarantine violators to offer pseudo-scientific support for violating government-mandated “data”-driven policies.

Over 1,200 healthcare officials weighed in with their “expertise” and postmodern gibberish to defend mass violations of quarantine rules: “Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response.”

And the experts added all sort of postmodern hedging to emphasize that their recalibrated woke “science” was now different than others’ less woke “science”:

However, as public-health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.

So in Animal Farm terms, some protests “are more in violation than others.” In a more historical vein, we might imagine these “experts” at another time and place, joining the chorus of scientists praising the agronomic genius of Joseph Stalin, whose “brilliant” and “scientific” irrigation fantasies began the destruction of the Aral Sea. In any case, millions decided why stay indoors when millions of others hit the streets to protest, loot, burn, destroy, and injure—with the sanction of our experts.

Non Compos Mentis

The Left hammered the 74-year-old overweight Trump about his supposedly iffy health. They brought in a Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, to testify about his incapacity to Congress. There and in op-eds, she offered a pseudo-scientific assessment of debility (e.g., “I and hundreds of mental health professionals are available and eager to assist with any or all these efforts”). Yes, and unethically so, without ever having examined the patient in question.

According to Lee, Trump was mentally impaired, a sociopath, and needed an “intervention,” a serious medical diagnosis that soon became a “scientific” grounding for the wild charges leveled at Trump of incompetence on network and cable news. Trump in his exasperation at “fake news,” took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test to prove his powers of recall and analysis. He aced the exam.

But where is Lee now in the era of a 78-year-old Joe Biden in the White House?

Or rather, where is the Left to use her “research” to question whether Joe Biden is compos mentis? In the last 30 days, he has claimed there were none vaccinated when he entered office (he was photographed receiving a shot on December 21, a month before his inauguration).

In truth, 1 million a day were receiving vaccinations when Biden assumed the presidency. He cannot at times remember the name of his own secretary of defense or of the Pentagon where Gen.(ret.) Lloyd Austin works, and increasingly needs a translator to make sense of his slurred words, raspy voice, off-topic wandering, truncated vocabulary, and fragmented syntax.

Trump was once said to be shaky and disguising an obvious illness because after a long day at West Point he walked slowly in his leather shoes on a smooth ramp. In contrast, this week Joe Biden staggered and fell three times climbing the stairs to Air Force One—without a commensurate media howl. Will Joe be subject to an outside medical assessment? Might Dr. Lee reappear to give him the Montreal test?

I think we know the answer. “Science” is used to denigrate a perceived enemy of the people, and ignored to enhance a guardian of the flock.

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Arkansas Bans Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law on Thursday a bill banning transgender female-identifying athletes from participating in women’s sports.

The new law, meant to preserve the integrity of female sports and protect girls and women from competing against biological males, comes amid a push by state legislatures to enact similar protections.

“Today, I have signed into law SB354, called the ‘Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.’ I have studied the law and heard from hundreds of constituents on this issue. I signed the law as a fan of women’s sports from basketball to soccer and including many others in which women compete successfully,” Hutchinson said in a statement. “This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition. As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events.”

GOP lawmakers in at least 20 states have introduced similar legislation this year, according to The Associated Press. Such states are reportedly under pressure by activists and organizations such as the NCAA to avoid implementing such bans. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem recently declined to sign a similar bill and sent it back to the legislature to exempt college sports.

Earlier this week, a group of state representatives introduced similar legislation into the North Carolina General Assembly. The bill cites the “inherent differences between men and women” for banning biological males from women’s sports.

The bill states in part:

Whereas, the benefits that natural testosterone provides to male athletes are not diminished through the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. A recent study on the impact of such treatments found that policies like those of the International Olympic Committee that require biological males to undergo at least one year of testosterone suppression before competing in women’s sports do not create a level playing field. “[T]he reduction in testosterone levels required by many sports federation transgender policies is insufficient to remove or reduce the male advantage by any meaningful degree.”

For example, “the muscle mass advantage males possess over females, and potentially the performance implications thereof, are not removed by 12 months of testosterone suppression.” Instead, the study concluded that “The data presented here demonstrates that the male physical performance advantage over females, attributed to superior anthropometric and muscle mass/strength parameters achieved at puberty, is not removed by the current regimen of testosterone suppression permitting participation of transgender women in female sports categories. Rather, it appears that the male performance advantage is largely retained by transgender women and thus remains substantial.”

On March 11, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill banning biological males from competing in women’s sports.

“I never imagined dealing with this, but POTUS left us no choice,” Reeves wrote on Twitter. “One of his first acts was to sign an EO encouraging transgenderism in children. So today, I proudly signed the Mississippi Fairness Act to ensure young girls are not forced to compete against biological males.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Saturday, March 27, 2021



Minnesota theater cancels production of Cinderella because the cast is 'too white'

A local Minnesota theater has cancelled a production of Roger & Hammerstein's Cinderella because its cast was 'too white'.

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres was scheduled to stage the show later this year before its artistic director stepped in to slam its lack of diversity.

'It was 98 percent white, ' the artistic director, Michael Brindisi, told the Pioneer Press on Wednesday after looking at who had been cast.

However, Chanhassen - located southwest of Minneapolis - has a population that is overwhelming white, and the racial demographics of the cast were not strikingly different from the city as a whole.

According to the most recent census, 92.5 percent of people in Chanhassen are white. Less than 3 percent of residents are Hispanic, while 1.1 percent are black.

No photos of the Cinderella cast were officially released before the show was scrapped.

In a statement released on Monday, the theater stated: 'After careful consideration and with our ongoing commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we have made the decision to cancel our upcoming production.

'In addition to changing future programming, we are establishing new pre-production protocols. We will be inviting (and paying) BIPOC artists to analyze the production with our creative teams through a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lens... This conversation will happen before the design and casting process has begun.'

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For the People?

Democrats sure do have a way of twisting words to hide their true intent.

I’m so thankful for those in Washington, DC, who are concerned about us and want to take care of us. What would we do without them?

Nancy Pelosi is so concerned about us that she came up with HR 1, the “For the People Act.” The question is, just “who” are those people she’s worried about?

If you thought the last presidential election process was the smoothest ever, you’ll love this legislation. The rest of us? Well, not so much. I’ve talked about how words once had meaning. Bills passed by Congress, especially ones crafted by Democrats, are masterpieces of disinformation. Anyone remember Pelosi’s monstrous ObamaCare legislation? “We have to pass it,” Pelosi said, “to find out what’s in it.” How’s that working out?

HR 1 is another huge pile of legislative dung. It’s only 800 pages compared to ObamaCare’s 900-plus pages, which no one read. If any Republican senator votes for this bill, he or she needs to be voted out of office. I can’t go into all of the serious problems it will cause, but I’ll hit some highlights.

This bill will basically mean DC will control all voting law from here on out. It is designed, as I understand it, to override state legislation passed to ensure voting integrity. Democrats have to do this because, well, all you Red State residents are bigots and racists, so leftists will make the right laws for you. No worries!

No voter ID will be required. I could walk into a polling place and say “I’m Alfred E. Newman” (you have to be of a certain age to know who he is) and vote. Apparently anywhere.

The handling of absentee ballots will be so sloppy that there will be no chain of custody and no witnesses of signatures, all while states will make them available to anyone for any reason.

Voter rolls cannot be purged of people who have moved or died. We all know of states where dead people vote every election. Noncitizens would be able to vote with no problems. You don’t have to decide whether or not you want to register to vote — the government will do that for you. This will result in people with multiple registrations. But hey, you can never have too many ballots coming to you, right? Online registrations would be a blessing to hackers and cybercriminals.

HR 1 imposes onerous regulatory restrictions on political speech, including online and policy-related speech by candidates, citizens, civic groups, unions, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. It would authorize the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy positions on nonprofit organizations when they apply for tax-exempt status. What could possibly go wrong?

It would set up a public funding program for candidates running for Congress. Your tax dollars could go to support candidates the Left chooses to fund. And we’re just barely scratching the surface.

The time of putting our heads in the sand is over. Every conservative Patriot needs to let their senators know what they think of this legislation. Don’t assume you know how they feel about this. It’s amazing how, when push comes to shove, the backbone completely disappears from some politicians.

Doing nothing will mean the Democrats won and we have surrendered our liberties! This legislation is NOT for “We the People.” It’s a leftist gift bag.

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If Categories Like Women and Men No Longer Matter, Why Bother with Equal Pay Day?

Many progressives today insist that gender is fluid and that American law should abolish any distinctions between the sexes. Yet, ironically, many of these same people point to overly simplistic statistics derived from binary male-female categories to claim that women are the victims of wage discrimination and to demand more regulation, more government monitoring, and many, many more lawsuits.

Surely, such a binary approach to categorizing workers and comparing wages is woefully outdated in our new woke world!

According to progressive activists, sexism is the reason that the average woman earns only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This logic has never held up to scrutiny. Commonly used wage gap figures simply compare the average full-time working woman’s wages to the wages of the average full-time working man. Such raw statistics don’t account for occupation, specialty, years of experience, or even hours worked.

That last factor alone explains a large chunk of what’s often referred to as the wage gap. According to the Department of Labor, the average female full-time worker logs several fewer hours per week on the job than the average male. It’s hardly surprising—or evidence of discrimination—that someone who works ten percent less each week also earns less. When factors such as these are controlled for, the unexplained differences between male and female earnings shrink to just a few percentage points.

Progressives like to claim that the differences between men and women’s work-lives are the unsavory fruit of our innately sexist society that pushes women to sacrifice their careers and earnings to take on the lionshare of caregiving. To raise awareness of this alleged inequity and push policymakers to make it easier for workers to sue their employers, they created the pseudo holiday “Equal Pay Day” to mark the day that women will have earned enough to catch up with men’s earnings in 2020.

This year, Equal Pay Day fell on March 24. But it seems that in 2021, Equal Pay Day didn’t get the attention it once did. And not just because of COVID. The truth is, progressive groups that used to champion women’s interests just aren’t that interested in women anymore. In today’s woke world, women take a back seat to other “oppressed groups.”

This actually makes sense: Women aren’t a victim class at all. Women make up a majority of the population and a majority of registered and actual voters. Women are an increasingly educated and powerful segment of society. Women today dominate universities, earning 6 out of 10 bachelors degrees, and a solid majority of professional degrees. Women are a near majority of workers, and though they are still less likely than men to be CEOs, they are a growing share of business owners and making hiring and compensation decisions. Indeed, if employers are overwhelmingly discriminating against women, then women are doing a lot of the discriminating. Efforts to paint American women broadly as a victim class have long been a stretch.

It’s strange to witness the Left’s absolute reversal when it comes to their concerns about women. Those who just a few years ago insisted that sexual harassment and violence against women are ubiquitous, openly scoff at the notion that opportunistic male predators would claim a different gender identity to gain access to female-only prisons, locker rooms, domestic violence shelters, and women’s and girls’ bathrooms, in order to do them harm.

Watching Congress talk about “women” in recent weeks is enough to cause mental whiplash: After replacing the term “women” in the “Violence Against Women Act” (VAWA) with words like “people,” “adults,” or “youth; redefining “sex” in our nation’s civil rights laws to mean “gender identity;” and, trying to resurrect the misnamed “Equal Rights Amendment” to outlaw any legal protections or programs (like VAWA) aimed specifically at women (even when these protections make sense), the same body wants to pretend to care that women as a group make less than men as a group. Never mind that sex-based pay discrimination has been illegal in the United States since the 1960s. The logical fallacies, self-serving hypocrisy, and two-tongued virtue-signaling when it comes to women is too much to watch. Women should take note.

I had once hoped that we would stop fixating on the wage gap because it isn’t a helpful tool for measuring workplace discrimination. I had hoped that we would come to respect that women and men make different choices and recognize that it’s ok if these choices impact earnings. Sadly, that’s not why Equal Pay Day is irrelevant today. But I’d still take its elimination as a win.

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Court Rules Professor Can’t Be Forced to Endorse an Ideology Against His Beliefs

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether enjoys a spirited debate. As a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University, there is plenty of that to go around in his classroom. And he is not afraid to voice his disagreement or bring up an entirely different viewpoint.

That’s part of what makes him a great professor. In his class, students are exposed to new ideas and opposing viewpoints. They have the opportunity to grapple with what they believe and why they believe it.

Most people think that’s what universities—the “marketplace of ideas”—are supposed to be!

But not according to Shawnee State officials. Now, Dr. Meriwether finds himself involved in a very different kind of debate—on the opposite side of the courtroom from his university, after it tried to shut down the free exchange of ideas by forcing him to endorse an ideology that he does not believe.

And, today Dr. Meriwether got some great news from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

Let’s take a deeper look at his case and the freedoms at stake.

Who: Dr. Nicholas Meriwether

Dr. Meriwether has served as a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University for over 20 years with an unblemished record. He is serious about creating an atmosphere of mutual respect in his classroom.

Dr. Meriwether is also serious about his beliefs. As a Christian, he strives to live and work consistently with his faith. In fact, his core beliefs are why he’s devoted his career to education.

Many of Dr. Meriwether’s students appreciate how he challenged them in the classroom and brought ideas to the table that were different than their own. As one student wrote:

You and I saw eye-to-eye on very little and that made those arguments all the more valuable to me. If you had only made a half-hearted attempt at a counterpoint or (far worse) neglected to even mention an opposing position in order to spare my feelings, you would have been fundamentally undermining my education. I thank you for showing me enough respect to bring your "A-Game" to every in-class debate.

Unfortunately, not every student felt the same way about encountering differing viewpoints in Dr. Meriwether’s class.

What: Meriwether v. The Trustees of Shawnee State University

One day, a male student approached Dr. Meriwether after class, informed him that he identified as transgender, and demanded that Dr. Meriwether refer to him as a woman, with feminine titles and pronouns. When Dr. Meriwether did not immediately agree, the student became aggressive, physically circling him, getting in his face, using expletives, and even threatening to get Dr. Meriwether fired.

The student then filed a complaint with the university, which launched a formal investigation.

As a philosopher and as a Christian, Dr. Meriwether believes that God has created human beings as either male or female, and that a person’s sex cannot change. To call a man a woman or vice versa endorses an ideology that conflicts with his beliefs. So Dr. Meriwether offered a compromise: He would refer to this student by a first or last name only. That way, he would not call the student something the student did not like, but he would also not say anything that contradicts what he believes is real and true.

This compromise was not enough for university officials; they formally charged Dr. Meriwether—claiming he “created a hostile environment” and discriminated against the student. Later, they placed a written warning in his personnel file that threatened “further corrective actions” if he does not refer to students using pronouns that reflect their self-asserted gender identity.

That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on Dr. Meriwether’s behalf.

ADF filed a lawsuit on Dr. Meriwether’s behalf in November 2018. In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the case, but we appealed that decision. In November, ADF attorneys argued Dr. Meriwether’s case before the 6th Circuit.

And today, we got some great news! The 6th Circuit issued its decision in favor of Dr. Meriwether, ruling that he shouldn’t be forced to speak a message that violates his beliefs.

Where: Portsmouth, Ohio. Shawnee State University is a public university in Portsmouth, Ohio.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Thursday, March 25, 2021



Obsessed Korean-origin psychiatrist loses her job over Trump



She herslf would appear to have OCD

A former Yale professor is suing the university after she was allegedly fired for tweeting about a 'shared psychosis' that 'just about all' of former president Donald Trump supporters suffered from.

Dr Bandy Lee, a former faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry in School of Medicine, filed a complaint against the Yale Monday claiming that she was unlawfully terminated 'due to her exercise of free speech about the dangers of Donald Trump's presidency.'

Dr Lee has been a vocal critic of Trump over the years, notably sending a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019 claiming that President Trump is showing 'signs of delusion' amid his first impeachment inquiry.

The former professor said in her complaint that Yale fired her for a January 2020 tweet where she described how 'just about all' of Trump's supporters suffered from 'shared psychosis.'

She added that lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump's legal team, had 'wholly taken on Trump's symptoms by contagion.'

Dr Lee had been responding to a tweet from University of Minnesota Law Professor and Yale Law School alumnus Richard Painter in relation to Dershowitz describing his sex life as 'perfect,' Hill Reporter reports.

Following her tweet, Dershowitz sent a letter to Yale administrators on Jan. 11, complaining that the professor's post constituted 'a serious violation of the ethics of the American Psychiatric Association' and calling for her to be disciplined. The Yale Daily News said that Dershowitz added in his letter that Lee 'publicly diagnosed [Dershowitz] as psychotic…without ever examining or even meeting' him.

In a statement to the News, Dr Lee expressed that she was not thrilled to have to seek legal action against her alma mater.

'I have done this with a heavy heart, only because Yale refused all my requests for a discussion, much as the American Psychiatric Association has done,' Lee said. 'I love Yale, my alma mater, as I love my country, but we are falling into a dangerous culture of self-censorship and compliance with authority at all cost.'

Court documents state that following Dershowitz's letter, chair of the Psychiatry Department John Krystal told Lee via email that the department 'would be compelled to 'terminate [her] teaching role' if she continued to make similar public statements.

She continued to tweet about the mental fitness of Trump even after Krystal's warning. Lee then met with Krystal and additional unnamed faculty members and was told that she 'breached psychiatric ethics.'

Dr Lee continued tweeting critically of Trump and his mental fitness, and was subjected to follow up meetings with Krystal and other faculty members, the court documents state.

Dr. Lee would learn she was terminated on May 17, 2020. Her numerous appeal attempts in the following months resulted in failure.

A letter Krystal sent to Lee stated that she repeatedly violated the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule - which states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to comment on a public figure's mental faculties in an official capacity unless granted permission or after a medical examination.

The former Yale faculty member feels that the Goldwater Rule is a 'gag order,' according to the court documents. Lee believes that the rule goes against her role as a psychiatrist 'in light of her belief that Donald Trump posed a dangerous threat to his country and the world,' the complaint reads.

Dr Lee has not been a member of the American Psychiatric Association since 2007.

In her complaint, Lee also claims that she did not diagnose Dershowitz, 'but [was] rather commenting on a widespread phenomenon of "shared psychosis."'

She is looking to be reinstated and is seeking compensation for damages, which include 'economic losses' and 'emotional distress.'

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Support for Illegal Immigrants Receiving a Pathway to Citizenship Craters Among Democrats

While Politico assures us that illegal immigrants receiving a pathway to citizenship is popular with the electorate, their newest poll could indicate that American’s patience with the never-ending flow over the southern border is ending. From today’s Politico Playbook:

Forty-three percent of voters overall believe that undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. should have a pathway to citizenship — down 14 points since January. Among Democrats, support for a pathway dropped from 72% to 57% over that period; just one in four Republicans backed the idea, down 10 percentage points.

Looking at the crosstabs, it appears the poll oversampled Democrats. Among respondents, 42% identified as Democrats, 27% as independents, and 31% said they were Republicans. By contrast, Gallup’s most recent poll on political affiliation has independents as the largest group at 41%, Democrats at 32%, and Republicans at 26%. Likewise, the self-reported ideological skew is significantly off from the general population. According to Gallup, conservatives are the largest group at 36%, 35% identify as moderates, and only 25% call themselves liberal. One-third in the Politico/Morning Consult poll identify as liberal.

This assessment is only worth mentioning because the poll may underestimate Americans’ current views on a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. One consistent theme is that men, regardless of other factors, support a pathway to citizenship at lower rates than women. Millennials and Generation X also support it at rates lower than Baby Boomers. The only generation that approves at a rate higher than 50% is Generation Z, whose oldest members are 24 and only started to vote in 2015. This finding makes sense because those who identify their occupation as “student” have a similar approval rate for a pathway to citizenship, higher than any other occupation.

It often seems as if Democrats attempt to use their stance on immigration as a pander to Hispanic voters to cover for their “demographics is destiny” beliefs. Unfortunately for them, the poll confirms, as is often pointed out, that approving of illegal immigrants is not a majority view in that population. With the top line at 43%, Hispanic voters only support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants at 44%. Hispanic voters also prefer deportation for illegal immigrants at a rate of 24%, which is higher than that sentiment among black voters, where only 10% registered that preference.

Voters most concerned about the economy and security have the lowest appetite for a pathway to citizenship along with those without a college degree. Income does not seem to make as big a difference, with only 42-44% expressing a preference for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants whether they report income of less than $50,000 or over $100,000. The notable political affiliations where deportation is preferred to legal residency are Republicans and ideological conservatives as well as ideological moderates and men whose party ID is independent. These groups may be driving the top-line results, where 27% prefer deportation of illegal immigrants to legal residency.

While Politico asserts that these results are a sign that Republican messaging about the crisis of illegal immigrants at the border is working, the evidence for that view is pretty thin. Only 50% of registered voters believe there is a crisis at the border, and the ideological split is stark. Among Democrats and those who lean Democrat, only 31% see the current border situation as a crisis. Republicans and those who lean to the right report this view 75% of the time. The message does not seem to be reaching across the aisle, despite the corporate media’s recent criticisms.

This poll is not the only one to show that Americans’ patience with a porous border is reaching its limit. Rasmussen polling reports that their Immigration Index has fallen 20 points on a scale of 100 since October 2020. Respondents answered the poll from February 28th to March 4th, and the result is the third consecutive survey establishing a new record low. A result above 100 indicates Americans want a more expansive immigration system. Results below indicate support for a more restrictive immigration system.

Rasmussen also found that 67% of likely voters view the situation at the border as a crisis. Likely voters in Rasmussen’s polls go through a set of screening questions to determine their propensity to vote in midterm elections. When asked about accountability for the border crisis, likely voters said:

If there is a border crisis, whose fault is it? Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters agree with the statement: “President Biden himself … has caused the [border] crisis with both his rhetoric and his policies.” That’s a quote from column last week by former Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters disagree and 10% are not sure.

Any way you cut these results, it is a problem for the Biden administration. It will be difficult for them to satisfy the radical left, which is driving the Democrats’ legislative priorities given the view of moderate and Republican voters on the border and illegal immigrant questions. Democrat politicians on the border are also nervous. Representative Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) released photos of the migrant facilities to Axios to highlight the crisis, and two more Democrats from border districts have announced their retirements ahead of 2022. President Trump flipped several border counties in November of 2020, and Republican candidates down-ticket may fare just as well in the area if this crisis persists.

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Hitting Woke Herd Immunity?

We have become an absurd society obsessed with race but without any mechanism to develop a logical category of victimization and reparation.

Two recent polls suggest wokism is beginning to recede on a variety of fronts, from less trust in Black Lives Matter and more confidence in the police, to suspicion that the Capitol “insurrection” account is being used to unfairly suppress political expression while Antifa, increasingly, is seen as a terrorist organization whose violence has been ignored improperly by authorities.

There are tens of millions of Americans who either have been stung, or turned off, by McCarthyite wokeness (and thus have anti-wokeness antibodies). More have been vaccinated from its latest virulent strains by their own values of judging people as individuals, not as racial or gender collectives. So lots of Americans have developed peremptory defenses against it. The result is that daily there are ever-fewer who are susceptible to the woke pandemic. And it will thus begin to fade out—even as the virus desperately seeks to mutate and go after more institutions.

Peak wokeness is nearing also because if it continued in its present incarnation, then the United States as we know would cease to exist—in the sense that 1692-93 Salem or 1793-94 Paris could not have continued apace without destroying society. Woke leftism exists to destroy and tear down, not to unite and build. It is not designed to play down and heal racial differences, but to accentuate and capitalize on them.

Scattershot Immunity

The methodology of cancel culture is utterly incoherent and unsustainable. The shark was jumped by the case of the Dr. Seuss books—banned by some local school districts, even as Dr. Seuss Enterprises, in terror, pulled some of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel’s publications of its own accord. If the author of The Cat in the Hat is now an enemy of the people, then anyone and all can be so designated.

That is, after 70 years and millions of books in the houses of millions of Americans, our generation’s new Soviet censors have now decided that Seuss’s books of the late 1940s and 1950s do not conform to our 2021 sensibilities and thus should be banned. The same kind of canceling of Disney films and cartoons, and of particular novelists and social critics is now a matter of record.

But what are to be the new standards of Trotskyization as we go forth? Can the Governor of New York be excused for months of policies that led to nearly 15,000 unnecessary deaths, but not for inappropriate kisses and touching of women? Or will he, as an Emmy-winning woke official, be exempt from punishment for both types of transgressions?

There are no logical standards that dictate who is and who is not canceled. For now, all we know about the rules of wokeness is that living leftists are mostly not canceled by the woke mob for the thought crimes that ruin both the non-Left or the generic dead.

The operating assumption is that the uncovered sins of the progressive are aberrations and not windows into their dark souls. Or perhaps woke leftism works on the same principle as carbon credits: the more you act progressively, the more pluses you have when minuses are summed up.

Most who have claims of being non-white are likely to find partial vaccination from the woke mob. Those who are independently wealthy or successfully self-employed likewise have some immunity. Then there are the defiant, the proverbial “Don’t Tread on Me” folks, who will fight, and thus encourage the zombie walkers to detour around them.

The only consistent pattern of woke punishment is the shared logic of the lions and water buffalos at the ford—devour the sacrificial, single, and vulnerable while avoiding the robust herd with retaliatory horns.

The Woke Tax

Wokeness eventually would put an unsustainable economic strain on the system. Wokeness is siphoning off billions of dollars from a productive economy through a sort of value-subtracted tax. We are spending a great deal of labor and capital for merit to be replaced in college admissions, in hiring, in grants, in publication, in the selections of awards, and in movies and videos, in everything—as racial, ethnic, and sexual identity considerations replace meritocratic, literary, artistic, and technological criteria, rather than just augment, them.

Americans also are investing lots of capital in preempting wokeness—writing/saying/acting in ways that are not productive, but simply defensive. Diversity oaths, and diversity applications, pledges, and statements take some time to read and digest. It will not be long before insurers will sell “woke insurance,” the premiums adjusted upward for those more conservative and of the wrong genealogy. It won’t be long before we all carry cards certifying that “At no time, did I say, hear, or think anything . . . .”

At a time of $1.7 trillion in student aggregate debt, and existential financial crises in universities during the zoom virtual campus, is higher education really so rich that it can add layers and layers of six-figure-income diversity and equity coordinators?

Most will not invent, create, teach, or produce. Instead, they are not merely monitoring but hindering those who do—either out of a need to justify their apparat or from self-importance. To believe otherwise is to suggest that on, say, May 1, 2020, the United States was an utterly racist society, without civil rights protections or any reparatory programs for those deemed unfairly victimized in the past.

The result is that billions of Americans’ hours are invested in woke reeducation and diversity training, in workshops and group confessionals, and in adjudicating and punishing those who do not comply. Ad hoc and personal cancel culture results in thousands of days of unproductive labor as functionaries scour the internet on the scent of a past misspoken word, or an ancient but now incorrect gesture that can return to ruin a rival or an enemy.

Our economy will soon mimic the totalitarian ones of old. Our commissars are like those of the old Red Army—ordering Soviet commanders’ counter-offensives during the Great Patriotic War to ensure that tank battalions were advancing ideologically correctly rather than just tactically or strategically soundly.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. But 280 former generals, admirals, and national security officials signed a letter warning that if Trump were to bring in any federal troops to keep the peace after the capital violence of late May and early June, riots that saw systematic attacks on police, vandalism, arson, injuries, and looting, and neared the White House grounds, he should be considered a dictatorial threat. “There is no role for the U.S. military in dealing with American citizens exercising their constitutional right to free speech, however uncomfortable that speech may be for some,” they insisted.

The same group remained mute when nearly 30,000 troops flooded the streets of the capital in the aftermath of the January 6 riot inside the Capitol building. They maintain their silence as barbed wire and fencing now cordon off the city, and thousands of troops remain without a terrorist or insurrectionist enemy in sight—a militarization of the capital not seen since the Civil War. Tolerable and intolerable violence is predicated on ideology, not its nature or magnitude.

Warring on the Past

No society can long exist if it believes that its own founding principles, its customs and traditions, its very origins are evil and must be erased. Tearing down statues of Abraham Lincoln, and redefining 1776 and 1787 as 1619, are many things, but one thing they are not is coherent. Trump was considered nutty when he warned that the statue topplers would go from Confederate monuments to Washington and Jefferson—and then when they did just that he was further ridiculed for being prescient.

Who were the long-dead men who devised a system whose natural and eventual fruition is what attracts indigenous people from Oaxaca, the destitute from Somalia, or the politically oppressed from Vietnam? If evil white people founded an evil system solely for their own evil purposes, why would anyone nonwhite dare risk his life to eat from the alluring fruit of the inherently long-ago poisoned tree?

If Americans are to accept that their Declaration of Independence and Constitution were frauds, abject falsifications of the real unspoken founding of 1619, then again what is to replace them? Whose statues are to rise, which books are we to be authorized to read, whose science are we to turn to?

Everyone has feet of some clay. For every cancellation, then must there be commensurate bowdlerizing? Is there no adultery, or unkind treatment of women or plagiarism in the past of Martin Luther King, Jr? No violence or criminality in the life of Malcolm X? Did Cesar Chavez never send his goons to the border to beat back illegal aliens? Was Margaret Sanger only a sometimes advocate of eugenic abortion? Are the written biographies of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to be freed of anti-Semitism and petty corruption? Is Louis Farrakhan an ecumenical leader in the way FDR was not? Was JFK really our first feminist?

Are we to look to those who erased our supposedly awful past for guidance?

Is it to be the architect of the 1619 Project? Long ago the ecumenical Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote that “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world . . . The descendants of these savage people pump drugs and guns into the Black community, pack Black people into the squalor of segregated urban ghettos and continue to be bloodsuckers in our community.”

Is going back into one’s student days to find such an embarrassing rant, in the fashion of the accusers’ of Brett Kavanaugh’s desperate but false allegations, unfair? If so, this past summer Hannah-Jones bragged that, yes, it would be “an honor” if the summer rioting—700 police officers injured, 40 deaths, and billions in property damages and hundreds—be called henceforth “the 1619 riots.”

At the height of tensions, she advised, “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” And she added, “Any reasonable person would say we shouldn’t be destroying other people’s property, but these are not reasonable times.” Did the Times consider its essayist inflammatory?

Tribes

In our self-celebrated liberal society are we all to be reduced to identifying by race? But first, do we even have the ability to ascertain who is and is not white or black or brown?

Most illiberal societies in the past that tried such stigmatization of race, ethnicity, or religion did not end so well—from the Ottomans and the Third Reich to the former Yugoslavians, Rwandans, and Iraqis. One eighth, one fourth, or one half makes one a person of color—or not color? Shall we seek knowledge of one-drop of tell-tale bloodlines from the archived jurisprudence of the antebellum South?

If Peruvian George Zimmerman had only used his matronymic, and Latinized his first name, then would a Jorge Mesa have become a sympathetic character who lost a fair fight with Trayvon Martin rather than reduced by the New York Times to a strange category of “white Hispanic” hoodlum, with the additional odor of a Germanized patronymic.

Why does class bow to race, since the former seems to trump the latter. If we forget percentages for a moment, and also forget that we are individuals, not anonymous cogs of vast racial wheels, in absolute numbers, there are roughly (in some studies) more poor white people—both those earning incomes below the poverty level and those with no income at all—than all other commensurate poor minorities combined. Were these supposed to be the targets of Barack Obama’s “clingers” remarks, or Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables,” John McCain’s “crazies,” or Joe Biden’s “dregs,” “chumps,” and “Neanderthals”?

Apparently, the supposedly all-powerful, all-determining Oz-like role of racial supremacy and the unearned privilege that accompanies it, have aided those 26 million white impoverished very little. Or perhaps they did not get the message that they were recipients of unearned, all-determinative white privilege.

Or perhaps they were just people, like the poor of all other races, who suffer from lack of or access to education or vocational training, the stagnation of entry-level incomes, divorce, family dissolution, bad luck, poor health, substance abuse, economic ill-winds, cultural disadvantages, self-inflicted pathologies, or all the other criteria that can make every one of us of every race susceptible to ravages of poverty.

Given that, in absolute numbers alone, there are more minorities that are not poor than the number of white people who are, how is it that class considerations are forgotten? Or for that matter, does any child’s destiny rest on just race—or a two-parent household living in Menlo Park rather than Parlier, or growing up with college-educated parents or high-school dropouts? And does race really determine all the other criteria that foster wealth or poverty?

Note the artifact that those who are now classified as nonwhite are wisely not often seeking to rebrand themselves as “white” to share in intractable “white privilege ”—in the fashion of the past when white majority racism was undeniable. Why are Asian-Americans, on average, enjoying over $20,000 more in average household income than so-called whites?

Why more commonly would so-called white people create an entire industry of constructing pseudo-minority identities—from Elizabeth Warren to Rachel Dolezal to Ward Churchill to Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria—if not for careerist or social advantage or wishing to be cool by claiming not to be “white”? Why has the new racist “passing for non-white” replaced the old racist “passing for white”?

These are admittedly absurd questions. But they are quite apt for an absurd society obsessed with race but without any mechanism to develop a logical category of victimization and reparation.

Predicating wokism on race is a tricky business, even if one could define and identify race, quantify its role in determining class status, and convince millions that it is moral to judge people by how they look.

Like the Salem witch trials and the McCarthyite hysteria, when wokism fades, we are likely to see its real catalysts revealed. And they will not be found to be misplaced idealism, nor heartfelt desire for a more ecumenical society, but mostly the age-old, narcissistic destructive road to career enhancement, fueled by customary ancient fears, envies, and hatreds.

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Australia: Greens senator retracts rape claim against Home Affairs Minister, apologises



This would normally be a matter of no general interest except for one thing: It is an example of the lie about rape that regularly sprouts from Leftist women: The lie that women do not lie about rape. "Believe the woman", they say.

Women in fact lie prolifically. There are many cases -- particularly in Britain -- where rape allegations have been found in court to be false. Britain has even jailed some of false accusers in the more egregious cases

It is just amazing how readily Leftists resort to psychopathic lies -- lies that are easily found out to be lies. If they wish something to be true, they act as if it were true. Their reality-contact is very poor It is a major mental defect in them


Greens senator Larissa Waters has issued an “unreserved” apology to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton after calling him a “rape apologist” last month.

The Courier-Mail revealed on Saturday Mr Dutton had sent a legal letter to the Queensland senator demanding the apology and removal of online posts containing the insult.

Senator Waters’ comments were made on social media site Twitter in February, in reaction to a news article in which Mr Dutton referred to not knowing the “he said, she said” in the Brittany Higgins rape allegations that have rocked Parliament.

“WOMEN DO NOT LIE ABOUT BEING RAPED (Peter Dutton) YOU INHUMANE, SEXIST RAPE APOLOGIST,” she posted, with similar comments made in a press release.

Tonight she posted an apology to both Twitter and her own website.

“On 25 February 2021 I published a media release on my website, posted on my Twitter account, and made in the course of a press conference false and defamatory statements that Peter Dutton is a rape apologist, that he has sought to conceal and dismiss reports of rape, and that he has no sympathy for victims of rape,” she said.

“I accept that there was no basis for those allegations and that they were false. I unreservedly apologise to Minister Dutton for the hurt, distress and damage to his reputation I have caused him.”

Senator Waters’ original tweet was no longer online last night.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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