Tennessee Town Stirs Debate Over 'Holiday Tree'
Nothing changes: Christmas hatred lives
Germantown, an affluent community with more churches than coffee houses, recently celebrated the lighting of the city's "holiday tree."
"The City of Germantown presents Holiday Tree Lighting," read an announcement that was sent to citizens.
"Watching the first flicker of the white light on the holiday tree is a long standing tradition in Germantown. On Friday, November 24, gather with your family and neighbors in Municipal Square to sing holiday songs, toast marshmallows and enjoy the beginning of the holiday season as a community. Afterward comes the much anticipated lighting of the tree," read another posting on the city's official Facebook page.
Lots of folks had questions about the holiday songs, the holiday refreshments and the holiday tree, including yours truly. I happen to be a resident of Germantown.
Which holiday, specifically, was the city of Germantown celebrating?
"Why does Germantown have something against Christian holidays and traditions," said conservative activist Justin Johnson.
"Coming on the heels of our GMSD School Board wanting to rename Easter to 'spring holiday,'" said Kristen New, with the Shelby County Moms for Liberty. "Seeing the pattern, yet?"
The city's school district drew national headlines when a committee recommended to rename "Good Friday" and "Easter Monday." A calendar draft showed that both Christian holidays had been designated as “spring holiday.”
Parents and KWAM News Talk listeners rose up in protest and the board ultimately decided to keep Good Friday. They eliminated Easter Monday as a school holiday.
"Have you noticed the liberal mentality of these people in this thread or is it just me? Jesus is the reason for the season and these people are mad about it. It's pretty sad," New said. "Merry CHRISTmas."
"Isn’t it odd that the word “holiday” is derived from the words “holy day,” and these vacuous knuckleheads in local government think they are avoiding the religious issue by using that word," added conservative Bob Hendry.
"They don't want to offend the snowflakes by saying Christmas, so they offend the decent people instead," another resident said.
But many leftists and Christmas-haters defended the city's decision to be tolerant and inclusive. And they posted their objections by the hundreds on KWAM's social media platforms.
"Not everyone who lives in Germantown celebrated Christmas. They are trying to be inclusive not exclusive like some of y'all," one resident said. "You can call it whatever the F you want to but the city is acknowledging ALL ITS RESIDENTS and ALL RELIGIONS! Why does this offend you? Not very Christian of you."
Will Germantown rename Hanukkah the “Holiday of Candles”?
I sincerely doubt the leftists would be so tolerant or inclusive if Germantown had renamed MLK Day or Gay Pride Month.
"How dare you homophobic bigots call it 'Holiday Pride Month,'" I could imagine the Alphabet Activists yelling.
So, let's cut to the chase - the holiday we are commemorating with trees and cookies and songs is called Christmas. Jesus is the reason for the season.
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When did populism become a dirty word?
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks during a campaign event at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in Miami, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee )
I am fascinated by the opposing connotations some political words have in the United States, on the one hand, and in Europe and Latin America, on the other.
One such word is “liberal” — which in the U.S. is associated with the left and big government, but in Europe and Latin America stands for individual liberty, property rights and small government.
Another is “populism” — which the increasingly visible presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought back to the forefront.
American populism champions the little guy against the corrupt “establishment” that rigs the system to make a mockery of equality before the law. In Europe and Latin America, it also has an anti-elitist connotation, but the word evokes primarily a disregard for liberal democracy and the rule of law in order to quickly achieve certain goals.
On the left (as the right sees it), it means destroying the economy through expropriation, taxation and redistribution. On the right (as the left sees it), it almost means fascism, i.e., authoritarianism based on a mystical idea of the nation and “traditional values,” as well as a draconian approach to law and order.
In Spain, the current government (an alliance of socialists, communists and regional parties fighting for Catalonia’s independence) is considered a left-wing epitome of populism, while Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is the consummate right-wing populist. In Latin America, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is a perfect example of a dictatorial left-wing populist, while El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele or Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro embodies right-wing populism.
In the U.S., populism is not always used to praise a leader or movement, but the word has a refreshing connotation. Many of the Founding Fathers are considered populists “avant la lettre,” or before the concept existed. A compilation of Thomas Jefferson’s writings edited by Martin Larson came out with the title “Jefferson: Magnificent Populist” in the 1980s.
In Europe and Latin America, Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to aggrandize the federal government, would have been considered a populist because of it, while James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who opposed Hamilton’s centralizing, interventionist instincts, would have been considered the opposite.
In the latter part of the 19th century, with the emergence of the People’s Party, which stood for monetary expansion, government control of the railways and restrictions on land ownership, American populism did have a connotation more like Europe’s and Latin America’s today. Progressives, with their naive belief in the power of the federal government to cure social ills, would also be considered “populist” in the pejorative sense.
Yet the word continues to enjoy a benign aura in America. To make things more interesting, the growth of government in the last few decades has played into the hands of “good” and “bad” populism, with the erosion of the middle class and the enrichment of an elite that owes a lot more to mercantilism — the connection between political and business interests — than to the competitive marketplace and healthy capitalism.
We have been constantly told by Biden and previous administrations that employment has improved at a healthy pace, but the index of hours worked indicates that its rate of growth since 2000 is one-third the rate between the 1960s and the end of the century. As for real median household income, its annual rate of growth since the beginning of the century is barely 0.6 percent, while in the second half of the 20th century, it was three times greater.
By contrast, the net worth of the proverbial top 1 percent has more than quadrupled since 2000 in real terms — while the Fed has printed money like crazy, inflating the price of speculative assets held by rich folks. The federal government has run up so much debt that it is now paying almost $1 trillion a year in interest. In the process, it has stifled wealth creation — to the detriment of the middle class. Instead of addressing this, the Biden administration wants to dish out another $106 billion that it simply does not have to various foreign actors.
That’s the perfect scenario for populism, both of the right kind (anti-elitism in the name of individual rights) and the wrong kind (big-government protectionism and economic nationalism in the name of the little guy). No wonder populism is making itself felt in the run-up to November 2024.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4323128-when-did-populism-become-a-dirty-word/
****************************************************The Feds’ Vehicle ‘Kill Switch’ Mandate Is a Violation of Privacy
In November 2021, former US Representative from Georgia Bob Barr wrote a little-noticed political column claiming that buried inside President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure legislation was a dangerous provision that would go into effect in five years.
“Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a ‘vehicle kill switch,’” wrote Barr, who was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president in 2008.
Like most Americans, I had never heard of this alleged “kill switch” until a few days ago when Representative Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican, proposed to strip the mandate’s funding.
“The right to travel is fundamental, but the government has mandated a kill-switch in new vehicles sold after 2026,” said Massie. “The kill-switch will monitor driver performance and disable cars based on the information gathered.”
Nineteen Republicans joined all but one Democrat in opposing Massie’s amendment, which failed.
True or False?
The claim that the feds would mandate that every new motor vehicle include technology that could disable the vehicle seemed ludicrous. So I started Googling.
To my relief, I saw several fact-checkers at legacy institutions had determined the “kill switch” mandate was not true.
“Our rating: False,” said USA Today.
“ASSESSMENT: False,” said the Associated Press.
“We rate it Mostly False,” concluded PolitiFact.
(Snopes, a reliably left-leaning fact check group, was a little less conclusive, saying the claim was a “mixture” of true and false.)
Unfortunately, my relief evaporated once I looked at the bill itself.
Sec. 24220 of the law explicitly states: “[T]o ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles.”
The legislation then goes on to define the technology as a computer system that can “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle” and can “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected” (emphasis added).
How the system will make this determination is unclear, as is the government’s potential role in apprehending suspected drunk drivers (more on that later).
But the law’s language could not be more clear: New motor vehicles must have a computer system to “monitor” drivers, and the system must be able to prevent vehicle operation if it detects impairment.
“No Mention in the Bill of a ‘Kill Switch’”
How fact-checkers determined the “kill switch” narrative to be false is odd, especially since the articles don’t deny Barr’s central claim: The legislation mandates a computer system that will monitor driving performance and be able to disable motor vehicles.
The Associated Press conceded the law would “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation” if the system suspects the driver is impaired, even “disable a vehicle from being operated.” So did USA Today and PolitiFact.
To arrive at their conclusion that this car-killing mechanism is just a fantasy, fact-checkers resorted to sleight of hand. A common tactic was to debunk social media posts that were actually false or unfounded, like the popular claim that the systems would be required to alert law enforcement if the drivers were deemed impaired.
“None of the technologies currently in development would notify law enforcement,” the Associated Press assured readers.
In an odd bit of uniformity, each of the fact-checkers said spokespeople for groups who support the system, such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), told them they would never support giving law enforcement access to the system.
My personal favorite, however, was PolitiFact.
“[We] found no mention in the bill of a ‘kill switch,’” PolitiFact concluded.
The idea that the absence of the words “kill switch” in the bill is evidence that a disabling mechanism doesn’t actually exist in the legislation is nothing short of gaslighting.
‘Secure in Persons and Effects’?
The unpleasant truth is that lawmakers slipped into a massive spending bill a mandate that stands to require all new vehicles to have AI-driven technology that can disable your vehicle if the technology determines you’ve had one beer too many. And fact-checkers are using headlines to make it sound as if the legislation does no such thing.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/11/28/fed-vehicle-kill-switch/
***********************************************Conor McGregor 'Knocks Some Common Sense' Into the Irish Taoiseach Over His Hamas Hostage Tweet
I would hope everyone was scratching their heads over the Irish Taoiseach’s tweet about the release of Emily Hand, the Israeli-Irish 9-year-old girl Hamas kidnapped during the October 7 attacks. Hand was thought to have been killed in the attacks, which makes her release more of a feel-good story. What makes it odd, sadly, was Leo Varadkar describing her disappearance as something akin to losing your kid in a supermarket.
The Taoiseach wrote, “This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.”
It was a tweet that got a community note for the obvious: she was kidnapped by terrorists.
Mixed martial artist and boxer Conor McGregor was incensed by Varadkar’s post, with the UFC champion laying haymakers on the Taoiseach for being exceptionally dumb with his remarks:
She was abducted by an evil terrorist organization. What is with you and your government and your paid for media affiliates constantly down playing / attempting to repress horrific acts that happen to children. You are a disgrace. The day after a stabbing of children in Ireland, NOT ONE PAPER HAD IT ON THEIR FRONT COVER. We will not forget.
An Algerian did go on a stabbing spree in Dublin last week, which set off massive unrest in the city.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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