News of the Week for July 29^th, 2018

• Gun Rights
• Hide the Decline
• Obamacare
• War & Terror
• National News
• Economy & Taxes
• International News
• Opinion

 

Gun Rights

 

Kavanaugh Could Tip Supreme Court Against Gun Control Laws
In the battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the usual suspects are lining up in support and opposition. At the grass roots, however, there is one new entry nervously eyeing the Kavanaugh nomination. It is March For Our Lives, started by high school students in Parkland, Fla., after the shooting there, and aimed ultimately at enacting more effective gun regulations.

Liberal Ninth Circuit Says Open-Carrying A Gun Is A Constitutional Right
The ultra-liberal and frequently overturned U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just ruled that the Second Amendment protects one’s right to carry a gun openly outside of the home.

Know Your Place Prol! Authorities force Uyghur butchers to use chained-knives
Having already instituted and Orwellian policy of marking new knives with QR tracking codes in an effort to thwart knife attacks by Uyghur separatists, Chinese authorities are taking a low-tech approach as well. They are chaining knives to workstations in the butcher-shops in at least one market in the Xinjiang Province.

Knife Owner Protection Act introduced in U.S. Senate; includes FSA repeal
We have been following the legislative sausage as two competing pieces of knife legislation grind their way through Congress. The first, the Interstate Transport Act (ITA), is sponsored the American Knife and Tool Institute, and the Knife Rights sponsored Knife Owner Protection Act (KOPA). KOPA contains within it both a repeal of the Federal Switchblade Act. The ITA does not, though AKTI has since helped introduce a standalone bill which would do this. KOPA also contains language which closes the loophole which has allowed New York and New Jersey to thumb their noses at the Firearms Owner Protection Act – harassing and even arresting travelling gun-owners on multiple occasions. This language is known as a “right of action”, which is why we at TTAK have endorsed the Knife Owner Protection Act as our preferred bill before the United States Congress.

 

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

National Geographic admits they were wrong about “starving polar bear” video
A stunning admission from National Geographic

 

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

Universal health care now California law – more or less
Providing universal health care coverage to 40 million Californians has become the rallying cry for the state’s Democratic Party as it drifts leftward in this election year.

 

War & Terror

 

Sajid Javid tells US: We won’t block death penalty for Isil ‘Beatles’
Britain has secretly abandoned its blanket opposition to the death penalty and Guantanamo Bay to allow two notorious members of the “Beatles” group of Isil terrorists to be sent to America, The Telegraph can reveal.

UK to US: Mind executing a couple of terrorists for us?
Will the “Beatles” soon come to the US for their really final farewell tour? According to The Telegraph, the UK has asked the US to take over prosecution of two ISIS terrorists with British citizenship allegedly involved in the torture and decapitation of several journalists, including Brits and Americans. They’d like to see them get the death penalty, a sentence not possible in the UK – and normally a bar to extradition to, and cooperation with, the US.

F-35 Engine Upgrade Would Enable Directed Energy Weapons
Pratt & Whitney is refining its proposed upgrade path for the F135 Joint Strike Fighter engine to include increased power and thermal management system (PTMS) capability following feedback on its initially proposed upgrade package from the F-35 Joint Program Office.

Shocker: North Korea not denuclearizing, not cooperating
I doubt that any sensible, objective observer expected North Korea to denuclearize in response to President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un. However, there was some reason to hope for a modicum of cooperation between the U.S. and North Korea on other issues, though such cooperation was hardly assured.

North Korea starts to dismantle facilities at its satellite launching station
Represents “a significant confidence-building measure on the part of North Korea.”

Veterans for Britain: ‘EU army actively undermining NATO’
David Banks, a Spokesman for the Veterans for Britain campaign, has told Westmonster that the European Union is actively undermining NATO.

New Details About the F-15X That Boeing is Pitching the US Air Force
The single-seat jet is being built to shoot down enemy aircraft, pound targets on the ground, and even hit ships at sea.

 

National

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Missouri Visit Poses Obstacle for Claire McCaskill
McCaskill yet to get behind incumbent Dem Lacy Clay

Murkowski vote on Kavanaugh won’t be based on single issue
This weekend, C-SPAN ran a series about Alaska that included an interview with the state’s senior Senator, Lisa Murkowski. Along with Sens. Susan Collins and Rand Paul, Sen. Murkowski is considered one of the Republican Senators who might vote against confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Muslim testifies her husband confessed to “honor killing” Christian son-in-law
The wife of a Jordanian immigrant testified Wednesday how her husband slipped into his son-in-law’s northwest Harris County apartment and fatally shot him minutes after his daughter left for work, one of two “honor killings” she and their son helped him commit.

Lesbians demand ‘L’ be removed from LGBT
Battle transgenders, insist biology makes big difference after all

Keith Ellison Demands Amazon Stop Selling Books the SPLC Hates
Last week, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote to Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, demanding that he no longer sell at Amazon any material that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) dislikes. Yes, it has come to this.

A politically incorrect look at San Diego Comic-Con 2018
Life as a Trump-supporter in a world of #TrumpDergangementSyndrome

Trouble for bubble tea shops as San Francisco bans plastic straws
As the San Francisco Board of Supervisors prepares to vote on an ordinance banning plastic straws, hundreds of small-business owners could be impacted by one problem: bubble tea.

Uh oh: Don Blankenship to file paperwork for third-party Senate bid in West Virginia
If he succeeds it might be the end of the GOP’s already dimming chances of flipping Joe Manchin’s seat from blue to red. Of the three polls of the race between Manchin and Republican Patrick Morrisey taken since May, Manchin leads by 13, 7, and 10 points. He hasn’t put the race away but Trump’s going to need to hit the trail in West Virginia this fall, maybe more than once, to drag Morrisey into contention. If Blankenship’s on the ballot to gobble up the right’s hardcore populist vote, it might end up being too heavy a lift even for POTUS in a state he won by 40 points.

Gillibrand: No really, our first order of business is to abolish ICE
Just what will Democrats do with control of Congress, assuming that the midterms go their way in both the House and Senate? Focus on economic issues near and dear to voters’ hearts? Rebuild infrastructure? Not exactly. Kirsten Gillibrand told an OzyFest panel this weekend that the biggest priorities on the Democratic agenda will be … socialized medicine, gun-grabbing, and abolishing ICE

University proposal to force preferred pronoun usage on shaky legal ground, free speech experts agree
“On a collision course with the First Amendment rights of university members”

Radical Feminist Exposes #TransCult
It is difficult to exaggerate how radical Natasha Chart’s feminism is. She is chairwoman of the board of Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), an organization that originated in Deep Green Resistance, which is just about as far left as you can go (without moving to Pyongyang).

Mass. Independent Senate Candidate Shiva Ayyadurai Punched In Mouth By Elizabeth Warren Supporter
Independent candidate for Senate, Shiva Ayyadurai, gets punched by Elizabeth Warren supporter at town hall meeting. The man, wearing a t-shirt which said “liberal” and a Warren for Senate sticker, approached Ayyadurai with an umbrella while he bullhorned a queue of Warren supporters outside a town hall in Great Barrington, MA, where the Democratic Senator was scheduled to appear.

Amendment to Protect Religious Freedom of Adoption Providers Attached to Appropriations Bill in House
An amendment to protect the religious freedom of adoption providers was passed by the House Appropriations Committee to be part of the fiscal year 2019 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill in a vote Wednesday.

Santa Barbara Authorizes Jail Time for Handing Out Straws
Yes, you read that right. The city of Santa Barbara has passed an ordinance that will allow restaurant employees to be punished with up to six months of jail time or a $1,000 fine for giving plastic straws to their customers.

Justice Department says the term is illegal alien, not “undocumented”
Is this just a case of legal semantics having little effect on actual prosecutions and casework? Of course, but it’s still worth mentioning. The Washington Times reports that the Justice Department has sent an email to its attorneys instructing them to stop using the progressive, inaccurate term “undocumented immigrants” and instead follow the federal legal code and say, illegal alien. You know this is another “own the libs” maneuver, but they’ve got a point.

The Dead Can Vote (At Least on the Ninth Circuit)
A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit casts a decisive vote four months after his death

Prof calls on art teachers to reject “geometry of whiteness”
In a chapter for a new “Handbook of Race and Arts in Education,” a University of North Texas art education professor argues that K-12 teachers should work to combat “geometries of whiteness.”

US Embassy Beijing ‘explosion’: Blast in Chinese capital causes panic with ‘smoke everywhere’
Security personnel, including the military and police, were seen working around something under a blue tarpaulin within a cordon

Senate Dem Candidate Goes Socialist
Maine candidate Zak Ringelstein congratulates himself on his “courage.”

Jordan announces bid for Speaker
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced his bid for Speaker on Thursday afternoon in a letter to colleagues asking for their support.

Prof demands white editors ‘resign’ from ‘positions of power’
A California State University, Fresno professor says the literary community “must DEMAND that white editors resign,” saying it is intolerable for them to hold “positions of power.”

Princeton 2nd Ivy to face Title IX probe for excluding males
Princeton University has become the second Ivy League school, after Yale, to face a federal Title IX investigation into allegations that some of its programs discriminate against male students.

LMU teaches profs the “Alphabet Soup of Sexual Orientation”
Loyola Marymount University will host LGBT activist Robyn Ochs for an event on September 14 designed to help professors decipher “the Alphabet Soup of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identities.”

UCLA fired a conservative professor last year. It’s still refusing to tell him why.
TA says UCLA disingenuously cites “privacy” as reason for stonewalling

Life May Have Once Existed on the Moon
The moon is a dry and barren place, utterly devoid of life. But has it always been this way? New research suggests that perhaps at one point in its history, the moon may have harbored microorganisms similar to those on Earth.

Identical twins run for US office — for rival parties
Twins Monica Sparks and Jessica Ann Tyson are identical in almost every way. The African American sisters running for local office in the US state of Michigan forged an unbreakable bond during a childhood tarred by abuse. They wear the same white dress and even finish each other’s sentences.

College Socialists Seek To Block Jordan Peterson From Speaking In San Antonio
An online petition has been started with the intent of blocking Internet sensation Jordan Peterson from speaking at an event in downtown San Antonio.

Death by “Gender”
Katyana Elasia Haught was a young woman from Livermore, California, who in January 2017 began injecting testosterone. Eight months later, after changing her name to “Daine Faolan Grey,” she “came out” as a “gay” transgender male – in other words, a woman who wants to “transition” in order to have sex with gay men. The word for this is crazy.

Course disputes idea that heterosexual sex is ‘natural’
Eugene Lang College is offering a “Queer Ecologies” course this fall devoted to countering “heterosexist” explanations of animals and nature.

Rasmussen: Majority of Democrats support letting illegal immigrants vote
There were actually two polls about illegal immigrants voting published this week, inspired by news from San Francisco that the, ahem, “undocumented” would be allowed to vote in school board elections. (San Fran isn’t the first American city to allow that, by the way.)

Huge lake of salty water appears to be buried deep in Mars, study says
A huge lake of salty water appears to be buried deep in Mars, raising the possibility of finding life on the red planet. The discovery, based on observations by a European spacecraft, generated excitement from experts. Water is essential to life as we know it, and scientists have long sought to prove that the liquid is present on Mars.

California Is a “No-Go Zone”: Trump Supporters Attacked by Democrat Thugs
This week, a vandal destroyed President Trump’s star on the Hollywood “Walk of Fame.” Thursday night, Elijah Schaffer and Joy Villa were recording a video at the site (Schaffer hosts a YouTube channel called “Slightly Offensive”) when they were surrounded by an angry mob of Democrat thugs. Being a Republican is more or less considered a “hate crime” nowadays in California, and Schaffer was wearing a red-white-and-blue Trump jersey. The mob started chanting “F–k Donald Trump” and – because they’re Democrats, and therefore thieves – one of the thugs stole a $3,000 camera from Schaffer’s crew. This led to a brawl and police are now looking for two suspects.

San Francisco focuses on crappy laws instead of excrement-covered streets
San Franciscans can look forward to higher taxes, no plastic straws, and the end of company cafeterias.

 

Economy & Taxes

 

Teen’s hot dog stand serves up food, inspiration with Minneapolis inspectors’ blessing
Jaequan Faulkner earned a permit from Mpls. for his entrepreneurial venture.

House repeals Obamacare’s medical device tax
The House has voted to repeal Obamacare’s medical device tax, a measure that has support from the Trump administration. The bill passed with support from both parties by a 283-132 vote. One Republican, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, joined 131 Democrats in voting against the bill.

Republicans take on tax reform 2.0
FBN’s Kristina Partsinevelos on Republicans’ push for updates to the tax reform legislation.

San Francisco Looks to Ban Workplace Cafeterias to Boost Restaurants
Once upon a time, I had a job with a company-owned cafeteria in the building. While I could still bring my lunch if I wanted, the cafeteria had some really great food at a really low price. As someone who prefers a real meal over a sandwich in most instances, I was a fan.

4.1 Percent Growth
While nobody should hang too much on one quarterly number, especially as these numbers are often revised substantially, the story this statistic is telling us about the economy is consistent with every other trend we’ve been seeing.

 

International

 

The Kazakh Famine of the 1930s: another “Harvest of Sorrow”
There are some similarities with the Holodomor (subject of Robert Conquest’s famous book, “The Harvest of Sorrow”) in that a forced collectivization campaign led to a massive man-made famine in a region that under normal circumstances was a major food exporter. While you could say the Ukraine was the bread basket of the USSR, Kazakhstan was its stockyard.

Africa is now the world’s epicenter of modern-day slavery
Africa just recorded the highest rate of modern-day enslavement in the world.

Erdogan’s Turkey
Optimistic expectations that the Turkish system established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, republican, nationalist, secular, and modernized, would continue have been frustrated. Hopes for a successful multiparty democracy ended because of chaotic politics and military coups. Turkey is no longer a functioning democracy but an authoritarian system under the control of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an elected dictator, a self-styled “grandmaster” who promises to re-establish the Sultanate, a combination of Islamic nationalism and Ottoman nostalgia. This will be accompanied by a new Islamic union, led by Turkey.

An Incident in Paris
Another affaire d’état shakes the République.

In Venezuela, public buses give way to private ‘dog carts’
On a recent afternoon, a crowd of hundreds massed on the sidewalk outside an exit from the subway in the central Venezuelan city of Valencia.

Adult migrant men are marrying children to qualify for EU passports in Sweden
Adult men are marrying child brides in order to receive EU passports, and Swedish law is failing to protect the children involved.

Trevor Noah under fire as offensive joke about Aboriginal women resurfaces
South African comedian Trevor Noah is facing heavy criticism after a video of a stand-up routine from 2013 where he made a joke about Australia’s Aboriginal women resurfaced online.

UK top diplomat warns no Brexit deal ‘now a very real risk’
Britain’s top diplomat warned Monday that the country could crash out of the European Union next year without an agreement on future relations with Brussels because of the hard line taken by EU negotiators.

Transgender Aussie axe-attacker claims Demonic-possession in court
As they say, “The 21st Century isn’t working out how I had hoped”. I wonder if there is a province state in Australia that roughly correlates with Florida, because this story has Florida Man™ written all over it. Except it isn’t.

Evidence detected of lake beneath the surface of Mars
A lake of liquid water has been detected by radar beneath the southern polar ice cap of Mars, according to a new study by Italian researchers from the Italian Space Agency, published Wednesday in the journal Science.

Rubio Warns of a Civil War in Nicaragua
Senator Marco Rubio discussed the tense political atmosphere in Nicaragua on CNN’s State of the Union. He cautioned that growing tension in the country could lead to “the possibility of a civil war in Nicaragua.”

 

Opinion

 

Why Leftists like Ruth Bader Ginsburg LOVE the South African Constitution
While not all judges seem to revere our founding document, a few appear not even to like it. For example, the recently retired Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner wrote an op-ed while still on the bench in 2016 in which he explained in no uncertain terms that the Constitution is basically worthless.

Dear Feminuts: You Asked for This!
A feminist writer named Natasha Pearlman recently penned an indignant essay in Britain’s Daily Mail, lamenting the death of common courtesy, thoughtfulness, and consideration. Men have lost sight of what it means to be a decent human being, she claims. Is this the flip side of equality?

The “new rules” are just mob rule
I’ll be honest, I had to wait two days to write this piece to make sure it wasn’t one of Bad Luck Fale’s recent two word NSFW promos for New Japan Pro-Wrestling just repeated 400 or so times a la Spider Jerusalem. The anger remains, but the thoughts aren’t as expletive-laced.

Ending Birthright Citizenship Will Make Republicans Look Like The Party Of Dred Scott
Are Republicans ready to become the party of Dred Scott? I ask, because that’s what Michael Anton wants President Trump to make it look like.

“Equality” and the Loss of Decency
Maria Hernandez at Victory Girls notices that feminists are now complaining that men are being ostentatiously rude, i.e., failing to yield their seats to pregnant women on public transportation.

Extending voting rights in San Francisco . . . to all business owners?
If illegal aliens can vote for San Francisco school board members, why can’t non-resident business owners in San Francisco vote for pro-business policies?

“New Way California” is Wrong Way
An odd group of Republican centrists and political has-beens formed New Way California earlier this year. They claim New Way is needed because they are “committed to policies that increase opportunities for all Californians.”

Universities fuel the growth of Democratic Socialism
The Democratic Socialists of America has grown rapidly of late, recently surpassing 40,000 members, and our universities are largely responsible for its newfound appeal to young people.

Nationalism vs. Statism
I thoroughly enjoyed Kevin’s essay on FDR and American nationalism, and not just for the kind words he had for me. He makes several points that are often lost on even very politically literate commentators.

Nationalism vs. Statism, Part II
I am constantly hearing how conservatism needs to embrace nationalism. But so far, only Ramesh Ponnuru, has been able to give me a single example of what a non-statist “nationalist” policy might be. Pulling out of the Paris accord on climate was nationalist, he argued, because it asserted American sovereignty and freed up American energy producers (in principle, of course: The actual accord wasn’t particularly binding in any meaningful way). I think this points to an important distinction. As I discussed in my G-File last week, the international realm is far closer to a state of nature than domestic politics, and, therefore, I can see how asserting national sovereignty can hold at bay attempts by international institutions to constrain American liberty, collectively and individually. This doesn’t mean that all international agreements are bad – I’m just conceding that they can be.

Will New Jersey Send A Republican To The Senate?
Or from reading the “public letter of admonition” sent by the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Ethics to Robert Menendez, the Democratic incumbent seeking a third full term representing New Jersey. Nationwide, Democrats are defending 26 Senate seats, Republicans only nine. Five Democratic incumbents are running in states that 21 months ago experienced Donald Trump swoons: He won Missouri by 18.6 points, Indiana by 19.2, Montana by 20.4, North Dakota by 35.7, West Virginia by 42.1. In New Jersey, which Hillary Clinton carried by 14.1 points, Menendez was supposed to be safe.

The Ocasio-Cortez Highlight Reel
The good people at the Washington Free Beacon have compiled a highlight reel of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez;s greatest hits, framed by DNC chairperson Tom Perez praising Ocasio-Cortez as “the future” of the Democratic Party. I certainly hope so! Occupy the Democratic Party!

New Study Finding Lesbians Are “Just As Good” As Married Biological Parents Is Fake News
An honest inquisitor will easily find that 99.8 percent of the research the press fawns over on this topic is embarrassingly poor in its basic methodology.

Wherein Mitch Dishes
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is no one’s idea of an electric speaker, but it is worth taking in his brief remarks this morning calling out Democrats for their hysteria over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I imagine most readers have heard New Jersey Senator Cory Booker calling Kavanaugh “evil” and other embarrassing things, but McConnell gets at the other crazy things Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have said.

Michael Anton’s “Social Contract” Is Not The “Traditionally American” Concept Of Liberty
The only really interesting thing about Michael Anton is his call for a ‘social contract’ that is opposite of the traditional American concept of liberty.

The Hollowing-Out of the California Dream
For minorities in the Golden State, opportunity and upward mobility are hard to come by.

The Politicization of Everything Makes Everyone a Politician
What the politics of personal destruction means for everyone.

Why Conservatives Should Vote Like A Blue Wave Is Inevitable In 2018
The only way to turn a purple state red is the old-fashioned way: driving America First voters to the polls, and outnumbering the tens of millions of anti-American voters throughout the country.

If You Don’t Know Enough About Politics, Don’t Tweet Or Vote
God hasn’t called you to insult strangers who are a thousand miles away. He’s called you to love the neighbors who are right in front of you.

Universities: Euthanasia Or Suicide?
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I’ll be giving the keynote address for a National Association of Scholars conference at Grove City College next month on August 11. (Still time to register if you are in the hood or want to travel.) I decided to call my address “Should We Euthanize Universities Or Let Them Commit Suicide?” It will be a revision and extension of some of the themes I laid out in my lecture at Arizona State back in February that I called “The Intellectual Suicide of American Universities: Causes and Remedies.”

The supremacy of stupidity
We are suffocating in the stupidity of politicians such as up and coming Democrat Rep.-to-be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a frank socialist. We are suffocating in the stupidity of the Democratic Party’s media adjunct such as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. Hayes fancies himself a brilliant wit and I would concede that he is half-right. If breathing weren’t an autonomic function, they both might be too stupid to breathe.

Capitalist Britain “literally” overthrew slavery
Which country is the capital of modern slavery? Actually, there’s no contest. According to the 2018 Slavery Index, North Korea keeps 2.6 million people, a tenth of its population, in involuntary servitude.

Fake News and Censorship (British Edition)
To return yet again to the topic of how abusing the idea of “fake news” could represent an ideal opportunity for censors on the make, here’s the BBC discussing a report by the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee (that such a committee even exists is, incidentally, yet more depressing evidence of the reach of the modern state). The Committee’s report was prompted by Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, but, however bad that mess may have been, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the cure may be worse than the disease.