News of the Week for Sept. 3^rd, 2018

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

 

Gun Rights

 

If Amazon Can Ban My Best-Selling Gun-Blueprint Book, It Can Ban Anything
The left is now arguing we may have a right to buy guns and a right to free speech, but we have no right to talk about how to make guns.

Young man, 22, is stabbed to death beside an anti-knife poster as police launch London’s 101st murder investigation in a year
Victim was found with knife wounds next to anti-knife crime poster in Deptford

New CPRC Research: How a Botched Study Fooled the World About the U.S. Share of Mass Public Shootings: U.S. Rate is Lower than Global Average
A paper on mass public shootings by Adam Lankford (2016) has received massive national and international media attention, getting coverage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, plus hundreds of other news outlets spanning at least 35 different countries. Lankford’s claim was that over the 47 years from 1966 to 2012, an enormous amount of the world’s mass public shooters – 31% – occurred in the United States. Lankford attributed this to America’s gun ownership. Lankford claims to have “complete” data on such shooters in 171 countries. However, because he has neither identified the cases nor their location nor even a complete description on how he put the cases together, it is impossible to replicate his findings.

Judge confirms gun background check law unenforceable
A district court judge brought the hammer down on backers of a voter-approved initiative intended to require background checks prior to gun sales by private individuals, telling them the courts and the executive branch cannot fix the problem they themselves created.

 

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

UN Appointed Climate Science Team Demands The End of Capitalism
A team of scientists appointed by the United Nations has reported that a free market system cannot provide the economic transition required to defeat climate change.

The science that cried wolf.
An article today in The Australian concerning the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef and the exhortation that something must be done is interesting not for its bloated and deceitful content but for the comments that follow it. The writer, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, is the director of something called The Global Change Institute at the university of Queensland.

 

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

Texas & Co win Bigly
In case you missed it, five states that had sued the previous administration over an illicit tax have finally been vindicated, to the tune of almost a billion dollars.

Gavin Newsom: I’m bringing single payer to everyone in California, regardless of immigration status
Gavin Newsom is currently running for Governor in California and, barring something dramatic, he is going to win. So when he says he plans to bring single payer to California as Governor, there’s a very good chance he’ll get his shot. Today, Newsom appeared on the Pod Save America podcast where he was asked about his health care plans. Newsom made clear he wants a single paper system that is for everyone in the state regardless of immigration status.

California Assembly Passes Bill to Mandate Free Abortions at All College and University Campuses
The California State Assembly today approved a dangerous bill that would require colleges and universities to offer abortion drugs on campus.

Euthanasia in Belgium: updates on a social experiment
Belgium seems to be treating the victims of child abuse by domestic violence, neglect and sexual abuse by killing them

From the Annals of the MVNHS©: Free Health “Care”
Apparently not considered an “emergency-emergency”

 

War & Terror

 

The Problem With China’s Powerful Air Force
The Chinese defense industrial base is infamous for its tendency to “borrow” from foreign designs, particularly in the aerospace industry. Almost the entirety of China’s modern fighter fleet has either borrowed liberally from or directly copied foreign models. The J-10 was reputedly based on the Israeli IAI Lavi and by extension the United States’ General Dynamics F-16; the J-11 is a clone of the Russian Su-27; the JF-17 is a modern development of the Soviet MiG-21; the J-20 bears an uncanny resemblance to the F-22, and finally, the J-31 is widely believed to rely heavily on technology appropriated from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Appropriation saves China time and money on research and development, allowing it to modernize the PLAAF at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. However, the appropriation strategy remains constrained by bottleneck technologies due to lack of testing data and industrial ecology. This problem is starkly illustrated by China’s ongoing difficulty in producing a high-quality indigenous jet engine.

China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus
Despite an international agreement, U.S. health authorities still have not received H7N9 avian flu specimens from their Chinese counterparts.

Is China Repeating Germany’s World War I Mistakes?
Channeling his inner Kaiser Wilhelm, Xi calls on China’s navy to “aim for the top ranks in the world. . . . Building a strong and modern navy is an important mark of a top ranking global military.”

China ‘building military base in Afghanistan’ as increasingly active army grows in influence abroad
China is to build its first military base in Afghanistan for hundreds of troops carrying out counter-terrorism training missions across the border from its western Xinjiang region, according to reports.

Japan Seeks Stronger Missile Defense Alliance With U.S.
Japan needs to bolster its missile defenses and its alliance with the United States, its government stressed Tuesday in an annual defense review that judged North Korea to still be a serious threat that has not taken concrete steps to denuclearize.

FBI arrests all five adults from the New Mexico compound on gun charges
Wednesday, all of the child abuse charges were dropped against the five adults who were arrested at a remote compound in New Mexico. The judge actually scolded the District Attorney’s office for failing to meet a mandatory 10-day deadline for presenting evidence. That left three of the five adults set to be freed while two were still facing charges in the kidnapping and death of a toddler whose body was found buried on the compound. Today, there has been another development in this case. KRWG reports the FBI has arrested all five of the adults on gun charges.

 

National

 

Someone threatens to murder Dana Loesch’s children. Twitter yawns.
Just this weekend we were talking about the shifting definitions of “hate speech” in the eyes of the social media giants. My conclusion at that time was that the underlying (and admitted) liberal bias among the management and staff at Facebook and Twitter was always going to leave any proposed attempt at balance looking like weak tea at best. While this is only one of an uncounted number of stories playing out each day, another example cropped up this morning. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch took to Twitter with some screen caps of a recent set of exchanges she had. One was a tweet from a “critic” who expressed some decidedly violent tendencies and the other was the response from Jack Dorsey’s crew after they supposedly “investigated” her complaint.

Study looks at groupthink among sociologists through their “underlying emotions”
“There are virtually no conservatives in the field”

David French on complaints from the left and right about his multi-racial family
David French is a writer at National Review who I often enjoy reading. At some point in the last year or so I because aware that he had an adopted daughter who was black and that he was taking a lot of heat on social media from people who consider this a sin of some kind. Yesterday, French wrote a piece for the Atlantic describing his experiences being harassed, sometimes on social media and sometimes in real life, by both the left and the right. As French explains, this story started with personal convictions based upon his faith.

Axios: House Republicans Circulating “Hell” List of Possible Investigations Democrats May Initiate if They Take Over
Preparing for the worst.

Florida: Fired-up Democrats close ballot gap with GOP; turnout nears 1.9 million
More people have voted in the 2018 primary than in 2016, a presidential election year.

Trump re-lowers flag for McCain, expresses ‘respect’ after backlash
President Trump on Monday expressed “respect” for Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) public service and ordered flags to fly at half-staff following a widespread criticism of his response to the Senate icon’s passing.

China Hacked Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server
A Chinese-owned company penetrated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server, according to sources briefed on the matter.

Senator Ron Wyden (Co-Author of § 230) Trying to Pressure Internet Companies to Restrict “Indecent” Ideas?
That’s how I read his item last week in TechCrunch, which warns Internet companies that this might happen if they “fail to understand one simple principle: that an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people, or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children, is far more indecent than an individual posting pornography.”

Marijuana study finds THC in breast milk up to 6 days after mom’s use
Doctors are getting a better understanding of how using marijuana can affect a breastfeeding mother’s milk supply — and for how long.

Twitter Reverses Ruling After Backlash, Concedes It’s Against The Rules To Wish Death Upon Dana Loesch’s Children
Twitter reversed course Monday and suspended a Twitter account that said National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch “has to have her children murdered.”

Berkeley students teach peers about ‘whiteness,’ ‘decolonizing’
University of California, Berkeley students are facilitating their own courses this fall on topics such as “Deconstructing Whiteness,” “Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis,” and “Decolonizing Methods in Academic Research.”

Clintonite Robert Reich: Let’s Annul Trump’s Presidency
“impeachment would not remedy Trump’s unconstitutional presidency”

Rand Paul Endorses Gary Johnson for Senate
The “libertarianish” Republican becomes first major GOP figure to bypass his own party and back the Libertarian challenger to New Mexico’s Democratic incumbent.

Nixon and Cuomo Spar over “Sexist” Room Temperature ahead of Debate
New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his Democratic primary opponent Cynthia Nixon are feuding about the proper room temperature for their Wednesday debate.

13 pounds of white powder seized is sugar, not fentanyl
A North Carolina sheriff’s office thought it made a huge drug bust, seizing 13 pounds of fentanyl worth $2 million on the street.

College rejects applicant for following Alex Jones on Twitter, lawyer says
States are moving on this privacy issue. Should Congress?

Facebook Employees Come Together to Take On Its “Intolerant” Political Culture
“We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack—often in mobs—anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.”

Gov. Brown signs bill eliminating money bail in California
California will become the first state to eliminate bail for suspects awaiting trial under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Task force suggests ‘compulsory social justice training’
A “Social Justice Task Force” is urging SUNY Plattsburgh to adopt a broad array of initiatives designed to create a “culture of social justice” on campus.

Massachusetts Democrat calls for Clarence Thomas impeachment
Barbara L’Italien, a state senator running in a crowded field to replace retiring Rep. Niki Tsongas, is declaring her intention to file an impeachment resolution against Thomas as part of an effort to address sexual assault if elected to Congress.

Justice department sides with Asian American students in Harvard bias lawsuit
Officials deny Harvard’s request to dismiss racial bias lawsuit filed by students, saying school’s use of “personal rating” may be discriminatory

Former Hillary Spox: Senate Dems brought “a butter knife to a gunfight” over judicial confirmations
Deal cut to fast track 15 more federal judges, so vulnerable Democrat Senators could go home to campaign.

New Mexico Reinstates Straight-Party Voting Just in Time to Thwart Gary Johnson
Democratic secretary of state in heavily Democratic state unilaterally changes voting rule in a way that favors Democrats (and punishes Libertarians). Republicans say they’ll sue.

University of Illinois makes massive free-tuition ‘commitment’
Starting next year, new freshman and transfer students will not have to pay a single cent in tuition or fees if they have family incomes below the state median of $61,000.

Explosive Ivy League Study Repressed For Finding Transgender Kids May Be A Social Contagion
‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ may be a social contagion linked with having friends who identify as LGBT, an identity politics culture, and an increase in internet use, finds a Brown University study.

Travis Corcoran’s acceptance speech for “The Powers of the Earth”
Travis Corcoran won the Prometheus Award for his excellent novel, The Powers of the Earth. He couldn’t make it to the Worldcon for this weekend’s awards ceremony, but here is the text of his acceptance speech, read by Chris Hibbert.

Judge refuses to shut down DACA, but suggests it’s unlawful
President Barack Obama dreamed up the DACA program (pun intended) back in June of 2012. That’s more than six years ago now. We were fighting about it before he’d even written the executive order and we’re still fighting about it today. The latest developments in the ongoing legal battle provide more evidence that even the courts aren’t quite sure what to do about it. Roughly one month ago a judge in D.C. found that not only was the program legal but further ordered the President to reinstate it within 20 days. This week a different judge, this time in Texas, refused to immediately shut down the program but did strongly suggest that it might be unconstitutional and may rule against it when the question comes before him at trial.

The Assassin’s Cabinet: A Hollowed Out Book, Containing Secret Cabinets Full of Poison Plants, Made in 1682
Hasn’t every child dreamed of a having a hollowed-out book on their shelf, inside of which they can hide whatever forbidden objects of mischief they like without fear of discovery? The idea surely goes back many generations, and possibly even to the era when not many adults, let along children, owned any books at all. A decade ago, a hollowed-out book dated 1682 went up on the auction block at German house Hermann Historica, and these photos of its elaborate design have captivated the imaginations of even we 21st-century beholders. But what are all the spaces within meant to contain?

 

Economy & Taxes

 

Trump says he has a deal with Mexico. Here’s what’s in it.
President Trump on Monday claimed he’d made a major breakthrough in trade relations between the United States and Mexico – suggesting he’d reached a deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trump aide says president weighing regulations on Google search engine that he considers ‘rigged’
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is considering new regulations on Google’s search engine to address his concern that it turns up too many stories that are critical of him.

When 2+2=3: Trump’s trade war with China is puzzling
Admittedly, I am not smart enough to work in Washington and grasp its conventional wisdom on how things should work in that humidity. But I must say this tariff business with China seems rather, uh, unusual, if you haven’t been drinking.

Gillum Wants 40% Corporate Tax Rate Hike
Bernie Sanders-backed candidate Andrew Gillum has won the Democrat nomination for the governorship of Florida. Taxpayers beware: Gillum wants to impose a massive tax increase on Floridians, starting with a corporate tax rate hike of over 40 percent.

 

International

 

Venezuela: Misery of mothers fleeing with young babies amid country’s collapse
A Venezuelan mother tells Sky’s Alex Crawford she prefers the desperate conditions at a camp in Colombia to life in her homeland.

Venezuela migrant crisis: Peru imposes new entry restrictions
Passports are now required in an effort to stem the flow of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s economic crisis.

YouTube Deleted Alternative for Sweden Channel
As previously mentioned, Alternative for Sweden is a dissident right party inspired by the growing Alternative for Germany. Both call for sanity regarding mass Third World immigration and Islamization. Sweden has an election coming up on September 9. Last July 23, YouTube permanently deleted Alternative for Sweden’s channel.

What’s Going On In South Africa Is Way More Complicated Than “White Genocide”
Any approach must take the ethnic and tribal nature of South African politics into account. This is not a white versus black conflict, but one between an ethnic minority and an ethnic majority.

Eastern Germany Hit by Riots after Deadly Stabbing Spree
Demonstrators chant “Merkel must go” and “Close the borders”

South Africa withdraws land expropriation bill passed in 2016
South Africa’s parliament withdrew an expropriation bill it passed in 2016 that allowed the state to make compulsory purchases of land to redress racial disparities in ownership, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Tuesday.

Pope knowingly gave Vatican apartment to gay priest later caught in cocaine-fuelled orgy
Pope Francis gave a Vatican apartment to a priest who was later caught hosting a drug-fueled homosexual orgy in that same apartment despite being warned about the priest’s grave problems, a highly placed Vatican source told LifeSiteNews in an exclusive interview.

Chelsea Manning to be barred from Australia
We haven’t heard too much from convicted traitor Chelsea Manning lately, aside from his attempt to be elected to the Senate in Maryland this summer. (For those who missed it, Manning was edged out in the Democratic primary by incumbent Ben Cardin in an 81 to 5 squeaker.) But that doesn’t mean that he’s not keeping busy. Manning has a speaking tour set up which will take the former Army private around the world. Those plans ran into a bit of a hitch this week, however, when Australia announced that Manning was persona non grata and would not be allowed into their country.

South African Farmer Reports on What Is Really Happening In His Country Regarding Land Seizure
When a recent report on the uncompensated seizure and redistribution of farmland held by white farmers in South Africa drew the concern of President Donald Trump, his South African counterpart told him to “stay out of our issues.”

Guatemala president nixes renewal for UN anti-graft body
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced Friday that he is shutting down a crusading U.N.-sponsored anti-graft commission that pressed a number of high-profile corruption probes, including one pending against the president himself over purported illicit campaign financing.

 

Opinion

 

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Transgender Activist and “Her” Pedophile Dad
Ashton “Aimee” Challenor is a 20-year-old activist in England who “came out” as transgender while he/”she” was a college freshman. Last year, “Aimee” ran for office on the Green Party ticket, and was an official spokesperson for the party on gender-related issues.

D.C. gets all the campaign attention, but the 36 gov races are a real key
With the all-consuming attention D.C. media focus on the federal elections in just 10 weeks, you’d think they were the most important decisions by voters.

The next attack on “free range parenting”
Another incident out of Illinois caught my attention this week, the latest is a series of stories about parents getting in trouble with the law for alleged abuse of their children. The form of abuse this time? Allowing a child to walk the family dog around the block. On August 2nd, Corey Widen, of the village of Wilmette, made the mistake of allowing her daughter (age 8) to take their Maltese puppy for a walk around the block. The walk was uneventful and both child and dog returned home without incident.

Ring Rees-Mogg
Over the weekend I finally finished reading Dominic Green’s long Weekly Standard profile of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory backbencher and serious Brexiteer. I learned a lot from reading Green’s profile, but what kept me going was the sheer entertainment of the thing.

Is a Monolingual America at a Disadvantage?
Recently, the digital news site Axios noted that “Europeans keep lapping America on foreign language learning,” drawing on a study from the Pew Research Center. The executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Marty Abbot, sees this as a very bad thing, as she makes clear in an interview with Axios. It occurs to me that it would be rather awkward if the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages didn’t consider the teaching of foreign languages an especially high priority, but I digress.

Civilization – Precious and Hard Won
I wasn’t going to blog on this until I finished the series, but the opening music for the second episode brought too many fond memories to the surface for me to wait. I recognized the chant: Ubi Caritas et Amor. I have sung Lauridsen’s setting.

NYT wonders: Why has GOP messaging gotten so grim?
“To watch some Republican ads today,” Jeremy Peters writes in the New York Times, “it seems like 1968 all over again.” Or maybe just December of last year. Peters wonders why Republicans are demagoguing on death and destruction as the midterms approach, without a hint of irony or awareness of the political dialogue from their opponents in the Donald Trump era.

The plot thickens on naming McCain’s successor
Yesterday, Arizona Democrats nominated David Garcia to run for governor. Garcia is a left-wing candidate, but a reasonably attractive one. He’s the Democrats’ highest-performing statewide candidate of the last 12 years, having almost won his 2014 race for state superintendent. And he is Latino.

“Taking offence at harmless things isn’t sensitive, it’s priggish”
Ici Londres

In Replacing John McCain, Doug Ducey Should Look to the Future
A United States Senate seat is, as Rod Blagojevich famously observed, “a f***ing valuable thing; you just don’t give it away for nothing.” Arizona Governor Doug Ducey currently has a Senate seat to give away at his discretion, one that has been held since 1987 by John McCain. Ducey’s appointee, whoever he or she is, will serve until 2020, at which time the voters will choose who fills out the final two years of the term McCain was elected to in 2016. In making his decision, Ducey should not look to the past, but to the future – specifically, the future of the Republican Party in Arizona.

Smoking declines, vaping to “blame”
I have written about e-cigarettes. I consider them the most effective response to the enormous public health problem posed by cigarette smoking – the leading cause of preventable death in this country. E-cigarettes offer a relatively healthy alternative for smokers who want to be done with cigarettes (as a great many smokers desire, but haven’t been able to accomplish). They deliver the nicotine that attracts people to cigarettes (and addicts them), but not the tar and other carcinogens that kill them.

Google’s Leaked Video on Mass Behaviour Modification
Google’s The Selfish Ledger

Framing Ted Stevens In 2008 Was The Deep State’s Trial Run For Framing Trump
Wrongfully prosecuting Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens paid off handsomely for Democratic partisans at no cost to the perpetrators. Obviously, someone was paying attention.

The Freedom of Speech Dilemma
Multiple recent events have bombarded us recently which are almost violently challenging basis American assumptions about rights and liberty. For centuries, the USA has been founded on some very basic principles of rights and freedoms. The founding documents of the United States were very strong on the concepts of liberty, laying out foundational principles about what freedoms and privileges all humans enjoy, and the American government is legally ordered to defend.