News of the Week for Sept. 29^th, 2019

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

 

Gun Rights

 

Dems Veto Red Flag Law for Gangbangers
If Democrats were serious about using red flag laws to keep guns out if the hands of people who might use them to senselessly murder others and therefore are danger to society, and not just as a gun-control tool to disarm law-abiding citizens, then why did they kill an attempt to use compiled lists of known gang members, which many police departments and law enforcement agencies possess? Why did they kill a measure to red flag gang members? And if Beto O’Rourke is going to come and take our guns, particularly our AR-15s, is he going to start on the south side of Chicago?

Lawful Gun Owners Defended Their Lives and Livelihoods in August
It seems as though every day another celebrity or politician demands that we place more severe restrictions on the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Beto Calls for Disarming Civilians at Kent State, Where National Guardsman Shot Protesters
On Thursday, struggling 2020 Democrat former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) called for a government seizure of citizens’ guns – at the site where government-armed troops opened fire on civilian protesters. To make matters worse, he chided a group of protesters who brought their own firearms in an open carry demonstration. Had the protesters at the 1970 Kent State University shooting also carried firearms, the outcome would have been very different.

Denial of Second Amendment rights warrants a jury trial Sep28 by Thomas Mitchell
Earlier this month, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled a person charged with misdemeanor domestic battery is entitled to a trial by jury, because the state Legislature in 2017 enacted a law saying someone convicted of such a crime could have their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms denied.

Prosecution for Rifle-UC-Rifle Gun Control Sticker
It’s apparently happening in Tennessee — but it’s clearly unconstitutional.

 

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

Eating meat could be banned like smoking, says top barrister, as he calls for new crime of ‘ecocide’
Eating meat could be banned like smoking, one of Britain’s foremost barristers has predicted, as he called for the offence of “ecocide” to be introduced to prosecute those who damage the nature on a massive scale.

Climate-Industrial Complex: Financiers Aim to Cash in on Greta Thunberg
Over the weekend, climate change activists associated with teen Greta Thunberg’s Climate Strike movement took to the streets, demanding “action” on climate. On Monday, climate activists tried to “Shut Down DC,” resulting in more carbon emissions as cars stall in worse traffic. Even climate activists have denounced the Climate Strike manifesto as extreme and useless, but Thunberg herself may be very useful to a certain type of climate financier.

Bunch of Swiss Hikers Hold ‘Funeral’ for Glacier Killed by Climate Change or Whatever
When Americans are polled about the issues that worry them most, “climate change” usually comes in somewhere between “getting killed by a foul ball” and “choking to death on dryer lint.” But the people who are scared of the weather are really, really, really scared. They’re so terrified of being struck down by angry sky gods that they don’t care how stupid they look to the rest of us. That’s why a bunch of geniuses are blocking traffic and making life tougher for clock-punchers in Washington,, D.C., today. That’s why our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the media are pretending a confused, vulnerable little girl has any idea what she’s talking about.

When Greta goes to Guangzhou
The climate change activism, and in particular, its more hysterical Extinction Rebellion/School Strike “we’re all going to die” variety, are very much a Western phenomenon, despite the issue of climate change (formerly known as “global warming”) itself being of course global in nature. This is arguably because the governments and the peoples of the developing world are far more concerned about lifting themselves out of poverty and getting ahead in life than what the weather might be like in half a century from today. Conversely, in the developed, world where the populations enjoy the highest standards of living ever achieved in history, the middle classes are comfortable enough materially and barren enough spiritually to fully enjoy that extra luxury of self-flagellation and moral angst.

Joe Rogan Just Skewered Andrew Yang’s Plan To Eliminate Meat-Eating
At a climate change forum hosted by MSNBC, 2020 Democratic nominee Andrew Yang said he plans to tax meat producers to make meat products more expensive if elected president.

Warren and Other Dems Call for Fracking Ban – Do they WANT to lose Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania?
A fracking ban would harm the economy, cost millions of jobs, and push America to rely on foreign energy again.

New York Times Pushes “Ecocide” as “International Crime Against Peace”
Radical environmentalists are mounting a two-pronged attack on free markets and human enterprise. The first is “nature rights,” which would allow anyone to sue to stop any significant use of the land or extraction of resources as violating “nature’s” supposed “right” to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” Think of “nature rights” as a “shield” against large scale enterprise.

The Tragedy Of Greta Thunberg
Our Lady of Sorrows

The apotheosis of St Greta
The Thunberg phenomenon is apocalyptic religion for rich whites

No MSM on this – Wyoming landfill burying used windmill blades
More than 900 gigantic blades from just three wind farms to be buried in the Casper Regional Landfill. (I thought this was supposed to be “sustainable” energy.)

Scotland gets ‘toughest climate change laws in the world’ as Holyrood vote passed
New legislation aimed at tackling climate change means Scotland now has the most ambitious targets anywhere in the world, environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham has insisted.

 

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

How Medicare for All Could Block Medical Progress
The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s was a revolution in medicine. Within a decade of its widespread use, however, bacteria began to develop resistance to the drug.

Depressed Man Euthanized in Canada
Once a society accepts killing as an acceptable response to suffering, the nature of the “suffering” that qualifies for termination keeps expanding.

 

War & Terror

 

Venezuela-FARC Drug Trafficking Alliance May Explain DEA Expulsion
New evidence suggests that late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez allied with the FARC to “flood” the United States with cocaine, potentially explaining his expulsion of the DEA from the country.

Anti-ICE protesters held a rally outside the home of detention center warden
Abolish ICE Denver and a local communist group held a protest last Thursday night outside the home of the warden of a local detention facility. Three people were arrested and Aurora police and neighbors expressed disgust over the protesters’ behavior.

Troops Could Have Night Vision Injected Into Their Eyes
The procedure would do away with bulky, electrically powered goggles.

 

National

 

Could Venus have been habitable?
Venus may have been a temperate planet hosting liquid water for 2-3 billion years, until a dramatic transformation starting over 700 million years ago resurfaced around 80% of the planet. A study presented today at the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019 by Michael Way of The Goddard Institute for Space Science gives a new view of Venus’s climatic history and may have implications for the habitability of exoplanets in similar orbits.

4 in 10 House Republicans in office when Trump was inaugurated have now quit or lost their seats
So far, 18 House Republicans have announced that they are resigning, retiring, or seeking another office, including longtime GOP stalwarts, some of the few GOP congresswoman, and the lone black Republican congressman. And that just scratches the surface, The Washington Post reports. “All told, 41 House Republicans have left national politics or announced they won’t seek re-election in the nearly three years since [President] Trump took office,” dwarfing the 25 Democrats who retired between 2009 and 2013, “and Republicans privately predict this is only the beginning.”

Sociology PhD Candidate Says False Rape Accusations Cause No Harm
A few days ago, sociology PhD candidate Nicole Bedera informed the world via Twitter that she found no evidence that false rape accusations cause harm to the falsely accused.

A New Republican Gender Strategy?
I wrote recently about how the Democrats are out of touch on gender. I quoted lifelong Democrats who have left the party over its reckless abandonment of sex-based protections for women and children.

Witness Says Vaping Helped Her Quit Smoking. Rashida Tlaib Asks ‘Are You a Conspiracy Theorist?’
“Vaping is a health miracle to me,” said ex-smoker Vicki Porter. “Not safe, but less harmful.”

University transgender conference utilizes “traffic light” badge system for “safe spaces”
A transgender conference at the UK’s Roehampton University made use of a “traffic light”-style badge system for participants’ “safe space” concerns.

Once Democrats Decide to Impeach, Things Will Move Quickly
Steve Kornacki posted this reminder of the timeline from 1998

Trump-Zelensky Transcript Released: Here’s What We Know
The White House has released the transcript of a call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that occurred on July 25 of this year. While Joe Biden was mentioned, Trump’s claim that there was “No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo” appears to be true.

Omar Storms Away From Kid Over Conversation About Tolerance, According To Parent
According to Rachel Campos-Duffy, who has guest-hosted shows as disparate as ABC’s “The View” and Fox News’ “Outnumbered,” last week her children went to the Capitol to vote with their father, Congressman Sean Duffy (R-WI). One of their daughters, Lucia, spotted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and recognizing who she was, asked to take a picture, triggering an alleged ill-behaved reaction from Omar when Lucia confronted Omar’s lack of tolerance.

Cats bond with caregivers just like kids, dogs
“In both dogs and cats, attachment to humans may represent an adaptation of the offspring-caretaker bond,” said researcher Kristyn Vitale.

HHS Secretary Tells UN General Assembly: “There Is No International Right to an Abortion”
The U.S. health and human services secretary condemned efforts to provide international access to abortion at a United Nations conference Monday.

California shocked to find bill decriminalizing retail theft resulted in… more retail theft
A few years ago, California passed one in a series of bills aimed at emptying the jails and prisons. Proposition 47 carried the disingenuous name of “the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” and its stated purpose was to keep non-violent offenders out of jail. To achieve this goal, the state decriminalized a number of lesser offenses, including retail theft. The law raised the value of the amount of merchandise someone could steal while still only being charged with a misdemeanor to nearly one thousand dollars.

Jury awards six figures to accused student for Title IX kangaroo court
Campus official testified the adjudication was not “a search for truth”

Wall Street Democrats threaten to sit out 2020 if Warren is the nominee
With Elizabeth Warren surging in recent polls, some Wall Street Democrats are getting worried about what a Warren administration would mean for them. CNBC reports some donors are even talking about sitting the next election out if Warren is the nominee

Equality Act pushed by LGBT mafia would allow government to kidnap children if parents refuse to have them treated with castration chemicals
The Democrats are pushing really hard to get the so-called “Equality Act,” also known as House Resolution 5, signed into law following its passage by the U.S. House of Representatives back on May 17, 2019. And if they’re successful, parental authority over children in America will pretty much cease to exist.

In California, the Right to Gender “Transition” Is Threatening Religious Liberty
In the age of transgenderism, the right to medically transition is threatening some of the most basic freedoms we’ve known, such as religious freedom.

AOC’s Newest Plan To Make America Socialist — ‘A Just Society’
In the midst of all the impeachment crap -and let us not mince words, it is all crap – New York Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced a package of six bills as part of what she calls “A Just Society.” This is her latest attempt to turn the United States into a socialist nation since the Green New Deal really has not gone anywhere, aside from the fantasies of eco-fundamentalist freaks rife with delusional climate anxiety. The key promises of this “Just Society” is your right to not to be fat and have perfect mental health, illegal immigrants receiving endless federal welfare and benefits, and national rent control, among other policies that would hurt American workers. In short, it basically wants to put the government in every aspect of your life and your money in efforts the United States should not be supporting.

Handmaid’s Tale’ Author Shoots Down Trump-Gilead Comparison: ‘Not True…So Suck It Up!’
Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale (a 1985 book with a recent Hulu adaptation), has come out with a sequel, The Testaments. In one of her many interviews for the new book, she set the record straight about President Donald Trump and the oppressive misogynistic dystopia of Gilead that appears in The Handmaid’s Tale. Pro-abortion activists have long attacked the Trump administration as a real-life Gilead, demonizing any effort to protect the unborn as reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale. [See: “Hillary Clinton on Brett Kavanaugh and Planned Parenthood.”] Even Atwood thinks that’s nonsense.

A US Victory at the Universal Postal Union
Numerous articles have criticized the Trump administration over its policy toward the United Nations and other international organizations.

McConnell: We have no choice but to hold a trial in the Senate if the House impeaches Trump
Liberals on social media have spent the past few days spitballing scenarios in which McConnell somehow shuts down the impeachment process without following through with a full trial on the merits.

City bans calling someone an “illegal alien” out of hate
It’s now against the law in New York City to threaten someone with a call to immigration authorities or refer to them as an “illegal alien” when motivated by hate.

Republicans show signs of discomfort in defense of Trump
Republicans, even as they generally show support for President Trump, are showing signs of discomfort amid an impeachment fight that has engulfed the country.

Puberty blocking drugs used on “trans kids” have killed more than 6,000 people
Here’s a horror show of a story that you’re probably not going to see on CNN anytime soon. A report emerged on Thursday indicating that the puberty-blocking drug Leuprolide Acetate (Lupron) has resulted in tens of thousands of serious “adverse reactions” in patients, including more than six thousand deaths. That’s bad enough, but it’s even more significant when you consider that this is one of the drugs being administered by doctors to so-called “transgender children” to unnaturally prevent their normal sexual development. And the testing done on the drug by the FDA for such applications appears to be thin at best.

Urinals banned from newly remodeled Portland Building
The total remodel will cost taxpayers $195,000,000. A spokeswoman said she did not have a break out on how much the bathroom work cost.

State Can’t Close Catholic Adoption Agency That Wants to Place Kids With Mother and Father
The state of Michigan has lost its attempt to close a Catholic adoption agency that wants to operate according to its religious beliefs.

U. California system president announces “Gender Pronoun Education/Awareness Initiative”
In order to put focus on the “importance of developing and maintaining an inclusive workplace,” the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) announced the “Gender Pronoun Education/Awareness Initiative” this week.

Campus paper apologizes for anti-social justice op-ed, cites JOURNALISM ETHICS
Appalachian State University’s student newspaper apologized for publishing an anti-social justice op-ed.

Actress who lost her dream role after a Hamilton actor dredged up a five-year old ‘homophobic’ Facebook post quoting the Bible sues for religious discrimination
Seyi Omooba was given the lead role in a stage version of The Color Purple

Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Bad language, Batman, and bias responses.

 

Economy & Taxes

 

California’s employment law was rewritten. Many independent contractors aren’t thrilled
State Capitol Democrats and organized labor say their new “gig” law will correct the misclassification of 1 million California workers who are falsely deemed independent contractors. But their thinking reflects a misunderstanding.

Bernie Sanders’ Frightening Tax Plan: Confiscate Half of Billionaires’ Wealth to Finance Medicare for All
The New York Times can barely control itself: Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a plan to tax “the rich” into oblivion in order to fund “Medicare for all.” It goes without saying that our friends in the mainstream media love him for it.

Alaska deals a blow to unions
We’ve covered plenty of stories from all over the country dealing with the fallout from the Supreme Court’s Janus v AFSCME decision. The ruling barred public-sector unions from automatically collecting dues or “agency fees” from non-member employees’ paychecks against their wishes and using that money for political speech the worker might not agree with. Since then we’ve seen workers suing to recoup dues and unions fighting to find ways around the ruling and keep dipping into employees’ paychecks.

 

International

 

German court rules hangovers are an ‘illness’
A German court has ruled hangovers are an “illness”, in a case against the maker of an anti-hangover drink.

Why the Hong Kong Protesters Keep Marching
Students, young professionals, and not-so-young Chinese have now demonstrated in Hong Kong for many weeks, despite the brutal attempts by the government to stop them.

UK: Church Leaders Ask Government to Ban Pointed Kitchen Knives
Knife control has arrived

Boris Johnson told to resign following Supreme Court defeat and become the ‘shortest-serving Prime Minister ever’
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s opponents have called on him to resign following the explosive verdict of the UK Supreme Court that his suspension of parliament was illegal.

Will Boris Johnson Play Hard Ball with the UK Supreme Court?
Parliament, in a purported statute, the Benn-Burt Bill, now the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, imposed a statutory duty on the Prime Minister to seek a withdrawal agreement or an extension of Brexit from the EU. That bill passed both houses of Parliament. It received royal assent on September 9, 2019 in consequence of the Queen’s prorogation order which was also to go into effect on September 9, 2019. Why did the bill receive the royal assent on September 9, 2019? The traditional procedure (per Erskine May) is to grant royal assent in regard to all bills which have passed both houses prior to the prorogation’s taking effect.

BoJo: Come on, what we need now is an election
It’s amazing how politics parallels itself. At the same time Congress ponders whether to have an impeachment or an election here in the US, the Mother Country’s mulling over the same conundrum in Westminster. After a unanimous decision by the UK’s top court slapped down Boris Johnson’s attempt to sideline Parliament, some members are talking about the I-word. And it doesn’t help that the prime minister once attempted to impeach Tony Blair, either

American lectures Hong Kong protesters: “You guys value freedom more than safety”
This has to be seen to be believed. According to Raw Story, this video was first posted by a Twitter feed called Passion Times which noted the woman in this clip was wearing an “I love Hong Kong” t-shirt. But the clip really took off on social media Monday after it was tweeted out by the Washington Examiner. The young woman, who appears to be American but claims to live in Hong Kong, lectured a small group of protesters about some signs and graffiti on concrete.

The Butterfly Effect: The UN Cannot Just Stand on The Sidelines on Venezuela
Faced with the destabilizing “flutter” of Maduro’s regime providing shelter to Colombian narco-terrorist forces inside Venezuela, the Secretary-General of the UN cannot just stand on the sidelines

Trump Administration Set to Triple Pro-Democracy Aid in Venezuela
The Trump administration is more than tripling U.S. support for pro-democracy work in Venezuela and for the first time directly funding opposition leader Juan Guaidó as he attempts to set up a government to rival the socialist administration of Nicolás Maduro.

On Point: Invoking the Rio Treaty Diplomatically Attacks Venezuela’s DictatorshipLatest Most Read
In 2018, the BBC reported U.N. officials were comparing the Venezuelan refugee problem to the “Mediterranean crisis” spurred by the civil wars in Syria and Libya.

China is killing religious and ethnic minorities and harvesting their organs, UN Human Rights Council told
The Chinese government is harvesting and selling organs from persecuted religious and ethnic minorities on an industrial scale, the UN Human Rights Council has been told.

Former MP: “I was punished for failing to hail Justin Trudeau as a great feminist”
Former Canadian Member of Parliament Eva Nassif was elected as the representative of Vimy, an area north of Montreal, in 2015. She was expected to run for reelection next month but suddenly dropped out of the race. Today, Nassif claims she was pushed out of her safe seat by the Liberal Party because she failed to praise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a feminist.

To fully appreciate Venezuela’s decline, simply compare it to Chile.
Five Reasons Capitalist Chile is Better than Socialist Venezuela

Jacques Chirac, a giant of French politics, dies at 86
A seasoned politician, Chirac’s career included two presidential terms, two stints as prime minister and nearly two decades as mayor of Paris.

One Man in China
China is a nation of 1.4 billion people. It’s hard to think of 1.4 billion people. Let’s think about one, just for a second.

“Ridiculous, irrelevant”: Protesters rally outside Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam’s town hall meeting
Over 1,000 people protested outside the venue for Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s first public dialogue session on Thursday.

University of Edinburgh is accused of ‘blatant racism’ for hosting an equality conference where white people are BANNED from asking questions
Q&A event – Resisting Whiteness 2019 – will bar Caucasian guests from speaking

Lopez Obrador Won’t Be Hugo Chavez, Though he Wants to
Lopez Obrador would like to be Hugo Chavez. Fortunately for his fellow citizens, the Mexican president does not have the resources that Venezuela did.

 

Opinion

 

What Trump’s Interloping with Ukraine Means for the Future of the Presidency
Just picture what happens next if the American people decide that it is legal and ethical for an American president to urge foreign leaders to investigate his political opponents, as it appears Donald Trump encouraged Ukrainian leaders to do in Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

No One Is Born in “The Wrong Body”
The idea that all people have an innate “gender identity” recently has been endorsed by many health-care professionals and mainstream medical organizations. This term commonly is defined to mean the “internal, deeply held” sense of whether one is a man or a woman (or, in the case of children, a boy or a girl), both, or neither. It also has become common to claim that this sense of identity may be reliably articulated by children as young as three years old.

The Problem with Canceling History
The past several months, I’ve been reading the Little House books with my older two kids. As we’ve been reading, I’ve come upon descriptions of Native Americans and thought to myself, “well, this is awfully problematic.” The way Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family discussed Native Americans, their ownership of the land, and their basic humanity is, thank God, not how we would discuss them today. There have been several instances where I’ve had to stop and explain to my children that, while Laura’s mother used to say “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” we would never, ever say that. And also please, never, ever say that.

Welcome to the Panoptican
Netflix. Roku. Smart-TVs. They are all spying on you. Facebook and Google have ad trackers on your streaming TV, studies find.

Quick Takes on the News: John Roberts Loves Options
The Supreme Court’s upcoming term is expected to be full of fireworks.

Why Cities Are Becoming “Theme Parks Of Childless Affluence”
With many of America’s densest urban areas losing families with kids, we must ask how we got here and why, even in booming economic times, people are simply finding it too difficult to raise families in cities.

Impeachment Is No Longer a Political Loser for Democrats
The Clinton example doesn’t apply in Trump’s case.

For Middle-of-the-Road Voters, Where’s the Smoking Gun?
The release of the “transcript” (really just detailed notes, possibly incomplete) seems like yet another Rorshach moment in the Trump era. Anti-Trump partisans see major corruption; pro-Trump partisans see a nothingburger. How does the voter in the middle see it? Picture a Midwesterner who voted for Obama, then Trump, then for a Democrat for Congress last fall. Picture a person who does not spend 15 hours a day obsessing over politics. How does he see things?

The Death of American Citizenship
The American founders institutionalized the best of a long Western tradition of representative government with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. These contracts outlined the rare privileges and responsibilities of new American citizens.

It’s Time For Trump To Update His Supreme Court Short List
It would be both smart politics and good governance to update the list of SCOTUS contenders. When a vacancy emerges, whether before or after the election, who will be considered?

America and Refugees
A few weeks back, we had an issue devoted to “What We Love about America.” One of the things I love is our traditional openness to refugees (with some shameful lapses, of course, as in the case of the St. Louis). We have provided a haven to the desperate and persecuted.

What Is a Man?
Contemporary culture has become so dominated by feminist thought that many people have come to think of women as the default “human,” and thus condemn men as “defective women,” Suzanne Venker argues.

Black Progress Requires Reviving The Legacy Of Booker T. Washington
Judging strictly by merit, Booker T. Washington should be no less celebrated by Americans than Martin Luther King Jr., for Booker understood what leads to progress.

The Death of American Citizenship
Open borders and sanctuary cities are blurring the distinction between illegal immigrants and Americans, and activist judges are eroding the Bill of Rights.

And They Call It Equity
In the world of the woke, where all shoes are clown shoes, a little pushback