News of the Week for June 24^th, 2018

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

 

Gun Rights

 

“Armed bystander” ends carjacking spree terminally
I’d like to say this is one of those “good news” stories, but while it has a satisfying ending there were still people injured. Something happened at the Walmart in Tumwater, Washington yesterday, but looking at multiple reports from the scene it sounds like we’re not exactly sure what it was. The only facts which seem to not be in dispute are that police were alerted to possible criminal activity in the area when a man with a gun was seen near the Walmart. Shots were fired and the suspect subsequently attempted to carjack two vehicles in the parking lot. At that point, two “armed bystanders” drew their weapons and the assailant is no longer among the vertical citizenry.

 

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

UN Climate Demand Opens the way for More Abuse of Poor Farmers
If there is one climate program which should have died in a welter of shame, that programme is third world conservation programmes, programmes which have reportedly already caused mayhem in places where government backed forces have committed atrocities to drive farmers and tribes out of nature reserves.

Thirty Years Of Failed Climate Predictions – the video
On June 23 1988, NASA’s James Hansen testified before Congress and made very specific predictions about global warming. In this video I show how he got them exactly backwards, and how scientists and journalists continue to spread baseless misinformation.

 

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

Early Fraud Warning
Our very first substantive post (way back in January of Aught Five) was about folks who thought they could cheat their way to big time insurance bucks. As one can imagine, they were not exactly successful in these endeavors, although they may have earned an “A” for effort.

Trump opens door to sale of ‘association’ health plans across state lines
Plans are cheaper, though with fewer benefits, than Obamacare

The NHS: “Thousands” may have been killed
For a supposed health service, the NHS does a great line in killing people.

 

War & Terror

 

China’s Next War
Despite being two of the world’s three remaining communist states, China and Vietnam look to be on the verge of war. Vietnam is an obstacle to China’s ambitions for East Asian hegemony.

Is Kim trading a war-games suspension for sanctions relief in Beijing?
Suddenly a global traveler, or at least a regional one, Kim Jong-un just arrived in Beijing for the third time this year in the wake of the summit meeting with Donald Trump. He will meet with Xi Jinping to discuss the status of talks with the US, and the recent trade-off of suspensions in military actions on the Korean Peninsula will be on the agenda. But will Kim expect a little quid pro quo?

US pulls out of UN Human Rights Council
Trump administration officials on Tuesday said the U.S. has pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, saying that the international body is “not worthy of its name.”

Poster-sized signs of change appear in North Korea
“All the anti-American posters . . . they’ve all just gone”

 

National

 

After Its Agencies Fail To Prevent Child Abuse, Connecticut Scapegoats Homeschoolers
As in California, leftwing bureaucrats and politicians are using a horrific abuse case in an attempt to clamp down on homeschooling families.

Poll: Kim Jong Un now more popular than Pelosi among Repubs, barely less popular than Trump with Dems
There’s a zesty mix of Twitter reaction today to this poll between “fake news!” and “Kim’s only trying to help his people!” So.

Pa. GOP moves to remake state Supreme Court after gerrymandering ruling
After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Democratic majority threw out the Republican-drawn map of congressional districts as an unconstitutional gerrymander, Republicans raised talk of impeaching Democratic justices.

Is the Party Over for Nevada’s Legal Brothels? Possibility of a Ban Looms
Referendum measures, if passed, would outlaw nine bordellos in two Nevada counties as women’s advocates take on working conditions for prostitutes

43 double votes may prompt redo of Clark County election
Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria is calling for a redo of a primary election decided by a razor-thin margin because 43 voters may have cast ballots twice as a result of an “unacceptable” failure in procedure by poll workers.

Prof urges math teachers to adopt ‘social justice pedagogies’
A professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago contributed a chapter to a new textbook arguing that math teachers “have a responsibility” to adopt “social justice pedagogies.”

What’s inside Sen. Cruz’s emergency legislation to prevent immigrant child separation?
“If my Democratic colleagues will join me, not play politics but work to solve the problem, we can start to end family separation this week. And, we can honor the rule of law.”

Seattle City Council passes plan to turn City Hall lobby into a homeless shelter
As one City Council member put it, members of the public “will have to give up things.”

The Corey Lewandowski “womp womp” clip
Seeing the usual mix of online reaction to this today between “fake news/he was misunderstood/he was taken out of context” and “hell yeah!” Plus a new one: “The little girl mentioned in the clip wasn’t separated under Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy!” Right, but Corey didn’t know that, did he? His intent is clear.

Princeton course will teach students to “read queerly”
Princeton University is offering a course next semester that aims to teach students to “read queerly” by examining “the ways in which desire, gender, and sexuality are queerly told.”

Retracted pro-colonialism article given new life
The National Association of Scholars has re-published a controversial academic journal article extolling the benefits of colonialism, which had been retracted after “credible threats” were made against the author.

Charles Krauthammer, conservative commentator and Pulitzer Prize winner, dead at 68
Charles Krauthammer, a longtime Fox News contributor, Pulitzer Prize winner, Harvard-trained psychiatrist and best-selling author who came to be known as the dean of conservative commentators, died Thursday. He was 68.

Bourbon Vs. Bourbon: Did Whiskey Really Taste Better in the 1800s?
If you ship whiskey on a river, does it taste better? We wanted to know, so we ran an experiment.

Texas Supreme Court strikes down Laredo’s plastic bag ban, likely ending Austin’s
The court’s ruling resolves a long-standing question over whether local governments may impose such bans, as cities including Austin, Fort Stockton and Port Aransas have in recent years

MSU employees forced to pay for mandatory diversity workshop
Michigan State University is requiring all of its “MSU Extension” program employees to attend a two-day “Multicultural Self-Awareness Workshop,” and is even making them pay $75 out of their own pockets.

SCOTUS overturns convictions, rules cell phone locator data a 4th Amendment issue
Just how much privacy do we have when traveling with our cellphones? According to a dramatic Supreme Court ruling this morning, the third-party doctrine of Smith and Miller do not apply to location data, which is collected without much thought or active consent. A 5-4 decision in Carpenter v US ruled that the nature of locator data puts privacy more at risk, requiring a warrant based on probable cause – and overturned a conviction that resulted in a 100-year sentence

Trump to House GOP: Stop wasting your time on immigration
House Republicans probably came to this conclusion on their own yesterday, but Donald Trump made the point plain anyway. As GOP leadership pushed off a vote on immigration reform into next week, the president told them not to bother at all

Transgender Vagina Envy and the SJW Campaign Against @JesseSingal
Excuse me for returning immediately to the same topic as the last post, but one of the commenters mentioned that Jezebel had joined in on the Jesse Singal lynch mob and, when I went to follow up on that tip, I discovered this article by John “Harron” Walker

Mexican Prez Candidate Calls For Mass Exodus To U.S.
“Find a life in the United States.”

Women-only tech scholarships, “Man Tax” violate California discrimination laws: lawsuit
Imagine the “pink hats” that would march if they were male-only

 

Economy & Taxes

 

Judge: Consumer finance agency unconstitutionally set up
The U.S. government’s beleaguered consumer finance watchdog agency is unconstitutionally structured, a judge said Thursday as she disqualified the agency from serving as a plaintiff in a lawsuit.

The Supreme Court overrules Quill
Holds that a company need not have a physical presence in a state to be subjected to state sales taxes for sales to residents

Did The Supreme Court Potentially Bankrupt Tens Of Thousands Of Small Online Businesses?
In SOUTH DAKOTA v. WAYFAIR, INC., ET AL., the Supreme Court ruled today that states can force online businesses to pay sales taxes whether or not they have “nexus,” which, roughly speaking, means having a physical presence in the state.

White House proposes federal government overhaul, including a consolidation of safety-net programs
The White House on Thursday proposed a radical overhaul of the federal government that, if implemented, would transform the swath of agencies that manage Americans’ food, public education, social services and even air travel.

 

International

 

Turkey’s Islamists and secularists join forces in bid to unseat Erdogan
Presidential contender Temel Karamollaoglu tells the Guardian he hopes to weaken Erdogan’s hold on power

Charges laid, social media racist attacks by SAPS and SANDF members
The civil rights organisation AfriForum today 18 June 2018, submitted criminal charges against two police officials and a former member of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) after they used social media to incite farm attacks and/or romanticise violence against farmers and minorities.

Members of South African Police and Military Personally Call for Genocide
The many South African farmers who find themselves under attack are advised not to rely on the police for protection. At best, the police reaction to white genocide has been apathy. To see it at its worst, consider some of the personal opinions expressed by members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and South African National Defense Force (SANDF)

Spanish students forced out of their houses to make room for Aquarius migrants
Hundreds of immigrants arriving aboard the Aquarius, docked yesterday afternoon in Alicante, where their children, aged between 12 and 17-years-old will be in the custody of social workers.

Venezuelan economy heading to complete collapse in months and probably a military coup
Venezuela has begun to proactively shut-in oil production to cope with nearly replete terminal storage. This will further accelerate an output decline and bring them closer to 1 million barrels per day or even less.

Turkish opposition leader drawing huge crowds before elections
As we discussed a couple of weeks back, tomorrow is the date for the first round of national elections in Turkey. While the nation’s current tyrant, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still the favorite to win in the scant bit of polling available, the race is shaping up to be closer than most observers had expected. The real surprise this month has been the vocal outpouring of support for Erdogan’s leading challenger, Muharrem Ince of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP). He’s been holding a series of rallies to drum up support and get people out to the polls, with one recent event allegedly drawing more than 100,000 people to it.

Leading Mexican presidential candidate promises radical revolution
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, referred to as AMLO, is certain to be Mexico’s next president and that is not very good news for the United States. Our neighbors to the south are poised to elect a populist who leans heavily on liberal nationalism while sometimes slipping into socialist leanings. AMLO has run twice previously for president and is a former mayor of Mexico City. His anti-Trump rhetoric inspires and motivates his supporters.

Mexican Presidential Candidate Calls Mass Migration To US A “Human Right”
Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) declared mass immigration to the United States a “human right” for all North Americans during a speech Tuesday.

Mexico: 15 fake transgender candidates disqualified from election
Men disqualified after trying to get around rules allowing transgender people to occupy candidacies designated for women

France’s Macron Wants Sanctions on EU States Refusing to Accept Migrants
“Arrogant” Macron risks becoming “No.1 enemy” on migration, says Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister

 

Opinion

 

Ideological Purity Runs Rampant At The Texas GOP Convention
In America’s reddest state, moderation and prudence are increasingly seen as a betrayal of conservatism and a reason to purge the GOP.

Democrats and Media Are Lying: Behind the Phony “Family Separation” Propaganda
The media headlines are deliberately misleading

The Tribal Mind and the Nation State
Over at Spliced, Matt Johnson has a very interesting article on Jonathan Haidt, Robert Wright, and whether the nation-state is the largest political unit that can satisfy the tribal instinct.

What Is Intersectionality?
Intersectionality is the newest fad in political activism. What is it? Who’s involved? And, what does it even mean? Nobody is better prepared to answer these questions than Daily Wire editor-in-chief and podcast sensation, Ben Shapiro. He breaks it all down in this invaluable video.

The Humanities are Dying, Poisoned by the Faculty
Fewer and fewer students choose to study the humanities these days and the main reason is that the field has been overrun by “progressive” notions. Those notions, of course, were introduced and spread by the faculty, eager to create lots of dedicated revolutionaries.

Americans are depressed and suicidal because something is wrong with our culture
Don’t pathologize the despair that is a rational response to a culture that values people based on ever escalating financial and personal achievements.

Transgender Totalitarianism
Jesse Singal is a journalist whose “progressive” credentials were never questioned until he wrote a cover story in The Atlantic about the growing phenomenon of “gender transition” for children. The article begins by focusing on a girl who “desisted” – Claire, who at age 12 began binge-watching YouTube transition videos, became convinced that she was transgender, but has since changed her mind

Is this the Sandra Day O’Connor moment?
In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race-based preferences by the University of Michigan Law School, The vote was 5-4.

University Boardrooms Need Corporate Governance-Style Reform
Universities are in many ways the worst run institutions in our society, with basically lousy governance.We see this in the way administrative bloat drives university tuition increases at well above inflation rates. We see it in the way the inmates are all too often allowed to run the asylum. We see it in how hiring emphasizes every kind of diversity except for ideological and intellectual diversity.

The ACLU Retreats From Free Expression
The organization declares that speech it doesn;t like can “inflict serious harms” and “impede progress.”

The Quiet Republican Check on Trump
One of the things that is sometimes said as an argument for electing Democrats to office is that Republicans have done nothing to check or restrain President Trump. If you know how Washington works and you;ve watched events there closely, though, this isn;t really true. Just because something doesn’t happen in a public, theatrical way does not mean it never happened. The ending of the family-separation controversy is only the latest example of this. But Trump’s attitude has made it harder for Republicans to convince the voters of this.

Mitt Romney: Where I stand on the Trump agenda
I appreciate the argument made by those who believe we should stay silent, but I cannot subscribe to it.

Media Publishes SJW Lies About Violent Transgender Psycho’s Public Suicide
Just a quick follow-up on the suicide of John Paul Neumann, a/k/a “Chloe Sagal,” who lit himself/”herself” on fire Tuesday in a public park in downtown Portland, Oregon. Recall that Neumann/”Sagal,” a freelance videogame developer, had already wrecked his/“her” personal finances by trying to launch a startup that went bust before the 2013 incident in which Neumann/”Sagal” falsely claimed to be the victim of an auto accident in order to scam money for sex-change surgery on IndieGoGo.

Why Socialism Is Doomed To Fail
In The Consolation of Philosophy, the 5th century Greek scholar and Roman Consul Boethius wrote: “Compare the length of a moment with the period of ten thousand years; the first, however miniscule, does exist as a fraction of a second. But that number of years, or any multiple of it that you may name, cannot even be compared with a limitless extent of time, the reason being that comparisons can be drawn between finite things, but not between finite and infinite.”

Newspaper column: Can a Nevada law pass constitutional muster?
Our federal and state constitutions are meant to lay the ground rules for what our governments can and cannot do, spelling out the rights of the individual to be free from the dictates for well-meaning but overweening lawmakers.