News of the Week for June 16th, 2019
- Gun Rights
- Hide the Decline
- Obamacare
- War & Terror
- National News
- Economy & Taxes
- International News
- Opinion
Gun Rights
Any Study Of ‘Gun Violence’ Should Include How Guns Save Lives
After the Parkland, Florida shootings, some are calling for more government research into “gun violence.”
The right to keep and bear flamethrowers
Congress truly must have solved all of the world’s problems if they have time to fool around with this. Not content with coming to take away our guns, one New York Democrat has introduced (for the third time) a bill intended to ban private ownership of flamethrowers. Congressman Eliot Engel calls this legislation the “Flamethrowers? Really? Act.” (In all fairness, we have to at least give the guy credit for a catchy title.) And, as GianCarlo Canaparo of the Daily Signal points out, this bill is really nothing more than a solution in search of a problem.
Experts Claim It’s Quite Easy To Get Firearms Illegally In Australia
For a while now, a number of anti-gun activists have been calling for Australian-style gun control in the United States. They want us to ban entire categories of guns and make it virtually impossible for law-abiding citizens to get firearms, all to supposedly curb violence.
“Gun-Free Zone” Policy Stopped Virginia Beach Victim From Carrying Her Gun To Work
The night before 12 people were killed in Virginia Beach on May 31, one victim, Kate Nixon, told her husband she wanted to carry a gun to work because she feared her would-be attacker, but decided against it because of the city’s no-gun policy, according to the family’s lawyer.
11-Year Old Slashes Intruder’s Head With Machete, Suspect Escapes From Hospital
An 11-year-old North Carolina boy defended his home from intruders Friday when he struck one with a machete.
Hide the Decline
Environment &
“Green Energy”
Hightower Backs “Nature Rights”
The “It can’t happen here” crowd had better start paying more attention to the mainstreaming of the “nature rights” movement. Not only has Science – one of the world’s foremost science journals – published in its favor, but now former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, a very influential voice on the left, has endorsed the extreme ideological agenda.
UK Proposal: 75% Wage Cut to Combat Climate Change
Britain’s Labour Opposition Party, which has a real chance of winning the next UK election, is seriously considering a think tank proposal to radically cut working hours and wages to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint.
The Complex Physics of Global Warming
One of the things that make climate science interesting is that it is in its infancy. It is a Wild West era in which hardly anything is settled, and just about everything is up for grabs.
Obamacare
Government in Healthcare
It’s Deja Vu All Over Again
California will now be taxing it’s citizens who choose to not purchase health insurance in order to pay to insure others who are in the US illegally. This is the individual mandate reinstated at the State level.
War & Terror
Mali: Nearly 100 die in attack on Dogon village by Muslim Fulani herdsmen
Unknown gunmen attacked a central Malian village inhabited by the Dogon community overnight to Monday and killed dozens of people, a local official and a security source have said.
Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America Released
The Terrorism of Yesterday and the Terrorism of Tomorrow
Christians in Egypt Attacked by Civilians Twice in One Week
While attacks on Christians in Egypt such as bombings of churches by Islamists break into our news cycles in the U.S., smaller attacks often go without making much of an impression in our media. Large-scale attacks, such as the Palm Sunday church bombings of 2017 where 44 people were killed, aren’t as frequent as the attacks on Egypt’s Coptic community by regular Egyptians. Copts – Christians in Egypt that trace their ancestry back to the ancient Egyptians and their faith to St. Mark the Apostle – have faced violent transgression by fellow civilians toward their homes in the last week alone.
The Reality of Sweden’s Migration Problem
Readers may recall a kerfuffle in February 2017, which now seems like the long, distant past. It revolved around President Trump riffing on the question of migration in front of a rally of his supporters
U.S. Believes Iran Behind Attack on Two Oil Tankers in Gulf of Oman
One investigator said that “damage appeared to be consistent with a hit by a torpedo or other projectile.”
It’s Time for Sweden to Admit Explosions Are a National Emergency
The bomb exploded shortly after 9 a.m. Friday in a blast that ripped through two apartment buildings and could be heard for miles. Twenty-five people suffered cuts and bruises and 250 apartments were damaged. A nearby kindergarten was evacuated. Hospitals jumped into disaster mode. Photos from the scene show rows of demolished balconies and shattered windows. It was “absolutely incredible” that no one was severely injured, a police spokesperson said.
It’s Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders
On February 1, 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to give a talk about free speech at the University of California, Berkeley. But he was prevented from speaking by a group of 150 or so masked, black-clad members of a then-obscure movement calling itself “Antifa.” The protestors caused $100,000 worth of damage to the campus and injured six people as they threw rocks and Molotov cocktails. Nine months later, again at Berkeley, an “anti-Marxist” rally descended into violence as approximately 100 masked Antifa members harassed journalists and beat rally organizers and attendees.
National
Super powered teens beat up the political enemies of the comic’s progressive creators
Progressive comics creators Mark Waid and Kwanzer Osajyefo don’t like all the people you would expect.Donald Trump. Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Republicans, and rural white gun enthusiasts.
Fact-Based Argument Is Denounced as “Common Right Wing Talking Point”
As every progressive knows, facts are “hate” and logic is “racism.” So when Jake Tapper asked a Democrat politician an obvious question – which proposed gun-control laws would have prevented a recent mass shooting in Virginia? – the Scanners-style head explosions commenced:
Melinda Gates Bashes “White Guys,” Says She’ll Discriminate Against Them
Melinda Gates says she will preference women and non-whites over men and white people, specifically for these immutable characteristics that have nothing inherently to do with business success.
State Department to launch new human rights panel stressing ‘natural law’
The Trump administration plans to launch a new panel to offer “fresh thinking” on international human rights and “natural law,” a move some activists fear is aimed at narrowing protections for women and members of the LGBT community.
Meet The Radical Technocrat Helping Democrats Push Single-Payer
Donald Berwick is one of the dangerous men Democrats are using to try to make single-payer health care a reality in the United States.
Google CEO: YouTube Will Begin Targeting ‘Content Which Doesn’t Exactly Violate Policies’
A day after acknowledging that his videos did not violate its policies, YouTube decided to demonetize all of conservative comedian and commentator Steven Crowder’s videos in response to a left-wing Vox employee complaining that Crowder repeatedly made fun of him because of his identity. On the same day, YouTube announced a mass ban on all content promoting one group as superior to another “in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.”
American Medical Association Reaffirms Opposition to Assisted Suicide
For years, the assisted suicide movement has been pressuring medical associations to assume positions of “studied neutrality” about the legalization of assisted suicide. Never mind that taking no position on one of the most important medical-ethical controversies of our era is a cowardly abdication of doctors’ crucial leadership role in society. The knees of some organizations – such as the California Medical Association – have buckled.
Democrats won’t name names on list of judges they’ll nominate if Trump loses
Name the names, so we can have the debate on the future of the federal judiciary.
Gillibrand: Appointing a judge who’s anti-Roe is like appointing a judge who’s racist
Via the Free Beacon. Without exaggeration, one of the worst answers to a question about abortion I’ve ever heard. Imagine deflecting a question about the legality of killing a child in the womb by insisting that “moral clarity” allows for no other position. Racism is self-evidently bad, anti-semitism is self-evidently bad, prohibiting the liquidation of a human being for the sake of convenience is … self-evidently bad?
Church Hosts Summer Camp to Train Grade School Kids to Be Antifa Activists
I’m so old I can remember when disseminating communist propaganda in public schools was frowned upon.
Virginia Democrat who was accused of having sex with teen secretary wins in state primary
A Virginia Democrat, who was accused in 2014 of having sex with his teenage secretary he later married, won the Democratic primary on Tuesday for the state’s 16th Senate District.
Follow the Money: Big-money donors drove more than $11 million in fundraising for Sisolak’s 2018 bid for governor
When Steve Sisolak became the first Democrat to take the governor’s mansion in Nevada in two decades, he did it with thousands of big-money donors who gave the former Clark County Commission chair millions in campaign cash.
Presidential race casts a shadow over two congressional races
More than a year ahead of the 2020 election, Democrats and Republicans are already sizing each other up for the fight over Nevada’s two competitive congressional districts.
New Texas law threatens Planned Parenthood sex-ed curriculum that normalizes child sex
Middle schoolers “role-play” drunk sex, lesbian sex
GAME OVER: RAs call the COPS on students playing video game
Resident assistants called the police on a group of University of Maryland students playing the video game “Quiplash.”
12 White Male Cops Sue San Francisco for Gender and Race Discrimination
Twelve white male San Francisco police officers are suing the city, arguing they were passed over for promotions because of their race and gender.
Oberlin College hit with maximum PUNITIVE DAMAGES (capped at $22 million by law) in Gibson’s Bakery case
Added to $11 million compensatory damages, brings total to $33 million
Kamala Harris Tells NPR Her Administration Would Have “No Choice” but to Prosecute Trump
“Everyone should be held accountable, and the president is not above the law.”
Report: Manchin thinking about leaving the Senate before his term ends
The Hill is reporting that Joe Manchin of West Virginia is fed up with nothing getting done in the Senate and is thinking seriously about leaving to run for Governor.
Libs Angry at Biden for Scolding Gender-Neutral Person
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has had a busy week. Here’s some of the mischief that nutty ol’ scamp has gotten himself into, in no particular order
Cory Booker says elementary school yoga can help end the “school-to-prison pipeline”
Cory Booker endorsed an elementary school program that sends children that cause disruptions to yoga classes instead of detention. Fort Worthington Elementary School in Baltimore hired an instructor to teach children meditation and yoga. Instead of punishing children that cause problems with detention, teachers send the children to yoga class, according to a viral video posted by NowThis on Monday.
Denver council member wins with promise to impose communism “by any means necessary”
Candi CdeBaca won a runoff race last week against former Denver city council president Albus Brooks, and she did it by promising to implement communist policies “by any means necessary.”
“Queer Bible Hermeneutics” course teaches students about “queerness in the church”
Course is part of “graduate theological curriculum”
Dartmouth offers ‘American Conservatism’ class…’tailored to a predominantly liberal audience’
Dartmouth College offers a course titled “American Conservatism.”
University ignores its own lawyer, refuses to recognize conservative club
Club rejected for the third time
Pinterest Suspends Pro-Life Organization, Places it on Pornography Blocklist
Live Action’s Pinterest account has been permanently suspended for violating Pinterest’s policies on “misinformation.”
Masterpiece Cakeshop Sued A Third Time, Ostensibly Over “Gender Transition” Cake
“They want to secure the right to force another person to operate against their wishes, particularly religious beliefs.”
Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Prison brunch, gaslighting, and nonconsensual neonatal blood samples.
Economy & Taxes
Math Is Hard
How many times do we have to explain basic economics to these people? Governments cannot mandate demand — for labor, or for anything else — and thus the attempt to artificially inflate wages by establishing an arbitrary minimum will have the effect of reducing the number of jobs for entry-level workers. This in turn will have ripple effects, acting as a disincentive to capital investment, as companies will seek out less-regulated markets. In a rapidly-growing economy, where there is high demand for labor, the statutory minimum wage will become irrelevant, as the vast majority of workiers are earning more than the minimum. However, artificially “raising the floor” underneath this free-market equation will always negatively impact both employment and business growth, by reducing opportunities for less-profitable companies to continue operations by hiring marginal workers for low-skill jobs, and by pricing these marginal workers out of the market.
What Happens When Everyone Gets a “Free” Lunch? Money Problems
A yogurt company, Chobani, has picked up the tab for unpaid school lunches in a Rhode Island school district.
‘It was bound to happen’: Machines are coming to the Vegas Strip — and they may take jobs
The coming of the machines is inevitable. And this city knows it.
Forget leverage: there’s a better way to liberalise trade
Historically, economies with “leverage” are those able to prise open smaller economies, by threatening to block access to their larger economy.
How the Public Thinks about the Economy
Michael Strain’s essay in the Guardian, mentioned below, starts with the thought that it’s an odd time for capitalism to be in such disrepute: Unemployment is low and wages at the low end of the labor market are rising.
L.A. council members propose taxing landlords who leave homes vacant
Los Angeles should penalize landlords who keep homes vacant as the city suffers a housing and homelessness crisis, several members of the Los Angeles City Council declared in a proposal unveiled Tuesday.
So Much for the ‘Harmless Stoner’ Sales Pitch: Legal Marijuana a Boon to Illegal Cartels
Unintended consequences of legislation are more commonplace than they should be, but minimizing them would require more nuanced political debate and that option has probably left us forever.
Bernie Sanders’ “Economic Bill of Rights” Taken Nearly Verbatim From Stalin’s 1936 Soviet Constitution
Sanders understands that many Americans view the term “socialist” as a “slur” and sought the opportunity to clear up some of the myths and allow us to see how great socialism really can be.
International
WHO Declares Large Ebola Outbreaks as the New Normal
Meanwhile, 350 migrants from Ebola-hit Congo have made their way into Texas.
Chimpanzee meat ‘being eaten at weddings and sold on market stalls in Britain’
Dr Jane Goodall and Dr Ben Garrod have warned that bush meat is being brought into the UK
Vatican: No, you can’t choose your gender
The ongoing debates over transgenderism have produced a great deal of acrimony and hurt feelings, not to mention a schism in the mental healthcare field. But I’ll confess that one authority I didn’t expect to see weighing in on it was the Vatican. They did it this week, however, releasing new guidance for Catholic educators. And their conclusion didn’t beat around the bush, either, stating flatly that you can’t change the gender you were assigned at birth and as determined by God. The document was 31 pages in length and was titled, “Male and Female He Created Them.”
China’s Power Grab in Hong Kong
The following is an edited transcript of an interview with Mike Gonzalez, which appeared in The Daily Signal’s June 11 podcast episode.
Inflation below 1 million percent but Venezuela crisis drags on
Venezuela’s annual inflation dropped below 1 million percent in May for the first time since 2018, according to the opposition-run congress. But, as Francis Maguire reports, Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis goes on, with the UN warning 3.2 million children need aid.
Police fire rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters in Hong Kong as authorities postpone extradition bill
Violent clashes erupted in Hong Kong on Wednesday as police fired rubber bullets to prevent protesters from storming the city’s parliament and tens of thousands snarled traffic to demand leaders scrap a plan to allow extraditions to China.
Left-Wing Comedian Fantasizes About Acid Attacking Right-Wing Politicians
“Why bother with a milkshake?”
The Sky-High Stakes in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong’s huge protest over a proposed law that would allow extradition from the territory to mainland China, there is far more at stake than “confidence” in the integrity of Hong Kong’s legal system, or the health of Hong Kong’s economy — important though those both are. The real showdown going on in Hong Kong has long been between despotism and democracy, between tyranny and the Free World. And whether we, the free people of America, and our allies, choose to think of it this way or not, the reality is that the showdown now taking place in Hong Kong will shape our future as well.
Lesbian Couple Who Tried to Force Transgender Surgery on 9-Year-Old Boy Stab Him to Death
Mother wanted son to be a girl.
Why Europe’s Far Right Is Targeting Gender Studies
A growing pattern of attacks across Europe is as much about electoral opportunity as a conflict of ideas.
Britain is headed for the one outcome we thought impossible: a Marxist-led government
What if we have left it too late? What if three years of dreary and petulant delay have made possible the one outcome that, in a country like Britain, should have been impossible – namely the election of a Marxist-led government?
Hong Kongers know the values behind the Union flag – but do the British?
It is, in its way, the highest of compliments. The human rights protesters in Hong Kong who brandish Union flags assume that people associate Britain with the things they hold dear: the rule of law, private property, impartial courts, uncensored newspapers, regular elections, jury trials. At a time when our own intellectual elites feel a certain distaste for British national symbols – a distaste that quickly turns to outright disgust in a colonial context – it is interesting to see how we are perceived in some of our former territories.
Britain bans “harmful” gender stereotypes in advertisements
Hapless husbands and housework-burdened moms are being banished from British advertising, as a crackdown on gender stereotypes comes into force.
Opinion
The Oberlin Trial Is a Blueprint for Fighting Back
An Ohio jury just proved that old laws can remedy new injustices.
Rising conservatives as hostile to freedom as leftists
Delegates to the California Democratic Party convention last weekend drew national attention after they booed a presidential candidate, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, for saying that “socialism is not the answer.” Conservative writers were aghast. Look at those crazy California Democrats, they insisted, who get upset at a few jabs at an ideology that’s long been associated with collectivism and misery.
The Unnerving Need to Believe in Politicians
The other day Wonkette offered an article with a headline that declares – cleaning it up for your sensitive eyes – “Kamala Harris Doesn’t Have To Explain Herself To Your Dumb [Tushes].”
LGBTQ Bigotry: Tyranny Masquerading as Tolerance
To anyone focused on real-world events and relationships, America is obviously the most tolerant and inclusive society that has ever existed. If you are looking for irrefutable evidence, watch an hour of TV commercials created by major U.S. companies. Racially integrated couples, gay couples and families, multi-racial professionals and creators are featured on virtually every one. This would hardly be the case if anti-Black and anti-gay sentiments were perceived by corporate advertisers to pose a significant threat to their sales. The same is true of television programming generally, where series featuring little people, obese people, and every mix of gay couples, non-white and non-straight TV hosts and commentators, are ubiquitous all day long. Yet the political left and the Democratic Party still refuse to take yes for an answer and prefer instead to focus on fringe and marginalized bigots who come in all colors, genders and sexual orientations, and will be with us to the end of time.
Campus Insanity Is Migrating To Society, And Republicans Had Better Stop It Before It’s Too Late
Conservatives once laughed at radical campus politics, imagining that upon impact with the “real world,” blue-haired social justice warrior activists would have to grow up and confront the hard realities of the capitalist marketplace. Instead, what’s becoming increasingly clear is that academic leftism is metastasizing off-campus, spreading into some of the world’s largest corporations as well as institutions of culture, with graduated millennial employees as its carriers.
What’s Wrong with Asking about Citizenship on the Census?
A donnybrook has broken out over how the administration decided to add a citizenship question to the census. We’ll presumably learn more one way or the other, but it’s worth asking why it is considered such a scandal to ask about citizenship, which is a question on other government surveys and isn’t new on the census.
Kamala Harris Runs for Queen
The California senator’s new immigration plan is a statement of her intent to govern through egregiously unconstitutional executive action.
Time to Leave Western Civ Behind: Looking for a Place to Emigrate
There is no doubt that Western nations are now undergoing a bonanza of massive immigration. Europe’s large and growing Muslim population has gifted the continent and the U.K. with riots, rape fests, car burnings, terror attacks, grooming scandals, no-go zones, hostage takings, and heightened criminal activity. The same scenario is gradually unfolding in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, whose landscapes are variously enlivened with much of the same, including even jihadist training camps. Organizations like CAIR and its offshoots are making substantial inroads into the public square, acquiring positions of authority in government and the professions to the benefit of all.
America’s Fabian revolution: Prelude to a Second American Revolution
We are in the 7th decade of a slo-mo socialist revolution in America, but there are signs it will be followed by a successful Second American Revolution.
“[Q]ueerness is incompatible with capitalism”
In case you missed it in the comments, here’s another illustration of the severely educated and their unhappy mental trajectories. In this case, Mr Anthony Oliveira, a writer and “pop culture critic,” who boasts of his PhD, in English literature, and whose pronouncements are, shall we say, very much of a type. And so we learn that, “queer people are permanently disadvantaged and marginalised by the capitalist power structure,” that, “‘the family’ as we now understand it is a capitalist invention and is specifically designed to exclude queerness”
