Quick quiz: Who is being blamed for future volcano eruptions that could devastate the United State of America?
(A). An angry volcano god, pining away for a virgin
(B). Xenu, our beloved galactic dictator
(C). An evil, abet brilliant, supervillain
(D). Donald Trump
If you answered “D”, congratulations, because you correctly guessed who will be blamed for the lack of Federal funding—which as everyone knows is the sole cause of natural disasters, plagues, and boy bands:
“Fortunately, America has got a heck of a lot of incredible scientists, geologists and volcanologists working on pretty much every single one of its volcanoes. Although prediction still remains the elusive Holy Grail for researchers in this field, earth scientists have never had a better understanding of volcanological process than they do in 2017.
“There’s a major problem though, and this time, it has got something to do with the president. Apart from goofing around with his strangely ominous Coke-ordering button on his desk in the Oval Office and complaining that the job of Commander-in-Chief isn’t as easy as he thought it would be, he has also vowed to slash science funding in the US to historically low levels.
“Although NASA’s proposed 2018 budget isn’t too shabby, the geosciences will be severely defunded if the budget proposal gets the approval of the GOP-dominated Congress. If it does, then don’t expect the monitoring of America’s volcanoes to improve – in fact, it might get worse.”
Venezuela continues to spiral downward into an ever deepening maelstrom. People are starving, the regime is no longer unified, and people are resorting to flinging feces… and being forced to eat the same.
“The government hasn’t published farming data in years. But Machado, the agriculture expert, said annual food imports averaged about $75 per person until 2004, then soared after Chávez accelerated the nationalization of farms, eventually seizing more than 10 million acres. The government expropriated factories, too, and Venezuela’s domestic food production plummeted.”
While Venezuela doesn’t have enough money for food, it can afford lots of Russian shoulder fired missiles! He’ll need them to fend off the hordes of rampaging people, like the ones that burnt down his boyhood home!
“Demonstrators lit the house in the city of Barinas where Chavez spent his early years aflame Monday afternoon along with several government buildings, including the regional office of the National Electoral Council, said Pedro Luis Castillo, a legislator who represents the area.
“The burnings capped a violent day in Barinas — known as the cradle of Chavez’s revolution — during which protesters clashed with national guardsmen, businesses were shuttered and roads were blocked with fire-filled barricades”
However, there are cracks in the regime. Venezuela’s top prosecutor is distancing herself from Maduro, and riot police are trying to find a way out. Considering that protesters have been forced to use s**t-filled cocktails against projectiles as security forces, is it any wonder that they don’t want to put up with this s**t?
“Venezuela’s opposition protests on Wednesday may be the messiest in a six-week wave of unrest as demonstrators prepare to throw feces at security forces, adding to the customary rocks, petrol bombs and tear gas.
The new tactic has been dubbed the ‘Poopootov’ in a play on the Molotov cocktails often seen at streets protests in Venezuela.”
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Whose privilege?
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
In a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut, a course on “critical race theory and implicit bias” is (allegedly) incorporating the concerns of conservative students…
“American University recently rolled out two separate courses on ‘critical race theory and implicit bias,’ one of which it is seeking to make mandatory for all first-year students.
“…
” While the course was initially intended to address the apparent prevalence of white privilege in America, another professor leading the course’s development said she tweaked its scope after the shocking results of last year’s contentious presidential election.
“‘I really wanted students to have a debate about this,’ professor Angie Chuang noted in the school’s press release. ‘If you’re white, you’re privileged, but we just learned about this entire population that’s struggling. How do we address that contradiction?’
“Accordingly, Chuang actually solicited the input of one of the few vocal conservative students on campus, Krista Chavez, who leads the school’s Network of Enlightened Women chapter and initially had her doubts about the proposed course.”
Assuredly, the college will get over this temporary bout of sanity…
At the so-called “March to Science” protests, one of the many examples of anti-science sentiment on display was a call for embracing “indigenous sciences“…
“Indigenous knowledge and practices are often dismissed as mythology or ‘quaint stories,’ Melissa Nelson, associate professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University […].
“‘There are numerous contemporary indigenous sciences based on a long tradition and history. They need to be validated as such — not as folklore,’ said Nelson, who is Anishinaabe.
“With the global March For Science events being held on Saturday, Nelson was part of a group that wrote a declaration arguing that indigenous science, including ancient practices of conservation and healing, could complement dominant ‘Western science’ and be useful at a time when people are looking for ways to tackle problems, such as climate change and issues of sustainability.
“…
“‘It seemed incomplete to me that as we celebrate science, we don’t celebrate the other sciences,’ Robin Kimmerer, director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at State University of New York, who is Citizen Potawatomi, told BuzzFeed News.”
A herb that is used to treat an illness may very well have a chemical that does indeed have a pharmacological positive effect. However, perhaps the herb is just a herb.
There are not different “sciences“. Different “ways of knowing” are not all valid. There is no such thing as “Western science” just as there is not such thing as “Indigenous science”: There is just science and not-science.
It is this type of “indigenous science” nonsense that leads stupid rich White people to worship crystals or believe in indigo children. Ultimately, all this does is make this new multicultural spectrum of “science” a laughing-stock.
Rousseau’s Volonté Générale presumes that there is a general and common will amongst the collective of a nation. While the concept of a “General Will” is a fanciful notion of a false god, and readily dismissedpreviously, it nonetheless can be pointed out that it presumes some unifying element that defines a people as a people.
We have reached the point where such a façade can not be maintained anymore. In its broadest sense, America is now divided between those who wish to fundamenally transform it, and those proverbially stand athwart history and yell “STOP”.
America is turning and turning in a widening gyre—the center can not hold. Any chance at empathy or coming together over common ground can not happen when people become polarized into a tribal identity of us vs. them. Even the barest of civility is gone.
“Rep. Tom MacArthur, a New Jersey Republican, tried to explain his thinking on the GOP health care bill to angry constituents. MacArthur, who authored the amendment allowing states to apply for a waiver to opt out of some health insurance requirement, knows something about preexisting conditions. His daughter died of health complications when she was 11. The cost of her care was more than $1 million. MacArthur was in the room when she was taken off life support.”
While some on the broader “Right” have opined about “the burning times” with a haughty assumption that they’d be able to brush aside a scant few “pajama boys” once “establishment” enablers, such talk has demonstratedly been so far almost all talk. However, with Hillary Clinton’s defeat in November 2016, the paranoid and violent delusions of the acolytes of the transformative (and often cult-like) Left, have been unchained.
Unlike with the broader Right, the broader Left has been quickly allowing itself to be whipped up into a frenzy of far beyond mere “burning times” opining, and onto to actual violence:
“The reason for this is straightforward enough: although progressives pride themselves on their putative tolerance and diversity, the imperatives of leftist politics are fundamentally illiberal. Justice imposed through power is the philosophical foundation of the political left, and when earnest progressives become convinced the only avenue to power is violence, their tolerance quickly falls by the wayside. Consider a few recent events, none of which involved college protesters but all of which were marked by threats of violence.”
This is but the beginning of the actual violence and physical intimidation. Actual physical violence against members of Congress have begun. For example, as a recent townhall meeting, North Dakota Congressman Rep. Kevin Cramer was physically assaulted.
If this is how the rapidly rabid Left acts when it is out of power, how will they act when they gain power again… and this time aim to never lose it ever again?
Circling back to Rousseau and the demonic child he’s responsible for, namely the French Revolution, the parallels between what America now faces and Revolutionary France have been well noted:
“In describing the condition of L’Ancien Régime in France, de Tocqueville points out [in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution] that the centralization of the state associated with the French Revolution was actually extant in L’Ancien Régime. It was this centralization, and the atrophy of the local institutions, that allowed the Jacobins free reign to spread their insanity and terror. But is was a privileged elite, that could extract income and exercise special benefits that the common man could not, who became the target. In L’Ancien Régime is was the nobles who exercised special privileges and income without doing anything to earn it; in modern day America, it might turn out to be retired bureaucrats such as Alameda County Administrator Susan Muranishi who will receive $423,664 a year for life, who may play an analogous (abet non-violent) roll.
“Today we see a growing concentration of power within the government, primarily at the higher levels (Federal and state levels primarily), or by unelected bureaucrats. What this has resulted in could be adequately described by the characterization that de Tocqueville gave L’Ancien Régime in France. He noted that ‘[f]or obvious reasons a system of relief operating from such a distance was bound to be capricious, sometimes misdirected, and always quite inadequate.’ The sentiments of small business owners, property owners, or anyone touching upon things regulated by the government was echoed by the 18th century French: ‘The protest of a town thus treated figures in the records. “this measure has taken all of us, from the highest to the lowest, by surprise; we had absolutely no warning it was coming.”‘”
The Progressive movement functions not a singular conspiratorial will, but as a Stand Alone Complex with multimple overlapping organizations and groups which, like a Hydra, not only cover for each other, but result in many more groups and organizations springing forth from an unluckily severed neck.
Now Progressives are complaining of shadowy groups and seemingly innocuous organizations playing off each other to achieve political transformation… and success.
Oh, they aren’t complaining about their own success, but of conservative groups elbowing in on their racket…
“Long a player on the national stage, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee has been quietly using its vast resources to construct state-by-state networks of activist groups to win support for its conservative agenda from coast to coast.
“This previously undisclosed effort by the Bradley Foundation was revealed in hundreds of thousands of documents swiped by international hackers from the foundation’s server late last year.
“…
“‘You have to take a longer view on some of the things we’re trying to accomplish,’ said Bradley Foundation CEO Rick Graber in an interview. ‘You’re not going to see definitive results every three months. It can take decades.’
“The records make clear the Bradley Foundation no longer simply favors groups promoting its signature issues: taxpayer-funded school choice and increased work requirements for welfare recipients. It now regularly funds nonprofits that are, among other things, hostile to labor unions, skeptical of climate change or critical of the loosening of sexual mores in American culture.
“More important, the foundation has found success by changing its fundamental approach to putting policies into reality.”
Starting local where organization and money can lay the groundwork for future gains? If the Bradley Foundation is guilty of anything it is in emulating the Progressivemodel.
What is a Eurocratic overlord to do when the peasants start complaining too loudly about being replaced by an imported population that is encouraged to NOT assimilate?
Why, pelt them with a poorly animated piece of propaganda about oppressed refugees who are saved from… Eastern Europe… by a fairy who appears to be an upper-middle class college educated woke girl… on a magical carpet.
At they end they give the entire game away by having one of the quaint craftsmen of Western Europe (of old) say that they needed the refugees!
Nevada’s current embarrassment, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, wants to mandate “diversity” throughout the U.S. Senate:
“‘We should be mandating diversity in our committees, mandating diversity in our hiring practices, mandating diversity throughout the United States Senate,’ Cortez Masto said. ‘You just have to walk in the room and look at the senators that are there — the 100 senators, right? You could see the lack of diversity,’ said Cortez Masto.”
So, the people can’t decide who they want, but must be retrained in who they can have as a Senator? The argument made by Cortez Masto’s minions will be that she was just talking about Senate staff and others, and not Senators themselves… yet that is the avenue she was heading down before the NPR interviewer interjected a “clarification” to make sure Cortez Masto didn’t let the cat out of the bag.
But even then, it raises the question of, in order to achieve her desired “diverse” quotas, she would turn away White applicants. Perhaps she could put out a “no dogs or White people” sign…
Just kidding! There is no evidence that she dislikes dogs.
The irony, of course, is that Cortez Masto is overwhelmingly White and pastier than many full-blood “White people”.
It has been previously pointed out that if one has “animus” within their soul, everything they say to do is necessarily illegitimate and effectively sinful. This has been unabashedly used to delegitimize anything and everything President Trump has done, is trying to do, may do in the future, most notably with his travel ban executive orders. This “logic” is as follows:
“Because the executive orders are declared to be motivated by animus, they are considered invalid, even if the orders themselves are not racist or that there are legitimate non-animus related reasons therefor. However, once declared to be sinful by animus, the positions are always considered invalid because no matter what, advancing those positions, even if they are acknowledged as otherwise being legitimate, also advances the declared animus.
Make Hell Great Again
“By declaring that everything is motivated by an animus, the person so accused ceased to be a person and become nothingmore than animus incarnate.”
Lawyers for the ACLU have all but admitted this by declaring that the executive order, per se, is not Unconstitutional, but that Trump promulgating it is:
“ACLU Lawyer Omar Jadwat, arguing against President Trump’s travel ban before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, admitted that the same exact travel ban ‘could be’ constitutional if it were enacted by Hillary Clinton.
“Jadwat argued that Trump’s campaign animus motivated the order, making it illegitimate. This claim was challenged by the Fourth Circuit’s Judge Paul Niemeyer.
“‘If a different candidate had won the election and then issued this order, I gather you wouldn’t have any problem with that?’ Niemeyer asked.
“Jadwat dodged on directly answering the question at first, but Niemeyer persisted, asking the question again.
“Jadwat again tried to avoid the question, asking for clarification on the hypothetical, but Niemeyer once again demanded an answer.
“‘We have a candidate who won the presidency, some candidate other than President Trump won the presidency and then chose to issue this particular order, with whatever counsel he took,’ Niemeyer said. ‘Do I understand that just in that circumstance, the executive order should be honored?’
“‘Yes, your honor, I think in that case, it could be constitutional,’ Jadwat admitted.”
