January 22, 2020

Will Atheism Remain as America's Default Religion?

Timothy Birdnow

America's support for atheism in the schools is up for review and may be overturned.

the Federalist article:

Today the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case that could determine whether parents and taxpayers have any choices about the kind of religion American children are taught with taxpayer funds. Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenueconcerns whether private donations may support schools that make their religious beliefs explicit. It could also undo a century of U.S. court and legislative decisions that used animus between Protestants and Catholics to attack the faith of both kinds of Christians’ children over the last century.

Five years ago, Montana’s legislature enacted a tiny school choice program that allows residents to deduct up to $150 on state taxes for their donations to private school scholarships. Eighteen states offersimilar charitable opportunities, which fund private schools using private money. Montana’s taxation agency, however, banned religious schools from accessing these private donations, on the grounds that would violate the state constitution’s ban on using public funds for "sectarian” schools.

Since these school choice programs employ private funds, instead of direct taxpayer support such as through vouchers, they have been less successfully challenged in courts on the grounds Montana’s bureaucracy employed. Thirty-seven states includesome variation of this prohibition in their constitutions, and several run programs similar to Montana’s, often with courts’ approval. Now the Supreme Court will deal with the discrepancy.

It is expected to use the occasion to consider anti-religious constitutional provisions like Montana’s, known as Blaine amendments, after the 19th century politician James Blaine. During Blaine’s crusade to enact these policies, the word "sectarian” was understood to mean specifically "Roman Catholic.”

High time. Our schools and educational system has promoted secular humanism and atheism at the expense of the majority of religious beliefs of our society. That includes Catholic and Protestant Christians, but also Jews.

The article makes that case quite plain:

During the height of Catholic immigration to the United States, however, many Protestants didn’t want to allow Catholics equal access to local public funding for the schools their churches ran. They thus created barriers to public support for religious schooling, such as Blaine Amendments, that at first affected only Catholics, but eventually also turned on Protestants.

These barriers and others lawmakers and courts added ultimately drove Christianity from publicly supported U.S. K-12 education. They helped lay the legal and cultural groundwork for eventually substituting atheism for Christianity as the religion of U.S. schooling. It’s a sneaky move, because atheism and secularism are easier to falsely view as "neutral,” when they are in fact a competing religious understanding of the ultimate questions every faith seeks to answer.

The truth is that there is no neutrality about religion. To not believe in God is a religous belief, just as believing in God is a religious belief. To include the Bible in curricula is a religious decision, just like not including the Bible in curricula is a religious decision.

To pray or not to pray: both are religious questions. Both teach something about the importance, existence, and nature of religion, as does every other decision about a school’s instruction, teaching methods, and priorities. Instruction techniques must change based on whether one holds the religious view that humans are by nature sinful or the competing religious view that humans are born perfect and corrupted by institutions.

Yet for a century or more, we’ve accepted the dangerous fiction that it is possible for law and public institutions to be neutral on religious questions. This has had the effect of making secular atheism the dominant religion of American public life, all while pretending it wasn’t happening.

On that basis, in 1962 the Supreme Court heldthat the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” required U.S. public schools to ban prayer. In 1962, the court banned public schools from Bible readings as part of instruction. In 1971, it banned states from funding nonreligious instruction in private religious schools. In 1985, it banned schools from allowing one minute for silent prayer or meditation, and in 2000 banned students from voluntarily leading prayers at football games.

While the Supreme Court repeatedly took a sledgehammer to American Christians’ ability to pass on their faith using their own tax dollars and supposedly locally controlled institutions, our politicians have refused to redress the bigotry against religion this entails. For if it is bigotry for Protestants to have banned Roman Catholics from equal access to public education funds solely on account of their religion, it is also bigotry for atheists to have effectively banned Protestants and Catholics from equal access to public education funds solely on account of their religion.

And so SCOTUS is taking this up. Goes to show how important the balance of power has been on the Court.

Now, it is not the job of secular public schools to promote religion or religious belief, but it is supposed to support the efforts of the parents to educate their children AS THEY SEE FIT. As of now it is educating them in opposition to the wishes of the parents. It has, in fact, become a tool of propaganda for the State.

Anyone wonder why so many Millenials are so big on Socialism? They have no other religion. Man is a religious animal; we need to believe in something larger than ourselves. We know we are flawed and seek some sort of redemption. The modern school system is supplying a diabolical answer to our religious vacuum; socialism and world government.

Socialism expunges our sins. It says Man IS flawed, and by his choice of a selfish capitalistic system. Socialism is the way we buy out our sins. Support collectivism and you are a moral being again.

Environmentalism is much the same. You can buy indulgences via carbon credits, for instance. And there is a doomsday prophecy, and a slim chance at salvation.

Young people buy into Global Warming almost as to a man.

That's because the schools have taught them this. These are religious views. Our young people are riddled with guilt at being born into a rich society, and living well. They feel they are evil for not being poor and barbaric. They seek a naturalistic paradise that can only be attained if they eliminate most people on Earth and end industrial civilization. These are all religious beliefs, not intellectual concepts.

This is the triumph of irrationalism.

Until we change this int he schools we will see our society continue to slide into the toilet. more...

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Terry Jones RIP

Timothy Birdnow

Monty Python animator and star Terry Jones has passed away.
  And now for something completly different.

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Why Are Bernie Bros So Violent?

Dana Mathewson

Why, indeed? And why are they so enamored of the gulags?

I'm going to break my long-established rule and include the entire Power Line article here -- hope we don't run into trouble for doing so.

I am starting to get the feeling that James Hodgkinson wasn’t a one-off. James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has been conducting an undercover investigation of the Bernie Sanders campaign. We wrote here and here about a Project Veritas investigator’s conversations with one of Sanders’ "top tier organizers” in Iowa. The Bernie Bro expressed admiration for the Soviet Gulags, said billionaires should be sentenced to breaking rocks, and suggested that anyone who opposes Sanders’ revolutionary policies would be shot.

It turns out there are more pro-violence Bernie Bros where Hodgkinson and the first organizer came from. O’Keefe has now released another video, this time of a South Carolina field organizer. It’s weird: I had no idea that there are at least two admirers of Russian Gulags in the U.S.:

[You'll have to go to the source article for the Tweet that appears here]

Re-education camps for Republicans! Bring back the guillotine! Let’s have a revolution!

How many pro-violence Bernie Bros are out there? I don’t know, but I have a feeling we are going to hear from a few more.

Coincidentally, Hillary Clinton’s attack on Sanders is in the news today, as Steve noted earlier:

It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it.

Hillary, of course, is concerned about attacks on liberal women, not Republicans, police officers or the City of Milwaukee (which will burn, one of the Sanders organizers says, if Bernie doesn’t win the nomination). Still, she raises a serious question: does the unhinged, anti-democratic, pro-violence craziness that we see among the Bernie Bros start at the top? Maybe, for once, Hillary has a point.

Good Heavens! Did you ever think you'd be agreeing with The Hag? I admit she has a point indeed.

Go here https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/why-are-bernie-bros-so-violent.php for the entire article in order to extract the Tweet and the video included with it.

I'd like to mention that these folks who want to send their "enemies" (read: political opponents) to prison, or the gulag, or whatever, never stop to think what would happen if the jackboot were on the other foot. That is, if the other side were in power (as it is now) and were as merciless as they want to be. I always say "Be careful what you wish for." And you might want to mention that if you are in a political discussion with someone on "the other side" and he starts to get "worked up."

Remember the eight Obama years, how uncompromising the Right was, how many liberals were slaughtered or went to prison on trumped-up (no pun intended) charges, how many homes were torched because their occupants were merely suspected of being Obama supporters, how many black people were lynched, etc.? Yeah, me neither.

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Thunberg by Proxy

This from Willis Eschenbach:

People think I'm down on Scoldilocks, but the truth is, I feel sorry for her. She's the poster girl for Climate Munchausen By Proxy, and her parents are the irresponsible parties stealing her childhood.

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Trump at Davos

Judson Phillips:

Don Surber is brilliant. You must read this and it isn't long.

Trump's Remarkable Remarks at Davos

A note from Tim:

I wish Trump would not have gone to speak there. Davos is the epitome' of the worldwide Swamp. It is the citadel of all things that oppose Make America Great Again.  Speaking to these jerks is like the Pope speaking to a convention of Satanists. It is worse than useless, for it conveys to the world that the American President is subordinate to them. It's an acceptance of the divine right to rule of the intelligentsia and world government.

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The Flaws of Star Trek

Timothy Birdnow

Star Trek - particularly the ones starting with Next Generation - are politically correct and often ridiculously so.  Warner Todd Houston made this observation on Facebook:

Has anyone noticed that in a future where everyone has supposedly gotten past race and ethnic differences, the Star Trek crew sure find a lot of planets that are strictly segregated with one ethnicity and the times they DON'T find that, the whole planet is usually in a race war?

I replied:

And the matter of money. They SAY all material problems have been solved and humans don't even use money, but there are traders in deep space hustling for "latinum" (Ferengui money) and the like. Funny how their socialism seems to fail to meet so many needs.

Nobody goes into deep space and busts their tail if they aren't going to profit from it.

Another commenter left the following remark:

They lost me when they started talking about enslaving animals for food production. That was early on in next generation.

Well, all those cattle have been waiting for a William Wallace or George Washington to organize their rebellion, I guess.

I loved Star Trek, but it sure stunk as a morality play.  Even the old Trek was dripping with liberal ideas and silly, soft-headed notions. But the newer ones were just dreadful in this regard.

I've always wished I were able to create my own series. There would be no aliens, or if there were they would be ALIEN, not people with putty on their noses. I would respect science, meaning no artificial gravity or warp drive. I would respect the dangers of space and the drive that leads people to go there - such as a need to acquire wealth (asteroid miners, say) or a sense of interplanetary manifest destiny or religion or whatnot.

Sort of like what they were trying to go for with Firefly, only I'd avoid some of the pitfalls of that show.

This solar system is quite enough to make terrific science fiction stories.

Be that as it may, I enjoy Star Trek but there are parts of it I have always had a hard time stomaching. For example, the ability of alien species to interbreed. Come on!  A human would have more luck breeding with a lizard than Spock's mother with his Vulcan father; the Lizard at least comes with the same DNA strands.

Frankly, inter species sex is an act of sodomy according to Church and Common Law and any rational society would consider it unacceptable.

That's why aliens would be aliens; multiple limbs, or two heads, or whatnot. (I'm thinking of the Pierson's Puppeteers in Niven's "Known Space" stories here.) Better yet do without, as Asimov did.

Speaking of Asimov, why hasn't anyone done HIS universe?  I LOVED all of his work, and he had no aliens and tried to largely respect the laws of science (well, when not using artificial gravity or hyperdrive). Someone really ought to do a series about Elijah Bailey.

At any rate, that is my rant for the morning.



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January 21, 2020

AOC: 'No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars'

Dana Mathewson

When I was a kid, we were always told "Never hit a girl." By extension, never fight with a girl. No leeway was provided for sheer stupidity of things the girl was saying, or anything like that.

But I don't remember anybody like AOC when I was a kid. I do remember some terminally stupid guys, but by and large, the girls were smarter. This bim... excuse me, female person just keeps coming up with more and more stupidity. Or, as an old college buddy would have said if he'd lived long enough to have encountered her, "She opens her mouth and all the dumb runs out."

She keeps proving she knows nothing about economics, particularly about the creation of wealth. She obviously believes there is a finite amount of money out there (unlike The Bern and Cherokee Lizzie, who believe they'll be able to fund social programs that cost trillions of dollars merely by getting the rich to pay "their fair share." But that's an argument for another day.).

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that "no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars" during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on Monday.

"No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars," Ocasio-Cortez said, receiving applause."I'm not here to villainize and to say billionaires are inherently morally corrupt. ...It's to say that this system that we live in, life in capitalism always ends in billionaires."

Ocasio-Cortez said billionaires make their money "off the backs" of "undocumented people," "black and brown people being paid under a living wage" and "single mothers."

She addressed a hypothetical "widget" billionaire in her remarks.

"You didn't make those widgets, did you? Because you employed thousands of people and paid them less than a living wage to make those widgets for you," Ocasio-Cortez said."You didn't make those widgets. You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages, and in some cases real modern-day slavery."

Who knew that the widget business was so terrible? Much worse than the automobile manufacturing business, apparently, where there are still lots of would-be workers striving to get in and get jobs. I guess to some people, modern-day slavery looks pretty good.

Am I cruel to want to see her lose her cushy House job and be forced to toil again as a bartender, obliged to hustle drinks for tips in bars where she isn't even paid a minimum wage, or wasn't back in the day?

Meanwhile, catch the rest of this article, found here: https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/aoc-billionaires-ta-nehisi-coates-interview if you have the stomach for it, that is.

I wonder if she dares talk to her boss Nancy Pelosi this way? Nan and her husband make tons of money off their Dole businesses, and I have the suspicion they don't pay their "undocumented people," "black and brown people" . . . and "single mothers" luxurious wages. No proof, but it's a hunch I have.

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Continuing problems at the VA

Timothy Birdnow

And the troubles continue at the VA.

From the article:

The inspector general's report based its conclusions on the region of VA hospitals that includes 1.6 million veterans across Florida, south Georgia, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. VA officials in that region referred more than 206,500 requests in 2018 for community care at clinics outside the VA network, with veterans facing a 56-day wait on average before receiving care, according to the report.

The problem is essentially that the VA is trying to put lipstick on a pig. When governments run things like health care they do a very poor job of it.

Our vets deserve better.

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Thoroughly Modern Marx

Timothy Birdnow

Our old friend Daren Jonescu pens a nice essay on Marxism at his website.

Here's a brief taste:

Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.

Letter to Bracke (1875)

There is the principle driving all modern progressive politics. It explains why there is not a literature department in the developed world that does not reduce allpast literature to "evidence” for neo-Marxist theories of systemic oppression and capitalist enslavement of the masses. It explains why we speak so matter-of-factly of a progressive ratchet — why late modernity tends always in one direction, indefatigably, such that ideas regarded as subversive radicalism in one generation become universally granted preconditions of all possible political thought in the next, though no one can point to the moment when this fundamental transformation occurred.


Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Critique of the Gotha Program (1875)

And if this transitional period should turn out to proceed so gradually as to devour centuries of human civilization; to necessitate the annihilation, by the "transitional” dictatorship, of hundreds of millions of human lives; and as a byproduct of its progress, to reduce the majority of the human race to brutish irrationality, materialistic hedonism, and bloodless greed — if all this, and more of a similar tenor, should prove necessary for the sake of pursuing the untested speculative fantasy of the communist ideal of a withering political hierarchy? Well, then so be it! Let the two-hundred-year universal conflagration begin! Because maybe, just maybe, if Karl Marx was right in that book he wrote in 1875 — in spite of so many of the practical aspects of his theory having been revealed as completely false through the intervening history — the eventual outcome might indeed be a stateless communist utopia, which could, in principle, if he was right, lead to universal happiness; or not, since of course no one can know the real results of implementing a theoretical model that has never been even remotely attempted. But still, it’s worth a shot, right?

Read the whole thing; Daren has some brilliant insights into the modern mind here.



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Guiliani says Impeachment About Corruption of Obama Admin.

Timothy Birdnow

Here is an article I hadn't caught from last month.

From the article:

Rudy Giuliani
✔
@RudyGiuliani
Dem’s impeachment for innocent conduct is intended to obstruct the below investigations of Obama-era corruption:

- Billions of laundered $
- Billions, mostly US $, widely misused
- Extortion
- Bribery
- DNC collusion w/ Ukraine to destroy candidate Trump

Much more to come.

39.9K
12:13 AM - Dec 16, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
25.8K people are talking about this
Reports: Rudy revealed a huge money laundering operation involving the Bidens and Burisma Holdings. Money was flowing through Latvia and Cyprus disguised as loans to various tech companies then paid out as ‘board fees’ to Hunter Biden.

"That is a straight out violation of a money laundering statute,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani revealed that there is documents showing Schiff’s star witness, fired US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch perjured herself at least twice during her impeachment testimony.

Documents prove Yovanovitch was personally involved in the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s investigations and denied visas to witnesses who could prove Biden, Dem corruption, Giuliani said.

I wrote about Yovanovitch previously here at the Aviary. She is one of the point men in this whole thing and needs to be investigated.

At any rate, if the Senate intends to call witnesses then they need to put people like her on the stand and grill her hard.

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Aussie Fires Due to Bad Policy

From Willis Eschenbach:

Fact check: ironic. Fake green lunacy strikes some poor Australian. If you think that "green" policies didn't make the Aussie fires a catastrophe ... think again.

'In 2004, Liam Sheahan was charged A$100,000 in fines and legal expenses after clearing land around his hilltop property in Reedy Creek, Victoria. Five years later that property was the only structure left standing in the area

Rupert Darwall on Twitter

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Atmospheric Warming

From Willis Eschenbach:

How much can doubling CO2 really heat the planet? Observations and musings on a rainy night.

Top and Bottom of the Atmosphere

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January 20, 2020

Global Warming is Racist!

Timothy Birdnow

The Left has really outdone themselves, jumping multiple sharks with this one!

Yes, researchers are now saying Global Warming is racist! Or racism causes Global Warming, or at least imposes it on the poor and people of color.

From the article;

Jeremy Hoffman of the Science Museum of Virginia, and Nicholas Pendleton, a former student at Virginia Commonwealth University, also contributed to the study, which was published in the journal Climate on Monday, January 13th. The researchers examined the relationship between summertime , which were derived from satellite imagery, and historical housing policies, specifically 'redlining,' in 108 cities in the United States.

Neighborhoods with less and more concrete and pavement are hotter on average, creating 'heat islands.' In an earlier study of Portland, Oregon, Shandas and colleagues found that lower-income households and communities of color tend to live in heat islands. They found similar effects in other cities, and they wanted to know why.

To explore this question, they looked at the relationship between 'redlining' and surface heat. Beginning in the 1930s, discriminatory housing policies categorized some neighborhoods—designated with red lines—as too hazardous for investment. Thus, residents in 'redlined' neighborhoods were denied home loans and insurance. These areas continue to be predominantly home to lower-income communities and communities of color. While the practice of redlining was banned in 1968, this study aimed to assess the legacy effects of such policies within the context of rising temperatures.

The study found formerly redlined neighborhoods are hotter than all other neighborhoods in 94% of the 108 cities studied. In particular, the researchers found that redlined neighborhoods across the country are about 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, on average, than non-redlined neighborhoods. However, in some cities the differences are much more stark. For example, the cities of Portland, OR, Denver, CO and Minneapolis, MN showed the largest heat differences between redlined and non-redlined areas—as much as 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The patterns of the lowest temperatures in specific neighborhoods of a do not occur because of circumstance or coincidence. They are a result of decades of intentional investment in parks, green spaces, trees, transportation and housing policies that provided 'cooling services,' which also coincide with being wealthier and whiter across the country," said Shandas. "We are now seeing how those policies are literally killing those most vulnerable to acute heat."

Hey dipwads; housing with no air conditioning is EVEN HOTTER!

Yes, if you live in urban areas you are going to experience the Urban Heat Island Effect more than if you live in suburbia. But come on!

This is intersectionality. Tie multiple left wing concepts together into a monistic whole to make them unassailable.

And it also is about U.N. Agenda 21, which calls for just the kind of green spaces being bandied about here.

These people are nuts.

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Ozone, Not Carbon Dioxide

Timothy Birdnow

Researchers at Columbia University have published a study arguing that half of the 20th century atmospheric warming in the Arctic was caused by ozone depletion.

From the article:

A study published today in Nature Climate Change by researchers at Columbia University examines the greenhouse warming effects of ozone-depleting substances and finds that they caused about a third of all global warming from 1955 to 2005, and half of Arctic warming and sea ice loss during that period. They thus acted as a strong supplement to , the most pervasive greenhouse gas; their effects have since started to fade, as they are no longer produced and slowly dissolve.

Ozone-depleting substances, or ODS, were developed in the 1920s and '30s and became popularly used as refrigerants, solvents and propellants. They are entirely manmade, and so did not exist in the atmosphere before this time. In the 1980s a hole in Earth's layer, which filters much of the harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, was discovered over Antarctica. Scientists quickly attributed it to ODS.

[...]

Scientists at Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory used climate models to understand the effects of ODS on Arctic climate. "We showed that ODS have affected the Arctic climate in a substantial way," said Lamont-Doherty researcher Michael Previdi. The scientists reached their conclusion using two very different that are widely employed by the , both developed at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Considering that almost all planetary warming in the last century occurred in the latter part of the 20th century, this seriously calls into question the notion that carbon dioxide is the culprit. In fact, this drops the warming well below the margin of error.

How long can the charade of carbon dioxide as the primary driver of climate be maintained? It continues to fall apart as new research shows CO2 has less and less to do with anything.

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Powerline.com & the Navy say that UFOs exist

by Jack Kemp

In WWII, UFOs were called "foo fighters" by US Army Air Force flyers. The government denied their existence for decades, I believe until they were able to come up with more sophisticated defenses and laser weapons.

So here is a Townhall.com article quoting a US Navy pilot and others, saying that UFOs are real.

Here are some quotes from the article:

Last May, Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed former military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, a man whose background - working for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and heading up the since-defunded Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program - puts him in a unique position to speak on the topic. Currently the Director of Global Security and Special Programs at the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and the host of the History Channel series "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation,” the knowledgeable, well-spoken, decidedly non-kooky Elizondo lends an aura of serious credibility to a topic not often taken seriously enough.

Navy pilot Chad Underwood, another decidedly non-kooky individual, had remained mostly quiet about his own November 2004 UFO encounter until last year, mainly because he wanted to dodge being "attached to the ‘little green men’ crazies that are out there.”

"At no point did I want to speculate as to what I thought this thing was — or be associated with, you know, 'alien beings' and 'alien aircraft' and all that stuff," Underwood told New York Magazine, explaining why it took him so long to speak out. "It is just what we call a UFO. I couldn't identify it. It was flying. And it was an object. It's as simple as that."

END OF QUOTES



more...

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Security measures heightened as thousands head to Richmond for large gun rights rally

Dana Mathewson

There will be many articles about the rally in Richmond, VA as the day progresses. It's not only a "gun rally," however. It's called "Lobby Day" and happens every year, and exists to give the citizens a chance to gather in the Capital and give the state government a chance to hear what the citizens think about current government initiatives. The Fox News writer doesn't seem to know that. I'll let it pass for now.

RICHMOND, Va. —Stacks of chain-link fencing, white-covered tents and rows of metal detectors were in place Sunday night around Virginia's Capitol in Richmond, ahead of Monday's widely publicized gun rights rally.

Thousands of people from across the country are expected to attend the demonstration demanding state Democrats drop a push for comprehensive gun control in the commonwealth.

Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy, has been on high alert for days following threats of violence, including claims of a militia storming the Capitol to protesters weaponizing drones.

The fear, though, wasn't enough to keep Maryanne Martin or her husband William away.

"All of our freedoms as Americans are under attack. We have to stand up for our rights."

— Maryanne Martin, protester

"All of our freedoms as Americans are under attack," Martin told Fox News. "We have to stand up for our rights."

The Martins, who live in Baltimore, Md., drove 160 miles to Richmond Sunday morning and spent much of the afternoon walking around the barricades in place around the Capitol.

 "We wanted to check it out today," she said. "If you ask me, it's a bit of overkill."

There had been concerns that white supremacists and anti-fascist activists would face off in Richmond but one of those activists, Molly Conger, tweeted Sunday that "there is no counter-demonstration planned for the january 20 (sic)convergence of armed militias on virginia's capitol. please, please encourage anyone you know who is thinking about counter protesting this event to stay away from downtown richmond on monday." (sic)

It's a long article and well-worth your time to read it. Found here, https://www.foxnews.com/us/security-measures-heightened-as-thousands-head-to-richmond-for-large-gun-rights-rally one thing that's either left out or under-emphasized is mention of the fears on the Right that the Left, or even the Governor himself -- Ralph "Coonman" Northam -- will stage an attack that will justify his otherwise overkill State of Emergency, which resulted in his being able to prevent law-abiding citizens from bringing their guns to a gun rally.

All in the name of "safety," of course.

Addendum by Dana: As you'd expect, some of the Leftists in the Drive-By Media have their knickers firmly in a knot because this rally is happening on MLK Day. I can't cite it directly but it was on Bloomberg News last week at some point.

Correction: Bloomberg News is not carping about the fact that the rally shares MLK Day; it merely points it out. The article is at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-20/virginia-s-capital-braces-for-gun-rights-rally?srnd=premium and the relevant passage is
The rally coincides with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, which is typically a chance for everyday citizens to use a day off work to lobby their legislators. However, the threat of violence largely kept other groups away from the Capitol, including gun control groups that hold an annual vigil for victims of gun violence.

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Calling a Spade a Club

Timothy Birdnow

Not content with saying a vote for Trump is illegal, NBC is now calling the Second Amendment rally in Virginia a "white supremacist" rally.

From Warner Todd Houston:

NBC ‘Reporter’ Pushes Lie that Virginia Gun Rally is Really a ‘White Supremacist’ Event

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January 19, 2020

NBC Calls for Disenfranchisement of Voters

Timothy Birdnow

NBC is declaring conservative votes unconstitutional and is calling for the disenfranchising of voters who don't support the Bright and Beautiful.

From the article:

Noah Berlatsky Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution. Can they be stopped? Republicans and Democrats alike have been unwilling to reprimand voters or to hold them accountable. But racist voting isn't an accident.
By Noah Berlatsky
If the Trump era has taught us anything, it's that large numbers of white people in the United States are motivated at least in part by racism in the voting booth.
Some politicians deny the evidence, no doubt because they don't want to alienate white voters, including prejudiced ones.
Other commentators try to parse whether Trump's racism will be a winning strategy in 2020. Terry Smith, a visiting professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, offers a different response in his new book, "Whitelash: Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box."
Rather than excuse racist voters or try to figure out how to live with their choices, he argues that racist voting is not just immoral, but illegal. The government, Smith says, has the ability, and the responsibility, to address it.
This sounds radical. But Smith argues that it's in line with the Constitution and with years of court rulings.
For example, Smith points out that racist appeals in union elections are illegal and that an election in which one side uses racist appeals can be invalidated by the National Labor Relations Board.
Similarly, in the 2016 case Peña v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court ruled that when a juror expresses overt bigotry, the jury's verdict should be invalidated. ,,,
So how can you tell when voters are acting out of prejudice?
Again, Smith says, employment discrimination law provides a useful analogy. In discrimination cases, courts look for pretexts. If someone gives a reason for a hiring decision that is obviously false or makes little sense in context, the court has good reason to believe that prejudice or bias may have influenced the hiring decision.
Trump's unprecedented, compulsive, easily documented lying during the 2016 campaign made him an irrational choice. It's reasonable to conclude that voters were willing to swallow the falsehoods because they liked what they heard: overt racist appeals and incessant lies about rising crime rates. Research has since suggested that plenty of Trump voters were indeed strongly motivated by racist resentment and anti-immigrant animus.
The Left and their media allies are boldly going into the final frontier, the open advocacy for ending elections because they don't go the way our leaders want.

Yes, it is tyranny. Lenin would be proud.

Hat tip: Infidel Blogger's Alliance.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:00 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Trump Admin. Ends Puddle Grab

Timothy Birdnow

Good news!  You now own your own puddle again.

Dr. Jay Lehr tells us the Trump Adminislration has rescinded the Obama policy of calling drainage ditches "navigable waters".

From the article:

The outraged property owners , farmers and trade groups won a nationwide stay of the amended CWA in 2015 by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals only to have it overturned by the Supreme Court in January of 2018.

It mattered not how far from a stream your puddle existed. Five miles, ten miles or more, that water and the land containing it was no longer in your control. Anything you wished to do on that land required approval from EPA and in most cases the hiring of consulting engineers to fill out applications to satisfy the stringent requirements initiated by EPA.

This regulation has wreaked havoc on farmers and ranchers desiring to alter the drainage on their property. In the process of suing those breaking this law, EPA has destroyed families and bankrupted businesses. I have met some of these unfortunate people, all the more unfortunate if they chose to fight this egregiously over reaching government agency.

On December 12 of 2018 the Environmental Protection Agency under the direction of Trump’s new Administrator, Andrew Wheeler, along with the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a clear, understandable, and implementable definition of "waters of the United States that clarifies Federal authority under the Clean Water Act. Unlike the Obama administrations 2015 directive, the new proposal contains a straight forward definition that precludes control over the puddle in my backyard or yours. Final wording of the new rules that will amend the Clean Water Act should be complete early in 2020.

I don't like it; the supposedly "right wing" SCOTUS should have declared this policy an abomination. As it stands, the President giveth and a future President can taketh away. This is only a temporary fix to a long term struggle.

But just think what would have happened had Hillary Clinton won the Presidency and cemented the Obama policy in place.

The hydrological cycle, like the atmosphere, is the ultimate in elastic clauses; it can be used to justify any and every power grab. We share water as we share air, and both are being used as tools to destroy free markets and private property.

But I'll take a win when I can get one. This is indeed good news.

I had feared the tire ruts I put in my logging trail road at the Ozark Hilton would wind me up in hot water with the EPA; those ruts filled with water when it rained. I could have lost my land over that.


Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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GAO Decision

From Willis Eschenbach:

On the eve of the impeachment trial the GAO has made a very political intrusion into the case. Their claims have no factual basis. Just more swamp dwellers.

Four Observations Concerning the GAO Decision

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:29 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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