Arguing with Idiots: Covidiocy Edition

Timothy Birdnow

Another fight on Facebook, this time with a Vax-troll who is probably being paid by the government.

First the Lion's Roar posted:

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."

~Pat Miller [Willfully Ignorant]

Michael Carl said:

This original post is such childish fear mongering. We have freedom in America, but that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all where people can always do whatever they want. You’re still living in a society where the common good actually means something. These jagoffs watching Tucker Carlson and then acting like they’re the second coming of Sam Adams because they’re preserving freedom by refusing a vaccine should be ridiculed at every turn. SMH.

There are a number of back and forths where Michael Carl insults commenters.

I reply:

Michael Carl has to call people names and ridicule because he can't defend his position in the end. He's a typical modern liberal, incapable of actually making a logical argument.

OF COURSE large gatherings were going to see infection rates spike. But so what? What you fail to mention is the death rates. Covid is essentially a lethal cold, and even colds often come up as covid on the antibody tests. You should know that.


more...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 02:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 6866 words, total size 48 kb.

"Server Error" Stops Tesla

Timothy Birdnow

You may need internet service to drive your Tesla!

Tesla Owners Locked Out After "Server Error 500"

My question - do you need good cellular internet coverage to be able to drive your Tesla? A surprise new Tesla issue might be a real problem for people in the middle of an emergency....

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:26 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

Cold Fusion is Back

Richard Cronin

Dr. David Prentice was ignored and demeaned for his adamant insistence that adult stem cells could be made to work. He was swimming upstream against the bias that only embryonic stem cells could provide plenipotentiary benefits. Turns out that Prentice was entirely correct and adult stem cell therapies are state-of-the-art treatment for soft tissue regeneration.

Now it seems that Cold Fusion is back under investigation. Certainly, the high pressure conditions within the Earth alter mineral forms as well as drive a number of chemical reactions, almost all of which are exothermic (give off heat).

How about we get to understand a bit more about the processes within the Earth before Alexandria Occasionally-Coherent has us living in caves, eating tree bark and rocks.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

Missouri Governor Says We Should Treat Unvaccinated Differently

Timothy Birdnow

This story is getting a little dust but I just became aware of it and it's worth mentioning.

Missouri is an overwhelmingly Republican state right now. The GOP has a supermajority in both houses of Congress. And we have all the major state offices.

The current hillbilly governor is one Mike Parsons. Parsons assumed the position after allowing then governor Eric Greitens to be taken out by the Soros-funded Prosecuting Attorney in St. Louis Kim Gardner on trumped up charges. And we all thought he was going to be a good leader. We were wrong.

He's caved almost completely to the Covidiots.

And now...

https://themissouritimes.com/parson-irresponsible-to-treat-vaccinated-unvaccinated-people-same-with-mask-mandates/

Yes, this dufus of a governor says it is "irresponsible to treat vaccinated and unvaccinated alike" and he said we have to "But you have to separate vaccinated from unvaccinated. You need to declare a difference between those two people,”

So he is openly calling for discrimination against those who decide it is in their best interests to not take this experimental and potentially dangerous injection.

With friends like these...

Whatever happened to equality before the Law? What happened to our right to be secure in our persons?

When the AIDS epidemic was raging we were told how we cannot discriminate, how we must allow everyone infected into the mainstream of society. Now we want a scarlet letter, a great big U for Unvaccinated.

And Missouri's Republican  governor is o.k. with that.

He needs to be primaried in '24.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 254 words, total size 2 kb.

The FBI is Broken

Stephen Chase

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:28 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 73 words, total size 1 kb.

Mass Murder in Wisconsin

Timothy Birdnow

Over the weekend a man rammed his car into a crowd at a parade kicking off the Christmas season in Waukesha, Wi.

The man has been identified as Darrell Brooks of Milwaukee. He has been released on $1000 bail after killing several people and injuring over a dozen others.

Brooks is black.

That is pertinent because one suspects he did it to "protest" the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. He may have been flying after committing a crime, the article cited theorizes.

And because he was released with such a light bond. He was known as a member of the Antifa protesters.

The media has been largely silent about this.

Read more on Brooks here.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:25 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

Fox on the Run

Warner Todd Huston

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:16 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

Covid and the Erosion of Rights

Timothy Birdnow

There is a brouhaha on Facebook about the powers of the government to impose Covid restrictions and mandatory vaccinations.

Some of the commentors said once an emergency order is put in place we will never be rid of it.

A few people pointed out that a number of orders (such as the War Powers Act) are no longer with us.

I pointed out that the Supreme Court made it almost impossible to rescind these things in their 1983 Chadha ruling.

According to Lawfare Blog:

Here’s how the NEA was supposed to work. Enacted in the post-Watergate era, the NEA’s aim was part of Congress’s general effort in that era to rein in presidential power. In the NEA, Congress sought to reclaim greater congressional control over what had become the promiscuous presidential use of emergency powers. The act first ended all previous states of presidentially declared emergencies. It then set up a new, formal process through which presidents were given the power to declare emergencies. But the key to the NEA was Congress’s determination to maintain a check on the power it was delegating to the president.

That check came in the form of the power Congress retained, through a concurrent resolution of the House and the Senate, to terminate any presidential declaration of emergency. A concurrent resolution is not a statute: the president plays no role in such a resolution. If Congress had to enact a new law to override the president’s declaration of emergency, the president would inevitably veto it. In essence, Congress said to the president: "We accept the need to give you power to declare emergencies, but we reserve the right to decide whether we agree with that declaration in any specific circumstance.” This concurrent resolution, known as a legislative veto, was a means through which Congress and the president shared the power to define emergencies.

Through this legislative veto, Congress—not the courts—was designed to be the institutional forum to determine whether the president was right in declaring an emergency. If both houses of Congress disagreed with the president, that was the end of the matter: The declaration was terminated. Courts would play no role. Congress could also be comfortable granting the president broad initial power to declare an emergency, given the power it retained to reject that determination. Attempting to define "emergencies” in advance was also not as pressing a concern, because Congress could decide, after a presidential declaration of emergency, whether it agreed.

Moreover, good policy reasons exist for not trying to write into legislation in advance a highly specific definition of what constitutes an emergency—almost by definition, the very nature of an emergency makes defining it in advance not only difficult but perhaps unwise. Any statutory definition would risk failing to anticipate new kinds of emergencies that might arise. But again, that was less of a problem when the House and the Senate could jointly oversee, and potentially reject, a presidential declaration of emergency.

In the Chadha decision, however, the Supreme Court declared all legislative vetoes unconstitutional. The court concluded Congress could not act through concurrent resolution, but only by enacting a new law, through the process of bicameralism and presentment to the president—which provides the president with an opportunity to veto (as President Trump surely will do if the House and the Senate vote to reject his emergency declaration). While Chadha arose under another statute, the decision destroyed the carefully wrought scheme Congress had created in the NEA for sharing power over determining when emergencies existed. But Chadha’s effects went beyond just the NEA, because the decision invalidated the legislative vetoes in all of the nearly 200 federal statutes that contained them. Perhaps no Supreme Court decision has struck down as many acts of Congress in one fell swoop.

Chadha, though not as well-known as some other separation-of-powers decisions, might also be the most consequential decision the Supreme Court has ever issued in this area, in terms of the real-world balance of power between Congress and the president. Consider how different the current border-wall emergency confrontation would be if Congress could override the president’s declaration through concurrent action of the House and the Senate. Instead, Congress will be reduced to a largely symbolic role, because after Chadha, the president has the power to veto any action of Congress.

So, any emergency powers usurped by the usurper will remain his unless Congress pass a law overturning it - and override the President's veto.

It gives imperial power to the President.

I would add that while some power grabs have been rescinded, many others have not. For instance, we are still operating under emergency powers granted to Franklyn Roosevelt over the economy. Much of the intervention in economic matters stems directly from powers taken by Roosevelt to deal with the Depression. Justice Scalia confirmed that in the notes of one of his court opinions.

The Income Tax started as a war tax during Mr. Lincoln's invasion of the South.

I could go on but you get the point.

At any rate, we may get rid of some of these Covid orders, but we have set a dangerous precedent and now it is only by favor of government are we going to be free of them. Our rights are no longer a matter for discussion.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:27 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 887 words, total size 6 kb.

Where is the Prosecutor?

Timothy Birdnow

So where are the prosecutors? Shouldn't they be pressing charges?

Identity of Man Who Kicked Kyle Rittenhouse in Face Comes to Light

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:29 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

War on Mob Violence Pushback

Timothy Birdnow

Now HERE is a man who gets it!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 70 words, total size 1 kb.

Arguing with Idiots Kenosha Riot Edition

Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook my friend Murray Stewart reposted a comment by yours truly.

Murray posted:

A liberal friend of his took umbrage.

Linda Allen says:

Two quick thoughts: 1. I do think we somehow have to allow protests etc, but can we figure out a way to keep guns out of it so this doesn't happen again. Granted, Kyle Rittenhouse's life will not be the same, but he has to take responsibility for that -- no one made him bring the gun. (BTW, did you see there is a Congressman who wants to have him as a Congressional Page?) and 2. If we dig for dirt on proseutor, aren't we perpetuating the same kind of treatment? Someone has to stop the cycle. and 3. I feel sorry for the families of those who were killed. Their family dynamic is certainly changed forerver as well. Whether we call them victims or not, they are still gone! Ooops, that was 3!

Murray replies: more...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 2173 words, total size 13 kb.

Jury Harvesting

Timothy Birdnow

In the interest of making every juror heard!

Prosecutors Find Mail-In Jury Votes at 3 a.m.: Rittenhouse Now Guilty

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:51 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

Arguing with Idiots: Censorship Edition

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a discussion about censorship on Facebook.

Alexis Worlock observes:

I agree these sexually graphic books don't belong in a school library. They can be easily accessed in other ways if a parent wants his or her kid to read them.

(Sargent) Schultz Schwamberger complains:

Perhaps out them in limited access. But banning is censorship PERIOD

Alexis Worlock replies:

Schultz Schwamberger Banning is the wrong word in this context. High schools CHOOSE the materials they carry, all of which are paid for by taxpayers, to advance the students' education. This is not a free-for-all. This is a public institution for a specific purpose--education.

If a private school wants to carry these books, it can. So can libraries. The books are not banned.

As a taxpayer, I for one do not want to be forced to supply sexually explicit novels to young teenagers.

Tim adds:

Exactly right Alexis Worlock. Why can't you find every single book in a library? I mean, why isn't the collected works of Leon Nutbutter there? (I just made him up.) There is "censorship" of books done all the time. It's just a matter of why and how.

The Left wants this stuff in the library and in schools to promote a societal change. They want a world where sex is as common as eating.

Doubt that? Read the works of the Marquis de Sade; he was quite influential in his day and was one of the architects of the Free Love Movement, which was the archetype of the Sexual Revolution. And while he is best remembered for his hallmark perversions, it is forgotten how influential the man was in his time - and remains so in ours.

De Sade is on record saying this; sex should be a simple, daily exercise, like brushing your teeth.

And that is the goal of introducing children to smut. It has nothing to do with art, or with education. It has everything to do with breaking down moral barriers and erasing decency. To worry about somehow damaging our freedoms by kicking this out of schools is like worrying about damaging our freedoms to defecate on the floor. We don't think our children ill-used when they are required to use the toilet, and yet some people think this is some slippery slope to tyranny that we won't allow the pornographers easy access to our children's minds.

And it must be remembered they are OUR children, not the States. That is a big part of this too; the liberals want to take the kids away from parents and their "old fashioned", "superstitious" reactionary thinking.

That's why they are quite happy to censor books on their own. Every look at a reading list for colleges? The Great Books are all gone, replaced by CRT and Social Justice and Marxist ideologies.

We rightly complain about that and are told to stuff it, but then we are somehow the bad guys when we want to not fund pornography for our children.

This is not censorship; you are absolutely correct. But forcing this on American children IS a kind of censorship, censorship of our culture, our heritage, or moral decency and way of life. And it is being done without our consent.


more...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1088 words, total size 7 kb.

Biden Begging for Help

Timothy Birdnow

So the Brandon Junta is crawling to our allies, begging relief from the mess he made.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Asks-Big-Oil-Consuming-Nations-To-Release-Reserves.html

So now Brandon goes crawling on his knees, begging for relief to save his political posterior. It's all a sham; he doesn't want lower gas prices (he drove them up in the first place) but rather wants to look like he's taking bold action. It's all about his poll numbers. But it was Biden who killed Keystone and banned drilling on government laned. It was Biden who promised a return to the Paris Accord and promised to end the internal combustion engine in the U.S. (thus frightening investors). It was Biden who put the squeeze on banks to get them to stop lending money to oil and gas producers. Then when his policies bear fruit (and this is exactly what these policies were intended to do, drive up the price of oil and gas) he crawls to foreign nations like a supplicant begging the king to not cut off his head. He doesn't mean it though. He wants prices to drop TEMPORARILY, until the public gets used to higher prices, then inch them up further. When Barack Obama was president and gasoline prices spiked over four bucks a gallon he was asked about it and said he was unhappy they rose so quickly, not that they rose. I would add that Donald Trump said this would happen during one of the debates when he finally got Rip Van Wrinkle to admit his hostility to oil and gas drilling. Nobody listened to Trump at the time. Well, how's that working out for everyone?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:20 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 307 words, total size 2 kb.

Make 'em Pay

Timothy Birdnow

In Britain if you are acquitted your legal fees are paid.

https://www.gdlaw.co.uk/site/blog/our-services/dispute-resolution/recovery-of-legal-costs-in-the-courts-of-england-and-wales

As a result the weapon of illegal prosecutions is far less effective for the Left. As my friend across the pond John Lees pointed out, the Brits are amazed that we allow innocent people to be bankrupted by bogus prosecutions.

It would be a step in the right direction to have such a law (although the liberals would no doubt abuse it to drain the state of it's coffers and enrich trial lawyers.) But what America really needs is a way to hold prosecutors personally accountable. Now they wouldn't care if the taxpayers were on the hook for it; they would still prosecute those they want to punish and hope something would stick.

It should be possible to hold them legally liable for misconduct and overcharging.

We need new, creative ways of dealing with this. George Soros knew what he was doing when he targeted prosecuting attorney offices.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 165 words, total size 1 kb.

Canada Starts Rationing Gas

Timothy Birdnow

Gas rationing in Canada.

Gas Rationing Now in Effect on Vancouver Island

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.

Budget Surplus in CALIFORNIA?

Timothy Birdnow

Ri-ight!

https://ktla.com/news/california/california-to-have-31-billion-budget-surplus-next-year-analyst-predicts/?fbclid=IwAR2aRVzePU4vEuYsvMt-hPfLRIA_Ohq5n0_3MafXlMlhb1Vjo6QblzQ-WqA

The phrase "budget surplus in California" is clearly oxymoronic.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:38 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

And Justice for All

Timothy Birdnow

I agree, although he fails to say WHY this system has become corrupted in this particular fashion. I would argue it is because of the rise in statist beliefs in our society and the corrupting influence of politics. We have been moving away from concepts like the Rule of Law and toward a system of "democratic" groupthink. We no longer believe in Natural Law but rather think all social rules come from a consensus and there is great pressure to conform with current fashion. In this case BLM is considered the "aggrieved" politically correct movement and this kid was a counter-revolutionary, a person who had to be taken down lest other Americans get similarly uppity. I have little doubt this prosecution was done to that effect. No doubt what the author of this says is true in no small measure, but I think he's missing the big picture in a way. Everything has been politicized and turned to the service of the great and glorious socialist revolution. Those on that side of the aisle do not believe in a concrete morality that would restrain them from doing such things as purposely destroying someone unjustly. It is all about power and intimidation now.

Hat tip: Sherrie Mathieson

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:04 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 836 words, total size 5 kb.

We Have to Start Doing the Cancelling

Timothy Birdnow

While we are all celebrating the exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse, I fear it was at best a tepid victory.

The Left won a victory just prosecuting this kid. They sent a message that you had better not oppose their Brownshirts or they will come to destroy you. Rittenhouse will have a hard time having any kind of life after this. Even though they lost in court, he had to spend massive amounts of money, and will have to move away and change his name. His career prospects are dim. They succeeded in destroying the kid even if he didn't go to prison.

We need to go after this prosecutor, dig through his records, investigate him, dig for the kind of dirt that these people have been digging for in our own trash cans. We have to start firing back at these people or this will continue and even get worse. There must be personal consequences for abusing the law for political gain.

When Sarah Palin was nominated by John McCain to be his running mate the Democrats sent 30 lawyers to her tiny hometown of Wasila, Alaska, to dig up dirt on her. This type of political lawfare has only gotten worse over the years.

And Communist Billionaire George Soros had his "Prosecuting Attnorneys Project" in which he financed radicals to run for office. He's been quite successfull, too, seizing power over D.A. slots in St. Louis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and a host of other places.

Why was he doing this? Because he understood the power of a D.A. and how important control of the criminal justice system can be.

Well, while I do not know for sure that this prosecutor was a Soros man, he clearly had a political ax to grind and he ground it into the tender skull of a 17 year old kid.

If there is to be a check on the power of these types of people it must come from the public. Since it appears money can buy just about anything, and the public doesn't really ponder elected positions like D.A., we are left to using the Left's own smarmy tactics. If they want to investigate people and drag them before courts we will have to do likewise.

Remember what they did to Donald Trump and all of Trump's people. Why did they go after guys like Roger Stone? Because they wanted to cut off Trump's hands, and to do that they had to take out his lawyers and supporters. Make it too dangerous to dare work for a guy who has been declared taboo. Ruin anybody who does that.

The Rittenhouse case served the same purpose. They wanted to send America a message that made it plain they were coming for you if you dared buck them. You had better let riots burn through the streets! You had better not dare put out fires or defend yourself with a gun! If you do what normal people would do and defend yourself, or be at some sort of protest, you will pay dearly.

The most terrifying thing to these people are the American citizenry taking action. That must be prevented at all costs.

So this creepy weasle of a prosecutor drops everything he can on this kid hoping to ruin him.

And while Kyle won't go to prison he's racked up a huge legal debt and is facing a grim future.

He joins people like Officer Darren Wilson, the cop who shot Mike Brown in Ferguson, or George "the White Hispanic" Zimmerman who shot the thug Trayvon "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon" Martin. Cast out. Persona non-grata. Shunned. A non-person. A leper.

In this way can they enforce compliance with their will. It's the same tool as political correctness.

Sadly that's where this poor kid is today. And where we'll all be if we don't stop this.

We can only stop this by fighting fire with fire. Otherwise they will simply cancel us too.

We have to start doing the cancelling.

We used to be able to agree to disagree, but the radical Left has made that impossible. They only compromise when they are getting half of what they want while we are just surrendering it. This has been going on for a long time. They have sytematically whittled away America until it is now hardly recognizable. This country does not even remotely resemble the America of just twenty years ago.

The long war against normalcy and decency is reaching it's final stage - the mop up. We have got to stop being the spill on the floor and instead need to become the zamboni.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:30 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 784 words, total size 5 kb.

Consistency

Steven Chase

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 52 words, total size 1 kb.