Good-bye

It’s been a good run, but after 10 years, this show is done. I appreciate all my listeners on whatever point on the political spectrum you might be.

I have a few parting thoughts, some reminiscing, and of course some conservative commentary. But this show goes a bit over the usual 10 minutes because, hey, it is a special episode.

Mentioned links:

A Parting Thought (Erick-Woods Erickson)

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Show transcript

Let me start with a little reminiscing. I started this podcast because I needed a creative outlet for my interest in politics. I had previously found one as a contributor to the late and lamented Shire Network News podcast. It helped me find my voice even though my skills as a satirist were not very good. See, the creator of SNN, a journalist from, at the time, New Zealand named Bruce Hill, had been running it solo when it started, and he had a biting sense of satire all his own. Later he started adding contributors who would send in a commentary of 3 minutes more or less (and sometimes a lot more (sorry Bruce)) which he’d incorporate into the show. After listening to it for a while, I heard Bruce ask for more contributors so that people didn’t have to send one in every week. I heard my chance and sent in my “screen test” as it were. Next episode he used it, so it was clear I got the job. But like I said, my satire chops were not well developed, and sometimes my contributions didn’t have any humor in them, satire or otherwise.

Anyway, that went on for a while until Bruce had time constraints and turned over the hosting duties to one of the contributors, and Bruce continued to record the weekly interview, the main part of the episode. A while after that, this contributor was having time constraints, so I took over hosting duties. Needless to say, this gave me lots of experience with audio editing. A while after that, Bruce informed me that he could no longer be involved in the podcast at all, so I suggested we do 1 last episode as a fitting good-bye to our listeners, rather than podfade. I enjoyed putting that together, but when it was done, my creative outlet was gone. I really wanted another one, and so this show came out of that. So thanks, Bruce, for that push.

When I started doing this show in 2012, I would do it at my desk in the basement. These days, I can’t do stairs. In fact, I can’t walk, or even stand up on my own. Not to get all “woe is me” here, but a lot can change in 10 years when you have Multiple Sclerosis. I got into a lot of that story back in episode 100. You can find it on the website if you want to listen to it. In late 2021 and early 2022, though, I was hospitalized twice, and each time it left me with less mobility. So now I spend my days in a wheelchair, although it is a pretty cool electric power wheelchair which gives me a lot more independence. I can use it outdoors to go down to our community’s clubhouse to get the mail, and it goes up and down so I can get things on higher shelves or not require people to bend over to talk to me. It stinks to qualify for a chair like this, but it is a bit of fun.

I say the same thing about handicap parking spaces. Stinks to qualify for them, but…

Just a quick note on some recent news headlines.

First, after almost half a century of working within the democratic system, pro-lifers won a huge victory when Roe v Wade was officially overturned. I think the justices got it right when they said 2 things. One, that abortion never really was a constitutional right. Instead, 7 unelected justices created it themselves. I mean, was Roe’s trimester system in the Constitution? No, it was unlawful legislation, pure and simple. So women didn’t lose any right at all; they never had it. And if you’re upset over a development where more babies will live to see the light of day, well it just seems to me that you’re not on the right side of history.

The second thing that the court said was to agree that a majority of 9 unelected justices should not be making rules as consequential as these for the entire country. So they agreed to get out of the way and let the people decide for themselves through their elected representatives; you know, the democratic way. Unlike how some on the Left are framing this, this is how the government is supposed to work. Elected representatives make laws, and judges merely decide who is right in a dispute based on those laws.

I had a lot more to say in the last episode about the leak of the Alito draft opinion. Turns out that there wasn’t much of a difference between the draft and the final opinion, so my comments still fit.

Radio host Erick Erickson had a wonderful column that he wrote about the end of the Roe-era. Link is in the show notes, and here is what he wrote.

A Parting Thought
By Erick-Woods Erickson
June 24^th, 2022

The strong nuclear force is the force that binds the nucleus of an atom together. The protons and neutrons, the quarks, and more are held there by that force.

For forty years, Roe v. Wade has been the strong nuclear force of the conservative movement. It has held disparate people of different walks of life together in common cause. Some have done it for the constitutional principle that abortion is not in the constitution and must be a matter for states. Some have done it for deeply religious reasons. Others have just signed on to be part of that cause.

Today at 10:20am ET, the United States Supreme Court snuffed out the strong nuclear force of the conservative movement. That movement will now fracture in many unforeseen and unpredictable ways.

Some small-government conservatives will now favor more expansive government spending for families and mothers. Some will favor and support more robust moral policies at the federal level. Some will be more libertarian than ever before. Where there had been consensus will now be, in some cases, disunity and discord. People who never cared for each other, but cared greatly about the cause, can now be disagreeable. People who’ve wanted to stake out positions to make names for themselves will be more bold. Others will work quietly.

Others will find new unity and new opportunity to work together for a greater and more expansive culture of [life]. They will agree to disagree and debate and work together for a new unity.

A new strong nuclear force will form and a new element within conservatism will take shape. A new atom with new energy will come to a movement that looks in some ways different from the old. It will take time.

For now, the cause that bound us together is gone and the parts of the movement move into new fights as the real work for a culture of life begins. It will cause disagreement, separation, and unity.

But, in the end, it is absolutely worth it. There was never a point for a Republican Party committed to ending Roe if it would not actually do so. Power for the sake of power must ultimately give way to use of that power even if by use, the power then fades. We have spent forty years persuading voters, building coalitions, changing hearts, changing minds, changing politicians, changing laws, and changing a Court — all for this one case, this one victory, this one day.

Let the power fade. Let the movement now evolve. The right decision has come.

In the end, life always finds a way.

And so, finally, a parting thought of my own.

We were at the home of our future in-laws on one of those Sundays that was attended by a boatload of their extended family. My son had gotten to know one of the guys there who was a future son-in-law and my son had pointed him to my podcast on Spotify. (Note to future podcasters; get listed on Spotify.)

I asked him what he thought of it, and he replied with a smile, “I really enjoy it.” My wife then asked, “So are you a conservative?” After a brief pause but keeping that smile, he replied, “I really enjoy it.” We had a good laugh over that.

But here’s the thing; that guy has been my main target audience all along, and beside him I know of a few other listeners who fit that description. I consider it one measure of success that I have listeners like that; those who disagree with me but are willing to listen and consider this. Hence the name of the show. If you are one of those listeners, thank you so much for your time and consideration. I hope you’ve been given a thing or two to think about.

Now, my secondary audience has always been what the vast majority of my listeners are, and that is those who are already conservative, or at least center-right on the political spectrum. By one measure, there are around 1,000 of you out there! One thousand? As I’ve noted before, where in the world could I go every week (or so) where 1,000 people would gather to listen to anything I have to say? The only answer I know of so far is podcasting. If you are one of those listeners, I want to thank you for your time as well, and I hope I’ve given you either new ways to think about the issues, or information about issues you weren’t aware of, or a voice for your opinion via your feedback, or something to share with friends to help persuade them, or perhaps a little bit of all of those. I consider it a measure of success if I’ve done any of those things for you, or if I’ve just given you a reprieve from the liberal media for 10 minutes or less.

And so to remind you once more, that in whatever situation you find yourself, whenever, wherever, and whoever you are, always take some time to consider this.

The post Episode 326: The End appeared first on Consider This!.

The Alito leak brought abortion front and center again

A leak out of the Supreme Court suddenly made abortion and Roe v Wade the main topic of outrage from the Left.

But, aside from whether or not the opinion aligns with yours, what are the reasons that the Roe and Casey decisions should be overturned? Are there reasons (that are not religious ones or regarding morality) that those decisions don’t hold up legally?

Listen in to find out. As a bonus, I’ll read the introduction to the Alito opinion after the main show so you can some of his reasoning.

Mentioned links:

Supreme Court leak stuns nation

10 key passages from Alito’s draft opinion, which would overturn Roe v. Wade

Is Roe v. Wade About to Be Overturned? If So, What Are the Implications?

U.S. Supreme Court launches probe into leak of draft abortion opinion

Alito’s draft opinion [PDF]

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Show transcript

A leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion is completely unprecedented, and the content of the one leaked on the evening of May 2^nd is remarkable in its own right. It appears, according to the opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, that the Court is prepared to overturn Roe v Wade because it was poorly decided. That’s something that lawyers from both sides of the aisle have agreed with over the years. Inventing a constitutional right to abortion out of whole cloth is what the Court did, overriding the laws of every state and basically legislating from the bench.

Some are suggesting that overturning Roe would be “undemocratic” and would “politicize the Court”. What they fail to realize is that Roe itself was undemocratic and was itself politicizing. The idea that the “right” to abortion was somehow actually in the Constitution is dishonest from the start. Even worse was the whole trimester setup and what was allowed at each step of the way. Was that in the Constitution? No, it was plain legislating, a power that the Court should never have. We have a legislative branch of government for that, and so that politized the Court. And there is nothing less democratic than a few Justices writing rules for the entire nation, overriding the laws of every state. Overturning Roe restores democracy and gets the Court out of the political realm. Removing the issue from edicts from on high and back to the people is what democracy is all about.

Apparently, that’s the last thing Democrats want; to give the people a vote. Fine then, pass a law through Congress where something like this, that lays out when certain procedures are allowed, is supposed to be created. That, too, is the democratic way, where our representatives make the laws, not a majority of a panel of 9 Justices.

But do you see what the Democrats want to do in order to get that passed? They want to use a misuse of the judicial branch of government and turn the Court into what’s been called a “super-legislature”; rather than merely deciding cases based on the text of the Constitution, they can additionally create laws out of thin air. This is an abuse of the process. But remember; live by the sword, die by the sword. Once you create a “law” in this manner, later on, when the court changes hands by the luck of what President gets to name the justices, you can easily see new laws, or removal of old laws, just as easily. And because these Justices have lifetime appointments, those “laws” will be just as hard to change.

And if that process sounds familiar, that’s because it is very much like Congress, except the legislative branch represents the people much more accurately.

In the meantime, an investigation has begun into the identity of the leaker. This is the first time in the 233 year history of the Court that something like this has happened. Leaks coming from the other two branches of government have become common, so who could have done this to the Supreme Court is a big question in DC right now.

There are 3 categories of people who could have done this; one of the Justices, one of their clerks, and one of those employees who work in the building, people like typesetters or copiers. It’s also possible that friends or family of one of these people could have seen some work that was brought home, though I kind of dismiss that because you’d think that the air of secrecy that the Court operates under wouldn’t allow that sort of thing.

If it was a Justice, they should be impeached, regardless of who it is. If it was a clerk, they should be disbarred. If it was an employee, they should be fired and never be able to work in DC again. It’s as simple as that. If there is no tangible punishment, then this is just the first of many leaks to come, and this will subject the Court to the whims of public opinion. There is a proper place where public opinion is to be taken into consideration, and it should come as no surprise that I’ll say it’s in Congress. But the vast majority of the public are not Constitutional scholars, in spite of what your Facebook or Twitter feeds might suggest. What is or isn’t constitutional should be left to those that our nation set aside for that job. If you want a law passed, like I said, then do so in the branch of government set aside for that.

That’s why prosecuting the leaker to the fullest extent of the law is so important. Now that a potential opinion of the Court is out there, everyone’s going to sound off. Not only that, but the reaction from those on the Left has been frightening enough that Justice Alito has currently been shuffled off to an undisclosed location.

We cannot allow leaks in the judiciary. Ever.

A few final thoughts. I’ve mentioned that the process is important a few times. Each branch of government should stay in its lane. Only then do the checks and balances that are built into the system work properly. What I’ve noticed is that the Left cares more about outcome than process. It doesn’t matter whether something is in the Constitution or not, or whether the Supreme Court makes up laws that it doesn’t have the authority to make. It only matters that they get their way. I believe the Right cares more about using the proper process, and to show that, I’ll read the introduction to Alito’s opinion after the main show is over in my customary 10 minutes or less. He covers the process problems with both the Roe v Wade and the Planned Parenthood v Casey decisions. Most people defending Roe or Casey need to read this first. There’s a link in the show notes to the PDF of the entire draft opinion.

Also, please note that no moral arguments have been made, and not a single Bible has been thumped. They exist, and I believe there is morality involved, but they are not needed in order to overturn Roe.

And finally, based on a lot of the rhetoric coming from the Left, it seems like they’ve rediscovered the definition of “woman”. There must be a bunch of newly minted biology degrees out there.

The post Episode 325: Will Alito’s Leak Mean the End of the Roe? appeared first on Consider This!.

Elon Musk buys Twitter

One way newspapers push a particular narrative is mentioning the race of a perpetrator right up front or way in the back. Or not at all. A study was done looking at major newspaper articles going back 2 years and guess what they found. (You can probably guess, actually.)

There was quite a backlash to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Thing is, it really brought out who really is for free speech and who isn’t.

Disney dipped it toe into the political waters, but it may be a bit to hot for them.

Mentioned links:

Yes, the Media Bury the Race of Murderers—If They’re Not White

Twitter employees go ‘absolutely insane’ after Elon Musk buys company

The Rising Storm Disney Can’t Wish Away

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Show transcript

One thing that conservatives have had a feeling about is that the media are selective on what they consider national news stories. If the perpetrator is white, it seems they get more press than a person of color. It seems that the narrative is pushing the news.

Well, for now we don’t have any hard data on that, but the Washington Free Beacon has done the work to determine where in a story that the race of a murderer shows up. As an example, they note that the race of Frank James, who was responsible for the subway shootings on April 12^th, was not mentioned at all in the coverage by the NY Times and Reuters. The Washington Post only mentioned James’s race in relation to his condemnation of training programs for “low-income Black youths.” The charge is that if he had been white, that would have never happened; race would have been prominent from the get-go.

But now there is hard evidence for that. The Free Beacon reviewed 1,100 articles published by 6 major newspapers over 2 years and found that indeed they downplay the race of non-white offenders. They have a graph in their article, linked to in the show notes, that show in which paragraph the race of the perpetrator was first mentioned. Here’s what they found.

Half of articles about a white offender mention his race within the first 15 percent of the article. In articles about black offenders, by contrast, mentions come overwhelmingly toward the end of the piece. Half of the articles that mention a black offender’s race do not do so until at least 60 percent of the way through, and more than 20 percent save it until the last fifth of the article.

And how about where the race was omitted? Well, the Free Beacon confirmed a murderer’s race from other sources and found out how often journalists skipped it.

Again, the skew is startling: White offenders’ race was mentioned in roughly 1 out of every 4 articles, compared with 1 in 17 articles about a black offender and 1 in 33 articles about a Hispanic offender.

There are more findings in the article, including how these stats changed after the death of George Floyd, which only serve to confirm the bias that conservatives have been confident existed in the media. The narrative is everything and if a news story doesn’t, as they say, confirm their priors, then it gets just the obligatory coverage and then memory-holed.

Oh, that liberal media. And yes, it is liberal.

Employees of a tech company reacted angrily when they found out that their company was to be bought by an African-American. That’s another way of reading the actual headline of a link in the show notes, “Twitter employees go ‘absolutely insane’ after Elon Musk buys company”. Yup, he did it, and it turns out that those employees are not all that hip on allowing speech that they disagree with.

There would still be monitoring of content so that things like promoting violence or pornography would still be moderated. As we have learned over the years, “free speech” still means that there are limits, but viewpoint discrimination is not part of that. The fact that conservatives have been blocked far more than liberals, or that President Donald Trump was banned for disseminating “misinformation” while the government of Iran goes merrily along with their insistence that everything wrong in the Middle East is the fault of Israel.

Instead, Musk wants to open up Twitter. For starters he wants to make the algorithm that removes tweets open source so anyone can see how it works. Sounds like that would make it easier to game the system but at least people would know why their tweet was removed. He also wants to do away with banning someone, thinking that a “time out” works better. He’s got the idea we’ve always heard that the antidote for bad speech is more good speech, not censoring. Transparency and free speech; this is what the Left are losing their cookies over.

Stephen Green, writing at the Instapundit blog, observed, “I don’t know if Musk can ‘save’ Twitter or even whether the platform is worth saving. But he’s certainly annoyed all the right people.” Indeed, and he has unmasked them at the same time.

Speaking of unmasking, it looks like that’s been done to the Disney corporation. On March 11^th, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek decided to go specifically political by saying that his corporation would work to combat laws like the Parental Rights in Education Act that might be introduced in other states. The corporation also vowed to fight the Texas law that prohibits transgender surgeries on minors.

Now what’s interesting is that only 27% of Americans agree that discussion of sexuality should be legal in kindergarten through 3^rd grade classes. It seems that the board at Disney got pushed into their position by a loud minority of their employees. Yes, yes, a corporation can take whatever positions it wants, even political ones, but then the political bodies of the state are allowed to take whatever positions they want.

Which they did. Florida revoked the self-governing status that Disney World has enjoyed for over half a century. That may no longer be needed now since the purpose of getting tourism to Orlando has long been realized.

But there are more issues for Disney. A letter from Reed Rubinstein, former deputy attorney general in the Trump Administration, sent on behalf of the shareholders, demanded a corporate investigation into this foray into politics, including asking why they support lessons on sexuality for 5-year-olds, and how any of this enhances the corporation’s reputation. He asks how this will appeal to its core U.S. and foreign customers, many of whom are parents. And, I would add, who’s foreign customers live in countries that jail homosexuals. In an anonymous open letter Disney employees said that they’ve had to “watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer” and that Disney has “fostered an environment of fear that any employee who does not toe the line will be exposed and dismissed.” Wording like this often heralds lawsuits. And for shareholders who are expecting that Disney is shirking its duty to not harm the corporation’s value, lawsuits against the officers could also be warming up in the wings.

As of the writing of the article whose link is in the show notes, Disney had shed 10% of its value since it got this political.

Those are the facts. What’s my conservative commentary? The phrase is not original with me, but it certainly fits; go woke, go broke.

The post Episode 324: Papers Push a Narrative / Elon Buys Twitter / Disney Goes Political appeared first on Consider This!.

Ron DeSantis signs the Parental Rights in Education bill

Well I’m finally back! We’ll see how the release schedule changes, but it’s good to get back on the saddle again.

Joe Biden was supposed to be the adult in the room when it came to being President, but it doesn’t look that way. In one of his worst gaffes, he seemed to call for regime change in Russia. That’s something the Left told us that Trump would do. (And to call it a gaffe seems to underplay it. Mispronouncing the name of a head of state is a gaffe. This was much worse.)

The NY Times finnaly admitted that the Hunter Biden laptop story was an actual story. Can the NY Post now share that 2-year-old story on Twitter without getting banned?

The Parental Rights in Education Act is now law in Florida. Its critics misnamed it, and they got the effect of the bill just as wrong. If you against this, what does that mean?

Mentioned links:

Washington Post, New York Times finally admit Hunter’s laptop is real — but only to protect Joe Biden some more

‘Reckoning’: WaPo Admits Hunter Biden Story Teaching Media A Lesson

Florida House passes controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill

Desistance studies in children with Gender Dysphoria

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Show transcript

“We’re watching newsreels of World War II in 2022.” That’s how a CNN reporter described the scenes we’ve been watching in Ukraine. C’mon people! I have a hospital stay followed by physical rehab and this happens while I’m away? Can’t y’all behave for a few months? I feel like Rip VanWinkle, but I only slept through the winter.

We’ve had that and over $4 average gas prices, truckers who shut down Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates, a Supreme Court nominee that couldn’t give a definition for the word “woman”, Elon Musk buying more share of Twitter than anyone else, and we’ve had Will Smith giving Chris Rock the Slap Heard ‘Round the World at the Oscars.

Oh, and let’s not forget remarks by Joe Biden about Vladimir Putin.

[Joe Biden, remain in power audio]

Now, say what you want about what he really meant, people in the media, his own State Department, and other world leaders took it as calling for regime change. These kinds of things are what the Left said Donald Trump was going to do. Gaffes that Trump made might get us into World War III. Well, if Putin thinks our aim is to remove him from power, a world war could very well be next. Yup, Biden was supposed to be the adult in the room, but it seems not so much.

Two years after the NY Post broke the story, the NY Times finally got around to admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop story was, in fact, a story. And little by little, other media organizations, though just a few, started to admit the same thing.

Consider that it has been, again, over 2 years since the story broke in the NY Post. And, of course, over 2 years since Twitter punished them for breaking that story by shutting down their account until they deleted the tweet publicizing it. You see, we can’t have stories that reflect badly upon a Democrat presidential candidate, and certainly not without enough time before a presidential election for the media to agree on a cover story. Instead, get some of the largest mass communication networks on the planet to run interference for the Democrats and then bury the story until all but the political junkies even remember it.

Oh, and when you do decide to bring it up again, make sure not to apologize to those you slandered as peddling “Russian disinformation”. “But”, you might say, “50 top members of the intelligence community said it had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!” That’s true, which means that a group like that can be very wrong or might possibly have an agenda. Consider this next time letters like this are used as reasons to censor someone.

Conservatives have had their messages shut down for quite some time by Big Tech. Yes, yes, Twitter and Facebook are private companies and can set their own rules and apply them in a tilted fashion all they want. We’re told that if conservatives don’t like it, make your own. Some people did and created a Twitter-like system called Parler. And then Big Tech shut that down as well. They can make their own rules, but if you practice viewpoint discrimination, whether you’re a social media company or a major newspaper, don’t claim that free speech is one of your values.

They called it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Well, the critics did, and since it fit the narrative, so did the media. Instead, you almost never heard the actual title, the Parental Rights in Education bill. And their caricature of what the bill would do is about as inaccurate as their misnaming of it.

The bill would ban the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation through 3^rd grade. After that it required that those subjects be taught in an age-appropriate manner. Being against this bill, then, meant you were for teaching something that was already not taught in K-3, but you wanted to jump into the subject very early so you could indoctrinate children in your sexual orthodoxy. Somehow, though, maintaining the status quo on the discussion of sex at those early ages will now, magically, suddenly, “treat LGBTQ topics as taboo and brand our community as unfit for the classroom”, according to Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project.

How is that possible? In an article in Parents magazine, it notes that only 24 states and DC have mandatory sex ed in public schools. Of those 24, it’s examples of programs in elementary school don’t suggest that kids in K-3 are getting anything like sexual orientation lessons. They have general health classes during those years, nothing sexual. So, there’s nothing that’s being taught right now that LGBTQ activists have to complain about

One video from a gay teacher said that he can’t tell his children about who he loves. Here’s a question; how many teachers told you about their love lives? I remember one teacher in middle school, and that only because her last name changed after she came back from vacation. Besides her, I couldn’t tell you anything about the love lives of my teachers. Now I’ll admit that that’s just me, and it’s been a few decades or so since I was a senior in high school, but from others I have heard talk about this I’m not alone. Again, we’re talking about subject matter that is not typical K-3 experience.

Normalizing and mainstreaming gender transition from the earliest age is the only reason I see for being against this law. Yet as soon as a child, who can’t even choose their bedtime, says they are of the opposite gender, some people want to pump them with chemicals and take scalpels to their bodies to let them have that choice. But consider this; on average, 80% of children change their minds and don’t continue as transgender going into adulthood.

No, this law lets kids be kids and waits to deal with sexual issue until they’re at least 10. Can we at least hold off until then?

The post Episode 323: Ukraine War / Hunter Biden laptop / Florida Parental Rights bill appeared first on Consider This!.

Our clogged ports

Sorry for the sound quality this time around. I haven’t unpacked the audio equipment yet from our move.

I thought we’d have some inflation after the lockdowns were over. However, the Biden administration has not been doing much too keep that under control.

I said that when a liberal restaurant owner kicked out a prominent Republican that it was wrong. Today I’m going on the record to say that when it happens on the Right it’s just as wrong. However, this time there is a funny turn of events.

Both Republicans and Democrats have been squishy on the issue of increasing the debt limit. Neither side has been better than the other. But that’s about to change.

Mentioned links:

The incredible, disappearing — incompetent — Team Biden

#EmptyShelvesJoe trending on Twitter amid Biden’s supply chain crisis

WaPo: Bread Lines Aren’t So Bad, Puny Citizens

Florida diner that forbids Biden supporters becomes so popular that it runs out of food

Episode 218: Blacklisted by a Red Hen / ACLU Cools to Civil Liberties / SCOTUS Rules Against Coerced Speech

Growing number of Democrats endorse abolishing debt limit altogether

‘Glorious karma’: Braves bring World Series to Atlanta after MLB pulls All-Star Game

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Show transcript

Well it’s been some time since I talked to you. Let’s see what’s been happening.

Inflation has reared its ugly head. Now I will say this; after the shutdowns and lockdowns of 2020, I figured that all that pent-up demand would lead to a buying binge that would mean prices would rise, just like your Econ 101 teacher said they would. But the Biden administration hasn’t been doing such a good job at trying to mitigate it. Getting stuff into our ports has, apparently, been such a hassle for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that he’s been taking paternity leave since August. Ships with shipping containers of all kinds of stuff are hanging out waiting their turn to dock at ports on both coasts. This has driven inflation up more than it would have been otherwise. But I guess it doesn’t matter that the price is higher if you can’t buy it anyway. The hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe was trending at one point complete with pictures of said shelves.

But the Washington Post, dutifully attempting to cover for a Democrat, tweeted this, “Don’t rant about short-staffed stores and supply chain woes. Try to lower expectations.” You see, we’re too used to being a first-world country. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who’s paying people to stay at home, or whose incompetence at transportation and commerce is hitting us right in the supply chain. Just get over yourselves!

Does anyone think ideas like that would have been published in the Post if Donald Trump had been elected?

Back in 2018 in episode 218 I talked about how a restaurant, the Red Hen, refused to serve Sarah Huckabee-Sanders. I chided the restaurant for outright refusing to serve someone based on their political affiliation. And now I’m going to be consistent in that belief.

The DeBary Diner in DeBary, Florida put up a sign on its door saying, “If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, please take your business elsewhere. God bless America, and God bless our soldiers.” This is more than what the Red Hen did. The Red Hen refused to serve a high-profile press secretary based on her politics. The DeBary Diner told all Biden voters to stay away, though it presumably would let them self-select rather than asking them on their way in. Either way, this is not the way to go about making your point.

In fact, the DeBary Diner had to close early on the same day it posted that sign. Not because it was ordered to, but because it had received too many orders. See, it got so much support from locals, plus donations from around the world for sending meals to veterans, that it ran out of food. OK, that part of the story brought a giggle to my face. But I guess, given Biden’s poll numbers, it shouldn’t have surprised me.

But otherwise, don’t do this whole political sorting thing, OK? It’s just not helpful at all. OK, but that was funny.

You may have heard, or may not have heard, that the government is approaching the debt limit. That’s basically the credit card limit that the government is allowed to borrow up to without passing a bill to raise it even further. Unlike your own credit card, where you would have to ask the bank to give you a higher limit, Congress can just ask itself, and it always grants the request.

Each time this happens, the party in power wants it raised and the other party wants to make them sweat about it. This is true no matter who the party in power is, whether Republican or Democrat. Neither side comes out looking any better than the other; they both just want to keep expanding those purse strings.

This time however, one side is actually looking quite a bit worse. Democrats, it seems, want to get rid of the debt limit completely, or hand the authority over to someone else. Leave aside that, once again, Democrats want to centralize authority to someone on high to merely make a pronouncement about the debt and absolved them of any responsibility, what they don’t want you to know is that they could raise the debt limit tomorrow with just Democrat votes. Using what’s called the Reconciliation process, Democrats would only need a bare majority in both the House and the Senate in order to pass a bill regarding the debt limit. But you see, that would mean they would own the increased borrowing and spending, especially since they want to borrow and spend about 80 gazillion dollars in the next 10 minutes. If spending that much makes our current inflation even worse, as it almost certainly would, then they would have to own that as well. It’s not something they would enjoy having to defend right before the 2022 elections.

So while it’s true that neither side winds up smelling like a rose when it comes to controlling our nation’s debt, one side would rather not be bothered by it anymore. I wonder what that smells like?

And finally in sports (which is not something I cover very often), my hometown boys, the Atlanta Braves, are going to the World Series. Aside from the fact that their last World Series win was in 1995 and it’s about time they did it again, let’s not forget that fellow Georgian Stacy Abrams and others lobbied Major League Baseball to move the All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver, and denied those businesses at and near the new stadium income from that. And now we’re going to get an even bigger event here in town. Yeah, the best revenge is winning.

The post Episode 322: Rampant Inflation / Refusing Service / The Debt Limit appeared first on Consider This!.

9/11 Headlines

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since the devastating terror attack on September 11, 2001. The memories seem so fresh. But are they?

In this episode you’ll hear my memories, a listener’s memories, and a Romanian’s ruminations on how we came together in the days following.

Mentioned links:

One man’s ‘mirror for America’ (November 6th, 2001)

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Show transcript

“They weren’t Canadian.”

These were the first words that I heard when I picked up the phone in my cubicle and said, “Hello, Doug Payton.” I recognized the voice as someone from our Canadian office. “What?”, I stammered, taken a little aback at the unusual greeting.

“They weren’t Canadian.” he repeated. “What weren’t Canadian?” I asked. “The planes.” he replied. “What planes?” I asked. And that’s when I found out that something was disastrously wrong. By this time, both towers had been hit. I tried to bring up various news sites on the web to find out what was happening, but apparently everyone else in the country, and much of the world, was doing the same thing. My web browser just showed me error after error. At one point I managed to get the top portion of The Drudge Report to load, and his headline screamed, “Who did this?”

I remember the voice mail I got at the office from my wife telling me to listen to the news. I remember hearing people in other cubicles relay news reported to them from spouses or friends over the phone (some of which turned out to be wrong). I remember thinking that when the towers came down the death toll could reach into 5 figures. (I remember being so grateful later on that it wasn’t.) I remember my boss telling everyone to go home. I remember watching TV pretty much the rest of the day. I remember when my kids got home from school and we talked about what had happened.

My kids took it well. They asked questions, and I answered them the best that I could. I’ve always tried to instill a sense of history in them when interesting things happened (we talked a lot about the 2000 election debacle), but in this case there was history mixed with a sadness, even a reverence, for those who just went to work that day and never came home.

One of my daughters was studying the state of New York in school and had recently decided to do a diorama of New York City. When it came time to do the buildings, I was going to print out a picture of the skyline, which we’d cut up and give a 3-D look to. When we asked her whether she wanted the Twin Towers there or not, she thought for a second and decided that she wanted them to be in there. She and her sister had visited the Twin Towers a couple years earlier with their aunt from Queens, and they remember looking out from the top.

Sometime after the clean-up at Ground Zero was finished, I took my 3 oldest kids there. I have some pictures of them there, as well as the perfectly-proportioned cross made of steel beams that was found in the wreckage, standing tall in the midst of what should have been two tall towers and thousands of people. Again, I was trying to instill a sense of the historic in them.

I have a lot of memories from 9/11, but not nearly as many as others. One of my brothers-in-law was stuck in downtown Manhattan for 3 straight days. He did maintenance work at a hospital, and for him to leave would have meant putting patients in peril, so he stayed. When he did come home, he ate, slept, and went right back. You want memories? He’s got ’em, and they’re far more emotional than mine.

So 20 years on, we’re remembering the day, each in our own way, based on our own memories. But we, as a nation, have a corporate memory as well; the sum total of all of our thoughts and experiences. This national memory sometimes fades, in and out, especially as the time passes. We were so patriotic in the days after 9/11, but where has that gone now? Some of us still are. But flag decals on your car don’t make you patriotic. I think standing up for your country when you believe your country is right is nothing to be ashamed of. I also think criticizing your country, in an honest manner, when you believe your country is wrong is nothing to be ashamed of, either.

So I believe that criticizing a war you think is wrong is patriotic, but I don’t think that marching in the street complaining of a tyrannical government that is worse than al Qaeda is, or is somehow dictatorial, is an honest criticism. If they were tyrannical, if they were stifling dissent, you couldn’t be marching in the street against them.

In one episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space 9”, Captain Sisko noted the problem between how Earth was handling a situation and how he thought it should be handled. His complaint was that Earth itself was the problem. [The Problem is Earth audio] In a similar fashion, I think we in the U.S. don’t really understand how good we’ve got it. We’ve forgotten, as a nation, what it felt like that fall morning when 3,000 died and our notion of impenetrability was shattered.

Hopefully, today will remind some folks about what is really going on in the world. Seeing people who have more of an emotional attachment to their 9/11 memories might awaken in others the real reason we can’t wait for the rest of the world to agree that our country needs defending. Today is not just an occasion to light some candles. It’s not just for comforting those who’ve lost loved ones. It is those things, but it is also one thing above all.

This is a day to remember.

Remember.

I put out the call for listeners to let me know what they felt and experienced that day 20 years ago. Here is what listener Barb had to say.

[Barb Rankin audio]

Make a difference, where you can, when you can. This is similar to advice I’ve heard elsewhere. If you want to change the world, start with changing yourself by, indeed, making a difference where you can when you can. If you can’t do that, the world is certainly too far a stretch.

Thanks Barb for your thoughts.

Naturally, Cornel Nistorescu writes his column in Romanian – he is, after all, managing director of News of the Day, an influential newspaper in Romania.

So he was more than a little startled when he started getting e-mails from the United States about a column he wrote in late September 2001, soon after 9/11. He wrote the column after watching a telethon, broadcast from Los Angeles, to raise money for victims of the terrorist attacks.

He had called the column ‘An Ode to America’ (“Cintarea AmericiI”). And when he began getting e-mails from the United States about it, he realized it had been translated and put on the Internet.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Nistorescu, who was in Washington at the time. “It’s incredible how a text published in Romanian became a mirror for America.”

Moved by the spirit of the telethon, Nistorescu, who had been a newspaperman for 25 years at the time and writes on an old-fashioned typewriter, began trying to figure out for himself what America was all about. He described his conclusions in the “Ode to America”.

Ode to America

Why are Americans so united? They don’t resemble one another even if you paint them! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations. Some of them are nearly extinct, others are incompatible with one another, and in matters of religious beliefs, not even God can count how many they are.

Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, the secret services, that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed on the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised the flag on the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a minister or the president was passing. On every occasion they started singing their traditional song: “God Bless America!”

Silent as a rock, I watched the charity concert broadcast on Saturday once, twice, three times, on different TV channels. There were Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, Robert de Niro, Julia Roberts, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Sylvester Stallone, James Woods and many others whom no film or producers could ever bring together. The American’s solidarity spirit turned them into a choir.

Actually, choir is not the word. What you could hear was the heavy artillery of the American soul. What neither George W. Bush, nor Bill Clinton, nor Colin Powell could say without facing the risk of stumbling over words and sounds, was being heard in a great and unmistakable way in this charity concert.

I don’t know how it happened that all this obsessive singing of America didn’t sound croaky, nationalist or ostentatious! It made you green with envy because you weren’t able to sing for your country without running the risk of being considered chauvinist, ridiculous or suspected of who-knows-what mean interests. I watched the live broadcast and the rerun of its rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player who fought with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that would have killed other hundreds or thousands of people.

How on earth were they able to bow before a fellow human? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit which nothing can buy.

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases which risk sounding like commonplaces. I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion.

Only FREEDOM can work such miracles!

I want to touch on one topic before finishing up here, and I want to begin with the last line of Cornel Nistorescu’s ode, “Only freedom can work such miracles!” We have been given such an amazing birthright by our Founding Fathers, but I fear too many don’t really grasp how important it is, even as it gets chipped away at by a bigger and more invasive government. Maybe people don’t understand it because it’s been chipped away so much.

You never miss what you never experienced. Colleges are full of kids who weren’t born on 9/11 or who are too young to remember it. While we have technology, which Mr. Zapruder could only dream of, that allows you to see and hear it happen, being there at that moment in time can never quite be communicated in words.

I am concerned, too, that the freedom that Mr. Nistorescu talked about is something that has been fading with the generations. This freedom, as much as it has been holding tight to life, has been slowly deteriorating. Every time the government spends millions or billions or trillions more that it takes in, we lose freedom to the ever-increasing debt. Every time fear causes us to inter our fellow citizens merely because of what they might be or do, we lose freedom to the idea that, yes, we did go there and run the risk of doing it again. Every time we censor speech merely because we take offense at it, we lose freedom to whoever can get the most offended.

Freedom is on its death bed. Who can revive it? The Founding Fathers understood from where this freedom came and they believed this so intently that they pledged their lives to defend, not just the idea of freedom, but the idea of where it came from. The document where they made that pledge begins this way.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What they were defending was every individual’s right, given to them by God and not government, to be free. They may not have lived up to the ideal themselves, but they knew what the ideal was and where it came from. Here’s how one of them put it in the year prior to the Declaration of Independence.

The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false reasoning, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race; and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.

So I would say to Mr. Nistorescu that what really happened here is that God worked such miracles through the freedom that he granted each of us, even through those who don’t believe in him. Freedom is like that. And hearing those words from Alexander Hamilton, I think he might look at us in 2021 and say, “Consider this.”

The post Episode 321: 9/11 20 Years On appeared first on Consider This!.

The latest casualty of socialized medicine

Don’t ever let the UK National Health Service find out you have a child on life support. They’ve found another one and have condemned it to death, and will not allow her parents to take her out of the country for treatment.

I first mentioned James Younger in October of 2019. His mom had convinced him he was really a girl, and got sole custody in a divorce. There’s more to the story now. I have some good news and some bad news.

And what more can I say about the botched withdrawal / retreat from Afghanistan? Well, I have my own quick take.

Mentioned links:

Op-Ed: Britain’s Death Cult: Court Rules Alta Fixsler Can Be Taken Off Life Support; Rejects Appeal By Family Amid Growing Number Of Verdicts

Episode 271: #SaveJamesYounger

Court Awards Full Custody to James Younger’s Mother but Requires Permission for Puberty Blockers, Gender Surgeries

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Show transcript

Two-year old Alta Fixsler was born with severe brain injuries. She has been on life sustaining treatment since her birth at a hospital run by the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. After discussions with medical experts regarding Alta’s prognosis, the Trust petitioned the High Court to have Alta’s life-sustaining treatment withdrawn.

Stop me if you’ve heard something like this. The names Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans come to mind. They were in the same situation in the UK, and the same thing happened to them.

Alta’s parents, Abraham and Chaya Fixsler, are Chassidic Jews with dual citizenship in Israel and the United States. They have pleaded with the courts to allow their daughter to remain on life support requesting that Alta be transported to hospitals in either Israel or the United States for advanced medical treatment. Both countries have medical centers that are ready to help this little girl if she is transferred, and Alta has a visa to come to the United States.

But, as with other children, the UK’s National Health Service is not content with just saving money by removing life support. They insist that the child stay put and die once it’s removed. To me, this is the central problem. Is it a problem with socialized medicine, or with a government that is too powerful and sprawling that the bureaucrats have lost anything resembling a heart? I don’t know; it could be something else entirely. But to tell parents of a small child that their child is costing too much to keep alive and they are forbidden to take the child out of the country to other waiting facilities is nothing short of barbaric. Only from a faceless and heartless government could a decision like this even be conceivable. Even if a run-of-the-mill insurance company stopped paying for life support, they couldn’t stop you from travelling and seeking help elsewhere. But when your insurance company is the government, they have many more tools in their toolbox that they won’t hesitate to use.

If I knew of someone in the UK with a child that needed life support, I’d tell them to start packing right now and get out of the country. Seriously. Find some institution somewhere else willing to take your child, and just move there now. Don’t wait until the blazing eye of Sauron…I mean, the NHS…takes notice of your youngster.

Now I’m going to reconsider this, a segment where I look at the latest news on a topic I’ve covered before. Back in October of 2019 I related the story of James Younger. At 3 years old his mom started telling him he was a girl, and referred to him at Luna, after a cartoon girl that James liked. There’s a link in the show notes to the original show about James, and you really should revisit that to really understand how things got to this point.

When James was 7, his parents divorced. There was shared custody, but Anne, the mom, got a court order requiring that Jeff, the dad, must refer to him as Luna and never saying anything at school about him other than that James was a girl. Basically he was mandated by law to lie about his son.

Well, fast forward to today, and I have good news and bad news. The bad news is a judge has awarded full custody to Anne, giving her exclusive control over James’s primary residence, counseling, medications, education and extracurricular activities. The order allows her to withhold information from Jeff Younger, James’s father, “regarding the children’s extracurricular activities, school functions, school enrollment, counseling, and medical care.”

The good news is that, while Anne has the exclusive right to consent to James’s medical procedures, the order notes that that power does not extend to hormone-suppression therapy, puberty blockers, or transgender reassignment surgery. So, while she can still push him into gender transition psychologically, she can’t legally do it medically.

That’s what passes for a victory here in 2021. How in the world did we slip this far this fast down the slope?

And finally, what can I say about the Afghanistan debacle that hasn’t been said elsewhere? From pulling out troops first before Americans or Afghans who helped us, to criminally underestimating the ability of the Taliban to take full advantage of our retreat, to leaving billions in weaponry for the Taliban to abscond with, to getting rebuked by both houses of the UK Parliament (that’s never happened before), to creating a local defense force that was dependent on being able to call in American air strikes (and then could no longer call them in so they folded like a broken beach chair). This will be historic, but not in the way that President Joe Biden wanted. He ignored intelligence and did it his way. But hey, no mean tweets.

And if Trump voters have to “own” the January 6^th riot, then Biden voters have to “own” this horrific military fiasco. If you don’t like having to do that, perhaps this type of blaming isn’t really all that helpful.

One more thing. If you think that all cultures and worldviews are equally good, if you think that one culture is never better than another culture, just watch Afghanistan in the coming months, and see if that doesn’t change your mind.

The post Episode 320: Death Wish for Children / Reconsider This: James Younger / Afghanistan appeared first on Consider This!.

Time for some good news

This time out, we’re going to have just good news. No conservative commentary. (Well, maybe just a little bit.)

Mentioned links:

We Just Got Proof That Uber Has Saved Thousands of Lives

Man speechless after letter he wrote to Santa in 1961 is found in his old chimney

Man surprises wife with long-lost wedding video after finding it 14 years later, in an unlikely place

Florida man in bubble-like vessel washes up on beach, sheriff says

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Show transcript

The rideshare company Uber has been the target of some politicians’ ire because of the way they run their business. Think about it; people voluntarily offer their time and vehicle in exchange for cash from a company that connects drivers with people who need a ride. That’s what the free market is all about.

But there’s a little something more to this company than merely disrupting the corrupt taxi service system. A study by two economists at the University of California, Berkeley examined the impact that Uber, specifically, has had on alcohol-related traffic deaths and total traffic deaths in the US. The study asked the question; by providing people with a safe, convenient, and relatively inexpensive alternative means of transportation, would Uber reduce drunk driving and traffic deaths?

The good news is Yup. Uber reduced drunk driving accidents by 6.1% and total road fatalities by 4%. How much is that in absolute terms? For drunk driving, it comes to 214 lives, and for all traffic deaths it comes to 494 lives. In absolute numbers, these may sound small, but consider that the major competitor Lyft was not included in this study and so those numbers could be double that. And consider these were just for the year 2019.

That’s good news, and because Uber can typically beat the rate for taxis, its disruption of the market translates into more lives saved than with just taxis because it’s an option.

Little Robert Crampton asked his father to write a letter to Santa with his Christmas list. Now, this was just 2 days before Christmas, so he made sure to have his dad write “URGENT” at the top of the page, along with the return address so he knew where to deliver the items, which were mostly cowboy-related. And so on December 23^rd, 1961, Robert sent that letter off to Santa and went to bed.

And that was the last anyone saw of the letter. Until recently.

Just a little while ago, on July 20^th, Cheryl Thorne found it while she was just doing her job. No, she’s not a postal worker; she’s a…chimney sweep. Cheryl found the letter up inside the home’s chimney. The Crampton’s had since moved, and Robert had grown up, so it took a little doing to reunite him with his letter 60 years later, but it happened.

Now I’m sure you’re either amazed and giddy or totally incredulous to hear that, yes, the letter was found in the chimney, at least if you, like me, are American. You see, Robert lived in Derbyshire, England, and it’s a tradition to write your letter to Santa and then burn it in the fireplace. I did not know this until I looked into this story. The ashes then go up the chimney and off to the North Pole. What’s interesting in this case is that the letter itself, remarkably intact, flew up the chimney and lodged itself somewhere so that it could remain safe until, 6 decades later, a chimney sweep could find it.

Let me leave you with a couple thoughts. Looking back, Robert noted that he did get some of what he asked for; a six-shooter cap gun and a sheriff’s badge. And also, I’m pretty sure that, if you ask one, a chimney sweep will tell you to not wait 60 years to get yours cleaned. Please consider this.

Some guy at the Life Bible Church in Harrisburg, Oregon was cleaning out some old video tapes. He’d watch a few minutes of each and then decide to keep it or chuck it. At one point, he recognized a friend on one of the tapes and sent him a message, “Look what I found!”

Let’s rewind a bit, so to speak. When Drew and Kayla Gottfried got married in 2007, they got the whole thing videoed, like pretty much everyone does. After their honeymoon, they sent the tape out to get digitized, but was told the tape was blank. Well I’m sure that was heartbreaking and a huge disappointment, but the Gottfrieds got on with their lives.

Fast forward 14 years, and the actual wedding video was sitting in a box at the church. Drew finally got the tape, but he had an idea. He didn’t tell Kayla about it just yet. Their 14^th anniversary was approaching, so he decided to wait until then to show it to her…in a local movie theater that he had rented out just for them. If you would like to have been a fly on the wall for that event, you can be. Drew recorded it. Link is in the show notes. You’ll love it. 6.1 million other people already have.

And yes, Drew and Kayla Gottfried now have multiple digitized copies of their wedding video.

And finally, Reza Baluchi wanted to try to raise money for the homeless and for first responders by walking up the coast from Florida to New York. The problem was that he never made it out of Florida before being spotted on the shore. Now normally that’s not too big a deal depending on who owns that particular bit of shore. But Reza was rather conspicuous. See, he was in a large floating cylinder with paddles on the outside, and he was on the inside walking on water up the coast. Sadly, this particular “Florida Man” didn’t make it.

The post Episode 319: Some Good News appeared first on Consider This!.

Just private companies, or something more?

Why would you voluntarily seek to represent a group that you disagree with? And should you be replaced in that representation?

When Big Tech social media companies ban someone, some suggest that since they are private companies that’s OK. But there are other considerations. And what happens when they start doing the bidding of the government?

Mentioned links:

Olympic athlete ‘pissed’ national anthem was played while receiving award, claims ‘it was setup’

Jesse Owens [Wikipedia]

Biden administration ‘flagging problematic posts for Facebook,’ Psaki says

Psaki Tries to Justify Getting Social Media to Censor People but Makes It So Much Worse

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Why would someone represent, of their own accord, a group or organization that they disagreed with? For example, would you go to a convention and be in one of those information booths for the company you worked for, but then tell everyone who came by that you were ashamed of your company? Now, you may have a perfectly good reason for feeling that way, but then why did you volunteer to represent the company? Now you’ve made your appearance at the convention about you rather than the company itself.

There’s a time and a place for airing your grievance, but this ain’t it. The company would have good cause to replace you with someone who will do the job. And that is what another group in this same position ought to do.

Gwen Berry was participating in US Olympic track and field trials in the women’s hammer throw. She came in third place and, while standing on the podium, the national anthem began to play. Now, there is some question as to whether this was simply being played at a particular time of day or for the competition itself, but either way when it started, Berry made her feelings known about it. She turned away from the flag and then later put her T-shirt over her head with the words “Activist Athlete” showing.

No matter what your grievance with the country might be, this ain’t the time to air it. You are voluntarily trying to get on a team, a team that will represent your country. This is not about you and your political or social disagreements.

In 1936, Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Think about what he as a black man living in Alabama was subjected to in this country at that time. And yet when he got on the 1^st place stand, he didn’t merely put his hand over his heart when his anthem played, he saluted the flag.

He understood what Martin Luther King would, decades later, say to the nation. The flag stands for a promise of freedom and of equal treatment under the law; a promise that has not been properly kept during this country’s history, but a promise nonetheless. Owens believed that promise and King appealed to that promise.

[MLK audio]

That is what the flag stands for, and if you can’t respect that, no matter your color, I don’t think you should be representing the country.

One of the defenses I hear when Facebook, Twitter, or some other social media company de-platforms someone is that, “since they’re private company, they can do what they want”. Typically this comes from someone who’s trying to appeal to my conservative values that the government should stay out of the private sector. And as far as that goes, that’s a very good argument.

But there are a couple of issues with that when it comes to these massive tech companies. For starters, when the government keeps in touch with those companies in order to specifically flag content, they become just another arm of the federal government. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted as much recently. At a second press conference she added that the administration believes that if you are banned from one social media company you should be banned from all of them. Coming from an administration that the big tech companies generally agree with on policy, this may start soon enough, especially since, if big tech wants to continue to get special protections from the government, they know that they should jump when Biden says to.

The other issue is that, while it’s true that these are private companies, they are so much more than your corner bookstore. If Sally’s Book Nook won’t sell your book, that’s one thing. When Amazon won’t, you’ve lost access to a global market. Sure Amazon isn’t the only game in town, but it is the first game in town for most looking to buy books, and often there isn’t a second game. If you’ve been permanently removed from you town council meeting, that’s one thing. When Twitter bans you, a ubiquitous, easily accessible, and global communication platform has been denied to you. And again, the #2 player is a long, long way down there.

So technically, yeah, they’re all private companies, but it really seems to me that we need to come up with a new category of business that holds so much of our daily lives in their hands. Let me know what you think.

The post Episode 318: Representing What You Disagree With / Big Tech Exceptions appeared first on Consider This!.

Banned on Twitter

It seems that these days you can be sent to Facebook or Twitter “jail” for merely stating scientific facts or bedrock judicial principles. Or you could lose your job entirely. Who would do such a thing?

The enhanced unemployment benefits due to the COVID pandemic can have a downside that, in the long run, will hurt the workers it’s supposed to be protecting. But there is a better way, if Democrats can get on board.

Mentioned links:

Daunte Wright shooting: Brooklyn Center city manager fired after call for due process for police officer

Spanish politician temporarily suspended by Twitter after saying ‘a man cannot get pregnant’

What Did Congress Expect When It Made Unemployment Worth $15.45 an Hour?

Joe Biden’s $6 Trillion Budget Proposal Will Hike Spending, Keep Deficits Near Record Highs

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Show transcript

Back in April, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was killed when, after resisting arrest, he was shot by a police officer at the scene. Let me just catch you up on the details because in the era of the 12 hour news cycle, this story already has a bit of dust on it. He was initially pulled over because of his expired license plate, but when the cops ran his name it turned out he had an outstanding warrant for possessing a gun without a license in an encounter with police last June. Once they found that out, cops on the scene approached the car to arrest him. He initially complied but at one point got back in his car and attempted to escape. One of the cops, Kimberly Potter, pulled what she thought was her Taser and announced that. However, she had actually pulled her firearm and when she shot she killed him. She is currently charged with second degree manslaughter.

In a press conference, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott wanted Potter immediately relieved of duty, and noted that the city manager was the person who could make that determination. The city manager, Curt Boganey, came to the podium next and had the audacity to say that Potter would be given due process. “All employees working for the city of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline. This employee will receive due process and that’s really all that I can say today.” But by the end of that day, the City Council had had its say. In an emergency meeting they voted to fire Boganey and give the Mayor command authority over the Police Department. Because clearly we can’t be handing out due process to white police officers willy-nilly, and if you dare suggest that we do, well, you’ll pay with your job. Thanks to listener Barb for noting that angle when she emailed me.

Meanwhile in Spain, a politician was suspended from Twitter for 12 hours for speaking a biological truth. That’s right, yesterday you could get put into Twitter jail for voicings beliefs that have been part of Christianity for 2000 years, and today the same thing happens with straight up scientific facts. Francisco Contreras responded to an article where a transgender male claimed to be a father after giving birth to a baby girl by tweeting, “A man cannot get pregnant. A man has no womb or eggs.” Apparently this so shocked the Twitter Ministry of Truth that they slapped him with a warning shot across the bow, if I may do some metaphor mixing, for using hate speech or threatening language. In response, and on Facebook, he quipped, “You can see this is already fascist biology. Next time I’ll try 2 + 2 = 4.”

I’m old enough to remember (and I mean “old” literally, not facetiously) when the Left accused the Right of being the overly sensitive ones, wanting to ban books and censor opinions. Back in the 70s, the Right did want to, for example, ban Tom Sawyer for middle school use because of the use of the N-word. The Left appealed to free speech to keep the book, but some places ultimately did hold off use of it until high school. Different places had different rules, based on what the local community wanted. These days, people get fired for suggesting we stick to a bedrock idea of our judicial system. These days, people are kicked off major, global, communication networks, or major international booksellers’ websites, or refused service, for expressing indisputable biological truths. It is not the Right doing this anymore; it is the Left. And they have tools for shutting down speech that the Right could hardly dream of in the 1970s.

One of the arguments against a boost to unemployment benefits is that the extra money the government has been handing out during COVID, which has been extended until September, winds up paying people more to stay home than to work, and therefore unemployment will continue to be a problem and businesses will have difficulty finding people willing to take a pay cut for a job. The Left tends to want to handwave this away, but let’s look at the numbers.

The average unemployment benefit runs $318 per week. The benefits from COVID relief bill added another $300 per week. So take $618 and divided by the average 40 hours per week and you get…“Computer, what is 618 divided by 40?” An average of $15.45 per hour. For those who were making less than that, do you really think they’d take a pay cut until September to start working now? And even some making more than that may decide that they can do with the slight pay cut if it means not having to punch a clock.

The upshot, of course, is that small businesses can’t find people to work for them. This is another part of economics that the Left doesn’t (or won’t) get; people respond to incentives. If they can make $10 an hour carrying boxes back and forth on a loading dock, or $15.45 sitting at home, what do you think they’ll do? And now that we have COVID vaccines fully available, why have we extended this until September? This just gives those small businesses more time to close down due to lack of workers, and then when those workers finally start looking for jobs, they won’t be there.

The cynics among us would suggest that this is, in fact, the plan; artificially cause a recession, with businesses closed and high unemployment, in order to get people more dependent on the government. That dependence means more power for those in political office because if you are dependent, you will vote for the person or party that promises to give you more of what you want. As I said, it’s a rather cynical outlook, but we already see some of that playing out today. The April jobs report, which was expected to show an increase of 1 million jobs, picked up only 266,000, and this while coming out of a pandemic where the pent-up demand for jobs and goods was going to explode. If Joe […] Biden and his policies can’t even take advantage of a natural bounce, he just can’t handle it at all.

But there is some sanity on the horizon. Some folks who still do understand economics (often called “Republicans”) have been trying to rework these incentives. Instead of giving people these extra benefits every week, they want to instead make them akin to a signing bonus. Republican (there’s that term again) Senator Ben Sasse has introduced a bill to give someone their unemployment benefits as a lump sum once they start a job. Now that’s an incentive that will actually get Americans back to work. Of course, no Senate Democrat has publicly endorsed this so far, which shouldn’t be a big surprise. But this should show which party wants to help both the worker and the larger economy; it can be done.

And finally, you know how the phrase “tax and spend Democrat” has become something of a cliché? Well there’s a reason for that, and here comes the latest example. The budget proposal that the Biden administration sent to Congress was $6 trillion. Consider that previous budgets had only recently topped $4 trillion, you see why the cliché has had such a long and well-deserved run.

The post Episode 317: Censored for Stating the Obvious / COVID Unemployment Benefits Downside appeared first on Consider This!.