Posts for: dtucker300
Sep 26, 2023 17:37:49 #
(Main)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFgg8f6-dx4
A new law forces businesses with 15 employees or more to provide pregnant workers with special working conditions.
Sounds great!
"These policies...are motivated by good intentions,” says Vanessa Brown Calder from the CATO Institute. "But that doesn't mean that the consequences of these policies will turn out well.”
No, it doesn’t.
Calder—who is pregnant—fears this new law will lead to fewer women being hired.
My new video explains.
A new law forces businesses with 15 employees or more to provide pregnant workers with special working conditions.
Sounds great!
"These policies...are motivated by good intentions,” says Vanessa Brown Calder from the CATO Institute. "But that doesn't mean that the consequences of these policies will turn out well.”
No, it doesn’t.
Calder—who is pregnant—fears this new law will lead to fewer women being hired.
My new video explains.
Sep 26, 2023 01:41:53 #
(Main)
Is the Left Happy That They Got
September 25, 2023
Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
America has been in a veritable cultural revolution since the 1960s. Nearly all our major institutions finally became woke—the administrative state, traditional and social media, universities, K-12, the corporate boardroom, entertainment, professional sports, and the foundations.
So the Obama and the Biden administrations finally seemed to have achieved their aims, in what the Obamas once boasted would be the “fundamental t***sformation” of America into something unrecognizable by its Founders. But what they gave us was nihilism—the destruction of norms, laws, and customs. There is no border, no criminal justice system, no real president any more.
The citizen is a serf, the i*****l a***n the veritable citizen. The former needs a passport to reenter the country, the latter is waved on through. There is a slob in gym shorts and a hoodie establishing dress codes for the Senate, teen murderers bragging that they won’t spend a day in jail, and a would-be state legislator filming herself doing sexual gymnastics while begging for cash only to be upset over the invasion of her “privacy.” So the Left got what it wanted and gave us our new America.
The curious result, however, is that even the elite Left is now forced to live among, and cannot always escape, the ruination it created—and for the first time is becoming slightly unhappy with what it birthed.
Critical legal theory has now trickled down into most of our large cities. It insists that criminals are not criminals at all, but rather victims of prior racial and class oppressions. Thus their victims should blame society for their injuries, not their predatory victimizers. Critical legal theory is a sort of Marxist redistribution schema—the middle class almost deserves its equal share of violence commensurate with that of the inner city.
As a result, in Chicago and Oakland and hundreds of other cities, prosecutors let out criminals without bail or sometimes even indictments—in part out of spite and hatred of middle- and upper-middle-class America that supposedly deserves a payback for its bourgeois indifference, in part out of sheer ignorance of the unleashing of human nature once all deterrence is removed.
And the result?
Anxious liberal professionals are fleeing our major cities in the greatest out-of-state migrations since the 1930s. Or they simply avoid their own downtowns. Or sometimes they are reduced to putting placards in their parked cars begging criminals not to smash and l**t them, or, for the richer, hiring their own security guards, or using apps to warn others against deposits of urban human excrement on downtown sidewalks.
The Left, aside from their desire for new dependent constituents, felt borders were anachronistic constructs that unfairly denied the inherent and universal human right of the poor and oppressed to go anywhere they pleased, without legality or permission of their targeted hosts. So they erased the southern border. Some 7-8 million illegal entries followed since January 2021.
And the result?
African-Americans in Chicago are demonstrating against mass influxes of i*****l a***ns into their cities who bury entitlements and social services. The Left used to calls such protests “xenophobia.”
Leftwing New York Mayor Eric Adams has gone from calling those r****ts who opposed i*****l i*********n to becoming a veritable nativist. He is now screaming that i*****l a***ns are “destroying” his city, damning the Biden administration, and warning of bankruptcy. Adams too is unhappy that l*****ts like himself finally got what they wanted.
Progressives recalibrated a tiny sliver of the population—well less than 1 percent—experiencing historically documented biological “sexual dysphoria” and announced that t*********rism was now both commonplace and an existential civil rights crisis involving anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of American youth and up to 40 percent on college campuses that appeal to the elite leftwing rich kids.
The Left demanded official recognition of multiple g****rs, the green-lighting of b********l m**es competing in women’s sports, the mainstreaming of risqué d**g q***n shows often before audiences of minors, and the preemptive smearing of anyone who believed that sexuality is biologically determined rather than fluidly socially constructed.
And the result?
Corporate pile-ons and trendy t*********red advocacies have ruined Bud Light, once American’s premier beer brand. The once beloved but now woke and arrogant Disney Corporation is bleeding audiences, customers, and subscribers. Due to its provocative arrogance, Disney managed to become all but despised by half the nation. Ditto other woke major corporations from Target to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Parents—many of them doctrinaire liberals—of gifted female athletes whose careers are derailed by t*********r males, of teenage girls who must use locker rooms with b********l m**es, of small children who witness in-your-face d**g q***n exhibitions—now feel bushwhacked by their own prior advocacy.
The Left has waged a war on f****l f**ls for decades. But once in power it has cancelled critical pipelines, restricted federal oil and gas leases, hectored oil and gas lenders, shut down entire oil fields, and issued arbitrary deadlines when internal combustion engines are to be banned, and clean burning natural gas appliances to be phased out.
And the result of turning the nation “green”?
Gasoline prices spiked to all-time highs, hurting most the poor and minorities, the supposed political base of the Democratic Party. When e******ns near, only then does a panicked Left begin draining the strategic petroleum reserve, while begging illiberal regimes abroad to pump more oil that they we will not—in a desperate effort to lower gas and diesel prices, at least temporarily until e******ns are over.
Bicoastal wealthy elites lecture down to Americans about the existential crisis of “c*****e c****e” and the radical revolutions necessary to “t***sition” (a favorite, multipurpose woke word) to solar, wind, and battery power.
And the result? Those who can least afford high energy prices now pay over $5 a gallon for gas and more for diesel in our wealthiest coastal blue states—on the directive of their affluent utopian advocates.
Leftwing rich liberals for a half century have virtue signaled their support for affirmative action and de facto racial quotas. The unspoken presumption was that they would always have the wherewithal to navigate around such systemic discrimination to ensure their own still went to the “right” colleges and universities and onto prestigious jobs and positions.
But then the woke revolution redefined affirmative action as “reparatory” admissions and hiring. That radical expansion of racial quotas meant elite universities like Stanford and Princeton soon bragged in r****t fashion that they would only admit so-called w****s as 20-30 percent of their incoming classes, despite their traditional proportional representation of 65-70 percent of the general population.
Soon such progressive discriminatory policies meant that after athletes, so-called legacies, the children of faculty and administrators, and the offspring of multimillionaire donors were accommodated, the new tiny white quotas were completely exhausted—even for the anointed children of the bicoastal left.
High-paid suburban and progressive professionals whose privileged, and high achieving sons and daughters with 4.0-plus grade point averages and near perfect SAT scores, with an array of “community service” blue-ribbon resumés—were summarily rejected en mass from America’s most prestigious schools.
Prior SAT camps, prep schools, tutors, “extracurricular” enrichment summer excisions, and prestigious internships and apprenticeships went all for naught under the new r****m.
And the result of the war on meritocracy? Elite liberals were shocked, shocked!
Such reverse-discrimination had traditionally targeted solely the children of deplorables, irredeemables, and clingers, the meritocratic lower white working classes, who were usually preposterously written off as white privileged and s*********ts and thus usually summarily rejected. Yet the architects of affirmative action never dreamed that their Frankensteinian creation would devolve into a quota monster devouring its parent.
As far as the professors, who opportunistically applauded the new -studies therapeutic courses, the DEI-apparat, the reparatory admissions, as well as the end of SAT and ACT scores and of the comparative ranking of high-school GPAs?
For those who taught real disciplines—languages, traditional history and literature, science, math, and engineering—they faced three dilemmas under the new nonmeritocratic admissions: 1) inflate their grades, 2) reduce class requirements, or 3) maintain grading and course standards and thus be targeted by DEI commissars should their grading reveal a “systemic” pattern of “r****m.”
After spending their careers damning administrative “bloat,” and the siphoning of university resources from teaching to fund administrative fiefdoms, suddenly faculty were forced to agree that they needed thousands of DEI supervisors and commissars, who were even more superfluous but also far more intrusive into faculty autonomy than the old-boy functionaries of the past. The result? Is it now “All administrators are bad, but some are not as bad as others?”
These examples of liberal utopianism backfiring on its godfathers are becoming endless as the Jacobin revolution known as woke destroys meritocracy, the ancient laws of human nature, pragmatism, and common sense. Will the revolution then finally wither away once it continues to gulp down its own privileged woke sacred cows?
Perhaps, but perhaps not.
Woke is a religion, not an empirically based revolution. It requires blind faith and ideological zealotry that ignores data, smears apostates as blasphemers, and is fueled by a climate of fear as it uses public shaming, cancel culture, doxing, shadow banning, ostr****m, and career destruction to bulldoze ahead.
That it is now mowing down its originators may not matter much, even if for the short term the current boomeranging should be teaching l*****ts that their ideology is unworkable and ultimately destructive of civilization. History, after all, is replete with misguided zealots who even to the very first shot of their own firing squads still believed in the catastrophic cultural and political upheavals they had unleashed on others.
Partly woke continues, then, because its privileged creators still cling to the belief, “What I create for others, certainly will not apply to me and mine.” And when it does, as it is beginning to now, they stay long in denial and continue their woke advocacy because they still hope their progressive piety and fides will someday earn them heaven on earth.
September 25, 2023
Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
America has been in a veritable cultural revolution since the 1960s. Nearly all our major institutions finally became woke—the administrative state, traditional and social media, universities, K-12, the corporate boardroom, entertainment, professional sports, and the foundations.
So the Obama and the Biden administrations finally seemed to have achieved their aims, in what the Obamas once boasted would be the “fundamental t***sformation” of America into something unrecognizable by its Founders. But what they gave us was nihilism—the destruction of norms, laws, and customs. There is no border, no criminal justice system, no real president any more.
The citizen is a serf, the i*****l a***n the veritable citizen. The former needs a passport to reenter the country, the latter is waved on through. There is a slob in gym shorts and a hoodie establishing dress codes for the Senate, teen murderers bragging that they won’t spend a day in jail, and a would-be state legislator filming herself doing sexual gymnastics while begging for cash only to be upset over the invasion of her “privacy.” So the Left got what it wanted and gave us our new America.
The curious result, however, is that even the elite Left is now forced to live among, and cannot always escape, the ruination it created—and for the first time is becoming slightly unhappy with what it birthed.
Critical legal theory has now trickled down into most of our large cities. It insists that criminals are not criminals at all, but rather victims of prior racial and class oppressions. Thus their victims should blame society for their injuries, not their predatory victimizers. Critical legal theory is a sort of Marxist redistribution schema—the middle class almost deserves its equal share of violence commensurate with that of the inner city.
As a result, in Chicago and Oakland and hundreds of other cities, prosecutors let out criminals without bail or sometimes even indictments—in part out of spite and hatred of middle- and upper-middle-class America that supposedly deserves a payback for its bourgeois indifference, in part out of sheer ignorance of the unleashing of human nature once all deterrence is removed.
And the result?
Anxious liberal professionals are fleeing our major cities in the greatest out-of-state migrations since the 1930s. Or they simply avoid their own downtowns. Or sometimes they are reduced to putting placards in their parked cars begging criminals not to smash and l**t them, or, for the richer, hiring their own security guards, or using apps to warn others against deposits of urban human excrement on downtown sidewalks.
The Left, aside from their desire for new dependent constituents, felt borders were anachronistic constructs that unfairly denied the inherent and universal human right of the poor and oppressed to go anywhere they pleased, without legality or permission of their targeted hosts. So they erased the southern border. Some 7-8 million illegal entries followed since January 2021.
And the result?
African-Americans in Chicago are demonstrating against mass influxes of i*****l a***ns into their cities who bury entitlements and social services. The Left used to calls such protests “xenophobia.”
Leftwing New York Mayor Eric Adams has gone from calling those r****ts who opposed i*****l i*********n to becoming a veritable nativist. He is now screaming that i*****l a***ns are “destroying” his city, damning the Biden administration, and warning of bankruptcy. Adams too is unhappy that l*****ts like himself finally got what they wanted.
Progressives recalibrated a tiny sliver of the population—well less than 1 percent—experiencing historically documented biological “sexual dysphoria” and announced that t*********rism was now both commonplace and an existential civil rights crisis involving anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of American youth and up to 40 percent on college campuses that appeal to the elite leftwing rich kids.
The Left demanded official recognition of multiple g****rs, the green-lighting of b********l m**es competing in women’s sports, the mainstreaming of risqué d**g q***n shows often before audiences of minors, and the preemptive smearing of anyone who believed that sexuality is biologically determined rather than fluidly socially constructed.
And the result?
Corporate pile-ons and trendy t*********red advocacies have ruined Bud Light, once American’s premier beer brand. The once beloved but now woke and arrogant Disney Corporation is bleeding audiences, customers, and subscribers. Due to its provocative arrogance, Disney managed to become all but despised by half the nation. Ditto other woke major corporations from Target to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Parents—many of them doctrinaire liberals—of gifted female athletes whose careers are derailed by t*********r males, of teenage girls who must use locker rooms with b********l m**es, of small children who witness in-your-face d**g q***n exhibitions—now feel bushwhacked by their own prior advocacy.
The Left has waged a war on f****l f**ls for decades. But once in power it has cancelled critical pipelines, restricted federal oil and gas leases, hectored oil and gas lenders, shut down entire oil fields, and issued arbitrary deadlines when internal combustion engines are to be banned, and clean burning natural gas appliances to be phased out.
And the result of turning the nation “green”?
Gasoline prices spiked to all-time highs, hurting most the poor and minorities, the supposed political base of the Democratic Party. When e******ns near, only then does a panicked Left begin draining the strategic petroleum reserve, while begging illiberal regimes abroad to pump more oil that they we will not—in a desperate effort to lower gas and diesel prices, at least temporarily until e******ns are over.
Bicoastal wealthy elites lecture down to Americans about the existential crisis of “c*****e c****e” and the radical revolutions necessary to “t***sition” (a favorite, multipurpose woke word) to solar, wind, and battery power.
And the result? Those who can least afford high energy prices now pay over $5 a gallon for gas and more for diesel in our wealthiest coastal blue states—on the directive of their affluent utopian advocates.
Leftwing rich liberals for a half century have virtue signaled their support for affirmative action and de facto racial quotas. The unspoken presumption was that they would always have the wherewithal to navigate around such systemic discrimination to ensure their own still went to the “right” colleges and universities and onto prestigious jobs and positions.
But then the woke revolution redefined affirmative action as “reparatory” admissions and hiring. That radical expansion of racial quotas meant elite universities like Stanford and Princeton soon bragged in r****t fashion that they would only admit so-called w****s as 20-30 percent of their incoming classes, despite their traditional proportional representation of 65-70 percent of the general population.
Soon such progressive discriminatory policies meant that after athletes, so-called legacies, the children of faculty and administrators, and the offspring of multimillionaire donors were accommodated, the new tiny white quotas were completely exhausted—even for the anointed children of the bicoastal left.
High-paid suburban and progressive professionals whose privileged, and high achieving sons and daughters with 4.0-plus grade point averages and near perfect SAT scores, with an array of “community service” blue-ribbon resumés—were summarily rejected en mass from America’s most prestigious schools.
Prior SAT camps, prep schools, tutors, “extracurricular” enrichment summer excisions, and prestigious internships and apprenticeships went all for naught under the new r****m.
And the result of the war on meritocracy? Elite liberals were shocked, shocked!
Such reverse-discrimination had traditionally targeted solely the children of deplorables, irredeemables, and clingers, the meritocratic lower white working classes, who were usually preposterously written off as white privileged and s*********ts and thus usually summarily rejected. Yet the architects of affirmative action never dreamed that their Frankensteinian creation would devolve into a quota monster devouring its parent.
As far as the professors, who opportunistically applauded the new -studies therapeutic courses, the DEI-apparat, the reparatory admissions, as well as the end of SAT and ACT scores and of the comparative ranking of high-school GPAs?
For those who taught real disciplines—languages, traditional history and literature, science, math, and engineering—they faced three dilemmas under the new nonmeritocratic admissions: 1) inflate their grades, 2) reduce class requirements, or 3) maintain grading and course standards and thus be targeted by DEI commissars should their grading reveal a “systemic” pattern of “r****m.”
After spending their careers damning administrative “bloat,” and the siphoning of university resources from teaching to fund administrative fiefdoms, suddenly faculty were forced to agree that they needed thousands of DEI supervisors and commissars, who were even more superfluous but also far more intrusive into faculty autonomy than the old-boy functionaries of the past. The result? Is it now “All administrators are bad, but some are not as bad as others?”
These examples of liberal utopianism backfiring on its godfathers are becoming endless as the Jacobin revolution known as woke destroys meritocracy, the ancient laws of human nature, pragmatism, and common sense. Will the revolution then finally wither away once it continues to gulp down its own privileged woke sacred cows?
Perhaps, but perhaps not.
Woke is a religion, not an empirically based revolution. It requires blind faith and ideological zealotry that ignores data, smears apostates as blasphemers, and is fueled by a climate of fear as it uses public shaming, cancel culture, doxing, shadow banning, ostr****m, and career destruction to bulldoze ahead.
That it is now mowing down its originators may not matter much, even if for the short term the current boomeranging should be teaching l*****ts that their ideology is unworkable and ultimately destructive of civilization. History, after all, is replete with misguided zealots who even to the very first shot of their own firing squads still believed in the catastrophic cultural and political upheavals they had unleashed on others.
Partly woke continues, then, because its privileged creators still cling to the belief, “What I create for others, certainly will not apply to me and mine.” And when it does, as it is beginning to now, they stay long in denial and continue their woke advocacy because they still hope their progressive piety and fides will someday earn them heaven on earth.
Sep 22, 2023 01:04:32 #
(Main)
albertk wrote:
Happy Birthday dtucker300! Many more.
Happy Birthday dtucker300! Many more.
Thank you! Happy autumnal equinox.
Sep 22, 2023 00:38:48 #
(Main)
Senators Dressing Like Clowns Is Just More Evidence Of American Decline
BY: CLINT BROWN
SEPTEMBER 21, 2023
5 MIN READ
Rather than leaders with high standards inspiring us to be our best, we have appointed leaders with no standards.
Axios reported on Sunday that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer directed the Senate sergeant at arms to no longer enforce the Senate’s dress code for senators, but not their staff, starting this week. Up to this point, senators were expected to wear business attire, meaning a coat and tie for men.
Granted, the dress code has been updated in the past. According to Axios, Sen. Amy Klobuchar petitioned her upper-chamber colleagues to make some changes to the dress code for women, which Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has fully embraced by regularly going sleeveless. But, until now, the male senators did not have the equal right to show off their guns.
There are several ways to interpret the new change.
Some would argue that this is small-ball. Enforcing a dress code should be the least of our worries when, amongst other problems, the border is wide open, the political opposition is being persecuted by the regime, and we’re staring down the barrel of a fiscal crisis like no other. In other words, Rome is burning and we’re talking about what clothes to wear to work.
Others would suggest that we get the leaders we deserve. If senators want to show up in basketball shorts and hoodies, as is the uniform of Sen. John Fetterman, let the people see how unrespectable they are. The system itself is no longer worthy of respect, and its appearance should reflect that. If senators want to wear clown clothes, all the better.
Of course, we must acknowledge that such a casual dress code is not ideal, but it’s certainly a silver lining when the people wake up and see that the emperor has no clothes. Perhaps v**ers will see what’s what and demand a course change.
Regardless of one’s feelings about the rule change, it is worth pointing out that not enforcing the dress code reflects several serious problems in American life. The first is our elite’s full embrace of post-modern Marxist ideology and Gramscian strategy, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
For those unfamiliar, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was an Italian Marxist widely credited as influential in the development of critical theory. In what is perhaps his most famous contribution to Marxist thought, Gramsci wrote about cultural hegemony, which posits that the dominant class uses the institutions of civil society to propagate its worldview, making it seem normal or common sense to the rest of society.
While the Senate is an institution of government, and not necessarily civil society, a Gramscian might argue that formal business attire is a tool of cultural hegemony meant to oppress. Critical theorists have made such arguments about professional dress before.
See, for example, this article in the St. Johns Law Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development: “When Your Identity Is Inherently ‘Unprofessional’: Navigating Rules of Professional Appearance Rooted in Cisheteronomative Whiteness as Black Women and G****r Non-Conforming Professionals.” According to this radical worldview, the lack of a professional attire requirement in the highly traditional U.S. Senate is good because it undermines the norm of the “dominant class” that our leaders should be held to higher standards.
Of course, it’s common sense that senators should respect their constituents enough to represent them well, putting their best foot forward. That’s precisely why this change, while subtle, is important: it institutes a new standard. It says senators don’t need to be bothered with professional standards and expectations. After all, it’s not as if they’re accountable to the people. Gramsci would be proud.
Even if you don’t like the current regime — in the broadest sense — you should still want your senators to carry out their duties with more, rather than less, respect for their constituents and themselves. Indeed, it could be argued that the primary problem with Congress is a lack of respect for the American people. This small change will serve to further that lack of respect.
A second, but no less important reason that this change is a problem is that it is emblematic of our society’s push against high standards.
While most senators won’t dress unprofessionally now, if this lack of enforcement remains, standards for dress in the upper chamber will likely decline over time. A few rebels will run in from the gym for a v**e dressed in athletic wear. Before long, jeans with a jacket will become the norm.
Perhaps a new generation of “hip” senators will wear Jordans with their suits. It’s a slippery slope to tech-bro hoodies and cargo shorts. If you think the system is bad now, imagine being ruled by a cargo-shorts Congress. No, thanks.
This slippery slope is what happens when our leaders lower or remove standards. Civilization is governed by standards that everyone is expected to uphold. If there are no standards, civilization will soon cease to exist. That is to say, with this new rule, we lose a bit of what made our civilization great.
Our society is already experiencing this erosion. Today, we have eliminated and lowered reasonable standards to accommodate those who can’t or won’t uphold them, while declaring such people victims. In doing so, we allow those who won’t meet the standards to not only determine what the standard is for everyone else, but we also elevate them to be our standard bearers. In other words, we make them our rulers.
Whether senators continue to wear suits or all start to dress like clowns, this new change is emblematic of the way our society now functions. Rather than leaders with high standards inspiring us to be our best, we have appointed leaders with no standards. It is no wonder that the bare minimum has become the expectation. It’s everywhere: higher ed, the military, business, the criminal justice system, just to name a few.
At the end of the day, the Senate dress code change is just one more example of the decline of American greatness.
BY: CLINT BROWN
SEPTEMBER 21, 2023
5 MIN READ
Rather than leaders with high standards inspiring us to be our best, we have appointed leaders with no standards.
Axios reported on Sunday that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer directed the Senate sergeant at arms to no longer enforce the Senate’s dress code for senators, but not their staff, starting this week. Up to this point, senators were expected to wear business attire, meaning a coat and tie for men.
Granted, the dress code has been updated in the past. According to Axios, Sen. Amy Klobuchar petitioned her upper-chamber colleagues to make some changes to the dress code for women, which Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has fully embraced by regularly going sleeveless. But, until now, the male senators did not have the equal right to show off their guns.
There are several ways to interpret the new change.
Some would argue that this is small-ball. Enforcing a dress code should be the least of our worries when, amongst other problems, the border is wide open, the political opposition is being persecuted by the regime, and we’re staring down the barrel of a fiscal crisis like no other. In other words, Rome is burning and we’re talking about what clothes to wear to work.
Others would suggest that we get the leaders we deserve. If senators want to show up in basketball shorts and hoodies, as is the uniform of Sen. John Fetterman, let the people see how unrespectable they are. The system itself is no longer worthy of respect, and its appearance should reflect that. If senators want to wear clown clothes, all the better.
Of course, we must acknowledge that such a casual dress code is not ideal, but it’s certainly a silver lining when the people wake up and see that the emperor has no clothes. Perhaps v**ers will see what’s what and demand a course change.
Regardless of one’s feelings about the rule change, it is worth pointing out that not enforcing the dress code reflects several serious problems in American life. The first is our elite’s full embrace of post-modern Marxist ideology and Gramscian strategy, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
For those unfamiliar, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was an Italian Marxist widely credited as influential in the development of critical theory. In what is perhaps his most famous contribution to Marxist thought, Gramsci wrote about cultural hegemony, which posits that the dominant class uses the institutions of civil society to propagate its worldview, making it seem normal or common sense to the rest of society.
While the Senate is an institution of government, and not necessarily civil society, a Gramscian might argue that formal business attire is a tool of cultural hegemony meant to oppress. Critical theorists have made such arguments about professional dress before.
See, for example, this article in the St. Johns Law Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development: “When Your Identity Is Inherently ‘Unprofessional’: Navigating Rules of Professional Appearance Rooted in Cisheteronomative Whiteness as Black Women and G****r Non-Conforming Professionals.” According to this radical worldview, the lack of a professional attire requirement in the highly traditional U.S. Senate is good because it undermines the norm of the “dominant class” that our leaders should be held to higher standards.
Of course, it’s common sense that senators should respect their constituents enough to represent them well, putting their best foot forward. That’s precisely why this change, while subtle, is important: it institutes a new standard. It says senators don’t need to be bothered with professional standards and expectations. After all, it’s not as if they’re accountable to the people. Gramsci would be proud.
Even if you don’t like the current regime — in the broadest sense — you should still want your senators to carry out their duties with more, rather than less, respect for their constituents and themselves. Indeed, it could be argued that the primary problem with Congress is a lack of respect for the American people. This small change will serve to further that lack of respect.
A second, but no less important reason that this change is a problem is that it is emblematic of our society’s push against high standards.
While most senators won’t dress unprofessionally now, if this lack of enforcement remains, standards for dress in the upper chamber will likely decline over time. A few rebels will run in from the gym for a v**e dressed in athletic wear. Before long, jeans with a jacket will become the norm.
Perhaps a new generation of “hip” senators will wear Jordans with their suits. It’s a slippery slope to tech-bro hoodies and cargo shorts. If you think the system is bad now, imagine being ruled by a cargo-shorts Congress. No, thanks.
This slippery slope is what happens when our leaders lower or remove standards. Civilization is governed by standards that everyone is expected to uphold. If there are no standards, civilization will soon cease to exist. That is to say, with this new rule, we lose a bit of what made our civilization great.
Our society is already experiencing this erosion. Today, we have eliminated and lowered reasonable standards to accommodate those who can’t or won’t uphold them, while declaring such people victims. In doing so, we allow those who won’t meet the standards to not only determine what the standard is for everyone else, but we also elevate them to be our standard bearers. In other words, we make them our rulers.
Whether senators continue to wear suits or all start to dress like clowns, this new change is emblematic of the way our society now functions. Rather than leaders with high standards inspiring us to be our best, we have appointed leaders with no standards. It is no wonder that the bare minimum has become the expectation. It’s everywhere: higher ed, the military, business, the criminal justice system, just to name a few.
At the end of the day, the Senate dress code change is just one more example of the decline of American greatness.
Sep 22, 2023 00:28:20 #
(Main)
Yeah, right.
Time is limited before the next e******n cycle. We need e******n reforms that include requiring v**er IDs, cleaning up inaccurate v**er rolls, and ending the practice of illegal b****t harvesting—all while raising awareness of the existence of v***r f***d.
Check out this “E******n F***d Database”! https://www.heritage.org/v**erfraud?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=v**erfraud&utm_content=030623_THF_Auto&mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGOV8CpOG4DnZfdShpMjOrs0LB9MdbspSCRrPyts_QbuaRKMyMDujdPXsCh8ajFyJNDTGz0mu3JIJoP4cVS8EWJo_Qeau0qgHK8FwqoowORV2C-3g
This resource presents a sampling of recent proven instances of v***r f***d across the country. Each one ended in a finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an e******n. And in some cases, that resulted in an e******n where the results were in question and had to be overturned.
I’m sure you’ll find it to be an eye-opening resource. You can search the database, view instances by state, print out our findings, and even report cases of v***r f***d yourself.
Time is limited before the next e******n cycle. We need e******n reforms that include requiring v**er IDs, cleaning up inaccurate v**er rolls, and ending the practice of illegal b****t harvesting—all while raising awareness of the existence of v***r f***d.
Check out this “E******n F***d Database”! https://www.heritage.org/v**erfraud?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=v**erfraud&utm_content=030623_THF_Auto&mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGOV8CpOG4DnZfdShpMjOrs0LB9MdbspSCRrPyts_QbuaRKMyMDujdPXsCh8ajFyJNDTGz0mu3JIJoP4cVS8EWJo_Qeau0qgHK8FwqoowORV2C-3g
This resource presents a sampling of recent proven instances of v***r f***d across the country. Each one ended in a finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an e******n. And in some cases, that resulted in an e******n where the results were in question and had to be overturned.
I’m sure you’ll find it to be an eye-opening resource. You can search the database, view instances by state, print out our findings, and even report cases of v***r f***d yourself.
Sep 22, 2023 00:21:46 #
Sep 21, 2023 15:06:39 #
If You See a Coin on a Gravestone, This Is What It Means
Madison Zoey Vettorino
Updated: Sep. 21, 2023
Discover why visitors leave coins on certain gravestones and what it symbolizes.
Ever visited a cemetery and noticed a splattering of items left on gravestones? From coins to flowers to stones, there’s a sentiment behind why visitors leave certain pieces. And if you’ve ever noticed coins in particular on a headstone, you might be curious why. As it turns out, this act of remembrance is intended to honor individuals who served this country through military service.
What does it mean when there are coins on a gravestone?
When you see coins on a gravestone, this signifies that the person buried there was a member of the military. Similar to gold stars on license plates, these coins are a meaningful way for people to convey their p***e in a loved one who is no longer with them. People who visit the deceased service member can leave a coin on the headstone so when loved ones come to the cemetery, they’re aware that others have been to pay their respects, too. This moving sentiment can make a tremendous impact on the family of deceased military folks, which is why it’s a special tradition.
It’s also important to take note of the type of coin on the stone. For instance, different coins hold different meanings.
What do individual coins on a gravestone mean?
Old Tradition Of Various American Coins Lying On Gravestone As Sign Of Respect
CHRIS LAUER/GETTY IMAGES
As you may have guessed, the different coins have different associations. If you notice a quarter on a headstone, for instance, the past visitor is trying to convey something different than if they’d left a penny. Let’s walk through what the individual coin types mean.
If you notice a penny on a gravestone, this signifies that a person has visited the headstone. It’s an act of gratitude for the person’s service. Anyone can leave a penny, whether they are a family member, friend or fellow service person.
If there is a nickel on the gravestone, this means that the visitor who left it went to boot camp with the person buried.
Next, if you see a dime on their gravestone, that signifies that the visitor served with the deceased military member.
Seeing a quarter has a particularly heavy association. If you notice a quarter, this signifies that a previous visitor was present when the soldier passed away.
Now that you understand what each coin means when you see it, you’ll have a better idea of what it means when you see this emotional item left behind at a gravestone. And more importantly, you’ll know the proper way to leave a coin.
Madison Zoey Vettorino
Updated: Sep. 21, 2023
Discover why visitors leave coins on certain gravestones and what it symbolizes.
Ever visited a cemetery and noticed a splattering of items left on gravestones? From coins to flowers to stones, there’s a sentiment behind why visitors leave certain pieces. And if you’ve ever noticed coins in particular on a headstone, you might be curious why. As it turns out, this act of remembrance is intended to honor individuals who served this country through military service.
What does it mean when there are coins on a gravestone?
When you see coins on a gravestone, this signifies that the person buried there was a member of the military. Similar to gold stars on license plates, these coins are a meaningful way for people to convey their p***e in a loved one who is no longer with them. People who visit the deceased service member can leave a coin on the headstone so when loved ones come to the cemetery, they’re aware that others have been to pay their respects, too. This moving sentiment can make a tremendous impact on the family of deceased military folks, which is why it’s a special tradition.
It’s also important to take note of the type of coin on the stone. For instance, different coins hold different meanings.
What do individual coins on a gravestone mean?
Old Tradition Of Various American Coins Lying On Gravestone As Sign Of Respect
CHRIS LAUER/GETTY IMAGES
As you may have guessed, the different coins have different associations. If you notice a quarter on a headstone, for instance, the past visitor is trying to convey something different than if they’d left a penny. Let’s walk through what the individual coin types mean.
If you notice a penny on a gravestone, this signifies that a person has visited the headstone. It’s an act of gratitude for the person’s service. Anyone can leave a penny, whether they are a family member, friend or fellow service person.
If there is a nickel on the gravestone, this means that the visitor who left it went to boot camp with the person buried.
Next, if you see a dime on their gravestone, that signifies that the visitor served with the deceased military member.
Seeing a quarter has a particularly heavy association. If you notice a quarter, this signifies that a previous visitor was present when the soldier passed away.
Now that you understand what each coin means when you see it, you’ll have a better idea of what it means when you see this emotional item left behind at a gravestone. And more importantly, you’ll know the proper way to leave a coin.
Sep 21, 2023 10:09:25 #
(Main)
Not if, but when.
https://www.newsweek.com/xi-jinping-preparing-china-war-opinion-1819587
Xi Jinping Is Preparing China for War
GORDON G. CHANG , AUTHOR, COMMENTATOR
ON 8/14/23 AT 11:26 AM EDT
In unprecedented moves, Chinese ruler Xi Jinping replaced the senior leadership of China's Rocket Force, which is responsible for almost all of China's 400 or so nuclear warheads. These personnel changes are part of what is almost certainly the most ominous development of this time. It looks like Xi is contemplating using or at least threatening to use his most destructive weapons. In other words, China is planning to go to war.
Xi sacked Rocket Force commander, Li Yuchao, and its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo. Neither has been seen in public since. Li's deputy, Liu Guangbin, has also disappeared, along with Zhang Zhenzhong, a former deputy. At about the same time, Wu Guohua, deputy commander of the Rocket Force, reportedly took his own life in early July.
Periodically there have been suicides of senior Chinese military officers, but the simultaneous removal of the top two officers of the Rocket Force is unprecedented. Also unprecedented are the replacements coming from other branches. The new Rocket Force commander, Wang Houbin, is from the Chinese navy, and the new commissar, Xu Xisheng, moved over from the country's air force.
American observers seem to believe that the sweeping purge was designed to target widespread corruption in the senior ranks of the People's Liberation Army. Chris Buckley of the New York Times, for example, called the personnel changes "an unexplained shake-up that suggests suspicions of graft or other misconduct."
Yet, this explanation is partial at best. "Almost all the senior generals had good reputations before their promotion," said a well-placed source speaking anonymously to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. Indeed, while the PLA's senior officer corps is known to be thoroughly corrupt, Xi Jinping has during his decade-long rule generally tolerated corruption among supporters.
It's less likely that corruption was the reason behind the purge in the Rocket Force upheaval than a convenient excuse. The more likely explanation for the purge lies elsewhere: From the beginning of this year, Xi Jinping has been purging the military of officers opposed to going to war—because he's preparing for one.
Xi Jinping these days often talks about war, and his regime is fast preparing for one. The C*******t Party is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War. It's simultaneously trying to sanctions-proof the country, stockpile grain and other commodities, survey America for strikes and sabotage, and mobilize China's civilians for battle. The military indoctrination of children begins during the first years of school.
And why would Xi Jinping opt for going into battle? China is failing fast, and Xi is being blamed. His Maoist-inspired policies, which favor state enterprises over private and foreign businesses, are making severe problems even worse. Especially troubling is Xi relentless cutting of China's links with other countries.
"China is in trouble," said Biden correctly last week at a political event in Utah. Xi's only way out is to rally the Chinese people with an external crisis.
Chinese doctrine is to threaten the use of nuclear weapons to prevent the United States and others from coming to the aid of Taiwan or other targets. During Xi's rule, Beijing has periodically made unprovoked threats to k**l Americans by the hundreds of millions and, beginning in 2021, Japanese and Australians as well. Moreover, China has also warned it will nuke Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing considers its 34th province.
In short, Xi needs obedient Rocket Force officers to execute orders to launch nuclear weapons, especially if the initial stages of a war do not go well for Chinese attackers. As Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told me, "At a time when Xi is preparing for war, his changes in the PLA high command reflect his demand for senior officers who will obey war commands."
That so many have been purged reflects disobedience in the ranks expressed as a reluctance to go to war. The regime handed down a death sentence this year to former Air Force General Liu Yazhou due to his continued opposition to an invasion of Taiwan, and he is not alone. "The image that Xi Jinping is firmly in command of the C*******t Party is belied by increasing evidence of instability in the ranks of China's military leadership," said Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute. "The extraordinary purge of both the commander and political commissar of the Rocket Force suggests there is serious discontent within China's military with Xi Jinping."
Burton, a former Canadian diplomat posted in Beijing, points to Xi's failing domestic and foreign policies, especially the "cratering economy." "They have got some problems," said President Joe Biden about China earlier this month. "That's not good, because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things."
Bad things like starting wars.
It is not clear that Xi has succeeded in taming the People's Liberation Army. "Whether the Chinese military will remain loyal to Xi if he orders an invasion of Taiwan, which could well fail disastrously for China, is now very much in question," says Burton.
There is, however, one thing we know: China is "a ticking time bomb," as Biden said. And now the world has to wonder whether that device is a nuke.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.
https://www.newsweek.com/xi-jinping-preparing-china-war-opinion-1819587
Xi Jinping Is Preparing China for War
GORDON G. CHANG , AUTHOR, COMMENTATOR
ON 8/14/23 AT 11:26 AM EDT
In unprecedented moves, Chinese ruler Xi Jinping replaced the senior leadership of China's Rocket Force, which is responsible for almost all of China's 400 or so nuclear warheads. These personnel changes are part of what is almost certainly the most ominous development of this time. It looks like Xi is contemplating using or at least threatening to use his most destructive weapons. In other words, China is planning to go to war.
Xi sacked Rocket Force commander, Li Yuchao, and its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo. Neither has been seen in public since. Li's deputy, Liu Guangbin, has also disappeared, along with Zhang Zhenzhong, a former deputy. At about the same time, Wu Guohua, deputy commander of the Rocket Force, reportedly took his own life in early July.
Periodically there have been suicides of senior Chinese military officers, but the simultaneous removal of the top two officers of the Rocket Force is unprecedented. Also unprecedented are the replacements coming from other branches. The new Rocket Force commander, Wang Houbin, is from the Chinese navy, and the new commissar, Xu Xisheng, moved over from the country's air force.
American observers seem to believe that the sweeping purge was designed to target widespread corruption in the senior ranks of the People's Liberation Army. Chris Buckley of the New York Times, for example, called the personnel changes "an unexplained shake-up that suggests suspicions of graft or other misconduct."
Yet, this explanation is partial at best. "Almost all the senior generals had good reputations before their promotion," said a well-placed source speaking anonymously to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. Indeed, while the PLA's senior officer corps is known to be thoroughly corrupt, Xi Jinping has during his decade-long rule generally tolerated corruption among supporters.
It's less likely that corruption was the reason behind the purge in the Rocket Force upheaval than a convenient excuse. The more likely explanation for the purge lies elsewhere: From the beginning of this year, Xi Jinping has been purging the military of officers opposed to going to war—because he's preparing for one.
Xi Jinping these days often talks about war, and his regime is fast preparing for one. The C*******t Party is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War. It's simultaneously trying to sanctions-proof the country, stockpile grain and other commodities, survey America for strikes and sabotage, and mobilize China's civilians for battle. The military indoctrination of children begins during the first years of school.
And why would Xi Jinping opt for going into battle? China is failing fast, and Xi is being blamed. His Maoist-inspired policies, which favor state enterprises over private and foreign businesses, are making severe problems even worse. Especially troubling is Xi relentless cutting of China's links with other countries.
"China is in trouble," said Biden correctly last week at a political event in Utah. Xi's only way out is to rally the Chinese people with an external crisis.
Chinese doctrine is to threaten the use of nuclear weapons to prevent the United States and others from coming to the aid of Taiwan or other targets. During Xi's rule, Beijing has periodically made unprovoked threats to k**l Americans by the hundreds of millions and, beginning in 2021, Japanese and Australians as well. Moreover, China has also warned it will nuke Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing considers its 34th province.
In short, Xi needs obedient Rocket Force officers to execute orders to launch nuclear weapons, especially if the initial stages of a war do not go well for Chinese attackers. As Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told me, "At a time when Xi is preparing for war, his changes in the PLA high command reflect his demand for senior officers who will obey war commands."
That so many have been purged reflects disobedience in the ranks expressed as a reluctance to go to war. The regime handed down a death sentence this year to former Air Force General Liu Yazhou due to his continued opposition to an invasion of Taiwan, and he is not alone. "The image that Xi Jinping is firmly in command of the C*******t Party is belied by increasing evidence of instability in the ranks of China's military leadership," said Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute. "The extraordinary purge of both the commander and political commissar of the Rocket Force suggests there is serious discontent within China's military with Xi Jinping."
Burton, a former Canadian diplomat posted in Beijing, points to Xi's failing domestic and foreign policies, especially the "cratering economy." "They have got some problems," said President Joe Biden about China earlier this month. "That's not good, because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things."
Bad things like starting wars.
It is not clear that Xi has succeeded in taming the People's Liberation Army. "Whether the Chinese military will remain loyal to Xi if he orders an invasion of Taiwan, which could well fail disastrously for China, is now very much in question," says Burton.
There is, however, one thing we know: China is "a ticking time bomb," as Biden said. And now the world has to wonder whether that device is a nuke.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.
Sep 21, 2023 10:02:38 #
(Main)
Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border
September 21, 2023
Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.
The more the border vanished, the more federal i*********n l*w was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.
But how and why did the Biden administration destroy i*********n l*w as we knew it?
The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020.
Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.
The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected.
Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased.
Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down.
New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals.
No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of i*********n l*w.
However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their i*****l i*******ts northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.
The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted i*****l i*********n into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others.
New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen i*****l i*******ts bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city.
But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history?
The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.
They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical a******n, racial, t*********r, crime, and green fixations.
Democratic grandees had always bragged that i*****l i*********n would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “r****ts” who object to leftwing efforts to use i*****l i*********n to turn southwestern red states blue.
Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many i*****l i*******ts rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.
Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and r****m.
The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship f******l northward, earn billions in profits—and k**l nearly 100,000 Americans a year. I*****l i*******ts pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.
Do not forget American corporate employers. Record labor nonparticipation followed the C***d lockdown. In reaction to the dearth of American workers, the hospitality, meat packing, social service, health-care, and farming industries were desperate to hire new—and far cheaper—labor.
Human rights activists insist that the borders themselves are nineteenth-century relics. And the global poor and oppressed thus have a human right to enter the affluent West by any means necessary.
Many in the tony suburbs and in universities do not live anywhere near the border. So they pontificate on the assurance that thousands of unaudited i*****l i*******ts will never enter their own enclaves or campuses.
The result is elite bottled piety—but not firsthand experience with the natural consequences of millions chaotically fleeing one of the poorest countries in the world to pour into the wealthiest. Without background checks, v******tions and health audits, legality, high-school diplomas, English-facility, sk**l sets, or capital, the result is an abject catastrophe.
Polls continue to show that the American people support measured, diverse, legal, and meritocratic immigration as much as they oppose mass i*****l i*********n into their country and the subsequent loss of American sovereignty on the border.
They understand what the Biden administration does not: no nation is history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.
Ending i*****l i*********n now depends solely on the American people overriding the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery.
September 21, 2023
Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.
The more the border vanished, the more federal i*********n l*w was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.
But how and why did the Biden administration destroy i*********n l*w as we knew it?
The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020.
Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.
The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected.
Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased.
Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down.
New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals.
No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of i*********n l*w.
However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their i*****l i*******ts northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.
The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted i*****l i*********n into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others.
New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen i*****l i*******ts bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city.
But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history?
The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.
They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical a******n, racial, t*********r, crime, and green fixations.
Democratic grandees had always bragged that i*****l i*********n would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “r****ts” who object to leftwing efforts to use i*****l i*********n to turn southwestern red states blue.
Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many i*****l i*******ts rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.
Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and r****m.
The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship f******l northward, earn billions in profits—and k**l nearly 100,000 Americans a year. I*****l i*******ts pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.
Do not forget American corporate employers. Record labor nonparticipation followed the C***d lockdown. In reaction to the dearth of American workers, the hospitality, meat packing, social service, health-care, and farming industries were desperate to hire new—and far cheaper—labor.
Human rights activists insist that the borders themselves are nineteenth-century relics. And the global poor and oppressed thus have a human right to enter the affluent West by any means necessary.
Many in the tony suburbs and in universities do not live anywhere near the border. So they pontificate on the assurance that thousands of unaudited i*****l i*******ts will never enter their own enclaves or campuses.
The result is elite bottled piety—but not firsthand experience with the natural consequences of millions chaotically fleeing one of the poorest countries in the world to pour into the wealthiest. Without background checks, v******tions and health audits, legality, high-school diplomas, English-facility, sk**l sets, or capital, the result is an abject catastrophe.
Polls continue to show that the American people support measured, diverse, legal, and meritocratic immigration as much as they oppose mass i*****l i*********n into their country and the subsequent loss of American sovereignty on the border.
They understand what the Biden administration does not: no nation is history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.
Ending i*****l i*********n now depends solely on the American people overriding the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery.
Sep 20, 2023 14:54:50 #
(Main)
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
Biden Lays A Booby Trap For A Republican President
Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden walking and laughing
The Biden administration is setting a booby trap in case a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.
On Friday, the White House unveiled a proposed rule that would make it even harder than in the past for an incoming Republican president to wrestle control of the left-leaning federal bureaucracy and actually implement the conservative policies promised to v**ers.
Of the 2.2 million federal civil workers, only 4,000 are p**********l appointees. The rest stay in their jobs, from one administration to the next, protected by rules that make it nearly impossible to discipline or replace them.
They overwhelmingly favor the Left. A staggering 95% of unionized federal employees who donate to political candidates give to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Only a tiny 5% support Republicans.
Some federal workers in high positions slow-walk or even derail a Republican president’s agenda — and get away with it.
Why bother to v**e if the left-leaning deep state stays in charge no matter who wins the presidency?
GOP candidates Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis are vowing to conquer this obstructionism.
Everett Kelley, union president of the American Federation of Government Employees, claims GOP contenders want to “politicize routine government work.” Nonsense. We’re not talking about mail carriers. It’s time to make lawyers, PhDs and other top-level career bureaucrats implement the president’s agenda, not their own.
After T***p w*n in 2016, they went to town neutralizing him on almost every policy front, explains James Sherk, special assistant to the White House Domestic Policy Council under Trump.
Career lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division flat out refused to challenge Yale University’s discrimination against Asian American applicants. Trump had to recruit lawyers from other divisions. After Joe Biden became president, the DOJ dropped the case. But the same career lawyers who refused to sue Yale made the losing argument in support of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Career health officials like Dr. Deborah Birx circumvented Trump’s instructions to moderate C***D lockdowns. Environmental Protection Agency lawyers pursued cases against f****l f**l producers and withheld the information from Trump appointees.
Trump mandated in a 2020 executive order that new federal buildings be designed to please the public, which prefers classical designs. Instead, General Services Administration architects chose modern designs they like. Trump mentioned as an example the San Francisco Federal Building, the ugliest edifice in the city.
It goes on, including weaponization of the FBI against the president himself.
In October 2020, Trump issued an executive order that federal workers who make policy should be reclassified as at-will employees who can be terminated.
But before it could be implemented, Biden became president. He canceled it immediately, knowing the bureaucrats were on his side.
The rule announced Friday would slow a president’s ability to reinstate Trump’s order. Democrats in Congress are going further, pushing to eliminate the president’s authority to reclassify jobs altogether.
The New York Times announced, “Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force.”
Ramaswamy vows to go further than Trump, eliminating half or more of civil service positions. “Speaking as a CEO, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, they don’t work for you,” he said in a speech on Sept. 12.
New York Magazine facetiously claims holding employees accountable is a threat to good government, and warns that a Republican victory will mean “a new class of federal appointees charged with a partisan agenda.”
Democrats and their media allies falsely romanticize civil service, claiming it protects “merit” over patronage.
Merit was the intention when the civil service was created in 1883 by the Pendleton Act. But merit is largely gone. Scramble those five letters and what you’ve got is the “timer” system. Federal workers get bigger salaries and fatter benefits than private-sector workers doing comparable jobs. And they almost never lose their job, no matter how derelict they are. They put in their time and skate to a gold-plated retirement package.
It’s a gravy train, paid for by John Q Public. That’s sickening enough. But it’s even worse when these civil “servants” put their own l*****t leanings ahead of the president and public they’re paid to serve.
Bravo to the GOP candidates pledging to take on the deep state — replete with deadbeats and lefties — and return government to the people. It’s a worthy fight.
Shame on Biden for protecting bureaucracy instead of democracy.
Not in America.
Biden Lays A Booby Trap For A Republican President
Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden walking and laughing
The Biden administration is setting a booby trap in case a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.
On Friday, the White House unveiled a proposed rule that would make it even harder than in the past for an incoming Republican president to wrestle control of the left-leaning federal bureaucracy and actually implement the conservative policies promised to v**ers.
Of the 2.2 million federal civil workers, only 4,000 are p**********l appointees. The rest stay in their jobs, from one administration to the next, protected by rules that make it nearly impossible to discipline or replace them.
They overwhelmingly favor the Left. A staggering 95% of unionized federal employees who donate to political candidates give to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Only a tiny 5% support Republicans.
Some federal workers in high positions slow-walk or even derail a Republican president’s agenda — and get away with it.
Why bother to v**e if the left-leaning deep state stays in charge no matter who wins the presidency?
GOP candidates Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis are vowing to conquer this obstructionism.
Everett Kelley, union president of the American Federation of Government Employees, claims GOP contenders want to “politicize routine government work.” Nonsense. We’re not talking about mail carriers. It’s time to make lawyers, PhDs and other top-level career bureaucrats implement the president’s agenda, not their own.
After T***p w*n in 2016, they went to town neutralizing him on almost every policy front, explains James Sherk, special assistant to the White House Domestic Policy Council under Trump.
Career lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division flat out refused to challenge Yale University’s discrimination against Asian American applicants. Trump had to recruit lawyers from other divisions. After Joe Biden became president, the DOJ dropped the case. But the same career lawyers who refused to sue Yale made the losing argument in support of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Career health officials like Dr. Deborah Birx circumvented Trump’s instructions to moderate C***D lockdowns. Environmental Protection Agency lawyers pursued cases against f****l f**l producers and withheld the information from Trump appointees.
Trump mandated in a 2020 executive order that new federal buildings be designed to please the public, which prefers classical designs. Instead, General Services Administration architects chose modern designs they like. Trump mentioned as an example the San Francisco Federal Building, the ugliest edifice in the city.
It goes on, including weaponization of the FBI against the president himself.
In October 2020, Trump issued an executive order that federal workers who make policy should be reclassified as at-will employees who can be terminated.
But before it could be implemented, Biden became president. He canceled it immediately, knowing the bureaucrats were on his side.
The rule announced Friday would slow a president’s ability to reinstate Trump’s order. Democrats in Congress are going further, pushing to eliminate the president’s authority to reclassify jobs altogether.
The New York Times announced, “Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force.”
Ramaswamy vows to go further than Trump, eliminating half or more of civil service positions. “Speaking as a CEO, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, they don’t work for you,” he said in a speech on Sept. 12.
New York Magazine facetiously claims holding employees accountable is a threat to good government, and warns that a Republican victory will mean “a new class of federal appointees charged with a partisan agenda.”
Democrats and their media allies falsely romanticize civil service, claiming it protects “merit” over patronage.
Merit was the intention when the civil service was created in 1883 by the Pendleton Act. But merit is largely gone. Scramble those five letters and what you’ve got is the “timer” system. Federal workers get bigger salaries and fatter benefits than private-sector workers doing comparable jobs. And they almost never lose their job, no matter how derelict they are. They put in their time and skate to a gold-plated retirement package.
It’s a gravy train, paid for by John Q Public. That’s sickening enough. But it’s even worse when these civil “servants” put their own l*****t leanings ahead of the president and public they’re paid to serve.
Bravo to the GOP candidates pledging to take on the deep state — replete with deadbeats and lefties — and return government to the people. It’s a worthy fight.
Shame on Biden for protecting bureaucracy instead of democracy.
Not in America.
Sep 20, 2023 13:25:25 #
(Main)
After 6 burglaries, 3 car thefts, multiple illegal trespasses, ongoing cocaine and alcohol addiction, committing 2 violent home invasions, 3 armed robberies, dealing F******l and Meth, passing counterfeit money, beating 4 victims senseless, and being arrested 23 times since 1998, G****e F***d hasn't committed a crime in well over two years!
But it did net his family $27 million from the state and $20 million from a GoFundMe account, not to mention statues and paintings honoring his accomplishments.
He's also been recognized by the former Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, Nancy Pelosi, as one of the bravest people who gave his life for the cause of Racial Injustice in our country.
We are one sick country to follow the Democratic model of justice.
But it did net his family $27 million from the state and $20 million from a GoFundMe account, not to mention statues and paintings honoring his accomplishments.
He's also been recognized by the former Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, Nancy Pelosi, as one of the bravest people who gave his life for the cause of Racial Injustice in our country.
We are one sick country to follow the Democratic model of justice.
Sep 19, 2023 22:23:02 #
dtucker300 wrote:
Signs that must have stories behind them …
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
Sep 19, 2023 22:18:23 #
dtucker300 wrote:
Signs that must have stories behind them …
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
Sep 19, 2023 22:15:04 #
dtucker300 wrote:
Signs that must have stories behind them …
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
Sep 19, 2023 22:11:00 #
Signs that must have stories behind them …
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
and some good ones amongst them.
some old, some new
