My problem with the Democrat-produced Jan 6th Show is that it is unbalanced and one-sided. A serious inquiry would expose all the evidence and open it to critical scrutiny and cross examination in an adversarial system that is essential to fact finding.
This is not a real hearing. It is an entertainment show that is one-sided, does not release all testimony to the public, and hides the evidence except for the most salacious or damning cherry-picked details guaranteed to titillate and outrage.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson recounted her gripping tale of that day. It all sounds plausible and in-character for El Donaldo. We are led to believe this was "Breaking News!" when actually, this was at least her fifth time testifying before the panel. Yes, she had told them all this already, but the producers wanted her dramatic retelling on prime time.
Did you hear how a raging Trump grabbed the wheel of his vehicle and assaulted a Secret Service Agent?
One problem. We find out Hutchinson did not provide eye-witness testimony. She was recounting what someone told her. That is called hearsay, and the Secret Service is saying the incident in the vehicle never happened.
Democrats could do a real public service and explore the question of which is funnier: An angry President Trump throwing ketchup-laden cheeseburgers at the wall, or an enraged Hellary on her losing election night heaving a sheet cake at the giant flat screen TV.
Democrats are not providing us a serious Watergate or Iran Contra Hearing. This is a National Enquirer style political propaganda mini-series.
How long until Centrist voters turn on Republicans?
This list is repugnant to the constitutional spirit of our republic:
* Unconditional abortion at any stage of development with no consideration of the rights and/or viability of the fetus
* State-sponsored "bounty hunting" those (including physicians) who assist in abortion procurement or in an abortion procedure
* Total ban on abortion, with no exceptions based on rape, incest or health of the mother
* Prosecuting a physician for performing a medically-determined abortion
* Prosecuting people who help others procure an abortion, including buying them a ticket or transporting them out of state
* Prosecuting women for having an abortion
* Prosecuting women for traveling out of state for an abortion
* A state prosecuting residents of other states for abortion-related actions taken in another state
* Prohibiting people from receiving any federally legal medications via US Mail
* Prosecuting a woman for ingesting an abortifacient and causing an abortion in her own home
My objection is rooted not in morality, but in historical western jurisprudence, natural rights and our constitution. We are a constitutional republic, not a Christian theocracy, and the question of abortion--as it pertains to the state and its citizens--needs to be addressed in the light of historical laws, common law and a balancing of the rights of the mother and child, to include the fact that medical science has pushed back the viability of a fetus to 20-25 weeks.
Safe, Legal, and Rare
Go yahoogle polling on abortion. A broad spectrum of Americans are willing to accept first trimester abortions as well as third trimester bans, with exceptions for rape, incest and health of the mother.
Such a law would flare up the anger on the fringes, but would represent a consensus that polling suggests the nation could settle into. Such a law would also look like the laws of most advanced European nations.
If the GOP were smart (and they are not), they would loudly kibosh all speculation about banning birth control, rolling back gay marriage, gay rights and sodomy laws, etc. Democrats have dramatically seized the high ground on the issue of liberty, just as it looked as if the GOP had firm possession of that champion's trophy.
Legal is not necessarily Moral
I think abortion is morally repugnant, as expressed by first century Christians in the Didache. Other religions, including Judaism, while not cavalier on the issue, do not take such a narrow view. The law must reflect the will of the people and must not impose narrow religious views on everyone. Otherwise, it is imperial diktat, and in a democracy, the people will end up ousting the tyrants.
Forcing over-interpreted mandates on people will only harden hearts and minds, not change them.
If we want to end abortion, we need to change those hearts and minds through scientific reasoning and moral persuasion, and for heaven's sake, can we approach this debate with some humility, charity and compassion?
"A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take it all away"
- President Gerald Ford
I have problems with language like this...
"Yet, even as the court continued to forge new ground in creating a private sphere where Americans could do as they pleased in their family life without undue government interference..."
I don't blame the writer. She is simply echoing the mindset of government and judges that has prevailed for over a century: That government must carve out spaces and create new rights for us. That mindset contradicts the US Constitution and the philosophy behind it, which hold that these rights and spaces flow from natural law, preexist any written document, and may not be infringed by government.
This unconstitutional mindset can be summed up as...
Rights come from government, so a person must seek permission from government to do something. If challenged, that permission must be found in the constitution.
That's ass backwards. The Constitution constitutes the government, telling it what it can and cannot do. Our individual rights are unenumerated and many and do not flow from that document.
A Constitutional Mindset...
The question is not whether a black man may marry a white woman, or whether someone has a right to contraception. This starts a game of "where can we find that right in the constitution?"
Rather, the question should be, where in the constitution does it allow a government to infringe upon such a fundamental right?
(hat tip to The Misinformation Spreaders Gazette for the Twitter embed below)
According to Joe Biden, another pandemic looms, and more money is needed:
BIDEN: “We need more money. We don't just need more money for vaccines for children, we need more money to plan for the second pandemic. There's gonna be another pandemic.”pic.twitter.com/THFuFIKss6
And that money is needed to vaccinate young children and adults, too — never mind the contraindications for doing so. See THIS and THIS, for example.*****
Personal observation: I am one of those individuals suffering long-term respiratory problems apparently caused by just one J&J injection. When I mentioned these problems to my primary care doctor yesterday, he did not dispute what I said but, instead, nodded his head. Hmmmmm....
For a few moments, let's be honest with ourselves, even if we cannot be honest publicly. Yes, our political views make such brutal honesty even more difficult.
The above said, we should make herculean efforts to be honest with ourselves — particularly for us who are voters in a democratic republic. Let's get past cognitive bias and political-party bias and all that.
1) Below is a short video of one of Joe Biden's recent outbursts. He is furious! And in the friendly venue of the AFL-CIO. My grandmother started having such outbursts, complete with similar gestures, post-stroke and when the situation certainly didn't merit such an outburst.
2) Watch President Biden's face in the short video below. What do you notice about his facial expressions and body language?
WATCH: Pres. Biden ignores questions when asked about his son’s business dealings with Russian oligarch.
“Why have you stopped taking questions from the press,” a journalist shouts. “What are you afraid of?!”
My father (June 19, 1911-January 30, 1998). Auto Mechanic Extraordinaire and Best Dad in the World, today is your 111th birthday!
Dad in his twenties
Dad, in his sixties, is on the left.
Dad's personal appearance changed little at all since he reached0 his sixties, never mind that he lived to be over 86 years old. And because Mom died over 10 years before Dad did, I got to know my father so well. Overall, those 10 years were wonderful years.
I miss you, Dad — even though these words so apply to our relationship:
"Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still -- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever" (fromHow Green Was My Valley).
I don't know what Dad's favorite song was, but I do know that the award-winning 1941 movie How Green Was My Valley was his favorite film. When Dad and Mom were dating, this film was the one movie which he took her to see at the cinema when the film was re-released to theaters in 1950:
I read that our nation has suffered a precipitous decline in book reading over the past decades, and then it hit me: The Democrats' Jan 6 TV miniseries is a slickly produced video version of one of those DC gossip books written by so many former staffers with axes to grind or reputations to burnish.
The emotional testimony of security officers adds nothing to any legal argument, but does provide drama and pathos to keep the easily-bored tuned in.
The quick-cut snippets of testimony and commentary from former Trump officials are damning, and they effectively contribute to the emotional appeal of the Democrat Party's huffed-up "hearings" slamming (without rebuttal) the former president. All that's missing from the well-polished production is whoots from the audience and shouted hoots of "sick burn!"
I give the Democrats props. Somebody within the party--probably a young staffer--realized DC tell-all books no longer have a bombshell impact, and impatient voters won't sit for hours of boring testimony waiting for the "at long last, sir, have you no shame!" payoff. So, they went for the well-staged Hollywood-style production. Bravo! It all looks so realistic and officious. (The FEC is criminally remiss if they are not counting the network coverage as in-kind political contributions)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
~~H.L. Mencken~~
In this post, I'm going to point out a few of the lies and some of the misinformation surrounding guns in general and the venerable AR-15 rifle in particular.
The AR-15 rifle is not an assault rifle.
From Merriam-Webster:
: any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles (such as the AK-47) that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire.
--my underline-- Below was added to the definition years later.
also: a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semiautomatic fire
The AR-15 is not capable of automatic fire, which is the true defining characteristic of an "assault rifle," nor are the bullets fired through it any more damaging or devastating than bullets of similar size and velocity fired from any other rifle.
I have often said that if a word can mean anything you want it means nothing. So we find ourselves with no agreed definition.
George Orwell said, in an essay titled “Politics and the English Language,” the following about words that have “no agreed definition”:
Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
Prior to the publication of a 1988 booklet about “assault weapons,” Google Book’s library of books and other publications revealed no results that use the term "assault weapon" to describe a semi-automatic rifle.
The following people have described semi-automatic “assault weapons” or “modern sporting rifles” as “fully automatic weapons” or “weapons of war”:
– President Barack Obama, 2013, “weapons of war.”
– Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton, 2016, “weapons of war” and “assault rifles.”
– Will Drabold, Time Magazine, 2016, “assault rifles” that have “widespread availability” in the U.S.
– Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post, 2016, “an assault rifle.”
– Evan Perez of CNN, 2016, “weapons of war.”
– Nick Wing, Huffington Post, 2016, "assault rifles."
Weapons Of War?
In reality; every weapon is a "weapon of war" or an improvement on an existing "weapon of war."
A wooden club, to a wooden club with a stone tied to the end.
A wooden spear, to a spear with a fire-hardened point, to a napped flint stone tip, to a javelin with a iron point.
A bow and arrow through all its various iterations to a crossbow which was termed a weapon so horrible that it would end warfare -- by the Catholic Church --.
The truth is that any weapon that is practical for protection or self-defense, in form or function, is an adaptation of a weapon that was developed for military use and thus a "weapon of war."
AR Does Not Mean "Assault Rifle" or "Army Rifle" or "Automatic Rifle"!
AR means, ArmaLite Rifle, which was developed by Eugene Stoner for the ArmaLite Corp, then was redesigned and modified by the Colt Firearm Company for the US military as the M16 rifle and then the M-4 variant.
The AR-15 Is Not Suitable For Hunting?
Not true. The AR platform is suitable for hunting and offers a wide variety of different chamberings and calibers for different purposes, including hunting. Most states do not allow the 5.56 mm cambering -- the primary chambering of the AR-15 -- as a suitable game
cartridge for medium sized game -- deer, elk etc.-- as it is
under-power and does not ensure a "clean kill." But the issue at hand isn't about hunting, and I see nothing about hunting in the Constitution of the United States.
The gun control narrative depends on raw emotion, raw fear, so that people will demand action from lawmakers, who will, in turn, be too afraid to not pass gun control.
Lies our President tells us:
This is stupid beyond belief!
Twisting of facts and figures to promote a narrative!
Reality check. The most popular rifle for home defense is the AR-15, and the most popular pistol for home defense is the Glock 19 -- a 9mm pistol.
Sure, you're not coming for our guns /sarc. But gun registration always leads to gun confiscation. We gun owners argue in good faith, and the next day you are back demanding more "compromise." To what end?
Candidate Joe Biden scalded the Saudi regime, resigning them to 'pariah' status. Now, with Bidenflation and gas prices headed to $10 a gallon, the worm has turned...
"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price," Schumer said at the rally. "You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."
Biden DOJ asks judge to go easy on Ivy League firebombers
Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman were arrested in the "mostly peaceful" protests following George Floyd's murder. The two lawyers handed out Molotov cocktails to the crowd, and Rahman tossed one into a police car before fleeing the scene in Mattis's van. They reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in October 2020 that wiped out six of the seven charges against them. Those prosecutors, nonetheless, sought a maximum 10-year sentence and argued that the incident qualified for a so-called terrorism enhancement that would turbocharge sentencing—a determination with which the U.S. Probation Office concurred.
In mid-May, the same career DOJ prosecutors who argued for that 10-year sentence were back in court withdrawing their plea deal and entering a new one that allowed the defendants to cop to the lesser charge of conspiracy. It tosses out the terrorism enhancement entirely.
Good thing they didn't wander into the Capitol on Jan 6th, they'd really be in deep doo doo...
...Forcing Americans into a fossil fuel crisis with the hope that we will all purchase electric vehicles is akin to a barren forty-five year old couple spending lavishly on a nursery for the newborn that will never arrive. But the fools keep shelling out money to the fertility specialist who promises them a future and gives birth to the wind....
[...]
...“Clean energy” is just the Ponzi scheme that enriches the wealthy and impoverishes the average American. We are indeed, impoverished now – with the fuel crisis. But “clean energy” is just one of the many dark money schemes hoisted upon the American People....
Read the entire essay HERE. Please read thoughtfully.
See 
