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Runaway1956 (2926)
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http://www.assaultweapon.info/
Howard wrote “that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.” https://www.14thamendment.us/articles/anchor_babies_unconstitutionality.html
Journal of Runaway1956 (2926)
"Hush child! Free speech is the reason you grew up without a grandma or your mommy or daddy! They all went to the Utah camps for demonstrating against the Democrat Party!"
https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1520790249957429248?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/28/dhs-created-disinformation-governance-team-police-/
https://ijr.com/dhs-dismisses-concerns-disinformation-board-leader/
Geeez, people, too bad we didn't have a disinformation board in the McCarthy days, huh? All those commies and socialists could have been put into concentration camps. Those radical black activists could have joined them. All the gay activists, a bunch of feminists, the free sex cultist hippies, and all the druggies. Don't forget the illegal aliens!!
The First Amendment Option: An Easy Way For Musk To Restore Free Speech On Twitter
For free speech advocates, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter could prove the most impactful event since Twitter’s founding in 2006. The question, however, is how Musk can accomplish his lofty goal of restoring free speech values to social media. He first would have to untie the Gordian knot of censorship in a company now synonymous with speech control. The answer may be simpler than most people think. Indeed, anti-free-speech figures in the country may have given Musk the very roadmap he’s looking for: the First Amendment.
The purchase of Twitter alone will have immediate and transformative changes for free speech. The control over speech on social media required a unified front. Free speech is like water, it tends to find a way out. With social media, there was no way out because of the unified front of companies like Google, Apple and Facebook. Facebook is actually running commercials trying to convince people to embrace their own censorship. This message was reinforced by Democratic leaders like President Biden, who demanded that these companies expand censorship and curtail access to harmful viewpoints.
Now this market has one major competitor selling a free speech product.
The fear is that Musk might be proven right and that Twitter could become larger and more profitable by allowing more free speech. Facebook has not had much success in convincing customers to embrace censorship, but it may find shareholders wondering why the Facebook board (like the Twitter board) is undermining its own product as a communications company committed to limited speech.
Another immediate change could be the forced exodus of a line of ardent censors from the company, with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal (hopefully) at the head of line. Agrawal is one of the most anti-free-speech figures in Big Tech. After taking over as CEO, Agrawal quickly made clear that he wanted to steer the company beyond free speech and that the issue is not who can speak but “who can be heard.”
However, once such figures are removed from Twitter, the question is how to re-establish a culture of free speech.
The answer may be in the very distinction used by Democratic politicians and pundits to justify corporate censorship.
For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies.
The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations. The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.
Corporations clearly have free speech rights. Ironically, Democrats have long opposed such rights for companies, but they embrace such rights when it comes to censorship. The Democratic Party embraced corporate governance of free speech once these companies aligned themselves with their political agenda. Starbucks and every other company have every right to pursue a woke agenda. Social media companies, however, sell communications, not coffee. They should be in the business of free speech.
Democrats have continued to treat the First Amendment as synonymous with free speech, as a way to justify greater censorship.
Just last week, former President Barack Obama spoke at Stanford to flog this false line. Obama started by declaring himself, against every indication to the contrary, to be “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist.” He then called for the censorship of anything that he considered “disinformation,” including “lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist screeds.”
He was able to do that by emphasizing that “The First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter.”
Well, what if it did?
The Constitution does not impose the same standard on Twitter — but Musk could. He could order a new Twitter team to err on the side of free speech while utilizing First Amendment standards to maximize protections on the platform. In other words, if the government could not censor a tweet, Twitter would not do so.
The key to such an approach is not to treat Twitter as akin to “government speech,” a category where the government has allowed major speech controls. Rather, tweets are very much as Musk has described them: akin to speech in “the digital town square.” If the government could not stop someone from speaking in a public forum like a town square, Twitter should not do so through private means.
The value to tying private speech to First Amendment jurisprudence is that there is a steady array of cases illuminating this standard and its applications.
Such a rule would admittedly allow a large array of offensive and objectionable speech — just as the First Amendment does in a public square. That is the price of free speech.
This is, admittedly, not a perfect fit. Twitter needs to protect itself from civil liability in the form of trademark, copyright and other violations in the use of its platforms. Moreover, most sites (including my own blog) delete racist and offensive terms. That can be done through standard moderation systems or, preferably, optional filters for users to adopt on Twitter. There are also standard rules against doxxing as well as personal threats or privacy violations.
Social media companies long had these limitations before plunging headlong into the type of content-based speech regulations made infamous by Twitter. Musk can use the baseline of the First Amendment with these limited augmentations to re-create the type of relatively open forums that once characterized the internet.
I have long admitted to being a type of “internet originalist” who prefers precisely the digital town square concept embraced by Musk. Adopting the First Amendment standards would create a foundation for free speech that can be tweaked to accommodate narrow, well-defined limitations.
The greatest challenge is not the restoration of free speech but the retention of such a site.
Notably, figures like Hillary Clinton have suddenly turned from advocating corporate censorship to calling for good old-fashioned state censorship. Last week, Clinton called on the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a massive censorship measure that has received preliminary approval. Coming after Musk’s bid for Twitter, Clinton and others now want to use European countries to offer the same circumvention of the First Amendment. Rather than use a corporate surrogate, they would use an alternative state surrogate to force Twitter to censor content or face stiff penalties in Europe.
Musk will have to fight that battle when it comes. In the interim, he can rally the public, as he did Twitter shareholders, to the cause of free speech.
EDIT: Related news, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/taibbi-savor-great-musk-panic
Yes, he said it: NYC Mayor Eric Adams blames ‘progressive politics’ for rise in crime across America
Posted by: Cynthia Van Gaasbeck|April 18, 2022 |Categories Featured, Must Reads, News
NEW YORK, NY – New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that he agreed with former NYPD commissioner William Bratton that progressive politics are to blame for some of the increase of crime in American cities.
Bratton was a guest on the “Bloomberg Businessweek” podcast on Thursday. On it, he said:
“The scales right now are tipped very heavily in favor of the reforms of the progressive left. Well intended, some needed, but a bit too far, and what we have as a result is this growing fear of crime, this growing actual amount of crime in almost every American city.”
Adams said that he believed Bratton was “right.” He said:
“Major mistakes made throughout the years that destroyed the trust that the police commissioner is talking about – we have to rebuild that trust. But we can’t rebuild that trust by allowing those who are dangerous and that have – they have a repeated history of violence to continue to be on our streets.”
New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, also a guest on the ABC show, said:
“We cannot lose sight of the victims of crime. We believe the system has to be fair and balanced, but when we lose sight of the victims of crime, we are not doing what public safety is intended to do.”
Adams previously said that crime was a national issue and added that it’s not “red state, blue state” issue.
Host George Stephanopoulos also asked the mayor and Sewell about the recent subway shooting in Brooklyn, wondering if there needs to be a better way to track individuals like shooting suspect Frank James.
He noted that in many ways James was “hiding in plain sight,” alluding to James’ racist rants on social media and YouTube.
Conservative commentators, who are frequently banned from social media for questioning the left’s policies, have also been wondering why James was allowed to spew racial hatred online.
Adams said that social media companies need to “step up.”
I'll bet you don't read any of that on Twitter!
Want to be honest? You can blame part of the increase in crime on the crazy lockdown policies of the past two years. You can blame a larger portion of that increase on the pandemic motivated emtpying of jails. You can blame most of the increase on the liberal policies that the mayor refers to. And whatever is left over, you can blame on BLM and Antifa, and their policies of racist riot and violence.
https://twitter.com/alexstein99/status/1515073773241729025?
AMERICAN NEWS Mar 17, 2022 3:03 PM EST
FLASHBACK: 16% of Biden voters would have voted differently if Hunter Biden laptop story was not suppressed by media, big tech
A poll previously put out by the Media Research Center showed that fully 16 percent of voters who were unaware of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal would have switched their minds and not voted for Joe Biden for president, had they known about it at the time.After the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop was suppressed, a poll was released showing that 16 percent of voters who were unaware of the laptop scandal would have not voted for Biden had they known about it at the time.
"Seems like a good day to remind everyone that 16 precent of Biden voters would NOT have voted for Biden if they had been aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story," said Kyle Martinsen on Twitter, linking to the poll.At the point when the poll was taken, 79 percent of respondents were still comfortable voting for Biden, with four percent switching their votes to Donald Trump, another four voting for a third candidate, and a further four percent would have skipped voting for president.
Another five percent would have stopped voting entirely, and the remaining five percent refused to answer the question.The reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop, which revealed President Biden's involvement with his son's enterprises with Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, was broken by the New York Post. Other media outlets refused to report on the story, or claimed that the materials were "Russian disinformation."
The New York Times, NPR, Politico and the Washington Post, acted to suppress the story, with the Times by publishing an article calling the laptop story "unsubstantiated" in September 2021, then editing the story without publishing a formal correction notice.
On Thursday, the Times acknowledged the legitimacy of the story as part of another story about Hunter Biden's tax liabilities.Bide has repeatedly denied the veracity of the story, although sources in federal law enforcement had already confirmed the authenticity of the laptop and its contents as far back as Oct 2020.
https://thepostmillennial.com/flashback-16-of-biden-voters
Watch the Hissy Fit When Students Nail Media for Disinformation at 'Disinformation' Conference
By Nick Arama | Apr 08, 2022 11:45 PM ETThe Atlantic and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics held a “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference over the past three days. They intended to explore the “organized spread of disinformation” and the ways to deal with it.
What was ironic was that they had speakers at their conference — mainly media types like CNN’s Brian Stelter — who are the very personification of disinformation. But a few college students managed to put them on the spot, and point out the inherent contradiction in their effort.
As we reported, college freshman Chris Phillips just eviscerated Brian Stelter with CNN’s pushing of disinformation.
Stelter didn’t have much of a response, other than to call it a “popular right-wing narrative” and try to deflect it.
But that wasn’t all. There were some other fascinating and revelatory looks into the mind of the liberal media.
There was the Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, whom freshman Daniel Schmidt asked about how the media had dealt with the issue of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the lies told to suppress it.
Applebaum’s response showed exactly why no one trusts the liberal media anymore.
Now that they can’t call it “disinformation” anymore, because it’s so true that even liberal media admitted it, they have to come up with some other reason to ignore it. Applebaum called it “totally irrelevant” as to who should be president — and not interesting.
So influence-peddling — someone in the highest office in the land possibly being compromised by relationships with foreign governments — is not interesting? Possible Russian blackmail isn’t interesting? How does she call herself a journalist? And here’s another question: If this isn’t interesting and is “irrelevant,” then why did the media spend four years pushing the false, Russia collusion hoax that was paid for in part by the Democrats? Why was that relevant and interesting?
Interestingly, even though she says this now, she pushed the Russia disinformation claim when it came to the Hunter Biden laptop, so it was “interesting” enough to do that. Speaking of disinformation, Applebaum falsely wrote in 2020 that President Donald Trump called COVID a “hoax.” That wasn’t true, but it was a common media falsehood.
The media types at the Disinformation conference were so upset that Daniel Schmidt dared to question them that they hauled out this pathetic effort by Never Trumper and token ‘conservative’ Jonah Goldberg. And you can see the difference between the freshman asking cogent questions and Goldberg pushing an anti-Trump narrative, ignoring the facts and statistics that Schmidt brought up about 16 percent of people who voted for Biden saying they wouldn’t have, if they knew the information about Hunter Biden.
But Schmidt never said that, but for the cover-up of the laptop, President Donald Trump would have won; he cited the poll with the responses of the voters — a fact Goldberg doesn’t want to deal with, so he skips right over that to try to refute something Schmidt never said. Now, yes, because of the cover-up we don’t know exactly what would have happened, but what we do know is that those voters would not have voted for Biden in a race that was very close in critical states. That’s a reality that Goldberg doesn’t want to deal with.
Finally, the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was upset that students were showing up the ‘professional journalists’ — and he had a little bit of a hissy fit.
“I think one darkly humorous but inevitable measurement of our success is that our disinformation conference has been the subject of a disinformation campaign on social media already,” he said. Is “success” what they call being eviscerated now?
So, students asking them honest questions is “disinformation” because they don’t like the questions? I think the students just proved their point.
I want to tip my hat to the students behind the questions from The Chicago Thinker. It’s good to see that some real journalists are coming up who care about the truth.
Yes, there was a coup in 2020. The Dems and the media staged a successful coup.
Science. It's great when decisions are science based, ain't it? The authoritarians in power around the country have been hammering that idea for a couple years now. So - what does science have to say about gun control?
Do Studies Show Gun Control Works? No.
Out of 27,900 research publications on gun laws, only 123 tested their effects rigorously.
AARON BROWN AND JUSTIN MONTICELLO | 3.31.2022 4:55
Well now. Imagine that. Gun laws are not backed by science at all. Twenty seven THOUSAND and nine hundred "studies" on gun control, and only one hundred twenty three qualify for any level of rigorous.
It's almost like people are making shit up as they go, huh? Twenty seven THOUSAND and nine hundred times, someone had a conclusion, and went in search of any made up numbers that might support that conclusion.
https://reason.com/video/2022/03/31/do-studies-show-gun-control-works-no/
After reaching historic lows in the mid-2010s, gun violence rates in America have gone up in recent years, and they remain higher than in some other parts of the developed world. There are hundreds of laws and regulations at the federal and state level that restrict Americans' access to guns, yet according to some advocates, social science research shows that a few more "simple, commonsense" laws could significantly reduce the number of injuries and deaths attributed to firearms.
There has been a massive research effort going back decades to determine whether gun control measures work. A 2020 analysis by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, parsed the results of 27,900 research publications on the effectiveness of gun control laws. From this vast body of work, the RAND authors found only 123 studies, or 0.4 percent, that tested the effects rigorously. Some of the other 27,777 studies may have been useful for non-empirical discussions, but many others were deeply flawed.
We took a look at the significance of the 123 rigorous empirical studies and what they actually say about the efficacy of gun control laws.
The answer: nothing. The 123 studies that met RAND's criteria may have been the best of the 27,900 that were analyzed, but they still had serious statistical defects, such as a lack of controls, too many parameters or hypotheses for the data, undisclosed data, erroneous data, misspecified models, and other problems.
And these glaring methodological flaws are not specific to gun control research; they are typical of how the academic publishing industry responds to demands from political partisans for scientific evidence that does not exist.
Not only is the social science literature on gun control broadly useless, but it provides endless fodder for advocates who say that "studies prove" that a particular favored policy would have beneficial outcomes. This matters because gun laws, even if they don't accomplish their goals, have large costs. They can turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals, they increase prosecutorial power and incarceration, and they exacerbate the racial and socioeconomic inequities in the criminal justice system.
The 123 papers identified by RAND tested 722 separate hypotheses about the impact of gun control policies for "statistical significance." Peer-reviewed journals generally accept a result as statistically significant if it has a one-in-20 chance or less of being due to random chance. So if researchers run 100 tests on the relationship between two things that obviously have no connection to each other at all—say, milk consumption and car crashes—by pure chance, they can be expected to get five statistically significant results that are entirely coincidental, such as that milk drinkers get into more accidents.
In terms of the gun control studies deemed rigorous by RAND, this means that even if there were no relationship between gun laws and violence—much like the relationship between drinking milk and getting into car accidents—we'd nevertheless expect about five percent of the studies' 722 tests, or 36 results, to show that gun regulations had a significant impact. But the actual papers found positive results for only 18 combinations of gun control measure and outcome (such as waiting periods and gun suicides). That's not directly comparable to the 36 expected false positives, since some combinations had the support of multiple studies. But it's not out of line with what we would expect if gun control measures made no difference.
The article is a moderately long read - I leave it to you to click the link, and read the article.
Short version here https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2088-1.html
412 page PDF here https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2000/RR2088-1/RAND_RR2088-1.pdf
For those who prefer video format, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiQ-LmJGMY
Conclusions and Recommendations
Of more than 200 combinations of policies and outcomes, we found that surprisingly
few were the subject of methodologically rigorous investigation. Looking across the columns in Table S.1, it is apparent that research into five outcomes is either unavailable
or almost entirely inconclusive. It is noteworthy that three of these five outcomes—
defensive gun use, hunting and recreation, and the gun industry—are issues of particular concern to gun owners or gun industry stakeholders, such as firearm manufacturers, firearm dealers, hunting outfitters, and firing ranges. The lack of research on
a wide range of outcomes makes it difficult or impossible to conduct a comprehensive
cost-benefit analysis of the gun policies. For instance, some of the strongest evidence
we found suggests that child-access prevention laws could reduce firearm injuries or
deaths among children. But restricting access to guns could also prevent gun owners
from accessing their weapons in an emergency. The lack of research on defensive gun
use means that we do not have a way of directly estimating how the benefits of these
laws (in terms of the number of child lives saved) compares with the possible costs (in
terms of forgone opportunities for self-defense).
Here, we summarize the key conclusions and recommendations that can be drawn
from the policy-outcome combinations with the strongest available evidence (conclusions 1 through 11). Thereafter, we draw conclusions and recommendations concerning how to improve evidence on the effects of gun policies (conclusions 12 through 16).
Perhaps, for a future journal entry, I'll dig up a similar study, done years ago, on crime control laws. That study only touched on gun laws peripherally - it was concerned with crime rates. It came to the same conclusion though. There is zero evidence that lawmakers have any effect on crime, despite all their verbose claims at election time.
But, again, let's trust the science, alright? But, before we can trust the science, someone will have to actually do some science.
The numbers, once again. 27,900 "studies", and only 123 of them actually qualify as a meaningful study. A helluva lot of people have been lying to us, while defrauding us out of untold millions of dollars.
Americans Remain Largely Dissatisfied With Direction of U.S.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
24% in U.S. satisfied with direction of the country
Democrats' satisfaction is up 11 points since February, to 46%
Satisfaction steady among Republicans (3%) and independents (23%)WASHINGTON, D.C. -- About one-quarter of Americans, 24%, say they are satisfied with the way things are currently going in the U.S., which is statistically similar to February's 21% and roughly in line with most readings since last August. The exception to this was 17% in January during a surge in COVID-19 cases attributed to the omicron variant.
The latest reading is from a March 1-18 Gallup poll, which also found President Joe Biden's approval rating mired in the low 40s and economic concerns rising amid record-high gas prices and the highest inflation in four decades. During the poll's field period, COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. continued to decline.
U.S. satisfaction, which Gallup has tracked since 1979, has been as high as 71% in 1999 during the dot-com boom and as low as 7% in 2008 during the financial crisis.
Although national satisfaction is now more than double the 11% reading measured shortly after protesters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it is significantly lower than the 30% to 36% readings of last March through July.
Satisfaction Up Among Democrats; Flat for Republicans and Independents
Democrats' satisfaction with the direction of the nation -- which has outpaced Republicans' and independents' since Biden's inauguration -- is up 11 points since February, to 46%, perhaps reflecting the improving coronavirus situation. At the same time, satisfaction among Republicans (3%) and independents (23%) is essentially unchanged and much lower.Democrats' national satisfaction was last at the current level in fall 2021. It has not been at the majority level since last June, likely related to the improved coronavirus situation at that time. Independents' satisfaction has been less variable than Democrats' but has ranged from 15% to 32% during Biden's presidency. Republicans' satisfaction with the direction of the U.S. has averaged 6% since Donald Trump left office. GOP satisfaction registered 60% in October 2020 before Trump was defeated for reelection and was above 70% before the pandemic.
Bottom Line
Three-quarters of Americans, including majorities of all party groups, are dissatisfied with the nation's direction. Even though COVID-19 cases are waning in the U.S., economic concerns are mounting and are likely to continue to suppress national satisfaction until inflation begins to ease.
See that, people? Less than half of DEMOCRATS are happy with the way the country is going. Seems that Old Sleepy Creepy ain't doing such a good job, huh? Wait for gasoline to hit $7/gallon!
https://news.gallup.com/poll/391358/americans-remain-largely-dissatisfied-direction.aspx
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv
And, no, it's highly unlikely that the polls will improve when Kameltoe takes over for the senile bastard. This administration will never see the approval rating that Trump enjoyed.
It’s Time To Give Gun Control Advocates an Offramp
By Jennifer Sensiba -March 28, 2022A recent tweet by David Hogg reveals the angst many gun control activists are feeling right now.
David Hogg
@davidhogg111
I’m so frustrated and I’m sad. You can do everything right you can turn out as many voters possible, you can bring the NRA to the weakest position in decades and still these politicians do not give a fuck.it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
In another article, I covered the big losses Everytown and Moms Demand Action are going have taken in recent years. They brag on their “wins,” only to have most of it unravel like a sweater that gets a loose string stuck in the side of the dryer.
But I don’t want to be mean and poke more fun at them while celebrating their losses. Instead, let’s take a look at why they’re losing and some constructive things they can do with their time.
Gun Control Is Dead
As Hogg’s tweet makes clear, proponents of gun control have made the mistake of thinking that the NRA was the center of the gun rights movement, and that Wayne LaPierre was holding the whole thing up singlehandedly. With that false premise in mind, they set out to strike what they thought was the Death Star’s main reactor.
But, when the NRA was significantly weakened with various investigations swirling around the association and LaPierre, they found — to their dawning horror — that the gun rights movement didn’t blow up. That’s because the power of the opposition to limits on Second Amendment rights has never been with the NRA. It lies in the hands of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who own and (increasingly) carry firearms.
Worse for them, it civilian gun ownership and opposition to gun control have only accelerated over the past two-plus years.
What the empire of civilian disarmament failed to realize is that, despite being generously funded by billionaires and cash-flush left wing foundations, the gun control movement — restricting the average citizen’s right to keep and bear arms — is on the ropes when it comes to public opinion.
This website has chronicled the shift in Americans’ attitudes . . .
“Hispanics Turning Their Backs on Gun Control“
“More Americans Trust the GOP on Gun Policy“
“Polling Shows Gun Control Near the Bottom of Voters’ Wish List of Biden Priorities“
“Gallup Poll: Support for Gun Control Laws Dropping in 2020“
Gun control advocates hoped that maybe someday, when the young people who support them get into government and more of us older gun-toting troglodytes die off, they’d finally get what they want and make the United States more like Europe. Or maybe even Australia. Alas, none of that has come to pass. And support for their anti-gun positions is plummeting…even among young people.So while they would never admit it publicly, gun gun-grabbing community is gradually coming to realize that gun control has no real future. That’s gotta be depressing for them. On top of that, their ability to keep people from accessing firearms is disappearing faster than a display of affordably-priced ammo at your local retailer.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of 3D-printed guns, or as the gun-grabbers like to call them, “ghost guns.” At first, 3D-printed guns were fairly flimsy single-shot things that were potentially dangerous to fire. But the state of the art has progressed since then. A lot. Designers like Jstark (who died under suspicious circumstances) have come up with plans and files for guns that can be built without even needing parts that are regulated in places like Europe.
That leaves the very concept of gun control completely unworkable. Sure, police can theoretically catch a person with a homebuilt gun here and there and prosecute them after the fact. But they can no longer do anything to prevent people from obtaining firearms if they want them. Even in repressive societies like Burma, the military junta that runs the country can’t stop the signal.
Of course, we can’t expect all gun control advocates to come to this realization immediately. After all, the first stage of grief is denial. Some are moving through anger and bargaining, and our friend David, above, seems to be all the way to stage four. But there’s still a long way to go before a significant number of the gun control industry finally reaches acceptance.
There Are Alternatives To Gun Control
So to all of you civilian disarmament advocates out there…I feel your pain. Really I do.Still, why should you listen to me? Well, I’m most of the way done with master’s degree in Emergency Management and Homeland Security and I’ve been through a police academy. So I understand public safety issues better than the average person.
I’m also not a Republican and on most issues, I’m not even what anyone would consider right wing. I’m a lesbian who writes for a popular electric car and clean energy website when I’m not writing here. So I’m not going to offer simplistic solutions and tell you something like “everyone just needs more Jesus in their lives” (although, I don’t think sincere worship is a bad thing at all).
Look, I understand that most of you red-shirted moms sincerely care about your communities and public safety. While I think you’re misguided and that some of the leaders of the gun control movement have authoritarian ulterior motives, the fundamental drive most of you feel to make the world a better place makes you a fundamentally good person. Don’t give that good part of you up or slide into depression just because you’ve lost the argument on gun control.
With getting gun control enacted becoming increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible, especially in the United States, it’s time to take that energy of yourse and direct it in more productive and less futile directions.
Community safety simply can’t hinge on passing more gun control laws. It’s just a fig leaf covering (but not actually addressing) the real problem: non-defensive violence. Banning guns while not addressing the root causes of violence is like putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound and hoping the patient will get better.
You probably agree with me that poverty, racism, bigotry, employment discrimination, drug addiction, homelessness, untreated mental illness, a broken education system, the school-to-prison pipeline, prisons that warehouse people instead of rehabilitating them, the War on Drugs™, political divisiveness, rigged and gerrymandered elections, and many other unfair aspects of society and politics drive a significant portion of violence through desperation.
Instead of focusing your efforts on gun control, maybe it’s time to do what Putin should be doing right now and look for an offramp out of a losing conflict. Focus your efforts on doing things to address the real problems that drive people to commit non-defensive violence in your community. There’s so much work to be done on those issues and there is no shortage of organizations you can get involved with to work on them.
Or, do what I did and become a certified firearms instructor and teach people how to properly store, handle, and use guns so there are fewer accidents and they can safely defend themselves and their families
Don’t wait for the government to enact another gun control law. Even if it happens, it’s worse than useless. Instead, keep being a good person and help us work toward making the world a better place. For real.
The only place I disagree with Jennifer is here:
But I don’t want to be mean and poke more fun at them while celebrating their losses.
I'm all for poking fun. The idiots have spent decades trying to fix what ain't broken, all the while ignoring the real disaster around them. The sucking chest wound analogy is spot on.
Remember when Bush shoved his foot in his mouth - all the way up to his buttocks?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001020294332922160
"This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while."
The lackwit turned a lot of people against the US who might have sided with us, if only George hadn't used that word, "crusade".
Well, Biden has decided that George cannot be remembered as the biggest idot of a president. First, he told the 82nd Airborne that they are going to Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1507386975753494533
Biden tells the 82nd Airborne they're going to Ukraine:
"You’re going to see when you’re there, you’re going to see women, young people standing in the middle, in the front of a damn tank saying 'I’m not leaving.'"
Next, he tells the world that we have to get rid of Putin.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/26/biden-putin-regime-change/
How Biden sparked a global uproar with nine ad-libbed words about Putin
By declaring that the Russian leader ‘cannot remain in power,’ the U.S. president seemed to suggest a drastic change in U.S. policy — prompting a scramble by White House officials“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
Come on, man, are you ready to admit that Biden is near comatose? He has little idea WTF he is saying.
The more rational voters recognized that fact months before the election. But you Democrats insisted that having a senile old fool in the Oval Office would work out alright.
Biden is going to start World War 3, just by running at the mouth. Unless we shut him the fuck up!
Why in HELL have his keepers even allowed him outside of the country? Why have they allowed him out of the White House, for any purpose other than to get an ice cream cone?
We could have sent any village idiot to Europe, and he would have done less damage than Old Sleepy Creepy.
EDIT:
Macron schools Bidet on diplomacy!
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/54/1245/463567/War-in-Ukraine/Diplomacy/Macron-warns-against-;escalation;-after-Biden-bran.aspx
https://theprint.in/world/biden-speaks-with-macron-discusses-diplomacy-deterrence-efforts-in-response-to-russian-military-build-up/840114/
It cannot be confirmed that Macron later said his efforts were wasted on a toilet.
EDIT: Here's a twist of warped humor that may help in swallowing all of this.
https://waynedupree.com/2022/03/joe-biden-senility-blessing/
EDIT: Creepy Joe's "approval" rating can't keep up with his disapproval rating. Not even Democrats can approve of him any more!
Jackson’s Failure to Define ‘Woman’ Indicates She Won’t Protect Females on Supreme Court
Setting aside Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record on unions and pedophile sentencing, it’s clear from her resume that she boasts many qualifications, and will likely be confirmed to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court.
During her nomination hearings, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked a handful of questions that caused controversy.
While sometimes these questions earn senators a reputation for grandstanding, this time, many of the questions paved the way for answers that revealed Jackson’s judicial temperament, legal philosophy, and how she makes legal decisions.
One such question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) seemed particularly important. Here is a transcript of the brief exchange:
Blackburn: "Can you provide a definition of the word 'woman'?"
Jackson: "No, I can’t."
Blackburn: "You can’t?"
Jackson: "Not in this context — I’m not a biologist.…In my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes."
This is not a normal line of questioning, because the definition of “woman” has not been ambiguous up until the last few years. However, as the number of people who have medically or socially transitioned from male to female has increased and gained acceptance into society, sometimes usurping women sports, even basic words have lost their meaning.
Society has known the definitions of “woman” and “man” for millennia. This was not a trick question, but probably a primer to understanding where Jackson might rule on cases that specifically address issues of gender and sex, cases like Bostock v. Clayton County, which now bars discrimination based on gender identity, just as the law bars discrimination based on sex.
The left immediately scoffed at Blackburn’s question. Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel called Blackburn “a horrible woman” for daring to ask that question. Fox 17 WZTV Nashville interviewed pastors who expressed “embarrassment” at Blackburn’s question. The Washington Post editorial board said the Republicans treated Jackson worse than Democrats treated Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, the only confirmation hearings where a Supreme Court justice-to-be was accused of gang rape.
The writer Andrew Sullivan tweeted that Jackson’s answer was great as it was a “an affirmation of biology as the core basis for sex.” This could be a generous interpretation of Jackson’s inability to answer such a basic question, but unfortunately, it is so simple, the takeaway seems more like Jackson deftly skirted a topic that has become a lightning rod for the right and the left.
By refusing to answer the definition of “woman,” Jackson leaves the door open to what she thinks about sex, gender, and controversial cases like Bostock v. Clayton County.
If Jackson knows the definition of “woman” but remains afraid to say so, this is certainly a red flag. In a free country, a Supreme Court nominee should be able to speak the truth without fear of repercussion.
If Jackson is unable or unwilling to define what a woman is in a legal sense, this can pose real problems for future cases she may hear as a sitting Supreme Court justice. How can she know what the law says on sex and gender identity if she cannot define sex? How can she rule in cases on women’s issues or rights when she isn’t sure how to define a woman?
Furthermore, as my friend Mollie Hemingway tweeted, “If you lack both the common sense and the education to understand what being a woman is — or you’re too terrified of your political allies to admit you do know — perhaps you should not have a job that affects other people in any substantial way.”
The refusal to define sex in a traditional manner is not just a “woke” trend without meaning that simply sounds happy and inclusive of the new gender rainbow that boasts over 60 gender identities and expressions. It has consequences. If “male” and “female” cannot be described, that leaves multiple expressions to be codified into law that would create loopholes for predators to abuse women and children.
Vague definitions of “men” and “women,” or even no definitions of “men” and “women,” might sound inclusive and hip, but the tangible effect is such that it leaves the vulnerable in society even more vulnerable when it comes to interpretations of the law.
To make matters worse, it’s hard to overestimate how hypocritical this entire charade is when President Joe Biden himself promised to nominate specifically a black female for this role — white males had no chance — and then Jackson treats the issue like it’s a great mystery, too complex even for her.
As tempting as it might be to chalk up this question to political grandstanding or Jackson’s answer to cleverness, don’t: Jackson purposefully played a game of semantics with an issue that has torn apart tenets of law, families, sports, and education. As a woman, she should know this.
A woman who doesn't know what a woman is? Or, who a woman is? Or, who a woman maybe should be? Maybe Ketanji isn't really a woman? Maybe she's not human? A lot of Marxists and Progressives are inhuman, come to think of it.
POLITICSNEWS
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Could Have Defined What a Woman Is, Rep. Elise Stefanik Says
