Month: October 2020

References:  https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd_debttothepenny.htm ; https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the–s-national-debt-3306124; https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/treasury-bulletin/current.html (September, 2020 issue)

“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice.” She could have been talking about the national debt.

What We Owe

            According to the US Treasury Department per the above sources, as of Ocober 1, 2020, the national debt was just a jot under $27 trillion.  To put that number in perspective, there are roughly 330,000,000 people in the US.  Debt divided by population equals almost $82,000 for each man, woman and child in the US.  That is in addition to what you already know you owe for credit cards, cars, mortgages, student loans, etc.  So if you have a family of four, your share of the national debt is about $328,000. 

            For each trillion dollars our elected “representatives” decide to use to pander to the woke mobs for more stimulus, pay off student loans, reparations, air force toilet seats, etc., it will cost every person in this country another $3,000, plus interest. 

            And it gets worse, way worse.  The US has to pay interest every month on this debt, and does so without paying down any of the principal – that is called “servicing the debt.”  That is just like you paying the minimum every month on your credit cards – actually it’s worse since your minimum payment at least usually includes some small amount of principal. 

            Would you believe for fiscal year 2020 it cost this country, and you, $522,767,299,265.34 just to service the national debt.  https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm.  That’s BILLIONS, and that’s just this year.  Using our same calculation, in fiscal year 2020 servicing the debt cost each person in this country almost $1,600.  Again, for a family of four that is about $6,400.  We’ll bet you could sure find some other uses for that kind of money. 

            Another perspective is that the 2020 federal budget had expenditures of approximately $6.6 trillion, which included the original stimulus money.  So the service on the national debt consumed almost 8% of the total expenditures.  And note that that $6.6 trillion included $3.1 trillion in new debt (this is called the “deficit”, which was more than TRIPLE that of the prior year) – that is, the government’s income in fiscal year 2020 only covered HALF the expenditures.  All that stimulus money?  The government had to borrow it. 

            A more realistic perspective for debt service is to use the original 2020 federal budget amount of $4.79 trillion.  That comes to about 11% of the original budget.  True, the pandemic has skewed things, but not in a good way.  It has generated so far about $3.1 trillion in unanticipated expenditures, which had to be borrowed and which will significantly increase what it costs to service the national debt.  It has also reduced revenues by hundreds of billions due to shutdowns.

But wait, it gets better (worse actually). For the past several years, the annual deficit has been about $1 trillion dollars, which means the national debt gets bigger every year. But it’s costing over 1/2 trillion dollars to service the national debt. so that means that the government has to borrow money just to service the debt. So that means we’re borrowing money to pay the interest we have to pay on the money we already borrowed! And that money will become part of the national debt next year and then we’ll be paying interest on that money. And so on, and so on… Is that nutty or what?

Who We Owe It To

            We owe it to all those entities who have loaned money to the US.  This includes foreign countries like China (about $1.07 trillion) and Japan (about $1.3 trillion), and the total foreign debt is about $6.81 trillion.  Note that this just includes what the US has borrowed from those governments.  It does NOT include all the property and companies in the US that foreign countries have purchased outright or invested in.

            The US also owes the Social Security Trust Fund, the Federal Reserve, state pension plans and private sector pension funds, mutual funds and a variety of other entities, from which it has borrowed money.  Notably, Social Security and public and private pension plans and 401(k) funds are all owed collectively just a bit under half of the debt.  So actually retirees in the US, both current and future, are the ones most at risk if the US cannot pay back this money.  Put another way, almost half of the national debt is owed to you and us via retirement plans of one sort or another, including Social Security.

The Debt Ceiling

            The sad reality is that the US government spends more than it makes every year, so it has to borrow more money every year.  You may have read or heard from time to time about politicians in Washington arguing about whether or not to increase the “debt ceiling.”  Congress sets a limit, called the “debt ceiling,” on how much the government can borrow in total – that is, the highest the national debt can be.

Why the Debt Ceiling Matters

Congress must raise the debt ceiling so the United States doesn’t default on its debt. During the last 10 years, Congress increased the debt ceiling 6 times. It raised it four times in 2008 and 2009 alone. If you look at the debt ceiling history, you’ll see that Congress usually thinks nothing of raising it.

The debt ceiling only matters when the president and Congress can’t agree on fiscal policy. That occurred in 1985, 1995 to 1996, 2002, 2003, 2011, and 2013. It’s a last resort to get attention by the non-majority in Congress. They might have felt slighted by the budget process. As a result, they create a debt ceiling crisis.

https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-ceiling-why-it-matters-past-crises-3305868

OK, So Why Is All This A Problem?

            Think about it.  It’s more-or-less the same as if you had to use 11% of your take home pay (after you’ve already paid out, say, 30% via taxes and FICA) every month to pay just the interest on your credit cards, but still leaving your family of four with a debt of $328,000, on top of the principal you owe everyone.  Wouldn’t you be worried?  Would you run out and spend another $1,600 you don’t have?  Well, if you had that kind of debt in the first place you probably would since you obviously cannot manage your finances intelligently.  And with that kind of debt and a normal income, no one is going to extend you any more credit anyway.  But if you’re a government you get cut a whole lot more slack when it comes to borrowing. 

            But governments and people who spend beyond their means have to pay the piper at some point.  At some point in the future, this money, or a good chunk of it anyway, is going to have to be paid back.  But you’ll be dead by then, so what do you care?  Well, if you have kids or care even a little bit about the future of the country, you should care.  Your kids, and their kids and their kids are going to have to pay it back somehow sometime.  And where does that leave them?  They are paying off our foolishness (Congress’s actually, but we all want all the goodies the government dishes out but don’t want our taxes raised and don’t much think about the consequences) in not being able to live within our means.  Maybe they can kick the can down the road like generations before them and just keep raising the debt ceiling.

            The answer, of course, is simply to budget and spend responsibly, start paying off some principal, and stop raising the debt ceiling, but anyone familiar with how Washington works knows that isn’t going to happen.  And if this progressive brigade takes over, well, the first thing they’re going to do is authorize spending for all sorts of pet projects, like paying back peoples’ student loans and spending trillions on reparations for blacks, and the so-called Green New Deal, and goodness knows what else – just look at the Democratic platform wish list.

            In the end, there are going to have to be some serious behavior changes among our elected “representatives” and “entitlements” since the following description is what we have right now and it show no signs of moderation:

Elected officials have a lot of pressure to increase the annual U.S. budget deficit. Increases in the budget push the national debt higher and higher. There is not much incentive for politicians to curb government spending. They get re-elected for creating programs that benefit their constituency and their donors.

https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-ceiling-why-it-matters-past-crises-3305868

The End

How did this country get to the place where it cannnot live within its means? You have to live within your means or the bank comes for your car or house. We have to live within our means or the bank comes for our car or our house. Here, the debt service of over 1/2 trillion dollars for 2020 is HALF of the budgeted 1 trillion 2020 deficit!!! That is, half of the new debt is going to pay interest on the old debt, and the rest of the new debt gets added to the national debt!!!

Spineless and gutless elected politicians and their ceaseless pandering to special interest groups of one party or another and election and re-election pressure to bring home the bacon for most Congresspersons is to blame. Congress is like a weak-willed parent who just can’t say “no” to their kid screaming in the checkout aisle.

We need better people to represent us. A representative democracy isn’t worth a hill of beans without qualified, decent and responsible people making these decisions for the rest of us. Look at this election – are Biden and Trump really the best we have to offer???

But we the citizens and voters have to step up too and stop returning these losers to office. Incumbency has become almost like tenure; most incumbents don’t even face serious challengers anymore, it’s too expensive unless you already have the power and can help out your donors.

We’re not saying we have any answers to make this happen, but we’re certainly open to ideas and it certainly is about time to start this discussion. One obvious potential solution is to allow only individuals to donate to federal election campaigns, up to a reasonable maximum, say $1,000 per candidate. No union, no corporate, no PACs, no national committees, no black money, politicians would just have to rely on individuals. As it is now, there are all kinds of ways to game the system and the only ones that aren’t hurting are incumbents. Think of what a responsible politician could do with the money wasted on political campaigns!

Now the obvious problem is the Supreme Court’s general view that political contributions are “free speech” of some kind. Well, that is utter nonsense, but it will have to be overcome. If a cap on individual contributions is constitutional, why isn’t the elimination of, or at least a cap on, corporate/union/PAC/committee contributions? Something isn’t making sense here. Not that the law has ever had anything to do with sense, common or otherwise.

Other ideas, anyone?

                First on this list is whoever invented the gas-powered leaf blower.  Like many sharply hit baseballs, their exit velocity is over a hundred mph.  This pox on society serves a useful purpose for only the laziest of homeowners and the most fanatically time-sensitive landscapers.  But its earsplitting whine has prompted no end of bylaw and ordinance proposals to ban them from one or another town, with excellent reasons, including but not limited to the abiding headaches they cause for the rest of us between the noise and gas fumes.  And people run them for what seem hours.  And the reality is they don’t save a heck of a lot of time, they’re just a lot less physical labor than raking.  There’s certainly no wonder why Americans are so fat; the simplest physical chore is anathama to most of us.  So go use your leaf blower for an afternoon, and then go spend thousands on a Peloton instead, why don’t you? 

                Second is whoever invented two-step verification for access to websites, usually banks and credit card operations.  As if signing on wasn’t a big enough pain in the ass as it was, this clown decided people are too stupid to put together unguessable passwords (though to be fair, not without reason), so let’s make it harder to get in.  If you haven’t enjoyed this newest fad, you put in your user id and then your password, and then on the next screen you have to choose how you want your “secret code” send to you, which is usually a text.  Which means then you have to get up and go get your phone, get into your texts, type in the “secret code” on the computer, and then you can finally get in.  Of course, when you check off “remember this browser”, it never does, so every time you want to check your credit card balance, you have to go through this whole rigamarole again. 

                Third are the creators, supporters and acolytes of baseball analytics, who deserve their own column so they won’t be harangued here – not today anyway.  These people deserve not only to be shot, but only painfully wounded and then slowly drawn and quartered by four horses as well.  If you don’t know what that is, we assure you it is not pleasant.

                In all the cancellations going on, it appears that two of the worst offenders have been overlooked, and we are outraged by these 0missions. First, when Neil Armstrong became the first Earth-based person (we don’t use the word “human” anymore since it has the word “man” in it) to set foot on the moon in 1969, he reportedly said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”  (some confusion over what he actually said, he claimed he said “That’s one small step for a man…” For our purposes, a distinction without a difference).

                Second, Linus Van Pelt, a character in the comic strip Peanuts, written by Charles M. Schulz, said in a panel from November, 1959, “I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.”

                If both Armstrong and Schulz were not already deceased, they should be taken out and shot.  This type of misogyny, and racism against females and other assorted genders “of color”, simply should not be tolerated in a civilized society.  It assumes not only that males are the only persons who matter, but wholly ignores not only the contributions of both white females and females “of color”, but also erases the entire LBGTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersexual, Asexual) community from history.  To speak of “mankind” is or should be offensive to anyone who is not a man, including transgender females (persons who are actually females but unfortunately began life trapped in a disgusting and filthy man’s body).  And it should be offensive to any “man” who cares about right-thinking, not that there are many besides us. 

                Therefore, we demand that the cartoon strip Peanuts, and all Schulz books and memorabilia, and any copies of old newspapers (including any on microfiche and digitally) containing the strip at any time in the past, be destroyed immediately.  Current media continuing to carry the strip must be boycotted until they cease this offensive transgression against all non-males in the universe.  Mr. Schulz must be eradicated and cancelled from history altogether.  No trace of him and his offensive attitudes should remain.

                Similarly, Armstrong, and the entire Apollo space program, which was plainly complicit in his incorrect attitudes, must be erased from history.  All videos, photographs, data recordings, reporting, etc. either at NASA or in the various forms of media must be destroyed and history books rewritten immediately to eradicate this man and the entire Apollo program.  Any still-living witness must be put to death.  Chinese Communist Party-style reeducation is not enough for this kind of wrong-thinking.

                Not even the merest shred of memory of either shall remain in Earth-based persons’ consciousness anywhere.  It is appalling that these misdeeds have been allowed to stand for over half a century, but we demand that this be put right.  The systemic patriarchy and racism that allowed this to happen must be challenged and destroyed!

Reference:         https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/us/sexual-preference-amy-coney-barrett-offensive-trnd/index.html;

and https://unherd.com/thepost/when-did-sexual-preference-become-politically-correct/

               First, “sexual preference”

                President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, used the phrase “sexual preference” in responding to a question about the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. 

                Well, the lefty woke dogpack was on that like white on rice (geez, we hope the use of the word “white” in this context isn’t somehow racist).  In particular, Senator Mazie Hirono (D. Hawaii – oops, Hawai’i) condemned in a lengthy statement.  “‘Even though you didn’t give a direct answer I think your response did speak volumes,'” Hirono said. ‘Not once, but twice, you used the term sexual preference to describe those in the LGBTQ community. And let me make clear, sexual preference is an offensive and outdated term. . . . It is used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice. It is not.'”  Apparently the favored term in the queer crowd is “sexual orientation.” 

                Makes one wonder what the “B”s do when they consider, “well, do I want a guy or a girl tonight?”  Isn’t that expressing a sexual preference? Oh, right, it’s OK if some “gay” or “Bi” says it, not if some straight person says it, just like certain other words like nigger. The nominee, of course, appropriately fell all over herself apologizing, since she wants the job and wasn’t looking to feed the wokes some choice soundbite.  But as the above unherd article points out in debunking this nonsense:

                Let’s start with the obvious. Referring to sexual preference doesn’t have to imply that sexual orientation is a choice. The meanings of ‘preference’ and ‘choice’ are distinct. One can have a preference in the absence of a choice and a choice in the absence of a preference. We may make choices on the basis of our preferences, but that does not mean that we choose what we prefer.

                Admittedly, in some situations, a preference can change — and thus it could be argued that the use of ‘sexual preference’ might imply that sexual orientation can be changed. However, if that’s the problem then it also applies to ‘sexual orientation’ as a form of words. Certain kinds of orientation — a political orientation, for instance — can be changed. Other kinds can’t, hence the term ‘fixed orientation’. Of course, there are many preferences that can’t be changed either — hence the term ‘innate preference’.

                So, looking at the matter objectively, there’s no reason why ‘sexual preference’ should be deemed incorrect and ‘sexual orientation’ correct.

                What’s really at issue here are the subjective and selective judgements of a cultural elite who think they should determine what the rest of us can and can’t say. Indeed, they’re literally re-writing the dictionary.

                Just look at the relevant online entry on the Merriam-Webster website, which makes the following declaration: “The term preference as used to refer to sexual orientation is widely considered offensive in its implied suggestion that a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to.”

                Yet on the same page, as archived on the 28 September 2020, the statement is absent. If ‘sexual preference’ really is “widely considered offensive”, then why did Merriam-Webster — America’s premier dictionary — wait until now to tell us?

                One might also ask why Joe Biden referred to ‘sexual preference’ earlier this year without Democrat senators lining up to condemn him? The inconsistency is glaring.

                But then performative offence-taking isn’t meant to be fair. When just about any form of words can be presented in the worst possible light, the temptation to do so as-and-when convenient is overwhelming. The only way to ensure consistency is to assume the best of everyone unless proven otherwise — which is one choice we can make.

                We second these sentiments 100%.  Language can be a tricky thing, but the woke crowd should not be allowed to become Humpty Dumpty and take over the English language:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t- till I tell you. . . . “

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass, Chapter VI (1871).

As noted in a prior post (National Coming Out Day? Oh C’mon, October 11, 2020), in our father’s words on the issue of words being taken over by the left:

It is the media which instantly adopted the word “gay” to describe homosexuals, who had been looking for a term without negative connotations.  The media has now used the term so much and so frequently, that ordinary people find themselves using it.  Yet it is a political term, i.e., one that was chosen to conceal the reality of what it stands for, a public relations term which is supposed to make the worse appear the better cause.

                Second, using the word “noose” gets you cancelled

Reference:          https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/10/22/926622333/penn-state-mens-basketball-coach-resigns-after-investigation-into-noose-comment, citing to and quoting from an article in ESPN’s The Undefeated.

                Trying to buck up one of his black players who had hit a tough stretch, Penn State Men’s Basketball coach Pat Chambers instead got himself investigated, which led to his resignation, presumably to preempt getting cancelled/fired.

                The player, Brakkton Booker, had shot poorly in a recent game,  and he recalled Chambers saying “I want to be a stress reliever for you. You can talk to me about anything. I need to get some of this pressure off you. … I want to loosen the noose that’s around your neck.”

                Bolton claimed these words were racist and “hurt” him since it evoked “the history of lynching, slavery and racial terrorism.”  He claims this was the reason he later transferred to a different program.

                Well, snowflakes and blackflakes are sure turning over every rock to find something to be offended about.  Here you have a coach seemingly trying to help one of his players maximize his potential and it blows up in his face.  Of course, given the current environment chances are he never would have said anything about a noose around a black person’s neck today since we’ve all become appropriately woke (some of us, anyway), but this happened well over a year ago. 

Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest reference to make in any event, but the message seemed reasonably clear to us and it didn’t have anything to do with being racist or about lynching.  He was doing a coach’s job, albeit perhaps clumsily.  But should a person’s life and career be over because of this?  There just is no proportionality anymore. 

                It’s certainly getting more and more difficult to have conversations with people who are generally in the resentment and being offended business.  After all, who knows what purely subjective interpretation a listener might have? There are lots of people today in the resentment and being offended business just looking for things to complain about, often solely on the basis of whether or not they happen to like the speaker. Today there would not even have been any “investigation,” he’d have just been thrown out on his keyster.  Well, as the old saw goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

Reference:         https://nypost.com/2020/10/06/the-associated-press-advises-suppressing-the-truth-about-riots/

                George Orwell would be proud of the new guidance in the Associated Press Stylebook, which proclaims that using the term “riot” to describe a riot “stigmatiz[es] broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice”.

                The guidance claims that “[f]ocusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.”  The AP says “riots” should be replaced with milder terms such as “unrest.” 

                OK, so if there is some sort of underlying grievance (which likely isn’t hard to claim in just about any situation, even if someone is just grieved because, say, it’s raining), then by definition there can be no “riot” when mobs of violent protestors decide to loot and destroy dozens of small businesses and the police cannot control it.  There can only be a “riot” when mobs of violent protestors decide to loot and destroy dozens of small businesses and the police cannot control it when the mob is doing it just for the sheer hell of it with no underlying grievance at all. 

                This is reporting?  No, it is more of the culture of ignorance. The AP should be ashamed of itself for this type of pandering to the antifa/woke/BLM nonsense filling the streets of Portland and other cities.  It’s a sad day when one of the most (formerly) respected and influential news operations in the world decides to engage in this type of stifling prior restraint on the First Amendment freedom of the media. 

If there was any question that the media in general is in the pocket of the leftist woke mob (which of course there isn’t), this redefinition proves it. Read Orwell’s book 1984 and how his Ministry of Truth operates, concealing reality underneath “newspeak” and “doublethink”, and you’ll get an idea of where this is heading, and it ain’t pleasant. 

Reference:          https://www.cbsnews.com/news/portland-protesters-pull-down-statues-teddy-roosevelt-abraham-lincoln/

                Why on earth is the state government in Oregon sitting on their hands and letting this stuff happen?  There is an insurrection going on in Portland.  These are not ad hoc riots and protests generated by the emotion of something that just happened.  These are carefully organized events with specific objectives.  Organizers and protesters arrive with all the necessary tools to achieve their goal and hundreds of their minions show up to help destroy things.

                Last Sunday, according to CBS news, “‘Protesters overturned statues of former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln here Sunday night in a declaration of ‘rage’ toward Columbus Day.  Protest organizers dubbed the event ‘Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage,’ in response to Monday’s federal holiday named after 15th-century Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, a polarizing figure who Native American advocates have said spurred centuries of genocide against indigenous populations in the Americas.  The group threw chains around Roosevelt’s statue, officially titled ‘Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider.’ They threw red paint on the monument and began using a blowtorch on the statue’s base, news outlets reported.  The crowd pulled down the statue just before 9 p.m. The group later turned their attention toward Lincoln’s statue, pulling it down about eight minutes later. . . . After toppling the statues, the crowd began smashing windows at the Oregon Historical Society and later moved onto the Portland State University Campus Public Safety office.'”

                “Historians have said Roosevelt expressed hostility toward Native Americans, once saying: ‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are …’  Protesters spray-painted ‘Dakota 38’ on the base of Lincoln’s statue, referencing the 38 Dakota men Lincoln approved to have hanged after the men were involved in a violent conflict with white settlers in Minnesota.”

                These clowns announced their intentions, actually gave their riot a name, the “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage”, induced hundreds of people to show up to destroy monuments, and they showed up with all the necessary tools including blowtorches, chains and spray paint.  After all, who out of the blue would think to bring a blowtorch or chains to a protest?

                It is just ridiculous that the State allows this to happen.  Night after night, people protest, become destructive, the police declare an unlawful assembly and then disperse the crowd, though not without a lot of pushback and often injuries and arrests. 

                Shame on the public authories in Portland and Oregon.  They should have declared martial law and brought in the National Guard months ago, but for whatever reason(s) they have elected to let this go on, with the resulting destruction not only of monuments and statutes, but of businesses, offices, the Oregon Historical Society and others, including small businesses owned by blacks.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

                Anyway, we think these gutless politicians should start doing their job. 

Reference: https://level.medium.com/the-demand-for-abolition-979c759ff6f

                This is just a sampling of the most recent blatherings of this Kaepernick fellow, who obviously has taken a few too many hits to the head during his football career:

The central intent of policing is to surveil, terrorize, capture, and kill marginalized populations, specifically Black folks. . . . We recognize it as anti-Black violence and control while law enforcement and the injustice system see it as essential to the very nature of the job. . . . The political project of anti-Blackness has always been central to the enforcement of laws and legal codes in the United States.

                Well, that’s certainly news to most of us. Consequently, he doesn’t just want to “reform” policing, he wants to eliminate police and prisons entirely.  He thinks it is a good idea to get rid of public protection agencies and put that money into methods of addressing social ills.  He writes:

By abolishing policing and prisons, not only can we eliminate white supremacist establishments, but we can create space for budgets to be reinvested directly into communities to address mental health needs, homelessness and houselessness, access to education, and job creation as well as community-based methods of accountability. This is a future that centers the needs of the people, a future that will make us safer, healthier, and truly free.

                It is certainly true that, like teachers, police have had a lot added to their plate during the past 20-30 years.  Now they are expected to be social workers, mental health experts, constitutional law experts, and punching bags to boot.  And it is certainly true that some of these tasks are better left to people more fully trained to deal with them, rather than relying on armed officers of the law to be first responders to events that do not warrant potential armed intervention or resolution. 

                But it is folly to believe that the police do not serve significant public purposes, such as protection of the citizenry and the investigation of crime and to deal with the armed criminal element.  Always unaddressed in these types of conversation is the fact that the police may kill 1-2 dozen blacks a year – justitifed or not – but the black community itself kills hundreds of its own members each year.  Seems to us you’d get a bigger bang for your buck by addressing the root causes of black-on-black violence rather than jumping on the police on these actually quite rare situations of blacks being killed by law enforcement. 

                Of course, the rejoinder to that is going to be, well, black-on-black violence is caused by systemic racism and white supremacy.  Well, bollix to that.  The failure of the black community to take any ownership of its own problems and blame them on others, that is, whites, is a fundamental failure in its messaging.  If the black community wants to get whites on board with addressing all this alleged systemic racism business and defunding and disestablishing law enforcement, then they’d better get their own house in order first.  And, notably, every study or poll we have seen indicates that by a wide margin the black community wants no part of this defunding or disestablishing the police.  Kaepernick should talk to his own people rather than committed academics and social justice warriors before he starts to advocate for things that aren’t wanted or needed.

                It is more or less agreed – despite constant whining of American Indians – in genetic and anthropological circles that the ancestors of the people existing in the Americas when Columbus landed wherever he landed (some debate about the specifics of that apparently), had themselves journeyed from East Asia during a time when the sea levels were so low that a land bridge formed between Siberia and Canada/Alaska for thousands of years.  E.g., https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-hailed-from-siberian-highlands-dna-reveals; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-americans-lived-on-bering-land-bridge-for-thousands-of-years/; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/science/prehistoric-migration-americas.html.

                “Indigenous” means “naturally existing in a place or country rather than arriving from another place”.  E.g., https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/indigenous.

                So all these claims of American Indians that they are “indigenous” or “native” to the Americas to the exclusion of the rest of us is just nonsense.  These people came over the Siberian land bridge from someplace else just like the rest of us, just earlier; they are no more indigenous than you or us.  And at this point, over 500 years later, Americans of white European ancestry have just as much right to consider themselves native or indigenous to the Americas as American Indians.  The fact they got here first doesn’t make them indigenous.  They didn’t spring up out of nothing on the American continents; they came from someplace else.   Maybe “Original Settlers Day” would be more accurate, and come to think of it, that would cover both perspectives. 

                This is not to say that the American Indians didn’t get a raw deal in the short or long-term, they certainly did.  But let’s not puff up their earlier presence in the Americas into something it just isn’t.  Anyway, this attempted renaming of a perfectly good celebration of the discovery of the Americas by white Europeans in favor of supposedly “indigenous” or “native” American Indians is completely baseless and should be ignored. 

                So, tomorrow, Happy Columbus Day, buona fortuna and enjoy the day!

Reference:       www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/national-coming-out-day-coming-out-during-a-pandemic/ar-BB19Ur08?ocid=msedgdhp

            The following is adapted from an essay written by our college professor father sometime in the 1990s, and it seems particularly apropos of National Coming Out Day, which turns out to be today, October 11th:

            What I want to do with this is to take up and discuss those aspects of our lives that have come to the fore in the past 10 or 20 years and have preempted the attention of television, newspapers, and other media.  Since these media are all controlled by liberals of various stripes, we have forced on us the “new” liberal attitudes they themselves hold, which are presented as normal for our time–when in fact, they are nowhere near normal–meaning widely accepted by the majority of Americans.  The result is an attempt to force people to accept these views by the constant presentation of them as if they were newsworthy and run-of-the-mill. . . .

            Just to get started, I think I will take up first the homosexuals, who are one of the most annoying groups, and one which has made the most headway in the last few years.  We have all seen, I’m sure, crowds of homosexuals and lesbians parading around on various days of significance to them, often in scandalaous costume, and demanding–something. What?  One is called Gay Pride day, as if one ought to be proud of being homosexual.  But why?  Is it something to be proud of?  The urging of such persons to others of their kind to come out of the closet and show their true colors has always struck me as the height of absurdity.  Why in the world would anyone want to advertise his sexual condition, or private practises, to the public?  “Hello, I’m a pederast, and I like to screw young boys; I’m proud of this, and dare you to say it’s abnormal.”  Or, “I find sticking my organ up another man’s arse much more delightful than sticking it in a female organ; furthermore, I consider this perfectly normal, and want you to consider it normal, too.”  Or, for lesbians: “I like most to strap on a plastic imitation male organ, and stick it into a woman, pretending I’m a man.”

            It seems to me that all the publicity which homosexuals are so relentlessly garnering has the opposite effect from the one they intend, since it has drawn attention to what they actually do, rather than to their supposed right to do it.  We have all been vaguely aware of homosexuals,  without giving them much thought, and have even encountered a few who have expressed a desire to do to us– whatever it is they do.  But because we are not interested in them or what they do, many of us have never inquired into the matter.  However, their constant whining and prancing around, as they have been in recent years; their organizing into pressure groups to influence special legislation on their behalf; all this has drawn attention to what they actually do, and thus has increased the revulsion of most people toward them.

            I’m reminded of an instance from my army days, way back in the forties.  We young recruits–18 or 19, most of us–had to attend the infamous army films about venereal diseases, the point of which was (I gather) to frighten us away from sex, or at least indiscriminate sex without a condom.  Part of this indoctrination included lectures about the penalties for sodomy.  One day, after listening to this stuff for a couple of hours, we stepped outside for a cigarette break.  Everyone was a bit uncomfortable with what they had seen and heard, and were quiet and embarrassed.   Suddenly, one of the young recruits blurted out, “Say, what the hell is sodomy, anyway?”  We all then breathed a sigh of relief, since most of us had little notion what it was,  and were glad to discover that others were equally ignorant.  Hardly anyone suspected it had to do with homosexualism, and with sticking one’s organ into another’s ass.  The only acquaintance with such a repulsive notion for most of us was those dirty jokes about farm boys and sheep; we did not suspect that men actually did that to each other.

            In fact, it is only through newspaper and magazine articles about the “Gay” movement that I have learned more about what the so-called Gay lifestyle actually means.  And it is much more ugly and repulsive than I’d imagined before.  And now that I’m better informed about what homosexuals do, I find myself becoming more hostile to them, not so much because they do it–after all, there are lots of strange people in the world–but because they want me to know about it in great detail, and even agree that it is not only normal, but quite possibly it is a superior way of life.  Only in America in the 90’s could this possibly occur, a nation corrupted by permissiveness to the nth degree, a nation without any principles any more, a nation for which anything goes, and I mean anything.

            I have learned about bathhouses in New York and San Francisco, for example, whose purpose is merely to make assignations, to pick up others or even perform anal sex on the spot.  I learn there are holes in the walls in some places, where one can back up and be entered by someone on the other side of the wall.  I’ve read about “fisting” which is too much even to describe here.  We have all become familiar with public restrooms which one cannot use any more because they are full of homosexuals propositioning every newcomer with importunity and aggressiveness.  No wonder diseases have spread among this group like wildfire.  The AIDS epidemic is indeed an epidemic among homosexuals; and while one might sympathize with a human being dying a lengthy and debilitating death, the reality raises many questions, not least among which is, why should the public put aside its research into other forms of disease to concentrate on this one, when people are dying in much greater numbers of many other diseases?  We may indeed have to finally spend huge sums of money on AIDS, thereby impeding study of Cancer, lung disease, leukemia, and others, simply because eventually these persons will infect everyone else, as the disease has been beginning to spread to some segments of the general populace.  This is hardly something, however, to endear homosexuals to the rest of us, and encourage us to treat them with normal consideration, as if they were just like everybody else–when they’re not.

            One of the surprising puzzles in all this has been the willing, even eager, connivance of the media.  It is the media which instantly adopted the word “gay” to describe homosexuals, who had been looking for a term without negative connotations.  The media has now used the term so much and so frequently, that ordinary people find themselves using it.  Yet it is a political term, i.e., one that was chosen to conceal the reality of what it stands for, a public relations term which is supposed to make the worse appear the better cause.  Along with the media have been other forms of communication–the public prints, for example, newspapers, magazines, books and book publishers, motion pictures.  Have the homosexuals that much power and influence in the country at large?  The answer appears to be yes.  Although various sources estimate that homosexuals constitute between 5 and 10% of the populace, they appear to be concentrated in certain occupations, chiefly the arts, entertainment, communications, and intellectual fields, where their numbers must be legion.  The homosexual of legend was usually a hairdresser, but no more.  While hairdressers may still be such, homosexuals are rife in other fields as well.

            For instance, if you read the obituaries of the New York Times, it is astonishing how many persons dying of AIDS are connected with the theatre in some way–not so much actors, but directors, producers, set designers, costumers, dancers.  Persons in their 30’s and 40’s, occasionally 50’s, who die of AIDS are almost universally homosexuals, and usually in the theatre, publishing, writing, or other related fields.  One can’t help wondering how dreadful it must be to work in those fields in New York or in other such centers.  This helps explain, too, why there is such a flood of books about homosexuality, why so many TV shows have introduced homosexual characters, why the entertainment business works so hard at trying to create sympathy for such persons. 

            These media sources, and their friends, are the source of frequent reports about how AIDS is affecting other, non-homosexual persons–one of their favorite tales being affecting stories about children and women who have AIDS.  The point being that AIDS is a disease that affects everybody, one that anybody can catch.  But this is patently absurd.  AIDS is primarily a disease of homosexual men, transmitted mostly by anal sex.  It can be passed on in other ways, by drug needles, or by bad blood transfusions, or in some instances it can be passed to a woman by a bi-sexual man.  But those exceptional cases are just that–exceptional.  It is, of course, in the interest of homosexuals to convince us that it is not a homosexual disease, since if everybody knew it were, there might be a more difficult time getting funding to find a cure for it.

            I don’t know if the new aggressiveness and vulgarity of homosexuals coincided with the appearance of AIDS or not, but the two events were fairly close in entering our consciousness.  But already we as a nation are spending a hugely disproportionate amount of money on research for this disease, leaving other, much more widespread diseases to hunt for funds.  This is due in great measure to the connivance of the media with the homosexuals in trying to convince us that they are simply normal people, like everyone else.  When TV shows us the annual Gay Pride Day parade, the cameras carefully avoid the more showy, flambouyant, ugly portions of the parade and show only the calm, decently dressed persons carrying banners, trying to look as normal as possible.  Similarly, when TV presents us with an example of a victim of homophobia (one of their favorite words), it is usually a fine-looking upstanding young man who is a straight arrow, goes to church regularly, etc.  We are victims of media distortion and dishonesty much more than many of us realize.

            Homophobia is now one of the most popular words in the homosexual vocabulary, and it means anyone who disapproves of what is called the “lifestyle.”  Is homosexuality a lifestyle?  Is it an aberration?  Is it a curse?  Whatever it is, more attention should be given to the views of the great mass of persons, rather than to the small segment of interested persons who have the support of media mavens, who often themselves are homosexual, male or female. 

Reference:          https://www.theepochtimes.com/yelp-launches-alert-flagging-businesses-accused-of-racism_3532506.html

                Yelp, which is some sort of on-line restaurant review outfit, just announced that it will flag businesses accused of racism.  According to the above article, “[t]he crowdsourced web and mobile-based review service said in a blog post that members of Yelp’s User Operations team will apply the new label, called the Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert, on businesses ‘when there’s resounding evidence of egregious, racist actions from a business owner or employee, such as using overtly racist slurs or symbols.’. . . Escalation to a racist alert will come after Yelp determines the presence of such ‘resounding evidence.’ Prior to that, if someone associated with the business has been either accused of racism—or been the target of racist behavior—the company will apply a more general Public Attention Alert.”

                “Yelp also said that it has ‘rolled out a number of initiatives to help users find and support Black-owned businesses,’ which includes partnering with the 15 Percent Pledge project, which calls on major retailers ‘to commit a minimum of 15 percent of their shelf to Black-owned businesses,’ on the premise that blacks in the United States make up nearly 15 percent of the population.”

                OK, so blacks in Massachusetts, for example, make up only about 7% of the population.  But Target and Walmart, etc., have to stock 15% from black businesses?  What about places in the South where blacks are, say, 50% of the population?  Or Detroit, or Chicago?  Is 15% sufficient there?

                This assumes, of course, that any statistical disparity always equals racism, which any statistician will tell you is just absurd.  Is Massachusetts more racist than Alabama or Mississippi because fewer blacks live there?  C’mon.  It’s often said that there’s nothing common about common sense, and this approach certainly verifies that truism.

                Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 29 U.S.C. sec. (c)(2)(A) provides blanket liability protection for internet service provider such as Yelp for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”.  The original impetus of this statute was to protect children from internet porn, but its reach is much further, as anyone who’s ever tried to sue Google, AOL, etc., has found out.

                The result is Yelp can basically do whatever it wants in terms of labelling conduct like it has proposed and it will suffer no legal liability.  That is, the victim of such foolishness can’t sue Yelp for defamation; he or she will have to try to find out who provided the information to Yelp, which isn’t going to be easy to do unless the accuser self-identifies.  How much faith do you have in the ability of these Yelp holier-than-thou parasites to accurately label businesses?  Well, if they don’t have any liability, they don’t care.  A Yelp “investigation”?  Please.  “Resounding” evidence?  Please. And who decides that?  Yelp, that’s who; judge, jury and executioner.

                One angry customer, that’s all it would take.  Might not even be a customer, could be a neighbor, could be a former classmate or lover of an owner or employee with an ax to grind, could be the fellow renting an upstairs apartment who doesn’t like BBQ smoke.  And evidence, of course, be damned.  An accusation is quite enough to go and cancel yet another business or life.  And once there is a single such flag, even if completely fabricated, then the crazies will come out of the woodwork and that business is done for. 

                If the Yelps of the world are going to start making these types of value judgments and taking it upon themselves to wreck peoples’ lives and businesses, then they do not deserve the protection they have and they should be liable to victims and have to pay up.  It’s up to Congress to change the law, but if the progressive freaks have their way that just isn’t going to happen because, like them, Yelp is woke.  And knee-jerk wokeism is all the rage these days.