Why Is PETA Silent On The Fate Of Tardigrades Murdered In The Name Of Science?

Reference:       Tardigrades Survive Being Shot Out of a Gun at Speeds up to 2,000 Mph (businessinsider.com)

            Tardigrades are “also known as water bears or moss piglets. . . . these 0.05-inch-long organisms look like eight-legged potatoes with scrunched up faces and tiny paws under a microscope. . . . The critters can withstand temperatures between minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 272 degrees Celsius) and 304 degrees Fahrenheit (151 degrees Celsius) and pressure up to six times that of the deepest part of Earth’s oceans. . . . Tardigrades can go without water and oxygen for long periods of time in a state of suspended animation called cryptobiosis, in which their bodies dry up and their metabolisms shut down. . . . “

            Thus when an Israeli spaceship carrying a bunch of tardigrades crash-landed on the Moon in 2019, scientists assumed they had survived.  But scientists, being what they are, had to know.  So some genius decided hey, let’s shoot a bunch of tardigrades out of a big gun at high speeds to see if they would have survived the impact of crashing into the Moon. 

            Someone somehow finagled some research money from somewhere, and Alejandra Traspas, an astrochemist at Queen Mary University in London and her pals came up with some tests to see whether tardigrades could have survived crashing on the Moon or not.

            “To test the theory [that they survived], Traspas’ team froze 20 tardigrades (to get them to hibernate), loaded them into hollow nylon bullets, and fired them at sandbags using a high-speed gun.  They found the animals just couldn’t survive an impact if the bullet was fired at more than 2,000 miles per hour — only fragments of the tardigrades remained — because the pressure of 1.14 gigapascals from the impact was just too great.”  “Being shot more than 2,000 mph meant the critters experienced 1.14 gigapascals of pressure on impact — that’s equivalent to the pressure of about 40,000 people standing on your back at once.  “‘They just mush,'” Traspas told Science. . . . This suggests tardigrades that crash landed on the moon in 2019 did not survive.”

            PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is always the first one to throwing blood on people wearing fur coats or freeing lab testing animals or protesting cosmetic manufacturers’ torturing of cute bunnies to check out eyeliner formulations.  Where are they when these poor tardigrades are herded into some lab, stuffed into hollow bullets, and then just blasted into oblivion, all for the sake of satisfying some nosy scientist’s idle curiosity?  Where are the protesters?  Why is this going unchallenged?  Tardigrades are animals too, at least these scientists think so.

            On their website, at www.peta.org, PETA loudly claims that ” Bigotry begins when categories such as race, age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or species are used to justify discrimination.  END SPECIESISM.”  So these scientists turn out to be nothing more than “speciesists”.  We’re not sure if that’s an actual insult, but it certainly sounds ugly – who wants to be called a speciesist?

            Rabbits, monkeys, horses, elephants, apes of various sorts, cats, dogs, big cats, big dogs, chickens, cattle, dolphins, the list goes on and on of the species PETA claims to protect, but tardigrades are not mentioned anywhere on their website.  SHAME ON YOU PETA!  Scientists, in the name of science (and their own idle curiosity), who massacre poor innocent tardigrades who never did anyone any harm, should be ashamed of themselves too.  Will no one stand up for the tiny tardigrade?  Anyone? Remember, if no one cares enough to stand up for the tardigrades, will anyone stand up for you when the scientists come for you?

Just When You Thought These “Progressive” Morons Couldn’t Get Any More Idiotic – “Women” Is Now Replaced With “Birthing People”

Reference:       Rep. Cori Bush Says ‘Birthing People’ in ‘Maternal Health Crisis’ Testimony, and Twitter Goes Nuts (msn.com)

            Representatives Cori Bush (D. MO), Ayanna Pressley (D. MA) and Senator Cory Booker (D. NJ) are all now officially morons (not that they weren’t already, this is just more evidence).  Now you can’t say the word “women” anymore, you have to refer to women as “birthing people.”  If there is anything more wokely idiotic, we haven’t heard of it, and we’ve heard a lot of woke idiocy lately for sure: 

Rep. Cori Bush was not the only government official to use the gender-inclusive terminology “birthing person” on Twitter or in official documents on Thursday. Democratic Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley used the term in her tweet Thursday announcing that she and Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey “re-introduced the MOMMIES Act to expand Medicaid coverage for birthing people & promote community-based, holistic approaches to maternity care.”

            Presumably terms such as “man,” “husband,” “father,” “groom,” “mother,” “wife,” “bride” and “girlfriend” are also out the door.  “Man” should be…what?  “Sperm Donor?”  What do you think?  “I now pronounce you sperm donor and birthing person.  You may now kiss the birthing person.”  How romantic.  Is it now “birthing person’s lib?”  Do books have to be retitled – like D. H. Lawrence’s “Birthing Persons In Love?” How about “Seven Birthing People For Seven Sperm Donors?” Pretty catchy, huh? “Birthing People-Head Revisited?”

            How does that translate to, say, French or any other language where the verbs are also masculine and feminine as well as the pronouns?  French progressive minds would probably just explode trying to sort that out, which isn’t such a bad outcome come to think of it. Not that the French would tolerate this nonsense anyway. 

            We obviously can go on like this all day, but the idiocy is – well, we hope, anyway – self-evident and doesn’t need to be pounded into the ground.  We fervently hope that at some date soon these “progressive” woke morons will come to their senses.  Or we wake up from this noxious dream! 

Rutgers Law School Is Full Of Foolish Students, But That’s No Surprise These Days For Any Law School

Reference:         The Boston Globe, 5.4.21 edition, P. A5:

                A white law student during Zoom office hours of a law school professor’s class at Rutgers quoted part of a court decision which included the word “nigger.”  She said the word “nigger” rather than this “n-word” baloney.  Naturally the outrage machine kicked in and “[w]hat followed has jolted” the school.  And of course all the black students, with their white etc. woke allies, have a petition going looking for formal apologies and the creation of a policy on “racial slurs,” completely ignoring that no one was insulted or called anything, they just had to hear the word “nigger,” which of course is OK for blacks to use but not whites. 

                The student, presumably concerned about getting kicked out of a public school, now has a lawyer.  Surprisingly, however, several Rutgers professors have actually supported the student and the professor on free speech grounds.  We’ll see where this goes, but certainly the cancel culture knives are being sharpened as we write this.  Stay tuned…but it doesn’t appear that this insanity is going to end anytime soon.

U.S. Senator Tim Scott, A Black Man, Said America Is Not A Racist Country. He is Scorched By The Left On Social Media And Everywhere Else. Next Day Both President Biden And Vice-President Harris Say The Same Thing. Utter Silence From The Left. Go Figure.

After 50 Years Of Jeep Having Vehicles With The “Cherokee” Name, NOW The Cherokee Nation Wants To Whine About It

References:        Time for Jeep to stop using Cherokee as a vehicle name, tribe’s chief says (msn.com)

                According to the above article:

                “I’m sure this comes from a place that is well-intended, but it does not honor us by having our name plastered on the side of a car,” Hoskin [the tribe’s Chief] said.

                The statement marked the first time that the Cherokee Nation had called for the change since Jeep first began using “Cherokee” on its vehicles in the 1970s, according to Car & Driver.

                Kristin Starnes, a spokesperson for Jeep’s parent company, the Amsterdam-based Stellantis, said in a statement that the vehicle name was carefully selected “and nurtured over the years to honor and celebrate Native American people for their nobility, prowess and pride”.  (emphasis supplied)

                Yes Folks, there’s nothing like jumping on a bandwagon before it gets away.  This is yet another example of, in the delicious words of Jason L. Riley at the Wall Street Journal (Gender-Neutral Language Is More Than a Word Game – WSJ), “opportunists who [a]re playacting for attention.”

Dumber Than A Bag Of Hammers Award, Part II

References:     Maura Healey leads AGs in calling for Biden to cancel student loan debt (bostonherald.com); Pressley proposes guaranteed jobs – The Boston Globe

                We have a repeater in this article, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who we noted previously (What’s The Difference Between Liz Warren, Ayanna Pressley And A Bag Of Hammers? Hammers Have A Use, February 8, 2021) won one of our “dumber than a bag of hammers” awards last week for her (and her buddies’) demand that the federal government simply write off all student loans up to $50,000, regardless of the need of any particular borrower.  See our post of November 15, 2021, Yes, By All Means Let’s Throw Away Money On This Phony Elitist Student Debt “Crisis”.  Not to mention that she also wants $2,000 recurring payments to people as part of a “stimulus” bill, every penny of which will have to be borrowed by the government and will impoverish generations of Americans yet to be born.  See If Being An Economic Illiterate Is Required For A Congressperson, Then Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush Are Well-Qualified, January 23, 2021.  Now, her most recent idiotic cost-be-damned proposal is to guarantee each person in the country a job – mostly on public works projects, it sounds like. Boy, that would probably take care of the student loan “crisis” going forward, why bother with college then? Y’know, sometimes things politicians say (and most other people actually) are so stupid they don’t really need much commentary pointing that out, so we’ll lay off here. If you happen to think that’s a good idea, then you’d better stop reading now before you have a stroke.

                But we have a new entrant this week, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who has pivoted back to the phony student loan “crisis,” which as we have explained before is no crisis at all.   She claims that “student loan borrowers were already struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic and recession . . . . The existing repayment system for federal student loans providers insufficient opportunity for struggling borrowers to manage their debts or recover from the current economic crisis . . . . Broad cancellation of federal student loan debt will provide immediate relief to millions who are struggling during this pandemic and recession, and give a much-needed boost to families and our economy.”

                What a load of bolongna!  Why is this bologna?  The following is adapted in summary form from our post of November 15, 2021, Yes, By All Means Let’s Throw Away Money On This Phony Elitist Student Debt “Crisis”.

                First, people accumulated their student debt knowingly.  They took on this debt, maybe even unwillingly, because it paves the road to a better tomorrow, supposedly.  But they agreed to it, and they agreed to repay it.  What is wrong with, in general, making them do just that?

                Second, what do you say to all the millions of responsible people who worked hard after graduation and paid off, or are paying off, their student loan debt without whining about it being excessive?  Even if it caused them hardship. Do we just write them all a check?

                Third, what do we say to all those responsible (and irresponsible) people who never had any student debt in the first place, but who are somehow managing to take care of themselves at real jobs doing useful work. Is that a crisis? Well, it might be pretty quick if all these college students who ran up debt get a big money payday (roughly 13.6% of the population) and the non-college people (roughly 86.4% of the population) get nothing.  After all, isn’t “equity” is one of the cool buzzwords these days – is that equitable? Or what is the carrot that the non-college crowd are going to get that we haven’t heard about yet?

                Fourth, this amounts to paying off the debt of all these leftist, antifa, BLM spoiled college brats-turned-graduates who believe that free speech is the most wonderful thing in the world UNLESS you don’t agree with them, in which case violence and property destruction are legitimate political alternatives and you are a monster needing immediate cancellation.

                Fifth, this proposal is a pretty transparent and cynical attempt to capitalize on this health crisis to implement one of progressive’s pet political projects – basically it’s buying votes for the Democrats with your money. 

                No doubt not having to pay one’s voluntarily incurred obligations would be a delight to most money-grubbers, though there may be few outliers who were brought up to live within their means and to pay their bills.  But if you look at the numbers, this is just giving people a gift most of whom don’t need it.  The big number everyone points to, of course, is the total student loan debt, which is running at about $1.56 trillion dollars.  Yes, that’s a big number.  But it is spread over 44.7 million people, so the average debt per person is $32,731.  The median student debt (meaning half owe more and half owe less) is only about $17,000. That leaves, of course, about 285 million people who won’t receive anything from this wealthy upper-class boondoggle. Did they vote to forgive the debt of college kids who don’t need it? Doubtful. Of course they’re probably white supremacist racists so no one need be concerned about their view.

                Now let’s think about that.  Half of people with student loan debt owe less than $17,000, not even close to the average price of a new car these days.  So just how is that some sort of crisis?  The answer is, it isn’t. Forget about the BMW and take the bus or subway and pay your debts first, like millions of others have and do. Yes, there are certainly bunches of people with student debt that is a lot higher, many owe over $100,000, which are the sad heart-string-pulling stories the media and “progressives” harp on.

                But the fact is that less than 2% of students have over $50,000 in debt.  Almost a quarter of borrowers owe between $20,000 – $40,000 (roughly 9.5 million borrowers).  Only 3 million have debt over $100,000.  Remember, there are 330 million people in this country, so that is not even one percent of the US population.  And dollars to donuts, a good portion of those with gigantic student debt like that got it by going to post-grad places like medical or law or MBA school, so they are much more likely to have the later income to pay it off.  So how is that a crisis?  Again, it isn’t.

                Yes, an increasing percentage of graduates have “excessive student loan debt” and that number has roughly doubled over the past 35 or so years.  “Excessive student debt” was defined as monthly payments consuming 10% or more of income, though obviously that depends on what income class you are in.  Yet that still isn’t even 15% of all borrowers.  So is that a crisis?  No, it isn’t.

                Now this all puts aside the basic notion of personal responsibility, which of course is no concern of Healey or the Democrats since they jettisoned that notion decades ago.  Why should people act responsibly when the federal government will cushion them from every bump and bruise life may inflict on them?

                Yes, for-profit and some two-year schools are notorious for scamming students, exhorting them to take out all kinds of loans including private loans, and those people make up about 40% of all student loan borrowers.  These folks also end up with much less debt since their schooling period is shorter, and/or they drop out and never finish.  But sadly they often end up in dead-end jobs that make it extremely difficult to find housing, health care, food, etc., never mind repay back money that they never really benefitted from and were more or less coerced into borrowing.

                If anyone needs a helping hand it is this group.  And if the “progressives” were to focus on this group – the actual needy rather than the higher-income and more-likely-to-vote group – then perhaps there is something to talk about.  But part of that discussion has to be to go after these schools, who really end up just being money-printing businesses for their owners.  And some limited progress has been made on that front.

                But the notion of some broad-based cancellation of student loans, with no consideration given to how the student got into difficulty in the first place or even needs any help, is misguided and a complete waste of money, unless of course, you’re a Democratic politician planning to run again in 2 or 4 years and want to buy some votes.  There are other pressing needs.  It surely seems inequitable to pass a budget-busting proposal worth over $1 trillion that isn’t going to do anything for the 285 million Americans (only 13% of the population, by the way) that don’t have any student loans and aren’t bellyaching about it.

                Since the election it’s been “gimme, gimme, gimme” with these progressive morons like Healey and Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez and Talib and the rest of the imbeciles who plainly don’t know anything about anything other than how to print money (that is, borrow it) and then give it away.  $1.9 trillion for “stimulus,” PLUS forgiving student loans, PLUS making all businesses pay at least a $15/hour minimum raise PLUS goodness knows what else.

                Therefore, today’s winners of the “Dumber Than A Bag Of Hammers Award” are our very own Congressional Representative Ayanna Pressley, and our very own Attorney General Maura Healey (probably soon to be a gubernatorial candidate or successor to Senator Warren if she ever gets a real job with the Biden administration).  Congratulations to the two of you!  One would hope you actually read this post and become educated about these and other issues before you take positions on them that you have trouble backing away from.

What’s The Difference Between Liz Warren, Ayanna Pressley And A Bag Of Hammers? Hammers Have A Use

References:        Warren, Pressley push Biden to cancel student loan debt – The Boston Globe; Yes, By All Means Let’s Throw Away Money On This Phony Elitist Student Debt “Crisis” (posted here on November 15, 2020)

                Dumber than a bag of hammers is an old saying, and we don’t really mean to insult bags of hammers here.  Congress is infested with bags of hammers.  But at least a bag of hammers has a use.  Preferably for beating dummies over the head until they acknowledge their dumminess.  (Oops, did we just incite violence against dummies?!  Oh my!)

                Progressive darlings Warren and Pressley (and undoubtedly others) continue to beat their drum of “let’s just cancel all the student loan debt of people with $50,000 or less of such debt.”  However, this whole student loan “crisis” is completely ginned up by these people purely for (1) PR splash, and (2) because every debt cancelled is likely a Democratic vote for life.

                Of course the reasons given are to save the economy and to more fairly distribute deficit-spending goodies among all the right identity groups, so-called “social justice”.  And if we’re being truthful about it, for “reparations,” though no one actually comes out and says so.  As the Globe notes, “Doing so would deliver financial help to tens of millions of struggling Americans amid an economic crisis, particularly Black and brown borrowers who have been disproportionately affected by the nation’s more than $1.6 trillion student debt crisis, proponents argue.”  Sounds like reparations to us, albeit thinly cloaked.

                Warren claims that “It would open up more opportunities for more Americans than any single act the president could take . . . . It would close the racial wealth gap among those with student loan debt by 25 points. It would boost a faltering economy. And it is fundamentally the right thing to do.”  To all of that we say, Baloney.  This is nothing more than a money give-away for the benefit of the Democrats in the 2022 elections.

                As the Globe also notes, “Critics, including some liberal economists, say the proposal being pushed by Warren, Pressley and others wouldn’t actually goose economic growth that much, despite a price tag of $640 billion or more.  Across-the-board cancellation also would mean plenty of well-off borrowers, who have not issues repaying their loans, would benefit, raising fairness concerns.  An analysis published by the Brookings Institution last fall found that almost 60 percent of outstanding student loan debt is held by households in the top 40 percent of income, those making more than $74,000 a year. The authors argue that those low-income workers hit hardest by pandemic-driven job losses — such as restaurant and retail workers — live in households that are less likely to have student loans.  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget argues that student debt cancellation would deliver far less ‘bang for the buck’ for the economic recovery than the other federal spending.”

                And what do you say to those of us who already have paid off our student loans without crying about it?  Or who don’t need help and are doing just fine.  Do we all want to pay off student loans for people when for tons of them it just means agony over whether or not to buy another beemer for the McMansion three-car garage, and what color it should be?

                Yes, there are people who didn’t plan, or didn’t ask the right questions, or who got hoodwinked by one of these for-profit fly-by-night “certificate” factories.  The people who got screwed by some unscrupulous con-man, those people perhaps merit some help – OK, that’s fine.  As for the rest, well, we have little sympathy with people who took out $100,000 in student loans so they could get an undergraduate degree in English Literature or Creative Writing, or sociology.  Any moron is fully aware that the income potential of such degrees generally don’t merit the expense.  And the people who have actually lost jobs during this pandemic, yes, let’s help them out, the retail and restaurant employees.  But not people who are still working and haven’t lost a nickel of income, which frankly is the vast majority of us.

If Being An Economic Illiterate Is Required For A Congressperson, Then Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush Are Well-Qualified

References:          Joe Biden’s call for unity faces challenges from Republicans and Democrats (bostonherald.com); Rep. Ilhan Omar calls on Biden to back ‘recurring cash payments’ until economy recovers (msn.com)

                Apparently Representative Ayanna Pressley (D. Mass.), despite her time on the Boston City Council and in Congress, has learned nothing about where the money the government spends comes from, and evidently doesn’t care.  Neither do her “squad” buddies:

Biden’s plan calls for a round of $1,400 checks that, when combined with an earlier batch of $600 checks, would bring the total for most Americans to $2,000 — the amount many Democrats and even Trump had called for. But progressive U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., were quick to say that $1,400 isn’t $2,000. And U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., tweeted, “The people deserve, demand and require $2,000 recurring monthly survival checks.”

                At least Ocasio-Cortez and Bush have their arithmetic correct, $1,400 isn’t $2,000.  Maybe their student loans didn’t go to waste after all.  But $1,400 plus $600 does equal $2,000.  Rep. Ilhan Omar has also recently chirped in, demanding like Pressley that President Biden back “recurring cash payments” to people until the economy recovers.  Goodness gracious, it’s wonderful to see such generosity in our elected representatives with your money. Of course, they have absolutely no intention of ever even thinking about paying it back. 

See our posts of October, 20, 2020, The National Shame Of The National Debt, and November 15, 2020, Yes, By All Means Let’s Throw Away Money On This Phony Elitist Student Debt “Crisis”, if you want to read more about how your elected “progressive” representatives want to spend your money, your kids’ money, your grandkids’ money, your great-grandkids’ money, your great-great-grandkids’ money, and so on throughout the rest of eternity. 

                These people really need an education in how borrowing money works.  There really should be some basic economic education required of new members of Congress so that they can learn and then understand that all the money they want to spend is not just sitting in some vault over at the Treasury Building waiting for someone to think up ways to spend it.  Each person alive in this country right now owns approximately $80,000 of the existing national debt.  Sure, let’s add another $10-20 thousand each to that – what the heck, in for a penny, in for a pound.  But remember that the people pushing and voting for the idea aren’t going to pay it back.  They’ll be long dead before that bill comes due. 

                And this is all on top of the equally moronic idea to spend another few hundred billion (at least) to pay off some or all of the existing student loan debt.  A dumber idea than that has never been hatched by a Congress (well, that’s hyperbole, of course, it’s a bottomless well of dumb ideas on Capitol Hill).  People who have already paid off their loans will revolt and those (the vast majority, by the way) that are perfectly able to pay will just take the extra money and buy a beemer.

                Sigh…