George Rebane
Those whose politics have no acceptable future, divert attention only to their version of the past.
National Propaganda Radio this morning featured interviews with BLM leaders who claimed that the Rittenhouse verdict now justified the wanton killing of black protesters by illegally armed and militant white supremacists. This outrageously false message was repeated by the usual lamestream suspects in a litany of videos shown on FN’s Media Buzz broadcast. All of it follows an historical year of the mainstream media and leftwing politicians gratuitously libeling Kyle Rittenhouse with allegations that have shown to be pure fabrications by a rogue press continuing their narrative to support critical race theory.
Upon examination, the main complaint of BLM is the fear that the thugs they field under the rubric of ‘peaceful protesters’ will now no longer feel secure when they riot and assault property owners and others they deem to be their class enemies. The lament is that Rittenhouse has set a precedent that it is now legal for “militant white supremacists” to carry guns on the street and defend themselves when attacked. A gang of rioters can no longer feel safe and protected by supportive progressive politicians, and the legions of the side-lined and lame law enforcement cadres. What’s a peaceful protester to do when presented with such a potentially dire scenario?
Led by outlets like NPR, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, …, the public has been told a mountain of lies for over a year about what happened in Kenosha on 25 August 2020. Humorous personal vignettes now abound about astonished, some outraged, Americans who just now are finding out that race was not an issue in the shootings since only white men were involved, and that it was legal (if not wise) for Rittenhouse to carry a visible long-gun during a riot, and that there was no illegal crossing of state lines with a weapon, and that he had more right to be in town than the imported thugs burning and destroying everything they could lay their hands on. You pay a high price in ignorance when you limit your news sources to the politically woke and stridently divisive lamestream.
For the rest of us it would be a boon if more law-abiding citizens with concealed carries to protect their cities were on streets empty of police when Antifa and BLM plan their next riots. No rioters should feel secure when they pick an innocent victim and decide to assault him with the intent of doing great bodily harm or worse. Nevertheless, that guarantee of safety for the criminal is the demand of every Democrat, most certainly those of national repute.
Postscript – To properly characterize the nature of the Left who now assemble on the streets, and prepare for future protests cum riots, we have last Friday’s Chicago, Portland, and Brooklyn demonstrations led by worthies such as ‘The Reverend’ Jesse Jackson. At these demonstrations people chanted, “every city, every town, burn your precinct to the ground”, and “the only solution is a communist revolution.” (more here)
Scattershots - 29nov21 (updated 9dec21)
George Rebane
Is it Offensive to Illegal Aliens to Refer to Them as 'Illegal Alien'? (here) I certainly hope so. But I'm afraid that doing so will not deter more of them from becoming illegal aliens, nor convince those already here illegally to go back. Nevertheless, it is another concern that is rising to top of our idiot Left's panoply of concerns about America.
[2dec21 update] Been pig hunting. Got back yesterday after a few days in the coastal range near Ladoga on a couple of big cattle ranches with the ranch manager and prominent hunting guide Mike Gardner. I was with my grandson (in-law) who runs a local electrical contracting business. We saw some pretty impressive country traveling in Mike’s ‘ranch truck’ and his quads. We almost had a sanitary problem experiencing for the first time the unbelievable steep terrains both vehicles were capable of navigating. No luck during the first evening’s and next morning’s hunts. Then we tried a mid-day hunt. Grandson got his pig in the standard way with a good scoped shot stalking in medium density vegetation. He spooked the remaining herd and, as planned, drove them in my direction up the next hill where I was waiting with Mike. The herd of about eight pigs decided to run up my hill along a fence line that would only give me about a 30ft window and slim chance to nail a pig going about 25mph and covering the space in less than a second. I was standing about 50ft away with my scope set at a wide 4X as the first pig banzaied out of the brush and immediately disappeared behind the next brush wall. Having seen how little time that took, I was ready for the second pig a couple of seconds later and calibrated my lead on him. A second or so later the third pig burst out and I was ready – led him properly and put a round through her a foot before her momentum carried her out of my shooting window where she collapsed and quickly died, bleeding copiously from entry and exit wounds and mouth. Mike said that in 20 years of guiding hunters he had never seen such a well-placed, off-hand shot at a pig that close and hauling ass at full speed. Grandson later made my day saying, “Papa, you've still got it!” (I did a little calculation that determined the pigs’ angular rate from my position was about 42 deg/sec; I had less than a second to nail Miss Piggy.) We collected our pigs and went back to the ranch house to field-dress them and enjoy a well-earned evening of libations, campfire, and BBQd tri-tip dinner. Got home yesterday after dropping off the carcasses at the butcher in Oroville. Fun time and good eating to come of some of the most expensive pork available in these parts – it will pencil out at about $45/lb.
[3dec21 update] The march of the deluded continues unabated on The Union’s op-ed pages. Today’s lead commentary is from a Keith Rhodes. He argues that K-12 ‘Students need (a) balanced, complete history’, elements of which come right out of CRT, which he maintains is taught only in select courses at the college level. The evidence from uncounted sources that CRT is well established in the K-12 curricula across the nation. This is either totally unknown to the (lamestream limited) Mr Rhodes, or is terminally denied. The Union’s management stated that it will addend editorial corrections to contributed columns with obvious errors. But it has become clear over the last few months that these ‘corrections’ consist primarily of the newspaper’s editorial (ideological?) stance, and have been applied selectively to conservative commentaries. Mr Rhodes exhortations to teach our kids divisive anti-American history are so far off base that he does not even acknowledge the decades of enduring damage to public school students perpetrated by unionized leftwing teachers and administrators. He concludes his sermon with – We have become a polarized society for many reasons, but what was once just the day-to-day march to improve science, medicine and history, to name but a few, has become a contest of rights and freedoms that isn’t necessarily controversial. It’s simply progress. As we bog ourselves down in the minutia of these arguments, our competitors in Russia, China and Europe march forward, surpassing us militarily, educationally and culturally. We are slowing our progress and we are threatening not only our democracy, but our future. Students, and all Americans, deserve to know the truth and be taught a balanced and complete history of our nation. That includes the good, the bad and the ugly.
[7dec21 update] Ever notice that the self-declared ‘centrists’, ‘independents’, 'non-partisans', etc are overwhelmingly leftwingers who need that extra little bit of subterfuge to bamboozle the innocents they seek to influence? I was reminded of this again reading this morning’s Union columnist George Boardman’s ‘Observations from the Center Stripe’ which is usually a continuation of his leftwing perspectives on a potpourri of items similar to RR’s Scattershots. Commentators of the Right never have a problem declaring themselves as conservatives or libertarians, or need to disguise their ideological bent. But those of the Left know that their medicine will not go down easily unless it is misrepresented in something more palatable. My own posterchild for this practice is a dear friend of many years whose list to port is beyond obvious and who seeks to deny this through his membership in the equally left-leaning organization calling itself ‘No Labels’.
[9dec21 update] Sudetenland redux. “President Joe Biden’s administration reportedly plans to push the Ukrainian government to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin by ceding territory” reports the Associated Press. The profundity of ignorance displayed by this administration knows no bounds. Perhaps the new history taught in schools today does not mention how surrendering Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938 helped save the world from WW2.
Climate models’ unreliability finally admitted. This truth has been a yearslong ongoing RR campaign debunking the climate change hysteria in which the world is embroiled. There is literally no scientific basis for believing the 50-100 year predictions of the current spate of mutually incoherent climate change, or the more formally known general circulation models. The 9dec21 WSJ reports, “Earlier this year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time used data on past climate behavior to gauge the reliability of climate models for policy makers.” (emphasis added) The science on climate change, and especially on preventable manmade global warming, ranges between thin and non-existent. And the gulf between science and knee-jerk climate public policies is still beyond measure. The bamboozle of the centuries continues unabated. (more here)
Controlling language to control the masses. We are reminded of this by the first commenter here below. However, not understanding or properly using language may have an equally destructive impact on the public mind. Case in point is the ongoing confusion between the use of ‘data’ and ‘information’ which in almost all people’s minds are erroneously the same. This includes journalists, lawyers, and even most techies. Today’s WSJ contains an entire section on the “Information Explosion” which turns out to be nothing more than articles on today’s still important data explosion. The critical difference is that data are facts and beliefs about the real world. On the other hand, information is data formatted/processed to support decision making. It is clear that from one dataset more than one set of information may be generated. Making information from data is usually hard and requires many different skillsets, most of which are difficult to master. It is the information generating enterprises which deliver real value to society, and also where the real money-making opportunities beckon.
Posted at 03:46 PM in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Culture Comments, The Liberal Mind | Permalink | Comments (61)
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