Morons, dupes, and fools
/
She was joined in her anger by many other readers of her TikTok post, and it’s disheartening, though not surprising, that these consumers can watch their favorite politicians — the ones they voted for — hike the minimum wage; drive up the cost of all fossil-fuel related products, from gasoline and diesel to fertilizer; raise taxes; treble electricity rates; and, in states like California, demand cage-free eggs and poultry and pork (forget caviar; it’s off the menu except for restaurants serving the very wealthy and very famous), and then, faced with paying the price for all these morally-right, earth-saving, meaningless gestures, scream at the food vendors and grocery stores that are passing those costs on to them.
Politicians know that they can always bank on the economic illiteracy of their constituents, which is why we see Biden yelling about “shrinkage: and “price gouging”, and legal whores like our own Richard Blumenthal joining states attorney generals in filing baseless lawsuits against “profiteers”.
Next up: price controls. And then collapse.
The communists know how to play the long game (UPDATED)
/
French far-left set to beat Le Pen’s far-right in election shock
After the first round of voting on June 30, Le Pen’s party was on course for its best ever election result.
Macron and Mélenchon worked to stop Le Pen
Frantic political maneuvering over the past few days saw Macron’s team and leaders of parties on the left muster their forces in a national effort to thwart the far right. Hundreds of candidates on the left and center of French politics pulled out of the election to avoid splitting the anti-Le Pen vote.
Their initial aim was to stop Le Pen’s party winning an outright majority, which seemed a likely outcome a week ago. Instead their efforts may have handed the initiative to the other extreme of French politics, the far left.
So the majority of French citizens have put the communists in charge. along with the most radical of the green parties. A 90% income tax is promised, “but only on the rich”, the nuclear plants that France depends on for its energy will be shut down and decommissioned, and the borders opened still further. Did I mention that the farmers and Jews are screwed?
I don’t particularly care about the French — not until they pay reparations for their slaughter and persecution of my Huguenot ancestors, and return the the land they stole (including the castles, please; thank you very much) — so I’ll just pop the popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show.
UPDATE: Over on RedState, Bonchie has a nice summary of the elections in England and France. His headline: Europe Doesn’t Want to Be Saved”. His summary: Let it burn. You can only help those who want to be saved.”
Mark Twain had it wrong when he said "there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress", but he'd have been right if he'd said that of Sweden
/
From the AP . . .
Shootings and other violence during the extended Fourth of July weekend have left at least 33 people dead, including 11 in Chicago, and injured dozens more nationwide, authorities said.
The Fourth of July historically is one of the nation’s deadliest days of the year. A flurry of shootings around the holiday a year ago left more than a dozen people dead and over 60 wounded. And a year before that, seven people died in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade near Chicago.
Violence and mass shootings often increase in the summer months, with more people gathering for social events, teens out of school and hotter temperatures.
Chicago’s murder rate, by the way, is 5X higher than NYC’s; go figure.
But on the other hand …
Sweden Is Safer in the Summertime, But No One Wants to Face the Reason Why
Robert Spencer:
The Swedish-language publication Fria Tider reported Tuesday that “in southern Sweden, it becomes quieter in the summer when the criminals go on holiday to their home countries, according to the police.”
Yes, you read that right: the people who commit most of the crimes in Sweden go on vacation to their countries of origin, and so their place of refuge becomes calmer and safer for the native population. Mats Karlsson, the head of intelligence for the police in the southern region of Sweden, explained: “Some of them, who originate in other countries, go there over the summer. Then we notice a big difference, a greater calm, in our vulnerable areas. In the second year when they are still in Sweden, they become messier.”
Now wait a minute. Aren’t many of these migrants supposed to be asylum seekers and refugees? So why are they vacationing in the countries they supposedly fled for their lives?
Also, who is paying for these vacations, with migrants receiving “65 percent of social welfare expenditures”? Swedish taxpayers, obviously. But why?
The “foreign-born represent 53 percent of individuals with long prison sentences, 58 percent of the unemployed.” As if that weren’t enough, they receive “77 percent of Sweden’s child poverty is present in households with a foreign background, while 90 percent of suspects in public shootings have immigrant backgrounds.” What benefit does Sweden receive from importing a large criminal element?
Deer Park price cut
/
33 Midwood Road, from $6.950 million to $6.6. It began at $8.3 back in October ‘21, dropped as low as $6.950 by the end of ‘22, then, in a display of market defiance, the price was raised to $7.2 in April ‘23. That didn’t work as hoped for.
1928 homes can be a tough sell, but Deer Park isn’t, so a buyer is sure to turn up.
Sometimes, a busted deal can be a good thing
/
153 E Elm Street (no link, because they’ve pulled all its pictures — I’m posting a couple from the MLS age, just to give the flavor) was purchased for $2.9 million in April 2021. Those buyers put it back up for sale the following January, 2022 for $3.250, entered into a sales contract that February, and when the buyer failed to perform, put it back on the market briefly before giving it up and giving it a rest.
It came back on this March at $3.450, and has now sold for $3.8.
The callipygous Kardashian look is so yesterday; our most admired starlets have put that behind them, and now ...
/
Trans Kids Are The New Fashion Accessories Among Hollywood’s Most Deranged Moms
There’s a celebrity trend that has nothing to do with the season’s hottest fashion designer, jewelry item or flashy car. Instead, Hollywood stars are parading their transgender children around like some sort of good luck charms on a keychain.
Actresses like Megan Fox, Jennifer Lopez and Charlize Theron have been posing for photos next to their transgender or “non-binary” kids, sending a message that this is somehow the new definition of cool. Fox specifically has styled her three boys in very obviously feminine ways, something that Northwestern University Psychologist Dr. Michael Bailey called “kind of crazy.”
“I think that our society now is kind of crazy, and that is, you know, that’s an example, I guess, of how we’re crazy, and I think that’s really bad for our society. I don’t know why anybody would think that’s a good idea,” Bailey told the Daily Caller.
Fox has openly discussed her support of her alleged non-binary child Noah, a son she shares with ex-husband Brian Austin Green. Noah has been photographed wearing dresses when he was as young as age five. The “Transformers” actress insisted that he made that fashion choice himself but has also admitted to encouraging Noah to form a unique identity. Fox says Noah started wearing dresses at age two, according to People.
“When I became pregnant with Noah, I could feel, through my mother’s intuition I suppose, that he was not subscribing to gender stereotypes, so I decided to provide an environment for him early on that would allow him to discover how he wanted to express himself,” she said in a 2019 interview with Education and Career News.
Noah apparently gets bullied at school, but Fox told Glamour in a 2022 interview she gave her son books that tell him it’s okay to dress like a girl.
Dr. Bailey told the Caller that actors aren’t really known for being “mentally healthy people,” which perhaps can explain certain choices.
“They’re known for being good actors and actresses, and, you know, they tend to be good looking and so on. I think that there’s probably a high rate of certain kinds of problems, like personality disorders. I’m not saying [Fox] has one, although this behavior certainly makes me wonder.”
Because of my mother’s Hollywood heritage we had a fairly-steady stream of actors visiting and staying in our house over the years; with but one exception*, they all seemed to suffer from, as Dr. Bailey says, “a high rate of … personality disorders”. Few of the men wore dresses, mind you, but it was a different era; I’m sure that would have changed by now.
(The exception to that parade of nice, but whacky Hollywood stars was family friend Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who was as impressive off-screen as he was on it — more so, in fact. Kind, intelligent, and rarely seen in a pinafore and curlers, at least when he was at our house.
You can read his full military history here — very impressive for anyone, let alone a Hollywood star who could have stayed there, making heroic war movies, or flying about on USO tours.)
*Ah, sorry, Granny, but ….
Edukashun
/
NEA president mocked for copying 'The Office' character Dwight Schrute in 'totally unhinged' speech
NEA President Becky Pringle banged on the podium, flailed her hands in the air and screamed about winning "all the things" repeatedly at the NEA's Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly (RA) in Philadelphia. X critics compared the moment to an iconic scene with Dwight Schrute from "The Office."
During the screechy speech, Pringle called for transformative social justice change in the education system in the pursuit of equity.
"To unite not just our members, but the nation to reclaim public education as a common good, as the foundation of our democracy, and then transform it into something it was never designed to be—a racially and socially just and equitable system," Pringle said. "We worked hard to rid ourselves of a tyrannical, deceitful, and corrupt White House, but the reality is that the seeds that were sown during that horrible season continue to germinate."
"We are the ones who help shape the heart of this nation's hope and dreams. We are the ones who hold steadfast to the belief in the plausibility of the possible. We are the heirs of all who did this work before us. We must keep going. NEA Delegates, we can do this work. We must do this work," she added.
"Our students are depending on us to win all the things," Pringle said, while continuing her screechy pitch. "All the things! All the things! All the things."
So that’s where we are now; here’s how it started:
ohn Dewey as a young professor of philosophy and psychology at Michigan, 1891.
How John Dewey Used 'Public' Education to Subvert Liberty
When humanist John Dewey and his disciples took over the emerging government-education system created decades earlier to advance collectivism, the fledgling system was still in its infancy.
By the time he died in 1952, though, it was a well-oiled collectivist machine that would obliterate America’s religious, intellectual, and political heritage more effectively than any force previously imaginable.
Dewey is often lauded as the founding father of the “progressive” education that now has more than 85 percent of American children in its grip. Although he wasn’t alone—he stood on the shoulders of fellow collectivists Robert Owen and Horace Mann—Dewey certainly deserves much of the credit, or blame, for unleashing it on the United States and humanity.
Like Mann and Owen before him, Dewey had ulterior motives when he dedicated himself with missionary zeal to the cause of “education reform.” Fortunately for future generations and historians, he was a prolific writer who cranked out a seemingly never-ending stream of essays, papers, manifestos, and articles. His views and objectives, then, are hardly a mystery.
Dewey wanted to fundamentally transform the United States. He wanted it to look more like the Soviet Union, in fact. To do that, he believed a total transformation of education and society was required—literally “changing the conception of what constitutes education,” as he wrote in “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education” in 1904.
Education must bring about a “new social order,” he argued.
As was the case with virtually all of the key figures involved in the government takeover of education, Dewey rejected Christianity and even the very existence of God. More on his religion later. He also rejected the individualism and liberty that defined America up to that point, with its strong protections for God-given rights, private property, and free markets.
I>>>>
On top of that, the system would produce a nation in which less than a third of those same seniors would even be considered “proficient” in reading and math, according to federal data gathered from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Replacing Freedom With Collectivism via Education
Interestingly, Dewey was from Burlington, Vermont—socialist Bernie Sanders’s stomping grounds. And like Sanders, Dewey styled himself a “democratic” socialist. But many decades before Sanders visited the Soviet Union on his honeymoon while it was slaughtering and torturing dissidents, Dewey made a pilgrimage to Moscow under Bolshevik rule.
>>>>
Writing in the far-left magazine New Republic, Dewey provided glowing reports about the communist system being imposed upon the people of the Soviet Union. He was especially pleased with its so-called education system, celebrating the way it was instilling a “collectivistic mentality” in Soviet children in his “Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World” published in 1929.
Despite his fondness for Soviet totalitarianism and the communist “ideology” behind it, Dewey would publicly criticize Stalin and Stalinism later in life. His model for a communist United States, by contrast, was outlined in Edward Bellamy’s 1888 book “Looking Backward,” a fantasy about a wonderful collectivist America in the year 2000 where all private property would be nationalized by government.
Dewey’s socialist views were hardly a secret. In “Liberalism and Social Action,” he wrote that the “only form of enduring social organization that is now possible is one in which the new forces of productivity are cooperatively controlled.” “Organized social planning,” he continued in his well-known 1935 work, “is now the sole method of social action by which liberalism can realize its professed aims.”
In common with virtually all the totalitarians of the 20th century, Dewey understood that the education of children would be fundamental to achieving his Utopian vision of collectivism. “Education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness,” he claimed. “The adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”
Out With 3 Rs, in With Collectivism
In his important 1898 essay “The Primary Education Fetich [sic],” Dewey argued strongly against the then-heavy emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic in the younger years. It produced highly literate, independent-minded individualists with faith in God and freedom. That was not conducive to a collectivist Utopia, obviously.
Instead, Dewey thought the main focus of education during those precious early years should be socialization and emphasizing collectivism. In particular, the reformer wanted to ditch reading and writing in the primary grades to concentrate on giving children “the habits of thought and action” that he believed were “required for effective participation in community life.”
An astute operator, Dewey recognized that the liberty-minded and overwhelmingly Christian teachers, taxpayers, and parents of America of that era would never knowingly support his radical educational and political ambitions if they understood them. “Change must come gradually,” he explained in that same essay. “To force it unduly would compromise its final success by favoring a violent reaction.”
So instead of going to the American people, Dewey went to the Rockefeller oil dynasty, which was giving away unfathomable amounts of money for “educational reform” through the “General Education Board.” The “philanthropic” outfit gave Dewey millions of dollars to create an experimental school to try out his ideas—a school that successfully cranked out reading-disabled collectivists.
>>>
From his ivory-tower perch, Dewey would train up legions of teachers and disciples to unleash on an unsuspecting United States and carry forward his vision. It worked. Dewey became the founding father of America’s “progressive” public education system, and his ideology went mainstream.
Another Dewey “achievement” while in academia was resurrecting quack methods for teaching reading that had been discredited in the 1840s under Mann in Boston. That incredible saga—the root cause of America’s current illiteracy crisis—will be the subject of a future piece in this series.
Perhaps even more important and far-reaching than being able to advance his views on education and politics was Dewey’s influence on the religious views of Americans. Dewey was a self-proclaimed humanist, with his public declarations on religion fusing atheism with socialism and communism. His success on this front is unquestionable and will be the subject of an upcoming piece in this series as well.
In fairness to Dewey, Owen, Mann, and the lesser-known characters behind the government takeover of education, they didn’t have the 20th century in the rearview mirror. It might be said, in their defense, that they did not know the ideology of collectivism, when implemented, would lead to the untimely deaths and mass slaughter of hundreds of millions of people. Now, we should know better.
(Lest you think that the passages above are a tad over the edge of hysteria, written as they are by a conservative Christian, you can find pretty much the same story told by the socialist magazine Jacobin in an appreciation published January 8, 2018.) It concludes with this quote from the hero himself:
… [T]he ends which liberalism has always promoted can be attained only as control of the means of production and distribution is taken out of the hands of individuals who exercise powers created socially for narrow individual interests. The ends remain valid. But the means of attaining them demand a radical change in economic institutions and the political arrangements based on them. These changes are necessary in order that social control of forces and agencies socially created may accrue to the liberation of all individuals associated together in the great undertaking of building a life that expresses and promotes human liberty.
And Trenton — don't forget the good voters in Trenton
/
Biden tells Pennsylvania crowd state got him ‘across the line’ when running as Senator from Delaware
President Biden told a room full of supporters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Sunday that Philadelphia always got him “across the line” when he was running for the U.S. Senate. However, Biden was a U.S. Senator from Delaware, not from Pennsylvania.
“Even when I was running for Senate, each time I ran – quite frankly, not a joke – Philadelphia, in particularly, got me across the line,” Biden said, eliciting applause from the audience. “No, I’m not joking.”
Not appearing to catch his mistake, Biden plowed ahead.
“No, I mean it, seriously. Organizationally and in terms of fundraising, the whole deal,” Biden said.
The quality and intelligence (and knowledge of geography) of Biden voters was on full display:
“Even when I was running for Senate, each time I ran – quite frankly, not a joke – Philadelphia, in particularly, got me across the line,” Biden said, eliciting applause from the audience. “No, I’m not joking.”
Late to his own funeral
/
He left his hotel in Atlanta 27 minutes late and arrived with less than half an hour to spare, with no time to learn where to look when Trump was talking, the Washington Post reported.
As a result, he often looked in the wrong direction and appeared like he was staring into space, barely aware of what was going on.
Uh huh. So, it wasn’t the cold, the 12-day jet lag, or mean ol’ Trump yelling at him, eh?