GOV/MIL Leftists Call For New "Secret Police" Force To Spy On Trump Supporters (AN ABSOLUTELY MUST-READ THREAD)

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Liz Peek: Democrats Overplayed the Race Card and Voters Are Fed Up
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Liz Peek |
Jan 6, 2022

In a recent interview, Flordia Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz told Bloomberg that Republicans had no “ideas” to offer American voters, and hence no winning platform going into the midterm elections.

She’s wrong. When polling shows that only 23% of the country thinks we’re headed in the right direction, the opposition party has plenty to talk about.

GOP candidates can offer sensible, time-tested solutions to some of our most pressing problems — like soaring inflation, rampant crime, and the flood of people entering the U.S. illegally. They’ve done it before and they can do it again.

But Republicans can also capitalize on the public’s growing disgust with race-focused policies which reverse our civil rights progress and produce new-age discrimination.

An Economist/YouGov poll shows only 13% of the nation “strongly approves” of Joe Biden’s stance on civil rights. The demographics of that survey suggest that white and Hispanic Americans are fed up with Biden’s insistence that the U.S. is a “systemically racist” country and the overreaching efforts by the Democrats and the White House to correct racial “inequities.”

The latest salvo came from the New York, where the Department of Health has indicated on its website that that rationing of potentially life-saving therapeutics including monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals like Paxlovid and Molnupiravir should take into account race and ethnicity.

The guidance from the department includes this statement: “Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor, as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.”

In other words, because some groups have a higher incidence of disease and because we have hypothesized that those unequal outcomes stem from past inequities as opposed to poor diet or other factors, we may withhold scarce treatments from white people.

This suggestion is offensive, but it did not originate in Albany. On January 21 last year, newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden signed an executive order “Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery” which vowed to tackle “severe and pervasive health and social inequities in America…”

In the order, Biden established a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force” tasked with rooting out racism in our approach to the coronavirus.”

The task force was charged, along with various other agencies, of collecting “equity data” and making sure vaccines, therapeutics and tests were distributed “equitably.”

Voters might speculate that if our health authorities had been less consumed with ferreting out speculative racial bias they might have done a better job of organizing testing, for instance, or informing the public about the efficacy of vaccines instead of relying on data from Israel and other countries.

Health departments have not been the only groups plunged into racial controversy. Schools and teachers’ unions are engaged in mortal combat between those who want kids to learn to read and do math and those who would indoctrinate them in critical race theory.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is urging her state’s legislature to pass legislation guaranteeing no university or school system in her state will teachThat any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior” nor that “individuals… are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.”

In other words, her bill proposes that no kid would be demeaned or demonized because of the color of their skin or because of something done two hundred years ago by their ancestors. Can anyone possibly disagree with that? As Noem said in an interview, “Americans believe ‘all men are created equal,’ and we also believe the American dream is available to all regardless of race, color, or national origin.”

This would not seem controversial. But activists across the nation perceive this bill, and Noem, as a dire threat.

When New Hampshire passed a similar bill, the state was sued by the National Education Association’s New Hampshire affiliate and the American Federation of Teachers.

Leftists like those leading the teachers’ unions view Noem and others as jeopardizing their purposeful destruction of the progress made over many decades by our civil rights leaders, which have been codified by law. Martin Luther King, who in 2013 famously dreamed of a day when his children would not “be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” would be horrified. These people insist that those children be judged solely by the color of their skin.

Why would teacher unions push racial discord? Because it advances Democratic candidates, who have worked overtime to solidify their hold on minority voters.

They push racial grievances because that’s all they’ve got.

Blue state officials have been unable to significantly narrow racial gaps in income or employment in their jurisdictions, not because of “systemic” discrimination but because their policies allow crime to run riot, discouraging investment in minority neighborhoods and they tolerate inner city schools which fail to educate black and brown kids.

Republicans should and can do better on issues of importance to minority voters, such as reforming controversial police tactics. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., proposed a sensible package of regulations to that end but was rebuffed by Democrats terrified of losing their grip on what they see as a potent issue. GOP candidates should campaign on adopting Scott’s proposal.

Republicans can also vow to overturn wrong-headed Democrat policies that have enabled a crime wave in our big cities, and especially in minority neighborhoods.

A survey of Minneapolis residents this fall showed Black voters more opposed to reducing police presence than white voters. African-Americans also rejected the alternative of a “Department of Public Safety” while white citizens approved that idea.

GOP candidates can also run on school choice, which is universally popular, and especially within minority communities.

Democrats have overplayed the race card while failing to deliver solutions. Voters will make that clear come November.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

You can’t parody this…
Posted by Kane on January 7, 2022 2:11 am

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1478946585295798273
2:20 min
Better I not say anything. Pretty much speaks for itself.

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[COMMENT: Although our system protects individual liberties to "pursue happiness' in whatever lifestyle one choses - within the law, it does not allow an individual or minority to override 'community norms" of social or religious acceptability of the majority. e.g. you can't force me to call you a "he" if your biological functions are female. So sorry that you are offended, but the Constitution does not protect you from being so. It only protects you from unequal treatment before the law.]
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

DOJ Refuses To Withdraw Memo Activating FBI Counterterrorism Division Against School Parents

SUNDAY, JAN 09, 2022 - 04:00 PM
In a quiet response to the Senate Judiciary Committee three days before Christmas, the Biden DOJ says it won't withdraw a controversial memo used to activate the FBI Counterterrorism Division to investigate parents voicing their opposition to a variety of topics - primarily mask and vaccine mandates, and teaching critical race theory.



This week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed the pre-Christmas response - stating:

"n December we asked why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was getting involved in parents expressing their concerns at school board meetings. Now, just to be crystal clear, there’s no excuse for real threats or acts of violence at school board meetings, but if there are such threats, these should be handled at the local level and the Attorney General should withdraw his memo that started this whole thing.

"Well, a couple days before Christmas, the Justice Department responded to us with just a one-page letter.

"In that letter, DOJ had nothing to say about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was involved in local school-board matters. DOJ just said, 'We’re not going to withdraw the memo.' So, the Feds may be keeping track of school board meetings—even if it creates a horrible chilling effect. And, of course the FBI looking over your shoulder would have a chilling effect. Next week the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on domestic terrorism. I hope we’re going to be focusing on the serious threats facing our country—and I hope no one thinks the focus is on our nation’s parents."

The Garland memo
On October 4, AG Merrick Garland issued a memorandum announcing a concentrated effort to target any threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents toward school personnel.

The announcement came came days after the national association of school boards asked the Biden administration to take “extraordinary measures” to prevent alleged threats against school staff that the association said was coming from parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory.

In late October, however, it was revealed that Garland based the memo on unsupported claims made by the National School Boards Association, which apologized for inflammatory language. Garland maintains that the letter had no bearing on the DOJ's stance.

A 'protected disclosure':

In mid-November, House Judiciary Committee Republicans sent a letter to Garland after an FBI whistleblower came forward with "a protected disclosure" - claiming that "the FBI's Counterterrorism Division had been compiling and categorizing threat assessments related to parents, including a document directing FBI personnel to use a specific "threat tag" to track potential investigations."

"This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents," the letter continues.

According to a public statement by Grassley regarding the one-page letter:
"The Department of Justice owes the American people a better answer than just a one-page letter that says nothing about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is involved in local school-board matters. Now more than ever, parents should be their kids’ strongest and best advocates. They have the God-given right to do so. And the Justice Department ought to be doing everything it can to protect that right, not scare them out of exercising that right. Attorney General Garland should withdraw his memo. And he should take Congress’s oversight, and concern for the rights of parents, more seriously."
(h/t Sharyl Attkisson)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Law journal bans 'hurtful' questioning of systemic racism, prompting exodus of contributors

"Emory is a great law school, and this will create a scandal that will discredit you and your journal," one departing contributor warned.

Updated: January 9, 2022 - 10:06pm

Emory University's student-led law review is facing a revolt by contributors for demanding that one drop "insensitive language" from a "hurtful and unnecessarily divisive" critique of the concept of systemic racism.

Two contributors confirmed to Just the News they withdrew their essays from a forthcoming "festschrift" issue honoring the work of Emory's Michael Perry, in protest of Emory Law Journal's attempt to censor an essay by the University of San Diego's Larry Alexander.

Alexander told Just the News that he, USD's Steve Smith and Northwestern's Andrew Koppelman are now publishing their essays in the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, which he edits.

"So the good news is that Perry gets two festschrifts instead of one," Koppelman wrote in an email. "The bad news is that the Emory Law Journal has engaged in shameful censorship," but he's confident a future editorial board will have "a better comprehension of their responsibilities."

Two more contributors have promised to withdraw unless the journal lets them "include a blurb in front of their essays that protests the decision not to publish Larry," Alexander's USD colleague Gail Heriot wrote for the legal blog Volokh Conspiracy.

They haven't given her permission to divulge their names, Heriot told Just the News in an email, but "one is from the Naval Academy and one is from Yale (emeritus)."

Student-run law journals have undergone the same woke shifts as other student media. Those at Harvard and New York University were sued in 2018 on allegations of discriminating by race and sex, both in the composition of their membership and whose articles they accepted.

The Emory Law Journal invited him to contribute because he's a "long-time professional friend" of Perry's, Alexander said. He received a "standard law review communication [that] didn't mention content censorship."

Alexander chose to write a critical essay on Perry's "disparate racial impact" theory from early in his career, and the editors gave him "several suggestions that I was told I could take or ignore."

He ignored those requiring substantial revisions to the third and final section, which scrutinized the evidence and proposed remedies for "systemic racism," then learned the edits were not optional.

Cornell law professor William Jacobson published some of the email exchanges between the journal and Alexander on his blog Legal Insurrection.

The editorial board "unanimously stated they do not feel comfortable publishing this piece as written," editor-in-chief Danielle Kerker Goldstein wrote to Alexander, and it must be "greatly revised" to be published.

He must not only remove the third section but also add more on "the merits" of Perry's work to the first two sections, she wrote. Also on the chopping block: Alexander's "objectifying term 'blacks' and 'the blacks' ... the discussions on criminality and heredity" and "the uncited statement that thankfully racism is not an issue today."

Alexander flatly refused. "I cannot believe the censorious tone you are taking towards an invited symposium participant," he wrote. "You don't have to agree with what I've written, but what I've written I stand behind."

This was an unprecedented demand from a law journal in his experience, Alexander told Just the News. He's taught at USD for more than 50 years, half of that with "distinguished" status.

Goldstein and Shawn Ren, executive articles editor, didn't respond to Just the News queries seeking an explanation of its editing process, whether it has rejected invited essays for similar reasons it gave Alexander, and how the essay withdrawals could affect the Perry festschrift.

They didn't answer two requests to share the full email exchange, which Alexander said is "out there" in full but didn't provide it.

Smith told Just the News the journal editors did a "pretty light edit" on his essay, "Michael Perry, Dark Prophet of Progressive Collapse," and had no "substantive objections."

The essay challenged Perry's early argument that the courts should expand human rights through a "noninterpretive" approach to the Constitution, using a "religious" and "prophetic" framework.

While he also has "questions or objections to parts" of Alexander's essay, "especially in these contentious times, a commitment to free speech is especially vital," according to Smith's email to the journal editors, published by Legal Insurrection. "[C]onversely, the kind of censorship you are practicing is especially objectionable and unfortunate."

Koppelman's essay for the journal scrutinizes the "controversial and undefended value choices" in Perry's "lifelong" human rights project: "What he offers is less a philosophical account than a set of articles of faith."

He told Just the News he doesn't agree with "Larry’s description of the world," which traces black poverty primarily to "cultural factors that have produced family disintegration, which in turn have produced poor educational achievement and crime."

But the USD professor "offers evidence for it, and it is a matter of some moral urgency to know whether he is right," Koppelman said. The journal editors didn't specify what was false or below scholarly standards, which suggests they oppose scholarly work that "describe true states of affairs" if it's hurtful or unnecessarily divisive. This view is "increasingly common, and it handicaps us in addressing the genuine problems of racial inequality."

He also accused the editors of mischaracterizing Alexander's discussion on racism as "not strongly connected" to the Perry analysis.

Koppelman made similar points in his email to the journal editors, which he shared. The three contributors are ready to find another publisher, he warned.

"But I hate to do that," he said. "Emory is a great law school, and this will create a scandal that will discredit you and your journal."

Perry, the subject of the special issue, didn't answer queries about how he would rate the law journal's editing process, and whether the festschrift should be published in light of the withdrawals and the revision demands to Alexander.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

National Association of Independent Schools Tries To Silence Reporting By Whistleblower Paul Rossi on CRT Training Sessions

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“I was just locked out of my account twice and received a DCMA strike as a result of a complaint by” NAIS “for sharing a clip from one of their Kindergarten teacher trainings.”

Posted by William A. JacobsonSunday, January 9, 2022 at 01:31pm


Paul Rossi was a former teacher at the elite Grace Church School in Manhattan, NY, and went public at Bari Weiss’ Substack regarding the destructive “antiracist” teaching and indoctrination at the school, I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated.

Paul appeared on a Legal Insurrection Foundation panel on May 30, 2021,

View: https://youtu.be/2WRILNc8rU0
1:42:45 min

Paul obtained training videos from the National Association of Independent Schools recent People of Color Conference. You can view the schedule here. There was an expansive list of sponsors. Soledad O’Brien was the featured speaker.

NAIS is the central accrediting authority for private schools, sets the tone for Critical Race activities, and is viewed with fear by many people we have communicated with.

Paul began posting some very short clips from the conference on Twitter to demonstrate how horrible this training is — and it truly is terrible.

Paul just tweeted that NAIS is trying to get the clips, which to me clearly are fair use, taken down.

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Paul also linked to his original thread, which now shows most of the videos disabled by Twitter.

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Many of the tweets were archived, so screenshots pre-takedown were saved though the videos don’t play as of this writing, including:













Rossi has mirrored the videos at GETTR.
*************


Here is the text of one of the takedown notices:
Hello,
The following material has been removed from your account in response to the DMCA takedown notice copied at the bottom of this email:
If you wish to contest this removal, you may seek retractions from the original reporter, or file a counter notification.
Retractions are not guaranteed, and must be submitted by the original reporter to copyright@twitter.com. You can request a retraction by using the reporter’s contact information found in the copy of the original DMCA notice located at the bottom of this email.
If you believe the material has been removed as a result of mistake or misidentification, you may submit a counter-notification of your objection pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3)
Please include the following in your counter-notification:
  1. Your full legal name, complete mailing address (house number, street name, state, country and zip code), telephone number, email address and Twitter username.
  2. Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled. (Must include specific URLs)
  3. The following statement: “I swear under penalty of perjury that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled”.
  4. A proper jurisdictional consent statement in the form of:
(If your address is in the United States)
“I consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which my address is located and I’ll accept service of process from the person who provided notice under 17 U.S.C. 512 (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.”
OR
(If your address is outside of the United States)
“I consent to jurisdiction in any judicial district in which Twitter may be found and I’ll accept service of process from the person who provided notice under 17 U.S.C. 512 (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.”
Please send your counter-notification to us via webform or as a new email to copyright@twitter.com.
We will forward a copy of your counter-notification, including the information required in item 1 above, to the complainant and Lumen. BY SENDING US A COUNTER-NOTIFICATION, YOU CONSENT TO THIS DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION.
Please note that repeat violations of this policy may result in suspension of your account. In order to avoid this, do not post additional material in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorized to post.
******************************
Copyright owner:
> National Association of Independent Schools
Name:
> Myra McGovern
Company:
> National Association of Independent Schools
Job title:
> Vice President of Media
Address:
> 1129 20th Street NW, Suite 800
City:
> Washington
State/Province:
> DC
Postal code:
> 20036
Phone (optional):
> [REDACTED BY LI]
Fax (optional):
>
Where is this infringement happening?
> Twitter
Description of original request:
> The clip is taken from a recorded presentation that is accessible only to people who registered for NAIS’s People of Color Conference.
Links to original work:
> [Empty]
Please provide URL(s) to the infringing material (e.g., Tweet URL, Periscope broadcast URL, Fleet ID, etc.):
> View: https://twitter.com/pauldrossi/status/1479905013908578308

Reported content:
> Video/Audiovisual Recording
Description of infringement:
> NAIS broadcast this presentation for registered attendees of a conference between November 30 and December 30, 2021. @pauldrossi has violated our intellectual property rights (including our copyright) by posting portions of our presentation without our consent on Twitter. It is our understanding that he intends to post additional copyrighted material in the coming days. We ask that this post be removed, due to this infringement, and the Twitter user @pauldrossi be restrained from posting additional copyrighted material without permission.
512(f) Acknowledgement:
> I understand that under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), I may be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, if I knowingly materially misrepresent that reported material or activity is infringing.
Good Faith Belief:
> I have good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
Authority to Act:
> The information in this notification is accurate, and I state under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
Signature:
> Myra McGovern
Country
> US
This story is just breaking, and will be updated and expanded.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Do Americans Actually Like Critical Race Theory?
Survey says: Nope.

By: Jeff CharlesJanuary 09, 2022 - 10:30 amArticles, Education, Good Reads, Opinion

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by Jeff Charles

A recent survey revealed why the far-left has been forced to resort to deception and coercion in its bid to infuse concepts related to Critical Race Theory (CRT) into America’s classrooms. Despite what so-called progressives would have the nation believe, their ideas really aren’t popular.

New banner Critical Race Theory Uncovered 2


Americans Not On Board With CRT

Rasmussen recently released the results of a poll showing that the majority of Americans are not in agreement with the far left about how the country’s history should be taught. Indeed, Democrats and Republicans seem to be largely in the same camp when it comes to the teaching of American exceptionalism and the negative aspects of the nation’s past.

From Rasmussen:
“Eighty-four percent (84%) of voters believe public schools should teach the truth about slavery. At the same time, a Scott Rasmussen national survey found that 81% believe public schools should teach that America was founded on the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-governance.
Combining the results shows that 72% of voters believe both should be taught.”
When asked if they subscribed to some of the core tenets of CRT, a sizeable number answered in the affirmative. “Another question found that 42% believe the schools should teach that America was founded on racism, slavery, and white supremacy. Forty-four percent (44%) disagree,” the report noted.

The survey also showed that 40% “believe students should be taught that America was founded on noble ideals, but not that the nation was founded on racism,” while 30% believe that both of these ideas should be taught. Among respondents who previously supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the numbers were interesting but not surprising. From the report:
“However, among those who support policies like those of Senator Bernie Sanders, just 42% think students should learn that America is a force for good. Thirty percent (30%) of Sanders’ supporters say that positive message should not be taught while 28% are not sure.”
Progressives Out Of Touch?
It has become abundantly apparent that progressives are woefully out of touch with the American people, especially over the past few years. Multiple polls showed most don’t like ideas like defunding the police, soft-on-crime policies, and Critical Race Theory.

In the overall debate over how history should be taught, fringe elements on both sides of the political divide have pushed for teaching that reflects their worldview. On the left, people prefer downplaying America’s evolution on race and the positive contributions black Americans have made toward society. On the right, some have pushed for banning books about Ruby Bridges and Frederick Douglass.

But it seems any poll would find that the overwhelming majority of Americans want the nation’s history taught, warts and all. They agree kids should learn the good, bad, and ugly about the past instead of revising it in a way that reflects an agenda.

Given this reality, it is amazing that the progressive left would continue trying to sell these absurd ideas, knowing the public does not want them. Yet they seem to lack the self-awareness required to change course. In the end, it may prove to be another nail in their coffin come November.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Pre-school is too young for this gender insanity…
Posted by Kane on January 11, 2022 12:33 pm

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1480723017713864705
.48 min
When Hillary said ‘it takes a village’ to raise children, maybe she was referring to the Village People.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

DOJ creates special unit to target ‘domestic terrorism’…
Posted by Kane on January 11, 2022 3:33 pm

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is establishing a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism, the department’s top national security official told lawmakers Tuesday as he described an “elevated” threat from violent extremists in the United States.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, testifying just days after the nation observed the one-year anniversary of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, said the number of FBI investigations into suspected domestic violent extremists has more than doubled since the spring of 2020.

“We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies,” Olsen said.

The department’s National Security Division has a counterterrorism section. But Olsen told the Senate that he has decided to create a specialized domestic terrorism unit “to augment our existing approach.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Justice Department Creating Specialized Unit Focused on Domestic Terrorism Due to Growing Threat of ‘Anti-Authority’ Ideologies

By Cristina Laila
Published January 11, 2022 at 10:58am
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The Justice Department is creating a unit focused on domestic terrorism.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday on the threat of domestic terrorism.

Olsen said he created a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism due to a growing threat of ‘anti-authority’ ideologies.

Of course Olsen isn’t talking about BLM or Antifa.

“We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies,” Olsen said.

Watch Tuesday’s hearing here:

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1j...due-growing-threat-anti-authority-ideologies/ 2:43:16 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

NEA hid votes on 'white fragility,' Black Lives Matter, reparations amid new scrutiny
The nation's largest teachers union even scrubbed from its website its 2019 vote against 'renewed emphasis on quality education.'

Updated: January 11, 2022 - 10:30pm

Last summer, the nation's largest teachers union scrubbed its website of newly approved resolutions approving funding for "critical race theory" promotion, "fight[ing] back against anti-CRT rhetoric," and anti-racism training.

The scrubbing went further than previously known.

The National Education Association also memory-holed some recorded votes from its 2019 "representative assembly" (RA) two years later, shortly after its 2021 resolutions were drawing scrutiny.

Among them: the RA's defeat of New Business Item 2, which would dedicate the NEA to "putting a renewed emphasis on quality education."

The Southeastern Legal Foundation publicized the archived pages, which now redirect to NEA's RA portal, on Monday night. The pages' Internet Archive indexes also show some were first taken down — returning "404 Not Found" empty pages — without redirecting.

The conservative Georgia nonprofit told Just the News it came across the cache of deleted pages while doing research for an upcoming "continuing legal education" event. "There is a lot more that we will be putting out," they promised.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1480692071719751682
.30 min

The defeated 2019 resolution on quality education was still live July 6, 2021, but redirected three months later. An approved resolution (NBI 11) to incorporate the concept of "white fragility" into existing NEA training was live July 3 but redirected two months later.

The NEA approved partnering with organizations seeking reparations for "descendants of enslaved Africans" (NBI 25), which was still live July 3 but had disappeared without redirecting five weeks later.

At least three 2019 resolutions may have been scrubbed before the July 2021 resolutions drew scrutiny, with their last live archives in May or June 2021.

NEA approved promoting the "Black Lives Matter Week of Action" in schools (NBI 19). Its agenda includes mandatory teaching of ethnic studies starting in pre-kindergarten, replacing "zero-tolerance policies ... with restorative justice practices," and hiring "more counselors not cops."

NBI 118, which demands the U.S. government "accept responsibility for the destabilization of Central American countries" that led to a flood of asylum seekers, was "404 not found" Dec. 14, the next time it was archived.

An approved resolution opposing "all attacks on the right to choose" abortion (NBI 56) was "404 not found" by July 10.

The NEA didn't answer queries Tuesday seeking an explanation for the removal of its resolutions and subsequent redirections of their URLs to its RA portal. Just the News asked whether they were migrated to new URLs or if old resolutions are customarily removed after a certain time period.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Justice Department creates domestic terrorism unit, raising concerns among some in GOP

"We prosecute individuals for engaging in violence and other criminal conduct, not for their beliefs or associations," a DOJ official asserted.

Updated: January 11, 2022 - 11:40pm

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday it is establishing a specialized domestic terrorism unit in response to what the agency says is a rising increase in threats. Some Republicans are voicing concerns over the plan.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the department's plans to create the new unit. "The number of FBI investigations of suspected domestic violent extremists has more than doubled since the spring of 2020," he said.

Olsen went on to list examples of recent domestic terror and hate attacks including the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting, the 2018 Pittsburgh Tree Of Life synagogue shooting and the 2017 Republican congressional baseball shooting, the latter of which the FBI officially reclassified last year from "suicide by cop" to "domestic violent extremist" after outrage from survivors.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Olsen said the DOJ has undertaken an unprecedented effort to prosecute "all who engaged in criminal acts." So far, more than 725 individuals have been arrested and charged by the department over Jan. 6.

Ranking Judiciary Committee Member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that President Joe Biden's domestic terrorism strategy ignored leftwing terrorism, including the 2020 riots after George Floyd's death that caused more than $2 billion in damages and killed at least 25 people.

The Domestic Terrorism Unit will consist of attorneys who "will focus on the domestic terrorism threat, helping to ensure that these cases are properly handled and effectively coordinated across DOJ and around the country," Olsen said.

"We prosecute individuals for engaging in violence and other criminal conduct, not for their beliefs or associations. But we will not hesitate to prosecute those who commit acts of violence in violation of federal law," Olsen concluded his opening statement to the committee.

Prosecuting domestic terrorism can be difficult for the federal government, which does not have a single "domestic terrorism" charge. The criminal code does include a definition for "domestic terrorism" that federal authorities use along with other statutes.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on what they see as the "Big Lie" from President Donald Trump and his supporters. "The Intelligence Community also warned that the Big Lie continues to fuel a heightened threat of domestic terrorism, stating that “narratives of fraud in the recent general election…will almost certainly spur some DVEs [domestic violent extremists] to try to engage in violence," the Democrats tweeted.

"While we must condemn violence in all of its forms, we also need to be realistic about what we’re facing here. The intelligence community has made it clear that the most lethal threat comes from violent white supremacists and militia violent extremists," the Senate Judiciary Democrats added.

"First, they labeled parents as domestic terrorists. Now, Biden’s new DOJ unit will investigate his political opponents and anyone with whom the Left disagrees. This is beyond wrong. It’s a time for choosing, America," Rep. Dan Bishop (R-S.C.) tweeted.

Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Attorney General Merrick Garland last week to withdraw his controversial memo asking the FBI to investigate threats at school board meetings.

"Are concerned parents domestic terrorists or not?" Grassley asked Garland in December.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Biden's Education Secretary Allegedly Requested 'Domestic Terrorism' Letter From School Boards Group

TUESDAY, JAN 11, 2022 - 07:25 PM
Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Newly surfaced emails suggest that the U.S. Department of Education might have played a more important role than previously thought in the creation of a highly controversial letter, which likened concerned parents to domestic terrorists.


Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona answers questions during the daily briefing at the White House on Aug. 5, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)


In a letter (pdf) sent to President Joe Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) characterized disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime.” The organization also urged the federal government to invoke counterterrorism laws to quell “angry mobs” of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for teaching Marxist critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions such as mask mandates on their children.

Just five days later, on Oct. 5, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to help address an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders.

The memo remains in effect, despite the NSBA having since apologized for and rescinded the letter.

According to email exchanges obtained by advocacy group Parents Defending Education (PDE), the NSBA letter appears to be a response to a request for information by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

On Oct. 5, NSBA board member Marnie Maldonado sent an email (pdf) to fellow board member Kristi Swett, asking her whether the NSBA had gone through all the correct procedures before sending the letter to Biden.

I am very concerned about the process by which the statement was made and the tone that essentially allowed the White House to direct the Attorney General to consider members of our community ‘domestic terrorists,'” Maldonado wrote, adding that she wanted the NSBA “to focus on civility.”

In response, Swett said she agreed that there were “communication issues” within the NSBA.

She also mentioned that Chip Slaven, then-interim director of the NSBA, “told officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cordona [sic].”

In an interview with Fox News, PDE President Nicole Neily indicated that the letter Cardona allegedly requested and the “domestic terrorism” letter are the same thing.

“Should this allegation be true, it would reveal that this administration’s pretextual war on parents came from the highest levels,” Neily told Fox News.

“Attorney General Merrick Garland unequivocally stated that he based his memo on the NSBA’s letter—which in turn mobilized the FBI and U.S. attorneys,” she said. “If Secretary Cardona was truly involved in this ugly episode, it is a significant breach of public trust, and he should be held accountable.”

The new information comes amid questions over the Biden administration’s involvement in the creation of the NSBA letter, which still serves as the basis of a series of actions taken by the Justice Department.

According to internal files leaked to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division has created a new “threat tag” titled “EDUOFFICIALS,” and directed agents to apply the tag to all “investigations and assessments of threats” relating to school boards.

“This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents,” Jordan said in a letter to Garland. “The FBI’s actions were an entirely foreseeable—and perhaps intended—result of your October 4 memorandum.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Age Of Intolerance: Cancel Culture's War On Free Speech

WEDNESDAY, JAN 12, 2022 - 11:40 PM
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”
- George Carlin
Cancel culture - political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance - has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.



Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.

This tendency to censor, silence, delete, label as “hateful,” and demonize viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite is being embraced with a near-fanatical zealotry by a cult-like establishment that values conformity and group-think over individuality.

For instance, are you skeptical about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines? Do you have concerns about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? Do you subscribe to religious beliefs that shape your views on sexuality, marriage and gender? Do you, deliberately or inadvertently, engage in misgendering (identifying a person’s gender incorrectly) or deadnaming (using the wrong pronouns or birth name for a transgender person)?

Say yes to any of those questions and then dare to voice those views in anything louder than a whisper and you might find yourself suspended on Twitter, shut out of Facebook, and banned across various social media platforms.

This authoritarian intolerance masquerading as tolerance, civility and love (what comedian George Carlin referred to as “fascism pretending to be manners”) is the end result of a politically correct culture that has become radicalized, institutionalized and tyrannical.

In the past few years, for example, prominent social media voices have been censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that were deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Most recently, Twitter suspended conservative podcaster Matt Walsh for violating its hate speech policy by sharing his views about transgendered individuals. “The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end,” Walsh tweeted on Dec. 30, 2021.

J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series, has found herself denounced as transphobic and widely shunned for daring to criticize efforts by transgender activists to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender. Rowling’s essay explaining her views is a powerful, articulate, well-researched piece that not only stresses the importance of free speech and women’s rights while denouncing efforts by trans activists to demonize those who subscribe to “wrongthink,” but also recognizes that while the struggle over gender dysmorphia is real, concerns about safeguarding natal women and girls from abuse are also legitimate.

Ironically enough, Rowling’s shunning included literal book burning. Yet as Ray Bradbury once warned, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

Indeed, the First Amendment is going up in flames before our eyes, but those first sparks were lit long ago and have been fed by intolerance all along the political spectrum.

Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination.
  • Offensive, politically incorrect and “unsafe” speech: Political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and a growing hostility to those who exercise their rights to speak freely. Where this has become painfully evident is on college campuses, which have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and “red light” speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended.
  • Bullying, intimidating speech: Warning that “school bullies become tomorrow’s hate crimes defendants,” the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying, going so far as to classify “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.”
  • Hateful speech: Hate speech—speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation—is the primary candidate for online censorship. Corporate internet giants Google, Twitter and Facebook continue to re-define what kinds of speech will be permitted online and what will be deleted.
  • Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its ongoing war on “extremism,” the government has partnered with the tech industry to counter online “propaganda” by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks. In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted. In fact, the Justice Department is planning to form a new domestic terrorism unit to ferret out individuals “who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” What this will mean is more surveillance, more pre-crime programs, and more targeting of individuals whose speech may qualify as “dangerous.”
The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state.

Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use.

The end result is mind control and a sleepwalking populace.

In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.
In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind lest they find themselves ostracized or placed under surveillance.

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.

The social shunning favored by activists and corporations borrows heavily from the mind control tactics used by authoritarian cults as a means of controlling its members. As Dr. Steven Hassan writes in Psychology Today: “By ordering members to be cut off, they can no longer participate. Information and sharing of thoughts, feelings, and experiences are stifled. Thought-stopping and use of loaded terms keep a person constrained into a black-and-white, all-or-nothing world. This controls members through fear and guilt.”

This mind control can take many forms, but the end result is an enslaved, compliant populace incapable of challenging tyranny.

As Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, once observed, We’re developing a new citizenry, one that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

The problem as I see it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government and its corporate partners to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean. The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.

In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears.

As Nat Hentoff, that inveterate champion of the First Amendment, once observed, “The quintessential difference between a free nation, as we profess to be, and a totalitarian state, is that here everyone, including a foe of democracy, has the right to speak his mind.”

What this means is opening the door to more speech not less, even if that speech is offensive to some.

Understanding that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.

We haven’t done ourselves—or the nation—any favors by becoming so fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful or closed-minded that we’ve eliminated words, phrases and symbols from public discourse.

We have allowed our fears—fear for our safety, fear of each other, fear of being labeled racist or hateful or prejudiced, etc.—to trump our freedom of speech and muzzle us far more effectively than any government edict could.

Ultimately the war on free speech—and that’s exactly what it is: a war being waged by Americans against other Americans—is a war that is driven by fear.

By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.

By muzzling free speech, we are contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world. When there is no steam valve to release the pressure, frustration builds, anger grows, and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

Be warned: whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

Eventually, “we the people” will be the ones in the crosshairs.

At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “hate” or “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.

After all, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

We are on a fast-moving trajectory.

In other words, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

This is the tyranny of the majority against the minority marching in lockstep with technofascism.

If Americans don’t vociferously defend the right of a minority of one to subscribe to, let alone voice, ideas and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

No matter what our numbers might be, no matter what our views might be, no matter what party we might belong to, it will not be long before “we the people” constitute a powerless minority in the eyes of a power-fueled fascist state driven to maintain its power at all costs.
We are almost at that point now.

Free speech is no longer free.
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship, spying and policing.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Capitol Security Officials Working To Identify Officers With Extremist Views

WEDNESDAY, JAN 12, 2022 - 06:20 PM
Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger and House Sergeant at Arms William Walker are working to identify and root out police officers who might pose “insider threats,” they told lawmakers on Tuesday.


During a hearing before members of the House Appropriations Committee, Walker said that his office has developed an “insider threat awareness program” to identify “insider threats and employees who do lose their compass.”
“The goal is to have police officers trained as insider threat specialists so we recognize the signs and symptoms and indicators that someone’s allegiance has changed,” Walker said during the House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.
Walker’s plan comes a year after the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building, which saw leaders who were in charge of the U.S. Capitol Police on that day ousted following criticism for intelligence and other failures.

He said his office will brief the full Capitol Police Board, which oversees the department, on the plan in the coming months.

Manger told lawmakers on Tuesday that he believes “it all begins with the hiring process.”
Background investigations, polygraphs, and social media investigations will be crucial to ensure those with extremist views aren’t hired, Manger said.
“After you hire someone, you do need to ensure that you have the kind of checks that are necessary to make sure that there’s not something that has changed in terms of their background,” he said during the hearing.
“Having really good in-depth investigations to determine if an officer is involved or engaged in some kind of activity that would lead to a question about their loyalty to our mission—that’s important as well to make sure that those investigations are done thoroughly and decisive actions taken on those cases,” Manger added.



U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thom Manger testifies during the Senate Rules and Administration Committee oversight hearing on Jan. 5, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Tom Williams/Pool/Getty Images)

Experts say the shock of the events that unfolded on Jan. 6 has prompted needed changes, including better communication among Capitol Police, other law enforcement agencies, and the public.
“It’s a sea change between this year and last year in terms of how the Capitol Police are thinking, and operating,” said Chuck Wexler, the head of the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization that focuses on professionalism in policing.

“They’re going to be over-prepared, and willing to be criticized for being over-prepared.”
Manger so far has focused on making major changes to the agency, which includes 1,800 sworn police officers and nearly 400 civilian employees. He’s ordered new equipment for front-line officers and officers assigned to the civil disturbance unit while expanding training sessions with the National Guard and other agencies. He’s also pushed for stronger peer support and mental health services for officers.

The breach took place during a joint session of Congress when lawmakers met to certify electoral votes submitted by the states. The Capitol grounds and building were breached by protesters and some rioters, some of whom wanted to voice their stance against then-Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to intervene in the certification process. Thousands of peaceful protesters remained outside.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Age of Intolerance: Cancel Culture’s War on Free Speech

by John W. and Nisha Whitehead
January 13, 2022
The Age of Intolerance_ Cancel Culture’s War on Free Speech


“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”—George Carlin
Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.

Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.

This tendency to censor, silence, delete, label as “hateful,” and demonize viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite is being embraced with a near-fanatical zealotry by a cult-like establishment that values conformity and group-think over individuality.

For instance, are you skeptical about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines? Do you have concerns about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? Do you subscribe to religious beliefs that shape your views on sexuality, marriage and gender? Do you, deliberately or inadvertently, engage in misgendering (identifying a person’s gender incorrectly) or deadnaming (using the wrong pronouns or birth name for a transgender person)?

Say yes to any of those questions and then dare to voice those views in anything louder than a whisper and you might find yourself suspended on Twitter, shut out of Facebook, and banned across various social media platforms.

This authoritarian intolerance masquerading as tolerance, civility and love (what comedian George Carlin referred to as “fascism pretending to be manners”) is the end result of a politically correct culture that has become radicalized, institutionalized and tyrannical.

In the past few years, for example, prominent social media voices have been censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that were deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Most recently, Twitter suspended conservative podcaster Matt Walsh for violating its hate speech policy by sharing his views about transgendered individuals. “The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end,” Walsh tweeted on Dec. 30, 2021.

J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series, has found herself denounced as transphobic and widely shunned for daring to criticize efforts by transgender activists to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender. Rowling’s essay explaining her views is a powerful, articulate, well-researched piece that not only stresses the importance of free speech and women’s rights while denouncing efforts by trans activists to demonize those who subscribe to “wrongthink,” but also recognizes that while the struggle over gender dysmorphia is real, concerns about safeguarding natal women and girls from abuse are also legitimate.

Ironically enough, Rowling’s shunning included literal book burning. Yet as Ray Bradbury once warned, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

Indeed, the First Amendment is going up in flames before our eyes, but those first sparks were lit long ago and have been fed by intolerance all along the political spectrum.

Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination.

Offensive, politically incorrect and “unsafe” speech: Political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and a growing hostility to those who exercise their rights to speak freely.

Where this has become painfully evident is on college campuses, which have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and “red light” speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended.

Bullying, intimidating speech: Warning that “school bullies become tomorrow’s hate crimes defendants,” the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying, going so far as to classify “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.”

Hateful speech: Hate speech—speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation—is the primary candidate for online censorship. Corporate internet giants Google, Twitter and Facebook continue to re-define what kinds of speech will be permitted online and what will be deleted.

Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its ongoing war on “extremism,” the government has partnered with the tech industry to counter online “propaganda” by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks. In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted. In fact, the Justice Department is planning to form a new domestic terrorism unit to ferret out individuals “who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” What this will mean is more surveillance, more pre-crime programs, and more targeting of individuals whose speech may qualify as “dangerous.”

The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state.

Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use. The end result is mind control and a sleepwalking populace.

In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.

In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind lest they find themselves ostracized or placed under surveillance.

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.

The social shunning favored by activists and corporations borrows heavily from the mind control tactics used by authoritarian cults as a means of controlling its members. As Dr. Steven Hassan writes in Psychology Today: “By ordering members to be cut off, they can no longer participate. Information and sharing of thoughts, feelings, and experiences are stifled. Thought-stopping and use of loaded terms keep a person constrained into a black-and-white, all-or-nothing world. This controls members through fear and guilt.”

This mind control can take many forms, but the end result is an enslaved, compliant populace incapable of challenging tyranny.

As Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry, one that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

The problem as I see it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government and its corporate partners to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean. The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.

In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears.

As Nat Hentoff, that inveterate champion of the First Amendment, once observed, “The quintessential difference between a free nation, as we profess to be, and a totalitarian state, is that here everyone, including a foe of democracy, has the right to speak his mind.”

What this means is opening the door to more speech not less, even if that speech is offensive to some.

Understanding that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.

We haven’t done ourselves—or the nation—any favors by becoming so fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful or closed-minded that we’ve eliminated words, phrases and symbols from public discourse.

We have allowed our fears—fear for our safety, fear of each other, fear of being labeled racist or hateful or prejudiced, etc.—to trump our freedom of speech and muzzle us far more effectively than any government edict could.

Ultimately the war on free speech—and that’s exactly what it is: a war being waged by Americans against other Americans—is a war that is driven by fear.

By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.

By muzzling free speech, we are contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world. When there is no steam valve to release the pressure, frustration builds, anger grows, and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

Be warned: whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all. Eventually, “we the people” will be the ones in the crosshairs.

At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “hate” or “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other. When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.

After all, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. We are on a fast-moving trajectory.

In other words, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making. This is the tyranny of the majority against the minority marching in lockstep with technofascism.

If Americans don’t vociferously defend the right of a minority of one to subscribe to, let alone voice, ideas and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

No matter what our numbers might be, no matter what our views might be, no matter what party we might belong to, it will not be long before “we the people” constitute a powerless minority in the eyes of a power-fueled fascist state driven to maintain its power at all costs.

We are almost at that point now. Free speech is no longer free. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship, spying and policing.

Image by wiredforlego via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0. Article cross-posted from The Rutherford Institute.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Is this a joke, Microsoft…
Posted by Kane on January 14, 2022 1:14 pm

View: https://youtu.be/JK1cmQ4DTYA
4:20 min
Microsoft unveils new woke-check feature for ‘problematic phrasing’

Microsoft has included a new function in the latest version of its Word software that acts as a checker for inclusivity and offers PC alternatives to phrases which could upset snowflakes.
Traditionally, Microsoft Word has offered tools to its 250 million users such as checking software for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. But now, the left-wing tech giant has added an additional feature which reads through a user’s work and examines whether the language used may offend a Democrat.

Continue reading…
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

DEVELOPING… Mike Lindell’s Multi-Million Dollar Businesses and Charities Just Got Completely De-Banked (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft
Published January 14, 2022 at 2:30pm

My Pillow founder Mike Lindell went on the War Room on Friday morning.

Mike Lindell announced on The War Room that one of the nation’s largest banks is moving to debank his multi-million dollar businesses and charities.


lindell-bank-.jpg


The bank is telling Mike his company has to leave.

Steve Bannon posted the information the Heartland officials online.

heartland-bank-officials-lindell-.jpg


Mike passed on information on the Heartland Bank officials on The War Room.

Mike Lindell blamed places like FOX News for not reporting on this persecution of conservatives like Mike Lindell and his company.


The Daily Angle reported:
Among them are the social media sites FrankSpeech.com and Lindell TV, and the Lindell Recovery Network, which helps people overcome addictions, Lindell said in an interview Friday with Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.”

Lindell has been banned by social-media platforms, and major retailers have stopped selling his products because of his efforts to expose fraud in the 2020 election through documentaries, symposiums and other activism.

Bannon played a recording of a telephone call between a top executive at Minnesota Bank & Trust and Lindell’s controller.

The executive asked in the call why the bank, a subsidiary of Heartland Financial, is associated with “someone who could be in the news.”

“Not that the FBI is even sniffing and looking, but what if somebody came and said, ‘Do you know what? We are going to subpoena all of his account records, and this and that. And then all of a sudden we make the news,” the executive said.

“So it’s more of a reputation risk,” he said.
Rumble video 11:31 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Latest Woke Alert: Outlaw Parenthood and Mandate ‘Universal Orphanhood’ for ‘Equity’

'If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children... '

ByJoshua Paladino
January 14, 2022

family and kids
A family enjoys a meal. / IMAGE: HiHo Kids via YouTube

Columnists Joe Mathews argued that California must make “raising your own children illegal” and mandate “universal orphanhood,” to achieve an equitable and “just society completely free from bias,” the Ventura County Star reported.

“If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children,” Mathews began the column.

Mathews wrote that the idea follows logically from belief in the “equity lens” that Gov. Gavin Newsom uses to make decisions.

He argued that each person’s parents confer too many advantages and disadvantages in life to render possible an equitable society.

“Fathers and mothers with greater wealth and education are more likely to transfer these advantages to their children, compounding privilege over generations,” Mathews wrote.

“As a result, children of less advantaged parents face an uphill struggle, social mobility has stalled, and democracy has been corrupted,” he added.

Yet, Mathews does not contend that the state should raise everyone’s children to eliminate these advantages and disadvantages, but that “the rich and poor should trade kids” and “homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors” to redistribute privileges.

Although some may view the proposal as “ghastly” and “totalitarian,” Mathews said he thinks it a “quite modest…fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions.”

He appealed to Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates argued that the guardian class should raise their children in common to eliminate sex distinctions, nepotism, and all other natural feelings that compete with loyalty to the satte.

Plus, he wrote—in a section that, hopefully, reveals the author’s satirical tone—that Justice Amy Coney Barrett supported “safe haven” laws allowing women to turn their babies over to authorities after birth.

“My proposal would merely make mandatory such handovers of babies to the state,” Mathews wrote. “Perhaps such coercion sounds dystopian. But just imagine the solidarity that universal orphanhood would create.”

Universal orphanhood would bless the Democratic Party with another social program, “Foster Care for All,” would free men and women from the need to find stable marriages, and would help “dismantle white supremacy and outdated gender norms” by removing parents who have opposed these goals.

“A few contrarians, lost in the empty chasm between American extremes, might object to this rational proposal on emotional grounds,” Mathews wrote. “They might argue that pursuing your own conception of family is fundamental to freedom.”

“But don’t pay those critics any mind,” he concluded. “Because they just can’t see how our relentless pursuit of equity might birth a brave new world.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

“Parents Should Have a Say in What is Taught in Schools” – Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin Receives Standing Ovation at Inauguration Speech (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila
Published January 15, 2022 at 3:00pm
IMG_9178-2.jpg

Republican Glenn Youngkin was sworn in as Virginia’s 74th Governor on Saturday.
WATCH:

View: https://youtu.be/_poDAqmzIdY
3:40 min

Glenn Youngkin is the first Republican governor of Virginia in over 10 years.

Youngkin defeated dirty Clintonite Terry McAuliffe in November as Republicans nearly swept the entire state of Virginia.

Critical race theory and concerns about safety in schools was the top issue for Virginia voters in November after a female high school student was raped in a girl’s bathroom by a ‘transgender’ boy wearing a skirt.

“Parents should have a say in what is taught in school,” Youngkin said during his inauguration speech to a standing ovation. “To parents, I say we respect you.”

VIDEO:
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1482435582194188288
.46 min

Watch Youngkin’s entire inauguration speech here:

View: https://youtu.be/WiVGV-UOhlU
27:21 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

“We Knew It Was Just a Matter of Time Before the – Big Tech Sh*thole You Work For Would Try to Silence Us” – Dan Bongino Responds to YouTube after Account Suspended

By Jim Hoft
Published January 15, 2022 at 10:11am
Screenshot_20211016-170630_Chrome.jpg

YouTube suspended Dan Bongino’s account on Friday after he spoke about the science behind the mask mandates.

Dan Bongino responded to the banning with one of the most memorable letters to the tech tyrants of all time.

He said what we have all been thinking.

Here are a couple of highlights.
We knew it was just a matter of time before the tyrannical, free-speech hating, bullsh*t, big tech sh*thole your work for, would try to silence us… Thankfully, I’m one of the investors with Rumble.

Respectfully Kiss My Ass,
Dan Bongino
bongino-letter-youtube.jpg


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marsh

On TB every waking moment

Law student government rejects free speech group because debate can cause 'real harm'
This marks the second time in a week that Emory Law School has become embroiled in a free-speech controversy involving a student-run organization.

Updated: January 14, 2022 - 11:22pm

For the second time recently, Emory Law School in Atlanta is dealing with a controversy involving a student-run organization seeking to squelch debate in the name of preventing harmful speech.

Its Student Bar Association, the law school equivalent of student government, denied a charter to the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF) in part based on the "lack of mechanisms in place to ensure respectful discourse and engagement" at its events, such as a moderator.

This could cause a "precarious environment" and "potential and real harm" on fraught topics such as race and gender, "when these issues directly affect and harm your peers' lives in demonstrable and quantitative ways," the rejection letter said.

A charter comes with eligibility for university funding and the use of university resources. Given Emory Law's "well-established promotion of free speech values" and EFSF's "overlap" with other chartered groups, the letter said, "we fail to see a need" to fund it.

A week earlier, three law professors pulled their essays from a forthcoming issue of the Emory Law Journal in response to student editors ordering one of them to remove "insensitive language" from a "hurtful and unnecessarily divisive" critique of the concept of systemic racism.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education raised concerns with the SBA last fall when the charter was rejected, but the student government didn't respond, according to FIRE.

The civil liberties group asked the Emory Law administration to intervene Jan. 10, claiming the SBA violated multiple policies and EFSF meets all criteria for recognition, while noting Emory gets FIRE's highest rating for speech-friendly policies.

The law school told Just the News Jan. 14 there's nothing it can do right now, citing the university's newly announced COVID-19 moratorium on chartering new student organizations.

"The SBA therefore will not have an opportunity to consider providing any new proposed student groups with temporary charters under the applicable law school and university guidelines until March 2022, pending further developments," Associate Dean for Marketing & Communication Susan Clark wrote in an email.

"The law school does not anticipate the need to develop alternative recognition procedures for student groups but would do so if necessary and appropriate to comply with law school and university policies," she said.

A Jan. 6 update to the event planning guide does not promise that chartering will resume in March, however. The moratorium "will be revisited no earlier than March 15, 2022," it reads. "If and when this opens, interested parties will need to follow the chartering entity's guidelines."

File
Emory-Law-statement-SBA-rejection-EFSF.pdf

"Emory's statement does not deny that its Student Bar Association abused its power to reject the Emory Free Speech Forum, merely because it didn't like what this group stood for," FIRE Program Officer Zach Greenberg told Just the News.

"Long before Emory imposed a moratorium on recognizing groups, the university allowed this viewpoint-discriminatory denial of rights to occur," he said. "Rather than refuse to grant all student groups the benefits of university recognition, Emory should follow its free speech policies by granting a charter to the Emory Free Speech Forum."

FIRE said in a blog post it plans to file a complaint with the University Senate's Open Expression Committee, which investigates complaints "through mediation and informal conflict resolution," advises administrators and interprets policy but has no "disciplinary authority."

The committee is composed of faculty, staff and students, and it has seven listed opinions going back to 2016, three of which concerned campus election activity that year. The dean of campus life — who is tasked with enforcing the "Respect for Open Expression Policy" — is an observer.

Emory Law's student handbook classifies violation of its Respect for Open Expression Policy as punishable misconduct, meaning SBA cannot deny recognition to a student group "because of disagreement with its mission or the viewpoints that it represents."

An Emory law professor told Just the News the SBA had committed a "really egregious violation of the free-speech policy and other law school and university policies."

While administrators and faculty are "pretty reasonable ... student government and many student organizations have been taken over by radicals who think free-speech norms don't apply to anything but the most socially progressive speech," the professor said, requesting anonymity.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert, said no other student group was required to use moderators as a condition of SBA recognition.

"It seems clear that the SBA's rationale stems from the student government officials' concern about particular viewpoints that they expect the group to include on those topics," he wrote in a blog post.

FIRE shared with Just the News the minutes from the SBA meeting where EFSF, with 20 members and a faculty advisor, sought the charter.

SBA members asked several viewpoint-related questions, paraphrased as: "How do we regulate discourse, so it is not harmful?" "Will you bring controversial speakers?" "Will there be any mediator?"

Others asked why the club needed funding "to talk" when it could do free events online.

"Free of expression [sic] policy for who? Very few individual of color," one member was paraphrased as saying.

The conversations the club plans to have "are not very ~chill~," another conveyed.

"Unsure what their message is," a third said. "Very contradictory. Emory already has shown they prioritize free speech and expression."

File
Emory-Law-SBA-meeting-minutes.pdf

SBA's claim that the nonpartisan, debate-focused EFSF is too similar to the right-leaning Federalist Society and left-leaning American Constitution Society "strains credulity," FIRE said.

Emory Law is contractually bound to honor its promises, including the open expression policy, which both recognizes "Constitutional rights of free speech and assembly" and emphasizes that "[c]ivility and mutual respect" cannot be invoked to limit speech on "controversial social and political issues," the civil liberties group said.

The rejection "exemplifies the exact reason why this club must exist," EFSF President Michael Reed-Price said in FIRE's blog post. "The SBA need not agree with our ideas, they must merely tolerate our right to express them."

SBA President Jadyn Taylor, to whom FIRE's letter is addressed, didn't respond to queries. Just the News couldn't find contact information for the SBA as a whole, and Taylor's predecessor Maggie Clark said she didn't have it.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

School District Openly Promotes Implementation Of CRT, High School Presentation Discusses ‘Pyramid Of White Supremacy’
People hold up signs during a rally against critical race theory (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Daily Caller News Foundation logo

KENDALL TIETZEDUCATION REPORTER
January 14, 20226:39 PM ET
  • A high school in Oregon gave a presentation featuring a “Pyramid of White Supremacy” that discussed concepts like “white fragility” and “white saviorism,” according to documents obtained by Parents Defending Education.
  • A “Pyramid of White Supremacy” displayed “indifference” at the bottom, which included phrases such as “remaining apolitical” and believing there are “two sides to every story” as white supremacist actions. Other statements such as “claiming reverse racism” and “cultural appropriation” fall under the “veiled racism” category.
  • Portland Public Schools’ (PPS) outlined plans to implement “Knowledge and comprehension of`critical race theory and its application to racial equity and social justice in education,” as part of its “Racial Equity and Social Justice Professional Development Competencies” included in its “Professional Development Framework”
A high school in Oregon gave a presentation featuring a “Pyramid of White Supremacy” that discussed concepts like “white fragility” and “white saviorism,” according to documents obtained by Parents Defending Education.

Grant High School in Portland, Oregon, taught students about equity and racial justice as part of its “Race Forward” project from December of 2021, according to documents obtained by Parents Defending Education (PDE).

The presentation defined “whiteness” in connection with “the belief that white people are the standard in society” and said “white fragility” is demonstrated by white people showing discomfort and defensiveness “when confronted by information about racism,” such as “bringing up having family members or friends who are Black.”

“A white savior seeks praise while alienating the people they claim to help through performative or self-serving actions,” the presentation said. “This causes harm, intentional or not, by implying that white people are superior and must ‘save’ the inferior people of color.”

The presentation included a “Privilege for Sale” game along with a privilege sheet, where participants purchased privileges with fake money so they could get “used to thinking about your [their] identity in this way.”

A “Pyramid of White Supremacy” displayed “indifference” at the bottom, which included phrases such as “remaining apolitical” and believing there are “two sides to every story” as white supremacist actions. Other statements such as “claiming reverse racism” and “cultural appropriation” fall under the “veiled racism” category.

White supremacy is “systemic” and entrenched into all political, economic, social, cultural, legal, military and educational institutions, according to the presentation.

One video on the “Race Forward” page called “Racism,” explains that racism is found in “history,” “whiteness,” “building a wall” and “Donald Trump.”

Portland Public Schools’ (PPS) outlined plans to implement “Knowledge and comprehension of`critical race theory and its application to racial equity and social justice in education,” as part of its “Racial Equity and Social Justice Professional Development Competencies” included in its “Professional Development Framework

People hold up signs during a rally against critical race theory (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

People hold up signs during a rally against “critical race theory” (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

Critical Race Theory (CRT) holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.

Another slide said the district will “integrate understanding of critical race theory, positive intersectional identity development and culturally responsive practices and pedagogy into daily professional life to advance racial equity and social justice.”

The district’s policies on “LGBTQ Issues” tell staff that they should not tell anyone if a student questions their sexual orientation, “even their parents or guardians.”

“Regardless of whether a transgender or nonbinary student has legally changed their name or gender, students and staff should always use the pronoun and name with which the student identifies or requests,” the district’s “Gender Diversity Support Guide” said. The district also provides a “Student Name and/or Gender Change Form.”

The document also outlines the importance of teaching children about gender identity because “transgender and/or gender nonconforming children may express gender diversity as young as preschool.”

A “Portland Public Schools reImagined” document outlines plans to turn students into “racial equity leaders” to “change oppressive systems in their communities.”

“They understand that the dominant historical narrative can minimize the perspectives of people of color and contribute to institutional racism,” the document said. “They can deconstruct the dominant narrative and change it to a more balanced and inclusive one.”

School districts across the country are encouraging teachers to keep parents out of the loop regarding their child’s sexual orientation or transgender status.

A teacher training at a Texas middle school reportedly instructed teachers to not tell parents if a student tells them they identify as transgender or non-binary, the Daily Caller News Foundation. previously reported.

In California, the state’s largest teachers union instructed members at a meeting in October about the best ways to undermine parents and conservative communities regarding gender identity and sexual orientation issues.

During workshops teachers admitted that they surveilled students’ Google searches, online chats and hallway conversations to identify and personally invite sixth grade students to join LGBTQ school clubs and hid information about students involved in these clubs from parents.

PPS did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy

SATURDAY, JAN 15, 2022 - 11:30 PM
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

There is a certain level of madness required to reach the state our country is in today. I think most of us feel this and know this but I want to dissect the situation a little so that we can see the guts of the thing and understand the mechanics of it. Insanity has a structure, believe it or not, and there are ways to analyze it and identify it. For example, there are many forms of madness that stem from an obsession with power and control.



In my previous article ‘Is There A Way To Prevent Psychopaths From Getting Into Positions Of Power’, I explored the thinking patterns and predatory habits of the worst 1% of humanity and how they insinuate themselves into authority by blending in (until they have all the power and no longer need to blend it). Now I want to talk more about the OTHER unstable people, the 5%-10% of the population that psychopaths exploit as a mob or army to frighten everyone else into conformity and help them achieve their goals.

To be clear, almost any group can become an exploitable weapon used by psychopaths. There have been times in history where the elites within the Catholic Church used zealotry among Christians to dominate society to the point of torture and terror during the inquisitions and crusades. During the George W. Bush era I remember well the lies about WMDs used to herd Republicans into pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, that is the past. Today the problem of zealotry is resoundingly on the side of the political left.

That is to say, the political left is now the side that is most appealing to narcissists, sociopaths, the emotionally unstable, etc., and this attraction is forming a mob that can be easily exploited by the establishment.

What I find interesting is that leftists actually believe that THEY are the underdogs and that they are fighting a “revolution” against the establishment. This is a bizarre disconnect from reality. Every major institution of power and influence in the US is on the side of the political left. How can you be rebelling against the establishment if all your values coincide with the establishment’s agenda?

The mainstream media and Hollywood have gone hardline in favor of leftist propaganda from critical race theory to the trans agenda and identity politics to feminism to socialism and centralization. Nearly every commercial, TV show and movie we see today reflects a far-left viewpoint or far left imagery, even though the majority of the population has no interest in woke ideology. Clearly, leftists and their friends in media think that if they force their cultism into people’s faces non-stop 24/7 that we will eventually capitulate and embrace it.

Big Tech and major social media platforms ALL operate according to leftist politics. All of their terms of service rules are enforced to protect leftists from criticism and to censor conservatives and any moderates that dare speak up. The evidence overwhelmingly shows a left leaning bias in Big Tech censorship with conservatives being booted off platforms for nothing more than citing facts. We saw this recently with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia GOP representative, who was banned from Twitter and called a “far-right conspiracy theorist” for posting links to the VAERS database.

For those unfamiliar with VAERS, it is a database run by the US government to track the adverse effects of vaccinations including covid vaccinations. While the numbers have been manipulated in the past (which the CDC claims was due to “reporting errors”), VAERS has still reported thousands upon thousands of deaths and side effects directly related to the covid vaccines, but you aren’t supposed to know about that. So, Greene gets booted from Twitter for posting the government’s own data, which is now only accessible if you go through a maze of links to get to the downloads.

Social media is also commonly used as a weapon by leftists in order to “cancel” people that step out of line. An American Airlines pilot was attacked this week by a Twitter mob when a crazed feminist recorded images of his luggage. His crime? A small sticker on his suitcase which said “Lets Go Brandon.” The woman and her Twitter cohorts called for the pilot to be fired and American Airlines is “investigating” the issue.

This is just one instance among thousands in the past few years that illustrate the sheer rage leftists feel when they are faced with a free thinking person. Their immediate reaction is to punish and destroy rather than accept and move on.

But where does this mentality come from?
I think it’s a combination of a culture of narcissism and collectivism coupled with a desperate desire for weak people to feel as though they are powerful. Leftists are very commonly people you might call the “runners-up” in life. There are a lot of malcontents and socially inept failures in their ranks that grow up feeling powerless. Instead of improving their lot by improving themselves and achieving something of merit, they instead blame others and the world for their lack of accomplishment.

This mentality can also be seen with their academia which often exaggerates their own importance and the importance of their accolades. One can get a masters degree in social sciences or feminist studies, but how useful is that person to the world really? Being an activist alone is not a career and they produce nothing, so the only measure of their education and their life is how much they can destroy, not how much they can build and create.

Joe Rogan’s latest move from Twitter over to GETTR is another big story that leftists are losing their minds over. They act as though they just want to be rid of conservatives and argumentative moderates from their “safe spaces,” but in reality this does not satisfy them. They don’t want us to walk away, they want us to conform. They want us trapped within their echo chambers and going along to get along, or, they want us erased.

Leftists see people as property of the collective, and if you and millions of others walk away this reflects badly on their ideology, which is unacceptable. This is why they are CONSTANTLY attacking or trying to take down conservative social media platforms. You would think they would be happy that GETTR exists, but they are miserable. Your freedom is their misery.

Think about that for a moment; there are millions of leftists out there that cannot abide your existence if you are free to express your discontent with their narrative.

When Joe Rogan contracted covid the leftists were jittery with excitement hoping he would die. When he beat the virus in less than three days without being vaccinated they cried out in horror. It’s as if they don’t realize that most unvaccinated people have had the virus and have easily survived it (I had covid for a week and then I was fine – I will NEVER get vaccinated).

Maybe they are aware that the vaccines are mostly pointless. Maybe what really bothers them is that the unvaxxed are free and do not conform to the mandates or the fear mongering? Maybe they are more concerned about the act of defiance rather than any issues of legitimate “health safety”…?

And this brings me to the relationship between the majority of government and the political left, which are working hand in hand to push forward covid controls and vax mandates. I’ve said this before and I’ll point it out again – There is no longer any debate about who the authoritarians really are. If you want to be free from overt government intrusion and tyranny you go to a conservative red state. If you want to be a slave to bureaucracy you go to a progressive blue state. Red states value individual freedom – Blue states do not. This is undeniable.

Leftists are not the rebels they think they are; they are not the heroes – They are the villains. They are the empire.

I believe the vax mandate agenda in particular appeals to their innate desire for control over others. This is evident in their crazed rhetoric over the vaccination issue. The LA Times just published an Op-Ed titled ‘Mocking Anti-Vaxxers’ Covid Deaths Is Ghoulish, Yes – But May Be Necessary’ (originally titled ‘Why Shouldn’t We Dance On The Graves Of Anti-Vaxxers?), and it’s this kind of bloodthirsty propaganda that truly reveals the extend of the political left’s broken psychology.

They want you to die for going against the mandates. They seem to think that covid is their avenging angel, but this only shows that they are too dumb to understand basic science or too malicious to think rationally.

The Biden Administration has been a key element in fear mongering over the covid pandemic, which has an average Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of 0.26% to 0.27% according to dozens of peer reviewed studies, and now with the even less dangerous Omicron strain the death rate is plummeting further. The overwhelming majority of people have NOTHING to fear from covid, yet leftists readily rally around Biden and his medical tyranny.

Furthermore, the bias (or ignorance) of the LA Times is made clear when we look at the actual data for Breakthrough Cases. Breakthrough cases are covid infections and deaths among fully vaccinated individuals. As a point of reference, in the state of Massachusetts alone there have been over 262,000 fully vaccinated people who still ended up infected with covid and 1054 deaths according to official numbers. That is an infection fatality rate of 0.4%, which is HIGHER than the national average IFR of 0.27%.

The most vaccinated countries in the world are also suffering from the worst infection spikes in the world. In Ireland, for example, over 63% of recent covid deaths were fully vaccinated individuals. In Israel, nearly 60% of covid hospitalizations are fully vaccinated. Uruguay, Bahrain, Maldives and Chile all have overwhelming majority vaccination rates and all of them have seen spikes in covid deaths and and infections. According to the UK government’s own stats, people who are triple vaxxed are 4.5 times more likely to be infected with Omicron than people who are unvaxxed.

The average vaccine is tested for 10-15 years before it is approved for use on human beings, yet covid vaccines were released within months with no long term testing to prove their safety.

It makes perfect sense for people to be concerned.

So, I would ask the hacks at the LA Times: Should we be dancing on your graves when you die from covid despite all those miraculous untested vaccines? Or maybe when you end up dead and on the VAERS list due to vaccine side effects? Autoimmune disorders can take 2-4 years to gestate and be identified by doctors; maybe in 2024 you’ll be wishing you had taken a wait-and-see approach to the untested vaccines like all the smart people are doing?

This is called logic, reason and science. The above data is beyond the mental grasp of many leftists and even when they do get it they ignore it. They have no interest in protecting your health or the health of the public, that’s not what this is about. What they care about is control and nothing would bring them more joy than to see 100% conformity and slavery to their ideals. They live vicariously through tyranny.

The pandemic paranoia, the lockdowns, the mandates, Big Tech, social media, cancel culture are all means to an end. Leftists pretend they are humanitarians that care about the greater good, but this is a facade. It’s just another excuse to justify a deep seated thirst to micromanage the lives of others.

A classic tactic of narcissistic sociopaths is to victimize and terrorize people, then accuse them of being monsters when those people snap back and rebel. They are projecting their tyranny on the rest of us and label us the bad guys. It’s time to end the theater and call leftists what they really are – They are the dictators they claim they are trying to fight.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Youngkin: Liberals Obfuscating on Critical Race Theory — Its ‘Tenets’ Are Being Taught

PAM KEY16 Jan 2022170

Video 18:45 min

Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that when liberals say Critical Race Theory is not taught in school, it was an obfuscation of the fact because its “tenets” were being taught.

Host John Roberts said, “Critics of your position, including former President Obama, say, look, Critical Race Theory is not being taught in schools and that this was merely a trumped-up, phony culture war. What do you say to that? And what does your executive order actually do in terms of Critical Race Theory?”

Youngkin said, “Anyone who thinks that the concepts that underpin Critical Race Theory are not in our schools hasn’t been in our schools. The curriculum has moved in a very opaque way that has hidden a lot of this from parents. And so we, in fact, are going to increase transparency so that parents can actually see what’s being taught in schools.”

He continued, “We’re not going to teach our children to view everything through a lens of race. Yes, we will teach all history. The good and the bad. Because we can’t know where we’re going unless we know where we have come from. But to actually teach our children that one group is advantaged and another is disadvantaged simply because of the color of their skin cuts across everything we know to be true.”

Roberts said, “Is it your contention that Critical Race Theory is being taught in Virginia public schools?”

Youngkin said, “There’s not a course called critical race theory. All the principles of Critical Race Theory, the fundamental building blocks of actually accusing one group of being oppressors and another of being oppressed, of actually burdening children today for the sins of the past, for teaching our children to judge one another based on the color of their skin. Yes, that does exist in Virginia schools today. And that’s why I have signed the executive orders yesterday to make sure that we get it out of our schools.”

He added, “We absolutely have to recognize what the left, liberals do here is try to obfuscate this issue, saying there is not a course of Critical Race Theory. Of course, there are not in elementary school. But in fact, there are absolutely the tenets of CRT present in the schools and what the executive order went at yesterday.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
When The Narrative does not fit the facts of the event...


Michigan AG suggests ‘white supremacists’ are behind Synagogue attack…
Posted by Kane on January 16, 2022 8:31 pm

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1482582659435937794
.19 min
FBI says they continue to search for the motive.

The perp is a Muslim terrorist and he wanted another Muslim terrorist released from prison.

The perp was shot and killed last night…
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Biden says the motive is unclear…

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1482792100441690112
.29 min

Michigan AG suggested white supremacists were behind Synagogue attack…
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1482767605240795137
1:33 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The ”Inclusion” Delusion
Destroying Social Boundaries and Discouraging Effort

by Tatyana Larina
January 16, 2022

diversity, inclusion, government, social boundaries, trans, women, sports, transgender,

Charlotte, NC — This administration’s policies of “equity, diversity, and inclusion” is nothing short of an attempt to social engineer America into a society where success is associated with privilege, effort is characterized as cheating, and failure is a carte blanche to find someone to blame.

There are mechanisms that keep society moving forward by encouraging individuals to thrive for success. All three of those policies are designed to break these natural social mechanisms, prioritizing individual “feelings” over the good of society as a whole. In this article, Bishop Robert Barron explains why each of them is harmful, from a Christian perspective.

Not a Christian myself, I would like to analyze “inclusion” from a social perspective. The goal of “inclusion” is to make every cell of society open their doors to everyone, regardless of qualifications or natural proclivities, to spare some people “hurt feelings.” While providing very questionable (and fleeting) benefits to few individuals, it infringes on the rights of other members of a particular group and hurts society in the long run.

Let’s look at the latest from the “inclusion” crew: transgender swimmer that goes by Lia Thomas was “included” in a women’s swim competition where she didn’t just beat, but crashed, all the other ladies, due to physical advantages of being a biological male. Sure, it made Lia Thomas feel good. But that happened at the expense of all the other women on the team seeing months of their hard work and effort unfairly destroyed. Why do Lia Thomas’ feelings count more than all of these women’s? Only because our “moral betters” in the government and the mainstream media characterized Lia Thomas as “a victim of exclusion” rather than someone trying to break the rules.

“Including” transgender athletes in women’s sports destroys motivation for female athletes to achieve new heights. They know their long hours of work can be destroyed in a minute when someone like Lia Thomas decides to identify as a “female” and enter a competition. So why waste time, money, and effort on excruciating training?

It also hurts transgender people as a group. I am very certain that most of people suffering from gender dysphoria just want to live their private lives without imposing on others, and they fully realize that Lia Thomas competing in a women’s meet is unfair. Most of them do not compete in sports, and they don’t view sports as a way to bring legitimacy to their existence. A few “activists” from “trans” community that appear on TV every hour demanding to be “included” in every aspect of society are creating hostility to people with gender dysphoria that mainstream media is desperately trying to characterize as “transphobia.”

Every school, club, team, and organization should be able to set their own standards and enforce them by only accepting people who they think benefit the organization. Discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, is against the law. Other than that, artificial and uniform “inclusion” creates chaos.

“Inclusion” is a myth that is often being pushed on us by social elites to cover for their own shortcomings. Colleges that terminate professors for stating there are only two genders, will never send an acceptance letter to an aspiring scientist from an inner-city school. Any anchor at CNN will chastise you for asking to impose education standards, but they won’t allow you within 10 miles of their cocktail party if you don’t own a house on Martha’s Vineyard.

From personal experience, being “excluded” by many places proved to be beneficial for me, although it didn’t seem so at the time. As a young child, I was “excluded” from several sports teams. That made my parents realize I wasn’t good at sports, so they shouldn’t be wasting my time or their own time pushing me to compete. In the former Soviet Union, sports was taken seriously, and a gymnastics coach, for example, would not waste her time by consoling a team member who was scared to get up on a bar. “Excluding” kids who didn’t have natural proclivities for sports made sure that those who did got time and attention they needed to thrive and achieve greater results. The rest of us were happy running friendly races with similarly “excluded” neighbors or taking swimming classes at a local community pool. Even though being “excluded” briefly caused “hurt feelings,” it benefited everybody in the long run.

It also works in the social sphere. As an awkward “goody do shoes” teenager, I was often left out of the parties and social gatherings thrown by the “cool kids.” I can assure you it caused much anxiety, sleepless nights, and self-doubt. I can’t tell you how many times I wished for an “inclusion officer” in my school to use his “magic wand” to make my “cool” classmates “include” me in their social circles. Of course, there were no “inclusion officers” in Soviet schools, and teachers didn’t care. In the end, this experience taught me to deal with rejection and made me a stronger person. It also made me examine my own shortcomings and figure out why the kids didn’t like my company. Also, just from personal experience, the “rejected” nerds tend to be much more successful in life than “the party crowd.” Life doesn’t end with high school graduation for most of us, and your “rejected” child will often get the last laugh when he or she gets an acceptance letter from Stanford.

Speaking of Stanford: on Stanford Parent Facebook group, I saw parents complaining that their kids were “rejected” by some of the clubs they wanted to participate in. Apparently, some clubs have limitations on the number of people they can “include,” so there is some selection process, and of course some of the kids did not get in. “Why complain?” — I asked the parents.

“Stanford allows anybody to start a club — why doesn’t your kid start their own? It will take more time and effort, but it would be a valuable learning experience.” Of course, I was promptly censored for “for violating some rule.” As a parent, what kind of message are you sending? Your child is attending the most exclusive place on the face of the planet, and they are upset about not being “included” in some silly club? Teach them to grow a pair.

“Not being included” is a way to make you a better, more valuable member of society. It either forces you to try harder or realize that the place that is “excluding” you is not the right place for you to start with. Either way, it builds character. Consider being “excluded” a blessing — because in most cases, it will turn out to be one. It will make you look for solutions that you never knew existed.

That is not to say that we should condone cruel behavior. If you teach your kids the golden moral principle of treating others as they want to be treated themselves, “inclusion” will come naturally to them. Teach empathy by pointing your toddler to a friend who is crying because he fell from a slide. If your five-year-old took a neighbor’s toy without asking, take one of his, and let him tell you how it feels. A bullying episode by a school-aged kid deserves a serious conversation and some consequences. Early lessons internalized through childhood will be your child’s inoculation from inflicting undue pain on another person.

At the same time, it’s important to teach your child that they will not be “included” in everything in life. Not being invited to a party is not the end of the world. One day, they will get a rejection letter from a college of their choice, which is a lot more painful and consequential.

They will have to deal with being passed down for a job, a promotion, or a business dinner invitation. Learning to deal with rejection early builds character. The “inclusion officer” is not present in most of the real-life situations, and if your child is not equipped to deal with rejection constructively, he or she will be afflicted by low self-esteem, a sense of entitlement, and narcissism.

“Inclusion” imposed on society by force of government is equivalent to banning “survival of the fittest” from the evolution theory because “all species matter.” It impedes “natural selection” process that society uses to ensure that everyone respects boundaries, strives for success, and finds their own worth without infringing on others.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The ‘New Normal’ and the Assault on Reason
Can this assault on reason and nature last?

By Glenn Ellmers
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January 15, 2022

Our political situation is so chaotic and strange right now that we can’t take anything for granted—including what is normal. So it’s often necessary to explain what may seem obvious to readers of American Greatness, but is regarded as strange or almost incomprehensible to other people.

For example, it is obvious to me, and probably to you, that today’s “progressive” agenda is actually pushing our country back to a more primitive past.

Consider some of the most urgent priorities of woke ideology:
  • Reinstituting racial segregation and replacing individual rights with group rights.
  • Abandoning poor and minority neighborhoods to lawlessness by defunding the police and decriminalizing many offenses.
  • Eliminating opportunities for women in sports by forcing them to compete against men.
  • Impoverishing working-class American citizens by enriching a global oligarchy while flooding the labor market with illegal aliens.
  • Eliminating due process and the rule of law by resurrecting pre-trial detention, extra-legal punishment, and the presumption of guilt for “political enemies.”
In each case, this agenda represents a return to a less civilized, even barbaric, past. More precisely, it is the return of tyranny—the default political system for most of human history, and the constant danger lurking in the shadows of freedom, threatening to overtake those who fail to guard their liberties.

It took two millennia for Western civilization to implement the revolutionary principles of limited constitutional government, equal natural rights, and the impartial administration of justice. Now those hard-won achievements are being swept away by a fanatical ideology which, ironically, is convinced of its own moral superiority and devoted to overcoming America’s allegedly racist, unjust history. Somehow, these bizarre and regressive causes have come to define the Left, which not that long ago prided itself on standing for “liberalism.”

In some cases these policies, such as racial segregation, evoke the relatively recent decades of the mid-20th century; but with some you have to go back to the Middle Ages, or even prior to the dawn of civilization, to find historical precedents. Even the Roman empire, for example, punished jury tampering with the death penalty—for obvious reasons. (There’s no point in having a trial if the jury can’t deliberate honestly and fairly.) Yet as we saw in the recent Kyle Rittenhouse case, public threats against members of the jury were tolerated and even celebrated by our ruling class.

Even as evidence grows that the FBI was suspiciously and perhaps illegally involved in instigating the January 6 “insurrection,” many American citizens caught up in the riots have been held in jail for months, sometimes in solitary confinement, awaiting trial, while others are being prosecuted—at enormous public expense—for such minor infractions as trespassing.

If you are sane, these developments are shocking and even a bit confusing. But if you are under the spell of woke ideology, this is all perfectly normal. In fact, if you live in the delusional leftist bubble, what’s shocking is that anyone dares to question this regressive and illiberal agenda.

The confusion sown among those of us who still dwell in reality is intentional. Psychological warfare is a common tool of tyranny. After all, most people don’t want to be slaves (presumably), and so have to be beaten or threatened into submission. Degradation, gaslighting, and arbitrary rules become standard tools of control.

What is more surprising—in fact, breathtaking—is how few Americans are being targeted with intimidation, and how many have instead become enthusiastic supporters of this new fanaticism.

Propaganda, of course, is another great tool of tyrants. But has any despotism in human history ever persuaded so many people, so easily, to accept doctrines that are obviously irrational; to change their opinions instantaneously and without question on command; to deny the evidence of their own eyes, ears, and common sense?

Let me add one more item to the list above—which is perhaps the most astounding example of successful woke indoctrination. For several centuries, at least since John Stuart Mill, the Left has defined itself by its commitment to freedom of speech. This was practically the sine qua non for calling oneself a liberal. Yet some time around 2019-20, in the historical blink of an eye, free speech was simply . . . dismissed. It became obligatory on the Left to support systematic control of our public discourse by a handful of massive tech companies, in cooperation with the government. Liberals moved as if with a single will and became enthusiastic supporters of official censorship implemented by a corporate oligarchy. And yet only a tiny handful of (excommunicated) intellectuals on the Left have dared speak against this Great Leap Backward.

Can this assault on reason and nature last? The historical evidence is mixed. The Soviet Union brutalized its people for decades. But this current woke madness is so strange and internally inconsistent—so unprecedented—it’s safe to say no one really knows what will happen.

On the one hand, the woke tyrants lack many of the advantages the old Soviet commissars had, including iron discipline, intellectual consistency, and a deranged if sincere moral courage.

Moreover, there are still millions of Americans who understand, for now, the difference between the truth and a lie, between the normal and the preposterous.

Commenting on one of his heroes, Winston Churchill, my teacher Harry Jaffa once wrote:
Human nature possesses an irreducible—or, if you will, an irremedial—capacity for resisting domination. We humans will not accept an harmonious arrangement of our lives that denies us all freedom to act as individuals. . . . We will not recognize as good any course of action that annihilates our sense of responsibility for the course of our lives. We cannot care for a world, however ostensibly good, in which we cannot recognize ourselves, or any whom we love.
This does not mean all tyrannies are destined to fail—certainly not in the short-term. Nor does it mean that freedom can be maintained without effort and cost. But it does mean that nothing in human life is preordained, except perhaps by God whose will we cannot fathom.

What is ordained is that every human being retains the power to love what is noble and good. Each of us is free to live well, to speak the truth, and to uphold our moral convictions.
“Never give in,” Churchill proclaimed in 1941.
[N]ever give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Good advice, especially in these abnormal times.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Michigan Democratic Party deletes social post claiming parents aren’t ‘client of the public school’
Facebook post ignited a hailstorm of criticism as the debate over parental rights continues to rage across America.

Updated: January 17, 2022 - 5:00pm

Aweekend Facebook post by the Michigan Democratic Party ignited a hailstorm of criticism, prompting the party to eventually delete the comment Monday.

“Not sure where this ‘parents-should-control-what-is-taught-in-schools-because-they-are-our-kids’ is originating, but parents do have the option to choose to send their kids to a hand-selected private school at their own expense if this is what they desire,” the deleted post read.

It continued: “The purpose of a public education in a public school is not to teach kids only what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public[.]”

The comments echoed a sentiment expressed by failed gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe during a campaign debate last October. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” then Gov. McAuliffe said during a debate with now Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

McAuliffe’s statement is widely attributed to derailing his campaign.

Commenting on the Democrats' social media post, American Federation of Children Director of Research Corey D’Angelis said on Twitter: “They didn’t learn anything from Virginia. (The) Michigan legislature passed two bills to fund students instead of systems in 2021. But Governor Whitmer sided with the teachers union monopoly.”

D’Angelis encourages parents to support a petition to override Whitmer’s vetoes, saying Michigan Student Opportunity Accounts would enable families to access open schools, tutoring, and other tools to address learning loss and meet students’ individual learning needs.

Beth DeShone, Great Lakes Education Project executive director, said the Facebook post requires a public repudiation and denunciation from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Democratic legislators.

“The Michigan Democratic Party might not get it, but no one knows what a child needs most like his or her parents,” DeShone said in a statement. “The Party’s classist attack on low-income and other parents is absolutely astonishing – and very telling. Public school is about kids, not Democrats’ political policy agenda. Parents are demanding Gretchen Whitmer and other key elected Democrats reject this educational extremism and hold their party accountable.”

DeShone also noted lower-income families did not possess the financial means to send their children to private schools.

Michigan Freedom Fund Executive Director Tori Sachs also took issue with the Facebook post.

“The radical Leftists at Whitmer’s Democrat Party think they know better than parents,” Sachs said in a statement. “Claiming that parents who can’t afford private schools shouldn’t get a say in their children’s public school education is not only crazy – it’s against the law. Yet Governor Whitmer has sided with teachers unions against parents and students again and again.”

Sachs continued: “Whitmer vetoed reading scholarships and opportunity accounts for parents to use on things like transportation, tutoring, and tuition at a school of their choice. Today, thousands of Michigan students remain locked out of their classrooms without the option to attend open schools or receive additional tutoring because of Whitmer's vetoes. Government must be accountable to the people, and public schools must answer to parents – not the Whitmer Democrats, teachers unions and school bureaucrats.”

Sachs cited Michigan law, which states in Section 380.10: “It is the natural, fundamental right of parents and legal guardians to determine and direct the care, teaching, and education of their children. The public schools of this state serve the needs of the pupils by cooperating with the pupil's parents and legal guardians to develop the pupil's intellectual capabilities and vocational skills in a safe and positive environment.”

Rep. Pamela Hornberger, R-Chesterfield Twp., is House Education Committee chairwoman. She responded with her own Facebook post.

“Michigan Democrats have continually sided with the education establishment and unions to fight against school choice and parent empowerment,” Hornberger wrote. “Their decisions harm our students. If the education establishment and unions continue to fund Democrats, the Democrats will continue to vote against the best interest of Michigan’s students and families.”

In a subsequent post, the Michigan Democratic Party noted they had removed the group’s initial statement.

“We have deleted a post that ignored the important role parents play – and should play – in Michigan public schools. Parents need to have a say in their children’s education, end of story,” the post reads.

The retraction continues, “The post does not reflect the views of Michigan Democrats and should not be misinterpreted as a statement of support from our elected officials or candidates.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Updated: January 17, 2022 - 9:31am

One of the executive orders signed by new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin removes the school masking requirement across the state. However, two Northern Va. counties – Arlington and Alexandria – have said they will be keeping the masking policies in place.

Youngkin's order places the power to decide if a child goes to school masked in the hands of the student's parent. "A child whose parent has elected that he or she is not subject to a mask mandate should not be required to wear a mask under any policy implemented by a teacher, school, school district, the Department of Education, or any other state authority," reads the order.

Yet 12 hours after the governor's order, the Arlington Public School system announced that it would not be complying with the order.

Exclusive: Governor Youngkin on Arlington school system saying it will require masks, despite Youngkin’s order stating that schools can’t do that. He threatened to use state resources to force schools to comply - but we still don’t know what that means exactly. @WTOP https://t.co/5Lijz9kbgd pic.twitter.com/SnC4dcCIar— Nick Iannelli (@NickWTOP) January 16, 2022
"Arlington Public Schools implemented our mask requirement this school year prior to Gov. Northam’s K-12 mask mandate, and we will continue to make decisions that prioritize the health, safety and well-being of our students and staff, following the guidance of local and national health professionals," the system said in a statement.

Alexandria City schools soon followed suit, writing "ACPS will continue to abide by the health and safety guidelines of the CDC and the Alexandria Health Department and continue to require all individuals to wear masks that cover the nose and mouth in ACPS schools, facilities and buses."

In response to a question about the actions of Arlington and Alexandria, Youngkin said, "We wrote the order specifically to give all the school systems, basically, eight days to get ready to listen to parents."

He added that he would use "every resource within the governor’s authority to explore what we can and will do to ensure parents’ rights are protected."
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Virginia Democrats Appalled by Parents' Rights To _Make Decisions With Regard to Your Child’s Upbringing, Education and Care_

Virginia Democrats Appalled by Parents’ Rights To “Make Decisions With Regard to Your Child’s Upbringing, Education and Care”

By J.D. Rucker • Jan. 17, 2022

There was a time not too long ago when Democrats hid the fact that they hate parents and want the state to raise all children. In fact, it’s only been a couple of decades since Democrats actually believed parents should have a say in the upbringing of their children. But the modern Democrat Party holds no such perspective. To them, your children belong to the state and how dare you think you should have a say in what they learn, how they’re cared for, and what values are instilled into them.

New Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin addressed the state assembly today to discuss the many issues facing Virginians today. Among them was the education and upbringing of children in the state. He congratulated the assembly for passing into law assurances of parental rights. For this, every Democrat in the assembly sat silently while Republicans stood and cheered. Watch:

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1483191332210413573
.44 min

What Youngkin said wasn’t divisive. Pretty much any parent who cares for their children would appreciate and support his sentiment. This was not a partisan issue, yet Democrats made it a partisan issue by acknowledging they do not believe in a parent’s right to decide or even know about what indoctrination is being pushed onto their children. Like I said, they want the children raised by the state, not parents.

The shocking part in this video is not that they weren’t fans. The shocking thing is they know what Glenn Youngkin said is a reasonable expectation in a free country. Sadly, Democrat lawmakers do not believe in a free country, only authoritarian control with them in charge.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Psaki: Biden “Stands by Everything He Said” When He Labeled Millions of Americans “Domestic Enemies” (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila
Published January 18, 2022 at 4:43pm

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Joe Biden stands by everything he said when he labeled millions of Americans “domestic enemies.”

Joe Biden delivered a divisive speech in Atlanta last week where he called millions of Americans who disagree with his federal takeover of elections, “domestic enemies.”

The ‘voting rights’ bill will eliminate voter ID, legalize ballot harvesting and force taxpayers to pay for campaigns.

Anyone who opposes this radical, federal takeover of elections that makes it easier for Democrats to cheat is a “domestic enemy.”

“The President delivered a powerful speech about the protection of people’s fundamental rights in this country, which is their right to vote, their right to vote for anyone they choose, whether it is him or someone else. It was not a partisan speech…and he stands by everything he said in that speech,” Psaki said.

VIDEO:
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1483498940813172744
.32 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Now a Total of 16 Virginia School Divisions Vow to Keep Insane Mask Mandates in Place for Children Creating Showdown with New Governor Youngkin
By Joe Hoft
Published January 18, 2022 at 8:30am
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Now 16 school divisions in Virginia are snubbing the new governor’s end to mask mandates in schools. To no one’s surprise, the Democrats are praising the insane move by these divisions.

We reported only a few days ago on Saturday that the new governor in Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin, issued 11 Executive Orders on his first day in office.


Within hours, radical Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax school boards announced they wouldn’t comply with the new governor’s Executive Order on masks in schools.


This morning the list of school ‘divisions’ has increased to 18. Newsmax reported:
Virginia Democrats are hailing 16 school divisions defying new GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s first day executive order permitting parents and their children to decide whether to wear a face mask in school.

The order goes in effect Monday, Jan. 24, but 16 school divisions have vowed to keep mask mandates, defying Youngkin’s executive order banning them — setting up another political fight in Virginia over schools versus parents, leading the governor to vow to use “every resource within the governor’s authority” to protect parents’ rights.

“We wrote the order to give school systems basically eight days to get ready, to listen to parents,” Youngkin said Sunday, responding to Arlington Public Schools immediate attack on his executive order — after an election campaign that saw Virginians elect him on the platform of standing for parents.

“And the fact that tweet came out from Arlington County within minutes of my executive order, what that tells is me they haven’t listened to parents yet,” he added. “If there’s one thing that everybody heard in November is it is time to listen to parents.

“So over the course of this week, I hope they will listen to parents, because we will use every resource within the governor’s authority to explore what we can do and will do in order to make sure that parents will have their rights protected.”
The Democrats praised the radical school divisions for requiring masks on children.

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As we all know, there is no definitive evidence that wearing masks helps prevent an individual from contracting the COVID-19 virus. This applies to children as well as adults. But what we do know is that children are basically at no risk from dying from COVID-19 and have been since it was first released in China. Children are more likely to die from drowning than from COVID.

To force children to wear masks in schools or anywhere appears to be abuse since there is no medical evidence to back this action as a preventative measure. But the Democrats clearly don’t care.

**
[COMMENT: I imagine the school board members can be recalled. If they time it right, they might be able to have the vote on the primary ballot, so it won't cost the county more to do a separate election.]
 

Dobbin

Faithful Steed
Psaki: Biden “Stands by Everything He Said” When He Labeled Millions of Americans “Domestic Enemies”
A Republic is SO inconvenient. You have to accord others the same rights as you accord yourself. Even those you deem as your "enemy."

Dobbin "stands by everything he said" when he labeled the Biden Administration as "Illegitimate."

And "Come do something about it..."

Right Owner? (he reads here...)

Dobbin
 
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