Fantasies versus Reality; Think Critically about your conscience and impulse
A swamp creature speaks out by Aaron L. Hirschi – “Vote your conscience, but think about the consequences of your actions in cold, hard logical terms.â€
“The presidency is only one branch and cannot legally do most of the necessary structural reforms without statutory changes. Whether the border wall is part of that statutory requirement is a separate debate. Congress must want to reform as well, but it doesn’t want to reform. Right now, it is the main nest of vipers poisoning the blood of the federal system; this branch has no incentive to change.
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Legislative politicians rely on a big weakness of the voting public that has kept the status quo going for decades. Most of the voters want to fix the system, but not if it directly affects themselves. Instead of following the idiom of “Throw the bums out!,” many voters embrace “Throw all the bums out except my bum.”
Washington’s Fantasies Are Not People’s Reality by Victor Davis Hanson – “The more Washington journalists scream of collusion, the more they are willfully blind to one of the most disturbing scandals in American history brewing right under their noses.â€
“The longer, like Captain Ahab, they hunt down the mythical white Trump whale, the more they are ruining the very reputation of journalism as they once inherited it.
So, we live in two worlds. One is the material cosmos of concrete action and deeds. The other reality is little more than the unfiltered fears, anxieties and fantasies of ill-informed television talking heads, groupthink opinion journalists, and progressive zealots who have conflated a sometimes-uncouth president with all their own apprehensions, and called the result Nazism and fascism.
When this depressing period in American news and commentary is over, the liberal order will not like the verdict.
Why AG Sessions declined to appoint a special counsel by Thomas Lifson – “A lot of conservatives are upset that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declined for now to appoint a special prosecutorâ€
“But, for the moment, at least, I see good reason for Sessions to take this position. In the letter, Sessions noted that he has asked the DOJ’s Inspector General Horowitz to investigate these matters, and, in a new disclosure, tasked US Attorney John W. Huber to investigate. Huber serves in Utah, far from the beltway, and was first appointed US Attorney by President Obama, and reappointed by Trump.
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with the IG digging up information, and referring it to Huber, further steps, including subpoenas to former DOJ and FBI employees, such as Andrew McCabe and James Comey, can be taken before a grand jury in Utah. An indictments issued by that grand jury presumably could be tried before a federal jury in Utah, whereas a special counsel would most likely work with courts in the District of Columbia, Virginia, or Maryland, beltway strongholds. Which jury pool would you prefer? The District of Columbia or Utah?
Federal Court Delivers the Coup de Gras to Contraception Mandate by David Catron – “A long legal war on religious liberty is finally over.†Maybe
“deep state holdovers at the Justice Department, like those Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender for decades after the end of WWII, continued to pursue the lost cause even after the Trump administration took office. On Wednesday, however, Judge David Russell of the United States District Court for Western Oklahoma flushed the last of these dead-enders out of their caves and forced them lay down their briefcases.
Judge Russell permanently enjoined the federal government from enforcing the mandate against the Catholic Benefits Association (CBA) and issued a declarative judgment to the effect that the mandate violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Judge Russell’s ruling also rescinds nearly $6.9 billion in federal fines that have accrued against CBA members since Obamacare was enacted in 2014. The organization represents more than 1,000 Catholic health care providers, making it the largest single plaintiff that had challenged the mandate.
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In other words, the battle over the outrageous Obamacare contraception mandate is over. The Obama era holdouts who have been hiding deep in the dark recesses of the DOJ now stand in the cold light of reality, blinking, befuddled, and wondering what happened. Ironically, the answer is clearly printed on their ID badges over those outdated photos — Justice.
David Hogg Is Quickly Learning How to Be a Bully by Jim Treacher – “When is it okay to talk back to someone who keeps falsely branding you a murderer? Well, that depends on whether he’s being funded by Republicans or Democrats.â€
“our media gatekeepers seem to think Hogg should be allowed to say whatever he wants without question, no matter how transparently false it is.
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As long as this kid is keeping lists of names, I hope he remembers all the adults who keep pushing him in front of the cameras.
“Collusion†stories undermine democracy more than the Russians ever could by Jazz Shaw – “Kirchick argues that Trump’s opponents who are constantly ginning up talk of collusion in terms of High Crimes and Misdemeanors are actually doing Russia’s work for them, undermining public confidence in our elections and even our democracy.â€
“the President’s opponents in not only the Democratic Party but also the media, seem to be delivering in spades what Putin allegedly desires. (And I purposely say “opponents†here rather than “critics†because there is clearly an ongoing, direct campaign against the White House taking place.) With the employment numbers looking as good as they are, the stock market and people’s 401Ks soaring, taxes being lower and consumer confidence hitting impressive levels, how do you explain a sitting President who has to take comfort in his approval level which barely scrapes above 40% on occasion?
Easy. The poll respondents are being buried in a deluge of news reports every day suggesting that the sky is about to fall on the House of Trump. And if they lose faith in the person in the White House their confidence in the office itself begins to erode as well. In that regard, Kirchick makes a valid point. If Vladimir Putin’s goal truly was to undermine our democracy, he must be having a good chuckle at the moment.
Make the Democrats pay for stalling Trump’s nominees by Paul Mirengoff – “The Senate is sitting on 78 of President Trump’s nominees who have already been passed out of committee but can’t get a floor vote.â€
“What to do? Try to change the rules requiring 30 hours of floor debate, a move that should have been made months ago. Sen. James Lankford has proposed that the debate time be shortened to eight hours. This, as the Journal notes, was the standard in 2013-14 after Republicans, then in the minority, agreed to a request by Harry Reid, then the Majority Leader.
It takes 60 votes to change this rule, so some Democratic support is needed. If it’s not forthcoming, and I don’t expect it to be at this juncture, then the Wall Street Journal editors urge Republicans to keep the Senate operating five days a week and even weekends until the deck has been cleared of nominees.
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Right now, the Democrats are paying no price for their obstruction. This has to change.
Every Word Liberals Say About Guns Is A Lie by Kurt Schlichter – “if liberals propose to gaslight us, to make us think we are insane for seeing what we are looking at, then they really need to be more … subtle.â€
“It’s a lie when they say an armed citizenry would be powerless in the face of a leftist government equipped with tanks and artillery and bombers – though their assumption that a leftist government would use tanks and artillery and bombers on the American people seems like a pretty good reason for having an armed citizenry.
It’s a lie when they say they only want to have a “conversation†and seek only “bipartisan compromise.â€
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What they cannot abide is us Normals being proud and free.
To disarm us would forever convert us from citizens to subjects. They get that our identity is wrapped up not in our guns themselves, but in the fact that armed we have the ability to control our destiny. If necessary, an armed citizenry can tell those who would trample our rights, “No†– and to back it up with force if necessary.
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They want us disarmed because they want us disenfranchised, discouraged, and no longer disobedient. They want us broken.
California coffee cancer warning: wrong by LuboÅ¡ Motl – “A Californian judge had enough power to decide that all coffee sold in California has to carry a warning: coffee causes cancer.â€
“Note that presumption of guilt, instead of innocence – also known as the precautionary principle – is used here. But if you evaluate the literature rationally, you will conclude that the threat is insignificant. What the literature doesn’t show is that the threat is zero. Well, it’s because no threat is zero. And with these insanely ambitious standards, you can’t prove the harmlessness of anything. I am sure that water also causes some kinds of cancer, in some amounts and under certain circumstances. So far, these activist judges “only” attack coffee (and things like carbon dioxide). But they may attack water or the air or at least the meat, sugar, bread, or vegetables in the future, too.
Why you stink at fact-checking by Lisa Fazio – “Research from cognitive psychology shows that people are naturally poor fact-checkers and it is very difficult for us to compare things we read or hear to what we already know about a topic.â€
First, people have a general bias to believe that things are true. … Second, people tend to accept information as long as it’s close enough to the correct information.
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Detecting and correcting false information is difficult work and requires fighting against the ways our brains like to process information. Critical thinking alone won’t save us. Our psychological quirks put us at risk of falling for misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Professional fact-checkers provide an essential service in hunting out incorrect information in the public view. As such, they are one of our best hopes for zeroing in on errors and correcting them, before the rest of us read or hear the false information and incorporate it into what we know of the world.
Ah, yes, we need to rely on someone else as if they are really better at whatever than us? The essay bypasses, skips, and skirts the second finding, the one about “close enough†and therefore misses or conflates the fact that misinformation is not a binary phenomena. Critical thinking is dismissed but not defined. Critical thinking is what allows building knowledge from facts and it is knowledge that counts. (see Why schools should not teach general critical-thinking skills) Knowledge considers selfawareness, context, accuracy, precision, needs, the ‘big picture’ and limitations. Knowledge grows and changes as the person does and as his experience expands. This can’t be delegated to others and must resist assault by ‘fact checkers’ who often have their own agenda and try to impugn knowledge with the escalation of de minimis.