Monday, July 4, 2022

Three Ways to Combat Propaganda at Your Local Library

 Kate McColl; Intellectual Takeout


"We’re almost through Pride Month. While many aspects of this “celebration” come off as tasteless at best, what’s truly sickening about it is the indoctrination efforts this event directs toward young children.

"Public libraries, where drag queen story hours and pride displays are all too common, are one of the primary venues for this indoctrination. Many of the books on display in children’s areas present explicitly sexual material, like the one at a local library showing someone’s naked backside in a pride parade and informing children that some people prefer not to wear clothes.

"But these things aren’t just issues during the month of June; propaganda at the library is a year-round problem. Our family has found it increasingly difficult to check books out from the children’s section without accidentally taking home an LGBTQ propaganda piece. For example, my kids love books about animals, so they grabbed And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, the cover illustration showing two adult penguins with their cute, fuzzy chick. Turns out, the two penguins are a pair of bonded males at the zoo who just want a chick of their own. The zookeeper provides them with an egg so they can be dads together. Pretty subtle.

"The amount and intensity of the propaganda can feel overwhelming, but Pride Month also offers an opportunity to beat these progressive propagandists at their own game. I recently witnessed this in action from a local parenting group, whose efforts (we can only assume) prompted the library to remove its Pride display in favor of a Caribbean American Heritage Month display (that’s a thing?). The parent group didn’t picket or argue; instead, it used tactics that forced the library’s hand by working within the system.". . . Full article here

Kellyanne Conway Opens Up

 Elise Cooper

"I always tell people to be aware of biased words in the questions.  I think the worst questions are biased through insidiousness, such as "do you support or oppose protecting the environment?"  If a large number say they support protecting the environment, then the inference is that there is support for the Green New Deal.  No, that is not what the question asked."


"Here's the Deal by Kellyanne Conway is a memoir of her life.  Readers will take the journey from her life as a young child to a pollster, a mom, and the only woman to run a successful presidential campaign.  She shares her feelings about family, her marriage, reporters, and working with Donald Trump, first on his 2016 campaign and then as a consultant in the White House.

"In reading the book, people will see her honest and straightforward account.  They will understand why she was so vital to the Trump campaign as a smart, articulate, and talented woman.  It was a pleasure to interview her about the past, present, and future regarding the issues.

EC: Let's start by talking about the past — 2020.  Can you explain the book quote, "I think if we lose to this guy [Biden] we are pathetic"?

KAC: In my book, I have an entire chapter titled "A Tale of Two Outcomes."  I show the contrast between 2016 and 2020.

"In 2020, there was a whole lot more going in terms of resources, much more money, and staff members.  Yet, toward the end, they ran out of money and had to pull some ad buys in those critical swing states.  For example, can anyone even tell me what the Super Bowl ad was about sometime before the election?  Then the Tulsa rally publicized how a million people would be there, yet there were empty seats.

"I think the campaign never adapted and adjusted from the Trump economy as the core governing central premise for his election versus a once-in-a-century global pandemic.  COVID dominated, which was a benefit for Biden, who stayed in his basement bunker.  There was never such a gulf between exposure of the two presidential nominees.  President Trump was on TV two hours plus a day versus less than an hour of Joe Biden per week.  Biden benefited by it because people could make him whatever they wanted to make him.". . .

And this is what America got:

The sinister strategy of the progressives running the Democrat party

"As an ex-long time registered Democrat, I no longer recognize or support Democrat leaders or many of the members of the Democratic Party." George Duran

 American Thinker   "Biden, leftist progressive Democrats, legacy and social media news have all promoted a psychotic and psychopathological hatred of Trump, Republicans, conservatives, Christians, capitalism, our Constitution, and anyone that opposes or questions their policies.

"Election improprieties were ignored and are not covered, yet they oppose common sense election integrity law such as requiring an ID to vote, yet they call for “common sense gun laws.”

"Our legacy news media spreads Democrat talking points, propaganda, and lies.  For years they touted the Hillary Clinton paid for, fake, and salacious Steele Dossier as true. They have said “inflation will be transitory, high gas prices are not our fault, and our economy is much better under Biden”.  They have claimed “America does not have open borders”, as we see thousands freely crossing. They say “crime is down” while at the same time releasing violent criminals back into our neighborhoods.  They ignore and not report contrary FBI reports documenting the tremendous increase in violent crime in Democrat run cities. 

"Meanwhile our schools are indoctrinating 1st-3rd graders with hateful identity politics, promoting socialism as good and capitalism as bad, touting racist Critical Race Theory as anti-racist, preaching that Marxist “equity” theory needs to replace our foundation of “equality,” touting transgenderism and pedophilia as normal, and encouraging sex change surgery and puberty blockers on our children.   

"They attack our constitutional Rights and attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court to rule in their favor – not on the Constitution. ". . .

This is my country

 The words of patriotic songs and the Declaration of Independence served to convict us that to some groups of Americans, they were denied so many of America's promises. We spent decades righting those wrongs but now a new generation of masked, black-clad tools seek to persecute different groups of newly disenfranchised. TD


William Campenni  "Growing up in World War II in northeastern Pennsylvania, we had a local pride for a nearby popular singing group, Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, working out of a resort at the Delaware Water Gap.

They were very popular on the radio and concert tours.  After America entered the war in late 1941 (you know, Pearl Harbor and all that, but who studies history anymore when wokeness is more important?), they recorded this song, written only a year earlier by lyricist Don Raye with music by Al Jacobs.  It became popular as America's Greatest Generation went off to war in faraway lands.  We wore out the grooves on the old '78s, playing it over and over on my cousin's record player.

"There are many patriotic songs, and each has its special place.  But this one for me was always extra-special, maybe because of my own memories, but also because of the message of both pride and gratitude.  It is a paean of appreciation by both those born in the USA (land of my birth) and those from other lands who chose to come here (land of my choice), like my wife, and my dad, who nearly lost his life fighting for it in the Argonne Forest, and whose second view of the Statue of Liberty was from a hospital ship cot.

"On this Fourth of July, more accurately Independence Day, take a moment to hear it, and pay special attention to its words, for they have so much meaning.  Probably a best version is that by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.". . .


William Campenni is a retired engineer and Air Force fighter pilot who is eternally grateful that he is an American

Perspectives on the Constitution: A Republic, If You Can Keep It

If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. . . . democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.

 Perspectives on the Constitution: A Republic, If You Can Keep It - National Constitution Center   "While today we marvel at the extraordinary accomplishment of our Founding Fathers, their own reaction to the US Constitution when it was presented to them for their signatures was considerably less enthusiastic. Benjamin Franklin, ever the optimist even at the age of 81, gave what was for him a remarkably restrained assessment in his final speech before the Constitutional Convention: "…when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." He thought it impossible to expect a "perfect production" from such a gathering, but he believed that the Constitution they had just drafted, "with all its faults," was better than any alternative that was likely to emerge.

"Nearly all of the delegates harbored objections, but persuaded by Franklin's logic, they put aside their misgivings and affixed their signatures to it. Their over-riding concern was the tendency in nearly all parts of the young country toward disorder and disintegration. Americans had used the doctrine of popular sovereignty--"democracy"--as the rationale for their successful rebellion against English authority in 1776. But they had not yet worked out fully the question that has plagued all nations aspiring to democratic government ever since: how to implement principles of popular majority rule while at the same time preserving stable governments that protect the rights and liberties of all citizens.

"Few believed that a new federal constitution alone would be sufficient to create a unified nation out of a collection of independent republics spread out over a vast physical space, extraordinarily diverse in their economic interests, regional loyalties, and ethnic and religious attachments. And there would be new signs of disorder after 1787 that would remind Americans what an incomplete and unstable national structure they had created: settlers in western Pennsylvania rebelled in 1794 because of taxes on their locally distilled whiskey; in western North Carolina there were abortive attempts to create an independent republic of "Franklin" which would ally itself with Spain to insure its independence from the United States; there was continued conflict with Indians across the whole western frontier and increased fear of slave unrest, particularly when news of the slave-led revolution in Haiti reached American shores.

"But as fragile as America's federal edifice was at the time of the founding, there was much in the culture and environment that contributed to a national consensus and cohesion: a common language; a solid belief in the principles of English common law and constitutionalism; a widespread commitment (albeit in diverse forms) to the Protestant religion; a shared revolutionary experience; and, perhaps most important, an economic environment which promised most free, white Americans if not great wealth, at least an independent sufficiency.". . .

A word to all our mal-educated youth rampaging in the streets:

The Fourth of July may be the most patriotic day on the U.S. calendar. Independence Day celebrates the decision by the 13 original colonies to renounce British rule and form the United States. However, that decision did not happen on July 4.


Sunday, July 3, 2022

Mapping the Fourth of July in the Civil War Era

 Virginia Center for Civil War Studies

Civil War history lives at Virginia Tech. From its home in Virginia Tech’s History Department, the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies promotes greater understanding of the Civil War era among academics and the public. Whether you’re a student or a professional historian, a serious history buff or someone who just likes to learn, we have something to offer you.

How did Americans celebrate Independence Day as their nation was falling apart? The answer lies in tens of thousands of Civil War-era sources, from newspaper articles and speeches to private letters and diaries. These documents reveal how a wide range of Americans — northern and southern, white and black, male and female, Democrat and Republican, immigrant and native born — all used the Fourth to articulate their deepest beliefs about American identity during the great crisis of the Civil War.

Did you know that many white southerners stopped celebrating the Fourth at the end of the Civil War? Frustrated by defeat and outraged by black commemorations of Independence Day, they did not fully resume their own celebrations for years. Northerners, meanwhile, used the holiday to celebrate Union victory while African Americans embraced the opportunity to claim their place in the national community. For everyone, the Fourth was a day to argue about who counted as an American and what that meant.

Fourth of July celebrations during the Civil War

Lincoln and Grant on July 4th  . . ."What to do as a blog post for a day like this?  I’ll begin with this really magnificent painting of Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863, at Vicksburg.  Called Glorious Fourth, painted by renowned artist Mort Künstler, it captures the second of two great Union victories that signaled the turn of the Civil War.". . .   


. . ."This is essentially a People’s contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life. Yielding to partial, and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend.

…"Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled—the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance against a formidable [internal] attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion—that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war—teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war." . . .

OPINION: Why The Left Truly Is Evil, (Not Stupid!)

 Townhall

". . .Should conservatives any longer give the left the benefit of the doubt as to their policies? Should we innocently believe they are simply misinformed as opposed to radically devoted agents to an agenda that is not only anti-American but that in fact is… evil?"


"In America this minute leftists can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. They are pushing an agenda that is evil. They are hellbent on accomplishing it and they are saying so publicly.

"The late Charles Krauthammer was the person credited for the intriguing binary observation that “conservatives view the left as stupid,” but that “liberals view conservatives as evil.”

"We see evidence of that second part constantly. The vehement hatred of those who support America First is proven every day. The hatred burns so deeply in fact that they seek out ways to create out of whole cloth imaginative conspiracies of Trump working with Russia and double impeachments based on literally no evidence.

"They justify the advancement of ludicrous stories of deranged presidents lurching at steering wheels—even when one or more secret service personnel were present and are able to testify to the opposite.

"They claim pro-lifers hate women. They claim that parents who don’t want drag queens in their kids’ schools are bigots. And they especially despise people who are faithful to God, family, and nation.". . .

And it’s not just energy, this group doesn’t care if babies have formula, your family has food, or if women bleed out from their monthly cycles.

Babylon Bee satire: Report: Zero Males Affected As Feminists Go On Sex Strike

 


Babylon Bee satire: Report: Zero Males Affected As Feminists Go On Sex Strike  "NEW YORK, NY - After feminists around the country vowed to stop having sex, men across the nation have remained blissfully unaware anything has changed.

""Huh? Who stopped having sex?" responded every man told of the development. "Wow, I had no idea. Good for them, I guess?"

"The so-called 'sex strike' had been launched by leftist women in response to the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade. "The right is trying to create this dystopian world where sex has some connection to pregnancy and babies," explained pro-abortion protester Lona Malachi. "Pregnancy is basically making a woman your slave, just like in The Handmaid's Tale. So as long as sex has anything to do with babies, we simply won't have it!" she exclaimed, before attempting to inhale air without taking in oxygen.

"Despite the clarion call for an end to sex from female media personalities and politicians, surveys have shown that absolutely zero men have been affected. "Our research indicates the strike has not hit the intended target," said sociology professor Sharon Young. "The nation's cats, however, have reported a general increase in angry yelling by their owners."

The Real Reason Washington Ignored Kavanaugh’s Would-Be Killer

 MSN  "In June 8, at about 1:05 in the morning, a taxicab pulled up outside the Chevy Chase home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A young man dressed in black got out, carrying a backpack and a suitcase. According to an FBI affidavit, he eyed the Deputy U.S. Marshals standing guard outside the house, then turned and walked down the block.


Michael Schaffer, the writer, assigns more danger to the Jan 6 rioters than to this would-be Kavanaugh assassin. He also repeats the meme that several people died because of the Jan 6 incident.

Face Masks Are Ineffective and Do Not Work, They Have Never Worked

And I had thought if one wore swim trunks made of face mask material it would be possible to urinate in a public swimming pool and not affect the water around you. TD

 SGT Report

"The case rate curves for two Californian counties – Alameda County, with an indoor mask mandate, and Contra Costa County, with no indoor mask mandate – are near-identical. Dr. Paul Alexander highlighted the comparison of data from the two Bay Area counties that clearly shows the measure imposed on populations is ineffective and does not work. “Covid [face] masks never ever worked and harmed populations,” he wrote.

"Dr. Paul Alexander has expertise in teaching epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and research methodology. He is a former Assistant Professor at McMaster University in evidence-based medicine, a former Covid Pandemic evidence-synthesis advisor to WHO-PAHO and a former Senior Advisor to Covid Pandemic policy in the US government, Health and Human Services.  In 2008 he worked at WHO as a Regional Specialist/Epidemiologist in Europe’s Regional Office in Denmark.

"In early June, during an uptick in covid cases, Alameda County was the only Bay Area county to bring back an indoor mask mandate “to limit the impact of a prolonged wave,” according to county Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss.  But regional case data provides no discernible evidence that the rule, which was lifted on 25 June, succeeded at that goal.". . .

Biden Looks to Block or Limit New Offshore Drilling, Scaling Back Trump-Era Plan to Pump More Oil

The Epoch Times  "The Biden administration has announced plans to block all new offshore oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while potentially letting a handful of new leases go ahead off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico, charting a different course from a Trump-era plan that sought to expand 

offshore drilling to bolster America’s energy security.

"The draft plan, released on July 1 by the Interior Department, lays out several options for public input as to how many offshore oil and gas lease sales should be held over the next five years, ranging from nearly a dozen new leases to zero.

“ 'The proposed plan puts forward several options from no lease sales up to 11 lease sales over the next five years,” said Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “The time for the public to weigh in on our future is now.”

"Open for consideration and public input are ten potential new leases in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Cook Inlet off the southern coast of Alaska, as laid out in detail in the Draft Proposed Plan (DPP) (pdf).

"Entirely removed from consideration are any new leases in federal waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.". . .

If Joe Biden only had a BRAIN in the Wizard of Oz (You Laugh You Lose) "Joe Biden in the Wizard of OZ "If I Only Had a BRAIN! Starring Hunter Biden, AOC, Pelosi, Trump and Let's Go Brandon's Joe Biden."