"Anyone paying attention to the news, even if following only mainstream outlets, knows that something is terribly wrong in America. Day by day it becomes more and more evident that a large portion of our citizenry does not comprehend the enormity of the pickle we are in.
"Author Yuval Levin opens his 2020 book, A Time To Build, with this observation:
We Americans are living through a social crisis. This is a straightforward fact, and easy to see. And yet part of this crisis, one of its symptoms, is that we can’t seem to get a handle on what it is that’s wrong. It’s sometimes even hard to tell whether the rage, foreboding, a despair that so often shapes the national mood are themselves the essence of the problem or are marks of a deeper dysfunction.
"Amen.
"Just for amusement, let’s enumerate a few of our tighter tight spots:". . .
Comment to this post: "As an American, I cannot apologize enough for the moronic media we are stuck with here in America. Yes, they are ignorant, hateful and money hungry. Queen Elizabeth was loved by millions of us and we send love, prayers and our apologies for the morons that waste the airwaves."
Comments to this post:
"Mr. Murray's claims about America's give me cash mentality is dead on. I'm American and I'm sickened by my countrymens rush to claim victimhood at every turn. We are in a downward spiral due to this mindset. Bless your country and your right thinking citizenry. And God bless the Queen.
Thank you for restoring my faith in my country. I've heard so many terrible things about us that it's become overwhelming, to the point where I apologise the minute I speak for some crime or other.
It's exhausting, mentally and emotionally, to feel responsible for things done so many years ago, despite knowing that we have made reparations and apologies already. Enough is enough.
Thank you to everyone who has written something lovely about us, our country and especially our late Queen.
Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
"It's a dizzying manipulation of logic that would have made George Orwell kick himself and ask: 'Why didn't I think of that?'
"Formerly known as heckling, 'counter speech' is essentially yelling that drowns out anyone that you disagree with. And so, our nation's snot-nosed cultural revolutionaries have put 'counter speech' to good work in our terrifying new age of intolerance.
"The spoiled brats at Stanford University Law School are leading the charge.
"They have fully embraced this society-slaughtering insanity as they continue to bathe themselves in disgrace following their shameful treatment of a federal judge who dared to accept an invitation to campus last week.
"We witnessed a classroom of hissing jackals, goaded on by the school's Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, refusing to allow Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan to speak.
"The inaptly named Stanford chapter of the American Constitution Society claimed that vicious and vulgar abuse hurled at Duncan was his own fault, writing that he was painted 'as a victim, when in fact he himself had made civil dialogue impossible.'
"And what was the sin that Duncan was being castigated for? What had he done to deserve all this?
"He had refused to use trans pronouns from the bench. That's it. That's really all it takes these days.". . .
"For those whose memory is foggy, a quick review: In the late stages of the 2016 race, Mackey posted several memes, designed to resemble Hillary Clinton campaign images, claiming that supporters could vote by simply texting a phone number.". . .
But everything moves faster in the digital age. Just five months later, the Biden Department of Justice is using the logic of “stochastic terrorism” to justify stripping core constitutional due process rights from dissident American voices.
Plagiarism of copyrighted material
Defamation (libel and slander)
True threats
Speech inciting illegal actions or soliciting others to commit crimes aren’t protected
under the First Amendment, either.
The Supreme Court decided a series of cases in 1919 that helped to define the
limitations of free speech. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, shortly after
the United States entered into World War I. The law prohibited interference in military
operations or recruitment.
Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck was arrested under the Espionage Act after he
distributed fliers urging young men to dodge the draft. The Supreme Court upheld his
conviction by creating the “clear and present danger” standard, explaining when the
government is allowed to limit free speech. In this case, they viewed draft resistant as
dangerous to national security. . .
NY Post "The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office began a program this week to shuttle employees between their cars and workplaces in downtown Los Angeles amid a series of incidents in which some have been confronted by the public, officials said Thursday.
"On Monday, the DA’s office launched the Employee Secure Transport and Escort Program (E-STEP) in an effort to provide free secure transportation for employees assigned to the Civic Center area.
"“Security incidents involving aggressive confrontations initiated by members of the public have occurred to our employees assigned in the Civic Center area, while walking between their vehicles or transportation area and the office,” a news release announcing the program said. ". . .
Do you want to know why Carlson is so popular? That line right there explains it all. It’s easy to go with the flow and stick to the script. He has the highest-rated show in cable news because he threw those shackles off. It’s that simple, and it’s why the Joy Reids and Chris Wallaces of the world will never be competition.
"There are a lot of figures populating the news media space in 2023, but Fox News’ Tucker Carlson routinely finds himself above the fray. That’s not just because he has a top-rated show, but because he obviously doesn’t formulate his positions based on how popular they will be.
"Carlson has taken a lot of flack over the years for not toeing the line, and that includes a lot of incoming fire from the conservative commentariat. His opinions on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia have earned him scorn from some Republicans, and his views on the COVID-19 vaccine were contentious. Carlson’s more recent exposure of footage from January 6th also resulted in gnashing of teeth among GOP politicians.
"But whether you agree with him or not on a given issue, I think you have respect that he’s his own person. He’s not just blindly reading party talking points like some others on his network are so obviously doing (you can guess who I’m talking about).
"That’s what made the podcast appearance by Carlson that I’m about to share with you so interesting. In it, he gets honest about his regrets in a way so many others would never dream of doing. In my opinion, it’s a must watch for anyone who follows politics.". . .
More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president. CNBC
" Because most of the media continues to show how much they are in the tank for Joe Biden. This week, Republicans have shown millions of dollars in transfers to the Biden family from China, and yet it doesn't make the nightly news.
"Always remember these two big lies from Joe where he says he has never made any money from a foreign source in his life.
“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life,” Biden said, pointing to 22 years of tax returns he has made public as proof.
Biden has long maintained he never discussed business with his son, other than telling him, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Emails reportedly found on the laptop and other subsequent developments have cast new doubts on that claim, though
"Hunter gets paid millions from a corrupt company in Ukraine for a no-show job and the media and other Democrats didn't care.
"Joe bragged about blackmailing Ukraine with a billion dollars in taxpayer money if they didn't fire a prosecutor investigating the company that paid Hunter millions -- and the media and other Democrats didn't care.
"The media and other Democrats not only didn't care about the pure corruption and kickbacks from Ukraine, but Trump was also impeached for even asking about it.". . .
"Yes, you read that right. The country with among the most resources in this arena
– human, technical and otherwise – finished dead last. Finland ranked the highest, with a 65 percent trust rating. In Kenya, the trust rating clocked in at 61 percent.
"But here in the U.S.A., the home of global media giants including the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, we’re trusted by a whopping 29 percent of those reading and watching.
"Is anyone really surprised? Because in looking at polls over the past few years (even pre-Donald Trump) we’ve been trending in this dubious direction for some time. ". . .
But it wasn’t always this way. Back in 1976, in the days of anchors such as Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, David Brinkley and Roger Mudd, nearly three-quarters of the country trusted the media, according to Gallup.
Fast forward to 2021, and the likes of Chris Cuomo,Jim A costa, Brian Williams and Yamiche Alcindor are given the same prestigious titles of anchor or correspondent.
Biden said that the border crisis didn’t begin “overnight.” Actually, it pretty much did begin overnight—the moment he took office.
The average American family has lost $7,100 in purchasing power under Biden due to inflation and high-interest rates.
Biden and his administration frequently took opportunities to portray half the country as evil, anti-democratic monsters.
"From COVID-19 tyranny to a foolhardy retreat from energy independence to a vicious war on parents, the 46th president has proved to be far from the healing uniter he was promised to be.
"Though it seems many Americans have already forgotten about it, the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal remains one of the most humiliating foreign policy fiascos in American history. Even worse, following that disaster, there was no reckoning, no accountability for what happened.
"In Biden’s second year, we saw many ongoing problems, some of which have only escalated. So, to mark the second anniversary of Biden’s presidency, I’ve updated my analysis of some of his biggest failures that are affecting Americans today.". . .
"J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the Grinnell poll, said Independent voters favored Biden by a 54%-41% margin in the 2020 election. If the vote were held again today, Trump would win the Independent vote by a 45%-28% margin. “It’s a massive shift in a demographic that helped carry Biden to victory,” Selzer said.
The President's promises of moderation and competency have been broken during his first seven months
"The Grinnell poll also showed that 52% of Americans believe that the US democratic system of government is under “major threat.” Again, voters were polarized, with 71% of Republicans and only 35% of Democrats saying that democracy faces a major threat."
"Biden’s woke rhetoric, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and declining mental state leave me disappointed in the man I reluctantly supported in the 2020 election. Author and commentator Lionel Shriver joins Steven Edginton in this week’s Off Script podcast. Watch the full video [below] . . .
I have always appreciated that she was never overtly political — that is, until I recently viewed a segment from her talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show. What I witnessed offended and shocked me to my core.
. . ."I have two daughters whom I am raising to be confident and strong in their character, and Ms. Barrymore is telling them that their lives as girls don't matter by promoting this farcical man. She is enabling a movement that paints women as ridiculous, self-absorbed ditzes whose worth lies only in what they wear and how well they put on make-up.ylan Mulvaney doesn't need sympathy or validation; he needs to be told he is a man and that he is hurting young girls by degrading and demeaning them. He has no clue what it is like to be a girl or a woman. He doesn't know what it is like to get a period, or have a baby, or go through menopause. He doesn't know what it feels like to nurse a baby and have cracked nipples and be so exhausted that you want to drop, but you keep pushing through the day because your kids need you.
Women and girls are under attack. The rights we have fought for are being eradicated by men who are thieves. They have stolen our sports and our private spaces, and now they want to eradicate us by becoming cheap grotesque imitations of us. Many women are afraid to speak out and stand up for their rights because these men in dresses threaten and dox them. Our government, public institutions, and corporations have sided with these twisted men. Now we have one of the most famous and successful women in the world kowtowing to them.
As a society, we have to stop letting these insane, perverse men destroy our daughters, mothers, sisters, and friends. Women are not a costume, and we are not a joke. Talk about toxic masculinity...
Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rachel Levine promised that medically changing kids’ genders will soon be normalized.
"When asked if red states should have the right to pass laws limiting access to gender-affirming treatments, Biden said: ‘I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that.’
University bureaucrats will continue to flex their power, stifle learning, undermine the quality of professors, and shut down viewpoint diversity until faculty and students demand they be banished from campus.
"If you are at all curious about how the war on campus free speech has evolved since student arsonists torched the University of California at Berkeley in 2017, look no further than the angry mob of infantile Stanford law students whoshut downa talk by Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan last week. Intolerant campus leftists have been shouting down speakers for years now, but what transpired at Stanford law school last week was special: The students’ effort to squash intellectual diversity was condoned and even enforced by a prominent university administrator.
"Ducan, who had been invited by the Stanford Federalist Society to give a talk titled “Covid, Guns, and Twitter,” was driven from the podium by Stanford Law School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach.
"Due to heckling, Duncan asked an administrator to control the students, who were violating Stanford’s free speech policies. That’s when Steinbach stepped in, took the podium from Duncan, and personally chastised him with prepared remarks.
"Steinbach said of their behavior in her pre-written speech, “I’m glad this is going on here.” “The Stanford Review” reported that students at the talk were screaming and holding obscene signs, such as “Judge Duncan can’t find the clit.”
"While Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez have apologized to Duncan, it appears neither the offending students nor Steinbach have been disciplined for their breach of university policy they’ve agreed to follow. ". . .
"That toxic culture evidenced itself after the shout-down. The Stanford Law School Chapter of the Federalist Society, which invited Judge Duncan to speak, got almost no faculty support (only two reached out privately), even though not just Judge Duncan but also Federalist students were targeted. Through its silence, the faculty sent a strong message that what happened was acceptable (had it been a liberal judge shouted down, you can be sure there would have been a faculty uproar.)". . .
. . ."The Stanford Law chapter of the far-left National Lawyers Guild not only defended the shout-down, it promised to do the same to future conservative speakers. David Lat wrote:". . .
. . ."These students thinking that it is protected “free speech” to prevent someone else from speaking reflects how uneducated these law students are. Ken White, clearly no fan of Judge Duncan, writes about the students’ position:
However, shouting down is not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is pulling the fire alarm, setting off an airhorn, or making bomb threats to stop the speech from happening. You couldn’t pass a law that said “no shouting down conservative speakers” or “no shouting down political speakers,” because those wouldn’t be content-neutral, but you can absolutely prohibit disrupting someone else’s exercise of free speech so long as you do so in a content-neutral way.
"Firing the Diversity Dean is a distraction and deflection. Let’s keep her front and center, let her be the face of Stanford Law School for all the world to see. Because she reflects the culture there.". . .
Douglas Andrews: Stanford Law Students Heckle Federal Judge | The Patriot Post . . . Steinbach stood up and gave a minutes-long lecture to Judge Duncan about the “harm” he’d caused on the Court of Appeals. As The Washington Free Beacon notes, “The students were particularly angry at Duncan for a 2020 opinion in which he refused to use a transgender sex offender’s preferred pronouns.”. . .
Kelly deserves some kind of award for her gifted mimicry of Steinbach. I found it hilarious.
The Vulgarization of America (townhall.com) . . ."But what shocked me was not just the utter lack of respect for others’ constitutional rights displayed by law students at one of the nation’s “top” law schools; it was the appalling vulgarity. These students were yelling obscenities at a federal judge and holding up signs with the coarsest language imaginable. (I could not provide it even if I were inclined to -- it is unprintable in most newspapers.) The protesters apparently thought this was clever.". . .
If Stanford cares about free speech, it must fire any administrator who actively encourages these unruly actions against it. Someone who is so eager, at the behest of an unruly mob, to shut down free speech, which Stanford itself considers “a bedrock principle for the law school, the university, and a democratic society,” has no place as a Stanford dean. . . ."She helped engineer chaos with her email before the event, delivered prepared remarks interrupting his speech, took the spotlight for herself, and has shown no remorse since."
"Indeed, we at the Review are concerned about what example this sets for these future lawyers, judges, and Supreme Court Justices."
The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project
to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the
Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford
CIO Council (CIOC) and People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) affinity group in
December 2020.
"The goal of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is to eliminate* many forms of
harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias,
ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and
code.
"The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words
we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to
assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all
informal uses of language.
"This website focuses on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with
a list of everyday language and terminology.** Our "suggested alternatives" are in line
with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community.***
Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive
or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.". . .
Given his uncontrollable urge to deceive, why did 81 million Americans believe him? Why would just 81. . . put their trust in a man who is the biggest liar in the post-Lyndon Johnson political era? It’s obvious he has a deep character flaw and has been in a decades-long descent into madness. He is a “psychopathic personality of some type.”
"How do we know when Joe Biden is lying? When he says he gives us his word as a Biden. But that’s not the only time he spins a whopper. He says something untrue quite regularly, the most recent instance a tall tale about his “epiphany” regarding gay marriage.
When asked about his “evolution on marriage equality” during an interview on Monday night’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, Biden radically revised his personal history so that he would appear to have been woke for more than a half century. Our president (how did such a thing ever happen?) said he “hadn’t thought much about” same-sex marriage until his “senior in high school.” But one day as his father was dropping him off, he saw “two well-dressed men in suits” kiss each other.
“I mean they give each other a kiss. … And I’ll never forget, I turned, looked at my dad, he said ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other. It’s simple.’ No, I’m not joking. ‘It’s simple. They love each other.’ … It doesn’t matter whether it’s, whether it’s same-sex, or heterosexual couples should be able to be married. What is the problem?”. . .
. . ."Biden has also lied about his education, his family background, his life experiences (he really said that he “used to drive a tractor trailer”), that he was on a plane that was fired at in the Balkans, was on a helicopter forced down by terrorists in Afghanistan, and told at least one group he was a “hard coal miner”). In the 1980s, he plagiarized a speech by British Politician Neil Kinnock appropriating the Labor leader’s story as his own.
"Long before he ran against Donald Trump in 2020, Biden was a well-known liar. Yet more than 81 million voters cast their ballot for him, a man who cannot tell fact from fiction. He lied when he promised he’d “shut down” COVID, unite the country and rescue the economy, which had been roaring before it was maimed by lockdowns.". . .
Joe Biden Claims a Child Wrote to Him About the ‘Gender Wage Gap' – PJ Media. . ."PJ Media readers are well aware that the purported gender pay gap is a fallacy. Despite this, the left continues to cling to the notion that women earn between 79 and 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. However, sex-based pay discrimination has been prohibited since the enactment of the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
"Not that this has ever stopped the left from claiming that the gap still exists. In fact, they’ve tried to “fix” the gender pay gap.
"If Joe Biden is claiming that the wage gap still exists, then I suppose he admits that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, signed by Barack Obama while Biden was vice president, failed to fix the problem. According to the Democrats, neither the Equal Pay Act nor the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act succeeded in achieving equal pay for women. So, obviously, more legislation is needed! I just can’t wait for Joe Biden to fix this nonexistent problem!
"The notion of a pay gap between men and women is largely an illusion generated by the left’s misleading method of calculation. This was clearly demonstrated when the Obama White House was accused of having a gender pay gap, and their rebuttal was that men and women in equivalent roles and experience earned identical salaries. The same explanation has been offered by fact-checkers to disprove the existence of the gender pay gap for years.". . .
"With Christmas done and dusted, it’s time to unveil my annual 10 most tiresome people of the year, a tradition I began way back in 2013 when I was a contributor at another conservative website that I carried on when PatriotRetort.com launched in 2015.
"Compiling this list every year is a job of work, let me tell you. And not just because it runs around 5,000 words and I always try to add 3 or 4 new Dianny images.
"No, the biggest challenge is limiting the list to my allotted 10 people. So many tiresome people parade by each year demanding our attention that I generally end up with an initial list of over 20 names. Paring it down to the 10 most tiresome of those tiresome people ain’t easy.
"Keep in mind, this isn’t a list of the 10 most evil people or the 10 people I despise with every fiber of my being, although, some of this year’s entrants definitely fit into one or both of those categories.
'These are the 10 most tiresome people. The folks that get on this list are the ones who, when I see their faces in the news or online, the first thought that pops into my head is, “Good grief. Not you again. Will this person ever go away?' !”. . .
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