Posted on by

The American left go full neo-con!

I always expect the neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, none of whom ever met a war in which they did not want American involvement, to be pushing to fight, fight, fight, but I’ll admit to some to surprise in seeing Salon’s Amanda Marcotte going full-neocon!

Zelenskyy visit exposes a GOP rift — between actual fascists and everyone else

Too many Republicans still refuse to stand up for Ukraine — and for democracy — against their MAGA brethren

by Amanda Marcotte | Friday, December 23, 2022 | 6:00 AM EST

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is widely popular, both in the U.S. and around the world. You’d have to be the most churlish asshole alive not to feel moved by his resolve to protect his nation’s sovereignty against the egomanaical supervillain impulses of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been waging an unprovoked war against Ukraine for nearly a year. Zelenskyy’s Wednesday night speech before a joint session of Congress wasn’t just moving. It was also persuasive on the brass tacks arguments. Military aid to Ukraine is “not charity,” he argued, but “an investment in global security and democracy.”

I’ll admit it: I checked Miss Marcotte’s Salon archive on December 26th to see if she’d written yet another “I hate Christmas” screed. When she wrote, in 2019:

For me, it’s personal. My family is mostly a bunch of Trump voters, sucked up into a vortex of propaganda and lies, unable even to admit basic facts about the world that run contrary to what their tribal politics dictate. That sort of thing is stressful on a normal day, but makes a mockery of the idea of familial love and harmony.

I just shook my head, because the idea that I’d simply give up my family over politics is simply beyond my understanding.

Oh, well, back to the original:

As Fred Kaplan at Slate argued, the speech “was a resounding success” that circumvented Republicans who previously had made noises about cutting aid to Ukraine. The Senate approved $44.9 billion in military, humanitarian and economic aid to Ukraine on Thursday afternoon, as part of a $1.7 trillion government spending bill that passed 68-29, and is expected to pass the House as well.

Zelenskyy’s argument that Ukraine’s victory is necessary to protect global democracy is hard to argue against. Especially in recent years, Putin has not hidden his contempt for Western-style democracy or desire to see it collapse around the globe. Even with all the caveats and nuances one could possibly inject into this, the “bad guys” and “good guys” are crystal clear in this scenario.

Winston Churchill famously said, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” But perhaps, just perhaps, a ‘favourable’ reference is all the difference.

Except, that is, to some Republicans in Congress and a number right-wing pundits. That world is not just anti-Zelenskyy, but imbued with such vicious sentiments that even the most jaded political watchers were shocked. This isn’t just about arguments over whether aid to Ukraine is being well spent, or about whether Ukraine is strategically crucial to U.S. interests. This was about full-on vitriol, to the point where even Republicans who are open to cutting aid to Ukraine were made uncomfortable.

There’s one major reason things got so ugly so fast. The debate over Ukraine, at least among Republicans, is a stand-in for the largely unspoken but very real debate that’s roiling the party: Do they still believe in democracy? A faction in the GOP has decided that they don’t, and now supports authoritarianism, or the F-word. Many other Republicans feel uneasy about this direction, but don’t seem able to stand up to the fascist faction.

It has to be remembered: Mr Zelenskyy is President of Ukraine only because legitimately-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in the so-called Революція гідності, “Revolution of Dignity,” in 2014, in large part because he opposed joining the European Union and NATO. But, for Miss Marcotte, it’s the evil reich-wing Republicans who don’t believe in democracy, and who now support authoritarianism.

There follows another several paragraphs of mixed and questionable assertions, which you can read for yourself; I cannot simply quote every one of Miss Marcotte’s 1,370 words.

Most Americans support Ukraine, with 65% agreeing that the U.S. should send arms to Ukraine and 75% supporting sanctions against Russia, even as those have driven up oil prices around the world. This onslaught of pro-Putin propaganda on the right has softened conservative support for Ukraine, but even so 55% of Republican voters are in favor of military aid.

This tension between America’s overwhelming pro-Ukraine sentiment and the far right’s caustic hatred was reflected in the behavior of congressional Republicans at Zelenskyy’s speech Wednesday night. Most Republicans, even those who have expressed doubt about more funding, at least showed moral support for Zelenskyy, standing to applaud his speech and telling reporters they believe in his cause.

There has been a whole lot of World War II thinking applied to the Russo-Ukraine War — or perhaps I should call it Russo-Ukraine War 2.0, considering Russia’s seizure and annexation of part of Ukraine in 2014 — with the logic that pushed the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Nazi Germany two days after the Wehrmacht rolled into Poland, but that is such superficial thinking that I am amazed no one has realized it. In that event, the UK and France could not and did not actually do anything to liberate Poland; the liberation of Poland came in 1944, when the Red Army pushed out the Germans, and ‘liberation’ by the Soviet Union hardly freed the Poles.

And there’s that biggest of differences: no one in Europe, or anywhere in the world, had in 1939 what Russia has now: a strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal. As he was losing the war, Adolf Hitler tried everything he could, used every weapon he had, but, other than the V-1 and V-2 terror rockets, had no power to strike at his enemies. We do not and cannot know what Vladimir Putin will do if, in the end, he sees Russia really losing RUW 2.0, but we do know that he could cross that nuclear threshold, and use tactical nukes against Ukrainian troop concentrations and other targets. And once that nuclear threshold is crossed, who can know when things will stop? And if the United States and NATO nations are supplying Ukraine from bases in Poland, how are those bases not legitimate targets if Russia has the weapons to reach them . . . and Russia does.

We have had proxy wars with the Communists since the 1950s, in Korea, in Vietnam, and in Afghanistan, but in none of those wars were we fighting Russian troops, nor was there any danger of strikes into the USSR itself; Ukraine has already struck inside Russia during this war. The New York Times reported, “The United States and Ukraine have agreed that Kyiv will not strike targets in Russia with American-provided weapons,” but that does not mean that Vladimir Putin will care about that distinction. If Ukraine can strike targets inside Russia, than Russia can strike targets outside Ukraine which are supplying the Ukrainians. War and escalation have their own logic.

Skipping to the end of Miss Marcotte’s article, we find:

One could quibble over whether supporting Ukraine and believing in democracy are the same thing, although Putin’s behavior tends to override any effort at nuanced debate. But within Republican ranks, there’s no doubt that the issue of Ukraine’s independence and self-determination has become is a proxy for the party’s internal debate over American democracy. Even the most stalwart authoritarians in the GOP know better than to come right out and say they’re against democracy and it’s time to do away with it. So they gaslight the nation instead, clumsily repackaging Donald Trump’s desire to be installed as a dictator as a narrative about a “stolen” or “rigged” election, and concerted efforts to undermine democracy as measures to ensure “election security.” Rooting against Ukraine is a way to advance the anti-democracy agenda, without quite openly embracing it.

Ironically, all the Republican game-playing on Ukraine only ends up reinforcing the argument Zelenskyy made in his speech on Wednesday: Protecting his country against Russian tyranny is ultimately about protecting democracy. Whatever criticisms could be made of his leadership or his imperfect nation, Zelenskyy’s biggest opponents in Congress hate him because they hate democracy.

Philadelphia’s transplanted Texan is honest enough to tell us her real message: the left must attack Republicans, and RUW 2.0 is just a vehicle with which to do that. Honestly, I expect no wider-range thinking from her. But in doing so, she has made arguments pretty much indistinguishable from those of Mr Boot.[1]Mr Boot, whose parents fled a strongly antisemitic regime in the USSR under Leonid Brezhnev, once said, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump,” even though the … Continue reading Mr Boot, who dearly loves having American troops all over the globe and has been a student of military history and strategic studies but has never served in the military himself, fretted that it would be a disaster for the United States to pull out of Afghanistan, though what more could be accomplished in that fetid and festering sewer that we hadn’t been able to accomplish in the 19½ years we had already been there he could not articulate.

Even the Editorial Board of The Washington Post went full neo-con on Ukraine. But, as is the case with Miss Marcotte, all I see is a tremendous desire to be anti-Trump in all of this. President Trump raised the legitimate question of European participation in NATO, and how the European nations were not paying their fair share of the burden of maintaining the alliance. I went further, and asked if Americans really like the idea that the North Atlantic Treaty would require us to go to war with Russia if Russia sent the tanks rolling into Riga. Just how many American cities are worth defending the Baltic States? And Ukraine isn’t even a NATO member.

Miss Marcotte was very much opposed to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though we were actually attacked by al Qaeda, which was hiding in Afghanistan. Those wars, of course, were started under George W Bush, a Republican President, so there’s that. But today, she’s conflating an attack by Russia, on a non-NATO nation, with Republicans in the United States, and telling us we have to fight, fight, fight Vladimir Putin and Russia, to preserve democracy in the United States. #TrumpDerangementSyndrome has managed turn so much of the American left into the new neo-cons.

References

References
↑1 Mr Boot, whose parents fled a strongly antisemitic regime in the USSR under Leonid Brezhnev, once said, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump,” even though the USSR under Comrade Stalin might well have sent Mr Boot and his family to a concentration camp; the Soviet leaders really didn’t like Jews very much.
Posted on by

Killadelphia

We’ve pretty much reached the end point, at which any calculations of the final toll of blood in the City of Brotherly Love are down to the margin of error. With just five days left in the year, Philadelphia has seen 510 ‘official’ homicides, so the final toll is going to be somewhere in the 514 to 521 range.

It was just twenty days ago that I noted the margin of error possibility that the city could finish slightly under 500 homicides. I guess that the gang-bangers “cliques of young men”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading took that as something of a personal challenge.

So, my congratulations to Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, on the fine job they’ve done.

In eight years under Mayor Michael Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams, and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Philly never once cracked the 400 ‘barrier,’ and saw two years, 2013 and 2014, in which the homicide total was under 250! Homicides were under 300 during the trio’s final three years in office together.

New York City has seen 418 homicides through Christmas Day. Philly, with just 18.5% of the Big Apple’s population, just smiles and says, “Hold my beer!”

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“
Posted on by

Our Betters are so very much smarter than we are that I’m certain, certain! that they have a plan for all of this

We noted Friday evening that Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities were asking customers to reduce their electric consumption during this bitterly cold snap, and even then KU was employing “brief service interruptions” to reduce demand. I’m not sure what good that does: as people’s heat goes out for an hour, that just means they’ll have to use it more after the sparktricity is restored to get their homes back up to the desired temperature.

Now there’s this, from The Philadelphia Inquirer, on Christmas Eve:

Bitter cold prompts call for electricity conservation until Christmas morning

PJM Interconnection is asking consumers to voluntarily limit their electricity usage until 10 a.m. Christmas Day to avoid the need to implement short blackout periods.

by Lynette Hazleton | Saturday, December 24, 2022

With winter storms raging and temperatures plunging to the lowest in decades, PJM Interconnection is asking consumers to voluntarily limit their electricity usage until 10 a.m. Christmas Day to avoid the need to implement short blackout periods.

“If we don’t have enough supply to meet demand then sometimes, on rare occasions, we will have rotating outages,” said PJM spokesman Jeff Shields.

During a rotating outage, different regions of PJM’s service area would be intentionally taken off the grid for about an hour. “We’ve seen that consumer conservation efforts can really help, and we need it now,” Shields said.

PJM is asking consumers to hold off using their largest appliances, such as washing machines and dryers as well as taking a shower and using hair dryers.

So dirty bodies in dirty clothes, right? Nope, no lovin’ tonight, honey.

PJM Interconnection isn’t an electric generation company itself, but a regional transmission organization which manages the power distribution grid serving all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. That does not include my part of Kentucky!

I’ve asked this question before, but I’ll ask it again: if the current electric power generation and transmission system cannot handle an unusual but hardly unprecedented bitterly cold snap now, how can it handle things when the Biden Administration is pushing for all new cars to be plug in electrics just 13 years from now, and the global warming climate change emergency activists want all new homes, and older homes as well, converted over to electric heat, as well as banning gas ranges?

According to Statista, slightly over half of the homes in the keystone State use natural gas as their primary home heating fuel, with another 15.88% using home heating oil or kerosene. My previous home in Jim Thorpe had a heating oil-fired steam boiler for heat, but we also added a wood stove as both a backup for times when the electricity failed — the boiler still required electricity to operate — and it evened out the heat in the one-zone boiler.

Only 23.5% of Pennsylvania homes were heated primarily with a heat pump or electric baseboard heat.

Our heating oil boiler ran on a single 110-volt, 20-amp circuit. I also installed two baseboard units, one in the living room and another in the kitchen, which were on 220-volt, 30-amphere circuits each. Now in the Bluegrass State, our primary heating system, an electric heat pump, is on two 220-volt circuits, 30-amps for the outside condenser, and 50-amps for the crawlspace unit, which does include ’emergency heat’ circuits for use during extreme cold. Of course, we also have a propane fireplace, which is not only a great back-up for when we lose electricity, but sure is nice when it’s bitterly cold outside.

So, just how the heck do the activists think that our power-generation capabilities, expanded solely with solar, wind and non-fossil-fueled sources, can handle greatly increased demand for power by increasing electricity’s share of home heating, and most automobiles being plug-in electrics?

Of course, Our Betters are so very much smarter than we are that I’m certain, certain! that they have a plan for all of this, right? Perhaps the fairy dust and unicorn farts they expect us to use do not emit CO2?

Posted on by

It’s 0º F outside, and Kentucky Utilities is employing “brief service interruptions”

We previously mentioned how the Pico household are not completely dependent upon electricity for heat, but that doesn’t include our daughter’s house in Lexington. She has a gas furnace, but it requires sparktricity to run.

LG&E and KU doing ‘brief service interruptions,’ asking for customers to conserve energy

by Audrey Fowler | Friday, December 23, 2022 | 9:06 PM EST

(LEX 18) — The winter storm has caused many outages across the state. Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities are asking for customers to reduce their energy consumption.

LG&E and KU are also performing “brief service interruptions” in intervals to “minimize extended impacts” on customers.

They say outage durations will vary but range around 30 minutes.

There’s more at the original, but it’s simple: while the Biden Administration and the global warming climate change emergency activists want everyone to switch to non-fossil fuel heating sources — meaning electricity — Kentucky Utilities, which serves Lexington, and our daughter’s house, is having to employ “brief service interruptions” to keep the power on for everyone, even though power needs are reduced by having “many outages” across the Bluegrass State.

Think about it: while most people’s gas furnaces use 110-volt, 20-amp circuits for their required electricity needs, electric heat pumps or baseboard heaters require 220-volt circuits, and, depending upon the system, more amperage.

Our daughter has sparktricity back, so the furnace is on again. But if Kentucky Utilities is unable to provide sufficient power in an area where most people have gas furnaces, how the heck does anyone think they could do so if everyone had electric heat?

Posted on by

As bitterly cold weather hits the United States, we’re not totally dependent upon electricity

As what the Weather Channel has been calling Winter Storm Elliot — and has any other media outlet picked up on the Channel’s naming of ‘winter storms? — is blasting through the lower 48, there are all sorts of interesting news items.

It’s 2º F at the farm right now, but the wind chill is around -19º. Mochi, our half-chocolate lab, half-Australian shepherd, keeps wanting to go out, but she doesn’t stay long.

Our home’s primary heat source is an electric heat pump, but when the air temperature is this low, it has difficulty extracting excess heat from the outside atmosphere. Even the emergency heat cycle doesn’t provide much more warmth than the heat pump.

But, of course, after 4½ days without power our first winter here, we installed the propane fireplace, and it does not depend on electricity to run. There is a circulating fan which does use regular power, but activating the fire itself depends on four AA batteries, so if the power goes out, the stove itself still works. Though thousands of people across the Confederacy have lost power, we have not. All of our utilities, electricity, water, satellite TV and internet are still operational!

Well, if the oh-so-serious global warming climate change activists want everything to be all-electric, no fossil fuels, this article from Barrons lets us know that not everybody seems to agree:

Ford Raises Prices for Electric F-150 Lightning Trucks Again. Investors Don’t Like It.

by Al Root | Friday, December 16, 2022 | 1:47 PM EST | Updated: 2:15 PM EST

Ford Motor has again raised the price of its popular electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning, and investors don’t seem to approve.

The market response to the move shows how auto makers are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Price cuts have triggered selloffs of EV makers’ stocks recently. Now a price increase is doing the same.

The cost of the electric version of Ford’s most popular pickup truck has climbed 40% in roughly eight months. The base price of a F-150 Lightning now stands at about $56,000, according to the company’s website, up from a base price of $52,000 set in October. The October price was an increase from a previous price of $47,000, and when the vehicle went was first delivered in May on sale, the base model cost about $40,000.

The Ford move stands out because, generally, prices for electric vehicles have been coming down. Tesla (TSLA), and others, cut prices in China in the fall, and their shares tumbled. Tesla is also offering U.S. car buyers $3,750 off to take delivery of a Tesla by the end of 2022; its stock has declined about 29% since the China price cuts in October, though CEO Elon Musk’s new role at the helm of Twitter (TWTR) has played a part as well. Car investors have feared weaker demand for EVs could lead to lower profit margins and earnings. But they apparently don’t like price increases, either. .  .  .  .

F-150 prices have been going up for a few reasons. Raw material prices are up, and demand for the vehicle has been strong. Ford says it has about two years of reservations for the electric truck in its backlog. A Ford spokesman confirmed the price increases Friday, citing normal business planning, rising costs, as well as strong demand.

It took awhile, but here we get to the money line:

Pricing can’t go up forever, and investors are clearly worried that higher prices will dent consumer demand for the truck. Demand in the broader EV market has been a concern for a while. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, RBC analyst Joseph Spak, and Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney have warned investors that EV demand is softening.

Demand is softening. More, prices for electric vehicles have been coming down not because the automakers are generous, but because the demand for the things isn’t what they anticipated. With the federal government offering subsidies for the purchase of plug-in electric vehicles, a real, if somewhat delayed incentive, demand still isn’t there.

And that’s pretty much true of everything. Even the liberals in very blue New England seem to want fossil fuels for their own homes, and despite the attempts of the global warming climate change activists to ban gas ranges, we have previously noted that “it seems that everybody, including the cooking show stars, wants a gas range.”

But hey, when the activists get their way, we’ll just have to accept that some Americans will die when their electric only heat sources don’t work because snow and ice and bitterly cold temperatures have brought down power lines! After all, it’s for our own good!

Posted on by

It is time for total truth between us

This article title comes from Lt Saavik, in Star Trek: The Search for Spock.” David Marcus, Admiral James Kirk’s bastard son is questioned by Lt Saavik, who says that this artificial planet you have created is not what he expected.

  • Saavik : It’s time for total truth between us. This planet is not what you intended or hoped for, is it?
  • David Marcus : Not exactly.
  • Saavik : Why?
  • David Marcus : I used protomatter in the Genesis matrix.
  • Saavik : Protomatter. An unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable.
  • David Marcus : It was the only way to solve certain problems.
  • Saavik : So, like your father, you changed the rules.
  • David Marcus : If I hadn’t, it might have been years or never.
  • Saavik : How many have paid the price for your impatience? How many have died? How much damage have you done? And what is yet to come?

Sometimes, the total truth must be told, even if the truth is unpleasant. I will admit it: I have been called an [insert slang term for the anus here], but sometimes you need an [insert slang term for the anus here] to get around political correctness or misapplied courtesy to just tell the truth.

We all knew it would happen sooner or later: those of us who are smart enough to reject the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls are being blamed for the death by suicide of “Henry” Berg-Brousseau. From what my, sadly now departed, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal:

‘Lack of acceptance took a toll.’ KY senator says son, who pushed for trans rights, died

by Tessa Duvall | Tuesday, December 20, 2022 | 4:14 PM EST | Updated: 4:20 PM EST

Kentucky Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, announced in a statement Tuesday that her son, who was transgender, died by suicide last week.

Henry Berg-Brousseau was 24.

Henry Berg-Brousseau is seen with his politician mother Karen, father Bob, a marketing director, and sister Rachael, a rabbi. Photo from the Daily Mail. Click to enlarge.

Note that the Herald-Leader uncritically wrote that Senator Berg’s daughter was her son. As is so often the case, the newspaper’s stylebook calls for referring to the ‘transgendered’ by the gender they claim to be, not the sex they actually are, and the use of the preferred ‘pronouns’ and faux name they chose. All of this is subtly designed to be courtesy, but also to normalize ‘transgenderism’ as something real.

Berg said her son spent his life “working to extend grace, compassion and understanding to everyone, but especially to the vulnerable and marginalized.”

“As the mother of a transgender son, I gave my whole heart trying to protect my child from a world where some people and especially some politicians intentionally continued to believe that marginalizing my child was OK simply because of who he was,” Berg wrote. “This lack of acceptance took a toll on Henry. He long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.”

Yes, Miss Berg-Brousseau “long struggled with mental illness,” but Senator Berg, who is a physician, doesn’t think that her daughter thinking that she was really a boy had anything to do with it. Much further down:

“In one of our last conversations he wondered if he was safe walking down the street,” Berg wrote. “The vitriol against trans people is not happening in a vacuum. It is not just a way of scoring political points by exacerbating the culture wars. It has real-world implications for how transgender people view their place in the world and how they are treated as they just try to live their lives.”

I have included a photo of the Berg-Brousseau family. In it, “Harry” — I have been unable to find her real name — is shown, seemingly shorter than her mother and sister, and certainly shorter than her father, as well as significantly overweight. Were she an actual boy who grew up that way, “he’d” have been the last picked for a team in Phys Ed, and been dateless as high school girls, real girls, would have rejected “him” for more masculine guys. As an adult, she might somehow ‘pass’ as a male, if no one asked any questions, but she’d have been the least impressive of ‘guys’.

Dr Berg claimed that Miss Berg-Brousseau believed that she was at risk, I assume from violence, walking out in public, but, in the end, the person from whom she wasn’t safe was not evil tormenters, but from herself. Had she been an actual boy who grew up to look the way she looked, she’d have had to get used to the kinds of insults that all boys growing up not masculine enough hear. But Dr Berg wants to blame her daughter’s suicide on people who recognize that her “transgender son” was actually her daughter, and refused to lie about it.

This, you see, is what the left want, for sensible people to be guilted into accepting something that they know to be false, to accept the mental illness of gender dysphoria as somehow being not a delusion but normal. More, they want sensible people to lie out loud, to call the ‘transgendered’ by their preferred pronouns and names, when that would be lying to others and to themselves. To me, the proper response is to not get involved in any way with the ‘transgendered,’ to not have to choose between going along with their delusions or angering them in public, but simply to ignore them as much as we can, as long as it has no effect on ourselves and society.

That’s why this site has spent so much bandwidth on Will Thomas, the male swimmer who thought he was a woman, and competed on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swimming team, utterly dominating women in the pool when he had been an average swimmer when competing as a male. That was actual harm, to the women he beat in the pool, and to society as a whole. Miss Berg-Brousseau? Obviously, the female-to-male ‘transition’ does not confer on someone biologically female the physical advantages of height, strength, quickness, and speed that actual males normally have, so there’s no threat to sports performance that Mr Thomas constituted, but it’s also obvious that, while there are short and obese males, the female-to-male ‘transgendered’ simply aren’t males.

Miss Berg-Brousseau? Other than her attempts to persuade the General Assembly not to pass legislation which would protect privacy of people from the opposite sex sharing their bathrooms and locker rooms — legislation which then failed, but failed during the last time in which Democrats controlled the state House of Representatives — she’s done little harm.

Perhaps Miss Berg-Brousseau would have found more acceptance among a smaller group of people, people who would go along with her claim that she was a man, but she tried to make herself an advocate, tried to push others to not only go along with her delusions, tried to get the law and the state to accept them; she put herself out in public, and putting yourself out in public invites those who disagree to state their disagreements, to make their positions clear and known.

Also see: Ronald Yates: How the Media are Brainwashing Us to Believe the “Woke New Normal”

This is what Dr Berg, and the Lexington Herald-Leader, as well as many other media sources, are trying to do, to stifle other people’s opinions, to try to blame other people for Miss Berg-Brousseau’s suicide, to try to guilt people into accepting other people’s lies and delusions.

Sorry, but no, just no.

Living out in the country in rural eastern Kentucky, I rarely see such individuals, only twice as a matter of fact: a male pretending to be female as a diner in Lexington’s Corta Lina restaurant, several tables away, and a male waiter pretending to be a waitress in the Applebee’s on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky. He wasn’t our waiter, so we had no interaction with him, but it’s notable that that Applebee’s closed down just a few weeks later.

As far as I am concerned, the ‘transgendered’ can have their own delusions, and I will ignore them when I can. But I will not lie for them. Does that make me an [insert slang term for the anus here]?

You know what? I will proudly accept that appellation, if it means telling the truth. We can have sympathy for Miss Berg-Brousseau, and her family, but sympathy should not extend to lying to other people, and to ourselves. Referring to Miss Berg-Brousseau as a male isn’t like answering your wife’s question, “Do these pants make me look fat?” Referring to Miss Berg-Brousseau as male is actively harmful to society, in that it goes right along with the normalization of mental illness and transgenderism. And referring to Miss Berg-Brousseau as male falls right along with her mother’s attempt to blame those of us who do tell the truth for her daughter’s death.
____________________________
Editor’s note: This article has been significantly expanded, including changing the title, from the original.
____________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

Posted on by

If the Tridentine Mass brings more Catholics to Mass, why would the Church ever restrict it?

The First Page of the Book of Genesis in the 1611 printing of the KJV, from Wikipedia. Click to enlarge.

Technically, I’m a “cradle Catholic,” baptized the month after I was born, because my father was Catholic. My mother? I really don’t know, other than her mother was Episcopalian. I remember very little about my life in California, before my parents divorced, and if they took me to Mass, which would have been a Latin Mass in the 1950s, I do not remember a bit of it.

I do know that my mother never took us to church after we got to Kentucky. My religious conscience was left to develop for itself, but somehow, I knew that I was Catholic. I did know that I had been baptized in the Catholic Church, because my mother told me, but that really was it.

In small town Mt Sterling, Kentucky, I certainly knew about the Protestant churches, and, for a while, when we lived off Richmond Avenue, there was a Pentecostalist church very close by, a church that took to heart raising a joyful noise unto the Lord, Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Google maps Streetscape tells me that it’s still there, though the white-painted concrete block walls have now been covered with white vinyl siding. But one of the things I also remember were that there were several Protestant churches which advertised themselves as King James Only, arguing that “the KJV needs no further improvements because it is the greatest English translation of the Bible which was ever published, and they also believe that all other English translations of the Bible which were published after the KJV was published are corrupt.” They have their reasons, which I will not argue here, and which you can read if you follow the link.

But, regardless of their arguments, one thing is certain: the Elizabethan English used in the King James Version is lofty in a way that modern English simply is not, and I have to wonder: does the grandeur of the language itself inspire some English-speaking people?

Old Latin Mass Finds New American Audience, Despite Pope’s Disapproval

An ancient form of Catholic worship is drawing in young traditionalists and conservatives. But it signals a divide within the church.

by Ruth Graham | Tuesday, November 15, 2022

I suppose that I have to laugh here, given that the form of the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin Mass, dates from the Missal of 1962. I’m not quite sure how that can be called, in the subtitle, “an ancient form.” 🙂 Continue reading →

Posted on by

You can’t make poorer people wealthier by making wealthier people poorer

Though Philadelphia is, overall, quite “diverse,” a word that I mostly despise due to the way it has been co-opted, it is, internally, one of the most segregated large cities in America. As we previously noted, the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer were aghast that the “percentage of Black and Hispanic Philadelphians who feel unsafe in their neighborhood is double the percentage of white Philadelphians.”

Gun violence is both a disease and a symptom. It’s crucial that our city’s goal be twofold: ensuring that all Philadelphians feel safe, and that the ranks of those who do not isn’t determined by skin color. Only when that is the case can Philadelphia truly say it is facing its challenges together.

For what are the Board asking here? They have already let us know that they don’t like gentrification, wealthier white people moving into predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods, and fixing up distressed homes; that, they claimed, led to segregated white pockets in the city. Somehow, no one seems to see the increased values in gentrifying areas lifting the net worth of the homes of black and Hispanic people living in those areas, or the value of white residents who are completely accepting of living in an integrated neighborhood. The Board seem to want more black residents in Chestnut Hill — which, with zip code 19118, one of the examples the Board used, being 67% white, ought to be considered integrated because that means 33% are not white — and Rittenhouse Square, but unless those residents can afford to move there, either the city, or someone, will have to provide the same subprime mortgages that caused the crash of 2007-9, or build ‘affordable housing’ in places which would then see other people’s property values decline due to it.

There is, of course, a not-so-subtle undertone to the Board’s editorial, the theme that white people make places safer, while blacks and Hispanics make areas more dangerous. The members would deny that, of course, but it is right there, obvious to anyone who reads what they wrote.

Unless, of course, the Board are saying that white Philadelphians should feel as unsafe as black and Hispanic residents do? If Will Bunch is on the Board, that wouldn’t surprise me!

And now the Board want to financially depress white areas of the city:

Race should not determine where you live

A recent lawsuit shows that segregation remains high in Philadelphia and that significant obstacles remain for Black households to build wealth through real estate.

By The Editorial Board | Tuesday, December 20, 2022 | 6:00 AM EST

As demonstrated through The Inquirer’s “A More Perfect Union” series on the legacy of racism in Philadelphia, bias and discrimination have a long history in our city. It is a rot in the foundation of America that we must all continue to repair and rebuild.

A recent housing lawsuit may be the latest part of that effort.

A Philadelphia landlord is accused of steering federal housing voucher recipients into properties in majority-Black neighborhoods, but not in predominantly white areas. This closes even more doors for people already hemmed in by a growing shortage of available rental housing and perpetuates racial disparities.

It is also a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act and the city’s own prohibition against tenant discrimination, as detailed in the suit against ProManaged Inc., a Mount Laurel-based landlord with 77 rental properties throughout Philadelphia.

Housing choice vouchers were designed to give low-income households a choice in where they live. Rather than being forced into disinvested areas, these families would have options, with market-rate housing in middle-class neighborhoods finally on the table. At least it was supposed to be.

What are federal housing vouchers? From the Department of Housing and Urban Development:

A housing subsidy is paid to the landlord directly by the PHA on behalf of the participating family. The family then pays the difference between the actual rent charged by the landlord and the amount subsidized by the program.

Note that: unless the voucher is for 100% of the rent, the family with the voucher are responsible for part of the rent. While the property owners are guaranteed the voucher amount, since that money is sent directly to them, they remain dependent upon the family to pay the remainder. And if the family are poor enough to be eligible for the vouchers in the first place, that means that many of them will be poor enough to be shaky in their ability to pay even the reduced amount.

A 2018 Urban Institute study found that two-thirds of landlords in the city refused to even meet with voucher holders. Compared to municipalities around the country, Philadelphia also had one of the highest disparities between acceptance rates in high- and low-income neighborhoods, a difference of 26%.

There’s some irony that the Inquirer’s editorial was published the same morning that the City of Brotherly Love informed us that it’d hit an even 500 homicides for the year. Given the fact that Philadelphia is a very violent city, and that violence is heavily concentrated in the neighborhoods with higher black and Hispanic percentages of the population, is it any particular surprise that a property owner in a ‘better’ neighborhood would not be all that happy about renting to people from those neighborhoods? Yes, it’s something of a ‘profiling’ judgement, but if the ‘profiling’ is being done based on vouchers rather than race, even there’s a question as to whether that constitutes racial discrimination. After all, poorer whites would face the same problem.

Even the Board recognized the problem, albeit in a backhanded way:

It’s no accident that maps showing structural racism in housing and the current epidemic of gun violence are nearly identical, according to a study by the Office of the City Controller.

Though it’s probably outside of the Board’s paradigm, they have said, inter alia, that bringing more black families into wealthier, whiter neighborhoods means bringing in more of the culture of violence. The people living in Kensington or Strawberry Mansion might be attempting to escape the violence of those areas, but they have also been more culturally conditioned to accept violence as normal, to accept the open-air drug markets as normal.

The Editorial Board at least noted that accepting vouchers came with its own economic disincentive to property owners:

For their part, landlords complain that accepting vouchers is costly and cumbersome. Unlike a private rental license — which in Philadelphia does not require an inspection — apartments leased to voucher holders must be inspected, and are held to higher standards. The landlord must also become certified through the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

So, the rental property owners must have their properties inspected by the city, which exposes them to unanticipated costs if the inspector finds something out of compliance. While the certification courses are listed as being free, they also require two days of the owners’ time, and time is money.

Leasing to voucher holders also comes with significant delays to the move-in process, keeping tenants unhoused and landlords unpaid from anywhere between 45 and 90 additional days when compared to a nonsubsidized rental. With record-low vacancy rates in the city, keeping units empty is expensive.

It sure seems as though people with apartments or houses to rent would want to keep them rented, rather than up to three months of vacancy, and no rent coming in, along with the problems that having an unoccupied dwelling brings. The owners’ property taxes don’t get suspended just because the property is vacant!

Property owners are rightly concerned about their properties’ values, and there’s a cost to that in bringing in people who must rely on vouchers to pay all or part of their rent. When the neighborhood starts to have more poorer people in it, it’s not just the rent: it’s vehicles of lesser value parked on the streets or in the driveways, it’s property not kept quite as nicely as previously, and it’s a subtle, but nevertheless real, perception that the neighborhood is losing value. These are things which depress property values, not only for the landlords, but the other properties in the neighborhood.

What the Editorial Board want is not just for landlords to accept more vouchers and rent to more poorer people, but for the resident homeowners to see the value of their properties to go down. It might not be politically correct to say — and being politically correct has never been something I do — but poverty metastasizes, poverty spreads more widely than just the poor family itself.

It’s both humorous and ironic that the Editorial Board have previously weighed in against “gentrification,” the very thing that both increases racial integration and raises property values in currently heavily minority areas. It takes some research, and familiarity with the Inquirer and its editorial slant, but if you read all of their editorials, and consider them together, you might well come up with the same conclusion I have: the Editorial Board want to mostly keep whites out of existing heavily minority neighborhoods, but move black and Hispanic residents into the more heavily white areas. Just how that makes sense mystifies me!

Home ownership is the best path to the economic success of a working class family, and we should not try to deny it to black or Hispanic Americans. But it is also something which cannot be forced, and the Editorial Board just don’t realize this. Rather, they would make people poorer by reducing their existing home values by pushing an influx of poorer people into established and economically growing neighborhoods.

The problems in Philadelphia are the things that the Editorial Board simply do not want to hear: they are cultural, in the acceptance and normalization of violence, the acceptance and normalization of bastardy, and the acceptance and normalization of drug use. Those are the things which have to be addressed, and they have to be addressed not by Governors and Mayors and city Councilmen, but by parents and neighborhoods and churches. There is no reason that poor or black or Hispanic residents cannot have a moral and ethical structure which leads to decent and safe neighborhoods, but the Board just don’t like people saying radical things like Christian or Jewish or Islamic morality are important culturally, that some of the individual choices some people take are harmful to both themselves and the community around them.
________________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.