WELL, LEFTIES ARE JUST MOBBING ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS’ HOMES AND TALKING ABOUT SHUTTING DOWN OPPONENTS’ TV NETWORKS BY FORCE, NO BIG DEAL. Is The US Headed For A Soft Civil War? A Political Scientist’s Worries.
Archive for 2018
June 23, 2018
PORTLAND OCCUPIERS SHUT DOWN ICE OFFICE, REPLACE AMERICAN FLAG WITH ‘REFUGEES WELCOME’ FLAG.
Related: Progressivism is wrecking cities in the Pacific Northwest:
Portland, Oregon, has continued to experience rapid urban decay in recent years, and the consequences for businesses and residents have been dramatic. In 2016, Columbia Sportswear, a major retailer, relocated a considerable number of its staff to downtown Portland. A little over a year later, in a scathing opinion piece in the Oregonian, the company’s CEO voiced his regret over the decision. Employees reported repeated criminal offenses, “daily defecation” in the store’s front lobby, and fears of physical violence. One female employee ran into moving traffic to escape a transient individual, screaming that he was going to kill her.
Conditions for other Portland companies have deteriorated as well.
Portland’s last Republican mayor left office in 1980. Why are Democrat-monopoly cities such cesspits of crime, violence, homelessness, and err, “daily defecations” in retail lobbies?
ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS NOT BE CRAZY. And they can’t even do that.
NEWS YOU CAN USE. Science: Having Sex Before Events May Result in Improved Athletic Performance.
It’s science — you don’t argue with that, do you?
THOMAS LIFSON: Why Mainstream Media Hysteria Is Increasing.
A cynic would argue that the tears were artificial, intentionally forced out of tear ducts and emotions faked. Maybe so, but this then raises the question of why they felt driven to such emotional manipulation of the audience.
And what if the emotions were real? What could drive seasoned professionals to such a loss of self-control if manipulation were not the intent?
I think the answer in both scenarios is the same: genuine mass hysteria is gripping the mainstream media. The first source is the political rise, election, and continuing successes of Donald Trump, currently presiding over the best economic times since the Reagan administration. Trump violates all the political norms that they learned, embraced, and enforced in their own rise to media prominence. When norms are violated, anger is the dominant response of members of the group that holds the norms.
But what accounts for the hysteria that results in loss of self-control? I think a second factor is at play. The mainstream media perceive that they have lost the ability to shape public perceptions beyond the 30% or so of the populace that is committed to left-progressivism. The majority of the public no longer trusts or believes what they have to say. And this sense of powerlessness in the face of a hated opponent is literally driving them crazy. Even before the Rasmussen poll showed the futility of their efforts (“54% of Likely U.S. Voters say the parents are more to blame for breaking the law … only 35% believe the federal government is more to blame for enforcing the law”), they must have realized that their efforts were failing. Knowing no other means of persuasion than intensifying the current efforts, they pulled out all the stops: anger and sadness replaced facts and logic, which don’t really stand up to scrutiny anyway.
Andrew Malcolm, writing at Hot Air, describes the awful truth to which they are awakening with horror every day: they no longer have traction.
And “traction” is essential to their self-esteem.
THIS IS ACTUALLY QUITE PHENOMENAL BUT I SUSPECT THE ESTIMATE IS ON THE LOW SIDE: Report: Nearly 400 Million Civilian-Owned Guns in America: Civilians own 100 times as many guns as the military, 400 times as many as police.
A report published this month found civilians in the United States own almost 400 million guns, outpacing every other civilian population, police, or military force in the world.
The Small Arms Survey estimates there are 393,300,000 civilian-owned firearms in the United States. The survey, performed by the Graduate Institute of Geneva, estimated the United States military has about 4.5 million firearms. It put the number of firearms owned by police throughout the United States at just over 1 million.
That means American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement.
Federal Bureau of Investigation background check records suggest that civilians bought more than 2 million guns in May alone, which means civilians purchase more than double the number of firearms owned by police departments. The number of gun-related civilian background checks in May and April, at over 4.7 million, is greater than the number of firearms currently owned by the American military.
The FBI reported processing more than 25.2 million gun-related civilian background checks in 2017, which is more than the 22.7 million guns the Small Arms Survey estimates are currently held by every law enforcement agency in the world combined. Between 2012 and 2017, the FBI reported conducting more than 135 million civilian gun checks—more than the 133 million guns the Small Arms Survey estimates are in all the world’s military stockpiles.
The Small Arms Survey estimated there are about 1 billion firearms currently in circulation throughout the world. By its estimate, about 85 percent are owned by civilians and American civilians own nearly 40 percent of all the guns in the world. Researchers said worldwide firearms ownership was up since the last time they studied the issue about a decade ago.
I won’t be happy until we have more than half.
THE LEFT IS REALLY HATING LIVING UNDER THE NEW RULES THEY’VE CREATED: Blue check Resistance appalled Sarah Sanders tweeted name of restaurant that kicked her out.
As Greg Pollowitz of Twitchy tweets, “Lot of this going around. Server at restaurant bragged about it online and it went viral. If [Sanders] didn’t tweet about it, she would have been asked about it. She probably had emails from reporters in her inbox when she tweeted.”
How dare someone on the right use social media to blow up the reputation of a restaurant — only we’re allowed to do that!
(Classical reference in headline.)
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Hillary Clinton could have spared the country hours of wasted investigations, debates, and near civil war had she just made three easy ethical and logical choices.” But then she wouldn’t be Hillary.
THE NEW YORK TIMES NOTICES THAT Trump supporters are now immune to media outrage. “Mr. Trump has also retained support across a range of demographics other than the working-class voters who are most identified with him. This includes portions of the wealthy college-educated people in swing counties, like Virginia’s Loudoun, in the country’s most politically competitive states. Many of these voters say their lives and the country are improving under his presidency, and the endless stream of tough cable news coverage and bad headlines about Mr. Trump only galvanizes them further.”
The press has three main kinds of power. One is to motivate the left. Another is to swing the middle. And the third is to demoralize the right. It’s pretty much lost the last of these, and I suspect the second one is fading too.
WHEN DID THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA TURN INTO SUCH A WUSSY LEFT-WING DUMP? Nebraska’s New Football Coach Says No Recruits With Guns Pics On Their Social Media.
I mean, it’s bad enough when a Nebraska sociology prof smears fake blood on an NRA lobbyist’s home, but that’s sociology. Now the football team finds guns too . . . triggering? Just shut the whole place down, it’s gone to hell.
AT AMAZON, deals in Grocery and Gourmet Food.
I WONDER IF MY ARGININE SUPPLEMENTS WOULD HAVE ANY EFFECT? Nitric oxide may help prevent kidney issues after heart surgery. “The authors found that patients who received 80 parts per million of nitric oxide during and for 24 hours after surgery were less likely to develop acute kidney injury.”
I mean, the arginine is supposed to boost nitric oxide levels, too, though I don’t know by how much compared to this treatment.
RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: New York Times: New York Confronts Rampant Smoking Among Chinese Men. “Cultural norms from China persist in the city because many Chinese residents are foreign-born.”
I’VE BEEN MEANING TO TRY ONE OF THESE: Impossible Foods Makes A Wheat Protein Burger With The Taste And Aroma of Meat. Though a friend makes a good point on Facebook: Nobody’s every trying to chop up meat and treat it so it looks and tastes like broccoli. Why might that be?
THIS ACTUALLY MAKES MORE SENSE THAN ELECTRIC CARS: Every Kind Of Bike Is Going Electric.
IN THE MAIL: Project Smoke.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: As student appeals suspension over hearsay, University of Denver engages in damage control. “If Addison Puffer may be suspended because some people said that other people said that she said offensive things, then students at DU have no free speech rights at all.”
Cost of attending the University of Denver, where you can be suspended because some people said that other people said that you said “offensive things:” $65,376 per year.
AN AIRBRUSH WOULD BE MORE TRADITIONAL, BUT AN ERASER WORKS, TOO: Students, staff take turns erasing pro-life chalkings at WWU. “When confronted by an SFL member, one of the student vandals said the pro-life messages were ‘actively hurtful,’ a similar explanation to the one offered by a school employee, who said the messages were ‘provocative I guess.'”
They’re going to hate the new rules.
