Interesting News - 6/14/2021

I am not against the idea that black lives matter

I am not against opposing fascism

I am not against teaching true history in schools

I am not against a holiday celebrating the end of slavery

I AM against people using these things as a Trojan horse to push radical ideology

— Leonydus Johnson (leave/me/alone) (@LeonydusJohnson) June 18, 2021

The bottom line for me is that the crowd would not have been in DC on January 6th were it not for the lies about the vote and lies about then-Vice President Pence's ability to alter the counting of the electoral votes.  The larger...and one might correctly point out mostly peaceful...crowd provided cover for those elements that wanted to engage in violence in an attempt to stop the just process of counting the electoral votes.  If President Trump and his allies had been telling the truth, then the crowd of protesters would have been much smaller and would not have been able to provide that sort of cover for those bent on mayhem.  That being said, I do think it is useful to understand how they got into the Capitol building.  I think it was largely incompetence on the part of Capitol hill police, but who knows.

This sort of thing drives me a bit nuts.  If we were talking about one of Donald Trump's progeny, the left and the media...but I repeat myself...would be consumed in near apoplectic rage declaiming the entire enterprise as thinly veiled corruption.  But it is Joe Biden's son, so our media "betters" cannot be bothered.

The latest in the saga of the real Lady A; vocalist Anita White.  The woke crowd continues their pattern of using their position of privilege to abuse minorities in the cause of appearing moral.

The Babylon Bee has won against The New York Times.  Great news for those in favor of free speech and fact.

Is the tide turning against Cancel Culture?  Probably not...yet.  But I trust that people like Kevin Hart and Charles Barkley will help lead the way out of that wilderness.

According to climate change theory, an increase in global temperatures should cause an increase in extreme weather. May is the month with the most tornados.  Yet not only was May 2021 pretty quiet, but almost all of the low tornado months on record have also come in the last 20 years.  Maybe...follow me on this...the dominant theories are subject to a significant level of uncertainty that should cause us to be reasonably cautious about accepting the climate models used to express those theories.

Continuing with the climate change trend, one theory is that humanity is the driving factor in the increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The Wuhan/Covid pandemic of 2020 caused a significant reduction in global travel as well as local travel.  Yet the trend of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has not altered one iota.  Maybe human activities aren't quite as influential as some folks suggest.

Recently, the socialist news agency Propublica presented a report on the taxes paid by a couple of the wealthiest Americans.  They attempted to calculate an effective tax rate.  Unsurprisingly, they utterly failed.  The tax rate is based on one's income, not on one's total wealth.

Here are (one - two) a couple of good articles on race and racial issues in America from Quillette.  Read the whole thing.

An attorney with the ACLU claims that liberals are leaving First Amendment free speech behind.  I disagree with his assessment that these are liberals.  Being a liberal requires being open-minded and tolerant.  The people the attorney is referencing are either leftists or potential future American Chekas.  They neither understand nor desire to be open-minded or tolerant of anything that disagrees with their theology ideology.

One last item for the week is a look back at how the feds were interested in Hunter Biden's fiscal issues back in 2016.  Hunter neglected to pay his taxes - I mean a LOT of unpaid taxes.  Something that would invite the full-court press from the IRS if it were a normal citizen.  But Hunter has connections.  Naturally, the left and the media...but I repeat myself...are disinterested in this wealthy American that can't be bothered to pay his fair share.  Nor are they interested in the appearance of impropriety surrounding his finances.