American Conservatives Are Disgusting Frauds - by Caitlin Johnstone

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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We've examined Ms. Johnstone in our blog before (Here, here, and here). She is reliably doctrinaire Left, and she is the worst kind: A producer of substanceless screeds designed only to gin up hatred. She provides absolutely no specifics, documentation, or identifies any conservative. That's because she's not writing to inform or explain. She's here to inflame, to demonize and isolate an imaginary target. This is what Leftists do.

In actual fact, it's the writing of a junior high student.

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Why Isaiah and Jesus Sound Like Marx (Again) - By Mike Rivage-Seu

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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We have had one previous opportunity to examine this author, and he did not fair well.

He pretends to be a sober commentator on religious matters, cloaking his presentation in Scripture references and a scholarly veneer. But in actual fact he is a political leftist who interprets the Bible and Jesus through a progressive lens. This of course creates all sorts of problem, since Jesus was in no way a Socialist.

We need to be clear about the reason the author writes: He did not write to explain, clarify, or provide information about Jesus or Christianity. His purpose is to reinforce The Narrative. The Narrative is the leftist talking points disseminated all over the media landscape. They become sacred truth through endless repetition and withering criticism directed towards those who disagree. 

The reader would do well to understand this.

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Dr. Martin Luther King Would Approve of Zohran Mamdani - By Dr. Lenore Daniels

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The agitprop is strong in this one, Obi-Wan. 

With nearly impenetrable prose, the author goes on and on about her caricatures, liberally employing well-worn Socialist tropes and bumper sticker slogans in a vain search for a coherent thought. 

Remember, this woman has a PhD. 

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If-Jesus-returns-kill-Him-again.com - Darwin Bedford

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This guy is a true believer. We're not going to respond, since the level of intellect at work here is self-evident. So just grab a cold one and sit down for a good laugh or two. Or, pity this poor soul who can barely put together a coherent thought.

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Letter to the editor: By not allowing a local sales tax, we are 'kinda stupid' - by Orville Bach

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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This letter writer supports more taxes, which is what a typical Leftist would do. But he goes farther and tells us we are stupid for not wanting more taxes. Specifically, a local option sales tax.

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Letter to the editor: Congress must address climate change, for our children Angie Winter

Found here. Our comments in bold

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The letter writer is a supporter of the Citizens' Climate Lobby. This noble-sounding organization is a leftist advocacy group pushing for more taxes. They want to convince you into consenting to taxing yourselves by dangling a carrot called a dividend. This dividend would supposedly mitigate the impact of the fee. They claim: "A national carbon price, with full revenue return and border adjustments, will do four things: internalize the social cost of carbon-based fuels, rapidly achieve large emission reductions, stimulate the economy & recruit global participation. And it will do so for FREE." Yes, they really believe it is free.

Here's a chart from their website:

Notice in step one they want a carbon "fee" [tax] which would be applied "at the point where they [greenhouse gases] first enter the economy." The point at which carbon enters the economy is not the point where carbon enters the ecosystem. The only point where carbon enters the economy is when oil, gas and coal producing companies sell their products. Therefore, the intent of the Citizens' Climate Lobby is to tax oil, coal, and gas companies with an escalating tax, obviously intended to become confiscatory at some point: "The fee would start out low — $15 per ton — and gradually increase $10 each year." 

Let's try to get an idea what this tax would mean to the oil industry. The government says that burning a gallon of gasoline creates about 20 pounds of CO2, and in the U.S. we used 134,506,764,000 gallons in 2013. That generates 690,135,280,000 pounds of CO2, or 345,067,640 tons. Just from gasoline. So the amount of the tax, just for the first year level, is $5.2 billion. 

The energy business intends to operate a profit, so this additional cost of doing business will be incorporated into the price of energy. This tax will be passed down in the cost of their product, which all downstream businesses will pay, and they will do the same with the price of their products. This will trickle down through the economy until it gets to the end user. You. 

You and I will pay this tax. All of it.

According to the International Business Times, U.S. oil company profits were $33.4 billion, only a part of which is gasoline, of course. "Refineries in the United States produced an average of about 12 gallons of diesel fuel and 19 gallons of gasoline from one barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil in 2013." So this means that gasoline is about 45% of a typical barrel of oil. So roughly, $15.3 billion of that profit is from gasoline.

Now, let's do the numbers. We bring in the $5.2 billion tax and add it atop $15.3 billion in revenue. This tax, at least for the first year only, will add 1/3 to the price of a gallon of gas, minimum. My 2008 Toyota RAV4 uses about 30 gallons of gas per month, or 360 per year. With the carbon tax added in, this vehicle will cost an additional $400 to drive, and again, this is just for the first year. 

Then add a second vehicle, as well as the same tax applied to your home's natural gas, each business's heating bill, necessary wage increases, the cost of manufacturing and transporting goods, and you might as well add 50% to the cost of living. Just for the first year.

Then, tax will increase by $10 per ton each year. At the end of year three, the tax will have tripled. 

Citizens' Climate Lobby tells us that carbon tax revenue would be rebated to the consumer. This is step two, above. As one reads further, we discover each household would receive a dividend from a government "trust fund," which contains the accumulated revenue of the carbon tax. Disbursements from this fund would supposedly cover the increased cost of energy resulting from the tax. 

Step three appears to be price and competition controls.

This continues for the few years until the cost of the tax and the rebate amount are absolutely huge. And yet no one in this circle of death seems to have any incentive to lower carbon emissions. The consumer getting reimbursed, and the producer is charging what he needs to.

In effect, what we now have is a perpetual motion machine. The government taxes energy, energy gets more expensive, the tax money is given to the consumer to pay to the energy company for covering the extra expense, the energy company gets a tax increase the next year of an additional 67%, (existing tax of $15 per ton plus another $10 per ton) which they also pass on in their prices. Even more tax money gets paid out of the trust fund to the consumer.

Hmm.

Now, imagine this plan being implemented. Your income no longer covers the cost of your expenses, because you are hanging on for dear life waiting for the arrival of the rebate check at the end of the year. Surprise, the check is less than you thought. But the next tax increase has already kicked in, and your income hasn't increased that much. Now you're in an even bigger hole than before, again waiting for the next rebate check. 

By year five, you can't buy gas any more, your gas powered vehicle is obsolete and valueless, you can't afford to buy an electric vehicle, which would make no sense anyway since electricity is largely produced by carbon fuels. You can't afford to heat your house or even buy groceries, because everything has tripled in price. The rebate didn't calculate its overall effect on the economy because the government never gets stuff like this correct.

Businesses don't get a rebate, even though energy costs have been passed on to them as well. Some businesses might try to pass on the expense in the price of their products, but this makes them hugely more expensive and people just won't be buying them because their disposable income is being used just to stay afloat. Each year gets worse until the economy shuts down.

This is what Citizens' climate lobby calls a free market solution.

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Toxic radio keeps fouling Bozeman's airwaves - by Stephen Maly, Guest columnist

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author is troubled that conservatives have started responding to leftist vitriol with thir own milder an more polite version. But rather than telling his fellow leftists to tone down their toxic rhetoric, he wants his side to have a platform to amplify the message.

Ultimately, this article is nothing more than pointless adolescent whining. So rather than analyze this shallow and unsubstantial rant, we will paraphrase the author using " ".

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Why are we so polarized? Why is democracy is such peril? - by Robert Reich

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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Dr. Reich once again provides his contribution to The Narrative. The Narrative is the daily marching orders from Central command, the Leftist talking points and bumper sticker slogans promulgated all over the media landscape. The Narrative isn't about the truth, racism, sexism, fairness, free speech, or democracy. It's designed for one thing: To advance the Agenda. Its sole purpose is further the Leftist goal of replacing The System. That's The Agenda, to dismantle society and remake it into their vision. 

So Dr. Reich issues the typical boilerplate complaints about eeevil corporations and eeevil capitalism, while bemoaning the loss of democracy. Whose fault is it that society is polarized? Eeevil corporations. Why is democracy suffering? Eeevil capitalism. Why are people polarized? Eeeevil oligarchs and authoritarians, of course. 

If all this seems like a non sequitur, it is. If you notice that Dr. Reich is a one-note samba, kudos. If you think that people like Dr. Reich completely overlook their own role in polarization, go to the head of the class. You know what we mean: Nazi, fascist, hater, misogynist, science denier, homophobe, racist... the list goes on and on, repeated ad nauseam. Leftists never miss an opportunity to denigrate, deplatform, demonetize, and destroy the livelihood and reputation of someone who doesn't toe the Leftist line. It's a way of life for them.

Apparently Dr. Reich is unaware of the vitriol the spews from the mouths of leftists. But more likely, he knows about it, embraces it, and recognizes its utility to neuter his political opponents and advance The Agenda. 

Which means he doesn't care about polarization except to the extent it is useful. In fact, he wants more of it. The Left wants to foment discontent among the Proletariat in order to overthrow the Bourgeois. This is the long-standing goal of the Socialist Left. 

And Dr. Reich is one of them.

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90 years later, Social Security still delivers for Montana - Tim Summers Guest columnist

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author is an apologist for the status quo, based on his vested interest in keeping his constituency happy. We don't begrudge him this, but we do take issue with the amorphous language and vague factoids he promulgates.

He does his best dance for us in order to present SS as a great thing, a wonderful success story, and popular beyond imagination. His word choice is carefully designed to make it seem like SS is saving seniors from certain death.

If one manages to survive until the end, the author's cheerleading veers into a little bit of truth, hidden in the fourth to last sentence, the "solvency gap." This successful and popular program has a problem, a problem that directly comes to bear on the topic the author has raised: "Social Security delivers for Montana." But he doesn't discuss this at all. 

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Letter to the editor: Social Security supports those who paid into it — and the economy - by Carol Stewart

Found here.

This barely coherent letter to the editor repeats all the typical leftist bumper sticker slogans about Social Security. It almost seems as though she copy and pasted sentences from various leftist websites in order to construct her letter.

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Our View: In snubbing Helena's overreach, Bozeman wins one for The Gipper - Bozeman Chronicle

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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In an astounding display of ignorance, double think, and illogic, the editorial board of the Chronicle provides us with this opinion piece. The premise is, President Reagan opposed big government, so when the state of Montana tells the city of Bozeman it can't do things, Reagan would apparently approve when the city resists.

We, your humble bloggers, were unable to type for some period of time, so boggled we were by the pure, unadulterated nonsense found in this editorial. We make no guarantees, but will do our best to untangle this mess.

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Letter to the editor: Dissent was once part of our DNA; now we see automatic consent - by Douglas Mawhinney

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Apparently the letter writer doesn't understand that dissent is only permitted for the Left. Conservatives are shouted down, deplatformed, shadow banned, and boycotted. Here's the Left's position on dissent:

The letter writer bemoans the loss of the 60s protest culture, viewing the past through rose-colored glasses. Such a wonderful time it was. Just, moral, and noble they were. Opposing "the Man," uplifting the downtrodden, free love and free money for all.

Apparently the letter writer doesn't realize that all that supposed "distrust of big government" eventually led to those same people populating the halls of congress, school boards, and the judiciary. 

When the dissenters and protestor got power they became "the Man." They now are the oppressors, the silencers, the policers of conformity.  They are the persecutors, the intolerant ones, they are the ones who silence people who express their dissent. It is the intolerant Left that has wielded the power of government against their adversaries. 

The Left prosecutes grandmothers for silently praying outside of abortion clinics. 

The Left accuses parents of being terrorists for speaking up in school board meetings. 

The Left runs people out of their jobs for violating leftist orthodoxy. 

The Left accuses conservatives of being book banners for opposing pornography in schools.

The Left forces cake decorators to endorse speech they disagree with.

The Left tells you want you cannot say, think, and do. 

The Left, not Trump. 

Burning buildings and taking over entire city blocks is noble and desirable, but a mostly peaceful protest in Washington DC is treason and insurrection. 

Dismantling government power structures is Gestapo tactics, but forcing people to do things they don't want to do is not authoritarian. 

When Trump defunds entire government departments and cuts bloated bureaucracy, that makes him a fascist, but when leftist California governor Newsome bans gas powered vehicles and wants California to be totally net zero, that's a permissible exercise of government power.

When encountering dissent, Trump actually has a rejoinder and doesn't just roll over like previous Republican presidents. The Left doesn't like it when someone disagrees with them, and especially when Trump disagrees with them.

So Trump tells these publicly funded colleges that they are no longer allowed to discriminate on the basis of race. The letter writer wants these colleges to "dissent," i.e., continue favoring certain races over others in its admission and grading practices. This apparently is tyranny.

In actual fact, with Trump as president the leftist oppressors are being negated. The entrenched power structures are being overturned. They are losing their power to control your lives

Leftists stand for, embrace, and implement, oppession, persecution, hate, and division, all the while accusing their political opposition of doing the very thing they're actually doing. 

So the letter writer is completely unaware of his own irony. He really believes the leftist agitprop coming out of the mouths of the talking heads on TV. He thinks that he's being told the truth by the very people who want to take away his freedom, take his money, and force him into government programs and government facilities.

Such is the sad legacy of the 60s anti-war, anti-government, anti-tyrant movement. They are laughable caricatures of themselves. 

They became what they protested.

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Gallatin County Health Department - Happy pride month

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This is a very odd Faceborg post from our county health department. It's really nothing more than pandering, a simpering show of support, with tobacco usage being used as the excuse.

Apparently gays are at higher risk because they smoke more. Do they smoke more? Well, yes. But Gallatin County wants to place blame, and the blame is 100% on external factors. Discrimination, stress, targeted advertising. Why? We don't know, except for the County's clear desire to virtue signal.

As much as they want to blame society and intolerant straights, discrimination is simply a questionable reason for higher tobacco use:

...if tobacco use is conceptualized as a coping behavior resulting from psychological distress associated with social rejection and stigmatization—as is the case in the Minority Stress Model26—then what accounts for the greater disparities in use among sexual minority women compared to sexual minority men?

Indeed, Since lesbians have a higher rate of tobacco use, are they subject to more discrimination than gay men? Of course not, blaming discrimination is nonsense. 

14% of people age 18 and above use tobacco products in Gallatin County. There are 126,000 people in the county, which equals 18,000 tobacco users. We will generously grant that 5% of Gallatin County residents are gay, which is 882 people. We will round that off to 1000 because we are so charitable. 

That is 0.8% of the population. This is what we mean by pandering. 

And because of this supposed stress, Gallatin County believes it's harder for gays to quit than it is for straights. They face "unique challenges." However, there is no evidence that quitting very addictive tobacco products is harder for one category of people than it is for another. Again, Gallatin County is simply trying to ingratiate themselves.

How are gays not offended by this?

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Trump isn't the fascist here - by Paul Kienitz

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This author warns us of all the fascists. He identifies fascists by name. He traces fascism back decades. George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Reagan, Nixon, Hoover, Harding. 

Fascists. 

All of them. In fact, the Republican party is all fascists. Has been for decades. Fascists here, fascists there, fascists everywhere. So many fascists.

Fascists.

They're all fascists. We are all fascists. Except Democrats. Wag your finger, Democrats. Clutch your pearls. Burn some Teslas, throw some rocks, turn over some cop cars, loot some businesses. Because of the fascists. 

Fascists.

Your neighbor is a fascist. Your pastor. Your grocer. Straight white male? Fascist. But not Trump. Trump is not a fascist, he's a narcissist. Even he's an authoritarian, a tyrant, and a dictator, he's not a fascist. No, really. Trump is not a fascist. At least there's one person who's not a fascist.

That's a relief.

He's not a fascist, but we all are. Fascists. All of us. Half the country is fascist. 

Fascists.

Letter to the editor: Use of term 'illegal alien' diminishes fellow human beings - by Julia Shaida

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This letter writer regurgitates the typical leftist slogans, but she clearly hasn't thought about the issue past what she's read on some leftist website. A little bit of independent investigation might perhaps lead her to more relevant and correct information, such as

Longstanding Supreme Court precedent recognizes Congress as having “plenary” power over immigration, giving it almost complete authority to decide whether foreign nationals ( “aliens,” under governing statutes and case law) may enter or remain in the United States.

We don't wish to be disrespectful, but Ms. Shaida simply doesn't know what she's talking about.
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This Executive Order Reveals the Trump-Musk Endgame - by Elie Mystal

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Mr. Mystal is a flame-thrower. Nothing else. He's not informative, thoughtful, or explanatory. He's not even reasonable. He has his template, which is that everything is about race, his race. He's a regurgitator of leftist talking points and bumper sticker slogans.

We have previously commented on his writing here and here.

Here's the list of the name-calling from today's article, perpetrated by Mr. Mystal:

authoritarian

misogynists 

provable racists

Hatred of:

• gay people
• trans people
• Latino people
• Muslim people
• truth
• science
• journalism
• fact-based reality

criminal junta

running a kleptocracy

fascism

megalomaniacal populists

exceptional thieves

lazy

powers of a king

stealing entire elections

That is his primary technique, to overwhelm the reader with incessant accusations and pejorative labeling. But while wading through the name-calling and leftist talking points is certainly difficult, tracking with the "logic" is even more so. Because government is his god, any cut whatsoever is unacceptable. Thus he finds himself in the position of defending unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats even while acknowledging they are obstacles to a free society. 

Further, it's certainly odd that a president devoted to cutting government spending and eliminating entire government departments could be accused of authoritarianism and accumulating power. But such is the mind of a Leftist.

Lastly, the real thrust of Mr. Mystal's screed is that he resents the fact that Republicans are in power, which means the Democrats lack the ability to enrich themselves by manipulating government power. That is, he's accusing Republicans of doing the very things his side has done for decades.

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Letter to the editor: Montana delegation can still avoid being complicit to treason - by Bob Allen

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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This letter writer is all in a titter about Trump. We are convinced that rationality has departed from the Left, if it ever had it. Supposedly Trump has defied court rulings, when in fact he has obeyed every one, no matter how inane or unreasonable. 

But more to the point, what does the Constitution, so valued and honored by the letter writer, actually say about treason?

Article III, Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Hmmm. No mention of defying judges.)

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Peter Strand and Melissa Romano: Attack on Department of Education is an attack on our children

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Typical leftist equations, that government funding equals solving the problem, that intentions equal results, and that cutting a government program means being against the stated goal of the program.

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Letter to the editor: Obama, Simpson gave us the road map for strategic debt reduction - by Michael Legge

Found here. 

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Here we have another leftist regurgitating something he read on some leftist website. As is typical for the Left, the author picks out factoids about particular examples of government spending and assigns their cost to the debt, which implicitly means he regards all other spending as funded. 

So if a war costs $3 trillion but SNAP costs $120 billion, Medicare $747 billion, and Medicaid/CHIP costs $609 billion, the cost of the war is deemed deficit spending but everything else is not. This of course is completely arbitrary based on the author's political orientation.

At the end, the author is actually in favor of debt reduction, which is surprising since the Left generally views deficit spending as desirable. Thus the author concedes major ground. All that is left is to decide what to cut.

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Will the Supreme Court constrain the wild Trump? I wouldn’t bet on it. Robert Reich

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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(Dr. Reich's cognitive dissonance must be excruciating.)

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