Farewell to "60 Minutes:" It just went the way of the Washington Post's editorial page - by Robert Reich

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Sometimes leftist mouthpieces like Dr. Reich are so over-the-top with irony it's a wonder they can keep a straight face. Every single accusation Dr. Reich raises against Trump and the political right exactly matches what the Right has been complaining about what the Left has itself been actually perpetrating for decades. Every single concern he raises is something the Right has already raised about the Left. 

Every single encroachment on freedom. Every single expansion of government power. The specter of using the government against one's political enemies.

All of it. 

The Left has been doing it. With impunity. For years, if not decades.

So when we read something like the article below, we can scarce believe our eyes. 

We've seen these words before, uttered by ourselves. With a brazenness seldom seen, Dr. Reich simply appropriates the Right's complaints against the Left and reverses them. He's not even particularly creative about it. 

Astonishing.

We do have a bit of solace, however. The worries of the Right now are the worries of the Left. They now know how we've felt for decades. 

Good.

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The White House Press Tracker Is a Parody of Media Criticism - Chris Lehmann

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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At a little over 1600 words, the author has ample opportunity to explain the supposed problem. He does manage to cite a couple of somewhat relevant issues, which of course are viewed through his Leftist lens, but he simply denies and moves on. The very media Trump criticizes is what the author relies on for his rejoinders.

But at its base, the purpose of the article is not to discuss the Press Tracker website, it's to hurl invective at Trump and consevatives. These same tired tropes are recycled again and again. We've heard it all before, and we know it's nonsensical. But that's the way the Left does things. 

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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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Rescuing Faith from Capitalism: A Theological Response to Project 2025 - by Mike Rivage-Seul

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This tarot card-reading "theologian" wants to tell us what the authentic Christian faith is. Really. Amazingly, while proclaiming another Jesus, he is somehow able to simultaneously determine when someone is being heretical. His theology is identical to the Left's political agenda, and his presentation is brain-dead bumper sticker Leftist slogans.

As is typical for Leftists, the author does not write to inform or explain, he writes to serve The Agenda, which is the overthrow of the system. It has nothing to do with any form of Christianity, because it is a political agenda, not a faith agenda.

Thus, as far as there being a "theological response," there isn't one.

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Medicaid makes good health possible - Kaiser Permanente

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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It's no surprise that an "about us" page is completely self-serving. But it's more than telling people who they are. We suspect that Kaiser Permanente has a substantial financial stake in providing Medicaid coverage, and they're worried that Trump is going to fix the program, which for them represents the loss of a substantial revenue stream.

Self serving is an apt description, because they also trumpet their DEI program, going so far as to count up the number of diverse employees by category.

Astounding.

Kaiser Permanente isn't about providing care or helping people. They are about revenue, nothing more.

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The Ten Non-Commandments - Faceborg meme

Found on Faceborg:



Morality really bothers atheists and God-haters. They will do everything they can to avoid moral imperatives. Further, they are entirely convinced of their intellectual superiority but are unable to see past their own colossal irony. They bristle at the idea of absolute truth and having morality imposed upon them yet write their own list of do nots. The very same people who don't want religion telling them what's moral are perfectly fine authoritatively telling us what's moral.

Our question is this: In a world without objective morality, on what basis do these these folks offer us (non) commandments about anything? If truth is relative, then each person chooses for himself what to believe, and there can be no imperative. However, each of these "non-commandments" is a moral principle, offered as self-evident truth to be embraced and promulgated. Each assumes the moral stature to apply universally.

And of course, each statement is a commandment, not a non-commandment. They must have forgotten their premise.

So let's take the above statements one by one.

Misinformation obscures standards guiding gender-affirming care for trans youth - by Helen Santoro KFF Health News

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This is presented as a news article but it's an opinion piece, replete with biased phraseology, leftist talking points, and deceptive characterizations. What a dismal piece of journalism.

The actual Florida legislation is easily located on the internet. It only 10 pages long, and is succinct and specific. The alarmist reaction to it indicates an obsessive desire to mutilate children and monkey with potentially dangerous medicines and shows a callous disregard for a child's long-term health and well-being. 

All in the name of tolerance, diversity and inclusion.

Also, one of the principle claims of the author is the careful protocol involved in gender transition. Perhaps she might explain this Portland "doctor" chopping up pre-pubescent children.

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Myths of Doom: Can the origins of today’s right be traced to the 1990s? -By John Ganz

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author takes over 2500 words to provide what is essentially a fawning book review, interwoven with an incoherent narrative comprised of half-remembered history, the haphazard lumping together of uncorrelated persons and events, unrelated factoids, and agendized smears of his political opponents. It's simply a long string of bits and pieces of phrases and talking points, as if the author did a series of random copy and pastes from leftist websites.

There is no discernable purpose, nothing of use, and nothing that even makes sense.

We are willing to bet that the reader will not be able to finish reading this screed.

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Abortion Involves Killing–and That’s OK! By Sophie Lewis

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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This rather astonishing presentation is full of twisted logic, euphemisms, and false equivalencies, coupled with moral posturing and false premises.

The author wants to shift the way pro-choicers express their arguments buy suggesting they concede that something is actually dying. However, she will do her level best to de-humanize the unborn baby by refusing to call it a baby. In addition, she will frequently refer to pregnancy as gestation, and pregnant mothers as gestators. These terms are designed to separate out the emotional aspect of pregnancy and birth, which neutralizes any attachment to the baby.

One might think the author is talking about the movie Alien and not unborn babies.

Despite the author's "concession," nothing would really change in the rhetoric. Which mean the logical and moral inconsistencies of the pro-choice position remain.

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Kyle Rittenhouse Has Gotten Away With Murder—as Predicted - By Elie Mystal

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The reader will note that the author never addresses the actual evidence, but instead wants to focus on minutiae, recharacterize the rioters, and make it about race.

Plus, the author will have nothing to say about black on black crime, an epidemic that far overshadows issues of "whiteness."

Also, who exactly predicted Rittenhouse would be found not guilty? The entire left wing immediately pronounced him guilty, racist, white supremacist, vigilante, etc. No one on the Left ever thought he would be acquitted.)

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No, Your Ancestors Didn’t Come Here Legally - by Ben Railton

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. FB friend S.B. posted a link to this article.

First my comment, then the article, followed by the FB conversation.
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This is a case of using an innocuous phrase (“My ancestors came here legally”) to divert the conversation to impugning an idea not presented rather than evaluating the issue at hand, illegal immigration. The objective is to suggest a group of people are stupid for having the idea. The author does this by imposing an implication not warranted by the statement in question.

The author asserts that absent a law, your behavior is neither legal nor illegal. However, laws always restrict the range of what is available. Laws never, ever broaden available choices, unless they modify an existing, more restrictive law. 

The total absence of law means nothing is restricted, aka anarchy. The first law passed necessarily limits unrestricted choices to "everything minus this one thing."

Illegality does not define legality, because legality is the default state. If the body of law is silent, that is, it hasn't restricted a range of choices, then every choice is definitionally legal. 

Laws make us conscious of what is wrong to do. Interestingly, the Bible makes this very point: "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." (Rom 3:20)

Here's the article:
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I guarantee you’ll hear the phrase “My ancestors came here legally” in the aftermath of President Obama’s immigration address. It’s almost impossible to find any conversation about immigration—between elected officials, pundits, online commenters—in which at least one participant doesn’t use the phrase. It’s an understandable position, through which the speaker can both defend his or her family history and critique current illegal immigrants who choose to do things differently. It helps deflect charges of hypocrisy (since most Americans are descended from immigrants). It’s hard to argue with. And it’s also, in nearly every case, entirely inaccurate.

Prior to 1875’s Page Act and 1882’s Chinese Exclusion Act, there were no national immigration laws. None. There were laws related to naturalization and citizenship, to how vessels reported their passengers, to banning the slave trade. Once New York’s Castle Garden Immigration Station opened in 1855, arrivals there reported names and origins before entering the U.S. But for all pre-1875 immigrants, no laws applied to their arrival. They weren’t legal or illegal; they were just immigrants.

Moreover, those two laws and their extensions affected only very specific immigrant communities: suspected prostitutes and criminals (the Page Act); Chinese arrivals (the Exclusion Act); immigrants from a few other Asian nations (the extensions). So if your ancestors came before the 1920s and weren’t prostitutes, criminals, or from one of those Asian nations, they remained unaffected by any laws, and so were still neither legal nor illegal. This might seem like a semantic distinction, but it’s much more; the phrase “My ancestors came here legally” implies that they “chose to follow the law,” yet none of these unaffected immigrants had to make any such choice, nor had any laws to follow.

The 1892 opening of Ellis Island didn’t change these fundamental realities. Ellis arrivals had to wait in line and answer a list of questions, and could be quarantined if they had a communicable disease or were visibly insane. But if they weren’t in those aforementioned few illegal categories, they still weren’t affected by any law, made no choice of how to immigrate. Moreover, many arrivals during this period came not through Ellis but across the borders, which were unpatrolled and open.

Only with the 1920s Quota Acts did Congress establish national immigration laws encompassing most arrivals. But those acts were overtly discriminatory, extending the Exclusion Act’s principles by categorizing arrivals by nationality and drastically limiting certain groups; South Carolina Senator Ellison Smith put it bluntly: “It seems to me the point as to this measure is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door.” Since immigrants had no control over their nationality, it’s difficult to argue that post-1920s arrivals “chose” to immigrate legally or illegally. And since the borders remained largely open and there were multiple entry points, it’s hard to say that any individual arrival was under the quota and thus legal or illegal.

The 1965 Immigration Act ended national quotas, instituting preferences based on less overtly discriminatory categories such as family connections and educational/professional training. Subsequent laws (such as the 1986 IRCA) further adjusted national policy. But as the ubiquitous “my ancestors” phrase proves, current immigration debates aren’t just about present policies—they’re always informed by ideas about history, and specifically about legal and illegal immigration in our past. So it’s vitally important that we begin to use those terms accurately—to recognize that for so many of us, our ancestors were neither legal nor illegal immigrants. That they came in the same way contemporary undocumented immigrants do: by crossing a border.

Ben Railton is an Associate Professor of English at Fitchburg State University and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
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And here's the FB conversation:

Me: "... the phrase 'My ancestors came here legally' implies that they 'chose to follow the law...'” No, it implies no such thing. It implies they violated no laws when they came.

C.K.: But there were no laws to follow. So it is still hypocritical.

Me: No, there were no laws to violate. Definitionally, violating no laws means legal. A law creates illegality, not legality.

C.K.: So maybe we should go back to the way things were when your family arrived so that we all get treated the same. The point is that at no point did you family jump through the same hoops today's immigrants have to go through so you are in no position to judge them.

Me: Agreed. However, in the meantime, let's just continue to ignore existing law as it suits us.

Me: And no one has issued any judgments.

How to fix Obamacare - The Economist

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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It is very nearly astonishing that the Left-leaning Economist would even admit there is anything wrong with the ACA. Generally speaking, the Left has steadfastly refused to even consider that their heroic legislation had even the slightest flaw, preferring instead to vilify detractors as being in favor of sick people.

So let's see if the Economist is able to accurately represent both the law and its flaws.
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America’s health-care system remains dysfunctional, but it could be made better (The subtitle contains a subtle leftist meme, "America's health-care system," which suggests that it is an entity as opposed to an industry.)


It is now nearly a year since the roll-out of Obamacare. The launch was a shambles, and Obamacare is a totem for every American who hates big government. Republicans will deride it, yet again, in the mid-term elections. (The implication is that Republicans are out of bounds for being anti-ACA, and that they should shut up about it.)

Obamacare is indeed costly and overcomplicated. (And ineffective and ill-conceived and punitive and...) 

Yet it is not to blame for America’s health mess, (Let's see what the author says is to blame.)

and it could just contain the beginnings of a partial solution to it. But that will only happen if politicians treat health care like a patient: first, diagnose the disease, then examine whether Barack Obama’s treatment helped, and then ask what will make the patient better. (This is a job for politicians? Really? The same politicians who created the mess?)

A quick check-up

Begin with the disease. At the core of America’s problems with health care is a great delusion: it likes to think it has a vibrant private marketplace. (America thinks this? America is an entity with singular thoughts? In actual fact, very few, if any, think we have a "vibrant private marketplace." Almost everyone acknowledges that the healthcare system is broken. As we will see, the author likes to give unsupported assertions as if they were fact.) 

In fact the country has long had a subsidy-laden system that is the most expensive and complicated in the world, (This is what conservative have been complaining about for decades!) 

with much of the government cash going to the rich, (Unsupported assertion. Government healthcare cash went to the rich? What does this even mean?) 

millions of people left out and little individual responsibility. ( A free market, something we haven't had in decades, relies on individual responsibility. It is government intervention that has discouraged this and created our present problems. Healthcare has been heavily legislated and regulated, where government spent $.47 out of every healthcare dollar. Government forces insurance policy language and coverage, strictly limits choice, and dictates pricing and access. All of this is contrary to the free market.) 

America devotes 17% of GDP to health care, (Again note the implication that America is a singular entity, which "devotes" spending to this or that. The phrasing almost sounds like there's a deliberate allocation of America's collective money by some governing body.) 

compared with 9% in Britain, yet nearly 50m Americans were uninsured in 2012 and life expectancy is slightly below average for a rich country. And the taxpayer foots much of the bill: government health spending per head in 2012, before Obamacare’s main provisions took effect, was 50% higher than in Britain, which has a nationalised health system. Some spending, such as the huge Medicare programme for the elderly and Medicaid for the hard-up, is obvious. But much is opaque. (The author is swerving into the truth here. Much of the healthcare system operated totally outside the marketplace.)

Employer-sponsored coverage is tax exempt, costing the government at least $200 billion a year. (This is nonsense. Declining to tax something simply means those who were going to be taxed get to keep their money. This does not "cost" the government, as if government should tax something simply because it isn't. 

In addition, taxation does not happen in a vacuum. Taxes are an additional cost, which means money that could be spent elsewhere by those who actually possess it, gets turned over to the government instead. These economic effects filter all throughout the economy. And we know that taxation discourages the activity being taxed. That's the reason for tobacco taxes, isn't it? So if government taxed employer-provided health insurance benefits, fewer people would be insured, correct?)  

Democrats moving forward - letter by John Shellenberger

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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Mr. Shellenberg is a semi-regular letter writer, invariably Left, and invariably inscrutable. Read on:

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Are Democrats willing to concede the House of Representatives in the November election to the Know-Nothing Party? (I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually know what this means.) Are they so convinced of the witlessness of the American people (Yes. In fact, Democrats count on it.) that they expect the obstructionists to win? (Mr. Shellenberger has made this "obstructionist" charge before. He seems to think that the majority party in the House is or can be obstructionist, but the majority has the power and advances its own agenda. Only the minority [Democrats] can be obstructionist.) Are they intimidated by the meanness and arrogance of the far right? (Irony alert... Prepare for it:) Are they ready to cave in to the anti-scientific, economically illiterate, misogynistic, ethno phobic doomsayers now characterized by the Republican Party? (Having deemed the far right "mean," Mr. Shellenberger unleashes a stream of mean and hateful invective against them. Self-awareness is apparently not Mr. Shellenberger's strong suit.) 

The Democratic focus seems to be to hold on to the Senate while assuming the House of Representatives will remain Republic. But, who such a defeatist attitude, especially at a time when Republicans are so vulnerable with the Democratic success in reaching the deficit steadily over the past few years, the economic recovery and the steady increase in new jobs? (Let's go to the transcript. Yes, this is indeed what he typed. With words flying off his computer unencumbered by rational thought or proper grammar, Mr. Shellenberger attempts to sing the praises of democratic accomplishments, unconnected to any known reality.) The Republicans have nothing going for them and have shown their ineptness by shutting down the government, refusing to participate in budget and debt reductions, reusing to move forward with immigration reform and dragging their heels on needed infrastructure funding. (Titters of laughter from the audience. His spell correct yields unexpected lucidity to his otherwise pink unicorn and rainbow view of recent history.)

Only the Democrats have shown a willingness to move forward on issues such as campaign financing reform, health care for missions of American, immigration reform, environmental protections, energy efficiency and military restraint. (More accurately, "Only the Democrats have shown a willingness to move forward on their own agenda," while "Republicans are obstructionist/extreme/eeevil for moving ahead on theirs.")

John Shellenberger

Bozeman