The media's pattern of utilizing Alinsky tactics has done it and the left a lot of good, and they've had quite a bit of success with it, even in recent times. The issue is that the law of undulation is absolute. Alinsky's tactics have a shelf-life and the more they're utilized, the more people are going to figure out what you're doing and then find ways to fight it.

Where Alinsky was once the Red Bull that gave the left wings, it's now the weight that drags them down. The sugar high is wearing off. They attacked too much, ridiculed too often; when you target, freeze, personalize, and polarize anyone too often, the fear of being targeted wears off. This especially applies when you attack the same target over and over again.

In this case, the target has been Trump. They wanted to make Trump look like a massive villain, and they succeeded in many ways, but now it's becoming clear that a lot of the Democrats' theatrical hyperventilating about the man was all just that: theatrics. //

In fact, we Americans, with our traditional values, seem to be more enthused to vote for Trump than ever before. I would argue that this is because of a massive miscalculation by the left. It doesn't understand American culture. Yes, it's largely Judeo-Christian, but our entire culture and the blood that flows through our veins is based in rebellion. We don't like the establishment by nature. //

Moreover, it shows that the left doesn't just misunderstand America, it misunderstands conservatives. Alinsky wrote the rules to apply in a land where conservatives were largely passive and happy to ask forgiveness out of pure politeness. It was easy to shame people into compliance back then, not because they were better people, but because they thought we were all playing by the same rules.

That brand of conservatism is pretty much gone at this point. We've learned that these rules only apply to one side, and if that's the case, then we aren't going to play this stupid game.

 Golden Rule
4 hours ago
German owned magazine since 1986. Germany does not allow homeschooling.

anon-055q Golden Rule
2 hours ago
In Germany, any "rights" that citizens have are bestowed by Daddy Government.

Indeed. In that respect, the term "Fatherland" assumes an almost literal meaning!

This has, alas, been a leitmotif of German social thought for centuries.

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) devastated Germany. The aftermath of that brutal conflict witnessed the widespread development of political thought that emphasized the need for a strong state to protect against, inter alia, the prospect of rampant invasions by foreign armies slaughtering the local populations and plundering the countryside.

This was a central theme of Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan", and directly inspired, (albeit, from afar) by the horrific events of that conflict.

That war had profound effect on German thought - starting in its immediate aftermath. The Saxon jurist, Samuel Pufendorf, strongly influenced by Hobbes, wrote in, "The Elements of Essential Jurisprudence" of the empirically demonstrated need for a strong political authority to acquire and maintain the military and financial means of protecting the polity from such depredations by foreign powers and actors. This, in turn, provided the justification for royal absolutism of the monarch over the rest of society - to the detriment, alas, of the status of individual rights that have been the basis of (especially, but not exclusively, American political thought.

The idea of individual rights that could be legitimately claimed against the desires and interior the state, has, thus, never really taken hold in Germany - even with the advent of the Republic of Germany after World War II.

And,I haven't even touched upon other historical factors that further buttressed authoritarian political thought in Germany, such as the Reformation.

Unfortunately, Martin Luther was a servant believer in absolute submission to state authority. This, ultimately, also had the unfortunate effect of rendering the Lutheran Church largely subservient to the monarch and state - in sharp contrast to the American experience.

All of these (and more) military, political, religious, legal, and cultural developments in Germany eventually combi ed to produce a social milieu where the author of the state was almost invariably presumed to be dispositive over the preparative of the individual.

Given that, is is not surprising (unfortunately) that the rights of parents with respect to their children's education have been historically weak in Germany.

And more's the pity!

In a June 17 newsletter, "Scientific American" Magazine, based on numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), suggested that federal regulations be put on homeschooling. NCES shows that almost three percent of American students are homeschooled, roughly 1.5 million kids. But it is not the call for federal regulations that is the most disturbing thing about Scientific American's suggestion; the best part is that they also suggest that parents of homeschooled kids "undergo a background check." First, just one question: What does this have to do with "science?" //

Fatherhood Reforged @fathersreforged
·
When they want to regulate homeschooling,

what they're really regulating is parenting.

When they say,

"Homeschool kids need to be checked on",

what they're really saying is,

"Parents can't be trusted with their kids".
6:00 PM · Jun 18, 2024 //

What better way to create a comprehensive database of conservatives and be able to know exactly where they are than to require them to undergo a background check? What sort of information would be required from a background check? Political affiliations, ownership of firearms? Imagine what the Biden administration would do with a database of conservatives — think January 6, and we already have a pretty good idea. //

Robert A Hahn
4 hours ago
Leftists wreck everything they touch. This used to be such a wonderful magazine. It was so scientific that much of the content went right over my head.

As Becky says, this article isn't science. This is leftist BS dressed up in a science suit. These bastiges did the same thing to Science News, which was also a wonderful little magazine until it turned into Al Gore's Climate Bugle. I hate these people. They wreck everything. //

MCPR
4 hours ago
Homeschooling succeeds BECAUSE it’s not regulated. Everything the government regulates turns into poop. “It takes a State to raise a child, comrade. Now stand aside while we indoctrinate your children.”

I know of only a few airliners with overwing exits that specifically direct evacuees over the leading edge of the wings, and two of these are very special cases:

Do split flaps produce lift? I don't see how, because there is no change in camber. It seems like an upside down speed break, producing only drag.

A:

Well, after all lift is created by deflecting air downward, which is exactly what a split flap does - although in a very inefficient way i.e. with a lot of drag.

This NACA TN shows how Cl and Cd increase with the deflection δf of the split flap (left plot):

But sales are shrinking and with them, revenues. I'd add that the tax revenues were maybe not what some boosters told us they'd be. "Colorado collected just over $274.1 million in commercial marijuana taxes and licensing fees in 2023," Denver's Westworld reported in March, "and has tallied a little more than $43.5 through the first two months of 2024."

For a state that spent $38.5 billion last year, $274.1 million in taxes — shared in part with local governments — doesn't amount to much. It seems like a long time ago when the hippies were saying, "Just legalize it, man, and we'll close the deficit!" But to be fair, the hippies were probably stoned out of their minds when they came up with that.

When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor

“Their moral calculus is as crude as you can imagine: They see Israelis and Jews as powerful and successful and ‘colonizers,’ so they are bad; Hamas is weak and coded as people of color, so they are good…,” she said. “This is the ideology of vandalism in the true sense of the word — the Vandals sacked Rome. It is the ideology of nihilism. It knows nothing of how to build. It knows only how to tear down and to destroy.” //

A father or mother deficit is one of the chief causes of systemic American social problems including crime, addiction, poverty, depression, early sexual activity, low achievement, and susceptibility to predators. Indeed, the decline of marriage and the Marxist denigration of men are chief sources of our culture’s decline. You only have to name any effect of Cultural Marxism to see almost instantly that stronger and better men and women would end or reduce it.

So while she speaks true and admirable words repudiating Marxist politics, in her own life, like other alleged anti-Marxists Rubin and Benson, Weiss enacts those same politics. Despite spending her entire professional life chronicling sexual politics, like most in our society Weiss is still blind to the full implications.

Weiss is clearly open to changing her mind and adopting counter-culture positions. So can others who share her current sexual preferences, and those sympathetic to them. If we truly want to save Western civilization, which protects us all, we must refuse to perpetuate Marxism no matter how much we want a child in our arms.

“Marc Elias is in the business of defending the riches of a disastrous elections system with universal vote-by-mail that are sending ballots automatically to thousands of bogus addresses,” Adams added.

A shocking discovery has surfaced that Yale University failed to disclose over $15 million dollars in donations from Qatar, the Middle Eastern country that is housing senior Hamas leaders.

The timing could not be worse for the university's reputation after the antisemitism that has been displayed in colleges across the nation over the last eight months. //

The report also states that Qatar has been the largest international donor to American universities since September 11th, and has given a whopping $5.6 billion since 2007. Top recipients are Ivy League schools such as Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell.

This would explain a lot. //

Our universities are being bought by anti-American countries that want to infiltrate our culture, politics, and ideology, and they're succeeding.

In light of the current passion for accurate "bookkeeping," Yale should be made to answer for this illegal activity. Moreover, steps need to be taken to protect the integrity of our academic institutions. If they can be so easily bought by our enemies, what's next?

Atrox
3 hours ago
I'm sure there are differing views on this but I always say, EVERYTHING is a win for the left. Vigilantism is a byproduct of their soft on crime policies and it's something they want. The more it happens, they can complain about how "something needs to be done"!!! ....

mopani Atrox
a few minutes ago
This is the desired result. The progressive left response to vigilante justice will be the suspension of civil rights, because violence. Two guesses when civil rights as we know them will be reinstated, and the first guess doesn't count. //

Random US Citizen
4 hours ago
Indeed. This is exactly what happened on the frontier in the early days of America. If there was no sheriff to be found, citizens might take it upon themselves to hang a horse thief. Because they were--like these folks in NYC--a mob, sometimes the wrong person wound up at the end of a rope. The arrival of civilization, in the form of law enforcement, courts, and jails was--for most--a welcome thing.

Here we see the opposite effect. The decline and fall, as it were. The courts are no longer working to decide the guilt of accused, they are now firmly on the side of the criminals. Law enforcement, whether willingly or no, is no longer able to enforce the law. Bereft of the protection of the society that they are a part of, citizens are resorting to vigilantism again.

You can expect this to get significantly worse unless these places reverse direction.

My advice: invest in lead. //

Douglas Proudfoot
4 hours ago
As every Montana 8th grade graduate knows, the absence of law and order gives rise to vigilantes. In Fall, 1863, a gang of Road Agents murdered perhaps 100 people in the gold fields of Montana. In January, 1864, vigilantes hung 25 of them. The outlaw leader, Henry Plummer, was the elected sheriff of Bannack, MT. Vigilantes hung him too.

Classical, Christian education isn’t meant to be confusing.
"What is a classical education? What makes Classical Conversations® different from other homeschooling opportunities? What exactly would a normal day or week look like for my child?"

Learn about classical homeschooling by watching our Start Here series! After you watch each short video below, another will appear to answer a follow-up question. And after watching all three introductory videos, you'll be able to view more detailed, age-focused videos about what a typical CC experience would look like for your student. You'll also receive three free downloadable PDFs, Ten Things to Know Before You Start Homeschooling, Ten Great Read Alouds, and Eleven Keys to Make Homeschooling Doable. Enjoy!

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016 declined to charge Hunter Biden alongside his business partners in a tribal bond scheme after he invoked his father’s position as Vice President of the U.S.

Because there is a difference //

Ask the contemporary leftists who target virtually every protection we have against mob rule in the name of “democracy” — attacking the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, federalism, the filibuster, the Senate, and even the existence of states. They understand the difference, even if just intuitively.

Ask leftists who treat the “popular vote,” not as a wishcasting cope, but as means of legitimizing presidential elections. Those who want a few big states ruling the nation via a direct federal democracy are not interested in an American “republic.”

Blunting the federal government’s power over states and the state’s power over individuals is an indispensable way to ensure a diverse people in a huge nation can govern themselves and live freely. The “save democracy” types who refer to these long-standing federalist institutions as “minority rule” do not view “democracy” and a constitutional republic as interchangeable concepts.

Neither do smaller blue-state governors who sign a national vote compact that not only dilutes their state’s power but circumvents the Constitution. They love a direct democracy. A constitutional republic? Not so much. //

There is, “of course,” zero “legitimate debate discussion” to be had over whether we are a “direct democracy.” Not today, nor ever. “Democracy” isn’t even mentioned anywhere in any founding document, much less a direct one. None of the framers entertained any notions about majoritarianism or federal power that would even loosely comport the ones now embraced by the left.

People will often tell me that, sure, we might be a republic, but we also have “democratic institutions.” Of course we do. We also have numerous nondemocratic institutions. The Bill of Rights, for instance, is largely concerned with protecting individuals from state and the mob. The insistence that we only use “democracy” is meant to corrode the importance and acceptance of those countermajoritarian rules and traditions. //

These days, though, a bunch of illiberal progressives (and others) have taken universal notions that once fell under the umbrella of “democracy” and cynically distorted them to champion a hypermajoritarian outlook. It’s no accident the people who demand you call us a “democracy” also champion the idea that 50.1 percent of the country should be empowered to lord over the economic, religious, cultural, and political decisions of 49.9 percent.

It’s the point.

The faux dramatic ad, which highlights Trump’s legal challenges and says Biden has been focusing on "lowering health care costs and making big corporations pay their fair share," says, in part:

This election is between a convicted criminal who is only out for himself, and a president who is fighting for your family. //

Le Fromage Grande
6 hours ago edited
The only reason that there aren't two convicted felons running for president is because one of them was declared to be mentally unfit to stand trial.

Let that sink in. //

Quizzical
7 hours ago
"This election is between an unconvicted criminal who is only out for himself, and a former president who is fighting for your family."

Fixed that for the Biden campaign. //

houdini1984
8 hours ago
We rightly mock this lawfare communication strategy, but we shouldn't assume that everyone sees it the same way. Yes, we know that the convictions are bogus and the sexual abuse trial was a sham, but it's important to remember that tens of millions of Americans exist in a different type of bubble. Theirs is a fact-free, government propaganda bubble that feeds them a steady diet of Orange Man Bad lies. How many Americans will hear those lies - and ads like this - and believe them?

The far left exists in an echo chamber. To a large extent, we do too - that is, if we fail to recognize that too many in middle America only hear what the left wants them to hear. Our side better be aggressive about getting the truth out there if we want it to override the left's lies. Don't just assume that Americans are smart enough to discover the truth for themselves. If they were, the Democrat party would have ended long ago.

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
·
Follow
John Kennedy Tells Chief Biden Regulator Point Blank That His Agency Is 'Operating Illegally'

11:30 AM · Jun 12, 2024

“For the longest time, the Federal Reserve was earning money, but that stopped in September 2022,” Kennedy said. “Now they are losing money. They don’t have any earnings. They’re no longer transferring earnings to the general fund, and the Supreme Court based its decision on saying, this funding scheme is Constitutional under the appropriations clause, by saying that these earnings would go to the general fund from the Federal Reserve so getting them directly from the general fund is no big deal,” he added.

The Supreme Court ruled by 7-2 vote in May that the unconventional way the CFPB obtains funding is constitutional. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the dissenting opinion that the ruling could establish a precedent wherein a federal agency can “bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.”

“How are you entitled to any money right now?” Kennedy asked. “The Federal Reserve doesn’t have any earnings.”

The answer, according to the statute and according to Senator Kennedy, "bigger than Dallas," is that the CFPB is not operating within the law. //

What will come of these congressional grillings? Sadly, probably not much. There is nothing so enduring as a government program or agency; one might be forgiven for suspecting that these will survive the heat-death at the end of the universe to somehow arise again in the next universe to vex information-seekers and taxpayers in whatever replaces our reality.

George Strait @GeorgeStrait
·
Take us back to Texas! George set an amazing record at #KyleField this Saturday with 110,905 fans—the biggest single ticketed concert in U.S. history! What was your favorite part of the show?

@alivecoverage / Courtesy of Messina Touring Group
1:16 PM · Jun 17, 2024 //

James Woods @RealJamesWoods
·
The largest ticketed concert in U.S. history. No fights, no shootings, no burning police cars. Just 110,000 civilized fans celebrating a great American talent. What a concept! Thank you, Texas!!! 🇺🇸#GeorgeStrait
foxnews.com
George Strait breaks US concert attendance record in Texas
10:19 PM · Jun 16, 2024 //

A civilized concert for civilized people in a civilized place. //

Probable Cause
8 hours ago edited
A little Strait is a nice respite in the midst of Pride Month.

Biden’s latest grand energy plan:

President Joe Biden is prepared to release more oil from the country’s strategic reserves if gas prices increase during the summer. //

The strategic petroleum reserve was set up for a purpose:

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil was established primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the international energy program. //

Dieter Schultz
6 hours ago edited

In a letter sent last month to energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, senior Republican politicians called on the administration to “ensure that the SPR is not abused for political purposes in this election year” and described Biden’s SPR release in 2022 as “a transparent attempt to influence the midterm elections”.

Discouraging the use of the SPR shouldn't be done by an appeal the the administration, it should be accomplished by law.

Sadly, I think we have too many laws but the use and abuse of the SPR by all administrations is one where Congress should be more specific about when the SPR can and can't be used as well as how to minimize the carrying costs by specifying firm requirements for buying on the cheap and selling when oil is dear.

Edit: Given that a few years ago we came very close to filling up US oil storage infrastructure, maybe we ought put a provision in the law to offer to let US oil producers use the SPR rather than building more of their own storage tanks.

There's an old rural metaphor that applies to a lot of politicians today. The metaphor in question is that of the "Fencepost Turtle," and it involves someone walking down the road and seeing an old wooden fencepost, and on top of the fencepost, balanced uncomfortably on his plastron, is a turtle. Now you look at that turtle, and you immediately know three things about it: 1) It doesn't belong up there, 2) It didn't get up there by itself, and 3) It's only a matter of time before someone comes along and knocks it off the fencepost.

Kamala Harris is a fencepost turtle. We all know how her political career started. We all know why she was Joe Biden's 2020 VP pick.

But it's 2024 now, and the question arises: Which of Donald Trump's possible VP picks presents the greatest challenge to Kamala Harris? //

Granted, some people think Kamala Harris is doing a bang-up job, and if you were to take those people and line them up end-to-end, they'd all sleep a lot more comfortably. But those few people aside, there are a lot more who look at VP Harris and wonder just what the heck Joe Biden (or whoever actually made that decision) was thinking. //

Failing upward is never the right way to get to the top. Sometimes, though, it can get one pretty damn close, which explains Kamala Harris. But, barring some calamity, this fall, Kamala Harris's tenure on the fencepost will end.

Like so many of the news items involving the pandemic and Dr. Anthony Fauci, details that were previously considered unreportable or forbidden have eventually come to light as being accurate and no longer deniable. The Washington Post displays the tendency by far too many in the press to push approved narratives and dispatch the facts for the sake of what is called propriety. //

It has taken the Washington Post over two years to come around and attest to those facts.