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Cult

Best of the Web: 'Conservative' US Supreme Court advances Democratic agenda with radical transgender, guns & immigration decisions


Comment: And just like that, Trump's 2017 efforts are completely undone...


gorsuch pencce mcconnell
RINOs
The Supreme Court has extended employment protections to gay, lesbian and transgender employees, and tossed out landmark border control and gun rights cases, all seen as massive setbacks for US conservatives.

Many Republicans have long held that despite the liberal bias of the media and the left-wing activism dominating the streets, their real power came from their hold over the US judicial branch.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is one of these Republicans, and was willing to place his political career on the line to hold the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat open during the last months of the Obama administration, so he could replace Scalia with a suitably right-leaning judge once President Donald Trump took office.

Comment: Some 'dictator'.

The appointment of Gorsuch, some may remember, was the first 'hot potato' issue Trump had to fight for back in 2017.

He got his way, followed by another conservative appointment in Justice Kavanaugh, but it turns out that none of that mattered.

The 'transhumanist', multi-culturalist, anti-tradition ideology has so thoroughly saturated the body politic that a 'conservative' Supreme Court in the US can out-flank even the radically-leftist Democratic Party.

This is all one way traffic now, and there is nothing bar asteroid impacts that can stop it.


Brick Wall

Best of the Web: Class, not race, divides America

class warfare
Nothing is stranger in these tense days than the monotony of the inexact and non-descriptive mantra of "white privilege" and "white solidarity" — as if there is some monolithic white bloc, or as if class matters not at all.

In truth, the clingers, the deplorables, the irredeemables, and Joe Biden's "dregs" have very little in common with those who so libel them, but superficially share supposedly omnipotent and similar skin color.

In the past, we saw such tensions among so-called whites in CNN's reporting of the allegedly toothless rubes at Trump rallies, in the Strzok-Page text trove about Walmart's smelly patrons, in the callous coastal disregard for the five-decade wasting away of the American industrial heartland, in the permissible elite collective disparagement of Christian evangelicals, and in the anthropological curiosity about and condescension toward such exotic, but presumably backward, Duck Dynasty and NASCAR peoples.

As a result, we have reached the surreal point at which the nation's privileged whites on campuses such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, in the top echelon of politics, and the corporate and entertainment worlds, all deplore in the abstract something they call "white privilege" in others who have never really experienced it.

Burka

Best of the Web: Seattle's anarchist utopia is already breaking down, CHAZ residents call for the guillotine

chaz
© Reuters / Goran TomasevicProtesters collar a street preacher in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), Seattle, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), June 13, 2020
"An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave," American anarchist Ammon Hennacy once wrote. Based on the scenes playing out in Seattle's Antifa-occupied 'autonomous zone', Hennacy was dead wrong.

A ragtag collective of Antifa types, anarchists, socialists, and 'Black Lives Matter' activists have occupied a six-block area around an abandoned police precinct in downtown Seattle for a week now. Roads into the 'Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone' (CHAZ) have been blockaded, and the would-be revolutionaries inside have set in motion a bold experiment: to prove that a cop-free society, based on "mutual aid," can sustain itself.

Sunday night seems to have proven otherwise. When the owner of an auto shop in the zone found a man attempting to light his business on fire, he detained the culprit, or so he told a crowd gathered outside. However, rather than let their comrade be handed over to law enforcement, the crowd set about pulling down the fence around the lot, in a bid to free the thwarted arsonist.


"The police won't come," the owner told a cameraman. "The fire department won't even come. This is really bad for business. Covid was bad enough, and now this stuff basically put the icing on the cake."

Comment: There's more...



See also:


NPC

Best of the Web: Anti-Cultural Revolution: Portland protesters topple statue of Thomas Jefferson, father of US Declaration of Independence

jefferson statue
© Twitter / @Pdx_resistance
A group of demonstrators in Portland has torn down a statue of Thomas Jefferson in front of a school bearing his name, fanning the flames of a growing cultural divide in the US as activists target landmarks deemed racist.

Around 1,000 people gathered at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon on Sunday to listen to speeches before setting off on a Black Lives Matter march across the city. Later in the evening, a crowd reconvened at the school and set their sights on a statue of the third US president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Two ropes were tied around the statue's neck as the group labored to pull Jefferson off his pedestal - which had already been defaced with graffiti reading "slave owner."

Videos show the group tugging on the ropes, eventually sending the statue falling onto the concrete steps in front of the school.

Comment: As the Left's "cancel culture" has proven, it does not matter how much good a person has done, past or present. If they represent traditional Western culture and society and have done even one "bad thing," they will attack. Today's version of totalitarianism isn't in the form of a soldier's boot on our throats, but rather a bunch of Karens scolding people and destroying anything that they don't like. Be careful if they are able to get a hold of any real political power.


Red Pill

Best of the Web: As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than Regime Change

boarding up of Winston Churchill's statue
The boarding up of Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament Square was act of appeasement if ever there truly was one.
As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than Regime Change

What we now face is regime change. That is why these strange crowds have begun to gather round ancient and forgotten monuments, demanding their removal and destruction.

They do not know what they want, or understand what they are destroying. But that no longer matters. They think their moment has come, and they may well be right.

This is why the memorial to Winston Churchill, and the Cenotaph itself, were shamefully boarded up on Thursday night - an act of appeasement if ever there truly was one.

That is why police chiefs kneel like conquered slaves to the new gods of woke, and the leaders of the Labour Party do likewise. I have seen it happen before, but only when things were moving in the opposite direction.

Blackbox

Best of the Web: What does Black Lives Matter really stand for?

blm black lives matter
For those who may be equivocating about Black Lives Matter and the Antifa riots and demonstrations, a very interesting point came to our attention today. Someone went and actually looked and read the BLM website to find out what they themselves say they are all about. My priest was told about this, and he told me, so I went and had a look, myself.

What follows is taken directly from this page: https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

It is important to actually inform the public about this group, taken from their own statements about themselves, and then make your own decisions as to whether or not this is a group you want to actually trust or support in any way. One thing is clear - this group is not about stopping racism. After their self-description will come some further comment.

Comment: Perhaps it is better to say that "stopping racism" is not BLM's primary aim. It is sandwiched between a host of other ideological aims having nothing to do with the core message implied by their name. But that's what all ideological movements do. Ordinary members and casual supporters may not even be aware of it, and that's the point. The true aims are piggybacked on the public face and slogans. Revolutionaries are smart that way. And most people don't know what has hit them after the movement tastes success: more often than not that means purges, and a further pathological deviation of the goals and methods of the movement in question. Best option: avoid ideological movements altogether. Inoculate yourself.


Red Pill

Best of the Web: MSM still predicting a Covid APOCALYPSE, but their web of lies is collapsing around them

medical worker
© Reuters / Caitlin Ochs
The mainstream media is still trying to drum up fear and hysteria on the basis of cherry-picked statistics. A glance at the figures is enough to prove them liars. Someone should let them know: no one is listening anymore.

The US has recently surpassed 2 million cases, according to official figures, representing almost one-third of the world's coronavirus infections. Much of the reporting on recent statistics features words like 'spikes', 'surges', and 'hot spots', but patterns in the statistics suggest that some areas have dwindling levels of the virus, while it is only now beginning to spread in others.

What can I say? They're lying. There has been a clear and persistent drop in cases ever since the peak towards the end of April, about six weeks ago. This is just another example of MSM outlets publishing half-truths, cherry-picked statistics, and agenda-driven stories in order to push their narrative. Your best bet for getting good information is alternative outlets like this one and various lone voices on Twitter.

X

Best of the Web: We don't need no stinking vaccine for Covid-19

bill gates vaccines
Bill Gates


A Glaring Omission


With the 24/7 media circus coverage of Covid-19 I find it particularly interesting that there is an obvious glaring omission of some extremely important facts relative to dealing with a virus, especially one that is allegedly so virulent like this one. Yes, I read all about the critical need to shelter in place, stay inside away from other people, wash your hands constantly, avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth, wear your face mask and by all means observe social distancing if you MUST venture outside for food!

Then it's repeated ad infinitum that the ONLY hope we have of ever returning to a semblance of normalcy is to have a vaccine to protect us! Then to add some drama to this narrative the media highlights their death-o-meter scoreboard with the implied threat that you'll be next IF you don't obey the rules as dictated by the "experts".

But what is assiduously avoided at all cost is any reference to our most potent defense against any virus; our body's natural immune system. Try as I might I couldn't find anything about this first line of defense on the World Health Organizations (WHO) website or Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website. It's as if it doesn't exist and is completely irrelevant.

Bullseye

Best of the Web: Eight big reasons critical race theory is terrible for dealing with racism

black lives matter BLM protest
As unlikely as it seems, a highly obscure academic theory known as Critical Race Theory has completely mainstreamed in society, and now everyone is discussing it. While Critical Race Theory has the noble goal of pointing out problems that can be hard to see and that maintain or constitute racism, it turns out to be a remarkably bad way of going about this. A little familiarity with the basic principles of Critical Race Theory and how they go wrong can help with this.

Before I begin, I offer my apologies to the reader. Critical Race Theory has been growing for over 40 years, and it has many deep problems. Therefore, this is long, and still it is not nearly complete. Here, I document just eight of the biggest problems with the entire Critical Race Theory approach. Treat them as eight short essays on specific topics in Critical Race Theory and digest them one at a time. I offer them in the hopes of helping people understand it better so they can decide for themselves if Critical Race Theory is the way we should be dealing with race issues and racism in our society, or if we can genuinely do better.

Arrow Up

Best of the Web: Up to 80% of coronavirus sufferers don't show symptoms, new study suggests

Matt Hancock 1
Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed the study's findings at Thursday's Downing Street press briefing
Up to 80 per cent of people who test positive for coronavirus don't show any symptoms, a new study of the pandemic in England suggests.

Research carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses swab testing to determine how many people are infected with Covid-19 across the country at any one time.

In the vast majority of cases, those who tested positive had not been displaying any symptoms, Matt Hancock revealed on Thursday.

The Health Secretary told the daily Downing Street press briefing: "Yes, there are some people who don't have symptoms but do have the virus.

"And in fact, in the ONS study we find that around 70-80 per cent of people who test positive don't have symptoms. That is quite a significant finding."

Mr Hancock acknowledged that asymptomatic transmission is "one of the things that makes controlling this disease really hard."

Comment: New studies are showing that at least 60% of people are naturally resistant to SARS-COV2:
The research, conducted by a team of scientists at the University Hospital in Zurich, is titled: "Systemic and mucosal antibody secretion specific to SARS-CoV-2 during mild versus severe COVID-19", and found that Sars-Cov-2-specific antibodies only appear in the most severe cases, or about 1 out of 5.

The authors infer from this that antibodies are inexplicably absent from the majority of mild cases of covid19. But, given the known inaccuracy of the diagnostic tests and the well-documented tendencies to over-diagnose by clinical observation, another potential explanation would appear to be that the absent antibodies were due to the fact the subjects had never actually been infected with SARS-COV-2 in the first place, and their 'mild' cold-like symptoms were due to some other pathogen, like...the common cold.

However, if the authors are indeed correct in their estimation, this might mean SARS-COV-2's infection rate (IFR) would need to be revised downward yet again. If 80% of those infected really do not produce antibodies then there is a live possibility the virus is present in many more people than usually supposed. Which would in turn potentially reduce the IFR, possibly considerably.

[...]

In other words, large numbers of people may be immune or resistant to this virus because they have already been infected by other coronaviruses.

This may not be surprising, given the close relationship between most coronaviruses, but it is a further indicator that this virus, known to be harmless in the vast majority of cases, is neither especially unique nor especially dangerous.

The evidence continues to mount that the original estimates of the danger posed by this virus were massively exaggerated.
See also: WHO does a 180, now says asymptomatic spread of coronavirus 'very rare'