URLs du Jour

2018-05-24

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

  • Proverbs 12:6 looks like a gripping, picturesque metaphor…

    6 The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood,
        but the speech of the upright rescues them.

    … sounds like the upright win the debate! Yay!


  • At NR, Ben Shapiro reveals Trump’s Superpower. Spoiler: "He can make Democrats defend anything."

    Democrats have increasingly defined themselves by opposing anything Trump does. Trump, unlike his predecessor, has promulgated a mainstream conservative agenda: He’s cut taxes and regulations and spent more on defense. Most Americans aren’t averse to that agenda, particularly considering the booming economy and a relatively quiet foreign sphere. But Democrats painted Trump during the campaign as an emissary of Cthulhu, and now they’re struggling to justify that depiction.

    If they were smart, they’d stick to Trump’s obvious heresies, of course: his Twitter foolishness, his inane rants. But they can’t muster up that kind of discipline. Instead, they simply oppose anything Trump does, which leads them to the rather uncomfortable conclusion that the worst people on earth are preferable to even temporary alliance with Trump himself.

    Can we count on Democrats to screw up another off-year election? Ben thinks so.


  • Ma belle Michelle Malkin names the Crapweasel of the week: Educrat Arne Duncan. The occasion is Arne's call for parents to yank their kids out of school until (presumably) gun laws to his liking are passed.

    As Obama’s meddling power-hungry education secretary, Duncan attacked “white suburban moms” and their children who turned to homeschooling in protest of the top-down Common Core “standards”/testing/data-mining program. Duncan sneered that he found it “fascinating” that the grass-roots anti-Common Core revolt came from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

    This elitist control freak revealed his fundamental disdain for rabble-rousing parents who’ve taken educational matters in to their own hands. By characterizing the movement against Common Core as “white” and “suburban,” Duncan also exposed his bigotry against countless parents “of color,” like myself, who’ve long opposed Fed Ed’s sabotage of academic excellence, local control and student privacy in school districts across the country.

    Michelle also points out that Arne sends his kids to the exclusive, private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in tony Hyde Park, which a Lab Schools brochure brags is 'patrolled by the University of Chicago Police Department and private security.'"

    Our Amazon Product du Jour is (I am not making any of this up) a song titled "Moon - Prince - Crapweasel Is Fading over the Porch" by the artist 'Studio Danilenko "Koresh"' from his (their?) album "Music Shows. From Ear to Ear. № 39 For Ten Jews". It will set you back 99 cents, and (full disclosure) Pun Salad theoretically gets a cut of that if you use the link.


  • At Cato, Jeffrey A. Singer notes the completely predictable results of the "DO SOMETHING" impulse: plenty of "unintended consequences" which, in this case, includes a lot of death: While Politicians Cut Opioid Prescriptions, Fentanyl—With Help From the “Dark Web” and the USPS— Becomes the Number One Killer.

    With all the evidence that the majority of non-medical users are not patients—with all the evidence that prescription rates have come down while overdose rates keep going up—with all the evidence of fentanyl and heroin flooding the black market and causing those deaths, it is time for policymakers to disabuse themselves of the false narrative to which they’ve been stubbornly clinging. This narrative blames the overdose problem on doctors prescribing pain relievers to their patients. The overdose problem has always been primarily caused by non-medical users accessing drugs in the dangerous black market created by drug prohibition. And our current restrictive policy is only driving up the death rate by pushing these users to more dangerous drugs while making patients suffer in the process.

    What’s the definition of insanity?

    Let's not forget that the "DO SOMETHING" impulse is also directing a lot of tax dollars to ineffective "treatment" and feelgood "programs". The beneficiaries of that green windfall have every motive to keep the cash coming, i.e., not to "solve the problem" (and, if anything, create new problems).


  • And our Google LFOD News Alert rang for a Union Leader story: Proposed ordinance targeting 'nuisance' items sparks debate over property rights in Raymond.

    A battle over property rights is brewing as selectmen consider a town ordinance aimed at cracking down on properties that some residents believe are littered with junk that could attract rodents.

    Town officials have been trying to address concerns initially raised by Pat Couturier, who lives on Regina Avenue in the Green Hills Estates manufactured housing community.

    “There’s people that have been doing this stuff for 10 or 15 years and it’s just continuing. It’s just escalating,” she told selectmen at Monday’s meeting.

    She insisted that New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” motto “doesn’t mean you can do everything that you want.”

    Sigh. Pat's right: it doesn't mean you can do everything that you want. I've checked on that. Fortunately, no criminal indictments or civil suits resulted from my research.

    Further on, Raymond Selectman John “Jack” Barnes is quoted as a counterpoint.

    Barnes said that if the property is posing a health problem, then the town would address it, but selectmen are struggling with the definition of nuisance because something that one person finds to be a nuisance might not be considered a nuisance to someone else.

    “If I want my grass to grow 12 inches high or if I want to have my son or my two sons bring their cars in the yard and park them so they can work on them, that’s not Live Free or Die. That’s my right. I own the property… I don’t need Big Brother telling me I can’t do this and I can’t do that,” he said.

    Jack seems to have a firmer grasp of LFOD than Pat.


  • The Gloucester [MA] Daily Times publishes the "Midweek Musings" of local Rabbi Steven Lewis: The persistence of idolatry and sacrifices to freedom. Rabbi Steve's key paragraph:

    The most challenging and entrenched idolatry is the inappropriate worship of those things that we feel are important or essential. Indeed, a powerful idol has been forged out of one of our highest national values: Freedom. Freedom, as on the New Hampshire license plate: “Live Free Or Die!” is often invoked as being of ultimate importance. Freedom is so important that we who believe in freedom should be willing to die to protect it. But freedom has become an idol. In deference to this god of Freedom, for whom we must be ready to die, we have become powerless to prevent murder. The arguments, made in the name of freedom, against protecting us from being murdered by guns elevate freedom from being a value that serves life, to an idol to which lives must be sacrificed.

    Yes, it's a rabbinical call for freedom-eroding gun laws. He's specifically OK with the freedom-eroding part, because, hey, freedom is just an idol. Because he says so.


  • Writing in the Concord Monitor, Tyler Deaton opines: If he wants to be re-elected, Trump should leave Mueller alone.

    And New Hampshire is still suffering from an unmitigated public health crisis with very little help from the federal government. This past March, more than a year after taking office, Trump took a break from railing against Mueller and his own DOJ to finally announce a drug policy, the crux of which is higher criminal penalties for drug users, including the death penalty for drug dealers. He has named authoritarian Singapore, where people are caned for spitting gum, as a model for solving our crisis. This is not exactly in the spirit of our motto “Live Free or Die.”

    Are people caned for spitting gum in Singapore? No.

    Tyler Deaton is "a Republican activist and former secretary of the New Hampshire Young Republicans." He is not the same Tyler Deaton who probably didn't kill his wife.


Last Modified 2024-01-25 9:50 AM EDT