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Category: meme
“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life . . .
“A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80 and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. . . .
“We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”
— Brown Chapel, AME Church, Selma, Alabama, March 8, 1965
News stories about death- and illness-by-vaping keep hitting us. But in most of these stories it is what is left out that is most alarming.
From Washington State’s King County we learn of another case of severe lung disease “associated with vaping.” But the reportage doesn’t mention how the maladies relate to vaping. “KING-TV reports there have been 15 cases of severe lung disease associated with vaping in Washington state since April 2019. . . .” Interesting as far as that goes, but. . . .
In addition to no discussion of causality, the most obvious thing not mentioned in this and similar reports? The numbers diagnosed with severe lung disease caused by smoking — which is the relevant vaping alternative.
The U.S. Government’s agency devoted to diagnosing potentially widespread pathogens and practices is, thankfully, a bit more useful. In a recently published study, scientists have narrowed down the real culprit: “Vitamin E acetate was detected in all 29 patient” samples taken from those under study.
Most had been vaping THC.
There are organizations worse than sloppy news outlets, however. In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives has passed a bill not merely to ban flavored e-cigarettes, but also to levy 75 percent tax on all e-liquids and vaping devices.
Typical government overkill.
But not overkill enough, for the bill doesn’t stop there. Whopping fines against those caught with unlicensed vaping products are also in the bill, as is — aaargh! — civil asset forfeiture.
The “representatives” of Massachusetts’ citizens want to take away their automobiles, boats and airplanes if they cannot prove, on the spot, their vaping products’ legality.
Politicians are far more dangerous than vaping.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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President Donald Trump responded to the weekend’s two shooting atrocities by decrying hatred and making five substantive proposals.
“They include tools to identify early warning signs in mass shooters, reducing the glorification of violence, reforming mental health laws, enacting ‘red flag’ laws to stop dangerous individuals from gaining access to firearms, and enacting the death penalty for mass murderers,” the Epoch Times summarizes.
But how useful are these?
- The “early warning signs” of a criminal are often identical to grumpiness and even righteous indignation in others — “tools to identify” could easily serve as excuses for unwarranted meddling and worse.
- Who would enforce lessening the “glorification of violence”? The federal government that is always at war?
- Is it mental health laws that should be reformed, or the practice of putting whole generations of boys on Ritalin and worse . . . made especially ominous by the percentage of shooters on such drugs?
- Denying “dangerous individuals . . . access to firearms” remains problematic under any semblance of due process and the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle.
- Since “death by cop” is often one of the apparent goals of many would-be shooters, how much of a deterrent could death by sterile procedure actually be?
But if you are looking for even worse reactions, look beyond Trump. The Democrats took the occasion to raise funds.
And complain to the New York Times, which “changed a headline on its front page because it presented Trump in a neutral light,” reports independent journalist Tim Poole. “This was in response to far left activists and Democrats expressing shock and outrage and demanding everyone cancel their subscriptions to NYT over it.”
Ideological bias or old-fashioned market pressure?
If it is in tragedy that we find our greatest tests of courage and wisdom, the weekend’s shootings show a lot of political and media failure.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“I’ve Got a Plan for That.”
“If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. “
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Guess Which is Real.
NOTE: 100 million human beings were killed by communist ideologues in the 20th century.
Freedom is good, sure . . . for most of us, most of the time.
But the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service was funded by Congress to study whether perhaps just a smidgen of short-term slavery for young people might be a smart program, a nice change of pace, a big help to all involved — both our nation’s youth and our nation’s government.
Involuntary servitude — a year or two of military service or mandatory civilian national service, i.e. helping this government agency or that one — might force these whipper-snappers to grow up faster, the argument goes. Not to mention assisting them by engineering an enlighteningly involuntary point-of-view from which to better sort out their futures.
But enough about what’s good for young people. Let them heed the famous words of President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what we can do for you, ask what you can do for us.”
Consider the awesome benefits we can accrue from an army of four million well-mannered, bright-eyed 18-year-olds, like the kids on The Facts of Life or Saved By the Bell — or whatever newfangled TV show dances in front of today’s youthful eyes.
Imagine, young people solving all our problems: cleaning up the environment, ending illiteracy, reversing global warming, wiping out poverty, curing cancer.
Or at least mopping up the lobby at the EPA, filing documents close to alphabetically at the Department of Education, picking up trash in a park.
All while becoming fully-actualized citizens.
Green energy isn’t the answer, youthful energy is! Remember: It cannot be bottled, but it can be conscripted.
Oh, and actually paying for 4 million make-work jobs?*
Ssshhhh.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* At minimum wage, it would cost more than $60 billion a year to hire every 18-year-old American. Oh, well, I guess freedom is much less expensive.
NOTE: If for any reason, you are skeptical of the wonders forced governmental service can provide, please join me today (April 10, 2019) at 4:00 pm ET for a webinar on how to “Save the Young People.”
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A funny thing happened on the way to voting on the Democrats’ Green New Deal (GND). With ‘earth in the balance,’ the proposal for fixing climate change — and so much more! — was granted its first procedural vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.
It failed, 0-57.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the Senate sponsor, along with 41 other Democrats* and independent Bernie Sanders, voted “present” to protest what he called “sabotage,” claiming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “wants to silence your voice.”
Au contraire! McConnell longed to hear Democrats sing the bill’s praises — loud, proud, and on the record.
After the vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) absurdly made the opposite accusation: Republicans were “climate delaying . . . costing us lives + destroying communities.”
Meanwhile, “If the Green New Deal came up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House,” USA Today reports, “it would have trouble passing.”
“It’s a list of aspirations,” says Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who does not plan to bring it to a vote. Though Democrats want to address climate change, the speaker points out that the “bill has many things that have nothing to do with climate.”
Rep. Elaine Luria, (D-Va.) echoes Pelosi: “[T]he Green New Deal is aspirational.” Rep. Sean Casten, (D-Ill.) adds, “The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great.”**
But is the GND something “great” to which Americans should aspire?
Only if they yearn for government-monopolized healthcare, free college tuition, micro-management of the economy, and government providing everyone a job, except those who don’t want one . . . who would get a guaranteed income, regardless.
I aspire to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* In the Senate, three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) joined all 53 Republicans in voting No.
** All four House co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force — Casten and Luria as well as Don Beyer, (D-Va.) and Susan Wild, (D-Pa.) — have come out in opposition to the GND.
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How do you know you are in an end-time cult?
When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.
So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.
What did the cultists do?
Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.
But no. I am not talking about that, not directly.
I refer to the Mueller Report.
“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”
Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.
To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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