On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private craft to fly into space, thereby winning for Mojave Aerospace Ventures the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.
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SpaceShipOne
California Governor Newsom wants to outlaw all political speech annoying to himself. If legislation he’s just signed is allowed to stand, he’ll be well on the way to doing so.
One target of California’s two new laws, the Babylon Bee, is filing suit against them.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the Bee, says that the subjects of the lawsuit, California’s AB2839 and AB265, “censor speech through subjective standards like prohibiting pictures and videos ‘likely to harm’ a candidate’s ‘electoral prospects.’… AB 2655 applies to large online platforms and requires them to sometimes label, and other times remove, posts with ‘materially deceptive content.’”
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon observes that, contrary to the wishes of “self-serving politicians [who] abuse their power to try and control public discourse and clamp down on comedy,” the right to tell jokes they dislike is secured by the First Amendment.
The vague nature of the laws would enable California officials to “police speech they disagree with,” according to ADF and Captain Obvious.
One of the laws requires a disclaimer to be attached to satirical content, a mandate that also violates the First Amendment.
The immediate incentive for fast-tracking the censorship bills into law was a parody video of Kamala Harris that includes a simulation of her voice. The video does bill itself as parody but that is obvious regardless. This video “should be illegal,” Newsom asseverated.
No, it shouldn’t.
Anyway, watch the hilarity on YouTube … while you can.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Joseph Butler
Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?
Bishop Butler, epigraph for The Moral Economy (1909) by Ralph Barton Perry.
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Declarations of Thanksgiving
On October 3, 1789, George Washington proclaimed Thursday November 26, 1789, a Thanksgiving Day. On the same date in 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.
Helene is x times worse than Katrina, but receives y less coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.
When we finally plug in the numbers, we will likely discover that the coverage difference is best explained by two factors: there are fewer reporters yet more “journalists” than ever before, and (you guessed
You see, Katrina coverage helped besmirch George W. Bush and the Republicans.
Covering Helene in the same way, or to similar extent, could hurt the incumbents (FEMA has been especially lame), and the presidential race is too close for the Democrats’ lackeys in the media to do that.
So let’s blame Helene on Trump.
Or, the low coverage on Trump. Trump’s the why of the y!
It’s just as sensible as blaming Helene on man-made climate change. Nearly every newsperson intones the plausible-sounding theory that the warmer the climate the more damaging the storms. It’s a great hypothesis. But pre-Helene studies have shown scant evidence for it.
Further, the oft-repeated line that “never before” has a hurricane reached so far inland is also untrue. Asheville, North Carolina, was destroyed by a similarly horrific hurricane in July 1916.
These are rare events. Or, perhaps, cyclical, on repeat by century.
The pity with all this theory and conjecture and political nonsense is: less coverage means less knowledge outside the hurricane zone of how horrible Helene is, and thus less sympathy elicited from the general population of generous Americans. Thus, less aid.
Making major media complicit — with the U.S. Government (FEMA, etc.) — in not helping relieve the suffering.
So maybe we should thank the climate change agenda. Without that devil to fight, we might get no coverage of Helene at all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Arthur Latham Perry
Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy (1891).
Suppose for a moment, that all taxes of every name could be abolished instantaneously, and the Governments, like the Israelites, live on manna for forty years. What harm would ensue? What industry would decline? Who would be impoverished? What stimulus to work and save and grow rich would be weakened thereby? Would not wages, and profits, and rents, all be lifted thereby, with no damage to anybody? A child can see that Taxes from their very nature are a burden, are a subtraction from income, are a minus and not a plus. Who, then, except from sinister motives, can imagine and represent, that Taxes are a good in themselves, a positive blessing, a spur to the progress of Society?