"...perhaps we can have more amazing strong, resilient, loving women shouting their adoptions."

In the Federalist, a person who was adopted tells her story.

...While the nation continues its intense debate over abortion, perhaps we can all shine a bit of light on the stigma about adoption, and recall that the placement of a child is an act of purest love and bravery. If we can focus on removing the barriers that make adoption difficult, and on changing the cultural stigma against those who place children for adoption, then instead of more women shouting their abortions, perhaps we can have more amazing strong, resilient, loving women shouting their adoptions.

Read much more here.

One man's experience teaching in a high school in Michigan

Lawrence M. Ludlow writes in American Thinker about our public schools. This one in particular.


Grosse Point High School

Read about it here.

Trusting our institutions?

KuKurt Schlichter writes in Town Hall,

...The fact is you cannot trust our institutions. They are not, and have not been, operating in the interests of Normal Americans for quite some time. They have degenerated into seedy scams run by, and for the benefit of, a garbage ruling caste that inherited the most powerful society in human history and seems determined to do in a couple generations what the Romans took a few hundred years to do – squander it.

Look at our useless Department of Justice. It gave Hillary a pass and basically rubbed it in our faces. If you or I pulled the classified material shenanigans she did, we’d could have been Epstein’s federal pokey pals. But James Comey – who we were duly informed by the smart set was a paragon of integrity – let her walk. Later, that Looming Doofus distributed classified material to his media pals to undermine the president we rubes elected and who he did not approve of, and so far he’s walking too. There are rules for them, and rules for us, and that’s not exactly going to reinforce our faith in our DOJ’s commitment to justice without an agenda, is it?

No.

How about the media? Why, they are brave truthtellers who perform the vital function of informing us, fairly and objectively, of the facts. And my unicorn, Chet, believes that. But none of us hornless headed humans do, not anymore. We’ve watched the liberal media go all in on the narrative and we’ve had it lying to our faces over and over again until it’s all background noise, just Fredo Cuomo yammering on endlessly in our ears as we wait for our delayed flight at the airport lounge. Yet these hacks, despite their commitment to a partisan position far to our left, demand to be treated as if they were neutral truthtellers, with all the respect and admiration due a guild of objective news-monks. Good luck with that, journaljerks. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness; it dies when our institutions shred their mandate to serve us and start serving themselves.

And that’s all they do – serve themselves.

Are you proud of academia? Are you impressed by the quality of the young people the universities are graduating? Do you often say, “Wow, what an excellent writer and clear thinker”? Me neither. I hire young people, and many of the ones I interview are terrible, totally unfit. You find good ones, ones who managed to get through the college assembly line without being ruined, and they are hobbled by a couple hundred grand in debt. That’s the system our elite built – one that rips off the futures of the young to fund its elite members’ lush sinecures in the present in return for meaningless diplomas in Intersectional Dance and Mongolian Transgender Poetry. And we’re supposed to pretend that our ruling class isn’t terrible, that it’s not capable of not merely gross incompetence but venal self-dealing and possibly worse?

Read more here.

Watch out for a pink panther!

hat-tip Soothsayer Fake Commenter

Milking cows is now sexual abuse!

Ace of Spades has another winner:

New York University Promotes Gender Studies Paper (Of Course!) Comparing Cow Insemination to "Rape" and Milking Cows to "Sexual Abuse"

Read it here.

Weaponized psychiatry

In American Greatness, Christopher Roach writes,

n the wake of recent horrific shooting sprees, Donald Trump and other Republicans wishing to appear to “do something” have seized the purported “middle ground”: red flag laws. These laws would permit law enforcement or concerned family members to petition a court to remove firearms from individuals deemed dangerous after a summary judicial procedure.

Laws such as these enjoy popular support and a general perception of plausibility upon first glance. After all, there is a broad public consensus in favor of keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons and other dangerous people. Recent mass shootings where the shooter made pre-incident threats, or otherwise instilled fear among those in his circle, appear to have offered several missed opportunities to prevent deadly violence.

...Psychologists and psychiatrists tend to be overwhelmingly people of the Left. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders changes every few years, removing old diagnoses like homosexuality and gender dysphoria, mostly because of political pressure from interest groups. A move is afoot to add conspiracy thinking to the manual. While conspiracy thinking can be an intellectual dead end, sometimes “they” really are out to get you. Ask Carter Page. It should be obvious how changing and amorphous diagnoses will be used against those on the right.

...Trump and other Republicans’ embrace of red-flag laws is especially shocking in light of our own very recent history: the attempt to declare President Trump incompetent under the 25th Amendment.

In support of this effort, prominent psychologists opined contrary to their ethical rules about the president’s mental health. The FBI deemed him unworthy of the normal deference and respect due to a president, treating him instead as a target in his first days in office. Prominent law professors explained how his removal would be entirely lawful and reasonable. In a shocking departure from the norm, a rogue Department of Justice official, Rod Rosenstein, offered to wear a wire to entrap the president. If the president, with the power and platform he possesses, could be so harried by weaponized psychiatry, a run-of-the-mill gun owner stands little chance.

Even in the absence of intentional abuse, biases of various kinds can infect a psychological assessment. After all, for many in the mental health establishment, the mere fact of wanting to own guns may be seen as a type of red flag. Should we entrust a treasured American liberty to this group of political leftists practicing an uncertain and malleable science employing pro forma judicial processes? The question answers itself.

Roach goes on to cover other areas where red flag laws might be detrimental. Read more here.

"The financial media would have you believe that customers lined-up around the building to purchase your products means your business is about to close because of a lack of customers."

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance observes that it has been a Stunning Day of Economic Gaslighting – Despite All Positive Data, Corporate Media Cheering For Recession…

A “negative yield curve“; a pending “economic recession“. These are the obtuse and ridiculous proclamations of the Mainstream Corporate Media today. So let’s take a moment to discuss how stunningly -intentionally- disconnected they are.

Always remember, there are trillions of dollars at stake; and these media entities have a vested interest in maintaining the Wall Street position, adverse to Main Street USA.

First the “negative yield curve” aspect; where long-term bond rates (returns on investment) are lower than short-term rates (returns). As Reuters proclaims:

“A key bond market metric turned negative for the first time since 2007 on Wednesday, sending stocks tumbling”…

I must admit, I actually started laughing out loud when I first read that proclamation. Allow me to introduce a radical concept in economics: “supply and demand” !


The long-term borrowing rate for return on investment dropped momentarily lower than the short-term borrowing rate of return on investment because massive numbers of foreign investors were rushing to buy long-term U.S. bonds. Wait… what? Yes, a ‘negative yield curve’ is what happens when everyone wants to buy bonds in your long-term economy.

There weren’t enough long-term bonds to fill the demand of those who wanted to purchase them. Ergo, the return rate of interest dropped because there was no need to have an incentive to sell them…. everyone wants them.

So the yield drops, because the U.S. doesn’t need to incentivize the sale… because everyone is lined up to buy them. See how that works?

Do lines of people wrapping all around the world trying to get to the U.S.A Bank and buy U.S. treasury bonds sound like the USA economy (underlying the bond) is weak or in trouble?

It’s OK to laugh out loud.

No, really, it’s ok.

Yes, Alice, it’s true. The financial media would have you believe that customers lined-up around the building to purchase your products means your business is about to close because of a lack of customers. THAT my friends is the stupidity of it.

The U.S.A economy is so strong, so healthy, and forecast to remain so with such intensity, that everyone wants to purchase dollars because it is the world’s highest predicted rate of return for investment….. And somehow the media can spin that into a bad thing.

No, really. That’s the narrative of today.

Now let’s look at the second stupid “A looming recession“

First, a “recession” is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. That’s how you define a recession. So to start a recession you need need one quarter of negative GDP growth right? Well, duh, it hasn’t happened, and there is not a single economist who is predicting a negative Third Quarter growth rate (July, Aug, Sept., ’19).

First Quarter GDP growth was 3.1%. [Beating all expectations] Second Quarter GDP growth was 2.1%. [Again, beating all expectations]… and somehow the Third Quarter is suddenly going to be negative growth? It’s OK to laugh again.

So how does CNN et al “warn of a looming recession” when there’s not a single economist forecasting a negative GDP for the third quarter? Well, they make shit up that’s how.

Think about it…. if the economy was contracting, people would not be getting hired right? Employers would be laying people off right? Businesses would be selling off assets right? Wages would be dropping right?

Do you see any of these things happening?

No? Why not?

Because it ain’t happening, that’s what !!!

The U.S. economy is not shrinking. Main Street is strong, and getting stronger.

Go back to point #1, would the world be rushing to buy dollars if the U.S. economy was on the precipice of collapse? Think about it.

Now, that said, there are some economies that are shrinking; and they all have something in common. The manufacturing export dependent nations are in trouble because President Trump is starting to limit their access to their most desired customers, the USA. And President Trump is telling companies that operate in those export nations that it would be in their best interests to come to the United States to make their goods.

Germany, the economic engine for the EU, is a manufacturing export dependent nation, and it is contracting. China is a manufacturing export dependent nation and their manufacturing is contracting. But the U.S. is strong, because we are not dependent on exports. In fact the U.S. consumes more than 80 percent of what we produce; we are a self-sustaining economy.

Our U.S. economic strength is why Asian and European investors are rushing to buy dollars (US Bonds); and why the U.S. treasury doesn’t need to provide high yield rates as incentives to buy them (hence the negative yield curve).

Stop me when any of the U.S. economic data has even the slightest implication of a slowdown, or “looming recession”.

Our last jobs report showed 164,000 new jobs created in July (yeah, like two weeks ago). In addition 363,000 people moved from part-time to full-time employment… does that sound like a weak economic outcome? Current blue-collar wage growth is in excess of 3.4%, and current overall U.S. worker income is growing at a rate exceeding 5.4%.

Does any of that sound like what you see just before a “looming recession”?

Read more here.

"huddled masses"

Stephen Dinan writes in the Washington Times,

The same year that Emma Lazarus‘ poem welcoming the world’s “poor” and “huddled masses” was added to the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. government rejected 5,812 of those same new arrivals for being poor.

In his annual report to Congress in 1903, U.S. Immigration Commissioner William Williams warned that too many immigrants were “entering this country with inadequate sums of money,” leaving the system with thousands of charity cases and sinking the country’s standard of living.

More than a century later, the debate between those who subscribe to Lazarus‘ optimistic view and those who take Williams‘ more cautious approach to immigration is playing out again — this time over the Trump administration’s rules looking to discourage immigrants who are likely to end up on the public dole.

Read more here.

All of Hillary's emails captured by a Chinese front company

Ace reports,

Oh: Intelligence Community Inspector General Tells Congress That All of Hillary Clinton's Emails Were Sent to a "Live Dropbox" Account Maintained by a Chinese Front Company
—Ace of Spades
You may remember that the original report on Hillary's emails said something like "they were almost certainly captured by a hostile foreign nation or hostile foreign nations," but then Comey and Strzok worked that language out to say the emails "may" have been accessed by another country.

And now: Oh no big deal, her system seems to have had a virus implanted into it that sent each and every email, including the top secret classified ones, to a drop box controlled by a Chinese company.

The system had been infected so that every email was sent to this address of a Chinese company, no matter who you actually intended to send it to, or not send it to.

And she did all of this because she didn't want to turn over any records to anyone -- no watchdogs with legitimate FOIA requests, no disclosure in response to a subpoena.

She decided she didn't want any Americans to have her emails.

But a Chinese front company? Sure, let's roll the dice on that one.

No intent. No intent no intent no intent no intent.

Read more here.

Soros finds a way to save money and get better results in his drive to put communists in power in America

Ace posts,

Trump-Appointed US Attorney Slams "Culture of Disrespect" for Police That Led to the Philly Shootout
—Ace of Spades

Read it here.

U.S. consumers are spending!

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports,

If you needed any empirical evidence to prove the doomsday proclamations by the financial pundits are false claims, just look at the July consumer spending results. July spending more than doubled expectations.

July results were +0.7 percent, against the economic forecast of +.03 percent. Consumer spending makes up over two-thirds of the U.S. GDP and overall economy. Doesn’t exactly sound like Main Street is on the precipice of a recession. Oh my.

Average wage growth remains +3.5% year-over-year. The growth of overall income for American workers exceeds +5.4 percent year-over-year. Unemployment is a low 3.6% and U.S. consumer inflation remains low at 1.4 percent. Meaning: the middle-class has more disposable income to save or SPEND; and that’s what is happening….

Reminder #1: Consumer spending is two-thirds of the U.S. economy.
Reminder #2: We consume more than 80 percent of our own production (products created in USA). We do not rely on exports.
Reminder #3: Because of #1 and #2, the “Main Street” U.S. economy is self sustaining -much stronger- and more protected from the negative impacts on the global economy.
Reminder #4: Who/What is at risk from global contraction? The Wall Street economy (compromised primarily of multinationals). What is not at risk, the Main St economy.
Reminder #5: Because of #3 and #4, Wall Street can drop while Main Street thrives.
This is the fundamental disconnect. These Main Street results, this dynamic, is the space between two economic engines that CTH has been describing for three years. The investment class on Wall Street can go through pain, while the middle-class on Main Street thrive. We are in the space between.


Wall Street Journal: WASHINGTON—American shoppers gave the U.S. economy a solid boost in July, a counter to weakness in the manufacturing sector and Wall Street jitters about faltering growth.

Retail sales, a measure of purchases at stores, restaurants and online, climbed a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in July from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

The robust report—the strongest reading since March and a sign that American consumers remain a source of fuel for the economy—is a positive signal for the U.S. amid warning signs of a global economic slowdown. (link)

Oh noes, the Deplorables are shopping:

Walmart (WMT) beat expectations on both the top and bottom lines for its second quarter. The world’s largest retailer also boosted its fiscal 2020 adjusted EPS and same-store sales forecast. Walmart shares soared 5% as of market open Thursday.

Read more here.

Meddling in other country's elections

This is the second excerpt National Review has published from Andrew McCarthy's new book entitled, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

... To Obama-era Democrats, arguing that Russia was a real threat, that it longed for a return to Soviet hegemony, was akin to calling for the return of Jim Crow and the adoption of protectionist practices that helped ignite the Great Depression.

But then Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, and Democrats decided they’d best return that call from the 1980s after all. It turns out Russia — the Russia against whose serial aggressions Obama took little meaningful action throughout his eight years in office — really is our Numero Uno geopolitical foe. Turns out the Cold War isn’t “so last century.” Since November 8, 2016, in ever-evolving Democratic dogma, Russia has gone from a quaint obsession of neocon warmongers to an existential threat on the order of Climate Change!

McCarthy goes on to give a brief history of election meddling, including meddling by the United States! Read it here.

The black hole at the center of the Milky Way flares up

In Universe Today, Evan Gough reports,

Even though the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a monster, it’s still rather quiet. Called Sagittarius A*, it’s about 4.6 million times more massive than our Sun. Usually, it’s a brooding behemoth. But scientists observing Sgr. A* with the Keck Telescope just watched as its brightness bloomed to over 75 times normal for a few hours.

Read more here.

No thanks, Google!

Sara Carter reports that the man we saw talking to James O'Keefe on the Project Veritas video has turned over a laptop and close to 1000 documents to the DOJ showing how Google uses its algorithms to block speech by websites whose ideas they do not want the public to see. The Project Veritas video listed many sites that were blocked by Google. I recognized a few of the sites, and they are sites that I recognized to be biased so I would choose not to click on them anyway. But let that be my choice, Google! I don't need you to make that decision for me!

Bill Clinton in a blue dress

Read more here.

"the biggest political scandal in American political history."

In PowerLine, Scott Johnson writes about Andrew McCarthy's new book entitled,

Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. What we have here is the biggest political scandal in American political history.

...McCarthy mostly lets the facts speak for themselves and allows the reader to draw his own conclusions, although he states upfront: “[I]n 2016, the incumbent Democratic administration of President Barack Obama put the awesome powers of the United States government’s law enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic Party, and the progressive Beltway establishment.”

A few pages later McCarthy puts it this way: “This book contends that the Obama administration, abetted by Washington’s politically progressive order, exploited its control of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to help Clinton and undermine Trump. This was a scandalous abuse of power.”

...In addition, when Trump improbably won the election, Obama and his men turned the investigation into an ongoing effort to undo it. McCarthy shows how, after Trump’s inauguration, the effort continued secretly under Trump’s nose. It represents, you might say, the audacity of nope.

In this book, McCarthy provides the evidence and a host of lucidly developed arguments. The exposition is masterful. Although the style is breezy, almost conversational, and the book is easy reading, McCarthy hands up a stinging indictment that calls for a day of reckoning.

Read more here.

Do individual Americans have a right to gun ownership?

In the American Thinker, William Sullivan writes a good essay on the Second Amendment here.

"Reasons unknown ought to be Epstein’s epitaph."

Daniel Greenfield writes in Sultan Knish,

Reasons unknown ought to be Epstein’s epitaph. He wasn’t prosecuted by Florida or the Feds for raping numerous girls for reasons unknown. Three states failed to register him as a level 3 sex offender for reasons unknown.

Epstein had been able to evade procedures all his life. It is hard to believe that the pass he got from the justice systems of three states, and the federal government, were procedural happenstance.

...The truth died on the top of a prison skyscraper whose administration and guards flagrantly violated their own rules, removing Epstein from suicide watch six days after a supposed suicide attempt, leaving him alone in his cell, and failing to check on him until it was too late. Blame will be passed around. Conspiracy theorists will cash in on it for years. And the questions will remain unanswered

Who could possibly penetrate Manhattan’s most secure detention facility? Who had the political influence to manipulate events within MCC’s walls? Who could do what Chapo’s confederates couldn’t?

These questions join others, such as who in the DOJ had allegedly told Alexander Acosta that Epstein was protected by intelligence figures, and who had corrupted the justice systems of three states?

The answers are gone, but the damage to our political system will linger.

Anyone can come up with conspiracy theories. But there is no escaping the fact that Epstein’s career was one long conspiracy of mysterious money, a private island, the subversion of justice systems in three states, and the federal system, followed by a death that should have been impossible.

Read more here.

"people involved with justice spend too much time around politicians, media and all the rest of the Beltway players. They are subject to influences they should be far away from. They have friends they shouldn't have."

Roger L. Simon writes in PJ Media,

The behavior of the federal government in the Epstein matter from its inception to the tycoon/pedophile's death has been nothing short of execrable. The attorney general was "appalled." He should have been, although it's likely little of this happened directly on his watch. But it besmirches the entire organization.

That people were hidden from exposure in this most heinous of crimes — they call it "short eyes" in prison for a reason — because they were important or powerful in some way is nauseating. Once the facts are known, everyone involved (adults only, of course) should be incarcerated or, failing that, subject to the public, career-destroying, opprobrium they so richly deserve. This should happen no matter whose ox is gored. (The repellent celebrities that continued to pal around with Epstein after his initial incarceration deserve their own special ring of Dante's Hell.)

But bad as it is, the Epstein affair is far from the worst malfeasance of the FBI/DOJ in recent years. That honor belongs to the Russia probe. Epstein, horrible as it is, is largely about the private lives of a certain number of despicable individuals. The Russia madness affected all of us, dominating the public attention since Trump was elected and weakening America before the world for absolutely no reason but to reverse the results of an otherwise legal election.

It was a treasonous farce with FBI and the DOJ up to their necks in all of it, as well as numerous other government agencies and officials, but let's restrict ourselves to these two culprits.

The real question before us is can these organizations — two of the most crucial arms of any democracy — correct themselves?

We don't know. This is supposedly underway. But you'll have to excuse me for being a little bit skeptical that enough of the guilty heads will roll or that the house will thoroughly be cleaned. These organizations are too incestuous and, as my headline indicates, are headquartered too close to the rest of the government in Washington. That means that people involved with justice spend too much time around politicians, media and all the rest of the Beltway players. They are subject to influences they should be far away from. They have friends they shouldn't have.

The solution — part of it anyway — is to move the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation out of D.C. Yes, I know they all have branches everywhere, but I'm talking about their headquarters.

Read more here.

"Follow the money; find the truth."

In V DARE, Michelle Malkin writes,

Border security and restored sovereignty start with defunding the funders of America's destruction, and then prosecuting them as criminal open borders racketeers. Follow the money; find the truth.

Read more here.