Free Republic

CNN needs better editors ... the DJIA closed at 37,863.80 not 47,863.83.

Bad editing ... or, rather, a lack of editing, I think.

Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences in 1992, but only spent two YEARS in prison before he was beaten to death in 1994 (too bad, so sad).

“I would never use words that ascribe morality to international affairs.”

So, you would not describe the actions of Nazi Germany with relation to its European neighbors between 1939 and 1945 as “immoral”? Or even “evil”?

How about Imperial Japan between 1933 and 1945?

2015 - https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/30/sport/gregory-mertens-dies-news/index.html

2014 - https://www.al.com/highschoolsports/article/charles-henderson-football-player-demario-harris-dies-after-collapsing-on-field-during-game/

2018 - https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/maine-football-player-18-collapses-and-dies-during-preseason-workout/

2016 - https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/07/football/patrick-ekeng-soccer-player-dies/index.html

The above four are just examples. A quick Google search yields hundreds of such reports just from 2011 to 2019.

I watched this episode a week or so ago. It’s fascinating.

The entire series - which began as a podcast - is very nicely done. Roman Britain, the Vikings in Greenland, the Khmer Empire, Sumeria, the Mayans... I highly recommend it.

Since I have been “working” from home for the last six months due to COVID, I’ve had the ... ah, opportunity to check out dozens of history documentaries on YouTube.

This is a very good series.

The Intercept has an interesting article suggesting the accusations were a planned attack on Morse.

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/12/alex-morse-college-democrats-chats/

Always fun to see the Dems show just how low they can sink ... even when they are fighting each other. Pass the popcorn!

Apple's anointed tech journalist -- Jim Dalrymple -- says the report isn't true.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/07/15/former-white-house-press-secretary-jay-carney-not-in-the-running-for-apples-vacant-pr-job

With respect, you're being deliberately misleading. Sure if you combine imports and exports, the US leads the way - because we import so much from everyone else.

But this discussion is about exports and manufacturing power - making things here and selling them abroad. Manufacturing has been the source - the Fountainhead, if you will - of national power and wealth for centuries. The US was the world's leading exporter for almost a century.

Not any more.

According to the CIA Factbook, we are now #4, ranked after the European Union, China and Germany.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2078rank.html

As Chinese manufacturing eclipses ours, so does its ability to build, maintain and deploy increasingly powerful and adanced military forces. Meanwhile the US is going the way of Great Britain, mired in debt and slipping in power and influence. Chinese money is all over Africa and South America and even Europe. Other countries see the trend and know the momentum is away from America.

Free trade isn't the only reason this is happening (unions, taxes and regulation hurt us too), but free trade has made it possible for China to enrich itself at America's expense. Time to change that.

With a few simple measure, not like admitting young Muslim men into the US, we could keep them at bay at a much lower cost to ourselves.

Uh oh. Now you've gone and done it. You've brought a little common sense into the discussion. We can't have that.

For some reason cutting off Muslim immigration is just not possible. Bush refused to do it after 9/11, and Obama certainly isn't going to do it.

Nope, much better to be slogging it out in the god-forsaken 'stans of the world for the next thousand years making Islam "safe for democracy" while we sink deeper into debt and our military suffers. And all-the-while China continues to arm itself and look on eagerly.

In the case of immigration, the U.S. bishops believe that the broken U.S. immigration system contributes to the exploitation of migrant workers in the workplace; their abuse by ruthless smugglers; and their deaths in the desert as they seek to find work to support their families. They come illegally because there are insufficient visas under the current system to come legally. Our system contains only 5,000 permanent visas for unskilled laborers to come to the United States, but the demand for their work is much higher, since as many as 300,000 undocumented people each year are absorbed into the U.S. workforce.

With the official unemployment rate at almost 10% and unofficial ( and likely more accurate) estimates even higher, the very last thing the US needs is more imported workers, skilled or not. The bishop cannot be unaware of this. But as usual, he blames America for the unlawful actions of others. If foreigners break our laws, it is because our laws are unjust. You see, America is always to blame. by this reasoning, if I steal my neighbors car, it's his fault for not giving me money to buy one of my own. 

Point taken. How about the encyclopedia Britannica, which says the same thing.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270386/Homo-erectus

Perhaps creationists would get more respect if they did some elementary fact checking before writing articles:

The discoveries are not only incredible but devastating for Darwinists who have held that Homo Erectus did not appear on the scene until 200,000 years ago. This assumption is contained in almost every world history and social studies text in the United States.

Darwinists hold nothing of the sort. Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia, or a googling of "homo erectus" would reveal that scientists beleive homo erectus to have existed from about 1.8 million to 500,000 years ago. Thus, finding homo erectus footprints at 1.5 million years is not a "shocking" discovery, nor does it conflict with the timeline of human evolution that paleontologists have generally accepted for the last 50 years. It is not Darwin who is debunked, but rather the article.

Bush had NOTHING to do with the MASSIVE mortgage frauds being perpetrated on the taxpayers in America’s inner-cities.

Bush had nothing to do with it? Nothing. Really? Hmmm, then how do you explain this?

http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr04-006.cfm&CFID=14986259&CFTOKEN=95069283

The Dems and their ACORN allies started this mess, to be sure, but lets not lie to ourselves and claim that Bush had nothing to do with it.

Really? Only by the Democrats? The Bush Admin had nothing to do with it? Hmmm. Care to explain this?

http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr04-006.cfm&CFID=13038624&CFTOKEN=76546918

Of course, if Valentina hadn’t extended the credit, Oprah’s mother would now be suing them for racial discrimination. There’s no winning in modern America.

Our trade deficit currently stands at $71B.

Our GDP currently stands at $13T.

So, Buchanan's figures are off by 20% or more.

No, you are wrong. The US's MONTHLY trade deficit in about $70 billion, our ANNUAL trade deficit is well over $700 billion. You are comparing annual GDP of 13 Trillion against a monthly trade deficit. Buchanan is comparing annual trade deficits against annual GDP. His percentage - approaching 6% of GDP - is correct.

The only flaw with this argument is that the left will quite readily destroy one of its own - particularly a low profile lefty like Myers in order to validate truly dangerous politically correct policies. And then having made use of the policy themselves, conservatives will be less able to oppose it later on.

As a practical matter, you are right, they have no plans to ditch their PC rules, but conservatives should be fighting them anyway, not conforming to them. If we don't fight these policies and stand on principle - what's the point of being a conservative?

Better not to play the left's game in the first place.

You are absolutely correct that these policies are selectively enforced. However, by turning the tables on the lefties and using their own PC rules against them we inadvertently grant legitimacy to those rules. Myers should be fired, but bringing charges under the school's ridiculous "bias" policy only validates the policy. Hoisting one of them on their own petard won't cause the lefties to wake up and see the foolishness of it - nor will it cause them to back off and stop enforcing the policy. Trust me, just like Obama, they'll hurl one of their own straight under the bus if it advances their agenda. And since the ideological balance on university campuses doesn't seem likely to swing in conservatives' favor any time soon, that's just shooting ourselves in the foot.

Catholics and conservatives should call for Myers to be fired - and should organize whatever donor and alumni action is required to accomplish that. But we mustn't fall into the trap of using the left's own tools, since that just means those tools will be strengthened by our use and will thus continue to be used, which doesn't benefit us at all. Citing a PC policy as a means of ousting him tacitly endorses that policy - a policy, incidentally, that could just as easily be used against practicing Catholics on campus. And almost certainly will be in the future.

By accepting the left's rules, we automatically lose the game.

My point was not to defend Myers, or to argue that his actions fall under the concept of "academic freedom." They don't. (Indeed, my use of the term "academic freedom" was sarcastic.) My point was that the university's own code, as quoted in the article, is so broad and so obviously constructed on the grounds of political correctness, as to make any statement, publication or offhand remark that could be even remotely construed as being in anyway critical of a group or individual into an example of "bias" or a potential threat.

Certainly, the regents have the right to police the integrity and reputation of the school - but read the policy they created. It does not establish any objective criteria defining what is legitimately unacceptable behavior aside from the fact that someone, somewhere might be offended by, well, virtually anything. Sorry, but that is not a "reasonable policy." It does not serve to protect the integrity of the university. It was designed to silence people who run afoul of what is deemed acceptable thought. Such broadly worded policies have been used quite effectively against conservatives on many US college campuses. And in Europe, Canada and Australia such nonsense has been coded into public law - as Bridget Bardot and Mark Steyn.

The Fourth Lateran Council did not declare Jews pariahs, it did not impose a tax on Jews and it did not exclude Jews from all public offices.

The first two points are more or less true. But almost every source I can find disagrees with that last bit.

The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215

CANON 69

Summary. Jews are not to be given public offices. Anyone instrumental in doing this is to be punished. A Jewish official is to be denied all intercourse with Christians.

Text. Since it is absurd that a blasphemer of Christ exercise authority over Christians, we on account of the boldness of transgressors renew in this general council what the Synod of Toledo (589) wisely enacted in this matter, prohibiting Jews from being given preference in the matter of public offices, since in such capacity they are most troublesome to the Christians. But if anyone should commit such an office to them, let him, after previous warning, be restrained by such punishment as seems proper by the provincial synod which we command to be celebrated every year. The official, however, shall be denied the commercial and other intercourse of the Christians, till in the judgment of the bishop all that he acquired from the Christians from the time he assumed office be restored for the needs of the Christian poor, and the office that he irreverently assumed let him lose with shame. The same we extend also to pagans. [Mansi, IX, 995; Hefele-Leclercq, III, 7.27. This canon 14 of Toledo was frequently renewed.]

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html

No "Jew Tax" was demanded by the Council - though Jews who charged excessive interest rates to Christians in financial transactions were ordered to make restitution and were to be compelled to compensate churches for donations that they would otherwise have received from Christians who became indebted by such usury.

CANON 67

Summary. Jews should be compelled to make satisfaction for the tithes and offerings e churches, which the Christians supplied before their properties fell into of the Jews.<.i>

Text. The more the Christians are restrained from the practice of usury, the more are they oppressed in this matter by the treachery of the Jews, so that in a short time they exhaust the resources of the Christians. Wishing, therefore, in this matter to protect the Christians against cruel oppression by the Jews, we ordain in this decree that if in the future under any pretext Jews extort from Christians oppressive and immoderate interest, the partnership of the Christians shall be denied them till they have made suitable satisfaction for their excesses. The Christians also, every appeal being set aside, shall, if necessary, be compelled by ecclesiastical censure to abstain from all commercial intercourse with them. We command the princes not to be hostile to the Christians on this account, but rather to strive to hinder the Jews from practicing such excesses. Lastly, we decree that the Jews be compelled by the same punishment (avoidance of commercial intercourse) to make satisfaction for the tithes and offerings due to the churches, which the Christians were accustomed to supply from their houses and other possessions before these properties, under whatever title, fell into the hands of the Jews, that thus the churches may be safeguarded against loss.

Canon 68, incidentally, barred Jews and Muslims from appearing in public at all - regardless of dress - on certain Christian holidays.

PZ Myers is still a complete ass, however.