Ironic

 In the spirit of performative, liberal, do as I say-not as I do, hypocrisy, Ben and Jerry made some ridiculous statement about how we should give the US back to the indigenous people's or some such nonsense.  

Well in a shocking turn of events, Chief Don Stevens of the tribe that originally owned the land where B&J's sits actually tried to take them up on their offer.   I know that B&J promptly entered talks to make the transfer.    Or they just ignored it and acted like their performance was all they needed to do.

https://www.newsweek.com/ben-jerrys-headquarters-vermont-indigenous-chief-stolen-land-1811532

"Renewable" energy

 One of the things that kind of go hand in hand with solar farms is their location, and exposure to weather other than just sunny days.    Strangely enough it appears that nobody really thought much about things like hail or tornadoes.  Well a Nebraska solar farm was destroyed by a hail storm, and the now acres of solar panels will be headed for a landfill, and vast sums of money will be spent to replace this "renewable" energy source.  

 

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/solar-farm-pelted-by-giant-hail-as-severe-storm-ripped-through-nebraska/#gref

It's also interesting how many of the minerals that are vital to the things like electric car batteries,  cell phones, and the like all come from countries with oppressive political regimes, poor human rights, virtually zero environmental regulations, and allow child (slave) labor in the mines the produce them. 

BVMLTT

 "When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination."

I apologize for any confusion.  I neglected to use "" for the above quote as a way to indicate that it was not something I said, but something someone else said.   Now the title of the post, should have made it clear that I was quoting a "black voice", but apparently that subtlety was not accurately communicated.  My deepest apologies for any confusion due to my lack of proper punctuation. 

Progress

 I just finished a really good book about Tolkein and Lewis, their friendship, and how WWI affected their writing and faith.   I picked up a couple of things that really struck me.    When I finished, I immediately re read the Narnia series, and am working on LOTR now. 

The first was how strongly the Myth of Progress drove us toward the almost assembly line killing of WWI and how much of the rhetoric of this worldview sounds very much like modern progressive talking points. 

The second was how much more of The Gospel, as well as some deeper theology Lewis managed to fit into the Narnia series.  It's much more than the Aslan/Jesus sacrifice piece. 

It Seems Unusual

 It seems unusual that the Biden administration invested untold amounts of time and money to hunt down and prosecute as many of the Jan 6 protesters as they possibly could, yet still haven't released all of the security footage that exists.    

Further, it seems unusual that SCOTUS was unable to find the leaker of the case that struck down Roe, despite the number of possible suspects being very small.

Further, it seems unusual that we still haven't seen the manifesto from the shooter at the Christian school.

Finally, it seems unusual that the WH is unable to figure out who left a bunch of cocaine in an area that is heavily secured, limited access, and monitored by video surveillance.  

I'm sure it's nothing, but it does seem strange. 

The Least of These

 I think that we can all agree that an infant is one of the least of these.  They depend on their parents for everything from food to cleaning up the other end of the digestive tract.   Pretty helpless, right?     Jesus tells us that good parents don't give their children bad things.   He said that a bad parent won't give a child a snake instead of a fish, or a rock instead of bread.   I think we could extend those examples to say that a good parent wouldn't give their hungry infant and empty bottle, couldn't we?    

Yet, in a bit of performative social media attention grabbing, we see a video of a biological male, who's had breast implants, "breastfeeding" his infant.   For those of you who've had children, can you imagine the response of a hungry infant when they latch onto a nipple and get no nourishment at all?   Can you imagine the result if this guy chose to only "breastfeed" this infant?   Wouldn't the child starve?    

If I remember correctly, there is some degree of bonding that happens between a mother and child when they breastfeed.    I can't imagine that a child being forced to "feed" from a nipple that will never provide nourishment having the same bonding experience as one who actually does breastfeed.   One wonders what effect this guy essentially lying to this child from this very young age will have on the child.

Finally, I'm quite sure that someone will respond by pointing out that it's not unheard of to supplement breast feedings with feeding from a bottle, which is actually True.   The problem is that for that argument to work, you would need to completely redefine supplement.  

" 1.  something that completes or enhances something else when added to it."

" 2.   add an extra element or amount to."

The word supplement literally carries the intrinsic meaning of adding to something that already exists.   In this case, since absolutely zero naturally occurring breast milk is present, it would be necessary to totally replace the nonexistent "breast milk" with formula.    Obviously, some biological women are unable to breastfeed and must bottle feed, but it should go without saying that this is usually because of something that doesn't function the way it was intended to not because they were born without any of the necessary bits to breastfeed.   Finally, I can't imagine a biological woman choosing to post a video of herself "breastfeeding" her baby if she was unable to breastfeed.   

On a related note, I saw a Twitter post from PP where they offered contraceptives that were to be used during anal sex.    Enough said on that subject.  

 It's all about the Science, until the Science gets in the way of ideology.  

 

Majority rule

 We live in a country that is founded on the concept of majority rule.   Not a true democracy where the will of 50.1% of the people can impose their will on the rest, but a representative form of majority rule nonetheless.  

Except, when we don't.    We've seen a significant increase in presidents trying to legislate by executive order in order to get things into "law" without actually wasting time with the legislative process.    We've just seen Biden's attempt a naked vote buying by fiat struck down by SCOTUS.      (As an aside, I pity the idiots who believed that Biden could magically make a small fraction of their debts disappear and voted for him believing that they'd actually get their debts paid by others.   Although, I'm confused.  I thought paying one's debts was a good thing and something to be applauded.)    

The other day, the governor of WI decided that he was going to ignore the whole majority rule/will of the people/representative republic thing and impose his will on his subjects.   He decided to use his veto power to veto the hyphen between 24-25 in a school funding bill, and pretend like this locks massive funding increases into law for the next 402 years.   Ignoring the clear intent of the legislature, and not even bothering to consult with them, he just decided to make this shit up on his own.  

I have no doubt, he'll be cheered by the APL for his creativity and ingenuity.   He'll be lauded for putting on over on the legislature, and the majority of the voters that elected this group of legislators to legislate.  He'll be lauded because this is a pet issue of the APL the notion that perpetually increasing school funding will miraculously increase grades and graduation rates.   

Seems like  a bait and switch fraud to me.   Of course the legislature will fix this, and his little stunt will be for naught.  Except in the minds of his base, who will believe for decades that he funded schools for the next 402 years, when it won't be True.   But as we've seen from the APL, it's not so much following through on promises that counts, it's simply making the promises.