[Bread and Circuses - Politics and other Silliness]

Every few years, some self-proclaimed prophet comes along with the announcement that the world is going to end on some specific date (usually because of mankind’s sins). These religious doomsayer prophets receive less publicity than in times past, only to be replaced by environmental doomsayers. Last week, the good folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute have done a service by publishing a new paper, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.” Below I have taken a sample of the headlines from among the many articles the CEI staff found (the full list and complete articles can be found on the CEI website, www.CEI.org). “Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century” (The Boston Globe, April 16, 1970). “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming” (The Washington Post, July 9, 1971). “Space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast” (The Guardian, January 29, 1974). “The Cooling” (New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976). “Acid Rain Kills Life in Lake...

By Ben Shapiro @benshapiro September 18, 2019 Last week, Democrats held their first true presidential debate. With the field winnowed down to 10 candidates — three of them actual contenders for the nomination — only one moment truly stood out. That moment came not from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders but from a candidate desperate for attention: Beto O'Rourke. O'Rourke ran in 2018 for a Senate seat in Texas and lost in shockingly narrow fashion to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. But his persona at the time was more Biden than Bernie: He ran as a unifying quasi-moderate, an Obama-esque figure determined to bring Americans together. In the early going of the presidential race, Beto was figured to be a prime contender: An April poll showed him in a solid third place. But he's faded dramatically; now the once-media darling is polling below 3%. So O'Rourke has refashioned himself into a woke warrior. He's declared that he wants to forcibly rem...

WALSH: Media Trumpets Study Claiming That All ‘Unwanted’ Sex Is Rape. That Is Insane And Dangerous. Here's Why. By Matt Walsh @mattwalshblog September 18, 2019 The media this week is trumpeting a study that makes a shocking claim: One in every 16 women say their first sexual experience was rape. As NPR notes, this is just "the tip of the iceberg." The one-in-16 figure — over 6% of all women between the ages of 18 and 44 — could even be an "underestimate," we're assured. News reports on this study have, of course, tied these revelations to the #MeToo movement. We are meant to come away with the impression that America is chock-full of rapists, and millions upon millions of women have fallen victim to the millions upon millions of predators lurking behind every corner. A closer look at the data, however, reveals a drastically different picture. There is no reason to artificially inflate rape statistics — rape is horrible enough, and far too common already — bu...

Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Posted On 11:35 am September 5, 2019 The life cycle of labor unions is predictable, the late economist Sylvester Petro once wrote. Because they are born not out of mutual exchange, but out of state-backed coercion, American unions inevitably face eventual demise triggered by their own corruption. The aged United Auto Workers union may be approaching that moment of extinction. After a four-year federal investigation into UAW bribes, kickbacks, and crony labor negotiations, the government has secured prison sentences for eight people connected to the union, Fiat Chrysler, and Automobiles NV, according to the Detroit News. The feds raided six locations, including the home of UAW President Gary Jones, and say they have evidence of blatant corruption, including “wads” of cash and files that conf...

I first met Elizabeth Warren when she was a professor at Harvard Law School in 2004. She was fresh off the publication of her bestselling book, "The Two-Income Trap." There was no doubt she was politically liberal — our only face-to-face meeting involved a recruitment visit at the W Hotel in Los Angeles, where she immediately made some sort of disparaging remark about Rush Limbaugh — but at the time, Warren was making waves for her iconoclastic views. She wasn't a doctrinaire leftist, spewing Big Government nostrums. She was a creative thinker.   That creative thinking is obvious in "The Two-Income Trap," which discusses the rising number of bankruptcies among middle-class parents, particularly women with children. The book posits that women entered the workforce figuring that by doing so, they could have double household income. But so many women entered the workforce that they actually inflated prices for basic goods like housi...

While tearing down everything that's great about our country, the left has always permitted us to celebrate patriotic holidays. But this year, on the week that we commemorate the unveiling of the Declaration of Independence, Nike yanked a Betsy Ross tribute sneaker off the market because the American flag didn't sit well with Colin Kaepernick. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is telling wild, provable lies about America's border agents. This Fourth of July, let's look at the tactics used by the left to blacken the reputations of American heroes. To wit, the lie that the principal author of the declaration, Thomas Jefferson, fathered a child with his slave, Sally Hemings. The charge was first leveled in 1802 by a muckraking, racist, alcoholic journalist, James Callender, who had served prison time for his particular brand of journalism. He had tried to blackmail Jefferson into appointing him postmaster at Richmond. When that failed, Callender retaliated by publicly...

https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/here-are-8-stubborn-facts-gun-violence-america In the wake of the tragic murder of 17 innocent students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students, educators, politicians, and activists are searching for solutions to prevent future school shootings. As emotions morph from grief to anger to resolve, it is vitally important to supply facts so that policymakers and professionals can fashion solutions based on objective data rather than well-intended but misguided emotional fixes. Are there ways to reduce gun violence and school shootings? Yes, but only after objectively assessing the facts and working collaboratively to fashion commonsense solutions. Here are eight stubborn facts to keep in mind about gun violence in America:     Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades.     The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides a...