I am back to active blogging.  I sat Shiva for my father and took 8 days off.  Thank you very much for all the support and positive comments on my last post.  It really meant a lot.

Now to my griping.

I caught an article over at the New Yorker Magazine titled THE BIG UNEASY What’s roiling the liberal-arts campus? about the goings on on Oberlin and other college campuses.

About halfway down the article the president of Oberlin, Marvin Krislov, was interviewed and said: “I don’t know if it’s related to the way we parent, I don’t know if it’s related to the media or the pervasive role of technology—I’m sure there are a lot of different factors—but what I can tell you is that every campus I know is investing more resources in mental health.  Students are coming to campuses today with mental-health challenges that in some instances have been diagnosed and in some instances have not. Maybe, in previous eras, those students would not have been coming to college.”

I would have to agree with President Krislov, it has to do with the way these kids were parented which caused these kids to have a mental illness.  It’s called extreme liberalism.

The article features an interview with Oberlin dropout Cyrus Eosphoros.  Eosphoros caught the attention of the author for leading a demand for a trigger warning on the tragedy Antigone.

Eosphoros dropped out of Oberlin because the school was just too racist and oppressive for him to handle.

“There’s this persistent, low-grade dehumanization from everyone,” he said. “Somebody will be, like, ‘Yeah, I had a class with a really great professor, and it was wonderful,’ and I’ll be sitting there, like, ‘Oh, yes, that was the professor who failed me for getting tuberculosis,’ or ‘That was the professor who, because I have double time on exams, scheduled them during lunch.’”

The author postulates “some would call such students oversensitive.”  No. Shit.

I highly doubt that Eosphoros was flunked out for getting tuberculosis.  No professor would every say “I’m flunking you because you got sick.”  Ever.  Eosphoros most likely flunked because he missed too many days of class because he got sick.  Here’s the thing.  Oberlin has a medical leave of absence available for students who have to take off due to sickness.   Eosphoros probably didn’t fill out the right paperwork and just stopped showing up.  That’s not the professors fault.

How about double time?  Well as someone who has taught classes in a university, the professor probably has limited time to proctor the exam.  You can’t really give up office hours that other students need access to.  The other times of the day are booked for class.  So a lunch hour is the most convenient time.  Too bad Eosphoros can’t appreciate the extent to which the professor went to accommodate his special needs.

If it was just one student, that would be one thing.  But it’s not just Eosphoros, it is the student body.

Robert Bonfiglio, the chair of the Student Union Board said about the student body “People are so amazed that other people could have a different opinion from them that they don’t want to hear it.”

Jasmine Adams, a senior and a member of the black-student union, said: “I literally am so tired of learning about Marx, when he did not include race in his discussion of the market!”

Wow.  I am almost at a loss for words.  For this kid, simply being indoctrinated as a Marxist-Communist isn’t enough.  That’s passe at this point.  She needs her anti-capitalism flavored with some good ol’ fashioned race hate and bigotry.

“As a person who plans on returning to my community, I don’t want to assimilate into middle-class values. I’m going home, back to the ’hood of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”

Now I want to know why Jasmine Adams wanted to go to Oberlin.  What is the point of going to college if not to try to and better yourself.  What is the point of spending $49,928 per year to go back to the ghetto and life that ghetto life?

More than thirteen hundred students signed a petition calling for the college to eliminate any grade lower than a C for the semester, but to no avail. “Students felt really unsupported in their endeavors to engage with the world outside Oberlin.”

These kids sent a petition to the President of Oberlin demanding stipends for protesting and credit for social activism.  They claim that their activism is interfering with their schooling and they needs to have their grades fixed to accommodate their busy social justice work.

Let me address these student’s concerns:

*Clears throat*

As students, it is true that you are the customers of the school.  But allow me to clarify what it is that your tuition pays for.  It is not for grades.  It is not for a degree.  It is for the services of the professors to teach you the fundamental skills various accreditation boards have decided you need to know to obtain your desired degree.  You have to put in the effort to learn what you are paying for us to teach you.  Just because you spent nigh on $50,ooo per year doesn’t mean that you deserve a good grade.  If you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain, to try and learn from those who are teaching, you don’t deserve anything but to fail.  Protesting and activism is not why you are in school.  If your focus is not on your education, you are wasting your money and your professors’ time.

There is something seriously wrong with these kids.  They are broken and they system that made them is broken too.  I just hope that education survives this SJW movement.

A little after 5:00 am Eastern time, my dad passed.  His battle against lymphoma was short.

He was an attorney.  He taught me about the Constitution, raised me to debate the law, and instilled in me a love of politics.

He was the man that taught me to shoot and that it was the responsibility of every able bodied Jew to be armed, because when we said “never again” we mean it.

He was the man that made me the man I am today.

He was a father of three and a grandfather to one, my son.

He is loved.

He will be missed.

I love you dad.

J.Kb

I caught an article about Donald Trump titled “Donald Trump: London mayor made ‘very rude statements’ about me.”

Apparently the newly elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said that Trump’s comments on Islam were “ignorant.”

Trump’s response was (and I’m not kidding here) “I’m not stupid” and then challenged the Mayor to compare IQ tests.  Yes, Trump’s retort to the Mayor of London was what you would expect from a fat middle schooler facing a bully.

Prime Minister David Cameron called Trump’s statements on Muslims “divisive, stupid and wrong.”

Trump fired back at Cameron with “It looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship. Who knows, I hope to have a good relationship with him but it sounds like he’s not willing to address the problem either.”

Keep in mind that the UK is our No. 7 trading partner by dollar value, and is widely considered by to be America’s closest ally.

So I find it very disconcerting that Donald Trump would risk relations with the UK over what could be considered the pettiest of insults.

Obama has not endeared the US to the British after a series of gaffes.  One would have hoped that our next president would be less of an ignoramus and try to repair our special relationship.

Trump, instead, has decided to make things worse, and he’s not even president yet.  Why?  Because he’s a narcissistic, childish, dunce.  I don’t care how much money he made.  He’s classless, and willing to risk America’s position on the world stage  because he feels personally affronted.

So I commented on the article with “He’s not even elected yet and already souring foreign relations with one of our closest allies.”

What I got in return was a level of vitriol from Trump supporters that could dissolve steel.

I was told that I was a traitor and a terrorist supporter for defending Khan.  I was called stupid, a troll, and told that I should kill myself.

For the record, I was not defending Khan.  He has been friendly with Muslim extremists and terrorism apologists.   He is a leading member of the Labour Party, which is suffering from a metastasized tumor of antisemitism.

But a good leader should respond to criticism with grace and dignity.   Reagan and G.W. Bush were burned in effigy by Communists and Liberals respectively, and neither lost their poise and acted like petulant children.

But my favorite comment was this:

Wow.  What a clear and rational justification to vote for Donald Trump.  I have been completely convinced that he is head and shoulders above every other candidate for President since the beginning of the 2016 primaries.

Oh wait, no.  That’s just the same insult and bulling tactic that Trump himself uses.  Bobaloo really does aspire to be like Trump, using only “the best words” (what a fucking tragedy that clip is).

I don’t know what is worse, Trump or his supporters.  What I can tell you is that they are making it harder and harder for me to ever come around on Trump, because I don’t want to associate myself with those assholes.

I am not the only blogger to feel this way.  There are more and more of us every day to can’t handle the Trumper tactics.

Former president Bill Clinton was heckled again, while campaigning for his wife, about the 1994 crime bill and the issue of aggressive sentencing.  Clinton defended his seminal piece of legislation by claiming that he had to pass the sentencing increase to get the assault weapons and magazine capacity bans to pass .  He also claimed that it was the AWB that was responsible for the drop in violent crime after 1994.  Lastly, Clinton went on to walk back the sentencing guidelines that his bill had and praised Obama for undoing part of his bill.

This is not the first time that either Clinton has had to denounce the 1994 crime bill.  A few months ago both Bill and Hillary Clinton got into some political hot water over statements related to President Bill Clinton’s signing of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, also know as the 1994 Clinton anti-crime bill.  The issue started with Hillary Clinton being confronted by Black Lives Matter (#BLM) protesters about her defense of her husband’s signing of the anti-crime bill, and more specifically about her description of some of the criminals the bill targeted as “super predators.”  After that, while on the campaign trail for his wife, Bill Clinton lost his temper with some #BLM hecklers, defending the anti-crime bill and saying that #BLM didn’t care about black lives when they were taken by black criminals.

The issue that #BLM has with Bill and Hillary in regards to the anti-crime bill is that mandatory sentencing and “three strikes” laws have caused mass incarceration of African-Americans and helped destroy the black community.  Consequently, the Democrats are tripping over themselves to distance themselves from the anti-crime bill.

When Bill Clinton lost his temper, he through out a word at the #BLM protesters that unfortunately was almost a generation away from being meaningful: crack.  Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and took office in 1993.  This was the zenith of the “crack epidemic” that started the early 1980’s and peaked in 1993.

An enterprising YouTuber put together a compilation video of CBS news reports on the crack epidemic.  It is almost 90 minutes long, and really gives you an insight into the national drug zeitgeist.

Associated with the crack epidemic was a spike in violent crime.  Crime rates had been going up since the late 1960’s, but climbed to new heights between the mid 80’s and mid 90’s.

During this peak, the crack epidemic was destroying black communities and led to the evolution of inner city gangs from vandalism and petty crime to powerful, violent, drug dealing organizations which began warring over control of the drug trade in major US cities.  It was due to the hugely disproportionate and deleterious effect of crack on black communities, that black leaders, including the Congressional Black Caucus, pushed for harsher sentences for crack possession and dealing.

Let me reiterate.  The higher sentences imposed for using and selling crack cocaine, a drug that heavily associated with black criminals, was fought for by black leaders to try and save the black community from the ravages of crack.

The problem Bill and Hillary are having is that they are facing a new generation of activists who have no concept of what the crack epidemic or the crime wave of the 90’s was like.  A lot of these SJW types are younger than I am, and I was in the 4th grade when the Clinton crime bill was signed into law.  They only know of this period in history from movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society.  To them, crack is not a drug that destroyed whole communities, but a throw away punchline – e.g. “I can’t stop eating these french fries, I think they cooked them with crack.”

Mandatory minimum sentencing and three strikes laws were some of many legislative and policy changes that helped turn the tide on America’s crime problem.  They were a reversal of policies put in place in the 1960’s and 1970’s that accelerated the rise in violent crime.

“One major reason was that as crime rose the criminal-justice system caved. Prison commitments fell, as did time served per conviction. For every 1,000 arrests for serious crimes in 1970, 170 defendants went to prison, compared with 261 defendants five years earlier. Murderers released in 1960 had served a median 4.3 years, which wasn’t long to begin with. By 1970 that figure had dropped to 3.5 years.”

But as the often misattributed but highly accurate quote goes: “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.”  Well the myth of mass incarceration is one of those often repeated lies.

What is troubling is how new policy is being created that directly undoes the progress made in the 1990’s.  Well intentioned but ignorant people have been trying to fight the “school to prison pipeline.”

“The ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ refers to the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.  This pipeline reflects the prioritization of incarceration over education.“

However, as schools adopt policies that limit expulsion and higher levels of student discipline schools have become more violent, with teachers coming under physical attack.  What goes unsaid is how this policy affect the kids in these classrooms who do behave and have their educational opportunities cut short by the bad students.

In several major US cities, reductions in policing and arrests due to social activism have lead to crime waves known as the Ferguson Effect.  To the point where a handful of these cities are responsible for the majority of all the murders in the US.

At the local level we have seen what reduced sentencing and inadequate policing has done to communities at an alarming rate.  When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York City, he cracked on quality of life crimes – e.g. squeegee men, turnstile jumping, peeing in the street –  in a policy known as broken windows policing.  This was credited as helping reduce the violent crime and other maladies that was plaguing the city in the 80’s and 90’s.  Mayor de Blasio, following the progressive dogma that being tough on crime is bad has stopped prosecuting quality of life crimes.  For the first time since I was a baby, homeless men can piss in the middle of a busy NYC street and get away with it.  As you can imagine, older New Yorkers, those who remember the bad old pre-Giuliani days, are concerned that these policies will lead to NYC having a pre-Giuliani murder rate as well.

America is watching in horrifyingly real time how progressive politicians, trying to make nice with the #BlackLivesMatter and Social Justice movement by denouncing and undoing the tough-on-crime polices put in place in the mid 90’s through early 2000’s, is resulting in a huge increase in violent crime and murder.  The more the progressive media personalities and activists justify looting and arson because a racial grievances, the more real damage they allow to happen to minority communities with violent crime.

Their hearts are bleeding.  So are the bodies of almost 1,300 people in Chicago.

Now compare all of that with the other major act of the 1994 crime bill, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act or Assault Weapon Ban (ABW).  Notice in the first video posted, how many people in the audience applauded the ABW and the “ammunition clip limit.”  As fast as Hillary is to denounce the 1994 crime bill as a mistake promises to amend federal law to be more lenient on criminals, she is in favor of bringing back the ABW.

In contrast to the other parts of the crime bill, just how effective was the AWB in reducing crime?  Not. At.  All.  And with the surge in purchases of these types of rifles since 2008, reinstating the ban will do nothing to prevent more crime.

Even those to try to tie the end of the AWB to mass shootings can only come up a conclusion that is “tenuous” at best.

And what about the effectiveness of the Clinton’s beloved Brady Bill?  Equally.  Worthless.

But there has to be more gun control and the victims of gun violence need to be able to sue the gun makers because… progressive reasons!!!

The politicians, activists, and pundits on the left are simultaneously pushing against effective anti-crime legislation and for ineffective anti-gun legislation.  Ignoring the ABW’s violation of civil rights, what they left wants is to do less of what worked and more of what didn’t.

These progressives will bring about more crime, more violence, and more death,  in pursuit of Social Justice.  They lack the historical understanding of what led to the crime peak of the 80’s and 90’s and what helped to end it.  They don’t understand how minority leaders fought for safer streets in minority communities and how it will also be minrity communities that are the first to be destroyed by their new policies.

The greatest tragedy in all of this is that the old guard of the Left (as much as I disagree with them on many, many issues) should be using this as a teachable moment but it is failing.  Bill tried but got shouted down and is on the path to surrendering to the #BLM/SJW movement.

More lives will be scarified on the alter of leftist, collectivist ideology because of this.

The Guardian has discovered that there are summer camps in the US where kids can develop the skills to participate in the fun and exciting sport of Practical Shooting.  Or as the UK based newspaper puts it “Alternative summer camp: where children learn to shoot assault rifles.”

The article itself wasn’t that bad.  It was pretty neutral on the politics and did go into how there were instructors and rules to make sure everybody was safe.

The article made a valiant attempt to be balanced, interviewing some pro-gun people from the camp as well as Ladd Everitt from the CSGV.  It is Ladd’s comment that I want to focus on here.

“The lesson you are teaching children is that guns are the solutions to problems,” said Ladd Everitt, the director of communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He said that his group is opposed to anyone under age 18 participating in practical shooting. “There are plenty of other healthy sports that don’t involve the risk of accidental injury that practical shooting does and don’t involve teaching violence.”

First of all, USPSA doesn’t teach “guns are the solutions to problems” any more than youth boxing, jiu jitsu, karate, or MMA teach that beating the crap out of someone is the solution to problems.  But thanks for trying.

Where I really wanted take apart was the statement “There are plenty of other healthy sports that don’t involve the risk of accidental injury that practical shooting does.”

Really?

How many young people who participate in USPSA are counted in the 135,000 youth sports related brain injuries that occur every year?

What about the fact that pee wee football has a worse brain injury rate than the NFL.

Of the 1.35 million youth sports injuries per year, how many are gunshots?

What about the fact that youth sports injuries are on the rise as coaches and parents become more competitive and push children from an early age to excel in a sport with the hopes of a college scholarship?

I tried to find out how many people per year are injured while participating in USPSA, and I couldn’t find any injury statistics.  I also couldn’t find any records of any accidental shootings during a USPSA match either.  Doing my best to find out how many accidental shootings occurred during sanctioned shooting competitions of all types yielded no results.

I’m not going to say that it never happened, but it seems to be so rare that there are no statistics for it.

Just going by the numbers, it seems that kids are a whole lot safer at the range than they are on the gridiron on soccer pitch.

That largely has to do with the contrasting cultures of the sports.  In shooting, the coaches and RSOs are there to make sure everyone is being safe all the time.

In most other sports, the coaches are there telling the kids to hit harder, dig deeper, and push themselves to the breaking point for a win.

Buy why let facts get in the way of your point?

H/T: http://www.saysuncle.com/2016/05/12/none-of-your-business/

Dr. Marjorie Rosenthal worte an op-ed about a conversation she witnessed between a Pediatric Intern at the Yale-New Haven Hospital and some new parents.

“Your daughter’s physical exam is perfect,” the intern said. “She’s eating well, peeing and pooping well. I want to talk to you a little about how to help you keep her safe and healthy.”

Next came a standard discussion about the baby’s sleeping position and whether she’s got a car seat. Then, the next question:

“Do you have any guns in the home?”

Suddenly, the genial tone changed.

“I don’t think you should ask that question,” said the child’s father.

“Should I take that as a ‘yes’?” the intern pressed.

“I just don’t think you should ask.”

“Sir, we ask because we want to make sure that your baby is as safe as she can be, making sure you keep any guns locked up and away from her.”

“It’s none of your business.”

Dr. Rosenthal then goes on to bemoan how this conversation turned icy and it was all about the child’s safety and that asking parents about guns shouldn’t be political.

Well it is political.  You know why?  I’ll tell you.

Since this weekend of my Son’s 2nd birthday, I remember quite clearly what the doctors did and did not talk to us about.  We had to watch a state mandated video in English and Spanish about shaken baby syndrome and why we shouldn’t shake our baby.

Our doctors did not ask if my guns were locked up.

Our doctors also did not ask if I put child safety latches on my kitchen cabinets or medicine cabinets to keep our baby about from household cleaners and medication, which is the cause of over 800,000 accidental poisonings per year in children under 2.

I was not asked if I have a pool or hot tub or if I put any sort of safety fence around them to combat the nearly 730 accidental childhood drownings deaths per year.

I was not asked if I had stairs in my home and if I put up baby gates around them to prevent my son from being one of the 100,000 children per year injured in a stair fall.

I was not asked if I had loose plastic bags around the house or how my child  would sleep at night to reduce the risk that he would be one of the 20,000 children per year injured by accidental suffocation.

I wasn’t asked if I had electrical outlet covers or fire extinguishers in my home.

If I look at the CDC’s list of leading causes of injury deaths by age group unintentional firearm deaths don’t make an appearance until age 5, and it still ranks below suffocation, drowning, and fire/burns.

So, Dr. Rosenthal, if you are really interested in the safety of newborns under your care, do you ask about pools and tubs, pillows and plastic bags, chemicals and medication, or any of the other major causes of injury and death to infants and toddlers?  Or do you just ask about guns?

If your answer is guns, then your motivations are 100% political.  There is no other way to rationalize how you ignore ALL of the leading causes of injury and death for infants and toddlers to focus on the one politically controversial item.

If safety really was your goal, you would be better off asking parents if they have the detergent pods at home.  Those little items are rapidly becoming a leading cause of injury to children because they look like gummy candy and the chemicals in them are highly concentrated.

But you are going to stick to the guns.  This is the reason we don’t trust you on this issue.

I believe that on Wednesday, May 4th, that Decision 2016 became Gozer 2016. With the only candidates left being Trump, Clinton, and Sanders, Americans are going to choose the form of their destructor.

I viscerally hate all three candidates. I am horrified by the election of any of them to the office of President of the Untitled States. It not just the individual policies that each candidate does or does not have, it is the big-picture message of what the election of each of those candidates means.

Hillary: The election of Hillary Clinton means that the American people have accepted monarchical system in which those in power do not have to obey the law of the land that they rule. Hillary Clinton is under investigation by the FBI and those that support her don’t care. She quote openly used her position as Secretary of State to enrich herself by brokering deals for nations and companies that supported the Clinton Foundation and nobody in the DNC seems to give a shit. The law does not apply to Hillary Clinton. She would be a queen, come to power because her husband abdicated the Oval Office.

The Bern: The election of Bernie Sanders means that the majority of Americans believe that the American Dream is dead. No longer is America the one nation where anybody can work hard, be motivated, and if they have enough determination and a touch of luck, can rise above the station they were born into. The American Dream is not rags to riches for everybody, as that is unfeasible. It is the idea that America has no caste system and that a person’s conditions of birth does not dictate the course of their life.
Sanders stands for the idea that each person is stuck where they are. The rich got ahead and pulled up the draw bridge behind them, and are now hording the money. This is the opposite of the American Dream. A Sanders’ America is one in which work, effort, and determination are not virtues but make you a target for punitive taxation. A Sanders victory means that we have crossed the tipping point where more people want America to be the land of government handouts than the land of opportunity. The “gimmie” will have won.

Trump: The election of Donald Trump means that America has lost the ability to think critically. Trump has not enunciated a single position or policy in any way that is remotely possible to accomplish. But he has generated a fanatical following by scapegoating, mockery, and insults. He proposed to do things that are blatantly unconstitutional (seizing money sent to Mexico). He brags and bloviates and has lowered the discourse of the election to abysmal levels.

The greater tragedy is that the GOP primary voters picked the Republican Sanders, because that is what Trump is. They both generate their support through anger, blame, and impossible feel-good policy. Sanders blames the rich. Trump blames the Chinese and Illegals. Sanders want to give everybody free college. No serious discussion about how to pay for it or what it will cost or how that will affect the economy, but it gets his supporters screaming his name. Trump wants to build a wall. No serious discussion about how to pay for it or what it will cost or how that will affect the economy, but it gets his supporters screaming his name. He is a cartoon character.  A dullard (I don’t care how much money he has).  It is horrifying that he speaks with the lowest reading level equivalency of any candidate on either side. Trump is incapable of explaining a concept at a level more difficult than the plot of How To Eat Fried Worms.

I was dismayed when Obama was elected, and then re-elected on charisma over content. It is fair to disagree with Mitt Romney on points, but there was no question that he was the smartest man in the room In every debate. President Empty Suit beat him with a combination of cool factor and nastiness.

I had hoped that America had learned its lesson. Night on seven years of the worst economic growth and labor participation in half a century, $8 Trillion in debt with nothing to show for it; this is what deciding electing a president with a lack of substance hath wrought.

My hope was for an aspirational Republican candidate, a new Reagan to recover us from Carter 2.0.

What I have is the inevitable choice between an ignorant, petulant, narcissistic, blow-hard in a bad hair piece and a power-mad, criminal harpy.
Yes, I am expected to go to the polls in November and decide who is better to run America, a man whose only well explained qualification for office is size of his dick or a woman whose only place for the next 4-8 years should Leavenworth.

This does not feel like an election for the President of the United States. This doesn’t feel like an election for a middle school class president. Right now, I feel like I’m voting for who will not be kicked out of Jersey Shore house.

Whoever wins, I fear we are doomed.  Not because of a single policy of either candidate, but because I don’t think the dignity and value of the Presidency can be recovered.