On the campaign trail candidate Joe Biden promised to create a “fair and humane” immigration system. Instead, the Biden administration has created a system in which the criteria for being allowed into this country at the Southern border a deep, dark secret. Would-be immigrants show up at the border with no idea whether they will be allowed in or sent back to Mexico, nor why.
Is it humane for families to trek for months across dangerous, cartel-controlled expanses with no rationale expectation of being admitted?
According to an Associated Press account today, the Biden administration releases most children traveling alone to relatives in this country and gives them notices to appear in immigration court. “Nearly 9,500 such children arrived in February, up 60 percent from a month earlier,” the story relates.
But six out of 10 families picked up by the Border Patrol in February were sent back across the border. The number of family arrivals in February topped 19,200, more than double the previous month.
The anecdotal lede on the AP story recounts how one family from Honduras with children ages 3 and 5 were given bus tickets to Oklahoma to join an in-law, while a mother from El Salvador and her 8-year-old daughter was “being banished to a violent Mexican border city with no food or money and sleeping on the concrete of a plaza.”
What is our immigration law? Who knows? It is a secret. Customs and border officers deport immigrants from Hidalgo, Texas. (AP pix) http://dlvr.it/RwHJ6F
It is time to cast off our chains and free ourselves from slavery to the clock.
On Sunday morning we are required to spring our clocks forward an hour, if we wish to remain in sync with the rest of the nation, get to church and work on time and tune in at the proper time to our favorite radio and TV programs.
Mankind once worked from can till cain’t, as my ol’ grandpappy used to say — from the time you can see till the time you can’t — and farmers and ranchers such as grandpappy still do. But to make the trains run on time, we strapped ourselves to the clock, even though the clock is uniform and doesn’t change when the amount of daylight does.
Ol’ Ben Franklin, while serving as ambassador in France, accidentally figured out that this out-of-sync arrangement was somewhat uneconomical when he mistakenly arose one day at 6 a.m. instead of noon and discovered the sun was shining through his window. “I love economy exceedingly,” he jested, and proceeded to explain in a letter to a local newspaper how many candles and how much lamp oil could be saved by adjusting the city’s lifestyle to the proclivities of the sun.
Franklin observed:
“This event has given rise in my mind to several serious and important reflections. I considered that, if I had not been awakened so early in the morning, I should have slept six hours longer by the light of the sun, and in exchange have lived six hours the following night by candle-light; and, the latter being a much more expensive light than the former, my love of economy induced me to muster up what little arithmetic I was master of, and to make some calculations, which I shall give you, after observing that utility is, in my opinion the test of value in matters of invention, and that a discovery which can be applied to no use, or is not good for something, is good for nothing.”
Then he did the math, and exclaimed, “An immense sum! that the city of Paris might save every year, by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.”
Thus, in 1918 in a effort to be more economical during the war, Congress borrowed from Europe the concept of daylight saving time — springing clocks forward during the summer and back in the winter. From shortly after Pearl Harbor until the end of the Second World War, the nation was on year-round daylight saving time, or war time, as it was called. National Geographic photo
Moving the clock forward in summer might well save a few kilowatt-hours in lighting, but in states like Nevada that savings is more than made up for with increased air conditioning costs and the fuel used to drive about more after getting off work.
One study found that springing forward causes enough sleep deprivation to cost the U.S. economy $435 million a year. The New England Journal of Medicine found an association between that one hour loss of sleep from daylight saving time and an increase in car accidents, as well as a 5 percent increase in heart attacks in the first three weekdays after the transition to daylight saving time, while an Australian study found an increase in the suicide rate.
In a probably futile gesture to end the charade, the state Legislature a couple of years ago passed Assembly Joint Resolution No. 4 that proposes to make Pacific Daylight Saving Time year-round.
“WHEREAS, Congress also found and declared that ‘the use of year-round daylight saving time could have other beneficial effects on the public interest, including the reduction of crime, improved traffic safety, more daylight outdoor playtime for children and youth of our Nation, [and] greater utilization of parks and recreation areas …’” AJR4 reads in part, also noting possible “expanded economic opportunity through extension of daylight hours to peak shopping hour. ”
It passed both the Assembly and Senate and was enrolled by the Secretary of State.
Changing to year-round daylight saving time might not save electricity, but it could increase productivity and prevent car wrecks.
Alas, as with everything else, the power to fix this lies in Washington, though I can’t seem to find this enumerated power in my copy of the Constitution. Perhaps it is outdated.
In another glaring example of the efficiency and sincerity of our elected officials, AJR4 passed, the morning newspaper reported that no one in Washington had ever heard of AJR4.
AJR4 concludes by beseeching Congress to amend The Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973 and allow each state to opt out, the same as Arizona and Hawaii have opted out, but rather than sticking with standard time, AJR4 would adopt Pacific Daylight Saving Time all year. Why should it get dark at 4:30 p.m. in the winter anyway?
Washington is in another century, much less a different time zone.
But the clowns in Carson City are dutifully at it again this year, working on legislation that might — if enough hoops are leapt through and the left coast Californians also indulge — keep Nevada’s clocks from hiccupping twice a year by staying on either standard or daylight saving time.
According to the Pahrump Valley Times, Senate Bill 153, if approved, has two prerequisites. First, moving Nevada to daylight time will only take effect with federal authorization. Also neighboring California must make the change, too. California voters OK’d the change in 2018 but the Legislature hasn’t acted.
The alternative of moving Nevada to year-round standard time also would happen only if California does the same.
Don’t hold your breath or waste much time contemplating the possibilities.
The national debate over the twice-a-year changing of clocks from standard to daylight saving time and back is so persistent and predictable that you could, er, set your clock by it.
The subject is back before the Nevada Legislature again this year, with a substantial chance that lawmakers will see daylight to approve a change.
If only that would turn out the lights on the matter.
Senate Bill 153 would put Nevada on a path to observe either daylight saving time or standard time year-round; one sponsor of the bill called the current semiannual change “archaic in today’s modern age.” A similar effort passed easily as a resolution in 2015. The nation switches to daylight saving time at 2 a.m. Sunday, moving clocks ahead one hour.
The Nevada bill awaits a hearing in committee and comes with a hitch: Federal law, which allows states to skip daylight saving time entirely and observe standard time all year, as Arizona and Hawaii do, does not similarly permit states to make daylight saving time permanent.
So the Nevada bill, if approved, has two caveats: Moving Nevada to daylight time will only take effect with federal authorization and if neighboring California also enacts the change. Golden State voters authorized the move in 2018 but the Legislature hasn’t acted yet.
Hence, Nevada’s bill attempts to separate night from day with the option to go either direction. By tying Nevada’s change to action by California, it also sidesteps a concern of those who oppose the change for fear that a fractured time zone map would complicate life for those who live in the Far West, and who make up a big part of Nevada’s drive-in casino customer base.
Simplify, and conquer
The tactic is exactly how the Utah Legislature moved a similar bill through in 2020. Supporters there conditioned its implementation on federal action and on approval by at least four other Western states. That has already occurred, with Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming among 16 states to date where laws, resolutions, or voter initiatives have passed since 2018. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee round out the list.
Utah proponents also sought to simplify the debate, which gets complicated because there are actually three choices: switch to full-time daylight saving time, to full-time standard time, or leave everything as is. In gauging support, they cast the debate as of question of more or less functional daylight time.
Action in states and Congress
The National Conference of State Legislatures, which has a standalone policy page tracking state action on the subject, counted 85 pieces of legislation on the subject in 32 states last year. And this year, a Senate bill with bipartisan backing is again before Congress: The “Sunshine Protection Act,” with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, as a prime sponsor, would make daylight saving time permanent year-round except for states on permanent standard time.
“Americans’ lifestyles are very different than they were when Daylight Saving Time began more than a century ago,” another supporter, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a release. “Making Daylight Saving Time permanent will end the biannual disruptions to daily life and give families more daylight hours to enjoy after work and school.”
Business interests
The first appearance of daylight saving time in the U.S. dates to 1916. The move was never about farmers or agriculture — cows, after all, don’t wear watches, and farmers opposed the time change because it upset their schedules. Rather, business interests thought an extra hour of daylight would mean more customers.
Proponents also made the argument that daylight saving time saved energy; it was observed year-round in the U.S. during World War II and again during the 1974 oil crisis, though it was reversed amid concerns that included students having to go to school in the dark. In 2005, Congress extended annual daylight saving time observance from six months to eight, March to November.
Energy savings remains official federal policy for the clock switching. The U.S. Department of Transportation, on a webpage last updated in 2014, says more daylight means lower electricity consumption, in addition to fewer accidents and less crime.
But increasing concerns and studies in the U.S. and elsewhere cite potential health effects and contrary findings — some find more accidents and workplace injuries occurring, not fewer, because of people not adjusting to the time change. Studies also question energy savings.
“As a seasoned family practice doctor I believe Daylight Saving Time is archaic in today’s modern age and desynchronizes our circadian rhythm, resulting in adverse health effects such as an increase in cardiovascular diseases, injuries, mental and behavioral disorders, and issues with the immune system including rising cortisol levels,” said Assemblywoman Robin Titus, R-Wellington, the GOP Assembly caucus leader. She cited “numerous studies demonstrating this in the U.S., Sweden, Denmark, and Australia.”
Titus is a sponsor of the bill to pick one or the other, along with Republican Sens. Pete Goicoechea of Elko and Joe Hardy of Boulder City.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine comes down on the side of full-time standard time, saying daylight saving time “is less aligned with human circadian biology.” Proponents of year-round daylight saving time tend to be advocates for outdoor recreation and businesses that benefit from more activity, such as service stations.
Nevada’s 2015 effort, which called simply for a one-way move to daylight saving time but carried less weight as a resolution, passed easily in both the Assembly and Senate. In 2021, a more flexible proposal, this time in bill form, could take the state in either direction.
At the end of the day, that could make it just as likely to pass.
More than 90,000 ballots mailed to registered voters in Nevada’s largest county were returned undeliverable, according to an analysis of election data by a conservative legal group.
Clark County, which includes the Las Vegas metro area, made the extraordinary move to mail ballots before the November general election to all the nearly 1.3 million active voters in the county, instead of just those who requested them. The county justified the move as helping people vote remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 450,000 voters cast their votes through the mail-in ballots. But more than 92,000 ballots were returned by the postal service as undeliverable, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s (PILF) March 10 research brief (pdf).
The number is based on data provided in February by Clark County Voter Registrar Joe Gloria, the brief says. The Clark County Election Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Mass-mail balloting is a step backward for American elections. There are millions of voter registration records with unreliable ‘active’ address information that will ultimately send ballots to the wrong place in a mail election,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in the brief.
The entire state of Nevada reported only 5,863 mail ballots returned undeliverable in the 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 General Elections combined, the brief says, referring to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission surveys.
Adams also took aim at the H.R. 1 election reform bill that was recently passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
The nearly 800-page bill would largely shift power over elections to the federal government. It would discard state voter-ID laws, allow for same-day voter registration, ban witness signature requirements for mail-in ballots, and require that mail-in ballots can arrive as late as 10 days after election day (as long as it is post stamped by election day). It would also make it a federal crime to “communicate or cause to be communicated” information that is knowingly false and designed to discourage voting and require a plethora of other measures.
Conservatives have made it their priority to oppose the bill.
“H.R. 1 does more harm than good for the American people and will leave them at a constant disadvantage to correct election system errors which ultimately impact their abilities to vote in a timely manner,” Adams said.
The bill “basically codifies everything that was irregular or outright wrong or the opportunities for fraud during last year’s election and makes it the law of the land,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita recently told Breitbart News.
A New York Times story (accessible for subscribers only) on the cover of the Sun insert in the morning paper quoted a book writer as saying that “Trump sought to ‘remake reality through language’ during a tumultuous tenure. As she writes in her book, the former president ‘changed some of the deepest expectations about presidential language, not just when it comes to style, but also the relationship between words and reality.’
“Now officials in Biden’s administration are using Trump’s own tactics to adjust reality again, this time by erasing the words his predecessor used and by explicitly returning to ones that had been banished.”
Erasing words? Changing the meaning of words in order to change reality?
Oh come on. Will somebody come out and say it out loud?
OK, the Times writer did get around to it well down in the tale.
“It’s kind of Orwellian — that’s what it is, really,” the NYT quoted Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, as saying. “The war against the word ‘alien’ is a continuation of this effort to destigmatize illegal immigration that started in the mid-1970s. This is in a sense the culmination of that process.”
Orwell, who learned the propaganda trade during World War II while working for the BBC, was a prophet. The current wordsmanship is nothing new.
As I noted in 2009:
George Orwell recognized this phenomenon and invented in “1984” the word newspeak to describe it. Newspeak was Big Brother’s way of trying to prevent “thoughtcrime” — which is why we have laws against certain hate crimes. Never mind that the act itself is a crime but it is doubly so if you have a motive that offends the sensitive ones.
And offending someone, anyone, is now the ultimate offense.
Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano doesn’t want to offend people who might want to blow us up by calling them by some offensive term like terrorist. Not she has now decided to call them the creators of man-caused disasters, like flying loaded passenger airliners into high-rise buildings.
Our one-worlder president doesn’t believe in fighting a global war against man-caused disasters. His Defense Department (They don’t call it the War Department anymore.) sent out a memo saying: “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”
That sounds so much better. I am relieved that the war on terror is over over there and here and everywhere.
If you subscribe to the morning paper you should be able to read the NYT account here.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” Orwell wrote in “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Joel Zinberg today reminds us that in 2020 the Biden campaign in general and Kamala Harris specifically “maligned President Trump’s claims about the speed of vaccine development and questioned its safety and effectiveness. New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo cast doubt on FDA evaluations of Covid-19 vaccines and said states should conduct their own reviews. An Aug. 27 letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asking governors for help setting up vaccine distribution elicited a statement from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer questioning the safety of the vaccines in development. Media ‘fact checkers’ said rapid vaccine development would take a ‘miracle.’”
Coincidentallu, Between April and December, Zinberg noted, the share of Americans who told pollsters they were likely to consent to vaccination declined from 74 percent to 56 percent.
Reuters quoted Joe Biden back in September as saying, “Let me be clear: I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump. At this moment, the American people can’t either.”
In an editorial today the WSJ reported that on Monday two Democrat congressional representatives “sent letters pressing 12 cable and tech CEOs to drop contracts with right-of-center media outlets including Fox News. Two days later the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing about ‘disinformation and extremism’ in conservative media. The only notable extremism on display was the majority party’s appetite for regulating and policing the free press.”A Texas Democrat representative said at the hearing that he saw a tension between “the freedom of speech versus other peoples’ safety.”
Like what was said by Biden, Harris, Cuomo, Schumer and certain media fact checkers?
From Kimberley Strassel’s WSJ column today: “Right now, the greatest threat to free speech in this country is not any law passed by the government— the First Amendment stands as a bulwark,” says Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr. “The threat comes in the form of legislating by letterhead. Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying.”
This observation came after Twitter, Facebook and others banned prominent conservatives, Twitter locked the account of the New York Post for reporting news about the Democratic presidential nominee’s son, Google and Apple dropped Parler from their app stores and Amazon banned a three-year-old book questioning transgenderism.
A Las Vegas man linked to anti-government activist Ammon Bundy has been arrested for allegedly threatening the lives of a police detective and a prosecutor who both handle domestic terrorism cases.
Joshua Martinez, 32, who runs Bundy’s burgeoning People’s Rights network in Nevada, faces stalking and harassment charges related to the alleged social media threats against Metro Detective Kenneth Mead and Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Dickerson, according to a criminal complaint.
Dickerson obtained a felony gun conviction against Martinez in 2019, and Mead had a courtroom encounter with Martinez in that case. Martinez was sentenced to probation.
Last Wednesday Martinez posted a Facebook photo of a flag-draped coffin carried by uniformed officers with the caption, “How police officers take out their trash,” the complaint alleges. Next to the photo, Martinez said, “I can’t wait to see the news and hear that Detective Kenneth Mead is in that casket.”
Another post that day featured a photo of Dickerson with the statement, “This is Michael Dickerson. He is Detective Kenneth Mead’s bitch. Dickerson, I hope you and Mead die a slow and painful death… Mead, I have a message for you — Molon Labe.” The Greek phrase, which means come and take them, is regarded as an expression of defiance for some gun rights activists.
The complaint alleges that Martinez threatened Mead with the intent that Mead be “placed in reasonable fear of death or substantial bodily harm.”
In an interview with the Review-Journal days before his arrest, Martinez said his main effort with Bundy’s group was holding Las Vegas police accountable when they stop people on the streets. He has posted videos on social media of police during stops, sometimes challenging their actions.
“We don’t believe in bowing down to police,” he said. “We’re anti-corrupt government. Not just anti-government. We need government.”
Martinez, dressed in blue jail garb, chains and a mask, made a brief appearance in Las Vegas Justice Court on Tuesday. When a judge told him the district attorney’s office might have a conflict of interest in the case because Dickerson is one of the victims, Martinez responded “I’ve been targeted. I understand.”
A deputy public defender representing Martinez said she planned to raise the conflict issue in court papers.
Four felony charges
Martinez, who is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on $1 million bail, is facing four felony charges — aggravated stalking, challenge to a fight with use of a deadly weapon, stalking with use of the internet or electronic communication and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. He also faces two misdemeanor harassment charges.
Police found a shotgun they allege was in his possession when they executed a search warrant last week. His plea deal sentence in the 2019 gun case prohibits him from having guns.
Deputy District Attorney Eckley Keach, who is prosecuting the stalking case against Martinez, said his office is taking the threats seriously.
“The goal is to make sure that justice is done, not only for the named victims in this case but also to ensure that the community is protected against people who choose to threaten to harm others,” Keach said.
In a Review-Journal story on the broadening spectrum of extremismpublished Feb. 20, Martinez said that Bundy’s newest grassroots group, about 415 members strong in Nevada, prefers a “bullhorn” over violence.
“We try to keep things peaceful,” he said. “Ammon wants everything peaceful.”
But the criminal complaint alleges Martinez between June 1, 2017 and February 18, 2021 “unlawfully” engaged in social media conduct against Mead and Dickerson that “would cause a reasonable person to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, or harassed.”
On the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, Martinez posted on Facebook: “This is Detective Kenneth Mead with the Metropolitan Police Department. He is an enemy of the constitution and has tried to make my life a living hell but has failed. To any activist here in Las Vegas, please keep an eye out for him. I also have his resume just in case you want more intel on him. Contact me for more information.”
The post included three screen shots of Mead, according to the complaint.
History of violence
“In a later post, Martinez wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Martinez added more in the comments on that post: “How can you gain your rights back by working with a tyrannical government? You can’t take down the palace using the kings tools. Name a people who have gained their rights back by being peaceful. Violence is what moves history.”
Martinez has a history of creating disturbances at the federal courthouse in 2017 while supporting the Bundy family during the criminal case stemming from an armed standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. In October 2018, he was found guilty of disorderly conduct, fined $500 and ordered to stay away from the courthouse.
The younger Bundy made headlines recently for anti-government actions in Idaho and elsewhere in the Northwest, as part of People’s Rights efforts to organize against coronavirus restrictions and other perceived government overreaches.
He told the Los Angeles Times that the new grassroots network had about 50,000 people in 35 states, and he described it as “neighborhood watch on steroids.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center suggested that Ammon Bundy is attempting to build a “network of right-wing, often anti-government activists” that can be mobilized quickly if needed.
Bundy also was regarded as one of the leaders of the deadly 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
A bill introduced in Carson City today would change the way the state’s two major political parties nominate presidential candidates — from the current caucus system to a primary in which voters in each party simply cast ballots, rather than have to listen to boring speeches and actually talk to other party members.
Assembly Bill 126 is sponsored by Assemblyman Jason Frierson and Assemblywomen Teresa Benitez-Thompson and Brittney Miller. The bill calls for the primaries to be held on the Tuesday immediately preceding the last Tuesday in January of each presidential election year, which would make Nevada the first nominating state. The bill also would allow same-day voter registration, which could lead to shenanigans such as “Operation Chaos,” suggested by Rush Limbaugh in 2008, calling for Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in Democratic primaries to keep her in the race and divide the Democrat Party.
“This legislation is yet another reason the Silver State deserves to be the first presidential nominating state in 2024,” Nevada State Democrat Party Chair William McCurdy II said in a statement posted by KOLO-TV in Reno. “We are a majority-minority state with a strong union population and the power structure of the country is moving West. I want to thank Speaker Frierson, who has devoted his career in the Assembly to make our voting process more expansive and equitable, for his help in securing Nevada’s spot on the national stage.”
Frankly, the state has no business telling state Republican and Democratic parties how to choose their nominees, nor should the taxpayers, many of whom are members of other parties or are independents, pay the millions of dollars it will take for the state and counties to conduct these primaries.
Columbia School of Law professor and election law expert Nathaniel Persily observed in 2008, “The move toward primaries has transferred power away from political parties to the media, who are then in a position to describe someone as having momentum.”
As I have said before, primaries turn serious political contests with serious consequences into beauty pageants and/or reality TV competition with ill-informed dullards from the lowest common denominator sitting on their couches and voting for the best quips and the worst gaffes occurring during their short attention spans.
Bring back the smoke-filled backrooms and let serious people with studied philosophies put forth the best candidates for each party. But if a party wants to conduct a primary, they should pay for it themselves and run it themselves and pay the consequences of getting pretty candidates with pretty slogans and an utter lack of competence and capability — witness the presidential candidates put forth by both major parties in 2020.
When this topic was broached in 2015, I noted, “No one, but no one has stepped back and asked the one vital question: What business is it of the Democrat-dominated state Legislature as to how or when any political party nominates its candidates?”
Not only is the Constitution silent on political parties, our Founders were actually disdainful of political parties.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789, “I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
Earlier, in 1780 John Adams wrote, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
In his farewell address in 1796 George Washington said:
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
Sounds downright prescient, doesn’t it?
Yes, a caucuses can be a drudge.
As I noted after the 2012 caucuses, the Republican presidential caucus wasn’t exactly a well-oiled machine. There were long delays, breakdowns in communication, misfires and miscues. In fact, 20 minutes into it I sent out a tweet or twit or whatever saying: “GOP organization — an oxymoron.”
As sure as worms after a rainstorm and just as there was in 2008 a bunch of people are wringing their hands and bemoaning the unseemliness and the rough-hewn nature of it all — people actually talking to each other about politics, poor turnout, delayed vote count results, etc., endless freaking out. They are saying, again, the raucous caucus should be replaced with a nice aseptic primary in which state paid bureaucrats and septuagenarian volunteers man the polls for 12 hours and the voters hide behind curtains to choose their party standard bearer.
In 2008 then-Democratic state Sen. Dina Titus promised to introduce a bill to conduct presidential primaries in Nevada. “This notion of neighbors getting together with neighbors to talk about politics, that’s just not Nevada,” she said. “What I found in my caucus is that the meeting didn’t lead to collaboration, cooperation and a good discussion. It led to hostility. It’s too complicated.” And she was a professor of political science — an oxymoron.
Bring back smoke-filled backrooms and let those willing and able to roll up their sleeves and scuffle with their neighbors to see whose principles and ideas come out victorious.
The thumb twiddlers over at the website Wallethub have put their experts with too much time on their hands to the task of answering authoritatively, definitively and mathematically the burning question: Which is the most sinful state in America?
Surprise. Surprise. Surprise.
Wallethub informs us that the most sinful state is Nevada — the hands down champion at gambling, drinking, carousing, jealousy, greed, lust and laziness.
To be precise, Wallethub informs us, “In order to determine the most sinful states in America, WalletHub compared the 50 states across seven key dimensions: 1) Anger & Hatred, 2) Jealousy, 3) Excesses & Vices, 4) Greed, 5) Lust, 6) Vanity and 7) Laziness.”
Most casinos per capita was given double weight on the 100-point scale. Pay no heed to the fact Nevada’s population is only about 3 million, while in non-COVID years it hosts more than 40 million gambling, drinking, greedy, lustful visitors from the other 49 states and from abroad.
Nevada ranked No. 1 in the greed category — which was measured by the number of casinos per capita, as well as gambling related arrests, charitable donations as a share of income, share of population with gambling disorders and persons arrested for embezzlement.
Nevada ranked 2nd for jealousy — which was measured by thefts per capita, identity thefts and frauds. That seems like an odd way to measure jealousy. Isn’t it more along the line of coveting your neighbor’s … whatever?
Nevada ranked 4th in the lust category — which was measured by the teen birth rate, google searches for vulgar sites, average time spent on those sites and the number of persons arrested for prostitution and vice per capita. Pay no heed to how many of those arrested for prostitution and vice might be from out of state or that it is legal in a number of counties.
At least we ranked only 29th in vanity — which was measured by the number of beauty salons per capita, google searches for plastic surgeons and spending on personal care products.
Wyoming was the least sinful state, but should be a given in a state where you spend all your time trying to keep out of the wind.
Nevada finishes last on so many state-by-state rankings. Now there is something to brag about. http://dlvr.it/RsqWdX
The social media application logo from Parler displayed on a smartphone in Arlington, Va., on July 2, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
An executive with Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives, said Monday that it will resume service with new management—coming about a month after Amazon Web Services removed its service from its servers.
Interim CEO Mark Meckler said in a news release that the company moved to a new server farm, saying that users should expect to be able to use the website on Monday.
As of 10 a.m. ET on Monday, the Parler website appeared to be accessible via desktop. Epoch Times staff members reported they could not access the desktop version of the site. Users posted on Twitter that they were able to use the mobile Parler app.
Meckler said that new users should be able to sign up for the service within a week or so.
“We are off of the big tech platform so that we can consider ourselves safe and secure for the future,” Meckler said in the release. He did not disclose what company is hosting Parler.
Elaborating, Meckler said that the firm is using artificial intelligence programs and human editors to investigate speech that violates its terms of service agreement.
“Cancel culture came for us and hit us with all they had. Yet we couldn’t be kept down. We’re back, and we’re ready to resume the struggle for freedom of expression, data sovereignty, and civil discourse. We thank our users for their loyalty during this incredibly challenging time,” said Dan Bongino, according to the release.
Meckler was tapped as the company’s CEO after the former executive, John Matze, was let go by the company several weeks ago.
Matze had announced: “On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision,” Fox News reported. “I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.”
Following the Nov. 3 election, Parler saw a significant spike in users as many moved from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms due to fears of censorship. In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s Twitter suspension, Google and Apple took action against Parler, and days later, Amazon terminated its hosting service agreement with the company.
Parler, in response, filed a lawsuit last month against Amazon, arguing that the company violated antitrust laws and colluded with other Big Tech firms to deplatform the website. The company alleged in a court filing that Amazon was primarily concerned with whether Trump would have moved to Parler, rather than alleged violations.
The Epoch Times reached out to Parler for comment.
