Taking another significant initiative, President Trump signed an Executive Order yesterday ordering the US Department of the Interior to take immediate steps to reduce American dependence on imports of critical minerals. Thanks to our incompetent Media, most of us were unaware until now how serious the problem was.
Critical Minerals are used in a variety of high-tech applications. The US Geological Survey lists 23---mostly rare---minerals as 'critical' because of their applications in sophisticated communications, computers, and other high-speed technologies. According to an Interior Department analysis released this week, the US is now 100% dependent on foreign imports for 20 of these 23 elements.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke today issued a notice to the USGS to report within 60 days to determine American capacity for production of these substances and to suggest how they may be implemented. Some of these minerals used to be produced here like Cobalt, which is used in corrosion-resistant alloys. We are also 100% dependent on Lithium, used extensively in batteries and also medicinally. Graphite, another 100% import, is essential for steel production and is used industrially to manufacture lubricants. Automotive braking systems use graphite as well.
China is the major exporter of these minerals.
Trump's move was applauded universally across national mining, engineering, and investment sectors. Andrew Cosgrove, Bloomberg's Senior Mining and Energy Analyst said "This initiative will open up new avenues of growth. Companies reliant on these minerals will be less like to outsource or seek investment in foreign properties."
Most importantly from the national interest standpoint, critical mineral independence will prevent severe disruptions that could result from national emergencies like war or terrorist attacks. It will also strengthen innovation by keeping Research and Development closer to home.
Klaus Schultz, who prepared the USGS Report, announced too that the report contains forecasts of future requirements which can be updated as technology or production needs change. This will ensure that the US faces no critical shortages in the future.
Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources said: "A country blessed with abundant natural resources shouldn't be mineral-dependent and vulnerable. This move addresses an economic and security threat that has festered across Administrations for far too long. I look forward to continuing work with the Trump Administration to reverse this disturbing trend."
Bishop is absolutely right. It is yet another failing of the Deep State that so vital an issue was ignored and denied for so long.
As we've probably all seen over the years, the Whacko Left Wing has an especial dislike for the Christmas Season. While others are joining with family and friends. exchanging gifts and celebrating; Leftists are typically shaming us. They point to the drug addicts and street bums (i.e. the 'homeless') and try to shame us for enjoying big Christmas Dinners. They shame us for giving gifts to those about whom we care, when the money could have been spent on one of their crackpot causes. They protest Christmas displays and ladies wearing new fur coats; they block traffic and chain themselves to store doors, etc.
And the First Family is a natural target of their wrath because they take Christmas seriously and encourage others to do the same. Ivanka Kushner---attractive, cultured, successful, and a mother---is a natural target of the kind of bitterness and envy that drives motivates most Leftists. Thus when Ivanka paid a surprise visit to a high school in Norwalk, Connecticut, some parents were outraged that they weren't notified in advance so that their young wards wouldn't have to endure personal exposure to a Trump.
Ivanka was accompanied by the CEO of IBM Corporation---who incidentally was the one who invited her to visit. IBM funds a program at this school which allows students to take college-level technology courses for high-school credit. News 12 New Jersey reported that some parents 'who oppose the President's views' took their students home in protest.
Actually, in September, President Trump signed an Executive Order increasing funding for programs just like these. So what were these people opposing? Well, reading through the comments on News 12's website, we get a glimpse of their mentality. One dolt named Ed Miller snorted at a Trump supporter: "What evidence do you have that she's caring and smart?" and at another: "So you think it's an honor to be in a room with someone who had an ongoing sexual relationship with her own father when in her teens?" and another: "Who knows what really happened there since her meeting was in secret?"
Another nutcase named Marsha Garn opined: "Ivanka was only thinking of herself. It never crossed her mind that she might be doing something wrong or offensive by not notifying parents that she planned to meet with their children."
A kook called 'Binary Kilowatt' added: "All you supporters forget she's a Trump. The very name alone sparks disgust. The entire family has had dealings with the Italian Mafia... I wouldn't want my kids anywhere near these POS".
While these things were happening in Connecticut, Trash-Culture pop star 'Eminem' released a new Christmastide ditty which fantasizes about finding Ivanka's body in the trunk of a car. Left-Wing critics actually complained that the song was misogynist, without a word of complaint about threatening the Presidential Family.
These are the kinds of people who'd now be running things if Hillary Clinton had won last year. Which gives us something else to be thankful for at Christmas.
A Red Pill cultist who writes under the name of Artisanal Toad is at it again. When we last encountered this illustrious fellow, he was explaining to us how rape, polygamy, and domestic violence are really Christian Virtues. Now he's at it again, this time explaining how Feminism has supposedly corrupted Biblical translations. He says that he favors the New American Study Bible---which was first published in 1971. Presumably, Feminist translations must include the Vulgate; which St. Jerome translated in the 5th Century.
The source of his translations, however, isn't too important since Mr. Toad is clearly picking whatever passages of Scripture are necessary to support his own dogmas. Here is a specimen of his scholarship from his last article, Feminism and Bible Translation:
"A virgin has no agency. She is married to any eligible man who takes her virginity whether she consents to marriage or not. She may be forced into a marriage that she does not desire and does not consent to by her father, as a free woman, or she may be denied marriage by her father. She may be sold into permanent slavery by her father to be the concubine of a free man (a slave-wife) or to be the wife of another slave. Or she may be raped into marriage against her will and over her objections."
Which statement is liberally salted with Biblical passages taken completely out of context. It doesn't seem to occur to Mr. Toad that everything he just described is completely illegal under even under the secular laws of Christian countries. We haven't had legal slavery in the United States since 1863 and rape has never been legal here. Paternal permission for marriage is only required when the affianced bride is legally a minor. Not a single one of these laws has the slightest thing to do with Feminist policy.
Aside from that, it is singular that Christ speaks of the Church Universal as 'His Bride' and of Christians singularly as 'His Children'. Nowhere in the New Testament is marriage spoken of in any sense but monogamous. When Christ speaks of a husband and wife becoming 'one flesh' this is obviously impossible to reconcile with polygamy. The Catechism goes into some explanation of this passage and concludes:
"Polygamy is not in accord with the moral law. Conjugal communion is radically contradicted by polygamy; this in fact directly negates the plan of God which was revealed from the beginning because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women who in Holy Matrimony give themselves with a love that is total and therefore unique and exclusive." (p.2387)
This passage refers thus to everything that is wrong with Mr. Toad's (and most of the Red Pillian's) exegeses. Everything that Toad and other Red Pills argue revolves around being contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women." While Toad claims to be anti-Feminist, his teachings are really much closer to Radical Feminism than to Christianity on this point of equal dignity. Equal dignity of the sexes is the same as Gender Polarity, which we've written about on many occasions.
Toad unwittingly confesses that his doctrine is Male Supremacy when he writes further that: "The issue here is one of authority....who has authority over the virgin? Only the father or the betrothed husband. There can be no one else with authority over her."
And what of Christ's authority over her? Toad claims that rape is a moral act and the Catechism addresses this as well:
"Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person...Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It is always an intrinsically evil act." (p.2356)
Therein lies one of the metaphysical contradictions of Red Pill Doctrine. If women have no moral agency, then they are not accountable to God for their actions and therefore not responsible for them, nor capable of sin. The Red Pills can only argue that God gave man dominion over women in the same way that He gave Adam dominion over the creatures of the earth. But nobody holds lower animals morally responsible for their action. A lion who kills and eats a farmer's sheep is only being a lion---he's not a thief nor a murderer.
And so again the Red Pill appeal to Scripture falls flat. Like most of their false teachings, their notions of marriage can't withstand even the light of human reason, let alone the Revelations of Christian truth.
Midway through the month of December, the Whacko Left has gone into full meltdown mode---even to the point where suspicion has arisen against them for causing the railroad disaster in Olympia, Washington today---good men still have been busy doing good things.
For example, most of us probably haven't heard that the US Forest Service and a group of private conservation groups announced the beginning of one of the largest game preserve projects in recent history. The project is called Mid-South Rebirth and involves the entire Cumberland Plateau region of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky.
The project is aimed at restoring the regional habitat which has fallen into neglect for nearly 20 years. Beginning with the Clinton Administration, environmental extremists largely abandoned forest management. The last three administrations also closed national forests to public access; a policy which the Trump Administration recently reversed.
On the Cumberland Plateau, an epidemic of Bark Beetles wiped out the native Short-Leaf Pine at the end of the 20th Century. Non-native species invaded---taking with them many of the larger fauna of the area. The Wild Turkey population was especially hard-hit.
But the new project aims to clear non-native trees and replant the Plateau with the native pine. New Administration policies will allow Forestry officials to take measures to eradicate the beetles, should they return. And the area is to be restocked with Wild Turkeys.
Past bad management also caused wildfires on the Plateau---as is currently happening in California. The renovation project is building fire-breaks and practicing controlled burns. Fire Prevention was also discouraged in the past.
Environmentalists educated in Left-Wing universities were taught the false theory that forest management---and human intervention in general---negatively impacted the ecosystem. This theory is based on a laissez-faire attitude towards Nature: the idea that Nature balances itself if left alone. This fits into the general Leftist schemata that Civilization itself is a negative thing.
Organizations like The National Wild Turkey Federation is made up mostly of outdoor sportsmen; and they have been the lead in organizing the project. Conservationism as it originally developed was the product of men who spent time in the outdoors, like President Theodore Roosevelt, author John Burroughs, and others. Care for the environment has always been a Conservative position. People have forgotten that the last century's last Republican Administrations: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush Sr. passed most of the strongest anti-pollution laws which cleaned up polluted waterways and urban smog in Liberal-run cities like New York and Los Angeles. President Trump is continuing the trend.
The project is also expected to create new jobs in an area badly in need of them. When completed, about 30,000 acres will be reopened to outdoor sportsmen and tourists.
Week 15 was another disaster for the NFL. Their much-hyped Game of the Week between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots drew this much attention:
But the real highlights came last week when street thugs representing Seattle and Jacksonville respectively, actually had a riot on the field near the end of the game. We can't speak for Jacksonville, but Seattle residents are accustomed to riots---they have them on a regular basis Downtown---and apparently the Seahawks decided to bring local Trash Culture to Florida.
What started the melee was a dirty, cheap-shot hit on a Jacksonville player during what was an end-of-game display of sportsmanship. For those unfamiliar with football, it is customary late in the game for the team who has the lead to run dead-ball plays if they are on offense. The custom is an old one. It's purpose is---as gentlemen and sportsmen once did---to refrain from beating down a defeated opponent and as a way of honoring a game well-played. But in postmodern thug-culture, showing magnanimity is for chumps; a graciously accepting a loss simply isn't done.
Thus, when the Jacksonville team ran a dead-ball play, Seahawks' thug Michael Bennett charged into an offensive lineman who wasn't expecting to get hit. Not only that, but Bennett went for the man's legs. That could have crippled him, but fortunately there was no injury. This is perfectly in keeping with Bennett's character, as we can see from this photo of him in Las Vegas last September:
He's the one on the ground, BTW.
At any rate, two Seahawks players were ejected from the game. One jughead named Quinton Jefferson decided to carry the fight into the bleachers:
Jefferson couldn't get his 300-lb. bulk over the guardrail to beat up people half his size. Oh well.
To make matters worse for the Seahawks that day, Malik McDowell--- a defensive lineman currently on injured reserve---wound up in jail after a fight in the parking lot outside a bar. McDowell allegedly scuffled with police officers, accusing them of brutality and singling him out. It should be noted that McDowell is 6'6" tall and a 300-pounder himself.
Michael Bennett, incidentally, is paid $6.5 million annually. Jefferson makes about $1 million and McDowell recently got a $3 million signing bonus in addition to the $4.4 million 4-year contract that he received. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fined Jefferson a little over $9,000 with no additional punishment. Bennett wasn't fined at all. The Seahawks team was fined $52,000; about what their degenerate billionaire owner Paul Allen spends on a dinner party.
Are fans and taxpayers finally fed up with this nonsense? Let's hope that this season is the beginning of the end of the NFL as we now know it.
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission reversed an Obama-Era decision on so-called 'Net Neutrality'. Granted, this was a very controversial issue which was complicated by the partisan propaganda put out by special interests on both sides. FCC Chairman Pai explained the issue quite succinctly shortly after the Thanksgiving Recess. As usual, the Corporate Media ignored his speech and spent the day whispering sexual innuendos against their enemies.
Even some of the FCC Commissioners who voted against the repeal admitted that Obama's Net-Neutrality Policy had been a failure. Jessica Rosenworcel, one of these commissioners, proposed to postpone the vote until State and Federal Agencies had finished investigating corruption in the process. That detail didn't make it the MSM either, despite her having said so at a press conference with the New York State Attorney-General and her speech posted on a press release on the FCC website. Commissioner Rosenworcel admitted that, since Obama instituted Net Neutrality in 2015, not one public hearing had been held, as promised. Over a million public comments were discovered to be fraudulent (over half of them had foreign e-mail accounts); and at least 50,000 known consumer complaints were missing.
Ending Net Neutrality isn't going to change things much for most of us. Basically, we're going back to Internet regulatory policies that were in effect up to 2014. But the Radical Left went into a collective outburst of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They not only gathered and rioted outside of FCC Headquarters, they phoned in fake bomb threats and made other threats of violence against FCC members. The Gateway Pundit documented several hours' worth of Leftist Twitter-feeds calling for Ajit Pai's death and expressing hopes of his imminent assassination.
These weren't simply isolated incidents or people venting their frustrations, either. On November 30th, Chairman Pai issued a Press Release condemning the death threats being received by Congressional supporters of the repeal. On the same day, authorities arrested a man in Syracuse, New York for threatening to assassinate Congressman John Katko and his entire family!
"If you do not support Net Neutrality, I will find you and your family and I will kill you all." the Anarchist said on the Congressman's voicemail, "Do you understand? I will literally find all of you and your progeny and wipe them of the face of the earth."
This is all very reminiscent of the threats of and actual violence against Federal officials during the unsuccessful attempt to repeal Obamacare. Chances are that none of these radicals understand Net Neutrality any more than they understand Obamacare. They operate in such a fog of blind rage that they will lash out in any direction. Senator Rand Paul, for example, was nearly shot playing baseball and had five ribs broken while mowing his lawn within the last six months alone.
It's time to get a grip on reality here. Personally, I never noticed the slightest effects on my life before or during Net Neutrality, nor am I or 99.9% of other Americans going to notice now that it's gone again. Internet Freedom---we're told by the Whacko Left---is now dead. And they've been telling us so over the Internet since their freedom to do so was supposedly revoked last Thursday.
While the Corporate Media has been spending the entire Autumn witch-hunting politicians (and even men within its own ranks) for being suspected heterosexuals, the so-called 'progressive' Left is launching a new program to help steer future generations from sexual normalcy. It's called Drag Queen Story-Time and it's all the rage among effete Liberal parents.
The politically-correct Indy Star profiled the program's debut at the Indianapolis Public Library. Lavishing praise on a trio of characters called Halle Pino, Blair St. Clair, and Ida Kay---all three adult males in dresses and wigs---perverted reporter Domenica Bongiovanni compared the drag queens to real-life superheroes. Taking the bait, Mr. Pino said: "When we put on drag, that is a superhero costume because it is an extension of our existing personality." In the past, people who imagined themselves to be somebody else were called psychotics. But that was then, this is now.
Stephanie Lane, who's in charge of planning library activities for children, said: "The mission of Drag Queen Story Time is to promote literacy, diversity, and artistic expression. I want kids to experience just the fun of being around drag queens; their style, their creativity, and their individuality."
Does this story sum up the 'Obama Legacy', or what? How much would we wager that a priest reading Bible stories in this library would be a matter of outrage to these sickos?
The head librarian at the Indianapolis Public Library is Jackie Nytes, a former City Councilwoman. She pockets a $154,000-a- year salary for using Indiana tax dollars to subsidize drag queens and give them access to children.
Indianapolis isn't the only city doing this, either. There's actually a website that trendy public officials and drugged-out parents can consult to bring transvestites to their local libraries. Their website features a testimonial from Judy Zuckerman, the Director of Youth and Family Services at the Brooklyn Public Library: "Drag Queen Story Hour is a fun and important program that celebrates diversity in the way that children may dress and act. It encourages children to look beyond gender stereotypes and to embrace unfettered self-expression. DQSH encourages acceptance of differences and helps prevent bullying while providing an enjoyable literary experience."
Nota Bene, the sections of this statement that we've highlighted. This is a roundabout way of saying that the purpose of the program is to groom and indoctrinate pre-pubescent children into the homosexual lifestyle.
Psychologists of the last century explained scientifically what our forefathers knew by experience and reasoning. Before the age of puberty, a human being is developing sexually, in accordance with his or her gender. This is normal biology, to which we have evolved civilized social norms to help this development into healthy channels. Introducing perverted sexual concepts to children, before they've reached their early teen years, can have devastating psychological effects. Children in the 6-10 year age-range are especially vulnerable. The scientific reasons for this are complex, but well-established. Briefly summarized: it's normal for children at this age to exhibit homosociality---preferring friends of their own sex and avoiding the opposite sex. It's actually a form of primitive, or instinctual, bonding that helps to shape appropriate gender-specific attitudes that later mature into preparation for monogamous bonding with someone of the other gender. One can see at this stage how a child's inability to reason deductively (that ability begins about age 12) combined with a homosexual experience can easily break that cycle. It's a short path from homosociality to homosexuality---and even shorter for those who can't understand where the path is going.
Most homosexuals became that way at those ages. Some because they were sexualized; others, because they never made a psychological transition from late childhood to early adulthood. That's what programs like Drag Queen Story Hour will actually accomplish: and it's highly likely that its promoters have this in mind as a goal. This is why Russia, for example, has the wise policy of keeping this kind of perversion away from impressionable minds.
Los Angeles and San Francisco also have similar programs. Taxpayers in these states should really start putting their public libraries under a microscope, because corrupting children wasn't part of the original Public Library Movement---to say the least.
