Month: July 2020

The Ant and the Grasshopper—2020 Version

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 5 Comments

Oh this is too funny! Don’t forget to laugh from time to time!

The other day I mentioned Aesop’s ‘Ant and Grasshopper’ in my post on being prepared. Reader Aileen had previously sent me the ‘modern’ version, but I only saw it this morning as I tried to take a stab at clearing my overflowing inbox.

The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different …

Two Different Versions …
Two Different Morals

OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

 

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’

Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the Black Lives Matter group singing, We shall overcome.

Then Reverend Al Sharpton has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper while he damns the ants. He later appears on MSNBC to complain that rich people do not care.

Former President Obama condemns the ant and blames Donald Trump, President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer exclaim in an interview on The View that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper , and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having; nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2020.

I’ve sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant Not a grasshopper!

Make sure that you pass this on to other ants.

Editor’s note: I always wonder who has the time and the talent to come up with stuff like this!

So Much for the So-called Fact-Checkers!

~ Ann Corcoran

The Capital Research Center posted a humorous piece a few days ago demonstrating how through simply parsing words, the Leftists at Snopes tried to wiggle out of their “fact-checking” that had concluded that convicted terrorists had not helped fund Black Lives Matter.

(I sure hope none of you rely on Snopes!)

Snopes Avoids Truth of BLM Ties to Terrorism by Torturing Language

In the public policy world, where part of CRC’s mandate is calling out the hypocrisies and fabrications of the other side—hopefully to effect change toward the better—there may be no better measure of success than when the other side is forced to start redefining terms to make their lies sound like truth.

Last week, Capital Research Center achieved that measure of success. Not since President Bill Clinton wrestled with the meaning of what “is” is has America witnessed such tortured verbal parsing.

A Terrorist’s Ties

Rosenberg is on the board of Thousand Currents https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/thousand-currents/

It began with a well-received June blog post from CRC President Scott Walter telling the tale of Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist who spent 16 years in a federal prison:

Rosenberg . . . started out as a member of the 1960s revolutionary group Weather Underground, graduated into even more violent, and arguably successful, forms of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s—including bombings at an FBI field office in Staten Island, the Navy Yard Officers’ Club in Washington, DC, and even the U.S. Capitol building, where she damaged a representation of the greatest of the Democrat defenders of slavery, John C. Calhoun.

At some point after President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence in 2001, Rosenberg landed on the board of Thousand Currents, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that fiscally sponsors the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Global Network Foundation.

Cut to July 14, when suspected less-than-unbiased fact-checking site Snopes decided it needed to set the record straight about Rosenberg and BLM. Snopes likely weighed in because CRC researchers had done several high-profile media appearances—including appearing on the Mark Levin Show—discussing the piece, and formidable cable news pundits such as Tucker Carlson covered the Rosenberg saga as well.

Poor Snopes. In trying to debunk the Rosenberg connection to Thousand Currents, they found that it was, in fact, all true. So, they consulted their Orwellian playbook and simply questioned the definition of the word “terrorism.”

Then they could rate the claim as only half true. Which is exactly what they did in an odd post (see below) that seems to move backward in time.

More here.

So while we are on the subject of fact-checking.  One of my local friends (Dick) sent me a youtube video (see it below before it disappears, he warned).

(You may have already seen it since it has been circulating since the beginning of the month.)

After watching it, the first thing I did was look for so-called ‘fact-checkers.’  I found two.

Perhaps the most interesting of the two was the one from the Associated Press which asserts this at the end of its fact check of ‘Insurgency-911.’

This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

Here’s more information on Facebook’s fact-checking program: https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536

LOL! Follow that link and see that Facebook uses ‘third party fact-checkers’ which immediately raises the question, so who are they and are they unbiased (of course not!)?

There is another ‘fact-check’ by highly suspect ‘Lead Story’s’ Eric Ferkenoff who is one of Facebook’s independent (ha! ha!) fact-checkers.

So this is what you do. Watch the video, read the fact-checks (consider how they parse words) and see what you think.

BTW, one of my favorite things the Left does is at the outset they say that we think the virus is a “hoax.”  By using that word they immediately signal readers/viewers not to believe what they are about to read or see.

I don’t think the virus itself is a hoax and I doubt you do either.  The question is whether it has been blown way out of proportion, and has the panic response been warranted.

Decide for yourself (but LOL! if you go to youtube to get the video, you will see that they try really hard to keep you from seeing it and that tells you all you need to know!)

On this last Saturday of July in the year from Hell, what are you doing to prepare?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 11 Comments

I don’t think preparing for the possibility that we could be visited by chaos and catastrophe this fall and winter is giving into the COVID panic.  Sensible people prepare for life changing events—they buy life insurance, change the batteries in smoke detectors and keep their automobile gas tanks full.

Do we call those people preppers?  We could because they are!

The warning signs have been right in front of our faces since about March!

 

The media has over the years depicted preppers as those who take to the back woods, lugging water from a nearby stream, and killing game to eat which they cook over spits in the ‘yard.’  But there is a wide range of possibilities for how much you want to prepare, and some of it is completely sane and sensible.

I had no interest this morning in writing one more crooks and criminals post that will only serve to feed your news reading addiction, because today I’m working on my to-do list for being prepared.

And, hey, look at it this way.  If conservative-minded people prep for the worst and the libs think the government is going to take care of them, guess who might survive riots, civil unrest and a pandemic.  You guessed it!

I just started reading a great book (well, I’ve only read a few chapters, so shouldn’t prematurely call it great) entitled “Start Prepping” by Tim Young.

The author discusses something that keeps most people from moving when faced with immediate or longterm danger.  He calls it ‘normalcy bias.’  He lists several examples of where people died because their brains just couldn’t go there—that they were in danger of being killed—and so they did nothing.

Case in point….

I recently read a novel about the Titanic and subsequently read a non-fiction book on the horrific sinking of the unsinkable ship.

The ship (on its maiden voyage!) sank in about two hours and 40 minutes from the time it struck an iceberg in the north Atlantic until it went down.

Initially the captain and officers didn’t think it was possible that they would lose the whole ship and many passengers did not move to lifeboats (there weren’t enough anyway) continuing to play cards and otherwise entertain themselves as normalcy bias overcame them.  At least 1,500 people went down with the ship.

Bad things do happen in history, after all, Rome fell, Nazi Germany nearly conquered all of Europe, the Twin Towers fell, is it so far-fetched that we are due for some rough times.

Heck we have had a little taste of it already.

Six months ago would you have dreamed that millions would lose their jobs and fat women would be punching each other in the aisles of supermarkets over toilet paper?

So what is the downside of learning how to protect your family?  A few people might think you are nutty—so what!

I suggest you stop reading this post, and look for a few good books and then head out to the grocery stores near you that are (still) open and begin getting in the things you would hate to live without even for a brief time—coffee maybe?

But, don’t forget water!  Author Tim Young says it is the most vital commodity for surviving even a few days.  Those of you living on ‘city water’ could find your water supply suddenly shut off for myriad reasons.

And, so what if you spend some time preparing, get in some food, water and other supplies and thank God nothing out of the normal happens later this year, then you can enjoy a few less shopping trips over the winter, eat some of what you have stored, and spend the extra free time on your political news reading addiction instead!

Finally, are you an ant or a grasshopper?  Aesop figured this out, oh, about six centuries before Christ.   Of course, one big difference now is that the ‘grasshoppers’ of today are mean SOBs often with weapons.  But that is another thing you need to be prepping for!

Biden Kisses Up To Muslim Political Activists; Wants More Islam Taught in Public Schools

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

I know it is an understatement, but this election matters like no other.

And, let me ask at the outset, why are so many of you pushing for schools to re-open? If you are truly a conservative, get your kids the hell out of there and use this opportunity (the COVID panic) to launch your own homeschool!

Sarsour can’t wait to pressure a Biden administration!

Before I give you a few snips about what the Dems’ presidential candidate Joe Biden said, perhaps the last few lines of the story are most telling.

Here is what Emgage Action conference attendee Linda Sarsour said of Biden according to The Christian Post:

“I choose Biden. But I choose him as my opponent in the White House,” Sarsour added. “I want him to defeat Trump so we can mobilize our movements to hold him accountable and push him to do and be better. We can’t do that with Trump.”

 

Joe Biden wants Islam taught more in schools, decries ‘rise in Islamophobia’

Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden said Monday that he wants schools in the U.S. to teach more about Islam and claimed that there is an “unconscionable rise in Islamophobia” under the Trump administration.

“I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith,” Biden, a Catholic, said during his video remarks played at the “Million Muslim Votes” summit organized by the Muslim American political action committee Emgage Action.

“I wish we talked about all the great confessional faiths. [Islam is] one of the great confessional faiths. What people don’t realize is … we all come from the same root here, in terms of our fundamental basic beliefs. I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity for being engaged, for committing to action this November.”

Emgage Action boasts of being the “political home for Muslim Americans” and endorsed Biden in April after initial endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the Democratic presidential primary.

“Donald Trump has fanned the flames of hate in this country, across the board, through his words, his policies, his appointments, his deeds and he continues to fan those flames,” the 77-year-old Biden, who served as vice president under former President Barack Obama, said. “Under this administration, we have seen an unconscionable rise in Islamophobia, including kids being bullied at school and hate crimes in our communities.”

[….]

Despite calling out administration officials he accused of being Islamophobic, Biden mentioned nothing in his speech about confronting the presence of radical Islamic extremist groups that are responsible for the killing of thousands around the world.

Biden praised Emgage Action for its effort in getting 1 million Muslim voters to show up to vote in November.

[….]

He went on to say that “this is the most important election in modern American history.”

[….]

Biden vowed to “end the Muslim ban on day one.” Biden also vowed to work with Congress to pass hate crime legislation and legislation to end racial and religious profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.

[….]

Biden’s comments on wanting to see more Islam taught in public schools come as many public school districts around the country already include units on Islam in high school and, in some cases, middle school social studies class.

[….]

“Biden has a lot of work to do to win the hearts of young Muslim Americans who were core to Bernie’s campaign,” Sarsour wrote in a Twitter thread. “They are anti-war, pro-Palestinian, pro-Abolition of ICE & support defunding of police. They care about Rohingya, Uighur Muslims, Kashmir, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen & Syria.”

“I choose Biden. But I choose him as my opponent in the White House,” Sarsour added. “I want him to defeat Trump so we can mobilize our movements to hold him accountable and push him to do and be better. We can’t do that with Trump.”

There is much more, including the fact that Rep. Ilhan Omar was there (not a surprise).

Surprise! Tyson Foods Lied about Extent of Chinese Virus Infections at Iowa Meat Plants

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

If you have been a follower of my other blog, Refugee Resettlement Watch, for the last dozen years you know that BIG MEAT is a big topic there as the global meat giants including Cargill, JBS Swift, Smithfield Foods, and Tyson Foods among others have a voracious appetite for cheap immigrant labor.

You also know that US Refugee Resettlement agencies are all too eager to help them continue to receive a steady flow of refugees (before Trump that is!).

Trump and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds can play kissy-face, but its Republican politicians like her who turn a blind eye to the meatpackers that in my opinion are nearly as bad as the Leftwingers!

So this story does not surprise me, but figured I would post it here at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ in case some of you don’t already know about BIG MEAT and refugees. And, because ‘Frauds and Crooks’ is the appropriate place to post this news!

Of course Leftwing media reports like this one are meant to skewer the Republican governor and the President, but after years of watching the global meat and poultry industry destroy American towns, I personally am not going to gloss over the fact that Republicans like this are destroying our culture and economy by sucking up to global companies.

Just a reminder, it was then Senator Jeff Sessions who publicly fingered meatpackers as major drivers of amnesty and more immigration to the heartland.

From the Associated Press:

Outbreak at Iowa pork plant was larger than state reported

 

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The first confirmed coronavirus outbreak at an Iowa meatpacking plant was far more severe than previously known, with more than twice as many workers becoming infected than the state Department of Public Health told the public, newly released records show.

The department announced at a May 5 news conference that 221 employees at the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Columbus Junction had tested positive for COVID-19.

But days earlier, Tyson officials told Iowa workplace safety regulators during an inspection that 522 plant employees had been infected to their knowledge, documents obtained through the open records law show.

A dozen of the plant’s roughly 1,300 workers were believed to have been hospitalized by then, and two died after contracting the virus, Tyson officials told the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The discrepancy adds to mounting questions that the state health department faces about its handling of public information during the pandemic. The department last week forced out its longtime spokeswoman, who said she was ousted for pushing hard to fulfill media requests and that the agency’s delays and scripted talking points were embarrassing.

The agency has also faced criticism for seeking to charge thousands of dollars for open records requests and for not routinely announcing outbreaks in workplaces, among other things. The department said it has “gone above and beyond to provide up-to-date and comprehensive information” to the public.

The early April outbreak in Columbus Junction was the first of several at meatpacking plants across the state as the virus spread through crowded workplaces.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds took a pro-industry approach to managing those outbreaks in Iowa, the top pork-producing state. She worked with executives to continue production even as thousands of workers became infected and some died, and she applauded President Donald Trump’s order to keep such plants open throughout the country.

More here.

Changing America by changing the people ….

See Reynolds says she wants more refugees in Iowa, here.

And see here that she received campaign donations from Tyson Foods lobbyist.

As I have said repeatedly, find a local source of meat and poultry and stop buying products from global corporations changing America for the almighty buck!