"In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that has happened in politics or religion."  -Karl Sagan

A professor at Cypress College in California berated her student for a pro-police view.  She said some nonsense -- and I mean real nonsense since it was false but had it been true it wouldn't have meant anything.

It got me thinking about dumb arguments I hear both for good and for bad things.

For example, a BLM supporter once murdered five Dallas police officers.  But this is not a good argument that BLM is evil.  No organization is accurately defined by its worst element.

“Mudslinging - In politics, anything bad the opponent says about our candidate; in contrast, when our candidate does this, it is called 'making a good point.”  –Richard Turner

“Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.”  -Walter Williams

Joe Biden wants to spend all of your money by giving it to people he wants to vote for Democrats in two years.  So unity!  How progress!

Meanwhile the Republican response was given by Tim Scott, a man with the charisma of lettuce.  Tim also explains that being followed around a store by a shopkeeper is "pain."  Am I the only one fed up with this kind of racial hyperbole?

"I don't blame only politicians. For the most part, they're only the instruments of a people who have growing contempt for our Constitution. You say, "Hold it, Williams. Now you've gone too far!" Check it out. How many votes do you think a James Madison-type senatorial candidate would get if his campaign theme was something like this: "Elect me to office. I will protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Because there's no constitutional authority for Congress spending on the objects of benevolence, don't expect for me to vote for prescription drugs for the elderly, handouts to farmers and food stamps for the poor. Instead, I'll fight these and other unconstitutional congressional expenditures"? I'll tell you how many votes he'll get: It will be Williams' vote, and that's it."  -Walter Williams

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/28/joe-bidens-speech-congress-read-full-transcript/4883244001/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/28/politics/tim-scott-response-transcript/index.html

“Too many in your state [Pennsylvania], as in this [New York], love pure democracy dearly. They seem not to consider that pure democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a thousand mad pranks and fooleries.” -John Jay

Clarence Thomas, as usual, makes sense to me when he says that the Eighth Amendment must not prohibit -- logically -- a mandatory sentence of life without parole for minors.  What a shame that he's the only one of the nine to make such an obvious point.

"It’s actually one of the more subtle and less talked about issues in socialized healthcare, that the government has a huge say in if and when you are worthy of treatment."  -Graham Carter

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”  -George Washington

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/desantis-signs-anti-riot-bill-vows-the-mob-will-not-win-the-day/

https://grahamcarter.substack.com/p/canadian-healthcare-vs-american-healthcare?r=9f8iq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter

"I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again and I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict."  -Chauvin Alternate Juror

A more straightforward case could hardly be presented to the left of a justified police shooting:  A young black woman was saved by a quick-thinking and accurate cop.

Nope.  Think again.  This case, I believe, illuminates who are simply anti-cop bigots who aren't to be taken seriously again unless they recant.

Literary rockstar Ibrahim Kendi says he doesn't know if he'll survive a police encounter even if he complies with the officer.  Uh... okay dude.  This is something akin to stolen valor.  Clearly these leftists have no idea what it actually means to fear for one's life, like millions and billions have, unfortunately, had to throughout the tragic history of humanity.

The left is, at least in the respects covered by a recent survey, far less well-informed about the incidence of police shooting unarmed blacks.  Sadly, I imagine almost zero of them are aware of that fact.

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,

    But life without meaning is the torture

    Of restlessness and vague desire—

    It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

—Edgar Lee Masters

https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf

“Everyone knows heavy drinkers can stop whenever they want to, so I never tried.”  -Scott Hanel

Defense Atty Andrew Branca says Chauvin should be granted a mistrial. That would have one nice effect: It would tell the mob that mobishness does not work.

I'd find Officer Chauvin Not Guilty on most counts since the state hasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin even caused Floyd's death.

Our current culture no longer finds addicts responsible for their horrible addictions. But I think they are.

"Another burglar demanded to know from me why he repeatedly broke into houses and stole VCRs. He asked the question aggressively, as if ‘the system’ had so far let him down in not supplying him with the answer; as if it were my duty as a doctor to provide him with the buried psychological secret that, once revealed, would in and of itself lead him unfailingly on the path of virtue. Until then he would continue to break into houses and steal VCRs (when at liberty to do so), and the blame would be mine. When I refused to examine his past, he exclaimed, ‘But something must make me do it!’ ‘How about greed, laziness, and a thirst for excitement?’ I suggested. ‘What about my childhood?’ he asked. ‘Nothing to do with it,’ I replied firmly. He looked at me as if I had assaulted him."  -Theodore Dalrymple

“When people are trying to see how far they can push things, that is the time to let them know that they have already pushed things too far.”  -Thomas Sowell

There are times, perhaps many times, when police should shoot fleeing suspects.  Why not?

Nancy Pelosi says that expanding SCOTUS might be necessary because of "the size of our country."  Oh.  Well if it only has to do with the size and not the political leanings of justices how about letting the next Republican nominate the next four?  If only we had a media to ask her these things.

An LA man who raped and stabbed a woman to death was let out of prison.  And within a month of being off parole, he stabbed another woman to death.  Where's the outcry?  Where's the million-dollar payment to the woman's family?

Hank Azaria apologized to the leftists howling that his voice-acting The Simpsons' Apu was racist.  Which makes me despise him.

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”  -Frederick Douglass

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/pelosi-growth-us-might-necessitate-expanding-size-supreme-court

https://www.foxla.com/news/elderly-murderer-paroled-after-decades-in-prison-accused-of-killing-another-person-after-his-release

This war was a revolution against the moral basis of civilization. It was conceived by the Nazis in conscious contempt for the life, dignity and freedom of individual man and deliberately prosecuted by means of slavery, starvation and the mass destruction of noncombatants' lives. It was a revolution against the human soul.

—Time, May 14, 1945

Joe Biden made a surprisingly good comment on the Minnesota riots.

Leftists presume because affirmative action hurts whites, it must help blacks.  It's not true.

Every time a sanctimonious leftist goes on TV to explain how we need to raise the minimum wage because those people just don't make enough money, I wish someone would tell him that his job has just been made illegal by people even more empathetic than himself.

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

—Will and Ariel Durant

"Diversity worship and multiculturalism are currency and cause for celebration at just about any college. If one is black, brown, yellow or white, the prevailing thought is that he should take pride and celebrate that fact even though, just as in the case of my eye color, he had nothing to do with it. The multiculturist and diversity crowd see race as an achievement. In my book, race might be an achievement, worthy of considerable celebration, only if a person was born white and through his effort and diligence became black."  -Walter Williams

United has announced half of their training class is going to be women/nonwhites.  And some people online believe setting racial quotas does not compromise output quality!

Ha!

Try running an NBA team and pledging you'll have only 13% black players.  Let me know what happens to quality when your team "looks like America."

"For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement."  -Walter Williams

“I am a conservative.  Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so.  Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.”  -Russell Kirk

"When you look over his criminal record, in my opinion, he shouldn’t ever have been out of prison to start with."  -Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins

"I am stating very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: *I* picked the cotton, *I* carried it to the market, and *I* built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing."  -James Baldwin

"Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America."  -Eric Hoffer

Joe Biden says the new GA law, which expands voter access according to The Washington Post, is "Jim Crow on steroids."

It's not.  Slavery is Jim Crow on steroids.

Families "of color" will receive payments in Oakland thanks to a city-launched project.

The Vermont governor tweeted an offer of vaccinations to black people before white people.  In what world is that not a massive news story captivating the nation??  Ours, evidently.