It's Ironic ... Or Something

Savor the irony -- by which, I mean hypocrisy -- of Democrats and other leftists engaging in hair-on-fire histrionics over the Republican governor of Texas attempting to close the border of his State to *unlawful* entry by non-citizens as compared to the response just a couple of years ago when a number of Democratic governors closed the borders of their States to the *lawful* entry of citizens. Consider their silence regarding the present unlawful interference against lawful interstate commerce by the mayor of New York city and governors of NY and NJ.

When Is a Joke Not a Joke?

 When the joke highlights the hypocrisy of Democrats and other leftists, obviously.

The other day,'The Babylon Bee' put up a piece with the headline, "Trump Promises Vivek An Administration Position Running The White House 7-Eleven"

1) 'The Babylon Bee's' joke *is* funny, it's very funny;
2) The joke isn't *about* Ramaswamy; it's a multi-layered joke (which is why it's so funny) *about* the Democratic Party's inherent racism and hypocrisy about both race and Trump;
2a) Recall, it was Joe Buy-den who said: "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."
3) Had it been 'The Onion' -- a leftie satire site -- or the writers for Steven Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel who had been witty enough to make this joke, no one would be complaining about it, because everyone would understand it to be a one-dimensional "joke" accusing Trump of being a racist;
4) Those "conservative" who are offended by the joke have thereby outed themselves as not really conservatives, for they are operating under the false and hypocritical premises of the Democrats and other leftists.

Matt Walsh: The Babylon Bee Made A Vivek Ramaswamy Joke. It Didn't Go Well.

Matt Walsh laughing about being the subject of a BB joke: Babylon Bee Trolls Matt Walsh Before Easter Weekend

EDIT: Here is a comment posted to Tim Pool's video about this pseudo-controversy --

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I worked in banking years and years ago. As you entered a new account, you would turn to the customer the screen to choose their profession. I was working with a Indian man, and I turned and it happened to be starting on the list as "Convenient Store Clerk" and he was offended and upset. So he wanted the manager and the manager apologized and said it was random and nothing having to do with him being Indian. So he calmed down and choose "Convenient Store Clerk" as that was his job. lol

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Now, *why* was the Indian guy in this anecdote offended? Because he considered being a convenience store clerk to be beneath his dignity ... even though that is exactly what he was.

Had *I* been that man, I'd have found it so hilarious that I'd have been laughing all day.  But then, I don't think that any honest work is beneath me.  Even though I was a well-paid IT professional for most of my adult life, there were times between IT jobs (and, to be blunt, I wasn't actively looking for a new IT job, as I *hate* interviewing) when I have worked menial jobs, such as being a janitor in a steel mill.

Do You *Really* Want a Damascus Road Experience?

 I've stated this before --

It's clear, from the typical atheistic demand for evidence of the reality of God, coupled with a total inability to define what they themselves would accept as being such evidence, intersected with their consistent refusal to engage in good-faith discussion when a "theist" attempts to provide evidence even in such a situation, that what the too-typical atheists are demanding is that God must be a Cosmic Soul Rapist before they will acknowledge him.  While almost none of them will put it this bluntly, the underlying and hidden premise from which they are operating is: "If God exists, then he wouldn't allow me to deny that he exists".

Just now, the thought comes to me --

At a less absolutist level, the not quite so rabid internet atheist is saying, "Unless God grants me a 'Damascus Road' experience, comparable to that of Paul, I will not believe in nor worship him" ... even as they overlook how that experience took over Paul's life and ultimately led to his unjust execution.

Steps to Converting to Nuclear Power

 You can know that the "Save The Earth" types are hypocrites and that their "concern" for the environment is a mask for their true goals by the fact that they refuse to countenance the generation of electricity via nuclear power.

0) "Green/Renewable" energy is a pipe-dream, at best, but mostly a scam with multiple objectives;

1) Battery-powered cars will almost certainly never meet our needs;

2) Even *if* battery technology does ever advance to the point that battery-powered cars could meet our needs, that electricity has to be generated somehow (*cough* natural gas/oil/coal *cough*), and the grid must be made robust enough to get that huge increase in electrical demand to where the demand is;

3) THUS, if our society is to pivot away from burning hydrocarbons to meet our transportation needs, battery-powered vehicles will never truly be the answer;

4) One potential answer -- and for which we already have most of the necessary technology -- is to burn hydrogen, rather than hydrocarbons, in our vehicles;

5) However, burning hydrocarbons to produce the hydrogen to provide our transport needs merely wastes hydrocarbons; that is, burning natural gas/oil/coal to produce electricity to use the electricity to produce hydrogen would inefficiently use even more hydrocarbons than we currently use to get the same result;

6) And this is where the nuclear generation of electricity could solve the issue that the greenies and other leftists pretend to be so concerned about -- nuclear power plants could both power the grid to our homes and businesses *and* power the plants which generate the hydrogen we burn in our newfangled cars, and the existing infrastructure for the distribution and sale of gasoline can be converted to distribute and sell hydrogen fuel. 

EDIT (2024/03/11):

Sabine Hossenfelder: Hydrogen Will Not Save Us. Here's Why.

On Internet Scams

For every Nigerian Prince trying to get access to your life's savings, there are 100 YouTubers doing ad-reads for scam products or services.  I'll try to explain the scamishness of the broad categories I can think of at the moment:

GOLD -- gold is not an investment. At best, gold is a hedge -- but only if you actually possess the physical gold.  Far more commonly, gold is a gamble, a speculation, and the more-so when all you have in hand is a piece of paper saying that you own some hypothetical amount of hypothetical gold in some hypothetical vault hypothetically somewhere.  And when do the big boy speculators ever let "the little guy" win at the game of speculation?  The whole point of speculative bubbles is to get you, "the little guy", to voluntarily dump the contents of your pockets into their pockets.

THE INTERNATIONAL ART MARKET -- The international art market is a massive money-laundering scheme.  Perhaps that bubble is about to burst, and so the people running it are trying to entice *you* into being the sucker left holding the (now empty) bag.  Even if those ad-reads to entice you to "invest" in the international art market were legit, at best you would have a speculation, not an investment.

DECLARE YOURSELF A LORD/LAIRD OR LADY -- You, Gentle Reader, are almost certainly a citizen of the  American Republic; thus, the very idea of declaring yourself to be a lord/laird or lady ought to be repugnant to you, even were this ad-read not a scam.  You do not become a laird or lady because someone enticed you to waste good money for a piece of paper claiming that you are the "owner" of a square foot of land in Scotland.

FAMOUS JAPANESE STEEL KNIVES -- With these scams, at least you get something of some value, however under-performing, in return.  Admittedly, the knives are over-hyped and over-priced; but at least the scammy ad-read doesn't claim that they are an investment.

MEN'S SKIN-CARE PRODUCTS -- Again, over-hyped and over-priced, but at least you get something of some sort of value in return.. However, what are you, some sort of sissy?  Are you going to use "foundation" next?  You know, one major reason that women often look older than men of the same age is all that shit which they slather over their faces from the time they are pre-teens.  That, and smoking -- a higher proportion of women than men smoke, and smoking dramatically ages one's skin.  By all means, take care of your health, including of your skin ... but these products will help neither your overall health nor the health of your skin. And, they're wildly expensive to boot.

DOG FOOD ADDITIVES -- Again, over-hyped and over-priced. If, as the ad-read asserts, typical dog-food, such as you are currently feeding you dog, is "dead" and bereft of nutrients, how is it that your dog hasn't already ascended to that Great Kennel In The Sky?

"QUALITY" MEATS and MEAL INGREDIENTS SHIPPED TO YOUR DOOR -- Once again, over-hyped and over-priced, but at least you get something with some degree of value for the money you wasted.  It's just meat, and it's just ingredients such as you can buy at any grocery store ... but with far more packaging to be thrown away and more shipping costs (i.e. a higher "carbon footprint").  You care about the environment, don't you, Hippy?

JOB STACKING -- "Job stacking" is the scam which claims to teach you how to successfully "work" multiple full-time jobs from home without getting "caught by corporate overlords".  Think about this: if you know you are not doing anything wrong, why would you be afraid of being caught by "corporate overlords"? AND, if you are a moral "influencer", why would you lend you name to this sort of scam?

So, what is my over-arching point? It is that to do these ad-read is to lend one's name and reputation to these scams -- it is to attempt to scam one's audience on behalf of these scammers.  "I need to assure a steady income" will no more withstand God's scrutiny than will "I was just following orders".