The recent convention of the Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) became a microcosm of the inanity of identity politics found in forums ranging from politics to higher education. Participants were given familiar “equity cards” as literal card-carrying members of groups demanding preferred treatment. The problem is when one identity group demands preference over another. The result, as seen in Winnipeg, was calamity and quickly became comedy.
Many in education have long pushed equity cards and “identity markers” to get students to define themselves by their race, disability, gender, or other criteria. Even computer science teachers are told to tailor their lessons to identity markers. Such markers are treated as essential to creating “Identity safe classrooms.”
There are even DEI games where children are encouraged to “match” their identity groups.
At the NDP convention, people were given equity cards to give preference to certain identities over groups such as males or whites. The problem is that the cards create an entitlement that can clash with others’ claims to speak first.
The cards were based on identity categories, including gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQ+ status, and Indigenous status. You were supposed to be able to jump ahead of others because of your priority identity.
One video shows a person holding up their green gender equity card to claim the right to speak first as another woman waves her pink race equity card to speak. What followed were objections to people not yielding to those with greater priority or right to speak with one noting that cards for people who identify as Black women “have no value outside of this space.”
Then there was the speaker who called out another delegate for the sin of misgendering the speaker who identified as “non-binary.”
The collapse of the equity house of cards is due to the inherent myth that identity politics produces equity. It is, in fact, a separate system of privilege and entitlement. It is used to marginalize other voices in the name of amplifying other voices.
The greatest impact is to balkanize a population or party rather than emphasize common identities. The alternative is to enforce uniform treatment of any speakers based on such novel devices as a line to speak.
Under this cutting edge approach, people are guaranteed to speak in the order in which they line up to speak. It may be a radical experiment for the NDP, but it has been shown to have some success in other areas.
The leaders of Iran’s Islamic Republic crowed on Thursday that they have begun to achieve their goal of regime change in the U.S.
“First Kristi Noem, and now Pam Bondi,” the official Iranian statement read. “The dominoes are falling one by one.”
Iran said that, although the US claims Donald J. Trump is still in power, “His speech last night did not prove that he is still alive.”
-The same kind of cheap shots we see from anonymouses on this blog.
Why do you keep writing about those who use Anonymous when you are identifying yourself only as Anonymous? (Oh Lord, I hope I don’t show up as Anonymous)
Are you that dumb pal? You’re anonymous too. So “booglheim” that’s synonymous with booger eater right?
” anonymouses “?
You dumb a$$, anonymous is an adjective, can’t be pluralized. Using it as a noun shows stupid.
No they did not. You lie. Those quotes are not real quotes. Fake quotes. If you had a brain, you’d know to add sources. But you don’t. Get smart.
A Federal Appeals Court just blocked HUD from changing the rules regarding dispersion of grant money to homeless assistance programs. The plaintiffs said that those changes would cause about 200,000 previously homeless people to be forced out on the street again. That’s fine, but my question is, how much of that grant money is going into somebody’s pockets instead of to the homeless? Wasn’t there a “homeless assistance” organization in California that was recently caught doing exactly that? How many other such organizations around the country are doing the same thing? I’m in favor of helping the homeless, but the first order of business should be to put safeguards in place to prevent grant money from being stolen by fraudsters.
HUD is irrefutably unconstitutional and entirely without legal basis in the Constitution.
Do please cite the Constitution for a legal basis; of course, that can not be done.
Challenge accepted.
It’s in the very first sentence of Article I, Section 8: the Taxing and Spending Clause. It turns out the Framers thought ‘providing for the general welfare’ was a pretty good legal basis for, well, providing for the general welfare. I’d cite the specific page in the Constitution for you, but since it’s on page one, I figured even a non-lawyer could find it. Do let me know if you need help with the Table of Contents next.
General – All
Wel – Good
Fare – Proceed
__________________
This includes things like roads, water, post office, electricity, or things that all people need to get along.
Surely you can guess that, counselor.
Social Security and Medicare may not be taxed for or funded as they serve only 18.7% of the population.
Shall I continue?
The Founders established a nation of freedom, not a free-flowing communist charity.
It did not exist in any form in 1789; the Founders knew well what they had written. The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional, including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, CRT, DEI, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, PBS, NPR, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax for ONLY debt, defense, and “general Welfare”—ALL or THE WHOLE WELL PROCEED through governmental provision of security and basic infrastructure—omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor, or charity. The same Article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY “the Value of money,” “Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes,” and “land and naval Forces.”
Further, the 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.
Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals, while government is severely limited and restricted to facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and basic infrastructure.
The Necessary and Proper Clause is nothing more than a perfunctory redundancy for the purposes of clarification—a reinforcement of that which was previously codified—and may not be wielded to amend and impose separate acts that do not represent but alter the letter and spirit of the Founders and Framers.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then, and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
By your logic, the Air Force is unconstitutional since the Founders only enumerated ‘land and naval forces.’ You’re treating the Constitution like a static grocery list rather than a framework for a nation. Claiming that Social Security and Civil Rights laws are ‘Communist’ doesn’t make you an Originalist; it just makes you someone who can’t distinguish between ‘General Welfare’ and your own personal grievances. If your theory was correct, every Justice since 1930 would be a ‘comrade.’ Use some common sense.
Article 1, Section 8, “Debt, Defense, and General Welfare.”
Please do continue; I love watching someone ‘fare’ their way right past 90 years of settled law. The Supreme Court already settled this in Helvering v. Davis (1937), ruling that Social Security is for the General Welfare. Your ‘18.7%’ math doesn’t override the Spending Clause. If you think the most popular programs in American history are a ‘communist charity,’ you might want to tell the millions of seniors—including plenty of Turley readers—that they’re actually comrades.
“Settled law” like Roe v. Wade, and “because secession is not prohibited, secession is prohibited” idiot pro-Lincoln justice, 1869.
Secession was fully constitutional in 1869. Secession is one of “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
_______________________________________________________________
10th Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Citing 1869 to defend secession is like citing 1912 to prove the Titanic is unsinkable. Texas v. White settled this: the Union is ‘indissoluble.’ You can’t 10th-Amendment your way out of a ‘perpetual’ contract. But please, keep ‘proceeding’ with these constitutional fairy tales; they’re almost as entertaining as your ‘Wel-Fare’ dictionary.
Counselor’s guess: You’re making it up as you go. The ‘General Welfare’ isn’t a vocabulary quiz; it’s a broad grant of spending power confirmed in Helvering v. Davis. You can’t ‘Wel-Fare’ your way out of the fact that HUD and the Post Office exist on the same legal bedrock. Nice try at the ‘Common Sense’ play, though.
General Welfare is ALL WELL PROCEED.
“STRICT CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS”
Thomas Jefferson used the phrase ad libitum (meaning “at liberty” or “at will”) to express his opposition to unrestricted government power, particularly in his 1791 opinion against the national bank and in later judicial criticisms. He argued that Congress cannot lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose, but only within strict Constitutional limits.
It’s charming to cite Jefferson’s 1791 theories while ignoring his 1803 actions. The moment Jefferson saw a good deal on the Louisiana Purchase, he threw his ‘strict limits’ out the window, despite admitting the Constitution gave him no power to buy land. If even the author of your argument didn’t follow it when reality called, why should we? Jefferson’s ad libitum warning was a great debate point in a parlor, but it failed the first time it met a real national interest.
The General Welfare clause is not and never has been viewed as a delegation of power to the federal government.
Read the TEXT it is a justification, not a delegation.
It says because General Welfare is important – Government is granted the following powers
What it does NOT say – not gramatically, not logically, not constitutionally is that anything that government does for the general welfare is constitutional.
Is it that difficult for you to understand ?
The General Welfare clause can not be converted by poor grammar and bad logic into an infinite grant of power.
And SCOTUS has correctly NEVER found that it did.
You keep saying SCOTUS never found it was an independent grant of power, but that’s exactly what they did in Butler (1936) and Steward Machine Co. v. Davis. Justice Roberts specifically adopted the Hamiltonian view that the power to spend for the General Welfare is substantive and not limited by the other enumerated powers. Your ‘textual’ interpretation isn’t a secret truth; it’s a discarded minority opinion from 200 years ago. Maybe it’s time to update your ‘logic’ to the current century?
“The General Welfare clause is not and never has been viewed as a delegation of power to the federal government.”
That is exactly correct. If promoting the “general welfare” phrase was intended to be carte blanche for Fedgov to do anything and everything it could concoct as meeting that obligation, there would have been absolutely no need for Articles I, II, and III to enumerate the specific and restrictive powers delegated to the three branches. And citing facial unconstitutional decisions that have opined otherwise does nothing but identify cased that have been erroneously decided, and should by rights be brought back before the Court for rectification.
“cases”
SCOTUS has NEVER found the General Welfare clause to be a delegation of power to the federal government – if it were it would be infinite,
and throughout the constitution there are plenty of provisions that make it CRYSTAL CLEAR that the power of the Federal Government was LIMITED.
We can debate the limits – but the General welfare clause is not and never has been accepted as a delegation of power.
This is also why the vast majority of major federal programs are actually run by the states. The States have the actual power to perform those tasks.
The federal government merely funds them.
That is how the courts have addressed the general welfare clause and the taxing power.
Regardless, ALL the words in the constitution MUST have meaning.
No single clause in the constitution can make the rest of the limitations in the document irrelevant.
The founders did NOT write a document with the intention that for centuries we would seek to game the text to transform the Federal Government into something that swallowed state powers nd individual rights whole.
The General welfare clause is a JUSTIFICATION clause – just like the Militia clause in the 2nd amendment – it is NOT a delegation of power.
A phrase in the form of
Because X is important to us, we empower Y does NOT convert X into a delegation of power for all possible X.
That is gramar, that is logix, and that is legitimate xonstitutional interpretation.
So you have failed at the challenge.
It’s amusing that you think your personal dictionary overrides Justice Roberts and the 1936 Supreme Court. You’re pushing the Madisonian ‘justification’ theory that the Court explicitly threw out in favor of Hamilton’s ‘independent power’ interpretation. To quote the Court: the power to tax and spend for the general welfare is substantive and not limited by later grants of power. You can call it ‘gaming the text,’ but the rest of the world calls it ‘The Law of the Land.’ Maybe try reading the 1937 ruling in Helvering v. Davis before your next grammar lesson?
John, Have you read the Helvering v Davis (1937) Supreme Court opinion?
General welfare references happiness or discontent. Tranquility…
ALL WELL PROCEED is what the law says, Einstein! Start with roads, water, electricity, post office, police, fire, etc.
You and the judicial branch have no power whatsoever to modify or amend the Constitution; the word “interpretation” is not in the Constitution and the judicial power means simply “to form an opinion about through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premises,” per Merriam-Webster, for those of you in Rio Linda.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”
__________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Quoting Hamilton to argue for strict limits is the ultimate self-own. In the very essay you cited (Federalist 78), Hamilton explicitly states that the ‘interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.’ He didn’t want judges reading a dictionary; he wanted them exercising Judicial Review to stop Congress. Hamilton is also the same guy who argued the General Welfare Clause gave Congress broad authority to fund national interests—a view the Supreme Court officially adopted in 1936. You’re using the Architect of Big Government to argue for a tiny one.
I agree but SCOTUS does not.
Unless congress wrote the rules into law, the process of deciding how to give out funds congress has allocated is NOT within the jurisdiction of the courts.
This is a separation of powers violation.
Someone should tell the Supreme Court, because they’ve been ruling on ‘arbitrary and capricious’ agency spending for decades under the Administrative Procedure Act. When Congress allocates funds, the Executive doesn’t get ‘absolute dominion’ over how they’re handed out—they have to follow the law. Checking that power isn’t a ‘violation’ of separation of powers; it’s the Checks and Balances system working exactly as intended.
AG Bondi has been fired. I guess after yesterday’s disastrous birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court didn’t sit too well with Trump.
Failure after failure after failure. DOJ losing immigration cases, the economy getting worse, Trump making things worse with his speech last night, the war with Iran still not won, and now it looks like Trump wants to walk away from it because high gas prices are being blamed on him. Looks like the Iranians are succeeding in hurting trump more than he realizes.
Trump said, “No foreign wars!” Lie
Trump said, “Release the Epstein files!” Lie
Trump said, “I’ll bring costs down!” Lie
Trump said, “I’ll make the world respect the USA!” Lie
The question for so-called Republicans is simple. Is he really worth all of this???? Is he really the hill you want to die on?
I believe Trump never said “no foreign wars”. He said “no forever wars”. I guarantee you the world respects the USA now. The rest of the world respects power and the willingness to use it. Many don’t like Trump because he shows them up as weak and feckless, e.g., The British government, the Spanish communist government, and the Italians too. NATO nations will rue the day they balked at letting the U.S. use the bases we paid for. I, for one, won’t be buying the products or visiting any European country whose government balked; that will be my foreign policy.
The exact words do not matter.
No president can possibly commit to avoiding all military conflict.
The expectation of supporters – and that is all that matters, is that Trump would not engage int he nonsense that most every president since Bush I has done.
With respect to NATO – kowtowing to Iran has been a massive blunder.
The mideast is NOT a significant US national security interest.
Iran with a nuke is a decade from threatening the US. They would be a threat to Europe instantly.
Iran’s missles already threaten Europe.
Iran’s funding of terrorist proxies has created massive problems for Europe.
It is Europe that should be fighting right now – not the US.
While Trump is calling attention to that – only the blind do not see it.
If this conflict is resolved successfully – Europe will massively benefit.
If the US just walks away – Europe will have to take a bigger role in the mideast – becase THEIR national security is threatened – not ours.
Here is Agenda 47 – what Trump actually has promised.
1 SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION
2 CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY
3 END INFLATION, AND MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AGAIN
4 MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!
5 STOP OUTSOURCING, AND TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER
6 LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!
7 DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS, AND OUR FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS,
INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF RELIGION, AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR
ARMS
8 PREVENT WORLD WAR THREE, RESTORE PEACE IN EUROPE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND BUILD A
GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY — ALL MADE IN AMERICA
9 END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
10 STOP THE MIGRANT CRIME EPIDEMIC, DEMOLISH THE FOREIGN DRUG CARTELS, CRUSH GANG
VIOLENCE, AND LOCK UP VIOLENT OFFENDERS
11 REBUILD OUR CITIES, INCLUDING WASHINGTON DC, MAKING THEM SAFE, CLEAN, AND BEAUTIFUL
AGAIN.
12 STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE OUR MILITARY, MAKING IT, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE STRONGEST
AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD
13 KEEP THE U.S. DOLLAR AS THE WORLD’S RESERVE CURRENCY
14 FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO
CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE
15 CANCEL THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE MANDATE AND CUT COSTLY AND BURDENSOME REGULATIONS
16 CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RADICAL GENDER
IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT ON OUR
CHILDREN
17 KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS
18 DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN
19 SECURE OUR ELECTIONS, INCLUDING SAME DAY VOTING, VOTER IDENTIFICATION, PAPER BALLOTS,
AND PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP
20 UNITE OUR COUNTRY BY BRINGING IT TO NEW AND RECORD LEVELS OF SUCCESS
Oh yeah, the left is so superior especially at killing Americans and robbery. Yes you have the moral ground
Love your potty humor X.
“AG Bondi has been fired.”
Mostly I have been happy with Bondi.
However there has been a strong MAGA effort to get rid of her – and Noem for some time.
Noem’s blantant infidelity with one of her close advisors was a huge problem.
The same people have been after Bondi.
She has enabled a disturbing pay for play arrangement accross numerous agencies.
She has mishandled the Epstain mess.
She has mishandled the James, Comey, Cook and many other cases.
I have expected this for a while.
Trump is not going to win the Birth Right Citizenship case.
That said the government did VERY WELL before SCOTUS.
Trump will lose – because regardless of what the 14th amendment means – deciding who is a citizen and who isn’t is NOT withing the domain of the Executive.
SCOTUS is NOT going to resolve the meaning of the 14th amendment in its decision.
It is just going to vacate the Executive Order.
While I think that near Absolute Birth Right Citizenship is granted by the 14A and that near absolute Birth Right citizenship is the CORRECT approach – whether the constitution says so or not, Contra your claim – the hearing was NOT disasterous and Trump did very well, much better than I wexpected for an issue that I have been saying HERE repeatedly he was going to lose. Even Turley has moved from an absolutist position on birthright citizenship to a questioning one.
Further – the Birth Right citizenship cases is a win-win for Trump.
Even if SCOTUS rules against him – which they will.
His Base qill credit him for trying.
And he has most definitely increased the number of people questioning Birth Right citizenship as well as illegal immigration.
Trump will lose on narrow grounds likel 5-4 or 6-3 – that is a major gain – when this case started I would have bet 9-0 or 8-1.
” DOJ losing immigration cases”
Please cite a SINGLE final decision on an immigration case that DOJ has lost ?
A very few Left wing nut judges are doing an excellent job of delaying the inevitable Trump victory on nearly all immigration issues.
And they are doing so to very little effect. Breifly Minnesota was able to get about 1000 illegal immigrants bond hearings – but those judges lost on appeal.
Unless the left wishes to apeal and lose this issue at SCOTUS – illegal immigrants are NOT entitled to bond while awaiting deportation.
That radically speeds up the process. BTW this is an issue that the left LOST elsewhere some time ago.
DOJ has been winning not losing thiese cases.
“the economy getting worse”
Just yesterday the St. Louis Fed reported
Growth is meeting expectations.
Unemployed is stable at very low rates.
and inflations is headed down towards 2%
That does not sound like doom and gloom.
What is it that you think is wrong with the economy ?
My business is starting to pick up.
I have had more work in 2026 than at any time since Bidenflation started.
I am still well below Trump 45 levels, But rising.
“Trump making things worse with his speech last night, the war with Iran still not won, and now it looks like Trump wants to walk away from it because high gas prices are being blamed on him. Looks like the Iranians are succeeding in hurting trump more than he realizes.”
If Trump walked away tomorow – that might be viewed as a loss for Trump.
But it would ABSOLUTELY be a loss for the Iranian regime.
The top leadership in Iran has been ENTIRELY wiped out.
If the Allies had wiped out Hitler – all of the top of the Nazi party and pretty much every admiral or general in the German military – wold that be viewed as a LOSS ?
While there are ongoing negotiations – one of the issues Trump has – is there is no one left in Iran with the actual power to make a deal.
Iran can not “surrender” because there is no Donetz left to do the surrendering.
Without some agreement, or regime change – The objectives of this conflict can not be permanently acheived.
But it is unlikely that Iran is threatening anyone with anything for the rest of Trump’s term.
I did not listen to Trump’s speech. I do not need to hear it. I am aware of the situation in Iran.
Given what we have already done, I beleive we should “finish the job” – to me that means continuing to dgrade the IRGC and Basij until there is a military coup, until they actually agree to something, or until they are weak enough that the Iranian people can over power them.
We may already be there. No one knows for sure whether the people will come out and succeed in putting down this regime if the US stops the bombing.
I would further note that so far Trump has deliberately avoided targets that would make economic recovery for Iran difficult. That would impose hardships on the Iranian people.
That is something no one has ever done in a conflict – and again we do not know how it will turn out.
REGARDLESS – China is a huge loser in this conflict – I would strongly suggest finding any of the independent china geopolitics observers – most of whom are … chinese and listen to them. I do not know when the Xi regime falls, But China/Ci has been in trouble for a long time. There have been recent protests in China far large than those in Iran in January.
There was an attempted coup earlier. The entire leadership of the chinese military has been purged.
You rant about the economy – China’s economy is having very serious problems – some of thse were inevitable. Many were because of the conflict in Iran
It appears that the Conflict with Iran may have tipped the balance in favor of Ukraine in their war with Putin – Further there are rumblings of coup attempts in Russia, and frankly Russia is running out of everything needed to sustain this war. The Ukraine was was always a war of attrition. But more recently that appears to be favoring Ukraine.
We are likely seeing the end of the Castro Regime in Cuba.
NATO looks like impotent pansies.
I have pointed out HERE to YOU repeatedly – The Mideast is NO LONGER A US INTEREST. There are ALOT of MAGA people not happy about this conflict because of that. ‘
Contra the left – that unhappiness is NOT translating to a drop in support for Trump. The MAGA people unhappy about Iran are NOT voting democrat.
NATO is grumbling – but Quietly they are preparing to secure the straits of Hormuz in the event the US decides to end this conflict.
AGAIN – the Mideast is a European problem – not a US problem.
I do not think Trump is leaving the job with Iran unfinished – because he is not going to leave the UAE, Saudis Qatar ,,,, in a lurch.
This is your idea of things going badly for Trump ?
What US adversay is not significantly weaker today than a year ago ?
John Say,
Great comment.
This is something that I have been looking for, Gulf States Considering Network Of New Pipelines To Bypass Strait Of Hormuz
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/gulf-states-considering-network-new-pipeliness-bypass-strait-hormuz
It is the second and third order effects of the conflict with Iran.
Myopic people focus on today’s headlines and do not pay attention to the second and third order effects. Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics, and economics.
The entire global energy market is changing. Gulf states, many whom are not allies with Iran, are looking to change strategy to make Iran irrelevant on the global stage.
As we have seen, this conflict deeply affects China and other countries who are dependent on China for refining Iran oil into finished products, e.g. diesel, jet fuel, gas.
IIRC, fracked US oil is light sweet crude. US or Caribbean refiners could supply those other countries with finished products to those other countries like Australia and bypass Iran and China entirely.
Trump is changing the whole energy market and game. This will change the entire geo-political landscape.
Just had a thought.
What could be a lot of fun, after the other Gulf states build alternative routes around the strait of Hormuz, UAE with the help of the US, are the ones who closes the strait of all Iranian oil tankers.
Did I just hear China’s sphincter tighten?
The absurdity of this gathering reminded me of a quote from E. M. Foster: “All men are equal-all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.” It’s as absurd as dropping a Golden ball in a well and meeting a prince [frog that is].
What I gather the participants are insecure malevolent pot stirrers, spreading evil lies to create divisions among us, guided by a Fallen Angel towards the destruction of civility and the welcoming fiery abyss of Tyranny.
Martin Luther King said in the Strength to Love: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
GW,
Well said! And great quote of MLK!
Hey farmer, how about you rewrite that comment in your own words?
Upstate
Thanks
I occasionally think of the tremendous impact Reverend King had, today’s Canadian example in my humble opinion is insulting his thoughts and prayers.
And there we have it, people living in glass houses throwing stones.
GW, glass house? No one mentioned glass house. Guess you saw thru the house?
I must go now.. it’s all yours
Martin Luther King was not a legitimate PhD and did not legitimately earn and obtain a doctoral degree as proven by a committee appointed by Boston University which “conducted the investigation with scholarly thoroughness, scrupulous attention to detail and a determination not to be influenced by non-scholarly consideration.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University concluded today that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized passages in his dissertation for a doctoral degree at the university 36 years ago.
“There is no question,” the committee said in a report to the university’s provost, “but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation by appropriating material from sources not explicitly credited in notes, or mistakenly credited, or credited generally and at some distance in the text from a close paraphrase or verbatim quotation.”
…
But the committee did recommend that a letter stating its finding be placed with the official copy of Dr. King’s dissertation in the university’s library. The four-member committee was appointed by the university a year ago to determine whether plagiarism charges against Dr. King that had recently surfaced were in fact true. Today the university’s provost, Jon Westling, accepted the committee’s recommendations and said its members had “conducted the investigation with scholarly thoroughness, scrupulous attention to detail and a determination not to be influenced by non-scholarly consideration.”
The dissertation at issue is “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.” Dr. King wrote it in 1955 as part of his requirements for a doctor of philosophy degree, which he subsequently received from the university’s Division of Religious and Theological Studies.”
– New York Times, October 11, 1991
Ralph Abernathy
Controversial Revelations: In his 1989 book, Abernathy felt it necessary to “tell the truth and set the record straight”. He revealed details about King’s sexual weaknesses, including allegations of affairs, even describing alleged encounters the night before King was assassinated.
Allegations of Infidelity: Abernathy detailed King’s marital infidelities, claiming King had sexual relations with two women on the night before he was assassinated.
Certainly, let’s all pay close attention to a communist in search of “free stuff” and “free status” who failed to lead his people home to “the promised land” and lied, plagiarized, and defrauded a wife, a family, a congregation, and the general public.
Left wing nihilism, rejecting all human values, excellence, honesty, competence, integrity, beauty, love, etc. as such leads inevitably to chaos and often violence. I’m surprised that fights did not break out at this convention of those who have voluntarily damaged, and in some cases I’m sure completely destroyed, their capacity to think. Reason will not work with these people since they have abandoned thinking a long time ago.
Did any of the cards provide get out of jail free or $200 for passing Go?
Turley– “One video shows a person holding up their green gender equity card”
“A person” and “Their”? Please don’t use a plural pronoun when a singular is correct.
It is jarring when reading and it is wrong.
If you want it to be genderless use “it” or “its”.
“A person held up its gender equity card” catches the spirit and the quantity.
The NDP is essentially Canada’s Labour Party, supported by the CLC, positioned to the left of the Liberals. If it has lost ground, either the country has moved to the right (doubtful) or the Liberals have moved to the left (seems likely).
The NDP is a completely irrelevant fringe party that holds 6 out of 343 seats in the Canadian parliament.
It previously held 103 seats in 2011, and is on a fast track to extinction.
They are not even recognized as an official [party anymore. Any group that has less than 12 seats is not recognized as an official party in Canada. They are simply a motley group of extremists that are no longer relevant in Canada.
The Canadian people have rejected them as a meaningful political entity.
I don’t know if anybody caught it yesterday, but during arguments Justice Alito jokingly mentioned the use of Claude AI and perhaps using it to issue rulings for the Supreme Court.
Crazy thing is AI is already being used to create arguments and motions in court. How long before a judge decides to use AI to determine a ruling with a complex case? The military is already using it to pick targets, businesses are using it to get rid of white collar jobs. Even crazier, how long until lawmakers simply use AI to create constitutionally sound laws that would be difficult to repeal by judges or even the Supreme Court?
Those who are actively experimenting with AI and its growing capacity to produce relevant answers and solutions will eventually achieve those scenarios. How will we know if a lawmaker just used AI or a lobbyist offered an AI created “model legislation” that would be essentially judicial review proof of something like that?
The NYT’s Corrections noted the other day that a book review it published contained unattributed chunks of The Guardian’s review of the same book.
Turns out the freelancer who turned it in had used ai to write it, and the ai included The Guardian’s prose.
The Grey Lady opposes both ai writing and plagiarism.
yeah, sure George tell about your AI usage on this blog. You comments used to be 500 words of BS, then when you were caught, suddenly your comments dropped to 50 words and unintelligible. Sure George, tell us about AI.
You sound resentful. Obsessive. You must be confusing me with john Say.
.Posting all day, every day, that’s obsessive. You sound resentful George, why is that? You get mocked all day, every day.
So? I’m not doing anything different than what you are.
And what is anon doing X?
No one would confuse me with someone who is wrong almost every time you write.
Much of what you say is true – and irrelevant.
First AI does NOT make decisions – humans do.
AI provides advice. Often very good advice, but not always.
Why do you care if a judge uses AI – Judges already use Clerks to do much of their workk.
Why do you care if the military uses AI to pick targets ?
You seem to think that AI can create unrepealable laws that no one wants – that is absurd.
I would love to see congress stick to constitutionally sound laws.
That would severely limit what they can do.
Why do you care if something is produced via AI ?
What matters is whether the solution works and is any good.
Regardless, AI is just a tool. a powerful one.
But not one that changes the FACT that Humans control their own world – not machines.
The final authority on everything is HUMAN.
No AI has been elected representative or senator.
The power of AI is as a tool to aide humans.
I am bearish on the ability of AI to advance significantly beyond were it is currently at anytime soon – small stepps – absolutely.
Quantum leaps – not without solving fundimental science problems we have no answers to.
At the same time I am very buillish on AI – what we have from AI now will take generations to fully utilize.
This is probably bigger than the computer, This is a new “industrial revolution”
And we do not need better AI to reap benefits for decades to come.
Sounds like an exercise in MI (mutual infantilization).
NDP= No Distinct Properties
I think it is accepted understanding that it is inherent in all of nature for marginalization, ostracization, and/or social rejection or hesitancy, as a matter of survival and social cohesion. Even in the fields of botany, biology, zoology, etc., species are recognized as either “native” or “alien.” After all, who came up with the words “normal” or “abnormal?”
That being said, in the human species and mostly due to moral evolution, “acceptance” is often forced upon others, with little effort by those ostracized to create a channel for acceptance. Instead, it becomes a retaliatory “in your face” effort to gain acceptance.
While looking up the YouTube video provided by the good professor, I looked off to the right for other related videos. I found this one which evokes the good and commonality among all of us, i.e., ‘I will not force myself upon you, but please look at what I have to offer you.’ (I am not familiar with the song or the lyrics, but I doubt there are many who can do a better job delivering it!)
“They Didn’t Like Her Look, But Then She Sang Like a Star!” @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szoM2gwNt5Q
(scroll past the two commercials)
So my point is, NDP, a big-tent motley collection of fireballs eager to force their way into recognition, validation, and acceptance, does not appear to have employed a winning strategy. Its members may be ostracized -not because of their declared “minority” identities, -but because they have failed to show why we might want to engage or befriend them. Accordingly, NDP will remain a motley collection of those identifying as -and building on being,- “minorities.” They can only gain recognition, not on their own talents or offerings, but on collectively presenting as strength in number, to overcome a hated “majority.”
(to put it more precisely, I do not identify with any of the traits shown in the NDP video. ((I am 5’5, thinnish, appearance matches my sex AND gender, etc. So I would need a more appealing/interesting reason to engage with NDP -other than identity politics.))
Conversely, I immediately liked the singer in the video I attached because, although dissimilar to me, she unites all of us with qualities that would attract and unify us. She builds on our commonality. I may be wrong, but I do not imagine her as being united with, or a member of, NDP.
Lin, I just watched it. Very good, thanks. 🙏
Yours as always,
Uncle Henry
Lin,
I once had a co-worker who would talk non-stop about his truck. What modifications he, did. Things he added. All the time. His truck defined him.
That is how I see these people with their little “equity cards.” They define themselves on what is written on their little cards. And in this case, they seem to be trying to make the claim what is written on those cards, should make them, to use the Animal Farm reference, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
I also see their little cards as a reference to The Lord of the Flies and the conch shell. Their internal fighting over who gets to speak, and the one speaker who says they will choose one speaker over another if they are presenting their card more prominently than the other. (Also reminds me of the passage where Piggy is holding the conch shell, as he who holds the conch shell can speak. IIRC, shortly afterwards, someone drops a big rock on Piggy’s head.)
How absurd is that?
Thinking on it, watching those videos of the NDP, I think they may have more in common with The Lord of the Flies than Animal Farm.
Regardless, the similarities to both are rather interesting.
And disturbing.
Ever since Canada declared its independence from Great Britain in the 1960s, it has been drifting toward incoherence.
“elitist, “I am more entitled than you!” Guess you don’t know the definition of elitist? Good job none the less. 🤣
Gorsuch and Barrett pretty much destroyed the absurd Trump administration position on birthright citizenship in a remarkable exchanges with the fast talking, but slow witted Solicitor General John Sauer.
Trump’s position is that birthright citizenship should only apply to children whose parents are “lawfully domiciled” in the U.S. They interpret the phrase, “under the jurisdiction of” in the 14th Amendment to mean “domiciled” in the sense of being a lawful resident. The implication is that any child born to someone not domiciled in the US cannot be a citizen. In his presentation, Sauer emphatically described that birthright citizenship turns on meeting the “domicile test”.
Gorsuch asked a very pointed question, if Native Americans born in the U.S. today would qualify as birthright citizens under Sauer’s “domicile test”. Before he joined SCOTUS, Gorsuch was a judge in Colorado where he had considerable experience dealing with Native American rights and tribal law.
Gorsuch focused on the administration’s “domicile” test, which argues that only children of parents with a permanent, lawful intent to remain in the U.S. should be citizens.
Gorsuch pointed out that Native Americans on reservations in 1868 were physically “domiciled” in the U.S. and had a lawful intent to stay permanently.
If domicile was the only requirement, then Native Americans should have been birthright citizens immediately in 1868. However, history shows they were excluded by the 14th Amendment until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
When Sauer initially replied that Native Americans are granted citizenship “by statute” (referring to the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924), Gorsuch cut him off, insisting that he should set aside the statute and answer whether they would be considered birthright citizens under the 14th Amendment itself.
Sauer suddenly realized that he was caught in a logical contradiction. He then stumbled in his response saying, he wasn’t sure and that he would have to think that through.
Gorsuch highlighted that the administration’s “domicile” rule is a modern invention that doesn’t align with how the 14th Amendment was actually understood in the 19th century
Why was Gorsuch’s question so important and an obvious trap that Sauer fell into?
The 14th Amendment’s original “jurisdiction” clause was historically interpreted to exclude most Native Americans because they were considered members of sovereign tribes rather than fully under U.S. jurisdiction. They only received universal automatic citizenship through the 1924 Act.
Gorsuch noted that Native Americans living on reservations were clearly “domiciled” in the U.S. in a physical and intentional sense.
Historically, the Supreme Court ruled in Elk v. Wilkins (1884) that Native Americans were not birthright citizens because they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the U.S. They only received universal citizenship through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
The Trap: If domicile is the only metric for citizenship, as Sauer argued, then Native Americans should have been considered birthright citizens from the moment the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.
The Flaw: If the government’s new “domicile” test were correct, the 1924 Act would have been redundant.
The Implication: By forcing Solicitor General John Sauer to admit that Native Americans might be birthright citizens under his test, Gorsuch highlighted that the administration’s theory is a “revisionist” departure from both historical understanding and existing statutes.
Barrett also pointed out the absurdity of the administration’s “allegiance” theory, – the idea that parents must owe “total allegiance” to the U.S. for their children to be citizens.
Sauer conceded that the primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved African people and their children.
Barrett then raised the case of an enslaved person brought to the U.S. from Africa against their will who viewed themselves as a captive and never intended to stay, thus lacking “allegiance” or “domicile” in the way Sauer defined them.
If Sauer’s “allegiance” test were applied strictly, many of the very people the 14th Amendment was written to protect would have been excluded from citizenship because they had no intention of staying when they first arrived. When they arrived they did not intend to stay and they definitely did not feel allegiance to a country that held them captive.
The absolute absurdities and logical contradictions in Sauer’s argument are plainly obvious to any rational observer.
This absurd interpretation of the 14th Amendment will go down by a vote of 7 to 2.
Thomas and Alito will twist themselves into a Gordian knot of absurdities to rationalize Trump’s position, as they always do.
Thanks for posting. Did not read it.
Lets see Anonymous the know it all on every subject. If the four billion women in the world get pregnant they can just jump on an airplane flying to the U.S. Once in the U.S. they can give birth and poof the baby is an American citizen. If they do it in California the welfare checks are soon to follow.
You can bet that the cost of their flight will be paid for by the welfare scammers in California. Just being anti Trump on every subject is also simply being anti intelligent. The know it all strikes again.
Wait, that’s the result of thinking through?
First sentence told me it was off-topic TDS nonsense from Gigi. Did not read past that.
Shouldn’t this be on your own blog where you direct the preferred subject of the day?
Canada has been a joke for a very long time. But it used to be funnier….
Canada was a reasonable country for a long time, until the elder Trudeau led it down the European Social Democracy road. Gun control continues to be irrational — the long gun registry cost a fortune, and had to be abandoned.
Ah, the one major flaw in the progressive ideology of the “perfected man”. They can’t/won’t accept the fact that humans have built-in (either genetically determined, or G-d given) proclivities that override any slight manipulation by other mere mortals. Their hubris-inebriated sense of self-righteousness and above average IQ allows them to think that their superiority gives them the wisdom to re-shape a world that, again, was (either, through dint of extraordinary evolution had arrived at its necessary state, or had been divinely planned – you pick). They will always fail because they only rely on humanities good nature and ignore the other half of the human psyche. But, true to their defiance of facts, they will continue to bedevil the world in a fashion similar to various other plagues that been wrought on us such as marxism, islamism, and let’s not forget, leperosy.
Um… you sound like a NDP nutjob.
No privilege card for you.
Again, only inventive and hate – your typical left loon – totally inadequate at debate because that would require a functioning brain stem.
Being anonymous again fat mama?
What you wrote was not debate materials, it was your typical a pathological rant.
Good grief, Turley is really leaning into the ‘filler’ content while waiting for a script that makes Sauer’s birthright citizenship arguments sound coherent. It takes a special kind of irony to challenge the 14th Amendment using the legal genius of John Eastman, only for Trump to TACO his way out of the room before the other side even spoke. Whether it’s a disastrous Supreme Court showing or a botched war in Iran, Trump’s new foreign and domestic policy is simple: Walk away and hope the gas prices don’t follow him. I look forward to Turley’s ‘both sides’ fairy tale tomorrow.
George/X: What a resentful, hateful, coveting outburst from you, yet again, first thing in the morning!
I do hope you realize that you have become theeee poster child on this site who reflects the very subject of today’s topic, –i.e., how to correctly handle those who feel marginalized by others and feel the jealous need to strike out against all of them, especially their host who graciously permits their insulting presence here. Do you agree with the good professor’s approach
to one who bites the hand that feeds him/his need?
(p.s. please notice my moniker carefully so that you do not confuse me again with someone else, in your hurried effort to strike me down.)
THanks, George. Have a nice day.
Lin, hateful, resentful, coveting? Huh? You’re keep mistaking fair criticism for other things not in evidence. Are you sure you’re a lawyer? Yesterday, your moniker was easily confused with that of an alleged bizarro “Lin”. I was not the only one ‘fooled’ on what could have been an April fools prank. Your complaint to Darren and continued warnings about an alleged impostor were a bit humorous.
I seriously have doubts about your claims of being a lawyer if you cannot recognize the fact that Turley’s opinions and views are fair game for criticism just as mine are.
And….strike you down? Wow. Do you accuse an opposing counsel in court of being jealous, resentful, or hateful when they rebut our counter our arguments? Come on Lin, surely you’re not that obtuse. Right? Yours truly X
george
You’re keep mistaking fair criticism for other things not in evidence.
********************
Did you really say that geroge. How many folks on this site, have said the same thing about you.
Dustoff, you had to ask even after reading it? Who is Geroge?
How many? I would have thought you would know. Apparently not.
^^^^ this, from the same Geroge clown who just wrote,
“You’re keep mistaking”
and “when they rebut our counter our arguments?”
Doesn’t get any funnier than this, folks.
And what have they said about Dustoff? Stupid, degree fraud, illiterate .. come to mind.
Lin,
Great take down of the slow and dumb one!! Well done!
Why don’t you take him down your stupid illiterate fool. Never seen you post anything but ass-kissing, Olly, Dustoff, Hull idiot etc..
You ain’t got the smarts to formulate anything worth reading and debating.
Upstate, I note a continuous desire to take you and Upstate Farmer down. (see below)
In a way that is music to my ears because it shows that the left lost the intellectual battle and the intellectual road you and OLLY take. He is a know-nothing fit only to hang onto your tailpipe in an attempt to slow you down.
S. Meyer, intellectual battle? Road? Olly keeps getting himself into circular logic traps and nonsensical musings. Nothing wrong with that mind you, but intellectual battles? No. Not even close.
it takes an intellectual to perceive an intellectual battle. You clearly missed that boat. And NEXT we will see you accuse others of “missing the boat,” just like you try to use “circular” arguments and “nonsensical musings” after these words were used against you. All words you learned and emulate from this comments section, mostly directed against you. clown.
“Olly keeps getting himself into circular logic traps and nonsensical musings. “
GSX, that is because your mind is too small to absorb his logic. Instead, you focus on his tailpipe and keep falling off. In prior names, you were called Paint Chips. Now the cause of your disability is carbon monoxide poisoning.
SM, when X calls my arguments “circular,” what he is really doing is slapping a label on a normal logical progression of facts and evidence that leads to a conclusion. Either he cannot or will not follow the progression, so rather than deal with it point by point, he tries to dismiss the whole thing with a buzzword and hope no one asks him to show where the circle actually is.
OLLY,
That is why I generally do not read the slow and dumb ones comments, unless I need to understand the context of one of John Say or Lins take downs. Engage with the village idiot once, no need to do it again. Just scroll past.
Olly, normal logical progression? No. Repeating a debunked point doesn’t make it ‘logical progression’—it just makes it a circular argument. I deal with your points; you just loop back to the errors I already corrected or pointed out why it’s flawed.
Ignoring a rebuttal is not ‘logic’ it’s just you unable to escape your circular arguments.
” No. Repeating a debunked point doesn’t make it ‘logical progression’—it just makes it a circular argument.”
OLLY and Upstate are correct. I think most of us believe that is what you do several times a day. I don’t think you are capable of logical thinking that has more than two or three steps. Combine that with your mendacious behavior, and you demonstrate what we all see.
SM, X is always given one clear opportunity to engage with the actual chain of reasoning. When he cannot, he slaps the label “circular” on it instead of addressing the steps. At that point I simply ignore him and leave the logic stream on the table for anyone who is actually following the argument.
ROFL!!! Oh S. Meyer, I can always count on your responses to be hilarious.
I’m glad because if you actually understood what people were thinking about you, you would require ECT if you aren’t already getting it.
Meyer, I suggest you, Olly and the fake Farmer get a room to conduct your mutual admiration for each other in private, rather than indulging in such an unseemly public display.
Three jerks would be a perfect number to form a circle to complete your mutual desires.
We really do not wish to witness whatever may be going on between all three of you.
We really do not wish to witness whatever may be going on”
I know. You spent an entire life stupid, and don’t want to change.
S. Meyer,
Thank you, and thank you for the tailpipe imagery! Made me laugh! 🙂
Tailpipe, isn’t that how your inseminate pigs Farmer?
Anonymous, thank you for the information telling us how you were born.
SM, thanks for the observation and for being willing to stay in the fight. If folks like you, Oldman, honestlawyer, James, lin, hullbobby, Say and a few others are catching this much flak, it tells me you are all earning some well‑deserved negative attention from people who would rather attack critics than deal with the ideas we keep raising.
Well deserved “negative attention”. Please, tell us, what that is. Feel free to make up a definition.
This CDC tip applies to you quite well, Tips for Using Positive and Negative Attention
https://www.cdc.gov/parenting-toddlers/communication/attention.html
OLLY,
Catching flak, good point! We must be on to something or our conversations would not receive so much attention. I think it also is a demonstration of the kind of conversations they do not want us to have or even exchanging of thoughts and ideas as they are anathema to leftist thinking. I believe in the UK, our kind of conversations would get labeled as a “hate crime.” Just recently some UK bureaucrat was complaining that X was allowing British citizens to express themselves concerning things like migrant crimes.
How many times have the annonys told us to shut up, or off ourselves?
Exactly right, Upstate. And the more we ignore the comments that don’t actually present an argument, the more desperate they become, because the only thing they’re really chasing is engagement and attention.
“Upstate, I note a continuous desire to take you and Upstate Farmer down.”
Great comment S. Meyer, now read it to yourself. LOL.
Upstatefarmer, take down? You see everything as a ‘take down’ don’t you?
Maybe you should offer your own takedowns.
Good grief, its George again. Anyone get what he’s ranting about today? Didn’t read it.
You read it. Everyone does. LOL!
Not fair to Professor Turley. His columns routinely give us things to consider which in some cases we would not otherwise know about. Case in point: the Canadian NDP gathering in Winnipeg
Turley is not giving us things to consider, he’s just re-posting the national news.
He’s only in it for the attention.
This topic really brought out all the bitter lefttards!
Hannah Arendt and Mattias Desmet both explain that totalitarian movements do not start with tanks in the streets; they start by reshaping how people are formed. You first atomize individuals, strip away any shared civic identity, and then give them a new identity, a cause, and an enemy to rally against.
Turley’s post today is a small but very clear example of that kind of mass formation at work. The people in that room probably do not think of themselves as part of a totalitarian movement, and I am not saying they got up this morning wanting a dictatorship. But the tools they are using are the same tools those movements rely on: you break people into narrow grievance identities, teach them to trust the card more than any shared “we,” and they become much easier to steer.
That is why “formation” matters so much. Either we are being formed as citizens for self‑government, ordered liberty, and a common national identity, or we are being formed for something very different, and what you see in that Canadian hall is a picture of the latter.
OLLY
You do not seem to understand that the NDP is a completely irrelevant fringe party in Canada.
Instead you fly off into one of your predictably absurd rants about “forming citizens”, and “self-government”. You are a ridiculous one trick pony who responds with these nonsensical diatribes in exactly the way that Pavlov’s dogs respond to the bell.
The NDP has only 100,000 members. In the recent election they won only 6 seats in the 343 seat Canadian parliament. They previously held 24 seats.
Now that they have less than 12 seats, they are no longer recognized as an official party in parliament.
They do not get any funding to hire staff.
They do not get any committee assignments.
They do not have a right to speak in debates.
The Speaker can completely ignore them in the house.
They play no functional role in the Canadian federal government whatsoever.
This post by Turley is a completely irrelevant push piece designed to rile up the MAGA mob, and as you prove, it has worked as designed.
You are right that the NDP is small and weak in Ottawa right now. That is not really what I am talking about. The American colonists were also a fringe within the British Empire until their ideas and their formation work caught up with history. The point is that big political shifts almost always start in “irrelevant” corners, where people are quietly being trained to think in a new way.
What I see in this Turley post is not just a goofy Canadian sideshow. It is a live example of how people get atomized into narrow identities and then taught to seek protection and meaning through those identities instead of through any shared civic “we.” That is the formation piece. We have watched the same basic pattern here, as a lot of once‑fringe groups and ideas have done decades of quiet work in universities, media, HR, and nonprofits and now have enormous influence over the modern Democratic Party. So I am less interested in how many seats the NDP holds today and more interested in what kind of citizen these little experiments are building for tomorrow.
So Olly somehow connected Arndt and the NDP. What a leap… into insanity.
Another goofy Olly comment. He’s about to set the blog record for the most irrelevant comments. Surpassing X/George.
Atta boy Olly, you go.
OLLY
You really are an absurd one trick pony.
This response is completely nonsensical gibberish. A completely meaningless word salad of terminology that you have manufactured for your own purposes that has no meaning outside of your absurd little world of fantasy.
You seem to think that the NDP is a small irrelevant fringe group that is “quietly training people to think in new ways”, as if they are the thin edge of the wedge that will eventually become more mainstream.
In fact, the exact opposite is true. They have steadily lost support over the last 15 years.
Here are the results of the last 5 elections.
2011: 103 seats
2015: 44 seats
2019: 24 seats
2021: 25 seats
2025: 6 seats (they initially won 7 seats, but one of them defected to the Liberals)
So you see, your absurd hypothesizing about the “pattern” that is developing is absolutely ridiculous.
The ridiculous antics of this declining fringe party are being rejected by the Canadian people.
Even some of their own members are rejecting the party’s current antics as demonstrated by the fact that one of the elected members in 2025 defected to the Liberals in protest.
You base your absurd analyses of “forming citizens” and “self-government” in an entirely fact free land of wild fantasy.
@OLLY
Same here, OLLY. Equally concerning is the apparent fact that those who are dismissive or enabling of it (which amounts to the same thing) will have to live in that world after it’s coalesced whether they like it or not. Foresight is virtually non-existent in a society addicted to comfort.
Your average progressive may have been fooled into believing they are privileged or elite; they are not, and the actual elites will insure they do NOT rub elbows with said created world.
We learned this lesson 250 years ago; just the past couple of decades have served to erase that memory. Useful idiots, indeed.
Exactly James, that is why I keep coming back to formation. The people who shrug this off or quietly enable it are going to have to live in the world that forms out of it, whether they ever consciously chose it or not. If there is one constant in any society, it is the process of formation. People can dismiss it as a nothingburger, mock it, or ignore it, but it still goes on. Through families, schools, media, and institutions, every culture is always teaching people how to see themselves and how to live; the only real question is what kind of person it is forming.
Our Founders worried hard about forming citizens fit for a free republic. Today we are watching a different kind of person being shaped in real time, and comfort makes it very easy to pretend that process has no destination until we suddenly find ourselves living inside it.
Olly, you are a fruit cake
@The Founders
So were you guys, thank God. It’s the only reason we have a free country. Bless you – like all good fruit cakes in history, for sidestepping Britain’s mushroom-headed conformity and their clinging to a privileged status quo based on their own self-perceived superiority and personal levels of comfort.
James, exactly this. I’ll happily take “fruit cake” in the sense you’ve just given it.
James,
Thank you for that comment. Looking back on history of this great nation and your comment, I shall never look at fruit cake in the same light again.
Or a good panettone, stollen, or tosoureki.
Such a common gambit. The matter complained of is small and insignificant so it should be paid no mind. Until of course it’s grown and is no longer insignificant. But now you can’t criticize it because you are marginalizing a significant minority. Until it grows some more and it’s now mainstream and you can no longer complain about it because you are out of touch on the wrong side of history. No dice. The time to take note of a toxic trend is when it is in its infancy. I assume, anon, that you agree that this NDP identity card nonsense is just that? So, we can actually agree and join forces to marginalize it further rather than fight about it.
@garyesq2k2
Respectfully, it was in its infancy 20 years ago, and no one cared to heed any of the warning signs in spite of the expressed concerns of many.
We really are probably one election away from a tipping point now.
Still, Canada and Britain are currently the best object lessons in the West; I really do think in the left’s hubris Hillary was supposed to win handily and we’d be mired in the same muck on the same timeline, hence the absurd levels of doubling down from 2020 onward.
Nevertheless, this is all fully in motion now, not its nascent stages, and it is absolutely generational. We need to do better *now*.
Hope you’re right. I still believe that this card nonsense would be rejected by all but the most leftist members of our Congress,. But the degree to which this matter is an infant for a teenager is a fairly mild quibble. We’re in basic agreement.
What, no Privilege Card today Olly?
OLLY,
Well said.
I find it ironic that the supposedly inclusive NDP is more like a segregated, elitist, “I am more entitled than you!” party. On the face of the video, it is truly comical they are even having those . . . discussions. But as you point out, they are using those tools in an attempt to reform society to conform to their individual “equity” for some to stand above all others. In their quest for equity, they have to erase the rights of the individual, and, of course, free speech.
“elitist, “I am more entitled than you!” Guess you don’t know the definition of elitist? Good job none the less.
Upstate, I appreciate that you actually get what I am driving at. At some point more people are going to have to bother trying to understand the psychology behind how a culture shifts right under our noses. Otherwise we are left scratching our heads, wondering how we end up with a Supreme Court justice who will not define “woman,” how “Black Lives Matter” is celebrated while “All Lives Matter” can get your city burned, how someone like Spanberger in Virginia or Mamdani in New York becomes the respectable face of ideas that would have been fringe not long ago, or how people will defend the killer of an insurance CEO while doing everything possible to shield an illegal alien who murdered a jogger.
All of that looks random and insane until you see it as formation work. Small groups, often written off as fringe, spend years atomizing people, breaking down any shared civic “we,” and then rebuilding their identity around grievance, enemies, and a new moral code. That is how you get sanctuary cities, no‑go zones run by radicals, and mobs ready to punish anyone who still talks about equal justice or ordered liberty. Turley’s little Canadian video is not the whole story, but it is a clear snapshot of the same process.
OLLY
This is completely nonsensical pseudointellectual gibberish.
Now you are trying to connect a rapidly declining fringe party in Canada as an explanation for your perceived shortcomings of SCOTUS judges, Mamdani and Spanberger.
You are delusional
You are completely out of your mind.
The NDP in Canada is a fringe party in rapid decline. It is being rejected by the Canadian people, and is on a fast track to extinction as I pointed out above with recent election figures. It is not in any way, shape or form a group that will any influence whatsoever in the near future.
You are drawing absurd conclusions about a group of whackos who are in the process of being rejected by the Canadian people.
Yep, we damned near lost the transgender battle until we recognized that while a small group of people, the underlying premise behind transing kids was an IDEA not just an action and that the IDEA behind the trend needed to be fully examined and rejected.
Gary, that is exactly it. There came a point where I had to step back from fighting issue by issue and start asking what kind of ideas and psychology were driving all this. That was my systems‑thinking kicking in, with Bezmenov always in the back of my mind, and then Desmet helped me see the pattern. If we do not dig down to that level, we stay busy arguing the minutia and never touch the root. The transgender fight is a perfect example. It was never just about individual “actions” in a clinic or a school. It was about an idea of the human person, the body, and identity that had to be exposed and rejected. The same is true here. These equity cards look like a small procedural gimmick, but underneath is a whole idea about what a human being is and how a citizen should be formed. If we do not name and challenge that idea, we will keep losing ground even when we win the occasional skirmish.
OLLY,
Well said.
We are seeing the formation at work. Just last weekend there was another “No Kings” protest, in which some got violent. So, yes, there clearly is what was once fringe group is now being accepted as mainstream. We also saw how they attempted to normalize things that we consider to be absurd, like pornography in elementary school libraries.
Upstate pigger, well said! Even you don’t understand the nonsense you post.
The people who get upset when we notice and mock marginal movements can never tell us when a movement is sufficiently popular to warrant a critique.
Gary, well put. The folks who scold us for noticing and mocking “marginal” movements never seem able to say when, exactly, a movement becomes big enough to criticize. By the time it passes whatever invisible threshold they have in mind, the ideas have already marched through the institutions and it is too late. And the hard truth is that many of the people doing the scolding have already been captured by the movement itself. Once you buy into the underlying ideas and language, any early warning looks like bigotry or overreaction instead of prudence. That, too, is part of the formation: you get trained to police the critics more harshly than the ideology that is quietly reshaping the culture.
OLLY,
In order to recognize a problem, we need to call it what it is, by name. I believe you call it social dysfunction, social decline, or something to that effect. Regardless, we need to call it out at each and every turn. We need to come up with a solution to fix the problem we have in America of losing our capacity to become citizens who can self govern. And I also think we need to not only call out the crazy, but mock it. Ridicule it for the absurdity it is. I am not saying the person per say, but the formation of the absurdity.
Upstate, that is where I see a kind of national dysphoria setting in. We are raising generations of people who not only lack the capacity for self‑government, but are no longer sure what it even means to belong to a free nation. The old civic identity has been hollowed out and replaced with a stack of grievance labels, and the result is a country that feels estranged from itself. Formation has not stopped; it has just shifted from forming citizens for a constitutional republic to forming confused individuals for something very different.