Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss recent abuses of power and the media’s perpetuation of lies.
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Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Carol Swain to the studio.
During the third hour, Swain discussed her experiences by which she left the Democratic Party and the racism while growing up and throughout her college career noting that it was white people and Conservatives that encouraged her to excel. Disappointedly, she admitted it was the affluent black people that were typically unsupportive because of her socioeconomic status.
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In a ruling that shocked conservatives and religious liberty advocates, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, ruled Monday that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gays, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment.
The court held that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.
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Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined in studio by Tennessee state Senator Kerry Roberts.
During the third hour, Leahy and Roberts talked about how Mayor Cooper made it difficult for the Republican National Convention to come to Nashville even though it would have helped many suffering businesses. Roberts added that in order to fix this world people need to know Jesus.
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In a 2008 TED Talk, psychologist Jonathan Haidt said the worst idea in psychology is the notion that humans are born as a “blank slate.”
Like the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, Haidt was rejecting the notion that the human mind is a blank slate at birth, an idea that can be traced to thinkers from Aristotle, to John Locke, to B.F. Skinner and beyond.
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A conservative free-market group hopes to convince Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, not to rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center as a gatekeeper for its philanthropic giving.
The scandal-plagued SPLC, a left-wing advocacy organization, routinely labels mainstream center-right organizations as “hate groups” on a list that includes actual hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis.
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Google acknowledged nixing an internal racial justice program Wednesday, and some employees believe the company did it fearing lawsuits from “right-wing employees,” according to an NBC News report.
The company ended Sojourn in 2019, claiming the program designed to teach about racial injustice was too difficult to expand beyond the United States, NBC News reported Wednesday. Current and former employees, however, told NBC the program ended because Google feared backlash in the wake of former software engineer James Damore’s 2018 lawsuit that accused the company of ideological discrimination.
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Conservatives are using words like “betrayal” to describe Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof’s late-night move to kill a vote on a bill to curb Dr. Amy Acton’s unrestrained powers in shutting the state down, and suggests he had an ulterior motive.
The Senate will not act this week on Senate Bill One pulling back the Health Department director’s powers, meaning it will likely fail, Fox 19 Now reported. The Senate is only having committee meetings this week and will hold a session next week.
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On Wednesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Michael Patrick Leahy spoke with special guest former Breitbart colleague and Washington journalist Neil McCabe.
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Even as Donald Trump continues to frustrate #TheResistance after three years of ceaseless fabrication and hysteria, conservatives must not forget just how close they are to the edge. We have a defender in the White House, but the social ideas of the Left prevail in nearly every other elite and cultural space in the United States.
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It appears that social media is not the real world. Indeed, contrary to the predictions I read there, the most seismic election in British history was not even close.
Boris Johnson on Friday morning returned as Great Britain’s prime minister atop a landslide of voters whom the progressive Left abandoned long ago.
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Barack Obama launched his meteoric political rise in 2004 by plagiarizing a message published in my 1991 essay, “Black and White Together: A Reconsideration,” which was included in the book Reassessing Civil Rights. Unfortunately, while Obama embraced the winning rhetoric, he did not embrace the argument. Otherwise, he would have transformed the political character of our nation. For the first thing he would have done would have been to lead the Democratic Party away from its practice of maintaining political ghettos for minorities.
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In a special interview, Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy was joined by former Vanderbilt professor and former Nashville mayoral candidate, Dr. Carol Swain to discuss her recent visit with Mayor John Cooper.
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Live from music row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy was joined in studio by all-star panelist Dr. Carol Swain to discuss the speculation that she may run for Congress in the district of Mayor John Cooper’s brother, Jim Cooper.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that he met recently with conservative pundits recently to get a “wide range of viewpoints” from people ahead of the 2020 election.
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Conservatives need to do a better job on the environment. That seems like a controversial thing to say, because usually when you hear a conservative speak positively about an issue closely identified with liberalism, it is the precursor to a sellout of conservative principles. How many times have you read an essay claiming to make “the conservative case” for some profoundly anti-conservative project like voting for Hillary Clinton or government-run healthcare?
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Facebook’s critics were not persuaded after the company revealed its long-awaited audit Tuesday into whether the Silicon Valley giant is biased against conservatives.
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Research finds that conservatives on average earn higher GPAs and test scores in high school, but ultimately receive lower GPAs in college when compared to their liberal classmates, at least partly due to liberal ideological bias. This grade discrepancy is even more evident in the humanities and social sciences, as compared to the more objective STEM fields.
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by Pedro Gonzalez The late Edward Abbey, an irascible and irreverent American environmentalist, took aim at the immigration ideologues in terms still relevant for our time: “The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause.” In other words, if the Republican Party and the Democratic Party can silently agree on one thing, it is that immigration is good, and more is often better. But the latest report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform reveals just how costly inviting the world can be. The FAIR report reveals that “our economy is hemorrhaging much-needed cash each year as a result of money sent to other countries”—that is, remittances—“primarily by foreign-born workers in the United States,” to the tune of $150 billion. “The $150 billion a year sent out of the country each year is money that does not circulate through our own economy, support local businesses, create new jobs, or generate revenues for local, state, and federal governments.” But that massive figure, combined with the $50.1 billion in taxpayer dollars doled out as foreign aid by the U.S. government, is just the tip of the Third World iceberg. The line between charity and masochism has been long…
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by Chris White Facebook recently changed its algorithms to steer focus away from explicitly political content, but now that alteration is laying waste to conservative and liberal outlets. Conservative pundit Deneen Borelli laid into Facebook last week, telling her followers on July 9 that the company’s bias against conservatives cost her a job. In fact, she is holding CEO Mark Zuckerberg chiefly responsible after BlazeTV cancelled her Facebook show, “Here’s the Deal.” “And Mark, I hold you responsible for the high-tech lynching of my job,” Borelli, a black conservative who gained a large following during her run, said in her final video on July 9, which received more than 374,000 views as of the posting of this article. Reports appear to show that Facebook’s algorithm shift is suppressing content across all platforms. A BlazeTV representative confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that her show was cancelled due to a lack of viewership. “My videos were not clickbait. I didn’t engage in over-the-top antics to get attention. I wasn’t shrill, and my videos were not challenged by a fact-check organization,” Borelli added. She told the DCNF she started seeing her content crater after she spoke at the Conservative Political Action…
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by Angelo Codevilla Leftists in America treat conservative voters, elected officials, and policies as illegitimate. Should conservative Americans return the favor? Could they? Few outside the corporate leftist media took seriously Hillary Clinton’s accusation that Donald Trump might refuse to accept defeat in the 2016 election. Though Americans’ sociopolitical divisions had already become irreconcilable, no one really believed that a major party would rebel against the voters, and hence against our constitutional republic—yet. And yet the Democratic Party and the ruling class that it represents did just that, and decided never again to concede legitimacy to any serious opponents’ victory. #TheResistance began as an attempt by Clinton and her staffers to explain why their unexpected electoral defeat had to be illegitimate. It burgeoned quickly into rejection of rule by voters because so many on the Left and in the ruling class rallied to it, having already decided that ordinary Americans have no right to stand in their way. Clinton’s characterization of Trump voters as “deplorables” and “irredeemables” and Barack Obama’s description of rural Republican voters as “clingers” to Bibles, guns, and racism, has long been ruling-class conventional wisdom. This attitude is what crossed the threshold of revolution. Because the Resistance…
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by CHQ Staff Our friend James O’Keefe and his team at Project Veritas have obtained a massive “Sensitive Terms List” from a Pinterest insider, which revealed the social media giant manipulates search results for “Bible verses,” “Christian Easter,” and other Christian terms. The terms on the list are marked as “brand unsafe.” What this means is such terms are removed from auto-complete, trending, recommended, etc. thus depressing the page views and connections of individuals whose posts include those terms. The communications obtained from an industry whistleblower show media giant Pinterest also labeled pro-life activist organization ‘Live Action’ under its “pornography” category; claiming the group was distributing “misinformation related to conspiracies and anti-vaccination advice.” The documents, which include product code, Slack messages, and internal policies, reveal terms and websites that Pinterest apparently censors. In an interview with Project Veritas, the Pinterest insider who leaked the documents explained how the company censors pro-life and Christian content on the website. “I was pretty surprised,” said the Pinterest insider in an interview, when s/he discovered that pro-life group LiveAction.org was added to a “porn domain block list.” The insider explained that the “block list” was intended to be a collection of pornographic websites…
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by Chris White President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign may create a profile on what is being called the conservative version of Twitter, Politico reported Tuesday, citing an anonymous source inside the president’s campaign. “It’s something he’s aware of and is checking out,” a senior Trump campaign official told Politico, referring to the president’s social media manager, Brad Parscale. “We don’t currently have a plan to make a big move to the platform.” The official was responding to questions about Parler, a fledgling social media network created in 2018 that caters to conservatives. Parscale and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, both began posting on the site in May. Pundits Gavin McInnes, Laura Loomer and Milo Yiannopoulos joined after they were booted from Twitter, a Silicon Valley company some conservatives believe is biased in favor of liberal views. Firebrand Alex Jones, who was permanently banned from Twitter in 2018, has yet to join Parler but is linked up on Gab, another conservative competitor to Twitter. The structure of the Parler app is similar to that of Twitter. User posts are limited to 1,000 characters, which other users can then support by “voting”and “echoing,” as opposed to “liking” and “retweeting.” But…
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by Judson Phillips In the age of Trump, something has become obvious. The news media is the enemy of conservatives. Across Tennessee and the nation, we see the liberal media attack conservatives with the single objective of destroying the conservative. Why shouldn’t the left wing media attack conservatives? After all, conservatives are the worst in managing media created crises. Any conservative who is involved in politics is subject to a media witch hunt. Any conservative out there must understand the rules. Rule 1. They are the enemy. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit likes to say, “if you just think of them as Democrat activists with a byline, you won’t go wrong.” The quotable Jim Treacher famously said in 2014, “Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.” The corollary is modern journalism is all about finding facts or at least allegations that they want to tell the public about because they will reflect badly on conservatives. Understand, when the media calls, they want to make a conservative look bad. Rule 2. You have the right to remain silent. The question is, do you have the ability? When the media…
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On Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked to One America News Networks Neil McCabe about the Democrat’s push of a unified agenda and the lack of a Republican direction. Further on in the discussion, the men touched upon the frustration that voters feel about the Republican candidates who are self-funded and who don’t have any interest in helping the little people as much as they do about getting power and staying in power. Gill: Neil McCabe with One America News is with us this morning as he is each Tuesday to bring us a little insight on the news around the country and around the world. And Neil good to have you back with us. McCabe: Hey, good morning good to be with ya. Gill: When is your brother Andrew going to go to jail by the way? (Laughter) McCabe: You know, I interviewed Robin Gritts who is the FBI sort of whistleblower who Andrew McCabe ran out of the FBI and she told me that you know the guy is behaving like…
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by Evie Fordham Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hosted dinners to pick the brains of conservative leaders, including Grover Norquist, about criticism over content policing or lack thereof, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, told TheWSJ he asked for help for two unnamed “prominent conservatives” who faced setbacks when placing pro-life ads on Twitter. Dorsey held outreach dinners, one in Washington, D.C., in June and another in New York, to get feedback from conservatives and others across the political spectrum, reported TheWSJ. Twitter came under fire from conservatives over summer 2018 when they accused the social media platform of “shadow banning” figures on the right, including Republican congressman. Twitter executives eventually admitted an algorithm meant to punish “bad-faith actors” had affected certain Republican congressmen’s visibility. Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz is one of the members of Congress who said he was shadow banned. “When you search Matt Gaetz, you don’t get the account that is @MattGaetz which has 33,000 follower. You don’t get @RepMattGaetz, which has over 80,000 followers. Instead you get @NotMattGaetz, that’s what you get. I think @NotMattGaetz has fewer than 12 followers. But that’s what happens when you…
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Tennessee Governor-Elect Bill Lee announced his appointment Wednesday of Court of Appeals Judge Brandon Gibson to serve as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Governor, a cabinet-level position. “Brandon is a principled conservative with deep rural roots in our state,” Lee said in a statement. “She is widely respected for her service on the Court of Appeals and I am honored that she will continue her commitment to public service in this administration.” Lee has drawn sharp criticism from some for the lack of conservatives in positions of authority in his administration. The Tennessee Star has pointed out that perhaps the only other conservative so far, Courtney Rogers, has limited authority as Commissioner of Veterans Affairs. Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill recently told Fox 17 News that while Rogers was a good appointment, the “power positions” are the chief of staff (which went to an out-of-stater), the chief of operations (a Democrat) and the finance commissioner (a Democrat). There are also a lot of holdovers from Gov. Bill Haslam’s staff, none of whom support President Donald Trump or will hire conservatives, Gill said. Lee’s newest appointment, Gibson, of Crockett County, serves as a judge on the Tennessee Court…
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Governor-elect Bill Lee will be inaugurated on Saturday January 19. As that date approaches he and his team are working feverishly to complete the selection of his Cabinet and fill many of the top deputy positions in key departments of state government. Thursday afternoon, Lee announced six new commissioners: David Gerregano has served as Governor Bill Haslam’s Commissioner of Revenue the past two years, and helped shepherd the Haslam tax increase (including adding $300 million per year in higher gas taxes) through the Legislature last year. He will continue to serve in that capacity for Lee. Bob Rolfe was appointed in March 2017 by Haslam to fill the slot of Commissioner of Economic and Community Development that Randy Boyd vacated when he left to run for Governor. Rolfe is being retained by Lee in that same position. Gabe Roberts is presently serving as Deputy Director at TennCare and will be elevated to the top slot by Governor Lee. As Deputy Director at TennCare Roberts was actively involved in Governor Haslam’s efforts to expand Medicaid/Obamacare which was derailed by the Legislature in special session in 2015 and again in the regular Session. And during Roberts tenure at TennCare the department apparently paid…
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by Jeffrey A. Rendall Predictions. It’s what New Year’s is all about. It goes without saying that 2018 was full of surprises. Heading into this year Republican majorities in both houses of Congress had just passed a massive reorganization of the federal tax code, including a sizeable tax cut for most Americans in the bill language. By January 1, Democrats were already griping about reduced rates for corporations and businesses, claiming, as they always do, that the benefits of the new law would rain down disproportionately on the wealthiest and most powerful taxpayers. Never mind that many, many companies had already announced sizeable end-of-the-year bonuses and raises for employees based on the improved future tax outlook. Nonetheless, Democrats were convinced the popularity of the new law would not improve (especially if they demagogued the matter) over the course of time. Democrats believed they could parlay President Donald Trump’s lukewarm favorability numbers into a “wave” in November. After all, they’d just been eminently successful in stealing a senate seat in deep red Alabama (with a huge assist from the Washington GOP establishment), so the sky was the limit, right? Last month’s election came and went, Democrats gained 40 seats in…
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Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) ignited a conservative firestorm Friday after vetoing one of the most comprehensive pro-life bills ever proposed since the passage of Roe v. Wade. House Bill 258 would ban any abortion after a child’s first heartbeat is detected. Since fetal heartbeats, in some cases, can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, this would limit abortions to well within the first trimester. This is the second time that Kasich has vetoed this bill. Additionally, Kasich passed Senate Bill 145, an act that restricts one of the most common methods in which second-trimester abortions are performed. The Dismemberment Abortion Ban, as the bill is known, restricts doctors from performing procedures in which dismemberment of the fetus occurs. Mike Gonidakis, President of Ohio Right to Life, hailed the decision, stating: Ohioans can sleep easier tonight, knowing that the horrendous practice of dismemberment abortions is behind us…Pro-Life Ohio will not stop until the Abortion Report reads: Zero. Nothing to report In spite of this success, many Ohio conservatives are furious that Kasich has once again vetoed the fetal heartbeat bill. Conservative lawmakers are already looking at methods by which to override the governor’s veto as early as December 27.…
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In a specific discussion on Tuesday morning’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – the duo contemplated Bill Lee’s current cabinets picks and the absence of any conservatives. The conversation continued about whether or not Lee would hold true to his “school choice” (or more specifically “parent choice”) campaign pledge and why it needs to become a bill and why it hasn’t in the past. At the end of the segment, Leahy urged Lee to provide leadership on this matter. Gill: We’ve been talking a little bit about the Bill Lee transition process and who’s been put into place in his senior positions and cabinet positions who are being added as we speak. Who are “whispering in his ear” to direct his assembling of his senior leadership team and cabinet. And you’re welcome to join us, 615-737-9522. Bill Lee and his team have not been able to find any conservatives any consistent dependable conservatives to serve in the senior positions of his administration at this point. They’ve appointed roughly twelve cabinet level positions including commissioner of financing and administration, agriculture, commerce and insurance, tourism,…
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by Karin McQuillan The midterms are in the rearview mirror and the chattering classes are back to debating fake collusion with Russia and a looming indictment of the president. Before the midterms, Republican voters were told this election was consequential. After the midterms, we’re told it is just one more split-government election, move along. I’m not moving along so easily, and neither is my circle of patriotic MAGA friends. Losing the House of Representatives was a crippling blow on immigration, the cornerstone of the Democrats’ drive to permanent domination. Any hopes of Democrats accepting Trump’s 2016 victory as normal politics is dead, and now they have Congress from which to harry and hobble the president. Democrats have dehumanized Trump and all his supporters as white supremacists, in order to justify violence against our republican foundations. Since inauguration day they have undermined respect for the presidential election, the Supreme Court, the electoral college, freedom of speech and religion and the right to bear arms. Democrats claim these hallowed institutions are bringing on fascism. Danger lights should be going off in every decent person’s mind. We are not in a terrain of politics as usual, but in a new and terrifying…
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by Brandon J. Weichert Ann Coulter thinks Donald J. Trump will be the last Republican president ever. She might be right. In fact, in my darkest moments, I have feared as much. After all, there hasn’t been a Republican like Trump in more than a generation—and there aren’t any like him on the horizon. Who will replace Trump when his second term ends? Will it be Mike Pence? I like the vice-president. I’ve even prayed with him. But he simply isn’t a replacement—he struggles to connect with audiences outside of the Evangelical community and he sounds too much like George W. Bush. Marco Rubio? Nice guy and a good man—but he doesn’t pass the smell test. Nikki Haley? Don’t make me cringe. Ted Cruz? He’s not a closer. Go down the list of potential successors and try not to get too depressed. Of course, there’s a chance a person is just waiting in the wings, as Trump was, to swoop in and fundamentally transform the 2024 Republican primaries. Although judging from the types of people running the show in the GOP, and given that all of the top-tier “talent” in the party (whether on the campaign side or on…
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On Thursday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy welcomed special guest host, Ben Cunningham to the show and chatted about his urging of conservatives in metro Nashville to run for office in District 29’s January special election. The men also reminisced about the Tennessee Tax Revolt, how people became transformed and activists, and how today there is so much a citizen can do to make a difference if they just get involved. Leahy: Guest hosting today is our good friend Ben Cunningham. Ben we were talking about getting involved in activism both the parents and grandparent’s and kids. Possibly encouraging somebody to run for metro council in the 29th district here a special election in January where Karen Johnson has left. Um, there’s also other things that need to be going on here… Cunningham: All the council seats are coming up in August of next year. August of 2019 is, be a full slate of the council member elections. Anybody can run for those seats also if you’re in Davidson county you have to qualify by, I think it’s May 13th…
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by Evie Fordham Google CEO Sundar Pichai will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 5 to answer questions about the company’s possible political bias, the committee announced. “Americans put their trust in big tech companies to honor freedom of speech and champion open dialogue, and it is Congress’ responsibility to the American people to make sure these tech giants are transparent and accountable in their practices,” committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said in a committee press release. Republican lawmakers criticized Pichai for skipping a Sept. 5 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on social media and foreign election meddling. Facebook and Twitter executives testified, and an empty chair with a nameplate that said “Google” sat where the company’s representative would have been. The announcement of the social media-focused hearing comes as Google employees are making headlines for a Tuesday open letter protesting the company’s work on a censored Chinese search engine. “Today the company accounts for nearly 90 percent of worldwide search traffic. … Unfortunately, recent reports suggest Google might not be wielding its vast power impartially,” committee member and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in the press release. “Its business practices may have been affected by political bias. Additionally, reports claim the company is…
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by Michael Finch American history is everywhere under attack. The recent skirmishes started with the campaign to remove Confederate statues, but it surely won’t end there. As our betters in America’s universities want us to know, the whole of American history is suspect. In our media, in the popular culture, and in our schools, we’re subject to an unending drumbeat of how America was founded to promote imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and genocide—unimpeachable facts, we’re told, for which all Americans must forever share the burden of collective guilt and shame. For America to atone for her sins, her history must be denounced and then purged. This assault on America’s past is hardly news to the Right; the Left has been waging war against American history for well over a half a century. But given this ongoing and unceasing hostility, the response of so many conservatives to recent events is terribly disturbing. While it is perhaps it is to be expected given our predilection to fight amongst ourselves (e.g., the Trump debate on the Right), it is extremely ill-advised and destructive to the things we still share in common. One thing we should have learned is that the Left never…
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by Martin Cothran In one sense political divisiveness has always been with us. The United States was birthed in political animosity. If you doubt it, go read about the contention between figures such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, or between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. And, of course, there was that little matter between Hamilton and Aaron Burr that resulted in a duel–a fatal one for Hamilton. So why do we think the divisiveness of modern politics is so historically unique? How can some people say that the debates of our own time are worse than those which not infrequently consummated in two men firing pistols at each other? Is there some sense in which contemporary political debates are divisive in a way the older ones were not? How exactly does the attack on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s home differ from a duel? Although the debates of the founding era were indeed divisive, their worst excesses were largely the result of personal animosities, many of them cases in which confidences were broken or in which there was a personal insult that required satisfaction. The political debates too–whether there should be a national bank, or what kind of relations…
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by Nick Givas MSNBC contributor Toure Neblett called conservatives “anti-media, anti-intellectual and anti-science” and accused them of believing in conspiracy theories on Up With David Gura Saturday. Neblett was discussing conservatives’ reactions to suspected mail bomber Cesar Syoc Jr., who was arrested Friday on suspicion of sending 12 potential explosive devices to Democratic politicians, media personalities and other public figures. “The right has been on this anti-fact thing for many years now. The president was a birther pushing this notion that was based on absolutely nothing … That’s been consistent of the right for a while,” Neblett said. “They are anti-media, anti-intellectual, anti-science. There are so many things that they believe that are based on no facts at all. So I mean, that they are embracing wholesale these conspiracy theories.” Neblett claimed it would be wrong to compare the attempted bombings to the shooting of GOP House Majority Whip Steve Scalise by Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson. “This is not the same as what happened with Steve Scalise. That was tragic. This is not the same,” he said, adding: Bernie Sanders was not telling people, Go harm people! Trump has been saying that consistently for years now. Obviously, something eventually is going to happen. Watch…
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by Jon Miltimore It’s probably important to preface any conversation on morality by noting that humans often struggle—mightily—to agree on what morality is. While it’s a thorny topic to define and explain, it would, of course, be foolish to avoid the pursuit of moral truths for this reason. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who has researched morality and culture for nearly 30 years, apparently agrees. Haidt has spent the better part of his career attempting to understand and explain the underpinnings of human morality. What Do We Know about Morality? During a TED talk a number of years ago, Haidt shared his discovery that contrary to the idea that humans begin as a blank slate—“the worst idea in all psychology,” he says—humans are born with a “first draft” of moral knowledge. Essentially, Haidt argues, humans possess innate but malleable sets of values “organized in advance of experience.” So if the slate is not blank, what’s on it? To find out, Haidt and a colleague read the most current literature on anthropology, cultural variations, and evolutionary psychology to identify cross-cultural matches. They found five primary categories that serve as our moral foundation: 1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to…
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by Jeffrey A. Rendall There’s mystery in what lies beneath. Or at least it’s true in conservative Republican circles, since the average citizen doesn’t go around shrieking, clutching offensive and abusive signs, disrupting formal government functions or carrying on like a spoiled five-year-old kindergartner who won’t lay down at nap time. Conservatives generally don’t confront senators in elevators or claw at Supreme Court chamber doors when a new justice is being sworn in either. For better or worse conservatives and Republicans’ behavior is dignified – almost to a fault. Preferring peaceful protest and speaking through the ballot box to violence in the streets, America’s silent majority simply permits events to swirl around with simmering anger contained and impulses suppressed. Even 2010’s mass tea party rallies were relatively tame compared with the left’s unglued and hateful mob mentality; there were no swear words from the conservative speakers, no threats to burn down government buildings, no anarchists with sledgehammers and bricks running about Helter Skelter shattering store windows — and the liberty-loving participants even cleaned up after themselves when they left. Boring, right? Perhaps not anymore. After the contentious confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh conservatives are surging with excitement and…
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The Washington Post reports President Trump has asked Speaker Paul Ryan to pull the American Health Care Act bill. Via the Washington Post: House Republican leaders abruptly pulled a rewrite of the nation’s health-care system from consideration on Friday, a dramatic acknowledgment that they are so far unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “We just pulled it,” President Trump told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. The decision came a day after Trump delivered an ultimatum to lawmakers — and represented multiple failures for the new president and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Dubbed “Obamacare-lite” by conservatives, the reaction of the development is being felt across both sides of the aisles. Tea Party Patriots President and co-founder Jenny Beth Martin released the following statement today, reacting to the failed attempt by House GOP members to repeal and replace ObamaCare: “The AHCA failed to garner the necessary votes from the House GOP for the simple reason that it failed to repeal the core elements of ObamaCare – the insurance company mandates (‘Guaranteed Issue,’ ‘Community Rating,’ and ‘Essential Health Benefits’) that are driving up the costs of health insurance even as they drive down the quality of care –…
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