Liar-in-Chief

Corruption 2 Minutes

I’m not sure who “Bonchie” is, but he (?) has done an excellent job compiling a thread of Joe Biden’s lies.  I am presenting his thread as a way of saving the list for future reference. 

THREAD:

Bonchie

Follow @bonchieredstate

Democrats are on the warpath, demanding George Santos resign for inflating his past accomplishments and backstory.

Oddly enough, they have no desire to apply that standard to their own standard-bearer: Joe Biden.

Walk with me because things get crazy…🧵

Joe Biden has spent decades lying about various aspects of his past. There are so many falsehoods that it’s hard to even quantify them.

For example, just two weeks ago, Biden made up a story about awarding his “Uncle Frank” a purple heart while vice president…

The story was vivid, complete with quotes from Uncle Frank and the description of a family ceremony.

The problem? Uncle Frank died in 1999. Essentially everything else about the story was also false…

Biden has claimed numerous times that he was arrested with Nelson Mandela in Soweto, South Africa.

The problem? That never happened. Even The Washington Post took the time to debunk it, and Biden finally admitted to the lie in September of 2022…

Biden has claimed at least twice that he worked driving a “tractor-trailer.” That was a lie so egregious that even Politifact couldn’t ignore it.

The reality? He rode around in one as a Senator…

But while those lies could be brushed off as Biden just fibbing about stuff that’s ultimately meaningless, he also has a long history of lying about his resume.

For example, he told a story about visiting Israel during the Six-Day War to bolster his record on foreign policy…

The problem? The prime minister he claimed to have met with wasn’t in power until 1969 (the Six-Day War was in 1967.

Further, his brag about being a “liaison,” essentially advising on military matters, was also false. Here’s CNN on that…

The resume fluffing doesn’t stop there. Biden was infamously caught in a plagiarism scandal that forced him out of the 1988 presidential race.

Biden had also lied about his class ranking in an attempt to bolster his credentials…

In another instance, again meant to make him seem more than he is, Biden claimed to have hit a ball 358-foot during a congressional baseball game.

He says the game took place in the “old Washington stadium.” It actually took place in Baltimore and records show he went 0-2…

Biden has also repeatedly lied about how his first wife and child died, claiming they were killed by a man who “drank his lunch,” i.e. a drunk driver.

He reportedly apologized in 2009 to the man’s family for the lie…

Back to lies meant to bolster his political image, Biden has claimed at least seven times that while he was vice president, an Amtrak conductor named Angelo Negri told him he had traveled 1.5 million miles on the service.

The problem? Negri retired in 1993…

And again returning to his resume bolstering, Biden has claimed numerous times he was a “full professor” at the University of Pennsylvania.

Fact-checkers like Snopes laughably gave him a mixed rating, but he never taught a class…

Of course, we could then talk about the lies that are so dumb that you can’t even disprove them. Such as his famed fight with “Corn Pop” or his claims of being an all-star football player (he apparently failed his way off the team)…

But I’ll stop there because I’d otherwise be here all day. The lies just keep going and going. The more you search, the worse it gets.

So while some might have the moral authority to call for George Santos to resign, Democrats (and their press allies) don’t.

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Published by pat frederick

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142 thoughts on “Liar-in-Chief”

  1. Morning All!
    temp has dropped a little but still above 30*
    hubby loves the Christmas tree this year, so I didn’t take it down yesterday…the tree has won a week’s reprieve…lol

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Morning! We are sitting right at 30 at the moment but cloudy again. LM is a sneaky little sucker. He was apparently watching from across the street – when he saw me open my front drapes, he scooted right on over for his breakfast. Then I discovered he spilled his water and some seeped underneath one edge of the shelter. SMH – kids!

      Liked by 1 person

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    1. Liked by 2 people

      1. Dollars simply empower the GOP to do as they please & that’s got nothing to do with voters.
        I hope the donors like Ronna McDaniel’s new face & hair…

        Liked by 2 people

  7. Liked by 1 person

  13. interesting article about one of the first men to “transition” and then return to his original gender…he says it’s all fake and a sham.
    entire article

    Walt Heyer, one of the first transgender women when he transitioned four decades ago, has long since transitioned back to male.

    Today he rejects the notion that there can be a transgender person, arguing a person struggling with gender dysphoria almost always an underlying issue.

    “People who identify this way are struggling with either bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, body dysmorphia, depression, or some underlying comorbid issue,” Heyer said on “The New Foundation for American Greatness,” a Just the News special report sponsored by Heritage Action for America. 

    “Nobody’s born transgender,” he continued. “The truth is transgenders don’t exist. There is no such thing as a transgender.”

    Walt Heyer began his transition from male to female in the 1980s, when he started to go by the female name Laura Jensen. He said that childhood trauma from his grandmother dressing him up in a purple dress when he was four and being sexually molested as a kid led to this ultimate decision.

    “My grandmother was a seamstress making women’s clothing, and she was babysitting me,” Heyer recalled. “I became very interested in what she was doing as a 4-year-old kid. I was mesmerized by what my grandma was doing and eventually showed an interest in cross-dressing, at 4 years old. As you know, 4-year-olds are curious about everything.” 

    Heyer recounted how his grandmother ended up psychologically abusing him by dressing him up in a dress she made for him. 

    “Grandma decided in her wisdom to make me a purple chiffon dress that perfectly matched my little body in 1944,” he continued. “She put that dress on me and started affirming me and started telling me how cute I was. In there lies what we call an adverse childhood experience where you begin to damage a child. This is emotional and psychological abuse.”

    Although this early cross-dressing episode and his later experience as a victim of sexual abuse at age 9 led to him struggling with gender identity, it wasn’t until the early ’80s that Heyer began his transition, he says.

    “I decided that I would go see a gender specialist,” he said. “Never go to a gender specialist. They will destroy your life. That’s their whole purpose. It destroyed my life. He said, ‘You have gender dysphoria, and what you need is hormones and surgery.’ That was in 1981.”

    It wasn’t until he started studying psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz that he understood that nobody is born transgender and those struggling with gender dysphoria typically have underlying issues, such as depression or body dysmorphia. 

    Heyer went on to write “Trans Life Survivors,” a book compiling the first-person accounts of 30 people who learned the hard way that the promises of gender change are illusory

    “Nobody is altered hormonally to the point where they change genders,” said Heyer. “The only thing that hormones do is make you look feminine or, for a girl, look masculine. So what is the real word that we should be using? The real word is we’re feminizing boys or men, and masculinizing women. We’re not changing anybody’s gender. No gender in history has ever changed.”

    The most important takeway from Heyer’s own unhappy gender change experience is to understand “we have a social contagion that is indoctrinating kids in school,” he said.

    Successfully turning back the seemingly inexorable tide of gender ideology must begin with rejecting the new language the movement seeks to normalize in its bid to effect a new social reality, Heyer believes.

    “We need to stop using the word gender dysphoria, stop using the word transgender, and stop saying transitioning,” he said, “because I haven’t found one person that actually has gender dysphoria. I have found that they have generalized dysphoria … so I think we need to own the language. We’re using the LGBT language, and we’re hurting ourselves by using their terminology.” 

    https://justthenews.com/nation/culture/wdkformer-transgender-woman-says-theres-no-such-thing-transgender-person-no-one-born

    Liked by 2 people

        1. Hi Filly!
          No, this subset of humanity cannot be faked because the ultimate arbiter is the Father of all. People can CLAIM to be anything!

          Liked by 2 people

  14. Denver overwhelmed with illegals…after they declare themselves a sanctuary city…who’d a thought?
    FTA
    With the recent bitter cold weather it has gotten so bad that the Denver Post headlined, “Denver stretched to ‘breaking point’ amid migrant crisis and brutal cold snap, mayor warns.” This is undoubtedly true but is this not what the mayor once asked for?

    Denver is a proud sanctuary city, “In 2017, the Denver City Council codified Denver’s status as a sanctuary city with an ordinance that prohibits city employees from collecting information on immigration or citizenship status, or prohibits the sharing of any other information about individuals for purposes of immigration enforcement.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/virtue_signaling_denver_mayor_unhappy_that_hes_getting_what_he_asked_for.html

    Liked by 1 person

  15. LOL
    the last time we visited my mom she gave us a box of Ritz garlic crackers…she bought them by mistake, tried them and didn’t like them. she knows hubby loves garlic so she gave them to him. he tried them a few days ago and didn’t like them either, so last night we decided to put them out on the tree stump to see if anything would eat them. this morning, they are all gone. either the deer ate them or the raccoons…but someone will have seriously foul breath for a while!

    Liked by 2 people

  21. EXCERPT: “As most Americans are preparing for their 2023 News Year’s Celebration, Al-Qaeda (AQ) channels were buzzing on RocketChat and Telegram. The flailing terrorist organization released JumadabAl-Awwal 1444, their routine publication. However, the messages conveyed in this issue were especially revealing in that it openly called for a repeat of Fort Hood and Pensacola-type insider attacks and revealed a surprising insight into how the organization carried out the 2009 Camp Chapman attack, which killed multiple CIA officers. First, we will cover the overall messages; then, readers can review the translated source documents at the bottom of this post. Be warned: the content can be viewed as inflammatory and obviously terrorist propaganda.

    In this publication, AQ announced that large-scale attacks are being planned against the U.S., possibly involving planes and that the new Muslim generation needs more suicide attackers. They expanded on this, saying that the US will witness the group’s capabilities are still far-reaching, and its hands are “unchained.” They added that AQ is a stubborn opponent and it will plan diligently for upcoming attacks. AQ rejected the sociological studies that say jihadist militants enter service due to poverty or social rejection. Instead, it claims its followers are well-educated, cultured, and enter militancy for righteous causes.

    AQ then praised the jihadists that carried out the terrorist attacks on Fort Hood in 2009 and Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2019, praising the two men that killed American servicemembers on those days. They added that attacks during the holiday period, as those two attacks were, are especially effective as they target the U.S. military when it is most vulnerable.

    This brings us to the most interesting topic broached in this publication: an insight into how AQ and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi planned and executed the Camp Chapman bombing on December 30th, 2009. Not only did this publication include direct quotes from planners and al-Balawi himself, but it was accompanied by a 30-minute video that purports to show al-Balawi taunting the CIA before carrying out the triple-agent suicide bombing. The video is below:

    https://theatlasnews.co/conflict/2022/12/31/as-americans-prepare-to-ring-in-the-new-year-al-qaeda-prepares-for-attacks-releases-cia-bombing-details/

    Liked by 1 person

    1. JD Rucker picked up on this….

      “When government wants to bury a story, they release the news on a Friday. When they REALLY want to bury a story, they release it during a weekend holiday when the vast majority of Americans are focused on anything other than the news.

      The Department of Homeland Security decided to drop a bombshell release about an upcoming terrorist attack on Saturday, New Year’s Eve. According to the intelligence, al Qaeda is actively recruiting new suicide bombers to use aircraft in attacks on the United States that are similar to what took place on September 11, 2001. They will use different strategies and tactics, according to the memo.”

      https://americafirstreport.com/dhs-quietly-issues-terrifying-alert-that-al-qaeda-is-planning-another-plane-attack-with-new-techniques-and-tactics/

      Liked by 1 person

    2. well hell…let’s let more unvetted illegals in from goodness knows where…if ANYTHING happens, Ultra Maggot, Mayorkas, Cameltoe, and the rest of the dems OWN IT

      Liked by 1 person

        1. no, but they are the face of open borders at this time in history. they are in power.
          let them own the disaster if and when it hapens

          Like


  23. (Image:Cannon Hinnant, Darius Sessoms)

    “MAN CONVICTED OF KILLING 5-YEAR-OLD CANNON HINNANT SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON AFTER PLEA DEAL TO SHIELD HINNANT’S SIBLINGS FROM HAVING TO TESTIFY”

    BY: DAVID CARON ON: JANUARY 1, 2023

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ MediaRightNews: 28-year-old Darius Sessoms was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday, bringing the legal process to a close in the killing of 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant. Sessoms, a black man, killed Hinnant, who was a white boy, in August 2020, during the summer of the BLM riots.

    Although a connection between the two was never established, a clear motive was never established for the execution-style murder. Hinnant’s mother Bonny Parker wanted the death penalty for Sessoms, but that would have meant that her two daughters would have had to testify if the case had gone to trial. Parker said of the decision, “Though his life should be cut short, my girls don’t deserve to go through that.” However, Parker was able to deliver a victim impact statement in court and she said she had waited more than two years to say those words to Sessom.

    Although the legal process is coming to a close, the fact that there was no clear motive means that Parker does not have closure. “So, it’ll never be closure for me. Yes it’s peace to know that I don’t have to walk back in that courtroom and see his face again, [but] he’ll suffer in that prison, and he’ll have to face what he [has] done every day for the rest of his life,” Parker insisted.

    One witness to the shooting, Doris Lybrand, said she saw Sessoms run up to Cannon and put the gun near the boy’s head before running back to his own house. Lybrand explained, “My first reaction was he’s playing with the kids. For a second, I thought, ‘That couldn’t happen.’ People don’t run across the street and kill kids.”

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Sorry but not sorry….I will never, ever agree with the people who choose to do things like this. I would think it would help those girls to speak out about it and see for themselves that he got what was coming to him and that is NOT a cushy life in prison!!!! Same for those people who say “I had to forgive him…my faith requires it” and advocate for not giving someone the death penalty who has brutally murdered their child. BULLSHIT!!!!

        Liked by 1 person

  24. I’ve been expecting my electric bill to be higher since I’ve been using my track lights a lot to help warm things up. Nope – actually about $.40 less than what I had planned for this month’s payment.

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ endtimeheadlines: “The U.S. consumer price index rose 7.1% in November from a year ago — down from a 40-year high of 9.1% in June. But hot inflation continues to hit consumers hard. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), roughly 20 million households in the U.S. — one out of six homes — are behind on their utility bills.

    As of August, these families owe about $16.1 billion in total, with an average amount owed of $788 — and the consequences of this could be dire, especially as home heat costs are expected to reach their highest level in over 10 years. “I expect a tsunami of shutoffs,” Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg. Electricity prices have spiked this year due to the skyrocketing cost of natural gas. According to the Energy Information Administration, natural gas is the biggest source of electricity generation in the U.S.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that November prices for electricity jumped 13.7% from a year ago. And just a few months before in August, this marker recorded its biggest 12-month increase since August 1981.”

    According to Mark Wolfe, executive director of NEADA, the country is “heading towards a period of unaffordable energy prices.” Wolfe called on Congress to act to increase funding to offset increasing prices. But if you can’t wait on lawmakers for relief, there are small things you can do to lower your energy bill. Every bit counts.

    Compared to big household appliances, light bulbs don’t seem like a big deal in terms of energy consumption. But it all adds up. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, lighting accounts for approximately 15% of an average household’s electricity use. To lower the lighting portion of your electricity bill, consider LED bulbs. They consume up to 90% less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and can last up to 25 times longer.

    The Department of Energy says by switching to LED lighting, the average household can save about $225 in energy costs per year. That said, LED bulbs tend to be more expensive to buy than incandescent bulbs. To get the greatest energy savings, look for LED bulbs that are ENERGY STAR-rated. (SOURCE)

    Liked by 1 person

  26. “Sweden Pulls Back from Gender Affirming Care on Minors: ‘Good Psychosocial Care Is Fundamental’
    By Talia Wise, 12-28-2022

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ CBN: “Sweden has officially announced that it is pulling away from providing transgender treatment to minors. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) recently changed its treatment guidelines for children with gender dysphoria admitting that “care has been characterized by both deficiencies in accessibility and a lack of knowledge about the results of the care.”

    In May, the board officially ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors under age 18, but now the board is cutting back on providing mastectomies to minors as well. “Young people who suffer from gender dysphoria need to be able to quickly receive an investigation and be offered adequate care measures, based on the health and medical services’ assessments of the care needs. Good psychosocial care is fundamental,” Thomas Lindén, head of the department at the National Board of Health and Welfare, explained in the updated guideline.

    In the past, NBHW championed gender-affirming care adopting a policy that pushed providing puberty blockers to girls as young as eight years old. But now the board is going to practice precaution in providing transgender treatment. “It is important that children and young people who suffer from gender dysphoria are taken seriously, treated well, and offered adequate care,” Lindén said.

    Sweden is one of several countries halting gender-affirming care after finding there is insufficient evidence to back that it is beneficial to minors. As CBN’s Faithwire reported, England’s National Health Service recommended that doctors limit gender medical treatments for children. In a draft guidance, healthcare providers were told young, pre-pubescent children should be treated based on “evidence that, in most cases, gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence.”

    Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to push for transgender treatment in minors. Earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra confirmed that the Biden administration supports using taxpayer dollars to cover gender transition procedures for minors and adults that healthcare providers have determined are “medically necessary.”

    Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, suggests the U.S. take a look at Sweden’s approach to handling the issue.

    “[Sweden’s] recommendation makes clear that, despite the caterwauling of gender-ideology warriors, there is no general scientific agreement — much less certainty — on how to best care for children with gender dysphoria, nor is there currently the depth of knowledge or the kind of systematically collected evidence required to assume that certainty. The recent spike in cases warrants an investigation as it may indicate a social contagion, akin to how youth suicide can sometimes proliferate,” he explained.

    Smith continued, “It is most unfortunate that our government and most social-media platforms continue to stifle these important discussions — just as they did, with catastrophic results, during the Covid pandemic. What is really needed now is not the suppression of opinions but open and robust debate in the medical community and among the public as to how we might best treat children for what might be an essentially psychological condition.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. twist the language again…”work around…”
      from tcth

      clarion
      clarion
      January 2, 2023 11:21 am

      Alyssa Farah Griffin brags she had to work behind Trump’s back to keep her buddies Fauci, Birx on TV

      Alyssa Farah Griffin admitted in testimony before Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s politically motivated House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th that she essentially ignored the directions from the then-President of the United States and other White House officials when it came to limiting television and media appearances of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, who was the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump.

      Of course, Griffin would employ a more politically palatable term, saying that as White House Strategic Communications Director she would “work around” orders from Trump and senior advisors Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, according to the transcript of her testimony released this week by the one-sided panel that set out from Day 1 to find Trump guilty of crimes related to the protest at the Capitol — real or imagined.

      https://www.bizpacreview.com/2022/12/30/alyssa-farah-griffin-brags-she-had-to-work-behind-trumps-back-to-keep-her-buddies-fauci-birx-on-tv-1320920/
      Last edited 45 seconds ago by clarion

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Like

  32. “Twenty-Three Canadian Children Have Died in the Past Month, and No One Is Talking About It — “We’re in a situation where hundreds and thousands of [Canadian] kids have been injected with potentially immune system-destroying mRNA vaccines.”

    The Vigilant Fox
    19 min ago
    Originally Published on DailyClout

    EXCERPT: “Influenza deaths among Canadian children are on pace to shatter all-time highs. Just a few weeks into the flu season (as of December 18, 2022), 11 influenza-related deaths have been reported in children and teens across Canada, according to research conducted by CBC News.

    CBC News reported: “Influenza rarely kills children in Canada. Over the past decade, there have never been more than 13 deaths in a year from the flu among those age 19 or younger, and the pre-pandemic yearly average was nine, according to Public Health Agency of Canada figures.”

    According to the CDC, flu season begins to pick up in February.

    Considering Canada is a cold-weathered neighbor to the United States, it’s safe to assume they experience a similar pattern. So this number of 11 influenza deaths in Canadian children could easily double, triple, or even quadruple by the end of the flu season.

    What is also disturbing is that many Canadian provinces are reluctant or unwilling to release the data. “Earlier this month, British Columbia announced publicly that the flu had killed at least five children in November, but only after the details of an internal conversation involving hospital officials was leaked to a media outlet earlier this month. At the same time, when CBC News asked other provinces about pediatric flu deaths, officials in Ontario declined to provide any statistics.”

    So what gives? Why do they appear to be hiding the data? Would it not be the job of the health authorities to warn parents of this unprecedented risk influenza now poses to their children? And why are influenza deaths up so high, so early?”

    https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/twenty-three-canadian-children-have

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Liked by 1 person

  37. H/T M

    The Justice League

    ON KEVIN MCCARTHY 🚨 Bob Good (R-VA) states that 10-15 members of Congress will block the vote on Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker run tomorrow. Remember, he needs 218 votes to become Speaker of the House. There are a total of 221 Republicans who could give him the vote.

    According to Good, they have had an alternative America First candidate for Speaker for WEEKS who will be on the second ballot. They did not release the name for protection purposes because the person may have been attacked.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. “Migrant-fueled New Year mayhem turns Berlin into warzone; police, firefighters, and even ambulance workers targeted in brazen attacks — When are we finally going to admit that we have a huge problem with young male migrants from archaic societies who don’t want to integrate? Silencing the problem means continuing to promote it.”

    January 02, 2023
    editor: REMIX NEWS author: JOHN CODY

    EXCERPT: “German youth in migrant-heavy neighborhoods once again turned Berlin and other German cities into war zones on New Year’s Day, but this year, news reports indicate that attacks were especially brutal and targeted rescue services, including ambulance workers. In Berlin, police and firefighters responded to 3,943 incidents, with 15 firefighters and 18 police officers injured. According to Bild newspaper, there were “particularly bad attacks in the hotspot neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln with a high proportion of migrants.”

    “There were dozens of attacks,” says Interior Senator Iris Spranger, of the Social Democrats (SPD). In Kreuzberg, for example, after young men set fire to barricades, firefighters who arrived to extinguish the fire were attacked by 200 hooded men. In Neukölln, which is one of the most multicultural neighborhoods in Germany, 50 perpetrators fired rockets at emergency force services. In one disturbing scene, a group of men were filmed attacking an ambulance, hurling objects inside the vehicle’s open rear doors.

    Many more Tweets: https://rmx.news/germany/watch-migrant-fueled-new-year-mayhem-turns-berlin-into-warzone-police-firefighters-and-even-ambulance-workers-targeted-in-brazen-attacks/

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I totally AGREE!!!!
      these are not families looking to i,prove things for their families—these are MILITARY AGE, SINGLE MEN–a fighting force—an invasion force!

      Liked by 1 person


  43. “Resolve to Think Carefully” BY Richard Kelly DECEMBER 31, 2022
    EXCERPTS: “Have you ever wondered about where our beliefs come from? What drives the way we frame the events we witness? What impact our worldview has on our actions? What meaning can we ascribe to our actions? How do behaviours become normalised and adopted by masses?

    I was at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day. I witnessed a mass, coordinated, synchronous, costumed display of standing and clapping and waving of wide-brimmed sun hats. Seemingly, all it took to make the best part of 65,000 members of the human race join this activity was a request from the ground announcer over the Public Address system.

    Shane Warne, 52 years old, one of the best bowlers ever to play the game, had ‘died suddenly,’ like so many others recently, earlier in the year. His player number was 350 – i.e. he was the 350th player to earn a test ‘cap’ to play for Australia. So, through some tortured logic resembling numerology, at ten minutes to four o’clock, or “3:50” pm, the players and crowd engaged in a brief display of clapping and waving a particular type of sun hat preferred by the late spin bowler.

    Shane Warne is, sadly, dead. He couldn’t witness and appreciate the clapping or the hat-waving. So why did all those people clap? “To show their appreciation of his bowling skills,” I hear you say. Well, we did that every time he took a wicket, didn’t we? “OK then, to show others that we loved him, and we miss him.” Sure, but will those ‘others’ do anything different, or help us, or receive help from us, in any way? I don’t think so. At best, anyone who had felt alone in their sorrow about Warne’s death might have gained some comfort from the fact that thousands of other people were clapping.

    So why did you clap, really? Because someone told you to, and because everyone else was doing it, and Warnie was a good bloke, and you needed to stretch your legs after sitting for so long?
    —————-
    This year will be the 15th annual ‘Pink Test,’ which has hijacked the Sydney Test match in the name of fundraising for breast cancer. Glenn McGrath used to play cricket for Australia. His wife the late Jane McGrath, whose favourite colour was pink, was diagnosed with breast cancer and died in 2008 at the age of 42. The McGrath Foundation was established in 2005, to ‘Provide supportive care nursing for the patients and families impacted by breast cancer.”

    For up to 5 days, depending on how long the test match lasts, the Sydney Cricket Ground is adorned in pink. Because they are told to, spectators wear pink clothes, and buy pink merchandise. Because they are told to, the players wear a special pink set of ‘whites,’ and their bats have pink handle grips. The stumps are pink. Because they are told to, various survivors or supporters of those with breast cancer parade, in pink, on the ground at breaks in play. The pinkness of course is completely irrelevant.
    —————–
    We seem to have a propensity to fall in line with suggestions, and directives even more so, without really thinking too hard. But unless we think, we risk falling into compliance with directives that turn out not to be good for us, or for others. We have seen many examples of directives these past 3 years.

    Stay six feet apart.
    Don’t go to a wedding.
    Shut down your business.
    Don’t visit your mum.
    Turn around at the state border.
    Get a test.
    Don’t get a test.
    Isolate for 7 days.
    Don’t isolate.
    Don’t go to the office.
    Follow the arrows around the office.
    Don’t wear a mask.
    Wear a mask.
    Don’t touch the football if it is kicked into the crowd.
    Don’t do elective surgery.
    Shut your church.
    Don’t admit some people into your shop.
    Don’t stand up to drink.
    Don’t leave your home after 9pm.
    Don’t go further than 5 km from your home.
    Don’t play golf.
    Don’t bother with vitamin D.
    Stay inside, don’t get out in the sun.
    Take this injection, and this one, and this one.
    Don’t call us until you can’t breathe.

    We should think about each and every suggestion, every directive, even (or perhaps especially) those that come with penalties for non-compliance. The world may have looked very different if we had.”

    https://brownstone.org/articles/resolve-to-think-carefully/

    Liked by 1 person

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