Saving American Children - Part 1

aka Saving America - Part 1

 

John Droz jr. Apr 04, 2024 @ Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues

We all agree that “Our children are our future.”

However, many of us then make the fatal mistake of saying something like: “Yes, but it’s a long way off before they will have an impact on the country, and I have more pressing things to attend to now.”

This single critical error is a primary reason why our country has been going downhill over the last few decades. 

 Fact 1: we are losing to the Left. 

 Fact 2: the main reason why is that Left is playing a very effective, long game.

The long game the Left is engaging in means that they plan to gradually subvert our country over a few decades — while we are attending to other matters. Their subversion is across the board: our education system, our values, our civility, our Science, our economy, our executive branch, our legislature, our judicial system, etc.

I’ve recommended this before, but it is worth repeating: PLEASE WATCH THIS FIVE MINUTE VIDEO, as it spells it out very clearly.

We are like live lobsters in the pot where the temperature is gradually being turned up.

Consider one astounding reality… 

Fact 1: Some four million US students graduate from US high schools every year.  

Fact 2: a conservative estimate is that some three million of those graduates are heavily propagandized with Left ideology, and have almost no Critical Thinking skills. 

 Fact 3: Most of these propagandized, non-critical thinking people will shortly become voting citizens.

How long can America survive with 3± million new voters every year, who have been propagandized with Left ideology and who have no Critical Thinking skills???

---

Parents are our first line of defense!

With the above understanding, what should be the objectives of conscientious parents, in bringing up their children?

Good question, as this is a highly debated topic. Many hundreds of books have been written on this matter. Some of the better ones are by John Rosemond.

One common answer to this question is that parents should teach their offspring to be productive, happy adults. Sounds good, but what does that translate to?

Let me suggest 5 major objectives that quality parents would want to teach their kids:

1 - How to Think (being a Critical Thinker),

2 - Strong Values (e.g., Judeo-Christian standards),

3- Useful Knowledge (covering a wide range of life topics),

4 - Good Habits (like brushing their teeth), and

5 - Worthwhile Skills (like knowing how to cook).

Let me posit further that the most important one is the first!

Considering things carefully, ALL of the others actually depend on the ability to do Critical Thinking! Conversely, a Critically Thinking child will not only do better on each of the other items, but will need less parental involvement with them as well.

Let’s say, for example, that your top priority is Christian values — like going to Church on Sunday. That’s an admirable start, but will your child continue to attend weekly Church services after they have left the nest?

IMO, unless they have done Critical Thinking about the merits of going to Church (vs. doing it because they were told to, or out of habit), they are very likely to stop. Is that what you want? Is that what you would call success?

How does a parent instill Critical Thinking in their children?

STEP ONE is parents understanding the importance of this special skill. Please read this list of amazing benefits of your child being a Critical Thinker.

STEP TWO is understanding that it is very unlikely that your child is being taught to be a Critical Thinker in school — especially public. Worse, it is almost certain that they are being taught the OPPOSITE of being a Critical Thinker!

What? Yes, that is what is happening in the majority of K-12 schools, during the most formative years of their life. As I’ve written before, the appropriate subject area for children to be taught HOW to be a Critical Thinker, is Science. That’s because real scientists are people who instinctively ask questions: who? when? why? An essential ingredient of being a Critical Thinker is to ask questions when non-parents (teachers, older kids, media, authorities, etc.) are telling them something.

Why have I excluded parents? It’s because those people have a very special love for their children. No one else has this same commitment. As a result, children should never question parental authority. (That understood, children can certainly respectfully question parental opinions on things like politics, religion, etc.)

So how are schools teaching the opposite of Critical Thinking? The opposite is to be a robotic lemming. Schools are teaching children that they should: be politically correct, follow the advice of experts (e.g., re COVID), accept the conclusions of computers (e.g., re climate), go along with consensus (e.g., secularism), believe that reality is what is on the Internet and social media, etc.

That’s one of the main reasons I’m so opposed to the Next Generation Science Standards that have been totally (or mostly) adopted by 49 states! The progressive NGSS is a key part of the K-12 curriculum, and it is teaching conformance and compliance, not Critical Thinking.

STEP THREE is like many other things: parents teach Critical thinking by setting a good example. Actions are more impactful than words. Show your children how to constructively question what they see on their screens, by the parents doing the same for what is on TV, in the newspaper, on the Internet, etc.

STEP FOUR is to help them perfect this skill by doing some real-world exercises. For example, some parents have told me that they ask their teenager to read my twice-a-month Newsletter. Then the child picks one of the dozen or more topics covered by the Newsletter to discuss. The parent then chooses one of the articles in that section.

Twice a month they set aside at least 30 minutes for some parent-child private time, with no interruptions (which is a good thing in itself). The child then reads the article out loud to the parent, and they discuss what’s good (or bad) in the article. This provides an outstanding opportunity to see that your child is somewhat up on current events, and from a reliable source.

Further, it provides the parent a glimpse of their child’s thinking on this topic, as well as being an outstanding opportunity for the parent to share with their child their perspective on an important societal issue. And, of course, this happy event is also about Critical Thinking — e.g. conversing with your child how this article compares to what she has seen in the media, or taught in school, or heard from their friends, etc.

For pre-teens these are good: How to Teach Your Child to Be a Critical Thinker, Four Strategies for Sparking Critical Thinking in Young Children, and Critical thinking is a 21st-century essential — here’s how to help kids learn it.

For anyone with refinements of this exercise — or other effective ways to teach children to be Critical Thinkers — please post them in the comments below.

Some sample reference material:

Report: The Key to Fixing the US Education System (an in-depth report)

Report: Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts

Website: The Foundation for Critical Thinking and their Library for Everyone

There's a Better Way to Teach Critical Thinking: 9 Rules of Thumb

Eight Instructional Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking

Yes, We Can Define, Teach, and Assess Critical Thinking Skills

The Best Resources on Teaching and Learning Critical Thinking in the Classroom

100 Brief Tips and Findings Regarding Critical Thinking

The Case for Critical Thinking...

The Scientific Method: Critical Thinking at its Best

PS — I’ll publish Saving American Children - Part 2 in a few days. It will be about the role of the K-12 education system in saving America.

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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Ya Just Can't Make This Stuff Up!!!!!

Taxpayer-funded museum says its plants are 'queer' June 5, 2023 By Thomas Lifson - I know that lots of people like to anthropomorphize animals, especially their pets.  Heck, I think of our dog as a member of the family and attribute all kinds of motives and emotions to her that aren't exactly based in science.  And I am aware of recent research that claims that plants "scream" when cut or stressed.  But imputing homosexuality to vegetative life strikes me as a matter of self-obsession when it comes to a museum that calls itself "a nationally designated site of LGBTQ+ history."  The National Pulse reports:...........

 

Alternative Sexualities: Cultural Comity or Cultural Coercion?  June 5, 2023, By Stephan Helgesen - There was a time not too long ago when people who went the other way kept it to themselves. Some did so out of fear of reprisals from those vehemently opposed to their lifestyle. Others preferred to keep their bedroom habits in their own bedroom believing that what they did there was nobody's business but their own. Our military observed a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy that seemed to work pretty well. Laws against homosexuality were loosened or eliminated entirely and Americans seemed to be changing direction and adopting a 'live and let live' attitude.

But that wasn't good enough for the activists in the homosexual community. They wanted, no they demanded cultural parity and total acceptance of their sexual lifestyles from those of us in the heterosexual majority. They organized wings of their movement, targeted specific cities and states and adopted a policy of shrill, open and direct confrontation along with an alphabet soup moniker (LGBTQ, etc., etc.). Their strategy was to use a 'blitzkrieg' (lightning war) approach to soften up the opposition, and they gained ground, steadily, as their lobbyists worked the Congress and other power brokers while their foot-soldiers kept up the pressure on local leaders, opinion-makers and the media...............

Hand over your children, or else June 5, 2023 By Robert Arvay - Leftists have openly stated that parents have no right to even know what their children are being taught.  In Virginia's House of Delegates, "Elizabeth Guzman [has] announced that she would introduce a bill that would hold parents criminally liable for refusing to treat their children as the opposite sex if they identify as such."  Criminally liable.  Radical leftists are dead serious about this, and we would be foolish to underestimate their power and determination. It is already happening in Australia.  Quote: 

"A recent Australian court decision sends a chilling message to parents who transgress the new gender orthodoxy: Refusing to validate a child's 'transgender' identity may be 'emotional abuse' and put parents at risk of losing custody of their child." 

The same sentiment of governmental authority over our children is already on the move in the United States.  The concept is embodied in the title of Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village.  According to leftist ideology, however, the real meaning of that phrase was encapsulated by former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe.  He said, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach. "Unsurprisingly, those words probably cost McAuliffe, and the Democrat party, the Virginia governorship.  The voters, when given a choice, protect their children..................

School district presses phys ed teachers to don LGBT pride apparel - June 2, 202  By Eric Utter - According to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation through a public records request, a Colorado school district recently strongly encouraged its physical education (P.E.) teachers to don LGBT pride gear and use preferred pronouns in an effort to display their unwavering support for the LGBT community.  To that end, a number of Jeffco Public Schools (JPS) high school teachers were trained via a presentation on how to make the district's P.E. programs "even more inclusive," so that all students feel welcome regardless of their "race, ethnicity or sexual orientation." The presentation instructed teachers to engage in "public visibility" by sporting various types of rainbow pride gear — such as pins, t-shirts, flags, or stickers — and by participating in pride events and practicing using preferred pronouns. The presentation stated:....................The power that a relatively small minority has accrued over virtually all of our institutions is nothing short of stupefying............

Pride Month and Why Schools Are Sexualizing Children  By Tamra Farah  Jun 03, 2023 - Our son was verbal as a toddler and still is today at 34.  He hit the “why” stage at about 3 ½ – you know, when a young child learns something new and then they want to know why.............  We have experienced a cultural revolution over the last three years with the ferocious expansion of the trans and gender ideology agenda, particularly in K-12 public schools. .................Let’s look at how this whirlwind has made its way into classrooms and bathrooms at the expense of reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with tossing a needed focus on accurate history, social studies, and science out the school window.   We must dig deep for this answer, carry it forward and then expose and stop those who have political and financial agendas to match it............. Lukács called for the sexualization of children in schools to separate them from their families and their religion. Lukács knew it was essential to destabilize the family unit and shift culture by separating children from their families to achieve his goal of building a Marxist society. As a result, the state captured the allegiance of the next generation, transforming them into activists for the Marxist cause.............

Woke corporations, grooming, trans craze can be traced to U.N.  - By Carole Hornsby Haynes -Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D., explains destructive Hungarian sex-ed from century ago............Public outrage is gathering steam as corporate America tries to force woke gender ideology and the LGBTQ agenda down the throats of consumers. The American people are fed up and using their voices and money to fight back................

CA High School Teacher Placed on Leave for Teaching How to Please the ‘Booty Hole’ - Alana Mastrangelo 2 Jun 2023 - A teacher at El Dorado High School in Placentia, California, was caught on video instructing her students on how to have pleasure during anal sex, as well as where to find sex toys that will stimulate the prostate gland. According to a district spokesperson, “the individual involved has been placed on administrative leave pending a thorough investigation.” “You don’t have to go inside the booty hole, you can actually just push on the seam, and that stimulates the prostate gland, as well. And they apparently really like that,” the educator can be heard saying to her students in a video............

Brace for Impact: DOE Is About to Unleash Sexual Assault on Girls and Women -Jonathan Emord  Jun 03, 2023 - Following the Senate vote championed by Sen. Tim Kaine to torpedo the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, the Biden administration’s Department of Education readied its proposal to change the historic interpretation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to accommodate those who “identify” as the opposite sex.   You can read the DOE summary of the proposed rule here.   It is open for public comment and will likely be rendered final and enforceable soon.  The new rule will permit boys and men who maintain a fiction, that they possess a gender other than their birth gender, not only to compete on girls’ and women’s teams but also to use their bathrooms and locker rooms.........  

Weingarten: Parents Are ‘Getting Really Angry’ at DeSantis’ Education Policies - Pam Key 2 Jun 2023 - American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claimed Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that people are “getting really angry” at the education policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).  Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “I want to come back to the other policy which is I think the most unpopular of all in sort of this new mom’s group and the polling that’s out is the book bans.”  Weingarten said, “Two things are unpopular, the book bans and also why you would get rid of social emotional learning when we have a mental health crisis? We have to make sure that kids feel okay.”..........

North Hollywood Parents Protest Elementary School’s ‘Pride Month’ Event - By Jordan Dixon-Hamilton 2 Jun 2023 - Parents of children who attend Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood, California, protested outside of the school Friday morning after members of the school administration announced it would hold an event commemorating “Pride Month” for its young enrollees. Parents gathered outside the school at 8:00 a.m. to “protest against Pride Day assembly, an inappropriate topic for our kids,” according to the Instagram account Saticoy Elementary Parents........

'The Idol' Normalizes a Pornographic Culture - Melissa Henson Jun 03, 2023 -  We hear all the time that “sex sells,” but with the new Max series The Idol, it’s fair to ask, “At what cost?”  The series, premiering June 4, stars popular entertainers Lily-Rose Depp as a troubled pop star, and the Weeknd, as a music industry executive/cult leader.  TV critics have slammed The Idol, citing it as “pornographic,” a “sordid male fantasy,” a “darker, crazier, and more risqué version” of HBO’s Euphoria, which is telling. Euphoria, a show about high school aged characters, has depicted child rape, full-frontal male and female nudity of both adult and child characters, illicit drug use by teen characters, pornography use by teen and adult characters, and frequent expletives (714 uses of the ‘f-word’ over 8 episodes). Euphoria was touted by HBO as its “youngest-skewing drama series.”.............

Sex Change Operations Do No Good -  June 2, 2023 by John Hinderaker - The “trans” lobby claims that genital mutilation of minors is necessary in order to prevent troubled teenagers from committing suicide. To my knowledge, there is no empirical basis for this claim, and suicide rates among those who have undergone sex change surgery are sky-high. But the claim persists, nevertheless.  Now, it turns out that one of the key “studies” relied on to support sex change procedures has been withdrawn. Public Discourse reports: ...............Integrity in published research has been on a downhill slide for some time. It started in the social sciences, and has now spread to the hard sciences. The basic idea of a research study is to be reproducible: someone else who tries the same experiment should get more or less the same result. But in recent years, a combination of hunger for headline-making publications and pursuit of political agendas has given rise to countless allegedly peer-reviewed studies that turned out to be utterly bogus:...........Nineteen times the normal suicide rate. Contemplate that. The claim that sex change surgeries are somehow saving lives is a fantasy. That genital mutilation destroys lives is an undeniable fact..........

Professor labels Target boycotters ‘domestic terrorists’ June 7, 2023 By Eric Utter - A University of Michigan professor referred to boycotts, and other threats against ultra-woke big-box retailer Target as a form of literal terrorism in a recent interview on MSNBC. The retail giant recently shed more than $9 billion in market value since it rolled out an extensive LGBTQ Pride collection of apparel and accessories, some aimed at toddlers and babies. After it was revealed that the stores sold LGBTQ-themed onesies for babies, children's books advocating for drag queen shows, and "tuck-friendly" bathing suits, the Minneapolis-based retailer’s value dropped 12% in just one week. It didn’t help that it turned out a few of the items were designed by an avowed Satanist.  LGBTQ organizations can threaten and make demands, but no others can? Ah, I see.............

Democrats Create a Transgender Child Kidnapping Network

By Daniel Greenfield May 21, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

“Trans Minors Protected from Parents Under Washington Law,” the Associated Press headlined its story. A short time later the story had officially been “withdrawn” by the AP.  Withdrawing the story however didn’t change the facts.

Washington Senate Bill 5599, titled, “Supporting youth and young adults seeking protected health care services”, allows shelters where a child runaway shows up not to notify his or her parents. While normally, unless a child were suffering “abuse or neglect”, the shelter would be obligated to inform the parents between 24 and 72 hours after arrival. The new law adds minors getting abortions and transgender treatments as “compelling reasons” not to notify their parents.

Once a child is listed as transgender, the parents are automatically treated as abusers.

Instead of contacting a child’s parents, the system will contact Washington’s child services department essentially claiming automatic state custody of any children classified as transgender. This measure follows on the heels of school policies where children are encouraged to imagine they’re another gender without telling their parents and shelter systems in the state that have refused to disclose information about minors to their families.

Laws like this not only violate family bonds for political reasons on the level of some of the worst totalitarian regimes in the world, they’re a bonanza to actual abusers who use social media to lure teenagers into running away. Senate Bill 5599 makes Washington a magnet for teenage runaways and sexual predators. That’s not surprising in a state where Seattle Mayor Ed Murray only resigned after being accused of sexually abusing five teenage boys.

Equal Rights Washington, one of the pressure groups behind the transgender child kidnapping bill, had been one of Murray’s biggest backers. After five men came forward to accuse the gay rights advocate of sexually assaulting them, Monisha Harrell, ERW’s chairwoman and a niece of the current Seattle mayor, expressed “sadness for the loss of a leader who has put himself on the front line of many of these causes that have been so important to us.”

There was no mention of any sadness for the young men her ally had assaulted, including Delvonn Heckard, a black man who had become addicted to drugs as a teenager when Murray was exploiting him, who was found dead a year after Murray’s resignation.

Even with five accusers, the ERW’s Monisha suggested that Muiray could win a write-in election because, “there might be people who will support him because they feel he was wronged, and that it will feel like righting a wrong.”

Equal Rights Washington and its transgender child kidnapping bill are not concerned with protecting children, just enabling their abusers, the way they did with Ed Murray.

The correct name for Senate Bill 5599 ought to be the Ed Murray Child Abduction Bill because that is the primary function that it serves. Washington State was not only the stalking ground for Ed Murray, it’s been the epicenter of some of the most aggressive child kidnapping measures.

Children can begin receiving “gender-affirming care” and admit themselves without parental consent in Washington beginning at the age of 13. Health insurance companies are not allowed to tell their parents about any medical procedures involving “gender affirming care”.

The same “shelter” program being empowered by the Ed Murray Child Abduction Bill already allows thirteen-year olds with stable loving families to check themselves into shelters.

And those parents who try to fight the mutilation of their children face serious consequences.

One parent, told that if he did not consent to transgender child mutilation would lose custody of his son to the state, took him and fled Washington. And he was far from the only one.

Through this bill and a previous one from last year, Washington’s social services system is effectively able to take custody and make medical decisions on behalf of a minor without parental consent. The system is able to bypass even the facade of custody hearings and accusations of abuse aimed at the parents for children that attract the political predators.

Gov. Inslee and Democrats have claimed that this is about dealing with a homeless crisis, but Washington Senate Bill 5599 specifically classifies Democrat policy priorities, abortion and transgender sexual mutilation, as the “protected health care services” they’re exempting.

Washington’s transgender child kidnapping bill follows in the footsteps of California’s Senate Bill 107. SB 107 was promoted by State Senator Scott Weiner, who had previously made national headlines for empowering judges to keep those guilty of “illegal sexual relations between a teenager age 15 and over and a partner within 10 years of age” off the sex offender registry.

None of this sexually abusive behavior is too surprising in a state that still venerates Harvey Milk: a California Democrat who supported Jim Jones and lured teenage runaways.

As the Alliance Defending Freedom argued, “SB 107 violates parental rights protected by the U.S. Constitution by giving California courts the ability to strip parents who reside in another state of their parental rights if their child travels to California to obtain gender transition procedures—including harmful puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries. It also denies parents the right to have access to their child’s medical information.”

Despite SB 107’s unconstitutional nature, 19 other Democrat states have introduced similar “transgender sanctuary bills”. Similar to sanctuary states for illegal aliens, child grooming and mutilation advocates hope to turn blue states into areas outside federal law. Much as sanctuary states for illegal aliens have led to a sizable death toll from crime, mass shootings and drunk driving, turning blue states into magnets for child grooming and sexual mutilation will cost lives.

While some trade conspiracy theories about underground networks, Democrats, backed by major donors, are putting into place a child kidnapping network encompassing half the country.

The network operates under the guise of “protecting” children from their parents. But that is how child groomers always operate. They claim that they understand teenagers when their parents don’t. They insinuate themselves into their confidence, win their trust and then manipulate them.

But what had been the practice of a handful of deviant men is now the government policy of entire states implemented by massive social services networks, clinicians and therapists.

As the rates of teenage depression and suicides increase, the Democrats are rushing to take advantage of troubled teens, manipulating them into joining its political cults and servicing its top political figures. Now that the politicians and bureaucrats are promising to protect children from their parents, who will protect the children, parents and families from the Democrats? 

 Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Democrats 'don't give a crap' about kids, gun violence, or civil rights

March 21, 2023 By D. Parker

What makes anyone think the fascist far left cares about anything at all but the selfish pursuit of power over the people? Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) recently talked to Salon magazine, complaining that Republicans "don't give a crap" about kids and gun violence.  If you're feeling particularly masochistic, you can watch the entire interview on YouTube.  We've done that so you don't have to, and have the headache to prove it.  Twenty minutes of infuriating propaganda and outright lies will do that, especially when the fascists' invert reality, casting Senator Murphy as Batman and Senator Ted Cruz as the Joker.  Yes, this bizarre assertion was made by the interviewer.

Getting back to the senator's falsehood about Republicans and kids, why can't the pro-freedom right assert the same thing about the anti-freedom far left?  Given their track record, why do leftists get a free pass when it comes to their utterly failed policies in keeping kids safe? It certainly wouldn't be a day that ends in "y" if the far left didn't lie.  And he said the economy is on fire, definitely, one of those "you keep using that word" moments if there ever was one.........To Read More...

Trudeau's government calls for euthanasia program to 'treat' children with naysaying parents

March 1, 2023 By Olivia Murray

Treat human life as anything less than sacred, and humanity is rapidly dehumanized. Canada's MAiD, like all medical homicide programs, is the metaphorical foot in the door, an obstinate wedge, breaking the seal of a once-closed divider.  Or we call it what it is (genocide), and MAiD is like an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson in The Shining. For context, in 2016, the year "assisted suicide" became legal, the number of MAiD deaths was 1,018.  Five years later, the 2021 data showed that number at 10,064.  This is a rounded 889% increase.  (This datum hails from a government report on the program, which can be accessed here.)  But there was also something else that stood out about the 2021 tally, entirely unsettling: it was the first year that MAiD executioners were legally permitted to kill those whose death was not likely to occur in the "foreseeable" future.  They label this group as "non-RFND."  In 2021, those deaths accounted for 2.2% of the total number. Two days ago, Harbingers Daily published a report by David Fiorazo, which opened with this passage:..............To Read More....

The left took over an important cultural institution while you weren’t looking

February 7, 2023 By Andrea Widburg

If you were raised in America, you probably grew up reading books published in the “Little Golden Books” series. It’s likely, too, that parents associate that label with trusted and wholesome products. Well, they’re probably still wholesome (no sex, obscenities, or other nasty things in these books), but recent content has taken both a shallow and a leftward turn, with the Little Golden Books starting early to turn your kids on to pop culture and to “wokify” them.

The Little Golden Books debuted in 1942 as durable, colorful children’s books that would sell for 25 cents to bring reading to the mass market. The first books set a lasting template: They were about basic education (the alphabet, objects, counting), faith (prayers), and morally or practically good behavior (The Little Red Hen). Here’s that list of the first Little Golden Books released in October 1942, all of which were huge successes:.........

In some ways, though, the saddest thing in the catalog is the cross-marketing for Hollywood. Disney had a tie-in with the Little Golden Books very early, but now it’s Disney/Pixar, the Hulk, Captain Marvel, Back to the Future, Jaws, you name it… The whole thing is just kind of tawdry.

I understand that everything changes. Europe, which froze itself in amber after WWII to make money as a tourist destination for rich Americans, shows how dangerous this kind of stagnation can be, especially because the culture stopped reproducing. Still, it’s sad to see a book series that introduced children to core ethical concepts and stories that have long underpinned the west (even if run through the Disney shop) work hard to jumpstart children’s obsession with shallow, often debasing and almost never ethically uplifting pop culture and woke concepts..............To Read More....

Climate extremism is making America mentally ill

By Craig Rucker |October 25th, 2022|Climate|275 Comments @ CFACT

America is floundering in an epidemic of anxiety, depression and drug use.

One in six Americans takes some kind of psychiatric drug, mostly antidepressants, a medical study concluded, and some of them (Prozac and Paxil) are linked to acts of violence. A third of high school students cannot shake feelings of sadness or hopelessness, another report found, and nearly 2 0% of teens have contemplated suicide.

Still more frightening, both studies are based on data collected before the COVID pandemic sent college, teenage and younger children into lockdowns, social isolation, minimal physical activity, hours spent playing video games and reading censored and self-selected online media — and rampant depression and “chronic incapacitating mental illness.” Nor is the problem confined to America.

Researchers and psychologists are constantly finding new reasons to explain the growing inability to cope. Their newest “explanation” is — climate change!

“Climate grief” is “real,” they insist, and it’s spreading rapidly among young people. “The future is frightening,” 77% of 10,000 young people aged 16-25 from the USA and other countries told analysts who investigate “climate anxiety.” Large numbers of children are having climate nightmares.

“The climate mental health crisis” already affects people who have “lost everything in worsening climate infernos,” laments a NASA scientist and climate activist fear-monger who’s convinced we face “the end of life on Earth as we know it.”

“I don’t want to be alive anymore. The animals are all going to die, and I don’t want to be here when all the animals are dead,” a four-year-old child wailed.

Parents fantasize about killing their children, over fears of the “climate-ravaged future” they face. Parents and children alike consider suicide. Indeed, there’s a clear link between increased global temperatures and suicide rates, a Stanford economist asserts.

Dr. Thomas Doherty has built an entire psychology practice around climate psychoses, the Climate Psychology Alliance provides an online directory of “climate-aware therapists,” and a “peer support network” offers grief therapy modeled on twelve-step drug addiction programs.

There’s only one real solution to this epidemic, “experts” insist: Governments must act immediately to “fix” the climate, and eliminate “the death knell of climate chaos hanging over people’s heads.”

Fomenting Fear, Grabbing Power

Excuse the bad pun — but this is insane! The hysteria and histrionics have gotten completely out of hand. They have no basis in reality.

We do not have a climate “crisis.” We have a climate fear-mongering and cancel-culture crisis.

The solution to the climate drug and mental health crisis is not to “fix” grotesquely exaggerated climate problems. It is to end the indoctrination and censorship that dominate discussions about climate change, from kindergarten through graduate school, and in almost every realm of science, politics and news.

The supposed climate crisis exists in computer models, headlines and hype about “unprecedented” temperatures, extreme weather, floods and droughts that have scant basis in Real World evidence. Viewpoints, evidence and experts questioning and challenging these claims are banned from classrooms, school curricula, news and social media, and government policy discussions – starting at the top.

The White House “national climate adviser,” for example, works hand-in-glove with Big Tech and news organizations, suppressing facts about climate change reality. Most federal (and many state) government agencies have similar officials and programs. Meta (Facebook), Twitter, YouTube and other Big Tech companies routinely, consistently and happily assist with this deplatforming and censorship.

The so-called Next Generation Science Standards feature climate alarmism as a guiding principle for students K-12, and determine what is being taught in over a third of America’s classrooms.

Meanwhile, as America and Europe are propagandized and prodded to eliminate their fossil fuel use — with enormous costs in jobs, living standards and lives — China, India and 100 other countries are rapidly expanding their oil, gas and coal use, to lift people out of rampant poverty.

Worse, China increasingly dominates raw material and “green tech” supply chains — and gets a free pass on its fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental destruction, and slave and child labor.

All these realities are studiously and systematically ignored and cancelled.

Fortunately, millions of parents are becoming more involved in their children’s homework and school boards. Fight for Schools and other such efforts are working to bring science, honesty and accountability back to education. They recognize that we desperately need diversity of political and scientific thought.

Without it, the United States and Western Civilization will see their liberties and living standards rolled backward by decades.

The shrill, alarmist cries of climate extremists must be confronted and doused with sound reason. This, for the sake of the children and everyone’s peace of mind.

This article originally appeared at The Daily Caller

Author

• Craig Rucker

  Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

 

This is Our Thalidomide Era!

By Rich Kozlovich 

For those not old enough to remember Thalidomide, it was a drug that caused serious issues of deformity in new born children.  It was considered a huge scandal in those days, and yet, as bad as it was, the numbers were minuscule compared to the damage these false vaccines are causing. 

From the very beginning I've taken the position this "pandemic" has been nothing short of a political pandemic, and nothing to do with public health. Now we're finding out not only has all these mandates been politically motivated, we're finding out these "vaccinations" aren't vaccinations, they're experimental gene altering chemical compounds, that don't prevent infection, don't prevent transmission, and what's worse, they're killing people, as Study after study prove Covid “vaccines” are a risky gamble.   

Here is part of a pertinent news story with this title: “FDA Withholding Autopsy Results on People Who Died After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines.”  “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines. The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted.”

According to The Exposé on October 20, 2022,  "the UK Government institution, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), between January and March 2022, 62,801 people had sadly died within an average of 48 days after receiving a booster dose of the Covid-19 injection no later than 31st December 2021, and 4,781 of those deaths were attributed to Covid-19. " 

There has been a lot of concern over these numbers.  While correlation isn't necessarily causation, when numbers like this start showing up, action must be required.  An awful lot of young men, healthy young men, among Army and Navy SEAL recruits, not to mention athletes, are dying suddenly, and without exlanation.  Why?  These figures should be generating some serious questions over these false vaccines, and yet the federal agencies responsible for this are sitting on the story.

We're finding that children, who are not very susceptible to this coronavirus and have a 99.99% survival rate when they do get it, that one in every 500 small children who receive the Pfizer “vaccine” are hospitalized by it, and yet the CDC votes to add COVID vaccine to routine childhood shots.  And what was Pfizer's response to all this?  Pfizer Plans 400% price increase.  The goal now seems to be vaccines today, vaccines tomorrow, vaccines forever!   

Yesterday the out-of-control Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 15-0 to add the Covid-19 vaccine to the CDC’s child and adolescent immunization schedule.  I don’t think there is any scientific basis for this action. Covid has proved not to be dangerous to children and young people; certainly not to infants who are routinely undergoing vaccination. For reasons I frankly do not understand, our establishment has resolved to make as many people as people get covid vaccines as often as possible, despite the fact that they don’t seem to do much good. That has not been the case in many other countries.

Meet the 15 CDC Members Who Voted to Add Deadly COVID Shots to Kids’ Vaccine Schedule:

 

This beyond-dangerous decision will kill a number of children. This is a foregone conclusion based on the existing data in VAERS. There is no other way to say it, or that it should be said. These ACIP members, people hiding in plain sight, have just condemned a number of children to death.  

 

Furthermore California passed a bill that:

 

essentially muzzles doctors preventing them from rendering medical opinions on COVID-19. The law states that doctors must follow an approved consensus that is judged by the California Medical Board, and violations will result in penalties and potential loss of licensure. Many countries are moving in this direction in an attempt to save the crumbling COVID-19 narrative............What’s even worse, is the fact that 15 UNELECTED people, appointed by God knows who, just made a decision that will impact tens of millions of families…WHILE THE PRODUCTS ARE STILL IN ONGOING CLINICAL TRIALS!!!! 

There is hope for America's children as governors can 'Just Say No' to this CDC vax mandate. and it appears GOP Governors are pushing back, and believe it or not, there's an upside to this:

Data journalist and pollster Rich Baris posted to social media he predicts a “homeschool boom” following the news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee unanimously voted to add the COVID shot to the children and adolescent immunization schedule, a move that will likely lead many states to require COVID shots for school attendance.

Not only will they not be forced to receive these genetically manipulating chemical compounds, they're now going to actually get educated versus being intellectually and philosophically corrupted.

The data is compelling these chemical compounds aren't just ineffective, but dangerous, and this is an all important point.  It takes between ten and twelve years before a drug has gone through FDA's required testing.  These were introduced in less than two years testing and Pfizer's CEO admitted they never tested for transmission, and yet he had to know that was a requirement for any compound to be declared a "vaccine", at least until they changed the definition to accommodate these drugs.  They didn't start testing for transmission until these compounds were already being injected into people's arms.  

And that means what?   They are yet to be approved by the FDA as they've not gone through the required testing, and at the same time these pharmaceutical companies are being protected by the federal government from being sued, here, here, here, and here. 

What could possibly go wrong?  EU Sets Out Commitment to Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, Mask Mandates andLegally Binding” Global Pandemic Treaty. A lot can go wrong!

What Vision Do Young People Need?

October 21, 2022  By Marsha Familiaro Enright

Before the devastating psychological effects of the COVID lockdowns, the U.S. faced a frightening rise in drug addiction, with youth suicide becoming the second-leading cause of death among people aged 15–20 in the U.S., and suicide in children quadrupling from 2007 to 2020.  What's behind this alarming trend?  Let's consider what the young need to thrive.

Infants and young children constantly challenge themselves to learn the next hardest thing — how to walk on uneven surfaces, how to run down a hill, how to say "rain boot."  As they grow, the challenges become psychologically complex.

Significant purposes are critical to their motivation, including a vision of work as important to achieve independence.  Vital are a hopeful view of the future, a vision that life can be an adventure worth the striving, and heroes that embody the highest reaches of human nature.  Without these elements, the young are lost, adrift — only too susceptible to depression and even suicide.

Throughout life, humans need inspiration to get through the difficult and dreary parts.  Where do the young find it today?  Our culture is schizophrenic: on the one hand, Intel's commercial "We believe there's an innovator in everybody" captures the classic American excitement toward challenge with financial reward.  On the other hand, running rampant are cynicism, resentment of achievement, intolerance toward differing ideas and values, and a bleak picture of the future based on the premise that human technology is destructive, expressed in the drumbeat of climate change disaster, artificial intelligence boogeymen, and the soul-crushing nature of capitalism..........To Read More...

Have You Had Enough?

They are changing all the rules, all of societies norms...The Great Reset. You will own nothing and be happy!? 

By Ray DiLorenzo ——Bio and Archives--October 8, 2022 @ Canada Free Press

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”~ Aristotle

 I insist I am not crazy. But, much of the world is.  It is twisted beyond recognition.  Politicians, our government institutions, the medical profession, multi-national corporations, almost everything having to do with education, the entertainment industry, even our military leaders.

Our military academies such as West Point, the Air Force Academy, and Annapolis are collectively nuttier than a fruit cake.  They have all become incoherent, preposterous, and senseless.  They care more about pronouns and winning approval from other morons than doing their job defending America.

The FBI has become a tool of political tyranny.  They don’t raid drug houses or organized crime anymore; they raid the political opposition.  I even read an article recently on what to do if you’re raided by the FBI.  One of the recommendations was to have donuts at the ready.

Listen to our politicians.  I mean really listen to them.  They don’t say what they mean or mean what they say…they insist the border is closed.  I know, what else is new, but maybe they keep sounding off with BS because not enough people take them to task.  The main-stream press certainly doesn’t. If government was a consumer product, how many people would ask for their money back?

• Why has everything changed so drastically so quickly? 
• What was so bad about being rational? 
• Was no war in Ukraine a problem? 
• Was no threat of nuclear world war becoming boring? 
• When North Korea stopped flying missiles toward Japan, did that unnerve anyone? 
• Was having cheap gasoline and plentiful food on store shelves ruining your day? 

Being absurd seems to be fashionable now.  People wear it like a badge of honor, and enlightenment.  This is not being ‘woke’ or enlightened,  it’s being dead on arrival.

Defund the police and we’ll have less crime?  Who came up with that?  Are we now supposed to have equal opportunity in criminal prosecution?  We can’t arrest any more Black people this month, we filled our quota, and vice versa. 

Black Lives Matter, I have to say, is brilliant.  Who would argue with that?  Capitalize on the unfortunate death of a Black man who was in police custody.  Get big corporations (stupid corporations, mind you) to donate millions of dollars to admitted, trained Marxists and then they take the money and run like Hell.  Wow! 

Do you know you can take your small child to the local library and have him or her sit on the lap of a transvestite?  Isn’t that nice?  What happened to the librarians I used to know?

Criminals kill and injure innocent people and no one hardly does anything about it.  Democrats insist the crimes are few and far between even when we know otherwise, and they know that we know otherwise.  But, no matter.  Don’t expect any changes.  When was the last time you saw the government admit they were wrong about anything? 

Lets not have voter ID; it’s unfair and impedes voting.  What?  Of course it impedes voting.  It’s designed to do just that…prevent those from voting who are not of age, not a citizen, imaginary, dead, not a legal resident, or having voted twice already. 

The medical industry lives and breaths on trust.  A friend of mine had a doctor appointment recently.  When she looked at the info sheet she was asked to fill out, there were 6 choices for gender.  One of them was ‘None of the Above’.  How did we get here?  That is a medical system I cannot trust.

Being in the digital age, we seem to think that computers can do almost anything, and maybe they can.  It all depends on who is writing the software.  We don’t want to count votes by hand because it’s labor intensive, so we think we’re being efficient by using computers to do simple counting.  But, can computers be tampered with?  Absolutely!  Computers are very compliant. They will do anything they are programmed to do.  Their intelligence is artificial and with no conscience. Can hand counting be tampered with?  Yes, but much less likely.  Hand counting with observers watching is infinitely safer than any machine.  With hand counted ballots we still get an occasional moron that wins an election.  With computer counting, we are now over-flowing with them from the top down.

A software CEO was just arrested for stealing election worker data and storing it on Chinese servers.  If you haven’t figured out by now that the Chinese are buying just about everything they can get their grubby hands on, including presidents, you’re not paying attention.

People have had enough of experts.  The environmental wizards say we are all going to die in 9 or 10 years…again.  They have said it at least 50 times in the last 50 or 60 years.  We are all still here.  What’s worse, they are still here.

I was watching a documentary recently on penguins (it was a slow TV day).  In examining mummified penguins’ bodies, the scientists discovered two sets of bodies, those that died 200 years ago and those that died 500 years ago.  They discovered that the reason they died was…wait for it…climate change!  What, climate change and no cars, trucks, lawn mowers, or people in any quantity anywhere?  How can that be? I thought it was our fault.  It be because climate change is part of the natural order in nature.  There is nothing unusual going on.

During the American Revolution, if you remember in one of your early history lessons (that’s a joke), Washington’s troops suffered a terrible winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.  That’s because it was during a mini ice age.  Climatologists are now saying another mini ice age could hit by 2030.  What then, the government will ask us to resurrect our gas-powered cars?  This government in D.C. has gone sideways on us.

Before we find ourselves stuck at home for the duration, why hasn’t anyone of any technical expertise admit that electric cars are not the answer.  Lithium ion batteries, like people in Arizona, cannot take the cold.  In low temperatures the batteries discharge quickly.  In a snowstorm in Minnesota, you will be up the Yangtze River without a ping pong paddle. Toyota even says that California’s ban of gasoline cars by 2035 is a stretch.  At the very least, EV cars are not ready for prime time, but no mind, they want everyone to own one and the pollution it creates in their production doesn’t seem to be a problem…hmmm!

Hollywood releases a gay rom-com (romantic comedy). It totally flops and the makers blame the audience!?  I mean really blames the audience for not being with the program. Well, they are right about that.  We are not with the program.  Hollywood needs to get out more often.  Leave California at least occasionally.

We have become faddish, looking for the latest craze, social, political or otherwise.  But, I believe it is for a purpose.  It’s a giant distraction.  Our eyes are being turned while forces from within and without are creating conditions for a major change in how we live, how our society functions.  They are changing all the rules, all of societies norms…The Great Reset.  You will own nothing and be happy!? 

Yes, I have never seen so much change and fad dictate so much in our lives.  It’s almost like the Beatles are back, except the music these dodos are playing is a dirge.

Have you had enough?

Editor's Note:  I have not asked for nor have I received permission to publish this piece in full, but I think this is such a well done and important piece I think it deserves the largest distribution possible, and I wish to help support such an effort.   If the author or the Canada Free Press object I will break it down to a link.    RK

 

Will DOJ Try to Prosecute Parents Who Refuse to Mutilate Their Children?

Katie Pavlich Oct 04, 2022

Democrat-controlled Chicago is suffering a crime wave as overall crime since 2021 has skyrocketed 37 percent while motor vehicle thefts have spiked 64 percent, per police statistics.

 Last summer the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland were caught red handed after they fulfilled a request by the National School Board Association, which was passed along by the Biden White House, to use the Patriot Act against parents who showed up at school board meetings. ................Now, the same DOJ is being petitioned by the American Medical Association to crack down on parents and reporters who have exposed a number of child mutilation programs at hospitals across the country under the guise of "gender affirming care." AMA calls reports about gender programs a "coordinated attack.".................To Read More....

•  The Democrats’ in ‘loco’ parentis view of ‘democracy’ October 3, 2022 Democrats keep insisting that Republicans are a threat to “democracy,” so it’s useful to analyze what they mean by the word. 

The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

September 13, 2022 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

 It’s September, in an even year. Labor Day has passed. The big mid-terms are less than two months away. It’s time for a pre-election bait and switch on poverty statistics to deceive any low information voters who aren’t paying attention to how the poverty scam works.

The poverty scam has been a big topic over the years at this blog, although perhaps less so in the most recent couple of years. This link will take you to all my prior posts on Poverty, some 129 in total. The most important recurring theme has been that the government cynically manipulates the poverty statistics so that the official measured rate of poverty never goes meaningfully down, no matter how much taxpayer money is spent, thus manufacturing a fake basis to hit up the people for ever increasing funding at regular intervals.

But there is an exception. When a big election is coming up and the Democrats are in power, suddenly alternative statistics magically emerge showing that poverty has dropped dramatically, all of course due to compassionate programs put in place by the Democrats. And thus we have two pieces from the front page of the New York Times in the past two days. From yesterday, it’s “A Quiet, Dramatic Blow to Childhood Poverty” (different headline in online version); and today it’s “Families Lifted By Safety Net Tell Their Stories” (again, different headline online). Both have the by-line of long-time Times “poverty” reporter Jason DeParle.

Before getting to a detailed consideration of the two latest pieces from the Times, let’s have a review of some history. My first post on what I called the “poverty scam” goes all the way back to the very beginning of this blog in November 2012. That linked post pointed out that almost all government “anti-poverty” spending was in-kind, rather than in cash, and that the Census Bureau systematically and cynically excluded all in-kind spending and tax credits when calculating its official measure of poverty. Thus, no matter how much money was spent via these programs, the poverty rate would never go down, and the seemingly high poverty rate could regularly be used as a basis to advocate for yet more anti-poverty spending. From the November 2021 post:

There is nothing honest about the exclusion of in-kind benefits from the definition of poverty. The main results of the exclusion are (1) the public thinks that the "poverty" rate is measuring something about material deprivation, but it is not, and (2) additional spending, even hundreds of billions of dollars of it, cannot ever make any dent in the poverty rate, even as the government spends more per family in poverty than the median income of a family of four in the entire country.

And that was indeed the usual order of things year after year. But then we came up on the 2016 election. Barack Obama was President, the Democrats ran the government, and Hillary Clinton was running for President against Donald Trump. Suddenly things changed. In September 2016 the Census Bureau came out with a suspiciously-timed big Report showing large gains in median household income, and a big drop in the poverty rate, from 2014 to 2015. On September 25, 2016 — the day of the first presidential debate — the New York Times weighed in with a big article headlined “With Pay Rising, Millions Climb Out of Poverty”:

3.5 million Americans . . . were able to raise their chins above the poverty line last year, according to census data released this month.

I responded with a post on September 27 titled “Fraudulent Advocacy For Government Growth.” That post noted that the supposed sudden drop in poverty actually resulted from changes in methodology by which Census compiled the statistics — particularly some conveniently-timed additional efforts to track un- and under-reported income. Whatever.

As soon as the election was over, and Trump installed in office, the Census Bureau and the usual advocacy groups resumed the use of the standard inflated poverty statistics, now mostly in the effort to bash the hated President Trump. Consider a few headlines covering 2017-2020, the years of the Trump presidency:

• From the New York Times, September 13, 2018, author Glenn Thrush, “U.S. Recovery Eludes Many Living Below Poverty Level, Census Suggests”: “On Wednesday, the Census Bureau released its 2017 annual report on the poor that offered a stark counterpoint, suggesting that the national recovery has bypassed many of the 40 million to 45 million Americans estimated to be living below the federal poverty level.” It’s fascinating how, exactly the same amount of time before a mid-term election as today, the narrative was 180 degrees the opposite with Trump in office instead of Biden.

• From the American Academy of Pediatrics, September 14, 2021: ”About . . .16.1% of children lived in poverty in 2020, according to new reports from the U.S. Census Bureau. The 2020 child poverty rate marks an increase from 14.4% in 2019. About 11.6 million children and adolescents under age 18 lived in poverty in 2020, an increase of 1.1 million from 2019.

• From the Children’s Defense Fund, May 3, 2021, “The State of America’s Children 2020”: “Children remain the poorest age group in America. Nearly 1 in 6 lived in poverty in 2018—nearly 11.9 million children (see Table 2). The child poverty rate (16 percent) is nearly one-and-a-half times higher than that for adults.”

• From the New York Times, May 7, 2022, by-line Bruce Covert: “We Pay to Keep the Old Out of Poverty. Why Won’t We Do the Same for the Young?”: 

  “The United States has an incredibly high child poverty rate. Nearly one in seven children lives in a poor family. By comparison, fewer than 10 percent of adults are poor, and under 9 percent of those age 65 and over are. Child poverty also doesn’t fall evenly across demographics: 71 percent of poor children are Black, Hispanic or Native American. . . . There’s a very simple reason for this: We don’t give parents enough money to raise their children.”

Well, welcome to September 2022. With less than two months remaining to the election, it’s time for a temporary 180 degree narrative change to prove that all the spending programs are actually working. From DeParle’s piece yesterday:

For a generation or more, America’s high levels of child poverty set it apart from other rich nations, leaving millions of young people lacking support as basic as food and shelter amid mounting evidence that early hardship leaves children poorer, sicker and less educated as adults. But with little public notice and accelerating speed, America’s children have become much less poor. A comprehensive new analysis shows that child poverty has fallen 59 percent since 1993, with need receding on nearly every front.

Since 1993? In other words, this Times piece completely contradicts the official left-wing narrative covering the Trump years, including the pieces linked above from the AAP, CDF, and even in the Times itself. Here is the Times’s chart of the decline in child poverty since 1993:

Note that the chart goes only to 2019, and reflects a dramatic decline in child poverty on Trump’s watch, and nothing about the Biden time period — although you won’t find any mention of that in the text of the article.

So how could the likes of the AAP, the CDF, and the Times’s own Messrs. Thrush and Covert have missed this? The answer is that there is nothing real here, and it’s only the usual statistical legerdemain to support the narrative needed for this particular moment. The labels in the chart give away the game. For the current purpose, we are now counting in-kind benefits and tax credits, notably the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit (as well as food stamps, as the text of the article makes clear). In other words, this is the so-called “Supplemental Poverty Measure,” rather than the usual “Official Poverty Measure,” in which these handouts would have been arbitrarily excluded. When AAP, CDF and the Times wanted to bash Trump, they used the Official Poverty Measure, which contained more useful figures for that purpose.

Note that I’m not by any means saying that the Supplemental Poverty Measure is any more honest than the Official Poverty Measure. The SPM has its own major problems, some of which I have previously covered, for example here. It’s just that the Times, and its compatriots in left-wing advocacy, cherry-pick whatever statistics they need to support the official narrative of the moment. Once the election is over, the business about the child poverty rate going down is highly likely to disappear as we go back to the usual line about extraordinarily high child poverty in the United States. Statistics from the Official Poverty Measure will be used to support that narrative. How many people will be able to figure out that they are being played?