266 Comments
Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

Bari, when will we see the progressives finally acknowledge the wreckage they have brought on America?

People sit in solitary confinement for months for their actions on January 6. No parole, not trial. This is an outrage. Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for speaking out on this, but no one hears him.

Meantime, the progressive democrats are destroying America piece by piece.

When are you going to interview a true conservative person who can share his or her views on how America is being destroyed by the left before our eyes? I suggest Victor Davis Hanson.

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The contempt of Fox by Jonah Goldberg is self-serving at best. Fox is still the highest rated cable news show and it isn’t even close. His leaving simply put him on the same tribe as the people who have alienated half the country. Maybe that’s good for him, I don’t know, probably it is. But he has cut himself off from the working class majority he had a shot at reaching. No one has been more disappointing to me through all of this than the Never Trumpers. They simply cast their lot with the left and the elite class. That is very easy to do. You simply have to demonize Trump, his supporters and Fox News. And in so doing, a large portion of this country.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

re J6: The dichotomy between the media's portrayal of the J6 riot and "Summer of Love" 2020 riots is about as manipulative as it gets.

Glenn Greenwald does the real journalism and wrote an excellent piece: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/civil-liberties-are-being-trampled:

"With more than 600 people now charged in connection with the events of 1/6, not one person has been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government, incite insurrection, conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping of public officials, or any of the other fantastical claims that rained down on them from media narratives. No one has been charged with treason or sedition. Perhaps that is because, as Reuters reported in August, “the FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.” Yet these defendants are being treated as if they were guilty of these grave crimes of which nobody has been formally accused, with the exact type of prosecutorial and judicial overreach that criminal defense lawyers and justice reform advocates have long railed against.

Dozens of the 1/6 defendants have been denied bail, thus being imprisoned for months without having been found guilty of anything. Many are being held in unusually harsh and bizarrely cruel conditions, causing a federal judge on Wednesday to hold “the warden of the D.C. jail and director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt of court,” and then calling on the Justice Department "to investigate whether the jail is violating the civil rights of dozens of detained Jan. 6 defendants.” Some of the pre-trial prison protocols have been so punitive that even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — who calls the 1/6 protesters "domestic terrorists” — denounced their treatment as abusive: “Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren said, adding: “And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.” Warren also said she is "worried that law enforcement officials are deploying it to 'punish' the Jan. 6 defendants or to 'break them so that they will cooperate.”

The few 1/6 defendants who have thus far been sentenced after pleading guilty have been subjected to exceptionally punitive sentences, the kind liberal criminal justice reform advocates have been rightly denouncing for years. Several convicted of nothing more than trivial misdemeanors are being sentenced to real prison time; last week, Michigan's Robert Reeder pled guilty to “one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building” yet received a jail term of 3 months, with the judge admitting that the motive was to “send a signal to the other participants in that riot… that they can expect to receive jail time.”

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Dec 17, 2021·edited Dec 17, 2021

Re: Laura Igraham. Why are her pleas to Meadows and her statement that not everyone at the Capitol that day were trump supporters mutually exclusive, much less a truth and a lie?

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So much to comment upon this TGIF! Let me begin with Biden's Build Back Better Botch.

Over at the "Commentary" podcast, the gang has offered what I think is a correct diagnosis of this Democratic debacle. They point out that right from the beginning, the messaging was all about the money: six trillion or 4.5 trillion or 3.8 trillion or 1.5 trillion $$$ or whatever. What the bill actually contained seemed of decidedly secondary importance, even to its proponents. The Biden Administration and congressional Democrats gave the impression that they were only interested in spending as much money as possible, and had no coherent plan.

Bernie Sanders runs around insisting that BBB is "wildly popular" but the truth is that by and large people don't know what's in the bill. Nor are they on board with the idea that spending a boatload of billions and trillions will address the issues that actually concern them. So with miniscule congressional majorities and no real popular support, BBB is going nowhere. Hence the ludicrously transparent pivot to "voting rights."

The problem is compounded by the incoherence of Biden himself. If the President can't provide an understandable explanation of his own signature legislation—what chance has it got?

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Re: homeschooling -- We have been active in the home education world for more than a decade. I teach civics, econ, and robotics (the robots are the most fun, but long term, the other two are probably more important -- but I digress). Our group is only about 50 families. A few aged out during the pandemic hiatus, some left town, but we also gained 8 new families, 6 of whom never home educated pre-COVID. We are a small, word-of-mouth-only, expressly Christian group. I can only imagine what larger groups who cater to secular homeschoolers are seeing.

The statistics seem to bear this out as well. According to HSLDA (a Christian home education legal aid and support group), their surveys say home education has nearly tripled in the last 2 years. Not all of those will remain, but many will. You start home educating for many reasons: academic, religious, work scheduling, sspecial needs (very common)... but those aren't enough to sustain it. You keep home educating because of the relationships you get with your children. Eventually, you realize you can't imagine turning over the best 7 hours of the day to someone you've barely met.

I fear that we will once again need to fight for the right to home educate though. When we were only 2-3% of the population, we weren't worth the trouble of the teacher unions. At 8-10% of the population, we will be a target.

Re: HHS Medicare reimbursements -- Paying doctors more based on race... what could possibly go wrong?

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Pimping for Pastor French AND Jonah Goldberg? Has flaming leftism now come full circle to be with “principled” conservative never trumpers? While I won’t read Goldberg’s “truly powerful essay” on the rot within Fox News, I’d have to bet the real reason that putz fled was because the money wasn’t there for him anymore. Those two friends of Nellie are grifters behind compare. Sheesh.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

Isn't it surprising how most parents want their children to learn to read, write, socialize and learn hard math and science skills so that the can function and compete in an increasingly skills-based economy and world.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

Water in Los Angeles.

No one should live in Southern California. The place has no water, it is a desert. 1/3 of all energy used in California is used to pump water to Southern California.

That water you're drinking came from up to 600 miles away. Water is diverted from the Trinity River in Trinity County into Whiskeytown Reservoir, and into the Sacramento River where it is pumped into canals, and up hill from Sacramento (3' above sea level) over the Transverse Range (4,400' in elevation). Stored in reservoirs, and then delivered to So Cal customers.

That water, 90% of the Trinity river being diverted causes the salmon population to crash in the Klamath River, where that Trinity River water should have gone.

Living in Southern California is killing forests in Northern California. If you want to be an environmentalist, get out of Southern California.

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Great stuff. I am fairly conservative, but I like the penalty flags thrown fairly onto both sides!

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

I appreciate your weekly takes and is one of the reasons why I subscribe. One suggestion though: If you want to change the water and air in LA, the local or even state govenernment should have adequate resources. No need to wait for a federal bill.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

It’s amusing watching liberals/progressives mess something up(defund the police) then turn around and try to fix it(stop crime). Buffoons

I think we should ALL be against ANY bill from either side that is thousands of pages long. There will ALWAYS be a lot of dross stuffed in.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

"We live in Los Angeles where the tap water and the air is bad..." Note that LA is going to "solve" global warming but can't deliver clean water to its people. It's like the guy who wants to play Chopin but can't be bothered to learn scales.

We live in Atlanta where the air and water is fine. Maybe a local solution instead of one driven out of DC would be better.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

Thank you Nelli. I did not follow you closely at the NYT (not sure why) but this has quickly become kind of "reader's guide to the news". Straight news is still out there somewhere but one needs a curator. I was already a subscriber so this is just a bonus.

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Dec 17, 2021Liked by Nellie Bowles

He added: “I think the institutions that create policies for the Democratic Party, they’re not up to the task. They’re not willing to be honest.”

How basic is this? To get your proposals accepted by the American people, you have to lie about them. November 8, 2022 can't come soon enough.

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agree with bifftorpedo - the pleas to meadows and telling her TV audience some of the crowd were antifa don't cancel out each other. we are learning some in the crowd were intent on

stirring up things. trump, meadows and the capitol police called for the national guard before

and during the riots, the capitol police chief six times before pelosi assented. she had to know

there would be a need for crowd control - why isn't pelosi on the hot seat before the juanuary 6

show/sham hearings.

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