Senate Dems and Susan Collins Tell Americans They’re Too Stupid to Make Their Own Insurance Decisions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Democrats don’t want you to be able to buy more affordable health insurance under Obamacare, and they made that pretty clear with a recent Senate vote.

Here’s the background: Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., used a discharge petition to force a vote on a resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to expand access to more affordable short-term health care plans that don’t have to follow Obamacare’s onerous coverage regulations.

The Trump administration’s move to expand these plans naturally follows the fact that more and more Americans are having trouble affording health insurance under Obamacare (something even the left-leaning Vox admits), but the Republican-controlled Senate can’t scrounge up enough support from its moderate wing to repeal the law, as Republicans have campaigned on for years.

The vote failed Wednesday by only a single vote. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined with every Democrat to bring the final count to a 50-50 tie.

Here are some of the prevailing arguments against what Obamacare boosters like to call “junk insurance” or “junk plans”:

Wait, you mean a more affordable insurance product might not offer the same amount of coverage as the astronomically expensive ones that working Americans are having trouble paying for? You don’t say.

The irony of this debate, of course, is that nobody is being forced to buy a short-term plan under this. But heaven forbid that we’d give free Americans the option to choose one of these short-term plans over the Obamacare-compliant plans that do all the things that made Obamacare so expensive in the first place.

By contrast, until the repeal of the individual mandate in last year’s tax cuts, people were absolutely forced to buy Obamacare-compliant plans, whether they wanted to (or could even afford it) or not.

Look, there are basically two arguments to be made against the administration’s move here: The guise of consumer protection or the preservation of Obamacare’s collapsing system.

The first says that you’re too stupid to make your own health care decisions and therefore should not have the freedom to. The second says that your health care decisions might undermine a sacred cow of American health care policy that can’t stand on its own, and you therefore shouldn’t have the freedom to find another option.

Neither of those arguments are going to hold up to many hardworking voters whose health insurance premiums match or surpass their mortgage payments. (For more from the author of “Senate Dems and Susan Collins Tell Americans They’re Too Stupid to Make Their Own Insurance Decisions” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Watch: Students Offered $100 to Name Just One Time Conservatives Shut Down a Progressive Campus Speaker

/0 Comments/in , /by

On Tuesday, Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips spoke with students at the University of Georgia to see if any of them could name a single time conservatives “shut down a liberal speaker on campus” like progressives often shut down conservative speakers.

Phillips even sweetened the pot, offering a cool $100 to anyone who could provide a sufficient answer. . .

Later in the video, two students attempt to push back, arguing that progressive views are “more palatable” and “less hate-fueled.” Another student claimed that Phillips’ argument was a “red herring,” then backtracked, then couldn’t articulate why he disagreed with Phillips.

(Read more from “Watch: Students Offered $100 to Name Just One Time Conservatives Shut Down a Progressive Campus Speaker” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Reuters. Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars – much like shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.

“Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of the people said. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.” (Read more from “Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women” HERE)

_____________________________________________

Amazon Built an AI Tool to Hire People but Had to Shut It Down Because It Was Discriminating Against Women

By Business Insider. . .A year later, however, the engineers reportedly noticed something troubling about their engine — it didn’t like women. This was apparently because the AI combed through predominantly male résumés submitted to Amazon over a 10-year period to accrue data about whom to hire.

Consequently, the AI concluded that men were preferable. It reportedly downgraded résumés containing the words “women’s” and filtered out candidates who had attended two women-only colleges.

Amazon’s engineers apparently tweaked the system to remedy these particular forms of bias but couldn’t be sure the AI wouldn’t find new ways to unfairly discriminate against candidates.

Gender bias was not the only problem, Reuters’ sources said. The computer programs also spat out candidates who were unqualified for the position.

Remedying algorithmic bias is a thorny issue, as algorithms can pick up on subconscious human bias. In 2016, ProPublica found that risk-assessment software used to forecast which criminals were most likely to reoffend exhibited racial bias against black people. Overreliance on AI for things like recruitment, credit-scoring, and parole judgments have also created issues in the past. (Read more from “Amazon Built an Ai Tool to Hire People but Had to Shut It Down Because It Was Discriminating Against Women” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

If Liking Dresses Makes a Boy Transgender, Half the Men in History Were Trans

/0 Comments/in , /by

This month, the drama “Butterfly” will air in the United Kingdom on ITV, about a boy deciding that he needs to live as a girl. Interviewed for YOU Magazine about her role in the show, actress Anna Friel said, “Imagine how confusing it must be to get to the age of four and realise you’re a boy but you like girls’ dresses; being told that you’re not to do this or that, but you have this desperate need. And imagine how many people must have gone through that before transgender was something we talked about openly.”

As if being a girl is liking dresses. Girls don’t always like dresses, and some of us strongly dislike them. If liking dresses is enough to make a boy “really” a girl, is disliking them enough to make a girl “really” a boy? At what age should such an interest be counted as life-determining? . . .

Yet why is it considered a particularly miserable life for a boy to like dresses? Why is this treated as such a bizarre interest for a boy to have?

Is it the attraction to the sorts of finer textiles that have appealed to many of the wealthiest people of both sexes throughout history? Was it an unheard gender identity message that caused Joseph-Marie Jacquard to be so fascinated with producing elaborately patterned fabrics that he invented what later came to be hailed as a critical computer history milestone, the Jacquard loom?

Is it the interest in wearing a garment that’s shaped like a single tube below the waist, instead of a separate tube for each leg, connected at the hip? Consider this painting of Henry VIII, and think about why we shouldn’t describe him as a trans-feminine person in a fetching, gray silk minidress ensemble with leggings. It makes exactly as much sense as thinking that a little boy who likes trying on dresses at home probably needs chemical castration, using drugs prescribed to convicted sex offenders to manage their urges. (Read more from “If Liking Dresses Makes a Boy Transgender, Half the Men in History Were Trans” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Alec Baldwin Says ‘Black People Love Me’ for Playing Trump. Actual Black People Seem to Disagree.

/0 Comments/in , /by

Actor Alec Baldwin seems to feel that he has earned the universal adoration of the African-American community because he has mockingly portrayed President Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live.”

Once he said that out loud, however, some black people took to Twitter to make Baldwin the butt of the joke, and to chastise him for his generalization of an entire race.

“I don’t know how to say this and I don’t want to get it wrong either, because everything is a minefield of bombs going off, but ever since I played Trump, black people love me,” Baldwin said. “They love me. Everywhere I go, black people go crazy. I think it’s because they’re most afraid of Trump. . .

Baldwin’s comments, which he made to The Hollywood Reporter, were apparently the first time many black people found out that black people “go crazy” for Alec Baldwin because of his satirical portrayal of the president.

“First of all, imagine thinking black people still watch SNL,” Ira Madison tweeted, before sharing a side-by-side screenshot showing that Baldwin’s comment makes him sound shockingly like the man he mocks on television.

(Read more from “Alec Baldwin Says ‘Black People Love Me’ for Playing Trump. Actual Black People Seem to Disagree.” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Children Over the Age of 12 in This U.S. Town Can Be Jailed and Fined for Trick-Or-Treating

/0 Comments/in , /by

Children over the age of 12 in Chesapeake, Virginia, will face fines and jail time if they’re caught trick-or-treating this year. . .

According to Chesapeake’s town code, any child age 13 and over could see up to six months in jail and be subject to fines ranging anywhere from $25 to $100.

The code states: “If any person over the age of 12 years shall engage in the activity commonly known as ‘trick or treat’ or any other activity of similar character or nature under any name whatsoever, he or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not less than $25.00 nor more than $100.00 or by confinement in jail for not more than six months or both.” . . .

“According to the City of Chesapeake, police will focus on making sure the evening is safe for everyone, not actively seeking out violations of the time or age limits,” the website reads. “For example, a thirteen year old safely trick or treating with a younger sibling is not going to have any issues.” . . .

For example, the cities of Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg/James City County, and York County all have the 12-years-old age limit. However, these cities and counties don’t have jail time for violators. (Read more from “Children Over the Age of 12 in This U.S. Town Can Be Jailed and Fined for Trick-Or-Treating” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Left-Wing Media Uses Former ELEMENTARY School Teacher to Attack Trump Aide

/0 Comments/in , /by

Will they ever learn? …

Elementary school inbounds? … If you thought the leftist media was going to stop at high school in an attempt to “own the cons,” you would have been wrong. On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story about Trump adviser Stephen Miller and what his third grade teacher thought about him. You read that right: In order to attack Miller, the entertainment newspaper of record went to his third grade teacher for an op-ed.

Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at 8. I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk — he always had stuff mashed up in there. He was a strange dude. I remember he would take a bottle of glue — we didn’t have glue sticks in those days — and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it.

I remember being concerned about him — not academically. He was OK with that, though I could never read his handwriting. But he had such strange personal habits. He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time.

At the end of the year, I wrote all my concerns — and I had a lot of them — in his school record. When the school principal had a conference with Stephen’s parents, the parents were horrified. So the principal took some white-out and blanked out all my comments. I wish I could remember what I wrote, but this was 25 years ago. I’ve taught a lot of third-graders since then. Of course, Stephen wasn’t political then — it wasn’t until later that he started to make waves.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine? An eight-year-old was socially awkward. STOP THE PRESSES! Of course the language used here is in an effort to make Miller out to be a sociopath. This is the type of character assassination that the left-wing press excels in. It wasn’t enough to talk to Miller’s uncle on TV; nope, the press went back to his elementary school teacher.

The media has done some obscene things over my lifetime. There’s only one word for this stunt: Disgusting.

Lack of trust … According to a HarrisX/Hill.TV poll, a plurality of voters thought the media coverage of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process was biased against him: 45 percent of voters thought the coverage was biased against Kavanaugh, while 20 percent said it was biased towards the justice; 35 percent thought the coverage was neutral.

The thing that sticks out in this poll is that 20 percent of Americans are so jaded that they thought the media was too fair to Kavanaugh. (For more from the author of “Left-Wing Media Uses Former Elementary School Teacher to Attack Trump Aide” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Meghan McCain Fires Back at Headline Claiming She Drank to Cope With Dad’s Cancer

/0 Comments/in , /by

Meghan McCain, a co-host of The View and the daughter of the late Senator John McCain, fired back yesterday after Raw Story ran a headline claiming she drank “through her Dad’s cancer.”

The headline referenced McCain talking about the passing of her father on her first day back at The View. “WATCH: Meghan McCain tearfully opens up about drinking through her dad’s cancer,” the headline read. She claimed after her father was diagnosed with brain cancer she got together with her co-host Abby Huntsman and “got wasted.”

. . .

On Tuesday, McCain fired back, saying she had a “rough day coming back to the show yesterday,” adding, “it’s been hard, everybody knows that. And I talked about when I first found out my dad had terminal cancer with a lifespan of 12 to 14 months I said ‘I got wasted,’ which I did that night.”

In response to the headline, she said, “First of all, screw you! I did not drink through my father’s cancer.”

“Until you lose someone, until someone goes, shut up,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, defending McCain. “Unless you’ve been there, and I was high through my brother’s death and I was high through my mother’s death. And you know why? Because sometimes it’s hard to put one foot in front of the other and until you’ve been there, shut up.” (Read more from “Meghan McCain Fires Back at Headline Claiming She Drank to Cope With Dad’s Cancer” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Five Teenage ‘Mean Girls’ Falsely Accused a Boy of Sexual Assault. They Weren’t Punished.

/0 Comments/in , /by

Several high school girls — dubbed “mean girls” — claimed a male student sexually assaulted them because they “just don’t like him.” Now the school district and district attorney are facing heat over the fact that neither punished the young women at all.

Now the boy’s parents, Michael J. and Alicia Flood, are suing the parents of the five girls and the Seneca Valley School District in Pennsylvania over their son’s treatment. They say in their 26-page lawsuit their son “was forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, the loss of his liberty, and other damages until several of the girls reluctantly admitted that their accusations were false.”

Their son is now being homeschooled due to the bullying he received, including signs taped to his back without his knowledge that said “predator,” according to the lawsuit which was filed last week.

“[The boy] was basically being tortured in school by other students and investigators, but the administration was only focused on protecting the girls who were lying,” the Floods’ attorney, Craig Fishman, told Penn Live. “Once the allegations were proven false, they didn’t really care one bit about [the male student] and there has been absolutely no repercussions against the girls.”

One of the girls decided to accuse the boy of sexually assaulting her while he worked as a lifeguard in July 2017 because, according to a taped interview obtained by Fishman: “I just don’t like him.” She has been identified only as “K.S.” in the lawsuit. (Read more from “Five Teenage ‘Mean Girls’ Falsely Accused a Boy of Sexual Assault. They Weren’t Punished.” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Hillary Defends Bill, Claims Kavanaugh Allegations Are Worse

/0 Comments/in , /by

Two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made head-scratching remarks in a new interview with CNN while defending her husband against the allegations of sexual misconduct that he has faced over the years. . .

“You say that you are going to talk about the difficulties that your husband went through, that you went through,” [CNN reporter] Amanpour said. “Obviously you’re going to be prepared to have questions about that moment in 1998, the impeachment, the allegations of sexual [misconduct] against your own husband.”

“Are you prepared to answer those questions?” Amanpour asked. “Is he prepared to answer them? And how do you see that similar or different from what President Trump is being accused of and Kavanaugh and others today?”

Clinton responded by saying the allegations against her husband were totally different because partisan politics were involved.

“There’s a very significant difference,” Clinton responded. “And that is the intense, long-lasting partisan investigation that was conducted in the ’90s.” (Read more from “Hillary Defends Bill, Claims Kavanaugh Allegations Are Worse” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.