Wednesday, November 30, 2022



An actor who has had relationships with many attractive women

Stories like the one below could be pretty damaging to many men. Many men have difficulties finding partners, to the point where there are many "incels". One cannot blame incels for the diffuse anger that they sometimes feel. And that anger can be expressed in very destructive ways.

I have been married 4 times and have at the momnent a chic chick in my life so I am not at all upset or envious about the story below. But I think there needs to be some way for stories such as that below to be somehow contextualized by stories about the relationship failures celebrities sometimes have. In the meantime, incels should probably steer their reading away from celebrity sites


image from https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/28/23/65028115-11479079-image-a-19_1669678810582.jpg

Miley Cyrus' mother Tish surprised fans by debuting her secret romance with Prison Break actor Dominic Purcell this week, seven months after filing for divorce from husband Billy Ray Cyrus.

And while details of the couple's relationship remain a mystery, Dominic's colourful dating history is well-documented.

From a 90210 star to billionaire James Packer's ex, the burly Aussie star has managed to woo very well-known women around the world.

Dominic, 52, was previously married to Australian film producer Rebecca Williamson between 1998 and 2008. The couple welcomed four children during their decade-long marriage: sons Joseph and Augustus, and daughters Audrey Lily-Rose.

Dominic went on to briefly date Baywatch star Brooke Burns, 44, from April to June 2008.

In 2011, he started began dating 90210 actress AnnaLynne McCord, who was 17 years his junior.

AnnaLynne previously revealed how BDSM played a major role in their on-and-off relationship, describing Dominic as a 'big, strong, angry Aussie' in a 2021 interview with sexual health platform Giddy.

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The left throws a tantrum as Elon Musk reverses censorship on Twitter

News that Elon Musk brought his 2-year-old son — one of 10 children — into key meetings at Twitter headquarters, after taking over the social media company in the fall, might make it less of a mystery to lefties why his “Priority #1” has been to banish child sexual exploitation material.

Not that you need to be a parent to abhor child pornography, but for some reason, the vile content effectively was given a free pass at Twitter before Musk arrived, so clearly not everyone in the company respected society’s last taboo.

But instead of applauding Twitter’s dedication to child safety and attack on degeneracy, leftist media have been decrying Musk’s attempts to restore free speech protections as if they are a threat to civilization.

They are hopping mad that Musk is demolishing the left-wing censorship regime that saw a sitting president de-platformed, satirical site the Babylon Bee banned and the oldest newspaper in the country locked out of its account for two weeks before the 2020 election.

Censorship hypocrisy

Lamenting the explosion of free speech under Musk, Yoel Roth, the former head of “Trust and Safety” who was responsible for censoring The Post, delivered an implied threat to his former employer in an op-ed piece in the New York Times.

Keep the censorship regime in place or Twitter will be thrown off Google and Apple’s app marketplace, he wrote, “making it more difficult for potential billions of users to obtain Twitter services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.”

Roth claims he just wants to prevent “hate speech,” but why was it that everyone banned by Twitter was conservative?

“Correct,” Musk replied to a tweet observing: “We don’t hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter [because] they were never kicked off in the first place … Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives.”

Musk already has reinstated former President Donald Trump, the Babylon Bee, Project Veritas, psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and the Libs of TikTok account that merely reposts absurd leftist clips from the video-sharing app TikTok.

In response, you would think Musk had launched the apocalypse.

Dozens of top Twitter advertisers boycotted the platform in protest, reportedly including Merck, Pfizer, Kellogg, Verizon, General Mills, Musk’s Tesla competitor Volkswagen, General Motors and, ironically, Balenciaga.

No sooner had the multinational fashion brand signaled its virtue than Balenciaga had to delete its Twitter account after being bombarded with irate messages over its depraved advertising campaign featuring small children holding teddy bears in bondage gear.

Other not-so-subtle pedophilia messages were embedded in the images, such as a sheaf of papers on a table which, on closer inspection, were court documents about child pornography.

How do you explain that? You launch a $25 million lawsuit against the production company and pretend no Balenciaga executive signed off on the images.

No wonder Balenciaga protested against a child-porn-free Twitter.

Which raises the question a lot of people on Twitter have been asking of Roth, the former head of “Trust and Safety,” after he too quit the company in protest:

Why was child porn permitted on Roth’s watch for years and all but eliminated by Musk in a few days? It’s an important question, but the rest of the media are more interested in amplifying his threats against Twitter.

The Associated Press tweeted a story claiming “online safety experts predict [Musk reinstating conservatives] will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation,” yet did not quote a single expert and did not carry a byline.

You would think AP might have been more careful about spreading unfounded nonsense after nearly starting World War III the previous week with a false report that Russian missiles had hit Poland.

The Washington Post’s infamous “technology” reporter Taylor Lorenz penned a piece last week claiming that Musk was “opening the gates of hell … to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.”

At least she quoted some humans, even though they were far-left hysterics and trans activist Alejandra Caraballo, who tweets obsessively as @esqueer to get conservatives kicked off Twitter and demand that the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade should “never know peace again.”

Right on cue, Antifa accounts that previously were free to dox conservatives and organize violent riots, called for arson attacks on Tesla locations in response to being banned from Twitter.

All the anti-Twitter “experts” agreed that the ultimate control of Musk will be for Apple and Google to remove Twitter’s app.

Musk’s response was to declare he will just “make an alternative phone.”

He is no right-winger. A libertarian who says he voted for Joe Biden in the last election, he responded to criticism by tweeting: “As a reminder, I was a significant supporter of the Obama-Biden presidency and (reluctantly) voted for Biden over Trump.

“But freedom of speech is the bedrock of a strong democracy and must take precedence.

“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration but have been disappointed so far.”

His goal is “a trusted digital town square, where a wide range of views are tolerated, provided people don’t break the law or spam. For example, any incitement to violence will result in account suspension …

“Twitter will be a forum for the peaceful exchange of views.”

In fact, since Musk took over and fired half the workforce, including most of the censorship — er, “moderation” — team, he has published stats indicating there are more users and less hate speech.

‘Mistake’ to delete Don

Musk also said banning Trump was a “grave mistake” since there had been “no violation of the law or terms of service. Deplatforming a sitting President undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America.”

He gets it, but is now bracing for the mother of all attacks, because he is removing the censorship that has been a source of the left’s newfound power in recent years.

“They won’t give up controlling the narrative easily,” he tweeted over the weekend.

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Dems Don’t Care About Inner-City Blacks

Do black lives matter, or don’t they? The answer apparently depends on whom you ask: a Democrat or a Republican.

“In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections,” writes author and researcher Heather Mac Donald, “conservatives had relentlessly raised the alarm about the post-George Floyd crime surge: homicides had risen 29 percent in 2020 (the largest increase on record), and they have continued rising since then. Democrats and their media allies responded either that crime was a racist fiction or that, because post-Floyd crime levels nationally were still lower than they were in the early 1990s, there was nothing to see here, folks, move on!”

Blacks, though, seemed less inclined to obey this Democrat directive than in years past. In an election cycle whose results were disappointing for Republicans, the GOP nonetheless saw some a demographic bright spot among blacks: As columnist Star Parker notes, “Republican House candidates got 14% of the Black vote, almost twice the 8% of the Black vote that Republicans captured in 2020 and 2018.”

What accounts for this significant shift? A youth movement, as it turns out. Pew Research reports that 28% of black Republicans are ages 18-29, compared to 17% of black Democrats and 10% of white Republicans. And this shift may be driven by a realization among young blacks that their inner-city communities are hit hardest when law and order breaks down as it did during the long, hot, violent summer of 2020. As Mac Donald writes:

Black Americans have borne the brunt of the increased violence since the George Floyd race riots. Their share of homicide victims went from 53 percent in 2019 (blacks are 13 percent of the national population) to 56 percent in 2020. At least an additional 2,164 black lives were lost in 2020 over the 2019 count, compared with an increase of 950 white and Hispanic homicide victims combined in 2020. Such disparities only worsened in 2021 and 2022. In 2020, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at 20 times the rate of whites in the same age range. In 2021, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at nearly 25 times the rate of whites of the same age.

Could it be that blacks — and especially young blacks — are beginning to realize that decades of fealty to the Democrat Party have brought little more to their communities than death and destruction? As our Mark Alexander has made clear, the Democrat Party has inarguably racist roots, and it continues to be a powerful vehicle for black oppression. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our decrepit inner cities, which Democrats have controlled for decades and whose overwhelmingly black populations are nonetheless beholden to.

The Democrats are inclined to dismiss the Republicans’ focus on law-and-order as little more than a racist dog whistle, but facts are stubborn things. Nowhere was the issue of crime more powerfully driven home than in New York, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Did it work? We might ask Zeldin’s opponent, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul, who wound up getting just 53% of the vote in a state where her party outnumbers Republicans by two to one.

Of course, much of the black community’s allegiance to the Democrat Party is borne out of dependence, and a reluctance to bite the hand that feeds it. What Thomas Sowell wrote back in 2016 is no less true today: “A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression. In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.”

Whether by downplaying the seriousness of violent crime, or by failing to address the collapse of the black family, or by continually opposing such reforms as school choice, Democrats are doing black Americans no favors. To them, it seems that black lives matter only for their votes.

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Toxic Masculinity Takes Out Gay Nightclub Assailant

A Saturday night massacre at a bar in Colorado Springs left five dead and at least 25 wounded, but it would’ve been immeasurably more bloody had it not been for a retired U.S. Army officer and the “toxic” masculinity that drove him to action.

Rich Fierro, who served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, rushed and tackled the 22-year-old assailant who opened fire inside a gay nightclub called Club Q, telling reporters that he tried to use the attacker’s own pistol to “finish him.”

“It’s the reflex,” said Fierro to the assembled media outside his home on Monday. “Go! Go to the fire. Stop the action. Stop the activity. Don’t let no one get hurt. I tried to bring everybody back.” As Fox News reports:

Fierro could smell the cordite from the ammunition, saw the flashes and dove, pushing one of his friends down before falling backwards.

Looking up from the floor, Fierro saw the shooter’s body armor and the crowd that had fled to the club’s patio. Moving toward the attacker, Fierro grasped the body armor, yanked the shooter down while yelling at another patron, James, to move the rifle out of reach.

As the shooter was pinned under a barrage of punches from Fierro and kicks to the head from James, he tried to reach for his pistol. Fierro grabbed it and used it as a bludgeon.

Fierro’s wife, Jess, said on the Facebook page of their family business, a local brewery, that her husband had bruised his right side and injured his hands, knees, and ankle. “He was covered in blood,” she wrote.

The disturbed assailant was already known to local law enforcement for an incident in June 2021. At the time, he was arrested for a bomb threat that led to a standoff with law enforcement at his mother’s home. In addition, the killer “identifies” as non-binary and uses “they/them” pronouns according to his lawyers. Beyond the Left’s boilerplate anti-2A rhetoric, there are and should be reasonable grounds for removing firearms. Here, it appears, was one such case.

None of this, however, stopped the shameless opportunists on the Left from immediately blaming Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans. “After Trump elevated anti-immigrant & anti-Latino rhetoric,” tweeted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “we had the deadliest anti-Latino shooting in modern history. After anti-Asian hate w/COVID, Atlanta. Tree of life. Emanuel AME. Buffalo. And now after an anti-LGBT+ campaign, Colorado Springs. Connect the dots, @GOP.”

We have no idea what drove the assailant to commit mayhem and murder — nor does a narcissistic leftist congresswoman from Queens — but we suspect it had a lot more to do with emotional imbalance and individual brokenness than it did Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. Unless there’s a growing community of nonbinary they/them ultra-MAGA types we’re not aware of.

Fierro had been at the club with his daughter Kassy, her boyfriend, and several others to see a drag show and celebrate a birthday. His daughter’s boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, was among those fatally shot.

Somehow, we suspect he wasn’t thinking Damn those Republican lawmakers! when he sprang into action, but many of those there that night were spared because he did. “Honestly, I don’t care about myself in that moment,” he said. “I cared about everybody that was around me and I cared especially about my family.”

“As soon as I got done with that guy and the cop came in, I went across the room and started first aid with my friend who was shot in the chest and the legs in the arms.”

As Task and Purpose reports: “Fierro entered the Army as a field artillery officer in 1999, deploying to Iraq from November 2003 to February 2004, January 2006 to December 2006, September 2008 to August 2009, and then to Afghanistan from April 2011 to April 2012 before leaving the service as a major in 2013. During that time he received numerous awards, including the Combat Action Badge and two Bronze Stars, according to his service record.”

The father and husband said he relied on his combat training to respond to the situation. “I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Fierro said. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”

“I told him while I was hitting him, I said, ‘I’m going to f***ing kill you, man, because you tried to kill my friends.’ My family was in there. My little girl was in there,” he said.

Fierro isn’t the first man to act courageously and aggressively to save the lives of others. In fact, he’s emblematic of traditional manhood and masculinity and military training. And for that, the surviving patrons of Club Q — and their friends and families — can be thankful.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Tuesday, November 29, 2022


Inside the mind of an incel

The story below is rather confused about the direction of the causal arrow. Do people who are depressed become incels or do incels become depressed? I am inclined to suspect that many incels are not too different psychologically but become disturbed and dysfunctional as a result of their inability to attract women. If that is so, there is a clear need for counselling and life lessons that would improve their attractivesness to women.

I have put up previously (e.g. here) stories about how many women these days find great fault with most of the men they meet -- and the women remain unattached because of that. "The men are no good" is an often expressed complaint. So it seems clear that many men are doomed to remain lonely. Many really are rejected by women. So men who have no success with women at all could well develop the negative feelings that we see in incels.

A major issue is physical attractiveness. That can be rather nebulous. Different women find different men physically attractive. But one near-certainty is that women like a tall, well-built man. As long as he is also reasonsbly polite, women will go for him. So incels will almost always be deficient in that regard or have seriously unattractive personalities, chief of which is egotism.

But most men are not tall, well-built and socially adept so is there any hope for the many leftovers? There is. I am in my 80th year and consequently am rather decayed in looks but I am still capable of attracting and relating well with quality women -- and I do. And I enjoy my times with women greatly.

So what saves me from being a decrepit incel in my old age? It's not looks. Women will forgive much in a good-looking man but that is no help to me

But if looks can attract and engender forgivesness of imperfections, so can personality. At attractive personality is nearly as helpful as good looks. What constitutes an attractive personality can vary but my particular asset is uncrushable self-confidence. As long as the confidence does not stray into egotism, a confident man is almost an essential for many women. It even makes life easy for an old wreck like me

There is no magic formula for an attractive personality but a man who conveys confidence, politeness and considerateness will be unlucky indeed if he remains an incel



Incels are usually clingy wannabe momma's boys, according to one of the first studies into the hate group.

Involuntary celibates — who advocate violence and rape against women — have been responsible for a growing number of terror attacks in recent years.

They make up a dark and depraved online community of young heterosexual men who blame society in women for their lack of romantic success.

Now researchers from the University of Rome have found similar personality traits that band members together.

Incels score highly for anxiety and paranoia, which may explain why they are distrustful of women and jealous of other men who have successful romances.

They also had higher depression scores, which may also lead to self-hatred, and suicidal and violent tendencies.

The researchers found incel members had a 'fearful attachment style', which includes being clingy or emotionally absent.

Their hatred of women and misogyny stems from a fear of trusting others and getting hurt, which may have arisen due to emotional neglect or abuse as a child, according to the study.

The team hope their findings and the scale can be used by doctors to identify people at risk of becoming incels.

In September, a self-described incel in Southern California was charged for a series of attacks on women using pepper-spray.

Alex Minassian killed 10 people with a van in Toronto in 2018, claiming it was a 'rebellion' which would 'force' women to have sex with men like him.

Elliot Rodgers, who killed six people in a gun and knife attack in California in 2014, posted a video shortly before his attack in which he complained about being a virgin at aged 22 and how he had never kissed a girl.

He also published an 141-page document going through his deep-rooted hatred of women, in which he said he could not understand why women would not want to have sex with him.

Mr Rodgers was never formally diagnosed with a mental illness.

A total of 770 men aged between 18 and 69 were given a set of questionnaires online identifying incel traits, depression and anxiety levels, attachment style and paranoia symptoms.

Incel attacks in the US

May 2020 - Incel gunman shot and wounded three people at a mall in Arizona while livestreaming the attack on Snapchat

February 2020 - A machete attack in a Toronto massage parlor became the first incident of alleged incel violence to be prosecuted as an act of terrorism

November 2018 - A gunman who posed as customer at a Tallahassee yoga studio killed two women and wounded five others.

He said he wanted to 'blow off' a woman's head and expressed other disturbing and misogynistic views four years ago on his YouTube channel.

April 2018 - A man used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto. He told police he belonged to an online community of sexually frustrated men, some of whom have plotted attacks on people who have sex.

The incel trait scale, developed by Dr Scaptura and Dr Boyle in 2019, includes factors such as confused, sad, fearful, excluded, weak and insecure.

Men who scored highly on the scale were more likely to also display paranoia, anxiety and depression.

Paranoia is an unjustified mistrust of people and can include unwarranted jealously.

In the case of incels, they are mistrustful of women specifically and jealous of other men who are successful in romantic relationships.

Depression and anxiety also contribute to an incel mindset, as both can cause diminished self-esteem and isolation.

Incels believe they are unable to attract women and will often retreat to online forums to discuss their unhappiness and frustration.

The researchers found that men who had a fearful attachment style were also more likely to score highly on incel traits.

On the other hand, those who had a secure attachment style scored lower in the questionnaire of incel traits.

Attachment styles are ways people behave in relationships with others and are based on the bond individuals had with their parents or primary caregiver while growing up.

A secure attachment style is when people feel protected by their parents, leading them to feel comfortable in relationships with others later in their life.

But if a child's primary caregiver is neglecting or unpredictable, the child can become needy as they work harder to get the attention they feel they are lacking.

When they become adults, children with a disorganized attachment have low self-esteem and an intense fear of rejection and abandonment, which is consistent with an incel attitude.

Boys may grow up resentful of women due to a lack of healthy relationships developed in childhood.

A caregiver might have behaved in a frightening way, including abuse towards the child.

Or they may have been inconsistent and unpredictable in their interactions with their offspring — being highly loving at times and then neglectful at others.

Boys can be left feeling unlovable and mistrustful that people will support and accept them.

The researchers concluded that paranoia and depressive-anxious symptoms play a 'pivotal role' in the incel attitude, and suggested that fearful attachment styles can contribute to a misogynic attitude.

Children may grow up resenting women if they feel their primary caregiver did not give them the love they needed, and may also leave them with a negative self-view.

The study was published in the The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

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Gender quotas are never the solution

‘To be judged on the content of our character and not the colour of our skin’ – that was one of the dreams of the great Martin Luther King Jr. We have progressed a great deal since MLK delivered his famous speech, yet in many respects, it seems we’ve made no progress at all – and ironically, the progressive-left is more often than not to blame.

So it was refreshing to observe last month that Australia’s shadow federal Treasurer Angus Taylor ruled-out gender quotas in the Liberal Party. There are some brilliant female MPs and senators in the party, and no doubt, there will be many more in years to come. But mandating quotas is antithetical to liberty and equality – at least the kind MLK envisioned. To progress as a society, we have to treat individuals equally and without any preferential treatment.

Still, some say we need quotas to stabilise and ‘even out’ the numbers in organisations and institutions. Here are three significant reasons why such arguments should be vehemently opposed:

Quotas can lead to resentment and self-doubt, as people question whether they earned their job or were hired simply to tick a box.

Consider this hypothetical example of Alice and Sarah. Alice is highly competent, she is well respected for her intellect, coupled with a powerful work ethic. She is promoted to a more senior role based upon her abilities. On the other hand, Sarah, although a valued employee, is not quite as efficient and effective in the workplace relative to Alice. However, it is decided by their workplace management that to fulfil quotas, Sarah will be elevated to the same seniority as Alice; despite having less experience and less suitability for the role. As one might expect, Alice is infuriated as this appears to her to conflict with the interests of true equality, for she has earned her position while Sarah is being promoted for management to tick a box (and meet their diversity and inclusion KPI’s). Why strive to work hard at all if that’s not what your boss is going to value?

Quotas may have a ‘gaslighting’ effect.

Following on from the first hypothetical example above, quotas may lead to uncertainty regarding whether one has rightfully earned their post. Sarah, while not being explicitly advised that she is being moved up the ranks to fill a quota, is suspicious of her promotion. While delighted on the one hand to take a pay rise; being highly self-aware, she also feels uncomfortable with the situation as she is unsure whether or not her performance has justified the outcome. Sarah overhears co-workers making snarky comments behind her back claiming she was only promoted to fill the new quota targets.

Naturally, self-consciousness and anxiety about her performance take hold. How can she take pride in her work when she’s unsure she’s earned her position? It is not fair to her, it is not fair to her co-workers, and it is not at all in the interest of equality more broadly.

They may lead to a lack of productivity.

A company’s number one priority must be turning a profit. Hiring based on identity is far less productive than hiring the best person for the job, whoever they may be. This is the essence of meritocracy: a system in which people are appointed to their posts based upon merit. In its true form, it looks beyond the race; religion; class; gender etc., of an individual, and focuses merely upon their competency to do a job effectively.

In summary, equality of opportunity is far more vital than equality of outcome. Thankfully, the National Party’s frontbench has demonstrated true egalitarian leadership by prioritising the former. You can have equal representation while retaining meritocracy. In the words of David Littleproud, the Nats’ 50/50 gender split is not because of any quota, it is ‘because of talent’ and ‘an environment whereby women are given the opportunity to stand up and feel encouraged to stand up’. Such an environment is both fair and diverse.

Angus Taylor made the right call. Women are equal with men and deserve to be treated as such. A quota undermines this and is insulting to competent women. Following the inspiration of MLK, let’s look not to gender quotas, but to character, and indeed, to competence.

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Broadway’s Lion King interpreter fired for being white

A white sign-language interpreter booted from Broadway’s Lion King for his skin colour quietly settled his federal discrimination case against the theatre company that fired him, the NY Post has learned.

Keith Wann and the Theatre Development Fund — a non-profit that provides ASL interpreters at Broadway shows — resolved the dispute outside of court just two weeks after Wann filed his lawsuit and The Post published a front-page report.

“The matter between myself and TDF has been resolved and both parties are satisfied with the discussions that ensued,” Wann wrote in a social media post announcing the settlement.

“I look forward to the review of the process that will come from this to hopefully benefit the interpreting profession.”

Wann filed the lawsuit on November 8 after he and another interpreter, Christina Mosleh, were told to back out of the production in April so they could be replaced by black sign-language experts, according to the suit and emails obtained by The Post.

“Keith Wann, though an amazing ASL performer, is not a black person and therefore should not be representing Lion King,” Shelly Guy, the director of ASL for The Lion King, told Lisa Carling, the director of the Theatre Development Fund’s accessibility programs, in an email.

Wann’s decision to take the case up in court was met with online backlash from the deaf community.

“You disgusted me,” Randy Spann, host of the deaf talk show The Real Talk with Randy, said in video response to Wann’s lawsuit. “Enough is enough. Let black people get their opportunities to get a spotlight.”

In a viral TikTok video, deaf performer Raven Sutton blasted Wann for his decision to sue the theatre group. “This is not discrimination,” Sutton signed on the video that amassed over 57,000 views. “Reverse racism is not a thing. Stop taking all the jobs when we have black interpreters that are the better fit. Wipe your own white tears because we are not going to do it for you.”

Many Post readers and others in the deaf community came out in force to support Wann and condemn the outrage he faced.

“I’m baffled by the hate,” Jared Allebest, a deaf civil rights attorney, told The Post. “There are some people justifying why they don’t support him through the lens of racial identity politics.”

In Wann’s statement this week, the interpreter addressed the criticism he faced online and the debates his lawsuit spawned.

“Over the last week I have seen a lot of pain in our community and have also seen some much-needed conversations,” Wann wrote. “It is unfortunate that assumptions were made, and conclusions were drawn without all the facts.”

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A Tasmanian tribunal has rejected the right of same-sex attracted people to hold social functions that exclude transgender people

This gets crazier and crazier

Launceston lesbian activist Jessica Hoyle had sought an exemption from Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act to run female-only “drag-king” shows and other lesbian events.

The exemption was denied by Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Sarah Bolt in July 2021, prompting Miss Hoyle to appeal to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

In a ruling late last week circulated on Monday, the tribunal rejected Miss Hoyle’s appeal, finding the desire for female-only lesbian events was insufficient justification for an exemption.

“While the applicants may not wish to comply with the Act and find aspects of its application to transgender and transsexual women irksome, particularly in the context of the event they would like to hold, that is not a sufficient justification,” ruled tribunal member Kate Cuthbertson.

Ms Cuthbertson SC said arguments by Miss Hoyle claiming “patterns of criminality and nefarious motivations” for transwomen attending female-only events were “not supported by empirical research or compelling evidence”.

Miss Hoyle told The Australian she was disappointed in the decision and would fight on, if necessary all the way to the High Court, believing same-sex attracted females should be able to exclude “people with penises” from social events.

“This decision erases the rights of women and freedom of association for lesbians,” said Miss Hoyle. “It is harmful to everyday, average lesbian women and gay men, who just want to be able to meet one another in a safe environment, and not have members of the opposite sex harass us.

“I’m all for transgenders and transsexuals having their own events, their own spaces, but (they ought) not force themselves on to anybody else’s rights. We are seeing in this country the erasure of women’s rights.”

However, Rose Boccalatte, of Equality Tasmania, welcomed the tribunal ruling. “This decision upholds the integrity of our gold-standard Anti-Discrimination Act and sends the message that trans and gender diverse people are equally protected by that Act,“ Ms Boccalatte said.

“It is very welcome to see the tribunal calling out misinformation about transgender women.”

Miss Hoyle said she was seeking further legal advice but was likely to reapply for an exemption taking into account aspects of the tribunal decision.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Monday, November 28, 2022



Scientists Don’t Agree on What Causes Obesity, but They Know What Doesn’t

And that was predictable from a Left=-leaning group. Leftists regularly shy away from individual responsibility. They tend to blame "society" for personal failings. And the idea that people have no personal control over obesity is bunk. The media are full of stories about people who have changed their behavior and lost a lot of weight as a result. I am myself a lot lighter than I used to be. Though I went down a very hard road to get there

LONDON — A select group of the world’s top researchers studying obesity‌ recently gathered in the gilded rooms of the Royal Society, the science academy of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, where ideas like gravity and evolution were once debated.

Now scientists were arguing about ‌‌the causes of obesity, which affects more than 40 percent of U.S. adults and costs the health system about $173 billion each year. At the meeting’s closing session, ‌John Speakman, a biologist, offered ‌‌this conclusion on the subject: ‌ “There’s no consensus whatsoever about what the cause of it‌ is.”

That’s not to say the researchers disagreed on everything. The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing. No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries‌, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony‌‌ and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers. In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from the effects of undernutrition, like stunting and wasting.

The researchers instead referred to obesity as a complex, chronic condition, and they were meeting to get to the bottom of why humans have, collectively, grown larger over the past half century. To that end, they shared a range of mechanisms that might explain the global obesity surge. And their theories, however diverse, made one thing obvious: As long as we treat obesity as a personal responsibility issue, its prevalence is unlikely to decline.

A nutritional biologist presented ‌th‌e idea that all the carbohydrates and fat in our food today dilute the protein our bodies need, driving us to eat more calories to make up for the discrepancy. An endocrinologist spoke of ‌the scientific model behind the ‌low-carb diet approach, suggesting eating patterns heavy in carbohydrates are uniquely fat promoting, while an evolutionary anthropologist argued many lean hunter-gatherer societies ate a lot of carbohydrates, with a special affinity for honey.

Others suggested the problem is ultraprocessed foods, the prepared and packaged goods that make up more than half of the calories Americans consume. A physiologist shared his randomized control trial showing people eat more calories and gain more weight on ultraprocessed diets compared with whole-food diets of the same nutrient composition. But it’s still unclear why these foods drive people to eat more, he said.

The mystery could be explained by the thousands of toxic substances ultraprocessed foods can carry in the form of fertilizers, insecticides, plastics and additives, argued one biochemist. Her research in cells has shown these chemicals interfere with metabolism.

Still others thought perhaps the problem is less about what we’re eating and more about what we’re not. An ethologist shared her work on the link between food insecurity and obesity in birds. When food becomes scarce, the animals eat fewer calories but gain more weight. Studies in humans have also found a “robust” association between food insecurity and obesity, she said — the so-called hunger obesity paradox.

To add to the complexity, the researchers made it clear that obesity can’t be thought of as one condition. They spoke of rare cases caused by single gene mutations or disorders; more commonly, obesity is believed to arise because of still murky gene-environment interactions. Perhaps they should have been talking about obesities the whole time.

By the end of the conference, the attendees were no closer to a unifying theory for the global rise in obesity — a condition that’s been with humans since at least Hippocrates but started to become widespread only after the debut of MTV. Yet in that short period, scientists, including many in the room, ‌‌have learned a lot.

They’ve identified more than a thousand genes and ‌‌variants that increase a person’s obesity risk. They’ve figured out that body fat is much more than a storage depot for energy and that not everyone with obesity ‌goes on to develop its associated complications, which include cancer, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and premature death. They’ve made remarkable progress mapping out how the brain orchestrates feeding and adapts to different diets, altering food preferences along the way. But ‌precisely what changed in recent‌ history to affect these complex biological systems, the scientists couldn’t concur.

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Portland store shuts down, posts blistering note on front door slamming rampant crime: ‘city is in peril’

A Portland, Oregon, clothing shop permanently shut down this month after facing a string of break-ins that has left the store financially gutted, according to a note posted to the front of the store.

“Our city is in peril,” a printed note posted on Rains PDX store reads, according to KATU2. “Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business, in our city’s current state. We have no protection, or recourse, against the criminal behavior that goes unpunished. Do not be fooled into thinking that insurance companies cover losses. We have sustained 15 break-ins … we have not received any financial reimbursement since the 3rd.”

The store’s owner Marcy Landolfo said that after 15 break-ins over the last year and a half, the business can’t survive the financial burdens the crimes have cost the shop.

“The problem is, as small businesses, we cannot sustain those types of losses and stay in business. I won’t even go into the numbers of how much has been out of pocket,” she said.

“The products that are being targeted are the very expensive winter products and I just felt like the minute I get those in the store they’re going to get stolen,” Landolfo continued to KATU2.

The message posted to the front store noted that the shop is closing down due to the “unrelenting criminal behavior,” “coupled with escalating safety issues for our employees.”

When Rains faced a break-in last month, according to KATU 2, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office said they were working on a plan to better financially assist business owners who needed to repair their shops.

But Landolfo said that isn’t enough to address crime in the city.

“Paying for glass that’s great, but that is so surface and does nothing for the root cause of the problem, so it’s never going to change,” she said.

Rains is the latest store in Portland to close up shop following crime spikes. A Nike location abruptly, and reportedly temporarily, closed up shop earlier this fall after brazen shoplifting incidents.

Thefts have plagued retail chains nationwide in recent years. The National Retail Federation conducted a survey that found organized retail crime increased by 26.5% in 2021, resulting in a multi-billion dollar issue for businesses.

Violent crime in Portland has skyrocketed over the last few years. A recent study found it rose most precipitously in 2020 when the city saw near-nightly protests and riots over the death of George Floyd.

The city saw a 58% increase in homicides in 2020 compared to the year prior, and 2021 notched a 54% increase in homicides compared to the already violent and bloody 2020. The number of homicides in 2021 was a 238% increase from the numbers recorded in 2018.

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Crazy Bronx Mom

image from https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/bronx-children-stabbed-featured.jpg

The Bronx mom accused of murdering her two young sons may have killed them because she believed they were possessed, law-enforcement sources said Sunday — as it was revealed she was once on the radar of the city’s child-welfare agency.

Dimone Fleming 22, had been obsessed with demonic possession, and cops are now investigating whether she killed her boys ages 3 and 11 months over it, sources said.

“She made statements about the devil — unusual statements,” a police source told The Post.

Fleming chillingly wrote on her Facebook page Saturday before the slayings, “It’s only one true God and I repent from all wrong doings and negative influence.

“Leaving all things that’s no longer serves me…… Thank you for your mercy,” the woman added.

Sources said Sunday that Fleming was previously probed by the Administration for Children’s Services after her oldest son, 3-year-old DeShawn Fleming, was born. The mom was suspected of improperly caring for the boy, sources said.

It’s unclear what the findings of the probe were and what if any action was ever taken.

Fleming has been arrested but is under psychiatric evaluation and awaiting charges in the grisly slayings of DeShawn and her baby, Octavius Canada, at the family’s apartment in a city homeless shelter, police sources said.

The boys’ bodies were found under a pile of wet clothes in the bathtub, their necks and torsos brutally slashed.

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Pastor Was Tired of Complaining About Drag Queen Story Hour, So He Actually Did Something to Combat It

An Arizona pastor has come up with an ingenious way of combating the drag queen story hour rage sweeping the nation: He held his own story hour.

On Wednesday, Dale Partridge of Prescott, Arizona, took to Instagram to share a photo of himself reading to children at a local library. In explaining his reasons for hosting the event, he said he was “tired of complaining” about drag queen story hours.

Partridge stated in his post that he read to the children a book he authored himself called “Jesus and My Gender,” which, according to The Daily Wire, teaches “a positive view of biblical boyhood and girlhood.”

Partridge wrote, “I asked myself this question: Why are drag queens seemingly more devoted to influencing kids in their community than pastors? Why is the LGBTQ+ community more effective at engaging the culture than Christians? These are serious questions we must answer.

“Passive, quiet, and effeminate Christianity is NOT working. We must return to a strong, politically engaged, and Gospel-aggressive Christianity. A Christianity where the men (and women) not only speak up but also stop the evil that is coming after our kids.”

In comments to The Daily Wire, Partridge said, “Fathers and mothers are to raise their children to understand what the Bible says about God, man, Christ, and the church. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Christian men have abdicated this role, leaving children vulnerable to the influence and lies of the culture.”

The pastor is right on the mark here: We Christians and conservatives have a duty to engage in the culture war and teach our children the correct values. If we are not strong enough to preach the gospel, the world will preach its own values to our kids.

One of the most pressing examples of this is the drag queen story hour craze, which indoctrinates children in a view of sexuality that is completely opposed to the teachings of Christ.

Drag queen story hours started out at a few local libraries, but they have since become the latest trend in the culture war and have even been introduced in public schools. This is not limited to secular institutions, either, as some churches have succumbed to the culture and held drag queen events for children.

What kind of message does it send when even the churches, which are supposed to be the custodians of God’s Word, have embraced the spiritual rot that has set into our nation?

Partridge is right: The LGBT movement has been much more effective in recent years in getting its message across, to the point where gay marriage is no longer up for debate. The conservative movement has largely surrendered to the mob, as evidenced by the 12 Republican senators who backed the so-called Respect for Marriage Act last week.

We can no longer afford to be passive. We can complain all we want, but we need to take active measures. The soul of our nation is at stake in this war, and we can no longer be content with the “live and let live” philosophy that allowed the LGBT movement to capture the soul of our nation.

Partridge shows that the best way to combat the spiritual decay in our nation is to offer a genuine alternative to it. The left does not have to have a monopoly on culture; there are still ways that conservatives can effectively fight back.

America is not yet totally lost, but if we want to save its soul, we need to do more than just complain. We need to actively combat the moral and spiritual malaise that we find ourselves in.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Sunday, November 27, 2022



Worshippers left 'in tears' as Cambridge dean claims Jesus was TRANSGENDER after row over Christ's wound having a 'vaginal appearance'

A work of art is no authority on truth. Nobody knows what Christ's wound looked like. But the C of E is not Christian anyway. They are the Devil's mockery of Christianity. The Bible tells us that homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord but the C of E even has homosexual bishops. Their actual religion is Leftism, not redemption. We can expect nothing Holy from them

Church worshippers cried 'heresy' at the Dean of Trinity College as they left a sermon claiming Jesus may have been transgender 'in tears'.

But the view of a transgender Jesus is 'legitimate', according to Dr Michael Banner, the Dean who stepped in to defend the claim made at a Sermon last Sunday that Christ had a 'trans body'.

Dr Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College, was backing up junior research fellow Joshua Heath, who displayed Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion depicting a side wound that he likened to a vagina in front of the congregation.

The side wound 'takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance', said Heath, whose PhD was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

'In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,' claimed the researcher.

Heath used the 1400th-century painting Pietà with the Holy Trinity by Jean Malouel, on display in the Louvre, to illustrate his point, according to The Daily Telegraph.

French artist Henri Maccheroni’s 1990 work 'Christs' also appeared during the sermon, as did the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg.

In a letter to the Dean, one worshipper said: 'I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed. I am contemptuous of the idea that by cutting a hole in a man, through which he can be penetrated, he can become a woman.

'I am especially contemptuous of such imagery when it is applied to our Lord, from the pulpit, at Evensong. I am contemptuous of the notion that we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a ‘trans Christ’, a new heresy for our age.'

Others said they felt unwelcome in the church, adding that the children attending were visibly uncomfortable.

But Banner wrote a letter defending the sermon, seen by The Telegraph, saying: 'For myself, I think that speculation was legitimate, whether or not you or I or anyone else disagrees with the interpretation, says something else about that artistic tradition, or resists its application to contemporary questions around transsexualism.'

He said however that he would not issue an invitation to someone who he thought would deliberately seek to shock or offend the congregation, or who he anticipated would speak against the Christian faith.

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NZ has more in common with Orwell than Magna Carta

By OLIVER HARTWICH

Two new bills take the integration of Māori custom into the NZ legal system to a new level; one that negates equality before the law.

There was a time, not so long ago, when countries in the common law tradition had comparable legal systems. Yes, there had always been differences between, say, the law of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Still, their basic approaches to legal matters were similar.

New Zealand was also a member of this family of common law jurisdictions. In one respect, that is by not having a written constitution, New Zealand was actually quite like Britain, the historic source of the common law.

But times are changing, and in few places are they changing as rapidly as in New Zealand. Something radically different is emerging in New Zealand’s legal system. It may still be rooted in the common law, but it is increasingly incorporating traditional Māori concepts.

This is a recent development, albeit one with a long prehistory. For one and a half centuries, New Zealand law and Māori custom (tikanga) have sat side by side. But their interactions were limited, and the only laws enforceable were those laws passed by Parliament and made by judges. State-made law was dominant over tribal rules.

Over the past few decades, Australia and New Zealand have witnessed the gradual recognition of customary title. In Australia, the landmark case was Mabo. In New Zealand, the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal was the primary step to consider historic grievances over breach of the 1840 Treaty.

At least in principle, recognition of customary title is reconcilable with the common law. Indeed, the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 was passed as a statutory codification of the common law tests for establishing communal property rights not extinguished by statute or adverse possession.

However, two Bills proposed by the New Zealand Government to replace the Resource Management Act go much further than that. More than any other legislation before, the Natural and Built Environments Bill (NBE) and the Spatial Planning Bill embody what are presented as Māori legal concepts. Whether these really give enough certainty to justify treatment as legal concepts is now a vital matter for New Zealanders.

Right at the start of the NBE, the Bill states the following goal: “The recognition of, and making provision for, the relationship of iwi and hapū and the exercise of their kawa, tikanga (including kaitiakitanga), and mātauranga in relation to their ancestral lands, water, sites, wāhi tapu, wāhi tūpuna, and other taonga.”

All these words and terms probably need to be translated for an Australian audience. Tikanga, for example, is the body of Māori custom. Kaitiakitanga is the Māori concept of looking after the environment. Mātauranga Māori is the body of Māori knowledge, which includes both factual knowledge and mythology.

That latter part makes mātauranga Māori a fuzzy source of legal principles. Judges familiar with Māori culture may purport to distil the legal significance of such terms. However, tribal elders and some experts emphasise they differ in meaning for each iwi. Meanwhile, other experts, including the only Māori judge on the Supreme Court, assert that it is not for the courts to declare tikanga or to change it. It is only for them to ascertain if from its tribal custodians.

The draft NBE legislation purports to define some of the terms, but always with a degree of circularity.

Thus, for example, “kaitiakitanga means the exercise of guardianship by the tangata whenua of an area in accordance with tikanga Māori in relation to natural and physical resources.” The problem is that there is no readily accessible standard meaning of precision in any of the Māori terms in that “definition”.

These terms are not just legal or political puffery. They present as core elements of the Bill. Tikanga is mentioned 31 times throughout. Mātauranga Māori comes up 26 times. Kaitiakitanga can be found in seven places. They all beat “property right”, which only features three times.

The Bill also states that Māori customary law applies to “all persons exercising powers and performing functions and duties” under the Act. This is besides their role of “giving effect” to the principles of The Treaty of Waitangi.

The role of Māori concepts within resource management will be pervasive. The same applies to the legal standing of Māori tribes (iwi), who feature not fewer than 153 times in the Bill.

This Bill takes the integration of purported Māori custom into the New Zealand legal system to a new level. It prominently enshrines various Māori concepts as sources of law which may not be properly known even to most New Zealand lawyers, let alone lawyers in other common law jurisdictions.

We may thus see the emergence of a new legal system in New Zealand – and perhaps a new system of government, too. The new system seems unlikely to be compatible with key elements of the rule of law, as generally understood. Its roots may remain in the common law, in its adherence to forms and procedures.

But New Zealand’s new system expressly negates equality before the law. It does so by selectively granting rights on public and private property use. Under the Bill, Māori will have some exclusive powers to decide on how resources are used to change the environment. Mind you, “environment” is defined widely to cover both cultural and economic matters, not just nature.

New Zealand is heading away from other great common law jurisdictions in the terminology and philosophy it applies. The NBE marks a radical withdrawal from the broader family of the common law.

Perhaps the proponents of this Bill are unaware of this possibility. They may also regard the embedding of indigenous customs into statute as part of the normal evolution of the law. The NBE is not the first piece of legislation to move in this direction.

But maybe the Bill’s supporters would not even be unhappy if a long-term outcome were to be New Zealand leaving the family of common law jurisdictions and defining its unique place in the legal world. That would be an act of decolonisation, a radical break with the past.

Whatever the motives of the legislators, the Bill warrants wider discussion. Yes, it is “just” a Bill about resource management (important as that is). But it is a dramatic step on a path towards a different legal system: one defined by tribal concepts – and by tribes apparently unconstrained by their non-Māori neighbours.

By its historic origins, going back to Magna Carta, the common law was a system that (sometimes imperfectly) tried putting everyone under the same law. Not even the king was above the law, and when he tried to ignore that principle, it could cost him his head.

What we are witnessing in New Zealand is the emergence of an altogether different system. It has more in common with George Orwell’s Animal Farm where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Perhaps New Zealanders are happy to be heading there. Who knows? So far, at least, they have not been asked. It might be worth asking them.

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The traditional fairy tales are now too GRIM for children

In case readers have missed the pun: The heading above contains an allusion to the German Gebrüder Grimm, who authored a famous collection of folk tales

Many much-loved traditional fairy tales are inappropriate, outdated and too scary for young children, according to young Brits.

Forty-six per cent of Brits under 30 believe that traditional fairy tales, including Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin, are inappropriate.

As many as 90 per cent of young people believe that the tales are old-fashioned, as 89 per cent of people surveyed said they perpetuate gender stereotypes.

Seventy seven per cent believe that the classic stories are sexist.

A quarter of parents said they wouldn't read 'offensive' tales to their young children at bedtime.

Hansel and Gretel, a story in which small children roast a witch to death in her own oven, was voted the most inappropriate, by 46 per cent of people asked.

Little Red Riding Hood was next on the naughty list, with 28 per cent saying the fable of the wolf in the woods was unacceptable.

Generation Z do not like Rumpelstiltskin either, as a quarter of people asked said it was inappropriate.

The Snow Queen, The Three Little Pigs and Beauty And The Beast are also under fire, according to the under-30s asked in a survey of 2,000 Brits.

However, some traditional stories remain popular. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White And The Seven Dwarves were the most popular nostalgic tales.

The Little Mermaid is also a fan favourite. Disney is launching a live-action remake featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel next year.

The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid will be released next year. The story, which remains one of Britain's favourite fairy tales, was made into an animated film (left) in 1989. The remake features Halle Bailey as Ariel

Many of the stories have been developed from the Brothers Grimm, who published folklore in the early 19th century and popularised many of the tales.

Nearly a third of Britons said they were shocked to discover some of the scarier elements in the original versions of the stories.

In Snow White And The Seven Dwarves, the evil Queen wants to eat Snow White's organs.

The nasty stepsisters in Cinderella mutilate themselves in some versions of the story to try and fit their feet into the small shoe that Prince Charming brings them.

Nearly 25 per cent of parents worried about their children being frightened by the fairy tales, and a quarter wouldn't read certain stories to their children before bed if they thought they were outdated or old-fashioned.

Despite their reservations, nearly half of young Brits are still happy to use the traditional tales to teach children about morals. A quarter say they have happy memories of being read the stories as children.

The figures come from a survey commissioned by Twinkly, a lighting brand that has created its own colourful lighting effects inspired by the popular children's stories.

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What is 'Stochastic Terrorism' and Why It Worries Free Speech Advocates

There’s a new bogeyman gaining traction in the world of left-wing academic and online discourse around current events, and it goes by the name “stochastic terrorism.”

Loosely defined, it is the notion that demonization or criticism of an individual or group in society on mass media and social media inevitably leads to acts of violence against that individual or group. The word stochastic, from the Greek stokhastikos — meaning to aim at or guess — refers to outcomes that may appear random but are actually probable, just not predictable.

Stochastic terrorism, in the discourse of today’s commentariat, is the end result of unchecked hate speech. Because the left believes hate speech only comes from one direction on the political spectrum — the right — then the purveyors of that speech must be called to account for the real-world violence that results from their opinions or commentary. “Free speech is killing us,” the New York Times declared in 2019.

The phrase first gained widespread usage in certain circles when an assistant secretary in President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, now teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School, used the phrase in reference to a mass shooting in 2019 at a Walmart at El Paso. Ahead of the attack, the white perpetrator had posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed on 8chan. Most of his victims were Latino.

In a piece in the Washington Post, Ms. Kayyem placed blame for the El Paso shooting at the feet of President Trump. Mr. Trump’s rhetorical winks and nods, his language about Hispanics and immigrants, and his failure to shame his fringiest supporters created an atmosphere in which attacks like El Paso, while not predictable, are probable, she claimed.

“Public speech that may incite violence, even without that specific intent, has been given a name: stochastic terrorism, for a pattern that can’t be predicted precisely but can be analyzed statistically,” Mr. Kayyem wrote. “It is the demonization of groups through mass media and other propaganda that can result in a violent act because listeners interpret it as promoting targeted violence — terrorism.”

More recently, the phrase has been trotted out to describe a shooting during a drag show at a gay nightclub at Colorado Springs last weekend, when five people were murdered. Voices on the left had been warning for weeks that something like it was going to happen and had already found a culprit for any violence — conservatives who have been campaigning against the hyper-sexualization of children in schools and the larger society.

In recent months, those conservatives have been railing against drag shows advertised as “family friendly.” Online activists have posted a steady stream of videos depicting children participating in such events, along with diatribes against “gender-affirming” medical care for confused adolescents and videos of public school teachers bragging about the myriad ways they attempt to persuade schoolchildren that gender is fluid and biological sex a fallacy. None of the videos are fake. They are merely broadcast to an audience that otherwise might not have seen them.

Writing in the Advocate, an LGBT magazine, Christopher Wiggins blamed these activists and their counterparts in conservative media for fomenting an atmosphere in which an attack like that at Colorado Springs was inevitable.

“Far-right influencers have set their sights on the LGBTQ+ community, specifically the transgender community and drag queens, to generate a divisive culture war issue in the run-up to the recent midterm election,” Mr. Wiggins wrote. “For months, experts have warned that the attacks targeting the LGBTQ+ community were not only bigoted but also dangerous.”

The attack, Mr. Wiggins continued, is prima facie evidence that the stochastic terrorism described by Ms. Kayyem is alive and well in America. There is, he said, a “direct correlation” between online criticism of radical gender theory and “angry and potentially violent extremists.” That the shooter’s lawyers said Tuesday he is “non-binary” and prefers “they/them” pronouns — the imprimatur of an enlightened progressive as opposed to a knuckle-dragging conservative — is apparently irrelevant.

The ultimate aim of these attempts to rebrand hate speech as terrorism is to silence the voices that the left finds offensive or disagreeable — mission creep for the speech police. Writing in Scientific American earlier this month, author Bryn Nelson of Seattle suggested that the key to combatting stochastic terrorism is “turning off the source of fuel.” Americans must, he said, strengthen and enforce laws against hate speech and incitement to violence.

There are those who believe, however, that the pendulum has already swung too far in favor of suppressing speech. Speaking to the Sun in March, one of America’s most esteemed judges, Laurence Silberman, who passed away on October 2, warned that the current climate surrounding the First Amendment is “worse than McCarthyism.” He called freedom of speech “the most fundamental American value” and repression of it “un-American.”

If the increasingly shrill voices on the left succeed in equating with terrorism criticism of drag queen story hours and medical intervention to prevent adolescents from going through puberty, then Silberman could turn out to have been, if anything, understating the danger to American values.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Friday, November 25, 2022



I'm 59 and I NEVER want to have sex again after being widowed twice - holding hands is my love language now

It's common for post-menopausal women to lose interest in sex

A single mother has revealed she never wants to have sex again and claims that holding hands is more romantic to her now that her libido has waned.

Monica Zwolsman, 59, who lives in Sydney, Australia, explained how she noticed a dramatic decrease in her sex drive after having her two sons and said that it was 'what nature intended'.

In a personal essay for Mamma Mia, the mother - who has tragically been widowed twice - questioned whether any women over the age of 55 still experiences sexual desire and insisted she 'doesn't care about being unf***able'.

When researching the issue for her piece online, Monica says she came across countless medical websites telling her that there was 'something wrong' with her body.

Monica says almost every website recommended taking hormones or having therapy as a means to restore her libido.

The mother-of-two wrote: 'The intimation is that all natural, healthy women want sex, no matter what their age, so I am in some way lacking – either mentally, physically or hormonally.

'I am not stressed. I am happy. I have lots of time. I am in perfect health. But I just don’t want to be that damn intimate with anyone.'

The mother then went on to explain how she's loved 'deeply' in her life - but as she's gotten older, she now prioritises 'hand holding and hugs' over having sex.

In the 1990s, Monica's first husband Ken was tragically shot dead in a South African war zone two weeks before the country's democratic elections.

Then in 2003, the mother - who had only just given birth to son Benjamin - lost her second husband Stephen to a heart attack at the age of 39.

Shortly afterwards, Monica's first child passed away and she went on to marry for a third time.

Now a single mother with two grown-up sons, Monica says that her idea of a romantic night in consists of sitting on the sofa and watching TV or reading a book as opposed to having passionate sex.

After doing a callout on social media, the mother was reassured to know that her peers hold the same view.

She continued: 'I miss hugging someone and burrowing into their armpit, skin-to-skin contact and spooning in bed. Most of all, I would like to have someone of my very own who is always there as an anchor.

'But if it means I have to trade the privacy of my genitals to get this, then I am out, because I don’t want the rest that badly. I have a dog for companionship and unconditional love. I have sons, sisters and brothers for family.'

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Georgia’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Is Reinstated by Top State Court

Georgia’s Supreme Court temporarily reinstated the state’s near-total abortion ban on Wednesday, after granting an emergency petition to stay a lower court order blocking the law.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Nov. 15 that the law that banned almost all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy was void because it was unconstitutional when it was adopted in 2019. The state filed its notice of appeal the next day.

The high court’s stay is temporary, pending a decision on the merits. The one-page order makes almost all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy illegal in Georgia.

The court also denied the abortion providers’ request for 24 hours notice before reinstating the ban, the plaintiffs said in a statement.

“Today, patients in waiting rooms are being turned away and forced to seek health care elsewhere or else carry pregnancies to term against their will,” the plaintiffs said.

“Reinstating this extreme abortion ban will cause immense harm, especially to Black Georgians and people with the fewest resources — who are least likely to be able to travel out of state for care and most likely to suffer severe medical consequences from forced pregnancy and childbirth,” Julia Kaye, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project said.

Alice Wang, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights said the “legal ping pong is causing chaos for medical providers trying to do their jobs and for patients who are now left frantically searching for the abortion services they need.”

McBurney had reasoned that the law was illegal under Roe v. Wade at the time of its enactment, and the US Supreme Court’s overruling of that precedent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, didn’t make the provision legal under Georgia law.

All of the Justices concurred, except Justice Nels S.D. Peterson, who was disqualified, and Justice Andrew A. Pinson who didn’t participate.

Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP, Caplan Cobb LLC, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Inc., American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Georgia Inc., Center for Reproductive Rights, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America represent the plaintiffs.

Planned Parenthood receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Bloomberg Law owner Michael Bloomberg.

The case is Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective v. Georgia, Ga., No. S23M0358, 11/23/22.

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Catholic University of America Opposes Radical ‘Respect for Marriage Act’

In our increasingly secular age in which growing numbers of especially young people claim no belief in God, or are indifferent to him, to whom will they give thanks?(Photo: Getty Images)

The Catholic University of America said Tuesday that it is aligned with top United States Catholic clergy in opposing the so-called Respect for Marriage Act.

“The Catholic University of America is committed to upholding the teachings of the Catholic Church, which includes the belief that marriage is between one man and one woman,” the university said in a Tuesday statement to The Daily Signal.

“Regarding this specific legislation,” the university continued, “the University stands alongside the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and their statements from July 2022 and most recently, Nov. 17.”

In the Nov. 17 statement, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, highlighted that senators who promote the Respect for Marriage Act claim their amended bill respects religious liberty.

“But the provisions of the Act that relate to religious liberty are insufficient,” he warned.

“The bill is a bad deal for the many courageous Americans of faith and no faith who continue to believe and uphold the truth about marriage in the public square today,” he said. “The Act does not strike a balance that appropriately respects our nation’s commitment to the fundamental right of religious liberty.”

“Senators supporting the Act must reverse course and consider the consequences of passing an unnecessary law that fails to provide affirmative protections for the many Americans who hold this view of marriage as both true and foundational to the common good,” the cardinal concluded.

The university’s opposition to the legislation comes as conservatives sound the alarm that it is not too late to block or amend the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. In a letter The Daily Signal published Saturday, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee urged his 12 Republican colleagues who voted for the legislation to “have the courage to protect” religious freedom.

The Respect for Marriage Act, or HR 8404, “provides statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages,” repealing provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman.

The legislation, which was passed by the House in July, also “repeals and replaces provisions that do not require states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with provisions that prohibit the denial of full faith and credit or any right or claim relating to out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin,” allows “the Department of Justice to bring a civil action,” and “establishes a private right of action for violations.”

Twelve Republican lawmakers voted for advancing the Respect for Marriage Act: Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana.

Many of these lawmakers claim that the much-discussed legislation protects religious liberty. But opponents of the bill warn that it “puts a giant target on people of faith.”

Lee has repeatedly raised concerns about the contents of the Respect for Marriage Act, urging Democrats and Republicans to come to an agreement on his amendment creating a strict policy that the federal government can’t discriminate on either viewpoint of marriage, whether same sex or traditional.

“I offered to support the bill if the sponsors would include my amendment to prohibit the government from removing tax-exempt status based on religious beliefs about same-sex marriage (for or against),” Lee said Wednesday. “The sponsors adamantly refused even to consider that. Why?”

Other major conservative and religious organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Religious Freedom Institute have condemned the Respect for Marriage Act. Religious leaders previously warned The Daily Signal that it would hack away at the religious freedom of faith-based groups.

“Catholic institutions will have a tough time living our faith under this legislation,” Stephen Minnis, president of the Catholic Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, told The Daily Signal last week.

“In fact,” he said, “giving religious institutions a tough time seems to be the point of the legislation. But the U.S. Constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, not just expression of religion. Benedictine College is committed to those rights, following the U.S. bishops, who joined an amici brief to defend our position this summer.”

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An American Tradition: Chronic Anti-Poverty Waste Via the Federal-to-Local Distribution Pipeline

For six years, beginning in 2014, the accounting firm for the Southeast Alabama Community Action Partnership warned administrators that the organization was doing a poor job of managing the millions of dollars in taxpayer money it received annually for its poverty-reduction work, including home energy assistance and foster grandparenting.

In 2018, a longtime employee filed a federal complaint alleging that the group spent public money profligately on extravagant travel and for other unauthorized purposes, and that it retaliated against employees who questioned its financial practices.

Although the case was dismissed upon agreement by both parties, the U.S. Department of Justice fined the Alabama nonprofit $30,000 last year for fiscal failures, including keeping federal money “even after being told by its outside accountant that it needed to return those funds to the United States.”

The fine was largely borne by U.S. taxpayers – the Southeast Alabama Community Action Partnership in 2021 received $5.5 million in federal grant funding, representing 97% of its support and revenue for the year.

The Alabama agency is part of a national network of over 1,000 local "community action agencies," or CAAs, distributing some $14 billion a year for so-called poverty-reduction programs, according to the Community Action Partnership, a national group that provides spending guidance and training to the local agencies.

That spending, part of a tangle of 89 programs spanning 14 federal departments and agencies, is a relatively small part of the federal outlay for low-income individuals and families, now totaling $1.16 trillion annually. Yet CAAs are significant as the main engines of such high-profile programs as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Head Start education efforts. And they offer a case study in how such spending can be virtually impossible to unwind, even if riddled with problems, critics say.

Despite a steady flow of federal audits and other reviews finding egregious waste in poverty relief over the past five decades, the Biden administration has doubled down on such programs since taking office last year. Food stamps, housing assistance, tax credits, and energy subsidies have been broadened in President Biden’s vast welfare expansion.

As RealClearInvestigations recently reported, the budget for the administration’s home weatherization programs nearly tripled to $1 billion a year under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, despite a long history of fraud and mismanagement among the CAAs that disburse the funds. Enforcement and policing of these programs has not been widely enhanced.

“The federal government just tosses money at the states and it’s up to them to figure it out,” said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has studied poverty and welfare programs since the ’90s. “No one pays attention or follows up on it, because it’s not state money and the federal government sends it and says, ‘Do whatever you want.’ There’s no data, so these bureaucracies spend this money autonomously.”

Yet despite a 92% increase in spending on low-income individuals and families since 2008, poverty rates in the U.S. have remained well above 10% of the population since the early ’60s, according to U.S. Census data. The lowest it has been since 1959 was 10.5% in 2019, and it has since escalated to 12.8%. The poverty threshold for a single adult under 65 in 2021, the most recent metric available, was $14,097.

Problem areas include the Child Care and Development Fund, which provides child-care assistance to low-income families. It made $1.1 billion in overpayments between 2016 and 2021, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Over the years, thievery among CAAs has made headlines, such as the finance director of the state CAA association in Louisiana who embezzled over $50,000, or the leader of a Maine community action group caught embezzling $1.3 million.

In 2015, three people were sentenced for bribery connected to the Gulf Coast Community Action Agency. Their scheme stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for a Head Start preschool for disadvantaged children.

In 2012, the former chief executive officer of the York County, Maine, Community Action Corporation pled guilty to embezzling some $900,000 in federal grant money.

In 2002, a former official with the Community Action Agency of New Haven (Connecticut) pled guilty to stealing over $1 million in federal and state funds intended for poverty programs such as Meals on Wheels and subsidizing heating bills and heating assistance.

Even organizations designed to promote best practices at community action agencies are prone to chicanery. In 2013, the finance director of the Louisiana Association of Community Action Partners pled guilty to embezzling over $50,000.

Errors or mismanagement across the welfare spectrum are often described with bureaucratic blandness by government overseers: “Administrative or process errors made by state or local agency resulted in overpayments.”

The problems have flourished because there are evidently few consequences for failure at any level.

“Unless there is something that ensures that the money being spent locally and spent effectively or they don’t get more, then the problem is going to go forward,” said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a DC-based policy group. “I’ve seen members of Congress saying that this program didn’t work so we’ll create a new one. If they had spent the money well or tracked it better in the first place, maybe more communities would have been helped.”

The waste is compounded by poorly prepared local management, he added. CAAs are led by local community leaders and activists, some with experience in grant handling, some not. The agency boards are required to include elected officials, representatives of the low-income community and members from local charities, civic groups, and businesses. As such, the board, supposedly a layer of oversight, is often better versed in the virtues of helping the poor but less so in the intricacies of finance.

“There’s poor planning in sending the money in the first place, then there are people receiving it with no experience in creating or funding projects,” Schatz said.

Mismanagement is so endemic to the programs that Care Providers, a boutique business insurance company, offers insurance “exclusively designed for Community Action Agencies.” Its list of crimes the organizations need to insure against includes “fraud, dishonesty, and theft by employees [which] are major problems confronting businesses of all sizes, including non-profit organizations,” the insurer writes. Care Providers “protects CAAs from loss of money, securities, or inventory resulting from crime. Common crime and fidelity insurance claims include employee dishonesty, embezzlement, forgery, robbery, safe burglary, computer fraud, wire transfer fraud, counterfeiting, and other criminal acts.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Thursday, November 24, 2022



BART seeks another $2.3b in federal funds for ca train

I like the BART but this is a phenomenal amount to pay for another small bit of it. I expect that a lot of the money will pour into associated personal pockets

They’re baaack! The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is now asking for another $2.3 billion from the federal government to see high-speed trains running from San Francisco to San Jose as part of the already years-delayed, over budget Bay Area Rapid Transit project, according to The Mercury News.

The total cost of this section of California’s high-speed rail project has exploded to $9.3 billion, 35 percent higher than the last estimate of $6.9 billion and almost twice what it was estimated to cost in 2014, the Mercury News reported. And it’s unclear whether that $9.3 billion figure will go up again.

Santa Clara County residents have paid for some of the project by voting for tax hikes in 2000 and 2008, paying almost $3.2 billion from sales taxes and bridge tolls.

The Federal Transit Administration already committed $2.3 billion to the project but Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority officials want to shift the overrun burden to federal taxpayers, asking the federal agency to double its commitment to $4.6 billion by moving the project to a federal program called New Starts.

This would bring the project in by 2034, four years later than current projection of 2030.

Santa Clara officials say that they don’t know the actual cost or timeline of the project. A better estimate will come during a top-to-bottom “rebaselining” effort that could end in a lower or higher estimate, VTA General Manager Carolyn Gonot said in The Mercury News.

The Federal Transit Administration completed a risk review more than a year ago, when the estimate was $9.1 billion. But the Mercury News reported in July that the FTA “continues to be concerned that the project estimate is under-representing the total cost due in part to contingency, inflation, and an optimistic base schedule and risk profile.”

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San Francisco's white election director is FIRED to promote 'racial equity' after serving the city for 20 years

Leftist racism has come roaring back after the Hitler debacle

San Francisco's election director, who has been in the position since 2002, will have his contract terminated in a move that 'wasn't about performance' but about 'racial equity'.

John Arntz, who is white, will be fired from his position next year, San Francisco's Elections Commission decided in a 4 to 2 decision last week.

The decision to get rid of Arntz was driven 'in large part by the city's plan for racial equity' - as the city strives towards making workplaces more diverse.

However, it was Arntz himself, as Department Director, who helped to establish such plans which have now ultimately cost him his job.

According to the Department of Elections' website, its Racial Equity Action Plan was 'developed through a collaboration' with Arntz.

City officials decided not to offer him a fifth five-year contract despite widespread praise from colleagues regarding his tenure as election director.

'It's hard to achieve diversity targets if senior roles never open up,' Cynthia Dai, a member of the commission, told the Washington Free Beacon.

'This has nothing to do with his performance,' said Dai, who voted against his renewal.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed came to Arntz's defense, telling Mission Local: 'John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity, professionalism and has stayed completely independent.

'He's remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of City politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote.

'Rather than working on key issues to recover and rebuild our City, this is a good example of unfair politicization of a key part of our government that is working well for the voters of this city.'

Arntz's contract will expire in May next year but he could still choose to reapply for the job. This will be the first time since 2002 that the Elections Commission chose not to renew the position in favor of conducting a search for new candidates.

As election director Arntz has been in charge of running the elections for the county and the city for 20 years. This move came just eight days after the November 8 midterm election.

City Attorney David Chiu said he was 'mystified' by the commission's decision, saying 'some folks have forgotten the history of this department.'

'Before Director Arntz, we had five directors in as many years, ballot boxes floating in the bay and an intense lack of confidence in city elections,' he told Mission Local.

Arntz was told in an email from the Commission's president Chris Jerdonek: 'Our decision wasn't about your performance, but after twenty years we wanted to take action on the City's racial equity plan and give people an opportunity to compete for a leadership position.'

In 2021, the Elections Commission wrote to the mayor that its elections were well run, saying: 'San Francisco runs one of the best elections in the country and we believe this transparent process has allowed us to continue to improve our elections.'

A year prior in 2020 it wrote Arntz a commendation for his 'incredible leadership'.

Division Manager Mayank Patel wrote an email to the department without Arntz's knowledge, Mission Local reported. It included a letter signed by 11 other division managers detailing why they supported his renewal.

'Under the leadership of Director Arntz, our Department successfully conducted over thirty public elections and rebuilt the public's confidence in the city's elections processes from the ground up,' wrote Patel.

Another official, District 2 supervisor Catherine Stefani, said on Twitter that the decision was 'a dereliction of the Commission's duty.'

If Arntz is still the most qualified candidate after a competitive search, Dai said he will have his contract renewed.

A rift has emerged in San Francisco between elected officials and unelected bureaucracies where progressive identity politics have advanced faster, according the Free Beacon.

It suggests that the city's 'racial equity plan' - which the Elections Commission cited to support their decision regarding Arntz - was created by the same elected officials that are now criticizing the decision not to renew him.

Board appointee Jerdonek, City Attorney appointee Dai, District Attorney's office appointee Robin Stone and Public Defender's office appointee Renita LiVolsi voted to not renew Arntz's contract.

Mayoral appointee Nancy Crowley and treasurer appointee Lucy Bernholz voted for him to stay.

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'You're burning the wrong witch': LGBTQ writer apologizes to JK Rowling after spending three months researching the Harry Potter author but finding NO evidence she is transphobic

An LGBTQ activist has commended JK Rowling for her 'bravery' and told her followers that people are 'burning the wrong witch' after she was unable to find any evidence that the Harry Potter author is transphobic.

EJ Rosetta, a writer and columnist for HuffPost, who has been vocal herself over trans issues, said in a series of Tweets that JK Rowling 'is not an 'intolerable transphobe'', but stood up for women's rights when she could have sat back.

JK Rowling said she has long faced death and rape threats for her views on transgender issues, where she has called out the erosion of biological sex and the harm it can cause to women. Critical LGBTQ activists have dubbed the author a TERF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, and have repeatedly denounced her for her opinions.

The author's comments and tweets led Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson to distance themselves from the world's creator.

But LGBTQ writer EJ Rosetta is adamant that activists are 'burning the wrong witch'.

In the tread, EJ Rosetta wrote: 'Right, I'm done. 3 months ago, I was tasked with writing an article detailing '20 Transphobic JK Rowling Quotes We're Done With' After 12 weeks of reading her books, tweets, full essay & finding the context of these 'quotes', I've not found a single truly transphobic message.'

The columnist and writer for HuffPost concluded that JK Rowling is not 'an 'intolerable transphobe'' but a 'woman who could have sat back & been beloved forever' but chose to speak out on women's rights.

EJ Rosetta said, often, 'one groups rights are being sacrificed for the other, with the most vulnerable women often paying the price.' The HuffPost writer pointed towards the example of domestic violence shelters and praised JK Rowling for 'paying attention'.

The Harry Potter author was also commended for her 'bravery' for speaking out on the issue.

'3 months of dedicated research,' wrote EJ Rosetta, '& I cannot find a single truly transphobic JK Rowling quote that stands up against the scrutiny of journalistic integrity. The abuse JK has endured is beyond forgiveness. Every death threat, r*pe threat & torrent of abuse, she has born w/ grace.'

Rosetta concluded: 'You're burning the wrong witch. I stand with @jk_rowling.'

JK Rowling originally came under fire in June 2020 after retweeting an opinion article where she took issue with the term 'people who menstruate' instead of the publication saying 'women'.

The author Tweeted: 'People who menstruate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?'

She was also rebuked by LGBTQ activists in 2020 when she wrote: 'Erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth.'

She added: 'I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so.'

Since then, JK Rowling said she has faced death and rape threats for her outspoken views. Just last year, activists posted a photo of themselves outside the author's home holding a pro-trans sign. The author's address was clearly visible in the image.

Rowling accused the activists of trying to intimidate her and added that she has now received so many death threats that she could 'paper the house with them'.

Downing Street even got involved and criticized the targeting of JK Rowling by trans activists. Then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's official spokesman said in November 2021: 'I don't think any individual should be targeted in that way.

'We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect and that people are able to share their views as long as it is done in that fashion.'

EJ Rosetta said she herself identified as a 'recovered TERF'. The term is used to describe feminists who others believe trans rights are excluded from women's rights.

Since then, the HuffPost writer has said that trans rights need to be respected and called for equality. She also raised awareness for the high suicide rate of trans youth.

JK Rowling's comments led Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe to speak out following her Tweets in 2020 in a statement published through the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention charity for the LGBTQ community.

The actor said: 'I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between J.K. Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what's important right now. While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment.'

The actor concluded: 'Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.'

Emma Watson also responded to JK Rowling's comments in June 2020. The Hermione Granger actress wrote: 'Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.

'I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.'

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This is the Walmart manager, 31, who shot six co-workers dead in 'planned' break-room massacre - as Virginia cops find 'death list' of names next to his body

image from https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/23/19/64874193-11461945-image-a-18_1669233289008.jpg

Andre Bing, 31, has been named by Walmart as the shooter in Tuesday night's attack in Chesapeake

Bing opened fire in the breakroom on Tuesday at 10.12pm as the night team gathered for their shift

He shot 10 people in total before killing himself; two of his victims were found dead in the breakroom with him

One of his victims was found dead at the store entrance and three others died in the hospital

Another four people who were shot remain in the hospital today and it's unclear if they will survive

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Terrifying moment three Florida teens wake up to find Hispanic stranger lurking at the foot of their bed

image from https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/23/15/64866153-11461843-image-a-1_1669218203726.jpg

Raul Mora-Yanez, 25, was caught lurking in the cabin of three teenage girls who were at a father-daughter retreat at the Circle F dude ranch in Lake Wales

Mora-Yanez was unknown to the girls, but turned out to be a camp employee

He said he was drinking when he entered the cabin and thought it was empty

One of the girls recorded the incident unfold i'n case they were killed,' and can be heard in the video screeching as Mora-Yanez moved around

The dads of the girls were also called but didn't make it to the cabin in time until Mora-Yanez had fled in his alien hoodie

He was arrested but released days later on a $25,000 bond. He will appear back in court on December 13

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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