Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Andrew Tate's "victims" speak out
It appears that there was no crime justifying his arrest
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UK: Church in row over plan to show Pride flag on altar over claims it politicises place of worship and will lead to 'moral anarchy'
The C of E can be really disgusting at times. Next thing they will be having cock-sucking competitions. They are the Devil's mockery of Christianity
St Nicholas Church in Leicester had hung the colourful flags at weekend services but then last year switched them for a much larger permanent version.
Church reverend Canon Karen Rooms claims the huge fabric Progress Pride Flag is merely a way of letting visitors know they are ‘welcome and safe’.
But opponents, including parishioners and General Synod members have accused the church, parts of which date from around 900AD, of ‘woke’ virtue signalling.
A test case will now be heard by the Church of England’s consistory court, with campaigners warning it will ‘open the floodgates’ to ideological imagery in other churches if given the go-ahead.
Sam Margrave, of the Synod, the CofE’s governing council, told The Sunday Telegraph that the ‘infiltration’ was allowing ‘moral anarchy’.
Canon Rooms wrote in her submission for the faculty that the flag ‘is a simple statement of welcome and safety’.
The Diocese of Leicester said: ‘All new altar frontals require permission... The application... is with the Diocesan Chancellor’s office and will be decided in due course.’
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, said: ‘Placing a Pride flag on the altar, which symbolises a political sexual ideology completely at odds with the gospel, must be challenged.’
The dispute comes at a time when the CofE is locked in a damaging internal debate over gender, sexuality and marriage.
The flashpoint at St Nicholas, which is among the ten oldest churches in Britain, happened in September when switched the Pride flags were replaced by the Progress Pride Flag, a gift from a worshipper at a nearby church.
The banner, based on the iconic rainbow flag from 1978, was developed in 2018 by non-binary American artist Daniel Quasar to celebrate the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community and call for a more inclusive society.
St Nicholas churchwarden and transgender poet Jay Hulme said at the time: ‘People were actually weeping in the pews when they saw it.’
But the church had to take down the altar frontal a month later as it hadn’t applied for planning permission, known as a faculty, and the case was referred to the church court as the protests grew.
It will be ruled upon by the diocese chancellor Lyndsey de Mestre, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, London, or a deputy in the coming months. It is not known yet whether the case will be heard in public or based on written submissions.
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Tell your kids marriage is more important than money or career — because it IS
Would you trade your family for money? Which one of your kids would you swap for certain wealth? All parents know what they would answer. None. Never. No way.
Yet a new Pew study shows parents would prefer — by a lot — their children prioritize financial independence and a good career over family and children. Eighty-eight percent of parents said it’s “extremely or very important” for their children to be financially independent when they reach adulthood; 88% also said the same of their children having a job they enjoy.
Only 21% of parents said it was “extremely or very important” for their child to get married, and just 20% felt that strongly about their progeny reproducing.
This is a giant mistake.
For one thing, with the stability of family comes a higher income. Want a better shot at having a good career? Get married.
It makes sense. The dude swiping on Tinder every night just isn’t going to have the same focus on succeeding as the man who has a family to support.
It doesn’t apply just to men, either. An October 2021 Pew study reported that in the last 30 years, the coupled have come to outearn the singles. Coupled women make $8,000 more a year on average than single women.
“The gaps in economic outcomes between unpartnered and partnered adults have widened since 1990,” Pew noted. “Among men, the gaps are widening because unpartnered men are faring worse than they were in 1990. Among women, however, these gaps have gotten wider because partnered women are faring substantially better than in 1990.”
Married people also pool their resources. Want your kid to be financially secure? Move marriage to the top of his or her to-do list. A 2017 TD Ameritrade study found “29% of single adults consider themselves financially secure, whereas 43% of married couples say the same.” A surprising stat in the data is that married people, despite often having to take care of expensive little people who live with them, end up saving more than single people.
Putting money or career first doesn’t work. You can’t “have it all,” but you can have most of it if you’re in a stable relationship.
Beyond just the cash, a married woman has options. The question “Will you go back to work?” that a woman gets asked after having a baby is not posed to single women.
And there are the existential reasons. We’re only on this planet for so long. The clichéd line “Nobody on his deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office’” is true. Your work might be meaningful and important, or it might be just a paycheck, but either way your family is worth far more. Your co-workers are not going to miss you when you’re gone. Your Twitter followers might not even notice. But done right, you will leave a legacy with your family to carry on.
Everyone says “Family first,” but sending the message to kids to pursue careers over family is the opposite of that. It exposes a shallow materialism trend that used to be embarrassing but is now out in the open. What are riches worth when you don’t have what really matters?
Parents should, of course, motivate their children to become financially secure. A marriage can always fail, and having a career to support yourself is important. No parents want their grown kid living in their basement calling up to ma to make some meatloaf. But when their child grows up and someday asks themselves “What’s the point?” the answer will never come back “To get those slides to Chad in accounting for our presentation.”
Raise children who understand this and who place importance on finding the right spouse and having children, and career and financial stability will follow.
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I'm de-transitioning after realising I'm happier as a man - and blame 'woke' culture for influencing impressionable teens into switching gender
An influencer who is in the process of 'de-transitioning' from a trans woman back to a man has hit out at 'woke' culture - which he claims encourages often vulnerable teens to question their identity unnecessarily.
Oli London, from Hertford, spent six months living as a woman, and underwent feminising facial surgery to soften his features before realising, he now says, that he was actually happier living as a man.
The social media personality, who had previously had surgery to look like male Korean pop idols, has hit out at celebs like Harry Styles and Timothee Chalamet, and shows like Ru Paul's drag race, that, he claims, promote gender fluidity - saying they are dangerous for teens who are encouraged to question their identity.
He said: 'There are now so many teenagers transitioning. It's something that's seen as trendy and cool to Gen Z and it feeds into woke people.
'I think that celebrities like Harry Styles and Timothée Chalamet, probably due to their PR, are queer baiting as they are made to look gay or feminine in order to be cool and trendy. It's a slippery slope.
'It projects these images onto impressionable kids and leads them to question themselves and their identity. It's really harmful.
'These kids are then influenced to experiment, which is fine, but if these teenagers weren't going to come to these realisations on their own about their gender, then it's likely that it is the wrong path for them and they have just been influenced by what they think is trendy.'
Oli, 33, flew to Turkey to undergo feminine facial surgery in April 2022, after struggling with his gender identity for years.
The British influencer previously sparked controversy after identifying as 'transracial' and spending more than $271,000 to look like Korean pop-stars.
He strived to look like Jimin from boyband BTS for over five years and has since spent over £100,000 ($150,000) on further surgery - most recently sharing a video from his hospital bed after undergoing eye surgery, a face lift, brow lift and temple lift.
He says he was able to book all of his surgery abroad without ever having undergone counselling or any therapy - which he now thinks should not be allowed for for gender reassignment surgery.
Last year, he spent six months living as a woman, and had planned to fly to Thailand for more gender surgery, before realising that he had been happier as a man.
Oli added: 'As a teenager, I was bullied for how I looked. I was told that I looked too feminine and not like a 'real' boy.
'I would also dress up in fancy dress costumes that were meant for girls and played with Barbies. So, I have had some gender identity questions my entire life.
'Because I was bullied for my looks, I started having plastic surgery to try and improve how I looked and I became addicted.
'In total, so far, I have had 32 procedures. However, I still wasn't happy and I felt like something was missing. I thought that as everyone had been calling me feminine my whole life, and that I had maybe been born in the wrong body, maybe they were right.
'So I decided I would begin the transition to female, and I started with my face. I underwent facial feminisation, and I was so happy with the results.
'I got hair extensions fitted, and started wearing dresses and heels too. Most people still called me Oli as it's also short for Olivia, but I also went by the name Rose.
His de-transitioning journey began with London shaving his head and wearing more traditionally masculine clothes
'I spent six months living as a transgender woman and at first it felt amazing. I thought this was the reason I'd never felt fully happy before.
'I was even considering going to Thailand for further gender-changing surgery, but I soon came to the realisation that I actually still wasn't happy.'
Oli discovered that undergoing different cosmetic procedures was a temporary fix for his unhappiness and decided that he needed to totally change his life.
Oli said: 'I originally transitioned because I thought it would be the solution to my unhappiness and that it would be some sort of miracle cure to why I felt the way I did about myself.
'After living as a transwoman for six months, I still wasn't happy and I realised that I had made the wrong decision.
'I knew that in order to find true happiness, I needed to go back to my roots and find the person who had been trapped inside me all along. I needed to find the real me.
'I had been influenced by information I was seeing on social media. I thought transitioning was something that was fun, easy, and cool because that's the way it had been portrayed online. I thought it was going to be a quick and easy fix, but I was wrong.
'To begin my detransition journey I shaved my hair off and got rid of my extensions, which was traumatic and liberating at the same time, and gave away all my feminine clothes to charity and friends.'
He says he's trying to make his face appear more masculine once more, he says: 'Although my face does still look very feminine, I am trying to just get over it rather than reverting to more cosmetic surgery.
'I've been taking supplements, trying to up my protein intake and focusing on building muscle in the gym to try and bulk myself out more too.'
He said: 'There are now so many teenagers transitioning. It's something that's seen as trendy and cool to Gen Z and it feeds into woke people.
'I think that celebrities like Harry Style and Timothée Chalamet, probably due to their PR, are queer baiting as they are made to look gay or feminine in order to be cool and trendy. It's a slippery slope.
'It projects these images onto impressionable kids and leads them to question themselves and their identity. It's really harmful.
'I believe it should be harder for people to transition because while it may be difficult for the people experiencing these feelings, it would prevent thousands of people from making a decision that they end up regretting.
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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, January 30, 2023
The Narcissism of the Angry Young Men
Excerpts below from an article in which Tom Nichols describes at length the problem of young men going on murderous rampages. He lists many such events and points out that great anger seems to lie behind them all. He has no solution to the problem they pose however. He can see what the young men are but has no idea of the forces that make them into human timebombs.
Even in his title, however, he goes astray. He refers to them as Narcissists. Narcissism has of course been the subject of much research by psychologists after Freud wrote an influential article on it over a century ago. And Freudian thinking has remained influential. But at least some of it is simply wrong.
And a 1991 study by Paul Wink was very informative about that. He combined three existing measures of narcissism, including the MMPI and CPI, and factor analysed the responses of a heterogeneous sample to them.
The sample responses showed no such thing as as unitary trait of narcissism. Varimax rotated eigenvectors revealed two distinct and uncorrelated traits underlying the "narcissism" questions: Vulnerabiliy and grandiosity.
So it seems that Freud's picture of the narcissist is fiction. The traits he describes do exist but they do not form the coherent syndrome described by him. So talk of narcissism needs to be avoided.
But Nichols is undoubtedly on to something. His use of the term "narcissism" is over-broad but egotism is undoubtedly to be seen in the “Lost Boys” he describes. It has long been my contention that excess ego is at the root of a lot of social problems: Crime generally, for instance. The criminal thinks that what he wants transcends the rights of others.
When (on October 30, 2008) Obama spoke of his intention to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography. He was talking about transforming what he thought American people can and must do. He thought he knew better: Clearly egotistical.
But when we see how widespread the problem of excess ego is, it becomes clear that it is NOT the defining characteristic of the “Lost Boys”. Most egotism does not result in shooting rampages. So we have to look for more than excess ego for our understanding of them.
And a major cause of their disgruntlement is pretty obvious: Men and masculinity are in both the media and the educational system routinely described as "toxic" and men are told that feminine characteristics are the only praiseworthy ones. How would YOU feel if people kept calling you toxic?. Anger is surely an understandable response.
Young men are in effect told by the whole society that they are contemptible. Is it any wonder that some will want to hit back at society as a whole in any way that they can? You reap what you sow.
Most young men do not go on murderous rampages but those who combine great anger with few rewards in life may do so
So the problem is largely traceable to the way feminism of various extremes has become normative thinking in our society. The “Lost Boys” are however only a minor penalty for that thinking. The way feminists have substantially destroyed marriage is the major evil that they have inflicted. Given the punitive divorce laws that have been enacted under feminist influence, it takes a brave or foolish man to get married these days
So no cure for the “Lost Boys” is in sight. But we know what would help. If feminism were to moderate its intolerance of all things masculine, the world would be a much happier place. How about a bit of "equity" for men?
Some years ago, I got a call from an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center. After yet another gruesome mass shooting (this time, it was Dylann Roof’s attack on a Bible-study group at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine and wounded one), I had written an article about the young men who perpetrate such crimes. I suggested that an overview of these killers showed them, in general, to be young losers who failed to mature, and whose lives revolved around various grievances, insecurities, and heroic fantasies. I called them “Lost Boys” as a nod to their arrested adolescence.
The NCTC called me because they had a working group on “countering violent extremism.” They had read my article and they, too, were interested in the problem of these otherwise-unremarkable boys and young men who, seemingly out of nowhere, lash out at society in various ways. We think you’re on to something, the analyst told me. He invited me to come down to Washington and discuss it with him and his colleagues.
The meeting was held in a classified environment so that the group’s members, representing multiple intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, could more easily share ideas and information. (I was a government employee at the time and held a clearance.) But we could have met in a busy restaurant for all it mattered—the commonalities among these young men, even across nations and cultures, are hardly a secret. They are man-boys who maintain a teenager’s sharp sense of self-absorbed grievance long after adolescence; they exhibit a combination of childish insecurity and lethally bold arrogance; they are sexually and socially insecure. Perhaps most dangerous, they go almost unnoticed until they explode. Some of them open fire on their schools or other institutions; others become Islamic radicals; yet others embrace right-wing-extremist conspiracies.
I emerged from the meeting with a lot of interesting puzzle pieces but no answers. Since then, there have been more such attacks, more bodies, more grief—but precious little progress on preventing such incidents. A few recent examples: In 2021, a 15-year-old boy murdered four of his fellow students in his Michigan high school. In 2022, an 18-year-old man carried out a massacre in a Texas school; another, the same age, committed a mass murder in a grocery store in upstate New York. A 21-year-old male attacked a Fourth of July parade in Illinois. A 22-year-old went on a rampage at an LBGTQ nightclub in Colorado.
These attacks are not merely “violence” in some general sense, nor are they similar to other gun crimes classified as “mass shootings” beyond the number of victims. Drug-war shoot-outs and gang vendettas are awful, but they are better-understood problems, in both their origins and possible remedies. The Lost Boys, however, are the perpetrators of out-of-the-blue massacres of innocents. Their actions are not driven by criminal gain, but instead are meant to shock us, to make us grieve, and finally, to force us to acknowledge the miserable existence of the young men behind the triggers.
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"Tinder Translator": taking a swipe at single men
By ANTONELLA GAMBOTTO-BURKE
Antonella is an extremely bright and much published writer, now 57, who has had a couple of marriages, so her demolition of a sad misanthropic feminist below is interesting and persuasive.
Perhaps saddest of all is that there are many men who are equally critical of single women. Tolerance of difference seems to be in short supply across the board. My partner and I have huge differences but tolerance of them enables us to have a very enjoyable and probably enduring relationship
A chapter or so into "Tinder Translator: An A-Z of Modern Misogyny", I assumed that author, Aileen Barratt, a British freelance copywriter, was a disillusioned, twenty-something tequila-chugging party beast.
I was startled to discover, as I got further into the book, that she is, in fact, a divorced mother on the cusp of middle age, dedicated to disparaging the men of Tinder, the world’s most popular dating app (67 million annual downloads).
The men on Tinder are, Barratt reports, “dull”.
They are abusive. Angry. Arrogant. Defensive. Degrading.
Entitled. Indifferent. Liars. Mean.
Phobic about commitment. Sexually underwhelming.
Sadistic. Shallow. Shaming. Unloving. Violent.
She refers to them as “douchebags” and “bellends”, “dickheads” and “selfish pricks”. (Imagine the critical response to a dating handbook written by a man who refers to women — “NOT ALL”, as Barratt hurriedly points out — as “whores” and “bimbos”, “gold-diggers” and “bitches”.)
Conversely, women are “f*cking sublime” — “babes” and “goddesses”, if you will. Women, Barrett continues, “are my fortress and my inspiration. Women built and sustain me. Almost all of the most constant, nurturing and joyous figures in my life have been women. The majority of music, art and literature that has shaped me was forged from the souls of wonder women.”
Really?
“Wonder women” like, say, French seminal feminist Simone de Beauvoir, whose sexual hypocrisy led to her breaking the spirits of the underage adolescent girls she sexually groomed for partner Jean-Paul Sartre’s delectation?
“Nurturing” women such as British heiress and child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell?
“Joyous” women such as Rosemary West, who beat, prostituted, and murdered her daughters?
Or another example, from my own life: the woman who beat “and glassed almost to death” her former boyfriend: an artistic, gentle, well-educated son of my friends.
After punching him — he refused to engage — she hurled his PlayStation controller at his forehead and caved in his right temple, viciously abusing him verbally throughout.
By the time the police turned up, the apartment was “soaked” in blood.
My point is that women are just as capable of sexual, and non-sexual abuse as men, particularly with those weaker than themselves and with those they know will not retaliate.
Logic, too, is thin in the book. “I am queer,” Barratt announces, “but I have only ever dated cishet (heterosexual) men.” How, in a world in which language has meaning, is that even possible?
Can one claim to be vegan despite regularly eating meat? Is it possible to self-identify as a murderer if one has never killed anyone? And if it is possible, why does Barrett then pillory married men for self-identifying as single on Tinder (“a special kind of dickhead”)?
Or is self-identification valid only if it doesn’t intrude on Barratt’s joyless romantic exploits?
At the core of the book is Barratt’s frustration at the men she meets online, many of whom apparently have little interest in pursuing relationships with her. They prefer other women. Sometimes, it’s because — incredibly — they don’t want to date a single mother (“When I told another guy I had a kid, he said he wouldn’t be able to meet up for our date after all, because he had to shovel fertiliser into his raised beds”).
It is, to Barratt, incomprehensible that a man may not want a relationship with a time-poor divorcee, that they may not want involvement with the Little Shop of Horrors that co-parenting can become, or to feel responsible for a child that is not theirs. Prior to becoming a single mother, I was this very man: uninterested in domesticity or dating fathers.
I certainly had no interest in further damaging a damaged child.
The fact that I am a woman — biologically, legally, and by inclination — would, according to Barratt’s prejudicial template, justify these desires. I was rebelling against the limited patriarchal behavioural template! But a man expressing the same desires is, in her book, simply a “dickhead” (“Writing ‘no single mums’ on your dating bio is a major fail”).
Like the men Barratt reviles, I had a right to these desires — they were, and remain, reasonable, but her perception is limited.
For example, Barratt understands sex as recreational in essence — something people do with each other when the mood takes them, rather than a significant statement. In one chapter, she recalls that after the usual sex-on-impact, her lover tells her that he has “a heart of stone”. Ignoring this clear statement of indifference, she continues sleeping with him. When, after weeks of casual sex, he asks her to a gig, she excitedly interprets the event as “big”, an indication of his deepening interest.
Of course, he eventually dumps her.
To Barratt, being asked out is an evolution, rather than a precursor, of the most intense intimacy known to mankind. It’s a topsy-turvy universe in which women place themselves in potentially perilous situations with strangers without the basic safeguards of courtship (familiarising yourself with the partner and his social circle before placing yourself in a vulnerable position), and then express surprise when men lie and leave.
“These lone wolves can literally tell you you’re the kind of girl they could see themselves marrying one day and, as long as they have previously stated they don’t want a relationship right now or whatever, still be confused as to how you could have possibly gotten the wrong impression,” she writes.
Failing to see how her own acceptance of trivialisation contributes to her repeated disappointment, Barratt continues blaming men. These feminist tropes not only dilute the social impact of feminism, but serve to further divide, rather than unite, the sexes.
It is a shame, because her stated quest is noble: to encourage women to reject disrespectful behaviour from men when dating online, and to stay safe.
Her means of achieving these aims ensures ultimate failure.
By the end of the book, I was tempted to ghost Barratt myself, repelled by the awful, grinding tone. Rejected and bruised by the dating world, she has constructed a protective verbal carapace she markets as “humour” and as a philosophy to other single women, but far from being a feminist landmark, this book uses male behavioural ineptitude on a dating app to exorcise rage and pain and sadness.
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Juvenile Crime Surges, Reversing Long Decline
Leftist "soft on crime" policies have ratcheted up so it is as we must expect
A 13-year-old boy ran through the Bronx streets one May afternoon last year, chased by two teens on a scooter. Surveillance video showed him frantically trying to open the doors of an assisted-living facility. The scooter peeled onto the sidewalk and sped toward him. A 15-year-old boy riding on the back pointed a handgun and fired multiple times, police say.
Nearby, 11-year-old Kyhara Tay stood outside a beauty salon after school, eating chicken wings and waiting for her friends to finish getting their nails done. A stray bullet struck the pavement in front of her, authorities say. Another pierced her stomach. She was rushed in critical condition to Lincoln Hospital 2 miles away, where she died that night.
Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a stark reversal of a decadeslong decline in juvenile crime.
In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%. The number of killings committed by children under 14 was the highest in two decades, according to the most recent federal data.
One consequence is a mounting toll of young victims. The number of juveniles killing other juveniles was the highest it has been in more than two decades, the 2020 federal data show.
Kyhara was one of 153 victims in New York City under the age of 18 shot in 2022, the most in at least six years and more than the 127 total minors shot in 2018 and 2019 combined, according to police data. The 13-year-old boy being pursued was unharmed, authorities say.
In New York City, police said 124 juveniles committed shootings during 2022, up from 62 in 2020 and 48 in 2019.
“The tragedy here is that we’re talking about a gunman who is too young to be called a gunman because he’s 15 years old,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark after Kyhara’s death. “These ages make you weep.”
The jump comes amid an overall wave of violent crime in the first two years of the pandemic—particularly homicides and shootings—that swept through urban and rural areas alike.
Police, prosecutors and community groups attribute much of the youth violence to broad disruptions that started with the pandemic and lockdowns. Schools shut down, depriving students of structure in daily life, as did services for troubled children. Increased stress compounded a swelling mental-health crisis. Social-media conflicts increasingly turned deadly.
Easier access to firearms for juveniles has also played a role, including the rise of homemade ghost guns and a surge in illegal firearms trafficking. Heightened gang activity was a factor too in some places such as New York City, authorities say.
The nationwide wave began to ebb in 2022, but in some communities, shootings involving minors have continued to surge. In Washington, D.C., there were 214 firearm-related arrests of children in 2022, a higher count than each of the prior three years. Sixteen juveniles were shot to death last year in the district, compared with nine in 2021.
Dora Villarreal, the top prosecutor in Rock Island County, Ill., said she has never seen such young teens so frequently involved in shootings and firearms cases in her county of about 143,000. “During Covid, without school being a constant kind of stabilizing structure for many of our kids, that has helped lead unfortunately to this rise in violent crime,” she said.
Since schools reopened, the arrests have continued to rise. Ms. Villarreal said residual impacts of the pandemic—including mental-health issues, drug abuse and the breakdown of routines—have all contributed. In 2020, 36 juveniles were arrested for gun-related cases in her county. As of late December 2022, the number was 64.
A still from surveillance footage released by the New York Police Department shows the alleged gunman in Kyhara Tay’s killing on the back of a scooter on May 16, 2022.
Fourteen-year-old K’Mya Marshall could see the changes among the young people she knew in her West Philadelphia neighborhood over the past two years.
After months of isolation, teens became less able to cope with conflict and more frequently lashed out over small disputes, she said. With less to do, many also drifted deeper into social-media circles where guns and crime were glamorized.
Firearms were seemingly everywhere, as gun sales skyrocketed during the pandemic. Kids got them from family members, purchased them on Instagram for a few hundred dollars, or bought homemade ghost guns from other teens.
“They think it’s cool,” said K’Mya, a team leader at the Young Chances Foundation, a community organization that seeks to prevent violence. “They want that gun to define themselves and for people to be scared of them.”
Late last year, a teenage friend of hers was shot to death walking in their neighborhood. Their school held a 10-second moment of silence a few days later. Such mourning has become increasingly routine in Philadelphia as the number of juveniles murdered jumped to 81 over the past two years, from 52 in all of 2019 and 2020.
“My friend got caught in the crossfire just trying to enjoy her day,” she said.
Last year, a total of 117 juveniles were arrested for shootings in Philadelphia, up from 43 in 2019, according to police. They include a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy both charged with murder after they were allegedly involved in a September gun battle outside a West Philadelphia recreation center in the middle of the day. Tiffany Fletcher, a 41-year-old employee of the center and a mother of three, was outside when she was fatally struck by a stray bullet.
The city council recently made permanent a 10 p.m. summertime curfew for teens from ages 14 to 17. “The new curfew law is meant to protect young people from being victims of crime while the City works towards other measures that reduce gun violence,” said City Councilor Katherine Gilmore Richardson, who proposed the measure, in a written statement.
The rise in juvenile shootings hasn’t been limited to the biggest cities. Peoria, Ill., population 112,000, saw eight juvenile homicide victims in 2021, according to police data. In 2020, there were none.
Stricter punishments
Some prosecutors and law enforcement leaders argue that the shift away from a more punitive approach for juveniles toward intervention programs and rehabilitation has gone too far and corrections are needed.
Ms. Clark, the Bronx district attorney and a Democrat, supported a 2017 New York law that ended the automatic prosecution of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, raising the age to 18. Most states had already passed similar “Raise the Age” laws.
Now, Ms. Clark said, she wants to be able to try more gun possession cases in criminal court, which would allow her office more authority over what sentences to seek. She said under the Raise the Age law, too many juveniles arrested on gun possession charges are being released quickly because such cases are typically sent to family court—and some of those minors are going on to commit more serious crimes or are being murdered themselves.
Her office cited the case of a 17-year-old who was arrested three separate times on gun possession charges and sent to family court each time, before being arrested for murder, all within 12 months.
“I don’t want to lock them up and throw away the key because they’re young. But at the same time, they have to know the consequences for their actions,” said Ms. Clark.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/violent-crime-rate-juvenile-11674485556
***********************************************Who’s More Irrational, the Religious or the Irreligious?
There are very few things conservatives, liberals, and leftists agree on. But if they are irreligious, they all agree that religious Americans are more irrational than irreligious Americans.
It is a secular axiom that secularism and secular people are rooted in reason, whereas religion and the religious are rooted in irrationality.
This is what almost every college professor believes and what almost every student in America is taught. Among the intelligentsia, it is an unquestioned fact. It helps explain why, after their first or second year at college, many children return to their religious homes alienated from, and frequently contemptuous of, the religion of their parents—and often of the parents themselves.
At the time in their lives when most people are the most easily indoctrinated—approximately ages 18 to 22—young Americans hear only one message: If you want to be a rational person, you must abandon religion and embrace secularism.
Most young Americans are never exposed to a countervailing view at any time in their college life. (That’s why you should expose your college-aged child, grandchild, niece, or nephew to this column.)
Yet, this alleged axiom is not only completely false, it’s backward. The truth is that today, the secular have a virtual monopoly on irrational beliefs.
One proof is that colleges have become the most irrational institutions in the country. Not coincidentally, they are also the most secular institutions in our society. In fact, the former is a result of the latter.
One could provide examples in every area of life. Here are but a few:
Only secular people believe “men give birth.”
Only secular people believe that males—providing, of course, that they say they are females—should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
Only secular people believe that a young girl who says she is a boy or a young boy who says he is a girl should be given puberty-blocking hormones.
Only secular people believe that girls who say they are boys should have their healthy breasts surgically cut off.
Only secular people believe it is good to have men in drag dance (often provocatively) in front of 5-year-olds.
Only secular people agree with Disney’s dropping use of the words “boys and girls” at Disneyland and Disney World.
Only secular people believe that “to be colorblind is to be racist.” That is what is taught at nearly all secular (and religious-in-name-only) colleges in America today.
Only secular people believe that fewer police, fewer prosecutions, and lower prison sentences (or no prison time at all) lead to less crime.
Far more secular Americans than religious Americans believed that the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins needed to change their names because “Indians” and “Redskins” were racist—despite the fact that most Native Americans didn’t even think so.
Who was more likely, secular or religious Americans, to support keeping children out of schools for two years; forcibly masking 2-year-olds on airplanes; and firing unvaccinated police officers, airplane pilots, and members of the military?
How many Western supporters of Josef Stalin—the tyrant who murdered about 30 million people—were irreligious, and how many were religious?
Stanford University, a thoroughly secular institution, just released an “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.” It informs all Stanford faculty and students of “harmful” words they should avoid and the words that should replace them.
Some examples:
Stanford asks its students and faculty not to call themselves “American.” Rather, they should call themselves a “U.S. citizen.” Why? Because citizens of other countries in North America and South America might be offended.
Is that rational?
Stanford asks its faculty and students not to use the term “blind study.” Why? Because it “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” Instead, Stanford faculty and students should say “masked study.”
Two questions: Is Stanford’s claim that being blind is not a disability rational or irrational? And what percentage of those who make this claim are secular?
The list of irrational (and immoral) things secular people believe—and religious people do not believe—is very long. As a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton puts it: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Yet, many people believe that the religious, not the secular, are the irrational people in our time.
That, ironically, is just another irrational belief held by the secular. And, of course, it is self-serving—just as is the belief that more people have been killed by religious people (meaning, essentially, Christians) than by secular people. Yet, that, too, is irrational—and false. In the last century alone, 100 million people were murdered by secular—and anti-religious—regimes.
Yes, religious people have some irrational, or at least non-rational, beliefs.
But two points need to be made in this regard.
One is that the religious beliefs that most people call “irrational” are not irrational; they are unprovable. For example, the beliefs that there is a transcendent Creator and that this Creator is the source of our rights are not irrational; they are unprovable. Atheism—the belief that everything came from nothing—is considerably more irrational than theism.
The other point is that human beings are programmed to believe in the non-rational. Love is often non-rational—love of our children, romantic love, love of music and art, love of a pet. Our willingness to engage in self-sacrifice for another is often non-rational—from the sacrifices children make for parents and parents for children to the sacrifices made by non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.
What good religion does is provide its adherents with a moral, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually deep way to express the non-rational. Therefore, they can remain rational everywhere outside religion. The secular, having no religion within which to innocuously express the non-rational, often end up doing so elsewhere in life.
So only the religious believe that “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” but they do not believe that men give birth.
Meanwhile, the irreligious don’t believe that “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” but only they believe that men give birth.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/25/whos-more-irrational-the-religious-or-the-irreligious
****************************************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, January 29, 2023
Jason Whitlock explains the Memphis police murder
There is a racial element. And this is a story about young Black men and their inability to treat each other in a humane way. Everybody involved in this on the street level was either 24 to 32 years old. Everybody. It was a group of young Black men, five-on-one. Looked like gang violence to me.
It looked like what young Black men do when they’re supervised by a single Black woman. And that’s what they got going on in the Memphis Police Department. They’ve elected some, or put some Black woman in charge of the police force, and we are getting the same kind of chaos and disunity and violence that we see in a lot of these cities run by single mothers.
If we want to discuss the breakdown of family that leads to disrespect for authority that causes you to resist the police and run from the police and not comply with the police, because you resist authority at all times, because there was no male authority in your home, let’s have that discussion.
https://worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video-c.php?v=wshhac2jLj50D7ai3R7c
*****************************************Idaho Scores A Win Against Homeless Encampments
Gov. Brad Little (R-ID) was granted a score after winning a court battle against homeless encampments outside of the state's capitol, saying it had turned into a “danger zone.”
A judge decided to dismiss a lawsuit filed by activists that challenged his administration’s actions to remove the encampment on public property.
According to Little’s office, activists began gathering on the capitol steps last January, which eventually led to an increased need for police surveillance after the area was starting to become a safety hazard.
Little said that the area had become like a scene out of Portland with hypodermic needles, bags containing human feces, soiled clothing, rotting food, abandoned property, violence, drug abuse, and garbage all over the state property.
“It just looked like heck," Little said, adding that there was “no shortage of people upset about it."
The Republican governor said his office won the case by arguing how unsafe and unsanitary the area had become, and also providing evidence of the waste found at the site.
“But they were there, they were harassing state employees and legislators when they went by," Little said, adding that Idaho has resources for the homeless such as shelters, which always almost have room.
“And we just don't have that in Idaho. But activists got these people – some of them with not much in the way of means, ginned up to stay there even though there were other places they could stay,” he continued.
He blamed activists for escalating the situation beyond its means, and said that his state was not going to be another Portland, San Francisco, or Los Angeles “where public officials have engaged in failed experiments to permit and encourage unsafe and destructive public camping."
According to data, Idaho has the 10th lowest violent crime rate in the nation, ranking it as the third safest state in the nation overall.
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The strange Leftist version of what is normal
One of the American Left's primary goals is to convince us that we are not normal if we do not affirm its ideology, a well established tactic among totalitarians. One of the best examples is the psikhushkas of the old Soviet Union. If you did not agree with Soviet Communism, you were not normal so you’d be placed in a psikhushka, or psychiatric prison.
Few were more clear in articulating this principle than former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev who said of those with whom he disagreed, “Of those who might start calling for opposition to Communism on this basis, we can say that clearly their mental state is not normal.”
The growing militancy of domestic authoritarians who harangue and berate as abnormal those who believe something different begs a simple but important question: What is normal?
The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides many definitions of normal. Among them, in descending order, are: “conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern, characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine; according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, procedure, or principle; occurring naturally; approximating the statistical average or norm; and generally free from physical or mental impairment or dysfunction,” to name a few.
If we contrast these accepted definitions of normal with many policies and practices of the American Left, a trend emerges. Much of what today’s Left promotes does not comport with what is recognized as normal.
Instructing children how to think and behave like racists, as happens in many government schools through variants of Critical Race Theory, is not normal. Teaching children to judge people by the content of their character is.
Grown men dressed as women and performing provocatively before preschoolers is not normal. Reserving adult entertainment for adults is.
Deliberately depriving people of available energy needed to heat their homes is not normal. Making such resources abundantly available is.
Promoting obesity is not normal. Promoting a healthy diet and living is.
People pretending to be a sex they are not is not normal. Recognizing people for what they are is.
Taking money from people and giving it to other people, otherwise known as wealth redistribution, is not normal. Reaping and keeping the fruits of one’s labor is.
Men using the ladies room is not normal. Men using the men's room is.
Letting criminal suspects out of jail with no restrictions or repercussions is not normal. Keeping criminals locked up is.
Boys playing sports against girls is not normal. Boys playing against other boys is.
Giving away military weaponry to the extent that one’s own military is degraded is not normal. Maintaining a strong defense is.
Surgically mutilating healthy human tissue is not normal. Preserving healthy tissue is.
There are many things actively promoted - often demanded - by the Left that are simply not normal. But if somebody notices and says so, they are marginalized. That is what is happening right now.
People who believe in normal things are under attack in America. They are assaulted on a near continuous basis by Leftists who practice and promote behavior that is clearly abnormal, behavior that deviates from the statistical norm, that does not conform to regular patterns, that does not approximate statistical averages. Frighteningly, some of this behavior is not merely abnormal, it's evil.
People need to reclaim normalcy.
But ordinary people are often intimidated into going along with abnormal ideologies because it’s easier than being screeched at by somebody who demands we affirm their abnormal behavior.
This intimidation prompts many people to tip-toe around the fact that much of what we see in America today just isn’t normal and sometimes, we keep quiet even though we know it’s not normal. This is how normal becomes redefined. It’s how Soviet Communism found a way to imprison and torture those with whom they disagreed; they just weren’t normal. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn knew that all too well.
None of this is to suggest we should be mean to or discriminate against people with such beliefs. Many of these people have been deceived, coerced or extorted into affirming abnormal behavior and ideas, and they deserve our compassion.
By the same token, other Americans have every right to withhold their acquiescence of abnormal behaviors without fear. A little more ‘live-and-let-live’ would go a long way.
But live-and-let-live is a two-way street. As long as ordinary people are under attack, we have an obligation to recognize and call out the abnormal behavior of those who demand we agree with their misguided ideology.
It’s time to stand up and say, “That’s not normal,” when something abnormal is being foisted upon us. Promoting normalcy is the only way to prevent normal from being perverted and redefined. The best defense against the abnormal is to call it what it is, and to elevate normalcy at every opportunity.
https://townhall.com/columnists/scotthogenson/2023/01/28/what-is-normal-n2618744
*************************************************************Spendaholic Politicians Are Destroying Your Economic Future
Most people don't lie awake at night worried about the national debt. Unfortunately, that includes President Joe Biden and the spendaholic Democrats in Congress.
They should be worried. Frankly, so should you, no matter what your politics. Economics is a science, and numerous studies by world-class economists confirm that when a nation's debt gets too high, it pushes the economy into decline. Inflation soars, jobs become scarcer and mortgage rates to buy a home are unaffordable. Ouch.
The U.S. is heading off that cliff. The national debt is at the highest level since WWII, and is forecast to break that record soon. In 2022, it hit 98% of GDP -- everything we all produce going to work every day -- and is growing rapidly. The U.S. is in the company of nations such as Mozambique, Bhutan, Angola, Portugal and Greece. We don't want our kids to live in a crumbling economy.
It wasn't always like this. Over the last 50 years, debt to GDP has averaged 46%.
Republicans, who recently won control of the House of Representatives, are withholding the House's approval to raise the debt ceiling -- the amount the nation is legally permitted to borrow -- until Democrats negotiate a plan to reduce spending and pull the nation back from its dire straits.
Biden, visiting Al Sharpton's National Action Network on Jan. 16, called the House Republicans "fiscally demented." It takes nerve for Biden to call anybody "demented."
Never mind. The Republicans are making a reasonable demand. If Washington's leaders won't rein in government spending, who will?
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls the House Republicans' quid pro quo economic terrorism. Nonsense. The real domestic terrorism is Congress' continued spending on borrowed money.
It can only go on so long. Ordinary people who live on credit cards and pay only the monthly minimum can tell you that. Eventually, credit card payments don't pay for any new goods or services, just interest.
That's what our nation faces if it doesn't change course now. Interest expenses will mount, rates will go up and an increasing proportion of tax revenues will be consumed paying interest. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that over the next 10 years, interest expense will triple. In a decade, interest outlays will exceed defense spending. Yikes.
Eventually, if fiscal sanity is not restored, government will have to cut services or impose massive tax hikes, or both.
Worse, as government borrows more, less money is available to make loans to businesses and homebuyers. Jobs dry up and wages decline. The economy spirals downward. It isn't a pretty picture. Ask economists who have examined high-debt countries.
Harvard's Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff analyzed 44 countries in their landmark analysis for the American Economic Review. They found that when national debt exceeds 90% of GDP -- a benchmark that's already in the U.S.' rearview mirror -- the economy falters.
Thirty-six other studies confirm that excessive government borrowing sabotages economic growth. Washington pols need to stop padding their own political fortunes and look at these scientific facts.
Sadly, there is no hope Democrats will agree to spending reforms without pressure from House Republicans withholding the debt ceiling hike.
After all, in December, as a last hurrah before ceding control of the House, Democrats enacted an omnibus spending bill that included 7,200 earmarks -- favorite projects of often unnamed legislators bringing pork home to their own district. Earmarks, a symbol of corruption, had been banned for a decade, but in 2021 the Democratic controlled Congress reinstated them in a flourish of political cynicism. Like holding up a middle finger to the unsuspecting public.
The rhetorical attacks on Republicans for delaying a hike in the debt ceiling are mounting. Bloomberg's editors call the Republican strategy "malpractice." Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) accuses the Republicans of an "extremist agenda."
There is nothing "extremist" about putting the nation on a responsible fiscal plan. Republicans need to stay unified -- a formidable challenge -- and hold their ground.
The party of unlimited spending and vote buying must be stopped, before the U.S. economy and our standard of living are destroyed.
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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, January 27, 2023
Leftism is fickle
The most notable thing about the article below is the casual demonization of a once-respected feminist, J.K. Rowling. The Left had a long love affair with feminism but that is over. Feminism has now been abandoned in favour of a new lover: transgenders. And any disrespect for the new lover causes the old lover to be subjected to domestic violence. The old lover is now tolerated only if she bows down before the new one.
But the old lover does have a new suitor: conservatives. In their disgust with the idolization of transgenders, conservatives hear much sense from feminists. Is a marriage on the cards? Joanne Rowling is at least good-looking
Back in 2020 when the game was in development, it was reported that Rowling’s views made the development team “uncomfortable.” And this week Hogwarts Legacy director Alan Tew has kinda, sorta touched on the discourse during an interview with gaming site IGN. “I think for us there are challenges in every game we’ve worked on,” Tew told the publication when asked about the ethical “discrepancies” surrounding Hogwarts Legacy. “This game has been no different. When we bumped into those challenges, we went back and refocused on the stuff that we really care about. “We know our fans fell in love with the Wizarding World, and we believe they fell in love with it for the right reasons. “We know that’s a diverse audience. For us, it’s making sure that the audience, who always dreamed of having this game, had the opportunity to feel welcomed back. That they have a home here and that it’s a good place to tell their story.”
IGN points out that Tew never addressed J.K. Rowling’s views or named her directly during their interview (who is she, Lord Voldemort?). Writer Luke Winkie notes that when he asked the director about Rowling, Tew “reiterated his earlier statement: That the team made Hogwarts Legacy for everyone.” For what it’s worth, IGN notes that the game’s character creator section is “broadly inclusive” and allows for “gender variance”, in which players can choose their vocal tone, body type and whether they want to be referred to as a witch or wizard in separate sliders. As in, you could choose to have breasts and be called a wizard. Hmm, wonder how they got that one past J.K. Rowling?
https://www.pedestrian.tv/tech-gaming/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling/
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“Kick In The Face” – Soldiers Fired For Refusing COVID Vaccine Forced To Pay Back Signing Bonuses
The Biden administration is a disgrace. U.S. service members who got fired for refusing to comply with the Pentagon’s tyrannical COVID vaccine mandate are now being forced to pay back their signing bonuses.
One service member said he got a $7,000 bonus for signing up for six years – he was asked to pay back over $4,000 of that.
He said that he was able to cover the amount he owed by selling unused vacation days. According to the service member, many didn’t have this same recourse to pay what they owed.
Fox News reported:
U.S. service members who were fired for refusing to comply with the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate are now being forced to pay back their original recruitment bonuses, which they tell Fox News Digital is a “kick in the face” after years of dedicating their lives to protecting the country.
One former Army soldier who was fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine last May told Fox News Digital that he would have to pay back his original signing bonus upon his termination from the military because he did not complete the commitment in his contract.
The soldier had signed a contract with the Army for six years and received a $7,000 bonus. However, because he fell short of the six years, the military notified him that he owed the government a prorated amount of slightly over $4,000. In order to pay it back, he ended up having to “sell” 60 of his unused vacation days to cover the amount owed.
He said that effects on his mental health have been extremely negative because the way he was treated by the military was a “final kick in the face.”
Another service member called this “another example” of the Department of Defense failing to make up for their wrongdoings.
He said if this continues “the recruiting and retention shortfalls will only continue.”
American Wire News reported:
“The Department of Defense continues to fall short on reestablishing trust for wrongdoings, and this is yet another example of that,” another service member told Fox News Digital in an interview. He stated that the recoupment of signing bonuses is the “icing on the cake” of the Pentagon’s deplorable treatment of military members.
There is a lot of anger and resentment out there and with this kind of treatment of the military, it will likely only get worse.
“The appalling treatment these individuals endured broke the trust that is owed to our citizens and our volunteers. America’s sons and daughters,” the Army member bitterly remarked in a statement.
“Until true efforts are made to establish trust, the recruiting and retention shortfalls will only continue. The individuals who make public statements that they are unsure what has contributed to the current recruiting and retention shortfalls need to take a look in the mirror, and perhaps they should resign for the betterment of our nation,” he added.
A slap in the face to the brave men and women who serve our country.
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Black police Treat Man Like a 'Human Piñata' in 'Savage' Encounter
The Memphis Police Department has fired five officers after an investigation.
Attorneys representing the family of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died after an encounter with police in Memphis, Tennessee, said Tuesday that an independent autopsy they commissioned found that Nichols suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” The full findings of the report were not made public.
Attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a statement that the autopsy was performed by “a highly regarded, nationally renowned forensic pathologist.”
“Further details and findings from this independent report will be disclosed at another time,” the statement said.
Nichols died on Jan. 10, three days after he was involved in a traffic stop with members of the Memphis Police Department. One day after the stop, police said that there had been a “confrontation” when officers approached Nichols’ vehicle. He then fled the scene before another “confrontation,” police said.
After Nichols’ family and their attorneys viewed bodycam footage of the incident, they compared it to the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police. That footage is not expected to be made public until at least next week.
The family’s attorneys said Tuesday that the autopsy’s preliminary findings determined that Nichols’ observed injuries were “consistent with what the family and attorneys witnessed on the video of his fatal encounter with police on January 7, 2023.”
Nichols’ mother, RowVaugn Wells, said in a Tuesday interview that when she watched the video, “All I heard my son say was, ‘What did I do?’ I just lost it from there.”
Wells said she was unable to bring herself to watch the video in full, which she said showed Nichols being tased, beaten and pepper-sprayed.
“I saw police brutality at its finest,” Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, told “CBS Mornings.” “I saw a helpless, young Black man being beat by several officers.”
At a press conference Monday, Romanucci said the bodycam footage showed an “unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating” of Nichols.
While no official cause of death has been released, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reported that on Jan. 10, Nichols “succumbed to his injuries,” without describing the nature of those injuries. Police have said Nichols was hospitalized after complaining of “shortness of breath.” The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation of the incident.
On Friday, the five officers involved in the traffic stop were fired following an “internal investigation,” which determined that they had “violated multiple department policies, including excessive force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid,” said Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis in a statement.
Possible charges against the five officers will be announced next week.
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The Left turns on Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt
It's rare that I agree with Mike Carlton but I do this time. As he did, I first said "who"? in response to hearing of the award. Although I am something of a news hound, I had never heard of her. And her name sounds like it might be a spoof so that's what I intially thought it was. The whole thing would seem to be some sort of feminist infiltration into an otherwise more reasonable awards committee
As to her claim about the inevitability of women getting fat as they get older, it is true that there is such a tendency but my partner is 74 and is still slim. But she works on it. She watches her diet and does daily exercise. Picture of her from this month below
Left wing journalist Mike Carlton has been slammed for his 'ignorance' after tweeting his low opinion of body image campaigner Taryn Brumfitt being made the 2023 Australian of the Year.
In a tweet posted after the announcement of Ms Brumfitt as the winner of the top Australia Day gong in Canberra on Wednesday night, Mr Carlton made his view of the decision known on his account with nearly 194,000 followers.
'My Australian of the Year would be a doctor or nurse working nights in intensive care or the ED, dealing with COVID and daily death. Real, compassionate work. For very little money. NOT someone who makes a buck out of saying it’s ok to be a bit fat. Good night.'
His tweet was supported by left-wing male television reporter, Paul Bongiorno, who tweeted 'Indeed' underneath Mr Carlton's post.
Brumfitt has revealed how she regularly walks around naked in front of her two sons - Oliver, 11, and Cruz, 9 - and daughter Mikaela, 8.
The former bodybuilder turned activist believes it's vital for them to know how a woman's body changes with age and insists they are all comfortable with her nudity.
'It's something I do mainly for my daughter's benefit,' she says. 'I know that, as a girl, it's especially important she sees me unclothed — it facilitates an ongoing dialogue between us about the female body, and the way it changes throughout the course of a woman's life. 'In fact, I believe that every little girl should grow up seeing her mother naked on a regular basis.'
Carlton also tweeted 'Who ? ? ?' when news of Ms Brumfitt's award first broke on Wednesday night.
But the tweets were met with a fierce response from women.
Sharna Bremner, the founder and director of End Rape on Campus Australia, tweeted in response: 'Eating disorders are the third most common illness among young women in Australia & have the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders,' she posted.
'These two should be ashamed of their ignorance & s****y remarks.'
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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, January 26, 2023
Trump, Biden, and the double standard on mishandling classified documents
by Jeff Jacoby
EVER SINCE it transpired that President Biden, like his predecessor, had improperly retained classified government documents, both men's claques have been busily explaining why the other guy's transgression is worse.
Team Biden's line is that the president's legal team has fully cooperated with law enforcement and the National Archives, whereas Donald Trump obstinately refused to return the classified documents he had taken, even after being subpoenaed. The former president's loyalists, on the other hand, point out that the White House discovered on Nov. 2 that Biden had improperly taken classified documents when his term as vice president ended but suppressed the information for 68 days. Trump, to his discredit, stashed thousands of documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and it took an FBI raid to recover them. Biden, to his discredit, insists he has "no regrets" about leaving classified material in multiple locations, including the garage of his Delaware home.
When he was asked on "60 Minutes" last September to comment on Trump's hoarding of top-secret documents, the president professed to be aghast that "anyone could be that irresponsible." Now others are saying much the same about Biden.
On Tuesday, meanwhile, former vice president Mike Pence notified Congress that "a small number" of documents bearing classified markings were found in his Indiana home.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsels to investigate the Trump and Biden cases. But it's not too early to draw some obvious conclusions.
To begin with, it seems evident that both men broke the law. Under Section 1924 of Title 18 of the US Code, it is a crime for any federal officer or employee to "knowingly remove" documents containing "classified information of the United States" and to "retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location." There are differences between the two cases, but the language of the statute is clear. Trump and Biden plainly did what it forbids.
Second, neither the president nor the former president has to worry about facing a serious criminal penalty. Big shots in these cases never do.
"Carelessness with government secrets has become endemic in official Washington," observed The Washington Post this week. In recent years, highly classified government material has been mishandled by numerous senior officials, including former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former CIA directors John Deutch and David Petraeus, former national security adviser Sandy Berger, and at least two former secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton. None of them was punished with anything more severe than a temporary loss of security clearance or a fine. Petraeus, who supplied classified material to a former mistress who was writing his biography, paid the heaviest price: He resigned from the CIA and was charged a $100,000 penalty.
Getting caught with classified government documents earns prison time only when the offender is a low-level federal employee or contractor. Just ask Asia Lavarello, Ahmedelhadi Serageldin, Harold Martin III, Reynaldo Regis, Benjamin Bishop, or Reality Winner. Their names are little known. But all of them ended up behind bars for doing what numerous high officials have gotten away with.
Perhaps the most important point is this: Even without any wrongful intent, it is inevitable that government documents classified as secret will be mishandled or misappropriated for the simple reason that there are way too many of them.
The amount of federal paperwork classified as confidential each year is staggering. At a congressional hearing in 2004, then-Representative Chris Shays noted that in the previous year, at least 14 million documents had been placed off-limits by the nearly 4,000 government officials authorized to do so.
"No one can say with any degree of certainty how much is classified, how much needs to be declassified, or whether the nation's real secrets can be adequately protected in a system so bloated," Shays said. "This much we know: There are too many secrets."
With the coming of the digital era, the already vast sea of classified documents swelled into what the director of the Information Security Oversight Office, a division of the National Archives, calls a "tsunami." The 14 million documents a year being designated as secret in 2004 has metastasized into more than 50 million a year today, according to Oona Hathaway, a Yale Law School professor and former special counsel to the Pentagon. A maxim attributed to Frederick the Great holds that "he who protects everything, protects nothing." The Prussian king was referring to battlefield strategy, but the principle applies equally to government paperwork. The annual classification of tens of millions of documents, most of which do not deal with ultrasensitive national security secrets, serves mostly to shelter the political class from scrutiny and to keep from the public information it has a right to see.
So far there's no indication that any actual harm was caused by the cavalier manner in which Trump and Biden made off with classified material. Politics aside, it may all amount to a big nothing. The same can't be said of Washington's bloated classification process. The breathless obsession with who mishandled classified government documents — and how, where, and when — makes headlines. What really deserves attention is why the documents were classified in the first place.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26708/trump-biden-and-the-double-standard-on
***********************************************DOJ Announces Two Indictments for Vandalism of Pro-Life Organizations
The U.S. Department of Justice announced two indictments by a federal grand jury on Tuesday in case where pregnancy resource centers were targeted with vandalism, intimidation, and interference — months after pro-abortion vandals targeted pro-life organizations across the country after a draft of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision leaked.
The two Florida residents indicted on Tuesday — Caleb Freestone (27) and Amber Smith-Stewart (23) — allegedly "engaged in a conspiracy to prevent employees of reproductive health facilities from providing those services."
Specifically, the defendants "targeted pregnancy resource facilities and vandalized those facilities with spray-painted threats...including 'If abortions aren't safe than niether [sic] are you,' 'YOUR TIME IS UP!!,' 'WE'RE COMING for U,' and 'We are everywhere,' on a reproductive health services facility in Winter Haven, Florida." In addition, it's alleged the defendants also targeted pro-life organizations in Hollywood, Florida, and Hialeah, Florida.
The Justice Department explained that the indictment alleges the defendants "violated the FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act by using threats of force to intimidate and interfere with the employees of a reproductive health services facility in Winter Haven because those employees were providing or seeking to provide reproductive health services" and by "intentionally damaging and destroying the facility's property."
According to DOJ, each defendant would face a maximum of 12 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines up to $350,000 if convicted.
"Since the leak of the Dobbs decision eight months ago, there have been at least 79 attacks — including firebombings and threats of violence — on pregnancy centers and other nonprofits working to save lives," noted Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, in reaction to the indictments. "We thank House Republican leaders for standing with the front-line heroes serving women and families in our communities and keeping the pressure on the Biden-Harris administration."
Calling the indictments "good first steps," Dannenfelser reminded that "the fight for equal justice is far from over."
"With a new House GOP majority positioned to exercise its oversight powers, we are finally beginning to see some accountability," Dannenfelser continued. "Yet the Justice Department continues to target the people of states that protect unborn children and their mothers. Congressional Democrats had the opportunity to condemn the violence and all but three refused, and again we have had to call on the White House to stop vilifying pro-life Americans," she said. "The pro-life movement is keeping a watchful eye on this administration and we will not be silent in the face of violence and intimidation."
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Connecticut Lawmaker Proposes Bill to Allow Illegal Immigrants to Vote
A new piece of legislation introduced by a Democrat in Connecticut would amend the state’s constitution to allow non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote in municipal and state elections.
The bill was introduced by state Rep. Juan Candelaria, who told local outlet the Hartford Courant that if the bill does not pass, it will open up a debate about giving illegal immigrants the right to vote.
"When we talk about undocumented individuals, they are part of our fabric of this nation and of the state,” he said, adding that he wants to “have the dialogue” and debate the subject.
Connecticut’s Republican House leader Rep. Vincent Candelora called the legislation “completely outrageous” and said it should not make it to the stage of a public hearing.
"I think that the fact that we have open borders and now we are potentially opening up elections to non-citizens completely erodes our sovereignty in this country and in our state," he said.
According to WTNH, there are currently over 240,000 “non-citizen immigrants” living in Connecticut.
Last week, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state’s capitol, Montpelier, can allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. The court ruled that it does not violate the Vermont Constitution, which restricts non-citizens from voting in state elections.
Local outlet VTDigger noted that Montpelier City Council President Jack McCullough said that the initiative began when town residents claimed that it was “not fair” that some non-citizens who paid taxes and participated in the community “were not allowed to vote on on the local elections and the local issues that affected their lives.”
In September, Townhall reported that the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office certified the required amount of signatures needed for a ballot initiative to repeal a state law that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain a driver’s license. According to WGBH, state voters voted against repealing the law allowing illegal immigrants to get a driver’s license.
Under the new law, illegal immigrants in the country will be able to apply for a driver’s license if they provide the Registry of Motor Vehicles with a foreign passport or consular identification document.
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Democrats Ramp Up Pro-Abortion Extremism With Senate Press Conference
The Biden administration sure has taken it pretty hard that Roe v. Wade was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court before it could celebrate its 50th anniversary. President Joe Biden, who considers himself a "devout Catholic" spent what would have been the anniversary--January 22, a Sunday--tweeting to promote abortion. Vice President Kamala Harris not only heavily promoted abortion that same day while giving a speech in Florida, she even intentionally left out parts of the Declaration of Independence to do so. Their fellow Democrats join them in such extremism, as evidenced by a Tuesday press briefing from Senate Democrats.
The pro-abortion speakers, which included a whole host of Democratic senators, made radically extreme remarks throughout. As he's done in the past, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took the cake.
"America is on our side, completely, completely, if he look across the board with what people think" on abortion, he claimed while shaking his clenched fist.
When it comes to what that "side" entails, Congressional Democrats, with few exceptions--plus the Biden administration--have been championing the so-called Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA), which they say will merely "codify" Roe v. Wade. Such urgency ramped up after the Court overturned Roe last June with its Dobbs v. Jackson case, and with what would have been the 50th anniversary having just passed.
In reality, though, the WHPA would actually expand Roe, by allowing for abortion up until birth without any legal limit.
While the WHPA passed the House in the Democratic-controlled 117th Congress, it couldn't get a majority of support in the Senate, let alone overcome the filibuster. Further, Republicans now control the House, which early on in the 118th Congress passed commonsense pro-life initiatives. This includes the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which merely mandates proper medical care be given to a baby who survives an abortion attempt. Not only did 210 House Democrats oppose it, but Schumer has made clear that these pro-life won't be going anywhere in his chamber.
In responding to the press conference over Twitter, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America pointed to the results from a Knights of Columbus/Marist poll released last Wednesday. While a majority of Americans do consider themselves pro-choice, they are not anywhere near as extreme as today's Democratic Party.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans favor restrictions such as limiting abortion to the first three months of pregnancy. The numbers are pretty evenly split among Democratic respondents, with 49 percent holding this view. Just 21 percent of overall respondents agree with the likes of Schumer, which is that "abortion should be available to a woman any time she wants one during her entire pregnancy."
SBA Pro-Life America also released a statement from Marjorie Dannenfelser, their president. "Pro-abortion Democrats and the radical abortion lobby are spreading misinformation to scare women and doctors as they try to distract Americans from their own extremism. Pro-life laws prevent intentionally ending the life of unborn children and every pro-life law ensures doctors can provide critical care to mothers in need. Make no mistake: the Democratic Party agenda is to mandate abortion on demand up to the moment of birth, paid for by taxpayers, in every state. In Congress, every Democrat except one voted against medical care for babies who survive abortions. Vice President Harris even censored the words of our nation’s founding promises in her push to deny unborn girls and boys the unalienable right to life," Dannenfelser highlighted.
She also emphasized support for commonsense pro-life restrictions on abortion. "Nearly 70% of Americans--women, Independents and rank-and-file Democrats included--want commonsense protections for unborn children and mothers that were continually blocked under Roe v. Wade. They overwhelmingly reject the Democrats’ extremism. In the Dobbs era it is clear pro-life laws are saving countless lives. The people are on the side of life, and the pro-life movement will tirelessly expose and refute pro-abortion lies."
Schumer was joined by other particularly pro-abortion Senate Democrats, including Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington state, of Washington state, with Murray serving as the president pro tempore; Tina Smith of Minnesota who worked for Planned Parenthood; Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut; Dick Durbin of Illinois, who serves as the majority whip; Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada; Mazie Hirono of Hawaii; Ron Wyden of Oregon; and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
The majority leader also retweeted moments from the press briefing throughout Tuesday from those who are as equally extreme on abortion, including Planned Parenthood's President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson and NARAL.
In her tweet, McGill Johnson claimed that "Abortion is health care" is something "we all know to be true." The poll findings above would dispute that, though.
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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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Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Texas Conservatives Should Not Support Banning Land Sales to Foreigners
They can't pick the land up and take it back home with them
The Texas legislature is considering a bill that would ban Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, and Russian individuals and entities from owning land in the state. Republicans supporting this bill seem unaware that it would undermine our American free-enterprise system rather than protect us from those authoritarian regimes.
Senate Bill 147, introduced by Rep. state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, would target not only government entities, but also private companies and citizens from those countries. Gov. Greg Abbott has promised to sign the legislation.
Sen. Kolkhorst claims that the “past several years have seen more Texans alarmed by the increased acquisition of land by primarily Chinese interests,” and that the, “growing ownership of Texas land by some foreign entities is highly disturbing and raises red flags for many Texans. Unfortunately, among Texas Republicans, she appears correct.
A recent poll by the Defend Texas Liberty PAC found that 82% of registered Republicans surveyed agreed that “Texas should prohibit the Chinese government or Chinese citizens from purchasing land in Texas,” while only 10% disagreed. It’s unfortunate that so many Texas Republicans, who often identify as conservatives and supporters of free enterprise, don’t understand that this bill would undermine our economic freedoms.
Private property rights are the bedrock of any capitalist economy, and these rights include the freedom to choose to whom and on what terms owners sell their land. Sen. Kolkhorst claims that “passing this law delivers some basic safeguards to ensure Texans remain in control of Texas land.” But it would do no such thing. Instead, a government prohibition would take away from Texas property owners the option of selling their land to people from these countries. Replacing private decision-making, which responds to market forces, with government orders is what the authoritarian regimes in China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran do. It’s not something freedom-loving Texans should embrace.
The bill of course would interfere with Texans’ freedom to engage in international trade, which improves our living standards.
No need to worry about our so-called trade deficit with China. International trade accounting puts items traded into either the capital account, which consists of assets, or the current account, which consists of goods and services, but a trade deficit counts only the flow of goods and services between countries. Yet international trade always balances in the sense that a good, a service, or an asset is traded by both sides of any exchange. People who worry about the trade deficit don’t understand that assets aren’t counted when calculating trade deficits and surpluses, making the picture incomplete.
The U.S. trade deficit with China, which stood at $20.4 billion in late 2022, means that, on net, Americans imported $20.4 billion more in goods and services from China than the Chinese bought from the Americans, and that simultaneously Americans sold $20.4 billion of assets, which includes land, to the Chinese, on net, to finance those imports.
This Senate bill could even undermine our foreign-policy interests. Economists have long provided empirical evidence showing that greater international trade promotes peace between countries by increasing the cost of war. Other studies have shown that when more-economically free countries, like the United States, trade with less-economically free countries, like those targeted by this bill, economic freedom tends to be promoted in the less-free countries.
The Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Iranian governments are valid national security concerns. But those concerns are best dealt with by targeting specific security threats from those governments. This bill needlessly includes innocent foreign citizens and companies and regulates Texas land sales that would have no security implications. In the process it makes Texas a little more like those authoritarian states and a little less of a beacon of freedom for less free countries to emulate.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14401&omhide=true&trk=title
***********************************************Sports Media in Hysterics Over Provorov Citing Religion for Refusal to Skate in LGBT Jersey
Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov refused to take a pregame skate Tuesday night in the team’s LGBTQ+ warmup jersey, citing his preference “to stay true to myself and my religion,” which is Russian Orthodox. “I respect everyone. I respect everybody’s choices,” said the only player who refused to participate in Pride Night.
You can imagine the hysterics Provorov’s apostasy sparked among the enlightened sports commentariat.
Canadian television sports network TSN’s Pierre LeBrun claimed Provorov “obviously does not respect ‘everyone.’ If he did respect everyone, he would have taken part in warm-up and worn the Pride Night jersey. Don’t hide behind religion.”
The “don’t hide behind religion” jibe is one of the dumbest and laziest smears going. It’s a favorite of bullies who act like they can bore into the souls of the heretics.
It’s bad enough that LeBrun contends that the only possible reason someone might be disinclined to celebrate same-sex marriage or the sweeping “+” of LGBTQ+ (I wonder if Lebrun could coherently explain what it means?) is deep-seated bigotry. But when these amateur theologians declare that dissenters are “hiding” behind faith, they’re not only arguing that religion is a mask for bigotry but that no genuine faith could possibly have a problem with the cultural norms he adopted about five minutes ago.
Of course, many orthodox faiths, not only Russians but Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Lutherans, and so on, believe same-sex relationships are sinful. Their adherents have believed that for centuries, if not millennia.
A person of good faith can “respect” others—they can even respect people for taking a stance—without celebrating their choices. In a truly open and diverse society, we don’t demand everyone abandon their tradition and critical thinking to skate lockstep in a rainbow flag. Dear Lord, it’s such vacuous virtue signaling.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the LGBTQ+ movement encompasses an entire open-ended ideological agenda, not merely the ability of gay people to live in peace or marry. Some of the other Flyers, for instance, spent time celebrating the achievements of a “nonbinary” 13-year-old.
As old-fashioned atheist, I don’t care who you sleep with, but I do still cling to the antiquated notion that humans have immutable biological characteristics and that objective truths can’t be wished away. To my mind, that 13-year-old kid is a victim of an irrational, destructive, and trendy pseudoscience. Yet folks like LeBrun will help normalize the quackery while hiding behind the idea of “tolerance.”
Most of the National Hockey League press also groused that hypocrite coach John Tortorella, a long-time figure in the NHL, hadn’t suspended Provorov for his sins. As coach of the U.S. national team, Tortorella once threatened anyone who refused to stand for the national anthem with a benching (a stance he regrettably reversed).
The obvious difference is that those players weren’t asked to endorse the lifestyle choices of strangers but were voluntarily representing the United States—and every person in it—at international tournaments. That so many people are unable to distinguish between the act of honoring your country and celebrating who people sleep with says a lot about how warped our values have become.
Indeed, the notion that Provorov is bringing this acrimony on himself because, as a bigot, he simply couldn’t get himself to put on a jersey with a rainbow, seems preposterous. Provorov takes on all risk, with no reward. He will be forever smeared by the closed-minded people who write about him.
In today’s world, dissenting from the progressive faith takes a lot of spine. Most players—most people—would rather not risk being denigrated and bullied by the mob. Who can blame them?
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Ron DeSantis denounces ‘woke conceit’ of NHL seeking diverse workforce
The faceoff continues between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the National Hockey League ahead of next month’s All-Star Game in the Sunshine State.
At issue is not the play on the ice, but rather the chill from the Governor’s Office in the wake of what the NHL called an “informational session” seeking a more diverse workforce.
The so-called “Pathway to Hockey Summit,” to be held Feb. 2 in Fort Lauderdale during the NHL’s All-Star Weekend, was originally tailored to “diverse job seekers who are pursuing careers in hockey,” but the NHL backed off of that condition after pressure from the administration.
Despite that resolution, the Governor laced up his boots and fired some shots on goal on the friendly “Unfiltered with Dan Bongino” program on the Fox News Channel during a pre-taped segment Saturday night, framing efforts to bring a more diverse workforce to the NHL as a “woke conceit.”
“We’re against racial discrimination, but that’s all discrimination. We’re not going to indulge in this woke conceit that it’s OK to discriminate against some people if that’s politically correct to do so and so we made it very clear to the NHL that they were running afoul of our laws. They reversed course very quickly. And our society’s better when we’re all treated equally and all treated as individuals and not as members of groups.”
The Governor uses the word “woke” often. Under oath last year, the administration’s General Counsel defined the term as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” However, it’s clear DeSantis believes that in defending the prerogatives of majority groups here, he is addressing his own conception of “systemic injustices.”
As DeSantis continues to heat up the issue, the NHL clearly would like to get beyond it, per comments made by Commissioner Gary Bettman this week when he was asked about the Governor’s position
“The answer is we’re planning to be in Sunrise and celebrate our sport at the All-Star Game,” Bettman told The Athletic on Thursday when asked. “I don’t want to get way into all of this, but the fact is what the summit is, and was, has been mischaracterized. It’s not a job fair. It was an informational session so that people could learn more about us.”
Bettman said he didn’t want to “increase the debate on it.”
The Athletic framed the summit as “part of the NHL’s response to its first diversity and inclusion report, which the league released in October.” That report suggests there is little diversity in the NHL workforce.
Nearly 84% of league and team employees are White, with 4% being Asian, and under 4% as either Hispanic or Black. More than 63% of NHL league and team employees are male, and less than 4% of the workforce identifies as LGBTQ+.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/582874-woke-conceit-desantis/
*************************************************Fox News analyst slams woke Miami restaurant for throwing him out for his conservative views as he discussed politics with friends
A political commentator for Fox News was asked to leave a North Miami bookstore and restaurant as he discussed politics with friends.
Gianno Caldwell had been eating a meal with a group of people at Paradis Books and Bread then he was asked to vacate the premises.
'I can't believe what just happened. I met up with friends for breakfast at Paradis Books and Bread in North Miami & while we were having discussions about politics we were told by the owner that we were not welcomed there because we aren't politically aligned. Outrageous,' he explained in an initial tweet.
'No matter your politics you should not be discriminated against. I was discriminated against for being a conservative and told to leave a restaurant in North Miami because my politics didn't "align" with the owner. This is NOT okay,' he stated in a follow-up posting.
Caldwell has said the incident was a clear case of discrimination and the bookstore's actions were promoting a sort of political segregation reminiscent of the Jim Crow South.
'In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." My experience at Paradis Books and Bread in North Miami is a clear case of discrimination that should not be tolerated in Florida or anywhere in America,' Caldwell said to NBC6.
'Whether liberal or conservative, no one should ever be asked to leave a place of business for engaging in political conversation in a respectful dialogue. Paradis is promoting a sort of political segregation that hearkens back to the days of the Jim Crow South and runs counter to the restaurant's harm reduction policy.'
The bookstore, which is owned by five friends, Brian Wright, Bianca Sanon, Sef Chesson, Ben Yen, and Audrey Wright opened in December 2021.
It has since closed its doors and posted on Instagram that they were starting its winter break early due to the incident.
The bookstore stated that the group's behavior and language made other customers and staff uncomfortable and that they stood by their 'zero tolerance' policy.
Social media users were unimpressed by the restaurant's antics. 'Freedom of Speech seems to have become a subjective issue,' wrote Glenn D Stewart.
'I just saw this. I am shocked. Florida is supposed to be a conservative state. Sue sue sue!' tweeted Linda.
'Slippery slope when businesses invade the privacy of your conversation & feel some kind of way about your freedom of speech & kick you out. Remember the pendulum swings both ways & this country is headed towards political and racial segregation,' posted Lashaun Turner.
'It is time to introduce some Atifa type tactics for patrons of that restaurant and perhaps it is time to have it inspected for ADA compliance ...and for good measure a discrimination lawsuit is certainly in order. The owner needs to relocate to Seattle / no room in Florida for her.'
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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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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See