That for which I am thankful

Their lives being so personally miserable, the Usual Suspects on the left want to make normal people’s lives miserable, too, combitching that the holiday should be renamed ‘Truthsgiving’, and too-numerous-to-count articles telling leftists how to ‘survive’ a family get-together in which an irascible uncle — or perhaps even most of the family — are, Heaven forfend!, MAGAts and Trump voters.

Our English forebears sailed to this continent, settled, and in the process pushed out, forced out, and even exterminated the Indians who were here before them. I’m fortunate enough to have had some work done on researching my maternal family tree, and it turns out that my earliest American ancestor, Richard Warren, who arrived on these shores on the Mayflower, was almost certainly at that first Thanksgiving.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, Thanksgiving and the Meaning of America

But that got me to thinking: just what sacrifices were made by other people for me to be here. I am alive today because 36,634 American soldiers gave their lives for me to be here.

What’s that? If it was not for the Korean War, the chances that my mother, who grew up in Portland, Maine, and my father, a third generation son of Portuguese immigrants living on Mau’i, would have met in Tokyo in 1951 would have been virtually zero. My father was with the Army Corps of Engineers and my mother was a WAC working in General of the Army Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters. 36,634 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines poured out their lives’ blood in the war that brought my parents together.

Of course, there’s more. There were 407,316 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who were killed in World War II, a war we entered only because Japan attacked us, and without our conquest of Japan, General MacArthur would not have had a headquarters in Tokyo at all. Japan had conquered Korea early on in the Pacific war, and without American participation in that war, Japan would have continued ruling Korea for decades to come.

My home? Our small farm is 37.4 road miles from Boonesborough, the first white settlement in Kentucky. Were it not for the defeat and expulsion of the Shawnee and Cherokee Indians, this wouldn’t be our home.

Brad Lopes, photo via Instagram.

Michael La Corte of Salon wrote about the whining of Brad Lopes, Director of Wampanoag and Indigenous Interpretation and Training at Plimoth Patuxet Museums, and his complaint that our Thanksgiving tradition about the communal harvest celebration between the settlers at Plymouth and the Wampanoag Indians is all a horrible, horrible lie. Mr Lopes describes himself a as member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, but looking at both his name and his photo, it seems as though he wouldn’t be here either were it not for a significant amount of Caucasian ancestry.

Perhaps he’s more of an Indian than Senator Elizabeth Warren?

As much as the left wish to scream “Decolonization!” they ought to realize, ought to be made aware of, that not only their homes and property are on conquered land — homes and property none seem all that eager to turn back to the Indians! — but that they, personally, exist today because of primarily English settlement and later European immigration to North America.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

I suppose that the judge felt that she had no choice. Section 16 of the Kentucky state Constitution specifies that, “All prisoners shall be bailable by sufficient securities, unless for capital offenses when the proof is evident or the presumption great; and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” But good Lord, this story is dumb!

Sheriff: Kentucky murder suspect slips ankle monitor and flees home incarceration

by John Cheeves | Wednesday, November 22, 2023 | 3:51 PM EST

A murder suspect on home incarceration in Somerset disappeared early Wednesday after removing the ankle monitor meant to track his location, Pulaski County Sheriff Bobby Jones said in a news release.

Samuel L. Baker, 24, was scheduled to stand trial Dec. 4 in Pulaski Circuit Court before Judge Teresa Whitaker on charges of murder, first-degree burglary, persistent felony offender and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

I admit to being shocked that the Lexington Herald-Leader published Mr Baker’s mugshot.

Baker is believed to have a gun with him and should be considered armed and dangerous, Jones said. He is believed to be with Adriana Brown, 28, in a 2016 black Dodge Grand Caravan, the sheriff added.

Miss Brown, you in a heap o’ trouble, girl! The state does not look kindly on helping criminals escape prosecution.

Baker was charged with the 2021 shooting death of Robert Claunch, 62, of Pulaski County.

Baker originally was jailed in lieu of a $500,000 bond. In August, after several trial delays, Whitaker agreed to reduce his bond to $25,000 in cash or $50,000 in property, on the condition that Baker agree to home incarceration with an ankle monitor, to not have a firearm and to not use alcohol or illegal drugs.

Mr Baker was arrested on March 19, 2021, so the “several trial delays” mean that he had been locked up on the charges for almost 2½ years without being tried. The obvious question is: why was there no more urgency to bring him to trial? There was still some COVID-19-related stupidity delaying trials in early 2021, but that has been over for well over a year now. If Mr Baker and his attorney had been the ones getting the trial delayed, then there was no reason for Judge Whitaker to reduce his bond; if the trial, which was now scheduled for December 4th, was delayed by the actions of the Commonwealth, then yes, I can see how the judge believed that she had no choice. She was aware that Mr Baker had failed to follow legal instructions in the past.

Mr Baker, the judge noted, was facing a possible sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In essence, Mr Baker had every incentive to cut off his ankle monitor and head for the hills; with a potential sentence of life without parole, there’s nothing more the Commonwealth could do to him. Mr Baker’s bond was posted on August 21st.

So, what happened? Mr Baker had every incentive to flee, but Miss Brown, if she indeed enabled his escape, would face charges herself, but stupid is as stupid does.

Even now, Jayana Webb is catching a bit of a break

On March 25, 2022, we reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to ramp up sympathy for the drunk driver who killed three men how our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper tried to ‘humanize’ Jayana Webb, to let readers know that it was not just the three men she killed but her own life which was now so negatively impacted.

Miss Webb had been pulled over by State Troopers Brendan Sisca, 29, Martin Mack,33, for doing 110 MPH in a 50 MPH zone of southbound Interstate 95. She got away with that, because the Troopers were suddenly called to a man trying to jump median barriers near Lincoln Financial Field. The Troopers let Miss Webb go, and found Reyes Rivera Oliveras, a 28-year-old electrician, around the median barriers.

Miss Webb, a very fortunate woman for getting away with that speeding and reckless driving stop, then headed south herself, and struck Messrs Siska, Mack, and Oliveras, so hard that she tore the doors off the State Police vehicle, sending the Troopers flying over the median divider, and the three men all to their deaths.

Unfortunately, reckless did not translate into wreckless.

    Webb, who prosecutors said admitted to drinking Hennessy cognac that night, proceeded south on I-95 and crashed into the three men at such a speed that the impact ripped the doors off their stopped state police SUV and sent the troopers flying over a highway divider.

The troopers and Mr Oliveras were in the left hand median; to have struck them, Miss Webb had to have been driving down the “hammer” lane, the left-hand passing lane. She got away with speeding, and she was speeding again.

Webb now faces three counts of third-degree murder and potentially decades in prison. Her friends are reckoning with how a popular and promising young entrepreneur ended up in jail without bail over the deaths of three men.

“(A) popular and promising young entrepreneur”, huh? Here the Inquirer was trying to humanize her, to make her sympathetic character, not a killer, not a murderess, but just some poor thing who happened to make a mistake.

Image of tweet, via Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

By the time Webb’s mugshot hit national news, she had already shown indications of reckless driving. Tweets from before the crash quickly emerged in which she bragged about drinking and driving. One January post read: “If you ask me, I’m the best drunk driver ever.”

Some in her social circle, meanwhile, were in shock. How could Webb — a track-and-field star with no past DUIs and a hair-braiding business — be responsible for the deaths of three people?

Jayana Webb perp walk, via Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

Some said Webb deserves what’s coming. Others, sometimes posting under the hashtag “#TeamJay,” said Webb made a terrible error, egged on by a pervasive culture of casual drunk driving.

“What she did was not right,” said a friend, who spoke to the The Inquirer on condition of anonymity due to the high-profile nature of the case. “But at the same time we’re all human and we all make mistakes.”

There’s more at the original, and it’s utterly disgusting. The Inquirer let us know what a wonderful person she really was, someone who just happened to get caught up in a culture of drinking, partying hearty, and driving drunk. Remember: the Inquirer also tried to make a martyr out of 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who fired a shot at Philadelphia Police officers, and wrote about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes as though he was an innocent kid just walking to school, when he was not.

It’s really not her fault, you know, she just made a mistake.

A mistake that left three men, three men with families, three apparently hard-working men, stone cold graveyard dead.

Well, she has now been sentenced.

Pregnant woman faces up to 60 years in prison for DUI crash that killed two state troopers and a civilian

Jayana Webb, 23, will start her prison term of 27.5 to 60 years in prison early next year, after giving birth to her child, her attorney said.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Wednesday, November 22, 2023 | 2:26 PM EST

A Montgomery County woman will serve between 27.5 and 60 years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to driving drunk and fatally striking two Pennsylvania State Troopers and the civilian they were assisting on I-95 last spring.

Jayana Webb, 23, of Eagleville, pleaded guilty to three counts of third degree murder, three counts of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, and one count of DUI for fatally hitting Troopers Martin Mack III, 33, and Branden T. Sisca, 29, along with Reyes Rivera Oliveras, 28, with her car on I-95 in the early morning hours of March 21, 2022.

As part of the terms of her guilty plea, Webb, who is seven months pregnant, will be allowed to remain out of custody until she gives birth in February, her attorney Michael Walker said. After she gives birth, Webb will be allowed some bonding time with the child before she reports to prison, he said.

This is the part that really pisses me off annoys me. She should go to jail, go directly to jail! She was out on bail, at least long enough to go out and get knocked up, and now, even after her sentencing, gets time before having to report to prison to have the baby, and then additional time to ‘bond with’ the unfortunate child. While the Commonwealth cannot force her to give up her baby for adoption, she should still go to prison immediately, be released to the hospital when she is ready to be delivered of the child, and then go immediately back to jail, to let whomever is going to care for the baby to bond with the child, not with Miss Webb. If she is going to serve a minimum of 27½ years, the child will be well into adulthood when his mother gets out of the slammer.

In a statement, District Attorney Larry Krasner called Wednesday’s guilty plea and sentencing by Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott a “just resolution” to “one of the most shocking incidents of vehicular violence in recent memory.”

A “just resolution”? Will Messrs Siska, Mack, and Oliveras have come back to life in 27½ years? Will they be walking and talking and enjoying life with their families in the sixty years which constitutes her maximum sentence?

The newspaper was still trying to drum up sympathy for Miss Webb. The original title for the story, as I read it in the ‘tab’ in my browser, was “Drunk driver sentenced after killing 3 people in 2022,” but an editor changed it to “Pregnant woman faces up to 60 years in prison for DUI crash that killed two state troopers and a civilian”, just so readers catch that she is pregnant.

The newspaper also reported that Miss Webb’s blood alcohol level was 0.211, when tested sometime after the crash, so it must have been higher than that when the crash occurred. She also tested positive for marijuana use, though that test does not measure active marijuana intoxication at the time taken.

27½ years means that Miss Webb will be somewhere around 50 to 51 years old when her minimum sentence has been served; if she has to do the full 60, she wouldn’t get out until she’s 83 or 84. According to the state Department of Corrections, a prisoner must serve the entire minimum sentence before becoming eligible for parole.

Western civilization has been a great boon to the entire world, even if the “decolonizers” hate it!

The Nation is an American biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis from a ‘progressive’ perspective. With current articles like It’s Time for American Healthcare Workers to Stand in Solidarity With Gaza and “Made in America” Never Meant More Ethical, well, you get the picture. And now, just in time for Thanksgiving, they have this gem:

Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?

Sean Sherman argues that we need to decolonize Thanksgiving, while Chase Iron Eyes calls for replacing Thanksgiving with a “Truthsgiving.”

by Sean Sherman and Chase Iron Eyes | Monday, November 20, 2023

Yes!

I am a proud member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. My early memories of Thanksgiving are akin to those of most Americans—meat-and-potatoes dishes inspired by Eurocentric 1960s-era cookbooks.

For many Americans, the image of Thanksgiving is one of supposed unity: the gathering of “Pilgrims and Indians” in a harmonious feast. But this version obscures the harsh truth, one steeped in colonialism, violence, and misrepresentation. By exploring the Indigenous perspective on Thanksgiving, we can not only discern some of the nuances of decolonization but gain a deeper understanding of American history.

The Nation does have a paywall, which allows you a couple of free articles, but I was already over their limit, and had to read it on my daily feed; you can avoid the paywall and read the article here.

If Sean Sherman is a proud member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, I am a proud descendant of Richard Warren, who arrived on these shores on the Mayflower, and was, I assume, at that first Thanksgiving in 1621, and first religious Thanksgiving in 1623.

The sanitized version of Thanksgiving neglects to mention the violence, land theft, and subsequent decimation of Indigenous populations. Needless to say, this causes tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma of these events to our communities.

Thanksgiving’s roots are intertwined with colonial aggression. One of the first documented “Thanksgivings” came in 1637, after the colonists celebrated their massacre of an entire Pequot village.

I do not think we need to end Thanksgiving. But we do need to decolonize it. That means centering the Indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday (and every other day on the calendar). By reclaiming authentic histories and practices, decolonization seeks to honor Indigenous values, identities, and knowledge. This approach is one of constructive evolution: In decolonizing Thanksgiving, we acknowledge this painful past while reimagining our lives in a more truthful manner.

Ahhh, that new watchword of the left, ‘decolonization’. The left love to throw it around, but very few mean for it to apply to themselves. How many of the pro-Palestinian protesters are calling for ‘decolonization’ by the Jews in Israel, though they never seem to decolonize themselves, giving up their homes and property to the Indians.

The journey to decolonize Thanksgiving is also an opportunity for a broader movement to decenter colonial perspectives around the world. The University of Saskatchewan has possibly the most succinct definition of colonialism: “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” Western colonization has often exhibited a complete disregard for Indigenous customs and cultures that value diversity and a harmonious relationship with the land. Decolonization in this context would mean resisting the dominance of colonial influences globally and reclaiming Indigenous knowledge, values, and, of course, foodways.

The “foodways” part is due to Mr Sherman being a chef specializing in Indian foods. But yes, that’s a pretty good definition of colonialism, but it’s written to desensitize, because colonialism if the replacement of a weaker people by a stronger group.

Oops! I suppose that we’re not supposed to say that, but that is exactly what happens. In every nation on earth, with the notable exception of Iceland, the current ruling inhabitants moved from elsewhere and pushed out or assimilated or enslaved or just plain killed the people who were there before them. We are all here today because our ancestors conquered this great land.

This Thanksgiving, let’s break the bonds of colonization and capitalism — not just on our plates but in our perspectives, too. I want a Thanksgiving where I can be thankful that I live in a world where diversity is celebrated, and where every person’s connection to their food, land, and history is respected and cherished. I would like to be thankful not only for a more inclusive world but for a more accurate accounting of the past. This inclusivity and commitment to truth would honor Indigenous people, but also every person on the planet. Banning histories as a righteous crusade to eradicate different opinions is wrong; understanding true histories is necessary.

A decolonized Thanksgiving could transform a holiday marred by historical amnesia into a celebration of genuine gratitude, unity, and recognition of our rich Indigenous heritage. It would offer a clearer lens through which to see the entire world.

Me? I am genuinely grateful, grateful than my mother’s ancestors came to this great land, and grateful that they conquered it. I am genuinely grateful that the United States was created, and became a world power, because without that, my mother, who was from Portland, Maine, and my father, who was from Mau’i, would never have both been in Tokyo during the Korean War, and never met. Perhaps some readers’ family histories aren’t as obvious in detail, but there can’t be more than a handful of people born in the United States who would be alive today if it weren’t for European ‘settler colonialism’ in America.

That was Mr Sherman’s argument; Mr Iron Eyes feels differently:

No!

In 1620, English sailors arrived on the Mayflower and landed at Plymouth Harbor. A year later, the English celebrated their first Thanksgiving — alone, until a Wam­panoag defense party arrived, wanting to know why gunshots were being fired.

Our cherished national myth is that Thanksgiving originated with Natives welcoming friends who were fleeing religious persecution and then celebrating the harvest together. But the Wampanoags were not there to welcome or celebrate with foreigners. They had a mutual-defense pact with the Pilgrims and likely arrived out of duty. Yet over time, a young America branded this interaction as a “cohosted” Thanksgiving. George Washington celebrated Thanksgiving in 1789, and John Adams and James Madison followed suit. Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, trying to unite Americans during their Civil War. Aliens in a foreign land need to invent new myths and identities to provide themselves with a sense of people, purpose, and place.

Now, why would the Wampanoags have a mutual-defense pact with the Pilgrims? It’s simple: they wanted help in defending themselves against other Indian tribes! There were no other people in the area, only Indian tribes and English settlers.

There is another, more illustrative Thanksgiving story not often shared in the mainstream. During this other early Thanksgiving, in 1637, European settlers gave thanks after their men returned safe from a raid on the Pequot, an Indigenous tribe living in present-day Connecticut, which led to the massacre of between 400 and 700 women, children, and men and the enslavement of those who survived. In this story, there is no mutual thanks; there is no giving. There is only consumption and taking.

You want to give thanks? Give thanks to Native nations who granted settlers some form of legitimacy — by entering into treaties recognizing them — to be in our homelands. Those treaties recognized that Americans are now under our spiritual custody and have rights to pass through our country. As soon as Americans were able to impose their will on Indigenous nations, the treaties were violated. Some Indigenous nations do not have treaties, and legally this means their nations should be intact. Those of us who have treaties have defensible legal claims to lands that are now occupied by private American settlers under US law. The United States is still not able to deliver clear title to the lands because they were illegally and unilaterally annexed by the United States. We know it was not the fault of American settlers who bought the stolen land. But in order to promote reconciliation, we want private landowners to support the transfer of federal and state lands back to the tribal nations that have valid claims to them. Give thanks by honoring the treaties, by giving land back.

Mr Iron Eyes complaint is, in effect, that the Indians lost as the primarily English Americans conquered the land, and the people living therein. Basically, he is asking for the title to virtually the entire United States. Nope, sorry, but no way.

Mr Iron Eyes continued to tell us:

In those early years of colonial settlement, Indigenous families, saviors of the interlopers, nursed them back to health, only to be slaughtered by them and subjected to decimation by biological warfare. To this day, the Doctrine of Discovery — the foundation of federal law permitting settlers to take possession of land they “discovered” — imposes a set of Christian-based “laws” and institutional thinking that confines Indian existence “legally,” politically, and economically. The reservation system, “blood quantum,” and the invention of the federally recognized tribes will lead to our extinction as nations, as distinct political entities. Thanksgiving is a lie in the same way Manifest Destiny is a lie: This continent was not a pristine, empty land that had yet to be put to “profitable” use in the ways “civilized” extractive alien economies defined it.

Yeah, it kind of was. It was held by an underpopulated group of Indian tribes who had left it almost ‘pristine,’ because they did not know how to exploit the natural resources this land had in abundance.

There were more than 300 distinct Indian tribal languages in North America when Europeans first arrived, and none of the Indian languages spoken north of Mexico had a written component. While their languages were complex, the North American Indians were entirely illiterate, something which contributed greatly to their weakness compared to the English settlers. An ignorance of writing also contributes to an extremely low development of mathematics, which dramatically reduces engineering abilities. If Mr Iron Eyes is able to write today, it is because he has absorbed enough of European Western civilization to be able to do so.

November is already Native American Heritage Month. Thanksgiving could be something better: a day to appreciate the truth of American history and Native Americans’ contributions to our lives. Let’s tell a different story by dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a Truthsgiving.

A Truthsgiving? The truth is that America was a vast, unspoiled, underpopulated land with hundreds of scattered indigenous tribes not far removed from the Stone Age. Mr Iron Eyes might not like the truth, but the truth is that the European settlers brought with them an advanced knowledge and culture, and that has been for the benefit of the entire world.

I hope that he lives for 707 years and 8 months!

Given that this happened in California, I’m a bit surprised that this “minor attracted person” didn’t get probation.

Costa Mesa babysitter gets life in prison for molestations

by Paul Anderson | Friday, November 17, 2023 | 4:54 PM PST

Note how Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski is smiling in this picture of him on the beach. He might not be smiling much anymore.

A 34-year-old child care service provider from Costa Mesa was sentenced today to 707 years and eight months to life in prison for molesting 16 boys, aged 2 to 14, and showing another victim child pornography.

Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski was convicted Oct. 3 of 34 felony sex charges related to 17 victims in crimes that prosecutors said took place from 2014 through 2019.

Jurors in the trial also heard evidence relating to two other boys, including one who was allegedly molested, but the defendant was not charged with attacking those alleged victims, Deputy Dist. Atty. Juliet Oliver said.

We were told, especially after the John Jay Report showing that 81% of the sexual abuse victims of the all-male Catholic priesthood were male, that child abusers care much more about opportunity than the sex of their victims. Why, then, were all of Mr Zakrzewski’s victims, as was also the case with Jerry Sandusky, male? If the chances of selecting a male victim out of an even chance is 50%, then there is only a 0.001220703125% chance that all sixteen victims would be male.

Multiple parents told Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger how the defendant’s crimes affected them. One victim offered the defendant forgiveness, while another implored him to seek redemption in religion because, “It’s never too late to turn to God.”

Further down, after several paragraphs on what parents of victims said, we come to this:

(A mother) said he is so conniving that no parole board should ever give credence to what he says about rehabilitation.

“He’ll know what to say,” she said. “No future committee can believe any of that.”

Which tells us that Mr Zakrzewski will eventually be eligible for parole.

In her closing argument of the trial, Oliver said Zakrzewski had an “entire book” on pedophilia on his computer.

“In it there’s a chapter titled ‘Hunting Season,’” she said. “… When the defendant reached out to [one of his victims] saying ‘Let me be his occasional babysitter,’ he was hunting [the boy]. He was hunting every family in this case. … He wasn’t just reading the book, he could have written the book.”

All accused are entitled to a defense, and I feel sorry for Jennifer Ryan of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, who had to put up some sort of defense for her client, a task made enormously difficult because Mr Zakrzewski liked to videotape the abuse he wrought on his victims. Miss Ryan made some feeble attempts, but feeble was the best that could be done, because the evidence was so overwhelming.

We are not supposed to be happy that prison rape occurs, and it should never be part of a convict’s punishment, but it’s very difficult for me not to wish to see Mr Zakrzewski put in a maximum security prison’s ‘general population,’ with the other prisoners made aware of just who he is and what he did. I suspect that he will not have an easy life in prison, and I hope that he spends all 707 years and 8 months alive, behind bars, suffering whatever that life for him is like.

As dumb as a box of rocks

Sadly, while ignorance can be cured through education, there’s really no cure for stupid!

I got this image via a tweet from Guy Benson, and it’s just shaking my head stupid. Just what do they believe that the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs think about “feminist values of protecting women and queer people of color”? According to Amnesty International:

Women’s and girls’ rights
According to the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, 29 women were killed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by their family members in apparent cases of domestic violence. In September, the Gaza authorities prevented sisters Wissam and Fatimah al-Assi, aged 24 and 20 respectively, from pursuing complaints for domestic violence through courts by impeding them from accessing a prosecutor to testify.

LGBTI people’s rights
Authorities failed to prevent and investigate homophobic and transphobic threats and attacks.

On 9 July, security forces stood by and watched as a mob beat youths and children participating in a parade organized by Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah that included rainbow flags. The attack came amid a wave of incitement to violence and hate speech against LGBTI people and feminists that the authorities failed to investigate.

The last I heard, Amnesty International was not some evil reich-wing organization!

Male homosexual activity is a criminal offence, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment, and worse. From The Jerusalem Post, written well before the current unpleasantness:

According to Palestinian law, being gay is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Gaza, it’s punishable by death. In 2016, Hamas executed a senior commander by firing squad in Gaza for homosexual activity. LGBTQ+ Palestinians have no legal protections against discrimination, are forbidden from adopting and gay marriage is not recognized in any capacity.

In this Pride month alone, the LGBTQ+ community has been threatened and silenced in Ramallah, forcing a concert of east Jerusalem’s Bashar Murad to be canceled when anti-gay activists marched into a concert venue and demanded the organizers cancel the event for the LGBTQ+ community.

According to Wikipedia, Northwestern University has an acceptance rate of just 7%, so one would think that the student body would be fairly intelligent, but if you did think that, apparently you’d be wrong. The University has a guesstimated annual cost of attendance of a whopping $91,290, including room-and-board.

But it doesn’t matter: at least their College Feminists are as dumb as a box of rocks.

Palestinian liberation is an intersectional issue, and goes hand in hand with feminist values of protecting women and queer people of color. As intersectional feminists, we are against all forms of oppression, including settler colonialism.

Really? As students in Evanston, Illinois, they are living on the land of the Illini and Ho-Chunk Indian tribes; have they shown their opposition to “settler colonialism” by giving up their homes and property to those tribes? Or is it the usual: they oppose other people’s settler colonialism, but have Reasons to keep what they have personally?

Ignorance, as stated earlier, can be cured by education, by teaching the person who doesn’t know something what he doesn’t know! But one would think that the Northwestern University College Feminists would have learned by now that Islam forbids homosexual activity, and most of the nations in the Muslim Middle East have legal prohibitions on such, prohibitions which are of varying severity, up to and including death, especially in Iran, which supports Hamas to the tune of an estimated $100 million per year. One would have thought that the College Feminists would have heard of the dissent in Iran which started over the religious police’s killing in custody of an Iranian woman for not properly wearing a head scarf.

Perhaps the College Feminists simply don’t understand the meaning of the word they like to throw around, intersectionality:

Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how individuals’ various social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.[1] Examples of these factors include gendercastesexraceethnicityclasssexualityreligiondisabilityweightspecies[2] and physical appearance.[3] These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.[4][5] However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality.[6]

Intersectionality broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, which largely focused on the experiences of women who were whitemiddle-class and cisgender,[7] to include the different experiences of women of colorpoor womenimmigrant women, and other groups. Intersectional feminism aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women’s differing experiences and identities.

Does that sound like gobbledygook to you? It should, but it seems that the College Feminists have assumed the position that all people who are supposedly oppressed have something in common, when they really do not. Were Hamas to actually take over, and the Northwestern University College Feminists living there, they’d be among the first ones lined up against the wall.

Feminism and progressive politics are things which can exist in Western civilizations, another term they’d probably hate, but it’s only under the enlightenment and Christian European and English-speaking North American societies where these things are even allowed to exist. The things people have the freedom to do and say in Iceland and Ireland and Israel are not allowed in Iran or Iraq or Indonesia, and trying them can get you beaten, imprisoned or even killed.

For $91,290 a year, you’d think that they could have learned that.

Everything the climate activists want will cost you more money The wealthy activists just can't understand that not everyone can afford this stuff

As Reichsstatthalter Kathy Hochul (NSDAP-NY) seeks to ban new gas range installations in the Empire State, an ad for the ZLINE 48 in. Fingerprint Resistant Stainless Steel 6.0 cu.ft. 7 Gas Burner/Electric Oven Range (RAS-SN-48) showed up in my morning feed. We’re not in the market for a new range at all, and, at a sale price of $5039.96, marked down from $5,599.95 — “shipping calculated at checkout” — it was nothing we’d have bought anyway.

Experience Attainable Luxury® with the ZLINE 48″ DuraSnow® Dual Fuel Professional Range. ZLINE’s dual fuel range combines a high performance gas stovetop with an electric convection oven. Providing both professional aesthetics and functionality, this dual fuel stove provides the ultimate luxury experience for a fraction of the cost. ZLINE’s exclusive DuraSnow® finish features a timeless non-directional fingerprint-resistant finish, allowing you to easily combat everyday wear and tear. Achieve optimal results with cooktop cooking power from 4,200 up to 18,000 BTUs provided with sealed burners. Rely on precise and even heating for every homemade dish with an electric convection oven. Enjoy an ultra-deep oven capacity with a three-layered insulated glass oven for efficient cooking every use. With upgraded premium features such as SmoothSlide ball-bearing oven racks, dual lighting, and adjustable legs, this range is certain to wow both the chef and guests alike. Assembled with the highest quality materials on the market, this range offers a durable, scratch-resistant porcelain cooktop and ZLINE’s exclusive single piece cast iron grate. Cook with ease with StayPut Italian hinges, providing a safe baking environment to enjoy for years to come. ZLINE stands by the longevity and durability of their professional dual fuel stoves, while ensuring further protection and peace of mind with a worry-free warranty. The ZLINE Dual Fuel Range is packaged in multiple boxes and will ship out together next business day when in stock.

Of course, the Reichsstatthalter’s wealthy friends will have ways to get around New York’s ban on the installation of new gas service!

So, why did the ad appear in my feed in the first place? Noting William Teach’s story on a Washington Post article, “How fast do you have to buy EVs and heat pumps to avoid the worst effects of climate change?” and it’s first lines: Continue reading

Has your income increased 58.39% since November of 2020? Gasoline prices have increased that much!

With Thanksgiving just a week away, many people have their minds on travel plans, to visit extended family a long way away. Fortunately for us, Thanksgiving travel means a whopping 18 miles, to my sister’s house.

Screen capture by D R Pico, November 16, 2023.

Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel gave us an interesting map of fuel prices across the fruited plain, and it shows just what you’d expect: in states where the government wants a deeper bite into your wallet, it’s going to cost you more to visit the relatives!

Here in the Bluegrass State, the average price as shown by the American Automobile Association is $3.037 per gallon, though the station closest to me has $2.959 per gallon for regular posted. I pay close attention to Pennsylvania, where we used to live, and the average price for regular is currently $3.607 per gallon, 57¢ higher than in Kentucky.

Kentucky is right in the middle when it comes to state taxes on gasoline, 26th in the nation at 30.10¢ per gallon, while Pennsylvania is third, charging 62.20¢ per gallon. As you’d obviously guess, the Pyrite State, California, tops the list, taxing its people.

Interestingly, Illinois, which has the second highest tax rate on fuel, at 66.5¢ per gallon, shares a birder with Missouri, with the second lowest, 17.47¢. Continue reading

Couldn’t we build something like this in Kensington?

In the two-part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine entitled Past Tense, Part 1 and Part 2, a transporter accident lands Commander Benjamin Sisko, Dr Julian Bashir, and Lt Commander Jadzia Dax in San Francisco, in the year 2024. From Wikipedia:

Sisko and Bashir are found by a pair of police officers, who believe them to be vagrants and warn them to get off the streets. They are escorted to a “Sanctuary District”, a walled-off ghetto that is used to contain the poor, the sick, the mentally disabled, and anyone else who cannot support themselves.

Well, who would have thought that it would be so prescient!

Liberal City Builds Walls To Protect Elite, Clears Out Homeless

by Andrew Sanders | Tuesday, November 14, 2023 Continue reading