In New York City, the savages protest in support of savagery

When my good friend William Teach wrote, at 8:25 PM EST on Christmas Day, “What’s the over/under that the @nytimes doesn’t bother to cover this, despite being a NY paper? Maybe a tiny blurb on A25. If these were rioting Jews it would already be on the web front page,” I thought that surely, surely!, even The New York Times couldn’t ignore riots. But, Mr Teach was right: at least as of 8:40 AM EST, there were no stories at all on the front page of the Times website concerning the riots, though there was a story, in the “In Case You Missed It” section about halfway down on the right hand side, “New York City, for Some Jews, Feels Newly Tense : With antisemitism and protests spilling onto the streets of New York, the city’s Jewish population is trying to navigate the new contours of its hometown,” a story dated on December 20th, six days ago.

There was an old joke in the city, from the days when people actually read the dead-trees editions of newspapers, that people on the subways used the Times as a cover to hide from people that they were actually reading the New York Post:

Pro-Palestinian protesters chant ‘Christmas is canceled’ while carrying blood-red mock Nativity scene through NYC — scuffles break out, arrests made

By Larry Celona, Reuven Fenton, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, and Patrick Reilly | Christmas Day, December 25, 2023 | 8:25 PM EST

They’re out to “cancel” Christmas.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters converged on Midtown Monday, lugging a blood-red mock Nativity scene and chanting, “Christmas is canceled here.” Continue reading

When it’s time to put up or shut up, the left do neither

Will the ACLU of Texas put their money where their keyboards are? They tweeted:

Indigenous people have lived here long before Texas was even called Texas, and still do today.

We will always work to uphold Indigenous peoples’ rights and sovereignty.

They will? Will they give up their office space? Will the employees of the Texas ACLU surrender up their homes and property to the Indians? Will they at the very least pay rent to “Indigenous people” for their homes, including back rent for as long as they have lived there?

Let’s face it, the left are really, really good at running their mouths and keyboards, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, they do neither. It’s not too dissimilar from all of the leftist pro-Palestinian protesters; how many have actually picked up a rifle and headed to Gaza to fight the colonizer Israelis?

I have no sympathy for this criminal

On Sunday, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to Aaron M. Kinzer, because the editors just love them some criminals:

In prison, a phone was my lifeline. Until I got caught with it.

Congress should overturn the Cell Phone Contraband Act to give incarcerated a a lifeline to the outside world.

by Aaron M Kinzer | Sunday, April 17, 2022

Aaron M Kinzer, from Parents.

Since 2010, when I was incarcerated, I have been at the mercy of the prison phone service industry. I have paid 15 cents to $1 per minute for monitored 15-minute phone calls to hear my mother’s prayers, my spouse’s love, and my children’s laughter. Companies like PayTel and Securis compete for contracts to siphon off money sent from family to people like me.

High prices, monitoring, and restrictions fuel the demand for illegal smartphones. Most incarcerated people don’t use smartphones to sell drugs or order violent attacks. Instead, they connect with loved ones. A more humane justice system would take this into account by providing tablets to inmates or allowing for video visits.

Unfortunately, because of how diffuse our national system of corrections is, this is an issue we’ll have to tackle at the county and state levels. While access to smartphones is still forbidden in jails and prisons across the country, many jurisdictions recognize the value of keeping families connected. New York City and San Francisco no longer require incarcerated people to pay a fee for making phone calls from jail, and other cities and states are considering following suit. Texas has expanded tablet access for sending emails, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons allowed for free calls during the pandemic when visitations were banned.

In prison, a phone is a lifeline, a thin thread holding together fragile family bonds. When I was transferred to a federal minimum-security prison in Virginia, located in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, I thought I would be able to resist the lifeline thrown to me. But after six months of being restricted to the prison phone, I smuggled an illegal smartphone into prison. I knew that if I got caught, I would be placed in solitary confinement, transferred, have more time added to my sentence, or, even worse, be indicted for possessing contraband.

And caught with it he was. Continue reading

My inferior understanding prevents me from seeing the obvious brilliance of his argument

Dr Jorge J Rodríguez V tells us, in his Twitter biography, that he is a “A DiaspoRican Theo-Socio-Storian contextualizing systems historically made Divine || PhD-Historian-Administrator || All Tweets My Own (He/Him/His/El)”. Now, I have no way to verify anything in his word salad of a biography, but shall assume that it’s all accurate.

On New Year’s Day, he told us:[1]The tweet shown in the article is a screen capture, just in case he deletes it. If you click on the image, it will take you to his original.

It’s not just that I think schools shouldn’t be open until the end of January, I don’t think *anything* should be open until the end of January. We should be paid to stay home and provided food for three weeks and we should try an *actual* lockdown to combat the #Omicron surge.

This nation has pushed vaccines as the sole answer and get #Omicron has persisted. Even if the rates of death are lower, people are still dying. And if people aren’t dying, many are getting long COVID.

I have family members who didn’t fully recover from COVID for eleven months. I know many people who died months after “recovering” from COVID because of the toll the virus took on their lungs or heart or blood. Just letting the virus run it’s course is not good public health.

If the military gets *billions* for new jets, we the people can get *billions* to stay home for a few weeks and slow this surge. Our nation is so scared of a lockdown because of its effect on the economy but the economy doesn’t matter if people are dead or unable to work.

It just makes me so angry. The whole thing. And knowing so many people in my community have to go to poorly ventilated schools with minimal testing in two days makes me even more angry.

I think I underestimate how much capitalism has stunted our collective imaginations. When invited to dream about a different way of doing things, the first instinct of so many is to call it unrealistic as opposed to sit in the possibility and explore alternative ways get there.

The first paragraph is from the original tweet, while each subsequent one is from a separate tweet in the thread.

Now, Dr Rodríguez is, purportedly, an educated man. Yet somehow, some way, he hasn’t managed to grasp the notion that the electricity, natural gas, and water going to people’s homes doesn’t just magically appear there, but is produced at power plants and pumping stations, and if everything is locked down, that means those utility plants close down. It’s January, and people will get awfully cold in their homes without electricity and natural gas. They’ll get very thirsty without water.

Of course, other things like, oh, food, have to be picked up from the grocery store. If everything is locked down, then the grocery stores are closed, too. I sure hope that you have three weeks of food at your house!

Well, let’s say that you are warned, and have the time to go shopping before the lockdown. Grocery stores don’t normally have three weeks of food for their customers on hand, but have to get deliveries, every day, to replenish the shelves. Many food items are perishable, and people don’t buy them three weeks before eating them. Do you want to eat three-week-old bread?

But hey, with the electricity out, in January, you can just put your perishables in a critter-proof box outside, and you’ll have nature’s refrigerator keeping things cold for you!

References

References
1 The tweet shown in the article is a screen capture, just in case he deletes it. If you click on the image, it will take you to his original.

Not just no, but Hell no! Why is it that every time the left think they have a good idea, they want to make it mandatory?

I have to take this one with a grain of coarse kosher salt, because Seth Dillon says that he is CEO of The Babylon Bee, a very good satire site, but here’s the tweet:

Perhaps Mr Dillon’s eyesight is going, because rather than a grown man in his twenties, it was obviously Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CN) who accosted his son.

Senators Markey and Blumenthal announce national face mask mandate legislation

Bill would require states to implement mask mandates, promote “the most powerful public health tool” the nation has against the coronavirus

November 25, 2020

Washington (November 25, 2020) – Despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), millions of Americans are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, giving rise to concerns about continued spread of the coronavirus as the country already is suffering a terrible surge of cases and deaths. Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today announced introduction of the Encouraging Masks for All Act, legislation that would encourage states to require the use of face masks in all public spaces and outside when one cannot maintain social distance. The legislation provides an additional $5 billion to the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund available to states who implement masking requirements. States can use this additional funding for efforts to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus. Additionally, the legislation authorizes $75 million for grants to states for promotion of universal mask wearing. The legislation also mandates mask use on federal property. Recent research suggests universal masking could prevent 130,000 deaths from COVID-19. Nonetheless, 15 states do not have mask mandates.

“Masks and face coverings are the essential public health tool to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic” said Senator Markey. “As President-elect Biden recognizes, we need to use every technique available to us to encourage mask use, from clear communication of the need for masks, to providing masks to those who need them, to leading by example, and even to mandating mask use nationwide. Our legislation would move us closer to goal of ensuring universal mask adoption during these dangerous winter months. It would also ensure that essential workers in transit, health care, and retail settings all over the country are protected with face masks. Mask up!”

“Wearing a mask should be considered a moral and health mandate—our primary defense against the coronavirus,” said Senator Blumenthal. “With cases skyrocketing as we head into the holidays, the Encouraging Masks for All Act would bring us closer to ensuring every American has a face mask and wears it. Even with a vaccine, mask wearing is an essential tool in conquering COVID-19, along with physical distancing and other common sense public health steps. This bill gives states the resources to encourage mask wearing in public and outdoors, to provide masks to those who need them, and to enforce mask mandates to protect public health.”

According to Newsweek, the two New England Fascists leftists bemoaned that a third of the states do not have any mask mandates.[1]Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming The two looney lefties names it the Encouraging Masks for All Act, but “encourage,” in this use, is defined as “to attempt to persuade.” Perhaps Senator Blumenthal, who once “encouraged” the people of Connecticut to vote for him by falsely claiming he was a Vietnam veteran, which he brushed of as “misplaced words” and having “misspoken”, meant that the bill was meant to “encourage” the states to mandate masks, or miss out on federal funds, but it certainly isn’t meant to “encourage” the public to wear them; it is an attempt to get the states to force people to wear masks.

Why is it that every time the left think they have a good idea, they want to make it mandatory? In the novel The Once and Future King, author T. H. White proposed a similarly worded rule as the rule of totalitarianism: “Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory.” The Pico Corollary of that is, “The Democrats support freedom of choice on exactly one thing.”

If Messrs Markey and Blumenthal recognize that the ‘authority’ to require people to wear masks — an authority I deny that any state has over free citizens — belongs to the states, why don’t they recognize that different states might legitimately choose differently? Oh, I’m sorry, that’s right: they don’t believe that the states could legitimately choose differently from how they see things, so they simply have to force those which don’t do what they see as the right thing.

This is why the Democrats cannot be trusted. They never want to ask people to do things, they want to order people to do things. If Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) had asked me to wear a face mask, and made his case for doing so, I would have happily complied. But when he ordered such, any free man would rebel, any free man would see not complying with the Governor as a proper act of independence and defiance.

Jonathan Edwards might have said it best:

Some man’s come he’s trying to run my life, don’t know what he’s asking
Working starts to make me wonder where fruits of what I do are going
When he says in love and war all is fair, he’s got cards he ain’t showing
How much does it cost? I’ll buy it!
The time is all we’ve lost–I’ll try it!
He can’t even run his own life,
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine-

References

References
1 Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming