What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
Anybody can roast beef.
*.*
I was in a liquor store and the owner asked me, "Do you need help?"
I replied, "Yes, but I’ll have a bottle of whisky instead."
*.*
A New Study Has Revealed The Vast Majority Of Retired NFL Players Look Weird In Suits
Football is an exciting sport, but it has its dark side. Yet another controversy surrounding the potential risks of playing professional football is brewing after some alarming data has come to light: A new study has revealed that the vast majority of retired NFL players look weird in suits.
Wow. You have to ask yourself if a game is worth this.
A damning study by Rutgers University has found that a troubling percentage of former football players struggle in retirement to not look absolutely insane in suits, whether it’s massive ex-linemen sporting jackets so constricting that they look like they’re going to explode, or muscular ex-tight ends in distractingly bright seersucker get-ups with incredibly wide purple ties that resemble something a clown might wear. On the field, these men were leaders and role models who performed at the highest level, yet, tragically, after retiring, many appear awkward and out of their element, donning outrageous, ill-fitting teal suits that somehow make them look both gigantic and tiny at the same time—pitiful shadows of the dominant forces they once were in their playing days, seemingly unequipped to function off the field.
The study, which compared a group of retired NFL players in suits to a group of similarly aged men in suits who didn’t play professional football, found that the men in the NFL group were over 50 times more likely to look downright bizarre in formalwear, demonstrating a strong predisposition towards wearing suits that appear baggy in some parts and comically tight in others, not unlike standing in front of a funhouse mirror. The disturbing results have already prompted many to deem this a crisis, one that must be met with aggressive reforms by the NFL for the sake of its players’ welfare.
“When players enter the league, they’re focused on playing football—they’re not thinking at all about how strange and off-putting they might appear in a suit 15 or 20 years down the line,” said the NFL Players Association in a statement. “There’s clearly a strong need for young players to be educated on the risks of having a refrigerator-sized body and wearing slim, tailored garments—it’s just not at all compatible, like trying to stuff a cinder block into a tube sock. We are calling on the league to provide the necessary resources to address this urgent issue so that players no longer go through their post-playing days in wildly patterned, absurdly proportioned garments that make them look like they’re playing dress-up with a bunch of clothes from their grandpa’s closet.”
The statement went on to confirm that the NFLPA will also be pursuing a nine-figure settlement from the league to fund new wardrobes for retired players so that they are no longer jarringly distracting to look at whenever they appear on a sports talk show or at an alumni charity event.
Good for them. These players deserve better.
*.*
American psychologists have isolated two fundamental reasons why men frequent bars.
1) They don’t have a woman.
2) They have a woman.
*.*
What is it about models on the runway not smiling?
So I'm supposed to think, "Boy, that woman who looks really mad at me sure is beautiful!"
Quote of the Times;
“When no smacks are heard at all—when foreigners wander into our country in the millions with no supervision, when robbers walk away smiling from brief court appearances, when rioters receive vocal support from senior public figures, when mentally ill vagrants poop in our streets, when statues of our national heroes are vandalized without penalty, when kids are taught in public schools that men can give birth—when these outrages continue year after year with no smacks at all, then citizens begin to long for the sound of smacking, constitutional or otherwise.” – Derbyshire
Link of the Times;
Gaslighting: “Conspiracy Theories” Already Proven True in 2023:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/conspiracy-theories-gaslighting/
Issue of the Times;
The Dark Secret of America’s WWII German Death Camps by Richard Stockton
Every schoolchild knows that the German side in World War II falsely imprisoned millions of noncombatants in a constellation of concentration camps scattered across the Nazi sphere of influence in Europe. Conditions in these camps were inhumane, to say the least, fraught with starvation, disease, and deliberate murder stalking every inmate for the months or years they spent interned.
What has largely escaped the victors’ history books, however, is that another program of internment and mass murder was put together at the end of the war by Allied forces, who took in millions of German prisoners in the summer of 1945 and deliberately starved as many as one in four of them to death, according to the highest estimates.
The story of the Rheinwiesenlager, or “Rhine Camps,” was then covered up and obfuscated by professional historians for decades after the war while the survivors grew old and the prisoner records were destroyed.
In the spring of 1945, the handwriting was on the wall for Germany. Millions of Allied troops poured into the Rhineland from the west, while the German SS and Wehrmacht forces staged desperate last stand actions in Vienna and Berlin to slow the Soviet Red Army’s advance in the east.
During this collapse, as German General Jodl stalled ceasefire negotiations to buy time, as many as three million German soldiers disengaged from the Eastern Front and trekked across Germany to surrender to American or British troops, whom they hoped would be less vengeful than the triumphant Soviets.
The German influx quickly grew so large that the British stopped accepting prisoners, citing logistical problems. Sensing that the Germans were turning themselves in en masse simply to delay an official, inevitable total German surrender, U.S. General Eisenhower then threatened to order his troops to shoot the surrendering German soldiers on sight, which forced Jodl to formally surrender on May 8.
The prisoners kept streaming in, however, and they all needed to be processed before the U.S. Army decided their fate.
The Army then hit on a solution for coping with large numbers of undesirable people that was similar to the one that the Germans had used in Poland: commandeer large stretches of farmland and wrap barbed wire around the prisoners until something could be sorted out.
Dozens of large holding camps thus sprang up in western Germany during the late spring of 1945, and by early summer, German prisoners of war still wearing their worn-out uniforms began to fill them.
Army officers skimmed off suspicious-looking prisoners, such as SS personnel and men with blood group tattoos on their arms (often a sign of SS membership) and sent them to intelligence officers and war crimes investigators for special scrutiny.
Meanwhile, officers allowed rank-and-file members of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine to simply pick a spot on the ground and sit down until somebody up the chain decided they could go home. Or so they thought.
The Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Convention strictly regulate the treatment of wartime prisoners. Captured enemy soldiers cannot be tortured or executed if they were wearing their country’s uniform when caught. They cannot be put on display or publicly humiliated, nor can they be overworked or punished for no reason.
The conventions are stringent about their provisions: Every single POW must be fed and housed up to a standard equal to what their guards get, for example. And if it is impractical to heat the prisoners’ barracks, for instance, the conventions’ rules say that the camp personnel should not have heated barracks, either.
Almost uniquely for WWII powers, the American Army took these rules seriously and even, at one POW camp, made its own guards sleep in bedrolls on the ground for the three days it took to build prisoner barracks, though their cabins were already finished.
This American reputation for fairness drew millions of defeated Germans to the Western Front in the first place, and probably shortened the war somewhat as the fighting men chose captivity over suicide in battle.
What none of the surrendering Germans knew was that General Eisenhower, in consultation with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943, had already decided to use the inevitable German weakness following defeat to permanently cripple that country’s ability to wage war.
As early as 1943, at the Tehran Conference, Roosevelt and Stalin had famously toasted to the shooting of 50,000 German officers after the war. They may or may not have been serious, but early in 1944, Eisenhower appointed a special assistant named Everett Hughes to handle the details of the surrender. That summer, a postwar plan devised by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. was initialed (and presumably approved) by both Roosevelt and Churchill.
The Morgenthau Plan, as it came to be known, was beyond punitive: Germany was to be divided into occupation zones, its industry destroyed, crushing reparations imposed, and large sections of its population forcibly resettled to wipe out the German capacity for war once and for all.
It was, by modern standards, practically a blueprint for national genocide insofar as millions of Germans would have to starve or relocate to make it work.
Everett Hughes was all in favor of the Morgenthau Plan, but after the PR disaster that followed the October release of some of the details, he was cautious. On November 4, Hughes sent a memo to Eisenhower urging him to classify details of prisoners’ rations as top secret. Eisenhower agreed.
Millions of surrendered Germans were held under conditions the U.S. Attorney General compared to Andersonville, the notorious Civil War Confederate POW camp whose commandant was hung for war crimes.
The reason for Hughes’ interest in rations lies in the legal distinction he and others on Eisenhower’s staff had made. Surrendered Germans, they decided, would not be classed as POWs, but under a new and totally made-up designation of “disarmed enemy forces” (DEFs). As DEFs, rather than POWs, the men would be entitled to none of the Geneva Convention’s protections.
The American forces would not even be obliged to feed their captives, and they could legally — so went the argument — bar the Red Cross from inspecting their Rheinwiesenlager camps or sending relief aid.
Under their new legal status, the defeated German soldiers would almost literally become unpersons, a vulnerable position compounded by the fact that after the surviving German statesmen were arrested in Flensburg, German veterans didn’t even have a government to advocate for them anymore. They were perfectly helpless and totally at the mercy of the U.S. Army.
There is only one reason to strip prisoners of war of the legal status that protects them from mistreatment: to mistreat them. According to a 1989 book on the subject, Other Losses, by Canadian writer James Bacque, at least 800,000, and “quite likely over a million” prisoners lost their lives in American-operated Rheinwiesenlager camps during the summer and fall of 1945.
Conditions in the Rheinwiesenlager camps, which were later reviewed by the Surgeon General’s Office, “resembled Andersonville Prison in 1864.” Even Stephen Ambrose, the world-famous historian and sometimes-employee of the Eisenhower estate, who was hired by the late President’s family to investigate the book’s charges, admitted in a 1991 New York Times: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/22/specials/ambrose-atrocities.html
“There was widespread mistreatment of German prisoners in the spring and summer of 1945. Men were beaten, denied water, forced to live in open camps without shelter, given inadequate food rations and inadequate medical care. Their mail was withheld. In some cases prisoners made a “soup” of water and grass in order to deal with their hunger. Men did die needlessly and inexcusably.”
Conditions varied at each camp, but dugout shelters covered with clothing and scraps of cloth were typical in the crowded makeshift enclosures.
The unpleasant details Ambrose would admit about the Rheinwiesenlager camps barely scratch the surface.
Allied forces would usually strip search and interrogate men designated as DEFs before admitting them to the camps. Much of the time, the American or British officers conducting the interrogations staged them to make the German (who was usually tired and hungry, deprived of sleep and wholly ignorant of the American and British justice systems) think he was on trial for his life and could only save himself or his family by confessing to whatever crimes he was being asked about.
Official marched the vast majority into barbed-wire enclosures and abandoned them — prisoners rarely received food or water, let alone fresh clothes, and shelter was whatever size hole they could dig with their hands.
Men who approached the perimeter wire to beg for provisions ran the risk of being shot as attempted escapees, but those who didn’t could easily starve to death or die of the typhus, cholera, and other illnesses endemic to the Rheinwiesenlager camps.
Both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and German civilians (short on food themselves) sent what aid they could. Still, camp officials flatly refused the ICRC entry to the camps and told them the DEFs had plenty of food without their help.
Nobody seems to know what happened to the civilian food parcels, though the guards never reported food shortages themselves, and it’s possible some parcels were distributed to French civilians near the border. The men in the camps got nothing, and soon they began to die.
No known, existing records show exactly how many German veterans died in the Rheinwiesenlager camps. The Army claimed after the war that it was impossible to track millions of prisoners under those conditions, and thus said that no detailed paperwork was even attempted. Later revelations showed that in fact the Army did keep files on the men, but that around 8 million documents were destroyed after the camps closed.
The closest researchers can get is in the “Other Losses” column of the Army’s records, showing discrepancies in the weekly prisoner count of sometimes tens of thousands of men who vanished from one head count to the next. This miscellaneous column, which gave Bacque the title of his book, excluded releases and escapes, as well as the majority of prisoner transfers, so no official explanation exists as to where hundreds of thousands of DEFs went during the months that the Rheinwiesenlager camps were operating.
Ambrose’s team issued a scathing indictment of Bacque’s work, asking in what they thought was a rhetorical tone where those million dead bodies went, since it’s presumably difficult to hide seven-figure death tolls in the Rhineland.
Nobody knows for sure what the answer to that question is, even today, but since 1945 the French and German governments have enforced a blanket ban on excavations across large swathes of their border territories where the camps were located. Official U.S. government statistics on the death tolls range between just 3,000 and 6,000.
The U.S. Army occupation forces established these exclusion zones at the end of the war, used them for “unknown” purposes throughout 1945, and then restricted them forevermore as war graves. No one is allowed to dig in these areas, and it seems no one ever has, so it is possible that the answer to the historians’ question lies buried under the trees of the Rhine River Valley to this day.
News of the Times;
The stage is set for Hybrid World War III:
https://thesaker.is/the-stage-is-set-for-hybrid-world-war-iii/
Bankers Rule The World:
https://www.rooshv.com/bankers-rule-the-world
Bodycam Footage Shows DC Metro Officer Boasting About Beating Trump Supporters with a Flagpole on J6:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/that-was-my-best-weapon-bodycam-footage-shows-dc-metro-officer-boasting-about-beating-trump-supporters-with-a-flagpole-on-j6-video/
US Hegemony and Its Perils:
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230220_11027664.html
Elon Musk TRASHES Media For Being ‘Racist Against Whites’:
https://en-volve.com/2023/02/27/elon-musk-trashes-media-for-being-racist-against-whites-after-scott-adams-gets-canceled-over-viral-rant-about-black-crime/
Politician’s Advice To ‘Work More’ To Afford Food Under Skyrocketing Inflation Causes Firestorm:
https://resistthemainstream.com/politicians-advice-on-how-to-afford-food-under-skyrocketing-inflation-causes-firestorm/
Americans With A College Degree Saw Wages Decline The Most In Two Decades:
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/americans-with-a-college-degree-saw-wages-decline-the-most-in-two-decades-71962.html
White student sues historically Black college for $2 million over racial discrimination:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/most-hated-white-student-sues-historically-black-college-for-2-million-over-racial-discrimination/ar-AA17Xn9B
Swiss residents are thrown out of their apartments and replaced by Ukrainian refugees:
https://strangesounds.org/2023/02/now-in-wefland-switzerland-swiss-residents-are-thrown-out-of-their-rental-apartments-for-ukrainian-refugees.html
Washington DC City Council says bill for allowing noncitizens to vote is now law:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-dc-city-council-bill-allowing-noncitizens-vote-law
Explosive New FBI Notes Confirm Obama Directed Anti-Flynn Operation:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/24/explosive-new-fbi-notes-confirm-obama-directed-anti-flynn-operation/
Boulder Attack Is Seventh High Profile Mass Shooting Where Attacker Was Known To FBI Beforehand:
https://national-justice.com/current-events/boulder-attack-seventh-high-profile-mass-shooting-where-attacker-was-known-fbi
Muhammad Becomes Most Popular Baby Name in Irish City:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/02/27/muhammad-becomes-most-popular-baby-name-in-irish-city/
Absolutely nothing the US does about CO2 will offset China's coal buildup:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/02/27/absolutely-nothing-the-us-does-about-co2-will-offset-chinas-coal-buildup-n533592
Transgender drugs and surgeries are atrocities, not ‘care’:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/transgender-drugs-and-surgeries-are-atrocities-not-care/
Camps?
Cleese?
Relationship advice for men.
Tighten all the jar lids in the house super tight.
Eventually, she'll have to talk to you.
*.*
A community orchestra was plagued by attendance problems. Several musicians were absent at each rehearsal. As a matter of fact, every player in the orchestra had missed several rehearsals, except for one very faithful oboe player.
Finally, as the dress rehearsal drew to a close, the conductor took a moment to thank the oboist for her faithful attendance.
She, of course, humbly responded, "It's the least I could do, especially since I won't be at the performance."
*.*
Great news, Mr. Bradley," the psychiatrist reported. "After eighteen months of therapy, I can pronounce you finally and completely cured of your kleptomania. You'll never be trapped by the desire to steal again."
"Gee, that's great, Doc," the patient replied.
"And just to prove it, I want you to stop by the mall on the way home and walk the length of the stores. You'll see that you'll feel no temptation to shoplift whatsoever."
"Oh, Doctor, what can I do to thank you?"
"Well," suggested the psychiatrist, "if you DO have a relapse, I could use a new TV."
*.*
Penguin Publishing is removing the word ‘fat' from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Matilda", to make the books less divisive and more inclusive.
They're replacing "fat" with "enormous."
I wonder what Enormous Head came up with that idea?
*.*
Got home from work today to find my kids have been on eBay all day.
If they are still there tomorrow I will lower the price.
Quote of the Times;
“This should not come as any surprise to anyone with a basic knowledge of history. Every single nation that has ever provided safe harbor to foreign refugees has eventually paid a heavy price in its own blood for doing so, beginning with Egypt and continuing all the way down through the centuries to Sweden and Ukraine today. Every single time. Whereas the ascendancies of Sparta, Spain, Germany, Russia, and now China have all been marked by very different policies.” - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Leaders Seem to Be Using These Disturbing Quotes From Vladimir Lenin as a How-To Manual:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/quotes-vladimir-lenin
Issue of the Times;
John Cleese On Wokeness And Creativity by Deanna Fisher
If you don’t know who John Cleese is, then I don’t know where you have been or what you have found funny over the last five decades. The Monty Python comedian and actor has always been subversive, and it takes a certain personality to “get” the humor that is Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the subsequent movies and shows.
At the time that the Pythons were actively creating content, they managed to offend people with their subversion and their absurdity, or they would lose people that simply didn’t understand their brand of humor. Now, the Pythons are seen as clairvoyant and offensive because they were telling truths that no one wanted to hear. Take this scene from The Life of Brian and marvel at how it predicted the world that we are currently living in.
This 1979 clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian perfectly encapsulates gender ideology in 2022, when pointing out biological reality is “oppression.” pic.twitter.com/YGHtAUqrk6
— Christina Buttons (@buttonslives) October 1, 2022
And the world that we are currently living in, John Cleese now says, is so “woke” that it no longer allows for creativity. This is the same environment that just four years ago said that Monty Python’s Flying Circus would never get made today because the group wasn’t “diverse” enough. In an interview with Nick Gillespie for Reason magazine, Cleese talks about his career in a wide-ranging interview and talks about being creative and making people laugh.
Now 83, Cleese—who studied law at the University of Cambridge—has set his sights on political correctness, which he says is the enemy not only of humor but of creative thinking in all areas of human activity. “There are people sitting there who are deliberately waiting for the thrill of being offended,” he says, emphasizing the importance of paying attention to context, without which irony and sarcasm can’t be properly understood.”
Reason’s Nick Gillespie caught up with Cleese at FreedomFest, an annual July gathering in Las Vegas. Cleese was the keynote speaker, there to discuss creativity, which was the subject of his 2020 book of the same name. It’s a myth “that creativity is something you have to be born with,” he argues, contending that “you can teach people how to create circumstances in which they will become creative.”
In a wide-ranging conversation available on The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, Cleese discusses the importance of freedom of expression to being creative, the difference between solemnity and seriousness, and why creativity remains necessary for the progress of civilization.”
An edited version of the interview can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBf6kJIbXLg
But let’s go over what John Cleese says about wokeness stifling creativity. The interview is worth both watching and reading.
Why is creativity so important for a thriving society?”
Cleese: I think the most natural impulse that people have other than curiosity is to figure out: Can we do this better? Whatever it is. I think that’s a pretty natural kind of response, but I’m afraid the educational system doesn’t encourage it.”
In your book, you argue that you can teach creativity. It’s a skill that you can pick up.”
Cleese: I don’t think you can teach creativity, but you can teach people how to set themselves up where they have the greatest chance of their own creativity emerging.”
Let’s talk about the enemies of creativity. You’ve mentioned the educational system that doesn’t facilitate it. Wokeism is an issue that you’ve talked about. How does that stifle creativity?”
Cleese: Because it’s the internal interruption that I was talking about. You think of an idea and you immediately think: “Oooh, is that going to get me into trouble? Well, that person last Thursday got away with it.” But all that stuff immediately stops you being creative.”
Just imagine how much of Monty Python’s material would be censored by today’s standards. Well, first of all, The Life of Brian had protests against it when it initially premired for mocking Christianity. That isn’t a problem for Hollywood any longer, but the “Loretta” scene from above would cause protests. “The Lumberjack Song” would now also be considered transphobic, probably. What about the song “Never Be Rude To An Arab“? Gone for offensive language that only black rap artists are allowed to use.
Comedy is dying and wokeness is driving a stake right in its heart.
John Oliver, Amy Schumer and More Sign Writers Guild DEI Pledge for Late Night and Comedy/Variety TV Writers https://t.co/Wn3hXYrzCG
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 20, 2022
The comedians of today, with notable exceptions, is more intent on making their audiences listen to their message while joking about leftist-approved targets. This is why the left is wringing its hands over Greg Gutfeld’s late night comedy success, horrified that someone, somewhere, might find it funny. Which is exactly the point that John Cleese was making in the larger sense. If you have to stop and wonder if you’re going to offend someone with your creativity, then that grinds everything to a halt. Too many have become more afraid of giving offense, than they are about doing something new or something that might make someone laugh.
Speaking of making someone laugh, John Cleese is still making people laugh decades later (including my seventh grader). That kind of success is something that the woke late-night comedians will never have. If only they had chosen to be creative over being inoffensively woke.
News of the Times;
Approximately Zero:
https://www.city-journal.org/new-cochrane-study-on-masks-and-covid
World War One Disgracefully Lacking In Diversity:
https://vdare.com/posts/guardian-world-war-one-disgracefully-lacking-in-diversity
Dilbert creator Scott Adams is the latest to be canceled:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/dilbert_creator_scott_adams_is_the_latest_to_be_canceled.html
One year on, here's how the Ukraine conflict is changing the world order:
https://www.rt.com/news/571927-war-reshaping-world-order/
Arkansas Police Rule Suicide in Death of Clinton Aide Found Hanging From Tree with Shotgun Blast to Chest:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/arkansas-police-rule-suicide-in-death-of-clinton-aide-found-hanging-from-tree-with-shotgun-blast-to-chest-despite-no-sign-of-gun/
We Are a Nation of Spies, They Think:
https://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/4575/We-Are-a-Nation-of-Spies-They-Think.aspx
Biden's 'woke' agenda for military puts bull's-eye on chaplains:
https://www.wnd.com/2023/02/bidens-woke-agenda-military-puts-bulls-eye-chaplains/
Here’s How Fast Things Have Changed in Brazil Since the Election:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/things-changed-in-brazil/
Some high profile writers at the NY Times are pushing back against the mob:
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/02/21/vanity-fair-some-high-profile-writers-at-the-ny-times-are-pushing-back-against-the-mob-n532284
Two Major Universities Drop “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” Requirements after Backlash:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/winning-two-major-universities-drop-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-requirements-after-backlash/
Rank Innumeracy On The Cost Of Electricity From Renewables:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-2-21-rank-innumeracy-on-the-cost-of-electricity-from-renewables
Electric car fires = Firefighter Nightmares:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tp0FFY4oBsg
6'6'' FL student knocks out teacher for taking his Nintendo away:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/cops-6-6-fl-student-knocks-out-teacher-for-taking-his-nintendo-away/ss-AA17VFZ7
Arizona man beat co-worker to death with a baseball bat:
https://rollingout.com/2023/02/20/arizona-man-beats-coworker-to-death/
Al Sharpton’s Brother Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion, Mail Fraud, Drug Conspiracy Charges:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/al-sharptons-brother-pleads-guilty-to-tax-evasion-mail-fraud-drug-conspiracy-charges-faces-20-years-in-prison/
Tighten all the jar lids in the house super tight.
Eventually, she'll have to talk to you.
*.*
A community orchestra was plagued by attendance problems. Several musicians were absent at each rehearsal. As a matter of fact, every player in the orchestra had missed several rehearsals, except for one very faithful oboe player.
Finally, as the dress rehearsal drew to a close, the conductor took a moment to thank the oboist for her faithful attendance.
She, of course, humbly responded, "It's the least I could do, especially since I won't be at the performance."
*.*
Great news, Mr. Bradley," the psychiatrist reported. "After eighteen months of therapy, I can pronounce you finally and completely cured of your kleptomania. You'll never be trapped by the desire to steal again."
"Gee, that's great, Doc," the patient replied.
"And just to prove it, I want you to stop by the mall on the way home and walk the length of the stores. You'll see that you'll feel no temptation to shoplift whatsoever."
"Oh, Doctor, what can I do to thank you?"
"Well," suggested the psychiatrist, "if you DO have a relapse, I could use a new TV."
*.*
Penguin Publishing is removing the word ‘fat' from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Matilda", to make the books less divisive and more inclusive.
They're replacing "fat" with "enormous."
I wonder what Enormous Head came up with that idea?
*.*
Got home from work today to find my kids have been on eBay all day.
If they are still there tomorrow I will lower the price.
Quote of the Times;
“This should not come as any surprise to anyone with a basic knowledge of history. Every single nation that has ever provided safe harbor to foreign refugees has eventually paid a heavy price in its own blood for doing so, beginning with Egypt and continuing all the way down through the centuries to Sweden and Ukraine today. Every single time. Whereas the ascendancies of Sparta, Spain, Germany, Russia, and now China have all been marked by very different policies.” - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Leaders Seem to Be Using These Disturbing Quotes From Vladimir Lenin as a How-To Manual:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/quotes-vladimir-lenin
Issue of the Times;
John Cleese On Wokeness And Creativity by Deanna Fisher
If you don’t know who John Cleese is, then I don’t know where you have been or what you have found funny over the last five decades. The Monty Python comedian and actor has always been subversive, and it takes a certain personality to “get” the humor that is Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the subsequent movies and shows.
At the time that the Pythons were actively creating content, they managed to offend people with their subversion and their absurdity, or they would lose people that simply didn’t understand their brand of humor. Now, the Pythons are seen as clairvoyant and offensive because they were telling truths that no one wanted to hear. Take this scene from The Life of Brian and marvel at how it predicted the world that we are currently living in.
This 1979 clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian perfectly encapsulates gender ideology in 2022, when pointing out biological reality is “oppression.” pic.twitter.com/YGHtAUqrk6
— Christina Buttons (@buttonslives) October 1, 2022
And the world that we are currently living in, John Cleese now says, is so “woke” that it no longer allows for creativity. This is the same environment that just four years ago said that Monty Python’s Flying Circus would never get made today because the group wasn’t “diverse” enough. In an interview with Nick Gillespie for Reason magazine, Cleese talks about his career in a wide-ranging interview and talks about being creative and making people laugh.
Now 83, Cleese—who studied law at the University of Cambridge—has set his sights on political correctness, which he says is the enemy not only of humor but of creative thinking in all areas of human activity. “There are people sitting there who are deliberately waiting for the thrill of being offended,” he says, emphasizing the importance of paying attention to context, without which irony and sarcasm can’t be properly understood.”
Reason’s Nick Gillespie caught up with Cleese at FreedomFest, an annual July gathering in Las Vegas. Cleese was the keynote speaker, there to discuss creativity, which was the subject of his 2020 book of the same name. It’s a myth “that creativity is something you have to be born with,” he argues, contending that “you can teach people how to create circumstances in which they will become creative.”
In a wide-ranging conversation available on The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, Cleese discusses the importance of freedom of expression to being creative, the difference between solemnity and seriousness, and why creativity remains necessary for the progress of civilization.”
An edited version of the interview can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBf6kJIbXLg
But let’s go over what John Cleese says about wokeness stifling creativity. The interview is worth both watching and reading.
Why is creativity so important for a thriving society?”
Cleese: I think the most natural impulse that people have other than curiosity is to figure out: Can we do this better? Whatever it is. I think that’s a pretty natural kind of response, but I’m afraid the educational system doesn’t encourage it.”
In your book, you argue that you can teach creativity. It’s a skill that you can pick up.”
Cleese: I don’t think you can teach creativity, but you can teach people how to set themselves up where they have the greatest chance of their own creativity emerging.”
Let’s talk about the enemies of creativity. You’ve mentioned the educational system that doesn’t facilitate it. Wokeism is an issue that you’ve talked about. How does that stifle creativity?”
Cleese: Because it’s the internal interruption that I was talking about. You think of an idea and you immediately think: “Oooh, is that going to get me into trouble? Well, that person last Thursday got away with it.” But all that stuff immediately stops you being creative.”
Just imagine how much of Monty Python’s material would be censored by today’s standards. Well, first of all, The Life of Brian had protests against it when it initially premired for mocking Christianity. That isn’t a problem for Hollywood any longer, but the “Loretta” scene from above would cause protests. “The Lumberjack Song” would now also be considered transphobic, probably. What about the song “Never Be Rude To An Arab“? Gone for offensive language that only black rap artists are allowed to use.
Comedy is dying and wokeness is driving a stake right in its heart.
John Oliver, Amy Schumer and More Sign Writers Guild DEI Pledge for Late Night and Comedy/Variety TV Writers https://t.co/Wn3hXYrzCG
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 20, 2022
The comedians of today, with notable exceptions, is more intent on making their audiences listen to their message while joking about leftist-approved targets. This is why the left is wringing its hands over Greg Gutfeld’s late night comedy success, horrified that someone, somewhere, might find it funny. Which is exactly the point that John Cleese was making in the larger sense. If you have to stop and wonder if you’re going to offend someone with your creativity, then that grinds everything to a halt. Too many have become more afraid of giving offense, than they are about doing something new or something that might make someone laugh.
Speaking of making someone laugh, John Cleese is still making people laugh decades later (including my seventh grader). That kind of success is something that the woke late-night comedians will never have. If only they had chosen to be creative over being inoffensively woke.
News of the Times;
Approximately Zero:
https://www.city-journal.org/new-cochrane-study-on-masks-and-covid
World War One Disgracefully Lacking In Diversity:
https://vdare.com/posts/guardian-world-war-one-disgracefully-lacking-in-diversity
Dilbert creator Scott Adams is the latest to be canceled:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/dilbert_creator_scott_adams_is_the_latest_to_be_canceled.html
One year on, here's how the Ukraine conflict is changing the world order:
https://www.rt.com/news/571927-war-reshaping-world-order/
Arkansas Police Rule Suicide in Death of Clinton Aide Found Hanging From Tree with Shotgun Blast to Chest:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/arkansas-police-rule-suicide-in-death-of-clinton-aide-found-hanging-from-tree-with-shotgun-blast-to-chest-despite-no-sign-of-gun/
We Are a Nation of Spies, They Think:
https://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/4575/We-Are-a-Nation-of-Spies-They-Think.aspx
Biden's 'woke' agenda for military puts bull's-eye on chaplains:
https://www.wnd.com/2023/02/bidens-woke-agenda-military-puts-bulls-eye-chaplains/
Here’s How Fast Things Have Changed in Brazil Since the Election:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/things-changed-in-brazil/
Some high profile writers at the NY Times are pushing back against the mob:
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/02/21/vanity-fair-some-high-profile-writers-at-the-ny-times-are-pushing-back-against-the-mob-n532284
Two Major Universities Drop “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” Requirements after Backlash:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/winning-two-major-universities-drop-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-requirements-after-backlash/
Rank Innumeracy On The Cost Of Electricity From Renewables:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-2-21-rank-innumeracy-on-the-cost-of-electricity-from-renewables
Electric car fires = Firefighter Nightmares:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tp0FFY4oBsg
6'6'' FL student knocks out teacher for taking his Nintendo away:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/cops-6-6-fl-student-knocks-out-teacher-for-taking-his-nintendo-away/ss-AA17VFZ7
Arizona man beat co-worker to death with a baseball bat:
https://rollingout.com/2023/02/20/arizona-man-beats-coworker-to-death/
Al Sharpton’s Brother Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion, Mail Fraud, Drug Conspiracy Charges:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/al-sharptons-brother-pleads-guilty-to-tax-evasion-mail-fraud-drug-conspiracy-charges-faces-20-years-in-prison/
Martyr?
Mother Nature keeps hurling out temperatures like they're Powerball numbers: 70, 31, 29, 59 ...
*.*
I just started dating an anesthesiologist.
She's a real knockout!
*.*
So, it's me and an x-ray tech who's around 30.
Me: I'm going to see The Eagles tonight.
Tech: Who?
Me: The Eagles. The 70s rock band.
Tech: That's cool. Which casino they playing at?
*.*
Oneliners:
We don't do this because it's easy, we do this because we thought it would be easy.
The phrase, "Don't take this the wrong way" has a 0% success rate.
Say the letter ‘M' without your lips touching.
Is running late to work considered exercise?
It's amazing when you think about it that, somewhere, out there right now, there's at least one person thinking of a way not to go into work on Monday.
The only time I got a 4.0 in college, it was my blood alcohol content.
Gotta love the irony of a generation that made prank phone calls being terrorized now by robo-calls.
The employee shortage is so severe that now, long-haired freaky people may now apply.
Procaffeinating: the tendency to not start anything until after you've had coffee.
Some things are better left unsaid, which is what I realize just after I said them.
You know, the word ‘listen' contains the same letters as the word, 'silent'?
*.*
I was a flat-earther for 4 years.
Then I turned 5.
Quote of the Times;
"The lowering of the moral values of a nation or ethnic group and the systematic encouragement of vice in it are inherently aggressive and political acts, designed to weaken the spiritual resistance of the national group." – Joyce
Link of the Times;
Presidential Address to Federal Assembly:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/70565
Issue of the Times;
The significance of "Never Apologize"; and the Martyr of Repentance by Bruce Charlton
The totalitarian rulers of the Western world are extremely powerful - especially in destruction.
As well as having control of armies, police, and weapons; they have immense resources of surveillance and propaganda/ 'education'.
Such a combination of capability and cover; means that people, organizations and things can be eliminated with impunity - since even great evils can be ignored, explained-away, or memory-holed.
And yet... There are many evil but expedient eliminations that They do Not do.
They do not simply kill-off all their opponents; despite the continual hysterical clamour that They should eliminate such things; coming from mid-level functionaries-of-evil such as managers, journalists, bureaucrats and others of the almost-wholly-corrupted intellectual middle class.
Why don't They just eliminate their enemies?
The answer is one that the functionaries-of-evil do not understand; which is that from the top-level of global (Western) leadership this is a spiritual war - ultimately.
Therefore; what is sought is not the physical elimination of enemies of evil, but instead their spiritual corruption.
It is often said that They do not kill someone because They do not want to create a martyr. And this is true; but literally not 'metaphorically' true as is usually meant.
When modern people talk of not making a martyr, they mean that a martyr might become a figurehead which could inspire resistance from others. In other words; the level of explanation is this-worldly, and materialist, and to do with social interactions.
But this fear of material-martyrs is probably untrue nowadays; since - apparently - the masses are so demotivated that no thing, no conceivable person or event, will inspire resistance against Them!
No, the problem with The System killing someone Good; is that when a Man accepts death rather than abandon Good when he could have saved himself by succumbing to evil: a literal martyr, a 'spiritual martyr', is the result.
In other words; such a Man 'certainly' attains salvation after biological death: A spiritual martyr chooses salvation and rejects damnation as certainly as we can know about such things, this side of death.
Such an outcome constitutes a disaster for the powers of demonic evil.
From Their perspective this is not just a soul lost to Them; but an enhancement of the power of Goodness; and this is a power that is available (by direct, intuitive apprehension; and through prayer) to inspire and sustain mortal Men on this earth in their own resistance to evil and commitment to Good.
Therefore, when an enemy of The System is identified... When any person resists (in any way) plans of the totalitarian global leadership... The objective is that he should be corrupted, not killed.
This is the deep reason why anyone who tells the truth in a situation when lies are mandatory, or who does the right thing when public compliance with the agenda of evil, is always pressurized to 'apologize'.
And, conversely, the reason why he should Never Apologize.
Because when someone apologizes for saying the truth, or for doing the right thing, or for resisting public displays of support for that which is motivated by evil intent... then that person has been corrupted into taking the side of evil.
When anyone lies publicly, in some way that is expedient for him rather than truthful - that person is corrupted.
When a public figure caves-in to pressure (which may, of course, be immense) - but does not admit he has caved-in, and instead dishonestly rationalizes his behavior as the right thing to do - he is corrupted.
And, in more general terms; anyone who sins and does not repent it - especially if he denies the sin or defends his compliance rather than repenting - then that person has been corrupted.
It is the prevention of repentance that lies at the heart of all these corruptions.
If a public figure caved-in to pressure and behaved without courage, if he also apologized for true things he said and went-along with public displays of support of the Litmus Test agenda items; and if he then lied to cover-up and rationalize all this...
But then repented all of this sequence of sins; for instance stating that this and this was wrong and evil, and that he should not have done them and in doing them had sinned...
Then - by the infinite saving power of repentance - even such a recidivist sinner would be forgiven and washed clean of the stains of sin There-And-Then.
And if such a Man was then killed for having repented: he would become a real martyr, a spiritual martyr.
It seems important for Christians to be clearer about this. There may be heroic martyrs of great personal Goodness and courage; but these are not the only kind of martyr because repentance may also be the cause of martyrdom.
Repentance requires courage, and may lead to martyrdom; and a martyrdom all the more admirable because it is less likely to be recognized publicly - and may be unknown.
A Martyr of Repentance is - nowadays - probably choosing to do the right thing despite very little possibility of recognition or reward on earth; and without any realistic likelihood of inspiring others into resistance to evil.
I suspect that such a martyr of repentance might - for exactly these reasons - be even more spiritually-powerful than a martyr who might reasonably expect to inspire veneration after his death.
Such are the deep spiritual realities behind Vox Day's pragmatically-orientated slogan Never Apologize.
To apologize for thinking, speaking or doing The-Right-Thing, for speaking truth, for offending against the agenda of evil... such is the opposite of repentance.
We are all sinners; and sin over and again all through our lives - because sin is whatever is Not aligned-with God's creation.
Most people in this world are weak in face of social pressure to sin, and are so afraid of the powers of evil that they will not repent - not even in their thoughts (so far as I can tell).
It is this refusal to repent which keeps them in thrall to evil.
Yet if there is one thing that Men may do, which the demonic rulers fear more than anything else in this mortal world; it is surely to accept martyrdom.
"They" will go to vast lengths Not to make martyrs - and will patiently lay siege to virtue with intent to corrupt it to the extent of denying that Good is Good (and instead apologizing for it); to sin while denying the sin and calling it virtue; to induce men to do all this and then not to repent.
We are all sinners; and yet every single one of us possesses the ability to deploy this deadliest anti-evil weapon of repentance; this most feared of outcomes by the demons.
A martyr must be prepared to accept whatever happens, including death, rather than fail to do the right thing.
But, the demons will not willingly create a martyr; will go to great lengths to avoid such an outcome.
Thus faith is indeed a kind of armour - even in this-world; so long as that faith truly is directed at eternal salvation.
It is by our investment in achieving expedient outcomes in this mortal life and world, that the powers of evil corrupt and control us; and lead us to self-chosen damnation through refusal to repent.
Yet, no matter how deep in corruption and no matter the societal pressure towards evil; if a Man can recognize, acknowledge, and repent his sins and accept whatever the consequences - then, at that moment (and for eternity, if martyrdom is his fate), he becomes a light to dazzle The Enemy and push-back the darkness in this world.
News of the Times;
Local Farmer Sounds the Alarm:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/local-farmer-sounds-the-alarm-why-did-east-palestine-launch-myid-emergency-service-to-surveil-biometrics-1-week-before-ohio-train-derailment/
The Poisoning of Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania Is Much Worse Than We Are Being Told:
https://discernreport.com/the-poisoning-of-eastern-ohio-and-western-pennsylvania-is-much-worse-than-we-are-being-told/
Millions of gallons of untreated sewage from Mexico spilling into San Diego:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-02-17-millions-gallons-sewage-mexico-san-diego.html
Despite massive DEI efforts, UMich students report feeling worse about themselves:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/despite-massive-dei-efforts-umich-students-report-feeling-worse-about-themselves/
These are the secret aims of anti-racism statements:
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=21285
Florida murder suspect in unprovoked attack has 21 previous felony convictions, deputies say: 'Cold-blooded':
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-murder-suspect-in-unprovoked-attack-has-21-previous-felony-convictions-deputies-say-cold-blooded/ar-AA17lNdv
High-paying trade jobs sit empty even as college degrees drop in value:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/high-paying-trade-jobs-left-unfilled-as-college-value-declines/
Better to drive drunk than face "two angry women":
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/ukiah-man-not-guilty-17774009.php
Catholic School Pupil Who Voiced Catholic Beliefs on Gender Arrested:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/02/12/catholic-school-pupil-who-voiced-catholic-beliefs-on-gender-arrested/
Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive
To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee?mod=djemalertNEWS
Harvard law journal requires applicants’ race, sexual orientation to submit articles:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-law-journal-requires-applicants-race-sexual-orientation-to-submit-articles/
Advocates of a new education system change their tune:
https://www.city-journal.org/the-rise-of-school-choice
Sen. John Kennedy Slices Up Delusional Climate Alarmist So Badly He’s Left Without Answers And Grinning Like an Idiot:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/believe-tooth-fairy-sen-john-kennedy-slices-delusional-climate-alarmist-badly-left-without-answers-grinning-like-idiot/
Modern Woman Gets Humbled At Relationship Conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkyVDodSxlU
*.*
I just started dating an anesthesiologist.
She's a real knockout!
*.*
So, it's me and an x-ray tech who's around 30.
Me: I'm going to see The Eagles tonight.
Tech: Who?
Me: The Eagles. The 70s rock band.
Tech: That's cool. Which casino they playing at?
*.*
Oneliners:
We don't do this because it's easy, we do this because we thought it would be easy.
The phrase, "Don't take this the wrong way" has a 0% success rate.
Say the letter ‘M' without your lips touching.
Is running late to work considered exercise?
It's amazing when you think about it that, somewhere, out there right now, there's at least one person thinking of a way not to go into work on Monday.
The only time I got a 4.0 in college, it was my blood alcohol content.
Gotta love the irony of a generation that made prank phone calls being terrorized now by robo-calls.
The employee shortage is so severe that now, long-haired freaky people may now apply.
Procaffeinating: the tendency to not start anything until after you've had coffee.
Some things are better left unsaid, which is what I realize just after I said them.
You know, the word ‘listen' contains the same letters as the word, 'silent'?
*.*
I was a flat-earther for 4 years.
Then I turned 5.
Quote of the Times;
"The lowering of the moral values of a nation or ethnic group and the systematic encouragement of vice in it are inherently aggressive and political acts, designed to weaken the spiritual resistance of the national group." – Joyce
Link of the Times;
Presidential Address to Federal Assembly:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/70565
Issue of the Times;
The significance of "Never Apologize"; and the Martyr of Repentance by Bruce Charlton
The totalitarian rulers of the Western world are extremely powerful - especially in destruction.
As well as having control of armies, police, and weapons; they have immense resources of surveillance and propaganda/ 'education'.
Such a combination of capability and cover; means that people, organizations and things can be eliminated with impunity - since even great evils can be ignored, explained-away, or memory-holed.
And yet... There are many evil but expedient eliminations that They do Not do.
They do not simply kill-off all their opponents; despite the continual hysterical clamour that They should eliminate such things; coming from mid-level functionaries-of-evil such as managers, journalists, bureaucrats and others of the almost-wholly-corrupted intellectual middle class.
Why don't They just eliminate their enemies?
The answer is one that the functionaries-of-evil do not understand; which is that from the top-level of global (Western) leadership this is a spiritual war - ultimately.
Therefore; what is sought is not the physical elimination of enemies of evil, but instead their spiritual corruption.
It is often said that They do not kill someone because They do not want to create a martyr. And this is true; but literally not 'metaphorically' true as is usually meant.
When modern people talk of not making a martyr, they mean that a martyr might become a figurehead which could inspire resistance from others. In other words; the level of explanation is this-worldly, and materialist, and to do with social interactions.
But this fear of material-martyrs is probably untrue nowadays; since - apparently - the masses are so demotivated that no thing, no conceivable person or event, will inspire resistance against Them!
No, the problem with The System killing someone Good; is that when a Man accepts death rather than abandon Good when he could have saved himself by succumbing to evil: a literal martyr, a 'spiritual martyr', is the result.
In other words; such a Man 'certainly' attains salvation after biological death: A spiritual martyr chooses salvation and rejects damnation as certainly as we can know about such things, this side of death.
Such an outcome constitutes a disaster for the powers of demonic evil.
From Their perspective this is not just a soul lost to Them; but an enhancement of the power of Goodness; and this is a power that is available (by direct, intuitive apprehension; and through prayer) to inspire and sustain mortal Men on this earth in their own resistance to evil and commitment to Good.
Therefore, when an enemy of The System is identified... When any person resists (in any way) plans of the totalitarian global leadership... The objective is that he should be corrupted, not killed.
This is the deep reason why anyone who tells the truth in a situation when lies are mandatory, or who does the right thing when public compliance with the agenda of evil, is always pressurized to 'apologize'.
And, conversely, the reason why he should Never Apologize.
Because when someone apologizes for saying the truth, or for doing the right thing, or for resisting public displays of support for that which is motivated by evil intent... then that person has been corrupted into taking the side of evil.
When anyone lies publicly, in some way that is expedient for him rather than truthful - that person is corrupted.
When a public figure caves-in to pressure (which may, of course, be immense) - but does not admit he has caved-in, and instead dishonestly rationalizes his behavior as the right thing to do - he is corrupted.
And, in more general terms; anyone who sins and does not repent it - especially if he denies the sin or defends his compliance rather than repenting - then that person has been corrupted.
It is the prevention of repentance that lies at the heart of all these corruptions.
If a public figure caved-in to pressure and behaved without courage, if he also apologized for true things he said and went-along with public displays of support of the Litmus Test agenda items; and if he then lied to cover-up and rationalize all this...
But then repented all of this sequence of sins; for instance stating that this and this was wrong and evil, and that he should not have done them and in doing them had sinned...
Then - by the infinite saving power of repentance - even such a recidivist sinner would be forgiven and washed clean of the stains of sin There-And-Then.
And if such a Man was then killed for having repented: he would become a real martyr, a spiritual martyr.
It seems important for Christians to be clearer about this. There may be heroic martyrs of great personal Goodness and courage; but these are not the only kind of martyr because repentance may also be the cause of martyrdom.
Repentance requires courage, and may lead to martyrdom; and a martyrdom all the more admirable because it is less likely to be recognized publicly - and may be unknown.
A Martyr of Repentance is - nowadays - probably choosing to do the right thing despite very little possibility of recognition or reward on earth; and without any realistic likelihood of inspiring others into resistance to evil.
I suspect that such a martyr of repentance might - for exactly these reasons - be even more spiritually-powerful than a martyr who might reasonably expect to inspire veneration after his death.
Such are the deep spiritual realities behind Vox Day's pragmatically-orientated slogan Never Apologize.
To apologize for thinking, speaking or doing The-Right-Thing, for speaking truth, for offending against the agenda of evil... such is the opposite of repentance.
We are all sinners; and sin over and again all through our lives - because sin is whatever is Not aligned-with God's creation.
Most people in this world are weak in face of social pressure to sin, and are so afraid of the powers of evil that they will not repent - not even in their thoughts (so far as I can tell).
It is this refusal to repent which keeps them in thrall to evil.
Yet if there is one thing that Men may do, which the demonic rulers fear more than anything else in this mortal world; it is surely to accept martyrdom.
"They" will go to vast lengths Not to make martyrs - and will patiently lay siege to virtue with intent to corrupt it to the extent of denying that Good is Good (and instead apologizing for it); to sin while denying the sin and calling it virtue; to induce men to do all this and then not to repent.
We are all sinners; and yet every single one of us possesses the ability to deploy this deadliest anti-evil weapon of repentance; this most feared of outcomes by the demons.
A martyr must be prepared to accept whatever happens, including death, rather than fail to do the right thing.
But, the demons will not willingly create a martyr; will go to great lengths to avoid such an outcome.
Thus faith is indeed a kind of armour - even in this-world; so long as that faith truly is directed at eternal salvation.
It is by our investment in achieving expedient outcomes in this mortal life and world, that the powers of evil corrupt and control us; and lead us to self-chosen damnation through refusal to repent.
Yet, no matter how deep in corruption and no matter the societal pressure towards evil; if a Man can recognize, acknowledge, and repent his sins and accept whatever the consequences - then, at that moment (and for eternity, if martyrdom is his fate), he becomes a light to dazzle The Enemy and push-back the darkness in this world.
News of the Times;
Local Farmer Sounds the Alarm:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/local-farmer-sounds-the-alarm-why-did-east-palestine-launch-myid-emergency-service-to-surveil-biometrics-1-week-before-ohio-train-derailment/
The Poisoning of Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania Is Much Worse Than We Are Being Told:
https://discernreport.com/the-poisoning-of-eastern-ohio-and-western-pennsylvania-is-much-worse-than-we-are-being-told/
Millions of gallons of untreated sewage from Mexico spilling into San Diego:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-02-17-millions-gallons-sewage-mexico-san-diego.html
Despite massive DEI efforts, UMich students report feeling worse about themselves:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/despite-massive-dei-efforts-umich-students-report-feeling-worse-about-themselves/
These are the secret aims of anti-racism statements:
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=21285
Florida murder suspect in unprovoked attack has 21 previous felony convictions, deputies say: 'Cold-blooded':
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-murder-suspect-in-unprovoked-attack-has-21-previous-felony-convictions-deputies-say-cold-blooded/ar-AA17lNdv
High-paying trade jobs sit empty even as college degrees drop in value:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/high-paying-trade-jobs-left-unfilled-as-college-value-declines/
Better to drive drunk than face "two angry women":
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/ukiah-man-not-guilty-17774009.php
Catholic School Pupil Who Voiced Catholic Beliefs on Gender Arrested:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/02/12/catholic-school-pupil-who-voiced-catholic-beliefs-on-gender-arrested/
Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive
To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee?mod=djemalertNEWS
Harvard law journal requires applicants’ race, sexual orientation to submit articles:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-law-journal-requires-applicants-race-sexual-orientation-to-submit-articles/
Advocates of a new education system change their tune:
https://www.city-journal.org/the-rise-of-school-choice
Sen. John Kennedy Slices Up Delusional Climate Alarmist So Badly He’s Left Without Answers And Grinning Like an Idiot:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/believe-tooth-fairy-sen-john-kennedy-slices-delusional-climate-alarmist-badly-left-without-answers-grinning-like-idiot/
Modern Woman Gets Humbled At Relationship Conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkyVDodSxlU
Contagion?
Quitting Social Media is the adult version of running away from home.
We all know you do it for attention, and you'll be back soon.
*.*
My wife: You need to do more chores around the house.
Me: Can we change the subject?
My wife: Ok, more chores around the house need to be done by you.
*.*
The six year old daughter enjoyed asking questions. She enjoyed asking lots of questions. Finally, one day, the girl's mom had had enough. "Have you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat?" asked the mom.
"No," replied the girl.
"There was once a cat who was very inquisitive. One day, this cat looked into a big whole, fell in, and died!"
The little girl just stood there quietly, deep in her own thoughts. There was a pause. "So what was in the hole?"
*.*
Top 5 Signs that you Travel Agent is not very good:
Just booked your cruise to Las Vegas.
He spelled Europe with a ‘Y'.
Just asked, "How do you feel about cattle cars?"
Picks connecting flights using the "Eeny! Miney! Mo" method.
Just said, "England? Never heard of it!"
*.*
Exercise can add more years to your life.
I just ran a mile and I already feel like I'm 82.
Quote of the Times;
The West had three components: Christianity, the European nations, and the Greco-Roman philosophical legacy. All three of these components have been abjured and significantly adulterated by the current rulers of Clown World. - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Politics of Transgenderism:
http://www.familyresearchinst.org/
Issue of the Times;
American kids are in the grip of a gender contagion by Mary Harrington
American kids are in the grip of a gender contagion. New research from the Ethics and Public Policy Center reveals that the number of prescriptions for puberty blockers to under-18s doubled between 2017 and 2021.
The data, based on information gathered from insurers, provide the clearest picture to date of the booming industry of gender butchery being practiced on American minors.
In this medical Wild West, a well-oiled campaigning machine with tentacles into nonprofits, schools and even the White House recruits healthy kids and spits out sterilized simulacra of the opposite sex, often with lifelong health issues.
Concerned parents, meanwhile, are bullied into compliance with threats of suicide — and the “treatments” themselves don’t even make their victims happier. A recent study by the UK campaign group Sex Matters found puberty blockers and hormone treatments do no more to improve teens’ mental health than a placebo.
And yet, as the EPPC numbers show, demand continues to soar. Why? The driver seems to be a toxic blend of teen angst, educator activism and Internet addiction.
Puberty is often tough, and most teens are now exposed to hardcore porn at a young age via smartphones. Many add this corrupted picture of sexual relations to mental health and body issues — then seize on “LGBTQ+” activism in schools and the wider culture as a refuge.
Digging deep for a rainbow “identity” of their own, many more stumble upon forums and YouTube influencers that inspire with “before” and “after” images and tales of how transition will take all the angst and pain away.
New research from the Ethics and Public Policy Center reveals that the number of prescriptions for puberty blockers to under-18s doubled between 2017 and 2021.
It’s no coincidence that in the decade since smartphones became widespread, the number of kids identifying as trans has rocketed. And over the same period the gender breakdown has reversed, from mostly boys to overwhelmingly girls, a group historically prone to body issues and social contagions.
But the scandal isn’t miserable Internet-poisoned teens, worrying though that is. It’s the adults flocking to cash in on their confusion and pain.
Speaking as a Brit, what I admire about the American insurance-based system is the freedom it grants both patients and innovators to push the envelope with new treatments. But the downside of that freedom is that it also leaves plenty of room for quacks and shysters.
And nowhere will you find more of these than in the booming field of gender “medicine,” where the pickings are rich and regulation disturbingly light. According to Global Market Insights, the market in trans medicine is predicted to be worth $1.5 billion worldwide by 2026. Gender surgery alone can cost $30,000.
And when hormone treatment costs upward of $1,500 a year, for life, you’d be crazy not to catch them young. No wonder providers are suddenly everywhere: The first American pediatric gender clinic opened in 2007, and there are now more than 50.
And there’s more. Per a recent report from the American Principles Project, Big Pharma firms such as AbbVie, which makes puberty blockers, dig deep to ensure nothing gets in the way of this lucrative market, by donating to lawmakers and nonprofits — many of which go on to campaign for measures that further entrench gender medicine.
What happens to the kids lured into the maw of this monster? Before their brains are even fully developed, they’re taking drugs that will permanently change them — whether they regret it or not. Lupron, the cancer drug used off-label to “block” normal puberty, has side effects including brittle bones, cognitive impairment and even blindness.
And combined with cross-sex hormones, Lupron causes irreversible infertility — in kids too young even to know if they’ll ever want to be parents.
Consider the hypocrisy of President Biden’s principal in-house gender cheerleader, Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who is transgender.
“If I had transitioned when I was young then I wouldn’t have my children. I can’t imagine a life without my children,” Levine said in a recent interview.
Yet the assistant health secretary is an advocate for “gender affirming” care, which too often allows a child to decide what to do when still too young to vote, drink or buy a gun. They won’t have the choice to reproduce if they transition then.
And if you think parents are still trusted to veto bad decisions on their kids’ behalf, think again: New policies encourage teachers and social workers to “help” the child while keeping their mom and dad out of the loop.
Advocates refuse to admit that the sharp rise in the use of puberty blockers may not be due to pent-up demand, but because of peer pressure, anorexia and mental-health challenges besides gender dysphoria. And that therapy — not drugs — is the better answer for most teens.
Some of these kids later regret their mutilation. California teen Chloe Cole, now 18, underwent a double mastectomy at 15 after falling into a trans identity in early adolescence via online groups. She is now suing Kaiser Permanente, the medical group that performed these surgeries, for gross negligence.
Let’s hope she succeeds. For if the freedom baked into American health care is now running wild in the predatory gender-industrial complex, perhaps another great American institution will take it down: lawfare. Surely nothing can stop the white-coated vultures feasting on American teen unhappiness, save the fear of eye-watering compensation payouts. Let the court cases begin.
News of the Times;
Norfolk Southern: Too Much Greed and Too Little Care:
https://victorygirlsblog.com/norfolk-southern-too-much-greed-and-too-little-care/
All the Transportation Scandals on Pete Buttigieg's Watch:
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/pete-buttigieg-train-wreck-scandal/
To defeat woke tyrants, the rest of us must treat them like the monsters they are:
https://nypost.com/2021/03/11/to-beat-woke-tyrants-rest-of-us-must-treat-them-like-monsters/
George Soros Takes an Integrated, Long-Game Approach to Destroying Gun Rights:
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/chaos-theory-george-soros-takes-an-integrated-long-game-approach-to-destroying-gun-rights/
DOMINION Voting Systems Knew Its Voting Systems Had Major Security Issues:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/breaking-sht-just-riddled-bugs-fox-news-filing-shows-dominion-knew-voting-systems-major-security-issues/
Business Partner Who Reported Pennsylvania Mom Missing Arrested For Murder:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/business-partner-reported-pennsylvania-mom-missing-arrested-murder/
Del Rio Sector Agents Arrest Two Child Sex Offenders Convicted of Sexual Assault and Intent to Rape:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/del-rio-sector-agents-arrest-two-child-sex-offenders-convicted-sexual
Priest rebukes Pope Francis for calling to decriminalize sodomy: "Do you belong to Christ, or to Sodom?":
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/priest-rebukes-pope-francis-for-calling-to-decriminalize-sodomy-do-you-belong-to-christ-or-to-sodom/
Testosterone Treatment Turns Democrat Voters More Conservative:
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/18/ncreased-testosterone-levels-turns-voters-more-conservative/
Thugs Jump Young Woman, She Leaves Them Begging For Mercy:
https://ussanews.com/2023/02/09/thugs-jump-young-woman-she-leaves-them-begging-for-mercy/
Senior Rotherham councillors ‘knew and stayed silent’ about town’s Muslim rape gangs scandal:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/02/uk-senior-rotherham-councillors-knew-and-stayed-silent-about-towns-muslim-rape-gangs-scandal
Oakland Baker Dragged 50 Feet While Chasing Thieves, Dies At Hospital:
https://www.ibtimes.com/who-was-jennifer-angel-oakland-baker-dragged-50-feet-while-chasing-thieves-dies-hospital-3666608
Ubisoft Partners With Police to Jail Gamers For Their In-Game Speech:
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63591
Applicants for university’s janitor job openings required to submit DEI statement:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/applicants-for-universitys-janitor-job-openings-required-to-submit-dei-statement/
Isolating the Earners & Debt Economy: The world starts to feel the pain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeBPjr31Dew
We all know you do it for attention, and you'll be back soon.
*.*
My wife: You need to do more chores around the house.
Me: Can we change the subject?
My wife: Ok, more chores around the house need to be done by you.
*.*
The six year old daughter enjoyed asking questions. She enjoyed asking lots of questions. Finally, one day, the girl's mom had had enough. "Have you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat?" asked the mom.
"No," replied the girl.
"There was once a cat who was very inquisitive. One day, this cat looked into a big whole, fell in, and died!"
The little girl just stood there quietly, deep in her own thoughts. There was a pause. "So what was in the hole?"
*.*
Top 5 Signs that you Travel Agent is not very good:
Just booked your cruise to Las Vegas.
He spelled Europe with a ‘Y'.
Just asked, "How do you feel about cattle cars?"
Picks connecting flights using the "Eeny! Miney! Mo" method.
Just said, "England? Never heard of it!"
*.*
Exercise can add more years to your life.
I just ran a mile and I already feel like I'm 82.
Quote of the Times;
The West had three components: Christianity, the European nations, and the Greco-Roman philosophical legacy. All three of these components have been abjured and significantly adulterated by the current rulers of Clown World. - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Politics of Transgenderism:
http://www.familyresearchinst.org/
Issue of the Times;
American kids are in the grip of a gender contagion by Mary Harrington
American kids are in the grip of a gender contagion. New research from the Ethics and Public Policy Center reveals that the number of prescriptions for puberty blockers to under-18s doubled between 2017 and 2021.
The data, based on information gathered from insurers, provide the clearest picture to date of the booming industry of gender butchery being practiced on American minors.
In this medical Wild West, a well-oiled campaigning machine with tentacles into nonprofits, schools and even the White House recruits healthy kids and spits out sterilized simulacra of the opposite sex, often with lifelong health issues.
Concerned parents, meanwhile, are bullied into compliance with threats of suicide — and the “treatments” themselves don’t even make their victims happier. A recent study by the UK campaign group Sex Matters found puberty blockers and hormone treatments do no more to improve teens’ mental health than a placebo.
And yet, as the EPPC numbers show, demand continues to soar. Why? The driver seems to be a toxic blend of teen angst, educator activism and Internet addiction.
Puberty is often tough, and most teens are now exposed to hardcore porn at a young age via smartphones. Many add this corrupted picture of sexual relations to mental health and body issues — then seize on “LGBTQ+” activism in schools and the wider culture as a refuge.
Digging deep for a rainbow “identity” of their own, many more stumble upon forums and YouTube influencers that inspire with “before” and “after” images and tales of how transition will take all the angst and pain away.
New research from the Ethics and Public Policy Center reveals that the number of prescriptions for puberty blockers to under-18s doubled between 2017 and 2021.
It’s no coincidence that in the decade since smartphones became widespread, the number of kids identifying as trans has rocketed. And over the same period the gender breakdown has reversed, from mostly boys to overwhelmingly girls, a group historically prone to body issues and social contagions.
But the scandal isn’t miserable Internet-poisoned teens, worrying though that is. It’s the adults flocking to cash in on their confusion and pain.
Speaking as a Brit, what I admire about the American insurance-based system is the freedom it grants both patients and innovators to push the envelope with new treatments. But the downside of that freedom is that it also leaves plenty of room for quacks and shysters.
And nowhere will you find more of these than in the booming field of gender “medicine,” where the pickings are rich and regulation disturbingly light. According to Global Market Insights, the market in trans medicine is predicted to be worth $1.5 billion worldwide by 2026. Gender surgery alone can cost $30,000.
And when hormone treatment costs upward of $1,500 a year, for life, you’d be crazy not to catch them young. No wonder providers are suddenly everywhere: The first American pediatric gender clinic opened in 2007, and there are now more than 50.
And there’s more. Per a recent report from the American Principles Project, Big Pharma firms such as AbbVie, which makes puberty blockers, dig deep to ensure nothing gets in the way of this lucrative market, by donating to lawmakers and nonprofits — many of which go on to campaign for measures that further entrench gender medicine.
What happens to the kids lured into the maw of this monster? Before their brains are even fully developed, they’re taking drugs that will permanently change them — whether they regret it or not. Lupron, the cancer drug used off-label to “block” normal puberty, has side effects including brittle bones, cognitive impairment and even blindness.
And combined with cross-sex hormones, Lupron causes irreversible infertility — in kids too young even to know if they’ll ever want to be parents.
Consider the hypocrisy of President Biden’s principal in-house gender cheerleader, Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who is transgender.
“If I had transitioned when I was young then I wouldn’t have my children. I can’t imagine a life without my children,” Levine said in a recent interview.
Yet the assistant health secretary is an advocate for “gender affirming” care, which too often allows a child to decide what to do when still too young to vote, drink or buy a gun. They won’t have the choice to reproduce if they transition then.
And if you think parents are still trusted to veto bad decisions on their kids’ behalf, think again: New policies encourage teachers and social workers to “help” the child while keeping their mom and dad out of the loop.
Advocates refuse to admit that the sharp rise in the use of puberty blockers may not be due to pent-up demand, but because of peer pressure, anorexia and mental-health challenges besides gender dysphoria. And that therapy — not drugs — is the better answer for most teens.
Some of these kids later regret their mutilation. California teen Chloe Cole, now 18, underwent a double mastectomy at 15 after falling into a trans identity in early adolescence via online groups. She is now suing Kaiser Permanente, the medical group that performed these surgeries, for gross negligence.
Let’s hope she succeeds. For if the freedom baked into American health care is now running wild in the predatory gender-industrial complex, perhaps another great American institution will take it down: lawfare. Surely nothing can stop the white-coated vultures feasting on American teen unhappiness, save the fear of eye-watering compensation payouts. Let the court cases begin.
News of the Times;
Norfolk Southern: Too Much Greed and Too Little Care:
https://victorygirlsblog.com/norfolk-southern-too-much-greed-and-too-little-care/
All the Transportation Scandals on Pete Buttigieg's Watch:
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/pete-buttigieg-train-wreck-scandal/
To defeat woke tyrants, the rest of us must treat them like the monsters they are:
https://nypost.com/2021/03/11/to-beat-woke-tyrants-rest-of-us-must-treat-them-like-monsters/
George Soros Takes an Integrated, Long-Game Approach to Destroying Gun Rights:
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/chaos-theory-george-soros-takes-an-integrated-long-game-approach-to-destroying-gun-rights/
DOMINION Voting Systems Knew Its Voting Systems Had Major Security Issues:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/breaking-sht-just-riddled-bugs-fox-news-filing-shows-dominion-knew-voting-systems-major-security-issues/
Business Partner Who Reported Pennsylvania Mom Missing Arrested For Murder:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/business-partner-reported-pennsylvania-mom-missing-arrested-murder/
Del Rio Sector Agents Arrest Two Child Sex Offenders Convicted of Sexual Assault and Intent to Rape:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/del-rio-sector-agents-arrest-two-child-sex-offenders-convicted-sexual
Priest rebukes Pope Francis for calling to decriminalize sodomy: "Do you belong to Christ, or to Sodom?":
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/priest-rebukes-pope-francis-for-calling-to-decriminalize-sodomy-do-you-belong-to-christ-or-to-sodom/
Testosterone Treatment Turns Democrat Voters More Conservative:
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/18/ncreased-testosterone-levels-turns-voters-more-conservative/
Thugs Jump Young Woman, She Leaves Them Begging For Mercy:
https://ussanews.com/2023/02/09/thugs-jump-young-woman-she-leaves-them-begging-for-mercy/
Senior Rotherham councillors ‘knew and stayed silent’ about town’s Muslim rape gangs scandal:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/02/uk-senior-rotherham-councillors-knew-and-stayed-silent-about-towns-muslim-rape-gangs-scandal
Oakland Baker Dragged 50 Feet While Chasing Thieves, Dies At Hospital:
https://www.ibtimes.com/who-was-jennifer-angel-oakland-baker-dragged-50-feet-while-chasing-thieves-dies-hospital-3666608
Ubisoft Partners With Police to Jail Gamers For Their In-Game Speech:
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63591
Applicants for university’s janitor job openings required to submit DEI statement:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/applicants-for-universitys-janitor-job-openings-required-to-submit-dei-statement/
Isolating the Earners & Debt Economy: The world starts to feel the pain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeBPjr31Dew
Magical?
Every once in a while, I go outside and run the vacuum over the driveway.
Makes sure none of the neighbors ever talk to me.
*.*
For those who need to hear this: The Olive Garden is NOT a fancy restaurant.
It's an overpriced Italian Denny's.
*.*
Petty Officer 2nd class Cristina Lopez-Padilla is innovating her approach to recruiting with one shocking item: a dozen fresh eggs. Recruiters have been known in the past to entice, or outright lie, to prospective recruits with the promise of $10,000, a brand-new Dodge Charger, or skills that can actually translate to work outside of the military.
Following news of rising inflation levels, the U.S. hitting the debt ceiling, and bird flu creating poultry shortages, Petty Officer Lopez-Padilla saw a golden goose opportunity and implemented a program called “Yolks for young folks.” Offering potential Sailors eggs as a “sign-on” bonus has allowed her to beat recruiting numbers from her peers in local Marine, Army, and Air Force recruiting offices.
“At first, they thought I was forging my numbers,” said Lopez-Padilla. “I had NCIS and IG coming in here clucking a lot after starting Yolks for Young Folks, but I was able to soothe their ruffled feathers once I explained the program's impetus.”
Lopez-Padilla began recruiting in San Diego in November 2022, just before Thanksgiving. She noticed quickly that food prices were skyrocketing, and eggs in particular had increased in price by about 60% since the same time the previous year. At first, this just seemed to be an unfortunate fact of life, but then she came across a news article about famines and shortages in the USSR.
“I read about how so many people were starving to death in Russia, but if you joined the Soviet army, they would give you bread, and I thought to myself, ‘Why do the Soviets get all the good ideas? We should do something like that!’” declared Lopez-Padilla proudly.
This stroke of genius is set to make her recruiting office the most successful in the area by the end of the fiscal year. In mid-January, she received a letter from the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, celebrating her ingenuity. Lopez-Padilla sees things, including the cost of eggs, only going up from here.
*.*
Here's a case of serious karma: In West Virginia, the home of a man who is accused of embezzling money from the Chapmanville Volunteer Fire Department caught on fire Monday afternoon.
I can't imagine there was a big rush to put it out.
*.*
My momma didn't raise a fool.
A psycho, maybe, but not a fool.
Quote of the Times;
You want to see multiculturalism in action? Look at Yugoslavia, at Lebanon, at Sri Lanka, at Northern Ireland, at Azerbaijan, or wherever else group “identity” has been hyped. There is no point in the multiculturalists’ saying that this is not what they have in mind. You might as well open the floodgates and then say that you don’t mean for people to drown. Once you have opened the floodgates, you can’t tell the water what to do. - Thomas Sowell
Link of the Times;
What the Media Can’t – Or Won’t – Tell Us About Armed Self Defense:
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/what-the-media-cant-or-wont-tell-us-about-armed-self-defense/
Issue of the Times;
Magical Thinking About The Post-Floyd Crime Surge by Ann Coulter
Ancient primitives—or as we now call them, “Indigenous people whose land we stole”—believed in talismans, voodoo, rain dances and other versions of “A preceded B, so A caused B.” Today, we consider such reasoning classic fallacy. Except at the New York Times.
First, you need to understand that the Times is no longer a newspaper, but more of a shaman. The paper used to report news. Anyone reading it for information these days might as well pull into a gas station and expect the nice man in a crisp white shirt to dash out and pump his gas.
Much like a Starfish tuna factory, the news comes in, then has to be cleaned, chopped up, soaked in oil and tightly packed into a tin can. If you peered into the Times’ back room, you’d find hundreds of woke scriveners repacking the news to fit the narrative.
Second, an urgent cleanup operation was needed to explain the paroxysm of violence that followed 2020’s anti-cop mania pushed at places like the Times. It simply could not stand to have people imagine that revering criminals while anathematizing the police would have any effect on the crime rate.
No, that wouldn’t do. The facts had to be retrofitted into an alternative narrative. What was the best backup explanation? The pandemic!
Attributing the massive crime wave to the pandemic solved two problems that would have arisen had the Times simply reported the facts: the upsurge in black crime, and the Times’ active encouragement of such.
Unfortunately, doing a rain dance to bring rain is quantum mechanics compared to the Times’ cause-and-effect theory about ”The Pandemic” inciting the post-George Floyd violence.
Here are the facts.
During the first few months of the pandemic, violent crime plummeted everywhere. You couldn’t have missed it. The Washington Post, Politico, Voice of America, Cambridge University, and on and on and on—even the Times itself!—reported that violent crime had virtually disappeared in cities around the world due to the COVID shutdowns.
And then on May 25, a fentanyl addict with a bad ticker died in police custody in Minneapolis, whereupon the depolicing demands of Black Lives Matter swept the nation with the active encouragement of all organs of elite liberal opinion, especially the Times.
Cops, the only people who seem to really believe “black lives matter,” risking their lives to bring safety to dangerous neighborhoods, were viciously slandered and kneecapped at every turn. Again, especially by the Times.
You’ll never guess what happened next.
After going into free fall during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, homicides and aggravated assaults in the U.S. rose by about 35% from Floyd’s death to the end of June. Burglaries, mostly commercial, shot up by an eye-popping 190% the last week of May—the height of looting during the “mostly peaceful protests.”
Other countries, also affected by the pandemic, saw no such rise in violent crime.
During the Summer of Floyd, murders increased by 42% in the 21 largest U.S. cities. By the end of 2020, the national murder rate had increased by 30%. That’s double the next largest hike on record, in 1968, the heyday of the country’s last experiment with liberal crime policies, when the murder rate rose by a comparatively paltry 12.7%.
Rarely has data on any change in human behavior been so clearly demarcated as it is in the crime rate pre- and post-George Floyd’s death.
Blacks—you know, the people whose lives allegedly “matter”—bore the brunt of this orgy of violence. The CDC reports, for example, that firearm murders of black people surged by nearly 40% in 2020, the greatest increase of any demographic group.
It’s understandable that the very same news outlets fanning the flames of anti-police hysteria in the wake of Floyd’s martyrdom—directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of black people—would want to shift blame to “The Pandemic.” But witch doctors have more empirical evidence for their diagnoses than the Times does for its repeated pronouncements that the pandemic caused violent crime.
At least voodoo practitioners probably believed their magical thinking. The Times’ Tourette-like hectoring about the pandemic proves the paper is lying and knows it’s lying. Nothing true needs to be endlessly repeated with such tenacity. (See also: “Climate Change.”)
In an article this week on the skyrocketing crime on New York City subways, Times reporter Ana Ley blamed the pandemic nearly a dozen times for the explosion of violence—violence that inexplicably began 10 weeks into the pandemic, but immediately after May 25, 2020.
E.g.:
“... an uptick in subway crime during the pandemic ...”
“... safety concerns, which climbed among passengers during the pandemic ...”
“... safety on public transit had gotten worse since the pandemic began ...”
“... she has stopped riding the subway past 6 p.m. during the pandemic.”
It’s as if the Times has a typewriter key “during the pandemic” that must be inserted into any sentence mentioning “crime.”
It’s hard to make yourself stupid enough to come up with a similar post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, but how about right-wingers start attributing mass shootings to ”the Clinton presidency”?
... an uptick in mass shootings that began during the Clinton presidency...
...mass shootings, which climbed during the Clinton presidency...
...mass shootings have become more common since the Clinton presidency...
...dance studio says it will reopen after 67th Clinton-era mass shooting...
...as mass shootings continue, Hillary Clinton struggles to talk about other issues...
At the Times, the pandemic is a sorcerer’s hex, the cause of violent crime. For unfathomable reasons, it just takes a few months to kick in. The COVID god works in mysterious ways.
News of the Times;
The Organism:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=29344
Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”:
https://simonwillison.net/2023/Feb/15/bing/#threats
CDC Boss: "It’s Time To Kill White People Who Refuse Vaccines":
https://newspunch.com/cdc-boss-its-time-to-kill-white-people-who-refuse-vaccines/
How the US national security state is using coronavirus to fulfill an Orwellian vision:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-state-using-coronavirus-push-artificial-intelligence-driven-mass-surveillance/266820/
Did You Notice What’s Ironic About the Dems’ Fears Over the House GOP Investigating the FBI:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/02/10/hearing-on-the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-n2619293
After The Worst January Job Cuts ‘Since The Great Recession’, Here Are 12 Major Layoffs Announced:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/after-the-worst-january-job-cuts-since-the-great-recession-here-are-12-major-layoffs-that-have-already-been-announced-in-february/
US economy, debt mean other nations must diversify reserves:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1285630.shtml
The War on Cash Intensifies: Visa Offers Restaurants $10,000 to Go Cashless:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/war-cash-intensifies-visa-offers-restaurants-10-000-go-cashless-n782276
Millions Of Americans Face "Hunger Cliff" As 32 States Set To Slash Emergency Food Stamp Benefits:
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/millions-americans-face-hunger-cliff-32-states-set-slash-emergency-food-stamp
What's driving the rise of catalytic converter theft:
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/04/22/catalytic-converters-cars-theft
US credit-card debt increased by the most in 20 years:
https://unusualwhales.com/news/us-credit-card-debt-increased-by-the-most-in-20-years
So Much For Billionaires: Joe Biden's IRS Is Now Coming For Waiters And Waitresses' Tips:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/so-much-billionaires-joe-bidens-irs-now-coming-waiters-and-waitresses-tips
43% of rural hospitals are in the red: 6 things to know:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/43-of-rural-hospitals-are-in-the-red-6-things-to-know.html
Global warming cult says surgery patients should receive less anesthesia to save the planet:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-02-07-global-warming-cult-less-anesthesia-save-planet.html
Army Now Trains for Combat Like a Stress Free, Gentle, Low Stakes Fat Camp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EcDVfv0BPo
Makes sure none of the neighbors ever talk to me.
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For those who need to hear this: The Olive Garden is NOT a fancy restaurant.
It's an overpriced Italian Denny's.
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Petty Officer 2nd class Cristina Lopez-Padilla is innovating her approach to recruiting with one shocking item: a dozen fresh eggs. Recruiters have been known in the past to entice, or outright lie, to prospective recruits with the promise of $10,000, a brand-new Dodge Charger, or skills that can actually translate to work outside of the military.
Following news of rising inflation levels, the U.S. hitting the debt ceiling, and bird flu creating poultry shortages, Petty Officer Lopez-Padilla saw a golden goose opportunity and implemented a program called “Yolks for young folks.” Offering potential Sailors eggs as a “sign-on” bonus has allowed her to beat recruiting numbers from her peers in local Marine, Army, and Air Force recruiting offices.
“At first, they thought I was forging my numbers,” said Lopez-Padilla. “I had NCIS and IG coming in here clucking a lot after starting Yolks for Young Folks, but I was able to soothe their ruffled feathers once I explained the program's impetus.”
Lopez-Padilla began recruiting in San Diego in November 2022, just before Thanksgiving. She noticed quickly that food prices were skyrocketing, and eggs in particular had increased in price by about 60% since the same time the previous year. At first, this just seemed to be an unfortunate fact of life, but then she came across a news article about famines and shortages in the USSR.
“I read about how so many people were starving to death in Russia, but if you joined the Soviet army, they would give you bread, and I thought to myself, ‘Why do the Soviets get all the good ideas? We should do something like that!’” declared Lopez-Padilla proudly.
This stroke of genius is set to make her recruiting office the most successful in the area by the end of the fiscal year. In mid-January, she received a letter from the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, celebrating her ingenuity. Lopez-Padilla sees things, including the cost of eggs, only going up from here.
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Here's a case of serious karma: In West Virginia, the home of a man who is accused of embezzling money from the Chapmanville Volunteer Fire Department caught on fire Monday afternoon.
I can't imagine there was a big rush to put it out.
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My momma didn't raise a fool.
A psycho, maybe, but not a fool.
Quote of the Times;
You want to see multiculturalism in action? Look at Yugoslavia, at Lebanon, at Sri Lanka, at Northern Ireland, at Azerbaijan, or wherever else group “identity” has been hyped. There is no point in the multiculturalists’ saying that this is not what they have in mind. You might as well open the floodgates and then say that you don’t mean for people to drown. Once you have opened the floodgates, you can’t tell the water what to do. - Thomas Sowell
Link of the Times;
What the Media Can’t – Or Won’t – Tell Us About Armed Self Defense:
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/what-the-media-cant-or-wont-tell-us-about-armed-self-defense/
Issue of the Times;
Magical Thinking About The Post-Floyd Crime Surge by Ann Coulter
Ancient primitives—or as we now call them, “Indigenous people whose land we stole”—believed in talismans, voodoo, rain dances and other versions of “A preceded B, so A caused B.” Today, we consider such reasoning classic fallacy. Except at the New York Times.
First, you need to understand that the Times is no longer a newspaper, but more of a shaman. The paper used to report news. Anyone reading it for information these days might as well pull into a gas station and expect the nice man in a crisp white shirt to dash out and pump his gas.
Much like a Starfish tuna factory, the news comes in, then has to be cleaned, chopped up, soaked in oil and tightly packed into a tin can. If you peered into the Times’ back room, you’d find hundreds of woke scriveners repacking the news to fit the narrative.
Second, an urgent cleanup operation was needed to explain the paroxysm of violence that followed 2020’s anti-cop mania pushed at places like the Times. It simply could not stand to have people imagine that revering criminals while anathematizing the police would have any effect on the crime rate.
No, that wouldn’t do. The facts had to be retrofitted into an alternative narrative. What was the best backup explanation? The pandemic!
Attributing the massive crime wave to the pandemic solved two problems that would have arisen had the Times simply reported the facts: the upsurge in black crime, and the Times’ active encouragement of such.
Unfortunately, doing a rain dance to bring rain is quantum mechanics compared to the Times’ cause-and-effect theory about ”The Pandemic” inciting the post-George Floyd violence.
Here are the facts.
During the first few months of the pandemic, violent crime plummeted everywhere. You couldn’t have missed it. The Washington Post, Politico, Voice of America, Cambridge University, and on and on and on—even the Times itself!—reported that violent crime had virtually disappeared in cities around the world due to the COVID shutdowns.
And then on May 25, a fentanyl addict with a bad ticker died in police custody in Minneapolis, whereupon the depolicing demands of Black Lives Matter swept the nation with the active encouragement of all organs of elite liberal opinion, especially the Times.
Cops, the only people who seem to really believe “black lives matter,” risking their lives to bring safety to dangerous neighborhoods, were viciously slandered and kneecapped at every turn. Again, especially by the Times.
You’ll never guess what happened next.
After going into free fall during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, homicides and aggravated assaults in the U.S. rose by about 35% from Floyd’s death to the end of June. Burglaries, mostly commercial, shot up by an eye-popping 190% the last week of May—the height of looting during the “mostly peaceful protests.”
Other countries, also affected by the pandemic, saw no such rise in violent crime.
During the Summer of Floyd, murders increased by 42% in the 21 largest U.S. cities. By the end of 2020, the national murder rate had increased by 30%. That’s double the next largest hike on record, in 1968, the heyday of the country’s last experiment with liberal crime policies, when the murder rate rose by a comparatively paltry 12.7%.
Rarely has data on any change in human behavior been so clearly demarcated as it is in the crime rate pre- and post-George Floyd’s death.
Blacks—you know, the people whose lives allegedly “matter”—bore the brunt of this orgy of violence. The CDC reports, for example, that firearm murders of black people surged by nearly 40% in 2020, the greatest increase of any demographic group.
It’s understandable that the very same news outlets fanning the flames of anti-police hysteria in the wake of Floyd’s martyrdom—directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of black people—would want to shift blame to “The Pandemic.” But witch doctors have more empirical evidence for their diagnoses than the Times does for its repeated pronouncements that the pandemic caused violent crime.
At least voodoo practitioners probably believed their magical thinking. The Times’ Tourette-like hectoring about the pandemic proves the paper is lying and knows it’s lying. Nothing true needs to be endlessly repeated with such tenacity. (See also: “Climate Change.”)
In an article this week on the skyrocketing crime on New York City subways, Times reporter Ana Ley blamed the pandemic nearly a dozen times for the explosion of violence—violence that inexplicably began 10 weeks into the pandemic, but immediately after May 25, 2020.
E.g.:
“... an uptick in subway crime during the pandemic ...”
“... safety concerns, which climbed among passengers during the pandemic ...”
“... safety on public transit had gotten worse since the pandemic began ...”
“... she has stopped riding the subway past 6 p.m. during the pandemic.”
It’s as if the Times has a typewriter key “during the pandemic” that must be inserted into any sentence mentioning “crime.”
It’s hard to make yourself stupid enough to come up with a similar post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, but how about right-wingers start attributing mass shootings to ”the Clinton presidency”?
... an uptick in mass shootings that began during the Clinton presidency...
...mass shootings, which climbed during the Clinton presidency...
...mass shootings have become more common since the Clinton presidency...
...dance studio says it will reopen after 67th Clinton-era mass shooting...
...as mass shootings continue, Hillary Clinton struggles to talk about other issues...
At the Times, the pandemic is a sorcerer’s hex, the cause of violent crime. For unfathomable reasons, it just takes a few months to kick in. The COVID god works in mysterious ways.
News of the Times;
The Organism:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=29344
Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”:
https://simonwillison.net/2023/Feb/15/bing/#threats
CDC Boss: "It’s Time To Kill White People Who Refuse Vaccines":
https://newspunch.com/cdc-boss-its-time-to-kill-white-people-who-refuse-vaccines/
How the US national security state is using coronavirus to fulfill an Orwellian vision:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-state-using-coronavirus-push-artificial-intelligence-driven-mass-surveillance/266820/
Did You Notice What’s Ironic About the Dems’ Fears Over the House GOP Investigating the FBI:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/02/10/hearing-on-the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-n2619293
After The Worst January Job Cuts ‘Since The Great Recession’, Here Are 12 Major Layoffs Announced:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/after-the-worst-january-job-cuts-since-the-great-recession-here-are-12-major-layoffs-that-have-already-been-announced-in-february/
US economy, debt mean other nations must diversify reserves:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1285630.shtml
The War on Cash Intensifies: Visa Offers Restaurants $10,000 to Go Cashless:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/war-cash-intensifies-visa-offers-restaurants-10-000-go-cashless-n782276
Millions Of Americans Face "Hunger Cliff" As 32 States Set To Slash Emergency Food Stamp Benefits:
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/millions-americans-face-hunger-cliff-32-states-set-slash-emergency-food-stamp
What's driving the rise of catalytic converter theft:
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/04/22/catalytic-converters-cars-theft
US credit-card debt increased by the most in 20 years:
https://unusualwhales.com/news/us-credit-card-debt-increased-by-the-most-in-20-years
So Much For Billionaires: Joe Biden's IRS Is Now Coming For Waiters And Waitresses' Tips:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/so-much-billionaires-joe-bidens-irs-now-coming-waiters-and-waitresses-tips
43% of rural hospitals are in the red: 6 things to know:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/43-of-rural-hospitals-are-in-the-red-6-things-to-know.html
Global warming cult says surgery patients should receive less anesthesia to save the planet:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-02-07-global-warming-cult-less-anesthesia-save-planet.html
Army Now Trains for Combat Like a Stress Free, Gentle, Low Stakes Fat Camp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EcDVfv0BPo
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.