SOUTHERN ISRAEL—On December 11, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down NASDAQ’s diversity rules for corporate boards. The rules, which had been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), required boards to have at least one member who identifies as a minority or LGBTQ.
The decision was another high-profile victory for Edward Blum, the activist behind 2023’s landmark Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-based college admissions.
Born to Yiddish-speaking cobblers in Benton Harbor, Mich., Blum has cited his Jewish upbringing as a formative influence on his values. At the time that the NASDAQ decision came down, he was in Israel on a moshav, or farmer’s co-op, pruning tomatoes about three miles from the Gaza border.
The Washington Free Beacon spoke to Blum about his recent victory and his time in the Jewish state. During the interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Blum discussed the significance of the NASDAQ ruling, the next stage of the fight against racial preferences, the mood in Israel after Donald Trump’s election, and the joys of Israeli farmwork.
Aaron Sibarium: Most Americans will never serve on a corporate board, and board members have only limited involvement in the day-to-day operations of companies. Why was it so important to challenge the NASDAQ rule?
Edward Blum: While few people ever serve on a corporate board, most Americans own stocks directly or indirectly. Requiring race and sex quotas for boards inhibits corporations from choosing the best-qualified candidates to serve. This outcome serves no one, including those chosen because of their sex and race.
AS: What are the real-world impacts of this decision likely to be?
EB: This opinion will prevent the SEC from wading into areas in which it has no statutory jurisdiction.
The season finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks delivered its series finale this week, and in doing so, addressed one of the most controversial issues in the Star Trek franchise. The issue in question revolves around Star Trek: Discovery, which has now been officially removed from the prime timeline canon, much to the relief of many fans, who are sick of wokeness in the storied franchise.
Discovery was infamous among Star Trek fandom for altering the appearance of Klingons and injecting identity politics into the universe.
Giant Freakin Robot reports that: “In the show’s finale, a group of Klingon ships encounters a phenomenon that transforms things into alternate-reality versions of themselves. When a Klingon ship hits one of those transformation rays, it transforms into a big, ugly Discovery-style Klingon ship. Then one of the crewmembers transforms into a Discovery-style Klingon.
“This couldn’t have happened if those weird Discovery Klingons had ever existed in the prime Star Trek timeline. It means that Discovery and its Klingons, just like the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies, happened in an alternate universe. One that has nothing to do with the rest of Star Trek.”
Fans across the internet rejoiced at the revelation.
Fan site That Park Place put it thusly: “Star Trek: Discovery debuted with high expectations, but over its run, it faced significant backlash from segments of the fanbase. Criticisms ranged from drastic changes in the portrayal of iconic species, such as the Klingons, to deviations from established timelines and character arcs. The early seasons set the series in the past, but inconsistencies soon emerged, leading to widespread dissatisfaction,” explaining further, “There’s a rift surrounded by a Schrödinger possibility field that remaps matter into alternate-reality versions from the multiverse. This event transforms the main timeline Klingons into those seen in Discovery, clearly delineating between the two universes. Consequently, while Lower Decks remains canon and part of the prime timeline, Discovery is relegated to an alternate reality, mitigating its previous inconsistencies.”
A lot of people gave up on Star Trek when they went woke, kind of like Star Wars.
Let’s stay true to the original story and heroes. Cut the woke crap.
At least we don’t have to include any of the Discovery rubbish in future series if they can make one that is watchable. We’ll always have Captain Kirk, the Borg, the real Klingon’s and Romulans to watch if not.
I didn’t think they could get worse, yet here we are. They are Marxist indoctrination centers for kids that have stopped teaching them useful skills other than to be social justice warriors.
Our CriticalRace.org project doesn’t get as much coverage at this Legal Insurrection website as our Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org), but it’s been chugging away documenting the spread of CRT and its offshoots, like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, since February 2021. Over 150 media outlets have linked to and cited the CRT databases, and over 600,000 users have performed almost 8 million actions.
While others have moved on from CRT to other hot topics, we have continued to update and databases and research, firmly believing that just because the media spotlight has shifted, the importance of fighting the racialization of education remains critical.We also have moved into content creation and analyis using the databases as a source, including how the largest universities in states that have ordered the elimination of DEI have rebranded rather than eliminated the DEI agenda, and how DEI is active in the schools of the Southeast Conference. Expect more reports and analysis in 2025, plus a Parents Guide that is ready to be revealed soon.Our latest analytical report focuses on Poison Ivies: DEI and the Downfall of the Ivy League [full embed at bottom of post].
The Equal Protection Project, founded and led by Cornell professor William Jacobson, has released a deep-dive report on the prevalence of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training at Ivy League universities.
In his comprehensive report, “Poison Ivies: DEI and the Downfall of the Ivy League,” Jacobson examines programs the eight Ivy League institutions use and require for students.
“The review of Ivy League practices by our CriticalRace.org project reflects substantial efforts by Ivy League schools to purport to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, while maintaining work-arounds and DEI practices that continue the obsession with racial identities,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
In his report, Jacobson shows how Ivy League institutions are sidestepping the June 29, 2023, ruling by the Supreme Court that says race cannot be used in admission decision-making at universities.
“Ivy League universities pretend not to take race into consideration but then provide essay question opportunities for students to talk about their race,” he said.
“The Supreme Court affirmative action ruling took place in the context of university admissions, but it’s clear that the court’s opinion at its core was an Equal Protection Clause ruling that applies in other university contexts.”
In his report, Jacobson found that out of the eight Ivy League universities:
Four require DEI training in student orientation programs (Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Yale).Six require faculty or staff DEI training in some capacity (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Princeton and Yale).All eight have DEI offices at the institutional and/or department level.Five have a strategic plan devoted to DEI or anti-racism (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Yale).All eight have DEI or CRT (critical race theory) topics in classes and curricula.All eight have bias reporting systems.
Jacobson said he found that while the universities “pretend” not to consider race, in practice, they often do….
“It’s hard to believe that in environments in which DEI is the dominant ideology, taking on a quasi-religious fervor, that race does not enter into admissions decisions in fact, even if there is window-dressing to provide possible legal cover.”
* * *
The Equal Protection Project focuses on challenging race-based discrimination. The organization has challenged over 100 scholarships and programs discriminating against White and Asian students at universities across the country.
“To fully achieve the nondiscrimination standards of the Supreme Court ruling, the race-obsessed cultures at the Ivy League schools need to change,” Jacobson said. “It will be a long process. The Supreme Court ruling was just the first step.”
The used to be main hero turns into a woke loser with no sense of reality. Disney already made it so woke that it’s impossible to watch for those of us who knew the real story.
Some fans were shocked upon seeing the unhinged, anti-Trump diatribe delivered by Star Wars star Mark Hamill who went into a spittle-specked rage over Trump while defiantly claiming he does not care how many fans he upsets with his hate for the President-elect.
Hamill cemented himself into pop culture fame with his role as Like Skywalker in Star Wars and later as the voice of Batman’s The Joker in a series of hit animated movies. But in his interview on a recent episode of the Politickin Podcast hosted by extremist Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom, Hamill seemed more like a crazed Joker than a serene Jedi Knight as he went into a rage over Trump.
As he continued, he seemed to find it hard to spit out his words because he was becoming so unhinged with Trump Derangement Syndrome. But he eventually admitted that he does not care how many fans he might upset with his demented vitriol.
“I was devastated,” he said with his hands shaking as he recounted how he felt when Trump won the White House for a second time last month.
If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know I disdain both reverse racism as well as the Marxist indoctrination at Universities. Here, you have both. As you read the list, you can see that it’s against things that make people better, smarter, wealthier, and don’t break the law. I think you can see the pattern here.
Racism is the intentional mistreatment of someone on the basis of their race – at least in the normal world. But in academia, racism is anything producing disparities, according to Professor Ibram Kendi.
What follows is a long list of people, places, actions, and other things declared racist this year by higher ed, though a few came from K-12. If something needs “anti-racist” action or “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” it follows it must be racist, or else it would not need correction.
Academic disciplines: Chemistry Classics Evolutionary biology Engineering Immunology Math STEM in general Twenty different departments at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Actions: Accusing a black student of plagiarism Banning DEI Being Asian but romantically interested in white people Course evaluations Criticizing a black female reporter Criticizing plagiarism Marriage/being married Mentioning a black female congresswoman has fake eyelashes Murder Not pronouncing Kamala Harris’ name right Not voting for Kamala Harris Opioid crisis Opposing DEI Opposing oil and gas restrictions to fight climate change Pollution Questioning Kamala Harris’ racial identity Romance “Traditional grading” Voter registration Voting for Trump White people running in shorts White people rapping
Beliefs: Being pro-life/pointing out high abortion rates for black women Christianity Colorblindness Nostalgia
Career fields: Counseling Ecological farming Education Dentistry Disaster response Geology Law enforcement Medicine Ocean sciences Nursing Surgical oncology
Entertainment/culture: Dolly Parton’s free book program Dressing as a Native American at a Kansas City Chiefs game Liking Taylor Swift Michaelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” Paintings of British countryside Porcelain Telling a Japanese professor about a good sushi restaurant
Food: Fried chicken Milk
People: Ben Shapiro Conservatives Donald Trump Duke University sports fans Nikki Haley Rapper Tom MacDonald Vivek Ramaswamy White people
Places: Coeur D’Alene, Idaho Columbia University Greenhouses Israel Lake Merritt, California parking lot Northern Idaho Pennsylvania public universities Sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms Swimming pools Thousands of streets that use allegedly offensive terms University of Michigan
It happens every year around December, a predictable flurry of pseudo-psychology articles from low-IQ progressives expounding on the negatives of Christmas. On top of that, there’s been a pipeline of anti-Christmas films coming out of Hollywood the past decade, including some real woke bombs depicting Santa as a corporatist, a racist and a woman hater.
It’s been going on so long that in the early 2000s conservatives dubbed the annual practice the “War on Christmas”. However, at that time people on the political right assumed the vitriol was aimed at Christianity in general. What many didn’t realize is that the hatred wasn’t only about religious differences.
Around 70% of atheists identify as Democrats according to surveys, with 15% identifying as Republican and another 15% having no party affiliation. It makes sense that the majority of Christmas critics are on the political left and that their distaste of the holiday season is driven by their anti-Christian views.
After all, the political left is so obsessed with destroying Christianity that they continue to repeat the false narrative that Christmas is a “pagan holiday” and that all the traditions are stolen and repurposed. This claim is debunked every year and yet every year they keep trying to bring it back.
The pagan celebration of “Yule” often associated with Christmas by ignorant academics has always been a completely separate tradition with separate practices. As Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, pagan groups would meld elements of their previous traditions with newly introduced Christian holidays. Every serious study of Yule admits the distinct separation between the pagan celebration and Christmas.
The Christmas tree is also a purely Christian idea, based on the stories surrounding Saint Boniface. Boniface sought to convert the pagan tribes of Germany in 725 AD and chopped down what was known as “Odin’s Sacred Oak”, a tree used by the pagans as a site for human sacrifice. A small fir tree grew in its place and was dubbed the “Tree of Christ”.
By extension Santa Claus is often wrongly associated with pagan characters; he is in fact based on the very real Saint Nicholas, a monk who traveled the known world around 280 AD, giving away his wealth and helping children in need. His good deeds became legendary and by the Renaissance he was the most popular saint in Europe. His feast day was celebrated on the day of his death (December 6th), and it was common practice to buy large gifts or get married around this time every year.
The name “Santa Claus” comes from the Dutch, who first brought the celebration of Nicholas over to the American colonies in the 1700s. They called him “Sinter Klaas”, short for Saint Nicholas. And, if you look at some of the very old fresco paintings of Saint Nicholas you’ll find he looks rather similar to the modern day folk character version of Santa Claus.
When the claims of pagan co-option failed to yield any results, leftists turned to more woke methods to undermine the Christmas holiday. Going beyond religion, progressives have even sought to take down Santa Claus.
You would think a guy that goes around giving away his wealth and helping the poor would immediately appeal to socialist leftists who claim to be the guardians of the underclass, but that’s not really the case. They say the biggest problem is that Santa is “white” and that he represents the western world’s habit of making white people the “default”. I would argue that this is a smokescreen for other problems the leftists don’t want to fully admit to, but let’s start with race…
Black Santa Claus
The leftist trend in recent years has been to hijack Santa Claus and make him non-white (as they have tried to do with almost every other icon of the west). They pushed hard to make “Black Santa” a thing over the past few years and it’s not working out for them.
This is not to say that black people can’t dress up as Santa Claus; they can do as they please. However, the idea of taking a centuries old western figure based on a real person and then co-opting their image and pretending like this doesn’t matter – Isn’t this the evil practice of cultural appropriation that leftists accuse white people of doing all the time?
Let’s be clear, the default of western culture IS white. White people created it and built it and so most of our celebrated figures are going to be white people also. Leftists are never going to successfully sell Black Santa as a cultural norm, just as it would be impossible to steal African folk heroes and turn them white.
Santa Takes Credit Away From Parents?
Another common argument I hear against the idea of Santa Claus is that parents are pressured to purchase gifts for their children on Christmas while telling them that those toys are coming from a fantasy figure (and a white fantasy figure, too! Oh, the horror!). Progressives want their children to give THEM credit for the money spend on gifts, not a magical white guy in a red suit.
Not surprisingly, these people have missed the point of gift giving on Christmas, though it is funny to see leftists essentially arguing in favor of meritocracy and individual recognition.
I see the idea of Santa Claus as very useful, not only as a way to bring a little wonder into the tradition for children, but also as a way to keep adult egos in check. Giving Santa credit for a gift is a valuable exercise in humility that every parent needs. The gift should not be about you, it’s about the happiness that the gift inspires.
Gift giving is not a trade for adoration, but that’s exactly how narcissists see it. And since the political left is absolutely infected with narcissism these days it’s not surprising that they hate Santa Claus for taking attention away from them at Christmastime.
Santa Has A Naughty List, But What If You’re A Moral Relativist?
Keep in mind that a lot of progressive academics that write criticisms of the holidays don’t have any kids. They are childless cat ladies and beta males with no experience in creating and caring for a family. Their opinions are worthless when it comes to child rearing (and most other things). That said, this doesn’t seem to stop them from giving advice on the trappings of teaching kids the value of morality and the consequences of their actions.
It might be a fading tradition but for the longest time parents have told children to be on their best behavior around Christmas because if they don’t they could end up on Santa’s naughty list and get coal in their stockings. Leftists argue that this punishment and rewards system should not be a part of Christmas.
Firstly, people without kids don’t understand that when the youngsters are on a school break for two weeks straight and everyone is stuck together in close quarters in a house in winter there is a need sometimes for extra policing. You use whatever tools are at your disposal because reasoning with children only works half the time. Their brains aren’t fully formed yet (like woke activists), and they tend to act out wildly based on impulse and emotion.
I really don’t think that lefties are particularly upset by the idea of Santa having a naughty list (I’ve never met a well adjusted parent that went beyond the threat and didn’t have presents for their sons and daughters on Christmas). I think they are upset by the idea of moral compass and discipline. They seem to think that children simply raise themselves and that the parents never need to do anything to mold them into proper adults.
This is exactly why our society is in a death spiral today; because progressives have convinced so many parents to stop parenting.
Santa (Like Christ) Represents Individual And Voluntary Charity
Leftists are socialists (or communists) – It’s the foundation of almost all their beliefs, and the root of socialism is the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the collective. Meaning, the government in the name of the majority must intervene in the affairs of individuals in order to force them to serve the interests of the group.
In other words, leftists believe that the environment determines everything and people will not do good for society unless they are extorted into it by the system. In a way they fulfill their own prophecy by making it almost impossible through the legal environment to do good for others unless you have permission from the authorities.
Over the years I have noticed that one highly destructive side effect of socialism is the exponential decline in personal charity. If the government handles everything, why should the average person take action to help others? Why even care? And if you do still care, it doesn’t matter because the system will punish you for acting on your own accord.
There’s a reason why socialist and communist regimes are mostly atheist and seek to eliminate Christianity through history; the government must become god and they can’t allow any alternatives to exist. When you see progressive governments ban private charity activities or prosecute people who go out on their own to help the homeless, you might be confused and wonder what the motivation could possibly be?
It makes perfect sense when you realize that leftists see voluntary charity as competition with their own god (government). In the past they have even tried to misrepresent Jesus as an early socialist figure, when in fact Jesus promoted individual acts of compassion, not deferring to a government authority.
The underlying impetus for socialism is forced wealth redistribution, but in a world of voluntary charity there is no need for governments to control wealth or property. That is to say, socialists exploit the existence of poverty as an excuse to take control of all personal wealth (and thus control the population). They can’t do that when Christianity, Christmas and symbols like Santa Claus show people there’s a better way.It happens every year around December, a predictable flurry of pseudo-psychology articles from low-IQ progressives expounding on the negatives of Christmas. On top of that, there’s been a pipeline of anti-Christmas films coming out of Hollywood the past decade, including some real woke bombs depicting Santa as a corporatist, a racist and a woman hater.
It’s been going on so long that in the early 2000s conservatives dubbed the annual practice the “War on Christmas”. However, at that time people on the political right assumed the vitriol was aimed at Christianity in general. What many didn’t realize is that the hatred wasn’t only about religious differences.
Around 70% of atheists identify as Democrats according to surveys, with 15% identifying as Republican and another 15% having no party affiliation. It makes sense that the majority of Christmas critics are on the political left and that their distaste of the holiday season is driven by their anti-Christian views.
After all, the political left is so obsessed with destroying Christianity that they continue to repeat the false narrative that Christmas is a “pagan holiday” and that all the traditions are stolen and repurposed. This claim is debunked every year and yet every year they keep trying to bring it back.
The pagan celebration of “Yule” often associated with Christmas by ignorant academics has always been a completely separate tradition with separate practices. As Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, pagan groups would meld elements of their previous traditions with newly introduced Christian holidays. Every serious study of Yule admits the distinct separation between the pagan celebration and Christmas.
The Christmas tree is also a purely Christian idea, based on the stories surrounding Saint Boniface. Boniface sought to convert the pagan tribes of Germany in 725 AD and chopped down what was known as “Odin’s Sacred Oak”, a tree used by the pagans as a site for human sacrifice. A small fir tree grew in its place and was dubbed the “Tree of Christ”.
By extension Santa Claus is often wrongly associated with pagan characters; he is in fact based on the very real Saint Nicholas, a monk who traveled the known world around 280 AD, giving away his wealth and helping children in need. His good deeds became legendary and by the Renaissance he was the most popular saint in Europe. His feast day was celebrated on the day of his death (December 6th), and it was common practice to buy large gifts or get married around this time every year.
The name “Santa Claus” comes from the Dutch, who first brought the celebration of Nicholas over to the American colonies in the 1700s. They called him “Sinter Klaas”, short for Saint Nicholas. And, if you look at some of the very old fresco paintings of Saint Nicholas you’ll find he looks rather similar to the modern day folk character version of Santa Claus.
When the claims of pagan co-option failed to yield any results, leftists turned to more woke methods to undermine the Christmas holiday. Going beyond religion, progressives have even sought to take down Santa Claus.
You would think a guy that goes around giving away his wealth and helping the poor would immediately appeal to socialist leftists who claim to be the guardians of the underclass, but that’s not really the case. They say the biggest problem is that Santa is “white” and that he represents the western world’s habit of making white people the “default”. I would argue that this is a smokescreen for other problems the leftists don’t want to fully admit to, but let’s start with race…
Black Santa Claus
The leftist trend in recent years has been to hijack Santa Claus and make him non-white (as they have tried to do with almost every other icon of the west). They pushed hard to make “Black Santa” a thing over the past few years and it’s not working out for them.
This is not to say that black people can’t dress up as Santa Claus; they can do as they please. However, the idea of taking a centuries old western figure based on a real person and then co-opting their image and pretending like this doesn’t matter – Isn’t this the evil practice of cultural appropriation that leftists accuse white people of doing all the time?
Let’s be clear, the default of western culture IS white. White people created it and built it and so most of our celebrated figures are going to be white people also. Leftists are never going to successfully sell Black Santa as a cultural norm, just as it would be impossible to steal African folk heroes and turn them white.
Santa Takes Credit Away From Parents?
Another common argument I hear against the idea of Santa Claus is that parents are pressured to purchase gifts for their children on Christmas while telling them that those toys are coming from a fantasy figure (and a white fantasy figure, too! Oh, the horror!). Progressives want their children to give THEM credit for the money spend on gifts, not a magical white guy in a red suit.
Not surprisingly, these people have missed the point of gift giving on Christmas, though it is funny to see leftists essentially arguing in favor of meritocracy and individual recognition.
I see the idea of Santa Claus as very useful, not only as a way to bring a little wonder into the tradition for children, but also as a way to keep adult egos in check. Giving Santa credit for a gift is a valuable exercise in humility that every parent needs. The gift should not be about you, it’s about the happiness that the gift inspires.
Gift giving is not a trade for adoration, but that’s exactly how narcissists see it. And since the political left is absolutely infected with narcissism these days it’s not surprising that they hate Santa Claus for taking attention away from them at Christmastime.
Santa Has A Naughty List, But What If You’re A Moral Relativist?
Keep in mind that a lot of progressive academics that write criticisms of the holidays don’t have any kids. They are childless cat ladies and beta males with no experience in creating and caring for a family. Their opinions are worthless when it comes to child rearing (and most other things). That said, this doesn’t seem to stop them from giving advice on the trappings of teaching kids the value of morality and the consequences of their actions.
It might be a fading tradition but for the longest time parents have told children to be on their best behavior around Christmas because if they don’t they could end up on Santa’s naughty list and get coal in their stockings. Leftists argue that this punishment and rewards system should not be a part of Christmas.
Firstly, people without kids don’t understand that when the youngsters are on a school break for two weeks straight and everyone is stuck together in close quarters in a house in winter there is a need sometimes for extra policing. You use whatever tools are at your disposal because reasoning with children only works half the time. Their brains aren’t fully formed yet (like woke activists), and they tend to act out wildly based on impulse and emotion.
I really don’t think that lefties are particularly upset by the idea of Santa having a naughty list (I’ve never met a well adjusted parent that went beyond the threat and didn’t have presents for their sons and daughters on Christmas). I think they are upset by the idea of moral compass and discipline. They seem to think that children simply raise themselves and that the parents never need to do anything to mold them into proper adults.
This is exactly why our society is in a death spiral today; because progressives have convinced so many parents to stop parenting.
Santa (Like Christ) Represents Individual And Voluntary Charity
Leftists are socialists (or communists) – It’s the foundation of almost all their beliefs, and the root of socialism is the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the collective. Meaning, the government in the name of the majority must intervene in the affairs of individuals in order to force them to serve the interests of the group.
In other words, leftists believe that the environment determines everything and people will not do good for society unless they are extorted into it by the system. In a way they fulfill their own prophecy by making it almost impossible through the legal environment to do good for others unless you have permission from the authorities.
Over the years I have noticed that one highly destructive side effect of socialism is the exponential decline in personal charity. If the government handles everything, why should the average person take action to help others? Why even care? And if you do still care, it doesn’t matter because the system will punish you for acting on your own accord.
There’s a reason why socialist and communist regimes are mostly atheist and seek to eliminate Christianity through history; the government must become god and they can’t allow any alternatives to exist. When you see progressive governments ban private charity activities or prosecute people who go out on their own to help the homeless, you might be confused and wonder what the motivation could possibly be?
It makes perfect sense when you realize that leftists see voluntary charity as competition with their own god (government). In the past they have even tried to misrepresent Jesus as an early socialist figure, when in fact Jesus promoted individual acts of compassion, not deferring to a government authority.
The underlying impetus for socialism is forced wealth redistribution, but in a world of voluntary charity there is no need for governments to control wealth or property. That is to say, socialists exploit the existence of poverty as an excuse to take control of all personal wealth (and thus control the population). They can’t do that when Christianity, Christmas and symbols like Santa Claus show people there’s a better way.
An amazing video circulating on social media follows three suspected thieves in Orange County, Calif., who were arrested this week after a law change now classifies shoplifting as a felony offense.
The video, released Sunday by Seal Beach Police on Instagram, features surveillance camera footage of three young black women walking into an Ulta Beauty Supply store and stealing $648 worth of product, before heading to a Kohl’s retail store and walking out the door with $1,188 in merchandise.
All the while, a police cruiser is making its way to the reported thefts and the women are ultimately intercepted, confronted by officers and thrown into the back of a squad car.
Footage from a camera in the back of the patrol vehicle captured the moment one of the thieves informed the other that shoplifting was now classified as a felony, saying, “Bitch, new laws.”
“Stealing is a felony,” the thief tells the other adding, “And this Orange County, bitch. They don’t play.”
On Instagram, Seal Beach PD explained the arrests were part of new laws passed under Proposition 36, which “went into effect Wednesday morning in California.”
“It undoes some of the changes voters made with a 2014 ballot measure that turned certain nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors, effectively shortening prison sentences and leading to a spike in retail theft and crime.”
Fox Los Angeles reports the Prop 47 measure previously in place led to a spike in shoplifting during the Covid pandemic.
…[D]uring the pandemic, the rate of shoplifting and commercial burglaries skyrocketed, especially in Los Angeles, Alameda, San Mateo and Sacramento counties. Statewide, reported shoplifting of merchandise worth up to $950 soared 28% over the past five years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. That’s the highest observed level since 2000.
The world is slowly healing and common sense appears set to make a comeback following Donald Trump’s re-election victory.
In 2023, nearly 62 million lives were lost worldwide – an average of around 7,000 deaths every hour.
These numbers reflect the impacts of aging, illness, and conflict, and Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao takes a further look into the countries with the most deaths every hour.
At the top of the list, China lost more than 1,300 people every hour in 2023. This is about 300 more deaths than second-ranked India (roughly 1,000 people ever hour).
Rank
Country
Deaths in 2023
Deaths per Hour
1
🇨🇳 China
11,684,177
1,334
2
🇮🇳 India
9,507,008
1,085
3
🇺🇸 U.S.
2,975,658
340
4
🇳🇬 Nigeria
2,675,442
305
5
🇮🇩 Indonesia
2,117,706
242
6
🇷🇺 Russia
1,794,857
205
7
🇵🇰 Pakistan
1,600,313
183
8
🇯🇵 Japan
1,524,430
174
9
🇧🇷 Brazil
1,494,154
171
10
🇩🇪 Germany
1,034,140
118
11
🇨🇩 DRC
901,851
103
12
🇧🇩 Bangladesh
859,075
98
13
🇲🇽 Mexico
799,366
91
14
🇪🇹 Ethiopia
767,018
88
15
🇵🇭 Philippines
716,490
82
16
🇮🇹 Italy
663,448
76
17
🇻🇳 Vietnam
659,980
75
18
🇬🇧 UK
653,747
75
19
🇹🇭 Thailand
637,306
73
20
🇪🇬 Egypt
625,449
71
21
🇫🇷 France
616,095
70
22
🇿🇦 South Africa
584,015
67
23
🇹🇷 Turkey
551,598
63
24
🇲🇲 Myanmar
495,470
57
25
🇺🇦 Ukraine
495,421
57
26
🇪🇸 Spain
447,463
51
27
🇮🇷 Iran
423,367
48
28
🇵🇱 Poland
412,310
47
29
🇰🇪 Kenya
399,024
46
30
🇹🇿 Tanzania
385,799
44
31
🇦🇷 Argentina
349,195
40
32
🇰🇷 South Korea
345,502
39
33
🇸🇩 Sudan
320,491
37
34
🇨🇦 Canada
311,824
36
35
🇨🇴 Colombia
282,433
32
36
🇷🇴 Romania
257,119
29
37
🇰🇵 North Korea
255,826
29
38
🇦🇴 Angola
254,482
29
39
🇦🇫 Afghanistan
240,296
27
40
🇨🇮 Ivory Coast
238,741
27
41
🇬🇭 Ghana
237,869
27
42
🇺🇬 Uganda
235,583
27
43
🇲🇿 Mozambique
235,520
27
44
🇲🇬 Madagascar
234,841
27
45
🇳🇪 Niger
231,746
26
46
🇺🇿 Uzbekistan
221,249
25
47
🇩🇿 Algeria
214,259
24
48
🇻🇪 Venezuela
213,955
24
49
🇹🇩 Chad
213,123
24
50
🇲🇦 Morocco
212,624
24
51
🇳🇵 Nepal
205,841
23
52
🇹🇼 Taiwan
205,339
23
53
🇲🇱 Mali
205,047
23
54
🇨🇲 Cameroon
202,882
23
55
🇾🇪 Yemen
188,764
22
56
🇮🇶 Iraq
186,266
21
57
🇵🇪 Peru
185,861
21
58
🇦🇺 Australia
183,924
21
59
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso
183,375
21
60
🇲🇾 Malaysia
181,166
21
61
🇸🇴 Somalia
180,554
21
62
🇳🇱 Netherlands
169,320
19
63
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka
162,453
19
64
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan
136,388
16
65
🇬🇳 Guinea
131,455
15
66
🇭🇺 Hungary
128,063
15
67
🇨🇱 Chile
127,691
15
68
🇬🇷 Greece
127,018
14
69
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
124,412
14
70
🇧🇯 Benin
124,132
14
71
🇧🇾 Belarus
121,587
14
72
🇸🇾 Syria
118,900
14
73
🇵🇹 Portugal
115,917
13
74
🇧🇪 Belgium
113,791
13
75
🇨🇿 Czech Republic
113,525
13
76
🇲🇼 Malawi
113,181
13
77
🇨🇺 Cuba
111,819
13
78
🇰🇭 Cambodia
111,340
13
79
🇸🇸 South Sudan
110,339
13
80
🇿🇲 Zambia
107,917
12
81
🇧🇬 Bulgaria
102,980
12
82
🇸🇳 Senegal
100,882
12
83
🇸🇪 Sweden
93,944
11
84
🇷🇸 Serbia
93,928
11
85
🇦🇹 Austria
93,223
11
86
🇪🇨 Ecuador
92,204
11
87
🇧🇮 Burundi
91,963
10
88
🇭🇹 Haiti
90,966
10
89
🇧🇴 Bolivia
87,812
10
90
🇬🇹 Guatemala
87,523
10
91
🇷🇼 Rwanda
82,826
9
92
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
77,837
9
93
🇹🇳 Tunisia
74,071
8
94
🇨🇭 Switzerland
73,788
8
95
🇹🇬 Togo
71,661
8
96
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
70,823
8
97
🇸🇱 Sierra Leone
70,116
8
98
🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
67,842
8
99
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea
67,700
8
100
🇫🇮 Finland
59,984
7
101
🇩🇰 Denmark
57,275
7
102
🇭🇰 Hong Kong
57,190
7
103
🇭🇷 Croatia
55,029
6
104
🇸🇰 Slovakia
54,167
6
105
🇮🇱 Israel
51,294
6
106
🇱🇾 Libya
48,610
6
107
🇨🇫 Central African Republic
48,529
6
108
🇱🇦 Laos
47,682
5
109
🇭🇳 Honduras
47,670
5
110
🇹🇯 Tajikistan
47,595
5
111
🇸🇻 El Salvador
47,443
5
112
🇬🇪 Georgia
45,077
5
113
🇱🇷 Liberia
44,333
5
114
🇳🇴 Norway
44,143
5
115
🇧🇦 Bosnia & Herzegovina
42,861
5
116
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan
42,575
5
117
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan
42,200
5
118
🇲🇩 Moldova
41,730
5
119
🇱🇹 Lithuania
40,940
5
120
🇵🇾 Paraguay
39,034
4
121
🇵🇸 Palestine
38,937
4
122
🇨🇬 Congo
38,880
4
123
🇳🇿 New Zealand
37,686
4
124
🇮🇪 Ireland
35,550
4
125
🇯🇴 Jordan
34,873
4
126
🇵🇷 Puerto Rico
34,664
4
127
🇱🇧 Lebanon
34,419
4
128
🇺🇾 Uruguay
33,145
4
129
🇳🇮 Nicaragua
31,294
4
130
🇨🇷 Costa Rica
27,861
3
131
🇸🇬 Singapore
27,728
3
132
🇲🇷 Mauritania
27,725
3
133
🇱🇻 Latvia
27,614
3
134
🇦🇲 Armenia
27,579
3
135
🇱🇸 Lesotho
24,612
3
136
🇦🇱 Albania
23,428
3
137
🇯🇲 Jamaica
22,933
3
138
🇸🇮 Slovenia
21,581
2
139
🇵🇦 Panama
21,272
2
140
🇪🇷 Eritrea
20,984
2
141
🇲🇳 Mongolia
20,340
2
142
🇲🇰 North Macedonia
19,863
2
143
🇳🇦 Namibia
18,279
2
144
🇬🇲 Gambia
16,975
2
145
🇪🇪 Estonia
16,693
2
146
🇬🇦 Gabon
15,577
2
147
🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau
15,181
2
148
🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea
14,556
2
149
🇧🇼 Botswana
14,197
2
150
🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago
12,577
1
151
🇲🇺 Mauritius
11,124
1
152
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste
10,065
1
153
🇽🇰 Kosovo
9,981
1
154
🇦🇪 UAE
9,916
1
155
🇴🇲 Oman
9,597
1
156
🇨🇾 Cyprus
9,499
1
157
🇸🇿 Eswatini
9,475
1
158
🇰🇼 Kuwait
8,624
1
159
🇩🇯 Djibouti
8,596
1
160
🇫🇯 Fiji
8,553
1
161
🇲🇪 Montenegro
7,209
1
162
🇰🇲 Comoros
6,119
1
163
🇬🇾 Guyana
6,049
1
164
🇧🇹 Bhutan
4,805
1
165
🇷🇪 Réunion
4,797
1
166
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
4,642
1
the rest of the countries had a zero so I didn’t continue the article, but it can be found
A horse and a chicken grew up together on the farm and were the best friends. They went everywhere together. One day, the horse waded into the pond to get a drink, and he realized that his feet were stuck in the mud and that he was sinking. He yelled for the chicken and said,
“I’m stuck in the mud and sinking, go get help, go get the farmer!”
The chicken ran to the house and, realizing the farmer wasn’t home, grabbed the Porshe keys, drove down by the barn, got a length of rope, sped back to the pond, tied the rope to the bumper of the car, threw the other end to the horse, and pulled the horse out of the water.
A couple of weeks later the chicken stepped into a mud puddle in the farm yard and realized that her feet were stuck and that she was sinking.
She hollered for the horse, “Go get the car!”
The horse said, “I don’t need the car.”
He stepped over the mud puddle, straddled it with one foot on each edge, and said, “grab my pecker and pull yourself out.”
The moral of this story is: If you’re hung like a horse, you don’t need a Porsche to pick up chicks.
MESA, Ariz. — An arrest has been made following a video on social media showing a man spraying bug killer on produce at a Mesa grocery store, police said.
In a video posted to “X,” formerly known as Twitter, on Dec. 19, 27-year-old Charles Smith is seen spraying “Hot Shot Ultra Bed Bud and Flea Killer” on bananas, potatoes, lemons, limes and rotisserie chickens at a Walmart in Mesa.
According to the post on “X”, the original video was deleted from social media. 12News found the original posts from what appears to be Smith’s TikTok page which had several videos. Some showed Smith appear to lock people inside of a Goodwill and throw food at people at a mall.
Mesa Police said they notified the store management and said “any produce that may have been affected has been removed from all areas accessible to the public.”
Widespread mistrust of the US government, media, and “experts” didn’t go mainstream until President Trump splashed onto the scene. That’s why they hate him so much. He’s the cog in their machine. The disruptor who yanked back the curtain and exposed just enough to jolt the country awake. Thanks mostly to Trump’s America First movement, we now know the truth: many so-called “experts” are just political pawns, there’s one big “uniparty” screwing us all over, and the fake news media is running a giant CIA psyop on the American people.
That’s right—we thought those CIA “mind control” tricks were reserved for foreign hellholes. Turns out, they’re using those same nasty tactics on us.
Ready to have your minds blown? I know what’s going on with the drones, and I will share it with you. But I’m also to give you the secret to seeing through all the nonsense we’ve been peddled for 60+ years.
What I am about to reveal to you is the Rosetta Stone for interpreting every major news event. I will give you the secret to unlocking the mystery. One simple assumption will reveal everything. Are you ready?
“The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.”
That’s it. That’s all you need to assume, and you will be correct. Think I’m crazy? That it couldn’t possibly be that simple? That it could never be that obvious? Let’s try it out and see how it works.
Who killed JFK? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
How did the cartels manage to get so many drugs into and so much cash out of the U.S.? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
Why were all those women and children at Waco burned to death? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
Who let the 9/11 hijackers into the U.S.? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
Why were there no WMDs in Iraq? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
What caused the housing market collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
What happened with all that Russian collusion stuff in 2016? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
Where did COVID originate? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
Why was discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop banned in 2020? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
Who blew up the NordStream pipeline? The U.S. government was behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.
And finally: what’s going on with all those drones in the Northeast? Say it with me: “The U.S. government is behind it and is lying to you to cover it up.”
Every time there is some major new story that everyone is fixated on, assume that the story exists because your government is trying to manipulate you for its own purposes, and you will be correct at least 9 out of 10 times. Maybe even 99 out of 100.
Follow this simple rule, and you will know what is actually happening before anyone else. You will appear to be clairvoyant. And you will have a superpower that no one in corporate media has: the ability to see the truth.
When Barack Obama won the U.S. Presidency in 2008, there were claims of an insidious plot to turn America into a Communist-run nation, which was initially labeled as a “conspiracy theory.” Mike Adams, known as the Health Ranger, raised concerns about this plot during Obama’s first term in office, which later gained attention and credibility. Biden’s time in office has been likened to Obama’s third term, suggesting a continuation of the alleged Communist agenda. Various “conspiracy theories” have allegedly come true over the past four years, pointing to a government run by Democrat-Communists aiming to destroy America and the middle class. Many maniacal plots are attributed to Democrats, Liberals, and Globalists that include issues like vaccine push, assassination attempts, election corruption, and the replacement of Americans with illegal immigrants.
Top 10 maniacal plots conjured and propagated by Democrats, Liberals and Globalists over the past 4 years to try to wreck America and wipe out the middle class
#1. The deadliest vaccine push ever propagated on Americans – mRNA clot shots
#2. Two assassination attempts of President Trump
#3. The “mysterious” Drone-Gate psyop happening right now
#4. The coverup of the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell”
#5. The most corrupt election in U.S. history that put Biden in the White House and the FBI-created “insurrection” that falsely imprisoned hundreds of peaceful conservative protestors from January 6th, 2021
#6. Hiding Biden’s senility from the whole nation while he has the nuke codes
#7. Running a proxy war through Ukraine to funnel trillions of U.S. dollars using the Military Industrial Complex while instigating World War III with Russia
#8. Killing thousands (if not millions) of Americans in U.S. hospitals during the plandemic using “protocol” of isolation, Remdesivir, ventilators, and more clot shots.
#9. More than 4 MILLION ABORTIONS, many in the third term of pregnancy and some even on the day of birth, were performed to add to the genocide of Americans
#10. Replacing Americans with over 20 million illegal immigrants over the past 4 years
A bombshell 17,000-page report was just dropped, detailing specific instances where the Biden administration has weaponized the federal government for political gain. The extensive document, compiled by the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, outlines claims of misuse of federal agencies to target political opponents, suppress dissent, and influence public opinion. This raises serious questions about the integrity of the federal bureaucracy and the Biden Administration’s four years in office.
During the nearly two-year investigation, exposed a “two-tiered system of government,” with the committee finding several cases of censorship, whistleblower retaliation, and the politicization of federal agencies and top law enforcement.
The report notes that the objective of the committee is to “protect and strengthen the fundamental rights of the American people.” Although its work is not done, the report assures the American people that this was the necessary first step to stop the weaponization of the federal government and to make sure it no longer works against the United States.
Here are the 20 of the most nefarious and diabolical activities revealed by the report.
1. Censorship by Big Tech: The report alleges that the Biden administration pressured companies like Meta (formerly known as Facebook) to censor American speech, with Mark Zuckerberg reportedly admitting to this pressure.
2. Weaponization of Federal Law Enforcement: The subcommittee claims to have found instances where federal law enforcement agencies were used against American citizens, highlighting a pattern of what they describe as government overreach.
3. Collusion with the Intelligence Community: There are allegations of the Biden campaign working with former intelligence officials to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation, which the report suggests was part of a broader effort to manipulate voter perception.
4. FBI Targeting Parents at School Boards: The report points to an Attorney General memo directing the FBI to investigate threats against school board members, which critics argue was used to target conservative parents speaking out at meetings.
5. Suppression of Conservative Voices: It’s claimed that there was a concerted effort involving government agencies and tech companies to suppress conservative viewpoints, including through the manipulation of content moderation policies.
6. FBI’s Handling of the Mar-a-Lago Raid: The report discusses the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, suggesting political motivations behind the action.
7. FBI Whistleblower Retaliation: The subcommittee heard from FBI whistleblowers who claimed they faced retaliation for exposing perceived biases within the agency, including the suspension of security clearances.
9. Legal Actions Against Pro-Life Activists: Allegations that the DOJ disproportionately targeted pro-life activists under the FACE Act, suggesting a two-tiered justice system.
10. Targeting of Traditional Catholics: An FBI memo from the Richmond field office labeled certain traditional Catholics as potential threats, which was later retracted but highlighted in the report.
11. IRS and DOJ Targeting: The report alleges that these agencies were used to target political opponents, echoing previous claims made during the Obama era regarding IRS scrutiny of conservative groups.
12. Misuse of National Security Tools: There are claims that surveillance powers were misused to spy on political adversaries, linking back to controversies around the 2016 election.
13. Government Influence on Media: Accusations that government officials influenced media narratives, especially around sensitive political topics like the Hunter Biden laptop and the origins of the COVID-19.
14. Operation Choke Point: An alleged Obama-era initiative where federal agencies pressured banks to cut off services to certain sectors, impacting conservative businesses.
15. Influence Over Social Media Algorithms: Assertions that the government had an undue influence on how social media companies prioritized and displayed content, affecting political discourse.
16. Use of Disinformation Campaigns: The report suggests that elements within the government were involved in creating or supporting disinformation to manipulate public opinion, especially in foreign policy contexts.
17. Involvement in Election Integrity: Claims that government agencies played roles in influencing election outcomes through misinformation management and voter suppression tactics.
18. Weaponization of Climate Change Policies: Allegations that environmental policies were used to target industries and individuals not aligned with administration views.
19. Manipulation of Public Health Information: During the COVID-19 response, there are claims of government agencies influencing what information was disseminated by health organizations, possibly to fit political narratives.
20. Protection of Political Allies: The report hints at the administration protecting allies through selective enforcement of laws or lack of investigation into potential wrongdoings.
[The] founding documents of the United States articulate the ideals of the American republic and guarantee to all American citizens fundamental rights and liberties. For too long, however, the American people have faced a two-tiered system of government—one of favorable treatment for the politically-favored class, and one of intimidation and unfairness for the rest of American citizens. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the contrast between these two tiers has become even more stark.
One of the most alarming parts of the report are emails between DHS/CISA, Stanford University, the Atlantic Council, and Big Tech, in which they colluded to create the “Election Integrity Partnership’s” censorship machine.
An email from Graham Brookie of the Atlantic Council’s DFR Labs read: “We just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA,” while another— now redacted from Facebook— exposes a phone call with DHS, saying, “DHS cannot openly endorse the portal.”
“We already have partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and we would love to chat with you and your team,” Alex Stamos of the Stanford Internet Observatory emailed NextDoor executives.
“Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, multiple federal agencies, including the White House, have engaged in a vast censorship campaign against so-called mis-, dis-, or malinformation,” the report states, noting that the subcommittee revealed the extent of the “censorship-industrial complex,” the report continues.
In another finding from the report revealed that the subcommittee probed alleged cased in which the federal government weaponized the use of law enforcement resources, which led to fraud and abuse of the FBI. Several whistleblowers spoke out and detailed how the agency “brutally retaliated” against them for coming forward.
The bureau suspend the whistleblowers “without pay, preventing them from seeking outside employment, and even purging suspected disloyal employees.”
The investigation also found that the Biden Administration teamed up with 51 former intelligence officials to interfere in the American electoral system just weeks before the 2020 presidential election by signing the statement calling Hunter Biden’s laptop disinformation.
story
Of course they did. It started with Obama covering up all the illegal stuff they did to Trump. This has to stop. I doubt they’ll get the top dogs, but they could put a dent into the machine
from Introvert Dear, but I can relate and I bet other Introverts can also. I don’t go if at all possible and am better for it.
Because introverts don’t just get ready for a holiday party — they gather strength for one.
Oh no, oh no, oh no. It’s today, isn’t it? The holiday party. And there’s another one tomorrow. A red-and-green glitter bomb of social obligation has exploded all over your calendar. Sure, you love your family, but the truth is, you’re an introvert, and big parties are utterly exhausting — even on those rare occasions when you actually enjoy them. Loud, crowded rooms and yet another round of “So, what’s new with you?” probably leave you dreaming of a white Christmas at home in your pajamas.
But the holidays only come around once a year, so you’ll rock around the Christmas tree anyway. That said, you’ll probably have some thoughts like these. Introverts, can you relate?
Saying yes to the big holiday get-together seemed like a good idea when you RSVP’d. You even threw in some exclamation points (soooo excited to see everyone!!) and offered to bring your famous apple dumplings. But that was two weeks ago — you were younger then, full of hope. Now, in a moment of panic and desperation, you’re seriously considering canceling because you’re “sick.” Besides, didn’t you promise your dog you’d binge Netflix together tonight?
2. Sigh. I’m going.
It is your family we’re talking about. And it is the holidays. That’s the double-edged sword of being an introvert — just thinking about skipping the party makes you feel guilty, even if it would be better for your mental health. You don’t want to let anyone down, even if saying yes means draining your energy completely.
3. I’ll just go for a little while.
Yes, that’s it — the perfect compromise! You’ll say your hellos, grab some food, and even give nosy Aunt Gladys the most basic updates about your life, complete with a polite smile. Then you’ll make a swift exit, just like a certain snowman who knew better than to stick around when the sun was hot that day.
4. I can do this, I can do this…
You’re doing this. You’re really doing this. You take a few deep breaths, savor the last moments of peace and quiet, and silently swear on Aunt Gladys’s fruitcake that you’ll be back home soon.
5. It’s so loud!
You’re at the party, and it’s SO LOUD. Christmas carols are blaring, everyone is talking at once, and your inner introvert is screaming for an escape to somewhere quieter. The noise feels like a physical force, crashing over you and draining your energy. You’re no Grinch, but suddenly his decision to live alone with his dog on a mountain makes perfect sense — it was quiet!
6. Small talk, whyyyyyy…
Let’s face it — small talk has never been your thing. Gossip and chatter about weekend plans? It all feels so, well, boring. As an introvert, you’d rather dive into big ideas or, at the very least, something that feels authentic and meaningful. At the party, you do your best to stick to socially acceptable chitchat, but somehow, it always veers off into… something else entirely.
7. This is getting awkward…
…so, so awkward.
8. There’s so much going on that I’m zoning out.
Marzi Wilson/Introvert Doodles
Despite how it might look to others, you’re not angry, bored, or depressed — you’re simply turning inward to block out the overwhelming stimulation. The noise, the flurry of activity, and the endless social cues to process can be too much for introverts, who naturally thrive in calmer, more low-key environments.
9. But seriously, how long?
This quiet moment alone is bliss. No small talk, no noise — just you, recharging in peace.
10. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that…
Marzi Wilson/Introvert Doodles
…there’s waaay too much fake smiling happening at this holiday party.
11. A pet! I’m saved!
Gemma Correll
Many introverts are devoted animal lovers because our four-legged companions are the perfect match for us. They offer unconditional love without expecting small talk or fake smiles in return (see above). And unlike some extroverts, they’ll never talk your ear off or complain that you’re too quiet.
12. “Hey, sorry, can’t talk — too busy checking my phone!”
Buzzfeed
Pulling out your phone and pretending to be completely absorbed in it? A classic introvert move.
13. I’m actually having fun! And then…
Sometimes, even we introverts surprise ourselves by enjoying a social event. There’s something comforting about feeling included — even if half the time was spent dodging personal questions from family and quietly checking your phone. And let’s be honest, the holidays bring a certain warmth and nostalgia that’s hard to resist. Maybe you even found another introvert to chat with — or an extrovert who respected your quiet vibe. It feels good to connect, even for us fiercely independent introverts.
But then, the inevitable happens. No matter how much fun you had, you’re still an introvert — and that means your social battery only lasts so long. Time to head home and recharge!
14. Seriously, I have zero energy left.
Debbie Tung/Where’s My Bubble
And that’s okay — it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just the way you’re wired.
15. If only extroverts understood what it’s like to be completely “peopled out”..
Aaron Caycedo-Kimura/INFJoe
…but let’s be real, a lot of them just don’t.
16. I’m so exhausted I don’t even want to say goodbye.
Kayla Yandoli/Sally Tamarkin/Will Varner/Buzzfeed
Dang, you forgot to pack your invisibility cloak. But it’s time to make your escape. Fingers crossed no one hits you with a “You’re leaving so soon?” as you quietly slip out the door.
17. I’m home! Hallelujah, I’m home!
College Humor
On the left: What it looks like.
On the right: What it feels like.
18. And I am completely and utterly exhausted.
The party might be over, but that doesn’t mean your energy magically returns. In fact, this is when the real exhaustion sets in. Cue the dreaded introvert hangover. For many introverts, social burnout isn’t just mental and emotional fatigue — it’s physical, too. The symptoms are real: headaches, muscle aches, and an overwhelming sense of feeling unwell. It’s your body’s way of saying, time to rest.
19. Because this is how my brain works:
Sarah’s Scribbles/Sarah Andersen
A WHOLE DAY.
20. Me:
Can we make it 12?
21. Just back away slowly and close the door.
You shut your bedroom door and breathe in the sweet, glorious relief of solitude. If you have kids, you might try to pass them off to your spouse for a little while — because let’s face it, the only cure for an introvert hangover is downtime. Alone in your room, free from everyone’s expectations, you’re finally in your most comfortable, natural habitat. This time to decompress isn’t just nice — it’s necessary. Seriously, it’s for everyone’s safety!
I was at an analyst conference and George H. W. Bush was the speaker. The first thing he said was that he hated the press. The second was that the stupidest question he ever got asked was by Lesley Stahl as to why he wasn’t dancing when the Berlin Wall came down.
Now this:
Newscaster Lesley Stahl claims she “doesn’t know what to do” about the embarrassing demise of the legacy media.
She was lamenting to her colleague, Peggy Noonan, that “we are at the point where even the president,” then corrected herself saying, “Elon Musk,” asserted that legacy media is dead. She appeared extremely worried, spilling her deepest concerns, in front of an empathetic audience gathered at the 92nd St. YMCA studio in New York.
It was as if Stahl was having an out-of-body experience, where she failed to factor in herself, in accounting for the reason why audiences were abandoning network news in droves. You know you’re in trouble as an award-winning reporter when the show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” on the Food Network manages to pull in higher ratings than the 24-hour news coverage, CNN.
“I don’t know how it (media) recovers,” Stahl confessed: “It is sort of… kind of hobbling along.”
There was some editing in her statement: She didn’t require the qualifier of “sort of,” “kind (of)” hobbling along. Sounding like sorority sisters, Stahl then confessed to Noonan, “I’m in a very dark place about it.” The gal-pal team then proceeded to engage in a hug-fest to lift up each other spirits, never hinting at they might be part of the problem.
“We’re talking about something so essential,” Noonan offered in her media overview. “You don’t want to say we’ll see. Or, maybe the world will end. We’ll see.” Wow! Noonan, in a moment of candid reflection, had actually compared something “so essential” as corporate media, and it being thrown on the trash heap of cancelled programing, with the world ending.
Such serious contemplation negates the wider view of just how they got into such a “dark place.” Still, they went along their merry way, as two titans in the media, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their smugness and Trump-bashing served as an integral part of the toxic behavior that fueled the rot in the “legacy media.”
Noonan proved it didn’t matter how nonsensical a joke or outright lie at Trump’s expense was — it was still worth working into the conversation. She made an off-the-cuff quip, shortly after the November election, when President-elect Trump was at the top of news reports in more than 100 countries, saying: “We haven’t been seeing much of Mr. Trump,” and “I’m enjoying that.”
The audience laughed appreciatively. So what if the joke indicated the speaker appeared clueless about an avalanche of news overtaking every newsroom in the nation? You must say this — Stahl and Noonan know their audience, no matter how much it may be shrinking.
Once the laughter stopped, Stahl may have found it productive to engage in some good-old fashioned reporting to figure out what she “could do” to better understand the media’s abysmal ratings. And even more concerning, the loss of public trust. In her 53-year journalism career, she never thought she’d witness her once-premiere news program, “60 Minutes,” becoming increasingly irrelevant in a post-Trump election world. Ratings stayed in the toilet bowl, as one CBS executive noted, as the show pulled in a pitiful five million viewers in mid-November.
It wouldn’t take much digging for Stahl to find out what’s going on in audienceville. She, like her colleagues, would have to get up out of their chairs, leave their network buildings and stop relying on corrupted news sources. (That would include themselves.)
The best — and obvious — place to start would be for Stahl and Noonan to review comments made by viewers watching their unscripted exchange. Reactions from the audience is merely a click away on the accompanying YouTube comment thread: The media titans may have appeared untroubled by their intense partisanship, but viewers were taking a dimmer view.
One viewer identified as “@CharlieWhitmore,” was diligent enough to perform Stahl’s job for her: He reviewed one of her most startling Trump-bashing moments on “60 Minutes.” “I went back and reviewed Leslie’s interview with Trump in October 2020,” he wrote. “Leslie you are the problem…” He referred to Stahl’s pathological tendency, like her colleagues, to disbelieve and discredit (then) President Trump and their refusal to report on the Hunter Biden laptop story. This, in turn, would have opened the door to investigating the “Biden crime family’s behavior,” President Trump claimed, and their influence peddling to negotiate lucrative contracts.
The snippet below speaks volumes about Stahl acting more as a White House spokesperson as opposed to a working journalist.
“He’s in the midst of a scandal,” President Trump said referencing Hunter Biden’s lap top’s incriminating content.
“He’s not,” Stahl interrupted. “He’s not. No.”
Later in the interview, Stahl claimed the Delaware computer contents had been “investigated and discredited.” This attitude of nothing-to-see-here-folks has become an integral part of the legacy media. They never failed in their efforts to come to the defense of the Biden Family along with Democrat operatives’ criminal activities.
“It can’t be verified,” Stahl repeated numerous times of the laptop. She was relying, of course, on her anonymous sources, corrupted intelligence contacts and biased news outlets. Nothing in the interview indicated that Stahl would divert from her political ideology and runaway bias.
“What can’t be verified?” Trump asked.
“The laptop!” Stahl responded as if confirming the obvious.
“The biggest scandal,” Trump continued, ‘was when they spied on my campaign.”
“There’s no real evidence of that,” Stahl said never wavering from her ludicrous and now embarrassingly false version of events. Owning up to this shameful chapter of reporting wasn’t on Stahl’s agenda, nor was correcting her distorted worldview.
Other viewer reactions were equally revealing, and not very sparing in their comments of Stahl and Noonan:
“Madame Stahl, you reap what you sow,” wrote @I.marciago5030, “Just listening to you (makes it) easy to understand why the corporate media (has) lost all credibility.”
“Lesley, thank you for all the good work you put into helping destroy legacy media,” responded another @woodyharrelson2624.
“Lesley Stahl just doesn’t get it. No wonder legacy media is dying,” wrote @Grad1067.
A few of the remarks were dripping in sarcasm including: “Big shout-out to these two ladies for helping Trump get elected. Bravo,” wrote @neildepoy77320
It might prove useful, for Stahl, to juxtapose the “60 Minutes” sparring match between herself and President-elect Trump in the wake of viewing the irrefutable facts. Sadly, Stahl appeared unwilling to take a moment of introspection to understand her personal responsibility — after all, she’s a big-deal journalist — for a media that has become corrupted by its own bias.
Instead, she spent a moment fawning over herself and offered up a different interpretation of the exchange between herself and President Trump. She recounted, without a hint of irony, that she asked the president in October 2020: “Why do you keep pounding on the press?”
Trump, being Trump, offered a pragmatic answer: “I do it and I repeat it because that way fewer people are going to believe you.”
I’m very content to be by myself. When you can do that, then being with others is fun, but not a requirement for fun. I do a lot of things and have a lot of activities, but they are taxing on my social battery. I don’t long for that like others
I was alone with my dog when this question came across my blog feed. I’m very content with just him and me and I realized that is fun.
The hustle and bustle of life doesn’t thrill me anymore.
It’s almost like clockwork. Terrorist attack – Muslim perp. SSDD for the last 1700 years
1 – Well, it looks like all the Merkel Legos and knife checks were of no avail in the German city of Magdeburg. Even confiscating corkscrews didn’t help.
An attacker reportedly deliberately drove his car at high speed into a dense crowd at the Christmas market in Magdeburg. According to the most recent reports, at least eleven people were killed and sixty wounded.
Unfortunately for the devotees of political correctness, the alleged perpetrator of this atrocity isn’t a Potato German named Heinz or Hans, but rather a Saudi doctor.
Sixty to eighty people have been injured in an attack at the Christmas Market in Magdeburg, and at least one is dead. A suspect has been arrested. According to Welt‘s information, he is a man from Saudi Arabia.
2 – Cambridge, Ontario resident Uwais Motala threatens to kill Christian white people & Jews in this very racist rant directed to those who question the “Free Palestine” movement.
“We’re coming, you won’t be able to handle all of this, there’s not enough bombs to kill all of us, you better do it, because we are going to get you for all those dead babies you fucking pieces of shit.”
“Fuck you, fuck your little white race mother fucker.”
“Fuck your country, fuck your race, fuck your culture, fuck Christmas.”
“Because the Master Race says so, you keep killing babies, we’re going to get you mother fuckers.”
“Fuck you & your rights, fuck you & your free speech, fuck you & your free thoughts, your free conscience, all that fucking freedom bullshit, we’re going to get you.”
3 – A Muslim student who attends George Mason University has just been arrested for planning a mass casualty attack on the Israeli consulate in New York.
The terrorist is from Egypt and his name is Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan. A tipster led the FBI to him and now he’s in the process of being deported.
Here’s more from AOL:
Egyptian national Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan faces a slew of federal charges tied to distributing information related to explosives,
The FBI has arrested a student at George Mason University in Virginia for allegedly plotting a mass casualty attack on the Israeli consulate in New York, according to a federal court filing.
Flames and torment aside, one imagines Hell as a place where lies prevail at all times.
For instance, imagine a situation in which an elderly man with a well-earned reputation for creepy behavior occupied the most powerful station in the world, and everyone around him knew that his severely diminished cognitive abilities not only prevented him from carrying out his official functions but had removed any theoretical restraints on said behavior, but they pretended otherwise, not only by continuing to trot him out in public but by referring to him, unironically, as “Mr. President.”
Such thoughts leap to mind when one sees a ridiculous new Christmas photo taken at the White House and posted Wednesday to the social media platform Instagram by 73-year-old actress Lynda Carter, who famously played the title role in the 1970s television series “Wonder Woman.”
In the photo, the 82-year-old President Joe Biden stood as close as possible to Carter.
Thus, Carter’s Instagram followers generally gushed over the photo. But not all of them did.
“Why is Jill a mile apart from her husband?” one Instagram user wrote.
“But did you get sniffed?” another wrote, referring to the president’s well-documented propensity for sniffing women and children.
Meanwhile, X users found the photo and had a field day with it.
“Bwahahahaha!!!!! Looks like Biden is a fan of WonderWoman as well! Go on a get a sniff while you’re all in her space!!” one X user wrote.
Americans don’t trust public health institutions, the virologist who used to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
“We have lost public trust, there’s no doubt about it, and it really harms public health in a big way,” Robert Redfield said Wednesday during an event at The Heritage Foundation, adding, “We’ve lost, I think, trust in science.”
The lines between public health institutions and politics became blurred during the pandemic, Kulldorff said.
The National Institutes of Health is a government research agency and “their role is not policy or public health policy,” he said.
Yet, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades until 2022, became quite involved in health policy while an adviser to two presidents during the pandemic.
NIH “should have focused on doing the studies to find out, for example, about genetic drugs, if they can help against COVID,” Kulldorff said. But instead, he added, Fauci “sort of took over that public health policy, which doesn’t make any sense.”
Schools shouldn’t have been closed and lockdowns shouldn’t have been widespread, Kulldorff said, but the “biggest chunk of the infectious disease research money was controlled by Dr. Fauci, so he took a very active role about the pandemic policy.”
Instead of a health system, Americans “pay for illness,” Redfield said, adding: “As long as you’re sick, the system works. We need to flip the switch … so that we pay for wellness.”
One of the “root causes” of the public health crisis is that doctors are “at the bottom of the treatment pyramid,” Johnson said.
Doctors “should be at the top,” he said, but are being “crushed by the agencies” in a third-party payer system in America.
I guess we are knocking on the door of an Epstein drive (Expanse reference here) or Warp Drive. I hope Scotty can reverse the polarity in the anti-matter drive in time for it to work.
Seriously, the problem is no iron dome can stop a Hypersonic vehicle. A pre-emptive strike would be here and there is nothing we can do about it.
China unveils MD-22 hypersonic drone, capable of Mach 7 speeds and near-space operations.
The drone is reusable, can travel 8,000 km, and carry 600 kg payloads for military and civilian use.
It launches mid-air from a high-altitude balloon, eliminating the need for traditional runways.
While China leads in hypersonic tech, the U.S., Russia, and others are also advancing in the field.
The drone’s potential for global security and scientific innovation raises both concerns and opportunities.
China’s recent unveiling of a hypersonic drone has sent ripples through the global aerospace community. A video released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) shows the MD-22, a cutting-edge unmanned aircraft, being launched from a high-altitude balloon and reaching speeds of Mach 7 before landing safely. This breakthrough marks a significant step forward in China’s quest for dominance in hypersonic technology. What exactly is this drone, and should Americans be concerned about China’s advancements?
What makes the hypersonic drone special?
The MD-22 is no ordinary drone. It operates in the “near-space” zone, a region between conventional aircraft and satellites. This gives it unparalleled flexibility and strategic capabilities. The drone can travel up to 8,000 kilometers (4,971 miles) and carry payloads of 600 kilograms (1,323 pounds), making it a formidable tool for both military and civilian applications.
I don’t want to fly anymore because I don’t trust that they are hiring the best at Boeing, The FAA, Air Traffic Controllers, the Airline Pilots or any aspect of travel.
I want the best pilot and an airplane that stays in the air with all of it’s parts. I don’t want some ATC to ram 2 jets together because they can’t read a radar screen.
American just lost and has to get rid of DEI, but the remnants are there. Hire on talent and ability, not on quota and skin color
American Airlines (AA) will no longer be recruiting and hiring based on the dictates of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. The company admitted that the policy is a violation of federal laws that protect equal access to employment, America First Legal announced Tuesday.
So then why did they do it in the first place? Did they think leftist priorities were immune to federal laws?
The US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) informed America First Legal about the decision. “American companies must return to using merit—not the desire to check a DEI box—to select the most skilled and qualified employees. American Airlines’ agreement with the OFCCP is AFL’s latest victory in our fight to put illegal discrimination on the no-fly list,” said Will Scolinos, America First Legal Counsel.
Wow. Who would have guessed that hiring based on merit rather than skin color is the moral way to go?
Question: Are they stopping this racist hiring practice because they suddenly realized how evil it was? Or are they just doing it because they got caught?
The decision came as a result of a complaint filed by AFL against AA with the OFCCP, which accused the company of not complying with federal law even though the airline does a massive amount of business with the federal government and has been the beneficiary of $140 million in federal contracts since 2008. In order to qualify for those contracts, AA had to promise to adhere to the Executive Order 11246 that prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, or employee training based of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It has failed to do so and has embraced discrimination based on race and sex in its hiring practices, Cadet Academy program and promotional activity.
Additionally, given that air travel is a huge deal, how could they have thought box-checking was the best way to hire people? Sounds like someone who was hired by checking a box made this policy the status quo.
It’s unclear how leftist corporations can get away with breaking such laws; if the roles were reversed and a certain skin color they do not prioritize was uplifted, they would never let it go. And while both are equally immoral, only one barely gets a slap on the wrist when the act is committed. And to say these people have double standards would be an understatement.
To begin with, it’s a Marxist idea and very few ideologies in history have killed more people than Marxism.
Specifically, this is what is happening.
I’m old enough to remember when health insurance was affordable. It wasn’t all that long ago; it was before Obamacare passed. Despite being officially called the Affordable Care Act, nothing about it has made health insurance more affordable. The question is, for the higher premiums and larger deductibles we have, are we even getting better coverage? The answer, which shouldn’t shock you, is a big fat “no.”
That’s right, despite paying more, you are also getting less. Health insurance denials and delays have hit record highs, and while many point the finger at insurance companies, accusing them of prioritizing profits over care, they’re not to blame. As Betsy McCaughey points out, the real culprits are the politicians who sold us Obamacare on a pile of lies.
“In 2013, before Affordable Care Act regulations kicked in, insurers denied roughly 1.5% of claims, according to the American Medical Association,” McCaughey points out. “But under ACA rules, denials increased tenfold. Now nearly 15% of claims are denied,” and some insurers are denying a third or more of claims.
Doctors and patients aren’t just battling denials — they’re also tangled in a bureaucratic nightmare of preauthorizations. As McCaughey notes, these delays force doctors to get insurer approval before providing care. And here’s the kicker: the person giving the green light is often unqualified to make those decisions. The AMA warns that an OB-GYN might be the one overriding your neurosurgeon’s recommended treatment.
And the consequences can be deadly.
McCaughey cites the example of a doctor who had a patient with metastatic breast cancer who needed a specific drug combination. But thanks to prior authorization delays, she had to settle for standard chemotherapy, which failed, and the patient died.
Obamacare is killing people.
It’s not just anecdotes. A House Committee on Energy and Commerce investigation found that Cigna overturned 80% of its Medicare Advantage preapproval denials upon appeal, proving that legitimate care is being withheld. And, as McCaughey reports, Cigna’s algorithm, PxDx, denies authorizations in bulk without considering individual cases.
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. That and everything else that came out of his mouth was an effing lie.
They found 3 people frozen in tents last weekend. FEMA is an agency the DOGE should eliminate. Samaritan’s Purse did more for the people than they did
The last time we checked on North Carolina, it dealt with the after-effects of the deadliest tropical storm in the state’s history – Hurricane Helene.
Much has happened in the nation and the world since then, but I thought doing a status check would be worthwhile.
Recovery efforts are ongoing, but many challenges remain. As we approach Christmas, the state is grappling with how to fund $53 billion worth of repairs to recover from the storm damage.
North Carolina expects the federal government and other private sector funding to provide about $19.9 billion in financial assistance, leaving over $30 billion in damages still uncovered.
On Oct. 9, North Carolina lawmakers passed a $273 million relief bill and a subsequent $604 million package that N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law Oct. 25. Legislators promised these packages would represent only the first steps toward disaster relief for North Carolinians suffering from the effects of Helene.
But as the immediate impacts of the storm fade, the ongoing recovery efforts have been met with political and financial struggles.
…According to Pryor Gibson, now-interim chief operating officer, the [North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR)] needs at least $40 million for each of the next three months to fund its projects. Without these funds, NCORR may not have the ability to continue supporting rebuilding efforts in still-recovering areas throughout the state.
Recently, a spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, apologized for the agency failing to deliver dozens of travel trailers and manufactured homes to North Carolina residents displaced by Hurricane Helene. The “apology” came in response to Charlotte station WBTV grilling the representative about the lack of trailers being delivered to impacted families.
Our questions came after a FEMA spokesperson told WBTV the week of Thanksgiving that the agency would deliver a total of 103 temporary travel trailers and manufactured homes to families in North Carolina by the end of that week. At the time, FEMA had delivered 27 homes.
By Wednesday, Dec. 4, FEMA had still only delivered 46 homes — well short of the number of promised temporary homes.
WBTV learned that more than 500 families have been approved for a FEMA travel trailer or manufactured home in the wake of Helene. The agency’s slow deployment of the homes means hundreds of families are weathering the snow and freezing temperatures currently hitting the North Carolina mountains.
Despite that, a FEMA spokesperson initially struck an upbeat tune in an interview with WBTV on Nov. 26. The spokesperson then doubled down on a promise to deliver homes to the more than 500 families who have requested one.
“There could be 500 of these eventually given out?” a WBTV reporter asked.
“Here’s the beautiful part about it, the answer is ‘yes,’ and we’ve done even more. So we can handle it,” said FEMA Media Relations Specialist La-Tanga Hopes.
One suspects the agency’s response will be more robust after January 20th. Let’s hope the good people of North Carolina can hold out by relying on their neighbors.
As temperatures begin to drop for the season, residents told Bender that there are still people in need of a warm place to sleep.
Jenica Grooms owns a local auto body shop. But since Helene, she said she has shifted her focus to building temporary climate-controlled homes for people who are displaced.
“There has been a lack of temporary housing. There’s not a lot of places for people to go. Their hotel vouchers are running out. So our goal is to place these on people’s property.”
They come for the free money, housing and food. Biden has shipped them in and shipped them around the US. All the while, Hurricane Helene victims are freezing to death while FEMA does nothing.
In Europe, they suck off of the hind teat of socialism. Free money for being there, except for the legal residents who foot the bill
Germany’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU) candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz says that Germany cannot accept more Syrians from Syria and that those Syrians who are not integrated should return to Syria.
Notably, Merz is pointing to the sky-high levels of unemployment among many of the country’s Syrian population. The chancellor candidate, during an appearance on ARD, said the “one-third” who “work and are integrated” in Germany can stay, “but the two-thirds do not work, they are overwhelmingly young men, many of them can go back, and many must go back.”
He said that a push to return many of these migrants must occur, saying:
“We must now speak very openly with them and say: You have no place in Germany in the long term… We have long been of the opinion that at least people could have returned to the north a long time ago, and now to other parts of the country as well.”
There are currently 1 million Syrians in the country, and those not working have become a major burden for German taxpayers. According to government data, 210,000 are employed, while 250,000 are currently “looking for work.” Another 150,000 are unemployed.
Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government, there is a European-wide push to return Syrians to their country; however, the ruling German government has expressed caution about the security situation in the country.
The WEF and global government types know they can break down civilizations, customs, traditions and hundreds of years of history by bringing in illegals to ruin the economies and enact the Cloward-Piven strategy.
The shooting of United Healthcare’s CEO, Bryan Thompson, has engrossed the public. The shooting itself was a well-planned and audacious act. But when police apprehended the handsome, Ivy League-educated killer, many were disappointed. They were rooting for him to escape.
The killing has proven more popular than I would have expected. Moreover, this popularity is not confined to the left wing. People across the spectrum have shared their frustrations with the healthcare system and found themselves sympathetic to the killer.
An All-American Murderer
When Luigi Mangione’s background and manifesto were revealed, he appeared to have a good life and a promising future. His social media suggested an intelligent freethinker, whose views and motives were neither clearly left- nor right-wing. He had his first significant encounter with the health system after a serious back injury, and the experience seems to have radicalized him.
His crime is a classic example of “propaganda by the deed.” People who acknowledge intellectually that murder is wrong seem totally unemotional about that conclusion. There’s widespread support for the shooter, while the victim has been dehumanized and reduced to a symbolic avatar for the industry and its sins.
Almost everyone has some story of being abused by the modern health insurance system. It’s even worse for the self-employed, who pay out of pocket for insurance. After paying premiums for years, the injured find themselves in a Kafkaesque battle with their insurance company over coverage, copays, and approved care.
The False Promise of Obamacare
It was not supposed to be this way.
Obamacare was supposed to provide universal coverage and make health care more affordable. After all, the law was called the Affordable Care Act. When the Obama administration proposed the law in 2009, it made many promises to sell it to the public and Congress.
One of the more famous ones was that “if you like your doctor, you can keep him.” Another was that if you like your insurance, you can keep that too. Finally, we were told this law would make us all healthier, as uninsured people would no longer wait until health problems became catastrophic before seeking care, typically in the emergency room.
This was the signature initiative of the Obama presidency, and the law has done none of these things. Care has become significantly more expensive. The quality of care has also gone down, with out-of-pocket expenses rising because of higher deductibles and out-of-pocket limits. Doctors are frequently dropped from plans, leaving patients unable to maintain continuity of care with those whom they have come to trust.
The country has not gotten any healthier, in spite of the enormous amount of money changing hands. The complexity of Obamacare has also led to the proliferation of highly paid billing specialists, administrators, and other overhead, none of which contributes directly to better care, but all of it costs money.
That MF looked right into the camera and lied to us. It’s what Marxists do. I’ve seen in the UK, EU and Canada that socialized or Government run healthcare just means less quality, longer waits for worse coverage and care. Obama only lied to the believers in him. I knew almost everything he said was a lie
Maybe we can stop Marxists like Obama and Kenji Brown from destroying America based on their free ride.
After the Supreme Court’s decision to axe unfair, DEI-driven, race-based admissions, some law schools are seeing a sharp decline in black and Hispanic students. The steepest drop is happening at Harvard. The so-called “pinnacle of excellence” sacrificed its reputation to prop up the left’s DEI charity agenda. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, Harvard will be forced to admit students based on merit, not skin color—which is a win for everyone. After all, no one should want a handout they didn’t earn.
However, not everyone sees it that way. The folks over at The New York Times are tied up in knots over the decline in racist school admissions. Apparently, they’d rather universities pick students by skin color than by excellence—and they’re perfectly fine watching greatness take a nosedive across business, education, medicine, and beyond. And by the sound of their new article, it seems NYT is terrified there will be fewer Barack Obamas and Ketanji Brown Jacksons in the ranks.
We’ve covered the DEI disaster from every angle, and it all adds up to the same failed equation: your business, country, hospital, or university can’t be the best if you’re hiring subpar candidates just to fill a progressive “guilt quota.” We recently published a fascinating article exposing the truth about DEI Black students at Penn State. It’s a real eye-opener.
Isn’t it ironic how the left touts itself as the champion of fighting “disinformation,” yet they’re the ones silencing the truth and punishing anyone brave enough to speak out? This is especially true when it comes to topics like black crime statistics and DEI students who aren’t cutting the mustard. So, if you dare to talk about real, raw issues, especially involving black students, you’re instantly labeled a “racist,” blacklisted, and shut down. That’s exactly what’s happening to University of Pennsylvania Professor Amy Wax, who dared to discuss the fact that no black students made it into the top quarter of Penn Law School’s class of 2023.
Of all of Professor Amy Wax’s myriad sins against the Woke worldview, the one that seems to have gotten the Penn Law School administration most obsessively angry with her was what she told Brown U. economist Glenn Loury during a 2017 podcast discussing the “downside of affirmative action. According to CNN:
“Here is a very inconvenient fact Glenn, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class and rarely, rarely in the top half,” Wax told Brown University professor Glenn Loury in a video of the interview that recently gained attention.
They’ve turned out robots instead of critical thinkers. They are restricting school choice, harming millions of kids. Not one accomplishment on behalf of the students since it was created. The NEA and Teachers Unions are going strong and pay themselves well for incompetence though.
The New York Times reported December 4 that math and science test scores for U.S. fourth and eighth graders have been essentially stagnant since 1995. Nor have they have been stagnant near the top — lots of countries outrank us — but rather in the middling middle. American elementary/middle school students perform behind Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, England, Ireland, and Poland.
“’This is alarming,’” opined a Department of Education commissioner.
Yes, it is, but perhaps not just for the reasons the article identifies.
The spin of the article is that scores are down and American kids have lost significant ground as a result of the pandemic. Author Dana Goldstein says the results corroborate “a large body of research showing significant academic declines since the Covid-19 pandemic began.” “Experts are debating potential causes,” reports Goldstein, including maybe the fact that American public schools were shuttered comparatively longer than in other countries.
Let me argue that spin is far too limited and selective.
While the “experts” debate, American kids continue to move through the public-school industry, advanced perhaps more for social promotion than mastery of skills. Eventually, they’ll hit college where freshman year will be spent in math remediation before they can undertake a required general education math or science course. I know. I worked as an associate dean at a private, tuition-driven Catholic university. One year, a fifth of the freshman class was in math remediation prior to regular college-level math classes.
You can argue the young people shouldn’t be admitted and it’s not a college’s role to make up deficiencies in elementary and secondary schooling. But somebody’s got to do it. These kids relied on what their schools told them, credentialing them with diplomas after going through multiple “proficiency tests” (that more often were “teaching to the test” than teaching). At some point, somebody’s actually got to teach them.
Walmart employees at certain U.S. stores were given body cameras to wear as part of a pilot program, CNBC reported Tuesday.
It is unclear how many Walmart locations have placed body cameras on store-level associates. Witnesses and images distributed online showed signs at entry points to locations warning shoppers that it has “body-worn cameras in use,” according to the outlet.
I know they can. I have to spell certain words as my dog knows exactly what I’m saying when I use them.
Dogs can form meaningful two-word combinations using soundboards, proving intentional communication.
Over 260,000 button presses by 152 dogs showed specific requests like “outside” + “potty.”
Dogs focus on immediate needs, unlike humans, who use soundboards for emotional expressions.
Future research may explore dogs’ ability to refer to past events or future plans.
Soundboards could revolutionize pet-owner communication and deepen interspecies understanding.
Dogs have long been considered “man’s best friend,” but a groundbreaking study published in Scientific Reports suggests that our furry companions are far more intelligent — and communicative — than we give them credit for.
The research reveals that dogs trained to use soundboards can form meaningful two-word combinations, proving they are not just randomly pressing buttons but deliberately communicating with humans. This discovery not only challenges our understanding of canine intelligence but also opens the door to deeper insights into animal cognition.
“may have several negative impacts on the local environment and economy”
See the post below about Germany being dumbasses about the same thing. Use gas. It’s cheap and it isn’t killing whales or the environment. Those are lies made up by hypocritical zealots whose religion is green (money, not sustainability like Al Gore and John Kerry).
Drill baby drill and bring down the cost of energy, bringing down the cost of everything else. For those who worship the planet, watch and see that it won’t harm a thing. It will actually be better for everything except their wallets
Everyone knows this has been a boondoggle, even the left, but they’re so committed to supposed ‘green’ energy that they can’t let go.
A government regulator recognizing offshore wind’s destructive environmental effects is as rare as a North Atlantic right whale. But a recent, 600-plus page report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) admits that the offshore wind development planned for the New York Bight—the triangular area bordered by the New Jersey and Long Island coastlines—may irreversibly harm whales, commercial and recreational fisheries, and seabirds.
The BOEM report is the agency’s first to evaluate the cumulative impacts of offshore wind development. Its authors cite a wide range of potential effects, from negligible (or even beneficial) to major. Acknowledging potentially “major” harms is a radical departure from the agency’s previously accepted Environmental Impact Statements for offshore wind projects, which have always focused on the impacts of individual projects, rather than the cumulative impacts of multiple projects.
The report, which BOEM bills as a “programmatic environmental impact statement,” admits that the proposed offshore wind projects on the New York Bight may have several negative impacts on the local environment and economy. The authors note, for example, that the effect on the North Atlantic right whale could be “major,” defined as having “severe population-level effects” that would “compromise the viability of the species”—in other words, potential extinction. The report also concedes that the projects could have major effects (“substantial disruptions”) on commercial and recreational fishing, which contribute billions of dollars to the New Jersey and New York economies.
While the report discusses the consequences of these wind turbines on ocean views and even on local housing prices, it makes no mention of these projects’ adverse effects on electric ratepayers and economic growth. These effects are substantial, as New Jersey’s experience reveals. The state’s Board of Public Utilities estimated that its two approved offshore wind projects in 2024, with a total capacity of 2,400 MW, would raise the monthly electric bills of a typical residential customer by about $7, a commercial customer by about $59, and an industrial customer by over $500. Those estimated costs, which don’t include what those customers will pay for new transmission lines and the backup generation needed to offset wind’s inherent intermittency, cumulatively amount to more than a $750 million annual increase in electric bills for the state’s 8.5 million electric ratepayers. , based on the numbers of these customers. If the Garden State succeeds in its goal of developing 11,000 megawatts of offshore wind electricity, despite mounting costs and the cancellations of two major in-state projects, ratepayers alone will end up paying an additional $3 billion to $5 billion more each year for their electricity.
What is it with Europe right now. The UK has gone Bats**t crazy and is converting to Islam faster than Iran, not this.
Another wind drought has led to soaring electricity prices across Europe. Norway, which exports power to its European neighbors, has seen enough.
Europe’s electricity prices soared on Thursday amid a wind drought. Source: Alexander Stahel on X.
For the second time in a month, Germany’s electric grid has been hit by a wind drought, known in German as a Dunkelflaute. The lack of wind sent Europe’s electricity prices soaring to their highest levels since the end of 2022, when Europe was in the midst of an energy crisis due to concerns about supplies of Russian gas. That’s saying something since Europe — and Germany in particular — now appears to be amid a permanent energy crisis.
Yesterday, German consumers paid an average of $400 per megawatt-hour for electricity. During peak times, prices in Germany’s wholesale power market came close to $1,000 per MWh, the highest level in 18 years. Here’s how a reporter with Spain’s El Pais newspaper explained the situation:
Dunkelflaute is a cursed word in the German electricity sector. The combination, typical of cold anticyclones, of low temperatures (which increase demand) and the almost total absence of wind (which hinders wind generation) configures one of the worst possible scenarios for the price of electricity: it forces the burning of more gas in combined cycle plants, which are much more expensive, and that substantially increases the bill…The main factor behind this escalation is the lack of wind. While at this time of year Germany’s powerful wind power sector (onshore and offshore) usually averages almost 20 gigawatts (GW) of power, according to data from the specialist portal Montel, thus becoming the country’s main source of electricity, on Wednesday it will just exceed 3 GW. With the cloudy skies, solar photovoltaic power is also operating well below its potential and forces combined cycle plants — in which gas is burned to obtain electricity — to operate at a higher rate than usual, driving up prices.
The wind drought isn’t just hitting Germany. As shown in the graphic at the top of this article, electricity prices across Europe soared amid the wind drought. In response, Norwegian politicians are promising to dismantle the undersea power cables that connect Norway’s grid to mainland Europe to protect Norwegians from Europe’s tumultuous electricity market. Electricity prices in Norway, which gets 90% of its power from hydro, hit record prices this week despite having full hydro reservoirs.
According to the X account of Visegrád 24, a Norwegian news outlet, the two links that connect Norway to Europe will reach their technical lifetimes in 2026 and 2027. The two cables have 9 GW of exchange capacity, of which 5.1 GW connects to Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK.
Getting fired for some snatch. He hasn’t learned the big red pilled answer. None of them are worth getting fired over. I told a girl who thought she was all that and a bag of chips that there is no golden pussy. There is always some girl that some guy is willing to not screw.
The case involves an Army four-star general who has been fired for improperly trying to rig an Army command screening process so that the general’s favored subordinate, who he happened to have an inappropriate relationship with, got command when she didn’t deserve it.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has fired a four-star general — one of just 12 in the entire service — following an investigation into accusations that he attempted to use his position to push a subordinate officer’s promotion forward, Task & Purpose has confirmed.
Gen. Charles Hamilton was relieved as the commander of Army Materiel Command, a position he had been suspended from during the investigation. The probe focused on whether Hamilton tried to pressure Army officials into promoting a lieutenant colonel that he mentored. Task & Purpose is not identifying the lieutenant colonel because there is no evidence she violated any Army policies.
“Based on the findings of a Department of the Army Inspector General investigation, the Secretary of the Army has relieved General Charles Hamilton of command,” the Army said in a statement.
Now, I had the privilege, in the latter years of my 31-year Navy career, as a Navy active duty Captain, to be appointed to about a dozen promotion and command selection boards, which were all held at the Navy Personnel Headquarters in Millington, Tennessee, from about 2002 to 2008. During every one of those boards I never saw one thing that even remotely hinted at undue influence or anything remotely wrong. Keep that in mind as we continue.
And, I would not bring up the race of the two officers involved, but Task & Purpose reported it because it was the General’s key defense in trying to explain away his actions:
In his classic book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, economist Timur Kuran notes how governments, and social movements, do their best to enforce this sort of ideological uniformity. People tend to hide unpopular views to avoid ostracism or punishment; they stop hiding them when they feel safe.
This can produce rapid change: In totalitarian societies like the old Soviet Union, the police and propaganda organizations do their best to enforce preference falsification. Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. This works until something breaks the spell and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers — or even to the citizens themselves. Kuran calls this sudden change a “preference cascade,” and I believe that’s what’s happening here.
In America, the left spent years bullying people into accepting “woke” ideas on race, gender, and politics. There’s considerable reason to believe that a majority of Americans never accepted these ideas, but between constant media repetition, and the risk of being mobbed and canceled if you disagreed with them, most people for years were afraid to stand up.
But two things put a stop to that. One was Donald Trump’s election. The other – and the two are related – was Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, which is now a free-speech platform with roughly equal representation of Democrats and Republicans. Both had the effect of blowing up the lefty bubble and letting people realize that they, not the woke, were the actual majority.
Let’s start with some of the highlights. First, the FBI IG report acknowledges the presence of multiple CHS’s (informants), some of whom were sent to DC for Jan 6 by the FBI, and some of whom went on their own accord and reported to their handlers in the FBI.
We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6. We reviewed the documented CHS reporting that the FBI had prior to the riot and breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. We determined that three CHSs had been tasked by FBI field offices in the days leading up to the January 6 Electoral Certification, with the required approval of the WFO, to travel to DC for the events of January 6 to report on domestic terrorism subjects who were possibly attending the event. Specifically: One FBI field office tasked a CHS to travel to DC to report on the activities of a predicated domestic terrorism subject who was separately planning to travel to DC for the January 6 Electoral Certification; a second FBI field office tasked a CHS to travel to DC to potentially report on two domestic terrorism (DT) subjects from another FBI field office who were planning to travel to DC for the events of January 6; and a third CHS, who had informed their handling agent that they intended to travel to DC on their own initiative for the events of January 6, was similarly tasked by their field office to potentially report on two DT subjects from other FBI field offices who were planning to travel to DC for the events of January 6. Our review 5 concluded that none of these three FBI CHSs were authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.
In other words, we see that there were at least three informants who had been tasked directly with following specific targets and informing on their plans in relation to January 6th.
In addition to these three informants who were asked to track specific people well in advance of January 6th, the FBI IG report acknowledges 23 additional informants who traveled to DC on January 6 and reported on the events to their respective FBI handlers:
They are as guilty as the day is long. The crime committed was authored by the FBI to cover up a stolen election. The FBI solves the crimes they commit
My wife’s dumbass relatives in Denmark can’t brag enough to me about their free healthcare, to which I say you pay 70% taxes, so it’s not free. They try to make America into Denmark and what sort of works for 5 million doesn’t translate to 330+ million. They don’t get it because they mostly want to trash the US. Plus, they are socialist and we’re not.
Well, here’s the facts. It doesn’t work, the doctors are crummy, you have to wait for months and you can’t sue for malpractice, which at least 4 of her relatives have received for healthcare and are now injured.
Now this story:
Advocates for “universal health care” love to use Finland as an example of a system that works. That is an absurd comparison. Finland has a culturally homogeneous population of 5.6 million; that is just over half the population of Los Angeles County (9.6 million).
Better examples are England and Canada.
England has government-funded “universal health care” in the form of the National Health Service. The population of England is around 57 million people. Wait times for nonemergency care average 14 to 18 weeks, and thousands of people have been waiting more than 18 months. As of June of this year, 7.5 million Brits were waiting for already scheduled procedures and surgeries requiring hospital stays, more than 300,000 of whom had been waiting for more than a year.
Keep in mind that these scheduled – and delayed – procedures include diagnostic tests and treatments for illnesses like cancer. Shortages of physicians and treatment facilities force cancer patients to wait weeks – or months – for radiation or chemotherapy.
These delays have life-and-death consequences. In 2009, British medical journal Lancet reported that 51.1% of British cancer patients were alive five years after their diagnosis. By contrast, 91.9% of American cancer patients were alive five years after their diagnosis.
England’s problems are not limited to cancer care. Last year, Bloomberg News published a report analyzing the NHS’s own data. The results were shocking. In most areas of England, medical care failed to meet government goals in things as basic as minimum wait times for an ambulance to arrive in an emergency (goal: 30 minutes; reality: up to three hours) or the availability of hospital beds.
In Canada – another country with “universal health care,” the situation is nearly as bad. Canada has a population of nearly 40 million. The average wait time for treatment in Canada for a condition requiring a specialist’s care is more than six months. But in some provinces and for some procedures – like orthopedic surgery or neurosurgery – the wait is closer to a year, or even longer. Canadians face long waits – six weeks to three months – even for simple but vital diagnostic procedures like MRIs, CT scans or ultrasounds.
By contrast, in the United States – a country with 330 million people – the average wait time for a nonemergency appointment with a specialist is only 26 days (a situation that medical journal STAT called “a public health crisis”). The median time between diagnosis of cancer and commencement of treatment is 27 days. The average wait time for an ambulance here is seven minutes.
The red flags used to be tattooed (especially helter-skelter instead of artistic), hair dyed an unnatural color (green, pink, purple), excessive piercings, and cats.
The problem was that some of these girls might actually have been ok (all right, single digits).
Now, there is a 100% test for a girl who is certifiably nuts and you should avoid
I was living there when it happened. We knew she was lying the whole time, but she still ruined the lives of some Duke students. I have no love for Duke, having had to work with their graduates, but I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
Here goes:
Former stripper and convicted murderer Crystal Mangum admitted Thursday that she lied and “made up a story” that three Duke University lacrosse players raped her at a team party in 2006.
“They trusted me that I wouldn’t betray their trust, and I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Magnum told the independent media outlet Let’s Talk With Kat at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women.
“[I] made up a story that wasn’t true.”
Mangum, 46, said she made up the allegation because she “wanted validation from people and not from God.”
The exotic dancer, who is in prison for the second-degree murder of her boyfriend in 2013, asked former players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann for forgiveness.
“I hope that they can forgive me,” she said, referring to the men as her “brothers” in the biblical sense. “I want them to know that I love them, and they didn’t deserve that, and I hope that they can forgive me.”
Mangum had never publicly stated that she fabricated the rape allegation before Thursday’s revelation.
As you likely know, race hoaxes are so common these days, it’s hard to keep up. You know the drill: the media breathlessly reports something like a “burning cross” on the lawn of a Baptist church, hinting that “white nationalists” are at it again. Then, surprise—it turns out some black guy did it because he hates white people.
Rinse and repeat.
The left and their media pals churn out race hoaxes, lies, and twisted stories to keep the “us vs. them” mentality alive and well in America.
The NAACP is getting in on this hoax game, too. They recently got busted trying to peddle this type of nonsense regarding the Daniel Penny not-guilty verdict. It all started when the NAACP responded to an X post by CNN that announced Daniel Penny’s fair and just acquittal – that case should’ve never gone to trial. And of course, instead of doing so professionally, the NAACP did what they do best: they sunk into the gutter, lied, and spread a fake racism hoax.
Thankfully, X’s Community Notes was there to crush the NAACP’s lie, and set the record straight.
Here’s what the NAACP lied about when responding to the CNN post. There were black people on the subway helping to restrain him, and who testified on behalf of Penny during the trial. This had nothing to do with race. It was very clearly a mental health/violence issue.
The left thrives on pushing these phony “race war” narratives. Why? Well, let’s face it, they can’t afford to have black Americans feeling happy, accepted, and successful—because the day that happens, the Democrat Party goes out of business for good.
Even the left’s politicians are getting in on the “race hoax” action.
The truth is, white people just aren’t producing the number of “hate crimes” the left needs, so they have to invent them. It’s a real supply and demand problem, eh?
The left and their media pals churn out race hoaxes, lies, and twisted stories to keep the “us vs. them” mentality alive and well in America.
The NAACP is getting in on this hoax game, too. They recently got busted trying to peddle this type of nonsense regarding the Daniel Penny not-guilty verdict. It all started when the NAACP responded to an X post by CNN that announced Daniel Penny’s fair and just acquittal – that case should’ve never gone to trial. And of course, instead of doing so professionally, the NAACP did what they do best: they sunk into the gutter, lied, and spread a fake racism hoax.
Thankfully, X’s Community Notes was there to crush the NAACP’s lie, and set the record straight.
Here’s what the NAACP lied about when responding to the CNN post. There were black people on the subway helping to restrain him, and who testified on behalf of Penny during the trial. This had nothing to do with race. It was very clearly a mental health/violence issue.
What Obama fears is that Biden might be persuaded to issue a sweeping set of Deep State pardons to a list that would include various top-level Obama administration officials like former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former Attorney General James Comey who potentially could be forced to provide damaging criminal testimony against him.
A presidential pardon does not waive a person’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for future crimes. But a person accepting a pardon (including Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Hunter Biden, or anyone else so pardoned) can be forced to testify truthfully about the pardoned crimes since they are no longer at risk of prosecution under federal law. Once pardoned, the Fifth Amendment privilege does not apply to giving testimony against others for the pardoned crimes since the pardoned individual no longer needs Fifth Amendment protection from a self-incrimination risk that is no longer relevant.
In other words, just to be clear, please understand that by accepting a pardon, a person has admitted guilt to the pardoned crime, a precedent the Supreme Court established in 1915’s Burdick v. United States. This fact, without any other evidence, gives the DOJ and the FBI a probative cause to start a new investigation by interviewing and interrogating the pardoned person under oath. All a DOJ or FBI official would have to do is to put a piece of paper in front of the pardoned person and ask that person to enumerate all crimes committed, plus requiring the pardoned person to give the names and details of all criminal accomplices involved.
That’s right, we get find out everything they did and who they are. They are going to get away with anyway, they already did. This is a pre-emptive strike for next time
In my younger days, I was passionate about fishing. At the time, I was inland so lake fishing was my only real weekend option, so I was all in. I was good with catching anything, but bass and stripers were at the top of the food chain.
One winter day, my fishing buddy (read he had a boat and I didn’t) Brian called me up and said let’s go. I checked the weather report and it was going to be in the 30’s, but I had nothing to do so my dumbass bundled up and went out on the lake.
I knew damn well that the fish had lockjaw under 40 degrees, but away we went, at zero dark thirty o’clock.
I figured it would be a day of casting practice and not catching, but that never stopped a fisherman. The ride to the perfect spot is never short, so we blasted through the freezing air as fast as the bass boat could go. No sense in going at a reasonable speed. I had to wait once we got there just to de-ice.
Here’s where the story begins.
At some point, the coffee went through me and I had to piss. I waited as long as I could so that when I reached the moment of truth, I could actually go.
So here I am on the back of the boat about ready to bust and now I have to take off a jacket, gloves, a pair of Ski pants, long johns, thermal underwear, and finally try to find my dick.
It was all (relatively) warm at about 32 degrees, but once my dick hit the freezing air, it revolted and said not today Jack. As I said, I was at the moment of truth and had to go. I was hoping for a huge stream to get it over with and not piss on the boat because then I’d have to stick my hand in the freezing water to wash it off.
After digging through all of my clothes and trying to get ready to force it out, My dick tried to crawl inside my body. It gave a weak effort, so I’m trying not to piss on my clothes, the boat, and trying to hit the water instead of everything else. I managed to get it done, but I don’t recall my dick being that cold ever before. It even revoted when I had to grab it with freezing fingers.
As for fishing, on a day we should have been skunked, I slayed the bass. I seemed to throw the right lure in the right place all day. I caught them off of stumps, on the spawning beds, on crankbaits, and on worms.
It was a helluva day fishing, but a terrible time trying to take a leak. I think that was the last time I tried that, although I’ve spent plenty of time in a tree stand hunting deer and trying not to piss.
In the wake of the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump that occurred on Sept. 15, a Secret Service agent who spotted the gunman and immediately fired at him was lauded for his quick reaction.
“The agent’s hyper-vigilance and the detail’s swift action was textbook,” Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe said at a press conference later that week.
While Trump’s agent may have reacted swiftly, he may not have been the best aim. According to the House Task Force investigating the Trump assassination attempts, the agent was as close as five feet away from alleged gunman Ryan Routh, and he fired six times at the suspect—missing them all.
While the 78-year-old made it clear he doesn’t believe his wife did “anything wrong,” he suggested if members of Trump’s administration were “determined” to “make” up a crime, it could probably be done.
During the 2016 election cycle, former secretary of state found herself in hot water after she was accused of using a private server to send classified correspondences. However, Bill pointed out Hillary had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
“She followed the rules exactly as they were written,” he said on the Wednesday, December 11, installment of The View. “Remember how the emails were such a big issue in 2016? Trump’s State Department found that Hillary sent and received exactly zero classified emails on her personal device.”
Bill claimed the scandal was nothing more than a “made-up phony story.”
The Clintons are dripping with crime, as are a lot of others like ex-FBI, DOJ, Eric Holder, the Obama’s, Liz Cheney, Schiff, Nadler, Maxine Waters, Fauci and a long list of others.
FBI Director Chris Wray will resign at the end of the Biden administration, the agency said Wednesday, as it became clear he would be forced out by President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump, who originally nominated Wray after firing the previous FBI director, previously announced he will nominate Kash Patel for the role, although Wray still had three years remaining on his 10-year term. Patel has been meeting with senators to build support for a confirmation vote next year.
Wray had wrestled with whether or not to resign given Trump’s stated desire to replace him, sources say, and wants to facilitate an orderly transition. But some in the FBI worried his departure would normalize Trump’s penchant for replacing FBI directors he doesn’t like, as the position is supposed to straddle administrations and be insulated from politics.
Wray took the helm of the agency after Trump fired Director James Comey following investigations under his watch into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Wray took office after Comey, whose FBI also investigated Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, left the bureau in May 2017.
As the incoming director, Wray was seen by many lawmakers as a solid choice to stabilize a rocky ship, but he ultimately suffered a similar fate as his predecessor, after he too oversaw an FBI that investigated Trump, probes resulting in two separate federal cases against the former president.
“Electricity bills in New England are poised to experience a sharp increase driven by the clean energy mandates in five of the six states, which require duplicative, overbuilt renewable energy.”
Connecticut ratepayers suffered sticker shock this summer when they opened their July electric bills. While their energy consumption was relatively flat, the “public benefits” component doubled for some and tripled for others. The culprit was not hard to find given a legislative requirement for utilities to itemize the cost components of monthly bills.
“Public benefits” cover the cost of subsidies the state provides for low-income electricity customers and energy-efficiency programs. They also include solar, electric vehicle, and other renewable energy incentives.
The wide array of renewable energy subsidies and aid to low-income residents who cannot afford high-cost electricity, growing everywhere, is an increasing cost burden for power users in the Northeast.
Connecticut: Worst of the Worst
The Northeast has become the most expensive region in the continental United States for electricity. Connecticut has the most expensive electricity in the 50 states outside of Hawaii. Connecticut’s overall electricity price for this September, according to the Energy Information Administration, was 27.08 cents per kilowatt-hour (ȼ/kWh), compared to Hawaii’s 35.46 ȼ/kWh.
When I worked in sustainability at IBM (a joke in itself there), the Northeast was the most smug and misguided about the whole energy/carbon/climate issue. Never have I seen so many smart people (inside and analysts paid by IBM) get an issue so wrong because of ideology.
Well, take your smugness to the electric company and out of your bank account.
Gas is cheap and efficient. It’s not the bogeyman that you made it out to be. You picked your poison, now drink it.
This writer regrets to inform you that leftists and Democrats were actually right.
Rampant racism and deeply embedded bigotry are alive and thriving in this country. The left has been tragically correct on this matter.
They just haven’t been particularly forthcoming about where all that racism and bigotry is coming from.
Spoiler alert: The call is coming from inside the house.
Soon-to-be former Democratic New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman — perhaps best known as an emasculated member of the progressive and anti-Semitic “squad” and/or Captain Fire Alarm and/or the jabroni who lost “the most expensive primary race ever” — took to the social media platform X on Tuesday to launch a vile (and yes, very racist) screed against white people.
Full disclosure: Not sure if you could tell by my last name, but I’m not white, so Bowman’s attack isn’t even directed at me. I still find it utterly abhorrent.
“Dear White People,” the defeated representative began. “I don’t know why I feel the need to keep talking to you. I don’t know why part of me still has hope for you and for us.
“Some of you are too far gone. But maybe enough of you aren’t and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy.”
“White supremacy,” you say? Surely Bowman has some concrete examples of this.
To give you an idea of Bowman’s room temperature IQ, his first example was immediately slapped with a Community Note:
go read it for yourself. It just goes to show you that if you discriminate based on skin color, any color, you are a racist
Fox News host Harris Faulkner (who is black) called out Black Lives Matter (BLM) and left-wing rhetoric that claims America “hates black people” on Monday, after Daniel Penny was found not guilty.
A Manhattan jury acquitted Penny, a 26-year-old former Marine, of criminally negligent homicide in connection with the death of 30-year-old homeless man Jordan Neely. On “The Faulkner Focus,” the host began by noting that BLM leaders were outside the courthouse following the verdict, advocating for “black vigilantes” to avenge Neely’s death.
“We don’t know what the road home would have been like right after this, but I’m sure they get some protection for some period of time during the trial. But you go back to your life and you’re part of that community that potentially is going to jump on the subway in the next few days and how can you – just think about that. There are threats outside to take people out because this hinged on race suddenly, like suddenly this hinged on race. Black Lives Matter group getting together and saying, ‘If you do this you’ — what did the woman say?” Faulkner asked. “She said, ‘America hates black people.’ I mean that was so far afield from what we’re watching here I can’t even imagine how we got there.”
“When you say that you want to burn stuff that affects everybody, and you’re gonna hinge because you think people who have my skin color are so hated in America that you [have to] set New York on fire? That puts everybody in victim mode,” Faulkner continued. “I mean how is that even tolerated? Where is Alvin Bragg? He should come out on the steps of the courthouse right now and say, ‘You will be protected. Justice has been adjudicated in this building so you will not riot tonight. We will come after people who do.’ Like where is his voice?”
An Arab Muslim woman who sued the prominent law firm Foley & Lardner for revoking its job offer over her anti-Israel activism just had part of her case dismissed by an Illinois federal court.
Georgetown Law School grad Jinan Chehade claims the firm’s director of diversity and inclusion promised her they “valued and supported” her Arab Muslim heritage—a promise she says she relied on when she accepted a job there.
But U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, an Obama appointee, ruled that those assurances didn’t amount to an “unambiguous promise” that her job offer would not be rescinded over her pro-Palestinian activism.
Chehade had worked as a summer clerk at Foley in 2023 and was to begin as a full-time associate at the firm’s Chicago office in late October. In the interim, and following the October 7th attacks on Israel, she began speaking out against the Jewish state on her social media accounts and at an October 11th Chicago City Hall meeting.
Chehade appeared at the meeting wrapped in a keffiyeh to oppose a resolution condemning the Hamas massacre. Though “the Western Zionist-controlled media machine would have you believe” it was an unprovoked attack, she raged, Hamas’s murderous rampage was justified: it was their “legal right” and a “natural response” to “75 years of occupation” by Israel’s “apartheid regime”:
He’s got enough Fentanyl in him to kill a horse. Let’s not overlook the Meth. He was a criminal committing a crime, not a hero.
They just needed a victim to set up the money laundering by a Marxist group. Who else is Marxist? Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, and other mass murderers in history who stole governments, laundered money, and tried to take down Western Civilization starting with God, the family, free speech, and private property.
What did BLM do with the money? Bought houses, cars and bling. They started no groups or agencies that actually helped blacks get on their feet.
An OnlyFans porn star broke down in tears after sleeping with 100 men in a single day in order to gain social media clout.
Actually 101.
Lily Phillips thought that having sex with so many men would catapult her to viral fame, and it did briefly, but she’s now counting the cost.
In a documentary made by YouTuber Josh Pieters titled I Slept With 100 Men in One Day, Pieters almost vomits at the sight of a bedroom littered with lube, used condoms, wrappers and tissues after Phillips had spent a nauseating 14 hours fornicating.
By the time the 30th man rocked up, the porn star said she began to “disassociate,” remarking, “It’s not like normal sex. I can only think of five, six, 10 guys that I remember and that’s it. It’s weird.”
Phillips said she began to feel “robotic,” but ‘felt bad’ about not giving every man at least the promised five minutes.
“When I started making this documentary, I wasn’t too sure of what to expect, I certainly didn’t expect to see Lily so upset at the end of it all,” said Pieters, as Phillips goes to hug her friend while sobbing.
I’m just glad that I found out she was sleeping around after I broke up with her, and that I didn’t catch anything. I’m glad I got out when I did, just not soon enough.
Top Kamala Harris Staffer Admits What We Knew All Along
Kamala Harris’s deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, admitted at a Harvard politics event Dec. 6 that the Democratic Party’s media outreach strategy is not only failing but failing miserably.
During a panel discussion at the school’s Institute of Politics, Flaherty lamented his party and campaign’s failure to find voters who are not paying attention to corporate networks — CNN and MSNBC — and Hollywood A-listers from Diddy’s orbit. He also made an interesting comment about the Democratic Party being the “party of institutions,” which I think is true. The Democrats have become the staunch defenders of the status quo, whereas the Republican Party, under the leadership of President-elect Donald Trump, has become an insurgent force of change in the capital.
They don’t live in the real world and really don’t know anything. Actors pretend for a living and the press are just people that try to sell advertising by sensationalism. They are shallow, vain and will sell you out in a second
Months before police identified Luigi Mangione as the man they suspect gunned down a top health insurance CEO and then seemingly vanished from Midtown Manhattan, another disappearing act worried his friends and family.
The 26-year-old scion of a wealthy Baltimore family who was a high school valedictorian and an Ivy League graduate, Mangione had maintained an active social media presence for years, posting smiling photos from his travels, sharing his weightlifting routine and discussing health challenges he faced.
He publicly kept track of nearly 300 books he had read or wanted to read, even posting a favorable review of the Unabomber manifesto on a book website.
story
Those institutions of indoctrination turn out losers. He’s just one in a line of many. I’m not saying they are murderers, but they are losers each in their own way.
Look at the last line before the story link. It says that the BLM activist racists are trained Marxists. The worst type of person we could have right now. (Look up Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Obama)
Black Lives Matter leader Hawk Newsome called for “black vigilantes” to descend into major cities Monday to retaliate against 26-year-old former Marine Daniel Penny’s acquittal over the death of Jordan Neely.
A Manhattan jury found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide after he held 30-year-old homeless man Neely in a chokehold to protect surrounding passengers on a New York City subway train in May 2023. Newsome called on “black vigilantes” to avenge Neely’s death and fight against white people who allegedly want to “choke” and “kill” black people for “being loud.”
“Like everybody else has vigilantes, we need some black vigilantes,” Newsome said. “People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud, how about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us? I’m tired. I know you’re looking for us to be like, ‘Oh, go and march. Go and march.’ No, this weekend, I want you to hold a community event, everywhere from the Bronx, to Houston, to Seattle, to Florida. Black people hold community events and talk about what you need.”
Passengers who witnessed the incident said Neely behaved in an erratic and threatening manner by screaming at commuters, throwing his jacket on the ground, and saying that he did not care if he went to jail. Penny then came up from behind Neely and held him in a chokehold for about 15 minutes, where Neely eventually lost consciousness and was pronounced dead.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggcharged Penny after a medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide in May 2023. The manslaughter charge, which was dismissed prior to the jury’s verdict, came with a potential 15-year prison sentence, while the negligent homicide charge comes with a maximum four-year sentence.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy said during a Monday Fox News segment that the jury was in a “deadlock,” likely due to many jurors buying into Bragg’s alleged “racialized” narrative of the incident.
Protesters supporting Neely gathered outside the courtroom prior to and following the verdict, chanting, “No justice, no peace,” and warning that the public “will hear [them] tonight.”
BLM executives have publicly identified themselves as “trained Marxist[s],” including co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who confirmed in 2020 that she and her fellow organizers are Marxist ideologues
At the center of it is the race hustle – a hustle being the attempt to get something for nothing – in this sense, seeking respect and approbation for people engaged in uncivilized behavior.
It kicked off in 2012 when one Trayvon Martin, 17, got shot while bashing the head of a neighborhood watch coordinator, George Zimmerman, against the pavement in Sanford, Florida. The news media dishonestly portrayed Martin as a skittle-munching child when police reported him as six-feet-tall. Zimmerman, five-foot-eight, was eventually acquitted of all charges on grounds of self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was born.
Next up in 2014 was Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Missouri. After robbing a convenience store, Brown was stopped on the street by Police Officer Darren Wilson. According to Wilson’s account, Brown reached into his patrol car trying to seize his gun. Brown’s DNA was later found on Wilson’s gun, and Brown’s blood was detected on the car’s door, suggesting a struggle. Following the incident, riots, arson, and looting broke out in Ferguson for days after. A local grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson, and he was eventually exonerated of civil rights violations when investigated by the US Department of Justice. The case amplified the Black Lives Matter (movement.
Other incidents followed in 2014: one Eric Garner, 43, was stopped in Staten Island for selling individual cigarettes on the street. Garner resisted arrest and was put in a choke hold. He repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe,” before dying of an asthma attack. In November, same year, Tamir Rice, 12, was brandishing a toy gun that looked like a real firearm in a Cleveland, Ohio, park, when police trainee Timothy Loehmann responded to a 911 call and shot the boy. A Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to indict Loehmann. The city of Cleveland settled $6-million with the Rice family in a wrongful death suit.
In May, 2020, George Floyd, 46, a released felon, resisted arrest after trying to pass a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in Minneapolis. Officer Derek Chauvin eventually subdued Floyd with a restraint, knee-on-back, recommended by the city police department’s training guide. Floyd died at the scene with 11 ng/mL of fentanyl, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine, and cannabinoids detected in his blood at autopsy, plus heart disease and hypertension. Officer Chauvin was convicted on several counts of murder and manslaughter and three other officers at the scene also went to jail on lesser charges. Riots, arson, looting, and murder ensued in Minneapolis and many other American cities. Statues of George Floyd were erected around the country and the city of Minneapolis settled a wrongful death suit for $27-million with the Floyd family.
Penny was saving people being threatened by a drug induced criminal. This was not a White on Black issue. What if the schizophrenic was a white dude or an Asian and Penny choked him out?
No, some people see things through the color of race making it impossible to stamp out racism.
I’m at the point where if it’s a deep subject or means something, I can go deep and listen and discuss until the subject is exhausted.
When I hear about shopping, what other people said, and the various examples of small talk, not only do I tune out, my social battery starts draining immediately.
Other introverts will relate to this one. It’s when the extroverts get going and talking is sort of a competition, where they wait for a break so that they can get in their point or part of the story that may or may not have anything relevant to what is being discussed.
Pathological talkers are like that. They wake up and their mouth starts going. I literally hide in my own house sometimes to make it stop
I couldn’t agree with this writing more. It’s happening to me and I even crave it now. For example, I celebrate every time I miss another high school reunion. The 50th is next year for me and there is nothing or nobody that could drag me back to see people that I left behind decades ago. (see the last section).
I’ve got family within driving distance and I don’t text or call for fear that there might be a get-together that I’d have to suffer through. There just isn’t enough there for me to want to suffer through that anymore.
We all become more introverted as we get older, even the most extroverted among us.
I’m a classic introvert, but in my teens and twenties, it was normal for me to spend almost every weekend with friends. Now, in my thirties, the perfect weekend is one with zero social plans.
And I’m not the only one socializing less these days. My extroverted friend, for example, used to run through her entire contact list, calling friends whenever she was alone in the car. She told me she hated the quiet, the emptiness, because being alone felt boring.
You know, for the whole 10–15 minutes it took to drive to the grocery store. Oh, the horror.
These days, I can rarely get her out for brunch or coffee. She’s content spending most nights at home with her husband and two kids. And I haven’t gotten one of her infamous calls in years.
So, what gives? Do we get more introverted as we get older?
In a post on Quiet Revolution, Susan Cain confirmed my suspicions: We tend to act more introverted as we get older. Psychologists call this “intrinsic maturation.” It means our personalities become more balanced, “like a kind of fine wine that mellows with age,” writes Cain.
Research also shows that our personalities do indeed change over time — and usually for the better. For instance, we become more emotionally stable, agreeable, and conscientious as we grow, with the largest change in agreeableness happening during our thirties and continuing to improve into our sixties. “Agreeableness” is one of the traits measured by the Big Five personality scale, and people high in this trait are warm, friendly, and optimistic.
We also become quieter and more self-contained, needing less “people time” and excitement to feel a sense of happiness.
Psychologists have observed intrinsic maturation in people worldwide, from Germany to the UK, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Turkey. And it’s not just humans; they’ve observed it in chimps and monkeys, too.
This shift is why we slow down as we get older and begin enjoying a quieter, calmer life — and yes, it happens to both introverts and extroverts.
Becoming More Introverted Is a Good Thing
From an evolutionary standpoint, becoming more introverted as we age makes sense — and it’s probably a good thing.
“High levels of extroversion probably help with mating, which is why most of us are at our most sociable during our teenage and young adult years,” writes Susan Cain.
In other words, being more extroverted when you’re young might help you form important social connections and, ultimately, find a life partner. (Cue the flashbacks to awkward high school dances and “welcome week” in college.)
Then, at least in theory, by the time we reach our 30s, we’ve committed to a life path and a long-term relationship. We may have kids, a job, a spouse, and a mortgage — our lives are stable. So it becomes less important to constantly branch out in new directions and meet new people.
(Note that I said “in theory.” In my 30s, I still don’t have kids, a mortgage, or a wedding ring. These days, we have the luxury of not following evolution’s “script.”)
“If the task of the first half of life is to put yourself out there, the task of the second half is to make sense of where you’ve been,” explains Cain.
During the married-with-children years, think of how difficult it would be to raise a family and nurture close relationships if you were constantly popping into the next party. Even if you don’t marry or have kids, it would be hard to focus on your career, health, and life goals if you were always hanging out with friends like you did in your teens and twenties.
Once an Introvert, Always an Introvert
But there’s a catch: Our personalities only change so much.
In my book, The Secret Lives of Introverts, I like to say that our personalities may evolve, but our temperaments remain constant.
This means that if you’re an introvert, you’ll always be an introvert, even at 90. And if you’re an extrovert — though you may slow down with age — you’ll always be an extrovert.
I’m talking big-picture here: who you are at your core.
Research supports this idea. In 2004, Harvard psychologists Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman studied individuals from infancy into adulthood. In one study, they exposed babies to unfamiliar stimuli and recorded their reactions. Some babies got upset, crying and flailing their arms and legs; these were labeled “highly reactive” to their environment.
Other babies remained calm around the new stimuli; they were the “low-reactive” ones.
When Kagan and Snidman checked in with these individuals later, they found that the “highly reactive” babies often grew up to be more cautious and reserved, while the “low-reactive” babies tended to stay sociable and daring as adults.
The bottom line? Our core temperament — whether cautious or sociable, introverted or extroverted — doesn’t change dramatically with age.
An Example: Your High School Reunion
Consider, for instance, your high school reunion.
Let’s say you were very introverted in high school — perhaps the third-most introverted person in your graduating class. Over the years, you’ve grown more confident, agreeable, and comfortable in your own skin, but you’ve also become a bit more introverted. If you enjoyed hanging out with friends once a week in high school, maybe now in your thirties, you’re content with seeing them only once a month.
At your ten-year high school reunion, you notice everyone has slowed down a bit, enjoying a calmer, more stable life. But those who were very extroverted in high school are still much more extroverted than you.
You’re still approximately the third-most introverted person in your class — but now the whole group has shifted slightly toward the introverted side.
And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it might be exactly what we need to flourish as adults. If there’s one thing we introverts understand, it’s the deep satisfaction of a quiet life.
Have you found yourself becoming more introverted as you’ve gotten older? Let me know in the comments below.
I’ve done decades of martial arts and choked people out with the same one he used on the criminal terrorizing the train that day. It was only cutting off the blood supply to the brain and then they wake up. Even the cop said he was breathing and had a heartbeat.
What Penny did was a Batman move to help everyone else on the train who was being threatened. His only crime was being white that day in an environment looking to convict a non PPP.
I said that day and every time since that I’d choke that MF out also just like Penny did if they were being harassed like that.
The case against Marine veteran Daniel Penny should never have been brought. It was a gross injustice. By law, he was justified in using reasonable force —even lethal force— to subdue a maniac who vowed to murder riders the moment he entered a subway car. That man, Jordan Neely, initiated the confrontation and died as a result of his own menacing and illegal actions.
He’s a hero and got a just sentence, except he never should have had to go to trial to begin with. It was a woke diversity move that the left was used to getting away with to try and extract reverse judgment on an innocent man. It should have never even gone to trial. He should have received a key to the city and a parade for saving people being harassed by a drug-induced criminal.
Justice was served. He never came close to committing a crime, rather he helped the community. That the criminal died is a different issue, but Penny didn’t have anything to do with his death. George Floyd died from Fentanyl which is how this farce began, but these made-up BLM lies failed again today against Penny
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The jury has come back in the Daniel Penny case.
It’s so weird to me. The jury deliberated the first charge, second degree manslaughter, for so long and couldn’t reach a decision.
The panelists acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide — which could have put him behind bars for up to four years — in Neely’s chokehold death aboard a crowded uptown F train in May 2023.
Manslaughter, the top charge against Penny, was tossed on Friday after jurors twice said they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.
Jurors sided with Penny’s defense attorneys, who had argued that the Marine veteran was justified in rushing to protect his fellow subway straphangers when he subdued the erratic homeless man. The lawyers had also questioned whether there was sufficient evidence that the chokehold caused Neely’s death.
These are still the early posts. While some are better than others, they were better when I first started this. This is still last year’s stuff before some of you started following me.
Woke, BLM, Muslim, Democrat, Illegal and Boston. I didn’t even include her breaking the law.
Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, a Democrat and the first Muslim elected to the council, was arrested on Friday by FBI agents.
Tania Fernandes Anderson, who served as Vice Chair of the Post Audit Committee, which oversees government accountability, was arrested on six felony charges (five counts of wire fraud and one count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds) stemming from a kickback scheme.
“The charges stem from an alleged kickback scheme she orchestrated to obtain several thousand dollars in taxpayer money in exchange for bribes paid,” U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said at Friday’s press conference, according to NBC Boston.
According to the indictment, Fernandes Anderson allegedly awarded a $13,000 bonus to a staffer, identified as “Staff Member A,” who is also a relative, on the condition that the staffer return a significant portion of the bonus—approximately $7,000—directly to her.
Anderson allegedly finalized the cash transaction in a bathroom at City Hall, receiving $7,000 in kickbacks from Staff Member A, as detailed by text message evidence included in the indictment.
I asked AI to list some of his boners. Here’s what came up
Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate economist and columnist for the New York Times, has been known to make predictions and argue for certain economic policies that have been proven wrong or controversial over time. Here are a few examples:
Predicting the 2008 Financial Crisis: In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, Krugman was skeptical of the severity of the housing bubble and the potential consequences of a housing market crash. He argued that such a scenario was unlikely and that the economy would continue to grow. However, the crisis ultimately occurred, causing a major recession and exposing the flaws in Krugman’s predictions.
Arguing against austerity: Following the 2008 financial crisis, Krugman advocated against austerity measures and argued that governments should focus on boosting spending to stimulate the economy. However, many countries that implemented expansionary fiscal policies saw mixed results, and some economists argued that a more balanced approach to austerity and stimulus was necessary.
Predicting a “double-dip” recession: In 2010, Krugman predicted that the U.S. economy would experience a “double-dip” recession, with a second downturn occurring after an initial recovery. However, the economy continued to grow steadily, and the double-dip recession never materialized.
Arguing against the effectiveness of Quantitative Easing: Krugman has been critical of the Federal Reserve’s use of quantitative easing, arguing that it was not an effective tool for stimulating the economy. Some economists, however, have attributed the recovery of the U.S. economy in part to the Fed’s aggressive monetary policies.
Here’s what a second engine said:
Paul Krugman, despite his reputation as a prominent economist, has made several predictions that did not materialize as he expected. Here are some specific predictions by Krugman that didn’t come true:
Economic Predictions
2008 Financial Crisis: Krugman failed to anticipate the severity of the 2008 financial crisis1.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: In July 2008, Krugman predicted that concerns about a possible collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “overblown.” Months later, both institutions required massive government bailouts1.
Unemployment Rate: Krugman supported the Obama administration’s stimulus package, which was predicted to keep unemployment below 8%. However, unemployment surpassed 10% despite the stimulus1.
Interest Rates and Fiscal Policy
Zero Lower Bound: Krugman believed that nominal interest rates couldn’t go below 0%. This proved incorrect as some countries experienced negative interest rates2.
Fiscal Austerity: In 2013, Krugman predicted that U.S. budget cuts (the “sequester”) would lead to severe economic damage and possibly a double-dip recession. Instead, the U.S. economy continued to recover2.
Inflation and Deflation
Accelerating Deflation: Krugman’s model predicted accelerating deflation in the face of a prolonged economic slump. In reality, consumer prices rose modestly even as unemployment remained high2.
Price Deflation: In February 2010, Krugman warned of potential price deflation in the near future, comparing the U.S. situation to Japan’s. This did not occur; instead, his preferred measures of CPI turned around sharply within months2.
Oil Prices and Production
Permanent High Oil Prices: In June 2008, with oil at $137 per barrel, Krugman predicted that oil prices were on a permanently higher trajectory. The price of oil collapsed mere months later3.
U.S. Oil Production: Krugman failed to foresee the surge in U.S. crude oil output. He had expressed skepticism about significant increases in oil production, but U.S. field production of crude nearly doubled in the following decade
I’ve never trusted the NYT other than to be on the liberal side of anything, even if it means they were wrong. That he got an award for his economic writings is analogous to Obama getting a Nobel before he did anything other than lie to get elected.
Go away and stop ruining our lives like the rest of the Coastal elites that misunderestimate (Bush-ism) what the real America and real Americans who live in flyover country believe. It’s why most of the country just voted red instead of blue.
My wife’s idiot niece Marian posted on Facebook that Elizabeth Warren is the bomb. I can pretty much count on her being on the wrong side of everything good for America. Here’s proof.
President Biden has overseen nearly four years of a two-tiered justice system, as his pardoning of Hunter Biden and the political persecutions of then-candidate Donald Trump make all too clear.
But there have been quieter attacks on justice, like “debanking” — and few people realize they could be the next victims because they are a “politically exposed person,” that is someone who disagrees with the liberal status quo.
Debanking is a kind of financial blackballing that has appeared within just the last 20 years.
It started under then-President Barack Obama as a war to punish those seen as political enemies, like firearm manufacturers. Government documents unsealed at the end of 2020 proved that the federal government used its regulatory authority over financial markets to attack political opponents.
Government regulators essentially make it impossible for certain people or businesses to make online transactions, or to have a bank account or a credit card.
…
The debanking scourge under President Biden has hit the crypto world particularly hard. The Securities and Exchange Commission has unleashed a plague of investigations, some real and some merely threatened, to force innovators and investors out of that space.
Dozens of tech and crypto founders have been debanked under Biden, and their inventions smothered.
On Joe Rogan‘s podcast, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen blamed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a group set up at the behest of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to go after crypto firms in particular.
“Basically every crypto founder, every crypto startup, either got debanked personally and forced out of the industry, or their company got debanked,” Andreessen said.
Their findings further verified theories about gain-of-function research in China and the lab leak theory; exposed waste, fraud, and abuse of COVID relief funding; revealed how federal and state agencies, including the CDC and NIH, enforced pointless, unscientific recommendations that damaged our country’s health and economy; and highlighted how the government “ignore[d] natural immunity” and mandated the ineffective COVID vaccine while it “failed to properly inform the public about vaccine injuries” and is still failing to provide compensation for the vaccine-injured.
The report also highlights how New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his Administration “worked to cover up the tragic aftermath of their policy decisions in an apparent effort to shield themselves from accountability” after forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients.
Joe Rogan reacted to the bombshell report with Canadian YouTuber and More Plates More Dates host Derek Munro, noting that the committee “basically said all the conspiracy theorists were correct.” He then slammed leftist MSNBC hack Rachel Maddow for helping to cover up the truth about the virus.
It can be recalled that Rogan came under intense scrutiny from the radical left and the fake news for questioning the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and taking Ivermectin to treat his case of COVID.
WATCH:
Rogan: The House released a 500-page report on COVID-19 pandemic key findings: COVID-19 likely originated from a lab-related incident in Wuhan, China. Crazy! You get banned from YouTube for saying that, banned.
Over $200 billion in relief funds lost to fraud, with criminals exploiting weak oversight. Prolonged lockdowns and arbitrary mandates caused severe harm, economic devastation, mental health crises, and historic learning loss while lacking robust scientific support. Policies ignored natural immunity, pushing mandates that eroded trust and harmed public perception of science. Absolutely. WHO and CDC compromised by political interference, offering inconsistent, unscientific guidance that fueled public distrust, and the key players included federal agencies. And Cuomo’s administration actively obstructed oversight efforts and hid critical evidence.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic basically said all the conspiracy theorists were correct, every single one of them. No repercussions, no retractions, no apology from Rachel Maddow, none of it.
In addition to the House report, The Gateway Pundit reported that in another bombshell legal win, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a high-profile case brought by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT).
The decision mandates the FDA to release the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) file for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine no later than June 30, 2025.
They should have done nothing, prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and nothing would have happened. Instead, they used it to cover up a stolen election and the would be 46th president is now the 47th.
We now can’t trust the government on healthcare, nor any of the agency’s recommendations.
Millions are vaccine-damaged, and a lot of old people died alone. It was malpractice by the government, the doctors, big pharma, congress China and America, not to mention countries like Israel and Denmark that made the whole country get jabbed.
Only Sweden and the Amish got it right. They had herd immunity.
The rest of us who saw through it and went un-jabbed are purebloods now.
“Everything was a lie from the beginning. The asymptomatic people don’t transmit. Kids were not harbingers of the disease. They don’t actually, they’re like a break on the disease. Lockdowns were a farce. Masks don’t work.”
“I tell people, I joke sometimes I say masks do work. A lot like bathing suits work to keep pee out of the pool. They’re not very effective. So that’s one of those things that, you know, it was a farce. Pretty much everything they said was a farce. I know we’re still recovering from it. Just yesterday we walked into a pharmacy and they were advertising COVID-19 vaccines.”
“Well if you want to destroy your immune system, take a COVID-19 vaccine. It will destroy your immune system. It distributes widely in your body. It can’t be broken down because it’s a genetically modified RNA. There are contaminants, process related impurities, what I usually call them, but contaminants for most people, that they haven’t gotten out of the vaccines.”
“The drug that I invented took eight years for us to get the process related impurities out. It’s hard to do and I knew this would be a problem early on when they were trying to push this so fast because nobody had ever made these vaccines in anything bigger than a blender. What we had is found is even worse.”
“They put an SV40 promoter in the vaccine, Pfizer did, that actually well known for the last five decades to bind P53 to Guardian the genome and cause cancers. They know that. We just kept them in the head of the Human Genome Project did this discovery with a few other molecular biologists.”
“This is really big news because the contaminants and the impurities in the vaccine are very dangerous and there’s design flaws like I just pointed out. Wide distribution to the brain, the bone marrow, the ovaries, the testes and long term production six months or more in the last study that we did. So there’s a lot to talk about. Do not get the vaccines unless you just want a crummy immune system. ”
“I think the main thing is these vaccines are dangerous. They have process related impurities. They cause cancer, strokes, heart attacks. The data is in 40% more deaths in 2021 between 18 to 64. This is just data we can’t ignore, so please stay away from the vaccines.”
Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbages contain many phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals. In fact, in the late 90s, published studies indicated that there was a link between the consumption of cruciferous vegetables and lower risk for breast cancer.
More recently, the nutrients in broccoli sprouts and their protective effects against multiple types of cancer have seen renewed interest within the research community.
One of the key components of broccoli sprouts is a compound called sulforaphane. Broccoli sprouts that are specifically 5-6 days old contain over 100 X’s more sulforaphane than the mature plant.
In 2011, the September Oncology Report, found that sulforaphane suppressed breast cancer cell proliferation and growth. In fact, the research committee found that Sulforaphane inhibited the growth of cultured human breast cancer cells, leading to cell death or apoptosis.
Another promising study in 2004 at the University of Buffalo, found that sulforaphane inhibited the growth of human breast cancer cells and “indicated a potential use of this compound as a chemotherapeutic agent in cancer treatment.” Can you picture the medical mainstream hooking up sulforaphane drips instead of the chemical concoction IV drips? Wishful thinking, almost comical and highly unlikely!
Many queer and transgender Muslims said they’d felt isolated from traditions that emphasize togetherness, like praying at community mosques, fasting for Ramadan, or performing the Muslim pilgrimage called Hajj.
While over 30 majority-Muslim countries criminalize queerness in some capacity, many Islamic scholars disagree about whether Islam “accepts” queer and transgender people. Each scholar, institution, and government leads with their own interpretation of and perspective on Islam.
Sophia Uppal, a 28-year-old who’s nonbinary, described their relationship with Islam as complicated. Some of Uppal’s favorite childhood memories include waking up early to their mom preparing sehri, or the meal Muslims eat before sunrise to prepare for the day’s fast.
But they said they’d also felt disconnected from Islam for so long because of the expectation to adhere to a heterosexual and cisgender lifestyle. “My mom would dress me up in hijab and clothes that did not feel aligned with me at all,” Uppal said. “Now it’s sometimes a deep trigger when I see gendered Islam forced upon me.”
Both Uppal and Khan look back on their Islamic upbringings and recall feeling pressured to conform to generations of tradition and subjectively interpreted religious texts. At first, these teachings — like the interpretation that if a person was queer or transgender they couldn’t be a Muslim — made Uppal and Khan feel excluded from their communities. But infusing queer and transgender experiences into Islamic tradition has helped Uppal and Khan create new relationships with their Muslim identities.
The decision by a top soccer team to withdraw LGBTQ rainbow jackets after a Muslim player protested has drawn criticism from a woke former player. Tim Howard, a New Jersey-born ex-goalkeeper for Manchester United, attacked his old team for deferring to current player Noussair Mazraoui, who said he would not wear an LGBTQ jacket, citing his Muslim faith. This prompted the team to abandon the jackets entirely so Maraoui would not be “isolated.”
“Any team, any organization should always do what is right. And if one player chooses not to take part, they are entitled to do that, Howard complains. However, he warns players opting out of doing “the right thing” will have “eyes on them.”
“Teams don’t have to protect players. Teams should focus on the greater good, not the beliefs of one individual,” he insists, declaring he “tend[s] to have a problem with any faith or any religion that doesn’t put human rights first.”
In common with many leftists, Howard goes on to suggest people have to agree with his social politics to be good Christians—despite Mazraoui being a Muslim—saying, “Jesus knelt beside beggars and sinners and thieves—people from all walks of life.”
While this is true, Jesus disapproved of sin—saving a woman accused of adultery from being stoned but instructing her to “sin no more,” for instance.
Multiple New Testament texts affirm that homosexuality is a sin, according to the Christian faith.
A man in Canada’s far north leapt on to a polar bear to protect his wife from being mauled, police say.
The unnamed man suffered serious injuries but is expected to recover, according to the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service.
The couple left their house at around 05:00 local time (11:00 GMT) on Tuesday to find their dogs, when a bear – which was in the driveway of their home – lunged at the woman.
The incident happened in Fort Severn First Nation, a small community of about 400 people in the far north of Ontario.
“The woman slipped to ground as her husband leapt on to the animal to prevent its attack,” police said in a statement. “The bear then attacked the male, causing serious but non-life-threatening injuries to his arm and legs.”
A neighbour arrived with a gun and shot the bear several times. It retreated into nearby woods where it died of its injuries.
The man was transported to a community nursing station where he was treated for his injuries.
Nishnawbe Aski police said they “continued to patrol the area to ensure no other bears were roaming the community”.
Alysa McCall, a scientist at Polar Bear International, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that polar bears rarely attack humans.
When an attack occurs, the bear is often hungry, young and unwell, she said.
Normally the bears are far from human settlements, instead preferring to spend their time at sea hunting ice seals. But climate change has led to temperature fluctuations, breaking up ice and in some cases driving bears inland to look for food.
“If you’re attacked by a polar bear, definitely do not play dead — that is a myth,” she told CBC. “Fight as long as you can.”
We are told to fret that climate change is a threat not only to all life on Earth, but also to our mental health:
As temperatures rise, extreme weather events become more frequent, and natural disasters intensify, the psychological well-being of populations worldwide is increasingly at risk.
This mostly effects politically sacred “vulnerable populations” — for example, those who are already have mental issues and of course nonwhites:
For Indigenous communities, climate change-induced displacement from ancestral lands can cause profound psychological distress, as these communities often have deep cultural and spiritual connections to their environment.
Only “indigenous communities” are capable of appreciating God’s creation. That’s why you never see any garbage or pollution in Third World countries.
The global warming hoax really does damage not only the economy but also sanity:
[T]he Daily Telegraph reported on an epidemic of “eco-anxiety” among the children who are being treated for an overwhelming terror of “environmental doom” as climate alarmists spread fears of an impending climate disaster.
Creating hysteria as a means of manipulation is a deliberate tactic:
As Breitbart News has reported, activists have studied people’s emotional response to climate expressions and purposefully selected the terminology that elicits the strongest reaction.
The Guardian rejects “climate change” in favor of “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown.” Salon has explicitly proclaimed that we should “start panicking” because the weather continues to fluctuate like it always has. Every summer heatwave is portrayed as apocalyptic, with predictable effects on the mental health of the gullible. Alicia Finley calls it “climate hypochondria.”
Given that it helps to be a little nuts to buy into woke ideology in the first place, climate change has created a vicious cycle of insanity whereby the more moonbats believe liberal establishment lies about the weather, the crazier they become, the more likely they are to believe the lies.
In the autumn of 2019 a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, began to circulate widely but at a low level. In March 2020, as the influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere subsided, due to a drop in viral interference SARS-CoV-2 surged and became the dominant respiratory virus. COVID-19 spread from China around the world, suppressing influenza, whilst leaving the other human-infecting coronaviruses undisturbed. The vast majority of countries reacted to COVID-19 by imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as lockdowns and facemask policies and, later, vaccination programmes.
It was a big effing hoax, all of it from the virus to the jab. Politicians and Pharma should fry for this. It was murder, perjury, money laundering, RICO and many other crimes
Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it?
I’ve been around the world, to most of the continents. It was for both business and pleasure. I’ve stayed in the finest hotels and some dumps. I’ve eaten with the best chefs and at a choke and puke.
I don’t want to do that anymore. The sense of adventure isn’t enough to make me want to fight the people, the waits, the lines, and the crappy service.
The answer now is that I want to be Home or my place in the mountains. I have my stuff in my place and I don’t have to fight airports, and security lines, stay in places that aren’t mine and someone full of germs was just there before me.
It’s because I’m an introvert and getting old. I don’t care anymore. I don’t have to see everything and right now, there’s nothing I want more than to be in my place, preferably alone with my dog.
An American woman, who accidentally stabbed an Eritrean to death, faces up to ten years in prison.
The young woman, 20, was standing at a German train station on an escalator, when a 65-year-old man grabbed her backside on June 29. The incident occurred at Kaiserslautern train station, in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
After realising what had happened, the woman turned around and drew a folding knife, gesturing towards the 64-year-old man, with stabbing movements. The woman explained to investigators that she ‘wanted to keep the mat at a distance’ and that when he, eventually, took a step back, so did she.
The man then grabbed at the arm that the woman was holding the knife in, and as the woman struggled to free herself she accidentally stabbed the man in the heart ‘during the same movement’. Prosecutors reveal
Once the laughter stopped, Stahl may have found it productive to engage in some good-old fashioned reporting to figure out what she “could do” to better understand the media’s abysmal ratings. And even more concerning, the loss of public trust. In her 53-year journalism career, she never thought she’d witness her once-premiere news program, “60 Minutes,” becoming increasingly irrelevant in a post-Trump election world. Ratings stayed in the toilet bowl, as one CBS executive noted, as the show pulled in a pitiful five million viewers in mid-November.
Delusions of Adequacy 
