A man stranded in 30 feet of water in upstate New York hanging on for dear life to his life jacket, his kayak and his new $1,400 smartphone . wound up getting rescued by men of the Lord: a floating tiki bar of priests.
Why couldn’t he just roll the kayak over and climb back in? That’s kayaking 101. Ohhh, right, he’d have to drop his phone in the water to do that.
Jimmy MacDonald, who is a substance abuse counselor and recovered substance abuser, was saved by the Paulist Fathers, a Catholic religious community from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Washington, D.C., who helped with the Tiki Tours staff.
*Gilligan’s Island* The sea it started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed…”
.A movement of the Holy Spirit. is how one of the seminarians, Noah Ismael, told NBC Washington about how the group of holy men serendipitously discovered MacDonald at Lake George in Albany.
MacDonald had drifted away from his family while snapping pictures.
Uh-huh. I have suspicions about a recovered addict who “got separated from his family” then showed up on a floating bar.
The choppy water kept him from getting back to shore . leaving him in huge fear before the saintly rescue.
.That.s when I said, .Alright, I think I might die today. I think this might be it.” I prayed to my lord and savior Jesus Christ for help,. MacDonald said according to WNYT.
He.s extremely grateful to his good Samaritans.
.I just take that as a sign from God that he’s got me here for a real reason,. said MacDonald.
A story is making the rounds of the Manosphere about a group of cop wannabes who walked into a Portland “not yet a riot” to see firsthand how brick-throwing monkeys behave in the wild. They were promptly educated and instead of admitting to gross stupidity, resorted to spreading scare tactics about how crazy-capable the monkeys were. This and a couple related stories are supposed to frighten me into believing that Antifa, aka Pantifa are supposed to be a highly trained and disciplined paramilitary cohort that needs to be taken seriously.
Fear is the mind-killer. Let me free you from that fear.
Antifa “commander” with flamethrower burst into tears during arrest, cops say
Look at his face. Look at it! Eyes still red from crying. Lips trying to look proud for the mug shot. He doesn’t have enough testosterone to be shaving even at age 23!
An Antifa leader known as Commander Red was busted carrying a flamethrower to a Wisconsin Black Lives Matter rally . and “dropped into the fetal position and began crying” when stopped by cops, officials said.
Last I checked, flamethrowers were California-legal. I always wondered how/why the Elites missed that one.
I doubt he’s actually a leader in Antifa. Those are called “community organizers” and they’ve been doing dirty shit for decades.
Matthew Banta, 23, is “known to be a violent Antifa member who incites violence in otherwise relatively peaceful protests,. a criminal complaint in his Green Bay arrest record insisted, according to WBAY.
He was carrying stickers and a flag for the controversial group . the name of which is short for .anti-fascist. . along with .military-grade 5-minute. smoke grenades, fireworks rockets, and a flamethrower, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
Banta was stopped after being spotted with .a whole bunch of white people with sticks, baseball bats and helmets. heading toward a BLM event in Green Bay, police said in the criminal complaint.
Sounds like a mostly-peaceful protest to me.
The others fled when a cop blocked them with his squad car, but Banta was stopped and “dropped into the fetal position and began crying,. the police report said. He complained that the officer got on top of him, which police denied, WBAY said.
“Cry me a river” AND HE DID!
At the time of Saturday’s arrest, Banta was out on a $10,000 cash bond after being accused of pointing a loaded gun at a police officer as well as biting and kicking a cop at a protest earlier this month, the report said.
THIS is why Antifa is a threat. Their sponsors in the government. Felony assault with deadly weapon against a uniformed police officer, plus battery against police, and bail is set at only $10k? Did the judge pay his bail, too?
A condition of his bond was that he can’t have a dangerous weapon, according to the Brown County district attorney’s office.
The 23-year-old from Neenah, about 40 miles south of Green Bay, was charged with obstructing an officer and two counts of felony bail jumping after Saturday’s arrest, the report said. He was released late Monday on $2,500 bond, court records show.
Again, THIS is why Antifa is a threat. Bringing a flamethrower to Day XX of urban riots AFTER VIOLATING THE CONDITIONS OF PREVIOUS BAIL FOR VIOLENT FELONIES, $2.5k?
Antifa ain’t shit but Soros owns the district attorneys in every city. He ain’t shit either, doing open treason and sedition in broad daylight, but again all the authorities let him get away with it.
Is socialism anything but a desperate, increasingly violent cry to be spanked by righteous authority for bad behavior?
Next, here’s video of a Pantifa protester with a knife wound to the leg–enough to break the skin through pants but no serious bleeding–who screams like he’s never been hurt before.
Although I admit, I would have screamed like this too if I saw a Pantifa ‘medic’ strapping a tourniquet onto my perfectly good leg. Sourced from
Portland Police arrest antifa rioters overnight. One of them is crying. Their comrades continue throwing projectiles at police, nearly hitting those being arrested on the ground. #PortlandRiotspic.twitter.com/s2e5k5h7eX
According to Portland officials, she had a bleeding abrasion on her head and was treated by a Portland Fire and Rescue field medic before being transported by ambulance.
However, after the ambulance pulled away from the scene, she jumped out of the ambulance and ran away.
Next, remember the recent CHAZ/CHOP anarchy experiment in Seattle? Starring rapper turned petty warlord Raz Simone? Here’s Simone begging emergency services to help with a shooting committed in his ‘town’ on his watch:
Medics refused to help even after people in the CHOP begged. They let our bro bleed out for 30 minutes till he died. Fuck politics. Fuck your currupt system. pic.twitter.com/PMwxU9yEzd
It’s like Dalrock’s Law for anarchists. First they drive you out, then they beg you to come back but only on their terms with them calling the shots on your dollar.
Here’s a cop who took a cheap shot with a car door after being pelted by mostly-peaceful protesters. I cannot explain how the perp didn’t see it coming.
Police car just drove by demonstrators on Classon Ave in Brooklyn — some of whom had been throwing cement — and opened passenger side door into a protester. pic.twitter.com/vd8Lq60TXC
— Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs (@NickAtNews) May 30, 2020
And lastly, check out these mug shots of Portland’s Finest Anti-Fascists!
Antifa are the Ugliest Americans to Have Ever Existed . A Deep-Dive Into the Physiognomy of Antifa
Antifa are undoubtedly the ugliest Americans to have ever existed. It is no wonder why they are angry, they look like some of the most miserable people you would ever meet. In this article, we will present to you some of the sorriest looking Americans you have ever seen.
And once again, most of these were immediately released with little or no bail even for repeat violent felonies. The linked article goes into profuse detail. Andy Ngo is doing the work of a thousand of his journalist peers.
Antifa are not a highly trained paramilitary organization. They’re hired scum & degenerates. That doesn’t make them less dangerous–if you see a mob heading your way then don’t be there, whether they’re Antifa or local color or a horde of rodents–but don’t fear them.
They’re the useful idiots of the real powers. Those you can fear because they have power over you. For now.
As a society, America has forgotten how to be human. It began with the assumption that unlimited immigration would not become an endgame demographic nightmare and metastasized until people couldn’t connect “no human contact, dehumanize yourself by covering your face at all times” with spikes in mental illness and suicide.
Along the way, somebody got the bright idea that training for school shootings should involve elementary-age children roleplaying their own violent deaths while being shot at.
AAP: Schools should avoid high-intensity live crisis drills
Prior to widespread school closures due to COVID-19, increasing concerns about mass casualty events in schools led to a burgeoning investment in school security and routine lockdown drills by most U.S. school districts.
I found myself at an active-shooter drill once, when my fieldwork schedule coincided. It was no big deal. A couple squads of up-gunned cops jogging around, discussing procedures and what-if scenarios and basically learning the geography of the school grounds… practical stuff and done during the summer vacation with no kids around.
I had no idea how far some of the tacticool badges were taking it:
Some districts utilize high-intensity active shooter drills that involve real weapons, gunfire or blanks; theatrical makeup to give a realistic image of blood or gunshot wounds; predatory and aggressive acting by an individual posing to be the shooter; or other means to simulate an actual attack. At times, students and staff are deceived into believing they are responding to an actual active shooter event, presumably to create an even more realistic experience for participants.
The boldfaced are BAD IDEAS even in the adult world. Not everybody relies on the Thin Blue Line for their safety. How long until staff go Flight 93 on a particularly convincing crisis actor?
These practices occur despite an absence of research demonstrating their efficacy and with little guidance on how best to protect children and staff from unintended negative psychological and emotional harm from such exercises.
To put it clinically.
A new policy statement, Participation of Children and Adolescents in Live Crisis Drills and Exercises, provides some guidance. The policy, from the AAP Council on Children and Disasters, Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, and Council on School Health, is available at https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-015503 and will be published in the September issue of Pediatrics.
Common sense, now with published guidelines!
Some high-intensity active shooter exercises were designed to mislead students and staff into believing they were experiencing an actual shooting event, according to AAP. In at least one situation, armed weapons were pointed at school children. In another live exercise, high school students sobbed hysterically, vomited, or fainted, and some children sent farewell notes to parents. Children risked physical harm when a stampede ensued, and students jumped over fences to escape.
Could those chuckleheads have really been that stupid?
Segue
Teachers “executed” in shooter drill sue Indiana sheriff’s office for trauma, injury
This may have been the incident provoking the new guideline.
An active shooter drill went too far at an Indiana elementary school, drawing real blood, and causing true trauma for the teachers playing victim, according to a lawsuit filed this month against the sheriff’s office that put on the mock exercise.
Teachers at Meadowlawn Elementary School came to work Jan. 4, 2019, aware of the planned training, but not what the White County Sheriff’s Office had in store, the lawsuit says.
The training included: high-velocity plastic pellets fired at point-blank range, breaking skin, leaving scars; screaming, expletives, and verbal abuse, according to the suit.
.The teachers displayed obvious signs of anguish and physical pain, but were humiliated to find the law enforcement officers joking and laughing at them,. the suit states.
The experience caused “lasting physical and emotional injuries,. and a group of eight teachers, represented by the National Education Association, are seeking compensation. …
Officers were supposed to be conducting ALICE training, a program that’s been taught in thousands of schools and businesses, according to the company’s website, and promotes “proactive strategies” to survive active shooter situations.
I’ve blogged previously on the uselessness of ALICE training. Link but I’ll skip it.
Between drills, teachers would quietly compare injuries. Often they were bleeding. Still, many said they didn’t feel they were allowed to opt out, and so continued to follow commands of the officer, the lawsuit says.
Female herd instinct.
More exercises were held throughout the day — a “run and hide drill,. a “barricade drill,. and a .counter-assault drill. — with more shooting.
One teacher has .a permanent scar. on her stomach from being shot, the lawsuit says.
Another described hiding under a table to avoid any more pellets, but an officer found her and shot her three more times.
.Throughout the Rotating Drills, Officers repeatedly smirked, laughed, and joked, including in moments when teachers were being hit with bullets, crying out in pain, or demonstrating extreme fear,. according to the suit.
For men, that could have legitimately been a fun time. I’ve been tapped a time or two to LARP for a National Guard coworker’s platoon. But yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
Though the officers were certified ALICE instructors, and had provided training at schools and workplaces for years, the program never calls for shooting participants with high-velocity pellets or “ever using force on participants without first obtaining their consent,. the lawsuit says.
.I.ve worked with teachers in other districts who have gone through ALICE, and this did not happen,. Barbara Deardorff, an Indiana State Teachers Association official, told the Indianapolis Star in 2019. .This is not the normal practice..
Considering how rare active shooters are, there’s little response needed besides locking the doors, closing the windows and checking in over the intercom. Training hard for a one-in-a-million event is wasted effort.
As I did in my selfie-link, I recommend GOLD training instead of ALICE. Get Out or Lie Down. Done. Send those earmarked training budget dollars to gunnerq at paypal dawt com….
Since the 1999 Columbine shooting in Colorado that left 12 students and one teacher dead, active shooter drills in the U.S. have become more common.
These drills, sometimes unannounced, are designed to teach students and faculty how to act in the event an active shooter is in their school, often involving masked gunmen actors and fake gunfire.
In some instances, students learn how to quickly lock doors, turn off lights and take shelter, but new research released Thursday shows that regardless of education level, the mental health of all involved is significantly stained with increased levels of depression, stress and anxiety following drills.
It passes the test of reasonableness. Me being a tabletop gamer, I once roleplayed myself in a zombie apocalypse scenario. It was surprisingly not fun at all, to imagine my life falling apart in unpredictably violent ways.
A nonprofit called Everytown for Gun Safety collaborated with the Georgia Institute of Technology to analyze nearly 28 million Twitter and Reddit posts in a search for terms such as therapy, suicidal, pain and pills that could indicate heightened concern or fear around the time of scheduled drills.
.This research unveiled alarming impacts of active shooter drills on the mental health of the students, teachers, and parents who experience them,. the report said. .In their current state, active shooter drills threaten the well-being of entire school communities over prolonged periods of time, leaving those who are affected in need of continued support to process their aftermath..
The research team discovered that social media posts alone displayed a 42% increase in anxiety and stress from the 90 days before active shooter drills to the 90 days after them. The frequent use of words such as .afraid, struggling and nervous. served as evidence, according to the report.
Signs of depression increased by 39% based on posts that featured the words .therapy, cope, irritability and suicidal. following drill events. Concerns about friends grew by 33%, concerns about social situations rose by 14% and concerns about work soared by 108%, the researchers found.
.I can tell you personally, just as an educator, we were not okay [after drills]. We were in bathrooms crying, shaking, not sleeping for months. The consensus from my friends and peers is that we are not okay,. one anonymous K-12 teacher wrote on social media, according to the report.
Worries over health also jumped by 23% while fears about death rose by 22%. .The analysis revealed words like blood, pain, clinics, and pills came up with jarring frequency, suggesting that drills may have a direct impact on participants. physical health or, at the very least, made it a persistent topic of concern,. the researchers wrote.
An anonymous parent tweeted, .my kindergartener was stuck in the bathroom, alone, during a drill and spent a year in therapy for extreme anxiety. in a new school even, she still has to use the bathroom in the nurses office because she has ptsd from that event..
And for some comic relief, from California Highway Patrol – Santa Cruz:
Talk about bad luck! When a 55-year-old Santa Cruz man fled from CHP this afternoon, he drove directly into the parking lot where an active shooter training exercise was being held with CHP, State Parks, Santa Cruz County Sheriffs office and numerous Fire and EMS personnel at Roaring Camp Railroad in Felton. The pursing Officer was soon accompanied by numerous law enforcement officers including our newest officers who recently reported to Santa Cruz. The incident ended with an arrest for evading and DUI.
End segues
A better approach
The policy outlines considerations regarding live active shooter drills in schools. It recommends eliminating children’s involvement in high-intensity drills and exercises (with the possible exception of a limited number of adolescent volunteers who have provided active consent/assent); prohibiting deception in drills and exercises; and making appropriate accommodations that address the unique vulnerabilities of individual or groups of children.
Translation, use common sense. If the phrase hasn’t yet been retired for obsolescence.
Rather than focusing only on preparing for mass casualty events, schools and communities are encouraged to increase efforts to prevent violence.
Sigh, of course they’re Woke themselves. “Prevent violence” is code for “control the children more tightly”. First they rightly see the cops not connecting “simulate your violent death” with emotional trauma, then they call to treat children like barely controlled monsters even more. Which was the justification for militarized active-shooter training in the first place. “We gotta be ready when the next kid blows! We know he’s here in this room… we just don’t know which one!”
Our society doesn’t know how to be human anymore.
[Increased efforts] would include investments in social-emotional learning…
Good for girls, bad for boys.
…positive school climate and culture…
Good for girls, bad for boys.
…early identification of behavioral health concerns and mental illness and effective and readily accessible treatment…
Medicate the boys when forcing them to act like girls doesn’t work. How original.
One wonders if these people actually care about the traumatized kids, or if they only care about the traumatized single-mother ghetto-rat feminist schoolteachers with DADDY ISSUES!
…training for educators and school administrators…
More money.
…sufficient mental health and support personnel in schools…
More money.
and interdisciplinary threat assessment.
Get spanked, Barbie. Having some boundaries imposed upon you will do wonders for your mental health and interdisciplinary threat assessments. At least you can recognize evil when it shoots bean bags up your nose… oh wait, you continued obeying their orders until a nicer male-authority figure came along!
This is a weirdo-sex advice column but I’ll edit it to ensure safety for work.
Dear How to Do It,
I.m a cis woman in kind of a classic millennial sex pickle: I’m really repelled by heterosexuality politically and personally, but I’m also really into [normal sex].
Don’t fight the inevitable, Barbie. Leave your life of sin, get pregnant by a healthy, normal man and get busy in the kitchen. You’ll be happy. Your single mother will hate you for being happy. And your government will try to bribe you back into the crab bucket of man-hating misery.
I’ve been thinking maybe I should look for bi dudes/ bicurious gay dudes, but I am not sure how best to do that.
Tell then you have AIDS. They’ll get excited.
Rich, what would you think of a woman being on Grindr? I do want to be respectful of gay men’s spaces and not horn in where I’m not welcome, but I really would love to find a vers guy with queer politics who would be up for casually dating a woman. What do you think? If you were me, where would you look?
She thinks about taming the unicorn. While casual conversation will work because of a shared interest in pickles, her ultimate situation will be less rewarding.
“I’m not into you.”
“Are you gay or something?”
“Duh.”
Dear Radical,
I.m not sure I’d call this a “classic millennial sex pickle….
We are in agreement.
…and I’d like to hear more about your particular flavor of self-flagellating dick politics…
She’s clearly been raised to deny her natural instincts. Perversion has been forced upon her from every direction yet in the final analysis, God wired her to be one gender and not another.
Sad to watch. She’s not yet at the slut event horizon… the searing of her conscience beyond redemption… but it won’t be long now.
…but I.ll answer the question you actually asked. A general rule of thumb that I wish more people followed is: If you enter a space as someone who is not a member of the demographic for which said space was established, you should behave yourself. Don’t try to make something that has been designed to be not about you about you. The world is not your bachelorette party. So if you must go the route of using digital spaces dominated by men seeking men, as a cis woman with (no offense?) ostensibly hetero desires, don’t bother people.
Surprisingly decent advice. “Don’t do female territory marking.”
Also be prepared to have your profile deleted. I actually have seen cis, hetero women on Grindr and the like before, and whenever I do, I think, .Well, she’s not gonna last.” And she doesn’t.
Even the gay sex advice columnist fell into the classic, Original Sin trap of not being able to tell a woman No. Hardwiring, I tell ye.
No, Barbie, the fags don’t want you walking in and asking for a straight guy.
Some gay and even bi men might admonish you for even trying your hand at the gay grid (and may get pissed at me for not scolding you for wanting to do so), but we must acknowledge that it’s not just a space for queer men anymore.
Amazing. The male desire to cuck for women is so strong that these queers would have to be more hetero to remain homo.
If you’re in a major metropolitan area, you’re better off going to queer parties, even queer sex parties (if you think you.d be into that), where the identification boundaries tend to bleed into each other and a real anything-goes spirit pervades.
Such is the spirit of this age and the logical conclusion of redefining gender to mean literally anything… anything except man and wife.
Barbie is not going to find Normal amidst the rebellion against Normal’s Creator.
Something you should keep in mind is that pursuing guys who share your interest in dick will hardly weed out jerks. There are a lot of shitty men who identify as gay and bi, and their queerness doesn’t automatically absolve them of misogyny.
Jerk = misogyny = patriarchy = husband, but a husband is what she wants and can’t admit.
In fact, the misogyny in some of these dudes is compounded by a perceived lack of use for women. At least straight guys will pretend to be civilized for the sake of getting laid. Ultimately, I feel like you’re going to end up with some big-dicked puppy dog of a straight guy who’s read some theory here and there, anyway?
Some Red Pill kind of theory! Give in to your natural desire for a pickle, Barbie, and reject the siren call of Satan’s Herd. Submitting to a husband will be the best decision you ever make.
I’ve discovered another Christian heresy, this one hiding in 9Marks Church’s use of the phrase “Christian freedom”.
John MacArthur’s battle against Los Angeles City persecution of Christianity has had several episodes by now. As I predicted, Mayor Garcetti’s threats to shut off the power & water were so hollow that now, he’s threatening to take away their overflow parking lot.
Not a coincidence, then, that the forktongued 9Marks church organization has come out swinging against MacArthur. Incompetent boobs of a mayor need all the help they can get.
I’ve blogged previously on 9Marks. Suffice to say, Leeman’s partner Mark Devers uses the term “Biblical” to trick Protestants into lowering their defenses.
Before your church follows John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church and begins to gather in defiance of governmental orders this Sunday, hold on! Stop and think with me for a moment.
In case you missed it, MacArthur provided a wonderful statement affirming: Christ’s lordship over governments; our duty to disobey governments when governments forbid worship; and the government’s lack of jurisdiction over a church’s doctrine, practice, and polity. Plus, pastors do well to learn from MacArthur’s example of courage. In years and decades to come, we may have many opportunities to defy governmental incursions.
“Don’t follow MacArthur’s wonderful, courageous and inspirational example!”
I also respect the decision of the Grace Community elders to “respectfully inform [their] civic leaders that they have exceeded their legitimate jurisdiction. and that “faithfulness to Christ prohibits [them] from observing the restrictions they want to impose on [their] corporate worship services.” That might be the right decision. I believe it’s a judgment call, but if they feel bound of conscience to gather their church, then they should gather (see Rom. 14:14, 23).
Leeman’s respect and four bucks will get you a cup of coffee in California.
I also respect the decision of the Grace Community elders to “respectfully inform [their] civic leaders that they have exceeded their legitimate jurisdiction. and that “faithfulness to Christ prohibits [them] from observing the restrictions they want to impose on [their] corporate worship services.. That might be the right decision. I believe it’s a judgment call, but if they feel bound of conscience to gather their church, then they should gather (see Rom. 14:14, 23).
So then, why are we having this conversation?
Yet I’d also like to add, civil disobedience may not be the only legitimate or moral course of action at this moment.
Leeman begins his disagreement with MacArthur by saying he can’t prove Mac is doing anything wrong. Going for the hard mode achievement!
Four additional things are worth mentioning in case you did read his piece. First, it’s true that MacArthur’s church cannot meet, but Christ’s church can meet. Right now, members of his church can meet outdoors. There is nothing sacrosanct about the particular and present forms of our congregations.
“Sacrosanct” came close. The word is “sacrament”. Government guidelines do not allow for sharing food or baptism. Heck, they don’t even allow for singing. And let’s not forget the American sacrament of First Amendment. Government ordering churches to literally close their doors is unlawful.
You might say my counsel to Pastor MacArthur is similar to my counsel to the pastor who thinks his church has to go to multiple service or sites: .why does that new congregation have to be called your church? You can plant, no?. Likewise, is there any biblical reason why your church or mine cannot split into several churches or take some other form?
Because it wouldn’t solve the problem, dumbass. Even house churches are now illegal!
Along these lines, I appreciate J.D. Greear’s and the elders of Summit Church’s decision to turn the 12,000-member Summit Church into hundreds of house churches for the remainder of the year, even if I would structure things a little differently than him.
Somebody is a sexual Gamma, getting in his little digs about how he’s just a little bit better than the big names.
Also, one possibility being discussed by the Capitol Hill Baptist Church elders is whether they should turn their church into several autonomous congregations should DC restrictions eventually make sufficient indoor room for doing so.
Sure, you can reorganize your church when the government gives you permission. You have much respect for Christ!
For now, they’re meeting in a field. Grace Church, on the other hand, is insisting on maintaining its present form. That’s a potentially legitimate decision to make, but it’s not the only decision a church can make.
Leeman doesn’t recognize or care about a major form of persecution: humiliation. The reason we’re being locked out of our buildings is to humiliate us, make us accustomed and resigned to having our chains yanked around by our ‘betters’.
It’s not always about the dungeon.
Grace Church, on the other hand, is insisting on maintaining its present form. That’s a potentially legitimate decision to make, but it’s not the only decision a church can make.
Leeman’s got nothing on MacArthur. No argument that he’s doing wrong in the sight of God. A real Protestant would have either opened up with chapter and verse of Mac’s misconduct, or nodded approvingly of a man taking some risks for the Savior.
Second, Christians have long worked to accommodate government restrictions on gatherings, both when those requirements have seemed fair and when they don’t. Churches in coastal cities during World War Two accommodated evening black-out requirements in case enemy planes hit the coasts. Those churches didn’t insist the government had no right to “restrict our worship..
I don’t recall that being the case in USA. Assuming it was, the government had no right then, either, but churches cooperated because God did not require His churches to be shelled into rubble.
Churches in China today sometimes do well to disobey the government and gather underground, but sometimes they’re wise to comply with government restrictions, or at least government enforcement measures, such as keeping their non-state sanctioned congregations relatively small. As my Chinese pastor friends tell me, the police know about their hundred-member congregations, but they won’t bother with them until they reach 200. And so my friends keep planting new churches. My point here is not that the Chinese Communist Party has a right to limit the church to 200. They don’t. My point is that my pastor friends are making calculated, wisdom-based judgments about what will best preserve the witness of the gospel over the long-run, and not just their church.
Strawman argument. God does not require his churches to be as large as possible so complying with that request is not necessarily disobedience to God. But when God orders believers to meet together and the government bans meeting together, then the choice is State or Christ… no third option.
Leeman knew that. It’s why he can’t say MacArthur is wrong to oppose the government.
In other words, just because you think God will ultimately vindicate your decision to disobey the government on the last day doesn’t mean it’s wise. You might have other options that avoid undue attention.
We don’t “think” God will vindicate our decision to disobey a government that openly hates Him and persecutes His followers. We read Hebrews 10:25 in context with the sacraments and the Biblical patterns of worship, also Acts 4:18-19 and 5:29-30 for good measure, and KNOW God will vindicate us.
Third, addressing this matter of what’s wise or “beneficial” (see 1 Cor. 6:12), I personally wonder if defying government orders for the sake of a pandemic is the most judicious opportunity to exercise those muscles.
Absolutely. Defying the plagues of the Roman Empire proved to be a defining moment in the Church’s early history, to say nothing of fearing God more than men.
Watch me risk death just to worship Christ for one more Sunday. Then tell me Christ will be unhappy that I wasted my life.
The politics of LGBT tells me our churches may have more occasions to defy government requirements in years to come. Do we want to spend down our capital on pandemics?
What, do Christians lose the ability defy government if we do it too often? The opposite is true: if we allow government to shut us down at will then they will shut us down. Habits come from actions.
Speaking of habits to actions, if Leeman isn’t already denouncing Sodomy… in his D.C. area church… then he’s got a nasty habit of disobedience.
My point is merely, let’s leave room for churches to make different decisions ? la Romans 14.
Step One is to make disobedience to God acceptable. Step Two is to demand disobedience. “Fifteen Days to Flatten the Curve” got us to accept the lockdown because it sounded like a good idea. Now we’re in Month Six of those “Fifteen Days”.
Let’s not make that mistake again.
Fourth, and this is my most wonky point, MacArthur draws a strict line between the jurisdictions of state, church, and family. I, too, affirm the separation of these jurisdictions and have written amply on the topic. Yet here’s what we need to keep in mind.
“We need to keep in mind that when I wrote about separation of Church and State, what I really meant is that the State should be free of God.”
Those jurisdictional circles, to some extent, overlap whenever it’s the same people who are bound by those distinct jurisdictions. After all, each of those authorities can possess a claim on a person, no matter what building the person is standing in.
It’s not about the freaking building, Leeman. It’s about serving two masters once government decides it’s not going to be a servant anymore.
…Churches should observe state-established fire codes, building codes, zoning restrictions, historical-preservation-society codes (if you’re on Capitol Hill), and more, all of which impinge on and limit our gatherings. Yet most of us have not stopped and said, .This is hindering our worship. or “This is the state exercising authority over church practice..
That’s because it wasn’t hindering. What IS, is banning singing, sacraments and gathering together in Christ’s name. For ANY reason. If you have trouble understanding the extent to which the government should be allowed authority over church practices then here’s a simple litmus test: Jesus is real and He’s watching what you do.
And on Leeman goes. Fast forward.
What.s implied in MacArthur’s statement is that his elders don’t believe there is a real threat with Covid-19.
It doesn’t matter if Covid is a serious threat. Covid could be Spanish Bubonic EbolAIDS and we Christians would still be required to meet together, take Communion and sing.
Witness our conviction… and Leeman’s. “We must think twice about obeying God if we might get hurt by doing so!”
Yeah, so, just another Churchian megapastor upset that a peer is making him look bad by finding his spine and doing a good deed that suggests MacArthur might actually believe the fairy tales that he’s peddled for a career.
But the times be a-changing! Normies are waking up! These guys are just a sample of the pushback he got.
One of the advantages of social media is that an author receives pretty quick feedback on an article, allowing him to see what people are hearing or not hearing from his piece. For that reason, I’m grateful for the robust social media response.positive and negative.to my written reflection and the Pastors Talk with Mark Dever on Saturday. Both commented on Friday’s Grace Community Church elder statement, which called churches to join them in obedience to Christ by resisting the government’s restrictions on various gatherings, including churches. Some folks were very critical of our stance, and we welcome the pushback.
One question that has surfaced again and again on Twitter is this: Why would 9Marks feel compelled to respond to these elders and raise these points right now? Aren’t you the pro-church and pro-gathering guys?
Attempt to control the discourse. The linked articles certainly didn’t ask such a mundane question as Leeman’s timing. They went for doctrinal blood just like me.
I sincerely love the elders of Grace Church and their senior pastor.
It.s possible I misunderstood the GCC elders. statement. I’m happy to be corrected.
Dude, you WERE corrected! With authority, and street tacos for spectators!
But to my eyes, it essentially read, .This is the way of faithfulness, and we’re calling upon other churches to join us in obedience to Christ.” Then it asked churches everywhere to demonstrate such obedience to Christ by affirming the statement with a signature. I believe this message was communicated in the title and the opening lines about Christ, not Caesar, being Lord (could it be that other Christians are trying to obey Christ by obeying Caesar?). And it was communicated again and again throughout the statement.
Yep. It is evil for a church to obey the lockdowns in general and California’s ban on singing & house churches particularly. Signing his pledge is optional; God knows who you are.
For example:
Compliance would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear commands..
.Pastors who cede their Christ-delegated authority in the church to a civil ruler have abdicated their responsibility before their Lord and violated the God-ordained spheres of authority..
.Our prayer is that every faithful congregation will stand with us in obedience to our Lord..
Aside from what the authors of this statement may or may not believe, the statement itself makes no provision for the possibility that a Christian might choose another path and still be counted as faithful. It does not say, “Churches and elders will come to different conclusions, but we believe we are free to disobey the government and even feel compelled to do so.”
That’s right, Leeman. MacArthur called you out! Now, shit or get off the pot.
And the point of my article, stated at the beginning and end, with four points in the middle trying to carve out the possibility, was to say, .This is not the only way of potential faithfulness..
Leeman wants to be seen serving two masters but everybody knows it’s the State he really obeys.
So, again, why raise these points now, good saints have asked? We’re not, finally, so much interested in addressing the decision of Grace Church once more.
Because once again, he’s got nothing that says MacArthur is doing wrong.
Rather, we want to draw attention to the growing pattern by Christians across the political landscape, ironically, to close down Christian freedom by binding the consciences of others in pursuit of our political agendas, agendas which are often good! This is a drum we’ve beat before and will continue to beat.
Oh noes! Ever more Christians are becoming dogmatically political! Some of them are even beginning to question State authority!
To the best of our ability, 9Marks has stood for and will continue to stand for Christian freedom, particularly in matters of political judgment. Not every political matter belongs to the domain of freedom. Abortion does not. Racism does not. Worshipping God and gathering as churches does not (and, yes, that’s political!). But how we approach those issues, and what strategies we take, as well as the vast number of other issues that fall under the headings of pastoral and political judgments, do fall into the domain of Christian freedom.
Perfect Churchianity. Boyfriend Jesus is all about freedom, not obligations that might harm your health! But as we all know, Churchians love to contradict themselves…
Amidst our political pursuits, we believe it’s crucial to remind the saints of our spiritual freedom for at least four reasons:
First, for the sake of unity.
…And there it is.
Christians in this country are going to tear each other apart if we treat every political judgment as a test of faithfulness. The nation’s politics are becoming uglier. The culture is pushing against churches. And now an election is here. All three of these factors combine to create a landscape in which a thousand different things.none of which are explicitly scriptural but many of which call for the application of Scripture.could divide us. When culture pushes against you, Mark Dever has said, unfaithfulness is one threat, but a biting and rancorous balkanization is another. And we feel brothers and sisters on both our political right and left increasingly treat their own issues as tests of gospel faithfulness. This does not bode well for unity in and between churches.
The political Left has broken with Christ. There’s no other way to put it. It is good that the middle ground is shrinking… forcing pastoral cockroaches into the light of consequences.
Lest you think it ironic to call for unity while offering a critique, please understand, the call to unity doesn’t mean we never disagree with one another, even publicly. That can encourage a false and shallow unity. Yet the call to unity does mean that, when we disagree, we try to do so charitably, for one another’s good, giving one another the benefit of the doubt, and affirming our ongoing gospel partnership, assuming this is possible.
This is a very insidious evil that prevents us from passing judgment on evildoers. Example, if a Christian thinks gay is okay then he is not a Christian. Full stop. “Agreeing to disagree” with such a man is to cheapen the teachings of Almighty God, who did not call them the Ten Suggestions.
There is no unity between sheep and wolves. There is no need for doubt over the clearly communicated principles of Scripture.
Second, for the sake of affirming the unique authority of the Bible.
Doubling down on no judgment! “The Bible has unique authority but we can agree to disagree on whatever it tells us to do.”
Neither John MacArthur nor Mark Dever nor their respective elders. judgments on when and how to apply the Bible rise to the level of Bible, as I trust all these men would quickly affirm. We protect the unique authority of Scripture by reminding our hearers of that distinction when we publicize our political judgments. None of us are apostles.
It doesn’t take an apostle to notice when a man disobeys Scripture. It’s not a hard book to understand… clerical efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.
Third, for the sake of protecting the gospel.
No, we’re not saying the gospel comes under threat because of the Grace Community Church elder statement or decision to meet. We’re saying that a consistent and unchecked disregard for the Christian freedom of other saints and churches will create a culture of legalism.
Quadrupling down on no judgment! Legalism is noticing when people call themselves Christians but don’t obey Scripture! We must avoid legalism!
“The gospel” is code for the socialist agenda. Preaching the Good News of political unity, welfare gibs and female empowerment!
And legalism effectively undermines the gospel, even if it’s unintentional.
That’s a lie. Nothing will advance the Gospel as much as our acting like God is real and obeying His commands is important. Endless, insignificant discussions about Biblical minutiae is how you DON’T spread the Gospel.
Why are we afraid of getting Covid if we believe God promised to resurrect us and make all things new? Oh, but we’re just pretending to be afraid so we don’t appear different from everybody else….
This is a danger the church faces along every point of the political spectrum. When things that are not ultimate become ultimate, faith in the sufficiency of the gospel is replaced with fidelity to something else. Therefore, to fight for Christian freedom is to fight for the gospel, because doing so is one way we draw a line between the gospel and everything else.
There’s that phrase again.
One of the marks of a healthy church, 9Marks has argued for two decades, is a biblical understanding of the gospel. Yet the growing political rancor of the last few years in and between our churches has prompted 9Marks during those same years to fight for the gospel more and more by emphasizing Christian freedom. And we will continue to do so.
Read that as “biblical justification of social justice” and you’ll have Leeman’s theology nailed.
Fourth, for the sake of teaching American Christians HOW TO THINK AND SPEAK IN THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIAN FREEDOM and Romans 14 amid our present political turmoil.
Capitalized letters mine. Honestly, could he be any more open about his true agenda without growing a mustache to twirl?
…Ohh, he could!
For instance, I decided to attend a protest march organized for evangelical churches over a month ago in order to affirm the basic theological truth that black people are made in God’s image…
Leeman participated in a Barabbas’ Life Mattered march.
…(since the DC mayor herself was speaking at marches, I didn’t understand myself to be disobeying her quarantine mandates, however inconsistent her application of those mandates might be).
Hey Leeman, the Bible also has commands about hypocrisy. It says DON’T.
I also invited members of my church, but wanted to do so without wrongly binding consciences and presuming too much about my own judgments. Here is what I said in the email to my church:
“While I assume that all of you agree with me regarding the sinfulness of racism and of police brutality generally, I recognize that all of you might not share my diagnosis of this particular historical moment and what steps are necessary for addressing such problems. And I want to affirm your Christian freedom and my fellowship with you amidst such differences. I love you all.”
His words prove that Hell can hide in syrup.
Perhaps there was a better way for me to have done this, but I am confident Christian freedom is a category and a language that Christians in the United States need to grow in using.
He could have picked a way that didn’t blame his white congregants for crimes they didn’t commit in a country that didn’t exist four hundred years ago.
See how “Christian freedom” is code for Social Justice?
As for what you can expect from 9Marks moving forward, if you want to make a case for reparations a test of faithfulness (for or against), expect us to again say, .Don’t forget Christian freedom! Welcome to the Table those who disagree with you..
Hey Leeman, the Bible also has commands about stealing. It says DON’T.
So with immigration policy and the timing and location of civil disobedience and specific strategies for combatting abortion and a hundred other things. And you.ll probably hear such talk from us more and more moving toward November.
Say, .We’re free to do this. all you want. But take great care before you say, “And you have to do this too.” Don’t sacrifice our spiritual freedom for your political freedom.
You do not have spiritual freedom, Pastor Leeman. None of us who follow Christ do. He is a king, not a butler and not a whipping boy.
Skin suits, I tell ye. “The gospel” of Social Justice. “Christian freedom” to be thieving, hypocrite agents of Hope ‘N Change. No Cross, no Christ, no condemnation, just good deeds for a worthy cause. There’s never been a better time to take the ticket!
Lest you think I am merely pushing back on brothers and sisters on the political right, I mean to push back on the left, right, and center. We all need the lesson of Romans 14 (see the excellent work of Andy Naselli, along these lines.)
I presume he means Romans 14:22 specifically. “So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.” But the context for that is the dietary laws that non-Jews were never commanded to keep.
Romans 14 is no excuse to disobey God… certainly not with the feeble excuse “Christian freedom”.
Recently in an undisclosed location in a Red State, I was inducted into one of the few religions that is 100% compatible with Christianity: hunting! A new friend invited me to spend the opening of dove season with him and his arsenal of toys.
I said no and protected Grandpa from Covid by staying home in Commiefornia breathing brushfire smoke through my old socks.
And I had to think about that return ticket.
We chilled for a few days, important when the heat index hits 110 degrees. We even hit the gym, a wonderful treat for a guy whose home state has directly banned fun and oxygen. I began thinking that the global warming alarmists had a point. Wait, they’re “climate changers” now? They think maybe it’s too cool outside? They didn’t believe their own lies long enough for me to fall for them.
You Midwesterners like to eat. I’m one to talk, the lockdowns have left me with the beginning of a deer gut but your BBQ beef brisket sandwiches did not help at all. I’ll come back for the catfish, though.
This was my first time using a shotgun. I’ve trained with rifles and knew handguns well enough to trade tips, but shotguns just aren’t much use in the city. They aren’t the room-clearing blasts of doom that movies and video games always claim they are. No matter, I’m sure the online hunter’s education course taught me everything I need to know. Put the bead on the bird and swing though the trigger pull. Easy.
On that note, the hunt began on my friend’s back forty under the beginning of a glorious sunset with a Browning Gold automatic that kicked less than a Gamma getting a swirly in the high school locker room. The doves began flying past, driven perhaps by enough shotgun blasts in the distance to remind me of my childhood in Los Angeles. Put the bead on the dove, pull the trigger, follow through, MISS! Try again, MISS! Hmm, must be the crosswind.
My friend asked why I kept passing up chances to shoot. I told him I didn’t want to hit the hunters in the other field and pointed them out, half-hidden behind the horizon.
“Don’t worry about them. Your shotgun has an effective range of like forty yards.”
The confidence eventually came and boom! Got my first dove!
“That’s a starling. Notice how they hesitate and drift a little in their flight? Doves don’t do that.”
Okay… boom! Got my first dove! I retrieved it and tossed it next to my chair, pleased at having made a clean kill.
“Put it on the chair so the fire ants don’t get it.”
Good to know.
By sunset, I’d managed four doves with two boxes of shells. Three boxes if you count getting skunked in the morning. Now before any of you brethren hunters make a comment, let me say in my defense that one, it was my first hunt, two, it was my first use of a shotgun and three…
…the doves were moving quicker than usual. Still better than a brushfire!
Is anybody else just waiting for Year 2020 to die already?
We packed it in and time pressure forced me to donate the doves to my friend’s family instead of gutting them myself. That’s okay; as an experienced fisherman, the “clean it and eat it” endorsement on my man card had already been punched. But I had to catch my plane before I could find out what dove tasted like.
A hair salon says it was told by a job center it couldn’t run an advertisement recruiting a “happy” stylist because the word is “discriminatory” against unhappy people.
Alison Birch listed a job ad looking for a part-time qualified hairdresser at her AJ’s Unisex Hair Salon in Stroud, England,.
The position called for someone with five years. experience of working in a salon, who is “confident in barbering as well as all aspects of hairdressing..
And the advertisement stated, “This is a busy, friendly, small salon, so only happy, friendly stylists need apply.”
But on Wednesday, Birch says she received a call from her local job center informing her they could not run her ad because the word “happy” is considered “discriminatory.”
Birch claims the job center told her that the advertisement may make some people feel they cannot apply if they do not consider themselves to be a “happy” person.
Me, I’m offended by the “five years’ experience” part, having choked on that phrase for way more than five years.
Birch shared the conversation she had with the job center on the salon’s Facebook page.
She claims the man at the job center said to her: “I’m sorry, but the word happy is a discriminatory word and we aren’t allowed to use it, as somebody who is not happy will be discriminated against.”
In case you’re only now joining us on Planet Earth, welcome to 2020.
According to Birch, he then asked: “Should we change the word in case somebody thinks that they can’t apply for the job because they are not a happy person?”
Birch said she was questioning herself.
“Was I being a bit sensitive, and is the word happy discriminative? Or has this whole world all gone mad?” Birch said.
Such are the mind games we must endure. “Am I a bad person because I only want to hire happy, pleasant and competent people?”
And plenty of Birch’s customers agreed with her outrage over the job center’s “ridiculous” stance on her advert.
That makes her one of the lucky ones, to have people publicly agreeing that she’s done nothing wrong.
“Does this mean that every descriptive word is discriminative… happy, tall, smart, elegant? Good luck with your search.”
Julie Thickins added: “I thought this was a joke, realizing it clearly isn’t has left me absolutely speechless… what has the human race come to?”
It’s come to the point where you didn’t share his name while complaining about him. Your outrage would have been much spicier.
You’ve been angry at BLM for wanting to defund the police but also curious. Why disband them and with what to replace them? Let’s go behind the scenes with Melina Abdullah, co-founder of BLM’s Los Angeles chapter, professor at CSU-Los Angeles, and practicing witch of the African “Ifa” spiritist tradition.
And that’s not even half of her problems.
[My apologies for subpar formatting. WordPress just forced an editor upgrade down my throat.]
Black Lives Matter-LA Co-Founder Melina Abdullah Talks About Defunding The Police And Fostering Change
On May 25th, police officers in Minneapolis arrested 46-year-old George Floyd after a convenience store employee alerted 911 that he may have paid with a counterfeit $20 bill. Once apprehended by the police, officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd to the ground, driving his knee into Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, despite onlookers calling for him to stop and Floyd’s own desperate pleas for help.
Suffocation doesn’t take eight minutes… and Floyd had complained he couldn’t breathe before Derek put him on the ground for resisting arrest.
Video of the killing sparked protests in all 50 states and around the world “resulting in significant actions being taken across all quadrants of our society. Laws are being changed, police departments have been defunded, and statues of colonizers and slave traders have fallen.
I checked the link. Slave trader = Christopher Columbus.
Melina Abdullah, an activist, professor, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter’s (BLM) LA chapter, knows that if we really want to change the world, the protests must also give rise to calculated political action.
Here’s the link for her witchcraft connections. It informs & entertains but is slightly more sensationalist than it really should be. Of course blacks who reject white supremacist Christianity for their animist roots are going to practice the occult.
.Make sure you research who your DA is and whether or not you want to keep them,. Abdullah urges, after weeks of leading demonstrations across Los Angeles (including outside the home of Mayor Eric Garcetti). .The district attorney is an elected official who prosecutes crimes, so we want to make sure that as they’re prosecuting, the first people who go to jail for committing crimes are the police who brutalize and kill our people..
Dr. Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, told a crowd of activists that Los Angeles is “home of the most murderous law enforcement offices in the country” and encouraged the crowd to shout “fuck Eric Garcetti. . the city’s mayor who has pledged to slash $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
.Sometimes people like your mayor, who I know likes to get in pictures with a lot of y.all . . she began as someone from the crowd shouted “fuck Eric Garcetti!.
.Say it again,. Abdullah said as the crowd repeated the phrase and cheered.
.People like your mayor and your police chief want to utter the name George Floyd as if the murders happened in Minneapolis. They want to utter the name Sean Reed as if the murders only happen in Indianapolis,. she continued.
.They want to say Breonna Taylor as if those killings are confined to Louisville, but Los Angeles is the home of the most murderous law enforcement offices in the country,. she said to cheers, adding that the city is filled with “liberal white supremacists..
.As we talk about white supremacists terrorists like Donald Trump . every time we say “fuck Donald Trump,. we gotta say “fuck Eric Garcetti,’. she added…
And Garcetti had already given in to the tune of $150m. But Breitbart left out the juicy part! Only the F-bombs were suitable for childrens’ ears.
On June 2, 2020, Black Lives Matter’s Los Angeles Chapter sponsored an action in front of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s house, demanding reductions in the city’s funding of police. The action, what many would call a protest, began like a religious ceremony. Melina Abdullah, chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and co-founder of BLM-LA, opened the event explaining that while the movement is a social justice movement, it is first and foremost a spiritual movement.
She led the group in a ritual: the reciting of names of those taken by state violence before their time.ancestors now being called back to animate their own justice:
“George Floyd. As?. Philandro Castille. As?. Andrew Joseph. As?. Michael Brown. As?. Erika Garner. As?. Harriet Tubman. As?. Malcom X. As?. Martin Luther King. As?.”
As each name is recited, Dr. Abdullah poured libations on the ground as the group of over 100 chanted .As?,. a Yoruba term often used by practitioners of Ifa, a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa, in return. This ritual, Dr. Abdullah explained, is a form of worship.
The BLM network has embraced female and queer leadership along with membership often shunned and/or marginalized by traditional faith groups, thus disrupting a legacy of civil rights leadership that is largely hetero-normative and almost exclusively male.
Original sin. Female rebellion & leadership.
The movement for Black lives works towards the goal of not just racial justice, but freedom of the mind and the spirit. It encourages “healing justice,. so that people can heal from trauma and engage as the best version of themselves. The movement infuses a syncretic blend of African and indigenous cultures. spiritual practices and beliefs, embracing ancestor worship; Ifa-based ritual such as chanting, dancing, and summoning deities; and healing practices such as acupuncture, reiki, therapeutic massage, and plant medicine in much of its work, including protest. That work, though, often remains invisible.
It’s not that they know better than to talk about this; it’s that they’re allergic to honesty.
As a person ordained in Ifa, [Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of BLM and co-protestor with Abdullah] led meditations that allowed participants to better imagine the future while advocating for self-care, mental health awareness, healing justice, and art activism during the pandemic.
End segue.
Abdullah and Black Lives Matter LA have been at the forefront of the protests in Los Angeles, helping the city demand accountability from its police department and elected officials like never before. Since taking to the streets, Angelenos have prompted Garcetti to reexamine a budget that would allocate 54% of the city’s funds to law enforcement agencies and promise a $250 million cut from the LAPD, with money redirected towards health and education in black communities. The mayor has also floated the idea of implementing an independent prosecutor to oversee police violations.
54%? Not likely. LAPD is notoriously understaffed.
Anger at an unjust system is easy to muster, but turning that rage into a tool to bring about meaningful and systemic change is crucial. Many of us who have taken to the streets don’t know what to do after we’ve made signs, marched, signed the petitions, and donated our money to organizations like BLM. So we reached out to Abdullah to talk about the next steps, defunding the police, and why we need to vote in this upcoming election, even if we’ve lost faith in our government.
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about defunding the police. On the surface that might sound a little bit extreme to some. For the people who wonder who will keep the law if we massively scale back police funds, what would you say to those concerns?
I think that defunding the police sounds radical until we realize that there wasn’t always policing and there wasn’t always this kind of expansionist approach to policing.
Shrug, okay. We’ll go back to old-school. What she wants:
What she’s gonna get:
So when we say “defund the police,. we mean defund the police. …
LAPD was the only city department that Mayor Garcetti proposed an increase for, as he’s slashing other city departments and furloughing 16,000 city employees in the midst of this economic crisis. Some will say that defunding the police sounds radical but I think that they should also look at how radical it is or how shocking it is to be spending so much money on police.
Considering we’re in the midst of a literal Bolshevik revolution leading up to a hot Spanish civil war in November, we ain’t spending nearly enough.
Finally, everybody says things are “crazy” or “radical” or “impossible” until they’re done. The city of Minneapolis just committed itself to disbanding their police department, so I think that shows us that it is possible. If people look at PeoplesBudgetLA.com, they.ll see that when we engaged in a participatory budgeting session with Angelenos, they wanted to spend 5.7% of the city’s budget on traditional approaches to law enforcement.
Oh, it’s participatory? I have family in LA… they like cops and wish they’d answer calls more regularly… why weren’t they invited to participate in this “participatory” budget?
That includes the LAPD, that includes traffic enforcement and includes the city attorney’s office, which is the prosecutor for the city. People don’t want to spend this kind of money on police. When we look at those survey results, people saw this kind of approach to law enforcement as the “least important” of their spending priorities.
Saying “defund the police” really just moves us towards what most people say they want anyway.
The central Marxist lie. “We are humble servants of the people.” The “MOAR ZOMBIES!!!” lie while invoking spirits of the dead is relatively new.
You.ve been center stage in the effort to prevent Mayor Garcetti from passing his city budget and even with the $150 million cut that still leaves over $3 billion for law enforcement, before the cut that was 54% of the city’s budget. In your view, what is a better way of using that money and what kind of community organizations and things should we do with that money instead?
I think everybody wants to live in a safe, healthy, and vibrant community.
When we think about how to get there, we know that the first thing we need to do is meet the universal needs of people, make sure that everybody has housing, make sure that everybody has healthcare, make sure that everybody has access to healthy food, make sure that we have parks and libraries and after school programs. I think you make a safe environment by providing first for the needs of people.
AKA “crime is society’s fault”. Another perennial Marxist lie. Oh wait, now it’s “COVID-19 is society’s fault”.
Angelenos don’t like being home to the largest houseless population in the nation. We have 60,000 unhoused people in this county, and it’s absolutely ridiculous.
Of their many problems, the absence of shelter is a minor one.
If you look at a budget you.ll see people’s priorities. So what this budget tells us is that the priority for this mayor is clearly investing . or spending, I won’t even call it an investment . spending on policing, which really functions to repress, and oppress, and surveil, and brutalize and even kill our community members rather than doing what the people say that we need, which is spending on things like housing.
Pure Marxism.
Aside from abolishing or defunding the police, there is also real reform that we can get done now, without waiting for the cogs of bureaucracy to turn, or election cycles to come around. What are some of those things that we can demand now?
There are spaces for abolition and I think that most people are with us on this one: police don’t belong in schools. Period. Right now., the LAUSD schools have police armed with AR15 weapons. The first thing that we can do to end policing or to defund police is to remove them from schools. We’re working with our partners from StudentsDeserve, we’re working with the teacher’s union UTLA, to immediately remove police from schools.
CHAZ for children? And I thought No Child Left Behind was evil.
We talk about bureaucracy, but these are things that can happen overnight, all it takes is a decision to end the funding of LA School Police, which is the largest school police system in the country.
Notice she isn’t giving a specific reason for defunding school police. Not even a false reason like Fentanyl Floyd.
We can also have Recs and Parks sever their relationship with the LAPD, this is happening around the country. People are recognizing that police have no business in the parks, we need youth workers in the parks, so lets severe those ties . that’s only the stroke of a pen by the head of the department.
This is something you can expect to see in your neighborhood soon: police not allowed inside parkland. That will go evil very quickly.
Sometimes we talk about bureaucracy and we know that white supremacist capitalism sets up systems to make it seem difficult to do the things that need to be done, but the city council can change the budget at any time.
No, it’s done annually.
Notice that BLM doesn’t just want gov’t funding… its wants that funding to come from their opposition, law enforcement. Comparable to stealing enemy supplies in wartime, it’s a double boost towards your victory.
That is why “defund the police” is a thing. Law enforcement’s replacements will be BLM activists preaching spirit worship together with white genocide.
It doesn’t take long, all it takes is eight votes of the city council, which is what they did in Minneapolis. All they did was vote for it . all we need our city council to do is have the will to overturn the mayor’s budget. It can be done, it doesn’t have to take some long, drawn-out process.
You got some wishful thinking there, Reactionary Barbie.
Right now there is a lot of passion amongst people who want to help, aside from protesting, donating, and signing petitions . especially for those who are immunocompromised . how else can a person help end police violence?
There is a whole lot people can do. A lot of our actions are still online, recognizing that there are still people who are immunocompromised. So today, from 1-2 pm, we have a Twitter storm, we’re asking everybody to call in to the budget committee, we’re asking people to send emails to the LA city budget committee…
This is BLM’s current line of attack, to threaten and intimidate local politicians directly into supporting their agenda. Textbook terrorism and not even their allies are safe from the braying mob of convicted felons.
In related news, Portland Mayor Wheeler doesn’t want to live in the Brave New World he betrayed the people to create just two weeks ago and will be relocating to one of his other million-dollar estates.
Segue
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Is Moving Out Of His $800K Condo After Rioters Ransack His Home
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is moving out of his home after rioters descended on the Democrat’s $800,000 condo Monday, setting fires and breaking windows, according to a Tuesday report. …
Wheeler rejected Trump’s offer on Aug. 22 to send federal assistance, according to an official statement.
.We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery. Portlanders are onto you. We have already seen your reckless disregard for human life in your bumbling response to the COVID pandemic. And we know you’ve reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to reelection,. the mayor’s Aug. 28 statement read.
Yeah, about those images of vandalism… Trumpslide, baby.
End segue.
…We’re also continuing our work in places like Torrance, where Christopher Deandre Mitchell was killed by two Torrance police officers, Anthony Chavez and Matthew Concannon. He was killed in a span of 15 seconds of their approach to the car. They still haven’t been fired.
Killed back in December 2019. Police found him driving a stolen vehicle, pulled him over, approached and saw a sawn-off shotgun in his lap. They ordered him not to move. He moved for the shotgun. Police shot first. Shotgun turned out to be a sawn-off air rifle. Car thieves sometimes use them to shoot parked cars to test for car alarms before getting fingerprints on the doors.
The shooting has been ruled legit.
Every Tuesday night, we put pressure on the Torrance city council to both fire those officers and also establish a police oversight commission. People who are immunocompromised can engage in actions like that.
This sort of tactic doesn’t make the papers very often. But then, the only reason it works is because our politicians are carefully selected for corruption and vulnerability to peer pressure.
When someone is donating to BLM or one of their local BLM chapters, where does that money go and how is it being used?
Black Lives Matter is not a traditional non-profit organization. Nobody works for Black Lives Matter or gets a check from Black Lives Matter.
Total bullshit. I didn’t even bother to check whether this high-level Marxist is a genuinely disinterested hero of the people who voluntarily lives in poverty in order to help the benighted masses. As a tenured professor, Abdullah couldn’t if she wanted to.
We’re not employees. When you donate money, we use that money for a range of things including organizing work. We use it to pay for flyers, we use it to pay for sound systems, we use it to amplify posts, we use it to support families.
When people are killed by police they’re not considered crime victims, so money that would normally go to victims of violent crime don’t go to those folks, so we help to pay for both funerals and independent autopsies, which are hugely important because, as we’ve seen with the murder of George Floyd, sometimes the coroners are in bed with these law enforcement agencies and their reports don’t reflect what actually happened.
Did BLM fund Floyd’s independent autopsy?
We have some medical examiners who volunteer their time with us, but we still have to pay for their expenses, the storage of the body, etcetera. The donations make sure families can get independent autopsies which generally cost about six to seven thousand dollars per person on the low end.
What.s something every protestor should know before hitting the streets?
We always try to have legal observers there, and we always try to have street medics there, but safety is a huge issue. You don’t have to worry so much about the protestors, but the police violence we’ve seen with this round of protests has been particularly brutal. We say that especially if you’re coming out with kids . and I’m a single mom so I always come out with my children . that you make sure you have an exit plan. That you make sure someone knows what to do if you get separated from your children.
UNFIT MOTHER!
Segue
EXCLUSIVE: California State Professor Brings Her 7-Year-Old To Lecture The Los Angeles Police Department
Melina Abdullah . a professor at California State-LA who also leads the Los Angeles Chapter of Black Lives Matter . brought her three children to a recent Police Commission meeting to chastise LAPD during public comment.
.Lots of people have died because of you,. Abdullah’s 10-year-old daughter told LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. .I think it’s horrible that you don’t care what you have done, and killed so many young children..
Hello, Greta Thunberg! Scratch that. Hello, Somali child soldier!
.I don’t know who to call anymore when I need help,. Abdullah’s 13-year-old daughter told the LAPD commissioners. .We see incident upon incident of people who call the police for help and end up being shot to death..
Lies. She’ll call the cops if she needs help, just like Mommy.
.You’re supposed to protect and serve,. said Abdullah’s 7-year-old son. .It’s more like you’re protecting and serving yourselves..
Seven-year-olds are never that politically aware. This is child abuse. Abdullah is a child-abusing single mother of a Marxist revolutionary.
Dr. Abdullah wanted to teach her children about civic engagement while they were on spring break. However, their perception of law enforcement appears to have already been shaped by their mother, who advertises the Pan African Studies Department she heads as “the intellectual arm of the revolution..
Say it with me: TENURED MARXIST REVOLUTIONARY.
End segue.
If you’re on parole or probation or if you have warrants, you want to make sure you think it through around whether or not you want to do certain things, we definitely don’t want you out on the frontline next to the police.
If you’re on parole then attending a “mostly peaceful protest” has got to be a violation.
We also make sure people write down the number of the National Lawyers Guild on their arm so that if you are arrested we can help provide you with some legal support so we can make sure you’re released.
RICO Act, Mister President? Please? We are running out of time.
A lot of people right now are frustrated by the process of reform and voting and getting things done through official channels. Do you have a message for first-time voters, and those who feel disenfranchised by the systems we have in place?
I think you should vote because even if you’re not going to vote for the President . which I think you should . but even if that doesn’t move you, we need to get this district attorney out of office. We need to get Jackie Lacey out of office. If you don’t vote for anything else, go to the polls and vote in the DA race and make sure you don’t vote for Jackie Lacey.
This would have been quite the compliment to Lacey except it’s coming from someone who thinks Garcetti is a Right-winger.
If you live in other cities or other counties, make sure you research who your DA is and whether or not you want to keep them. The district attorney is an elected official who prosecutes crimes, so we want to make sure that as that they are prosecuting, the first people who go to jail for committing crimes are the police who brutalize and kill our people.
Targeting the district attorneys has been a Soros/Media Matters priority for many years already. Maybe Abdullah really doesn’t take BLM money, if she’s already taken that ticket.
In fact, I’m going to prove exactly that in a moment.
For protestors, what is the next step and how do we keep up this historic and unprecedented momentum?
If you’re black and want to join Black Lives Matter, we welcome you. If you’re white and you want to support Black Lives Matter, we’re asking you to join White People for Black Lives, and there is lots of other organizations Centro CSO, American Indian Movement . find an organization that speaks to you and join that organization.
For the love of God, Mister President! The RICO Act!!!
Transformative change does not happen just one person at a time, being plugged into an organization increases our power exponentially.
……………………………………………………………………………..
I close with this biographical information from the dailywire segue.
While her extreme ideas might seem shocking, perhaps Abdullah’s family history provides proper perspective into her long-term goals.
A third-generation radical organizer, Abdullah descends from a line of Marxists that can be traced back to the Communist Party of the German Reich.
For much of her life, Abdullah was known as Melina Reimann, the granddaughter of a world-renowned Marxist economist named G?nter Reimann, who joined Germany’s Communist Party around 1920.
When he died in 2005, an obituary explained, .Reimann.s understanding of capitalism derived from the position of desiring its overthrow..
Long before Reimann advised governments, central banks, and CEOs from all over the globe, he was a 17-year-old rebel writing for Rosa Luxemburg’s Die Rote Fahne, which translates to The Red Banner. It was a communist newspaper described by the New York Times as .a party organ..
As The Guardian reported at the time of Reimann’s death:
.he worked underground with German social democrats and communist resistance fighters, fully aware that this might prove a terminal decision. Indeed, by 1934 the Gestapo was closing in. Nazi Officials raided his house and arrested his student guest, Hu Lan-Xi, who would go on to become the Red Army’s first female general.
Reimann soon left Berlin and went into exile.
By 1938, he was living in New York City with political refugee status.
I bet he’s Jewish.
Reimann.s new life in the United States was made possible by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) . an organization that has since received funding from George Soros. Open Society Foundations.
Boom, there it is. What a small, small, small, small, small world it is in the Ivory Tower.
Reimann acquired U.S. citizenship in 1944. Then, two years later his son, John, was born.
John Reimann would relocate to Oakland, California, during the turbulent 1960s, where Melina was born in 1972. At the time, armed Black Panthers “patrolled the pigs” to combat police brutality . creating the perfect environment to mold an upcoming Black Lives Matter revolutionary.
Aww, she’s just like her Daddy!
Abdullah.s mother is black, and her father, John Reimann, is now a white, retired union organizer who is still active in the Bay Area’s progressive scene.
.I was born in the 70s in East Oakland. All of our parents are Panthers, or Black Power organizers, or organizers,. Abdullah recalled. .We come out politicized..
Long before the first Molotov cocktail was thrown, John Reimann was part of Occupy Oakland, which would go on to become one of the most violent branches of the Occupy movement.
Now that’s interesting.
John Reimann, who contributes to a blog called “Oakland Socialist,. is also a self-proclaimed Trotskyist . a philosophy that advocates global socialism through continuing revolution.
Those same principles are now being promoted by his daughter, Melina Abdullah, preserving the family’s communist calling.
.The system of white supremacist, heteronormative, patriarchal capitalism is extremely fragile,. Abdullah tells her followers. .Their power is false and easily toppled..
“White supremacist” is a catchall term but heteronormative and patriarchal mean Christianity specifically.
In addition to toppling capitalism, Abdullah seeks to replace police with community-based public safety teams. But you won’t find that in her Cal State L.A. bio . a school that made headlines last year after protesters tried to stop a speech from Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro. He went on to file a lawsuit against the school . and Abdullah . for violating his First Amendment rights.
Boom again. Police will be replaced with “public safety teams”.
Three months later at a campus “healing space,. Abdullah labeled Shapiro a .neo-Nazi. and .neo-KKK member..
Abdullah is so far Left, she thinks Ben Shapiro is KKK! And that’s not just a putdown.
As a tenured department head, Abdullah is free to recruit students as Black Lives Matter allies and take road trips half way across the country organizing the people to rise up . all in the name of Pan African Studies.
.Thankful to be part of a department that lives the revolution rather than just theorizing about it,. Abdullah posted on Facebook after a 2014 sojourn in Ferguson, Missouri, site of the “hands up-don’t shoot. fallacy that led to full-blown riots.
Now we know where the buses come from. Of course, we already knew this from arrest records but confirmation is nice.
Professor Abdullah has invested years teaching her children, students, and anyone that identifies as “oppressed” to distrust law enforcement. She admits that her anti-police activism is part of a much larger strategy of advancing a communist revolt.
The Red Dawn is not coming, gentlemen. It is now in progress.
In the wake of Kyle Rittenhouse utterly pwning three Jews rioting for BLM, an Antifa shill ponders what a future of vigilantism might look like… and proves that the first man a liar lies to, is himself.
Vigilantism, again in the news, is an American tradition
It.s a contentious time in the U.S., with a pandemic, racial equality, police violence and a presidential election all occupying people’s attention. Given all that stress, it can seem like people are taking the law into their own hands more often.
“They’re starting to fight back! Help! Police! Pigs! Anybody!”
It.s not just in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In recent weeks, there have been confrontations over removing monuments to the Confederacy, clashes over the use of face masks, attempts to protect . or intimidate . Black Lives Matter protesters and even a renewed interest in .citizen’s arrests.” Some of these events have turned tragically violent and deadly.
“Confrontation” here meaning “our targets offering positive resistance”. You didn’t hear about the Karens who bullied white men into re-covering their faces yet still remember the haunting screams of that day in Manhattan Beach, California.
Just in case you, personally, didn’t:
These events show Americans moving beyond differences of opinion and free speech into private displays of force. Their participants may be trying to enforce their own ideas of what the law is, or protect property or defend their communities against threats . especially in light of the failures of police to provide a fair system of justice.
YOUR PEOPLE attacked us, repeatedly, while YOUR allies in government literally cleared the roads for their advance. What did you expect us to do? Continue believing that your lives are sacred to the Christ you openly hate? Do you even remember what Christ did to HIS OWN life?
Attorney General William Barr has claimed, by contrast, that this vigilantism might be a premonition of the disorder yet to come if police funding is in fact slashed in communities nationwide.
Feel free to *not* defund the police.
As a scholar of vigilantism in U.S. history and a political scientist interested in how the state and law develop over time,
And as a welcome member of an openly Marxist institution of learning,
I have found, as have others, that for many Americans, law and order has long been as much a private matter as something for the government to handle.
Our author today, Mr. Obert if I may presume his/her/hir/their/its gender, is an associate professor of political science at Amherst College. This strongly suggests he is a member or ally of Antifa, although since he’s more interesting in talking about vigilantism than doing it, he might just be a Nu-Male.
Vigilantism . the private, violent enforcement of public moral or legal standards .
Whoa, hoss.
Oxford: [vigilantism is] law enforcement undertaken without legal authority by a self-appointed group of people.
Free Dictionary: [vigilante is] a personwho is not a member of lawenforcementbutwhopursuesandpunishespersonssuspected of lawbreaking.
Webster: [vigilante is] a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate)broadly: a self-appointed doer of justice
Vigilantism is not self-defense. It is not owning slaves. It is certainly not law enforcement.
tends to rise in two types of situations, neither of which may be what people expect. It doesn’t come from a government being weak or absent, leaving citizens on their own, but rather when the very principles that make up a government and its people themselves seem to be changing.
I’m intrigued that he defines vigilantism as last-minute resistance to government forcing new beliefs upon its people.
And it doesn’t necessarily come from situations where one ethnic or racial group clearly dominates others . but rather in times and places where who belongs to a particular community is up for debate. Vigilantism is often about the attempt to establish power rather than a reflection of preexisting hierarchies.
Yes, it’s very curious that those BLM terrorists were Jews. It would be very bad optics for all those oppressed survivors of the Holocaust, some of whom are now 20 years old, were the general public of America to realize the extent to which they hate Christ, hate the nation that rescued them during WW2 and weaponized some Useful Idiots of Color for a terrorist campaign against the governments of the United States.
Many Americans are feeling like the rules of the game are changing in unfair ways and have a sense of unease about what the nation is going to look like in the future. As scholars and pundits opine about the serious possibility of another American civil war, the grave implications of domestic political violence loom more than at any point in the past 50 years.
The Seventies were a nightmare of Leftist vigilantism.
These fears are reinforced by a president who seems to encourage division and fear between Americans, even as Black people’s voices are attracting more attention in the public and the halls of power.
Poor MLK Jr. Nobody listened to him.
We are left in no doubt as to the author’s political loyalty.
Through U.S. history, the distinctions between vigilantism and lawful arrest and punishment have always been murky.
No.
Frequently, vigilantism has been used not in opposition to police efforts, but rather with their active encouragement. Indeed, in some recent protests that still seems to be the case.
He’s blurring the definition of vigilantism, a telltale of Social Justice. One cannot be both a vigilante and a servant of official law enforcement. Being wrong at the definition level of his specialization bodes ill tidings for Obert’s competence.
Before police departments existed, arrests were made under traditional common law, which depended on private participation in legally organized posses and serving as deputies.
That’s not vigilantism.
Institutions like slave patrols required that non-slave owners were willing to use, or at least permit, violence to maintain white supremacy.
Not vigilantism, unless Obert wants to make the case that the Confederacy did not support slavery.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, private detectives and security guards also possessed powers of arrest similar to those of police officers.
Private detectives being a specific topic of interest to Obert. He’s well-poised to help with the Convergence of law enforcement with socialist criminal organizations. Maybe someday he’ll be tossed a cheap sinecure for a reward.
Meanwhile, private detectives are not vigilantism, either.
Even the spate of “stand your ground” laws passed in the last 15 years borders on vigilantism, giving private citizens lots of freedom about how to use force to protect themselves.
Not. Vigilantism.
American vigilantism is primarily associated with the terrible lynching campaigns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that targeted Black Americans and other racial minorities. But that isn’t the whole story.
Dude, that’s not even the definition.
You lied to yourself, Obert. You lied that words don’t matter. You lied that the ends of Social Justice justify any means, including the means of getting yourself an easy professorship in 19th Century dime-novel trash while spouting just enough of the Narrative to still be welcome on campus. Now you can’t even define the subject yo specialized in without crossing the Narrative.
You’ll never get tenure because your usefulness does not require you getting tenure. What can you do about it? I dunno. Maybe commit some lewd acts with livestock while wearing blackface and send the pictures to Soros. Or the Chinese embassy, I hear they’re buying souls now, too, but learning their language is hard. Unlike poli-sci.
Political scientist Eleonora Mattiacci and I studied what were called “vigilance committees,. private groups organized in the decades before the Civil War that typically promoted anti-immigrant sentiment in areas, including cities, precisely as the laws concerning the powers of local governments were rapidly changing.
Additional confirmation that what Obert calls vigilantism is in fact, resistance to the Convergence.
Eleonora Mattiacci, for your Halloween costume inspiration.
In fact, though it has been most often used to try to establish racial and economic hierarchies, vigilantism . including actual lynching . has also, at times, been used by disadvantaged communities for self-defense.
Take recent events in Milwaukee, for instance: A small gathering of people in a predominantly African American neighborhood violently confronted residents of a house where two girls were believed to be held in a sex-trafficking ring. This follows a long tradition of people of color using private force to protect themselves and defend their communities.
Has there been even a single incident in all of America’s history of white men legitimately using violence to defend their white community against persons of color? Or to ask the question more simply, are you voting for Trump in November?
Vigilantism has often abetted the worst instincts in the politics of crime in the U.S., making justice appear to depend on what the people want rather than the rule of law.
No, no, that’s democracy.
But it is also evidence of the complicated relationship between violence and justice at the core of American democracy. The founders thought seriously about self and community protection and believed that popular participation in law enforcement and defense could be an important corrective to an unresponsive and oppressive legal system.
But allowing the majority to impose justice can have unequal effects on disadvantaged members of the nation, granting the police a mandate to act violently precisely because that seems to be what the people want.
The relationship between violence and justice is not at all as complicated as Obert tries to make it sound. Convergence uber alles. Anarcho-tyranny. The devil’s children can do no wrong and those who love Christ and America can do no right.
As Americans focus on the way in which people of color, in particular, have been policed in this country, they should disentangle the damaging forms of vigilantism from a deeper notion that democracy might require ordinary citizens to rely at least partly on themselves to enforce the law.
QED. Convergence uber alles. Anarcho-tyranny.
Democracy requires Americans to somehow be vigilant over the use of force in their midst . without themselves becoming vigilantes.
With all my postings on current events, true crime and false priests, one might wonder why I’ve never once mentioned QAnon. It’s because I can’t tell why the guy is talking about. I’ve seen more legible word salad coming from Jordan B. Peterson. As a rule, if somebody makes a point of not speaking clearly then I don’t believe they’re honest.
Which today, puts me in company with the Left. Awkward.
Back in October of 2017, an anonymous person calling themselves the .Q Clearance Patriot. (.Q. for short) started dropping vague messages on 4Chan purporting to detail President Donald Trump’s coming war on the “evil tyrants” who control America. These messages . called “breadcrumbs” or .Q Drops. by adherents . appear garbled and even incoherent to most of us, but a growing community has used alleged clues to piece together a narrative. That narrative involves a cabal of Hollywood actors, wealthy elites and well-known Democratic personalities like the Clintons and the Obamas, all of whom have conspired to exert control over America for their own sinister ends.
Also Jews and Jesuits, the latter now controlling the Catholic Church and COVID-19 lockdowns in USA. Hello, Fauci! You aren’t a conspiracy theory anymore.
This is the essence of QAnon, which has become a big tent for a family of conspiracy theories involving secret child trafficking rings hidden right under our noses…
The child abusers teach sodomy to schoolchildren under State protection. That is also not a conspiracy theory anymore; it’s government policy.
…Robert Mueller, COVID-19 trutherism and anti-Black Lives Matter sentiment.
Dude, every property owner in America is anti-BLM.
Holding it all together is the idea that Trump is working behind the scenes to engineer “The Storm. . a code name for the mission to dismantle this group of “Deep State” operatives and restore peace and order to America.
Joe Carter has done an excellent job explaining QAnon for the Gospel Coalition.
He calls QAnon Satanic because hysteria over Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 80s petered out with little to show… besides George Soros being a victim of it, and Soros doesn’t like people remembering his early days as a literal, swastika-wearing, let’s-gas-the-Juden German National Socialist.
The appeal of QAnon isn’t hard to figure out. America has been, as they say, .going through it. lately. QAnon provides explanations . however farfetched . for the seemingly inexplicable. It simplifies the maze of life into a relatively simple narrative. As America grows less religious, conspiracy theories like QAnon can provide a religious sense of peace and meaning . assuring followers that everything is under control. QAnon is a sort of faith movement . one that has found a lot of traction with evangelical groups. In fact, a pastor of a megachurch used his sermon time to show a QAnon video just a few weeks ago.
There are a few possible reasons.
The appeal of QAnon is twofold. One, people know they’re being lied to and want to figure out exactly what and who the lies are covering up, preferably while there’s still a chance to do something with the truth. Welcome to my blog. And two, people want to believe that a Jesus figure will come along to save them. The real Jesus is not popular for this purpose, often teaching His followers patient endurance over Mohammedan murder sprees, so wouldn’t it be nice if President Trump saved us from evil?
Hence the heartburn over QAnon these days. Trump is up for reelection and *anything* that brings him support must be countered!
First, QAnon a logical extension of the culture war, providing real plot and vocabulary to the “us vs” them. model that became popular with the rise of the Moral Majority. QAnon codifies the mistrust of science, “big government” and celebrity into a real (if slippery) system.
A conclusion I reached in my previous post, that the Moral Majority was a reduction of Christianity’s political potential into controlled opposition.
But QAnon has nothing to do with the way our Marxists misuse science and government.
Secondly, as evangelicalism becomes more of a secularized collective, QAnon rejuvenates it with new religious energy, providing a shared sense of secret knowledge to bring communities together and an assurance that everything is going to work out alright in the end. In a way, QAnon provides a political spin on end-times theology; a peek at the end of the book to provide confidence that the bad things happening now won’t last forever.
Religion doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t just wander off. It’s always a monkeybranch thing.
Finally, QAnon isn’t necessarily as crazy as it sounds.
It’s undoubtedly true that powerful, immoral people do have an alarming amount of control and they do get away a lot of bad things. Look at the story of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who had connections to powerful politicians on both sides of the aisle. Look at Roger Stone. Look at the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, who deliberately downplayed concerns about Oxycontin as the opioid crisis surged.
Unfortunately, these horrible stories more banal and out in the open than QAnon adherents want them to be. They aren’t mysteries. You can read about them in pretty much any newspaper in America. But the headlines provide enough confirmation bias to keep Q followers glued.
Confirmation bias is my take on QAnon’s popularity.
There are no easy answers about what can be done about QAnon.
You could ignore him, like I do. If Q’s right them Trump will defeat you regardless and if he’s wrong then everything you do in response to him is wasted effort.
The lack of a shared epistemology means that debates are often doomed to frustration, as what one side considers a trusted news source may be considered a propaganda machine by the other.
Man, this author is too short for the lollipop ride.
But the fact that Christians seem extra open to conspiracies does reveal that something is deeply broken in how people of faith are spreading their worldview. When Christianity is set up as a cultural battle instead of an opportunity to serve, others are seen not as people in need of love but enemies who need to be feared and mistrusted.
In other news, Christians are not permitted to sing as a temporary health measure. You are not being persecuted. You are merely being silenced for the good of humanity. Stop trying to look behind the curtain!
Jerry Falwell, Jr. is currently the subject of an obviously political, yet deserved scandal. However, it spirals into the history of the Moral Majority movement’s founder. There is one picture that while technically safe for work, is creepy AF.
A little background. Forgive me if my editing is a little off, there was a lot to process.
Jerry Falwell Jr. Put On “Indefinite Leave. From Liberty University After Latest In Long String Of Scandals
Jerry Falwell Jr. agreed Friday to take an “indefinite leave of absence” from his roles of president and chancellor of Liberty University at the request of the Board of Trustees after he shared a provocative, now-deleted vacation photo on social media, the latest in a series of scandals for the evangelical leader.
We’ll get to the pic but the key here is “series of scandals” dating back to 2012. Why are all these scandals only blowing up now? Spoiler: Junior was an early Trump supporter in 2016. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Falwell began stoking controversy shortly after he took over as president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest conservative Christian universities, urging students at a 2015 convocation to carry concealed weapons so they could “end those Muslims before they walked in,. referencing a mass shooting in San Bernardino.
Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik went Aloha Snackbar on a combination training seminar and Christmas party. Fourteen dead, most of them shot in the back, pipe bombs failed to explode, RC car wired with explosives didn’t work. Sounds right for violent Muslim Arabs.
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. urged students, staff and faculty at his Christian school to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon on campus to counter any copycat attack like the deadly rampage in San Bernardino, California just days ago.
“Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,” Falwell told an estimated 10,000 of the campus community at convocation Friday in Lynchburg. While Falwell’s call to arms was applauded, his remarks also seemed to target Muslims.
Forbes blatantly mis-stated Falwell’s words.
Following the San Bernardino shootings, which left 14 dead, Falwell said he began carrying a .25-caliber handgun in his back pocket. He said he’s had a permit for more than year.
A .25 to defend the innocent from up-gunned jihadists?
During his address Friday, Falwell mentioned the weapon and reached around seemingly to fetch it.
“Is it illegal to pull it out? I don’t know,” he said, laughing, drawing some hoots from the audience.
How unprofessional. While I appreciate the stand he took, Falwell didn’t act like a serious ally of gun rights.
End segue
As controversy swirled around Falwell’s business dealings involving a young pool attendant in Florida, photos emerged of the Liberty president and members of his family partying at a Miami Beach nightclub in 2014; Falwell dismissed the allegations, which don’t line up with the school’s standards for students barring co-ed dancing and drinking, saying the images were photo-shopped (though the photographer published more the next day).
“The Wall” Miami nightclub. Pictured are Trey Falwell, Jerry Falwell Jr., Becki Falwell, & Wesley Falwell. These pictures were made publicly available and sourced from
The photographer, Seth Browarnik, founder of the World Red Eye photo agency, didn’t even know he had these pictures until Politico Magazine showed up. He took it as a personal offense that Junior accused him of photoshopping evidence and graciously made these public to prove his innocence.
So, Junior gives the impression of being a blowhard and pervert who is also closely tied to Trump, going back to Trump giving the 2012 graduation address at his Liberty University. Inevitably, Junior went one scandal too far:
Falwell landed in hot water once again this week after posting a photo of himself on a yacht while on vacation with his pants unzipped, midriff hanging out, a drink in hand and his arm around a woman.
I warned that it was creepy. That’s not his wife his arm’s around… and she’s reportedly pregnant.
Where did that line about “black water” come from? Probably a song lyric: “Oh black water, keep on rollin’ Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shinin’ on meeeee”. The party was themed after an exceptionally raunchy show about hillbillies.
It gets even creepier when you think about this and connect some dots. Falwell is a well-known Trump supporter and is well-known in Christian circles. Trump is currently in the reelection fight of his life against opponents who are eager to alienate Christian voters from him. And Falwell intentionally and publicly posts a picture like this on public social media? And then gives an interview like THIS?
Falwell apologizes for unzipped pants photo: .I.m gonna try to be a good boy.
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said on Wednesday that he had apologized for posting a photo of him in unzipped pants and arm around a woman . but also defended the incident as a vacation “costume party” that was “just in good fun..
Oh come on. He’s got to be a better liar than that.
The now-deleted photo showed Falwell, a leading evangelical supporter of President Donald Trump, with his pants unzipped and his underwear showing beneath, while he had one arm around a woman whose shorts also appeared to be unbuttoned and his other holding a glass with a dark-colored liquid. The photo appeared to be on board a yacht.
The posting . which was quickly withdrawn . drew a sharp backlash and charges of hypocrisy because the evangelical university that he leads prohibits students from having sexual relations outside of a .biblically-ordained. marriage and consuming media with lewd lyrics, sexual content and nudity. The university’s policy also counsels “appropriateness” and “modesty” in how students must dress.
He had to have known the truth would come out… but for the truly wicked, the greatest thrill is getting away with it.
.I.ve apologized to everybody,. Falwell said in an interview on the Morningline show on WLNI 105.9FM, a local radio station in Lynchburg, Va., Falwell’s home town and that of the Liberty campus. “And I’ve promised my kids I’m going to try to be . I’m gonna try to be a good boy from here on out..
His son, Trey got Daddy to buy him a gay hostel with Liberty University’s money. Link at the end. He hasn’t yet acted upset with his gay co-owner of that hostel who literally fucked with his mother for years.
Falwell described the woman in the photo as his .wife’s assistant.” On his Instagram account, Falwell tagged a picture of the woman as Kathleen Stone, who lists on her Facebook account that she works for Liberty University. A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The photo of Falwell appeared to be a parody of the comedy TV show “Trailer Park Boys.” The website Pulpit & Pen also published a video, set to the theme music of the show, that shows Falwell and other yacht guests in costume. The video appears to have been taken by someone on the yacht.
Asked about the reference to the TV show during the interview on Wednesday, Falwell demurred. .Whatever,. he said. .It was a costume party on a . we were on vacation. And, anyway, long story short it was just in good fun. That’s it..
Sounds like Falwell Jr is a swinger/wife-swapper. While other scandals have broken in his recent past, this is the only incident that blew up.
Curious that he accepted a permanent “out” in only two days.
Jerry Falwell Jr. says he was depressed after wife had affair, man blackmailed family
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., who is currently on an “indefinite leave of absence” from the Christian college after a series of public embarrassing acts, revealed Sunday that he had been depressed after his wife, Rebecca, had an affair with a young man who then blackmailed his family.
.During a vacation over eight years ago, Becki and I met an ambitious young man who was working at our hotel and was saving up his money to go to school. We encouraged him to pursue an education and a career and we were impressed by his initiative in suggesting a local real estate opportunity. My family members eventually made an investment in a local property, included him in the deal because he could play an active role in managing it, and became close with him and his family,. Falwell said in a statement to the Washington Examiner late Sunday.
.Shortly thereafter, Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved . it was nonetheless very upsetting to learn about,. he explained.
Falwell did not identify his wife’s former lover but previous reports identify him as Giancarlo Granda, the son of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico, who was 21 at the time he met the Falwells. Granda met the Falwells while working as a “pool boy” at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach. That relationship would eventually result in the Falwells investing in a gay-friendly youth hostel they purchased in 2013 for $4.7 million.
I found pics. The place is a dump. No way, not even by California real estate standards, was it worth five mil.
According to the Miami Herald, the investment led to even more trouble as Falwell settled a lawsuit last October brought by 28-year-old lawyer Gordon Bello for an undisclosed “monetary sum” over the hostel deal. Bello claimed in the lawsuit that he and his father, Miami builder Jett Bello, pitched Falwell on the hostel idea after Granda, a high school friend, introduced them.
Also a Cuban name. Looks like Junior stepped into a real estate scam… but Granda’s behavior goes way beyond simple organized crime.
Granda, who flew with the Falwells on corporate jets and traveled to Liberty University in 2012 to meet now President Donald Trump (a keynote speaker at the university at the time), was granted a 25% share in the South Beach real estate deal. Bello argued that he was promised a similar share.
This is the earliest association between Junior and Trump that I could find. While I don’t share the Left’s Trump Derangement Syndrome, I sense a loose network of cronies held together with lots of real estate backroom dealing.
According to heavy.com, his wife Becki Falwell’s father went to prison for $7mil of tax evasion… on real estate.
He further noted that he met Falwell’s wife through Granda and formed a “personal relationship” with her before he met the now suspended university president in the lobby of the Loews Miami Beach for the alleged pitch meeting in 2012, the Miami Herald noted.
In his statement Sunday, Falwell explained how he lost 80 lbs after learning of his wife’s affair. The couple, he said, .forgave each other, because while her indiscretion may have been more obvious and apparent, I realized that there were important smaller things I needed to do better too..
I won’t cover it in detail but Granda reportedly had sex with Becki while Junior watched frequently. Voluntarily or not, hard to say, but Junior clearly has hompedo connections.
.Someone.s Gotta Tell the Freakin. Truth.: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence
At Liberty University, all anyone can talk about is Jerry Falwell Jr. Just not in public.
.When he does stupid stuff, people will mention it to others they consider confidants and not keep it totally secret,. a trusted adviser to Falwell, the school’s president and chancellor, told me. “But they won’t rat him out..
That.s beginning to change.
With a setup like that, this could be an SJW point-and-shriek. But they go on to talk about money changing hands which is a much more specific accusation than being a rayyypist.
In interviews over the past eight months, [current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell] depicted how Falwell and his wife, Becki, consolidated power at Liberty University and how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell’s decision to hire his son Trey’s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell’s advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell’s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends.
.We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,. said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. .We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students. money to do it..
We’re getting the drift and not liking where it’s headed. Large sums of money getting moved around the nation in real estate markets by an entrenched false Christian with sex perversions… Pizza Party anybody?
Liberty University says Jerry Falwell Jr. “withdrew” his resignation
After hours of conflicting statements, a spokesman from Liberty University said late Monday that Jerry Falwell Jr. had agreed to resign as president of the evangelical Virginia college and from the school’s board of directors, but “following media reports about the resignation, withdrew it.” The contradictory reports about his status came after Falwell denied allegations of a sexual impropriety involving a business associate.
According to spokesman Scott Lamb, Falwell agreed to resign immediately but then instructed his attorneys to not tender the letter for immediate resignation. The full board of directors will meet Tuesday.
Earlier Monday, a senior official at Liberty University told CBS News that members of the school’s board “have been in discussion” with Falwell and expect to make a statement on Tuesday.
Sounds like he was expecting a deal that didn’t happen.
Maybe this is what it appears to be at first glance: Falwell got too drunk at a swinger’s party, posted something he shouldn’t have and couldn’t take it down fast enough. I have several problems with this:
Previous scandals were equally bad yet caused him less damage, and he never made permanent concessions as a result… let alone within two days.
He took no precautions to prevent a drunken Tweet. He goes to sea in a yacht for privacy then uploads dick pics to his public account?
He apologized to his sons specifically, not to the Christian university with its uniquely stringent moral code that he has now completely disgraced… and flaunted for the entirely of his leadership.
He is not repentant.
He expected, somehow, to survive this with his office (or at least, its wealth) intact. He went on leave 7 August, right away, but only resigned on 24 August after efforts to remain on indefinite leave.
The timing stinks.
I think Falwell, Jr was offered the ticket. Take a dive, humiliate Trump’s Christian supporters and in return, he’ll be allowed to feed off the family empire. He was in no position to refuse thanks to his degenerate lifestyle. So he did the pic, made an apology to indicate he’ll play ball and then discovered blackmailers aren’t honorable.
I also think his son Trey and his probable lover Granda are the ones who forced this on him. Partly because Sodomites are almost exclusively Democrats and partly because Granda is the most obvious person to have blackmail on Junior. And, partly because Granda made a habit of having sex with Junior’s wife while he watched. I’ll be proven right if Trey survives in Liberty University leadership.
The disgrace of this just doesn’t stop. If Jerry Falwell III was a gay bathhouse operator and Jerry II an utterly shameless sex hypocrite then I have questions about Jerry I being leader of the “Moral Majority” political movement. What’d he do, offer his firstborn son to the devil in return for power?
*checks*
The Vatican, Occupy Wall Street, and Jerry Falwell’s Legacy
SS: I want to talk about your new book, The Right Hand of God . It’s coming out in January and is a biography of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who created the Moral Majority. When you were researching his life, did you bump into any surprises?
Michael Sean Winters: I did. One was his capacity for friendship with political opponents. There’s a very funny episode in the early 80s where one of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staffers signs up to get the Moral Majority report in order to see what was being written about Kennedy. They issue a membership card to Ted Kennedy. This got to the press, and what comes of it is that Kennedy goes to Lynchburg and speaks at Liberty College. But first he goes to dinner at the Falwell’s and they become friends. A year later, Sen. Kennedy reads in the newspaper that Reverend Falwell is in Fort Lauderdale. Sen. Kennedy is in Palm Beach and his mother is ill. So he asks Reverend Falwell to come pray with his mother, and he does. They spend the afternoon together at the Kennedy compound. Ted Kennedy ends up writing the letter of recommendation for Jerry Jr. to go to the University of Virginia Law School.
And perhaps most famously, Jerry Falwell sues Larry Flint over an ad parody, and it goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Afterwards, they do this dog and pony show where they go to college campuses to speak about it, each on their private plane. They realize, .Oh, we’re going to the same place.why don’t we ride together?. They start sharing rides and end up becoming friends. Every time Jerry Falwell would go to Los Angeles, he’d visit Larry Flint.and when Falwell died in 2007, Flint wrote a very moving tribute to his friend. I had no idea Falwell had that capacity for friendship with his political enemies.
High-level enemies of Christ hated Falwell Senior based on his reputation but when they got to know him personally, they became longtime friends. It’s a red flag when your sheepdog hangs out with the wolves.
The other thing that really interested me was that he, like many Southern preachers, was a segregationist, and then he flipped. Unlike some, he was very explicit and said, .I was wrong, I apologize.” What he never did was say, .Here’s what I used to say and here are the biblical verses I used to justify my position. Here’s where I now stand in opposing segregation and here are the biblical verses to justify that.” It never dawned on him that this switch raised questions about his ability to interpret the scriptures in other areas. Again, this is part of fundamentalism, which is not particularly intellectually agile or curious. You find your position and then you find the proof text, not the other way around.
I already knew he took flak for being a segregationist holdout. I didn’t know that he did a 180 with no explanation.
There was not a lot of intellectual curiosity in Dr. Falwell, although he was certainly an extraordinarily intelligent man. I’m glad I never had to debate him. But there was a lack of curiosity. In contrast, go back in the Catholic intellectual tradition, pick a century and there’s a fight between the Franciscans and the Dominicans or the Jesuits and the Franciscans. There have always been competing schools which leads to a dialogue that improves the intellectual life of the entire church.
Falwell didn’t engage in any sectarian infighting. What he did instead, was mix Christianity with politics:
SS: During the 80s a strong alliance developed between conservative business and the Christian right. It was a powerful match, and many would say it began in the 80s. But you say that Jerry Falwell had been preaching a gospel of conservative economics for decades, so this was not a new thing for conservative Christians.
MSW: Before Falwell got politically involved in the 60s, he would frequently give his Wednesday-night sermons on anti-Communist themes. That’s where “American exceptionalism” with a very Christian inflection comes about, and part of that was not only that Communists were godless, but that they were Communists. Falwell contrasts them with the God-fearing, free-enterprise system of Americans. This predates by over a decade his decision to encourage Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists to get involved politically. It was not a leap for him. But it was a leap for pro-business elements to accept evangelicals into the fold.
On issues like abortion, when Ronald Reagan signed a very lenient abortion law as governor of California he did it with the support of Republicans in the state legislature. Democrats, who were largely Catholic, were opposed. All those issues were changing in the late 60s, 70s, and 80s. Falwell himself did not respond immediately to Roe. It took many, many years before he got politically engaged on that.
I don’t immediately credit a Leftist’s complaint that Moral Majority was all about business… but the shoe fits that Falwell Senior brought the Christian Church onto the Republican false-opposition plantation using the Moral Majority organization.
Paul Weyrich was co-founder of the Moral Majority and a pretty obvious Deep Stater who also founded the Heritage Foundation, so the idea of Moral Majority being a way to leverage the Church into Republican-controllable channels is not far-fetched.
“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.” -Jerry Falwell Sr. Actually, it was the example set by Christ who despite denouncing the Pharisees, never sought worldly power Himself.
“If your wife doesn’t treat you as she should, be thankful, you might not like what you deserve.” -Jerry Falwell Sr.
To those who knew him well, Rev. Falwell was known as a consummate prankster. He carried M-80 firecrackers in his pockets, had an extra-loud horn installed on his SUV, and learned to hotwire his associates’ cars, drive them several blocks away, and leave them. When we spoke, Falwell admitted placing a stinkbomb under the chair leg of Bob Jones, Jr., then-president of Bob Jones University, at a conference of pastors. “When he sat down, the bomb broke,” he said, laughing. “And in a crowded auditorium, it got pretty rank pretty quick. Everyone was choking for ten, fifteen minutes.”
That’s an astonishingly inappropriate sense of humor.
When Rev. Falwell first met Macel Pate, who would become his wife of 49 years, she was already engaged to Falwell’s roommate at Bible college. Undeterred, Falwell wrote her love letters in secret, and when his roommate asked him to mail his own correspondence to Macel, Falwell simply threw the letters away. Within months, Macel had broken off her engagement to the roommate and agreed to marry Falwell instead. Stealing another man’s fiance isn’t exactly a biblical approach, but all’s fair in love and war.
One supposes that this should not come as a surprise, to find the tree near the fallen apple.
Falwell Sr was a psychopathic political manipulator who gatekept the ability of Christians to participate in politics.
Falwell Jr is a sex pervert, fraud, hypocrite and real estate scam artist.
And Falwell III, aka Trey, was co-owner of a gay hostel with the bisexual sleeping with his mother.
Inside the Falwells. hostel, the stench of general decay and cigarette smoke is overpowering. Walking to the lobby, Andy and I passed down narrow hallways as spatterings of people milled about, smoking, talking to each other, playing billiards, staring into their phones. There’s an ashtray on every table.two at the red bar, above which shone a Miller Lite sign.
As we approached the reception desk, the older of the two men behind the counter cocked his eyebrow, as if to ask us what the hell we wanted. .We’re checking in,. Andy explained. .Oh,. said the younger one, his burly biceps bulging out from his tank top. .Give us five minutes. You can go into the kitchen..
The kitchen was also what you might call the business center: Two computers lined a wall, next to which stood a bookcase with a Bible hidden on the second-to-bottom shelf, buried amid the kind of fiction your fourth-grade teacher might read at the beach. Across from the books was a wall display of Minicards advertising local entertainment and other venues for tourists and offering coupons for their business. One of them caught my eye: a closeup of a redhead with entirely too much eyeshadow, sporting a wide choker around her neck. Tootsie’s Cabaret: 74,000 square feet of adult entertainment and FULL NUDITY.
I took a seat at a hightop, and tried to figure out the situation at the only other occupied table in the kitchen. A guy and girl were seated across from each other. The girl stared blankly at the guy, who was very angry at whomever he was on the phone with. I couldn’t understand anything he said except a few shouted fucks.
Andy grimaced at the stench of the room. .I have to breathe through my mouth,. he said quietly, before heading back to the lobby to check in. Minutes later, he returned holding two frayed towels and a folded pile of formerly white bedding. The employees had advised him that we should go to CVS and buy locks to keep our belongings secure while we slept. There.d been thefts, and management took pains to remind us that they weren’t responsible for what happened to our stuff. .Seriously, Brandon, there’s a Hyatt just up the street,. Andy said.
We made the way to our room, climbing up a narrow green staircase and passing through a hallway straight out of a slasher film.long and narrow, with a dim light flickering at the end of it.
As soon as we unlocked the door, I smelled incense, which masked the unmistakable scent of marijuana. Two guys were conversing in Spanish, while another sat on a lower bunk fidgeting with his fishing rod. Everyone quickly, almost imperceptibly acknowledged us, and we returned the greeting. There were six bunks, two of which were reserved for us. Andy took one top bunk and I threw my stuff on the only other open top bunk, in the opposite corner of the room.
Junior paid $5mil for that property. The article discusses one way that Junior might have been laundering Federal taxpayer funds into real estate purchases.
This should amuse, that the Center for Disease Control has released new guidelines on how to handle the workplace violence that comes from people who are damn sick and tired of wearing face diapers in the summer heat.
Guidelines on workplace violence have already been issued by OSHA, FAA, FBI and even the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, itself a subsidiary of the CDC… and that’s just what the coming guideline bothered to link to.
OSHA: Wear correct PPE, personal protective equipment, during all hostile human resource encounters. Serious injury may result from inadequate PPE.
FAA: Kill the hijacker before it’s too late! Get that plane on the ground NOW!
FBI: Don’t bother us unless there’s a synagogue involved.
NIOSH: [direct quote] “The most serious workplace violence issues facing taxi drivers are homicide and physical assaults, which are often related to a robbery.” I did NOT learn something new today.
I’m so glad we have multiple layers of government to guide us! Without their leadership, my reaction to workplace violence would be to win it. “That was fun, Bob, but now you’re fired AND need a dentist. Remember to pay him cash beginning *dial insurance carrier* right now. Where’s my ice pack?”
But no, the CDC decided that what we proles need to hear next from them is how to handle physical resistance over their COVID-19 lies and dictats. Their hands are somewhat tied owing to the fact that encouraging independence and self-reliance would hinder the original, illegal policies they’re trying to enforce.
Limiting Workplace Violence Associated with COVID-19 Prevention Policies in Retail and Services Businesses
Who this is for: This information is intended for use by employers and employees in retail, services, and other customer-based businesses. Retail or service businesses sell goods and provide services to the public and include department stores, grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants. These businesses are open [despite our recommendations] and have started [WHO-directed, Federally-directed,] state-directed, municipality-directed, and company-directed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention policies and practices to minimize the spread of the virus among employees and customers.
Please… have mercy… I just want to buy a couple polo shirts….
Purpose: This webpage offers strategies to limit violence towards workers that may occur when businesses put in place policies and practices to help minimize the spread of COVID-19 among employees and customers. These policies may include requiring masks to be worn by employees and customers, asking customers to follow social distancing rules, and setting limits on the number of customers allowed in a business facility at one time.
“Only ten customers or two hundred looters at a time… where is all this violence coming from?!”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may update this page periodically. Please check the CDC COVID-19 website regularly for updated guidance.
One of the best reasons to not worship the Narrative is the fact that it changes so fast, you need hourly updates on… for example… how disease spreads. You might think that microbe behavior wouldn’t vary with election results but you would be surprised! I’ve been wearing my face shield to the gym with no trouble until the last time I went, when the staff informed me that face shields no longer protect against C-virus like they used to. Must have been one of those ‘evolutions’ I keep hearing about… the C-virus evolved into a drone, or something.
I’m done with my gym. Not that they care about losing a customer, I just can’t take the abuse any longer. My muscles may weaken but never my self-respect!
Today:
Workplace violence is “violent acts, including physical assaults and threats of assault, directed toward persons at work or on duty..
Tomorrow:
Workplace violence is “violent acts, including physical assaults and threats of assault, directed toward persons of color at work or on duty..
Who will take my bet? …Aw nuts, my readers have all read “Animal Farm”.
Employers can take action to prevent workplace violence:
Offer customers options to minimize their contact with others and promote social distancing. These options can include curbside pick-up; personal shoppers; home delivery for groceries, food, and other services; and alternative shopping hours.
“Get rid of all customers as a preventative measure.” Nice opener.
Post signs that let customers know about policies for wearing masks, social distancing, and the maximum number of people allowed in a business facility.
“Create a hostile climate for dissident customers in order to reduce violence.”
Advertise COVID-19-related policies on the business website.
“Create a hostile climate for dissident customers in order to reduce violence.”
Assign two workers to work as a team to encourage COVID-19 prevention policies be followed, if staffing permits.
Teamwork? But but but social distancing! Also, “if staffing permits” is a total nonstarter after four months of economic suicide plus a Canceled tourist season.
Provide employee training on threat recognition, conflict resolution, nonviolent response, and on any other relevant topics related to workplace violence response.
“Education creates good citizens! With enough education there will be no problems!”
Put in place steps to assess and respond to workplace violence. Response will depend on the severity of the violence and on the size and structure of the business.
“Education creates good citizens! With enough education there will be no problems!”
Remain aware of and support employees and customers if a threatening or violent situation occurs.
“If workplace violence happens then you should notice it.”
Install security systems (e.g., panic buttons, cameras, alarms) and train employees on how to use them.
Identify a safe area for employees to go to if they feel they are in danger (e.g., a room that locks from the inside, has a second exit route, and has a phone or silent alarm).
“Run away!”
Lord, what women these mortals be.
Do: Be aware and call for help, preferably from a (male) authority figure you can hide behind. Don’t: argue or fight back.
Oh come on! When I tell women to do exactly that, I get shamed for misogyny. The CDC says the same thing and they get hailed as innovative heroes! I totally understand why some men choose to become male feminist bureaucrats but alas, I wasn’t joking about my self-respect.
GunnerQ’s COVID-19 Workplace Violence Guidelines:
Sympathize. Take your mask off and tell the angry customer that you’ve just about had it, too, with both the masks and the government lies. This helps the subject not see you personally as the threat, redirects his anger at worthy targets and gives you the chance to breathe free for a precious minute.
The customer is always right. Let him take his mask off. Let him sit close to his friends. It’s not the end of the world and you might get an extra tip if you wink and a “just for you”. If all the other customers follow his example then it’s time to have “the conversation” with senior management… right then, right there.
Be patient. Hear him out. Some people relax when they vent to someone willing to listen. (Others get worked up even more and that’s when you proceed to…)
Win it. A little fisticuffs can bleed off a lot of frustration for all concerned. More than a few men have bonded over ice packs apres hockey. Remember: no cops, no weapons and don’t follow them down. All y’all are just blowing off some steam if anybody asks.
If the problem is a Karen or other mask Nazi then tell them no. No, you don’t care if X isn’t wearing a mask. No, she cannot talk to the manager and No, she is not a cop. Unlike the singer in the opening video.
We believe that a healthy professional environment facilitates the communication of a broad array of ideas, whether political, philosophical, or personal. No one should ever be afraid to express themselves for fear of retribution. Unfortunately, that fear has pervaded corporate culture. Millions of Americans limit themselves from expression which may threaten their businesses, job security as well as the institutions for which they work. We’re changing that.
To whom it may concern, We understand that a very small but loud group of people have taken serious offense by the Unwoke Platform.
. We don’t care.
We just find it jaw-dropping that so many people in that particular line of work (destruction) have been shouting for years about establishing hiring processes where the ethnicity of a person is masked. Now, when we’ve created it, their heads suddenly explode because of how “racist” it is. It makes one wonder how dedicated to their principles they really are [rhetorical question].
Boom!
To Vice Media Please remove your statements linking us to “white supremacists”, calling us “dumb” and deserving of being “trolled to death”. Fail to do so and you will have a nice defamation suit coming your way very soon. Trust us, serving you would be an absolute joy.
Target bracketed, now firing for effect!
To our users Thank you for the unimaginable level of support. The amount of love letters are in the thousands and we’re working diligently to reply to each and everyone of you.
Confidentiality is obviously critical against an opponent notorious for infiltration and targeting third parties so I can’t tell if this is a real HR recruitment website. One hopes it is.
Some people out there including some media outlets, would like to have you believe that we’ve had a “rocky start.” We not only disagree, that whole notion is blatantly false.
First of all, we weren’t hacked. We were “XSS-attacked”.
Secondly, the email “leak” wasn’t really a leak.
Spiking the football!
We built the entire Unwoke platform over a weekend to see if a concept like this would stick. So of course there were flaws. But the trolls did us a favor by exposing our vulnerabilities. Then they put their findings on social media so we could fix everything immediately. Just brilliant work there. Free lunch as far as we’re concerned. So stay tuned, a lot of new and exciting updates are coming very soon!
. What have we learned? Nothing. It only confirms what we already knew. That the people shouting are incapable of creation and only capable of destruction. And that a platform like Unwoke is desperately needed and desperately feared by the same people who seek to destroy it.
Didn’t the Geneva Convention ban incendiaries?
. Is the platform secure? Unequivocally yes.
Sincerely, The creators of Unwoke.
However did I miss this battle? Let’s go to the source of the REEE!
‘Unwoke’ Jobs Site Launches, Is Brutally Trolled and Hacked Immediately
A right-wing job recruitment site called Unwoke was immediately trolled, then defaced to display antiracist memes and images.
Um… they knew that was going to happen… and you SJWs french-kissed that tar baby after making love to it.
Unwoke.hr, a platform for listing open positions and job-seeker profiles, believes that the modern workplace “has become a hotpot for unchallenged radical thinking and left wing ideology,” and that society needs a culture of “enlightenment, beauty, truth and freedom through free market initiatives,” according to the site. The Unwoke.hr domain was first registered in late June.
“Hire courageous, free thinking and freedom loving individuals,” the site says. “Not ideologues whose only agenda is to weaponize your brand and business to further a radical cause.” It encourages hiring managers to “watch your woke competition implode” for hiring diverse staff.
Because this is a ridiculous thing to say, let alone build a website for.and because the site didn’t verify CVs or listings before anyone is able to post them.people immediately started trolling the site with fake profiles, which made it the perfect recruiting platform for those looking to hire a Big Chungus.
Apparently, Big Chungus is a “Big Is Beautiful” take on Bugs Bunny. I did not click on that link to confirm. My antivirus has limits and lately, a persecution complex.
The lack of screening should have been a tip-off. The SJWs couldn’t run fast enough into Unwoke’s trap of simultaneously 1. proving the need for Unwoke’s business model and 2. free advertising.
One is the complete “Navy Seal” copypasta meme. Another, “Pee Pee Poo Poo Man” (20 years of experience in fintech). “Professional Fuckup,” “Farty Fart” and “Cringey White Supremacist Incel” also feature on the site’s hireable talent pool.
I sense a Phase Two to this trolling and bet the SJWs don’t.
Within 30 minutes of Unwoke getting attention on Twitter, someone hacked the site to display a crossed-out swastika, and then the Big Chungus video game meme, rendering the whole platform unusable.
The YouTube link on Unwoke.hr redirects to a right-wing YouTuber called Mr. Regan, whose videos include a defense of keeping confederate statues…
So unreasonable!
…and “The Left-Wing Plot to Cause a Race War in America.” His most recent videos include links for Unwoke.hr in the descriptions.
I recall a Mr. Regan youTube that outed Alexia Occasional-Cortex as just an actor hired by some Pajeet immigrant whose name I’ve never managed to remember. I have no idea if he’s right because IMHO, all politicians in a democracy are actors with handlers.
In a week when we’ve seen (at least) three open letters deriding or responding to the idea of political correctness as sicknesses of Internet Discourse.including two big rage quits from Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss.Unwoke.hr’s dog-whistling about diversity quotas and “left wing ideology” aren’t subtle.
Neither was their threat of a lawsuit. This is still up after a month?
Weiss got SJW-swarmed out of the NY times; Sullivan forced out of NY Magazine.
Like far-right social media network Gab, which started as an alternative to mainstream social media and was quickly ruled by white supremacists, these sites calling for less accountability for people’s problematic actions aren’t sneaky anymore. They’re just dumb, and deserved to be trolled to death.
*checks* no lawsuit filed yet? Three points off. Troll 7/10! 6/10 if not a real HR site, either.
I have fantasies of old Adolf rising from the grave as a superpowered undead and leading a zombie Third Reich to world domination, and all the SJWs just sit down and gibber in face of impending doom because they used up all the “ultra-right-wing fascist neo-not-see white-supremacist” ammunition on people who just want to be left alone.
I’ve reached out to Unwoke.hr to ask what they plan to do about “DIck Sucker” and “Nut eater” on their platform, and will update if I hear back.
I couldn’t sleep last weekend, partly because of a heatwave and partly because there was so much lightning that I first thought my neighbor was binge-watching J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies. My count was 150 lightning strikes in ten minutes, when I haven’t seen lightning at all since about 2011.
And the power went off. I wouldn’t even have noticed had the quarantine nor forced me to be spending Saturday night online with friends. Turns out that solar & wind power doesn’t always work even in the height of summer when the energy yields peak.
Naturally, this all happening during fire season has resulted in yet another epic fire season. That’s not news. If Pacific Gas & Electric doesn’t start the fires with faulty equipment and no funding for tree trimming then God will do it directly, I guess. What is news is that some of the fires were burning practically in my backyard and I didn’t get activated as a volunteer firefighter.
I am trained specifically to support firefighters fighting brushfires. For example, I can run cooling cabanas (pop-up shades with misters that help firefighters cool off and rest in between air tank fills), direct traffic and other basic skills to free up the experts. I can even substitute as inmate labor although I won’t remind anybody of that.
My phone never rang.
Instead, I helped a coworker evacuate his home.
What gives?
I talked with some folks I know. Turns out, the fire department was prohibited from using volunteers because of COVID. We might have infected the firefighters despite wearing masks and social distancing and washing our hands every five minutes! And I’m not joking about that last one. Our latest newsletter had so many lockdown hygiene warnings that I probably wouldn’t have shown regardless, because if they’re that convinced I’m vomiting blood, pus and plague from the moment I say hello then I don’t want to bother “infecting” them with my assistance.
Turns out, they didn’t even give me the chance. Safety first!
What they say is true, the lockdown will do more damage than the disease ever would have.
This Newsweek article illustrates other ways in which the COVID lockdown is ruining us.
As California Fires Rage, Pandemic Leaves State Hundreds of Firefighters Short
As California battles both wildfires and the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, resources have been “stretched totally thin,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) told Newsweek.
Cal Fire President Tim Edwards said: “In the last few weeks, resources across California have been stretched totally thin.”
Man, Newsweek is going downhill if the quality of their editing has gotten bad enough to ruin the first two sentences of a published article.
Nearly 150 firefighters from Cal Fire, which is responsible for fighting fires in over 96 to 99 million acres of California’s nearly 101.7 million total acres of land, are currently in quarantine due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.
Lame-O statistic. It’s called CalFire because, yes, it fights fires across the length of California.
“For Cal Fire, right now statewide we have approximately 130 firefighters who are quarantined. Out of those, over half have tested positive [for COVID-19] and the rest were exposed due to it. So this adds to the strain on Cal Fire,” he said.
They sidelined sixty-odd firefighters because they were in the same room as people who weren’t even symptomatic.
Even before the outbreak began, due to budget cuts Cal Fire was short by 400 firefighters to bring the department up to its minimum operational requirement, Edwards noted.
COVID-specific budget cuts. More below.
In addition, Cal Fire’s total number of inmate crews, who operate line construction around fires to contain them, have nearly halved from 99 to 45 crews, Edwards told Newsweek. Each inmate crew consists of 15 to 17 people.
Oh, that’s right! We emptied the prisons! Now crime rates are through the roof while firefighting is left hanging. (In fact, police are currently arresting looters who target the homes of the evacuated.) I recall those inmate crews are actually paid to fight fires so this isn’t mere slave labor, but maybe that’s changed in the last couple decades. For a group too scared to call a hard drive “master”, legislators have surprisingly few qualms about issuing mandatory guidelines.
Fires are being battled along the central coast, including the areas of “Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Sonoma, Napa. All up there along San Francisco, we have multiple fires going on right now,” Edwards said.
“But because the fires in southern California, including in Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino areas, broke first, they got the majority of the resources,” he said. So these areas are struggling to get their resources freed to help fight fires in the other parts of California.
“If it continues in this state, there will be a time when federal and state governments will have to decide whether to bring on additional resources,” in the form of “hiring more federal firefighters and more single [individual contractors] firefighters to take over these fires on federal land,” Edwards said.
“At some point in time, they [governments] will have to make that decision if it keeps going at the pace it’s going now,” he said.
The decision has already been made, Edwards. The Federal government will rescue California or it’ll be Trump’s fault that Governor Newscum and friends looted the budget of all its wealth and left We the Taxpayers with nothing but homosexual Marxist schoolteachers for our money.
I cannot wait for California’s leaders to die of their AIDS and syphilis and cronies. The loathsome swine! Parasites! I know why they fear the noose and it isn’t because of any racism! It’s because that’s the favored tool of vigilante mobs of righteous American men! And they call ME diseased, those pig-fucking lovers of LGBT activists!
Edwards said: “It’s been really difficult because we’re having individuals do 36 plus hours straight on a fire line. And with the amount of heat [in the state] right now and especially given the terrain these fires are in, there’s a high risk of fatigue and injury. We’ve had a lot of heat strokes [at least 15 individuals affected so far] already.
“With less manpower, the firefighters are working longer and harder, which puts a stress on their bodies. Fatigue can cause injuries. So right now, we’re trying to keep our guys as rested as we can.
How sustainable are the current strained conditions? “Realistically, we’re gonna have to keep going until these fires go out and get the job done. But at the end of the day, how many firefighters were gonna have injured is gonna be higher than normal,” Edwards said.
Government that refuses to do its job is not a legitimate government. The people then have the right and duty to replace that government. Here, the California State government refused to properly fund firefighting efforts while spending billions unaccountably on what turned out to be a false threat. For this, there MUST be consequences! Because the perpetrators are unrepentant.
Holding morning briefings, which usually see fire crew members “just pile into an area,” Edwards noted, has proved to be more difficult now, with enhanced safety measures required amid the ongoing pandemic, including temperatures checks before crew enter their fire base camps.
Whaaaat? They’re checking forehead temps of FIREFIGHTERS RESPONDING TO BASE CAMPS? “Oops, you’re a bit feverish from that last fire you fought this morning! That’s two weeks of quarantine for you and the crew you came in with because there’s no way a 40,000-acre brushfire is more important than protecting us from your China Balls!”
[Edwards continued]: “Our base camps (fire camps) have to be more strategically planned out because of the social distancing and mask requirements. We have to have bigger areas where crew can stand technically six feet apart.
“So it’s creating a logistics problem, having to find a big enough area to hold these briefings, as well as house them [the firefighters], feed them [between fires],” he said.
I… I can’t even.
Maybe it’s true that California deserves to die. If firefighters are willing to sabotage their own firefighting efforts because some desk-humping bureaucrat in an air-conditioned office said “Chinaballs” then there’s nobody to save California for.
Cal Fire was said to be lacking 400 firefighters before the pandemic due budget cuts over the years.
“In the January budget, the governor [California Gvo. Gavin Newsom] proposed [hiring] 553 new firefighters just to bring us up to where we need to be. But we didn’t get all of those. We’re still short 400, so we were given 153 firefighters,” Edwards told Newsweek.
“Because COVID came along and killed the state budget, we were not able to get them [the full 553 new permanent staff firefighters]. So COVID killed the budget. This just creates an even bigger problem [for staff shortages].”
This is a quickie about a quickie marriage. I mean really quick, as in the groom didn’t make it to the wedding night before getting fucked. Normally the shotgun comes before the marriage, not the .380 after.
Wedding guest in Texas shoots groom in chest; bride refuses to talk
A Texas couple’s wedding day ended with a guest shooting the groom in the chest and the bride refusing to cooperate with authorities, according to reports.
Yes, it’s an ethnic kind of neighborhood.
A Texas couple’s wedding day ended with a guest shooting the groom in the chest and the bride refusing to cooperate with authorities, according to reports.
It happened at a residence in Harris County Thursday night.
.A groom has been shot on his wedding day. Witnesses not cooperating with responding officers,. Capt. John Shannon, who is with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said on Twitter.
Investigators said those who were clamming up included the bride, KPRC-TV reported.
Priest: “Do you take Preggo Barbie for a wife?”
Groom: “I do.”
Baby Daddy: *pulls a gun* BANG BANG
Bride: “How much fo’ last rites?”
Priest: “Last rites are free. My silence to the cops, five Gs.”
A medical chopper gave the groom a ride to the hospital where he was in critical condition.
He stabilized so unfortunately, Ghetto Barbie can’t yet cash his life insurance. Man, that’s gonna be a cold marriage.
Investigators were told that a person who was invited to the wedding got into some sort of altercation with the groom, the station reported. That person then shot the groom and fled the scene.
A woman told the station she was in bed when she heard a loud commotion.
Okay, okay, this was probably a drug deal gone bad. One supposes that Hay-Soos was willing to turn water into wine but not flour into coke.
.My daughter ran into my room and said, .Mom, there’s shots, there’s shots, there’s shots,.. the woman said. .So we came outside to see what was going on and we saw the bride come out and she started yelling, .Where is he? Where is he? I need to find him…
Thus proving that Hubby ain’t her first love.
Video can be found here. I’d guess the bride’s weight at 190lbs.
Much ado is being made about the ultrawealthy and the “knowledge workers” leaving cities for more affordable & spacious locations. It rarely amount to more than first-level thinking such as “good riddance to the One Percent” or “why weren’t they already telecommuting anyway?”
The strength of cities is its labor force. That’s why the factories were built there and it’s why Silicon Valley is full of people who theoretically could telecommute… they want to be part of the labor pool. While in theory a lot of tech-based jobs do not require meatspace socializing, the simple fact is that meatspace socializing is what people do. Blah blah efficiency but few people are naturally so misanthropic as to be happy toiling in physical isolation.
Thus, the telecommuters will flee to the suburbs but not farther, because they’re still human and wired to socialize.
The superwealthy don’t like cities. Never have, because they’re full of uncultured proles who alternate between envying them and sucking up to them. They go there to work but always maintain residences in pleasant (and remote) locations along with those stereotypical penthouses. I daresay those fleeing NYC banksters aren’t escaping to any newly purchased destinations.
But the purpose of cities as labor warehouses will continue because humans are human.
Plague doesn’t change any of the ancient equations. You’re born on a farm and die in a city, it’s always been that way, because farmers breed their own labor force and a city is short on space.
The cost of city living is a result of 1. the debt economy driving up prices, 2. banksters using real estate as hedges against the very inflation they profit from and 3. population mobility. The cost of California property would plummet if immigration was reversed and people were required to live in the houses they purchased.
The rich want cheap labor and expensive land. The middle class wants expensive labor and cheap land. Nobody cares what the poor want. If you see the middle class leaving, it’s because misanthropic Elites have taken control.
And on that note, the reason cities are liberal cesspits is because predators go where the food is. If you get your kicks from hurting innocent people then you won’t dedicate your life to becoming the Commissioner of Podunk County. No, you’ll move to the capitol and campaign for Mayor.
Every city-government-level election victory should be celebrated with an all-access investigation into the winner’s personality, known criminal associates and whether he tortured the family pet as a child. I look forward to the day when not having a detectable disgust reflex invalidates a man from holding office.
Let me try to teach these concepts to the slow class:
This Terrifying Economic Crisis Will Make Cities Better
Nolan is formerly of Gawker?! This should entertain.
Have you heard? The gold?en age of the Amer?i?can big city is over. The pan?dem?ic and the protests are scar?ing peo?ple away. Res?i?dents are flee?ing. Crime is up. Bud?gets are bust?ed. The offices are emp?ty, the rich are mov?ing to the sub?urbs, and the peri?od of unbro?ken pros?per?i?ty has shat?tered forever.
Good.
Evil. Crime is up, the leaders have betrayed the people and the System in general is crashing.
Well…to be more pre?cise…there is a strong poten?tial for this to be good, if a few things break the right way. The pan?dem?ic is bad, as is the human suf?fer?ing and the eco?nom?ic cat?a?stro?phe…and it’s all like?ly to get worse. But the city? The city is going to be reborn for the better.
No. The Red Dawn is E.V.I.L. Nothing good can come of it.
To under?stand why this is true, you have to under?stand who cities are for: every?one. Cities are not theme parks for the rich, where every?one who makes less than six fig?ures is sim?ply a cast mem?ber with a ser?vice role. Cities are not archi?tec?tur?al show?rooms for bank branch?es. Cities are not apartheid states that pro?vide the raw mate?r?i?al to the prison-indus?tri?al com?plex. Cities are not just back?drops for Amazon’s new head?quar?ters build?ing.
Cities are for people whose work requires lots of labor, or who want to sell their labor. If you aren’t looking for a job then why not live cheaper in the boonies? Many retired people do.
Cities are…or should be…fre?net?ic quilts where every type of per?son lives togeth?er. The mag?ic, and the ben?e?fit, of cities is that they bring togeth?er rich and poor, young and old, artists and busi?ness peo?ple and col?lege kids and retirees and hus?tlers, facil?i?tat?ing unpre?dictable rela?tion?ships and smash?ing (to some degree) the bub?bles that we form to sep?a?rate our?selves from one another.
It never ceases to amaze, that liberals value diversity. I remember trying to convince a coworker that language diversity meant I couldn’t even say hello to my (Asian) neighbor, and that was bad for community-building. It positively HURT to explain something so blindingly obvious.
One would think that Chinatowns and Italian Quarters being typical features of city life would tip off the Kool-Aid drinkers that people don’t like to regularly confront cultural barriers.
That capa?bil?i?ty of cities has bro?ken down in two ways. Some cities have been hol?lowed out by post-indus?tri?al decline, los?ing the pri?ma?ry dri?vers of their economies with noth?ing to replace them. This is the Detroit prob?lem, and its emp?ty down?towns and board?ed-up homes can be seen in once-thriv?ing cities across the coun?try.
Yes, the loss of need for labor caused by, at first, unions driving labor costs too high, followed by “off-shoring”. Which is when Chinese cities began to enjoy exponential prosperity.
But oth?er cities have been afflict?ed by the oppo?site prob?lem: death by pros?per?i?ty. From New York to Los Ange?les, San Fran?cis?co and? Seat?tle, a rapid influx of wealth into such cities has raised the cost of liv?ing in gen?er?al, and the cost of hous?ing in par?tic?u?lar. In the most suc?cess?ful cities in Amer?i?ca…the very places where it would make the most sense to encour?age the most peo?ple to live…the rent is too damn high, and, for the aver?age work?ing per?son, buy?ing a home is a math?e?mat?i?cal impossibility.
Immigration driving down the price of labor. Also, banksters artificially inflating the cost of housing with tricks from environmental activism to inventing fraudulent renters.
This con?di?tion has reached the most absurd pro?por?tions in San Fran?cis?co, where there are vir?tu?al?ly no homes in the entire city that one could pur?chase on a teacher’s salary. The same dynam?ic is true in large swaths of New York and oth?er thriv?ing cities. Unless you believe that cities should come with ready-made slums pop?u?lat?ed by the ser?vant class?es, you have to admit that a city with?out afford?able hous?ing is fun?da?men?tal?ly flawed.
But WHY is there no affordable housing? Don’t just say “prosperity”. Say “immigration” and “investment properties” and “tax shelters”.
The most ratio?nal response to this influx of rich peo?ple into cities would have been to build a large amount of new hous?ing, in order to pre?vent the prices of the city’s hous?ing stock from sky?rock?et?ing as it was bid up by wealth?i?er res?i?dents.
You can’t build more housing, as a general rule. There are hard upper limits, both physical and social.
Of course, that is not what hap?pened. Instead, every city just allowed their hous?ing prices to sky?rock?et until they faced deficits of hun?dreds of thou?sands of units that would need to be built in order to meet demand.
Tip-off! Labor market manipulation!
In the long term, that hous?ing will indeed have to be built as cities grow; but the past decade is proof that in the short term, it will not hap?pen, due in large part to the intran?si?gence of exist?ing home?own?ers, who make up the most potent force in any city’s local politics.
Earlier, he complained about the prison-industrial complex. Now he complains about homeowners not cooperating with the construction of ultra-high-density housing. News flash, increasing the size of the labor pool FURTHER will do nothing to raise the wages of laborers!
For years, it has seemed like many of America’s cities were doomed to become increas?ing?ly unaf?ford?able playpens for the rich, able to be vis?it?ed by nor?mal peo?ple, but not lived in. Unless. there was an exo?dus of the upper class from major cities. Wow…that.s just what the pan?dem?ic has pro?vid?ed! All of the trend sto?ries about New York?ers flee?ing the city ..in droves. are not about the poor, nor about the mid?dle class. They are about the wealthy, who have the means to go live wher?ev?er they want. And while this dynam?ic is being pre?sent?ed by some media out?lets as a night?mare, the real?i?ty is that a reduc?tion in the demand of upper class peo?ple to live in cities would serve as a release valve on hous?ing mar?kets, mak?ing these cities more afford?able for every?one else.
The Elites have worked very hard in recent years to drive off the normies. Confiscatory taxation, slave labor both imported and home-grown homeless.
The middle class leaving the cities is a major priority for the rich because the remaining labor pool will be more easily exploited. Don’t confuse the Elites’ COVID-vacations in the Hamptons with a refusal to return to the cities.
Frankly, the only reason so many Elites insisted on living in NYC as long as they did is Jewish xenophobia and the profitability of insider trading on the stock markets. Look, social connections!
Lack of mon?ey can dev?as?tate a city. But mon?ey can dev?as?tate a city as well. Over?whelm?ing pros?per?i?ty dri?ves out the cool peo?ple, prices out the artists and the dive bars, and pro?motes chain stores and lux?u?ry goods. It makes once-inter?est?ing and unique places look like every?where else.
No, it’s poverty that brings homogenity. If you’ve seen one strip mall in the barrio then you’ve seen them all.
This has hap?pened to Man?hat?tan. It has hap?pened to San Fran?cis?co. It has hap?pened to gen?tri?fied neigh?bor?hoods in Atlanta, and in Den?ver, and in Los Ange?les. But it can be reversed. The big chain stores are already shut?ting down in New York. In their place will be some?thing cool?er, because there is noth?ing less cool.
Of course, there is a steep down?side to what is hap?pen?ing to cities right now. City bud?gets rely on tax rev?enue. When the busi?ness?es and the peo?ple in cities are not mak?ing mon?ey, and when the prop?er?ty val?ues decline, tax rev?enue goes down, and bud?gets get cut. We are liv?ing through that now. New York City is poised to lay off more than 20,000 city work?ers, and they are not all bad cops. They are san?i?ta?tion work?ers and ambu?lance dri?vers and tran?sit work?ers and the oth?er peo?ple who make the city run. Los?ing them will make the city a worse place to live. The city will be dirt?i?er, crime will rise, the sub?ways will break down, and count?less needs will go unmet as ser?vices are slashed. If all of this were inevitable, it would cer?tain?ly be a strong argu?ment against the idea that there is any sil?ver lin?ing to all of this.
But it is not inevitable. City bud?gets can be res?cued by the fed?er?al gov?ern?ment.
Indeed, mon?ey to bail out city and state gov?ern?ments, to pre?vent the cut?ting of ser?vices out?lined above, appears to be one of the main stick?ing points in the cur?rent stalled nego?ti?a?tions between Democ?rats and Repub?li?cans on a new Covid res?cue pack?age. If Repub?li?cans get their way, city bud?gets will have to be cut, and the down?ward spi?ral will com?mence, and any new hous?ing afford?abil?i?ty will come at the cost of a much more bro?ken city that will hurt the most vul?ner?a?ble res?i?dents. But if the fed?er?al gov?ern?ment does the wise thing…most like?ly under a future Pres?i?dent Joe Biden “then we could enjoy the exo?dus of a good num?ber of wealthy peo?ple from our cities and the sub?se?quent relief in hous?ing prices with?out the awful cuts to mass tran?sit and oth?er ser?vices.
Subsidies never lower prices. Put down the tax money bong. Step away from the tax money bong. You are nothing but a useful puppet to your Elite handlers.
In that sce?nario, we could legit?i?mate?ly be enter?ing a new gold?en age of cities…afford?able for nor?mal peo?ple, open to art and music and cul?ture once again, and with?out Chase branch?es and tech bros lit?ter?ing the streets. The dream would be realized.
And yet, the homeless bums would remain to “revitalize” downtown with vibrant culture!
So keep yelling at the rich to scare them away, but be sure you also yell at Con?gress. If we don’t get that bailout mon?ey, things are gonna suck. But if we do, you may final?ly get a chance to live with?out a roommate.
But the supply of cheap, exploitable labor will remain behind.
I really don’t get it. How can a white man make a career of warring against “white privilege”, “white supremacy” and “white nationalism” then get blindsided when his Colored/female underlings decide to go +1 on his chalky fat ass? Isn’t that exactly what he taught them to do?
Isn’t that exactly the story of Joe Biden? Hey Joe, you taught People Of Color to hate Whitey for a long time… you are very white… and now I see you chose a Prostitute Of Color to balance your Presidential ticket… gosh, I hope she doesn’t believe in what you’ve been saying for a career. It would be awkward to watch the Secret Service protect the Prez from his Veep.
But November 4 is still a while off. Today, Cthulhu came for Jim Wallis the Sojourners Justice Warrior. Wallis’ first mistake was, of course, thinking God isn’t real and Christianity was therefore a tool to Converge The World with. His second mistake was green-lighting this blatant hit piece:
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS A VISIBLE WHITE-POWER FACTION
BY ERIC MARTIN, August 2020 Edition of Sojourners Magazine
I haven’t been able to identify Eric Martin unless he’s a pop guitarist. He came without the usual credentials and offices of a skinwalker.
WHEN THE U.S. Catholic bishops gathered to draft a document on race in the wake of the 2017 white terrorist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Bishop Anthony Taylor of Little Rock, Ark., submitted an amendment to condemn the imagery of swastikas, Confederate flags, and nooses. The U.S. bishops deliberated and voted to reject it.
The document, .Open Wide Our Hearts,. was billed as .a pastoral letter against racism,. making its writers. inability to adopt the amendment condemning three famously extreme symbols of racism a curious one. The bishops explained themselves by arguing that swastikas and nooses were already “widely recognized signs of hatred,. which would seem to make them all the easier to condemn. (Interestingly, they eschewed this logic when issuing their only condemnation, against violence toward police.) As for the Confederate flag, .some still claim it as a sign of heritage,. they argued.
Segue, from the same link:
Correction: An earlier version of this article claimed that the writers of the document Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love – A Pastoral Letter Against Racism, developed by the Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), were silent on three extreme symbols of racism: swastikas, Confederate flags, and nooses. This is not true. The final language of Open Wide Our Hearts includes the sentence “The re-appearance of symbols of hatred, such as nooses and swastikas in public spaces, is a tragic indicator of rising racial and ethnic animus.” The document did not condemn these symbols, but did address them. The final document does not address Confederate flags.
Martin wrote this screed to demand that the USCCB oppose the Confederate flag specifically and be extension, white male American history generally. He cloaked his intention by adding nooses and swastikas to evoke the proper emotions.
Wallis not catching this was either foolish or… intentional.
End segue
The decision to avoid condemning swastikas, nooses, and Confederate flags would be troubling under any circumstances. But this moral failure is compounded by the fact that Catholics are among the most integral groups that rally behind these symbols. From the highest reaches of government to the lowest depths of social media, many members of hate groups and politicians who model their talking points are part of the bishops. flock. Catholics not only contributed to the platform for the so-called alt-righters who terrorized Charlottesville and killed Heather Heyer but are leaders and even founders of the most dangerous neo-Nazi groups in existence.
The Catholic Church, once persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan, today has a visible white-power faction. As long as the bishops actively refuse to condemn its banners, they give white supremacists space to embrace their anti-Black and anti-Semitic work free of religious dissonance.
I’ll guess that Martin is a nobody of a hack, because accusing the USCCB of being “leaders and founders of the most dangerous neo-Nazi groups in existence” forced his SJW allies in the USCCB to publicly oppose him. A house divided against itself cannot stand and guess who the cheap sacrifice was this time? The lead editor who didn’t do his job of screening the cannon fodder.
Here Catholics discussed everything from their favorite saints to their thoughts on Pope Urban II. They talked of “how to defend proper Catholicism” and shared links to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. They saluted “Sieg heil!. to each other. They went from joking about the murder of Heather Heyer, the anti-racist activist who was run over in Charlottesville by a neo-Nazi, to singing “Ave Maria” together. They discussed the merits of Mein Kampf, identified themselves as “Charles Coughlin Roman Catholics. (after the 1930s Catholic radio demagogue), encouraged genocide against Jews, advertised the anti-Semitic podcast The Daily Shoah, and confessed their allegiance to what they call the .14 words.: .We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children..
This went way too far for a hit piece. Hello, open-and-shut libel against the single largest organization on the planet!
Augustus Sol Invictus grew up Catholic. Matthew Heimbach was raised in a Catholic family and eventually switched to the Orthodox Church. Both have been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “major players from the “Unite the Right” rally..
Surprise, the SPLC did not back up Martin’s claim of the two being agents of the Catholic church when they did their thing. And so the article continues.
Then Wallis made his third mistake: he apologized. He had no choice, of course. Doubling down would have shredded his golden parachute.
I excerpted heavily from the following as usual but I will also give the overall word counts. It emphasizes the silly suckage.
Sojourners has removed this article from our website. It was offensive and should not have been published. We are sorry and are looking into our internal processes. This article did not meet our editorial standards for accuracy, fairness, and balance. White supremacy and alt-right factions are insidious realities of the American society and indeed have manifestations in all our communities of faith. But this article made unwarranted insinuations and allegations against many Catholics, many in leadership, including the bishops, and within the wider Catholic Church who are working toward and are committed to racial justice. We are sorry for harm this article has caused in those efforts and we will work to repair the damage.
. Jim Wallis, Editor-in-Chief
Wallis’ apology was directed at his allies in the RCC. Alas, forgiveness is only a CHRISTIAN principle.
UPDATED July 31, 2020
Word count: 785
Based on further conversations and reflection, as Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners, I feel it is important to clarify a very unfortunate situation regarding an article published in Sojourners and the decision to take it down. In this case a breakdown occurred in the final step of our editorial process, caused in part by this time of COVID-initiated remote work, in which the Editor-in-Chief reviews the final copy of the magazine before publication and which, in this case, was never sent to me. That is not the author’s fault but ours and mine, and I apologize to the author for any harm this has caused.
No way. The Editor-in-Chief never saw even a draft of an issue before it went to print? The problems with Martin’s screed were not of the “typo in the final copy” kind.
I read this article after it had been published, and in further conversation with some of our team and many of our longtime and trusted friends including within the Catholic community, I made the difficult decision to have it taken down– something which would only happen in an extraordinary circumstance.
That was Wallis’ fourth mistake. He silenced an SJW attacking Christians. While he shouldn’t have given Martin the voice he enjoyed, apologizing to Christians alienated everybody on Team Narrative. Not even Wallis approved of Wallis doing that:
All institutions, including the Catholic Church, need to continually acknowledge and address their roles and responsibility as it relates to issues of racial justice. This article failed to place in context the ongoing work of Pope Francis and the Catholic Church to address these issues which would have led to a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of the work being done by leadership within the church. We also know and believe that the Catholic Church, as with all institutions, including our own, has more work to do to address these issues.
UPDATED: August 10, 2020
Word count: 2,430
Dear Friends and Fellow Sojourners,
The posting of an article by Eric Martin, and my unprecedented decision to take it down as a feature on our website (though it remains in print), has generated understandable confusion, and in some cases, outrage on the part of many of our friends and readers.
The first expression of hurt and outrage came from the original publication of the piece, and it was greater than anything I had experienced in our 49 years of publication.
“Remember how loyal I’ve been, O Dark Lord!”
This came from many of our dearest, closest, and long-term progressive Catholic allies.
You swung Left, dude. Don’t blame the tool for that.
This was followed, after the decision to take the article down (and without an adequate explanation), by a whole new wave of hurt and outrage, this time by other friends and readers (many of them also Catholics), who wondered what could have justified such an extraordinary action.
When you serve the devil, don’t make the mistake of admitting that Christians are not as bad as you just said they were.
The opening of the article referred to the fact that in approving their 2018 post-Charlottesville letter on racism, .Open Wide Our Hearts,. the bishops chose not to “condemn” the hate symbols of nooses, swastikas, and Confederate flags. In fact, the letter did cite nooses and swastikas as symbols of hate, though it is true that it omitted reference to Confederate flags. (Needless to say, Sojourners has consistently called for the removal of all Confederate flags and monuments, long before the murder of George Floyd or Charlottesville, and I would have admired the bishops if they too had taken that position before it became as popular and widespread as it is today.)
August 12, 2020
Word count: 1,091. It dropped off, perhaps because the movers were taking the furniture out of his office at the time of writing.
Repentance- A New Way Forward
Jim, I don’t think Satan does repentance, either.
At the heart of the situation is the natural and ongoing tension between our identity as a publication and as an advocacy organization in and supportive of broader movements.
This is Wallace offering to break up his empire as a compromise.
That tension has been with us from our outset until now, 49 years later. Both pillars of our work are dedicated to our mission “to articulate the biblical call to social justice in order to inspire hope and build a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church and the world.
Whoa. Jim Wallis took the mask off. He shined a quick light into the dark places he inhabited for half a century as a final threat to what he can do if his offer is rejected.
Learning from the mistakes made recently, I am committed to working with our staff and board to make the changes needed, including but not limited to:
1. Evaluate and strengthen a transparent structure and policies and procedures that enable and protect both genuine editorial independence and a faithful commitment to advocacy and movement building and to share it clearly with our readers, authors and partners.
“Choose between my commitment to your cause or me taking my little empire independent.”
2. Commit to any future editor and writer for Sojourners, we will never again take down an article that has already passed our editorial standards to be published, even if mistakes are made in our process. In the future we will always find another way.
“I offer you control of the editorial process.”
3. Redouble our commitment to racial justice and the abolition of poverty–all based on the deep biblical instruction of human equality and Imago Dei.
“You need me. You want me.”
That principle is the foundation of all politics for people of biblical faith. For Sojourners’ part of that commitment involves existing plans for our managers to engage in managerial training in September with an emphasis on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“In the future, I promise to be loyal enough to give you a kill switch… aww, man, you already got one.”
Dhanya: I officially resigned from my associate editor position late last week. I secured another position elsewhere but let me be clear . three years of experiencing this toxic environment as a Dalit woman/WOC + recent events is the reason why I decided to leave.
And associate editor Jose Camacho had already left. The “Isolate and Swarm” stage of the SJW attack had been achieved.
Jim Wallis steps aside as Sojourners editor-in-chief after removing controversial op-ed
Longtime progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis has been replaced as editor-in-chief at Sojourners magazine after staff members resigned following his decision to unpublish a controversial op-ed accusing the Catholic Church of having a .white-power faction..
Sojourners, a monthly magazine and online publication popular among progressive Christians that also serves as a social justice advocacy organization, announced last Friday that it has made structural and editorial changes to reflect the “editorial independence” of the publication from the nonprofit’s advocacy work.
Offer accepted. Turns out, they needed him after all. They wanted him.
As part of these changes, Wallis will no longer serve as editor-in-chief of the magazine. Wallis has overseen the magazine since it was founded as The Post-American in the early 1970s.
Wallis, 72, will continue to serve as the president of Sojourners, an evangelical activist organization based in Washington, D.C.
In his place, the magazine’s executive editor, Sandi Villarreal, has assumed the role of editor-in-chief of the magazine and online publication.
.She will have editorial independence as she oversees Sojourners magazine and sojo.net,. Sojourners said. .The new Editor-in-Chief will continue to be part of the senior leadership team of the Sojourners organization..
I see a lot of deceit in that New Moon left eye. That smile indicates high ego and the hoop earrings, whoredom. But I admit, I’m surprised to see long hair and not-a-Negress.
htt ps://sojo.net/biography/villarreal
Sandi Villarreal came to Sojourners in 2012 after starting her career in print newspaper reporting and veering quickly into digital media and online journalism.
Layoffs.
Sandi holds a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science from Baylor University. She has worked in both print and online journalism, publishing, digital marketing, and non-profit community development.
She doesn’t even pretend to be a Christian. A politico-journalist hack from the beginning.
Sandi is most interested in writing about the intersection of faith, politics, and culture, especially as it relates to women’s leadership both within our churches and on the political stage.
Wallis negotiated a leveraged takeover of his little empire. While being unwilling to walk away, he promoted his in-house Commissar into the highest office to ensure that by the time he walks away, there will be nothing left but a genocidal organization wearing Christ as a skin suit.
Sandi has earned awards for her news and commentary writing, as well as for her work as editor of Sojourners’ online publication.
Sandi hails from deep in the heart of Texas, is married to a Lutheran preacher from Arkansas, and is mom to three young kids. In her downtime, you can find her visiting local wineries…
LOL! Truly, the wages of sin are cheap wine!
…watching the San Antonio Spurs, and helping out with the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Solutions Journalism Network.
Nobody values loyalty as much as the Rebel. Christ values loyalty also but remembers that we are frail and blind, and also believes in allowing us breathing room to be ourselves. As in Sandi’s case, the devil will Converge your every last moment of life to the Narrative.
What kind of female judge would reverse herself with no explanation or even a hearing to rule that a father must not be allowed to protect his son from a child molester of a mother? We can find out thanks to an interview she gave that confirms every single Red Pill Manosphere concept about female nature.
I start with the latest on the story, then how the judge got assigned and finally the interview.
Court axes “Save James” ruling, mom who wants gender “transition” for 8-yr-old regains decision rights
August 12, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) . Yesterday, a Dallas judge took away Jeffrey Younger’s say in his son James. medical, psychological, and psychiatric care, giving that power to James. mother, who wants to “transition” him into a .girl.” After receiving national attention in October 2019, the bitter parental dispute had ultimately resulted in both parents getting a say in decisions regarding James and his twin, Jude; this ruling effectively reverses that.
The next article discusses exactly what happened between October 2019 and August 2020. Not just China Pox!
James Younger’s mother, Dr. Anne Georgulas, will now be able to enroll the eight-year-old in school as a “girl” named “Luna” and subject him to transgender medical procedures. …
Yesterday.s ruling effectively reverses Judge Kim Cooks. October order.
Mr. Younger was especially concerned about medical, psychological, and psychiatric decision making as medical records indicated James had been referred to a local gender “transition” clinic and Georgulas was looking to start the process of medically “transitioning” James into a “girl.”
But in October, Judge Kim Cooks. ruling found that Georgulas was overly affirming in instances when James supposedly showed a desire to be a girl, including taking him to LGBTQ parades, buying him dresses and fake hair, and enrolling him in kindergarten as a “girl” named “Luna.”
Mr. Younger claims that James does not show any signs of wanting to be a girl when he is with James. He shared with the court that he initially allowed James to wear dresses and girls. clothing at his home until he found the girls. clothing in his trash one morning.
Since then, Georgulas. attorneys have challenged Cooks. ruling. They filed multiple motions requesting Georgulas be granted additional rights and exclusive decision-making abilities for the boys.
Too many of my readers PERFECTLY understand what that is like.
Yesterday, Judge Mary Brown, who was appointed to the case in January, granted Georgulas. requests to force Mr. Younger to pay for counseling for James and Jude and attend family counseling. Mr. Younger previously objected to both of these requests as he was not allowed a say in the selection of the boys. counselor or the family counselor.
Go ahead, ask my readers about this kind of behavior the family courts show towards fathers. Let me watch! Who says the Fourth of July can’t happen in August?
The “Save James. Facebook page, run by individuals who support Mr. Younger’s cause, claims counseling will cost Mr. Younger $5,000 a month, in addition to a $10,000 retainer required by the counselor. Court documents do not specify the cost for counseling or the retainer.
In case it’s not obvious, this is pure Anti-Christianity. Human authorities ruling against a father’s authority over his children, his wealth and ultimately, his own life… because Eve took a new lover.
Judge Brown’s ruling came without the hearing that was scheduled to take place yesterday. There was no explanation why Judge Brown issued her order without the proper hearing.
Inn-teresting. The interview will give this context.
After almost a week in court, in October Cooks had granted both parents, Mr. Younger and his ex-wife Dr. Georgulas, a say in medical, psychological, and psychiatric decisions for James and Jude. If the parents could not agree, a court-appointed parenting coordinator would be the tie-breaker. Now, Georgulas . who supports subjecting James to a gender “transition” . will be in charge of those decisions. Georgulas is not even James and Jude’s biological mother; she and her now-ex-husband used an egg donor to conceive the boys via in-vitro fertilization.
How did justice get this twisted? Captain Save-A-Ho!
Judge removed from 7-year-old James Younger case, new judge to be appointed
The Texas judge who rejected a jury’s decision granting conservatorship to a mother intent on medically gender-transitioning her 7-year-old boy into a girl and instead awarded joint conservatorship to both parents has been removed from the case.
No good deed goes unpunished.
A regional administrative judge, a conservative Republican, will soon be appointing a new judge to oversee the ongoing dispute.
YOU MOTHERFUCKING CUCK! Not to be confused here with the child-fucking mother.
In late October, Judge Kim Cooks of the 255th district ruled that parents Jeff Younger and Anne Georgulas would share conservatorship and have equal decision-making regarding the medical and psychological treatment of the boy, and Jude, his twin brother.
Georgulas…
…believes James is a transgender girl and is already socially transitioning him, calling him “Luna,” and plans to pursue hormonal interventions like puberty blockers in the next six months to a year.
Two days prior to Cooks’ ruling, however, a jury had awarded Georgulas sole conservatorship in an 11-1 decision that elicited a massive public outcry, heightened media scrutiny, an investigation from Governor Greg Abbott, and promises from state lawmakers to outlaw the medical transitioning of minors during the next legislative session.
Promises not kept. More rope, please.
Georgulas’ attorneys filed to have Cooks recused from the case because of a Facebook post the judge shared on her personal page, a Dallas Morning News article about her ruling where she added a statement of her own, neither .[the] Governor nor any legislature had any influence on the Court’s Decision..
Georgulas’ attorneys maintained that by Cooks commenting on the case her impartiality had been compromised, and that “nothing the judge posted was in the best interest of the children in the case or to advance justice, but to simply advance her own political aims,” according to The Texan last week.
Logan Odeneal, Jeff Younger’s attorney, argued Cooks. actions did not meet the statutory requirement for recusal because her comments were made after the final verdict was issued.
An amicus attorney on the case . appointed by the court to be a third party, neutral voice . agreed with Odeneal, and asked for the motion to be scrapped.
That is the lamest Lame-O excuse to recuse a judge ever.
Last week, Georgulas’ team’s request was granted.
Judge Tena Callahan, a retired district court judge, recused Cooks from the case. Thus, Cooks will not hear another motion from Georgulas, that the jury’s original decision in her favor, be upheld.
So, a pioneering LGBT activist overruling another judge in a high-profile LGBT case was NOT “compromising to her impartiality”?
The fate of James Younger now rests in the hands of Ray Wheless, a regional administrative judge who is a conservative Republican from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Wheless will be assigning a new judge to oversee the contested case.
We the People of the United States think very little of Conservatives In Name Only.
Wheless with his staff. That pic says everything about his beliefs re feminism. Sourced from starlocalmedia.com/planocourier/news/dwi-court-alternative-to-jail-time/article_fd39cdc0-8c74-5225-a8c8-ea63b6a6003c.html discussing Wheless’ new no-jail-for-DWI program. Suffice to say, participants who can afford the program are taxed an extra $400 on behalf of the participants who can’t.
And now, our feature presentation: the judge he picked to replace the Honorable Kim Cooks.
Attorney at Law Magazine Dallas Publisher P.J. Hines sat down with Judge Mary Brown, of the 301st District Bench, to discuss her career on the bench and as an advocate, as well as her perspective on the legal industry.
AALM: How did you transition from your career as an attorney to your career as a judge? What prompted the change?
Brown: Prior to being hired as an associate judge for the Family District Courts in 1996, I worked for the District Attorney’s Office representing Child Protective Services in cases where children had been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. My office was in the George Allen Courts Building, and all my hearings and trials were held before one of the seven Family District Court judges or associate judges, so the scenery didn’t really change at all, just my role.
That’s a huge conflict of interest. If Joe the attorney for XYZ Corp. becomes a judge hearing cases brought to trial by XYZ Corp, with his chambers in the same building with the same breakroom as XYZ Corp, probably keeping friends with his former attorneys at XYZ Corp, then favoritism is not just credible but inevitable.
Now replace XYZ with CPS. Nothing has changed… least of all the profit motive.
I had an 18-month old at home at the time…
Unfit mother. Her job is more important than her kid.
…and not having to spend large periods of time outside of work hours preparing for trials was a big positive for me, as was the fact that no longer would my wok consist solely of child abuse cases. In Family Court, I would hear cases involving a variety of issues. Applying for an associate judge position when one became open was a logical next step for me.
She became a judge because paperwork was hard? Hold that thought.
After 18 years as an associate judge, I made the decision to run for the 301st District Bench. I was elected and began my first term in January 2015 and ran unopposed for a second term which just began in January 2019.
I would say that my style in the courtroom is focused on getting things done. I like to think that my rules, written and unwritten, are grounded in practicality.
AALM: Describe your style in the courtroom.
Brown: I would say that my style in the courtroom is focused on getting things done. I like to think that my rules, written and unwritten, are grounded in practicality.
“Unwritten rules” is ominous coming from a woman.
AALM: Describe your relationship with your staff.
Brown: My staff members are the best! But it’s not just the court staff that make up our team. The deputy district clerks assigned to 301, as well as the bailiffs supplied by the Sheriff’s department, are also crucial members. In fact, we received the Dallas Bar Association’s Best Court Staff award for 2018, so it’s not just me who thinks they are wonderful. Each member works hard to serve the public and to ensure that the court runs efficiently and effectively.
The “henhouse” style of female management. Cliques in the judiciary are always a bad sign.
AALM: Do you have any advice for attorneys trying a case before your bench?
Brown: The best advice I can give to anyone appearing in the 301st Court is to know what you want and put it in writing. This will help you focus on your or your client’s goals and really is a must in order to streamline any proceeding. It will also help the court make its ruling on all the issues presented once the proceeding is concluded.
Remember that thought you held? That Brown became a judge because paperwork was hard? Here, she wants other people (men) to do all the real work so she can fire off a quick decision then go home to play with her toddler.
Shoulda been a housewife, Barbie.
AALM: What drew you to the legal industry?
Spoiler: Daddy issues!
Brown: I began to consider law school late in my senior year of college. After graduation, I was unable to get a satisfactory job in my field of study, which was marketing. I did land a job as a waitress and later moved up to become a bartender.
Shake your moneymaker, baby!
If nothing else, both of those positions fueled my desire to attend law school, and it paid the bills while I applied and was accepted.
No, part-time waitressing did NOT pay well enough for law school.
Throughout law school, and in each job thereafter, I searched for the law job that would best utilize my strengths. After four years, I found the closest match…
Patent law? Torts? Land use?
and that was the job with the district attorney’s office representing CPS.
Somebody has Alpha ghosts!
I loved that job, but being a judge is even better.
AALM: What do you love about your job?
Brown: I love being able to help people. Going through a divorce or a child custody proceeding is stressful. While there is very little I can do to prevent that stress, I try not add to it. We try to provide a pleasant, calm environment, stocked with chocolate and plenty of tissue.
*GQ jabs himself with a testosterone autoinjector. Goes to debtor’s prison for being male.*
I feel it is part of my job to help litigants gain the tools they need to get through the court process and beyond. This may translate into orders to complete classes or attend counseling. As parents, we love our children, but we may not always know how to meet their emotional needs.
Stop. Sodomizing. Them.
If we can learn some simple solutions that work, well then, problem solved. I get excited about this stuff!
Hormone blockers and sexual surgery on eight-year-olds are never, repeat never, a “simple solution that works”.
AALM: Are there any challenges that you believe need to be corrected in the legal community?
Brown: I don’t like the idea of any erosion of the right to trial by jury, and I believe that, even in family law, the right to a jury trial is critical. With all its messy parts, trial by jury is still the best option for litigants in certain situations. It is one of the cornerstones of our legal system and provides a crucial check and balance to trial judges. It must be protected and defended.
On the one hand, this sounds good. On the other hand, we’ve already established that she’s lazy.
AALM: What do you do in your spare time? Hobbies?
Brown: For the last 24 years, I have been a working mother, and all my time outside of work was spent on that job. Now that our youngest child is a senior in high school, I have rekindled my love of gardening. I am in the middle of a multi-year landscaping project at my home.
Doing the math, she started her family after becoming a judge. Her job is more important than ALL of her kids!
What male was stupid enough to stick his dick in a sitting CPS judge? Repeatedly, no less?
AALM: Tell us about some of your mentors.
Brown: Every judge for whom I have worked, as well as many of my colleagues, have mentored me, but Judge Dee Miller was my first “judicial mentor,. and I have definitely tried to emulate her judicial style and work ethic. Judge Dennise Garcia has also been a mentor to me and is always there for me when I need help or have a question.
As per the order signed by Judge Garcia, the father sought to take possession of the children, only to meet blatant refusal by their mother. The father proceeded to report the matter to the Coppell Police, who informed him that they lacked jurisdiction, as the issue pertained to a civil lawsuit. The father then returned home without the children.
The father then received a text message from the mother that said, .Judge Garcia has called the police department and clarified the order.” The father relayed the development to Judge Coen, who stated that it would not be possible that any judge would communicate with a litigant ex-parte (that is, with only one party of the case present) or would call the police after-hours or during the weekend, as he had never seen it happen in his numerous years on the bench.
The mother then communicated to the father via email, attaching a “Corrected Order” and a communication from Judge Garcia requesting that the mother instruct the father to appear in court on Monday, September 23, 2013. After refusing to enforce a legally binding court order, altering the content of the order ex-parte and outside of court, and scheduling the subsequent hearing without providing the father an official court summons, Judge Garcia proceeded to file her “corrected” order with the court, thereby again revoking the father’s custody rights over his children.
Subsequently, the father filed an Open Records Request with the Coppell Police Department and received a set of audio files demonstrating that Judge Garcia had been in ex-parte communication with the mother and had called the Coppell Police Department, instructing them to not enforce her own order.
The father has since made numerous attempts to get at least some minimum access to his children, but all of his attempts have been thwarted by the associate judges and Judge Garcia.
My sympathy is limited because the father is a Pajeet who should never have been in North America in the first place. That being said, with this witch as a role model it’s no wonder that Judge Brown reversed her own decision before hearing Mr. Young plead his case.
End segue.
I think my legal hero, as well as my just plain hero, would have to be my late father. He had the wonderful ability to connect to people and make them feel heard.
AALM: Who is your legal hero and how do you try to emulate them in your day-to-day life?
Brown: I think my legal hero, as well as my just plain hero, would have to be my late father. He had the wonderful ability to connect to people and make them feel heard. He was genuinely interested in people and in helping them when he could. I am not as adept at it as he was, but I do try to emulate his behavior in that regard. He would be proud to know that I followed him, as he had followed his father, in becoming a state district judge in Dallas County.
She failed as a marketing executive, she failed as a bartender, she failed at finding a quality husband, so she played on Daddy to pay her way through law school and give her the judicial firepower to hate all the men who never wifed her up. Just like Daddy!
No review of a slut’s life is complete without the Daddy Issues review!
The badthink judge was removed for opposing the Narrative by an LGBT activist. The “Conservative Republican” Save-A-Ho appointed a CPS veteran for a replacement, who originally held the same position then changed her mind after several months of peer pressure from her friends who supported the prosecuting mother. As a direct result, a child is damned to a life of grotesque sexual violation and a father has been completely failed by society.
And it all started with a Daddy who protected his little snowflake from ever ending up dependent on a husband.
There’s no shortage of authorities giving advice on how to prep for the coming cashless society. When a Christian CEO of a financial services company wrote an op-ed, however, I took note.
By Chuck Bentley, CP Guest Contributor, 24 July 2020
Dear Chuck,
I.m hearing more and more about a “cashless society.” What can we as believers do to prepare for such a possibility and how should we navigate the days ahead?
Prepping for Digital Currency
The passive voice is strong enough to suspect this is a made-up request; indeed, this post generally reads more like an op-ad than an op-ed; but the topic is certainly hot and relevant.
Dear Prepping for Digital Currency,
This is not an easy question as there are many strong, differing opinions; some say that it absolutely is going to happen, and others say that it absolutely will never happen.
Dude, NOBODY says it won’t happen. China ANNOUNCED it was implementing a cashless society. The question is when, not if.
A 2019 Harvard Business Review article points out that 30% of all transactions happen with cash. They don’t think it is likely to ever be eliminated as a form of payment. On the other side of the argument, a BBC article suggests it will get here sooner than we think. I fall somewhere in the middle as to the probability of it happening. But, to your point, we do need to be informed and prepared.
Oh, it was Harvard that said it’ll never happen? Now that only 30% of transactions are cash, mainly transactions of less than $100? News flash, Harvard is a den of liars, thieves and Jewish banksters.
A cashless society means absolutely no cash. That means transactions will be fully digital and fully controlled. While many young people welcome it since they are almost there already, the idea deeply concerns me.
Some Context
The most used form of payment today is debit cards, followed by cash. The coronavirus caused many to fear using cash because of possible transmission of the virus, even though there is no proof that paper money carries the virus any longer than plastic cards.
That was a clue you missed, Chuck, that the authorities are lying about their sudden motivation to get rid of physical currency. Try to keep up. You’re late to this dance.
On July 14, 2020, an article from Bloomberg CityLab stated: .A June report from Square showed that at the start of the pandemic in March, 8% of U.S. sellers were effectively cashless, meaning that at least 95% of their sales were made through credit or debit card. That figure jumped to 31% by the end of April and has since leveled off at 20% in mid-June as cities reopen. In the U.K., cashless sellers jumped from 10% to 60%, according to the Square analysis, and dropped just slightly to 57% in June..
QED. Nobody is saying the cashless society ain’t gonna happen.
We.ve seen the use of cash discouraged and even refused by certain vendors. However, cashless stores were banned in San Francisco, New Jersey, and Philadelphia on the grounds of discrimination.
Because it was a way to keep homeless bums out of your store. Don’t worry, once SF Mayor London Breed’s wealth-redistribution plan kicks in and the bums have debit cards full of taxpayer money, those laws will change.
These factors could either propel or delay the push towards going cashless, so don’t make a determination too quickly one way or the other.
Benefits of Cashless Society [to peasants] . Convenience . Lowers crime . Reduces cost of printing and storing cash . Eases international payments
Disadvantages of Cashless Society [to peasants] . Privacy sacrificed . Hacking risk, technology issues, and impaired access in a natural disaster, power outage, etc. . Overspending and management issues . Susceptible to imposed fees and lack of control . Biometric IDs will likely be required
Benefits of Cashless Society [to the State]
Total control of society
You can loot anybody with the push of a button
Dissidents will slowly starve
De facto godhood
Disadvantages of Cashless Society [to the State]
Small, long-term chance of going to Hell if it turns out to be real.
Cash Alternatives . Debit and credit cards . Payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle . Mobile payments like Apple Pay . Cryptocurrencies
This bit is how it’ll shake out. There WILL be an obvious and massive financial incentive for helping dissidents participate in a cashless society. “Lowers crime”, hah! It might not run on cash but for sure, there’s gonna be a black market.
GlobalData predicts the following countries are poised to go cashless this decade: Finland, Sweden, China, South Korea, United Kingdom, and Australia.
“But others say that it absolutely will never happen.”
Although disturbing, some are concerned with the government “unbanking” political enemies. Government control would also eliminate those who hoard cash or drop out of the financial system. The idea of the government being in control of all citizen money is concerning.
The idea of the government being in control of all citizen money is exactly what makes this inevitable. Come on, give your advice!
Prepping for Cashless
There are only two ways to be prepared for a cashless society. One is to grow in wisdom. .If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.. (James 1:5-6 ESV)
Chuck took a dive on the opening question.
Wisdom allows you to look at the facts and make appropriate decisions. We do not know if this trend is going to take us into a cashless society or not. That means we do not need to waste time in fear and needless use of energy to protect ourselves from it.
HALF OF THIS VERY POST WAS HIS OWN PROOF THAT IT’S ALREADY COMING TO PASS!!! I know Churchians love to sabotage their own arguments but this one is a contender for “gunshot foot wound of the year”.
The other way to be prepared is to be sure that your life is not defined by or controlled by money. The Bible tells us over and over to keep our lives free from the love of money.
WORTHLESS MORON! “How are we going to pay for our food?” “Ask God for wisdom! Also, keep yourselves free from the love of money.”
So, no ACTUAL words of wisdom from this financial services CEO.
If you’re looking for practical ways to prepare for these possibilities and seek to grow in wisdom, Crown offers many online studies, videos, and more on our online platform.
I checked his Crown Financial Ministries; looks to be a typical get-out-of-debt company. Nothing in there about setting up alternative secure currencies or tips for a barter economy. Perhaps there’s no reason to prep for something that “others say will never happen”.
Let’s dig in to what Chuck really does teach. From
The world is not in danger of running out of resources; but we do believe the world is in danger of running out of faithful stewards. Jesus came to seek, restore and redeem a broken world. And, the practice of redemptive stewardship is an essential part of that transformation.
Sigh, no, this world will be neither restored nor redeemed. This world is the diaper of our spiritual infancy and will be treated as such.
Memo: God uses disposables. Disposable realities. Because you can do that when you’re a real God.
Environmental Stewardship We should be the best stewards, not only of our resources and talents, but also of the earth. It’s God’s spectacular and bountiful creation! Genesis 2:15 says, .The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it..
Genesis 3:23 “So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden…” We ain’t in Eden anymore, Dorothy.
To practice environmental stewardship, you can start small, incorporating good practices into your daily routine. Do things like recycle, shred paper and use it in the garden, try to compost, and avoid products packaged with excess paper or plastic.
Duuude, come on! China doesn’t want to buy our “recycle” garbage anymore. That’s all it ever was. And paper is a renewable resource. We will never run out of it.
Money Dates Many marriages today are in trouble! And struggling couples often tell us that conflicts over money are the leading cause of their arguments.
Maybe you can relate. Yet God’s desire for you and your spouse is to live in peace with each other, unified and making financial decisions together.
We created 10 date nights, or Money Dates, to help spouses and engaged couples connect on the topic of money. Come together to create a biblical financial plan that will help you achieve all God has for you. You can start with the date that seems best for you — or begin with How Did We Get Here and work through the rest in the suggested order.
Okay, some legit financial assistance stuff.
Career Stewardship From the very beginning, work has been a gift from God.
Sheesh, back to Genesis 3 we go.
“Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.” Oops, that was Mark Twain.
Genesis 3:17-19 “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, .You must not eat from it,. .Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return..
Honestly, God, Mark Twain said it better.
It’s a key part of how we’re designed. So why does work sometimes feel like something we have to do, and not the fulfilling, God-glorifying act it was meant to be?
SHEESH!
Any job can glorify God. Whether you work in a church, factory, school, office, or the great outdoors, all of our work can still be done with Him at the center. To be a vocational steward, you should first discern if your job matches up with the talents God has naturally gifted you with.
Why? If any job glorifies God then you can do any job you want regardless of whether you feel “gifted” about it. Because frankly, few of us are designed by God for a specific line of work. I’m already on my fourth & fifth careers, simultaneously, because hello unstable command economy.
Homemakers and retirees can also steward the work they do every day for God.
The term is “housewife”, Chuck. The home is womens’ work.
This page will help you discover the right vocation for you, and help you to better manage your talents for the Lord.
It’s a scam. A petty one but, still.
Gospel Stewardship Our great passion as a ministry is to see lives transformed, not just for this lifetime, but for eternity. How can we make an eternal impact? Gospel Stewardship. The greatest, most lasting impact a person can make in another person’s life is to lead that person into the love, joy, peace and hope offered through a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ.
Chuck, you should be enough of a Christian to understand how to evangelize people. You start with the existence of God and Evil, explain how the Fall happened… woman rebelled and man encouraged her… then offer the chance to turn against Evil and accept Christ’s offer. Which comes with more blood, sweat and tears than love, joy and peace these days.
If there is no evil, no rebellion against God, then there is no need for Christ’s offer. Don’t leave the existence of evil outside your altar calls. Remember that Christ came to thwart the devil, not to share the Boyfriend Experience with us.
Are you a Christian? Are you currently trying to walk through this life on your own, or do you have a relationship with the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ?
The old “personal relationship with Jesus” canard. We got ourselves another Churchian.
And in the dead of night, no less, because that’s when do-gooders like to do their good deeds. Move over, Red Pill! Make room for… morality pills! AKA the Birth Control Pill?
.Morality pills. may be the US.s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist
An associate professor at Western Michigan U who became qualified to teach ethics by acquiring student debt while living a sheltered academic life. Too bad that he never realized how unethical it is for colleges to intentionally train so many academics that there’s not nearly enough tenured faculty positions to go around. The resulting desperation makes “associate” college faculty prime recruiting grounds for domestic terrorist organizations whose members demand society take responsibility for their own poor decisions.
On that note…
COVID-19 is a collective risk. It threatens everyone, and we all must cooperate to lower the chance that the coronavirus harms any one individual.
Demanding that society be held responsible for individuals who acquire China-balls. Never before in human history have healthy people been blamed for sick people being sick.
Among other things, that means keeping safe social distances and wearing masks. But many people choose not to do these things, making spread of infection more likely.
When someone chooses not to follow public health guidelines around the coronavirus, they’re defecting from the public good. It’s the moral equivalent of the tragedy of the commons: If everyone shares the same pasture for their individual flocks, some people are going to graze their animals longer, or let them eat more than their fair share, ruining the commons in the process. Selfish and self-defeating behavior undermines the pursuit of something from which everyone can benefit.
Already we see that Crutchfield is a hardline Soviet, blaming bourgeois individuality for oppressing proletariat communes. Rise up, faceless minions! You have nothing to lose but your chains, your jobs, your freedoms, your possessions, your religion, your history, your friends and your daily bread! Progress, ho!
Democratically enacted enforceable rules . mandating things like mask wearing and social distancing . might work, if defectors could be coerced into adhering to them. But not all states have opted to pass them or to enforce the rules that are in place.
The boldfaced is indeed what a true democracy looks like. Two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner, y’know. Mob rule. That’s why the Founders meant America to be a REPUBLIC but one can’t expect a college professor to ever have been taught that.
My research in bioethics focuses on questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good. To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?
No. Morality does not come in a can. But perhaps Unity does?
It.s a far-out proposal that’s bound to be controversial but one I believe is worth at least considering, given the importance of social cooperation in the struggle to get COVID-19 under control.
Evidence from experimental economics shows that defections are common to situations in which people face collective risks. Economists use public goods games to measure how people behave in various scenarios to lower collective risks such as from climate change or a pandemic and to prevent the loss of public and private goods.
The evidence from these experiments is no cause for optimism. Usually everyone loses because people won’t cooperate. This research suggests it’s not surprising people aren’t wearing masks or social distancing . lots of people defect from groups when facing a collective risk.
What material benefit are people gaining by not wearing masks? Oxygen, of course, but oxygen is still free.
There’s no economics at work here. Mask-wearing is purely political. It’s individualism versus collectivism and people know it even if they can’t articulate it. That’s why we “dissidents against the collective good” don’t want to wear masks, because this is MY life to live and the road to Hell is paved with appeasement.
By the same token, I’d expect that, as a group, we will fail at addressing the collective risk of COVID-19, because groups usually fail. For more than 150,000 Americans so far, this has meant losing everything there is to lose.
But don’t abandon all hope. In some of these experiments, the groups win and successfully prevent the losses associated with the collective risk. What makes winning more likely? Things like keeping a running tally of what others are contributing, observing others. behaviors, communication and coordination before and during play, and democratic implementation of an enforceable rule requiring contributions.
“Keeping a running tally of what others are contributing, observing others. behaviors” = the real reasons for mask-wearing. Public demonstrations of loyalty to the State.
“Communication and coordination before and during play” = the real reason for contact tracing.
“Democratic implementation of an enforceable rule requiring contributions” = Black Lives Matter reparations.
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
For those of us in the United States, these conditions are out of reach when it comes to COVID-19.
YAY FREEDOM! Choke on some inalienable rights bestowed by our Creator, you Commie motherfucker Crutchfield!
You can’t know what others are contributing to the fight against the coronavirus, especially if you socially distance yourself. It’s impossible to keep a running tally of what the other 328 million people in the U.S. are doing. And communication and coordination are not feasible outside of your own small group.
Even if these factors were achievable, they still require the very cooperative behavior that’s in short supply. The scale of the pandemic is simply too great for any of this to be possible.
t seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system . a vaccine.
But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?
Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.
NO! THIS IS NO! What kind of monster can say this AND call himself an ethicist at the same time?
For example, oxytocin, the chemical that, among other things, can induce labor or increase the bond between mother and child, may cause a person to be more empathetic and altruistic, more giving and generous. The same goes for psilocybin, the active component of “magic mushrooms.” These substances have been shown to lower aggressive behavior in those with antisocial personality disorder and to improve the ability of sociopaths to recognize emotion in others.
These substances interact directly with the psychological underpinnings of moral behavior; others that make you more rational could also help. Then, perhaps, the people who choose to go maskless or flout social distancing guidelines would better understand that everyone, including them, is better off when they contribute, and rationalize that the best thing to do is cooperate.
Unbelievable.
One is that the science isn’t developed enough. For example, while oxytocin may cause some people to be more pro-social, it also appears to encourage ethnocentrism, and so is probably a bad candidate for a widely distributed moral enhancement. But this doesn’t mean that a morality pill is impossible. The solution to the underdeveloped science isn’t to quit on it, but to direct resources to related research in neuroscience, psychology or one of the behavioral sciences.
Another challenge is that the defectors who need moral enhancement are also the least likely to sign up for it. As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply.
Crutchfield is not just a Communist. He’s a poisoner waiting to happen. Nobody who advocates sneaking mind-controlling drugs into society’s water supply deserves his white privilege. This is a monstrous evil and before I’m done, I’ll prove this article isn’t just a one-off.
These actions require weighing other values. Does the good of covertly dosing the public with a drug that would change people’s behavior outweigh individuals. autonomy to choose whether to participate? Does the good associated with wearing a mask outweigh an individual’s autonomy to not wear one?
You better get the right answer to that question, Parker.
The scenario in which the government forces an immunity booster upon everyone is plausible. And the military has been forcing enhancements like vaccines or “uppers” upon soldiers for a long time. The scenario in which the government forces a morality booster upon everyone is far-fetched. But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change. That’s why we should be thinking of it now.
Okay, let’s think about whether face diaper “defectors” should be force-fed female hormones and hallucinogens until they become team players, on the pretext of martial law overriding their civil rights… I think Parker got the wrong answer.
The first time the idea of using female hormones to cure COVID came up in April, I thought it was just a little virtue-signaling to the LGBT community.
By kellibusey, 29 March 2020, confirmed by her linked Twitter to be a transsexual activist.
Transgender men might have a natural hedge against COVID-19.
When the Novel Cormovirus was first reported in Wuhan it quickly became apparent that more men than women were being infected. The media quickly attributed that disparity noting that while nearly half of Chinese smoke, less than 2 percent of women smoke. Unhealthy lifestyle choices, most made by men, such as diet, drinking and lack of exercise were also attributed.
Clearly, hormones played the critical role here..?
But soon it became apparent that there had to be other factors. So while we anxiously await the outcome of clinical trials for Remdesivir and become proactive by breaking our own bad habits we need to be educated about this deadly virus.
Specifically, educated about how artificial estrogen can be the solution!
Studies in 2013 and 2017 have shown that female mice have a naturally occurring resilience to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) Cormovirusi resulting in a much lower mortality rate than male mice. The results of these studies, regarding infection and mortality rates, have shown to parallel that of humans during this viral pandemic happening now.
Why?
This disparity has been attributed to higher estrogen levels in the female mice.
Do mice actually use estrogen? *checks* Okay, “estrogen” is a family of related chemicals. Regardless, this was not a useful conclusion from the study. What were the male mice supposed to do, begin hormonally transitioning into females? …Uh-oh.
How does this relate to the transgender community? The studies show that:
Female mice with artificially induced estrogen suppression, oophorectomy, or hysterectomy, when infected with Cormovirus, have increased mortality rates equal to that of male mice.
So they WERE preparing arguments to promote artificial sex hormones as a “healthy alternative lifestyle”!
Testosterone suppresses menstrual cycles and decreases the production of estrogen from ovaries as evidenced in these studies, as these mice had a higher mortality rate. By extension, and not verified by these studies, trans men currently taking HRT might result in increased susceptibility to COVID-19.
Here, emphasis hers.
There haven’t been any studies that I can locate which would specifically indicate that estrogen improves transgender women’s resilience to Cormovirus infection or mortality. All of the studies were binary sex-based comparisons.
We need medical professionals to undertake studies regarding the novel Cormovirus, HRT and the transgender community.
The transgender community proceeded to study the issue and, in a rare moment of sanity, realized the predictable consequence of forcing cis-men with guns to grow boobs: the loss of victimhood status. Oh, snap!
Now as promised, Crutchfield’s article wasn’t a one-off. He’s published actual research documenting the “morality” of secretly poisoning water supplies with mind-altering drugs and hormones.
By Parker Crutchfield, 28 August 2018, so he’s been talking about doing this for at least a couple years. The actual paper is paywalled but here’s the abstract. Emphases mine:
Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.
Maybe we Christians will check out of modern society BEFORE the Mark of the Beast forces us to.
Postscript, here’s a letter to the editor Crutchfield wrote in defense of mosquito-spraying a year ago. His arguments sound very much like what his ilk use today to justify C-Virus mandates. So many landowners of Kalamazoo County, MI opted out of aerial spraying for mosquitoes that the program was canceled (before it was canceled anyway because of weather). Among the reasons for opting out was concern over the harm insecticides would have done to native honeybee populations.
Opponents of mosquito spraying are the new anti-vaxxers (opinion)
He took this political right from the title. When I try to convince other people that I’m right and they’re wrong, I generally try to be nonconfrontational and demonstrate how my way is in my opponent’s best interest. Crutchfield couldn’t wait to disabuse everybody of the notion that he had come to do anything but point fingers.
The following is a guest opinion from Parker Crutchfield, Ph.D.
As an ethicist who is often responsible for teaching public health ethics, the state’s recent decision to withhold aerial insecticide from Kalamazoo and Portage due to so many opt-outs is disappointing. Opting out of aerial insecticide that is intended to prevent further infection of Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) is the moral equivalent of opting out of vaccines. Those who have opted out put others at unnecessary risk, in particular those who are already most vulnerable.
Yes, actually. It’s exactly like opting our of vaccines. If an individual decided that a vaccine is not in his best interest then he has every right to refuse it. My body, my choice, remember? If he gets sick later on as a result, that’s on him. Similarly, if a landowner doesn’t believe that the threat of mosquito-borne illness justifies aerial pesticide, that’s a decision he should be allowed to make. That goes double if he believes that the spraying would do him direct harm.
The guiding principle here is that government is a servant of the people, not a master. State policies in USA are not (should not be) set by bureaucrats cloistered far away from the consequences of their decisions. This doesn’t seem hard. Merely unpopular among cloistered bureaucrats.
This does mean that some potentially beneficial ideas and policies cannot be implemented in a free society. The Fifth Amendment was not written to make our police forces MORE capable.
By living in a governed society, we all must accept some intrusion into the way we want to use our property and live our lives.
This is America, bitch. You need the CONSENT of the governed in order to be a legitimate authority.
I object to my neighbors mowing their lawn at 8 p.m. on a weeknight. It prevents me from using my property the way I want to use it and it keeps my children awake.
Sheesh, First World Problems!
But I accept this intrusion because prohibiting my neighbors from mowing at 8 p.m. on weeknights would be an even greater intrusion of their liberties. I would love to opt out of all the ways in which my tax money is misappropriated. But as a taxpayer I can’t opt out of the things I don’t like . I have to take the whole package.
That’s not what we’re talking about. Can you walk onto your neighbor’s property, against his will and in the company of armed guards, spray his plants and animals with a pesticide of your choosing and then walk away to leave him with the consequences of your actions? THAT is what we’re talking about.
I’m actually sympathetic to aerial spraying. Fifteen years ago, Salinas Valley, CA had an invasive moth get established and wreak havoc. Plans were made to spray them with synthetic moth-sex hormones which were known to be safe for local agriculture but unknown to be safe for humans. (You wouldn’t expect any crossover but such things can happen.) The decision was between protecting billions of dollars’ worth of agriculture in addition to local ecology–oak trees were already CARPETED in squirming mats of caterpillars, there were CLOUDS of moths fluttering around–or allowing a few NIMBYs to cancel the project in fear of unspecified health risks.
I solidly backed the spraying because 1. it protected local farmers and local industry, specifically the food supply of which I am very fond, 2. the State had done everything imaginable to minimize risk to people & property and 3. the NIMBYs themselves couldn’t offer a coherent reason for their opposition.
How does my reasoning stack up in this situation?
The threat of EEE is a collective risk with potentially devastating consequences. The most tenable solution, aerial spray of insecticide, requires that everyone sacrifice some minuscule liberty. Everyone must accept the liberty intrusion for the intervention to work.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Aerial spraying is “the most tenable solution” therefore “Everyone must accept the liberty intrusion”? Just because bureaucrats think it’s the easiest way to solve the problem does not justify its coercive implementation.
That’s strongly parallel to “most studies show that face masks can help block aerosol particles that can carry viruses, therefore every human being in North America must be forced to wear a mask for their every waking moment under penalty of fines and solitary confinement in perpetuity until they can be forcibly vaccinated.”
The same can be said of vaccinations. For risk of contracting measles to be eradicated, everyone (or almost everyone) must accept the liberty intrusion of a vaccine. For the risk of contracting EEE to be eradicated, everyone (or almost everyone) must accept the liberty intrusion of aerially administered insecticide.
One, note he’s trying to “eradicate measles” not “protect people from measles”. Two, there are legit reasons to refuse a measles vaccine. Some people do react badly to them. There’s risks of heavy-metal poisoning and other concerns.
When a person opts out of vaccines, they put themselves at risk. We should allow people to make judgments about what level of individual risk is acceptable. But by opting out of vaccines, they’re putting others at risk.
Not if others chose to get vaccinated, right?
For them, individual liberty trumps concern for others.
Correct. This is a central principle of both Christianity (you can only save yourself) and American government (self-rule). Or if one prefers philosophy, it’s the difference between Western guilt-based morality and Eastern shame-based morality.
There are no reported deaths from measles in 2019. Even so, those who opt out of measles vaccines bear a significant portion of the blame for the suffering that resulted from this year’s outbreak. Had those who opted out instead acknowledged that to allow others to live the way they want to live we must accept some intrusion of our liberty and accepted the vaccine, the suffering from measles could have been prevented.
Crutchfield’s PhD is obviously not in debate, with arguments like that.
The same is true of any EEE cases that may arise. So far, three people in the area have died. The many people in Kalamazoo and Portage who opted out of the spray bear significant responsibility for any suffering, and likely death, that results from their opting out. The suffering from EEE can be prevented by acknowledging that protecting others sometimes requires accepting intrusions of one’s liberty. If helping to prevent collective risk is too much to ask of these people, then perhaps they should not be granted collective benefits of living in such a society.
Assuming that people should not be allowed to run any risk of poor health…
Assuming that individual liberty is always subject to government approvals…
Assuming that the only reason one person gets sick from a disease is because another person did not obey the proper authorities…
Assuming that private property is “private” only in the sense that somebody signed up to pay taxes on it…
And assuming that somebody gives a tootsie roll from a rat’s ass damn about Crutchfield complaining about his neighbor mowing the lawn at the ungodly hour of 8pm…
He’s totally right.
Crutchfield reportedly got death threats for this op-ed. I would never go that far. I think Crutchfield should be forcibly relocated, permanently, to Venezuela as a health measure… far away from America’s water supplies.
He will be much happier living with the consequences of his collectivist beliefs.
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