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#Hamas and the #Palestinians have told us who they are; why are so few people willing to believe them?

Imagine, if you will, that there were ubiquitous iPhones and the internet, and social media in 1944. The scenes, which Joseph Goebbels would be doubtlessly pushing across the West, of German families shattered by the deaths in collapsed houses due to Allied bombing, of orphaned children rescued from the rubble, where they had been buried next to their dead parents.

Were today’s American and European left alive in 1944, but with today’s mentality, we would be seeing all sorts of plaintiff cries on Quitter — the 1944 version of Twitter — saying that Germany was clearly defeated, that the Allied armies were at the Rhine and the Oder-Neisse and the Third Reich had been expelled from all of the territory it had captured in the war, and we should declare a ceasefire, leaving everything in place, to stop the killing, to stop the unnecessary deaths.

That, of course, would have left Adolf Hitler and his henchmen alive, and the concentration camps that were in Germany proper operating. All of the actual extermination camps were located in occupied Poland, to keep them secret from German civilians, but the fanatical Führer and his equally insane Schutzstaffel would have adapted camps like Bergen-Belsen in Germany for more mass killings.

The lead photograph illustrating Nicholas Kristof’s column is supposed to leave you sympathizing with the poor, poor Palestinians. Photo by Mahmoud Issa, Reuters. Click to enlarge.

In Gaza, ‘Psychic Scars of Fear and Rage’

by Nicholas Kristof, reporting from the West Bank and Israel | Wednesday, April 2, 2025

For one brief shining moment, something encouraging unfolded in Gaza: Palestinians protested against Hamas.

As I traveled in Israel and the West Bank — foreign journalists are generally not allowed in Gaza — the protests seemed to capture hope of change, a deadlock breaking, some way forward. But Hamas appears to have squelched the brave protests for now, in part through torture and murder.

In February of 1991, after the American-led Coalition forces expelled the Iraqi army following the invasion of Kuwait, the elder President Bush stopped continuing the war in Iraq, 150 miles short of Baghdad, leaving Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath Party cabal still in power in Iraq. The assumption seems to have been that President Hussein could not survive in power after such a crushing defeat, but that wasn’t how things happened. Mr Kristof has just told us that Hamas are, at least at the moment, duplicating Saddam Hussein’s survival in power

Despite talk of cease-fire proposals, the two sides still seem impossibly far apart on any deal to end the war for good, so I fear we must brace for more killing. Israel on Wednesday announced an expansion of its military offensive in Gaza, including plans to seize “large areas.”

The people of Gaza are caught between the irreconcilable demands of two parties, Hamas and the Israeli government, that both show a brutal indifference toward Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages alike — in Israel’s case, with a weapons assist from the United States.

The author continued with several paragraphs telling us about the suffering of the children, the children! in Gaza. But perhaps Mr Kristof should have considered a bit of history. Unlike Gaza, in which the Hamas fighters are hiding among the civilian population, the German and Japanese military weren’t among the civilians; we were bombing those nations’ industrial plant, transportation networks, and public utilities . . . and their war industry workers. We bombed them and bombed them and bombed them, until Hell wouldn’t have it anymore. But, in the end, we forced the decision: the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. Tens of thousands more Germans and Japanese, including children, had to die before Hitler shot himself and Germany surrendered. It took two atomic bombs, on targets which were only barely military, as well as the B-29 firebombing campaigns against Tokyo and Yokohama, before Japan surrendered.

And that was the last war we truly won!

Mr Kristof attempted to split the differences, telling us how horrible Hamas are, but also complaining about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He even noted that he was astonished that so many on the left have “embrace (Hamas) as a champion of Palestinians,” given that Hamas are “repressive, misogynist, homophobic and incompetent”.

But he still returned to the idea that Israel should stop fighting the people who want to destroy their country.

It is a credit to Israel that some civil society groups and leading security figures have shown great courage in condemning their country’s Gaza policy. A former defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, has repeatedly warned that Israel is committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Ami Ayalon, a former director of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, has protested Israel’s Gaza policy as “immoral and unjust.”

There is only one crime in war, and that’s the losing of it. Ethnic cleansing? We are a country founded on ethnic cleansing, as our “Manifest Destiny” led us to round up and push the Indians into reservations, killing hundreds of thousands, but the Indians no longer threaten destruction of the United States from within. And there is one great truth here: as long as the ‘Palestinians’ are on Israel’s borders, they will fester and fume and, eventually, they will launch another “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation. So many on the left, and even among more moderate people, see the old “two-state solution” as the only path to peace, but Hamas, the leadership of the ‘Palestinians’ don’t want that, don’t want any ‘solution’ which leaves Israel intact, secure, and free. Like the scenario posited at the beginning of this article, a ceasefire which leaves Hamas alive in any form would be like having allowed Hitler and the Nazis to survive World War II alive and in power.

Hamas and the ‘Palestinians’ at large have told us who they are, and, like Mr Kristof, I am astonished that when the ‘Palestinians’ tell us who they are, so few are willing to believe them.

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The left want to control language; don’t let them!

We have previously noted how the left attempt to use control of language to control the argument. The Associated Press Stylebook, which is used by many, though certainly not all, credentialed media sources, specifies language which reinforces the notion that a person can define his ‘gender’ as something different from his biological sex, and that such choices can, should, and must be accepted by society as real. The First Street Journal maintains its own Stylebook, and we do not go along with the silliness of the AP.

The Philadelphia Inquirer either uses the AP Stylebook, or maintains its own policies to identify the ‘transgendered’ by the gender they claim to be rather than their actual sex, but reporter Susan Snyder decided to go one step further, and hammer down on the feminine pronouns, just to make sure the reader got it.

Transgender swimmer at the core of controversy over funding withdrawal at Penn vows to fight for trans inclusion in sports

“It’s so easy to feel isolated and alone and demoralized especially nowadays in the current political climate,” said former Penn swimmer Lia Thomas. “We have to stick together and support each other.”

by Susan Snyder | Saturday, March 29, 2025 | 3:28 PM EDT

The transgender swimmer at the core of the controversy over the federal funding pause at the University of Pennsylvania said she will continue to stand up for inclusion of transgender people in sports.

“I am going to keep fighting as much as I am able to,” Lia Thomas said during a trans youth forum held on Zoom Saturday.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s administration decided to pause $175 million in funding to Penn because the Ivy League university allowed Thomas to swim on the women’s team during the 2021-22 season after she had transitioned. She did not specifically address the president’s decision at the forum and did not respond to a previous request from The Inquirer for comment.

There’s much more at the original, all of it sympathetic to Will Thomas, the ‘transgender’ swimmer who calls himself “Lia.” This site has covered Mr Thomas’ actions extensively.

We might not have bothered with this, save for one paragraph, the fourth, screen captured and shown at the right.

Any English professor, any journalism instructor, any creative writing teacher, would have told Miss Snyder, a graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a “Pulitzer-prize winning journalist with decades of experience in education reporting,” according to her LinkedIn profile, that using three separate pronouns in the same sentence while not using the subject’s name is poor prose. Miss Snyder’s editor — assuming an editor at the newspaper actually reviewed her story — should have caught that, and changed one of those pronouns to “Thomas,” but that never happened.

Throughout Miss Snyder’s article, I counted 38 separate uses of the feminine pronouns to refer to Mr Thomas.

The newspaper then gave Mr Thomas space to explain why he performed so much better against women:

She performed on the men’s team as a freshman and sophomore and competed in a few meets as a junior before COVID-19 canceled the next season. She returned in August 2021 for her senior year as a member of the women’s team and posted some of the fastest times in the nation among college women.

She said she thinks people don’t understand the importance of athletes’ mental state in driving their performance. It’s as important, if not more, than the physical aspect, she said.

Thomas recalled the heavy depression she felt her sophomore year before transitioning and how that impacted her swimming ability. Once on the women’s team, she said she was much happier and “that happiness translated into feeling better in the water and being able to give my all in a way that I wasn’t able to before and that showed in my results.”

UPenn 2021-2022 Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

No, of course it had nothing to do, nothing at all, with Mr Thomas being a 6’2″ or 6’3″ tall athlete who had gone through male puberty, who had the heart and musculature and hip structure of an adult male. He just went from being the 462nd ranked male collegiate swimmer to number one among women because he was happier.

To us, the issue of language is not a small one. If people refer to Will Thomas as “Lia”, if they use the feminine pronouns to refer to him, they are reinforcing the idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. Some might see it as just being polite, but we do not; we recognize that debate is conveyed by language, and that the left are attempting to push the debate in the direction they wish. We don’t accept the left setting the definitions, and neither should you.

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This is what winning looks like President Trump was right all along: we didn't have to accept some illegal immigration to reduce illegal immigration in total; we could fight illegal immigration without compromise.

American military on border gate between California and Mexico at San Ysidro. Photo by Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times. Click to enlarge.

One of President Trump’s main campaign promises was to close the border to illegal immigration. It’s easier to intercept and interrupt illegal border crossing than it is to round up illegal immigrants already in the United States, and that policy is absolutely working. Not only are the Border Patrol undertaking stronger efforts to stop the illegals from crossing, but the President’s policies have discouraged many more from even trying.

The Los Angeles Times is one of America’s (formerly) great newspapers, and of an extremely liberal editorial slant. But even that newspaper has to tell the truth sometimes:

California-Mexico border, once overwhelmed, now nearly empty

By Andrea Castillo | Sunday, March 30, 2025 | 3:00 AM PDT

  • With so few migrants coming into the U.S., shelters that once served migrants have closed.
  • The Border Patrol has been bolstered by 750 U.S. military troops dispatched to the San Diego area.
  • In recent months, six miles of the border wall have been outfitted with concertina wire.

SAN YSIDRO, California  — When the humanitarian aid workers decided to dismantle their elaborate tented setup — erected right up against the border wall — they hadn’t seen migrants for a month.

A year earlier, when historic numbers of migrants were arriving at the border, the American Friends Service Committee, a national Quaker-founded human rights organization, came to their aid. Eventually the group received enough donations to erect three canopies, where it stored food, clothing and medical supplies.

But migrant crossings have slowed to a near halt, bringing a striking change to the landscape along the southernmost stretch of California.

Shelters that once received migrants have closed, makeshift camps where migrants waited for processing are barren, and nonprofits have begun shifting their services to established immigrants in the U.S. who are facing deportation, or migrants stuck in southern Mexico.

For those stymied by the newspaper’s paywall, you can also access the story here.

The story details what the pro-immigrant groups have been doing, which is to close up shop. American Friends Service Committee Program Coordinator Adriana Jasso told the Times’ reporter, Andrea Castillo, that her group is helping very few immigrants these days, because so few are even trying to enter. Why, it’s almost as though taking down the welcome sign that former President Joe Biden put out, in May of 2023, when he ended a panicdemic policy under which migrants were denied the right to seek asylum and were rapidly returned to Mexico.

In the leadup to the policy change, migrants descended on the border by the thousands.

Now, once again, potential immigrants are told no, they can’t come in, they need to make the best life they can in their original homes.

Also read: William Teach, “Credentialed Media Shocked The Border Is Quiet“

This is an uncompromised good! Now thousands of potential immigrants are deciding not to waste their time, efforts, and money trying to come to America, and realizing that, at least until a Democrat retakes the White House, they aren’t getting in here. This leads to them doing whatever they can to improve their living situation in Mexico and Guatemala and El Salvador and Venezuela, which improves life in those countries as well, albeit not a lot. It means that the pressures on our welfare and public services in the United States are reduced, and reduces demand for housing in the United States, which will eventually slow the growth in housing costs.

And, of course, it reduces the number of immigrants who come here not just to find a better life, but to commit crimes.

Since American troops arrived to bolster the Border Patrol, on January 23rd, just three days after Mr Trump took office, they began stringing concertina wire along the border fences, to further ‘discourage’ illegal immigrants from trying to scale the wall.

(Jeffrey Stalnaker, acting chief patrol agent of the San Diego sector) said federal prosecutors in San Diego had also accepted more than 1,000 border-related criminal cases this fiscal year. And following Trump’s tariff threats, Mexico vowed to send 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border. Those troops now meet with U.S. agents a few times a week and conduct synchronous patrols on their respective sides of the border, Stalnaker said.

While Mr Trump was unable to keep his 2016 campaign promise to have Mexico pay for the border wall, at least he’s pushed them into spending some of their money to reduce illegal immigration!

These are all things that President Biden could have done, if he had actually been committed to enforcing our immigration laws! Our 46th President said that he needed the (supposedly) bipartisan immigration law, one which he called “essential” to making the U.S.-Mexico border “more orderly, secure, fair, and humane,” but which fortunately never passed.

The bill would force the Department of Homeland Security to shutter the border if daily illegal crossings top 5,000 migrants on average or 8,500 in a single day. Unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada wouldn’t count toward that total.

The administration could only reopen the border if encounters of illegal crossings drop to 75 percent of the number that initially triggered the closure.

DHS would also have the power to shut down the border if crossings average more than 4,000 a day for a week, and Biden has signaled he would aggressively use that authority.

Apparently the bill was not needed, because our 47th President is shutting down the border regardless of how many or how few are attempting to cross. President Trump, enforcing the immigration laws which are already on the books, has done more in just 69 days in office than Mr Biden did in 1,461 days in office. President Biden blamed Mr Trump for the bill’s failure, but that only shows that then-former President Trump was right all along: we didn’t have to accept some illegal immigration to reduce illegal immigration in total; we could fight illegal immigration without compromise.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Another teacher caught raping a student.

Christyan Cabrera, mugshot via WCNC.

As soon as I heard about this, checked all of the available articles, and, as usual, they all left out one pertinent bit of information.

Former Rowan County teacher appears in court after being arrested for alleged sexual relationship with a student

Christyan Cabera, 25, was a world history teacher at West Rowan High School. The district said he is no longer employed at the school.

by Nathaniel Puente and Jesse Pierre | Thursday, March 27, 2025 | 6:31 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, March 28, 2025 | 7:20 PM EDT

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. — A former West Rowan High School teacher was arrested for multiple sexual assault charges involving a 15-year-old student, authorities reported.

Christyan Cabrera, 25, was taken into custody on Thursday, and charged with statutory rape, statutory sex offense with a child, and committing a crime against nature. The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office said Cabrera was a world history teacher at the high school. Friday, he had his first appearance in court.

Deputies say Cabrera engaged in sexual intercourse and other sexual acts with the student inside an empty classroom between Jan. 9 and March 19. The incidents were first reported to the school’s resource officer on March 21.

Investigators obtained arrest warrants for multiple sexual offenses. Cabrera was booked into the Rowan County Detention Center under no bond, in accordance with the pre-trial integrity act.

During his court appearance, the prosecution requested that he not have contact with the victim and not go on Rowan-Salisbury school property. Both of those requests were approved by the judge. The prosecution also requested a $500,000 bond, while his defense attorney requested a $50,000 bond; he was ultimately given a $250,000 secured bond. Cabrera is not allowed to leave the state of North Carolina.

So, what was the pertinent piece of information excluded? Through several articles, all saying the same thing, we were not told whether the distinguished Mr Cabrera’s (alleged) victim was male or female. The closest thing I could find was on Yahoo! News:

Channel 9 spoke with a parent who had four boys in the district. She said cases like this made her want to homeschool them.

My impression was that the mother of the four boys had heard something, and saw her sons at risk for something like this. Does that confirm my initial suspicion that, whenever the sex of the (alleged) victim is concealed, the sexual abuse was homosexual in nature? No, it absolutely does not. But it’s unusual the way it was written, almost a backhand way of telling us more.

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Once more, the Philly Inquirer goes all-in to support transgenderism Every bird, every reptile, and every mammal has the ability to distinguish between males and females of their own species, but apparently human liberals have 'educated' that right out of themselves.

We have referred to America’s third-oldest continuously-published daily newspaper as The Philadelphia Enquirer, as RedState writer Mike Miller mistakenly referred to it, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I sometimes think of it as very apt. The newspaper, the past winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, has gone all-in on promoting the ‘transgender’ agenda, and once again they’ve published a sob story about a mentally-ill boy who thinks he’s a girl.

Parents of trans Colonial athlete speak out against PIAA rule change: ‘Having her play sports with males would be cruel’

The parents of a Plymouth Whitemarsh High School student spoke out against a rule change barring their child and other transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

by Maddie Hanna and Gillian McGoldrick | Wednesday, March 26, 2025 | 5:42 PM EDT

The parents of a transgender student athlete at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School spoke out Wednesday, telling the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association that participating on girls’ sports teams was critical for her well-being — and that of other transgender children.

Appearing before PIAA’s board of directors in Mechanicsburg — which last month changed its transgender athlete policy to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” — Sarah Hansen said her child, a senior who runs track and field in the Colonial School District, had grappled with her identity for years.

“Since 15, we’ve been on a journey for her to transition to the girl that she always has been,” including psychological evaluations, medical appointments and testing, and hours of therapy, said Hansen, who was accompanied by her husband, Tom.

“My child is a female in her heart and soul, and according to her medical labs. Having her play sports with males would be cruel,” Sarah Hansen said.

The problem for Mrs Hansen and her son, Sean “Luce” Allen, is that whether he feels “female in her(sic) heart and soul,” he’s actually male in his body. He can call himself “Luce” all he wants, but he’s still a male. Click on the image of young Mr Allen, and you’ll see he’s still very male.

If I, as a Star Trek fan, found some quack plastic surgeon to give me pointed ears and started to claim that I was a real Vulcan, would you accept that, or think I was off my rocker?

Reporters Maddie Hanna and Gillian McGoldrick included a paragraph making a curious argument:

(Kristina Moon, a senior attorney with the Education Law Center) read a statement from an unnamed teammate of Allen’s, who said that “I have always been in close competition with Luce. Some reps, I’m faster. … I have never felt like any of my meets or races have been unfair because of Luce’s participation.”

Simply put, Miss Moon is arguing that Mr Allen should be allowed to race as a girl because he just isn’t that good, isn’t any faster than the real girls. Does that mean that people like Will “Lia” Thomas should have been completely disqualified after his performance in the Zippy Invitational? What about Brayden “Blaire” Fleming, who wasn’t as overpowering but was still the top player for San José State, and was good enough at his disguise that he ‘passed,’ even among his teammates for several years? AB Hernandez, a trans-identified boy, set the Division 3 Girls’ triple jump meet record at the Ontario Relays meet in Southern California with a 40-foot triple jump, 8 feet longer than the 2nd place finisher, the top finishing real girl (32’3”); I guess that he should be disqualified.

Today’s left seem absolutely determined to take the furthest left position possible on anything even remotely related to sex, because otherwise they’ll somehow justify and enable us evil, reich-wing Republicans, but just how silly is it to no longer be able to tell the difference between males and females, an innate ability that every bord, every reptile, and every mammal other than human liberals has.

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Why don’t we return to charitable giving? Why must everything be through the government?

It was back in 2023 that one of my fellow parishioners at St Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church told us that the Estill County Community Food Bank was losing the ‘extra’ money coming from the federal government in COVID-19 ’emergency’ money was ending. The parish council then decided that we would take up a quarterly extra second collection specifically for the Food Bank, and I’m happy to say that most of those second collections netted slightly over $1,000 for the organization.

I thought of that when I saw the tweet on the right from WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, and the following (brief) story:

Delaware Food Bank loses nearly 1M meals after Trump administration ended food aid funding

Continue reading →

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Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle Schools Our current education bureaucracy hasn't done very much good, has it?

The First Street Journal has mentioned the Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle School several times previously, primarily in connection with former Philadelphia city councilwoman Helen Gym Flaherty and her use of the school as a backdrop in her campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination in the spring of 2023, a nomination she very fortunately lost. Mrs Flaherty proudly proclaimed that it was thanks to her efforts that the school didn’t “go charter”. We noted, at the time, that the school at the time ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, in which 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math.

Well, that was then, and this is now, 1¾ years later, and the ranks have been updated Continue reading →

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That thing that never happens has happened again

The murder of Laken Riley by José Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant released into the US by Customs and Border Patrol during the Biden Administration because the surge in apprehended border crossers had worsened to a point where they did not have enough space at a detention facility to hold him, was a rare, rare event, certainly nothing over which to criticize our 46th President’s compassionate immigration policies. Such criticism was inflamed by the evil reich-wing former President Donald Trump, for political gain, don’t you know.

Detectives arrest a subject who sexually assaulted children.

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He didn’t have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here]

It might seem like an unimportant story in Saturday morning’s Washington Post, and the ruling won’t affect all that many people, but it demonstrates the willingness of some people to be absolute assholes — note that I used the word directly rather than my more usual [insert slang term for the anus here] — for no good reason. Yes, sometimes we need government officials to be [insert plural slang term for the anus here] for the good of government and of the country, but this kind of behavior over pettiness is just plain stupid. Continue reading →