Author Archives: Dana Pico

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A university professor right in theory, but wholly wrong in the real world

It is a famous aphorism that freedom of speech does not protect yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but as is frequently the case with aphorisms, the ‘general truth’ contained therein is often not completely accurate. The First Amendment states that Congress — and now extended to cover state and local governments — shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. In the case of yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, a violation of the First Amendment occurs not in punishing the consequences of such an action, if that action is untrue and results in injuries due to a panic, but would be a law or regulation which prohibited people from going into theaters because they might yell, “Fire!”

We have already seen such a violation, in which the Biden Administration pressured various social media companies to “remove content it considers misleading, including about the COVID-19 pandemic.” And there was the famous but failed attempt by the Administration to create its own Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Fatherland Security, something that Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post reporter who gained her greatest fame with the doxing of Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate saleswoman and creator of the Twitter site that the left hate, Libs of TikTok sorely lamented.

But within hours of news of her appointment, (Nina) Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

Well, it’s another year, the Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board idea has died a well-mocked and well-deserved death, but now there are some defenses of people not being restricted in their speech but paying the consequences for it. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A truce in the Israel-Palestine tweet wars

Dozens of public figures have been dismissed from their jobs because of their social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war. It’s a scorched-earth battle, and it makes real conversation impossible.

by Jonathan Zimmerman, Columnist | Thursday, November 30, 2023 | 7:00 AM EST

Your tweet was antisemitic. You’re fired!

Your tweet was anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic, as well. You’re fired, too!

Welcome to the digital war we’ve been waging in the United States, while a real one rages in Gaza. Dozens of physicians, entertainers, and journalists have been dismissed because of their posts about the conflict. It’s a scorched-earth battle for the age of social media. And it makes real conversation impossible.

The only solution is to let everyone tweet what they wish, whether you agree with them or not.

I have been fully supportive of people tweeting exactly what they wish, and do not want the anti-Semitic tweets censored, not because I support what they are saying, but because I very much want the anti-Semites to tell us exactly who they are, so that we can avoid them, and avoid doing business with them. I completely support the things we have previously reported about deep-pocket university donors closing their checkbooks due to anti-Semitism on campus, and creating ‘do not hire’ lists of the haters of Jews. Dr Zimmerman, who write the column cited above, was similarly displeased that the deep-pockets donors were using their money to fight anti-Semitism.

But, and fair warning here, I am going to use a word which will offend many, no one, and I include Dr Zimmerman in this, would be even remotely surprised or opposed if a company fired an employee who said that he hated niggers.[1]In posting this article on the American Free News Network, I did censor the word, not because I thought it wrong, but because I did not want to cause problems for that site.

Why did I use the dreaded “n” word? Because it points out the extreme end, the end to which even Dr Zimmerman would almost certainly not go to defend someone’s job if he said the wrong thing. Me? I’m retired, so I can’t be fired for using the word! 🙂

Corporations have exactly one purpose, and that’s to earn money for their shareholders, and if they believe that allowing employees to say things which can cost them money, or, as has frequently been the case, call into question the professional commitment of lawyers and physicians to fully support or treat patients and clients who are members of the demographic group they’ve slammed.

Dr Zimmerman then discussed a couple of cases in which he raised questions as to whether people should have been fired for tweets some found offensive, then stating:

Did NYU fire (Benjamin) Neel to create “the appearance of even-handedness” with (Zaki) Masoud, as the suit alleges? I don’t know. But here’s what I do know: There’s no way to justify firing one of these guys unless you also dismiss the other one. And if we keep calling for their heads, we will lose our minds.

How many more people will be fired for tweets about Israel/Palestine? And how do you know you won’t be next on the list if someone is offended by your own post?

Like I said, I’m retired, so I know that I won’t be fired! But corporations, companies, organizations, and schools depend on customers, patients, clients, and consumers to have faith in the people with whom they deal, and if an employee uses his freedom of speech in a manner which could cause prospective customers, et al, to lose faith in their employees and in the company in general, that employee has become a liability, not an asset.

My copy of Mein Kampf. I don’t own it because I support it, but because it is an historically significant book.

Dr Zimmerman is a university professor, and university professors have a natural interest in the free expression of ideas. Unfortunately, the immature hot heads on so many of our college campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania, do not seem to have much interest in the free expression of ideas when those ideas run contrary to what many in the student body believe. Penn itself earned some notoriety by telling “strongly advising” the actually female members of the school’s women’s swim team not to speak out to the press about Will Thomas and tried to instill fear in the women that if they did, their employment prospects would be diminished.

The columnist is right about the free exchange of ideas, but only in an abstract sense. Would he, or really anyone — other than some of today’s Palestinian-supporting university students, that is! — give intellectual credence to a calm and rational discussion of the ideas expressed in Mein Kampf?[2]There are doubtlessly some people who would claim that my ownership alone of Mein Kampf means that I’m some sort of Nazi sympathizer. Well, I’m Catholic, but I also own a Quran; some … Continue reading

Dr Zimmerman’s original column title, which I saw by putting my cursor on the tab in which the article appeared, was “We need a truce in the Israel-Palestine tweet wars.” But let’s tell the truth here: we’re not going to get that truce, and we really shouldn’t have it. Anti-Semitism festered in Europe for 1,800 years after the Romans expelled the Jews from the Levant, and the Shoah was only the most extreme example of it, unprecedented in size and scope and viciousness, but not in kind. Just as the victorious Allies did what they could to “de-Nazify” Germany after the war, we need to marginalize today’s anti-Semites as much as possible.

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↑1 In posting this article on the American Free News Network, I did censor the word, not because I thought it wrong, but because I did not want to cause problems for that site.
↑2 There are doubtlessly some people who would claim that my ownership alone of Mein Kampf means that I’m some sort of Nazi sympathizer. Well, I’m Catholic, but I also own a Quran; some books can be used for research, without implying anything about the owner.
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The Journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer

No, that’s not a typographical error in the headline: The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias. We have previously written about the journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, often enough that this is the fifth article with that title. The newspaper reported:

Haverford College holds vigil for Palestinian student shot in Vermont

Haverford students, alumni, and staff gathered in Founders Hall to light candles and offer support for Kinnan Abdalhamid, the West Bank-born biology major and member of the school’s track team.

by Max Marin and Ximena Conde | Tuesday, November 28, 2023 | 7:21 PM EST

Jason J Eaton, mugshot by Burlington Police Department and is a pubic record.

Haverford College held a vigil on Tuesday in support of a Palestinian student who was shot in what authorities are investigating as a potential hate crime in Vermont on Saturday.About 200 Haverford students, alumni, and staff gathered in Founders Hall around 4:30 p.m. to light candles and offer support for Kinnan Abdalhamid, the West Bank-born biology major and member of the school’s track team, who was one of three victims of Saturday’s shooting.

Abdalhamid remains hospitalized in Burlington along with his two friends, Hisham Awartani and Tahseen Ahmed. The three college students, all 20, were visiting Burlington for the holiday weekend when a man opened fire on them without warning.

Note the publication date of the newspaper’s article: Tuesday, November 28th, at 7:21 PM EST. The reporters let readers know that this is being investigated to see if it was a hate crime, referencing an article published the previous day at 8:58 AM, and updated at 6:56 PM, in which it was reported:

Given the unprovoked nature of the attack and soaring tension around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Murad said it was understandable to suspect hate-based motivations at play in the case, but urged the public to withhold speculation as the investigation continues among local, state, and federal authorities. “We still do not know as much as we want to know.”

Returning to the originally cited article in the Inquirer:

Haverford’s vigil was structured in the Quaker tradition where students held long moments of silence broken only when someone was motivated to speak. One Palestinian student broke down in tears as she addressed the room. As two friends flanked her for support, she said there was no doubt in her mind the shooting was a hate crime.

“Palestinians’ suffering has to be recognized,” she said. “We’re humans.”

Authorities said the men were walking to a relative’s house in Burlington after a family gathering when Jason J. Eaton stepped up onto a nearby porch and, without a word, fired four shots from a Ruger .380 pistol, injuring all three.

While the motive remains unclear, authorities noted the victims were speaking in a mixture of English and Arabic, and two of them were wearing keffiyehs. The U.S. Department of Justice is assisting with an investigation into whether the unprovoked attack was a hate crime. Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday and pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder on Monday.

OK, fine. But there is absolutely nothing in the Inky’s reporting to tell you that the suspect, Jason Eaton, was off his rocker, suffering from depression, coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, and mostly a political whacko:

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, Suspect in Shooting of Palestin-ian Students ‘Strug-gled With Depression’

According to NBC, Eaton appears to have a YouTube account that has playlists with videos that include “Expose Fauci,” long COVID, economics, and how to use brain crystals for “psychic powers.” An Instagram account that appears to belong to him also shows him on a farm and cooking.

In an X account that appeared to belong to Eaton, he describes himself as a “radical citizen…patrolling demockracy and crapitalism for oathcreepers.” A 2022 archived version of that same account, which contains the same photo, has a more subdued bio that describes him as a Vermont dad and part-time farmer. The archived X account also provides a link to a Substack, with the “wandering ramblings of a reformed broker on the ADHD/ASD spectrum.” The Substack only has one post, which is an essay on how restaurants can retain dishwashers.

I guess that part wouldn’t fit Teh Narrative, but actual journalists, rather than journolists, would have included it. It should be noted that the published reports about Mr Eaton and his mental health issues are dated on the morning of the 27th, and updated at 7:07 PM the same day, fully a day prior to the Inky’s story.

The mugshot of Mr Eaton? The newspaper doesn’t usually publish them, despite mugshots being easily available from the Philadelphia Police Department, but when it comes to a blue-eyed, blond-haired white guy? While the photo credit notes that it came from the Burlington Police Department, I found it in this article in the Inquirer.

Did the Inquirer actually lie to its readers? Nope, there’s nothing that I spotted which was demonstrably untrue. But the newspaper omitted a lot of facts, enough to be called lies of omission by some, facts which would change the impression that the article was intended to give.

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You go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause! Climate activist Greta Thunberg goes all out anti-Semitism

We have previously noted the definition of “intersectionality,” and how the perhaps less than genius thinkers on the left misuse it to tell us that all leftist causes are related, mixing together things which would curdle new milk. An interesting example is the mixing of feminism and transgenderism, hich leads to the amusing fact that, at least in some things, the best woman for the job is a man male.

Now, William Teach’s sort of favorite whipping girl, Greta “How dare you!” Thunberg, has hurt her own cause by mixing it with today’s oh-so-popular anti-Semitism. From The Times of Israel:

Climate activist Thunberg flogged for ‘crush Zionism’ chant

by Canaan Lidor | Tuesday, Kislev 15, 5784 | 6:23 PM Jerusalem Time

Footage showing climate activist Greta Thunberg chanting “crush Zionism” at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden is provoking harsh-worded criticism of her by prominent Jewish environmentalists.

If you can’t access the Times website, you can find the story here as well. You can see the original of the tweet here, which shows you the video, not just thye still in the screen capture I took ands used.

The actions by Thunberg, whom many regard as a symbol of the environmentalist movement, reflect how “large parts of ‘the left’ or ‘progressives’ have been intellectually captured by a naive, distorted and frankly bigoted anti-Zionism,” Nigel Savage, a UK-born environmental activist and founder of Jewish environmental nonprofit organization Hazon, tells The Times of Israel Tuesday.

Savage, whose Jerusalem-based group was established in 2000 and holds environmentally oriented bike rides in New York, adds: “It is a microcosm of a far larger and far greater challenge. It’s sad and disturbing.”

Now I will admit it: I can kind of see Miss Thunberg’s reasoning. In saying that Israel should be crushed, she is taking the side of poverty and savagery over prosperity and Western civilization, and if there’s one thing the global warming climate change activists hate, it’s prosperity and Western civilization, despite the fact that they are living with the benefits of prosperity and Western civilization.

I will admit to wondering how Miss Thunberg got from her native Sweden to Amsterdam without the use of fossil fuels, or from where the puffy coat and its insulation came without the use of petroleum, but I’m hardly the first person to point out her climapocrisy.

Miss Thunberg, of course, has the freedom of speech, and can say any fool thing she wishes, but I am amuse by the fact that she is hurting her own cause by siding against Israel and Jews, Jews who just might be the voters who put the Democrats over the top to control Congress and get the climate policies she wants enacted into law.

So, you go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause.

 

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Run her out of town on a rail! Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, Leslie Richards needs a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

If you were apprehended after shooting at a crowd of people in a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority station, would you expect to simply be let go, even if you had missed everyone? I wouldn’t, but, then again, I’m not a 16-year-old girl.

A 16-year-old girl is facing arrest for a SEPTA subway shooting at the 15th and Market station

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant in the Nov. 19 shooting at the 15th and Market Street station.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, November 27, 2023 | 1:00 PM EST

A 16-year-old girl who police say shot at a group of juveniles inside the SEPTA station at 15th and Market Street earlier this month — but struck no one — will be arrested for that crime, authorities said Monday.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said an arrest warrant had been issued for the teen in connection with the Nov. 19 shooting on the station concourse. The girl, whom authorities did not identify because she is a juvenile, is expected to face charges of aggravated assault and firearms violations.

The teen had been detained at the 11th Street station on the day of the shooting because she was wanted on a family court bench warrant for theft, the district attorney’s office said.

She is expected to be arrested for the shooting by the end of the week, authorities said.

The language on this story is unclear, to say no more. Was she already locked up on the bench warrant? Will she be arrested while already behind bars, or is she out on the streets? Normally, one would expect an apprehended shooter to have been arrested on the assault and firearms charges right away. Were the police waiting to see if uber-permissive District Attorney Larry Krasner would want to take any action since the shooter was a 16-year-old girl?

The teen girl opened fire on a group of juveniles who were following her out of the station and up the exit stairs, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. Video obtained by investigators shows the teen shooting from the steps, fleeing, and then throwing a backpack into a trash can in the concourse, the statement said.

A handgun was recovered from the trash can and matched the live rounds and shell casings found at the scene of the shooting, the district attorney’s office said. When the teen was detained on the bench warrant, authorities said, she was wearing clothing that matched what the shooter was seen wearing on surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s about SEPTA’s negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109, who have been working without a contract since March 31st. The union postponed a strike date of November 20th, until a decision on December 13th:

The transit police officers are asking for a pay increase amid a staffing shortage and a rise in antisocial behaviors — like smoking and turnstile jumping — but not violent crimes.

Is shooting up a subway station not a violent crime if the shooter never hit anyone?

But I have to laugh at that last quoted paragraph for other reasons: reporter Rodrigo Torrejón listed “smoking and turnstile jumping” as the antisocial behaviors, but for some reason declined to mention the biggest “antisocial behavior” plaguing not just SEPTA stations but the city itself: drug addicts littering the stations and the tracks with used needles, and junkies passed out on the streets and in the stations and even the train cars.

The (supposed) marathon bargaining session scheduled to begin on October 23rd obviously didn’t solve anything, and SEPTA has only been surviving on federal deficit spending aid due to the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus. Now CEO Leslie Richards, who has presided over worsening service yet got a $75,000 raise earlier in the year, a plethora of bus and trolley accidents, and train stations littered with the homeless and drug needles, with the transit service plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff wants more money from the taxpayers to subsidize SEPTA passengers. Just yesterday, a day in which SEPTA had a whopping forty routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator shortages,’ a man on the system stabbed three people at the Walnut Locust station before being shot by a SEPTA police officer.

But, things have improved today: only 21 routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator unavailability.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing site, described the SEPTA trains:

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

To me, that’s a bit more serious than “smoking and turnstile jumping,” but yeah, I’m an evil reich-wing Republican! I’m the kind of man who would have used the word “junkies” rather than “people in the throes of opioid addiction,” and “vagrants” rather than “people experiencing homelessness.”

Miss Richards will have to somehow hammer out a contract with the SEPTA police officers, and will have to do it in the face of reduced revenues, from a lower number of riders and the loss of Federal dollars as the Covidiocy spending ends.

At a time when the left want to push people out of their cars and onto public transportation, Miss Richards has overseen a real decrease in the quality and service of one of our nations larger public transportation systems. Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, she needs to get a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

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↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus.
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When it’s time to put up or shut up, the left do neither

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

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

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

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

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

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Why do the left want to defend Ukraine’s borders, but not our own?

I have said it in the past, and as recently as today: Ukraine cannot win no matter how much aid we give them, and Israel will not lose, even if we give them no support. Thus, we shouldn’t be helping either Ukraine or Israel.

Alas! the warmongers in Congress just love them some more spending to help Ukraine in its stalemated war against Russia, and there are enough Republicans among them for more aid to Ukraine to pass, unless Speaker Mike Johnson flat prevents a vote. But Conservatives have come up with a new tactic:

Republicans want to pair border security with aid for Ukraine. Here’s why that makes a deal so tough

Congress return to work this week after the holiday break, and Senate Republicans have made clear they won’t support additional war aid for Ukraine unless they can pair it with border security measures

by Mary Clare Jalonick and Stephen Groves, Associated Press | Sunday, November 26, 2023 | 8:52 AM EST

WASHINGTON — As Congress returns to session this week, lawmakers will be trying to forge an agreement on sending a new round of wartime assistance to Ukraine. But to succeed, they will have to find agreement on an issue that has confounded them for decades.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress have made clear that they will not support additional aid for Ukraine unless it is paired with border security measures to help manage the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their demand has injected one of the most contentious issues in American politics into a foreign policy debate that was already difficult.

Time is short for a deal.

A small, bipartisan group in the Senate is taking the lead and working to find a narrow compromise that can overcome a likely filibuster by winning 60 votes. But even if they can reach a modest agreement, there is no guarantee it would pass the House, where Republicans are insisting on wholesale changes to U.S. border and immigration policies.

There’s more at the original.

As my good friend and occasional blog pinch hitter William Teach has noted many times, the so-called “sanctuary cities” to which Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) has shipped some, but nowhere near all, of the illegal immigrants ‘migrants’ who have crossed into the United States have found that the ‘migrants’ cost time, space, and money to house, and other budget items are having to be cut. But those are primarily the local officeholders, the big-city mayors who have to actually deal with the situation on the ground. far too many of the Democrats in Congress are more concerned with leaving the border wide open, because they aren’t the ones who have to deal with the problems themselves. And, as we noted on Saturday, wanting to do something really radical like protect your country’s borders is now “far right,” and the Democrats can’t do that, can they?

But there’s a real irony here, of Democrats wanting to protect Ukraine’s borders, but not our own.

Republicans hope that Democrats will feel political pressure to accept some of their border proposals after illegal crossings topped a daily average of more than 8,000 earlier this fall. President Joe Biden, who is running for reelection next year, has faced pressure even from fellow Democrats over the migrant flow.

Think about those numbers. “(A) daily average of more than 8,000” “illegal crossings” works out to over 240,000, roughly a quarter of a million illegal immigrants ‘migrants’ in a month, but President Biden, who has the same tools at his disposal that President Trump used to greatly reduce illegal immigration, simply won’t take action. We let in almost the population of St Louis, Missouri, a hellhole of homicide itself, of illegal immigrants in just a month.

We need to do both things: really restrict illegal immigration, and cut off aid for Ukraine, but we might, at best, get one.

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Did you know that wanting to protect your country’s borders makes you ‘far right’? Some people think that it makes you sensible!

If there’s one thing the left and the credentialed media just love to do is to try to minimize conservatives by labeling them as ‘far right’. Apparently just another tweak, and we’d all be neo-Nazis!

As Robert Stacy McCain reported, a knife attack, allegedly by an Arab immigrant, outraged the people of Dublin:

Ireland’s police chief (Drew Harris) has warned that far-right radicalisation will continue to disrupt the country after a night of arson, rioting and looting left parts of Dublin resembling a war zone.

The capital was tense on Friday as significant numbers of police remained on the streets and Dublin counted the cost of an anti-immigrant protest that turned into anarchy, leaving the political establishment shocked.

Gardai said they made a number of arrests on O’Connell Street in Dublin city centre on Friday night.

The cleanup began as fresh details emerged of the stabbing attack outside a school that left three children and a carer injured, two of them critically, and the suspect, reportedly a naturalised Irish citizen in his 50s, in custody and requiring medical treatment.

Claims that the suspect was a foreigner spread online soon after the attack, which happened at about 1.30pm on Thursday, and drew a crowd to the scene at Parnell Square in the north inner city, leading to a riot in which 13 shops were looted, a tram and two buses torched, 11 police vehicles damaged, several officers injured – one seriously – and 34 people arrested.

Drew Harris, the Irish police commissioner, said people radicalised by far-right ideology and social media exploited a “terrible crime” to unleash mayhem.

Good heavens, “13 shops were looted, a tram and two buses torched, 11 police vehicles damaged, (and) several officers injured”? These “far-right” ideologues are amateurs, and need to go to Philadelphia to learn how to riot properly!

The Republic of Ireland is 94.1% white; it’s not as though someone who doesn’t look almost pasty-white Irish isn’t going to be easily noticed.

The European Union have decreed that EU member nations have to take the ‘migrants.’ Time for an Éirexit?

That, of course, is the result of a single incident. This, on the other hand, was a free election!

In a shock for Europe, anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders records a massive win in Dutch elections

By Mike Corder and Raf Casert | Friday, November 23, 2023 | 3:25 AM EST

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders won a huge victory in Dutch elections, according to a near complete count of the vote early Thursday, in a stunning lurch to the far right for a nation once famed as a beacon of tolerance.

The result will send shockwaves through Europe, where far-right ideology is on the rise, and puts Wilders in line to lead talks to form the next governing coalition and possibly become the first far-right prime minister of the Netherlands.

Laughing out loud! The Associated Press writers managed to include “far right” thrice in two one-sentence long paragraphs.  🙂 Mike Corder’s latest article on the subject is entitled “The Netherlands’ longtime ruling party says it won’t join a new government following far-right’s win“.

With nearly all votes counted, Wilders’ Party for Freedom was forecast to win 37 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, two more than predicted by an exit poll when voting finished Wednesday night and more than double the 17 he won at the last election.

Political parties were set to hold separate meetings Thursday to discuss the outcome before what is likely to be an arduous process of forming a new governing coalition begins Friday.

Despite his harsh rhetoric, Wilders has already begun courting other right and center parties by saying in a victory speech that whatever policies he pushes will be “within the law and constitution.”

Wilders’ election program included calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders.

It also advocates the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands. He says he wants no mosques or Islamic schools in the country, although he has been milder about Islam during this election campaign than in the past.

There follow several paragraphs noting how Mr Wilders could have a tough time forming a governing coalition, and then this:

The historic victory came one year after the win of Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy’s roots were steeped in nostalgia for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Meloni has since mellowed her stance on several issues and has become the acceptable face of the hard right in the EU.

“(H)ard right”? “(S)teeped in nostalgia for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini”? Dear Messrs Corder and Casert: tell us that you are leftists without saying that you are leftists! 🙂

London’s The Guardian, a far-left newspaper, published an article entitled, “Offensive, hostile and unrepentant: Geert Wilders in his own words“, just so you would know why the hard left in Europe hate Mr Wilders, and how appalled they are that the Dutch voters are less than appalled.

The normally more-liberal-than-Americans Europeans are finding learning, firsthand, what decades of liberal-to-leftist policies have brought to their homelands. Like the liberals in American ‘sanctuary cities,’ they’re finding out that unrestricted immigration of people who do not share their, or even Western civilization, culture isn’t quite as nice when it happens in their own back yards, rather than in some high-minded philosophy when the effects are visited on Other People.

The migrant crisis in Europe is different from that in the United States in a way few consider. Our illegal immigrants are primarily Hispanic, and if their background isn’t white, middle-American, it is still primarily Christian, mostly Catholic, with a Catholic sense of what is right and wrong. They are not, for the most part, demanding and getting mosques built, but helping to fill too empty Catholic churches in the US.

In Europe, the ‘migrants’ are coming not from Catholic countries, but primarily Islamic ones. Rather than filling emptying Catholic churches, they are demanding, and getting, Islamic mosques, and that’s one thing Mr Wilders has promised to stop. Their culture is not only not Western, but they come from lands in which Western culture is seriously despised.

Except for Western prosperity, that is. The ‘migrants’ do love Western euros!

The Netherlands is not Hungary or Poland, not a nation in which liberal democratic traditions are a new overlay over a recent authoritarian past. The Dutch resisted the Nazis as best they could, and, neutral during World War I, they allowed Kaiser Wilhelm II to live out the remained of his life in exile in Doorn. When the Dutch move in a conservative direction, it means something.

The left have had control of the democratic European governments for a long time, as the stigma of Naziism retains revulsion among European voters. But that wariness of conservative principles, along with economies subsidized by American defense spending might just be coming to an end, as the results of decades of liberal politics keep pouring into their countries, and their neighborhoods.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well-reasoned conservative commentary.

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That for which I am thankful

Their lives being so personally miserable, the Usual Suspects on the left want to make normal people’s lives miserable, too, combitching that the holiday should be renamed ‘Truthsgiving’, and too-numerous-to-count articles telling leftists how to ‘survive’ a family get-together in which an irascible uncle — or perhaps even most of the family — are, Heaven forfend!, MAGAts and Trump voters.

Our English forebears sailed to this continent, settled, and in the process pushed out, forced out, and even exterminated the Indians who were here before them. I’m fortunate enough to have had some work done on researching my maternal family tree, and it turns out that my earliest American ancestor, Richard Warren, who arrived on these shores on the Mayflower, was almost certainly at that first Thanksgiving.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, Thanksgiving and the Meaning of America

But that got me to thinking: just what sacrifices were made by other people for me to be here. I am alive today because 36,634 American soldiers gave their lives for me to be here.

What’s that? If it was not for the Korean War, the chances that my mother, who grew up in Portland, Maine, and my father, a third generation son of Portuguese immigrants living on Mau’i, would have met in Tokyo in 1951 would have been virtually zero. My father was with the Army Corps of Engineers and my mother was a WAC working in General of the Army Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters. 36,634 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines poured out their lives’ blood in the war that brought my parents together.

Of course, there’s more. There were 407,316 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who were killed in World War II, a war we entered only because Japan attacked us, and without our conquest of Japan, General MacArthur would not have had a headquarters in Tokyo at all. Japan had conquered Korea early on in the Pacific war, and without American participation in that war, Japan would have continued ruling Korea for decades to come.

My home? Our small farm is 37.4 road miles from Boonesborough, the first white settlement in Kentucky. Were it not for the defeat and expulsion of the Shawnee and Cherokee Indians, this wouldn’t be our home.

Brad Lopes, photo via Instagram.

Michael La Corte of Salon wrote about the whining of Brad Lopes, Director of Wampanoag and Indigenous Interpretation and Training at Plimoth Patuxet Museums, and his complaint that our Thanksgiving tradition about the communal harvest celebration between the settlers at Plymouth and the Wampanoag Indians is all a horrible, horrible lie. Mr Lopes describes himself a as member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, but looking at both his name and his photo, it seems as though he wouldn’t be here either were it not for a significant amount of Caucasian ancestry.

Perhaps he’s more of an Indian than Senator Elizabeth Warren?

As much as the left wish to scream “Decolonization!” they ought to realize, ought to be made aware of, that not only their homes and property are on conquered land — homes and property none seem all that eager to turn back to the Indians! — but that they, personally, exist today because of primarily English settlement and later European immigration to North America.
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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

I suppose that the judge felt that she had no choice. Section 16 of the Kentucky state Constitution specifies that, “All prisoners shall be bailable by sufficient securities, unless for capital offenses when the proof is evident or the presumption great; and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” But good Lord, this story is dumb!

Sheriff: Kentucky murder suspect slips ankle monitor and flees home incarceration

by John Cheeves | Wednesday, November 22, 2023 | 3:51 PM EST

A murder suspect on home incarceration in Somerset disappeared early Wednesday after removing the ankle monitor meant to track his location, Pulaski County Sheriff Bobby Jones said in a news release.

Samuel L. Baker, 24, was scheduled to stand trial Dec. 4 in Pulaski Circuit Court before Judge Teresa Whitaker on charges of murder, first-degree burglary, persistent felony offender and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

I admit to being shocked that the Lexington Herald-Leader published Mr Baker’s mugshot.

Baker is believed to have a gun with him and should be considered armed and dangerous, Jones said. He is believed to be with Adriana Brown, 28, in a 2016 black Dodge Grand Caravan, the sheriff added.

Miss Brown, you in a heap o’ trouble, girl! The state does not look kindly on helping criminals escape prosecution.

Baker was charged with the 2021 shooting death of Robert Claunch, 62, of Pulaski County.

Baker originally was jailed in lieu of a $500,000 bond. In August, after several trial delays, Whitaker agreed to reduce his bond to $25,000 in cash or $50,000 in property, on the condition that Baker agree to home incarceration with an ankle monitor, to not have a firearm and to not use alcohol or illegal drugs.

Mr Baker was arrested on March 19, 2021, so the “several trial delays” mean that he had been locked up on the charges for almost 2½ years without being tried. The obvious question is: why was there no more urgency to bring him to trial? There was still some COVID-19-related stupidity delaying trials in early 2021, but that has been over for well over a year now. If Mr Baker and his attorney had been the ones getting the trial delayed, then there was no reason for Judge Whitaker to reduce his bond; if the trial, which was now scheduled for December 4th, was delayed by the actions of the Commonwealth, then yes, I can see how the judge believed that she had no choice. She was aware that Mr Baker had failed to follow legal instructions in the past.

Mr Baker, the judge noted, was facing a possible sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In essence, Mr Baker had every incentive to cut off his ankle monitor and head for the hills; with a potential sentence of life without parole, there’s nothing more the Commonwealth could do to him. Mr Baker’s bond was posted on August 21st.

So, what happened? Mr Baker had every incentive to flee, but Miss Brown, if she indeed enabled his escape, would face charges herself, but stupid is as stupid does.