When family members play heroes of the Soviet Union

Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (Па́вел Трофи́мович Моро́зов) was a supposed hero of the Soviet Union:

In 1932, at the age of 13, Morozov reported his father to the political police (GPU). Supposedly, Morozov’s father, Trofim, the chairman of the Gerasimovka Village Soviet, had been “forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State” (as the sentence read). Trofim Morozov was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, where his sentence was changed to death, which was fulfilled. However, Pavlik’s family did not take kindly to his reporting his father and on 3 September of that year, his uncle, grandfather, grandmother, and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother. All of them except the uncle were rounded up by the GPU and sentenced to “the highest measure of social defense” – execution by a firing squad.

Thousands of telegrams from all over the Soviet Union urged the judge to show no mercy for Pavlik’s killers. The Soviet government declared Pavlik Morozov a glorious martyr who had been murdered by reactionaries. Statues of him were built, and numerous schools and youth groups were named in his honour. An opera and numerous songs were written about him. The Gerasimovka school that Morozov attended, became a shrine, and children from all over the Soviet Union went on school excursions to visit it.

The entire story may have been a fabrication by the Soviet Communist Party under Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, yet another of the typical propaganda stories. Who, after all, could imagine a 13-year-old denouncing his own father to the police? Continue reading

I check Bluesky so you don’t have to! Will Bunch would rather see more killing than Donald Trump win a Nobel Peace Prize

I will admit it: I have spent far too much of the past couple of days in schadenfreude over the apoplexy of the left that Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States at noon on Monday. Most of the stuff was by people as no named as me, and a lot of it was simply silly beyond belief. Mr Trump moved the inauguration indoors due to the bitterly cold weather forecast for Washington DC, about 20º F, with wind chills in the single digits, so the left have been claiming that it wasn’t the weather, but that the President was afraid, afraid that the number of protesters would outnumber supporters, and that he just wasn’t tough enough, as Presidents John F Kennedy and Barack Hussein Obama had inaugurations outdoors in similarly cold weather.

We might as well face it: the very bitter left will say anything to insult Mr Trump.

More interesting to me was this skeet — a skeet is what a tweet on Bluesky is called — from Will Bunch, the far-left columnist of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Mr Bunch wrote that he literally felt sick to his stomach over the idea that our incoming President was “already Nobel Peace Prize shopping, peering down the aisles of conflict and crisis to gauge the easiest route to capturing the coveted award to adorn the lobby of Mar-a-Lago,” and that The Washington Post’s new contributing columnist, Rahm Emanuel, argued that “even Trump’s fiercest opponents ought to encourage this yen — and even root him on.” Continue reading

How the severity of the California wildfires is Donald Trump’s fault!

I might be stealing William Teach’s schtick with this one, but it’s too good to pass up.

Burning Teslas in LA Add to Toxic Mix Hindering Wildfire Cleanup

  • Electric cars add a new dimension to the mess left by fires

  • Specialized removal means longer delays for victims

By Eliyahu Kamisher, Laura Curtis, and Kara Carlson | Thursday, January 16, 2025 | 8:16 PM EST | Updated Friday, January 17, 2025 | 8:31 AM EST

As the smoke clears from devastating Los Angeles wildfires, efforts to clean up the affected areas are being complicated by burnt-out electric and hybrid vehicles and home-battery storage systems. Continue reading

It was never about “protecting democracy”.

The left have complained loudly that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his support of that wholly radical concept of Freedom of Speech was a horrible, horrible thing, but while conservatives are no longer censored on that social media site, Mr Musk has allowed those on the left the same access they always had.

And thus we have Tristan Snell being able to vent his frustration that former President Donald Trump will become President again at noon on January 20th.

Who is Mr Snell? His self-written Twitter biography states that he is a “Lawyer, commentator, fighter for democracy. Prosecuted Trump University @ NY AG. Author of TAKING DOWN TRUMP. Host of the Tristan Snell Show on Apple + Spotify.” Continue reading

World War III Watch: Joe Biden sends more aid, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants us to send ground troops

We have said it before: it doesn’t matter how much money and military aid we send to Ukraine, they cannot defeat Russia absent the US and NATO sending actual ground troops to fight Russia, and fighter aircraft and pilots to gain air superiority. Now Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants just that:

U.S. announces more Ukraine aid as Zelenskyy calls for NATO to deploy troops to “force Russia into peace”

CBS News | Thursday, January 9, 2024 | 10:00 AM EST

Ramstein Air Base, Germany — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said Donald Trump’s return to the White House would open “a new chapter” and reiterated a call for Western allies to send troops to help “force Russia to peace.” He made the plea as the Biden administration announced what will likely be its last major military aid package for Ukraine — a promise of weapons and other support worth $500 million. Continue reading

I check Bluesky so you don’t have to Amanda Marcotte loves her some censorship and ordering of society . . . when it comes from the left

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain has frequently written, “I watch CNN” or sometimes MSNBC, “so you don’t have to.” Well, I created an account and check Bluesky, the liberal version of Twitter, so that you don’t have to. And checking this morning I found the very lovely Amanda Marcotte complaining that Mark Zuckerberg, the creator and owner of Facebook, is no longer going to apply liberally-oriented ‘fact checkers’ to posts on Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta makeover: MAGA grandpa is about to get much worse

Facebook ditches its fact-checking program in favor of Elon Musk’s army of disinformation zombies

by Amanda Marcotte | Wednesday, January 8, 2025 | 8:00 AM EST

In part because of his goofy appearance and in part because he doesn’t engage in fascist trolling like fellow billionaire Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg is rarely seen as a sinister character in modern American life. But Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook and Instagram will soon cease fact-checking is such a stellar model of villainous doublespeak that George Orwell would have thought it was a bit much. Zuckerberg insisted it’s in the name of “free speech” that he must unleash uncontrolled disinformation on his platform, adding, “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” Continue reading

The left can’t see an obvious fact right in front of their faces.

My far too expensive Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. I could use a senior citizen’s discount right about now.

You know, I get it: Will Bunch, the far-left opinion columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is thoroughly eaten up with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, far too eaten up to see some basic facts. Mr Bunch fairly heavily documents his work with hyperlinks, so it’s not as though he doesn’t know how. But, in his Tuesday morning newsletter, “Revealed: The real reason that Trump won,” he managed to completely miss the most obvious thing: Continue reading

Paranoid much?

While perusing my images files to find an illustration for this article — I was actually looking for my Philadelphia Inquirer subscription notification image — I found this old ad for subscriptions to the newspaper. I guess this is what qualifies as “Philly Love”:

The queer people who are buying guns to prepare for Trump’s America

“We’re not looking to arm up and storm the capital,” one gun owner said. “We just don’t want to be put in concentration camps.”

Continue reading

The Democrats new ‘It Girl’ is actually a guy

We were greatly amused when the media began touting then Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane as “the Democrats’ New ‘It Girl’.” Salena Zito wrote, in 2013:

A former midlevel prosecutor’s ambition and rise in Pennsylvania politics is a sign of the times in American politics.

In under a year, Kathleen Kane has gone from an unknown Lackawanna County assistant district attorney to the powerful position of the state’s attorney general. If you believe the gossip surrounding her, she is a prospective candidate for every elected office imaginable, including governor, U.S. senator and president.

Fortunately for the Keystone State, Mrs Kane crashed and burned spectacularly, charged, tried, and convicted for perjury, and sentenced for 10 to 23 months in jail. After her release — she actually served only eight months — she wound up with a driving under the influence of alcohol arrest and parole violation as well, because the Democrats’ new ‘It Girl’ just wasn’t very smart. But at least she actually is a girl!

CBS Mornings Touts New Democratic Sweetheart: She’s Transgender!

Continue reading