Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Charlotte ex-patriot aghast to find “Let’s go, Brandon” bumper sticker in North Carolina

My good friend William Teach alerted me to this article via a tweet:

From The Charlotte Observer, yet another McClatchy newspaper:

    There’s a real danger behind the juvenile ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ meme

    by Peter Horn | Friday, January 7, 2022 | 4:30 AM EST

    Back in Charlotte for the holidays, I was out on a walk when I noticed my parents’ neighbor’s truck. It’s a big truck. White, newish, plastered with bumper stickers in dense but ordered rows — mostly political, some football-related. Among many others was “Mean Tweets 2024” and “Let’s Go Brandon.”

    This, from a purportedly serious man. A grown-up by most senses of the word, likely born in the 1950s. A man with grown children of his own, a respectable career, two bowls of water by his mailbox for passing dogs and a nativity set in the front yard.

    I stopped and stared for a moment, wondering, how did we get here?

Much of the author’s dismay can be found in his bio at the bottom of the article:

    Peter Horn is a Charlotte native and a southern ex-pat for the greater part of the last decade. He currently lives in San Francisco and works as an investor and freelance writer.

Oh, he’s a native of Charlotte, but lives in ‘Frisco!

Also see: William Teach in The Pirate’s Cove: There’s A Real Danger In #LetsGoBrandon Or Something

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden carried the Pyrite State by a huge margin, 11,110,250 (63.48%) to President trump’s 6,006,429 (34.32%), but it was even worse in San Francisco, where Mr Biden won 378,156 (85.26%) to 56,417 (12.72%). Mr Horn was apparently never so triggered[1]In this, I am using the Urban Dictionary’s definition: “1.) *popular and well known definition* triggered is when someone gets offended or gets their feelings hurt, often used in memes to … Continue reading as he was when visiting his parents, because there probably aren’t a lot of “Let’s go, Brandon!” stickers seen around the feces-covered sidewalks and streets of the City by the Bay. While Mr Biden carried Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, by a wide margin, 378,107 (66.68%) to 179,221 (31.60%), Mr Trump carried the Tarheel State as a whole, 2,758,775 (49.93%) to 2,684,292 (48.59%). Hey, you go to Carolina, and you’re likely to see Trump stickers and signs!

    I don’t mean the polarization. How did we reach this level of absurdity, where ”serious people” are comfortable putting thinly veiled ”F— Joe Biden bumper stickers on their trucks, like a group of 12-year-old boys snickering over walkie-talkies because surely Mom and Dad don’t know that word really means penis.

Well, it’s certainly one way to express one’s feelings about the current President without resorting to actual profanity. But if Mr Horn has been triggered, maybe it’s because he left his safe space on the left coast.

    For those unfamiliar with “Let’s Go Brandon,” it’s a viral slogan that’s coded criticism of President Joe Biden. It started when an NBC Sports reporter suggested fans at an Oct. 2 Talladega race were chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” during an interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown. They weren’t. They were actually chanting “F— Joe Biden.”

    It’s all just so juvenile. So pathetic.

One wonders: was Mr Horn similarly appalled at this, from his adopted home state?

    Hundreds of Artists Have Come Together to Say ‘Fuck Trump’
    Los Angeles gallery iam8bit launched the ongoing virtual exhibit on the President’s birthday

    By Liz Ohanesian -June 17, 2020

    On Sunday, June 14, the Echo Park-based creative production studio and art gallery iam8bit launched fucktrump.art, a hybrid virtual exhibition and protest where all of the works read “Fuck Trump” and are available to download for free as web and print resolution files so that anyone can share the message online or IRL.

    The date of the launch was significant—it was Donald Trump’s birthday and Flag Day, as well as a day often used to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride—and the message was strong. Jon M. Gibson and Amanda White, co-founders of iam8bit, describe it as a “primal scream.”

    “It’s like punctuation for us at this point,” says White of the phrase “Fuck Trump,” adding that their hope is for “everyone who disagrees with the administration to be comfortable screaming it at the top of their lungs.”

Google search for “Fuck Trump signs” and you’ll get hundreds of images. But, perhaps for Mr Horn, that’s different somehow.

    But as I found myself thinking more about it, trying to find an historical parallel for this intersection of creeping illiberalism and giant oversized red shoes, it struck me how dangerous this moment in time really is.

    Because every minute spent shaking one’s head at the latest display of self-debasement by the GOP is a minute not spent on the insidious machinations behind the veil. Save for a few notable exceptions — who are currently being driven out of the party with pitchforks and tiki torches — in 2022 Republicanism is Trumpism.

You can follow the embedded link to read the rest, but it boils down to one thing: Mr Horn was using his sight of a “Let’s go, Brandon” bumper sticker primarily as the supposedly snappy beginning for his complaint that evil reich wing Republicans are trying to prevent legal voters from voting. No, we want legal voters to vote, but we want to restrict the ability of the left for cast fraudulent votes. I may have mocked him for his supposed triggering, but I doubt he actually was triggered; he just needed a starting hook for what he wanted to write.

Mr Horn suffers from a kind of denialism: he really can’t believe that other people would think differently from him, that other people might take different choices than he would. That’s not an uncommon problem for much of the American left.

References

References
↑1 In this, I am using the Urban Dictionary’s definition: “1.) *popular and well known definition* triggered is when someone gets offended or gets their feelings hurt, often used in memes to describe feminist, or people with strong victimization.”
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High water!

SSG Pico bought tickets for her and me to see the Oakland — never Las Vegas! — Raiders play the Baltimore Indianapolis Colts today, but the one road in or out from our farm is underwater. Our place isn’t in any danger; even the record flood of a guesstimated 41.00-foot crest didn’t get in the house, though it did get in the garage and crawlspace.

But we have sparktricity, propane, food, water and internet, so life is still good.

There has been some flooding damage in Madison County, but we don’t live in Madison.

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You’re despicable!

When Hillary Clinton derided half of the supporters of Donald Trump as a “basket of deplorables,” she created a meme that she hadn’t intended, with millions of people mocking her by calling themselves deplorables. Mrs Clinton later expressed regret for her choice of words, primarily because she was afraid it would cost her votes, but it was, fortunately, too late: following the 2016 elections, Mrs Clinton remained a private citizen.

One would think that Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, even as deeply unself-aware as she is, would understand that certain words used to describe your political opponents become words taht can be used to mock the speaker right back. So, when she calls Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) “2021’s most despicable villains,” she ought to be prepared for the quote from Daffy Duck: “You’re despicable!”

I suppose that depends on your definition of “wonderful.” From the wholly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, to the inconsistent yet authoritarian response to COVID-19, President Biden’s “wonderful” seems more like a wonderful gift to Republicans running for office in 2022.

The famously atheistic Miss Marcotte would probably be aghast that I’m listening to Father Ray Kelly, a parish priest in Ireland, singing a version of Hallelujah at a wedding, while I write this, but I digress. Despite my bad ears, I can hear music if there is no other background noise.

    He went into office taking the threat to democracy seriously, studying “How Democracies Die” by Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. His theory of how to meet the moment was a sound one: Prove to the public that democracy can work, and people will fight to keep it. So he focused his energies on passing Build Back Better, a massive social spending and economic reform package that was meant to be a New Deal-style rebuttal to the cynicism and disillusionment that allows authoritarianism thrive. There are reasons to criticize Biden’s approach — I certainly felt like he should have put more of a priority on shoring up electoral systems and imprisoning the coup ringleaders — but Biden was absolutely correct that any strategy to save democracy requires demonstrating its value to the public.

    Despite Biden’s boldness, however, here we are at the end of 2021, with fascists ascendant and the pro-democracy majority feeling demoralized. Biden’s approval ratings have been underwater for months, with more than half of Americans disapproving of his performance in office. Biden’s theory wasn’t wrong. Saving democracy does require showing that government can work. But Biden isn’t doing that. On the contrary, the message most Americans are getting is that he failed, Democrats failed, and maybe it’s time to give up fighting.

    The worst part of all of this is it’s mostly not Biden’s fault. Nor is it the fault of congressional Democrats, 96% of whom support Build Back Better and, almost certainly, some kind of bold democratic reforms to save election systems from Trump’s grubby little fingers. No, the fault lays entirely with two Senate Democrats, both of whom are awash in corruption: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Of course, what Miss Marcotte alleged was corruption was the normal business of candidates holding fund-raisers, and, shockingly, those fund raisers included people who are opposed to President Biden’s programs. Also shockingly, it seems that Senators Sinema and Manchin are supposed to represent the citizens of their states, all of the citizens of their states, and not just the Democratic Party.

In 2018, Senator Manchin was opposed in the Democratic primary by Paula Jean Sweerengin, a far more liberal candidate; the Democrats of the Mountain State rejected Miss Swearengin 111,589 (69.8%) to 48,302 (30.2%). Senator Manchin then went on to win the general election 290,510 (49.6%) to Republican Pat Morrissey’s 271,113 (46.3%).[1]Miss Swearengin won the 2020 Democratic senatorial nomination with 38.39% of the vote in a three-way contest, but was then defeated by incumbent Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito in the general … Continue reading

In 2020, West Virginians gave 545,382 (68.62%) of their votes to President Trump, and just 235,984 (29.68%) to Joe Biden; the Mountain State was second only to Wyoming in the strength of its support for Mr Trump.

Senator Manchin, it seems, represents the people who elected him, the people of West Virginia, and not the national Democratic Party. And that Miss Marcotte finds despicable.

Miss Marcotte has found success with her “edgy” writing, but she has found success preaching to those who have supported her positions all along; actually persuading others has never been her strong suit. It’s not exactly an attempt at persuasion to label the two Senators “despicable,” “sinister figures,” “these two jackasses,” or “snakes in the grass.”

I will admit to a sense of schadenfreude here: it’s always a good feeling when Miss Marcotte’s political views are frustrated because, in the end, what she wants is just bad for our country.

References

References
↑1 Miss Swearengin won the 2020 Democratic senatorial nomination with 38.39% of the vote in a three-way contest, but was then defeated by incumbent Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito in the general election, 547,454 (70.28%) to 210,309 (27.00%), an utter rejection of liberal policies by West Virginia voters. Miss Swearengin left the Democratic Party in 2021, complaining that it was too conservative, for the People’s Party, a hard-left successor to a draft socialist Bernie Sanders movement. Yeah, she’s way too left-wing for West Virginia.
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A couple of updates

We have previously reported on the arrests of three men for the murder of Mykel Waide in Lexington. However, it seems that the Commonwealth’s Attorney was unable to present sufficient evidence to get the grand jury to indict any of the three men accused of the killing:

    Lexington men no longer face murder charges in death of former Tates Creek student

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Monday, December 27, 2021 | 3:50 PM EST

    Three Lexington men are no longer facing murder charges in the death of a college student after a grand jury declined to indict two of them and prosecutors dropped the charge for the third.

    Antwone Davenport, Tayte Patton and Antonio Turner had all been charged with Mykel Waide’s death. Waide, who was 18 when he was shot and killed in August 2020, was set to start school at the University of Louisville the same week he died. He was also a former basketball player at Tates Creek High School.

    “A grand jury dismissal is without prejudice, meaning if new and or additional evidence is found the charges may be resubmitted to the grand jury for indictment,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn said. “Our office considers this to be an open case and those responsible for killing Mykel Waide will be held accountable.”

There’s more at the original.

We have also reported on the University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Swimming and Diving Team’s Will Thomas, a male who believes he’s female, and has been allowed to compete on the women’s team after having taken testosterone suppressants for a year. It seems that the real women on the women’s team considered a boycott:

    Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’ teammates considered boycotting final meet in protest

    By Yaron Steinbuch | Wednesday, December 29, 2021 | 1:49 PM EST | Updated: 3:42 PM EST

    UPenn 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.

    A group of UPenn swimmers were so upset by transgender athlete Lia Thomas’ advantages that they mulled boycotting their final home meet — but decided not to for fear they’d be banned from the Ivy League championship, according to a report.

    Thomas, 22, who has smashed several records at the University of Pennsylvania this season, has sparked outrage for being eligible under NCAA rules to swim in women’s collegiate events after taking one year of testosterone suppressants.

    A source close to the team of 41 women who considered the boycott told the Daily Mail that “they’ve been ignored by both Penn and the NCAA.”

    The source told the outlet that “there is a feeling among some of the girls that they should make some sort of statement, seize the opportunity while they have a spotlight on them to make their feelings about the issue known.”

However, in the end, they athletes decided against the boycott, because they viewed it as likely to end their ability to participate in the Ivy League championships in February.

    Another source told the Daily Mail that Thomas will likely blow away the upcoming competition.

    “It’ll be like the last couple meets. Lia will finish and nobody will give a s—. Then when the first biological female finishes, there will be a huge eruption of applause,” the source said.

Of course, the women on the team all have to worry about their futures, and whether they’ll be blacklisted for being “transphobic.” They could get kicked off the team, or even kicked out of school, because even in an Ivy League school, where everybody is supposed to be oh-so-smart, they can’t tell the difference between males and females . . . or if they can, they aren’t allowed to tell the truth about it.

But while the real women on the team have to keep quiet, it seems as though the spectators have made their views known, with their silence as Mr Thomas wins his races. The common people, it seems, have some common sense.

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Mochi

We have to keep Mochi inside on Mondays, until the garbage man has come and gone, because he’s deathly afraid of dogs, and Mochi barks at strangers. She’s never bitten anyone, and once you make friends with her, something which can be done in a single encounter, she’s a very loving dog.

Our yard is fenced, $3,100 worth of fence . . . and Mochi soon figured out that she can jump high enough to scramble over the corner of the gate. She runs across the road, into the Daniel Boone National Forest, to chase only the Lord knows what, she runs down to the river and the pond, to get muddy and wet, and our 8 acres are not nearly enough; her ‘territory’ is about 20 acres.

She’s a horrible dog: she wants to chase cars, and steal food off your plate. She’s the ultimate guard dog, because nothing can approach the house without her letting us know about it. But she also wants to cuddle, and we love her.

Robert Stacy McCain wrote about his dog here.

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Seen at Wawa

My thanks to William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove, who cross-posted here on the days I was away!

Driving back to Kentucky from the Keystone State on December 23rd, I stopped at the WaWa store on Pennsylvania Route 61, just north of Interstate 78, and saw something I’d never seen, in person, before: the WaWa had six — I think it was six; I didn’t actually count, and should have taken a quick picture, but didn’t — Tesla TSLA: (%) charging stations. This was at 3:45 PM EST.

Also see: William Teach: Climate Cult: Forget The Electric Vehicles You Can’t Afford. People Need To Drive Less

What I didn’t see were any Tesla’s actually being charged there. Oh, one of the charging stations was occupied, but by a mid-1990s, gasoline-engine beater car, using the charging area as a parking space.

Meanwhile, the store’s twelve or so gasoline pump queues, two pumps per queue, were fully occupied, with additional cars lined up to get fuel, and a fuel tanker was unloading gasoline or diesel into the underground storage tanks, because those vehicles are thirsty! I really should have taken pictures, on my phone, or as Sheriff Buford T Justice told his son, “Put the evidence in the car!”

I did pick up two boxes of WaWa coffee in Kuerig-cups for my wife and older daughter for Christmas.

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Brandon Makes Holders Of Student Loan Debt Mad

Biden is just working hard to make everyone mad

Biden says Americans must be ready to resume student loan payments next year, clashing with Democrats like AOC urging him to cancel the debt

President Joe Biden on Wednesday extended a pause on student loan payments that was set to expire on February 1, a decision praised by Democratic lawmakers who pressured him to make the move as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt American lives.

But at the same time, Biden signaled that he wants borrowers to resume paying off their loans once the new moratorium ends on May 1, placing him at odds with Democrats who have demanded that debt be wiped out.

“[We] know that millions of student loan borrowers are still coping with the impacts of the pandemic and need some more time before resuming payments,” Biden said in a statement. “Given these considerations, today my Administration is extending the pause on federal student loan repayments for an additional 90 days — through May 1, 2022 — as we manage the ongoing pandemic and further strengthen our economic recovery.”

No one is pausing you and I having to pay our mortgages, car loans, and other stuff. Loans we took out voluntarily. Same with student loans. They knew they had to pay them, yet, they often took them and either got a degree not worth the paper or obtained too much debt to repay properly. That’s their problem. Of course, you can’t simply repossess the degree. Provided they even obtained it. Why should they be given relief? Get a job? Work two. There should be no extension. Biden is correct that they should start paying. He shouldn’t extend this. Because you know the loan recipients will next get him to further extend it.

Under what statutory authority is there to extend the pause on repaying legal debt to creditors? Perhaps if the loans are from the federal government, not just the ones backed by Los Federales but owned by private companies.

“Meanwhile, the Department of Education will continue working with borrowers to ensure they have the support they need to transition smoothly back into repayment and advance economic stability for their own households and for our nation,” the president continued. “As we are taking this action, I’m asking all student loan borrowers to do their part as well: take full advantage of the Department of Education’s resources to help you prepare for payments to resume; look at options to lower your payments through income-based repayment plans; explore public service loan forgiveness; and make sure you are vaccinated and boosted when eligible.”

Wait, what was that last part? Did that need to be there?

Biden’s comments put him on a collision course with progressive lawmakers vowing to increase pressure on the administration to cancel student-loan debt for millions of borrowers. Americans owe an estimated $1.7 trillion in student loans, a record-breaking total, according to Federal Reserve data.

“Thank you! Next step: cancellation,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted along with a video of Biden’s announcement.

“I applaud President Biden for once again pausing federal student loan payments for 45 million Americans. Now let’s cancel it. All of it,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont tweeted.

A government of Men, not law.

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He feels like a woman

I do not know how many websites have, and publish, their own “stylebook,” but at The First Street Journal, I do. From that Stylebook:

    Those who claim to be transgender will be referred to with the honorific and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth; the site owner does not agree with the cockamamie notion that anyone can simply ‘identify’ with a sex which is not his own, nor that any medical ‘treatment’ or surgery can change a person’s natural sex; all that it can do is physically mutilate a person.

That is, of course, wholly at odds with the Associated Press Stylebook, which is used by many, though certainly not all, credentialed media sources, which 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.

And so we come to NBC News:

    Ivy League swimming champion becomes target of transphobic rhetoric

    Lia Thomas, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, has become the most recent target in the heated debate about trans women athletes.

    By Jo Yurcaba | Thursday, December 16, 2021 | 5:23 PM EST

    A swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania is the latest target in the culture-war debate over whether transgender girls and women should be allowed to participate on female sports teams.

    Lia Thomas, who came out as trans in 2019, set three school records and two national records at a meet this month.

    Since then, Thomas has faced criticism and verbal attacks from anti-trans groups, conservative media and, reportedly, even two teammates.

    Some of the headlines about Thomas’ wins said she “smashed” the records and continued her “dominant” season alongside pre-transition photos of her and using her previous name and male pronouns — practices known as deadnaming and misgendering.

As we have previously noted, Twitter bans “deadnaming” and “misgendering”, not allowing any discussion of whether the ‘transgendered’ really are the sex they claim to be rather than their biological sex — something The New York Times gave Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a ‘transgender’ activist who believes he is female, and goes by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy. space to claim actually promotes freedom of speech. I will confess to having difficulty with the notion that restricting speech somehow promotes freedom of speech. Were I to submit this article for publication to the Times — something of which I have no intention of doing — I would have to change all references to those deemed acceptable by their stylebook, and, in doing so, concede the argument that sex can be changed!

    Transgender advocates have condemned that coverage and some of the conversation about Thomas as transphobic. They said it mischaracterizes her victories to make it appear that transgender women are cheating just by being trans and implies that one trans woman winning means trans women generally are dominating women’s sports. They note that Thomas is competing within guidance issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

What I have pointed out is that Will Thomas and his swimming records, competing against biological women, prove that “trans women” are very different from real women. On Sunday, December 5th, Mr Thomas, won the 1,650 yard freestyle with a time of 15:59:71; the second-place finisher was his teammate Anna Sofia Kalandaze, who touched at 16:37:44 in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio. The difference between Mr Thomas’ and Miss Kalandaze’s times is 37.73 seconds.

Competitive swimming at the collegiate level involves races which are often won by fractions of a second. A victory of 37.73 seconds is extraordinary.

In the 500-yard freestyle final, Mr Thomas again defeated his teammate, Miss Kalandaze, who finished second, 4:34.06 to 4:48.99, a 14.93 second margin; Miss Kalandaze defeated the seventh-place finisher by 7.42 seconds, just half of the time she was behind Mr Thomas.

Mr Thomas time would have finished 15th in the men’s final, ahead of ten other male swimmers. The last place male swimmer in the 500 yard freestyle, Luke Scoboria of Bloomsburg University, finished at 4:42.78, 7.21 seconds ahead of Miss Kalandaze’s second-place time. His year of taking testosterone suppressants — whether he has undergone ‘sexual reassignment surgery’ is not something I have found in the published record — have obviously not done what the NCAA believe it would.

    Thomas’ critics have varying views. Some have used explicitly anti-transgender language and argue that trans women should be completely banned from women’s sports, while others argue that the NCAA’s policy regarding trans athletes’ participation isn’t strict enough.

    Thomas declined an interview with NBC News and has done only one recent interview, with the podcast SwimSwam. In that interview, she said she and her coaches expected that there would be “some measure of pushback” in response to her competing, but not “quite to the extent that it has blown up.”

    “I just don’t engage with it,” she said, regarding the criticism. “It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t, and that’s all I’ll say on that.”

Of course Mr Thomas does not wish to engage with it, because, regardless of how he feels about things, his swimming records point out the differences, shout out the differences, between males and females. I get it: he really wants to feel like a woman, but he just isn’t one. Even he has to wonder about all of this, because with every meet he swims, every record he breaks, he is demonstrating the differences between himself as a ‘trans woman,’ and real women.

The Daily Mail reported:

    ‘Usually everyone claps, everyone is yelling and cheering when someone wins a race. Lia touched the wall and it was just silent in there. When fellow Penn swimmer Anna Kalandadze finished second, the crowd erupted in applause.’

Simply put, regardless of what Jo Yurcaba says, regardless of what Bruce Jenner or Bradley Manning or Will Thomas believe, the crowd of ordinary people knew what had happened, knew what was going on, and knew that the winner was not a real female swimmer.

This is the part I simply do not understand: if Mr Thomas believes that he really is a woman, why is he doing things which make the differences between him and real women so apparent?

It is wholly politically incorrect to say that men and women are different, but I’m not exactly politically correct; men and women are different, and somehow, some way, every human society about which we have any knowledge knew about and understood those difference. Every bird, every reptile, and every mammal, can tell the difference between males and females of their own species; it’s necessary for survival. Some mammals, cats and dogs for instance, appear to be able to distinguish between human males and females. It is only now, among our 21st century liberals that that innate ability has been educated right out of them.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a ‘transgender’ activist who believes he is female, and goes by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy.