Category Archives: Uncategorized
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
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.
Brandon Makes Holders Of Student Loan Debt Mad
Biden is just working hard to make everyone mad
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.
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
| ↑1 | Chad Malloy is a ‘transgender’ activist who believes he is female, and goes by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy. |
|---|
And what could have happened had the school district done otherwise?
The idiocy of ‘transgenderism’ strikes again:
Missouri school district on the hook for $4 million for not letting transgender student use desired restroom
by Adam Sabes | Wednesday, December 15, 2021 | 9:52 PM
A Missouri school district has been ordered to pay a former student $4 million after a jury ruled that the district discriminated against a transgender student by not allowing him to use the boys’ restroom.
A jury in Jackson County, Missouri ruled on Monday that Blue Springs School District discriminated against a transgender student by not letting him use the boys’ restroom or locker rooms at several schools, including the middle school and the Freshman Center.
In 2014, the family of RJ Appleberry, the student, filed a lawsuit against the Blue Springs School District after the district allegedly blocked him from using the boys’ bathroom and locker room, according to Fox 4 Kansas City.
The article states that the student transitioned from female to male at the age of nine years old.
According to the lawsuit, after amending his birth certificate in 2014, he was still denied access to the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at several schools, including Delta Woods Middle School and the Freshman Center.
In total, the jury awarded $175,000 to the former student in compensatory damages in addition to $4 million in punitive damages, and the plaintiff has also requested that the school district cover the attorney fees as well.
A spokesperson for the Blue Springs School District said that they disagree with the verdict and will be “seeking appropriate relief from the trial court and court of appeals if necessary.”
There’s more at the original.
Miss Appleberry was a minor, when her parents and she filed the lawsuit, and the obvious question is: had Miss Appleberry had sexual mutilation procedures sex reassignment surgery performed at the time? Missouri has seen legislation which would make such illegal on minors, but it is not clear that such would have been prohibited when she began her ‘transition’ nine years ago. The question that no one seems willing to ask is: what are the dangers of allowing someone with female genitals into the bathrooms and locker rooms full of hormone-riddled real teenaged boys? We already know what happened when the Loudoun County public schools allowed a boy who sometimes wore a skirt to freely use the girls’ bathrooms. There is a risk of sexual assault!
The Blue Springs School District would have been equally liable if Miss Appleberry had been allowed to use the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms if some real boy decided that the chance to see, and perhaps use, some female genitals in such settings. That such would have constituted rape on the part of the assailant would not relieve the school district of the liability of allowing such a set up to occur.
We bought a house!
Starting the bathroom renovation.
We knew we’d have to do a bit of renovation in the bathroom, but the more my nephew Nate and I dug into it, the more s(tuff) we found. Photos below the fold. Continue reading
Girls can’t be boys and boys can’t be girls
Will Thomas, from his University of Pennsylvania biography page.
Will Thomas was, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s athletic department’s swimming and diving 2018-19 team roster, a sophomore member of the men’s team. He was “Second-team All-Ivy in the 500 free, 1,000 free, and 1,650 free after reaching the ‘A’ final of the Ivy League Championships and finishing second overall in each of the events.” The 2019-20 roster lists him as Lia Thomas, and states that he “Competed in four of Penn’s eight regular season events (as a male, and) won the 500 free against Villanova (Nov. 15).” The 2017-18 roster notes that he was “Ivy League Championships qualifier in 500 free (A final), 1000 free (A final), 1650 free (A final).”
Will Thomas, prior to ‘transitioning,’ from the Daily Mail.
Penn, an Ivy League school, erased Mr Thomas portrait from those rosters. For the 2021-22 season, he is now listed as Lia Thomas on the roster, complete with his portrait after ‘transitioning’. His individual biography page no longer lists his top times, or his past accomplishments on the men’s team, and simply notes that “All 2020-21 Ivy League winter sports were canceled on November 12 due to a nationwide outbreak of coronavirus COVID-19.”
To no one’s surprise, Mr Thomas, now claiming to be a female and competing against women, is setting the pool on fire. From the London Daily Mail:
‘It’s bringing people to tears’: SECOND UPenn swimmer speaks out against trans Lia Thomas competing for the women’s team and says the crowd was silent when she won most recent meet
- An second anonymous female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has spoken out to say she and her teammates are upset by transgender teammate
- Lia Thomas, 22, smashed three US swimming records at an Akron, Ohio contest last weekend
- Thomas also gave an interview to SwimSwam touting the fairness of inclusive but controversial IOC guidelines allowing transgender athletes to compete
- Thomas previously competed for the school’s men’s team for three years before joining the women’s team with her last men’s competition in November 2019
By James Gordon | Published: 18:29 EST, 10 December 2021 | Updated: 21:33 EST, 10 December 2021
A second female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has aired her frustrations and fury as her transgender teammate Lia Thomas continues to smash records.
The entire team has been ‘strongly advised’ not to speak to the media and the second swimmer has been granted anonymity.
Nevertheless, the teammate stepped forward to tell how UPenn swimmers are ‘angry’ over what has been perceived as a ‘lack of fairness’ as Thomas smashes record after record in the pool.
On Sunday, December 5th, Mr Thomas, won the 1,650 meter 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.
‘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.’
Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Waking up from wokeness. People can tell when leftism has degenerated into idiocy.
What stings the swimmers the most is that the records are being set by a swimmer who didn’t even make the first-team when she was competing as a man in the All-Ivy league during the 2018-19 season.
However, as a woman, Thomas broke 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:34:06 last Friday at the Zippy meet. She raced to victory 14 seconds ahead of Kalandaze – the swimmer she beat by 38 seconds on Sunday.
And then on Saturday, she won the 200-yard freestyle in 1:41:93 – seven seconds ahead of her nearest rival, giving her the fastest female US time ever for that race too.
As per our Stylebook, The First Street Journal refers to those who claim to be transgender with the honorifics and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth, but we do not change the direct quotes of others.
The Daily Mail article refers to a second anonymous female athlete on the team speaking out; the first was quoted in this from Fox News:
“Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach [Mike Schnur] just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” the female Penn swimmer said during a phone interview.
“When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake,” she added.
Why anonymity? The first swimmer to speak out said that she feared for her ability to find employment after being graduated from college for sharing her opinion about a transgender teammate. I’m retired; I can say what I wish without having to worry about getting fired for it.
There’s a Twitter hashtag, #TransWomenAreWomen, but when I hear about and read about people like Mr Thomas, a man male who went through puberty as a male, who competed athletically as a male, all of whose experiences growing up were as a male, I am hearing about someone who wants so desperately to be female that he has gone through all sorts of medical, and I assume, surgical, treatments to try to become female, yet who is doing everything he can to prove to us that he isn’t female.
The crowd at the Zippy Invitational Event knew what was happening right in front of their eyes; they could see the differences between someone born male, competing against real women. Whatever the political beliefs of the spectators, of the coaches, and the other athletes are, common sense was smacking them right in the face.
We can feel sorry for those who are consumed with the idea that they are really the opposite sex from what their genes and their bodies say they are. But having sympathy for them does not and should not overcome reality. Will Thomas was conceived as male, he was born as male, he grew up as male, and he will always be a male.
The Patriot Front marches
Twitter was full of stuff on this march held by the Patriot Front.
I see @ProjectLincoln had a field trip this weekend pic.twitter.com/TlWSJAdvjf
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 5, 2021
Much was made of the marchers being masked, masked to conceal their identities rather than any submission to COVID-19 masking requirements, and it looked so staged that many though it had to be a joke, a set-up by the Lincoln Project or some other silliness group. The group marched in quasi military order, and they were carrying American flags. To the left, carrying the flag is apparently a hate symbol. That the marchers were masked led to cries of outrage by the left, the same left which thought nothing about antifa marching masked throughout 2020’s summer of riots.
The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.
And that’s the point: the Patriot Front exercised their constitutional rights of freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. Unlike the left’s Mostly Peaceful Protests™ of last year, the Patriot Front was peaceful. They assaulted no one, and they set no buildings on fire.
The masks? Given how the feds were using facial recognition software to identify and prosecute people who took part in the January 6th Capitol kerfuffle, and have held some of the charged without bail, despite not having charged them with any violent offences, who can blame them? Antifa have largely gotten away with violence, mayhem, looting and arson by going masked, so why shouldn’t the Patriot Front use the same tactic during a peaceful protest. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the patriot Front as a white supremacist group, and tries to get members fired from their jobs, so yeah, it’s important to the members.
You don’t have to agree with the group’s message to support their right to speak and assemble as they please.
As people get tired of living in fear, fear must be stoked again, to enable greater government control
It seems that the plebeians have been getting a little bit too complacent, so, once again, fear has to be ramped up. From CNBC:
- “Frankly, omicron will dominate and overwhelm the whole world in three to six months,” Singapore doctor Leong Hoe Nam told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia.”
- New vaccines targeting omicron are a “nice idea” but won’t be practical because of the transmissibility of the strain, he said.
- Experts don’t know exactly how contagious the highly mutated omicron variant is, but the virus’ spike protein — which binds to human cells — has mutations associated with higher transmission and a decrease in antibody protection.
Omicron will likely ‘dominate and overwhelm’ the world in 3-6 months, doctor says
by Abigail Ng | Thursday, December 2, 2021 | 2:13 AM EST
SINGAPORE — The new Covid variant omicron will likely “overwhelm the whole world” in the coming months, according to a Singapore-based infectious disease doctor.
While vaccines against the strain can be developed quickly, they need to be tested over three to six months to prove that they can provide immunity against the variant, Dr. Leong Hoe Nam of Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital said Wednesday.
“But frankly, omicron will dominate and overwhelm the whole world in three to six months,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia.”
Delta, the strain that is currently accounts for 99% of Covid infections, started becoming more common in the Indian state of Maharashtra in March 2021, and was dominant globally by July, according to Reuters.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel on Monday said it will take months to develop and ship a vaccine that specifically targets the omicron variant.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla also said shots could be ready in less than 100 days, or slightly over three months.
“Nice idea, but honestly, it is not practical,” Leong said of a vaccine that specifically targets omicron. “We won’t be able to rush out the vaccines in time and by the time the vaccines come, practically everyone will be infected omicron given this high infectious and transmissibility.”
Are you terrified yet? Are you quaking in fear? Are you ready to surrender more of your rights, your freedoms, your liberty, to those who know better than you, those who only want to protect you, for your own good?
Dr Leong is in Singapore, and should have no influence on US policy, but, not to worry, we have our own Dr Anthony Fauci:
- “The profile of the mutations strongly suggest that it’s going to have an advantage in transmissibility and that it might evade immune protection that you would get,” U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Dr Fauci does have the President’s ear.
The CNBC article included this video, with Dr Syra Madad, an infectious disease expert and a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is part of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
And that’s the key: she may be an infectious disease expert, but she’s part of the Kennedy School of Government! She’s ‘urging’ everybody to mask up and get tested frequently, but when someone connected to a school of government ‘urges’ something, we all know that significant non-compliance will result in that asked to become something mandated.