As dumb as a box of rocks

Sadly, while ignorance can be cured through education, there’s really no cure for stupid!

I got this image via a tweet from Guy Benson, and it’s just shaking my head stupid. Just what do they believe that the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs think about “feminist values of protecting women and queer people of color”? According to Amnesty International:

Women’s and girls’ rights
According to the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, 29 women were killed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by their family members in apparent cases of domestic violence. In September, the Gaza authorities prevented sisters Wissam and Fatimah al-Assi, aged 24 and 20 respectively, from pursuing complaints for domestic violence through courts by impeding them from accessing a prosecutor to testify.

LGBTI people’s rights
Authorities failed to prevent and investigate homophobic and transphobic threats and attacks.

On 9 July, security forces stood by and watched as a mob beat youths and children participating in a parade organized by Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah that included rainbow flags. The attack came amid a wave of incitement to violence and hate speech against LGBTI people and feminists that the authorities failed to investigate.

The last I heard, Amnesty International was not some evil reich-wing organization!

Male homosexual activity is a criminal offence, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment, and worse. From The Jerusalem Post, written well before the current unpleasantness:

According to Palestinian law, being gay is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Gaza, it’s punishable by death. In 2016, Hamas executed a senior commander by firing squad in Gaza for homosexual activity. LGBTQ+ Palestinians have no legal protections against discrimination, are forbidden from adopting and gay marriage is not recognized in any capacity.

In this Pride month alone, the LGBTQ+ community has been threatened and silenced in Ramallah, forcing a concert of east Jerusalem’s Bashar Murad to be canceled when anti-gay activists marched into a concert venue and demanded the organizers cancel the event for the LGBTQ+ community.

According to Wikipedia, Northwestern University has an acceptance rate of just 7%, so one would think that the student body would be fairly intelligent, but if you did think that, apparently you’d be wrong. The University has a guesstimated annual cost of attendance of a whopping $91,290, including room-and-board.

But it doesn’t matter: at least their College Feminists are as dumb as a box of rocks.

Palestinian liberation is an intersectional issue, and goes hand in hand with feminist values of protecting women and queer people of color. As intersectional feminists, we are against all forms of oppression, including settler colonialism.

Really? As students in Evanston, Illinois, they are living on the land of the Illini and Ho-Chunk Indian tribes; have they shown their opposition to “settler colonialism” by giving up their homes and property to those tribes? Or is it the usual: they oppose other people’s settler colonialism, but have Reasons to keep what they have personally?

Ignorance, as stated earlier, can be cured by education, by teaching the person who doesn’t know something what he doesn’t know! But one would think that the Northwestern University College Feminists would have learned by now that Islam forbids homosexual activity, and most of the nations in the Muslim Middle East have legal prohibitions on such, prohibitions which are of varying severity, up to and including death, especially in Iran, which supports Hamas to the tune of an estimated $100 million per year. One would have thought that the College Feminists would have heard of the dissent in Iran which started over the religious police’s killing in custody of an Iranian woman for not properly wearing a head scarf.

Perhaps the College Feminists simply don’t understand the meaning of the word they like to throw around, intersectionality:

Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how individuals’ various social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.[1] Examples of these factors include gendercastesexraceethnicityclasssexualityreligiondisabilityweightspecies[2] and physical appearance.[3] These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.[4][5] However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality.[6]

Intersectionality broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, which largely focused on the experiences of women who were whitemiddle-class and cisgender,[7] to include the different experiences of women of colorpoor womenimmigrant women, and other groups. Intersectional feminism aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women’s differing experiences and identities.

Does that sound like gobbledygook to you? It should, but it seems that the College Feminists have assumed the position that all people who are supposedly oppressed have something in common, when they really do not. Were Hamas to actually take over, and the Northwestern University College Feminists living there, they’d be among the first ones lined up against the wall.

Feminism and progressive politics are things which can exist in Western civilizations, another term they’d probably hate, but it’s only under the enlightenment and Christian European and English-speaking North American societies where these things are even allowed to exist. The things people have the freedom to do and say in Iceland and Ireland and Israel are not allowed in Iran or Iraq or Indonesia, and trying them can get you beaten, imprisoned or even killed.

For $91,290 a year, you’d think that they could have learned that.

Everything the climate activists want will cost you more money The wealthy activists just can't understand that not everyone can afford this stuff

As Reichsstatthalter Kathy Hochul (NSDAP-NY) seeks to ban new gas range installations in the Empire State, an ad for the ZLINE 48 in. Fingerprint Resistant Stainless Steel 6.0 cu.ft. 7 Gas Burner/Electric Oven Range (RAS-SN-48) showed up in my morning feed. We’re not in the market for a new range at all, and, at a sale price of $5039.96, marked down from $5,599.95 — “shipping calculated at checkout” — it was nothing we’d have bought anyway.

Experience Attainable Luxury® with the ZLINE 48″ DuraSnow® Dual Fuel Professional Range. ZLINE’s dual fuel range combines a high performance gas stovetop with an electric convection oven. Providing both professional aesthetics and functionality, this dual fuel stove provides the ultimate luxury experience for a fraction of the cost. ZLINE’s exclusive DuraSnow® finish features a timeless non-directional fingerprint-resistant finish, allowing you to easily combat everyday wear and tear. Achieve optimal results with cooktop cooking power from 4,200 up to 18,000 BTUs provided with sealed burners. Rely on precise and even heating for every homemade dish with an electric convection oven. Enjoy an ultra-deep oven capacity with a three-layered insulated glass oven for efficient cooking every use. With upgraded premium features such as SmoothSlide ball-bearing oven racks, dual lighting, and adjustable legs, this range is certain to wow both the chef and guests alike. Assembled with the highest quality materials on the market, this range offers a durable, scratch-resistant porcelain cooktop and ZLINE’s exclusive single piece cast iron grate. Cook with ease with StayPut Italian hinges, providing a safe baking environment to enjoy for years to come. ZLINE stands by the longevity and durability of their professional dual fuel stoves, while ensuring further protection and peace of mind with a worry-free warranty. The ZLINE Dual Fuel Range is packaged in multiple boxes and will ship out together next business day when in stock.

Of course, the Reichsstatthalter’s wealthy friends will have ways to get around New York’s ban on the installation of new gas service!

So, why did the ad appear in my feed in the first place? Noting William Teach’s story on a Washington Post article, “How fast do you have to buy EVs and heat pumps to avoid the worst effects of climate change?” and it’s first lines: Continue reading

Has your income increased 58.39% since November of 2020? Gasoline prices have increased that much!

With Thanksgiving just a week away, many people have their minds on travel plans, to visit extended family a long way away. Fortunately for us, Thanksgiving travel means a whopping 18 miles, to my sister’s house.

Screen capture by D R Pico, November 16, 2023.

Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel gave us an interesting map of fuel prices across the fruited plain, and it shows just what you’d expect: in states where the government wants a deeper bite into your wallet, it’s going to cost you more to visit the relatives!

Here in the Bluegrass State, the average price as shown by the American Automobile Association is $3.037 per gallon, though the station closest to me has $2.959 per gallon for regular posted. I pay close attention to Pennsylvania, where we used to live, and the average price for regular is currently $3.607 per gallon, 57¢ higher than in Kentucky.

Kentucky is right in the middle when it comes to state taxes on gasoline, 26th in the nation at 30.10¢ per gallon, while Pennsylvania is third, charging 62.20¢ per gallon. As you’d obviously guess, the Pyrite State, California, tops the list, taxing its people.

Interestingly, Illinois, which has the second highest tax rate on fuel, at 66.5¢ per gallon, shares a birder with Missouri, with the second lowest, 17.47¢. Continue reading

Couldn’t we build something like this in Kensington?

In the two-part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine entitled Past Tense, Part 1 and Part 2, a transporter accident lands Commander Benjamin Sisko, Dr Julian Bashir, and Lt Commander Jadzia Dax in San Francisco, in the year 2024. From Wikipedia:

Sisko and Bashir are found by a pair of police officers, who believe them to be vagrants and warn them to get off the streets. They are escorted to a “Sanctuary District”, a walled-off ghetto that is used to contain the poor, the sick, the mentally disabled, and anyone else who cannot support themselves.

Well, who would have thought that it would be so prescient!

Liberal City Builds Walls To Protect Elite, Clears Out Homeless

by Andrew Sanders | Tuesday, November 14, 2023 Continue reading

Money talks When you piss off your donors, they might just choose not to continue to give you money!

The First Street Journal has covered the backlash of deep-pockets donors against the outbreak of anti-Semitism on our college campuses. Now it seems as though the colleges are very upset when those deep-pocket donors exercise their freedom of speech. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Penn’s donor backlash raises questions about how much influence philanthropists should have

Ronald Lauder told Penn president Liz Magill he didn’t want faculty involved in the Palestine Writes festival teaching at the Penn institute that bears his family’s name.

by Susan Snyder | Sunday, November 12, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST Continue reading

You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!

At some point, you’d think that education professionals, all of whom have collegiate degrees, would be smarter than this, but I guess if you did think that, you’d be wrong. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A guidance counselor at a Bucks County middle school had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student, police say

Kelly Schutte had multiple sexual encounters with the teen this year, both in her car and at the teen’s home in West Rockhill Township, according to police.

by Vinny Vella | Friday, November 10, 2023 | 12:52 PM EST | Updated: 2:21 PM EDT Continue reading

Another deep-pockets Ivy League donor tells the pro-Hamas students to go to Hell Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $2,000,000

We noted, just yesterday, that despite the noisy pro-Palestinian demonstrations on our college campuses and in large cities, only about 20% of Democrats support Hamas, and that, even surveying only those in the 18-to-24-year-old age bracket, Hamas enjoyed less support than Israel. The radicals are both the noisy and stupid ones.

As for colleges themselves? We have also noted how some deep-pockets donors are closing their checkbooks and job offers in the face of the anti-Semitism being displayed. Now, yet another college is losing a billionaire donor. From Forbes: Continue reading

Rashida Tlaib and the rest of the Usual Suspects prove the need for a strong, independent, affirmatively Jewish Israel!

We are being told by the people the credentialed media use as spokesthings, like Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the now-censured congresscritter from Detroit and a ‘Palestinian-American,’ if such an oxymoron can actually exist, that all the Palestinians want is their freedom. They don’t hate Israelis specifically, or Jews more generally, but just want their freedom. Mrs Tlaib even tried to claim that the mantra, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” as not being anti-Israeli at all, but no one actually believed her.

However, there’s an obvious question: do the (purported) leaders of the pro-Palestinian movement in the West actually represent the crowds behind them. The tweet I retweeted from @StopAntisemitism is just one of hundreds they’ve posted, documenting people living in the United States and Canada showing us exactly who they are. The Stop Antisemitism site is doing great work in exposing and identifying those people, and letting their colleges or employers know just who they are, and many have found their way to the unemployment line. If you think that’s a bad thing, just imagine how employers would react if one of their employees was caught on video calling for the death of [insert virtually forbidden slang for Negroes here].

Of course, even those stupid enough perhaps to want to say that kind of thing about blacks are generally not stupid enough to say it on tape, which means that they are at least not as stupid as the anti-Semites! Continue reading

Three pages of Nashville shooter’s notebooks leaked

Steven Crowder, host of Louder with Crowder, a daily political podcast and YouTube channel with commentary segments, somehow got possession of photographs of three pages of the ‘Death Day’ notebook of Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old white woman who was so mentally ill that she thought she was a male named ‘Aiden,’ and who killed six people at the Covenant School outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Plenty of other people, including Robert Stacy McCain, have commented on Miss Hale’s notebook — I can’t seriously call it a ‘manifesto’ — and the fact that Miss Hale was just plain off-her-rocker.

Rather, what interests me is the reaction from the authorities: Continue reading