Archive for June, 2021
23rd June 2021
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From Planned Parenthood to Satanism, AmazonSmile encourages shoppers to donate to some extreme charities — at least 216 different groups. But multiple prominent conservative groups aren’t even allowed to participate.
Amazon, which is on track to be America’s largest retailer next year, launched its charity program AmazonSmile in 2013. The company has banned multiple conservative organizations since then, because it relies on the anti-conservative Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to decide what groups qualify for the program.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Satanists, Planned Parenthood and More: 216 Crazy AmazonSmile Charities
23rd June 2021
ZMan not only pulls back the curtain but he jerks it completely off the rod.
A popular concept in right wing politics is the gatekeeper or sometimes called the controlled opposition. This is the person or group that appears to be in opposition to the Left, but is an insulation layer between the Left and genuine critics. The function of the gatekeeper is to prevent people from abandoning the political morality of the Left, while at the same time making sure to lose every fight with the Left. They channel opposition into positions that can never succeed.
Ben Shapiro is the most obvious example. His primary role is to funnel all opposition into a dead end. His answer to the tech monopolies, for example, is to tell people to build their own new internet. After all, only a communist would demand the government prevent private actors from trampling your rights. Of course, he always tone policing the language of the people he claims to represent. The point is also to cleanse the language of rhetoric that could be effective against the Left.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Gatekeeper Is Broken
23rd June 2021
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Tribal societies don’t have the animus against cheating that WEIRD societies do.
Yes, that includes the Chinese and Koreans. If you’ve ever been to graduate school with Chinese or Korean students, you know that most of them plagiarize and cheat whenever possible, as a matter of course.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Syria and Sudan Turn Off the Internet to Suppress … Cheating by Kids Sitting Exams
23rd June 2021
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A Michigan judge last year turned loose an accused murderer who is now suspected of killing two people in Detroit, and is back in jail.
Detroit police on Tuesday named Orlando Whitfield, 32, as a person of interest in the gruesome slaying of a “31-year-old man and his 27-year-old girlfriend inside a home on the city’s northwest side. . . . The couple’s 9-month-old infant was luckily found unharmed inside.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Impeach Judge Carol Kuhnke
23rd June 2021
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“Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.”
In a recent graphic of the top 100 organizations for donations to political candidates by employees, the only two that were distinctly more pro-Trump than pro-Democrat were the Marines and the NYPD. And while 97% of Harvard donors donated to Biden, only about 70% of the Marines and NYPD donated to Trump.
Still, I suspect that scared the heck out of Democrats: they’ve got 98% of the institutions more or less on their side, but NOT the two you’d most want to have in your foxhole.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on How and Why Is Conquest’s Second Law True?
23rd June 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd June 2021
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I’ll bet you thought Rolling Stone was a magazine about music. Nope. It’s full Narrative mode.
A recent exposé showed how billionaires dodge taxes on their wealth. The bigger scandal is how the rich pay an army of lawyers, accountants, and more to hide trillions from any government
Apparently this has come as a surprise to certain people.
If one has trillions, surely it’s rational to spend millions to defend the rest from predation through taxation? Nowhere is it suggested that these activities violate the law; the gravamen of the article is the apparent moral depravity of actually desiring to (lawfully) minimize tax liability. (The swine!)
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Inside the Shadowy Industry Where the Uber-Rich Pay Millions to Hide Trillions
23rd June 2021
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One of the most curious things about America is how many of our most celebrated billionaires sound like socialists. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett love talking about how more and more of their wealth should be taxed. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, enabling it to wage relentless war on the Republicans.
That’s why it seemed a little funny for the socialists at National Public Radio to report some public hatred of Bezos as news. The headline was “Tens Of Thousands Sign Petition To Stop Jeff Bezos From Returning To Earth.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Ban Billionaire Jeff Bezos From Earth?
22nd June 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
22nd June 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd June 2021
Coca-Cola Diversity Policy Risks Violating Anti-Discrimination Laws, Shareholders Warn
Professors Call For Hate Speech Protections To Be Extended To Animals They’re so oppressed.
San Francisco Walgreens shoplifter seen filling bag with stolen goods arrested while ‘clearing shelves’: cops
The Democrats Have an Elitism Problem. Sheldon Whitehouse Is the Latest Example (Newsweek) Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then; Newsweek wanders away from the Narrative.
US Olympic athlete Chelsea Wolfe threatened to burn flag on podium The whole Trans thing may not succeed in destroying U.S. participation in the Olympics, but its increasing politicization will certainly destroy any lingering pretense of having an audience.
Quid Pro Quo? Amazon-Funded Progressive Group Calls Company ‘No. 1 Investor in America’
Colorado Mayor Suspends Pledge of Allegiance at Town Meetings There must be a lot of Californians moving to Colorado.
A Court Ruled Rachel Maddow’s Viewers Know She Offers Exaggeration and Opinion, Not Facts
Woman Briefly Identifies As Man To Avoid Long Bathroom Line Babylon Bee.
California will pay off all past due rent
US Govt Seizes News Websites Across MidEast, Including Iran’s PressTV
National Popular Vote Compact Would Disfranchise Smaller and Rural States
“Out Of Order!” Colorado Mayor Bans Pledge Of Allegiance, Then Snaps At Meeting Attendees Who Recite It Anyway Time to leave.
On The Mean Streets Of America, The Gun Battles Never Seem To End…
Sesame Street Airs 4-Hour-Long Special Where The Count Counts All 471 Genders Babylon Bee.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
22nd June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
22nd June 2021
Vaccines Exhibit “Reduced Efficacy” Against “Delta” Variant, WHO Doctor Warns
New Study Links Ivermectin To “Large Reductions” In COVID-19 Deaths
World Health Organization Says Do Not Give Children Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine Shots
We Just Got Even More Proof That Stay-at-Home Orders Lethally Backfired
Kremlin: People Without Vaccine, Immunity in Russia Will Have Limited Work Options
Fauci Pal Daszak Finally Fired From Commission Investigating COVID Origins
Nursing Home Deaths Up 32 Percent in 2020 Amid Pandemic
Flawed modelling is condemning Britain to lockdown
Kamala Harris Trains Activists To Pressure People Into Getting Vaccinated
New Harvard Data (Accidentally) Reveal How Lockdowns Crushed The Working Class While Leaving Elites Unscathed
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
22nd June 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
22nd June 2021
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Hint: It’s not for your benefit.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why Utilities Want to Control Your Smart Thermostat Sometimes
22nd June 2021
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
— James 2: 1-4 (ESV)
Sound at all familiar?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Quotation of the Day
22nd June 2021
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Kristen Clarke, now the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, has filed a brief on behalf of the United States arguing that a West Virginia law barring boys from participating on girls’ sports teams violates Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia cast a key vote confirming Clarke. Ed Whelan aptly calls this a case of no naïve deed going unpunished.
Clarke’s brief argues that the 11-year-old biological male who wants to try out for Bridgeport Middle School’s girls’ cross-country and track teams “is a girl.” Therefore, the argument goes, the West Virginia law unlawfully “targets girls who are transgender.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Kristen Clarke Attacks Law Barring Boys From Participating in Girls’ Sports
22nd June 2021
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The latest news out of radical racial justice land would be terrifying if it weren’t so damn funny. BET studios actually dropped a trailer for a new movie titled “Karen,” a flick about a terrifying “entitled white woman” who terrorizes her new African American neighbors.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on ‘I’ll Tell The MANAGER.’ Horror Movie With Racist White Suburban Female Villain Debuts Trailer
22nd June 2021
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Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi seems a somewhat clarifying figure. He is the head of regime’s judiciary. He is under sanction by the United States for his role in the mass execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. He earned his nickname the hangman honestly. See Mariam Memarsadeghi’s Tablet backgrounder “Meet ‘The Butcher,’ Iran’s New President Ebrahim Raisi” and Bret Stephens’s New York Times column “Iran Bets on Religion, Repression and Revolution.”
The AP quoted a senior official of Amnesty International upon Raisi’s election last week: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.”
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Hope Springs Supreme
22nd June 2021
ZMan considers alternatives.
Alternative history is one of those things that should be more popular in Hollywood, as it opens the door for creativity. “What if the South won the Civil War” would let the filmmaker run wild with all sorts of claims about the past, for example. For the same reason, it should be more popular with people in general. It makes for a good start to a campfire story. “Imagine if our enemies from the past had won and we were forced to live in a world of their creation…” is a good scary story.
For whatever reason, alternative history is not very popular. Revisionist history, on the other hand is popular. In fact, revisionism, outside of one subject, is the norm in the history departments of the West. The only thing historians do is question the official narrative of various historical events. The new narrative usually tries to explain the past according to the new morality. Fitting the past into the great story justifying the moral claims of the people in charge is the point of history.
Why bother considering an ‘alternative history’ when you can just change the Narrative to make the Official History reflect your preferred alternative? 1619 Project, anyone? Tulsa ‘Massacre’, anyone?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Alternative Ruminations
22nd June 2021
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Outsourcing reaches its limits.
I wonder how many poor schmucks behind the counter are going to be shot because of this?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on A CCTV Company Is Paying Remote Workers in India to Yell at Armed Robbers
22nd June 2021
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A pandemic is as good as a war in shaking up people’s expectations of what is and is not possible.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Retail Workers Are Quitting at Record Rates for Higher-Paying Work: ‘My Life Isn’t Worth a Dead-End Job’
22nd June 2021
CNN.
This is a major production about — you guessed it — the January 6 incident. The Narrative Media are desperately trying to build this molehill into a mountain, hoping that it will divert attention from the volcano of Antifa/BLM violence that has extended over the Era of Covid.
It won’t work, of course; there isn’t any there, there. Not even Eisenstein could turn this police-facilitated college weekend into an ‘insurrection’ except in the minds of the Anointed, who REALLY REALLY needed some sort of squirrel to attract the attention of the left side of the Bell Curve.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Paths to Insurrection
22nd June 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
21st June 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
21st June 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
21st June 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
21st June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
21st June 2021
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I have no objection to letting the Afghan people suffer under the rule of the Taliban, since that appears to be what they are determined to do.
Pity to lose our great live-fire training area, though.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Taliban Take Key Afghan District, Adding to String of Wins
21st June 2021
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At present, disorder is progressives’ most vexing governance challenge. This is illustrated just as plainly by the Jazmine Headley incident Barron describes as the street crisis in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. The Jazmine Headley incident centered around a “victimless crime.” Those are some of the hardest crimes to fight. When public safety authorities concern themselves with “victimless” crimes, that seems to violate John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle”: why should behavior that directly harms no one be a punishable offense?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Municipal Deep State
21st June 2021
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News accounts have been swirling for days (though conspicuously not in the NY Times, Washington Post, etc) that a very high ranking Chinese intelligence official (some reports say it is Dong Jingwei, the vice minister for state security) has defected to the U.S., and is confirming the lab leak hypothesis for COVID-19, as well as warning the U.S. of extensive penetration by Chinese agents.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on What’s Up with the Reported Chinese Defector?
21st June 2021
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The demonization of the police in New York City and the criminalization of normal police behavior accelerated under Mayor de Blasio. Social media and cell phones have certainly amplified the tendency. Arresting a resisting subject is never pretty: it can involve multiple officers pulling someone to the ground, manipulation of limbs and joints in directions counter to natural movement, “compliance strikes,” and the use of batons or pepper sprays and even tasers or dogs. Such images can provoke reactions of disgust and rage and a sense that the police are essentially armed bullies, or just another gang of thugs.
Brutality does happen, of course—though the introduction of body cams demonstrates it much less than was anticipated by anti-cop activists and the plaintiffs’ bar—and deserves condemnation when it’s real. But the cause of public safety and trusted law enforcement is not served when elected officials jump on every WorldStarHipHop video and join the chorus of denunciation without getting all the facts or even caring to find out what they really are.
UPDATE: De Blasio’s New York
UPDATE: From Broken Windows to Broken Streets
UPDATE: The Assault on the NYPD
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on New Crime City
21st June 2021
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Due to an abundance of one specific type of DVD drives, plans were made to give a useful afterlife to these devices. A laser scanning microscope seemed to be the most useful project.
Be the first on your block….
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on DVD-Drive based Laser Scanning Microscope
21st June 2021
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There are windows of opportunity in nature, and one of my annual favorites is “sugaring time.” In late winter, tree sap begins to flow, and from the right trees, this sap can be collected and concentrated into a very special (and very delicious) caloric resource—sweet tree syrup. Most of us focus on how to make maple syrup during this window. But maple trees are just the beginning. Here’s what you need to know about the history of tree tapping and the basics on how to tap trees for syrup.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Make Your Own Maple Syrup Without Harming the Trees
21st June 2021
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When my parents were in high school, this sort of thing was considered the essence of the high school experience: Preparing young people for Real Life, such as teaching young men basic trade skills and young women basic homemaker skills, because that’s what most of them would be doing once they walked away from graduation. It was only the combination of Everybody Needs To Go To College and Diversity And Inclusion took over the school systems that such skills-training started to atrophy.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Rhode Island Makes Financial Literacy a Required Class For All High School Students
21st June 2021
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Let’s start with a more basic question. What is automation? Machines have replicated and augmented human work processes for centuries, and that is often the colloquial use of “automation” in our current moment. But “automation” was not used to describe this process until 1947, when Delmar Harder, vice president of manufacturing at Ford Motor Company, created its Automation Department. The department’s engineers redesigned automobile production so that materials were automatically conveyed from one process to another, obviating the need for laborers to load and unload machines. Further, the process was itself increasingly machine-controlled, through a system of timers, switches, and relays—what technology historian David Hounsell calls the “electromechanical brain.”
Most of the technologies involved in automation had been developed and implemented in other industries years before their incorporation into Ford’s production process. What made automation new was its centrality to Ford’s manufacturing strategy, coming at a time of historic unrest among autoworkers, and in particular, on the heels of a costly twenty-four-day strike at Ford’s massive River Rouge plant in May of 1949. Not only would the new technologies dramatically reduce an unruly labor force, but they allowed Ford to decentralize its production away from the roiling unrest of Detroit as the company opened new automated factories, with new less militant employees, in Cleveland and Buffalo. Workers immediately perceived the threat, and automation was, from its inception, a deeply politicized issue. The history of automation reveals it as a political tool to subvert worker power, not simply an economic one to increase productivity.
…
Investigating grocery store self-checkout, researchers found that Luddite customers hated and avoided the technology. In response, management cut staff to make lines so unbearable that customers gave up and used the machines instead. Even then, cashiers were still required to assist and monitor transactions; rather than reduce workload, the technologies were “intensifying the work of customer service and creating new challenges.”
…
“There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Full Automation Fallacy
21st June 2021
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Researchers at the University of Maryland have turned ordinary sheets of wood into transparent material that is nearly as clear as glass, but stronger and with better insulating properties. It could become an energy efficient building material in the future.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Scientists Develop Transparent Wood That Is Stronger and Lighter Than Glass
21st June 2021
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Most people have heard that old saw about “God made all men, but Sam Colt made ’em equal.” While it’s not strictly speaking completely true, it’s not entirely an exaggeration either.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Why Gun Control Is a Class Issue
21st June 2021
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Medicine Crow completed all four tasks required to become a war chief: touching an enemy without killing him (counting coup), taking an enemy’s weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy’s horse.
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He also led a successful war party and stole fifty horses owned by the Nazi SS from a German camp, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode off.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Joe Medicine Crow
21st June 2021
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Last time we took a look at the social place of people involved in war. We found that, far from there being a universal combatant, distinctions between soldiers and warriors are both significant for the present and important for understanding the past. Moreover, beyond that simple dichotomy, the idea of a universal war experience in turn conceals the basic fact that many people who were neither warriors nor soldiers, not properly combatants of any kind, experienced war in unique ways, be they victims of warfare, homefront supporters, or economically invested in the enterprise. Already we have seen that there’s far more than just one sort of person with a war experience.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Collections: The Universal Warrior
21st June 2021
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Officials in Afghanistan are warning that the growing number of districts being overtaken by the Taliban could create a sense of inevitability that the insurgents will take over once U.S. and NATO troops leave, even though the country’s security forces are expected to be strong enough to keep the government in power.
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Taliban Testing Morale of Afghan Forces as US Pulling Troops
21st June 2021
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And why should he? Biden will eventully roll over just as Obama did.
UPDATE: Iran Needs “Guarantee” From Biden US Won’t Ditch Nuclear Deal Again
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Iran’s President-elect Says He Won’t Meet With Biden
21st June 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
21st June 2021
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A “Swedish” Muslima who went to Syria to join the Islamic State had her children taken away when she returned to Sweden. When she threatened to kill a health care worker, the Swedish justice system threw the book at her — it made her talk to a shrink.
If that fails, of course, there’s always the Comfy Chair.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Sweden Throws the Book at an ISIS Terrorist
20th June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
20th June 2021
Why The Davos Elites Just Played The ‘Jon Stewart’ Card I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.
Police Chief Resigns Over Gun Law He Says Will Help Anti-Police Activists ‘Torment Law Enforcement’
ProPublica’s Half-Baked Exposé Continues To Captivate Credulous Media
Mayhem ensues as Antifa converges on Western Conservative Summit in Denver
Godfather Of Color Revolutions: Is George Soros The Most Dangerous Man Alive?
Governments Are Failing At Their Most Basic Duties… While Promising Free Stuff
ABC Boosts Dems Lashing Catholic Bishops Denying Communion to Biden
Houston PD Deputy’s Home Invaded, Wife, Stepdaughter Shot
Ex-Detroit Police Chief: ‘No Surprise’ Cops Quitting In Face Of Reforms
“Furious” Parents Slam NYC’s “Woke” $57K Spence School After It Shows Video Calling White Women “Entitled” And “Annoying” Well, you’ve got to admit, they are — at least the ones that would send their kids to a school like Spence.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
20th June 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
20th June 2021
“U Look Asian With Those Closed Eyes!” Woke Social Justice Warrior Megan Rapinoe Caught Mocking Asians On Twitter At least they don’t have purple hair.
CBC Turns Off Facebook Comments To Protect “Fragile” Journalists’ Mental Health And “Protect Free Speech”
CNN Decries ‘Politically Motivated’ Bishops On Abortion, Communion
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
20th June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic