Archive for July, 2022
9th July 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
9th July 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
9th July 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
9th July 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
9th July 2022
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Early in the morning on New Year’s Day in 2014 I was looking through the online news, as was my habit. I came across an article about an explosion and fire in the Cedar-Riverside district of Minneapolis, which was suspected to have been caused by a gas leak. As I skimmed through the text, I noticed that the damaged building was said to be “next door to a mosque”. That got my attention — the blast must have been in “Little Mogadishu” — so I read the article more closely and looked at some of the news videos.
My suspicions were aroused by the appearance of the building after the explosion, before firemen brought the blaze under control. It didn’t look like a gas explosion, which typically blows out all the walls and collapses the roof onto the rubble. When that happens, most of the ambient oxygen is consumed by the initial blast, and there’s usually very little fire afterwards in the remaining rubble.
That’s not what happened on Cedar Avenue that bitterly cold New Year’s morning. An intense explosion blew out the windows of the second floor and propelled debris across the street (as well as the legless body of one of the victims, according to early reports that were later scrubbed from the web), but the walls remained intact. A fire burned fiercely afterwards, consuming all the flammable material in the building, including the roof. It took firemen a couple of days to extinguish the blaze completely.
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In the end the building was razed and the rubble carted away, destroying any possibility of a real investigation. The official cover story was a “gas leak”, never mind the gas utility’s vehement insistence that their monitoring equipment showed definitively that their system experienced no leaks whatsoever that morning.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on The Cedar-Riverside Explosion, Eight Years On
9th July 2022
Tell the truth: We’ve all wanted to do that.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
9th July 2022
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This ought to come as no surprise. Intelligence, if not entirely hereditary, has a large hereditary component. In these degenerate modern times, when even people who don’t have the smarts to make it in college nevertheless get admitted and funded (with YOUR tax dollars), the children of people with advanced degrees have no trouble getting advanced degrees themselves, unless they are total screw-ups (which many are). In the Good Old Days, being a professor didn’t pay all that much, so their kids sometimes had to get a Real Job. But not any more.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Academia, and Economics in Particular, is Becoming Too Elite
9th July 2022
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The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced it has told carriers to stop delivering auto warranty robocalls, citing it as a top complaint from consumers.
The FCC said it has authorized all U.S.-based voice service providers to stop carrying traffic from Roy Cox Jr., Aaron Michael Jones, their Sumco Panama companies and other international associates believed to be behind the more than 8 billion robocalls generated since 2018.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on FCC Orders Carriers to Stop Delivering Auto Warranty Robocalls
9th July 2022
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An article featured in British newspaper The Guardian forecasts a world in which it is commonplace for young adults and would-be parents to opt toward raising “digital babies” over having real children of their own. Powered by virtual reality and artificial intelligence, these “programmable and highly realistic children” would simulate play, emotional feedback, and the tactile feel of caring for offspring.
Cute, right?
I propose that they all bear the surname ‘Tamagochi’.
Actually, this isn’t a bad idea; there are a lot of people that I wouldn’t want to see actually reproduce, so this ‘digital baby’ might serve as a substitute for people whose offspring we’d really not want in our gene pool.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on ‘Digital Babies’ and the Culture of Lifestyle Over a Culture of Life
9th July 2022
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More than $77 billion of the unemployment insurance (UI) program’s total of $413 billion in payments in 2021 were made improperly, according to a report from the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General (IG).
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Labor Dept. Made $77.2 Billion in Improper Unemployment Insurance Payments in 2021: IG
9th July 2022
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Governor Youngkin appears to be successful in weeding out some of the dead wood among the state bureaucracy.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Over 300 Virginia State Employees Resign in Wake of Gov. Youngkin’s Telework Policy
9th July 2022
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Good luck with that.
The purpose of an HOV lane is to prevent two (or more) people from driving multiple cars by encouraging the sharing of a vehicle. There is no way an unborn baby could be driving its own car, and therefore it doesn’t come within the ambit of the scheme.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Plano Woman Says Unborn Baby Counts as HOV Passenger
8th July 2022
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Planned Parenthood is the greatest branding triumph in the modern world. When I was growing up as a pro-choice, proto-feminist teen, I would argue with my conservative, pro-life mother about Planned Parenthood. Based on its name alone, I considered it a force for good in the world. “What’s wrong with planning parenthood, Mom? They’re just trying to help people plan. Isn’t planning a good thing?”
The original plan for Planned Parenthood was Margaret Sanger’s, and her plan was to have fewer black babies born. That plan certainly worked, after a fashion.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on Panned Parenthood
8th July 2022
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“This is a moment, the moment, a moment to restore the rights that have been taken away from us and the moment to protect our nation from an extremist agenda,” Biden said, repeating himself as he spoke to the nation from the White House.
The president’s executive order, called “Protecting Access to Reproductive Healthcare Services,” states that abortion is a private decision and “should not be subject to government interference.”
His order says that the federal government “is taking action to protect healthcare service delivery and promote access to critical reproductive healthcare services, including abortion.”
I love how killing your child is now ‘reproductive healthcare services’. Next thing you know, murder will be reclassified as healthcare.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Biden Calls Pro-Life Agenda ‘Extremist’ While Rolling Out Executive Order on Abortion
8th July 2022
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The Biden administration keeps trying to give Vice President Kamala Harris something to do, but she keeps balking at the opportunity. She complains about being “sidelined” by the White House and complains when they give her a job she doesn’t want to do, such as handling the border crisis. It’s as if the only thing she is really passionate about is using the power of her office to destroy the careers of her political rivals.
Harris was not enthusiastic about being tapped to lead the administration’s response to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the vice president “had initial reservations about becoming the face of the administration’s response, worried she could be pigeonholed on the issue because of her gender, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a sensitive dynamic.”
She’s a talker, not a doer.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Kamala Harris Doesn’t Want To Be in Charge of Anything
8th July 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
8th July 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
8th July 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
8th July 2022
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At a time when states across the nation are passing and enacting pro-life legislature to help save babies, our “devout Catholic” president is taking a different stance. Joe Biden is expected to sign an “Executive Order Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services” Friday to expand access to abortion, according to Politico.
Biden plans to direct his health department to “expand abortion pills, beef up enforcement of Obamacare’s birth control coverage mandate and organize a cadre of pro bono lawyers to help defend people criminally charged for seeking or providing the procedure.”
The administration is supposedly also looking into digital app privacy rights for abortion seekers so that women can have abortions without getting in trouble.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on Abortion Extremist Biden Makes Plans for More Baby Slaughter
8th July 2022
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A New York Times editorial board member does not seem to think the company’s policy against participating in protests applies to her.
In her July 2 column, Mara Gay wrote that she wants to see all the men she has had sexual relationships with who have since moved on to join her at the next pro-abortion protests. “They’re good men, and I’m happy for them,” Gay writes. “I’d also like to ask: Will I see you at the next protest? Join us.”
Taking Gay at her word means she just admitted to violating New York Times corporate policy, which forbids staff from attending any “march or rally in support of public causes or movements.” Neither the New York Times nor Gay responded to a request for comment.
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on New York Times’s Mara Gay Admits to Breaking Company Policy in Latest Column
8th July 2022
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Get woke, go broke! After years of shoving leftist propaganda into children’s entertainment, Disney has learned a hard lesson in playing identity politics..
According to BoundingIntoComics, cry-baby “Lightyear” Director Angus MacLane is attacking critics after getting beat by “Minions: The Rise Of Gru.”
The woke film Lightyear opened to a dismal $51 million, which was way below expectations. According to The-Numbers, the film was never able to reach commercial success as it dropped 64% during its second week and then another 64% during its third week.
Compared that to Minions: The Rise Of Gru: The non-woke children’s movie matched Lightyear’s entire domestic run during opening weekend to $107 million. The film now sits at $140.6 million and $93.7 million internationally, totaling $234.3 million. The disparity between the two is telling, but this fact upset many Hollywood lefties.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Woke Lightyear Gets Beat by Minions: The Rise of Gru
8th July 2022
ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
A while back I did a Taki post on the macaroni men. This was a fad in the 18th century in which men would dress like clowns in public. The only thing is their absurd costumes were not intended to be funny. These were serious people and their ridiculous outfits were proof of their seriousness. The same thing exists now. Instead of silly hats, the Cloud People don silly ideas. They decorate themselves with overwrought opinions about small things made up to be important.
Of course, the absurdity of it all reflects the absurdity of the people behind it and to a great degree the target audience. The mass media is created by flakes and weirdos for people who want to be like them. The days of a newspaper seeking to inform the readers about the events of the day are long gone. Cable chat shows are just the modern freak show and animal act. Out mass media is an essential part of a ridiculous system run by ridiculous people.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on An Angry Return
8th July 2022
Democrats: Party of Tax and Spend
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
8th July 2022
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When Francis Collins departed as Director of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) in December 2021, his legacy included multiple-millions of dollars in secret royalty payments to himself, prominent colleagues like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and hundreds of other scientists, officials, and researchers working under him.
Today, Collins is the highest paid adviser to the president with the most expensive White House staff ever, according to data compiled by the Chicago-based non-profit government watchdog, Open The Books (OTB).
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Former NIH Chief Is Now Highest Paid Member of Most Expensive White House Staff Ever
8th July 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Two People in Tesla Killed After Crashing Into Parked Semi at Florida Rest Stop
8th July 2022
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Over the last week, we have been barraged with stories about a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio who was unable to obtain an abortion in that state and had to cross the line into Indiana to terminate her pregnancy. If you Google “10 year old abortion Ohio,” you get 33,100,000 results. The story is everywhere, internationally.
But did it happen? It turns out that the story originated with an abortionist who is also a media figure, seemingly working full-time to promote abortion. And if a 9 or 10 year old was raped, it was a heinous crime. Where is the criminal prosecution of the rapist? There doesn’t seem to be any record of one, and in fact, no Ohio newspaper has endorsed the story.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on About That 10-Year-Old Rape Victim
8th July 2022
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This is a story that would be getting a great deal of play if it advanced a liberal media narrative: two illegal aliens planned to “shoot up” an Independence Day parade in Richmond, Virginia, but were thwarted by an alert citizen.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on 4th of July Shootout Averted
7th July 2022
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The surge in violent crime that began a few years ago continues. It will abate only when Americans demand and get action from local and national leaders.
The crime numbers we’ve seen already this year highlight the problem.
A serious upswing in violent crime often follows significant anti-police protests and less aggressive policing. Researchers call this the Ferguson Effect or the Minneapolis Effect.
The events of the summer of 2020 created a perfect storm.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Another Year, Another Bloody Summer
7th July 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
7th July 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
7th July 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
7th July 2022

Will you catch Monkeypox?
Omicron BA.5: One Variant To Rule Them All…For Now (Deadline)
BA.5, now dominant U.S. variant, may pose the biggest threat to immune protection yet (NBC)
WHO to consider again whether monkeypox outbreak is public health emergency of international concern (CNN) C’mon, guys, we need another PANIC!
Judge strikes down paused LAUSD student vaccine mandate (L.A. Times)
Antibody evasion by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, & BA.5 (Nature)
Covid-19 reinfections may increase the likelihood of new health problems (CNN)
When will COVID-19 become endemic? Possibly in about two years, Yale researchers say (Connecticut Public)
FDA allows pharmacists to prescribe Paxlovid COVID treatment (Axios)
King County identifies local monkeypox transmission (KOMO News)
Xi’an shuts back down as China finds first cases of new Omicron subvariant (CNN)
WHO: More than 6,000 Monkeypox Cases Reported, Another Emergency Meeting Set
Nanoparticle Vaccine Protects Against C19-Causing Variants and Related Viruses
MSNBC Slimes Fox’s Coverage of Shootings, Ignores Red Flag Law Failures
SK hynix pitches tents at Chinese factory to house workers in case of lockdowns
Covid-19 Vaccine Doses, Once in High Demand, Now Thrown Away
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
7th July 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
7th July 2022
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In the fall of 2019, Facebook announced that it would be writing selected media outlets some very big checks. The launch of Facebook News was billed as a way to give consumers more access to information, but it was actually an attempt at appeasing big media companies.
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While Hillary wanted someone to blame for her failures, the media wanted leverage over the company that controlled its fate. The invention of a “fake news” or “misinformation” crisis, the term that the media pivoted to once President Trump made “fake news” his own, was used to persuade Big Tech companies to censor conservatives and promote media content.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on How the Media Used Russiagate Conspiracy Theories to Create a News Cartel
7th July 2022
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Maybe Turkey will be next after Ukraine for Russia.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Turkey Discovers 694 Million MT of Rare Earth Element Reserves, With Infrastructure Construction Starting This Year
7th July 2022
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The Washington Post ran a front-page story on Thursday that lamented “There are no crowdsourced charity drives raising millions for victims’ families in Chicago, where the holiday weekend death toll reached at least 10 with 62 injured — numbers that exceed the toll in Monday’s mass shooting at a July 4th parade in nearby Highland Park, Ill. In that affluent lakeside suburb, the violence was an anomaly. Here, it is a grimly regular occurrence.”
But on her MSNBC show on Tuesday, Nicolle Wallace focused exclusively on the seven Highland Park shooting deaths. Not a word about the 10 shooting deaths in Chicago. Note that in 2021, there were 3,561 shooting incidents in Chicago, and 797 homicides.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on 7 Killed in Highland Park, 10 in Chicago—But MSNBC Ignores the Everyday Violence
7th July 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
7th July 2022
ZMan watches the dumpster fire.
In many ways, Johnson is like Donald Trump in that he represented the unhappiness of the Tory voters, even though he never really sympathized with them. Trump rode popular discontent into the White House but was obsessed with gaining elite approval. Johnson rode a populist wave into power, but never seemed to understand any of it.
There are, of course, lots of different opinions on the two men, but the one thing everyone agrees upon is the best people hated them. The reason the best people hated them is they appeared to side with the rabble against their betters, which is the one unforgivable sin in this age. Just about any degenerate act can be forgiven, but if you go against the family, you will never be forgiven. Like Trump, Johnson never seemed to understand this for some reason.
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Another parallel to Trump is that the British ruling elite now faces the same trouble as the American elite in that a replacement is not obvious. In 2020 the selectors in Washington settled on a bumbling old simpleton because the other options were terrifyingly incompetent. No matter how angry you may be at the orange dirt monster, the thought of Elizabeth Warren in charge is a bridge too far. Bernie Sanders was literally their next best option.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Bad Choices
7th July 2022
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Many of us are passingly familiar with circadian rhythms as a way to refer to our sleep cycle. In 1972, scientists discovered that that cycle is mediated by an area in the brain’s hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This structure coordinates the release of hormones — among them dopamine — that lower body temperature and blood pressure and make us feel sleepy; in the morning, cortisol and other hormones restore our alertness, make us warmer and increase blood pressure. The a.m. surge in blood pressure is believed to be one reason heart attacks occur more often then than in the p.m.
In the past two decades, however, researchers have discovered that the clock in the brain is by no means the only one in our body. It turns out that most of our cells contain a group of genes that might be thought of as gears in a mechanical watch, keeping time everywhere internally. These “clock genes” — there are at least six that are considered integral to the watch’s operation — work together the same way in each cell. And just as they cause the release of hormones in the brain, they dictate other processes in other parts of the body. In the early 2000s, advances in the ability to detect the activity of genes in various tissues revealed that the cell clocks are organized into separate organ-level clocks representing every physiological system: There’s a skin clock and a liver clock and an immune-system clock; there’s a clock for the kidney, heart, lungs, muscles and reproductive system. Each of those clocks syncs itself to the central clock in the brain like an orchestra section following its conductor. But those sections also adjust how and when they perform based on guidance they receive both from the environment and from one another, and their timing can provide feedback to the central clock and cause it to adjust the time it keeps too. The liver, for instance, determines when to rev up your metabolism based on when you eat; if you do that in the middle of the night, the liver will be receiving contradictory cues from the brain, which is telling it to rest. As a result, when the liver starts processing the midnight food, it will do so less efficiently than it would have done after a daytime meal — and it sends conflicting signals back to the brain and other organ systems.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Quest by Circadian Medicine to Make the Most of Our Body Clocks
7th July 2022
Ann Coulter has some fun.
The Second Amendment does not refer to “muskets”; it refers to “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” “Bear” means to carry, so any handheld firearm carried by the military can be carried by the people. Just as the musket was once carried by our military, the AR-15 is a handheld arm (technically, the less powerful version of the automatic M-16) carried by our military today. As soon as the U.S. military goes back to muskets, then muskets it is!
But I’m not here to refute idiotic arguments. These guys may as well claim that the First Amendment protects only speech delivered in pamphlets and sermons, but nothing communicated on television, the internet, or with poster boards and Magic Markers.
The Second Amendment is nearly the only prescriptive policy in a document that liberals have been trying to pump their nutty ideas into for 50 years. Unfortunately for them, there’s nothing in the Constitution about a right to dance naked in strip clubs, contraception, marriage or sticking a fork in a baby’s head.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on What Liberals Get Wrong About the Second Amendment
7th July 2022
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Sixteen mujahidettes, all of them mothers, have been returned to France from Syria. One of the returning jihadistes is Émilie König, whose three Syrian-born children were sent home ahead of her.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Jihad Émilie Returns to France
6th July 2022
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Polar Night Energy’s system, based on its patented technology, has gone online on the site of a power plant operated by utility Vatajankoski.
The 4×7 metre steel container contains hundreds of tonnes of sand which can be heated to a temperature of 500-600 degrees Celsius. The sand is heated with renewable electricity and stored for use in the local district heating system.
It has a particularly strong use case in Finland which sees long and very cold winters, and was recently cut off from Russian gas supplies over a payments dispute. The storage system’s developers say it is cheap and easy to build.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on World’s First Large-Scale ‘Sand Battery’ Goes Online in Finland
6th July 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
6th July 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
6th July 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
6th July 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
6th July 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
6th July 2022
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The Mountain State’s Republican Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, released a statement on June 29 detailing his continued commitment to saving the lives of babies by reinstating a 170-year-old law protecting them, according to Life Site News.
The law was crafted in 1849, but was left on the books when Roe v. Wade established a federally guaranteed “right” to abortion. But now that the recent Dobbs decision overturned that 1973 ruling, the law can be re-enacted.
“Enacted in 1849 and never repealed since,” anyone who administers or performs an abortion with the intent to destroy a child “commits a felony punishable by three to ten years in prison,” the rule states.
“The statute covers persons who perform abortions and, at least arguably, women who seek them,” Morrisey added.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on West Virginia Revives 170 Year-Old Abortion Laws
6th July 2022
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Gunshots. Knifings. Cars being set aflame. All in broad daylight, all on the streets of Molenbeek.
Molenbeek, Belgium, you may recall, was the Brussels neighborhood that was home to almost half of the jihadists responsible for the 2015 Paris attacks and several subsequent terror attacks in Belgium. The bomber of a train at Brussels Central Station in 2017, for instance, lived in Molenbeek. Mehdi Nemmouche, who shot and killed four people at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014, had previously lived in Molenbeek. The mastermind of the Paris killings, Abdelhamid Abboud, grew up and still lived in Molenbeek.
Most of Molenbeek’s population is Moroccan, though immigrants from elsewhere in North Africa and from Eastern Europe have also settled there. It is an area of Brussels where, according to the Oasis Center, an Italian foundation that studies relations between Muslims and Christians, “a type of Islam has been propagated over the decades that, if not radical, has nevertheless prepared the ground in which the radicalism would then take root.”
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on In Molenbeek: Jihadists, Guns and (Drug) Money
6th July 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day