The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
Showing posts with label The Mind Boggles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Mind Boggles. Show all posts
Believe it or not, this is a genuine e-poster from an outfit calling themselves Mainebreastfeeds. Click the image for a larger view.
The caption is "National Breastfeeding Month", but the subtitle below it is "Celebrating trans lactation, two-spirit and chestfeeding". Needless to say, "breastfeeding" and "chestfeeding" are not interchangeable terms (except in the sick minds of those who conceived this travesty)!
I imagine that for most normal people, that image is about as stomach-turning as one could wish. It makes a mockery of natural breastfeeding, and is medically and physically impossible as well. I find it nauseating.
I think anyone holding such views, or supporting those who hold them, should have their sanity examined as soon as possible. That may be the only benefit to such arrant nonsense - to expose those who are, mentally speaking, three or four cents short of a nickel.
A gentleman (?) named Jamarcus Oneal Spates was arrested by a gaggle of Houston police officers on Monday. It's not clear why so many of the officers were involved, or why they took such extreme precautions, but be that as it may . . .
On-duty uniformed officers arrived and attempted to stop the vehicle with Spates inside, the release states. HPD alleges Spates refused several commands to exit the vehicle.
The responding officers said they shot at Spates after they attempted to move toward the vehicle and saw him open the driver's door of the vehicle and extend his arm "in a shooting position," according to HPD's account. A bullet "grazed" Spates, the release said.
A bullet "grazed" Spates. One bullet.ONE SINGLE BULLET.
How many rounds were fired by all those officers to obtain just one slight, non-disabling injury to the suspect? See (and hear) for yourself.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?????
All those bullets flying around, and the suspect was grazed by just one of them. Where, pray tell, did the rest of the bullets go? How many nearby buildings, vehicles, trees, etc. were struck as well? Oh - and what about innocent bystanders?
That's just about the most sickeningly incompetent firearms handling I've ever seen from uniformed cops. I've no idea how many rounds were fired in all, but I won't be surprised to hear it was a hundred or more . . . AND ONLY ONE STRUCK ITS TARGET, AND EVEN THEN, ONLY JUST!!!
What's the point of issuing firearms to police at all, if that's the way they're going to handle them in a crisis situation?
No handgun bullet is a very good fight-stopper compared to a rifle or shotgun. We know this. It's been common knowledge for years. However, even a handgun will stop a fight quickly enough if a bullet hits the target's central nervous system - i.e. the brain or the spine. A penetration of the heart and/or circulatory system will take a bit longer - up to 30-60 seconds for the suspect to "bleed out". However, if all the bullet does is "graze" the suspect's arm, it's not going to do one single damned thing to stop him. It may make him lose his temper, but that's about all.
(As the late, great Jeff Cooper used to say about the [infamously puny] .25 ACP round: "Carry a 25 if it makes you feel good, but do not ever load it. If you load it you may shoot it. If you shoot it you may hit somebody, and if you hit somebody, and he finds out about it, he may be very angry with you." Considering the lack of success of those police officers, armed with [comparatively much more powerful] 9mm handguns, shotguns and at least one AR-15 rifle, they may as well have been carrying .25 ACP pistols instead!)
I'd take away the badges of the whole lot of them, and send them all for remedial firearms training. I'd refuse to re-issue their badges unless and until they passed a truly practical, useful firearms test, such as the qualification for a basic handgun certificate from Gunsite or Thunder Ranch or equivalent shooting schools. Can't do that? Then you can't carry a gun to defend the public, because you're more of a danger to them than you are to the criminal!
For those who didn't know, the staple sauce throughout the Roman Empire of old was called garum.
Garum is a fermented fish sauce that was used ... in the cuisines of Phoenicia, ancient Greece, Rome, Carthage, and later Byzantium ... The taste of garum is thought to have been comparable to that of today's Asian fish sauces.
Like modern fermented fish sauce and soy sauce, garum was a rich source of umami flavoring due to the presence of glutamates.
There's more at the link.
Believe it or not, after about 2,000 years or thereabouts, you can still buy authentic garum today. Go check out what's available at the link. If you prefer something slightly less fishy, British Worcestershire sauce is basically a modern version of garum. It was developed "by accident", with a nasty unpalatable concoction left forgotten in a basement for years. When rediscovered, it had matured into what we know today. Read all about it at the link.
So, fermented fish sauce has a long and celebrated history . . . but one can have too much of a good thing, as the residents of St. Mary's in Canada learned to their cost.
Over 100 tanks of rotten fish sauce are finally being removed from a small Canadian town after stinking up the neighborhood for decades.
The supply of what’s been described as “the worst rotted fish you ever smelled” was left abandoned in the quaint town of St. Mary’s after the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company shuttered more than 20 years ago.
Over the next few months, workers will embark on a $1.2 million project to drain roughly 110 tanks, each holding 3,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce.
The stinky sauce will then be mixed with peat moss to absorb the liquid, according to St. Mary’s volunteer mayor, Steve Ryan.
Trucks equipped with giant hoses will then suck up the material and deliver it to a massive pit lined with high-density polyethylene, where the waste will be buried in topsoil.
The dilapidated factory full of ditched fish sauce has wafted an indescribable smell over the town of roughly 300 people in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The liquid kept fermenting as the plant kept turning to ruin, with a blown-off roof and a wall knocked out by a storm in January.
There's more at the link. Here's a video report on the process.
This is one time I'm truly, profoundly, deeply grateful that "scratch and sniff" technology hasn't made it to the pages of the Internet yet - or to the screens of our electronic devices!
There's a video on X.com showing a Russian army officer opening some of the candies and chocolate that have been found in the battle zones in Ukraine. If you're logged into X, here's the link. If you aren't a member of X, here's an alternative link that will let you play the video. The candy is loaded with explosives and a detonator, proving that too many sweets really are bad for you!
There are plenty of comments following the video that are worth reading. My favorite is from user Bitcoin Wizard - mavensbot:
"I'm starting to think that these processed foods are not healthy."
I've been something of a "prepper" for many years, but until last night it had never even crossed my mind to consider this.
The city of Annapolis, Maryland, has released an emergency preparedness guide tailored to the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that members of the community are more likely to be affected by natural disasters.
The Annapolis Office of Emergency Management, led by Kevin Simmons, published a graphic this week outlining its emergency preparedness recommendations for LGBTQ+ residents. The office states that disasters “present unique challenges for the LGBTQ+ community,” claiming that “After a disaster, LGBTQ+ people are almost twice as likely as the overall population to be displaced - and far more likely to face food insecurity, unsanitary conditions, and isolation during recovery.”
Under the recommendation to stay connected, the guide advises residents to establish a support network that can be contacted during emergencies and to identify “safe spaces” where resources may be available. For medical preparedness, the guide recommends speaking with healthcare providers to get an “emergency supply of retroviral and/or hormonal medications.”
The guide’s list of recommended supplies to gather includes standard emergency items as well as things such as “syringes” and “gender-affirming clothing.” It also lists “chest binders,” “wigs,” and “packers,” which are used by trans-identifying biological women to make it appear as though they have a bulge in their pants.
“Extreme heat can be challenging for those who rely on gender-affirming clothing,” the guide warned at the bottom. “Stay hydrated and take frequent breaks from chest binders on hot days.”
For the life of me, I can't see how LGBTQ+ concerns for preparedness are in any way, shape or form different from everyone else's concerns for the same thing. Water doesn't ask for your sexual orientation before you drink it: food, before you eat it: and a blanket, before you sleep in it. This appears to be a thoroughly artificial attempt to drag the politically correct cause du jour into an essentially practical field that has nothing whatsoever to do with gender.
I can, however, assure you that if, in a crisis, people come to me demanding that I give them a bottle of lesbian-safe water, or gay-safe guacamole, or bisexual beans, or ... well, you get the idea ... I'm likely to be very rude to them, and anything but sympathetic.
This extraordinary report on the BBC has me goggling.
Whale graveyard dating back five million years discovered
An enormous whale graveyard around 1,200km (745 miles) long has been discovered in the south-eastern Indian Ocean.
The site, which is 7km (four miles) deep, has been found in the Diamantina fracture zone, a range on the sea floor of ridges and trenches.
But it is the age of the remains - some from 5.3 million years ago - that has prompted huge excitement in the scientific community.
The underwater necropolis, which was discovered by a team of researchers from China, Italy and New Zealand, is teeming with organisms and species that "may be new to science", according to journal Nature.
One of the study's authors Xiaotong Peng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: "Discovering a necropolis of this scale was completely unexpected.
"The size of distribution, the depth and the age range were far beyond anything we had imagined."
During 32 dives to the site, explorers collected samples from 485 whale-fossil sites and active whale falls, and found a treasure trove of remains, including one extinct whale's skeleton.
The beaked Pterocetus benguelae, which is 5.3 million years old, was discovered to be one of the fossilised skulls in the graves.
A five-metre long Antarctic minke whale's carcass was the largest discovery made.
A new species which the team has called Pterocetus diamantinae, after the site, was also uncovered.
Jellyfish, worms and crustaceans are among the community of creatures living off the huge spread of carcasses.
"Peng and colleagues' encounter with a vast fossil graveyard is a truly unique discovery," Stephen J Godfrey of the Calvert Marine Museum wrote in Nature.
How on earth did so many whale carcasses end up in such a relatively small area? Is it possible that some species of whale may deliberately go to that part of the sea to die, just as elephants were reputed to go to the "elephants' graveyard", a hidden valley where they lay down to die? The elephant myth has long since been refuted, but I'm willing to bet some will raise it again in connection with the whales.
This is absolutely fascinating. I daresay there are decades of research ahead in that area.
Yesterday Alma Boykin, fellow author, fellow blogger and friend of long standing, wrote on her blog:
It is a good reminder to treat the road crew well, wherever we are. Or we will end up like the infamous performance of Tosca, where the stage crew replaced the pad for the diva’s dramatic leap with a trampoline. She wasn’t hurt, but ooooh, her ego suffered.
Click over to her place to read the rest of her article.
In my younger days, half a world away from here, I used to dabble in amateur dramatics. I never graced (?) the opera stage, but took part (as an enthusiastic amateur) in theater productions by CAPAB (the Cape Performing Arts Board). Highlight (?) of my theatrical career (?) was a performance of the musical Oklahoma! in Cape Town. I initially had only a crowd scene or two as an extra, but some of the local male singers proved to have difficulty hitting some of the tenor high notes, so I was duly roped in to add vocal enhancement to those scenes. It was weird, but it helped . . . or so I'm told.
With that background, I know many of the stories about opera, theater, etc. I found an article that repeats many of them, and I thought you might enjoy them too. Here's an excerpt.
Another delightful, but probably apocryphal, anecdote is the one which allegedly happened at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco – to the same “Bouncing Tosca” from Chicago.
The firing squad were played by supernumeraries who received last minute instruction to shoot the person they found onstage, and then to exit with the principals. However, When they got onstage, they discovered there were two people there instead of one. Not knowing which one to shoot, they wavered back and forth a bit as both principals said not to shoot them. They finally settled on Tosca, shot her, and looked bewildered when Mario keeled over dead. They also did not leave, since they were told to exit with the principals – and neither of the principals were exiting. Tosca made some gestures to shoo them away, but they remained onstage until Spoletta came in with the soldiers. When Tosca jumped from the parapet, they saw their chance to finally exit with at least one of the principals, and jumped down after her, giving a Shakespearean greatness to the final tragedy.
OPERA singer Fabio Armiliato must be thinking that Tosca is his profession's equivalent of Macbeth as a work of ill luck.
Appearing as the eponymous heroine's beloved, Mario Cavaradossi, in the production's first night at the open-air arena in Macerata last week, he was stretchered off near the end of the opera after being hit in the leg by debris from blanks fired in the execution scene.
For Friday night's performance, the tenor bravely hobbled back on stage - then fell and broke his other leg in two places while standing in the wings at the end of the first Act. He returned to hospital by ambulance, commenting from his stretcher: "Could it be that I am destined never to leave this theatre on my own two feet?"
. . .
At a performance of Rigoletto in Chile in 1970, as the tenor Louis Quilico threw his head back to start singing, a feather floated down from the rafters straight into his mouth. He passed out without uttering a sound.
Rather higher drama was on offer in Montevideo in 1934 when an orchestra member pulled out a gun and killed the conductor in mid-performance. It turned out that the conductor, Franco Paolantonio, had been sleeping with his wife.
I'll try to look up the hysterically funny misadventures of an English pantomime show, that I recall reading about many years ago. If I can find them, I'll publish them for your enjoyment.
A little late, perhaps, but worth repeating nonetheless. From Peter Girnus, "a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner".
I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.
The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.
A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.
Everything else was improvised.
I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.
What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.
I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.
She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.
. . .
2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.
The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.
That's priority.
. . .
I have produced eleven of these dinners ... I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.
188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.
A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.
Mr. Girnus' post on X (formerly Twitter) has so far attracted over 4,000 replies and comments. Click over there to read them if you're interested. I particularly liked his reply to one comment:
They took the wine at a pace that suggested familiarity with hotel evacuation corridors. That's not elite behavior. That's logistics under pressure. I've seen worse at a Marriott fire alarm in Phoenix.
Word!
Needless to say, my opinion of most alleged journalists has not been improved by this fiasco . . .
When I first heard about this a few days ago, I dismissed it as a fake news gimmick. I mean, who would be dumb enough to actually say something like this?
That stands for: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and additional identities.
Again, that’s MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. I find it helps to go three letters at a time. Like when you’re giving your account number to the customer service guy, who says his name is Steve but he has an Indian accent.
The speaker there is named Leah Gazan. (Oops. There’s a warning sign right there.) Who is a member of [the] Canadian Parliament. She’s in the NDP, whatever that is.
MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ is an all-inclusive, all-encompassing, balls-to-the-wall, slam bang, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am acronym for the totality of the gender bending, sexually "unique" population of Canada.
. . .
Budgeting for each and every identity, preference, and fantasy spirit in the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ community would blow up the Canadian budget.
I fondly recall when sexual preference identities were simple: LGB and maybe T, XYZ, believe you me. It was easy. It was a simpler time then. We didn't have to worry about offending someone by using the wrong pronoun. We didn't have to worry about making some poor, disturbed "T" or "Q" explode in tears from being misgendered.
It would be so much easier (and we'd be less likely to offend) if the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ "community" would just walk around with name tags identifying which gender they are, what their sexual identity is, and most importantly, what pronouns they prefer to be referred to.
Yes, that's a joke. No Nazi "Star of David" references, please.
Not that I'd use them. But since misgendering is going to be an Olympic sport in 2030, it would be helpful to know who we should insult.
And yet . . . even when they come up with absolute howlers such as the acronym above . . . the LGBWTF crowd actually expect us to take them seriously. They (well, some of them, anyway) expect us to take the acronym seriously.
What are they smoking??? Whatever it is, where can I buy some? If I'm going to have to read, or listen to, or endure that sort of crap any longer, I'm going to need all the help I can get!
DHS announces the ICE arrest of a Liberian illegal alien who they say was working as a Minnesota corrections officer while also being AWOL from the PA National Guard, all while masquerading as a U.S. citizen despite having no legal status in the U.S.
I'm tempted to call it American enterprise at its finest, except that there's nothing American about him. I'd love to follow his paper trails in those various organizations, to see precisely how they all came to let him slip through the cracks.
I've known of the Colt 1855 Sidehammer revolver shotgun for years. It was used (in the rifle version) by some sharpshooter units early in the Civil War, and sold reasonably well on the frontier and out West. What I didn't know is that some unknown pioneer or trooper decided he wanted his Sidehammer to be somewhat more portable and accessible. Well, "portable" is relative for a gun well over a foot long and weighing more than 6 pounds . . . but I'd say he succeeded.
If he tried to fire that beast one-handed from the back of a galloping horse, I suspect it would have been really hard to hold onto it. The recoil must have been pretty snappy, to put it mildly! Nevertheless, given the opportunity to modify a modern replica Sidehammer into that configuration, I'd kinda like to try it. Typical 10ga. shotguns of the period used up to 1.5 to 2 drams of powder behind up to 1.5 ounces of lead shot. The Sidehammer's chambers were shorter than sporting guns, so I daresay it wouldn't have used the top end of those ranges, but even so, I suspect it had a real kick on both ends.
When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow back into the breast. That saliva carries biological signals about the infant’s immune system. If the baby is getting sick, the mother’s body detects it.
Within hours, the milk changes.
White blood cells surge. Macrophages multiply. Targeted antibodies appear.
When the baby recovers, the milk returns to baseline.
This was not coincidence. It was call and response.
A biological dialogue refined over millions of years. Invisible—until someone thought to listen.
. . .
Milk changes by time of day. Foremilk differs from hindmilk. Human milk contains over 200 oligosaccharides babies can’t digest—because they exist to feed beneficial gut bacteria. Every mother’s milk is biologically unique.
. . .
Milk has been evolving for more than 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs walked the Earth. What we once dismissed as simple nourishment is one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology has ever produced.
Katie Hinde didn’t just study milk. She revealed that nourishment is intelligence. A living, responsive system shaping who we become before we ever speak.
That may be one of the most mind-blowing scientific analyses I've ever read. I had no idea . . . and I guess most of the scientific and health community didn't, either. It took one researcher who caught a glimpse of something tantalizing, enough to make her look further and go deeper - and she revealed a whole new wonder of nature. Here's a TED talk she gave in 2018, before much of the most recent research was revealed.
The more I learn of this sort of complexity in nature, the more I shake my head at those who claim that evolution is responsible for everything, that we're merely cosmic "accidents", that there's no such thing as "intelligent design". If there isn't, how does one account for the immense intelligence revealed just in the biological system of human milk - never mind everything else about us, and about life?
I know we'll never agree on that, but that's OK. I'm just going to say, "Thank you, Lord", and leave it at that.
I'm still giggling at a highly sarcastic and snarky article about how truly over-the-top a personalized Rolls-Royce luxury car can become. A tip o' the hat to the anonymous reader who sent me the link. Here's just one paragraph to whet your appetite.
Rolls-Royce says the BLACK BADGE GHOST GAMER was "delivered to a tech entrepreneur", which somehow surpasses the American dog mom buyer of the SPECTRE BAILEY for obviousness. It also explains why the new owner wasn't worried about what women would think of his new car, because meeting a girl will be a theoretical concern for his entire life. Rolls-Royce, I should note, does not specify that the commissioning buyer is a man, but I am dead certain a woman's hand did not touch this car at any point in its construction.
There's much more at the link. I won't steal the author's thunder by reproducing it here; and besides, you really need to see the pictures to appreciate the length to which some car owners will go. Fortunately, they can pay Rolls-Royce (a lot!) to take them there.
This very interesting video shows what happened when 100 Ford dealers were asked to quote a best and final price for an identical model of pickup. The first year, relatively few responded. The second year (after Ford had taken notice and presumably talked to its dealers) a lot more responded - but the price variance in both years, from lowest to highest offer, was astonishingly high, well into five figures. Take a look.
I knew dealer margins varied, but I had no idea their pricing structures were so very different, nor did I realize how much the price goes up when dealer add-ons are included. The section on fees and regulatory charges was also eye-opening; I'd assumed that dealers would not dare meddle with statutory costs like that, but it looks like I was wrong.
I'm sure the facts and figures disclosed in the video will be encountered at any manufacturer's dealers, not just Ford's. Nevertheless, I hope Ford notices this video and does something about what it reveals - because business practices like these do it no favors at all in the eyes of the public.
I'm certainly going to follow the video's advice if I ever buy another vehicle from a dealer. Obviously, it applies more to new vehicles, but I'm willing to bet some of it carries over to the used market as well.
We've published charts several times in the past, detailing how the buying power of the US dollar has declined over the course of the past hundred years or so. Visual Capitalist has just published the newest such graphic, which I recommend to you - it's worth viewing, and thinking about.
What struck me was this inset showing the buying power of the dollar in terms of candy and other consumables, over the years. I've snipped it as a screenshot to make it easier to read.
Now that's a graphic illustration of what our money is currently (not) worth!
The foreigners, from Italy, the US, Russia and elsewhere, are accused of paying Serbian forces to take part in the shooting spree during the Bosnian War.
They were allegedly motivated by sympathy for the Serbian cause, sheer bloodthirstiness or a combination of the two, investigators say.
. . .
The amateur snipers paid the modern-day equivalent of €80,000 to €100,000 (median £80,000) to take part in the chilling “sport”, according to La Repubblica newspaper.
. . .
The case has been taken up by an Italian journalist and writer, Ezio Gavazzeni, with the backing of two lawyers and a former judge.
There was “a price tag for these killings: children cost more, then men, preferably in uniform and armed, women, and finally old people, who could be killed for free,” said Mr Gavazzeni.
There's more at the link, including earlier allegations that now appear to be vindicated by the latest evidence. It appears that people from Italy, America and Russia were among the "tourist snipers".
When I first read that report, I got a sick feeling in my stomach, very similar to what I experienced when I realized the magnitude of the Catholic clergy child sex abuse crisis. The thought of anyone casually handing over large sums of money for the "privilege" of hunting innocent civilians, murdering them for no reason except that they were available . . . it's almost beyond belief. I've seen that kind of callous indifference among combat troops who'd been exposed to a war environment for too long, and had left at least part of their humanity behind, but I'd never dreamed that "normal" people might do the same. (They're not "normal", of course: they're monsters in human form, who've drowned their souls in the dregs of existence by their own choice.)
You'll understand that I still view life through the lens of a clergyman's calling, despite not having been professionally active in that field for a long time. I wonder what I would do if someone who'd done that came to me and asked me to hear his confession of sin, and give him absolution? I hope and pray that I wouldn't turn away from my calling, and would minister to him as best I could . . . but it would be extraordinarily difficult. It was the same for me as a prison chaplain, when a multiple murder or rapist or whatever would feel the touch of grace, and want to repent before God. To sit and listen to the litany of pure evil they unleashed in their confession was probably the hardest thing I had to do as a clergyman. I can only hope and pray that God's mercy would reach out and cover their sins, even though as a human being I didn't know that such mercy would be possible. I suppose it's a good thing I'm not God . . .
I can't say any more about it. I've run out of words to describe the horror I felt reading this, and remembering those video news images of civilians being cut down in the streets of Sarajevo. May those guilty of this repent of their sins; but if they don't, may they suffer condign punishment and retribution in the hereafter.
Two reports caught my eye over the weekend. Just remind yourself as you read them that they are the fruit of four years of the Biden administration - and if President Trump is forced to back down on his policies (e.g. through losses in the mid-term elections, or court rulings) we'll be back in the same situation in no time.
The most frequently cited statistic about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is that about 43 million Americans rely on it each month to feed themselves and their families. That number is often used to justify the program’s scale and reach. But this monthly average hides a far more disturbing truth. Because of high turnover, the real number of Americans who receive SNAP benefits at some point during a given year is much higher. Federal data show that 52% of new enrollees leave within one year, and 67% within two years. That means that across twelve months, between 63 and 83 million unique individuals participate in the program. In other words, about 22% of the entire US population uses SNAP to buy food during any calendar year. This is not a small anti-poverty program. It is a vast, parallel food economy. The only way such numbers make sense is if many more illegal immigrants are benefiting from the system than politicians admit.
. . .
SNAP benefits are set to be suspended on November 1 if the shutdown persists, and states like California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington have each announced that their food programs for illegal immigrants will be suspended at the same time. These programs were supposedly distinct from SNAP, yet their funding halts when SNAP halts. That coincidence exposes the truth: the money, the systems, and the administrative pipelines are connected. States have long played a shell game, quietly routing federal funds into state-level programs for illegal immigrants. The shutdown has revealed the link.
The implications are enormous. If SNAP were truly separate from these state programs, the shutdown would inconvenience them, not paralyze them. Their paralysis proves a shared infrastructure, shared databases, shared eligibility systems, and, most troublingly, shared funding streams. This confirms what conservatives have long argued: state officials are using federal welfare mechanisms to subsidize benefits for illegal immigrants. It is not a clean firewall between programs. It is a revolving door.
Illegal immigrants have benefitted from at least $197 million in direct federal healthcare-related grants since fiscal year 2021, according to new research from Open the Books. This figure does not include indirect spending on illegal immigrants via Medicaid, which was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be around $27 billion from FY 2017-2023, nor does it account for education spending that benefits illegal immigrants and their children, which amounts to an estimated $70 billion annually.
. . .
Health-related spending is principally directed towards programs serving the neediest members of society, such as the homeless, drug-addicted, or otherwise medically fragile. The expansion of programs to include illegal immigrants both encourages illegal migration into the United States and directs spending away from high-poverty Americans.
. . .
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150.7 billion per year [at] the federal state and local level. Meanwhile, this year’s budget reconciliation bill directs $45 billion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s detention budget and nearly $30 billion to ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations over the next four years. The bill directs an additional $46.5 billion to border security infrastructure.
So much for our taxpayer dollars. So much for constitutional and legal provisions forbidding the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on those not entitled to such support. The previous administration appears to have disregarded those provisions wholesale. If these numbers don't demonstrate the absolute contempt that the progressive left wing of US politics has for taxpayers and regular citizens, then I don't know what will.
Even with all that President Trump has accomplished so far, we remain balanced on a knife-edge as far as our future fiscal policies are concerned. If the progressive left gains control of the House and Senate during the 2026 mid-term elections, and/or if left-wing judges use the judicial system to block much of the President's program, then we're neck-deep in the financial dwang once again . . . and given how deep that noxious substance already is in our body politic, I don't know whether we'll be able to dig our way out again. That's particularly troubling in the light of opinion polls suggesting that a majority of the electorate is not happy with the President's policies for one reason or another. (Whether or not those polls are accurate is another question: without knowing the exact statistics of who and how many were sampled, when and where, it's one I can't answer.)
It's up to all of us, individually and collectively, to keep up the pressure, encourage all those we know to think rationally and count their pennies (particularly those given to the taxman), and stop that from happening.
I couldn't believe this article was real, but I'm assured it is.
Marvel Rivals video game is ramping up the LGBTQ+ representation with its fourth game release this month by featuring the sister of Thor, the Asgardian God of Thunder, who is a lesbian with a transgender husband.
The storyline for the game, put out by NetEase Games in collaboration with Marvel Games, follows villain character Doctor Doom who meets his alternate reality self — who is a hero — and that causes a “timestream entanglement” in which heroes and corresponding villains come to fight each other for domination over the universe. It is a first person shooter-styled game first released last year and already has several gay characters introduced.
The new release is reportedly set to add the character Vanguard Angela (Aldrif Odinsdottir), who is the daughter of Asgard’s God King, Odin. That makes her the sister of popular Marvel comic book hero, Thor, God of Thunder.
In the comics, the character, Angela, is married to a male character named Sera who was later written as having “transitioned” to female in the comics.
How does this fit the Norse canon in any way, shape or form? (Although, I suppose if Loki could turn himself into a horse and bear a foal, a lesbian goddess is far from impossible. I draw the line at a transgender husband, though. Even Odin couldn't turn his famously blind eye to that!)
Of course, if gay and/or homosexual gods are to become a thing, it'll give new meaning to the name of their home. Perhaps "Asgard" should be re-spelled with a second "S" in the first syllable, and a "U" in the second?
