Posts Tagged → new york
Recent gun “buy backs” hugest waste of money and time
Leave it to people who are so consumed with hate that they can’t think straight to make a solid public policy, and so they expend public time and funds on really stupid things.
We are talking here about the hate that so many elected officials (99.5% of whom are registered Democrat Party) have for firearms. Firearms that otherwise secure our police forces, secure our armed forces, secure food for the table, and secure our private homes and personal bodies from violence. Firearms by themselves never did anything to anybody, but if you are an ineffective elected fool, and you are looking to make some kind of statement about how effective you are to people who are easily impressed, you do a “gun buy back.”
Such foolishness recently happened here in Northampton County, Pennsylvania and in Utica, New York.
Never mind that there is no “back” in the gun buy-back, because the guns being purchased never belonged to the official buyer. But hey, fools are gonna fool, especially with foolish sounding policy names, and so we get these mis-named public gun purchases in mostly Democrat-run towns and counties. *I grew up in a rural area where the Democrat Party was heavily represented. Today, not one person out there is a registered Democrat, because this political party has gone off the rails.
Public funds are expended to buy guns, with great fanfare and yet very little or no gain in public safety. Usually the public message goes something like this: “If our purchase of guns here today stops just one mistaken shooting, just one crime, just one accident, why then this is all worth it.”
Which is of course more foolish nonsense. The same communities are often wracked with violence and epidemic official failure, causing hundreds of local citizens to die unnecessarily and prematurely every year. But the “just one life” thing always sounds so serious.
Never does anyone ask What if these guns were used instead to defend our borders by state militia in Arizona, or New Mexico, or California, or Texas? Think about how many lives THAT would save, given how many drug and drug violence deaths are being walked across America’s open southern border right now. These guns in the hands of private citizens defending the American border could probably save hundreds of thousands of lives!
Or, what if the local police put on a gun safety program and taught these same private gun owners with little firearms experience how to safely shoot and store their guns? They would probably make their homes so much more safe and crime-resistant!
When all of the potentially saved lives are compared to the one or two potentially, theoretically, possibly saved by the “gun buy-back,” then we see these gun buy-backs a) don’t save lives and b) are a waste of public money.
What really strikes the eye in these publicized public firearm purchases are the purchased firearms’ low quality, the large number of antique black powder guns that have not hurt anyone since the 1860s, the valuable historic and collectible guns that should be sold to raise money for public agencies, and the simple hunting-grade weapons that leftists tell us they never ever want to take away from us. And all of the hunting ammunition! Destroying this stuff is the crime!
Why don’t the police use the ammunition for police officer training? Why destroy something so valuable as ammunition?!
And since when does the government rip off private citizens, paying them literally pennies on the dollar for high value guns, and then instead of monetizing that public money investment, the government employees then destroy the high value property?
Why doesn’t the government have an appraiser on site who can advise private citizens about the actual high value of the old gun the local government is offering them $75.00 for? Why is ripping off local people a good policy?
In Utica, New York, roughly $30,000.00 of public money was spent on purchasing… “ghost guns,” which is a political term, a loaded term, and a fake term to describe guns that are manufactured off the grid. And you know what? Those “ghost guns” that sound so dangerous and scary to the New York Attorney General… they were printed on a 3-D printer! In other words, they probably cost a few bucks each to make, and then the public mis-paid the owners hundreds of dollars each.
How does any of this make sense?
And yet all of these guns and the ammo are destined to be destroyed. So say the unquestioning mainstream media fools, who stand up in front of the cameras and parrot the talking points they are handed. Hint to the paid media people: You got a degree in “journalism,” I think because you were supposed to be…journalists? What kind of a journalist doesn’t ask questions, especially of those in positions of political and official power? (Answer is: Mainstream media people are not journalists and they do not ask questions. Instead they parrot narratives given to them by leftist government employees).
So we here are doing the job of the “journalists” who appeared in writing and on TV with the articles and reports about the gun purchases in Northampton County, PA, and Utica, NY. We are asking the simple questions, and making the simple points that these are not intelligent uses of official time or money. But then again, we do not begin at the assumption that destroying any and all firearms is the right and intelligent thing for government to do, because we are not filled up with mindless hate for inanimate objects.
[Question to the pro 2A activists in Northampton County: Why not sue this nincompoop of a DA, Terry Houck, and demand that he at least assess the market value of these guns before having them destroyed? In no other area of government do people get rewarded for destroying valuable public property]
Terry Houck is Northampton County’s idiot DA, who takes great pride in knowing zero about the collectible, valuable guns he is destroying
Flintlocks, black powder percussion guns, hunting shotguns, single shots, highly collectible and valuable Veteran bring-back guns from Europe, all said by DA Terry Houck to be dangerous. And yet…none of these are associated with crime. And therefore they are not dangerous.
These are not the kinds of guns used in crime. Simple single shot shotguns and one really valuable over-under hunting shotgun, all destined to be destroyed. For no public benefit at all. Just to make fools feel good about themselves
If you stand in front of a camera and talk like a parrot, are you a journalist? Priscilla Liguori asked no questions, committed no acts of journalism in the making of her report about Northampton County’s gun purchases. One more big mainstream media failure
The green-colored gun is a Remington 20-gauge pump shotgun used for hunting birds and rabbits. The rifle at the far right bottom with the rounded pistol grip is a high value Veteran bring-back gun from Europe that never hurt anyone. The gun at the very top of the heap is a single shot black powder FLINTLOCK muzzleloader used to hunt deer; with 1790s technology, it has zero potential use in crime. Only hatred-filled firearm prohibitionists cheer on the destruction of these useful and safe recreational and collectible guns.
Across America, Democrat candidates refuse to debate
Across America, Democrat Party candidates are refusing to debate their political opponents in the traditional way of testing the quality of one another’s ideas in public. Including here in Pennsylvania. They are literally just hiding in their basements and letting the mainstream media (MSNBC, NPR, CBS, ABC, etc.) promote them, without taking any risks that might expose them to the curious public.
This hiding is a goddamned shame is what it is. It is pathetic, and it demonstrates that across America the only thing standing between a political annihilation of the Democrat Party through the voting process and its basic nail-scraping-up-to-the-cliff-face survival is the Democrat Party’s ownership of the mainstream media. The Democrat media continues to act like it is a propaganda arm of one political party. And that is a disgusting shame, too. And I find it amazing that any American sits and absorbs the toxic bullshit that MSNBC and CNN (both of which I watched recently just to be reminded of how much these channels never say or try to figure out for their viewers) pour down the gullets of their lazy audience.
Here in Pennsylvania senate candidate John Fetterman, a rich playboy who pretends to be a blue collar working guy, who has never held a real job in his entire life, who has destroyed the small Pennsylvania town he served as mayor of in his first adult job, who says he wants to release 30% of the incarcerated violent felons back into our neighborhoods, refuses to debate Dr. Oz, his Republican opponent.
Fetterman is not just a liar and a poser and a faker, he is justifiably afraid of debating Oz. I am no huge fan of Dr. Oz. I was a Kathy Barnette supporter, and remain so. But at least stand up and show people what you are made of, you pussy, Fetterman. Fetterman knows his koo koo ideas cannot withstand the light of day in a public debate. And yes, it is true that Fetterman had a brain seizure and a stroke, rendering him a babbling incoherent mess in public and private. So to an extent we can understand his reluctance to appear publicly.
But if your health is that bad, Fetterman, then step the hell down and stop trying to be the candidate hiding in the basement! Being a US senator is a big deal and it requires the full abilities of the person serving in that capacity.
And what about the registered Democrat voters who are going to vote for basement dweller Fetterman, no matter what, no matter that he is a dysfunctional mess (forget that he is an admitted communist who says he wants to use his position to dismantle America as we have been for over two hundred years)? What the hell is that about? Are you voters really so tribal, so short sighted, so deep into your own partisan trench that you will vote for a candidate this bad?
Really?
In Washington State, Arizona, New York, in addition to Pennsylvania, Democrat candidates refuse to stand up and tell the voters what they believe in. They are relying on a spineless sold-out press to do that for them. And yet America actually still has a large number of voters devoted to this ridiculous political party, who will vote for any thing with a “D” after its name on the ballot.
Believe me, I don’t get the partisan Republican thing either, but at least they are not trying to turn America into a mushroom cloud or a mass of dead middle Americans killed by released felons, like the defund-the-police and release-the- prisoners soft on crime Democrats are. At least the Republican candidates show up, get stabbed by crazed Democrat voters (or run over and killed) (or shot like Rep. Scalise), and keep explaining why they love a constitutional America, with freedom, liberty, safety, and opportunity for all.
Once again, it is shame, shame, shame on registered Democrat voters for being so lazy, uncurious, and careless with their sacred votes. Sorry, folks, gotta say it. And yes, you can change. You do not have to vote for bad people like Fetterman.
This election map says it all
If you are shocked at how easily the 2020 election was stolen from the legal voters of America, then take heart. Two can play that game, and IF the Republican Party will only gain its nerve and assert itself half as hard as the Democrat Party, the tables can be turned.
After 300 Democrat Party lawsuits nationwide right before the 2020 election in dozens of states attempting to overturn established election laws, and about a dozen broad daylight unilateral and illegal usurpation of election law jurisdiction and plain-as-day constitutional limits by secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and other states that allowed unsupervised absentee ballots, ballot harvesting, delayed voting until the “right number” of votes are found, and a bunch of other non-transparent “voting” techniques that are all designed to steal elections, it is time for conservatives to quit whining and get with that program.
If you are in a lacrosse or hockey match, and one team is just high-sticking and high elbows right and left and beating the crap out of your team, and scoring on your team as a result, and the referees are not calling the illegal hits, then play the game to the referees. Play to the standard the referees are playing at, not to self-imposed rules that make you “better people” than the other team.
There is no need to be a martyr and to lose the entire game or match because you would not lower yourself to play (cheat) like the other team did. Forget that, play to win! Do whatever it takes, whatever the other team is doing, to win. That is fair. What is unfair is what happened in November 2020, where one political party changed all the rules at the last second, spammed the voting system in a bunch of swing states, and stole the election in a mass of vote fraud, and is now trying to shut down investigations into the obvious fraud.
If the 2020 election was fraud-free and clear, why is one political party doing its utmost to stop transparency into the voting process? In Arizona, the entire Democrat political party is seething around the Maricopa County vote recount, trying to stop it through legal channels, and also to infiltrate it and cloud its legitimacy.
And so, if you look at the map below, you will see that America is almost entirely red. That is, America is almost entirely conservative, patriotic, Constitutional, committed to the rule-of-law etc. Even in supposedly “blue” states like Virginia, Oregon, Washington State, and New York, the number of red voting districts far outnumber the blue ones.
This means that if the red voting districts have the same 150% voter turnout that the blue voting districts had in the 2020 election, and that 97% of that 150% voter turnout goes to the Republican candidates, then the Republican Party should win handily just about everywhere. Even in states that supposedly have a Democrat Party voter edge. And especially in the swing states that so magically had Democrat Party-dominated cities vote at about 150% voter turnout in November 2020.
This would not be cheating, per se, it would simply be following the lead of the Democrat Party and doing just as they do. Everyone following the same rules of the game, the same referees.
And it means that when some federal investigators show up to view that 150% voter turnout, your county sheriff and dozens or hundreds of deputies not only physically stop the investigators from viewing the ballots, they arrest them for attempted vote tampering themselves. Holding a couple dozen communist anti-America federal employees without bail in East Succotash County Jail for a few months will probably send a strong message to communist-occupied Washington, DC, that our votes will not be stolen or rigged. The only unknown here is whether or not the Republican Party actually wants to win elections, or are they happy to be the powerless perpetual minority?
If every red voting district nationwide has the same 150% voter turnout that the Democrat Party claimed in many swing state cities, the Republican Party should do great in the 2022 election.
Democrat Party violence and Armed Citizen response = Save the NRA
Democrat Party militia have been engaged in violent destruction, looting, and personal assaults across America for months now. In Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, and now Kenosha, as well as others.
Every one of these places is run by the Democrat Party, and in every one of these places the political leaders have stopped their own police forces from doing what police have always been hired to do: Bring general law and order to the public square. Liberals have unleashed their BLM, ANTIFA, and “peaceful protest” militias to bring chaos and disorder to public life, with the hope of scaring the public into giving them political power that they cannot otherwise persuade voters to convey to them at the ballot box.
I have never been a partisan person, never. I used to be a Democrat, a long time ago, until the Democrat Party abandoned almost everything I believed in, like a free America.
All my adult life I have voted for candidates and worked on political campaigns that seemed to me to offer the best choice for the citizenry. This includes Independents, Republicans, and Democrats. Living in Harrisburg, long ago abandoned by the GOP, I am often given a choice between batshit crazy leftist Democrats and normal, taxpaying, working Democrats who are liberal but also reasonable. Guess whose political campaigns I volunteer for? If you guessed the normal people who I merely disagree with on many policy issues, but who I do not feel physically threatened by, then you would be correct. Because the chickenshit GOP has abandoned Harrisburg, there are no GOP campaigns to volunteer for.
But this is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where things may be violent in certain neighborhoods, but overall we presently enjoy some general tranquility. In most other Democrat-run locales, the citizenry has been abandoned by the political leaders and their police; left to fend for themselves. Left to defend themselves with whatever weapons they can get.
But Kenosha and Portland could easily come to Harrisburg, because mayor Eric Papenfuse and governor Tom Wolf already sent the public message that they support violence when they marched in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA militias earlier this year.
And so what happens in the burning streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a symbol of things about to come to your neighborhood. And so when 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse lawfully defends himself in those burning Kenosha streets against violent, murderous assault by a convicted violent pedophile, a convicted felon not-to-have-firearms who is pointing a handgun in his face, and another guy beating on him with a deadly weapon, is a symbol of what you and I may well end up doing. If we care to save our own lives.
And so we ask, why is the New York State Attorney General, a partisan Democrat, using her public office to attempt to destroy the National Rifle Association, on the most obvious of political and ideological grounds?
Is she attacking the NRA because she wants to bring harmony to the world? Or is she trying to undermine the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens, while simultaneously not enforcing the law against criminal use of firearms?
If you believe the NY AG is using her lawsuit against the NRA to hurt law-abiding citizens, and to leave them at the mercy of the exact kind of murderous Democrat Party militia guys who just attacked innocent Kyle Rittenhouse, then you would be correct. And this is why protecting the NRA is so important.
Without the NRA’s constant defense of our Second Amendment rights, we would have no self-defense rights at all, and we will then all be subject to the murderous attacks of liberal street militias, who are protected by their political leaders. The same Democrat leaders who will use the law to attack anyone who stands up to their liberal street militias.
The takeaway is this: Vote to support the NRA, because your very life depends upon it.
Kenosha, Wisconsin, car dealership attacked by Democrat Militia, despite the pro-BLM sign
Kenosha, Wisconsin, streets on fire with Democrat Militia. Is this really how you want America to be?
A silver lining
It is easy to become angry as it becomes clearer every day that the coronavirus lockdown response has been a partisan media hype job without any basis, and we have all been deprived of our most essential civil rights by a bunch of power-mad politicians.
After all, as of today’s Pennsylvania Department of Health statistics, exactly 2/3 of the deaths here attributed to covid19 Wuhan Flu occurred in nursing homes and other elder care facilities, among vulnerable elderly people who already had serious health problems.
And we are also learning that a great many of the Wuhan Flu – related deaths are not actually related to the CCP Wuhan Flu. But they are chalked up to it to artificially inflate the numbers, to make it seem worse than it is.
And we are also learning that the death rate of the Wuhan CCP Flu is actually very low. Lower than ye olde regular annual flu! In other words, a lot lot lot of Americans contracted the CCP Flu, showed little or no signs of it, and did not die or become hospitalized.
So as a bunch of justifiably angry Michiganders storm their state house, and as sheriffs in barely-touched rural areas defy state governors’ over-reach, and as counties and townships begin to open up for business on their own terms (with people wearing masks and standing apart), it is easy to see that a public powder keg could go up in dramatic fashion. Why not? It is the American way. It is how we founded our great nation. Hang ’em high!
But there has been a silver lining to all of this stay-the-f*ck-at-home stuff, and that is the result that American families have spent more time together, as families, than since 1952 and the advent of the television. Families have been forced together. In our own home we have had regular family dinners, family conversations, some doozy family fights, and lots of really valuable, really enjoyable, really loving time together. This has been the upside of all the artificial insanity.
And that said, I will also say that I lost a lot of acquaintances and some friends in New York City. They were mostly much older, almost all with some existing health challenges. Some died alone in a hospital, their family members unable to be with them at their time of passing, as they choked to death alone in unfamiliar surroundings. Bad deaths, really hurt and very sad families. There is no question that New York City and its environs have been the hardest hit from the Wuhan Flu, and it is turning out that most of their deaths were also in nursing homes, where Governor Cuomo ordered sick people to go, even as the virus spread.
So yes, there are going to be some lessons learned here. Some painful ones and some good ones. The main good one being that American families are still intact, much more so than we might have thought just eight weeks ago. Let’s not forget this nor let it go. Spending family time together is one of the very best ways to spend time. Hopefully we don’t need a public health emergency to remind us in the future.
Rural & Urban People Experience the Virus Differently
Rural and urban people are experiencing the covid19 CCP virus differently. And this means they each experience the various governors’ approaches to it differently, too. Chinese Flu policies impact rural and urban people differently.
In rural America, like Clinton County and Lycoming County here in Pennsylvania, life is still pretty much going on, not quite like normal, but fairly close to normal. The perceived risk from Wuhan covid19 Flu is low. This is because the rural peoples’ observations are not squaring up with what they are being told from their state capital. Rural people are not seeing up close and personal the disruptive chaos and death that is so pervasive in places like New York City and Philadelphia. So their behavior is different.
For weeks the Lowes in Mill Hall, PA, has been standing-room-only parking on the weekends, as local people shop for gardening supplies. Likewise the other nearby big box stores and small hardware stores are also full of people attending to their needs. Life is going on, albeit with some face masks and people clearly trying to steer clear of one another in shopping aisles. The Wegmans in Williamsport, PA, was full of shoppers the last time I was there, and the shelves were mostly well stocked. Notes about limits per customer are placed in all the usual places – TP, canned tuna, milk, bread. Ladies at the checkout are quite tough and firm about shoppers abiding by these limits, and everyone seems to be getting along just fine.
Elsewhere in rural PA are drive-in church services, food takeout, maybe some bonfires with chairs set apart, but still lots of chairs, nonetheless.
Actual Risk vs. Perceived Risk vs. Government Policy
At the heart of this lifestyle difference between rural and urban people is the difference they have over perceived risk, actual risk, and what the government policy says.
When rural people look around and see none of the catastrophic chaos engulfing New York City, they begin to ask simple and necessary questions about the actual risk of the China Flu to them. The actual risk, not the suggested hype or irrational fear stay-the-f#k-at-home perceived risk that is being breathlessly communicated by the cable outlets every minute. Without bodies stacked high, without lots of people becoming obviously sick from the CCP Chinese Flu, and with local health providers like hospitals and clinics operating as normal, rural people begin to question the value and necessity of the government policy that tells them their Constitutional rights must be suspended.
They then begin to question the value and purpose of their own government.
When we hear about the over-reach in places like Kentucky and Michigan, whose governors are literally demanding that people cower in their homes or else face huge overwhelming coercive force and jail time, it is natural for Americans to ask not just what is the value of these policies, but why can’t we have real policies that are tailored to the realities that each community faces. The potential risks of Wuhan Flu are just not the same everywhere.
Rural areas have more room and space between people, fewer people, less congestion, and a lot lot lot less exposure AND a lot less actual risk. Government policies need to reflect these realities. Blanket one-size-does-not-fit-all policies serve no real health purpose. Instead, no matter how well intentioned the governor may be, these blanket policies that are the same in Philadelphia as they are in Lock Haven, PA, make everyone equally miserable, damage all businesses equally, regardless of the health outcomes.
At the end of the day, government action must both balance risks with costs and benefits, while also safeguarding the citizenry’s sacred Constitutional rights. To date, very few states have done this. Instead, almost every state has treated low-risk rural areas the same as high-risk congested urban areas, and hit them all with the same heavy hammer. This makes the whole covid19 reaction thing seem awfully fishy.
Steven Thrasher has a real PhD in Fake Journalism
Bad journalism is like bad cooking. You can put up with it for a while, until it starts to do you in.
Lately there has been a lot of really bad, highly politicized journalism, the kind where you realize that you just can’t believe a single thing that fake journalists are saying any more. People ingesting this fake news know it is bad, and yet if it is served up with flair and fancy flourishes, it can be tolerated for a while simply because so many people around are similarly pretending to enjoy the crap. They are following the advice of actor Billy Crystal: It is better to look good than to feel good. But now we really feel awful.
Doctoral candidate in “journalism” Steven Thrasher gave a commencement speech to an overly respectful audience at New York University last week that gives perfect and clear insight into all that is wrong in academia, in “higher learning,” and in the supposed craft or profession of “journalism.” And the audience sat there and took it, despite widespread rejection for Thrasher’s white hot hate speech (and surprising amounts of applause at times, too). One wonders how Thrasher would have taken open disruption of his bad performance, like he advocates for others with whom he disagrees.
Steve Thrasher is no “journalist.“ Forget that having a PhD in something as simple as reporting facts makes no sense except as a crotch stuffer. This is a PhD in totally fake news. It is actually pretty sophisticated, because it involves deceptive behavior.
Thrasher’s establishment media is loaded with people just like him: Not seeking real facts or accuracy, not trying to report just the facts so that people have a firm grasp on reality, but instead preloaded with a partisan, highly subjective political mission, and using “journalism” to achieve it. With people like Thrasher, the mainstream media absolutely IS the enemy of The People.
[One of my kids has a science degree from NYU, and she was subjected to political harassment and intimidation by many of her science professors for four long years; I have emails from some of her professors demanding that she attend anti-Trump and anti-America rallies.]
Steven Thrasher:
- Advocated for genocide of “white” people and Jews
- Advocated for violence, vandalism, blacklisting, and oppression against people with whom one does not agree politically
- Advocated for politically correct speech, not free speech, and shutting down speech one disagrees with
Along with his litany of politically correct America-destroying policy points, Thrasher also called President Trump a “fascist,” which seems to be kind of an oh-yeah-take-this moment for political extremists on today’s campuses. Note to Thrasher: You just showed us that you are the intolerant, power-crazed fascist, not Trump. And Thrasher is supposedly an ‘open minded academic’!
From Thrasher’s ugly speech anyone with an open mind can see the disastrous present of academia and the scary future of America. And if you have been willingly ingesting fake news until now, because it is everywhere and easy and it calms your nerves because it makes you feel like everyone agrees with you, and yet having seen Thrasher’s performance you have decided that you finally feel ill, you cannot be alone. Stop eating the crap that is being served up to you by academia and the mainstream media. You will feel better.
Mainstream media, the establishment media, that is the same media which gets its next crop of so-called reporters from institutions like Northwestern University where Thrasher is next set to “teach journalism,” has been poisoned by the likes of Thrasher for decades. Students at these schools cannot get passing grades unless they submit to the political indoctrination of extremists like Thrasher. So education and open minds are out, and politically correct brainwashing is in throughout the establishment media. Thrasher is why the mainstream media has indeed become the avowed enemy of The American People.
Some takeaways we get from Thrasher’s ‘Munich Speech’:
- Communicate clearly with any college or graduate school from which you or your kids hold a degree, that you will not financially support them or speak their praise until all of this politically correct evil is scrubbed from their institution, top to bottom.
- Communicate with information outlets that orchestrate fake news, and tell them that you will not watch them or listen to them or hold them in even middlin’ regard, until they clean up their house and begin acting like non-partisan professional reporters of facts and not like political activists. CNN may be the worst of the bunch, but taxpayer-funded NPR is blatantly partisan and politically correct. National Geographic magazine wants to sell subscriptions, but why would any normal person willingly allow NG’s cutting-edge PC trash into their home? Same with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and about three hundred other mainstream partisan information outlets masquerading as “news.”
- If you find yourself in an audience with a speaker like Fuhrer Steven Thrasher, stand up and object, or show that you object by leaving. The speaker has no right to demand that you just sit there meekly and take their abuse. They certainly do not extend to other speakers the same expectation of respect and tolerance that they are now demanding from you. You are not a captive audience, you can get up and leave. Do it.
- Don’t pay for your kids to attend expensive colleges unless you know they are going to get a real education that will help them advance themselves throughout life. Think about it: Steven Thrasher has a PhD in journalism, and what the hell did it do for him? It made him stupid and close-minded. College education today is a scam, as we see with Thrasher, and as will be seen with his students. Most college experiences today are Marxism 101 to Cultural Revolution 404. This is not an education, at least not one that an employer will value. Pay for four years of science, or pay for a one- or two-year degree at a community college or technical school like Penn Tech in Williamsport, PA. Bankrupting your family while losing your good kid to four years of mind-numbing indoctrination is not a smart move.
Thrasher either virtue signaling or beginning his sieg heil salute, and either way demonstrating how political activism has corrupted and ended professional journalism.
“Vee vill crush zem like stzraw” or some other personification of Nazi German speak
Thrasher’s “Ha! I just said that!” moment
Steven Thrasher, the personification of everything that is wrong in academia and in the establishment media
My 2019 resolution: Not going pee with the ladies
Last night we were celebrating the incoming New Year with friends at a hotel in New York City. Lot of fun, beautiful time of year and place, great, friendly people and beloved old friends.
…and then I had to pee…
Discharging excess fluid is how a healthy mammal’s body works any day, and especially after copious intake. So, I feel the urge, stand up from the table, ask a friendly staff person about the location of the toilet, and receive clear directions. So far so good.
One of Western Civilization’s chief accomplishments is ubiquitous flush toilets. They even come with sinks and hand towels. They are generally clean, tidy, and hygienic, certainly compared to a hole in the floor like you will find the world over. This particular hotel is quite nice, and had all kinds of nice little “extras” about for guests, and it stood to reason that my bathroom experience would be top quality.
Nope.
This is in NYC, a major locus of PC crazy, and it turns out that simply going pee in the homeland of PC crazy results in a crazy pee experience.
I approached the bathroom door and noticed beautiful and often scantily clad women coming and going through that door. Then a well dressed young man entered. The see-through door is labeled “EVERY BODY.”
My inner dinosaur screamed “No f*ing way!” as my feet reflexively stumbled backwards. I may have suffered a brief infarct. Maybe a meteor hit Earth or my head at that moment, too. Reality wheeled around me, and I had an out-of-body feeling.
The kindly young bathroom concierge standing nearby smiled knowingly and said, “there’s a men’s room downstairs, here let me show you,” and he accompanied me downstairs to a glittering bathroom that said “MEN” on the opaque glass and brass door.
This was what I had hoped for: Urinals for guys to stand over, breath mints and mouth wash on the spotless counter, stalls with doors giving enough privacy for guys going #2 or even amorous couples to do their business without interference or observation. A typical nice Men’s room. Natural boundaries. Privacy for men, to be men.
After emptying my body’s excess water tank, I washed up, went back upstairs, and walked past the Chaos & Bizarro anti-civilization bathroom, shown in these photos. Young men and women were still entering and exiting simultaneously, and as a result I made my first and likely only 2019 New Year’s resolution: I will not use a Chaos & Bizarro dual-sex bathroom.
Nope.
I like my high civilization and I intend to keep it. One pee at a time.
Fifty years of designated wilderness
Two weeks ago marked the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act.
It applies to federal designation of remote areas, not to states. States can create their own wild areas, and some do. States closest to human populations and land development seem to also be most assertive about setting aside large areas for people and animals to enjoy.
I enjoy wilderness a lot. Hunting, camping, hiking, fishing, and exploring are all activities I do in designated wilderness.
Every year I hunt Upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains, in a large designated wilderness area. Pitching a tent miles in from the trail head, the only person I see is a hunting partner. Serenity like that is tough to find unless you already live in northern Vermont, Maine, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming or Alaska. It’s a valuable thing, that tranquility.
This summer my young son sat in my lap late at night, watching shooting stars against an already unbelievably starry sky. Loons cried out all around us. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves on the birch trees above us and caused the lake to lap against our rocky shore.
Only by driving a long way north, and then canoeing on a designated wilderness lake, and camping on a designated wilderness island in that lake, were we able to find such peace and quiet. No one else was anywhere around us. We were totally alone, with our camp fires, firewood chores, fishing rods, and deep sleeps in the cold tent.
These are memories likely to make my son smile even as he ages and grapples with responsibilities and challenges of adulthood. We couldn’t do it without wilderness.
Wilderness is a touchstone for a frontier nation like America. Wilderness equals freedom of movement, freedom of action. The same sort of freedoms that instigated insurrection against the British monarchy. American frontiersmen became accustomed to individual liberty unlike anything seen in Western Civilization. They enshrined those liberties in our Constitution.
Sure, there are some frustrations associated with managing wilderness.
Out West, wilderness designation has become a politicized fight over access to valuable minerals under the ground. Access usually involves roads, and roads are the antithesis of a wild experience.
Given the large amount of publicly owned land in the West, I cannot help but wonder if there isn’t some bartering that could go on to resolve these fights. Take multiple use public land and designate it as wilderness, so other areas can responsibly yield their valuable minerals. Plenty of present day public land was once heavily logged, farmed, ranched, and mined, but those scars are long gone.
You can hike all day in a Gold Mine Creek basin and find one tiny miner’s shack from 1902. All other signs have washed away, been covered up by new layers of soil, etc. So there is precedent for taking once-used land and letting it heal to the point where we visitors would swear it is pristine.
Out East, where we have large hardwood forests, occasionally, huge valuable timber falls over in wilderness areas, and the financially hard-pressed locals could surely use the income from retrieving, milling, and selling lumber from those trees. But wilderness rules usually require such behemoths to stay where they lay, symbols of an old forest rarely seen anywhere today. They can be seen as profligate waste, I understand that. I also understand that some now-rare salamanders might only make their homes under these rotting giant logs, and nowhere else.
Seeing the yellow-on-black body of the salamander makes me think of the starry night sky filled with shooting stars. A rare thing of beauty in a world full of bustle, noise, voices, and concrete. For me, I’ll take the salamander.