Trains?

     A train hauling hazardous materials derailed Thursday near Detroit, but none spilled, officials said.  The Norfolk Southern train derailed nearly two weeks after a Norfolk Southern derailment in Ohio left a mangled and charred mass of boxcars that had been carrying various hazardous chemicals.  The derailment just before 9 a.m. west of Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport left the tracks damaged and wheels disconnected from some rail cars.  Police said there were no reported injuries and no evidence that hazardous materials were exposed in the derailment.  The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy sent responders to the scene who found one of the overturned rail cars contained agricultural products while the other cars were empty.. No hazardous material was released into soil or waterways, and one rail car contained liquid chlorine but was away from the overturned section.

    Too soon to speculate what happened here. So many things can cause it. You can bet there are several departments all pointing fingers right now. A defective wheel, bad brakes, improperly tested brakes, broken rail, bad rail bed or some other rail maintenance issue, weather (sudden temp changes). In Canada years back, some hose draggers were called out and got on the locomotive and likely disengaged the air brakes. The crew was accused of not setting enough hand brakes and it rolled away. I know of a case (another railroad) where a malfunctioning electronic car inspection device that sits trackside was ignored because it had been giving false messages. Well, on this particular train, it was giving a legitimate defect message and since it was ignored, the train went all over the ground. Hell, could have been sabotage. Gotta wait for the results of the investigation to know for sure. Even then, we may not find out for sure.

 Since 2019 they have averaged over 80 derailments a month. Everything from simply having to put a car back on the rails, to massive pile ups. Very few like Ohio thank god, but there have been several hundred hazmat leaks a year as well, both involving accidents, and from cars leaking going down the rails or in the yard. 

 

 

 

Why Liberals want high gas prices

 

 Gas prices are up and you're seeing some stories about it in the media, but what's interesting is how the press cover rising gas prices. If you look carefully, it's pretty clear they're not that interested in the topic. They just don't find it compelling. In fact, they may be a little bored by it, and that shouldn't surprise you.

 America has more than enough energy to keep gas prices low, so why is this happening? Well, it is being done on purpose by the party that hates gasoline.

Gas engines are bad for the climate, Democrats tell us. They appear to believe that, but they also understand something else about gas. Cars mean autonomy. If you've got a car, you can go wherever you want. The central planners cannot control you. They hate that.

 

 You won't hear it from Democrats on Capitol Hill, but higher gas prices are a good thing for the environment. Expensive gas should slow the use of cars, and the pollution they emit. 

They want high oil and gas prices. The Biden master plan is for American oil and gas production and consumption to go to zero over the next 15 to 20 years. How do you achieve that goal? By making oil and gas so expensive and so unavailable that Americans are forced to use alternatives.

In other words, the fact that gasoline is roughly $1.25 more expensive per gallon today under Biden than it was a year ago under former President Donald Trump didn’t happen by accident. This was not a result of a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, that could knock out our oil facilities. This was by design.

The left believes that they can change the temperature of the planet by forcing American energy companies to produce less oil and to force Americans to use less of it. How do you get people to buy less of something? You raise its price. This is basic high-school introductory economics.

 Some on the Biden team have inadvertently admitted this. Cornell University professor Saule Omarova, a high-ranking Biden nominee for one of the country’s leading regulatory agencies, said she wants to “bankrupt” U.S. oil, gas and coal companies — and apparently has no problem putting roughly 5 million Americans into unemployment lines. Biden’s appointee to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Lael Brainard, was asked at a congressional hearing recently if she thought high gas prices were a problem. She hemmed and hawed and refused to answer with a simple “yes.” Instead, she explained that this is a “complicated” issue. How is this complicated?

 

 

 

The Biden administration strategy is to force-feed the American economy expensive, unreliable and made-in-China wind and solar energy. His $3 trillion Build Back Better bill would dole out more than $500 billion of taxpayer dollars to the wind, solar and electric vehicle industry to break the back of oil and gas production. If this energy source is so efficient, why does it need a half trillion dollars of your and my money?

Meanwhile, nearly every Biden policy has been deliberately aimed at killing U.S. oil and gas production — from killing the Keystone XL pipeline to trying to shut down other existing natural gas pipelines in the Midwest (Home heating costs are going way up this winter.) to shutting down much of Alaska oil production to new Environmental Protection Agency rules making it very difficult and expensive to drill here in America. He is also preventing the mining of American coal, which is still one of the dominant sources of electric power around the world. He also wants to raise taxes on the oil and gas industry.

Now, let’s be honest. Do any of these policies suggest that Biden and his liberal friends in the green-energy movement want to keep oil and gas prices low? If you answer yes to that, you probably believe that Al Gore invented the internet.

Black Xmas

 

 

 

 Black Lives Matter has continued with its tradition of boycotting “white companies” for the seventh year in a row during the month-long festive season. It has also urged support for “Black Xmas”. On Black Friday, the #BlackLivesMatter Global Network Foundation took to Instagram, where it stated, “Let’s use every tool in our toolbox…including our dollars…to end white-supremacist-capitalism.”  As BLMLA organizer, Jan Williams, reminds us, 'Capitalism doesn't love Black people.'"  The blog post adds that "white-supremacist-capitalism invented policing, initially as chattel-slavery-era 'paddy rollers,' in order to protect its interests and put targets on the backs of Black people. Under modern-day policing, those targets have been affixed to the backs of Black people," including multiple Black customers who were killed by police in stores like Walmart and 24-Hour-Fitness locations. 

Getting wrapped up in settling scores, as BLM’s #BlackXmas seeks to do, will never lead anywhere positive. Actively trying to bankrupt a business because of the owner’s skin colour is blatant discrimination. And then to wrap it up into Christmas is doubly depressing. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s a time of year when families, friends and communities should come together. Not in the eyes of BLM, though, which appears to believe it’s the optimum time of year to crank up racial division.

Here is the perfect example of just exactly how hate-filled and steeped in Marxism – at its core – the Black Lives Matter movement truly is. In fact, there is nothing about this movement that isn’t centered on Marxism division and hate.  The core ideology of the BLM movement is a plagiarized version of the Marxist-based Critical Theory dogma; a socioeconomic political theory meant to use division to conquer the masses bringing them to heal. The dogma, in its original form, used the economic classes to create the dividing fault line.  Today, the Fascists who are seeking to bring the masses to heal have replaced the economic faultline with a faultline based on racial division, and the useful idiots of the opportunistic race-baiting movement have gone all-in.

In our free society, we must suffer such attacks on our culture because even the disingenuous and the opportunistic are guaranteed the freedom of speech. What we don’t have to afford these opportunistic reprobates, however, is a validation of their destructive, self-centered, false narrative dogma.  The statistics disproving a systemic racial bias in law enforcement are well documented. So too are the statistics disproving any systemic racism in education clear and present for those who don’t openly refuse to see them. In fact, the pendulum of racism has swung so far to the opposite end that it is the opportunistic activists of the Black Lives Matter community that are executing open and hateful racism.  These attacks on two of the pinnacle holidays in the United States serve as proof of this hate and opportunism.

Some of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation's biggest corporate donors have stayed silent after the group called on allies to only shop at Black-owned businesses this holiday season.  Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has received major donations from corporations around the world.  BLM Donors to Avoid in 2022: Walmart: 100M (million) over 5 years Target: 10M + 10,000 of pro-bono consulting Home Depot: 1M EA Games: 1M Square Enix: 250K + employee matching contributions to BLM Ubisoft: 100K Etsy: 1M H&M: 500K Everlane: 75K Spanx: 200K Levi’s 200K +100K to the ACLU + 100K to Live Free USA Gap: 250K Warber Parker: 1M Lululemon: 100K + 250K to local Minneapolis organizations Nike 40M over 4 years McDonalds: 1M Wendy’s: 500K  United Healthcare: 10M to George Floyd’s children and Minnesota + 5M to the YMCA Peleton: 500K

 Conservative Clergy of Color, a national non-partisan civil rights advocacy group, is calling on corporations and business leaders to withdraw their financial support from the Black Lives Matter movement following the launch of BLM's annual boycott of these same companies.  "Business leaders who rely on Christmas shoppers for so much of their annual revenue yet also fund BLM, which promotes boycotts of these same companies through #BlackXmas, must pick a side: capitalism or Marxism," said Conservative Clergy of Color co-founder Bishop Audrey Shines. "It's time for them to de-fund BLM now, stop the movement from 'biting the hand that feeds it,' and stand up against attacks on faith-based American traditions including Christmas. Most of all, corporations need to remember that #ChristmasMatters to Americans.

 

 

 

 What companies would you even begin doing business with? There are no BIack owned consumer technology or electronics companies in America. Home appliances? None. Tools and hardware? Nope. Jewellery, watches, luxury handbags? No, no, no, no. I'm sure there are some clothing companies, at least small boutique ones, but none of the major brands. And banking? There's a list online of BIack owned banks - there's 32 of them nationwide, half of them have fewer than two branches or ATMs, and they only exist in 24 states.

  

 

 

It's kind of an ironic statement for BLM to put out, anyway, since for the last two months we've all watched dozens of videos of their followers Iooting and stealing from businesses without paying anyway. A boycott would end up making White owned businesses *more* money.  The problem with radical leftists like BLM is that they will do anything they can to stoke division and unhappiness. It’s not really about whatever the current point of discord they are pushing is. The ultimate point is always about moving the country further to the left. That’s why it’s always about attacking America’s system or underpinnings — like holidays — because the basic principle is that until we go full-on radical, we are evil.

 It would seem, although not surprisingly, that the folks at BLM have forgotten the reason we celebrate Christmas. It is not for the benefit of business owners, be they Black or White. It also doesn't surprise me that this anti-Christian organization would attack Christians at the very root of their beliefs. That is despicable but, unfortunately, expected from the likes of BLM. And, just so you know, Melina, you will have to go way beyond your personal hatred and racist behaviors if you expect to ruin my Christmas. My Holiday spirit is in no related to what can be obtained in a store. Maybe you should ask Santa for some Christian values and ethics. Or a new attitude towards other humans. Or maybe see a shrink.

The Teen sex predator in a skirt in Loudoun County School in Virginia

 

A teen sex predator in a skirt gaming a school’s transgender policy in order to rape a fellow student is every parent’s nightmare

Woke schools implementing ‘guidance’ on trans pupils literally opens the bathroom door to manipulative potential predators.  Loudoun County Virginia is home to one of the United States' wokest school boards, and has shot to notoriety this year as parents clash with board members over topics including critical race theory and gender identity.

 

When Scott Smith tried to raise the matter of his daughter’s rape by a ‘skirt-wearing’ male student at Loudoun County School in Virginia, the 48-year-old plumber was dragged from the room of the school board meeting and when a video of the incident went viral, was ridiculed on social media as some sort of deranged, right-wing nutter.

Funny thing is, it looks like Smith was right. The then-14-year-old boy had been arrested for the assault on his daughter but the local sheriff’s department did not release details of the attack at the time largely due to the legal position on dealing with two juveniles so the incident went under the radar. The same boy, however, was later arrested at a different school after allegedly holding another girl in a classroom where he attacked her.

It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to identify a sexual predator, which would appear to be the case if these allegations are true and while it’s disturbing in a teenage boy, the fact that he was able to exploit the right-on schools’ transgender policies to gain access to young girls is the real frightener.

 

 

 

On June 22 — four weeks after the Smiths' daughter told teachers she was raped in the girls' bathrooms at Stone Bridge High School — Ziegler, who earns $295,000 as the school superintendent, told a crowded school board meeting: 'To my knowledge, we don't have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.'  He then went further, calling it a debunked theory that a transgender person is more likely to sexually assault a cisgender (non-trans) person and that the 'predatory trans person does not exist'.  'I think it's important to keep our perspective on this, we've heard it several times tonight from our public speakers but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,' he said. 

However, the Loudoun County Sheriff's office confirmed to Fox News this week that they had conducted a two-month investigation into the alleged sexual assault at the school.  'We can confirm a May 28, 2021 case that involved a thorough 2-month-long investigation that was conducted to determine the facts of the case prior to arrest,' the sheriff's office reportedly said. 'This case is still pending court proceedings. The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office is not able to provide any documents that pertain to a pending case.'

 

 

 

The male student, who was allowed into the bathroom because he told staff he identified as female, was arrested in July, a month after Smith's outburst at the school board meeting.  Apparently, after the incident, the school system simply transferred him to another school.

The boy allegedly went on to allegedly sexually assault another girl, at a different school, Broad Run High School, on October 6. Broad Run is also part of Loudoun County. Further details on the circumstances of that assault, including why he was at a different school, have not been made clear.  He is now in juvenile detention awaiting a court appearance on all charges, which include sexual battery and forcible sodomy.

 

 

You must understand how fucking vile and evil these people are.

Other than furthering the cause, they have no morality. A 15-year-old girl repeatedly sodomized? That is just fine with them if, in the end, they get what they want.

The organized left will sacrifice all your daughters to create their sick and twisted version of utopia.

Keep voting Democrats, you Blue State, and City morons.

They are coming for your children, and if you refuse to see that, you are as guilty as they are.

Do you really hate Republicans more than you love your own children?

Why woke leftists love the lockdowns

    

     

I’m amazed at the number of intelligent people who are taking what the government and media is telling them about the coronavirus at face value. In what alternate universe has the federal government and mainstream media earned your trust, especially in the past 10 years?  Socialism believes that the government can take better care of you than you can of yourself. And guess what? It has never succeeded — ever. Israel, India and the United Kingdom have all tried it and ended up rejecting it. More recently, you have the socialist disaster of Venezuela to look at if you want to see just how bad the system can be. Even totalitarian Marxist countries like the Soviet Union have been destined to failure. And if socialism isn’t bad enough, totalitarian socialism is even worse, and that agenda, too, has been pushed by the Democrats during this coronavirus “crisis.” Think about it: Marxists do not believe in religion. They don’t believe in personal freedom.  They don’t believe in liberty.

      Not only is there no evidence that “lockdowns” work, they are unconstitutional. Democrat governors have threatened to arrest anyone who attends a church service during their lockdowns. Freedom of religion, as well as the freedom to assemble, are guaranteed First-Amendment rights. It is the backbone that our country was built on, and no politician, no matter the circumstances, should be able to circumvent the Bill of Rights.

     But it doesn’t end there. People have been threatened by government officials for walking in a park, using a beach or leaving their homes. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat dictator, decided it was within her power to ban garden stores from selling seeds. Colorado police handcuffed a father in front of his kids for playing T-ball in an empty park with his daughter. And three Massachusetts men were arrested and face jail time for crossing state lines to play a round of golf. Totalitarian socialism justified by a disease is still totalitarian socialism, and no one should condone it.

 

 

 

     The Covid emergency has created two sides: the progressive Left want lockdown to continue, borders to remain closed, JobKeeper and JobSeeker to be continued, and the economy to remain weak, as continual growth is thought a Ponzi scheme. The Right proposes an opposite set of policies. Having insisted on a prolonged lockdown, the Left then took advantage of the resulting social vacuum to promote its own wide-ranging agendas, while insisting that society as a whole undertake a self-denying ordinance on activity.

     Liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more worry about the pandemic than Republicans do. People who describe themselves as “very liberal” are distinctly anxious.  Last year, when the pandemic was raging and scientists and public-health officials were still trying to understand how the virus spread, extreme care was warranted. People all over the country made enormous sacrifices—rescheduling weddings, missing funerals, canceling graduations, avoiding the family members they love—to protect others.

 

 

 

     2021 is different from 2020, though. Scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t. Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information. And in their eagerness to protect themselves and others, they may be underestimating other costs. Being extra careful about COVID-19 is (mostly) harmless when it’s limited to wiping down your groceries with Lysol wipes and wearing a mask in places where you’re unlikely to spread the coronavirus, such as on a hiking trail. Even as scientific knowledge of COVID-19 has increased, some progressives have continued to embrace policies and behaviors that aren’t supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning.  Public figures and policy makers who try to dictate others’ behavior without any scientific justification for doing so erode trust in public health and make people less willing to take useful precautions. The marginal gains of staying shut down might not justify the potential backlash.

 

     Our culture treats some freedoms, like the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities, as sacrosanct and unquestionable. Yet it treats others, like the freedom to visit family or have a drink at the pub, as conditional, liable for revocation whenever the state decides that the supreme law of public health requires it.

 

      That marks quite a shift. Seen through the older prism of freedom, a state policy, such as the lockdown, would not be embraced. It would be seen as an unprecedented infringement on our liberty. Indeed, the countless deaths caused by lockdown could even be conceived as state manslaughter. The threat of the state behaving in this way would outweigh, morally and politically, the threat posed by a new virus. A pandemic would still be treated with the utmost seriousness, but we would rely more on Swedish-style voluntary precautions, rather than attempt to use the state to minimise mortality at all costs.

      Such an approach seems difficult to imagine in the UK today. Instead of ‘give me liberty, or give me death!’, too many now ask the state to ‘give me liberty from death – and from nasty words and microaggressions too!’  The liberal logic of lockdown is clear: if the good life is the gratified one, and the state is the means to protect us from others’ attitudes, why shouldn’t the goverment lock us down⁠, or lock us up, in order to protect our health?

 

     The tentacles of socialism that have wrapped themselves around the Democrat party didn’t start with COVID-19 and it’s not going to end with COVID-19. However, what has happened during this pandemic is that America has allowed the Democrats to advance their socialist cause. They have made significant inroads that have harmed the country, the economy, small businesses, the president and our individual freedoms and liberty. 

Democrats’ Motto: Rules For Thee, But Not For Me

 

When It Comes To Coronavirus Restrictions, Democrats Act Like The Rules Don’t Apply To Them

 

     Viewers have slammed the Emmys after hundreds of celebrities packed into the awards show without masks or social distancing, despite ongoing warnings in LA about the spread of Covid-19. Many who criticized the show pointed out the hypocrisy of Covid rules that apply to the average person but don't seem to apply to multi-million dollar celebrities - just as it was during the Met Gala last week.

     Actor Seth Rogen on Sunday criticized the Emmy Awards over what he called inadequate COVID-19 precautions while he was presenting an award.  When presenting the evening's first award, for best supporting actress, Rogen openly questioned the safety measures at the event.  "Good to be here at the Emmy Awards," the longtime Hollywood actor and writer said. "Let me start by saying there is way too many of us in this little room. What are we doing? They said this was outdoors. It’s not. They lied to us. We’re in a hermetically sealed tent right now. I would not have come to this."  Rogen continued, questioning whether it was "more important that we have three chandeliers than that we make sure we don’t kill Eugene Levy tonight?"

 

     This comes only a few days after San Francisco Mayor London Breed was seen dancing in the city's Black Cat nightclub, violating her own strict mask mandate.  Unmasked, singing, and dancing with an equally unmasked crowd, cell phone video shows Mayor London Breed inside a club in the Tenderloin on Wednesday night. A San Francisco Department of public health order, clearly states:

     "Everyone, including people who are fully vaccinated, must wear a well-fitted mask in indoor public settings at all times except," the order continues, "people may remove their well-fitted mask while actively eating or drinking."  Breed was dancing behind a table full of drinks, but was not actively drinking or eating, or wearing a face covering while singing, dancing, and posing for photos.

 

     "My drink was sitting at the table. I got up and started dancing because I was feeling the spirit and I wasn't thinking about a mask," Breed explained. "I was thinking about having a good time and in the process I was following the health orders."  Breed added, she and fellow club-goers "don’t need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing."

 

     Wait, what? London, dancing is not actively eating of drinking so you were not following the health orders. If a person wandered into City Hall maskless while "feeling a spirit and thinking about a good time" would the "fun police" interrupt their fun? Translation: "I don't need to follow the rules set for you lowly peasants, and I don't care who knows it".  It's elitism at it's worst. These politicians are emboldened, especially now since the recall failed. She feels superior to the citizens, and will continue to flaunt her position and power. London Breed sounds and behaves like a spoiled rebellious teen(not all teens are such). She gets caught violating her own rules and lashes out in angry indignation trying to turn it around on the rightfully angry citizens whom she's duping into following her ridiculous rules. The only difference is she's being defiant towards her voters rather than a parents authority and make no mistake about this fact, she is an employee of the voters not their lord and master. Start holding these spoiled brats accountable.

 

 

 And the list is long:

 

AT LEAST 10 DEMOCRAT GOVERNORS HAVE BEEN CAUGHT BREAKING THEIR OWN RULES

• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo bragged that his 89-year-old mother would be traveling to Albany to join him for Thanksgiving despite telling New Yorkers to stay home for the holiday, and only later canceled her visit after facing backlash.
• California Governor Gavin Newsom was caught dining at the three-star Michelin restaurant French Laundry with a large party and no social distancing, just hours after he discouraged residents from traveling for the holidays or bringing together multiple households for Thanksgiving.
  • Newsom also held an indoor bill-signing ceremony at a restaurant unable to offer indoor dining under his own coronavirus restrictions.
• Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, now Biden’s Commerce Secretary, was caught at a wine and paint event after instructing residents to obey a “pause” on social gatherings and stay home.
• Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak was photographed breaking his own coronavirus guidance, having dinner without a mask and no social distancing.
• New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ignored her own order mandating all non-essential businesses close, forcing a jewelry store to open so she could buy jewelry remotely despite curbside pickup not yet being allowed.
• Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf attended Biden’s inauguration despite telling Pennsylvanians to “avoid leaving their homes unless absolutely necessary” and requiring travelers to present a negative coronavirus test or quarantine for 10 days.
• New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy attended Biden’s inauguration even though he told Garden State residents to avoid “all nonessential interstate travel at this time.”
• Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker attended a Biden victory parade the day after announcing he was exposed to coronavirus, opting out of self-quarantine.
• Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards dined at a country club without a mask, despite his own coronavirus restrictions requiring people to wear masks in public.
• Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was “slammed” for mingling maskless in Virginia Beach crowds.

11 MAJOR DEMOCRAT MAYORS WERE CAUGHT BREAKING THEIR OWN RULES

• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot joined a big crowd to celebrate Biden’s election despite her own rules for mass gatherings.
  • Lightfoot also got her hair cut despite salons being shutdown under the state’s stay-at-home order, claiming exemption because she is the “public face of this city.”
• Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser traveled to “high risk” Delaware to celebrate Biden’s win, claiming it was “essential travel” and therefore exempt from her own quarantine order.
• San Francisco Mayor London Breed was caught having her own French Laundry party the night after Newsom’s infamous
• New York Mayor Bill de Blasio celebrated New Year’s in Times Square after barring New Yorkers from doing so.
• San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo attended a Thanksgiving gathering that broke California’s coronavirus restrictions.
• Denver Mayor Michael Hancock flew to Mississippi for Thanksgiving after telling Denverites to stay home, shamelessly tweeting to “avoid travel” just 30 minutes before his flight.
• Austin Mayor Steve Adler was on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, when he told residents to “stay home.”
• Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney dined indoors at a restaurant in Maryland while indoor dining was banned in his own city.
• Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined Black Lives Matter protesters just one day after telling residents “to avoid gathering with others outside their households.”
• Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles joined a group of City Council members at a bar, where their unruly behavior was well documented, often refusing to wear masks and not socially distancing.
• Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer was photographed ignoring mask requirements at the Kentucky derby.

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS HAVE ALSO BROKEN CORONAVIRUS GUIDANCE, BELEIVING THE RULES DON’T APPLY TO THEM

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) got her haircut indoors with no mask in the height of the pandemic, in violation of San Francisco’s coronavirus regulations.
  • Pelosi held a press briefing where she approached the lectern masked, and expressed shock that the gathered maskless reporters were following CDC guidance.
  • Pelosi attended an indoor White House event without a mask while still enforcing a mask mandate on the House floor.
  • Pelosi planned an in-person dinner for newly elected House Democrats, and only canceled after receiving blowback over coronavirus safety precautions.
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was captured pulling down his mask surrounded by a large group of people in order to sing.
• Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who pushed for a national mask mandate, was caught chatting with her aides maskless in congressional halls.
• Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was videoed not wearing a mask in the House chamber, then tried to blame maskless Republicans for giving her coronavirus.

DEMOCRAT ELITES ALSO BELIEVE THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW

• Joe Biden was spotted maskless on federal property hours after signing an executive order requiring masks on federal property.
  • More recently, Biden wore a face mask outdoors to announce that face masks are no longer required outdoors.
• Barack Obama was spotted golfing just days before Michelle Obama told people to “stay home.”
• Climate Czar John Kerry was photographed maskless in first-class on an American Airlines flight, ignoring Biden’s executive order requiring face coverings on commercial flights.
• National Teacher’s Union President Randi Weingarten held numerous in-person meetings as she insisted that in-person schooling was too dangerous.

 

 This is just some example of "mandates for thee, but not for me." This routinely keeps happening, and people should not stand for it. No one is supposed to be above the law, but you can change it if you're an affluent celebrity or a Democratic officeholder. As polarizing as COVID-19 is, how can anyone legitimately take warnings seriously when this keeps happening again and again?

If Gabby Petito were black

      

 

     If Gabby Petito were black, she wouldn't be all over the news.  At any given time, there are tens of thousands of Americans categorized as “missing” by law enforcement. However, only a fraction of those individuals receive news coverage, leading some commentators to hypothesize that missing persons with certain characteristics are more likely to garner media attention than others: namely, white women and girls.

      There is very little awareness or concern over the pervasiveness of missing Black women and girls. Especially, when compared to white women and girls. Some have argued that mainstream media appears overly fascinated with covering endangered or missing white women and girls such as Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, and Laci Peterson – but conversely, seems disinterested in cases involving Black women. 

 

     Among the tens of thousands of Black women and girls who are missing many of them are also runaways and victims of sex trafficking. Almost half of U.S. sex trafficking victims are Black girls. In many cases girls are taken against their will; however, it is not uncommon for young Black girls to runaway due to economic deprivation or sexual and/or physical abuse. It is reported that approximately 60% of Black girls are sexually assaulted before they turn 18, which makes it easier for sexual predators to capitalize on their vulnerabilities. Because Amber Alerts are exclusively reserved for abductees, runaways aren’t privileged with texts or sirens that blare out over cell phones — alerting the public of their disappearance. Making matters worse, research suggests that some law enforcement tend to inaccurately categorize cases of missing Black girls as runaways, which decreases the intensity and urgency given to those who have been abducted or who are otherwise endangered.

 

 

     The term Missing White Woman Syndrome describes the fact that Western media will focus on the murder, kidnapping, or disappearance of Caucasian females — usually pretty, young, and middle- or upper-class — to the exclusion of male, minority, poor, or disabled missing persons.  Unbalanced news reporting sends a message that these victims are more important and deserve more consideration than others. 

 

     In December 2018, as one of his last presidential moves of the year, Trump signed the Ashanti Alert Act into federal law. The new nationwide system dispatches notifications about missing people between the ages of 18 and 64 — too old for an Amber Alert, designed to make the public aware of child abductions, and too young for a Silver Alert, which similarly dispenses information about missing seniors. It is the legislative namesake of Ashanti Billie, a young, Black woman and aspiring chef who moved from Maryland to Virginia Beach to study culinary arts. On September 3, 2017, Ashanti was kidnapped on her way to work. Because she was 19, no be-on-the-lookout alerts went out about her abduction. Then 11 days later, her body was discovered near a church in Charlotte. Her parents, Meltony and Brandy Billie, and lawmakers pushed the act to help expedite searches for missing and endangered adults so Ashanti’s senseless death could save another life.

 

 

 

 

     Despite an omnipresent temptation to harangue "the media" for their sensationalist reporting, and having long tired of the recursive "ratings-determined programming" argument in which readers and journalists chase each other along the downward spiral with no sense of who's leading, I must say that in this case, as in many cases, race is circumstantial. The damsel-in-distress fable has always drawn attention--but let's have a look at what makes a damsel. It's not race, but context and juxtaposition. The lack of connection to any criminal element, the unexpectedness of the tragedy, the disjunction between the victim's life and the crime--these make the story "special." Present us a story of a young woman of any race--a college student, a wife, mother, professional, what have you--who has no connections to anything that might suggest the predictability of the crime, or the likeliness of its having occurred, and you'll get your media storm. If you want it. Drama--melodrama, really, which is what this is--derives from the extent to which the narrative elements are fantastic. Give us a dramatic death, give us a tropical island, give us the seamy side of the average America we rarely think about in specific terms, and you'll secure your ratings. 

 

 

     Pretty is better than not pretty, or course, if that's your business; rich is better than poor, young is better than old. If you're going to present these cases like so many episodes of primetime TV, we shall treat them as such. If there's a lack of black, Latino, Asian, people finding themselves in circumstances extraordinary enough to warrant the media attenion that women such as those you've listed get, then the problem of race we need to address as a nation is larger than the individual case reporting.