President Donald Trump has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan to address U.S. troops on Thanksgiving Thursday.
The
president arrived at Bagram Air Field around 8:30 p.m. local time and
spent roughly two-and-a-half hours in the war-torn country. The media
was under “strict instructions” to keep the visit under wraps for
security reasons, CBS News reports.
No surprise there. The military loves the guy, and he's good to veterans as well. This is a president that cares about the troops, unlike his lawless predecessor!
Of course, the idiot MSM can't even get this right:
President Donald Trump mocked Newsweek after
they reported Thursday he spent Thanksgiving golfing and tweeting. In
fact, the president was secretly traveling to Afghanistan to visit
deployed American troops.
“I thought Newsweek was out of
business?” Trump wrote on Twitter, sharing a screenshot of the article
and photos of him with the troops in Afghanistan posted by his son
Donald Trump Jr.
Nice to see him holding them accountable!
While they were compiling their lies for their Fake News stories, he was busy acknowledging the history of the day and reasons to be thankful:
President Donald Trump recalled the spirit of unity and gratitude in his Thanksgiving proclamation for 2019.
Trump
noted the pilgrims spent their first Thanksgiving seated in unity with
the Wampanoag Tribe after they helped them survive in the New World.
“That first Thanksgiving provided an enduring symbol of gratitude
that is uniquely sewn into the fabric of our American spirit,” Trump wrote.
The president also recalled America’s first president, George
Washington declared a National Day of Thanksgiving after the
Revolutionary War and the new Constitution and President Abraham Lincoln
proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving after the battle of Gettysburg.
First Lady Melania Trump took to Twitter on
Thursday to wish Americans a “blessed Thanksgiving” and thank those in
the military serving overseas.
“May you all have a blessed
Thanksgiving! Enjoy time with your family and friends. To those in our
military who are serving overseas, you are in our thoughts and prayers –
our nation is thankful for all you do!”
Classy lady, and certainly a patriotic American who is proud of her country!
People in Hong Kong appreciate our president as well, for all he's done for them:
Thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong staged a “Thanksgiving” rally on Thursday evening in response to President Donald Trump signing two bills in support of the city’s pro-democracy movement.
Demonstrators
took to the streets shortly after the president signed the legislation.
Some draped themselves in U.S. flags and expressed gratitude for the
administration’s support.
“The rationale for us having this rally is to show our gratitude and
thank the U.S Congress and also President Trump for passing the bill,”
student Sunny Cheung, 23, told
Reuters. “We are really grateful about that and we really appreciate
the effort made by Americans who support Hong Kong, who stand with Hong
Kong, who do not choose to side with Beijing.”
“I was confident Donald Trump would sign the law because we are
fighting for universal freedom. Everyone globally should support that,”
another young woman told
the news outlet. “But we do want to give thanks to those around the
globe that support us, a small city like Hong Kong, we thank them for
their attention.”
Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong held up
posters featuring U.S. President Donald Trump depicted as “Rocky Balboa”
at a special rally on Thanksgiving Day to thank the president for
signing legislation supporting their cause.
On Wednesday, Trump
tweeted a humorous image of his face superimposed on Sylvester
Stallone’s body, circa 1976, in the role of prizefighter Rocky Balboa.
Left-wing Hollywood personalities were outraged, and mainstream media fact-checkers tittered in disapproval, but most people took the tweet as a joke.
Except in Hong Kong. There, protesters appear to have taken the image
seriously, as a depiction of American resolve against China.
On Wednesday, President Trump signed
two relevant bills into law. One, the Hong Kong Human Rights and
Democracy Act, “mandates sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials
who carry out human rights abuses and requires an annual review of the
favorable trade status that Washington grants Hong Kong,” the Associated
Press reported. The other bill prohibits the export to Hong Kong of
non-lethal arms used by police to suppress protests.
It was not clear at first whether the president would sign the bills,
though they had overwhelming support in Congress. Trump is in the midst
of delicate trade talks with China, and while he has sometimes used the
Hong Kong issue to gain leverage, he has also appealed to China by
supporting talks instead of confrontation. In a statement Wednesday, he
said: “I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and
the people of Hong Kong.”
You've gotta love this! He's so adept at trolling the Left, and people love him for it!
Then, there is a nice flashback article for you, and some history:
Former President Ronald Reagan delivered a
memorable Thanksgiving address in 1985, with his words continuing to
ring true 34 years later.
The 40th president delivered brief
remarks on the cherished holiday, urging Americans to thank God for the
liberty they enjoy in the United States.
“You know, the Statue of Liberty and this wonderful holiday
called Thanksgiving go together naturally because although as Americans
we have many things for which to be thankful, none is more important
than our liberty,” he said, painting a stark contrast between the
freedoms Americans enjoyed and the oppression that remains a reality for
so many across the globe:
Fundamental American values manifested in the
story of Thanksgiving centuries before the Declaration of Independence
and Constitution, explained Wilfred McClay, author of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story and professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Mansour invited McClay’s assessment of criticisms of the November holiday among left-wing teachers calling for students to “unlearn” a “feel-good” Thanksgiving “myth.” McClay said of leftist contempt for
Thanksgiving, “I think it’s a reflection of what — for some people — is
the obsession with the politicization of all aspects of life, and
everything has to be brought into conformity with some kind of
ideological worldview.”
McClay continued, “It’s almost like a kind of revolutionary religion,
like in the French Revolution, the way they abolished the calendar, and
tried to reinvent civilization from the bottom up. It’s the kind of
mentality [against] something that really … is one of most admirable
holidays imaginable. Of course, we aren’t the only ones that have
Thanksgiving in the world, but it is integral to our essential
practises, and it’s an expression of gratitude.”
“It has religious roots,” said McClay of the history of Thanksgiving.
“In the 1620s — there’s some debate over when the first Thanksgiving
was, whether it was in Virginia or whether it was in Plymouth, but it’s
in the 17th century — it had religious overtones, particularly with the
Pilgrims in 1621.” McClay added, “It is an amazing
story. Of course they had come in pursuit of freedom to practise their
religion and raise their children as they saw fit. They had come from
the Netherlands, where religious liberty was available to them, but it
was a hard place to live for various reasons, and particularly for their
children, to have them grow up not speaking English and all of that, so
they got on the Mayflower and came on over.” “It was a terrible, brutal first
winter,” stated McClay. “They suffered from disease and exposure, and
about half of them died. Many of them never came off the ship because
they saw the landing as so dangerous, but they did have favorable
contacts with some of the native tribes, the Patuxet Tribe [and]
Squanto, and he taught them how to cultivate corn, what plants to eat
and what plants not to eat.” “[Squanto] was an intermediary,”
explained McClay. “He helped [the Pilgrims] form relationships with the
Wampanoag Tribe. … They had this celebratory feast in November 1621 to
celebrate a successful harvest of corn that Squanto had helped show them
[how] to cultivate. So that’s seen as the historical origin of it, and
it was, by all accounts, by everything we know about it, and we don’t
know a lot.” McClay remarked, “Puritans were great
about keeping journals and diaries. They saw success or failure as
evidence of the degree to which they were being faithful to God. …
That’s what their settlement was all about. They saw this as a mission,
this errand into the wilderness.” “Ten years later, John Winthrop, who
led the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which became Boston — he gave this
magnificent speech … where the phrase ‘city on a hill’ comes from —
makes it very clear this was a religious enterprise, so they’re grateful
to God [for] the success in finally getting through — or at least
having the materials to get through — the coming winter,” added McClay. Fundamental American values were being developed by the early colonists, explained McClay. “What they did was enact social
compact theory that had been sort of kicked around in Europe —
especially in Britain — for awhile,” McClay noted. “They created a body
politic out of the consent of those who were aboard the ship, and they
had the foresight to realize they should [and] could do that … two
centuries before the Declaration of Independence, the idea that
government is based on the consent of the governed, which of course is
one of the fundamental American ideas. So all of this is prefigured by
the Mayflower Compact.” McClay said, “There’s a kind of
audacity about these [first colonists] that we miss, I think, in the
historical accounts. Their journeys were dangerous. The habitats into
which they were coming were brutal, and they lost many lives, and yet
they had this sense that …. they were on a mission of God, ‘The eyes of
all people are upon us.’ … They were so deeply committed to the vision
of what they were doing, and that was the germ of what became,
ultimately, a great nation.”
The Puritans sought religious restoration via their settlement enterprise, explained McClay.
“[The Puritans] wanted to just have a faithful remnant of a church
that they thought had become corrupt in England, and in Europe, in
general,” McClay shared. “What they really wanted to do was recreate
what [William Bradford] called, ‘the primitive church,’ and that doesn’t
mean people running around with spears and that sort of thing. It meant
a church that resembled the church of the time of the apostles and
Jesus and immediately after Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, the
early time of the church, when it was simpler, when you didn’t have a
lot of pomp and ceremony and popes and bishops running around in fancy
robes and the accumulation of wealth and worldly power.” McClay added, “It’s proper, I think,
that we really trace Thanksgiving more to the Puritans, to a kind of
reverent Thanksgiving.” “[Left-wing criticism of
Thanksgiving] doesn’t touch the validity of the holiday for us, because
we don’t necessarily ground what we value of Thanksgiving in that
historical episode. It’s not like the founding is, where it really
matters what the language of the [Declaration of Independence] and
Constitution was, and we want to try to stay as close as we can to the
original intent of those documents. We don’t have that same kind of
relationship to the first Thanksgiving, so I think it’s kind of a phony
charge, what it does reflect to me is this pervasive politicization of
American life, particularly from a left, radical, critical perspective.” McClay described Thanksgiving as an “aspirational” holiday. “A myth, properly understood, is not a
falsehood,” McClay said. “We say that we believe all men are created
equal. In some literal way, of course that’s not true, so what do we
mean? Do we mean all men are created equal in the eyes of God? Maybe,
although secular people might object to that formulation, but we
certainly mean we have a kind of aspiration towards recognition of — in
some ultimate way that’s very hard to define — the equal worth of all
individual people. That’s really, I think, fundamentally religious. It’ s
hard to imagine that existing out of a Juedo-Christian understanding of human beings.” McClay went on, “We have this day
because we aspire to reconciliation to one another and a recognition of
just how profoundly indebted we are to those who came before us, to our
parents, to our surrounding society, to our neighbors and friends, that
there’s so much that we take for granted every single day.” “How are you going to go through
life?” asked McClay. “How are you going to go through the world? Are you
going to go through it thinking that everything is your due and
everything you don’t get [means] you’re being cheated by the world? Or
do you think, ‘Why do I have something rather than nothing? Isn’t that
great?'” McClay continued, “The Christian view
— I’m sweeping widely, here — is that we don’t really deserve anything.
Our sinful nature is that we don’t really have anything coming to us,
that it’s God’s graciousness that is the source of all these good things
that we really don’t deserve.” “It is a time in which we recognize
our own insufficiencies, that we are not islands unto ourselves and that
we depend on others, and that there are so many people in our lives to
whom we owe profound gratitude, and just the bounty of existence,”
determined McClay. “These are all reasons for gratitude.”
McClay contrasted gratitude and ingratitude. “Gratitude is the proper disposition
of a healthy human soul, and it’s the proper disposition of a good
citizen in a democratic society,” assessed McClay. “If we lose those
things and we become, sort of, brats — and I’m not meaning to say all
the radical critiques of American society are bratty, most of them are,
but not all of them — brattiness is a kind of ingratitude and a feeling
that, ‘I deserve it all and whatever I don’t get is a form of
expropriation.’ It’s the seed of
other good things, other forms of mutual appreciation and reconciliation
that can occur, and to take that away atomizes people.it leaves people
without a means to reach out to one another.”
Left-wing critiques of Thanksgiving are generally a part of a broader
political campaign to undermine America’s founding, concluded McClay.
That one, you have in full, because it's a great message, and one a lot of people don't hear these days.
Hope you all had a great holiday, with people you love!
Ever hear someone claim that we should not eat meat? That it's unhealthy, bad for the environment, and so forth? Well, they're wrong, and now some scientists re standing up and stating this obvious fact.
A team of UK scholars have fired back at
unscientific claims by PETA and other groups that veganism is a
“greener” option that eating meat, insisting that meat has “massive
social benefits.”
Speaking at a panel
in central London, scientists from the University of Edinburgh and
Scotland’s Rural College argued that eating meat is crucial for the
physical and mental health of children, especially in developing
countries, adding that that alternatives to livestock farming would not
improve land use.
“We feel that while livestock production has a range of economic,
social and environmental costs and benefits, the costs have perhaps been
receiving far more attention recently than some of the benefits,” said
Professor Geoff Simm, Director of Global Academy Agriculture and Food
Security at the University of Edinburgh.
“Meat has massive social benefits,” Simm said. “It’s an important
source of dietary protein, energy, highly bioavailable micronutrients,
even small amounts of animal-sourced food have a really important effect
on the development of children, in the developing world on their
cognitive and physical development and they are really important.”
Simm also said that claims that veganism would benefit land use are not based on serious research, the Telegraphreported.
“Often the argument is made that going vegan would minimise land use,
and the modelling studies that have been done demonstrate that that’s
not the case,” he said.
Prof Mike Coffey, from Scotland’s Rural College expressed his
agreement, while adding that livestock breeding actually contributes
positively to the environment.
“It’s completely unnecessary to go vegan,” Coffey said. “If everybody
went vegan it would be devastating for the UK environment. Animals bred
for food help boost biodiversity.”
Concerns over bovine methane emissions are also being effectively
addressed, the panel declared, since researchers are attempting to breed
cattle that grow faster and eat less, which could further reduce the
amount of methane released by cows.
Already the difference in methane emissions from best and worst
cattle was about 30 percent, Prof. Coffey said, which means that if all
UK farmers used the most digestively efficient animals carbon emissions
could be reduced by nearly a third.
Experiments in breeding is leading to dairy cows that consume less
feed for the amount of milk they produce, Coffey said, and soon
livestock farmers will be able to measure methane emissions from groups
of animals.
“My expectation is that at some point in the near future there will
be product labels that relates to the efficiency or carbon impact of the
food,” he said.
Caution is to be recommended before recommending veganism as a cure-all, said Edinburgh University Professor Andrea Wilson.
“We know a lot about the livestock sector because people have looked
at it. We actually know very little about the vegan sector,” she said.
“The danger is we demonise one and jump too quickly to the other.”
For his part, Prof. Simm has argued elsewhere
that meat production has and will likely continue to play an important
role in feeding the world, which should be of paramount importance.
“While there is an argument for a diet with less meat in it, the science argues against consuming no meat,” Simm said.
“There are areas of the world where grass grows better than any other
crop and that, coupled with food industry by-products, could support an
optimum of 12 per cent of animal protein in the diet, particularly
from ruminants like cattle and sheep,” he added.
So, gobble that turkey! Consume that cow! Devour that deer! Chow down on that chicken!
Samuel Opoku, 23, has been arrested for the alleged assault of five different people with buckets of liquid feces.
Opoku has been charged
with five counts of assault with a weapon, and five more counts of
mischief interference with property. Near midnight on Monday, Oppoku
allegedly dumped one of the buckets on a woman just outside the
University of Toronto.
Police Constable David Hopkinson was disgusted. “A young girl had a bucket of waste, feces, dumped on her,” he told the Toronto Star.
“I don’t know what to say, I’m at a loss, this is absolutely
disgusting.” Similar incidents took place at U of T, as well as York
University.
One attack occurred in the John P. Robarts Library on Monday, when a
man entered and poured a bucket of waste on two people seated at a
table, before fleeing the scene. “As a public university we work to make
the resources of our libraries as open as possible,” Yanni Dagonas,
acting chief spokesperson for York University, said. “What happened was shocking and assistance was provided to those affected.”
And while all of the victims of the attacks have been of Asian
descent, Police Spokesman Victor Kwong said the crimes are not believed
to have been racially motivated. “We don’t know if that’s the
connection, because we have different parts of Asia in there,” Kwong
said. “Some (of the victims) were from the west side, some from the east
side — so it’s not like they were all Chinese, per se.”
Mostly, though, authorities are simply dumbfounded. “It’s so
bizarre,” Constable Allyson Douglas-Cook said. “You can imagine the
questions, and we’re just as confused as everyone — and just as
determined to try to put an end to this. Because it’s just absolutely
horrible and disgusting and confusing.”
Opoku has been ordered to remain in custody until Dec. 3 when a bail hearing has been set.
Every target is Asian, meaning Oriental, but they don't think this is racist?? Seriously??? Are they really that stupid?
How often is this the case, I wonder, that some member of a protected group commits a crime? How often are they excused for their bad behavior, based on their group status?
In this case, at least, we can say the person is mentally ill. Well, duh! Why are we told we must accept this?
A former UC Berkeley student and left-wing
activist has been deemed insane and sentenced to 39 years to life in a
psychiatric facility for the murder of a woman and the attempted murder
of a second woman in Berkeley, California.
Pablo Gomez Jr., a known left-wing activist on UC Berkeley’s campus who reportedly
preferred to be addressed by the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” was
deemed unfit to stand trial for murder and sentenced to 39 years to life
in Napa State Hospital last week, according to a report by San Luis Obispo Tribune.
The 24-year-old leftist was transferred to the custody of the
Department of State Hospitals after pleading no contest to the
first-degree murder of a 27-year-old teacher, Emilie Inman, and the
attempted murder of her friend, Kiana Schmitt.
Gomez — who had been a Chicanx/Latinx Studies major at UC Berkeley at
the time — fatally stabbed Inman at her home on January 6, 2017, and
then went on to stab Schmitt after hiding the teacher’s body in the
garden, according to the Post Millennial.
The report added that Schmitt — who had driven Gomez to Inman’s home,
believing it to be the home of one of his friends — found the man in
the yard, drenched in blood, with a knife. That’s when Gomez reportedly
stabbed Schmitt, who managed to escape the attack, despite her injuries.
According to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, Alameda County
assistant district attorney Teresa Drenick said that Gomez made the
pleas with a stipulation that he would be not guilty by reason of
insanity based on the opinions of four doctors at the time of the
crimes.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge C. Don Clay, however, reportedly
said in court that if Gomez is ever restored to competency and deemed
fit to stand trial, he will serve the remainder of his sentence in
prison.
Inman’s father, Scott Inman, wrote a letter in preparation for last
week’s hearing, stating that the loss of his daughter has been
“devastating” for the Inman family, and that the case’s conclusion still
leaves many questions unanswered regarding “the strange collection of
events” that led Gomez to commit such a “heinous” crime.
“The profound grief that accompanies a loss of a child, especially
considering the conditions in which she died, have made the last three
years seemingly unbearable at times,” wrote Inman. “The numerous trips
to the Alameda County Superior Court house have continued to challenge
our mental state as well as our deep emotional being.”
In September 2016, Gomez was filmed confronting
the UC Berkeley College Republicans and grabbing their promotional
materials, stating, “this is fucked up, this is really fucked up,” in a
video eerily similar to many of the viral videos that surface showcasingleftistsattackingconservativestudents on collegecampusesacross the country.
In November 2016, just five weeks before his murderous rampage, the left-wing activist tweeted that
“the United States is a violent white supremacist settler empire whose
only fate is annihilation,” according to the Post Millennial.
Gomez, who was also involved with the school’s Queer Alliance Resource Center, was even featured in a 2014 Vice film about climate change.
“The way that we’ve been living our lives isn’t working out for us,”
preached Gomez in the film. “The world, as we know it, is in danger.”
So, confused about his own sex, racist, and violent, and yet we are supposed to welcome the things he wants? If he's nuts, how are the same standards from others sane?
We are told it's "racist" to reject people entering our country illegally. We are told it's "racist" to claim these people, already criminals by their entry, also cause even more crime. We are being lied to.
An illegal alien woman returned to the United
States soon after being deported for killing four American children in a
2008 school bus crash in Cottonwood, Minnesota.
Olga Marina
Franco del Cid, a 35-year-old illegal alien from Guatemala, was found
guilty for 24 charges including four counts of criminal vehicular
homicide after she ran a stop sign on February 18, 2008 and killed
13-year-old Jesse Javens, 12-year-old Reed Stevens, nine-year-old Emilee
Olson, and nine-year-old Hunter Javens.
The four children Franco del Cid killed were among 28 students on a
school bus at the time, 14 others of which were injured in the crash.
Hunter
Javens (top left), Emilee Olson (top right), Reed Stevens (bottom
left), and Jesse Javens (bottom right) were killed in a school bus crash
in 2008 caused by an illegal alien woman from Guatemala. (Photo via CBS
News)
In October 2008, Franco del Cid was sentenced to just 12 and a half
years for the children’s deaths. By April 2016, she had served only
eight years in Minnesota and was set free. Immediately on release she
was turned over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency
and deported from the U.S. in May 2016.
Sometime between late 2016 and 2019, ICE officials said Franco del
Cid returned to the U.S. and was living less than three hours away from
where she had left those four children dead in 2008.
“This individual has committed a very serious crime in this state,” ICE official Shawn Neudauer told FOX 9. “Beyond serving her sentence, there is a penalty for coming back after you’ve been told you have to leave.”
This week, Franco del Cid was arrested by ICE in Inver Grove Heights,
Minnesota. The illegal alien may face between 10 to 20 years in prison
for illegally re-entering the U.S.
This is what we are supposed to welcome? This child killer needs a "better life"? At this stage, I say arrest her and use the death penalty.
In these modern times, people are depending more and more on various "smart" devices, with a wide range of uses, but more often than not, such devices bring with them a serious loss of privacy. Why are people willing to trade privacy and security for convenience?
The editor of the Mozilla Foundation’s Internet
Health Report recently published a blog post on the website of the UK
consumer association Which? that questions how privacy-focused the smart
devices being pushed by the Masters of the Universe are.
In a blog post
to Which.co.uk titled”Are You Being Spied on by Your Smart Home
Devices?” Solana Larsen, the editor of the Mozilla Foundation’s Internet
Health Report, discusses whether popular smart home devices such as
speakers are respecting users’ privacy.
Larsen notes that although many people may have heard of smart
devices such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home, there are a number of
smart home devices from smart scales to cat litter trays.
Larsen warns that just as the number of types of smart devices grows,
security and privacy measures often don’t improve. Larsen writes:
Now that more and more companies collect personal data about you, including audio and video of your family, and sensitive biometric and health information, like your heart rate and sleeping habits, it’s worrying that more are not upfront about the privacy and security of their products.
To address this, we at Mozilla publish a ‘*Privacy Not Included’, buyer’s guide every year to assess whether popular smart devices meet our five Minimum Security Standards. This year, we examine 76 popular products, and encourage you to judge for yourself what you think.
Larsen notes that the most popular smart devices have generally
improved their security, but many leave much room for improvement.
Larsen writes:
For example:
New types of smart devices like doorbells, which have been
criticised for lack of encryption, security vulnerabilities, and privacy
issues.
Fitness trackers designed for kids as young as 4 years old, raise
questions about what we are teaching our children about how much digital
surveillance in their lives is normal.
A whole range of pet-focused products entering homes are disturbingly weak on both privacy and security.
Larsen then lists the steps that users could take in order to influence manufacturers to improve the security of these devices:
For example:
Start rating products on their privacy and security. Wherever we rate the price and performance of products, let’s start rating them on privacy and security too.
Push for better privacy laws and regulations. In Europe, and beyond, we need to urge politicians to pass robust data privacy regulations — and enforce them!
The Mozilla Foundation has also compiled a shopper’s guide
of sorts. The guide lists a number of different products with a smiley
face above them, as users scroll down the page the smiley changes from
smiling to concerned to frightened. This indicates the level of privacy
offered by the devices in each category.
Try it out at the Mozilla Foundation’s website here.
We need to be aware, as consumers, just how our personal data is being used, often without our knowledge, to bring profit to various companies, and even to collect data they don't need, which could potentially be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes.
For example, how many of you use your cell phone to take pictures? I'd guess most do. How many share those pictures online, on social media sites? If you do, do you know that your phone could be placing quite specific location information on those photos? Unless you turn off location data, anyone could download those pictures, and tell exactly where they were taken. And, yes, I mean pretty exactly. One study that was done showed that someone could determine not only in which house on street a picture was taken, but in which room. photo of your baby's nursery could tell a hacker where in your house your baby sleeps, making it easier to target that child. Pictures your kids post and share with friends could reveal their location to online predators.
How about that smart refrigerator? Wow, it can tell you when you need to shop, and maybe even do that for you! What happens, though, when doctors or insurance companies have data on what foods you purchase, and decide to use that information against you? What if insurance companies were allowed to refuse coverage, if you didn't eat exactly as some "professional" decided you should eat? Think that couldn't happen? Think again. There is already a push in many quarters, including from the UN, for people to stop eating meat. Nowadays, your refrigerator could turn you over to the food police.
Smart TV? Do you want or need a device that knows everything you watch? How about a DVR that can count how many people are in the room? Or a gaming system that can track people in the room? A doorbell camera that can analyze you voice and share that data? And don't even get me started on those "speaker" or "personal assistants" or whatever you want to call those evil spy devices!
Five-year-old “Landen” is concluding a remarkable recovery after being hurled from a Mall of America balcony.
Would-be murderer Emmanuel Aranda told
authorities he was “looking for someone to kill,” but it “didn’t work
out.” Now, the victim of that botched attempt has recovered enough to
leave even his limp behind.
Landen captured countless hearts on the internet, as his fight for
survival in the aftermath of the 39-foot fall from a high balcony in the
famous Bloomington, Minnesota, shopping center gained traction on
social media. After being admitted in April, Landen remained in the
Intensive Care Unit until the beginning of August.
One month later, he finally made it
back home — but far from unscathed. Landen still had “a limp and uneven
legs from a two-time broken femur, [and] an open wound on his belly we
were taking care of every night,” Landen’s family said in a status
update posted to the GoFundMe page used to raise over $1,000,000 in aid.
These days, Landen is doing even better: “When
his mommy asks him if she can look at his wound or asks how he’s doing,
he always responds with ‘Mom, I’m healed, you don’t need to ask me
anymore,'” according to the aforementioned update.
“He loves being back to school and going to kindergarten at the same
school his twin brother and sister go to,” the family said in the post.
“He gets out of the car every morning happy and blows kisses all the way
in! He’s a strong, happy boy.”
Thank God!! I know a lot of people were praying for this child, who was so viciously attacked. It's awesome to hear that he's recovered so fully, and can live his life, with no lasting effects. God does answer prayers. Strong and happy; that's what I wanted to hear!
I hope and pray that his attacker can find his way to being sorry for his actions, and seek forgiveness. Wouldn't that be something?
Budapest, HUNGARY — Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a packed hall
in the capital Hungary is proud of its Christian heritage and will do
all in its power to defend its Christian identity.
“We are proud that our king Saint Stephen built the Hungarian State
on solid ground and made our country a part of Christian Europe one
thousand years ago,” Mr. Orbán said, citing Hungary’s constitution. “We
recognise the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood.”
The prime minister said “Saint Stephen, our first Christian king, was an enlightened monarch, a visionary who wrote a guide
for his son Emeric called ‘Admonitions’ that we Hungarians read as a
personal message to each of us, both as a nation and as individuals, and
it has been a source of our strength and flourishing.”
Along with urging him to preserve the Christian faith, the
Admonitions also contained precious counsel for good citizenship and
good government, Mr. Orbán noted.
“Be merciful to all who are suffering violence, keeping always in
your heart the example of the Lord who said: I desire mercy and not
sacrifice,” Mr. Orbán recited. “Be patient with everyone, not only with
the powerful, but also with the weak.”
“Finally, be strong lest prosperity lift you up too much or adversity
cast you down. Be humble in this life, that God may raise you up in the
next,” he quoted.
In his speech, broken up periodically by enthusiastic applause, the leaderr echoed words written by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000 to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of Hungary as a Christian nation.
“When St Stephen wrote his Admonitions for his son Emeric, was he
speaking only to him?” the Polish pope asked. “Did he not write his
Admonitions for all future generations of Hungarians, for all the heirs
of his crown?”
“Your holy king, dear brothers and sisters of the Hungarian nation,
left you as an inheritance not only the royal crown,” he said. “He left
you the spiritual testament, a heritage of fundamental and
indestructible values: the true house built upon the rock.”
In Tuesday’s address, Mr. Orbán said that despite its small size, Hungary has an important mission to play in the world.
“Hungarians make up only 0.02 percent of the world’s population, so
how much difference can it make? Is it worth it?” Mr. Orbán asked.
He then proceeded to invoke the historical example of the 12
apostles, who changed the world by their Christian witness to the death
and resurrection of Jesus.
“Standing up for our persecuted brothers and sisters engenders
courage in ourselves and others,” the prime minister continued. “When we
raised Aid to Persecuted Christians to the level of a government
ministry, who would have known how it would grow and influence others?”
Mr. Orbán also shared some sobering facts about the extent of the real-world drama of Christian persecution.
“Four out of 5 people persecuted for their faith are Christians and
some 245 million Christians around the globe suffer extreme
persecution,” Orbán noted, along with scores of vandalized churches and
numerous deaths.
“And yet Europe remains silent again and again!” he said. “European
politicians seem paralyzed and unable to do anything, insisting that it
is all a matter of generic ‘human rights.’”
“But Christian persecution is not just a humanitarian issue,” Orbán
insisted. “It is not just violence against individual persons or groups
but an organized attack on an entire culture, including here in Europe.”
This attack takes many forms, some overt and some more subtle, he
said, which includes “population exchange through mass migration,
stigmatization, mockery, and the muzzle of political correctness.”
The prime minister also criticized Western Europe’s indiscriminate acceptance of mass migration as a time bomb for the future.
“Western Europe has already provided dozens of militants to the
Islamic State,” he noted, “and uncontrolled immigration has produced a
radical change in the demographics of the population.”
The only solution, he suggested, is for Europe to rediscover its Christian roots, its Christian identity.
If more leaders in Europe would stand firm as he's doing, the people there would not be facing such a crisis, and the attempts to transform Europe into something else, and to eliminate European people, would not be going so well.
This issue is out of control. A decade ago, most of us would never have imagined things could become this bad, that people could be this far off track, but here we are. Not only have many people accepted perverse and destructive behavior, calling that "normal", now we have people not only accepting, but actively seeking, and recruiting for, people trying to change their biological sex. Not just adults, either, no, children are being pushed into this madness as well. I am sure you all already know this issue is pretty bad, but how bad, exactly, is it? Well, if your stomach can handle it, read on:
Crowdfunding site GoFundMe shows more than 26,000 girls and women are seeking financial assistance to have “top surgery” — or an elective double mastectomy — in order to appear more masculine.
A read through some of the statements by females asking for funds finds some similarities, especially sadness.
“August” of Chicago wrote:
"This is a surgery I have been dreaming of since I was a child. I never thought it would become a reality. My chest has been the main source of discomfort and dysphoria in my life and soon it will be gone."
“Will” in Ireland wrote:
"Top-surgery is something I have wanted since before I had the language to describe it. I bind every day. It is uncomfortable, and I don’t want to have to keep struggling to breathe."
“Kal” wrote:
"A big part of my transition has been working towards alignment of body and mind, and the next big milestone I am marching towards is my top surgery."
Despite the focus on surgery to change one’s appearance in order to look more like the opposite sex, there is no scientific evidence that cross-sex hormones and transgender surgery actually benefit individuals with gender dysphoria because gender identity is a psychological — and not a biological — phenomenon.
Attorney and writer Jane Robbins observed at the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse:
"The concept of changing one’s biological sex is, of course, nonsense, as sex is determined by unalterable chromosomes. An individual can change his hormone levels and undergo surgery to better imitate the opposite sex, but a male on the day of his conception will remain a male on the day of his death. And as discussed below, the idea that there is a real personal trait called 'gender' that challenges or invalidates the identity significance of biological sex is equally fallacious. But the absence of genuine evidence is simply ignored, and faux “evidence” is created to validate the mania."
Physicians who have embraced transgender ideology are enthusiastically treating gender dysphoria with expensive and life-altering medical interventions and surgeries.
Transgender treatment for those with gender dysphoria has grown into an elaborate industry. The cost of top surgery, for example, is over $10,000.
A number of the females with GoFundMe top surgery accounts provide prospective donors a link to the website of Dr. Javad Sajan of Allure Esthetic Plastic Surgery, who specializes in the surgery.
Another website that advertises top surgery is the International Center for Transgender Care (ICTC) at the American Institute for Plastic Surgery in Dallas.
“Patients who opt for cosmetic mastectomy can expect to experience a number of benefits, including a greater congruence between their outside appearance and experienced gender, improved self-esteem and self-image, and an increased ability to blend-in society as a man,” touts ICTC, which features a photo of a perfectly muscular bare male torso as a suggestion of a final result.
However, ICTC also admits:
"While top surgery can help you to gain a more traditionally masculine appearance, your chest may not look 'perfect' following surgery. Swelling and bruising are to be expected after mastectomy, so final results may not be evident right away. Ultimately, your results will depend on the specific mastectomy technique used, along with your individual anatomy and body characteristics."
Hacsi Horváth, MA, PgCert, an expert in clinical epidemiology and a “detransitioned” man who says he “masqueraded ‘as a woman’” for about 13 years, wrote last year at 4thWaveNow of the new industry of “affirming” physicians:
"Proponents of affirmative care have dealt the deathblow to what little gatekeeping that remains. Their activities could well be described as marketing and recruitment for “being trans.” Patients of any age need only say they think they are really the opposite sex, or wish they were, and affirmative care clinicians are happy to get busy, scheduling surgeries and prescribing lifelong drug regimens. They seem to see themselves as affirmative pioneers, especially those who work tirelessly to provide medical interventions to more and more children and teens, thus creating an iatrogenic illusion from which the kids may never emerge."
As an example of a trans industry physician, Horváth pointed to Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
He noted Olson-Kennedy’s paper in May 2018 in which she recommended gender-confused girls as young as 13 for top surgery. Based on 136 “completed surveys” at her gender clinic, she and her colleagues determined, “Chest dysphoria was high among presurgical transmasculine youth, and surgical intervention positively affected both minors and young adults.”
“Given these findings, professional guidelines and clinical practice should consider patients for chest surgery based on individual need rather than chronologic age,” she concluded.
In the video below from November 2018, Olson-Kennedy is heard stating during a meeting that a double mastectomy for a young teen girl is not a big deal, even if she regrets the surgery later on in life:
https://youtu.be/5Y6espcXPJk
Insisting that teens make positive, life-altering decisions all the
time, she said, “Adolescents actually have the capacity to make a
reasoned, logical decision” about removing their breasts.
“And here’s the other thing about chest surgery,” she added, “if you
want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them.”
Yes, these people are really this sick. Forget the fact that the suicide rate for someone so confused is higher than for virtually any other group, even with "treatments" and acceptance of their ental illness as "normal", forget everything we know about biology and genetics, forget common sense, let's just encourage people to mutilate themselves, because someone convinced them they wer not acceptable as God created them.
The really sick thing is, the people who encourage this insanity are the same ones who used to claim we had to accept people for who they were. They claimed that some ar genetically homosexual - not true - and thus it was wrong to treat their behavior as a bad thing. No, they claim genetics don't matter, and it's all about how someone feels and believes, and we are supposed to allow any sort of medical procedure to make that person content. Anything, that is, except mental health care, which is what they actually need! That, many states have actually outlawed! And, they are teaching this lunacy to children. Children! Kids who haven't even hit puberty are being told they can be the opposite sex, that biology doesn't matter.
Growing up, I never encountered anyone who thought they were supposed to be the opposite sex. No one. Ever. I don't believe that there are that many who think this now, without having been convinced by someone else it was so. This is a madness, and a spiritual infection, and it's spreading.
If you haven't done so already, I encourage all parents to get your children out of the public schools. Out of the daycares. Out of the preschools. Tighten the budget, and have one parent home with them. Home school, if you can't afford a private school. Otherwise, you risk losing your children to this madness. They are teaching it everywhere, even in cartoons, these days. I know this sounds alarmist, but it's not There are even parents losing their kids for not allowing the to "transition", when the child claims that's what they want. What that we can buy is worth that? It is still possible for a mother to stay at home, and home schooling is something most can manage.
We did it. Mine are almost done at this stage, and they are well educated, capable of carrying on conversations with anyone, well adjusted, and well above even many college kids, when it comes to knowledge. They love to read, to study history and science, and are themselves shocked at how poorly many manage to express themselves online. Sure, it takes a bit of effort, but the results make that worthwhile. Do you want your children to grow up to be capable, independent, freedom-loving individuals, or helpless, gullible, confused, mentally ill slaves to the State?
This one is interesting. The Girl Scouts, not the best of institutions, are now telling parents not to direct their daughters to hug relatives. No, I'm not joking. Yes, just daughters; apparently they aren't concerned about the boys. Seems they believe that a hug, for a relative, is somehow akin to something sexual, and are pushing that message, under the guise of giving girls a choice. Here's the article:
The Girl Scouts of the USA released a reminder this holiday season to parents not to force their young daughters to hug anyone.
The organization released the reminder on their website, saying that parents could be giving their daughters the “wrong idea about consent and physical affection” by asking them to give hugs.
The Girl Scouts urged parents to think twice about asking their daughters to show affection in the following scenario:
“Have you ever insisted, ‘Uncle just got here—go give him a big hug!’ or ‘Auntie gave you that nice toy, go give her a kiss,’ when you were worried your child might not offer affection on her own? If yes, you might want to reconsider the urge to do that in the future.”
The organization also posted on Facebook as part of the campaign that “forced affection=not O.K.”
The organization says that these behaviors, suggesting a girl owes somebody a hug after not seeing them in awhile or because she received a nice gift from them, may spark something later in life where a girl determines whether it is okay to “owe” someone sexual favors because someone decided to take her to dinner.
“The notion of consent may seem very grown-up and like something that doesn’t pertain to children, but the lessons girls learn when they’re young about setting physical boundaries and expecting them to be respected last a lifetime, and can influence how she feels about herself and her body as she gets older,” said Girl Scouts’ developmental psychologist Dr. Andrea Bastiani Archibald.
The Girl Scouts as an organization is advising families to let their daughters take the lead in showing affection toward family members. While the organization said it does not want to facilitate rudeness towards family members, it is allowing Girl Scout troop leaders to counsel parents to let their daughters make that choice.
Most of those commenting on the article see this as ridiculous, and I tend to agree. What do you think?
This is madness. This woman likely prevented that child from becoming hopelessly lost, or falling into the hands of a predator, and she's being charged as a kidnapper?
A Utah teacher is facing kidnapping charges after she says she
intervened to help a 5-year-old get home safely after seeing the child
“sobbing uncontrollably” before wandering off school property.
“I
did not kidnap a child. I followed a clearly distraught child as she
left the school grounds. I felt she was not safe traveling alone,” Amy
Louise Martz told reporters Thursday, according to Deseret News.
Martz,
a 49-year-old sixth grade teacher at Fox Hollow Elementary School, was
charged with the felony on Monday in connection with an incident in
early September, when a woman reported that her autistic 5-year-old
daughter never came home from school.
Martz and her attorney say
the whole thing is a misunderstanding complicated by a language barrier,
as the 5-year-old girl is apparently autistic and speaks Spanish at
home. While authorities have charged Martz because they say she took an
unauthorized walk with the child off school property, the teacher
insists she spent most of the time trying to lead the girl to her
parents, first trying to take her to the bus stop and then the parent
pick-up spot. She said the little girl shook her head both times.
“At
each fork in the road I stopped and said, ‘Which way home?’ She would
point confidently and said, ‘This way home,” Martz was quoted saying by Deseret News.
At some point, however, she said she “realized this cute girl did not know where she was going.”
The
walk ultimately took the girl more than a half-mile away from school
grounds and lasted about 40 minutes, authorities said. The two were
eventually brought back to campus by another teacher who spotted them.
According to charging documents, surveillance footage recorded Martz “walking hand-in-hand” with the girl on school property.
Martz
said she didn't intend to be gone for so long but had left her
cellphone at school, leading her to ask a neighborhood resident to
borrow a phone and call the school.
The teacher of 24 years
claimed that she tried to explain her intentions to the girl's father
but that there was an apparent language barrier that prevented him from
“understanding (her) good intentions and the safety (she) had provided.”
After
receiving a reprimand from the school and being denied a second chance
to explain herself to the parents, Martz said she found out about the
child kidnapping charges against her after being contacted by the media.
She turned herself in, was booked into the county jail, and posted
bail.
If convicted, Martz faces up to 15 years to life in prison.
“I
had no intent to interfere with the child’s trip home. I was providing
safety to what I felt was a vulnerable child because she was distraught.
I did not learn until later that she had autism,” Martz told reporters
on Thursday, adding that she was “acting out of compassion” for the
child.
“It’s a sad commentary on our society when educators who
responsibly help children are disciplined and charged with
crimes,” Martz said. “I plead with the prosecutor to drop the charges
against me.”
So, if yu see a small, disabled child wandering around lost, don't bother to help? Just let the child go off alone, to be taken by an actual predator, or lost, or hit by a car, and do nothing to help? Where were the parents? Why was a disabled child of five left to walk home alone? Why aren't the parents being questioned for not picking her up? Note, too, they don't speak English, apparently. Are they even here legally?
This is ridiculous! Instead of looking at the actual causes of all of this violence, people want to pretend the stores are to blame, because of design issues? Maybe they could just block groups that are prone to violence from entry, and see some real results.....
NEW
YORK, Nov 21 (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp employees on Thursday sued the
fast food giant and several of its franchisees in Chicago over a store
redesign that staffers say has made it easier for angry customers to
leap over the counter and attack them.
The
suit, filed in Illinois' Circuit Court of Cook County by 17
Chicago-area McDonald's workers, claims McDonald's has failed to protect
them from a pattern of violence.
Employees
have been threatened with guns, beaten with a wet-floor sign, had
kitchen equipment thrown at them by a naked customer, been
pepper-sprayed, been flashed and propositioned, and even urinated on,
according to the complaint.
"McDonald's
takes seriously its responsibility to provide and foster a safe working
environment for our employees, and along with our franchisees, continue
to make investments in training programs that uphold safe environments
for customers and crew members," the company said in a statement that
did not mention whether it planned to contest the lawsuit.
"In addition to training, McDonald’s maintains stringent policies against violence in our restaurants."
The
lawsuit targets McDonald's so-called "Experience of the Future" store
renovations announced in 2017, part of a corporate turnaround plan that
came after years of stagnant sales.
The company said last year that it and its franchisees would invest $6 billion to revamp most of its roughly 14,000 U.S. stores.
In
October, executives said more than 9,000 stores had completed
remodeling - about two-thirds of all U.S. locations - with more in
development before year's end, and that the modernized stores had
improved overall sales.
But
the suit claims that the new design features split and lowered
counters, creating easy access for customers seeking to harm employees
on the other side.
Filed
in conjunction with the Fight for $15 and a Union, the complaint
alleges a nationwide epidemic of in-store violence, including an armed
robbery at a McDonald's in Orlando, Florida when workers were held at
gunpoint in a walk-in freezer.
In the Chicago area, there are more than 20 calls every day to emergency services from McDonald's stores, the suit said.
Plaintiffs claim that McDonald's ignores best practices that could make stores safer, especially at locations open overnight.
Those
measures include drive-thru windows that block customers from entering
the store, windows free of advertising materials that otherwise obstruct
lines of vision and bathrooms that lock when workers need to clean them
alone late at night. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by David
Gregorio)
How ridiculous is this? Because, gee, people weren't leaping over counters, and through windows, and whatever, before this redesign? Oh, wait, they were! You can watch countless videos on YouTube showing such things, and let me tell you, there is a noticeable trend in those. Not 100%, but noticeable. But let's blame the restaurant chain, and ignore the facts, and make some money, eh?
This case is beyond ridiculous. We have a liberal location refusing to address problems caused by homeless people, and then fining business owners for not dealing with the problems themselves. Here's the story:
Jawaid Bazyar is fighting a decision by the City of Denver to
fine his business for refusing to clean poop from an adjacent alley.
The local internet service provider CEO is taking
the city to court after being fined for not cleaning up the leavings of
the local homeless population from his property. “If the city’s not
going to enforce laws against trespassing, or camping, or public
defecation and just make me bear the cost of these problems, that’s just
not right,” Bazyar told CBS Denver.
“There’s food, trash, drug deals,” Bazyar said. “In the alley, we get
the defecation, drug needles.” Bazyar is concerned about the health and
safety of both him and his employees. “It’s a bio-hazard. It could be
infectious. I didn’t hire these people to clean poop off the ground. I
can’t, as an employer, just say, ‘Go and clean up the feces,’” he
explained.
While the Denver Public Health Department claims
to “empathize” with Bazyar’s plight, it refuses to clean the alley
because it is on his private property. If only private property meant as
much to the police as it does to the health department: Bazyar said he
has to call police — sometimes several times a day — to remove the
homeless from his property.
Even that might be tolerable, if the police responded to the calls.
Bazyar claims they “rarely” do, making it difficult to prevent the
problem, and making the area dangerous to his employees. One of them,
Tamara Chapman, said she has been “chased with a 2-by-4, a knife, a
pipe.” A man even allegedly “bashed in [Chapman’s] windshield with a
rock.”
Bazyar will appear in court on December 18. In the meantime, he may
be fined for every day he does not comply. At this point, he feels
cornered. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” Bazyar said. “The
government’s primary job is public safety. I think a lot of politicians
don’t want to be seen as anti-homeless or heartless.”
“I’m going to go to court and do my best to argue that the City’s
treatment of this unfair. This is a public crime issue, and a public
health issue, and the city is the organization that’s responsible for
that,” he said.
So, the city won't do anything, won't remove these people, won't fine them for public defecation, won't clean up, but they expect their citizens to handle biohazards, while trying to earn a living, and while being threatened with various weapons from the people causing the problem?? Really, Denver, that's the best you can do? You care about these homeless people who are endangering everyone else, but you don't care at all about everyone else.
Business owners, take note. Relocate, remove your businesses from this city, and go elsewhere, to some place with more sense in the local government. Let Denver go broke.
This is seriously twisted. No motive is mentioned, but there has to have been something. You don't do what hey did accidentally, and claim you didn't mean to hurt anyone.
Two teenagers are facing murder charges after a six-foot log fell from a cliff and killed a photographer taking school pictures below.
Victoria
Schafer, 44, was killed instantly when the 74-pound log fell about 75
feet and hit her as she photographed students for their senior pictures
near Old Man’s Cave at Hocking Hills State Park, in Ohio, on 2 September.
Authorities
investigating whether the log was deliberately moved concluded that it
was purposely removed from a pile of logs more than 40 feet from the
edge of a cliff, the Chillicothe Gazette reports.
Troy
Newman, an investigator at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources,
claimed there was a ledge below the first drop and that the log would
have required forward momentum to fall the way it did, according to the
newspaper.
Investigators allege two 16-year-old boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pushed the log intentionally.
However the lawyer representing one of the boys has argued he did not intend to kill anyone, CBS News reports.
The teenagers were initially charged with reckless homicide but their charges have now been upgraded to murder, The Washington Post reports.
They also faces charges of felonious assault and involuntary manslaughter and will be tried as adults.
According
to Ohio state law, a person can be charged with second degree murder if
they have done something intentionally which has led to the death of
another person, even if it was not planned or premeditated.
Ms
Schafer’s sister, Cathy Muth, told CBS the mother of four had left her
job to pursue photography full time and had died doing what she loved.
The defendants remain in a juvenile detention centre on $100,000 (£78,000) bonds, CBS reports.
The
teenagers will appear before a new judge in adult court next week if a
grand jury decides to indict them on Friday, according to The Washington Post.
A trial will then follow.
What, exactly, did they intend, if not murder? Who thinks that dropping a heavy log on someone from a height isn't dangerous, and likely fatal? No one with half a brain thinks that's just some harmless prank, or whatever they are trying to claim for motivation.
