Tag: bankruptcy

Freedom is under siege, and the besiegers have now told us they have no mercy

1:06 pm

Liberty under siege
Liberty under siege.

For many years I deeply and sincerely believed that many rank-and-file Democrat voters honestly did not know how corrupt and power-hungry the political leaders of their party had become. I thought that if I could simply get them to see the clear evidence of misbehavior and abuse of power that has been going on in the Democratic Party without check since Bill Clinton was president, they would reconsider their voting habits and abandon their support of that party.

I thought that the vast majority of Democrats were decent people who opposed oppression and intolerance and simply were unaware that they were voting for it when they supported the Democratic Party.

I now know unequivocally that I was wrong. Two stories in the past week illustrate bluntly that a large number of ordinary Democrats, maybe even a majority, are eager supporters of oppression and intolerance and dictatorship. They like the corruption and abuse-of-power coming from Democratic Party politicians. They even want more of it.
» Read more

60 comments

Pushback: New VA Attorney General shows Republicans the right way to fight the left

12:50 pm

The way it has been for decades
The way it has been for decades

All around us the oppressive leftists of the Democratic Party are in control. They dominate the mainstream media, the education and science communities, the bureaucracy, the major social media companies, and the entertainment industry. That monolith of top-down rule now imposes its will everywhere, blacklisting and destroying anyone who dares dissent from its agenda.

For decades these intolerant socialists and communists and hate-filled bigots have steadily gained more and more control and power because no one would truly resist them. Time after time they would do something egregious and never face any consequences. For example, in 1999 a DC bureaucrat was forced to resign because he used the word “niggardly,” properly describing how the political world was sometimes cheap and miserly for the wrong reasons. Several ignorant co-workers accused him falsely of using a racial slur, and DC mayor, Democrat Anthony Williams, quickly forced the man to resign. Shortly thereafter Williams realized his error and arranged for the man’s rehiring, but never did anything to discipline the illiterate fools who caused the furor.

Republicans in this matter are far worse. » Read more

12 comments

Pushback: For calling parents “terrorists” National School Board Association facing “collapse”

12:11 pm

Not an organization parents should associate with
Parents and state school boards should return the favor, and get out.

Because of a letter [pdf] it sent to the Justice Department suggesting that protesting parents were akin to “domestic terrorists,” the National School Board Association (NSBA) now faces “total collapse,” with nineteen state school board organizations exiting the association, along with 6 members of its 19-person executive board.

More information here, including this quote:

Until this fall, the National School Boards Association was a noncontroversial, bipartisan lobby group. Then its leaders wrote President Biden a letter. It alleged that the threatening and aggressive acts against school board members across the country might be a form of “domestic terrorism” and asked for federal law enforcement intervention.

Now, the association is at risk of total collapse.

…Nineteen mostly GOP-led states have withdrawn from the association or promised to when this year’s membership expires, and six members of what was a 19-person board have left. Several states are discussing forming an alternative association for school boards. A new executive director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is working to save the organization, lobbying individual states to reconsider, but so far he has not persuaded any of them to change their minds.

» Read more

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Study: Weightlessness might produce long term anemia

3:13 pm

The uncertainty of science: A study of fourteen astronauts who spent six months on ISS has found that weightlessness appears to increase the loss of red blood cells, and that the continuing loss extends well past their return to Earth.

Before this study, space anemia was thought to be a quick adaptation to fluids shifting into the astronaut’s upper body when they first arrived in space. Astronauts lose 10 percent of the liquid in their blood vessels this way. It was thought astronauts rapidly destroyed 10 percent of their red blood cells to restore the balance, and that red blood cell control was back to normal after 10 days in space.

Instead, Dr. Trudel’s team found that the red blood cell destruction was a primary effect of being in space, not just caused by fluid shifts. They demonstrated this by directly measuring red blood cell destruction in 14 astronauts during their six-month space missions.

On Earth, our bodies create and destroy 2 million red blood cells every second. The researchers found that astronauts were destroying 54 percent more red blood cells during the six months they were in space, or 3 million every second. These results were the same for both female and male astronauts.

The study also found that for as much as a year afterward the astronauts continued to lose red blood cells at a rate 30% greater than normal.

The researchers immediately suggested further invasive monitoring of anyone who wants to go to space. From their paper:

Space tourism will considerably expand the number of space travelers. Medical screening of future astronauts and space tourists might benefit from a preflight profiling of globin gene and modifiers. Postlanding monitoring should cover conditions affected by anemia and hemolysis. Monitoring individual astronaut’s levels of hemolysis during mission may be indicated to reduce health risks.

Without question, this data strongly suggests that it would be wise for anyone who wants to go into space for long periods have themselves checked for anemia, and have it treated prior to going, or if they still have it at launch time to decide not to go. However, the choice should belong to the individual, not bureaucrats imposing regulations or legislators passing laws.

Unfortunately, our modern leftist society now assumes such decisions no longer belong to the individual, but must be made by their betters in Washington. Provisions in the 2004 Space Amendments act allows the FAA to impose such invasive medical testing on future space tourists. Its bureaucrats have not yet done so, but the recent history with government mandates over the COVID shots suggests strongly that they will not hesitate to do so when they think they can get away with it.

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Texas grants $5 million grants to two spaceport regions

12:45 pm

Texas today awarded $5 million grants to two spaceport regions, one in Houston and the other in Cameron County where SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility is located.

Governor Greg Abbott today announced Spaceport Trust Fund grant awards of $5,000,000 to the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corporation and $5,000,000 to the Houston Spaceport Development Corporation. Administered by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and Tourism, the Spaceport Trust Fund is a financial tool to support the development of infrastructure necessary for establishing a spaceport in the state of Texas. The 87th Legislature appropriated $10,000,000 in funds in fiscal year 2022 to provide grants, disbursed on a cost-reimbursement basis, to help support the creation of quality jobs and attract continuing investments that will strengthen the economic future of the state.

The money is obviously intended to help pay for things like roads and bridges and other various improvements required to handle the increased traffic and population brought to the locations because of the new spaceport activity.

One wonders, however, why Houston got as much as the Boca Chica area. As far as I know, there is no spaceport begin built near Houston. It houses the Johnson Space Center, but that handles activities prior to and after launch.

I suspect there was some politics involved. Abbott couldn’t award Boca Chica while ignoring Houston, especially because Houston’s importance in the space industry is presently declining as the industry moves from a government-run model (epitomized by the Johnson center) to a private commercial model (epitomized by SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility). Abbott probably felt obliged to send some support Houston’s way to avoid accusations that he is ignoring its increasingly problematic position.

8 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Four-year-old rejected by Make-A-Wish for not getting COVID shot

11:15 am

4-year-old cancer boy rejected by Make-A-Wish
Four-year-old rejected by Make-A-Wish because
he hasn’t gotten the jab

Now they’re coming for the children: The Make-A-Wish Foundation has rejected the wish of a four-year-old cancer patient to go to Disneyworld because the boy has not gotten his COVID shots.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is refusing to grant 4-year-old cancer patient Rocco DiMaggio’s wish to go to Disneyworld — all because he is not vaccinated.

Rocco and his two-year-old brother are not yet even eligible for the jab.

“It was a punch in the gut,” Rocco’s mom told Newsmax about Make-A-Wish Foundation canceling the Disneyworld opportunity.

Not only do children regardless of individual medical conditions have to get the mRNA shots, according to Make-a-Wish, the group’s policy says all family members who receive air travel must be vaccinated. The mRNA shots have thus far failed to deliver as promised and there is no long-term safety data on vaccinating children. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence illustrates the utter brainlessness of the Foundation’s policy. Even if the parents were gung-ho to get the shots, which they are not, it can’t be administered to him at this time because of FDA regulations.

That’s not all however. The stupidity of this is further illustrated by these additional facts:
» Read more

8 comments

House Democrats attempt end-around of filibuster to pass election law using NASA bill

9:09 am

A bill initially written to give authorization to NASA lease its property to others and and passed by the Senate has been stripped entirely of that language by House Democrats and replaced with their proposal to federalize elections nationwide.

H.R. 5746 was introduced in October by Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. The bill extended NASA’s authorization to enter into what are known as enhanced use leases, or EULs, of agency property to companies, government agencies, or educational institutions, for 10 years. The House passed the bill by a voice vote Dec. 8.

The Senate amended the bill, extending the EUL authorization by only three months instead of 10 years, and passed it by unanimous consent, sending it back to the House.

The Democratic leadership of the House, in an unusual move, then took the Senate-amended bill and stripped out the NASA provisions, replacing it with the text of two voting rights bills and now called the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.” They did so because H.R. 5746 had already passed the House and Senate, so the amended version could go directly to the Senate floor without the threat of a filibuster from Senate Republicans, who oppose the voting rights legislation. [emphasis mine]

The level of corruption exhibited by this Democratic Party action is beyond words. The Senate approved one bill. The House Democrats have now turned it into another bill that the Senate did not vote on initially.

In the past, such a corrupt action by the House would never have been attempted because the House would have known that the entire Senate would have rejected this tactic immediately as an insult to its legislative rights. Today however the Democrats care nothing for legalities or law or legislative rights. All they care about is power, and they are willing to do anything to get it. You can expect for certain that all but two Democrats in the Senate will support this crooked action.

That vote’s passage however rests with those two Democrats. Since this tactic is a direct attack on the filibuster, and if successful would forever make it null, we must wonder if Senators Kysten Sinema (D-Arizona) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) will vote against it. If they don’t, their high-minded claims that they will not end the filibuster rule will be proven to be empty words.

48 comments

Today’s blacklisted child: McDonald’s evicts unjabbed children with cancer from Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver

12:33 pm

Already here in Canada and the United States
That child being rounded up for a death camp in this picture could easily
be the sick son of Austin Fergason. Soon it will be your children, and you.

Now they’re coming for the children: The management at a Ronald McDonald House for sick children in Vancouver has told the families of its residents that any child who has not gotten a COVID shot by next week will be evicted from the facility.

Austin Fergason is the father of a four-year-old child with leukemia who received a notice from Ronald McDonald House Charities – British Columbia & Yukon chapter, that he had a month to move his child and his family out unless they submitted to the jab.

“Beginning January 17, 2022, everyone five years and older who are working, staying or visiting our facilities (both the House at 4567 Heather St. Vancouver and at the Family Room in Surrey Memorial Hospital) must show proof of full vaccination (two doses), in addition to completing our existing screening, unless an Accommodation has been sought and has been explicitly approved and granted by RMHC (Ronald McDonald House Charities) in writing,” reads the notice.

It gives these families till the end of the month to comply. Fergason and his family have been at the House since October.

» Read more

14 comments

Pushback: Former employee sues Smith College for discrimination and harassment because she is white

1:33 pm

No civil rights allowed for whites at Smith College
No civil rights allowed for whites at Smith College

Fighting back against bigotry: Jodi Shaw, a former librarian at Smith College in Massachusetts, has sued the college for discriminating against her because she was white, and harassing her by forcing her to attend critical race theory indoctrination sessions that demanded she admit to racism and the evils of the white race.

While she worked there, Shaw “was denied a significant professional career advancement opportunity when she was told by her supervisors that they canceled an orientation program she organized ‘because you are white.’” She was also expected to run a “Residential Life Curriculum” in which students were directed “to project stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others based on skin color.” The college asked Shaw to maintain “affinity houses,” which consisted of student housing segregated along racial lines.

During a professional development retreat at which attendance was compulsory, Shaw “was publicly humiliated for not admitting to ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’ and was continually expected to submit to shaming and harassing group race therapy as an ongoing condition of employment.”

The college harassed her, Shaw claims in the complaint. When she objected to the offending policies and the racially hostile environment at Smith College, the “defendants retaliated against her, attempted to stymie her efforts to file an internal complaint, and then hedged and delayed their investigation. Defendants steadily removed Plaintiff’s job responsibilities, denied her promotional opportunities consistent with all of her colleagues, placed her on furlough, launched a pretextual investigation into her email usage, and deliberately made any further employment at Smith College impossible for Shaw.”

» Read more

23 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Space historian and science journalist blackballed for opposing COVID shot mandates

12:25 pm

Banned because the author expressed an opinion
Banned because the author expressed an opinion.

After a year of daily reporting the blacklisting of hundreds of innocent Americans for merely expressing dissenting opinions, I am sad to say that the new leftist McCarthyism has finally come after me.

In December I was blackballed by most of the Arizona caving community because I had disagreed with their decisions to discriminate against anyone who had not gotten a COVID shot. One of the local clubs was going to run an outdoor camping/caving event and had decided to require everyone who attended to either prove they had gotten the jabs or could show they were tested negative for the Wuhan flu in the past two days. I objected, first because this was discriminatory and was demanding private medical information from people that by law was forbidden, and second because the policy made no sense because the shots provided no certain protection against the virus.

Realizing that their policy was not going to do anything to protect anyone from COVID, the organizers cancelled the event out of fear, and then made both me and one other protesting caver scapegoats for their decision, demanding we be banned from all caving organizations. What made this particular action especially hurtful was that it was pushed and imposed by a number of people who I thought had been close friends. I instead discovered that they really didn’t give a damn about me, and if I didn’t bow to their political will they were most eager to make me a non-person.

So much for friendship, eh?

I hadn’t reported this at length in public because it was essentially a personal matter. Now however this new fad of blacklisting anyone who disagrees with the new fascists and their medical mandates has reached out to try to hurt me and others professionally.
» Read more

26 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Boston policewoman suspended for leading opposition to COVID shot mandate

11:44 am

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are certainly coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: Shana Cotone, the Boston policewoman who helped form and heads Boston First Responders United, a group for Boston municipal workers that has sued to block the city’s COVID shot mandate on all workers, has been put on administrative leave by her department and is now under “an internal affairs investigation”.

Cottone said BPD officers came to her house and took her badge and gun Saturday morning. “They’re trying to come after me — to silence me,” Cottone told the Herald. “They’re not going to silence me.”

Cottone’s group is not the only one suing. » Read more

5 comments

Pushback: Children in England are refusing to wear masks or get tests

11:02 am

A little child shall lead them, by James Johnson
Painting by James L. Johnson.

And little child shall lead them: According to one teacher’s union official in Great Britain, children are refusing in “huge numbers” to wear masks or get twice-weekly tests for COVID, despite government mandates requiring both.

In its latest guidance issued on Jan. 2, the UK Department for Education (DfE) recommended that secondary school pupils in England should wear face coverings inside classrooms to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Before that, masks were already recommended in outdoor communal areas and corridors. Secondary school students are also advised to take a lateral flow test twice a week.

But according to the NASUWT teachers’ union, there has been strong resistance from pupils to the new policy. Damien McNulty, a national executive member of the union, told the BBC on Thursday: “Sadly, we have had reports in the last 24 hours of at least six secondary schools in the northwest of England where children, in huge numbers, are refusing to take lateral flow tests or to wear masks.”

“We’ve got one school in Lancashire where only 67 children out of 1,300 are prepared to have a lateral flow test and wear masks,” he said.

» Read more

14 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Reuters fires long time employee for criticizing BLM

11:41 am

Leftist dictatorship coming to America
What we can look forward to if we all do not
start fighting back, loudly and without fear.

They’re coming for you next: Because Zac Kreigman, Director of Data Science for the Reuters news agency, refused to accept without question the company’s total endorsement of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization in 2020 and instead published detailed fact-based internal memos documenting BLM’s bigoted and Marxist agenda, Reuters fired him.

A chain of events—beginning with the death of George Floyd and culminating with a statistical analysis of Black Lives Matter’s claims—would turn the 44-year-old data scientist’s life upside-down. By June 2021, Kriegman would be locked out of Reuters’s servers, denounced by his colleagues, and fired by email. Kriegman had committed an unpardonable offense: he directly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement in the company’s internal communications forum, debunked Reuters’s own biased reporting, and violated a corporate taboo.

Driven by what he called a “moral obligation” to speak out, Kriegman refused to celebrate unquestioningly the BLM narrative and his company’s “diversity and inclusion” programming; to the contrary, he argued that Reuters was exhibiting significant left-wing bias in the newsroom and that the ongoing BLM protests, riots, and calls to “defund the police” would wreak havoc on minority communities. Week after week, Kriegman felt increasingly disillusioned by the Thomson Reuters line. Finally, on the first Tuesday in May 2021, he posted a long, data-intensive critique of BLM’s and his company’s hypocrisy. He was sent to Human Resources and Diversity & Inclusion for the chance to reform his thoughts.

He refused—so they fired him. [emphasis mine]

Of course, Kriegman has been proven right, on all points. The “defund the police” movement pushed by BLM and its allies in the Democratic Party did do great harm to minorities like blacks. Reuters does have a leftist bias, proven not only by Kriegman’s allegations but by his actual firing. He dared express a dissenting view, did not kow-tow to the leftist narrative the company wished to push, and got fired for doing so.

The highlighted words however are the most important. » Read more

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NASA finally makes available to the aerospace industry its new flight termination software

2:59 pm

After what appears to be about a year and a half delay, NASA finally today made available its new flight termination software so that the aerospace industry can now test it.

“This is a major milestone that enables Rocket Lab and other U.S. launch companies to integrate the software now with their launch vehicle’s hardware and run performance simulations,” said David L. Pierce, Wallops Flight Facility director. “This is a key achievement toward enabling Rocket Lab launches from Wallops, in parallel with the NASA teams’ final safety certification steps, which are currently underway. Rocket Lab’s use of the NASA software will enable a high degree of confidence moving forward toward launch.”

Rocket Lab had hoped to launch from Wallops more than a year ago, but was blocked by NASA because the agency was apparently behind schedule in preparing this software. Now that it is finally available for testing, expect Rocket Lab to move swiftly, with a likely Wallops launch within months.

5 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: A short list of just a few of the academics fired for having opinions

2:39 pm

Lysenko with Stalin
Trofim Lysenko, the person American academia now most admires,
preaching to Stalin as he destroyed Soviet plant research,
persecuted anyone who disagreed with him, and caused famines
that killed millions.

Today at the Daily Signal one of their writers, Douglas Blair, compiled a list of eight college professors whose lives were destroyed by the intolerant left and its effort to silence all opposition, by any means necessary. That list is as follows:

Five of those eight individuals had previously been a subject of my daily column, “Today’s Blacklisted American,” proving that the number of such cases of oppression and blacklisting by the academic left has grown so large that a daily column can’t possibly cover every story.

What struck me about this list however was the petty, ugly, and absurd reasons given for destroying or silencing these individuals. » Read more

6 comments

Biden administration commits to operating ISS through 2030

5:46 pm

The Biden administration yesterday announced that it has committed NASA to operating the International Space Station (ISS) through 2030, a six year extension to the previous end date of 2024.

Today’s abrupt announcement on a federal holiday comes one day after Biden and Putin had a “serious and substantive” telephone conversation about the situation in Ukraine where Russian troops are massed at the border. Biden has said that if Russia invades Ukraine the United States and its allies will respond with more economic sanctions. A Russian official told reporters later that Putin warned Biden that any such sanctions “could result in a ‘complete rupture’ of relations” between the two countries, according to the New York Times.

…Asked why the ISS extension was announced today and if it is related to the Biden-Putin call, a NASA spokesperson told SpacePolicyOnline.com only that it has “been in the works for months.”

A White House commitment to 2030 falls short of setting the date in law, but demonstrates U.S. intentions at least as long as Biden is President. Whether the other partners, especially Russia, agree will be interesting to watch. ESA’s Director General, Josef Aschbacher, welcomed the news, but it will be the 11 ESA members who participate in the program who make the decision.

The article gives a good overview of the political issues, and notes accurately that it will be very difficult to operate the station if Russia and the U.S. part ways and Russia leaves the partnership.

What the article did not mention is the fragile state of some of Russia’s modules. Both Roscosmos and NASA know that the Zvezda module, the second oldest on ISS, is showing very worrisome signs of aging, including many stress fractures that have caused small airleaks. The Russians themselves have admitted that the module is failing, and have added that because of this fact the Putin government has begun work on a new and independent Russian station.

It is unclear if ISS could function if Zvezda became unusable. At a minimum its capabilities will be reduced. At worst it might not be safe to occupy.

The Biden administration and NASA can extend ISS on paper as much as they want, but reality suggests that it will be a dangerous challenge to keep the station running until 2030. The real solution is to get as many private commercial American stations launched in the next few years, so that when Zvezda fails, there will be viable options to ISS.

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A small victory in Nevada against COVID mandates illustrates the ongoing corrupt politicizing of all of American culture

12:31 pm

Might still exist in Nevada
Might still exist in Nevada.

First the good news: An elected Nevada legislative commission last week overturned an extension proposed by the state’s board of health of its mandate that all college students in the state get COVID shots or be banned from school.

Initially approved in August by the Nevada State Board of Health, the emergency provision was set to last only 120-days, according to The Nevada Independent. When the mandate expired last week and was sent to the Legislative Commission for review, the Commission chose not to make it permanent, with all six Republican lawmakers voting against the mandate and all six Democrats for it.

The tie means the mandate is not renewed.

This small victory for freedom and against irrational discrimination and blacklists illustrates some fundamental points about the entire COVID madness as well as America’s evolving culture.
» Read more

35 comments

Firefly forced to postpone next launch because of security issues

3:35 pm

Capitalism in space: Firefly has been forced to postpone its next launch of its Alpha rocket, tentative scheduled for late January, because the federal government wants the Ukranian investor — who essentially saved the company when it went bankrupt — to completely divest himself of any ownership.

Noosphere Venture Partners, a fund run by Ukrainian-born investor Max Polyakov, said Dec. 29 that it will retain an investment banking firm to sell its interest in Firefly. That sale comes at the request of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the company said.

Polyakov invested $200 million to bring the company from the ashes when it was about to be liquidated in bankruptcy proceedings. He left its board of directors last year and reduced his share in the company last year in an effort to ease these same concerns. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, even though his ownership was not a problem when the company obtained a lease for a launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Though there might be a real security issue, we must not dismiss the possibility that this is a corrupt power play by people in Washington to use Polyakov’s foreign roots to push him out so that they can replace him, now that the company is healthy and moving forward after Polyakov saved it.

I know this is a cynical suspicion, but based on the behavior of our Washington bureaucracy and legislators in the past decade, it is far from an unreasonable one.

7 comments

Pushback: Citizens create open Christmas soup kitchen when official food drive bans unjabbed

11:59 am

Spokane: Where some charities think some of the poor should starve during Christmas
Spokane: Where some charities think some of the poor should starve
during Christmas, while others step up to provide charity for all.

Pushback against blacklists: When the official annual Christmas soup kitchen in Spokane announced that the homeless and poor would be banned if they didn’t get COVID shots or tested first, a group of local citizens quickly organized an open soup kitchen where no jabs or testing would be required.

The image to the right illustrates the rules for the two competing soup kitchens.

A week before Christmas, in Spokane, WA, the Christmas Bureau food assistance program turned away needy people who could not show proof of Covid-19 vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test no more than 72 hours old.

The Christmas Bureau is an annual holiday assistance program coordinated by Catholic Charities Eastern Washington, Volunteers of America, and the Spokesman-Review. The program is made possible by generous monetary funds and volunteer hours donated by community members and organizations.

In response to the Christmas Bureau’s actions, a group of Christian patriots launched a “No Vaccine Canteen” to feed everyone — regardless of their medical history. [emphasis mine]

I purposely highlight the entities who decided that it was all right to deny charity to some of the poor and homeless during the Christmas season, merely because they hadn’t gotten the government jab. To paraphrase the words of Scrooge, “Maybe these unvaccinated should simply die and decrease the surplus population.”

For those in Spokane with the Christmas season in their hearts, this information should provide guidance next year when these particular organizations come begging for money. It is clear they really don’t have charity in mind, but power and enforcing their will, even onto the most vulnerable.

Instead, Spokane citizens should contact the people who ran the “No-Vaccine Canteen,” who teamed up with an organization called Blessings Under The Bridge, and give them their donations. When they heard about the Christmas Bureau’s decision to turn people away, these people were quickly able to raise $3500 and organize multiple free meal events for the poor.

Below is a video interview with Dan Bell, who helped organize the “No-Vaccine Canteen.” As he says,
» Read more

14 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: NY elementary school bans singing “Jingle Bells”

11:48 am

Banned by Brighton Central School District, NY
Banned by Brighton Central School District, NY.

The administrators at an upstate New York elementary school, Council Rock Primary, have decided to ban the song “Jingle Bells” because it might be “controversial or offensive.”

“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”

…Allison Rioux, Brighton Central School District assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, offered a different reason for removing “Jingle Bells.” She wrote, “Some suggest that the use of collars on slaves with bells to send an alert that they were running away is connected to the origin of the song Jingle Bells. While we are not taking a stance to whether that is true or not, we do feel strongly that this line of thinking is not in agreement with our district beliefs to value all cultures and experiences of our students.

“For this reason,” Rioux concluded, “along with the idea that there are hundreds of other 5 note songs, we made the decision to not teach the song directly to all students.” [emphasis mine]

Rioux use of the weasel words “Some suggest” as her source for this ridiculous justification is of course another way of her saying “I’m making this up.” According to Kyna Hamill of Boston University, the foremost expert on the history of the song (and whose work the school cites as their justification for the banning),
» Read more

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