As much as Democrats made Juneteenth a national holiday in order to attempt to maintain America's racial wounds and keep Blacks on the Democrat plantation by pandering to the grievance mongers, we should instead celebrate it in line with its original intent:
Juneteenth commemorates Republicans taking action and freeing slaves from their Democrat masters.
Democrats have been mad at Republicans ever since.
Billie Elish made quite a show at the Grammys, stunningly and bravely declaring a progressive bromide that "No one is illegal on Stolen Land" to an approving left-wing audience.
That she doesn't appear to actually believe beyond the progressive required virtue signalling this is demonstrated by two separate incidents:
1. Her mansion sits on land, that if you buy her "stolen land" argument is thus not hers and instead is belonging to the Tongva tribe, and she has yet to give back her "stolen land".
2. She has cetianly not come out in support of the Australian performative artist who was refused entry to the USA after announcing he was taking her up on her stolen land argument by announcing he was coming to occupy her stolen mansion:
Blast: Billie Eilish 'Got' Activist 'Deported From U.S.' After Her Mansion Was Targeted
An Australian activist’s viral stunt has come to an abrupt end at LAX. Drew Pavlou says he was deported from the United States after attempting to enter the country on what he describes as a “performance art” mission targeting Billie Eilish’s California mansion. The activist had publicly announced plans to camp outside the singer’s property following her controversial Grammy speech criticizing ICE. Instead of pitching a tent in Glendale, Pavlou found himself detained by immigration authorities for more than 30 hours before being sent back home.So much for no one is illegal on stolen land. I didn't realize there was an exception for Australians.
Who knows, maybe she'll write a song about it.
Oh, and Billie, it was conquered, not stolen, There's quite a difference.
Generally, when the media fails to tell you the race or show you the face of the perpetrator of a crime in the Detroit Metro area, you can generally guess, and guess correctly due to that failure.
The latest media euphemism to distract attention: "Suburban Men":
The Detroit News: Suburban men, two ex-postal workers plead in $63 million stolen check scheme
Suburban men makes you think of Hank Hill from King of the Hill, amirite?
In this case it's "Suburban Men" going by the handles of: DaQuan Foreman, 32, of Eastpointe and Jaiswan Williams, 32, of Rochester Hills.
Technically true that they are from the suburbs, but that's hardly the salient or newsworthy feature here.
Their more urban confederates in crime are Crystal Jenkins and Vanessa Hargrove - both employees of the Post Office who stole the checks from the mail - Sixty-three million dollars worth of them.
After stealing the checks they gave them to suburbanite confederates in crime DaQuan and Jaiswan to sell off on the black -- oh, sorry -- suburban -- market.
The Michigan Supreme Court, currently dominated by Democrats, has passed an edict that, come 2024, all judges in Michigan must address the parties before them using the parties preferred pronouns.
MLive: Michigan judges must use preferred pronouns in court come 2024
All involved in state court cases are now required to use an individual’s preferred pronouns and corresponding honorific when referring to them in court according to a new rule passed down by the Michigan Supreme Court.
The only safety valve if a judge does want to use a ridiculous Ze, Xim, Xer or other ridiculousness is to address the participant by their role such as juror, attorney, defendant, etc.
In short the potential for stupidity and making a mockery of the court system is obvious with the Michigan Supreme Court deciding to go woke.
Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
As such, starring in 2024 my preferred pronouns in court will be M'Lord and His Majesty.
So Neil Young is delivering an ultimatum to Spotify that it's either Joe Rogan or him. I think there was a song already written some time ago that summed up how this is likely to go:
And verily, his ultimatum, as a last ditch gasp for attention, to which many youngsters and Joe Rogan podcast subscribers alike will say "Neil who?", will likely fall flat.
To no one's surprise, except perhaps to Mr. Young, this has indeed gone pretty much as expected:
Wall Street Journal: Spotify to Take Down Neil Young’s Music After His Joe Rogan Ultimatum
Biden on the Texas Synagogue Attack:
"I don't think there is sufficient information to know why he targeted that synagogue why he insisted on the release of someone who's been in prison for over 10 years... why he was using anti-Semitic & anti-Israeli comments."
Unbelievable.
This ridiculous political correctness and dancing around avoiding any mention of the motivations of Islamic terrorism and ideology is an absolute farce.
Biden has no hesitation making unsubstantiated allegations in other situations, even when he's shown to be wrong later. But, when there's plenty of evidence and its a Muslim attack on Jews he doesn't want to make any conclusions and suddenly lacks sufficient information.
Yes, it's an actual quote from Biden and the President can be watched saying it on Twitter.
I've talked about the stupidity of "Land Acknowledgments" before.
It seems a professor at University of Washington didn't just talk about the stupidity of required Land Acknowledgments, he went ahead and demonstrated the absurdity of such by inserting a true but certainly politically incorrect land acknowledgment statement on his syllabus rather than using the administration's approved message.
The result - perfection:
Yep, pretty much accurate, that.
Computer science professor Stuart Reges rather delightfully and skillfully mocked the inanity that are these land acknowledgments.
The powers that be at UW were not amused. Really not amused.
Feathers were ruffled, students' fee-fees were offended. Snowflakes were melted.
770KTTH: Rantz: UW admin. goes to war over Seattle professor’s hilarious land acknowledgment joke
We will note for the record that to date neither UW, nor its Director of the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Magdalena Balazinska, have deeded their properties over to the Coast Salish tribes.
Had they really believed in their own land acknowledgment virtue signalling BS, then it only goes to follow that they should have deeded the University and their properties over to the Salish - immediately - even as that would be rather ahistorical as much as it is woke.
So far, the University is putting a competing section of the class at the same time as Professor Reges' class, and have removed his syllabus from their website. and made a virtue signalling abject apology for it - and asking students to make complaints against him.
One funny thing I've recently noticed in Canada is that at the start of every hip artistic performance or similar activity they somberly intone "We recognize we are on stolen land or land belonging to blah blah blah".
There's literally written extensive guidelines on how to do this now. They can even get in trouble for doing it wrong, as Gay Pride Toronto found out to its dismay.
First time I heard it I burst out laughing.
It's virtue signaling and preening of the highest order and nothing more of course. It's an easy way for some good group think and disdain towards Western Civilization without having to really do anything about it and shows you're part of the hip and the woke.
I guarantee none of those making the invocation or taking it seriously have surrendered the deed to their house, or moved out of their apartments. After all, if you are acknowledging you obtained your property by theft or from a thief as you so piously intone, then you don't have good title so why are you still living there?
So then the question arises as to who to give it to since you're staitng you're on land not belonging to you:
Certainly not the Iroquois or Ojibway, they're johnny-come-latelys to the scene and the land. No, we need to go further back. After all many of the tribes that were there before them were pushed farther south (or wiped them out) by the Iroquois and those tribes pushed others farther south (or wiped them out) before them. They similarly pushed others farther south (or wiped them out) as well so they don't count either.
So we better go back farther in time.
So going all the way back we end up with:
Yep, this Zuul crurivastator a recently discovered species of ankylosaurankloysaurus rocked and ruled Ontario, Canada over 75 million years ago. Until, of course the land was stolen.
As such, following the lefties' line of thought and the arc of justice to its ultimate absurd conclusion, the land justly belongs to its descendants:
So yes, Canada really is for the birds.
Now, we've been told that applying appellation of "Wuhan Virus" or the "China Virus" is allegedly both racist and scientifically illiterate. Verily, one may not even say the descriptive words China Virus or Wuhan Flu to denote the virus' geographic origin. Indeed even the Yale School of Medicine said it was bad to attach geographical locations to identify the source of the disease in its name. News agencies fell into line immediately with this and uniformly call it Covid-19 or Coronavirus with no hint to its geographic origin.
Yet, news agencies now regularly and with absolutely no self-reflection report the mutations of the virus as the South African variant, or the UK Coronavirus variant, and the Brazil variant etc. There's no insistence that they be solely referred to by their variant names of B.1.351 , B.1.1.7, and P.1 respectively.
Isn't that interesting?
And Revolutions tend to eat their own, as a School Superintendent found out to his chagrin.
Apparently making a truthful statement that fails to fully buy into the left's dogma of today is enough to get one fired these days, especially if you speak "truth to power" about the wrong people.
Click On Detroit: Michigan school board votes to fire superintendent who made controversial remarks on George Floyd
Metcalf had said on Facebook that Floyd’s death in Minneapolis was “wrong.” But he also said “it all starts with being a law abiding citizen,” and that Floyd was suspected of using counterfeit money.
Nothing false about his statement in the least, it was in short 100% truthful and accurate, but that completely failed to protect him.
Nor did his later attempt to bend the knee, with his apology for daring to speak the truth and then offering to take diversity training.
Again, Floyd's death was wrong. But, it is an absolute fact that his allegedly trying to pass counterfeit money, and then resisting arrest led to the circumstances of his wrongful death.
I don't watch a lot of TV being busy doing other things. When I do, I want to be entertained with quality story lines.
9-1-1 Lone Star threw out the storytelling part and replaced it with a focus on wokeness, making a rather unwatchable mess.
The TV show 9-1-1, from which 9-1-1 Lone Star sprang, does have a fair bit of PC to it, considering it's set in LA that's to be expected. Of course, it had its Black Lives Matter moment and other stuff, but it typically wasn't in your face and did not replace the story of the show itself and was generally more subtle and in the background rather than in your face.
9-1-1 Lone Star flips the script on that, being woke as all heck, and real short on story-line.
The story begins: A disaster at a Austin, Texas storage facility wipes out all but one member of a firehouse in a rather earth-shattering kaboom. A promising start that swiftly goes downhill.
The Austin Fire Department then heads to New York to hire Rob Lowe, their only hope (who has early stage lung cancer from 9/11 of course), to diversify the department (because Austin, Texas is just a backwater in fly-over country and obviously only has white good ol' boy firefighters, amirite?) and rebuild the empty station.
Lowe, in between being very concerned about his hair and moisturizing (no, not making that up), goes forth and totally ignoring any existing civil service and firefighting hiring protocols assembles a crack woke team of:
- A devout Muslim female daredevil acrobatic firefighter from Miami;
- A trans from female-to-male firefighter from another city (Chicago?), who happens to be a magically talented crack investigator;
- A Hispanic who has continually failed the written test for the fire department but, because he is detail oriented at cleaning the Fire Chief's car, Lowe feels he'll be a great firefighter so no need to actually pass the academy;
- Lowe's fictional son, who is not just very, very gay, but also has an opioid addiction problem and is just recovering from trying to commit suicide after his prior lover broke up with him; and
-The Texan lone survivor who is present as a PTSD suffering, stubborn, somewhat conservative good ol' boy, and not depicted as overly smart. But, thankfully, he does at least have a redeeming feature by having an African-American wife who is depicted as very wise, sensible, and able to order him around.
Yep, you can just imagine the hiring board, the Austin firefighter's union, and not to mention the City's liability insurance company absolutely losing their stuffing over such a hiring process.
On top of that, you have Liv Tyler, who is horribly miscast as a top paramedic. Liv, when not working, is busy searching for her sister's killer, and is busy handing out medications and performing off-book medical procedures for illegals. The illegals in thanks for her medical services then give her a clue to the disappearance of her sister three years before. Yes, really.
Of course, the average white Texan represented on the show are depicted as overly conservative in a stupid backwards way, or being benightedly Christian-religious (which is bad, unlike a devout Muslim praying on a prayer rug in the station, which is good), or racist. They often score a perfect trifecta of all three in the show.
In short, the show decided to put maximum wokeness way ahead of the story line and replace an actual plot with actual disasters/emergencies at the forefront with PC pablum and it really shows. I got through the first episode just to see if they could actually stop this from turning into a PC-train wreck, and then threw in the towel mid-way through the second episode.
Basically, the show is designed to gut the standard heroic Emergency!/Rescue show and bend it to the progressive zeitgeist and let the cognoscenti tea-bag on their imagined stereotypical denizens of a red state. Meanwhile, the show producers are apparently too ignorant to realize that Austin is a rather solidly blue dot in Texas.
In short, there's much better stuff on TV to watch today and 9-1-1 Lone Star is not worth your time.
The Times: Saatchi Gallery covers up SKU artworks after complaints by Muslims
The artwork itself is now covered in what very well looks like a burqa, as can be seen in the linked article.
The art, being a critical commentary on Islam and its interaction with the west, had Arabic script overlaid on some nude images. If you couldn't predict what was going to happen when you did that. . .
Well, just like the real life interaction between Islam and the West, there's been a rather fractious and vociferous uproar of blasphemy and offense from the Muslim community.
Rather provocatively, the artist included the Shahada, or Muslim declaration of faith, on the image and that's where the outrage began, including comparison to the Satanic Verses. Note the author of the Satanic Verses got a fatwa and multiple and very real death threats and attmepts on his life, so the artist in this case is likely also in a bit of trouble too.
Offensive? Most certainly.
However, clearly no more offensive than for example Piss Christ or Mary in Elephant dung, and Banksy's anti-semitic art display at Art Basel in Miami -- all of which were on prominent display in art galleries without fear, nor were they ever covered up. This is because Christians and Jews, while they may get annoyed and consider it offensive, and even write letters to the editor complaining about it, in the West they don't kill people over offensive art these days.
If you're going to display provocative art, knowing it is provocative, retreating after there's a reaction to the provocation is rather weak indeed, and it tends to reinforce and reward threatening behavior. Setting a policy that offensive art is ok, just as long as it doesn't offend Islam, has some very bad consequences.
Whether as a desperate distraction from the Democrat Governor of Virginia's dalliance with blackface, or just a standard cry for attention, the latest leftist manufactured outrage is getting a fair bit of media coverage.
The outrage? That the venerable children's classic movie Mary Poppins, made in 1964, is racist! This is because Mary, Dick Van Dyke, and the kids get soot on their faces while acting as chimney sweeps, which is clearly racist because, well, the left declares it to be so.
The Detroit Free Press: Is 'Mary Poppins' racist and using blackface? Twitter is not having it
Anyone who actually viewed the movie with half a brain-cell not corrupted by leftist cant isn't having it either. Sometimes soot is just soot, and chimney sweeps are indeed chimney sweeps.
Considering the professor that wrote this clap-trap has a BA in History from Yale and a PHD in English from Harvard It doth seem that our so-called elite academic institutions have turned out "scholars" incapable of understanding context nor of being able to conduct non-ideologically based critical thinking.
Or conversely, all the great things in the English department have already been written about, and this surplus of scholars turned out by these elite institutions are now stuck inventing imaginary offenses of racism and creating issues of class struggle wherever they can manufacture them so they can publish something.
Language is often the first victim of political correctness to rewrite the narrative to bring favor for selected groups or to objectify others.
For example, remember George Zimmerman being labelled as a "White Hispanic"?
Illegal Aliens become Undocumented Immigrants to downplay the criminal nature of entering a country illegally.
And now, Home Invaders become "Unwanted House Visitors".
Really.
NBC New York: Scuffle Ends in Deadly Shooting Outside New Jersey Home
Police say a New Jersey man fought off an unwanted house visitor by using the suspect’s own gun — ultimately killing him.
This isn't the first instance of the media using unwanted house visitor as a replacement for home invader:
WICX: Unwanted Visitor Arrested In Windsor
WJAC: Unwanted visitor breaks into home, hides in closet
I expect drug dealers to be referred to as unlicensed pharmacists any day now.
Even though the seasons should be reversed on the other side of the equator, Winter has apparently come early down under and the snowflakes are not happy.
The Caldron Pool: Several Australian universities BAN sarcasm because it’s a “form of violence.”
Well, that sounds like a great idea.
Ben and Jerry's, a rather leftist ice cream company, decided to make their leftism rather overt.
USA Today: Ben & Jerry's launches Donald Trump-inspired ice cream flavor, Pecan Resist
Because nothing sells ice cream like alienating half of your consumer market, natch.
The Internet was rather quick to cleverly mock this new flavor:
Yep, its the wokest ice cream out there.
The irony that at least a quarter of the funds will support the women's march headed by the anti-semitic and pro-sharia Linda Sarsour and other Farrakhan loving fellow travelers apparently escapes them. They've actually stated they don't have a problem with such associations. Rather tone-deaf with no enemies to the left I suppose.
I'll suggest the next flavor Ben and Jerry's can offer in their politically correct line:
They can call it Obamacares and offer a vegan, non-dairy, gluten-free treat with a tagline "If you like your ice cream you can keep your ice cream!"
Inside the container however there will be no ice cream. Instead inside will be a colored block of ice. Oh, and it'll cost double the normal pint.
Democrats will buy it like hot cakes.
Didn't used to mean beating your wife with a hockey stick.
But with Canada's embrace of Syrian refugees, it's becoming a thing. So is murder.
I had been contemplating witting a blog post on the murder of 13-year-old Marrisa Shen, in Vancouver, killed by a Syrian Refugee in Canada, who had been in the country all of three months before committing the murder. All the fabled vetting failed, and failed rather badly.
However, Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish wrote an article that said it all far better than I ever could, so please click and read it.
One thing that strikes me in his article, amongst all the hand-wringing of the do-gooders he quotes in the article who figured nothing ever bad would happen, is their certainty that they certainly shouldn't stop bringing more refugees in and these are just all isolated incidents.
After all you can't make an omelet without cracking some eggs, and Shen and others victims were just eggs cracked for the omelet of Canadian tolerance of tolerating the intolerant and the necessary celebration of diversity.
The amazing defense of the indefensible in the name of compassion and tolerance is rather amazing.
But back to hockey night in Canada, from Daniel Greenfield's article:
Mohamad Rafia, a Syrian refugee beat his wife with a hockey stick for half an hour and then claimed that he didn’t know it was illegal. “More should have been done to educate him,” his interpreter insisted.
It used to be that ignorance of the law was no excuse.
Indeed, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that beating your wife (or anyone else for that matter) with a hockey stick is wrong, m'kay? It's pretty much a given that it is bad by its very nature.
It's funny in a rather unfunny way how the advocates against violence against women are strangely silent or make excuses when it is a member of a protected class doing the beating. How about that Keith Ellison, right?
Part of this is a deliberate diminishing and loss of confidence in Western Civilization, where other cultures that hold women in less esteem cannot be judged comparably or asserted to be inferior to Western Civ in any way.
To say that Western culture is bad and shouldn't pass judgment on other cultures tends to create some problems. After all, if Western Civ is bad, how dare its adherents criticize other cultures?
Canada now merrily removes status of its founders for not conforming to present SJW ethos. But at the same time Canada pointedly ignores or excuses a far more barbaric import in the present with a trope that they simply don't know any better, or an excuse that they just have a different culture which should be respected and shouldn't be judged or dared to be compared, or its just another isolated incident.
It used to be that Western Civilization, for all its faults, did quite a bit to protect women, and it still does for that matter, and continues to improve. The evil of "Patriarchy" and all that, I know.
But it used to be when faced with another culture that held women's lives of far less value, Western Civilization and its leaders would step forth and yes, even with all its faults, assert the superiority of Western culture, state affirmatively that the other culture was wrong, and thereby save live.
General Sir Charles James Napier, when told that the burning of widows at their husbands funerals in India was a cultural practice that should be respected had this to say:
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
Canada could use someone of the stature of Sir Charles today.
Imagine cities taking down statues of George Washington in America because he was found to be offensive when weighed against modern sensibilities. No daring to talk about the vital role he had in the founding of his nation.
That's what Canada is doing - taking down statues of their first prime minister- the man that brought Canada together.
The GLobe and Mail: Victoria to remove statue of Sir John A. Macdonald
A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald is set to be removed from the steps of Victoria’s City Hall this weekend, as communities across the country struggle to reconcile the legacy of the country’s founding prime minister with his treatment of Indigenous people. The plan to remove the statue, which easily passed a city council vote on Thursday, follows year-long discussions with two local First Nations who argued the statue has become a painful reminder of colonialism. But it has also inflamed a debate about whether historical figures should be judged through a modern lens, and how to weigh abuses against Macdonald’s role in shaping the country.
Yes, to assuage leftist white guilt, the founder of their nation is being removed from the public square.
Personally I think all those Canadians who are Offended by John A. Macdonald should reach into their wallets and send me all their $10 bills that bear his likeness. I'll give them a good home and honor Sir John A. accordingly.
Last year in May 2016 it was reported with much outrage and high dudgeon that the Manchester Police had dared do a training exercise where a suicide bomber yelled "Allahu Akbar" and blew himself up.
They were forced to apologize for stereotyping:
Manchster Evening News: Police chief apologises after 'suicide bomber' shouted 'Allahu Akbar' during Trafford Centre training exercise
BBC: Greater Manchester Police sorry for 'Muslim terrorist' mock blast
The quotes and politically correct SJW outrage in the article is just precious and now llooking back on Monday's events the apology is just pathetic considering on how bang-on (to use a phrase) the exercise was to what actually occurred:
"The scenario for this exercise is based on an attack by an extremist Daesh-style organisation and the scenario writers have centred the circumstances around previous similar attacks of this nature, mirroring details of past events to make the situation as real life as possible for all of those involved."However, on reflection we acknowledge that it was unacceptable to use this religious phrase immediately before the mock suicide bombing, which so vocally linked this exercise with Islam. We recognize and apologise for the offence that this has caused."
The only thing if anything, they have to "apologize" for is getting the location of the attack wrong, otherwise their drill of a suicide bombing Daesh-supporter last year was rather spot-on.
The Express: Police forces deemed NOT prepared to deal with 'honour-based violence' in damning report
It's a pity the British no longer have the fortitude to say: You may kill a woman according to the dictates of your culture, but we will then hang you according to the dictates of our culture. You may follow your custom and we will follow ours.
Instead of that, in today's Britain we get Rotherham.
