Proud Boys Leader Yells Racist Slurs Before Attacking Black Woman
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/andrew-walls-proud-boys-assault-video_n_621c87a3e4b0afc668c2eda2
Proud Boys Leader Yells Racist Slurs Before Attacking Black Woman
Andrew Walls, 26, was slapped with weapons and assault charges after he was seen on video sucker-punching a woman outside a bar in Akron, Ohio.
By Andy Campbell
February 28, 2022
A chapter leader in the far-right Proud Boys extremist gang was charged with assault Sunday in Akron, Ohio, after he was recorded shouting racial epithets at a black woman and then sucker-punching her in the face.
A man police identified as Andrew Walls, 26, was caught on video outside a bar in the early hours of Sunday, stumbling and scuffling with other patrons while spewing a torrent of racial slurs. His victim, 23-year-old Cameron Morgan, was passing by with a friend when she heard Walls and others around him screaming “Fucking n*****s.”
She later told her father that she confronted Walls after realizing she was the only Black person around.
“We were like … ‘You can’t say that. That’s not OK,’” she told her dad, local teacher and former sportswriter David Lee Morgan Jr., who recorded the conversation and provided a transcript to HuffPost.
Video taken by Cameron Morgan’s friend shows what happened next: Walls squares up, points his finger at Morgan, and repeats the racist slur, adding: “Bitch, shut your mouth.” He then cocks his right fist and punches her directly in the face, the impact of which releases a blood-curdling pop.
Morgan was treated for a concussion.
WARNING: The video below contains graphic violence and racist language.
https://twitter.com/DavidLeeMorgan/status/1497948024265482245
Walls kept going after the recording ended, and dragged Cameron into the street by her hair, her father said. She was shaken up, he said, and left the scene without initially calling police.
But once the video began to make the rounds on social media Sunday, activists quickly identified the assailant as Walls. They also unearthed a previous story about him in the local Akron Beacon Journal, which identified him as the vice president of the Akron-Canton chapter of the Proud Boys.
https://twitter.com/Venusisaband/status/1497979487664971793
Though Walls wasn’t wearing his Proud Boys uniform — a black and yellow Fred Perry polo — during the assault, his membership in the gang suggests a predisposition for violence and bigotry. The Proud Boys, designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and a terrorist organization by Canada, have close ties to white supremacist groups and other extremists, and violence is literally written into their rules. (The gang’s highest rank, known as the Fourth Degree, is given only to members who commit a significant act of violence “for the cause.”)
Walls’ chapter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reached by phone Sunday, David Morgan’s voice trembled as he recalled waking up to see a video on his phone of his daughter being assaulted.
“Soon as we saw it, I was in tears,” he said. “I just cried, because, I just watched somebody punch my daughter, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Morgan said his daughter went to an urgent care clinic and was treated for a concussion after she saw stars and blacked out. Her face swelled up temporarily, to the point where she couldn’t move her jaw.
“She couldn’t really open up her mouth to eat,” he said.
Walls was charged with possessing a firearm while intoxicated and assault, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The severity of Cameron’s injuries may lead to his assault charge being upgraded to a felony, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. Akron police are also considering an added ethnic intimidation charge.
David Morgan said the revelation of Walls’ Proud Boys affiliation changed everything for him. He said he was aware of the gang and the national tour of political violence they’d been on since their founding in 2016, but he “never thought it would hit home until today.”
“This changes a lot for me, in the sense that, I want to get involved now,” he said. “This happening was time for me to wake the hell up. And I hate that my daughter had to suffer that for me to wake the hell up.”
Michigan nursing home worker gets jail time for voter fraud
Michigan nursing home worker gets jail time for voter fraud
By ANNA LIZ NICHOLS
February 24, 2022
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A nursing home employee in metro Detroit will serve jail time for making false statements in absentee ballot applications after she forged signatures for residents of the facility she worked at it, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday.
In October 2020, Center Line’s clerk alerted the Michigan Bureau of Elections to about two dozen absentee voter applications with signatures that didn’t match what was on file for those voters.
While working at Father Murray Nursing Home in Macomb County, Trenae Myesha Rainey forged signatures for residents who hadn’t given staff indication that they were interested in voting in the November 2020 election, according to investigators.
Rainey had originally faced six charges for three of the applications, all five-year felonies, but pleaded guilty on Wednesday to three misdemeanor counts of making a false statement in an absentee ballot application. A Macomb County judge sentenced Rainey to 45 days in jail and probation.
An Associated Press review of election fraud in six battleground states found state officials identified a total of 56 potential instances of voter fraud in Michigan, a number which represents less than 1% of President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state.
Rainey and three other individuals were charged after state investigations showed attempted voter fraud.
Carless Clark pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor earlier this year after she admitted to forging her grandson’s signature on his absentee ballot envelope in Wayne County.
Nancy Williams, who investigators say attempted to obtain absentee ballots and have them sent to the same place for multiple legally incapacitated persons under her care, faces trial in five courts in Wayne and Oakland counties with court dates scheduled in the coming months.
Russia attacks Ukraine; peace in Europe ‘shattered’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-attacks-ukraine-defiant-putin-055130690.html
Russia attacks Ukraine; peace in Europe ‘shattered’
By YURAS KARMANAU, JIM HEINTZ, VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and DASHA LITVINOVA
February 24, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine on Thursday, hitting cities and bases with airstrikes or shelling, as civilians piled into trains and cars to flee. Ukraine’s government said Russian tanks and troops rolled across the border in a “full-scale war” that could rewrite the geopolitical order and whose fallout already reverberated around the world.
In unleashing Moscow’s most aggressive action since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, President Vladimir Putin deflected global condemnation and cascading new sanctions — and chillingly referred to his country’s nuclear arsenal. He threatened any foreign country attempting to interfere with “consequences you have never seen.”
Sirens wailed in Ukraine’s capital, large explosions were heard there and in other cities, and people massed in train stations and took to roads, as the government said the former Soviet republic was seeing a long-anticipated invasion from the east, north and south. It reported more than 40 soldiers had been killed and dozens wounded so far.
The chief of the NATO alliance said the “brutal act of war” shattered peace in Europe, joining a chorus of world leaders who decried the attack, which could cause massive casualties, topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government and upend the post-Cold War security order. The conflict was already shaking global financial markets: Stocks plunged and oil prices soared amid concerns that heating bills and food prices would skyrocket.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cut diplomatic ties with Moscow and declared martial law.
“As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history,” Zelenskyy tweeted. “Russia has embarked on a path of evil, but Ukraine is defending itself and won’t give up its freedom.”
His adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said: “A full-scale war in Europe has begun. … Russia is not only attacking Ukraine, but the rules of normal life in the modern world.”
The attack targeted a country the size of Texas that has increasingly tilted toward the democratic West and away from Moscow’s sway. The autocratic Putin made clear earlier this week that he sees no reason for Ukraine to exist, raising fears of possible broader conflict in the vast space that the Soviet Union once ruled. Putin denied plans to occupy Ukraine, but his ultimate goals remain hazy.
Ukrainians who had long braced for the prospect of an assault were urged to stay home and not to panic despite the dire warnings.
With social media amplifying a torrent of military claims and counter-claims, it was difficult to determine exactly what was happening on the ground.
Associated Press reporters saw or confirmed explosions in the capital, in Mariupol on the Azov Sea, and Kharkiv in the east. AP confirmed video showing Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukrainian-held territory in the north from Belarus and from Russian-annexed Crimea in the south.
“We are facing a war and horror. What could be worse?” 64-year-old Liudmila Gireyeva said in Kyiv. She planned to flee the city and try to eventually get to Poland to join her daughter. Putin “will be damned by history, and Ukrainians are damning him.”
Governments from the U.S. to Asia and Europe readied new sanctions after weeks of failed efforts for a diplomatic solution. But global powers have said they will not intervene militarily to defend Ukraine, though NATO mobilized more troops to move toward eastern Europe.
Alliance member Lithuania, which borders Russian ally Belarus and a Russian exclave, declared a state of emergency, and the president of Moldova pushed to do the same.
“We woke up in a different world today,” Germany’s foreign minister said.
After weeks of denying plans to invade, Putin justified his actions in an overnight televised address, asserting that the attack was needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine — a false claim the U.S. had predicted he would make as a pretext for an invasion. He accused the U.S. and its allies of ignoring Russia’s demands to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and for security guarantees.
The attacks came first from the air. Later Ukrainian authorities described ground invasions in multiple regions, and border guards released security camera footage Thursday showing a line of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine’s government-held territory from Russian-annexed Crimea.
The Russian military claimed to have wiped out Ukraine’s entire air defenses in a matter of hours, and European authorities declared the country’s air space an active conflict zone. Russia’s claims could not immediately be verified, nor could Ukrainian ones that they had shot down several Russian aircraft. The Ukrainian air defense system and air force date back to the Soviet era and are dwarfed by Russia’s massive air power and precision weapons.
U.S. President Joe Biden pledged new sanctions to punish Russia for the “unprovoked and unjustified attack.” The president said he planned to speak to Americans on Thursday after a meeting of the Group of Seven leaders. More sanctions against Russia were expected to be announced.
Zelenskyy urged global leaders to provide defense assistance to Ukraine and help protect its airspace, and urged his compatriots to defend the nation. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pleaded: “The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”
In the capital, Mayor Vitaly Klitschko advised residents to stay home unless they are involved in critical work and urged them to prepare go-bags with necessities and documents if they need to evacuate.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Facebook that the Russian military had launched missile strikes on Ukrainian military command facilities, air bases and military depots in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it was not targeting cities, but using precision weapons and claimed that “there is no threat to civilian population.”
The consequences of the conflict and resulting sanctions on Russia started reverberating throughout the world.
World stock markets plunged and oil prices surged by nearly $8 per barrel. Market benchmarks tumbled in Europe and Asia and U.S. stocks pointed toward a sharply lower open. Brent crude oil jumped to over $100 per barrel Thursday on unease about possible disruption of Russian supplies. The ruble sank.
Anticipating international condemnation and countermeasures, Putin issued a stark warning to other countries not to meddle.
In a reminder of Russia’s nuclear power, Putin warned that “no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to the destruction and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.”
Among Putin’s pledges was to “denazify” Ukraine. World War II looms large in Russia, after the Soviet Union suffered more deaths than any country while fighting Adolf Hitler’s forces. Kremlin propaganda sometimes paints Ukrainian nationalists as neo-Nazis seeking revenge — a charge historians call disinformation. Ukraine is now led by a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust.
Putin’s announcement came just hours after the Ukrainian president rejected Moscow’s claims that his country poses a threat to Russia and made a passionate, last-minute plea for peace.
“The people of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine want peace,” Zelenskyy said in an emotional overnight address, speaking in Russian in a direct appeal to Russian citizens.
Zelenskyy said he asked to arrange a call with Putin late Wednesday, but the Kremlin did not respond.
The attack began even as the U.N. Security Council was meeting to hold off an invasion. Members still unaware of Putin’s announcement of the operation appealed to him to stand down. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the emergency meeting, telling Putin: “Give peace a chance.”
But hours later, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg indicated it was too late: “Peace on our continent has been shattered.”
New York Times: The C.D.C. Isn’t Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It Collects – The agency has withheld critical data on boosters, hospitalizations and, until recently, wastewater analyses.
The C.D.C. Isn’t Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It Collects –
The agency has withheld critical data on boosters, hospitalizations and, until recently, wastewater analyses.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
February 20, 2022
For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.
When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group the data showed was least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.
The agency recently debuted a dashboard of wastewater data on its website that will be updated daily and might provide early signals of an oncoming surge of Covid cases. Some states and localities had been sharing wastewater information with the agency since the start of the pandemic, but it had never before released those findings.
Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said.
Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early.
Without the booster data for 18- to 49-year-olds, the outside experts whom federal health agencies look to for advice had to rely on numbers from Israel to make their recommendations on the shots.
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable.”
Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the agency’s deputy director for public health science and surveillance said the pandemic exposed the fact that data systems at the C.D.C., and at the state levels, are outmoded and not up to handling large volumes of data. C.D.C. scientists are trying to modernize the systems, he said.
“We want better, faster data that can lead to decision making and actions at all levels of public health, that can help us eliminate the lag in data that has held us back,” he added.
The C.D.C. also has multiple bureaucratic divisions that must sign off on important publications, and its officials must alert the Department of Health and Human Services — which oversees the agency — and the White House of their plans. The agency often shares data with states and partners before making data public. Those steps can add delays.
“The C.D.C. is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute. “The steps that it takes to get something like this released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the C.D.C.”
The performance of vaccines and boosters, particularly in younger adults, is among the most glaring omissions in data the C.D.C. has made public.
Last year, the agency repeatedly came under fire for not tracking so-called breakthrough infections in vaccinated Americans, and focusing only on individuals who became ill enough to be hospitalized or die. The agency presented that information as risk comparisons with unvaccinated adults, rather than provide timely snapshots of hospitalized patients stratified by age, sex, race and vaccination status.
But the C.D.C. has been routinely collecting information since the Covid vaccines were first rolled out last year, according to a federal official familiar with the effort. The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public, the official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.
Ms. Nordlund confirmed that as one of the reasons. Another reason, she said, is that the data represents only 10 percent of the population of the United States. But the C.D.C. has relied on the same level of sampling to track influenza for years.
Some outside public health experts were stunned to hear that information exists.
“We have been begging for that sort of granularity of data for two years,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist and part of the team that ran Covid Tracking Project, an independent effort that compiled data on the pandemic till March 2021.
A detailed analysis, she said, “builds public trust, and it paints a much clearer picture of what’s actually going on.”
Concern about the misinterpretation of hospitalization data broken down by vaccination status is not unique to the C.D.C. On Thursday, public health officials in Scotland said they would stop releasing data on Covid hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status because of similar fears that the figures would be misrepresented by anti-vaccine groups.
But the experts dismissed the potential misuse or misinterpretation of data as an acceptable reason for not releasing it.
“We are at a much greater risk of misinterpreting the data with data vacuums, than sharing the data with proper science, communication and caveats,” Ms. Rivera said.
When the Delta variant caused an outbreak in Massachusetts last summer, the fact that three-quarters of those infected were vaccinated led people to mistakenly conclude that the vaccines were powerless against the virus — validating the C.D.C.’s concerns.
But that could have been avoided if the agency had educated the public from the start that as more people are vaccinated, the percentage of vaccinated people who are infected or hospitalized would also rise.
“Tell the truth, present the data,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and adviser to the Food and Drug Administration. “I have to believe that there is a way to explain these things so people can understand it.”
Knowing which groups of people were being hospitalized in the United States, which other conditions those patients may have had and how vaccines changed the picture over time would have been invaluable, Dr. Offit said.
Relying on Israeli data to make booster recommendations for Americans was less than ideal, Dr. Offit noted. Israel defines severe disease differently than the United States, among other factors.
“There’s no reason that they should be better at collecting and putting forth data than we were,” Dr. Offit said of Israeli scientists. “The C.D.C. is the principal epidemiological agency in this country, and so you would like to think the data came from them.”
It has also been difficult to find C.D.C. data on the proportion of children hospitalized for Covid who have other medical conditions, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s Committee on Infectious Diseases.
The academy’s staff asked their partners at the C.D.C. for that information on a call in December, according to a spokeswoman for the A.A.P., and were told it was unavailable.
Ms. Nordlund pointed to data on the agency’s website that includes this information, and to multiple published reports on pediatric hospitalizations with information on children who have other health conditions.
The pediatrics academy has repeatedly asked the C.D.C. for an estimate on the contagiousness of a person infected with the coronavirus five days after symptoms begin — but Dr. Maldonado finally got the answer from an article in The New York Times in December.
“They’ve known this for over a year and a half, right, and they haven’t told us,” she said. “I mean, you can’t find out anything from them.”
Experts in wastewater analysis were more understanding of the C.D.C.’s slow pace of making that data public. The C.D.C. has been building the wastewater system since September 2020, and the capacity to present the data over the past few months, Ms. Nordlund said. In the meantime, the C.D.C.’s state partners have had access to the data, she said.
Despite the cautious preparation, the C.D.C. released the wastewater data a week later than planned. The Covid Data Tracker is updated only on Thursdays, and the day before the original release date, the scientists who manage the tracker realized they needed more time to integrate the data.
“It wasn’t because the data wasn’t ready, it was because the systems and how it physically displayed on the page wasn’t working the way that they wanted it to,” Ms. Nordlund said.
The C.D.C. has received more than $11 billion to modernize its systems, which may help pick up the pace, Ms. Nordlund said. “We’re working on that,” she said.
The agency’s public dashboard now has data from 31 states. Eight of those states, including Utah, began sending their figures to the C.D.C. in the fall of 2020. Some relied on scientists volunteering their expertise; others paid private companies. But many others, such as Mississippi, New Mexico and North Dakota, have yet to begin tracking wastewater.
Utah’s fledgling program in April 2020 has now grown to cover 88 percent of the state’s population, with samples being collected twice a week, according to Nathan LaCross, who manages Utah’s wastewater surveillance program.
Wastewater data reflects the presence of the virus in an entire community, so it is not plagued by the privacy concerns attached to medical information that would normally complicate data release, experts said.
“There are a bunch of very important and substantive legal and ethical challenges that don’t exist for wastewater data,” Dr. Scarpino said. “That lowered bar should certainly mean that data could flow faster.”
Tracking wastewater can help identify areas experiencing a high burden of cases early, Dr. LaCross said. That allows officials to better allocate resources like mobile testing teams and testing sites.
Wastewater is also a much faster and more reliable barometer of the spread of the virus than the number of cases or positive tests. Well before the nation became aware of the Delta variant, for example, scientists who track wastewater had seen its rise and alerted the C.D.C., Dr. Scarpino said. They did so in early May, just before the agency famously said vaccinated people could take off their masks.
Even now, the agency is relying on a technique that captures the amount of virus, but not the different variants in the mix, said Mariana Matus, chief executive officer of BioBot Analytics, which specializes in wastewater analysis. That will make it difficult for the agency to spot and respond to outbreaks of new variants in a timely manner, she said.
“It gets really exhausting when you see the private sector working faster than the premier public health agency of the world,” Ms. Rivera said.
Wordle – After I made 5 wrong guesses, at least I knew the status of 21 different letters. Can anyone come up with 22 or more?
This is a screenshot of my Wordle game from February 14, 2022. I didn’t get it until the last possible try. But because of the five wrong guesses that I did make, at least I was able to know the status of 21 different letters. Can anyone come up with a set of five words that lets us know the status of 22 or more letters?
For those who can’t see the screenshot, my guesses, in order, were Ideas, Ought, Proxy, Black, and Women. The correct answer was Cynic. The five letters that I did not include in any of my guesses were F, J, Q, V, and Z.
Shame on the New York Times! Instead of asking “Where are the fathers of these children?” the New York Times blames childhood poverty on lack of government funding. Also, shame on the New York Times for saying “they had little choice.”
Here is a recent article from the New York Times about a bunch of unmarried women and their out-of-wedlock babies.
The word “father” does not appear in the article.
Instead, the New York Times uses the following words and phrases to explain why these women and children are living in poverty:
“have few options”
“waiting for subsidized housing”
“18 people had been inside the four-bedroom public housing unit, triple the number of people who had moved in a decade earlier”
“mothers, sons and daughters”
“they had little choice”
“a growing family forced to crowd ever more tightly into the apartment it already had”
“According to a 2016 assessment of housing needs in the city, Philadelphia is supplying less than 12 percent of the publicly supported housing needed for its low-income households”
“Without enough funding to support a program like that”
“Shakia Miller, who lives in a three-bedroom unit at the West Park Apartments, which are owned and managed by the housing authority, applied for a bigger place when she was pregnant with twin boys. They are now 9 years old, yet the family, which includes Ms. Miller’s three older children, is still living in the same apartment.”
“There were six people on the lease at that time, a number that expanded, by the time of the latest lease, to 14. There were three sisters, Rosalee, Virginia and Quinsha, and a growing number of children”
“There should have been a lot more resources for the family”
“For the families that are in such a situation, there may not be much of a choice at all.”
So that’s what’s in the article.
According to the New York Times, these women had no control over anything, and the reason that these women and their children are living in poverty is because the government is not spending enough money.
The New York Times never asks where the children’s fathers are.
The New York Times never asks why these women had so many out-of-wedlock babies that they could not afford to take care of.
Shame on the New York Times for not asking, “Where are the fathers of these children?”
Shame on the New York Times for blaming their poverty on lack of government funding!
Shame on the New York Times for falsely claiming these these women had no choice and no control over their situation!
I’d like to propose a new policy. Instead of the government spending more money on unmarried women and their out-of-wedlock babies, the government should stop funding them entirely.
Unmarried women who have babies out of wedlock should not be rewarded with public housing and section 8 vouchers.
Whatever you reward, you get more of.
We should stop rewarding unmarried women who have babies out of wedlock.
An unmarried women who has a baby out of wedlock should never be eligible for public housing or section 8 vouchers.
Before the Democrats started their “Great Society” and their “war on poverty” in the 1960s, only 5% of babies in the U.S. were born out of wedlock.
Today, it’s 40%.
This chart shows the increase. The chart is from this link at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States,_1940-2014.png
And now I’d like to talk about the origination of the fire that killed those mothers and their children.
First, someone removed the batteries from the home’s smoke detectors.
And second, a very careless and negligent cigarette smoker left their lighter in a place where a five-year-old boy was able to get it and then use it to set the family’s Christmas tree on fire. I don’t blame the five-year-old boy. I do blame the adult smoker.
This incident happened in Philadelphia. And while I don’t know the statistics for Philadelphia, I do know that in New York state, low-income smokers spend 25% of their income on cigarettes.
Choices matter.
Choices result in actions.
Actions result in consequences.
Having babies out of wedlock that you can’t afford is a choice, no matter how many times the New York Times writes that “they had little choice.”
Taking the batteries out of smoke detectors is also a choice that can lead to disastrous results.
Leaving a lighter where a five-year-old can get it is irresponsible and negligent.
Smoking is stupid.
Spending 25% of your income on cigarettes when your own children don’t even have adequate housing is inexcusable.
Childhood poverty would be greatly reduced if people behaved responsibly. Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Finally, I’m going to end this blog post by posting a video of the song “Love Child” by the Supremes from the 1960s. By today’s standards, this song would be considered extremely conservative, as well as racist and sexist. It’s a great song, with a lesson that needs to be taught more often:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdmGO-GvHyo
Truck Drivers Are the Atlas that Finally Shrugged
Truck Drivers Are the Atlas that Finally Shrugged
By John Nolte
February 11, 2022
Anyone familiar with my scribbling knows that I separate modern society into two categories: World Turners and The Useless.
Me? I’m no World Turner. I’m one of The Useless. What I mean is this: If everyone who does what I do for a living stopped doing it today, the world would keep right on turning. Society would roll along just fine without me and mine — maybe better. Sure, a few people might miss my musings, but only for a little while. And the same is true for anyone who makes a living spewing their half-assed opinions (especially Jonah Goldberg).
In fact, you could wipe society’s table clear of every writer, artist, actor, musician, professor, dancer, reporter, tastemaker, producer, influencer, teacher, lobbyist, politician, everyone on TV, everyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty, and our world would keep turning just fine. Would we miss things like the newest Marvel movie? Sure. Those things are the spice of a life as bountiful as ours. But that doesn’t change the fact that our world would keep right on turning.
Now try to live without the World Turners, those sneered at by America’s left-wing elite, by the CNNs and Morning Joes and NPR — the working class. Try to imagine your life without mechanics, farmers, coal miners, oil drillers, plumbers, roofers, electricians, pest control, the people who stock the shelves, who make our steel, police our streets, put out our fires, pave our roads, dig our ditches, haul our garbage, and plow the snow. Within a month, our world stops turning. Within six months, welcome to dystopia. Within a year, we’re eating one another.
But if you really want to know who keeps our world turning, it’s the truck drivers. Nothing moves without truck drivers, and I do mean nothing. Without truck drivers, it all goes to shit in about a week. No gasoline, no heating oil, empty store shelves, empty pharmacies, no seeds to grow your own food. It all grinds to a halt.
And still, despite their necessity and the value they add to our lives, everything our useless elites despise can be found in the person of a truck driver, for they are the modern-day cowboy: the rugged and resourceful individualists doing the dangerous, difficult, skilled, and tedious work of keeping us fed and absurdly comfortable.
Thanks primarily to truck drivers, modern societies’ poor live a life of luxury no Pharaoh could have imagined: central heat, air conditioning, microwaves, plasma TVs, cheap food, clothes, and furniture, cheap everything…
You don’t have to thank these guys. In fact, they’re perfectly content living in a world where no one gives them a thought. That’s how they’re built. If one quality defines most truck drivers, it’s that they just want to be left alone. They’re loners comfortable in their own company and eager to escape into the cab of their rig where the world makes sense, where the complications and unnecessary dramas that define modern life don’t exist. All that exists is hot coffee, a loyal dog, the radio, the companionship of the like-minded at the next stop, and the road.
We need truck drivers a whole lot more than they need us, and they know it. The leverage they hold over our society has always been there, but because truck drivers are men and not babies, they don’t use it. Instead, they just go about the business of going about their business. But if you don’t allow them to go about their business…
Guys like this, guys who just want to be left alone, those are the last guys you want to push around to the point where they push back.
And now the world’s truck drivers, especially in fascist Canada, have had enough, and now they’re shrugging. Brother, are they shrugging.
And can you blame them?
You don’t need a vaccine passport to attend the Oscars, but you do need one to be a truck driver.
On what planet is that okay?
Only silver-spooned bullies like Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden live on that planet.
And never forget that unlike the Brownshirts in Black Lives Matter and Antifa, these men are laying something on the line, something real. These are working people, not professional activists, criminals, and students. These men have families, mortgages, a nut to crack every month. But they’re still out there without the burning and looting that define the modern left. The risks are also real — crippling fines, imprisonment, truck confiscation, a fascist state eager for violence — but their cause is the most righteous of causes in the history of man: the right to be left alone.
Who is John Galt?
Now we know.
Instead of banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools, we should give equal time to the opposing point of view from black conservatives
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 7, 2022
Many people on the left want to teach critical race theory in schools.
Many people on the right want to ban the teaching of the subject in schools.
I propose that we teach critical race theory in schools, with the three following guidelines:
First, it should be age appropriate. High school, yes. Kindergarten, no.
Second, it should be taught under the proper context. Social studies class, yes. Math class, no.
And third, we should give equal time to teach the opposing point of view from black conservatives such as Winsome Sears, Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, Brandom Tatum, Star Parker, Walter E. Williams, Mia Love, Larry Elder, Josephine Mathias, Deroy Murdock, Herman Cain, and Ben Carson.
Hero Crossing Guard Hailed For Incredible Reflexes After Saving Kid From Car
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hero-crossing-guard-hailed-incredible-093945272.html
Hero Crossing Guard Hailed For Incredible Reflexes After Saving Kid From Car
By Ed Mazza
February 7, 2022
https://twitter.com/DrJalawson/status/1489700948972769280
A Maryland police officer is being hailed as a hero after saving a child from being hit by a car and taking the brunt of the impact herself.
The dramatic scene was caught on surveillance video.
The footage shows Cpl. Annette L. Goodyear of North East, on crossing guard duty on Friday, holding up a hand to stop traffic. As a middle school student walked through the crosswalk, a car blew into the intersection. Goodyear pushed the child out of the way only to be hit by the car herself.
Although the footage shows her falling hard to the pavement, Cecil County Public Schools Superintendent Jeffrey Lawson said on Twitter that Goodyear was treated and released and is doing well.
“It was strange. As I’m lying there I’m thinking to myself this actually did happen. I didn’t even know what to think about at that point,” Goodyear told Fox 5. “It didn’t seem real as it was happening.”
The child was not injured.
CBS Baltimore reported that the driver was given multiple citations, including negligent driving, failure to stop for a pedestrian in the crosswalk and an expired registration.
The town’s website said Goodyear has been with the department since 2008, and was its first female officer.
Goodyear told Fox 5 that after leaving the hospital, she went to check on the girl, who was too shaken to go to school and went home instead.
“She came down the stairs saw me standing there and as she was walking toward the door she was getting teary-eyed, and you could see it and when she got teary-eyed, then her dad started getting teary-eyed, and we all started at that point,” Goodyear told the station. “I was just so thankful she was standing there and that she was OK.”
Zero jail time for Black Lives Matter arsonist who set a school on fire
Man who tried to burn Minnesota school during BLM riots gets probation
By Andrew Mark Miller
February 5, 2022
A man convicted of attempting to set fire to a high school during the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd has been sentenced to five years probation.
Mohamed Hussein Abdi, 20, was handed the probation sentence in a U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota, Thursday after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit arson, according to court documents obtained by Fox News.
Abdi was also ordered to pay just over $34,000 in restitution to Gordon Parks High School in St. Paul.
Court documents state that the sentence was “imposed pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.”
The presiding judge, Reagan-appointed District Court Judge David S. Doty, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
Abdi was arrested in June 2020, a month after he entered the high school through a broken glass door during the Floyd riot and could be seen on security footage pouring liquid from a white container onto the floor and then into a trashcan. Abdi then took a liquid-soaked garment and sent fire to the trash can before running away as flames and smoke began to spread.
It has been estimated that rioting across the nation following Floyd’s death destroyed over $1 billion worth of property.
More than 1,500 businesses in the Minneapolis St. Paul area were damaged or destroyed during the riots totaling roughly $500 million in damages.
YouTuber harvest hollow reviews the 1937 movie “Marked Woman” based on my recommendation. Skip to 14:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TguPpI1vAh8
In this video from 2005, Whoopi Goldberg explains why she’s against censoring old Looney Tunes cartoons that have racial stereotypes. I agree with her. And I’m against suspending her for her recent comments about the Holocaust. And I’m Jewish.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 2, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg has just been suspended from The View for her recent comments about the Holocaust.
I’m Jewish, and I’m against her suspension. I support free speech for everyone, and for all points of view.
In the past, Goldberg herself has defended free speech for old Looney Tunes cartoons that have racial stereotypes. This video is from The Looney Tunes Collection Vol. 3, which was released in 2005:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCT1clqci3I
I’m Jewish, and I think it’s ridiculous that anyone would be upset by what Whoopi Goldberg said about the Holocaust
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 1, 2022
The people who insist on getting offended and upset by everything are saying that Whoopi Goldberg should be fired for her recent comments about the Holocaust.
I say those people are a bunch of totalitarian idiots.
I support anyone’s right to express their opinion on any subject.
I support Whoopi Goldberg’s right to say what she said about the Holocaust.
And I also support the right of people to say that Goldberg should be fired for her comments about the Holocaust. I disagree with what they say. But I do support their right to say it.
And I also support free speech for people who disagree with me.
I support free speech for everyone.
Free speech is awesome!
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
