Category Archives: You can’t fix stupid

Canceled-Tales From Behind the Blackboard Curtain

For this narrative, I employ initials rather than names. Not to protect anyone’s identity, nor to provide legal cover from which to besmirch someone’s character. Rather, to utter some names would be akin to reading from an “honor” role of malefactors who should be condemned, not celebrated.

Injuries sustained in the line of duty ended my law enforcement career in 1989. The following year I moved from California’s radical Leftwing Bay area to attend college in the Midwest. Possessing a degree in history, I added one in education. A local school district hired me in 1993 to teach 9th grade American history. Over the next 23 years, I taught American History, Advanced Studies, Comparative Government, U.S. Government (my forte), Modern Global Issues, and World History. In a conservative city now, I walked into my first social studies department meeting believing I was safe from the censure and sanction (denial of promotion and assignments) I endured at the hands of virulent liberals running my former police department. To my surprise, the department brimmed with teachers ranging from liberal to Marxist. They began the meeting trashing out BW, a retiring geography teacher, not present, for being in the NRA. They eviscerated conservatives and former president Reagan with harsh criticism and mocked students whose dads were pastors. They were never shy, dilatory, nor quiet about ensuring everyone heard their opinions. Nor were they tolerant of dissenting views. Having paid a heavy price for being a conservative in California, I kept my mouth shut. Following this eye-opening meeting, I visited BW revealing what had transpired. He said they were all very liberal and cautioned me to watch my back. Silence, then, never expressing my views, would be my protective shield. So I thought.

April 1996, near the end of my third year, department colleague BB, slipped in my room after school shutting the door behind him. He bore a warning. BB said I was “under suspicion” by the social studies department for being a conservative. How could that be? I never spoke at meetings or shared my views with anyone on any subject. He explained being a former policeman was a red flag, but that was not what raised the most alarm. Department mockery and ridicule of conservatives at meetings was relentless. They noticed I never laughed or joined in. My silence was de facto proof of guilt. I scoffed at such nonsense. BB was not laughing. He delivered a prophetic warning. If it turned out I was a conservative, they would never accept me, I would never fit in, and I would have a tough career as a teacher. He could not have been more right. What transpired between 1993 and this tale would fill a book. Maybe two.

Fast forward to the beginning of the 2013 school year. Two juniors, PJ and JS asked me to sponsor their after school club. I was supervising after school detentions so declined. In the spring of 2014, having done my detention duty, four days a week, and some Saturdays, since 1997, I decided it was time to give it up. PJ and JS again pressed me to be a sponsor. I asked what the club was and they said The Sons of Liberty, a college Libertarian organization they wanted to bring to the high school level. I pointed out I was a conservative, not a Libertarian, they knew this, and me as a sponsor would probably not be a good fit. PJ and JS insisted this was not a problem. They only needed a faculty member present in order to meet after school. My role would be nil. Against my better judgment, I agreed. Summer break began and I forgot all about it.

During the first week of school, September 2014, assistant principal and activities director CH summoned me to his office. He was responsible for approving and managing extra-curricular activities and clubs. He asked me about the Sons of Liberty. I explained, I never heard of them. I did a Google search and learned they were a college Libertarian club. That was the extent of my knowledge. I only agreed to be the adult in the room, not take an active role in their activities. CH had reservations about approving the group. He said high school clubs should reflect the general student population, not left or right politically. Down the middle. His comment was odd considering the school sponsored a Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered Student Alliance, as well as a Gender Equity Club. Boys with girlfriends in the latter group told me it was an “angry feminist sounding board”. They were hardly moderate or down the middle. I said nothing in defense of the Libertarian Club. Considering what I had been through the past several years, I was disinclined to stick my neck out for anyone.

Beginning in 2010, a cabal of liberal female mostly social studies teachers, began a campaign to get me fired. RI, with whom I began my career, had ascended to become chair of the social studies department for three high and three junior high schools. She aided and abetted the cabal to an unknown degree. An English teacher, SA, and the Librarian JC, joined them in 2015. I called these six blondes the “Turnip Witches”. Most of them had been with the district less than ten years. They began their campaign by spying on me. They listened outside my door (students caught them) and later hid in an attached storage room listening to me (I caught them). They rifled through copy requests I turned into the copy clerk (she told me) and went through handouts in my room (I caught them). They squeezed students for information about what I said in class (kids told me). Turnip Witches then circulated lies about me among staff. Next, on a routine basis, they took their noxious file of lies and half-truths on me complaining to JF, the principal. Each time, in response, he summoned me to his office chastising and lecturing me for my alleged conservative bias. My side? He did not want to hear it. His motto was “perception is reality”. It did not matter if I was conservative and or biased. The fact teachers accused me of these crimes meant this was their perception therefore, it was true. He made up his mind before I crossed the threshold of his office.

He again summoned me at the start of the 2010 semester claiming more “alleged” complaints. He said I had a “reputation for being a conservative”, and this was a “problem” that had “persisted for years”. My being a conservative was the topic of discussion among faculty and it was causing a great deal of controversy, agitation, and concern among them. JF talked as if being a conservative was a crime. He added a parade of teachers were coming to him and they as well as parents were complaining I pushed conservative views in class. They wanted to know why he had not disciplined or fired me. I asked JF which parents were making complaints. He would not tell me. I asked who the teachers were. He said, with a sneer, he would never tell me. He added in mocking tones I would truly be surprised if I knew who some of them were. JF told complaining teachers for him to take action against me they had to make their allegations and names public. They refused. Who were the teachers stabbing me in the back? How could I now trust anyone I worked with from that moment forward? As with previous “anonymous” complaints, JF required me to turn in copies of all handouts, assignments, homework, quizzes, and tests, so he could scour them for bias. I was appalled. Parents of conservative and or Christian students had complained to me about liberal teachers pushing their bias in class. I not only documented this with names, dates, and places, I obtained handouts used by these teachers demonstrating their liberal bias. Why was he not summoning and investigating them? I protested this constituted a double standard amounting to persecution. He should investigate the liberal teachers for bias. He insisted I was the only one about whom he received parent and teacher complaints. Based on my experiences, I suspected “parents” was more likely singular not plural. Without exposing names, I revealed parents complained to me about specific social studies teachers. As coincidence would have it, I later learned these liberal teachers were the very same ones complaining about me. What was JF’s response to my request? He became angry and dismissed me. As I got up to leave, he said, “This is not over. We’re not through yet”.

I was a member of the State Teachers Association, not the NEA. Each time I went to my representative, CB over what the principal was doing to me, he said there was no need for concern. It would all “blow over”. He did nothing and he was wrong.

The State had recently instituted standardized End Of Course exams (EOC’s), for certain courses. American history was one. This was the first year we were to administer the test. We discovered several questions applied to an eighth grade junior high unit, “Opening of the West”. There was a problem. Eighth grade teachers never made it to that unit. Now 9th grade American history teachers had to add this unit to a curriculum they already struggled to finish each year. All because 8th grade teachers failed to do their job. No one gave a hoot about 9th grade American history until EOC’s. I emailed Department Chair, RI asking her how we were to teach a course for which we had no curriculum and only a few days to prepare to boot. RI forwarded my email to DB, leader of the Turnip Witches, and they sent it to the principal.

On August 20, 2012, at 10:30 a.m., JF entered my room and shut the door behind him. He was furious. He told me to have a seat. He sat at the table next to my desk. He handed me an email and demanded to know if I had sent it. Why did he ask? My name was on it. He had cut the header off to hide who forwarded it to him. He said the “parties” who sent it to him were very angry, and then he launched into a violent tirade against me. He accused me of going behind his back. He yelled in my face, “I am sick and tired of you! I have put up with your behavior for ten years. You have tried to undermine balanced assessment! You have not embraced this initiative!” And I mean yelled. As JF’s voice rose, he slammed his open hand on the table repeatedly. “It’s over! We’re through! I’m finished with you!” He yelled in my face.

Was I scared? Yes. I was in the back of a room locked in with a boss who appeared out of control. He was full of rage, his voice yelling, and his eyes furious. He was between the door and me. I felt as if JF would strike me at any moment with no witnesses either. “I was a social studies teacher for years! And I was a darned good one too” JF screamed in my face slamming his hand down on my desk accentuating each word his face red with rage. Where did that come from? There was no antecedent or context for what he was screaming at me. I had not known him when he was a teacher and hence never commented on his teaching. “You don’t support or embrace balanced assessment!” (State tests) he repeated, still yelling. This was the first year we were to give the EOC. How could he claim I did not support what we had never done?

“Of course I embrace it. What are you basing this accusation on”, I asked. I was upset at his ambush and the false accusations he was hurling at me. They were a lie. JF became even angrier. He threw his head back and yelled “No! That is not how I interpret your email!” I explained my concerns about teaching the 8th grade unit, but he did not believe me. Again, pounding his hand down on my desk accusing me of attempting to sabotage his efforts to prepare kids for the exam. Why would I do that? JF had been clear. If kids did poorly on the test, he was blaming the teacher. If I were trying to stab him in the back, why would I do so by sending emails to supervisors not exactly part of my fan club? I asked him this. He repeated, he had had the same trouble with me for ten years and accused me of not supporting the history curriculum and attacked me for teaching in a biased manner. JF yelled he was sick of talking to me about this and of hearing from parents and teachers who complained about me. From that moment forward, I was to submit to him copies of every assignment, homework, test, quiz, and so forth I used in my classes. He would examine each including test questions, for conservative bias. Then he leaned toward me with this strange weird smile on his face but his eyes were all rage.

“You’re very bright”, he said sarcastically, “so let me make it clear so you understand. Any more problems, emails, whatever, and I am writing you up. Do you understand?” His voice had become low and gravelly. “You are a divisive element in the social studies department. It is because of your behavior”, he added. “No one in the department likes you. No one in the department accepts you as a member of the department, and that is why they don’t treat you like a member.” A cabal of liberal teachers was out to get me, unknown collaborators were out to get me, and the principal was as well. Coming to work became unpleasant. It was only the beginning. The Turnip Witches never dismounted their brooms.

“Hostile work environment” is a legal term. For me, it became reality. Word I was what others called the principal’s new “whipping boy” leaked out. No doubt, assisted by the Turnip Witches, Queens of backstabbing. I became a pariah in short order. Math teacher JR taught two doors down from me and we were on friendly terms. I often stood with him in the hallway, supervising students during passing periods. When he saw the principal or an assistant principal approaching, JR said he must shove me against the wall in order to promote his career. Work “friends” asked me not to send emails to them any longer. They did not want a trail, paper or electronic, between them and me. JD my new supervisor was down in the JV building. I emailed him from time to time with work related questions. Instead of replying by email, he walked all the way up the hill to my building and classroom to answer in person. He was not shy in telling me he too wanted no link or record of communicating with me. The district held in-service meetings at various locations including on campus and Central Office. Work “friends” joked they could not sit with me any longer because I was “toxic, radioactive” and “career suicide”. JD coined the term “Career Suicide Gang” and anointed me its undisputed leader. They made these comments and insults in the presence of the principal and assistant principals who did nothing. It got worse. I was still on the history exam writing team. At in-services, the other members refused to sit at the same table as me. This included three of the Turnip Witches. It was so bad the principal was compelled to make them sit with me. This they did, huddled tightly together, as if I was a monster, at the far end of the long rectangular table. Several teachers commented on how bad this looked. Kids learn at an early age unspoken social cues with respect to who is in and who is an untouchable. It carries over into adulthood.

Faculty meetings met in a large lecture hall. The rows of seats were arranged in two sections, one on the left, and one on the right separated by an aisle down the middle. Each row had 12 chairs. I sat in the section on the right, toward the middle of the room, in the last seat on the right. I had the entire row to myself. Was this coincidence or intentional? I decided to conduct an experiment to answer this question. From 2012, until my final day in May 2016, I arrived early to each meeting before anyone else. As teachers filed in, looking for seats, especially those habitually late, they would look at me, the eleven empty seats to my left, back at me, and then walk away. Some chose to stand along walls rather than sit in the same row as me. I knew almost none of them. Was it a good experiment? Consider this, the principal held faculty meetings every month on Wednesdays. Teachers refused to sit in the same row as me for over three and a half years. There were two exceptions. One time Math teacher DF came in late. The meeting was packed. He sat in my row but at the last seat on the left as far from me as possible. He did not even glance at me. DF and I had lived in the same neighborhood, gone to the same church, and I had taken him to work when his car was in the shop. Yet, DF’s neck was like cement, unable to turn. I decided to tweak my experiment. Instead of sitting in the last seat on the right, I moved three seats to me left. Now even late arriving DF would not sit in my row. A separation of eight seats was not enough. KD was an English teacher who had taken a job with another district. For her last meeting she sat next to me. KD said she knew exactly what I was doing with my little experiment. She said the way teachers treated me was a disgrace and the principal was evil and vindictive.

I endured this humiliating shunning every month in addition at in-service training. From faculty meetings to supervising after school pep-rallies in the gym, it was the same story. Teachers moved away from and or would not come near me. I was always sitting or standing completely alone. Did students notice this? Yes they did.

Later that semester, November 2012, JF wrote me up placing me on step one of a three-step termination process. My crime? I used too many free market sources in my history class (not true), and was not “collegial”. JF assigned me to the American history unit test writing team. He tasked us with writing exams teachers would use in common. At the meeting, I pointed out to second year teacher and team leader, AB, The Progressives Unit, included questions on Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle. They were problematic. Although fiction, schools teach it as fact. Proposed unit test questions reinforced that notion. Sinclair had been a radical socialist and historians had demonstrated his novel was mostly fiction. I consulted with a professor at a former University who agreed. AB asked me to share my concerns. As the meeting was breaking up, I demurred. She asked me to email them to her, which I did. My very liberal then supervisor, her friend DB, leader of the Turnip Witches, instrumental in my being demoted, twice, and active in trying to get me fired, told AB to forward my email to the principal. This she did.

JF came by my room, unannounced, after school, locked and shut the door, and sat down by my desk. Furious, he said my email to AB was “passive-aggressive”, I was sending “divisive behind the scenes communications”, was using biased sources, the fact that I told students The Jungle was essentially, a hoax, raised concerns I was not teaching the curriculum, kids needed to learn about socialism, and I was trying to undercut AB as team leader. None of this was true. Her sister taught in the district where I lived and my kids attended school. At back to school night, I told AB’s sister she was doing a great job. JF did not believe me. He said he was finished with me and left. He came by just before the Thanksgiving Break, to say he did not want to ruin my break by leaving me hanging. When we came back, he was writing me up.

For attempting to undercut AB, team leader, and using too many free market sources, JF wrote me up placing me on permanent probation. I was to turn in to him, again, copies of every handout and assignment I used in class. None of what he said was correct or factual. He was acting on behalf of the Cabal who were among his favorite teachers. In addition, for 2014, he was moving me from the Varsity down to the JV building on the first floor where the bulk of social studies teachers taught, including the Turnip Witches. Worse, I would be co-teaching one section of World History with DM, a special education teacher, liberal, and friend of the principal who hand picked him to supervise his department. Sitting in CH’s office, with all this running through my mind, I hoped he would not approve the new club. I was between three and four years of retiring and looking forward to a quiet uneventful finish. To my surprise, he approved the club. He gave me no guidance, let alone training on how to manage an extra-curricular activity, which I had never done.

Beginning October 2014, the Club met in my classroom after school on Wednesdays. I had met PJ and JS, now seniors, but did not know the other kids. Membership seemed fluid from week to week. Their format was a debate. Someone made a proposition and then members debated it. Topics included drug legalization, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, free speech and censorship, U.S. support for Israel, Gay rights, and so forth. Students described themselves as anarchists, Libertarian, socialists, anti-capitalists, Anarcho-Capitalists, many labels with which I was unfamiliar. I stayed out of debates and never offered my opinion. Debates were spirited but I did not hear comments anyone would consider inappropriate.

In late April 2015, PJ invited me to join an “Austrian Economics” free market forum on Face Book. Having never been on any form of social media, I was unfamiliar with FB. In addition, I was “technologically challenged” and had to call a family member who walked me through setting up a FB page. I connected with a family member and friends from college, about four in all. I joined the Austrian forum. People from around the world were members and it was a public group.

I posted nothing on this forum. Instead, I made comments on two items posted by PJ and JS. One was a You Tube video by economist Thomas Sowell who is black suggesting fatherless homes played a role in the recent Baltimore riots. I had lived and gone to school in Baltimore’s inner city and gave Sowell’s video a “like”. Another was a You Tube video on Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling against same-sex marriage. PJ and JS took issue with the Court’s ruling from a Libertarian perspective. I pointed out that same-sex marriage was a prelude to the radical homosexual lobby’s next step, adoption rights. I added sarcastically, “I guess I’m a failure as a Libertarian”. A Forum member who went by the handle, “Ignacio”, and was unknown to me, posted comments critical of the Pope. This drew angry anti-Christian responses from other members. When comments devolved into name-calling, I bowed out from the forum never to return.

On Monday May 4 2015, I arrived at school and logged onto the laptop to check email. It contained a warning from one of the seniors to stay off FB. He said the principal was calling kids, one by one, to his office, and conducting an investigation of the Club. It was a “witch hunt”, and they were after me. After me! I was stunned. This could not be true. What had I done?

On Tuesday May 5 2015, PJ came by my room. He said assistant principal JA was now calling in kids and questioning them about an incident occurring between Club members. My name came up during the interrogations. These kids had used school IPADS in the library and became embroiled in an angry debate (I had to ask what an IPAD was). They failed to log off, the librarian saw what they had written, and she ran to the principal with it. Oh brother. I knew JC, the librarian. She had been a new social studies teacher in 1998. The department assigned me to be her mentor. She used the room during my plan period. JC was a liberal, saw the framed picture of President Reagan on my desk, and a book critical of FDR and the New Deal. She never spoke to me and refused my help. Instead, she hung out with the department liberals. Students revealed that these teachers mocked me in front of their students. Later, JC transferred to a sister high school and became a librarian. In 2014, she transferred back to my high school.

I asked PJ what was on the IPADS that led to an investigation and caused such an uproar. How did my name come up? He said JS had become involved in a heated debate with several freshmen club members. It devolved into nasty name-calling and anti-Jewish slurs. He had no idea why my name was part of the investigation as I was not involved.

On Thursday May 7 2015, the principal came by my room after school unannounced. When he was out to get a teacher, he called them to his office to discuss an issue and then ambushed them with a different one in order to keep them off guard. His other tactic was to come by a teacher’s room unannounced and ambush them there, shutting and locking the door to keep out witnesses.

His demeanor was angry and curt. He interrogated me from a list written in his spidery style. He showed me a portion of a FB post he had cut and pasted. According to the principal, JS wrote he was picking something up for me at a store in town. I was flabbergasted. I had no idea what JS was talking about. I had no clue where the principal was going with his interrogation. He refused to allow me to see the text preceding JS’s statement. I learned later, the text referred to JS stopping by a doughnut store on the way to the Club meeting in my room. Period. The principal knew this when he interrogated me. Why did he pretend it said JS was picking something up “for” me when JS clearly did not write that? Why did the principal deceive me? Why did he lie?

Next, the principal asked if I ran the Cub meetings. I said no, PJ and JS ran the meetings. He asked if anyone had made “extremist” statements during meetings. I was typically on my laptop, in the back of the room, and not listening to what members said. I was unaware of anyone making “extremist” comments. JF did not define “extremist”. It was clear he did not believe me. He kept returning to and grilling me about my role in the club and extremist comments. I did not know where he was going with this line of questioning or why he focused on me. I had nothing to do with whatever they were investigating. He showed me a list including anti-Jewish slurs and suggested either I had something to do with, or supported them. This was rubbish. I had done scholarly research for Herbert Romerstein, a Jewish professor who made me an honorary member of his Synagogue in Clinton, Maryland, and I am a member of a Jewish organization. He refused to tell me what was going on but, instead, treated me like a criminal and then angrily left the room. Later that same day, PJ came by. He said a second assistant principal, KT, (there were four) was now calling kids to her office to be interrogated for a third time. She asked them, who ran the meetings, did I run them, did I contribute to their discussions, and what was my exact role. Had the principal not already grilled me about this? Why a third round of interrogations with yet another assistant principal? Why were they focusing on me?

Later that day, JS came by during my plan period. He was very upset. He revealed he had been in the nasty debate with Club members on the IPADS. Three freshmen had gone to the principal claiming JS was gathering guns and bombs to blow up the school. I was shocked. This was the first time I had heard specifics about the incident other than the name-calling. I told JS if there was any truth to these allegations, he would not graduate in two weeks, the district would expel and refer him to the police. This was a very serious matter. Rather than discuss this with me, he and his family needed to consult with an attorney immediately. I told him how angry I was because I was not involved and yet, the focus was on me. JS agreed I had nothing to do with it. He assured me the accusations against him were false. I told him it would still be wise to consult an attorney.

On Friday May 8 2015, with about 12 minutes remaining in hour seven, the final period, the principal entered my room followed by JG, a history teacher. He told me JG was taking my class and to “come with me”. The kids all stared in stunned silence. I followed the principal from the room. He walked me out of the JV building up the hill to the Varsity building, said hello to a few students, but would not talk to me. I was totally in the dark. I followed him into his office complex. I saw JM, assistant superintendent, sitting at a round table covered with papers. Now I was scared. What was going on? He told me to sit down at the table. The principal joined us. JF said that while investigating a situation involving several students in the libertarian club, my name came up leading to an investigation of me. He accused me of being on Face Book 37 hours over the past month, during contract time, using district property, the laptop, making inappropriate comments, and contact with students on Face Book.

JM listed district policies, and their code numbers, I had violated. The best I could hope for was them to write up and move me from step one to step three of the termination process. At worst, he would recommend the Board of Education terminate my employment adding, “You will have to be squeaky clean to even have a chance of holding onto your job”. My chest began to tighten. I felt as if I could not breathe. I have a phobic fear of heights and felt as if someone had shoved me out of an airplane.

JF claimed to be my biggest defender but no more. He repeated his “perception is reality” axiom. JF did not say who or from what he defended me. He showed me a tech-prepared spreadsheet indicating I had been on FB during contract time. I explained, yes, but this was not instead of teaching. It was late April and kids were taking exams and or I was showing a video after exams. That is when I logged on to FB. I did not log off during the day but left the page open. Did this make it appear I was still on FB when I was not? He “accused” me of being a Libertarian. He showed me pages with blacked out (redacted) sections and asked if I had made the comments in response to Thomas Sowell and the Alabama Supreme Court case. I replied yes. He said Sowell’s comments were racist and JM agreed. Had either of these upper middle class lily-white men lived in Baltimore or Philadelphia’s inner city as I had? Did they know who Thomas Sowell was? Racist? I was born with a natural tan, a step below Caucasian compared to them, and father of a mixed race family. Racist?

The principal demanded I confess to being a Libertarian. I refused because that was a lie. He claimed to have documents somewhere to prove I was. He jumped up from the table and ran across the room to his desk. He scrolled frantically through the computer file he kept me. It was robust. He kept muttering, “It is in here somewhere, I know it is. I read it”. Finally, JM suggested he return to the table and look later. Frustrated, JF returned but did not give up. “This is it, this one”, he said triumphantly waving a piece of paper he picked up from the table. It was my comment about the Alabama Supreme Court case. JF said I admitted to being a Libertarian. Was this man dense? I explained my statement, “I guess I have failed as a Libertarian” was rhetorical sarcasm. He could ask the two seniors. He would not let go of this accusation.

Next JF and JM said my comments about homosexuals and adoption were inappropriate and unacceptable. I explained they represented my Biblical convictions. Brushing aside my religious faith, they ruled my views inappropriate and they forbade teachers from sharing inappropriate views with students. JF returned to the You Tube video/interview with Thomas Sowell. He insisted that Sowell’s assertion fatherless homes has anything to do with inner city violence is racist. He asked if I was the one who posted the video and link. No, I was new to FB and had no idea how to post videos and links. Which was true. I did not actually watch the video. “Then why did you give it a like”, JF asked, suggesting I was lying. I told him I was familiar with Sowell, his articles, books, and views. I read the title of the video, had lived in Baltimore’s inner city, and understood what Sowell meant. JF and JM laughed at me in mocking tones. They did not believe me. “Why would you like what you did not watch” JM asked, condescension in his voice. Had I not just explained this? I added I had no time to watch every video. The “like” was a courtesy to those who posted it. This was also true. They did not believe me and suggested I posted the video. I repeated again, I lacked the technological skills to do that which was true. The principal threw his head back mocking me with derisive laughter. He accused me of pretending to be naïve and backward with respect to technology. He called me liar.

JF tossed some papers in front of me. It was a copy from a FB page. At the top right corner was a red ball with a number inside it. It was FB’s notification one had a private message. The principal insisted, because I had clicked on it, this proved I was a liar and knew my way around technology. Was he more technologically backward than I was? Above the red ball were the words “private message”. I pointed this out. The number inside what looked like a billiard ball suggested the number of messages. One did not need to be technologically adept to figure out what it meant, I pointed out. JF continued accusing me of lying about my level of “expertise”. It was obvious to me; at that point, this really was a witch-hunt. When people search for witches, they find them. I explained PJ asked me to join the free market forum, I had never been on FB, and had to ask someone how to set up the page. Again, they laughed at me. JF asked who Ignacio was. I said I had no idea. People on forums typically use a “handle” rather than real names. He said Ignacio was a student at the school. I had no way of knowing this. JF and JM said while downloading FB pages during the investigation, the pages began disappearing. JF accused me of wiping them clean. He claimed my time on FB at school was not with family and friends but, instead, secret communications with students that I was now trying to conceal. What! This was insane! This man was utterly unhinged creating a bizarre conspiracy from whole cloth. I insisted there was no truth in this. If they could read my posts, they could see with whom I communicated, all four of them. JF and JM laughed again calling me a liar and accused me of erasing my pages so no one could see with whom I had communicated.

JM told me I needed to come clean. Wiping my FB page to hide anything was an offense for which he would fire me. I was shocked. I had done nothing of the sort. He repeated the accusation several times. He said either I wiped my pages clean or I had given my password to a student and directed him to do it for me. I could not believe my ears. This was preposterous. They continued to hammer me with accusations. I continued to tell them I had done nothing of the sort. Now the principal accused me of leading a cover up. JM again insisted the time had come for me to stop lying, come clean, and tell the truth. It was an ugly scene. Suddenly, the principal saw a name at the bottom of the half-redacted page. It was not mine. He said, maybe it was not my page after all. It was not mine. Whomever it belonged to had done the erasing, not me. I did not know how to erase posts. Yet, JF and JM sat their attacking, mocking, calling me a liar, and demanding I confess to something I had not done. They accused me of leading a nefarious conspiracy. There was no truth to any of this whatsoever.

JF continued trying to prove I was an “extremist” who made “extremist” comments to the club. He asked if I remembered when he came by my room asking if anyone ever made extremist comments and I had said no. Yes I did. Aha! My answer proved I was a liar. I told him he was wrong. I never heard a kid make an inappropriate comment. Not a kid, you, he said. He considered my FB forum comment about the radical homosexual lobby extremist. Because I denied saying what he considered extremist, this proved I was a liar. I had never heard such demented demented illogic in my life. What gave him the right to decide which views were extremist? What gave him the right to declare the Word of G-d extremist and deny to people, their devoutly held religious beliefs? His illogical assertion made it clear he was bent on my destruction, not the truth. Channeling his inner Thomas Newton, the principal could not let go of his witch-hunt. He then said I violated district policy by engaging in private communications with students not accessible to parents.

JF’s argument was thus; I was on a FB Forum to which students belonged. Unless a parent logged on and joined the forum, they might not see what I said to a student even though the forum was public. Wait a minute, I thought. Did the school allow football, basketball, cheerleading, and soccer coaches, and club sponsors to communicate with students during the day? They did this during contract hours and many used their cell phones. Parents could not see these messages. This double standard drove home the fact they were out to destroy me. They had decided I was guilty beforehand and now were holding the trial. They had their witch.

JF and JM continued to insist I was using FB to engage in secret communications with students and I used FB to hide this fact. This was not remotely true and I said so. JF said I had a “bad image” and “reputation” among teachers for being an “extremist” adding “Perception is reality”. I wanted to point out this “reputation” was among Leftist social studies teachers who were, after all, trying to get me fired. For Pete’s sake, they called conservatives “Nazis” all the time. They had called me a Nazi. As far as these teachers were concerned, anyone who was not a liberal was a fascist extremist. Seeing how unhinged the principal was, I held my peace. He brought up that JS had come my room during my plan period. He insisted we met secretly conspiring on how to run this cover up. He accused me of having a much “closer relationship” with JS “than meets the eye”. Total fantasy. I could not understand why the assistant superintendent did not see the principal was insane, intervene, and end this ugly and degrading meeting. JF accused me of conspiring with JS to wipe my FB page clean to hide my involvement in his political movement and my extremist statements. Had we not already covered this? This was a monstrous lie and I denied it all. He could employ his techies to see who had posted and erased what. It was not me. JF was relentless. He continued to insist I was lying.

JF jumped up from the table a second time and raced over to his computer. He said he had written me up for stuff like this before. He was making no sense. I have copies of the write-up. I wrote about it at the beginning of this narrative. Does what I wrote bear any resemblance to the present accusations? JF told JM I was a member of the Tea Party because I had a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag hanging in my room. That was back in 2012 when he wrote me up the first time. He ordered me to take it down and I did. I was never a member of a Tea Party, instead, the flag was part of a Revolutionary War collection I hung in my room including the Betsy Ross flag. I first put them up in 1999. The Tea Party was born in 2009, after Barack Obama’s election. My flag was up a decade before there ever was a Tea Party. I had told JF this in 2012 and he knew it.

JF then asked if I had passed out papers or handouts at Club meetings. When I said no, he called me a liar. He said the You Tubes I showed during club meetings were extremist so I was lying. I never passed out papers or showed You Tubes. PJ and JS did that. Go ask them. I was in the back of the room and did not participate in meetings. Show me the papers. Show me the handouts. Show me the videos. Go ask those who were there. JF and JM laughed at me again and called me a liar.

JM said they were seizing my laptop. Now was the time to save myself and come clean. Now was the time to tell the truth before it was too late. If they found any form of communication with students on my laptop, or inappropriate content, he would recommend the school board fire me. Now was the time to confess. I told him I had nothing to confess. He would find no communications with any student. He warned me again, if he found anything inappropriate, he would fire me. I asked him to define inappropriate because I had a few cartoons on the laptop mocking school life. Instead of defining inappropriate, he insisted again, it was time to come clean. I repeated there was nothing to come clean about. He said, even if that was true, they were moving me from step one to step three on the termination process. Step four, was termination.

It was now 3:30 p.m. JF walked me back to my room in silence. Everyone was gone as the school day ended at 2:30 p.m. He asked me where the Bible was and began searching for it. It was a science room I had been in only that year. I had two file cabinets and nothing more. Because he was moving me to the bottom floor next year, my third room in three years, I had packed everything up for the move. I only needed a box. Student handouts remained in the file cabinets and the custodians would move them. He demanded I tell him where the Bible was. I could not have it in the classroom, as it would suggest I was teaching from a Christian perspective. I did not answer. He did not find it. He then saw the book, Nullification, by Thomas Woods on my desk. He almost lost it. He picked it up and told me never to bring it back onto school property again. Snatching up my laptop, JF said, “If you can’t serve these kids, if you can’t push them to set the bar higher, you should leave now and never come back”. I have no idea what he meant. He added he would be going over every handout I used in class looking for conservative bias. I pointed to the two cabinets. “I teach World History and Modern Global Issues. Social Studies Department teachers created every handout I use for each course. “Take whatever you want”, I said. He ignored me and swept out of the room leaving me there, on a Friday, in the face of the most bizarre and preposterous accusations I had ever heard, and termination hanging over my head.

Before school, on Monday 11 May 2015, I went to my State Teacher representative and told NS, what had happened. He handed me a business card for the Association lawyer and said to call them. Nothing more. I called several times but no one answered. I stood in a parking lot, my chest tight as if squeezed by a giant snake, dripping sweat, and struggling to breathe. Several students asked if I was okay. I was not. I did not know it at the time, but my doctor later confirmed, I had a heart attack.

On Tuesday May 12 2015, the principal came by my room before class with the lap- top and a yellow legal pad. Unannounced as usual. He found some cartoons he considered objectionable. One depicted a Border Patrol drug dog next to stacks of cocaine and heroin. The caption read, “After searching two school lockers, the drug dog was exhausted”. The other depicted a firing squad. The caption said the school was adding a new punishment to detentions. I never transmitted them to anyone. No one had seen them. Humor is how I deal with stress. He insisted a parent might get his or her hands on my laptop and password, and see them. If he believed all that fantasy conspiracy rubbish, this would seem plausible to him. Right. I had written several articles on the Constitution and a government of limited powers based on original sources. He found them problematic. I had written a letter to a friend about bias against conservative teachers. He wanted to dispute the chronology in my letter. He handed me the laptop, said he would summon me for the write-up, and left. He never mentioned inappropriate communications with students because there was none. He never mentioned erased pages because I had nothing to do with that either. Nor did he apologize for these false accusations.

By the end of the day, rumors flew throughout the school I was being fired. A liberal teacher, TB, stopped by my room after school. Several newer female teachers had come to him and said they heard I was “dangerous”. They were scared. They heard I was gathering guns and bombs to shoot other teachers and blow the school up. Others heard I was going to crash through the building’s front glass doors, in my car on the last day of school, and mow kids and them down. They were asking him and other teachers if it was true and should they be scared. Another colleague said some teachers had a name for me. They called me “Scary” something or another.

Later that day the principal called me to his office. The assistant superintendent was there. They wrote me up. They said my like of Thomas Sowell’s comment about fatherless boys was racist. JS had interviewed me for his final senior project in English. The topic was being a conservative teacher. I noted there were challenges ranging from lack of acceptance to shunning. His teacher, SA, one of the Turnip Witches, ran with the video to the principal. JF wrote me up for talking to students about colleagues. Wait a second, I never mentioned anyone by name, yet liberal teachers trashed me out to their students…by name. They did not care. Because I told JS the principal was moving me to another room the following year, JF wrote me up for revealing “confidential information”. He wrote me up for being on FB during contract time and violating school policy with respect to FB communications with students to which parents were not privy. He wrote me for conducting research that did not pertain to the courses I taught. This was utter hypocrisy. Contract time? Coaches assigned students busy work so they could watch videos of upcoming opponents, draw up plays, and flesh out rosters for their next games. I witnessed this. He wrote me up for not supporting the curriculum. He gave no examples. Not only did I use the same handouts as other teachers for each course, I used their handouts, not mine! Then it got worse.

Principals evaluate teachers every five years. He was placing me on permanent daily evaluation. Because I was now on step three of a three-step termination process, one mistake, one slip-up, and he would fire me. He was placing me on permanent probation. One mistake and he would fire me. I was tempted to point out I was already on permanent probation from the first time he wrote me up three years prior. Double secret probation? I would have to submit to him every lesson, article, homework, quiz, and so forth so he could search each for Libertarian bias. He reiterated, I was under close daily scrutiny. One mistake, he was firing me. He still believed I was hiding something about my “relationship” with JS and “our” political activism. He believed we had engaged in some sort of cover up. Utter nonsense. I had no relationship with any student ever. He believed I was part of an extremist organization, underground, and possibly white supremacist. There was not an iota of truth to this. People born with a natural tan do not make good white supremacists.

I saw the handwriting writ large on the wall. I asked the assistant superintendent, if I retired right then, would I be eligible to receive my retirement bonus. Because the cut off for retirements was February, he had to check to see if it was possible. We all signed copies of my write up and I went back to class. An hour later, I received an email from the assistant superintendent saying the superintendent was unwilling to take my request to the Board of Education. However, JF would be willing to accept my letter of intent to retire. Hint. My doctor said I was unlikely to survive the next year. I submitted my letter to JF stating I would retire at the end of the 2015/2016 school year. He and the vicious despicable Turnip Witches were ecstatic. I could almost hear the Champagne corks popping. I could almost hear the rasp of their claws and them cackling.

On Monday, May 26 2015, at school, I found a spent shell casing in an empty desk drawer. A .32 caliber casing. I had already packed up and cleaned out my room. Who put the shell casing in my desk? I showed it to the NEA representative across the hall. He said not to sweat it. I showed it to a work “friend”. He said someone was setting me up. He too heard the rumors I was gathering guns and bombs to get revenge.

The student named Ignacio came by my room apologizing for what happened to me. He was an exchange student from South America. With his blonde hair and blue eyes, I would never have guessed. He did not understand why the principal fired me considering I had nothing to do with their fight on the IPADS. Nothing at all. He said I never passed out papers or participated in their meetings. I was in shock over how fast and vicious the witch-hunt had unfolded. I felt as if I had walked into a booby trap infested ambush. The principal came by on the last day of school. He claimed he had not been out to get me and would not “bust my chops” my final year. He could afford to be magnanimous. He got what he wanted. Me gone. He had used similar methods to force a math teacher, librarian, and Spanish teacher, with whom I was acquainted, into retirement. He had this down to a science. I was truly stunned that a man so devoid of character, honesty, and a conscience was a high school principal. I never did find out who erased the FB pages. As I stood in my room on the last day of school in May 2015, I wondered if the Turnip Witches would leave me be my final year.

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Recycling

When I was a kid, the idea of recycling became popular. Mind you our elders had been doing recycling for years. Taking parts from one piece of equipment and using it on another, re-purposing things for jobs that they were never intended, but they made it work. I’m blessed, I had grandparents and parents that were really good at it. They didn’t lecture, they just did it and we learned. In the 70s it became trendy though. Now I’m not in favor of littering or anything else like that, I think recycling is great. My point is that we were doing it long before the government saved us by making it trendy or mandatory.

Some things are great for recycling, soda bottles, hand me down clothes, car parts, old wheelbarrows for flower gardens or strawberries. The limit is creativity. Some things however stunk the first time around, and yet are being recycled. Politicians for example.

Claire McCaskill- Air-Claire ran as a moderate for the Senate from Missouri. Complete with June Cleaver pearl necklace and sweater set she convinced ill informed Missourians she was a moderate. She and the hoplophobic Robin Carnahan tried to hold a rally at a gun shop to convince people they weren’t anti gun. Had people read Missouri Weapons and Self-Defense Law by Kevin Jamison, they would have known when a prosecutor lies openly and says any 12 year old can walk into a gun shop and buy and Uzi she is not honest, and not on your side. Happily some Second Amendment people tipped off the gun shop, who should have known better, and the even was canceled.

Even back then the MSM aka #FakeNews was so biased she was never challenged on it. Well, Air-Claire (all sorts of good articles to choose from there) wants to be relevant again. But to be relevant in today’s Democrat-Socialist party, you have to be for tyranny and against the American people. Claire wants to prove she can fit right in.

Ex-Senator Claire McCaskill says Capitol riots were worse than Benghazi

If you needed a reminder why the citizens of Missouri refused to re-elect the incompetent, intellectually limited Clair McCaskill, she provided it today. Here’s the headline from the NY Post:…

I had to double-check that this was not a new piece of satire from the Babylon Bee. Nope. I looked at my calendar fearing it was April 1st and this was a lame attempt at macabre humor. Double no.

Here’s what she said:“Joe I have one word: Benghazi. Benghazi had in the House alone six investigations,” the Missouri Democrat told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. “If you compare and contrast, I don’t want to minimize the loss of life in Benghazi or the problems around the security of those locations, but lets compare and contrast those two events and which is more foundation shaking to our democracy.”

But not content to let it go with one episode of lunacy, Former Sen. Claire McCaskill Says She’s Going To Start A New Family Tradition Of Watching The Capitol Riots Every July 4th And I Think She Has Definitely Gone A Little Crazy

Nope, it’s not the Babylon Bee, The Onion or any other satire blog. It’s not even me being snarky.

Most families have their own holiday traditions on 4th of July. Normally, they involve fireworks, cookouts, swimming pools, and maybe watching a movie like Independence Day, The Patriot, or Jaws.

But the McCaskill family is apparently about to start a new and disturbing tradition.

Just listen to the former senator tell MSNBC what her family has planned for this Independence Day:

“We’re going to start a new family tradition in my family; on the Fourth of July and every Fourth of July going forward, we’re going to watch that New York Times put together of January 6th.”

So, Air-Claire finds watching a bunch of antifa dress up like normal Americans create havoc and then change back into their antifa black cool? Meanwhile normal Americans are just walking around in the Capitol or in the Capitol but destroying or burning nothing and then have their lives ruined something enjoyable? Apparently that’s the mindset needed to be in the “in crowd” in the Democrat-Socialist party today.

Even a small group of Republicans trying to find out what is happening to these prisoners was disrupted by leftist operatives. No free speech for sure.

Recycle fail.

Kathleen Sebelius- was the HHS secretary during the disastrous rollout of the disastrous obamacare website. I’m not sure why anyone thought it would work anyway. It was done as a no-bid contract with a buddy of Moochelle Obama’s.

The Failed Launch Of www.HealthCare.gov

“I’m going to try and download every movie ever made, and you’re going to try to sign up for Obamacare, and we’ll see which happens first” – Jon Stewart challenging Kathleen Sebelius (former Secretary of Health and Human Services) to a race.

So having proven how adept she is at forcing Americans into something they don’t want, she longs to stretch her little tyrant wings again.

Former HHS Sec. Sebelius Compares Being Unvaccinated To Drunk Driving, Second-Hand Smoke

….I think that it’s time to say to those folks, it’s fine. If you don’t choose to get vaccinated, you may not come to work. You may not have access to a situation where you’re going to put my grandchildren in jeopardy where you might kill them or you might put them in a situation where they’re going to carry the virus to someone in a high risk position.

That’s, I think, the point where we are is freedom is one thing, but freedom when you harm others like secondhand smoke and issues that we’ve dealt with very clearly in the past, you can’t drive drunk. You can drink but you can’t drive drunk because you can injure other people. You can’t smoke inside of a public place where you can give cancer to someone else in spite of their never having been a smoker.

So I think we’re reaching that point in the United States for those of us who are vaccinated. I want to take off my mask. I want to be able to live my life with vaccination. And I’m being impinged on by people who say, I don’t want to get vaccinated. It’s fine, but I want them to maybe have a limitation on where they can go and who they can possibly infect.

But Kathleen! You favor abortion, what happened to “My body, my choice”?? Typical Democrat-Socialist hypocrisy.

Recycle fail.

Critical Race Theory-While it’s new to American school children who’s horrified parents are finding out the reason Johnny can’t do math and Janie can’t read is because rather than useful skills that will equip them to live lives as productive American citizens they are instead being taught your skin color determines everything and you should hate people of different colors. The reason of course is different depending on your skin color. Racist much? I’m happy to see parents of all colors and ethnic backgrounds are standing up to the race-baiting tyrants on school boards trying to shove this down the throats of children along with the gender identity agenda. But if you want to see the endgame of CRT, look to South Africa. I’ve written about the on-going genocide in South Africa before. It’s not better, it’s worse, made worse by the Wuhan Flu lockdowns that only kept the flu around longer. Now they face looting in which the police take part, think New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and racial attacks on the white farmers. Farm land has been taken away from the white farmers and given to people who know nothing about farming, and aren’t farming it. So rather than having enough food to export, they don’t even have enough for themselves and there is no reason to think it will get better.

South Africa: 72 Dead – Baby Thrown from Burning Mall as Food and Gas Run Out

Opposition leaders questioned the government response, which had called up 70.000 soldiers to enforce COVID lockdowns, but only 2.500 largely ineffective troops to fight the largest insurrection in South Africa since the end of Apartheid 1994. Videos showed police letting looters escape or participating in looting themselves.

Because Covid…..you know. Wink wink, nod nod.

CHAOS AND MAYHEM IN SOUTH AFRICA: Indian Militias Fight Back Against Looters and Rioters in Durban

If you want a good insight into where it leads, Lauren Southern did a good interview with a South African gun rights activist.

But no worries, South Africa has gun Control.

The African National Congress is urging towards a politically motivated disarmament programme. Tightening up on Gun Control Legislation, law-abiding citizens are fearing their inability to protect themselves against the alarming crime rates in South Africa. Rape is a reality. Killing has become a causality. And our means of self-protection is slowly but surely, becoming prohibited…

It probably won’t come as a surprise that Chabad is stepping up and helping.

Recycle fail.

Socialism>Communism- Socialism which becomes Communism because people figure out living under socialism sucks regardless of what AOC, her college professor, anyone’s college professor, the MSM aka #FakeNews any gullible soul still trusting the #FakeNews says, it sucks. Eventually after it’s too late, people find out. When they try to rebel they catch a baseball bat upside the head. Or are just shot. Cubans were disarmed after the communists came to power.

The Lesson of Cuba: A Disarmed Populace Fights for its Freedom Well worth reading.

These freedoms were lost for one reason and one reason only: A DISARMED POPULACE ISN’T FREE. THEY ARE SLAVES TO THE STATE.

And if anyone had any doubts about BLM and what they really are, that time should be over. BLM came out in support of the Cuban dictator killing their citizens.

BLM comes out in support of the Cuban communist regime—’condemns the US’

Black Lives Matter (BLM) issued a statement condemning the US federal government, not Cuba’s communist regime, over its “inhumane treatment” of the Cuban people. Pro-freedom demonstrations have been ongoing on the island nation since Sunday.

The official Black Lives Matter account has posted a statement reaffirming its support of Cuba’s communist regime just as mass anti-government protests are breaking out in the island. BLM also again expressed gratitude for Cuba giving asylum to convicted murderer Assata Shakur

Well, of course they do! They told people they were trained Marxists.

BLM urged the Biden administration to lift the economic sanctions against the tiny island nation of 11 million residents, claiming that these trade concerns were causing unrest.

“Since 1962,” they write, “the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba by cutting off food, medicine and supplies, costing… [them] an estimated $130 billion.”

These people are not the brightest crayons in the box, or they think everyone is as gullible as AOC. We aren’t.

Countries where socialism/communism are in place are not known for their healthy vibrant happy middle class. Because there isn’t one. And now they want to try those failed ideas in America by enacting a communist coup.

They are known for their abuse and unjust confinement of citizens who are then tortured. Just like the people who have been locked up since January 6th. Heavily armed men showed up at their homes, families were forced outside at gunpoint in night clothes in 45 degree weather for hours. People that were only walking around the capitol, or in the capitol. None of them have been accused of anything of the magnitude of BLM or antifa. They are being kept in solitary confinement, beaten (so far I hear one has lost an eye) tortured, one hour of turn out a day, no bail, and trials not until next year. Does anyone think President Trump would have allowed any American citizen, regardless of their political affiliation to be treated like this? I don’t. Yet the MSM aka #FakeNews and the rabid left, but I repeat myself, babbled on and on about how President Trump was a fascist. Idiots. There is a Telegram group where Professor David Clements highlights one a day. Most have lost their jobs and businesses as well leaving their families in an awful state.

I’ve heard of the pattern before, in the past. It sounds a bit families to me anyway.

Recycle fail.

Anti-Semitism. I’m not exactly sure why someone thought that sending me a link to a rabidly anti-Semitic website was a good idea. I’m kind of offended, it doesn’t even have any new or creative anti-Semitic lies, just the same old tired ones. Der Sturmer recycles. Actually I think some of them may have come from Der Sturmer. I saw copies of it when I was at Yad Vashem. I’m not giving you the link. Nope, no traffic from me. But you would think that an inquiring mind might be a bit curious about someone who is purporting that we sacrifice children and drink their blood. Yes, we eat meat (ok, I don’t but that has nothing to do with this) but do Jews eat a rare steak?

Is a Medium-Rare Steak Kosher?

Would it be kosher to eat a steak that is cooked medium-rare? I ask because it seems that there is still blood that comes out of the meat when cooked like this. Should steak be “well done”?

Answer:

The laws of kashrut require the extraction and drainage of all blood from beef or fowl within 72 hours of slaughtering. This is accomplished through a unique soaking and salting process—or, in some instances, through broiling.

The reddish liquid that remains inside the meat after this procedure is not halachically considered blood; it is the meat’s “juice,” and is 100% kosher.

Today, kosher meat is sold with the blood already removed. Therefore, if dining in a kosher restaurant, or if you bought your meat at a reliable kosher butcher, you can confidently eat your medium-rare steak.

What Part of Beef Is Kosher? Nope, not even all of a Kosher animal is Kosher.

So if we don’t even eat a rare steak because of the blood, why on earth would you think we are killing and draining a young woman for a sacrifice?

Then there is the tired old blood of non-Jewish children in Matzah. Guess what?! For reasons we won’t go into, I still have my box that my Pesach Matzah came in! It is Kosher and from Israel. Double threat what hey! So good news, let’s take a look shall we?

Actual box of Kosher for Pesach Matzah! From actual Israel!
Ingredients in box of Kosher for Pesach matzah 2021

Blood? Nope, no blood. And it’s Kosher and everything!

Of course there is the obligatory Jews going to rule the world tripe. But honestly, my favorite answer to this is one my fellow writer Y.B. gave a few years ago.

But it would take wayyyy too long to run a check on the a$$bat that wrote the web site. It took about 5 seconds to find out the guy is such a raving moonbat that even though he completed law school he was denied a license to practice law because he was so flipping unhinged. Yeah, boy howdy that’s who I’m going to take as a solid source about my faith. What a load of cow shiff. But I guess if you tend to believe like the AOC, Tliar, and Omar crowd, your beliefs fit right in with theirs. So, I guess I would wonder if they have typically found their opinions to agree with them? Have they honestly found them to be truthful? Or do you just hate Jews.

This is not a new pattern, Julius Streicher used it to great effect, and now today’s Democrat-Socialists are using it. Shutting down the free speech (of one side), government spying (of one side) unjust imprisonment (of one side) abuse and torture while in captivity (of one side). The Der Sturmer media is reprising it’s role as well with it’s constant vilification of conservatives, and covering up for Xiden on the other hand. Initially the German people wanted nothing to do with hitler’s anti-Semitic lunacy, but the constant dripping of it from their free government volks radios, and the Shiff that was published in Der Sturmer and the people began to change. The disarmament of the populace (of one side)

A repeat of a pattern that never needs to be repeated. But, I take comfort in knowing Streicher was hanged. He facilitated the loss of many Jewish, lives with his lies. Many from other ethnic groups were killed as well, but Streicher didn’t target them.

The Ten Stages of Genocide

Recycle fail.

But what I wish we could recycle? The brilliance of Jackie Mason, The Ultimate Jew. Brad Alpert Z”L, may his memory be for a blessing, urged me to listen to some Jackie Mason YouTubes. Fabulous! We lost Jackie Mason Z”L this weekend. A huge loss. So I will leave you with this Jackie Mason clip on gun control. Warning, there are some naughty words in it…..just FYI.

Recycle score? Another Jackie Mason would be a winner!

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Lifting the Veil On [S]BLM[K]

 

 

 

My heart goes out to the brave men and women of the Armed Forces and Law Enforcement. You put your lives on the line to protect America from enemies foreign and domestic. Your countrymen have betrayed you. They have handed her over to these people who hate this country and despise everything for which you stand and fight.

At the start of each New Year, pundits and commentators on the passing scene typically offer a retrospective best and worst of list for the preceding year. This is my offering for the Ten Biggest Whoppers of 2020:

1. Mostly peaceful protests.

2. Two weeks to flatten the curve.

3. Social media supports the 1st Amendment.

4. Black lives matter to Black Lives Matter.

5. Follow the science.

6. Emulate your political “leaders”; always wear a mask and social distance.

7. Fair and honest elections.

8. AOC is not an eighth grade girl blogging from her bedroom.

9. Nancy Pelosi does not sleep with the undead.

10. Joe Biden is president.

Growing up in America, like anyone else, I was an avid consumer of pop-culture entertainment, film, and music. By my university years, I perceived the Left was using these medium to inculcate unsuspecting youth with their subversive “values”. Their goal is to deconstruct Judeo-Christian based Western Civilization. Like shop-a-holics, credit card in one hand phone in the other watching the HSN Channel, people seemed incapable of resisting indoctrination. Too many bought into the value system and worldview peddled by cultural and political revolutionaries without question. Even more insidious are public school teachers serving as their political commissars in classrooms. Has there been a ripple effect to this brainwashing?

I have been a Formula 1 racing fan, the world’s premier motorsport, since childhood. My favorite teams included Lotus and McLaren. Several years ago, I gravitated toward Mercedes with her glittering silver cars trimmed in teal. Englishman Lewis Hamilton won his first World Championship with McLaren and then six more with Mercedes. Wikipedia, perhaps the worst source for information, lists Hamilton as black. However, he is actually mixed-race. His dad is black from the Caribbean and his mother white from England where Lewis was born and raised. Over the years, I collected Hamilton apparel, biography, autographed picture, and die-cast racecar. However, because he chose to inject politics into the sport, my Hamilton memorabilia is no more. I have binned it all. Last year, Hamilton decided he was an angry black American, from South Central Los Angeles no doubt, who took up the cause of black Americans BLM claims the police are systematically murdering on behalf of white America. This millionaire jet-setting bon vivant was soon sporting BLM shirts and hats, kneeling sans American flag, and raising the Marxist clenched fist before each race. However, that was not enough. He publicly called out as racists, drivers who did not kneel with him. He forced them to wear black T-shirts reading “End Racism” during the host country’s national anthem. Formula 1’s panjandrums decreed that racetracks and buildings display slogans about racism. However, that was still not enough. Mercedes repainted their shimmering silver cars an angry flat black with BLM-like slogans on the car’s halo device. I was stunned. BLM, started by three Marxists, is a domestic terrorist organization with the blood of police officers and citizens on its hands. Heading into a new season, I wondered how much of BLM’s Kool Aid motorsports fans had imbibed. Time to find out.

I joined several Face Book Formula 1 Groups. One gentleman lamented the manner in which Hamilton has injected politics into the sport causing “divisions” between fans. I noted the hypocrisy of Hamilton and Formula 1 claiming to be fighting oppression while holding races in countries with state sanctioned slavery and in Islamic states where women are second-class citizens. Mr. Qundiso Mpofu challenged me to name such countries. I listed several in Africa, the Middle East, and Red China. Mr. Mpofo insisted there was as much oppression against blacks in the United States as in any other country. Then he made the jaw-dropping claim there was as much slavery in the U.S. as in China! I suggested he had taken leave of his senses and asked him to provide me examples. No response was forthcoming. He was alone among black Hamilton fans who equated criticism of BLM with racism.

On the FormulaNerds page, a member also bemoaned the degree to which Hamilton’s political activism was damaging the sport. I agreed noting, although Hamilton is a great driver worthy of the hype, I could no longer support him. Four members of my family served in the U.S. Military and two, including me, in Law Enforcement. I feel betrayed by his support of BLM. For a week, members responded with “likes”. Then a Liston Alexander asked how, by standing against racism and racial oppression, Hamilton had betrayed me. He asked if the “cellphone pictures were faked”? He chided “people like you” with “law enforcement experience” see the world differently than others, meaning blacks. I asked him to what cellphone images he referred and who was committing acts of oppression and violence against blacks in America’s cities. It is not police gunning down blacks in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, and Philadelphia among others. Does Hamilton speak out about oppression of blacks by other blacks? He has thrown support behind BLM whose message is the white race is inherently (born that way) racist, they constructed America’s institutions to preserve white hegemony by suppressing blacks, and the white race is waging a war of genocide against the black race, with police their instrument of extermination. Considering these are monstrous lies, guaranteed to generate hatred and violence between races, how could I support Hamilton?

Liston Alexander responded writing I had no empathy or understanding of the centuries of systemic racism inflicted on African-Americans. He claimed the only terrorists in America are the “armed supporters of Satan who stormed the Capitol building” and for me to shift the blame to BLM for anything, and black people, who are the “victims tells me exactly who you Are” [capitalization in the original]. I responded writing I owed Mr. Alexander an apology presuming he was an educated intelligent person but that was clearly not the case. I noted the greatest oppression of blacks occurs between Mauritania in the west to Somalia in the east and Chad in the north to Zimbabwe in the south. In addition, I had grown up partly in Baltimore and Philadelphia’s inner cities, and attended majority black schools. Whites did not oppress blacks they were terrified of them. BLM never mentions this. No response.

An argument commonly employed by supporters is to say they do not endorse BLM’s Marxist goals and violence only its struggle against racism. It does not work that way. As the Monster from Austria [MFA] built the National Socialist German Workers Party, he attracted Germans with disparate grievances. Germany’s military was its pride and joy. Veterans believed politicians stabbed them in the back while still on battlefield at the end of the Great War tarnishing them with the stain of defeat. Soldiers wanted the military returned to its former glory. Germans crushed by the burden of war reparations, as well as union workers, believed MFA would restore the economy and jobs. Others rejected the war-guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles and many Germans feared the rise of the Communist Party in the Weimar Republic. Of course, there was the bizarre cult that saw Jews as subhuman and poison to German culture. People representing these factions found themselves supporting the Nazi Party vigorously or as the lesser among several evils.2 History demonstrates that one cannot disaggregate responsibility for the evil a group does by declaring support for only part of its actions. This would be like declaring, although one opposes lynching, nevertheless, they joined the Klan because it supports strong families. In addition, sans support for the NAZIS by these factions, they would not have come to power. This is why, after the war, the Allies did not allow Germans who were members of the Party to say they never supported persecution of and ultimately mass murder of Jews. Who then, is Black Lives Matter?

Former police officer and currently a forensic criminologist Ron Martinelli, Ph.D. writes of BLM, “This is an organized and well-funded, media savvy, national, and international movement, based upon revolutionary Marxist ideology. The movement seeks to systematically attack, diminish, and eventually overthrow the rule of law and the democratic form of government to free whom they see to be the oppressed masses”.3 How can those supporting BLM, like American professional athletes and Lewis Hamilton, not know this? They support an organization seeking to overthrow the U.S. system of government in favor of a Marxist dictatorship. They say so. BLM and its “ancillary militant groups and organizations” drive to defund law enforcement, in order to upend the rule of law, is preparatory to overthrowing American’s “democratic way of life”.4 If this is true, how can so many people, black and white, support [S]BLM[K]? Could the answer be what I have written is false? To answer this question, we repair to BLM’s Webpage from 2015.

Three female Marxists founded BLM in 2013 following the jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman charged by the state [Florida] with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. BLM used the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri [2014], as the vehicle to catapult it to national prominence.5 BLM’s founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, used rare police shootings of unarmed black men to claim these shootings were, instead, the norm and represented a monstrous conspiracy by the white to exterminate the black race. Garza, a lesbian Marxist, began the call for Black Lives Matter on Face Book. Cullors, also a lesbian Marxist, joined the nascent organization while running a convict “advocacy” organization in prisons. Tometi, a Marxist immigrant from Nigeria, ran an advocacy group for black immigrants.6 In 2015, BLM’s website consisted of history, a mission statement, and various political declarations. They asserted white cops were waging a war of terrorism against the black race. Their credo under “We Affirm That All Black Lives Matter” clearly explains “Black lives matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It’s an affirmation of Black folk’s contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression”.7 Systemized and intentional means; people organize a process to achieve a specific goal through methods standardized to the point they become a replicable system. It requires an objective and metrics by which those managing the system can measure progress toward that goal and a definition of what accomplishing that goal looks like. Intentional means individuals deliberately created the plan and system with a specific goal in mind.8 Therefore, BLM argues leaders within the white race decided to exterminate the black race. They created a standardized plan to achieve their goal (systematic), methods to ensure its success (institutionalized), and a means (the police). The white race has purposed to commit genocide against the black race according to BLM’s webpage (if they have not sanitized it yet). BLM affirms its right to fight back by any means. They mean killing police officers and race war.9 What do they mean their movement is “ideological”? Clicking on text boxes quickly provides an answer.

Under “Black Villages” it reads “We are committed to disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers parents, and children are comfortable”.10 Other textboxes contain militantly feminist, homosexual, and “transgendered” (sic) statements. BLM is committed to dismantling the traditional Judeo-Christian family structure replacing it with a lesbian ruled matriarchy wherein hermaphroditic men serve their interests like worker bees. They declare, “We are working to [re]build the Black Liberation Movement”.11 Liberation from what? In the 1960s, the Black Power Movement, a liberation movement, founded by Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X, and others broke with Martin Luther King over his insistence on non-violent resistance and universal brotherhood. They preached gathering arms to execute violent revolution and enact revenge on the white race with separation being their ultimate objective.12 The Black Power Movement’s view of the white race as an irredeemable enemy and call for violent revolution, with separation into a black nation lines up with today’s BLM movement.

Calls for healing, reconciliation, and unity are contrary to the worldview of the BLM movement. They despise notions of black life’s “fate in America decided inevitably by white people”. Liberation is freedom from “the power of whites” who have no future in their world.13 BLM denounces “buy black” campaigns because they ignore “our sisters queer, and trans (sic) blacks”. They affirm, “The lives of black queer and trans (sic) folk, disabled folks, black undocumented folks” and black prison inmates “along the gender spectrum”. They assert black poverty is the result of state directed genocide. Blacks in prison are innocent victims of “state violence” and “Black queer and trans (sic) folk bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishes us and profits off of us and this is state violence”. Their slogan is “justice, liberation, and peace”, identical to the slogans of communist guerillas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.14 Knowingly or not, anyone who dons BLM apparel, raises a clenched fist, or takes a knee metaphorically spitting on the American flag, lends support to BLM’s claim white people are beyond salvation and their call to race-war.

I understand the pique of blacks at my critique. Pathologies afflicting black cities include high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, drug use, school dropouts, and unwed mothers. BLM and its supporters have invested too deeply in white oppression narratives as the cause of these pathologies to countenance contrary explanations. Racism is the root cause of their lagging academic and employment accomplishment, compared to Asians and Hispanics. If not for the white race using its institutions and police to hold him down, they would succeed like everyone else. Black crime rates are no higher than other races; the police simply target only them for enforcement. Challenging BLM’s assertions, I encountered anger and brick wall like resistance to the truth. It is easier to blame scapegoats than accept perhaps to some degree; pathologies plaguing inner cities might be self-inflicted. Equally, I understand the pique of whites. From them I rob any rationale for purging their “white-guilt” through self-hatred and prostration before blacks, believing they rightfully deserve the hatred, opprobrium, and debasement BLM hurls at them. I take away the validity of “deconstructing” their whiteness through acts of self-flagellation.

Why do whites submit to debasement and humiliation by BLM and its allies? Why are they sock-puppets spewing the propaganda of those who hate them? What has so annealed them to the point they cannot be reached? Two culprits come to mind. Had pop-culture and public education not first fertilized their minds with the manure of lies and evil propaganda, America would not today be harvesting such poisoned fruit.

22 The BBC, Higher Learning, “Why The Nazis Achieved Power”, at https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitsize/guides/zsrwjxs/revision/7

33 Ron Martinelli, Ph.D., The Truth Behind The Black Lives Matter Movement And The War On Police (Temecula, California, Martinelli & Associates, Justice and Forensic Consultants, Inc., 2016), 3.

44 IBID. viii.

55 IBID. vii-viii.

66 IBID. 1-2.

77 Black Lives Matter, 2015, at http://www.blacklivesmatter.com

88 Yitzhak Goldstein’s definition derived from educational theory with respect to measuring learning progress.

99 BLM Webpage.

1010 IBID.

1111 IBID.

1212 Daniel J. Boorstin and Brooks Mather Kelley, A History of the United States Since 1861 (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, Inc., 1990), 437-439.

1313 David Horowitz, Hating Whitely And Other Progressive Causes (Dallas, Texas, Spence Publishing Company, 1999), 82-83.

1414 BLM Webpage. I am not writing from memory. Not only did I take notes, I downloaded and copied their 2015 webpage.

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Rotting to the core in the Big Apple

You know when you’re a child, lots of things seem like really really good ideas. For example selling your little sister to put the money towards a pony. Writing your own excuse to skip gym class/recess because it’s freezing, or anything else, by not only writing the note, but also signing it. In printing because you haven’t learned how to write in cursive yet. I hadn’t actually figured out how I was going to explain my parents lack of skill in that particular department. But you kind of out grow that sort of thinking where you think you can just pull some boneheaded stunt and no one will see through it, or that there might be a need to anticipate things that could go wrong and different potential outcomes. You know the old failing to plan is planning to fail concept? Yeah most kids start growing out of that by 2nd, 3rd grade.
You know who never outgrows that idiotic alternate universe kind of thinking? Progressives, leftists. Reality doesn’t inhabit their world, so lying to people has no consequences. Forcing people to live in your unrealistic and imaginary paradigm is kind and compassionate. No matter how much you force them through tyranny, and no matter what they think or feel, the democrat\communist will try their level best to force you into their demented playhouse.
And the thing is, some of these brainless/brain-dead ideas they have, would cause you to think you are reading a column from The Onion or The Babylon Bee because no one could be that stupid. But you would be wrong.
For example, if a sane person hears “Defund the police” they might say, “Excuse me, I mis-heard, you said DEFEND the police correct”? A leftist will say “Yeah man, defund the police, they’re evil”. A democrat/communist will say “Ok, as soon as we get rid of the local police that are made up of community members we’ll bring in the national police force barry sotero talked about that have no ties or relationship with a community”

The woke

But grown ups will realize there is going to be a consequence. Which is how you know the mayor of New York City and his very stupid wife are not grown ups, or at least wise mature people.

9 June 2020

Chirlane McCray was behind decision to shift NYPD funding

Hizzoner then handed off the question to McCray, who said, “There’s no question that it was important to move more funds to youth and social services.”

McCray said the mayoral coronavirus-recovery Task Force on Racial Inclusion and Equity, which her husband appointed her to co-chair with Deputy Mayor J. Phillip Thompson, conducted a survey that showed “more resources for our young people was right up there” with the most-requested assistance.

Even without those responses, I talked to my husband about it, and I encouraged him to find — help us find — ways to do that because you know, it’s something I know from my heart,” she said.

9 March 2021

After ‘Defunding The Police,’ NYC First Lady Pleads For Citizens To Intervene In Violent Crimes As Assaults Spike

Shootings in New York City doubled in 2020 and were up 75 percent last month compared to a year prior. Burglaries have also increased, and violent, unprovoked crimes against Asians have become endemic.

Mayor de Blasio’s wife says residents should ‘intervene’ to stop violence after pushing to defund NYPD

As attacks on Asian American communities continue, we’re asking New Yorkers to show up for their neighbors and intervene when witnessing hateful violence or harassment. I know that can be frightening when you aren’t sure what to do or say, but you can learn,” New York City’s First Lady Chirlane McCray wrote on Twitter March 6. “Fear is a normal feeling when stepping into a confrontation, but being prepared can help.”

And then Mrs De blasio helps you deal with being prepared to physically intervene in an assault that is taking place in front of you. She seems to get her intervention techniques from a web site called “Hollaback” https://www.ihollaback.org/. No, I can’t make that up. They do offer in person and interactive classes to prepare you to intervene in violent situations. But you need to plan your day wisely so you’ll have enough time for the class. Because as best as I can tell, the class lasts an hour. A whole HOUR! But it could be a wise investment of your time, as you will now feel empowered to step into these violent situations with such techniques as distracting the criminal beating the life out of some poor soul, or raping a woman and walk up to the victim and say “Scuse me old chap, I say, have you got the time?” <<Ok, that’s fluffed up, you just walk up and ask them the time. Then you should document it, so film as the person has the last few seconds of life beaten out of them, or as a woman is left in a huddled humilated mess, but Mrs. De Blasio does caution you not to release the video without the victim’s permission. Then you delay for a bit, then maybe later go back and check on the survivors “I say, sorry about that brutal assault your suffered” Then offer to help them contact the police if they need it. This apparently will make them feel valued. It’s ok to delay this step if your confidence is low. I guess your confidence won’t be low if you decide to give step 5 a go, because that is confront the aggressor directly.

After all, after the defunding of police initiated in 2020, violent crime in New York City has skyrocketed.

By the end of 2020, NYPD reported a 97% increase in shooting incidents compared to 2019. Homicides increased by 45%.

The 2019 “Bail reform” law has not helped matters at all. The result of bail reform, according to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, is that 90 percent of arrestees for gun crimes are released right back on the streets.

Even as His and Her Wokeness yammers on about white supremacy, it turns out most of the Asians being assaulted in de Blasio land are being attacked by blacks. Which is apparently the new white supremacy. https://www.dailywire.com/news/chirlane-mccray-deblasio-asks-citizens-intervene-crime-after-defund-police

NYPD statistics list 20 arrests for alleged anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020. Most of the suspects were black.

I wonder if the fact that their daughter has rioted with blm, shut down streets and bridges caused the Asian-American community to doubt the sincerity of the deBlasios? Seeing as how the mayor and his wife have made blm a protected class.

De Blasio Chased Away From Anti-Asian Crime Vigil

Uh huh, she’s a real peach.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s attempt to participate in an anti-Asian crime vigil at Union Square this Friday fell by the wayside when the rallygoers reportedly heckled him and chased him away.

Video footage from the event showed him trying to express his solidarity with all Asian Americans as some of the onlookers kept shouting “what are you going to do about it?”

You know what role His Wokeness does approve of using police to fill? Thought Police, Bill de Blasio Wants NYPD to Visit People to Warn over Non-Criminal ‘Hurtful’ Conduct

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said the NYPD could visit those accused of racism or discrimination, “even if something is not a criminal case.”
….
The reporter followed the response by asking how the Mayor would view cases where the lines are burry. “[If] it’s something that’s not a criminal case,” she asked, “how would the NYPD confront someone if it’s not criminal? Would they have a conversation with them to say, ‘Hey, that’s actually not cool?’”

Well, that’s exactly what happens. Whether again, it’s NYPD or it could be other agencies as well, but NYPD is a great example,” de Blasio said. “One of the things officers are trained to do is to give warnings. If someone has done something wrong, but not rising to a criminal level, it’s perfectly appropriate for an NYPD officer to talk to them to say that was not appropriate.”

So, it’s something like you see some poor soul being assaulted by one or two (or more) viscous thugs. You walk up and ask the nearly unconscious victim if they have the time. They barely mumble their phone was stolen. You could then say to the aggressor “I say old chappie, don’t you think that poor old fill in the blank nationality has about had it?” The aggressor then stops stabbing/pummeling/raping/beating <<circle appropriate style of assault, and whips out the stolen cell phone and dials 9-1-1. “Hello, NYPD? I’d like you to send one of the three remaining officers to central park, I’ve been micro-aggressed. No, I don’t want one of flipping de Blasio’s social workers, this is serious.”
Dispatch: Dispatch to Adam-12
This is Adam-12 go ahead.
Adam-12 we have a report of micro-agression in Central Park. A man was beating a insert gender or lack thereof here to death when a bystander following the de Blasio rule attempted to intervene and asked the time.
Adam 12: Dispatch are we going out on a homicide call for a fool that followed that bird brained mayor’s wife social engineering scheme?
Dispatch: Sorry Adam-12, no it’s the assailant that called in, he was microaggressed by the man he is now beating to death, but he wants you to come out and take a complaint in case the man that interfered survives. The other assault victim didn’t.
Adam 12: Um, sort of busy right now Dispatch. Mayor’s lovely daughter, the one that looks like a cockatoo, started a riot at one of the two stores left on 5th Avenue, and it is on fire. They didn’t have the shoes she wanted in the color she wanted so she called in her BLM buddies and the store is burning

Uh huh, she’s a real peach.

Dispatch: I admire your courage Adam-12, but remember the de Blasio rule, micro-aggressions and offences lead to the spread of systemic racism and white supremacy. The riot on what’s left of 5th Avenue is mostly peaceful anyway. Probably won’t last long, there was only two stores left. Everyone else fled years ago.

So the insane (what you call it when you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) communists disarm law abiding citizens, dispose of big parts of their police department and it never occurred to them that crime might soar? In a communist world, they keep telling the same lies, they keep trying the same failed policies and expecting the results to be what they want. Because they’ll do it right, this time. And yes, de Blasio has been up front about his communist policies. https://rumble.com/vbzwqb-bill-de-blasio-takes-the-mask-off-admits-hes-a-communist.html

And yet, they are shocked, shocked when law-abiding citizens don’t like being the target of criminals and don’t want to lay down and just take it like the Europeans do.

Communism is slavery, always has been, always will be. And we, we are meant to be a free people. There are many that are deluded, confused and fooled by the mainstream media and baseless hatred stirred up by the #MSM, #FakeNews and social media’s cancel culture. They don’t understand what is headed our way. All they know is “Orange man bad”. They are incapable of discussing policy or like the de Blasios, looking down the road and seeing the consequences of their actions. I kind of feel sorry for the people of NYC, but not very much. He got elected somehow.

But Pesach is coming, Passover, the time of leaving slavery. You know, the plagues went on for about 10 months, you’d have thought the Egyptians would have got a clue by then wouldn’t you? But like those voting Democrat/Communist they want G-d removed from the public arena, from private lives and from the world if they could pull it off. Fools, who do they think created this world?

I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the Chabad page on why we eat the Hillel sandwich https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/3298027/jewish/Understanding-the-Sandwich.htm

In our lives, we each have “matzah moments,” moments in which we experience the blessings of life. Moments when we feel truly free and liberated. We also have “bitter herb” moments, moments in which we feel the bitterness of challenges and difficulty.

The bitter herbs are part of life. Every person experiences some measure of hardship and challenge. The “free” person is one who is not enslaved by life’s difficult challenges, but rather grows from them. The bitter experiences of life, when approached with faith and courage, can bring out the greatest potential of the human being.

Yet, initially, the matzah and the bitter herbs are eaten separately. Because in the moment of pain, we often don’t see any redeeming factor. In the moment of challenge, all we see is difficulty. Only after the fact, once we overcome the challenge, once we attain freedom, can we look back and view the past suffering as a step toward freeing our deepest spirit. From our perspective, the pain and the freedom cannot mix. We therefore eat the matzah and the bitter herbs separately.

And then we make a sandwich.

We remind ourselves that there was was a time, when the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, when spirituality was easily accessible. At that time, a person like Hillel could combine the matzah and the bitter herbs. He could combine the suffering with the salvation. At the very moment that he was experiencing the challenge, he could feel that his challenge was part of a sandwich. His challenge was an integral part of the free person he would become.

The Jew living in spiritual exile may not be able to feel that the challenges in his life are part of a bigger story of freedom. However, he can and should remember Hillel’s perspective. Eating the sandwich will remind him that the bitterness of life is the catalyst for redemption.

It’s good to remember,

חג פסח שמח!

Happy Passover!

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Missing the Temple and Unity

As we head into Tisha B’Av, I have a few thoughts. Of course I do. Tisha B’Av is the day we re-feel the lose of the two Temples. The place where G-d said I want to live among you, build me a home. First the Mishkan in the desert, later the two Temples. Tisha B’Av is a 25 hour fast, and there are many customs that accompany the date.

Chabad has a list of tragedies that occurred on the 9th of Av, Tisha B’Av. This year it is 30th July 2020.

I’ve done columns as well. This one is quite applicable. Tisha B’Av from within.

I listened to a very interesting audio show the other day on a Podcast called “Soul Talk”, this episode dealt with the 9th of Av.

The Cliff notes version: It wasn’t about the building, the Temple being destroyed because our behavior had already destroyed was it was about. The core and foundation of it were already weakened by our lack of realization of G-d’s presence within ourselves and others. How we related to ourselves and others. There were 3 key violations that were taking place within the populace at the time. If we sense the presence of G-d within ourselves, how do we relate to ourselves? If we sense the presence of G-d in others, how do we relate to them? The first Temple was destroyed because of 3 cardinal sins, murder, idolatry, and sexual perversion. Murder violates my relationship with others, idolatry violates my relationship with G-d and sexual perversion violates my relationship with myself. It all comes from the feeling is G-d with us? Is he within us? When that’s gone, everything is gone. What hope is there for a world that doesn’t believe in themselves, that doesn’t believe the human being is inherently valuable?

And contained within that, is lack of unity, a lack of cohesiveness. And are we ever there today. The continually changing rules on lockdowns, the stifling of data on actual scientific studies, the denial of information to the American people by big (leftist) corporations is having a horrifying effect on people.

I don’t know if this woman was crazy because she is re-breathing her own CO2, or if her mask fit too tight on her little head. But this woman felt it was her right to attack and mace a couple and their puppy having a little picnic outside in the sunshine and fresh air in a dog park. Why? Because they weren’t wearing masks while they had their little picnic. No one was around them, they were easily socially distancing over the 6 feet outside. Because, you know, safety right? It’s all about protecting lives……by screaming at innocent people, flipping them off and then macing them. Thank goodness neither of them seem to be asthmatic! Poor puppy, only 3 months old. I hope the police find the left wing dingbat and press charges. There is a video. This insane marxist feels entitled to act like this and commit assault in broad daylight. How many others have been so socially conditioned by the MSM #FakeNews to believe they will die and the world will end if free speech isn’t stifled and individuality isn’t stamped out? Masks for all!

Masked Speech

Continuing further with the sense of entitlement we have those that block law abiding citizens from using public roads. Doesn’t matter if they are going to work, an ambulance running a call or taking their kid home from tap dance lessons. We’ve all I’m sure, seen the videos of the peaceful rioters attacking cars breaking windows and pulling the drivers out to be beaten. Heard the terrified people calling 9-1-1 begging for someone to come help them only to be told their city council has given approval for citizens to be attacked and the police will not come. We’ve heard children crying hysterically in the background as their parents are unable to protect them and they know it. And these “peaceful rioters” feel entitled to treat citizens in this manner.

Terrified Woman Mobbed by Violent Protesters, Hits Gas to Escape — Police Won’t Arrest Her and Let Her Drive on Home

I’m giving you all the tweets the rioter sent out. She feels totally within her rights to do this to another human being. G-d bless the police on this one.

The mob banged on her car, beat her windows, jumped on her hood, screamed at her and threatened the poor woman who just wanted to escape their violence….

As we blocked streets, certain drivers got annoyed and attempted to maneuver their way around us. This particular white woman tried to cut through a gas station. Me and a couple other protestors stood in front of her car and demanded she turn around. Instead she steps on the gas. pic.twitter.com/ODL1Evmmzf

— Julia Clark🇧🇷 (@Jsc_35) July 26, 2020

Finally cops come but instead of arresting this woman, or asking for her ID, registration, etc., they turn towards us and begin pushing us. We are BEGGING them to arrest this woman who just tried to run over protestors repeatedly. pic.twitter.com/GUP7wWmDBs

— Julia Clark🇧🇷 (@Jsc_35) July 26, 2020

After about 40 minutes, police FINALLY ask for her ID and she claims she is too scared to give it to them because protestors “might take it”. In the meantime myself and other witnesses give our information to officers. pic.twitter.com/2upyodRSGw

— Julia Clark🇧🇷 (@Jsc_35) July 26, 2020

After all this time of pushing protestors and protecting this violent white woman, the MPD LET HER DRIVE HOME. Shoving and grabbing protestors who tried to stop her. Police treated us like threats, when she was clearly dangerous.

— Julia Clark🇧🇷 (@Jsc_35) July 26, 2020

Police didn’t do XXXi. They have never done XXX. Will never do XXX. And will never BE XXX. XXX the police. This is a hate crime. Find this woman.

— Julia Clark🇧🇷 (@Jsc_35) July 26, 2020

This is exactly why we need to defund MPD. MPD does not protect citizens utilizing their right to protest, they protect a woman who tried to run over protestors. Police DON’T keep us safe. The only thing police are good at is brutalizing Black people. DEFUND MPD.

— Julia Clark🇧🇷 (@Jsc_35) July 26, 2020

She feels, as Rabbi Aaron talked about that the poor drivers are just a means to an end. The rioting thug is allowed to treat people however she wants to show her displeasure and get what she wants. Means to an end.

Another peaceful rioter didn’t come out so well. Leftist Protester Shot and Killed by Driver in Austin as Crowd Blocked Intersection

Car Drives Through Mob of Protesters on Colorado Highway, Protester Shoots Fellow Protesters While Trying to Shoot Driver

We’ve probably all seen the video of the peaceful rioters trying to throw smoke grenades into horse trailers on the highway.

I don’t think there is any resolution to be reached with these people. And we aren’t suppose to compromise with evil. I do believe our country is at the edge of a precipice.

I believe our culture has descended into the darkness that is like when we lost the Temples. The 9th of Av isn’t just about grieving the loss of them.

The Jerusalem Talmud states: “If the Holy Temple is not rebuilt in your lifetime, it’s as though it were destroyed in your lifetime.” The commentaries learn from this that the Temple’s destruction is an ongoing event.

I’m feeling the loss, I miss my Synagogue, I miss being in my community, I miss hearing Rabbi teach, I miss a ton of things and it’s all because we are missing the presence of the Beit HaMikdash.

We are ready, there is a organization The Temple Institute that has been training priests so they are ready, they are raising red heifers and have potential candidates, they have crafted the tools needed for the service. You can also see pictures.

בבקשה אבא בקרוב

רק עכשיו

רק היום

צום קל

Please father, soon

Right now

Right today.

May you have an easy fast (for those that are going to fast)

iJulia Clark has a potty mouth. I cleaned it up a bit.

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The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Is an UNenumerated Right?

Trigger Warning: The referenced column is written by a left-wing whacko acting professor at the People’s Republic of Kommiefornia’s UC-Davis, and is published in The Atlantic.

I don’t know what constitution Aaron Tang — who purports to be a “Constitutional law & education law prof” — teaches, but he should bone up on the United States Constitution. If he taught anywhere but the University of California – Davis, I’d call that fraud. But he’s par for the anti-rights course there.

What If the Court Saw Other Rights as Generously as Gun Rights?
Both gun-rights advocates and educational equity activists use similar legal strategies. Why does the Supreme Court treat them so differently?

Probably because the right to keep and bear arms is specifically mentioned in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and education is not. check for yourself; no mention of education, learn, teach, school, university, college, or anything else education-related. (While we do speak of an Electoral College, that term doesn’t actually appear in the Constitution; only “electors.”)

If the courts treated education the same “generous” way they do Second Amendment rights, you might need a license to go to school, minors wouldn’t be allowed to go to school, you’d need to pass a background check before every class, you might be allowed one class per month, and you’d be limited to a low-capacity tenth grade education. The Department of Education could arbitrarily ban knowledge of algebra and imprison you for knowing it. You might be allowed to go to college, but only after paying $200 for the permission slip that would come eight or nine months later, and local law enforcement would be informed. Depending on your major, even with the permission slip you would not be allowed to attend a college or university established after 1986.

Spearheaded by new leadership at the NRA in the late 1970s, gun-rights activists engaged for decades in an effort to persuade the Supreme Court to recognize an individual Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense at home. The Court ultimately enshrined that right 12 years ago in D.C. v. Heller, displacing a long-standing consensus to the contrary.

Tang clearly didn’t read Heller, or he’d have seen Scalia’s many, many citations of Supreme Court cases, law, and history supporting the individual right. The Supreme Court has been recognizing an individual right of the people since at least 1857.

At first glance, the gun-rights movement and the pursuit of educational equity seem to have little in common. But they in fact share an approach: Both promote arguments that rely on what are called “implied” or “unenumerated” constitutional rights.

Oh, really?

Article II: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Article II, Two, 2. Numeral. Enumerated.

The argument for a constitutional right to train at any shooting range is far from obvious. The Second Amendment speaks of a right to “keep” and “bear” arms, but says nothing about a right to train or practice.

I’ll grant that the words “train” and “practice” don’t appear, but please note that “well regulated Militia.” What did “regulate” mean when that was written?

regulate: 1. to adjust by rule or method 2. to direct

What the heck kind of well regulated, ordered, prepared, methodical militia is untrained, unpracticed? Certainly not the sort specified by the Second Militia Act of 1792 which required militia members (each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years) to arm themselves with militarily suitable firearms and equipment.

That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter,How to be armed and accoutred. provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack.

Further note that government officials and employees were not included in the militia; dispensing with the common violence-enabling victim-disarmer argument that the militia is the army and national guard (a point the Supreme Court noted in 1990, which for numerically-challenged people like Tang is many years before Heller).

But see that “exercise”? That isn’t talking about jumping jacks and sit-ups. A /militia/military exercise is training and practice.

And just in case Tang is as hazy on law as he is the Constitution, the militia is still codified in 10 U.S. Code § 246. Militia: composition and classe. And yes, government officials and employees are still exempted.

Aaron Tang is clearly at UC-Davis because the heads of every other law school in the country were smart enough not to hire the ignoramus.

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Find The School Shooting: Part 6

Why do I do this? I just checked the ten latest entries in Everytown’s list of “school” shootings. It isn’t as if I don’t know by now what I’ll find.

Spoiler: Right off the top, 40% were not school shootings at all. Let’s look at the details.

  • 12/2/2019 Waukesha South High School
    Police shooting, legal intervention.
  • 11/29/2019 Illinois Institute of Technology
    A man was shot and killed Friday near the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in Bronzeville on the South Side.
  • 11/26/2019 Sarah J. Anderson Elementary School
    Vancouver Public Schools spokesperson Pat Nuzzo said the “targeted” shooting took place in the school parking lot at 3:15 p.m., but did not involve students or staff.
  • 11/23/2019 Searles Elementary School
    The shootings of the boys, ages 11 and 14, took place in the parking lot of Searles Elementary School, CBS San Francisco reported. Callers to 911 reported hearing gunfire at around 1:30 a.m., the station said.
  • 11/23/2019 Florida Memorial University
    Open party on campus, 10:15PM. Unidentified; unknown if students or staff, or just visiting partiers. Given the area, I imagine it was gang-related.
  • 11/23/2019 Southern University at New Orleans
    A spokesperson with SUNO stated that the victim is not a student or employee of the university and that the university rents out the building to non-affiliates of the university.
  • 11/23/2019 University of Louisville
    Three people were injured in a shooting Wednesday night near the University of Louisville, according to police.”
  • 11/15/2019 Pleasantville High School
    A shooting took place on the football field at Pleasantville High School in New Jersey on November 15.
  • 11/14/2019 Saugus High School
    A girl and a boy were killed and three of their classmates wounded when a fellow student opened fire on his birthday at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita Thursday morning, authorities said.
  • 11/11/2019 Achievement Academy
    A 19-year-old male student was shot Monday afternoon outside Achievement Academy in northeast Baltimore.” Targeted attack on public street in front of school.

Four of ten were not on school grounds: 40% not school shootings, even by Everytown’s expansive definition.

One was a police officer stopping a crime. On campus, but not what most folks would think of as a school shooting.

Two more happened in school parking lots after hours, and did not involve students or staff. On campus, but not what most folks would think of as a school shooting.

One was an after-hours open party on a university campus. Victims not yet identified. Maybe, maybe not, but not what folks think of as a school shooting.

That leaves two shootings on high school campuses, involving students, and at school-related events.

You may recall that I object to Everytown inflating their count by including colleges and universities, when most folks think they’re talking about elementary and high schools. 40% of these are such (including three that weren’t actually on school grounds). I didn’t take the time to fact check the next ten entries, but seven of that ten are college/university, too. That’s 55%.

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Cash For Clunkers

Ron Berler has a plan to end gun violence. To his credit, he does realize that almost no one is going to voluntarily turn in their guns, not even in “buybacks.” He’ll go about a little differently.

If you’re drinking anything, go ahead and swallow. Set your cup down. You’ve been warned so I accept no responsibility for moisture-damaged screens or keyboards.

Today, one can walk into a gun shop and purchase, for instance, a .22, .38 or .44-caliber handgun. Most firearms are built to accommodate one size round only. Here’s what would happen if the manufacture of today’s standard-size rounds were outlawed, and .21, .37, or .43-caliber rounds took their place: Eventually, gun owners would run out of the old ammo, and their weapons would become paperweights.

Yep. A ban on manufacturing today’s cartridges would seriously inconvenience some folks I know.

In a few decades.

And those aren’t even the reloaders.

Fresh attention could be paid to newer, research-vetted strategies, such as the universal adoption of smart-gun technology and limiting the size of rounds available to civilians.

Smart guns, eh? I don’t think so. And limiting the Mexican cartels to .22, .380, 9mm, and shotguns has worked so well

Why should a law-abiding citizen spend hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars to replace one’s gun collection?

Gun manufacturers could offer a six-month window for any person eligible to turn in their old weapons and receive a partial rebate toward the purchase of new ones. For manufacturers and retailers, these sales would amount to a windfall of epic proportions.

Obama would approve. The NSSF probably would, too. But I don’t see owners rushing out to replace their effective firearms with government-mandated less effective chamberings.

Police and military would keep their current firearms and ammuntion, manufactured and distributed under strictest control.

I’m quite sure that will keep standard ammunition and firearms out the hands of the peons. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta. More or less.

Law-abiding citizens could still own guns. And that is all the second amendment promises. It does not prohibit federal or state governments from regulating the type of weapon one may own.

The Supreme Court disagrees. In Heller, SCOTUS found that the government cannot ban common defensive firearms. In McDonald, they rule that the restriction on government included the states.

But Miller is the case that will prompt Berler to piss his panties. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment specifically protects the right of the people to keep and bear militarily useful firearms (Miller’s short-barrel shotgun could be regulated under the National Firearms Act because it wasn’t shown to be used by the military).

Stick to “youth issues,” Berler. Maybe you know something about that subject.

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Find The School Shooting, Part 5

I’m such a glutton for punishment. I looked at Everytown’s list of “school” shootings again. Only seven new entries since last I checked.

The score today:
3 of 7 of these don’t even meet Everytown’s crazed definition, leaving only 4. That gives them a generous 57.1% accuracy rate; much worse than last week.

There’s a non-student drug deal that was only coincidentally on — university — campus; strike that one: down to 42.9% accuracy.

If you limit it actual shootings at elementary or high schools — you know, where kids might be –, which is what most people think of when you say “school,” only 1 of 7 qualifies: 14.3% “accuracy.” And that one didn’t involve kids; they don’t even know when it happened because no one notice until they found a broken window.

And yet idiot journalists pushing an anti-rights agenda still cite these liars. And Bloomberg continues to pay Shannon Watts for this incompetence.

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Is the ATF “Beleagured”?

The Washington Times’ Jeff Mordock thinks so. I don’t.

EXCLUSIVE: ATF beleaguered by crisis in age of mass shootings
An epidemic of mass shootings has put a spotlight on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, revealing an agency that is understaffed, underfunded and treated as a political punching bag on both the right and the left.
[…]
“If they are really concerned, Congress would give ATF the resources to prevent and respond to mass shootings, but ATF is a political football,” [Kenneth E. Melson, former acting ATF director] said.

Bull. Even accepting the existence of the ATF, it is over-staffed for its “mission.”

In regards to firearms, the ATF has two jobs, neither of which it performs very well.

  • Regulation of National Firearms Act (NFA) items
  • Regulation of commercial manufacturing and sales

Because they have the manufacturing/sales data, they got tasked with assisting traces as an additional duty.

That’s it. Everything else it sticks it nose in is bureaucratic power grabs, empire building, in order to justify more people and bigger budgets.

As to the first — NFA — it shouldn’t be doing much of that, if any, at all. See MILLER, which held that militarily useful firearms are protected by the Second Amendment and may not be regulated under the NFA.

And it doesn’t even do that well. ATF agents have been forced to admit in court that, when investigating seemingly unregistered NFA items, over 40% of the time the discrepancy is actually in the ATF’s registry.

The second may be partially justifiable rationalizeable under “interstate commerce,” but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it… especially poorly.

Tracing could be done by the FBI — which does have a criminal investigation role (constitutionality of that is a separate topic of discussion) simply by giving the FBI logins to the ATF manufacturing/sales databases, thus eliminating a layer of bureaucratic blockages and delays in investigations. Ditto for the ATF recovering firearms from prohibited persons who mistakenly complete purchases from FFLs. The FBI runs NICS; they could more simply and quickly do the recovery themselves (or, rather, inform local LE).

There happen to be excellent reasons for the multiple attempts to shift ATF duties to the FBI (which the FBI has resisted because it would mean getting stuck with a stable of incompetent ATF agents).

The ATF does not investigate murder, mass or otherwise, unless an NFA item was involved. State/local law enforcement and the FBI do that. At best, the ATF gets called in as advisors for its alleged firearms expertise… unless it’s something like Mandalay Bay where they were not even allowed to examine firearm internals.

“Expertise?” See the bizarre reinterpretation of reality that makes bump stocks — inert plastic and metal — into machineguns. Not to mention rubber bands. Wait? Did I mention their inability to make up their minds whether shoelaces are machineguns? The Technical Branch jury is out on belt loops as of this writing.

Expertise? Open bolt semi-autos were semi-auto. Until they weren’t. Unless they were manufactured before an arbitrary date, in which case they aren’t. Until they are.

Expertise? Look at the current rifle receiver fiasco. Rather than work with the obvious — AR receivers simply happen to be in two major subassemblies — they classified one inoperative subassembly as a firearm. Two federal courts have noted that the ATF’s WTF classification conflicts with statutory law, prompting the dropping of charges in a major case lest the courts get a chance to slap the AT F-ups down for sheer stupidity.

The ATF is understaffed and underfunded only in the sense that the Keystone Kops were. I really don’t think we need to fund incompetent rights violations.

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