Tragedy

 Two shooting incidents yesterday, it will be interesting to see how quickly they disappear from most mainstream national news reporting and most left wing social media accounts.  

Monday Bits

 

 https://x.com/wallstreetapes/status/2045372999264817586?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

No, there is nothing suspicious at all here.  

 https://x.com/pnwconservative/status/2045733144721273132?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

Justice is alive and well.  

 https://x.com/alexberenson/status/2045676530647372219?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

So much about leftists in display in this thread.  

 

 

 https://x.com/wallstreetapes/status/2045094936484499555?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

CA in general and LA in particular are simply cesspools of corruption.  The lies told by the various governments regarding rebuilding from the fires are epic.  

 https://x.com/iamyesyouareno/status/2045416347610296466?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

More justice.   

 https://x.com/michaelarothman/status/2045227930096427389?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐌𝐀𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐆𝐍𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐂 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄. 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐓. 𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐒𝐎 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐇𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓. Bill Maher spent eight minutes on Real Time last Friday doing something no Democrat with a national microphone has done honestly in a decade. He told his own party why they lost. The core of the monologue: “𝘝𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘷𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢.” Read that again. Slowly. The second-most-famous liberal talk-show host in America — a man who has spent 30 years telling audiences how dumb Republicans are — just told Democrats that the issues do not matter, that voters pick based on 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢, and that Donald Trump has all three while the Democratic Party has none of them. This is not a small admission. This is the entire 2024 post-mortem in a single sentence, delivered by a Democrat. Let me walk through what else he said, because it gets better — and worse, depending on which side of the aisle you sit on. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐝 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 The Democratic Party’s current approval rating is 𝟐𝟏 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 (Gallup, March 2026). Maher’s joke: “𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘦’𝘴 𝘴𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘬𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘴”. Funny because it is accurate. And the Gallup internal is the part that should terrify every DNC strategist: 𝟒𝟓 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫, up 11 points in four years. Nearly half the Democratic base is telling pollsters, on the record, that its own leadership is too far left to win. When almost half your own voters want you to move toward your opponent’s position, you do not have a messaging problem. You have a 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 problem. 𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤: 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐅𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 Maher nominated Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania as the Democratic Party’s Trump. Not the populist-movement Trump. The 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘴-𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦-𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳-𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴-𝘯𝘰𝘵-𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥-𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮-𝘵𝘩𝘦-𝘕𝘎𝘖-𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵 Trump. Here is Maher’s inventory of Fetterman’s heresies, each of which would have been a career-ender in the Democratic Party of 2020: 𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫: Fetterman says wanting a secure border is not 𝘹𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘣𝘪𝘤 or 𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘵. It is common sense. 𝐎𝐧 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥: When pro-Hamas protesters showed up at his home, Fetterman went to his roof 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐢 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦. Read that again. A sitting Democratic United States Senator publicly flew the Star of David in the faces of his own party’s base. 𝐎𝐧 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲: Fetterman says four words 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳, per Maher: “𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐤𝐞.” Translate that honestly. Maher just told his audience that the reason Republicans are nervous about 2028 is not a policy agenda. It is the possibility that 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐞. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐏𝐞𝐭𝐞 Maher’s proposed running mate was former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and the reasons he gave are almost more revealing than the Fetterman case. Buttigieg 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬 a month ago. Stopped. Quietly scrubbed them. Maher flagged it on national television. Buttigieg’s own recent words, quoted by Maher: Democrats would do better “𝘪𝘧 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘰𝘤𝘢𝘣𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴”. That is a former Democratic presidential candidate publicly renouncing intersectional identity politics. In 2020 he would have been canceled for that sentence. In 2026 he is using it as a positioning play for 2028. Buttigieg also told Democrats to stop “𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢”. Maher’s rejoinder: “𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐜𝐡.” That one is going on the highlight reel. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐀 𝐉𝐨𝐤𝐞 Strip away the Mar-a-Lago bits, the CVS clothing line, the 6-foot-8 gag, and look at what Maher actually said about Trump’s victory: “𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘸𝘰𝘯. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘹. 𝘎𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘨𝘰𝘴𝘩, 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘺, 𝘪𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬.” Translation: Trump won because he met voters where they actually were on crime and immigration. Americans were not yearning for the agenda; they were yearning for a politician who would 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 about borders, crime, men in women’s sports, and elementary-school pronoun drills. Every Democratic post-mortem since November 2024 has blamed Latinos, blamed young men, blamed podcasts, blamed Elon Musk, blamed disinformation, blamed Russia again for some reason, blamed misogyny, blamed low-information voters, and blamed Joe Biden for staying in too long. Bill Maher — alone, on a Friday night, on a premium cable show — finally said the real answer. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐲. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐝. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐅𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧/𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐠 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧 Here is the problem with Maher’s prescription, and it is the same problem that has been cooking the Democratic Party for 15 years. The Democratic primary electorate — the activists, the donor class, the DSA wing, the 𝘚𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘥 caucus, the identity-studies faculty, the Planned Parenthood board, the teachers unions, the Working Families Party — will never nominate John Fetterman. They will not nominate anyone who waves an Israeli flag at his own base. They will not nominate anyone who says 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘬𝘦. They will not nominate anyone who agrees with Trump on the border. Maher knows this. Every Democrat in Washington knows this. The primary will eat any Fetterman-type candidate alive before the first snow falls in New Hampshire. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐞-𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐁𝐨𝐛𝐛𝐲 𝐊𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐮𝐥𝐬𝐢 𝐆𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲. The Democratic Party does not actually want to win. It wants to be right about race, gender, and climate. Those are not the same goal, and for twenty years the party has been choosing the second one. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐈𝐬 𝐃𝐮𝐞 I have disagreed with Bill Maher on plenty. I still do. But on this one, he is telling the truth at volume about his own side, on his own network, to his own audience, and he knows the next three weeks of his DMs will be brutal. That is 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐚 he said voters reward. He is modeling the trait he is asking his party to rediscover. The fact that the Democratic Party cannot find more than a handful of its elected officials willing to do the same is the entire diagnosis, all by itself. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐨. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐚𝐧. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 '𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐤𝐞' 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲. 𝐁𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐲. 𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥."

 Maher is absolutely right, but I'm torn between a DFL that is a reasonable, rational, potential alternative, and a DFL that is intellectually and politically bankrupt.  

 https://x.com/rach4patriarchy/status/2045399467008934290?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 

 

 "Male students are more tolerant of political rivals than female students are of political allies."

Elect more women, they said. It'll be better, they said.  

 https://x.com/swipewright/status/2045351040879386986?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "I think, in many ways, it broadly boils down to how each side views the other. The right tends to view the left as ignorant, naive, or misguided, and therefore believes conversation has at least some chance of changing minds. But the left largely views people on the right as stupid, evil, or selfish, and therefore believes conversation would be pointless."

This is exactly how I've seen right/left conversations play out on various blogs I follow and on social media.  

 https://x.com/anaraintuitive/status/2045228279175803167?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" Before Oct 7th, I was a naive adherent of IslamoLeftism. A lifelong Democrat, I believed what I was told. When the NYTimes said Modi and Hindutva groups are right wing fascist thugs oppressing Indian Muslims, I accepted it. When Haaretz presented graphic images of Palestinian suffering and framed Israelis as powerful oppressors, erasing causality and context, I wept like a good little bleeding-heart liberal for the poor Palestinians. I was never able to see Arab/Muslim aggression against Jews and Hindus, because it was never part of the narrative. Oct 7th opened my eyes. The horror of that day was profound. It penetrated deep into my Yiddishe Neshama, my Jewish soul. I watched people who looked like me and my family, who bore our names, who could be us, slaughtered, raped, kidnapped, in their own homes. I had a panic attack. Then I watched the global Left unite with the Muslim ummah to deny, justify, celebrate, or minimize these atrocities. They fomented the greatest rise of Nazism I’ve seen in my lifetime. IslamoLeftism, also known as the red/green alliance, hides in plain sight. It appears like a legitimate democratic project, yet it is hollowed out. It perverts all the Left’s concepts of justice, human rights, international law, to uphold Islamist hegemonic domination. IslamoLeftism does not solely target “Zionists,” via the racism of antizionism, it targets all non-Muslims; anyone who refuses to submit to its goals. Academia entrenches IslamoLeftist concepts into societal dogma. Language of “decolonization” is used in Orwellian ways. Islam has historically been a brutal colonial paradigm outside of Arabia. While Western academics do land acknowledgements, make solipsistic statements about indigenous rights, actual indigenous people are demonized as colonizers in their own land, while a false indigenous identity is constructed for Muslim colonizers. In reality, Israel is decolonization. Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya is decolonization. These facts are obscured, in the never ending quest to demonize non-Muslims and justify genocidal violence against them. IslamoLeftist politics engenders a soulless landscape in which Left parties like Labour, Greens, and Democrats, are subverted by Islamist terrorist propaganda. Nazi-grade Jew Hate is presented as moral imperative. Activists stand with the most abusive authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups in the world, while grandstanding as being on the right side of history. Oct 7th was a watershed moment. It made me an Oct 8th Jew. An independent thinker. One who learns the history, and knows the facts. One who stands unapologetically with my people — not just out of a sense of tribalism, but because our cause is morally righteous. One who is no longer blind to the IslamoLeftist paradigm, to the harm it’s causing in the world. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It must be called out and censured."

The alliance of the ASPL with Islam is such an incredibly bizarre marriage due to the fact that they have virtually nothing of substance in common.  

 https://x.com/megbasham/status/2044878298866470998?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

Great response by Trump to a gotcha question from a "journalist".

 https://x.com/badhombre/status/2044980201193411030?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 https://x.com/vincedaotv/status/2044622185168519205?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "Haiti genocided its entire White population in 1804. Haiti stands as the blackest country in the world, exceeding all Sub-Saharan African countries. It is the least ethnically diverse country in the Western Hemisphere. White missionaries from the United States, Canada, and Europe are routinely kidnapped and held for ransom. Over 95% of the population practice satanic Vodou worship. Only 15% of the population have running water, the average annual salary is $1,700, it has the highest incidence of rape and murder, and the highest HIV prevalence in the Western Hemisphere. Haitians chose this path. America is not responsible for absorbing the shocks of Haiti’s self-inflicted crises."

 Not wrong. I guess diversity is our strength only works in certain situations. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enough Said

 

Last One For Today, I Promise

 https://x.com/shellenberger/status/2038609325124354205?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "The Hormuz crisis is the precipitating factor in the current energy crisis, but the underlying cause is too little oil and gas production outside the Persian Gulf. Had the world spent the past decade building the oil, gas, LNG, pipeline, and fertilizer infrastructure that engineers designed and companies proposed, the Hormuz crisis would still be a serious geopolitical event, but it would not threaten to cause a recession. North America — The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile natural gas line from West Virginia to North Carolina, saw its cost double from $4.5 billion to $8 billion during years of environmental litigation before Duke Energy and Dominion Energy cancelled it in July 2020. — The Constitution Pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York died the same year. — The PennEast Pipeline won its case at the United States Supreme Court in 2021 and still could not get built because New Jersey refused to issue state permits. — In Canada, TransCanada abandoned the $15.7 billion Energy East pipeline in 2017 after the National Energy Board required an unprecedented review of upstream and downstream emissions. — In January 2024, the Biden administration paused all pending approvals for LNG export terminals shipping to non-free-trade-agreement countries, freezing projects representing tens of billions of cubic feet per day of potential capacity. — Venture Global’s CP2 terminal in Louisiana, designed for 20 million tonnes per annum, sat in regulatory limbo for over a year. — NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG in Texas, with 48 MTPA of planned capacity, stalled alongside it. — PTT Global Chemical’s proposed $10 billion ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio, first announced in 2015, remains on indefinite hold after failing to attract financing partners amid climate-driven investor sentiment. — Across the US Gulf Coast, nearly 60% of planned plastic and petrochemical production projects sit on hold. — LNG Canada, the Shell-led terminal at Kitimat, British Columbia, took over six years from construction start to first cargo, with its pipeline running 263% over budget. Environmental review, Indigenous disputes, and contractor cost escalation all contributed. — Pieridae Energy’s Goldboro LNG project in Nova Scotia, a 10 MTPA facility first proposed in 2012, was abandoned in November 2023 after more than a decade of permitting and financing obstacles. Australia — Australia’s Santos’s Barossa gas project was halted midway through construction after a Federal Court ruling overturned its environmental approval. — Woodside’s Scarborough project faces ongoing litigation from the Australian Conservation Foundation seeking to block it on climate grounds. Africa — Perhaps nowhere has the damage been more consequential than in Africa. At COP26 in 2021, wealthy nations pledged to halt overseas development finance for gas projects, a commitment that fell hardest on the continent least responsible for climate change and most in need of energy infrastructure. — The World Bank stopped financing oil and gas extraction in 2019 and imposed restrictive conditions on downstream gas projects. — The European Investment Bank announced a complete ban on unabated fossil fuel financing by the end of 2021, with its president declaring that “gas is over.” — At least 21 other development finance institutions followed suit. As a result: — TotalEnergies’ Mozambique LNG project sat under force majeure for four and a half years after the UK Export Credit Agency and other backers withdrew climate-motivated financing. — The East African Crude Oil Pipeline lost financing commitments from more than 30 major international banks under pressure from climatists. Europe — France prevented the completion of a third gas interconnector with Spain, citing climate neutrality goals. — The United Kingdom imposed a moratorium on fracking in 2019 despite sitting atop one of Europe’s most promising shale gas formations. — Germany, which shuttered its last three nuclear plants in April 2023, compounded its gas dependency by refusing to develop domestic shale resources. — CF Industries permanently shut the UK’s largest ammonia plant at Billingham, a facility that also produced 60% of Britain’s food-grade CO2. — Yara International curtailed output across plants in France, Italy, and Belgium before permanently closing its 400,000 tonne per year ammonia facility at Tertre, Belgium, in October 2024. These closures occurred because European climate policy made gas too expensive for the domestic industry to survive."

This Is Pretty Much What We Are Seeing Today

 https://x.com/nancyrpearcey/status/2038668554740892058?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 

 Why the ancient Romans persecuted the early Christians: "In New Testament times, the Greeks had a term for the underlying principle that unifies the world into an orderly cosmos, as opposed to randomness and chaos. They called it the Logos. The Stoic philosophers conceived it as a pantheistic mind pervading the universe. But the apostle John applied the term to Christ. “In the beginning was the Word”—Logos (John 1:1). Every Greek who heard John’s gospel understood that he was claiming that Christ himself is the source of the order and coherence of the universe. As Paul put it, “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). Creation has a rational, intelligible order that reflects God’s creative plan. 

  From the beginning, however, this New Testament concept of truth came under fire. The Roman Empire did not regard religion as the search for truth about reality. That was the province of philosophers, not priests. The Romans defined religion solely in terms of ritual, ceremony, and cult practices. The empire was perfectly willing to accept Christianity if it would take its place as just another set of religious practices. What the empire would not accept, says Catholic theologian Lorenzo Albacete, was Christianity “as a source of truth about this world.” How did the early church respond? It resolutely refused to reduce Christianity to Rome’s relativistic definition of religion. As Albacete writes, Christianity “would not accept a place with the religions of the empire” as merely another set of rituals and practices. It “saw itself as a philosophy, as a path to knowledge about reality, and not primarily as a source of spiritual or ethical inspiration.” The message of Christ’s resurrection—in a physical body, in historical time—did not allow for any dualism that shoved religion off into a separate sphere of life concerned only with spiritual rules and rituals. The early church insisted that biblical truth is a comprehensive unity, encompassing the realms of both priest and philosopher. Truth is a unified whole."

To Be Wrong Or Not Wrong, That Is The Question

 https://x.com/mamacita4life2/status/2038649157595046152?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

She's not wrong.

 https://x.com/sfliberty/status/2038763477511106596?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

Also not wrong. 

 https://x.com/pitiklinov/status/2038726519627854284?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" Philosophers Daniel Kodsi and John Maier argue that many of the most absurd and destructive phenomena of our time—from gender ideology, cancel culture, DEI, COVID lockdowns, net zero, the abolition of police and prisons, to the obsession with “including” at all costs—share a common cause: an intellectual vice they have termed “exceptionalism.” What is “exceptionalism”? Exceptionalism is the pathological tendency to make too many exceptions to well-founded rules, principles, and generalizations, based on isolated cases, emotional anecdotes, or particular desires. Instead of maintaining simple and solid principles, the exceptionalist excessively complicates ideas to accommodate any anomaly, exception, or special case that matters to them. This produces over-complicated, fragile, and often absurd theories. The authors compare it to the scientific problem known as “overfitting”: when a model fits so closely to noisy or erroneous data that it loses predictive power and becomes useless. The exceptionalist believes that there are certain people or things to which normal rules do not apply. Moreover, when they stop to reflect, they often end up denying that those rules are rules at all, precisely because they do not account for the exceptions they demand for their protected or special categories. There are two types of exceptionalists: -The single-minded one: They obsess over a single cause or protected group and subordinate everything else to it (example: “minimize Covid deaths at any cost”). -The indiscriminate one: They see exceptions everywhere and constantly complicate everything (typical of woke activists, journalists, and people “chronically online”). And what examples do the authors give of exceptionalism, or how do they apply it? Here are a few: -Gender ideology: Rejecting the simple biological definition of “woman” (adult human female) to accommodate rare cases or subjective feelings, creating extremely complex and contradictory theories. -Covid lockdowns: Prioritizing only coronavirus deaths and ignoring all other harms (mental health, education, economy, isolation of the elderly, etc.). -Cancel culture and restrictions on academic freedom: Freedom of expression becomes “yes, but…” with infinite exceptions to avoid offending certain groups. -DEI and diversity policies: Sacrificing meritocratic standards and objective educational goals to accommodate “inclusion” targets. -Net Zero and climate policies: A single goal (zero emissions) is imposed even if it brings disproportionate costs to other aspects of life. -Police and prison abolitionism: Ignoring that most crimes are committed by repeat offenders and proposing complex solutions instead of the simple and effective one. -Art and culture: Subordinating aesthetic quality and entertainment to political and social justice goals. In summary, many modern absurdities (according to these two philosophers) share a common root: instead of maintaining clear and general principles, people obsess over exceptions, anecdotes, and special cases, complicating everything until it becomes absurd. The authors call this “exceptionalism” and see it as the true intellectual problem of our time."

Also not wrong.  

 https://x.com/drewhutton45645/status/2038719633449214096?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" It is about time those of us in progressive politics owned up to our failures. ·       We argued for social justice for all and ended up arguing it should only be for a favoured few identity groups. ·       We argued for women’s rights and ended up arguing men could be women and could occupy women’s spaces. ·       We argued for same-sex marriage and ended up with saying there are no sex-based rights. ·       We argued for renewable energy and ended up allowing giant, multinational energy companies to bulldoze thousands of hectares of our precious, high biodiversity forests for wind farms. ·       We argued for free speech and ended up by practising cancel culture. ·       We argued for multiculturalism and ended up believing that criticism of the practices of a minority culture is, necessarily, racism. ·       We argued that imperialism should be combated and ended up believing only US imperialism causes authoritarianism and repression."

No wrong detected. 

 https://x.com/cynicalpublius/status/2038660940426879460?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 https://x.com/chrismartzwx/status/2038440523564781818?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

In the case of how stupid the woman is, still not wrong. 

 https://x.com/toscaausten/status/2038643533096137024?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

OK, the woman in the attached video is wrong.

 https://x.com/ericldaugh/status/2038030980003324173?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

Shilling for communism, also wrong. 

 https://x.com/danburmawy/status/2038714670303912190?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "When I say “Judeo-Christian values,” I mean the backbone of Western civilization. In the Judeo-Christian framework, your worth is not contingent on race, tribe, ability, utility, or social status. You are not valuable because the state says so, or because you’ve achieved something impressive, or because you’ve aligned with the right political movement. You are valuable because you were made in the image of God. Period. That’s a claim with legal, social, and philosophical consequences. Strip that away, and you are left with humanist relativism? Then you’re only as valuable as your usefulness. Your dignity is conditional. Your rights are negotiable. And your identity means nothing unless the mob, or the regime, says it does. Without Judeo-Christian foundations, there is no unalienable human dignity. There is only hierarchy, utility, and power. You’re not better than a rat unless you belong to the dominant group, or unless you’ve earned your worth through performance. The Western judicial system, equal protection, due process, innocence until proven guilty, was built on the belief that every human being stands equal before a higher moral authority. That’s not a product of secular enlightenment. That’s the fruit of centuries of biblical soil. Freedom of conscience, the right to dissent, to question, to protest, to speak your mind, to grow, these didn’t emerge in societies shaped by Islam or atheism or Marxism. They emerged where the individual was seen as accountable to God alone. You may not believe in God. Fine. But if you enjoy the freedom to say that publicly without being jailed or executed, you can thank the Judeo-Christian worldview."

Back to not wrong. 

 https://x.com/Austen/status/2037993939165233265

 https://x.com/johnamonaco/status/2038392136480301346?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "People do not realize how significant this was. Everyone was locked inside. Basketball courts were filled with sand, the netting of the hoops cut. Weddings were postponed. You were prevented from attending the funeral of a loved one. Restaurants lost business and turned into takeout stations. Grocery stores had those 6 feet markers for “social distancing”. You couldn’t attend classes, but instead had to log on Zoom. And then, suddenly, the rules shifted for a certain group. After George Floyd died, hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest “systemic racism” and “police brutality”. “Surely,” you thought, “the medical establishment will sympathize with their cause but reinforce the lockdown rules.” Except, they didn’t. “BLM protests are justified because racism is also a pandemic” “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19” (University of Washington, 6/2/20) “Racism is an ongoing public health crisis that needs our attention now!" (American Public Health Association, 5/29/20) Immediately, every rational person became aware of how the COVID-19 response was a charade. We were lied to. It was an utter and complete power grab by a global elite, and too many were all too keen to bend the knee. After the 2020 “Summer of Love”, it seemed as if the Overton window shifted. Not only was DEI unfair, it was considered ridiculous. Posts about people ransacking Targets and Walmarts were explicitly calling out the race of the perpetrators. Folks like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and other talking heads became bolder in going beyond the “principled Republican” conservatism. When COVID first hit, I more or less believed the mainstream narrative. While, from the start, I vehemently opposed the Church’s suspending of public worship and access to the sacraments, I still wore my mask & kept my 6 feet social distance. I had 10 people at my wedding. I couldn’t attend the funeral of a loved one. But I nonetheless complied with the mandates and trusted in public health officials. After the post-Floyd BLM protests, however, everything changed. The medical establishment will never realize just how much public trust was burned by their allegiance to The Current Thing. The idea that “racism” somehow justified 80,000 people marching shoulder-to-shoulder through streets of Philadelphia during a “pandemic”, but that 8 people couldn’t attend a funeral for their grandmother due to a need to “stop the spread”, radicalized me to distrust the entire medical establishment. I feel like we all moved on way too quickly from holding these charlatans accountable for the bio-tyranny they inflicted upon the world. COVID-19 felt like a bad dream, but it was the BLM riot justification that woke me up."

Not wrong.  

 https://x.com/magamahacindy/status/2038701879476011503?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

More not wrong.  

 

I Really Like This Guy

 https://x.com/bskimike22802/status/2038728914189578448?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" THE FLAG THEY BURNED AND THE ONES WHO BLED FOR IT I cried doing the research for this. Only tears that a combat veteran would not be ashamed of. More than once. I am not embarrassed to say that. I am a science teacher and a medically retired Army combat medic with 23 years of service. I have held men together who were coming apart in ways that would make most people close their eyes and look away. I have been in places and made decisions that follow me into rooms where I am supposed to feel safe. I do not cry easily. But I cried writing this. And I think that is exactly as it should be. Because if you do the research — if you really sit inside these stories and not just skim the surface of them — and you feel nothing, one of us is broken. I am fairly confident it is not me. So. Let us talk about a flag. And what it actually costs. — The Decision Nobody Talks About — There is a decision that combat medics make that nobody talks about at the dinner table. You do not read about it in the news. Politicians do not bring it up in speeches. But every combat medic who has ever worked a mass casualty event knows exactly what I am talking about. And most of us spend the rest of our lives carrying it in a place that does not have a name. You are at my CCP. The world is loud and wrong and smells like things that should not have a smell. My hands are already doing the assessment before my brain has fully caught up — fast, mechanical, exactly the way they trained me. I go down the line. One man. Serious wound. Survivable — IF I start right now, right here, and I do not stop. I KNOW I can save him. I have the training. I have the supplies. My hands already know what to do. But there are two more. And they are also dying, but each one not as bad, not as time consuming. If I stay with him, my friend, my Brother, the other two are gone. If I move on, he is gone. The math is the math. Save my friend or save two of my Bothers. It does not care what I feel. It does not care that he has a name, he is my friend, that I know the name of his wife… his kids… that I have talked to his family on the Satellite Phone. It does not care that somewhere there is a woman who said goodbye to him at an airport and is going to get a knock on her door that will divide her life into a before and an after. I move on. He dies. And two more live from his sacrifice… from my sacrifice. And I live with that. Not because I did something wrong. Because I did something RIGHT. I did it by the books! And the books saved two when only one would have lived. Because the math said two lives outweigh one and I had the composure to do the math in the worst moment a human being can be asked to do math. I replay it… again… and again… and again. Every quiet room. Every night that runs too long. I replay it and I come to the same answer every time and it does not help. At all. I am a medic, and that is my job, to save the most I can and let the rest be a sacrifice for the survivors, for if I tried to save them all, all of them would have perished. There are rules of being a combat medic, even if not written, we know them… Rule 1: Good People Will Die Rule 2: Doc Can't Save Everyone Rule 3: Doc Will Go Through Hell to Break Rules 1 & 2 This is the curse of a combat medic. To be the Attorney of the fallen, to plead to God for one more day, one more chance, one more evac to the next level of care… but I can only have so many clients in the same hour. I have made that call. I live with it… some days better than others. I was still in country but imagined I stood at the grave of the man I chose not to save. I have watched the honor guard carry his flag-draped casket with the kind of precision that only exists when it is the last thing you can give someone. I have watched his widow receive that folded triangle. I have stood there knowing — KNOWING — that the flag on that box passed directly over a hole in the ground where a decision I made was to allow him, someone I could have saved on a normal day, to die, because this was no normal day, and instead chose two of his brothers to litigate for their survival. Two for the cost of a friend. Math and emotion know no wars. So when I tell you the flag is not a piece of cloth, understand where that is coming from. — The Funerals — I need you to sit here for a minute. Not scroll. Sit with it. There is a protocol called the transfer of remains. A military casket comes off a plane. The flag is on it — not a crease out of alignment, not a single imperfection anywhere — because this is the last thing the military can give him, and it is going to be given perfectly. It does not matter if you are in a war zone or you are state side. When these service members get transferred, everything stops. Planes are not loaded, buses stop, mission prep stops. Every service member is halted in respect, even for a single casket with a flag draped on top. This is what defense of the flag with one’s live mean on a FOB. We all make a moment of silence in respect for the Brother or Sister who sacrificed their life for the flag and their country. They make it home, and we still carry on the fight for them. The honor guard moves with a precision that does not exist anywhere else in civilian life. Every step deliberate. Every motion exact. Because the ceremony is not for show. It is the nation saying — through the rigid, unwavering discipline of its ritual — WE KNOW WHAT THIS PERSON GAVE. We know. And we will not let them go without being witnessed. Twenty-one guns. Three volleys. The sound goes into the trees and comes back wrong. Every combat veteran in the crowd flinches at the first one and tries not to show it. Some of them do not succeed. That is not weakness. That is the body remembering something the brain is still trying to process. And then Taps. Twenty-four notes. Played at American military gravesides since the Civil War. If you have never stood at one of those funerals and felt those twenty-four notes hit you somewhere behind your sternum — and refuse to leave, days later — then you have not yet felt what I am trying to describe. I do not say that to be unkind. I say it because it is true. Those notes go somewhere in the body of a person who has served, and they do not come out. The flag is folded. Thirteen folds. A tight triangle of blue and stars. A soldier kneels. On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Armed Forces, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service. She takes it. She might be nineteen. She might have a child on her hip and another one coming she has not told anyone about yet because she was waiting to tell him first. She might be holding herself together by something that has no name in any language and no equivalent in any civilian experience. She holds it on the way home. She puts it somewhere she can see it. And on the nights when the house is too quiet and the chair at the dinner table is a wound that does not close and the world has moved on in a way that feels like a personal cruelty — she looks at that folded triangle. THAT flag. The one in her hands right now. THAT is what you are burning. — The Bill — Here is what I am proposing. Read the whole thing before you react. There is a serious constitutional argument underneath it and I have thought about it carefully. The Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson (1989) and United States v. Eichman (1990) that burning the American flag is protected symbolic speech under the First Amendment. I agree with this ruling, surprisingly. But not as you may thing. I have fought for your freedom of speech, my brothers and sisters have dies to protect this freedom of speech, from the government! HOWEVER. Every person who has put on the uniform of the United States Armed Forces has taken an oath. Not to a president. Not to a party. Not to any political figure alive or dead. To the CONSTITUTION — and the flag of the United States is that symbol that stands against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is on our shoulder when we go to war. It flies over bases, FOBs, COPs in every foreign land that troops are stationed. That oath does not come with an expiration date. Ask any veteran you know. It lives in the body long after the uniform comes off. So here is the First Amendment tension that nobody in Washington is addressing: If a person has the constitutional right to burn the flag as protected symbolic expression, and a service member has a sworn constitutional oath to defend that symbol of the constitution… our flag — an oath made under legal penalty, governing their entire adult lives, sending them to the places where they watched flags draped over their brothers — then THAT SERVICE MEMBER is also engaged in a constitutionally grounded act when they place themselves between a flame and that flag. Both parties are exercising rights derived from the same founding document. The flag burner invokes the First Amendment. The veteran invokes the oath that made the First Amendment possible in the first place. My proposed bill is this: any person who has taken the military oath of enlistment or commissioning, with documented service in the United States Armed Forces, regardless if they served in a combat zone or personally witnessed the flag draped over the remains of a fellow service member — that person is legally protected from civil and criminal liability for ANY physical action taken to prevent the burning of an American flag in a public setting. As the poem says “Now there's but one shot in this old gun, So now it's time to decide which one, Which one of you will follow our lead, To stand and die for what you believe?” I put my life on the line knowing that I may be in a box draped by that flag. It is time for the people who want to exercise their freedom of speech to have that very same honor, to stand up and die for what they believe in. No arrest. No lawsuit. No criminal record. Because if you want to exercise your First Amendment right to burn the symbol of a country that my brothers died for — the symbol that came off the plane on their caskets, the symbol their widows are holding right now in quiet houses — you are now standing in a crowd where at least one person has sworn, under oath, before God, that they would defend it. You have the right to burn it. I… WE… have the right to stop you, by any means per our oath and to defend what our brothers and sisters would do if they were still alive. By any means! I am not the government as much as you are. The Government is not restricting your freedom of speech, I am fulfilling my oath, as in individual! I am embracing my freedom of speech, No, I am embracing the freedom of speech for all of my brothers who have died in service of this country since 1776, for my fallen brethren by destroying anyone who are willing to burn their casket covering. That is not a contradiction. That is the First Amendment working exactly the way the Founders intended — two competing rights, both rooted in the Constitution, working themselves out in the public square without the government pre-deciding which one wins. — What I Need You to Understand — The reason I cried researching this — and I said it at the beginning and I will say it again because I refuse to be embarrassed by the truth — is the accumulation of it all. The medic's calculation. Two lives for the cost of one. Math that does not care about names. The twenty-four notes that do not leave. The widow who does not let go of the triangle. The flag is not the cloth. The flag is the CHOICE. The choice to stand when everything says run. To hold on when everything says let go. To put your body between what you love and what is trying to destroy it. THAT is what the anthem is about. THAT is what the twenty-four notes are about. THAT is what every flag on every casket is about. You want to burn it, bring your lighter. Put your life on the line to burn that flag. I dare you! With this law, you have the freedom to burn the flag… but I will protect the flag with my life as I have done for the last 23 years, and I do not think you are ready to protect your right to burn it with the same vigor and sacrifice, for I will protect it to MY DEATH… so good luck! But I want the man in that crowd who folded that flag for a widow he never met — who stood at attention for someone else's husband, dry-eyed and straight-backed because she needed him to be — to have the legal right to stand between you and that flame without being handcuffed for it. He already spent years doing exactly that. The least we can do is make sure we do not arrest him for doing it one more time. But what do I know — I am only a medically retired Army combat medic who has made the calculation you can never take back, who has watched a flag-draped casket pass over a hole in the ground where a decision of mine is buried alongside a man I could have saved on any other day, who has placed a folded triangle into hands that shook in a way I still see in the quiet rooms, and who has enough respect for every one of them to refuse to let their symbol go without saying something. Share this if you have ever stood at a graveside while those twenty-four notes told you something words never could. Share if you support our Flag and the ones who died and where covered by it to protect the rights of those who burn it."