But not the endorsement of the former democrat governor and her membership in mom’s demand action has not been suppressed. Of course given her side business her membership in “Mom’s Demand Action” gets an entirely new meaning.
Apparently the St. Louis Children’s hospital has decided that due to a new Missouri law the risk / reward business of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors has shifted to the point where they now decline to do such things.
I suspect that as laws change and lawsuits progress this type of decision will be more common.
Alas the gravy train might have ended but there are still plenty of kids whose lives have been ruined to keep psychologists in clover for decades
The risk reward ratio however has also shifted in DC and New York at least for kids and crimes.
The decision not to go after juvenile crime has had rather nasty consequences, both in DC and NY for the citizens, but not yet to the point where it’s has had political consequences for those who have decided to go soft.
Finally Mitt Romney has announced he will not run for re-election to the US senate thus avoiding an embarrassing loss for his senate seat in the primary.
I’ve never forgotten that Romney inaction as MA gov was instrumental in killing a state vote on gay marriage when the Massachusetts SC by one vote began the slippery slope that got us where we are, however he was also quietly active in the Scott Brown campaign which really launched the Tea Party as a successful group.
His despicable enabling of the left’s attempts to destroy Trump has caused many to say they regret their vote for him in 2012. I don’t regret mine in the least, because the alternative was Barack Obama whose third term under Joe Biden has been even worse than his first two.
I’m back home from Pintastic NE 2023 the most relaxing time I’ve had in months and frankly the best Pintastic I’ve attended with one exception. I didn’t have a chance to interview Gabe at the end of the show because of time constraints, however I will be uploading and posting video daily till it’s all up. Meanwhile here is the new Godfather 50th Anniversary Pinball Machine.
The one on the left is the “cheap” one that sells for $12,500, the one on the right is the expensive version that sells for $15,000. You’ll hear more about that specific game later in the month.
I’d like to give Mr. Lieu the benefit of the doubt that he actually understands that this is unconstitutional but I would not be surprised if this is more of a case of learning what Harry Reid did not, namely if your side changes the rules in one state then the other side can do the same elsewhere.
Frankly I’m less concerned if he’s doing this for selfish reasons, altruistic reasons or both as long as he’s with us in defending the constitution.
Apparently the president’s performance in Vietnam was yet another national embarrassment but frankly I’m wondering something.
For a long time Joe Biden making a fool or an ass out of himself was not newsworthy because the media didn’t want to promote or expose this fact which was a disgrace in terms of how journalism works.
I’m wondering however if we’ve actually reached a point where Joe Biden being non compos mentis is so common and so established that it’s no longer newsworthy if he acts that way, or that it will not be newsworthy until he carries himself like a normal person.
I’m sorry. I like Citizen Free Press and think it’s usually an excellent source but this a “fascinating read” Really?
Can someone tell me why anyone, particularly a conservative site is trusting a story from the NYT or Bill Kristol as a source as to what big money GOP donors are thinking concerning election 2023?
Finally today is 9/11 and as a child of Depression era parents and the son of a father who served in the Pacific in World War 2 I find myself more and more frustrated on this day.
I hate that we didn’t rebuild the towers twice as big.
I hate that we didn’t finish the job with Iran when we had armies to the east and west of Iran and a navy to the south.
I hate that we didn’t do in Iraq what we did in Germany and Japan, namely stay till they were no longer a threat even if it took half a century. If we weren’t going to do the job right why go in?
But all those things that I hate are a function of what the country and the culture has become helped on by enemies who figured out it’s cheaper and smarter to spend their money on pols and academics that you can buy and use for decades rather than weapons that can be destroyed or go obsolete.
All of these things were choices made by us as a nation, just as our decline has been a choice. That’s the worst part of it all.
On the bright side today is the birthday of one of my nephews that I’m closest to so while 9/11 is a day of infamy on the day and shame pondering our response nationally personally I’m glad to have this fine fellow in my family so happy birthday and many more.
Moving to a new town, particularly after a tragedy–the death of your father–is a painful experience. Which is what high school student Magne Seier (David Stakston) and his younger brother, Laurits (Jonas Strand Gravli), confront when they move to the small Norwegian town of Edda in the Netflix series Ragnarok.
And Edda isn’t just any town. The largest employer there is Jutul Industries where their kindly but weak-willed mother, Turid (Henriette Steenstrup), finds a job. More on Jutul in a bit.
How does Magne cope? By becoming a reincarnation of the Norse god Thor. And if “jutul” sounds familiar, they are the enemies of the Norse gods.
Over the first two seasons, Magne, for the most part reluctantly, puts together a new gathering of the gods, including assisted care home resident Wotan Wagner (Bjørn Sundquist) as the new Odin, another high schooler, Iman Reza (Danu Sunth), as the new Freyja, and Harry (Benjamin Helstad), a mechanic and a boxer, as the new Týr.
While Wotan/Odin wears an eye patch–the mythological Odin was one-eyed–he doesn’t ride a an eight-legged horse. The contemporary Odin travels around Edda in a motorized scooter. But he does look into the future with rune stones. There is also a tip of the hat to the importance of dwarfs in Norse mythology. A minor character, Halvor Lange (Espen Sigurdsen), a doctor at Wotan’s nursing home, is a dwarf.
Magne of course has Thor’s hammer.
Laurits is the reincarnation of the devious trickster god, Loki, and it’s difficult to ascertain whose side he is on. As it is with his “child,” his onetime tapeworm, the Midgard Serpent, who Laurits calls “Little O.”
In the third and final season of Ragnarok, the gods expand their crew, adding Kiwi (Ruben Rosbach), as Heimdall, and Laurits’ love interest, Jens (Vebjørn Enger), as Baldr.
Ragnarök, according to the Norse mythology, is the end time of the world, when the jutul or jötunn, often sloppily translated into English–as it is for this show–as giants, battle each other. In the first season, we are introduced to the Jutul family, led by Vidar (Gísli Örn Garðarsson), his wife Ran (Gísli Örn Garðarsson) ,and their high school age children, Fjor (Herman Tømmeraas), and Saxa (Theresa Frostad Eggesbø). Vidar is the CEO of Jutul Industries, which is poisoning the fjord off of Edda, and Ran is the principal of Edda High School. All of this is quite awkward, to say the least, for Magne.
The following paragraph contains Season Two spoilers.
A battle between Magne and Vidar at the end of the first season in inconclusive, which is not that case with their second confrontation; Magne kills Vidar with and ancient axe. That is one of the few ways gods and jutuls can be slain. That leads to a power struggle between Saxa and Fjor for control of Jutul Industries. Ran withdraws into depression, and Laurits, who we learn is Vidar’s son, plays both sides of the conflict.
As Season Three begins, Turid is planning her wedding, inevitable conflict is coming, and oh yeah, final exams and graduation at Edda High School loom. As for that battle, the two sides line up, as in a western movie, or more accurately, as with the final showdown in Akiro Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
While I enjoyed the first two seasons, I see Season Three as a big letdown. The performances are still compelling, the cinematography still great, and an enjoyable presence who was largely absent in Season Two, the radio announcer (Jeppe Beck Laursen), briefly returns. Ragnarok’s unseen announcer is reminiscent of the one in the M*A*S*H television series.
And I have to say it, the Laurits and Jens romance is very in-your-face one–as if the writers are yelling out, “Look, they’re gay! Gay! Gay! Gay!” Much more is left to our imaginations with Magne and his female love interests. The creepy romantic encounter at a party with Ran and two male students from her high school in the first season is mostly off-screen. Are the writers and directors trying to compensate for the decades of absence of gay characters in movies and in television series? Oh, one more failing: the CG to create the Midgard Serpent, is unconvincing.
As a whole, Ragnarok is still worth your time, particularly if you enjoy coming-of-age dramas and ancient mythology, but don’t expect so much in this final season.
As of this writing, it is the seventh-most popular offering on Netflix.
Ragnarok is rated TV-MA for violence, sexual situations, marijuana use, and underage drinking. It is available in Norwegian with English subtitles as well as dubbed English. Besides Norwegian, there are smatterings of Old Norse and English throughout Ragnarok.
Today is the feast day of the passion of St. John the Baptist.
As a rule the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of saints on the day they die. John the Baptist is the only saint where this is not the case, like Mary and Christ himself both his birth day and the day of his death (or in Mary’s case the Feast of the Assumption) are feast days of the Church. We celebrate St. John the Baptist’s birth in June and his death today.
It’s very fitting to ponder the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist because he was slaughtered for the same crime that many in America are now being punished for: Telling the truth.
You see John called out Herod for marrying his brother’s wife while he was still alive. This was a pretty good deal for Herodias as it gave her power and position and she never forgave John for publicly calling Herod out. Meanwhile even though Herod imprisoned John he not only didn’t kill him, but would go to the dungeons and listen to him. He didn’t have the courage to release him, nor did he have the courage to repent and give up his elicit marriage but he understood John was right.
So when Herod in front of his entire court made a injudicious promise to give Herodias’ daughter anything she the daughter at her mother’s prompting demanded on a platter the head of John the Baptist and Herod knowing it was wrong but not having the wisdom of Abe Lincoln who said: “Bad promises are better broken than kept.”, promptly had him executed and the head delivered to the girl who gave it to her mother.
Put simply John was executed for publicly saying aloud the truth that threatened the power of Herodias and Herod went along because he feared for his public reputation more than he honored truth.
This is America today.
We have not reach the “promptly executed” point in the US but if things don’t change it’s only a matter of time.
You see when we say basic truths like:
No amount of surgery can make a man a woman
A child is not competent to make life altering decisions about themselves
It’s a good idea to jail people who rob and loot and support police when they enforce the law
People should enter the country legally and the federal government should enforce the law
Children should not be sexualized
If you make it easier to cheat in elections they can’t be trusted
The government should not be used to jail their political enemies
If you’re going to give billions of dollars to someone they should be accountable
Drugs that have already been approved for people are safe to use vs COVID
We find an army of woke Herodias’ outraged not because those statements are false but because those statements challenge their delusions or their profits or their power bases and that army of woke Herodians put pressure on an army of Herod who they have granted their political, financial or even in some cases sexual favors to in their quest to get what they want.
Thus many institutions or pols, or business knowing that those making those statements are right but fearful of the wrath of the army of woke Herodians buckle. but not all.
There are still some who either because they still retain some backbone or fear the masses of the people more than the army of woke Herodians (who are actually much smaller then they appear) decide to reject them and side with the people and each time they it strikes fear in the hearts of the woke Herodians because they know their power is dependent on the fear of their Herods and the indifference of the masses.
There are John the Baptists out there. Tucker Carlson who faced the wrath of the woke Herodians but thrived despite it, Riley Gaines who refuses to bend the knee to Transgender Inc. Joe Rogan who talked openly about ivermectin to be used in Covid cases, Ron DeSantis who didn’t give in to either the COVID hysteria or the Disney/woke crowd on sexualizing children and yes Donald Trump as well who refused to bend the knee even as he is treated like an enemy of the state for being an enemy of dishonest elections.
I’m sure when the tyranny falls as all eventually do, first slowly and then all at once, millions will suddenly declare that they were with us just as many Frenchmen declared they were with the resistance as soon as the Germans were gone but till then who do you wish emulate? John the Baptist who spoke truth aloud and is remembered by two feasts of the church or Herodians who would with Herod would eventually die in exile?
Choose wisely.
Update: Tucker Carlson nails it:
None of our leaders are punished for lying. Instead, regular people are punished for telling the truth. That was part of our conversation with Hungarian leader Balázs Orbán. It happened immediately after our speech in Budapest. Watch. pic.twitter.com/HpWDBJFS6W
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