Several years ago I ‘volunteered’ (pressured is the better word) to help hand out food for a Thanksgiving drive. We gave out turkeys, potatoes, cranberry sauce - everything for free. There were people driving up in BMW or Lexus SUVs - all foreigners from Russia, East Asia, India. We were instructed not to question need. 50% was obvious fraud. But at the end the guy running this program was ecstatic. He talked about the sheer quantity of food we gave away without regard to helping anyone. Later I realized this ‘non-profit’ probably received state grants, the size of which depended on how much ‘good’ it was doing. Taxpayers had paid for free food for people who didn’t need it, a non-profit paid its employees and staff - and a bunch of suckers like me ‘volunteered’ to help the effort.

Blaming UKR for diesel prices was always just Trump blaming others for some really bad operational decisions in the Gulf.

Real campaign sign from here in Kelowna😂 I hope he wins!

After watching people spend the last few days talking about Pike - her childhood, her age, her trauma, her execution, her suffering - I want to talk about Colleen Slemmer. Because somehow the person who was murdered keeps becoming a footnote in the story of the person who murdered her. Colleen was 19 years old. She wasn't a case number. She wasn't simply "Christa Pike's victim." She was a daughter. A granddaughter. A young woman who loved roller-skating, miniature golf and computers. She could take a computer apart and put it back together again. She even had a shirt that said "Computer Geek." Her family later had that shirt made into a teddy bear so they could keep a piece of her close. ❤️ Colleen was also the kind of kid who gave up part of her own lunchtime to help children with disabilities - feeding students who needed assistance and helping kids in wheelchairs. She volunteered at Special Olympics events. One summer, she helped paint her school. She struggled with reading, but she was smart and fascinated by computers. She wanted training that wasn't available at the Job Corps program near her home in Florida, so at 19 years old she left her family and went to Knoxville to learn computers and build a future for herself. She never got that future. On January 12, 1995, Colleen was lured to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee agricultural campus. What happened next wasn't a momentary loss of control. Colleen was beaten and tortured during a prolonged attack. She was cut repeatedly. Her throat was slashed. A pentagram was carved into her chest. She was struck with a meat cleaver and ultimately suffered devastating blows to her head with a large piece of asphalt. Afterward, Pike took a piece of Colleen's skull from the scene. These details come from the court record - not internet rumor. Colleen was 19. Nineteen. And while the country is now being asked to think about what Christa Pike experienced during a failed execution, I think there's room to remember what Colleen experienced when nobody came to stop it. There's also room to remember everything that existed before those final horrifying moments. The girl who loved computers. The girl who roller-skated. The girl who helped children with disabilities eat their lunch. The girl who volunteered at the Special Olympics. The daughter whose mother has now spent more than three decades trying to make sure the world remembers her name. Her mother, May Martinez, said something this week that absolutely broke my heart: "The criminals get so much attention. Why? She has been lost in this." She's right. So today, I'm not posting Christa Pike's face. I'm posting Colleen's name. COLLEEN ANNE SLEMMER September 20, 1975 – January 12, 1995 She was here. She was loved. She mattered. And she deserves to be remembered for the life she lived - not only for the horrific way someone chose to end it. Remember Colleen. 🤍

They were surprised to learn that there was no life saving equipment in the… EXECUTION ROOM

“That’s a lot” vs. “We won’t miss it.” A powerful word for parents of teens. 🔥

This is how it’s done!

I have many thoughts on the Nikole Hannah-Jones story, especially having attended the kind of schools she sent her daughter to, but if we're looking for takeaways, here's a simple one. When an expert in education so thoroughly demonstrates a jarring and near complete lack of expertise in the act of getting an education for her own daughter, we should stop taking advice from her on curriculum, instruction, and all other fads disguised as wisdom she offers. That seems like the least we could do. Her daughter's personal struggle, which is indeed sympathetic, wasn't much of a teachable moment for her, as she doesn't seem to have updated any of her priors (and actually fudges funding facts, so as not to disrupt the narrative of under-resourced schools). But it should be a teachable moment for us, about the outsized influence of a scholar who claims to know better than anyone what her daughter would be up against in the school to which she chose to send her, but was inexplicably surprised and left her daughter completely unprepared for it.

Remember when I sued you in both state and federal court to open the beaches of Orange County that you maliciously closed, and you lifted the order so as to moot our cases before the hearings? You knew it back then too, Governor.

New Underground Railroad Established To Help Lone Black Juror Escape From Angry White Liberals In The North buff.ly/RpAaHu8

The idea that the state is the ultimate determiner of true information for all of society is of course the essence of fascism.

The dehumanization of babies and the humanization of pets is horrible

Lord have mercy, these women jurors instrumentalized law to make social policy. They are tearing down confidence in the justice system.

She doesn’t realize that believing she committed “altruistic filicide” means that she committed the murders with intent & knowledge. Meaning, she had the necessary mens rea to convict of 1st degree murder. That was the entire point of the doctor’s testimony who she references.

there are like 5 unique sentences left

Excitable Fiscal Hawks know what happend to inflation the last time the government handed out 'stimmy' checks during Covid.

At some point, you just need to ask yourself how liberal feminism has turned into a straight up cult of death. If you suggest that an unborn baby should be treated as a human, they’ll turn out in droves to oppose you If a woman viciously murders her three children, they'll feel sympathy for her instead of the dead kids.

Yes — and we are living through such a cycle.

Is he going to strangle her?

Seems to me that this path leads the US to being more like China than anything else. nationalinterest.org/feature…