Will anti-Albertan terrorist Mike Hudema lose his Facebook/Twitter accounts over this?

Earlier this week, eight protesters were arrested during a protest attracting around 150 people who oppose the oil pipeline replacement under construction, saying it threatens "waters the local tribes use to fish and harvest wild rice."

According to CBS,

[The group Giniw Collective] say that “several cultural site maps, numerous sacred and significant sites lie in the path of the Line 3 project.”

“Enbridge’s last ditch effort to build fossil fuel infrastructure is killing people and the planet. I refuse to be complicit in settler colonialist practices, and feel that I have to put my body on the line to protect indigenous communities sovereignty and all of our futures,” protester Abby Horberger said.

After all, we've learned this past week that all you have to do is call on your supporters to march or act, and if anybody "storms" a piece of property as a result then your social media accounts are obliterated.

Of course we all know the rules apply to us but not to them. Hudema is in fact, by Pelosi/Dorsey standards a domestic terrorist calling for insurrection. Yet strangely enough as his acolytes continue to invade private property and risk human lives no action has been taken.

I don't believe in the no-win worst case scenario

Back before Christmas I set a followup to this report on Global News by CP presstitute Shawn Jeffords:

New projections show infections in the province continue to rise and “hard” lockdowns of four to six weeks could bring cases down to less than 1,000 a day.

Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the province’s COVID-19 science advisory table, said anything less than a four-week lockdown will not work, based on the experience of other jurisdictions.

“Hard lockdown, a very stringent lockdown, with very strong communication, of four to six weeks can reduce case numbers in Ontario,” he said. “The duration of lockdown is very important.”

It's all the same bullshit you've seen before: only four week lockdowns work (despite the Wuhan Flu having a two week incubation period) but those 4 weeks need to be extended to 4 months before you can sneeze.

Brown said that if Ontario’s COVID-19 case rate continues to grow between one to three per cent, the province will have 3,000 to 5,000 daily cases by the end of January.

If the province sees “substantial growth” of seven per cent, Ontario will have 30,000 daily cases.

The new projections show that under all scenarios the province will see 300 intensive care unit beds filled within 10 days — double the 150-bed threshold where surgeries must be cancelled.

If you watched the report on Global television, you heard this part emphasized:

Under a worst-case-scenario, ICU occupancy could hit 1,500 beds by mid-January.

Well seeing how it's mid-January now I figured we should look into how things are looking. The first thing I noticed from the Ontario data is that on December 21st, the day of this report, there were 265 ICU patients, so we weren't talking about an explosion: notice that like all lying enemies of the people, Jeffords' report never mentioned the current levels were almost at 300 and indeed implied they were below the 150. Indeed, they hit 300 ICU patients on December 29th, and on the magical tenth day (December 31st) they were at 337.

So from 265 to 300 in ten days and from 300 to 1500 in the two weeks afterwards. So as of January 13th what were the ICU numbers in Ontario? 385.

In other words, their "worst case scenario" didn't even remotely come to pass. It was all fearmongering lies to make you demand Ford take stricter action to unfairly restrict the freedom of even more of your fellow citizens.

So just as the last "worst case scenario" fearporn was proven incorrect, get ready for Round Two:

Although the projections by Ontario's scientific advisers were presented to cabinet on Friday, the information is not slated to be made public until Tuesday.

Multiple sources who have seen the modelling tell CBC News it includes:

• Forecasts putting the province on track to report a daily average of 6,000 new cases of COVID-19 before the end of January.

So 6000 new cases by the "end of January". Scary, eh? But wait, Adalsteinn Brown (who claims to be a doctor) said in late December that cases could be 3000-5000 by the end of January. So which is it?

In early January cases broke 3000 per day, and other than a couple of days of 4000 spikes have settled around that level ever since. So their model widely overestimated ICU requirements while getting cases relatively close. But then they throw it all down the memory hole and expect us to live in fear with the second "sobering" data.

As I've mentioned many a time, if you looked at conservative media like Third Edge of the Sword or Breitbart or PJ Media since last January you'd see forecasts that more closely followed reality than any official models.

They never improve the models. They just hope that the Gell-Mann Effect lures you in again. When you see these people in the streets, spit in their eye.

Matt Gaetz for the win

Florida Republican Matt Gaetz nails it on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today:

For months, our cities burned, police stations burned, our businesses were shattered, and they said nothing, or they cheer-led for it, they fundraised for it, and they allowed it to happen in the greatest country in the world.

Now some have sighted the metaphor that the president lit the flame, but they lit actual flames, actual fires, and we had to put them out!

Unsurprisingly, Google News searches for this speech come up with zero hits. 

Reefer Lockdown Madness continues

Alberta is (senselessly) remaining in lockdown for (at least) two weeks longer than the three weeks promised back in December. You know, the ones that were supposed to expire earlier this week.

Which itself is curious: as the meme above says, if lockdowns worked and reduced the cases then why do we need to lockdown longer because cases aren't really going down? And if the lockdowns aren't effective at reducing the cases then why are we still bothering with them?

It's the second question at this point that will need to be asked, because it's clear now that the lockdowns flat out aren't working. And don't take piddling examples like the lockdowns in Ontario or New York, look at the real serious lockdowns in places like the United Kingdom, Belgium, or Bolivia.

Bolivia? Yes. As of September 2nd they had the second-strictest lockdowns in the world, and they still had almost 5000 Wuhan Flu deaths. 

Over in Europe, Austria had an extremely tight lockdowns (slightly relaxed over Christmas, take that Jason Kenney) and yet their deaths per million double Canada's. Belgium (partly due to too many Muslims) was hit early and hard by the Wuhan Flu with a big increase in deaths starting around October 11th and peaking November 10th. Viro Fascists will point to the lockdown being eased in September, apparently forgetting that the "eased" lockdown was still stricter than anything in Canada or the United States: while facemasks were no longer mandatory outdoors (!?) you were still allowed contact only with 5 people, with gatherings of 10 or more indoor or outdoor all banned. 

Back down to South America, Columbia has another one of the region's strictest lockdowns, and to what effect? From early June to early September their deaths continued to climb, then dropping slightly to a plateau from mid-September to mid-December, only to be climbing again. Yet again, their COVID restrictions make Alberta's look like a nothingburger, and an early September relaxing of their restrictions coincided with a levelling of their caseload and death count.

Which brings us, natch, to the UK. I wrote over Christmas about the Calgary Police cunts who won Mark Steyn's "Brit Wanker Copper of the Day" awards, but the very name of the award speaks to the UK constabulary who took their newfound powers over the citizenry to heart from the earliest days of "two weeks to flatten the curve". To wit, the British have been under severe lockdown since late March. Indeed, back in May:

It's worth noting that England far more than Canada or even most (if not all!) U.S. States has extreme lockdown rules.

And how has that worked out for them? Yeah, kind of poorly. New cases levelled off in April, but then by early October skyrocketed, with deaths recently returning to their April levels. And yet their strict lockdowns apparently did no good. The relaxed lockdown (still relatively strict!) that started on July 4th of all days was basically the start of a 4 month Wuhan Flu vacation: cases didn't climb until early October with deaths a week or so behind (note: not three weeks as the Viro Fascists always call for). By October 31st the UK was back into insanely strict lockdown territory and the end result has been...wait this can't be right: cases and deaths keep climbing (yet still -- still -- far below what the "models" were suggesting: Boris was told "thousands of deaths a day" but the UK seems to be peaking this week with 1300 daily deaths). The four week lockdown from October 31st by the way is still on to this very day, with apparently middling results.

So this, as it always does, swings back to Sweden. Sweden of course has been locked down, just less so than (almost) everybody else: even in May of 2020 there were limits on the size of gatherings and capacity restrictions for businesses. In late November Sweden instituted stricter lockdowns, a month later even stricter stricter lockdowns, and now even crazier lockdowns. Yet starting in early November cases and deaths started to spike (despite, one notes, no policy changes related to lockdowns), and neither the November 24th lockdowns nor the December 24th lockdowns (remember: even Viro Fascists claim that 3 weeks later you should see benefits) have stemmed the tide in Sweden. Yet their September and October numbers were the envy of the world. Again the key point is no correlation between lockdown measures and cases/deaths.

(As a brief aside, isn't it weird that Sweden counts aren't updated daily, which causes the fancy graphs to all show false spikes? Going 3 days with counts of zero make the "254 cases today" more like 85 cases per day. Just another way that the data is manipulated to impact how you think a country is doing)

As Alberta continues into a costly and harmful lockdown, the question remains: why are we bothering? It's a purely political gesture: lockdowns have no impact on cases or deaths, but cases and deaths do cause far-left media outlets and bleating liberals to demand further and further restrictions (just look at Doug Ford's new curfew that isn't called a curfew, an entirely manufactured media outrage that now has determined public policy). Just like how Calgary and Edmonton had mask bylaws since August which had no impact on Wuhan Flu transmission, lockdowns are just another example of Politician's Logic.

Why are conservative governments letting their ministers promote Twitter, a far-left site that bans their followers?

My Twitter account is in Thelma and Louise mode as I post this — a mass deletion app is purging my old content.

There’s no point in remaining on the platform, even as a source of breaking news. Trump and others have been purged in the past few hours, and the high value accounts like Andy Ngo are surely next.

Apple is threatening to ban Parler. Face it folks, it’s time to rebuild the independent conservative blogosphere.

Believe it or not, much of this post was already completed by the time this news started breaking: the far-left site is doing more and more to remove principled conservative voices for "crimes" which violent thugs in mid-2020 enjoyed without worry.

So the question remains: why are conservative governments not doing more to take away Twitter's power by requiring all ministers and departments migrate over to Gab or Parler? Over the Christmas holidays, Alberta's medical chick Deena Hinshaw used Twitter to publish the province's COVID updates, which were dutifully repeated in the mainstream media: the subtle implication being this internet platform is useful and you should be a member.

Meanwhile, this same platform bans and shadowbans the people who are interested in re-electing her boss Jason Kenney. So what's the motivation for Kenney to allow this to continue?

Imagine instead an alternate world where Hinshaw was only permitted by government order to communicate in her official capacity on a free speech enabling platform like Gab^†?

^†For the purposes of this post I'll use Gab as the example, though this will apply equally to Parler or MeWe. I'm actually planning an upcoming blogpost about Parler, as I have a few technical notes to make about how the site needed to be improved (which may or may not be impacted by the move from Amazon)

In that case, the fake news pressitutes at Global News would be required to show a screenshot of Hinshaw's Gab post, mention Gab on the air, and make the subtle implication being this internet platform is useful and you should be a member.

This was one of the issues with Trump being on the censoring Big Tech sites in the first place: his popularity and presence was giving them legitimacy this whole time: every time there was attention to something Trump said on Twitter he was inadvertently providing comfort to his enemy.

So here's my free advice to Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, Doug Ford, Blaine Higgs, etc: get yourself, your cabinet ministers, your government departments, and your government officials off of Twitter and Facebook. If they want personal accounts that's one thing, but absolutely no government business should be conducted on the Big Tech censorship networks who are busy silencing the conservative voices who not only are superior to leftist voices but are also the only people who are going to be putting you into office again.

No more Twitter posts that links to press releases. No more announcements or clarifications or anything other than Gab. Sure you'll find that mysteriously the mainstream media will no longer be linking to or embedding your Gab posts and you won't be engaging with your leftist constituents, but that's a feature and not a bug.

Twitter and Facebook are far-left organizations who actively harm the conservative cause. We've already seen the cumulative effects of this at the ballot box both in Alberta in 2015 and America in 2020. Unless you want the (superior) conservative cause to be chased out of the argument and then the levers of power, you need to fight back.

Storming the federal building was cool in 2018

via email:

What a difference two years makes. On October 4, 2018, taking over the Capitol was just another form of protest.

On that date, The Hill reported, “More than 300 people were taken into custody by police on Capitol Hill after descending on a pair of Senate office buildings Thursday afternoon to protest the confirmation process of Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

“The vast majority of the arrests, 293, were a result of protests in the Hart Senate Office Building, where protesters crowded in the atrium. Loud chants could be heard throughout the building, which is structured so the hallways of each floor open up and look out onto the first floor.

“Those arrested in Hart were charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, according to Capitol Police. Another nine people were arrested on the fourth floor of Dirksen Senate Office Building and charged with unlawful demonstrations.”

CNN also called the crowd protesters.

On Wednesday, CNN called pro-Trump protesters who stormed the Capitol “rioters.

NPR called them "far-right insurrectionists."

In 2018, NPR called the anti-Kavanaugh crowd "demonstrators" and titled its coverage of the storming: " 'We Believe Survivors': Demonstrators Throng Capitol Hill To Protest Kavanaugh"

CNN gushed in 2018, "Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski were arrested in Kavanaugh protests."

The story included a tweet from Ratajkowski, who tweeted, "Today I was arrested protesting the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. Men who hurt women can no longer be placed in positions of power."

Benny Johnson tweeted back, "You're joking, right? Arrested?

"I watched the cops walk up to you and ask politely if you wanted to be arrested. You & Amy Schumer said 'yes.' Then you both just sat comfortably on the floor until the cops gave you special wristbands & politely escorted you out

I have video."

Being arrested was good for their brand as both got lucrative endorsement contracts for tampons (Schumer) and perfume (Ratajkowski).

Capitol Police shot and killed a protester on Wednesday. She was an Air Force veteran.

In 2018, there were no calls to remove Senator Kamala Harris for riling people up.

And no Democrat senator said she was going to vote against the appointment but upon seeing the protest inside Senate office buildings, she was so ashamed that she would vote for Kavanaugh.

Contrast and compare to Kelly Loeffler's waffling. This shows feminism has achieved its goal of equality because she's as big a weasel as any man.

Well, except Mitt Romney. No one is his equal. He gives weasels a bad name.

White House staffers are leaving after Wednesday's protests by pro-Trump demonstrators. They figure they can devote the next 2 weeks full-time to landing a new gig. Where they land will tell you how loyal they were to the president and his supporters. The bigger the salary, the bigger the weasel.

Book deals are the biggest tell. Can Bill Barr top Kellyanne Conway's advance, or will he have to settle for the mere $2 million that John Bolton landed?

In 2018, the press was ho-hum about the taking over of Senate offices. 

Was this Trump's fault too?

— Fiery but mostly peaceful 🔥 (@tappy1008) January 7, 2021

Twitter is calling the protest on Wednesday an insurrection.

The way the media frames protests matters, which is why they support the anti-American ones and attack the patriotic ones.

The press will be protected from the reprisals that are coming.

Well, maybe not Fox.

But look for full federal funding of NPR in the next round of covid 19 relief.

John Earle Sullivan, who was inside the Capitol building during the siege on Wednesday, previously gave a speech in BLM Plaza in DC in August 2020 where he identifies as being part of an insurgency group & calls for a violent left-wing revolution.

Je Suis Ashli Babbitt

"There’s never an avalanche around when you need one" (and always a tumour when you don't)

Kathy Shaidle 1964 – 2021

Her tombstone reads: GET OFF MY LAWN! 

She is relieved she won’t have to update her LinkedIn profile, shave her legs, or hear “Creep” by Radiohead ever again. Some may even be jealous that she’s getting out of enduring a Biden presidency. 

Deny WestJet employees EI benefits

WestJet has had to furlough more employees due to the Wuhan Flu restrictions by various levels of government, and their CEO has been quick to lay blame at the foot of the Shiny Pony:

CEO Ed Sims said Friday that WestJet — which is now operating a network size similar to what it had in 2001 — continues to face volatile demand and instability in the face of continuing federal government travel advisories and restrictions.

Sims said the most immediate concern is a new directive issued by the federal government on Dec. 31 requiring all air passengers five years of age or older will be required to test negative for COVID-19 before travelling from another country to Canada, effective Jan. 7.

The test must be taken 72 hours before departure, and documentation of a negative laboratory test result must be presented to the airline prior to boarding a flight to Canada. Anyone who receives a negative test result and is authorized to enter Canada must still complete the full, mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Sims said immediately following the Dec. 31 announcement, WestJet saw “significant reductions in new bookings and unprecedented cancellations.”

“The entire travel industry and its customers are again on the receiving end of incoherent and inconsistent government policy,” Sims said.

There's only one minor problem of course with WestJet being the victim of the uncaring and nonsensical Justin Trudeau government: they have been aggressively chasing away their customers on a corporate level, and as individual employees similarly attacking customers on one hand and unionizing on the other.

Wait, I can hear you asking, what does that last bit have to do with anything? You didn't even provide a link.

Well, in 2018 WestJet employees stopped being caring owners and became lazy and worthless CUPE union employees. Why is this relevant? It's because CUPE and the NDP who are continually propping up Rat Bastard 2.0's government are joined at the hip.

In other words, Justin's evil government that cost WestJet employees their jobs was their idea this whole time. So why should taxpayers be on the hook for their benefits?

Leftist union support means WestJet employees should starve

It's time that we stopped giving those who provide support for disgusting organizations like CUPE a free ride. You make your bed with Jazz Meat Sing? You go lie in it. Let CUPE pay your wages during this "furlough" period. It is, after all, essentially strike pay. Think of it the business version of that old "bizarre suicide" gag from the early days of the internet.

Supporters of the Liberals and NDP need to start enduring the lion's share of the suffering their intrusive government policies are causing on citizens and the economy. Denying EI payments to workers at companies whose unions prop up the feds would be a great start.

Is there still time for President Trump to give Miranda Rosin the Medal of Freedom?

High Country News has been suffering some server issues because of the bandwidth, so here's Miranda Rosin's article in full:

Freedom in a Floundering World

If you are like me, you are likely wondering what this 2021 will look like. A short twelve months ago we embarked optimistically into our new decade as a province with unbounded confidence towards our economy and way of life. But our world has changed drastically since then. The simple, happy lives we freely lived have fallen victim to a never before seen virus and the decisions of worldly governments feebly attempting to slow its spread. Society has had serious conversations about legislation’s ability to force medical examinations and treatments. People are demanding that vaccines be made mandatory on the general populous. Businesses shutter in while the masses call for stay-in-place lockdown orders, and for the first time in our history as a Western world we are unable to go certain places in public without covering our face. At times it seems as though the distinguishable rights, freedoms and compassion that historically made me so proud to be Canadian are being diminished to no more than a memory lingering distantly in the back of my mind. I know I am not alone in feeling that way.

At stores, those who do not wear their masks quite properly or forget to hand sanitize upon entrance are sneered at with judgement by passersby, and sorting through the produce to find a pure, unblemished fruit has become a novelty of the past. Churches and religious institutions, the only places left where people can turn to for hope and community, are mocked and scorned for remaining open. Just the thought of receiving a hug, a gesture formally known to represent warmth and comfort, now horrifies some. Our precious little world has lost its way.

Over the past ten months we have seen nearly every democratic society in the Western world gamble away their longstanding values of freedom and self-determination in surrender to fear and uncertainty. I am proud to say that Alberta has not, but I do worry the wills of society are changing.

Our Government has worked hard to keep 85% of our economy open during even the worst of times and avoid far-reaching lockdowns, contrary to almost everywhere else. We have vowed never to make vaccines mandatory and will even be going so far as to repeal section 38(1)(c) of the Public Health Act which allows for such. I have personally fought back against the legality of forced treatments as Deputy Chair of the Public Health Act Review. Yet many amongst us are unhappy about these endeavors. What is scariest about the current state of our world is not that people have begrudgingly surrendered their personal freedoms to the Government, but that they have begged and pleaded for the Government to take them away even when it did not want to do so. To paraphrase a neighbor of ours, people have been societally conditioned over the past year to view freedom as selfishness. That is a sad realization to admit. They say it takes just three weeks to form a habit, and we are now ten months into COVID 19 behaviour.

Heading into 2021, our province faces a pivotal crossroads in our history. We may choose to follow the path that so many other jurisdictions have chosen and establish a permanent, deeply held reliance on the Government, looking to institutions for continued moral, emotional, and financial support, or we may return to the old normal we all knew and loved where people lived without fear of their future and walked with confidence. I know which of the two options I prefer.

Ronald Reagan famously said that “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on.”

The fate of this new year and our future here on earth are the responsibility of no one other than ourselves to determine. As we embark into 2021, we must assess what kind of world we want to live in; what demands we may shortsightedly make of those with the ability to enact them and what the long- term consequences of those demands may be. We must also assess the role both ourselves and Government are expected to play in that world, and to what extent. We can get past COVID 19, but we need to want to do it.

The 20’s can still be our best years yet if we let them be. Stepping forward into this new year, let’s push for better. The future is in our hands, and with diligence and responsibility we can get our old normal back.

By Miranda Rosin, MLA

Note this great comment by Paul Lawson at the biased Calgary Herald coverage of the story amid all the Viro Fascists demanding Rosin be cancelled:

And of course we see the typical commenters against a politician actually suggesting that personal freedoms should be a consideration when governments impose rules and restrictions. Apparently trying to enjoy life rather than just to exist is considered selfish to some of the more bitter and angry commenters here. I assume in the name of safety these folks would also support 10 kph speed limits, the outlawing of drinking and smoking, and the elimination of any potentially dangerous recreational activities.

Does Gord Steinke feel bad for lying to Edmontonians?

Helpful hint: "deadly mob" only works the the 'mob' causes a death, not when one of their own is shot by police. Would you call George Floyd a "deadly criminal"?

While we're on the subject, you called them "protests" that turned violent back in June, why aren't you using the same phrase this week like an nonbiased news anchor should?

Update, January 9th 11:20am: Steinke and Global News also lied by omission by refusing to tell their viewers about last week's militant riots in Portland that spoil their anti-Trump narrative.

@ExInfernum - like when Canada banned sodomy in 1981 to solve the AIDS crisis?

As always with these Viro Fascists, they never ask why we didn't mandate "social distancing" between faggots when HIV was "out of control"...

Re-read your Constitution. It says everyone has the right to life. Your government should be doing what it can to protect you. In the absence of that, state and local leaders try and fill the hole. Your right to freedom does not trump (pun intended) their right to life.

— Paladin (@ExInfernum) November 26, 2020

If Bloomberg was consistent (they wouldn't be evil)

Quick, guess which headline is actually the far-left anti-business "business channel" headline and which is the mockup?

It's not just Bloomberg of course... over at Global News (who always lie about conservatives), it's a "dark and dangerous moment in modern American history". Back when niggers were mad that a criminal died of COVID while a cop's knee was on his neck that wasn't a "dark and dangerous moment" according to Global News but instead people were "calling attention" to a perceived injustice...which is totally different than what happened in Washington yesterday, apparently.

(as always, the Babylon Bee totally nails it: "Mostly Peaceful Protestors Breach US Capitol")

Who else nailed it? Mark Steyn obviously has hit on this theme numerous times: in 2017 on the Tucker Carlson show he noted the link between free expression and political violence:

Steyn was reacting to Tucker Carlson's monologue regarding corporations and progressives censoring speech of offensive factions.

He agreed that, while white supremacy is abhorrent, stifling the rights of more moderate factions lead to those factions finding other ways to express themselves.

"The less freedom of speech we have, the more we have what we saw over the weekend," he said. "All you can do is blow things up and shoot people."

"It always starts off with [white nationalist websites], but it goes further than that," he said. 

And of course what's happened since early November is that Big Tech has been actively banning speech that dares to suggest that the 2016 election was rigged. Oh, wait, sorry, that's the 2020 election...you're totally allowed to express (false) beliefs about the validity of Trump's victory. #StopTheSteal rallies have had their media coverage suppressed, their hashtags shadowbanned, and their evidence and red-flags ignored.

So why act surprised when, as Kate at smalldeadanimals always says, conservatives are learning that not rioting has been a public policy failure? Why act surprised when the ballot box doesn't work that maybe revolution is worth a try?

Another website casualty

thelastlinkontheleft.com, the website that for a while was tracking every murder in Edmonton, is no more: 

In July 2015, due to circumstances detailed below, the contents of this website were removed from the Internet.

Last Link crossed paths with Third Edge of the Sword on several occasions, as one might expect when the subject of Edmonton murders comes up. The biggest case, of course, was the Shernell Sharon Pierre saga:

Shernell Sharon Pierre, a 26 year old Caribbean immigrant, was working at the Misery-cordia hospital in west Edmonton. She had been in a relationship with a married man, and later left him for another. After her shift at the hospital the evening of March 12, 2008, she left the premises and wasn't seen again until 11:23pm when her car was discovered burning up with her inside of it, on the side of 170th Street just south of 87th Avenue at West Edmonton Mall. The only thing recovered was her bible. Her purse was found a few blocks further west.

Two days later, Shernell Pierre was identified by police as the victim, and investigators started asking the public for information related to what was now believed to be the murder of Shernell Pierre.

That's where I come in.

The original LLotL post about Pierre's murder is now gone: the Wayback Machine gives you a 503 error when you try to go look at it but I was able to hack together the archived site.

I had noticed that in 2014 the site had given up on listing new murders: I thought maybe the guy just got tired of it all. Guess not.

Devin Nunes as Jacques Clouseau

Over at The Federalist, Mollie Hemingway details how Devin Nunes went from a snackpack-ish^† young Republican (slightly hawkish on Russia) to the victim of endless media hit pieces as he stood up for what's right and defeated Adam Schiff's lame attempts to push the Russian collusion story.

^†For those who don't get the reference...

It's a great read, but one part about it really stuck out to me:

The daily onslaught of Russia collusion stories made life difficult for anyone who stood against the tide. The media were in a constant state of hysteria. Nunes stood mostly alone in insisting there was no evidence Trump had colluded with Russia, but there were strong indications the FBI’s investigation of the issue had been corrupted. It wasn’t just Democrats, media operatives, and leftwing groups who were attacking him but even fellow Republicans.

Sen. Lindsay Graham frequently appeared on television in the last year to complain about the Russia collusion hoax. He even held a couple of hearings in the fall of 2020 — long after it mattered. But back in 2017, Graham went on NBC News to mock Nunes, saying he was running “an Inspector Clouseau investigation.” Republican Rep. Walter Jones called on Nunes to resign from the committee leadership.

When Graham was on NBC News, did the anchor or whoever not mention (or not know) how ridiculous that analogy was? Yes yes it works as a soundbyte, a pithy thing to put next to his photo in the newspaper article about his interview the next day.

There's only one teeny tiny minor problem with this comparison:

Clouseau was always right about another character's guilt or innocence.

Just like Nunes.

In the first movie, nobody else on the police force (there's no Dreyfus yet, but there's Henri and Tucker) agreed with Clouseau's contention that "The Phantom" was actually Sir Charles Lytton (David Niven): the police are trying to figure out his identity with the sting operation at the beginning (the one that almost catches Clouseau's wife), and it's heavily implied that the police force isn't interested in the Lytton-as-Phantom theory and that's why Clouseau goes to Switzerland to catch Lytton in the act himself. So if Nunes was running a "Clouseau investigation" in this case it means going above and beyond to nail the guilty party (that only Nunes recognized was evil). You can't even necessarily call it a bundled investigation really: the zany physical comedy you associate with the character actually wasn't present in the original 1963 film: I actually rewatched it about a month ago (during an evening snowfall, and I had European ski resorts on the brain). 

In the second movie, nobody else on the police force (particularly Dreyfus, but also Hercule because Clouseau's underling's name has to start with H for some reason) believes that Maria Gambrelli is innocent. So if Nunes is running a "Clouseau investigation" he's busy trying to to prove how a person (Trump) is innocent even when every official voice is insisting he's guilty. Remind you of anything you'd heard of over the past four years? Here's where the film mocks Clouseau as always making things worse as he doggedly pursues his goal: this is the personification of Inspector Clouseau that the general public thinks of.

But calling Nunes' efforts to prove how Schiff and the Democrats invented the entire Russian collusion hoax "an Inspector Clouseau investigation" isn't the insult that 2017 Graham thought it was. It actually fits the facts on the ground better than he might think.

The intellectual laziness of homo acerbia†

Why are women so stupid?

^† For those wondering what homo acerbia is from, see here.

So last night I'm watching The Guest, the okay but not amazing movie about a man who shows up at a family's door claiming to be the best buddy of their recently deceased soldier son. In time he gets involved in all the family drama, disrupts their lives, and goes on a killing spree only to magically survive like Mike Myers at the end. Oh, right, warning: spoilers.

The point is for the first part of the story David appears to be what he claims to be, if perhaps a little demented. Things start falling apart when the dead soldier's sister (the very sexy Maika Monroe who I'm mentioning to shamelessly post her photo) gets suspicious and calls the army base who directs the call to a shady corporate HQ where an executive in a military haircut orders them to "stick with the cover story". As a result, the base tells Anna that David died in a fire two weeks earlier. Meanwhile, the executive starts making suspicious calls.

"Shady". "Suspicious".

You may notice those specific words I used above: at this point in the movie we don't know as an audience what's really going on. I didn't know what was going on, the woman next to me didn't know what was going on.

I understood this was something we didn't yet understand. She refused to accept this and demanded I explain everything to her. Right then and there. All the way to how the movie would end (despite her knowing ahead of time that while I had watched the first 40 minutes or so before, I fell asleep during it and didn't know how it ended). She wanted everything explained to her. Painstakingly. Because she's stupid. Because she's a stupid woman.

She's not alone either. They're all like that. I can't tell you the number of women I've had ruin a movie by demanding (even pausing to insist) that I explain what's going on. The moment they receive imperfect information they get very very upset and refuse to allow the movie to give you a mystery followed by the resolution.

What's up with Captain Ramius killing Putin at the beginning to The Hunt for Red October? Is the daughter at the start of Heredity possessed? Why is Kevin Spacey talking about a barbershop quartet instead of telling us what happened on that boat? Why did Bruce Willis kill that guy in the airport/train station at the start of Lucky Number Slevin? What's going on behind the restaurant in Mulholland Drive? Who or what did Charlie shoot at the beginning of Straw Dogs? Who's this guy in the black suit demanding to know what the rebels did with their stolen plans?

Every one of these movies explains the mystery at some point during the runtime (yes, even the David Lynch movie that does leave a bit of the circumstances abstract). Some movies like The Usual Suspects are all about the mystery and it isn't resolved until eight seconds before the closing credits. Others like The Hunt for Red October setup the mystery in Act One and by Act Three that mystery has been resolved and the story has progressed from that original tension into the dramatic stakes that fuel the rest of the story. Darth Vader is explained halfway through Star Wars to your satisfaction in that story (future stories expand on his relationship with the other characters but if you only watch the 1977 movie you know everything you really need to know about him).

Men understand this. Women, being stupid, do not. They seem to think it was some failure (on the filmmaker's part, not theirs, obviously!) to properly explain things and that you, as the man who by default are smarter and more insightful, might have pieced together the answer and can therefore explain it all to them.

The worst thing is that it's usually true. We usually have, and we usually can. We sometimes get it wrong (I had theorized in The Guest that David actually was their son and he had undergone some sort of special Face/Off style surgical procedure, maybe mixed in with a bit of RoboCop to explain his strength and "shutdown" scene earlier) but we've always at least pieced together part of the story. And we were all paying enough attention to know what's happening and the likely outcomes.

This is, of course, the "mansplaining" conundrum: men actually do need to explain things all the time because we're smarter than women are. Then we get chastised for it, typically about 45 seconds after the woman herself either explicitly or implicitly required us to do so. Because they're really that stupid.

@joyforkansas - Pay public school teachers the same as babysitters ($12/hr and help yourself to the snacks in the fridge)

So they've just come out and said it: the public school teachers who teach lies to your children with your tax dollars are promoting themselves as a glorified babysitting service:

Important truth: “Kansas economy is driven in large part by the function of our schools to care for children while their parents work.” Funding matters. #ksed #ksleg https://t.co/AYakLKaEce

— Dr. Joy Koesten (@joyforkansas) December 29, 2020

So if we're going to take Joy on her word, funding doesn't really matter does it?

Teachers salaries can be cut to a level more appropriate for the level of service that "educators" -- of their own volition, mind! -- agree that they provide.

Public school teachers keep your kids from accidentally drinking turpentine, and know how to dial 9-1-1 if they break their arm playing touch football. As the title of this post implies, that's worth the rate of a decent sitter, which as all parents know is just a slightly-less immature moron than her charges, but hey she works on the cheap and helps drive the "marriage economy" by which couples get out of the house together now and again.