“Sandy had lost both front feet to hunters’ leg-hold traps. The sweet little dog will soon have his professionally made prosthetic legs, which our vet is ordering from the US. We can’t wait! But, for now, he’s very happy, much loved by Bob Chau, and, apart from missing two front feet, he’s very healthy.
Huge thanks to Ross Td of Taiwan Adventures hiking specialists for getting us up and down safely, and to Lazy Lease for getting us up and down safely, and to Lazy Lease for calling in the rescue when she spotted Sandy and his appalling injuries while hiking in that very remote location.
And thanks to Sandy for making a very difficult rescue much easier than it would have been if he was bigger or less friendly!”
DCG
Better than Drudge Report. Check out Whatfinger News, the Internet’s conservative frontpage founded by ex-military!
Am I to assume that the food truck owner will not call the police if she is robbed or raped in her truck? Wouldn’t want her to feel “unsafe.”
The owner of the food truck identifies as a brown queer person. She pulled out two cards for this fight!
From Fox News: A food truck owner in Detroit, Michigan says she won’t serve police officers or other law enforcement officials because she, along with the “majority” of her customers, “do not feel safe around law enforcement agents.”
The owner of Rocky’s Road Brew, Rocky Coronado, wrote on Facebook Friday that she is “well within [her] rights to refuse service to law enforcement agents,” such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security, and local police officers.
The truck owner detailed in a separate post that she turned away two officers on Friday who were “in a unmarked, black suburban with tinted windows both with bulletproof vests and badges.”
The officers, according to Coronado, circled back around with a third person after being told the food truck was closed, and asked why they weren’t served.
“Not feeling confrontational, I meekly told her that I don’t serve law enforcement,” the owner wrote.
The officer allegedly said she was with the Michigan Humane Society, and “quickly became belligerent.”
According to Coronado, one officer took photos of her and other customers, and the officers’ “false account of what happened” was posted online. “The posts went viral and I decided to post why I do not serve law enforcement agents,” the owner wrote.
The Michigan Humane Society did not immediately return Fox News’ request for comment.
The Facebook post said that “because of the madness” and backlash the posts have received, Rocky’s Road Brew temporarily will be closed.
DCG
Better than Drudge Report. Check out Whatfinger News, the Internet’s conservative frontpage founded by ex-military!
Remember, Rahm Emanuel said to Chicagoans back in 2016: “To all those who are, after Tuesday’s election, very nervous and filled with anxiety … you are safe in Chicago, you are secure in Chicago and you are supported in Chicago.”
Oh wait, Rahm was speaking to illegal aliens.
From MyFoxChicago: What started off as a peaceful afternoon in the 2000 Block of North Leamington turned horrific in just moments as witnesses watched a man being dragged down the street and then sent flying by a speeding SUV that kept on going.
“They’redragging him, smashing him repeatedly against the parked cars on the left side, and I have no idea who it was, what caused it, nothing,” said the victim’s wife who asked that her name not be used out of concerns about retribution.
The incident happened around 1:00 p.m.on June 22nd. The victim, 20-year-old husband Roman Dzyubinskyy, a driver for Grub Hub, had taken his dog for a walk just before. He was called over to the vehicle where he was seen talking to the driver and then a conversation turned tragic.
“Everybody started approaching me and telling me they saw him walk up to the car and they had like a four or five minute conversation, and then after that next thing you know the driver grabbed onto his arm like pulled him in and took off,” said Dzyubinskyy’s wife, who has a different last name. The hit-and-run left Dzyubinskyy in a coma with spinal fractures and brain damage. A neighbor shared the video on her Facebook page hoping someone might know who owns the vehicle.
“For a human being to do that to another human being, it’s a horrific sight, me being a parent and a grandparent, it’s like I can’t believe somebody could do that,” said a woman who heard a loud thump and came out to see the victim sprawling, bleeding and not moving in the middle of the street. The callousness of the driver may be stunning, but the victim’s wife is also frustrated with police.
“I’ve called them since this happened and told them I had these videos, they haven’t asked for them, they haven’t looked at them, they haven’t cared. And yes, it’s very hard for me to watch those videos (but) not as hard as seeing him in the hospital,” said Dzyubinskyy’s wife.
DCG
It’s the “Classic Mother BB Gun Block.”
Pro-tip for the women cited in this article: We have THOUSANDS of strict gun laws already on the books. The problem is enforcement and those darn criminals who don’t obey them.
And if you’re interested in teaching your child about proper firearm safety instead of an irrational fear, there are LOTS of resources available. For example, see here, here, here, here, here and here.
From Yahoo (originally from Vogue): Over the weekend, on a party supplies run at Flying Tiger, the charming Danish discount store, my 4-year-old daughter’s eyes sparkled at the sight of a neon-color water gun. “Can I have that?” she asked—the same question she’d repeated at the sight of the modeling clay and princess crowns and silly straws.
I wavered for a beat. I’d come of age in the late ’80s and ’90s—the height of the backyard Super Soaker battle. And before that water gun became the hottest ticket at Toys “R” Us, my brother and I had wielded tiny green plastic water pistols filled and refilled with rudimentary plugs, sneakily shooting each other in the eyes. I remember all of this as pure, absurd fun. “No,” I told my daughter, and briskly steered her on.
I offered no explanation in the moment—and I hadn’t really turned the question over in my head before—but my gut gave me my answer: that I didn’t want to introduce her to this or any other gun in a world that already seemed to be teeming with them in movies and video games, on TV and, most of all, on the news. Her fleeting interest in the toy gun was innocent, but, sadly, my view of it no longer was. The water gun fights my brother and I used to have in the summer were from another era, maybe even another world—before Columbine and Parkland; Orlando and Sutherland Springs; and before these much-covered mass shootings rightfully reminded the public of the regularly occurring violence in lower socioeconomic and minority communities. Back then, guns might have been just toys; now, it’s impossible for me not to see them as charged with the trauma of recent events.
I considered that same question again today—should we let our children play with toy guns at a time when the U.S. is grappling with the impact of gun violence?—when I saw the pictures of Prince George holding a rather realistic-looking black toy gun at an English polo match over the weekend. Part of the debate over toy guns has hinged on distinguishing them, clearly, as toys—so as never to be mistaken for the real thing. There are state laws, including one in New York, requiring toy guns be brightly colored, as opposed to black, aluminum, or silver. Perhaps for this reason, the photos stood out: to some eyes, the prince’s looked eerily like a real pistol. “I gasped when I saw the photos,” an American friend said on Facebook.
And she has a reason to: America has a gun violence homicide rate that is 25 times higher than that of other developed countries, according to Everytown for Gun Safety; we outrank all other countries in the number of mass shootings that occur here; we own an estimated half of all civilian guns worldwide. A child wielding a toy gun in the U.K., where firearms are much harder to obtain, arouses a different sense of shock or unease than they might in America, though no less alarming—remember the brouhaha when Pippa Middleton’s friend pointed a firearm out of their convertible at a paparazzi? There’s also the matter of who’s holding the toy gun. “The photo of Prince George juxtaposed with the story of Tamir Rice, a young black boy killed by police in Ohio because he had a toy gun in hand is an important part of the racial and white supremacy dynamics at play here,” Erika Soto Lamb, the founding and former head of communications for Everytown and Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety and a mother of two sons, ages 5 and 7, told Vogue. “It’s not safe for a black child in America to play with toy guns.”
Soto Lamb is a Texas native who was raised around real guns; she grew up playing cops and robbers and revering A Christmas Story—the irreverent classic in which mischievous young Ralphie Parker dreams of his very own BB gun. But she does not allow her two sons to play with toy guns of any kind. While at Everytown and Moms Demand Action, “when my life was a daily deluge of news stories about gun violence in America, and working with mothers whose children had been killed, it was simply untenable to come home and hand my children guns to play with,” Soto Lamb said.
When I began asking other parents today about kids and toy guns, many echoed her uneasiness. “My daughter is just 3, but I don’t think a gun can be an innocent toy in this day and age,” Anna Davies, a fellow writer in Jersey City, New Jersey, told me. “It’s much easier to just not have them in our lives.” Another friend said she was “uncomfortable” when her 5-year-old daughter recently received a toy water gun in a birthday party goodie bag. One mother stealthily returned a “machine-gun” toy loaded with foam pellets that her son received at his own birthday party. “It was designed to look like the real deal,” she said. “I was so horrified, I immediately stashed it away while he was busy tearing into his other gifts.”
I can hear the other side now: that parents denying their kids toy guns are overthinking this. That a toy is still just a toy. But if Barbies arguably possess the power to body shame little girls, and princesses can mess with their sense of independence, then can’t guns, even if just subliminally, sanction violence? “I believe we have a cultural problem with guns in this country, and I don’t want to normalize the use of them,” Kathy Healy Champion, a mother of three in Connecticut, said. She doesn’t allow her children to play with toy guns. “I see it as a step in the right direction.”
After Sandy Hook, Soto Lamb says she began to view A Christmas Story through a different lens: “I realized that America’s problem with gun violence goes deeper than any laws, there is a cultural shift that needs to happen,” she said. “We give them blocks to inspire them to be builders, we give them paint to inspire artistic expression . . . what are we feeding our children, in the metaphorical sense, when we hand them toy guys to play with?”
It doesn’t have to be a real gun to spark debate: According to Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, even emoji guns carry a certain charge that doesn’t necessarily belong in our texts or tweets: all of those companies scrapped their original gun emojis in favor of “water guns.” The TSA—Transportation Security Administration—recommends toy guns be packed with checked baggage; it bans “squirt guns, Nerf guns, toy swords, or other items that resemble realistic firearms or weapons.”
For some parents, the question of how to handle toy guns is ongoing—some allow just water guns and only of the bright-colored variety. Others have nuanced rules—that toy guns should never be pointed at people or used to pretend-kill someone. (But, then again, that’s usually the point of a gun, whether real or fake.) Some parents say the decision isn’t easy—one mother reluctantly allows her sons to partake in paintball gunning, so as not to make them feel left out among friends. The hardest part for Soto Lamb is banning water guns. “Water guns are really so fun, but let’s be honest, Super Soakers are basically assault weapon–style water guns,” she said. “We make do with water blasters”—long tubes with no trigger—“and water balloons.”
Several parents told me their concerns about toy guns tend to get dwarfed by their worry over real gun violence. Responding to some online backlash about Prince George’s toy gun, Davies said, “I wish the outrage would continue to be directed at the NRA, not Prince George and the royal family. Maybe if we lived in a society that had strict gun laws, our toddlers could also play with pretend guns. I think it’s actually something to aspire to—let’s become a society where guns are just as fantastical as lightsabers.”
DCG
The Queen has spoken.
From Hollywood Reporter: Elton John has no tolerance for homophobia, and now the legend has blamed social media for allowing hate speech to slide on their platforms. In an interview with BBC News on Friday (June 8), John said that major social media companies “haven’t done anything to try to stem the flow of hate on the internet,” and proposed that a boycott could make them take action. “I don’t know why they allow it. It’s supposed to be free speech, but the things that are on social media are so disgusting that there has to be action taken by the people who own these companies. ... People say, ‘Well, what about my freedom of speech?’ Well, sod your freedom of speech,” he said.
John explained that a boycott would make social media giants “sit up” and take a stance against homophobic hate speech on their platforms.
The interview followed shortly after John gave the Diana, Princess of Wales lecture on HIV, where he also demanded social media companies take more aggressive action.
“Companies like Facebook and Instagram cannot pretend they are purely private enterprises. I believe they have a public role and responsibility,” he said. “But if we found ways to automatically respond to hatred with fact, good could be all the way around the world before falsehood even got its boots on.”
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From Daily Mirror: A failed asylum seeker has confessed to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Germany – where tributes have claimed she’s the ‘victim of tolerance’. Susanna Maria Feldman was strangled and buried close to a railway track near a refugee camp in her hometown of Wiesbaden, Germany.
Ali Bashar, 20, was arrested by Kurdish security forces after fleeing Germany to Iraq on a ticket which did not match the name on his passport.
There he was interrogated by Iraqi police officers – where he is said to have confessed to the crimes. He is due to be sent back to Germany today.
This comes after a 13-year-old refugee told police in Wiesbaden that Bashar was responsible for killing the teenager. Bashar is a suspect in a string of other offences, including sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in the refugee camp and knifepoint robbery.
He arrived in Germany in 2015 with his parents and five siblings but his asylum request was refused, local media reports. Although he was due to be deported, he obtained temporary residence while he waited for his appeal to be heard.
Susanna went missing on May 23 after going out with her friends the previous night, but police did not investigate because she was “often truant.”
Tributes have now been left near the area she was found – including a cross with a sign reading: ‘Susanna, 14 year-old, victim of tolerance’.
Flowers and candles also adorn the makeshift memorial.
Her mother, Diana Feldman, wrote on Facebook before her daughter’s body was found: “There is nothing worse for a mother in the world than not to know where her child is.”
Now, the case has put renewed pressure on Merkel’s government over the decision to open Germany’s borders at the height of the refuge crisis in 2015.
Alice Weidel, the chief of far right party AfD, told the Times of Israel: “Susanna is a new victim of the egotistical and hypocritical welcoming policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel.”
DCG
In a nutshell: Learn from the past, support women, give second chances, blah, blah, blah.
But Hillary didn’t support any woman who accused her husband. In fact, she threatened the women, called them names and defamed them.
Such a vile and repugnant woman.
From NY Post: Hillary Clinton has finally offered an explanation as to why she didn’t fire a top campaign aide over allegations that he sexually harassed a female staffer.
Speaking in a lengthy Facebook post on Tuesday night ― which she posted just minutes before President Trump’s State of the Union address ― Clinton claimed that she kept Burns Strider on her team in 2008 because she “didn’t think firing him was the best solution to the problem.” “He needed to be punished, change his behavior, and understand why his actions were wrong,” she wrote. “The young woman needed to be able to thrive and feel safe. I thought both could happen without him losing his job. I believed the punishment was severe and the message to him unambiguous.” Furthermore, Clinton said that she believes “in second chances” ― and wants to “continue to believe in them” ― despite what others think.
“I’ve been given second chances and I have given them to others,” she explained. “But sometimes they’re squandered. In this case, while there were no further complaints against him for the duration of the campaign, several years after working for me he was terminated from another job for inappropriate behavior. That reoccurrence troubles me greatly, and it alone makes clear that the lesson I hoped he had learned while working for me went unheeded. Would he have done better ― been better ― if I had fired him? Would he have gotten that next job? There is no way I can go back 10 years and know the answers. But you can bet I’m asking myself these questions right now.” Clinton said she waited to respond to the reports about the Strider situation because she wanted to find the best way to deal with them.
“You may question why it’s taken me time to speak on this at length,” she said. “The answer is simple: I’ve been grappling with this and thinking about how best to share my thoughts. I hope that my doing so will push others to keep having this conversation ― to ask and try to answer the hard questions, not just in the abstract but in the real-life contexts of our roles as men, women, bosses, employees, advocates, and public officials.” Clinton went on to say that it was “reassuring” to hear that the female staffer in question “felt supported back then ― and that all these years later, those feelings haven’t changed.”
She refused to apologize for keeping Strider on, but did say that if she had to do it again, she “wouldn’t.” “Over the past year, a seismic shift has occurred in the way we approach and respond to sexual harassment, both as a society and as individuals,” Clinton said. “This shift was long overdue. It occurred thanks to women across industries who stood up and spoke out, from Hollywood to sports to farm workers ― to the very woman who worked for me.”
She added, “We can’t go back, but we can certainly look back, informed by the present. We can acknowledge that even those of us who have spent much of our life thinking about gender issues and who have firsthand experiences of navigating a male-dominated industry or career may not always get it right…I hope that women will continue to talk and write about their own experiences and that they will continue leading this critical debate, which, done right, will lead to a better, fairer, safer country for us all.”
DCG
Scott makes some very valid points in his video. Nicole Eggert’s story sounds fishy after listening to Scott’s account. Nicole is being represented by attorney Lisa Bloom, Gloria Allred’s daughter, who was an adviser to the sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.
In advising Weinstein, Bloom had substantial differences in her public and private statements. According to the NY Times, in one of the emails a Weinstein Company (TWC) board member scolded Ms. Bloom for “fanning the flames and compounding the problem” and asked that she step away from the company. He pointed to a business deal she had previously reached to have Mr. Weinstein turn a book she had written into a television series. The board member asked, “You have a commercial relationship with TWC via a TV deal so how can you possibly provide impartial advice to Harvey or address this group with any credibility?”
Not the best way to establish your credibility of this Scott Baio claim, Nicole.
From US Weekly: Scott Baio took for Facebook on Saturday, January 27, to deny his Charles in Charge costar Nicole Eggert‘s claims that he molested her when she was a minor.
The former Baywatch beauty, 46, accused Baio of sexual misconduct in a series of tweets on Saturday, writing, “Ask @scottbaio what happened in his garage at his house when I was a minor. Creep,” she tweeted in response to a joke about the Happy Days star and his support for President Donald Trump. She then accused the Joanie Loves Chachi star of digitally penetrating her, starting at the age of 14. In subsequent replied to Twitter commenters, she said she was a “molested child” who “covered up” the alleged abuse for years, writing that she was “14, 15, 16 and 17” when the alleged incidents occurred.
The pair costarred on the sitcom from 1984 to 1990, with Baio playing college student Charles, who looked after a group of kids including Eggert’s character, Jamie.
Baio’s wife, Renee, tweeted a response to Eggert, saying that his legal team had served Eggert with two cease-and-desist letters, before the actor took to Facebook to slam what he said were Eggert’s “100% lies.” In the Facebook live video filmed by his wife, Baio sat at a desk and said that his “reputation was being damaged” and that what he was being accused of was “horrible.” He acknowledged that he and Eggert did have sex but claimed that it was consensual and that she would have been at least 18, or possibly 19 or 20, at the time of their encounter.
“I remember her calling me and asking me to come over and coming in my house one time, and seducing me,” he said. “Any normal heterosexual, red-blooded American guy, the outcome would have been the same.” He said that when Eggert’s claims first came up in 2012 and 2013, she was promoting three reality shows and he “kept [his] mouth shut” because false allegations like that eventually go away. But he said that she “just won’t let them go away.”
The accusations resurfaced in 2017, and Baio help up two letters that he and his legal team sent to Eggert and their Charles in Charge costar Alexander Polinsky when, he said, they “decided to team up against” him. Baio said that he told them to go to the police if they had legitimate claims, but said that “they chose not to.”
In the video, Baio said that Eggert was his “best friend” and was a friend of his wife’s but that now, all of a sudden he is “a bogeyman.”
“The problem with almost all he said-she said cases is they’re he said-she said. Now, go prove it or disprove it,” he said. The real problem with this is people with legitimate claims aren’t taken seriously — and that’s too bad.”
DCG
Because when it comes to understanding net neutrality, the “home of the Whopper” is the first place you think of as your go-to expert.
From Fox News: Never hesitant to share their true feelings, Burger King has called out the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality in a new commercial, explaining the somewhat-confusing decision via Whoopers.
In a spot published to YouTube and shared across the fast food chain’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages Wednesday, the fast food chain has rolled out a fictional spoof illustrating what would happen if the company repealed BK’s faux-equivalent of net neutrality with “Whopper neutrality.” Customers grow increasingly outraged as they realize that their Whoppers will be prepared in accordance with how much they pay for “MBPS,” or “making burgers per second.” A Burger King staffer explains that “slow MBPS” costs $4.99, which “hyperfast MBPS” will produce their meal for $25.99.
“Are you kidding me? You paid $26 for a Whopper?” one disgruntled customer asks another, to which the cashier replies “He’s higher priority, so…” A company executive from Burger King confirmed that they are proud to make their first public stand for net neutrality.
“We believe the Internet should be like Burger King restaurants, a place that doesn’t prioritize and welcomes everyone,” Fernando Machado, Burger King’s global chief marketing officer said via press release. “That is why we created this experiment, to call attention to the potential effects of net neutrality.”
“This effort aims to help people understand how the repeal of Net Neutrality will impact their lives. The Burger King brand believes the Internet should be like the Whopper sandwich: the same for everyone,” BK further elaborates in the video description on YouTube. The clip closes with Burger King’s royal King mascot drinking out of an oversized Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup mug, just like the one that FCC chairman Ajit Pai has caught heat for using.
Though Business Insider notes that the repeal of net-neutrality rules have not yet officially gone into effect, it should come has no surprise that Burger King is speaking up, as their longtime tagline was “Have it your way.”
See also:
From Washington Times: SCOTTeVEST founderScott Jordan was rebuked by his own clothing company after he posted on Facebook last weekend that Fox News viewers are “f–ing idiots.” Mr. Jordan co-founded SCOTTeVEST with his wife in 2000, selling a line of multi-pocketed “eVests” designed for consumers to carry multiple gadgets. He failed to clinch a deal on ABC’s Shark Tank with his “Technology Enabled Clothing” (TEC) patent in 2012, The Blaze reported. Mr. Jordan, who stepped down from the company’s management last year but still holds the title of chief executive officer, was disavowed by the company on Wednesday after he publicly described an encounter with someone who recognized him from his SCOTTeVEST television commercials.
“I love meeting new people that recognize me and my company from all of our television commercials,” he wrote Jan. 14 in the now-deleted post, according to a screenshot captured by a “Shark Tank” fan blog. “I am on the ski lift and the following exchange just happened and happens often: I ask, ‘What network they saw me?’ Invariably people say Fox News. “I laugh to myself, and tell them that we primarily advertise on Fox because we find their viewership to be extremely gullible and much easier to sell than other networks,” he wrote. “The look on their face at that time is priceless. I am not kidding you. I get to tell them they are [f–ing] idiots while getting rich off them.” SCOTTeVEST posted a statement on its website calling Mr. Jordan’s comments “offensive and inexcusable.”
We are extremely sorry for his unacceptable comments,” the company said. “Mr. Jordan’s post was impulsive and inappropriate for too many reasons to list, and rightfully offended so many people. We strongly disagree with the views expressed by Mr. Jordan.”
Company spokesman Luke Lappala told The Blaze in an email that Mr. Jordan had since deactivated his Facebook and Twitter accounts. “We are sickened by his remarks,” Mr. Lappala said. Mr. Jordan apologized in a Medium post Friday, calling his words “incredibly rude and inaccurate.” “To those that I called gullible and idiotic, I am truly sorry,” he wrote. “As the founder of SCOTTeVEST, Inc., I have spent more than 17 years with the help of an amazing team building an awesome company with world class products and customer service. My idiotic statement not only jeopardized all of that hard work, but it also compromised the faith that SCOTTeVEST customers and our team of 20+ employees and contractors entrusted in me. “I also want to apologize to the SCOTTeVEST customer service team, who are taking the brunt of the backlash for my actions,” he added. “SCOTTeVEST employees are good people that do not deserve to be punished for my actions. I will continue to learn from my mistakes and strive to become a better person.”
Mr. Lappala explained to The Blaze that Mr. Jordan stepped down from his management responsibilities last year due to “personal reasons” but remains as “CEO in name only.”
“Mr. Jordan retains his CEO and Co-Founder titles, but he is not involved in our daily operations,” Mr. Lappala said.
h/t Breitbart
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Cinderella Broom
Dave
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Deplorable Patriot
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