Firearm trainers typically tell their students never try to draw down on a bad guy when his or her gun is pointed at you. However, all of that goes out the window when the criminal has already opened fire. That’s exactly what happened in a Paraguay gun store last month as a pair of armed robbers stormed in, guns a-blazing.
With one robber shooting at him, the owner had no choice to but draw and engage. He did so, even after taking a round to the arm, firing from the hip and making good hits.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday announced a new investigation into Facebook and Twitter trying to suppress initial reporting in October 2020 about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In recent days, mainstream media outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post have confirmed the legitimacy of the laptop and its contents, which were initially reported on by the New York Post in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
[snip]
The committee said they will conduct a thorough investigation into social media giants Facebook and Twitter actions to “interfere in free and fair election-related public discourse” on their platforms that worked “to the benefit of President Biden and the detriment of former President Trump,” according to letters sent to both companies.
The Democrats clearly have their knives out now for the Biden Administration, it finally dawning on them the senile turnip-brain in the White House is doing them far more harm than good. Because Democrats are much more advanced in the art of recklessly destroying anyone in their path they don’t care for, not restrained by such niceties as ethics or fair play, the Republicans are wisely (we hope) letting them do the dirty work on Joe Biden and going after the evil clowns running social media instead.
Since even the most avid users of Twitter and Facebook are not particularly fond of those institutions, the Republicans have far more to gain going after them instead of Joe Biden, for which they would still be lambasted by the media, even if they too wish to see Biden gone. On the other hand, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times and the like are far less likely to rush to the defense of Twitter, Facebook et al., knowing they are increasingly disliked and untrusted by all.
The Republican’s hands thus will appear clean as they stand back from the upcoming fracas of Democrats on Democrats, while at the same time, if successful at exposing the foul innards of social media, will be performing a valuable and much needed public service. It should be fun to watch.
A recent article in Forbes (good Lord, what’s happened to “Capitalist Tool” Forbes? ) tells the tale of a young, handsome Ukrainian artist named Daniel Skripnik. The poor fellow is caught in a terrible bind. Owing to his being LGBTQ (no specifying which one of those letters he claims, but no matter; it’s sufficient to establish he’s not white cisgender), he wants to flee his country because if the Russians win and and take over “it will un-do years of progress in the LGBTQ community’s fight for acceptance” in Ukraine.
Unfortunately for Mr Skripnik the Ukrainian government says he cannot leave, that he is fit to fight and must stay to do battle with the Ruskies to prevent their re-implementing restrictions on LGBTQ folk (among a few other things). However, because of an illness, not specified, and regardless his not showing any obvious signs of disability, Skripnic claims he is not only unable to fight, but also cannot assist in non-military, but critical tasks like clearing away rubble from bombed streets, pulling corpses from wrecked buildings, volunteering at hospitals where the bombed and bloodied survivors of Russian aggression are brought in, nor any other such activity that might put him in harm’s way.
Eager to serve in some capacity, Skripnik has happily found a way to aid and show solidarity with his comrades under fire from Russian bullets and bombs, while remaining safe himself; he paints pictures of sunflowers, the symbol of Ukraine. No doubt channeling the ’60s, Skripnik calls his wartime service “painting for peace” and who cannot be inspired by it as thousands of his fellow Ukrainians, many no doubt LGBTQ also, die in the slaughter?
Speaking of the ’60s, Daniel Skripnik’s heroic efforts of painting for peace bring to mind the song by the classic comedian and mathematician of that decade, Tom Lehrer: “The Folk Song Army.”
A Russian soldier allegedly surrendered his tank to Ukraine, claiming his military bosses’ war campaign was too “chaotic” and that he’d rather take up the Ukrainians’ offer for resettlement than continue fighting.
The soldier will eventually receive $10,000, a comfortable place to live and a chance to apply for citizenship, a Ukrainian official said.
Andrusiv said Ukraine has been sending Russia soldiers SMS messages telling them how to surrender and where to hand over their military gear.
Your Tatler is Catholic convert and though thoroughly catechized, maybe better than most (seven months by two gentlemen from Opus Dei), there are no doubt still gaps in his knowledge of Holy Church and her teachings. A case in point is an item in today’s Vatican News:
Pope on Confession: ‘Forgiveness is a human right’
“Forgiveness is a human right” which priests at the confessional should dispense by welcoming, listening to and accompanying penitents, thus helping contribute to a “spiritual ‘ecology’ of the world.”
“Forgiveness is a ‘right’ in the sense that God, in the Paschal Mystery of Christ, has given it in a total and irreversible way to every person willing to accept it, with a humble and repentant heart.”
Um, yes, no doubt, but is this something new? That priests should be understanding and listen to confessors while they’re in the box? Your Tatler sort of thought that’s a given. Good heavens, what will be next? That priests should offer absolution and penance?
Here are some more revelations from Christ’s Vicar on Earth:
By accompanying the penitent, the Pope pointed out, the confessor does not decide for the other, as he is not the master of the conscience of the other.
The confessor simply accompanies, with all the prudence, discernment and charity of which he is capable, the recognition of the truth and the will of God in the concrete experience of the penitent.
Here, he said, one should distinguish between the seal of confession and the dialogue of spiritual accompaniment, which is also reserved, although in a different form.
Dear readers, do help your Tatler out, for he is harboring the most uncharitable notion about these nuggets of knowledge: that they are as shallow as a Rod McKuen poem or a David Haas hymn. Suggest a method this poor sinner might delve into the texts above and behold something more spiritually enlightening than the preparation instructions for a TV dinner. The first good soul to oblige will be gratefully rewarded with a free one-year subscription to the Taos Tatler, with an additional three months added if an explanation of “spiritual ecology” is also provided.
A Russian soldier reportedly drove over his colonel with a tank — while two other service members were caught venting about strongman Vladimir Putin’s “bulls—” invasion of Ukraine amid reports of heavy losses.
The Russian soldier who was behind the wheel of the tank “blamed the commander of the group, Col. Yury Medvedev, for the deaths of his friends,” Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsimbalyuk said on Facebook.
“Having waited for the right moment, during battle, he ran over the commander with a tank as he stood next to him, injuring both his legs,” he wrote, the Daily Beast reported.
A depressed teenager is persuaded by “experts” to change her sexand pays for it with her life.
Note: this essay was published earlier and your sometimes technically challenged Tatler, with the assistance of WordPress, managed to delete a substantial part of it. With the help of recovered memory he has restored it, though it may not perfectly resemble what was lost.
Public schools in this country have been on a downward slide for over half a century. For a good number of those years it has simply been rising incompetence and declining standards and discipline; ever increasing spending per pupil with increasingly dismal results. As bad as that is, poor proficiency in math and English can be remedied and made right, provided parents are willing to take on what the schools can no longer do.
In the last few years though a far more ominous trend has appeared. Whereas before the problems with our schools were primarily the fault of incompetent teachers and their union protectors, now we are seeing a preponderance of peripheral staff, i.e., “professionals” with worthless graduate degrees, who have little regard for the welfare of their charges or the rights of their parents. Our schools today are not only ineffectual, but can actually be dangerous.
A grieving California mom says her severely depressed teen daughter was encouraged to leave her family, go into foster care, and begin taking cross-sex hormones before she developed unbearable pain and killed herself by laying down across the tracks in front of a train.
Abigail Martinez, 53, alleged school staff at Arcadia High School—without her knowledge or consent—encouraged her daughter, Yaeli, to join an LGBTQ club that met at the school during lunchtime.
She blames a school psychologist and other school staff, the Los Angeles County’s Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS), a transgender student and her mother, and the LGBTQ club for “brainwashing” and coaching Yaeli on how to get hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery instead of recommending treatment for her depression.
“They were doing all this secretly,” Martinez said. “I didn’t even realize that my daughter was going to this club because they don’t report to you what they’re doing at school to keep them ‘safe’ from their parents, according to them.”
Not only was young Abigail the victim of malpractice by the the slew of organizations and agencies of the Los Angeles school system (and their like can be found in schools everywhere), but her mother was treated like a criminal for simply refusing to call her daughter by a male name and trying to stop the pumping of male hormones into the poor girl’s body. For this, she was accused of child abuse(!) and was only permitted to visit her daughter, now in foster care, for “one hour, one week under supervision,” permitting her sadistic tormentors to further their quackery undisturbed, until she could be tormented no longer. There is much more to this story and reading the whole thing, if you can stomach it, is highly recommended.
The nightmare described above is not uncommon in our public schools today, where basic skills are secondary to wokeness. The proponents of the latter are a vicious, driven lot, far more concerned with ideology than the learning of math or English. To drive the point home, look at the photo below of young Abigail Martinez and her adoring mother and consider what has been done to them: one has been murdered, the other has been put through living hell, from which she is never likely to recover.
Thus is the state of so many of our country’s public schools today. There never was a great need for them and since they now do more harm then good, they ought to be abolished and replaced with, by those who need them, vouchers with which parents may choose where and how their children are schooled. Not only will that result in a far better educated populace, it will save billions if not trillions of the public’s money.
The significance of the passage of time, Right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think of it, there is great Significance to the passage of time . . . There is really great significance to the Passage of time.
The estimable Roger Kimball recently wrote a think piece that he himself admits may be far fetched, but seems less so each day. In it he speculates Democratic leadership, desperate about the coming cataclysm in 2024, are scrambling to come up with ways to remove, before the election, the two mental cyphers that are the President and Vice President.
It appears the Dems’ media jackals have already begun working on softening the populace to the notion it’s time for Biden to go. The recent stunning revelation by the New York Times (the same stunning revelation made two years ago by the New York Post) that the contents of the laptop belonging to the indescribably revolting Hunter Biden are real, is probably a good sign the Times and others of its ilk will no longer cover for the president. Should those contents, as reports suggest, show the president himself was involved in Hunter’s sleazy acts, that will pretty much be the end of the Biden presidency.
Ron Klain, the real president of the United States, plus his staff, are comfortably and firmly entrenched in their powerful jobs. They want to keep those jobs, so if Biden goes Harris must go too, for if she were to run for president in 2024 she would lose by an even bigger margin than Biden. Hence it behooves Klain to get rid of her first.
Which brings up the title of today’s little offering: there are now ten former members of Kamala Harris’s staff enjoying spending more time with their families. That their former boss is a harridan of the first rank and utterly ignorant on just about everything cannot be denied. Still, the jobs these former employees had were likely very well paid and could hardly have required much work; since when has the Vice President’s job been regarded as challenging? If the VP doesn’t have much to do, how much work is there for the staff? Regardless the unpleasantness of the boss, it just doesn’t add up so many of her staffers quitting quitting so soon.
No, your Tatler suspects the real reason so many top members of Kamala’s staff are bolting is they know or sense their boss will be out soon. They probably figure it’s better to flee now than to wait until their boss is brought down and they are brought down with her. No wonder they’re running for the door. Expect more to do similarly.
THE TAOS TATLER. 
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