'Intended to be aspirational not punitive'

'We know it’s within our capacity to do that'a

VP Harris has remained committed to reinstating protections similar to those once provided under Roe v. Wade.

'It doesn’t make me happy'

A post shared on X claims Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steve McCraw called all illegal immigrants “cockroaches.” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw doubles down on referring to undocumented immigrants as “cockroaches” that are part of an “infestation”: “Texas is not going to allow any part of this state to […]

'You make bad choices then you blame it on the system'

This incredible critter is the queen conch, and look out fellas she’s single. She’s one of many queen conch bachelorettes being saved by a new initiative in Florida that’s relocating these endangered mollusks to deeper waters. Warming seas off the Florida Keys have made this species lethargic and survival-focused, impeding their reproductive activities. Marine biologists […] The post Florida’s Trying New ‘speed dating’ Service to Save Endangered Mollusk–Matching Queen Conchs with Caring Mates appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Terry Pratchett Book Club Terry Pratchett Book Club: The Shepherd’s Crown, Part II Tiffany takes Geoffrey broomstick-shopping… By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on September 20, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Some folks just know where they’re meant to be. And they come with a very unnerving goat. Summary Mrs. Earwig visits Tiffany while she’s working, and tells her that she’s spread too thin and should let Mrs. Earwig take over Granny’s steading as the older more experienced witch. Tiffany tells the woman that she finds her brand of magic ridiculous, and dismisses her. She asks the Feegle to help her with the washing duty she’s doing for a local elderly man, and decides that she’ll have to change how she’s doing things. The fairy queen and her raiding party follow Of the Lathe the Swarf into the human world and have their first encounter with a train. The goblin throws iron shards at Lord Peaseblossom when he threatens him. Joe Aching is drinking in the pub and the locals are praising Tiffany and hoping she doesn’t move away. Roland comes to speak to Tiffany and tell her that there have been complaints about her absence, which infuriates her. Roland leaves, embarrassed in spite of himself. The Fairy Queen takes her raiding party home, but Peaseblossom is growing in strength and insisting that all the weakness they’ve shown is the queen’s fault. He turns the other fairies against her, destroys her glamour, tells the others to tear off her wings and cast her out, and usurps her place. Tiffany flies back to Lancre that evening and meets Geoffrey when he arrives at the back door of the cottage. She can tell that he’s run away from home and was well-off, but he insists that he wants to learn to be a witch—not a wizard. Nanny arrives and Tiffany tells her what Geoffrey means to do, so she sends him with Nanny to Mr. Nimlet’s to clip his impossible toenails, all to give him an idea of what real witching is like. Miss Tick interviews new witches to help Tiffany on the Chalk, the fairies gain momentum for their upcoming incursion, and Geoffrey begins observing the elderly men of Lancre and how they seem to be in the way in their own homes. He suggests that they build themselves sheds, and ingratiates himself to everyone in Lancre very quickly; he has a calming presence to everyone and Mephistopheles quickly becomes talk of the town for his own feats. Tiffany introduces him to Feegle only to find out that he already knows about them from sleeping in the lean-to with them. She brings him to the kelda and Jeannie finds out that he’s a vegetarian and tells Tiffany that he’s a special sort and she must treasure him. Tiffany decides that she’ll take him to Ankh-Morpork the next day and perhaps see Preston while she’s there. She takes him to the new broomstick shop at the train station, and gives Granny’s old stick to refurbish for Geoffrey in exchange for healing one of them of their back pain. She and Geoffrey stay with Mrs. Proust for the night, and the old witch asks Tiffany about Preston. Tiffany admits that she’s sad because they’re both married to their work, but Mrs. Proust tells her not to worry; things might work out at a later date. Tiffany and Preston have a nice visit, and then she picks up Geoffrey’s broomstick, which he is a natural with, to her surprise. They head back to Lancre. The fairy queen is thrown into the human world and Feegle find her and bring her back to the mound because she’s wounded and alone, so no good for fighting. Jeannie has Tiffany summoned, and Tiffany tells them that they aren’t to hurt the queen, whose true name is Nightshade. She is their prisoner, and Tiffany makes Big Yan and Wee Mad Arthur her guards. The beer keeps going off at the local Chalk pub because the fairies are messing about with it, and the locals wonder why Tiffany hasn’t sorted it yet. Two young men show up to the flumes to become workers who guide logs down the river so they can get delivered far and wide. The man in charge, Mr. Slack, tells them that the job is hard, but they’ll make good money. Some of the wood they cut down is Predictive Pine, and if the tree likes you, it’ll show you the future. He hires the two lads, Martin and Frank, but when he touches a pine, he has a vision of a horrible fight about to happen, and he tells them to run. They escape using the flumes while the lumberjacks are slaughtered by a raiding party of elves. Elsewhere, humans and animals are being terrorized by them, very few managing to successfully fight back… Commentary Of course, now is the part where I talk about the fact that this isn’t entirely the story of a boy becoming a witch, but rather a person who was raised as a boy becoming a witch. Because this is what Geoffrey has to say about his gender: “I’ve never thought of myself as a man, Mistress Tiffany. I don’t think I’m anything. I’m just me.” An agender sovereign. But, you know, tell us again that Pratchett wouldn’t have held with that “transgender trend.” We’ll wait for all the usual excuses, the inevitable “but everyone feels that way obviously.” No, they don’t, in point of fact. But Geoffrey does. Geoffrey’s work with the older men of the town is meant to give them a sense of purpose later in life, but can’t fix the core issue at hand, being a strict division of the “realms” of gender. The spheres of influence that state that women rule the homestead, while men make their life outside the home. It runs alongside a certain strain of “old-fashioned” thinking within this world, one meant to satirize our own. And while it’s a stereotype that does bear out in many areas of our society (and more so among older generations), I’m curious as to whether later books wouldn’t have included an advent in more current thinking. More men on the Disc who actually participated in the household. After all, if Sam Vimes thinks parenting his son actively is so important, it couldn’t hurt Nanny Ogg’s sons to do a dish or two. Tiffany’s little face-off with Mrs. Earwig is so satisfying, in part due to the progression of these books. Tiffany has been through the process of learning when to hold her tongue and when to speak her mind—A Hat Full of Sky was in large part about the pain of that process. But Tiffany is grown now, and she is Granny’s chosen heir, and she has been through so much: She is owed respect that Mrs. Earwig doesn’t know how to give anyone. So Tiffany tells her off. She’s not cruel about it, merely truthful, and she sends the woman packing. There is a rushed quality to parts of this book that makes it clear that Pratchett was determined to get this story as finished as possible. It’s difficult to note, but it makes the places where he takes more time and care stand out all the more. The importance of Tiffany and Preston’s meeting is one of those places, along with her talk to Mrs. Proust about it beforehand. It’s intriguing coming just after a book where we see Moist and Adora Belle enjoying a marriage that doesn’t consist much of spending time together—the trouble for Tiffany and Preston is distance and their jobs existing in two entirely different places. And now the former fairy queen is living among the people of the Chalk. We’ll see how that goes… Asides and little thoughts I forgot to mention in the last segment: Granny Weatherwax letting the bees know about her impending departure is in keeping with an ancient beekeeping tradition. “Telling the bees” is when the beekeeper lets the bees know about major events in life, including deaths and marriages. It’s possible that this sprang from a Celtic tradition. There are beliefs that bees are close to the gods; not informing the bees could result in them vacating the hives or refusing to produce honey. I really do love the idea of calm-weavers as a class of witch. It’s an underrated skill, being able to keep people at ease. And Lancre could certainly use it in Granny’s absence—Nanny Ogg isn’t really about that. How did I forget about the “Lumberjack Song” reference? How did I forget that? It just sneaks up in the flume section… Pratchettisms She flounced so much that it almost hurt. Even now, trees were frantically scribbling in branches and twigs as she passed, and parts of the ground seemed to be having a little race to create blades of grass on either side of her. Tiffany saw a suggestive grin on Nanny’s wrinkled face, as if an apple was suddenly leering at her. Next week we finish the book and perhaps end our little book club! Which is giving me a lot of feelings. Um.[end-mark] The post Terry Pratchett Book Club: <i>The Shepherd’s Crown</i>, Part II appeared first on Reactor.

Last week, I looked at the effects of the Biden-Harris administration’s border policy on crime and jobs. This week, I want to look at its increasingly devastating effect on public housing and public services and how that affects everyday Americans. Since January 2021, the administration has used a variety of quasi-legal fudges to treat millions of inadmissible aliens as if they had the right to enter and remain in the U.S. Then, the federal government colludes with elected officials, activist organizations, and charities to settle them across the country, regardless of local resources. American residents of those towns have no say in the matter but are expected to provide to quasi-legal noncitizens all the same services they provide to citizen taxpayers. That gets expensive, and fast. Public Housing Treats Americans as Foreigners—San Francisco The New York Times reported on a Honduran family of six that entered the U.S. illegally and headed to San Francisco because, the mother (Ms. Solito) said, it was a “sanctuary city.” After leaving Honduras, the family had already stopped in Guatemala and Mexico, where they could and should have applied for asylum rather than traveling on to the U.S. The Times notes that “an immigration nonprofit then paid for them to fly, in August 2023, to San Francisco.” That nonprofit likely used your tax dollars to do so and added significant overhead costs to the bill. After spending 10 months in a homeless shelter at taxpayer expense, the family “won the housing lottery” by getting a taxpayer-subsidized apartment for $800 a month. In San Francisco, the average rent for a 740 square foot apartment is $3,323. There were 10,000 applications for the apartment they got, in a lottery where the city lumped citizens, legal residents, and illegal aliens together. Last year, there were only half as many families on San Francisco’s waiting list for shelters, so one can surmise many of the 528 families on it today aren’t here legally. Solito and her husband were given work authorizations by the Department of Homeland Security while their asylum case continues to wind slowly on. Their children were admitted to a free public school, albeit one where “40% of the students are homeless” and “many have acute medical, dental, and emotional issues from living in poverty,” according to the principal. Public Services Overwhelmed—Springfield, Ohio The city of Springfield, Ohio, has been in the news because of a recent mass arrival of Haitians. Whether “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” from parks to avoid being eaten has grabbed media attention. But the real question is, what happens if you add 20,000 immigrants from a desperately poor country to an already stretched town of 60,000? Answer: It gets overwhelmed. Springfield is a postindustrial town whose population has declined by a third since the 1970s. The school system got 2 out of 5 stars in the state’s report card for Ohio’s 707 school districts. The Federalist reports that “the public school system had to hire two dozen Haitian-Creole interpreters and now spends 10 times more on translation services compared to four years ago” to handle more than 1,500 new Haitian students. From 2021 to 2023, the number of Haitian patients seen by the local community health clinic rose from 115 to 1,500. In 2019, Springfield’s violent crime rate was already above the national average in 2019, and from 2021 to 2023, reports of motor vehicle theft went up 51.5%, and shoplifting 112.8%. It’s possible these increases are simply due to increased population, but they still require more police, prosecutors, and jails paid for with tax dollars. There are many American citizens and permanent residents of Haitian descent. The Haitians  in Springfield are likely a combination of beneficiaries of temporary protected status or in deportation proceedings or beneficiaries of President Joe Biden’s invented “parole” program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. That parole program allows Haitians to claim to be refugees even if they are coming from 77 other, often safe, countries other than Haiti, where they’ve been living for years. Few of them are legitimate asylum claimants, but because of a special status in immigration law, Haitians—unlike nationals of most other countries—“may be eligible for … Medicaid, Refugee Cash and Medical Assistance, Refugee Social Services, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Federal Student Aid.” Local Needs Trump Global Charity—Norfolk, Massachusetts The Washington Post describes how the town of Norfolk, Massachusetts, (population 11,000) became an unwitting host of inadmissible aliens, many from Haiti. A former prison in the town has been converted to a shelter for more than 400 “migrants who had been granted parole at the border to legally enter the country and who were in the process of applying for asylum or temporary protected status,” as the Post calls them. Massachusetts officials told townspeople that the migrants would be families, including children up to age 21, and that they planned to close the shelter within a year. Anyone believing that hasn’t been to the border lately—as I have. The migrant shelter issue in Norfolk has split the town, even in the country’s most left-leaning state. There is a Concerned Citizens of Norfolk (against the flood of migrants) and Norfolk Welcome Wagon (for it). A local woman told the town’s board that her disabled son had lost his health insurance at a time when most of the new arrivals would qualify for free care. Residents are concerned about the “already overcrowded school system,” housing prices, and taxes. (Some state residents already called it “Taxachusetts” long before the migrant flood.) In Boston’s Logan Airport, part of a terminal has been used as a temporary shelter for aliens for months. Now, the state wants to spread them around—and make room for more. Indeed, a local “Haitian community leader” said that people learn by word-of-mouth of Massachusetts as a destination and will continue to come to Logan for a place to stay. The Post’s article singles out a sympathetic 16-year-old girl, Nika. Her family had left Haiti for Brazil, where they had settled for five years before crossing the U.S. border and coming to Boston. Nika’s family’s story illustrates the magnet effect of Biden’s catch-and-release policy. Her whole family had already found a refuge in Brazil—not to mention they crossed through several safe third-party countries—before entering the U.S. on the premise that they would claim asylum. Their story, multiplied by millions, explains the surge at our borders since Biden took office. Never before was there an assumption that most aliens caught entering illegally would be released into the country—with little prospect of ever being removed. Until this giant magnet is turned off, they will continue to come.   Putting America Last It’s only human to wish individuals like Ms. Solito and Nika well. But to then assume that every person in Honduras, Haiti, and the rest of the world would be better off living here—let alone staying safely resettled in another country—and should be able to do so is alarmingly naïve. How long can a national policy of treating the entire world the same as American citizens when it comes to welfare and benefits possibly last? Most Americans have no idea of the scale of the demand to come here. That demand has been restricted for generations by the supply—our immigration laws  allow some but not all to enter, based on limits and rules set by Congress and enforced by the executive branch. Now, for the first time in our history, an insatiable worldwide demand is being met by the Biden-Harris policy of turning chaotic illegal mass migration into “safe, orderly” illegal mass migration. From coast to coast, Americans continue to experience the very real costs and consequences. The true cost of mass illegal immigration is a story the legacy media won’t properly cover. When it comes to state and local government budgets, crime, and labor issues, giving detailed, useful information to allow voters to make up their minds about what a sensible, legal migration system should be is too dangerous for the legacy media to allow. The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more. Read Other BorderLine Columns: The Stunning Costs of Biden-Harris’ ‘America-Last’ Border Policies—Part 1 Fraud Permeates Biden-Harris’ Illegal Alien ‘Sponsorship’ Program Despite Tough Talk, Biden-Harris Admin Rolls Out Red Carpet for Illegal Alien Gangs Biden Administration’s Latest Illegal Immigration Scam How Ruling Elites Continue to Stifle Debate Over Immigration Policy The post The Stunning Costs of Biden-Harris’ ‘America-Last’ Border Policies—Part 2: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Two Democrat senators have decided to put fresh (public) pressure on major social networks in the US ahead of the November election. Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner penned a letter addressed to Meta, X, Discord, Twitch, and Alphabet (Google) that entirely predictably revolves around the talk of “election disinformation” and highlights that their concerns about this are “persistent.” We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. The letter effectively accuses these companies of allowing the proliferation of such content on their platforms, and stresses the need to stomp it out through “prioritizing decisive action.” The companies are warned by the senators that what they described as the continued spread of “misinformation” means it is reaching millions of people, and that things will only get worse as “AI gets more sophisticated.” Klobuchar and Warner attempt to make their point seem politically neutral, mentioning that “AI” generated content is “targeting” both presidential candidates, while at the the same time continuing to exaggerate the effect all this has, elevating it all the way to “eroding trust in our democracy” and throwing in “national security” and “foreign meddling” for good measure. With the narrative stage set this way, the two senators tell the tech companies that they are “on the frontlines of the risks to our democracy posed by online disinformation.” Now for what Klobuchar and Warner expect them to do: “prioritize” action to counter the situation as presented, via (moderation, aka, censorship) policies and procedures, but also by hiring extra staff that would deal with this. The senators then seek to attach more pressure to their message by telling the companies to come up with answers, by October 1, to about half a dozen questions. They range from asking about actions to update policies around election “misinformation,” whether there are any plans to add more measures and policies in this regard, to the way they are dealing with “deceptive AI-generated content” – specifically that which concerns candidates. And, it should be said, that most often refers to satirical memes. Facebook (Meta), which was heavily leaned on by the losing side in the 2016 election for allegedly allowing massive amounts of “foreign meddling” to proliferate on its platform, seems to be susceptible to “working” with the current government at least on that point. Earlier this week, a major Russian media company, RT, was banned on Meta’s apps globally for “foreign interference activity” – something the outlet denies. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Senators Klobuchar and Warner Urge Meta, X, Discord, Twitch, and Google to Censor “Misinformation” appeared first on Reclaim The Net.