Tuesday, September 12, 2023

The Lawyer on the Playground: the price we pay for a litigious society

 Intellectual Takeout

Tony Christopher, executive director of the National Institute for Play, said playgrounds post these signs hoping to “mitigate the liability of the entity responsible for the playground (school, municipality, etc.) in the event they are sued.”

“Welcome! Play Safe” reads the sign at a Fairfax County Public School playground in Virginia just outside of Washington D.C. It goes on to list a few simple rules — 21, by my count.

"First off, the playground should never be used when it’s frozen. Or wet.

"There can be no climbing on things like the safety rails (which are… fences?). And kids must not wear any clothing with drawstrings, hoods or toggles when playing — because these could get caught on something. (Ponytails seem grandmothered in.)

"On the slide, children must “take turns,” “sit in an upright position,” and “not climb.” There also must be “No loitering at slide entry or exit.”

"Loiter not, little ones!

"While she has seen this same sign at a playground for kids ages 6-12, Katie Courtney, a 32-year-old mom of four who brought this sign to my attention, says: “This is literally a playground that’s for 2- to 5-year-olds.” The slide there is about “as tall as an adult.”

"Nonetheless, when a child gets up to the top, legally they must hustle their butt right down. This disturbs Coutrney, who has her master’s in education and used to teach pre-school.

“ 'Part of the fun of being on the playground is that for three seconds you’re at the top of the slide — you have one moment of being in charge.” And if another kid is right behind you? “How hard is it for a 4-year-old to negotiate, ‘You need to move! You’re blocking everyone else!’?”

"Without legal counsel? That’s crazy." . . .

Biden Does the Unthinkable To Gold Star Mom After Marine Son’s Death -

  Analyzing America

The attack was a horrific tragedy that took the lives of many innocent people. It also highlighted the chaotic and dangerous situation in Afghanistan as well as deadly consequences of President Biden’s incompetence and poor leadership

Gold Star mother Kelly Barnett lost her 31-year-old son, Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, during the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal of U.S. service members from Afghanistan.

Crying during a forum held from the families, Barnett opened up about the “disrespect,” “lies,” and “hatred” from the Biden White House. Republicans have launched an investigation into the botched withdrawal.

The grieving families of the fallen were “told lies” and given “incomplete” and “incorrect” reports. “I was told to my face, he died on impact,” Barnett explained. “That’s not true. The only reason that I know this is because witnesses told me the truth. I was lied to and basically told to shut up.” . . .

. . ."She said her son expressed concerns about how he witnessed “chaos, no communication, lack of leadership” during his final deployment.

“He lived for a little while… he was giving out his ammo,” the gold star mom said. “He tied a tourniquet at around his leg. I don’t understand the reasoning of that lie,” Barnett said. “It makes no sense other than the fact that, did they really even do an investigation? Did they talk to witnesses? I don’t know.” . . .

21 Fascinating Facts And Photos Of The Titanic That'll Be New To Pretty Much Everyone

 21 Fascinating Facts And Photos Of The Titanic That'll Be New To Pretty Much Everyone (msn.com)

7.And this life vest is one of only six (out of an original 3,500) that still exists in the world today. It was recovered from the field of debris by Robert Edwards, quartermaster of a ship chartered by the White Star Line to search for bodies.


Monday, September 11, 2023

Joe Biden - President's Public Schedule

 WATCH: Reporter Smoothly Corrects Karine Jean-Pierre Over Preposterous Biden 'Busy Schedule' Claim – RedState   "The explanation given by that White House official along with Biden's supposed salute to service that he is going to give in Alaska is not going to go over well, especially with those who are already worried that the day will one day be viewed as an afterthought. "

President Joe Biden - Public Schedule Calendar | Factbase

Schedule updates at midnight Eastern Time, or when pushed out via social media, whichever is earlier. Available as a Google Calendar . Calendar maintained in U.S. Eastern Time and may publish earlier when the President is overseas.

12:55 AM

Official Schedule
The President drops by a meeting of CEOs with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính of Vietnam (11:55 AM Local)
Office of Government, Hanoi, Vietnam
Out-of-Town Pool Spray

2:00 AM

Official Schedule
The President meets with President Võ Văn Thưởng of Vietnam (1:00 PM Local)
Presidential Palace, Hanoi, Vietnam
Out-of-Town Pool Spray

2:30 AM

Official Schedule
The President participates in a State Luncheon with President Võ Văn Thưởng of Vietnam (1:30 PM L:ocal)
Presidential Palace, Hanoi, Vietnam
Out-of-Town Pool Spray

3:55 AM

Official Schedule
The President meets with Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue of the National Assembly of Vietnam (2:55 PM Local)
National Assembly Building, Hanoi, Vietnam
Out-of-Town Pool Spray

4:35 AM

Official Schedule
The President visits the John Sidney McCain III Memorial (3:35 PM Local)
John McCain Monument, Hanoi, Vietnam

Even the Liberal Press Noticed How Insane Biden's Vietnam Presser Was, and Democrats Are in Trouble –

  RedState

"As I've said before, they should have just let Gavin Newsom take the spot. I can't stand the guy and I think he's been absolutely horrific for California. But from a purely political standpoint, he would have much better appeal in 2024 than Biden. That ship appears to have sailed, though. It's Biden or Harris, and both are nowhere near a sure thing to win." . . .


"As RedState reported, Joe Biden gave a presser for the ages in Vietnam on Sunday. This time, it wasn't just his senility and references to "dog-faced poney soldiers" that raised eyebrows, though. 

"Instead, the big shocker was hearing Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, cut Biden's mic mid-sentence, even as he was trying to answer more questions. To make things even more awkward, the president then remained on the stage, rambling away. No one could hear him, though, because of the aforementioned muting of his mic. 

"It was bad. It was really, really bad. It was so bad that even CNN couldn't ignore what happened, and some of the framing in the liberal network's report is very telling. 

However, the president lingered on stage, responding to additional questions about what he said to Chinese Premier Li Qiang before he was interrupted by the press secretary.  

Throughout the presser, Biden acknowledged the demands of the whirlwind trip, joking at one point, “These five-day trips around the world are no problem.”  

Minutes before Jean-Pierre ended the press conference, Biden had delivered a lengthy answer that involved a rambling explanation of why he uses the phrase “lying dog-faced pony soldier” in an attempt to explain his feelings about politicians who deny the existence of climate change. 

"Yes, that is CNN describing Biden as "rambling" while noting that the trip appeared to have taken a mental and physical toll on Biden. Keep in mind he's only been on the road for three days, and he travels in the world's most luxurious airplane. When even the left-wing press can't spin the president's obvious senility, that says something big. 

"They can't let this guy be the 2024 nominee. They just can't. I know Democrats have no good options, with Kamala Harris, one of the most unpopular politicians in modern history, waiting in the wings. But what do they do when Biden has multiple episodes on the campaign trail next year? How do they explain that away when whoever the Republican nominee is appears to be far more capable in comparison? " . . .

Hanoi Joe is even worse than Hanoi Jane - American Thinker   "Joe Biden found himself in Vietnam on Sunday. Returning from the G-20 summit in India, he made a pit stop there, supposedly to improve relations with that country as a means of checking China's aggressions.

"Instead of saying 'Hello,' like normal presidents say, Biden greeted the Vietnamese with "Gooooood morning, Vietnam," rather shockingly bringing up a line from a movie that was all about the absurdities of the Vietnam War.

"His performance was so bad his staff cut his mic and whisked him off the stage. 

"According to the Daily Mail:" . . .

Masking, Vaxing, and Mail-In Ballots; Democrats use masking to make people fearful and willing, once again, to vote by mail.

I have swim trunks made from COVID mask material; I can go into a public swimming pool and relieve myself and it has no effect whatever on the water around me. not a joke. The Tunnel Dweller

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics   "When a bipartisan congressional bill ending the COVID-19 national emergency was reluctantly signed by President Biden last April, most Americans hoped that the politicization of the virus was at an end. Those hopes dimmed two weeks ago when Dr. Anthony Fauci materialized on CNN, like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s feast, to dispute a widely publicized study showing that masking doesn’t reduce the spread of COVID or any of its variants. After host Michael Smerconish described the study’s findings, Fauci brayed that it somehow helps “at an individual level.” This is nonsense, of course, but his return to the talking head circuit tells us something important about Democratic intentions in 2024.

"Those intentions became all too clear a week later, when Senate Democrats killed a bill introduced by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) that would have banned mask mandates for public schools, domestic air travel, and public transit. The remarks of Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who led the charge against Vance’s bill, made it clear that the Democrats will bring back mask mandates and scare tactics to accomplish their goals: “[I]f in the opinion of public health officials, strategies can be adopted using masks that reduced the likelihood that more will die, we should give them that freedom to make those decisions.” Vance refuted the claim that masks reduce COVID transmission when he introduced his bill:

It’s not just that masks, according to randomized, controlled studies do no good. It’s that they can actively cause harm. We know that a generation of school children has suffered significant speech and developmental disabilities because this country panicked instead of using its brain and forced toddlers and small children to wear masks. We cannot return to the failed policies of the COVID pandemic. I’m not mad that we screwed up. I made mistakes, many people in this body made mistakes. What I do think that we should avoid is repeating the mistakes in 2023. Let’s learn from the mistakes that we made instead of just doubling down on them. . . .

 COVID-19 Has Forever Destroyed Americans' Trust in Ruling Class 'Experts'  Charlotte, NC — As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the “rulemaking” governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.

Imaging KJP being the one to save a Biden press conference.

 Exhausted 80-Year-Old Joe Biden Cut Off by Karine Jean Pierre as Press Sec Moves to End Train Wreck Presser in Vietnam (Video) | The Gateway Pundit | by Kristinn Taylor   "White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre interrupted and cut off Joe Biden to abruptly end his press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam Sunday evening.

Jean Pierre apparently acted to save Biden from further embarrassment in the gaffe-filled press conference that was bizarrely scheduled at the end of a whirlwind jet lag-inducing trip to India and Vietnam that wrecked the 80-year-old Biden’s body clock. Biden was so tired he told reporters, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”

The move by Jean Pierre to interrupt Biden in the middle of his speaking and abruptly end the press conference comes as a new book on the Biden presidency reported he has complained his staff treats him “like a toddler.”

 DUDE IS LOST: Old Joe Biden Mumbles Through Speech in Vietnam, Leaves Podium Before Vietnam Leader Speaks, Then Freezes in Place (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft   "As Steve Bannon says, “Elections have consequences. Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences.”

"Joe Biden mumbled through another speech in Vietnam on Sunday. Biden left the G20 in India and made a stop in Vietnam. Biden received 5 draft deferments during the Vietnam War.

"Biden read the entire speech while looking down at his paper but still managed to confuse his words.

"When Old Joe was finished his prepared remarks he walked away from the podium. He forgot where he was. Then he stopped and looked completely lost. He had no idea what he was doing." . . .

Biden's Staff Cuts Short His Vietnam Press Briefing As U.S. Pres Starts Rambling

‘Are you okay?’: Paul Murray reacts to Joe Biden’s press conference blunder

Biden Admin. Has Welded Open More than 100 Border Gates to Allow Illegals Access -

 The Lid (lidblog.com)

"The Biden administration has been caught welding open more than 100 border wall gates to allow criminal illegals and terrorists to more easily break our immigration laws.

"Per the New York Post:

The door to America is wide open.

Thousands of migrants are flowing across the US border in Arizona every day — literally through open floodgates that have made the Tucson post the busiest point of illegal entry into the country, The Post has learned.

US officials have inexplicably welded open 114 massive gates along the Arizona border to allow water to flow freely during the annual monsoon season and for the migration of an endangered species of antelope, officials said.

But the move is also letting an average of 1,400 migrants from as far away as China casually walk into the country daily — with overwhelmed and outnumbered border agents practically helpless to stop them.

"We are now on track to have been flooded by more than seven million criminal illegals during Joe Biden’s interminable four-year regime.

"As far as the Democrats are concerned, this is not a problem. It’s a feature." . . .

Gov. Glenn Youngkin Pardons Father Who Protested School Board After His Daughter’s Sexual Assault

 “We righted a wrong. He should’ve never been prosecuted here. This was a dad standing up for his daughter.”

"The horrors that pervaded Loudoun County public schools arguably led directly to the 2021 election of Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin (R).

"Among the many shocking scandals emanating from this woke school district was the cover-up of the sexual assault of at least two female students and the shuffling of the skirt-wearing male offender to another school.

"This, along with other incidents of highly offensive wokeness in Loudoun County schools, set off the parents movement that swept the nation and flipped many school board seats to sensible parents who want to protect their districts’ children and ensure quality education, not woke indoctrination and dangerous pro-criminal policies that threaten every child. It is also ground zero of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Merrick Garland-run corrupt DOJ against normal American parents, whom he declared “domestic terrorists” for attending and daring to speak at public school board meetings.

"With all the noise coming out of that privileged little splotch of blue, we can lose sight of the fact that the father of one of the two girls who was sexually assaulted in school was convicted of disorderly conduct for protesting the sexual assault of his daughter at a school board meeting.

"It was an outrageous arrest, an outrageous conviction, and it’s now been put right by Governor Youngkin." . . .

Prosecutor and Democrats Go Ballistic After Youngkin Pardons Father of Rape Victim in Loudoun County – RedState  "All of that anger over a pardon for a disorderly conduct charge in which the father was completely justified in wanting his voice to be heard. It's astonishing and disturbing to see Biberaj put out a statement like that. Why not just be silent about the matter? Again, the circumstances of Smith's arrest, including the fact that Loudoun County officials covered up the rape of his daughter for political reasons, should have dictated a change in approach. Instead, Biberaj has continued to speak of Smith as if he murdered someone. 

"She wasn't the only one, either. Other Virginia Democrat officials also ranted and raved following the pardon. " . . .

It is mind-blowing to see these Democrats essentially defend the rape of a then-14-year-old girl because they see it as a way to attack Youngkin politically. How deranged does one have to be to take that position? We are talking about a party that largely supports "criminal justice reform," including leniency for all sorts of major crimes, but suddenly, they are deeply aggrieved over a pardon for a disorderly conduct charge. No one should buy their outrage as being authentic. 

If Your Kid Can’t Read This, Thank a Teachers Union

AFT President Randi Weingarten


 If Your Kid Can’t Read This, Thank a Teachers Union - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics  "The 2022-2023 school year, close to 10 percent of nation’s K-12 students did not attend classes on the average day, The New York Times‘ David Leonhardt reported in his newsletter. A quarter of students are chronically absent. “That’s a vastly higher share than before COVID.”

"The biggest reason truancy is on the rise, Leonhardt posits, “seems to be simply that students have fallen out of the habit of going to school every day.” (RELATED: Rehabbing Teachers Unions)

"Call it an unintended side effect of COVID lockdowns — children who were robbed of a comprehensive education. And structure.

" 'As the pandemic wore on, it became increasingly clear that children were the least likely to get seriously sick or die from COVID-19, and they had suffered major academic and developmental blows from online classes and prolonged isolation,” Education Week reported in June.

"Thank the teachers unions.

"When COVID hit, union leaders did not demand that teachers be classified as “essential workers,” which one would expect them to do.

"To the contrary, unions embraced remote learning, even though shuttering classrooms was bound to deprive students of a rich learning experience — especially kids with working parents who lacked a higher education.

"It didn’t have to be this way. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention never mandated widespread open-ended school closures. In 2020, CDC guidelines instead recommended school closures of two to five days, and then only when an exposed person had been on campus or in districts with high infection rates. (READ MORE: The CDC Should Stay in Its Own Lane)

"It was blue-state Democrats and local officials who panicked and shut down public schools — with the support of labor.

" 'In many places, including California, children did not see the inside of a physical classroom for nearly a full year and a half,” Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya told the “Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson” podcast. “The consequences of that play themselves out with deep learning losses.” . . .


A Neoconservative Is a Liberal Who Has Been Mugged

 


A Neoconservative Is a Liberal Who Has Been Mugged | Power Line  "That formula goes back, I think, to the 1980s, and while “neoconservative” has taken on a different meaning, it still holds true. The latest case in point is Shivanthi Sathanandan, a vice chairwoman of Minnesota’s Democrat-Farmer-Labor party. Like most Democrats, Sathanandan was anti-police and pro-criminal. In June 2020, she wanted to “dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department”:. . .

"In any event, it is nice to see that Sathanandan is now thankful to “the incredible Minneapolis 4th Precinct Officers.”



Unforgettable United Flight 93

Passengers and crew during these final 30 minutes made 35 airphone calls and two cell phone calls.  They quickly learned of the other hijacked planes that had been flown into the Twin Towers.  Donald R. McClarey


 Unforgettable United Flight 93  When they got up that Tuesday morning twenty-two years ago, the very last thing that the 33 passengers and the seven crew of United Flight 93 expected was to be engaged in a life and death struggle to retake an airliner that was headed to Washington DC as a terrorist missile.    All they expected the day to bring was a hum drum flight from Newark to San Francisco.  Just ordinary people living their lives.  Their occupations included pilot, first officer, flight attendant, an environmental lawyer, the owner of a public relations firm,  university students, a senior vice president of a medical development company, a sales representative for Good Housekeeping magazine, a manager of a US Wildlife animal refuge, an arborist, an account manager for a corporation, an ironworker, retirees, a computer programmer, a computer engineer, a lobbyist for the disabled, a real estate agent,  an executive vice president of a corporation and a free lance medical writer.  They were wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, all with unique histories and lives, with little in common except that they happened to be on board Flight 93 when the world changed.

"The plane took off at 8:42 AM Eastern Time.  Four terrorists had boarded amidst the other 33 passengers.  The terrorists began to hijack the plane at 9:28 AM, soon after both the hijacked airliners had struck the Twin Towers in New York City, and just brief minutes before a fourth airliner was hijacked in Washington and slammed into the Pentagon.  At 9:28:17 AM a member of the cockpit crew shouted “Mayday! Mayday!” over the radio, with sounds of violence in the background.  35 seconds later someone in the cockpit shouted over the radio, “Mayday!  Get out of here!  Get out of here!”

"By 9:31 AM the terrorists were in control of the cockpit.  They informed the passengers that they were in control of the plane and falsely told them they had a bomb.  Now began the final 30 minutes of Flight 93." . . .

One of the Reasons I Remember 9-11-01 – The American Catholic