Waiting For The Next Step

For thirty-five years, I lived about ten miles from Kraft Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. New England sports fans are dedicated–even when their team is losing. I learned to appreciate the New England Patriots (actually I am a Jets fan, but I learned to appreciate the talent of the Patriots). I wasn’t really surprised to hear today that Tom Brady will be leaving the New England team. It has been an amazing 20 years for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about Tom Brady’s announcement that he is leaving the New England Patriots.

The article includes an Instagram post by Tom Brady:

The article concludes:

That era has finally closed out, and what an era it was. It was the kind of dominance that free-agency and the draft were designed to prevent by providing parity to the NFL. It seems unlikely that we’ll ever see it again, but that’s part of the fun of playing the games. At the very least, Brady earned that Greatest of All Time title, and we had fun watching him do it — even if many of us were wailing and gnashing our teeth while he did. No matter where he lands, it’s a long shot that Brady can generate that kind of dominance in the time he has left, but he might have enough to take a more complete team to the Super Bowl. Never count him out.

I will miss watching Tom Brady play. He made the game look easy.

 

 

Are Children Becoming Collateral Damage In The Culture War?

The Daily Signal today posted an article by Sydney Wright, a business sales representative in the private sector and a student at Georgia Northwestern Technical College. Sydney Wright spent a year as a transgender man and shares her experience in the article.

In the article Sydney explains the path she traveled:

From my earliest years, I was always different from the other girls. I wore boy clothes, and I played with boy toys. I was a classic tomboy.

As I got older, I became romantically interested in other girls. In fact, with the exception of one guy I dated in high school, I exclusively dated girls.

At the time, you wouldn’t have been able to tell I was gay just from looking at me. I had long, blond hair, wore makeup, and carried myself rather femininely. But in my head, I knew I was gay—though I was more of a self-loathing gay.

The truth is, I didn’t like gays, and didn’t want to be associated with them. Yet there I was, dating only other girls.

Her journey begins in earnest with the viewing of successful transgender stories on Instagram. All the stories she saw painted a positive picture of transition and life after the transition. She expressed the feeling that being a transgender female would result in less negative feedback from society than being gay. She looked for books that would discuss both sides of the transgender issue, but found only books that supported the transgender movement and the medical procedures.

The article continues:

The first step was to find a therapist who would write me a letter to start me on male hormones.

I soon found a therapist who said she would help me, and I told her I wanted to start the hormones on my 19th birthday, which was only five weeks off. She required only a one-hour appointment each week.

That’s hardly enough time to get to know someone. Yet those five hours got me an official letter that unlocked the doors for me to get hormone therapy and become a “man.” It also helped me change my “sex” on my driver’s license from female to male.

I now see a huge problem with how easy this was. If the therapist had gone slower and been more careful, she would have seen that I wasn’t actually trans.

But by this time, I’d seen the promotional videos. I was convinced that my gender is what was “off,” and the therapist guided me along and made me feel like a sex change is what I needed.

By this point, my friends were also encouraging me to transition. “You’re a hot girl,” they said. “You’ll be a hot guy, too!” Others were too afraid to say anything against it, because after all, it was 2017. I never got pushback from anyone.

The article notes:

Not once did she tap the brakes to keep me from gender transition.

The article goes on to detail some of the medical problems a teenager may encounter with transition. Finally Miss Wright was encouraged to stop the transition by her grandfather. His wisdom probably saved her life. She then details the withdrawal process which also involved some serious medical problems.

The article concludes:

It’s insane to me that our society is letting this to happen to young people. At age 18, I wasn’t even legal to buy alcohol, but I was old enough to go to a therapist and get hormones to change my gender.

This is happening to vulnerable kids much younger than I was, and the adults are AWOL.

When you walk into these clinics, you won’t really see older people around. It’s boys and girls playing dress-up, brought there by clueless parents, waiting for the appointment that could likely ruin their lives.

I hope I’m not the only one who sees a major problem with this. Our culture has set up a fast-track to gender transition that will only result in scarred bodies and ruined lives—and the medical community is complicit. I met with these doctors in person and gave them my own cash. I can tell you they did not care.

At age 18, I wasn’t even legal to buy alcohol, but I was old enough to go to a therapist and get hormones to change my gender.

This is a public health crisis that our media and politicians are completely ignoring. More young people are being deceived every day, being told that the solution to their insecurity and identity problems is to get a sex change.

That’s just about the worst path you can put a young person on.

Until we do something, until the medical community puts up serious guardrails and begins to do its due diligence—and until politicians grow a spine and step in—expect to see more young people scarred for life.

If anything, I hope my story can serve as a warning bell and save some other young teenager the misery and grief I’ve been through.

Her story is chilling and should be a wake-up call to parents who for whatever reason are putting their children on the transgender train. The current transgender movement is a dangerous fad that ‘cool’ parents are taking part in. It is actually child abuse.

Sometimes Warnings Are There For A Reason

Common sense is not a flower that grows in everyone’s garden. When someone warns you about something, they may actually know something you do not.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about bloggers Jolie King and Mark Firkin. They announced in 2017 that they would be going on an international trip to “try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad rap in the media.” What could possibly go wrong?

Last Thursday, the BBC reported:

Two Australian citizens detained in Iran have been identified as Jolie King and Mark Firkin.

Ms King, who also holds a UK passport, and Mr Firkin were blogging their travels in Asia and the Middle East.

They were reportedly arrested 10 weeks ago near Tehran but news of the arrest, and that of another British-Australian woman, came to light on Wednesday.

Australia said it had repeatedly raised their cases with Tehran, including in a meeting between officials last week.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said she had lobbied on their behalf in a meeting with her Iranian counterpart.

She described the detentions as “a matter of deep concern” on Thursday, and confirmed that assistance had been offered to the families of the three detainees.

“[We] hope to see Mark and Jolie safely home as soon as possible,” their families said on Thursday.

The situation comes amid growing tensions between the West and Iran.

Several dual nationals have been detained in Iran in recent years, including the British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Relations between the UK and Iran have also been strained in recent months by a row over the seizure of oil tankers in the Gulf.

I guess maybe the media discourages people from traveling to certain places for a reason. We need to remember that not every country in the world plays by the same rules.

 

Be Careful When Getting Excited About An Upcoming Trip

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about a recent controversy in the knitting community. I am posting most of the article because I am not sure anyone could explain this as well as Mr. Hinderaker.

The article reports:

It begins with a young (white) knitter who expressed enthusiasm about an upcoming trip to India on social media:

On January 7, she blogged excitedly about her upcoming trip to India. She wrote that 2019 would be her “year of color.” She said that as a child, India had fascinated her, and that when an Indian friend’s parents offered to take her with them on a trip, it was “like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.” She spoke of her trip as if it were the biggest hurdle anyone could jump: “If I can go to India, I can do anything — I’m pretty sure.” Templer, it should be noted, is white.

As someone who is mixed-race Indian, to me, her post (though seemingly well-meaning) was like bingo for every conversation a white person has ever had with me about their “fascination” with my dad’s home country; it was just so colorful and complex and inspiring. It’s not that they were wrong, per se, just that the tone felt like they thought India only existed to be all those things for them.

Following a major controversy in the online knitting community, the offender offered a Maoist apology:

Templer has since apologized for her post, writing, “It took women of color pointing this out for me to see it … which is not their responsibility, and I am thankful to them for taking the time,” and that she’d be continuing to raise visibility of people of color (and specifically black/indigenous POC) knitters and their work.”

The article concludes:

Social media also makes pointing out racism easier than ever. For weeks, POC knitters have used Instagram, and specifically Instagram stories, to share their observations, tag other knitters, and conduct polls about others’ experiences with racism in the community. Hundreds of people of color have shared stories of being ignored in knitting stores, having white knitters assume they were poor or complete amateurs, or flat-out saying they didn’t think black or Asian people knit.

There is much more–“whitewashing,” for example. If lefties can turn knitting into a hotbed of racism, what can’t they do?

Wow. Not even knitters are safe from racism.

Comments On A Current Scandal

This is not a news article—this is a rant from an old person who is concerned about the activities of the current younger generations. There is no source for this article although it is the result of the news we have recently seen about the scandal in the Marine Corps regarding nude pictures and videos. Admittedly, I come from a generation that was more accustomed to privacy—we didn’t have Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. to post pictures of our lunch and other activities. The older generation had a different concept of privacy than the current generations.

I don’t find it odd that men would look at pictures of naked women. I don’t find it odd that a man would look at an explicit video. I do question the wisdom of the women posting these pictures or videos. A good rule of thumb is to never put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t mind seeing on the front page of The New York Times or on the evening news. Even if the pictures of videos were not intended for the internet, there is no guarantee when you give a person a picture or a video that the picture or video will never be seen by anyone else. Again, wisdom is called for. Never put anything on film or in your phone or laptop that you don’t want to go public. These pictures and videos could create a serious problem if a future employer were to see them.

I don’t know what the eventual punishment of the people involved in this scandal will be. It is my hope that the people who created the pictures and videos will be disciplined as well as those who set up the Facebook page to view them. There are no victims here—the women who created the pictures and videos are not victims—the pictures and videos were created with their consent. They are guilty of bad judgement, just as the men who set up the Facebook page are guilty of bad judgement.

As I have previously stated, I am part of a generation that believed in privacy. These pictures and videos devalue the women that made them. They are the result of the lies that many women are told about their value and about their role as women.  My advice to a woman whose boyfriend or husband asks for such a picture or video is to find another boyfriend of husband. You are worth more than that.

I am sure there will be some serious consequences for the people involved in this scandal. It is my hope that they will learn from their mistakes and be more prudent in their actions in the future. I also hope that the women involved begin to realize their true worth and that the men involved begin to respect the women in their lives rather than viewing them as sex objects.

Using A Fool’s Folly To Gain Political Advantage

The Democrat party is desperately looking for an issue that will bring Democrats out to vote in this year’s mid-term election. They have a few issues that have worked in the past, but they are having a hard time finding one that will work this year. Well, I think they think they have found their issue–it’s the ongoing problem of racism in America. We had our conservative racist last week–Cliven Bundy was taken to the cleaners by the press. Now we have our Democrat racist this week–Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

Mr. Sterling was taped by a former girlfriend during an argument. Those tapes were then released to the press as evidence that Mr. Sterling was a racist. At this point I should mention that Mr. Sterling is 80 years old, extremely wealthy and his girlfriend is young, black, and Mexican. He seems more like an older man in the clutches of a gold-digger than a racist.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article on the controversy yesterday.

The article reports:

The more you learn about the story, the stranger it gets. If you listen to the tapes, which have been made public by TMZ and Deadspin, it is hard to make sense of them. Sterling doesn’t want Stiviano to put up photos of herself with African-Americans on Instagram or bring them with her to Los Angeles Clippers games. He says he doesn’t care if she associates or sleeps with black people, just don’t put them up on Instagram. An odd distinction! His request was motivated, evidently, by the fact that one or more of Sterling’s friends called him to comment on the Instagram photos. While Sterling never says this, reading between the lines it appears that someone must have teased him about his mistress consorting with blacks.

As usual, President Obama chose to comment on how this incident shows that America is racist:

“The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination,” Obama said during a news conference in Malaysia, where he was traveling.

No, the incident shows that a wealthy older man is vulnerable to a woman who wants a large portion of his money. Individual people may be racist in America, just as individual people all over the world may have prejudices. However, the comments of a man in a heated domestic argument should not be used to accuse America of being racist. There is also a strong possibility that Mr. Sterling’s girlfriend was baiting him to make sure she got a really good tape. I also wonder if she asked Mr. Sterling for money for the tape before releasing it and if he refused. That may be the reason the tape was released–blackmail didn’t work.

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