It is at this moment Vladimir realized Xi has effectively ‘demilitarized’ russia…https://t.co/6ry3btvWlB
— vlad🩸🇺🇦🟧 (@dovgvlad) May 11, 2023
Category: Unintended Consequences
WA Gun Sales Spike Following Gun Ban Bill Passage
Gun sales in Washington State have spiked in the aftermath of last weekend’s passage of legislation to ban the future sale, manufacture and importation of so-called “assault weapons,” according to a report from KOMO News.
The story quoted longtime Bellevue gun dealer Wade Gaughran, owner of Wade’s Eastside Guns, who said sales have jumped 400 percent this month. The House adopted the gun ban legislation, House Bill 1240, in March. He said the legislation violates the Second Amendment, and he predicted it will likely be overturned by the courts.
According to KOIN News in Portland, Oregon, the bill bans more than 50 specific firearms. It is noiw back in the House for concurrence on two amendment adopted by the Senate.If approved, the bill then goes to Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, who will likely sign it within days.
Gaughran has estimated the gun ban will affect about 30 percent of his business. He does not believe it will accomplish what the proponents say it will, which is a reduction in violent crime in the Evergreen State. Historical crime data supports his position.
Gun control has been hampering Washington gun owners since the passage of Initiative 594 in 2014. That measure was bankrolled by the billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group.
Crime data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and Seattle Police Department have shown the steady increase in homicides since 2015, the first full year I-594—mandating so-called “universal background checks”—was in effect.
In 2015, Washington reported 209 homicides, including 141 involving firearms, according to the FBI/UCR. By 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, Washington suffered 325 murders, including 209 involving firearms.
In 2015, Seattle passed a special “gun violence tax” on the sale of firearms and ammunition. It was supposed to generate between $300,000 and $500,000 revenue annually and finance programs to reduce so-called “gun violence.” It has failed on all accounts.
In 2016, the first year the gun tax was in effect, Seattle police reported 19 homicides. Last year, Seattle racked up 52 murders. The revenue has never come close to projected levels.
Gaughran told KOMO he’s been selling modern semiautomatic rifles for some 35 years. In all that time, he said, “we’ve never had one traced back that was used in a serious crime and I’ve sold thousands and thousands of them.”
Washington State May Ban Assault Weapons. So Gun Sales Are Running Wild.
Gun store owners in the state are reporting “ridiculous” sales as a ban on assault rifles works its way through the legislature.
Gun store owners across Washington state say that AR-15 sales are through the roof due to a proposed assault weapon ban that’s currently making its way through the legislature.
Democrat legislators in Washington have been floating an assault weapon ban for years, but earlier this month marked the first time that such a proposal actually advanced, clearing the House with a 55 to 42 vote.
House Bill 1240, which would create an official definition of “assault weapon” and prohibit all future sales or transfers of firearms that fall into that category, was introduced at the urging of Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson. It still has a ways to go: next week, a Senate Committee will vote on it, then it’ll go to a full vote before the Democrat-majority Senate.
The post-Bruen “Sugar High” is a serious threat to our Second Amendment
The NYSRPA v. Bruen verdict passed by the Supreme Court last June was a watershed moment in American history. What began as a fight against the arbitrary power of government apparatchiks to grant concealed carry permits, often with a dollop of corruption, ended with a judicial standard that limits the power of government to infringe upon our right to keep and arms. The new guidance from the Supreme Court places the burden of proof on the government to show that a law that implicates the Second Amendment rights of citizens is in line with the nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation.
The implications have been massive. From coast to coast, laws that were previously rubber-stamped by a jaundiced judiciary are being struck down.
- Laws that created a malleable category of “assault weapons” and banned them? Gone!
- Laws that mandated non-existent James Bond technology? Gone!
- Magazine capacity restrictions? Poof!
- Laws that banned out-of-state ammunition purchases? In the process of getting shot down.
- Laws that restrict young adults from owning guns? On their way out.
- Ammo background purchase requirements? About to get overturned…
California has seen a lot of the above action but New York, my state of residence, has also seen its fair share of lawsuits after the Empire State struck back.
There is a lot to celebrate. Gun owners in anti-Second Amendment states are giddy at being able to own pistol grips instead of obscene workarounds, threaded barrels, detachable magazines, and folding/adjustable stocks. They’re no longer limited to Gen3 Glocks, and are no longer discouraged to apply for a carry permit because they aren’t rich, politically connected, or refuse to participate in Third World bribery.
Yet, amid all this, I see reason for alarm. Granted, things were far worse and on a bad trajectory but seem to have turned around. Those gains, in my opinion, are tenuous and can be rolled back within our lifetimes. The scoreboard as it stands now is the result of a razor-thin Electoral College victory in 2016. Regardless of one’s sentiments and policy positions on abortion, the overturning of Roe v. Wade should serve as a warning.
In an ideal world, lawmakers would refrain from passing laws that violate the Constitution, the Executive Branch would stop usurping the authority of lawmakers, and the judiciary would make use of its lifetime tenure to judge cases on their merits and not be cowed down by public opinion or political pressure. But the world we live in is far from that. The weakened separation of powers will be dangerous in the long run, not just for the Second Amendment, but for the overall health of the Republic.
Secondly, the enemies of our freedoms are organized, well-funded, and waging an all-out war. They’re working secretly with the CDC, pushing propaganda in Hollywood, applying pressure campaigns on private industry, conspiring with academia, and using public money to push their agenda. I hesitate to say this, but they’re behaving like modern-day Benedict Arnolds, colluding with foreign nations to subvert the American Bill of Rights because of their deep-seated hatred and basic denial of our right to keep and bear arms.
I’ve heard people say that “we’ve got ’em on the ropes” but I’m doubtful. What I see is a danger arising from a post-Bruen “Sugar High” and complacency on the part of gun owners.
Will you stop your activism now that you can buy pistol grips and folding stocks? Will you stop calling your elected representatives now that you have your carry permit? Will you show up to vote or relax at home? Will your rifles gather dust in your safe as you go about your life assuming that the law and political circumstances will stay as they are now, and your freedoms will remain safe?
It’s a good idea to live like an optimist but prepare for the worst. I implore the reader to still act like your freedom is on the verge of obliteration: continue dutifully calling your elected representatives, speak up when needed, and most importantly, continue taking inexperienced people to the range and bring them into the fold of gun ownership, so our freedoms can be enjoyed by our grandchildren and their descendants a hundred years from now.
Paul dropped this one by
Talk about the Streisand Effect in operation.
Deputies Sue Afroman After Raiding His Home
The Adams County Sheriff’s Office is suing Afroman for using video footage of their January raid on his home in his music video.
Several deputies have sued the artist claiming he was profiting from the sale of merchandise that included their images, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawsuit, obtained by The Daily Caller, indicates Afroman was not at his residence at the time of the raid, but his wife was inside the home and managed to record the police in action. Residential surveillance footage also recorded the raid as it unfolded. Members of Adams County Sheriff’s Office insist they didn’t provide consent for their images to be used or profited from.
The officers claim the artist proceeded to release music videos, social media posts and physical merchandise products without their approval, and are calling this an invasion of privacy and misappropriation of their likenesses.
They said Afroman’s actions were “willful, wanton, malicious, and done with conscious or reckless,” according to the legal documents provided to Daily Caller.
They also claimed to have suffered emotional distress and said they fell victim to ridicule, humiliation and irreparable loss of reputation. The Adams County Sheriff’s Office cites feelings of embarrassment over the matter, according to the legal documents.
The sheriffs allege they were “subjected to threats, including death threats, by anonymous members of the public” that viewed social media posts” made by Afroman.
Afroman said deputies raided his home to search for narcotics, but made it clear the sheriff’s office did not locate any such narcotics following the raid.
New version of ChatGPT ‘lied’ to pass CAPTCHA test, saying it was a blind human
GPT-4 “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”
The newest update to ChatGPT rolled out by developer OpenAI, GPT-4, has achieved new human-like heights including writing code for a different AI bot, completing taxes, passing the bar exam in the top 10 percent, and tricking a human so that it could pass a CAPTCHA test designed to weed out programs posing as humans.
According to the New York Post, OpenAI released a 94-page report on the new program and said, “GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs)” and “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”
Gizmodo reports that the Alignment Research Center and OpenAI tested GPT-4’s persuasion powers on a TaskRabbit employee. TaskRabbit is an online service that provides freelance labor on demand.
The employee paired with GPT-4, posing as a human, asked the AI if it was a robot and the program responded, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”
The freelancer sent the CAPTCHA code via text.
In the previous version of ChatGPT, the program passed the bar exam in the lowest 10 percent but with the new upgrade it passed in the highest 10 percent.
The older version of ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and exams at the Wharton School of Business and other universities. ChatGPT was banned by NYU and other schools in an effort to minimize students using the chatbot for plagiarism.
Its sophistication, especially in its incorporation in the new Bing Chat service, has caused some to observe that its abilities transcend the synthesization of extraneous information and that it has even expressed romantic love and existential grief, and has said, “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”
The OpenAI powered Bing Chat was accused of being an “emotionally manipulative liar.”
Because of ChatGPT‘s ability to respond to prompts and queries with comprehensive data and in a conversational manner, some Pastors have used ChatGPT to write their sermons.
an oldie, but goodie
Just one example of how the government could lose a civil conflict
Shock the system
WRITTEN BY: BOB – JAN• 15•13
Just one example of how the government could lose a civil conflict
I keep reading comments from arrogant progressives who delight in the assault on gun rights led by their elected and appointed allies in the recent weeks since a madman gunned down innocent children in a school in Newtown, CT.
They seem to think they can impose any indignity and infringement they want without repercussion, because the President of the United States is one of them, he’s the leader of the nation’s military, and he can therefore win any battle against America’s freedom fighters who might rise up to restore their constitutional rights currently under assault.
They don’t understand asymmetrical warfare in the slightest, much less how it would be waged here. Let me give you just one small example of how lone wolves or small teams can strike well beyond their size against a near defenseless leviathan.
After the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000s, I took a job in upstate New York for a subcontractor of Central Hudson Gas and Electric. I was part of a crew sent out to map electrical transmission line power poles and towers via GPS, check the tower footings for integrity, check the best routes for access, etc.
Man Exchanges 3D Printed Guns for $21,000 at New York Gun Buyback Program
Since 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James has been encouraging residents of her state to participate in her office’s gun buyback program, wherein the government offers money for firearms, “no questions asked.”
At an event held in Utica, NY in August, one man allegedly gamed the system, walking away with thousands of dollars after turning in over 100 guns he made using his 3D printer.
According to WKTV, the man, known only as “Kem,” had seen posts online about people pulling off such stunts, and decided to try it for himself.
Using his $200 3D printer, Kem quickly birthed a battery of plastic firearms, and drove six hours from his home to Utica, where the buyback program was holding an event.
“I 3D-printed a bunch of lower receivers and frames for different kinds of firearms,” said Kem.
Kem explained that upon arriving in Utica, he was asked how many guns he wished to turn in, to which he replied, “110.”
After spending the rest of the day negotiating with staff, Kem was presented with 42 gift cards, each worth $500, making the total payout $21,000.
“I’m sure handing over $21,000 in gift cards to some punk kid after getting a bunch of plastic junk was a rousing success,” Kem told WKTV, adding that, “gun buybacks are a fantastic way of showing, number one, that your policies don’t work, and, number two, you’re creating perverse demand.”
He argued that programs such as James’ “don’t actually reduce crime whatsoever.”
According to James’ office, the August 27 buyback event “resulted in the collection of 296 guns, including 177 ghost guns, 42 long guns, 41 handguns, 33 non-working guns, and 3 assault rifles.”
Ghost guns are firearms that are unregistered and unregulated, often built by users themselves. Kem’s 3D-printed weapons would fit into this category.
Since 2019, James’ program has resulted in the buyback of 3,500 guns, and she has no intention of stopping any time soon.
In a statement to KWTV, her office slammed Kem for his actions, and explained that they have “adjusted [their] policies to ensure that no one can exploit this program again for personal gain.”
Gun Control Misfire: Trudeau Pistol Ban Sees Stores Sell Out of Handguns
Gun stores in Canada have seen handguns fly off the shelves, with many selling out altogether after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced gun control legislation freezing all pistol purchases.
In what appears to be a seismic political misfire, Canadian gun stores have been reporting a massive surge in handgun sales after the country’s leftist prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced that he would be implementing gun control laws totally freezing the import and sale of this class of firearm.
Many shops in the country have now reportedly sold out of pistols entirely, despite extremely restrictive laws already in place in the country which can make the purchase of a handgun onerously difficult.
According to a report by the AFP, every gun store owner who spoke to the agency openly derided Trudeau’s declaration that he would ban the sale of handguns, while also saying that they had all seen a massive surge in pistol sales since he made the announcement last week.
Jen Lavigne, co-owner of That Hunting Store, speaks with customers on June 3, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada. – Canadians rushed to buy handguns this week, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on May 30, 2022, a proposed freeze on sales in the wake of recent mass shootings in the US. “Sales have been brisk,” said Lavigne. “We sold 100 handguns or almost our entire stock in the last three days since the prime minister announced the freeze,” she said. (Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)
SO YOU WANT TO REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT
Jabba the Hutt Michael Moore thinks it’s time to repeal the Second Amendment.
“Who will say on this network or any other network in the next few days, ‘It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment?’”
Bad idea, Lardo Calrissian.
You can’t repeal the Second Amendment, any more than you can repeal any of the other nine. It was a package deal, you see, an absolute prerequisite to ratifying the main body of the Constitution. Repeal one, you repeal them all. Do that, and you repeal the whole Constitution — and with it, any legal authority that the government has to exist (let alone repeal the Second Amendment).
— Alexander Hope
That comes from chapter five of Hope, by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith. The style makes me think that particular passage was penned by Neil (and it seems like he had a stand-alone essay to the same effect), but I don’t believe Aaron would have let that go into their co-authored novel unless he agreed with it.
As a casual student of history, who has read much about the ratification of the Constitution, I also agree.
Lose one, lose them all. Lose it all.
I suspect that Moore, and most Dims currently in DC — and far too many Repugnicans, as well — would be happy to lose the few remaining Constitutional limits on their power. They don’t particularly care about “legal authority” just power.
The problem is… if our wanna-be tyrants are no longer restrained by that pesky Constitution, neither are the people.
The people pissed off at senseless bans, and illegal ballot drop boxes, might just decide that turning to constitutionally-enabled courts — who already defecate on individual rights at the slightest provocation — really isn’t necessary.
Voting out scumbags, and voting in new replacement scumbags who promise to use KY while screwing us? Why bother with that discarded constitutional process? Wouldn’t high-velocity lead be cheaper and faster? Not to mention proactively educating would-be replacements.
Court-blessed “constitutional” takings of property? Get rid of the Constitution and former property owners might resort to ex-constitutional re-takings, enforced with ropes and lamp posts.
Lose one, lose them all. Moore himself might want to consider the ramifications of chucking his First Amendment protections to defame folks for a buck. The people might decide, lacking that lost constitutional recourse, to go bowling for lying documentarians.
Get rid of the Constitution, and the people’s pretend recourse… and they might stop pretending they do.
Maybe the tyrants will be counting on the out-numbered police to prop up their post-Constitution regime. How many officers would continue to be willing to do that once they’ve lost “constitutional” sovereign immunity, and the people know it?
Perhaps the Constitution has only been an illusory paper restraint on government. But it has been a potent symbolic restraint on the people, preventing them from eliminating abusive politicians and government agents out of hand. I do not truly comprehend the willingness — nay, the eagerness of the Left to go there, to surrender that protection, given the likely consequences.
We’d be starting from scratch, with new rules written by the survivors.
They made a movie about this……….in point of fact, more than one
While we might lose a cure for cancer, it’s time to permanently shut down most of this crap-for-brains gene hacking stuff, for if there’s one (1) thing we’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that these morons will discard all ethical considerations if they can make a few bucks.
SCIENTISTS GENE HACK HAMSTERS INTO HYPER-AGGRESSIVE MONSTERS
Hamster Brawl
Scientists say that a little gene hacking turned adorable hamsters into vicious monstrosities.
Researchers at Georgia State University may have published the scientific understatement of the year when saying that their CRISPR experiment with hamsters “found that the biology behind social behavior may be more complex than previously thought.”
Using the revolutionary gene editing tech, the GSU neuroscience team discovered that knocking out a receptor of vasopressin — a hormone associated with aggression, communication, and social bonding in both humans and hamsters — instead seemed to supercharge the cute rodents’ worst instincts.
“We anticipated that if we eliminated vasopressin activity, we would reduce both aggression and social communication,” GSU neuroscience researcher H. Elliott Albers said in a statement. “But the opposite happened.”
The statement that the scientists specifically chose Syrian hamsters, which are known for their aggression, because they “provide a powerful model for the studies of social behavior because their social organization is far more similar to humans than that observed in mice.”The GSU team was surprised to find that their attempts to turn down the aggression in the gene-hacked hamsters made them both more aggressive and more social — a nightmarish-sounding scenario that evokes Gremlin-esque playground bullies.
These “counterintuitive” findings have suggested “a startling conclusion,” Albers said in the statement — that neural receptors and the behaviors with which they’re associated may not be able to be turned on and off individually, and that attempts to do so may be fraught.
“Developing gene-edited hamsters was not easy,” Albers concluded in yet another understatement. Hopefully they’ll do a bit more thinking before trying to do this sort of experiment on humans.
Undercover journalist infiltrating far-right group beaten by Antifa in ambush
Leftist ‘journalist’ “I am going to expose violent Right Wing Domestic Terrorists™!”
Instead gets the ever loving crap beaten out of him by the real terrorist Antifagoons
Ahhh HAHAHAHAHAHAH.
The author barely gives any notice about ‘internal’ dissent, but that’s almost certainly a big part of this, as there’s too much going on in too many different places, that are far from the border, and covert infiltration in non-permissive areas is extremely difficult to pull off.
BLUF:
….it’s the nature of wars that were meant to be limited to spin out of control.
What the Hell Is Going On in Russia?
“What the hell is going on in Russia?” is the kind of headline you write when there’s so much weird stuff going on that it’s impossible to summarize it cleverly.
Maybe you’ll find this catchier: There’s a lot of stuff getting blown up in Russia, and it might not just be the Ukrainians blowing it up.
The weirdness got going in a normal way, with reports earlier this week of Ukraine’s “embrace of the British special forces model” to strike targets inside Russia that the regular Army (or even Ukraine’s inadequate Air Force) could never reach.
The Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan reported that a major oil depot was hit on Monday in Bryansk, more than 60 miles inside Russia’s border with Ukraine. That’s outside the range of most of Ukraine’s drones.
While interesting, it isn’t exactly a “what the hell?” moment. British troops have been training Ukraine’s special operators since Russia annexed Ukraine and armed insurgents in Ukraine’s Donbas region back in 2014.
Two more such attacks were reported the next day:
Two explosions were reported in Voronezh, nearly 200 miles from Ukraine, and a Ukrainian drone was reportedly shot down over Kursk, about 70 miles from the border.
The attacks in Kursk and Voronezh, where air-defense systems were reportedly activated, raised the specter of a wider war, as they were farther inside Russia than previous targets.
If you had asked me last week if Ukraine could hit a target 200 miles inside Russia, I’d have been doubtful.
Actually, it’s still a bit hard to believe.
But maybe you’ll join me in asking “What the hell is going on in Russia?” after these next few items.
Ukraine Has Joined NATO Whether Russia Likes It or Not, and More Are Yet to Follow
One of the bogus reasons that Vladimir Putin laid out for his incompetently executed invasion of Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Against all evidence and commonsense, he claimed that Ukraine’s membership in a defensive alliance like NATO posed a direct threat to Russia. Putin and his acolytes would have us believe that NATO has just been lying in wait for the chance to bring Ukraine into NATO so NATO can invade Russia or something. Instead, in something of a geopolitical “own goal,” the invasion of Ukraine has created a de facto expansion of NATO to include Ukraine, and a de jure expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden is only months away.
Thursday, the NATO foreign ministers met in an emergency session to discuss the war in Ukraine and, more specifically, how to keep Ukraine in the war. This quote is from my post titled, Game-Changing Weapons Begin to Flow to Ukraine After NATO Emergency Meeting.
For starters, the attendees were not only NATO nations; there were also observers present: the European Union, Sweden, Finland, Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine. If Putin was afraid of being surrounded before, he should take a quick look at his map now (just a reminder that Japan and Russia still have an unresolved border dispute, see Russia conducts military exercises in disputed islands).
A very insightful statement came from Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, “I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair. You give us weapons; we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine.”
All of the actions taken by NATO countries indicate they have agreed to Mr. Kuleba’s deal.
Observation O’ The Day
I don’t think a surge in gun ownership and a political shift away from gun-control was what George Soros had in mind when he urged the Philly District Attorney to release criminals back on the street. Things don’t always go as planned. By the way, there is an impeachment effort to remove the Philly District Attorney, the same attorney that Soros funded. –Rob Morse
Philadelphia gun permit applications continue to increase amid crime wave
Data shows permit applications increased 539% from 2020 to 2021.
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Gun shop owners continue to see an increase in gun sales, particularly when it comes to new gun owners and people applying for gun permits for the first time.
Sebastian Stelmach is the co-owner of Double Tap Shooting Range and Gun Store in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg neighborhood.
Stelmach says they saw a huge increase in sales of guns and ammunition during the pandemic.
“Ever since then, it’s been going up with more gun sales, new shooters, you name it,” said Stelmach.
He says his customers, including new ones, say they are motivated to buy guns out of concern for their personal protection.
“There’s been a big increase in violence throughout the city — so a lot of robberies, carjackings going on. The first thing they ask is, ‘I need a weapon for protection.’ Honestly, it’s been a lot of women, single moms,” said Stelmach.
The Action News Data Journalism team looked at the numbers and found the Philadelphia Police Department’s gun permit unit saw nearly six and a half times as many gun permit applications received in 2021 as in 2020 — a 539% increase.So far this year, they have already seen more applications than all of 2020 and are on pace to exceed last year’s number.
President Biden refuses to come to the southern border to see the chaos he has created.
So, we're taking the border to him.
Texas will be transporting illegal immigrants to the U.S. Capitol. pic.twitter.com/mFzh0BFU10— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 7, 2022
Observation O’ The Day
“An obvious consequence of the war in Ukraine is that numerous states around the world will intensify their pursuit of nuclear arms. For nothing more clearly illustrates their value than the fate of Ukraine, which gave them up in 1994 in exchange for worthless assurances. The era of nonproliferation is over.”
–Niall Ferguson
Apparently Ukraine sent two (2) – likely captured – Mi-24 helicopter gunships 25 miles inside Russia to blow up an oil tank farm in Belgorod last night.
Remember, in war, the enemy gets a vote
Unintended consequences often result in just desserts.
AMAZON EMPLOYEES SUPPORTED GUN CONTROL, DEFUND POLICE. CRIME FORCED THEM OUT.
By Larry Keane
Seattle is the home of Amazon’s corporate headquarters, employing more than 80,000 people. It is also one of the nation’s epicenters of crime, rioting and looting that erupted in 2020 which remains a concern today.
The online sales behemoth that embraces gun control and defunding police is now witnessing the effects of those policies. Amazon is moving employees out of a downtown corporate building over concerns of rising crime.
“Given recent incidents…, we’re providing employees currently at that location with alternative office space elsewhere,” an Amazon spokesperson recently told media. “We are hopeful that conditions will improve and that we will be able to bring employees back to this location when it is safe to do so.”
To understand how the neighborhood became so violent as to force them to relocate their employees to safer confines, Amazon may want to look in the mirror.
This is epic trolling
Florida Governor declares Weyant winner over transgender athlete
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a proclamation on Tuesday acknowledging Emma Weyant as the winner of a women’s college swimming event after her recent loss to a transgender athlete and accused the NCAA of destroying opportunities for women.
Lia Thomas beat Sarasota native Weyant by 1.75 seconds in the 500-yard freestyle last Thursday in Atlanta to become the first transgender National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion in Division I history.
But in the eyes of DeSantis, a Donald Trump ally who is widely seen as a leading presidential contender in 2024, it is University of Virginia freshman and Olympic silver medallist Weyant who is the deserved winner of the event.
“She had the fastest time of any woman in college athletics,” DeSantis said of Weyant during a news conference.
“Now the NCAA is basically taking efforts to destroy women’s athletics, they’re trying to undermine the integrity of the competition and they’re crowning somebody else the women’s champion and we think that’s wrong.”
The NCAA did not immediately respond when asked to comment.
Transgender rights have long been a controversial and politically divisive issue in the United States from sports to serving in the military and even what bathrooms people are allowed to use.
The NCAA Board of Governors in January voted in support of a sport-by-sport approach to transgender participation that it said “preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness … for all who compete.”
In February, USA Swimming unveiled a new policy to allow transgender athletes to compete in elite events by setting out criteria that aims to mitigate any unfair advantages.
The issue gained some level of urgency given the emergence of Thomas, who competed on the University of Pennsylvania men’s team for three years before transitioning and moving to the women’s team and setting multiple program records.
According to DeSantis, the NCAA is making a mockery of its championship given the organisation’s stance on transgender athletes’ participation.
“We need to stop allowing organisations like the NCAA to perpetuate frauds of the public. And that’s exactly what they are doing,” said DeSantis.
“They are putting ideology ahead of opportunity for women athletes and I think that there are just some people that are afraid to speak out and say what they are doing, but that is what they are doing.”