[THEASPENBEAT] The left has hounded artistic Colorado baker Jack Phillips for over a decade. It started back in 2012 when a gay couple demanded that he create a ''gay wedding cake'' with two figurine husbands on top.
Of course, the gay couple could have gotten their gay cake created by many other bakers. They seem to have chosen Phillips not despite, but because, creating such a object was contrary to his religious beliefs.
Phillips politely said he would happily bake a cake for them, but not a gay cake. That's an important point. Phillips did not simply refuse to serve the couple on the grounds that they were gay. Rather, he refused to create a special ''gay cake'' for them.
Phillips thus refused to create an artistic expression that was contrary to his religious beliefs.
The gay couple were something like a couple seeking out a Kosher restaurant, demanding that the Jewish chef cook up an elaborate pork dish, and then contending that they'd been discriminated against when told that pork is not on the menu.
It's actually worse than that. The gay couple thought Phillips' beliefs were not just discriminatory, but should be illegal. So, they schemed to establish that as a legal matter.
First, they brought an action against Phillips before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and won. The case then went to a Colorado appellate court, and they won there too.
Phillips finally filed for review in the Colorado Supreme Court, where all seven Justices are Democrat appointees. Those Colorado Justices refused to even hear the case on the grounds there was zero merit to Phillips' appeal.
Then Phillips filed for an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court. It's the court of last resort in America, and they accept only a few percent of the appeals lodged there.
To everyone's surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Phillips' case was worth hearing. Not only that, but after hearing the case they reversed the Colorado decision. They decided that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had exhibited an unfair antipathy toward Phillips' religious-based actions.
Let that sink in. The U.S. Supreme Court — the highest court in the land — found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and state courts had shown six years of unfair antipathy toward Phillips' ordinary Christian religious beliefs.
At least they didn't feed him to the lions. But what happened next was almost as bad, as anyone who's been a defendant in a lawsuit will tell you.
On the very day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in favor of Phillips, a self-described ''devil worshipper'' demanded by email that Phillips bake a cake celebrating the devil's birthday — complete with a dildo on top. (It's not clear what is bedeviling about dildos.)
As before, Phillips politely explained that he could not bake such a cake because it was contrary to his religious beliefs.
Before then, on the very day that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Phillips' appeal of the ''gay cake'' case, someone came into Phillips' bakery and demanded that he create a ''transgender cake'' depicting transgender stuff.
You can see the pattern.
As before, Phillips refused to create the ''transgender cake.'' As before, the transgender person brought an action before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. As before, he/she won. And as before, the case eventually went up to the Colorado Supreme Court.
This time, the Colorado Supreme Court took the case (perhaps feeling stung by the U.S. Supreme Court's reversal of the Colorado decisions the earlier time).
But the Colorado Supreme Court dodged a decision on the merits. Instead, they dismissed the case on a technicality.
It was a win for Phillips, but it didn't establish any precedent for other Christian bakers or anyone else who wants protection for his religious beliefs.
Pity the Colorado Supreme Court. They were faced with either (1) defying the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision by ruling against Phillips, or (2) defying their woke principles by ruling in his favor.
Ah, they were torn between the law of the land and the law of the woke. They found a clever way to choose neither.
But trust me, they'll be back. The devil-worshipping transexuals, the kangaroo state courts and ''civil rights'' commissions stacked with Democrat appointees, and the rest of the totalitarian wokerati — they'll all be back, lawless as ever.
They want to outlaw religious beliefs that they don't believe in, and that's almost all of them.
[RushBabe49] Once again, I will post this in its entirety for those who are not following Wendy on X/Twitter (she is @wendyp4545). This gives us a look into conditions prevailing in NC before the hurricanes and floods decimated the western part of the state, as well as eastern Tennessee. This also offers a look at the behavior of the state and federal governments, and especially North Carolina’s DemocRat Governor, Roy Cooper. Frankly, this is disgusting. Your government is working against you.
To the Litigation Attorneys representing all of the people in North Carolina who lost everything because of the flood and who will not have money to rebuild because they didn’t have flood insurance: There are a few things that you need to know.
A) FEMA didn’t update the flood zone maps for decades so the people who purchased their properties didn’t know they bought land in a flood zone. FEMA didn’t do their job.- Maria in the Morning interview 10-15-2024
B) Duke Power opened the dam that caused the water that created mudslides which then caused the roadways to fail and rivers to flood.
C) The River monitors were broken and had been broken and were reported by homeowners in the area near Chimney Rock.
D) No evacuation was given until after Duke Power opened the dam after the mudslides began.
E) Video testimony exists of victims who didn’t receive evacuation notices until the mudslide events were in progress.
F) FEMA Spokesman on Fox interview 10-14-2024 said that the Governor has to request FEMA. Governor RoyCooper was partying in New York and did not call in FEMA Search and Rescue causing many people who could have been rescued to lose their lives.
G) Many of the Representatives in North Carolina were convieniantly out of state or town including the Mayor of Chimney Rock. – Video testimony exists.
Given this information, I suggest that it is imperative that you all vote for President Donald Trump in November, to drain the swamp.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Yaroslav Karpikov
[REGNUM] The invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region has obviously not only failed to achieve its goals, but the occupiers are rapidly losing the positions they managed to secure in August-September. If the situation continues to develop at the current rate, Kiev's bloody adventure will soon come to an inglorious end. It seems that the historical experience of the Ukrainians teaches nothing, because this is not the first failure of their military adventure near Kursk.
A similar adventure, the scene for which became the same lands of the Kursk border, was the attack of the Cossacks of the first Little Russian hetman-traitor Ivan Vyhovsky 350 years ago.
The history of the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654 is well known in Russia since school years, and was also known in Ukraine (before history textbooks were rewritten in the key needed by the independent state ). Less well known is what happened after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Zaporozhian Host took the oath of allegiance to the Russian Tsar.
Khmelnitsky died already in 1657. And if this commander and statesman played a positive role for the general Russian history (with all the complexity of the personality of Bohdan Mikhailovich), then the situation was completely different with his successors, who led such an inconstant and “shaky” mass of people as the Cossacks.
MR. VYHOVSKY'S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
After Khmelnytsky's death, power was taken over by the former general clerk of the Zaporozhian Host, Ivan Vyhovsky. The Hetman's mace fell into his hands thanks to intrigues combined with repressions, which vividly resembles the modern Ukrainian "politicum".
According to Bohdan's will, the young son Yuri Khmelnitsky was to become the new head of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, with Vyhovsky acting as a sort of regent. But in the end, Yuri Bohdanovich was sent to study at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, and the general clerk seized the reins of government.
He was supported by a part of the "significant" Zaporozhians - the Cossack elders and the Orthodox gentry who joined them, who believed that it was better to receive back the privileges from the Polish king Jan Casimir than to continue to serve - albeit a co-religionist - the Russian tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The Zaporozhian golytba (golutvenny Cossacks) and part of the elders were faithful to the oaths of the Pereyaslav Rada.
Vyhovsky's downside was his "murky" biography.
He was not a natural Zaporozhian, but a nobleman from the present-day Zhitomir region, served in the "kvartsiany", that is, regular army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the battle of the Poles with Khmelnitsky's Cossacks (and the Crimean Tatars, with whom Bohdan was in a temporary alliance) at Zhovti Vody, he was captured, tried to escape and was caught by the Crimeans. It is known that Khmelnitsky bought the prisoner from Khan Islam Giray for a horse.
In gratitude, Vyhovsky swore an oath to Khmelnytsky. The nobleman, who graduated from the Mohyla Academy, was a valuable acquisition - thanks to his diplomatic skills, Khmelnytsky established contacts with the Transylvanian prince and the court of the Turkish sultan. It is not surprising that, by the will of Hetman Khmelnytsky, Vyhovsky headed the General Chancellery of the Zaporozhian Host.
But they did not believe the general clerk "bought for a horse". The Russian historian Sergei Solovyov quoted the words of the Cossack envoys to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich: "We do not want Vyhovsky as a hetman at all and do not trust him in anything... Bogdan gave him life and made him a clerk; but by his nature, he does not want any good for the Army, and his wife is a noblewoman from a noble house."
In the struggle for power, Vyhovsky showed a tough character. Pereyaslav Cossack Colonel Timofey Tsetsyura wrote that he "ordered to flog many colonels who did not want to listen, and shot and hanged others, and gave many Cossacks with their wives and children to the Crimea as Tatars." Needless to say, "Euro-oriented" Ukrainian politicians have always known a thing or two about repressions and reprisals.
Vyhovsky began "European integration" immediately after seizing power. In early September 1658, in the city of Gadyach, Vyhovsky signed an agreement with the Poles. The "Gadyach Articles" promised the hetman's lands the status of a third full member of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - along with the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a "Russian Principality" was to appear. The Cossacks were promised the liquidation of the Brest Church Union.
But the promises remained on paper - Warsaw explained that the Sejm ratified the "articles", but in a greatly reduced form. In reality, the Hetmanate, with a minimum of benefits, received a maximum of problems, finding itself - like today's Ukraine - in the position of the West's battering ram against Russia.
True, Vyhovsky, unlike current figures, looked at things more realistically and, not counting on help from Jan Casimir, just in case swore allegiance to the Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray in the expectation of military assistance.
MATTRESS OF MILITARY SIGNIFICANCE
After the treaty with the Poles in Gadyach, the hetman, together with the previously invited Tatars, conceived an act of intimidation against the Russian state: an attack on the border lands to the west of the defensive structure - the Belgorod line. The "traitor Ivashka Vyhovsky" chose the Kamennoye fortress as the place of the first attack.
This town (now the village of Kamennoye in the Sumy region, about 90 km from the border with the Kursk region) can be compared in its location to today's Sudzha - a border town without great strategic importance, chosen for a show of force. But behind the fortress there were critically important and vulnerable roads - Bakayev Shlyakh and Svinoy Shlyakh, along which the Crimean Tatars could break through.
The city of Kamennoye was built in the summer of 1651 through the efforts of the governor Fyodor Arsenyev, who erected Ostrogozhsk the following year (now a city in the Voronezh region).
The fort in Kamennoye was built from oak forest and consisted of eight towers - six blind and two passage towers. The main tower - "Moskovskaya" - was about 20 sazhens (slightly less than 43 meters) high. The total length of the fort wall was about 600 meters. The city's artillery consisted of one iron messenger pishchal - a long-barreled aimed gun, three regimental copper pishchals, three iron regimental pishchals (all on mounts). The defenders were armed with 11 iron zatinny pishchals - heavy fortress muzzle-loading guns, as well as one iron mattress.
At that time, a mattress was the name given to a primitive firearm, a tube 40–130 cm long, welded at one end and with a conical socket at the muzzle.
The beginning of the invasion. "And the churches of God and the bread he burned..."
We can judge the events under the walls of Kamenny from the letters of the city governor Prokofiy Karpov, who had been in charge of the newly built fortress since 1658, which have been preserved in the archives. In addition, the chief of the Discharge Order, Prince Grigory Romodanovsky, reported to Moscow about what was happening.
The first raids of the "Cherkasy" - Vyhovsky's Cossacks on Kamennoye began on August 18, 1658, when they drove away "horses and all kinds of animals" and also killed a boyar's son (as one of the classes of service people was called) and a Cossack in Russian service.
On September 10, 1658, large forces of Cherkass and Tatars appeared near Kamennoye, who “… laid siege and took away the entire settlement and became camps” — that is, they captured the suburbs and set up camp.
In a report that reached Moscow only on November 10, Governor Karpov wrote: Vygov “burned the Church of God, and the settlement, and the threshing floors, the grain and the mills, destroyed everything down to the foundations, not a single house remained.”
Around the city, the Cossacks built trenches - positions for cannons. On Vyhovsky's orders, the cannons fired for "three days." One of the targets of the shelling was "God's Cathedral Church," which brings to mind the fate of the temple in Sudzha.
Vyhovsky "broke the city and killed many of your Sovereign's people with cannons," wrote Karpov. On August 19, there was a "cruel attack" - Cossacks and Tatars tried to break through the Moscow Gate and dug tunnels under the tower. But, "by the grace of God," the enemy's attack was repelled, many Cherkassy colonels and Tatar murzas were beaten "and the city was defended."
Along with the siege of Kamenny, the Tatars and Cherkassy of Vyhovsky decided to expand the zone of military operations and, having crossed the Psel River (flowing through Sudzha and Sumy), they besieged the royal fortress of Lebedin (now a city in the Sumy region) in the northeast.
The fighting here lasted from September 10 to 19. The trading post was burned, but the Russian city was never taken - this can be found out from the message sent by the Lebedinsky voivode Kirill Mishkov.
SEVEN REGIMENTS CAN'T COPE. MYSTERIOUS NEGOTIATIONS
The Cherkasy captured under torture near Akhtyrka informed about Vyhovsky's forces participating in the attack on the Russian borderland. The voivode of the Russian fortress of Akhtyrka (now a city in the Sumy region) Maksim Telegin sent two captured Cossacks of the Mirgorod regiment, Ivashka Yunchenko and Danilka Samoilov, to the voivode Romodanovsky in Belgorod.
The Mirgorodians showed that the hetman who had defected to the Polish side brought seven regiments: Chigirinsky, Cherkassky, Prilutsky, Nezhinsky, Mirgorodsky, Lubensky and Kanevsky. Crimean Tatars arrived to help the invasion forces under the command of Karach-bey Murza, a well-known organizer of raids on the "southern Ukraines" of Russia.
The Tatars alone, according to the captives, had 40 thousand sabres. The figure is clearly exaggerated. But if we consider that all the invasion forces "in the Ukraine" consisted of several tens of thousands of Cherkassians and Tatars, this can be compared with the current grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region (30 thousand at the beginning of October, according to The Washington Post).
After unsuccessful assaults on several fortresses, the enemy's morale began to decline. During interrogation in Belgorod, prisoners Yunchenko and Samoilov reported that the Poltava Regiment had "seceded" from Vyhovsky. The residents and Cossacks of the Poltava Regiment's cities who remained loyal to their oath to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich locked themselves in their cities and disobeyed the traitor hetman.
On the other hand, the situation of the Kamennoye garrison was difficult - three dozen of the 200 defenders died. The city fought back, but the fighters were exhausted, there was a problem with food, and famine began.
Nevertheless, in view of the failures, Vyhovsky abandoned the siege of Kamennoye, and on September 22 ordered the preparation of a crossing over the Psel River in order to go to other tsarist cities. In the testimony of the captured "Vyhovskys" there is an interesting detail that is not in the reports of the governor Karpov. Before lifting the siege, the hetman had a personal meeting with the governor of Kamennoye and a local priest: "The Kamenovsky governor and the priest went from the city to the hetman's camp and spent the night with him, the hetman. And on September 23, the hetman... let the governor and the priest go to the city."
It is unknown what the negotiations were about. Perhaps about some guarantees for Vyhovsky in case his “operation” fails and he is captured by the Russians?
VYHOVSKY AT THE WALLS OF OLESHNYA. "THERE WAS A BATTLE UNTIL NIGHT..."
Be that as it may, on September 23 the siege of Kamenny was lifted, and Hetman Vyhovsky with all his forces headed across the Psel River towards the next Russian city - Oleshnya.
The city of Oleshnya (now a village in the Akhtyrsky district of the Sumy region) stood on the western edge of the Belgorod line, on a plain near the river of the same name. During the Time of Troubles, it was captured by the Poles, but the Russian state managed to recapture the city shortly before the events described. Oleshnya, following Kamenny, had to withstand the onslaught of Vyhovsky's army.
According to the archives, the city's artillery consisted of a one-and-a-half copper cannon, three copper cannons on mounts, two iron arquebuses without mounts (sent from Tula gunsmiths). The Ostrog in Oleshny was smaller than in Kamennoye - a wall with a total length of less than 400 meters, four corner towers and one roadway gate about three meters wide.
It was in 1658 that the newly appointed governor Alexei Bovykin took over the estate. Even before the arrival of Hetman Vyhovsky near Oleshnya, the garrison was reinforced by a company of dragoons numbering 60 men with captain Ivan Golenskin sent from Belgorod by Prince Romodanovsky.
Vyhovsky's troops and the Tatars approached Oleshnya on September 25 "at the seventh hour of the day." In advance, even before the enemy arrived, the governor Bovykin ordered the church books and icons to be transferred from the Cathedral Church of the Transfiguration, which was in the settlement, to the prison.
“There was… a battle until nightfall,” the inhabitants of the settlement became the first victims of the Tatars and Cherkassians, the governor “is under siege,” communication with the city is broken, Romodanovsky reported.
But Bovykin not only sat under siege, but also made a successful sortie from the prison. Later, the Oleshansky voivode reported that during the siege, more than 20 poods of "potion" (gunpowder) were spent (out of 90 poods of the total arsenal), 100 cannonballs from large and small cannons.
The city was defended by a little over three hundred people. Among the defenders were both service children of the boyars from the Great Russians (117 people plus 60 of their children and relatives who "came in time" for service) and 117 Cherkassian Cossacks, loyal to the oath to the Russian Tsar. Judging by the same document, only three Cherkassians fled to the enemy - ironically, three Fedors: Fedka Savostyanov, Fedko Savchenko and Fedko Borovik.
Hetman Vyhovsky stood for three days at the walls of Oleshnya, burned the settlement, greatly ravaged the county and on September 28 lifted the siege, leaving for Little Rus'. The hetman began to have problems in the rear, and Prince Romodanovsky's army set out from Belgorod to clear the captured lands and help the besieged cities.
LESSONS OF RUIN
The rebellious Cossacks were driven back from the Kursk and Sloboda "Ukraines", which, however, did not mark the end of the special operation against Vyhovsky. It was just an episode in another clash between Russia and the "outpost of the West" Poland - the war of 1654-67. The Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the Swedish Kingdom all tried to turn the southern Russian lands into their sphere of interests, and local Cossack leaders sought an alliance with them and fought with each other. The result was an era that went down in the history of Little Russia under the eloquent name of "Ruin".
These events, as well as Vyhovsky's further adventures, require a separate story. Let us note only that the Russian state won the protracted and difficult war, but as a result of this victory it was able to secure only Kyiv and the left bank of the Dnieper. The right bank, where the main events of the Khmelnitsky uprising unfolded, remained under Poland for another hundred and fifty years.
Lessons were also learned from Vyhovsky's raid on the Russian borderland.
On the one hand, the attacks on Kamennoye, Oleshnya and other cities came as a surprise to the tsarist government. The unprotected districts and settlements were devastated by the people of the "Polish Crown Hetman" and the Tatars. Only a month after the attack, the governor Romodanovsky was able to gather sufficient forces of the Belgorod Discharge Regiment and set out to "cleanse" the districts of the invaders.
On the other hand, the fortress cities were able to hold out and withstand the siege thanks to well-built forts and other fortifications. This helped them hold out until the main forces arrived. The result of Vyhovsky's "demonstrative" campaign was an inglorious retreat - similar to what can now be seen in the Kursk borderland.
One of the West's goals was to bring the war to the Russian People, and in Kursk they did just that. The terror campaign in Kursk, a backwater region that offered little strategic value was largely a success.
[Bee] ATLANTA, GA — Continuing her push to bolster support among minority voters, Vice President Kamala Harris appealed to black voters by offering each of them a free pack of menthols and a copy of Madea's Family Reunion on DVD.
With her support from black males slipping despite her recent announcement to offer free cash and legal weed, Harris held an emergency meeting with her campaign staff to determine what special incentives could bring her popularity back up.
"We struck out with offering to legalize drugs, and everyone called us racist -- but we were not deterred," said Harris-Walz campaign staffer Elaine Johnson said. "If offering cash and weed was a no-go, how about a pack of menthols and a Madea DVD? Tyler Perry is still popular with the, uh, black people, right?"
When asked about the move, Vice President Harris had only one brief comment: "Madea! HAHAHA! Am I right? HAHAHA!"
At publishing time, black voters had reportedly reminded her that the DVD came out in 2006 and it was her administration that worked to ban menthol cigarettes.
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/17/2024 06:25 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bee] ATLANTA, GA — Continuing her push to bolster support among minority voters, Vice President Kamala Harris appealed to black voters by offering each of them a free pack of menthols and a copy of Madea's Family Reunion on DVD.
