One of my undergrads was in English with a creative writing focus.
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I’m surprised I didn’t predict this spin on the Durham annex. Why not keep running with the whole Russian collusion narrative at this point?
I’m guessing NPR and Heather Cox Richardson will run with the same narrative. They always run with the same narrative.
Maybe they can get those 51 former intel agents to say that these are fake, like they did for Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In local news, 20-30 gunshots were fired downtown at around 3pm yesterday. Nobody was injured, but a whole lot of people are rattled. Living in a combat zone can be very stressful.
Our useless woke politicians will do anything to stop this except change their policies that resulted in this situation. They still think they have that part right.
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I’m glad that funding was cut but sad that it came to this. NPR has always leaned a bit left but it messed up bad when it went full blown Democratic Socialist and became American Pravda, prioritizing narrative control over facts.
Car Talk, Science Friday, interesting interviews on Fresh Air, and a whole lot of other programs were all fantastic at one point. I even donated 20 years ago..
They couldn’t just stick to their mission. Lying about the amount of public money that funds member stations didn’t help either.
My sister always had that on, about the same timeframe. Even then it seemed to me a little preachy and untethered from the general public. That was about the time I began to realize that they liked the taste of their own words and shiny new ideas much more than the actual effect of them.
Terri Gross has given some great interviews over the decades, but you are correct about the target audience for most of their shows.
Car Talk was pretty good blue collar material.
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I left HK when I was 7, lived near Chinatown in NYC but didn’t hang out with street urchins so I know very few slurs. Generic favorite is luntow (dickhead) or lunyeung (dickface).
Heard a funny story about a guy losing his job as chairman of a dept. because he was in a surgery that ran longer than anticipated, and the dude got the excessive sweats lol. Dude was an alcoholic who had been chairman at 2 top 10 medical institutions for about 2 decades.
Spot on. Cockroaches will survive even a nuclear holocaust. Probably why so many politicians love war.
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I support Trump’s new physical education program for kids.
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The director of the CIA said on Fox News that indictments are likely for Hillary, Comey, and Brennan.
I’m still working my way through all of Mike Benz’s stuff he recently posted, but I encourage everyone to read through his recent thread and watch his videos. He doesn’t set off any of my bullshit detectors, explains ideas very well and also supports them with facts.
TLDR; We’ve paid to have a color revolution done to ourselves right here in the USA after decades of refining these regime change methods in nations around the globe. The wild part is that most of it is in the public record in the form of tax returns with innocuous-sounding descriptions of the activities being performed.
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OK!
Does this mean is no real Marxist Revolution being waged by an army of Russia inspired Social Justice Warriors, set in motion 2 generations ago on college campuses during the Cold War?
Just Hillary Clinton and her croonies manipulating the former Twitter?
Thats good news, right?
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No, that aspect is very real, although I’d call it Democratic Socialism. It’s still Marxist but not the same as Marxist-Leninism, aka Soviet Communism.
The ideas have been around forever. The funding has not been, not to the degree we’ve seen lately.
Funding the ideas resulted in more people believing in them. Who would fund something like that? Us. That’s who.
Benz actually explains the legal predicate for government censorship not just of twitter, but all major social media. He goes into good depth about how the government works with nonprofits of all kinds, including universities, to censor Americans by non-government proxies.
It’s all about “protecting critical infrastructure.” It’s some wild stuff, but he produces receipts.
In really simple terms, we’ve been funding the rebels who want to overthrow our government, censoring and smearing the opposition, and cultivating revolutionary thought in academia, all funded with tax dollars. The same way we have been achieving this other countries, although in decades long past we were funding pro-freedom, anti-socialist rebels. Same blueprint, different political ideas, but always calling it “democracy”.
Another term for what we’ve experienced is a “color revolution”.
Mass migration has been a massive element of the destabilization as well, also funded by tax dollars through NGO’s. Maine state spending favors noncitizen migrants in unbelievable ways, as do many other states. All very similar to the UK, Germany, etc. We pay to destabilize foreign countries, pay to traffic people around the globe, pay for them to settle, while also paying to destabilize ourselves.
I can see this happening at the local level. We have activist nonprofits who are both direct and indirect recipients of tax dollars for stuff that nobody would ever donate their own money to. The Church of Safe Injection has received almost a half million dollars in federal grants to subsidize drug cartels, along with advocating for the abolition of all prisons and related criminal justice reform to keep dangerous people on the streets. Multiple other social justice activist nonprofits are also funded by tax dollars. Maine Inside Out and Presente! are two others that come to mind.
We also have many more that operate without direct government funding, but if you trace the grant awards far back enough (and realize that money is fungible), you end up with indirect government spending as well. The Maine Community Foundation is a 732M nonprofit, mostly privately funded, that then distributes vast amounts of money to social justice advocacies.
Even our local news media are nonprofits that receive state and indirect federal funding.
Here’s a good case study:
To zoom all the way down to the local level, here is a piece I recently wrote on two of the Lewiston non-profits who were awarded mass shooting donations by The Maine Community Foundation, a 732M nonprofit who openly advocates for Democratic Socialist ideas of DEI and transgenderism. Lewiston City Council allowed them to swoop in and take over the fundraising in the aftermath of Maine’s deadliest shooting, then they distributed a huge chunk of money to unrelated immigrant and prisoner advocacy nonprofits after deceiving their donors into believing it would benefit the victims, families, and organizations that offered healthcare support.
It is a long article, but understanding how fucking crazy a lot of this stuff is can’t be done on tik tok or in a 140 character tweet. It is a good ground-floor example of how this machine operates and the consequences it produces.
Continuing on with my citizen’s analysis of our local Democratic Socialist activist nonprofits, today I will examine the Maine Prisoner’s Advocacy Coalition (EIN: 27-2861615) and Maine Inside Out (EIN: 83-0462687). Both of these organizations applied for and were awarded $65,522 grants by the Maine Community Foundation from the “Broad Recovery Fund.” These funds were collected by giving their donors the impression that 100 percent of the funds raised would go to people and organizations directly impacted by the events of October 25, 2023, here in Lewiston.
The Maine Prisoner’s Advocacy Coalition and Maine Inside Out are both members of Freedom and Captivity: A Decarceration Collective. Zoe Brokus, the executive director of The Church of Safe Injection (EIN: 83-3543610), is also affiliated with Freedom and Captivity as a member of the “Justice Radio Team”. Donations to Freedom and Captivity are collected through Colby College.
I label these organizations as Democratic Socialist because they clearly advocate for radical policies straight from The Democratic Socialists of America’s policy platform. The “decarceration” policy of Democratic Socialists can be seen at this link:
https://www.dsausa.org/dsa-political-platform-from-2021-convention/#abolition-carceral
In short, the members of Freedom and Captivity (and COSI) advocate for the closure of all prisons. Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t take my word for it, read their webpage yourself here:
The Maine Democratic Party platform doesn’t spell it out in as much detail, but their stated policy is in general alignment with the Democratic Socialist position.
Prison Reform and Rehabilitation: For both adults and juveniles we endorse fair sentencing and programs other than incarceration, including restorative justice, education, and registered apprenticeships. We support programs to prevent recidivism and reform the juvenile justice system.
A man named Joseph Jackson is the executive director of The Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, and he is also co-director of Maine Inside Out. According to witness testimony, in the early morning hours of April 16, 1995, Joseph Jackson was high on crack cocaine, upset about “getting ripped off by a Dominican” in a cocaine deal, and spoke of getting revenge.
Jackson then went to his drug dealer’s base of operations, brandished a handgun, and then shot Juan Carlos Rodriguez three or four times, with someone behind him firing an additional shot, resulting in the death of Rodriguez right here in Lewiston. Evidence suggests Rodriguez attempted to defend himself with a knife in this altercation.
Jackson was acquitted of murder charges and convicted on lesser manslaughter charges. Details of the case can be found here:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/me-supreme-judicial-court/1190711.htm
Jackson served 19 years in Maine’s Department of Corrections, earning a master’s degree from the University of Southern Maine while being the first incarcerated person accepted into their master’s degree program. His master’s thesis included a poem titled Questions and Conclusions of a Convict, where he pondered the nature of lethal force law from a perspective of fundamental misunderstanding. The poem can be read on page 31 at this link:
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1157&context=etd
I don’t fault a man for writing a poem in prison, no matter how crazy the poem sounds to someone like me. I have only spent two nights in jail. My first arrest was for drinking two Miller Lights at age 18 or 19, which required that I spend a minimum of 12 hours in the Porter County Jail in Indiana. I had to follow that up with 30 hours of community service. My other arrest was when a Pulaski County Sheriff discovered a small baggie of what he mistakenly believed to be marijuana in my 1983 Cadillac Seville. After my lawyer was able to explain all of the facts, the charges against me were dropped in a pre-trial diversion.
I cannot relate to the prison experience, but by publishing this poem in his master’s thesis, Jackson communicates the idea that he was justified in using his handgun to defend himself after brandishing it in someone else’s home. It communicates the idea that he was only found guilty due to an all-white jury in Lewiston, when Lewiston was over 95 percent white according to the 2000 census. It communicates the idea that the police are cowards who are afraid of a fist fight. I don’t agree with any of those ideas.
The IRS granted Jackson tax-exempt status for operating Maine Inside Out in February of 2012. He finished serving his manslaughter sentence in 2013. After getting into the charity business, Jackson has received significant amounts of public money to fund his Democratic Socialist revolutionary efforts against Maine’s society. According to Maine Inside Out’s most recent tax filings in 2023, they received $397,385 dollars in public funds via government grants that year. In total, Maine Inside Out has received at least $894,257 in public funding since 2017. I am unsure how much they received in 2021, as the IRS’s link was malfunctioning and I wasn’t able to view that year’s form 990.
The Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition is privately funded, with no reported public funding sources. According to Jackson’s monthly updates, the Maine Community Foundation has been a major donor long before they gave Jackson’s organizations a combined $131,044 in funds collected from people who were given the false impression that it was helping the victims of October 25, 2023, in very direct ways. I doubt anyone would have donated to the Broad Recovery Fund if they knew it was going to Jackson’s decarceration advocacy nonprofits.
It requires a long and convoluted chain of thought to reach the conclusion that awarding funds collected in such a way is an ethical thing to do. The Maine Community Foundation has made their ideological commitment to Democratic Socialism quite clear. Their conception of Equity along with the Diversity and Inclusion aspects of DEI are the ideas that seemingly guided them to conduct their charity in this gravely unscrupulous way, grievously insulting the victims and families of Lewiston’s most horrific tragedy.
Marcel LaGrange was given access to Lewiston Public School students as part of Maine Inside Out. In doing this Marcel LaGrange was also given access to “restorative justice” in lieu of incarceration after well-documented violent crimes and disturbing statements made to state authorities. According to the Portland Press Herald, LaGrange had previously expressed his wish to murder innocent people, but the State of Maine determined that he belonged in society in lieu of incarceration.
LaGrange eventually followed through on his threat, murdering Michael Hayter and Brittney Cockrell in front of their 11 and 7 year-old children on June 19, 2023, in Westbrook. LaGrange is currently under indictment for two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and three lesser charges. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and the trial process is currently underway.
Joseph Jackson has served his sentence and has not reoffended since his release. He has the same free speech rights all US Citizens do, and he is likewise free to solicit private donations to his Democratic Socialist activist 501(c)(3) organizations. It is my belief that this is a grossly irresponsible use of taxpayer money. I also do not believe that Maine Inside Out should be allowed access to public school students, as they were at LPS. It is our right as citizens to know these facts about any nonprofit and to use the information to shape our voting choices and communicate our concerns to elected officials.
Make no mistake about it, Maine Democrats do not want to incarcerate anyone. They clearly state this in their policy platform. They are taking incremental steps to achieve that aspect of their insane vision of social justice by awarding public funding to activist nonprofits who want more people like Marcel LaGrange roaming society. They also want more individuals like Leein Hinkley decarcerated through their impractical and dangerous legal theories. The Maine ACLU is still hard at work advancing these concepts, along with publicly funded activist groups like Maine Inside Out and other members of the “Decarceration Collective”.
In 2025 it may seem absurd that I spent an entire night in jail for drinking two cans of beer as a teenager in the '90’s or repeating that experience over what turned out to be a big misunderstanding about the substance that law enforcement discovered in my vehicle. My hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana was once extremely similar to Lewiston in many ways, but visiting today is like being in a completely different country. The wildly different trajectories of these two college towns of 30-40 thousand people comes down to one major difference: public policy. Valparaiso and Indiana have not incorporated the wild ideas of Democratic Socialism to the degree that Lewiston and Maine have.
There are many more examples of Democratic Socialist activist charities engaging in revolutionary race-based social justice efforts with public money in Maine. I will continue to examine these and post my findings
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I didn’t go down the media rabbit hole in my article, but it also bears mentioning that Jackson, a cold blooded killer and registered sex offender, has been repeatedly fluffed up by local media.
The same media who never mention taxpayer funding levels, his sex offender and convicted killer status, connections to other activists, and who pretend that families in Lewiston aren’t actually outraged at how mass shooting donations were distributed to immigrant and prisoner nonprofits.
The same media who have reliably towed the Democrat line for years.
All part of the color revolution machine, with zero interest in investigating the amount of tax dollars flowing to our enormous noncitizen migrant population, or any information that would reveal its true scale.
No one blows themselves harder than a bunch of libtard communists with a token minority to sell to the public.
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The school board members who didn’t want Maine Inside Out working on a rap album were all maligned as racist.
Normally, anyone who wants to work with public school students needs to undergo a background check, which Jackson, LaGrange, and most other members of MIO would fail in spectacular ways.
They made an exception for Jackson’s group because of DEI.
When LaGrange gunned down that couple in Westbrook in front of their kids after telling the state he wanted to murder innocent people everyone tried to pretend that LaGrange wasn’t involved with Lewiston Public Schools.
Our School Committee Chairwoman downplayed it by stating something like “anyone in this room could become a murderer tomorrow”, as if they all had felonies and were on record saying they want to murder innocents.
Lagrange’s name was credited on the rap album they produced. Here he is wearing a Maine Inside Out shirt at an event with our useless, corrupt mayor.
DEI kills, and we pay for it in a variety of ways.
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Also, that phrase- “restorative justice”.
WTF? Like there’s strawberry justice, and purple nerple justice, Ben & Jerry’s funky monkey justice?
If thats not a precursor to a reparations argument by whipping people inyo a froth and making them feel like they’re missing out on something that doesn’t exist, then I don’t know what is.
I’m assuming purple shirt? Either way, just light enough to be acceptable, and cool dreads.
If he looked like Charlie Murphy he’d be riding the lightning.
It just means not locking people up, or imposing any kind of harsh consequences for being violent. “Restorative Justice” is fully incorporated at Lewiston Public Schools, and many other schools in Maine.
LPS has never, ever, been nearly as dangerous as it is today. We had one more holdout until a few months ago, but I think there is only one member left with kids in the district.
Back to National News, Heather Cox Richardson still hasn’t mentioned the brewing scandal that is the Durham Annex, but she did join the fracas in denouncing Texas’ congressional redistricting. Out of all people to quote, she quoted the governor of Illinois, whose congressional map is gerrymandered to ridiculous degrees. Republicans hold only 3 seats, districts 12, 15, and 16.
She is probably the most sophisticated political hack author who is regularly putting out content, because her propaganda comes with a degree from Harvard and lots of citations of other political hack authors.
Here is Texas Governor Abbot explaining how it works in Texas.
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Wow. Yet another poorly thought through, losing strategy.
Like, whats the endgame? “We’ll just abdicate our duties, vacate our offices, and go to prison!”?
“Yeah! That will show them we mean business!”
Once again, fiction has nothing on reality.
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