[FoxNews] A motorcycle gang's upcoming funeral is causing concern with local law enforcement.
Hells Angels motorcycle club founder Sonny Barger died June 29 following a cancer diagnosis. He was 83.
San Joaquin County Sheriff Pat Withrow is warning the public that the founder's funeral has the capacity to see serious violence.
The funeral is being held Saturday from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the 99 Speedway on North Wilson Way.
"I am bringing in substantial resources to protect the safety of the general public from the violence and danger that may result from this event," Withrow said at a press conference Friday.
Barger — who starred in "Sons of Anarchy" as Lenny the Pimp — shared a pre-scheduled Facebook post announcing his death in June.
"If you are reading this message, you’ll know that I’m gone. I’ve asked that this note be posted immediately after my passing," the message stated. "I’ve lived a long and good life filled with adventure. And I’ve had the privilege to be part of an amazing club."
"Although I’ve had a public persona for decades, I've mostly enjoyed special time with my club brothers, my family, and close friends," the message continued.
[City Journal] You can learn much about what a civilization lacks by observing what sentiments it elevates as an ideal. The ancient Greeks, who invented the concept of the "golden mean" between extremes, were, on the basis of Greek tragedy and historical accounts, given to wild eruptions of rage. For years now, Americans have exalted empathy as our king of sentiments, but on the evidence of everyday life, empathy is in short supply.
We’re surrounded by polls, studies, memes, and viral events said to reveal or shape our national existence. It could be, though, that the social forces that most determine our collective destiny are barely talked about because they are impossible to quantify. To take one profoundly consequential trend: nearly one in four American adults is taking psychiatric medication, and a substantial portion of these people report experiencing "emotional blunting"—an inability to feel their own and other people’s emotions.
Over the last few years, I lost two close friends to the effects of psychiatric medication. Both had been taking antidepressants for many years. One was on Trazodone, which, along with stunting empathy, causes reckless behavior and problems with impulse control. I watched as he blew up his marriage and in one instance publicly humiliated his wife and teenaged children. I’ll never forget the strange, dislocated grin he wore the last time I saw him. He had come with his children for lunch and began showing my wife and me pictures of his third child, whom he had just had with his new wife, as the two children he had raised with his first wife stood there, stricken and speechless. And yet he grinned as if we were all having the time of our lives.
I had been very fond of him, but the second friend, whom I knew for 20 years, I had loved. He was a kind, deep-feeling, brilliant, funny, creative prince of a man. But he began to act irrationally, missing basic emotional cues, finally emotionally hurting my son, whom my wife and I had, out of trustfulness, allowed him to sponsor in some way. I gently asked him to be a little more conscientious with our son and he said that he would—then gave me that same dislocated, jack-o’-lantern grin I had seen from my other friend. When he never did change his heedless behavior toward our son and I reproached him in an email, he exploded and tried to retaliate against me professionally.
#2
#1 You're right, never ignore the obvious. But the observation about the peculiar, out of place smile is sadly familiar to me at least. These drugs are significantly over-prescribed with almost no thought to the consequences. We all have our share of curve balls and heartbreak, medication shouldn't be the default first resort, at some point you really DO need to just get over it.
Trazadone wasn't their problem. Trazadone was an attempt to help them deal with their problems.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/24/2022 10:38 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The final paragraph addresses your concern, Rob:
If it is true that the essence of a functioning democracy is the ability of its people to feel empathy for one another, then the widespread reliance on antidepressants—and I lament not their necessary use, but their unnecessary overuse—is like some cruel joke. Add to the pharmacological cultivation of emotional blunting the emotionally blunting effect of lives lived increasingly online, and you have a democracy resting on a fundamentally anti-democratic way of life. The Cassandras who see democracy about to collapse at every turn might want to look in their own medicine cabinets.
So an internal effect that matches the external effect of botox in creating a separation between the self and its emotional response to the outside world.
Actually, just kidding. Real headline below
[KP] Russian helicopter pilots visited their grandmother, who saw them off and met them from combat missions
by Dmitry Steshin
Marina Ivanovna has two sons participating in the Special Operation, she is very worried about them. Photo: the crew of the "shooting Mi-8"
A few weeks ago, a KP special correspondent flew to "strike" on enemy positions near Kharkov. After the flight, we managed to have a heart-to-heart talk with the pilots. And at the end of the interview, Igor, the first pilot of the "shooting Mi-8", told what hooked everyone - both the KP special correspondent and readers. Here's a snippet of that conversation in its entirety:
“- During these months of fighting, was there something that struck you, right in the heart?
Igor considers the answer for a few seconds:
- Grandmother, an old grandmother in a village near the border. She has a red flag on her hut, and when we fly by, she comes out onto the porch, bows to us and baptizes us. And we fly further and understand, confidently understand - we are doing everything right, everything, in conscience, and, in truth.
The special correspondent of the KP then suggested to Igor, they say, why don’t you fly in to this grandmother, don’t visit her? Is there a place for a helicopter to land there? Igor confirmed:
- Yes, my grandmother has a huge field behind the house.
It was evident how the pilot thought and summarized:
"Great idea, why didn't we think of it before?"
The denouement happened the other day. Igor wrote to the KP special correspondent - “We visited my grandmother!”. And gave details:
- They collected food rations for my grandmother, after returning from the task they wanted to give her, but she was not at home. Then they decided to leave the parcel with the letter in the courtyard of the house.
A couple of days later, the pilots were returning from a combat mission and suddenly saw a grandmother on the edge of the garden - she was baptizing the pilots. The helicopter landed very slowly and very carefully - this can be seen from the video that the pilot handed over to the command post.
- It turned out that our benefactor's name is Marina Ivanovna, - says Igor, - she was, of course, amazed by our visit. And then we were surprised. It turns out that Marina Ivanovna has two sons participating in the Special Operation, she is very worried about them and is waiting at home with a victory ...
Surprisingly, the descent of pilots from heaven to the one who prays for them and blesses them for feats of arms coincided with the six-month "anniversary" of the Special Operation. No one guessed specifically for the date, it just happened. And if you look, there are a lot of meanings in this story.
[ZERO] The Biden family was selling U.S natural gas to China long before Joe Biden became president, who was aware of how his son Hunter Biden was making the sale possible, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, citing documents and information provided by a whistleblower.
Hunter Biden had a Chinese Communist Party member as his assistant while dealing with the Chinese side for the shipping of American natural gas to China in 2017, and the Biden family was promising business associates that they would reap rewards once Biden became president, said Comer in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dated Sept. 20.
"The President has not only misled the American public about his past foreign business transactions, but he also failed to disclose that he played a critical role in arranging a business deal to sell American natural resources to the Chinese while planning to run for President," Comer wrote.
Joe Biden, Comer said, was a business partner in the arrangement and had office space to work on the deal, and a firm he managed received millions from his Chinese partners ahead of the anticipated venture.
While part of what Comer stated had previously been reported in the news, the letter, citing whistleblower testimonies, as well as emails, a corporate PowerPoint presentation, screenshot of encrypted messages, and bank documents that committee Republicans obtained, provides a more complete picture suggesting Biden’s knowledge and involvement in the plan from at least 2017.
From 2017 to 2021, the Bidens promised business associates that Joe Biden would run for president in 2020 and those who worked with them from 2017 onward would "reap the rewards in a future Biden administration," according to Comer’s recount of a whistleblower testimony to Oversight Committee Republicans.
[IsraelTimes] The PA president raged against Israel’s intransigence and the world’s complicity. But his own words made plain his bad faith
Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... ’s speech to the United Nations
Continued on Page 49
#1
The way I understand this, is that when the British drew up the borders in the middle east, they meant Israel for the Jews and Jordan for the Palestinians.
#2
The way I understand this, is that when the British drew up the borders in the middle east, they meant Israel for the Jews and Jordan for the Palestinians.
My understanding also, Seeking Cure.
The headline takes me to the original article — try again?
#4
Indeed, Procopius2k. The Palestinians have attempted many, many things over the years, absolutely none of which worked. Which is why their yoots have mostly given up.
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.
[ZERO] The Biden family was selling U.S natural gas to China long before Joe Biden became president, who was aware of how his son Hunter Biden was making the sale possible, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, citing documents and information provided by a whistleblower.
Paleostinian Authority President 
