Sunday Memes–Stupid Woke in Great Britain and crime in the US – The Bull Elephant
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Sunday Memes (On Monday)
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Labor Day: a New Start
Celebrating a proud American tradition of labor! — JAB by Kerry Dougherty
Labor Day. America’s most ambiguous national holiday.
Think about it. On other special days – Memorial, Independence, Veterans, Thanksgiving, Presidents, Martin Luther King and Christmas – we pause, however briefly, to honor a beloved person or a historical event.
We have parades, visit cemeteries, blast fireworks, give thanks, recite a famous speech or watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Not on Labor Day.
Take a peek at the festivities scheduled this weekend. Wait. What festivities? The Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon moved on years ago, so there’s nothing to do today other than hit the beach and cook out.
Swimming and eating burgers has nothing to do with Labor Day’s grittier, trade union roots.
And that’s a good thing.
I’m not sure anyone wants to mark Labor Day by dragging a picket sign to the beach or by joining a national scavenger hunt to look for Jimmy Hoffa’s body.
Does anyone plan to watch “Norma Rae” today? Or gather the family together for a few choruses of “The Ballad of Joe Hill”?
Anyone inviting the repulsive Randi Weingarten to their cookout?
I didn’t think so.
On Labor Day, it’s not what we do, it’s what we don’t do – labor. Continue reading.
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The Latest Thought Crime: “We Love Bacon”
I pulled this image off the Internet. Upon reflection, I did not check its provenance when I originally posted it. I suspect it is AI-generated. I do not vouch for its authenticity. — JAB The world is descending into a very dark place when a man gets arrested for professing his love for bacon. But that’s what it’s come to in the United Kingdom. The gentleman shown above was participating in a July protest in Dalton-in-Furness against construction of a mega-mosque when he broke into a sing-song chant of “we love bacon.” Police hauled him off on suspicion of a public order offence, specifically “racially or religiously aggravated harassment intended to incite disorder or offend the Muslim community.”
Some peoples’ sensitivities apparently matter more than others’.
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Virginia’s Upper Body
Finding inspiration in all the wrong places
by Gordon C. Morse
Virginia Senate Democrats – the leadership, primarily – have taken a wrecking crew mentality to higher education and exposed themselves to condemnation for doing the very things they passionately denounce others for doing.
In this instance, on Thursday afternoon, the majority Democrats serving on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee made quick work of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s recent board appointments to George Mason University, the University of Virginia and Virginia Military Institute.
Figuratively speaking, the Democrats balled up the list of names and contemptuously threw it out the window. It was meant to be preemptive and performative, a crude demonstration of their presumed power to act independently of the General Assembly as a whole and lay waste to Younkin’s choices.
This was Round Two. The Senate P&E Committee did this previously in June and in similarly obnoxious fashion. That little dance ushered in litigation and the matter now sits before the Virginia Supreme Court.
Republican committee members asked, why do this now? What was the point?
But the Democrats were not in a talkative mood and likely would have preferred a darkened space to do their work, removed and detached, where they could punch, run and suffer no bother.
They were, however, good enough to distribute a copy of the letter they’d had dashed off to Gov. Youngkin.
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Princess Anne and the Blob
by James C. Sherlock
I posted earlier today about the cutoff of Princess Anne Health and Rehabilitation Center (Princess Anne) in Virginia Beach from Medicare and Medicaid participation.
Federal and state officials had as evidence very recent smoking guns from a February 2025 complaint inspection and a June 2025 revisit by the VDH Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC). Those were apparently the final straws in the case of Princess Anne. Combined with Princess Anne’s multi-year track record under the same ownership, those recent reports provide good and sufficient cause for the action.
Your author has named Innovative Healthcare Management, Medical Facilities of America and LifeWorks Rehab the blob. One group of chain operators and one group of owners control all three. The chain operators swap the facilities around, sometimes overnight, among the three names. They likely have a new name, or several, ready to go. So, the blob it is.
Princess Anne is not even the worst blob facility in Virginia, just the one to be exposed so badly recently.
In a broader view, Virginia has only one Special Focus Facility (SFF) among 290 nursing homes certified for Medicare and Medicaid. An SFF is so designated because it has been so bad for so long that it needs special oversight. Henrico Health and Rehabilitation Center (Henrico), another blob outpost, is the current awardee.
Neither the blob’s Princess Anne nor its infamous Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center (Colonial Heights) are even SFF Candidates. Virginia has five of those:
- Wonder City Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Hopewell – blob;
- Birchwood Park Rehabilitation (Virginia Beach) and Seven Hills Rehabilitation and Nursing of Lynchburg owned by Clifton, New Jersey’s Eastern Healthcare Group, a blob lookalike;
- Mount Vernon Healthcare Center of Cincinnati’s Communicare Health; and
- Augusta Nursing & Rehab Center was owned by 44-facility Consulate Healthcare of Atlanta. Consulate, after having been driven out of Florida more than a year ago, shut down operations on May 31. I don’t know what has become of that situation.
Here we will take a look at what one author has called “tunneling” of Medicare and Medicaid funds that has become the norm among the worst chains. I probably haven’t found the full scope of the Princess Anne corporate architecture with a single hour’s research, but it is illustrative, even if child’s play compared to some of them.
It will get your attention and inform.
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Two Virginia Wind Energy Grants Cancelled by Trump’s DOT
by Steve Haner
President Donald Trump’s war on the offshore wind industry has finally reached Virginia with the cancellation of two U.S. Department of Transportation grants intended to help develop Hampton Roads as a hub for that now-endangered industry. The decision was announced Friday.
There still has been no attempt, and not even any public discussion, of the Trump Interior Department seeking to alter or cancel the permits or leases it granted under President Biden to Dominion Energy Virginia’s $11.3 billion wind turbine construction project. Nor has there been any indication from Washington that the project is safe from interference.
If it is, it would seem to be almost alone in enjoying that protection. Recently the Trump Administration cancelled a New England wind project that was past the halfway point in its construction phase and has indicated it will kill a project off Delaware by simply siding in a lawsuit with the project’s opponents. That second project was not yet under construction.
A New York-based project poised for construction was also terminated, but the Trump Administration reversed its decision and allowed it to proceed. It has been reported a deal was struck with New York authorities to proceed with some long-opposed natural gas pipeline proposals in exchange for relenting on the wind cancellation.
The 176-turbine. 2.6-gigawatt Dominion project is the largest offshore facility proposed so far in the United States and is one of the few (if not the only one) with the active support of a Republican governor and his administration. It is also the only one owned by a monopoly utility and financed by that utility’s ratepayers, who could bear the full $6-8 billion stranded cost of its cancellation.
The other projects targeted are owned by merchant generators planning to sell the electricity, but with the risk carried by their investors. Many are foreign-based. One legal pathway they may take is to sue for full compensation for their losses from the government by claiming the actions were a taking.
Now Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has announced that $679 million in federal funding for several projects around the United States, mostly shore-based facilities in support of offshore wind, was being withdrawn or cancelled. Of that, $427 million was for a proposed facility to support a floating wind project off Humbolt, California.
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One Down
by James C. Sherlock
For the first time ever, a Virginia nursing home, Princess Anne Health and Rehabilitation Center (Princess Anne) in Virginia Beach, has been evicted from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Before I get to it, I want to acknowledge and thank those who have been working to improve nursing facilities in Virginia.
Federal. Medicare is administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under Dr. Mehmet Oz. The federal HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) under Juliet Hodgkins investigates wrongdoing in Medicare. Most chains operate in more than one state, making full owner accountability a federal matter under the investigative responsibility of the HHS OIG.
Virginia. In this Commonwealth, acknowledgements start with Governor Youngkin, his team and the General Assembly.
The Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Secretariat led administration efforts under both John Littel, now the Governor’s Chief of Staff, and Janet Kelley. The Departments of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS), Virginia’s Medicaid agency, under Cheryl Roberts and the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) led by Health Commissioner Dr. Karen Shelton have earned the gratitude of all Virginians.
The Virginia Department of Social Services’ Adult Protective Services under Paige McCleary was responsible for the raid on Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center (Colonial Heights that woke up both the citizens and the General Assembly.
The legacy media, TV and print press, did its job well. Reporting on Colonial Heights by Tyler Lane of WTVR CBS 6 in Richmond has been particularly dogged and superb.
The General Assembly had been the place where nursing home oversight legislation went to die for nearly five decades. I have repeatedly skewered them here for it. But after the Colonial Heights scandal and its publicity, bipartisan support emerged for 2025 legislation that has provided more authority and money to supplement VDH inspection efforts.
Special thanks to OLC. Most of all, I acknowledge the work of VDH’s Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC) under both previous Director Kim Beazley and Acting Director James Jenkins.
OLC inspections teams, understaffed and underpaid, have doggedly and professionally inspected Virginia’s nursing homes for decades. It is their work that I most often quote here. It is that office that finally this year, after four decades, was given authorization and funding by the General Assembly to staff their activities properly.
OLC this year shot the arrows that finally finished off Princess Anne. Here is their complaint inspection report from February and revisit report from June. Apparently, the final straws.
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Richmond Justice: From Gun-Safety Class to Murder
An illegal alien plea bargains firearms and narcotics offenses down to therapy and a gun safety class — and goes on to commit murder.
Marvin Ramos, murder victim. Photo credit: WTVR News by Victoria Manning
New documents obtained by Restoration News show four violent illegal alien criminals were charged with murder over just two years in Richmond, Virginia, while multiple others were charged with unlawful firearm possession.
Richmond’s Democrat Sheriff Antionette Irving, who oversees a sanctuary city, refuses to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while the city’s progressive prosecutor, Colette McEachin, goes easy on gun-toting illegal aliens.
McEachin, who is seeking reelection this year, is endorsed by Abigail Spanberger, the former Democrat congresswoman now running for governor and Ghazala Hashmi, running for lieutenant governor.
Sheriff Irving confirmed she has not turned over any inmates to ICE this year, and ICE told Restoration News that Richmond does not cooperate with its officers. While Democrats push for more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners, they won’t take unlawful guns out of illegal aliens’ hands.
Prosecutor gives illegal alien ridiculous plea deal
Police pulled Yonathan Zelaya-Beltran over for a traffic violation on Feb. 10, 2023. Beltran failed to produce a driver’s license or identification, and a search revealed he had a concealed firearm in his pocket. He was also in possession of narcotics.
Richmond prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain for Beltran requiring him to complete community service, substance abuse treatment program, and a firearm safety course.
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Data Industry Giants Split on Proposed Future Rates
By Steve Haner
Facebook data center in Henrico County Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed changes to how and how much it charges data centers for electricity appear to have divided the industry, based on testimony filed at the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC).
The utility’s ideas are in general being supported — with some caveats — by the Office of the Attorney General and the staff of the SCC, both of which are charged by law with watching out for consumers.
Several state legislators have also filed letters supportive of Dominion’s application with the State Corporation Commission, but they avoid taking positions on the many specific provisions that the data centers have complained about. If the typical SCC case is as complex as rocket science, this one borders on high energy particle physics.
“I support the idea of a separate class for such customers, agree with the need for significant minimum charges, and believe that Dominion’s proposal should be a floor, not a ceiling,” wrote Senator Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, chair of the legislature’s Commission on Electric Utility Regulation. The prize for understatement goes to Senator Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, who put in her letter: “I acknowledge that consensus may be elusive.”
One of the strongest statements in opposition to the proposal was filed by Google, which just this week stood beside Governor Glenn Youngkin to announce another $9 billion in Virginia capital investments. A state media that was paying any attention might have picked up some of the controversy to ask about in the news conference.
Amazon Data Services, on the other hand, filed testimony generally supportive of Dominion. Microsoft’s expert is closer to the middle, focused on major amendments to Dominion’s proposal but not calling for rejection Three 800-pound economic and political gorillas, three different positions for the SCC to ponder. The file contains many more.
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Northern Virginia’s Five-Ring Gender-Bender Circus
Image credit: Bing Image Creator by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora
Republished with permission from IWFeaturesStep right up, moms and dads. If you’d like to coparent with public school teachers, counselors, and administrators, then Northern Virginia’s Gender-Bender Five-Ring Circus is just the place for your children.
On July 25, with good reason, the United States Department of Education found five Northern Virginia public school districts in violation of Title IX, as they are still allowing opposite-sex students into what are supposed to be single-sex, intimate facilities on the basis of so-called “gender identity.”
Despite their federal funding being under threat, leaders in these districts continue to defy federal law, all while shirking their responsibilities to students and parents.
In Alexandria City Public Schools, for example, a middle school teacher gave her students an invasive questionnaire last week regarding their gender identity and preferred pronouns without their parents’ knowledge or consent. In addition to asking 12-year-olds their preferred names and pronouns during the first week of class, which is ridiculous enough to begin with, the survey actively pits students against their parents by asking:
- “May I use your class name when I contact caregivers?”
- “May I use these pronouns when I contact caregivers?”
- “If you answered NO to any of the above, which pronouns should I use instead?”
- ”If you answered NO to any of the above, what name should I use instead?”
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Be Careful What You Wish For
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Wren Building, College of William and Mary President Trump has directed the Secretary of Education to expand the reporting requirements of institutions of higher education in order to determine if any of those bodies are still using race as an admissions criterion.
Accordingly, the Secretary has directed the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to collect the following data from each higher ed institution, disaggregated by race and sex:
For applicants and admitted students:
- Standardized test scores
- Final grade point averages
- First-generation-college student status
For enrolled cohorts:
- Graduation rates
- Financial aid offered
- Financial aid provided
In her directive, the Secretary directed NCES “to develop a rigorous assurance process for reported data” in order to “ensure the information collected by the Department is accurate and reliable.”
These directives raise a host of questions and policy issues.
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Restoring Arlington Cemetery’s Reconciliation Monument
The restoration of a monument in Arlington Cemetery may serve as the spiritual portal that brings America back to its origin in greatness.
Arlington National Cemetery photo by Rachel Larue by Scott Powell
The attack on normalcy, traditions, and history in America intensified in 2020 with Covid-19 lockdowns and the riots catalyzed by the death of George Floyd. When destruction then turned under the Congressional Naming Commission to the icons associated with the Confederacy of the Civil War period, the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington Cemetery came into the crosshairs. It was removed from Arlington on Dec. 16, 2023, despite longstanding traditions and laws against desecrating gravesites. The Reconciliation Monument was the last work of the sculptor Moses Ezekiel, and he chose the monument’s location as his burial ground, making the monument his headstone.
Now with the Trump administration’s priority to revive Americans’ appreciation of their heritage, this somewhat obscure monument is in the spotlight. And for good reason, because the Reconciliation Monument can serve as the catalyst and spiritual portal that bring America back to its origin in greatness as the nation of “e pluribus unum” — meaning one out of many.
In a recent post on X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reiterated that the reinstatement of the 1914 Reconciliation Monument, which celebrates the bringing together of the South and the North after decades of post-Civil War division, was important because it fosters the unity of America, and its removal by “woke lemmings” in 2023 was inconsistent with honesty and openness about the past. The secretary added: “Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it.” The Reconciliation Monument is projected to be restored to Arlington in 2027.
Most Americans may not realize the full cultural and spiritual significance of restoring this monument to its rightful place in Arlington Cemetery. In this time of intense spiritual warfare against traditional values and constitutional America, we certainly need to preserve and restore historical monuments. But we also need to go on the offense and uphold the American values that inspired these great markers of history. And the Reconciliation Monument compels such action better than any other monument in Arlington and beyond.
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Miyares Excoriates “Utter Travesty” Against Women Swimmers
by Scott Dreyer
Attorney General Jason Miyares at Aug. 25, 2025, press conference in Salem. At 10:30 a.m. on August 25, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares held a press conference at the Salem library to reveal his office’s investigation into alleged abuse by Roanoke College officials against members of the 2023-24 women’s swim team.
About twenty people attended the event, including five Roanoke County elected officials, some local media, and members of Miyares’ office and campaign staff. No one from Roanoke College administration was present.
Bill Bock, attorney for two members of the swim team, opened the conference by pointing out the unfairness the lady swimmers had faced. “Publicly available data indicates that about 54.4% of Roanoke College’s full-time students are female. Yet some 58% of varsity athletic roster spots at Roanoke College are on male teams. That means that males at Roanoke College have more than one hundred more varsity roster spots than do females, even though about 45% of the entire student population is male.”
Bock added that two members of the team “filed discrimination claims with the Virginia Attorney General because in 2023, not only did Roanoke College have far fewer varsity athletic roster spots for women than men, but that year Roanoke College actively supported a former swimmer from the (…) men’s swim team moving over to the women’s swim team, merely because this man claimed a female gender identity.
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The Inherent Conflict of Interest in Bargaining with Public-Sector Unions
Image credit: Bing Image Creator by J. Kennerly Davis
In the spring of 2020 — with Democrats controlling the Senate, the House of Delegates, and the Governor’s mansion – the General Assembly narrowly passed and Governor Northam signed HB-582, now set out in Section 40.1-57.2 of the Code of Virginia. That law, enacted during the widely disorienting onset of Covid, marked a dramatic change in Virginia labor law, and it represents gross legislative malfeasance that cries out for repeal.
Prior to the enactment of HB-582, public employee collective bargaining was prohibited by state law. This prohibition was consistent with long-established practice across the country.
The 2020 law significantly altered the landscape in Virginia. It repealed the state prohibition on public-sector collective bargaining and now allows localities – counties, cities, and towns – to formally recognize labor unions and other employee associations as bargaining agents and to enter into collective bargaining agreements with those agents.
If a local government does not adopt an ordinance recognizing a bargaining agent, employees of that government can form a unit, request collective bargaining, and force the local government to vote on recognition within 120 days.
Since the law took effect on May Day 2021, public sector unions and their supporters have pressured local governments across the commonwealth for recognition of bargaining agents. Several cities and counties, including Alexandria, Richmond, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William, have adopted ordinances or resolutions allowing public sector collective bargaining, and union activities in those localities are steadily advancing.
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Married Moms Twice as Likely to Be “Very Happy”
Married women receive more physical touch and are less lonely than single or childless women
Press release from the Charlottesville-based Institute for Family Studies:
A new YouGov survey, sponsored by the Institute for Family Studies with the Wheatley Institute, finds that married women are more likely than their unmarried counterparts to report feeling deep connection and meaning in their relationships and are less likely to report being lonely.
The 2025 Women’s Well-being Survey (WWS) of 3,000 women in the US aged 25-55 found that married mothers reported higher levels of happiness and physical touch, as well as less loneliness, than their unmarried or childless counterparts.
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