Beware the shifting Overton window

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Vermont Republican State Senator Worried That People Identifying As Animals May Skirt Proposed Bestiality Law

Vermont case reminiscent of Maine middle schoolers identifying as cats.

As Vermont’s state legislature considers expanding the range of sexual activities considered bestiality, an alert GOP senator sees the handwringing on the wall.

During a recent legislative hearing on the proposed bill, Sen. Steven Heffernan, R-Addison, raised fears the measure may simply be a veiled excuse for Therians to escape prosecution.

“In these crazy times, what happens if the individual identifies as an animal having intercourse with an animal?” Heffernan wondered aloud. “How are the courts going to handle that?”

Renee McGuinness, policy analyst for the Vermont Family Alliance, said Heffernan isn’t far off in his skepticism.

“Sounds cray-cray, I know,” McGuinness wrote in an op ed for the Vermont Daily Chronicle.

But she said current legal reproductive rights and an upcoming election on an equal-rights amendment in Vermont make the question worthy of consideration.

“Would the state have the legal legs to enforce its own bestiality laws if a Therian sued the state for its right to engage in sexual activity with an animal?” McGuinness asked rhetorically.

A growing number of children identify as Therians, aka animals, according to an article in Mamamia, a publication and podcast in Australia, that McGuinness highlighted.

“According to the article, adults with psychology degrees advise parents to encourage their Therian-identifying children to explore their animal identity,” she said. “If a minor identifies as an animal, would they also be exempt from Vermont’s bestiality laws which apply to humans, not animals?

“What if both an adult and a child identify as animals? Would Vermont’s bestiality laws apply to them as a couple?

“If schools are encouraging students to explore their sexual identity through kindergarten classroom books and Vermont Agency of Education’s LGBTQ+-inclusive sex education, are some school personnel also encouraging students to explore their animal identity?”

Heffernan said he’d reluctantly vote for the bill, H.578, “but I wanna make this chamber aware of what’s coming.”

AI Overview

The Overton Window is a political theory describing the spectrum of policies and ideas that the public finds acceptable at any given time. Politicians can generally only support ideas within this "window" without risking their careers. Ideas outside this range are considered "unthinkable" or "fringe".

Who Created It?

The model was developed in the mid-1990s by Joseph P. Overton, a senior vice president at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He created it to illustrate how think tanks, advocacy groups, and intellectuals can influence public policy.

The Degrees of Acceptance

Political commentator Joshua Trevino expanded Overton's concept by breaking down political acceptability into six distinct degrees, moving from least to most acceptable: [1, 2]

  1. Unthinkable: Ideas completely outside mainstream discourse and culturally rejected.

  2. Radical: Ideas outside of mainstream debate, but openly discussed by activists or fringe groups.

  3. Acceptable: Ideas where public pushback lessens, entering everyday conversation.

  4. Sensible: Ideas viewed as rational or logical, even if not yet fully backed by the majority.

  5. Popular: Ideas broadly accepted and supported by society.

  6. Policy: Ideas that have been translated into active laws or government action. [1, 2,

How the Window Shifts

The window is not static; it moves, shrinks, and expands over time based on societal norms, values, and deliberate political advocacy. [1, 2]

  • Gradual movement: Think tanks, media, academics, and grassroots activists publish research, frame debates, and repeat specific stories to make once-radical ideas seem normal over time.

  • Extreme anchoring: By aggressively advocating for extreme positions, activists can make slightly less radical or moderate policies seem perfectly sensible and acceptable by comparison.

  • External events: Wars, economic shifts, or viral cultural moments can rapidly move the window in ways no one plans. [1, 2]

Examples in Society

  • Same-Sex Marriage: In the late 20th century, the idea was widely considered unthinkable or radical in the mainstream political arena. Decades of activism and shifting societal norms caused the window to shift, making it a popular policy and a legally acceptable reality.

  • Marijuana Legalization: What was once considered taboo became gradually shifted into "acceptable" and "popular," leading to legalization in many regions across the globe.


Interesting that Google AI doesn’t include the biggest shift, boys who think they’re girls.

Oh, the HUMANITY!

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I’d just cut the flight short by a few miles and let them find their own breakfast at a cafe of their choosing

Deportation Flight to Pakistan Served Pork Sausages as In-Flight Meal to Detainees

An air charter company was moved to change its in-flight catering after a deportation flight taking 24 men to Pakistan served a “inappropriate” traditional breakfast of sausages.

A September 2025 deportation flight that carried 24 men home from the Republic of Ireland to their native Pakistan — at a cost of €473,000 ($550,000, £410,000) — was written up by a human rights observer because the detainees were given a traditional Full Irish breakfast. National newspaper The Irish Times states it has now forced the release of internal government documents on the flights, which they say show the shortcomings of the service provided by the state and its private partners.

According to the report, deportees are accompanied by both police officers to guard them for the duration of their flight and a human rights monitor who writes a report on any abuses they witness during their deportation.

  • For instance, another 2025 flight saw the human rights monitor narrate the situation when a deportee was restrained and then physically carried aboard the plane after he refused to go voluntarily.

  • It was stated his refusal was down to the Pakistani deportee not having his mobile phone on his person, it already having been placed in his baggage and stowed in the hold.

  • As for the September pork sausage breakfast flight, the report stated three of the 24 deported men had been held in prison before their deportation on the grounds of being “high risk”, and once in the air: “the quality of the food provided was of a lower standard than expected and that the serving of pork sausages as part of a full Irish breakfast was inappropriate”. As The Irish Times notes in their report, Pakistan “has a majority Muslim population” and halal food was expected onboard.

The ‘full’ fry-up breakfast is part of the indigenous food culture of the British Isles, including the Full English, Full Scottish, and Full Irish. As well as the traditional pork sausages, bacon, fried eggs, black pudding, and fried bread the Scottish may add a slice of fried haggis, while the Full Irish or Ulster Fry adds a slice of white pudding and soda bread.

[Okay, serving anyone haggis is a crime against humanity, but otherwise, just eat your fried bread and shut up

And this warning of the danger of offending the dietary preferences of Muslim terrorists:

“While a meal prepared according to the cultural norms of the originating country of the flight may seem trivial, getting the right food can prove crucial in some migration contexts. In 2020 a Sudanese origin migrant at a government-funded asylum seeker accommodation hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, went on a stabbing spree allegedly over the lack of “culturally appropriate” meals which left him “very hungry”. As stated at the time:

“The attacker was a Sudanese asylum seeker and he’d been telling his friends that he was very hungry in the hotel. In the past few days he was threatening people, and it was reported to the staff the day before,” said Kurdish Community Scotland activist Ako Zada… they were fed three times a day but people were complaining at getting the same spaghetti and macaroni cheese all the time. It wasn’t culturally appropriate for them”

Six people were stabbed and the knifeman was shot dead by police.

I’ve long been trying to do my best on this, but if I can help further, then sign me up

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Sierra Club: Volunteers Needed to Counter ‘Climate Disinformation’

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Climate disinformation is rampant on social media, but the volunteers of Sierra Club’s Climate Truth Tellers team are fighting back by uplifting positive, fact-based posts.” (- Sierra Club, below)

Call to Action! A leading environmental pressure group is urging us to volunteer to debate climate and energy issues on all leading social media platforms. I am very active on LinkedIn and Facebook, so I have signed up on the Sierra Club’s website. You can also.

Background

As reported at Yale Climate Connections,

Jennifer McCharen of the Sierra Club says reading this can make people feel confusion or despair. So she leads a team of more than 1,300 volunteers who are fighting back – not by arguing with online trolls but by uplifting truthful content…. Each week, her team sends a few accurate social media posts to these volunteer ‘Climate Truth-Tellers’ and asks them to flood the comments.

“Instead of arguing with trolls,” Sierra Club states, “they’re amplifying the truth.”

Trolls? Does this apply to those of us who argue in good faith because of a belief in superior arguments? Or is this an attempt to limit debate—given the leaky, failing narrative of climate alarm and forced energy transformation?

In fact, the numerous critics of climate alarm are winning on social media, hence the call for volunteers to push back. Some of us point out facts such as the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club once calling wind turbines “The Cuisinarts of the Air.” Is there anything wrong with this?

Filter Questions

The first filter questions are, “How important is clean, renewable energy to you?” and “How important is protecting our public lands from destructive drilling, mining, and fracking?” I answered “extremely important” for both.

Getting the truth out about “clean, renewable energy” is vital to end the Green Energy Scam. Industrial wind and solar is not clean or green–just the opposite in terms of blight, sprawl, and inefficiency. “Protecting our public lands” requires privatization so that the owners can prioritize uses and steward the asset that now has a (private) capital value to maximize. Basic free-market environmentalism.

The next filter questions are:

Why are you interested in protecting our wild places, wildlife, and natural resources? An easy choice is given and answered: “I want future generations to have a better world.”

“What are the most important issues we face today?” I checked “Clean and Plentiful Water.” I would have checked “Climate Change” except for the missing word Policy. And I could have (re)checked “Clean, Renewable Energy” to correct the anti-environmental narrative.

“Your voice matters,” the Sierra Club states. “We need dedicated supporters to help elevate accurate, educational content on social media platforms where bad information is running rampant.” True–and in the direction of exaggerated alarm and false solutions.

David Strom: An Inconvenient Movie: Al Gore's 20 Years of Failed Predictions

It's tempting to say that the worst hoax of the 21st century was the COVID hysteria that did so much damage to the United States and the world. A virus that is no more dangerous than a bad flu season was used to upend the world, destroying lives, separating families, redistributing tens of trillions in wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, and destroying a generation's education and mental health. 

But as bad as the COVID myths were, I think it is safe to say that the Climate hysteria and all the downstream consequences of reshaping our lives and economies around a hysterical overreaction to an exaggerated problem are worse. 

Millions of young people have had their mental health shattered, economies have been hobbled for decades, and the balance of the world economy has shifted toward China as manufacturing has migrated there. Germany is deindustrializing, the UK is committing economic suicide, and many of our major industrial powers have wasted trillions on useless technology. 

As much as anyone, Al Gore has been a main cheerleader of what amounts to a death cult, and as The Wall Street Journal noted, the twenty-year anniversary of An Inconvenient Truth has arrived. 

Read the whole article, with its massive recital of the fraudulent profiteers behind this scam (Al Gore was worth $2 million when he left office — his net worth exceeds $100 million today); your blood will boil, and that won’t be because of global warming.

Hey, it came from a high school's cafeteria kitchen— how could they tell the difference?

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Baked dirt was mistakenly (sic) served to students at Maine school supper

Last Wednesday night, during Medomak Valley High School’s Empty Bowl Supper, a dish of baked dirt was mistakenly served as dessert.

It was part of a science experiment, where students baked the dirt in the oven to sterilize it and test for plant growth afterward, the school said in a statement.

That dirt was set aside in a covered baking dish away from the food destined for the Empty Bowl Supper, a longstanding community service event at Medomak Valley.

“In an effort to quickly deliver food to the serving tables, the dish was mistakenly identified as part of the meal and brought out for service,” the school said.

The error wasn’t discovered, however, until after three students “briefly” had a mouthful of the dirt.

Live! But not with Regis, who has (permanently) relocated

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Kathy Lee Gifford’s house at the end of Cedar Cliff Road in Riverside — 108 Cedar Cliff, to be precise — is new to the listings today at $100,000,000. It’s a fabulous property perched high on a hill, with incredible views up and down Long Island Sound.

Will it fetch this much? Well, the same agent put 88 Cedar Cliff Road on the market in 2022 at $25.5 million and it finally sold in 2025 for $13.250, so you never know, but if any property in Riverside can be called unique, one-of-a-kind, this one is it, and someone is going to be willing to pay a very, very large sum to own it.

Nice place.

Well, okay, but it wouldn't have been my choice

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25 Dialstone in Riverside, new construction, has sold to a buyer from Brooklyn - 11211 — for $5.2 million. It started in May 2025 for $6.195 million, and was built on land purchased for $1.2 million in October 2022. That’s a lot of carrying costs, but I’m sure its builder made out.

Brother Gideon toured this house and reported that it was quite nice inside. Maybe, but I’m a believer in that old yacht design principle that a yacht should look beautiful when you pull away from it in your dinghy and look back, or, in this case when you pull into the driveway. This house flunks that test.

another greenwich landmark fallen to the wrecker’s ball — not

Platner is the wave of the future

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There’s much to dislike about Maine Democrat / socialist Gerald Platner, the man who might very well replace Senator Susan Collins in Washington next January, but what’s most worrisome is that Maine voters don’t care about any of it; he’s not a Republican, and that’s good enough for them. This antipathy goes beyond “Never Trump”, and is instead based on a new, radical vision of what America should look like.

The man himself is the product of an orchestrated fraud put together by the far left: he’s not, as he’s portrayed, a simple farmer who, appalled by what was happening in the nation, decided to put down his oyster rake and run for Congress. Instead, his senatorial website was created and registered a year before he started his aqua-farm and announced his candidacy. It was all carefully planned:

Democrats Bet on a Fraud: The Trust-Fund Kid Dressed Up as Maine’s Oyster Farmer

But really, that’a minor matter, as is the upset over his SS death head tattoo: the new left is anti-Semitic anyway, and the old left, particularly the older, Jewish Democrats, won’t believe what’s coming until it knocks on their door.

So forget all that, and focus intead on what Platner and his mob are planning for the country’s economy. The man’s platform is pure Democratic Socialists of America, identical to Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the rest of what now pases for the Democrat party. A wealth tax, extended, first, nationally, then globally, is just part of it: that great sucking sound you hear is money being extracted from citiens and being directed to Washington, where the politicians can get their hands on it and shovel it out to themselves and their friends.

Yet Mainers, and many Americans elsewhere claim they’re ready for this; they’re going to get it, good and hard.

Here’s Platner’s Platform; it contains every Democrat wet dream that’s been proposed over the years, all on one page, and is exactly what they have in mind for the country. The wealth tax is just the beginning, but here’s that part of it:

A PDF summary is here:

1. A WEALTH TAX ON THE ULTRA-RICH Reasonable proposals call for a 5-6% tax on wealth over one billion dollars, which alone could raise over $4.4 trillion.

Income taxes alone cannot address the massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few: only a tax on wealth can do so. Wealth taxes have been the third rail of politics, for obvious reasons, in a nation where billionaires can buy elections at will. But it has gone too far. Americans will not allow ourselves to sink into a permanent underclass in a world dominated by a handful of oligarchs.

2. A NEW ERA OF AMERICAN ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY: TOWARDS A GLOBAL BILLIONAIRE MINIMUM TAX For decades, foreign policy has been dominated by trade agreements and endless wars that exploit workers and send our young people to die. It’s time for a new era of American economic diplomacy. We cannot allow billionaires to defund the societies that made their fortunes possible simply by shuffling money into an offshore account.

Platner, by the way, is only one of many Decocrats screaming for loot. As of April 26th, Maine now has a “millionaires’ — not billionaires – tax”

Key Details of the New Tax

  1. Rate and Threshold: A 2% surcharge on state taxable income exceeding $1 million for individuals and $1.5 million for couples/heads of households.

  2. Effective Rate: The new top tax bracket increases from 7.15 percent to 9.15 percent.

  3. Scope: Applies to all state taxable income, including wages, capital gains, and business profits (partnerships/S-corps).

  4. Targeted Revenue & Usage: Estimated to generate $74–$96 million annually in the first year, with projections up to $150 million over the next biennium. The revenue will fund tax credits for property taxes, school funding, and other public services.

  5. Context: The tax was incorporated into the supplemental budget, which passed along party lines in early April 2026.

Maine was already ranked 44th among the 50 states in economic outlook even before this new tax, and its Democrats aren’t done yet.

Two days after the 2% surcharge was signed into law, there are already proposals to double it.

Democrat Gubenatorial candididate Troy Jackson unveils plan that would increase newly passed millionaires tax

The plan's action items include proposing a 4% surtax on income over $1 million. That's 2% more than what was enacted in the recently passed spending bill, which made it out of the state Legislature on party lines.

It's one of a handful of measures that Jackson said could redistribute tax dollars from wealthy Mainers to state-funded programs. Jackson also proposed raising the top corporate tax rate on profits over $3.5 million by 1%, which he said could generate an additional $50 million in total tax revenue.

And Connecticut, watch out:

Jackson also supports working with other states on an interstate compact to pursue taxation of ultra-high net worth households, including a minimum 5% annual tax on assets above $1 billion.

"I think Massachusetts and Vermont are the clear ones right out of the gate. Connecticut and New York [to follow]," Jackson said. "The more that you can build that coalition, the better opportunity it is."

Well yes, that would be expected, but I wonder if that's what the Post headline writer had in mind?

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“Open wide!”

No, I didn’t follow the clickbait to see what other effect the reporter might be talking about, but I put the link in just in case you’re curious — it’ll probably expose you to some horrible virus, but that’s your lookout.