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January 2, 2021
SKYNET SMILES, OFFERS CIGARS: Can AI Lead to Pregnancy?
BRYAN PRESTON: 2020 Ends on a Hilaria-s Note (Video):
PIERRE DELECTO DISSENTS: Mitt Romney Slams Josh Hawley over Planned Electoral College Objection.
DON SURBER: Fighting to close schools so she can vacation in a covid hotspot.
On Thursday, before the news of her vacation broke, she tweeted, “Hearing of an educator revolution happening. Tons of members are emailing their admin: I’ll be asserting my right to continue to work in a safe remote environment on January 4th, 2021. I have signed the pledge, along with over 8,000+ union educators to continue to work remotely.”
Well, Puerto Rico is remote from Chicago.
And a covid hotspot.
In response to the anger over her Puerto Rican adventure, she tweeted, “Since I had covid so terribly for 60+ days, my doc told me it’s extremely unlikely for me to covid again.”
Seeing how she will not get covid again, she should get in the classroom and start teaching again. Her students are special education, which means they are the ones who need her services most.
Oh wait a minute.
With her, it is not about the children, is it?
That’s a great question, but she’s currently maintaining radio — and television — silence:
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Doctor – What Is That? Switching Genders Of Major Characters Always Runs The Risk Of Alienating Fans For Whom Attraction Plays A Part In Their Fandom.
If Penthouse suddenly switched all of its glossy double-page spreads to abs and cocks, you’d expect some backlash. A few awkward silences. Probably a sharp drop in subscriptions.
Does this make its readers a pack of bigots, misandrists, and man-hating homophobes burdened by fragile sexuality? No. They were simply looking for something else. The magazine’s target audience has an established sexual preference, confirming the old adage ‘sex sells!’ is as true for Penthouse as it is for a fifty-year-old science fiction show.
Doctor Who is the James Bond of the geek world – men want to be him, and girls want to shag him. I can’t speak for the boys, but who doesn’t want a gorgeous, older boyfriend with a time machine, infinite bank balance, no job, endless adventure, and a demi-god status in the universe? He is an inconvenient sexual fantasy that contradicts the preferred social politics of the BBC, despite being its flagship show.
It is no accident that ratings soared when Scottish heart-throb David Tennant took over the role in 2005 alongside his young, attractive female companion Billie Piper. Their will-they, won’t-they romantic tragedy elevated the BBC production out of the fringe geek world and into the mainstream market of swooning teenagers. The onscreen sexual tension made the international arm of the network a fortune in the US, propping up their less successful social justice vanity projects.
Until the BBC decided what the world needed was a female Dr. Who:
WELL, THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK. Conspiracy theories: a great American tradition.
Americans love to believe completely nutty things, just as long as they require the implicit premise that political enemies are corrupt and evil, and preferably pedophiles as well. This is not some horrid innovation inflicted on America by the Tangerine Tyrant. It’s a constant. In most cases, Americans don’t even believe the conspiracies they nominally endorse. Thinking that Hugo Chavez bribed the governor of Georgia or that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster is a form of stylized political self-expression more than it’s a theory anyone would be their life on being true.
But NPR’s own reporting on Wednesday demonstrates another reason so many Americans like to believe conspiracy theories: Because they’ve grown used to nominal authorities being untrustworthy. NPR’s leading example of ‘misinformation’ that American’s have come to believe in 2020 is that ‘the majority of protests that occurred this summer were violent’.
Well, Cockburn wonders, how might they have come to believe that? Could have been that there was rioting and looting in Minneapolis, St Paul, Chicago, Washington, New York, Dallas, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Bakersfield, Boston, Columbus, Portland, Seattle, Des Moines, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Louisville, Kenosha, Phoenix, San Jose, Sacramento, and even Green Bay? Could it have been CNN attempting sleights of hand about ‘fiery but mostly peaceful’ protests? Could it have been highly-paid New York Times reporters blatantly cheering on violence?
Nope, NPR is sweeping all that aside, and calling Americans conspiracy-obsessed dodderheads for not buying into the press’s preferred statistical distortions. Behind the belief that violent riots were violent, the next bit of ‘misinformation’ NPR singles out is believing the coronavirus came from a lab in China. Is that true? Probably not. But nobody actually knows where the virus is from, and China has actively suppressed investigation of the matter from the very beginning.
NPR isn’t fighting misinformation; it is labeling a party line as objective truth and dismissing everything outside as misinformation or a conspiracy theory. Cockburn has a daring prediction to make: the more the press resembles ideological propaganda, the more ordinary people will simply decide to believe whatever they want.
Of course, Americans have believed in various conspiracy theories since the nation’s founding in 1619 (to borrow from a recent big media conspiracy theory), I mean 1776. As the late Tom Wolfe told an interviewer once about the Kennedy assassination:
I’ll never forget working on the [New York] Herald Tribune the afternoon of John Kennedy’s death. I was sent out along with a lot of other people to do man-on-the-street reactions. I started talking to some men who were just hanging out, who turned out to be Italian, and they already had it figured out that Kennedy had been killed by the Tongs, and then I realized that they were feeling hostile to the Chinese because the Chinese had begun to bust out of Chinatown and move into Little Italy. And the Chinese thought the mafia had done it, and the Ukrainians thought the Puerto Ricans had done it. And the Puerto Ricans thought the Jews had done it. Everybody had picked out a scapegoat. I came back to the Herald Tribune and I typed up my stuff and turned it in to the rewrite desk. Late in the day they assigned me to do the rewrite of the man-on-the-street story. So I looked through this pile of material, and mine was missing. I figured there was some kind of mistake. I had my notes, so I typed it back into the story. The next day I picked up the Herald Tribune and it was gone, all my material was gone. In fact there’s nothing in there except little old ladies collapsing in front of St. Patrick’s. Then I realized that, without anybody establishing a policy, one and all had decided that this was the proper moral tone for the president’s assassination. It was to be grief, horror, confusion, shock and sadness, but it was not supposed to be the occasion for any petty bickering. The press assumed the moral tone of a Victorian gentleman.
After indulging in every conspiracy theory they could imagine during the Trump era, the Victorian gentleman will be returning in about three weeks time, to form the palace guard of His Fraudulency, a fossilized man seeming to date from the Victorian era.
NOT MENTIONED: BLACK LIVES MATTER. Violence adds to NYC’s 2020 death toll, with 97% jump in shootings and 45% increase in murders — criminal carnage not seen in 14 years.
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JANUARY 6: Constitutional lawyer Rick Green describes in layman’s terms the essential issues at stake come Wednesday when the Senate and House meet in a joint session to count electoral votes for president.
IN THE MAIL: Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It.
JEFF JACOBY: What was GREAT about 2020.
The past 12 months have brought misery, turmoil, and distress on a scale that most Americans couldn’t have imagined last New Year’s Eve: the emergence of the coronavirus, a torrent of sickness and death, economic and social lockdowns, a tidal wave of racial protests, frightening riots, a poisonous election campaign, catastrophic wildfires, a nationwide shutdown of sports, concerts, and theaters, millions of lost jobs. If it hasn’t literally been “the worst year ever,” as Time magazine labeled it, it has certainly been the worst that millions of people have known in this lifetime.
But it has been a year of good news and glad tidings, too. While 2020 was overloaded with stress and sadness, it also supplied reasons to be grateful and milestones to celebrate. Here are a few.
Read the whole thing. Though I have some doubts about this passage:
• The politics of 2020 were atrocious, and the US election campaign was as polarizing and toxic as any in living memory. Yet when all was said and done, Americans demonstrated that their commitment to democratic self-government was as unwavering as ever: When the election finally arrived, 21 million more Americans cast ballots than had done so in 2016. In the past four years, America’s population grew by 7.5 million.The increase in voter turnout was triple that.
And some of that massively increased turnout may actually be attributable to real (living) voters!
BUT NOT FROM THE PRESS: Biden’s secretary of state pick likely to face questions about Chinese donations to Penn.
“DOUCHE GIGOLO, CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN:” 2020 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year: Eric Swalwell.
While it remains unclear whether Fang Fang and the California Democrat were doing the bang-bang, what is known is that one day in 2015 Ms. Fang disappeared. Like a fart in the wind, she had absconded to her native land, never to be seen or heard from again.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
BLACK MAN FORCED OUT BY “RACIAL JUSTICE” ACTIVISTS: Brown University police chief resigns amid ‘defund the police’ demands.
I DON’T SEE THIS SELLING: When the pandemic is over we should continue wearing masks. Though the Asian custom of wearing a mask when you’re sick is probably worth emulating.
ROGER KIMBALL: Are we back in the Obama White House?
[T]he consortium behind Biden is busy trying to put the old band back together. There’s John Kerry — remember him? — getting ready to ‘report for duty’ as Climate Envoy. There’s Jake Sullivan, tapped to be Biden’s national security adviser. You’ll remember him crowing about how brilliant Hillary Clinton’s handling of Benghazi was back in 2012. Later, Sullivan helped bury those 33,000 yoga and wedding emails from Hillary’s private email server while also pushing the Russia collusion fantasy that tripped up Gen. Mike Flynn and intruded on the first two-and-a-half years of Trump’s first term.
In fact, there are so many retreads and old familiars in the line-up someone made for Old Sleepy Joe that you might think you were back in the Obama White House. Maybe you will be. But I suppose this is where hope comes in. The idea behind the 2020 elections was to expunge not just Trump but the current of ‘deplorable’ sentiment that swept him into office in 2016. That certainly didn’t happen. Whoever turns out to be the winner of the top spot, the Trumpist impulse won down-ballot all over the country.
* * * * * * * *
Biden, on or past the threshold of senility, is the perfect embodiment of that flaccid pajama-boy spirit of fragile futility. Of course he wears a mask whenever he leaves his basement. Of course he is fixated on accusations that America is ‘systemically racist’ or insufficiently woke or imperfectly green or transphilic or globalist.
The hair shirt left ate those messages up coming from Obama, but (honest, no pun intended based on Biden’s aging faculties), Biden has no clue what he’s going to face from both sides of the aisle: the left consider him an elderly, utterly unwoke white guy, and as for the right, well: “At some future date reconciliation may be possible. But not until the last four years has been repaid in full.”
The check’s about to come due on a mighty big bill.
MARK LEVIN’S LIST: 15 ways Democrats stole the election.
I HAVE QUESTIONS: Florida scientist Rebekah Jones named Forbes’ ‘Tech Person of the Year.’
Flashbacks: From last month: Florida Police Raid Home Of Fired State Covid-19 Data Scientist Rebekah Jones.
About ten officers with guns drawn raided her home in Tallahassee at around 8:30 a.m., Jones told CNN, as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement worked to execute a search warrant as part of an investigation into whether the data scientist accessed a state government messaging system without authorization to encourage employees to speak out about coronavirus deaths, according to an affidavit obtained by the network.
“It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead,” the November 10 message said, according to the affidavit. “You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”
* * * * * * * *
She said officers also “pointed a gun six inches from my face” and took all of her “hardware and tech” including her computers, phone and flash drives that she says contained “proof that (state officials) were lying in January about things like internal reports and notices from the CDC” and “evidence of illegal activities by the state.” She said that she accessed those reports legally and some had been sent to her by other people after she was removed from her position.
Rick Swearingen, the law enforcement department’s commissioner, said in a statement that “at no time were weapons pointed at anyone in the home.”
And from May: Rebekah Jones’ firing is the COVID clickbait the media dreams of – but it’s all fake.
Jones also has an extensive criminal history in Leon County, where she’s been arrested and charged with three felonies, including one for robbery, and a handful of misdemeanor cases including “sexual cyberstalking,” a case where she created a website and used it to sexually harass her ex-boyfriend. The website has been taken down, but images from the case exist in Leon County court records.
Most of the charges filed against her came after she was hired by the Department of Health, so they would not have turned up in any background check.
The bottom line: Rebekah Jones was fired for performance issues, not for “refusing to manipulate data.” And her extensive criminal history, which predates her employment in Florida, lends credence to the DeSantis administration that she was just a troublesome employee who is now disgruntled and trying to get media attention about her firing. The easiest way to get media attention right now is to claim a Republican elected official is involved in a conspiracy to cover up COVID-19 data detrimental to reopening the state economy.
The media outlets listed above will not issue retractions. They will double down on the idea that DeSantis’s administration is withholding / manipulating / deleting / altering data. That, too is totally false. But mark these words, the embarrassment of touting Rebekah Jones as their coronavirus martyr will quickly fade into the mainstream media memory hole.
Forbes’ dubious award found via Twitter user “PoliMath,” who writes, “I’m a little bit worried that this pandemic has caused our society to legitimately fracture into a 2 parallel societies that exist in the same physical space but have accepted opposing sets of foundational truths.”
ALANA GOODMAN: Warnock Can’t Dismiss ‘Traumatizing and Disturbing’ Camp Abuse Story. He’ll try, and the press will help him.
LORDING IT OVER THE REST OF US IS THE ENTIRE POINT: De Blasio under fire for dancing in deserted Times Square.
New York City dropped the ball again on New Year’s Eve, but perhaps not as much as its mayor, Bill de Blasio did.
Critics are laying into the Big Apple’s leader for dancing on national television while the rest of the city was told to stay inside and socially distance during the coronavirus pandemic.
Against the backdrop of a mostly empty Times Square, de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, danced on stage together at the famous landmark. Typically, it is packed with people doing the same on New Year’s Eve.
“The View” co-host Meghan McCain tweeted: “You’ve always been basically the worst political in modern history – but shutting down the NYC but having your own private party in Times Square is really *chefs kiss* the most tone deaf thing I may have ever seen a Mayor do. Everyone hates you DeBlasio.”
De Blasio’s presidential bid in 2020 was a massive exercise in self-indulgence, and he’s term-limited against running for a third term as mayor, so likely de Blasio just wanted to get the epic shot to close out his personal “highlight” reel, not minding at all that he looked very much like the Joker dancing around the ruins of Gotham City on Thursday night.
Flashbacks:
● Dr. Birx Took Family Trip to Delaware After Thanksgiving, Despite Her Own COVID Advice.
● Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry Outing Crystallizes the Arrogance of COVID-19 Dictators.
● San Francisco Mayor London Breed had her own French Laundry party — the night after Gavin Newsom’s.
As Stephen Kruiser suggested: Let’s Start Jailing Lawmakers Who Violate Their Own COVID Restrictions. “Imagine the pure, poetic justice of seeing Newsom, Cuomo, and some of the other Hitler youth (stole that from Animal House) cooling their heels in a holding cell after being caught with their masks off and their pants down.”
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Strip Club Ban on Unaccompanied Women Spawns LGBT Rights Controversy.
BUT HER HAIR WAS PERFECT: Nancy Pelosi’s home vandalized with graffiti, pig head: reports.
HERE COMES THE FLOOD: Ninth Circuit Judges Reopen Borders for Flood of Illegals.
LEFTISTS HAVE SEVERE MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL ISSUES THAT COMPEL THEM TO FOUL THEIR NESTS WHEREVER THEY ARE: A multibillion-dollar f-you.
This dialogue was punctuated by a pithy tweet from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who describes herself as a progressive Democrat, “F*ck Elon Musk.”
At that time, we had no idea how much that tweet, and attitude, would cost us.
Nine months later, Elon Musk is gone. He is selling all his personal real estate in the state. He is now a resident of the state of Texas. He has moved his philanthropic foundation to Texas, too.
Consider the unfathomable irony of progressive Democrats forcing Elon Musk to give up on California. Musk came to this state as an immigrant and proceeded to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) and its subsidiary, solar panel manufacturer SolarCity Corp., than all the “progressive” politicians in the state combined. Musk didn’t talk about it. He simply brought products to market that benefited the consumer, the environment and his shareholders. He should have been the poster boy for the green agenda, but instead they turned on him because he committed the ultimate sins: He made money and he questioned their authority.
This year, Musk is likely paying billions in state tax. Next year, he will be a resident of another state.
The damage goes much deeper than the tax revenue of one person. Musk didn’t just leave the state. He turned on the state. It is now his mission to get other innovators to leave as well. According to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, he is on the phone with Musk once a week, strategizing about how to get other California companies to relocate to Texas. In the last few weeks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (NYSE: HPE) and Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) have both announced they are moving their headquarters to Texas, with other potential moves in the pipeline.
In a nutshell, California state income tax is the highest in the nation, California’s ranking for “business friendliness” is the lowest, and we have elected representatives who would lob crass, vulgar F-bombs at the people who are paying the freight.
The worst thing about the Gonzalez tweet is that no one called her on it. No one in state government had the guts to repudiate her words and show a modicum of respect for a man many call “the da Vinci of our age.” Don’t think other business owners don’t notice.
Why stay in a state that’s run by nasty people who hate you?
January 1, 2021
OH, I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS ONE: NYT: COVERING THE ELITES, OR COVERING *FOR* THE ELITES?
Plus:
Read the whole thing if you want maximum amusement. But this example raises a deeper question: why do so many liberals feel compelled to embellish or make up stories about themselves? In addition to racial fakery like Rachel Dolezal, which connects to the diversity ideology of the moment at least, you have the fake war heroism of Richard Blumenthal, Brian Williams, and, most spectacularly of all, John Kerry. (And leave aside Hillary Clinton “landing under fire” in Bosnia, and supposedly being named for British explorer Edmund Hillary, even though his fame as a mountaineer didn’t arrive until well after Hillary Rodham was born.)
I suggest there is something about the fundamental nihilism at the heart of modern liberalism—the view that there is no truth, that the “narrative” is the only important thing, that creating your own “reality” is perfectly fine—that compels liberals to lie about themselves.
Also Gary Hart, nee Hartpence, and of course Bill de Blasio, nee Warren Wilhelm.
BRITAIN’S Brexit Triumph.
BIG TECH IS JUST AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY — OR MAYBE IT’S THE OTHER WAY:
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Will Joe Biden take on our alarming China problem?
BLUE ZONES ARE RUN BY GARBAGE PEOPLE: WATCH: Mayor de Blasio dances in Times Square with his wife after shutting down annual New Year’s Eve party.
AS LONG AS THE ELECTRIC STUFF DOESN’T COME FROM LUCAS: This Electric Jaguar XK120 Is a Classic Without Hassle. “This has a twin motor with 516 lb-ft of torque and the equivalent of 375 horsepower. And the brakes, suspension… everything upgraded around that.”
MY MERCEDES SUV CAN ALREADY DO THAT: Teslas May Soon Be Able to Call 911.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5.56 NATO vs. .223 Rem.: What’s the Difference? You can shoot .223 in a 5.56, but not the other way around. “It is, and always will be, safe to shoot .223 Rem. ammunition in a chamber marked for 5.56 NATO. Commit that idea to memory, and you’ll never get in trouble. The pressures that a 5.56 NATO cartridge can generate are too high for the .223 Rem. chamber.”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Sustained teleportation of quantum information achieved in test.
BECAUSE JOE BIDEN IS PUTTING THE OBAMA-ERA BAND BACK TOGETHER: Why Iran Is Getting the Bomb.
And the Obama-era DNC-MSM groupies will vacuously nod along with whatever they do.
IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!
—Agence France-Presse, June 29, 2017.
I blame Obama:
● President ‘has four years to save Earth.’
—The London Guardian, January 27, 2009.
Which brings us to our current hellscape: “A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.”
—The London Guardian, February 21, 2004.
K12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Looking Back On A Year Of Mass Homeschooling. “Indeed, there has been an exodus of students from public schools this fall, as many parents select private schools that have been more likely to open for in-person learning, or choose independent homeschooling. NPR reported that public school districts in at least 20 states have seen plummeting numbers of students this fall. In Arizona, public school enrollment is down five percent compared to last year, and in Massachusetts it is down four percent.”
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Will Joe Biden take on our alarming China problem?
NOT MENTIONED IN THIS STORY: BLACK LIVES MATTER. Violent trend emerges in Knoxville with more shootings in 2020.
KURT SCHLICHTER: My Prediction for 2021 Is Pain.
Related metaphor alert:
Oof pic.twitter.com/mFI3uYMilD
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) January 1, 2021
THREE GLARING FLAWS PLAGUING THE BIPARTISAN PUSH FOR $2,000 ‘STIMULUS’ CHECKS: Handing out boosted $2,000 COVID ‘stimulus’ checks like candy on Halloween isn’t effective or justified.
I MISSED THIS WHEN IT HAPPENED–DIVERSITY NONSENSE COST TENS OF THOUSANDS OF LIVES!: Moderna Slows Coronavirus Vaccine to Ensure Minority Representation.
This is particularly egregious because apparently Moderna felt the need to ensure sufficient representation of Hispanic Americans. Even if you buy the dubious notion that there is a significant chance that vaccines will have significantly different effects by “race,” what race are Hispanics supposed to be, exactly? The average American Hispanic is about 3/4 European by descent, based on DNA studies. Essentially, then, Moderna allowed tens of thousands of people to die to ensure that “enough” white people who happen to have Spanish-speaking ancestors were included.
Like many stupidities, the very unscientific focus in biomedical research on American racial categories is the product of government policy. Even if you believe in “race” as a biological concept likely to have significant medical salience, our American civil rights/affirmative action categories don’t make any sense in that regard, e.g., putting Caucasian people from India in the same “racial” category as East Asians such as Chinese and Austronesians such as Filipinos. A chapter of my in-progress book on American racial classification (preview here) will discuss this in detail, but a shorter version can be found here. [BTW, if we have any readers with relevant medical/scientific expertise who would be interested in “peer reviewing” my chapter, please let me know.]
Serious question: Why did I only hear about this today? Why wasn’t there mass outrage when this was reported in September?
IN THE MAIL: CookWise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed.
MOST OF THE RACIAL TENSION IN AMERICA IS FOMENTED BY JOURNALISTS: A “POLICE SHOOTING” IN MINNEAPOLIS.
Although, if you actually follow the link, the first thing you see in the Times story is that “[t]he chief said witnesses indicated that the man had fired first.”
It wasn’t a traffic stop, either, contrary to the Times report. It has subsequently been reported that the stop was incident to a firearms investigation.
In any event, a crowd of demonstrators appeared at the scene. They blocked traffic for several blocks and started a bonfire in the middle of the street to keep warm. Authorities pleaded with them not to riot or commit arson. Eventually the crowd dissipated, but that was probably due to the temperature dipping down to an overnight low below ten degrees rather than to the fact that the decedent, a criminal, opened fire on the officers. Rioting is more fun in May and June.
A little while ago, the Minneapolis Police Department released body cam footage of the incident. Here it is. This was no traffic stop. Multiple police vehicles converged on the suspect’s car. He first tried to drive away and then, blocked, started shooting at the officers. They returned fire.
Like I said.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN: The Tyranny of Diversity: Its monomaniacal pursuit undermines other values—true equality among them.
There’s nothing wrong with the idealistic yearning for equality unless it gets in the way of other important goals or goods. The ideal of promised equality under communism, for example, annihilated the ideal of personal liberty. The political philosopher Isaiah Berlin often wrote about the conflict that arises when two good qualities compete. Great goods, Berlin thought, sometimes cannot live together: “We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.” Is diversity, in higher education and in politics, always the right choice?
In contemporary higher education, diversity competes with intellectual authority, based on scholarly and scientific accomplishment. These days, diversity is all but victorious and intellectual authority well in retreat. This leaves no one in a position to set or determine educational standards. University presidents, once educational leaders, now focus on fundraising and public relations. The heads of academic departments tend to accept their jobs not out of a desire for intellectual leadership but to reduce their teaching loads. Because of this want of intellectual authority, universities have now been on the slide for many years. . . .
In the conflict between goods, it is always worth asking who is favored and who loses because of the good chosen. In higher education we have witnessed Harvard, in its desire for diversity, turn away large numbers of highly qualified Asian-American applicants for admission. In contests for awards and prizes, diversity, too, is often the primary factor. A friend recently told me that his grandson won a Marshall Scholarship, all the more remarkable, he noted, since the kid is a white male.
America has always been and remains a diverse country, composed of waves of immigrants seeking opportunities available nowhere else. If some groups have had to struggle to secure these opportunities, they have for the most part successfully done so. Those who oppose them are now rightly regarded as retrograde. Left to their own devices, and once freed of the harness of victim status that many of their leaders wish to bind them in, they are likely to go from strength to strength. Attempts to rig the system in their favor through the artificial arrangements that imposed diversity requires cannot ultimately help them attain the genuine equality that only true accomplishment can bring.
The best way to celebrate diversity, perhaps, is to begin by celebrating diversity of thought.
No, they pursue race/gender diversity in order to exclude diversity of thought. It’s not an oversight; it’s the goal.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Will Joe Biden take on our alarming China problem?
A NEW YEAR, BUT THE B-52 REMAINS: A BUFF flies a mission somewhere over southwest Asia.
AS I KEEP SAYING, FOR A PARTY THAT SUPPOSEDLY WON BIG, THEY DON’T SEEM VERY HAPPY: Democrats more gloomy than ever, despite Biden’s Electoral College win.
HOW’S THAT LOCKDOWN WORKIN’ FOR YOU? Bodies pile up, patient care falters as COVID-19 devastates L.A. County hospitals.
Related: US COVID case numbers would be on the decline if not for California increases.
Also: Los Angeles Locked Down, Covid Came Anyway. The city’s crisis contradicts the simple narrative that outbreaks are punishment for red-state recklessness. “Los Angeles has endured nine months of a shutdown more extreme than most of the country’s — or the world’s. In the beginning, the city even closed the parks. You still can’t enter the Venice Beach boardwalk except to pick up takeout food. No walks, bike rides or fishing on the pier.”
A HAPPY NEW YEAR CHALLENGE: Thank God, it’s 2021 and 2020 is now behind us. Speaking of new beginnings, HillFaith has a New Year’s Challenge about the first beginning. Are you up for it?
WEIRDLY, IF DEMOCRATS HATED MINORITIES AND WANTED THEM TRAPPED, SAD, AND DEAD, THEY WOULDN’T HAVE TO CHANGE ANY OF THEIR POLICIES: New York City’s Shooting Surge Hit Black and Hispanic Communities Hardest. “The number of shootings increased to 1,493 for the year so far, compared with 754 for the same time in 2019, the data showed. A single shooting could end up with more than one victim, which accounts for the difference in totals between victims and incidents. The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice said people of color accounted for most of the victims. An analysis of NYPD data by that office showed that 1,440 of 1,495 shooting victims between Jan. 1 to Oct. 1, or 96%, were either Black or Hispanic. During that period, 29 shooting victims were white.”
Entirely missing from this story: Any reference to Black Lives Matter.
HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH OF 2020? THEN MAKE 2021 COUNT: Mind How You Go. We Can Do This!
2020 MAN OF THE YEAR: Eric Swalwell: Douche gigolo, California congressman.
GOOD. IT IS TIME TO START QUESTIONING THE PSY-OPS. ITS TIME TO START EXPLODING IT ALL OVER. COME WHAT MAY: British Woman Arrested After Filming Empty Hospital Wards While Health Officials Push COVID Panic.
BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO. HEY, DO YOU HEAR THAT ALARM CLOCK? Richard Grenell Discusses Ballot Fraud Evidence Local Officials Purposefully Keep Hidden.
We did tell you not to tread on us. Did you fail to understand it? Should we have spoken Mandarin?
OH, THEY DO. THEY JUST THINK THEY CAN IGNORE US. THIS IS AKIN TO DISABLING YOUR ALARM LOCK AND THINKING YOU NEVER HAVE TO GET UP: D’Souza: “GOP establishment should realize Trump supporters demand the election challenge”.
BEHOLD! MY FACE IS SO SHOCKED: New Evidence That the Ancient Climate Was Warmer than Today’s.
US OUT OF THE UN, UN OUT OF THE US: The Middle East Doubles Down on Oil and Gas As the UN Warns of “Climate Emergency”.
I’ll believe their climate emergency when they go after China to change its behavior.
I WANT TO POINT OUT WE’RE FINE: Thousands in Colorado without heat after vandals attack gas system.
BEFORE OR AFTER THEY DEAL WITH THE FAMINE THE LEFT IS CREATING WORLDWIDE? Britain’s new climate plan that could make millions of homes unsellable.
JUST REMEMBER THE NEW YEAR IS PRONOUNCED TWENTY TWENTY WON: The Century Crammed Into a Year Mercifully Ends.
THAN THEY ARE? ABSOLUTELY: Teachers: Should They Be Held To Higher Standards?
OH, LOOK, NEW YEAR SHOCKED FACE: DOJ Researcher Releases Study Indicating Massive Election Fraud in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
FANG FANG MITCH IS NOT A TRAITOR. HE’S ON THE OTHER SIDE: Does Mitch McConnell Want to Lose the Senate?
YEAH. AND EVERY YEAR WE’LL HOLD A MEMORIAL FOR FLU VICTIMS? BAH. LAUGH THEM OUT OF PUBLIC LIFE! Memorial for Covid in Biden Inauguration Plans.
Our founding fathers gained your liberty during a small pox epidemic. Lefties ain’t Americans.
GOING INTO 2021 IN MY MOLON LABE T-SHIRT, MIDDLE FINGERS ALOFT AND THIS ONE GOES OUT TO ALL THE COMMIES AND SOSHES IN MEDIA, ENTERTAINMENT, NEWS, POLITICS, AND OUR SO CALLED TECH LORDS:
You thought I/we’d lay down and die? Ah! Molon Labe…. come and get it. Maybe you made the mistake of messing with Americans?
December 31, 2020
ENDING 2020 ON A HIGH NOTE: In a Last-Minute Reversal, HHS Voids FDA Fees on Distillers Who Produced Emergency Hand Sanitizer.
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