BYRON YORK: Humiliation in Afghanistan.
SOMETHING CHEERFUL: Tal Bachman shares this video and comments:
I just watched this entire video. My thoughts:
1.) This was a casual rehearsal – and it makes every other musical rehearsal I’ve ever participated in (symphonic, rock, jazz, choral) feel ridiculous.
2.) This is the Mexican “Freebird”.
3.) La muchacha on harp is face-melting. Combines supreme technical skill with supreme musical skill.
4.) The only instruments you’re hearing are those three (harp, guitarron, and vihuela), yet at first listen, you’d think there were a dozen people playing.
5.) This level of syncopation – and constantly improvised, no less – is beyond any other type of music I’m familiar with. The downbeat gloriously vanishes here and there, sometimes for bars, especially during the solo parts in the middle. How do they keep track of where the downbeat is?
6.) This is the most you can make out of only three chords. Impressive.
7.) I wonder how la muchacha has tuned her harp…?
8.) Guitarron player plays octaves on each note.
9.) There is only real error here: the last chord. Just end it on the one chord, amigos. But we can forgive that.
It’s worth a few minutes of your time.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Getting Ready for the End of the World. “Why is eschatology suddenly so big, not among the so-called crackpots beloved of leftist caricature, but among the tech savvy millionaires and billionaires? . . . Undoubtedly the optimism of the Reagan era has been eclipsed by the apparent second coming of Jimmy Carter.”
IT’S COME TO THIS: B-52 bombers head to Afghanistan — to bomb our own planes before they fall into the hands of the Taliban.
American B-52H bombers are understood to be conducting an attack on the largest Afghan air force base in order to destroy the aircraft based there.
The aircraft are reportedly heading towards toward Mazar-e-Sharif.
“It is highly possible that they bomb the second largest air base of Afghanistan National Air Force now in hands of Taliban. They don’t want A-29B & AC-208B attack aircraft [to] remain in hands of Taliban.”
Related: All the Times Joe Biden’s Love for Ice Cream Melted Our Hearts.
OPEN THREAD: This is not a dream. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
IF THE WAR ON “DOMESTIC EXTREMISTS” GOES AS WELL AS THE WAR ON TERROR, THE PROUD BOYS WILL HAVE TAKEN WASHINGTON, D.C. BY NEXT YEAR: Dept of Homeland Security Makes Official U.S. Government Announcement, If You Question Govt COVID Response You are Considered A Domestic Violent Extremist.
GOOD LUCK — I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU: Biden Administration Wants Airlines Off Fossil Fuels By 2050.
BOEING STRIKES AGAIN: Boeing’s Starliner launch, a critical test flight for NASA, delayed indefinitely as capsule heads back to factory. “In the aftermath of Nauka’s malfunction, the space station was temporarily too preoccupied to receive Starliner on its planned arrival date of July 31, so OFT-2’s liftoff was postponed for a few more days. But during that time, teams on the ground discovered that 13 valves on the Starliner spacecraft were not functioning properly during preflight checks. Boeing has been troubleshooting that issue in an effort to get the spacecraft off the ground this month.”
Anybody can have tech problems, but Boeing seems consistently to have more than its share nowadays.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE:
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen, But now it’s been decided nobody minds. The places are a long way off, not here.”
I’m not against ending the Afghan War, which wasn’t doing anything constructive. But the Biden Bugout has been . . . well, it’s been handled about as well as anything else in this dreadful administration, which is to say dreadfully.
TRENDING ON TWITTER: #BIDENMUSTRESIGN.
HOW BAD A MISJUDGEMENT WAS OBAMA’S BIRTHDAY GALA? EVEN MAUREEN DOWD IS DISSING HIM: Behold Barack Antoinette.
Jay Gatsby gave big, lavish, new-money parties at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. He wanted Daisy to notice him.
Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him.
One difference is that Gatsby opened his house to the uninvited. Obama closed his house to many of the invited after getting flak for hosting “a celebrity mosh pit,” as Stephen Colbert called it, while officials were telling people to mask back up.
It’s hard to stop thinking about the over-the-top fete the former president held at his Martha’s Vineyard manse for his 60th birthday. It is such a perfect taxonomy of the Obama arc.
As president, he didn’t try hard enough on things we needed. He was a diffident debutante with a distaste for politics. Post-presidency, he is trying too hard on things we don’t need. The culture is already swimming in Netflix deals, celebrity worship, ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention podcasts. Did the world really need “Renegades,” his duet with Bruce Springsteen?
We already knew Obama gravitated to stars but it was disillusioning to see it on such a grand scale last weekend.
It was only disillusioning to those with illusions. Many of us knew that Obama was a narcissistic lightweight, an empty suit with sharp-creased pants, from the beginning. Only the Democrats and the media — but I repeat myself — convinced themselves that he was something more, as they did with Andrew Cuomo and Michael Avenatti, among many others.
Among other masks. Also: CONFIRMED: Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard Birthday Bash a Super Spreader Event. “Blood on his hands?”
Related: Private jets and no masks — how Obama’s party was height of elite hypocrisy.
INTERESTING: “The bears and Indigenous humans of coastal British Columbia have more in common than meets the eye. The two have lived side by side for millennia in this densely forested region on the west coast of Canada. But it’s the DNA that really stands out: A new analysis has found that the grizzlies here form three distinct genetic groups, and these groups align closely with the region’s three Indigenous language families.”
OUT: PARTY LIKE IT’S 1975. IN: Party Like It’s 1842.
You’d think that after 20 years there, we’d have better intelligence.
SPACE JUNK: BETTER PUT UP MY UMBRELLA. NASA mulls how to dispose of International Space Station.
Prior plans to have the Russians de-orbit it seem to be in trouble. Call SpaceX!
HAVE YOU NOTICED that when we talk about science, etc., we refer to things as “the gold standard” for research to indicate it’s the very best. But then we don’t actually use the actual gold standard?
Related: Fifty Years Without Gold. “How very different our prevailing monetary system is from the ideas of Bretton Woods.”
FAVORITE LIBERTARIAN BOOK? I Think mine would be Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Someone in the comments mentioned putting up a list of good libertarian classics, what are your favorites?
I’VE ALWAYS SUSPECTED THAT A LOT OF THE MIDDLE-AGED METABOLIC “SLOWDOWN” IS JUST INACTIVITY: Metabolism doesn’t slow down until senior years, researchers say. “veryone knows that your metabolism peaks in your teenage years, when you’re fit and active and feeling your oats. And everyone knows that a person’s metabolism slows down in middle age, as bodies start to expand and sag, and become less energetic. But that’s all wrong, it now appears to have been fake news about how humans age that’s gained the currency of truth over the years.”
PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1975: US Embassy will be completely evacuated within 72 hours and staff are already being rushed to Kabul airport as Taliban warlords close in: First of 3,000 Marines arrive and refugee crisis begins.
Related: Biden Admin Instructs Kabul Embassy To Destroy American Flags As It Braces For Global Embarrassment.
Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has reportedly instructed embassy staff in Kabul to destroy American flags to minimize the embarrassment the administration will face through propaganda produced by the Taliban as the extremist group has rapidly seized large swaths of the country.
“Facilities will provide destruction support between 0830 and 1600 daily until further notice,” an internal memo stated, according to The Washington Post. “Please take advantage and reduce the amount of sensitive material on the property.”
The memo added in bold font, “Please also include items embassy or agency logos, American flags, or items which could be misused in propaganda efforts.”
More: Last Major City in Northern Afghanistan Falls to Taliban While Joe Biden Vacations at Camp David.
No word yet what flavor of ice cream Joe is enjoying today.
UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine urges use of ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘parent’s milk’ in new guidance. Biden administration uses phrase “birthing people” instead of “mothers” in 2022 budget proposal.
REVIEW: Ruger Max-9 Pistol.
THE VANISHING LEGACY OF BARACK OBAMA: On the road from stirring symbol of hope and change to the Fat Elvis of neoliberalism, birthday-partying Barack Obama sold us all out. “Obama was set up to be the greatest of American heroes, but proved to be a common swindler and one of the great political liars of all time — he fooled us all.”
Not all of us.
Related: Behold Barack Antoinette. Maureen Dowd is shocked Obama has dropped the mask.
SCIENCE: Massive New Analysis Confirms Just How Many COVID-19 Cases Are Truly Asymptomatic. The answer: Lots.
PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1975: Biden braces for brutal defeat in Afghanistan.
But it’s OK, though: “Biden is at Camp David this weekend, not at his Delaware beach house. He can relax there, but also has full comms. People can come and go without detection, and he avoids the optics of a beach vacation amid a mass evacuation.”
HMM: Brain cholesterol regulates Alzheimer’s plaques, study reveals. “Hansen notes, however, that cholesterol is needed by the brain for many other processes, including the maintenance of normal alertness and cognition. His laboratory discovered in a 2020 study that severely interrupting the effect of cholesterol in neurons by general anesthetics can induce unconsciousness via a shared mechanism.”
BIDEN INVESTIGATING IF HE CAN OVERRIDE STATE BANS ON SCHOOL MASK MANDATES.
Related: President Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium is unconstitutional and he knows it.
More: Texas, Missouri AGs Win Major Border Victory Over Biden. But Will Biden Abide By It?
With this level of gangster government, clearly then: Journalists Must Stop Covering the Biden Presidency Like It’s Normal.
SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES — THEY’RE JUST LIKE US: Size of supermassive black hole divulged by eating pattern.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: A Hunger Inside You: Your Vibrator Can Now Update You On The Status Of Your Food Delivery.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: College professor held in wildland arson spree near California’s massive Dixie Fire.
THE BABYLON BEE: Hateful White Men Question How Hateful They Really Are (Video).
THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO IS “JOIN[ING] THE NATIONWIDE EFFORT TO DECONSTRUCT ANTI-BLACKNESS [AND] DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY”: I received this invitation yesterday from my employer:
HUMC 294: Black Lives Matter: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Course
Course Description: Faculty across all academic units are invited to participate as instructors in an interdisciplinary 5-week class about the movement for Black lives. Drawing upon the expertise of scholars from the humanities, arts and architecture, business, engineering, education, and the social sciences, this course will consider this historical moment of social and political change. All USD faculty are encouraged to apply.
Heeding the call of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and global network, this course joins the nationwide effort to deconstruct anti-Blackness, dismantle white supremacy, center Black resistance, and build solidarity movements that support the wellness and self-determination of Black communities. The collaborative and team-taught course will not only contextualize the complex histories of Black people in the US but also center Black wisdom, joy, and antiracist praxis. It is our intention to reorient canon to recognize Black contribution; to learn about Black networks across the world and throughout history; and to imagine futures that support Black excellence. Students will be exposed to a range of interdisciplinary analyses of the movement for Black lives and engaged in critical, transformative reflection.
…
Compensation: Each faculty participant will receive a $600 stipend.
Could a course description be any clearer that it is about inculcating and supporting a fringe ideology? The course description literally states that the course is part of a “nationwide effort to deconstruct anti-Blackness [and] dismantle white supremacy.” The problem is that you couldn’t find a white supremacist in these parts if your life depended on it. These folks are barking mad.
The suggested topics for the sessions include “Black internationalism,” “Labor and U.S. Racial Capitalism,” “Black Epistemologies and Education,” “Environmental Racism,” “Black and Womanist Theology,” “Anti-Blackness in Science and Technology,” and lots more. It’s hard not to wince while reading through all the neo-Marxist jargon.
By the way, as a result of the pandemic, the University of San Diego is so strapped for cash that it initially stopped paying into the retirement accounts of its faculty and staff. At this point, it has re-evaluated and is paying 50% of the retirement benefits it used to pay. In effect, everyone, down to the lowliest assistant gardener, has received a pay cut. And guess who is harmed the most? The lower you are on the pay scale, the more it hurts when it comes time to retire and your nest egg is insufficient. Recently the law school announced that under its new “fiscally prudent” policy, faculty and staff will even have to bring “their own coffee mugs, cutlery, dishware and condiments (i.e. coffee pods, tea bags, sweetener/creamer, etc.).” But never fear: There is plenty of money—ridiculous sums—to hire someone into the newly created position of Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And there is plenty money for faculty stipends to “join the nationwide effort to deconstruct anti-blackness [and] dismantle white supremacy.”
I wonder when boards of trustees, parents and donors are going to get wise to the foolishness on college campuses these days. While I’m not what you’d call optimistic, I’m not willing to give up the fight. I’ve been told I have an abnormally long attention span ….
FUNNY, NOT FUNNY:
DISPATCHES FROM SANDY’S WAR: Tucker Carlson Mocks AOC’s Jan 6 ‘Rape’ Fear: ‘Get a Therapist, Honey!’
(Classical reference in headline.)
DEMOCRATS AND CRONYISM: A LONG HISTORY. Documents: FDR pressured Hitler to meet with his oil buddies. “Hitler eventually blew them off, but the memos show the president’s efforts to help his personal friends in their businesses, something that today would be impeachable at the least.”
Well, not if a Democrat did it.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: “Blame Biden for Afghanistan’s Return to the Dark Ages,” says…The Bulwark?
MAYBE WE SHOULD CALL IT THE “CHOOM GANG VARIANT.” CONFIRMED: Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard Birthday Bash a Super Spreader Event. “Blood on his hands?”
Related: Private jets and no masks — how Obama’s party was height of elite hypocrisy.
HOW IT STARTED: Oakland City Council Votes to Defund Police, Stripping More Than $17M from Department Budget.
—Bay Area CBS affiliate KPIX, June 24th, 2020.
How it’s going: After shooting in broad daylight, Oakland’s Chinatown asks Gov. Newsom to send in the CHP.
—John Sexton, Hot Air, yesterday.
BURIED LEDE: SNL STILL HAS FANS. SNL’s Horatio Sanz Hit With Lawsuit For Allegedly Sexually Assaulting Underage Fan.
JUDGE ORDERS BIDEN TO REIMPLEMENT KEY TRUMP BORDER POLICY AS BIDEN’S BORDER CATASTROPHE WORSENS:
A federal judge ordered Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration late on Friday to reimplement a key policy from former President Donald Trump that forced foreign nationals seeking to enter the U.S. through the southern border – illegally or without proper documentation – to be returned to Mexico and wait there while their legal cases are adjudicated.
More like this, please.
HECKUVA JOB, BARRY: At least 63 people on Martha’s Vineyard have tested positive for Covid-19 since Barack Obama’s maskless 60th birthday bash — the most cases on the island since April.
Buried lede: Here’s proof at last that it’s actually possible for woke Democrats to get Covid.
August 13, 2021
PARTY LIKE IT’S 1975: In desperation, U.S. scours for countries willing to house Afghan refugees.
I REMEMBER WHEN THEY CALLED HIM A SUPERLAWYER: Michael Avenatti’s Libel Lawsuit Against Fox Thrown Out by Judge.
READER BOOK PLUG: From Jonathan Fesmire, Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western.
OPEN THREAD: Hark the Critical Race Theory anthem.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE:
● Yikes: Obama Flack on MSNBC Struggles to Defend Biden on Afghanistan.
● CNN: Boy, Biden sure is facing a lot of crises all of a sudden.
Although some at CNN still maintain their Baghdad Bob style: Biden forges ahead where Trump and Obama failed on infrastructure and Afghanistan.
IN THE PHOTO, THE ROCKET/CAPSULE COMBO LOOKS A LOT LIKE BLUE ORIGIN’S PENIS-ROCKET, BUT I HAVEN’T HEARD THE SAME JOKES: Stuck valves on Boeing’s Starliner keep critical space station test flight on hold.
Not even a “failure to launch” jape.
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? This Giant, Hazardous Asteroid Almost Certainly Won’t Hit Us, Probably, NASA Says.
Well, if the experts aren’t worried about it, then I’m . . . uh oh.
CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT FAILED: Writing in the American Spectator, Scott McKay argues the conservative movement is dead, if it is defined as the Old/New Right Plus Bush Chamber of Commerce Republicanism:
“When you’ve gone from surrendering on gay marriage to failing to summon up convincing arguments for obvious things like ‘boys shouldn’t play on girls’ sports teams’ or that the least racist nation on planet Earth was founded to promote slavery, you aren’t really conserving much of anything anymore, are you?
“When you went from failing to reform government programs like Social Security and Medicare, when it was patently obvious they would eventually bankrupt the government, to signing off on a trillion-dollar bacchanal of ‘infrastructure’ spending only a quarter of which can reasonably fit in that definition, you’re not a fiscal conservative.
“When you progressed from creating a security state capable of spying on everyone in the world with marginal accountability to having little to say when that security state gets politicized and nearly effects a coup d’etat on a duly-elected American president, we can’t really say you’re conserving our liberty.”
McKay advocates a new “Revivalist” movement that sounds an awful lot like what I heard one night in October 1964 on television when a guy from “Death Valley Days” came on the screen and delivered what became known as “The Speech” that launched the Reagan Revolution.
He wasn’t perfect, but he won the Cold War and got Congress to pass the biggest tax cut in American history, rebuilt American military might and respect, and showed how presidential leadership can restore a large measure of the shared civic spirit that once was the norm.
I was one of the legions of idealistic young Americans he inspired to enlist in the movement to save America and who in some key respects were the “Wide Awakes” of our day. Reagan was the right man for the time. But that was 1980. This is not. A revival would be great but would it be enough?
ADDERALL FOR LIFE: Just 10% of kids with ADHD outgrow it, study finds.
THIS IS A BIGGER DANGER TO THEM THAN COVID: Study: Ultra-processed foods supply two-thirds of calories in U.S. child, teen diets.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: ‘We Don’t Like Cuomo Now,’ Says Every Late-Night Host In Perfect Robotic Unison.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Liberals Look in the Mirror and Scream.
And here’s a pro tip for the fussy boys of Twitter: You already libel us as “Nazis” and “fascists” – which is weird because we aren’t socialists, national or otherwise – so it’s not like you doing it with even higher-pitched shrieks than usual is going to make it more compelling or get us to care. Nor is it a particularly persuasive flex to somehow assert that a bunch of proposals which a dozen years of my columns oppose are actually proposals that I really support, and that I could not possibly be mocking the pinkos, and that I somehow inadvertently let slip out some sort of inner Mussolini and only tacky blue checks are clever enough to detect the hidden truth. Again, we have the continuing liberal dilemma: Are they dumb, or do they merely think that the people listening to them are dumb?
But I did mix in some plausible initiatives among the outrageous ones. The lines about increasing our carbon footprint and deporting all illegal aliens – yeah, those are good ideas.
In the end, holding up the mirror to these saps had exactly the effect that I sought to achieve – these dorks are so easy to play. Utterly without even the self-awareness to hide their Stalinist aspirations, they demonstrated that they were fine with those authoritarian tactics, just not with those particular objectives. The thread’s modest proposals included banning Marxism, control of social media, and punishing dissenters. Their response was that I should be banned, that social media should toss me off, that I should lose my job, and that I should be reported to the cops. A bunch of freedom advocates reported me to Twitter, so I got a flurry of those “German law” notices. Basically, their view is that suppressing rights is not inherently bad. It’s only bad if done to them. When done to us, it’s a moral imperative.
Not surprisingly, the party whose organizing method is “the moral equivalent of war” happily views American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head.
CHANGE: FDA OKs second Pfizer, Moderna booster shot in vulnerable Americans. I have a friend who has had two shots of Pfizer and also had Covid, and she shows no antibodies, probably due to the immuno suppressive drugs she takes for MS. She’d be a candidate, but if the two shots and the actual disease don’t do it, why should one more shot?
On the upside, she wasn’t especially sick when she actually had Covid.
WHY ARE TRUMP SUPPORTERS SO RELUCTANT TO GET VACCINATED? “They’re Experimenting On Us” — Why Black New Yorkers Don’t Trust The Vaccine.
Earlier: Why Don’t They Believe Us?
HOW AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FAILS: People are suspicious of favoritism! Maybe it’s not a favor at all.
WHEN THERAPISTS BECOME ACTIVISTS:
Until roughly five years ago, people seeking mental health care could expect their therapists to keep politics out of the office. But as counselor education programs and professional organizations across the country embrace a radical social justice agenda, that bedrock principle of neutrality is crumbling. Mental health professionals—mainly counselors and therapists—are increasingly replacing evidence-driven therapeutics with ideologically motivated practice and activism.
The Graduate Counseling Program at the University of Vermont, for example, intends to “structurally align” itself with the Black Lives Matter movement and begin “the work of undoing systemic white supremacy.” After George Floyd’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Counseling Center advised would-be students to “consider us one of many resources in the difficult but necessary work of engaging with internalized bias, recognizing privilege, and aligning values of anti-racism and allyship with embodied and sustained practice.”
Such sentiments are not limited to mission statements—they are playing out in the real world of clinical training. Some counseling programs encourage students to engage in social justice activism. Most troubling of all, trainees are being taught to see patients not as individuals with unique needs, but as avatars of their gender, race, and ethnic groups. Accordingly, more and more counselors encourage their patients to understand their problems as a consequence of an oppressive society. White patients, for instance, are told that their distress stems from their subjugation of others, while black and minority patients are told that their problems stem from being oppressed.
What could go wrong?
THE JUDICIARY CONTINUES TO DISAPPOINT: “This Is No Way to Rule a Country:” If an eviction moratorium is needed, why wouldn’t the legislature try to enact one?
It is precisely the way to rule a country, if the rulers fear accountability to the people.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit.
MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE FRANK RIZZO AGAIN: Not a Joke: Philadelphia Mayor Announces Double-Mask Mandate.
Yes, this mayor:
PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1975: Afghanistan Falling Just A Month After Biden Says It’s Unlikely Taliban Will Take Over (Video).
More here: “For the last seven months I’ve watched Generals engage in twitter fights with people, debate the merits of Critical Race Theory on Capital Hill. It seemed like our generals were more concerned with fighting Tucker Carlson than they were the Taliban.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE “IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN WE DO IT” PARTY: CNNers Revel in Rand Paul’s YouTube Ban For….Saying What CNN Said a Week Ago? “Speaking of misinformation, [CNN Newsroom guest host Erica Hill] was not entirely fair in describing what Paul said that got him banned. What Paul said was, ‘Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection.’ That is practically identical to what [former Biden advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm] told Hill’s colleague and Inside Politics host John King on August 2: ‘We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out.’ So, if a CNN-approved guest says something, no problem. If you asked, they’d likely cite the fact that Osterholm is an author, college professor, former Biden Covid advisory board member, and frequent broadcast and cable network news guest. In fact, they get posted on YouTube. But the moment a Republican says it? Oh, they deserve whatever censorship comes their way.”
PARTYING LIKE IT’S 2020: Just Like COVID-19, The Murder Hornets Are Back, Too.
IT DOES SEEM THAT WAY:
The Democrats seem to be operating with a haste and an openness that isn’t normal for a party with a razor-thin majority. It reminds me a bit of how Chinese companies were doing business in 2019 — as if it’s some kind of final period.
CRISES BY DESIGN: Mask Nazis Remain Silent About the Biden Border Super-Spreader Event.
UPDATE: Mayorkas says ‘we’re going to lose’ the border crisis: Leaked audio. “Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed the administration is ‘going to lose’ the border crisis as ‘unsustainable’ numbers of migrants continue to pour into the United States.”
(Updated and bumped.)
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Teaching assistant docks point on conservative student’s Black Panther essay: ‘White people cannot experience racism.’
IT’S COME TO THIS: Greenies Against Grass: Climate Change Believers Now Attacking Legal Marijuana.
When the climate change hypothesis followers start attacking an industry for their carbon footprint, they never consider the loss of jobs resulting from their attacks. Their pot pugnacity is no different.
Despite the huge climate impact of the nation’s fastest-growing new industry—legal sales jumped 50 percent last year, topping $20 billion, while the industry added almost 80,000 jobs—Biden, most lawmakers and many environmental groups, even those supportive of cannabis legalization, have largely ignored the issue.
And that doesn’t even count the loss of jobs from the lower consumption of Cheetos, chips, and other munchies, or the secession of people ordering delivery from Domino’s pizza at 3am. Or the people who manufacture rolling papers, pipes, and/or bongs.
Heh, indeed.
NEWSWEEK: The Diversity Problem on Campus.
The words “diversity, equity and inclusion” sound just, and are often supported by well-intentioned people, but their effects are the opposite of noble sentiments. Most importantly, “equity” does not mean fair and equal treatment. DEI seeks to increase the representation of some groups through discrimination against members of other groups. The underlying premise of DEI is that any statistical difference between group representation on campus and national averages reflects systemic injustice and discrimination by the university itself. The magnitude of the distortions is significant: for some job searches discrimination rises to the level of implicitly or explicitly excluding applicants from certain groups.
DEI violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment. It entails treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century. It requires being willing to tell an applicant “I will ignore your merits and qualifications and deny you admission because you belong to the wrong group, and I have defined a more important social objective that justifies doing so.” It treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.
Yes. Plus: “DEI compromises the university’s mission. The core business of the university is the search for truth.”
ARE YOU EVEN ALLOWED TO SAY THIS ANYMORE? Wanting to Preserve Your Culture is Not a Bad Thing.
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW, we’re hiring a new dean, and two new faculty members.
Position descriptions and application info at the links.
TIME FOR REPARATIONS: A Racial Reckoning for the Democrats:
Vermont Democrat Party chair Bruce Olsson published a commentary recently proclaiming yet again that Republicans are “racist.” This is particularly rich since the Democrat party is the oldest and most enduring racist political party in history, and its racism continues to this day. Here are the facts:
The Democrat Party was founded in 1828. Its first national party platform, ratified during the 1840 Presidential election, stated: “ that all efforts by abolitionists or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery… are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people… and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.”
The message was clear: the Democrat Party did not consider Black Americans to be “people” deserving of “happiness.”
That same language was in every national Democrat party platform for the next 16 years.
Democrat party leaders acted on their racist principles, committing high treason against their country and their fellow Americans between 1861-1865 in order to preserve the system of Black human bondage.
In 1868, the Democrat Party platform urged amnesty for the traitors who, during the Civil War, killed hundreds of thousands of Americans for the purpose of preserving slavery. The platform also called for “the abolition of the Freedmen’s Bureau; and all political instrumentalities designed to secure negro supremacy”:
In 1904, seventy-six years after its founding, the Democrat party’s platform complained about the Republican platform:
“The race question has brought countless woes to this country. The calm wisdom of the American people should see to it that it brings no more.
To revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed. We therefore deprecate and condemn the Bourbon-like selfish, and narrow spirit of the recent Republican Convention at Chicago which sought to kindle anew the embers of racial and sectional strife, and we appeal from it to the sober common sense and patriotic spirit of the American people.” . . .
Throughout most of the 20th century, Democrats condoned or excused policies of apartheid and disenfranchisement of Black Americans. Senate Democrats successfully filibustered a Republican led anti-lynching bill in 1934, and a Republican-led effort to ban the poll tax in 1940. At the time, the poll tax was so effective in the American South that only 3% of Black Americans were registered to vote there. Elected Democrats fought tooth and nail against anti-racist legislation, filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and engaging in so-called “massive resistance” against school integration into the early 1970s. A century and half of racist policies vigorously supported by Democrat party leaders — no other political party in history comes close.
Reparations now!
QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Is PAW Patrol authoritarian propaganda in disguise?
MARK JUDGE: Kavanaugh in the Suburbs.
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