P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

We didn’t start this culture war The woke left rages against increasingly bizarre things, and then calls everyone else crazy. Tom Slater

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/05/we-didnt-start-this-culture-war/

Kermit the Frog. Mr Potato Head. Dr Seuss. The culture war becomes more infantile by the day. Quite literally. The big talking points of the past few weeks have focused almost exclusively on children’s TV shows, toys and authors.

First Disney Plus slapped a warning label on The Muppets Show, due to the ‘negative depictions and / or mistreatment of people or cultures’ it apparently features, acknowledging the ‘harmful impacts’ these puppets have inflicted on generations of youngsters.

Then there was the de-gendering of Mr Potato Head. Hasbro announced that the beloved toy brand would drop the honorific, so as to make it more gender inclusive (while still keeping the Mr and Mrs Potato Head characters).

Then they came for Dr Seuss, as it were. Joe Biden conspicuously removed any mention of the beloved author from his proclamation on Read Across America Day this week, which was up until now also known as Dr Seuss Day. A Virginia school district also instructed its teachers to ‘not connect Read Across America Day with Dr Seuss’. Most strikingly, the Seuss estate said it would cease publishing six of the more ‘problematic’ titles.

This followed a years-long campaign on the part of some academics to repose Seuss as a racist, due to the old stereotypical depictions in some of his books (ignoring the fact that while his work reflects some of the prejudices of his time, he also satirised racism, fascism and nationalism).

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Jonathan Turley: Scandalous failure of big city public schools has created a lost generation of kids Many school officials seem intent on replicating past failures

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/failure-city-public-schools-lost-generation-jonathan-turley

Tiffany France is understandably upset. She is a mother of three who works three jobs to support her family.

Her 17-year-old son failed 22 classes in Baltimore and was late or absent 272 days over his first three years of high school. 

As recently reported, France’s son almost graduated near the top half of his class at Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts after failing every class but three in four years. He has a 0.13 GPA. She thought her son would be graduating from the school in June.

According to Fox45 News “only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened.”

France ultimately had to pull her 17-year-old son out of the school and enroll him in an accelerated program to allow him to graduate from high school in 2023.

Her story is tragically all-too-familiar. The coronavirus pandemic led to the closure of an already failing public school system, as evident with France’s children.

We have a lost generation of kids who have neither the education nor the trained skills to succeed in society.

As teachers’ unions fight to keep schools closed, the true cost is being felt by students who are racking up failing grades, dropping out of virtual classes, increasing drug use, and, in rising numbers, committing suicide. 

Watching this happen to the public schools has been particularly hard for some of us who are ardent supporters of public education.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Despite $460 Mil Budget for Capitol Cops, Pelosi Wants More Money Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/despite-460-mil-budget-capitol-cops-pelosi-wants-daniel-greenfield/

This is a joke. Right?

The Capitol Police have over 2,000 sworn officers and they’re the 19th largest police force in America. If that’s not enough to protect a few buildings, then maybe it’s time to ask some serious questions about the competence and corruption of the key players in this mess.

The Capitol Police have over 2,000 sworn officers. A police force dedicated to protecting Capitol Hill has more personnel in its service than the police forces of most of the country.

Congress’ private cops are the 19th largest police force in the country. It’s a larger force than the police forces of Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, or Milwaukee with a massive $460 million budget.

While Democrats advocated defunding the police, their private police force budget shot up from $375 million in 2016 to $460 million in 2020. After the Capitol Hill riot, expect it to go higher.

Much higher.

How much higher? Pelosi is clamoring for more cash.

Speaker Pelosi said they have “drafts” of security proposals, but protecting the Capitol properly will require more funding.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France: Yes, He Murdered a Jewish Woman While Screaming ‘Allahu Akbar,’ But You See, He Was Stoned French authorities offer the most imaginative excuse for jihad violence yet. Robert Spencer

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/france-yes-he-murdered-jewish-woman-while-robert-spencer/

Here’s a new one: the marijuana excuse. For years authorities all over Europe have dismissed clear cases of jihad violence as “mental illness,” but that one is so overused now, it’s understandable that officials would be casting about for new and imaginative ways to hoodwink their people into think that there really isn’t any jihad in the West at all, just a few unfortunate incidents and misunderstood adherents of the world’s most peaceful and tolerant religion. But sometimes even willfully ignorant dhimmi authorities can go too far with this wishful thinking.

So it is that in France, according to the Jerusalem Post Thursday, the appellate Court of Cassation has begun deliberations on whether to overturn the ruling that a Muslim named Kabili Traoré, who murdered an elderly Jewish woman while screaming “Allahu akbar,” will not be tried because he was high on marijuana at the time of the killing. That’s right: French authorities are on record now that if you get high, killing Jews is A-OK.

The cannabis, you see, allegedly compromised Traoré’s “discernment.” The lower court judge “cited psychiatric evaluations saying Traoré’s consumption of marijuana before the incident led to a ‘delirious episode’ that made him not legally responsible for his actions.” The millions of Americans who have smoked marijuana might wonder how it is that they never got so stoned as to think that throwing a 65-year-old woman out of the window of her third-floor apartment was just the thing to do, but that is now a matter for the Court of Cassation to decide. Muriel Ouaknine Melki, who is a lawyer for the family of Traoré’s victim, Sarah Halimi, observed that the appeal will establish whether or not “the consumption of narcotics can be a cause for exonerating from penal responsibility in criminal matters.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Dems’ ‘Election Reforms’ Would End American Democracy As We Know It

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/08/dems-election-reforms-would-end-american-democracy-as-we-know-it/

HR. 1, the Democrats’ just-passed “election reform” bill, laughably dubbed by supporters the “For The People Act,” is so bad you might be tempted to ignore it. After all, legislation this awful can’t get passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law, right? But all Americans should take it seriously. It’s an attempt to take away your right to vote and create permanent Democratic control of the federal government.

Yes, elections have consequences, and terrible bills like this certainly prove that. Anyone who voted for the Democrats in 2020 hoping for a “turn to the center” should by now be feeling mighty foolish. H.R. 1 is but one example.

So far, Democrats have passed a near $2 trillion spending splurge that has next to nothing to do with COVID-19, created a new crisis on our border, alienated our strongest ally in the Mideast, convinced a bullying China that we’re weak and vulnerable, and, instead of doing the people’s business as they’re supposed to, are now “investigating” the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C.

Some 5,000 National Guard troops, totally unnecessary right now, remain camped in the nation’s barbed-wire encased capital, despite the fact that the FBI testified last week that no arms were seized by them nor were any shots fired by demonstrators during the supposed “insurrection.”

Democrats hope to use the distraction of troops in D.C. and a probe of the events of Jan. 6 to pursue the most radical congressional agenda in history. The showpiece of this effort is H.R. 1, which passed the House by a sliver and now goes to the Senate. If they fail in the Senate, don’t worry: They’ll try again soon.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Dividing by Race Comes to Grade School Students, ages 5 through 11, are urged to ‘check each other’s words and actions’ and become committed activists. By Bion Bartning

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dividing-by-race-comes-to-grade-school-11615144898?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

My awakening to the new orthodoxy began during this past summer of discontent. In mid-June, a few weeks after the George Floyd protests began, the head of Riverdale Country School, the New York City private school my wife and I entrusted with the education of our two young children, sent a memo apologizing for unspecified past wrongs. “We have the responsibility to use our privilege to fight for change,” he explained. “We are also free to shift some aspects of our culture more quickly than other institutions and organizations.”

In September, at the first assembly of the year, instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “America the Beautiful”—longstanding school traditions—the head of the lower school announced that the “theme” for the year would be “allyship.” He then played a video in which the school mascot told students, ages 5 through 11, to “check each other’s words and actions.” The lower-school head had earlier written that “it is essential that parents/caregivers and educators acknowledge racial differences (as opposed to a ‘colorblind’ stance)” and offered reading recommendations such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Families at Riverdale are encouraged to join school-sponsored “affinity” groups to bond with people from their ethnicity or skin color. One is called simply “the POC,” short for “parents of color.”

At this point in the story, perhaps “lived experiences” become relevant. I am half Mexican and Yaqui, an indigenous tribe native to the U.S.-Mexico border region, and half Jewish. I spent the first year of my life on a commune in Berkeley, Calif. Growing up, I was aware that I had darker skin than my mother and my classmates, but I was never taught to define my identity by the color of my skin. My mixed background and ancestry made me feel like nothing more than a typical American.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Woke Chinese Communist Party Beijing uses progressive rhetoric to attack Western interests.

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-woke-chinese-communist-party-11615153949?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Chinese state media rarely deserves attention but lately it’s taken a notable and instructive turn. It is invoking the woke themes of American progressives as a propaganda weapon against the U.S.

“Canada, the UK and Australia, three members of the Five Eyes alliance, have recently taken action to put pressure on China. They have formed a US-centered, racist, and mafia-styled community,” said a Feb. 23 editorial in Global Times. “They are becoming a racist axis aimed at stifling the development rights of 1.4 billion Chinese.”

The Communist Party-run paper notes that the members of Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing network, “have a strong sense of civilization superiority.” U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton is a “neo-Nazi and extreme racist” and “the Trump administration is an extremely typical white supremacy government.” By resisting this bloc of English-speaking countries, the editorial concludes, “China is not only defending its own interests, we are also defending the diversity of the modern world.”

Note the use of “white supremacy” and “diversity” and “civilization superiority,” which come straight from the progressive critique of America as a country that is “systemically” racist and oppressive. The Global Times editors may be crude but they’ve obviously been reading the New York Times. Their dismissal of Mr. Cotton as racist is what you see on progressive Twitter.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The power to change what we are: Social media as the new ‘Fifth Estate’ By Tim Blake Nelson,

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/541990-the-power-to-change-what-we-are-social-media-as-the-new-fifth-estate

Could Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey ever have imagined that his social media platform would become a U.S. president’s preferred manner of communicating with the American electorate and beyond? It did, and the pattern became a familiar one: President Trump tweeted out to his Twitter “followers” — mostly his political base — but also, compulsorily, to those in the news media. Journalists then projected his 148-character statements to the country and the world. Trump ended his single presidential term banned from the platform, severely hobbled politically in part because of that.

By now, articles on every topic, from politics to sports to culture, embed tweets and links to actual pages. Since to view these one must possess an account, the ubiquity of the Twitter platform — and others like it — only increases. Putatively, at least, one must be on them to be informed. Whether Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or another site, social media now wield power beyond what possibly could have been imagined at their inception.

Some legislators and editorialists wonder whether this makes us vulnerable to the whims of unelected individuals, in the form of the owners of social media companies. If an American president can be muzzled, can’t anyone?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Climate and COVID: The Erosion of Common Intelligence and Common Sense By David Solway *****

Posted By on March 7th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/03/07/climate-and-covid-the-erosion-of-common-intelligence-and-common-sense-n1430627

In a recent article for PJ Media, I discussed the decline in IQ scores across the West over the last decades, a phenomenon confirmed by many psychological studies and clinical reports. In the article I provided links and documentation as well as numerous episodes and examples in support of the survey’s conclusions. But I omitted for reasons of space what strikes me as a cardinal illustration of the contemporary erosion of common intelligence and common sense, namely, the popular belief in “climate change” and so-called renewable energy sources, and, more recently, mass compliance with government public health dogma and politically inspired COVID legislation.

With regard to climate: Untold millions credulously buy into long-exploded pseudo-scientific fables like anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the utility of wind turbines and solar arrays, attesting to the ongoing debility of critical inquiry and independent reasoning, qualities associated with intelligent thinking. The unsightly despoiling of the environment, the distribution of these monstrosities in fields and pastures across the national landscape, and the hecatombs of bird and insect species caused by these lookalike Imperial Walkers should give us pause.  

Moreover, the toxic nature of industrial wind, involving hazards like ILFN (Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise), noxious REEs (rare earth elements), and the installation of Permanent Magnets whose components produce prodigious amounts of radioactive waste, cause serious health impacts and deformities. This has become a matter of criminal import, something people should be aware of. The data has been available for years. In this connection, a legal challenge has been launched in France against the government under articles of the Penal Code. 

The notorious Texas freeze, to take a recent instance, should have provided abundant evidence that wind and solar are not only weather-dependent and inadequate suppliers of electric power but potentially disastrous; yet many continue to believe that the answer to such emergencies is even more green technology. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, who introduced the Green New Deal in Congress, claims that the infrastructure failures in Texas “are quite literally what happens when you don’t pursue a Green New Deal.” The degree of stupefaction here is legendary. Renewables are not only ill-suited for, but wholly contra-indicated to serving as primary energy sources for industrial societies.

Climate delirium has been with us for a generation and more and has been discussed and analyzed in innumerable articles and books. The authentic literature on the subject has long been discoverable by any sentient person. What is comparatively new on the psychogenic scene is Covid Derangement Syndrome.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Outrage: Biden’s Border Patrol Is Not COVID Testing Immigrants Swarming and Overwhelming the Border By Victoria Taft

Posted By on March 7th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/03/07/outrage-bidens-border-patrol-is-not-covid-testing-immigrants-swarming-and-overwhelming-the-border-n1430599

When Joe Biden signaled his open borders plan, it triggered human traffickers south of the border to start teeing up swarms of people to storm the U.S. border and flood the already COVID pandemic-slammed U.S. labor market. But now we learn that the Biden administration has not been COVID testing the illegal immigrants swarming the border before they’re released into the interior of the US.

Joe Biden knew this before he opened the borders, gobsmackingly asserted that the US “didn’t have a COVID vaccine,” and claimed the pandemic was so severe he had to spend nearly $2 trillion to fight it.

The Washington Examiner reports that the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security are not COVID testing the illegal aliens and their children. Why? Even if they did test positive, “they cannot return children and some families.” Adults can be deported, but not people with children.

The Border Patrol is not allowed to quarantine illegal aliens with the virus. The Examiner reports that they’re urged to turn them over to “local health systems.”