Archive for 2022
July 4, 2022
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Biden’s EPA Trying To Crush The Permian Basin?
NEO: Twitter suspends Jordan Peterson: why?
For Peterson – if I understand him correctly, having watched a fair number of his videos – the important thing here is not what he calls Page. It’s why. We all are being required to acquiesce in what Peterson considers the fiction that [Ellen/Elliot] Page is a man and always was. Certainly the latter – that Page was born a man and has always been a man – is something manifestly untrue except in woke circles and I suppose in Page’s mind. But everyone is now required to agree with the narrative, and Peterson thinks there’s a big cost in agreeing.
There is a cost, indeed.
When I was in graduate school in the 1990s I noticed this new (to me, anyway) tendency to insist that subjective beliefs should hold sway over objective ones, and that in fact there was no such thing as objective truth. Sorry, I don’t buy that. Maybe there isn’t absolute and definitive truth, but some things are a lot truthier than others and someone like Peterson should be allowed to say so without being thrown off Twitter.
Read the whole thing.
MITT ROMNEY SAYS AMERICA IS IN DENIAL, THEN ADDS: “President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man.”
Denial, indeed.
COMING SOON FROM KURT SCHLICHTER: We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.
GOT WOKE, WENT BROKE: Woke employee who refused to work while ‘mourning’ Roe v. Wade fired.
A woke Universal Music Group worker claims he was fired for “speaking up” about abortion rights — after he admitted he refused to work because he was in “mourning” over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Michael Lopez, a production coordinator at Universal Music Enterprises, blasted the company as “anti-gay” for terminating a “queer brown person” during Pride Month for “speaking up in defense of abortion rights,” according to a lengthy note on LinkedIn that went viral last week.
“Last Friday, like countless other folks, I was devastated by the news of the supreme court’s [sic] attack on abortion rights,” Lopez wrote.
“Paired with the flood of anti-queer and anti-trans legislation, it’s been hard to process how company’s [sic] expect us to be productive while our rights are being stripped away.”
Lopez then went on to explain that each Friday “one of my tasks was to process reports for upcoming releases” and then to email his work to 275 people.
But instead of doing the usual process reports, he wrote an email that read: “I didn’t do them today.”
“I’m in mourning due to the attack on people with uteruses in the US. Federally guaranteed access to abortion is gone,” the email continued.
* * * * * * * *
Lopez’s note on LinkedIn went viral, generating more than 3,200 reactions, some 250 comments and more than 60 shares.
While some commenters were supportive, others were less sympathetic.
One LinkedIn user called Lopez “entitled, lazy, and obviously ignorant,” writing: “Yeah this is pretty pathetic…You a grown man pretending to have ‘grief’ so unbelievably unbearable over something that will never affect you in any way that you can’t perform a simple task at work.”
Another LinkedIn commenter wrote: “If you just sent the report like they asked every Friday… would you have lost your job? Most likely no.”
The commenter added: “You didn’t lose your job based on your color or sexual orientation so please stop thinking that. Your actions are childish cause for termination.”
It seems like the tide has turned a bit in terms of corporations pushing back against ultra-woke crybully employees and reminding them that businesses aren’t college campuses: Netflix ‘Culture Memo’ Tells Woke Employees That ‘Netflix May Not Be the Best Place for You.’
GROOMERS GOTTA GROOM: Biden vows to stop DeSantis’ anti-grooming bill.
HE’S RISIBLE WHEN HE’S NOT PATHETIC: Chinese state media trolls Biden over demand that gas stations lower prices.
WELL, POLITICO: Politico Hit Piece on Clarence Thomas Goes Horribly Wrong.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Instant PotPro 10-in-1 Pressure Cooker. #CommissionEarned
IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE SINCE YOU WERE IN SIXTH GRADE, WHY NOT READ IT TODAY?: Today’s a holiday for many of you. It’s a short document. And there’s no time like the present.
Here’s my favorite clause in Jefferson’s litany of offenses by the king: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” I love that word “swarms.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Happy Independence Day to Freedom Loving Americans! “If you live long enough, you will eventually see everything. I remember when Democrats used to get angry when right-wing nutjobs like me would accuse them of hating this great country.”
EVERYBODY KNOWS IT’S A SHAM: Text Messages Reveal What Cassidy Hutchinson Really Thought Of The January 6th Committee.
WHY, IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH DEMOCRATS LIKE HIGH GAS PRICES: Despite Record Gas Prices, Biden Rejects New Drilling in Atlantic and Pacific.
YES. We’re Tikking a big risk — TikTok imperils US business. It’s Chinese government spyware.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS DESIGNED TO INDOCTRINATE: Here’s a book that will teach your children that (1) prior to the arrival of Columbus, America was a deliriously happy paradise; (2) Columbus was an ugly ogre, from a continent of ugly ogres, who destroyed the paradise; (3) things have been terrible ever since; but (4) the ugly ogres who have been in charge for centuries will soon get their comeuppance. It’s called Christopher the Ogre Cologre, It’s Over.
If you think that’s just a tad one-sided, you might want to pay attention to what your children are reading. The book seems to be getting more publicity than I would have predicted.
Here’s the sequel: Rebeldita the Fearless in Ogreland.
CHANGE (IT BACK): If It Can Happen in San Francisco, It Can Happen Anywhere.
The San Francisco School Board recently returned the admissions policy at Lowell, the city’s most prestigious public high school, to the merit-based system that it had used for more than a century. Thus ended a short-lived lottery introduced in the name of racial equity. The board also abandoned a campaign to erase “The Life of Washington,” a WPA-era mural at George Washington High School by the artist Victor Arnautoff. Arnautoff was a Communist, and his mural, which depicts slaves picking cotton at Mount Vernon, was intentionally subversive. But an earlier incarnation of the board had voted first to destroy it, then to cover it up, saying that removing it from view was a form of “reparations.” The board member Alison Collins had said, “This mural is not historic. It is a relic.”
These two decisions, both 4–3 votes, represent a double rejection by the current board of the hypersensitive poses adopted by its predecessor. When you factor in the 2021 collapse of the infamous school-renaming campaign, it’s a trifecta. Our deep-blue city seems to have grown weary of the more radical elements of the new racial-justice movement. And although this story is specific to San Francisco, if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.
Well, good.
AS USUAL, AMERICANS ARE BETTER THAN OUR LEADERS. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY:
The Amtrak Southwest Chief runs through town regularly. On summer afternoons you can see the Amtrak locomotive in the distance, racing across the prairie like a polished chromium bullet. But the train never stops here. It just keeps moving.
Until last week.
It was a Monday that will live in infamy. The Southwest Chief made an unexpected stop near Mendon, of all places.
The Chief was traveling 87 mph, bound for Chicago. There were more people aboard than there are living within Mendon’s city limits.
Up ahead a dump truck was stalled on the tracks. The truck was obstructing the crossing of County Road 113. This was not a small truck. This was a vehicle about the size of a Sonic Drive-In.
The train never slowed.
The sound of the collision could be heard from as far away as Westville. It was the noise of two General Electric diesel locomotives and seven Superliner cars plowing into a mass of Dearborn steel. The train was derailed. . . .
The story made national headlines, of course. Reporters from national newspapers visited. They photographed, videoed and wrote. Cable news anchors wore frowny faces and mentioned the wreck, just before cutting to commercials urging elderly viewers to reverse mortgage their livers.
But somehow, the bigger story about what happened in Mendon was lost. Somehow, you didn’t hear about Mendon’s magnificent people.
Sure, you heard about the wreck itself; the 150 injured, and the four fatalities. But you didn’t hear about how the residents of Mendon—nearly every single resident—rushed to the scene of the accident.
Throngs of ordinary townspeople arrived before first responders even knew about the crash. There were volunteers crawling out of the wallpaper.
“It was a wonderful problem to have,” said school district superintendent, Eric Hoyt, “but we probably had too many volunteers show up.”
People came from all over Chariton County, riding beat-up Silverados, ATVs, or arriving on foot. They came from Sumner, Marceline, Cunningham, Brookfield and Indian Grove.
Two Boy Scout troops dutifully helped injured victims from the wreckage. Local high-schoolers were fashioning bandages out of bandannas. Old women recited the Lord’s Prayer alongside strangers in blood-stained clothes.
There were farmers, off-duty nurses, truck drivers, soccer moms, Little League coaches and grade-schoolers. They were doling out food, first aid, bottled water and, most importantly, phone chargers.
Victims were taken to local homes, fed, bathed and bandaged. Weeping passengers were embraced by rural preachers. Passengers using wheelchairs were lifted from the rubble by young men in ropers and camouflage caps.
Local schoolbus drivers transported the wounded to hospitals. Northwestern High School staff members triaged victims in the gymnasium and fed people in the cafeteria.
One resident said that Mendon didn’t feel like a 171-person town anymore. “It was like 671 people came together.”
And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual. At least not within the national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town.
Although we rarely hear about such acts of compassion and lovingkindness within our society, believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill. Sadly, ordinary American journalists aren’t interested in being astounded by such things.
I had a similar experience. “One of the things we’re constantly told is that basic decency is gone in America. But once you’re outside of the media/political bubble, most people seem to be awfully decent, and if anything, they seem to behave better when the going gets tough. That’s worth remembering as many media outlets keep telling us how awful we are and how much we hate each other.”