YOU HAVE TO WATCH THESE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATORS LIKE A HAWK: Fortunately, that’s what Californians For Equal Rights Foundation has been doing. In 2020, we defeated the legislature’s effort to repeal the part of the state constitution put there in 1996 by Proposition 209 (“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”) But in 2020, the legislature took up a bill entitled “California’s Upward Mobility Act of 2022,” which would have created quotas based on race and ethnicity for appointments to state boards and commissions. That’s an obvious violation of Proposition 209. It took a while, but we (in cooperation with the Pacific Legal Foundation) got them to back down. That’s a victory!
Now we just need 10,000 more such victories around the country. I’m working on it …
Every election cycle has one. That absurd farce of a race that hardly seems like it can be real. This year the honors go to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its clown car of a Senate campaign. There are 13 million people in the Keystone State and somehow it has come down to Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman to serve in the upper house of the Congress. Where is DJ Jazzy Jeff when you need him?
By dint of a coin toss backstage, I’ll start with Dr. Oz. But where to begin? Oz is the Trump backed candidate, but he’s running like Mitt Romney, with all of the electric Utah energy that entails. There is a kind of Mid-Atlantic Republican who sort of apologizes for it — Oz oozes that. Because of this, there may be no other major GOP candidate in the entire midterm more out of step with the zeitgeist of the party than the mild-mannered, perfectly coiffed Republican.
Oz also has a demographic problem: as a daytime TV star and wellness guru, the group he should naturally appeal to is suburban women. The problem is that suburban women are the only group among whom Republicans have lost support in the past year. That’s not his fault, but it’s like being a fastball hitter who only sees breaking balls: you have to adjust — and Oz hasn’t. Even his viral crudités faux pas seemed directed at Martha Stewart-watchers, not NASCAR dads.
Now on to Fetterman. Let’s set aside the medical stuff for a moment and start from a baseline. He has the vibe of a Trump-endorsed Republican. He embodies the populist energy that Oz just can’t muster. With his gargantuan frame wrapped in a hoodie and bald head, he looks more like a guy you don’t mess with in a bar than a Senate candidate. But behind that facade lies some troubling insights.
UPDATE: John Fetterman: My Top Priority is Ending Life in Prison Without Parole for Convicted Criminals. “Fetterman, as Breitbart News reported, has overseen the release of 13 convicted murderers while heading the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. Likewise, one of Fetterman’s appointees to the board sought to end mandatory life without parole sentences for first and second-degree murderers. In 2021, Fetterman advocated for eliminating the state’s mandatory life without parole sentence for suspects convicted of second-degree murder.”
A presentation obtained by North State Journal shows the new leader of Wake County Public Schools’ Office of Equity Affairs presented on “culturally responsive teaching and social justice in high school mathematics classrooms” at a 2021 Math Summit held at N.C. State University.
Wake County’s new Office of Equity Affairs leader Dr. William Chavis gave the presentation alongside Dr. Kevin Bullock, Executive Director for Equity Affairs for Durham Public Schools. Bullock is also the husband of Ronda Bullock, the founder of Working Towards Anti-Racist Education (WEARE) which is an organization that openly supports the use of Critical Race Theory in K-12 education.
The 25-page presentation is titled “Is Culturally Responsive Teaching even Possible in Mathematics Classes?: Equitable Teaching Practices in Integrating Culture and Social Justice in High School Mathematics Classrooms.”
The slides include discussing, engaging and applying “tenets of culturally responsive teaching through high school mathematics standards and the framework for social justice,” as well as increasing the “understanding of social justice issues and how they play a critical and pivotal role in teaching mathematics.”
Much of the material and themes included in the presentation mirror that of “Equitable Math,” a project aimed at dismantling racism in math instruction that has $1 million in grant backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
One of the core guides followed by Equitable Math includes a framework with approaches for “antiracist math educators” for “dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.” Toxic characteristics in the guide include getting answers right and teaching “real-world math.”
I had no idea that math classes in (presumably) leftist dominated high schools were such a cesspit of racism and white supremacy.
In San Francisco, a city rife with gadget-lovers and plagued by high property crime, the technology would seem to be a game changer. But in reality, situations like my stolen Subaru can often be mired in unforeseen complications.
The response by police has at times been thwarted by legal constraints — for example, an officer generally can’t enter a home just because the Find My iPhone app says your cell is inside — and at other times by what victims say feels like apathy.
Police officials say the reality is that a stolen phone, bike or even car is not as high a priority as a violent crime, so cops don’t always have time to get involved and stay involved.
The result can be maddening for victims armed with case-cracking evidence. And while police say they always advise these victims against following their valuables into potentially dangerous situations, many people told me they felt they had no choice but to go cowboy.
Looking back at Miguel’s texts from May 19, it’s easy to see how the specter of danger immediately enters the equation.
“Be careful!!!!!” “It says the car is on!” “There could be someone in the car.” “MEGAN DO NOT CONFRONT ANYONE.”
I’ll admit, the possibility of vigilantism had crossed my mind. But the SFPD jumped on our case, even though it had no idea I was a member of the media.
It’s tough to picture a Paul Kersey figure emerging in San Fran*, but not impossible — as Glenn has written, “the breakdown of law and order won’t go as [leftists] hope. Ultimately, the police are there to protect criminals from the populace, not the other way around. Get rid of the police, and armed vigilantism is what you’ll get. And what you’ll deserve.”
It’s also likely that private security forces will be on the rise, as this 2013 Reason TV video about such forces working in another leftist hellhole, Detroit spotlights:
And that’s not all: “The document alleged that employees weren’t able to freely use the bathroom or access clean drinking water, among other workplace safety violations. OSHA subsequently conducted an inspection of the facility, and earlier this month California authorities fined the company $25,000 for 13 health and safety violations found at the Santa Rosa production plant. It’s not the first time: Between 2014 and 2019, Amy’s Kitchen has apparently paid penalties upward of $120,000 for violations that include an instance when a worker’s finger was amputated on the manufacturing line.”
“THEY PRETEND TO PAY US, AND WE PRETEND TO WORK:” The rise of “quiet quitting.” It’s “where people who may not necessarily be ready to throw in the towel but feel fed up with the seemingly unrewarding hustle culture of the workforce are no longer going that extra mile to impress their bosses.”
In academia this is known as “retiring in place.” I wonder if it will survive the cutbacks of the coming recession.
BUT THE “DEEP STATE” IS A MYTH: Alex Berenson Sued Twitter Over Being Banned and Was Reinstated. “It’s a long segment so don’t miss the key material near the end, explaining why he settled with Twitter and how he’s moved on to publishing documents showing that the federal government pressured Twitter to ban him. Twitter had accepted him, he says, and White House people said they wanted him banned, and, within 6 weeks, he was banned. That clip should be put alongside this other Joe Rogan clip, from one day earlier. Here’s Mark Zuckerberg talking about the FBI’s pressuring Facebook to moderate content.”
I remember all the people yammering at the time: Private companies can do what they wannnttt!!!!
First, that hasn’t been true for more than my lifetime. Second, when they do it at the behest of the government, it loses its private character.
Far too many alleged libertarians were making that argument. I hope they’ve learned their lessons, but I doubt it.
WHEN WILL WE GET Bacteriophage Therapies? “No, the reasons that bacteriophage therapy isn’t used much are practical ones.”
MIND TRUMPS GEAR, BUT BOTH ARE IMPORTANT: Is Mindset or Gear More Important? I’d rather have Col. Jeff Cooper with an old Police Positive revolver than the entire Uvalde police department with full-auto weapons.
The elite found in the truly poor — neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base — an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes and romance of the far distant underclass.
Second, race became increasingly divorced from class — a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals. For the white bicoastal elite, it became a mark of their progressive bona fides to champion woke racialism that empowered the non-white of their own affluent class, while projecting their own discomfort with and fears of the nonwhite poor onto the middle class as supposed “racists,” despite the latter’s more frequently living among, marrying within, and associating with the “other.”
The net result was more privilege for the elite and wealthy nonwhites, more neglect of the inner-city needy, and more disdain for the supposedly illiberal clingers, dregs, deplorables, chumps, and irredeemables.
The results of these contortions were surreal. The twenty-something who coded a video game that went viral globally became a master of the universe, while the brilliant carpenter or electrical contractor was seen as hopelessly trapped in a world of muscular stasis. Oprah and LeBron James were victims. So were the likes of Ibram X. Kendi, Ilhan Omar, and the Obamas, while the struggling Ohio truck driver, the sergeant on the front line in Afghanistan, and Indiana plant worker became their oppressors. Or so the progressive bicoastal elite instructed us.
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is calling out the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire for tweeting a photo of her crying over her father’s flag-draped coffin with a caption reading: “Happy Holidays.”
The tweet came on Thursday, exactly four years after John McCain died.
“This is the official twitter account of the state of New Hampshire’s Libertarian political party,” Meghan McCain tweeted. “I really fear for the future of the world and how we have come to treat each other – especially on social media. I hope no one ever does anything like this to any of you.”
In another post, she said: “This photo is the most pain I’ve ever been in – physically, emotionally – worse than any moment of childbirth. I thought it was going to kill me. But I didn’t and it made me the woman I am today. I’m made of steel. To anyone who feels like I did here, it passes, I truly promise.”
Not that big a fan of either McCain, but this is in appalling taste; the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire aren’t making many new fans with this tweet.
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