WELL, IT’S A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT: Men say ‘meh’ to college. “Thirty-nine percent of male high school graduates are enrolled in college now, down from 47 percent in 2011, Fry reports. Forty-eight percent of female high school graduates are enrolled in college, down from 48 percent. The gender gap in college-going is widest for white high school graduates, Pew reports.”
The hate has consequences.
THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: The rise of “Multiracial Whiteness.”
And it’s the allegedly smart people — academics, mostly, and some journalists and pundits — who are making them crazy.
NOT SO CHILL: Is Netflix About to Get the ‘Bud Light Treatment’? “A new animated children’s show on the popular streaming platform, called ‘CoComelon Lane,’ features a young boy with two dads. Of course, showing a gay couple on a show targeting kids between the ages of two to six years old wasn’t enough; the show also makes no attempt to hide its transgender grooming efforts.”
THE WAY THINGS WORK IN THE CRAZY YEARS: “Democrats out to save democracy long for a solution to Donald Trump that is anything other than defeating him democratically. The judiciary is supposed to swoop in and rescue Democrats from the task of winning the votes of the people.”
Well, they’re still in the process of dissolving the people and forming another.
SORRY, JOE:
You gotta feel for the Big Guy. He tried buying them off and got Oct 7. Then he tried holding back Israel in Gaza and got the Red Sea crisis. Maybe he'll go back to trying to buy them off again. He's already got two wars. He doesn't need a third.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) December 22, 2023
OPEN THREAD: Party on, dudes and dudettes.
AMERICAN REFUGEES: Americans Vote Red with Their Feet. “Just-released census data show that migration from blue to red continues.”
That, by the way, is the title of Roger Simon’s book, which will be out in a couple of weeks: American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Migration from Blue to Red States. I ran into a friend at the shooting range the other day: He shooting with a couple of recent (“very conservative” in his words) arrivals from California. If he says they are, they are. And my personal experience is that the folks moving here from elsewhere tend to lean right. This is in contrast to the past, because this migration is as much about politics as about economics, though obviously there’s a lot of overlap.
Anyway, I got an advance copy of Roger’s book a while back, and I highly recommend it.
I REMEMBER WHEN OFF-LABEL USE OF MEDICATIONS WAS PRACTICALLY A FELONY: Major Study Finds HIV Drugs Could Lower Risk of Multiple Sclerosis by Up to 72%.
NOBEL LAUREATE VERNON SMITH: Fire Claudine Gay:
I see Gay as getting her post at Harvard because she was a diversity, equity and inclusion candidate, not on the basis of strong academic qualifications. There are plenty of accomplished blacks who need no such ‘help.’ Harvard is reaping the negative consequences. I am not much concerned about Gay’s success in exercising her power as I don’t think she has much. She is a discredit to Harvard, and that is being revealed. See: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-harvard-cant-fire-claudine-gay-dei-hiring-lack-of-merit-b1d480ec.
She’s a diversity hire, the rules don’t apply.
Related: 2022 Nobel Laureate Philip Dybvig:
Claudine Gay has power now and she is the oppressor of any group not favored by her and other people in power. This is a common pattern in governments heading for totalitarianism. First, say you represent the oppressed. Then you get power and oppress non-favored groups. This leaves you in a morally indefensible position that could not survive given free speech, so you do what you can to destroy anyone (“counterrevolutionaries”) who disagrees with your narrative.
Maybe this isn’t over, though in some ways the best outcome is for her to remain as a lasting discredit to Harvard.
ALL OF A SUDDEN, I’VE BEEN THINKING about the New Madrid fault lately. Not sure why, but I hope it’s still asleep, and stays that way.
TWO BIDEN ADMINISTRATIONS IN ONE!
Shot: White House takes action to force government workers to travel via electric vehicle, rail. ‘These operational changes will accelerate the clean transportation transformation,’ White House says.
—Fox News, December 15th.
Chaser: Biden Is Secretly Paying Delta Airline to Airlift His Army of Illegals All Over the American Interior. “Delta won’t confirm it. But they’re also not denying it, despite this story trending on X.”
—Ace of Spades, today.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I remember when the Supreme Court rewrote the law of libel to protect the New York Times from politically-motivated libel suits. Over $500,000.
SOLID ADVICE: Stop Driving With Your Dogs in Your Lap.
IMPROVE TEXT NECK: CAYATCH Back Brace Posture Corrector for Men & Women. #CommissionEarned
EXTREME LONG RANGE SHOOTING: First Look: Barrett MRADELR Rifle.
LYNDON JOHNSON SMILES: Washington Post: Ukraine War Is No Longer Newsworthy.
So, as the Washington Post implicitly admits in changing its priorities, the Ukraine war will not end but fade away.
It would be better to push for a negotiated solution. Russia has committed horrible crimes by transporting Ukrainian citizens into its territory. We should help Ukraine get its citizens back.
Don’t hold your breath, though–Biden left American citizens behind in Afghanistan, so I suspect that he is even less concerned about helping Ukraine end the war gracefully.
Ukraine has never been as strategically important as Taiwan; it simply was more urgent. Let’s hope our military folks kept their eye on the real prize. Losing Taiwan would actually hurt the West in a way that losing Biden’s bankers never would have.
Democracy dies in ignoring the billions of taxpayer funds that Biden’s handlers are transferring to Ukraine (and related players) during an election year.
NEVER ATTEMPT TO TEACH A PIG TO SING: Speaker Johnson Dares Biden to Finally Do Something About the Border.
Jain told Reuters part of his electric vehicle’s suspension broke when he was driving with his family the day after he’d received delivery of the Model Y. He said the car had 115 miles on its odometer when the suspension issue caused portions of the vehicle to come in contact with the road and Jain to lose steering capabilities.
The Reuters investigation — which cited interviews with more than 20 customers and 9 Tesla workers, as well as thousands of internal documents — found that Jain was one of thousands of Tesla owners to face issues with the company’s suspension or steering over the past six years. The publication reported that while Tesla had publicly denied some of the issues and attempted to put the onus on owners, the automaker was more aware of the issues than it had indicated publicly.
Tesla, which disbanded its press department years ago, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elon Musk has admitted in the past that the carmaker has faced some quality issues, especially during production ramps.
“When you go faster, you just discover these things,” he told the auto expert Sandy Munro in 2021. “If we knew them in advance, we’d fix them in advance.”
Jain told Reuters that his family went from “over the moon” to “absolutely petrified” when the car they had paid about $55,000 to buy broke down on the road.
Reuters reported that after Jain took the vehicle into a Tesla service center, a worker initially told Jain that they’d found “no evidence of an external damage” and suggested the electric-car maker would pay for the car to be fixed. But Jain later learned he was expected to pay the $14,000 repair bill after Tesla sent him a letter indicating the issue was the result of “prior” damage, the publication reported.
The former Tesla owner told Reuters he ended up paying an insurance deductible of about $1,250 and faced a higher insurance premium going forward. The suspension issue took three months for Tesla to fix, and Jain resold the vehicle at a loss of about $10,000, Reuters reported.
Scaling up from a boutique manufacturer to a mass manufacturer was never going to be easy, but Tesla should be more accommodating of its customers suffering from Tesla’s growing pains.
CHICKS DIG BAD BOYS: This east LA girl went on a date with a masculine guy and “felt the feminism leaving” her body. “Homegirl reverted back to factory settings in the presence of masculinity. 6 years of ‘women and gender studies’ down the drain.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: U.S. plans return to moon with an international astronaut by 2030.
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