I WROTE ABOUT THIS PHENOMENON IN ARMY OF DAVIDS: Meet The Teen Who Pays For College With A Jewelry Business. “LeiLei Secor, a rising sophomore at the University of Virginia, is her own boss at her Etsy and online shop, Designed by Lei. Secor doesn’t simply sell the jewelry, she makes it herself with tools and supplies that are stashed under her dorm room bed and desk. Oh, and to top that off, she was the winner of the 2013 National Federation of Independent Business Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Now that’s what we call an extracurricular.”
Archive for 2015
July 26, 2015
INSTEAD, WE GOT OSHA, EPA, AND INCREASED WELFARE BENEFITS: What Didn’t Happen After Men Walked on the Moon.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Back To School and Off To College sales.
SALENA ZITO: Domestic terror, fear & voters’ anger.
What if fear is the origin of all the anger that voters feel toward Washington? Not just fear over economic stability in our homes and communities, but fear for our personal safety, our nation’s security? When was the last time that felt stable?
Numerous terror attacks have occurred in Main Street America since 2009. In June of that year, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot at a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting office, killing one soldier and wounding another.
Five months later, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan shouted “Allahu-akbar!” (“God is great!”) as he opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30.
The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, carried out by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, took four lives.
In 2014, an aspiring jihadist beheaded an Oklahoma woman, and Ali Muhammad Brown went on a killing spree in two states in the name of his faith.
As each awful event occurred, the Obama administration refused to state the obvious — that each was an act of terrorism based on a fundamentalist version of Islam; it even insisted that the Fort Hood massacre was “workplace violence.”
In January of this year, during his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that the greatest threat to America’s future was neither terrorism nor nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran. “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” he said.
Just once, we’d love a little honesty and a lot less political division from the White House, so that guys like Larry Fitzpatrick know that Obama has the backs of our military — and so they don’t feel compelled to arm themselves and protect a military recruitment center.
Well, the security situation — like the economic situation — is a constant reminder to ordinary Americans that the folks in charge don’t really care what happens to them. And yeah, that makes people upset.
ARTIFICIAL FRIENDS WITH LIMITED BENEFITS: Several companies are developing appealing robot companions, but they aren’t yet capable of helping out around the house.
THIS SEEMS FAKE, BUT IT’S REAL: At Anti-Bullying Conference, Iowa Middle Schoolers Learn About Lesbian Strap-On Anal Sex, Fake Testicles.
In rural, small-town Iowa, a group of parents and community leaders is seeking to prevent students from the local taxpayer-funded middle school and high school from attending future versions of an anti–bullying conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens.
The last one — in April — left many of the denizens of Humboldt, Iowa up in arms, reports Des Moines NBC affiliate WHO-TV.
Iowa Safe Schools, an activist group out of Des Moines, hosted the conference.
It was quite something.
Among the nearly two dozen speakers, “only two” addressed bullying, one attendee estimated, according to EAGnews.org.
The rest of the sessions involved issues such as “how to pleasure their gay partners.”
Middle school girls from Humboldt (pop.: 4,690) had the opportunity to learn “how to sew fake testicles into their underwear in order to pass themselves off as boys.”
One speaker wore a dress made out of condoms to which could be “used as needed.” . . .
Nate Monson, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, said parents who worry about middle school kids hearing about anal sex with strap-ons and analingus are “disgusting.”
“It’s incredibly frustrating that adults are being the problem and being the bully,” Monson told the Des Moines NBC affiliate. “
If I were a parent in this district, I would not stop until heads rolled. I looked up Iowa Safe Schools, the organization that sponsored this “event,” and discovered that, despite a moniker suggesting that it’s aimed at reducing bullying, it’s actually a LGBT promotion organization, with its mission statement as follows:
The mission of Iowa Safe Schools is to: a) improve school climate in order to increase the personal safety, mental health, and student learning of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied (LGBTA) and all other students; b) increase awareness and understanding among current and future educators, school administrators, and key community agents of inequities regarding the safety of LGBTA students and their family member(s) in schools and communities throughout Iowa. Iowa Safe Schools also seeks to empower these key actors with effective, research-based tools and strategies to combat intolerance and safety inequities.
No one wants LGBT–or any other kids–to be bullied at school. But there is a huge difference between promoting LGBT tolerance and promoting LGBT sex, and the event in Humboldt crossed the line. And the line-crossing doesn’t seem to be limited to the Humboldt event. Back in April, at an event in Des Moines called “The Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth”–also sponsored by Iowa Safe Schools–students were similarly shocked to find that an event billed as “anti-bullying” turned out to be LGBT promotion:
What one student thought was going to be a day to support anti-bullying at the Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth, turned out to be much more graphic.
A metro high school student who attended the conference says she was overwhelmed by a sexually explicit question and answer forum at one of the workshops. She was so shocked that she recorded a portion of the Q&A, where someone anonymously asked if anal sex was painful.
The conference hosted by Iowa Safe Schools. Executive Director Nate Monson defends the open forum and says it’s the only chance many LGBTQ teens have to get answers.
Since when does a teen’s desire to “get answers” mean that all fellow students must hear a graphic answer, down to specifics about sexual toys and positions? When did sexual education turn into sexual proselytizing?
Iowa Safe Schools and other similar LGBT “safe schools” efforts aren’t about preventing bullying or even sexual education, but about promotion of LGBT sex. Yes, students need to learn the specifics about body parts, how they work, and how babies are made. Such education became integral, after all, to help prevent unwanted pregnancies. But unwanted pregnancy is not possible with LGBT sex. So teaching about specific LGBT sexual techniques and practices isn’t sexual education, it’s sexual promotion. And many parents are, understandably, not comfortable with the public school system being used for such promotion. Those parents who are comfortable with teaching sexual promotion–learning the means of sexual pleasure–are of course free to discuss these matters with their children.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad (a Republican) and the Iowa legislature should immediately ban all “safe school” efforts sponsored by Iowa Safe Schools.
POPULAR MECHANICS: The 7 Best Sites to Buy and Sell Your Car Online.
ROBOTIC COOKS and your own preferred recipes.
DEMOCRATS’ BLUE COLLAR BLUES: Nolan Finley at Detroit News opines, “Democrats’ Handout Strategy is Failing.”
Blue collar white voters believe the Republican Party is better equipped to make the economic system more fair by an overwhelming margin, according to a new Washington Post poll.
In the survey of non-college educated whites, 50 percent had more faith in GOP policies, while 29 percent favored the Democratic strategy.
These are among the workers hit hardest by the economic shifts of the past quarter century, and in particular by the failed polices of the Obama administration.
They’ve seen good paying jobs in Appalachian coal mines become casualties of the president’s war on coal. They’ve lost solid, middle class work on the oil rigs of the Gulf to a president more obsessed with tomorrow’s temperatures than today’s families. And they’ve bid goodbye to Midwestern factory jobs while the president saddles employers with oppressive taxes and regulations. . . .
Mitt Romney, the failed GOP standard bearer in 2012, bemoaned the prospects for selling a message of smaller government when 47 percent of the population is receiving some form of government assistance.
But many of these blue collar whites are among the 47 percenters. They may be getting Obamacare subsidies, or unemployment benefits, or even food stamps.
And that’s not what they want. They’re looking for the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families. They want jobs, not another Big Government giveaway designed to replace the paychecks Democratic policies have killed.
They’ve lost faith — if they ever had any — in the government’s ability to solve their problems. And who can blame them?
All true. Handouts never create opportunity, only dependency. Blue collar workers aren’t hardwired to want handouts; it demeans their humanity and self-sufficiency. And I should add that blue collar workers comprise 61% of the U.S. working population.
I would also add that Democrats’ incessant demeaning of blue collar workers because of their race (predominantly white), religion, gender (predominantly male), or values isn’t helping a whole lot, either. If you keep suggesting that white, male, Christians who believe in earning a dollar are racist, ignorant, xenophobic, homophobic or otherwise evil, they probably won’t vote for you.
MORE LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Stretchable Conducting Fiber Provides Super Hero Capabilities. “The list of potential applications for a new electrically conducting fiber—artificial muscles, exoskeletons and morphing aircraft—sounds like something out of science fiction or a comic book. With a list like that, it’s got to be a pretty special fiber… and it is. The fiber, made from sheets of carbon nanotubes wrapped around a rubber core, can be stretched to 14 times its original length and actually increase its electrical conductivity while being stretched, without losing any of its resistance. An international research team based at the University of Texas at Dallas initially targeted the new super fiber for artificial muscles and for capacitors whose storage capacity increases tenfold when the fiber is stretched. However, the researchers believe that the material could be used as interconnects in flexible electronics and a host of other related applications.”
SOCIAL JUSTICE BULLIES: THE AUTHORITARIANISM OF MILLENNIAL SOCIAL JUSTICE. A self-confessed liberal engages in some long-overdue reflection on the price society is now paying for political correctness and the self-righteous zeal for “social justice”:
And perhaps it’s my liberal heart speaking, the fact that I grew up in a liberal town, learned US history from a capital-S Socialist, and/or went to one of the most liberal universities in the country, but I view this is a good thing. The idea that societal ills should be remedied such that one group is not given an unfair advantage over another is not, to me, a radical idea.
But millennials are grown up now — and they’re angry. As children, they were told that they could be anything, do anything, and that they were special. As adults, they have formed a unique brand of Identity Politics wherein the groups with which one identifies is paramount. With such a strong narrative that focuses on which group one belongs to, there has been an increasing balkanization of identities. In an attempt to be open-minded toward other groups and to address social justice issues through a lens of intersectionality, clear and distinct lines have been drawn between people. One’s words and actions are inextricable from one’s identities. For example: this is not an article, but an article written by a straight, white, middle-class (etc.) male (and for this reason will be discounted by many on account of how my privilege blinds me — more on this later).
And while that’s well and good (that is — pride in oneself and in one’s identity), the resulting sociopolitical culture among millennials and their slightly older political forerunners is corrosive and destructive to progress in social justice. And herein lies the problem — in attempting to solve pressing and important social issues, millennial social justice advocates are violently sabotaging genuine opportunities for progress by infecting a liberal political narrative with, ironically, hate. . . .
This particular brand of social justice advocacy assaults reason in a particularly frightening way — by outright denying it and utilizing fear-mongering to discourage dissent. There is no gray: only black and white. One must mimic the orthodoxy or be barred forcibly from the chapel and jeered at by the townspeople. To disagree with the millennial social justice orthodoxy is to make a pariah of oneself willingly. Adherence to the narrative is the single litmus test for collegiate (and beyond) social acceptance these days. . . .
To the social justice advocate of our time, conclusions are not contingent on facts; rather, facts are contingent on conclusions. In a global example of confirmation bias, the truth is malleable. The malleable truth is molded around the theoretical viewpoints of social justice. In order to uphold the sanctity of this viewpoint, adherents ostracize dissension. It’s nothing new — it’s a tactic as old as religion itself. Instead of holy texts, though, the millennial social justice advocate bows at the altar of the currently-in-vogue ideological Trinity: Marxism, Feminism, and Post-Colonialism.
Yep. It’s the new religion of the political left, and it insists on rigid orthodoxy. How ironic that a group of post-modern atheists whose entire identity is wrapped around a notion of “social justice” have become the most fervent religious zealots whose primary tactic is bullying and intimidation? There are odd parallels between this western social justice movement and radical jihad of Islam. Is it just something in the water (or the parenting) that is causing the millennial generation to be angry, convinced they are right, and willing to use whatever means necessary to prove it?
And I wonder if we can count on Michelle Obama to help us stop the bullying by these social justice warriors? According to the government’s new website, StopBullying.gov, bullying “includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.” So basically this would include virtually everything SJWs do, plus much of the mainstream media. But it would be interesting for our young people, particularly those in high school and college, to start pushing back against social justice tactics by reframing their behavior as bullying (which it undoubtedly is).
IN THE MAIL: Linda Goodman’s Love Signs: A New Approach to the Human Heart.
Plus, today only at Amazon: “Psych: The Complete Series,” $74.99 (63% off).
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 808.
A quick recap: Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, violated guidelines from the National Archives and her own State Department by using her own private email server for professional correspondence, and then destroying whatever messages she deemed destructible.
At first Clinton claimed that she needed a single non-governmental email account for “convenience,” because she only had one phone. That claim turned out to be provably false. Next, she claimed that it didn’t matter much, because “The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.” The latter half of that claim turned out to be provably false, too. She further insisted that none of the emails contained classified information, a claim that many people with intimate knowledge of such things—such as a former senior State Department official—described with phrases like “hard to imagine.” And her assertion in a CNN interview this month that she went “above and beyond” the email disclosure requirements was—wait for it—false.
In sum, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential frontrunner brazenly violated government transparency policy, made a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act, placed her sensitive communications above the law, and then just lied about it, again and again. Now comes word that, unsurprisingly, two inspectors general are recommending that the Department of Justice open a criminal inquiry into the matter. One of their findings was that the private server, contrary to Clinton’s repeated claims, contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.”*
So how much do Democrats value basic transparency, accountability, and honesty in their presidential candidates? Not bloody much, if you go by the handy polls over at RealClearPolitics.
Party first, party always.
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ASHE SCHOW: Columbia student accused of rape amends lawsuit to include ‘the mattress attends graduation’.
Former Columbia University student Paul Nungesser, who was accused of being a “serial rapist” by mattress-toter Emma Sulkowicz, has amended his lawsuit to include his graduation ceremony, where Sulkowicz carried her mattress across the stage.
The amended complaint, filed on Tuesday, includes a section titled “The mattress attends graduation,” and describes how Columbia allowed Sulkowicz to continue her harassment campaign against him through graduation, where she carried her art project, a mattress, across the stage.
“In the weeks and months before graduation, Paul reached out repeatedly to Columbia administrators, requesting detailed information regarding whether Defendant Columbia would allow Emma to carry the mattress at the graduation ceremony,” the lawsuit says. “Despite repeated requests, Defendant Columbia refused to provide him with any information.”
The night before graduation, university administrators sent an email informing students they could not bring “large objects which could interfere with the proceedings or create discomfort to others in close, crowded spaces shared by thousands of people.” Despite Sulkowicz’s mattress clearly falling into that category, she did in fact carry her mattress during the ceremony.
It’s a hostile environment for male students. And it was intended to be so.
HAS HE SAID ANYTHING SIMILAR ABOUT HILLARY? Trump launches offensive against Walker.
“Wisconsin is in turmoil,” Trump told a boisterous crowd at a rally in Iowa. He pointed to the state’s roads, schools and hospitals, which he said were all “a disaster.”
Walker, who is leading polls in Iowa, remains one of Trump’s biggest rivals in the race.
If Trump worries about people thinking that he’s a Hillary shill, maybe he should dispel those rumors by going after Hillary.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN: Opposing Sharing Economy Is Big Mistake for Democrats.
It’s not just consumers who like the Uber experience and the sharing economy; it’s the drivers, as well.
The New York Daily News recently headlined a column, “Uber Job Beats Working for Yellow Cab,” by one such driver. Rabiul Karim said, “With Uber, it’s like 50 percent stress is gone right there, because you don’t have to look for passengers.” Reducing stress among drivers is a good thing for all of us!
But Karim added another reason he prefers driving for Uber. “I have flexibility with time. Suppose my daughter has a doctor appointment. I can take her without having to pay the day rate for yellow cabs.”
On the other coast last week, in California, I heard that exact same theme while chatting with my Uber driver. His first reaction was to talk about how much he loved the flexibility. With three kids under 7, he appreciated the ability to schedule his work around other family needs. And when he needs a little extra money, he can work a little bit more.
Despite all of this, a lot of Democratic politicians really dislike Uber and the entire sharing economy. The latest to try to stand in the way of progress was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The New York Daily News described the mayor’s anti-Uber plan as “a protectionist crusade for an entrenched industry, absurdly claiming to stand for the thousands of New York passengers and drivers who have flocked to Uber.”
The New York Post noted that the beneficiaries of the mayor’s plan would have been “a yellow-cab monopoly, and fleet owners who’d donated more than $550,000 to de Blasio’s mayoral campaign.”
Like I say, Uber’s problem is insufficient opportunity for graft.