Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
September 4, 2024
MY SISTER JUST BOUGHT A USED ARMADA. IT’S VERY LARGE. Does the New 2025 Nissan Armada Make the Infiniti QX80 Irrelevant?
Well, here’s one selling point: “But the Armada’s interior has one irrefutable advantage. Instead of using a touchscreen for climate and vehicle settings as in the Infiniti, the Nissan uses straightforward, foolproof physical switches to change temperature, fan speed, or drive mode—too uncommon in new cars these days.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Global stocks tumble after Wall Street drops on worries about the economy.
EXCEPT MACHETES IN THE HANDS OF IMMIGRANT MUSLIM TERRORISTS, IT WOULD BE RACIST TO GO AFTER THOSE: Knives Out: After Virtually Outlawing Guns, U.K. Officials Now Coming After Knives.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do aphrodisiacs work? What the science says.
SHELDON COOPER HARDEST HIT: String Theory Has Failed for 40 Years.
AS HIS BRAIN DAMAGE RECEDES, HE GROWS STEADILY MORE SENSIBLE Not sure what’s going on with the other Democrats. . . .
Good on @SenFettermanPA https://t.co/gGE7oH61EQ
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) September 4, 2024
HE’S RUINED HIS LAST THANKSGIVING WITH WOKE POLITICS, I GUESS:
🚨 BREAKING: The *entire* family of Kamala Harris running mate Tim Walz just endorsed TRUMP. This is the greatest troll of the 2024 election 🤣 pic.twitter.com/579a7iPLBp
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 4, 2024
I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: Yale divinity students forced to read from witch’s ‘spell’ at orientation.
One of these small group periods was the first activity of orientation. Participating as an incoming student in one of these circles, I saw how the discussion opened with a set of “Restorative Circle Rules.” These rules boiled down to a warning to be open minded: all viewpoints were expected to be heard, that you only have to take what you want from the circle and participate as wanted – at least nominally.
After this show of inclusion, we as students were led to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from Adrienne Brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell.”
Brown (pictured) has been described by Meeting of Minds as a “mixed-race Black queer American writer, community organizer, facilitator, witch and- may I say- goddess.”
Brown herself ascribes to witchcraft, and it informs her public work. Her website describes her as someone who “grows healing ideas in public” through “her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot” and “her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals.”
This context of Brown, her work, and her particular spiritual inclinations was not given to students before participating in the reading. As such, the group reading of the spell took on an undeniable coven-like feeling, with students unable to fully consent to the pseudo-ritual knowingly, despite the Circle Rules.
A second-year student, who requested to remain anonymous, expressed to me a deep concern over this act by the orientation staff. The student called the provided spell “bizarre,” and “gross,” especially for students to not be told of the author or intentions behind the spell before being led to participate.
Consent is the most important thing in the world, except when it’s not.
The University of Minnesota Board of Regents rejected a proposal to divest from companies that have connections to Israel after demands by campus anti-Israel groups.
The decision was announced on Tuesday following a Board of Regents meeting. In a press release, the university announced that a “position of neutrality” will be applied to investments in its Consolidated Endowment Fund.
”After careful consideration of all this input, we believe today’s action honors our fiduciary duty and the long-term needs of the University,” said UMN’s Board of Regents Chair Janie Mayeron. . . .
Anti-Israel students at the university held a news conference after the Board of Regents announced its decision not to divest from companies connected to Israel, saying that they would continue to protest in support of their cause, according to CBS News.
“[We’ll] continue to do a lot of the same disruptive actions that we had over the past year,” said UMN student Faye Hodges. “And I think that, again, we don’t want to make the regents’ lives comfortable and our university functioning as usual while our tuition dollars are being spent on something that over 70% of the student body voted against.”
Campus Reform reported in July about UMN Interim President Jeff Ettinger’s admission that he signed a document that contained a reference to “Hamas’ foundational mission to exterminate Jews in Israel.”
“That was a mistake by our administration. The way things transpired that day, we ended up finalizing that document at 5 a.m.,” Ettinger explained at the time. “Those topics were characterized by the students as their demands. We looked at them as topics, but clearly, I didn’t even know what that word meant.”
If the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy set out to destroy the position of higher education in American society, it couldn’t do a better job than the left is doing on its own.
BYRON YORK: What Kamala Harris means by ‘freedom.’ “A shorter version of that might be that ‘freedom’ tested well.”
It’s what people want, not what she plans to deliver.
WELL, BUT THE DOJ HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY CORRUPTED: Here’s Where FBI Officials Realized What Could Be the DOJ’s Goal in Raiding Mar-a-Lago.
What would the government do about the classified materials still stored at Mar-a-Lago? It’s a meeting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice didn’t want to have, but they were mulling options over how to obtain the rest of the files. NBC News penned a lengthy article about this heated meeting, where the FBI was concerned about the optics of raiding a former president’s home while top DOJ officials couldn’t care less. The bureau was also concerned about the political donations made by Jay Bratt, a top DOJ prosecutor, who supposedly was apolitical to his core, a consummate professional who harbored no anti-Trump bias: He just donated to the political rival party. Bratt wasn’t giving money like the late Sheldon Adelson, but it’s the principle of the matter—the officials in this room, at this rank, shouldn’t be making such contributions.
Steven D’Antuono, now retired, was then chief of the Washington bureau office for the FBI, and he wanted a conciliatory and less-than-hostile approach to repossessing the files at Mar-a-Lago. The funny part about this meeting was that the main narrative used by the DOJ to storm Trump’s Florida residence was over national security concerns. The house was guarded by the Secret Service. The files were in a secure location.
In D’Antuono’s mind, there was no need to execute a storm-the-Bastille-like operation. Everyone at this meeting knew their careers were on the line, along with the severe political ramifications if things went sideways. It’s also where the FBI stumbled upon the DOJ’s main aim against the former president regarding the files, the raid, and how to catalog the legal documentation for a judge to sign off on the search. Trump would need to be accused of committing a crime, one that could bar him from political office.
Whenever they tell you somebody’s an apolitical straight-shooter, an institutionalist, they always turn out to be the worst of political hacks. See, e.g., Merrick Garland.
Related: China Paid Pro-CCP Agitators To Clash With Dissenters During Xi’s Visit to San Francisco: Report.
This wouldn’t happen if the United States had a functioning government.
But not all is gloomy: Flagstock 2024: UNC Frat Bros Get the Rager They Deserve: Journalists try, fail to ruin fun party.
DON SURBER: Making It Too Big To Rig. “This time around, Democrats cannot bogeyman Trump because we already know how he did as president. More celebrities are coming out of the closet for Trump. A few have even flipped sides. . . . The communists in Red China approved Walz to visit 30 times. They don’t do that for any patriotic American. His reaction to Tiananmen Square was to go to Red China and work at one of its schools for one year. Finally, Trump has the party behind him. Lara Trump’s running the RNC. I doubt she will joyride in limos. Also, Scott Pressler is signing up voters in Pennsylvania and inspiring others to follow his lead. A new generation is going to Make America Great Again. So let the campaign begin. The third time is the charm.”
OF COURSE NOT, THEY’RE ON THE SAME SIDE: Will Harris-Biden act to counter Iranian agents behind anti-Israel campus protests?
As colleges begin the new school year, “pro-Palestine” protesters need to start asking who’s really calling the shots: It may be agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Post’s Isabel Vincent reported exclusively Friday that Iran is funding anti-Israel, pro-Hamas groups and campus protests via a network of activist groups whose names bear no sign of Tehran’s ties.
For instance, members of the Texas-based Rise Against Oppression (which downplays its links to Iran) “reclaimed” a student center at Houston University in April.
Many pro-Palestinian groups also get funding (directly, or via the radical Tides Foundation) from the Maximum Difference Foundation, the US family charity of an extended clan whose members back in Iran are tight with the family of Iran’s former President Akbar Rafsanjani and have worked with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
“Following the October 7th attacks … Tehran has poured money and logistical support into anti-Israel and pro-terror rallies, encampments and civil disorder,” said Sam Westrop, director of Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch project.
Westrop added that the Iranian regime “appears to operate mosques, activist and student groups that are deeply involved in pro-terror demonstrations, alongside Beijing-backed and Hamas-aligned groups.”
Hey, it’s not like they’re criticizing school boards.
September 3, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Don’t miss it!
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS LOOKING LIKE A SUBSIDIARY OF THE CCP: Ex-Hochul and Cuomo aide enjoyed $4M mansion, salted ducks, ballet performances and other luxury gifts from double life as Chinese agent: feds.
YES:
The last few days have seen an almost symphonic surge of attacks on our most fundamental rights, by officials, newspapers, politicians, celebrities, & academics. It's not rhetoric anymore, it's an organized massing of institutional forces prior to big moves which seem imminent https://t.co/oCHNPtBDiq
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) September 1, 2024
Related: Jackbooted Paste Eaters. “The current unifying theme among a set of people who regard themselves as progressive, liberal, mainstream, respectable, and so on, is a spectacular punishment fetish. Arrest them arrest them arrest them arrest them, they helpfully explain about people who disagree with them about anything, ever. See, for an easy example of the discipline fetish, this quite popular reader-generated “diary” post from a few days ago at Daily Kos, arguing that Tulsi Gabbard’s ‘Quiet Skies’ designation is a proper use of the state security apparatus against a domestic enemy.”
The question is why is this being ginned up now. One obvious guess is in preparation for stealing the election, and keeping the aftermath under control.
But it’s not just happening here:
Nearly every paragraph of this Washington Post thing contains extremely telling language, like the description of the brave judge Alexandre de Moraes fighting for democracy in Brazil by repressing platforms that tolerate the evil of dangerously unmediated speech, or the Eastern Bloc-flavored description of social media figures like Elon Musk as “impudent.” Note that, while social media leaders are being “brought to heel,” they’re also being “reined in.”
Let’s be honest, the people running the world are not only corrupt, but spectacularly incompetent. For their lousy performance alone they should be tarred and feathered; for their “impudence” in attempting dictatorship they deserve worse. But it really seems that over the past few years the ruling class of the West has been preparing for war against its owns citizenry. Again: Why?
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Evolution Space tests rocket on Spaceport Company sea-based platform.
ANOTHER REASON WHY THEY HATE HIM:
I can’t wait. There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go. https://t.co/BOh3MIv4sJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 3, 2024
What he sees as waste and needless regulation, they see as vital sources of graft and leverage.