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School District Changes Policy to Notify Parents of Gender Changes

by Owen | 0954, 9 Mar 24 | Culture, Education | 1 Comment

Good for the district for continuing to fight for kids, parent, and families against the groomers. If a child breaks a finger or cusses out another child, the parents should be notified. If the child is having an identity crisis replete with severe mental distress, the parents should be notified.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California school district sued by the state has updated its policy requiring staff to notify parents that a student is using a different pronoun or bathroom designated for another gender and now will only mention that a child has requested a change to their student records.

The Chino Valley Unified School District board approved the updated policy on Thursday as the district fights a lawsuit filed by Democratic state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who called the original policy discriminatory. Bonta’s office did not respond to email requests for comment on the policy changes.

The policy maintains part of the original rule requiring staff to notify parents within three days of their child requesting any changes to their “official or unofficial records,” although it does not specify what that would include. All references to gender identification changes have been removed from the policy.

LGBTQ+ advocates said the new mandate is simply a legal loophole to repackage the same policy that continues to violate the rights of students.

“They’re just broadening the scope so that they don’t obviously single that population out,” said Kristi Hirst, who co-founded the public education advocacy group Our Schools USA. “But the intent behind it, in my opinion, is no different.”

Measles Outbreak Spreading

by Owen | 0759, 8 Mar 24 | Culture, Politics | 14 Comments

Measles is spreading across our nation and the Marxists are blaming the decline in childhood vaccinations.

Although the total number of infections nationwide may seem small, it bears noting that before the COVID pandemic, the annual number of measles infections across the US had been gaining momentum (1,274 cases documented in 2019). This underscores the salutary effect the efforts undertaken to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the first two years of the pandemic had on the spread of the highly contagious measles. In 2020, only 13 individuals developed measles across eight jurisdictions. In 2021, there were 49 measles infections and in 2022 a total of 121 measles cases, in large part due to a community outbreak in central Ohio, with 85 locally acquired measles cases. And in 2023, there were 58 across 20 jurisdictions. At the current pace, 2024 may be the largest measles outbreak experienced in the US during the COVID pandemic.

The current trends show the dangers posed by the government’s abdication of the responsibility to maintain an actively engaged public health infrastructure. This has led to the promotion of anti-scientific misinformation campaigns by reactionary and fascistic groups who are downplaying the dangers posed by respiratory infections, leading to a decline in childhood immunization and resurgence of disease, specifically measles.

Two points. First, I don’t disagree that the decline in childhood vaccinations is real. It is. It is measurable. However, we must realize why vaccination rates are down. For the better part of three years, the public health system in our nation flat our lied to us. They bullied us. They demonized us. They ridiculed us. They lied straight to our faces and then tried to put us in jail when we asked questions. Justifiably, they lost our trust and forced thinking people to question everything they say. If public health “experts” are looking for a cause for the decline in vaccination rates, they can look in the mirror.

Second, ignored in the news reports is the human wave of unvaccinated people flooding across our border. You cannot introduce millions – yes, MILLIONS – of unvaccinated, unwell people into our communities and not expect the diseases they carry to spread. What is the Mealses vaccination rate among the illegal alien population? I guarantee that it’s much, much lower than for legal immigrants and citizens.

Theater Has “Whites Only” Night

by Owen | 1925, 29 Feb 24 | Culture | 0 Comments

Just kidding. It’s a “Black Only” night.

Chaos has engulfed a controversial West End play which is selling tickets for ‘black-only’ nights after one of the two dates vanished from its website.

Slave Play which is being held at the Noel Coward Theatre later this year has come under fire after announcing it will have two performances aimed at an ‘all-black-identifying audience’ that is ‘free from the white gaze’.

Producers, who say they want to ‘increase accessibility to theatre’, had said it would hold these performances on July 17 and September 17, with tickets being sold for as much £125.

However, the latter of these has vanished from the show’s website, with potential buyers given no option to buy tickets for a show on September 17, and no performance being listed for this date.

The people behind the show have said they are now ‘carefully considering’ how to incorporate the ‘black out’ nights as part of its run and insisted ‘no-one will be prevented or precluded from attending any performance’.

[…]

‘The idea of a Black Out night is to say this is a night that we are specifically inviting black people to fill up the space, to feel safe with a lot of other black people in a place where they often do not feel safe.’

Incidentally, I’ve gone to shows in London’s West End and New York’s Broadway in the past eight months and both audiences had a lot of black folks in them. They had a lot of black folks and white folks all enjoying a show together. I challenge their premise.

Google CEO Calls Gemini Debacle “Unacceptable”

by Owen | 1854, 28 Feb 24 | Culture, Technology | 8 Comments

Not a bad statement. I hope the reality matches the sentiment. I’m pessimistic that it will.

In a memo Tuesday evening, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company’s artificial intelligence mistakes, which led to Google taking its Gemini image-generation feature offline for further testing.

“I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard). I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.”

“Our teams have been working around the clock to address these issues. We’re already seeing a substantial improvement on a wide range of prompts. No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we’ll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.”

“Our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is sacrosanct. We’ve always sought to give users helpful, accurate, and unbiased information in our products. That’s why people trust them. This has to be our approach for all our products, including our emerging AI products.”

“We’ll be driving a clear set of actions, including structural changes, updated product guidelines, improved launch processes, robust evals and red-teaming, and technical recommendations. We are looking across all of this and will make the necessary changes.”

“Even as we learn from what went wrong here, we should also build on the product and technical announcements we’ve made in AI over the last several weeks. That includes some foundational advances in our underlying models e.g. our 1 million long-context window breakthrough and our open models, both of which have been well received.”

“We know what it takes to create great products that are used and beloved by billions of people and businesses, and with our infrastructure and research expertise we have an incredible springboard for the AI wave. Let’s focus on what matters most: building helpful products that are deserving of our users’ trust.”

Alphabet Mafia Tries to Purge People Who Don’t Share Their Faith

by Owen | 1835, 28 Feb 24 | Culture, Education, Politics | 4 Comments

The LGBTQ activists are refusing to allow any disagreement or debate with their current ideology. They want this guy fired for not agreeing with them.

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is standing by policies affecting the transgender community in state schools following the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict, which has resulted in increasing calls for his removal from office.

“To make sure that all individuals are safe in a school, we want every student to be protected, we want every student to be successful,” Walters told ABC News in an interview Tuesday. “That also means we’re not going to lie to students. And we’re not going to push a gender ideology.”

However, an open letter is calling for Walters’ immediate removal from office for, the letter claims, “fostering a culture of violence and hate against the 2SLGBTQI+ community in Oklahoma schools.” The letter is signed by about 350 local, state, and national organizations, including GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, Oklahomans for Equality and more.

What are Walters’ “radical” views? Pretty much what a majority of people currently believe and what was almost universally accepted as truth just a few years ago.

Walters said he believes there are only two genders and that those are based on the sex someone is “assigned at birth.”

Google to Relaunch Gemini AI

by Owen | 1925, 26 Feb 24 | Culture, Technology | 0 Comments

I can see the memo now… “keep it racist and woke, but a bit less obvious.”

After pulling its artificial intelligence image generation tool on Thursday due to a string of controversies, Google plans to relaunch the product soon, according to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

Google introduced the image generator earlier this month through Gemini, the company’s main suite of AI models. The tool allows users to enter prompts to create an image. Over the past week, users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses, which have circulated widely on social media.

“We have taken the feature offline while we fix that,” Hassabis said Monday during a panel at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona. “We are hoping to have that back online very shortly in the next couple of weeks, few weeks.” He added that the product was not “working the way we intended.”

[…]

When asked for a “historically accurate depiction of a medieval British king,” the model generated another racially diverse set of images, including one of a woman ruler, screenshots show. Users reported similar outcomes when they asked for images of the U.S. founding fathers, an 18th-century king of France, a German couple in the 1800s and more. The model showed an image of Asian men in response to a query about Google’s own founders, users reported.

Make no mistake. It wasn’t a mistake.

35% of Gen Z Spends Compulsively

by Owen | 0751, 26 Feb 24 | Culture, Economy | 0 Comments

If they want to spend their way to bankruptcy, that’s their business. It becomes my business when they are asking me, a taxpayer, to bail them out for their bad decisions.

On a recent episode of Caleb Hammer’s YouTube show, Financial Audit, Abigail admitted the student loan she took out wasn’t necessary. “I don’t need to use them like I use them, I know that,” she said.

“You’re borrowing from the government, potentially from taxpayers,” Hammer responded. “You’re going about this in such an irresponsible way and your actions are showing that you just don’t give a s–t.”

However, according to a recent survey, Abigail isn’t alone in her addiction to spending money or misallocating funds.

35% of American Gen Z’s surveyed by Credit Karma admitted to “doom spending,” which it described as a pattern of compulsive spending (think: clothing or high-end skincare products) that helped people cope with anxieties about the economy and world affairs.

Abigail seemed to be on a similar path when she appeared on Financial Audit.

Her college is relatively close to where she lives and is, as Hammer described, “insanely cheap.” Nevertheless, she managed to accumulate $11,000 in student loans — all of which were allocated to fund her lifestyle choices.

In addition, she has $8,000 in auto loans for a car she admitted she didn’t need to buy in the first place.

She also has thousands of dollars in credit card debt, which could have been avoided because her cost of living is lower than the national average. She currently lives with her parents and doesn’t pay for groceries or utilities.

When Hammer asked Abigail if she’d “just given up” she said “probably.”

She added, “That’s been my problem for the past few years: knowing I’m hurting myself and just not doing anything about it. I just feel like I don’t have any self-esteem.”

Death of Trans Kid Unrelated to Minor School Scuffle

by Owen | 0920, 24 Feb 24 | Culture, Politics | 24 Comments

This story has been interesting to watch unfold. The original narrative was that trans kid died after fight with other students in evil red-state Oklahoma. It was spun as an example of intolerance of trans people by redneck Republicans or something. Now we learn more… First, we learn that the trans kid was the aggressor.

In the video from the hospital the day of the altercation, Nex explains to an officer that the girls had been picking on them and their friends because of the way they dressed. Nex claims that in the bathroom the girls said “something like: why do they laugh like that,” referring to Nex and their friends.

“And so I went up there and I poured water on them, and then all three of them came at me,” Nex tells the officer while reclining in a hospital bed.

Not that a squirt of water justifies a physical attack, but Nex did transition the altercation from verbal to physical.

Next, when the mom called 911, she thought it might be a head injury from the fight that caused Nex’s eventual death. This is the narrative that the media ran with despite no other diagnosis other than raw speculation by an untrained observer.

In the 911 call on Feb. 8, Nex’s mother, Sue Benedict, expressed concern about a head injury as she described Nex’s symptoms.

The mother went on to politicize her kid’s death almost immediately and continues to politicize it to this day.

Nex’s mother told the Independent that the bullying Nex had faced came amid state legislative policies that targeted the transgender and nonbinary communities.

Later we learn that the autopsy revealed that the death was not the result of a head injury from the fight.

While the two-week-old warrant states that police were seeking evidence in a felony murder, the department has since said Benedict’s death was not a result of injuries suffered in the fight, based on the preliminary results of the autopsy.

The police department, which didn’t respond to multiple messages sent Friday, has said it won’t comment further on the teen’s cause of death until toxicology and other autopsy results are completed.

Now neither the police nor the family are commenting on the actual cause of death. The police are correct and should not comment until they know for sure. The family can be given some leeway in their grief, I suppose, but they continue to use their dead kid as part of the trans agenda.

What we do know for sure is that this kid got into a minor fight at school in which he was a mutual combatant and later died of unrelated causes. It is the adults who are elevating this kid’s tragic death to use in ideological warfare to advance trans ideology.

“Experts”

by Owen | 1107, 19 Feb 24 | Culture, History | 6 Comments

These are the kind of things that make regular people roll their eyes when a story starts with “experts say.”

In a recent survey conducted by a panel of experts specializing in the American presidency, President Biden was ranked the 14th-best president, while his likely 2024 presidential opponent former President Trump found himself at the very bottom of the list.

[…]

Biden was placed ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. Former President Obama was ranked No. 7, eight spots higher than when the experts were polled last year.

Really? I would even put Obama ahead of Biden. Certainly Reagan and Grant. Wilson was a raving eugenist, but even he had some good qualities. Frankly, any ranking that doesn’t have Coolidge in the top 5 is invalid.

Church Shooter’s History of Mental Illness

by Owen | 0928, 17 Feb 24 | Crime, Culture | 0 Comments

But it’s the guns…

The 2022 child-parent relationship lawsuit filed by Walli Carranza raises multiple concerns about Moreno, who at the time was referred to as Jeffrey. Carranza alleges Moreno was diagnosed multiple times with schizophrenia and had said she was not taking prescribed medications or following treatment recommendations made by her psychiatrist.

Walli Carranza said Moreno had “a history of constantly erratic, paranoid, stalking and mendacious behavior and was diagnosed as exhibiting Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy signs and symptoms.” Munchausen syndrome is when someone fakes illness, abuse or other hardship to gain sympathy or aid. By proxy means they took on someone else’s misfortune as their own.

[…]

“(Moreno) has been investigated four times by Child Protective Services for child abuse and neglect and was found by them to have intentionally harmed her child on at least two occasions,” the suit states.

Weapons and Antisemitic Paraphernalia Found at Church Shooter’s Home

by Owen | 0920, 17 Feb 24 | Crime, Culture | 0 Comments

Uh huh.

Bulletproof vests, ammunition, plastic bottles filled with unknown substances, antisemitic books and a white mask that read “Free Gaza Trump” were pulled from the Conroe home of the suspected Lakewood Church shooter, records show.

[…]

Officers also found a book titled “All Remainers are Neo-Nazis.” It’s unclear what the book is referring to, but the term remainers is often used in the United Kingdom to describe people who voted for the country to stay in the European Union. Seven handmade poster signs were found in a trash can, but the warrant does not indicate what they said.

[…]

Conroe police have responded to more than 20 calls since 2019 tied to the address where Moreno lived, records show. The calls ranged in severity from neighbors reporting strange interactions with the woman to one who said Moreno tried to hit her with her vehicle.

Deadbeats Abound

by Owen | 1641, 8 Feb 24 | Culture, Education | 1 Comment

Loaning money to unemployed college kids has always been a high-risk endeavor. When the federal government guaranteed, and then took over, the loans, that risk was transferred to taxpayers against their will. Now this is what far too many deadbeat college grads and dropouts think about taxpayers. Selfish deadbeats.

Santos is “overwhelmed” by her student loan balance because she currently doesn’t have a job. She asked her TikTok viewers: “Are you guys paying your student loans back?”

Surprisingly, a significant number of people who commented admitted they aren’t paying their loans back. Some, like Santos, appear to have forgotten completely, while others have purposefully sent their loans to collections or ignored their payments altogether.

Many of those who commented said they haven’t started paying their student loans back because they can’t even afford their monthly payment.

Dearborn Residents React to WSJ Opinion Piece

by Owen | 0929, 4 Feb 24 | Culture, Politics | 0 Comments

In a sane world, isn’t what Stalinsky wrote just common sense? You have a group of people who is celebrating the rape, kidnapping, and murder of Jews on October 7th and calling for genocide. Why wouldn’t we be concerned and keep a closer eye on them? If these were white Michiganders celebrating Nazi attacks in Europe, we wouldn’t hesitate.

The contentious article was written by Steven Stalinsky, who is a commentator on terrorism and has served as executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, based in Washington DC, since 1999.

He warned in the story that Dearborn’s majority Arab population ought to be paid ‘close attention’ by counterterrorism agencies following October 7.

[…]

‘It’s 2024 and the WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage. Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic. Dearborn is one of the greatest American cities in our nation.’

According to census figures, Dearborn is roughly 54 percent Arab American, making it one of the most densely populated areas for Middle Eastern people in the US.

It is home to the largest Muslim population in the US per capita as well as the largest mosque in North America.

In the wake of the October 7 attacks on 1,000 Israeli citizens, protests erupted in Dearborn – supporting the Palestinian side.

[…]

‘President Biden, we say quite clearly: you are not welcome in our community.’

Zahr said to the crowd: ‘Are we going to forget?’ To which he received the roaring response: ‘No!’

The crowd chanted: ‘Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,’ ‘Genocide Joe’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’

Madison DEI Alum Accused of Plagiarism

by Owen | 0803, 31 Jan 24 | Culture, Education | 2 Comments

Academia is riddled with lazy, mediocre, cheaters.

It’s not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.

Through that sleight of hand, Sherri Ann Charleston effectively took credit for her husband’s work. The 2014 paper, which was also coauthored with Jerlando Jackson, now the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, and appeared in the Journal of Negro Education, has the same methods, findings, and description of survey subjects as the 2012 study, which involved interviews with black computer science students and was first published by the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

Outcome-based politics

by Owen | 0720, 30 Jan 24 | Culture, Politics, Politics - Wisconsin | 1 Comment

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here you go:

Our system of government was purposefully constructed to make it difficult to impose policy without overwhelming support, thus requiring advocates to win adherents in the crucible of public debate. As Americans, we have always engaged in robust political debate for this purpose, but our politics are different than it once was. More dangerous. More consequential.

The difference seems to be that in ages past, both political parties adhered to a fundamental respect for the process and institutions of our nation. Imbued with legitimacy accorded by the Founders and the many years since their creation, there was near universal respect for our institutions and the process by which we confer the consent of the people upon the wielders of political power.

In recent years, the Democrats, and to a much lesser, but not negligible, extent, the Republicans, have jettisoned respect for, and adherence to, the process, institutions, and constitutional constraints of our system of government in favor of an outcome-based approach to obtaining and wielding political power. This has coincided with the growing Marxist faction of the Democratic Party wielding increasing power over the wilting traditional liberals. In this doctrine, the outcome justifies subverting, ignoring, or modifying the processes and institutions as required to achieve the outcome. Just as ancient and medieval princes justified their tyranny for the sake of necessity and the greater good, so, too, do our modern tyrants. Whether for the cause of security, climate change, COVID, or democracy (whatever that means), political objectives are elevated to the stature of existential causes to justify any action that leads to the desired outcome.

We see this infection reddening the organ and connecting tissues of all aspects of our government. In Wisconsin, we see it with the newly leftist Supreme Court. The settled process for reapportionment as prescribed by the state Constitution and long practiced by both parties is being abandoned by the court. The leftist justices and their adherents justify the action for the sake of “fairness” — as defined by them. To the leftists, the constitutional and long-established process for apportionment did not result in the outcome they wanted, so they are jettisoning the process to dictate their desired outcome.

When the United States Supreme Court ruled that President Biden lacked the constitutional or legal authority to arbitrarily absolve tens of thousand of debtors from their obligation to repay their student loans, thus thrusting that cost onto taxpayers, Biden simply ignored the order. Without making any effort to involve Congress or obtain the required authority, Biden has been illegally transferring billions of dollars of student debt to taxpayers. For Biden, the outcome of appeasing this constituency justifies ignoring the protestations of the coequal branch of government charged with adjudicating his actions.

Perhaps nowhere else do we see the destructive force of an outcome-based political system than at our southern border. Despite a constitutional responsibility and reams of laws empowering and funding the federal government to secure our federal borders from people illegally crossing them, President Biden has chosen to ignore that responsibility and use those resources to facilitate and accelerate the ingestion of millions of illegal aliens into our nation. The full resources of the federal government are being used to greet, provide resources for, and diffuse illegal aliens into the interior.

We know that this invasion is Biden’s intent because the border was all but secure at the end of the previous administration. Since then, the Congress has not passed any border or immigration legislation, yet the border is gaping open. It is estimated that well more than a million illegal aliens have been dispersed throughout our nation every year of Biden’s term. Biden’s intentional effort to flood communities with people he thinks will be more likely than not to vote for Democrats someday justifies unburdening himself from the confines of statute or Constitution.

Outcome-based politics always precedes tyranny. By abandoning the constitutional, legal, and traditional processes and institutional implements of power for the sake of necessity, we necessarily concentrate power and silence the moderating effect of opposition voices. The same slide preceded Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler — tyrants all, who stood astride the ashes of the republics they replaced. The slide can be reversed, but it becomes more difficult with each passing day.

The New Gun Voter

by Owen | 2120, 26 Jan 24 | Culture, Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments

Spot on. And it’s good to see Nik Clark on the interwebs.

It’s my observation most Republican legislators as well as political consultants who run campaigns for Republicans in Wisconsin think the “gun vote” is a bunch of Generation X and Baby Boomers who hunt, fish, and would likely be found at a Pheasants Forever or Ducks Unlimited banquet. This is a 1990-2010 understanding of “the gun vote” and is as dated as Scott Walker’s Kohl’s sweater vest. Because a majority of this demographic is already voting “R“, Madison Republicans think they already have “the gun vote” in the bag, much like Democrats assume “the black vote” is secured. They are both wrong. What is the “gun vote” in 2023?

For the past 5 years, most attendees of our Milwaukee area classes are non-white, non-male. Women and minorities are the new face of concealed carry. Especially women. Ask anyone who works at a retail gun store for confirmation. Starting with the riots of 2020 and extending to today, the realization Milwaukee and Madison’s soft-on-crime criminal justice system treats law-abiding citizens like criminals and criminals like victims, and uses the streets as a jail, resulting in a flood of concern from urban and suburban women for their safety and ability to protect their children. Citizens are collateral damage in the democrat’s failed social-justice crime experiment. People who never before considered a firearm for personal protection have changed their minds.

This changing face of concealed carry presents an opportunity for Republicans to appeal to demographics that traditionally voted Democrat, but would likely consider a republican candidate who offered the real chance to make them safer. Elected Republicans ‘tough-on-crime’ policies are more symbolism than substance because local DAs and Judges drive the criminal justice system and can side-step new legislation. Elected Republicans CAN provide safety for urban and suburban voters by making concealed carry more attainable and more practicable.

Harvard Makes Excuses

by Owen | 1857, 20 Jan 24 | Culture, Education, Politics | 0 Comments

They still haven’t acted appropriately and allow plagiarists and bigots to roam their halls.

Harvard’s account acknowledges that the university did not handle the review perfectly, suggesting that the university was in crisis as it faced an uproar over its handling of antisemitism on campus.

“These allegations arose in a time of unprecedented events and tension on campus and globally,” the report said. “We understand and acknowledge that many viewed our efforts as insufficiently transparent, raising questions regarding our process and standard of review.”

On Friday, Harvard also announced new rules to rein in student protests.

In a message just before the start of college classes Monday, Harvard said that demonstrations would not be permitted in classrooms, libraries, dormitories or dining halls without permission. Instead, protests are limited to “courtyards, quadrangles and other such spaces” and cannot block students from walking to class.

The clarification did not directly address the question raised at the congressional hearing that contributed to Gay’s resignation: whether protesters chanting slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — which many supporters of Israel interpret as a call for wiping out Israel — would be against Harvard’s code of conduct.

The Scourge of Hamas

by Owen | 2056, 19 Jan 24 | Culture, Foreign Affairs | 0 Comments

I truly pray that this is, or becomes, the prevailing view of Gazans. I fear, however, that it is a tiny minority.

“We are displaced here in Rafah and before that [we were] in Khan Younis. We have no money and no home, the unstoppable wars between Hamas and Israel have destroyed our lives.”

A businessman called Mohammed agreed.

“We have lived under unjust rule for more than 16 years. Hamas imposed heavy taxes on us and now they have dragged us into a devastating war in which we lost our property, money and homes,” he told the BBC.

“I used to live in a good house and work in trade. Now what will we do? The crossings are closed, the company has been destroyed, and the house is not fit for habitation due to the destruction.

UW Requires Racist Reeducation

by Owen | 1855, 18 Jan 24 | Culture, Education, Politics - Wisconsin | 4 Comments

Wow. From WRN and WILL. Stunning racism at UW.

For example, the handout that was included with the WILL news release tells students, “As beneficiaries of racism and white privilege, you sometimes take a defensive posture even when you are not being individually blamed. You may personalize the remarks, not directed personally at you. It is the arrogance of your privilege that drags the focus back to whites.”

The handout repeatedly generalizes about whites, saying, “Whites are more willing and more comfortable decrying our oppression than scrutinizing our privilege.” It uses the term whites over and over again.

Read the handout here. One excerpt generalizes about white people’s beliefs about police and the court system.

Another excerpt is critical of conservative talk show legend Rush Limbaugh, telling students that quotes by him were “loaded with white people’s fear of people of color and what would happen if they gained ‘control.’ Embedded here is also the assumption that to be ‘pro-black’ (or any other color) is to be anti-white.”

The handout shared by WILL also contains this passage, “By saying we are not different, that you don’t see the color, you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors’ experience of racism and your experience of privilege.” Another excerpt tells students, “To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism.”

Tax me now!

by Owen | 0752, 17 Jan 24 | Culture, Economy, Politics | 0 Comments

This is such idiotic pandering.

More than 250 billionaires and millionaires on Wednesday reiterated their call on elected representatives of the world’s leading economies to introduce higher taxes on the very richest in society.

In an open letter to political leaders gathered at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the rich signatories said they wished to deliver a clear message: “Tax our extreme wealth.”

“We are surprised that you have failed to answer a simple question that we have been asking for three years: when will you tax extreme wealth?” the letter said.

“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”

First, nothing stops these people from giving their money to government or privately funding things. They could help build roads, sponsor police departments, kick in for the welfare bill, or whatever. They are agents of choice.

Second, the reason that I oppose higher taxes – even if only target at the mega rich – is because that’s never where it stops. We have centuries of history of small, targeted taxes being expanded into the middle and lower classes. More government spending creates demand for more government spending that must be satiated.

Third, notice the comment, “unproductive private wealth.” Unless a rich person is hoarding cash in their mattresses, that wealth is not unproductive. In fact, concentrations of wealth are a necessary part of capitalism and vital to making capitalism work. You need concentrated wealth to invest in new ventures and innovation to progress the economy and raise the standard of living for everyone. There’s a word for when we give all of the money to government and allow the government to make those decisions: Communism. These people are Communists advocating for communism. The fact that they are rich only means that they expect to continue to ride atop a Communist society but with the violent power of government added to the power of their purses.

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