Muda69

Soccer is a "country club" sport? That is news to me.................

A number of them are, yes.

American society already legislates the moral choices minors can make, and have been doing it for decades: 1. The age they can legally purchase and consume alcohol. 2. The age they can legally have sex with another individual. 3. The age they can legally drive a car. 4. The age they can legally purchase tobacco products. 5. The age they can legally work for pay outside of the home. 6. The age they can join the military. This list goes on. Again, I'm talking about minors here. If a legal adult want to waste their time and money, along with most likely a lifetime of pain and suffering, to become a different gender, then they can knock themselves out. So you are in agreement that all the above laws should be repealed, in the name of getting government out of the morality business?

Is Dungeons & Dragons Eliminating 'Inherently Racist' Half-Elves, Half-Orcs? https://reason.com/2023/04/05/dungeons-dragons-half-elf-half-orc-racist-woke-pc/

I read somewhere that the total cost for a full transition, including surgeries and drugs, can be upwards of 7 million dollars. Sweet, sweet coin for the hospitals and doctors.

Think about the children Bob! Do you want some woke skold of a parent deciding that it's ok for their 13-year old daughter to become a man, beginning a regime of puberty blockers and testosterones treatments that could have some real long term health consequences? Especially if at 17 the now "man" decides they really no longer like their "maleness" and want to go back to being a female. And surgeries just add another level of cost and complication to that matter. Is this the kind of decision a 13-17 year old can really, really make for themselves? After all we aren't talking about tattoos or piercings here.

More disgraceful stadium shenanigans, this time by the owner of the Bills: (warning, foul language) https://deadspin.com/buffalo-bills-nfl-stadium-pegula-hochul-west-ham-1850306760

https://reason.com/2023/04/03/minnesota-taxpayers-could-be-pillaged-for-280-million-in-vikings-stadium-upgrades/ Yep. Crony capitalism and fleecing the taxpayers at it's finest. Despicable.

https://reason.com/video/2023/04/03/rand-paul-is-right-banning-tiktok-would-be-idiotic/ Yep, the government is always, always looking for new ways to restrict personal freedoms.

A fake woman drinking fake beer. Sounds about right........................

The Revolution Comes for NPR https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-revolution-comes-for-npr/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second What NPR’s executives see as baseless allegations of racial hostility are, in fact, supported and reinforced by the tools fashioned into existence by NPR. Given how much this company has devoted itself to broadcasting content that purports to divine racial hostility in unremarkable banalities, its listeners would probably agree with NPR’s disgruntled former employees. In recent years, NPR has played frequent host to pop-academic fixtures such as White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo, who lectures white listeners on their need to experience discomfort while interrogating their own internalized white supremacy because “‘nice white people’ can still be complicit in a racist society.” It lectures young listeners on the most effective ways “non-black folks” can “talk to your parents about racism.” It diagnoses acute medical ailments that are directly attributable to the existence of racism and poverty. Applying a secret logic that uncovers “covert racism” in everyday life dominates NPR’s coverage of just about everything. The January 6 hearings were actually all about racism. Banal crime-blotter journalism is rife with racism. Climate-change activism is, in fact, an anti-racist crusade. Philanthropy and charity are tainted by racism. Homebuyers navigate a minefield of racial hostilities. The “food world” is, consciously or otherwise, racist. Birdwatching’s racist legacy pervades the practice even today. The same could be said of conservationism in general. Mundane turns-of-phrase such as “sold down the river,” “grandfathering in,” “master bedroom,” and “cake walk” expose their users as, if not racist themselves, white-supremacist-adjacent. NPR finds evidence of “systemic racism” in seemingly every legacy institution in the United States, a category that surely includes storied venues such as NPR. By lending undue credence to nearly any allegation of white racial bigotry, the broadcaster was writing the instructions through which the disgruntled can bring down the successful. Did NPR’s executives expect their employees not to notice? In my book, The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun, I describe the psychological incentives associated with the impulse to impose progressive political themes on otherwise apolitical cultural stimuli — “a power play reserved almost exclusively for the successful”: NPR made this intoxicating philosophy into a business model. Their employees over-imbibed and became understandably besotted with it. The only surprise in the news that the revolution NPR incubated has at last come for NPR is that it took this long. This would be funny if actually wasn't so sad.

https://reason.com/2023/03/31/public-sector-unions-are-trampling-our-public-services/ Remember the words of FDR: "Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government....The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

The Trump Indictment Exposes Fault Lines in the American Criminal Justice System: https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-indictment-exposes

Donald Trump indicted; expected to surrender early next week https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-new-york-indictment-election-027d0e5ac1881a4c55c6379deae75faa?utm_source=apnews&utm_medium=featuredcard&utm_campaign=leadstory I fear yet another pandora's box has been opened.

Why does there have to be a money factor involved for the mechanics of promotion/relegation to work? You classify teams not by their enrollment but entirely on their success/failure as a program over a determined amount of time.

I think you mean "parity". "Parody" has a completely different meaning. 🙂 But to answer your questions, yes, to both.

https://deadspin.com/ferris-state-tony-annese-cigars-suspension-ncaa-1850273580 Yep. Curse you Joe Burrow!

https://gizmodo.com/open-letter-musk-demand-pause-on-advanced-ai-1850275951 Interesting times we live in. What do the other GID members believe is the hope, or threat, of AI?

https://reason.com/2023/03/29/this-years-farm-bill-threatens-to-be-a-bigger-monster-than-ever/ Yep, this legislation is no longer a Farm Bill, it's a Food Stamp Entitlement Bill.

It sure it. From the latest substack entry by Rod Dreher: Did you see the shock results from the Wall Street Journal poll this week? Here’s the story accompanying the poll, but these graphs tell the story: Now, here’s an important caveat: the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini calls the accuracy of these results into question, and explains why. I hope he’s right. But what if he’s not? The WSJ results show a total collapse in the American spirit. You are looking here at a sketch of Weimar America, a demoralized nation that believes in nothing except money. And yet Washington, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the media, and Woke Capitalism want to export the blessings of American liberty to the rest of the world, or else. The poll also captures a partisan divide so stark it’s like a vivisection: If you read the granular poll results — here’s a link to the PDF with those data — you’ll see the surprises keep coming. For example, only one in five Americans has a favorable view of the pronoun thing — but the elites constantly shove them down our throats: Fewer than one in five believe trans athletes ought to play on the sports team that matches their identity — but the elites keep shoving this down our throats: Get this: only 15 percent — 15 percent! — support diversity measures that discriminate against people on the basis of race in student admissions. But the elites … you know: On Woke Capitalism, almost two out of three Americans oppose it: Eighty percent of those polled say the economy is in “poor” condition, and only 15 percent expect it to improve (these data are in the PDF). Nearly half of Americans are downcast about their financial situation: Only 28 percent believe that they can improve their material lot in today’s America. And almost four out of five think their kids will be worse off than they are: Again, I hope that Ruffini is correct, and that these numbers are skewed. If they aren’t, America is in very, very serious trouble. The good news is that there seems to be a very solid majority of Americans who are sick and tired of wokeness, and are primed to support serious pushback against it. Given the ubiquity of DEI, LGBT, and the rest in the media, you’d think support for it is more widespread than this poll indicates. But if this poll is correct, most people, however personally tolerant, hate this stuff. The elites are talking to themselves. The masses need political and religious leadership that will give voice to its views — and not just voice, but leadership that can act effectively to roll this stuff back. This is why I’m on DeSantis’s side, not Trump’s. Nobody can stoke resentment like Trump, but when he was in power, he got rolled. Nobody is going to roll DeSantis. That said, the depths of pessimism revealed by this survey suggests that people may not have as much interest in the constructive fightback of DeSantis, but may prefer Trump’s burn-it-all-down approach. The polarization between Democrats and Republicans is astonishing, and makes me wonder if it’s even possible to put us back together. According to the poll, the Democrats demand more wokeness — the very policies helping to tear America apart. Well, even if we got rid of wokeness, a nation that doesn’t believe in God, or having children, or in itself, is not a nation that is prepared to extend its life. And it is telling that equally few Americans of all political tribes have much interest in “community involvement.” Most of us are bowling alone, and content with that. So: what does it all mean? Again, I hope Ruffini is correct, and things aren’t as far gone as the WSJ poll indicates. But hoping for methodological error is no excuse for not taking the results seriously as possibly true. Here’s what conclusions I draw from the poll: America as we have known it is dying. We don’t believe in the things that sustains a nation’s life. Americans on the whole hate wokeness, but liberals think it hasn’t gone far enough. The cultural Left, which controls elite institutions, are going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, exacerbating division. Perhaps this Nashville shooting will be a turning point. I woke up this morning in Europe and saw multiple media examples of the Left trying to control the Narrative. Look at this egregious example from the NBC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky, of all places: Rod Dreher @roddreher Hours after 6 Christians murdered by trans shooter, @LEX18News goes to local liberal church to praise its welcome for LGBTs, the *real* victims. Is station implying that Nashville Christians brought this on themselves for being orthodox on LGBT? lex18.comIn Nashville shooting aftermath, local pastor welcomes LGBTQ+ members in search of supportFor Pastor Matt Falco, the nicest things about his church aren’t the original pews dating to the early 1900s, or the stained glass wind... 7:01 AM ∙ Mar 29, 2023 Think about it: six Christians are murdered by a trans person, their bodies not even cold, but the first instinct of the Kentucky TV journalist is to rush to a liberal church to do a story on the trauma of LGBTs! I have to hope that the reality of six dead Christians, including three nine-year-olds, at the hands of a trans killer, and the way this savagery is being massaged by the media to conform to the woke Narrative, will jar most Americans awake about the decadence and corruption in our leading institutions. It is not going to stop until we make it stop. Am I really patriotic? Do I really believe in having kids? In community involvement? It’s easy for me as a conservative to sneer at the Americans who no longer believe in these things, but how would I have answered had I been polled? I had a dinner conversation earlier this week with a visiting American scholar who works on national security and defense issues. He and I got to talking about the US military. He was telling me the stark and depressing facts about the military recruitment crisis. I told him about my second son’s considering military service, and how I told him I would support his decision whatever it was, but that I hoped he wouldn’t serve. It’s not (I explained to my dining companion) that I think America is not worth defending. Everybody should want to defend their country against invasion. It’s rather that after Iraq, I don’t trust the US leadership to deploy the armed forces wisely. And I don’t want my kid to be in the woke military and have to choose between obeying his Christian conscience or his commander. Beyond that, though, I don’t feel “patriotic” if patriotism means expressing confidence in the country as it is today. Living overseas for the past two years, in a conservative country that’s in America’s ideological crosshairs, has taught me a painful lesson about what my country stands for today, and how it uses its power in the world. “We’re Babylon,” a visiting US pastor said to me recently. He’s right. What does it mean to be patriotic if that’s true? The evils of Russia and China aren’t any less, nor is the decadence of Europe, but neither do these things erase the chronic diseases of Weimar America. Seriously, you have to get out of America for some time to grasp how much cultural influence we have in the world, and how bad that is. About having kids, I often note that previous generations had children even thought they face far worse prospects than we do today. I’m glad I had kids, and would do so again. But I can’t really fault young people today for fearing the future in a country that seems to be falling apart, and in which there seem to be no solid values. The collapse of the gender binary is the most frightening thing, because of what it symbolizes about the West’s flight from reality. About community involvement — what community? What binds us? The elites teach our children to hate their ancestors, to hate their bodies, and, if they’re white, to hate themselves. The ruling class has no loyalty to the interests of their countrymen. Every day the media tell conservative, religious Americans that we are the problem with America — especially if we are white and male and working class. A friend who works in a major UK university is clearing out and moving to the US, saying, “Britain is f-cked.” His basic point is that the UK is governed by people who hate it, and that everybody else is too demoralized to recover. He sees more resources of resistance in the US. He’s right about that, but still, we Americans have the same problem: elites who hate the country, its history, its traditions, and many of its people, and masses who are too morally and spiritually enervated (by porn, by pot, by materialism, etc) to resist and recover. Most Americans are not conservative, and even many who identify as such are no paragons of moral and spiritual health. The Benedict Option, now more than ever. We cannot go on like this. I believe in mounting political resistance, but I believe it is more important to also mount cultural resistance. The best thing politicians can do is to create space for meaning-giving institutions (families, temples, schools, fellowships, etc) to do their work. We should support strong, sensible candidates, but absolutely not be under the illusion that we can vote our way out of this crisis. Today, the best we traditionally religious people can realistically hope for in the near term is survival. The things I talked about in The Benedict Option are even more relevant today. In 1982, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote the following words. In 2023, they look as if they had been written in neon: You, reader, need a Benedict Option. We all do. The hour is very late.

Yes, it is. Much, much narrower.

https://www.theonion.com/parents-waiting-to-see-son-s-test-scores-before-prohibi-1850258076 lol, consider the source.

Like I said before, I'll leave the detailed implementation proposals up to the brainiac's like foxbat and yourself. Unless you think the current system, which is still overwhelmingly based primarily on enrollment, is the perfect solution.

Yes, and yes. And sure, there was team comradery and all that, but such things can IMHO better taught and instilled with other activities not sponsored by a government school.