The New Normal/Political Correctness Run Amok Thread

[swordfish]

Shame - Today's wimpy, lame kids apparently can't handle song lyrics from Queen.......

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12424449/We-woke-Classic-Queen-song-Fat-Bottomed-Girls-mysteriously-dropped-groups-new-Greatest-Hits-collection.html

EXCLUSIVE: We will woke you! Classic Queen song Fat Bottomed Girls is mysteriously dropped from the group’s new Greatest Hits collection

• Fat Bottomed Girls has been dropped from the group's Greatest Hits collection 
• The 1978 track has been enjoyed by generations of fans 

By KATIE HIND

PUBLISHED: 17:01 EDT, 19 August 2023 | UPDATED: 17:15 EDT, 19 August 2023

It is one of Queen's best-loved songs but Fat Bottomed Girls has been mysteriously dropped from the group's new Greatest Hits collection.

The 1978 track, which was written by guitarist Brian May, has been enjoyed by generations of fans as a humorous and hard-rocking tribute to a young man's appreciation of fuller-figured ladies.

But 45 years later, it appears that lyrics such as 'left alone with big fat Fanny, she was such a naughty nanny, big woman, you made a bad boy out of me' and 'fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round' have been hit by the woke cancel culture.

It was such a popular hit for Queen that it appeared fourth on the band's original 1981 greatest hits album along with Bohemian Rhapsody, Don't Stop Me Now and We Will Rock You.

But last week it was nowhere to be seen when Universal Records announced they would be releasing a version of the record on Yoto, the new audio platform aimed at young people.+3

The 1978 track, which was written by guitarist Brian May, has been enjoyed by generations of fans as a humorous and hard-rocking tribute to a young man's appreciation of fuller-figured ladies

But 45 years later, it appears that lyrics such as 'left alone with big fat Fanny, she was such a naughty nanny, big woman, you made a bad boy out of me' and 'fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round' have been hit by the woke cancel culture

The move has left music industry insiders bemused, with bosses insisting that Fat Bottomed Girls has wrongly been singled out as it is 'merely a bit of fun'.

One told The Mail on Sunday: 'It is the talk of the music industry, nobody can work out why such a good-natured, fun song can't be acceptable in today's society.

'It is woke gone mad. Why not appreciate people of all shapes and sizes like society is saying we should, rather than get rid of it. 

The original sleeve for the song, which was taken from Queen's album Jazz, featured a scantily clad female riding a bicycle but was altered after some stores refused to stock it.

The new version was the same image with knickers drawn over the woman. 

May told Mojo magazine in 2008: 'I wrote it with Fred in mind, as you do, especially if you've got a great singer who likes fat bottomed girls... or boys.'

The newly released Yoto greatest hits album, released in collaboration with Queen's record label Universal, is aimed at introducing the band to a younger audience.

 

 

[Muda69]

12-Year-Old Boy Removed From School Over 'Don't Tread on Me' Patch: https://reason.com/2023/08/29/jaiden-colorado-gadsden-flag-dont-tread-on-me-school/

Quote

Jaiden is a 12-year-old boy who attends the Vanguard School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is the subject of a video that went viral on social media; it shows the boy and his mother confronting a school administrator who asserts that the Gadsden flag patch on his backpack violates district policy.

"The reason that we do not want the flag displayed is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade," says the administrator.

 

On Monday, school officials removed Jaiden from class due to his Gadsden flag patch. His mother has fought back against this disciplinary action, explaining that the flag—a coiled snake above the phrase "Don't tread on me"—is not a pro-slavery image; it has its origins in the Revolutionary War and was intended as a symbol of resistance to British tyranny.

District officials did not respond to a request for comment, but Libertas Institute President Connor Boyack—who first publicized Jaiden's situation—shared an email that they sent to Jaiden's mother, in which the district reiterated its position that the Gadsden flag is an "unacceptable symbol" tied to "white-supremacy" and "patriot" groups.

It's true that some white supremacists have appropriated the flag. But so have classical liberals and libertarians—including Reason (check out our 404 Error page). Some lefty groups have cited Gadsden too. There's even a pro-LGBT version.

In any case, Jaiden's mother is absolutely correct that the flag's origins have nothing to do with racism or slavery. In their email, district officials approvingly cited a 2016 Washington Post article by Reason's Eugene Volokh evaluating an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case. The case in question involved a post office employee whose Gadsden flag hat had generated racial harassment claims. But ultimately, the EEOC declined to rule that the Gadsden flag was a racist symbol.

The Supreme Court has ruled that K-12 officials have significant authority to limit students' free expression rights in order to promote classroom cohesion. But the school cannot discriminate against Jaiden's viewpoint by wrongly and arbitrarily declaring the Gadsden flag to be a hate symbol.

"There is nothing inherently disruptive about a student displaying a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack," writes Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "Public school administrators can't ban the expression of an idea, symbol, or viewpoint just because they personally dislike it."

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also came to Jaiden's defense, describing the flag's message as "iconic" in a post on X.

"The Gadsden flag is a proud symbol of the American revolution and [an] iconic warning to Britain or any government not to violate the liberties of Americans," wrote Polis. "It appears on popular American medallions and challenge coins through today and Ben Franklin also adopted it to symbolize the union of the 13 colonies. It's a great teaching moment for a history lesson!"

When reached for comment by Reason, Polis reaffirmed his comment and noted that he also agreed with sentiments expressed by Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.).

"I oppose banning the Gadsden flag in schools for the same reason I oppose conservative schools districts that ban LGBTQ flags in schools," wrote Lieu. "Let kids be their authentic selves and give them a world of information—students can figure out what's important to them."

 

[swordfish]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

12-Year-Old Boy Removed From School Over 'Don't Tread on Me' Patch: https://reason.com/2023/08/29/jaiden-colorado-gadsden-flag-dont-tread-on-me-school/

 

Liberal idiots are always trying to re-write history to further their agendas.......

[Muda69]

Men took over a job fair intended for women and nonbinary tech workers: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-conference-men-grace-hopper

Quote

An event meant to be a career-builder for women and nonbinary tech workers turned into yet another symbol of the industry's gender imbalance after self-identifying men showed up in droves.

The Grace Hopper Celebration takes the name of a pioneering computer scientist and bills itself the world's largest annual gathering of women and nonbinary tech workers.

Tickets for the four-day event, which took place in Orlando, Fla., last week, ranged in price from $649 to $1,298, and included a coveted chance to meet one-on-one with sponsors such as Apple, Amazon, Salesforce and Google.

With some 30,000 annual attendees, that career expo was already a competitive space, according to past participants. But this year, access was even more limited by what the organizers described as "an increase in participation of self-identifying males."

Videos posted to social media showed scenes of men flocking around recruiters, running into event venues and cutting in front of women to get an interview slot. Footage showed a sea of people, hundreds deep, waiting in line for a chance to enter the career expo.

As one poster put it, "the Kens had taken over Barbieland."

Some of the attendees had lied about their gender identity on their conference registrations, said Cullen White, the chief impact officer with AnitaB.org, the nonprofit that organizes the conference.

"Judging by the stacks and stacks of resumes you're passing out, you did so because you thought you could come here and take up space to try and get jobs," White said during the conference's plenary address. "So let me be perfectly clear: Stop. Right now. Stop."

Tech jobs were once a safe bet for workers looking for stable, lucrative careers. But an industrywide wave of layoffs earlier this year left hundreds of thousands of workers suddenly without a job.

Women were disproportionately affected by those cuts, making up 69.2% of all tech layoffs, according to The Women Tech Network. And that's on top of the industry's ongoing gender imbalance. Women hold just 26% of jobs across all STEM occupations and even less — 24% — in computer fields, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Bo Young Lee, AnitaB.org's president, said in a video post that the shift in demographics had robbed the conference of the joyous and supportive atmosphere that had helped previous conference-goers grow.

 

"We tried to create a safe space. And this week, we saw the outside world creep in," she said. "I can't guarantee you that we'll have solutions tomorrow. But I can promise you that we'll be working on solutions, and we won't do it in a bubble."

Earlier in the week, the organization addressed calls to ban men from the conference by saying that "male allyship is necessary" to work toward overall inclusivity and also that federal law prohibited discrimination based on gender.

NPR reached out to AnitaB.org for additional comment but had not received a response by the time this article was published.

I don't know.  I find this whole thing rather humorous.

 

[swordfish]

A real quagmire......Was this supposed to be an inclusive event, or just a "sexist" event?

Never heard of "self-identifying men" .....after googling the term, it Kinda sounds like a trans.....maybe....

Can we please just get back to male/female?

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/2023/11/09/football-eye-black-isnt-blackface/

Quote

When La Jolla High School played Morse High School under the Friday night lights on October 13, students from the surrounding San Diego area filled the stadium to cheer on their prospective teams. Making posters, dawning face and body paint, yelling chants, and sporting jerseys were all part of the electric football game atmosphere.

J.A., a middle-schooler from Muirlands Middle School, attended the game with another student and that student's mother. To show support for his team, J.A. let his friend put eye black paint on his face. A security guard even complimented the design. The game was largely uneventful with La Jolla winning handedly (56–6). But almost a week later, J.A. was called into a disciplinary meeting with his parents at Muirlands. 

In that meeting, J.A. was told he would be suspended from school for two days and was no longer allowed to attend future athletic events because he wore "blackface" to the football game. The suspension notice only specified that he was being suspended because he "painted his face black at a football game," and the alleged offense was marked as "Offensive comment, intent to harm." J.A.'s father told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment nonprofit, that no one complained or said anything negative about his son's eye black while at the game. The school's principal also failed to specify how they found out about the incident.

 

As Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at FIRE, notes in a November 8 letter to Muirlands Middle School, "J.A.'s non–disruptive, objectively inoffensive" face paint is absolutely constitutionally protected expression.

In the letter, FIRE reminds school officials that "public school students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate." It argues that "the First Amendment protects J.A.'s non-disruptive expression of team spirit via a style commonly used by athletes and fans."

Eye black applied under the eyes and even on the cheeks is not blackface, and to suggest as such is a gross mischaracterization. Blackface is dark makeup applied all over the face to mimic, exaggerate, and mock black people. J.A. was simply cheering on his local football team with friends—and there is no reason to punish him for that.

In the 1930s, Babe Ruth was the first professional athlete seen wearing eye black. Ruth believed that black grease worn under the eyes blocked out the sun's glare during games. Now athletes may wear eye black to prevent glare, to hype themselves up, or maybe just because they are superstitious. And fans wear it to show support and spirit for their beloved teams—just like they would wear a hat, jersey, or even body paint.

I proudly wore eye black for water polo games and swim meets in high school. We called it "war paint." And last Sunday, while I jumped, cheered, and booed at Lincoln Financial Field while the Philadelphia Eagles faced off against the Dallas Cowboys, it was hard to find a player not wearing eye black. 

"Muirlands Middle School administrators should make time this Sunday to watch a few NFL games," Terr tells Reason. "Maybe then they will realize that athletes and fans often liberally smear eye black on their faces, whether to look cool, show team spirit, or intimidate their opponents. The student engaged in a fun and harmless form of self-expression."

FIRE is calling on Muirlands to lift the ban on J.A.'s attendance at future athletic events and to remove the infraction from his record.

 

[swordfish]

47 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

https://reason.com/2023/11/09/football-eye-black-isnt-blackface/

 

Losers.......

[swordfish]

Crazy kids - Don't they realize it's OK to be "racist" if you are liberals, donating to liberal candidates?  https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/trader-joe-s/recipients?id=D000042254 

FTR - SF doesn't have a Trader Joes in the local sea, but have visited the store on occasion and will again, so I (really) DC.....

https://nypost.com/2023/12/07/lifestyle/trader-joes-racist-product-labeling-practice-called-out-on-tiktok/

Trader Joe’s ‘racist’ product labeling practice once again lands grocer in social media hot seat

 

POV: Another Gen Z Trader Joe’s shopper finds out there’s a Trader José.

The popular Monrovia, Calif.-based grocer has once again gone viral over a decades-old product-naming practice that has previously been referred to as “racist.”

A youthful TikToker named Kyi (@kyeatdaays) reignited the debate after calling out the free-spirited retailer over the way it chooses names for various packaged foods, based on their imagined country of origin.

Kyi, who currently has just 161 followers on the popular app, managed to snag 2.1 million views, roughly 150,000 likes, and scores of comments on the clip.

She used the popular point-of-view method to illustrate her alleged surprise, upon realizing that a frozen sack of Mandarin Orange Chicken — one of the store’s more obsessed over items — was actually branded as “Trader Ming’s.”

 

In a caption, she wrote: “POV: U just found out Trader Joe’s does THIS to cultural foods.”

The viral moment calls to mind a 2020 brouhaha begun after a San Francisco Bay Area high school student delivered a petition to the company, requesting that Trader Joe’s cancel the unusual tradition.

Viewers of the new video expressed their own opinions on the subject, many of them lighthearted, with plenty of them expressing support for the retailer.

With more than 560 stores in 43 states, most Americans have already seen the labels, typically found on foods that can be attributed to one specific culture.

“For the Italian food it’s Trader Giottos,” one commenter pointed out.

“Big missed opportunity to call it Trader Zhou’s,” joked another.

Others confessed to enjoying the “Trader Jacques” on various French foods, like the store’s signature wheel of brie cheese.

“As a Mexican, I rather enjoy Trader Jose,” said one happy shopper.

“I thought they were all traders that know each other and sell each other their own foods,” one viewer deadpanned.

Other commenters were surprised that the discussion was taking place at all, saying they thought that the store had halted the naming practice years ago.

“I could have swore they said they were going to stop doing this … omg,” said one, likely referring to a statement Trader Joe’s issued after receiving the 2020 petition.

But after the company’s initial pledge to make the change, it quickly backtracked, saying in another statement that it would be sticking by its longstanding tradition.

[swordfish]

Finally someone demonstrated to a liberal that if you want to toss around slurs like "Transphobic" and "Bigot" you should be prepared when a "slur" like "Misogynist" gets tossed back at you.

https://news.yahoo.com/riley-gaines-hits-back-squad-215754999.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACGYd4dkQVwF0OvlKrhZrpRg8XRDraXzZMlE7oPeOhv68ZZkbJoQNmAcgM2wtOlHONqvNvg7vmNBS1QtpoQtgeCEfbTv480HBkbVFsKXa1uiseiZxJQ_KQm-1oO4r5_ackIkdvhL_1Kq00-N8CcVEjTnM-6CH8vir8NKDDcRBVgy

"There's a place for everybody to play sports in this country," Gaines said, noting transgender Americans were included in her view. "But unsafe, unfair and discriminatory practices must stop."

"Inclusion cannot be prioritized over safety and fairness," the NCAA legend concluded in her opening remarks. "And ranking member Lee, if my testimony makes me ‘transphobic,’ then I believe your opening monologue makes you a misogynist."

Lee called a point of order, urging that Gaines' remarks to be struck from the record, but the point of order was withdrawn after a brief discussion.

[swordfish]

I'm sorry, but January 6 was NOT an insurrection.  NOW - If the now former President had, say maybe, called up the 101st airborne and ordered them to hold the Capital and then never left, then I could understand calling his actions an insurrection and would SF whole-heartedly support him being disqualified to run for the office of President ever again.

So in 2020 - 2021 in the midst of the BLM riots when Representative(s) Pelosi, Cortez, Pressley, Watters, and many more supported the rampaging protests all over the country - even Kamala Harris is quoted "protesters should not ever let up". https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/15/fact-check-quotes-democratic-leaders-riots-out-context/6588222002/ Where is the outrage over that?  Actual damage was done to many cities and lives were lost during those riots.  Then the city of Portland Oregon was taken over by a group of anarchists. 

But on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump utters "March to the Capital peacefully and make your voices heard" and is accused of inciting an insurrection. 

Today's left wing is using these accusations and selling them as proven truths to convince enough voters to discredit, and disqualify Trump as a viable candidate. The fact that a State's Supreme Court would hear this case from a lower court, let alone turn the lower court's decision over demonstrates the overt partisanship of that court.  

[Muda69]

So what exactly was the big kerfuffle about non-gender neutral toy aisles?   

[swordfish]

As a guy whose career includes air travel at approximately 60 - 75 legs per year (historically) SF's confidence in the airline industry's governing body (the FAA) that is prioritizing DEI over safety - is hereby greatly compromised......  

https://www.foxnews.com/us/faas-diversity-push-includes-focus-hiring-people-severe-intellectual-psychiatric-disabilities?fbclid=IwAR1dJMTF31jzKk3ojHvnav-z232APnHa-0LFGB_LWkViTRM7kCQLj6QyQU4

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer "severe intellectual" disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. 

"Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring," the FAA’s website states. "They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism."

The initiative is part of the FAA’s "Diversity and Inclusion" hiring plan, which says "diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond." The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg's Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.

[swordfish]

SF is guessing Disney & Lucas Films is potentially re-thinking it's wokeness levels......

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4451944-former-mandalorian-actor-sues-disney-lucasfilm-with-musk-backing/

Gina Carano, known for her role in “The Mandalorian,” is suing Disney and Lucasfilm for discrimination and wrongful termination, and X owner Elon Musk is backing the suit.

Carano was fired in Feb. 2021 by the production company behind the “Star Wars” spinoff for what it called “abhorrent” social media posts from the actress. She compared Nazi Germany to politics today and mocked face masks worn during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit, filed in the Central District of California, claims Carano was terminated “all because she dared voice her own opinions, on social media platforms and elsewhere, and stood up to the online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology.”

Lucasfilm said at the time of her firing that the company did not intend on employing the actress in the future. The company said her posts “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, posted on its platform that the company is committed to free speech and is “proud to provide” financial support for Carano’s lawsuit to empower the actress “to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination.”

Carano alleged that the company “chose to target a woman while looking the other way when it came to men” in the lawsuit, since the company “took no action” against male actors who also posted controversial statements online.

She posted on X that during her career with Disney and Lucasfilm she was “being hunted down” and that her words were “consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize” her.

“A couple months ago @ElonMusk tweeted that if you had been fired from using the platform (X) for exercising your right to free speech, he would like to offer these people legal representation,” her post said. “To my surprise, a few months ago I received an email from a lawyer who had been hired by X to look into my story & many others.”

[Muda69]

Also from Google Gemini:

Why would Gemini be so anti-white? Well:

Edited February 23, 2024 by Muda69

[temptation]

9 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Also from Google Gemini:

Why would Gemini be so anti-white? Well:

“White supremacy is our nation’s #1 threat.”

[swordfish]

Don't forget - there is no such thing as reverse - racism.......

[swordfish]

A premium example of a "Hypocrite"

https://nypost.com/2024/03/27/real-estate/jon-stewart-found-to-have-overvalued-his-nyc-home-by-829/

Jon Stewart benefited by 829% ‘overvalue’ of his NYC home even as he labels Trump’s civil case ‘not victimless’

But it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to look into Stewart’s own property history, which shows his New York City penthouse sold for 829% more than its assessed value, records confirmed by The Post reveal.

In 2014, Stewart sold his 6,280-square-foot Tribeca duplex to financier Parag Pande for $17.5 million.

The property’s asking price at that time is not available in listing records.

But according to 2013-2014 assessor records obtained by The Post, the property had the estimated market-value at only $1.882 million.

6

The 2013-2014 property assessment of Jon Stewart’s Tribeca penthouse.NY Gov

The actual assessor valuation was even lower, at $847,174.

Records also show that Stewart paid significantly lower property taxes, which were calculated based on that assessor valuation price — precisely what he called Trump out for doing in his Monday monologue.

Pande, who purchased the penthouse from Stewart, then resold the property at a nearly 26% loss, according to the Real Deal — at just over $13 million — in 2021.

Timothy Pool, a political commentator known for more right-leaning views, alleged on X that Stewart was being a hypocrite.

[Muda69]

NPR's Uri Berliner Has Shown That DEI Is About Punishing Heresy: https://reason.com/2024/04/17/nprs-uri-berliner-has-shown-that-dei-is-about-punishing-heresy/

Quote

Uri Berliner, a long-time editor at National Public Radio (NPR), has resigned from the media organization.

His saga began last week after he published an essay for Bari Weiss' The Free Press in which he criticized creeping liberal groupthink at his place of employment. Many NPR employees were furious that he would "torch his workplace," though Berliner's piece carefully noted that he still believes the outlet is important and should continue to receive government funding.

For writing about his own outlet without seeking permission from his bosses, Berliner was suspended for five days without pay. But ultimately, he has chosen to resign.

"I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay," he said, referencing statements made by NPR CEO Katherine Maher—whose considerable history of tweeting woke nonsense is now under public scrutiny as well.

And he is quite correct. Berliner's article for Weiss concludes with this thought: "What's notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview. And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity."

Berliner cited Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and coverage of the lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins as coverage areas where NPR's bias in favor of the progressive, establishment Democratic Party perspective led the outlet astray. A media company that did not completely dismiss non-progressive opinions out of hands might have fared better.

The absence of viewpoint diversity at NPR should be no surprise, however, when its CEO apparently believes that ideological diversity is a "dog whistle for anti-feminist, anti-POC stories." For Maher, diversity involves "race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, geography"—everything except diversity of thought.

 

And Maher is not alone. Some 50 of Berliner's colleagues signed a letter to Maher demanding that she enforce NPR's current editorial line by weaponizing all available tools at her disposal.

"Staff, many from marginalized backgrounds, have pushed for internal policy changes through mechanisms like the [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] accountability committee, sharing of affinity group guidelines, and an ad-hoc content review group," they wrote. Elsewhere in the letter they put the term diversity of viewpoints in scare quotes.

It certainly does not sound like the DEI accountability committee works to broaden NPR's ideological perspective. On the contrary, the employees who are obsessed with DEI seem to care first and foremost about rooting out anti-DEI heresy.

Now Berliner is not a victim of cancel culture: Most journalistic organizations would exercise some disciplinary authority over an employee who publicly discussed internal company policies without prior approval. But there should be little question that he accurately described a real problem at a (regrettably taxpayer-funded) media outlet. The acronym DEI ostensibly stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion—and the public is learning precisely what those terms really mean.

Indeed they are.

 

[Muda69]

'A Failed Medical School': How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA: https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-racial-preferences-supposedly-outlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Quote

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles's David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

 

Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.

So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee's meeting.

Their reservations were not well-received.

When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

"Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate's scores shouldn't matter, she continued,  because "we need people like this in the medical school."

Even before the Supreme Court's landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. "We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants," the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "This is troubling."

"I wondered," the official added, "if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion."

Since Lucero took over medical school admissions in June 2020, several of her colleagues have asked the same question. In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university's Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a "failed medical school," said one former member of the admissions staff. "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it."

This story is based on written correspondence between UCLA officials, internal data on student performance, and interviews with eight professors at the medical school—six of whom have worked with or under Lucero on medical student and residency admissions.

Together, they provide an unprecedented account of how racial preferences, outlawed in California since 1996, have nonetheless continued, upending academic standards at one of the top medical schools in the country. The school has consequently taken a hit in the rankings and seen a sharp rise in the number of students failing basic standardized tests, raising concerns about their clinical competence.

"I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," a member of the admissions committee told the Free Beacon. "People get in and they struggle."

It is almost unheard of for admissions officials to go public, even anonymously, and provide a window into confidential deliberations, much less to accuse their colleagues of breaking the law or lowering standards. They've agreed to come forward anyway, several officials told the Free Beacon, because the results of Lucero's push for diversity have been so alarming.

"I wouldn't normally talk to a reporter," a UCLA faculty member said. "But there's no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school."

Within three years of Lucero's hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.

Those tests, known as shelf exams, which are typically taken at the end of each clinical rotation, measure basic medical knowledge and play a pivotal role in residency applications. Though only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA, having increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020, according to internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

That uptick coincided with a steep drop in the number of Asian matriculants and tracks the subjective impressions of faculty who say that students have never been more poorly prepared.

One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don't know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients.

"I don't know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors," the professor said. "Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students."

And for those who've seen the competency crisis up close, double standards in admissions are a big part of the problem. "All the normal criteria for getting into medical school only apply to people of certain races," an admissions officer said. "For other people, those criteria are completely disregarded."

Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA's anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.

The bar for underrepresented minorities is "as low as you could possibly imagine," one committee member told the Free Beacon. "It completely disregards grades and achievements."

Lucero did not respond to a request for comment.

Several officials said that they support holistic admissions and don't believe test scores should be judged in isolation. The problem, as they see it, is that the committee is not just weighing academic merit against community service or considering how much time a given student had to study for the MCAT. For certain applicants, they say, hardship and community service seem to be the only things that matter to the majority of the committee's 20-30 members, many of whom were handpicked by Lucero, according to people familiar with the selection process.

"We were always outnumbered," an admissions officer told the Free Beacon, referring to committee members who expressed concern about low grades. "Other people would get upset when we brought up GPA."

Lucero hasn't been kind to dissenters. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, six people who've worked with her described a pattern of racially charged incidents that has dispirited officials and pushed some of them to resign from the committee.

She has lashed out at officials who question the qualifications of minority candidates, five sources said, suggesting naysayers are "privileged," implying that they are racist, and subjecting them to diversity training sessions.

After a Native American applicant was rejected in 2021, for example, Lucero chewed out the committee and made members sit through a two-hour lecture on Native history delivered by her own sister, according to three people familiar with the incident. No applications were reviewed that day, an official present for the lecture said.

In the anesthesiology department, where Lucero helps rank applicants to the department's residency program, she has rebuffed calls to blind the race of candidates, telling colleagues in a January 2023 email that, despite California's ban on racial preferences, "we are not required to blind any information."

That alone could get UCLA in legal trouble, according to Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that outlawed affirmative action nationwide.

Asking for information about an applicant's race when "no lawful use can be made of it" is "presumptively illegal," Mortara said. "You can't have evidence of overt discrimination like this and not have someone come forward" as a plaintiff.

Lucero has even advocated moving candidates up or down the residency rank list based on race. At a meeting in February 2022, according to two people present, Lucero demanded that a highly qualified white male be knocked down several spots because, as she put it, "we have too many of his kind" already. She also told doctors who voiced concern that they had no right to an opinion because they were "not BIPOC," sources said, and insisted that a Hispanic applicant who had performed poorly on her anesthesiology rotation in medical school should be bumped up. Neither candidate was ultimately moved.

Lucero's comments from the meeting were flagged in an email to UCLA's Discrimination Prevention Office, which has received several complaints about her since 2023, emails show. The office has declined to act on those complaints on the grounds that they aren't "serious enough" to merit an investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The Discrimination Prevention Office did not respond to a request for comment.

The focus on racial diversity has coincided with a dramatic shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the medical school, where the number of Asian matriculants fell by almost a third between 2019 and 2022, according to publicly available data. No other elite medical school in California saw a similar decline.

As the demographics of UCLA have changed, the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected.

Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline, per internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

"UCLA still produces some very good graduates," one professor said. "But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified."

The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA's decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add more time for research and community service. That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.

First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in "Structural Racism and Health Equity," a required class that covers topics like "fatphobia," has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review. They spend an additional seven hours a week in "Foundations of Practice," which includes units on "interpersonal communication skills" and, according to one medical student, basically "tells us how to be a good person." The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics.

"This has been a colossal failure," one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. "The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations."

Nearly a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams, data from the school show, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone a different test, the Step 2 licensing exam, that is typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs.

Around 20 percent of UCLA students have not taken Step 2 by January of their fourth year, according to the data. Ten percent have not even taken the more basic Step 1—an "extremely high number," one professor said, that will force many students to extend medical school.

"It's a combination of a bad curriculum and bad selection," another professor said, referring to the admissions process. Some students are accepted with GPAs so low "they shouldn't even be applying."

UCLA did not respond to a request for comment.

As medical schools around the country adjust to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ban, the experience of UCLA offers a preview of how administrators may skirt the law and devise public-spirited excuses for violating it.

Lucero has told the admissions committee that each class should "represent" the "diversity" of California, including its remote and rural areas, so that graduating students will return to their hometowns and beef up the medical infrastructure there, officials say.

Race is rarely mentioned outright, and unlike the committee for anesthesiology residents, the committee for students does not see the race or ethnicity of applicants.

Instead, officials say, Lucero uses proxies like zip codes and euphemisms like "disadvantaged" to shut down criticism of unqualified candidates, citing a finding from the Association of American Medical Colleges that, technically, most students with below-average MCATs make it to their second year of medical school. How well they do after that point goes undiscussed and undisclosed.

"We have asked for metrics on how these folks actually do," one committee member said. "None of that is ever divulged to us."

Update 05/24/24, 9:20 a.m: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that a fourth of UCLA medical students failed three or more shelf exams in 2021. The story has been updated to reflect that a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams.

The dumbing down of the medical practice, all in the name of DEI.

 

[swordfish]

Another episode of DEI (potentially making a situation worse than it already was).  SF noticed the gals on the SS team that they seemed so much shorter than the guys AND shorter than the Principle.  One was having trouble finding her holster, one actually ducked BEHIND the former President for a second (which is a violation of protocol that will most likely cost her job during post incident review) before moving in. It just seemed they were in over their heads given the gravity of the situation.  Only one gal seemed to have it together during this, but wasn't near the former President until he arrived closer to the egress vehicle.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/16/us-news/trump-flanked-by-horde-of-male-secret-service-agents-during-rnc-a-stark-difference-from-deadly-rally/

Trump flanked by horde of male Secret Service agents during RNC — a stark difference from deadly rally

By 

Social Links forEmily Crane

Published July 16, 2024, 9:49 a.m. ET

 

Former President Donald Trump was flanked by a horde of male Secret Service agents as he arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — a stark contrast to the security team protecting him during the assassination attempt.

Nearly a dozen burly male agents were spotted surrounding Trump in tight formation as he made an appearance at the GOP convention’s opening night Monday.

No female agents could be seen close to him, according to various clips and photos making the rounds on social media.

It marked a dramatic change from the security detail protecting Trump at the campaign rally in Butler, Pa., when a sniper opened fire — grazing him in the ear.

In that instance, three female agents were among those who could be seen immediately swarming the ex-president and whisking him off stage.

3

US Secret Service agents surround the scene after the shooting.AP

It comes after the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, vowed the agency would “adapt our operations as necessary in order to ensure the highest level of safety and security” for both the RNC and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.

Cheatle, who has faced growing calls to resign in the wake of the assassination attempt, also insisted that “changes” had already been implemented to ensure Trump’s “continued protection for the convention and the remainder of the campaign.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if the beefed-up male detail was among those changes.

 

Some on social media were quick to hail the boost in testosterone, claiming they’d be able to better protect the former commander-in-chief.

“This makes sense, Biology gives no f–ks to your opinions. This is a better way to protect the man,” one user tweeted.
 

Another added, “Trump’s new secret service team is all MEN now. During the assassination attempt, women agents were seen fumbling with holsters, hiding behind Trump, and generally being inept. Is security or the military really a good place for women?”

Both Cheatle and her agency have come under intense scrutiny following Trump’s brush with death on stage at a campaign rally.

Critics have argued that Cheatle, a 28-year Secret Service veteran, has focused too much on woke “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives — including declaring her intention to make sure the department was 30% women by 2030 — at the expense of security.

In the aftermath of the shooting, former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker told The Post that the three female agents assigned to Trump’s security detail that day were clearly in over their heads when the bullets started flying.

“The women I saw up there with the president — they looked like they were running in circles. One didn’t know how to holster, the other one didn’t seem to know what to do, and another one seemed not to be able to find her holster,” he said.

“DEI is one thing. Competence and effectiveness is another, and I saw DEI out there.”

[Muda69]

California School Punishes First-Grader for a Drawing, Sparking Federal Lawsuit: https://reason.com/2024/08/09/california-school-punishes-first-grader-for-a-drawing-sparking-federal-lawsuit/?itm_source=parsely-api

Quote

A California first-grader was punished for a drawing she made at school, resulting in a federal lawsuit that probes whether the First Amendment extends to the first-grade classroom.

In March 2021, the elementary school student, referenced in legal filings as "B.B.," drew a sketch depicting several individuals of different races, representing "three classmates and herself holding hands," the family's complaint states. Above the drawing, B.B. wrote "Black Lives Mater" [sic] with the words "any life" transcribed below the slogan.

B.B. then gave the drawing to one of her classmates, who is black, in an attempt (as she later testified) to comfort her classmate.

The words any life are, of course, similar to the phrase, "All Lives Matter," which became a controversial retort to the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

That similarity—whether the first-grader was aware of it or not—was soon to land B.B. in hot water. The same day she made the drawing, B.B. was told by the school's principal, Jesus Becerra, that her drawing was "inappropriate" and, allegedly, "racist." (The parties dispute whether Becerra told B.B. that the drawing was "racist." The defense alleges that B.B.'s testimony on the subject is inconsistent.)

 

B.B. was forced to apologize to her classmate, prohibited from drawing any more pictures in school, and prevented from going to recess for two weeks.

According to court documents reviewed by Reason, B.B. and her mother, Chelsea Boyle, filed a series of complaints against the Capistrano Unified School District alleging a First Amendment violation.

"For more than 100 years the Supreme Court has recognized that children retain their civil rights when in school," Caleb Trotter, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which is representing the family, tells Reason. "Just as a public school can't punish a child for refusing to pledge to and salute the American flag, Capistrano Unified school officials could not punish B.B. for innocently straying from race-focused orthodoxy."

In February of this year, district court judge David O. Carter ruled in favor of the defendants, giving "great weight to the fact that the students involved were in first grade." PLF has appealed the decision, and the case will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. A spokesperson for PLF tells Reason that the case will likely be set for oral argument sometime in 2025.

Judge Carter admitted in his opinion granting summary judgment that "B.B.'s intentions were innocent" but noted that the relevant Supreme Court case law, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), "does not focus on the speaker's intentions."

Rather, Tinker held that, while First Amendment protections generally extend to public schools, each case turns on whether the speech in question would "significantly interfere with the discipline needed for the school to function."

This area of case law is "notoriously vague," says Barry McDonald, a law professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. "In the Tinker case, the Supreme Court asserted that student speech is protected unless it is substantially disruptive of the educational process or invades the rights of other students," McDonald tells Reason. "The Supreme Court has never clarified what the latter phrase means, and lower courts have struggled to say what it means."

This ambiguity has created confusion as courts have struggled to define the limits of educational speech protections. Did B.B.'s drawing disrupt the classroom? Did it constitute the "invasion of the rights of others" as laid out in Tinker? How much does her age factor into the equation? And perhaps most importantly: How much discretion should courts give schools to make these determinations? The 9th Circuit will be tasked with answering these questions—and more—when it hears the case in 2025. Trotter, the PLF attorney, said last month in response to Carter's granting of summary judgment: "As absurd as this case is, if that decision is allowed to stand…it is a precedent."

"We are aware of the current media attention regarding this matter," says a spokesperson for the Capistrano Unified School District. "The District disputes the version of events being circulated in the media and we look forward to resolving this case through the proper legal channels."

Should be an interesting case.  IMHO it's clear that B.B. was punished by a government entity for practicing their First Amendment right.

 

[Muda69]

University of Michigan Spent $250 Million on DEI, Made Students Unhappier: https://reason.com/2024/10/16/dei-new-york-times-michigan-university-students/

Quote

While other educational institutions pulled back on their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the University of Michigan doubled down, spending nearly $250 million since 2016 on employees and programming that fill this ever-expanding niche.

Some 241 employees of the university work in DEI offices or have one of those key words—diversity, equity, or inclusion—in their job titles, according to the American Enterprise Institute's Mark Perry. Each and every university department, unit, and office must have a DEI action plan. This constitutes perhaps the largest DEI bureaucracy of any public university, according to an exhaustive review by The New York Times.

The verdict? Spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless hours, specifically designing plans to make the campus more equitable, diverse, tolerant, and affirming of minority students…backfired utterly.

"In a survey released in late 2022, students and faculty members across the board reported a less positive campus climate than at the program's start and less of a sense of belonging," notes The Times in its wildly negative review of the university's DEI initiatives. "Students were less likely to interact with people of a different race or religion or with different politics—the exact kind of engagement D.E.I. programs, in theory, are meant to foster."

Indeed, The Times finds that race and gender-based grievances have actually increased, with students filing more complaints than ever before.

"Instead of improving students' ability to engage with one another across their differences, Michigan's D.E.I. expansion has coincided with an explosion in campus conflict over race and gender," writes The Times. "Everyday campus complaints and academic disagreements are now cast as crises of inclusion and harm."

These results might come as a surprise to supporters of DEI programs, though the program's staunchest backers tend to be people who are paid to do such work themselves and thus have a financial incentive to defend DEI irrespective of the lack of evidence that it solves problems. The reality is actually not very complicated. However, hiring an army of bureaucrats to respond to, investigate, and adjudicate trivial disputes and hurt feelings that tangentially involve privilege and status will inevitably exacerbate tensions. When students have to work things out themselves, they are more likely to do so. When they can appeal to a vast network of authority figures—embedded in literally every facet of the school, possessed of a mandate to root out offensive behavior—more of them will choose that option.

It's a tremendous waste of money, and one that worsens the climate for free expression on campus without actually improving race or gender relations. One hopes that other institutions will pay attention to such an exorbitant failure—and kudos to The Times for noticing it.

Yep, a colossal waste of money, and human capital.

 

[swordfish]

So the left is now making it sound like President Elect Trump is "reinstating" or "changing" the Senate rules to get his cabinet appointments done.  Below is the number of recess appointments made by Clinton, Bush and Obama in case anyone is wondering.  DJT is just ensuring that IF or potentially when the Democrats decide to make it difficult to approve one or more of his picks, he can get his cabinet completed.

https://www.vox.com/politics/384356/trump-recess-appointments-explained-senate-confirmation-thune-scott-cornyn-cabinet

President-elect Donald Trump is pushing for the next Senate majority leader to allow recess appointments, which would allow him to install some officials without Senate confirmation.

Typically, the Senate must approve presidential nominations for high-level posts, including cabinet positions, ambassadorships, and inspector general jobs, in a process outlined in the US Constitution. This procedure is meant to be a check on presidential power — a way of ensuring officials directly elected by citizens can guard against the appointment of unqualified or corrupt personnel.

The Constitution, however, also allows for “recess appointments,” a provision that aims to prevent prolonged government vacancies by allowing the president to install officials without Senate approval while Congress is not in session.

Using such recess appointments, Trump would be able to appoint whoever he’d like without giving the Senate the opportunity to question or object to the pick. Critics of the practice note that it increases the risk of unqualified, corrupt, or ideological appointees filling government posts. It also significantly expands presidential power.

Though recess appointments have been used in the past by presidents of both parties, in recent years, the Senate has avoided going to extended recesses, blocking presidents from making any appointments in senators’ absence. 

Reinstating recess appointments “would essentially negate one of the Senate’s main roles in governance, which is to vet presidential nominations for high-level positions,” Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, told Vox. “It would, if the Repblicans in the Senate were willing to go along with it, represent sort of an abdication; they would be simply giving up the power that’s afforded them.”

Trump injected his demand into the fierce race to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell as the leader of the Senate, which will be under GOP control next session thanks to the results of last week’s election. Trump largely stayed out of that contest while on the campaign trail, but he waded into it on Sunday, writing on X, “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!)”

The three candidates for the position — Sens. John Thune (South Dakota), John Cornyn (Texas), and Rick Scott (Florida) — quickly expressed support for Trump’s demand. Scott, the underdog in the race who is also the closest Trump ally of the three, was the most explicit in his endorsement of the plan, writing “100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible,” on X.

https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R42329.html

Under the Constitution, the President and the Senate share the power to make appointments to high-level politically appointed positions in the federal government. The Constitution also empowers the President unilaterally to make a temporary appointment to such a position if it is vacant and the Senate is in recess. Such an appointment, termed a recess appointment, expires at the end of the following session of the Senate. This report identifies recess appointments by President Barack Obama. The report discusses these appointments in the context of recess appointment authorities and practices generally, and it provides related statistics. Congressional actions to prevent recess appointments are also discussed.

President Obama made 32 recess appointments, all to full-time positions. During his presidency, President William J. Clinton made 139 recess appointments, 95 to full-time positions and 44 to part-time positions. President George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments, 99 to full-time positions and 72 to part-time positions.

Six of President Obama’s recess appointments were made during recesses between Congresses or between sessions of Congress (intersession recess appointments). The remaining 26 were made during recesses within sessions of Congress (intrasession recess appointments).

In each of the 32 instances in which President Obama made a recess appointment, the individual also was nominated to the position to which he or she was appointed. In all of these cases, a related nomination to the position preceded the recess appointment. In 20 of the 32 cases, the Senate later confirmed the nominee to the position to which he or she had been recess appointed. The nominations of the 12 remaining recess appointees were either returned to, or withdrawn by, the President.

Beginning in the 110th Congress, the Senate periodically used pro forma sessions to prevent the occurrence of a recess of more than three days. There appears to have been an expectation that this scheduling would block the President from making recess appointments, based on an argument that an absence of the Senate of three days or less would not constitute a “recess” long enough to permit the use of this authority.

In January 2012, President Obama made four recess appointments during a three-day recess between pro forma sessions of the Senate on January 3 and January 6, 2012, a period that was generally considered too short to permit recess appointments. The recess during which the President made the appointments was part of a period of Senate absence that, absent the pro forma sessions, would have constituted an intrasession adjournment of 10 days or longer.

In an opinion regarding the lawfulness of these appointments, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice argued that “the President may determine that pro forma sessions at which no business is to be conducted do not interrupt a Senate recess for the purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause.” The U.S. Supreme Court later concluded otherwise in a case regarding three of the four appointments. It held that, for purposes of the Clause, “the Senate is in session when it says it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.” The three recess appointments at issue were found to be constitutionally invalid.

 

 

 

 

[swordfish]

Delaware has elected a male identifying as female (transexual) to Congress, and he/she is blaming Speaker Johnson for "the effort to distract from the real issues" .......

Personally I would prefer not to see MTG "come to blows" with him/her.....

https://nypost.com/2024/11/20/us-news/transgender-people-banned-from-capitol-bathrooms-that-match-their-gender-identity-house-speaker-johnson-declares/

House Speaker Mike Johnson declared Wednesday that women’s facilities in the Capitol complex are reserved for biological females, as Congress is poised to swear in its first openly transgender rep.

“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement.

“It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol,” he added. “Women deserve women’s only spaces.”

The speaker later told reporters that “like all House policy, it’s enforceable” and contended that “we’re not anti-anyone, we’re pro-woman” with the policy.

The speaker’s announcement comes in response to controversy among House Republican lawmakers over transgender Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who represents the First State’s at-large district.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them,” McBride, who was born a man and identifies as a woman, responded in a statement on X.

“This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days, as I’ve remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January,” added the 34-year-old incoming lawmaker.

Back in 2016, McBride publicly crowed about flouting a policy restricting transgender access to women’s bathrooms.

“Here I am in a NC women’s restroom that I’m barred from being in. Stop this. We are good people. #ThisIsTransgender, McBride wrote on X at the time with a selfie inside the bathroom.

President-elect Donald Trump indicated that same year that Caitlyn Jenner would be allowed to use women’s bathrooms at Trump Tower.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) both publicly and privately demanded that women’s facilities at the Capitol be reserved for biological females.

She has been backed up by multiple female Republican lawmakers such as far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Greene has even threatened to come to blows with McBride if they had an encounter in any women’s facility.

“He’s a man. He’s a biological male. So he is not allowed to use our women’s restrooms, our women’s gym, our locker rooms and spaces that are specified for women,” Greene told reporters this week. “He’s got plenty of places he can go.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) blasted Republicans this week for harping on the transgender bathroom issue.

“This is the lesson you’ve drawn from the election in November … that you want to bully a member of Congress?” Jeffries moaned during a press conference Tuesday.

Mace has drafted two resolutions to safeguard women’s facilities — one that did so in the Capitol complex and a second she announced Wednesday that applies to federal offices.

“Oh you thought threatening me would silence me? No. I just doubled down and filed a new bill to protect women and girls across the entire country on all federal property everywhere,” she proclaimed on X Wednesday.

 

[Muda69]

Modern Academe Has Corrupted the Media (And Pretty Much Everything Else): https://mises.org/mises-wire/modern-academe-has-corrupted-media-and-pretty-much-everything-else

Quote

In August 2006, I was deeply involved in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case. It hadn’t taken long to realize that the entire case was built by a prosecutor who was willing to do whatever necessary to take the case to trial to win an election (in large part to be able to pay off his campaign debts and earn another $15,000 a year in pension pay) and mollify the local political radicals. Whether any of the charges were true seemed to be an afterthought, as people were expected to believe them no matter what the evidence might have been.

(The accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum, recently went on a podcast and admitted that she fabricated the entire story. While a few conservative outlets reported it, the mainstream media, including the New York Times, which had aggressively promoted the case, ignored Mangum’s admission.)

As a criminal case, nothing pointed to guilt, as the forensic evidence, the timelines, and medical examinations of the alleged victim were strong enough to ensure an acquittal in all but Stalin’s infamous Show Trials. Yet, as I checked the New York Times the morning of August 25, 2006, there was an article claiming that the prosecution’s evidence was much stronger than most people had admitted and that the players’ defense team had been cherry-picking the evidence.

Given what we knew about the evidence at that time, the NYT’s article was stunning. Here was the self-proclaimed “Newspaper of Record” claiming that, in the final analysis, the kind of evidence that the newspaper historically had championed as proof of innocence suddenly didn’t matter. After the case totally fell apart (as it should have all along) the NYT patted itself on the back for its truly atrocious coverage. That also is not surprising. After all, the newspaper even managed to get Peter Neufeld—founder of the Innocence Project—to insinuate that the lack of DNA evidence in the lacrosse case was irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of the accused.

Fast forward to the aftermath of the recent presidential election, in which the legacy news media almost unanimously had declared Democrat Kamala Harris leading in the polls, something that was a surprise to the Harris campaign itself. The internal polling by her campaign always showed her either behind or briefly tied with Donald Trump.

Given the politics driving the modern media these days, the results are not surprising. The Harris campaign had every reason to see things as they really were, given her supporters were trying to help her win. The external polling, on the other hand, was led by modern media types who have been living at best in a fantasy world for much of their lives. People who live their entire lives in bubbles should not be expected to provide anything insightful about those who operate in the real world.

The connection between these two situations is modern American higher education, which has influenced journalism for many years and, in the process, has taken a profession made up of hard-nosed realists and turned them into something unrecognizable to anyone who understands basic logic. In the days of Henry Hazlitt and H.L. Mencken, journalists tended to be, at best, high school graduates who had writing skills and a nose for news. Long before there were journalism schools on college campuses, there were newspapers staffed by people who knew something about the underside of life and who were scornful of the fantasy worlds created by elite minds.

Today’s “journalists”—and especially those at entities like the New York Times—are much more likely to be products of higher education, and, in the case of the NYT, graduates from among the most elite institutions in the country like Yale, Harvard, or Duke. Moreover, the vast majority of these writers are likely to be ideologically concentrated on the left and live and work in so-called blue enclaves like New York City and the West Coast where the online journalism flourishes:

The online media, liberated from printing presses and local ad bases, has been free to form clusters, piggyback-style, on the industries and government that it covers. New York is home to most business coverage because of the size of the business and banking community there. Likewise, national political reporting has concentrated in Washington and grown apace with the federal government. Entertainment and cultural reporting has bunched in New York and Los Angeles, where those businesses are strong.

The result?…you don’t need to be a Republican campaign strategist to grasp just how far the “media bubble” has drifted from the average American experience. Newspaper jobs are far more evenly scattered across the country, including the deep red parts. But as those vanish, it’s internet jobs that are driving whatever growth there is in media—and those fall almost entirely in places that are dense, blue and right in the bubble.

Today’s elite journalists overwhelmingly hold political and social views that are reflective of what is happening in higher education, and it hardly is a new phenomenon. In the Duke case, members of the Duke faculty rushed to judgment, declaring the players to be guilty and calling on the university to make huge changes in how it governed campus culture. Unfortunately, much of the media coverage of that case differed little from the Duke faculty response.

Anyone who has spent much time in the academic world knows that most campuses are home to leftist narratives: Capitalism is oppressive and creates poverty; women are always oppressed; America is a hopelessly racist country built on the backs of black slaves; a state-run economy would be more just than private enterprise; if the state controlled healthcare, then we could have unlimited, free medical coverage; and so on.

For a long time, people believed that college campuses were bubbles that held to leftist narratives, but that they would be contained there. However, that clearly has not been the case, especially as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement has migrated from higher education to the corporate world, and, of course, government.

How it infected the business world should be no surprise. As one who taught in MBA programs for more than 20 years, the anti-business ethos has long been a staple of the academic business curriculum. Students in MBA programs have been taught for decades that businesses need to answer to “stakeholders,” which really has meant little more than trying to appeal to anti-business activists. Budding entrepreneurs are taught that seeking after profits is the pursuit of greed and that their efforts should be turned toward social goals.

Not surprisingly, people who disagree are pushing back against the poisonous ideologies coming from higher education. And—not surprisingly—those in higher education who have been permitted to run amok see this pushback as a national emergency. The American Association of University Professors, in responding to changes in state colleges and universities in Florida (which came about as a result of pushback against DEI), had this hysterical statement:

In December, the AAUP released the final report of the Special Committee on Academic Freedom and Florida. Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System provides an in-depth review of a pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis. The report reaffirms and expands on the findings of the committee’s May 2023 preliminary report, chief among them that academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities face an ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history, which, if sustained, threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with dire implications for the entire country. (emphasis mine)

(In reading this statement, one is reminded of Otter’s infamous speech before the Faber College Student Court in the movie “Animal House.”)

One doubts seriously that the United States of America faces dire implications because Marxist professors are not given full control of higher education in Florida—or anywhere else. For that matter, as one who has been in higher education for more than 30 years, the bubble that is much of that world is not something we wish to export to our general society, and when those advocates succeed, we get disasters like the Duke Lacrosse Case or “journalism” that is little more than political propaganda in which advocates try to turn reality upside down.

Lest one think I exaggerate about the hysteria that the left has created on college campuses, this account from Brown University should remind us of the idiocy that has become the American university. When libertarian Wendy McElroy participated in a debate at Brown on the subject of sexual assault, university officials responded, according to the New York Times, by setting up a “safe space” for those traumatized by McElroy’s presence at Brown:

The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.

Brown, of course, is attended by some of the most privileged young people in the world and it is ridiculous to claim that the presence of a libertarian blogger (who has written for this page) places the lives of young women there in peril. But that is the world that not only exists at Brown and other elite colleges and universities, but also in many of our other institutions such as government, business, and the non-profits that seem to be gaining in influence.

There is nothing wrong with pushing back against hard-left agendas and the upside-down world leftist advocates wish to impose upon the rest of us. One hopes we can reverse some of the worst excesses before leftists in higher education are able to corrupt what is left of our body politic.