As a woman, I am continually flabbergasted by this administration’s policies against women. Title IX is a bedrock for us, for student athletes. They do not care for us or represent us.
The gist of that policy amounts to the claim that Due Process does not apply to male students. It's flagrantly unConstitutional, given that the consequences of being accused can be severe.
What makes, or made, this country different is that we have RIGHTS: the right to confront our accusers, the right to a speedy and fair trial, the right to not be treated in a discriminatory way, etc. It would seem most University Presidents now could not pass a basic Civics course.
As Bruce Miller pointed out, the roots of due process in English Common Law go all the way back to the Magna Carta, the aim of which was to prevent King John from engaging in pure despotism.
I think they know exactly what they are doing. Most D’s do not believe white males will vote for them in any large numbers so this is just another attempt to divide the country and hope a few more progressive females will overlook the sports part of their policy and focus on getting even with white males. This is the policy that has railroaded a number of white males out of colleges around the country by eliminating their constitutional rights using executive fiat.
It will not just be white males who will be railroaded. A trans woman can claim sexual assault following a minor confrontation in a women’s locker room (even if nothing really occurred) and see ‘her’ assailant punished without due process.
The Party is not just after white males, just like the Nazi’s were not just after Jews.
Another point about Columbia closing classes. There are 8,832 undergrads at Columbia and the administration instead of having the Marxist protestors arrested and removed they punish the majority of the tuition paying students by closing the campus.
These far left administrators have no backbone. If I were a student at the left wing snake pit, I would sue the living daylights out of Columbia.
It is run by far left spinless assholes. Make them pay for their spinless non-actions!
On another topic covered in today's FP article, Columbia's video classes:
Columbia has caved (agrees with the campus rioters) by closing on-campus classrooms in favor of video classes.
The rioters must be popping Champaign corks over this win.
In my humble opinion, Columbia should have allowed the National Guad round up all of these commie swine, arrested them and kicked them out of Columbia and permanently expelled them.
We need harsher laws on rioters. If you are in a group of rioters, five years in a supper max prison, no parole.
Define a rioter as anyone who disrupts the flow of traffic, harasses anybody, occupies a building or destroy property or doesn't have a marching/gathering permit.
Last Friday, Megyn Kelly gave this epic 10 min rant on Biden rollback of Title IX and danger to women/girls, have a listen here (she starts into Title IX at 2:45):
These rollbacks were done by Dept. of Education agency fiat. So, this will be challenged in the court. How many peckers in bra's will our girls in locker rooms have to be traumatized with, in the meantime...
I don’t think it’s a case of not understanding, but another case of they don’t care. In this case they don’t care about due process or the rights of young men. What matters to them is to chase votes - in this case they believe that doing this will motivate more women to vote for them. The #MeToo movement’s influence on the Democratic strategists is still significant. Biden and his campaign seek, yet again, to divide the country further to gain votes. They calculate that number of young men who they may lose by this justified by the gain of young women.
So there's an interesting thing that is happening. After being knocked off-balance for a while, the feminists are back to doing what they always do: blame heterosexual white men for everything. According to the women's groups now, the whole trans-athlete thing is a conspiracy by Duh Patriarchy to divide the women's movement. Every straight white man is responsible.
So the feminists have once again succeeded in labeling their would-be allies as enemies. I did support the feminist cause regarding trans athletes. Now, I'm not sure I care one way or the other.
"The Biden administration doesn’t have a clue what due process is nor do they care." So true. What they care about is votes. This is vote-buying from progressive feminists who also don't know or care what due process is, just like the student loan "bailouts" are vote-buying from young adults.
It is not only "unconstitutional" but it is so blatantly and idiotically destructive of due process that it removes the rudimentary due process rights that were wrested from the despotic King John in the Magna Carta. That's how truly repressive and Soviet are these progressive Democrats.
The irony, of course, is that being a typical left wing drone, who is on board with everything that is the Cause Du Jour on that campus, will offer no protection. They will eat their own.
Nobody safe anywhere: this is the Democrat mantra. This is their "Progress". This the "brave new world" they want for all of us.
I missed that. There is so much batshit insanity going on that I lose track of all its threads. It would seem that WWAND is the principle: what would a nut job do? If a nut job would do it, the Biden Administration is pushing it. And if it helps anyone who has not declared themselves a victim of some sort, they oppose it.
Certain feminists are fighting. Several are fighting the same battles they fought back in the 1970s. The women from the Yale Rowing team spring to mind.
Sharron Davies in the UK is leading the fight and has forced many international bodies to rethink. Read her book Unfair Play which explains why she is doing it.
Catlin (Bruce)Jenner also agrees with Davies's stance.
There are a lot of women fighting against it. But they are usually women who have already been cancelled for defying the Leftists in some other way, so they lack the power to do much more than shout about it on Twitter.
Yes and no. For example, the international sports organizations are starting to come around on the grounds of fairness and safety. It does have to be done internationally because elite sport is international.
Many current sportswomen do not want to speak up because their livelihoods depend in part on sponsorship. Not that women's teams etc have ever received as much sponsorships as men's. It is good to see several new sportswear companies such as https://www.xx-xyathletics.com/ (started by the former Levis CEO) dedicated to standing up for women's sports. Hopefully they will be able to provide a counter balance in time to some of the giant concerns.
Has Caitlin Clark been asked yet about her position on "trans" women (males) in women's sports? She just signed a $28 million deal with Nike. Her answer will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know on the issue.
I think there are a lot of women who will SAY their are ok with Trans being in women's sports (like the coach from the team Catlin lost to). But I suspect many of them are afraid of saying what they really think and don't want to lose their job or spot on their various teams.
To all: Can we all just stop saying trans women? They ARE NOT women.That is language that they have invented, and expect everyone to use. Please read your 1984 novel again. Can we just use plain descriptive language like "men who think they are women". Or men who have gender dysphoria? If we do this, then we also don't have to say "biological women". Think about term - it's just dumb.
Some (many?) of them are APG's or afflicted with 'Autogynephilia', defined as a male's propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. Means, they put on a skirt and get an erection. Difference now is they can walk into women's locker rooms and be legally protected from getting off. Sick stuff.
Thank you. Language capture precedes policy capture. As far as I will go is "trans-identified males." They are not and never will be female. Whatever the motivation -- kindness or idiocy -- ceding language on this front has caused a great deal of harm by allowing activists to frame the discussion. Sadly, many mainstream media organizations have shilled for them by adopting their verbiage.
They were the first to push back on the sports front and still gets no recognition for being humongously brave to stick their necks out when it was frightening to speak out against anything trans.
Excellent to know about them as well. It is about consumers deciding to support sport brands which support women's sports for biological females and the only way to do that is by word of mouth.
Angel Reece has recently tweeted, "Protect women's sports." My guess is that Caitlin Clark, whom I admire, won't take a stand that might adversely affect her $28M Nike deal. If she does, my admiration will increase exponentially.
As a 72 year old British man with a sport-loving wife and two sporty adult daughters, Sharron is a hero in my book as are the rest of the ladies in "Fair Play for Women".
Catlin Jenner and Daley Thomson - both Olympic gold medallists who've supported women's sport - are, similarly, heroes on this side of the Atlantic.
As for me, I wear my "Save Women's Sport" T shirt on our weekly Parkruns and when out training. I know that it may not make much difference but at least it shows that I care.
I think wearing something like that is a bigger deal than you realize. I feel that there are quite a few issues in our country that most of the population agree with, but the media has told everyone they are minority positions, so people feel alienated. And being worried about be ostracized, people keep quiet. So seeing your shirt may make someone feel like they are not alone and may one day empower them to speak up as well.
You're spot on! SO many people are afraid to speak up and don't realize how many would agree with them if they did. We need to start speaking up for sanity and common sense so we can get our country back.
Thanks for the support, Litr8r. We do indeed need our countries back and I intend to continue wearing the shirt. I hope you're right that others may follow suit but my experience over 60 years in British society is that people generally don't get fired into any action until it's way past too late. Then they wonder why no-one did anything to stop it ...
Thank you for your commen and support. It can feel daunting to go to an event of, say, 400 runners where I know no-one and wear the shirt which I know might cause some opposition but, at the end of the day, I imagine what my father would have said to me - "If you won't do what you know is right, you have no right to anybody's respect! Act like a man - wear the bloody thing!"
Excellent that you wear that. I know that the former marathoner Mara Yamauchi is v involved in trying to make Park Run understand that women want a level playing field whether it is elite or a 'non-competitive' activity like ParkRun.
Yes, Mara is definately in the protest group. The main issue with Parkrun is that they pretend that it isn't a race when it manifestly is one! At 73, I'm beaten by almost everyone, but I still race to try to beat my previous best time. We all have different targets and decide on them ourselves.
For some people, it is a magnificent achievement to walk 5km and they get support and applause that hopefully makes them want to come back next week.
For the faster, younger runners, their times can be used as part of their training schedules and the male/female definition used is important for that as well as for the age-related scores that we all get for every run to allow us to compare across age bands and sexes.
On this basis, I always come lower down the order than those I go with but I keep going back for more - over 200 times now - and, most importantly, I can still run over 10km without a rest part way round which is the real point of the whole exercise, of course!
Good luck to you, Mike. From my vantage point (I live in China) it seems like England is losing its battle against tyranny... The English people seem less and less interested in being free and instead have chosen to simply bankrupt themselves by doubling down on putting all of their hopes in the state. And the less said about Scotland, the better...
Riley Gaines is another fighter. The current administration is doing this because they follow the money and, subsequently, the power. There are alot of people behind this agenda with a great deal of resources. It's that simple.
Yes I agree about Riley Gaines and the old adage 'follow the money' is apt.
There is also this strong belief in bikini medicine -- basically that men and women are the same except for the parts covered by a bikini. It is only since 2016 that biological sex must be taken into consideration when people do medical research. Some of that research is in sports medicine (and is proving that biological sex does matter in sport, surprise, surprise). But this notion of some sort of parity (and therefore women should just work harder) does seem to persist.
Fair Play for Women started because of rugby -- which is where I first learned about the problem. Rugby is a game I played at college in the 1980s. Therefore I knew there were solid reasons you do not want women playing a contact sport against men.
It seems so painfully obvious that our physiologies are different in so many ways. Rugby, a very contact, physical sport is but one of many examples. It doesn't mean men are better as humans. It just means they're bigger (in general) and stronger. I don't get the mental gymnastics necessary to reason around these clear facts.
Check out how Kelly Robinson (President of Human Rights Campaign) dodging Ted Cruz and John Kennedy congressional questioning on sex/gender and women in sports. This video posted yesterday and hearing on 4/22, I believe. This is "maximum" mental gymnastics.
I'd like to throw in a bit of a curve ball here which I think may be of interest. I am a member of a native american tribe which plays a sport called stickball, similar to lacrosse only traditionally it was far more violent. It was called the 'little war' back in the day because players could be severely injured or even killed. According to our oral history, in ancient times women use to play stickball with and against the men, but at a point far back in time women were outlawed from playing. Why you might ask. Well because women players were so violent they killed and severely injured far too many other players. When a woman is in a potentially deadly contact sport with a man it's not going to be just a game to her. She is going to go for the jugular and try to take him out as quickly as possible. She cannot afford to mess around because he is so much bigger and stronger. So my ancestors would have fixed this whole men invading women's sports thing by ganging up and taking him down hard and fast and not worrying about his survival. I'll betcha
every single one of those pretend women/men jocks would leave women's sports so damn fast there would be a trail of smokin hot skid marks. So maybe we need to reverse the narrative that these pretend women/men are endangering the real women/girls and instead point out that it is extremely dangerous and not conducive to the continued health and well being of the pretend women/men jocks to play in the same games as the real women and girls.
So the women ganged up to collectively punish specific men? That does not surprise me. Generally if you go back far enough, you will come up with a practical reason why laws like that were put in place.
There is a myth that women are passive and dainty creatures...I blame the Georgians who really invented the cult of the Lady. For example, Sir Walter Scott with Ivanhoe created a myth of medieval women which is at odds with the historical record. If you want to understand the why of the Salic law, look at the early 6th century Merovingian empire and what certain women were up to.
The medical evidence for the subtle differences between the two sexes is significant. This paper from 2022 which uncovered new sex linked hormones which directly affects the ways in which muscles interact https://elifesciences.org/articles/76887 This gives a bit clearer of an explanation: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220531151959.htm And as I am sure you know subtle differences can have a huge impact in sport.
When I see trans after trans snagging first place in “women’s” competitive sports, I can’t get beyond how extraordinarily deluded and narcissistic these supposed “top athletes” are. This bizarre arena is yet another storybook illustration of all the peasants standing around doing their best to look admiringly at the emperor in his new clothes so they aren’t killed. And Biden, disguised as the fashionista tailor, is really an evil overlord amusing himself with the forced obedience of his muted peasants.
The simple thing to solve this is a cheek swab test.
It is also not 'banning' but ensuring fair competition. An open -- anyone can compete and a biological female category. Biological female being defined as the absence of the Y chromosome. A cheek swab test (non invasive) tests for the Y. It means that unscrupulous trainers can't go to v poor areas of the world where medicine is not as advanced and proclaim men suffering from some genital abnormality as being a woman either.
And I do agree with you about the Emperor's New Clothes and the Spiral of Silence. Where Biden fits in, I have no idea but I suspect he believes wholeheartedly in the bikini medicine fallacy. I understand why the fallacy developed (think thalidomide) but it was wrong. I read a long time ago that Mao was one of the people who really pushed the whole 'women are not different from men' as he wanted women to work in the fields. There are distinct and subtle differences -- sports is one place where biological sex matters.
".....recently - in a certain kind of feminist journalism - I keep coming across warm-hearted acknowledgements that Masculinity and Femininity are complementary polarities in any sane conception of The Good Life. Acknowledgements that the relationship between a man and a woman has the potential to be the finest fruit that life has to offer. And that when things go wrong, they are often better understood as resulting from a kind of Faustian tango between the sexes than as a simple case of one sex always doing wrong by the other......"
One thing I think people forget is that many families have traditionally been organized as matriarchies. If you look at the Ottoman Turks, the Kosem Sultana often held power because by the time her son inherited, he was normally mad... even though one might think being in a harem, she'd be prevented from exercising that power.
The interplay is far more complex than most strategic essentialists want to admit.
You do need both -- masculine and feminine. I also think the rise of the corporation shifted that balance in ways which we struggle to understand.
There has been an erasure of powerful women (particularly powerful women with sons) and thus some of their achievements get forgotten. For example I Magnin's (a long time SF department store sadly defunct/taken over by Macy's) was founded by a woman Mary Ann Magnin who ran it until her sons could take over.
Julie Bindel, Janice Raymond, Meghan Murphy, Kara Dansky, Martina Navratilova, and on and on and on. I'm really tired of hearing "Where are all the feminists?" You actually have to go read and follow them. Perhaps start with the legal briefs filed by Dansky in almost every single "trans" case. They aren't going to come to your breakfast table and spoon feed you the news on what they are doing, especially when the male and female misogynists try and block their work. I could say "Where are all the men?" in reference to the lack of due process on campus, after all the founding fathers fought for those rights. I will tell you both a male (Trump) and a female (Betsy DeVos) are there, but some just want to keep blaming one group (men) or another (women), instead of the group "scumbags," composed of both males and females.
You are both correct, there are feminists who are doing this, but the bulk of so-called feminist organizations and women's rights organizations are not really doing the same work and I think that is what most people generally mean.
Then they are not really feminist organizations. No surprise as I can remember the 60's and 70's how the misogynists were able to turn "feminist" into a dirty word to be despised. Many girls and women would be quick to say they were for women's rights, but "I'm not a feminist." Now it's changed to not worrying about using the label "feminist," making it meaningless and doing no work for women's rights. Many are fully behind Big Trans and work for special privileges for the worst kind of male. They are filled with those women who hold males on a pedestal and worship males. Feminists like males (and some even love a few males), but there's no male worship.
Actual feminists (not the woke performative kind) are fighting this. Most people still aren't aware but legacy feminist organizations like NOW have all gone woke. They don't fight for women's rights anymore. They're Men's Rights Activists for men who call themselves women. Look to new crop of women's orgs like Women's Liberation Front, Women's Declaration International, and the conservative women led Independence Forum which has said they're filing a lawsuit against Biden for changing Title IX to deprive women of their rights.
Spot on. Add the ACLU and the National Center for Lesbian Rights to organizations that once stood for females and now shill for woke gender ideologues.
Thank you for bringing this up and got it upvoted to top comment. I can't believe Oliver intentionally omitted this part in talking about Title IX and chose to talk about the due process instead. He just revealed himself to be completely the same as the liberal "feminist" soyboys. What an asshole.
QX, are you JUST NOW seeing / realizing Oliver Weisman is a dishonest, flaming WOKE Progressive Democrat??
DO NOT EXPECT HIM TO “Do Better” or be honest in his reporting! Remember, omission is the same as a lie, because a decent journalist doesn’t omit pertinent information!
Olly has proved he is an activist, propagandist for the Left, no better than the rest of the MSM + he is now in Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome!
I highly suspect he is only going to get more radical in his reporting as we get closer to the November election.
I know he's liberal. I see people complaining about him being liberal every week and I don't disagree. I just don't care if journalists are liberal or conservative as long as they do their job and report honestly. They're entitled to their politics personally imo. This Title IX reporting he did today however was absolutely dishonest. It absolutely was woke MSM trash to intentionally not mention the actual travesty of the Biden new rule but instead spent paragraphs talking about the side show (problematic as the side show was).
They have transitioned to trans activists. I have lived through much of modern feminism. I have never understood the plan or goal. And this #method shat is infantilization of women. It rose out of prosecutions of child abuse where words of very young children were deemed reliable evidence of abuse sometimes with little or no corroboration. Now we accept allegations from women decades later. It is unseemly. If you are woman, hear me roar, roar at the time.
The other day there was a middle school girls Shot Put team that refused to compete because the other team had a transgender male on it. We start seeing this at HS/College level this whole thing Ends.
Women's rights only extend to abortion. (Not sure of that if guys start getting PG) That's the bedrock of the D party. After that, women are no longer defined and therefore have no specific rights. It's a stupid policy, but the D party is the party that was historically against women's rights to vote and supported segregation. So their track record is there for all to see. Trouble is, people are one topic voters - Abortion.
Democrats only care about about ‘abortion’ in so far as it stirs up young and old Democrat women to vote. That’s all. It’s the Democrats’ campaign strategy. Rev them up and we’ll win. Unfortunately, it’s also a display of how obtuse and one-note American liberal women are today.
CC, and (of course) how obtuse Republican fanatics are (examples: Arkansas, Arizona) until they realise it could cost them votes. Then, all their high principles go out the window.
Right, and Thefp should be writing about how the Biden Administration is removing girls/women as a legal category. This is a bigger issue than at what week and where "Pregnant People" might get abortions.
Oliver is being a total ass to bring up Biden's change to Title IX and not even mention the real travesty is that it dismantles everything it was designed to give women equal rights. Yesterday Maureen Dowd, today this. I really don't know why Bari hired him.
Biden and the dems have managed to twist and weaponize Title IX to be used to attack both men and women. We could undermine the dems attacks if men and women stand together.
In my imagination, all the old feminists like me show up on campus to support an accused male when he has his due process rights destroyed. Not in support of guilt or innocence, but in support of due process for all. I also imagine men showing up and asking women to clear a locker room so they can go in and surround a male intruder or show up and heckle a male in a female athletic event. That is my vision.
I believe there's a way to do this. I haven't yet published on substack, but there might be a way to use substack to notify people to show up. Males accused of sexual assault on campus can notify me, I verify, and then I announce a date to show up and demand he gets due process. Women can notify when a male has invaded a locker room and normal men can show up, declare female identity, and then go in and stare at the misogynist.
So many comments here presume that left-wing people have principles and are now betraying them.
By definition, Leftism is the absence of principles. It is tribalism defended with sophistry, and that sophistry often consists of pretending to have principles.
It's not a joke. Ask yourself whether ANY left-wing outrage over ANY "injustice" would still be there if the races or genders involved were swapped.
Couldn't agree more with Sydney about Biden's disregard for female athletics (and all female single-sex spaces). I'm a former high school and college athlete, lesbian and no longer a lifelong Democrat.
Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) and Independent Women's Forum are a great example of how liberals and conservatives are working together to challenge Biden's efforts to gut historical sex-based protections for girls and women in favor of "gender identity." I highly recommend viewing this recent panel discussion on implications of the administration's "rewrite" of Title IX; speakers include Riley Gaines and other NCAA athletes, as well as hardworking women from both sides of the aisle making common cause: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr_gv7_n_eY
Biden has withheld release of the provision that specifically preferences males who want to compete on female teams, but there's no doubt it's coming, as his administration consistently champions trans-identified males over females. He's just being craven in advance of the election. He knows his stance on letting males trespass female sports -- which most Americans see as outrageous, even if they don't comprehend other consequences of gender ideology -- will lose him votes. I hope what he's already done is sufficient to achieve that.
This is simply not true. What you, and people like you fail to understand is that the Democratic Party represents "All Women" and so, that means all people. You can't write things like "as a woman" anymore because it is not a thing. I mean hell, even a genius like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson can't define what a woman really is. It is like trying to define "God" or something like that... The very word "woman" is disinformation. We are all "people" (and even that is "problematic"... other primates should have the same rights as us!)
Trust the Democrats. Bari Weiss does. She votes for them. You should too. They know what is best for you. You are not "you" you are "us". Embrace the collective. Combat "disinformation". Get on board. Hate Trump.
Embrace the two-minute hate... get into it... You hate Trump, you hate Emmanuel Goldstein... Trump... Goldstein... Trump... embrace the hate... you can do it... just "do better"... hate Trump...
Honestly? I think Donald Trump is the more feminist candidate at the moment. I won't vote for him, and say what you will about him, and it's probably all true but....at least he knows the difference between a boy and a girl.
Title IX is not about athletics per se. It was just applied pretty effectively in the women's athletics arena. Pun intended. But while I am appalled at the exploitation thereof by allegedly trans athletes THIS article gives me pause. If a male can be falsely accused with no opportunity to defend himself (no due course available) is it unreasonable to seek to deny maleness?
If I had boys, I would not send them to a school filled with left wing idiots. They would go State schools in a conservative State.
This is a cliche, but how is it that left wing people break everything they touch, then lie and call it progress? Adulthood is in part about owning mistakes. It is about sincerity. It is about improving the mind, and improving the world. Why does this never happen once this zombifying virus takes hold? Thereafter it is roughly equal measures BS, patronizing moralistic postures, and steady decay in everything.
Trump is innocent with respect to all the charges in all of his trials. The current one in New York, as I understand it, is about campaign finance violations. The FEC already looked at it and found no wrong doing. The whole thing is a cooked up fraud that should embarass any lawyers still capable of embarassment.
And lets not forget that Hillary operated a server that itself was illegal, that plainly was intended to avoid compliance with the Federal Records Act (for the seemingly obvious reason that she was conducting illegal transactions), then deleted 40,000 emails, ran Bleechbit on her servers, and physically smashed both her hard drives and cell phones, to make any investigation impossible. This AFTER all this was subpoenaed by Congress.
If you do not understand that we have a two tiered system of "justice"--which really amounts to two tiers of injustice, in which one set of people is not charged for things they did do, and another IS charged for things they did not do--then all I can say is I assume you are wrong about nearly everything in your personal life too. I pity those around you, because you are out of touch with the currents of Life itself. None of this is complicated.
We did not push our kids to go to college, partly because they would have had to fund their own education (we are too poor to fund it ourselves), and partly because going back to college for our degrees (and amassing a huge amount of student debt in the process) did not give us the employment boost we expected.
Our oldest son supports a wife and child (and a mortgage) on his wages at a factory. We had suggested that he might consider trade school, but there was no particular trade that appealed to him. He fully recognizes that he works simply to be able to have the funds to live and do the things he really cares about.
Our younger son--who pondered an engineering degree in his teens, but decided against it--accumulated all the duel-enrollment credits he could in high school. Then he got TWO associate's degrees at our local community college, paying for them with Pell Grants and his wages as a security guard. He worked for five years as a First Aid attendant at the factory where my husband is employed, gaining a lot of experience dealing with the paperwork involved with employee health issues and Workman's Comp. He used that to get an assistant HR director position at a high-end assisted living facility. He, too, supports a wife and mortgage on his wages.
Our youngest daughter has never wanted to be anything except an artist. We encouraged her to seek a degree in animation, but the program at our community college (which was expressly designed as a feeder for a local animation studio) subjected her to things in her general education classes that she didn't want to be subjected to (despite her overall Woke-ish attitudes). So she's floated around to different jobs (but always worked hard to support herself). She currently works in an art store and lives with her bf (who is in college, studying computer programming, with a focus on game design).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that college isn't essential. There are other paths.
My grandson went through union electrician apprenticeship program (where else can a 19 year old get paid, learn a skill, and receive awesome benefits?). His wife is a stay-at-home mom to their child. They just bought their second house.
It's not only blue collar professions. I'm a self-taught programmer. And I have several colleagues who are the same. I taught myself, at night, after working a full day. It cost me $0 and took one year.
IMO college is mostly a scam, excellent educations are available now online for a fraction of the cost in dollars and time.
We also told our kids that college was not essential, and that if they did go to college, they needed to know why they were going and what they hoped to accomplish before making that investment. They both started at the community college while still in high school and finished at an economical state school. They both now work for the government in their chosen paths. Their careers have not suffered one bit for the "low brow" education, and they have virtually no debt compared to their Ivy League co-workers.
There ARE other paths, Celia, but these spoiled, fragile snowflakes NEED college, in order to have “safe spaces” to be treated like the Prima donnas their parents (apparently) raised/ allowed them to think they are.
Where else can they go to be pampered after High School? Mommies basements?!
The going rate for Electricians around here seems to be about $30-$35/hour. That's not bad money for this area. And it's largely devoid of office politics. With overtime, you can get close to six figures without too much trouble. A lot of these guys (and a few gals) live quite well.
“This is a cliche, but how is it that left wing people break everything they touch, then lie and call it progress?”
Liberalism is a mental disorder…and it seems to get worse each day. Far left democrats are pushing immortality down our throats and down the throats of children, which is as immoral as it gets. Who would’ve ever thought girls in 2024 would need to be looking out for their safety in a locker room, or had to compete against boys? If “traditional democrats” didn’t like what was going on, they wouldn’t be voting for it. If you’re voting for Biden in November, you’re voting far-left.
If you’re voting for Biden again, and he “wins” again, America is doomed. And I am not being an alarmist saying this. I am a realist with 71 years of experience.
Seeing what the Democrat Party has DEVOLVED into, should scare the holy hell out of Americans!
IT IS NOT THE PARTY of your grandparents, or parents! It is NOT the Party for the Blacks, Jews or Asians! IT IS NOT A PARTY FOR FREE THINKING AMERICANS, who value our History, Constitution, or Laws.
Do your homework! Being a Liberal Democrat meant accepting differences. Today’s WOKE Progressive Democrats align with the Far Right Fringe KKK! You heard me correctly!
Progressive aren’t about “accepting differences” rather they apply labels + censure anyone who dares to speak out against their WOKE narratives!
And, if you think they are just targeting against Republicans and Independents, look how they will destroy and eat their own!
I do not care whether you vote for Trump, or RFK Jr. (although his VP choice concerns me!), YOU MUST NOT VOTE FOR BIDEN!
In all honesty, in my humble opinion, regardless of who you vote for, or against, I fear Biden will “win like he did in 2020”
I fully agree with you. Schumer and now Pelosi both have called for Netanyahu to resign. It is no longer a recognizable party. I’m borderline losing respect for friends who don’t see the danger we’re in and will vote for Biden/Obama again.
"If I had boys, I would not send them to a school filled with left wing idiots. They would go State schools in a conservative State."
The Title IX regulations apply to state schools in conservative states. Your hypothetical son could have exactly the same experience - not told what the charges are, not allowed to question witnesses, not given sufficient details to present an alibi - regardless of where he hypothetically went to college.
True, but the outcomes depend on the Administrators and students in question; and at what I would actually tend to call sane places negative outcomes would be vastly less likely. The pool of people would not be as littered with unhinged nut jobs, both in the student body, and the buildings where the adults were supposed to work and operate.
Unsaint: For once, I disagree with you - on this one point only.
This rewrite of Title IX is designed to bring ALL colleges and secondary education under the woke equity umbrella. Any “offensive” outcomes - offensive to the accusers - can be, and will be, challenged as violations of Title IX.
There will be no safe havens for young men - or any young person who comes up against this madness.
I did not even graduate from high school and my husband never went to college. We neither exalt nor despise the value of formal education. (We both worked hard in the Alaska fishing industry and are mostly retired at this point.) We are very happily paying for our daughter to go to Hillsdale College. The quality of education she is receiving and of relationships she is making there are both worth every penny and more. :)
Another college Biden administration doesn't like is conservative for-profit institute Grand Canyon University. I had the pleasure of watching live GCU's Men's BB Team during March Madness. Thier fan base of kids were spectacular. From my circle of friends and acquaintances I've only heard good things about GCU. Biden is fining GCU and I hope they fight back and win: https://apnews.com/article/grand-canyon-university-fine-college-6728cbbc74912d96f1cf1c192780ae96
True, but all this will depend largely on the mental health of the people present. As someone who lived and worked and went to school in California, but has lived in a conservative State for many years, I can say with certainty there are different average levels of mental health. The percentages of crazy, and the extent of the crazy, does vary place to place; so, too, presumably, would the willingness to pursue false charges against innocent, or largely innocent, men.
I wish I could believe that, but I read the article in TFP about liberal parents sending their offspring to Southern and Midwestern Universities to escape the insanity their politics created. Several lamented that these ‘safe’ places didn’t reflect their values.
Living in a small NC town, I hear - almost every day - some transplanted New Yorker or Californian condemn local conservatism. They chose to move here, but they yearn for the chaos they left behind.
They are leaving an unsafe, chaotic, expensive place for a safer, more accepting area and you are concerned about the values of the folks in your new location? That's just idiotic.
It’s true. My daughter goes to a private college in Michigan. Her dad went to visit her and they took a quick weekend trip to Ann Arbor and toured a museum in the Biological Sciences Building at the University of Michigan. There were tampons in the men’s restrooms.
That tends to be true, but they are also the children of their parents, and if their parents are reasonably sane, then they will at least start out reasonably sane. How crazy they get will depend largely on the general atmosphere and how perceptive and individuated they are, or can become.
If it makes you feel better, the Biden changes to Title IX now make it so when a "transwoman" (ie a man) harasses, stalks, or sexually assault a female student, or exposes himself to her and leer at her in the bathroom or locker room, and the female student reports him, she too will be accused for sexually harassing the man (ie the "transwoman") especially if she "misgenders" him and says "he" was stalking or sexually harassing her, and the female student can be suspended and expelled without due process or recourse.
So under the new rules your theoretical son can absolve himself by immediately identifying as a woman and counter accuse the female student for sexual harassment. The female students however will have no recourse or due process against any male student who calls himself a girl or a woman. This rule gives male students superpower and immunity as long as he identifies as a woman.
If your reading of the Bidenized Title IX is correct (and I suspect it is 100% so), we have reached a new height of insanity and legally-mandated bull hockey.
Unsaint, wait for the jury verdicts. And if your rejoinder to that is: “the prosecutions (all four) were politically motivated stitch-ups”, then you do not believe in the American justice system nor in jury trials. I happen to believe Trump is guilty in all four but like you, I am not in the courtroom. He has defense counsel doing their best to make all these go away - let’s wait and see. Even his lapdog Attorney General Bill Barr has said he is gone on the secret documents case. For such a self-declared genius, that was beyond stupid: he showed them around at his golf club; he refused to return them; and then lied about it.
Wow. Will, you are not worth my time. Am I arrogant? Maybe. Am I wrong? No, not about these cases. Should I force myself to pretend that I respect your intelligence? Maybe. Am I going to? No.
None of this is complicated. If you are confused, you are common, but common men who believe absurd things are a cliche.
Educate yourself. If you ACTUALLY understand what Trump is being charged with, and what the basis of those charges are, and you STILL believe this trial is legitimate in any way, then you are an imbecile. I am choosing for the time being to view you merely as ignorant. Ignorant is how the press likes Americans, and they usually get exactly what they want from all those too lazy to do their own homework.
It's broadly true that almost all homeless people don't want to be homeless, but in the US, most homeless people also don't want to take the steps needed not to be homeless. Attaining short term-shelter, employment, and housing IS possible in most US cities, but no one can or will force any homeless people to do any of it, and there is ALWAYS an excuse for why they don't.
No. In the US we prioritize free and low cost housing for those deemed most likely to die on the street, and these are often people who don't want to be "inside." There are a lot of homeless people who want to be housed, and can't work due to disability/old age, but they can't get housing, because they are too sane and clean. "If only I had become a drug addict, I could get housing," is something I've heard a lot of. (I work with a lot of homeless, and affordable housing providers.) But we have affordable units sitting vacant for months because they are set aside for "the most vulnerable" and those are often the people who don't want to get off the street.
“most homeless people also don't want to take the steps needed not to be homeless.”
This is an important point purposefully concealed by the homeless industry that profits from the homeless. I saw a documentary years ago in which a group of advocates took on the noble effort to improve the lives of a few homeless adults. The subjects were provided with a spartan but adequate dwelling and jobs paying enough to cover rent, food and basic essentials. In every case it was a short lived failure and each were back to their previous arrangements. It was a tremendously disappointing outcome for the advocates but it also revealed to them the problem was not a lack of resources or opportunity, but a failure to understand why someone feels more comfortable living a life we dread.
A lot of money has been squandered and squirreled away into the bank accounts of organizations only interested in keeping the cash flowing while appearing to help. They shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh well, we tried.”
That is referred to as the homeless-industrial complex. They don't do shit except leech money from government. But, they are very adept at said leeching.
I used to think like you until my kid with Asperger’s became an adult. He’d be homeless without our help. The mental health laws are atrocious. It’s a long sad story but take my word for it, the solution is not a simple one.
That one is not easy for someone - especially someone who probably has some visible issues when you look at them, spotty or no employment/education history, and likely a criminal record. Where exactly do you expect them to work? It's not 1950; there's not factories demanding labor. And in CA, we're now even replacing fast food workers with computers/AI.
emplyment isn't always easy. At the very least there's usually months of addiction and/or mental health treatment that's needed. Social support is an absolute must. The overall point I'm trying to make is no homeless in America are made to take steps towards not being homeless and are instead enabled. So the problem only continues to get worse.
CCC camps. Clean up public areas, forests, parks. Attack the kudzu problem in the SE. There’s no shortage of no-skills outdoor work that could be taken on,
What goes around comes around the High Plains were the Great American Desert in the 19th Century. There is a lot of whingeing about assisted suicide in Canada; what I think is happening is they are making room for an influx of you lot as the climate improves there! ;-) /s There is a great deal of balls wittered about climate.
Try getting that past the unions, if you get it past the bleeding hearts. Could be an element of Universal Mandatory Service, formerly known as the draft.
In 1950, virtually all factory workers were required to have a legitimate diploma from high school, proper clothing, proper grooming and hygiene, and speak and understand English. There's not a PhD today, who could qualify.
Choices have consequences; I think that more emphasis should be placed on that logical thinking of what happens as a result of that first bad choice?
There are a lot of programs to help people who want to turn their life around, AA/NA, consistently providing excuses for why they can't, rather than why they can, is the bigotry of soft expectations. I had the fortunate experience for working a LOT of menial jobs, you'd be surprised what people will pay you to do if you show up on time.
I've heard of dozens of folk living out of their cars and gainfully employed. I know of two who slept at their Mcjobs and when it came to the attention of management they got help sorting their homeless problem and in one case other staff got fired; the homeless person's work ethic preferred over bigotry.
If you are homeless outside a large city, you must go to the nearest city and wait, without shelter, until a bed becomes available.. Have you ever been to a shelter? You know shelters are temporary, right? You always have an excuse for not knowing what you are talking about.
Then demand this dope in the WH stop paying Ukraine extortion money for covering up the Biden Crime Family bribes and spend that money on more homeless shelters and mental illness hospitals.
Most importantly, do not vote him in for another 4 years!
I have and I've had immediate family who were homeless and have worked a couple jobs that had me interacting with several homeless on a near daily basis. I don't claim to be an expert and maybe should have phrased my comment to not give the impression I know everything and all the answers. I appreciate as best I can how terrible a situation homelessness is, but all my experiences speak to a population that is largely never made to take the steps needed to change their situations, which is usually what they are most in need of
I've had experience working with those who get housing and those who do not. Again, I'm not an expert, but from my limited experience those that get into housing are willing to make the commitments required by the organization and those that do not refuse. The commitments I see are have a job, do the assigned chores in the residence and attend a certain number of meetings for personal improvement. These are their choice and vary from AA, NA, faith based among others.
It's just an excuse to keep the them "out of the neighborhood." And it's also very typical of Democratic policy: "help" is only allowed to ultimately harm (lest the recipient lose the grievances that make them a blue voter). Preventing people from having housing by demanding that housing reach a better level of "dignity" is 100% on-brand for the Democrats.
And given the choice every one of the dignity advocates would run over their grandmothers to get to one of those dwellings rather than live in an encampment.
I really enjoyed how, at the end of the video, the council head quietly called out the fact that one of the detractors was, herself, a resident of an earlier apartment complex that previous detractors had objected to.
Who was that guy in Congress? Paul Ryan? Yes. He was death on aid to families with dependent children, and welfare of all kinds. Guess what. Paul's mother survived using those programs when he was a kid. That's how he was fed and housed. There's hypocrisy all around.
I wonder if part of the problem is that "the Projects" haunt the Democratic Party to this day as an example of dense low-income housing that went very, very wrong.
They don't dare to actually SAY that they're afraid of low-income housing in their own neighborhood, but they are very good at finding excuses for not allowing it.
Hollywood should take it's cue from Davis, California. There is a noted liberal columnist named Marcos Breton at the Sacramento Bee, which is a paper that is very liberal. Mr. Breton called the Davis city council, "Liberal to the point of feckless idiocy." Mr. Breton could not be argued with. Perhaps he understated the matter.
Davis has built, and continues to build, designated low-income housing units. Guess who they populate those apartments with first? They put in professors they don't pay very well, and adjunct professors who would otherwise live in tents. Once in a while they might put a PhD student in low-income housing, but UC Davis and the city are just fine with grad students pitching tents or living in their cars. In one case, a woman grad student was sleeping under a tree on the main quad. This was found by... the Occupy Marxist protesters camping on the main quad to protest injustice. The Occupy kids in their Marxist wisdom, chased her off (she was black you know, and not one of them) and even denied her the free food that anyone else could have. I know, because I saw them do this. I said something to them, and got fish-eyed stares. Clearly, I did not understand the rules of the revolution---it's about equality and goodness for all!
There is also a famous (or infamous) "freegan" (now former) grad student of UC Davis in the transportation department who learned to get by living out of dumpsters and eating from trash cans. He was interviewed by Colbert in a truly sad bit that I can't find anymore. He still wanders around town living off trash. You can see PhD students at UC Berkeley eating from trash cans sometimes too. Math PhDs have done this because math doesn't get a lot of grant money. (One reason I didn't do a PhD in math, and chose a field that gave tuition grants to grad students. Go where you're wanted, you know. But I digress.)
There are plenty of intellectually brilliant people in the Hollywood area who would qualify, and mostly they aren't riff-raff. (Though, there was that infamous Stanford grad student in math who got so frustrated with his faculty adviser that he killed him with a ball peen hammer after 19 years of work that his professor sneered at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Streleski ) These days, universities put time limits on how long a grad student can continue. After "Bang-bang Maxwell's hammer" incident, all the major universities took a close look and commanded professors to graduate students, usually after 7 years.
So. Hollywood and West Hollywood, do your damnedest to be like Davis! Universities will save you! Ben! Ben! Tell them Ben! Tell them about this bonanza. The truly dysfunctional and those that want to, they live in the ditch and the jungle until the rains come.
Yes, Ben. There are perfectly capable people who live in ditches, in homeless jungles, etcetera. Ex-cons, men on the sex offender list, men on the sex offender list who want to freely have sex with little girls and boys, retirees on a fixed income who stretch their social security by living in a ditch and getting free stuff. Women who made it by having two people, maybe 4 in a one bedroom apartment, then one or two die, or two of them lose their jobs and ... It's quite the variety pack. We call them ... riff-raff. and they don't belong in our low-income housing.
Oh, yes. And there are the crackers, cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs, psychotics and others (there are no words) people living in ditches and jungles. And many of those are meth burnouts.
Will the insanity never stop? We actually know how to take care of the homeless, educate children, foster a more peaceful world, create wealth here, build cultural strength, etc. For some reason unknown to me, we have allowed a bunch of smug, uninformed, petulant children to hijack multiple issues and solutions on a variety of topics. From Greta Whatever on climate to the California progressives to the pro Arab State Department contingent to the Trans women’s right destroyers and more, they are pushing us into multiple disasters.
Who the f-ck are these people and why do we put up with them?
My answer is to vote for the Democratic policies that created a successful world. The policies of Truman, JFK and Bill Clinton.
Of course right now those policies reside in the Trump wing of the R party. What Trump policy would not have been supported by any D up until 2008?
Assume that Democrats are intentionally collapsing the country in the name of a socialist revolution - as they explicitly said they were doing years ago - and everything makes sense!
It's not an exaggeration! Every single thing the Democratic Party does destabilizes out nation and disenfranchises the white male backbone of the country.
And this is happening as we descend into a global war with a devastated economy, wrecked by our idiotic pandemic policies. We are at war, we are losing, and the Democrats are traitors.
I guess this is what happens when you have a generation coming of age who was educated primarily on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok from the time they entered puberty or even before.
One of my relatives set up an Instagram account for her 4-year old. Everywhere he goes he is posed and photographed. Is it any wonder these children arrive at school wanting to be the star of the show?
I know many parents like this. They see it as a harmless way to share their child's life with their friends and family. Imo there are many downsides to it - the vanity aspect you referenced, not to mention giving Meta access to all this data on your innocent child and how that risk might manifest in the future.
I see it as the result of parents surrendering the raising of the children to the village. Parents ard motivated by the needs of their child(ren). The village is motivated by the needs of the collective children. The result is a lot of children who do not have their individual needs met which ultimately creates a collective of children with unmet needs. My prediction is that many of these will join the ranks of the homeless in coming decades.
The whole village thing is an interesting point because I actually feel like 21st century parents desperately need more community/village like environment, and in the absence of that are trying to create it online or something. It used to be more common for people to live in multigenerational homes or in the same neighborhood as multiple extended family members, and that type of "village" was probably enormously helpful when it came to raising families. More and more people live far away from their families of origin now and are raising their young kids almost in isolation, but feeling the need for community/village, social media becomes a kind of pathetic stand in that does more harm than good.
I have the opposite take re the internet. I think it destroyed the village as guardian of social mores. I think back in the day it was important to people to be part of their physical communities. Longtime residents were born to it. Newcomers made efforts to be part of it. They joined civic groups and churches. They interacted with their neighbors. As a result there was an informal neighborhood watch of sorts. The religious leaders knew who the problems were because their congregants shared what they knew. In that way pedophiles for example were controlled at least somewhat. If for no other reason than public shame and isolation. But the internet changed that. Those isolated people had a place to congregate and boy have they. I would argue that they are on the way to being mainstream ed. Drag queen story hours. Minor Attracted Persons. But back to the village raising the child I am not a proponent thereof. I think it takes parents, preferably two, willing to be responsible for the child. But of course community support for those parents is important. IMO too many overstresseded parents jumped on the village bandwagon and abandoned their decision making role. I do not know how anything else explains the transitioning of minors promoted at primary school level. Those schools after are the face of the village.
I think you have a fair point about the internet destroying the physical village, though it's kind of a chicken vs egg conundrum. I am not religious myself but I think there is a longing in the secular west for the community that organized religion offered, and people are trying to fill that void with other types of identities, and the internet plays a big role in that. Regarding your pedophile remark - not sure about that, the Catholic pedophile scandal took off in the 90s when the internet was a baby, social media did not yet exist, no smart phones etc.
I agree with you the village should never be a replacement for two parents committed to their children's well being - rather I see it as an add on, a wider community of people who love the children and are looking after them to some extent. This reminds me, this year I've read a number of refugee memoirs and a common theme in all of them is the loss of the large, physically close extended family they had in their home country and the feeling of isolation when they are resettled in the West. I've read accounts of refugees from North Korea, Syria, Burma, and various African countries and this theme is in all of them. As happy and relieved as the refugees are to be resettled, there is a feeling of loss and disorientation because the lifestyle is so isolated compared to what they had before. In many of these cases they lived in an apartment with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents etc - there was just always family around and a sense of love and accountability in close physical proximity. Not that I want to move to any of these war torn places by any means, but the nostalgia for community that you find in these works struck a chord with me.
We are largely in agreement. I think the Catholic thing started way before that though. For two reasons. First this is not a slam on Catholicism because it is comprised of humans and there are bad humans. For at least a millenia the village odd ducks flocked to the Church. Second people with malevolent intent will go where they can readily find victims. What better place than one where forgiveness and turning g the other cheek are doctrine?
You don’t quite understand the problem. The democrat party is the reason America is vanishing. So they will take all your rights and you will happy as a lark ( says the leftist).
Read more carefully. I said to vote for traditional D policies., not the D party of today. The D party now is so far left that Trump’s policies are now what used to be D mainstream policies. Strong border, effective but carefully used military, support for working class. Voting for Trump is voting for traditional mainstream policies. It’s not extreme as the media would have you believe.
Time to brush up on American History. Today's Republicans were yesterday's Truman-JFK-Scoop Jackson Democrats. ("Ask not what your country can do for you ...")
Yes but the evil dems have lost that pride of being American. Now they are swade by leftist ideology and its their way or the highway. They want total control and to hell with the Rights afforded to us by the Constitution. How can they screw everybody to make themselves rich, destroy the fabric of America and lie to the masses. It’s a sad state for America and control of the media, social media and almost every form of news. This extends to the education of our kids too.
Let's see, CA led by hair gel has spent between 88 and 128 billion on a high speed train and has squat so far and still needs more money. LA just passed some homeless housing construction projected to end up at a million per tiny unit. $1.7 million projected for a public toilet in SF. Who the hell even believes CA is a state that has any ability to solve any problems and their only answer is to throw money at an issue and then have a party in the high rent district to celebrate what great caring people they are. Meanwhile the taxpayer struggles more everyday and the politicians cronies get richer from these bullshit projects that are always over cost and behind schedule. The idiots that keep voting the progressives back into office deserve everything that has and will continue to happen to them. Again, You can't fix STUPID!
A GOP friend told me that the one thing he did not like about Trump was his policy to cut the federal tax credit for taxes paid to the state. His rationale is totally based on self interest, but the subsidy to support blue state expenditures I've always found shocking. I thought it was one of the best things Trump did. How do you help an addict? (blue state legislators addicted to overspending) Take away their crack!!
Getting rid of the SALT deduction is actually popular with progressives. It comes back in 2026, unless whoever in charges makes it permanent. The benefit is limited to relatively wealthy people in hi tax states (e.g., New Jersey, New York, California, etc.). They also raised the standard deduction significantly. which made the deduction beneficiaries an even smaller pool of people.
My favorite is that some states (including California) came up with ways the wealthy folks in pass through entities (S-corps and partnerships) such as law or accounting partnerships can pay their state tax through the pass-through entities, and have their federal taxable income lowered directly. This is a way better deal than a schedule A write off, since you still get the high standard deduction, plus schedule A deductions we're reduced based on income. Plus, having your taxable income reduced (instead of a deduction) means you play less in self employment tax and Obamacare taxes.
A lot of it is Cali taxpayers though. In 2021 the top 1% paid just under 50% of the taxes collected. Last year it was down to 38% which accounts for the deficit. Which they do not agree on a number for. The budget office number is nearly double the governor's number.
Has anyone disclosed from whence will come sufficient numbers of people wanting to travel between Bakersfield and LA to justify the Toonerville Trolley, much less a high-speed train on a dedicated right of way?
A high speed rail line to SF Bay Area (which was what it was supposed to be) would virtually end the commuter flights between SFO, SMF, and LAX or BUR. I suspect that is why it is languishing. Those are lucrative flights, generally crowded, and the plans make multiple flights per day.
I will be driving I-5 (and 99) to Bakersfield in a few months. Where be the tracks? I thought they were only building between Shafter and Fresno (something like that)?
My husband said it is between Bakersfield and Fresno. He added the Transit Center they built in SF was to eventually connect the bullet train. Biggest progressive labor project just to keep people working.
We drive from AZ through Tehachapi and turn north on 99. I believe the tracks go over part of 99 or else they are right beside them. A prodigious cement structure which looks abandoned. It has looked this way for years. I will ask my husband exactly where this part of the "bullet" train is. Safe travels in the valley.
I'm sure the route can be looked up on-line. I was thinking more about anything south of Bakersfield heading towards the grapevine (if that is the route?)
Imagine the perspective of young men in college today. You can be verbally accused and be severely punished with zero recourse even if it is a lie. And if you’re a female athlete you can be (essentially) sexually harassed, lose events and be humiliated by a man and you too can be expelled for speech about that. Sounds like a war on college kids to me.
"If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace."
When I was a child and my father wanted to impress upon me the inadvisability of my doing certain things -- like letting a candy wrapper fall from my fingers onto pavement -- he used the double negative for emphasis ("Don't you NEVER do that!"), assuming that to my baby ears, two no's were better than one.
The masterminds behind these university protests know to whom they are speaking: ill-educated children. But strong enough to hurl chairs at police officers.
Look at the pictures of these woke student mobs: they wouldn’t even be at these schools without D.E.I. They didn’t earn acceptance and they’re not paying tuition; most freely admit that. These “students” are only there to fulfill the diversity goal of the admins and the professors (most of whom are also unqualified, diversity hires.
Some are foreign nationals from wealthy families who pay the full load. Apparently this is higher ed's golden egg laying goose. It is why early expulsions were walked back (they had visa implications) and now toothless suspensions are given. If that.
‘Uncharacteristically for the Trump administration, her effort was thorough…’. Really, Free Press, really?! What a well written article factually laying out the most recent changes to Title 9 with a brief synopsis of its history, and then that dig of opinion looms larger than the story. Please keep opinion out of pieces so the reader can take in the substance of the piece without any bias from the author. It ruins the morning reading experience.
“Back when Obama was president, his administration made the elimination of campus sexual assault a priority—an effort led by then–Vice President Biden. It was a worthy goal.”
Worthy goal in whose opinion? The author?
And of course back then, they got the typical knee-jerk reaction from their devout liberal followers. “Oh how we love Obama…he understands that men are always the aggressors.””To hell with due process, we will just kick them out.” “No worries” said everyone and the love-struck left just went about their groveling over Obama. Young men were judged and silenced.
There will come a moment - and we may already have reached it - when ordinary people who are trying to simply care for their families and do their jobs will no longer tolerate being shamed, hectored, patronized, and sneered at. Their would-be re-educators will then be met with horse laughs and the diminution of their career prospects.
Unless power is wrested from this DEIWOKE government that moment won’t simply “ come”. They aren’t going to cede powere willingly or suddenly change their cult ideology
I fear not. That might have been true in former times where normal people were productive - literally - members of society. But capitalism has been all but destroyed in part by those who decry the notion of workers subject to evil management and our leadership -on a bipartisan basis- has reduced our formerly productive economy to a service economy. And service can and will be performed by AI. Humans will not be necessary. Thus the vision of all the dystopian fiction of recent decades will come to pass. At least if the electricity holds out.
Since these are universities we're talking about, why don't they tell students that they can protest all they want if they can pass a simple test on the history of the Middle East, the history between Israel and Hamas, the history of this particular conflict, and the nature of counter-insurrection warfare in an existential situation?
I'd like to think that there would be a lot fewer protestors. But I'm afraid that's an overly optimistic view.
It doesn’t matter to them as long as there aren’t any Jews there. After all they always leave off the part of the chant that they really mean “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free…of Jews”
There is no guaranteed free speech on college campuses. Anyone who defies university rules gets expelled and their record expunged. Like they never went there.
I like the idea of companies announcing they will not hire anyone from a college that coddles terrorists. That should make enrollment crash.
I like the idea of rich people withholding donations. The govt should too, if we had anyone with cajones in charge.
It’s time we implode these hotbeds of racism and terrorists.
Because Jews were cast out of other places, besides Poland, first. When you are a successful minority in Italy, Spain, France, etc., the majority doesn't like that and puts you on reservations 'to the east'. Poland (and Pale of Settlement) in present day Ukraine became the world's Hebrew reservation, prior to Zionist movement. Pale btw comes from the Latin word 'palus' which means 'stake'. And when you place a lot of stakes in the ground you get a fence or boundary. Which is what the Pale of Settlement was. Lots and lots of pograms against the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement and Jews had no choice but to stay around and take it. And now you know why a good amount of Ukranian's welcomed the Wehrmacht in during WW2 invasion of Russia. The people there had plenty of practice hating Hebrews and were ready to get back to it.
My husband's family emigrated from Romania in the '60s. After spending time in a Siberian prisoner camp, they fled to Israel at the first opportunity. But you know, that's really just #whiteprivilege
No doubt. Unsurprisingly, most of the people I know who believe that crap are actually privileged, and seem incapable of understanding that not everyone grew up the way they did. They also seem fundamentally ignorant of basic statistics.
Yep. Rob Henderson’s memoir really highlights that. After what he went through to get to Yale, being accused of “privilege” by a wealthy Yalie because he’s part Asian….
Sadly, this sort of thinking reminds me of my 18 year old self. If I had a time machine, one of my great temptations would be to go back in time and punch myself in the face when I was in college.
But jokes aside, imputed privilege is just part of devaluing and dehumanizing. And anyone who still bothers to study history knows where those thoughts - if seized upon by a large enough number of people - take a society. Your husband's family and my own attest to this, as do hundreds of millions of other victims of ideological regimes.
hey, good idea, but I fear if it's a written test, the "students" will use AI to pass the test, and if the test is oral, the school will be taken to court for infringing on students rights to use notes...my comment is more for humor in a very contentious situation today. I fear actual physical violence is close to occurring at the expense of our Jewish friends. take care
I can't help wondering if there is a very definite connection. The AI mess (dare I call it a scandal?) was hugely embarrassing for Google. And Google leadership--better than anyone else--knows that the AI programming was done by activist employees (they know precisely *which* activist employees).
In other words, Google is now aware that activist employees are causing active harm to the company. But until they fired people for protesting at work, I suspected that the company was willing to put up with a certain level of harm in order to main a Woke work environment. This is the first hint that...maybe not.
The B&W photo featuring a row of smiling black Nazis was peak woke. “Ok, maybe not everything needs to be diverse.” I hope they remake Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy is a transgender Asian woman and the Nazis are black.
South Park is awesome! It constantly pokes fun at woke ideas. I'm surprised it's still allowed to be on air. A breath of fresh air that always makes me laugh!
I cannot speak to the housing policies of West Hollywood, only to say after a peak income of about $160,000 a year as a lawyer, I had to cross any form of Hollywood off my affordability list. I don't think the answer is to force someone with a 5 million listing to accept $700 monthly payments from me.
In other parts of America, that begat the GRANTS PASS case argued Monday and the BOISE vs. McDonalds case the issue is NOT "NIMBYISM" or the desire to make poor people just get out of site.
Those 9th Circuit decisions have said that even an offer of a clean, safe bed and a meal is inadequate if the recipient doesn't like any of the provisions put on it ; like, "no guns, no drugs, no pit bulls." Many homeless have profound mental illness and substance abuse issues and claim that can't "be fenced in." Others demand the right to a "low barrier shelter" meaning the organizers shouldn't' be able to check for guns, knives and weapons.
I have volunteered running all night homeless shelters and while there certainly exists a real need, a significant part of the loudest are young men with no apparent physical disability, but very sure in their "right" to wave guns around, smoke fentanyl, harass women, or disregard whatever minor safety rules a shelter might have.
The justices suggesting the "campers" were ""taxpayers" looking for a place to go "stargazing" are delusional (supreme court justices used those very those words in quotes, during the argument Monday).
In my experience there are four types of homeless. 1) the philosophical descendants of old-time hobos. The housed will rarely encounter these folks unless done so voluntarily. 2) the victim of financial circumstance homeless. The circumstance can be a disastrous diagnosis and accompanying bill, a job layoff or job elimination, a divorce, etc.. These are the there but for the grace of God go I homeless. They are also the ones likely to recover unless health concerns prevent it. 3) drug abusers who are either in or well on their way to full blown addiction. These people think working people are suckers. They will lie, cheat and steal to achieve their high. They also will be in and out of jail through a revolving door that in this era of criminal justice reform is spinning ever faster. 4) the mentally ill. There is some overlap here with group 3 as some unknown percentage of mental illness is drug induced. As long as there is no involuntary commitment I see no solution to this category.
As long as there are people so warped to think that any barrier is some kind of violation of "rights" of the socially maladjusted including those 9th Circuit judges, there will never be a solution. They fail to see how absolutely cruel they are to have created this situation where homeless drug addicts are rotting and dying on the street striped of all dignity and humanity.
You need to live around these entitled addicts who refuse shelter, food, Narcan, even recovery drugs (for free) because they claim to ENJOY the "freedom" they get at the cost of the community. Many of the addicts are the ones stripping both themselves and their victims of any semblance of "dignity!
This. Yes, the *homeless* crisis in west coast cities, such as Seattle where I work, is not driven by the "one paycheck away from being on the street", it's the result of the liberalization of drug use and the as-expected descent into addiction. "Wet" housing and "no-barrier" housing are just excuses that the homeless industrial complex use to perpetuate the problem to their enrichment.
It’s Boise V Martin and the supremes were disgustingly dismissive at the time when they refused to hear the appeal from the ridiculous Ninth Circuit. NOW they decide they have to do something.
I swear, the Supreme Court goes out of their way to defy not only common sense but also to look as lazy as possible by not taking cases that they should.
I disagree with your assessment of the Court. The makeup of the Court has shifted. As a result judicial activism is no longer in vogue. As a result a non-activist court will see it's role as intervening only when a law is not being applied constitutionally. Thus it will carefully review which cases require its action. You can't have it both ways.
We really need to re-invest in State Mental Facilities. This time with proper oversight. People need help. Dems wanted these places shut down in the past (1970's) due to abuses and Republican's went right along because it 'saved money'. So, so short sighted. We are reaping the rewards of those poor decisions.
Columbia should have a mandatory semester abroad in rural Afghanistan, Yemen, and Sudan. That would enable all the protesters and the sympathetic professors and administrators to live their truth in very real terms.
Did she? I haven't yet heard her say anything that suggests she actually learned anything. Most of what she's said seems to be performative--an effort to make it sound as if she's grateful for being rescued, while quietly signaling to the Woke crowd that she definitely *doesn't* love the U.S.
“One thing that’s good about this country is our right to protest,” Griner said after the game when I asked her about the issue. “You have a right to be able to speak out, question, to challenge, and do all these things. [After] what I went through, it just means a little bit more to me now. I was literally in a cage and could not stand the way I wanted to … and a lot of other situations. Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely wanted to stand.”
The national anthem she never stood for? That’s rich.
What’s best is that Caitlin Clark is cashing in big time as the female basketballs biggest star now, I can hear the gnashing of teeth from the rest of the WNBA now.
Yup. The shitty country that gave her the opportunity to play basketball for a living. It took her being locked up in Russia for her to figure that out. Go Caitlin!
All those students protesting to demand divestment elected to attend Columbia knowing that it has investments with Israel. Why did they not select to go to a university that has already divested or never had any involvement with Israel? Seems a little hypocritical to me.
Robert Reich's Substack Note on the Columbia U shit show showed up on my Substack newsfeed and out of curiosity I went to take a look.It was like stepping into bizarro world. Bad enough Reich pretended harassment of Jewish students wasn't happening or that the protestors aren't literally saying they support Hamas and make it into some propaganda piece about free speech. The horrifying part was his large following and the top commenters all parroting him that "this isn't antisemitism" and "free speech". Free speech my ass. Where were these free speech supporters when people especially women were cancelled left and right for speaking up against their trans insanity? All of them actually think they're supporting "free expressions and debates". What debates? The toddlers protesting aren't asking for debates. Reich and his followers entirely omitted the tantrum throwers at Columbia are asking for divestment nor debates. Then it was all OMG the atrocities Israel is doing to Gaza. Why don't they even ask Hamas to surrender? Or to give up the hostages? It's all Israel wants "Genocide!!".
Can't take their "Genocide" seriously after them crying "Genocide" because of "misgendering".
I think it necessary to know what my enemies are doing and to this end subscribe to moveon.org. I'm always surprised at the bullshit Reich (hmm?) can spout off.
I'm not sure; I think he was at least a mouthpiece for it for awhile - I don't recall when he was relevant (at least in democrat circles)? My recollection was that it was founded to get Republicans to "move on" from Bill Clinton's impeachment. so that's back in 90's still.....
You are correct. It ws predecessor was started by two techies in support of Clinton but it morphed into moveon.org in and gained notoriety in Howard Dean's presidential run in 2003-4 as it demonstrated the power of online fundraising. I found this interesting
They need to divest from themselves. The ultimate hypocrisy is that they comfortably live on stolen land in an actual white colonist settler state, which of course they are fine with. I think a big element of this is a projection of guilt with Jews as the scapegoat, a tale as old as time.
Stolen land? Native Americans didn't own the land that Europeans settled and developed. Native Americans had hundreds of years to develop the land, but that was far beyond their mental acuity as they never built a road, a bridge, a building, or anything close to resembling a city. They rejected progress and refused to learn how to process food instead of hunting and gathering it.
Is this the land you would have preferred? Sorry, but you're greatly outnumbered.
Natives did not recognize the concept of private ownership of land so in that respect there was no land to steal. But the rest of your comment is disingenuous. Reliance on processed food is literally killing us because we are so far removed from the sources of our food. Native cultures lived in harmony with the land. Personally I think they were far, far more evolved than our current culture and its economic drive for more, more, more. More plastic. More planned obsolescence. More McMansions. More growth. Progress my arse. Just ever increasing demands on ever more fragile ecosystems.
I had a feeling some folks here might latch onto my "stolen land" phrasing and miss the entire point of my comment...which is not to criticize America's founders, but to point out the hypocrisy of the Pro Hamas group in condemning Israel for a "crime" (kicking out 'indigenous' people) that by their own metric, European colonizers in America committed on a greater and more violent scale. They want to wipe Israel off the map for this "sin" but give themselves the grace to continue living in on what is, by their own logic, land stolen from indigenous people by white people.
It's so infuriating. I'm reminded of the protest at Berkeley or wherever it was, can't remember, where the protestor called 911 cause she needed to change her tampon and to do so in a bathroom, would have had to leave the grounds of the "protest." You are protesting for people whom, according to you are being GENOCIDED, and you are meanwhile whining to the police that you're unsafe because you need to change a tampon.
The other point to make is that Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) make up about 60-65% of Israel's population which means it's not full of White European colonizers.
Exactly right! This is why my head starts to explode with rage when I even think about this. By their own standards America is far guiltier than Israel when it comes to the whole "white colonist settler" argument. The Jews who emigrated to Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries were racially diverse and were fleeing literal extermination, AND were returning to an ancestral homeland.
I've said this before elsewhere. If you are going to protest against a country, a war or a political situation, please educate yourself on the basics. The problems in the ME are complicated and multifactorial and some bone head college student who has been propogandized by the media and/or the BDS movement has little idea WTF they are talking about.
If you want to provide anything resembling an argument to back up your opinion I'm happy to engage. Please keep in mind we are focusing on the mindset of the Pro Hamas protestors.
At the risk of repeating myself, I got your point. It was a poor analogy because Native Americans never owned the land that was developed, unless you have some proof of ownership, like a deed or title, that the land was theirs, or is this the origin of squatters rights? In which case feel free to advance that argument.....
They're not really okay with it (at least so long as not being okay with it means doing dumb things like giving land acknowledgments, and doesn't mean doing things that have any real consequences for them).
They are okay enough to live on this land and take advantage of all that it offers, including the right to public protest. They give themselves that grace but want to wipe Israel off the map for what, in their eyes, is basically the same "crime" (colonization).
So my guess is that if the river to the sea goal were achieved and the Jews washed from Palestine all that those Jews built in the last 80 years would be distributed to the victors. This whole divestment thing is just a different take on redistribution of wealth.
You can’t cite Bill Kristol as evidence that the anti-Trump circlejerk includes people from “both sides of the aisle.” Neocons were never really “cons,” and when his Weekly Standard failed, Kristol took left-wing money to run an anti-Trump site. A true conservative would not support this administration which is drowning us in spending, debt, and wars (it’s the wars that Trump wasn’t giving Kristol).
Maybe Toobin thought he was in a circle jerk on that Zoom call then realized nobody else was spanking it with him. Everything written that includes his name should read “Jeffrey Toobin, who in 2020 masturbated on a Zoom call in full view of his colleagues…”
Can you imagine their conversations? All about Saving Our Republic and He’s Just Like Hitler. All while Biden & his band of America-hating incompetents do all the things they speculate Trump will do if they can’t steal the election again this fall.
As a woman, I am continually flabbergasted by this administration’s policies against women. Title IX is a bedrock for us, for student athletes. They do not care for us or represent us.
The gist of that policy amounts to the claim that Due Process does not apply to male students. It's flagrantly unConstitutional, given that the consequences of being accused can be severe.
What makes, or made, this country different is that we have RIGHTS: the right to confront our accusers, the right to a speedy and fair trial, the right to not be treated in a discriminatory way, etc. It would seem most University Presidents now could not pass a basic Civics course.
The Biden administration doesn’t have a clue what due process is nor do they care. It’s astonishing that so many people cannot see this.
Authoritarians loathe the idea of due process. It prevents them from doing whatever they want to whomever they want.
Beria is smiling up from Hell at the ravages of the Biden cabal.
And so is his pal Stalin.
Exactly, and that's why due process exists.
As Bruce Miller pointed out, the roots of due process in English Common Law go all the way back to the Magna Carta, the aim of which was to prevent King John from engaging in pure despotism.
Due process? You mean like someone undergoing a trial?
I think they know exactly what they are doing. Most D’s do not believe white males will vote for them in any large numbers so this is just another attempt to divide the country and hope a few more progressive females will overlook the sports part of their policy and focus on getting even with white males. This is the policy that has railroaded a number of white males out of colleges around the country by eliminating their constitutional rights using executive fiat.
It will not just be white males who will be railroaded. A trans woman can claim sexual assault following a minor confrontation in a women’s locker room (even if nothing really occurred) and see ‘her’ assailant punished without due process.
The Party is not just after white males, just like the Nazi’s were not just after Jews.
You're right and practically every professor is a Marxist hack that program students.
And that "get even" motivation is not even well founded.
Another point about Columbia closing classes. There are 8,832 undergrads at Columbia and the administration instead of having the Marxist protestors arrested and removed they punish the majority of the tuition paying students by closing the campus.
These far left administrators have no backbone. If I were a student at the left wing snake pit, I would sue the living daylights out of Columbia.
It is run by far left spinless assholes. Make them pay for their spinless non-actions!
On another topic covered in today's FP article, Columbia's video classes:
Columbia has caved (agrees with the campus rioters) by closing on-campus classrooms in favor of video classes.
The rioters must be popping Champaign corks over this win.
In my humble opinion, Columbia should have allowed the National Guad round up all of these commie swine, arrested them and kicked them out of Columbia and permanently expelled them.
We need harsher laws on rioters. If you are in a group of rioters, five years in a supper max prison, no parole.
Define a rioter as anyone who disrupts the flow of traffic, harasses anybody, occupies a building or destroy property or doesn't have a marching/gathering permit.
Put up an armed perimeter around the campus, turn off the utilities, stop food deliveries, and starve them out.
The J 6 ers are in jail.
Last Friday, Megyn Kelly gave this epic 10 min rant on Biden rollback of Title IX and danger to women/girls, have a listen here (she starts into Title IX at 2:45):
https://youtu.be/-3sxWKvtAqA?si=IxEoQ3Z-srUMQ3v4
These rollbacks were done by Dept. of Education agency fiat. So, this will be challenged in the court. How many peckers in bra's will our girls in locker rooms have to be traumatized with, in the meantime...
Not so astonishing when you consider the educational system that has delivered us to this point.
I don’t think it’s a case of not understanding, but another case of they don’t care. In this case they don’t care about due process or the rights of young men. What matters to them is to chase votes - in this case they believe that doing this will motivate more women to vote for them. The #MeToo movement’s influence on the Democratic strategists is still significant. Biden and his campaign seek, yet again, to divide the country further to gain votes. They calculate that number of young men who they may lose by this justified by the gain of young women.
So there's an interesting thing that is happening. After being knocked off-balance for a while, the feminists are back to doing what they always do: blame heterosexual white men for everything. According to the women's groups now, the whole trans-athlete thing is a conspiracy by Duh Patriarchy to divide the women's movement. Every straight white man is responsible.
So the feminists have once again succeeded in labeling their would-be allies as enemies. I did support the feminist cause regarding trans athletes. Now, I'm not sure I care one way or the other.
I think people can see it, we just don't know how to get it fixed.
I don’t think they want to fix it.
Right. Cuz, proper grammar is white supremacy.
"The Biden administration doesn’t have a clue what due process is nor do they care." So true. What they care about is votes. This is vote-buying from progressive feminists who also don't know or care what due process is, just like the student loan "bailouts" are vote-buying from young adults.
It is not only "unconstitutional" but it is so blatantly and idiotically destructive of due process that it removes the rudimentary due process rights that were wrested from the despotic King John in the Magna Carta. That's how truly repressive and Soviet are these progressive Democrats.
One by one, the freedom guaranteed in each amendment is being obliterated.
They make King George's minions seem meek by comparison. Do we have the starch again to stand on Lexington Green and face them down? I doubt it.
The irony, of course, is that being a typical left wing drone, who is on board with everything that is the Cause Du Jour on that campus, will offer no protection. They will eat their own.
Nobody safe anywhere: this is the Democrat mantra. This is their "Progress". This the "brave new world" they want for all of us.
Only lunatics would do such things. They are truly a plague on our society.
I have said forever, there is nothing progressive about the left.
Well except that they are not unlike a progressive disease. Think colorectal cancer.
I keep thinking that too. It is Star Chamber Redux. Except rather than operate in secret the Chamber is very open to anyone who dares look.
All the excesses of authoritarianism that we were taught to despise writ large by these odious progs.
You had a slightly better chance of justice in the Star Chamber.
She’s speaking of the protections for transgenders which means guys can come into our bathrooms, locker rooms, and kick our asses in sports.
I missed that. There is so much batshit insanity going on that I lose track of all its threads. It would seem that WWAND is the principle: what would a nut job do? If a nut job would do it, the Biden Administration is pushing it. And if it helps anyone who has not declared themselves a victim of some sort, they oppose it.
Well in your defense, Oliver didn't report on that aspect of the EO.
A very significant omission.
Unsaint, listen to Megyn rail against it here. It's some sick shit and so anti-women it makes my stomach turn: https://youtu.be/-3sxWKvtAqA?si=IxEoQ3Z-srUMQ3v4
It's the latest example of how gender ideology and progressive dogma are robbing women of safety, opportunities, and dignity. And it's despicable.
https://www.euphoricrecall.net/p/the-erasure-of-women
Strait white male student's need not apply.
That's been the destination for the last twenty year and N O W is selling out women for trannies.
Take a seat, it's going to be a rough ride.
I have been ranting here for over a year about the tyranny of the left. This just another example of that tyranny.
Wake up America! They are coming for all of us. If anyone on the loony left thinks I am an alarmist, tell me where I am wrong.
From the article:
"The new rules, which go into effect in August, damage due process in more ways than one:
• Accused students will lose the right to have access to all evidence gathered in the university’s Title IX investigation;
• They will lose the right to have a live hearing to adjudicate the claim against them;
• They will no longer be able to have an adviser or attorney cross-examine adverse witnesses;
• And the Biden administration has voided the basic requirement that any investigation open with a written complaint."
The ever senile Joe must be taking his cues from the Russian and Chinese legal system.
I'd argue that this EO is so breathtakingly unconstitutional that SCOTUS would bounce it 9-0. Let the lawsuits begin, this EO is tyranny.
It might be 8-1 Shane, one of them on SCOTUS doesn't know what a women is
Shane, you know I despise both parties but the Dem/Soc take the cake. First the PC/Woke tyranny and now this.
Jefferson (1787): "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
(He said it folks.... If you're not willing to pay the ultimate price--sorry 'bout that.)
The USA is over😭
Maybe.
Maybe not!!!
I’m also shocked. Where are all the feminists? Why are we allowing women to lose all they fought for in sports?
Certain feminists are fighting. Several are fighting the same battles they fought back in the 1970s. The women from the Yale Rowing team spring to mind.
Sharron Davies in the UK is leading the fight and has forced many international bodies to rethink. Read her book Unfair Play which explains why she is doing it.
Catlin (Bruce)Jenner also agrees with Davies's stance.
See boysvwomen.com (also on twitter).
There is a huge worldwide grassroots movement to protect women's sports. Unfortunately the Biden Administration have put their fingers in their ears.
There are a lot of women fighting against it. But they are usually women who have already been cancelled for defying the Leftists in some other way, so they lack the power to do much more than shout about it on Twitter.
Single women vote overwhelmingly D. Their problems are of their own making
You're not wrong.
Yes and no. For example, the international sports organizations are starting to come around on the grounds of fairness and safety. It does have to be done internationally because elite sport is international.
Many current sportswomen do not want to speak up because their livelihoods depend in part on sponsorship. Not that women's teams etc have ever received as much sponsorships as men's. It is good to see several new sportswear companies such as https://www.xx-xyathletics.com/ (started by the former Levis CEO) dedicated to standing up for women's sports. Hopefully they will be able to provide a counter balance in time to some of the giant concerns.
Has Caitlin Clark been asked yet about her position on "trans" women (males) in women's sports? She just signed a $28 million deal with Nike. Her answer will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know on the issue.
I think there are a lot of women who will SAY their are ok with Trans being in women's sports (like the coach from the team Catlin lost to). But I suspect many of them are afraid of saying what they really think and don't want to lose their job or spot on their various teams.
It was very disappointing to see her sell out to the company that put a guy in a sports bra
To all: Can we all just stop saying trans women? They ARE NOT women.That is language that they have invented, and expect everyone to use. Please read your 1984 novel again. Can we just use plain descriptive language like "men who think they are women". Or men who have gender dysphoria? If we do this, then we also don't have to say "biological women". Think about term - it's just dumb.
Mentally ill men is the most accurate.
And all who play along? Idiots
Some (many?) of them are APG's or afflicted with 'Autogynephilia', defined as a male's propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. Means, they put on a skirt and get an erection. Difference now is they can walk into women's locker rooms and be legally protected from getting off. Sick stuff.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22005209/
Thank you. Language capture precedes policy capture. As far as I will go is "trans-identified males." They are not and never will be female. Whatever the motivation -- kindness or idiocy -- ceding language on this front has caused a great deal of harm by allowing activists to frame the discussion. Sadly, many mainstream media organizations have shilled for them by adopting their verbiage.
There's also ICONs https://www.iconswomen.com.
They were the first to push back on the sports front and still gets no recognition for being humongously brave to stick their necks out when it was frightening to speak out against anything trans.
Excellent to know about them as well. It is about consumers deciding to support sport brands which support women's sports for biological females and the only way to do that is by word of mouth.
Angel Reece has recently tweeted, "Protect women's sports." My guess is that Caitlin Clark, whom I admire, won't take a stand that might adversely affect her $28M Nike deal. If she does, my admiration will increase exponentially.
I'll tell you one women who is for sure not fighting against these Title IX rollbacks and that's Nellie's favorite politician, Hillary Clinton.
Kara Dansky is probably one of the most effective with her legal briefs.
As a 72 year old British man with a sport-loving wife and two sporty adult daughters, Sharron is a hero in my book as are the rest of the ladies in "Fair Play for Women".
Catlin Jenner and Daley Thomson - both Olympic gold medallists who've supported women's sport - are, similarly, heroes on this side of the Atlantic.
As for me, I wear my "Save Women's Sport" T shirt on our weekly Parkruns and when out training. I know that it may not make much difference but at least it shows that I care.
I think wearing something like that is a bigger deal than you realize. I feel that there are quite a few issues in our country that most of the population agree with, but the media has told everyone they are minority positions, so people feel alienated. And being worried about be ostracized, people keep quiet. So seeing your shirt may make someone feel like they are not alone and may one day empower them to speak up as well.
You're spot on! SO many people are afraid to speak up and don't realize how many would agree with them if they did. We need to start speaking up for sanity and common sense so we can get our country back.
Thanks for the support, Litr8r. We do indeed need our countries back and I intend to continue wearing the shirt. I hope you're right that others may follow suit but my experience over 60 years in British society is that people generally don't get fired into any action until it's way past too late. Then they wonder why no-one did anything to stop it ...
Thank you for your commen and support. It can feel daunting to go to an event of, say, 400 runners where I know no-one and wear the shirt which I know might cause some opposition but, at the end of the day, I imagine what my father would have said to me - "If you won't do what you know is right, you have no right to anybody's respect! Act like a man - wear the bloody thing!"
Excellent that you wear that. I know that the former marathoner Mara Yamauchi is v involved in trying to make Park Run understand that women want a level playing field whether it is elite or a 'non-competitive' activity like ParkRun.
Yes, Mara is definately in the protest group. The main issue with Parkrun is that they pretend that it isn't a race when it manifestly is one! At 73, I'm beaten by almost everyone, but I still race to try to beat my previous best time. We all have different targets and decide on them ourselves.
For some people, it is a magnificent achievement to walk 5km and they get support and applause that hopefully makes them want to come back next week.
For the faster, younger runners, their times can be used as part of their training schedules and the male/female definition used is important for that as well as for the age-related scores that we all get for every run to allow us to compare across age bands and sexes.
On this basis, I always come lower down the order than those I go with but I keep going back for more - over 200 times now - and, most importantly, I can still run over 10km without a rest part way round which is the real point of the whole exercise, of course!
If you want to really help England you'll carry a gun while you wear it too... make a real statement for freedom.
Really, it would make a statement that I'm an arogant, stupid man who disrespects England, it's citizens and it's laws.
Do I really need to say that all of those are things that I strive NOT to be?!
Over here we believe in winning the argument by discussion not violence and long may it remain so.
Good luck to you, Mike. From my vantage point (I live in China) it seems like England is losing its battle against tyranny... The English people seem less and less interested in being free and instead have chosen to simply bankrupt themselves by doubling down on putting all of their hopes in the state. And the less said about Scotland, the better...
Riley Gaines is another fighter. The current administration is doing this because they follow the money and, subsequently, the power. There are alot of people behind this agenda with a great deal of resources. It's that simple.
Yes I agree about Riley Gaines and the old adage 'follow the money' is apt.
There is also this strong belief in bikini medicine -- basically that men and women are the same except for the parts covered by a bikini. It is only since 2016 that biological sex must be taken into consideration when people do medical research. Some of that research is in sports medicine (and is proving that biological sex does matter in sport, surprise, surprise). But this notion of some sort of parity (and therefore women should just work harder) does seem to persist.
Fair Play for Women started because of rugby -- which is where I first learned about the problem. Rugby is a game I played at college in the 1980s. Therefore I knew there were solid reasons you do not want women playing a contact sport against men.
It seems so painfully obvious that our physiologies are different in so many ways. Rugby, a very contact, physical sport is but one of many examples. It doesn't mean men are better as humans. It just means they're bigger (in general) and stronger. I don't get the mental gymnastics necessary to reason around these clear facts.
Check out how Kelly Robinson (President of Human Rights Campaign) dodging Ted Cruz and John Kennedy congressional questioning on sex/gender and women in sports. This video posted yesterday and hearing on 4/22, I believe. This is "maximum" mental gymnastics.
https://youtu.be/qPDHh9YCfeY?si=dMw2I1otdCH-YNhj
I'd like to throw in a bit of a curve ball here which I think may be of interest. I am a member of a native american tribe which plays a sport called stickball, similar to lacrosse only traditionally it was far more violent. It was called the 'little war' back in the day because players could be severely injured or even killed. According to our oral history, in ancient times women use to play stickball with and against the men, but at a point far back in time women were outlawed from playing. Why you might ask. Well because women players were so violent they killed and severely injured far too many other players. When a woman is in a potentially deadly contact sport with a man it's not going to be just a game to her. She is going to go for the jugular and try to take him out as quickly as possible. She cannot afford to mess around because he is so much bigger and stronger. So my ancestors would have fixed this whole men invading women's sports thing by ganging up and taking him down hard and fast and not worrying about his survival. I'll betcha
every single one of those pretend women/men jocks would leave women's sports so damn fast there would be a trail of smokin hot skid marks. So maybe we need to reverse the narrative that these pretend women/men are endangering the real women/girls and instead point out that it is extremely dangerous and not conducive to the continued health and well being of the pretend women/men jocks to play in the same games as the real women and girls.
So the women ganged up to collectively punish specific men? That does not surprise me. Generally if you go back far enough, you will come up with a practical reason why laws like that were put in place.
There is a myth that women are passive and dainty creatures...I blame the Georgians who really invented the cult of the Lady. For example, Sir Walter Scott with Ivanhoe created a myth of medieval women which is at odds with the historical record. If you want to understand the why of the Salic law, look at the early 6th century Merovingian empire and what certain women were up to.
The medical evidence for the subtle differences between the two sexes is significant. This paper from 2022 which uncovered new sex linked hormones which directly affects the ways in which muscles interact https://elifesciences.org/articles/76887 This gives a bit clearer of an explanation: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220531151959.htm And as I am sure you know subtle differences can have a huge impact in sport.
When I see trans after trans snagging first place in “women’s” competitive sports, I can’t get beyond how extraordinarily deluded and narcissistic these supposed “top athletes” are. This bizarre arena is yet another storybook illustration of all the peasants standing around doing their best to look admiringly at the emperor in his new clothes so they aren’t killed. And Biden, disguised as the fashionista tailor, is really an evil overlord amusing himself with the forced obedience of his muted peasants.
The simple thing to solve this is a cheek swab test.
It is also not 'banning' but ensuring fair competition. An open -- anyone can compete and a biological female category. Biological female being defined as the absence of the Y chromosome. A cheek swab test (non invasive) tests for the Y. It means that unscrupulous trainers can't go to v poor areas of the world where medicine is not as advanced and proclaim men suffering from some genital abnormality as being a woman either.
And I do agree with you about the Emperor's New Clothes and the Spiral of Silence. Where Biden fits in, I have no idea but I suspect he believes wholeheartedly in the bikini medicine fallacy. I understand why the fallacy developed (think thalidomide) but it was wrong. I read a long time ago that Mao was one of the people who really pushed the whole 'women are not different from men' as he wanted women to work in the fields. There are distinct and subtle differences -- sports is one place where biological sex matters.
I wrote about some feminists who are fighting the misandry madness in this piece: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance
".....recently - in a certain kind of feminist journalism - I keep coming across warm-hearted acknowledgements that Masculinity and Femininity are complementary polarities in any sane conception of The Good Life. Acknowledgements that the relationship between a man and a woman has the potential to be the finest fruit that life has to offer. And that when things go wrong, they are often better understood as resulting from a kind of Faustian tango between the sexes than as a simple case of one sex always doing wrong by the other......"
One thing I think people forget is that many families have traditionally been organized as matriarchies. If you look at the Ottoman Turks, the Kosem Sultana often held power because by the time her son inherited, he was normally mad... even though one might think being in a harem, she'd be prevented from exercising that power.
The interplay is far more complex than most strategic essentialists want to admit.
You do need both -- masculine and feminine. I also think the rise of the corporation shifted that balance in ways which we struggle to understand.
There has been an erasure of powerful women (particularly powerful women with sons) and thus some of their achievements get forgotten. For example I Magnin's (a long time SF department store sadly defunct/taken over by Macy's) was founded by a woman Mary Ann Magnin who ran it until her sons could take over.
The cult of the Lady has a lot to answer for...
Julie Bindel, Janice Raymond, Meghan Murphy, Kara Dansky, Martina Navratilova, and on and on and on. I'm really tired of hearing "Where are all the feminists?" You actually have to go read and follow them. Perhaps start with the legal briefs filed by Dansky in almost every single "trans" case. They aren't going to come to your breakfast table and spoon feed you the news on what they are doing, especially when the male and female misogynists try and block their work. I could say "Where are all the men?" in reference to the lack of due process on campus, after all the founding fathers fought for those rights. I will tell you both a male (Trump) and a female (Betsy DeVos) are there, but some just want to keep blaming one group (men) or another (women), instead of the group "scumbags," composed of both males and females.
You are both correct, there are feminists who are doing this, but the bulk of so-called feminist organizations and women's rights organizations are not really doing the same work and I think that is what most people generally mean.
Then they are not really feminist organizations. No surprise as I can remember the 60's and 70's how the misogynists were able to turn "feminist" into a dirty word to be despised. Many girls and women would be quick to say they were for women's rights, but "I'm not a feminist." Now it's changed to not worrying about using the label "feminist," making it meaningless and doing no work for women's rights. Many are fully behind Big Trans and work for special privileges for the worst kind of male. They are filled with those women who hold males on a pedestal and worship males. Feminists like males (and some even love a few males), but there's no male worship.
Yes! Add Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, JK Rowling, Abigail Shrier as part of that "on and on."
Yes!
Actual feminists (not the woke performative kind) are fighting this. Most people still aren't aware but legacy feminist organizations like NOW have all gone woke. They don't fight for women's rights anymore. They're Men's Rights Activists for men who call themselves women. Look to new crop of women's orgs like Women's Liberation Front, Women's Declaration International, and the conservative women led Independence Forum which has said they're filing a lawsuit against Biden for changing Title IX to deprive women of their rights.
Spot on. Add the ACLU and the National Center for Lesbian Rights to organizations that once stood for females and now shill for woke gender ideologues.
Exactly. Fifty years down the drain.
In college, our university had to remove several men’s programs to accommodate Title IX. What a waste and I feel for athletes on both sides.
I do too. My university had to rid itself of football with a history under one of the most famous coaches. One step forward, ten steps back.
Our male football and basketball teams fund ALL the other sports.
Same with for the NBA and WNBA. No one watches the latter.
Thank you for bringing this up and got it upvoted to top comment. I can't believe Oliver intentionally omitted this part in talking about Title IX and chose to talk about the due process instead. He just revealed himself to be completely the same as the liberal "feminist" soyboys. What an asshole.
Yeah I was thinking the same, there’s a bigger part to this story that was completely ignored.
QX, are you JUST NOW seeing / realizing Oliver Weisman is a dishonest, flaming WOKE Progressive Democrat??
DO NOT EXPECT HIM TO “Do Better” or be honest in his reporting! Remember, omission is the same as a lie, because a decent journalist doesn’t omit pertinent information!
Olly has proved he is an activist, propagandist for the Left, no better than the rest of the MSM + he is now in Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome!
I highly suspect he is only going to get more radical in his reporting as we get closer to the November election.
We are here to shine light on any and all omissions made by TFP reporters. Oliver is getting his just desserts in this comment thread.
I know he's liberal. I see people complaining about him being liberal every week and I don't disagree. I just don't care if journalists are liberal or conservative as long as they do their job and report honestly. They're entitled to their politics personally imo. This Title IX reporting he did today however was absolutely dishonest. It absolutely was woke MSM trash to intentionally not mention the actual travesty of the Biden new rule but instead spent paragraphs talking about the side show (problematic as the side show was).
It’s beyond belief
They have transitioned to trans activists. I have lived through much of modern feminism. I have never understood the plan or goal. And this #method shat is infantilization of women. It rose out of prosecutions of child abuse where words of very young children were deemed reliable evidence of abuse sometimes with little or no corroboration. Now we accept allegations from women decades later. It is unseemly. If you are woman, hear me roar, roar at the time.
NOW is a sham. It is the female arm of the Dem/Soc party and will walk lock step with them.
The other day there was a middle school girls Shot Put team that refused to compete because the other team had a transgender male on it. We start seeing this at HS/College level this whole thing Ends.
I've been saying this all along- a few times of Teams not participating, will simply change the INSANITY
Women's rights only extend to abortion. (Not sure of that if guys start getting PG) That's the bedrock of the D party. After that, women are no longer defined and therefore have no specific rights. It's a stupid policy, but the D party is the party that was historically against women's rights to vote and supported segregation. So their track record is there for all to see. Trouble is, people are one topic voters - Abortion.
Democrats only care about about ‘abortion’ in so far as it stirs up young and old Democrat women to vote. That’s all. It’s the Democrats’ campaign strategy. Rev them up and we’ll win. Unfortunately, it’s also a display of how obtuse and one-note American liberal women are today.
Democrats care only about power and the rewards it brings them.
100% this.
It’s their “Trump” card (pun intended) and they know it.
Sadly, Biden will win on this issue alone.
CC, and (of course) how obtuse Republican fanatics are (examples: Arkansas, Arizona) until they realise it could cost them votes. Then, all their high principles go out the window.
For God's sake don't tell the Democrats that trans-women can't get abortions.
It's the transmen who want abortions.
😂😂😂
Pathetic that a major political party rests it’s campaign on the backs of dead babies
Well said. 👏👏
Right, and Thefp should be writing about how the Biden Administration is removing girls/women as a legal category. This is a bigger issue than at what week and where "Pregnant People" might get abortions.
Exactly, Terry Brown!
Oliver is being a total ass to bring up Biden's change to Title IX and not even mention the real travesty is that it dismantles everything it was designed to give women equal rights. Yesterday Maureen Dowd, today this. I really don't know why Bari hired him.
There are women who work at TFP and they vote for Dims.
Biden and the dems have managed to twist and weaponize Title IX to be used to attack both men and women. We could undermine the dems attacks if men and women stand together.
Yes! Come together right now.
In my imagination, all the old feminists like me show up on campus to support an accused male when he has his due process rights destroyed. Not in support of guilt or innocence, but in support of due process for all. I also imagine men showing up and asking women to clear a locker room so they can go in and surround a male intruder or show up and heckle a male in a female athletic event. That is my vision.
I believe there's a way to do this. I haven't yet published on substack, but there might be a way to use substack to notify people to show up. Males accused of sexual assault on campus can notify me, I verify, and then I announce a date to show up and demand he gets due process. Women can notify when a male has invaded a locker room and normal men can show up, declare female identity, and then go in and stare at the misogynist.
So many comments here presume that left-wing people have principles and are now betraying them.
By definition, Leftism is the absence of principles. It is tribalism defended with sophistry, and that sophistry often consists of pretending to have principles.
It's not a joke. Ask yourself whether ANY left-wing outrage over ANY "injustice" would still be there if the races or genders involved were swapped.
There's your answer.
Accused and detained J6 participants saw this coming.
Couldn't agree more with Sydney about Biden's disregard for female athletics (and all female single-sex spaces). I'm a former high school and college athlete, lesbian and no longer a lifelong Democrat.
Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) and Independent Women's Forum are a great example of how liberals and conservatives are working together to challenge Biden's efforts to gut historical sex-based protections for girls and women in favor of "gender identity." I highly recommend viewing this recent panel discussion on implications of the administration's "rewrite" of Title IX; speakers include Riley Gaines and other NCAA athletes, as well as hardworking women from both sides of the aisle making common cause: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr_gv7_n_eY
Biden has withheld release of the provision that specifically preferences males who want to compete on female teams, but there's no doubt it's coming, as his administration consistently champions trans-identified males over females. He's just being craven in advance of the election. He knows his stance on letting males trespass female sports -- which most Americans see as outrageous, even if they don't comprehend other consequences of gender ideology -- will lose him votes. I hope what he's already done is sufficient to achieve that.
Fantastic information. Thank you.
It is more than irritating that OW does not address this.
Seems like they despise women
This is simply not true. What you, and people like you fail to understand is that the Democratic Party represents "All Women" and so, that means all people. You can't write things like "as a woman" anymore because it is not a thing. I mean hell, even a genius like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson can't define what a woman really is. It is like trying to define "God" or something like that... The very word "woman" is disinformation. We are all "people" (and even that is "problematic"... other primates should have the same rights as us!)
Trust the Democrats. Bari Weiss does. She votes for them. You should too. They know what is best for you. You are not "you" you are "us". Embrace the collective. Combat "disinformation". Get on board. Hate Trump.
Embrace the two-minute hate... get into it... You hate Trump, you hate Emmanuel Goldstein... Trump... Goldstein... Trump... embrace the hate... you can do it... just "do better"... hate Trump...
Honestly? I think Donald Trump is the more feminist candidate at the moment. I won't vote for him, and say what you will about him, and it's probably all true but....at least he knows the difference between a boy and a girl.
no. they don't
Title IX is not about athletics per se. It was just applied pretty effectively in the women's athletics arena. Pun intended. But while I am appalled at the exploitation thereof by allegedly trans athletes THIS article gives me pause. If a male can be falsely accused with no opportunity to defend himself (no due course available) is it unreasonable to seek to deny maleness?
"As a woman...."
What are you? Woke?
If I had boys, I would not send them to a school filled with left wing idiots. They would go State schools in a conservative State.
This is a cliche, but how is it that left wing people break everything they touch, then lie and call it progress? Adulthood is in part about owning mistakes. It is about sincerity. It is about improving the mind, and improving the world. Why does this never happen once this zombifying virus takes hold? Thereafter it is roughly equal measures BS, patronizing moralistic postures, and steady decay in everything.
Trump is innocent with respect to all the charges in all of his trials. The current one in New York, as I understand it, is about campaign finance violations. The FEC already looked at it and found no wrong doing. The whole thing is a cooked up fraud that should embarass any lawyers still capable of embarassment.
And lets not forget that Hillary operated a server that itself was illegal, that plainly was intended to avoid compliance with the Federal Records Act (for the seemingly obvious reason that she was conducting illegal transactions), then deleted 40,000 emails, ran Bleechbit on her servers, and physically smashed both her hard drives and cell phones, to make any investigation impossible. This AFTER all this was subpoenaed by Congress.
If you do not understand that we have a two tiered system of "justice"--which really amounts to two tiers of injustice, in which one set of people is not charged for things they did do, and another IS charged for things they did not do--then all I can say is I assume you are wrong about nearly everything in your personal life too. I pity those around you, because you are out of touch with the currents of Life itself. None of this is complicated.
We did not push our kids to go to college, partly because they would have had to fund their own education (we are too poor to fund it ourselves), and partly because going back to college for our degrees (and amassing a huge amount of student debt in the process) did not give us the employment boost we expected.
Our oldest son supports a wife and child (and a mortgage) on his wages at a factory. We had suggested that he might consider trade school, but there was no particular trade that appealed to him. He fully recognizes that he works simply to be able to have the funds to live and do the things he really cares about.
Our younger son--who pondered an engineering degree in his teens, but decided against it--accumulated all the duel-enrollment credits he could in high school. Then he got TWO associate's degrees at our local community college, paying for them with Pell Grants and his wages as a security guard. He worked for five years as a First Aid attendant at the factory where my husband is employed, gaining a lot of experience dealing with the paperwork involved with employee health issues and Workman's Comp. He used that to get an assistant HR director position at a high-end assisted living facility. He, too, supports a wife and mortgage on his wages.
Our youngest daughter has never wanted to be anything except an artist. We encouraged her to seek a degree in animation, but the program at our community college (which was expressly designed as a feeder for a local animation studio) subjected her to things in her general education classes that she didn't want to be subjected to (despite her overall Woke-ish attitudes). So she's floated around to different jobs (but always worked hard to support herself). She currently works in an art store and lives with her bf (who is in college, studying computer programming, with a focus on game design).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that college isn't essential. There are other paths.
My grandson went through union electrician apprenticeship program (where else can a 19 year old get paid, learn a skill, and receive awesome benefits?). His wife is a stay-at-home mom to their child. They just bought their second house.
Oh -- and no student loans to pawn off on other people.
It's not only blue collar professions. I'm a self-taught programmer. And I have several colleagues who are the same. I taught myself, at night, after working a full day. It cost me $0 and took one year.
IMO college is mostly a scam, excellent educations are available now online for a fraction of the cost in dollars and time.
We also told our kids that college was not essential, and that if they did go to college, they needed to know why they were going and what they hoped to accomplish before making that investment. They both started at the community college while still in high school and finished at an economical state school. They both now work for the government in their chosen paths. Their careers have not suffered one bit for the "low brow" education, and they have virtually no debt compared to their Ivy League co-workers.
There ARE other paths, Celia, but these spoiled, fragile snowflakes NEED college, in order to have “safe spaces” to be treated like the Prima donnas their parents (apparently) raised/ allowed them to think they are.
Where else can they go to be pampered after High School? Mommies basements?!
Where else can they go to keep on partying with their "peers" and avoiding responsibility for another 5 or 6 years?
The going rate for Electricians around here seems to be about $30-$35/hour. That's not bad money for this area. And it's largely devoid of office politics. With overtime, you can get close to six figures without too much trouble. A lot of these guys (and a few gals) live quite well.
“This is a cliche, but how is it that left wing people break everything they touch, then lie and call it progress?”
Liberalism is a mental disorder…and it seems to get worse each day. Far left democrats are pushing immortality down our throats and down the throats of children, which is as immoral as it gets. Who would’ve ever thought girls in 2024 would need to be looking out for their safety in a locker room, or had to compete against boys? If “traditional democrats” didn’t like what was going on, they wouldn’t be voting for it. If you’re voting for Biden in November, you’re voting far-left.
If you’re voting for Biden again, and he “wins” again, America is doomed. And I am not being an alarmist saying this. I am a realist with 71 years of experience.
Seeing what the Democrat Party has DEVOLVED into, should scare the holy hell out of Americans!
IT IS NOT THE PARTY of your grandparents, or parents! It is NOT the Party for the Blacks, Jews or Asians! IT IS NOT A PARTY FOR FREE THINKING AMERICANS, who value our History, Constitution, or Laws.
Do your homework! Being a Liberal Democrat meant accepting differences. Today’s WOKE Progressive Democrats align with the Far Right Fringe KKK! You heard me correctly!
Progressive aren’t about “accepting differences” rather they apply labels + censure anyone who dares to speak out against their WOKE narratives!
And, if you think they are just targeting against Republicans and Independents, look how they will destroy and eat their own!
I do not care whether you vote for Trump, or RFK Jr. (although his VP choice concerns me!), YOU MUST NOT VOTE FOR BIDEN!
In all honesty, in my humble opinion, regardless of who you vote for, or against, I fear Biden will “win like he did in 2020”
I fully agree with you. Schumer and now Pelosi both have called for Netanyahu to resign. It is no longer a recognizable party. I’m borderline losing respect for friends who don’t see the danger we’re in and will vote for Biden/Obama again.
"If I had boys, I would not send them to a school filled with left wing idiots. They would go State schools in a conservative State."
The Title IX regulations apply to state schools in conservative states. Your hypothetical son could have exactly the same experience - not told what the charges are, not allowed to question witnesses, not given sufficient details to present an alibi - regardless of where he hypothetically went to college.
True, but the outcomes depend on the Administrators and students in question; and at what I would actually tend to call sane places negative outcomes would be vastly less likely. The pool of people would not be as littered with unhinged nut jobs, both in the student body, and the buildings where the adults were supposed to work and operate.
Unsaint: For once, I disagree with you - on this one point only.
This rewrite of Title IX is designed to bring ALL colleges and secondary education under the woke equity umbrella. Any “offensive” outcomes - offensive to the accusers - can be, and will be, challenged as violations of Title IX.
There will be no safe havens for young men - or any young person who comes up against this madness.
There’s one college I know of that doesn’t accept federal money, Hillsdale.
I did not even graduate from high school and my husband never went to college. We neither exalt nor despise the value of formal education. (We both worked hard in the Alaska fishing industry and are mostly retired at this point.) We are very happily paying for our daughter to go to Hillsdale College. The quality of education she is receiving and of relationships she is making there are both worth every penny and more. :)
Another college Biden administration doesn't like is conservative for-profit institute Grand Canyon University. I had the pleasure of watching live GCU's Men's BB Team during March Madness. Thier fan base of kids were spectacular. From my circle of friends and acquaintances I've only heard good things about GCU. Biden is fining GCU and I hope they fight back and win: https://apnews.com/article/grand-canyon-university-fine-college-6728cbbc74912d96f1cf1c192780ae96
I hear Megyn Kelly advertise that college. Also I bet University of Austin is a great school.
Do they have sports teams?
True, but all this will depend largely on the mental health of the people present. As someone who lived and worked and went to school in California, but has lived in a conservative State for many years, I can say with certainty there are different average levels of mental health. The percentages of crazy, and the extent of the crazy, does vary place to place; so, too, presumably, would the willingness to pursue false charges against innocent, or largely innocent, men.
I wish I could believe that, but I read the article in TFP about liberal parents sending their offspring to Southern and Midwestern Universities to escape the insanity their politics created. Several lamented that these ‘safe’ places didn’t reflect their values.
Living in a small NC town, I hear - almost every day - some transplanted New Yorker or Californian condemn local conservatism. They chose to move here, but they yearn for the chaos they left behind.
My experience as well. Skate park coming soon. Of course it will take a ride in an internal combustion engine to get there.
They are leaving an unsafe, chaotic, expensive place for a safer, more accepting area and you are concerned about the values of the folks in your new location? That's just idiotic.
It’s true. My daughter goes to a private college in Michigan. Her dad went to visit her and they took a quick weekend trip to Ann Arbor and toured a museum in the Biological Sciences Building at the University of Michigan. There were tampons in the men’s restrooms.
Universities are havens of crazy because they are filled with 18- to 22-year-olds with all the privilege and none of the responsibility.
That tends to be true, but they are also the children of their parents, and if their parents are reasonably sane, then they will at least start out reasonably sane. How crazy they get will depend largely on the general atmosphere and how perceptive and individuated they are, or can become.
My understanding is that this also applies to schools K-12!
Yes, it does.
Sundar Pichai could make a pretty powerful point by rehiring James Damore
Since this is hypothetical, I'll just leave it, but oy.
It's Regress. That much is obvious.
Yes, for everyone.
The Title IX rollbacks by Biden's Department of Education also apply to K-12 locker rooms. It's not just colleges and private gyms!
Thanks, that's good information.
If it makes you feel better, the Biden changes to Title IX now make it so when a "transwoman" (ie a man) harasses, stalks, or sexually assault a female student, or exposes himself to her and leer at her in the bathroom or locker room, and the female student reports him, she too will be accused for sexually harassing the man (ie the "transwoman") especially if she "misgenders" him and says "he" was stalking or sexually harassing her, and the female student can be suspended and expelled without due process or recourse.
So under the new rules your theoretical son can absolve himself by immediately identifying as a woman and counter accuse the female student for sexual harassment. The female students however will have no recourse or due process against any male student who calls himself a girl or a woman. This rule gives male students superpower and immunity as long as he identifies as a woman.
If your reading of the Bidenized Title IX is correct (and I suspect it is 100% so), we have reached a new height of insanity and legally-mandated bull hockey.
Unsaint, wait for the jury verdicts. And if your rejoinder to that is: “the prosecutions (all four) were politically motivated stitch-ups”, then you do not believe in the American justice system nor in jury trials. I happen to believe Trump is guilty in all four but like you, I am not in the courtroom. He has defense counsel doing their best to make all these go away - let’s wait and see. Even his lapdog Attorney General Bill Barr has said he is gone on the secret documents case. For such a self-declared genius, that was beyond stupid: he showed them around at his golf club; he refused to return them; and then lied about it.
Wow. Will, you are not worth my time. Am I arrogant? Maybe. Am I wrong? No, not about these cases. Should I force myself to pretend that I respect your intelligence? Maybe. Am I going to? No.
None of this is complicated. If you are confused, you are common, but common men who believe absurd things are a cliche.
Educate yourself. If you ACTUALLY understand what Trump is being charged with, and what the basis of those charges are, and you STILL believe this trial is legitimate in any way, then you are an imbecile. I am choosing for the time being to view you merely as ignorant. Ignorant is how the press likes Americans, and they usually get exactly what they want from all those too lazy to do their own homework.
A brand new 300 sq ft dwelling is beneath the dignity of someone currently sleeping in a tent under a bridge? Cool.
It's broadly true that almost all homeless people don't want to be homeless, but in the US, most homeless people also don't want to take the steps needed not to be homeless. Attaining short term-shelter, employment, and housing IS possible in most US cities, but no one can or will force any homeless people to do any of it, and there is ALWAYS an excuse for why they don't.
No. In the US we prioritize free and low cost housing for those deemed most likely to die on the street, and these are often people who don't want to be "inside." There are a lot of homeless people who want to be housed, and can't work due to disability/old age, but they can't get housing, because they are too sane and clean. "If only I had become a drug addict, I could get housing," is something I've heard a lot of. (I work with a lot of homeless, and affordable housing providers.) But we have affordable units sitting vacant for months because they are set aside for "the most vulnerable" and those are often the people who don't want to get off the street.
As usual, the policies of Democrats cause maximal harm, while pretending to "help."
Because money was thrown at a problem without insight into what the problem is exactly.
“most homeless people also don't want to take the steps needed not to be homeless.”
This is an important point purposefully concealed by the homeless industry that profits from the homeless. I saw a documentary years ago in which a group of advocates took on the noble effort to improve the lives of a few homeless adults. The subjects were provided with a spartan but adequate dwelling and jobs paying enough to cover rent, food and basic essentials. In every case it was a short lived failure and each were back to their previous arrangements. It was a tremendously disappointing outcome for the advocates but it also revealed to them the problem was not a lack of resources or opportunity, but a failure to understand why someone feels more comfortable living a life we dread.
A lot of money has been squandered and squirreled away into the bank accounts of organizations only interested in keeping the cash flowing while appearing to help. They shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh well, we tried.”
That is referred to as the homeless-industrial complex. They don't do shit except leech money from government. But, they are very adept at said leeching.
I used to think like you until my kid with Asperger’s became an adult. He’d be homeless without our help. The mental health laws are atrocious. It’s a long sad story but take my word for it, the solution is not a simple one.
> employment
That one is not easy for someone - especially someone who probably has some visible issues when you look at them, spotty or no employment/education history, and likely a criminal record. Where exactly do you expect them to work? It's not 1950; there's not factories demanding labor. And in CA, we're now even replacing fast food workers with computers/AI.
emplyment isn't always easy. At the very least there's usually months of addiction and/or mental health treatment that's needed. Social support is an absolute must. The overall point I'm trying to make is no homeless in America are made to take steps towards not being homeless and are instead enabled. So the problem only continues to get worse.
CCC camps. Clean up public areas, forests, parks. Attack the kudzu problem in the SE. There’s no shortage of no-skills outdoor work that could be taken on,
The kudzu epidemic in the southeast could employ 25 million people for life. 🤣🤣🤣
It is actually much better now than when I was a kid. My dad said they had a good herbicide now. That or changes in climate are impacting it.
I can see the desert coming where I am and things I used to grow easily are refusing to do so now.
What goes around comes around the High Plains were the Great American Desert in the 19th Century. There is a lot of whingeing about assisted suicide in Canada; what I think is happening is they are making room for an influx of you lot as the climate improves there! ;-) /s There is a great deal of balls wittered about climate.
Hear! Hear!
Try getting that past the unions, if you get it past the bleeding hearts. Could be an element of Universal Mandatory Service, formerly known as the draft.
In 1950, virtually all factory workers were required to have a legitimate diploma from high school, proper clothing, proper grooming and hygiene, and speak and understand English. There's not a PhD today, who could qualify.
And most took trade courses in high school.
Choices have consequences; I think that more emphasis should be placed on that logical thinking of what happens as a result of that first bad choice?
There are a lot of programs to help people who want to turn their life around, AA/NA, consistently providing excuses for why they can't, rather than why they can, is the bigotry of soft expectations. I had the fortunate experience for working a LOT of menial jobs, you'd be surprised what people will pay you to do if you show up on time.
I've heard of dozens of folk living out of their cars and gainfully employed. I know of two who slept at their Mcjobs and when it came to the attention of management they got help sorting their homeless problem and in one case other staff got fired; the homeless person's work ethic preferred over bigotry.
Give them meaningful jobs around the city then…filling potholes, picking up trash, scrubbing graffiti.
It sickens me when people are simply given tax-payer services with zero expectations.
Actually, a lot of homeless are mentally ill and do want to live in "freedom."
If you are homeless outside a large city, you must go to the nearest city and wait, without shelter, until a bed becomes available.. Have you ever been to a shelter? You know shelters are temporary, right? You always have an excuse for not knowing what you are talking about.
Then demand this dope in the WH stop paying Ukraine extortion money for covering up the Biden Crime Family bribes and spend that money on more homeless shelters and mental illness hospitals.
Most importantly, do not vote him in for another 4 years!
I have and I've had immediate family who were homeless and have worked a couple jobs that had me interacting with several homeless on a near daily basis. I don't claim to be an expert and maybe should have phrased my comment to not give the impression I know everything and all the answers. I appreciate as best I can how terrible a situation homelessness is, but all my experiences speak to a population that is largely never made to take the steps needed to change their situations, which is usually what they are most in need of
I've had experience working with those who get housing and those who do not. Again, I'm not an expert, but from my limited experience those that get into housing are willing to make the commitments required by the organization and those that do not refuse. The commitments I see are have a job, do the assigned chores in the residence and attend a certain number of meetings for personal improvement. These are their choice and vary from AA, NA, faith based among others.
It's just an excuse to keep the them "out of the neighborhood." And it's also very typical of Democratic policy: "help" is only allowed to ultimately harm (lest the recipient lose the grievances that make them a blue voter). Preventing people from having housing by demanding that housing reach a better level of "dignity" is 100% on-brand for the Democrats.
Reminds me of the fights Democrats put up when they want to build wind or solar farms anywhere near their homes!
And given the choice every one of the dignity advocates would run over their grandmothers to get to one of those dwellings rather than live in an encampment.
I really enjoyed how, at the end of the video, the council head quietly called out the fact that one of the detractors was, herself, a resident of an earlier apartment complex that previous detractors had objected to.
Wow! Talk about losing one’s dignity.
Who was that guy in Congress? Paul Ryan? Yes. He was death on aid to families with dependent children, and welfare of all kinds. Guess what. Paul's mother survived using those programs when he was a kid. That's how he was fed and housed. There's hypocrisy all around.
Only in Cali. But does this mean height and density prohibitions were always BS?
I wonder if part of the problem is that "the Projects" haunt the Democratic Party to this day as an example of dense low-income housing that went very, very wrong.
They don't dare to actually SAY that they're afraid of low-income housing in their own neighborhood, but they are very good at finding excuses for not allowing it.
I think it is plain old-fashioned snobbery. They view low income as a character flaw that only they can fix.
Hollywood should take it's cue from Davis, California. There is a noted liberal columnist named Marcos Breton at the Sacramento Bee, which is a paper that is very liberal. Mr. Breton called the Davis city council, "Liberal to the point of feckless idiocy." Mr. Breton could not be argued with. Perhaps he understated the matter.
Davis has built, and continues to build, designated low-income housing units. Guess who they populate those apartments with first? They put in professors they don't pay very well, and adjunct professors who would otherwise live in tents. Once in a while they might put a PhD student in low-income housing, but UC Davis and the city are just fine with grad students pitching tents or living in their cars. In one case, a woman grad student was sleeping under a tree on the main quad. This was found by... the Occupy Marxist protesters camping on the main quad to protest injustice. The Occupy kids in their Marxist wisdom, chased her off (she was black you know, and not one of them) and even denied her the free food that anyone else could have. I know, because I saw them do this. I said something to them, and got fish-eyed stares. Clearly, I did not understand the rules of the revolution---it's about equality and goodness for all!
There is also a famous (or infamous) "freegan" (now former) grad student of UC Davis in the transportation department who learned to get by living out of dumpsters and eating from trash cans. He was interviewed by Colbert in a truly sad bit that I can't find anymore. He still wanders around town living off trash. You can see PhD students at UC Berkeley eating from trash cans sometimes too. Math PhDs have done this because math doesn't get a lot of grant money. (One reason I didn't do a PhD in math, and chose a field that gave tuition grants to grad students. Go where you're wanted, you know. But I digress.)
There are plenty of intellectually brilliant people in the Hollywood area who would qualify, and mostly they aren't riff-raff. (Though, there was that infamous Stanford grad student in math who got so frustrated with his faculty adviser that he killed him with a ball peen hammer after 19 years of work that his professor sneered at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Streleski ) These days, universities put time limits on how long a grad student can continue. After "Bang-bang Maxwell's hammer" incident, all the major universities took a close look and commanded professors to graduate students, usually after 7 years.
So. Hollywood and West Hollywood, do your damnedest to be like Davis! Universities will save you! Ben! Ben! Tell them Ben! Tell them about this bonanza. The truly dysfunctional and those that want to, they live in the ditch and the jungle until the rains come.
Yes, Ben. There are perfectly capable people who live in ditches, in homeless jungles, etcetera. Ex-cons, men on the sex offender list, men on the sex offender list who want to freely have sex with little girls and boys, retirees on a fixed income who stretch their social security by living in a ditch and getting free stuff. Women who made it by having two people, maybe 4 in a one bedroom apartment, then one or two die, or two of them lose their jobs and ... It's quite the variety pack. We call them ... riff-raff. and they don't belong in our low-income housing.
Oh, yes. And there are the crackers, cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs, psychotics and others (there are no words) people living in ditches and jungles. And many of those are meth burnouts.
Will the insanity never stop? We actually know how to take care of the homeless, educate children, foster a more peaceful world, create wealth here, build cultural strength, etc. For some reason unknown to me, we have allowed a bunch of smug, uninformed, petulant children to hijack multiple issues and solutions on a variety of topics. From Greta Whatever on climate to the California progressives to the pro Arab State Department contingent to the Trans women’s right destroyers and more, they are pushing us into multiple disasters.
Who the f-ck are these people and why do we put up with them?
My answer is to vote for the Democratic policies that created a successful world. The policies of Truman, JFK and Bill Clinton.
Of course right now those policies reside in the Trump wing of the R party. What Trump policy would not have been supported by any D up until 2008?
Assume that Democrats are intentionally collapsing the country in the name of a socialist revolution - as they explicitly said they were doing years ago - and everything makes sense!
It's not an exaggeration! Every single thing the Democratic Party does destabilizes out nation and disenfranchises the white male backbone of the country.
And this is happening as we descend into a global war with a devastated economy, wrecked by our idiotic pandemic policies. We are at war, we are losing, and the Democrats are traitors.
Spot on Anthony!
I guess this is what happens when you have a generation coming of age who was educated primarily on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok from the time they entered puberty or even before.
And bad reading and math programs in their schools that encouraged the Dumbing Down of America. Example: Success for All out of Baltimore area.
One of my relatives set up an Instagram account for her 4-year old. Everywhere he goes he is posed and photographed. Is it any wonder these children arrive at school wanting to be the star of the show?
I know many parents like this. They see it as a harmless way to share their child's life with their friends and family. Imo there are many downsides to it - the vanity aspect you referenced, not to mention giving Meta access to all this data on your innocent child and how that risk might manifest in the future.
The traitorous insanity going on at the Ivy League, UC system and other woke human cesspools is ample proof of that.
I see it as the result of parents surrendering the raising of the children to the village. Parents ard motivated by the needs of their child(ren). The village is motivated by the needs of the collective children. The result is a lot of children who do not have their individual needs met which ultimately creates a collective of children with unmet needs. My prediction is that many of these will join the ranks of the homeless in coming decades.
The whole village thing is an interesting point because I actually feel like 21st century parents desperately need more community/village like environment, and in the absence of that are trying to create it online or something. It used to be more common for people to live in multigenerational homes or in the same neighborhood as multiple extended family members, and that type of "village" was probably enormously helpful when it came to raising families. More and more people live far away from their families of origin now and are raising their young kids almost in isolation, but feeling the need for community/village, social media becomes a kind of pathetic stand in that does more harm than good.
I have the opposite take re the internet. I think it destroyed the village as guardian of social mores. I think back in the day it was important to people to be part of their physical communities. Longtime residents were born to it. Newcomers made efforts to be part of it. They joined civic groups and churches. They interacted with their neighbors. As a result there was an informal neighborhood watch of sorts. The religious leaders knew who the problems were because their congregants shared what they knew. In that way pedophiles for example were controlled at least somewhat. If for no other reason than public shame and isolation. But the internet changed that. Those isolated people had a place to congregate and boy have they. I would argue that they are on the way to being mainstream ed. Drag queen story hours. Minor Attracted Persons. But back to the village raising the child I am not a proponent thereof. I think it takes parents, preferably two, willing to be responsible for the child. But of course community support for those parents is important. IMO too many overstresseded parents jumped on the village bandwagon and abandoned their decision making role. I do not know how anything else explains the transitioning of minors promoted at primary school level. Those schools after are the face of the village.
I think you have a fair point about the internet destroying the physical village, though it's kind of a chicken vs egg conundrum. I am not religious myself but I think there is a longing in the secular west for the community that organized religion offered, and people are trying to fill that void with other types of identities, and the internet plays a big role in that. Regarding your pedophile remark - not sure about that, the Catholic pedophile scandal took off in the 90s when the internet was a baby, social media did not yet exist, no smart phones etc.
I agree with you the village should never be a replacement for two parents committed to their children's well being - rather I see it as an add on, a wider community of people who love the children and are looking after them to some extent. This reminds me, this year I've read a number of refugee memoirs and a common theme in all of them is the loss of the large, physically close extended family they had in their home country and the feeling of isolation when they are resettled in the West. I've read accounts of refugees from North Korea, Syria, Burma, and various African countries and this theme is in all of them. As happy and relieved as the refugees are to be resettled, there is a feeling of loss and disorientation because the lifestyle is so isolated compared to what they had before. In many of these cases they lived in an apartment with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents etc - there was just always family around and a sense of love and accountability in close physical proximity. Not that I want to move to any of these war torn places by any means, but the nostalgia for community that you find in these works struck a chord with me.
We are largely in agreement. I think the Catholic thing started way before that though. For two reasons. First this is not a slam on Catholicism because it is comprised of humans and there are bad humans. For at least a millenia the village odd ducks flocked to the Church. Second people with malevolent intent will go where they can readily find victims. What better place than one where forgiveness and turning g the other cheek are doctrine?
You don’t quite understand the problem. The democrat party is the reason America is vanishing. So they will take all your rights and you will happy as a lark ( says the leftist).
Read more carefully. I said to vote for traditional D policies., not the D party of today. The D party now is so far left that Trump’s policies are now what used to be D mainstream policies. Strong border, effective but carefully used military, support for working class. Voting for Trump is voting for traditional mainstream policies. It’s not extreme as the media would have you believe.
Time to brush up on American History. Today's Republicans were yesterday's Truman-JFK-Scoop Jackson Democrats. ("Ask not what your country can do for you ...")
Yes but the evil dems have lost that pride of being American. Now they are swade by leftist ideology and its their way or the highway. They want total control and to hell with the Rights afforded to us by the Constitution. How can they screw everybody to make themselves rich, destroy the fabric of America and lie to the masses. It’s a sad state for America and control of the media, social media and almost every form of news. This extends to the education of our kids too.
They also reside in the RFK Jr camp.
Let's see, CA led by hair gel has spent between 88 and 128 billion on a high speed train and has squat so far and still needs more money. LA just passed some homeless housing construction projected to end up at a million per tiny unit. $1.7 million projected for a public toilet in SF. Who the hell even believes CA is a state that has any ability to solve any problems and their only answer is to throw money at an issue and then have a party in the high rent district to celebrate what great caring people they are. Meanwhile the taxpayer struggles more everyday and the politicians cronies get richer from these bullshit projects that are always over cost and behind schedule. The idiots that keep voting the progressives back into office deserve everything that has and will continue to happen to them. Again, You can't fix STUPID!
Don't forget that much of that money came from the feds which is our federal taxes.
A GOP friend told me that the one thing he did not like about Trump was his policy to cut the federal tax credit for taxes paid to the state. His rationale is totally based on self interest, but the subsidy to support blue state expenditures I've always found shocking. I thought it was one of the best things Trump did. How do you help an addict? (blue state legislators addicted to overspending) Take away their crack!!
Red states get more money than they pay in taxes as a rule. Blue states get less back from the feds.
Getting rid of the SALT deduction is actually popular with progressives. It comes back in 2026, unless whoever in charges makes it permanent. The benefit is limited to relatively wealthy people in hi tax states (e.g., New Jersey, New York, California, etc.). They also raised the standard deduction significantly. which made the deduction beneficiaries an even smaller pool of people.
My favorite is that some states (including California) came up with ways the wealthy folks in pass through entities (S-corps and partnerships) such as law or accounting partnerships can pay their state tax through the pass-through entities, and have their federal taxable income lowered directly. This is a way better deal than a schedule A write off, since you still get the high standard deduction, plus schedule A deductions we're reduced based on income. Plus, having your taxable income reduced (instead of a deduction) means you play less in self employment tax and Obamacare taxes.
A lot of it is Cali taxpayers though. In 2021 the top 1% paid just under 50% of the taxes collected. Last year it was down to 38% which accounts for the deficit. Which they do not agree on a number for. The budget office number is nearly double the governor's number.
"CA led by hair gel"
I almost spit out coffee laughing
Obligatory:
https://babylonbee.com/news/newsom-takes-a-dip-in-pacific-ocean-causing-massive-oil-slick/
There's the US oil reserves in his hair.
Readers really need to see the tracks of the “high-speed” train from Bakersfield to LA.
Every time we drive by this monolith here in CA, we just shake our heads. It looks like an old Soviet installation in the former Czechoslovakia.
Has anyone disclosed from whence will come sufficient numbers of people wanting to travel between Bakersfield and LA to justify the Toonerville Trolley, much less a high-speed train on a dedicated right of way?
A high speed rail line to SF Bay Area (which was what it was supposed to be) would virtually end the commuter flights between SFO, SMF, and LAX or BUR. I suspect that is why it is languishing. Those are lucrative flights, generally crowded, and the plans make multiple flights per day.
All this time I thought that SF was abandoned because of sticker shock. Thanks! (Still doesn't explain a fast train to.... Nowhere Much. Yeesh.)
No one to my knowledge, Casey, but perhaps a reader out there knows.
I will be driving I-5 (and 99) to Bakersfield in a few months. Where be the tracks? I thought they were only building between Shafter and Fresno (something like that)?
My husband said it is between Bakersfield and Fresno. He added the Transit Center they built in SF was to eventually connect the bullet train. Biggest progressive labor project just to keep people working.
Why many of us will leave this state.
Hi David,
We drive from AZ through Tehachapi and turn north on 99. I believe the tracks go over part of 99 or else they are right beside them. A prodigious cement structure which looks abandoned. It has looked this way for years. I will ask my husband exactly where this part of the "bullet" train is. Safe travels in the valley.
I'm sure the route can be looked up on-line. I was thinking more about anything south of Bakersfield heading towards the grapevine (if that is the route?)
I thought part of the route is supposed to go that way but not sure now. Sorry not to be of more help. Maybe someone from that area will weigh in!
It's not stupidity, it's corruption.
The pols are corrupt. The public is stupid by keeping them in office and not voting better.
Imagine the perspective of young men in college today. You can be verbally accused and be severely punished with zero recourse even if it is a lie. And if you’re a female athlete you can be (essentially) sexually harassed, lose events and be humiliated by a man and you too can be expelled for speech about that. Sounds like a war on college kids to me.
No but wait, they get their loans forgiven!!!!
"...loans forgiven!!!!" and keep the pickup truck..
“If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace.”
Apparently the ability to use functional grammar is not a requirement for acceptance into Columbia.
I came to post this same comment!! Jeez… $70k a year and that’s the outcome?
"If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace."
When I was a child and my father wanted to impress upon me the inadvisability of my doing certain things -- like letting a candy wrapper fall from my fingers onto pavement -- he used the double negative for emphasis ("Don't you NEVER do that!"), assuming that to my baby ears, two no's were better than one.
The masterminds behind these university protests know to whom they are speaking: ill-educated children. But strong enough to hurl chairs at police officers.
Look at the pictures of these woke student mobs: they wouldn’t even be at these schools without D.E.I. They didn’t earn acceptance and they’re not paying tuition; most freely admit that. These “students” are only there to fulfill the diversity goal of the admins and the professors (most of whom are also unqualified, diversity hires.
Some are foreign nationals from wealthy families who pay the full load. Apparently this is higher ed's golden egg laying goose. It is why early expulsions were walked back (they had visa implications) and now toothless suspensions are given. If that.
Thats exactly right.
It’s also a threat of physical violence.
‘Uncharacteristically for the Trump administration, her effort was thorough…’. Really, Free Press, really?! What a well written article factually laying out the most recent changes to Title 9 with a brief synopsis of its history, and then that dig of opinion looms larger than the story. Please keep opinion out of pieces so the reader can take in the substance of the piece without any bias from the author. It ruins the morning reading experience.
Also,
“Back when Obama was president, his administration made the elimination of campus sexual assault a priority—an effort led by then–Vice President Biden. It was a worthy goal.”
Worthy goal in whose opinion? The author?
And of course back then, they got the typical knee-jerk reaction from their devout liberal followers. “Oh how we love Obama…he understands that men are always the aggressors.””To hell with due process, we will just kick them out.” “No worries” said everyone and the love-struck left just went about their groveling over Obama. Young men were judged and silenced.
There will come a moment - and we may already have reached it - when ordinary people who are trying to simply care for their families and do their jobs will no longer tolerate being shamed, hectored, patronized, and sneered at. Their would-be re-educators will then be met with horse laughs and the diminution of their career prospects.
Unless power is wrested from this DEIWOKE government that moment won’t simply “ come”. They aren’t going to cede powere willingly or suddenly change their cult ideology
The only way to do that is to bankrupt the university. That’s not going to happen anytime soon.
I fear not. That might have been true in former times where normal people were productive - literally - members of society. But capitalism has been all but destroyed in part by those who decry the notion of workers subject to evil management and our leadership -on a bipartisan basis- has reduced our formerly productive economy to a service economy. And service can and will be performed by AI. Humans will not be necessary. Thus the vision of all the dystopian fiction of recent decades will come to pass. At least if the electricity holds out.
Since these are universities we're talking about, why don't they tell students that they can protest all they want if they can pass a simple test on the history of the Middle East, the history between Israel and Hamas, the history of this particular conflict, and the nature of counter-insurrection warfare in an existential situation?
I'd like to think that there would be a lot fewer protestors. But I'm afraid that's an overly optimistic view.
I’m sure they don’t even know what river and what sea that slogan is about.
It doesn’t matter to them as long as there aren’t any Jews there. After all they always leave off the part of the chant that they really mean “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free…of Jews”
Lol, so true!!
There is no guaranteed free speech on college campuses. Anyone who defies university rules gets expelled and their record expunged. Like they never went there.
I like the idea of companies announcing they will not hire anyone from a college that coddles terrorists. That should make enrollment crash.
I like the idea of rich people withholding donations. The govt should too, if we had anyone with cajones in charge.
It’s time we implode these hotbeds of racism and terrorists.
At the very least, start taxing their endowments.
Another question to add to the list:
Regarding your "go back to Poland" chant, why is it that Jews left Poland in the first place?
And - why did Jews go to Poland in the first place?
Because Jews were cast out of other places, besides Poland, first. When you are a successful minority in Italy, Spain, France, etc., the majority doesn't like that and puts you on reservations 'to the east'. Poland (and Pale of Settlement) in present day Ukraine became the world's Hebrew reservation, prior to Zionist movement. Pale btw comes from the Latin word 'palus' which means 'stake'. And when you place a lot of stakes in the ground you get a fence or boundary. Which is what the Pale of Settlement was. Lots and lots of pograms against the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement and Jews had no choice but to stay around and take it. And now you know why a good amount of Ukranian's welcomed the Wehrmacht in during WW2 invasion of Russia. The people there had plenty of practice hating Hebrews and were ready to get back to it.
I can't speak for all Jews, but I know why my grandfather left. He was 14 years old and Iiving in Krakow on September 1, 1939.
My husband's family emigrated from Romania in the '60s. After spending time in a Siberian prisoner camp, they fled to Israel at the first opportunity. But you know, that's really just #whiteprivilege
No doubt. Unsurprisingly, most of the people I know who believe that crap are actually privileged, and seem incapable of understanding that not everyone grew up the way they did. They also seem fundamentally ignorant of basic statistics.
Yep. Rob Henderson’s memoir really highlights that. After what he went through to get to Yale, being accused of “privilege” by a wealthy Yalie because he’s part Asian….
Sadly, this sort of thinking reminds me of my 18 year old self. If I had a time machine, one of my great temptations would be to go back in time and punch myself in the face when I was in college.
But jokes aside, imputed privilege is just part of devaluing and dehumanizing. And anyone who still bothers to study history knows where those thoughts - if seized upon by a large enough number of people - take a society. Your husband's family and my own attest to this, as do hundreds of millions of other victims of ideological regimes.
Good luck finding a professor (currently on faculty) that could teach that topic with historical accuracy.
I doubt these kids could even find any of these places on a map or define genocide.
hey, good idea, but I fear if it's a written test, the "students" will use AI to pass the test, and if the test is oral, the school will be taken to court for infringing on students rights to use notes...my comment is more for humor in a very contentious situation today. I fear actual physical violence is close to occurring at the expense of our Jewish friends. take care
Interesting that Google wants politics out of work only now, and not before it couldn't draw an accurate Nazi
I can't help wondering if there is a very definite connection. The AI mess (dare I call it a scandal?) was hugely embarrassing for Google. And Google leadership--better than anyone else--knows that the AI programming was done by activist employees (they know precisely *which* activist employees).
In other words, Google is now aware that activist employees are causing active harm to the company. But until they fired people for protesting at work, I suspected that the company was willing to put up with a certain level of harm in order to main a Woke work environment. This is the first hint that...maybe not.
Possibly. Or maybe Sudar Pichai just wanted his office back. It's ok to indulge these babies until they start inconveniencing HIM.
You make a good point. It's all well and good until it causes a personal problem for them, and then they scream.
Read the tech pirates link article. It is very well explained.
This is what happens when the nasty lap dog bites its master.
From their perspective, for sure.
Erasing white people isn't politics for Alphabet, it's religion.
The B&W photo featuring a row of smiling black Nazis was peak woke. “Ok, maybe not everything needs to be diverse.” I hope they remake Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy is a transgender Asian woman and the Nazis are black.
South Park did a brilliant episode making fun of Disney for doing this, and I recommend it even for people who aren't fans of the show.
South Park is awesome! It constantly pokes fun at woke ideas. I'm surprised it's still allowed to be on air. A breath of fresh air that always makes me laugh!
PUT A CHICK IN IT AND MAKE IT LAME!
What's the episode named?
"Joining the Panderverse"
Thx. Just watched it.
"Indiana Jones and the Testicles of Doom"?
Once when my son was little he called them “my tentacles…or balls, whatever”
LOL
I cannot speak to the housing policies of West Hollywood, only to say after a peak income of about $160,000 a year as a lawyer, I had to cross any form of Hollywood off my affordability list. I don't think the answer is to force someone with a 5 million listing to accept $700 monthly payments from me.
In other parts of America, that begat the GRANTS PASS case argued Monday and the BOISE vs. McDonalds case the issue is NOT "NIMBYISM" or the desire to make poor people just get out of site.
Those 9th Circuit decisions have said that even an offer of a clean, safe bed and a meal is inadequate if the recipient doesn't like any of the provisions put on it ; like, "no guns, no drugs, no pit bulls." Many homeless have profound mental illness and substance abuse issues and claim that can't "be fenced in." Others demand the right to a "low barrier shelter" meaning the organizers shouldn't' be able to check for guns, knives and weapons.
I have volunteered running all night homeless shelters and while there certainly exists a real need, a significant part of the loudest are young men with no apparent physical disability, but very sure in their "right" to wave guns around, smoke fentanyl, harass women, or disregard whatever minor safety rules a shelter might have.
The justices suggesting the "campers" were ""taxpayers" looking for a place to go "stargazing" are delusional (supreme court justices used those very those words in quotes, during the argument Monday).
In my experience there are four types of homeless. 1) the philosophical descendants of old-time hobos. The housed will rarely encounter these folks unless done so voluntarily. 2) the victim of financial circumstance homeless. The circumstance can be a disastrous diagnosis and accompanying bill, a job layoff or job elimination, a divorce, etc.. These are the there but for the grace of God go I homeless. They are also the ones likely to recover unless health concerns prevent it. 3) drug abusers who are either in or well on their way to full blown addiction. These people think working people are suckers. They will lie, cheat and steal to achieve their high. They also will be in and out of jail through a revolving door that in this era of criminal justice reform is spinning ever faster. 4) the mentally ill. There is some overlap here with group 3 as some unknown percentage of mental illness is drug induced. As long as there is no involuntary commitment I see no solution to this category.
As long as there are people so warped to think that any barrier is some kind of violation of "rights" of the socially maladjusted including those 9th Circuit judges, there will never be a solution. They fail to see how absolutely cruel they are to have created this situation where homeless drug addicts are rotting and dying on the street striped of all dignity and humanity.
You need to live around these entitled addicts who refuse shelter, food, Narcan, even recovery drugs (for free) because they claim to ENJOY the "freedom" they get at the cost of the community. Many of the addicts are the ones stripping both themselves and their victims of any semblance of "dignity!
This. Yes, the *homeless* crisis in west coast cities, such as Seattle where I work, is not driven by the "one paycheck away from being on the street", it's the result of the liberalization of drug use and the as-expected descent into addiction. "Wet" housing and "no-barrier" housing are just excuses that the homeless industrial complex use to perpetuate the problem to their enrichment.
Rotting and dying homeless, dead and discarded fetuses, citizens dead at the hands of illegal aliens and career criminals. Stunning, no?
It’s Boise V Martin and the supremes were disgustingly dismissive at the time when they refused to hear the appeal from the ridiculous Ninth Circuit. NOW they decide they have to do something.
I swear, the Supreme Court goes out of their way to defy not only common sense but also to look as lazy as possible by not taking cases that they should.
I disagree with your assessment of the Court. The makeup of the Court has shifted. As a result judicial activism is no longer in vogue. As a result a non-activist court will see it's role as intervening only when a law is not being applied constitutionally. Thus it will carefully review which cases require its action. You can't have it both ways.
We really need to re-invest in State Mental Facilities. This time with proper oversight. People need help. Dems wanted these places shut down in the past (1970's) due to abuses and Republican's went right along because it 'saved money'. So, so short sighted. We are reaping the rewards of those poor decisions.
Oral args weren't up on Oyez last I looked. Dare I ask which of our illustrious philosopher-kings spouted that nonsense?
If California fell into the Pacific tomorrow, we would not miss it.
So tired of selfish me me narrative.
I’d miss the wine
Argentine, Australian, New Zealand. I'm fine with those.
Argentine possibly; Australia & New Zealand are equally demented offences to the Anglosphere.
But not the whine.
“Like the mystics and statistics say it will” - Warren Zevon
Columbia should have a mandatory semester abroad in rural Afghanistan, Yemen, and Sudan. That would enable all the protesters and the sympathetic professors and administrators to live their truth in very real terms.
PS Kawaler-Weiss 2028.
Brittany Griner figured it out pretty quickly.
Did she? I haven't yet heard her say anything that suggests she actually learned anything. Most of what she's said seems to be performative--an effort to make it sound as if she's grateful for being rescued, while quietly signaling to the Woke crowd that she definitely *doesn't* love the U.S.
“One thing that’s good about this country is our right to protest,” Griner said after the game when I asked her about the issue. “You have a right to be able to speak out, question, to challenge, and do all these things. [After] what I went through, it just means a little bit more to me now. I was literally in a cage and could not stand the way I wanted to … and a lot of other situations. Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely wanted to stand.”
Not in any way defending Griner. Her tone begrudgingly admits to her stupidity.
'Performative' exactly defines all of this bs.
The national anthem she never stood for? That’s rich.
What’s best is that Caitlin Clark is cashing in big time as the female basketballs biggest star now, I can hear the gnashing of teeth from the rest of the WNBA now.
Yup. The shitty country that gave her the opportunity to play basketball for a living. It took her being locked up in Russia for her to figure that out. Go Caitlin!
Followed by a semester or two in the communist country of their choice.
They should 'study abroad' so they can soak in the real culture for sure.
All those students protesting to demand divestment elected to attend Columbia knowing that it has investments with Israel. Why did they not select to go to a university that has already divested or never had any involvement with Israel? Seems a little hypocritical to me.
Where do the protesters get the professionally produced signs?
And identical tents and camping gear … that they just happen to have ready to go in Manhattan.
Robert Reich's Substack Note on the Columbia U shit show showed up on my Substack newsfeed and out of curiosity I went to take a look.It was like stepping into bizarro world. Bad enough Reich pretended harassment of Jewish students wasn't happening or that the protestors aren't literally saying they support Hamas and make it into some propaganda piece about free speech. The horrifying part was his large following and the top commenters all parroting him that "this isn't antisemitism" and "free speech". Free speech my ass. Where were these free speech supporters when people especially women were cancelled left and right for speaking up against their trans insanity? All of them actually think they're supporting "free expressions and debates". What debates? The toddlers protesting aren't asking for debates. Reich and his followers entirely omitted the tantrum throwers at Columbia are asking for divestment nor debates. Then it was all OMG the atrocities Israel is doing to Gaza. Why don't they even ask Hamas to surrender? Or to give up the hostages? It's all Israel wants "Genocide!!".
Can't take their "Genocide" seriously after them crying "Genocide" because of "misgendering".
Robert Reich is one of the nastiest people on X today.
Extreme case of Napoleon Syndrome.
I think it necessary to know what my enemies are doing and to this end subscribe to moveon.org. I'm always surprised at the bullshit Reich (hmm?) can spout off.
And yet Trump's rhetoric is the nasty stuff. Didn't Screamer Dean found or help found moveon.org?
I'm not sure; I think he was at least a mouthpiece for it for awhile - I don't recall when he was relevant (at least in democrat circles)? My recollection was that it was founded to get Republicans to "move on" from Bill Clinton's impeachment. so that's back in 90's still.....
You are correct. It ws predecessor was started by two techies in support of Clinton but it morphed into moveon.org in and gained notoriety in Howard Dean's presidential run in 2003-4 as it demonstrated the power of online fundraising. I found this interesting
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3925822
But it was started as an angry response.
They need to divest from themselves. The ultimate hypocrisy is that they comfortably live on stolen land in an actual white colonist settler state, which of course they are fine with. I think a big element of this is a projection of guilt with Jews as the scapegoat, a tale as old as time.
Now I’m going to have songs from “Beauty and the Beast” running thru my head all day! Thanks for that, Gollum!😊 #alsomissedthepoint
Stolen land? Native Americans didn't own the land that Europeans settled and developed. Native Americans had hundreds of years to develop the land, but that was far beyond their mental acuity as they never built a road, a bridge, a building, or anything close to resembling a city. They rejected progress and refused to learn how to process food instead of hunting and gathering it.
Is this the land you would have preferred? Sorry, but you're greatly outnumbered.
Natives did not recognize the concept of private ownership of land so in that respect there was no land to steal. But the rest of your comment is disingenuous. Reliance on processed food is literally killing us because we are so far removed from the sources of our food. Native cultures lived in harmony with the land. Personally I think they were far, far more evolved than our current culture and its economic drive for more, more, more. More plastic. More planned obsolescence. More McMansions. More growth. Progress my arse. Just ever increasing demands on ever more fragile ecosystems.
I had a feeling some folks here might latch onto my "stolen land" phrasing and miss the entire point of my comment...which is not to criticize America's founders, but to point out the hypocrisy of the Pro Hamas group in condemning Israel for a "crime" (kicking out 'indigenous' people) that by their own metric, European colonizers in America committed on a greater and more violent scale. They want to wipe Israel off the map for this "sin" but give themselves the grace to continue living in on what is, by their own logic, land stolen from indigenous people by white people.
My husband and I were talking about this very cognitive dissonance yesterday!
It's so infuriating. I'm reminded of the protest at Berkeley or wherever it was, can't remember, where the protestor called 911 cause she needed to change her tampon and to do so in a bathroom, would have had to leave the grounds of the "protest." You are protesting for people whom, according to you are being GENOCIDED, and you are meanwhile whining to the police that you're unsafe because you need to change a tampon.
🤦🏻♀️
The other point to make is that Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) make up about 60-65% of Israel's population which means it's not full of White European colonizers.
Exactly right! This is why my head starts to explode with rage when I even think about this. By their own standards America is far guiltier than Israel when it comes to the whole "white colonist settler" argument. The Jews who emigrated to Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries were racially diverse and were fleeing literal extermination, AND were returning to an ancestral homeland.
I've said this before elsewhere. If you are going to protest against a country, a war or a political situation, please educate yourself on the basics. The problems in the ME are complicated and multifactorial and some bone head college student who has been propogandized by the media and/or the BDS movement has little idea WTF they are talking about.
It wasn't missed......it was a poor analogy.
If you want to provide anything resembling an argument to back up your opinion I'm happy to engage. Please keep in mind we are focusing on the mindset of the Pro Hamas protestors.
At the risk of repeating myself, I got your point. It was a poor analogy because Native Americans never owned the land that was developed, unless you have some proof of ownership, like a deed or title, that the land was theirs, or is this the origin of squatters rights? In which case feel free to advance that argument.....
They're not really okay with it (at least so long as not being okay with it means doing dumb things like giving land acknowledgments, and doesn't mean doing things that have any real consequences for them).
They are okay enough to live on this land and take advantage of all that it offers, including the right to public protest. They give themselves that grace but want to wipe Israel off the map for what, in their eyes, is basically the same "crime" (colonization).
Hypocrisy and ignorance are far more forgivable in 18 year old students than in the 50 year olds who are teaching them.
So my guess is that if the river to the sea goal were achieved and the Jews washed from Palestine all that those Jews built in the last 80 years would be distributed to the victors. This whole divestment thing is just a different take on redistribution of wealth.
Better yet, why not attend college in on of the 50 Muslim countries?
You can’t cite Bill Kristol as evidence that the anti-Trump circlejerk includes people from “both sides of the aisle.” Neocons were never really “cons,” and when his Weekly Standard failed, Kristol took left-wing money to run an anti-Trump site. A true conservative would not support this administration which is drowning us in spending, debt, and wars (it’s the wars that Trump wasn’t giving Kristol).
Circle jerk! Toobin, Kristol and their Trump hard-on. The losers that managed to fail upward.
Maybe Toobin thought he was in a circle jerk on that Zoom call then realized nobody else was spanking it with him. Everything written that includes his name should read “Jeffrey Toobin, who in 2020 masturbated on a Zoom call in full view of his colleagues…”
Can you imagine their conversations? All about Saving Our Republic and He’s Just Like Hitler. All while Biden & his band of America-hating incompetents do all the things they speculate Trump will do if they can’t steal the election again this fall.
Who could sit across the table from Toobin and not think about his wank session? How is this man even taken seriously anymore?
In all fairness, he was a moron before he was exposed as a moron
Isn't that how it always works?