Posts Tagged ‘Texas A&M’
Friday, November 17th, 2023
Progressives kick Jews out of the club, San Francisco cleans up for a communist dictator (but not mere citizens), FBI busts a brothel catering to politicians…then refuses to divulge their clients, and The Marvels crashes and burns on opening weekend. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Jews Get Kicked Out of the Progressive Club.”
To sustain the alliance between leftists and Islamists, something had to give. And that something was Jews.
After a while, it became a parody worthy of classic comedy skits: the Biden administration’s reflexive need to launch into a condemnation of “Islamophobia” every time the discomfiting topic of antisemitism came up — which, you may have noticed, it does quite a bit these days.
Progressives hate antisemitism. Not, unfortunately, the concept . . . the word. It holds a mirror up to their internal contradictions.
Jews have been among the most consequential, cutting-edge progressives in history. A few months back, I reviewed Democratic Justice, Brad Snyder’s biography of Felix Frankfurter, who may have been as responsible for forging the dominance of American progressivism as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president he zealously served. Alas, Frankfurter would not be welcome today in what’s become of his movement — not least because of another project on which he collaborated with his mentor and fellow Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis: Zionism. That project is anathema to today’s progressives. It honors the old order and the uniqueness of a people reified in their ancestral homeland, one in which they dwelled for millennia — before Islam existed and, 14 centuries later, the notion of “Palestinians” was conceived.
Moreover, to highlight antisemitism is intolerably inconvenient to the collaboration of highest priority for modern progressives: Their partnership with sharia supremacists — so-called Islamists, adherents to “political Islam.”
Snip.
Ostensibly, it’s an unlikely partnership: Sharia supremacists despise many signal progressive causes — e.g., abortion, equality for women, civil rights for homosexuals, and “gender fluidity.” (How long do you figure the “activists” waving their “Queers for Palestine” placards would actually last in Gaza?) And it seems odd for progressives, infamously intolerant of religious liberty, to make common cause with unabashed theocrats who would impose on society a systematically discriminatory legal code enforced by barbaric punishments — of the terrorizing kind that, not coincidentally, the Brotherhood’s Hamas jihadists inflicted on Israeli men, women, and children on October 7.
But let’s dig deeper. The ne plus ultra for sharia supremacists and leftists is the extirpation of the established order. Yes, they have very different ideas about what should replace that order; but that’s an argument for later (at which point progressives would find themselves in the unenviable position of the appeaser after the crocodile is done devouring everyone else). For now, it is a marriage of convenience, a joint war of conquest against Western civilization.
Marriages of convenience are not big on commitment and loyalty. Hence, Jews — predominantly on the left, with legions of stalwart progressives who would as reflexively rebuke Islamophobia as any good Democrat — have become a casualty of that war.
The sharia-supremacist hatred of Jews is doctrinal. As the Hamas Charter relates, Islamic eschatology is consumed by an end-of-times war in which even trees and stones will help Muslims kill their mortal enemies, the Jews. The Islamic claim on the land “from the River to the Sea” also stems from scripture: Mohammed’s night ride from Mecca to Jerusalem and on to heaven. And Muslim scripture further holds that Islam’s prophet died upon being poisoned to death by a Jewish woman.
This is all very uncomfy for progressives. They really don’t do doctrine, let alone submit — or at least allow themselves to appear to be submitting — to religious doctrine. Thus must they engage in euphemistic games to sidestep reality.
“Democrat Media Arm Scrambles As It Becomes Clear They Knew About Hamas Invasion Of Israel Before It Happened. “Reports have been bubbling up that the various tentacles of the Democrat hacktivist media actually had pro-Hamas activists ‘journalists’ embedded with Hamas before and on October 7th.”
Democrats wouldn’t clean up San Francisco for mere citizens, but they did it for a communist dictator.
Apparently, the city of San Francisco can indeed clear out the tent cities of homeless, remove the human feces and hypodermic needles from the sidewalks, and make the downtown look sparking clean and shiny in just a matter of days. All it takes is sufficient motivation — like hosting a visit from Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
Even the New York Times can’t deny the irony that the arrival of Xi and a plethora of overseas leaders is spurring efforts that, presumably, could have been started and carried out at any point with enough motivation:
On Market Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, maintenance workers resurfaced uneven sidewalks and installed plywood over empty tree wells.
Nearby, a crew gave a long-derelict plaza a makeover by turning it into a skateboard park and outdoor cafe with ping-pong tables, chess boards and scores of potted plants. Elsewhere, workers painted decorative crosswalks and new murals, wiped away graffiti, picked up piles of trash and removed scaffolding to show off a refurbished clock tower at the Ferry Building. . . .
Perhaps the most obvious change has been seen at the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building at the corner of Seventh and Mission Streets, less than a mile from the conference center.
Before we go any further, can I just point out how infuriating it is that we live in a country with so many genuinely heroic, inspiring, and under-recognized figures, and yet we name things after politicians whose greatest achievements were bringing back a lot of federal funds to their constituents? I realize in the state of West Virginia, that statement is blasphemy.
In a perfect irony, in August, “Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advised hundreds of employees in San Francisco to work remotely for the foreseeable future due to public safety concerns outside the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building on Seventh Street.” As Iowa GOP senator Joni Ernst noticed, to protect the building named after the House speaker who said that border walls are “immoral,” federal officials put up a high chain-link fence.
In other words, the official assessment of the federal government is that the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building is not a safe place for anyone, which strikes me as a heavy-handed metaphor.
Anyway, back to the Xi-driven cleanup:
For two years, a stubborn fentanyl market at the corner and a sprawling homeless encampment across the street became neighborhood fixtures. People regularly used drugs in an adjacent alley.
Most have seemingly disappeared in a poof…
It’s almost like the city government of San Francisco perceives Xi Jinping as the boss it needs to impress, instead of the voters whose exorbitant taxes (including an 8.625 percent sales tax!) pay city employees’ salaries. If the city is worth making safer, cleaner, and more attractive for a visit by Xi, President Biden, and a whole bunch of diplomats . . . why isn’t it worth making safer, cleaner, and more attractive for the full-time residents?
Why indeed.
“Newsom Assures Homeless They Can Resume Pooping On Sidewalks Once His Boss Leaves.”
“Californians Set Up President Xi Dummy So Newsom Will Keep The Cities Clean All The Time.”
Thinks that make you go Hmmmm: “DOJ Protects D.C. Brothel Customers… As Congress Votes For New FBI Facility.”
Two tightly connected things happened in Washington, D.C., on November 8: a “high-end” brothel serving “elected officials” was shut down by the FBI, and the U.S. House approved a controversial $300 million new headquarters building for the weaponized agency.
In announcing the brothel’s bust, the Department of Justice explained that the sex-trafficking operation served “elected officials, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, attorneys, scientists and accountants, among others.”
The press release named the brothel operators: Han “Hana” Lee, 41, of Cambridge, MA; James Lee, 68, of Torrance, CA; and Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, MA.
In lurid detail, the Department of Justice explained how the operators advertised their services—primarily young Asian women—for high-end customers. In order to utilize the prostitution services of the brothel, prospective clients allegedly completed “a form providing their full names, email address, phone number, employer and reference if they had one.”
Not mentioned in the press release were the names of the customers.
The announcement was made just ahead of a vote in the U.S. House, which would have defunded the $300 million new headquarters building proposed for the FBI. The facility, to be built in Maryland, will reportedly be larger than the Pentagon. The Pentagon has a total floor area of 6.5 million square feet and offices 23,000 military and civilian employees.
Dispatches from the Biden Recession: “Stellantis offers buyouts to roughly half of U.S. salaried workers.” Stellantis consumed the corpse of Chrysler several years back.
“Taibbi: According To Pundits, ‘Ignorance’ Makes Americans Give “Wrong” Answers To Economic Confidence…The Guardian editorial Krugman linked to explains: Americans continue to believe the economy sucks, even though they’ve been told over and over it doesn’t! Why won’t they listen?…I can’t remember an instance of newspapers polling Americans about their feelings, then telling them their answers are not only wrong, but ignorant!
“Pro-Palestinian” protestors are anti-American protestors:
(Hat tip: The Daily Gator https://thedaleygator.net/?p=25316 )
Gaza kids say the darndest things…about killing Jews. “I want to stab them again and again.”
Speaking of which, what better accessory is there for a little girls room than a cache of rocket launchers?
Tim Scott is out. Like so many in this presidential campaign cycle, he made himself less, not more, electable by taking the wrong side in the culture war.
Texas Republican congressman Michael Burgess will not seek reelection.
This is a weird story: “Congressman Pat Fallon (R-TX-4), who had filed to run for Texas Senate District (SD) 30, has now backed out and will instead run for re-election to his currently held congressional seat.” Being a state senator is all well and good, but who steps down from a U.S. Congressional seat to a state senate seat?
Austin police officer Jorge Pastore was killed in the line of duty early Saturday morning.
“Texas: Islamic scholar praises Gazans for having ‘thrown horror’ in the hearts of the Israelis.” That would be Mohamad Baajour of the East Plano Islamic Center.
Another week, another liberal journalist charged with child pornography.
A BuzzFeed feature story from 2018 about a journalist who told a group of schoolchildren that he was gay was taken down just a day after it was announced that he had been brought up on child pornography charges.
Slade Sohmer, 44, the former editor-in-chief of the left-leaning video-driven news site The Recount, was freed on $100,000 bail on Monday after he was charged in Massachusetts court with possessing and disseminating “hundreds of child pornography images and videos.”
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of dissemination of child pornography.
(Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“Germany’s Rheinmetall to supply Ukraine with 25 Leopard-1 tanks.”
Asianometry takes a deep dive into Nvidia’s radical new computational lithography method for generating semiconductor masks. I know a whole lot of eyes just glazed over, but this stuff is important, and I don’t think any other bloggers are covering semiconductors. And speaking of eyes…
World’s first whole eyeball transplant performed. No vision yet, but doctors are hopeful.
Rosalynn Carter joins her husband in hospice care.
Texas A&M head football coach Jimbo Fisher just got paid $77 million to go away. Nice work if you can get it…
The Marvels officially has the worst opening weekend of any MCU film. Yes, worse than the Ed Norton Hulk.
Speaking of disasterous superhero films, Critical Drinker goes over the compounding errors of the never-to-be-released Batgirl movie. Surprisingly, the film itself was reportedly not that bad, it’s just a cascading series of studio decisions made the film nonviable.
Snoop Dogg says he’s giving up weed. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
A tale of two Halloween lights.
“Hamas Says All The AK-47s Found In Gaza Hospital Were Strictly For Medicinal Use.”
“Thousands Already Lined Up For Black Friday After Grocery Store Offers Prices From When Trump Was President.”
Tags:2024 Election, 2024 Presidential Race, 4th Congressional District, anti-semitism, Arab-Israeli Wars, Austin, Austin Police Department, automobiles, Babylon Bee, Biden Recession, California, cars, China, Crime, Critical Drinker, DC Comics, Democrats, Disney, Elections, FBI, Foreign Policy, Gavin Newsom, gay, Gaza, Hamas, Han "Hana" Lee, Hollywood, Israel-Hamas War, James Lee, Jews, Jihad, Jimbo Fisher, Jimmy Carter, Junmyung Lee, Leopard 1, LinkSwarm, marijuana, Marvel, Media Watch, Michael Burgess, Michael Quinn Sullivan, Military, Mohamad Baajour, Nvidia, Palestinians, Pat Fallon, pedophilia, Plano, Republicans, Rheinmetall, Rosalynn Carter, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, San Francisco, Semiconductors, Slade Sohmer, Stellantis, tanks, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State Senate District 30, Tim Scott, Ukraine, Xi Jinping
Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 22nd, 2023
My Hunter Biden corruption evidence, a Democratic Senator catches federal corruption charges, more blue cities suffering from Biden’s open border policies, California goes looking for cops in Texas, and a new Bill Burr movie looms. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Now we know at least one of the people bribing Joe Biden buying Hunter Biden’s “artwork.”
The person who paid as much as six figures for “artwork” by an untrained painter also received a prestigious government appointment from the artist’s father, President Joe Biden.
Now congressional investigators want to know if Biden’s decision to name Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad was in any way related to her purchase of artwork by Hunter Biden, a middle-aged man who paints as a hobby.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is now asking Naftali and White House Counsel Stuart Delery to answer questions as to whether the Biden family is using Hunter’s “art” as a means of selling White House access.
The White House has previously claimed the identity of Hunter Biden art purchasers would be concealed to prevent any undue influence, but nothing prevents the purchaser from identifying themselves to Joe Biden when seeking an appointment, and now at least one purchaser has been identified as someone who sought White House access.
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and his wife indicted on federal corruption charges.
Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was indicted on corruption charges by federal prosecutors on Friday morning in a Manhattan court in an influence-peddling scheme involving Egypt.
The unsealed indictment revealed that Menendez’s wife, Nadine, New Jersey real estate mogul Fred Daibes, and two other business associates are being charged along side the lawmaker.
Led by Southern District of New York attorney Damian Williams, in June 2022, investigators conducted a search of Menendez’s residence in New Jersey and found $100,000 worth of gold bars, nearly half a million dollars in cash, “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe,” and a brand new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible.
“Menedez and Nadine Menedez agreed to and did accept hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menedez’s power and influence as a Senator to seek to protect and enrich” his allies “and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt,” the indictment reads. “Among other actions, Menendez provided sensitive U.S. government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt,” the filing notes.
More money for illegal aliens means less money for other New York City functions.
New York City will cut overtime pay for its police officers and three other agencies to help reduce costs driven by the city’s unprecedented migrant crisis, City Hall announced Monday.
Jacques Jiha, the budget director for Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, told the city’s police, fire, corrections, and sanitations departments in a Saturday memo to each submit an overtime pay reduction plan “to reduce year-to-year OT spending.”
He also wrote the four departments must submit monthly reports “to track overtime spending and their progress in meeting the reduction target” once Adams issues the order.
Jiha also noted the current assistance provided by President Joe Biden and New York governor Kathy Hochul is not enough, prompting City Hall’s decision to cut overtime pay among other financial measures.
“The amount of aid we have received from the federal government and the state has been grossly inadequate and there has been no progress on a statewide or national decompression strategy,” Jhia wrote in the memo, first reported by Politico. “The city can no longer continue to shoulder these skyrocketing costs and balance the budget without making very difficult choices.”
Crime has risen in New York in recent months as more than 100,000 illegal immigrants have poured into the city.
The leader of a police union said the overtime pay cuts will lead to fewer cops patrolling the streets, resulting in more staffing shortages.
“It is going to be impossible for the NYPD to significantly reduce overtime unless it fixes its staffing crisis,” Patrick Hendry, head of the Police Benevolent Association, told the New York Post. “We are still thousands of cops short, and we’re struggling to drive crime back to pre-2020 levels without adequate personnel.”
“If City Hall wants to save money without jeopardizing public safety, it needs to invest in keeping experienced cops on the job,” he said.
The Homeless Illegal Alien Industrial Complex pays very, very well in Chicago:
Ukraine destroys Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters.
“The Biden admin cut the razor wire Gov. Greg Abbott put along the Rio Grande, so Abbott immediately sent the Texas National Guard to put up even more.”
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson switches to the Republican Party. “While Dallas has thrived, elsewhere Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness.”
“I have been mayor of Dallas for more than four years. During that time, my priority has been to make the city safer, stronger and more vibrant,” Johnson wrote in his article.
“That meant saying no to those who wanted to defund the police. It meant fighting for lower taxes and a friendlier business climate. And it meant investing in family friendly infrastructure such as better parks and trails.”
Johnson said he does not plan to alter his “approach” to being mayor but is switching his party affiliation.
“When my career in elected office ends in 2027 on the inauguration of my successor as mayor, I will leave office as a Republican,” Johnson said.
The mayor was a leading opponent of calls to decrease funding for the Dallas Police Department after the 2020 demonstrations against police violence. Johnson proposed cutting salaries at city hall instead.
In his announcement, he also touted Dallas’ decreasing crime rate and the Dallas City Council’s reduction of the property tax rate.
While city mayors are nonpartisan officeholders in Texas, Johnson was a Democrat during his nearly five terms in the Texas House of Representatives.
This is both unexpected and big news. Lots of Hispanic politicians in Texas have switched to the GOP, but this is the first case I can remember of a high profile black Texas Democratic politician switching to the GOP.
Exercise helps prevent Alzheimer’s thanks to a hormone called irisin.
Antifa rioter sentenced.
A 35-year-old Renton man was sentenced on Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court to 40 months in prison for his role in a plot to burn the Seattle Police Officers Guild building in downtown Seattle during the September 2020 protests.
The defendant, Justin Christopher Moore, pleaded guilty in September 2022.
At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Lauren King said, “What you did showed a complete disregard for human life. Our ability to peacefully assemble is a fundamental right to our society. Your acts of violence can deter people from exercising that fundamental right.”
According to records filed in the case, Moore made and carried a box of 12 Molotov cocktails in a protest march to the Seattle Police Officers Guild building on Sept. 7, 2020. Ultimately the marchers were moved away from the building in downtown Seattle. Police smelled gasoline and grew concerned about the intentions of protesters. The box containing the 12 gasoline devices was found in the parking lot next to the Seattle Police Officers Guild building.
Using video from that day and from other protests, as well as information from the electronic devices of other co-conspirators, Moore was confirmed as the person seen carrying the box of destructive devices.
In June 2021, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Moore’s residence. They seized clothing that is consistent with the images of what Moore was wearing when he carried the Molotov cocktails. From the basement storage area, they also recovered numerous items that are consistent with manufacturing explosive devices. Law enforcement recovered a notebook in which Moore had made entries related to the manufacturing of destructive devices and the ingredients necessary.
University of North Texas tries to cancel musicology professor. Professor wins in court. Again.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down another defeat to the University of North Texas and a victory to Allen Harris in a lawsuit defending the First Amendment rights of Professor Timothy Jackson, after UNT shut down his journal, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. The decision can be located here.
In January of last year, Allen Harris had already prevailed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The District Court Judge Amos Mazzant rejected UNT’s motion to dismiss the complaint of Professor Timothy Jackson in a strong decision available here.
Ordinarily, the case would then proceed to discovery and eventually to trial. But UNT invoked its right to a special appeal (called an interlocutory appeal) that is allowed only to the state under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. At first, Texas was expected to make an argument defending UNT’s right to do whatever it wanted with Timothy Jackson’s journal.
The Journal of Schenkerian Studies is dedicated to a late 19th/early 20th-century Austrian-Jewish music theorist, Heinrich Schenker, and his systematic, graphic methods of music analysis. In July 2020, Timothy Jackson defended Schenker in the pages of the Journal from an attack by Hunter College Professor Philip Ewell. Professor Ewell labeled Schenker a “racist” and, indeed, the entire tradition of Western classical music as “systemically racist.” This dispute would have remained a typical academic tempest in a teapot, but the University of North Texas swiftly condemned Jackson’s defense of Schenker and classical music. At UNT, defending classical music and its theory against charges of “racism” is a “thought crime.”
Graduate students quickly condemned Professor Jackson for “racist actions” and various other derelictions that they claimed hurt their feelings. Calls for Professor Jackson to be fired quickly escalated, and the vast majority of Jackson’s fellow faculty members jumped on the bandwagon. Sixteen of them signed a graduate student petition calling for his ouster and for censorship of the Journal. Discovery revealed that at least one did so without even reading or understanding what the petition said.
The most important thing at the University of North Texas was to demonstrate pious commitment to “anti-Racism,” no matter how irrational or lacking in substance–or contrary to evidence. As the Dean of the College of Music admitted in open court, the Journal was “put on ice.”
In July 2020, Professor Jackson stood alone against this tide. Had the case been allowed to proceed after Mazzant’s strong decision on the motion to dismiss, the Journal would likely be back in publication by now. Yet censorship is so important at the University of North Texas that the state exercised its right to a special appeal in order to halt discovery in its tracks.
Some technical legal analysis omitted.
The ruling is a clear warning to do-nothing boards of trustees and boards of regents that they have an affirmative duty to ensure that public universities uphold constitutional rights in education. From now on, they will also enjoy a no qualified immunity from personal suit, at least in the Fifth Circuit. UNT’s Board of Regents had direct governing authority over all UNT officials. They too can therefore be held accountable under the Ex Parte Young for sitting idly by while career university bureaucrats trampled Professor Jackson’s free speech.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Regulations (California and federal) are crushing the trucking industry.
Unfortunately, the federal government continues its misguided attempts to control an industry regulators know little to nothing about. But today’s attempts tend to focus more on something they understand even less than trucking: technology.
The electronic logging device (ELD) has been around since the late 1980s. The devices were first adopted by large nationwide fleets to simplify managing their plethora of drivers, and eventually became a way to lower insurance costs. Manufacturers and employers claimed the devices prevented drivers from driving longer than legally allowed, therefore reducing the number of tractor-trailer-related crashes. It was under the latter premise that the DOT mandated that all trucks be equipped with ELDs no later than the end of 2017. Unfortunately, fatal accidents involving tractor-trailers have seen a recent increase following a sharp decline. This correlation suggests that mandating ELDs has not had the promised or intended safety improvements.
More recently, environmental regulations requiring manufacturers to reduce emissions gave us the diesel particulate filter (DPF), an exhaust treatment system that replaces a standard muffler. While there is no current federal mandate requiring a DPF, the filters are required by the 2008 California Statewide Truck and Bus Rule, which has incentivized many nationwide fleets to adopt them. The problem with DPFs is the filter system clogs. A lot.
When DPFs go down, trucks roll to a stop. Truckers report having to have a DPF serviced as often as every 5,000 miles, which means lots of lost productivity and stranded cargo. I’ve had four breakdowns over the past two years, and three were due to my DPF. A tow truck driver I spoke to on one of those occasions told me half of his business comes from malfunctioning DPFs. Repairs are a specialized affair, and replacements can cost up to $2,000. When my truck isn’t moving, I’m not earning. And these regulators have required that my truck stand still far too often.
Next up on the government’s list of ways to make truckers’ lives miserable are proposed speed limiters. Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, wants to limit all tractor-trailers to the same speed. Imagine being stuck behind a pair of tractor trailers side by side, who can’t speed up to pass each other. It’s relatively rare right now, but it will become the norm. Every single interstate nationwide will be populated by moving roadblocks, inspiring road rage and blocking critical services. What happens when the fire truck or ambulance is stuck behind these unbreakable pairs?
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Gavin Newsom throws in the towel, lifts ban on travel to states passing anti-transexual and antigroomer laws.
Also in the California “Hall of Ls,” after ruing its own police department through defunding, San Francisco is trying to hire cops in Texas.
San Francisco slashed its police department’s budget by $120 million in 2020. Almost immediately, crime rose in the city. Crime has gotten so bad in San Francisco, that residents are reportedly leaving their car doors unlocked, so crooks won’t smash their windows.
Mayor London Breed promised to reverse her “defund” policy by restoring and increasing the police budget. However, the city is struggling to recruit qualified officers. Recently, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association accused the mayor of continuing to make cuts to the sheriff’s department.
Despite this, the city went to four universities in Texas to recruit police officers. This appears to be the first time San Francisco looked for candidates outside of California.
Those four universities are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University, and Texas A&M University.
Murder suspect who broke into a Georgia home find out that gun beats knife. “Once he is released from the hospital, he will be confronted with charges including burglary, home invasion, and theft by receiving in Georgia, as well as murder charges in Ohio.”
Cisco to Buy Splunk for $28 Billion.
Bill Burr has a new film called Old Dads coming to Netflix next month. Looks promising. “Just go on Twitter and share the story where you’re the hero.” Knowing Burr, there will be something here to offend everyone…
“Auto CEOs Struggling With Whether To Replace Striking Workers With Robots Or Mexicans.”
Now that’s a memorable wedding:
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Tags:Allen Harris, Alzheimer's, antifa, Bill Burr, Black Sea, Border Controls, California, Cisco, corruption, Crime, Crimea, Dallas, defund the police, Democrats, dogs, Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, Eric Adams, Eric Johnson, Georgia, Greg Abbott, homeless, Hunter Biden, Illegal Aliens, James Comer, Joe Biden, Justin Christopher Moore, LinkSwarm, Nadine Menendez, New Jersey, New York City, NYPD, police, Prairie View A&M University, Republicans, Robert Menendez, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Sam Houston State University, San Francisco, sanctuary cities, Seattle, Splunk, Stuart Delery, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Southern University, transexual, UAW, Ukraine, unions, University of North Texas
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Texas, unions | 2 Comments »
Saturday, July 22nd, 2023
It’s easy to get discouraged over the obscene metastasis of creeping social justice infecting our institutions. Even though only something like 15% of Americans back radical leftwing social justice, it often gives the impression of moving from victory to victory.
But it’s important to note that forces of American liberty have won important victories against the woke Borg. Indeed, the good guys have recently taken scalps in the realm of higher education, and those victories are worth noting.
Item one: VMI alumni managed to get that school’s diversity chief to quit.
proactive alumni group working to curb diversity, equity and inclusion at the Virginia Military Institute has been given credit for prompting the school’s DEI chief to quit.
An article in The Washington Post largely cites the actions of proactive alumni, most notably members of “The Spirit of VMI” group, for the decision by Jamica Love to leave her post.
“Love, 49, who leaves her position at the end of June, was the highest-ranking Black woman at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college. But she faced intense backlash from some alumni and cadets as soon as her hiring was announced in May 2021,” the Post reported June 1.
While the Post’s article suggested the dislike of DEI at VMI is due to disgruntled white male alumni, former students there have told The College Fix in recent years they seek to preserve honor and meritocracy at the institute in the face of equity programming. They also said they reject the argument the institute is steeped in racism and sexism.
As The College Fix previously reported, the controversy dates back to a 2021 consultants report that accused VMI of “institutional racism and sexism” and recommended the implementation of new DEI measures.
Last year alumni began actively writing to state lawmakers about their concerns, including Gov. Glenn Younking, as well as voice complaints on social media.
Earlier this year, alumni said they will withhold donations as VMI implements DEI programming.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Item the second: Texas A&M rescinded a journalism professor’s tenure offer after public outcry, causing A&M’s president to resign.
Texas A&M University has been at the focus of a media firestorm this past month after the school walked back the terms of a job offer extended to journalism professor Dr. Kathleen McElroy.
The saga began with the publication of a story by Valerie Munoz, a Texas A&M journalism student, in Texas Scorecard that highlighted the school’s recent decision to hire McElroy as the new department head overseeing the school of journalism. The university offered McElroy tenured status similar to her present faculty position at the University of Texas.
The story pointed to McElroy’s advocacy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) measures in both academic settings and newsrooms, drawing a contrast between the journalism professor’s approach to education and new state public policy measures passed by the Texas Legislature this year banning DEI offices in public universities.
In addition, the story reported on a statement by McElroy on her approach to journalism, that she opposes the equal representation of all sides of an issue in news reporting if one side is deemed “illegitimate.”
After the story broke, the university began walking back elements of the job offer, causing McElroy to decide to take the details public.
In an interview with the Texas Tribune, McElroy, who is black, stated she felt she was being “judged by race” and maybe gender after the school decided to rescind the tenure offer and instead offer a one-year contract and at-will employment terms. She said she didn’t believe other people would face the same bars or challenges and that she felt “damaged” by the entire process.
The story has since snowballed into national headlines, and outrage over the hiring process has resulted in the resignation of both the university’s interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jose Luis Bermudez and President Katherine Banks.
If Bermudez and Banks are backers of social justice, and it very much appears they were, their departures (and scalps) are also welcome.
The Texas A&M Faculty Senate recently voted to create a fact-finding committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the alteration of the job offer extended to McElroy. Shortly after that, Banks tendered her resignation to Chancellor John Sharp, writing that the mass negative press on the incident led to the decision.
“The recent challenges regarding Dr. McElroy have made it clear to me that I must retire immediately. The negative press is a distraction from the wonderful work being done here,” Banks wrote.
Numerous reports placed blame on “outside groups” improperly influencing hiring decisions at the school, a claim reportedly started by the faculty senate. That turned attention to one organization of former Aggies in particular, The Rudder Association (TRA).
According to its website, TRA is “a group of dedicated Aggies committed to preserving and perpetuating the core values and unique spirit” of the university.
In a series of press statements on the group’s website, TRA pushed back on reports characterizing its members, which includes taxpayers, tuition payers, and donors to the school, as “outside influence.” In addition, the group said that university regents and elected officials should not be characterized as such either.
Firing by firing, progress is made.
The bad news, of course, is that McElroy is still at UT…
Tags:Critical Race Theory, Democrats, Jamica Love, John Sharp, Jose Luis Bermudez, Katherine Banks, Kathleen McElroy, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Texas A&M, The Rudder Association, University of Texas, Valerie Munoz, Virginia, VMI
Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 6th, 2023
There are conflicting reports on whether Texas A&M, as ordered by Governor Greg Abbott, are actually ending their raidcal leftwing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI, AKA critical race theory, AKA social justice), or just pretending.
Officially, Texas A&M has ended DEI.
The Texas A&M University System has moved to remove all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements from their employment and admissions practices, it said in a statement on its website.
Chancellor John Sharp stated that after receiving a letter in February from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, he ordered a review of all DEI policies in the university system.
“No university or agency in the A&M System will admit any student, nor hire any employee based on any factor other than merit,” said Sharp.
A directive was sent to all university system agencies to limit employment and admissions to a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching philosophies, and professional references.
A memo obtained from Abbott’s office asserted that DEI policy “has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others.”
The University of Texas (UT) System board chairman Kevin Eltife announced a pause on all DEI efforts during a board of regents meeting last week. The move was prompted by his comments about how “certain DEI efforts have strayed from the original intent.”
Is there a reason to doubt the sincerity of this effort? Well, John Sharp is a Democrat, albeit one from an era (he was State Comptroller from 1991 through 1999) where there was still a conservative (or at least moderate) wing to the Texas Democratic Party.
Second, over at Texas Scorecard, Scott Yenor is skeptical of A&M’s sincerity.
“How Texas A&M Went Woke,” my report from the Claremont Institute, has prompted the Texas A&M administration to respond. First, A&M has reportedly hired someone to continue the process of scrubbing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies from its website. Second, A&M is circulating a memo charging that “misinformation” lies at “the foundation of the report.” A&M compares more than a dozen “Statements from Yenor” against “Facts from Texas A&M University.” But their “facts” are simply the evasions and obfuscations of a guilty party. Their rebuttal presents an object lesson in sophistry.
One category of sophistry is refuting a charge not made. I contend that that A&M “has more DEI administrators than UT-Austin.” A&M responds that a comparison of “executive-level DEI operations” in central administration shows that A&M has fewer. I say A&M has more total DEI administrators; A&M says it has fewer central administrators. Both statements are true. A&M had many more lower-level DEI officials than UT at the time of the counting. I say that A&M created a diversity committee to consider removing statues on campus; A&M responds that no statues have been removed (yet!). Again, both statements are true. A&M has not refuted anything I said.
Sometimes, they claim ignorance; A&M evidently has so many DEI programs that it can hardly keep track of them. One is the LEAD program, which trains department chairs in DEI ideology, among other things. A&M is “not aware of a training for department chairs called LEAD.” A snapshot from ADVANCE, the university’s faculty affairs website, shows that this program still exists under a different name.
Another technique is to deny, deny, deny. A&M administrators describe their own ACES program, which is housed in the Office of Diversity. A&M often lauds ACES as a premier diversity program. It lists ACES in its evaluations of diversity programs. A&M now denies that ACES is “a diversity effort.” Who you gonna believe—A&M or your lying eyes?
Sometimes A&M concedes that their DEI programs exist, but that they have discontinued them or that they will discontinue them.
Snip.
The university has announced in advance how it will get around the A&M system’s recently-announced ban on DEI statements.
The legislature should defund DEI administrative offices in all Texas universities and colleges. All who are currently employed in such offices should be let go. This will make it clear that DEI is bad for one’s career in Texas higher ed. Second, the Texas legislature should adopt the Kalven Report as a vision for university professionalism. Politicized teaching and disciplines should be judged against the standards of the Kalven Report. If disciplines are so thoroughly infused with DEI ideology or any other leftist activism, the legislature should cease to fund them. Disciplines with DEI inscribed into their DNA should not receive public funds.
Most importantly, the Board of Regents must take its job more seriously. It must issue directives to eradicate DEI from universities and then follow through with them by firing university presidents who openly defy the Board or obfuscate their DEI efforts. Personnel is policy. The Left has clamored for DEI practices for generations, and university presidents have responded by permitting the DEI bureaucracy to bloat. It is time for these university presidents to fear conservatives in the legislature more than they do the Left, and this can be done only when select university presidents are fired. If this Board of Regents will not do it, then it too must be released and replaced.
I share Yenor’s skepticism. Those infected with social justice never give up pushing their radical ideology, administration directive or no administration directive. Laying off all DEI personnel is the only way to purge the infection.
Tags:education, John Sharp, Scott Yenor, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Texas A&M
Posted in Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »
Monday, February 20th, 2023
Via Texas Scorecard comes two different stories of how radical racist social justice warrior ideology in the form of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion continues to infect Texas universities.
First up: A University of Texas professor is suing UT officials for violating his First Amendment rights.
In attempts to silence the professor for speaking out on controversial issues, university administration threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, and academic freedom.
Richard Lowery, Ph.D., a tenured finance professor at University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, said in the complaint, “The officials at the state’s flagship university violated his constitutional right to criticize government officials.”
In the suit, Lowery claims the university administration “harmed his right to academic freedom.”
Lowery’s suit explains that the First Amendment “protects the right of public university professors to engage their colleagues and administrators in debate and discussion concerning academic matters, including what should be taught and the school’s ideological direction and balance.”
According to the Institute for Free Speech, Professor Lowery is “well known” for his “vigorous commentary on university affairs.” Lowery’s articles have been featured in The Hill, The Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix.
Lowery has also been known to use social media and online opinion articles to “publicly criticize university officials’ actions, and ask elected state-government officials to intervene. He has also used such tools to participate in the sort of academic campus discourse that faculty traditionally pursue.”
In his articles criticizing UT officials, Lowery specifically calls them out for their approaches on issues such as “critical race theory indoctrination, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.”
On multiple occasions, Lowery reported that university administrators are using diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out “competent” teachers and professors who disagree with the DEI ideology prevailing on campus.
In response, Lowery claims university administrators “responded with a campaign to silence” him, where they threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, academic freedom, and labeled his behavior as inviting violence or lacking in civility.
The suit continues, saying school officials “also allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”
“Lowery got the message,” the suit says.
In response, the professor is seeking to “vindicate” his right of free speech, asking the court to declare the administration’s actions as unconstitutional and restore his First Amendment rights to speak on matters he was previously prevented from speaking on.
DEI has even infected the university previously considered a bulwark of conservative value, Texas A&M:
Thought of by many Texans as a relatively conservative university, a new report explains how Texas A&M has “gone woke” in recent years.
Scott Yenor, a Boise State professor and fellow at the Claremont Institute, explained during a recent interview on The Luke Macias Show how leftist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies have seeped into the campus.
DEI programs have come under fire recently for prioritizing factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation over merit in hiring, admission, and curriculum.
“Texas A&M has this reputation as being one of the more conservative public universities. I know a generation ago when someone asked me where I would send my kids to school, I said the best public university in the country is Texas A&M,” said Yenor.
But when Yenor began researching DEI programs in college campuses across the country, he found something troubling in Texas.
The interesting thing about these universities is that they advertise what they’re doing. They have a plan and they’re proud of the plan. And then they go about trying to execute the plan. And Texas A&M announced a very radical diversity plan in 2010 and has been executing it like on steroids the last two years.
Yenor mentioned recent efforts to take down a statue of former Confederate General and Texas Governor Sul Ross from campus. Though that movement was unsuccessful, Yenoer argued bigger factors are at play.
“There were attempts to take down statues and, and, you know, other other ways of affecting the campus climate symbolically. But the more important thing is that there’s been a real, real ratcheting up of their understanding of what they have to do. The 2020 diversity plan really concerns breaking down the systems of oppression in words like ‘merit,’ hiring the best person, and things like that,” said Yenor.
To that end, Yenor pointed out a shocking statistic: Texas A&M University currently has more DEI personnel than the University of Texas at Austin.
“It’s true at A&M that diversity is the new merit,” said Yenor.
Governor Greg Abbott issuing a directive banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory doesn’t seem to discouraged social justice warriors from continuing to radicalize Texas higher education. There needs to be sterner measures, including defunding the DEI bureaucracy, followed by pink slips.
Tags:Critical Race Theory, education, Richard Lowery, Scott Yenor, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Scorecard, University of Texas
Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »
Friday, September 16th, 2022
Facebook violates user rights, Larry Krasner held in contempt, mass graves in Izyum, and more Disney groomers indicted. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Pennsylvania House votes to hold Philadelphia Soros-backed DA Larry Krasner in contempt for defying a subpoena.
The Pennsylvania House voted Tuesday to hold Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by a legislative committee searching for grounds to impeach him.
The chamber voted 162 to 38 — with support from 10 Philadelphia Democrats — to approve the resolution holding the city’s top prosecutor in contempt, a highly unusual move that even the measure’s sponsor told House colleagues he’d never seen before.
State Rep. John Lawrence — a Republican who represents parts of Chester and Lancaster Counties and chairs the select committee investigating Krasner — said the DA had “willfully neglected” the subpoena and was treating it like “a worthless piece of paper.”
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
“According to DOJ whistleblowers, Facebook has been spying on Americans’ private messages and reporting them to the FBI if they express ‘anti-government or anti-authority’ statements – including questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 US election.” More: “It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” said one of the whistleblowers, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena. According to one Post source, ‘They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.'”
Mass grave found in Izyum.
UT professor Richard Lowery files lawsuit against Texas A&M over their illegal discrimination on the basis of race.
Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the state of the American academy today knows that employment discrimination runs rampant on campus. Not the old-fashioned kind where women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Asians, gays, or communists were excluded from employment opportunities, but the modern Kendian variety, in which overt discrimination against white men (and, in many disciplines, Asian men as well) is embraced as official university policy and as a necessary part of being “antiracist.”
As Mark Perry has documented in hundreds of complaints he has filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, such “discrimination for the ‘right’ reasons” is as common on campuses today as empty Red Bull cans. Nor does anyone with any actual knowledge of employment law dispute that such overt and intentional sex and racial discrimination is patently illegal under federal law, and usually state law as well.
Why is this so? If such “no white / Asian guys need apply” practices are clearly illegal, how have they been allowed to not only stand but spread to all corners of campus?
Part of the reason is that under Grutter and Fisher II, the Supreme Court gave universities the benefit of the doubt when using racial and other demographic characteristics in admissions decisions. Rather than use race sparingly in admissions decisions, and in the narrow, surgical method the Supreme Court envisioned, universities instead have taken those decisions as a mandate to do whatever they want in not only admissions, but also employment and other areas.
Indeed, as I have noted before, university administrators often admit to overt discriminatory reasons for their DEI employment initiatives (e.g., the need to provide “role models”), despite the fact that the Supreme Court rejected such reasons as illegal decades ago. (Such abuse of the limited leeway the Supreme Court gave universities in admissions decisions is why many observers are predicting that the Supreme Court will end it in the upcoming term, when it decides cases challenging admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.)
However, the main reason for the ubiquity of such practices is that only people who are, in fact, victims of such discriminatory practices have standing to sue to stop them. Leaving aside the serious economic challenges of litigating such a suit against a wealthy university, what would happen if you actually did so? E.g., “I exceed the posted qualifications for a tenure-track position at Enormous State University, but ESU’s official policy is that only BIPOC candidates are eligible for the position. As a white [or Asian] man I am ineligible for the position because of my race, and so I am suing ESU for racial discrimination in employment.”
In the woke monoculture that pervades most campuses today, being known as someone who took legal action to challenge a DEI initiative would render you radioactive and unemployable, not only at ESU but across most of the American academy. And even if you prevail in your lawsuit, you would thereafter be known as the guy who got an “antiracist” affirmative action employment program shut down. Given what the campus cancel culture mobs have done to people like Dorian Abbot who merely question the legality or morality of such programs, what do you think they will do to someone who actually succeeds in having them declared illegal? Ask Allan Bakke.
With universities perceiving no real risk of being sued, and with the Biden administration having about the same interest in neutrally enforcing federal discrimination law as it does in securing the southern border, university administrators know there is no serious risk to giving in to the demands of “antiracist” activists for official, overt discrimination against white and Asian men. That many state officials (including some red-state officials such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott) are too cowardly to do anything to resist the campus wokesters further compounds the problem. Like the days of Mob-controlled garbage collection in New York City, university administrators can say, “Yeah, what we’re doing is illegal. Whaddya gonna do about it?”
But just as the law eventually destroyed the Mob’s garbage cartels in the Big Apple, the law may finally be coming for the overt employment discrimination practiced on most campuses today. The form of the destructor may be a test case filed on September 10: Lowery v. Texas A&M University System.
As described in the complaint:
8. The Texas A&M University System, along with nearly every university in the United States, discriminates on account of race and sex when hiring its faculty, by giving discriminatory preferences to female or non-Asian minorities at the expense of white and Asian men. This practice, popularly known as “affirmative action,” has led universities to hire and promote inferior faculty candidates over individuals with better scholarship, better credentials, and better teaching ability.
9. These race and sex preferences are patently illegal under Title VI and Title IX, which prohibit all forms of race and sex discrimination at universities that receive federal funds. But university administrators think they can flout these federal statutes with impunity because no one ever sues them over their discriminatory faculty-hiring practices and the Department of Education looks the other way.
10. These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States. The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system.
Specifically, the complaint avers that in July 2022, Texas A&M’s “office for diversity” announced a program for hiring professors that was limited to members of “underrepresented groups,” which it defined as “African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians.” In other words, like many DEI initiatives that pervade most university campuses today, white and Asian men need not apply for this program. Texas A&M justified the program with the goal of establishing a faculty whose racial composition attains “parity with that of the State of Texas”—despite the fact that even Grutter recognized that such racial balancing was “patently unconstitutional.”
Another week and more Disney employees arrested for attempting to have sex with minors. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Speaking of groomers: “Sixth-Graders Protect Their Fellow Students From a Creepy Teacher.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Not helping: Texas GOP leadership “Refuses to Publish Study Critical of Child Gender Mutilation. State Rep. Will Metcalf (R-Montgomery) blocked the publication for being ‘controversial and inflammatory.'”
Twitter continues its war against conservatives:
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“FBI Tracks Down Mike Lindell On Hunting Trip, Surrounds His Car And Seizes Cell Phone.”
Nancy Pelosi channels Jeb Bush: “That’s an applause line.”
The Russian S-300 still sucks.
Philadelphia’s soda tax backfires. “People shopping for sodas outside city limits canceled out almost 40% of the decrease in sugar-sweetened beverage purchases. Additionally, the soda pop tax actually led to about a 4% increase in purchases of other high-sugar goods in Philadelphia and in neighboring towns. But compared to the sugar decrease from sodas in Philadelphia, additional sweetened food purchases offset an additional 40%.”
Ohio Democratic representative and senate nominee Tim Ryan says “We Gotta Kill” MAGA “Extremists.” You may remember Ryan from such hits as “My Presidential Campaign Is Going Nowhere Fast.”
Russia’s gas cutoff may force BASF’s largest chemical plant in Germany to shut down entirely.
“Who am I selling out to?”
Wokeness kills G4. In other news, G4 was evidently still running somewhere.
Armin Tamzarian, call your office. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Yo dawg, I heard you like Minecraft, so I put a Minecraft in your Minecraft so you can Minecraft while you Minecraft.
Huge Ft. Worth football brawl triggers ejections of players. All of them.
Sea urchins wearing hats.
“Obamas Construct New Cages At Martha’s Vineyard To Hold Arriving Migrants.”
“King Charles Replaces Harry & Meghan With Two Corgis In Line Of Succession.”
Tags:2022 Election, Babylon Bee, BASF, Border Controls, discrimination, Disney, Elections, Facebook, Ft. Worth, G4, George Soros, Germany, groomer, Hunter Biden, Illegal Aliens, Izyum, John Lawrence, Larry Krasner, LinkSwarm, Mark Perry, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Media Watch, Mike Lindell, Minecraft, pedophilia, Philadelphia, Regulation, Richard Lowery, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, sex offender, Texas, Texas A&M, Thomas Sowell, transexual, Twitter, UK, Ukraine, war crimes, Will Metcalf
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 23rd, 2021
Texas A&M’s football team has withdrawn from the Gator Bowl following a bout of Flu Manchu.
News broke on Tuesday that A&M’s football team had not practiced since last Saturday as a number of athletes had tested positive prior to the Aggies hitting the practice field on Sunday and then again during the next two days. The team was supposed to be released to go home on Tuesday until Dec. 26 when players were to make their way to Jacksonville for final bowl preparations. People both within the program and the highest levels of the administration were pessimistic as early as Tuesday night due to practical considerations arising from numbers via NCAA protocols that the game would take place.
The Aggies were already down quite a few players going into bowl game workouts last week given their status due to injuries and opt outs even before news of possible problems with COVID tests had emerged. There are as many as ten upperclassmen who are draft eligible who could or already have opted out of the game. In addition, two more (Zach Calzada and Dreyden Norwood) have entered the NCAA transfer portal since the regular season ended. Finally, by our count, there are as many as 12 players who are done for the season and won’t play in the game due to injury. Those items push the Aggies down towards approximately 60 scholarship players being available for the game including just one quarterback in Haynes King (who missed most of the season himself due to a broken ankle and has just returned to workouts).
Wait, 60 players? That’s seven more than an NFL roster. You need 11 players each side, for a total of 22. (And prior to 1941, the same players played both offense and defense.) You’ve got enough to play, even if a few players have to learn new positions in a hurry. It’s the postseason, the only postseason your team gets this year, and you’re wimping out.
Also note: “Scholarship” players. Whatever happened to the much-vaunted “12th Man” tradition at A&M, about to turn a century old? One of the features of the 12th Man was a willingness to play walk-ons. A bet dozens (if not hundreds) of ex-high school football playing Aggies would be happy to volunteer to join the football team in their hour of need. And I bet the NCAA would approve it.
But no, we can’t have that. Better to cancel it because someone might get an ouchie.
Evidently the Aggies of 2021 just aren’t made of the stern stuff of the Aggies of 1922. Or even 1983.
Tags:college, coronavirus, Florida, Football, Texas, Texas A&M
Posted in Texas | 6 Comments »
Friday, July 17th, 2020
Another Friday, another boatload of links. In fact, too many to wrangle into shape right now. I may have to do another mini LinkSwarm on Saturday.
Kurt Schlichter has a warning for our elites:
Would you be shocked to learn that a big hunk of the citizenry is absolutely convinced that Donald Trump will not only be re-elected but re-elected in a landslide? It’s true, and it’s not an ironic or performative belief, but rather one drawn from a perspective that the mainstream media utterly ignores. This means you probably have no idea it even exists, and that could lead to an unpleasant surprise in November.
Well, unpleasant for you.
Remember that apocryphal anecdote about how Pauline Kael moaned that she did not know anyone voting for Dick Nixon? If you’re here, then that’s very likely you.
You can dismiss these people as stupid – many of them really believe that Jesus stuff, deny systemic racism, and have no fear of civilization being destroyed by the weather in a decade or so.
After all, President Hillary Clinton did.
Didn’t there arise in your mind, that agonizing Wednesday morning after Mrs. Clinton’s ruination, just the faintest notion that you had been lied to? You tracked the polls, and you reviewed the percentages – most hovering above 90% – that assured you that the glass ceiling was in for an epic shattering. And yet, no shattering was forthcoming. Whether expressly or by omission, you were lied to.
And it is happening again.
“Trump Admin Tells Minnesota Governor To Get Bent Over $16 Million Aid Request Following Riots.” If Democratic officials refuse to defund their own cities from hard-left rioters and thugs, how is that the rest of the nation’s problem?
Cancel culture is real.
President Donald Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was great.
First, let’s be clear on who is waging the “culture war” for which the media blames Trump. Trump did indeed blast the “cancel culture” that is “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees” so that “in our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.”
Trump here is just speaking the truth. There has long been an established, deeply admirable civic culture in this nation; it is the radical left who now wages war against it. All over the country, people are being fired for the mere utterance of inconvenient or unwanted thoughts, even anodyne thoughts. People are being physically (and dangerously) hounded from public forums. And it is an utter assault on the rule of law itself to deface or destroy public art, as opposed to removing it through legitimate representative processes. To defend the civic culture against such assaults is not an affront, but a duty.
Moreover, as Trump said, it is a duty rooted not in suppression but in a commitment to continued expression of the values and virtues that have “rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”
“Chinese Virologist Flees Hong Kong, Accuses Beijing Of COVID-19 Cover-Up.”
Plagues, compared. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Texas governor Greg Abbott says still no lockdown order.
Democrat M. J. Hegar won her runoff with Royce West to face incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn in November. Cahnmann thinks Hegar is a much better candidate than West, but she’s not going to get the mountains of money and fawning media Beto O’Rourke got in 2018, nor are the demographic voting dynamics of a presidential election year going to be nearly as friendly to her.
Other Texas runoff election results. Fort Bend County Sheriff beating Troy Nehls beating Kathaleen Wall 70% to 30% is interesting, especially since Wall poured $8 million of her own money into the race, more than 16x what Nehls raised. As Ted Cruz proved in 2012: Money isn’t everything.
On the other hand, Ilhan Omar’s Democratic primary opponent raised $3.2 million to Omar’s $471,000.
Speaking of which: “Ilhan Omar’s Payments To Husband’s Firm Top $1 Million.” She’s certainly adapted quickly to the Washington Way…
Former Auburn football coach and Donald trump-endorsement recipient Tommy Tuberville wins Alabama senate primary over Jeff Sessions. I fully expect Tuberville to crush fluke democratic incumbent Dough Jones in the fall.
How remote work could destroy Silicon Valley:
Perhaps no phenomenon is more studied, marveled, and desired in the world of high tech and science than the mystery of serendipity. In seemingly every industry, CEOs pay millions in consulting, design, and architectural costs to multiply and optimize the number of chance encounters between their most creative employees — and hopefully profit from the blockbuster new products that might result. If only they could engineer the cubicles just so, or the indoor waterfall at the right angle, they might orchestrate providential encounters, or at least load the dice in their favor.
No place on the planet generates more such interest than Silicon Valley. For decades, cities everywhere have tried to replicate the Valley’s record of producing one trend-setting tech giant after another, but none has quite measured up. Like history’s other hubs of outsized accomplishment — Athens in 450 B.C., Hangzhou in the 12th century, and Florence in the 16th century — Silicon Valley has entrenched itself as the world’s centrifugal force for the biggest thing of its age, tech.
But now Silicon Valley seems to be under a little-noticed threat. Amid Covid-19, the deep recession, and renewed antitrust pressure from Congress and regulators, the Valley faces a very different challenge — the disruption of its very essence, the serendipitous encounter. The culprit is a rush by many of the Valley’s leading companies to permanently lock in the coronavirus-led shift to remote work. In May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees they were no longer required to turn up in the office. Slack said more or less the same to its workers, and the trend was made official by industry colossus Zuckerberg, who announced that he expected up to half his employees would become permanently remote.
In the years before the pandemic, talent in San Francisco and the Valley were already conflicted about whether to stay, increasingly exasperated by the cost of living. The concentration of highly motivated creators has produced enticing jobs, but also driven up prices. In Palo Alto, the median home now costs $3.2 million. In nearby Mountain View, it’s $1.7 million, and in San Francisco $1.8 million. In other words, the Valley has priced out almost anyone not making high six-figures, and even many of them. The temptation has been to flee elsewhere, and some tech talent had already been doing so.
But now, if engineers, designers, and venture capitalists are geographically disbanding, working via the cloud instead of walking Google’s halls, surfacing at Buck’s Restaurant, or the cafes on University Avenue, how will future serendipity happen?
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at instapundit.)
Lincoln Project co-founder is literally a registered agent for Russia. “The media can keep calling you ‘Republicans,’ but if you support Democrats, take Democratic Party positions, make voting for Democrats all the way down the ticket a binary choice and moral imperative, and then take most of your money from big Democratic Party donors, you’re a Democrat.”
Another good word is “Grifter”:
Iran’s nuclear facilities mysteriously explode. (Scratches chin.)
Another day, another fake hate crime, this one at Texas A&M.
How idiots destroyed Brooks Brothers. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Austin response times for emergencies has gotten progressively worse over the years.
The City would cut the number of cops despite increasing response times for emergency calls and increased violent crime in the city. I suspect other cities will be facing similar budget decisions under similar circumstances.
I don’t know anyone who thinks we shouldn’t improve officer training and use of force guidelines to minimize harm to citizens. I know a number of cops who have been saying such things for years. I fail to see how decreasing the number of cops will enhance public safety.
Oopsie!
ESPN suspends “NBA insider and reporter Adrian Wojnarowski after he sent an email to Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley reading, ‘F— you.'”
The Republican senator asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver last week if he would allow players to wear jerseys with the message: “Free Hong Kong.” Hawley was criticizing the league after officials announced “pre-approved phrases” would be allowed on the back of jerseys while “censoring support” for law enforcement and criticism of China, according to Fox News.
Wojnarowski responded to Hawley with the two-word email, which Hawley shared on social media. The columnist soon issued an apology for the message.
Wojnarowski (or “Woj” as NBA followers call him) still hasn’t clarified which was offensive to him: Supporting American law enforcement officers or supporting freedom for Hong Kong.
The Houston Rockets’ Russell Westbrook tests positive for coronavirus.
RoadRich will be very sad at this story.
“Ca-..ca-…ca-Candygram!”
“Black Conservative Informed By White People That He’s Racist.”
“Elizabeth Warren Declares Herself Warlord Of Eastern Oklahoma Autonomous Zone.”
“Trump 2020 Campaign To Simply Air Unedited Footage Of Democrats Talking.”
My friend Dave Hardy has a free swashbuckling SF novel on Amazon through Sunday.
“It’s like confetti, but with human bodies!”
Tags:2020 Election, 2020 Texas Senate Race, Adam Silver, Adrian Wojnarowski, aircraft, Austin, Austin Police Department, Boeing, Brooks Brothers, China, coronavirus, Crime, Democrats, Doug Jones, Elizabeth Warren, ESPN, Foreign Policy, Greg Abbott, Hong Kong, Houston Rockets, Ilhan Omar, Iran, Jeff Sessions, John Cornyn, Josh Hawley, Kathaleen Wall, Kurt Schlichter, Land Shark, Lincoln Project, LinkSwarm, M. J. Hegar, Mount Rushmore, NBA, Oklahoma, police, Republicans, riot, Royce West, Russell Westbrook, Russia, Social Justice Warriors, technology, Tesla Motors, Texas, Texas A&M, Tommy Tuberville, Troy Nehls, Wuhan
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 24th, 2020
Burisma, Chinese plagues and falling iguanas all feature in this Friday’s LinkSwarm!
Emails tie “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella to Obama White House meeting on Bursima.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham reported Wednesday evening that she obtained a chain of State Department emails stemming from a standard request for comment from New York Times journalist Ken Vogel, whose reporting helped generate scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Hunter Biden, 49, is the son of Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, and Republicans have called for him to testify during the Ukraine-related Senate impeachment trial against President Trump.
On May 1, 2019, Vogel contacted State Department official Kate Schilling about a story he was working on regarding an Obama administration meeting in January 2016 with Ukrainian prosecutors and mentioned the name of the CIA analyst believed to be the whistleblower whose complaint sparked impeachment proceedings that led to two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Would you believe that the New York Times had and killed the story of the meeting? Of course you would. It reflected badly on Democrats. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Top seven lies Adam Schiff has told to booster impeachment. Pretty much all of these should be familiar…
“Democrats Warn That American People May Tamper With Next Election.” “‘When the Founders wrote that founding document thing, they never imagined there would be electoral outcomes that Democrats did not agree with.’ Democrats also said they even have hard evidence that the 2016 election was compromised by Republicans voting for Trump.”
Final Brexit bill passes. The EU is reportedly quite eager to hurt its largest trading partner to spite its face…
John Bercow is so very, very upset that Tories are blocking his peerage, in much the same way he blocked Brexit…
Giant warehouse explosion in Houston. No reports of injuries, but the explosion was said to be heard 20 miles away… Update: Now hearing it was a manufacturing facility, with a propylene tank as the suspected cause, with two dead and one missing.
China’s birthrate hits historic low. Mark Steyn always said that China would get old before it got rich.
China is also trying to control the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic:
The Chinese government has placed the city of Wuhan under quarantine in an attempt to stop the spread of the deadly, pneumonia-like virus called 2019-nCoV.
According to a Chinese news bulletin, all passenger transportation out of the city has been temporarily suspended. That means that the city’s 11 million residents, hundreds of whom have fallen ill and at least nine of whom have died from the viral outbreak, are trapped unless they receive special permission to leave.
The virus quickly spread to nearby Japan, Thailand, and South Korea, and a traveler from Wuhan also carried it to the U.S.
In the face of a global outbreak, the Chinese government has been trying to maintain control of the narrative, censoring media and deleting social media posts that don’t align with its official statements.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Last coronavirus death count is 26 people, with more than 30 million people under quarantine. By contrast, the 2014-2016 west African Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 people.
But wait! Wuhan is also home to a lab studying the world’s most dangerous pathogens.
Coronavirus case in Brazos County, Texas? That’s home to College Station and Texas A&M University.
For its new White House correspondent, CNN hired the guy who got caught asking the DNC what he should ask.
First! Rule! You! Fucking! Idiot!
Smear someone as a “white nationalist” on the says so of the SPLC, just because they want to enforce border control laws? Enjoy your $5 million lawsuit.
Hungary to abolish Gender Studies. Good.
Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen has stated that such programs “ha[ve] no business in universities” as they represent “an ideology, not a science,” with a market profile “close to zero.” Similarly, Orban’s Chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said, “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women. They lead their lives the way they think best [and] the Hungarian state does not wish to spend public funds on education in this area.”
Media estimates of 22,000 for the Second Amendment rally are probably too low. “I think when all is said and done, the crowd of gun rights supporters attending Lobby Day on Monday probably was double the official figure and approached 50,000.”
Speaking of Virginia Democrats trying to override inconvenient passages in that pesky Bill of Rights: “Virginia Democrats File Bill To Make Online Criticism of Elected Officials a Crime.
Norway’s government falls over Islamic State bride.
“Austin’s Homeless Policy May Be Implicated in the City’s First Murder of 2020.”
In addition to Steve Adler all but personally inviting every transient drug addict in the state to take up residence in Austin, the killer was out on personnel recognizance bond after committing a burglary, thanks to yet another Austin City Council decision.
Fun things from the SHOT Show. (Hat tip: CutJibNews on Ace of Spades HQ.)
Amazon sues to stop to stop Microsoft $10 billion “war cloud” project for the Pentagon, evidently because President Trump is a big meanie who didn’t let them get the contract. Eh, Pentagon procurement bidding is pretty opaque under the best of circumstances, much less under the zillions of possible variations on setting up a cloud infrastructure. There’s no way whether to determine this is a real grievance or just sour grapes over losing a big contract.
Denver Post writer fired for insisting there are two sexes.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald charged with hacking in Brazil. Though in this case, “hacking” seems to amount to “publishing embarrassing information about members of the Brazilian government.”
In praise of Christopher Tolkien. It’s probably only a matter of time until Disney buys the Tolkien estate now…or someone far worse.
Terry Jones has eaten his last mint.
Lost Klimpt recovered. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit. )
Tradwife. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Icy with a chance of falling iguanas.
Again?
Enjoy your weekly funny dog tweet:
Tags:Adam Schiff, art, Austin, Brexit, Burisma, China, CNN, College Station, coronavirus, Crime, Democrats, Denver Post, dogs, Eric Ciaramella, EU, Florida, gun shows, Guns, homeless, Houston, Hungary, impeachment, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jihad, John Bercow, Ken Vogel, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Monty Python, New York Times, Norway, Obama, Obama Scandals, Obituary, pandemic, Second Amendment, Social Justice Warriors, Southern Poverty Law Center, Steve Adler, Texas, Texas A&M, trade, UK, Ukraine, Viktor Orban, Virginia, Zsolt Semjen
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Well, this is interesting: UT and A&M are part of a consortium bidding to help run Sandia nuclear weapons lab:
A consortium that includes the Texas A&M University System and the University of Texas System announced Tuesday that it will compete for the contract to operate one of the nation’s nuclear weapons labs.
The two university systems, along with the University of New Mexico, the Boeing Co. and the Battelle Memorial Institute, will bid to run Sandia National Laboratories, based in Albuquerque, N.M., officials said. Sandia, which is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, has a $2.9 billion annual budget and is currently operated by a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp.
“This collaboration is a perfect fit, leveraging the research power of stellar universities as well as the expertise of Battelle and Boeing to elevate the already remarkable development coming out of Sandia National Laboratories,” UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven said in a written statement.
The UT System, the A&M System and the University of New Mexico would provide research expertise, workforce training and independent peer review of the work done at Sandia, officials said.
I was previously unaware that UT had missed out on running Los Alamos in 2005…
Tags:Austin, Military, nuclear weapons, Sandia, Texas A&M, University of Texas
Posted in Austin, Military, Texas | No Comments »
