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Monday, September 30, 2024

Links - 30th September 2024 (2 - Palestine/Middle East Peace)

Meme - Phil Magness @PhilWMagness: "Just a reminder that this same University of Utah professor defended pro-Hamas protesters who painted a swastika on a synagogue a few months ago.  Now he thinks that acknowledging the victims of Stalin is tantamount to "Holocaust denial""
Marshall Steinbaum @Econ_Marshall: "This is a form of Holocaust denial."
Pierre Poilievre @PierrePoilievr: "On the 85th anniversary of Black Ribbon Day, we remember the victims of Soviet Socialism & National Socialism (Nazism). May we never forget the countless atrocities ..."
Weird. Usually left wingers claim that caring about one thing doesn't mean caring less about something else. But of course that only applies to their obsession with trivial bullshit that pushes the left wing agenda

Thread by @YasMohammedxx on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "On March 11, 1978, Dalal Mughrabi, a 19-year-old Palestinian woman, led a group of 13 terrorists from Lebanon by boat and landed on an Israeli beach between the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. Realizing that they had missed their target destination of Tel Aviv, the group casually ate lunch on the beach, then ran into nature photographer Gail Rubin, a New Yorker and the niece of a U.S. senator. They asked her for directions to Tel Aviv and then Mughrabi shot Rubin point blank. They flagged down a taxi, killed its occupants and began driving to Tel Aviv. En route, they hijacked a bus full of civilians and proceeded to shoot Kalashnikovs and toss grenades at passing vehicles. They killed one of the bus passengers, tossed the body from the vehicle and carried on.   They commandeered a second bus, piling the surviving passengers from the first vehicle onto the second one, amassing 70 hostages. After blasting through successive barricades, the bus was finally stopped by a roadblock just outside the northern edge of Tel Aviv. The terrorists launched a firefight with sub-machine guns, grenades and explosives against ill-prepared and lightly armed officers. When the battle ended, 37 Israelis and one American, among them 13 children, were dead. Another 71 were wounded. It remained the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history until October 7. On International Women’s Day 2020, the official Palestinian Authority TV celebrated Mughrabi and other female terrorists: “They are the mothers of the leaders and the sisters of the heroes. They are the praiseworthy rebels who have carried the weapons and created generations of educated people.” A photo was tagged: “Heroic Martyr Dalal Mughrabi.” Today, throughout Palestine, Mughrabi’s photo adorns posters and T-shirts. “Sisters of Dalal” groups exist on university campuses. In 2010, a town square was named in her honor. In 2017, a women’s center was named in honor of Mughrabi, funded in part by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and the government of Norway. “We are all Dalal Mughrabi,” the New York Times quoted a member of the Fatah Central Committee saying at the dedication. “For us she is not a terrorist [but] a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.”  A 22-year-old who attended the ceremony said, “Dalal sacrificed for her country and is a symbol for every Palestinian girl.” There is nothing unusual in Palestinian society about the treatment of Mughrabi’s memory. The celebration of Palestinian “martyrs” is at the heart of the ongoing conflict and is part of a comprehensive strategy of incitement, of inculcating especially in the young a sense of the rightness of violence and a legitimacy of maximalist “resistance,” even as an alternative to negotiated peace. Palestinians from the youngest ages are encouraged to admire those who have died for the cause, to aspire to emulate them and, not coincidentally, to develop an intensively nurtured grievance-based loathing of Israelis and Jews... As a Palestinian woman, it pains me to confirm every syllable of the above. After Israeli hostages were shot in the head, Israel is facilitating polio vaccines in Gaza. The stark contrast between the people who value life and the people who value death is so remarkably clear. I grew up valuing death. I understand that mindset. I was born and raised and lived that mindset. Those of you who have never seen it are loathed to believe it’s true because it’s just too evil. It can’t be real. Humans are not like that. I envy you. I would love to live in the head of a person who does not intimately and viscerally understand that this is the devastating truth. The devastating reality. The people whose lives are in danger do not have the same luxury as you. We can’t pretend it’s not real. Like every person in Israel, I know it’s real. Like them, I feel the cold steel on my neck everyday. Also like them, I know what it feels like to scream for help and to have people’s eyes skim past yours to settle empathetically on the the evil behind you. How much must we scream? How much must we bleed? When will the world start to see that as they ignore our cries and our blood, theirs will be next?
Sultan Abu al-Einein, an adviser to Abbas on civil society organizations and a Fatah Central Committee member, said in a 2016 interview with the Palestinian news site Donia al-Watan:   If you ask me my blunt position, I would say — every place you find an Israeli, slit his throat. Likewise, I am against talks, negotiations, meetings, and normalization in all its forms with the Israeli occupation."

David Andrew Jaffe's answer to Why doesn't Israel allow Palestinians to have free access to Jerusalem? - Quora - "First of all, I live in Jerusalem. I see Palestinians everyday, everywhere. One of the greatest lookout areas of Jerusalem (Haas Promenade) is filled all the time with Palestinians. They work out next to me in the gym, sit next to me waiting in line for the doctors, and yell at clerks at the banks, just like the rest of us.  So you might mean something different than what your question sounds like. But there are TONS of Palestinians in and around central areas of Jerusalem, completely free of any issues whatsoever.  I know everyone wants pretend like Israel’s treatment of Arabs is akin to blacks in the US in the 60s or in apartheid South Africa. This is provable nonsense. In every way. A Jew on the street is no better in any way than a Palestinian.  Now, if your question is not really about Palestinians but about specific Palestinians, like Gazans for example, than the question at least makes sense. But so does the extraordinarily obvious answer!  Palestinians can go anywhere they’d like to on the extremely strict conditions of they are not allowed to kill people.  I know some people might take issue with that. If it’s a free country, with freedom of religion, and they have religious leaders dictating they must kill Jews, it is obviously very wrong for the Israeli government to place restrictions and prevent this.  Nevertheless, I must take issue with that idea.  Listen closely: The Israeli government sees the protection of its citizens as a value. There have been many Palestinians throughout the years who have entered Israeli territories and murdered thousands of Israelis. So the government takes precautions to prevent this from happening. And that equals some people sometimes cannot enter Jerusalem.  Please tell me under these situations how anyone reasonable person would do things differently."

Rachel Streich's answer to Why didn’t Britain establish a homeland for the Zionists on its own land instead of sending them to occupy Palestine and exterminate its people? - Quora - "Britain didn’t “send” Zionists to occupy Palestine or exterminate anyone.  There have always been Jews living in the region you call Palestine, since ancient times.  There have always been Jews coming home to Eretz Yisroel from other parts of the world in small numbers, since ancient times.  In the 1800’s, when the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who ruled the area you call Palestine, gave permission, organized groups of Jews began buying land in Eretz Yisroel from absentee landowners and moving there to escape persecution and discrimination in the countries where they had been living in exile.  They settled down, worked to improve their land (draining swamps, irrigating deserts), planted crops, built towns and cities, and tried to get along with their Arab neighbors. But it was the Arabs who frequently refused to get along with their Jewish neighbors and instigated violence against them.  By the time the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I and the British took over the administration of Palestine under a Mandate from the League of Nations, the presence of a significant Jewish population in the land was an already-established fact that the British had nothing to do with.  In fact, due in increasing violence by Arabs against Jews, and pressure from Arab leaders, the British severely limited immigration to Mandatory Palestine by Jews in the 1930’s and 1940’s, at the exact time when Jews across Europe were desperately trying to get out of Europe to escape Nazi persecution and genocide.  As for “extermination” of Arabs in Palestine, nothing like that ever happened while the British were in control of Palestine, or at any time after.  About 700,000 Arabs left their homes within Israel’s borders when Israel declared independence in 1948, because Arab leaders asked them to clear the way for an all-out Arab assault on Israel, and assured them that the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq would quickly destroy all the Jews and then the refugees would be able to come home and take the Jews’ property.  Unfortunately for them, the Jews won the war. Those Arabs who didn’t leave when Israel declared independence (about 150,000) became Israeli citizens and have lived in peace with their Jewish neighbors ever since.  Now, 76 years later, those 700,000 Arabs who left have become 5 million plus “Palestinian refugees”. So….where is the “extermination” you speak of?"

Goldfinger's answer to How can the U.S. ensure accountability for incidents like the shooting of American activists in the West Bank? - Quora - "Enact a law that says the moment an American citizen joins a terrorist organization like Hamas, or lends them material support, they automatically lose their US citizenship. That way, when they get killed in a battle zone, which is all of Israel at the moment, nobody gives a FCK.  I don’t see your outcry for the American hostages who were murdered in cold blood by Hamas or others. If you are a hypocrite and you’re posting on these pages against Israel, best you find another hobby.  We are coming for them all. Every last one, AND their supporters. One of the ‘silent rules’ of the Middle East is, “If you support terrorism against us in any way/shape/form, your life is forfeit from that point onward.”"

Jay Horowitz's answer to What are the implications of calling for an independent probe into the killing of US activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the West Bank? - Quora - "I am not sure why people are so outraged that a person decided to participate in a war and got killed. I have visited Israel three times, the last time, being nine years ago for my godson’s BarMitzvah. He suggested that he and I visit The Toumb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron, in the West Bank. That area, like Jenin is a volatile area with frequent battles between Jew and Palestinians. Hell no. I had no desire to put myself into a war that doesn’t involve my own country. She made a decision to participate in a war and paid a price, that many war participants pay."

Meme - James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames: ""Palestine" is not the issue. The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution."
"3. PALESTINE IS NOT A SINGLE ISSUE. PALESTINE IS THE - ISSUE.
Venn diagram with circles: Racism, Capitalism, Patriarchy, Settler Colonialism, Environmental Terrorism
WHITE SUPREMACY. TOXIC MASCULINITY. MISOGYNY. INDIVIDUAL OVER COMMUNITY. MAN DESTROYS NATURE
PALESTINE CONNECTS IT ALL!
PALESTINE IS THE ISSUE THAT MAKES US REALISE EVERYTHING IS INTERCONNECTED. EVERY STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE, FREEDOM, AND LIBERATION. ALL CONECTED. FROM PALESTINE, TO CONGO, TO SUDAN."
The left wing agenda is all connected
Keywords: When left wingers not just admit, but proclaim, that the left wing agenda is all connected

Takezo Thot on X - "So fighting for Palestine is fighting against toxic masculinity and misoginy ? Have you ever heard of Islam ?"
paul worth on X - "Great Illustration of Intersectionality - place revolution in the middle. However, the common target is always moving. Wasn't Trans in the center ring yesterday?"
David Carlyon on X - "That is like a diagram of the woke brain, but the center is always changing to whatever the Current Thing is."
Jared Vennett on X - "Someone made a visual of all the “species” of the Marxist “genus” Great visual of your explanation"
Trygve Taranger on X - "It is funny to see a Venn diagram like this for Palestine, because I distinctly recall reading a book which basically said the exact same thing. About Trump."
Kiwi BOSS on X - "This is their "QAnon"."
JPB Liberty on X - "Wow! Does that mean if Israel completely destroys "palestine" and disperses the Arabs claiming this fake name to the 4 winds then all this woke leftist BS will disappear. Totally worth it."
Blueblur on X - "Remember, the revolution is always uniquely against Western civilization."

Oren Barsky 🎗️ on X - "This clip of @DouglasKMurray   on @PiersUncensored     has been circulating online, and I imagine many of you  have seen it by now (if not, it’s worth watching).  For this reason, I won’t address his comments directly,  but rather focus on a hidden meaning within his words  that many seem to overlook.  Douglas begins by stating that you can’t hold the leader  of a democratic nation to the same standards as the  leaders of a terrorist organization.  And here lies a critical insight that needs to be brought  to light.  Many in the West view events in the Middle East through  their own lens—shaped by their values and beliefs,  which are rooted in one basic principle:
LOGIC.  In their minds, it seems logical that a person would want  to live a good and peaceful life.  It seems logical that they’d want their family and  children to have a better present and future.  It seems logical that a country would strive to improve  the lives of its citizens.  It seems logical to want to live and let live.  But that’s a mistake.
You can’t analyze the Middle East through a Western  lens. But many still refuse to accept this.  They don’t want what you in the West think people  want.  You shout “Free Palestine” because it seems logical to  you that this is what the Palestinians want.  But they were already free—Israel withdrew, and along  with the rest of the world, provided resources they could  have taken advantage of.   They had democratic elections. And what did they  choose?  They chose an extremist Islamist organization that  believes in a global Islamic caliphate.  They chose not to be democratic. They chose not to  choose anymore.   They chose not to be free.
Now, because you refuse to understand this, we witness all sorts of bizarre phenomena, like “Queers for  Palestine”—since, to them, it seems logical that a  marginalized group would support another group they  perceive as oppressed.   Naturally, they assume both sides support each other’s rights and goals.  We’ve also seen other figures claiming that all the  Palestinians want is to live in a free and democratic  state, "just like we have in the U.S." (remember that?).  “Just give them their own state, and they’ll leave you  alone.”  This sounds logical for someone who wants to live their  life and let others live theirs—but it doesn’t align with  the logic of the Middle East.  By the way, this is also why many in the West refuse or  struggle to understand that a significant number of  immigrants from the Middle East didn’t come to  integrate.  “I’ll let them live their lives, and they’ll let me  live mine,” they think. But that’s not the reality. Many  didn’t come to integrate, and they didn’t come to let you  continue living your lives as before.  (Of course, many did—many Muslims do want to live that way—but they aren’t the dominant group. They fear radical Islam more than anyone else, so you also need to look out for them.)  The day you understand this will be the day you  understand why they encourage their children to die,  why they raise them to die, and why they rejoice in their  deaths.   No Western person can truly comprehend this— but that’s the reality.  You’ll understand why, in Gaza, there isn’t a single  civilian bomb shelter—not one!—despite it being a war- torn area and despite receiving billions for civilian  infrastructure and fortifications.   (In Israel, for example—despite having the world’s most  advanced missile defense technology— there is still a  law requiring a protected room in every new home,  and public shelters near unprotected buildings are  regularly maintained.)  You’ll understand why civilians are deliberately left  vulnerable, and why they actually want to see as many  of their own civilians killed as possible.
The day you understand this, you might realize that this  is not just a local conflict, but a clash of cultures—one  that believes in compromise and coexistence,  while the other sees compromise as out of the question, with only one solution: the destruction of one of them."
This is like elites who are unable to understand how sub-IQ 100 people think and so think things like universal basic income is a good idea or criminals won't reoffend if you let them be bailed off

Khaled Hassan on X - "THE BBC REPORT IS OUT.   After months of work, I have a lot to say. But, for now, I want to leave you with one of our key findings for BBC Arabic.   I sampled 160 randomly selected interviewees. Of these, 45 had Reportable Affiliations [mostly to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad] and 14 were found to have official ties to Hamas. The BBC should have reported the affiliations of its interviewees (that's why the BBC refers to such affiliations as "Reportable Affiliations"). Instead, they presented to you, the non-Arabic speaking public, as innocent civilians, legitimate journalists, poor victims, etc.   BBC Arabic is an excellent outlet....for representing the views of a society that supports Hamas, such as Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, or Lebanon. BBC Arabic is unfit for purpose. BBC Arabic is the British Al Jazeera. Paid for by the British government to promote pro-Hamas content!   When Jews are attacked on our streets, on campuses, at schools, workplaces, and synagogues, it's because of the hatred and lies our publicly funded broadcaster has fed to the public over the years.  This is not okay."
Kosher🎗🧡 on X - "🚨 JUST RELEASED 🚨 Here it is. Wow. The official Asserson Report Document on the BBC Bias in the Israel/Hamas reporting. In my opinion, the word “damaging” would be a huge understatement. Click the link for a PDF copy of The Asserson Report 👇🏽"

Thread by @thestustustudio on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "BREAKING: Joseph Edelman, a Brown University trustee, has now resigned over the future divestment vote at Brown University.  As a result, I am releasing my recording of the Wednesday meeting where the Brown Divest Coalition presented their proposal to divest from Israel.
Here is video of the full presentation below. Remember, Brown is a private university; you can't FOIA this video. Without me, this recording may not have ever gone public.  I honestly wanted a bit more time with this footage and other divestment trainings I have recorded to present this in a digestible format. The language of ESG is how many of these students are getting their foot in the door and they are being trained to exploit this. There is a lot I could say about this subject.  However, Edelman's resignation will hopefully get sizable attention, and I hope by "democratizing" this footage, you can see how ridiculous this presentation was. If you use it, please tag me so I can boost it and comment if needed.
I really enjoyed watching Professor James Kellner grill the students after their presentation. Kellner is a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and Environment and Society. In a past life, I imagine he must have been a lawyer. He is one of the professors who is a member of the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management (ACURM).  Here he explains ACURM's duties when it comes to "social harm." In a truly golden moment, he then asks the students if they know that Brown University is not directly invested in any of the ten companies they want to divest from.
Kellner posed a philosophical question to the students about how social harm could be easily identifiable if we presume that companies are responsible for how their products are used. He used alcohol as an example of something that is widely used yet creates social harm.  President of the Undergraduate Council of Students, Niyanta Nepal, didn't engage with this thought experiment and instead focused on how strong the students feel about divestment and how personal Palestine is for the student body.  Nepal ran on a platform of divestment and even participated in the hunger strike for eight days.
Again, Kellner gets philosophical and discusses how possibly neutrality cannot exist; if so, should we consider the net good and net harm of these companies?  It sounds like Nepal, but could be another student, responds that the students are only looking at the harm.  Kellner says, "The world is more complicated than that." He uses flying on airplanes as an example of a social harm that also provides great benefits. He asks the students to consider how the university needs to consider the totality of a company.  The students once again don't engage with these questions and go back to how the student body has spoken about not wanting to be complicit and how they have proven how great the social harm is.
Kellner now asks the students about what Brown should do considering that they have received a letter from 24 Attorney Generals threatening legal action if the university divests.  Rafi Ash, the Treasurer of the Undergraduate Council of Students and Secretary of Brown/RISD Young Democratic Socialists of America, walks us through his legal analysis of the situation. He sees this as illegal and unconstitutional. He also believes these politicians are "jockeying for political power."
Kellner is such a good professor. If he is like this in the classroom, I imagine his students grow so much if they rise to the occasion.  "I appreciate that response; I'm going to push back and ask you to try again from a slightly different point of view."  Kellner walks the students through how grants work, how they "flow through other states," and how they could be jeopardized if Brown University divests.
Ash doesn't engage with this. Instead, he blames "fundamentally extremist politicians" and wants us to consider "who does the university stand for?" He sees this as an issue of academic freedom and that these students are simply questioning the university.
Major Takeaways from the Divestment Presentation
-Kellner rules and has such a great approach. We should all be blessed to have such a professor who challenges you to be your best.
-These are the best that Brown has to offer? Really?
-Volvo being one of the companies they want to divest from makes me laugh. Raise your hand if you ever rode around in that old iconic Volvo station wagon!"
The left's purity concerns at it again

Meme - 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ @NiohBerg: "Greta Thunberg wears a keffiyeh and chains herself to the mic on a Danish radio show.  Performative nonsense from a spoiled rich girl turned into a demigod by insane leftists."

German state near Berlin bans Islamic Centre, citing Hamas ties - "Brandenburg's Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) has banned an Islamic association outside of Berlin, saying it is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organization Hamas and promotes anti-Semitism. Stübgen, in a statement released on Thursday, also said the Islamic Centre Fürstenwalde al-Salam opposes the constitutional order. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement founded in 1928 in Egypt, is banned there. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militia group which started the current Gaza war after it invaded Israel on October 7, is the Brotherhood's branch in Gaza... In July 2023, the association was classified by the Brandenburg's domestic intelligence agency as a having confirmed extremist purpose... According to assessments by the agency, known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the association's extremist agenda can be demonstrated through its activities and social media posts. Posts make clear references to Islamist extremist organisations. For example, the association disseminated content from organizations close to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood on its social media channels. Additionally, anti-Semitic content is disseminated that questions Israel's right to exist, the domestic intelligence agency said."
More censorship of pro-Palestinian speech!

David Bernstein on X - "BREAKING: Non-anonymous allegations from a non-Jewish student that, in an environment of pervasive antisemitism student fellows at @georgetownsfs chanted "Gas more Jews," "We will finish what Hitler started," and "Every day is October 7th" at Georgetown's "Red Square." And that there are videos to support these claims, and that the administration did nothing. I am reprinting an email from a former student to the dean making these allegations, with permission."

Father of man who killed Israelis at Jordan-West Bank crossing comments on son's actions - "The father of the gunman in the deadly shooting of three Israelis at the border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, said on Monday he was proud of his son."
Terrorism supporters will pretend the IDF celebrates the deaths of Palestinian civilians instead of investigating them

War and peace: Israeli physicians treating Palestinian patients - "Severely ill patients were referred to the Rambam Health Care Campus by their local treating physicians for therapeutic modalities that were unavailable in Gaza and the West Bank. 34 paediatric patients (aged 2 months to 13 years) and 84 adults (aged 16–74 years), mainly with life-threatening diseases, such as acute leukaemia and bone marrow failure, received medical care at our institution. 15 paediatric and 48 adult patients underwent the most comprehensive medical treatments, including allogeneic stem-cell transplantation and novel immunotherapies"
One terrorism supporter kept blathering on about genocide, and when I presented this evidence, claimed Israel only did that because they had destroyed Palestinian hospitals. When I suggested that "genocide" would be more effective if they didn't treat any Palestinians at all, all he could do was laugh react. On some level terrorism supporters know they're talking rubbish, but when presented with facts and logic, all they can do is continue talking nonsense.

Meme - saira rao @sairasameerarao: "Realizing how many American doctors and nurses are Zionists and genuinely terrified for Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and Black patients - even more than usual. And usually it's bad."
Readers added context: "There is no recorded data of American zionist doctors intentionally harming or mistreating Arab, Muslim, Palestinian, Black, or brown patients. Important context is that Israeli hospitals routinely cure Palestinians, including Hamas leaders and their families."

Corporate Profits: Perception & Reality

"2-2d Capital and Its Earnings

After deducting the small sliver of income that goes to the owners of land and natural resources, the rest of national income mainly accrues to the owners of capital—the machines and buildings that make up the nation’s industrial plants.

The total market value of these business assets—a tough number to estimate—is believed to be in the neighborhood of $40 trillion. Because that capital earns an aver- age rate of return of about 10 percent before taxes, total earnings of capital—including corporate profits, interest, and all the rest—come to about $4 trillion. (These are very rough numbers.)

Public opinion polls routinely show that Americans have a distorted view of the level of business profits in our society. The man and woman on the street believe that corporate profits after tax account for about 36 percent of the price of a typical product. (See the box “Public Opinion on Corporate Profits” on the next page.) The correct number is closer to 7 percent.


"Public Opinion on Corporate Profits
What people think is a "reasonable" corporate profit - 26%
What people estimate corporate profit is - 36%
Actual corporate profit - 7%"
SOURCES: “Public Opinion Survey,” Reason-Rupe Public Opinion Survey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Survey Research Associates International, May 2013. The older poll was: “Public Attitudes toward Corporate Profits,” Public Opinion Index (Princeton, NJ: Opinion Research Corporation, June 1986)

A 2013 public opinion poll found that the average American thought that corporate profits after taxes amounted to 36 percent of sales for the typical manufacturing company. At the time, the actual profit share was closer to 7 percent! Interestingly, when a poll years earlier asked how much profit was “reasonable,” the mean response was 26 cents on every dollar of sales—more than six times as large as profits actually were at that time"

--- Macroeconomics: Principles & Policy, Fourteenth Edition / William J. Baumol, Alan S. BLinder, John L. Solow (2020)

Links - 30th September 2024 (1 - Harris-Walz)

MAZE on X - "What a beautiful clip. Last year while discussing Kamala's historically low approval rating, Joe Scarborough said that Biden shouldn't replace her because nobody cares about the VP.😂 He then said that none of the criticism Kamala gets is because she is Black or a woman.🤣"
Clearly, Dan Quayle was bashed because people were racist and sexist, and a white man would never be criticised the way he was

Scott Adams on X - "When I started getting a lot of media attention for Dilbert, my publisher paid to give me "media training" for interviews. Rule 1 for media training: If you don't like the question you were asked, answer a question you want to answer instead. Then run out the clock. When Harris avoids questions, it's because she is well-trained, not unprepared."

Andreessen Horowitz co-founders explain why they're supporting Trump - "Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of one of the most prominent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, says he’s been a Democrat most of his life. He says he has endorsed and voted for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, he says he’s no longer loyal to the Democratic Party. In the 2024 presidential race, he is supporting and voting for former President Donald Trump. The reason he is choosing Trump over President Joe Biden boils down primarily to one major issue — he believes Trump’s policies are much more favorable for tech, specifically for the startup ecosystem... “I wish we didn’t have to pick a side,” said Horowitz, who also acknowledged that his political choice would upset many of his friends and even his mother. “We literally [believe] the future of our business, the future of technology, and the future of America is at stake.” Andreessen and Horowitz argued that tech prowess is one of the three pillars — along with economy and military might — that allowed the U.S. to be the most successful country in the world over the last century. American dominance in these three areas helped the U.S. to peacefully defeat one of the biggest threats of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union ended the Cold War because it couldn’t keep up with the U.S. technologically, the a16z co-founders said. “Why is tech important? It’s because if you don’t have the tech part of that triangle, you’re not going to have the economy part, you’re not going to have the military part,” Andreessen said. The pair listed several reasons they believe the Biden administration is stifling startups through overregulation and potentially needless taxation, while Trump would help innovation flourish. Among other things, the co-founders explained that they don’t agree with the current White House plan to “overregulate” artificial intelligence. “Any limitations we put [on] ourselves are going to disadvantage the U.S. versus the rest of the World,” Andreessen said. They also discussed Trump’s view on AI at a recent dinner they had with the former president. “What he said to us is, ‘[AI] is very scary, but we absolutely have to win because if we don’t win, China wins,’” Horowitz said... Biden’s proposal to tax unrealized capital gains is what Andreessen called “the final straw” that forced him to switch from supporting the current president to voting for Trump. If the unrealized capital gains tax goes into effect, startups may have to pay taxes on valuation increases. (Private companies’ appreciation is not liquid. However, the U.S. government collects tax in dollars.) “If you’re a venture firm, you’re getting strips of your portfolio pulled away from you every year. You’re out of business,” Andreessen said. “This makes startups completely implausible.”"
The left hate the US, so

Kamala Harris says her dad taught her to be fearless, but he’s been markedly absent from her public rise - "Kamala Harris was on her 2019 memoir promotion tour when she joked around with radio host Charlamagne the God, the future vice president cheekily answering his question about whether she’d ever used marijuana. “Half my family’s from Jamaica,” she said. “Are you kidding me?” The man responsible for that half of the family, however – the politician’s father, economist Donald J. Harris – wasn’t laughing. Despite his virtual invisibility throughout Harris’ political rise, her father chose that moment to raise his head above the parapet. He sent a letter to a media outlet in his native Jamaica, publicly scolding her like a naughty child. “My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote. "Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”... Donald broke academic barriers a generation before his ceiling-shattering daughter. Born in Jamaica in 1938 and raised in St Ann Parish, he was descended on his father’s side from planter and slave-owning politician Hamilton Brown, founder of Brown’s Town on the island."
Clearly, even though he represents her "black" side, he doesn't support her due to racism and internalised white supremacy. He is contemptible because he is descended from a slave owner.
Mary Trump hates Donald Trump so it proves you should never vote for him, but if you talk about Walz's family supporting Trump you are contemptible, and Harris's father criticising her doesn't mean anything

Meme - "Tim Walz's family has a message for him: TRUMP 2024. TAKE AMERICA BACK. WALZ'S FOR TRUMP"

Grief over Gaza, qualms over US election add up to anguish for many Palestinian Americans - "Nada Al-Hanooti, national deputy organizing director with the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, rejects as unfair the argument by some that traditionally Democratic voters who withhold votes from Harris are in effect helping Trump. She said the burden should be on Harris and her party. “Right now, it’s a struggle being a Palestinian American,” she said. “I don’t want a Trump presidency, but, at the same time, the Democratic Party needs to win our vote.”... initially gave him relief on various domestic issues, but the DNC left him disappointed on the Palestinian question. Before the convention, he expected to vote Democratic, but now says he’s considering backing the Green Party for the top of the ticket or leaving that blank. “Our vote shouldn’t be taken for granted,” he said. “I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils.”"
Weird. We are told that if you don't "vote Blue, no matter who", you are enabling "fascism". And we know it's Islamophobic to call Muslims fascists

My government job taught me amazing lessons. I wish Kamala Harris learned them - "The goal with the highway department was to conserve energy, while the goal at the book bindery was to conserve time — to finish as quickly as possible and move on with your life. With government work, time routinely acquired a negative value — something to be killed. I recognized early on that killing time was a crime against life itself. All or almost all of Harris’s work experience is for the government – either forcing people to obey specific laws (as a prosecutor) or creating new laws they will be forced to obey (as a senator). Perhaps Harris never experienced ground-level government perpetual incompetence."

Kamala Harris Believes Slavery Caused Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure - "HARRIS: “Because, you know, all of us can be traced back to the original tribe, you know, based on body size and shape and all that. And so, went back, and in the original people, who are still there, no such heart disease.”
UNKNOWN: “Wow.”
HARRIS: “No such high blood pressure. Well, what happened? 400 years of slavery happened.”
UNKNOWN: “Yes.”"
Koz on X - "Or it could be buying and eating crappy foods. Check the shopping carts."

Suzette Leverock on X - "I just want someone to laugh at my jokes the way that Kamala laughs at questions she can’t answer."

New Poll Suggests Harris’s Support Has Stalled After a Euphoric August - The New York Times - "Is Kamala Harris’s surge beginning to ebb?  That’s the question raised by this morning’s New York Times/Siena College poll, which finds Donald J. Trump narrowly ahead of her among likely voters nationwide, 48 percent to 47 percent... Overall, 46 percent of likely voters say they have a favorable view of the former president. That’s down a tick from our last national poll, when 47 percent had a favorable view, but it still makes him more popular than he was in 2016 or 2020... A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is “not too far” to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s “too far to the right.” Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s “not too far either way.” This is one of Mr. Trump’s overlooked advantages. Yes, he’s outside of the political mainstream in many respects — he denied the result of the 2020 election. And yes, he does have conservative views on many issues, like immigration. But he’s also taken many positions that would have been likelier to be held by a Democrat than a Republican a decade ago, like opposition to cutting entitlements, support for a cooperative relationship with Russia or opposition to free trade. It’s a reputation he’s careful to protect, from saying he doesn’t support Project 2025 to his cagey position on additional measures to restrict abortion. He’s seen as the change candidate in a nation that wants change... When Ms. Harris entered the presidential race, she seemed like a candidate with a lot of potential liabilities. She took many unpopular positions in her 2019 presidential campaign, and she was tied to the Biden administration’s immigration policy as well.  In August, it seemed she could glide past all of these issues by running as a “generic” Democrat. She didn’t make many gestures to the middle. She didn’t roll out a robust policy platform. Instead, she mostly stuck to boilerplate Democratic messaging on abortion, strengthening the middle class, prices, democracy and more... In this poll, the risks associated with this strategy are evident. Despite a month of favorable coverage, voters still don’t know enough about her: 28 percent of voters said they needed to learn more, compared with only 9 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump. More than anything, voters say they want to hear more about where she stands on the issues, something her campaign has seemed to struggle to lay out. The poll also hints that the Trump campaign has begun to fill in some of the blanks. Nearly half of voters say she’s “too liberal or progressive.” A majority of voters see her as at least somewhat responsible for the problems along the border. And a majority of voters say she’s a “risky” choice and “more of the same” — hardly an enviable combination."

Bad Hombre on X - "According to leaks the joy is gone and there is increasing discontent within the Harris-Walz campaign. Kamala angrily referred to members of her team as “totally incompetent” during a call for failing to secure changes to the Sept 10th debate rules that she believes would have favored her. Staff is also blaming Walz’s “awkwardness on the campaign trail” for her declining poll numbers."

Diana Dillman on X - "This race must be familiar for many women: she's overqualified for the promotion, he's unqualified, and yet it's still a contest."
Left wing logic: Trump isn't qualified despite having held the job before. Harris is qualified because of her DEI appointments, even though her record is shit

Ruth Ben-Ghiat on X - "As I said in my earlier tweet today, the strategy of the NYT seems to be to cast doubt on the competency of Harris. Images are powerful and this one shows Harris as "coming apart" & lacking focus- also gender stereotypes."
You're not allowed to criticise incompetent women (but on the left only) because of "stereotypes"

Resist the Mainstream on X - "🚨 Kamala unable to provide a proper definition of "collective bargaining"
"Collective bargaining is about saying, 'let the collective come together around a common experience which at it's core is about dignity and dignity of labor'...and then the outcome will be fair""

‘Let Them Eat Joy’ - "The Democratic National Convention, which just wrapped up in Chicago with the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, positively glittered. The event was chock full of celebrity politicians, musicians, movie stars, millionaires, and even a couple billionaires; the combined net worth of the Democratic glitterati who graced the stage was probably bigger than that of some small nations. And boy are those rich people happy. Joy is back! Hope is back! Obama is back!  One other thing, though, was on full display: the class divide that has come to define the Democratic Party.   For hardworking Americans struggling to make it in the economy created by three of the speakers who took the convention stage—Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—there was precious little by way of policy to make the case for Harris. To the extent that a pitch was made to the American people about what a Harris/Walz administration would look like, it was that it would be filled with the joy of the rich and the famous, of Kerry Washington and Hillary Clinton, JB Pritzker and Michelle Obama.  Who is Kamala Harris? What does she plan to do as president? There was gaslighting aplenty as we were reintroduced to a woman we all know, as if she were a blank slate available for projection.   “[Kamala] understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” Michelle Obama said of a woman who dropped out of a primary before a single vote was cast and somehow failed her way to the top of a presidential ticket. “We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth,” Michelle Obama said of a woman whose father and mother had PhDs. “If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead,” the former first lady said of a woman leading a party that just undermined an entire election process to get Joe Biden off the ticket. Not to be outdone, former President Obama spent half his speech demonizing Trump and the other half complaining about polarization.   Every accusation with the Democrats is a confession.  The theme of “freedom”—or at least, the use of the word freedom—was hit again and again, mostly in relation to abortion, and how the Democrats will make sure women still get to choose abortion, given that Donald Trump is allegedly going to ban it.    Oh, you hadn’t heard that Trump wants to ban abortion nationwide? Perhaps you had heard the opposite, in fact? That he torched the pro-life language from the RNC 2024 platform? Unfortunately, that doesn’t fit as neatly with the chosen theme of the Harris candidacy: “We’re not going back!”   To be at the DNC was to be told again and again in so many words that if you are nostalgic for 2019, when you could afford to feed your children a simple protein multiple times a week, that this reminiscence is the equivalent of being nostalgic for the Jim Crow South. To long for a time when your dollar stretched much further is to crave bloody, back-alley abortions.   The abortion lie was only one of many that were told about the former president over the course of the four-day convention. The American people were told that five people died on January 6—who knew—and that Trump called neo-Nazis “fine people,” never mind that even CNN debunked that as misinformation! Have you heard that Trump is going to implement Project 2025—even though he mocked it endlessly and humiliated its writers? Astonishing! Did you know he promised a bloodbath if he loses—in the auto-industry, but never mind that last part! And of course, everyone knows he’s going to be a dictator; haven’t you heard about his “explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy,” as Harris put it in her speech Thursday night?  Of course, none of this is true, which raises a rather compelling question: If Donald Trump is such an obvious threat, why the need to lie, embellish, and invent stories about his evil? Indeed, if Harris’s plan to save America makes her such an obvious, easy choice over Trump, why talk about him at all?   Yet Trump was pretty much all the speakers at the DNC talked about, aside from abortion. There was almost nothing by way of policy, a major disappointment after Harris’s economic speech the week before that laid out the foundations for a Democratic populist vision. There were many invocations of “Kamala Harris, for the people,” though not all the people, it turns out; one of the most articulate voices for working-class dignity, Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien, was unforgivably ghosted by the Harris campaign for the sin of bringing the case of workers’ rights to the Republican National Convention, at Trump’s invitation, where he lambasted Republicans for nearly half an hour. Instead, the DNC put up the head of the UAW, Shawn Fain, who flattered the Democratic audience with flamboyant anti-Trump pageantry.  I held out hope that at least Harris’s own speech would develop her economic vision and present struggling Americans with a significant choice between Trump’s protectionism and the distributionist model Harris laid out in her speech. But her campaign has already started backing off her promise to use price controls to tame inflation, and her DNC address was completely devoid of any policy whatsoever.   It was instead a list of platitudes...   Is such pablum likely to fly with the American people? The polling seems to suggest that all the enthusiasm for Harris is localized in a very specific group: college-educated voters. As Ruy Teixeira pointed out in the Liberal Patriot, Harris is doing even better than Biden with the college-educated, and even worse with the working class—of all races. Among working-class voters, Harris is trailing Trump by seven points—and she’s ahead with college-educated voters by 20 points. And she’s lost even more ground with nonwhite working-class voters, who Biden carried by 48 points in 2020, while Harris is ahead by only 29 points.  The Democratic Party remains the party of the elites; now it’s given up on economic policy altogether, which has been replaced by feelings and “vibes.”"

Kamala Explains 93% Of Staff Quit Because They Couldn’t Handle The Joy | Babylon Bee

WATCH: Kamala Bizarrely Says Starbucks Lid Color Is Giving Her Anxiety - "Footage has recently surfaced on social media showing Vice President Kamala Harris sharing a strange story at Spelman College. Harris described how the white lids on Starbucks Coffee cups arouse anxiety, as she fears leaving a lipstick stain during important meetings. Many have raised concerns about Harris leading important meetings or negotiations with world leaders if coffee cups arouse anxiety.  “We talked about those lids. So here’s what I said to her, here’s what I said to her. So you know how those lids are? Because this is, I’m just gonna speak, okay, so this is it. So you know how those lids on the Starbucks cups, they’re white, right? And so if you wear lipstick, they get all over the lid. And so then I find myself in meetings if I’m the only woman, and that’s kind of until I keep taking the lid off and having my cup out so that I don’t have that big lipstick mark on the lid. So I said, Can we do something about the color of the lid?” Harris said at the historically black college.   Social media users reacted to Harris’s statement, pointing out that she should be addressing much more significant issues.  “She literally spoke more about the lid of her Starbucks coffee cup, then she has about the border, illegal immigration and illegal aliens, inflation, the price of food, gas prices, crime, or the troops who were killed at Abbey Gate. And the Democrats have selected her to be President,” one person said.  “You can’t be serious. Can you imagine Christine Lagarde or Giorgio Meloni going on like this. I worked in finance in a very male dominated business for a decades. This is embarrassing. It is a reinforcement of the female dingbat stereotype. We don’t need DEI. We need women who can be taken seriously. No one care what color creed you are. They care about the words coming out of your mouth. She’s interviewing for the most important job in the world,” another person wrote. Echoing the same sentiment, another user lamented the idea of Harris leading negotiations with the United States’ world leaders.  “Imagine her trying to negotiate with Putin. Putin would be like “Let me take over Europe and I will give you lids to match your lipstick”. No wonder she has Putin’s endorsement,” they commented.  Another blasted the vice president, writing, “No mention of the economy, borders, price of food and gas, interest rates, credit card debt, bankruptcies, wars, rising crime, or fentanyl deaths. Just Starbucks lids.”  Another person posted in the comment section, “There’s not just one, but 3 things wrong in this video: 1. Her anxiety over the lid 2. Her “authoritarian elitist” stance….she has the power to tell Starbucks to change the lid. 3. Note the accent…..want to guess who she’s talking to? You win if you guessed a “historic black college in Atlanta”. The cackle doesn’t help either!”"

Kamala Explains 93% Of Staff Quit Because They Couldn’t Handle The Joy : r/babylonbee - "It’s funny because I had someone tell me the senates secretary ledger wasn’t a valid source to prove she was verbally abusive to her staff and that she had a 92% turnover rate among staffers.  If the official secretary of the senate ledger on a government website isn’t a valid source, I’m not sure what could be."

Meme - ob @Indian_Bronson: "White Dudes For Harris"
Ethan Evans @EthanEvansvP: "A CEO I worked for seduced my wife in retaliation for my pushback on him at work. He won. I got divorced and left the company. When I say I truly understand how some executive teams can be political snake pits, I trust you will believe me. Learn from my pain - do the following:"
Ethan Evans @EthanEvansVP: "I couldn't be more proud to support Kamala Harris for president. That's the kind of leadership America deserves."

Thread by @VigilantFox on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Top 10 Most Embarrassing Moments from the DNC: Day 3  They brought in celebrities to save the day, but what actually happened was downright hilarious.  🧵 THREAD
#10 - Oprah Winfrey says “childless cat lady,” and CNN cuts to a random woman in the crowd who had no idea it was coming.  I didn’t know CNN was that savage!
#9 - Tim Walz says with a straight face: “Leaders don't spend all day insulting people and blaming others. Leaders do the work.”  That's odd.  Trump hasn't been in office for 3.5 years, and Democrats blame him for everything!
#8 - Mike Lindell (in disguise without a mustache) trolls Harry Sisson.  "Have you gotten your vasectomy yet?!"  Credit: @GC22gc...
#7 - The completely oblivious DNC crowd cheers as Bill Clinton brags about being younger than Trump.  Biden (81) was their guy just four weeks ago!
#6 - CNN panelist openly questions how Bill Clinton can “make these kind of stages” when the American people “know a lot of other things about” him.
#5 - DNC chooses the wrong person to deliver this line:  “As the saying goes: If you're not at the table, then you're on the menu." 😬  Credit: @EndWokeness
#4 - Chris Cuomo unexpectedly calls out the hypocrisy at the DNC.  “Those suites start at $500k…Those boxes are filled with the same people that they say they’re going to regulate.”
#3 - Biden-Harris Commerce Secretary goes into full denial mode when she’s confronted with damning data that reveals nearly a million of the jobs the administration "created" don't actually exist.  "I'm not familiar with that."
#2 - CNN admits on air that Democrat men are a bunch of low-T soy boys.  Dana Bash says Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff “can speak to men out there who might not be the testosterone-laden gun-toting guy.”
#1 - Resurfaced video reveals the Texas Sheriff who just "endorsed" Kamala at the DNC was urging her and Biden to fix the border crisis in 2022.  You can't make this up!"

Meme - 1929 - Hoover: "A CHICKEN IN EVERY POT"
2024 - Walz: "A TAMPON DISPENSER IN EVERY BOYS' ROOM"

Meme - "A tough as nails billionaire doing battle with a giggling idiot to protect the citizenry... Story seems familiar? *Kamala Harris as Joker, Donald Trump as Batman*"

Gad Saad on X - "Me: Why are you voting for Kamala?
Lobotomy Patient: Because she is positive.
Me: Sure but any specifics?
LP: She has a plan to heal communities.
Me: Sure but any specifics?
LP: She has energy and is fun. Trump is nasty.
Me: Sure but how does fun fix the economy, immigration, crime, etc?
LP: I don't know. I just feel energized by her excitement.
[Good night USA. You had a good run.]"

VP Candidate Tim Walz on "There's No Guarantee to Free Speech on Misinformation or Hate Speech, and Especially Around Our Democracy" - "WALZ: I think we need to push back on this. There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy. Tell the truth, where the voting places are, who can vote, who's able to be there….
[1.] Walz was quite wrong in saying that "There's no guarantee to free speech" as to "hate speech." The Supreme Court has made clear that there is no "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment (and see here for more details). The First Amendment generally protects the views that the government would label "hateful" as much as it protects other views.
[2.] As to "misinformation," the matter is much more complicated. Sometimes misinformation, especially deliberate misinformation, is constitutionally punishable: Consider libel, false statements to government investigators, fraudulent charitable fundraising, and more. (For more details on all these points, and citations, see When Are Lies Constitutionally Protected?.) But sometimes even deliberate lies are constitutionally protected. In New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Court held that even deliberate lies (said with "actual malice") about the government are constitutionally protected. And in United States v. Alvarez (2012), five of the justices agreed that lies "about philosophy, religion, history, the social sciences, the arts, and the like" are generally protected."
Weird. I thought the right was the one that was poorly informed and pushing "misinformation"

Meme - Ashley St. Clair: "After over 2.5 million people viewed the egregiously misleading headline against JD Vance, the AP has deleted their post. Around 70% of people only read the headline when consuming news online."
The Associated Press @AP: "JD Vance says school shootings are a 'fact of life,' calls for better security"
Ashley St. Clair @stclairashley: "You don't hate journalists enough. JD Vance said "I don't like that this is a fact of life". The AP is a sick and demented outlet."
"I don't like that this is a fact of life," Vance said. "But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We've got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they're not able."
Why the left is so upset that Elon Musk is not letting Twitter spread lies anymore. Of course, only fascists criticise the media (unless it's right wing media)

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Links - 29th September 2024 (2 - General Wokeness)

End Wokeness on X - "Oprah: "I have been on the receiving end" of "racism, sexism, income inequality" Oprah has a $2.7 billion net worth"
James Kirkpatrick on X - "One of the false assumptions many whites have is that the more success, money, and support a non gets from whites, the more grateful and patriotic he or she will be. This is not true. The non simply becomes more contemptuous and resentful of the host population."

Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law - "Liberals control institutions because they care more about politics, a disparity that grew larger around 2016. This makes attempts to use government (i.e., bureaucracy!) to take back the culture unlikely to succeed, at least in the short term.   What should conservatives do, then? I’m talking about the anti-woke portion of conservatism, which increasingly seems to be the most animated part of the movement. This post is not meant to be advice for gun people, abortion people, or low tax people; those parts of the right have figured out how to have influence and are doing relatively well.  The good news is that there can be an anti-wokeness agenda, just as easily as there is a low tax agenda and a pro-gun rights agenda. People have generally misunderstood wokeness as a purely cultural phenomenon. It does have a cultural component, of course, but it is important to also understand wokeness as something that has been law in the United States for the last half century. The triumph of this ideology over the last 10 years in public discourse is simply culture catching up to law. To reverse what has happened, one needs to know a bit of the history, and how every major institution in the country came to act and think in the exact same way... the political movement devoted to fighting this ideological matrix is quite short on policy ideas... If the left is going on about healthcare, for example, it’s usually because they want some new bill or policy. But it was difficult to see what those talking about Dr. Seuss or Mr. Potato Head actually wanted...  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination based on race and gender. While most at the time thought this would simply remove explicit discrimination, and many of the proponents of the bill made that promise, courts and regulators expanded the concept of “non-discrimination” to mean almost anything that advantages one group over another. An important watershed was the decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), in which the Supreme Court ruled that intelligence tests, because they were not shown to be directly related to job performance, could not be used in hiring since blacks scored lower on them, and it did not matter whether there was any intent to discriminate. People act as if “standardized tests are racist if they show disparities” is some kind of new idea, but it’s basically been the law in the United States for 50 years, albeit inconsistently enforced. Standardized tests aren’t the only target of the doctrine of disparate impact. In 2019 (under Trump), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) settled a suit brought against Dollar General for $6 million for doing criminal background checks that disproportionately prevented blacks from being hired. The Obama administration went after schools for disciplining black and white students at different rates, with predictably disastrous results. Police departments, fire departments, and other institutions use “gender normed” tests to stop the EEOC and private applicants from suing them for gender discrimination. This is of course completely insane; criminals can’t be relied on to go easier on female cops on account of their sex, but somehow we’ve all come to accept affirmative action policing and firefighting (in 2014, a guy who jumped the White House fence overpowered a female Secret Service agent and made it all the way to the East Room). As the government invented new standards for what counts as “discrimination,” it was forcing more aggressive action on the part of the private sector... Across the federal government and among contractors, affirmative action assumed that “but for discrimination, statistical parity among racial and ethnic groups would be the norm.”  Government interpretation of the Civil Rights Act also invented the concept of the “hostile work environment.” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has written about how this has been used to restrict free speech... The rise of HR departments can be directly traced to the federal government’s race and gender policies, which involve direct control of the federal bureaucracy, the “carrot” of government contracts, and the “sticks” of EEOC enforcement and lawsuit threats. As Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin wrote in Inventing Equal Opportunity, it was civil rights law that revolutionized the American workplace. Corporations started to hire full time staff in order to keep track of government mandates, which were vague and could change at any moment. There was a sense of “keeping up with the Joneses,” in which every company and institution had to be more anti-racist and anti-sexist than the next one, leading to more and more absurd diversity trainings and other programs.  To decide whether an institution had discriminated against a protected group, courts and regulators would often use a “best practices” approach, meaning that if your competitors adopted the latest fad coming out of academia or the HR world, you felt the need to do the same. As I discussed in my podcast with Jesse Singal, this could help explain the success of the now-discredited Implicit Association Test, along with more modern innovations like Critical Race Theory-based training... Dobbin and Sutton argue that this is a general feature of American law, where the state is selective in enforcement and gives vague guidance that is subject to interpretation, like improving “safety” or fighting “discrimination.” They compare the US to France, where the government is more inclined to just issue direct mandates to businesses, who spend a lot less time and effort on private sector bureaucracy to keep up with how regulators and courts are thinking. The creation of bureaucracy means that it eventually gains its own power base and becomes able to advocate for its own interests. Ironically, if the US had just mandated gender and racial quotas, compliance would’ve been simpler and there would’ve been no need for permanent bureaucracies within each organization with an open-ended mission to stamp out all forms of “discrimination.” This may explain something else I’ve always wondered about. The US seems to elect some of the most conservative politicians in the Western world, but has perhaps the wokest institutions. Civil rights law makes all major institutions subject to the will of left-wing bureaucrats, activists, and judges at the expense of normal citizens. Thus, we see that every one of the main pillars of wokeness can be traced to new standards created by regulators and courts, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s but updated over time... the entire concept of a full-time bureaucracy having to micromanage people’s work lives is a creation of government.

Meme - "Oh Sam. If those orcs kill Merry and Pippin... just imagine the backlash against peaceful orcs!" *Orcs from Rings of Power*

Hundreds of places in the US said racism was a public health crisis. What's changed? - "Years after the declarations, community organizers and public health advocates in Milwaukee and Sacramento County say not much has changed. Officials counter that it’ll take more than a few years to undo centuries of structural and institutional racism. But experts, officials and advocates all agreed on one thing: The declarations were an important first step toward creating a racially equitable society. Extensive research shows racism can have detrimental health impacts on people of color, including chronic stress and anxiety and higher rates of heart disease and asthma. “If we’re not going to name racism in the first place, then we’re not going to start to develop solutions to address it,” said Dara Mendez, who teaches epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh and studied the early declarations. “... Then the next step is (asking) what are the actions behind it? ... Are there resources? Is there community action?"... “If racism as a public health crisis was truly operationalized, we would have more people graduating from high school. If it was truly operationalized, people could live to their full potential and not worry about being mistaken by a police officer for having a gun,” said Paine, who was the chief of staff at the city's health department from late 2019 to March 2021. “And those aren’t changes you can speak to overnight.”"
Ironic, since left wingers used to be obsessed with self-fulfilling prophecies, and we know that what makes people stressed is not actual discrimination but perceived discrimination
Operationalising racism as a public health crisis means letting illiterate black kids graduate from high school and not policing black neighbourhoods so more black people die

Why we should stop using acronyms like BIPOC - "Indigenous Peoples have long been subject to identity control through legislated elimination in the Indian Act and categorized as non-status versus status Indian, Inuit or Métis. Our Nations have been identified as one group (Aboriginal, Native, First Nations, First Peoples, Indian, Indigenous) to facilitate colonial control, and the BIPOC acronym contributes to the further grouping of distinct identities. Being Indigenous in Canada involves continually pushing for our self-determination and inherent rights to be recognized while ensuring our survival as distinct nations. Acronyms like BIPOC represent a step back in the struggle to assert and sustain nationhood. Scholars have argued that Indigenous and Black liberation movements are interconnected, and the possibility of coalition-building increases the chances for racial justice. However, despite the intentions of those who use BIPOC, the combination of these experiences can have the opposite effect and contribute to a sort of oppression Olympics. For example, some organizations and news outlets have more recently switched the order of the acronym to IBPOC (Indigenous, Black and people of colour) to recognize Indigenous Peoples as First Peoples. This Indigenous first acronym is an inadequate solution. It still results in racialized people being broadly categorized and essentialized. Furthermore, these kinds of debates over the order of letters can also disrupt coalition-building among racialized people. American activists Angela Davis and Elizabeth Martinez suggest that competition between racialized peoples, or the oppression Olympics, perpetuates harm and division. This kind of debate further reinforces white supremacy and settler colonialism that rely on the continued marginalization of racialized peoples."
This is just another version of Oppression Olympics

Meme - Grummz @Grummz: "Found it. This is the guide that was lauded in 2016 by a DC Comics artist.   The literal blueprint every AAA game and comic now uses to defeminize characters.  Patient Zero of woke fem design.  This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's what they wanted to push. They succeeded, but tanked sales."
"How to De-Objectify Women By Renae De Liz. As an artist, what can I consider if I want to de-objectify and add power to female characters?"
It's interesting that "de-objectifying" is seen as "adding power"
Comments: "yes because in a world where there is a radioactive hulk, Literal mutants walking around indestructible, alien who we call Superman and Norse gods we should be focused on realism."
"It seems like it takes much more effort for the phat ones to change everything around them than to just lose some weight"
"Always the ugly women that complain about feminization in games"
"Imagine people wanting to enjoy things."
"I figure they hate femininity because it makes it difficult for men to pretend to be women."
"notice how men never complained about Superman, Thor, Captain America, or how jacked Batman is. But women see attractive females, and they freak out because no one hates women more than women."
"I always think it's funny when the side that claims to not objectify women, also acts as though an attractive one is a "sex doll"
"Beautiful women exist. Why do ugly women pretend realistic means "fat and ugly"?"
"remember women arent allowed to be sexy"
"no real woman looks like that. American "women" perhaps"
"Why didn't you buy 2 million copies of concord? The game was LITERALLY made for you lol the modern audience. All like one thousand of you lol"
"plenty of human beings aren't fat"

TheGamer says we should start trusting "game reviewers" again. So what about these other articles they also made? Do these are of any service to us, gamers? (Check the next images for context.) : r/Asmongold
It’s Time To Start Trusting Video Game Reviewers
Kratos' Stoicism Reflects A Clumsy But Sincere Attempt To Untangle Toxic Masculinity
Grand Theft Auto 6 Could Go Woke, Cry About It
Gamers Are Terrible People And We Should Stop Being Okay With It

Empathic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals: Political Intergroup Empathy Varies by Political Ideology and Is Explained by Moral Judgment - "Empathy has the potential to bridge political divides. Here, we examine barriers to cross-party empathy and explore when and why these differ for liberals and conservatives. In four studies, U.S. and U.K. participants (total N = 4,737) read hypothetical scenarios and extended less empathy to suffering political opponents than allies or neutral targets. These effects were strongly shown by liberals but were weaker among conservatives, such that conservatives consistently showed more empathy to liberals than liberals showed to conservatives. This asymmetry was partly explained by liberals’ harsher moral judgments of outgroup members (Studies 1–4) and the fact that liberals saw conservatives as more harmful than conservatives saw liberals (Studies 3 and 4). The asymmetry persisted across changes in the U.S. government and was not explained by perceptions of political power (Studies 3 and 4). Implications and future directions are discussed."
Weird. We keep being told that wokeness is about "empathy", which conservatives lack
Evidence that conservatives think liberals are wrong, but liberals think conservatives are evil (replace as needed with right wingers and left wingers)

Lewis Brackpool on X - "Reports confirm that the anti-terrorist unit and Merseyside Police visited a 19-year-old at her house a few days ago enquiring about her politics and whether she is “right-wing”.   They also asked why she kept a 'Anglo Saxon' replica helmet in the house.   The police refused to reveal what she was accused of and confiscated a duplicate samurai decorative sword hanging on her parents' wall.  Just before the police left, they advised her, "Bite your tongue before talking on line.”  This is eerily similar to “I’m here to check your thinking” that you read in dystopian novels."

ZUBY: on X - "Most smart atheists I know have been approaching this conclusion over the past few years. Christianity is the West's immune system. As a believer, it's far more than that. But as a sociocultural observer, it's obvious a great house can't stand if you destroy its foundations."
Even Richard Dawkins recognised that the retreat of Christianity has opened the way to worse

Meme - Dissident Soaps @DissidentSoaps: "Homosexuality being genetic was just a political tactic to appeal to Civil Rights obsessed Americans. It was reasoned that we couldn't discriminate against them if they were born that way.   This argument has been entirely abandoned by the LGBT political vanguard today, who say sexuality is fluid, AND the 'gay gene' still hasn't been found 20 years later.   It's now overwhelmingly clear that it's a social contagion spread to children and gets worse the longer it goes untreated."
Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 @jeremykauffman: "Homosexuality is less heritable than... basically everything.  Homosexuality is even less heritable than disliking homosexuals, which is pretty funny."
So much for "born this way"
The left keep claiming homosexuality is not a choice, but homophobia is. Ironic

Meme - iamyesyouareno @iamyesyouareno: "Remember the massive media outrage when this happened?  Me neither."
Jaden McNeil: "Ariel Robinson is a black leftist who talks extensively about "white privilege" and the how evil white people are. She and her husband adopted an innocent white child and beat her to death. The media is silent."
Ari- People Lover @arifunnycomedy: "We go together like ketchup & MUSTARD! #MiniMe Being a girl mom is awesome!"

Meme - "r/aznidentity
You know something is wrong when Asian owned businesses need images like these to market themselves (Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ)
Found as one of the main "social" photos on their website: https://www.gyu-kaku.com/  Not sure what's sadder, the fact that this company went out of their way to depict WMAF pairings (instead of even just all white people for example), or that society as a whole has normalized imagery like this and expect AM to be pacified to the point where you're expected to believe that nothing is out of the ordinary."
"A perfect depiction of how whites want Asian Americans to be in a nutshell.  AM serve them food  AF serve them p***y.  The solution is to go to the restaurant with WF and write horrible reviews about the place because you saw them licking white people's shoes."
"Just leave horrible reviews. Make stuff up like "unhygienic", "dirty", " saw flies on the table", that sort of thing. Don't even mention WMAF or anything racial.  The objective is to hurt these companies so that they go bankrupt, so go with what works. Dirty restaurants are a big no-no for customers."
Even for this toxic subreddit this is amazing. This is your brain on identity politics and grievance-mongering. You're such a loser that you go around writing fake reviews to destroy a business because you're triggered by their advertising

When did this weird pronoun trend start? I feel embarrassed listening to this character dialogue in Jedi Survivor... : r/KotakuInAction - "Listen to Black Voices!  Unless it's the wrong Black Voice, of course. No John McWhorter or Adolph Reed Jr.!"

Meme - Robert Komaniecki @Komaniecki_R: "This post is the Rosetta Stone for understanding Twitter activism"
"hi, someone with heavy food sensory issues here! frosted mini- wheats are one of the only things I can actually consume regularly and not get sick from. guilting people who can't support boycotts is ableist as fuck but y'all aren't ready for that conversation."
Theo @jewish_activist: "Anyways, y'all know what this means. Don't buy any Kellogg's products. Stand in solidarity with Kellogg's workers and don't cross the picket line, no matter what."

Steve McGuire on X - "BREAKING: The University of Pennsylvania has announced it will stop issuing official statements on social and political events.  “It is not the role of the institution to render opinions—doing so risks suppressing the creativity and academic freedom of our faculty and students. Even as they seem to provide emotional support to individuals in our communities, institutional pronouncements undermine the diversity of thought that strengthens us and that is central to our missions.”  “Going forward, the University of Pennsylvania will refrain from institutional statements made in response to local and world events except for those which have direct and significant bearing on University functions. The University will issue messages on local or world events rarely, and only when those events lie within our operational remit.”"

Meme - Charlottesville Area...: "Any queer-friendly Christian pastors or even drag queens available today that could come pray over a friend who is passing in UVA hospital? Don't want someone that will lecture but who is able to pray over a member of the LGBT community."
The equation of drag queens to pastors is really revealing about left wing thinking. Drag is like a religion. That explains why they get so upset when it's criticised in any way

11 Popular Songs You Didn’t Realize Are Actually Racist - ""Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones. The 1991 hit celebrating the fall of communism dismissed the ongoing Black struggle at the time: "A woman on the radio talked about revolution when it's already passed her by" and "I saw the decade in, when it seemed the world could change at the blink of an eye/ And if anything then there's your sign of the times." The former line was a dig at Tracy Chapman, who had released "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" three years earlier, while the second one referred to a Prince hit from 1987. "I wanted to write a sort of updated but positive 'Sign o' the Times' to reflect what was happening," Jesus Jones singer and songwriter Mike Edwards told the Guardian in 2018. Fine. But did he really have to brush off powerful musical statements about racial disenfranchisement by two Black artists in order to make his point? This pretty much sums up why Black History Month shouldn't be a single month."
Not unconditionally celebrating black people above all else is racist

Human Rights Commission report on Christmas led to safety fears - "The Canadian Human Rights Commission’s 2023 report denouncing Christmas as a racist observance “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism,” provoked so much backlash the commission feared for its staff’s safety, says Blacklock’s Reporter. Access To Information records indicate a single staffer, whose name was the only thing censored in 314 pages, created the report Discussion Paper On Religious Intolerance. The commission said it hid the author’s name by invoking Section 17 of the ATI Act that states: “The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested under this part that contains information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to threaten the safety of individuals.”... the Commons unanimously passed a Bloc Québécois motion condemning the Discussion Paper... The motion asked that Parliament “denounce the comments of the Canadian Human Rights Commission,” “denounce any attempt at polarization” over Christmas and “unite during this Christmas period.” It did so while MPs shouted: “Merry Christmas!”"
Criticism of the left makes them feel unsafe. Time to ban it
Of course, we'll still be told the War on Christmas is a right wing Christian invention and misinformation

Arkansas professors concerned about political interference, survey shows - "A majority of college faculty in southern states, including Arkansas, are concerned about political interference and are considering leaving academia, according to a new American Association of University Professors survey. The new study, which received responses from more than 2,900 individuals, highlighted dissatisfaction with the political atmosphere surrounding higher education, with about 70% rating it poor or very poor... “My state and university’s stance on Palestine and BDS makes it very difficult to bring guests to campus because they have to sign agreements to not support BDS,” one faculty member said. “Additionally, the university didn’t defend Arab and Arab American scholars on campus from bigoted colleagues, which creates a hostile culture, especially for junior and marginalized faculty who want to engage issues related to Palestine and social justice at large.”"
Despite all the bitching, this bit is revealing about the truth: anti-Semitic academics and those who push activism on company time are getting pushback, and this is a bad thing (and this can be extrapolated to the other things they complain about). They're upset they can't indoctrinate students and push the left wing agenda anymore, so ironically this is evidence that academia really is biased (despite what the left claim)

Meme - Carl Benjamin @Sargon_of_Akkad: "Kids may be getting stabbed in the street, pensioners may be freezing to death, newly freed criminals may be looting their way across the country, but have you considered the real problem is "Afro hair discrimination"?"
Paulette Hamilton MP @PauletteHamilto: "I'm teaming up with @OfficialMelB  and others to make the UK the first Western country to introduce a law ending Afro hair discrimination.  We’re calling for Afro hair to be recognised as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Illegal discrimination of Afro hair is already recognised & prohibited in the UK.  G v St Gregory's Catholic Science College [2011] EWHC 1452 found that a policy of banning boys from wearing cornrows was unjustified indirect racial discrimination under the Equality Act 2010."

Alaska man arrested, charged with threatening to torture, kill Supreme Court justices - "The Justice Department Thursday reported the arrest of an Alaska man Wednesday for allegedly threatening to injure and kill six U.S. Supreme Court Justices and some of their family members.  Panos Anastasiou, 76, sent more than 465 threatening messages via a Supreme Court website to the justices, according to court documents...   "We allege that the defendant made repeated, heinous threats to murder and torture Supreme Court Justices and their families to retaliate against them for decisions he disagreed with," Attorney General Merrick B. Garland saId in a statement."
Obviously the 3 liberal justices must be 3 of the 6, because we know that the "far right" keeps inciting violence and the left are the side of tolerance and empathy. 2 of the remainder must be Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett because the "far right" hate minorities. I wonder who the last one must be?

Last Supper vs Demanding tolerance and respect / Reasons for the AIDS epidemic / The 'myth' of the Slippery Slope


Jillian Michaels @JillianMichaels: "Dear fellow gays… We demand tolerance and respect but then make a mockery of something sacred for over 2 billion Christians. This type of hypocrisy and lack of understanding is a bad look. We get outraged when the extreme right bashes us, but then we do this shit. What kind of reaction do you think they will have towards the LGBTQ+ community after this. This is NOT how we break down barriers it’s how you build them."


pagliacci the hated 🌝 @Slatzism: "remember this post next time a UK Cigarette tearfully tries to do shitlib historical revisionism and act like Ronald Reagan was running around San Francisco with a poz laser in the 80s, firing at random.  no. they did it to themselves."
azzurro 🇵🇸 @azzurrochurro: "Who’s coming to the 54 person pump and dump?!"

Damn discrimination and stigma making gay men the top victims of AIDS!


Dane @UltraDane: "We just want to live like everyone else"
"We just want to get married"
"We just want to use the ladies restroom"
"We just want to prance naked in front of children"
"We just want you jailed for disagreeing"
*Subway car decorated all over with Pride and Trans Pride flag*

Links - 29th September 2024 (1)

Meme - "Vegans. Lesbians
Using imitation meat to fill a void."

Denny Burk on X - "One of the traits of Gen X is that they are cynical. Why? “It's because we had to replace our record collections with a tape collection and then replace that with a CD collection that we slowly replaced with an MP3 collection and now need a subscription to listen to music.”"

How Facebook graffiti artist David Choe earned $200 million - "Some millionaires reach seven figures through hustling and penny pinching. Others just get lucky.  Graffiti artist David Choe knows the second scenario well.  As featured on a recent episode of CNBC’s “The Filthy Rich Guide,” in the early 2000s, Choe’s work caught the eye of Sean Parker, founder of Napster. In 2005, after Parker became president of then-fledgling start-up Facebook, he hired Choe to deck out its original headquarters in Silicon Valley with murals.  Though Choe despised social media’s early iterations like MySpace and called Facebook a “ridiculous” idea, according to “The Filthy Rich Guide,” he agreed to paint the building for a hefty sum: $60,000. “My prices had been going higher and higher and I was like, ‘Yeah, I mean, if you want me to paint the entire building, it’s going to be 60, you know, 60 grand,’” Choe told Howard Stern. Parker offered him a choice between cash and company stock, but advised him to take the stock.  It was a risky decision. As Choe told Stern, at that time “Facebook was a joke.” There was no guarantee that the business would amount to anything and his shares could wind up worthless.  He took the stock.  When Facebook went public at $38 a share in 2012, his stock options were worth $200 million, making him a bona fide multimillionaire. (Today the common stock is at more than $171 per share.)"

Meme - Gypsy Rose: "I love you mom. I hope you're looking down on me and praying for my success! Your little girl has grown from little princess to a full queen I love you"
"I wish my Mom was alive. I need to talk to her."
"It's funny you should say that!"

Meme - "Me, excited my girl finally agreed to try anal"
"Her with a 12 inch strap-on"

Meme - "Thufir, how much will a pretzel baconator cost at 12:15PM on Tuesday"
*white eyes*

Meme - Reverse Fatty Liver: Support G... Amanda J Spencer: "Thank you to the ppl that were kind and understanding. I will be exiting the group as being told "just eat meat" several times when I am meat free is inappropriately pushy. Also not all of us eat poorly, certain meds and supplements contribute to fatty liver. Please yall pushing meat tell the millions of plant based ppl in the world you are right and they aren't... Good luck."

Meme - "Asus Z97-AR w/ 4790k CPU
Free
Description: Upgraded my CPU and motherboard a while back to a Ryzen and don't need these anymore. These are older, but could still game pretty well. Will need a new CMOS battery as the old one had died right before I upgraded. Free, because I cannot test them (they were working when pulled, but I no longer have any DDR3 RAM to test with, sorry) as long as you pick them up. I don't have access to a car to deliver currently. I'm located in *** IL. ***No, I will not ship you something I'm trying to give away for free.*** Also, if you wanna get laid while you're here to pick it up, I'd be down (I'm 32/female). Bored and lonely lately so why not kill two birds with one stone."

Meme - "A RACK. IT'S NOT JUST A COUNTRY IN THE MIDDLE EAST *Cece Rose*"

Meme - "Everybody gangster until the stink bug takes it's titties out"

Meme - "Dealership when they're selling you a car
It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
Dealership when you're trading it back in.
What a piece of junk!"

Canadians get lousy value for the taxes we pay - "Every year at the Fraser Institute, we calculate the total tax bill — which includes income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, etc. — for the average Canadian family. This year we found the average family paid 43.0 per cent of its annual income in taxes in 2023. That is more than it spent on basic necessities such as food, clothing and housing combined, and significantly higher than the 33.5 per cent it paid in 1961.  Put differently, the average family’s tax bill has increased 2,705 per cent since 1961 — or 180.3 per cent after adjusting for inflation.  And yet, in a recent column, Star contributing columnist Linda McQuaig said we’re “distorting the public debate over taxes” by publishing these facts while stating that the effective tax rate the average family pays has only “increased by 28 per cent since 1961.”... According to a recent poll, 74 per cent of respondents feel the average family is overtaxed, and 80 per cent believe the average family should pay 40 per cent or less of its income in total taxes.  Another important question is whether families get value for the taxes they pay. Polling shows nearly half (44 per cent) of Canadians feel they receive “poor” or “very poor” value from government services while only 16 per cent believe they receive “good” or “great” value. This should be no surprise. Health care wait times are at record highs. Student test scores are declining. And Canada routinely fails to meet our NATO defence spending commitments. Meanwhile, governments waste taxpayer dollars on pet projects such as a federal infrastructure bank, which, despite a budget of at least $13.2 billion, has delivered only two relatively minor projects in seven years. Or handouts to new electric vehicle (EV) owners that cost taxpayers — including Canadians unable to afford EVs — more than $587 million annually.  Can we really say governments are using our money wisely?  Unfortunately, many governments are doubling down. Municipalities such as Vancouver and Toronto raised property taxes by at least 7.5 per cent this year. Toronto city council has even floated the idea of a municipal sales tax. It’s hard to argue that you want to make life more affordable for families by leaving less money in their pockets.  And of course, the Trudeau government recently raised taxes on capital gains. But despite claims to the contrary, this tax hike won’t only affect wealthy investors. According to an analysis by economist Jack Mintz, 50 per cent of taxpayers who claim more than $250,000 of capital gains in a year earned less than $117,592 in normal annual income from 2011 to 2021. These include Canadians with modest annual incomes who own businesses, second homes or stocks, and who may choose to sell those assets once or infrequently in their lifetimes (when they retire, for example).  Finally, more tax hikes are likely on the horizon. The federal government and eight provinces are currently running budget deficits, meaning they’re not taxing enough to keep up with spending. Deficits produce debt, which will be passed onto future generations of Canadians in the form of higher taxes."
Clearly, services are only poor because taxes are too low, but we can raise taxes on "the rich" to fund more services

reformed social parasite on X - "Knowledge is lost and rediscovered all the time in history. The vast majority of Greek and Roman texts largely exist today because of the preservation efforts of Muslim scholars during the Islamic Golden Age. Nothing about this indicates that one culture is superior to another."
Christopher on X - "You've taken a half-truth that was already exaggerated, and exaggerated it beyond recognition. The "vast majority" of Greek and Roman texts most certainly do not exist today "because Muslims". (If they did, we would have only a translation of a translation.)"

Meme - "ROAST THE CHICKEN FOR 25 MINUTES, OR 30 MINUTES If YOU HAVE LARGE BREASTS"
*looks down*
"BETTER DO 30 MINUTES"

Red Light Cameras May Not Make Streets Safer - "In a study I co-authored with economist Paul J. Fisher, we examined all police-recorded traffic accidents for three large Texas cities over a 12-year period – hundreds of thousands of accidents. We found no evidence that red light cameras improve public safety. They don’t reduce the total number of vehicle accidents, the total number of individuals injured in accidents or the total number of incapacitating injuries that involve ambulance transport to a hospital... Evidence clearly shows that camera programs are effective at decreasing the number of vehicles running red lights. In one study in Virginia, red light cameras reduced the number of total drivers running red lights by 67 percent.  However, cameras can have contradictory effects on traffic safety. Some drivers who would have otherwise continued to proceed through the intersection when the light is yellow or red will now attempt to stop. That means that the number of accidents caused by vehicles not stopping at a red light will likely decrease. But the number of accidents from stopping at a red light – such as rear-end accidents – is likely to increase. That’s not an inconsequential side effect. Some drivers will attempt to stop, accepting a higher risk of a non-angle accident like getting rear-ended, in order to avoid the expected fine."
They do, however, increase revenue

Red-Light Cameras Increase Accidents - "One source that is highlighting the increase in accidents is the media. Because so many studies are showing an increase in collisions at red light camera intersections, various news outlets are conducting their own studies in this phenomenon. Below is a small sampling of these reports."

Actual Fact Bot: Revived | Facebook - "Mukurob was a unique rock formation in the Namib Desert that fell in 1988. Indigineous oral tradition told that the power of the “white man” would end when this geological structure collapsed. South Africa finally relinquished control of Namibia a few weeks after it collapsed on the night of 7 December 1988."

Big Blue Drew on X - "Just pulled into a DQ drive thru for a blizzard. Dude tells me they’re out or Reese’s. I say no problem not your fault. He dead ass goes “that’s where you’re wrong. I do the ordering and I’ve been slacking.” ☠️ 😂"

The Tale of Two Lovers - Wikipedia - "The Tale of Two Lovers (Latin: Historia de duobus amantibus) (1444) is a novel by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II. It is one of the earliest examples of an epistolary novel, full of erotic imagery. The first printed edition was published by Ulrich Zell in Cologne between 1467 and 1470."

Meme - "That's a cute outfit, did your husband give it to you?"
"How did you know I have a husband?"
"I'm the twink you both air-gapped last weekend."

Meme *Swiss Railway Station* "LOOK AROUND White Men built all of this"

wanye on X - ""x is the consensus view amongst scientists!" is always a weak argument, since there must exist better arguments that convinced those scientists to accept the consensus view in the first place. An appeal to consensus is either an acknowledgement that you don't actually know those arguments very well or that they don't exist."

Meme - Ryan Burge @ryanburge: "In 1976, 5% of high school seniors were 'straight edge' No alcohol, no cigarettes, no marijuana in the prior month. In 2021, nearly 40% of high school seniors were straight edge."

Meme - zoethebitch: "McDonald's giving away free fries if you use their mobile app and then updating the terms and conditions to say if you use this app you waive your right to trial in any class action lawsuits and have to do mandatory arbitration is INSANE"

ELI5: The $90 million Batgirl movie tax write-off : r/tax - "I don't think this is really a tax "write-off" situation. My guess, as someone who doesn't actually know anything about the industry, as to why they trashed it rather than just doing a streaming release:
   Poor testing suggested that recouping even a fraction of the $90 mil spent so far unlikely, effectively creating a $90 mil sunk cost.
   Finishing the VFX, licensing the music, paying any triggered licensing fees, and advertising the movie would cost tens of millions of dollars they think would be wasted.
   There are likely contractual obligations that generate additional costs if the film is released, including actor bonuses, and partner revenue sharing.
   There may be deferred tax items (like amortization & depreciation) that can be more quickly recognized if the film is cancelled rather than released.
   The film is so terrible it will further tarnish the already poor reputation of the DCEU. "
Residuals are a thing (why Willow got pulled). But to left wingers, tax writeoffs are a way to make money, so

After writers' deal, Disney+, Netflix and others will drop more shows - Los Angeles Times - "“#embarrassing.” That is how the star of the Disney+ series “Willow,” Warwick Davis, described the streaming video platform’s decision to remove the show entirely. “Willow” is not alone. Ever since Warner Bros. Discovery decided to not release the movie “Batgirl” on its streaming platform, then known as HBO Max, lots of filmed titles have been removed from streaming services. Many people blame these decisions on the tax write-offs that can be taken when a show is pulled off a platform. In class with my students last week, we estimated the additional tax benefit Warner Bros. Discovery got by discarding “Batgirl”: about $700,000. The studio is said to have spent $90 million to make the movie. The tax savings alone do not justify the decision to scrap it, so there must be other financial incentives at work. There are two costs that streaming services bear when they leave under-watched programming online. The first cost is the continuing compensation payments to the cast and crew, known as residuals. Under the collective bargaining agreements reached between the studios and the guilds in 2020, the amount of residuals paid by the studio on each show was a function of how many subscribers were on the streaming service. In other words, Disney had to pay the residuals cost of “Willow” based on how many subscribers the platform had, regardless of how many people were watching the show. Higher residual rates in the new deal that the Writers Guild of America just negotiated will probably accelerate streamers’ decisions to drop shows. The guild told its members that Netflix’s residual payouts for certain shows “will increase from the current $18,684 for a one-hour episode to $32,830.” The writers may have unintentionally increased Netflix’s motivation to drop their under-watched shows. The second cost of leaving under-watched programming online is damage to the brand. When viewers watch a show that disappoints them, they may check out something on another streaming service. With enough disappointments, consumers can easily cancel their subscription and switch their attention to another. In a worst-case scenario, fans might spend less at the theater when the next DC movie comes out because “Batgirl” was so unsatisfactory. Yet the good news is that “Willow” and other withdrawn shows are not necessarily gone from streaming forever. They may eventually follow the same path back to home viewers as “Westworld,” a formerly trending series that began its life on HBO. “Westworld,” which left Max presumably because of tax write-off advantages and residuals costs, has arisen from the dead on another streaming service, Tubi. Tubi, Pluto TV and the Roku Channel — free, ad-supported streaming television, or FAST — offer a solution to keeping under-watched, under-loved programming accessible. The difference between FAST services and subscription platforms is how they make their money. The free platforms earn income only if viewers watch ads. When “Baywatch” takes a commercial break on Pluto TV, about half of the money paid by the advertiser goes to Pluto TV, and the other half goes to the show’s owner. The more people watch “Baywatch,” the more the show’s owner earns. Moving a show to a FAST service means the amount of residuals for the cast and crew gets calculated in a different way"
Clearly, the WGA needs to go on strike again

Its such a damn shame Disney has ruined Star Wars for so many children. Just look at the toy sales : r/saltierthancrait - "What even went wrong with Star Trek? Did it just fade into relative obscurity, because I don’t recall any actual issues unlike Star Wars"
"A terrible hack writer named Alex Kurtzman (seriously, look up his past credits, every single one famously awful writing) somehow failed upwards until they gave him control of the entire franchise.  The reboot with the Abrams movies killed continuity and those movies nosedived with each sequel. New series Discovery tried to ignore everything about Trek by being dark, edgy and topical (in a bad way rather than good like DS9). Picard went out of its way to piss on beloved characters and any connection to the older timeline.  Trek under Berman wasn't perfect, but it was fairly consistent and had a LOT someone could build off of. Instead, the new folks wanted to do their own thing, but it was awful.  Reall, though, Kurtzman is the biggest issue. I can't overstate how terrible a writer he is and how insane it is that a guy with his track record got given the reigns to any IP, much less Trek."
"Agree with this and to add further for the original commentor: Kurtzman helped influence Star Trek moving away from its optimistic, philosophical, and moral roots into a more cynical, lowbrow, and violent show in an effort to make the "heady" Star Trek appeal to an audience by making it "more like Star Wars".  This ignores the fact that even Deep Space Nine (my personal favorite) and considered the "dark show" of Classic Trek never fully abandoned the optimism of the franchise, nor how shallow attempts at sex appeal (Seven with Voyager or T'Pol with Enterprise) never took away the show being about the future being brighter than it is now.  Hot Take - I'd personally argue that Nu Trek is starting to "get better" relative to Star Wars, since we at least got Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Picard Season 3 which "feels" more like Trek (or at least pays it respect), but these shows still have justifiable issues with writing, tone, etc. Hell Picard was trash until they got someone that actually knew the show in the final season and even their newest show coming out ("Section 31") looks like absolute shite/straight up Acolyte-tier if the trailer is anything to go off of.
tl;dr to original poster - Nu Trek had/still has the issue Star Wars is facing where they're making the shows for people who don't actually like the thing that makes the franchise stand out and beloved world wide."

shevereshtus on X - "One of the most vile (and oft repeated) accusations against Jews and Judaism is that the Talmud (Ketubot 11b) permits relations with a girl as long as she is under the age of 3. A thread debunking this absolutely horrific libel...
this is in the larger context of evaluating the marriage contract for the purpose of establishing the financial protections she receives in the case of a divorce. What this is not is:
1) A discussion about what's permitted/forbidden
2) A moral evaluation...
If you were to take a law book from your state and open it even in the sections regarding crimes of this nature, it would be coldly read as  "If abuser does this to victim, this is considered X. If he does that, this is considered Y. In such conditions, you give them X sentence."
You won't find a single manual of law that says "Drunk driving WHICH IS A HORRIBLE THING TO DO gets you 3 years minimum in jail if you kill something AND YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THAT.""

Thread by @thefernandocz on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg was one of the most hated CEOs on the planet.  6 years later, he wears chains, surfs in tuxedos and fights Lex Fridman.  Everyone seems to love him.  It's the most brilliant PR transformation of the century and everyone needs to understand why it worked: 🧵
Remember this scrawny, awkward hacker?  Now, he’s a jacked CEO who fights Lex Fridman & wears chains.  Here’s what you missed about Zuck’s PR transformation:
2004: A nervous 19-year-old in flip-flops launches Facebook from his dorm room.
2024: A confident 40-year-old in gold chains wakeboarding while holding the American flag.
What happened in between?
It's not just about looks.  Zuck's gone from awkward Congressional hearings to scrapping with UFC fighters.  From "smoking meats" videos to receiving gold chains from T-Pain.  This isn't an accident...
Coincidentally, it's coincided with Meta getting its mojo back.  Meta stock is up 60% this year (& 160% in the last 5).  Zuck's transformation mirrors Meta's:
• Meta: From scandal-plagued social media to AI innovator
• Zuck: From robotic CEO to relatable tech bro
The secret? Zuck's new strategy: Authenticity.  He's not pretending to be a normal guy anymore. He's owning his billionaire status.
• Wakeboarding in a tux? Check.
• Collecting designer chains? Yep.
• Training with MMA fighters? You bet.
Other transformations we're seeing:
Zuck's whole wardrobe got an upgrade:
• Out: Dishwater tees and hoodies
• In: Capri cabana shirts and Yeezy-esque sweatshirts
And:
• He's let his hair grow out into Gen-Z curls
• He's engaging with fashion designers in IG comments
The secret:
While Elon Musk picks culture war fights on X, Zuck's projecting a "whatever bro, I'm doing me" vibe.  By embracing his quirky billionaire status instead of hiding it, Zuck's become MORE relatable.  Now, he's just spending time with his family & spending his billions as we would. The big takeaway:
Whether or not you liked Zuck before, you probably like him more now.  And it's all down to him just being himself.  This is what people get wrong about personal brand:
They think a personal brand is about being someone else.  That a personal brand = the LinkedIn influencer types.  But Zuck's transformation shows you:  Your authentic self is what leads to the best outcomes."

'IT WAS THE JEWS!' Screams Candace Owens On First Round Of 'Clue' | Babylon Bee - "According to sources, it was not the Jews. It was Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Rope.  At publishing time, Candace Owens was vindicated after she did her own research and determined Colonel Mustard was a Jew."

they're a cult : r/Jordan_Peterson_Memes - "Most republicans now would have been considered democrats back in the 90’s and early 2000’s."
"If you listen to some of the old Bill Clinton speeches, you'd swear he was a Republican by today's standards."

Actual Fact Bot: Revived | Facebook - "The Rolling Stones' record company mistakenly included a comma in the title for their single “Paint It Black” (Paint It, Black), leading to a controversy over its racial interpretation."
The power of literature

Foreign tourist in Japan arrested for having sex on shrine grounds in broad daylight - "Much has been written, and many hands wrung, over the opaque, obtuse, and obfuscating etiquette of the Japanese culture. In reality, though, for foreign tourists traveling in Japan, common sense will get you pretty far. Say please and thank you. If you’re stopping somewhere to check a map or dig through your bag, move to the side of the walkway so other people can get by. Refrain from humping in broad daylight at religious sites.  But apparently that last local manners point was a bit too hard for a 61-year-old Austrian tourist to adhere to, and was a social norm a Japanese female acquaintance of his was willing to break as well. At 11:35 in the morning on August 23, the police in the town of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, received a call reporting that two people were having sex on the grounds of a shrine. Though the shrine isn’t in a heavily populated area, the witness reported that the pair was engaged in the act in an open, easily seen location... the Austrian man was leaning against the shrine building while engaged in the act... The pair now face charges of disrespecting a place of worship, with the woman, a Kesennuma resident in her 40s, already admitting guilt."

Wendy’s “Chili Finger Lady” Comes Clean - "In 2005, Anna Aayala was dining at a San Jose Wendy's restaurant when she claimed she chomped down on a partially-cooked segment of human finger. The fast food chain suffered an estimated $21 million in lost business. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, got the severed finger from a co-worker, who lost it in an industrial accident. Both Ayala and Plascencia pleaded guilty. Aayala was sentenced to nine years in prison but was released after four years on good behavior. There's one condition to her release: She's not allowed to step foot back in the place that made her famous."

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