Sleepless in Midland

Did HEB get woke?

The CEO of Goya said nice things about Donald Trump, and the mob called for a boycott against Goya.

To counteract the radicals, I planned to purchase a couple of cans of Goya garbanzo beans and make some hummus. But at the local HEB today, there was not a single can of Goya beans of any kind on the shelves in the canned bean section. Not a one.

Of course it's possible that they were simply currently out of supply. Restocking has been a challenge during the Coronavirus panic. However one has to wonder if HEB did this intentionally. I'll keep checking. If HEB is boycotting Goya that would be disappointing.

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2:35 PM 7/13/2020

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Quote of the day 6-21-20 -- Clarice Feldman on whose lives matter

From What My Neighborhood Needs: Fewer Virtue Signaling Lawn Signs:

I’m old school enough to think all lives matter. Indeed, I think treating all people equally and entitled to the protection of their person, property, and rights of civil enjoyment is essential to preserve an orderly, prosperous society.

Speaking of old school, some of us still share Martin Luther King's dream that some day people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

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9:41 AM 6/21/2020

Celebrities against consumerism -- what an irony

There was a time when actors were considered lower class. But then movies were invented, and shrewd entrepreneurs developed a very profitable business. Promoting actors into stars enhanced that business enterprise and elevated the status of actors.

The job of an actor is to pretend to be some other character. Actors are simply people with a talent for convincing others that they are something they really aren't. A celebrity worship cult developed, and the actors capitalized on that to become fabulously wealthy. And somehow they convinced themselves that people wanted to hear what they themselves had to say.

Eyebrows get raised when celebrities pontificate about how normal people should live their lives. Here's a case in point. Stars and scientists call for world not to 'go back to normal':

"The pursuit of consumerism and an obsession with productivity have led us to deny the value of life itself: that of plants, that of animals, and that of a great number of human beings," the short letter added. "Pollution, climate change, and the destruction of our remaining natural zones has brought the world to a breaking point."

So here we are. Working people are struggling to make ends meet, and celebs richer than Croesus are railing against consumerism. What a scene.

Kat Timpf takes them down a notch:

Now, to be clear, I’m not attacking them for their success – or even for them enjoying it with lavish lifestyles. What I am saying, however, is that I can’t help but be irked by the unconscionable lack of awareness you’d have to have in order to sign something like this while you’re sitting in an extravagant home surrounded by servants.

After all, if any of the super-wealthy people who signed this letter had any real interest in stopping the “pursuit of consumerism,” they would certainly have started with taking a look at their own habits in that area.

Here's an idea. Let's support their battle against "consumerism" by avoiding any movie, TV show, concert, or other performance involving those actors. Yeah! We're in this fight together!

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3:11 PM 5/12/2020

"Pillow fight" as metaphor now banned thanks to Glaad

Political correctness struck again. The language vigilantes have now attacked "pillow fight."

POLITICO Playbook of 12/20/2019 explains how it came about:

Good Friday morning. GLAAD sent us a note yesterday about Playbook PM, noting that our use of “pillow fight” when describing a fight between Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren may have offended people. That was not our intent -- pillow fight, in our mind, connotes a fight where no one draws blood.

-- Drew Anderson from GLAAD explains his view: “For women and LGBTQ people at the workplace, hearing phrases like ‘dramatic,’ ‘over the top,’ and even ‘pillow fight’ during office disagreements fosters negative stereotypes and diminishes a person simply because of who they are. Disagreements happen in politics, but using these loaded terms during disputes feed into the sexist and homophobic tropes that simply have no place in our political coverage and rhetoric.”

So phrases like "pillow fight," "dramatic," and "over the top" foster negative stereotypes during office disagreements?

Emily Jashinsky probably sums up most people's reaction in GLAAD Deems ‘Pillow Fight’ Offensive Language:

What seems more offensive is the implication that grown adults are so psychologically frail they would feel “diminishe[d]” on the basis of their sex or sexual orientation by reading the term “pillow fight” in a perfectly appropriate context.

What they are saying is if you disagree with me, just shut the f___ up.

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10:52 AM 12/29/2019

the OK hand sign-- who knew it meant so much more?

To the outrage industry, the OK hand sign is a racist symbol. To students it's a stunt to entice a fellow student to look at it then receive a punch. To everyone else it's an OK sign.

This latest plunge into the world of political correctness should wake us up to how powerful they think they are. It resulted in an official investigation -- Army, Navy determine football game gesture wasn’t racist sign -- and fortunately, the unlucky students who were playing the circle game escaped being labeled racist. (Not known whether anyone got a punch in the arm.)

But now we've lost an old fashioned OK signal. No longer will normals be able to use it without the risk of being branded as racist. What a shame.

It's political correctness gone wild. And it's the sort of overreach that will help Donald Trump get reelected.

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2:41 PM 12/21/2019

If you've ever wondered who's better, men or women, Obama can mansplain it for you

Barack Obama was the consummate politician. The skill he boasted about was the ability to make everyone think he agreed with them. So one has to assume he was telling a recent audience what they wanted to hear when he said:

"Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us [men].

These days women are better off than men by most measures, especially if the measure is graduation rates from high school through college. But private business man Barack Obama is selling a service, and in this case he was lecturing people on an undisclosed subject in Kuala Lumpur for an Obama Foundation event.

Mr. Obama is a good example of the principle of public choice. That's the theory that people who go into the political arena aren't motivated by a desire to promote the common good but are motivated by the same human desires that motivate just about everyone else -- money, power, adoration, rock star fame, what have you.

And in Mr. Obama's case when people hear him speak, somehow they just get the feeling that he agrees with them. His skill has served him well.

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3:31 PM 12/16/2019

PC crowd takes another scalp after UNT speaker said n-word in speech about hate

This happens all too often, and dammit, this was at my old alma mater. Kids, if you squelch someone's free speech it will eventually happen to you, too.

Here's Dallasnews.com: University of North Texas staff attorney resigns less than 24 hours after sparking controversy by using N-word as example during free-speech event:

At the event, titled “When Hate Comes to Campus,” Sewell said the following during her presentation:

“You know, you can say a lot of offensive things in here because it’s impossible to talk about the First Amendment without saying horrible things. Um, you know, ‘You’re just a dumb n----- and I hate you.’ That alone, that’s protected speech.”

Um, no. It's not protected from the PC mob. The pressure resulted in her resignation the next day.

And it's yet another example of selective outrage. Jason L. Riley made this observation a couple of months ago (Alternate link):

White people are led to believe that a word that has permeated the most popular forms of comedy and music in the country for decades somehow sends black people into conniptions when they hear it in any other context. But the first time I recall hearing the word as a child, it was spoken by other blacks, and my experience is far from unique. Even today, blacks are far more likely than whites to use the term in public. And the selective outrage over its use has grown tiresome.

Tiresome indeed. Yet still dangerous.

P.S. It's worth noting that she resigned on her on volition.  Governor Abbott signed S.B. 18 in June -- effective in September -- which is supposed to protect free speech at institutions of higher education.

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2:28 PM 11/10/2019

Some municipalities are banning fast food drive throughs to save the planet

NPR tries to answer the question: Why U.S. Cities Are Banning New Fast-Food Drive-Throughs:

In August, Minneapolis became the latest city to pass an ordinance banning the construction of new drive-through windows. Similar legislation restricting or banning the ubiquitous windows has also passed in Creve Coeur, Mo.; Long Beach, Calif.; and Fair Haven, N.J.

Most bans focus on curbing emissions, reducing litter, improving pedestrian safety and enhancing walkability. In Minneapolis, City Council President Lisa Bender notes that the ordinance fits in with Minneapolis 2040, a plan for growth and development that includes achieving an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

So they are reducing green house gasses, huh? If they want to reduce the time vehicles sit with their engines idling they missed the mark by a mile. The time spent by commuters sitting at red lights is probably incalculable. But it's huge.

If municipalities really wanted to reduce idle time they would improve traffic conditions. One way would be to coordinate traffic light changes to minimize the wait time. Also, when traffic is light, flashing yellow lights could replace red lights. However, many people in government love control over people, and making them sit still when they want to go somewhere is a great way to show the rabble who's boss.

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1:22 PM 10/20/2019

Will Ken Burns ruin country music?

There's a TV show that reruns on truTV called "Adam Ruins Everything" in which Adam Conover "ruins" some popular theory by debunking any myths about it that can be ridiculed. Meanwhile, he bores the audience with over-explanation.

I'm reminded of that TV show by the promotions by PBS NewsHour and C-Span of Ken Burns' upcoming series called Country Music, a film by ken Burns.

In both the PBS "news" segment and the C-Span interview Burns goes directly to the feminist movement with remarks about how liberated Loretta Lynn was back in the day.

My reaction, as someone who grew up listening to that old country music, is that it looks like an east coast progressive going out into the sticks to do a documentary about those weird people who inhabit that wilderness out there. The documentary isn't meant for country music fans, it's meant to entertain the progressives on the coast -- like a wildlife show, or maybe more like Adam Ruins Country Music.

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5:07 AM 9/14/2019

Quote of the week 8-24-19 is about the N word

Lance Morrow wrote about the travails of Prof. Laurie Sheck who attempted to teach her students about the works of James Baldwin and used a title of one of his pieces which contained the N word. A white student reported her to the language police at the school, and an investigation ensued.

Here's our quote of the week. From Lance Morrow:

The unutterable word makes me think of the passage in Homer’s “Odyssey” in which Tiresias instructs Odysseus to take an oar from his ship and put it over his shoulder and carry it far, far inland, until he encounters people who do not know what an oar is and mistake it for a winnowing fan. When that happens, the terrible wandering of Odysseus will be over. He will be free. He will be home.

So it may be, someday, with the N-word and all its bitter meanings.

From A Forbidden Word’s Lost Lessons. Alternate source.

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3:50 PM 8/23/2019

When NYT glorified Soviet diversity vs American Apollo mission they forgot about the Brezhnev Doctrine

The tweet reproduced on the right has circulated the blogosphere in the past few days.

The woke New York Times is glorifying Soviet diversity as a win over the U.S. to take a shot at those of us who might want to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landing. Amazingly it looks so much like what one might expect from Pravda.

A better comparison might have been to address the brutality of the Brezhnev Doctrine during that same time period. Soviet dissenters were declared mentally ill and subject to all sorts of punishments described as cures.

But foremost, let's recall the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 because their citizens were trying to sample freedoms that the Soviet system couldn't allow.

Wikipedia sums up the Brezhnev Doctrine this way:

The vague, broad nature of the Brezhnev Doctrine allowed application to any international situation the USSR saw fit. This is clearly evident not only through the Prague Spring in 1968, and the indirect pressure on Poland from 1980–81, but also in the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan starting in the 1970s. Any instance which caused the USSR to question whether or not a country was becoming a risk to international socialism, the use of military intervention was, in Soviet eyes, not only justified, but necessary.

Oh, but the diversity! In the eyes of the New York Times, freedom must take a back seat to diversity. But there's a bumper sticker idea for Putin: "Russia -- diversity is our strength. Don't like it? Turn yourself in."

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4:14 PM 7/19/2019

What if Ilhan Omar is part of Islam's grand plan?

The tolerance Democrats have for the recent antisemitic remarks of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) sounds very wrong to most Americans. We've had "diversity is our strength" drilled into our skulls so long that it's numbing. So maybe that's why Democrats seem deaf to intolerance by those who seek to discriminate against Jews.

If one watches enough of the confirmation hearings when the appointee under consideration is a Christian one comes away with the feeling that there's a high degree of Christian-phobia out there. Now we can add Jew-phobia to that list, too. But when it comes to Islam, it's as if their minds are so open their brains fell out.

Anyway, to the point. Maybe Ilhan Omar is part of Islam's grand plan. Let's revisit James Mitchell's book, "Enhanced Interrogation" where he recounted some of his conversations with Jihad mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Here's an excerpt (bold added for emphasis):

"It would be nice," he said, if al Q'ida or like-minded Islamists could bring America to its knees with catastrophic attacks, but that was unlikely to happen; "not practical" is the wording he used. From his perspective, the long war for Islamic domination wasn't going to be won in the streets with bombs and bullets and bloodshed. No, it would be won in the minds of the American people.

He said the terror attacks were good, but the practical, way to defeat America was through immigration and by outbreeding non- Muslims. He said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the united states, taking advantage of the welfare system to support themselves while they spread their jihadi message. They will wrap themselves in America's rights and laws for protection, ratchet up acceptance of sharia law, and then, only when they were strong enough, rise up and violently impose sharia from within. He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people eventually would become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.

"Eventually," KSM said, "America will expose her neck to us for slaughter."

Ilhan Omar and a few others are leading the attack on the American system. The long plan would have American citizens and non-citizens adopting Sharia law voluntarily. However, the only uncertainty at this point is which alternate system will ultimately prevail.

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3:17 PM 3/8/2019

There should be a statute of limitations on distasteful jokes- Give Northam a break

The focus of MSM attention these past few days is the possibility that Virginia Governor Northam posed long ago in a yearbook photo in garb that is regarded as screaming, yelling, ultra racist by today's standards.

As satisfying as it is to see Democrats held up to the standards they use for Republicans, it's still unfair. What was halfway acceptable 30 or 40 years ago might be considered totally out of bounds today. But the problem is with the time travel aspect. A lawful society doesn't make rules, then turn back the clock and convict people of violations for acts that were OK at the time.

Most crimes have a statute of limitations attached to them. Once that time has passed, the law doesn't exactly excuse them, but it ignores them. The same thing should occur in civil society. But as it works now, the rules get changed, and past events fall into that new category: OK at the time, but wrong now. We really shouldn't hold people responsible for things they did in the past just because the mob wants to apply new rules to past acts.

Ethnocentrism is judging another culture by the values and standards of one's own culture.

What we have now is Era-centrism: Imputing a sin or crime to long ago acts that, due to social evolution, are now unacceptable.

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2:21 PM 2/3/2019

political correctness cheat sheet

You need a program to know what's acceptable and what's not. But the important thing to remember is that the "who." Who said it is more important than what is said.

A delightful website by Bradley Campbell makes that point loud and clear. In fact, he published a convenient cheat sheet demonstrating that very thing in http://victimhoodculture.com/index.php/2018/08/09/victimhood-culture-and-hidden-meanings/ Victimhood Culture and Hidden Meanings. See below:

So there you have it.

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3:20 PM 8/14/2018

Stunner -- fake racist claim right here in West Texas

These days whenever we see or hear a news item in which one individual describes some act of racism it's probably a prudent approach to give it at least a 50% chance of being fake.

But it's probably hard for a reporter to put that principle in effect when he is staring at a super salacious story about racism.

That's what happened in our neighbor city of Odessa, TX, the other day. You've probably heard the story. First, a waiter claimed that a customer wrote a racist note on a receipt. Here's the Odessa American's first report complete with a glowing portrayal of the claimant: Racist receipt at restaurant condemned.

It took the restaurant owner's own investigators to do the fact checking -- the note was faked. But let's give credit to the Odessa American for reporting that important narrative breaker a week later in Saltgrass COO, waiter say racism story made up. Oops.

Does anyone wonder why so many people don't trust the media?

P.S. Newspeak addition: "Terrorist" is now a racial epithet.

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5:37 AM 7/25/2018

Google is not the only company steeped in political correctness -- look at HP

Roger Clegg tells us that HP, Inc., is threatening to deduct 10% off a law firm's bill if the firm doesn't meet the diversity quota set by HP. See HP Mandates Quotas:

Kim M. Rivera, who is chief legal officer and general counsel of HP Inc., is serious in her insistence that law firms doing work for her company meet the racial, ethnic, and gender quotas she has set for them (she calls it “achieving the metric”). She has sent this letter informing them that the company will withhold up to 10 percent of any amount invoiced by the law firms if they “do not meet or exceed our minimal diverse staffing requirements.”

She helpfully appends a description of the program. It spells out, for example, that the definition of “diverse” attorneys is limited to “race/ethnicity, gender, LGBT status, and disability status” — no use trying to sneak in someone because of his or her religion, impoverished background, or heterodox political views. But the good news is that the “twofer” is alive and well: “An attorney who is both a woman and racially/ethnically diverse” counts double.

Never mind that the law prohibits discrimination, they may have to discriminate in order to get their workplace to comply with HP to get full payment.

Meanwhile, in the Senate: Senator wants 'mandated diversity' for Congressional staff. While I agree with the principle that elected office holders should be held to the same standards as everyone else, a better approach would be to abolish quotas all together.

Finally, Kyle Becker helpfully provides us the names of the 10 Most 'Woke' Corporations in America. To save you the trip over there, they are PayPal, Adidas, Starbucks, ESPN, PepsiCo, Walmart, Target, Nordstrom, Google, and General Motors.

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12:57 PM 1/4/2018

Women marching against sexual harassment must wonder why no one would want to give them CPR

There was an interesting juxtaposition in the morning paper. The top article screams, "Hundreds march against sexual harassment." But right below that one is this headline: "Study: Women less likely to get CPR from bystanders."

It's as if the top headline answers the question posed by the bottom one. Who'da thunk it?

Bonus: Democrats ridiculed VP Mike Pence when he said he wouldn't be alone with a woman other than his wife. After seeing the ancient claims of harassment coming out against Roy Moore, could any male blame him?

In PC wars alleged racist gesture outweighs flag disrespect

Astros player Yuli Gurriel allegedly made a racist gesture in a World Series game the other night between the Astros and the Dodgers. The PC warriors forced an apology out of him, so I had to hunt for it to figure out just what a "racist gesture" looked like.

Apparently, he touched both sides of his face and stretched his eyelids to look oriental. See Astros player Yuli Gurriel appears to make racist gesture mocking Japanese opponent. He got banned from five games next year as punishment.

In professional football a player can insult an entire country by disrespecting the national anthem and he becomes a hero to the same crowd that condemns Gurriel. What a contrast.

Dressing up for Halloween? Only safe costume is go as Trump supporting deplorable

The reach of political correctness is long and strong. Schools all over the country are so caught up in political identity groups that they are warning students against costumes that might offend someone. And if anyone is offended, then everyone on the left

The war on Christmas ended in a draw. But now it's a war on Halloween. For example, see the flier from University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul warning against cultural appropriation.

Ben Shapiro provides the new rules in Here Is Your Only Approved Halloween Costume, According To The Left. To wit:

So, here are the basic rules, according to the Left. If you are white and dress up as a hero who happens to be white, you are ethnocentric. This is racist. If you are male and you dress up as a female, this is sexist (unless you actually believe you are a female, in which case you are a female). If you are white and dress up as a hero or villain who happens not to be white, you are culturally appropriating. This is also racist. This leaves white people with just one costume choice this year: all white people must dress up as white villains. But wait: if you wear a costume that mocks a villain, you might be taking villainy too frivolously, and making light of the suffering of their victims. That could be racist or sexist.

Shapiro goes on to explain that the only acceptable costume would be one that looks like Rubik's Cube.

In the old days women enjoyed dressing up in sexy costumes, sexy vampires, sexy nurses, or (gasp!) sexy Playboy Bunnies. But these days those would probably be deemed, sexist and unfair to women who were naturally non-sexy.

But don't despair. Shapiro's Rubik's Cube idea aside, there's one costume that is sure to be acceptable to the PC crowd, a Trump supporting hillbilly toting a jug and a banjo. A deplorable!

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1:51 PM 10/24/2017

If the protesting football players knew what they were talking about it might make a difference

The rationale for the professional players who refuse to stand for the national anthem is claimed to be that they are protesting police killing of blacks. If so, their reasoning is based on a flawed set of facts.

Walter E. Williams has a piece titled Blacks vs. Police cites research which says that in 2017 roughly 22% of people killed by police were blacks. (For those reliant on quotas, that's too high. But the numbers alone don't really prove anything about police attitudes toward blacks.)

Dr. Williams takes it further, or rather narrower, by focusing on Chicago where there have been 533 murders and 2,880 shootings so far in 2017 of which fewer than 13% have been solved. He suggest that crimes of black vs. black might be a better focus of concern.

I would suggest a focus on the educational system that appears to fail black significantly. Professional sports shouldn't be the only avenue for success for black people.

Anyway, regarding the kneeling as a form of protest at football, those guys are entertainers who don't entertain me. So they can do what they want.

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4:10 PM 10/13/2017

reaching the acceptance stage of grief about the national anthem sit-downs

OK, I've rounded the bend. I no longer care whether pro football players take a knee during the national anthem. It's a disgrace that the underlying reason for their behavior was based on a lie about what happened in Ferguson that day the police officer shot the black guy. But that belief in a lie is there, whether we like it or not.

In any event, taking a knee is probably more tolerable than burning the flag. As we all know, burning a flag is a Supreme Court sanctioned method of protest. And a certain news channel, whatever the motive, cheapened the national anthem by playing it on weekend mornings preceding the start of their live programming. Are we supposed to stand up at our breakfast tables while it plays? I'd like to see a hidden video showing what the staff and crews of that channel do while it's playing.

Along these lines, Tim Carney carefully eviscerates the argument that the millionaire sports stars don't have any basis for complaining in Being rich and privileged doesn't undermine the protests by Colin Kaepernick and other NFL player. That, he explained, was because Kaepernick stated at the outset that he was doing it for others, not himself. Well, it would be nice if he could also acknowledge that the black-lives-matter movement was based on a lie. But that's probably asking too much. Being a fan of Fidel Castro means being able to accept a lie as truth.

Or as Jason Brennan implies in How Kneeling Athletes Reveal the True Nature of Politics, the kneelers may just be showing allegiance to the tribes with which they want to identify. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's the same tribe to which most of the others in the entertainment industry also identify.

They can do whatever they want. And on weekend mornings I'll continue to remain seated, eating my porridge, and reading the morning paper as the cable news channel plays the national anthem.

Editor's note: Whoa! You're some kinda alt-libertarian.- Robo-ed.|  |Hmm. Maybe. - Sleepless.

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1:26 PM 9/28/2017

Taking a knee and biting the hand

All those rich professionals ball players on the field who refuse to respect the U.S. flag have every right to do so. They should thank our founding fathers for giving them that right, but that wouldn't fit the narrative.

In any event, the politicization of pro sports could have a positive effect. The case for taxpayer funded ball parks for pampered professionals and wealthy owners has always been a misuse of tax dollars. Voters who will inevitably be asked to pay for new sports stadiums might have second thoughts about that concept.

So maybe voters will balk the next time some pro team owner comes to them with his hand out. The ballot box is where conservatives protest. Let the millionaire players pay for their own stadium.

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9:13 AM 9/24/2017

Protesters should just take a knee during Robert E. Lee school song

Once again, Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas, is in the news. It's probably only a matter of time before the school name is changed -- we talked about that the other day.

Now it's the fight song. Apparently, there's a refrain in the fight song that came from the song, "Dixie," which of late has triggered social justice warriors into action. They complained, and the school principal immediately changed the song. See Riddick: Lee principal suspends use of Dixie in its fight song.

It just takes one disgruntled person to get government entities to make changes to accommodate political correctness. When the discontented make enough noise and put so much fear in the folks who are usually expected to make informed, intelligent, decisions, those folks cave. Imagine a long row of dominoes standing on end. One touch at the right spot, and they all fall.

Sigh. I remember the time, however long ago it was, that protesters took a knee when they heard something didn't like. The school song protesters should do that. That way they could get attention each time the song is played.

While I don't have a dog in the fight, I do have an aversion to the heckler's veto. It will be interesting to see if there's any voter backlash at the next MISD board election.

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1:33 PM 8/27/2017

New names for Lee High School -- some helpful suggestions

A local (Midland, Texas) petitioner is seeking a change of the name, Robert E. Lee High School, to something else. If you follow the news, you'll know why this is happening now. The newspaper article announcing the effort -- Midland ISD alumni behind petition for Lee name change -- doesn't suggest any new names. But have no fear, we are here to help.

First up: Robert Lee High School. No, not General Robert E. Lee but Robert Lee, the Asian-American ESPN announcer who got bounced from broadcasting a game because of his name. School groundskeepers could simply paint over the "E" where ever the school's full name appears.

Don't like that one? Here's another one: Clarence Thomas High School. He's a real hero who made it through Joe Biden's high tech lynch mob to become a Supreme Court Justice. And he's a good one! Oh, he's African American, so that should shut off many complaints.

Next up, Midland High School #2. There's already a Midland High School named after the city where it is situated. To keep the names absolutely neutral, start numbering them. Easy enough.

How about Caitlyn Jenner High School? Political correctness is all the rage these days. And attempts to pass bathroom bills get condemnation from all Democrats plus the heads of some of the largest corporations. So a transgender Olympian should shut them up, for a while.

But wait. If that's where we are going, Tona Brown High School. She was the first African American transgender to sing AND play a violin at Carnegie Hall. A twofer?

Moving along, the Rebel mascot would have to be replaced, too. For the new mascot I would recommend, The Facebooks. There probably isn't a student around who is not on Facebook. So why not name the mascot for their favorite forum?

Along those lines, maybe The iPhones might be just as appropriate, if not more so. At least the iPhone is a solid object rather than an internet portal. The students could hold up their iPhones when the team scores a touchdown, if teams are still allowed to score touchdowns. But that's a subject for another day. The PC police haven't shut down competitive sports yet, so there's still time to celebrate a victory.

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1:59 PM 8/24/2017

Google company dogma has a lot in common with Sharia law

In the archives of this blog are a few posts about James Mitchell's book, "Enhanced Interrogation." That book contains a trove of information about Islam, terrorism, Sharia law, and other subjects the detainees opened up to him about.

In one of the chapters he relays a conversation in which one of the captured terrorists explained that Sharia law equals freedom. The rationale was that because the rules are laid out plainly, it freed the people from making decisions.

Compare this with the fiasco at Google in which an employee was hounded out of the company because he didn't subscribe whole heartedly to the politically correct mindset in the company.

I didn't make the connection until Michael Barone's use of the word "dogma" drove it home in his article, Google's 'tolerance' requires repression. To wit:

And Google's tacit endorsement of the quasi-religious dogma that a fair society must produce gender balance and proportionate ethnic representation is at war with both experience and logic.

Defenders of that dogma say that rejecting it would justify gender and ethnic discrimination. But that's exactly wrong. Just follow James Damore's advice: "Treat people as individuals, not just as another member of their group."

The dogma is needed to justify the elaborate apparatus of gender and racial quotas and preferences and the lavish campus and corporate diversity bureaucracies to enforce them and stamp out heresy. As a reliable transmitter of free thought, Google seems headed down the path toward the Spanish Inquisition.

Freedom, in the minds of many of the techies on the West Coast -- as well as many on college campuses these days -- is freedom from associating with anyone who isn't of the correct mindset. Just like Sharia.

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11:23 AM 8/10/2017

Most conservatives quit using Google long ago

One of the big news items of the last few days was the outing of the Google employee who wrote a memo disagreeing with the company's diversity driven, politically correct culture. As everyone knows by now, he got fired for his efforts to educate his fellow co-workers on the issue.

Well, that's one more mark against Google. But most of us have known how Google works at helping Democrats with search results. Further, Google collects information on its users -- that database must be immense! One doesn't have to be paranoid to believe that Google knows more about us than any human being does, no matter how close that human is to us. And that collected information is for sale in one form or another.

But there's hope. Most of us know that there are alternative search engines which promise not to collect information.

One is ixquick.com. The search engine uses Google, but they say this about that:

When you search with StartPage by Ixquick, we remove all identifying information from your query and submit it anonymously to Google ourselves.

We get the results and return them to you in total privacy. Your IP address is never recorded, your visit is not logged and no tracking cookies are placed on your browser.

Lately, I've been using duckduckgo.com. Their privacy page explains their policy:

DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell. The rest of this page tries to explain why you should care.

See the rest of the page for the details.

In any event, Google users probably already know what they are getting into and don't care. In that regard, note this: Google is more afraid of liberal outrage than federal law. (Link via Instapundit.com.)

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10:34 AM 8/9/2017

Trump dumps military push for transgenders

What's not to like about this?

Source.

The Obama agenda was more focused on identity politics than on protecting America.

Women's group lets mask slip with embrace of Shakur -- it was always about lefty power, never about equality

"Classy" is the way Ben Shapiro describes this: 'Bipartisan' Women's March Wishes Happy Birthday To Terrorist Who Murdered A Police Officer.

Non-feminists saw through them years ago. The women's movement may have been about equality in the minds of some in the early days. But it wasn't long before it became obvious: It wasn't about equality, it was all about power.

Anyway, this must have seemed like a huge faux pas to anyone who hoped to maintain the facade. The lefty group, Women’s March, tweeted out a greeting to terrorist-on-the-lam, Joanne Deborah Chesimard, aka, Assata Shakur. Here's what Shapiro had to say in the above linked article:

The tweet came complete with a picture of Shakur, with the slogan “IS IN THE STRUGGLE” pasted at the top. In May 1973, Shakur was wounded in a shootout with state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike; one trooper was killed, execution-style. She was convicted of the murder, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1979, she escaped from prison and then finally fled to Cuba, where she has been living; she is still on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List, and there is a $2 million [sic] reward on her head. As David French points out at National Review:

All told, “from 1970 to 1984, the BLA was responsible for four bombings, four hijackings and 32 violent armed confrontations in the United States. Sixteen of those involved confrontations with law enforcement officers who were killed.” In other words, by every reasonable contemporary definition of terrorism, Shakur was a violent terrorist who belonged to a violent terrorist organization.

Shakur has become a hero to leftists because she rejects the morality of Western civilization — she was a member of the Black Liberation Army, a more violent splinter from the Black Panther Party.

The FBI's wanted poster for her lists several other names by which Assata Shakur is known. Meanwhile, some bounty hunter types should try to cash in on that $1,000,000 reward. But, of course, a federal judge would probably let her walk free if they grabbed her against her will, even in Cuba.

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12:53 PM 7/19/2017

Am I woke? Nope.

Commanding the language is one thing the left does really well. And along with that is the reinvention of old words. Although, once they appropriate a word or slogan it is only a matter of time before it becomes a pejorative. "Liberal" is one such word. It no longer means what it once did, i.e., classical liberalism. The word got so overused and abused that they appropriated another old one, "progressive." That one seems to be still in use.

So here's a new one, "woke." Urbandictionary.com defines it this way:

A state of perceived intellectual superiority one gains by reading The Huffington Post.

In other words, "politically correct." BTW, "politically correct" is now a pejorative. So the way these things work, you make be "woke" today, but some day you'll be running away from it.

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12:41 PM 6/3/2017

Jaw dropping numbers -- Fox paid out $45 million to settle sex claims

It doesn't seem too long ago that a man's crude language around women was generally considered rude, and listeners shamed the guy or simply shrugged it off. Or the woman intended as the target fought back with wit and verbal skills. Now it could be a company-bankrupting offense. The Fox network won't likely go bankrupt any time soon, but consider this:

Fox's bill for Roger Ailes settlements is now $45 million. Surely I'm not the only curmudgeon out there who is astonished that crude language has become so expensive.

One would think that any woman hired in the positions the aggrieved victims held at the Fox network would have above average wit and verbal skills. Too bad it didn't occur to them to use those skills against the alleged abusers.

Long ago women were called "the weaker sex." But decades of feminism beat back that proposition. Well, you've come a long way baby, full circle, in fact, to become the weaker sex again.

Furthermore, one has to suspect that in the minds of a lot of employers there's an unspoken bias against female job applicants, because the males will have to walk on egg shells around them. Any slip-up could ruin the company.

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1:32 PM 5/12/2017