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MARCH 2,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

MORE SIGNS OF A REVOLT IN EDUCATION – FROM COLLEGE FIX:    This fall, a higher education institution is set to open that pledges to offer a unique approach to college, one that combines both an emphasis on vocational education as well as Socratic-styled seminars.  Thales College is scheduled to be open year-round and aims to prepare students to enter the workforce and give them the experience they need while earning their degree, said Clifford Humphrey, its director of admissions.  “We are offering a different model for how to do college,” he said in a telephone interview with The College Fix.  For one, the college will encourage students to dress as if they’re going to work, and not just throw on a pair of sweatpants for class, which will help them “start taking on the identity of adults,” according to a news release from the school.  Humphrey also emphasized the college’s focus on vocational education.  “The ways we are unique are that we emphasize career preparation through internships required during the second year,” he said in his interview. “The idea is to learn about a specific industry, network, work with employers and employees.”  Read the rest.  We must encourage experiments like this.  We must break the mold of leftism and mediocrity that threatens this country's future.

WE SURE NEED THIS – FROM PJ MEDIA:    You can relax now: “Barack and Michelle Obama have their Ramadan plans ready,” Esquire reported happily on Wednesday, so you don’t have to worry anymore that the Muslim holy month might catch the First Couple of the Media Elites unprepared. The Obama have “announced a new season of their Higher Ground podcast called “Tell Them, I Am,” which will feature a collection of narratives from Muslim voices.”  True to form for the left, the podcast will be loaded to the brim with “diversity,” except in any of the ways that it actually counts. The “Tell Them, I Am” podcast, which is set for release on Spotify, will “feature stories from activists, artists, actors, performers and athletes,” all of whom no doubt all think the same way. Esquire, out there working hard for a pat on the head from Barack and Michelle, says that it is “promising to be thought-provoking and reflect the best that human nature has to offer, according to the streamer.   There are times to get off the stage. 

March 2, 2021       Permalink

FINALLY – OVERNIGHT:  I consider this one of the most important stories I've printed in the last year.   The question has been asked quietly for some time:  When are the Asian Americans going to wake up?  Our fastest-growing minority, one of our most accomplished communities, an American success story if there ever was one, Asian-Americans have kept largely out of politics, rarely complain, and have been treated badly by other minorities and conspicuously ignored by the press.  They are regularly cheated in college admissions and rarely shown the respect they deserve.

We now have a sign of awakening.  Asian Americans have watched in too many cities as the schools they depend on for their progress have been dumbed down and turned into propaganda mills by people who regard Asian Americans as over-accomplished newcomers, not worthy of much regard.  In New York, the quiet but growing resentments felt by Asian Americans are boiling over, with one group taking direct, courageous and brilliant aim at the new racket called critical race theory.   Read this, from PJ Media: 

Backlash is rising against the Marxist critical race theory (CRT) behind The New York Times‘s “1619 Project” and other efforts to indoctrinate Americans with the idea that American society is fundamentally or “structurally” racist. This week, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY) issued a powerful statement condemning critical race theory and urging Chinese Americans to oppose it.

“Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud,” CACAGNY declared. “One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of too many Asians in good schools. Asians are over-represented. CRT is today’s Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real hate crime against Asians.”

Tough, accurate language.  I love it.

Critical race theory teaches that any racial disparities must ipso facto be proof of some hidden racial bias or discrimination, regardless of civil rights laws explicitly forbidding such discrimination. Since Americans of Asian ancestry are overrepresented in colleges, universities, and certain high-income professions, CRT effectively teaches that American society is structurally biased in favor of Asians.

“CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of implicit bias/sensitivity training . It infiltrates our schools pretending to be culturally/ethnically responsive pedagogy, with curricula such as the New York Times’s 1619 Project and Seattle’s ethnomathematics,” CACAGNY argued. “From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.”

The Chinese American group laid out the main “dogmas” of critical race theory, including (emphasis original):

• You are not a person. You are only your race, and by your race alone you will be judged .

• Justice is about equal rights , but Social Justice, or equity, is about equal outcomes . Only Social Justice matters; Justice does not. To achieve equal outcomes, forget equal rights .

• All unequal outcomes by race — inequity for short — are the result of racial oppression .

• All Blacks are oppressed and all Whites are oppressors. This is systemic:  never ask whether oppression occurred, only how it occurred. Everyone and everything White is complicit .

• If you are White and won’t admit you are racist, you are racist by implicit bias . To reduce implicit bias, you must self-criticize, confess to privilege, apologize to the oppressed race.

• Whiteness is belief in, among others: achievement, delayed gratification, progress, schedules and deadlines, meritocracy, race-blindness, the written word , facts and objectivity (they deny lived experience), logic and reason (they deny empathy), mathematics and science (until they are de-colonized and humanized ).

• CRT suppresses dissent with cancel culture: publications withdrawn, college admissions rescinded, online presence wiped out, business relationships ended, jobs terminated.

The Chinese American group presented three instances of CRT at work. In June 2020, Seattle ran an “anti-racism” training that began with the claim that all White people have a natural sense of racial superiority. The session required participants to confess their complicity in “white supremacy,” become “less white,” and become accountable to black people in their every thought.

In August 2017, Nevada high school senior William Clark took a mandatory class in which the curriculum told students that white people are racists who enjoy the privileges of oppression.

Classmates, teachers, and administrators allegedly began harassing Clark merely because he was identified as white.

In January 2021, a teacher in Cupertino, Calif., told an elementary school math class that students lived in a dominant culture of white, cisgender, educated Christians, and that the culture was created to hoard power. As CACAGNY explained, “a Chinese parent found out about this and organized parents to stop it. It reminded them of Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution.”

Although Chinese Americans “are people of color and therefore start from the oppressed side of CRT’s binary,” CACAGNY explained that “as we overcome discrimination and achieve upward mobility, we are now White by adjacency” (emphasis original). The Chinese American group claimed that Black Lives Matter rioters with CRT signs assaulted a CACAGNY rally supporting merit-based education.

CACAGNY condemned various forms of sleight-of-hand that allow universities like Harvard and top high schools to select “lower-qualified Blacks” over “better-qualified Asians.”

CACAGNY called on Asian Americans to loudly denounce critical race theory and to fight back.
“We need to recognize CRT through its fraudulent packaging, call it out, resist . Parents need to watch for CRT in schools, talk to each other, and organize, like the Cupertino Chinese parents,” the group argued. “Regardless, parents need to speak with their kids to anti-indoctrinate (or un-doctrinate ) them at home. This needs to start early, because CRT indoctrination also starts early. Don’t trust schools and teachers blindly.”

CACAGNY acknowledged former President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban CRT on the federal level, but noted that President Joe Biden rescinded that order upon taking office. That means state and local efforts provide the most promise.

Republicans in various states have filed legislation to ensure that schools do not indoctrinate kids with the 1619 Project. These efforts are likely to grow.

CACAGNY made powerful arguments against Marxist critical race theory without mentioning that this ideology inspired much of the destruction of the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots over the summer. While protesters rightly expressed outrage at the treatment of George Floyd, many of the protests devolved into looting, vandalism, and arson in which lawless thugs — acting in the name of fighting racism — destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments.

 When vandals toppled a statue of George Washington in Portland, they spray-painted “1619” on the statue. When Claremont’s Charles Kesler wrote in The New York Post, “Call them the 1619 riots,” Hannah-Jones responded (in a since-deleted tweet) that “it would be an honor” to claim responsibility for the destructive riots.

Parents of all races should oppose this dangerous and divisive ideology. Critical race theory pits Americans against one another on the basis of skin color, teaches children a basic distrust of the social elements that make America great, and inspired violent and deadly riots.

COMMENT:  I hope I'm seeing the start of a counter-revolution.  But the counter-revolutionaries, including the Asian Americans, know that they're facing tremendous opposition in the universities and the press.  Freedom as a concept is becoming less cherished, not more.  My fear is not that the American people will have their rights ripped from them, but that they'll give them up, gladly, in the name of "equity." 

And the sound you'll hear will be the best people leaving the former United States.

March 2, 2021       Permalink

MARCH 1,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

LITERARY WOKENESS – FROM FOX:    President Biden appears to have erased Dr. Seuss from "Read Across America Day", the annual celebration of reading in honor of the legendary children's author, whose birthday falls on March 2.  While Biden followed presidential tradition in proclaiming Tuesday "Read Across America Day," he bucked his predecessors by leaving out any mention of Dr. Seuss from the proclamation.  The White House didn't immediately return a request for comment on why Dr. Seuss was left out of the proclamation, but the snub comes as progressives have sought to cancel the beloved children's author.  One of Virginia's biggest school districts, Loudoun County Public Schools, reportedly nixed Dr. Seuss from the school's "Read Across America Day" celebration, citing alleged racial "undertones" in his children's books.  Former President Barack Obama and former President Donald Trump both highlighted Dr. Seuss' contributions in their annual proclamations, a Fox News review of White House archives found.  I'm glad the Seuss threat is over.  I suspect he was a foreign plant.  Maybe Norway.

THE START OF ALUMNI REVOLTS? – FROM FOX:  The University of Texas has one of the most historic football programs in the United States.  However, many of the school’s wealthiest donors are angry with the controversy surrounding the alma mater song, "The Eyes of Texas," which has Confederate origins. The Texas Tribune obtained public records that were published on Monday, and many of the alumni expressed anger at the situation. Some of the donors threatened to no longer contribute their money to the university if the situation isn’t fixed.  Emails were sent to University of Texas president Jay Hartzell, and they demanded that the school stands up to the "cancel culture" or else they will no longer receive donations from some of their richest alumni.  Alumni can play a critical role in fighting the insanity that has taken over many of America's colleges and universities.  Money is a major tool, but not the only one.  Influential alumni can petition Congress to put a lid on federal aid to corrupt and politicized education. 

March 1, 2021       Permalink

KIND OF LIKE THE CAPTAIN OF THE TITANIC – OVERNIGHT:  Andrew Cuomo keeps sinking.  It gets worse every day.  What future could he possibly have?  From the New York Post: 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday was accused of making unwanted advances toward a woman and planting an unsolicited kiss on her cheek at a 2019 wedding.

“He said, ‘Can I kiss you?’” Anna Ruch, 33, recalled to The New York Times.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed.”

The allegation comes after two former state staffers accused Cuomo, 63, of sexual harassment on the job — including one who claimed the governor kissed her without warning at his Manhattan office, which he has denied.

Unlike the other two women, Ruch has never been employed by the governor or the state, according to the Times.

A former member of the Obama administration and the 2020 Biden campaign, Ruch and Cuomo met at a crowded New York City wedding reception in September 2019, she told the newspaper.

Within moments of being introduced, Ruch claims the gov put his hand on the small of her lower back, which was exposed in an open-back dress.

“I promptly removed his hand with my hand, which I would have thought was a clear enough indicator that I was not wanting him to touch me,” she told the Times.

But the governor apparently didn’t get the hint.

He allegedly noted that Ruch seemed “aggressive” — and then placed his hands on her cheeks and asked if he could kiss her, according to the report.

“I turned my head away and didn’t have words in that moment,” Ruch said.

Ruch said she was so shocked, she had to ask a friend whether the gov’s lips had actually touched her face as she was pulling away. She was told that he kissed her cheek.

The pal captured the encounter in a series of photographs, including one provided to the Times that shows Cuomo holding Ruch’s face.

COMMENT:  I'd imagine the Democrats are trying to figure out a way to usher Cuomo out of office.  By now he's become an embarrassment to the party.  Those Democrats who refuse to denounce him are increasingly seen as hypocrites. 

Cuomo is also being loudly denounced by New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio.  The two have never gotten along. 

Amazing, isn't it?  Just a year ago Cuomo was being called "America's governor" for his handling – now seen as mishandling – of the Covid 19 virus.  Now he's in the shadows, and also faces a federal investigation of his role in nursing home deaths during the Covid 19 pandemic.

March 1, 2021       Permalink

REMINDER – AT 11:30 P.M. ET:  Remember when Portland, Oregon, was a beautiful, civilized city?  Well, a funny thing happened to Portland on the way to urban greatness.  It elected the wrong people.  The violence that erupted in Portland last year is still going on, and now no one seems to care.  Enforcing the law seems an idle hope.  From Fox: 

Rioters vandalized several buildings in downtown Portland, Ore., on Saturday night in one of the largest protests in weeks, according to reports.

Around 150 people marched through Portland’s Pearl District in what’s called a "direct action" event, smashing windows of businesses like Starbucks, Chipotle, Umpqua Bank and Urban Pantry and tagging them with graffiti, KION-TV in Portland reported.

One vandal wrote "banks suck" on Umpqua Bank’s façade, a Portland Tribune reporter tweeted.
The marchers were protesting the Biden administration’s immigration policy and the federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The White House received progressive pushback this month when it reopened a Texas shelter meant to house unaccompanied teenage migrants. Amid the blowback, the administration has claimed the shelter "won't stay open very long."

Ahead of Saturday's unrest, several Portland business owners had boarded up their storefronts in anticipation of the planned protest, FOX 12 in Portland reported.

"We have removed everything that could possibly cause damage tonight," Jim Rice, owner of Fields Bar and Grill, told the station. The restaurant was already damaged on Friday. It was unclear if it suffered any further damage Saturday.

"When these people come through, and we've lost an entire day of business which means that's impacting my team member's wages. This has been going on for nine months," he continued. "Where are our resources? When do we get enough resources to finally go after and fix this?"

COMMENT:  Fella, you should accept reality and leave Portland.  There are plenty of good, peaceful towns and cities in this country who would welcome a hard-working, law-abiding restaurant owner. 

As for the night after night of violence, where are those who called an hour of mindless disruption at the Capitol in Washington on January 6th a national catastrophe?  I guess they just didn't want Nancy Pelosi inconvenienced.   Or they've never heard of Portland.

March 1,  2021     Permalink