First World Problems...

We had some AC work done this week. Nothing out of the ordinary...just maintenance (mostly cleaning) and replacement of a capacitor that was on its last legs. The tech was methodical and careful, but was puzzled by one of my thermostats. Yes it is old. What's it to you?

He also needed the systems running during part of the maintenance, and didn't reset one of them to the previous settings. I woke up this morning to a bedroom at a chilly 63 degrees, with the AC running! I figured it out, and after I checked both thermostats I realized that it was indeed an existential crisis!

Yes, I should have taken the photo first, but still...

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (232) | Trackbacks (Suck)

How Do You Know If Someone Attended Harvard?
He'll tell you in the first five minutes He's a Racist, Sexist, Jew-And-Christian-Hater Who Rejects Civil Rights Law!

It has always been easy to dislike Harvard. Their smug superiority and class condescension is famous, but recently the facade carefully built over almost 400 years is showing lots and lots of cracks. Their vaunted undergraduates have been exposed as mostly illiterate, innumerate buffoons who cheer on genocidal maniacs like Hamas, simply because it is what the cool kids are doing. Their bloated management structure is filled with affirmative-action hires who can barely communicate, and when they do, it is often plagiarized.

And perhaps even worse, their teaching ranks are filled with a combination of Muslim-funded anti-Western, anti-Semitic rabble-rousers, or mush-brained fools who pretend to be academics while writing nonsensical polemics about intersectionality, transsexualism, White Privilege, and on and on...

But Harvard crosses the line between typical academic stupidity and far more malign behavior. They have failed to protect their students from obvious discrimination by professors, and even more obvious physical intimidation from the mobs whipped up by Harvard's curious support for every anti-Western organization and philosophy. Harvard has also failed to revamp their admissions and hiring practices to fall in line with basic civil rights law.

Which would be distasteful but acceptable if Harvard did not accept government funds. But they do, so they should be bound by federal civil rights laws.

And hilariously the administration and many faculty are crying about academic independence! They are suing, claiming they are a private university and the government can't tell them what to do! Hey Harvard...use your $53 billion endowment and be independent of government funding!

But the best part of this whole mess is the possibility of Harvard losing its tax-exempt status. That would be absolutely delicious!

Trump Right: Ending Tax-Exemption for Universities Can Be Done

As the Internal Revenue Code makes clear, discriminatory policies "cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit within the 'charitable' concept" of the common law" or "within the Congressional intent" in establishing tax-exempt categories under federal law.

In the foundational case of Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574, (1983), the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the IRS that "government has a fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating . . . discrimination in education" and that this public interest "substantially outweighs whatever burden denial of tax benefits places" on an offending institution.

The high court found that this applied even to First Amendment rights, to which both Bob Jones University and Harvard appealed to justify their policies.

Bob Jones’s loss of tax-exempt status was accordingly upheld and only restored after the university abolished its discriminatory policies in full.

Read the article...it is worthwhile. It points out that a loss of tax-exempt status would also kill donations, which would be a lovely bonus. Harvard might discover how dedicated their alums are if those donations aren't deductible!

My guess is that Harvard will prevail in court, at least in part. But going forward their position at the front of the government funding trough is in jeopardy. What prevents the federal government from rejecting all future funding applications from Harvard? Is there some legal entitlement to public money?

It will be interesting, but even if Harvard ultimately digs its way out of this mess, their reputation has been tarnished, and it will take a very long while before Harvard can claim to be the greatest university in the world.

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter] And the Apple and Spotify feeds for CJN's podcast should be working!

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (272) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book (and FWP) Thread - 4-27-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (DON'T PANIC!). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Today's FWP is that my home internet has been down since Wednesday. I contact my ISP and it's a problem with the cable at the node that services my street/neighborhood. The could not give me an estimate on when they expect to have it fixed. If it's not fixed within a week, then it's time to shop around for a new ISP, I think. A new one in my area is offering 3x the speed at the same price, which is very tempting, even though I really don't need 1Gb internet.

Thus, today's Sunday Morning Book Thread will be an abbreviated version. Less calories, but hopefully still filling in some way.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (216) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 27 April 2025

Top Story

• 4chan is back. (Slashdot)
  
  This will annoy the terminally-online haters and delight the... Also terminally-online haters.
  
  I don't think I've ever visited 4chan, but as a natural-born archivist I'm glad that it's not lost.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (214) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night "Club ONT" April 26, 2025 [The 3 Ds]

Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration of your Sunday through Wednesday ONT Crew - The Disco, The Doggo, and The Dino.

Top photo: El embarcadero - Club Hemingway. Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (347) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 4/26/2025

Ivan Reitman

Ivan Reitman is not someone many people would hold up as an example for auteur theory. I think auteur theory quickly ran amok from the original idea as posited by Francois Truffaut in his Cahiers du Cinema article which essentially amounted to a pair of writers were taking control of adaptations and missing the point of the original texts except when working with Jacques Cocteau. Combined with the magazines focus on directors like Hitchcock and Hawks, the idea became "directors are king" rather than "there's usually one role that takes the most prominent creative control of a film." The article itself was arguing that the writers were doing that in everything they did except when they worked with Cocteau, who became the main creative force when he was directing.

Anyway, I start this essay about Ivan Reitman, no one's idea of an auteur, with that tangent because even though his career is mostly dotted with middling to bad comedies that aren't particularly funny, despite the presence of one of the best movies of the 80s, Ghostbusters, under his belt, he had a shockingly clear voice. He just...wasn't a particularly good filmmaker. And that's not the kind of director auteur cultists adhere to (Kubrick? Yes. Reitman? No.). They have to be both great and distinctive. Indistinct and great gets forgotten (think Wyler and even Cahiers own favorite Hawks). Distinctive and not very good? Never embraced at all.

Now, I didn't hate Reitman's body of work. I just found it overall disappointing. However, this post isn't about bashing him but tracing how even a director like Reitman can exert control over his films, and how early experiences can influence a director's entire approach to filmmaking.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:30 PM | Comments (206) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - April 26, 2025 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin and it came up with automata!

[Top photo: fear the TRex automata horde!]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (114) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 26

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:13 PM | Comments (99) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, April 26

Happy Saturday! We're starting to get some interesting stories with some of our recent photos from members of The Horde:

2 fun entries this week, Iris bed going strong and a wonderful amaryllis that I saved from a neighbor who was “relandscaping”. (She destroyed lovely old flower beds and replaced them with nothing). - Tom Servo

Sad for the loss of your neighbor's old flower beds. Glad you got some of the flowers.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:20 PM | Comments (45) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Left puts a heavy burden on David Brooks

It's not easy being the "conservative" opinion writer at the New York Times. A few days ago, the very model of genteel elitism wrote this:

Mike at Chicago Boyz has written a great piece which puts Brooks' call to revolt in context - The BoBo Manifesto:

Posted by: K.T. at 11:06 AM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

[H/T Beckoning Chasm]

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter this week's Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Spooner. Just sayin')

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Even the trolls have feelings. Stupid ones, but still.
3) No running with sharp objects. No don't think about it, joke about it or do it.
4) Contrary to Rule #3, have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 08:05 AM | Comments (433) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 26 April 2025

Top Story

• What this country needs is a really good $20,000 electric truck. Apparently. (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  I mean, given what vehicles cost these days, it's worth a shot.
  
  There are a few corners cut, to be sure. The Slate Truck is available in one colour - slate grey, has no sound system, and only does 150 miles on a charge. And the body panels are plastic, not metal, though that's not a first even on much more expensive models.
  
  And it's designed to be repairable by the owner, though how far that goes is something that we'll have to see when it comes out next year.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (165) | Trackbacks (Suck)

More Powerful Than An ONT

Oh no! It's Friday!

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (476) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mouse Cafe

Whew. Another week down.

Thank you all for your readership and commentership (?).

Golden retriever works on whale-watch boat barking at whales, just to let people know they're there. After 11 years of barking at whales, one finally came over Stimulating Saint Bernards by letting them play at their chosen profession. (IG)

Kangaroo couch potato.

Ostrich says "no" to bully.

Little beaver dances like the groundhog in Caddyshack.

Here's the longer version of the Mouse commercial. I still don't know what the hell is even going on. Here's another longer version.

Road Rage Turkey. (IG)

Little dog in a bunny costume. The bunny costume allows him to channel Bunny Jumping Power.

Doggy and ducky roughhouse.

Teaching a puppy how to howl. Sounds cute now, but in six months, you will regret your folly.

Dogs stealing candy from babies.

Kitten is trying to break through a German shepherd's tough exterior.

Rescued kitten and bird grow up together.

A puppy is in howl training.

ICYMI: This deer is judging you.

Kangaroos lope across a lake at sunset.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (311) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week In Woke

Vegan "butcher" complains has her "vegan butcher shop" goes bankrupt.

Vegan 'butcher' unleashes as business dries up amid surprising new trend: 'We're out of money'

The owner of a once bustling vegan butcher shop in Sydney fears her business will soon close amid an emerging trend away from meat-free products.

The shift has resulted in dozens of vegan restaurants closing, companies that made meat alternatives collapsing and supermarkets shrinking their vegan offerings - though those in the industry have struggled to put a finger on why.

Suzy Spoon has run meat-free butcheries that bear her name in the Sydney suburbs of Marrickville and Newtown for more than a decade but business is drying up.

'Woolworths has reduced our range dramatically and Harris Farm has quartered what they would buy from us before Covid. It's terrible for our business,' the entrepreneur told news.com.au.

'We're out of money. We're out of everything, we're tired.'

She said she has seen other vegan business making a shift to serving up some meat products.

'But I can't do that, because that's just not how I roll. That will never be what I do.'

A shift away from meat had been happening over the last decade. At its peak, one report found that between 2020 and 2023 there was a 47 per cent increase in plant-based meat sales - but over the last two years it seems the bubble has burst.

...

A quick browse of the Australian Vegan Reddit thread showed that its being noticed by those who adhere to the diet.

'What happened? For a little while it was awesome being vegan in Australia. But the last few years have been brutal,' one person said.

See if you can psychically divine what this "Suzy Spoons" pyrsyn might look like.

Do you have an image in your mind's eye?

Pete Hegseth fired Benghazi cover-up architect Susan Rice. As well as all the other leftists bitterly clinging to power in the DOD.

Why the hell was she still on "advisory boards" with access to Pentagon officials?

Breanna Morello
@BreannaMorello

BREAKING NEWS

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ended the service of all committee members on DOD advisory committees.

This would include the seat held by Susan Rice.

Hegseth thanked the members for their work but said changes are needed to align with the department's new goals and to use resources more effectively.

You probably know that when the White House began investigating the leaks of top-secret information to leftwing "news" outlets, one group of suspected culprits were all the Obama/Biden appointees hanging on to "advisory" board positions.

They've now all been fired. Thank goodness.

Elon Musk
@elonmusk

Good move. There are thousands of committees that take up a lot of time without clear accomplishments.

A reset was needed.

Surprise! Adam Carolla was right when he said that California would slow-roll approvals for rebuilding the houses the city and state conspired to destroy, and Karen Bass and Gavin Newsome were lying when they said they'd accelerate the permitting process.

Months after the catastrophic wildfires that devastated large swaths of Southern California, Los Angeles--under Democrat leadership--continues to lag in its rebuilding efforts. Despite President Donald Trump's swift declaration of a national emergency and promises to waive federal red tape, city officials have only approved a fraction of the necessary rebuilding permits.

Key Details:

As of late April, just 23 rebuilding permits have been issued in Pacific Palisades, where 5,619 structures were damaged or destroyed.

President Trump declared a national emergency within days of his inauguration and pledged to waive all federal permits to speed up rebuilding.

California Assembly Leader James Gallagher blames Governor Newsom and Democrat lawmakers for dragging their feet despite federal action.

John Cusack, who seems to be learning disabled, claimed that MAGA crucified Jesus or something.

John Cusack
@johncusack

Happy Easter - Christ was tortured and executed as a Political calculation by the Trumps of the Day...

Happy Easter

Does this developmentally-disabled adult know what "calculation" even means?

Terrorist propaganda organization the AP lost its motion to compel Trump to restore its previous unearned privileges.

A federal judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a new White House press policy that downgrades The Associated Press to the same status as newspapers, eliminating the wire service's previously privileged access to the president.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who had earlier ruled that the White House unlawfully discriminated against AP for declining to use the term "Gulf of America," said the revised policy appears to be viewpoint neutral.

"I'm not inclined to see anything wrong with it," said McFadden during a Friday hearing.

The new policy places reporters from the Associated Press--along with those from Bloomberg and Reuters--on equal footing with newspaper outlets like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Under the revised rules, AP photographers will also hold the same status as other photojournalists.
Advertisement

As a result, AP reporters will now join the rotating pool of journalists who cover the president's daily activities. With dozens of outlets in the rotation, this means AP will receive special access less than once a month, on par with the newspapers.

Ugly charisma vacuum Pedro Pascal once again showed that Disney allows leftwing firebrands to alienate as much as the public as they like while also firing Gina Carano for saying that the Nazis began their campaign of hatred by first normalizing the hatred of one neighbor for another.

That's not the real reason they fired her. They fired her because she wouldn't bend to the trans mafia and post her pronouns.

But Disney didn't want to admit that they fired a popular actress for not obeying the corporate line on constant promotion of transgenderism for children, so they claimed that Carano's warning about the Nazi campaign of hate was some kind of attack on the Jews.

Really.

Anyway, here's the guy who's about to lose his career after Fantastic Four makes $60 million in its opening weekend:

Pedro Pascal blasted author J.K. Rowling for her latest trans tweets, calling the author a "heinous loser" in a comment on Instagram.

The Last of Us star was responding to a post by activist Tariq Ra'ouf, who criticized the author for celebrating the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom's landmark ruling last week that trans women should not be recognized as women and that "sex" should legally mean biological sex.

Rowling had posted, "I love it when a plan comes together," along with noting to a critic, "I get the same royalties whether you read [my books] or burn them. Enjoy your marshmallows!"

Wrote Pascal in the comment section of Ra'ouf's post: "Awful disgusting SHIT is exactly right. Heinous LOSER behavior."

In related news, Pedro Pascal's skin looks exactly like an aerial photograph of Dresden in June 1945.

BTW, Gina Carano is obtaining information about how much Disney pays Pedro Pascal. She wants to show the court how much Disney will pay someone for following their corporate political line.

Gina Carano is getting the salaries she's looking for.

A federal judge has ruled that the mixed martial arts fighter turned actor will be allowed to see compensation information for other stars in the "Star Wars" universe on Disney+, including Pedro Pascal, Diego Luna, and Rosario Dawson.

The April 3 ruling came in a lawsuit Carano filed against Disney over her termination from the "Star Wars" spinoff show "The Mandalorian" after two seasons.

Disney announced in 2021 that Carano wouldn't return to the show for a third season after she had made social media posts comparing political conservatives in America to Jews in the Holocaust, questioning the results of the 2020 election and the use of masks during the coronavirus pandemic, and using the pronouns section of her Twitter (now known as X) page to mock transgender people.

Carano's lawsuit, which was funded by X owner Elon Musk, accuses Disney of violating California labor laws by firing her because of her political views. Disney says the company has creative control over which characters it discontinues as well as a First Amendment right to disassociate itself from Carano's views.

As part of the lawsuit, Carano's attorneys asked for salary information related to a constellation of other stars in "Star Wars" shows on Disney's streaming service.

They said the information was crucial for calculating damages if Carano were to win her lawsuit.

Carano's lawyers also argued Disney should be forced to disclose salary information for the lead actors of other "Star Wars" shows -- such as Amandla Stenberg and Luna -- because Carano had been set to star in a "Mandalorian" spinoff titled "Rangers of the New Republic" before Disney fired her.

US Magistrate Judge Steve Kim ruled in Carano's favor, ruling that Disney needed to turn over a spreadsheet or chart of the compensation Pascal, Dawson, and the costar Carl Weathers received for the first three seasons of "The Mandalorian," Dawson's salary for "The Book of Boba Fett" and the first two seasons of "Ahsoka," Stenberg's salary for "The Acolyte," and the compensation Luna received for the first two seasons of "Andor."

Remember, California passed a law to protect communists. The law says that employers cannot punish employees for political speech. If it protects dirty filthy communists, it also protects nice Catholic girls like Gina Carano.

Western Lensman
@WesternLensman

The plan we're watching play out:

Overload the country with as many unvetted illegals as possible, by any means necessary.

Know that mobilization of resources and enforcement operations to remove them would be extraordinarily daunting.

Rely on heavily funded leftwing legal groups and activist courts to delay, obstruct and impede deportations at every possible turn --

-- in an attempt to nullify the election result and override Americans' overwhelming desire for deportations, while looking to enshrine millions of illegals permanently into the country, reshaping congressional apportionment and securing future voter blocs for the Democrat party.

In parallel, utilize that same set of lawfare groups and activist judges to fight any and all election security measures, such as implementing voter ID and stopping non-citizen voting.

And, of course, count on their legacy media PR arm to run information ops and secrete a never-ending deluge of propaganda to run cover for it all.

The end goal being: Single-party, permanent power.

If Kamala would've won, the borders would have remained open, and mass importation would've continued. Game over.

Because Trump won, and the border closed -- the judicial contingency has been implemented.

That's where we are now.

The plan stays in motion, as they attempt to run out the clock on Trump 47.

Firealarm-puller and antisemite Jamaal Bowman says that the NFL is rigged against black players.

BLM influencer calls for "hunting" whites and piling up their bodies on the floor.

An illegal alien captured, but then released into the country again by Biden, forcibly sodomized a 13-year-old boy. No big deal, just a kid exposed to AIDS who will have permanent trauma. I hope the somewhat-lower costs to trim the verge on your mansions was worth it!

Hope this was worth it, too!

Bill Melugin
@BillMelugin_

EXCLUSIVE: The families of two teens killed by an illegal alien who crashed into them while drunk, high, & speeding at 100 mph in OC in 2021 have been told by the state of CA that their killer will be released from prison early in July, just 3.5 years into a 10-year sentence for killing the teens, who both burned alive.

Oscar Eduardo Ortega-Anguiano, a twice deported Mexican illegal alien, had a lengthy rap sheet prior to killing 19-year-olds Anya Varfolomeev & Nikolay Osokin in the DUI crash on the 405 freeway in Seal Beach in November 2021. Both were US citizens, and they were dating. Ortega-Anguiano had several felony convictions, had gone to state prison, and had multiple convictions for driving without a license, but was still on the streets when he crashed into the teens' vehicle.

In spring of 2022, Ortega-Anguiano was convicted in OC of two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for killing the teens, and a judge sentenced him to serve 10 years in prison for each count, but concurrently, meaning he would serve both 10-year-sentences at the same time.

The victims' families felt that was already a weak sentence, but they tell me they were notified by the CA Department of Corrections on Easter Sunday that Ortega-Anguiano is scheduled for an early release on July 19th, 2025, only a little more than 3 years into his sentence, leaving the victims' families shocked, and outraged given the seriousness of the crime and his prior criminal history. They provided us the CDCR document showing the July 19th release date.

The CA Department of Corrections wouldn't confirm the release date when I reached out, saying they "cannot provide information on an incarcerated person's release date or location in advance of their release." They added that "incarcerated persons may earn credits for participating in rehabilitative programming, which may move parole eligible dates to an earlier date.

ICE confirms to @FoxNews that they have placed a detainer on Ortega-Anguiano with the CA Dept of Corrections and intend to take him into custody upon his release. They hope the CA Dept. of Corrections will honor the detainer request and transfer him to their custody upon his release, which they often do. But the families fear, even if he is deported, he will just re-enter the US as a gotaway, as he's done twice before.

Noted Astronaut Katie Perry has hit the Demented Bag-Lady Madonna phase of her career faster than I ever would have guessed.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (374) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Fake News The Left Can Use: USAID Has Been Funding Leftwing "News" Agencies Around the World

Mario Nawfal
@MarioNawfal

EXCLUSIVE - BOUGHT AND PAID FOR: HOW $472 MILLION BUILT A GLOBAL LEFT-WING MEDIA MACHINE

In February 2025, WikiLeaks pulled back the curtain on a government-funded media empire that's been quietly shaping what billions of people read, watch, and believe.

At the center of it all? A group you've probably never heard of: Internews Network. Funded mostly by USAID, Internews presents itself as a friendly nonprofit supporting "independent journalism."

But behind that noble-sounding mission lies a global operation that critics say is more about managing narratives than reporting facts.

The numbers are jaw-dropping.

Nearly $473 million--yes, that's nearly half a billion--has flowed to Internews from USAID and the U.S. State Department over the past 2 decades.

Add in millions more from billionaire-backed organizations like George Soros's Open Society, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and you've got a media Frankenstein stitched together with government cash and private influence.

In 2023 alone, Internews claims to have worked with 4,291 media outlets, produced 4,799 hours of programming, and trained over 9,000 journalists.

It also says it reached an audience of 778 million people worldwide. That's more than double the population of the United States.

But here's where things get murky. Internews isn't just giving media groups equipment and microphones. It's tying grants to ideological conditions.

In Hungary, for example, officials accused Internews of funding anti-government media under the guise of "media development." If you didn't toe the line, you didn't get the money.

In Ukraine, it funded 9 out of 10 major media outlets--almost all promoting pro-NATO, pro-conflict content during wartime.

And it's not just about news. In Kosovo, just months before major protests broke out in Serbia, Internews offered grants to reporters to write in Serbian.

The pitch? Promote "positive" stories about Albanian-Serb relations. Sounds harmless--until you realize this was a foreign-funded push to shape how people talk about sensitive ethnic conflicts.

Then there's Internews' Earth Journalism Network, which recently launched a $100,000 media grant focused on climate reporting in Asia.

Sounds great--except that the fine print gives Internews and its donors the rights to edit and publish all the content.

So yes, they're funding journalism--but they're also controlling the output.

Even advertising isn't off limits. Through its "Ads for News" program, Internews partners with GroupM, the world's biggest media buyer, to funnel ad dollars to "trusted" outlets. If you're not on the list, you get nothing. It's a digital loyalty program--except instead of points, you get credibility and cash.

Internews is led by Jeanne Bourgault, a former U.S. government official who made $451,000 last year. She previously worked on post-Soviet "transition programs" and oversaw a $250 million budget at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

In 2023, she launched a $10 million media fund at the Clinton Global Initiative--a project backed by Hillary Clinton. The Internews board includes big Democratic donors and political insiders, and WikiLeaks says at least one of its six subsidiaries is based in the Cayman Islands, a notorious offshore haven.

Meanwhile, its headquarters in California? Reportedly an abandoned building still listed in official filings.

Let that sink in: a half-billion-dollar media empire, pushing narratives in dozens of countries, funded by your tax dollars--and run from a ghost office.

Internews says it's here to "support press freedom." But as one media analyst put it, "It's not about giving journalists a voice--it's about choosing which voices get heard."

So the next time you read a "fact-check" or see a story calling something "disinformation," remember: it might just be brought to you by the same people who paid $473 million to decide what the world thinks is true.

Sources: Anadolu Agency, Hungary Gov, Ukrayinska Pravda, KoSSev, Earth Journalism Network, TRT World, Concordia, Shore News Network

Meanwhile, the left authorized $4 trillion in taxpayer dollars for their own political warfare uses:

Insurrection Barbie
@DefiyantlyFree

This thread shows how $4 Trillion in Federal Funds Were Funneled Through Leftist NGOs to Enrich Activists, Mobilize Voters, and Power Anti-Trump Protests--With Receipts

This is maybe the most important thread I have ever done. It explains how the two biggest pieces of legislation from the Biden administration filled the coffers of all of these activist groups that have been engaging in the Trump 2.0 resistance. From GOTV efforts, to Anti-Tesla protests to the legal battles against Trump.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), founded by Clinton ally John Podesta, is more than a think tank--it's the strategic command center for the modern Left. Under Biden, CAP helped orchestrate the biggest activist cash grab in U.S. history: $4 TRILLION.

When Biden tapped Podesta to oversee implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act--a $369B climate fund--it wasn't just about energy. It was about control. Podesta's real mission? Redistribute billions to Democrat-aligned NGOs.

But that $369B was just one piece. The combined total from COVID relief, infrastructure, and climate bills under Biden exceeds $4 TRILLION. CAP helped shape who got that money--and it wasn't the states. It was activist orgs.

Enter the Justice40 Initiative--designed to steer 40% of benefits to "disadvantaged communities." In practice, this meant bypassing elected officials and funneling funds directly to NGOs, most of them progressive-aligned.

These grants weren't just for "climate justice." They funded GOTV, "community empowerment," "trusted messengers," and "technical assistance." Translation: campaign infrastructure disguised as public service.

Organizations like Indivisible and the Sunrise Movement became major beneficiaries. Both have organized anti-Trump protests, Tesla shutdowns, and youth voter drives--and both have received massive indirect support through these federal programs.

Indivisible used its gains to grow chapters in every swing state, launch digital voter targeting, and coordinate pressure campaigns against GOP legislation. Their footprint expanded after receiving funds through "equity" and "democracy advancement" grants.

Sunrise Movement, tied to "climate resilience" grants, led protests at Tesla showrooms and occupied congressional offices. In 2024, they claimed to have made over 4 million youth voter contacts, playing a massive role in Democrat turnout.

Podesta and CAP created the policy architecture that made this possible. They advised federal agencies to embed "equity" mandates and prioritize "community-based organizations" (aka: progressive NGOs) in grantmaking.

In total, the Justice40 Accelerator--just one program--helped NGOs win $138 million in grants. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Let's be clear: these aren't apolitical charities.

* Indivisible was built to oppose Trump.

* Sunrise led sit-ins to demand Biden go further left.

* Faith in Action and EDF advocate openly for progressive legislation.

And they're all funded by your tax dollars--thanks to Podesta's CAP and their policy-to-grant pipeline. This is government-funded activism, hidden behind a green mask.

CAP didn't just lobby from the sidelines. Its alumni staff the Biden admin. Its reports became agency regulations. Its "equity" mandates were inserted into budget guidance.

This wasn't legislation. This was executive-branch capture. Voters never approved it. Congress never debated it. And now, the Left has permanent infrastructure--built and maintained by public funding.

Meanwhile, conservative groups get nothing. No parallel infrastructure. No grants. No embedded agencies. Just censorship, audits, and public smears.

This is what they mean by "saving democracy":

* Billions to leftist orgs

* Massive GOTV ops under federal cover

* Protest movements subsidized by taxpayers

* Power concentrated in NGOs that answer to no one

Final receipts:

*$600B+ allocated across 500+ programs (Justice40)

* $138M+ in direct awards via Justice40 Accelerator

* 4M+ voter contacts by Sunrise Movement

* Indivisible protest partnerships with House Democrats

* CAP's direct personnel pipeline into federal agencies

CAP built it. Podesta directed it. NGOs profited. And the Left now has a publicly funded political machine disguised as a climate plan.

The Trump administration MUST investigate this fully.

She included a lot of links with supporting evidence, which I did not copy and paste. You can see those here.

Posted by: Ace at 05:26 PM | Comments (85) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Left Is Now Shrieking About a Right-Wing "Womanosphere," Even Worse Than the Manosphere, Because It Encourages Young Women to be "Thin, Fertile, and Republican"

The horror.

I mentioned this in last night's Quick Hits, I think.

Left-wing media has identified a dangerous new political archetype: the thin, fertile, Republican woman.

Beware the burgeoning online "womanosphere" urging an audience of young women away from feminism and towards marriage, children, and being attractive, warns The Guardian. The outlet points to prominent conservative commentators such as Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, along with publications like Evie Magazine, as emblematic of this clunkily-named counterpart to the "manosphere."

These women are united by their "desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview," according to The Guardian, which casts "women as submissive homemakers" and "men as strong providers."

Oh, the horror.

Hey I already said that.

"Gender-essentialism" refers to the outlandish belief that men and women are different. One is free to draw varied conclusions from this fact. The left has taken up a strange quarrel with the concept of biological sex itself, an argument which defeats itself at the outset. How can one analyze why female commentators specifically appeal to females without acknowledging the validity of the category?

The outlet warns of "an organized effort" to create an "alternative rightwing media ecosystem targeting young female US audiences." One discerns the outlet's terror at the prospect -- no great wonder, given the much vaunted "podcast strategy" helped win over young male voters to Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

"Organized" is supposed to be a dirty word. It connotes an insidious masterplan to take women off birth control and put them on quick-slimming diets. But the legacy media, with its extreme left-wing bias, is surely no less organized and strident in its political and cultural prescriptions than the "right-wing media." Notice the asymmetry in terms. The New York Times and Netflix are simply media. They claim neutral ground. It's a powerful rhetorical trick. If they can successfully assert themselves as unbiased observers and artists, they fashion reality itself in their terms.

...

"Young women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that's not a given," writes The Guardian.

Therein lies a sick admission. The Democratic Party prefers women fat, infertile, single, and unhappy. Why? Because those women make the most fervent ideologues. Leftism inverts natural hierarchies. It lofts the ugly and sick above the beautiful. It punishes any natural inclination towards the latter. This appeals to malcontents who depend on such an infrastructure to confer them status and meaning. Or a green card, as the case may be.

Who profits by a woman being thin and fertile? Why, only the woman herself, the young men interested in dating and marrying them, her future family, and all the rest of society by extension. The left's supposed concern for female "freedom" and "independence" is false. They'd just prefer women be dependent on the state, not a husband.

As I frequently say, the Democrat Party is the Husband of Last Resort for unmarriagable, miserable, mentally-ill women.

Here's a bit more from this deranged screed from The Guardian:

It's not only rightwingers who have gripes with contemporary feminism. Many on the left have been critical of shallow "girlboss feminism" (the bipartisan backlash to the embarrassing Blue Origin flight being a case in point), noting that impossible expectations are placed on women in a crassly capitalist society that offers little support for working mothers. According to a 2023 survey run by the non-profit Catalyst, four in 10 women said they felt they would need to change jobs in order to manage childcare demands, and the US is still the only rich country in the world without a national paid parental leave policy. Yet for this new womanosphere, the response is not advancing policies like paid family leave or affordable childcare, but to return to an idealized, illusory past where being a wife and mother was viewed as a woman's sole purpose.

Young women are particularly vulnerable to these appeals. Like their peers in the manosphere, these commentators are capitalizing on a real crisis of loneliness and economic precarity facing gen Z. "Social media has truly given gen Z a warped sense of reality," said Cooper, who has described dating apps as "treacherous" and a "barren" landscape.

The alternative vision these influencers are proposing is scarily retrograde and would strip women of their freedom and economic independence. "You want to go back and sit in a cubicle when you could have this, like, beautiful amazing child that you've created with the love of your life?" Cooper asked rhetorically on a recent podcast appearance.

Instead of trying to have it all, women, she said, need to change their priorities because "if you aren't going to the gym, if you aren't taking care of yourself, if you don't like children, if you only care about your career, and you hate the patriarchy" then a desirable man is "not going to go for you".

The type of woman these commentators valorize is thin, straight, fertile, traditionally feminine, conventionally attractive to men and white -- though they try to avoid overt racism, instead opting for sentiments like, "as a minority woman, I'm here to say that you'll be happier and more fulfilled if you aren't consumed by thinking about your race." Anyone who falls outside of this narrow mold is subject to relentless mocking and disparagement. Though they have different tactics and tones, like their cohorts in the manosphere, they play with the idea that calling women fat or ugly is fun and transgressive -- framing it as part of a virtuous quest to rid society of woke, feminist ideals.

Young women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that's not a given. While young women still went blue in 2024, Joe Biden's 35-point lead in 2020 dwindled to a 24-point lead for Kamala Harris. Other demographics, like Black and Latino men, broke with historical trends to shift to the right this election. Emily Amick, an influencer and political analyst who has been observing the trend on her Substack, said that people might underestimate the womanosphere's impact at their peril. "What we saw in the 2024 presidential election was that the manosphere had a lot more impact than a lot of people expected," Amick said. "I believe that the conservative movement is running the same play with women, and in 2028 we are going to see a massive impact of the messaging machines they have been building."

LOL. If only the left had such a network of propaganda nodes...

...

In the past two decades, mainstream women's outlets have made attempts to emphasize overall wellbeing instead of outer beauty and valorizing thinness above all. Evie sees this as wokeness run amok. They want to bring back your mother's -- or your grandmother's -- women's magazine, in which it was OK to celebrate a certain body type over others. "When we encounter a heavily tattooed, blue-haired, obese, gender-neutral individual with a bull-ring, that person is communicating to us that they actively disregard the standards for normality that the majority of people agree on," read a 2021 piece titled Objective Feminine Beauty Is Not A Relic Of The Patriarchy.

...

Maggie Bullock, a women's magazine veteran who co-writes the Spread, a newsletter about the industry, said she saw outlets like Evie as trying to be something of a "gateway drug" into more extreme conservative ideologies. "Like, we're nice and we're pretty and we're not that radical, don't worry, we're just telling you the truth," she said. "It feels like a wolf in sheep's clothing."

What would we do without experts.

...

Evie's reach shouldn't be overstated -- it has 210,000 followers on Instagram, compared with Cosmopolitan's 4m, and has only put out three print issues in four years -- but they're increasingly finding new ways to garner attention.

The entire premise of this article, that the Womanosphere is a Great and Growing Threat, relies on overstating its reach.

But now, in paragraph 30, they tell you it only has 210,000 subscribers.

From Phyllis Schlafly in the 1970s, who helped mobilize young Christian women against the Equal Rights Amendment, to Ann Coulter and Moms for Liberty, women have long played a role in spreading conservative propaganda. But what sets these new voices apart is that they don't all market themselves as political commentators. In this sense, they are cribbing from the success of the manosphere, which won new Maga converts in part because most of its leading figures weren't explicitly partisan.

You mean how "journalists" pretend they're not partisan so that their clear partisanship passes under people's radar undetected?

If only the left had this sort of powerful messaging machine!

Multi-hours-long podcast episodes and Twitch streams from the likes of Rogan, the Nelk Boys or Theo Von are typically much more weighted to cover sports, gambling, drugs and dating than they are to talk about which bill is passing in the Senate.

The leading voices of the womanosphere are using a similar strategy. As Brittany Hugoboom put it in an op--ed for the rightwing outlet Quillette: "Conservatives will never win if they imagine themselves as combatants atop defensive battlements, hurling abuse on the mass media. We need to involve ourselves in the creation of pop culture."

...

The coalition drawn to fringe wellness ideas is multifaceted: from the "crunchy" moms frightened of toxic chemicals they believe are in our food and pharmaceuticals, to the chronic illness sufferers frustrated with a medical system they feel has let them down. Yet the savvy voices of the womanosphere have responded by weaponizing genuine anxieties -- which have complex roots and few easy answers -- and serving up far-right propaganda on a platter. "It's sneaky," Clark told the Washington Post. "I want to be seen as: Alex Clark, cool girl, loves health and wellness, happens to be conservative. I'm not trying to beat people over the head with that. I don't think that's persuasive."

You mean how celebrities attempt to leverage their fame and public goodwill into influencing people's political thinking?

If only the left had a network of propagandists such as these!

Oh, and I love how the left, which has for 60 years railed against artificial additives in food, are now positively in favor of adulterating food with as many unsafe chemicals as possible.

...

Clark's crusades against topics such as birth control -- that it "accelerates ageing", "induces abortion", causes cancer and fertility issues -- make more sense in light of the Trump administration's pro-natalist policy agenda, which organizations like Turning Point USA and Project 2025 have spent years crafting.

"It's all tied together with the goal of shaming women who have sex and who might get pregnant, and ensuring that they really are forced into the idea of this nuclear family because it preserves current power structures," said Dr Jennifer Lincoln, an OB-GYN in Portland, Oregon. "They come at it from this Maha angle of 'we have to protect women,' and then they legislate away people's choices to use these medicines that are literally life-saving for so many people."

Another expert weighs in.

Posted by: Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (228) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The New York Times Whines That an Illegal Alien Was Deported After 21 Years (Cue the Violins) "to a 'Home' He Barely Knew"

Their headline and propagandistic twitter post omitted a highly relevant fact: He was a drug dealer convicted of kidnapping. He then served 15 years in prison for that crime.

Via Twitchy, this is outrageous propaganda.

Twitter should limit the NYT's account to exercise some control over this Fake News Russian Disinformation.

Tricia McLaughlin
@TriciaOhio

The New York Times conveniently glossed over that this illegal alien, Nascimento Blair is a convicted kidnapper and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In 2008, he was issued a final order of removal. Because of the Biden administration's open border policies, this criminal illegal alien was released onto the streets of New York.

The article does grudgingly admit his ticky-tack kidnapping conviction and the 15 years he served in prison. Though the Times insists that that conviction is in doubt, because, the Times says, this deportee "disputes" the conviction.

Ah, I see. A convict "disputes" his conviction. Well why didn't you say so? Obviously he's innocent because no convicted criminal would ever lie.

But most people aren't going to see the article -- they're going to see the headline, and the twitter post, and those claim that he's just a guy who got deported.

Nascimento Blair returned home in shackles.

He landed in Jamaica in February, 21 years after he had abandoned the island, seated next to dozens of his countrymen who were also handcuffed. As he stepped off the plane at the seaside airport in Kingston and felt the scorching Caribbean sun of his youth, Mr. Blair, 46, was greeted with suspicion.

Still dazed, he looked out of place. He had on the same winter clothes -- a peacoat, turtleneck, gray suit and Chelsea boots -- he had been wearing when U.S. immigration authorities had abruptly detained him on a frigid morning in New York City weeks earlier.

He noticed his slightly Americanized accent as he sat through hours of interrogation by Jamaican authorities at the airport. And he felt like an outcast as Jamaican officials snapped his mug shot, took his fingerprints and asked about his past.

"They don't look at you like a Jamaican," Mr. Blair said. "They look at you like a criminal."

You are a convicted criminal. That's why they look at you like you're a convicted criminal.

Mr. Blair did not give them details about his past, an odyssey that began with a side hustle dealing marijuana in the New York suburbs as a 24-year-old Jamaican transplant, which led to a kidnapping conviction he disputed and a 15-year prison sentence he fulfilled.

It was his criminal past that had gotten him deported from the United States, where he had been rebuilding his life and seeking redemption.

So it was his kidnapping conviction that got him deported, and not racism and/or "fear of brown people," huh?

He had earned two college degrees, started a trucking business, mentored people released from prison, cared for a fiancée with breast cancer, taken classes at Columbia University.

Oh wow he took classes at Columbia night school. He's a regular Maryland Father.

None of it would stave off deportation: He was among the first few thousand immigrants scattered across the globe during the early days of President Trump's deportation campaign.

On paper, Mr. Blair fit the profile of the people Mr. Trump says he wants to deport: those with criminal backgrounds. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security blamed the Biden administration for not deporting Mr. Blair sooner.

But to Mr. Blair and his supporters, his life story was one of rehabilitation, nuanced and filled with qualities that they believe Mr. Trump's deportation machine disregards as it flies out immigrants en masse.

LOL.

The article pushes the factoid that he was released from prison in 2020 -- the year of the covid crisis -- and Trump didn't deport him before he left office. The NYT seems to believe that if a president doesn't make it his top priority to deport you as soon as he can, then you are grandfathered into remaining into the country forever.

By the way, the NYT talks about this guy "living in America" for 21 years, as if he has squatters rights that kick in after that time period.

For fifteen of those years "living in America," he was living in federal cell because he's a drug-dealing kidnapper.

He kidnapped someone and was convicted of it within a few years of coming to America and enriching our precious diversity with his crimes.

Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (279) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Unveils His "Secret Weapon" to Bring Racist Universities in Line

He's ordering federal accreditors, the bureaucrats who certify higher ed institutions as legit and eligible for federal funds and loan guarantees for students, to start requiring schools allow free speech and prioritize actual merit.

Deep State Media organization NPR:

President Trump on Wednesday signed a list of executive actions aimed at both higher education and K-12 schools.

One of the actions takes aim at college and university accreditors, organizations the White House says have "abused their authority by imposing discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-based standards."

Another promises new discipline guidance for K-12 schools, with the goal of "ensuring school discipline policies are based on objective behavior, not DEI," the White House said in a statement.

"Today's Executive Orders pave the way for critical innovations -- inviting more competition in the higher education accreditation system, ensuring transparency in college finances, supporting new technologies in the classroom, and more," Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote on social media.
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The collection of orders aim to cement Trump's conservative agenda when it comes to education in America, including rolling back the policies from the Biden administration, bolstering workforce training, improving teaching about artificial intelligence in schools, and launching a new White House initiative on historically Black colleges and universities.

The order pertaining to college accreditation directs McMahon to "overhaul" the system. Accreditation is the process colleges are required to go through to receive federal financial aid, aimed at ensuring that a program meets an acceptable level of quality.

Trump referred to accreditation on the campaign trail as his "secret weapon" in his efforts to combat what he considers ideological bias in higher education. The executive action aims to use the process as a way to hold colleges accountable for "ideological overreach" and to increase "intellectual diversity" on campus.

The action directs the education secretary to recognize new accreditors in an effort to encourage more competition. Trump has previously modified the accreditation system: During his first administration, he removed restrictions that forced schools to use accreditors based on their geographic region.

"Trump's goal is to manipulate accreditors in order to force colleges and universities to do his bidding and punish them when they resist," said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors in a statement. "He is weaponizing the accreditation process to gain the leverage he seeks."

What a weird way to say "he's fighting blatant racial (and political) discrimination in taxpayer-funded schools."

Another executive action warns that federal grants for universities could be revoked if schools do not complete "full and timely disclosure of foreign funding."

In a briefing announcing the order, White House staff secretary Will Scharf said, "We believe that certain universities, including, for example, Harvard, have routinely violated this law, and this law has not been effectively enforced."

Federal law already requires schools to disclose gifts or contracts worth $250,000 or more from foreign entities. In a statement, a Harvard spokesperson said the school had, for decades, been in compliance with the law.

On Truth Social on Thursday, Trump dug in on Harvard again calling the university "a Liberal mess" and "a threat to Democracy."

He also is revoking Obama's and Biden's executive orders which demanded that schools not punish black kids, and/or severely punish white kids to make up for the fact that so many black kids violate school rules.

In an executive action aimed at K-12 schools, Trump requested new federal guidance on school discipline. The measure calls for revoking previous policies by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama aimed at reducing racial disparities in, for example, suspensions and expulsions. The new guidance would prohibit using "racially preferential discipline practices."

"Trump's order empowers local school boards by encouraging real discipline," said Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "By ending federal overreach, it frees educators to focus on teaching, not chaos, ensuring kids get a quality education."

But some civil rights activists disagree.

"These executive orders are another move to dismantle civil rights protections," said Judith Browne Dianis, who runs the Advancement Project, a civil rights nonprofit. "The Administration wants to rebuild the school to prison pipeline but civil rights law is clear: schools cannot punish students more harshly because of race, color, national origin, sex, or disability."

LOL.

Princeton University's President defiantly continues racist policies which other Princeton professors admit deliberately disfavor whites, Jews, and males of all races.

Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe report for City Journal:

Amid the ongoing showdown between the Trump administration and the Ivy League, one university president has positioned himself as a leader of the academic resistance: Princeton's Christopher L. Eisgruber.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to Princeton as part of its investigation into racial discrimination and anti-Semitism at the New Jersey campus. Eisgruber, though, was defiant, telling the New York Times that he's "not considering any concessions" and calling for other university presidents to follow his lead.

This isn't Eisgruber's first bid for the spotlight. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, he declared that Princeton--where he has served as president since 2013--was guilty of "systemic racism." In a letter to students that September, he went so far as to claim that racism was embedded in the very "structures of the university itself."

Eisgruber was right to say that he presides over a system of racial discrimination--but not in the way he imagines. The university does not discriminate against "oppressed" groups, such as blacks and Latinos, but against those seen as "oppressors."

"At Princeton, it's totally common knowledge that there are favored groups and disfavored groups," one professor said. "And the disfavored groups are whites, Jews, males," and others commonly disliked by the Left.

A City Journal investigation confirms that Princeton has, in fact, entrenched a system of racial discrimination and segregation. We have obtained more than a dozen internal documents and conducted interviews with a half-dozen employees, who confirm that the university has flagrantly violated the principles of the Civil Rights Act in the name of "social justice."

The basic structure of this system is the university's "diversity, equity, and inclusion" bureaucracy, which has expanded dramatically under Eisgruber's tenure. An infographic circulated by Princeton shows at least 40 academic and administrative departments with established DEI committees, with the express purpose of adjusting the campus's racial composition. As Princeton's first annual diversity report noted, "Every administrative and academic leader is being held accountable for demographic evolution."

According to several Princeton faculty members, "demographic evolution" is a euphemism for racial quotas and outright discrimination in academic hiring. A 2021 internal report outlining best practices for faculty recruitment described how staff were trained to "increase the diversity of the applicants at every step in the process." The report advised search committees to discount negative references for minority candidates and to ensure that every shortlist included at least "two women and/or two underrepresented minority candidates."

The implicit message from Eisgruber and the administration: don't hire white men unless absolutely necessary. According to one professor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, this meant abandoning merit-based hiring in favor of race-based preferences--the only way, given the current pipeline, to accomplish Eisgruber's stated goal of increasing "by 50 percent the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty members from underrepresented groups over the next five years."

Though many of these policies relied on euphemism, some were openly and explicitly discriminatory. The university's Target of Opportunity Program, which was cancelled shortly before the 2024 presidential election, made funding available for departments to hire "candidates from groups that are underrepresented on campus." According to conversations with Princeton professors, this referred primarily to racial minorities and women. The program covered half of each hire's salary, allowing departments to bring on new faculty without bearing the full financial burden. In effect, the administration created financial incentives to prioritize hiring racial minorities.

Princeton also has an illegal policy to discriminate against white suppliers and vendors.

...

The reality is that Princeton has violated the principles of the Civil Rights Act. It may have gone further: in Morenoff's estimation, its contracting policy likely ran afoul of New Jersey civil rights law ("among the strongest, most sweeping non-discrimination statutes in the nation") and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. And its hiring preferences may have violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in hiring unless the employer can fit one of a few narrow exceptions--which, Morenoff said, there is "good reason to doubt."

While Eisgruber has remained publicly defiant toward the Trump administration, he seems to recognize his vulnerability. The university has been quietly scrubbing its website of DEI materials and recently updated its page to include a statement on Princeton's ostensible commitment to "equal opportunity and non-discrimination."

One hundred Yale professors signed a statement recommending that the school freeze all new hiring and conduct an investigation into its own hiring practices. This, they hope, will forestall a federal investigation.

The statement points out that faculty hiring has "stagnated" while "administrative" staff -- mostly in DEI make-work "jobs" -- has grown by double.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (215) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Just Wants to Sell Some Sweet Merch and the Left Is Freaking Out for Some Reason

Sometimes you want to sell a hat with your name on it, followed by some random numbers.

What's the big deal?

The Gulf of America hat must be what's bugging them.

Is there anything to this apart from trolling? Steve Bannon keeps talking up running Trump a third time, but that's just silly unless there's a constitutional amendment.

When a president is a lame-duck, after the mid-term elections of his second term, he loses most of his political power, because members of his own party don't feel threatened by him any longer. Trump's power over his base will blunt that effect, but he will definitely lose some of his power to bully the RINOs and GOPers after November 2026.

Who knows, maybe Trump wants the idea out there that he's going to be president through 2032 just to keep the RINOs on-side.

Posted by: Ace at 01:12 PM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)