Posts Tagged ‘University of Texas’

LinkSwarm for May 26, 2023

Friday, May 26th, 2023

More woke going broke, San Francisco is (still) a shithole, and Baggage Claim Fight Club. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!


  • “FBI Concerned Jan. 6 Footage Would Expose Undercover Agents, Informants.” You don’t say.
  • “Layoffs are hitting HR and DEI teams at a disproportionately high rate.” Couldn’t happen to a nicer profession. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Target loses $9 billion in market cap for trying to tranny dress toddlers. I would boycott them over that, but I was already boycotting them over the tranny bathrooms.
  • “Innocent Multi-Billion Dollar Corporation Ruthlessly Attacked By People Not Giving Them Money.”
  • Bud Light sales drop another 25%.
  • Soros-backed Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price lets man off with no jail time despite him setting a man on fire with a blowtorch. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “‘There’s Poop Everywhere’: San Francisco’s Office District Not Only A Ghost Town, It’s Also Covered In Sh*t.”

    Everyone knows that San Francisco is the nation’s largest public toilet – requiring the city to employ six-figure ‘poop patrol’ cleanup team, however a new report from the city Controller’s Office really puts things in poo-spective.

    For starters, feces were found far more often in commercial sectors, covering “approximately 50% of street segments in Key Commercial Areas and 30% in the Citywide survey,” second only to broken glass as can be seen in the ‘illegal dumping’ section.

    If you’re wondering about the city’s fecal methodology, look no further than a footnote on page 43;

    Feces also includes bags filled with feces that are not inside trash receptacles. Feces that are spread or smeared on the street, sidewalk, or other objects along the evaluation route are counted. Stains that appear to be related to feces but have been cleaned are not counted. Bird droppings are excluded.

    As far as where most of the poo is found, Nob Hill takes the top spot, followed by the Tenderloin and The Mission districts.

    (Previously.)

  • “After California health authorities in 2014 imposed a mandate requiring requiring churches to provide elective abortion coverage to its employees, four churches sued, and after a long court battle, have now won a $1.4 million settlement.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • “The University of Texas at Austin spends more than $13 million on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) salaries for close to 200 jobs.”
  • Cycling bans men from women’s competition. Another sentence that shouldn’t have to be written…
  • FDA bans farmers from caring for their own animals with antibiotics. Man, it sure seems like our elites are trying to destroy the food supply… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The DeSantis campaign raised $8.2 million raised within 24 hours of announcing his presidential run.
  • In a classic case of bad timing, Tim Scott also announced that he’s running for president. I don’t see him making much headway against Trump or DeSantis, but he’s a serious veepstakes contender.
  • C. Boyden Gray, RIP. Among his most important tasks was spearheading the campaign for Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court.
  • Sudden Putin Death Syndrome strikes again.
  • It’s weird to be on the same side of an issue as Taco Bell. Namely that no one should be able to trademark “Taco Tuesday.”
  • Citing air-worthiness concerns, the FAA grounds the…B-17? Good to know they’re finally working through that 1946 backlog… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • The first rule of baggage claim fight club is you don’t talk about baggage claim fight club. The second rule of baggage claim fight club is that the blue zone is for loading and unloading only.
  • What is it like to cross the Darien Gap by car? A green hell.
  • A really amazing BattleBots match.
  • “Dodgers Summon Satan To Throw Out First Pitch At Pride Night.”
  • University of Texas Announces DEI Pause

    Saturday, March 4th, 2023

    A lot of conservatives have criticized Governor Greg Abbott’s anti-CRT/DEI/SJW initiatives as all show and no teeth. But there is at least some sign that those directives have had an effect on the people that run the University of Texas system.

    The University of Texas (UT) System will pause all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, the board of regents announced last week.

    The board chairman Kevin Eltife stated at the start of the meeting he had a comment that was “not an action or discussion item.”

    “The topic of DEI activities on college campuses has received tremendous attention nationally and here in Texas,” Eltife said.

    “We welcome, celebrate, and strive for diversity on our campus with our student and faculty population.”

    “I also think it’s fair to say in recent times, certain DEI efforts have strayed from the original intent to now imposing requirements and actions that, rightfully so, raised the concerns of our policymakers,” he added.

    Eltife went on to announce that all DEI policies would be paused on UT campuses and he will be asking for reports on any current policies still operating.

    “We will await any action from the legislature for implementation by the University of Texas system at the appropriate time, and if needed, the board may consider a uniform DEI policy for the entire UT system,” Eltife said.

    This announcement follows many reported incidents of DEI policies on UT campuses.

    In 2021, Texas Tech University announced it was hiring four new assistant professors for its Department of Biological Sciences. Its social media posts made clear the department’s commitment to DEI hiring.

    The department released a rubric for evaluating new faculty candidates’ diversity statements about how well they understand and have knowledge of “dimensions of diversity.”

    Texas Tech has already released a statement about its steps toward ending DEI hiring and its desire to “always emphasize disciplinary excellence.”

    UT Austin has been accused of using DEI policies to “espouse a clear ideological agenda,” and other reports have shown the pervasiveness of DEI in multiple Texas medical schools.

    A medical school applicant, George Stewart, has filed a lawsuit against six Texas medical schools for alleged willingness to “discriminate on account of race and sex when admitting students by giving discriminatory preferences to females and non-Asian minorities, and by discriminating against whites, Asians, and men.”

    It’s one thing for the board to announce policies, it’s quite another for administrators and department heads to follow them. Right now I would bet some social justice warrior administrators at UT are busy telling their friends on Facebook how they’re going to ignore the board’s directives.

    When we start seeing entire DEI pockets of resistance being laid off the way we’ve seen in Florida and in the private sector, then we’ll know it’s real and not just empty talk.

    DEI Continues To Infect Flagship Texas Universities

    Monday, February 20th, 2023

    Via Texas Scorecard comes two different stories of how radical racist social justice warrior ideology in the form of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion continues to infect Texas universities.

    First up: A University of Texas professor is suing UT officials for violating his First Amendment rights.

    In attempts to silence the professor for speaking out on controversial issues, university administration threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, and academic freedom.

    Richard Lowery, Ph.D., a tenured finance professor at University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, said in the complaint, “The officials at the state’s flagship university violated his constitutional right to criticize government officials.”

    In the suit, Lowery claims the university administration “harmed his right to academic freedom.”

    Lowery’s suit explains that the First Amendment “protects the right of public university professors to engage their colleagues and administrators in debate and discussion concerning academic matters, including what should be taught and the school’s ideological direction and balance.”

    According to the Institute for Free Speech, Professor Lowery is “well known” for his “vigorous commentary on university affairs.” Lowery’s articles have been featured in The Hill, The Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix.

    Lowery has also been known to use social media and online opinion articles to “publicly criticize university officials’ actions, and ask elected state-government officials to intervene. He has also used such tools to participate in the sort of academic campus discourse that faculty traditionally pursue.”

    In his articles criticizing UT officials, Lowery specifically calls them out for their approaches on issues such as “critical race theory indoctrination, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.”

    On multiple occasions, Lowery reported that university administrators are using diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out “competent” teachers and professors who disagree with the DEI ideology prevailing on campus.

    In response, Lowery claims university administrators “responded with a campaign to silence” him, where they threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, academic freedom, and labeled his behavior as inviting violence or lacking in civility.

    The suit continues, saying school officials “also allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”

    “Lowery got the message,” the suit says.

    In response, the professor is seeking to “vindicate” his right of free speech, asking the court to declare the administration’s actions as unconstitutional and restore his First Amendment rights to speak on matters he was previously prevented from speaking on.

    DEI has even infected the university previously considered a bulwark of conservative value, Texas A&M:

    Thought of by many Texans as a relatively conservative university, a new report explains how Texas A&M has “gone woke” in recent years.

    Scott Yenor, a Boise State professor and fellow at the Claremont Institute, explained during a recent interview on The Luke Macias Show how leftist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies have seeped into the campus.

    DEI programs have come under fire recently for prioritizing factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation over merit in hiring, admission, and curriculum.

    “Texas A&M has this reputation as being one of the more conservative public universities. I know a generation ago when someone asked me where I would send my kids to school, I said the best public university in the country is Texas A&M,” said Yenor.

    But when Yenor began researching DEI programs in college campuses across the country, he found something troubling in Texas.

    The interesting thing about these universities is that they advertise what they’re doing. They have a plan and they’re proud of the plan. And then they go about trying to execute the plan. And Texas A&M announced a very radical diversity plan in 2010 and has been executing it like on steroids the last two years.

    Yenor mentioned recent efforts to take down a statue of former Confederate General and Texas Governor Sul Ross from campus. Though that movement was unsuccessful, Yenoer argued bigger factors are at play.

    “There were attempts to take down statues and, and, you know, other other ways of affecting the campus climate symbolically. But the more important thing is that there’s been a real, real ratcheting up of their understanding of what they have to do. The 2020 diversity plan really concerns breaking down the systems of oppression in words like ‘merit,’ hiring the best person, and things like that,” said Yenor.

    To that end, Yenor pointed out a shocking statistic: Texas A&M University currently has more DEI personnel than the University of Texas at Austin.

    “It’s true at A&M that diversity is the new merit,” said Yenor.

    Governor Greg Abbott issuing a directive banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory doesn’t seem to discouraged social justice warriors from continuing to radicalize Texas higher education. There needs to be sterner measures, including defunding the DEI bureaucracy, followed by pink slips.

    A Tale Of Two Governors

    Saturday, January 7th, 2023

    If you want to know why Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a leading presidential contender in 2024, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott is not, this story about DeSantis shaking up a college board of trustees provides a big hint.

    Governor Ron DeSantis appointed six new members to the New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees on Friday, directing the new conservative majority to reorient a public university that has been led astray by progressive ideologues in recent years.

    In 2001, the New College of Florida (NCF) was designated the state’s honors college by the Florida legislature. Since then, the school has increasingly embraced progressive ideological causes, such as expanding DEI initiatives, all while missing its 2022 enrollment goal by 45 percent.

    DeSantis’s six appointees are Christopher Rufo, Mark Bauerlein, Matthew Spalding, Charles Kesler, Debra Jenks, and Jason “Eddie” Speir. Several are well-known conservatives.

    Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and is best known for his activism against critical race theory in K–12 education, corporations, and higher education. Kesler is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and editor of the Claremont Review of Books, a quarterly conservative publication of political philosophy, history, and literature. Spalding is vice president of the graduate school of government at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C., and has published books on the Constitution and the Founding.

    “Governor DeSantis is leading the nation in educational reform and post-secondary responsibility,” Spalding said in a statement to National Review. “I am honored by the appointment and look forward to advancing educational excellence and focusing New College on its distinctive mission as the liberal arts honors college of the State of Florida. A good liberal arts education is truly liberating and opens the minds and forms the character of good students and good citizens.”

    While they must first be confirmed by the GOP-controlled state senate, the selections are on board with the governor’s plan to refocus NCF. DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier says the administration intends to convert the college to a classical model akin to that of Hillsdale College. The Michigan conservative bulwark rejects the neo-Marxist school of thought, including critical race theory and its contention that white supremacy is intrinsic to America’s national fabric and that positive discrimination is necessary to rectify historical racial injustice.

    “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South,” he told National Review.

    I have no doubt that Rufo and the other new regents will do their best to purge New College of Florida of the poison of Critical Race Theory and other radical social justice teachings.

    Has the Texas Governor ever appointed a true conservative reformer to a college school board? One: Wallace Hall, appointed to the University of Texas System Board of Regents, who dug deep into the scandal of the offspring of the well-connected receiving preferential treatment for admission into college administration programs.

    The problem is, Hall was appointed by Rick Perry, and Abbott essentially hung him out to dry, failing to take any action on the scandals he uncovered and failing to reappoint him when his six-year term was up.

    From the outside, Abbott seems like a fairly conservative governor, and he is when compared to the likes of Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom. But at heart, Abbott seems to be a cautious, consensus-driven politician who is reluctant to rock the boat. When it comes to real efforts to sand-blast the social justice rot out of higher education, the contrast between him and DeSantis is night and day.

    LinkSwarm for July 9, 2021

    Friday, July 9th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to the return of the Friday LinkSwarm on Thursday! My Mac is working, my house is clean, and I have a newly painted master bathroom with a new floor and a new toilet.
    
    Some links are new, some from a week or two ago.

  • “Defector Provides Evidence That the Chinese Military Orchestrated the Creation of COVID-19 and Lab Leak.”
  • Minneapolis: “Black Lives Matter activists block city council member’s car until she signs statement that charges against rioters will be dropped.”
    

  • “Peter Daszak – whose ‘EcoHealth Alliance’ funneled U.S. taxpayer cash to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – defended SARS gain-of-function experiments that potentially rendered the virus ‘capable of directly infecting humans’ in a Nature article unearthed from November 2015.”
  • Know who else was funding Peter Daszak’s research? Google.

    The unearthed financial ties between EcoHealth Alliance and Google follow months of big tech censorship of stories and individuals in support of the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory.

    The Google-backed EcoHealth Alliance played a critical role in the cover-up of COVID-19’s origins through its president, Peter Daszak.

    Daszak served on the wildly compromised World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 investigation team. He championed the efforts to “debunk” the lab origin theory of the virus, despite mounting support for the claim…

  • When it comes to the factors that helped mislead the public about Flu Manchu, Daszak’s name comes up again and again:

    The more we learn about Peter Daszak, one of the main villains of the COVID epidemic, the worse it gets.

    Daszak is president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nongovernmental organization mostly funded by the US government. EcoHealth passed some of that money on to the lab in Wuhan, China.

    It was Daszak who organized the letter in The Lancet from February 2020 dismissing as “misinformation” claims that the virus may have originated from the Wuhan Virology Lab. The letter created the illusion of consensus, which internet companies proceeded to enforce through censorship, and the media reinforced by constantly interviewing Daszak ­himself.

    There might be journalistic value in hearing from the Chernobyl plant director about all those clouds floating over Ukraine. But if he suggests the rash of mysterious sores and cancers were due to a faulty shipment of microwaves recently arrived in Pripyat, you’d probably think he was engaged in a bit of “motivated reasoning.”

    Apparently not the World Health Organization, which invited Daszak to join their microwave hunt in Wuhan.

    In the last two days, Daszak has been removed from The Lancet’s own UN-backed commission investigating COVID’s origins, though whether he removed himself or was fired remains unclear.

  • I’m sure you’ll find it shocking that Daszak defended Fauci-funded gain-of-function research.
  • Haiti’s President whacked:

    Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on Tuesday night in an attack on his home, the nation’s prime minister announced.

    First lady Martine Moïse was hospitalized for gunshot wounds she received in the attack. Unidentified gunmen broke into the president’s residence on the outskirts of the capital Port-au-Prince during the night and opened fire on the couple.

    “A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state,” Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a statement. “The country’s security situation is under the control of the Haitian police and the armed forces of Haiti. . . . Democracy and the republic will win.”

    Moïse has ruled by fiat for the past two years after Haiti failed to hold elections and the parliament dissolved. Meanwhile, a new prime minister, Dr. Ariel Henry, was scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday.

    Opposition figures said Moïse should have stepped down on February 7 of this year to complete a five-year term, and after Moïse refused to leave office thousands of Haitians protested in the streets. The government responded by arresting 23 people, including a senior judge and police official, whom Moïse accused of conspiring to assassinate him.

    He might have been right! But it’s not like Moise was some sort of Jeffersonian paragon:

    Haiti has experienced growing instability during the administration of President Jovenel Moïse, withunrest, high rates of inflation, and resurgent gang violence. The government’s failure to hold elections in October 2019 resulted in the terms of most of the Haitian legislature expiringon January 13, 2020, without officials elected to succeed them. Moïse is now ruling by decree. The judiciary is conducting ongoing investigations into Moïse’s possible involvement in various corrupt activities, which the president denies. Haitian Senate and Superior Court of Auditors investigations allege embezzlement and fraud by current and former Haitian officials managing $2 billion in loans from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe discounted oil program.

  • Speaking of getting whacked: “John McAfee Found Dead In Prison Cell After US Extradition Approved.” Ahem:

  • Also related:

  • Portland Can Blame ‘Woke’ DA Schmidt and Singer John Legend for the Police Riot Squad Walk Out.”

    It took 18 months of steady abuse by rioters and their overlords at city hall for Portland cops to say “no mas” and tap out. As one retired Portland police detective said, “If anyone did to a horse or a dog what has been done to PPB cops for 18 months, that person would have amassed hundreds of counts of felony animal abuse, but it’s perfectly OK to do it to cops, wholesale, and with an army of anarchist pals.”

    The police officers in the Portland riot squad, officially called the “rapid response team (RRT),” still work for the agency, but will no longer volunteer themselves for the duty that resulted in “nearly all” members being injured with “broken bones, torn ligaments, and cartilage, traumatic brain injuries, hearing damage, damaged eyesight, lacerations and burns,” in the words of the resignation letter sent to the chief by the squad’s leader.

    Expect more of this.

    Snip.

    The chaos started at the top by assuming rioters were victims and cops were criminals.

    In their letter, RRT leader Lieutenant Jacob Clark said rules on the books for dealing with protests and riots didn’t change, but interpretation of those rules changed often and were in conflict with interpretations by council members, the city attorney, and others. Worse, the changes in the interpretations were applied retroactively and officers, staying within the limits of the law, were suddenly written up under a new interpretation of the rules.

    Snip.

    You can trace the walkout by Portland cops directly to efforts that began with George Soros.

    Singer John Legend and BLM co-founder Shaun King followed Soros’s lead and poured money into the campaigns of district attorney candidates who believe cops are the problem, not the solution to keeping order. In fact, keeping order isn’t really a thing for these activists.

    In both cities, Leftists poured money behind DA candidates who promised to free criminals and do what they could to stick it to cops and police departments. Portland got Mike Schmidt and LA got carpet bagger George Gascon. These DA’s, aided by unhinged city council members – Jo Ann Hardesty in Portland, Kshama Sawant in Seattle, and their allies in city bureaus – have created less safe cities.

    Seattle’s city attorney and King County prosecutor’s lack of prosecutions against actual criminals – because woke ideology – has turned the Emerald City, like Portland and San Francisco before it, into a homeless encampment with no rules, free-flowing drugs, and free rent.

    Sounds familiar

  • Black mom slams Critical Race Theory at Loudoun County school board in Virginia:

  • You know that predicted lockdown baby boom? The exact opposite happened:

    Nine months after the declaration of a national emergency due to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. births fell by 8% in a month.

    The December drop marked an acceleration in declines in the second part of the year. For the full year, the number of babies born in the country fell 4% to about 3.6 million, the largest decline since 1973.

  • The idea floated by Democrats that Republicans called for defunding the police is such ludicrous bullshit that even the Washington Post called them out for it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Michael “Creepy Porn Lawyer” Avenatti sentenced to two and a half years in prison over Nike extortion case. Let’s take a stroll through memory lane over the endless MSM fawning over Avenatti:

  • 40 “progressive” groups sent Biden a letter saying that he shouldn’t let trivia like “Uighur concentration camps” outweigh pursuing the glorious illusion of working with China on “climate change.” What’s a little thing like “genocide” compared to self-righteous self-delusion?
  • UT has a CRT problem:

    s I previously reported, earlier this year, the University of Texas at Austin (UT) went off the deep end of all things “woke” and politically correct.

    Despite warnings from alumni, faculty, and organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Association of Scholars, UT quietly adopted a “Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity” that is genuinely chilling. Among other questionable practices, this plan institutionalizes the Critical Race Theory version of “equity” (equality of results, as opposed to equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and meritocracy) as the paramount driver of decisions on hiring, promotion, tenure, leadership positions, and even teaching awards and endowed chairs at UT. It also creates a bureaucracy of diversity commissars in each college to enforce the new orthodoxy and mandates re-education of virtually all faculty in the new catechism.

    UT insiders tell me this plan was the brainchild and pet project of UT Vice Provost Edmund Gordon, a pronounced CRT advocate. UT’s adoption of this extraordinarily ill-considered plan was the last straw for me (and, based on responses I have received to my article, apparently many other UT alumni as well). UT President Jay Hartzell’s response to this criticism has been to ignore it, which seems to be his preferred modus operandi. President Hartzell’s calculus appears to be that, with the Texas legislature now safely adjourned from its biennial session. UT can continue on its merry way, unmolested by the unenlightened peasantry.

    He may be in for a rude awakening.

  • Russia unveils world’s largest submarine. I’m sure it will be well-engineered and quite capable (Soviet subs were), but I’m betting those “Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedoes” are almost pure vaporware.
  • More details of Mossad’s badass intelligence raid on Iran back in 2018.
  • The story of a woman who fell two miles from a plane and survived landing in the Amazon rain-forest.
  • Stop Extending the Eviction Moratorium. It’s a heavy burden both for landlords and for tenants who play by the rules.”
  • “Troy ISD to Consider $135 Million Tax Break for Solar Company that Pledges to Create One Job.”
  • Wells Fargo ending personal and portfolio lines of credit. Except for my mortgage, I don’t use credit these days.
  • “Hedge Fund That Bet Against GameStop Shuts Down As Backers Pull Money.” “White Square Capital, run by a former Paulson trader, has announced that it will return capital to shareholders. Some of the FT’s sources said the decision was likely due to heavy losses stemming from the firm’s GME short.”
  • Man wakes up to find $1.1 trillion in his Coinbase account. I think I could live on a mere half of that…
  • An $11 billion tunnel through the Alps.
  • The world’s most remote buildings.
  • When you go to church and a wrestling match breaks out:

  • Subway’s tuna sandwich isn’t.
  • I should probably save this one for Halloween:

  • Boom:

  • I think you may have overtorqued that.
  • “Biden Announces Putin Meeting Was A Success, Hunter Now Has A Job With Russian Pipeline.”
  • Requisite funny dog video:

  • LinkSwarm for May 7, 2021

    Friday, May 7th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden economy kicks in, China behaves badly (again), and rock stars are fed up with woke. Let’s lead off with this weird photo people have been taking about all week:

    Puppet people aside, what better image for the week in which Biden seems to be bringing stagflation back?

  • If you were wondering when the Trump boom would end and the Biden bust begin, it just did:

    U.S. job growth for the month of April fell far below what experts had predicted, as data reported Friday showed an increase of 266,000 jobs, versus an estimate of 1 million — the largest miss relative to expectations since at least 1998.

    Economists had suggested a positive outlook for the report, with the White House hoping for a gain of at least 700,000 jobs — making Joe Biden the first president ever to hit 2 million new jobs in his first 100 days. But expectations came crashing back to reality with data showing an overestimation of nearly 800,000 — the worst miss in decades.

    The U.S. unemployment rate rose slightly from 6.0 percent to 6.1. March’s payroll gains were also revised downward by nearly 150,000 jobs, from an initial print of 916,000 to 770,000. Labor force participation rate rose slightly, to 61.7 percent.

    Huh, irresponsible tax-and-spend policies, rampant inflation and paying people not to work evidently aren’t a recipe for economic success. Who knew?

  • Speaking of inflation, it looks like it’s back, baby! Rising metal, oil, and ag commodity prices all point to inflation. “Wood prices are at an all-time high at over $1,370 per 1,000 board feet.”
  • China pollutes more than the U.S. and all developing countries combined.
  • Speaking of China: Did Bill Gates dip his wang into Chinese spy Wang’s ‘tang??
  • Biden Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm owns stock in “Proterra, an electric vehicle company that is being actively promoted by the Biden administration. Further, Granholm being the Secretary of Energy means she gets to make regulations that can directly enrich herself.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Joe Biden lied about gun shows. Again.

    Joe Biden said today, “Most people don’t know: you walk into a store and you buy a gun, but you go to a gun show you can buy whatever you want and no background check.”

    This isn’t even close to being true. In fact, gun shows are subject to the same rules as apply everywhere else, which are that:

    1. commercial transfers require federal background checks, but that
    2. private transfers only require federal background checks if they are conducted within one of the thirteen states that superintend non-commercial firearms transactions

    There are no special rules for gun shows. The same set of laws applies to them as applies to, say, your kitchen table: If you are in the business of selling guns, you are federally obliged to run a check. If you are not, you are not — unless your state requires you to. That’s it. There’s no “loophole” here, and nothing about gun shows that separates them from the broader debate about private sales.

  • Lockdowns, riots and pushes to defund the police all lead up to cratering support for gun control among young people:

    A new poll from ABC and the Washington Post published on Wednesday found a significant drop in support for new gun-control laws, especially among young people.

    The number of Americans supporting enacting new gun laws over protecting gun rights fell from 57 percent to 50 percent, a seven-point drop from when the poll was last conducted in 2018. The number of Americans favoring gun rights jumped from 34 to 43 percent, a nine-point jump. The difference between the two positions narrowed by 16 points overall.

    The sharpest decline in support for new gun-control measures came among 18 to 29-year-olds and Hispanics. Both groups saw a 20 percent drop. Rural Americans and strong conservatives saw a 17-point drop.

  • Worker shortage is so acute that a Tampa MacDonald’s is paying people $50 just to interview for a job. “Some 17 million Americans remain on jobless benefits. Perhaps many of these people want jobs but are getting paid more to sit on the couch.”
  • Supply chains implode because there’s not enough shipping capacity to meet demand.
  • How Michael Dell used several financial maneuvers to turn $3.6 billion into more than $50 billion.
  • The Who’s frontman Roger Daltry says that the woke are ruining the world. “It’s terrifying, the miserable world they’re going to create for themselves. I mean, anyone who’s lived a life and you see what they’re doing, you just know that it’s a route to nowhere.”
  • And Daltry wasn’t the only rock star calling BS on the woke. Also taking aim: punk rock icon John Lydon:

    Johnny Rotten blames ‘wokeness’ for US ‘collapse’

    Sex Pistols’ frontman Johnny Lydon had some rotten things to say about “wokeness.”

    In a recent profile with the Times UK, the aging punk rocker decried “cancel culture” and the activists who campaigned to tear down national monuments which they say promote historical racism. The statues include that of Winston Churchill, one of the UK’s most revered prime ministers.

    He also blamed academia as well as the media for giving “the space” to “tempestuous spoilt children.”…

    Addressing calls to tear down Churchill’s statue in London, Lydon dismissed criticism that the wartime prime minister was racist. However, critics point out that the leader once referred to Indians as “the beastliest people in the world next to Germans,” and thought that black people are “[not] as capable or as efficient as white people.”

    “This man saved Britain,” Lydon asserted. “Whatever he got up to in South Africa or India beforehand is utterly irrelevant to the major issue in hand.”

    If there are any bigger haters in history than today’s cancel culture, Lydon conceded, it’s the Nazis — and Churchill took care of that.

  • Florida “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones is a big fat liar. “NPR describes Jones as a ‘top scientist’ leading Florida’s pandemic response. In fact, Jones has held three jobs in her field; all three have ended in her being terminated and criminally charged.”
  • “Texas House Approves Election Integrity Bill After 17 Hours of Deliberation.” Good.
  • University of Tennessee offensive line coach fired for daring to make fun of Stacey Abrams. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Company Basecamp bans “wokeness” in the workplace. One third of employees quit. Sounds like a win-win to me. Get woke, go broke…
  • Charles C. W. Cooke channels Swift on teenage knife fighting:

    Just when I thought that America couldn’t possibly get any softer, people start suggesting that there’s a role for the police in preventing knife murders. The snowflake generation strikes once again.

    Is there any tradition that the radicals won’t ruin? As the brilliant Bree Newsome pointed out on Twitter, “Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons.” And now people are calling the cops on them? I ask: Is this a self-governing country or not? When Newsome says, “We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon,” she may be expressing a view that is unfashionable these days. But she’s right.

    Disappointingly, my colleague Phil Klein has felt compelled to join the critics. In a post published yesterday, Phil asked in a sarcastic tone whether the police should “somehow treat teenage knife fights as they would harmless roughhousing and simply ignore it.” My answer to this is: Yes, that’s exactly what they should do — yes, even if they are explicitly called to the scene. I don’t know where Phil grew up, but where I spent my childhood, Fridays were idyllic: We’d play some football, try a little Super Mario Bros, have a quick knife fight, and then fire up some frozen pizza before bed. And now law enforcement is getting involved? This is political correctness gone mad.

    It’s hypocrisy, too. Who among us hasn’t come within a second or two of murdering someone else with a steak knife? My best friend in school, Bobby “The Blade” Simpson, used to throw shivs at the smaller kids in the music room. Did we need the authorities to step in when that happened? No, we did not. As MSNBC’s Joy Reid argued smartly on her show last night, pranks such as these were dealt with by our teachers — just as we all expected they would be. And if something went wrong? Well, that’s why we had substitutes.

    In all honesty, I worry that this sort of helicopter policing is making us weak. Back in my day, the people who survived a good stabbing came out stronger for it. I learned a lot of lessons from my time in the ring: self-reliance, how to overcome fear, the importance of agility, the basics of military field dressing. And, given the turnover, I also learned how to make new friends.

  • Sad news (and possibly foul play). “University of Texas linebacker Jake Ehlinger, the younger brother of former Longhorns quarterback Sam Ehlinger, was found dead Thursday.”
  • Season 13 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is now fully funded.
  • Scott of Kentucky Ballistics continues to heal.
  • “There’s a lot of value to being the idiot.”
  • Heh:

  • It’s a Freaking Winter Wonderland in Austin This Morning

    Monday, February 15th, 2021

    7°F and a good four inches of snow on the ground (which probably feels like a foot to us).

    There’s an official disaster declaration and the city has pretty much shut down:

    The University of Texas at Austin is closed through 8 a.m. Wednesday.

    Austin Energy is performing rolling blackouts to conserve power. The electricity provider, which has more than 500,000 customers, instituted the measure as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the city said in a statement. The outages typically last 10 to 40 minutes but were lasting longer than expected as of early morning Dec. 15, Austin Energy tweeted. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has asked utilities around the state to use rotating outages to lessen the strain on the state’s power grid.

    Many flights are canceled. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials urged travelers to confirm their flight status if flying in the next 48 hours. The airport also announced that Security Checkpoint 1 is closed and all passengers will be screened through Security Checkpoint 2. According to FlightAware, 138 flights into or out of ABIA had been canceled as of 8 a.m. Feb. 15. In addition, many roads around the airport have been closed because of ice.

    The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the Texas Interconnect Grid, reports that the grid is near capacity and rolling blackouts may last some time. My power hasn’t gone out here since it was restored Friday morning.

    You don’t even need to tell Austin drivers to stay out of this stuff. If you look at the traffic cams, the roads are empty.

    Yesterday HEB reported that it was running out of items and closing early, and even if it’s open today, it’s on a reduced schedule. The local HEB phone number just rings, so I wouldn’t count on any of them being open.

    I imagine that almost all restaurants are closed (here’s an outdated list). No answer at the Jim’s and Denny’s locations I called. I even tried calling all three local Waffle Houses to see if any were open, and all three calls went to voicemail.

    Truly the end times are upon us.

    I’ll give you more first hand info when I walk the dogs later.

    Stay warm…

    Update: There are reportedly almost 2 million people without power across Texas this morning.

    Update 2: A whole lot of power outages all across Austin. This isn’t an outage map, it’s a bad Picasso painting:

    Update 3: Firefighters close East Parmer at Dessau due to too many stuck vehicles. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)

    Update 4: No Capital metro today.

    Update 5: It’s not just Austin. Houston-area households are suffering from a huge number of power outages.

    Update 6: A commenter asked about Dallas, so here’s Oncor’s outage map. But it’s even less useful than the Houston or Austin maps…

    Update 7: 4.4 million without power?

    Update 8: Pflugerville is under a boil water notice:

    Update 9: Lists of which Austin restaurants are open or closed.

    LinkSwarm for January 22, 2021

    Friday, January 22nd, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Looks like I may have to start doing BidenWatch again, given all the stupid things the newly ensconced Biden Administration has been up to…

  • How Bidenomics will bankrupt us:

    US government debt now stands at $20 trillion, or roughly 100% of GDP. This should be a concern, but Democratic economists are not worried. A much-discussed November 30 paper by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and former Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Jason Furman suggests that Democratic thinking has veered into the paranormal, with an emphasis on levitation. Governments will be able to borrow and spend as much as they want for whatever purpose they want, the authors argue in so many words, and interest rates will remain low forever.

    As Washington Post editorialist Charles Lane commented Dec. 7, “Far from burdening future generations, governments have a golden opportunity to fund long-standing needs by borrowing for investments in future prosperity—the list includes child care, early education, job training and clean water.”

    The argument so easily refuted by casual reference to the facts that it takes a doctorate from Harvard (which both Summers and Furman hold) to suspend disbelief in the obvious. The authors aver:

    We note that with massive increases in budget deficits and government debt, expansions in social insurance, and sharp reductions in capital tax rates, one would have expected to see increasing real rates if private sector behavior had remained constant. We suggest that changes in the supply of saving associated with lengthening life expectancy, rising uncertainty and increased inequality along with reductions in the demand for capital associated with demographic changes, demassification of the economy, and perhaps changes in corporate behavior have driven real interest rates down. This characterization is rather like Hamlet without the Ghost, for the ghost in the interest machine during the past decade has been the Federal Reserve Board’s multi-trillion-dollar purchases of Treasury and agency securities. Summers and Furman do not mention this in their 50-page excursus.

    “This time is different!” they swear every time…

  • A new group has been founded to fight Critical Race Theory.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Biden Personnel Chief Served At Chinese Intel Org Flagged By FBI For Recruiting Western Spies”

    Thomas Zimmerman, who will serve as a Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel under Joe Biden, formerly served as a visiting scholar at what the FBI has called a “front group for Chinese intelligence collection and overseas spy recruitment,” The National Pulse can reveal.

    While at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, Zimmerman also served as a fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for its close ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security.

    The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), which the FBI views as a “front group for Chinese intelligence collection and overseas spy recruitment,” was involved in a 2019 criminal case involving a retired Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative selling classified U.S. defense documents to China.

    The operative, Kevin Mallory, was contacted by a SASS official via LinkedIn to begin the relationship that culminated in a 20-year prison sentence for Mallory.

  • The Biden Administration wants to force states to mandate men competing in women’s sports.
  • More on that theme: Why the “woke” make Biden’s “moderation” irrelevant:

    It must be understood that Critical Social Justice is an administrative and bureaucratic ideology by its very design. It was formulated by activist academics to train not just activists but, very specifically, either people who will go on to produce the culture industry (like in media and arts) or who will become administrative bureaucrats where they can produce a kind of unaccountable policy that we find in HR departments, where pushback is irrelevant unless it’s from the top down. These sorts of people dream of positions not specifically of power and influence, like the presidency, but of training and administrative roles where they will receive relatively little scrutiny or opposition while they engage in their favorite activity of all: telling other people what to do, not directly, but through a shield of very official and institutionally binding paper.

    For any of his late and thin comments about the violence that has rocked our streets for the last half of this year, Biden has given us absolutely no indication that he’s going to resist any of this bureaucratic totalitarianism. In fact, he’s done the opposite, using the language of the ideology, like saying he has a “mandate” from the voters (in an election that hasn’t yet even been decided, two weeks later) to take on “systemic racism,” and tapping individuals like Mehrsa Baradaran (who believes in full reparations) for the Treasury Department and Margaret Salazar (whose focus is on “cultural responsiveness”) for Housing and Urban Development. These come among roughly 500 more appointments to his administrative bureaucracy—so far—who allegedly express a commitment to racial justice, in line with precisely the racial equity programs touted by Biden and Harris on their campaign and now transition websites. In few domains has it been signaled that this will be more powerfully considered than in public health and the Covid-19 response, which Biden has already indicated will lead to a permanent position: “At the end of this health crisis, it will transition to a permanent Infectious Disease Racial Disparities Task Force,” we’re told on the Covid-19 priorities page on Biden’s “Build Back Better” transition site.

    This renders Biden and, perhaps, Harris largely irrelevant to the “Woke” impacts of their election. They are, if you’ll accept the metaphor, “not the room.” These administrators are the room. Biden (and Harris, maybe) can be as moderate as moderate gets, and if even a modest fraction of the administrators in key departments favor the Critical Social Justice style of policy, that’s most of what we’ll get. So far, we have reason to suspect that at least an eighth of Biden’s administrative apparatus will be in that vein, including in key and powerful sectors like public health—to say nothing of apparatuses like the FBI.

  • Tulsi Gabbard reveals why congress won’t attempt to reign in Big Tech:

    How do you spell love? M-O-N-E-Y!

  • How the Trump impeachments backfired:

    He was made a martyr. Yes, die-hard anti-Trump Democrats always would hate him, and die-hard pro-Trump Republicans would love him no matter what. But the great American center, comprised of reasonable Democrats and Independents, flocked towards Trump during and after the prior impeachment. They saw he was being railroaded.

    He now is being railroaded again. We still all are trees inside the forest, lacking the broader perspective that time will afford. Right now tensions are too high for people to step back a moment and to gauge objectively. But that is only today. The Democrats irresponsibly have just done something that perhaps is all but unprecedented in American history: they charged, tried, and convicted a person — the impeachment phase of the political drama — in less than a day. If impeachments are meant to be fit in during a coffee break, why did the last one drag on so long? Why did Clinton’s and Johnson’s? Last year’s annual Trump impeachment took weeks of testimony from witnesses all over the place. Remember their names — all your favorites — from last time? Kurt Volker. Marie Yovanovitch. Fiona Hill. George Kent. Gordon Sondland. Bill Taylor. Laura Cooper. Alex Vindman. His medals. Catherine Croft. It went on and on and on. If they had not shut it down for Christmas, Kato Kaelin would have been next.

    But this time it was Darkness at Noon: instead of pretending honesty, Pelosi and her Democrats did the impeachment as Josef Stalin conducted his show trials in the Soviet Union: first declare the guilt, then type up some charges, and then vote to convict without so much as a meaningful hearing. She did not even bother with the souvenir pens — presumably just ink-refill cartridges this time.

  • Nancy Pelosi can’t let go of her own Trump derangement syndrome.
  • “Football Coach Fired For Challenging Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory Curriculum In Daughter’s 7th Grade Class.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “City councilman in Louisiana arrested for election fraud.” “Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin Thursday morning announced their offices have arrested an Amite City Councilman on eight counts of election fraud. Emanuel Zanders, III is accused of submitting voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent.” I know you’ll be shocked to learn he’s a Democrat.
  • Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, says says they’re not white supremacists. And he should know, since he’s black.
  • “I used to love New York City, but feckless leaders have forced me to leave“:

    As COVID-19 settled into its new home in NYC, my local coffee shop closed, my gym shuttered, I lost my job at SUNY, and everything I loved was temporarily put “on pause.” A term that nine months later now feels like a cruel joke. None of us knew what we were facing back in March, or how long it would last. The streets became quiet, the city became still. All the sounds, the familiar faces, the busy restaurants, the daily rituals, the very pace of our existence slowed to a full stop. The silence was deafening.

    The homeless and mentally ill flourished in my Chelsea neighborhood overnight. Many residents fled our beloved city to safer suburbs and second homes. After a night in the West Village where I saw men looting cars, and a gunpoint robbery happen by the West 4th train station, I no longer felt comfortable here. I decided that I couldn’t abide the lawlessness and my first pandemic at the same time, so I spent the first wave of the pandemic upstate in a guest room at my family’s house, where at least I didn’t have to worry about the crime.

    After spending three months in quarantine upstate, I decided it was time to start putting my NYC life back together. The idea of suffering through this time with my closest friends felt like a step in the right direction. Even if we didn’t have our bars and restaurants for an undetermined amount of time, at least we’d have each other.

    I imagined my summer would be filled with long walks, bike rides on the West Side Highway, and small gatherings on rooftops. I imagined we’d get over COVID and that the energy of the city would come back slowly over the next six months. I was optimistic, loved my city and loved my life here with all my heart. I hopefully assumed most New Yorkers had the same feelings I did. And then the riots happened.

    The dark tone of daily life here now seems permanent. For months after the riots, stores in my area were still being burglarized. The helicopters were so close they would shake my top-floor apartment all night. In peak summer there were always two or three homeless people on both sides of every street in my area. Every aspect of my life became about avoiding them and staying far enough away from anyone who might attack me. Someone broke into my building one night but fled when they accidentally set off the alarm on the roof. The whole summer felt like living in a war zone.

    Dating used to be a pleasure for me, but during my summer in Chelsea there were so many stabbings and robberies within one block of my apartment, I no longer felt comfortable making plans that involved meeting anywhere. I’d walk to get coffee in the morning and get harassed and threatened by homeless people every day.

    Six months after NYC’s first wave of riots, I was clearly wrong about my hopes of returning to the fast-paced yet wonderful life that I once loved.

  • The City of Houston wants to regulate your homes for looks. “Everything from what color you paint your home, to whether you put shutters on your windows, would be subject to government control.” Nuts to that.
  • “Houston Woman First Ever Charged in Transporting Minor for Female Genital Mutilation.”
  • The rise and fall of a Turkish sex cult leader.”

    In the end, it was not the British deep state, Darwinists, Jews, Freemasons or any of the sinister cabals that Adnan Oktar long railed against that defeated him. It was the Turkish judiciary.

    On Monday, the notorious 64-year-old preacher, often referred to in salacious headlines as a “sex cult leader,” was sentenced to 1,075 years in jail for crimes including sexual assault, sexual abuse of minors, fraud, and attempted political and military espionage.

    It marks the end of a long and bizarre career for the preacher, television host, author and filmmaker.

    Beginning his career in the 80s as a firebrand orator, railing against Jews, Freemasons and Charles Darwin, he later became (in)famous for his shows on Turkish TV, in which he would discuss Islamic principles while scantily clad women with bleached blonde hair danced around him to popular music. These women Oktar referred to as his “kittens”.

    Skipping over a lot, including the bit where he went from being a Holocaust denier to being a supporter of building the Third Temple in Jerusalem.

    In July 2018, Oktar was arrested on a number of charges, including forming a criminal organisation, sexual abuse of children and sexual assault.

    According to the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office, he was caught while attempting to run away from the arresting officers. As he was led away, he told journalists that the charges were a conspiracy by the British deep state.

    “They are thinking of covering the whole region with Christianity. They targeted me because they saw me as the effective inhibitor of this game,” he would later say in court.

    Though “the British deep state” has yet to officially comment on the case, many have questioned the timing of Oktar’s arrest, considering accusations against him dated back decades.

    In 1999, Oktar and a number of associates were arrested and charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organisation with the intent to commit a crime. A Turkish prosecutor listed a number of companies tied to BAV, which was accused of using blackmail and sex traps to generate revenue. The legal process against Oktar and BAV lasted two years, during which the majority of the complainants retracted their claims.

    In the case file during his most recent trial, prosecutors presented an array of photos depicting sexual acts involving members of the organisation purportedly taken secretly at Oktar-owned properties for the purpose of blackmail. It also revealed WhatsApp messages involving male and female members of the group, in which they were given instructions to get used to anal sex.

    Yuksel told MEE that he was aware of a number of senior politicians who had been involved with (or had relatives involved with) Oktar and were compromised by their association with him. However, he declined to offer any names.

  • The University of Texas at Austin has partnered with Chinese institute later deemed a security risk by Department of Education.

    In October 2017, the University of Texas at Austin announced that it had signed a new memorandum of understanding with the China University of Petroleum, a school directly affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.

    According to a statement released at the time by the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, the agreement would “encourage academic cooperation through research and study in furtherance of the advancement of learning.”

    But in October 2020, the U.S. Department of Education released a report critical of such foreign entanglements, specifically deeming contracts with China University of Petroleum a security risk.

    “Academic research regarding oil and gas extraction should not be considered separate from the Chinese government’s geopolitical ambitions,” the Education Department report reads, adding, “China’s largest oil companies are state owned and dominate China’s oil market, so this could cross paths with Chinese government endeavors.”

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Funny how the Trump Administration never got around to putting up those gay concentration camps we were promised:

  • Hank Aaron, RIP.
  • New blue.
  • Detroit Lions hire Slab Bukhead as their next coach.
  • “Trump Praised For Accepting Election Results 4 Years Quicker Than Hillary Clinton Did.”
  • Joe Rogan meets Rick Sanchez. Damn you and you’re increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms, YouTube!
  • Happy dog:

  • UT Disbands PC Police

    Saturday, December 26th, 2020

    A tiny bit of good news in a dismal year:

    Political speech is under attack these days from Beijing to Berkeley, so we’ll take victories where we can get them. One arrived Tuesday when the University of Texas at Austin agreed to disband its PC police and end policies that suppress speech on campus.

    Credit the nonprofit Speech First, which sued on behalf of student members in 2018. The group claimed UT and its officials had “created an elaborate investigatory and disciplinary apparatus to suppress, punish, and deter speech that other students deem ‘offensive,’ ‘biased,’ ‘uncivil,’ or ‘rude.’”

    Students could anonymously report their professors and peers for “bias incidents” to the Campus Climate Response Team, which would investigate and threaten disciplinary referrals and “restorative justice” meetings with administrators. The university gave several examples of what constitutes an act of bias, including “faculty commentary in the classroom perceived as derogatory and insensitive,” and other behavior open to highly subjective judgments about what is offensive.

    On the first go-round, a federal judge dismissed the the case in 2019.

    But Speech First appealed, and in October the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the ruling and remanded the case back to the district court. Circuit Court Judge Edith Jones blasted the bias-response team as “the clenched fist in the velvet glove of student speech regulation.”

    Now comes the settlement, in which administrators agree to dismantle the bias-response team and amend policies that chill speech. Gone is a ban on “uncivil behaviors and language that interfere” with the “welfare, individuality or safety of other persons.” Also stricken is a definition of “verbal harassment” that prohibited “ridicule” or “personal attacks.”

    Under the settlement, UT reserves the right “to devise an alternative” to its bias-response team, but “Speech First is free to challenge that alternative.”

    One small victory in the war against Social Justice. Also, as of this writing, that bias report form still seemed to be active (maybe due to the Christmas break). But there’s still an entire “diversity” bureaucracy at UT intent on inflicting leftwing social justice conformity on students that needs to be dismantled.