TikTok Influencers Push to Unionize Amazon

These people are kids with millions of followers on social media.  And they're demanding Amazon pay its workers $30.00 an hour. Right. Fucking brats. 

At WaPo, "Gen Z TikTok creators are turning against Amazon":

A coalition of top TikTok stars is pledging to cease all work with Amazon — including shutting down storefronts and halting new partnerships with the e-commerce platform — until the company meets the demands of the Amazon Labor Union.

Boasting a combined following of over 51 million, the group of 70 TikTok creators says that the campaign, called the “People Over Prime Pledge,” is designed to pressure Amazon to meet the requests of its workers, which include a $30 minimum wage, increased paid time off and halting activities the group considers “union busting.”

“Amazon’s widespread mistreatment of their workers and blatant use of union busting tactics will no longer be tolerated by the TikTok Community,” reads a statement from Gen Z For Change, an advocacy group that coordinated the pledge and works frequently with creators.

Amazon Labor Union, which did not help organize the People Over Prime Pledge, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The campaign is a public setback for Amazon, which has sought to develop tighter relationships with young influencers in recent years. In 2017, the company launched the Amazon Influencer Program, allowing creators to earn revenue by recommending products in personalized Amazon storefronts. Earlier this year, Amazon flew more than a dozen Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok stars to a luxurious retreat in Mexico to encourage influencers to grow their presence on the platform. In June, Amazon built a massive VIP lounge at VidCon, an annual conference for online video stars, where influencers could learn about ways to work more closely with the company.

Instagram knows you don't like its changes. It doesn't care.

“I think their method of offering influencers life-changing payouts to make them feel as if they need to work with them while also refusing to pay their workers behind the scenes is extremely wrong,” said Emily Rayna Shaw, 24, a TikTok creator with 5.4 million followers who has partnered with Amazon in the past. “I want to feel comfortable recommending Amazon products to my community because it is so reliable, but I can’t do so until I know that they are treating their workers fairly.”

Many of the creators behind the People over Prime Pledge have done promotional deals with the company but plan to shut down their storefronts and decline future partnerships because of concerns over worker treatment. Creators who have worked with Amazon say that the company requires them to sign nondisparagement agreements, so that they can’t speak negatively about the platform even when the deals are over.

Amazon — which is the second-largest private employer in the U.S., where it has a higher rate of worker injuries than its competitors — has increasingly become a target for organized labor. In April, the independent Amazon Labor Union won an election at a large fulfillment center in Staten Island, marking a major union victory. Amazon workers are also organizing facilities in Bessemer, Ala.; Garner, N.C.; Albany, N.Y.; Campbellsville, Ky., and San Bernardino, Calif.

But the company has cracked down on these efforts, disciplining, firing, and even calling the police on some workers who show support for unions. The National Labor Relations Board has said some of the company’s conduct violates labor law, but the agency has limited resources to police a company of Amazon’s size. Even at the warehouse where Amazon Labor Union won the election, the company has successfully delayed the start of the contract-bargaining process, which itself could take months or years to complete.

[Amazon could stymie unions for years by going to the courts.]

Jackie James, 19, a TikTok creator with 3.4 million followers said that she will not be doing deals with Amazon until they change their ways. “As an influencer, it’s important to choose the right companies to work with,” she said. “I don’t think that workers should be treated the way they are under Amazon.”

Yet as labor organizing efforts within Amazon have hit speed bumps — Amazon Labor Union lost a second election in Staten Island in May — the movement has remained high profile, attracting support from Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Biden. Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls appeared on a prominent Twitch stream last week, and the hashtag #hotlaborsummer has popped up on Twitter.

Amazon has previously denied discontent among its workers, arguing turnover is a function of the company’s flexibility. “A large percentage of people we hire are re-hires, showing that they will choose to work for us when they want to,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, told The Post in June. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

“We’re demanding that Amazon listen to their workers and make changes to provide a healthy workplace environment,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, founder of Gen Z For Change, who also posts on TikTok. “Until Amazon institutes these changes, we as creators will block Amazon from monetizing one of the largest social media platforms in the world.” ...

New Poll Finds 'Bleak' Prospects for San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin

Screw the polls. I expect the results to mirror the school board recall in February. All three incumbents on the ballot got the boot. Politics in San Francisco is some of the most toxic anywhere, and homelessness, poverty, and the deadly drug epidemic are nightmares. Voters are taking back control. 

At S.F. Gate, "New poll of Chesa Boudin recall shows closer, but still bleak, race for San Francisco DA":

Commissioned by the anti-recall campaign and shared with SFGATE, the new poll from Public Policy Polling (rated as an "A-" pollster by FiveThirtyEight) found that 48% of San Franciscans plan to vote "yes" on recalling Boudin, 38% plan to vote "no" and 14% are undecided. The poll was conducted over the weekend among 697 likely voters and has a margin of error of 4.3%.

 

Inflation Is Taking Biggest Toll on Nonwhite Voters, WSJ Poll Shows

Batya Ungar-Sargon can't say it enough: Democrat Party identity socialists, woke-leftist mainstream media goobers, craven corporate America, Marxist university elites, and Silicon Valley tech-totalitarians hate the very people they purport to champion and support. 

Biden's now set to release "a million barrels of oil a day" from the strategic petroleum reserves, which won't make a dent in the rising price curve for gasoline, groceries, consumer goods, heavy industry, manufacturing, shipping, and more. 

Inflation's the number one issue driving the concerns of everyday Americans, that is, the American voters. Add the crazy gender assault on morality and the schools, and the Democrats are looking to put themselves out in the political wilderness for a generation. 

It's bad.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Black women and Hispanic men reported the highest levels of inflation worry among different demographic groups":

Nonwhite voters are more likely than white voters to say the highest inflation in four decades is triggering major financial strain in their lives and that appears to be giving Republicans an opening with a growing segment of the electorate that traditionally favors Democrats, the latest Wall Street Journal poll shows.

Eight months before the midterm election, 35% of Black, Hispanic, Asian-American and other voters who said they were something other than white expressed that level of inflationary pain, compared with 28% for white voters. Black women and Hispanic men, both at 44%, reported the highest proportions of major strain among various demographic and gender combinations.

People with the lowest incomes also were most likely to report major financial challenges from inflation. Almost half with incomes of less than $60,000 reported major financial strain, while just 13% of those making $150,000 or more did so.

Some poll participants said they blame President Biden for inflation because he has taken actions to limit oil-and-gas drilling and pipelines in the U.S.

Roger Stephens, a 62-year-old mostly retired airplane mechanic who is Black and lives in the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles, said gas is running close to $6 a gallon in his area. He is troubled by prices at the pump and those at grocery stores and restaurants.

“Uncle Joe has put us on a diet,” he said in a reference to Mr. Biden. “I like to have a steak once or twice a month. I can’t do it now.”

Mr. Stephens is a registered Democrat who said he twice voted for Democrat Barack Obama for president and then for Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. He said he was more likely to back Republicans than Democrats in this year’s election. Inflation, he said, is one of the issues he is weighing.

The inflation numbers help explain why almost two-thirds of voters think the economy is headed in the wrong direction even as jobs are plentiful, wages are rising, home values are up and stock prices remain above where they were when Mr. Biden took office. Rising energy, food and services prices pushed inflation to 7.9% last month compared with a year ago. The Consumer Price Index, which measures the cost of goods and services, hasn’t been this high since it reached 8.4% in January 1982. Overall, 58% of poll participants said inflation was causing them major or minor financial strain, up slightly from 56% in a similar survey taken in mid-November.

In a potentially troubling sign for Democrats now running Washington, a 47% plurality of voters said they think Republicans can best tame inflation, compared with 30% who listed Democrats.

Almost 9 in 10 Republican voters think the economy is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 36% percent of Democrats.

Among independent voters—a key group in most close elections—71% say the economy is going the wrong way. Hispanic voters are even more likely to feel that way, with 78% expressing a negative view.

Stronger dissatisfaction with the economy among nonwhite voters could translate to softer support for Democrats in November if things don’t improve before then.

“They’re sour economically,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster whose firm conducted the poll with the firm of Democratic pollster John Anzalone...

  

Melting Away the Symbols of the Capital of the Confederate States of America, and Our Country's History (VIDEO)

Leftists attack the slogan "heritage not hate," and that's because they hate our heritage and are destroying it, steadily ever more, piece by piece, into oblivion.

It makes me sad. We know this eliminationist process doesn't stop with statues of Confederate Generals. Last month, President Thomas Jefferson's statue was removed from the chamber's of City Hall in New York City. 

Now the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, on behalf of the Charlottesville City Council, will have Robert E. Lee's statue melted down and "repurposed." A sign of the times.

At the New York Times, "Charlottesville’s Statue of Robert E. Lee Will Be Melted Down":

The City Council of Charlottesville, Va., voted on Tuesday to donate a statue of Robert E. Lee to an African American heritage center that plans to melt the monument, the focus of a deadly white nationalist rally in 2017, into bronze for a new piece of public artwork.

The 4-0 vote by the council followed years of debate over the fate of the statue. Four years ago, a plan to remove the statue drew scores of white nationalists to Charlottesville for a “Unite the Right” rally that led to violence, including the killing of a counterprotester by an Ohio man who plowed a car into a crowd.

The statue’s fate was left to a prolonged fight in court that concluded in April, when Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the city could take down two statues of Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee’s. Over the summer, workers hoisted it off its granite base.

After taking it down, the city accepted proposals from bidders who wanted the statue. But the council on Tuesday decided to give it to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which submitted a proposal under the name “Swords Into Plowshares.”

An Indiegogo campaign page for Swords Into Plowshares said that its leaders wanted to “transform a national symbol of white supremacy into a new work of art that will reflect racial justice and inclusion.”

The project’s leaders have not decided what the new artwork will look like. The campaign page said the decision would be “informed by a six-month community engagement process where residents of Charlottesville can participate in forums to help determine how the social value of inclusion can be represented through art and public space.”

Andrea Douglas, the center’s executive director, said in a video that Swords Into Plowshares “is a community-based project.”

Residents, she said, “will be able to articulate what we want in our public spaces, as opposed to objects that were given to our community that highlighted a particular ideology that we no longer share.”

The council’s decision followed an announcement from Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, on Sunday that the pedestal where a Robert E. Lee statue had stood in Richmond would be removed soon. Mr. Northam said that the removal process of that pedestal would be “substantially complete” by Dec. 31.

“This land is in the middle of Richmond, and Richmonders will determine the future of this space,” Mr. Northam said. “The Commonwealth will remove the pedestal and we anticipate a safe removal and a successful conclusion to this project.”...

 

A Shocking Number of College Grads Wish They Had Been Taught More Life Skills

 At Pajamas, "According to a poll from SWNS digital, 81% of college grads wished they had been taught more life skills before graduation. Instead, they learned the importance of pronouns and social justice activism. It seems that many students leave a college clueless about budgeting and what to do when you can’t afford DoorDash."

America is Still Standing (VIDEO)

An awesome video, featuring Kelly Shackleford, for Prager University:

Is Substack the Media Future We Want?

It's Anna Wiener (whoever that is), at the New Yorker, "The newsletter service is a software company that, by mimicking some of the functions of newsrooms, has made itself difficult to categorize."

Establishment media outlets fear Substack, so they're out to destroy it. Big Media doesn't want you to read folks like Glenn Greenwald, a leftist who on Israel I can't stand, but who is amazingly good on a lot of other current stuff. See his great piece this week, "The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing to Do With Trump."

Or, Andrew Sullivan, also someone who's got a really sketchy and devious political pedigree, but has lately been on fire, "Do All Black Lives Matter? Or Just Some?"

And Matt Taibbai, "The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire: Silicon Valley couldn't have designed a better way to further radicalize Trump voters."

All of these guys are leftists, which tells you something, as they've been excommunicated form the leftist media precincts (especially Greenwald and Sullivan).

Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks

It's Samantha Jones (not her real name, to protect against leftist death threats, apparently), at New Discourses, "A Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out."

It's the second half of her piece that's most interesting, for example:

One of the most urgent needs is the development of a grassroots movement for intellectual diversity on campus, spearheaded by students, alumni, parents, and concerned citizens. I hope that existing conservative, centrist, or libertarian organizations can help to facilitate this movement by providing organizational and logistical support at campuses throughout the country. Everyone should take a close look at their state’s public universities’ Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiatives to see if intellectual diversity is included. If it is not, then the obvious first step is to advocate for the inclusion of intellectual diversity. Concerned taxpayers, students, parents, and alumni, working with the elected officials in those university districts, if necessary, need to ensure that universities have intellectual diversity in humanities and social sciences course offerings. If intellectual diversity is included in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiative (in my experience, most of these initiatives include at least a brief reference to intellectual diversity), then work can be done to survey students to see if they feel that intellectual diversity is represented, particularly in their humanities and social sciences courses. Heterodox Academy has published relevant survey data on the dearth of intellectual diversity in these fields.

If America has any chance of continuing the classical liberal values upon which it was founded, then students who have a commitment to these values have to enter the teaching profession—as doctoral students in education, as administrators, and as public school teachers. Critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical race theory, are the dominant discourses controlling all levels in American schools of education, so students need to tread lightly and assent, at least outwardly, to Critical Social Justice ideology. Once in the classroom, however, teachers should reject all pressures to teach Critical Social Justice, and especially critical race theory, because it is an inherently racist ideology and because it instantiates the problem—racism—that it purports to solve. Critical race theory also needs to be resisted because it, as its own proponents assert, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction). Teachers should take a stand for fighting racism within liberalism, not by adopting critical race theory. If there is not already a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting non-woke students to enter the teaching profession—again, at all levels, as professors of education, as administrators, and as public school teachers—then one should be organized immediately. This could also be a special project for existing right- or libertarian-leaning organizations.

Another important project should be the revival of Western civilization and Great Books courses, at all levels of education, but most critically in the universities. In 1964, 15 of the 50 premier universities in America required students to take a survey of Western civilization. All 50 offered the course, and nearly all of them (41) offered it as a way to satisfy some requirement. (Source: New York Post, by Ashley Thorne “The drive to put Western civ back in the college curriculum,” March 29, 2016). But since 1987, when Jesse Jackson led 500 students around Stanford University protesting the requirement that undergraduates take a course in Western Civilization, which they denounced as Eurocentric, white-male indoctrination, most colleges have eliminated Western civ courses for diversity or multiethnic course requirements. An excellent example of a Western civ curriculum can be found in the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, which is dedicated to “exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought.” Another avenue is to look into funding institutes for education in Western civilization as a new department at extant colleges and universities.

I would love to see crowd-sourced funds used to construct a beautiful classical building adjacent to one of the ugliest college campuses in the country, preferably one composed entirely of postwar Brutalist buildings. I imagine that students whose spirits are continually depressed by attending classes in the midst of such hideous architecture would feel intrigued to enter such a beautiful building. Once inside, they might learn that there is, in fact, such a thing as beauty; that it matters, and that Critical Social Justice ideology can never build anything beautiful; it can never, in fact, build anything at all—it can only destroy. Once inside that building, students might become interested in registering for a course on Western civilization, a course in which all thought is permitted, in which no one is threatened with cancellation: a microcosm of what a university environment used to be. In this way, we might plant and nurture the seed of resistance to the increasing totalitarianism of Critical Social Justice.

In the long term, it is going to be necessary to create more universities devoted to classical education, not indoctrination into Critical Social Justice ideology, as well as more K-12 private and charter schools in the classical tradition because university schools of education have been training “social justice” educators for decades now, so Critical Social Justice ideology is now in the K-12 public schools. At a policy level on this problem, we need avenues for teacher certification outside of the existing teacher colleges, which are wholly committed to critical pedagogy and other failed approaches. Forcing every licensed teacher (usually for state jobs) to undergo ideological training to gain licensure is not only a problem but should be illegal. At the personal level, my advice to everyone with kids who can afford to do so is to pull your kids out of the public schools immediately and enroll them in private schools, or home school. Although home schooling has already begun to come under attack, it is still a viable option—at least for now. In the future, homeschooling will come under increased scrutiny and I believe there will be attempts to render it illegal. I realize that not everyone can afford to home school or send their kids to private schools (many of which are not safe from Critical Social Justice, either). I strongly recommend that all parents emphasize the value of vocational training programs for their children as avenues to career paths that pay well and offer a great deal of autonomy.

My hope is that new immigrants to America will increasingly speak out against Critical Social Justice ideology as an American instantiation of what is called, in other contexts, tribalism—a form of corruption that has damaged many countries. Far from being a bastion of white supremacy, America’s liberal values are what have attracted people from all countries to undergo great hardship to come here, precisely because this is one of the few places in which ordinary people can exercise their talents to achieve a standard of living that is impossible in most of the world. It is my fervent hope that more American college students—especially the “woke” who rail against their own country as evil—would be required to spend a semester abroad in a developing country in order to gain some much-needed perspective on the struggles people face who were not fortunate enough to be born into such an “oppressive” place as America.

Lastly, I have focused mostly on academia and education because this is the sector I know best, but I strongly urge everyone, from all walks of life, to embrace your sense of humor (a quality that is conspicuously absent in woke culture). Wokeness should continue to relentlessly mocked and parodied through meme culture (Andrew Doyle’s Titania McGrath is a great example). Just as important: Be courageous. Stand up for the beliefs that have made America a great country. If you hear people treating others as members of groups, articulate the importance of treating people as individuals. As Jordan Peterson put it, “The smallest minority is the individual.” If you encounter people treating others badly because of their gender or skin color, say that this behavior is morally wrong. If you see people attempting to “cancel” others, articulate why this is a terrible way to treat others. If you witness attacks on freedom of speech and advocacy of censorship, or if you meet people who are in favor of “hate speech” laws, or laws to combat “misinformation” (a code word for non-leftist ideas), articulate why freedom of speech is an absolutely essential and non-negotiable value. If you hear people discussing why they think socialism is great, take a stand for free markets and the prosperity they have produced. If you hear people calling for retributive justice and political violence, push against it and discuss why violence is never acceptable. If you encounter attacks on meritocracy, make a case for why merit is essential to the advancement of individuals and societies. I think a lot of liberals, like me, generally, if not naively, assumed that the liberal values underpinning America would simply continue throughout our lives, but these values are under attack and they need to be vigorously and unapologetically defended. Our civilization is at stake and the hour is late.

RTWT.

Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children

At Reason.

But see this, from L.A.T, a couple of weeks ago, "L.A. Unified will not give Fs this semester and instead give students a second chance to pass."

And this passage especially is killing me, about the push-back against the "no fail" policy:

In April, L.A. Unified prohibited failing grades for the spring semester and also determined that no student’s grade would be lower than it was on March 13, the final day of on-campus instruction. At the time, many teachers and some principals complained that the policy undermined student motivation and some reported a subsequent drop-off in student effort.

Stocks surge. Retail rises. Unemployment continues to decline. Post-election markets set record highs while online shopping contributed to recovery. How did this month fare overall?

Such concerns resurfaced Monday during a faculty meeting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, according to an English teacher who did not wish to be identified because she was not authorized to speak.

“Yes, it’s COVID time,” the teacher said. “But this soft bigotry of low expectations — including us being banned from demanding students ever comment with their voices or actually show themselves on camera during Zoom — will indeed help our low-income students stay on the bottom of the pile of learning.”

A high school principal from a different campus was more supportive. Given the unprecedented crisis, the principal said, students who earn A’s and B’s should get to keep them but that the only other grade handed out should be a pass. This principal — who also was not authorized to comment — requested anonymity...

Astonishing, really.

Notice how everybody speaks off the record, obviously so they won't face the guillotine.  

Would the Party of Moral Authoritarianism Cheat on Elections?

Nah. At Issues & Insights, "Of Course the Party of Moral Authoritarianism Would Cheat on Elections":

The moral authoritarians of the left are so hungry to rule over others, so convinced of their own virtue that they will do almost anything to muscle a path to unchallengeable authority. In their minds, stealing an election is a legitimate means to their ends.

Fight them. Defeat them. Never stop. 

 

Zoë Quinn Drives Game Maker Alec Holowka to Death

The Other McCain is on the case:

Death by ‘Social Justice’: Zoe Quinn Drives Game Maker #AlecHolowka to Suicide: https://t.co/QkihqzZLd2: Via @PatriarchTree
#SJWs #RadicalLeft 🤨 pic.twitter.com/cJq2piZ2Vc

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 1, 2019

This is what Mr. Holowka had to say about Zoe a few years ago. Too bad no one stood up for him when it counted.

Now he's dead and that crowd is back to blaming everyone but themselves. (h/t @GamesNosh) #ZoeBodyCount pic.twitter.com/HYZFSvI1rv

— Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort) September 1, 2019

SJWs Ruined Twitter

I'm trying to adjust to the new Twitter layout, but it's hard. One can go back to "legacy" Twitter, which I'm thinking about. We'll see. We'll see.

At the Other McCain, "Meet the Women Who Ruined Twitter."

#SJWs: Meet the Women Who Ruined #Twitter: https://t.co/n10nZECdQF Via @PatriarchTree pic.twitter.com/mXLviqB679

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 27, 2019

Megan Rapinoe

I saw all the Twitter outrage over the politicization of the Women's World Cup Championship. I don't care about the politics. I just want to enjoy sports, and I did enjoy watching the U.S. Women's National Team. They're incredible. Rapinoe herself is just phenomenal. And I think she's beautiful. I could look at her all day. I love her hair, her face, her teeth, her smile. What I don't love is how she's taken her success in sports and turned it into a platform to elect Democrats. That's not the role she was given by being a sports leader, an ambassador for women's and girls' soccer. And thus, she's going to harm her agenda ultimately, especially in how she says the debate's won, the conversation's finished, and that she'll only meet with people who already agree with her. That's not how you win in politics. That's how you divide.

More later, I guess, But until then, at WaPo, "Fifteen minutes on cable television that illustrated one of America’s deepest political divides" (via Memeorandum).

And at CNN and MSNBC, where else?

The Red Decade

At City Journal, "The Red Decade, Redux":

In The Red Decade, Eugene Lyons was documenting not just a historical moment but also a species of historical illiteracy as unchanging as it is poisonous, its utopianism able to flourish only at the expense of independent thought. https://t.co/dr0DOYcGgE

— City Journal (@CityJournal) June 25, 2019

It may be that the best book that will ever be written about today’s progressive mind-set was published in 1941. That in The Red Decade author Eugene Lyons was, in fact, describing the Communist-dominated American Left of the Depression-wracked 1930s and 1940s makes his observations even more meaningful, for it is sobering to be confronted with how little has been gained by hard experience. The celebration of feelings over reason? The certainty of moral virtue? The disdain for tradition and the revising of history for ideological ends? The embrace of the latest definition of correct thought? Lyons was one of the most gifted reporters of his time, and among the bravest, and his story of the spell cast by Stalinist-tinged social-justice activism over that day’s purported best and brightest—literary titans, Hollywood celebrities, leading academics, religious leaders, media heavies—would be jaw-dropping if it weren’t so eerily familiar... 

Project Veritas: Insider Blows Whistle on Google's Far-Left Political Bias (VIDEO) -- UPDATED!

At Memeorandum, "Insider Blows Whistle & Exec Reveals Google Plan to Prevent “Trump situation” in 2020 on Hidden Cam."



Google-owned YouTube took down the Project Veritas video. I tweeted:

Boy, nothing like proving political bias with blatantly biased political censorship. Who could’ve seen this coming? 🙄🤷‍♂️ #Google #ProjectVeritas https://t.co/rhmSGSY62q

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 25, 2019

Statement: United States Holocaust Museum Rejects AOC's 'Concentration Camps' Analogy

There's little that makes me loathe leftists more than their constant attacks on political opponents as Nazis. Any rational, knowledgeable person knows that what's going on at the Southern border bears little resemblance to the Hitler's exterminationist programs against the Jews. But leftists aren't rational; they're ideological, and attacking your opponents as genocidal murderers, apparently, is the main way hateful progs can fire up the base and maintain political support.

It's all despicable.

At the U.S. Holocaust Museum's page, "Statement Regarding the Museum's Position on Holocaust Analogies" (via Memeorandum).

And linked at the center's page, "Why Holocaust Analogies Are Dangerous."

Video here, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls Out U.S. ‘Concentration Camps’."

And her pathetic defense after coming under vociferous criticism:

Democrat Debates Shaping Up as Epic Clown Show

It's not really a debate --- it's a far-left cattle-call.

At the Los Angeles Times, "The stakes are high as Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to debate":

Read to the bottom to find out what mindfulness tells you about debate prep. https://t.co/RqGuG5VeWE

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) June 21, 2019

With so many candidates onstage, the Democratic presidential debates risk becoming a stilted, parallel-play affair, with candidates trying to squeeze scripted messages into tiny scraps of airtime.

But the prospects of an unruly political feeding frenzy, particularly on the second night of the two-day extravaganza, have soared as former Vice President Joe Biden has thrown chum in the water: His provocative comments about race will tempt candidates to abandon restraint and go on the attack.

The back-to-back debates on Wednesday and Thursday nights could be a pivot point in the Democrats’ primary campaign, which for months has seen candidates refraining from criticizing one another — or doing so only in veiled terms.

It will be a high-stakes test for the biggest primary campaign field ever, which includes three black candidates, one Latino, six women, two Asian Americans and an openly gay man.

The lineup includes Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual advisor and a congressman who meditates; the mayor of the nation’s largest city and the mayor of South Bend, Ind. The oldest candidate was born before Pearl Harbor; the youngest when Ronald Reagan was president.

Some are well-known figures; more are obscure and thirsty for national attention.

They will all come together for the first time in a scramble to make an impression, avoid gaffes, draw contrasts and send a message. All in seven minutes or less, the estimated amount of airtime each candidate will get in the two-hour sessions. The debates will be televised on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo starting at 6 p.m. PDT each night.

Only half the field will have a direct shot at Biden: With so many running for the nomination, the Democratic National Committee capped debate participants at 20 — three others didn’t meet the fundraising and polling criteria to make the stage — and split them between the two nights, with 10 for each session.

As the clear front-runner in early polls, Biden already had a target on his back. That bull’s-eye got bigger on Tuesday after he spoke nostalgically of his “civil” relationships with segregationists in the 1970s Senate and made a joke about not being called “boy” by one of them.

So far, Biden has pursued a strategy of trying to stay above the fray, looking past his primary rivals to focus on President Trump. The Thursday night debate, in which he’ll be at center stage, flanked by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, will test that approach.

Sanders, who is running second in many polls behind Biden but has appeared to lose some support in recent weeks, is preparing to draw a strong contrast between his democratic socialist vision and what he calls Biden’s “middle ground” approach on issues like healthcare and trade.

“Biden wants to skate on the suggestion that we are all shades of the same gray,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager. “Bernie wants to make clear that you have fundamentally different choices to make between governing vision, philosophy and how we are going to shape the agenda. That choice has to be drawn out.”

Biden backers think blunt attacks on him will backfire.

“The front-runner position always puts you as a target,” said Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.). “People don’t want the personal attacks. We’ve seen enough with our current president.”

When almost all the candidates appeared at South Carolina Democratic party events last weekend, none of them brought up the segregationists controversy.

Sanders has also been studying up on other rivals, where they stand on key issues like Medicare for all, and what they have said about him. He will be sharing a stage with former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, for example, who has criticized Sanders’ brand of democratic socialism...

More.

Coleman Hughes Testimony Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties (VIDEO)

Gawd, this is fantastic!

Leftists were outraged. I mean, just look at the faces of the black Democrats behind Mr. Hughes. They don't want to get off the leftist-Democrat Party plantation!

Watch:



And at Twitchy, "Blue-check comedian OK’s racial slur against black columnist who testified against reparations."

And from the now-deleted tweet, by Rae Sanni:

It’s okay, just for today, to call Coleman Hughes a coon. He’s arguing against reparations on Juneteenth. He’s Cooneman Hughes til midnight Pacific Standard time

— Rae Sanni (@raesanni) June 19, 2019

Joe Biden's Racist, Segregationist Nostalgia

Biden's not going to apologize for working with --- indeed, praising --- the classic Democrat Party racist old guard.

He praised Strom Thurmond as late as 1997!

Full story at the Los Angeles Times, "Joe Biden’s nostalgic remark about segregationist senators draws criticism":

Here's a portion of the speech Biden gave about Strom Thurmond, in May 1997https://t.co/b8B2Gei7FE pic.twitter.com/UY79DJ7jvn

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) June 20, 2019

Biden’s seeming nostalgia for his past relationships with segregationist senators draws sharp rebukes from @KamalaHarris @CoryBooker and others. https://t.co/rafyzY3IBS

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) June 19, 2019

With a tone-deaf bit of nostalgia Tuesday night, former Vice President Joe Biden ignited a fire around his presidential campaign, speaking wistfully of a time in Washington when he could work civilly with conservatives, including arch-segregationist Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia.

“He never called me boy, he always called me son,” Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in New York said, referring to Eastland.

And while Talmadge was “mean,” he said, “Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore.”

The response from many Democrats was quick and angry, with Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a black rival for Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination, and others accusing Biden of racial insensitivity. By Wednesday afternoon, the fight had become one of the most heated intra-party disputes of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign.

The controversy goes beyond Biden’s well-known penchant for verbal gaffes because it directly involves one of the central tenets of his campaign — his call for a return to the bipartisan style of governing that prevailed in the Senate in the past.

The timing increases the likelihood that Biden’s embrace of that approach to governing will become a focal point of next week’s first presidential primary debate.

That theme has appeal for voters who long for an end to Washington’s gridlock, but for many Democrats, especially on the party’s left, it underscores Biden’s image as a figure of the past, out of touch with today’s hyper-partisan realities and unwilling to challenge entrenched interests to achieve the party’s objectives.

“Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people, and for everyone,” said Booker. “I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans. He should.”

Biden, bridling at the suggestion that he sympathized with racists, responded to the controversy late Wednesday by describing his record of pushing for civil rights and voting rights legislation.

“I could not have disagreed with Jim Eastland more,” he said, speaking to reporters outside a fundraiser in the Washington suburbs.

Asked whether he would apologize for his comments, as Booker was requesting, Biden said, “Why should I? Cory should apologize. He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career.”

Others who criticized Biden included Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the other black candidate in the 2020 field, who told reporters on a Senate elevator Wednesday that Biden's remark about segregationists “concerns me deeply.”

“If those men had their way, I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate and on this elevator right now,” she said.

Some critics even suggested the remark should disqualify Biden for the party’s nomination.

Yeah, let's nominate Cory Booker or Kamala Harris. That'll show those cracker old guard troglodyte Democrats!

Keep reading.

Gillette's Woke Transgender Son Shaving for the First Time Advertisement (VIDEO)

So lame.

Megham Murphy nails it, at Feminist Current, "The ‘intersectional’ masses celebrating Gillette’s new ad reveal their empty politics":

"Much less amusing is the fact that not only multi-billion dollar companies, but LGBT 'allies,' are pushing young people down an incredibly harmful path without any concern for the consequences." https://t.co/2UXVnseluo

— Feminist Current (@FeministCurrent) May 31, 2019

In their ongoing attempts to use politically correct politics to sell razors, Gillette has hit another home run. This time, the company produced an ad depicting a father helping his daughter learn how to shave.

Naturally, there is a woke twist. The daughter, named Samson, is “trans,” and we are meant to understand she is a man. The ad, called “First Shave,” begins with Samson saying, “Growing up, I was always trying to figure out what kind of man I would become.” While we could choose to read this as a celebration of a supportive father, lovingly teaching his child the rituals of entering manhood, it makes far more sense to read this as a company’s attempt to glom onto the most saleable trend right now: transgenderism.

To be clear, I have little interest in criticizing this father and child, who are clearly doing their best in a culture that finds the most superficial, profitable solutions for personal, cultural, or social problems.

Parents are stuck between a rock and a hard place, as they are told over and over again, by a multitude of institutions, including public schools, governments, mainstream media, LGBTQ organizations, the medical establishment, and the pharmaceutical industry, that if their child announces they are either transgender or literally the opposite sex, they must affirm this assertion and support their child to transition, or be labelled abusive, oppressive, or even responsible for mental illness and suicidal ideation.

Children and teenagers are inundated with propaganda telling them that it’s possible to be born in the wrong body; that if they don’t feel perfectly comfortable with rigid gender roles, they must actually be the opposite sex (a scientific impossibility); and that if they feel either a desire to have the body of the opposite sex or to reject the gender stereotypes associated with that sex, their only option for a happy life is to transition. Telling young people that their only route towards fulfillment lies in numerous cosmetic surgeries and a lifetime of hormones that destroy their bodies and render them sterile and unable to experience sexual pleasure is irresponsible, cruel, and dangerous. Yet this is what Gillette is selling. Or rather, using in order to sell.

Initially, I was confused as to why a company that sells shaving products to men would imagine their consumer base would be propelled to buy more Gillette products by imagery of a young woman shaving. I suspect most men don’t buy into gender identity ideology, and certainly “transmen” are not a large enough group to support any jump in sales. But apparently their last ad, which aimed to associate the company with the #MeToo movement, by demonstrating “good masculinity” vs “bad masculinity,” actually did succeed in broadening their audience (despite the fact that thousands of men hated the ad). I suppose the assumption is that new audiences will translate to new consumers, in the long term.

I’m not an ad executive and I certainly have no idea how to make money (I mean, look at my career choice…), but if all this attention from liberals and the media translates into dollars, good for Gillette, I guess… That is their goal, after all. What I find most amusing about this ad and the conversation happening around it online, though, is the way it is being universally celebrated as “progress” by people who will, in the same breath, claim to be “intersectional” — a term intended to communicate a commitment to understanding the intersections of race, class, and gender on individual people’s lives. So, people who are using a concept that is intended to be critical of capitalism (i.e. the thing responsible for class oppression) and gender in order to sell themselves to the world as Very Good and Righteous are celebrating the most brazen co-optation of the most regressive ideology, by a company owned by Procter & Gamble. L-o-fucking-l, you chumps.

What is much less amusing, of course, is the fact that not only multi-billion dollar companies, but LGBT “allies,” are pushing young people down an incredibly harmful path (one that will lead them right into the hands of other multi-billion dollar companies, of course) without any concern for the consequences...

Still more at that top link.