Cal State Faculty Agree to Tentative Contract

Perhaps the threat of the strike brought about some concessions from the CSU negotiators.

I hope so, because my union's in contract negotiations with my college, and it's time to bring the heat on the administration.

At LAT, "Cal State faculty union postpones planned strike after tentative salary agreement is reached."

If You Walk Mike Trout, You Still Gotta Face Albert Pujols: Angels Beat Rangers, 4-3, with Walk-Off in Bottom of Ninth

It felt like old times last night at Angel Stadium. Lot of smiles (plus plenty of grimaces from Manager Mike Scioscia).

And I still can't see why teams think they're making a good call by walking Mike Trout. Pujols is going to take you to the cleaners on the next at-bat. I said it as soon as Texas pitched wide to Trouty, and then boom, the Pujols walk off. It was almost like clockwork.

At LAT, "Albert Pujols punches first winning ticket for Angels in bottom of ninth."

Angels get first win of season when Albert Pujols delivers walk-off hit against Rangers https://t.co/KPhQets7Zl

— L.A. Times Sports (@latimessports) April 8, 2016

The Rangers intentionally walk Mike Trout to load the bases and face Albert Pujols, and Pujols delivers walk-off hit. The Angels win, 4-3.

— Pedro Moura (@pedromoura) April 8, 2016

“I got close to 2,000 RBIs for a reason,” Albert Pujols said. “I know how to stay focused in those situations.”

— Pedro Moura (@pedromoura) April 8, 2016

Bill Clinton Confronts Black Lives Matter Protesters in Philadelphia (VIDEO)

This is actually a kind of "just wow" moment.

At the Weekly Standard, "Bill Clinton: ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protesters Are Defending Murders and Drug Dealers" (via Memeorandum).

Michelle Goldberg isn't pleased, heh, "Fire Bill Clinton" (at Memeorandum):

I wonder if there’s a part of Bill Clinton that doesn't really want Hillary Clinton to become president, particularly if she has to distance herself from his legacy to do so. How else to explain why one of the world’s most talented and agile politicians is so consistently flat-footed and destructive when advocating on his wife’s behalf? How else to explain his terrible and destined-to-be-viral confrontation Thursday with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia?

More.

Get Ready for Mother's Day

At Amazon's Mother's Day Shop.

BONUS: From Alison Wolf, The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World.

Greg Louganis and Janet Evans Will Be Featured on Wheaties Boxes Ahead of 2016 Olympics

It's weird how you arrive at things sometimes on the Internet.

The Angels game tonight's on Fox Sports 1 rather than Fox Sports West. Since I love my broadcasters, Victor Rojas and Mark Gubicza, on FSW, I googled around to see if there was a schedule of non-FSW games for the season. I started reading at the first click, however, at the Sporting News, "Angels broadcast thrives with Victor Rojas' attention to detail." And featured at that story was Janet Evans, who Rojas had up in the box to talk about the LA84 Foundation, a youth sports foundation to which Evans joined to promote the group's 2013 summer swim program.

So, not remembering what year Evans first won Olympic gold, I googled further, now to find out that Wheaties just announced that she'd be on the cereal boxes ahead of this summer's Olympics in Rio. What a trip. She's such an all American girl. Frankly, though, it's Louganis who I remember more from 1988, for his miraculous gold medal in Seoul, after hitting his head during the 3-meter springboard preliminaries.

In any case, see the Los Angeles Times, "Olympians Greg Louganis and Janet Evans finally make the Wheaties box."

Welcome four-time gold medalist and world record breaker @janetevans to the Orange Box Club. #WheatiesLegends pic.twitter.com/g6KsusTLy6

— Wheaties (@wheaties) April 5, 2016

ICYMI, Andrea Tantaros, Tied Up in Knots

You can see Ms. Tantaros weekday mornings at 9:00am on the West Coast (12:00pm in D.C. and New York), on "Outnumbered."

She so smart!

Check out her book, Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable.

Sabine Jemeljanova for Page 3

Well, Sun News hasn't caved to the feminist totalitarians just yet --- thank goodness!

Via Alison Webster on Twitter:

Sublime @you_kiki on www. https://t.co/pC7b8gi7l5 today hmu @charlietoons pic.twitter.com/9VdS9XssEr

— Alison Webster (@alisonvwebster) April 8, 2016

9-Year-Old Reporter Hilde Lysiak Breaks Crime News, Sparks Backlash on Parenting

I don't see what the problem is. We push kids so hard in school, with high school algebra and what not pushed down to K-6, and now folks are upset by a precocious kid who likes to cover the news?

More power to this kid and her mom, who were on "GMA" yesterday.



And see the Washington Post, "9-year-old reporter breaks crime news, posts videos, fires back at critics."

Jackie Johnson's Wet Weather Forecast

Just mild sprinkles in Irvine, but San Diego apparently got some pretty good rain today.

Garth Kemp Does the Weather with Supermodel Coco Rocha

It's pretty good.



More, "Supermodel Coco Rocha Talks About Her New Clothing Line."

She's on Twitter as well.

Today Only: LG 49-Inch 1080p Smart LED TV [BUMPED]

At Amazon, a major buy, LG Electronics 49LF6300 49-Inch 1080p Smart LED TV (2015 Model).

Saving $550.00 on that television, heh.

Spring Event - Organize the Office

At Amazon, Shop - Organize the Office.

Plus, Shop Fashion - Can't Miss Savings on Spring Styles.

Also, save today only, Diamondback Bicycles 2014 Mini Viper Kid's BMX Bike (16-Inch Wheels), One Size, Blue (and other selections).

More, from Dave Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.

And from Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching As a Subversive Activity.

BONUS: Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics.

The Left Seeks End of Sex-Segregation Everywhere

From Laurie Higgins, at the Illinois Family Institute:

The Left Seeks End of Sex-Segregation Everywhere: https://t.co/KsskfEGXKa #Leftism #LGBTyranny #Privacy #Modesty #tcot #MediaWatch

— IL Family Institute (@ProFamilyIFI) April 7, 2016

A funny thing happened on the way to the following article getting published. After two pieces appeared in the Chicago Tribune mocking and maligning those who believe sex differences matter, I submitted an op-ed in which I express an opposing view. The associate editor of the Chicago Tribune’s Commentary section, Marcia Lythcott sent me this response:

I would love you to offer up an opposing viewpoint but you have submitted a rant. There is no way that this piece would make those on the fence say “Hmmm, that a really interesting viewpoint to consider.” I feel like you are jabbing the opposition in the eyes nonstop. Is it possible for you to do a rewrite, one that is less doctrinaire and reader-friendly? The point is to have as many readers as possible read a piece to the bitter end. I fear that many will stop reading your submission by the third paragraph. No one wants to be screamed at.

Readers can make their own judgments about the professionalism and accuracy of Lythcott’s eye-jabbing response, but before doing so, please take a few minutes to read the two pieces that prompted my op-ed, one by Rex Huppke and one by Mary Sanchez. See if their articles are less eye-jabbing, doctrinaire, ranting, and screaming than mine.

“The Left Seeks End of Sex-Segregation Everywhere”
Written by Laurie Higgins — First published on American Thinker

North Carolina’s attorney general recently announced that he would not fulfill his duty to defend a duly enacted law one of the purposes of which was to preserve the right of communities to require that restrooms correspond to biological sex rather than “gender identity.” Progressives are incensed by this type of legislation, which is proposed by conservatives in response to leftist actions in the service of their subversive beliefs about gender dysphoria. Progressives want any persons who wish they were the opposite sex to have unrestricted access to opposite-sex private areas, including restrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms and single-sex shelters. In the brave new progressive world, beliefs about the meaningfulness of objective, immutable physical embodiment as male or female must be subordinated to desires to be the opposite sex.

The left seeks to prohibit “discrimination” based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” in all contexts, including those areas that were created for the sole purpose of recognizing and accommodating objective, immutable sex differences. The prohibition of discrimination based on sex and the prohibition of discrimination based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” with regard to facilities in which private activities take place are wholly incompatible. The former permits society in some contexts to accommodate sex differences. The latter forbids society in any context from accommodating real, objective, immutable differences between men and women.

Some progressives dishonestly claim that conservatives are “obsessed” with so-called “bathroom bills,” when in reality it’s gender-dysphoric activists and their ideological allies who are obsessed with radically altering the cultural understanding of sex. They seek to mandate that sex-separated facilities, like restrooms, for private activities no longer correspond to the biological sex of humans but to the subjective feelings of humans about their sex.

Progressives ignore substantive conservative arguments. They recast arguments about the nature and meaning of sexual differentiation as bigotry; flippantly mock potential risks, particularly for girls and women; and wholly ignore the near universal understanding that separate facilities for men and women to engage in private activities exist because objective bodily differences exist and have meaning.

The concern of conservatives is not centrally about gender-dysphoric men assaulting women or girls — though that risk is not nil. The safety concern is, rather, that predators may exploit these policies, pretending to be gender-dysphoric in order to access women’s private facilities.

But even this is not the central concern. The central concern is with the meaning and value of physical embodiment from which feelings of modesty and desires for privacy derive.

In order to justify the injustice and irrationality of policies that force women and men to share private areas with persons of the opposite sex, the left resorts to unsound comparisons of gender dysphoria per se to race per se. Their error rests in the fact that while there are no intrinsic and meaningful differences between people of different races, there are intrinsic, substantive and meaningful differences between males and females, which both those who experience gender dysphoria and those who experience same-sex attraction implicitly acknowledge.

Here are some questions for progressives...

More.

Mia Kang Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Video 2016

Following-up from yesterday, "'Would You Rather: NYC Edition' with Mia Kang (VIDEO)."

A lovely lady.

Kim R. Holmes: How Liberals Lost Their Way (VIDEO)

Kim R. Holmes is a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and his book's out on April 12th. I'm really looking forward to it.

At Amazon, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Kim R. Holmes surveys the state of liberalism in America today and finds that it is becoming its opposite—illiberalism—abandoning the precepts of open-mindedness and respect for individual rights, liberties, and the rule of law upon which the country was founded, and becoming instead an intolerant, rigidly dogmatic ideology that abhors dissent and stifles free speech. Tracing the new illiberalism historically to the radical Enlightenment, a movement that rejected the classic liberal ideas of the moderate Enlightenment that were prominent in the American Founding, Holmes argues that today’s liberalism has forsaken its American roots, incorporating instead the authoritarian, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist prejudices of the radical and largely European Left. The result is a closing of the American liberal mind...

More.

Outrageous! Federal Judge Rules That Christian Cross Has No Place on Los Angeles County Seal

This is ridiculous, a total outrage.

Frankly, the teeny-tiny crosses are almost unnoticeable at the original county seal.

Leftists are once again working to drive even the slightest mention of our religious history from public recognition, and the public memory.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Christian cross has no place on L.A. County seal, judge rules":

In a long-awaited ruling, a federal judge has sided with plaintiffs who argued it was unconstitutional for Los Angeles County supervisors to place a Christian cross on the county seal.

A divided Board of Supervisors voted in 2014 to reinstate the cross on top of a depiction of the San Gabriel Mission, which appears on the seal among other symbols of county history. They were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and a group of religious leaders and scholars, who said placement of the cross on the seal unconstitutionally favored Christianity over other religions.

A decade earlier, the county had removed a cross from the seal — this one shown floating above the Hollywood Bowl — after being threatened with a similar lawsuit. The proponents of reinstating the cross on the seal argued it was needed to make the image of the mission historically and architecturally accurate. When the seal was redesigned in 2004, there was no cross on top of the mission, as it had gone missing during earthquake retrofitting. The cross was later restored atop the building...

Keep reading.

Hateful Anti-Israel Protesters Disrupt Jerusalem Mayor's Speech at San Francisco State University (VIDEO)

Hat-Tip: Legal Insurrection, "San Francisco State: Yet another shout down of Israeli speaker":

We have been documenting a clear shift in tactics by anti-Israel campus activists, led by Students for Justice in Palestine joined by other groups.

The shift is towards disruption of Israeli and pro-Israeli speakers on campus in order to create a hostile campus environment. We have reported on several such recent disruptions, including at UC-Davis, University of Chicago, University of Minnesota Law School, UT-Austin, Kings College (London), U. Windsor, University of South Florida, and anLGBTQ Shabbat Event in Chicago. Even events that are not disrupted are protested, such as the appearance of actor Michael Douglas and human rights hero Natan Sharansky at Brown University.

It happened again yesterday at San Francisco State University, where anti-Israel activists have co-opted student protests over proposed budget cuts. International Business Times reports...

Keep reading (additional video there as well).

They should be prosecuted, like UCI's "Irvine Eleven" back in 2011.

Lindsey Pelas, Stunning Former Playboy Model and Instagram Star, Hits Back at 'Slut-Shamers' (VIDEO)

She's a cool chick.

Previous Lindsey Pelas blogging, "Stunning Blonde Lindsey Pelas Lights Your 4th of July Barbecue," and "Lindsey Pelas Hilarious Bikini Blooper Video at Playboy."

Now at London's Daily Mail, "'It makes me feel good to take a cute picture of myself!' Former Playboy model who often strips down to her lingerie (or nothing at all) on Instagram hits back at 'slut-shamers'."

And watch, "Lindsey Pelas Responds to Slut Shamers."

BONUS: "Lindsey Pelas: Playboy's Amateur Girls (VIDEO)."

Deal of the Day: Up to 84% Off Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software

At Amazon, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13.0, English.

More, Save on Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software.

Also, from Glenn Reynolds, The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It.

And from Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.

Plus, from Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.

BONUS: Robert Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.

Bernie Sanders Says Hillary Clinton 'Not Qualified' to Be President (VIDEO)

Heh.

You gotta love this campaign.

Via CNN: