Covid Shrinks the Labor Market, Pushing Out Women and Baby Boomers

At WSJ, "Nearly four million Americans have stopped working or looking for jobs":

Unlike previous recessions, this one is making it especially difficult for parents, women in particular, to work because of school closures and the loss of child care. https://t.co/tMz82YGdnX

— Catherine Lucey (@catherine_lucey) December 3, 2020

Since spring lockdowns were lifted, the demand for workers has snapped back faster than many economists expected. Between April and October the unemployment rate fell by more than half, to 6.9%, undoing more than two-thirds of its initial rise.

But unemployment data overstates the health of the labor market because the supply of people either working or looking for a job has declined. The U.S. labor force is 2.2% smaller than in February, a loss of 3.7 million workers.

The labor-force participation rate, or the share of Americans 16 years and over working or seeking work, was 61.7% in October, down from 63.4% in February. Though up from April’s trough, that is near its lowest since the 1970s, when far fewer women were in the workforce.

The supply of workers and their productivity are the building blocks of economic growth. A smaller labor force leaves fewer workers to build machines and clean tables, restraining the economy’s long-term prospects.

“If we don’t get all the workers back, we can never have a V-shaped recovery,” said Betsey Stevenson, economics professor at the University of Michigan, referring to a quick and sustained bounce-back after a sharp decline. “Everybody should be worried about making sure that we don’t leave workers behind,” she said.

>Many economists say it’s too soon to conclude this year’s decline in participation is permanent. They note labor-force participation usually falls in recessions. The lack of good-paying job opportunities prompt many of the unemployed to give up the job search, return to school or simply retire earlier than they had planned. When labor markets tighten, rising wages and better hours pull people back into the workforce. Heading into the pandemic, labor force participation rates had improved; unemployment fell to 50-year lows and wages rose during the last economic expansion.

Many who have left the labor force had worked in low-wage sectors like retail, hospitality and personal care services disproportionately hit by the pandemic. Once the virus is contained, many of those jobs and workers may return, boosting participation.

Just a third of the increase in the number of people sidelined from the labor force since February 2020 say they still want a job but are not now looking, according to the Labor Department.

>Older workers who leave the labor force for good might mean employers turn to hiring more younger workers at lower wages when the economy recovers more broadly. But that’s not the same thing as the creation of new jobs, which is the engine of economic growth.

Some economists say the extent to which participation revives depends on how swiftly demand rebounds. Joel Prakken, chief U.S. economist at IHS Markit, believes that the combination of falling unemployment and the reversal of virus-related economic effects will gradually restore participation to pre-pandemic levels.

The economy has already recovered faster than many predicted in the spring, and advances in vaccine development suggest the potential for a strong recovery as the health threat ebbs.

New applications for unemployment benefits declined last week, a sign layoffs are easing but remain high. U.S. services businesses, a key driver of economic growth, gained ground for the sixth straight month in November, adding to signs of a continued recovery.

Nonetheless, some economists see three reasons the pandemic’s depressing effect on the labor force could linger. First, it appears to have sped up some baby boomers’ decision to retire, shrinking the number of productive workers in the economy prematurely. Second, it is forcing some parents of young children, in particular women, to reduce their hours or stop working altogether, which could make a comeback harder. Third, it is falling particularly heavily on workers with less education and skills. These workers often struggle to find well-paying work and many drop out of the workforce.

Participation fell sharply after the 2007-09 recession and never fully recovered. This partly reflected demographics as the first baby boomers qualified for Social Security in 2008. The recession damped participation of “prime-age” workers, those 25 to 54, which didn’t return to 2007 levels until 2019, when the labor market was strong. Lower participation reduced average annual economic growth by 0.6 percentage point from 2009 to 2017, according to S&P Global.

This recession appears to be speeding up retirements. In the third quarter of this year, about 3.2 million more baby boomers said they were out of the labor force due to retirement than in the same period a year earlier, according to Pew Research. From 2011 through 2019, the number of retired baby boomers rose at a rate of about two million annually.

Labor-force participation among workers aged 55 and over logged in at 38.7% in October, down from 40.3% in February.

“It’s always harder for older workers to find jobs when they’re pushed out,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, labor economist at the New School in New York City.

That’s especially true for older workers who entered the pandemic already in a vulnerable position. At the start of the year, Karen Naranjo, age 65, was unemployed, networking at charity events while preparing to look for a job at a nonprofit serving homeless or at-risk youth that used her project-management skills. But then the pandemic upended her plans.

I'm Interviewed at the 'Viking'

It's the school newspaper. I'm not linking, But they were fair. And I must have been particularly loquacious. 

Two political science professors at Long Beach City College provided their insight into the presidential election.

Since the country has received the news that previous vice president, Joe Biden, would become the 46th president of the United States, the country has been hit with many questions, some being about voter fraud and what to expect in the upcoming weeks.

“Trump and his campaign will continue to challenge the election, in public opinion and in the courts. Trump’s supporters claim this was a ‘stolen election,’ but so far, there’s been little hard proof (of massive fraud in particular, at least from what I’ve seen),” said political science professor, Donald Douglas, who has been teaching at Long Beach City College since 2000.

Douglas shared more of his insight to what is currently happening in the country.

“The problem, of course, is that everybody’s going to view the whole thing from their own partisan perspective. Trump and his supporters say he was robbed. Democrats say Biden is the president-elect. It all seems like a blur. Mostly, we’ll have to let the legal process play out. Trump’s campaign has filed at least 16 lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It doesn’t look like things are going all that well so far, but it’s complicated,” said Douglas.

Douglas shared information on the requirements every state has for the election.

“The 50 states are required to submit their final election certifications to Congress by December 14th, when members of the Electoral College are set to meet. If Trump’s legal challenges go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the final winner of the majority of the Electoral College vote is disputed, a decision will come before December 14th. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore on December 12th, stopping the recount in Florida, leaving Bush ahead in the state and delivering Florida’s electors to Bush, and victory in the Electoral College,” he said.

A possible Supreme Court case in the future leaves some uncertainty on who will take office on January 20.

Douglas discussed the different possibilities that could take place.

“There won’t be a temporary vacancy of the office of presidency. Trump will absolutely serve out his term until January 20th, and most likely Joe Biden will be sworn in. It’s complicated, but if there was a tie in the Electoral College, or if Congress refused to accept the certification of elections from a state or a number of states, Congress would have to vote to choose the winner, and the vote is by state delegations.”

Matthew Atkinson, a political science professor at Long Beach City College since 2016, also had more insight on this possibility.

“The rules are very specific, I don’t think that there are any states where the election is so close that the courts are going to throw the electors into limbo,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s any possibility that these recounts or lawsuits would change any of the outcomes. I think Biden has by now had more than enough votes to lose one of the states that contested. I don’t think he’ll lose any of them but even if he did, he still has enough Electoral College votes in,” said Atkinson.

Despite the uncertainty still on who will be sworn into office this upcoming January, it was a tight race throughout the entire election. Joe Biden won with 306 electoral college votes, and President Donald Trump with 232 electoral college votes.

Why was this election so close?

“Overall turnout was 66 percent of eligible voters, the highest turnout since 1900. Quite simply, more people voted. And Trump increased his numbers from 2016. The movement to “Keep America Great” is here to stay. It’s going to be a powerful and enduring factor of American politics for a long time, long after Trump’s retired from the scene. Democrats are worried, and rightly so. They lost seats in Congress. They failed to win back the majority in the Senate, and the two Georgia runoff elections to the Senate are a long shot for the party. And Democrats failed to win back the majority in any state legislature. Except for the presidential race, it was a bad night for Democrats and the left,” said Douglas.

This election had the highest voter turnout compared to every past election.

Atkinson said, “Through most of the late 20th century, voters didn’t really feel like that there was much at stake in the election and they certainly didn’t feel like there was an option for them that was important or exciting for a lot of Democratic voters.”

“It’s the top down mobilizing effect where it’s the parties and the politicians investing the resources and getting people to turn out to vote because that’s essential, and then there’s the bottom up people all of a sudden waking up and saying, oh wow, this is really important and start talking about it,” said Atkinson.

“If people sustain this level of voting, it would be really good for democracy, because it is good for Democratic representation,” said Atkinson.

“A lot can happen, but should gridlock reign in Washington, it’s going to be rough for the party in the 2022 midterms, with a strong possibility of Republicans retaking majority control of that chamber two years before the 2024 election,” said Douglas.

Jonathan Church, Reinventing Racism

At Amazon, Jonathan Church, Reinventing Racism: Why “White Fragility” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Racial Inequality.

A Plea for a Humanist Antiracism

 At Areo:

If the astounding fact that Donald Trump received a greater share of non-white people’s votes in 2020 than any Republican president since 1960 reveals anything at all, it’s that this past summer’s racial reckoning didn’t resonate with many. In contrast to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, which found expression in historic legislation, the results of this year’s cultural upheavals have been more symbolic than substantive. Statues were toppled—not just of confederates but of abolitionists and national founders; defund the police became the impromptu battle cry of progressive activists; dissenters like James Bennett, David Shor, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan were fired from or pressured to leave their jobs for refusing to acquiesce. But, despite the fact that major corporations from Walmart to Goldman Sachs, along with almost every major media outlet, celebrity and cultural institution came out in full support of Black Lives Matter, conspicuously few national policies advocating structural reforms in policing have emerged as a result. 

A sharp uptick in violent crime and homicides was the predictable outcome of the widespread anti-police sentiment galvanized by Black Lives Matter. Rioting caused billions of dollars in property damage in largely minority neighborhoods and dozens of lives were lost. It would be a terrible irony if a movement ostensibly dedicated to preserving black lives inadvertently cost more of them than it saved. 

Trump’s gains among non-white, women and LGBTQ voters (and his setbacks among white male voters) have not stopped some progressives from blaming the unprecedented turnout of support for him on white supremacy, patriarchy and racism. Charles Blow, for example, has commented, “All of this to me points to the power of the white patriarchy and the coattail it has of those who depend on it or aspire to it … Some people who have historically been oppressed will stand with the oppressors, and will aspire to power by proximity.” Likewise Roxane Gay has asserted, “The way this election has played out shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention or if you understand racism and how systemic it really is.” Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted that the Latino vote for Trump can be attributed to the whiteness of certain Hispanic ethnic groups. But the much more parsimonious answer is that demography is not destiny. 

This is an ideology incapable of adapting to new information. Modern, race-conscious antiracism is not just a political affiliation, like libertarianism or democratic socialism. The sense of meaning it provides in our increasingly secular society has turned it into a quasi-religious belief system that grow stronger in the face of disconfirmatory information. If our political identity is our primary source of morality, any challenge to our political worldview will be perceived as an existential threat. In modern anti-racism, resistance to reality is more of a feature than a bug. 

The misplaced assumption that racism killed George Floyd virtually guaranteed a disproportionate and jumbled response. The ostensible concerns of BLM—racial profiling in policing and the lack of accountability and transparency among officers—are laudable and well substantiated. But it was no coincidence that race and racism, rather than structural policing issues, quickly became the main issue. 

Police killings of unarmed people of any race are exceedingly rare in the US (there were only about 55 last year). The group most targeted by police are the poor. Interracial violence is extremely uncommon and black police officers may be just as likely to kill black suspects as white officers. White people are regularly killed by police and in higher absolute numbers than black people. The death of a white man called Tony Timpa, who was killed in nearly identical circumstances to Floyd’s attracted little interest. The discomfiting reality is that racial gaps in policing start to close when we account for differences in crime rates and frequency of encounters with police. Any honest conversation about policing must also take into account the around 400 million guns circulating in the population along with America’s disproportionate rates of violent crime in relation to our peer countries. Around 81% of black Americans want as much or more policing in their communities as they currently have. All these facts have been ignored and treated as extraneous, at best. Those who raised them are often viewed with suspicion. Questioning whether racism really killed George Floyd opens one up to the charge of being a racist oneself. To be against Black Lives Matter is framed as being against black lives. To be against the current form antiracism has taken is framed as being in favor of racism. This discourages honest conversation. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. If the advocates of anti-racism could address its two major blind spots—historical determinism and race essentialism—a better version would emerge. We can mitigate the lingering effects of racism in society without resorting to the same moral logic that gave rise to white supremacy in the first place: the use of group identity as a means to power and absolution. Any successful antiracist movement must begin with the premise that race is a fiction

...Still more.

Hot Girls Wednesday

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

⏩ IG: ( luna.benna ) pic.twitter.com/zMNacdD1e5

— HottieYeep (@HottieYeep) November 26, 2020

╭═➤ ✰ ✯ IG: raphabonas ✯ ✰
🇲╔══╗⋆∘･ﾟﾟ･･:⋆∘∵⋰◦⋆∘
🇺║═╦╩╦╗╔╗╔═╦╦╦╗
🇸║╔╣╬║╚╣╚╣╬║║║║
🇹╚╝╚═╩═╩═╩═╩══╝
╰═➤⏩ @HotGirlsZ0ne @BadBab3s ⏪ pic.twitter.com/YbcgGZiD6z

— vagarymodels (@vagarymodels) November 21, 2020

John R. Bruning, Race of Aces

John R. Bruning, Race of Aces: WWII's Elite Airmen and the Epic Battle to Become the Master of the Sky.

Max Hastings, Operation Chastise

Max Hastings, Operation Chastise: The RAF's Most Brilliant Attack of World War II.

When Sharks Turned Up at Their Beach, They Called in Drones

This is pretty cool, at NYT, "A goal of the SharkEye project is to one day produce automated “shark reports” for beachgoers to help them gauge levels of risk."

Statewide Mask Mandate

Fock Newsom. Just fock 'im and his focking French Laundry.

At LAT, "Californians must mask up outside their homes under new expanded mandate."

New expanded bullshit. I wear my mask when I go out. I don't want any hassles, mostly, but I don't like.

I will never go back to teaching if I'm required to wear a mask. That's my line in the sand. 

Top CAP Executive Neera Tanden is Biden's Pick for Director of Management and Budget

Lame. 

She's a lawyer and political consultant by training. She's way out of her league. 

At USA Today, "Live politics updates: Neera Tanden, Biden's pick for budget chief, draws fire from left and right."

And WSJ,"Joe Biden Fills Out His Economic Team: President-elect’s picks include Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget and Cecilia Rouse to chair the Council of Economic Advisers."

BONUS: Glenn Greenwald, "Biden Appointee Neera Tanden Spread the Conspiracy That Russian Hackers Changed Hillary's 2016 Votes to Trump."

Oh Fock China. Just Fock 'Em

Why, oh why, is the Chinese minister's tweet not flagged as "disinformation" by the "woke" Twitter memory-hole apparatchiks? 

You know the answer. Big Tech, Big Pharma, the NBA, they're all in the tank for Beijing and they greedily grab for the potential market of billions and billions of endless consumers. Truth and decency be focking damned. 

At CNN, "Australia demands apology after Chinese official tweets 'falsified image' of soldier threatening child."

And at the Syndey Morning Herald, "China fires back at Morrison, doubles down on war crimes accusation."

So brazen. I'd personally like to kick Chinese diplomat Zhao Lijian right in the teeth.

Australia’s prime minister condemned what he called a fabricated image tweeted by a Chinese official. The post showed an Australian soldier with a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. https://t.co/L1MMIMqXRJ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 30, 2020

Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, &call for holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/GYOaucoL5D

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) November 30, 2020

William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears

At Amazon, William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears : The World of the New Urban Poor.

YouTube Star Jake Paul Smashes Nate Robinson with 'Brutal' Knockout (VIDEO)

Jake Paul should get in the ring with Mike Tyson. That'd be worth it, lol. 

At Sporting News, "Jake Paul vs. Nate Robinson fight results: YouTube star wins with brutal KO."

[That just reminded me: "The Great White Hope"? (Wiki.)]

Short knockout video here.

Biden's Win Hides Dire Warning for Democrats in Rural U.S.

I'm been giddy about this, especially because radical leftists and Democrats (but I repeat myself) have no clue. I've been shouting this from the rooftops to family members and friends since the election. I'm now dead to them, especially my older sister (who calls me "Mr. Republican," which I'm most definitely not, lol) and her friends. 

At the Minneapolis Tribune, "While Democrats powered through cities and suburbs to reclaim the White House, the party slid further behind in huge rural swaths of northern battlegrounds."

'Authority for the Last Days'

Pastor Mike Webb's service this morning, at Foothill Family Church, in Lake Forest, California.

'The Queen's Gambit' Turning Out to Be the Most-Watch Series Netflix Has Ever Shown

I'm trying to cut down on the number of shows I'm streaming --- or else I'll have time for nothing else, man. You can get sucked into non-stop streaming pretty fast when you're facing endless Democrat Party lockdowns. 

I'm watching football today, but maybe I'll sample episode one tonight. 

At AoSHQ, "Saturday Afternoon Chess thread 11-28-2020."

And at the Guardian U.K., "'It's electrifying': chess world hails Queen's Gambit-fuelled boom."

'Cold as Ice'

Live from 1978:

And at the comments:

 

"Lou Graham's voice was simply amazing in his prime. He is right up there with Steven Tyler, Freddie Mercury, et al... Pick your legendary hard rock or metal singer - Cornell, Plant, Rogers, Daltry, Zander, Dickinson, Halford, Hagar. Graham holds his own with any of them. Legend!"

Was That the Goal?

Of course that was the goal. Why even post such journalistic speculation except as a massive gaslighting operation. 

At NYT (FWIW), "Assassination in Iran Could Limit Biden’s Options."

On the Way: More Sweeping Stay-at-Home Order for Los Angeles County

Are you surprised? You're certainly not entertained. 

At LAT, "A more sweeping stay-at-home order is likely if L.A. County can’t slow COVID-19 spike."

I work in Los Angeles County, so this directly affects me, as my college will remain closed, not just because of the county, though it's that, but because of the state government's panic too. Where're all the economic relief payments to families and businesses (already!) devastated by these catastrophic shutdowns? My goodness. 

The 4-Year-Long Campaign Against Trump: Infographic

At Zero Hedge.

Post-George Floyd, Wave of 'Anti-Racist' Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting 'Whiteness'

Colleges too, and big time. 

And as you know, I'll be writing quite a bit about this topic of "anti-racist" teaching indoctrination in the weeks and months to come, but unfortunately, it has to be done. 

At RCP Investigations. 

Also, "The Totalitarian Tendencies of the Woke."

BONUS: At the Other McCain, "The Anti-Anti-Racist Professor."

Belkin 12-Outlet Power Strip Surge Protector

At Amazon, Belkin 12-Outlet Power Strip Surge Protector, Flat Plug, 10ft Cord (4156 Joules), Gray.

BONUS: Honda EU2200i 2200-Watt 120-Volt Super Quiet Portable Inverter Generator.

Staten Island Pub Declares Itself an 'Autonomous Zone' After Cuomo and De Blasio Impose NEW New York Restaurant Lockdown Order

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "IT’S THE WINTER OF LOVE ON STATEN ISLAND: NYC Pub Borrows a Page From Leftists in Lockdown Dispute."

William Julius Wilson, The Bridge over the Racial Divide

At Amazon, William Julius Wilson, The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics.

British Couple Take 9 Hours to Drive from Bournemouth to Kent in Their New 'Fully Electric' Porsche Taycan 4S

It takes carbons to fuel an automobile. Electricity is most effectively generated for industrial-scale use by fossil fuels, especially coal. But coal's out if you're a leftist. These idiots don't understand that wind, solar, and hydro will never provide enough energy to meet current demand, not in Britain, not in the U.S, and certainly not worldwide, where poor countries are still decades if not centuries behind the West in terms of their political-economic (especially industrial and scientific) modernization.

But these are the times in which we live, and we've got mountains to move before we can finally crush the left and save Western civilization. We'll do it. But it takes time. (More about that later.)

In any case, at Dana Pico's Journal 14, "Out of juice: What happens when you can't find a working charging station for your plug in electric vehicle?":

If you have a plug-in electric car, you'd better have a fossil fueled second car if you want to go further than just tooling around town. https://t.co/A6VHIolJU1 British couple takes nine hours to make 130 mile trip because they can't find a working charging station. pic.twitter.com/aANkxEVOo7

— Dana Pico (@Dana19707 on Parler.com) (@Dana_TFSJ) November 29, 2020

BONUS: At London's Daily Mail, "‘Bet they wish they had gas!’ Chaos in California as Tesla drivers are stranded for hours in a half-a-mile-long line to charge their cars on Black Friday: Shanon Stellini was travelling through Kettleman City on November 30 when she stumbled across around 50 of the electric cars waiting in line for a recharge."

Eric Clapton? Just Wow!

Well, it was 1976, for some context. He's a little out of control, obviously. And at a live concert, basically telling immigrants to leave, they're not welcomed? Man, that's harsh. 

But Britain was a shithole country in the 1970s and Labour policies were destroying the very fabric of society. Maybe Clapton's message was actually resonating with people, with his fans. But that was then and this is now. There's no way a performer can get away with saying anything like that nowadays, not even with the context and no matter how true. In fact, you know celebrities are ALWAYS cancelled for exactly the truth they speak on topics the left thought they'd already silenced through their campaigns of intimidation and violence.

See, "Did Eric Clapton really ask foreigners to 'get out'? Truth behind racist remarks amid 'Stand and Deliver' release."

And, this isn't really a new issue. He apologized for his previous comments in 2018, but this is the age of the Twitter rage mob, so no one's safe. Absolutely nobody. 

All the racism wouldn’t fit in one screenshot pic.twitter.com/8xu2hZkt6S

— Deren Ney (@DerenNey) November 27, 2020

Thanksgiving Pardon for Retired United States Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn

Leftists destroyed this man's life as a political vendetta. He was convicted on a "process" crime with no substantial underlying linkage to the allegations of electoral collusion with the Russians. 

Now he's received a presidential pardon, but how does someone rebuild one's life --- a life of patriotism and exemplary national service --- after a diabolical ideological smear campaign like this?

Thank goodness for President Trump. 

Background at NPR, "Trump Pardons Michael Flynn, Who Pleaded Guilty to Lying About Russia Contact, and at NYT (with fear and trepidation, lol), "Trump’s Pardon of Flynn Signals Prospect of a Wave in His Final Weeks in Office." 

And for the analysis, see Grim's Hall, "Michael Flynn Pardoned":

It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2020

In a particularly grueling miscarriage of justice, retired general Michael Flynn had to be pardoned for a crime of which he was innocent. Investigated by the FBI at the behest of President Obama, who decided for some reason that Flynn was a Russian spy, Flynn was cleared of all charges as a result of the investigation. The FBI closed the case. 

He was prosecuted anyway by a politicized Department of Justice, which nevertheless failed to produce the only piece of evidence it allegedly had against him. That evidence would have been the original "302" form showing that the FBI agents who interviewed him thought that he'd lied to them -- about a case in which the FBI had already cleared him. No such 302 was ever produced, allegedly being lost, but we do have one that we happen to know was edited long after the fact by disgraced liar and political agent Peter Strzok. We know this because he discussed it in unencrypted text messages with his lover, also-married disgraced former prosecutor Lisa Page. 

After a financially ruinous prosecution in which the FBI/DOJ produced almost none of the exculpatory evidence that the law requires them to produce -- including the record of the investigation that completely cleared him on all charges -- Flynn's sorry lawyers convinced him to plead guilty. This was done in such a way that the DOJ and his sorry lawyers (perhaps motivated by one of their partners, a former Obama attorney general) made an illegal deal to hide the agreement not to prosecute Flynn's son from the judge! Not only did the judge lack the information he needed to discern whether the guilty plea was coerced, anyone against whom Flynn later might have testified as a result of the deal would have been denied their constitutional right to know of the deal so they could raise it as a defense against the value of his testimony. 

That judge -- a personal friend of Obama's, it turns out -- wasn't upset about the fact that the law firm and the DOJ conspired to hide these facts from him in violation of the law. His ire was for Flynn, whom he accused of selling out his country even though the DOJ had never even attempted to charge Flynn with that. What they charged him with was perjury for "lying" to the FBI (in the vanished 302), and a paperwork violation for which the FBI investigation had already cleared him. 

(They cleared him of the FARA violation because he had in fact filed paperwork with the government under another act, on the advice of lawyers he hired specifically to help him meet the legal reporting requirements -- thus, he had not tried to hide his lobbying work for a NATO ally, and clearly they could not s how criminal intent. DOJ knew all of that and made him plead guilty to it anyway, if he wanted them not to send his son to prison on trumped-up charges too.) 

Then we spent a year while Flynn's new lawyer, Sidney Powell, managed to get all the exculpatory information illegally hidden from him in the first place. None of it convinced the judge one bit to let Flynn withdraw the coerced guilty plea, nor to accept the DOJ's determination that it should probably actually drop those baseless charges after all. Ordered to drop the charges by the DC Court of Appeals in a three-judge ruling, the judge instead sought en banc approval to continue the case. He was granted it, provided he would dispose of the matter with "dispatch." That was now several months ago, and instead of disposing of the case he has been dragging it out towards an obvious intent to sentence Flynn in spite of his innocence. 

What this case shows is how completely distorted our system has become...

Still more.

Lori Laughlin's Daughter Lives It Up at Santa Barbara's Rosewood Miramar Resort While Her Mother Lori Does Time for Admissions Scandal Conviction at Federal Correctional Institution, in Dublin, California

Oh these daughters make my blood boil. 

Sure, these parents are literally imbeciles, especially for the fact that for all they did to get their daughters into an "elite" private university (U.S.C.'s not "elite," but that's another story), their daughters couldn't care less. Olivia Jade even attacked her mom when the scandal broke --- she slammed her for getting arrested, because it ruined her career as a YouTube influencer. The youth generation is the greatest generation of spoiled, no-talent trust-fund brats. This story has always blown me away. 

See, "Lori Loughlin's daughter Isabella Rose Giannulli, 22, relaxes at a luxury Santa Barbara resort as her parents languish in jail for paying $500k in bribes to get her and her sister into USC":

Lori Loughlin's daughter Isabella Rose Giannulli, 22, relaxes at a luxury Santa Barbara resort as her parents languish in jail https://t.co/ob4otPcae3

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) November 27, 2020

Her parents' prison time seemed a distant memory as she relaxed with a dark-haired male companion wearing a dark t-shirt and blue shorts and joked around, appearing to bury her feet in the sand at one point. 

Rooms at the luxury beachside getaway currently start from $806 per night, with many boasting views across the ocean. 

It's a far cry from the current dwellings of her parents who are both serving time in California prisons for their parts in the college admissions scandal. 

Loughlin, 56, started her two-month sentence at FCI Dublin in California on October 30. 

She is said to have been a 'wreck' during her first few weeks behind bars. 

A former inmate turned prison consultant told DailyMail.com this month that the mom-of-two was 'anxious about contracting COVID, is living off a diet of dry cereal and fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, is sharing a cell with three other inmates and is only allowed to shower three times a week.

Still more. 

Saturday Links

Morning everybody. 

All is right in the blog world, as I've gotten an Instatlanche this morning: "WHEN FRENCH INTELLECTUALS THINK THE AMERICAN LEFT HAS GOTTEN TOO CRAZY…"

Linked there, at my piece, is Assistant Village Idiot, who logically should be getting a tertiary Instalanche: "Critical Race Theory."

And at the Other McCain, "In the Mailbox: 11.27.20 (Evening Edition)."

More at Maggie's Farm, "Saturday morning links."

Found there, at Power Line, "MORE EVIDENCE THAT LIBERALS HATE AMERICA."

At AoSHQ, "Thanksgiving ONT."

Proof Positive, "Best of the Web."

At Pirate's Cove, "Clapton, Van Morrison Team Up For Anti-Lockdown Anthem."

Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup.

At Director Blue, "Larwyn’s Linx: Pennsylvania State Legislature Files Resolution to Dispute Statewide 2020 Election Results."

BONUS: At 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Report Claims Fox News Is Blacklisting Guests Who Appear on Newsmax TV..."

David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

At Amazon, David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's Top Nuclear Scientist, Assassinated in 'Brazen' Ambush Outside Tehran (VIDEO)

I love this story. I love all this winning. We've taken out Iran's terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, and now their top doomsday scientist. 

Big story, but no matter where you find it among the MSM outlets, this is a supposed to be a bad thing. Why? It looks good on President Trump and his Middle East policy. It looks good on U.S. strategy of isolating Iran behind a ring of new strategic alliances. And it affirms Israel's role once again as the undisputed hegemon in the region and the linchpin of the American the alliance posture there. I mean, all the recent peace deals, and the breakneck diplomacy? Not bad. Not bad. That is, unless you think the Obama administration's $400 billion quid pro quo pallets of cash was okey-dokey!

It's such a damn shame Biden and his fanatical appeasers are coming back to power. They won't have long though. They won't have time to fuck things up, unless Biden goes all Obama and starts yet another Middle East war. 

At the Times of Israel, "US, world leaders mum on Fakhrizadeh killing; ex-CIA chief calls hit ‘reckless’." And at J.Post, "Iran's Rouhani blames Israel for killing of nuclear scientist.

And FWIW, CBS's Margaret Brennen with last nigh report: 

If You're Tired of Quarantine...

 ... Maybe head out to the (Chinese?) market and do some shopping? With luck you'll bump carts (or private parts?) with an absolutely amazing woman like this, dang! (Via Funky Links.)

'There is a fight to be waged against an intellectual matrix coming from American universities and intersectional theses that want to essentialize communities and identities, at the antipodes of the Republican model, which postulates the equality between human beings, independently of their characteristics of origin, sex, religion. It is the breeding ground for a fragmentation of societies that converges with the Islamic model...'

One hundred French intellectuals have signed a letter backing the recent comments from French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer.  

See the Unz Review, "France: Prominent Academics and Macron Administration Attack American Anti-Racist Ideology as "Anti-White":

100 prominent French academics signed a letter affirming Blanquer’s statement, and calling for the French people to defeat an “American” ideology that preaches hatred of “whites” (a word that, unlike Trump, they explicitly used) and the indigenous Gallo-Romans of France. While the academics and Blanquer primarily blame Saudi-funded Islamist preachers for the death of Samuel Paty, they also believe US influence on their intellectuals has made it socially acceptable to murder white people.  

In an interview with a French journal, Blanquer reiterated this sentiment...

RTWT.

BONUS: Speaking of France and French intellectuals, the Assistant Village Idiot has an explainer: "Critical Race Theory [and Michel Foucault]."

Michigan's Allegations of Massive Vote Fraud [GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION]

At Doug Ross's Director Blue, "INFOGRAPHIC: Michigan's Bombshell Allegations of Rampant Vote Fraud":

Thanks to our magnificent Constitution, the various state legislatures have complete control of the electoral process. Not judges, not unelected bureaucrats, and not the "media" (also see: an infographic on Georgia's provable vote fraud issues). Thanks to Sidney Powell and her team, please note the following, massive vote fraud likely perpetrated in Michigan. 

 Click through for all the links and the complete infographic.

 

Miami Babes Out Boating in November

Live is good.

Get out there and enjoy it.

And I gotta say, lots of folks on social media are urging me to move to Florida, and I'm thinking about it!

Seriously, what beauty!

Woke Trust Fund Millennials 'Work' to Destroy Capitalism

They don't work. They're as privileged as you can be, benefiting from an economic system that's made them (well, their families, really) among the most fortunate people in the world. Remember that. Remember these are the young idle rich. These are the same kinds of young people whom the Bolsheviks murdered in the revolution's obscene orgy of indiscriminate retributory violence ("Anastasia screamed in vain..."). These idiots, rather than be grateful... Rather than work to help those less well-off... Rather than just, say, work for charity and human emancipation through global poverty reduction (and through free markets)... Or, frankly, rather just work --- toil! --- and make their own damn money and mind their own damned business... They're guilt-ridden and mad. 

Remember, it's always the affluent intellectuals who form the "vanguard" of radical movements, waving the red flag at the head of the worldwide proletarian revolution. Che Guevara was trained as a physician. Ho Chi Minh was the son of Confucian scholar and teacher, and after literally traveling the world, he received his political education in Paris, that destitute human hellscape of haute couture, Impressionism, the Guide Michelin, and world-foundational enlightenment philosophy. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Comrade Lenin) actually enjoyed a comfortable petite middle-class status and studied physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University, one of the top technical institutes in Russia at the time. He was expelled for "revolutionary activities." Stalin was the son of Besarion Jughashvili, a shoemaker and successful small-business owner who ultimately cracked under pressure and descended into a long drunken vodka vacation. Son Joseph (Joseph Besarionis dzе Jughashvili a.k.a Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin) was a very promising student who attended the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tbilisi, Georgia, on a generous scholarship. He'd been mentored by Father Christopher Charkviani into the Orthodox priest-pipeline, a promising career path to economic stability (if not wealth and prosperity). Mao Zedong, as a child, was raised in a wealthy family in Hunan Province. He attended the First Normal School of Changsha, one of the best educational institutions in regions --- and he then quickly absorbed himself in all kinds of anti-imperialist revolutionary agitprop, naturally. Béla Kun, the leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, received an education at the "upper class" Silvania Főgimnázium (the Silvania National College), a prestigious bilingual high school in Zalău, Romania. It was Béla Kun who, in 1919, led the fight against counterrevolutionary troop units, crushing the incipient counter-rebellion, which resulted in 1,000s of dead and tortured over a two-year period (1919–1921) known as Hungary's "White Terror."

These people are not the product of the capitalist "lumpenproletariat," that most despised and downtrodden class in all of Marxist-Leninist theory.

And so it goes: For America's sheltered Millennial youth of today, as entitled as they are --- because of racism, sexism, microaggressions, homophobia, transphobia, settler colonialism, genocide of indigenous peoples, the "environment," and (of course) Israel --- the solution is the burn it all down in an apocalyptic ideological war against phantom "oppressors." 

Gird your loins, people. They're coming after you. Sooner or later, they'll have your name and number (listed in the new regime's social media social credit system database, built in collaboration with the recently nationalized ideological-purity industry firms of Silicon Valley, now elevated under the new Biden politburo as the Big Tech Komsomol Thought Crimes Sanitary Correction Unit). Get ready for Kamala's "Truth and Reconciliation Committee." Wealthy Ivy League and elite private college students will be the party's Red Guards in America's 2020 "Cultural Revolution." 

At the Walter Duranty Times, "The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism":

Lately, Sam Jacobs has been having a lot of conversations with his family’s lawyers. He’s trying to gain access to more of his $30 million trust fund. At 25, he’s hit the age when many heirs can blow their money on harebrained businesses or a stable of sports cars. He doesn’t want to do that, but by wealth management standards, his plan is just as bad. He wants to give it all away.

“I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible,” he said.

A socialist since college, Mr. Jacobs sees his family’s “extreme, plutocratic wealth” as both a moral and economic failure. He wants to put his inheritance toward ending capitalism, and by that he means using his money to undo systems that accumulate money for those at the top, and that have played a large role in widening economic and racial inequality.

Millennials will be the recipients of the largest generational shift of assets in American history — the Great Wealth Transfer, as finance types call it. Tens of trillions of dollars are expected to pass between generations in just the next decade.

And that money, like all wealth in the United States, is extremely concentrated in the upper brackets. Mr. Jacobs, whose grandfather was a founder of Qualcomm, expects to receive up to $100 million over the course of his lifetime.

Most of his fellow millennials, however, are receiving a rotten inheritance — debt, dim job prospects and a figment of a social safety net. The youngest of them were 15 in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street drew a line between the have-a-lots and everyone else; the oldest, if they were lucky, were working in a post-recession economy even before the current recession. Class and inequality have been part of the political conversation for most of their adult lives.

In their time, the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor has pushed left-wing politics back into the American political mainstream. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. trailed Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist candidate, by 20 points among millennial voters in this year’s Democratic presidential primary. And over the last six years, millennials have taken the Democratic Socialists of America from a fringe organization with an average member age of 60 to a national force with chapters in every state and a membership of nearly 100,000, most of them under 35.

Mr. Jacobs, as both a trust-fund kid and an anticapitalist, is in a rare position among leftists fighting against economic inequality. But he isn’t alone in trying to figure out, as he put it, “what it means to be with the 99 percent, when you’re the 1 percent.”

Challenging the System

“I was always taught that this is just the way the world is, that my family has wealth while others don’t, and that because of that, I need to give some of it away, but not necessarily question why it was there,” said Rachel Gelman, a 30-year-old in Oakland, Calif., who describes her politics as “anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and abolitionist.”

Her family always gave generously to liberal causes and civil society groups. Ms. Gelman supports groups devoted to ending inequality, including the Movement for Black Lives, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and Critical Resistance, a leading prison abolition group.

“My money is mostly stocks, which means it comes from underpaying and undervaluing working-class people, and that’s impossible to disconnect from the economic legacies of Indigenous genocide and slavery,” Ms. Gelman said. “Once I realized that, I couldn’t imagine doing anything with my wealth besides redistribute it to these communities.”

According to the consulting firm Accenture, the Silent Generation and baby boomers will gift their heirs up to $30 trillion by 2030, and up to $75 trillion by 2060. These fortunes began to amass decades ago — in some cases centuries. But the concentration of wealth became stratospheric starting in the 1970s, when neoliberalism became the financial sector’s guiding economic philosophy and companies began to obsessively pursue higher returns for shareholders.

“The wealth millennials are inheriting came from a mammoth redistribution away from the working masses, creating a super-rich tiny minority at the expense of a fleeting American dream that is now out of reach to most people,” said Richard D. Wolff, a Marxist and an emeritus economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has published 12 books about class and inequality.

He said he has been professionally arguing against capitalism’s selling points since his teaching career began, in 1967, but that his millennial students “are more open to hearing that message than their parents ever were.”

Heirs whose wealth has come from a specific source sometimes use that history to guide their giving. Pierce Delahunt, a 32-year-old “socialist, anarchist, Marxist, communist or all of the above,” has a trust fund that was financed by their former stepfather’s outlet mall empire. (Mx. Delahunt takes nongendered pronouns.)

“When I think about outlet malls, I think about intersectional oppression,” Mx. Delahunt said. There’s the originally Indigenous land each mall was built on, plus the low wages paid to retail and food service workers, who are disproportionately people of color, and the carbon emissions of manufacturing and transporting the goods. With that on their mind, Mx. Delahunt gives away $10,000 a month, divided between 50 small organizations, most of which have an anticapitalist mission and in some way tackle the externalities of discount shopping.

If money is power, then true wealth redistribution also means redistributing authority. Margi Dashevsky, who is 33 and lives in Alaska, gets guidance on her charitable giving from an advisory team of three women activists from Indigenous and Black power movements. “The happenstance of me being born into this wealth doesn’t mean I’m somehow omniscient about how it should be used,” she said. “It actually gives me a lot of blind spots.”

She also donates to social justice funds like Third Wave Fund, where grant-making is guided by the communities receiving funding, instead of being decided by a board of wealthy individuals. The latter sort of nonprofit, Ms. Dashevsky said, “comes from a place of assuming incompetence, putting up all these hurdles for activists and wasting their time on things like impact reporting. I want to flip that on its head by stepping back, trusting and listening.”

Of course, an individual act of wealth redistribution does not, on its own, change a system. But these heirs see themselves as part of a bigger shift, and are dedicated to funding its momentum.

 Still more.

Rhian Sugden Bodacious 2021 Calendar (PHOTOS)

 At the Sun U.K., "Rhian Sugden shows off her famous curves in sizzling snap from her 2021 calendar."

"'Oh My Heavens' This is Joe Biden's Thanksgiving Day message. He has no idea what the Psalms are. He calls them the 'Palmists' and then looks confused..."

"Oh God" is right. 

Cringeworthy. 

At Althouse, "The LORD is my Teleprompter and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me... except when He doesn't help me... and I'm sure He has His reasons...."

Glenn Greenwald: Nothing Trump Did Compares to the 'Moral Evil' of Bush’s and Obama's Wars (VIDEO)

I've been watching a lot of long podcasts, YouTube interviews, and Bloggingheads t.v. 

So much great, great stuff out there. Except for football, and streaming shows late at night, I haven't been watching ANY mainstream news programming, and I watch pretty much everything. I'm just sick of it right now. 

But Gleen Greenwald's an island of reason in a sea of mental illness. 

Here's the interview, via Instapundit, "ONE OF THE FEW LEFTIES WHO’LL GIVE TRUMP CREDIT FOR HIS RECORD OF PEACE: Glenn Greenwald: Nothing Trump Did Compares to the ‘Moral Evil’ of Bush’s and Obama’s Wars."

Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx

At Amazon, Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration.

Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies

Rod Dreher, at Amazon, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.

Shop Warehouse Deals

At Amazon, Amazon Warehouse: Great deals on quality used products -- Shop millions of pre-owned, used, and open box items including: used computers and tablets, used home and kitchen, used digital cameras, used Amazon devices, used unlocked cell phones and used TVs.

Mario Puzo's 'The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone' (Trailer)

At Variety, "Diane Keaton: Watching Recut ‘Godfather: Part III’ Was ‘One of the Best Moments of My Life’" (via Ed Driscoll, at Intapundit):

 

It was a call that took Diane Keaton by surprise.

Three decades after “Godfather Part III” opened to middling reviews and box office grosses, Francis Ford Coppola returned to the editing bay to tinker with a film that was largely dismissed as a disappointment. Coppola shuffled scenes around, changed music cues, and affixed a new beginning and ending to the three hour epic, now rechristened “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” Now, he was inviting Keaton, along with co-stars Al Pacino, Talia Shire, and George Hamilton to see the finished product at a private screening on the Paramount lot.

“It was one of the best moments of my life to watch it,” says Keaton. “To me it was a dream come true. I saw the movie in a completely different light. When I saw it way back, it was like ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ It didn’t seem to do that well and the reviews weren’t great. But Francis restructured the beginning and the end and man, I’m telling you it worked.”

It wasn’t just critics and audiences who were cool to “The Godfather Part III” when it opened in 1990. Keaton was one of the people who found the initial film lacking.

“I don’t know why people didn’t appreciate it, but I was one of them,” she admits. “What was wrong with me? Why didn’t I like this before? But I didn’t. I kind of just dismissed it and thought, ‘oh well.'”

She’s convinced that Coppola’s re-edit will make people reconsider the film, as well as one of its most maligned elements, Sofia Coppola’s performance as Michael Corleone’s daughter, Mary. The knives were out for Sofia Coppola when the movie premiered. She had barely any acting experience when she stepped in for an ailing Winona Ryder just prior to shooting, and reviewers excoriated her performance, calling it flat, amateurish and unconvincing.

“That’s not going to happen anymore,” Keaton says, arguing the new edit gives Sofia Coppola’s performance more of a chance to shine. “She’s what a daughter would be like if you had this guy as your dad, the head of a criminal organization. She was not so sure of herself and is kind of quiet. Kind of haunted. I thought she was fantastic.”

Keaton said re-watching the film reminded her of the fun she had during its production.

“It took me back,” says Keaton “At that time, I was kind of with Al. I really liked [co-star] Andy Garcia. We were shooting in Italy. It was a special time.”

The actress was even able to put aside her long-standing aversion to watching herself on screen...

Still more.

How to Be an Anti-Antiracist

I have agreed to participate in a "How to Be an Anti-Racist Book Discussion" on my campus (an event based on the currently "all-the-rage" book by Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist).

Here are the discussion points for the participants for the book discussion, which is to be held on Zoom: 

* What did you learn from the book that will help set you on a path to be an antiracist educator?

* In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi shares his own experience with racist thinking. How does his honesty help give us space to acknowledge and name our own racist behaviors and attitudes?

* Kendi writes, “The only way to undo racism is to constantly identify it and describe it—and then dismantle it.” Why does he believe we need to call out racism when we see it, even if it can be uncomfortable to identify?

* The book’s central message is that the opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” The true opposite of “racist” is antiracist. “The good news,” Kendi writes, “is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next.” What does it mean to have to constantly reaffirm your identity as an antiracist? Is there any benefit to the fact that you can’t just decide you are “not racist” or an antiracist and be done with it?

* What is the first step you, personally, will take in striving to be an antiracist? How will you check yourself and hold yourself accountable if you notice you, or someone else, is being racist?

* Anyone who values immigrants from European countries and devalues immigrants from Latin America is guilty of racism. Have you ever been guilty of this type of racism? Discuss the unique resilience and resourcefulness people possess if they leave everything in their native country behind and immigrate to another, as Kendi examines in the chapter on Ethnicity.

* Identify two practices at the course level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.

* Identify two practices at the department level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.

* Identify two practices at the institutional level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.

* Why do you think it is so hard for people to not assess other cultures from their own cultural standards? How does doing this trap people in racist ideas?

And I gotta say it: Don't get mad a me, bro. 

I know there's a huge push on the right to actually shut down thinking, and, in a few cases, to actually completely embrace and evangelize the most wild claims and conspiracies against the radical left and the Democrats (but I repeat myself). At some point, you have to draw a line on how far you'll go to demonize and destroy the other side -- and to defend yourself against the other side. I'm a good person. I want to make things better: "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, then dwell on these things" (Philippians 4:8).  

But being good as I am means I will also defend myself. And to the death. And once again, lately, I'm defending myself against a lot of ideological hatred, obsessive leftist anti-conservative and anti-religious bias, and the once-again leftist condescension and hubris on social media that is even stronger than usual when a leftist Democrat "wins" the White House. Back in 2016, Facebook comments and posts I wrote after the election were reported to my college, and the same trolls have come back out of the woodwork this time around, now that I decided to give Facebook another try (for the new era, same as the old era, alas). But nah. Leftist are not driving me off the site this time. I'm sick and tired of their attacks. Defend against the left's hate. Defend against the left's destruction. Defend against the left's lies: "Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said to Him, 'All these things I will give you if you will worship me.' Then Jesus said, "Go, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only'" (Matthew 4:8-10).

The left has abandoned the Lord and is doing the work of Satan. There's no other way, as a Christian, to understand this, and thus we must gather strength in faith and gird for the battles ahead. 

So I'm defending myself. I'm holding the line for truth and facts. I mean, ask yourself: Do leftists say and advocate things that have any basis in factual reality (for example, L.A. County's latest total restaurant lockdown is entirely devoid of any basis in scientific fact)? Nah. But frankly, if I'm going to remain employed at my college, then I've (somewhat) got to go along to get along. I've got to at least be professional and collegiate, and it's hard. Longtime readers will know that I've been fighting a ten-year war against radical leftist harassment, cancelling, and multiple attempts to get me fired. And I've been fighting against a college administration that rarely, if ever, gives me the benefit of the doubt, one that in the past has investigated the most absurd claims by anonymous trolls who tagged me and my college in the same tweets (this was after I got a lot of viral coverage for my on-the-ground reporting of the ANSWER/HAMAS protest against Israel, for example, "Communists, Hamas Solidarity Protesters Demand Israel's Extermination in Los Angeles — #ANSWERLA"). It was me who was investigated. I mean, fuck! Trolls had gotten the home phone number of the vice president of academic affairs at my school. They harassed him. They claimed I was "stalking" Cassandra Fairbanks, the erstwhile militant SoCal leftist who volte-face went all Cernovich or something shortly before Trump was elected. Now she's the doyenne of the Gateway Pundit set in D.C. (Weird, I know.) In any case, I had my administration threatening me to get this trolling "stopped," even though I literally had nothing to do with these completely anonymous randos working their evil to make things bad for me. I KNOW WHAT EVIL LEFTISTS DO. Seriously. I had an attorney at one point, and I now have an accommodation with the college on my "private First Amendment activities," as my human resources department labeled my blogging and tweeting at the time. 

Therefore sometimes I have to just roll my eyes at folks, on either side, who literally can't entertain an idea that contradicts their political ideology and positions. I blame the left most of all. But I see conservatives copying the left when they engage in the exact same kinds of speech suppression campaigns. (Wayne Dupree? C'mon.) It's out of control, and an honest person should and will call it out, from wherever it may come. (And one more time, it comes overwhelming from the left.) 

So, yeah, I'm actually reading Kendi's book, with an open mind, for the college's Zoom book discussion, I'm gonna calling be myself an "anti-antiracist" lol. 

And with that, here's Glenn Loury and John McWhorter at the Bloggingheads video. McWorther name-drops Coleman Hughes, at City Journal, "How to Be an Anti-Intellectual," and Kelefa Sanneh, at the New Yorker, "The Fight to Redefine Racism."

More later.

What's Her Face: 'We're Talking About the Transformation of Humanity Into a Godless Transhumanist Nighmare From an Orwellian Hell' (VIDEO)

I love this lady, lol.

Allie Beth Stuckey, You're Not Enough (And That's Okay)

Allie Beth Stuckey, You're Not Enough (And That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love.

President Trump's Thanksgiving Message (VIDEO)

At the Epoch Times, "Trump Encourages Americans to Gather and Offer Thanks During Thanksgiving."

Bouncy Angela White

Seen on Twitter:

Massive bouncy cleavage! @ANGELAWHITE @Topmodelstv1 #boobs #tits pic.twitter.com/tRm66QUQuf

— Big Breast Pics (@BigBreastPics) November 21, 2020

Belle Delphine: Make Millions Now Before I'm Old and Wrinkled

She's just 21, and she can't keep doing this kind of viral sexual toy thing forever. I mean, just ask (fat) Kelly Brook. 

On Twitter:

Come get my new collectable belle delphine cards, it's like pokemon but there is only one pokemon and it's me and I'm half nakedhttps://t.co/I3rqON8UhA pic.twitter.com/4oHcsXuWvV

— Belle Delphine (@bunnydelphine) October 22, 2020

Bonus: Belle Topless. 

Only Fans Star Jem Wolfie Trolled for Comments on U.S. Election (PHOTO)

Well, for one, she's Australian, and shes shared a photo of herself wearing an American flag bikini, and, as she's apparently a Biden supporter, her Trump-back fans weren't pleased. 

At London's Daily Mail, "'We don't need the concern of an Instagram model in a bikini': OnlyFans star is trolled by Trump supporters after weighing into the US election by saying she is 'praying for change' --- Jem Wolfie shared a photo of herself in an American flag bikini on Thursday. During her post she appeared to favour Joe Biden, angering Trump supporters She claimed post wasn't political and she 'didn't care' about how people voted."

Historian Jason Stanley Attacks Critics of Marxist Angela Davis: You're All 'Intellectual Midgets and Half-Wits' Yelling 'Communism!' [Screaming Into His Pillow, Argghh!!]

Stanley's the bestsellng author of How Propaganda Works and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. I haven't read his work, mainly because I'm constantly reading REAL experts of fascism and Nazi Germany, which is one of my research and teaching specialties in international relations and comparative politics. In short, Jason Stanely doesn't rate except as a bloviating academic nincompoop who's recently made some of the "hawt" progressive book lists and who's been feted endlessly at the New York Times for his conformity to current left-wing trends in illiberalism and ideological projection. 

Gawd these people are idiots. 

I don’t know who needs to hear it, but Angela Davis is one of the most impactful US intellectuals of the last half century. Watching the intellectual midgets and half-wits yell “communism!” at her, as they did at Du Bois, is beyond cringeworthy.

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) November 26, 2020

And I wrote: "Dude, you teach history wtf?!! She literally the ran on the Communist Party U.S.A.’s presidential ticket in 1980 and 1984. She’s in fact exactly a “communist”."

And at the Old Gray Lady, November 20, 1979, "Gus Hall and Angela Davis Lead Communist Party's Ticket for '80."

The papers of Angela Davis, just acquired by Harvard, trace her transformation from an obscure philosophy professor to an icon of the global left https://t.co/YpAetgW11H

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 13, 2018