Education funding

Increased education spending generally isn’t associated with better results. So why do people claim the education is being defunded?

Raz, the warlord of CHAZ, is distributing AR-15's from the trunk of a Tesla.

The woke people are trying to cancel Domino's Pizza for an absolutely stupid reason.

UCLA removed a lecturer for questioning proposal to give black students preferential grading. Now there's a movement to fire the Dean for doing that.

This person has reasonable arguments why the lockdown was a mistake. It also says something about free medical care.

I initially thought this was The Babylon Bee. Snap, Crackle, Pop determined to be racist.

Also not The Bee: the great-great-grandson of Aunt Jemima is angry that she is being taken off the syrup container.

The Washington Post never misses and opportunity to say something bad about Donald Trump but strangely never finds print space to say something good (there are a lot of good things about Trump's presidency if he would just tweet less). Here's an interesting anecdote about his father on Father's Day, from folk singer Woody Guthrie no less.

There is a movement to rename military bases that are named after Confederate soldiers.  This Washington Post editorial has a list of suggested names worthy of the honor.  It  is a little bit politically correct, and calling Ulysses S. Grant the finest officer to ever wear a US Army uniform seems a bit presumptuous.

Here's a report of what it's like inside the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone. It's a lawless mob. People were shot two nights in a row.

How the CDC lost control of the virus.

Frank Fleming is a funny guy. You can see some of his work at The Babylon Bee uncredited. Here's an article on why people write fiction.

The educational establishment is out of touch with reality. That's why we should defund the thought police.

Protestors in Madison Wisconsin tore down a statue of one of their heroes. They also assaulted a state senator.

The Catholic Chaplin at MIT lost his job over an email.  Read the email and see if you can figure out what antagonized the left.

Black Lives Matter is just another part of the Left's Big Lie.

A round-up of reports from the government accountability office, including the fact that the IRS sent $1.4 Billion to dead people.

E-Bay executives arrested

How crazy and/or stupid do you have to be to break federal law to harass a blogger couple for something they wrote about your giant corporate employer? E-Bay executives harass a couple for blogging.

Pretty interesting reading: the history of popcorn. Don't miss the Orville Redenbacher anecdote.

What it's like inside the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle.

Remember Hydroxychloroquine? It was in the news because the FDA removed the authorization for its use for Corona-19. The FDA did it wrong. They never tested it at the right time and with zinc.

Black Lives Matter is upset with one of Biden's choices for VP nominee.  The other choices have problems also.

BLM creates poverty and food deserts wherever they go. They destroy the infrastructure including grocery stores.

Olympia Mayor Cheryl Selby has been a loud supporter of Black Lives Matter, and the related protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department—but she has since changed her tune after her home was vandalized by protesters. 

In the middle of a severe recession, the California state government is doing what it does best: raising taxes. The gas tax is going to 50 cents/gallon; highest in the nation.

A man pushed a 92-year old woman who fell and hit her head on a fire hydrant. He has been arrested 100 times before, but keeps getting out because of bail reform. Watch the video here.

Fauci said that "masks were not necessary" because they were in short supply and he wanted to protect the public health community.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has told contact tracers not to ask Covid-19 infected people if they attended a protest rally. Politics is more important than science.

Magical thinking replaces jurisprudence at the Supreme Court. Gorsuch is legislating.

Was the officer justified in using force at the Wendy's shooting? The law is on his side.

June 17th is the 48th anniversary of the Watergate Break-In, which led to the trope of the hero journalist. Maybe not totally accurate.

Boy Scouts of America says it supports BLM, will require new "diversity and inclusion merit badge" to become Eagle Scout. Give me a break!

Free Speech

There is a spirit of ferocious intellectual intolerance sweeping the country and much of the journalistic establishment with it. Contrary opinions aren’t just wrong but unworthy of discussion. From a NYT editorial arguing that the Times should publish editorials like Tom Cotten's suggesting sending in the troops to halt the riots.

A high school principal advised her students not to loot. A petition is calling for her to resign, but she's hanging on.

This article from the Asia Times puts some perspective on black and white shootings.

There is a programming term "master" and "slave" to refer to the hierarchy of software routines. Github is abandoning them.

Fifty-four scientists have lost their jobs as a result of NIH probe into foreign ties.

Reverend Maupin was a longtime activist protesting police shootings. Police invited him to use of force training. He left with a new perspective.

Clarence Thomas upbraids SCOTUS for 'Prolonging Our Decade-Long Failure to Protect the Second Amendment'.

Victor Davis Hanson with another terrific article about the myth of "White Privilege".

A writer threw away her treasured copy of Gone With the Wind because she is nuts.

It's the season for tearing down statues, not just heroes of the Civil War, but even John Sutter in front of Sutter Memorial Hospital and Mahatma Ghandi in England.

The Democrats are pushing mail-in ballots. Of course they are; there's so much more room for graft.

The murder of George Floyd and the future trial

It will be difficult to get a conviction Six reasons why the prosecution is in trouble. Floyd was having a heart attack before he was restrained, and actions by the police were consistent with guidelines.

Don't miss this insightful article: the media’s “truth” is a good guide to what is abjectly false; more wisdom from Victor Davis Hanson.

Elon Musk has recently become more famous for sending two astronauts to the Space Station, but he has another interesting project (besides Tesla cars). Starlink is planned to be an array of low earth orbit satellites which will provide high-speed internet all over the world. He just launched another 58, bringing the total to over 420.

Who is responsible for the mess in Minneapolis?

2020; the year gun control died.  More here: New Zealand took away everybody's guns, which resulted in more gun crimes.

The American press is destroying itself with its "cancel culture".

Is there still room for debate? Andrew Sullivan decries the cancel culture. Here's an example of the problem. The editor of a top academic journal is facing calls to resign after criticizing protesters for wanting to defund the police.

Are you ready for this summer's blackouts? People working at home won't be able to go into work as a refuge.

If you watched Mueller testify about his report, you couldn't have failed to note that his mental acuity had declined. The Mueller investigation was actually done by Andrew Weissmann, a Department of Justice lawyer. He retired and hosted a "fireside chat" for the former vice president's donors on June second. The guy running the investigation was a Democrat operative and even he couldn't. come up with a crime.

Some Cornell professors have forgotten the principles of free discourse; want to fire a colleague for questioning Black Lives Matter.

There is a 6-block area of Seattle that has been taken over by protesters. It is called the "Capital Hill Autonomous Zone", or CHAZ for short. It includes an abandoned police station and is being run by a warlord who carries an AK-47. Residents are not particularly happy. It may have been cleaned out by the time this is published, but there are many references to CHAZ on the Internet here, here and here.

So, this guy runs all over the Earth, taking movies and him and friends dancing. Seemed kind of frivolous, but you need to watch the video and judge for yourself.

Can we fight for racial justice while tolerating dissent? How can we not? How the battle for ideas is supposed to work.

Here's a very insightful article about what "defund the police" means; it's actually a very rational idea. Unfortunately, I don't think most of the proponents have the same understanding.

Donald Trump's Ad: The Best is Yet to Come 

Older issues of the blog are here.

The New York Times

Journalism dies in darkness. An editor of The New York Times editorial page has resigned after the publication of a controversial op-ed from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. Dozens of the newspaper's snowflake staffers revolted, marking another nail in the coffin of the NYT. More on the death of journalism is described in this article.

Here's an editorial in the Wall Street Journal decrying the loss of competing ideas in journalism.

There is a black commentator, Candace Owens, who has been critical of the riots. She has been suspended from Go-Fund-Me for her comments that George Floyd is not the hero family man idolized in the media.

Ten years ago, an eccentric millionaire hid a chest full of treasure in the Rocky Mountains. He published a poem with clues to its location. It has finally been found. At least four people died searching for it. The poem is here. More here in Wikipedia. This story hit the national media after I drafted this post. I don't normally like to include items with coverage, but as usual, the media leaves out lots of detail.

Another insanity. J. K. Rowling got backlash for saying "only women menstruate". Crossfit is in trouble over an innocuous George Floyd joke on Twitter.  It's looking like nobody should have a Twitter account lest they misspeak. For example, here's a 17-year old high school football player that just messed up his life with a social media post.

Here's some background on the elderly protestor who was knocked down and filmed. There's more than meets the eye.

Here's a fun video of a guy who takes an AR-15 away from an Antifa guy.

An organic chemist wrote an essay suggesting that affirmative action in hiring was not the best way to hire the most qualified scientists. It was peer-reviewed, published in an academic journal, and caused a huge flap.

Data shows that the police don't target black people. Watch the video.

Walmart to stop keeping 'multicultural' beauty products in locked display cases.

A look inside Seattle’s newly-formed ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’.

This is carrying microaggressions a little far. The incoming dean of the ASU School of Journalism lost her job because she said "some police are good". The future of journalism is fragile with these kinds of students coming up.

The owner of the Mr. Pickles sandwich shop in David wrote (to me) a reasonable letter complaining about BLM. The company has closed his store.

A teacher spying on a student while doing virtual teaching reported him to the police when his BB gun was seen on the wall.

White UCLA professor under investigation after reading MLK's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'.

Is there no end to this stupidity? College 'deeply sorry' for letting police use restrooms.

Older issues of this blog are here.

Not the Babylon Bee: NBA reporter cheers rioters torching low-income housing, freaks when "animals" come to his gated community.

Elon Musk is launching hundreds of little satellites to give you high-speed Internet from the sky. This could be a big deal.

Here's the full video of the landslide in Norway. Scroll down to the second image.

Since there seems to be a media blackout on the victims of the riots, this thread will serve as a reference and tribute.

Here's a pretty good video about how voter ID requirements suppress the black vote. Read the comments.

A detailed analysis of institutional racisms and black deaths at the hands of the police.

Remember that corporate lawyer who was arrested for throwing a firebomb into a police car (see previous post in the blog)? She is out on bail thanks to a former Obama intelligence official who helped secure her release.

The New York Times ran an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton in which he advocated for using federal troops to put down the riots.  This caused a revolt among the staffers, who really don't believe in allowing different viewpoints in the news.

The rioters defaced a number of monuments in Boston, including one dedicated to a black regiment who fought for the North in the Civil War.

Mayor Lightfoot of Chicago is pleading with major retailers to rebuild the stores destroyed by the rioters so the residents will have a place to shop for food and other essentials.

Four pretty insightful questions for the media and Black Lives Matter.

Last blog we covered an announcer fired after many years of service for a reasonable post. Now, the editor of the Philadelphia Enquirer has been fired for a small headline. This cancelling of people has gone way overboard.

Public health officials have undermined their case for the lockdown in the response to the George Floyd protests and memorial.

This week was the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Here is an interesting look back if it had failed.

A new era in space

A new era: The Space Age is making a comeback, but it's cheaper this time with SpaceX.

The CDC has waited for years for this moment; they have one job and they blew it.

How to crash an airplane, an engaging story.

New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nikole Hannah-Jones attempted to justify the ruthless rioting terrorizing American cities Tuesday by claiming simply, “property can be replaced.”

The satirical web site The Babylon Bee ha stopped trying to parody Joe Biden. They will just publish his comments, which are better than anything they can come up with. See the examples.

While you are there, see what The Bee had to say about Trumps photo-op.

A pair of Brooklyn lawyers tried to firebomb a police car. Seems like a lawyer ought to know better. They were caught.

Grant Napear had a 32-year career as the TV voice of the Sacramento Kings and the most popular sports talk radio host in town. He made a mistake that any of us could have, tried to apologize, and was fired.

I kind of like this idea: natural burials.

A progressive Democrat in Colorado learned something about the Second Amendment. Be sure and read the comments.

More here on why we need the Second Amendment.

A sheriff in Florida addresses the issue of guns and looters.

A retired St. Louis police captain was killed trying to protect a business from looting.

The Flynn case

An analysis of the FBI's creation of the Flynn case by Jonathan Turley. More here on the Flynn case from The Hill: New FBI document confirms the Trump campaign was investigated without justification.

Biden's search for a vice-president just became a disaster.

For some time, I continue to be incredulous that in the media's 24/7 coverage of Epstein, none have bothered to mention Clinton's many trips to the island on Epstein's airplane. Here's another report they will ignore about his visits there.

Here's a sad report about an elderly, wheel-chair bound, lady who lost her access to shopping because of the riots.

Some jokes just write themselves: Samaritan’s Purse was excluded from NYC for the sake of inclusion.  I guess liberals have a different definition of "inclusion".

An article in the Bee details efforts to pick a theme song for Sacramento.   If nothing else, be sure and listen to “Sacramento, California, USA” — the “city by the city by the Bay.”

Michael Moore, famous for fact-challenged documentaries, produced a movie called "Planet for the Humans". It was pretty critical of windmills, solar power, and biofuels, beloved by environmentalists. It was available on YouTube until the liberals got it removed. There are still plenty of videos critical of the movie.

Today in history. On May 29, Islamic Jihad captured Christian Constantinople, the last outpost of Christianity in the Middle East.

The strange case of the Cuomo brothers. Governor Andrew has killed thousands with ineptitude, but he is idolized for his TV performance and held out as an alternative to Biden. More on the remains of the Obama administration from Dr. Hanson. More on Democrat politicians killing people by putting infected patients in nursing homes.

The sound heard round the world; the explosion of Krakatoa.

The Democrats are pushing mail-in ballots because of the opportunities for stealing elections. They deny this.

Why were experts wrong about Florida's governor and the virus?