As much as I don’t like the man’s policies, especially his “I’ll select the worst possible person to replace me” VP policy, I gotta admit I feel bad for him. The dementia combined with his utter unpopularity leading to delusions that he is surrounded by crowds of adoring fans? Makes me sad for what is essentially elder abuse.
Feel the Bidenmentum!
…. buuuuuuuut… what the hell is this?
Dude. DUUUUUDE. Just no.
One of these days the pendulum is going to swing back.
—
Oh, and as a followup to a previous posting, behold:
This is spectacular. Princeton University, of Ivy League Fame, has a President who decided that a struggle session was in order, and wrote an open letter where he said:
Racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society, sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies. Race-based inequities in America’s health care, policing, education, and employment systems affect profoundly the lives of our staff, students, and faculty of color.
Racist assumptions from the past also remain embedded in structures of the University itself. For example, Princeton inherits from earlier generations at least nine departments and programs organized around European languages and culture, but only a single, relatively small program in African studies.
From this bit, it seems President Eisgruber’s biggest claim that his university is racist is that it has “nine departments and programs organized around European languages and culture,” which as anyone who isn’t a self-hating nincompoop will realize isn’t racism so much as recognition of reality, what with our nation, civilization, culture, etc. all being derived from European cultures. “English,” after all, isn’t a language that originated in Uganda, but in *England.* But the university President thought it was a neato-keen idea to be seen grovelling before the Outraged Idiotarian Mob, and decided that talking smack about his own university was a good idea.
Ooops.
According to a letter the Department of Education sent to Princeton that was obtained by the Washington Examiner, such an admission from Eisgruber raises concerns that Princeton has been receiving tens of millions of dollars of federal funds in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which declares that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Ruh-roh.
Seems to me that Eisgruber has two options:
This time it’s not just random schmoes who, in some sudden moment, blurted out Wrongthink. No, this time it’s people who plotted and planned to commit acts of violence and criminality, complaining that, lo and behold, there are consequences.
I fully expect that corporate HR departments keep or perhaps trade back and forth databases of people who get themselves into the news, their mugshots splashed on the pages of local or even national news. I certainly hope that *somebody* is keeping a record of all the commie scumbags who have been arrested – and generally promptly released by commie scumbag DAs/prosecutors. Most of them may well not face the legal system for their crimes. But it would be advisable for companies to know that so-and-so was arrested for setting a Starbucks on fire or for trying to blind cops or for being an extremist whackaloon trying to tear down civilization. Not only are such people bad employees – you never know when they’ll decide to set the break room on fire – they are also a PR nightmare.
Update: Ragina Joy-Marie Gray, 30, was arrested & charged w/multiple criminal offenses at a violent BLM-antifa protest on 6–7 Aug. in Portland. This is the night the elderly women were attacked. All of Gray's charges were dropped by the DA. #PortlandRiots https://t.co/KNXaeww2fg pic.twitter.com/mO7YLw6nQk
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 17, 2020
The antifa man recorded resisting arrest & trying to steal a baton from police is 31-year-old Phillip John Wenzel, of Beaverton, Ore. He's a paralegal in the Portland-area and a hardcore advocate of abolishing law enforcement & DHS. https://t.co/7h5qabJwSK https://t.co/8aqtbA6PF9 pic.twitter.com/hU9UGrav2f
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 15, 2020
A lot of people wanted to defund the police. In cities where the police have been defunded, held back, stood down or demoralized, they’ve gotten exactly what you’d expect:
Short form: less police, less policing, more crime. This is hardly surprising. This is undoubtedly what a great many of the “defund the police” crowd *wanted,* a get-out-of-jail card so that they could live out their criminal fantasies without risk of legal consequence. The statistics indicate that nationwide 710 additional murders have so far been committed, each and every one of which can be laid at the feet of the anti-police protestors and their facilitators, supporters and enablers in the media and politics.
But there are other areas of life where government spending really does need to be slashed. Behold:
The article describes a number of states that are doing a terrible job educating their students. Such as:
The public schools in Oklahoma spent $8,935 per pupil in 2016-2017. But only 26% of eighth graders in Oklahoma public schools were proficient or better in reading, and only 26% were proficient or better in math.
Yes, Oklahoma is doing a *terrible* job. But they’re doing it at one third the cost.
In contrast, Utah is spending $8,794 per pupil and is at 38%. That still seems terrible to me, but the best of the bunch is Massachussetts, which spends $18,490 per pupil to score 45%. What this shows is that outcome seems to be virtually wholly unconnected to spending. As such… slash the spending. Use that money for some other purpose… free one-way flights to foreign lands for those who hate the US, for instance.
Good. We are *looooong* past the time when people rioting in the streets could legitimately claim that they were protesting some injustice. After the most recent incident of a knife-wielding lunatic getting *justly* shot by a cop in Lancaster, PA, whackaloons took to the street in “protest.” You have to be a grade-A doubpleplusungood moron to not recognize that this is a good shoot of a truly dangerous person:
And that’s jut one. The majority of the cases that people claim to be protesting about, from Michael Brown on up to Jacob Blake, have turned out to be unfortunate but justifiable, even praiseworthy, incidents of police shooting someone posing an immediate threat. We’ve skated well past the time when it’s reasonable to assume that the protestors are on the up-and-up; it’s time to recognize the violent ones for what they are: enemies of the state, the people, the culture who want to just tear everything down and dance on the ashes. Best to stomp them down *now* before they plunge the US into a full-on civil war which will kill millions and will likely lead to the end of western civilization as a going concern.
This video is depressing and inevitable:
I *really* hope the Trump campaign is on the ball here, because the leftists are doing their damnedest to provide him with all the footage he needs for TV commercials that should net him a historic landslide of an election.
Huh.
In short: 80 light years away in the constellation Draco a Jupiter-sized (up to about 14 times as massive, thought) planet orbits a 6-billion year old white dwarf star a mere 11,000 miles in diameter, once every 1.4 days. The orbit is apparently stable.
There is virtually not a chance in hell that the gas giant evolved in that orbit around the original star. When the original star died and became the white dwarf, it likely would have shed a *lot* of mass; in which case any planets orbiting it would have moved outwards or been lost entirely. However, had there been other massive planets, other small stars, or perhaps wandering rogue stars, gravitational interactions could have knocked the planet into a highly elliptical orbit with e very close periastron. Over time the elliptical orbit could have circularized that close in.
What I’ve found hasn’t given data for the semi-major axis of the planetary orbit… but it’s got to be pretty close. Should be interesting to see what sort of system this is and how warm the planet is. Being 14 times more massive than Jupiter means that it could *easily* have multiple moons Earth-sized or even bigger, depending of course on tidal disruption from the star. It would be an interesting place if the planet is close to the white dwarfs habitable zone.
Someone has some ‘splainin’ to do, methinks.
Absolutely no context is given here. One *hopes* that the biker was some flavor of political “protestor.”