Msean.dugan

Liberal reactions to the high profile decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court this week read like a parody account.

On Thursday, the Court dealt a blow to affirmative action by invalidating race-based college admissions programs in favor of a merit-based system and the responses from many on the left were downright racist.

Rev. Al Sharpton said the decision was “tantamount to sticking a dagger in our back.” He’s saying that blacks aren’t smart enough to compete without the leg up that affirmative action provides. And, of course, he failed to mention the dagger Harvard and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill admissions officers have been sticking into the backs of Asian and white Americans for decades.

A Twitter post from independent journalist Erica Marsh was even more insulting. She wrote: “Today’s Supreme Court decision is a direct attack on Black people. No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed. Today’s decision is a TRAVESTY!!!”

Oh look, a white female Democrat who worked for Biden thinks that black people are so stupid that they can't get into college on their own merit.

This is what actual racism looks like, kids.

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) June 29, 2023

Marsh came under immediate attack for the tweet and issued a non-apology apology that only exacerbated the situation:

Allow me to clarify this tweet, which is being manipulated for propaganda and misinformation by ULTRA MAGA.

The intention of my tweet is to highlight that prior to affirmative action, there existed a supposedly merit-based system for Black individuals to gain admission to colleges. However, these institutions employed racial profiling to prevent Black individuals from attending under the guise of this “merit” system.

I want to emphasize that my statement in no way suggests that Black individuals are less intelligent than people of other races.

No one manipulated Marsh’s tweet. It said what it said: “No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed.”

WNBA player Natasha Cloud, incensed by all of the Court’s rulings this week, wrote: “Our country is trash in so many ways and instead of using our resources to make it better, we continue to oppress Marginalized groups that we have targeted since the beginning of times.”

Let’s send her to Russia.

TAKING SHOTS: WNBA champion bashes America after SCOTUS rulings. https://t.co/Fj17hvW7Lv pic.twitter.com/A6TFWgluV4

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 30, 2023

Whoopi Goldberg wondered if this ruling would lead “to no women in colleges soon.”

Asked by a reporter if this was a rogue court, President Joe Biden replied, “This isn’t a normal court.”

He was later questioned about his remark during an interview with MSNBC: “What I meant by that is it’s done more to unravel basic rights, basic decisions of any court in recent history.” And with that, he inexplicably stood up, shook anchor Nicole Wallace’s hand and thanked her, then bizarrely wandered off the stage before waiting for the commercial break. The moment went viral on social media.

Whoopi: “Is this leading to no women in colleges soon? Who knows!”
This was a good compilation of the left’s reaction to the SCOTUS decision. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/xy7kH2iKMJ

— Cali-Florida Patriot (@CaliPatriot20) June 30, 2023

If Biden was rattled over the Court’s decision on affirmative action, he was completely rocked by its smackdown of his student loan forgiveness plan, an issue he had campaigned on.

Speaking to reporters, Biden promised he would seek a new path forward.

A reporter asked, “Mr. President, why did you give millions of borrowers false hope? You’ve doubted your own authority here in the past.”

He replied, “I didn’t give any false hope. The question was whether or not I would do even more than was requested. What I did I thought was appropriate and was able to be done and would get done. I didn’t give borrowers false hope. But the Republicans snatched away the hope that they were given and it’s real, real hope.”

“Did you overstep your authority?” she asked.

“I think the court misinterpreted the Constitution,” Biden answered.

Actually, it was Biden who misinterpreted the Constitution – intentionally.

The reporter was correct. Biden knew that neither he nor his education secretary had the authority to forgive $430 billion in student loan debt. But, ahead of the 2022 midterms, he also knew this promise would draw a lot of young voters to the polls and that the lawsuits that would surely ensue would take months to play out.

In fact, the Court quoted words uttered by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a 2021 press conference in its majority opinion. Pelosi had said, “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”

But Pelosi’s past remarks didn’t stop her from criticizing the Court’s decision. On Friday, she said it “cruelly allowed for a crisis of debt to continue holding back families from buying homes, starting businesses and making ends meet.”

Pelosi added, “President Biden is to be commended for his action to ease the student loan burden, which disproportionately harms women and people of color. Energized by our commitment to equity, justice and opportunity, the fight is not over.”

Unfortunately, half of the electorate believes these liars.

NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP IS BAD BECAUSE NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS ARE SOMETIMES ACCOUNTABLE TO THEIR CITIZENS. “GLOBAL GOVERNANCE” NEVER IS. PROF GIORDANO: Higher education is undermining America by pushing ‘global citizenship.’

The space and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies has announced a deal to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion.

L3Harris is buying Aerojet at $58 per share in an all-cash transaction. Aerojet shares traded at $54.89 on Dec. 16. The deal is expected to close in 2023, pending regulatory approvals.

Aerojet Rocketdyne, based in Sacramento, California, manufactures rocket engines and propulsion systems for space vehicles, ballistic missiles and military tactical weapons. The company generates approximately $2.3 billion in annual revenue. L3Harris, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, is a global defense and aerospace firm with $17 billion in annual revenue.

This deal could in the end save Aerojet, which in recent years has had problems both making and selling its rocket engines, while facing increasing competition from many new rocket engine startups. As an old space company, its engines have tended to be too expensive, and often produced behind schedule. L3Harris now has the opportunity to clean house and streamline operations there, thus making the engines it produces more competitive in the emerging new space market.

ANOTHER LAUGHING WOLF PRIMER: Buying Your First Weapon. “After yesterday’s Preparedness On The Fly post (the series is aimed at those just getting into preparedness because of the nuclear threat) it seems there is some interest in my talking more about how to go about purchasing your first weapon. While a good bit of this will concentrate on pistols since that seems to be what most are interested in purchasing, we will cover some other areas as well.”

Pass this along to a friend or relative who’s been thinking of exercising their Second Amendment rights.

ABOUT TIME: Hearing aids will be available over the counter in October.

AMSTERDAM, CIRCA 2000:

Amsterdam, 2022: How Amsterdam ceased to be gay heaven. The city is becoming Islamicized and gay people are paying the price. “Full points to Bev for standing up to transgender ideology. It’s a real menace. But if we battle it hard enough, it’ll go away: it’s too irrational to last. And when it’s gone, we’ll still have a Western Europe that grows more Islamic by the day. And Bev Jackson will, I presume, stay silent on that topic — along with millions of others. Yes, it’s baffling that Western Europeans fail to vote for their own survival. But is this failure any wonder, when even a veteran gay activist won’t be honest about the biggest threat to gays in our time?”

HOW IT STARTED:

This is NEWS AND NOTES. I’m Ed Gordon. On today’s Roundtable, Senator Biden’s slave state – will it help him if he runs in ’08? And Kofi Annan booed in Beirut.

Joining us from out New York bureau is Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, and E.R. Shipp, distinguished professor of journalism at Hofstra University School of Communication. Also with us, Callie Crossley, social and cultural commentator on the television show Beat the Press, which is seen in the Boston area. She joins us as she gets that last-minute vacation in from Martha’s Vineyard. We appreciate you interrupting that, Callie.

E.R., let me start with you. The idea of – and we wanted to take a broad-based look at Dems as they move to ’08. A lot of talk about Hillary Clinton. But as we see others either quietly – like John Edwards – readying themselves, if you believe that he’s going to run, or others laying groundwork. John Kerry has suggested that he’s ready to go, and now has made claims which he backed away from immediately that perhaps Ohio didn’t do him right by virtue of voter intimidation.

We also hear now from Senator Joe Biden of Delaware when he talks about whether or not a northern liberal can be something that’s palatable to Southern voters. He said this on Fox News.

“You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state, my state is a border state, my state has the either largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state. We see Joe Biden embracing the fact that it was a slave state.”

Professor E.R. SHIPP (Professor of Journalism, Hofstra University): Yes. This -between Kerry and Biden, it seems like this is an episode of the Democrats version of Desperate Housewives; we just call it desperate politicians. With Kerry, he should’ve raised the issue back in 2004. And the particulars of the vote count then have been challenged and so far upheld. But what he’s doing now is pandering to try to raise money for the Democratic candidate in the race in Ohio.

But Biden sounds like he’s – he’s an interesting character – but it sounds like he’s basically saying, I had more slaves than you did. Delaware was just a slave state. I mean it was like – it’s ridiculous on his face. But he’s been known to have difficulties with expressing himself verbally.

Remember way back when when he gave this very heartfelt off-the-cuff speech about labor and all of that, and it was really plagiarizing a speech that had been given by a British politician earlier. So Biden – and he also was found guilty of plagiarizing in law school. Got an F in a class that he had to retake.

So he’s had difficulty with words, so who knows what he really wanted to say, but it didn’t come across well.

—“Roundtable: Slavery in Delaware; Heckling Annan,” NPR, August 30th, 2006.

How it’s going: Perhaps NPR is tacitly answering the question of what Biden wanted to say back then, particularly based on the administration’s Nazi and CCP-inspired “Dark Brandon” meme, which featured into last week’s disastrous optics: Biden’s so-white historians may miss crucial points on saving democracy.

—NPR, Sunday.

THE LATEST FROM PROJECT VERITAS: FDA Executive Officer on Hidden Camera Reveals Future COVID Policy: ‘Biden Wants To Inoculate As Many People As Possible. . . Have to Get an Annual Shot.’

FDA Official Statement: “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Now That The Beatles’ Get Back Is Out, Why Can’t We See Let It Be?

However, in the 2010s, the bitter feelings within The Beatles’ camp toward Let It Be started to fade a bit. McCartney expressed interest in seeing the film re-released in 2016, saying that if anyone should be wary about people seeing Let It Be, it should be him (referencing the sometimes bossy manner in which McCartney is seen trying to corral the other Beatles). He then became even more receptive about re-releasing the Let It Be footage in some form when Peter Jackson came to McCartney with the idea of reappropriating the material into Get Back, convincing the Beatle that there was actually a lot of joy and camaraderie in the footage, despite the fact that it also shows some of the internal rifts within the band at the time. While Get Back shows a much more comprehensive view of the Let It Be/Get Back project, it was never meant to replace Let It Be as the definitive document of this time period, as Jackson specifically wanted Get Back to be a companion to Let It Be, intentionally only using footage that wasn’t featured in the 1970 documentary unless they were essential shots where no other footage existed.

Additionally, when the release of Get Back was announced, it was also announced that a remastered version of Let It Be would be released for consumption. Any more specific details about when or where this release will be available haven’t been elaborated on, though one would assume (and hope) it will be available on Disney Plus in the near future. This, of course, is an easy thing to be cynical about, considering how ridiculously hard The Beatles have made it to see Let It Be over years and how many aborted attempts there have been to make it more widely available. Yet considering the warm reception that Get Back has received (both from fans and from the living Beatles themselves), there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic that Let It Be will easily be available. Either way, Get Back serves as ample compensation for fans that have been waiting to finally see (or revisit) Let It Be for all these years.

I’m hoping Let It Be will be bundled with the Get Back Blu-Ray discs in time for next year’s Christmas shopping season. And maybe even a limited theater release to promote it. Who wouldn’t want to see a restored version of the rooftop concert on a 25 foot tall movie screen?

Earlier, from your humble narrator:

● The Beatles get Back in Peter Jackson’s New Three-Part Documentary.

● The Beatles’ get Back: The Long and Grinding Road.

● I Question the Premise: The Beatles: Get Back shows that deepfake tech isn’t always evil.

SOMETHING CHEERFUL: Tal Bachman shares this video and comments:

I just watched this entire video. My thoughts:
1.) This was a casual rehearsal – and it makes every other musical rehearsal I’ve ever participated in (symphonic, rock, jazz, choral) feel ridiculous.
2.) This is the Mexican “Freebird”.
3.) La muchacha on harp is face-melting. Combines supreme technical skill with supreme musical skill.
4.) The only instruments you’re hearing are those three (harp, guitarron, and vihuela), yet at first listen, you’d think there were a dozen people playing.
5.) This level of syncopation – and constantly improvised, no less – is beyond any other type of music I’m familiar with. The downbeat gloriously vanishes here and there, sometimes for bars, especially during the solo parts in the middle. How do they keep track of where the downbeat is?
6.) This is the most you can make out of only three chords. Impressive.
7.) I wonder how la muchacha has tuned her harp…?
8.) Guitarron player plays octaves on each note.
9.) There is only real error here: the last chord. Just end it on the one chord, amigos. But we can forgive that.

It’s worth a few minutes of your time.

YOU JUST THOUGHT HR1 WAS DEAD: It’s back but this time it’s HR4 and the Democrats are calling it the Voting Rights Act. Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig warns in The American Conservative that “if anyone thinks the flood of mail-in ballots the country witnessed in 2020 was just a one-off fluke, they haven’t been paying attention.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Piriformis Stretches To Help You Get Rid Of Sciatica, Hip, and Lower Back Pain.

DANUSHA GOSKA: Ten Reasons Why I Am No Longer A Leftist.

mrmrswoodman:

That’s just freaky.. 

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: This Is Not A Frame From A Science Fiction Movie. “It’s an actual image from the successful Morpheus vehicle test completed today at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility. There’s great video too.” At the link.

ROGER SIMON: Who Needs Ayn Rand? America Has Already Gone John Galt.

Although I admit to libertarian tendencies, I don’t think any of us can celebrate because of this. It’s an economic disaster that should be blowing even Chris Christie off the front pages.

In fact, it’s much worse than that. It’s a human emotional disaster. Freud may have been wrong about a number of things, but he was right about this. Two mainstays that get us through life, other than religion, which Freud didn’t cotton to, are “love and work.” I don’t know about love, but the work part of our lives has been brutally kicked out from under us in the Obama years.

The implications of this are actually terrifying. What are those nearly 92 million people doing with their time, other than sitting around depressed?. Many, of course, are on some version of welfare. Some are panhandling. We see the homeless on the streets of all our big cities. Others are moving into a shadow economy, much of it illegal (drugs, prostitution), not paying taxes on whatever they earn. It’s truly a sad situation. No wonder so many states are moving toward legalizing grass. Everyone wants to zone out.

This is rapidly approaching a a pre-revolutionary condition, but not for a revolution many of us would want to undergo. To avoid it, a massive change must occur at the federal level. But Barack Obama, mired in a dead ideology, doesn’t seem prepared to do anything but prolong the situation with highly conventional liberal solutions that have failed for decades, maybe even centuries.

And yet there is so much he could do.

Only if he wants to succeed.

REMEMBER WHEN WE THOUGHT THE SECRET SERVICE WAS ALMOST INFALLIBLE? Fake Sign Language Guy and the death of competence.

A fake sign-language interpreter is the sort of thing a reasonably savvy advance team would be on guard for, no matter how inept the local government might be. Is part of the problem here that everyone merely assumed the sanctified government of post-Mandela South Africa must be competently managed?

But now we learn the guy was potentially dangerous, his criminal case files “mysteriously empty,” with a tendency towards hallucinations and violence by his own account… hired by a shadowy fly-by-night firm that promptly flew by night and disappeared… and yet he managed to get onstage with the President of the United States. The Secret Service must be having some interesting closed-door meetings right about now.

But as far as I know, no one has been fired.