Oregon, My Oregon

At TNP, Far Left Mayor Demands Removal of Private, Iwo Jima Flag-Raising Mural

The Democratic Mayor of Salem, Oregon – Chuck Bennett – has ordered the removal of a private business owner’s mural depicting the iconic, patriotic flag-raising at Iwo Jima during WWII. The mural is painted on the side of Valley Roofing in Salem, Oregon, which is privately owned by local businessman Jon Taylor.

Taylor commissioned the mural from local artist Mario Jr. DeLeon. Many of Taylor’s friends and family have served in the U.S. military, and the piece was designed to honor them and other Americans who have and are currently serving.

Local veterans said of Taylor, “[he] does a lot for this community both personally and through his business. He is a true credit to our fine city and a shining example of the sort of person we should all want as a neighbor and community leader.”

Nevertheless, the City of Salem cited a single, anonymous complaint about the mural and demanded its removal.

Should the artwork not be removed, Taylor will initially be fined more than $200. The only alternative to removal of the mural and the fines associated was the city removing the piece and giving it, free of charge, to a local art group.

The news represents yet another example of extreme government overreach from Oregon’s far-left leadership.

The mural is painted directly onto the outer wall of the property owned by Taylor, so it is unclear how the city would remove the piece in order to give it to a currently unnamed art society without completely destroying Taylor’s building and business.

DeLeon, the artist, said, “Even when we help fight the wars, they don’t want us to be talking about our contribution.”

A petition to save the mural has already amassed around 7,000 signatures. The petition seeks to raise awareness of the city council’s harassment of local business owners, like Taylor, who seek to “beautify the city through both art and deeds.”

Now do George Floyd. Or, just forget it Jake, it's Salem.

Oregon, My Oregon

 John Sexton at Hot Hair, Peter Boghossian resigns from Portland State University

 . . . Boghossian’s ability to get under the skin of his illiberal opponents was already becoming clear but it really reached its zenith later in 2018 when he along with James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose revealed that they had written a series of hoax papers which had fooled a number of “grievance study” journals. In case you’ve forgotten about this here’s a 6-minute video narrated by James Lindsay that really sums it up. You’ll notice that the three authors, including Boghossian are really having a good laugh at the people who fell for these papers. 

Not surprisingly, there was a big backlash to this effort. Lindsay and Pluckrose were somewhat insulated from it because they didn’t have jobs working in academia at the time. Boghossian on the other hand was teaching at PSU. A few weeks after the hoax was revealed, Boghossian received a letter from a PSU vice president saying he’d been found guilty of “a clear violation of the policies of your employer.” The school decided that the hoax papers, designed to show the ways in which journals were not rigorous and unable to tell fact from politically correct fiction, were in fact experiments on human subjects and therefore subject to rules about informed consent. They also claimed that by making up the fake papers amounted to fabricating data. Boghossian was warned he could be fired.

A few months later, Boghossian was found guilty of violating protections for human subjects of experiments. He was told he could not carry out any further research without additional training. That was in July of 2019. Today, Boghossian submitted his resignation. He gave a copy of his letter to Bari Weiss who published it on her Substack. Here’s a sample, though the whole thing is worth reading:

​​I’m writing to you today to resign as assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University…

Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly…

Early in the 2016-17 academic year, a former student complained about me and the university initiated a Title IX investigation. (Title IX investigations are a part of federal law designed to protect “people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”) My accuser, a white male, made a slew of baseless accusations against me, which university confidentiality rules unfortunately prohibit me from discussing further. What I can share is that students of mine who were interviewed during the process told me the Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children. This horrifying accusation soon became a widespread rumor.

With Title IX investigations there is no due process, so I didn’t have access to the particular accusations, the ability to confront my accuser, and I had no opportunity to defend myself. Finally, the results of the investigation were revealed in December 2017. Here are the last two sentences of the report: “Global Diversity & Inclusion finds there is insufficient evidence that Boghossian violated PSU’s Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment policy. GDI recommends Boghossian receive coaching.”

Not only was there no apology for the false accusations, but the investigator also told me that in the future I was not allowed to render my opinion about “protected classes” or teach in such a way that my opinion about protected classes could be known — a bizarre conclusion to absurd charges. Universities can enforce ideological conformity just through the threat of these investigations…

This isn’t about me. This is about the kind of institutions we want and the values we choose. Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty.

The only thing he is guilty of is mocking the bogus academicism of the woke left. They will not be mocked, which is why we must continue to do it. 

Oregon, My Oregon

Speaking of Molon Labe (one of Ted's favorite phrases), this from Sundance at CTH, Oregon Police Officer Under Investigation For Extremist Views – Infraction, He Carried ‘Molon Labe’ Key Chain

Pretty scary, huh?

The attacks against police; and the attacks against patriotism that connects the social fabric to respecting law and order; are reaching new levels. The tools and techniques being deployed by Marxist BLM activists are increasingly infiltrating the police units.

The leftists are creating new and ridiculous definitions of what constitutes “extremism” and/or “far right” extremist expression. This latest example is a case study in using Alinsky weaponizing methods to attack language.

OREGON -A Bend Police Department officer will be investigated for allegedly violating policy by wearing a keychain connected to a far-right group while in uniform on Saturday.

Bend Chief Mike Krantz did not identify the employee, though Cpl. Josh Spano is the officer seen in a photograph circulating on Reddit and Facebook. Attached to the front of Spano’s service vest is an item reading “molon labe” in Greek lettering, a phrase associated with the far-right Three Percenters militia.

It's widely used in the fight for the second amendment. The phrase Molon Labe "is a classical expression of defiance. It is among the Laconic phrases reported by Plutarch, attributed to King Leonidas I in reply to the demand by Xerxes I that the Spartans surrender their weapons. The exchange between Leonidas and Xerxes occurs in writing, on the eve of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC)."

The “molon labe” item and its letters appear to be larger than Spano’s name tag on his vest.

“I’m aware of the allegations posted around social media regarding one of our employees displaying an item that was inconsistent with our uniform, an item believed to be supportive of extremist ideologies” Krantz told The Bulletin. (read more)

We'll have no defiance about weapons confiscations, in Bend, will we? But just try to get a teacher fired for espousing socialism or communism. 

Policewoman Palm Sunday

Continuing the theme of honoring our TV policewomen before the tides of political correctness sweep them away, today I give you  Det. Calleigh Duquesne of CSI Miami, played by Emily Proctor:

Emily Mallory Procter (born October 8, 1968) is an American actress. She played Ainsley Hayes in the NBC political drama The West Wing (2000–2002; 2006) and Det. Calleigh Duquesne in the CBS police procedural drama CSI: Miami (2002–2012).

Procter was born on October 8, 1968. She was adopted as an infant by William Procter, a general practitioner, and Barbara Jones, a volunteer worker, and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was three years old when her parents divorced. She has an older brother, Whit, who is also adopted.

Procter is a graduate of Ravenscroft School in Raleigh. While at East Carolina University she became a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. Before she received her degrees in journalism and dance at East Carolina, she was employed as a television weather anchor at WNCT-TV in Greenville, North Carolina.

Some minor NSFW.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and linkfest. Linked by EBL in Rogers & Hammerstein's Carousel: June Is Bustin' Out All Over and
You call it CHOP? Some call it CHAZ 🤷🏻‍♀️ 🤦🏻‍♀️😬 It's actually 💩. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Michelle Malkin and FMJRA 2.0: I’m The Runaway Son Of The Nuclear A-Bomb up on time and within budget.Linked by EBL in An important day is coming soon.... Cendrillon 🎭, Accordion Babes, This lawsuit is just ri-dick-ulous 🤦🏻‍♀️, L’Elisir d’Amore 🎭, Manon 🎭 with Lisette Oropesa, Marilyn Maxwell: June Comes Around Every Year, Hedy Lamarr: Sampson and Delilah, Samson et Dalila 🎭, Doctor Atomic 🎭 ⚛️🤯 and La Traviata 🎭.

Rule 5 Saturday - Chicago PD's Tracy Spiridakos

In my opinion, one of the more convincing female cops on TV (and that is a low bar) is Chicago PD's Detective Hailey Upton, played by Tracy Spiridakos.

Tracy Spiridakos  is a Canadian actress. She starred as Becky Richards on the Teletoon children's comedy series Majority Rules! from 2009–2010. She then starred as Charlotte "Charlie" Matheson on the NBC post-apocalyptic science fiction series Revolution from 2012–2014, for which she was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television. She played Annika Johnson on the A&E television drama Bates Motel. Since 2017, Spiridakos has starred on the NBC police drama Chicago P.D. playing the role of Detective Hailey Upton.

It's just possible that they portray the Chicago Police Department as more corrupt than it actually is.

Spiridakos was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Greek-born parents, restaurant owners George and Anastasia Spiridakos. . . The family moved to her father's hometown, Skala, Greece south of Sparta, a few years after she was born, and returned to Canada in 1992. She strongly identifies with her Greek heritage and speaks fluent Greek. Spiridakos began acting in junior high school, and studied at the Actors Training Centre of Manitoba.  

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and linkfest. LLinked by EBL in Rogers & Hammerstein's Carousel: June Is Bustin' Out All Over and You call it CHOP? Some call it CHAZ 🤷🏻‍♀️ 🤦🏻‍♀️😬 It's actually 💩. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Michelle Malkin and FMJRA 2.0: I’m The Runaway Son Of The Nuclear A-Bomb up on time and within budget. Linked by EBL in La Donna del Lago 🎭, Don Pasquale 🎭, Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸, Bruce Springsteen: 4th of July, Asbury Park 🇺🇸, Mount Rushmore July 3, 2020, Hypocrite Alyssa Milano Attacks Redskins Team Name While Selling Their Gear 🤷🏻‍♀️🏈🤑🤦🏻‍♀️, Don Giovanni 🎭, Carmen 💃🏻🎭, The Nose 🎭👃, Stompin' Tom Connors: Canada Day, Die Walküre 🎭, Force of Nature 🎥, La Fille du Régiment 🎭, Die Zauberflöte 🎭, The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Miss June 75, New Women of Yellowstone, An important day is coming soon.... Cendrillon 🎭, Accordion Babes, This lawsuit is just ri-dick-ulous 🤦🏻‍♀️, L’Elisir d’Amore 🎭, Manon 🎭 with Lisette Oropesa, Marilyn Maxwell: June Comes Around Every Year, Hedy Lamarr: Sampson and Delilah, Samson et Dalila 🎭, Doctor Atomic 🎭 ⚛️🤯 and La Traviata 🎭.

NYPD's Bluest - Kim Delaney

The next in the indefinite series of play policewomen is Det. Diane Russell from NYPD Blue, played by Kim Delany:

Kim Delaney (born November 29, 1961) is an American actress known for her starring role as Detective Diane Russell on the ABC drama television series NYPD Blue (1995-2003), for which she won an Emmy Award. Early in her career, she played the role of Jenny Gardner in the ABC daytime television drama All My Children. She later had leading roles in the short lived TV drama Philly, part of the first season of CSI: Miami, and the first six seasons of Army Wives.

She would not likely have been a very good cop in real life:

Like her character in her breakout role on the television series NYPD Blue, Delaney has struggled in her life with alcoholism. In 2002, Delaney was arrested in Malibu, California, for suspicion of drunk driving after she refused to take a breathalyzer test. She subsequently pleaded no contest and was sentenced to two years probation, fined, and ordered to take a defensive driving course. In 2003, after being dropped from the cast of CSI: Miami, Delaney checked herself into an alcohol rehab center. In 2005, she lost custody of her then 15-year-old son after endangering his life by forcing him to ride with her when she drove while intoxicated, which her son testified was not the first such incident. In 2011, Delaney was pulled from the stage before finishing a long, slurred, odd speech at an award ceremony recognizing the work of former United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Some NSFW.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Michelle Malkin up on time and within budget.

Great Moments in Climate Hypocrisy

From Capt. Ed at Hot Air, Green New Conceal: Warren Tries Sneaking Off Private Jet After Spotting Camera

pic.twitter.com/zUzVxeBWhG

— Thomas F.X. Sullivan (@IrishHoodlum) February 4, 2020

It’s the hiding that really sells this, because otherwise it’s at least potentially defensible. Presidential candidates get ripped for not doing enough retail politics, especially in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where commercial flights aren’t all that abundant. Warren could simply have offered an explanation that on rare occasions in this particular context, a charter flight is necessary — but that it should be a choice of last resort. It would still be fairly hypocritical as environmental advocates rarely if ever concede anything about practicality when demanding that everyone else live according to their diktats, but at least it would address the obvious contradiction here.

Instead, Warren tries to use one of her aides as a human shield against the camera. Way to champion transparency and accountability, Senator!

Why, just the other day I was searching for a picture of Fauxcahontas with a private jet. Now I know why.

Speaking of which, Warren’s hardly the only hypocrite in the Greta Thunberg Army. The Washington Free Beacon did an analysis of private-jet use by Democratic candidates, and guess who comes in first place? Feel the after-Berner, baby:

The Bernie Sanders campaign spent just under $1.2 million on private jet travel last quarter, outpacing the entire 2020 Democratic presidential primary field.
The most recent filing from Sanders reveals $1,199,579 in spending during the final three months of 2019 to Apollo Jets, LLC, a “luxury private jet charter service.” The campaign spent an additional $23,941 for transportation to Virginia-based Advanced Aviation Team.

I'm shocked, shocked!

Sanders and Warren aren’t alone on this score, either:

The candidate who comes closest to matching Sanders in private jet spending was former vice president Joe Biden, whose campaign spent $1,040,698 to Advanced Aviation Team last quarter.
An analysis of private jet spending in filings from other top candidates found that Elizabeth Warren’s campaign spent $720,518 and Pete Buttigieg’s campaign spent $323,518. Michael Bloomberg, who pumped a whopping $200 million of his personal fortune into his campaign’s opening weeks, spent about $646,000 on private jet travel, about half of what Sanders spent.

Those numbers don’t suggest “occasional logistical issues.” They suggest standard operational convenience, of the very same kind that Democrats demonize in their environmental lecturing. To paraphrase our colleague Instapundit, I’ll believe that climate change is an emergency when its hysterics start living like it is.

I'm gonna turn up the thermostat. We can afford it.

Rule 5 Saturday - The Deplorable Emma Roberts

This week's Rule 5 post inspired by Hollywood Film Depicts Trump Supporters Being Hunted for Sport by Liberals

Hollywood clearly still likes the idea of promoting violence against people who aren’t good and obedient leftists, because Universal Pictures is set to release a thriller called The Hunt on September 27, which features left-wing “elites” hunting Trump supporters for sport.

In the past few days we’ve been hearing a lot about how Donald Trump’s rhetoric is apparently to blame for the El Paso shooting, yet Hollywood apparently lacked the foresight to think that a movie promoting violence against “deplorables” might be in bad taste until after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, as only now is Universal rethinking their promotional strategy for the film.

"Did anyone see what our ratf**ker-in-chief just did?" one character asks early in the screenplay for The Hunt, a Universal Pictures thriller set to open Sept. 27. Another responds: "At least The Hunt's coming up.Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables."
In the aftermath of mass shootings within days of one another that shocked and traumatized the nation, Universal is re-evaluating its strategy for the certain-to-be-controversial satire. The violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum's Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.
Over the Aug. 3 weekend, ESPN pulled an ad for the film that it had previously cleared, while AMC ran the spot during the season premiere of its drama The Preacher. It's unclear whether the ads were identical, but the one yanked by ESPN opened with a sound resembling an emergency broadcast signal. A rep for ESPN parent Disney declined to comment on the move, but an ESPN source says no spots for the film will appear on the network in the coming weeks.

According to THR, the movie “features guns blazing along with other ultra-violent killings as the elites pick off their prey.”

The original title for the film was Red State Vs. Blue State, so the political themes of the movie are clearly important to the plot. THR says that The Hunt “made some executives at Universal skittish back in May 2018, when film chief Donna Langley acquired the script and fast-tracked it at a modest $18 million budget,” but several studios “did not pursue it because of the explosive premise.” One studio executive reportedly didn’t even bother reading the script because "The idea seemed crazy." The movie was produced by Jason Blum, who also produced other well-known horror flicks like The Purge, Paranormal Activity, and Get Out.

The script for The Hunt features the red-state characters wearing trucker hats and cowboy shirts, with one bragging about owning seven guns because it's his constitutional right. The blue-state characters — some equally adept with firearms — explain that they picked their targets because they expressed anti-choice positions or used the N-word on Twitter. "War is war," says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly.

How exactly did anyone think this was a good idea even before the El Paso and Dayton shootings? In June 2017, a Bernie Sanders supporter and left-wing activist shot at Republican members of Congress who were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for charity. The shooter had specifically inquired as to whether the team practicing was made of Republicans or Democrats. The same year, Senator Rand Paul was assaulted by his own neighbor and just this past week had part of his lung surgically removed because of injuries sustained in that attack. Apparently, some in Hollywood are more than willing to promote violence against Trump supporters. Meanwhile, Democrats and liberals in the media want us to believe that it's Trump’s rhetoric that needs to be toned down.

My guess is that surprise twist will be that the bad guys will turn out to be secret Trump-supporters, and the good girl is a Liz Warren advocate.

UPDATE: Movie release cancelled! How long until it shows up on cable? Unverified reports suggest that indeed, Emma Roberts character is a good liberal military lass caught up by mistake, and all the true deplorables are killed, along with the perps.

Linked at Pirates Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Homeko At The Beach and FMJRA 2.0: Slave To The Grind up at The Other McCain. Linked at The Right Way in the weekly Rule 5 Saturday LinkOrama.

McKinley Out Near McKinleyville

The statue of Mckinley in the Arcata Town Square 2013

Just in from a long article on virtue signaling: Until this week William McKinley thought he was home free.

. . . Finally, this just in: The Arcata, California city council voted Wednesday night to remove the statue of President William McKinley from the town square. The statue has been in place for over a hundred years. As per usual, McKinley’s sins have not been clearly elucidated. He was assassinated in 1901. Like Matt Lauer, the statue will vanish into the ether. One of the groups demanding the statue’s removal is the Humboldt State University student group, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanco de Aztlan, whatever that means. I’m embarrassed to admit I’m a resident of Arcata. Our neighboring town to the north is McKinleyville. The town’s name is probably not long for this world.

Some minor desecration

Georgia's sister and brother-in-law, and her nephews live in McKinley?ville. It's one claim to fame is the airport there, which was built to test instrument landings for WWII; being one of the foggiest places in the US.

These are just a sampling of the ways virtue signaling is dictating behavior far and wide. Being aware of its many manifestations will reduce your confusion and increase your amusement. It’s a shame it’s doing so much damage.

Although I played around, and probably climbed on the statue of McKinley during my undergraduate years in Arcata, I never thought much about him. Checking Wikipedia, though, I think I found why "Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanco de Aztlan" may have targeted him (besides being a Republican):

McKinley hoped to persuade Spain to grant independence to rebellious Cuba without conflict, but when negotiation failed, he led the nation into the Spanish–American War of 1898; the U.S. victory was quick and decisive. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the United States its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; Cuba was promised independence, but at that time remained under the control of the U.S. Army. 

It seems a shame to try to kill the past.

Historians regard McKinley's 1896 victory as a realigning election, in which the political stalemate of the post–Civil War era gave way to the Republican-dominated Fourth Party System, which began with the Progressive Era. McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election, in a campaign focused on imperialism, protectionism, and free silver. However, his legacy was quickly cut short when he was shot on September 6, 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a second-generation Polish-American with anarchist leanings; McKinley died eight days later, and was succeeded by his Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. As an innovator of American interventionism and pro-business sentiment, McKinley's presidency is generally considered above average, though his universally positive public perception was soon overshadowed by Roosevelt.

Maryland, My Maryland!

Maryland University Abandons State Song. Guess Why

The University of Maryland marching band will no longer be playing the state song, “Maryland, My Maryland” at upcoming school events. Given the current arc of progressive action in blue states, the government may be looking into the same action in the very near future. Why?

Come on, man. Surely you’ve guessed by now. We’re taking down flags, monuments and statues all over the place. It was only a matter of time before we started banning music with “unacceptable thought” in it. And the state song of Maryland has a decidedly Confederate tone to it. (CBS Baltimore)

As much as I’ve railed against the erasure of history, even I will give at least a small nod to the fact that there’s no disputing that the song is based on the Confederacy. You can read the full lyrics at the state’s website. Here are just a few excerpts because it’s actually quite a long tune.

The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Yes, the “despot’s heel” isn’t exactly subtle, is it? The sixth stanza continues with this theme.

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
“Sic semper!” ’tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!

One can assume the “tyrant’s chain” is being held by the North. And answering the call of Virginia is fairly obvious. But the dead giveaway comes in the final verse.

I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she’ll come! she’ll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

Northern scum? Speaking as someone born and raised in New York (even though I’ve developed a deep fondness for the south over the years) that’s kind of harsh, isn’t it? But taken in the context of the times, understandable I suppose.

One thing that’s missing from the song is any reference to slavery, to racial divisions or anything related to it. But still, it’s a battle hymn and no doubt about it.

It's widely acknowledged that most of Maryland was really a southern state at the start of the civil war, and only the presence of the Federal armies kept them from seceding  too. Maybe they would have broken like Virginia, which lost much of it's mountains to West Virginia. But the song, written at the height of the Civil War (excuse me, War of Northern Aggression) in 1861, wasn't adopted by the state until 1939.

The song seems kind of lame. It's set to the melody of "O Tannenbaum." But this means the band will no longer be playing "Oh Christmas Tree" at games! War on Christmas?

Quote du Jour

To be on the left today is to look around and see nutty ideas accepted as perfectly reasonable, everywhere and at all times. Speech is violence, but violent acts are just a really neat form of expression. Gender is a social construct, so you can be a boy on Monday and a girl on Tuesday. If Paul Ryan calls for a spending increase that’s less than what Democrats want, in the progressive imagination this amounts to pushing Granny off a cliff. If the federal government considers ending its subsidy for the leading abortion provider in the country, or if a House dress code that didn’t bother Nancy Pelosi is discovered to have lingered on into Ryan’s term, we’re living in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Kyle Smith - And that means Democrats’ time in the wilderness could last a long, long while

One can only hope.

Reason #5552 That Trump Was Elected

How Trump Affected Political Correctness

A major theme—the major theme?—of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency was his relentless assault on socially-enforced standards of speech and opinion that those on the Right tend to refer to as political correctness and those on the Left tend to refer to as politeness or propriety. And a new paper from the National Bureau of Economics Research suggests that this assault was at least partly successful: By “updating” peoples’ preferences about the popularity of anti-immigration views, Trump’s unexpected victory made people more willing to express anti-immigration views publicly than they were before Election Day.

The authors (Leonardo Bursztyn of the University of Chicago, Georgy Egorov of Northwestern, and Stefano Fiorin of UCLA) summarize their methodology like this: In the run-up to the 2016 election, they offered subjects a dollar “if they authorized the researchers to make a donation to a strongly anti-immigration organization on their behalf.” Some of the participants were told that their donation would be anonymous. Others were told that they researchers might ask them about their decision later. Those who thought their donation would be anonymous were significantly more likely to authorize it than those who thought they might need to discuss it in the future, “suggest(ing) the presence of social stigma associated with the action.” After the election, however, this social stigma disappeared; people were just as likely to authorize a donation to an anti-immigrant group even if they were not assured that the donation would be anonymous.

It’s not that Trump’s election increased anti-immigration sentiment, the authors say—it just made people already inclined toward restrictionism feel less of a need to conceal their preferences.

The signs of preference cascade.  Once people see that a substantial fraction of the public holds a view contrary to that preferred by the dominant media, they become more willing to show it in public, and convince even more people to follow suit:

An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence. Another is the relatively recent "Arab Spring."

And the fall of communism.

When is "OK" Not OK?

Media Trolled? Liberal Reporter Claims ‘OK’ Gesture Is ‘White Power’ Signal

A couple of White House reporters posted Twitter photos of themselves at the briefing room podium making the “OK” sign, and a liberal journalist wrote an entire story claiming that this common gesture is a secret “white power” signal. Apparently, this claim originated with Reddit pranksters who, in February, explained that “our goal is to convince people on twitter that the ‘ok’ hand sign has been co-opted by neo-nazis.” They dubbed their hoax “Operation O-KKK” and, it would appear, within two months had fooled liberal journalists into believing it.

 Whodda thunk that Emma Watson would be a white supremacist?

Can "Idiocracy" Be Far Behind?

University drops math requirement in favor of "diversity" training: Wayne State Drops Math Requirement, May Add Diversity Requirement

A faculty committee has proposed adding a three credit hours requirement in diversity to the general education curriculum at Wayne State University. It also recommended that WSU drop its university-wide requirement in mathematics, an idea that was carried out on June 13.

“We are proposing the creation of specific ‘Diversity’ courses, with students required to take one course in this designation,” said a document from the General Education Reform Committee, which is recalibrating what the university will expect from all students who earn a degree from the state university. It released the proposal in May.

The committee report said, “These courses will provide opportunities for students to explore diversity at the domestic level and consider the ways in which it intersects with real world challenges at the local, national and/or global level.”

In announcing the change in mathematics, the university said, "This decision was made largely because the current (math) requirement is at a level already required by most high school mathematics curriculum."

And we all know that high school students fulfill all their graduation requirements. Well, social scientists don't need math anyway.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

Sad Puppies Rule!

and Rabid Puppies drool, of course. Over the last several days, there have been a number of postings about the Hugo Awards, a prestigious set of awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the Sad Puppies movement, for lack of a better word, to take the judging out of the hands of a clique of left-wing voters, and make it friendlier to a wider range of writers.  This article seems to hit most of the high points, with a number of useful links: The Hugo Awards: How to Fight Back in the Culture War

. . . A few years back, conservative science-fiction author Larry Correia noticed that left-leaning participants at Worldcon were engaged in a whispering campaign against one of his nominated books because of his political views. Many of them had not even read his novels. They opposed him, not because of the quality of his work, but because of who he was. In effect, the Left was enforcing a blacklist in which no right-leaning science fiction writer can be allowed to win awards.

All of which sounds drearily familiar. Believe me, when you’re in my line of work, you don’t expect to win any of the mainstream awards, either. They just don’t give those things to people like us. It’s a part of our professional life that most writers on the right have just given up on. And maybe we shouldn’t have.

Voting for the Hugo Awards is available for anyone will to pay the fee to attend Worldcon, a minor cost, but perhaps a major commitment in time.

To counteract the voting bias, Correia organized a campaign called “Sad Puppies”—because, he explains, “boring message fiction is the leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness.” Which gives you a small sampling of the kind of goofy, irreverent humor with which the campaign has been conducted. The idea was simply to suggest a slate of authors Correia thought were likely to be overlooked or slighted because of their views—and to counteract that effect by lobbying in their favor.

Seems like turn about ought to be fair play, and it least it's out in the open, right?

His goal wasn’t even to win, but just to bring attention to the issue. Here is how he described it:

1. I said a chunk of the Hugo voters are biased toward the left, and put the author’s politics far ahead of the quality of the work. Those openly on the right are sabotaged. This was denied.

2. So I got some right wingers on the ballot.

3. The biased voters immediately got all outraged and mobilized to do exactly what I said they’d do.

4. Point made.

Some things are so predictable.

The goal was simply to bring the leftist bias out into open view.

But then things got out of hand. This year, the Sad Puppies campaign (and a related slate of recommendations called Rabid Puppies) swept the field. The response was a total meltdown among the leftist elites who had assumed, in previous years, that they (and their favorite publisher, Tor) basically owned the Hugos. So they did what the Left always does: they smeared everyone who disagrees with them as racists.

Correia notes that on April 6, eight different news sites, from Entertainment Weekly toThe Guardian, all published suspiciously similar hit pieces describing the Sad Puppies campaign and its organizers as racist and misogynist.  . . .Clearly, someone was feeding these sites the new official narrative, and they all swallowed it without any attempt at basic research. . .

Or as we call it now, going "Full Rolling Stone." Don't ever go Full Rolling Stone.

So for example, the original version of the Entertainment Weekly piece claimed:

The Hugo Awards have fallen victim to a campaign in which misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards. These groups, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies (both of which are affiliated with last year’s GamerGate scandal), urged sci-fi fans to become members of the Hugo Awards’ voting body, World Science Fiction Convention, in order to cast votes against female writers and writers of color.

But the article had to be repeatedly corrected, adding this humiliating admission:

After misinterpreting reports in other news publications, EW published an unfair and inaccurate depiction of the Sad Puppies voting slate, which does, in fact, include many women and writers of color. As Sad Puppies’ Brad Torgerson explained to EW, the slate includes both women and non-caucasian writers, including Rajnar Vajra, Larry Correia, Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Ann Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Sanderson, and Amanda Green.

As the sardonic saying goes: “Other than that, the story was accurate.” Obviously, the “correction” guts the central point of the whole piece, and what is really required is a wholesale retraction. And more: any journalistic entity worthy of the name would decide that the real story is, who is smearing Sad Puppies as racist, and why?

You can read a typical factless filled rant here at Salon: Sci-fi’s right-wing backlash: Never doubt that a small group of deranged trolls can ruin anything (even the Hugo Awards).

I used to consider myself a great SciFi and Fantasy fan, but by comparison with these guys, I'm a piker. I hardly know any of the authors anymore. Maybe I'll bone up this year, and pay the $40 to support Worldcon next year and vote myself.

Can Redskins Become the Giant Killers?

Today the now infamously awful Washington Redskins (3-10) take on the almost equally bad New York Giants (4-9) at 1 PM in the New Jersey Meadowlands, just coincidentally one of the most contaminated places in the United States. A perfect place for two teams that stink to face each other. Can they both lose?

How bad are the Redskins? So bad that Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post gave their owner second place to President Obama for the "Worst Year in Washington". For the record, this is the second year in a row the President has taken the "honor."

Dan Snyder, for disasters on and off the field

Well, at least Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, won something this year.

In late November, Rolling Stone magazine named him the worst owner in all of professional sports. Snyder's "victory" was a fitting end to a year that — even in the annals of Redskins stinkdom — has to be right at the top when it comes to being at the bottom.

And we know how unbiased the Rolling Stone is don't we? But wait, I agree with them on that. Maybe I should reconsider.

First, the on-the-field problems. "Franchise" quarterback Robert Griffin III went down in the first quarter of the season's second game with a dislocated ankle. That put backup Kirk Cousins in charge of the offense. He quickly proved he was better at throwing the ball to the other team than to his own. Then Griffin came back and, well, stunk. That led to his benching — and possible departure from the team at the end of the year — and the installation of Colt McCoy, he of the now 7-17 lifetime record as a starter, as the starter.

 Time to play "quarterback" roulette again?

Remember that Snyder's team gave up three first-round draft picks and one second-rounder for the rights to draft Griffin in 2012. And as of this writing, the Skins were 3-10, their fifth double-digit-loss season in the past six years. Next year may bring a new quarterback — or perhaps a new head coach, if Jay Gruden's desire to part ways with Griffin doesn't go over well with his bosses.

Off the field, things weren't any better for Snyder. Calls to get rid of the "Redskins" name burgeoned over the past year; 50 Democratic senators signed a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in May urging that the name be changed. The next month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the team's patent on the name and logo, saying they are offensive to Native Americans.

Even Elizabeth Warren, who faked being 1/32 Cherokee to get a job at Harvard where she claimed to be the "First Woman of Color" on their faculty. I wonder what the Cherokee equivalent of "chutzpah" is.

That's funny, now there aren't 50 Democratic Senators coming back next year to send such a letter. Coincidence? Probably;  I think Obama and Obamacare had more to do with that, but  who knows. Maybe the general disgust with Senators who cared more about renaming football teams than fixing the Obama economic depression.

Snyder, displaying his usual tin ear, promised the name would never be changed. At this rate, never is also when the Redskins will be a relevant NFL franchise under this owner.

I think that's about the only thing he's done right.

In other NFL news, several players decided to show their support for tax resistance and petty crime by raising their hands in support of "Don't shoot, I can't breathe" or something: NFL players show support for 'I can't breathe' protests.  Welcome to Tea Party, boys.

Washington (AFP) - Several NFL players joined other stars Sunday to support the "I can't breathe" protests sweeping the United States demanding justice for black men who have died at the hands of white policemen.

On Saturday, Chicago Bulls NBA star Derrick Rose wore a T-shirt bearing the words, which has become the slogan of the demonstrations in major US cities because they were the last phrase uttered by a black father of six in New York when police placed him in a chokehold.
Eric Garner died but a grand jury on Wednesday decided not to charge the white police officer, triggering days of protests in several US cities.

Detroit Lions running back Reggie Bush wore a top with "I can't breathe" written on it ahead of an NFL game on Sunday, as did Cleveland Browns ace Johnson Bademosi.

It's hard to play a football game that way; maybe he should have sat it out.

Davin Joseph, a St Louis Rams guard, wrote the same words on his cleats and tweeted it, along with the caption: "RIP Eric Garner."

Five Rams players incurred the wrath of a St Louis police organization a week ago when they entered the field with the same "hands up, don't shoot" gesture adopted by protesters in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson after a white policeman there shot dead an unarmed black teenager.

Oh well, enjoy your game, which ever one it is.

Wombat-socho's monster compendium "Rule 5 Sunday: Winter Solstice Edition" is ready at The Other McCain.

NFL Sunday: Skrælings Attack Vikings

In the ongoing controversy concerning the name of the Washington Redskins (a team not located in Washington, and having no Redskin Indian Native American players), I've come up with a new possibility for a name as the Redskins (3-5) take on the Vikings (3-5) in Minnesota at 1 PM EST. My proposal? The Landover Skraelings:

Skræling (Old Norse and Icelandic: skrælingi, plural skrælingjar) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the indigenous peoples they encountered in North America and Greenland. In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century. In the sagas, it is also used for the peoples of the region known as Vinland whom the Norse encountered during their expeditions there in the early 11th century.

The word skræling is the only word surviving from the Old Norse dialect spoken by the mediæval Norse Greenlanders. In modern Icelandic, skrælingi means a barbarian or foreigner. The origin of the word is not certain. William Thalbitzer (1932: 14) speculates that skræling might have been derived from the Norse verb skråla, meaning "bawl, shout, or yell".

 Or maybe "war cry"?

An etymology by Michael Fortescue et al. (1994) proposes that the Icelandic word skrælingi (savage) may be related to the word "skrá", meaning "dried skin", in reference to the animal pelts worn by the Inuit.

Some scholars have speculated that skrælingi came from the Scandinavian word skral or the Icelandic word skrælna. The word skral connotes "thin" or "scrawny". In the Scandinavian languages, it is often used as a synonym for feeling sick or weak, but this speculation is probably a case of folk etymology or linguistic "false friend"; the word skral does not exist in medieval Norse texts (for example the Icelandic sagas) nor in modern Icelandic. It is a 17th-century loanword from Low German into the Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Skræling or skrælling means weakling in modern Norwegian and Danish. Skrælna refers to shrinking or drying (plants for example). The term is moderately pejorative in Erik the Red's Saga as it is first used after a negative description of Native Newfoundlanders encountered in Vinland. First Nations people in Canada consider it offensive.

Of course they would. It's just the victors in the early battle for Eastern North America spitting on the losers.

One thing it would do is require adoption of Scandahoovian vowel "æ". Which doesn't help too much in terms of pronunciation:

In Danish and Norwegian, æ represents monophthongal vowel phonemes. In Norwegian, there are four ways of pronouncing the letter:

• /æː/ as in æ (the name of the letter), bær, læring, æra, Ænes, ærlig, tærne, Kværner, Dæhlie, særs, ærfugl, lært, trær ("trees")
• /æ/ as in færre, æsj, nærmere, Færder, Skjærvø, ærverdig, vært, lærd, Bræin (where æi is pronounced as a diphthong /æi/)
• /eː/ as in Sæther, Næser, Sæbø, gælisk, spælsau, bevæpne, sæd, æser, Cæsar, væte, trær ("thread(s)" (verb))
• /e/ as in Sæth, Næss, Brænne, Bækkelund, Vollebæk, væske, trædd

But in Iceland, it's pronounced as a dipthong, with the closest English pronunciation the "ie" in pie.

Speaking of the war on the Redskins name, it has become an issue in the midterm elections in Virginia, the northern part of which at least is in the Redskins sphere of influence as Virginia governor candidate Ed Gillespie (R) sides with the name Redskins, and accuses his democratic rival Mark Warner of not focusing on job creation while wasting time and effort on trivia:

The Gillespie spot refers to a bill that aims to “prohibit tax-exempt status to professional sports leagues that promote the use of the term redskins.” The Democratic bill comes after debate over whether the name should be considered a racial slur.

In the ad, Gillespie says, “I’ll answer the question. I’ll oppose the anti-Redskins bill. Let’s focus on creating jobs, raising take-home pay, and making our nation safer, and let the Redskins handle what to call their team.”

Oneida Indian Nation’s “Change the Mascot” campaign on Tuesday condemning the ad.
“The last time a Virginia Republican senate candidate actively promoted a racial slur, voters rightly rejected him,” Joel Barkin, the campaign’s spokesperson wrote in a statement. “As with former Senator George Allen, Ed Gillespie will likely lose the election promoting a dictionary-defined slur, but perhaps there will be a place for him on Dan Snyder’s payroll when it is all over.”

I don't think it's going to work.

No Joke: The Redskins Are Suing Five Native Americans

Five Native Americans are asking a Virginia judge to dismiss a lawsuit the Washington Redskins filed after the group successfully challenged the team's name, arguing it is offensive.

Lawyers for both sides were expected in federal court in Alexandria on Friday, where a judge was scheduled to hear arguments on whether the lawsuit should be thrown out.

The five won a victory earlier this year when a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office board ruled that six trademark registrations on the team's name should be canceled because they were "disparaging to Native Americans" when registered. The board acted after the group of Native Americans petitioned it to cancel the trademark registrations.

After the board's action, the team in August sued the five Native Americans, asking a federal court to stop the cancellation from happening.

The team, which has used Redskins as part of its name since 1933, says in court papers that the patent office board was wrong and that its trademarks are proper because the term was not offensive when the trademarks were registered. The team says canceling the trademarks, which were registered between 1967 and 1990, would violate the Constitution.

Lawyers for the five Native Americans argue that the Redskins' lawsuit against them should be dismissed because the team's real dispute is with the patent office.

Enjoy the game. And for you half-time reading may I suggest the Behind the Scenes look at the Vikings Cheerleaders Swimsuit Photo Shoot?

UPDATE: Well, the Redskins Scrælings lost 26 to 29 in a back of and forth game.  RG III did OK, but they didn't really look like a playoff team. Next week is a bye week with the next game on Nov. 16th against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: Flowtation" up at The Other McCain.

Lena Dunham is a Toad

Ugly and poisonous:

Kevin Williamson (@KevinNR) is a masterful journalist who knows a thing or two about effective storytelling. Sometimes, as a writer, you don’t want to be the one to connect the dots. Just say, “Oh, look, here’s a dot and there is another dot,” and let your readers form their own conclusions. And so, having undertaken to read Lena Dunham’s latest autobiographical opus — taking a bullet for the team there, Kev —Williamson describes Dunham’s depraved childhood habits:

Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter noted for his primitive brand of highbrow pornography, his canvases anchored by puffy neon-pink labia; her photographer mother filled the family home with nude pictures of herself, “legs spread defiantly.” Self-styled radicals from old money, they were not the sort of people inclined to enforce even the most lax of boundaries. And they were, in their daughter’s telling, enablers of some very disturbing behavior that would be considered child abuse in many jurisdictions — Lena Dunham’s sexual abuse, specifically, of her younger sister, Grace, the sort of thing that gets children taken away from non-millionaire families without Andover pedigrees and Manhattanite social connections. Dunham writes of casually masturbating while in bed next to her younger sister, of bribing her with “three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds . . . anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.” At one point, when her sister is a toddler, Lena Dunham pries open her vagina — “my curiosity got the best of me,” she offers, as though that were an explanation. “This was within the spectrum of things I did.”

That occurs in part one of the story, and then you read through part two of the story, until you get to part three of the story:

She sneers at “girls with boyfriends who looked like lesbians,” at a man guilty of “dressing vaguely like a middle-aged lesbian,” etc. “Lesbian” is Dunham’s shorthand for “awful.” On Girls, one of the characters scoffs that “dates are for lesbians,” and Dunham describes a childhood fear that she would become “the militant lesbian leader of a motorcycle gang,” but she also describes herself as “being in possession of a gay sister,” which fact she wields like a get-out-of-women’s-prison-free card against accusations of homophobia . . .

Notice the artfulness that Kevin Williamson has employed here: Early in the story, we learn that the degenerate young Dunham molested her sister as a child. Then, after reading several hundred more words, we are reminded, “Oh, by the way, that little girl Lena molested? She grew up to be a homosexual.” There is no need for Williamson even to suggest a correlation between these two facts. Anyone who has studied developmental psychology understands it.

Lena Dunham: Voice of a Perverted Generation!

And she is an Obama voter.