MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Wokeness Killed Comedy So Badly, The Office Couldn’t Be Made Today “Most of the characters on that show probably would be canceled by now.” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/wokeness-killed-comedy-so-badly-the-office-couldnt-be-made-today/

Don’t take it from me.

It’s one thing when Mel Brooks says that Blazing Saddles couldn’t be made today. But we’re not talking about 70s or 80s comedies being made two generations later. The Office ran from 2005 to 2013. It went off the air less than a decade ago and it was such a linchpin of programming that Peacock’s only real power play was taking it off Netflix and trying to build a streaming service around it.

Nevertheless.

Mindy Kaling, who played Kelly Kapoor on the hit show The Office, told Good Morning America that the show couldn’t be made in the current climate and that the characters would all be “canceled.”

Asked about what her character would be up to now, she told the hosts, “I think she probably would have quit Dunder Mifflin to be an influencer, and then probably been canceled, almost immediately.”

“Actually, most of the characters on that show probably would be canceled by now,” she added, referencing the rise of cancel culture.

She explained that the show that launched her career “is so inappropriate now,” further telling the hosts that “we probably couldn’t make [it] now.”

“Tastes have changed, and honestly, what offends people has changed so much now. And so, I think that actually, it’s one of the reasons why the show is popular because people feel like there’s something kind of fearless about it or taboo that it talks about on the show,” Kaling said.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Death of Liberal Education and the Birth of the ‘Woke’ Our universities have failed in their primary reason for existing. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-death-of-liberal-education-and-the-birth-of-the-woke/

Last fall I taught my last class, ending a teaching career that began in the fall of 1977. During that time I watched as higher education deteriorated under the pressures of leftist ideology, rank careerism, bureaucratic inertia, and philistine utilitarianism. The humanities––English, foreign languages, philosophy, history, the arts––have been particularly corrupted.

Worse, liberal education, the passing on of the traditions, foundational ideas, and collective wisdom of the West, has been virtually banished from most of our schools and colleges. Universities, with a few exceptions, no longer ground students in liberal education, and teach them “to know the best that has been known and thought in the world, irrespective of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other consideration whatsoever,” as Matthew Arnold put it, and  “through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically.”

Those days are gone. Today our educational institutions are grubby, rent-seeking businesses, and propaganda organs for illiberal, incoherent ideologies based on the “higher nonsense” that has captured “higher education,” and from there trickled down into K-12 schools. No wonder the majority of the products of those failed institutions, like Generation Z, support letting murderers go free, censoring speech that challenges their “stock notions and habits,” joining the anti-carbon “green” cult, and subjecting children to drag-queen shows and inappropriate sexual curricula.

The most important tool in this demolition has been the dishonest idea of “diversity” created out of thin air by the 1978 Bakke decision. The legalization of Constitutionally forbidden discrimination in university admissions and hiring put the weight of federal power behind illiberal identity-politics. As a corollary to the increasing numbers of “protected” classes eligible for affirmative action, there was soon spawned attacks on liberal education for being the products of “dead white males”––not just irrelevant for contemporary students “of color,” but absolutely toxic in their promotion of the defining principles of a peculiarly destructive, racist, imperialist, colonialist Western Civilization, global history’s most heinous villain.

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Why Isn’t Homeland Security Monitoring A Muslim-Only Immigrant Shelter At The US Border?By: Todd Bensman

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/06/why-isnt-homeland-security-monitoring-a-muslim-only-immigrant-shelter-at-the-us-border/

A shelter in Tijuana for U.S.-bound Muslim immigrants exemplifies the Biden administration’s dangerous mismanagement of the border crisis.

In October, U.S. Border Patrol caught another nine border-crossing immigrants who were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list, adding to the already record-breaking 98 during the just-ended fiscal 2022 and 14 during the prior fiscal year.

Those 121 suspected terrorist border crossings should strike President Joe Biden’s homeland security establishment and the general public as a “system blinking red” moment, to requote the infamous 9/11 Commission Report line about failures to act on threat information.

But my recent fact-finding trip to Mexico’s first and only shelter that expressly caters to U.S.-bound Muslim immigrants indicated Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sees no blinking red lights amid this current mass-migration border crisis.

In June 2022, the San Diego-based Latina Muslim Foundation noticed significant enough numbers of U.S.-bound travelers from the Islamic world to justify opening the Albergue Assabil/Mesquijta Taybah shelter in a two-story, 8,000-square-foot former nightclub in Tijuana just two blocks from the border wall, which all who stay there intend to bypass one way or another. The shelter serves as a waystation for 30 to 140 immigrants at a time coming from Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Somalia, Chechnya, and other regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia where terrorist organizations operate.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Buying a Country Home? A Few Important Tips By David Solway

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/david-solway-2/2022/12/06/buying-a-country-home-a-few-important-tips-n1651343

Having decided to sell our city dwelling and purchase a new home in the country, my wife and I compiled a list of instructions for our real estate agent, almost as if we were house seekers on HGTV. Ample space was an obvious prerequisite. Reasonable proximity to an urban center for cultural, medical, and other needs and amenities was desirable — close but not too close, as semiotician Roland Barthes said about family. A congenial surrounding would be essential to avoid feng shui miseries.

The first item on the list, however, was absolutely crucial, namely, the solid assurance that a prospective wind farm anywhere in the vicinity would be out of the question. Governments and corporations have a way of staking out land to erect these atrocities without community consultation. The results are horrendous.

To begin with, wind turbines violate environmental principles, given that each turbine needs approximately 80 gallons of industrial oil and 12,000 gallons of PAO synthetic based on crude as a lubricant; the equipment to build windfarms runs on petroleum; there is no way to recycle the 150 ft. blades, which means landfill will be at a premium; and each turbine generates a humongous footprint. Some industry sources report that a wind farm typically requires up to 40 acres per megawatt of capacity. One must also factor in power substations and new access roads. All this apart from the fact that wind farms, for that matter solar panels as well, are not only eyesores but bird killers par excellence. Of course, we are not environmentalists but cannot help wondering how the Greenies square the desecration of the environment with their ostensible values. For the harm they do to the environment is immense.

If this were not bad enough, the insistent thrum of the rotating blades is known to produce psychological harm as well. I first became aware of the affliction some years back when a rural village in my native Quebec went collectively neurotic. The story made the middle pages of a few newspapers and then was quickly dropped. But there is no doubt that people who live near a wind farm suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, and nervous breakdowns, not to mention irrecoverable property depreciation. Which may explain why government ministers, corporate CEOs, and Green enthusiasts do not live anywhere near the installations they variously promote, build and profit from. They are dacha-smart.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Brute Physical Facts and Social Construction The progressive and the traditionalist are equally detached from the underlying reality as currently described by science. Vinod Goel

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://quillette.com/2022/12/06/brute-physical-facts-and-social-construction/

According to the former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, the most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, and it’s not even a close call. “If you ask, ‘who’s the most likely to take this Republic down?’ It would be the teachers’ unions, and the filth that they are teaching our kids,” he told Semafor in a recent interview. This statement is startling given that Pompeo is a graduate of Harvard Law and West Point, until you realize that he is probably positioning himself for a 2024 Republican presidential run, where the primary electability criterion is one’s stand on certain cultural issues.

Pompeo and other Republican hopefuls are addressing the Republican base, like my friends and neighbors in Florida. While some of us may struggle to understand their hyperbolic invective, my MAGA neighbors understand it, and it resonates with their own concerns. They have impassioned and unalterable beliefs about many social/cultural issues such as gender, race, territoriality, abortion, and equality. They are certain that “men are men and women are women”; that race is a real phenomenon; that equality is not inevitable; that life begins at conception, and that America’s borders must be defended from foreigners.

These beliefs are intuitively plausible, often embedded in instinctual biases, and culturally reinforced. They not only form the bedrock of their adherents’ own social order, they are also attributed to the Founding Fathers and implicated in the success of Pax Americana. To question these beliefs and cultural norms is to threaten America and their way of life. In this context—and in the absence of a credible external threat—it is not surprising that the greatest threat to the Republic is perceived to be the university-educated “liberal progressives” who question and disavow these traditional norms and try to replace them with their own.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Civil Disobedience Starts Here

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/07/civil-disobedience-starts-here/

As COVID-19 cases increase, the Los Angeles County public health director is threatening – yes, that’s the right word – another indoor mask mandate. It’s a hob-nailed boot on the neck. Angelenos need to resist, for themselves and the rest of the country.

“As COVID cases and other viruses continue to rise, the Southland is inching closer to a mask mandate,” the Los Angeles CBS affiliate reported Sunday. Barbara Ferrer, the county director of public health, who is not a physician, not a nurse, not even a paper shuffler at a doctor’s office, but a social welfarist, said last week that “masking” is one of several “commonsense mitigation strategies” that “remains a very sensible approach.”

Don’t mistake mask mandates as harmless cases of officials acting in an abundance of caution or just covering their backsides, as government always does. Mask mandates are open displays of outright meanness, a manifestation of authoritarian urges to control others. There is no data, no reputable research that tells us mask mandates works.

In fact, the data tells the opposite. Yet officials such as Ferrer and the Sacramento schools chamberlains are insisting that masks must go back on. It’s no coincidence that the madness is starting in a state where personal freedoms are routinely tread upon as if they’re gifts that can be handed down by the government rather than God-given.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Clarification From the Capitol Riot Committee The chairman makes it even harder to take this work seriously. James Freeman

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-clarification-from-the-capitol-riot-committee-11670362454?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D., Miss.), who defied the U.S. Constitution in 2005 by seeking to block certification of the re-election of President George W. Bush, is back in the news. No, Mr. Thompson is not denying legitimate election results again. But his Tuesday comments appear to represent yet another affront to constitutional governance.

Luke Broadwater reports for the New York Times:

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on its inquiry, the panel’s chairman said on Tuesday, but has made no decision on who it will recommend charging or what offenses it will cite.
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the Democratic chairman of the committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill that the panel had agreed to take the step and would meet later Tuesday to discuss the specifics. But within moments, he and his staff rushed to clarify his statement, reflecting a debate that is still underway within the panel about whether to call for charges against former President Donald J. Trump and some of his top allies.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Bipartisan Schedule for Presidential Primaries Biden wants to demote Iowa and New Hampshire, but why not let the closest states go first? By Michael Segal

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bipartisan-schedule-for-presidential-primaries-south-carolina-nomination-process-election-race-voters-11670350936?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Democrats have proposed to make the South Carolina primary the first contest in their presidential nomination process, supplanting Iowa and New Hampshire. The problem is that they plan to do so using racial criteria, to “ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process,” as President Biden put it in a letter to the Democratic National Committee last week: “You cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color.”

Since that isn’t true of the Republicans, they’re unlikely to use the same criteria or the same schedule. This would be a logistical problem, especially in states that allow independent or crossover voting, where voters can choose on Election Day in which primary to cast a ballot.

Democrats have a point that the process could benefit from some updating, but how about using a rules-based approach? The first primary could go to the state with the closest race in the previous presidential election. In 2024 that would be Georgia, where Mr. Biden won by 0.2% in 2020. Next could be Arizona, where Mr. Biden won by 0.3%, or North Carolina, where Donald Trump won by 1.3%.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Why unpopular Biden desperately wants Democrats’ primary season to start in South Carolina

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/unpopular-biden-desperately-wants-democrats-primary-season-south-carolina

President Joe Biden just pulled a fast one on Pete Buttigieg.

And… on Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Gavin Newsom and other Democrat hopefuls who might (despite vows to the contrary) be planning to challenge Joe Biden in 2024. 

The president’s political gurus are trying to upend the party’s primary schedule – knocking out Iowa and New Hampshire as leaders of the selection process and moving South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan earlier in the calendar. Those changes would seriously disadvantage those potential 2024 candidates and several others. 

But, the revised plan would – surprise! — make Joe Biden a shoo-in by prioritizing states with large Black populations. Democrats should beware: the boost to Biden and emphasis on African-American voters could backfire.

Joe Biden has been taking a victory lap recently, taking credit for his party’s unexpectedly strong showing in the midterm elections. But it is notable that the president personally had little involvement in those races; numerous candidates eschewed his participation, concerned that his low approval ratings might prove contagious.

Even now, Biden is a no-show in Georgia, where incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock is battling Republican Hershel Walker to retain his seat. Barack Obama is campaigning in Georgia, but not Biden.

Ignored midst the giddiness over the GOP’s poor showing in the midterms is that Biden remains deeply unpopular. Real Clear Politics puts the president’s average approval rating at 41%; a recent Quinnipiac poll shows his favorability at 36%. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Raphael Warnock Wins Reelection in Georgia Senate Runoff Spencer Brown  

Posted By on December 7th, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/12/06/georgia-senate-runoff-n2616800

After neither incumbent Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock nor Trump-endorsed GOP challenger Herschel Walker received more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day in November, the two faced off on Tuesday in a runoff election that saw Sen. Warnock prevail in his reelection bid according in a call that came less than three hours after the polls closed.

Throughout the night as votes were tallied, the lead see-sawed between the two candidates, with Walker leading for a while as day-of votes began to be counted and Warnock taking the lead back as counties around Atlanta reported more votes. 

Despite Walker’s performance among day-of voters, Warnock’s advantage among early and absentee voters kept the incumbent Democrat ahead of his GOP challenger even as turnout in Georgia’s runoff beat records in previous cycles — another repudiation of claims that Georgia’s election integrity law would disenfranchise voters and reduce participation in Peach State elections. 

Still, the outcome looks to be closer than the three percent margin that many analysts and pundits predicted in the Georgia runoff, meaning that Warnock did not run away with his reelection bid and was held closer than expected by Walker’s campaign, due in no small part to runoff campaign assistance from Gov. Brian Kemp following his reelection in November.

At the time Decision Desk HQ called the race, Warnock had 50.46 percent of the votes to Walker’s 49.54 percent with 83 percent of the estimated votes counted. As expected, Warnock led in the early vote by a not-insignificant margin, underscoring calls by some Republicans, contrary to what former President Donald Trump has said, for the GOP to ramp up its early voting efforts to prevent Democrats from running up leads like the one seen in Georgia Tuesday night. 

But for now at least, the 2022 midterm election cycle is finally, officially over — ending again in Georgia with a Senate runoff — the result of which puts the balance of power in the U.S. Senate at 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans.