Tuesday, May 2, 2023

TLDR DIGEST APR 17-24

HEADLINES


The Myth of Inclusive Ballet
Proclamations of ‘trans-inclusive’ ballet are utterly specious: The sport isn’t even female-inclusive.


The Media Are Strangely Cautious about a Mass Shooter’s Motives, Just This One Time


Transgender sex worker who infected client with HIV fights deportation


Chicago Mayor-Elect Defends Rioters in Violent ‘Teen Takeover,’ Condemns Those Who ‘Demonize Youth’


It’s Beyond Just Hunter: House GOP Now Says Probe Extends to Nine Biden Family Members’ Web of Money and Influence


Europeans find blaming the Jews easier than giving up meat

Europeans discomfited with the idea of animal cruelty could abstain from meat. But accusing halal and kosher butchers instead absolves the conscience and keeps the foie gras flowing.


It's Democrats, Not Republicans, Who Are to Blame for Most Child Gun Deaths


Black Harvard Democrat charged with anti-gay hate crime – peers blame pro-life group


Yale columnist shares anger at ‘polite’ and calm pro-life peers

Debates about abortion or immigration are “an insult to our personhood, experience and rights.”


Zero House Democrats Vote to Protect Women’s Sports from Male Intrusion


Florida Mayor Goes Silent about Sponsoring Islamist Bigots


Pennsylvania Teachers, Activists Concocted Bogus LGBTQ Bullying Epidemic for Political Gain, Investigation Finds


Clueless Classical Ed Critics Accidentally Make A Killer Case For It

If you think classical education is racist, tell that to W.E.B. Du Bois.








QUOTES


“…tuition [] is now outrageous. The professors seem to be doing more sabbaticals than seminars. There are protests preventing access to the dining hall. And it honestly seems like your kid is getting a better education watching four-hour meme essays on YouTube. And after they graduate, their job search is a tear-filled nightmare that’s documented on TikTok. It’s enough to make you, a product of the system, wonder whether this whole higher education shindig is a scam.”


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“…regarding the 2020 election, affirming the sanctity of the process has become creedal and a sign of loyalty to the democratic process. That election is alone in American history as unassailable. … Who remembers the 2004 presidential election, when John Kerry was “supposed” to cruise to an easy victory over George W. Bush? Bush’s victory in Ohio was, we were told, corrupted and stolen by Diebold Election Systems, a manufacturer of voting machines which had alleged ties to Republican political figures. To this day there are dead-enders on the Left who believe that Kerry had the election stolen from him. …. Or consider 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s loss so baffled her devotees that they launched a four year “Resistance” to the Trump presidency that was festooned with conspiratorial musings so lavish that they included a front-page New York Magazine assertion that Donald Trump had been recruited as a KGB mole in the 1980s, with the long-term aim of installing him as a Kremlin puppet. … Fox News tried to play both sides in the wake of the 2020 election, and got its fingers burned by airing clumsy suppositions about election fraud that stupidly named names. It will no doubt have learnt its lesson, but do not expect this to be the last time we hear complaints about America’s hallowed election process — from either side.“


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“In the last two presidential campaigns, the most prominent candidates at points were Mr. Trump on the Republican side and Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, even though Mr. Trump had spent as much time as a registered Democrat or independent in prior years, and Mr. Sanders wasn’t technically a Democrat at all but rather an independent. In both parties, moderates hoped “party leaders” might devise a strategy to stop them, only to discover there were no leaders with the clout to do so.  And while it’s true that lawmakers in Congress often vote in lockstep with one another, they seldom do so because of some coherent set of party principles. The more powerful motive is fear of crossing the most strident activists back home.”


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“…the muddling of admission standards under the sign of social justice is an expression of a deeper and much older mentality among the Ivy administrations, one that predates affirmative action by decades or even centuries…Toward the middle of the 20th century, after decades of trying and failing to maintain their status as exclusionary clubs for monied Northeastern men, the times called for the prestige-supply of the Ivies to be distributed among the best and most qualified students—male and female, gentile and Jewish—in order for the Ivies to credibly retain their gatekeeping role. Conversely, in the 2020s, another period of social upheaval, excellence has gone out of fashion among an elite whose new watchword is “equity.” … In their implementation, the Ivies’ attempts at demographic engineering have little to do with any clear idea of either merit or justice. Indeed, if historical wrongdoing was the core issue, it would be hard to find a group in America that was explicitly targeted for exclusion for longer and to greater effect than Jews, including by the Ivies themselves. Instead, the Ivy student bodies reveal the absurdity of present efforts to equitably distribute prestige in an increasingly unequal society.”


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“I introduced a -11 Amendment to House Bill 2002.  It would have mandated insurance coverage for detransition treatments, similar to how the base bill covers “gender-affirming treatment”.  The amendment was flatly rejected by the Democrats.  They called the amendment “controversial”.  Oh.”


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“The protesters who insist on “our democracy,” like their counterparts in the United States, are not defending the actual outcome of an election, which they lost. Rather, they are insisting that elections merely deliver a hollow form of democracy, and that to make a government for, of, and by the people valid, you have to make sure that the people who run it have the right ideas, or else.”


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