Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Category: Culture

Racist Activist Women Demand Suppression of Civil Rights by Autocrat

Not only do they want to ban guns… not only do they want the governor to do it via executive fiat… but they want to make white women submit to their bidding as penance for being white… and scores of white women show up. This is the state of our culture at the moment.

Here4TheKids, a movement created after a mass shooting in Nashville in March left six people dead, including three children, calls for primarily White women to peacefully sit-in until Polis, a Democrat, signs an executive order banning guns. It was founded by two women of color, Saira Rao, who is South Asian American, and Tina Strawn, who is Black. Both are mothers.

Strawn told CNN the movement calls for White women to be at the forefront of the sit-in because, “we know what happens when we show up with demands.”

 

“We know what happens when we show up in large numbers to fight for our rights. We’ve been doing it for generations. We’re always the ones whose bodies are in the most danger and at the most risk,” Strawn, an author and owner of the “Speaking of Racism” podcast said.

 

“So, it appealed to me very much that this was actually a time where we are asking Black folks and other marginalized and vulnerable communities to sit this one out and allow the White women and their privileged bodies, their privilege, and their power to show up. It’s time for them to show up,” Strawn added.

“Rainbow Capitalism”

Can’t win, eh. This is why I prefer companies that just keep their noses out of activism in any form. Sure, sell the merchandise targeted at the LGBTQ community, but just sell it like all of the other products. When you make a point of getting into activism, it cuts both ways.

Heather Hester told Fox Digital that Target’s reaction confirmed that the organization was ‘in this just for the money,’ and that the company’s recent actions are a ‘huge betrayal’ to the LGBTQ community.

 

‘Rainbow capitalism is essentially, you know, selling Pride products for profit and not necessarily standing behind the community with support,’ said Hester. ‘That’s what happened, right? There are a lot of things that go into that, but that is what happened at the end of the day.’

 

Target has lost market value since it viral videos showed its LGBTQ clothing – including ‘tuck-friendly’ gear – on sale in stores.

Crime Destroys Home Values

Yup

Other notable declines occurred in major metros like Austin, Boise, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Los Angeles – all of which saw their median home price shed at least $60,000 since April of last year.

 

San Francisco and Oakland both saw price drops into six figures with the median value decreasing by $220,000 and $174,000 respectively.

I was speaking to a friend who lives in the Minneapolis area. She commented on how home prices in her town were still high with limited supply, but she knew of people moving out of Minneapolis proper who were losing their shorts on their homes. People are sick of the crime and are fleeing. Unfortunately, like what happened in Chicago, there are fewer and fewer people who care about crime living in these cities. What’s left are people who will continue to vote for Marxists who will continue to encourage the carnage with pro-criminal policies. The cities are in a death spiral.

The trap that we must avoid is to bail these cities out. They have made a choice. They should deal with the consequences. There is no rational reason for people who made better choices in other communities to send their hard-earned money to be flushed down the crime sewer.

BLM Nonprofit Cuts Expenses

Heh

A 60-page filing, submitted by the organization earlier this month, shows the foundation spent more money than it earned in its last fiscal year, from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. It ended the year with roughly $30 million in assets, down from the $42 million in assets reported in its filing the previous year.

 

The BLM nonprofit had raised more than $90 million in the first year that it was a tax-exempt organization, coinciding with the wave of protests over police brutality in the summer of 2020. But with the racial justice fundraising environment quickly returning to norms, the new tax filings show the organization cut operating expenses by nearly 55%.

Cicley Gay, board chair for the foundation, said the belt-tightening was part of an effort to demonstrate that its stewards “have been responsible, proactive decision-makers of the people’s donations.”

 

“We are building an institution to fight white supremacy and reach Black liberation,” Gay said in a statement about the tax filings. “Every dollar we spend is in order to reach that goal.”

 

The foundation said it would post the new financial documents to a “transparency center” on its official website.

 

Last year, the nonprofit gave more than $4 million in grants to Black-led grassroots organizations, including organizations founded by the families of police brutality victims, whose names rally the larger movement. Nearly $26 million had gone to Black organizations and families during the foundation’s 2020-2021 fiscal year.

The ratio of “expenses” to grants seems to confirm that this little more than a graft organization

Climate Fascists Are Frustrated With Opposition

Ha. So climate fascists continue to turn the screw of oppression to bend the masses to their wills and they get frustrated when people say mean things on Twitter. Bullies.

Policies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of climate change are accelerating, prompting a rise in what experts identify as organised resistance by opponents of climate reform.

[…]

Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and a regular target for abuse by deniers of climate change, said he believed the rise in misinformation was “organised and orchestrated” by opponents of climate reforms.

Uber Diversity Executive Takes Leave Amidst Controversy

For the life of me, I don’t understand why companies think that it is their responsibility to use the workplace to correct society’s ills. They should certainly keep bigotry and hate out of the workplace (we call that “professionalism”), but why does Uber and other companies feel like they need to use their time and resources to address societal or cultural issues? Not only is it not their job, it is fraught with professional and market peril – like we see in this story.

CNN — 

Uber’s diversity chief is on leave from the company after criticism from some employees related to an internal panel called “Don’t Call Me Karen.”

Bo Young Lee, Uber’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, is on a leave of absence, Noah Edwardsen, an Uber spokesperson, confirmed to CNN on Monday.

Lee oversaw a series of sessions called “Moving Forward” at Uber that focused on issues around race, gender identity and class. One of the more recent sessions was titled, “Don’t Call Me Karen,” and focused on the experiences of a handful of women leaders, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. “Karen” is a slang term that usually refers to a middle-aged white woman with a strong sense of entitlement, often at the expense of people of color.

[…]

According to the New York Times, which was first to report the news, Black and Hispanic workers at Uber first felt that organizers of the event were focusing more on the harms caused by using the moniker “Karen” than the harms white people can inflict on people of color.

In a follow-up listening session, the Times reported, some employees felt their concerns weren’t being heard and that instead of a chance to provide feedback or have a dialogue, they were lectured by Lee about their response to the initial “Don’t Call Me Karen” event.

Gorsuch Decries Assault on Civil Liberties During Pandemic

Yes. And. Yes.

‘Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private,’ he wrote.

 

‘They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too.’

 

[…]

 

Referring to the broader issue of strict lockdown policies during the pandemic, Gorsuch added: ‘Doubtless, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and hopefully serious efforts will be made to study it.

 

‘One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.

 

‘A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force.’

 

He concluded: ‘Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others.

 

‘And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.’

Remember that Wisconsin’s Governor Evers was in the vanguard of Medical Totalitarianism until the Republican legislature and right-leaning Supreme Court yanked on the reins. The results would be different if it happened today after two liberal wins to the court.

More Rail in Wisconsin Could… Could Attract 250,000 New Passesngers

But at what cost?

MADISON – State transportation officials who want to expand Amtrak rail to Wisconsin’s population centers of Madison, Green Bay, Waukesha County and other communities project the move could attract about 250,000 new passengers to the trains within a decade and an additional 1.6 million by 2050.

 

The state Department of Transportation this week released a long-term plan for Wisconsin’s rail lines that includes the department’s vision for rail service in Wisconsin over the next three decades, including proposals to extend passenger rail to 11 new communities in Wisconsin that would connect the state’s capital and Milwaukee.

The first assumption that they don’t even bother to explain is that increasing rail passengers is a good thing. Is it? At best, it’s neutral, isn’t it? So some people who might prefer to take a train from Green Bay to Madison can do so instead of driving. So?

And what will that cost? Look at California… it ain’t cheap. So let’s say it will cost $20 Billion (probably low) to expand the passenger rail service so that someone can take a train from Wausau to Madison in 4 hours instead of driving it in 2. So we should spend $80,000 per ride to build that out?

Can we just accept that we like our cars and want to use our government resources to be used to make the roads better and stop making cars more expensive?

Leftist criminal justice policies are killing us

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

The first trend is the intentional softening of our criminal justice system. With callous disregard for the victims of crime, the left has made a concerted effort in recent years to drive soft-on-crime policies while putting in place prosecutors, judges, and police leadership who use their positions to coddle criminals at every opportunity.

 

The left is so proud of their pro-crime positions that they are not shy about telling people. Gov. Tony Evers has a stated policy goal of halving the state’s prison population. The only way to do that is to let some criminals out early while preventing more from going in. Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform, the euphemism liberals use for soft-on-criminal policies. Chisholm’s “bail reform” initiative, which allows violent offenders to bail out of jail for little or no money, has led to criminals committing more crimes when they should have reasonably been in jail.

 

In each of the three incidents that led to the deaths of four officers this year, the murderers should have been in jail. We used to know that locking up violent criminals was the surest path to reducing crime. The left wants us to forget that fact, but the evidence is clear.

 

The second trend is the cultural contempt for police that the left is advocating. Every time there is a policeinvolved shooting, leftist politicians activists leap to blame the police and attack them with accusations of racism or misconduct before the guns have even cooled.

 

The left pushed the defund-the-police movement using rhetoric that the police were so fundamentally corrupt that they could not be reformed. They must be defunded and disbanded instead.

 

When leftist rioters burn down our cities, attack people, and occupy neighborhoods, leftist politicians and activists side with the rioters and prevent the police from keeping order.

 

Even with our children, the left teaches that police are inherently bad and corrupt. In the wake of the BLM movement, the Milwaukee Public Schools ejected all Milwaukee police officers from their schools and are boisterously rejecting Republican calls to let them return. How are Milwaukee’s public school kids supposed to respect police officers when they are being taught that the police are violent bigots?

 

The overall increase in crime driven by leftist policies, prosecutors and judges coupled with the leftist anti-police rhetoric is having the intended effect. More police officers are being murdered by violent criminals who no longer respect the police and should have been in jail anyway. The story of leftist rule is being written in blue and red.

Sir Karl Jenkins Debunks Trans Meghan Rumors

This is my favorite story of the week.

Sir Karl JenkinsIMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Welsh composer Sir Karl Jenkins had a surprise when he had to debunk theories that he was the Duchess of Sussex in disguise at King Charles’ coronation.

 

Despite it being announced the duchess would not be attending, Twitter was awash with claims she’d snuck her way into Westminster Abbey.

 

“Meghan you’re not fooling us,” one user said, attaching a photo of the musician’s unique look.

 

After this, Sir Karl took to TikTok to set the record straight.

Lower Birth Rates Driven By Fewer Unwanted Pregnancies

The cultural deprioritization of children and families leads to fewer of them. Shocking.

The new data is one of the clearest indicators that the drop in fertility during the Great Recession was not just a temporary delay, as often happens in recessions. Instead, it seems to have coincided with a broader shift in what women wanted, and increased access to contraception.

 

The analysis combined reports and surveys from the National Center for Health Statistics; abortion data from Guttmacher; and estimates of total pregnancies and miscarriages.

 

The data is from before two seismic events that affected fertility: the pandemic, followed by the Dobbs decision that ended the nationwide right to abortion. It’s unclear what long-term changes those will bring. There is early evidence that at the beginning of the pandemic, many people delayed getting pregnant. There could also be an increase in the share of unwanted or mistimed births in states with new abortion bans.

 

The United States has long had one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancy in the industrialized world. It has declined 23% in the last three decades, and 46% of pregnancies are now unintended. In Western Europe, by comparison, 36% are unintended, and the rate has not changed much.

 

The new analysis suggests that during the period of the study, American women rapidly gained more autonomy over their family planning, and had fewer abortions because of it.

 

The data indicates that “far fewer individuals were becoming pregnant in 2015 than in 2009, and that abortion incidence went down because individuals did not get pregnant, not because their pregnancies continued to a birth instead of an abortion,” wrote the paper’s authors, Guttmacher researchers Kathryn Kost, Mia Zolna and Rachel Murro.

 

In 2015, just under a quarter of women said their pregnancy came too soon, a decline of 18% from 2009. There was also a slight decline of 5%, to 17%, in the share of pregnant women who said they did not want a baby at all. These declines were driven by younger women having significantly fewer unwanted pregnancies.

Test Scores for U.S. History and Civics Plummet

This is a disaster.

A growing number of students are falling below even the basic standards set out on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a rigorous national exam administered by the Department of Education. About 40% of eighth graders scored “below basic” in U.S. history last year, compared with 34% in 2018 and 29% in 2014.

 

Just 13% of eighth graders were considered proficient — demonstrating competency over challenging subject matter — down from 18% nearly a decade ago.

 

[…]

 

The dip in civics performance was smaller but notable: It was the first decline since the test began being administered in the late 1990s. About 22% of students were proficient, down from 24% in 2018.

 

[…]

 

Instructional time for social studies declined after the implementation of No Child Left Behind, a pattern that was amplified during the pandemic, when schools had to triage academic losses, resulting in more of a focus on reading and math.

 

“It doesn’t bode well for the future of this country and for the future of democracy if we don’t start doing more instruction in social studies,” said Kristin Dutcher Mann, a history professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who helps train middle and high school social studies teachers. At one point, she said, older elementary school students in her community received an hour of social studies each day. Now, she said, “they will be lucky if they get 30 minutes for social studies twice a week.”

 

Instruction has changed, too.

 

Students spend far less time memorizing state capitals or the preamble to the Constitution — information they could easily Google — and instead focus more on key skills, like distinguishing between primary and secondary source documents. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Dr. Dutcher Mann said. Students need to be taught to think critically.

 

But she said that emphasis can contribute to a troubling lack of background knowledge. Even in her college classes, she said, she has noticed a “rapid and very significant decline” in what students know about history and geography — like the fact that Africa is a continent, not a country.

I do think that the emphasis on “how to think” is useless without a base of knowledge. You can’t evaluate information if you lack the historical and factual context of the information. It’s not that we want to move away from teaching critical thinking. It’s that we have to teach a lot of rote facts first so that we CAN teach critical thinking.

Oregon to Make it Illegal to Harass Vagabond Campers

There was a time when a public space was supposed to be able to be enjoyed by all. In Oregon, you’ll need to feel comfortable dodging mentally ill people and needles to enjoy your public spaces. And don’t complain, because that might cost you. Of course, if you are accosted, that’s on you.

Democrats in the Oregon House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would decriminalize homeless encampments in public places and allow homeless people to sue for $1,000 if harassed or told to leave.

The bill, HB 3501, would allow unhoused people to use public spaces “without discrimination and time limitations” regarding their housing status, the text reads.

“Many persons in Oregon have experienced homelessness as a result of economic hardship, a shortage of safe and affordable housing, the inability to obtain gainful employment and a disintegrating social safety net system,” says the bill, sponsored by Rep. Farrah Chaichi, a Democrat whose district includes Beaverton, and Rep. Khanh Pham, from southeast Portland. “Decriminalization of rest allows local governments to redirect resources from local law enforcement activities to activities that address the root causes of homelessness and poverty.”

 

Teacher Activism

Bearing in mind that we only get one side of the story in this article and it’s from the aggrieved teacher, but this is the kind of stuff that parents are rightfully getting upset about. This is a 3rd grade teacher. 3rd grade. I don’t want her delving into queer theory any more than I want her to 2nd Amendment rights. I want her to teach the curriculum. Is that so hard? Just do the job. The classroom is not your personal activism space.

“you’d think I was teaching way out west but this is downtown Austin…,” she writes.

 

“OK, so today I got pulled into a ‘check-in meeting’ with my administrator at school, and she had this lovely list of concerns that she wanted to bring to my attention,” Sophie explains in the video.

 

Included in the list is the concern that Sophie is “intentionally” teaching her third-grade students about their rights.

 

“But my favorite amongst them is, ‘We’ve noticed an intentional attempt at teaching your students about their legal and constitutional rights.’ That’s the concern,” she reveals. “Why are you concerned? Why is that a concern? Why does that concern you?”

 

Sophie, who is “queer until proven straight,” is outspoken about human rights on her social media platforms. She covers a plethora of current events, including the Queer Capitol March and Texas legislation.

 

“I have no other choice but to be political. life is depending on it,” reads her Instagram bio. “unwilling to die for the dow. abortion advocate.”

Thomas Mansplains Feminism for Teammates

Lovely.

Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas hit back at women who don’t want her to compete in women’s sports, claiming they were too scared to ‘fully manifest’ their ‘implicit bias’ and play it off as half-support.

 

The former University of Pennsylvania athlete joined first NCAA transgender swimmer Schuyler Bailar on his podcast Dear Schuyler on Monday to discuss the division over whether or not trans-female athletes should be on women’s sports teams.

 

Thomas, who received multitudes of criticism throughout the swim season, has called her former teammates and critics fake feminists who are pushing transphobic values under the disguise that they are ‘supporting women.’

 

[…]

 

‘They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs. I think a lot of people in that camp sort of carry an implicit bias against trans people, but don’t want to, I guess, fully manifest or speak that out. And so they try to just play it off as this sort of half-support.

 

Bailar agreed with the controversial athlete, saying:  ‘They’re coming from…this whole protect “protect women’s sports,” [which] has become a very big movement and that they do it under the guise of feminism. “Oh, we’re just feminists, we’re just fighting for women,” and whenever anybody says that I’m always [like]: ‘Okay, you’re fighting for women by excluding women so that’s not fighting for women.’

 

The athletes discussed how black women faced the same criticism that transgender women are facing now, saying that people ‘don’t want a woman who doesn’t look like you perhaps or who isn’t fitting your version of womanhood to win.’

 

Bailar went on to say that feminism has become ‘twisted’ and ‘turned into excluding women’ and reduced them to ‘reproductive capacity.’

 

‘At the end of the day, everybody’s trying to – under a true feminist  – is everybody trying to come together to sort of break down these patriarchal ideals of what a woman is and who can be a woman and sort of open that up to to the very broad range of possibilities that there are,’ Thomas said.

Underly undermines education

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly has finally found something to get vocal about. It’s not about the fact that only about 9.1% of Milwaukee government schools kids are proficient or better at math. It’s not about the fact that only 5.1% of Kenosha government schools kids are proficient or better at language arts. No, those immoral and abysmal failures escape Underly’s notice. But the fact that some kids in the Waukesha government school district are not singing “Rainbowland” by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton has drawn her full wrath. Underly’s priorities are clear and wrong.

 

[…]

 

Understand that if those same teachers were infusing biblical teachings or gun rights into every day, then Underly’s stance would be different. But since those teachers want to indoctrinate kids with critical race theory, gender ideology, and Marxism, Underly wants to enforce unfettered access to kids under the banner of inclusivity. Leftist activists like Underly never seem to consider how ferociously exclusive they are to people with whom they disagree.

 

This is the trick by which leftists have been using our schools increasingly as indoctrination centers. Through activists posing as teachers and staff, they push the latest leftist ideology into our schools through every crevasse. With flags on the walls and off-topic rants, they program kids to accept their world view as the only normal. Then, when challenged by parents who disagree, they gaslight and accuse parents of being controversial and oppressive. It is a proven tactic by leftist cry-bullies.

 

In Waukesha, the citizenry, through their elected school board, has decided that they want their teachers to spend their time teaching. Their policy does not prohibit the discussion of controversial subjects but relegates them to the appropriate educational context. The district’s recently approved Parental Rights and Transparency policy reaffirms this commitment to education and inclusivity and leaves the teaching of values and religion to parents.

 

The good folks of Waukesha are making it clear that they want their government schools to spend their valuable time teaching core subjects and skills instead of wading into the latest cultural controversy. Government schools are only required to teach 1,137 hours per school year for grades seven through 12 — less for other grades. That’s less than 13% of a child’s time. Kids can spend the other 87% of their time engaging in cultural warfare, but for that 13%, Waukesha wants their kids to learn something.

 

Under Superintendent Underly’s watch, like that of her predecessor, the performance of government schools to educate kids has been in decline. Our kids are falling increasingly behind and are less equipped to be successful adults than their parents were. Despite this, Underly is choosing to spend her finite time and considerable resources bullying school districts to allow leftist teachers to use their classrooms to indoctrinate the next generation.

TikTok to Enforce Climate Change Orthodoxy

Look at them get in line when threated by a ban. And you’ll notice that TikTok still isn’t banned…

Controversial social media app TikTok announced Friday that it would begin removing “climate change misinformation” from its platform.

 

“On April 21, we will begin to ramp up enforcement of a new climate change misinformation policy which removes climate change misinformation that undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as content denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it,” the company said in a statement ahead of Earth Day on Saturday. “As we do for all misinformation policies, we will work with independent fact-checking partners when applying this policy to help assess the accuracy of content.”

32,000 More Living Babies In 6 Months After Dobbs

Excellent!

In the six months after the Supreme Court ruling that ended the federal right to an abortion, there were about 32,000 fewer abortions than expected in the United States, according to a new analysis.

There were about 5,000 fewer legal abortions each month, on average, than there were in the months before the ruling – a drop of about 6%.

I thought the most interesting thing about the report was the before/after chart by state starting on page 9. Look at the “before” column and notice that the number of abortions is nowhere near linear by population. The states had different restrictions prior to Dobbs, but abortions were still generally available for most of the time for all pregnancies. The difference in abortion rates seems to be indicative of the varying cultural preferences in each state more so than the legal restrictions. Of course, those differing legal restrictions in each state were also reflective of the cultural variances in each state.

I guess it just confirms what we knew… liberals just really like to abort their babies much more than conservatives.

Cardinal Stritch University to Close

The demographic trends are undeniable. There will be more to fall. What are our taxpayer-supported universities doing to adjust to the new realities?

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — The president of Cardinal Stritch University announced Monday that the university will be closing, effective May 22.

 

In a video message, Dr. Dan Scholz said, in part:

“I would prefer that I shared good news with you, but my message is profoundly sad. I am here to report that the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi have accepted the recommendation of the University’s Board of Trustees to suspend and cancel all educational services, activities and programs, effective May 22, 2023 and begin the winddown process of the university operations after the current spring semester.” 

Dr. Scholz attributed the closure to “fiscal realities, downward enrollment trends, the pandemic, the need for more resources and the mounting operational and facility challenges.”

Dueling Drug Rulings

The contradictory federal court rulings about the abortion pill is going to have to be resolved by SCOTUS. I did think that this was… interesting, I guess. Infuriating?

Allison Whelan, assistant professor in Georgia State University College of Law who filed a legal brief in favour of keeping FDA approval, said the ruling – which refers throughout to “unborn humans”, not fetuses – was “inflammatory”.

“The politics and ideology motivating Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision could not be made any clearer by the inflammatory anti-abortion language used throughout the opinion,” she told the BBC.

While not the chosen language of the Left, “unborn humans” is a perfectly accurate description of an unborn human. How is that inflammatory? I suppose you could argue that it is anti-abortion, because it acknowledges the fact that fetuses are, in fact, unborn humans, but if anything, “unborn humans” is far more accurate description in common language.

Frankly, I appreciate the abortion supporters who are at least honest and admit that they want to kill the babies instead of hiding behind words to obfuscate the fact.

 

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