Washington residents sue the Navy to stop SEALs from training in state parks, because the thought of men armed with guns watching them from behind trees is too scary to think about.
It isn’t like Washington is part of the US anymore, so perhaps soon those will be actual combat missions.
There are eight Ivy league colleges in the United States: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. All have this reputation of being the best colleges that the country has to offer. Being accepted to one of them is an indication of excellence. Is pride in that accomplishment justified?
Only a five students have been accepted by all eight of them.
What do all of these students have in common? (Other than being accepted by all eight Ivy League schools, of course.) They have a lot in common:
Admittedly, they have high grades and test scores. However, lots of students have that. So then explain to me how David Hogg qualified for Harvard with his SAT scores, which were low enough to place him in the 5th percentile.
Keep in mind that Harvard accepts less than 6 percent of applicants. The other schools in the Ivy league do the same. They have been sued for discrimination in the past.
William Fitzsimmons, the 30-year dean of admissions, who oversees the screening process of about 40,000 applicants and narrows them down to 2,000 acceptance letters that are handed out each year, testified that African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores out of a possible 1600 combined math and verbal, are sent recruitment letters with a score as low as 1100, whereas Asian-Americans need to score at least 250 points higher – 1350 for women and 1380 for men.
Tell me that being accepted to those prestigious schools is about your ability and accomplishments, and not about meeting the woke checkboxes. The admissions departments at these schools claim that this isn’t discrimination, because they are attempting to “break the cycle of the discrimination of the past.” Fighting discrimination by discriminating against people is like fucking to preserve virginity.
Harvard isn’t the only one. Yale was also sued by the justice department under President Trump for discriminating against qualified white and Asian students.
Meanwhile, 49 percent of the students at Harvard have straight A’s.
I don’t understand how a University that admits students based on race, then gives them straight A’s can possibly be an elite school that carries any sort of prestige.
Just last week, I asked how people could afford to simply up and quit their jobs as a part of the great resignation. It seems as though the child tax credit was a big part of it, and now that credit has come to an end.
Yahoo brings to us a piece that explains how those who have quit their jobs are now complaining that the loss of the tax cut means that they have no money for bills, believing that the government should pay them to sit at home and do nothing but breed.
Roberts, who lives in Marks, Miss., left her job as an insurance agent at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when her employer wouldn’t let her work from home…”This tax credit is the only way we’ve kept food on the table,” said Roberts, who is raising a 5- and 7-year-old. “For a lot of the working poor, it gave us a chance to finally take a freaking breath and not stress so much about how the bills get paid every month.”
Imagine how easy it would be to pay your bills if you didn’t quit your job.
Back in Mississippi, Roberts – who took custody of her cousin’s grandchildren five years ago – says she’ll probably let her car insurance payments lapse so she can buy groceries. She has just $388 left in her bank account but feels lucky to own her house, which she says puts her in a much better position than many friends who are at risk of eviction or foreclosure.
This poor woman is stuck having to raise and provide for the grandkids of her cousin. I feel bad for her, but it isn’t the responsibility of the US taxpayer to give her money, simply because she has a sad backstory.
Who else is sad because they aren’t getting checks anymore?
In San Antonio, Nathaniel Miller and his wife used their monthly payments to buy gluten-free food, oat milk and diapers for their 1-year-old daughter, who has severe food allergies. Without it, he says his family of four will have to start using their savings to cover everyday expenses.
“We’re a one-income household, so that money has been a lifeline,” said Miller, 34, who works in communications. “Now that it’s gone, I don’t know where that extra money is going to come from. We have a little bit in savings, but savings deplete quickly. If anything else comes up, we’re kind of screwed.”
My wife and I both have jobs. Why doesn’t yours?
Caroline Nasella, a government attorney in Sacramento with 3- and 6-year-old daughters, said the extra $400 a month helped cover child-care costs and provided extra breathing room during the pandemic.
Or how about this woman:
Kelly McKernan, an artist and illustrator in Nashville, used her $250 monthly checks to cover mid-month bills and buy school clothes and winter boots for her second-grader. Her income has been cut in nearly half, to about $25,000, during the pandemic.
“Not having that money is already having a really big impact,” said McKernan, 35, who’s working on a graphic novel anthology with the rock band Evanescence and is looking for art teaching positions to make ends meet.
It’s good to know that my paycheck is cut in half by taxes so my tax money can be used by a woman to sit at home and work part time on a comic book about a rock band.
People say that teachers and schools aren’t teaching real life skills. Here is one school distract that is- a middle school class that teaches students how to hunt, kill, dress, and butcher a moose.
Hat tip to Mark.
This morning’s article in Slate illustrates just how pissed off the left is over the SCOTUS decision to strike down Biden’s vaccine mandate. Here is why they are pissed:
COVID is undoubtedly a “grave danger” and a “new hazard” to workers, this broad language is not enough, because it does not “plainly authorize” the mandate. Why not?
A grave danger? For people under 60 years old, there is less than a 0.1% fatality rate. It certainly isn’t a “new hazard.” COVID first came about in February 2020, but the vaccine mandate wasn’t enacted until November 2021, nearly two years later.
Congress is the country’s legislative body. Had congress wanted there to be a vaccine mandate, they would have passed one by now. In fact, the majority of the Senate voted AGAINST mandating a vaccine. When the legislature specifically rejects passing a law, it isn’t the prerogative of the executive to simply ignore the will of that legislature and issue edicts. That isn’t how the “democracy” that Biden claims to be defending works.
The Biden administration even admitted that his edict was a “workaround” of the will of congress.
Don’t even get me started on the mental gymnastics that SCOTUS will go through to approve a leftist wishlist. Remember the Obamacare fine that wasn’t a fine? That partisan moron Sotomayor denied that the vaccine mandate was actually a mandate, because workers had the option of weekly testing instead.
The Air Force, with no other problems or concerns, has decided to worry about releasing guidelines for airmen to put their pronouns in the signature line of emails.
The Chinese are about to kick our asses.
Having solved all of the State of Florida’s problems, the state legislature will soon be debating a new law designating strawberry shortcake as the official state dessert.
I guess it’s better that they spend time on this, rather than spending time passing laws that screw us over.
Republican Congressman proves that politicians will sell out anyone or anything, if it means getting reelected. This guy is willing to toe the Democrat line in endorsing the 2020 election, as long as it means that they get eliminated last.
North Korea launched a missile early Tuesday morning local time that apparently spooked NORAD, which caused more of a stir than government sources are willing to admit. The missile itself appears to have had a different signature than earlier test launches, probably caused by the fact that it appeared to have hit Mach 10, causing the missile to reach a high enough altitude that the hypersonic glide vehicle could have reached the west coast.
As a result, the FAA issued a pair of ground stops for aircraft on the west coast that lasted a total of 17 minutes. NORAD initially denied issuing an alert message before later admitting to it. (Actual ATC ground stop slips pictured)
Now let me tell you that I am part of a hobbyist group that monitors the US radio network that is used to issue messages to nuclear capable units, among other things. Called an EAM (Emergency Action Message) they are encoded, but you still get a sense that something is happening when radio traffic increases. The messages sound like this:
So last night, I was repeatedly awakened as no fewer than 22 EAMs between 2100 and midnight. I wondered what was going on, then discovered the textgroup had been alive with aircraft reports.
Some of the members of the group are HAM radio enthusiasts like myself, others are air traffic controllers, some just radio nerds. Here is what was reported to me:
Two B-1B bombers were scrambled out of Joint base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, callsigns Javelin 71 and 72. They were accompanied by 4 KC-135 tankers, callsigns Pearl 71, 72, 73, and 74. They were diverted and landed at Misawa AFB in Japan. I don’t think that these were armed with nuclear weapons, both because the B-1B has reportedly had its nuclear capabilities removed, and I doubt Japan wants nuclear weapons stored on its soil.
Note: Reader Wolfgang Gullich posted a comment (see below) that there were never any B-1’s at Elmendorf on the day in question. Don’t know what this means, since the callsigns and flight paths have been verified by flight tracking software.
At the same time, it seems that some B-52s were scrambled out of Barksdale, a pair of E-6 Mercury TACAMO craft (callsign Shrub 46 and Ruff 07) took off out of Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City and Joint Base Andrews in Morningside, Maryland, while a VC-32A also lifted out of Andrews at nearly the same time, using the callsign SAM-116.
The B-52 is of course a nuclear capable bomber, but there is no way of knowing if any of the aircraft launched had actual nuclear weapons loaded, but that would be the safe bet. I mean, why draw an unloaded firearm from the holster, right?
The E-6 Mercury is a “doomsday” plane that has the capability to both launch the nation’s land based nuclear missiles and order the Navy’s Trident submarines to launch their weapons. It is staffed by a flag officer (either an Air Force general or Navy Admiral) with access to the country’s nuclear codes, so that they can order a nuclear retaliatory strike in the event that other levels of the command structure are destroyed in an attack. They used to be airborne 24/7, until 1990. Since that time, they are kept on ground alert with the capability of being launched on short notice. The Navy (who owns the aircraft) only bought 16 of these aircraft, so it is a big deal to have two of them airborne at any one time, for any length of time.
The VC-32 is used by the Vice President under the callsign Air Force-2, and by cabinet level officers in the chain of succession using the SAM callsigns.
As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, there is still at least one E-6B over the country. One of them (RUFF01) is currently airborne over Nebraska.
Here is what I think happened:
NORAD detected the missile launch and noted that its speed and maximum altitude fit the profile for a possible CONUS impact. This caused NORAD to issue a ground stop for the west coast, as well as flushing some nuclear capable forces off of ground alert and headed towards Korea, while also getting a Presidential successor and the generals in charge of any possible nuclear response into their airborne command posts.
Former Vice President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill into law. Buried in that law is a provision that requires all new cars, trucks, and SUVs to have a “kill switch” installed by 2026. The system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected.
Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, this measure is disturbingly short on details. The switch will passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired. The term “impaired driving” isn’t defined by the legislation, so it would be open to interpretation by regulators such as the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The worst part of the legislation is the open nature of the system which will feature at least one backdoor for third-party access to the system’s data at any time.
Who has access to the data collected by the kill switch system? Will the police be given access to the data without a warrant? What about insurance companies, will they be granted access to the data in order to better understand what kind of driver is being insured, or worse, will they know with what frequency your driving habits “change” which could then be interpreted as impairment?
What if a driver is not drunk, but sleepy, and the car forces itself to the side of the road before the driver can find a safe place to pull over and rest? Considering that there are no realistic mechanisms to immediately challenge or stop the car from being disabled, drivers will be forced into dangerous situations without their consent or control. Imagine your car stopping in the middle of a bad neighborhood.
This law is a disaster in the making. They just can’t resist bossing people around. Tyrants, the whole lot of them.