“I’ve never seen them whip anyone.”
“I’ve never seen them whip anyone.”
9/27/21
“I promise you, those people will pay. There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment. But beyond an embarrassment, it's dangerous. It's wrong.” — President Joe Biden. The past news week was dominated by an influx of migrants descending on Del Rio, Texas, and the subsequent Biden administration response (or lack thereof). One particular incident caught on camera showed mounted border patrol agents corralling migrants, and a row ensued over whether the migrants were being “whipped.”
“I’ve never seen them whip anyone.” — The photographer who took the photos. It should be noted that the sensationalistic, patently false media coverage about what the photos purportedly show, in combination with the Biden administration knowingly mischaracterizing what took place, is clearly a concerted effort to deflect from the real issue, which is the open border and the record number of illegal migrants who’ve moseyed on over since January.
“There’s not a Black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There’s the United States of America.” — HBO’s Bill Maher, reiterating a point that Barack Obama made not too long ago. Maher disagrees with the NFL’s new policy of playing the “Black National Anthem,” which is generally understood to be the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” before the actual American National Anthem at football games.
“Surprise surprise — Fauci lied again. And I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan.” — Sen. Rand Paul, after the Intercept obtained documents detailing the gain-of-function work of EcoHealth Alliance at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Probably those with children are going to be given a notice to appear [in immigration court], and then the others … I don’t know what they’re going to do.” — Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez, on processing thousands of Haitian migrants at the Texas border. According to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, nearly 30,000 Haitian migrants have surged to the border since Sept. 9, and approximately 12,400 have been allowed to have their cases heard by an immigration judge “to make a determination on whether they will be removed or permitted to remain in the United States.” These migrants were released into the United States with either a notice to appear in court or a notice to check into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office (recall that in June, I mentioned that of the 50,000 illegal migrants who’d been told to report to an ICE office, just 13% had done so). Mayorkas also said an estimated 8,000 migrants “have decided to return to Mexico voluntarily” and just over 5,000 are being processed by DHS to determine whether they’ll be expelled or placed in immigration proceedings in the U.S.
“Why the Term JEDI Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” — The title of an essay in Scientific American.1
“I like Republican presidents who win re-election.” — Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). Late last week, former President Donald Trump sent out a bizarre meme morphing the faces of two of his biggest political nemeses in the Republican Party: former President George W. Bush and Rep. Liz Cheney. The odd Photoshopped image appeared to be in response to Bush announcing he was headlining a fundraiser for Cheney next month. Trump is backing the GOP primary opponent of Cheney, who voted to impeach him.
“Imagine if every time someone referred to someone as “young lady” they were ask [sic] responded to by being addressed with their age and gender? They’d be pretty upset if one responded with ‘the old man,’ right? Why this kind of weird, patronizing behavior is so accepted is beyond me!” — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), after Rep. Joe Manchin (D-WV) referred to her as “young lady.”
“You know, Obama didn't care about Europe. Trump was hostile to Europe. And here you have Biden. And Biden, to be frank so far, is a big disappointment all over Europe.” — Gérard Araud, the former ambassador to the United States from France.
“Neither Spencer nor his legal guardians ever signed a release authorizing the use of any images of Spencer or of his likeness, and certainly not of commercial child pornography depicting him.” — A lawsuit filed on behalf of Spencer Elden, who was the baby on the front cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind album. Elden is suing Nirvana members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and former drummer Chad Channing, as well as Cobain’s estate and his widow, Courtney Love, claiming the nude picture constitutes child pornography.
“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being, and dignity. . . When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.” — The ACLU. This is a quote from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, easily the most famous female jurist in American history, that in its original form reads: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choice.”2
41%: Percentage of Americans who think their productivity would improve or remain the same if they worked four-day weeks.
30%: Rise in murders during 2020, according to a forthcoming FBI Unified Crime Report. This represents the largest increase on record, eclipsing the previous largest one-year change of 12.7 percent in 1968.
600,000: Packages that FedEx has been rerouting every day due to a shortage of workers at processing sites. The labor shortage, which is hitting multiple U.S. industries, cost FedEx an estimated $450 million in the quarter that ended August 31 because of wage rises and inefficiencies. Most of this came from FedEx Ground, the company’s service that ships packages to businesses.
45%: Percentage of Americans who have “zero confidence” in the healthcare system’s future ability to handle an emergency.
1/4: Proportion of Americans who would agree to live in a colony on Mars for the rest of their lives.
$5.5 Trillion: Estimated global online sales by 2023, which is expected to lead to a concomitant increase in the packaging industry’s revenue to $300 billion.
-79: Percentage change in the number of babies named Alexa since the launch of the Amazon product in 2015.
59%: Percentage of Americans who say they’ve started a new hobby during the pandemic. The group most likely to try out a new pastime include those laid off or furloughed (82%), Gen Z (76%) and millennials (74%).
324: Carjackings in New York City this year, up 81% compared to 2020 (179).
$104 Million: The amount of Pennsylvania turnpike fees that went unpaid in 2020. A report found that as the turnpike transitioned into a “toll-by-plate” license plate camera system, some 11 million rides, approximately 7 percent of the total, generated no revenue for the agency.
1,160: Public bathrooms in New York City. There are 8.8 million residents. The pandemic has exacerbated people’s frustrations with these facilities, which are often dirty, hard to find, out of order, or simply not enough in number to accommodate city crowds.
This is why the terrorists hate us.
So the ACLU took a quote in which the most famous female jurist in American history spoke about the importance of defending women’s autonomy and dignity and expurgated from it any mention of womanhood. They neutered it.
I don’t care what your dogmatic political ideology BS calls for: you do not have the right to rework an on-the-record statement to make it more acceptable in the current political environment.
There’s a significant difference between what Ginsburg actually said and what the ACLU — at one time a serious, principled organization, but which is now run by cowards who’re all too eager to scrub quotes from famous public servants for the sake of appeasing activists dead set on imposing their bizarre linguistic gymnastics on the rest of society — alleges she said. Ginsburg was talking about women for a reason, not some ambiguous they, and the ACLU’s expurgation of the quote’s gendered language to support the ridiculous notion that females aren’t the only ones who can get pregnant undermines Ginsburg’s point entirely. In fact, she was explicit in her view, often repeated, that “the one thing that conspicuously distinguishes women from men is that only women become pregnant.” This was central to her argument for equality.
This is not complicated. Ginsburg was arguing that women should be allowed to exercise their autonomy as human beings, just as men do, and that to deny women access to abortion is to effectively treat them as less than human beings by withholding said autonomy. When you remove gender from this concept and reduce the subject to the androgynous they, you’re not just changing Ginsburg’s intent, you’re doing a disservice to women by supplanting women’s interests with the special interests of a microscopic portion of society, all in the name of the Left’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives that are getting more and more ridiculous as time goes on, and are pretty much guaranteed to incite intense backlash that in all likelihood will prove to be a huge electoral liability for Democrats. So, in addition to being stupid and Orwellian and an especially nonsensical example of the Left’s fetishistic attachment to historical revisionism, it’s extremely self-defeating.
It’s amazing that a non-negligible segment of society still either refuses to accept or doesn’t understand that performative leftist absurdism, which in this case demands that 99% of the country completely dispense with basic facts and rational understanding held for centuries, is exactly the kind of alienating idiocy that gives someone like Trump enough traction to become president of the United States.