Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Juden
2. Parade
3. Suicide
4. Landry
5. Bud Lite
6. Planters
7. Steyn
1. Juden. Yeah, I know, a provocative title. But there is some real ugliness afoot in the world today, as the antisemitic masks on the left have dropped, all in support of the murderous animals of Hamas. Here in the US, the DEI shops on college campuses have been in the center of converting young skulls full of mush into raging anti-Jewish Nazis. Jewish students at Columbia hid in the library during a pro-Hamas protest. Protests continue in the streets with at least two attempts to storm the WH. Current demand is for an Israeli cease fire in Gaza, which doesn’t look like it is going to happen. It has been a busy week.
- The DEI shops set up in universities since the George Floyd riots of 2020 have been instrumental in teaching antisemitism to students. Colleges have long had anti-Israel protests, but these really ramped up since DEI infested the campuses. The more a particular campus embraces DEI, the more antisemitic its students are. Why? DEI has given antisemites an intellectual and seemingly moral framework to spew their hatred. In the DEI world, people are divided into oppressors and oppressed. Whites are universally viewed as oppressors due to little more than the color of their skin. That framework is applied to the US, but also to Israel, what they believe to be a bastion of Jewish whiteness in the Middle East. Campus DEI bureaucracies have stoked the hatred since they were created, with a near continuous criticism of Israel and the Jews who live there. The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests triggered pushback by wealthy donors who happen to be Jewish. The pushback is causing the universities to muzzle their DEI loudmouths at least for a little while. But it won’t reverse the cancer until that cancer is dealt with.
- Political pushback is also beginning, with loud demands from Muslim groups for the Biden regime to force a cease fire by Israel which is busily destroying Hamas in Gaza. It’s almost like Hamas, for years screaming Death to Israel finally was told, “Your terms are acceptable.” Those threats have become political here in the US, with promises by Muslims never to vote for democrats again unless they stop Israel. PA, MI, MN and AZ all seem to be in play by Hamas supporters. If you look at the numbers, in 2020, there were 1.5 million Muslims in the US registered to vote. Most of the swing states flipped by a few ten thousand votes. Sufficiently aggrieved Muslims could most certainly flip those states Republican, which is why the Biden regime is listening to them. OTOH, there are just over 6 million Jewish eligible voters. A lot of them live on the coast. Most are ethnically rather than religiously Jewish. Most are very, very liberal. Most of them are more interested in things of liberalism rather than things Israel. Funny thing about liberals is that they will continue to vote for democrats unless something happens to get their attention. A worldwide orgy of antisemitism would seem to be an appropriate attention getting step. So would your kids and grandkids hiding from the mob on the campus you’ve been donating large sums of money to for decades.
- For its part, Hamas retreated mostly to the (in their view) safe confines of its tunnel complex in Gaza, reportedly 300 miles worth. These tunnels have openings under all the usual places, hospitals, schools, day care, etc. A few photos of the interior show them typically 1 m wide, 2 m tall, vaulted ceiling, with concrete walls and floors. From here it looks like every single penny of aid to the Palestinians in Gaza has been diverted to build and stock these tunnels. Hamas, other than its leadership in Qatar, is currently hiding in the tunnels, waiting opportunity to pop out and kill IDF soldiers. Happily, the IDF is not playing whack a mole with them. Rather, they are systematically identifying entrances, sealing those entrances and air vents, and slowly squeezing the Hamas remaining in Gaza into oblivion. Their tunnels, all built with Western humanitarian aid to Palestine will become giant crypts, catacombs, ultimately as useful to their war effort as the Maginot Line was to the French. Somewhere along the line, Israel will eliminate Hamas leadership in Qatar, and there will be nothing Qatat will be able to do about it when it happens. Hamas, ever the public relations expert, announced the tunnels were built for Hamar rather than Palestinian civilians, who are more useful as human shields and hostages.
- Final story here in the US are the posters hung in a number of cities of the missing, hostages taken by Hamas on Oct 7. The new game is for Hamas supporters to tear the posters down. This has created its own special little form of ugliness, with multiple physical confrontations. Things have gotten so bad for the Hamas supporters that they have resorted to using women to tear the posters down, which is about what you’d expect from a group that uses women and children as human shields. You can get in a fight with a man over this. Women, not so much. The posters are an inexpensive way to trigger outrageous behavior from Hamas apologists and supporters, and they look awful doing it. I expect this to continue as long as it triggers the current reaction out of the Hamas side, which it should.
2. Parade. Over the last several weeks, Fulton County DA Fani Willis has reached plea bargain deals with at least 3 Trump lawyers involved in the dispute over the 2020 election in GA. She is in negotiations with at least six more defendants. None of the plea bargains were for any of the felonies the three were charged with. All plead guilty to one or two misdemeanor charges. The plea bargains will also get these in front of a jury, testifying against Trump. Don’t expect anything substantive to come from their testimony. Instead, Willis’ plan appears to simply parade the perps through the courtroom in front of the jury to bolster her case against Trump. The media, as usual, is beside itself in breathless glee over the plea bargains, ignoring the fact that none of these pled to any of the felony charges brought against them, meaning they were all massively and intentionally overcharged, creating eye candy for the Fulton County jury that will hear this case.
3. Suicide, A massive piece on international mental health by Zach Rausch (third in a series) in After Babel describes how large the youth mental health crisis of today actually is. The current spike in anxiety, depression and self-harm among adolescent girls began in the early 2010s and continues particularly in the anglosphere today. The piece concludes by comparing global suicide rates, which have been in decline over the last century among older adults, particularly those in non-western nations. This trend masks a very different story when we focus on adolescent girls in many Western nations (New Zealand, Oz, Canada, UK, and US). Gen Z girls and young women in all those nations have the highest suicide rates of any recent generation. The same is not true about Gen Z boys and young men. Mental health of Gen Z members became significantly worse in the early 2010s. Outcomes for boys was more varied. Reason for suicides among adolescent girls are more likely to be a result of interpersonal problems. The one seismic shift in how interpersonal relationships work was the migration of social media platforms and smart phones into their lives 2010 – 2015. Since the early 2010s, stable intra-person communities and relations rapidly disintegrated. American teens and young adults were already socially distanced from each other by 2019 before the COVID restrictions. The sudden shift from play-based childhood to phone-based childhood is the leading candidate to explain the collapse of their mental health. And what comes along to double down on that trend? CCP’s Tik Tok.
4. Landry. Republican Jeff Landry won the governorship of Louisiana a week or two ago. LA has a jungle primary, lumping all candidates from all parties together. If the winner does not break the 50%+1 barrier, the top two go to a runoff. Democrats have used this for years as a vehicle to elect democrat governors in an increasingly red state. Not so this year. Landry won nearly 52% of the vote in a field of 15 candidates, meaning no runoff this year, making him governor elect. A Breitbart piece by Nick Gilbertson Oct 30 reviewed what went right. The piece ought to be a roadmap for conservative candidates in the 2024 cycle. What did he do right? First and foremost, he was an excellent candidate, an excellent attorney, high energy, conservative, involved, Trump supporter, and did a good job on the campaign trail. The campaign targeted individuals who were registered to vote and voted in 2016 and 2020 but did not vote in 2015 and 2019. Their targeting of African American voters increased Landry’s support from 8 – 10%. The mail runs were extremely targeted, in the hundreds rather than thousands or tens of thousands. The campaign spent 30% of its funds on social media. They reached out to single issue voters who are indys or democrats. Overall, a job well done. We hope Daniel Cameron can do the same thing to Andy Beshear tomorrow in Kentucky.
5. Bud Light. Demonstrating he is one of the better businessmen in the US today, UFC CEO Dana White announced a deal last week that would make Bud Light the official beer of the UFC. He will be paying $100 million for the privilege. This move is not without its dangers, as Bud Light today is anathema to all things conservative, and there were immediate calls for boycotts aimed at UFC. In the persuasion (and business) world, this is referred to as picking up free money. Bud Light’s management action to appeal to the trans community almost destroyed the brand, ending up being a massive and very expensive mistake. The people who presided over that idiocy have all been removed, replaced perhaps with saner people. The product value cratered. White is putting the reputation of the UFC on the line, propping up the recently chastened Bud Lite and the greater Anheuser Bush. If he is successful, Bud Lite will indeed appeal to the younger fans that the marketing executive was aiming for when she embraced trans, though in a much more testosterone laced form. If he is successful, White will be a big player in one of the major breweries here in the US. I like the move. I hope he is successful. I like smart guys taking chances.
6. Planters. Fun article out of the San Francisco Chronicle last week describing a new approach by business owners to homeless encampments on sidewalks in front of their stores. The liberal leadership in SF and the homeless industrial complex of grift they have constructed turned city sidewalks into bedrooms, homes and toilets, all things that make doing business more difficult. Solution? Add a touch of greenery by installing metal planters (galvanized metal raised beds) on the sidewalks, filling them with dirt and greenery. Who in a liberal city doesn’t like a little greenery? The movement seems to be growing, with more tubs springing up in the city center. The planters tend to keep at least a bit of the sidewalk clear of tents, though they don’t move too far. This also tells me that the tent users camped out on anything other than sidewalks, as dirt is a nice place to put tent stakes and poles. As expected, homeless advocates and other members of the grifter community are roundly blasting the planters as hostile architecture, meant to push homes population out of sight. The strategy is not new, as frustrated residents, business owners and even the SF municipal government have started using architecture to make the sidewalks less friendly to homeless encampments. These have included things like planters, boulders, rocky pavement, windowsill spikes, curved, slanted or segmented benches, loud music or sprinklers. Progress, what a concept.
7. Steyn. After 11 long years of obstruction and delay, jury selection in climatista (Hockey Stick) Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn will begin this week. Steyn quoted Rand Simberg who called Mann the Jerry Sandusky of climate science. Sandusky and Mann at the time were both employed by Penn State, and both defended by Penn State. Mann, who is a sue them kind of guy responded with a defamation lawsuit. Mann’s technique is to sue people and delay the festivities for years, running them out of money while Mann’s legal bills are paid by his academic institution. Steyn called Mann’s hockey stick graph a fraud. Which it is. Whether Steyn can get justice in front of a DC jury remains to be seen.
More later –
- AG