ASKING THE BURNING QUESTIONS: When Did Self-Immolation Come Into Style in America?
April 20, 2024
BILL MAHER (ACCIDENTALLY?) EXPLAINS HOW EXPOSING KIDS TO GENDER IDEOLOGY IS GROOMING:
On Friday evening, leftist comedian Bill Maher once again criticized the way the transgender cult is targeting children, and I have to say it’s encouraging to see he hasn’t been bullied into silence on this issue.
“Contrary to current progressive dogma, children aren’t miniature adults wise beyond their years. They’re morons,” he pointed. out. “They’re gullible morons who will believe anything and just want to please grown-ups, and they don’t have any frame of reference, so they normalize whatever is happening. That’s why endlessly talking about gender to six-year-olds isn’t just inappropriate.”
Maher continued, “It’s what the law would call entrapment, which means enticing people into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
For example, after 9/11, there were several cases of overzealous federal agents leading sad losers into terrorist plots like the undercover FBI agent who got seven out-of-work dudes in Liberty City, FL, to sign onto a plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago. Oh please, these guys didn’t even have a gun, but when someone said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we taught the man a lesson and blew something up?” They said, “Yeah, that would be kind of cool!”
Entrapment, suggesting someone into something they wouldn’t otherwise do. And if you think some of that isn’t going on with gender in schools, you’re not watching enough TikTok videos.
Maher then played clips from TikTok videos of LGBTQ activist teachers who were clearly abusing their positions to indoctrinate children.
More here: Watch: Bill Maher Stuns With Monologue on Trans Ideology and Children, but There’s a Problem.
This is where I’m going to break away from the typical fist-pumping by conservatives anytime a left-winger says something we remotely agree with. Maher is right that transgender ideology is essentially entrapping kids into permanently altering their bodies at the behest of activists. He’s right that companies like Disney are trying to indoctrinate children. He’s correct that teachers use their platforms to push their political culture wars onto their students. He’s even right that children’s media, including books, are being written and pushed specifically to do just that.
Where Maher goes wrong is that he continues to try to stake out a middle ground where one doesn’t exist. He claims the idea of a “gay agenda,” which translates to pushing “queerness” (centered on transgenderism) is “mostly” nonsense. That’s the wrong approach, and it will lead to more proliferation of what Maher is decrying. You can’t just pretend away that this is a massive, targeted effort to corrupt and harm children.
I assume Maher has plenty of security: Hilary Cass: I can’t travel on public transport any more.
Her final report — the world’s biggest review into the contested field of transgender healthcare — involved trans patients, families, academics and doctors.
Cass said she was pleased that, for the most part, both sides in the debate over the treatment of children with gender dysphoria had not “weaponised” her report. But she has still had to deal with a “pretty aggressive” response from some, particularly those in activist groups. She is also staying away from Twitter/X.
Cass said: “There are some pretty vile emails coming in at the moment. Most of which my team is protecting me from, so I’m not getting to see them.” Some of them contained “words I wouldn’t put in a newspaper”, she said.
She added: “What dismays me is just how childish the debate can become. If I don’t agree with somebody then I’m called transphobic or a Terf [trans-exclusionary radical feminist].”
Cass said the abuse spiked every time the review said something “people don’t like”.
Online discussion hardened following her interim report, in 2022, and the selection of Liz Truss as Tory Party leader and prime minister, she said. “That was when the debate got more aggressive and people got into bunkers, then the online furore heats up.”
But Cass, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, is remaining resolute, despite being thrown into the middle of the culture wars.
Asked if the abuse had taken a toll on her, she said: “No … it’s personal, but these people don’t know me.
“I’m much, much more upset and frustrated about all this disinformation than I am about the abuse. The thing that makes me seethe is the misinformation.”
She added: “I’m not going on public transport at the moment, following security advice, which is inconvenient.”
Cass shouldn’t have any problem on American public transportation, though: Left-Wing News Orgs Completely Ignore Bombshell Trans Report. “Various left-wing news organizations completely ignored the bombshell Cass Review, a report commissioned by England’s National Health Services (NHS) which found there was ‘weak evidence’ for the efficacy of puberty blockers in minors, a Daily Caller review found. CNN, ABC News, Axios and Vox haven’t covered the story on their websites at all. NPR, CBS and NBC have four combined stories on the review, one from NPR, one from CBS and two from NBC.”
Related:
It turns out for pedophiles in Hollywood, "It's A Small World After All." pic.twitter.com/4qUtOhXZYL
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) April 20, 2024
Why, it’s as if Hollywood is a sex-grooming gang or something.
WELL WORTH THE TRIP: ‘Deep Sky’ Takes Us On a Cinematic Voyage Beyond the Stars. This IMAX documentary has just opened in 300 theaters across North America, and it gets a rave review in Forbes:
Imagine venturing to the beginning of time and space, exploring cosmic landscapes so vast and beautiful that they’ve remained unseen by human eyes until now. This is the promise of “Deep Sky,” an extraordinary IMAX presentation that brings the universe’s awe-inspiring mysteries closer than ever before. . . .
At the heart of “Deep Sky” is the story of human ambition and scientific achievement. The film chronicles the high-stakes global mission that brought the James Webb Space Telescope to life. From conception to the nail-biting launch that placed JWST into orbit a million miles from Earth, “Deep Sky” captures the collective effort of thousands of individuals across decades, aiming to answer some of humanity’s oldest questions: Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? Are we alone in the vastness of space?
I’ve seen “Deep Sky” and agree wholeheartedly: It’s a great film, and a joy to watch in IMAX. See it at a theater near you.
READER FAVORITE: 10-Minute Strength Training Exercises for Seniors. #CommissionEarned
KURT SCHLICHTER: That Civil War Movie Is a Symptom of Hollywood’s Problems.
I know a little about Second Civil War fiction since I’ve written a best-selling series of novels about it. And you know what I focused on? How America gets into a Second Civil War and what happens when it does. How do things change? What expectations are upended? How would things work out in that situation? That’s what’s interesting about the concept. That’s what we want to know. And frankly, that’s what teaches us what to avoid so we never get into that situation again no matter how much the Democrats try to provoke Round Two.
But this movie ignores the civil war stuff and is all about journalists on a road trip. Despite the fact that most journalists today are loathsome communists, that’s not necessarily a bad way to show us around the Second Civil War. You could get lots of perspectives, and you can see and learn what happens and why through reporter characters. But the only perspectives we get are about the reporters themselves, and they’re annoying people – which is at least a taste of realism. But they never talk about the war itself. There’s no context to all the mayhem.
Remember, it’s the world-building that’s interesting to us, not these characters. I don’t care about the characters. You have a jaded war correspondent. And another jaded war correspondent. And a third jaded war correspondent. And a fourth war correspondent who’s young and isn’t quite jaded yet but who gets jaded at the end. That’s not interesting, and that’s not what I’m trying to buy when I throw down nearly 20 bucks for a ticket to a movie called “Civil War.”
Look, the actors are competent. They’re just playing boring people. And the movie is boring. That’s the crime. The lesson Andrew Breitbart always taught about political movies is to be good first. Be interesting. Make a good movie. Then you can get your message across. He didn’t object to the idea of a left-wing viewpoint. “JFK” is a left-wing movie with an idiotic message, but it was interesting. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, even though it was unbelievably stupid. I barely kept my eyes open here.
Alex Garland is not an untalented filmmaker. The Englishman has made a few vaguely interesting movies. The problem is he shoots this one like a movie-of-the-week. It is very workmanlike. What he wants to do is set up really interesting shots like helicopters flying around the Washington monument. That’s a pretty cool image. A gun battle at the White House? Yeah, that’s an interesting concept. But not the way he does it. You can see this was not a big-budget movie. All the battles have like 10 people.
John Podhoretz dubs Civil War “an MSNBC zombie movie:”
America has collapsed. When you leave New York to drive to Washington on a circuitous route that takes you through Pittsburgh, everything is empty but there are a lot of cars burned out on the highways—a completely familiar trope by now, and understandable as a directorial choice since showing millions of corpses would be expensive.
Instead, it appears the entire Eastern seaboard has been depopulated, which would be quite the feat. We follow our crew of journalists as they wend their way south. They pass a gas station where gun-toting yahoos have strung up a couple of people they hated in high school for being looters. Later, they end up in a shootout in an office park and then in some kind of refugee camp in a high-school football stadium where people are warming their hands over a garbage-can fire and smile at each other pacifically. Then they’re in the middle of a gun battle between two warring forces. Who are they? We don’t know.
The movie seared the conscience of Manohla Dargis of the New York Times and made her profoundly uncomfortable. You’d think a movie critic who’s seen horror movies and war movies for decades wouldn’t be so seared and uncomfortable. I think she’s seared and uncomfortable because she wanted to be—wanted to find this depiction of an America literally at war a ripped-from-the-headlines unnerving thing. It’s fine, I guess, but rest assured (spoilers follow here) the only reason the movie exists is that, in the final moments, we see the Donald Trump stand-in pumped full of bullets.
That scene alone will so thrill Molly Jong-Fast that she might even dye her hair a normal color. You can stay home and watch a Walking Dead rerun.
John Nolte describes it as a “Ridiculously Dopey, Anti-Trump Snuff Film:”
Anyway, I promised to spoil the entire plot, so here it is…
First off, why are only two states fighting to remove President GreatHairRedTie after he basically declared himself dictator with an unelected third term? This makes zero sense, including historical sense. People from all over the country would form battalions and join a side. Then, we learn that the remaining 48 states broke apart into the Florida Alliance, the New People’s Army, and the Loyalist States. Okay, but what are they doing?
There are over two dozen Loyalist States, so why does it look like only 11 people are protecting the president at the White House?
There are over two dozen Loyalist States on the president’s side and only two states in the Western Forces against the president. Why is the president losing?
Why did that guy admit to the redneck he was from Hong Kong? Darwin demanded that the idiot get shot.
What happened to the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force?
Why doesn’t the president use low-level nukes to wipe out the Western Forces?
Why is there no air war or no one in command of the air?
Why is President GreatHairRedTie sitting in the Oval Office waiting to be killed instead of hiding deep in a bunker with the nuclear codes?
Finally, the Critical Drinker notes that Civil War is “a movie that says nothing, does nothing and ultimately accomplishes nothing. It’s a film so deathly afraid of sparking controversy and division that it remains neutral to the point of neutering itself.” Yet another reminder that the film isn’t the second coming of Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate or the aforementioned JFK, each full of leftist agitprop, that are all simultaneously extremely controversial — and great movies.
THE NATIONAL LAWYERS’ GUILD CLAIMS A LOT: National Lawyers Guild stands by claim protesting at Berkeley dean’s house is free speech.
WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF HARVARD UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: Serial Plagiarist Claudine Gay To Teach ‘Reading And Research’ Ethics Class At Harvard.
Gay resigned as the president of Harvard University in January over charges of plagiarism.
The university assured her she would remain employed for a salary of around $900,000 a year as an administrator. This week, Harvard announced Gay would assume the role of teaching a graduate-level “Reading and Research” course at Harvard.
Yes, you read that correctly.
A woman outed for serial plagiarism – or “inadequate citations,” the phrase that the school used to euphemize her misdeeds – will preside over a “research” course that emphasizes proper attribution.
How this is real-life and not a skit on “SNL” or a headline from the Babylon Bee is amusing.
Harvard says the course does not provide letter grades. Letter grades uphold a grading system that disproportionately favors white students, several Harvard administrators argue.
Grades are racist.
The school adds that the course requires “written work of sufficient quantity and quality so that the course is equivalent to a lecture course or a seminar.”
Got it.
Future employers can rest assured that students who pass the course will be well-equipped to publish adequately-cited work after learning from Dr. Gay…
Just as future media employers can be assured of their hires having learned their ethics from this man: Great news: Brian Stelter got a gig at Harvard.
ABOUT OUR ‘JUNK’ DNA: The more is learned about the junk, the less it looks like junk, according to another installment of “Long Story Short” on HillFaith.
HMM: Tennessee Volkswagen employees overwhelmingly vote to join United Auto Workers union. Probably not going to help VW’s faltering fortunes.
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: The Pinchbeck Peer, Book 8: The Clever Man. I like this series.
NEWSWEEK SPOTS REPUBLICANS POUNCING AND SEIZING! Teen Suspended for Saying ‘Illegal Alien’ Sparks Republican Outrage.
“Because of his question, our son was disciplined and given THREE days OUT of school suspension for ‘racism,'” Leah McGhee said in the email, per the Carolina Journal. “He is devastated and concerned that the racism label on his school record will harm his future goal of receiving a track scholarship. We are concerned that he will fall behind in his classes due to being absent for three consecutive days.”
On Tuesday, Leah McGhee appeared on The Pete Kaliner Show, which airs on the radio station WBT, and discussed the matter in more detail. She said the family had once lived in England, and Christian mentioned how people from that country also need green cards to reside in the U.S.
McGhee said she and her husband met with the school’s assistant principal and told him “illegal alien” is a term their son can look up in the dictionary.
“It is a term used as federal code, and it is a term that is heard frequently on many news broadcasts,” she said. “I feel that if this was handled properly in the classroom, it could have easily been used as a teachable moment for everyone.”
The Carolina Journal reported that Republican state Senator Steve Jarvis contacted the school district’s superintendent for information on the incident. He told the newspaper he asked school officials to seek a fair outcome but declined to state a position without knowing more about what happened.
“I do not see [how] that would be an offensive statement, just in getting clarification,” Jarvis said to the Journal. “But there again, I don’t know. I don’t know the situation of this particular incident.”
How bipartisan was Newsweek’s reporting?
Thank you, Newsweek, for using our reporting, but couldn't help doing the "Republicans pounce" headline thing huh? But I'm sure you checked the party registration of everyone who thought that suspension was ridiculous. #ncpolhttps://t.co/Pj2FQOz5zF
— David Larson (@DavidLarson83) April 17, 2024
A RARE MOMENT OF SANITY AT GOOGLE: Google Fires 28 Employees over Anti-Israel Office Sit-Ins.
On Tuesday, pro-Palestinian protesters occupied offices in New York, California, and Washington demanding that Google cancel Project Nimbus, a joint contract with Amazon that provides cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence services to the Israeli government and military. Notably, one of the occupied offices belonged to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian; his office is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. Police arrested nine protesters across the country after the coordinated sit-in lasted ten hours.
It was unclear if the nine detained demonstrators were among those who were fired.
“Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to – including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns,” Rackow said.
The companywide memo adds that Google “takes this extremely seriously” and will continue enforcing its “longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior – up to and including termination.”
Tuesday’s protests were organized by a group of tech workers known as No Tech for Apartheid, which boasts over 200 members. Though it has protested against Project Nimbus since the contract was announced three years ago, the group’s criticisms of the Google-Amazon contract with Israel have ratcheted up since October 7.
Yesterday, we told you about Google employees who were forcibly removed from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office after staging a ‘protest’ demanding the company end business with Israel.
One of those employees had an interesting take on Israeli women who said they were raped by the terrorists (and the many witnesses who said the same):
More great moments in moral equivalence here:
Time to update your bio. pic.twitter.com/g69WMHM2Vj
— Strxwmxn (@strxwmxn) April 18, 2024
Exit question: “If I decided to protest any cause by occupying my employer’s office, I would be fired. Most employers would do the same. How is this remotely close to ‘McCarthyism?'”
WELL, GOOD: Aspiring Maryland Trans Shooter Thwarted.
Andrea Ye was clearly a fan of Audrey Hale and referenced her in her writings. She had been researching instructions for bombmaking and fantasized about murdering elementary school students because she “might get tackled” if she shot up a high school. This sounds like a textbook definition of a monster if I’ve ever heard one.
Plenty of outlets picked up the news of the arrest, but there was one curious commonality among many of them. The majority of headlines I came across completely failed to mention the fact that she was trans. The BBC only described the aspiring shooter as a “teen.” The Independent similarly went with “teenager.” WTOP News in Washington described Ye as a “Montgomery County Student.” WHIO News in Ohio went with “Maryland Teen.”
Back in Montgomery County, officials didn’t seem to want to talk about the suspect’s trans identity either. Watch as County Executive Marc Elrich explodes when being asked why the trans angle is being covered up and why he is “burying the lede.”
They’re devoted to the narrative, under which only white males and conservatives can be demonized based on their identity.