Wednesday, May 07, 2025
China is not the biggest threat
Democrats are losing their party, but some are loyalists. They are going against everything they used to say they supported in their 20th century campaigns. Patriotism, working class, merit, hard work, family, Christian values. Of course they were soft even then, so environmentalism became global warming became climate change. The Civil Rights movement was stolen from blacks and became feminism, gay rights, and then trans anything even animals. Even Transtifa.
Friday, November 08, 2024
What's the future for Trump supporters now?
And for all of us who were ridiculed or cancelled (in job, in family, in friendships or in church) for speaking the truth about the 2020 election, the vaccine or George Floyd, let's hope there can be the purifying effect of sunlight on those issues too. Have you seen the graph of the 20,000,000 Democrats who were in the 2020 data, but not in the 2016 or 2024? Did Biden really get more votes than Obama? When and if Trump gets some of the "cancelled" science professors--biology, medicine, virology, etc.--back on the job and in the CDC and FDA, let's hope we never again let "public health departments and politicians" take away our freedom of religion and right to speak or have opinions.
The new meme that even Don Jr. is espousing is that losing in 2020 was a good thing because he would have been continually harassed and blocked, and now he will have a much stronger team, more knowledge about who he can trust, the backing of his party (which has also been changed) and the Senate (and we hope the House) to get his appointments through to make substantive changes. Of course, he'll never have the media, academe or Hollywood, but that's not a bad thing as the new media is drawing millions away to new sources.
We'll see. Most of us won't be here for the next one, or will be too befuddled to care.
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Hysteria in Academe--ASA meeting
"Attacks on public education"= denying porn to 1st graders
"racial justice" = racist attacks on whites and Asians are OK
"future of Democracy" = seeking more government control
"As the discussions over attacks on public education, racial
justice, and the future of democracy continue to dominate the American
conversation, thousands of sociologists whose work provides insights on these
and other vital topics will meet at the American Sociological Association’s
118th Annual Meeting, August 17-21, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Approximately
600 sessions featuring over 3,000 research papers are open to the press.
From race and racism to mental health, from climate control and environmental
policy issues to artificial intelligence, sociologists are investigating and
reporting on the most sensitive problems confronting American society. This
year’s theme, “The Educative Power of Sociology,” shows how sociology’s
educative power exists within its ability to convey knowledge and research
critically, and to even offer solutions and interventions to social problems,
from classrooms to boardrooms, individuals and families to communities,
institutions to nation-states, and social movements to social change and
justice. Given the diverse range of topics that will be covered, the ASA Annual
Meeting will provide a wealth of information for journalists assigned to nearly
any beat.
Session highlights include:
Attacks on Public Education and Strategies of Resistance to Protect the Public
Sphere. This session is focused on the broad attacks on public schooling,
including the push to privatize public education, attack anti-racist curricula,
and expand charter schools or create separate school districts. Panelists will
discuss different strategies of attacking public education playing out as part
of the general critique of public institutions and actors along with strategies
of resistance and efforts to protect a robust public sphere.
Participants: Amanda Evelyn Lewis, Noliwe Rooks, Jack Schneider, Julian Vasquez
Heilig, and John B. Diamond
White Rage, White Apathy, White Zeal: Understanding White Responses to Calls
for Racial Justice. White Americans have responded to calls for racial justice
in myriad, emotionally embodied ways. What shapes white people’s racialized
responses to demands for racial justice, such as those arising from the
Movement for Black Lives? Why do some white people become invested in fighting
against critical race theory, while the majority remain practically
indifferent? Finally, what compels some white people to “show up for racial
justice,” in mind, body and spirit? This panel speaks to these questions.
Participants: Jennifer C. Mueller, Kim Ebert, Amanda Evelyn Lewis, Sarah H.
Diefendorf, and Biko Mandela Gray
The Future of Democracy: A Conversation on the Supreme Court, Education, Civil
Rights, and Society with Tressie McMillan Cottom and Melissa Murray, moderated
by Dan Hirschman (live streaming available). Legal scholar, MSNBC contributor,
and former interim dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law,
Melissa Murray, and sociologist Tressie Cottom will dialogue about the
implications for society and research of the recent Supreme Court decisions on
higher education, reproductive choice, civil rights and liberties and LGBTQ+
equality.
Participants: Prudence L. Carter, Daniel Hirschman, Tressie Cottom, and Melissa
Murray, New York University Law School"
Received via e-mail July 19, 2023
Sunday, August 28, 2022
The colleges' role in the student loan crisis
Comments on Amy Wax mentioned above: "On Dec. 20, Wax in an interview with Glenn Loury, a professor at Brown University, said that since “most” Asian Americans support the Democratic Party, “the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
After backlash to those remarks, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Dean Ted Ruger announced on Jan. 14 that he had initiated a faculty review process that could result in sanctions imposed on Wax." (Daily Princetonian, Jan. 27, 2022)
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Blame for woke goes way back, embedded in academe
Monday, July 19, 2021
Those who misled us during the pandemic
Instead of keeping calm and carrying on, the American elite flouted the norms of governance, journalism, academic freedom—and, worst of all, science. They misled the public about the origins of the virus and the true risk that it posed. Ignoring their own carefully prepared plans for a pandemic, they claimed unprecedented powers to impose untested strategies, with terrible collateral damage. As evidence of their mistakes mounted, they stifled debate by vilifying dissenters, censoring criticism, and suppressing scientific research."
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Americans are becoming serfs in their own country.
Four food processing corporations own 80% of our processing ability, the "food chain."
Four financial institutions are buying up all the affordable housing and eventually we'll only be able to rent.
Big Tech and Big Pharma silence free speech and research about the global pandemic, putting our lives in danger.
A major, left of center podcast (Darkhorse) has been shut down for daring to suggest Ivermectin can be a tool, not a cure, not a vaccine, just like other safe medications.
Big Tech colluded with Democrats to shut down the only president of either party, to bring new ideas and a fresh look at the power of our intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI) that are spying on Americans and particularly conservative organizations and non-profits. He called out our "allies" to pay their fair share, and protected our Bill of Rights and Border. How scary was that for the moles in government!
Democrats in Congress are encouraging crime in black communities through defund police efforts, slogans and street riots,, assisted by a flow of illegals to take their futures, as well as encouraging death to their next generation through abortion.
Academe has become completely a left wing think tank for Marxists in the government, and the gatekeeper for who teaches and who gets in, after convincing generations they couldn't succeed without a college degree.
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Running for the exits
Lies on the Left, cowardice on the Right.
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
It's not the cat, it's the culture
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Save us from the experts, musings and opinions
Nicholas Christakis is making the rounds of talk shows, twitter, Facebook, academic papers, etc. and says our leaders (aka Trump) weren't taking the right actions to fight Covid19. Of course, he would have no book if everything had been done right. Yet, he admits, he knew nothing till the end of January (it's his field) then became alarmed when China confined/locked down Wuhan. Now he's saying the president didn't do enough. (Perhaps he has his time taken up by the Democrats three year campaign to undo the 2016 election?) He acted on January 30 to close air traffic and began working with private industry to get supplies out. But being an academic, Christakis is a progressive--they are always smarter than the people who get elected, right? I guess he was listening to the main stream media that nothing was done. But these same critics, poo-poo Trump's accomplishments in getting a 16 year process reduce to 9 months for a vaccine and some governors have instilled fear about them.
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Where did all this divisiveness and anger come from? Academe.
https://youtu.be/l9URgeqIF-o
Monday, July 13, 2020
A returning student comments on campus brain washing
“As someone who has gone back to college for the last few years, now age 40, I would say it has not stopped on the college campus. It now just has no one pushing back against these ideas, they are mainstreamed. It is accepted truth, and emailed out by the head of my institution. We live in a rape culture, an irredeemably racist and sexist society. It is broadcast all over my campus, and when I first went back after such a long hiatus, I was, an continue to be, appalled. They had young women making puffy paint sweatshirts documenting how many times they have been gang raped. Which if was actually true, no one was encouraged to go to the police. No, they were encouraged to wear their shirts as a badge of honor. All over campus are posters pointing out that society is racist and must been torn down and rebuilt. I have friends of all ethnicities whom are appalled but don't dare speak up. The professors are fearful of the students, it is a sea change from the first time I was in college.”
This was a comment left at a discussion on racism in our culture. I certainly believe him—I was on campus in the 1990s, and it was bad then. There was a list of 50 organizations to help women posted in the women’s restroom even in the 1980s. This was then called victim mentality. Now it’s a mental illness, and it’s apparently catching.
So you see, George Floyd riots really weren’t about bad cops, or a murder, they were/are about years and years of conditioning impressionable young people, they graduate, and move into society.
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Indoctrination and mind control
As we are all distracted by marches, rioting and tearing down statues of emancipators and liberators, you should track down and object to the brainwashing your children and grandchildren are getting in schools and universities from the organizers and funding groups of BLM and ANTIFA. Much of this preceded their existence and has been building in influence and power incrementally since the 1980s through diversity and inclusion programming. And now it’s a perfect storm.
I reviewed the indoctrination for Ohio State medical staff and found it appalling. It begins with a statement of fact (not theory, hypothesis or idea) that systemic racism exists and is a health crisis (OSU and Columbus have declared it a health problem which gets more grants from the federal government, the life line for all state universities). The solution is it must be destroyed through various manipulative and compulsory methods, and if you disagree or publish research to the contrary, you are a racist and part of the problem. No disagreement or alternate views allowed.
It essentially, invalidates all programs, changes, research, efforts and good will established or instilled since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and our remarkable achievements unknown in the history of the world since outlawing slavery in our costliest war in blood and treasure of our history.
It also ignores the actual fact that there are 30-40 million slaves in the 21st century and suggests instead we focus on microaggression and unconscious bias instead of real pain, actual health problems and tragedy of millions, much of it still coming from Africa.
Friday, June 05, 2020
Police brutality, blacks and whites
Grieving for a man who was killed in a terrible way during an arrest is understandable; allowing the nation to be destroyed based on a myth of police brutality is an evil, ugly plot to destroy the lives and living of millions. In 2019, 9 black men died at the hands of police during a confrontation. 19 white men died during a confrontation with police. Most were in the act of committing a crime. This information is from the Washington Post data base and is real, deep digging research investigating all the circumstances. So who blows it up? Our news media and social media.
39 black men had fatal confrontations with police in 2015 and 9 in 2019. We are a nation of 330, 000,000. Even for Obama's era, that's a tiny, tiny percentage of millions of confrontations with police. However the drop is significant under Trump.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877 is the link to the research. Probably to save their P & T promotion, the authors of this article, which makes perfectly clear that more whites are at risk than blacks in confrontations with police are trying to walk it back. I guess too many people were quoting it to bust the myth that unarmed black men are at terrible risk.
Academe is so far left, it's amazing anything but the party line ever got in to print. The hurdle would be funding, probably figured it was an easy thing to prove--systemic racism and police brutality. Then the next hurdle, finding a publisher--all the journals are also liberal with gate keepers who can shut the door. Then to get a group of people to do a peer review--that must have been a challenge once the results of the study were known. Of course, purchasing it had already been done. PNAS is on subscription and librarians (also gate keepers) probably couldn't reject it. I fully expect that after their clarification and apology, and after they've been run out of town, tarred and feathered, their careers have been ruined and the offending volume will be removed from library shelves.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
University of Illinois record enrollment
Congratulations on the record breaking enrollment at U. of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/802663? Enrollment was about 20,000 when I started in 1958, and I think the cost was about $1,000 year. It was about a 4 hour drive for my parents who lived in Mt. Morris, and it was up to me to get a ride home for holidays.
I lived in a private dorm owned by the Y right in the middle of the action, McKinley Hall on Wright St. https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2003/10/54-how-to-find-roommate-who-doesnt.html I found a website for the YWCA in C-U down the street from the old McKinley Hall, but now it's just bogged down in day to day SJW missions and intersectional causes. It's actually where I met my cousin Chuck Ballard when we got together so he could give me a ride home. I think he was a senior--and incredibly handsome.
William B. McKinley was an Illinois millionaire, business owner and politician (not the president of the U.S.) and I went to a McKinley Presbyterian church down the street (visited website of the foundation--same SJW), and was sick in the McKinley Hospital now a health center, taught Spanish at Urbana high school that had McKinley Field, and walked on McKinley Avenue. https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2003/11/67-ghost-of-william-b.html
Like the wealth of many 19th and 20th century millionaires which built so many schools, churches, colleges, orphanages, funded orchestras, etc., today the source is ignored and they don't even mention his name, or capitalism, on their websites
Monday, June 17, 2019
Eating their young in academe
So true, and even getting P & T in academe is a struggle because there are so few conservatives in any department, so they have come to prominence quietly, or by converting later and recognizing the evils of Marxism, socialism, and communism, or by simply asking logical questions about dogma. Tuvel is a radical feminist and untenured philosophy professor who simply suggested that transracialism and transgenderism are based on the same theory of biological change. For that heresy published in a peer review journal, the editorial board was threatened (they apologized) and Tuvel's dissertation committee caved. The power of group think. In her case, it was a social media mob -- and you just never know where the bots are.
Of course, it's a shame that Tuvel has worked so hard to even get a job in academe to then have her reputation smeared by nobodies and her career dismantled, but she only had to look around her as she was coming up, doing the research, attending conferences or going out for a drink with colleagues to see that when the confederate statues are knocked down, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be next, and then some poor anonymous figure representing a pioneer.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
I got a compliment
on my research skills and a question on how did someone from academe ever become a conservative! And I responded:
“ I was completely apolitical until about age 55—when my husband went into business for himself and I had to start paying attention to silly things like taxes and insurance—something the state of Ohio had always done for me. I was the perfect state employee—rarely asked how Ohio was going to meet all those pension obligations that paid 2 or 3 times what Social Security does. And frankly, being a Republican isn’t that much fun since we elect such wimps and liars! Being a self-righteous Democrat was much nicer. Did you see where Ohio’s Republican governor (until 2 weeks ago) has taken a job with CNN? Just infuriates me. What a turn coat!!! Right now I’m using my research skills on “growing older with health and vitality.” I think we’ve attended 6-7 funerals in the past 6 months. We called a good friend Sunday to find out why we didn’t get a Christmas card,** and he told us his wife now has Alzheimer’s. She always handled that stuff, and he now has diabetes and congestive heart failure. This getting old is getting old . . . . But occasionally there’s something interesting on our group list to respond to.”
**These days, when we don’t hear from friends or relatives, we know it’s because of Trump, but we knew this guy’s politics so figured it was something else.
As far as being an academic, yes, conservatives are a dying breed on campus because “you dance with the one who brung ya’.”
Monday, January 07, 2019
University departments’ possible name changes
Michael Rectenwald a professor at NYU suggests in a comment on Facebook some academic department titles to replace those old, tired, worn out ones that have served to make our nation great. I was going to use the word "new," but looking back at things I was writing in the 1990s, they aren't new, just retreads. I was asked to leave a women's studies brown bag luncheon at OSU Main Library in the 90s because I am white.
"Non-English Literature, UnAmerican Studies, Gender-Changing Studies, Women's-and-the-Men-Who-Think-They're-Women Studies, African American (Affirmative Action) Studies, Political Pseudo-Science, History (and the dead white men who belong there), Foreign Languages (English), Fat (Shaming-Skinny-People) Studies, Religious (Atheism) Studies, etc."
Then each of those non-white, non-American studies departments can add their own "Diversity and Inclusion" sub-unit and further bloat the administrative staff of universities. This is usually a two-fer and good for hiring women and minorities to raise the percentage for the department.a
Friday, December 21, 2018
Tenure won’t protect you against the social justice witch burners
You think you're safe at your university of college if you have tenure? Not if you come out for western civilization and don't believe in creating pools of victims. Rick Mehta, an associate professor of psychology, has been outspoken on a range of contentious issues. He has come under fire for saying multiculturalism is a scam, there's no wage gap between men and women, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has created a victim narrative. Identity politics are divisive. Duh. All he was suggesting was a discussion. Imagine that--doing what colleges are supposed to do. He had many teaching awards, right up to his firing. Academe has been entrapped by a group of "true believers' [in Marxism]. No discussion is allowed.
Janice Fiamengo went from being a radical feminist to a moderate feminist to an anti-feminist after 9/11 when she saw her Canadian colleagues enjoying the event and proclaiming "they deserved it." Also she saw how unjust hiring practices were--very anti-white men. She became outraged when equity hiring meant the most qualified person wasn't chosen . Now speaks out on behalf of men.
Saturday, December 08, 2018
What are liberals doing to college students?
Some of us, usually Republicans or Conservatives, think it's a bad idea to have such a high percent of our college faculty liberal/Democrat/progressive. They are turning out graduates with $70,000 debt much of it from the government, who leave with social science degrees and poor earning potential, who can't afford to get married, or to buy a home, or to have children. Then with envy in their hearts they listen to socialists and vote for Democrats. Is this the Democrats' secret plan to bring down the country?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html (2005)
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/27/research-confirms-professors-lean-left-questions-assumptions-about-what-means (2017) defensive
https://www.wsj.com/articles/most-u-s-college-students-afraid-to-disagree-with-professors-1540588198 (2018, James Freeman)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/10/students-more-liberal-but-its-not-because-their-professors-james-piereson-naomi-riley-column/1012622001/ (opposite viewpoint)
