A lot of young conservatives today like to disparage “Zombie Reaganism,” without actually knowing very much about him. But is there any political leader right now speaking as clearly as this?
There is NOTHING better to watch today than THIS ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/IGr1F2mAmq
— miha schwartzenberg (@mihaschw) April 27, 2024
The news on hog futures once prompted the comedian Gallagher to proclaim, “hogs have no future, I mean bacon is not exactly a career.” That is true, and bacon may have peaked at the Black Bear Diner establishments, known for large portions. For breakfast, lunch or dinner, the place offers nothing that looks like the bottom of a bird cage or something you ate an hour ago. It’s all good, and then there’s the soundtrack.
People of many ages are familiar with “When a Man Loves a Woman,” but Black Bear diners may hear Percy Sledge on “Cover Me,” every bit as soulful. As he did back in 1967, Stevie Winwood sings “I’m a Man,” and Tammy Wynette urges ladies to “Stand By Your Man.” Black Bear diners can also hear Bobby Blue Bland sing the “Driftin’ Blues,” Buddy Guy heading “where the weather suits my clothes,” and the Allman Brothers southbound along with him. That’s the late Dickie Betts on guitar.
Gladys Knight spots a friend catching that midnight train to Georgia, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins may even “put a spell on you.” Black Bear Diners may hear Sam Butera busting up “Night Train” and even “Take the Coltrane,” by John Coltrane his own self, with Duke Ellington on piano. That marks a contrast to establishments such as Panera, where – I am not making this up – customers may hear:
If you caaall me, I’ll come running like a coy-o-teeee
And:
I’ve got a little bit of hope, like a soap on a rope
Whoever you are, don’t quit your night job. Starbucks offers similar fare, and they charge 50 cents for coffee refills. None of that at Black Bear where, contrary to Gallagher, bacon is indeed a career. The comic, who passed away in 2022, was known for “Stuck in the Sixties,” smashing up watermelons and such, but there was more to him. In 2003, when Californians recalled Gov. Gray Davis, Gallagher threw his hat in the ring.
He wanted to make it illegal to talk loudly on cell phones and to wear pants too low. Gallagher also wanted a dam across the Gulf of California to create a new fertile valley in Mexico. Crops could be harvested by Mexican families, who wouldn’t have to emigrate to the United States. On the other hand – and this is no joke – Gallagher never called for bringing eight million people into the USA with no background checks, no health records, and no job skills.
The kill-the-Jews rallies going on across America have resulted in casualties, including the leader of Columbia’s protests, now banned from the campus although it doesn’t appear that he has been expelled.
Here in Minnesota, we have the entertaining spectacle of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health being fired, and subsequently starting a lawsuit. On to that in a moment, but first, who is she? The Daily Mail, usually the best source for Minnesota news, has the story:
A model-turned DEI manager who was fired because she posed in front of an Israeli flag emblazoned with swastikas is now suing because her First Amendment rights were ‘violated’.
Mashal Sherzad, 29, was fired from her position as the diversity, equity and inclusion manager at the University of Minnesota because of now seemingly deleted pictures that she accidentally uploaded onto her public social media of her posing in front of the controversial flag.
Ms. Sherzad, a former model, is something of a bombshell:
Sherzad is a lesbian who checks just about every politically-correct box. She describes herself as “a proud Queer, Muslim, Afghan and SWANA woman.” (I don’t know what SWANA means, either.) Beyond her multiple-minority status, I have seen no explanation of her qualifications for the DEI post.
But why was she fired?
Mashal Sherzad, 29, was fired from her position as the diversity, equity and inclusion manager at the University of Minnesota because of now seemingly deleted pictures that she accidentally uploaded onto her public social media of her posing in front of the controversial flag.
Sherzad, who identified as Muslim, and who is in a relationship with a woman, began her role in October, 2023, and travelled to Barcelona to attend a pro-Palestinian rally just two months later. She shared pictures of herself from the rally – including snaps of her posing in front of the swastika-embezzled [sic] Israeli flag.
That was too much for the Dean of the School of Public Health:
[I]n a January letter School of Public Health Dean Melinda Pettigrew told Sherzad she respects employees’ rights ‘to comment on matters of public concern’ but ‘your conduct directly undermines your credibility in this role.’
‘I find that continuing your employment would create a real risk of significant disruption to School and University activities,’ Pettigrew wrote.
‘This is particularly true given the current climate around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, within the University community and around the globe, and the highly inflammatory nature of the image you posted.’
The swastika flag was just one in a series of anti-Jewish social media posts by Sherzad:
Sherzad has posted videos of herself chanting at rallies in support of Palestine, pictures comparing Nazi occupied Poland to Israeli occupied Palestine and plenty of pro-Palestine infographics and protest pics.
Sherzad’s case against the university alleges that it violated her free speech rights:
The activist showed up to a news conference on Friday in a very tight bodycon dress with risqué cut-outs to make her case and beg for her job back – explaining that the vandalized flag she posed in front of was ‘somebody else’s intellectual property’.
***
‘The caption on said post was, ‘This is not a conflict. This is not a war. This is genocide’,’ Sherzad explained.
A familiar claim. CAIR is supporting Sherzad:
The executive director of Minnesota’s Council on American-Islamic Relations, Jaylani Hussein, has said: ‘The facts of this case are completely unbelievable. It is a dark day for freedom of speech.’
That’s rich. Sherzad apparently fails to understand how her endorsement of “kill the Jews” protests could compromise her position as a diversity officer. I suppose she would say, if asked, “I didn’t think they meant that kind of diversity.” And to be fair, they probably didn’t. But the outburst of anti-Semitic rallies across the country has forced the hand of a number of institutions, like Columbia and the University of Minnesota, who were happy to go along with quieter forms of racism and anti-Semitism.
Hugh Gallagher explored what he called FDR’s Splendid Deception in his 1985 book of that title. In the title Gallagher was referring to FDR’s concealment of the polio-related paralysis that struck him in 1921. Gallagher was also a polio victim who understood the pain underlying Roosevelt’s efforts.
Researching the book, Gallagher found that among the 35,000 photographs of Roosevelt at his presidential library, only two featured him in his wheelchair. Media of the day cooperated by ignoring his polio. Roosevelt himself went to extraordinary lengths to convey the impression that he could walk.
“[T]he overwhelming fact about [FDR] is that he was horribly crippled, and yet through sheer persistence and will, rose above his lower body” — so wrote my teacher Jeffrey Hart in his memoiristic history of America in 1940, From This Moment On. Hart added: “In rising above his crippled body and seeming to walk again…Roosevelt told everyone that America rise again and walk too.” Put to one side that we had to rise again in 1940 by overcoming Roosevelt’s domestic policies.
Accepting the premise that Roosevelt’s deception may have served a higher purpose, I would contrast it with the ludicrous stage management of the Biden puppet masters. Yesterday Axios reported: “President Biden has introduced a change to his White House departure and return routine: Instead of walking across the South Lawn to and from Marine One by himself, he’s now often surrounded by aides…With aides usually walking between Biden and the press’ camera position outside the White House, the visual effect is to draw less attention to the 81-year-old’s halting and stiff gait[.]”
According to reporters Hans Nichols and Alex Thompson, “Some Biden advisers have told Axios they’re concerned that videos of Biden walking and shuffling alone — especially across the grass — have highlighted his age.” Axios suggests that the stage management emanated from the windmills of Biden’s mind — the reporters attribute the idea to Biden himself. If so, he must be firing on both of his remaining cylinders. Has he got any ideas for covering up the identity of his designated successor in case of his death during a second term?
Biden’s pitty-pat steps manifest his infirmity and serve as a metaphor of his age-related mental decline. What we have here is the Weekend At Bernie’s presidency, dead man walking variation. At RedState Nick Arama looks to the ocular proof supporting the Axios story in “CONFIRMED: Watch the Cover-Up by Handlers in Real Time as Joe Biden Shuffles From Marine One.”
It seems to me a tad late to cover up the visible manifestations of Biden’s decline and debility. Everyone has seen them. They remind us of the idiotic policies for which he has fronted since the first day of his presidency: open the borders, roll out the welcome mat for illegal aliens, suppress domestic energy production, make life easy for the genocidal maniacs running Iran, require that men who say they’re women must be treated as such, give me that old-time DEI religion. Biden shouldn’t be able to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube by surrounding himself with physically capable aides, although the mainstream press will play its part to accommodate his and their laughably squalid deception.
We’re not done with Uncle Bosie yet, and I’m starting to wonder whether someone said something to (P)resident Biden about being a boss, or being too bossy, and it triggered one of his gummed-up but imaginative synapses to invent yet another tall tale about Biden lore—the Bidens being the greatest clan since the Borgias. The cannibalism makes perfect sense, too, since what’s left of Biden’s brain is clearly cannibalizing what little intelligence he ever had.
They look like they’re about to break into dance.
Headlines of the week:
Hope for Biden’s brain.
And finally. . .
Commentary in the liberal press is so uniform that you wonder whether reporters and commentators have coordinated their coverage, down to the word and the phrase. Well, they have, of course. You remember JournoList, where, years ago, reporters would gather to coordinate their pro-Democrat, anti-Republican stories. JournoList supposedly disbanded after it came to light, but I assume it more likely just went underground.
Here we have another instance, JournoList 2. Politico reports: “Inside the Off-the-Record Calls Held by Anti-Trump Legal Pundits.”
As the Jan. 6 committee was working on its bombshell investigation into the Capitol riot and President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election, committee staffers took some time out of their seemingly 24-hour jobs one day in 2022 to brief a group of lawyers and legal pundits on a Zoom call.
The people on the call weren’t affiliated with the investigation or the government. But they would have been familiar to anyone who watches cable news. They were some of the country’s most well-known legal and political commentators, and they were there to get insights into the committee’s work and learn about what to look for at the hearings.
To “learn what to look for.” That is, to coordinate their news coverage. But that zoom wasn’t a one-off:
The group’s gathering was not a one-time event, but in fact an installment in an exclusive weekly digital salon, whose existence has not been previously reported, for prominent legal analysts and progressive and conservative anti-Trump lawyers and pundits. Every Friday, they meet on Zoom to hash out the latest twists and turns in the Trump legal saga — and intellectually stress-test the arguments facing Trump on his journey through the American legal system.
Politico is on their side, of course. But the repellent reality comes through:
The meetings are off the record — a chance for the group’s members, many of whom are formally or loosely affiliated with different media outlets, to grapple with a seemingly endless array of novel legal issues before they hit the airwaves or take to print or digital outlets to weigh in with their thoughts.
Right. So that they can convey a uniform anti-Trump message to their audiences.
About a dozen or more people join any given call, though no one takes attendance. Some group members wouldn’t describe themselves with any partisan or ideological lean, but most are united by their dislike of Trump.
Obviously. The participants are a left-wing rogues’ gallery:
The group’s host is Norman Eisen, a senior Obama administration official, longtime Trump critic and CNN legal analyst, who has been convening the group since 2022 as Trump’s legal woes ramped up. Eisen was also a key member of the team of lawyers assembled by House Democrats to handle Trump’s first impeachment.
The regular attendees on Eisen’s call include Bill Kristol, the longtime conservative commentator, and Laurence Tribe, the famed liberal constitutional law professor. John Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon before pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in connection with Watergate, joins the calls, as does George Conway, a conservative lawyer and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. Andrew Weissmann, a longtime federal prosecutor who served as one of the senior prosecutors on Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation and is now a legal analyst for MSNBC, is another regular on the calls. Jeffrey Toobin, a pioneer in the field of cable news legal analysis, is also a member of the crew. The rest of the group includes recognizable names from the worlds of politics, law and media.
I’m sure it does.
The Politico reporter, while sharing the group’s anti-Trump bias, understood that not everyone would see it that way:
[A]s I was reporting this story, I learned that some members of the group were understandably anxious about its publication. Trump has claimed that there is a legal conspiracy against him, and there is a risk that news of a group such as this could give Trump and his allies an attractive target.
Trump’s claims of an organized conspiracy might be bunk, but there are other potential problems with the Friday Zooms: There is a risk, for instance, that the calls could breed groupthink or perhaps help dubious information spread, where it might then reach people watching the news.
Trump’s claim obviously is not bunk, as the Politico article itself reveals. And the idea that the weekly calls could “breed groupthink” or “help dubious information spread” to “people watching the news”? That is the whole point, obviously.
This is just one more reminder that the legacy press is hopelessly corrupt and wholly unreliable. Happily, hardly anyone pays any attention to these people.
This survey of the most regretted college majors will come as no surprise to most of our readers, and I’m tempted to make the suggestion that student loan forgiveness should be granted in inverse proportion to this ranking. That is, if you majored in journalism, you’d be eligible for no more than 13 percent of your loan being forgiven. This would provide a strong incentive not to major in sociology, etc.
It will be interesting to see trend survey data the next few years about the number of people who regret attending college at all. I suspect these numbers will be on the rise soon, if they aren’t already.
