[Ringside at Reckoning] Affirmative action and its principal (if not at this point its only) legal justification -- "diversity" -- have been written about a zillion times. The most important thing I can add at this point takes root in what I used to do as a federal prosecutor, namely, to try to see what's really going on beneath the high-minded language, strip away the window dressing, and call things what they actually are.
I have an example to work with. In criminal law, the fashionable trend is what the MSM calls "criminal justice reform." That's an opaque and vaguely appealing name, used to avoid saying what it actually is -- shorter sentences and earlier release for criminals, including not a few violent criminals who're going to do some robbing and mugging and killing when they get out. The reason "criminal justice reform" is deceptively named is, thus, easy to see: If it were called what it is, only a very few quite odd people would buy it. As public policy, it would go nowhere.
Therein lies the key to analyzing affirmative action's key "diversity" rationale. What "diversity" actually means is this: Based squarely on race, colleges will deny admission to whites and Asians -- admission they would get under normal, achievement-geared criteria -- and give it instead to less qualified blacks. In other words, it's rank racial discrimination. Without a pleasant-sounding disguise, it too would go nowhere. There's a reason its defenders use "holistic" and other antiseptic (if slightly mysterious) words in talking about it.
So the first among many things wrong with "diversity," and the tip-off to most of the others, is that it's dishonest. Like anything else that's being sold to you through dishonesty, your reaction should be to refuse to buy it on that ground alone. If the seller understands he needs to disguise the product in order to make the sales pitch, he's telling you all you need to know about his own assessment of it. You’d best understand.
[Babylon Bee] SAN JOSE, CA — Last week, PayPal faced backlash after including verbiage in its Acceptable Use Policy that allowed the company to fine users $2,500 for "misinformation." While the company has said that the verbiage was posted "in error" and they never intended to fine users for misinformation, the online community has spotted additional fine print allowing PayPal to levy $2,500 fees against white people for reparations.
"Acceptable Use Policy infractions include...being white, for which infraction reparations of $2,500 will be automatically withdrawn from users and redistributed to historically oppressed groups." PayPal's terms of service were scoured by eagle-eyed critics over the weekend, many of whom took issue with their PayPal accounts being raided after they filled out the "Caucasian" race on the checkbox and then clicked "I confirm that I have read and agree to the terms of equity service" without noticing they were opting into being fined for reparations.
Some social justice advocates have questioned where the funds will be sent, asking whether the decision-makers overseeing the distribution of funds will strictly adhere to principles of equity and intersectionality. Concerns were raised that the funds are earmarked for "building equitable housing for historically oppressed BLM organizers," but PayPal has assured these critics that to avoid appearances of corruption, the funds will be given to LLCs held by the organizers for buying mansions and funding parties.
At publishing time, the reparations had been withdrawn from the accounts of all white people, as well as people who "declined to state" their race or were "Asian," which reparations experts have said is "white-adjacent."
#3
PayPal shit the bed with this one. A Financial Services entity operates on trust. They just lost it, even with the halfway walk-back. I expect a purge to come of those responsible
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/12/2022 8:48 Comments ||
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#4
Too close to reality. Kinda not funny, actually
[YouTube]-The Biden Administration has announced further limits on Chinese firms' ability to access foreign (read: US dominated) semiconductor technology. Many of my followers ask why I don't consider China a more capable potential threat to the global order than I do; the ability for Beijing to be cut off from global technology with what amounts to the stroke of a pen is one of them.
China remains utterly dependent on foreign countries for innovation and tech discovery, research, investment into its higher level manufacturing. It's not just that the most advanced chips powering everything from your smart phone to the cloud and advanced computing are designed in the West (and primarily the US)--key production components and technologies, such as advanced lasers, are often siloed within one or two companies in the US, the Netherlands/EU, or Japan and South Korea. While China might produce the lion's share of low end chips, they are hardly at the forefront of anything.
#1
China threatened to take Taiwan Semiconductor when it takes Taiwan.
The owner threatened to destroy it first.
China went crazy with more threats against the owners.
[NYPOST] Ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s exit from the party made a splash, but she’s hardly the only sign Democrats have gone far off-course. Sen. Bernie Sanders ...The only first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being an Independent socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around... and even ex-prez Bill Clinton ...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of the word is... are speaking up too.
Gabbard unloaded on the wokies who’ve seized power in the party as an "elite cabal" who "divide us by racializing every issue," "believe in open borders" and "demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans."
Bullseye: From the White House on down, Democrats are putting third-rate ideologues in top-level administrative positions as they push far-out theories that amp up racial hatred, leave the border open and let dangerous crooks skate repeatedly for serious crimes.
On the border, Clinton noted recently, "There is a limit to how many migrants colonists any society can take without severe disruption." So far, the White House shows no sign of listening.
Even Bernie is raising alarms. He just warned in a Guardian column that Dems are putting too big a bet on child sacrifice abortion in this year’s midterms, calling it "political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy."
OK, he ignores the fact that President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. SOld, boring, a plagiarist, fond of hair sniffing and grabbing the protruding parts of women, and not whatcha call brilliant... or is that an act?... embraced the Sanders economic agenda from Day One, and the resulting disaster now has voters trusting Republicans more on that No. 1 issue. But at least he understands (in implicit agreement with Gabbard) that the obsessions and tantrums of wealthy blue-staters don’t matter to voters when grocery and gasoline prices are skyrocketing (along with crime!).
Fine, Gabbard was never a major party figure, Clinton peaked in the 1990s and Sanders is a Socialist, not a Democrat (except when he’s running for president). But that frees them to speak the truth that establishment figures like Sen. Chuck Schumer ...Senator-for-life from New York, renowned for his love of standing in front of cameras and microphones. Schumer has been a professional politician since 1975, when disco was in flower, which is 46.84988 years. Senate minority leader as of 2017... surely know but don’t dare say: The party’s fallen out of touch with reality and anything resembling the nation’s center, and the "establishment consultants and directors of well-funded Super Pacs" (in Sanders’ words) don’t have a clue what to do.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/12/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
On the border, Clinton noted recently, "There is a limit to how many migrants colonists any society can take without severe disruption."
Bill Clinton said that? He's the guy who turned California from red to blue with his own open border policies. Something's wrong here. Dunno what but something.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/12/2022 11:52 Comments ||
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#2
I mean, doesn't Clinton want to turn Texas blue?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/12/2022 11:58 Comments ||
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[MSN] The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles. It took consecutive nights of telescope observations from Chile and South Africa to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock....
.Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid. Scientists had anticipated shaving off 10 minutes, but Nelson said the impact shortened the asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes.
#2
So far it looks like everything went according to plan. There was a bit of a breath holder as it wasn't a solid body, more like a pile of rubble and the ejecta was more than they thought there would be due to its loose nature. A lot of the kinetic energy could have been lost that way since it was a rubble pile (see bullet backstop on a firing range).
But the measurements coming back seems like it went well.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.