361 Comments

Speaking as neither a Republican nor Democrat, the Democrats have pretty much guaranteed I will never vote for any member of their party ever again. Take that for what you will.

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So, have you all had about enough of the decades of destruction wrought by the so-called progressives and their fantasies of creating a utopia on earth? How much more failure do you need?

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Thank you as always for your fair-minded reporting.

Two things.

1) My daughter lives in NYC. She is 23 years-old. I told her to not be a "good liberal." Always be on guard. Don't allow guilt to override protecting yourself. Stand away and against the wall on a Subway platform. Do what animals do. Do not judge yourself for feeling fear. Two crimes in LA were committed by homeless men. You can feel for them but don't not be afraid of them. If they scare you, they scare you. I just don't know if I ever taught her, or if society ever taught her generation, that yes - violence can always happen, especially to women or young women, no matter what. So be careful and always be cautious.

2) Joe Biden is surrounded by people who get their information from the high minded op-ed writes and the blue checks on Twitter. That is a huge mistake. They are in a bubble and any ordinary American can see that. I saw a poll recently that asked people what they thought of Kyrsten Sinema. More than half had no idea who she was. But in that feedback loop of the Left it is a bigger crisis that she thinks for herself than our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The controlling elite in this country don't understand that the empire they once ruled over has mostly abandoned them. They are only speaking to their most devoted now. Biden can't be that person if he wants to succeed. He has to get out of the bubble. How he does that, I don't know.

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When I learn that books are going to be purged because the authors are "dead white men" it infuriates me. Over the past couple of years, as I grow more fearful of book burnings, purges and deletions, I have been purchasing more used books to have for my grandchildren. Someone needs to contact every alumni and every parent sending their child to these elite, over priced colleges and universities and attempt to inform them of how destructive their woke stupidity is.

Books are how the wisest people of the past send their wisdom forward into the future.

What is happening is frightening.

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founding

So, the Bard College Library walked back and disavowed the decanonization ("exclusion") effort they had first cheerily announced? That's great!

Don 't fall for it. The effort proceeds, probably redoubled, just underground. Goal is to erase the Western canon.

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founding

Regarding the three men who took part in saving themselves in Texas, Miss Go in LA, and the beautiful healthcare provider on the edge of retirement: When law enforcement cannot or will not enforce law and ORDER, there's only one choice left in a civilized society, us. Unfortunately, as reported in nearly all media sources, when a young man named Rittenhouse defended his community (as law enforcement intentionally stood down), he was called a vigilante. We'll never know how many lives that young man may have saved that night but it's likely lives were preserved during the mayhem that overtook that community. When law enforcement are unable to keep order, it is left to us ordinary citizens to take up the slack before order turns into mayhem because the pill is much bigger and more bitter to swallow after order becomes mayhem. And that's not vigilantism, that's survival in modern day civilization. And we're experiencing the alternative to civilization right now. Thanks Wokesters.

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I feel like I can sum up TGIF in one sentence:

"Texas Rabbi defeats terrorist while Liberals continue destroying their own cities."

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Re: the three murders in three days. There is something in common among all of them. The perpetrators are all black men. While the victims are white, Asian and black, the criminals are all black men, while the victims are women.

I wonder if females of the leftist persuasion ever ponder the wisdom of elevating black male criminals to sainthood.

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Headline should be “Three Woman Murdered in 3 Days”. Victims of these insane new policies are the most vulnerable in society. The perps were men. What ever happened to the fight against “toxic masculinity” - where are the feminist ?

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There is a Very Good Reason that "dead white men" take up so much shelf space. It's because they have to their credit by far the greatest number of accomplishments. If that bothers some people, I would suggest getting up off their dead asses and accomplishing something themselves; then people will write about them, too. Who is awarded the most patents, Nobel Prizes (for real things, not "peace prizes," etc.)? #1 - America. #2? Israel, with only 8-1/2 million people. Q.E.D..

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Great work on this TGIF but damn. It’s depressing.

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There is a great Instamgram account call Mcdojo, which exposes all the fraudulent teachings in the martial art/self-defense world. If you don't follow it, it's highly recommended. When you look at these videos, even people who know nothing about the topic can clearly see the absurdity of what these students are being taught. The "teachers" become widely ridiculed for both taking their students money and (more importantly), teaching them techniques that could potentially get them killed because they believe they now have the skills to defend themselves in the real world.

I believe this is a nearly direct parallel to what is occurring in our educational system. Maybe we can call it "Mceducation."

The leaders of "Mceducation", primarily the leftist Authoritarians, are the most narcissistic and least nuanced group of people who have ever existed, possibly. They believe that they know all the right answers on every topic, and anyone who disagrees with their dogma is wrong. And not only that, but if you disagree with ANY aspect of their dogma, then ALL your ideas are rotten to the core. Disagree on women's rights? Your ideas on religion are wrong. Disagree on abortion? Your ideas on foreign policy are wrong? Disagree with veganism? Your home décor choices are wrong...and on, and on, it goes.

When no one is around to tell you that your ideas are absurd (whether it be parents, teachers, friends, great historical thinkers, etc), you start to believe all your own bullshit. But what's worse is that we are now intentionally starving our children of not just important ideas, but the best ideas of which humanity has ever conceived, and filling their heads with the garbage ideas of these "Mceducation" authoritarians, rendering the young defenseless to fight them, or anyone one else in the real world.

When Howard University announced their plan to eliminate their classics department, Cornell West wrote an incredible op-ed about the degree to which this was a bad idea. In summation of why this is so detrimental to both those students, and our society at large, he wrote that this decisions represents a "spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture." If you haven't read it in full, I highly recommend it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/19/cornel-west-howard-classics/

At the end of the day, the "Mceducation" elitists are no better than the fraudulent Mcdojo instructors, and are, in fact worse, because most of us can go through our lives without having to physically defend ourselves...no one can go through their lives without logically defending themselves.

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Excellent wrap up. Thank God for Substack. It’s pretty much the only publication nailing it on the journalistic front. Keep crushing it and giving us non-partisan common sense journalism. Your readers are grateful.

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As long as criminals can act with impunity we will have these senseless and tragic crimes. The perpetrator should have been locked up for his prior offenses and not out on the streets. Too much concern is placed on the “rights” of the criminals with little regard for the victims and society as a whole.

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If it's Friday, then Nellie Bowles must be on the job with another TGIF roundup. And what a week it was! So...

Item One! Jen Psaki would have you believe that it was a controlled flight into terrain. But President Biden's Wednesday press conference wasn't just a plane crash—it was a blowup to rival the "Hindenburg" disaster. Boy, did Joe make news! V. Putin must have been delighted to learn that a minor incursion into Ukraine might, you know, be no big deal. Anyhow, he intimated, NATO is unlikely do much of anything about it because, as the President helpfully explained, NATO member states aren't on the same page. Good to hear! It seems not to have occurred to Biden that if the United States is, in fact, the leader of the NATO alliance, then the US should, ahem, provide leadership. Instead the President prattled on like some cable news pundit, opining that Putin might do this or maybe that. I nominate him for the Golden Umbrella Award for Distinguished Achievements in Appeasement.

Having laid waste to US foreign policy, Joe added some thoughts on domestic policy and politics. Build Back Better, we were told, might have to be reduced to "chunks." An image of the Biden Administration blowing chunks was hardly appealing, but let us look on the bright side. Perhaps the chunks will be small enough to fit down the garbage disposal.

The President also spent some time claiming that he didn't say what we all heard him say, i.e. that anybody who opposes his version of "voting rights" is a white nationalist, racist member of the Jefferson Davis Fan Club. And to drive the point home, he helpfully advised the American people that the 2022 midterm elections are likely to be stolen by said J.D. Fan Clubbers if he and the Democrats don't get their way. Hey, at least Donald Trump waited until after the 2020 election to declare it illegitimate.

All in all, it was a ghastly performance, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joe Biden is in way over his head. The man is unfit to hand out lawn signs for Hillary! 2024, much less serve as president. And deep down inside, I think he knows this, even if he hides that knowledge from himself. The tell? His intemperate response to particularly tough questions. And just think, America: This clueless, befuddled old fool has three years to go. I know I'm being harsh, but the situation is too serious to admit of euphemism. We live in a time of troubles and alas, we have no effective leadership.

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I have an idea for Bard. Organize a course around the canon and let students read Plato through Marx and Mill [Wollstonecraft included] to see if there are any insightful ideas about justice that can be learned from these great books. What starts out as an effort to censor, could be an opportunity to learn.

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