Can You Be Counted On?

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

Can you be counted on?  That is the question we quietly ask others.  It is the question good people ask themselves.  And I suspect that it is a question the Almighty will pose when we stand before Him to be judged.  

It is a question that has nothing to do with intelligence or talent.  It is a question that has nothing to do with one’s ancestry or station in life.  Yet it is the most important question when danger comes, time is short, and everything is on the line.  When you say, “I will hold this position,” can others put their lives in your hands?  When you give someone your word, do you treat it as a solemn duty?  When you make God a promise, can He count on you?

That’s the test for integrity, and it is a test that most people fail.  That’s because being a person of integrity requires choosing tough and sometimes lonely roads.  It requires the honesty and discipline to admit when you have done wrong.  It requires moral resolve.  And all these traits are in short supply today.

There are a thousand different ways in life to seek honors, and there is no shortage of honors out there waiting to be won.  There is only one way to live a life with honor — by being a person of character, strength, and commitment.  Doing so requires walking a thin line while almost everyone else veers far from principle’s path.  Seeking to behave virtuously in a world that mocks virtue is not easy.  Living honorably is its own precious reward.

Why do I bring this up?  Because 2024 is not only going to be a tumultuous year but also a year when the wheat is separated from the chaff.  Each of us will be tested, and each of us will be given the opportunity to prove our mettle.  

With two regional wars already raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, China’s Xi promising an invasion of Taiwan, and a not-so-secret globalist plot to resettle millions of military-aged illegal aliens into the United States, the geopolitical cauldron is boiling over.  With the U.S. government’s deficit spending, money-printing, and “green energy”-induced inflation spiking the cost of necessities at home while America’s foreign adversaries rapidly decouple from the dollar, we are one match strike away from the whole financial tinderbox going up in smoke.  With Democrats moving from mail-in-ballot fraud to outright removing Trump from ballots (as well as imprisoning his voters), the justice system’s self-immolation could incinerate what’s left of due process and the rule of law.  2024’s fortune cookie might as well read, “Only those who seek shelter and hide will see ’25.”

How we respond to these chaotic events will define both our lives and the life of our country.  When disaster strikes, can you keep a calm head?  Will you do everything you can to safeguard your family, friends, and community?  Will you dig down deep with steely nerve?  Can you be counted on when it matters most?

It has never been more important for people of integrity to lead, and in the trying times that lie ahead, there will be a public desperation for such leaders.  How do I know?  Because, with a few notable exceptions who are already being mercilessly persecuted today, America’s entire leadership class lacks honor.  

After years of shamelessly defending the wealthy and powerful from what it routinely denigrated as “baseless conspiracy theories,” the mainstream media have finally been forced to admit that two separate sex scandals (one involving Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking operation and another involving a Beltway prostitution ring — both probably honeypot goldmines for foreign intelligence services) substantiate long-running claims that America’s “ruling class” has a predilection for pedophilia.  After failing to defend Jewish students from on-campus attacks following Hamas’s October 7 slaughter of Israeli innocents and failing to truthfully defend her academic record as one befitting for the president of the country’s oldest university, Harvard’s Claudine Gay still refuses to take responsibility for her own actions and instead blames her ouster on “racial animus.”  After spending the last three years discharging servicemembers for refusing experimental “vaccines,” promoting men in skirts, stigmatizing conservative troops as “extremists,” and insisting that “white supremacy” and “climate change” are existential threats, the Pentagon has proven itself so full of horse manure that nobody wants to get near its stench. 

While the whole world knows Joe Biden is suffering from dementia, the U.S. press corps never says a word.  While roughly half the country believes his 2020 election “victory” depended on electoral fraud, and with evidence of that fraud piling up for three years, the press corps refuses to ask hard questions.  When hundreds of thousands of unarmed, patriotic Americans show up to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest for free and fair elections on January 6, 2021, however, the press corps can’t stop talking about an imaginary “insurrection.”  Today’s journalist class is filled with liars and frauds who have no time to speak truth to power because they are too busy manipulating the public and protecting the powerful.

America’s current “leaders” are power-hungry pedophiles, plagiarists, propagandists, and pro-Hamas partisans.  They chase cushy academic positions, meaningless journalism awards, and the superficial trappings of professional prestige.  They are not, however, people with honor.  If they were, most would have resigned long ago or begun fighting the corruption from within the Marxist globalist beast.  Instead, they use their resources to undermine those who have the audacity to exhibit character and moral strength.  The people who cannot lead and cannot be trusted have chased all the real leaders away.

What we have is a leadership vacuum.  For too many years, the worst among us have risen to the top, while the best take cover to avoid being seen.  American exceptionalism has withered because America’s most exceptional people have quietly disappeared.  In “going Galt,” they have left the keys to the kingdom with the ransackers and thieves.  Too many of the clergy — those who promised God, “Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” — have proven through their own sex scandals and willingness to be silent in the face of government-directed evil that they cannot be counted on.  Too many academics have proven that they prefer their sinecures to their intellectual obligation to think critically.  Too many natural-born warriors have proven that they would rather avoid rocking the boat than protect the country and Constitution they swore oaths to defend.  

If and when tragedy strikes, though, these Americans who have been far too quiet for far too long will have a second chance.  They should take it.  Reclaiming their honor by admitting their past wrongs is the way those who have been silent can rejoin the fight for America’s survival.  Victory, after all, is never easy.  It is defined as success in a struggle or endeavor against great odds.  It is a difficult ordeal that ends in triumph.  In other words, there can be no victory, unless we first acknowledge that the work before us is immense and the challenges daunting.  There certainly can be no victory for American freedom, unless those with honor join the fight.  Integrity shines most during uncertain times.  And as those lacking honor “lead” our country to its destruction, more and more Americans will turn to each other with a single question on their minds: can you be counted on?

X22, And we Know, and more-January 7

 

‘High on Likes’: Driving Under the Influence of Social Media at the Crossroad of Freedom and Serfdom

The societal dimension of hardwiring youth to become hypersensitive to “social feedback"—i.e., “peer pressure"—within their network will have an immense and deleterious impact upon a free society.

by Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

As the New Year commences, I peeked into the rearview mirror and rediscovered an article that appeared in Lisa DePasquale’s diurnal newsletter, Bright. Published on January 3, 2023, by StudyFinds [one word], the headline was a terse red flag for the future of our free republic: “The Social Disaster: Children Who Frequently Check Social Media Face Significant Brain Changes.”

Based upon a then recent study from the University of North Carolina, the gist of the article is in equal parts instructive and alarming:

‘The findings suggest that children who grow up checking social media more often are becoming hypersensitive to feedback from their peers,’ says Eva Telzer, a professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s psychology and neuroscience department and a corresponding author, in a statement.

‘Social media platforms provide adolescents with unprecedented opportunities for social interactions during a critical developmental period when the brain is especially sensitive to social feedback,’ the study concludes. This longitudinal cohort study suggests that social media behaviors in early adolescence may be associated with changes in adolescents’ neural development, specifically neural sensitivity to potential social feedback.

It is not difficult to understand Big Tech’s venal motives for catering to customers’ psychology to increase their use of social media: the corporations’ already humongous profits. But the societal dimension of hardwiring youth to become hypersensitive to “social feedback”—i.e., “peer pressure”—within their network will have an immense and deleterious impact upon a free society.

Certainly, it is not lost upon the administrative state, who is hellbent upon controlling (often in conjunction with legacy/regime media) both the means and messages of citizens’ interactions on social media, be it censorship, pushing bogus, statist narratives, etc.

Per the paper published in JAMA Pediatrics, “students who look at social media at least 15 times daily were the most sensitive to social feedback.” While these students are the most at risk, their peers are not far behind them: “Previous research shows that 78 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds report checking their devices at least hourly each day and 35 percent look at the top five networks ‘almost constantly.’”

Understandably, the researchers assert that “further research examining long-term prospective associations between social media use, adolescent neural development, and psychological adjustment is needed to understand the effects of a ubiquitous influence on development for today’s adolescents.”

Let’s give them an admittedly non-expert head start on this research by gazing back even further in our rearview mirror to March 20, 2018, where StudyFinds previously published another alarming article, “It’s Not Your Smartphone You’re Addicted to, It’s the Social Interaction.”

It’s author, Ben Renner, succinctly lays out the findings by the researchers at McGill University: “[people’s] urge to socialize is actually an ingrained human need resulting from eons of evolution. For those who argue spending too much time on a smartphone makes a person anti-social, the authors say overuse is actually the product of being hyper-social.”

McGill psychiatry professor Samuel Veissière admitted, “There is a lot of panic surrounding this topic. We’re trying to offer some good news and show that it is our desire for human interaction that is addictive – and there are fairly simple solutions to deal with this.”

What, one may ask, is “this?”

“Many of the most addictive smartphone apps such as Facebook or Snapchat tap into this constant search for meaning and the ingrained desire to see others and be seen by them… Veissière insists the need for social interaction is a positive instinct, but in the age of constant connectivity to the internet and the variety of social platforms it provides, that instinct can be kicked into ‘overdrive,’ leading to unhealthy addictions.”

Okay, but what are the proposed “simple solutions?”

“Veissière and his team recommend turning off push notifications on your phone if possible and purposefully setting aside time to check your phone to help battle these addictive impulses.”

Yet, for a hypersocial citizenry addicted to social media and “high on likes,” these simple solutions are the hardest, as anyone experienced in treating substance abuse addictions can attest. And it is almost impossible when the institutions subverted by the elitist Left are colluding to use social media “approval” to compel the citizenry into compliance with the state’s directives.

Adjusting the rearview mirror to 2020, the COVID pandemic provided the paradigm by which we can view the damaging effects of the administrative state’s coordinating with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the legacy/regime media, academia, and their shock troops of left-wing trolls (paid and otherwise) to enforce its arbitrary and capricious effects upon the populace. “Wear the mask” and “get the vaccination” meant you are a good citizen; if not, you are a homicidal cretin “killing people” and worthy of any punishment society wishes to inflict upon you.

So, too, 2020 also showed how the administrative state and Big Tech could collude on election interference by denying and censoring stories about the Hunter Biden laptop. Anyone trying to bring the truth to light was censored and “deplatformed” from their social network and its feedback—a cyberspace shunning.

Now, in 2024, through the deliberate, debilitating din of the Communications Revolution, we can glean the insidious aim of the administrative state, Big Tech, and a host of leftist institutions and minions: the erosion of individual liberty and the perverse inversion of subordinating sovereign citizens into subjects of the government. Doesn’t history instruct how, in attempted revolutions/coups, the cabal urgently prioritizes capturing and controlling society’s means of communication? Using social media to cajole, coerce, and inure citizens into conforming within the “collective” and its “hyper-socialism,” the Left’s first punishment for exercising non-state-sanctioned, independent thought and dissent is and will continue to be the ostracization from one’s social interactions. Other punishments, such as job loss, harassment lawsuits, etc., will follow. Frankly, what is being “cancelled” but being locked in a virtual gulag?

Thus, while the solutions may be simple, such as dismantling the administrative state, reforming their colluding leftist infested institutions, and offering hope to those addicted to “likes,” etc. – they will be decidedly difficult. But the future of our free republic requires an intervention. Inaction is not an option, especially given the speed AI is metastasizing within an already social media addled populace.

For those whose decisions are driven in whole or in part by social media, they may well refuse to admit the problem as they wheel and whistle past the graveyard of individuality and liberty. For those of us not driving under the influence of social media, as we peer out the windshield to the crossroad of freedom and serfdom ahead, one has the sensation of time slowing down as a collision unfolds.

How TikTok Killed The Preteen Era

Impressionable preteens are ditching their innocence and acting, looking, and shopping like young adult TikTok influencers. 

Evita Duffy-Alfonso reporting for The Federalist

In a now-viral TikTok video, former Sephora employee Rianna Smith recounted the time a nine-year-old walked into her store looking for Babyfacial, a chemical exfoliant from the high-end brand Drunk Elephant marketed to minimize “the look of pores, fine lines, and wrinkles.” 

Smith asked the child whether she had used a chemical exfoliant in the past, to which the child responded that she uses the Ordinary Peeling Solution, an anti-aging acid peel, “daily.” According to Smith, this wasn’t a unique experience, revealing that while working at Sephora she encountered “15-year-olds… com[ing] in with chemical burns” caused by harsh skincare products. 

The consensus among dermatologists is clear: expensive, intense anti-aging skincare is not good for children. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Dr. Ross Perry, medical director of Cosmedics Skin Clinics, warned that many of these cosmetics, such as retinol, another anti-aging product, not only can “cause irritation” for children but could also “damage the skin down the line.” 

“It is a good idea to start a skincare regime from a teenager, but the products used should be aimed at not just your skin type but also age-appropriate,” said Ross.

Anti-aging retinoids and chemical exfoliants for children sound utterly absurd on their face, but dermatologists are having to step in and clarify the obvious for one reason: influencers. 

More chronically online than even Gen Z, Gen Alpha, or the iPad generation, is uniquely susceptible to social media consumerism. Twenty-year-old influencers with beauty brand deals go TikTok and Instagram viral showing off their skincare routines and OOTDs (outfit of the day), causing their impressionable preteen followers to act, look, and shop like young adults. 

In one TikTok, a mother recorded her daughters showing her what’s on their “Christmas wish list” at Sephora, which included luxury fragrances and a $68 Drunk Elephant moisturizer. 

Emulating older influencers, the internet is now replete with young children showing off their pricey “Sephora hauls” and complex skincare routines. The children also use influencer mannerisms and speech patterns, which are known colloquially as “YouTube voice,” an indication of just how much time Gen Alpha is spending online. 

@chasegerssten lets do a full face of DE! 🐘✨ What brand should I do next? #drunkelephant #drunkelephantcollection #fullface #grwm #gurwm #skincare #skincareroutine #fyp ♬ original sound - Chase 🤍

@xokennadanielle Replying to @Bubble✨ Get ready with me for school 📓✏️📚 with bubble! #ryliej #bubbleskincare #skincareroutine #grwm #grwmforschool #grwmroutine #grwm_aesthetics ♬ original sound - Kenna & Rylie 👯‍♀️

Another example of Gen Alpha’s disturbing susceptibility to TikTok marketing is the Stanley cup craze. Parents across America reported that this year their pubescent girls weren’t asking for paints or dolls, but a Stanley cup, which The Federalist’s Kylee Griswold aptly describes as a “gargantuan stainless steel, insulated tumbler that yoga pants-wearing millennials the world over tote around like it’s their precious young.” 

Griswold correctly observes that the Stanley mania is a symptom of “cultural consumerist rot.” It’s “a social media-fueled frenzy to convince the mindlessly scrolling mob that some random beverage doodad is something they ‘must have,’” she writes.

For young people, however, the issue is deeper and far more problematic. Technology has made it possible for parents to constantly have their children entertained. Instead of allowing kids to be bored and therefore cultivate creativity, parents are instinctively putting an iPad or television in front of their kids’ faces.

Generation Alpha is completely skipping over normal childhood and experiences, desires, and interests. Meanwhile, tween clothing stores like Justice and Limited Too are things of the past. 

In our post-industrial internet age, there have always been concerns that children are growing up too fast. But with Gen Alpha, it’s accelerated to the point where even Gen Z professional influencers have taken pause and conceded that Gen Alpha’s behavior is concerning. “We play a role in the problem,” admitted one TikToker. 

In the classic chick flick “13 Going on 30,” what 13-year-old fictional character Jenna Rink wants most in the world is to be “30 and flirty and thriving.” “I don’t want to be original,” she tells her mother. “I want to be cool.” Jenna rejects her personality quirks, unique interests, and even her “uncool” friends because she wants to “fit in” and be like the adult women she sees in magazines. 

Miraculously, with the help of some “magic wishing dust,” Jenna’s dream comes true, and she wakes up as a 30-year-old. But what she realizes is that being 30 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the lifestyle and beauty trends she was pining after as a 13-year-old weren’t only beyond her years but were vapid and depressing. “You want to be a grown-up, and then when you’re a grown-up, you want to be a kid again,” she says toward the end of the movie. 

Ultimately, Jenna goes back to being 13, understanding how precious childhood is and with a greater appreciation for wholesome, natural beauty. 

Unfortunately, we can’t give all the Drunk Elephant-using Gen Alpha girls magic wishing dust to make them suddenly value childhood. There is a generation of young people who will be stunted adults. Their innocence is being stolen, and their individuality and creativity are not being cultivated because all they have ever learned to care about is what’s trending on TikTok.

Our Incompetent Elite Opening Up America To Attack

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

My first Townhall Column of the year was my top 2024 predictions, but one prediction did not fit with its snarky vibe. Let me make it now. In 2024, we’re going to see a massive terrorist attack here in the United States. I’m not going to sugarcoat it – I’m worried that we’re facing a terrorist threat unlike anything we’ve ever seen and that a lot of Americans are going to die. It does not have to happen, but because the people running this country are so corrupt, malicious, and incompetent, it will.

The people running this country have made choices – like throwing open the border – that are going to kill a lot of Americans because our enemies, unlike our alleged leaders, are serious people. They’re serious about subjugating and killing us. But the only things our leadership is serious about are keeping their names off pervert passenger lists, skimming endless Ukrainian cash, and pronouns, pronouns, pronouns, always pronouns. We have a distinctly unserious elite in the most serious of times.

When October 7 happened, we saw the Israelis caught unawares by an asymmetrical attack where a determined and cunning foe leveraged all its limited strengths against the Jewish state’s very few weaknesses, allowing Hamas to execute a short but bloody rape and murder spree. Understand that 10/7 was not a military assault, though it used violent means. It was an information operation, an operation designed not primarily to destroy the combat power of the IDF but to attack the will of the Israeli people and force Israel to change its policies. That did not work. Israel was stronger than Hamas imagined, and it hit back harder and more consistently than the terrorists expected, despite the shameful backstabbing by the Biden administration and the screaming of the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party here at home. 

But what would be the effect if our jihadist enemies launched such an attack here in America? Again, while they would target some infrastructure – we are enormously vulnerable because we imagine we are safe – the real target would be the heart of our country. They would seek to use hideous bloodshed and publicized atrocities – including rape and mutilation – to scare us into folding up into the fetal position and pulling back from the world in reaction to the sheer scope of the violence and murder they would inflict. Imagine – because they have – murders and atrocities across the country, uploaded on the web, with waves of strikes occurring inside the decision cycle of our totally inept current administration, politicized federal law enforcement, and woke military.

It can happen. I fear it will.

I write about all this and more in my new novel, The Attack, which is published on January 8th. I originally thought about writing a nonfiction book about the threat that I and others saw in the wake of the October 7 attack, but I went with fiction because it allows me to talk in more detail about what we Americans would individually experience and to viscerally show how an American 10/7 would unfold. I talked to a lot of military people, government officials, and intelligence personnel to make sure my scenario was entirely plausible. Sadly, it is entirely plausible. In fact, I actually removed some things because I just didn’t want to give away those tactics and vulnerabilities. The Attack is not a grim slog – there’s some of the dark humor that my People’s Republic fans appreciate, such as how the terrorists decide not to attack the FBI because they assess that it is more damaging to the Americans’ ability to tighten back if that broken organization remains operational – but the novel is intense. I know it’ll scare the hell out of you because it scared the hell out of me while I researched and wrote it.

The scenario for the kind of attack I believe is coming is deceptively simple – infiltrate a large number of minimally-trained killers who have no regard for their own lives into the USA and shed as much blood as possible, preferably on camera. We are utterly unprepared for this, and in fact, we are helping our enemies by facilitating their ability to position forces to attack us inside the United States. The entire southern border is wide open – it would be a joke if it weren’t going to lead to so many deaths. We’re seeing tens of thousands of military-aged males walking into the United States. Some of them are infiltrators. It will not take much to organize a force that launches simultaneous attacks over the width and breadth of this country. Think 10/7 on steroids.

We are not prepared for such a mass attack. Our law enforcement can barely contain a single freak with a gun. Do you remember those idiots in Boston who blew up the marathon with a pressure cooker bomb? There were two of them with a couple of handguns, and they completely locked down a major metropolis for a couple of days. Two untrained idiots with a pair of pistols shut down the whole city of Boston. So what happens if you have 10,000 suicidal jihadists with smuggled-in automatic weapons simply waiting for an order? Those of you who have been in the military understand command and control, but what happens if you don’t need it? What happens if you just position these people, arm them, and have them wait until a set time to go to a specific place and start murdering Americans? What if your plan was to launch mass shooters across the country, supplemented by some specialists with bombs and missiles, plus hit teams designed to go after prominent politicians, entertainment, people, and other public figures? You’re not talking about hundreds dead. You’re talking tens of thousands of dead. 

And what happens if that takes place – when it takes place – to our national morale? After 9/11, we went to Afghanistan and killed everybody associated with Al Qaeda. We made the mistake of staying, but there was never any question about our initial commitment to vengeance. Today, do you think this desiccated old pervert in the White House could orchestrate the kind of retribution that would be required to respond to a mass attack? That’s especially true if a nation – like, I don’t know, Iran – is behind it, and only a nation-state could back this kind of mass assault. This administration is never going to do anything about Iran. Hell, these Iran-backed Houthi semi-humans are shutting down arguably the most important trade route in the world, and Grandpa Badfinger is staggering around, shrugging, yelling about “Muh democracy!” and saying we normal Americans are America’s greatest threat.

What happens in a scenario where almost every American knows someone personally who’s been murdered? That can happen. I’m afraid it will happen. And when it does, who is going to fight back? The pronoun platoon that used to be our military? No, when they start killing Americans on the street, the first responders are going to be us, at least in places we were allowed to arm ourselves. Pity the people in the blue states like California who are sitting ducks. 

Do you think the enemy doesn’t see our weakness? Do you think the enemy hasn’t thought about this? No, the enemy knows exactly where we are vulnerable, and that’s where we’re going to strike, just like Hamas did to Israel. They are weaker than us militarily, but I fear they are stronger than us in terms of commitment. As we saw with the Claudine Gay nonsense, our elite is committed to nothing but the perpetuation of its own scummy power. It’s not competent, it’s not courageous, and it’s not capable. It’s weak, and it’s stupid – America is run by Fredos, who insist they aren’t dumb like everybody says, that they’re smart and want respect.

Michael knew the score.

I fear that our alleged elite is inviting a bloodbath of epic proportions, something that will change this country forever. I chose to write a novel to talk about it because, through fiction, I can tell individual stories and show you exactly how it’s going to affect you and the people you love. And it’s scary. Understand where we are. Prepare yourself. And get serious about the election. Our nominee has got to win. Put aside mean tweets, put aside hurt feelings. When we pick a nominee, that nominee has got to win the White House or we lose more than just an election. It’s a matter of life and death. Literally, and remember that life and death may be yours.

CNN Panel Catfight Ensues Over DEI, Then Someone From the Right Scores a Win

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

CNN might be the official sock-puppet media outlet of the far left, but you gotta admit that the silly "news" channel is often funny as hell — unintentionally so, of course.

Such was the case on Saturday’s edition of "The Chris Wallace Show," when National Review contributor and Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam hooked up with The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg to do battle with New York Times podcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro and fellow podcaster Kara Swisher. The topic: the hypocritical-as-hell Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement and recently-resigned former Harvard President Claudine Gay. 

Wallace, being Wallace, kicked off the festivities with a charged and loaded question:

Reihan, has in effect, the country moved on from the so-called racial reckoning we were all talking about, after the murder of George Floyd? 

Salam responded by pointing out the left's hypocrisy — and selective outrage —over DEI.

I think there's a broad sense that that racial reckoning involved smuggling in certain really contentious, ideological ideas that weren't ultimately about diversity but rather were about imposing ideological uniformity. 

When you’re looking at DEI bureaucracies, what really is noxious about them is that they actually don't respect all sorts of diversity, including viewpoint diversity, including the fact that, look, in some cases, you have groups that are over-represented, and that can be okay. 

You know, the point that J.D. Vance was making about the Dallas Mavericks is that it can be good and healthy and reasonable in some domains to have—

Yup, Garcia-Navarro interrupted Salam, mid-sentence, with this brilliant comment: "Ridiculo, ridiculo." 

"What she said," added an equally brilliant Swisher.

Salam fired back:

You can say it's ridiculous, you can make that assertion, but fundamentally the fact that, you know, I am one second-generation Asian-American on a panel of four, I am massively, massively over-represented, but I think it’s reasonable to say you’re going to judge people based on their merits, and when you’re looking at organizations that count that matter—

He was again cut off by Garcia-Navarro:  "But this, excuse me, excuse me—" 

This is the burden and I can't tell you how infuriating I find it. This is the burden that always comes with representation. 

The idea is that because you are a person of color, suddenly it is -- you are only there because it is some noblesse oblige, it is because some white guilt put you there, because there was some DEI initiative, and you can't win either way you look at it. 

I mean, what infuriates me is you look at the whole Claudine Gay thing and everyone's talking about DEI. This woman cannot win or lose. Either— if she is there – 

"I'm happy to talk about Claudine Gay, please," Salam interjected.

"Let me finish," Garcia-Navarro insisted. 

If she’s there, it is because of DEI, they put her there because she is black. If she loses and they kick her out, it’s because she was never good enough to be there in the beginning and she was— you can't win in this situation.

No, she was "kicked out" because of her antisemitic comments and serial plagiarism, you disingenuous fool. 

Goldberg tried to jump in: "Yeah, but—" But Garcia-Navarro ridiculously added: "And it is infuriating as a person of color to constantly have this cudgel put on our heads." 

Goldberg finally got a word in, edgewise:

I get the argument that you can't win but you also can't have it both ways. You can't celebrate and tout that someone was hired and it’s a wonderful thing to expand diversity. Harvard went full tilt talking about how great it was to hire the first black woman and then say all of a sudden when she’s caught—

Ah, but Garcia-Navarro was not going to let him finish that sentence, choosing to instead up the black ante:

The first black person, it wasn’t even the first black woman, it was the first black person—

Goldberg was finally able to make his point — mostly, anyway.

Okay, I don’t care. The point is, is that she got caught obviously plagiarizing and that is — those are the facts that — this massive—

Garcia-Navarro cut him off with a nonsensical comment: "It was ideological, very well-funded—" 

Finally, Goldberg for the win:

The motives of the attack don't change the fact she plagiarized.

And so it went — excruciatingly so.

The Bottom Line

Attempting to have a civil, intelligence debate with a leftist is not dissimilar to trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Try as you might, they both slip away — neither of them giving a darn.

Obama Worried About Biden Campaign, Aides Dish on Tension Between Camps

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

There's a fascinating new report from the Washington Post about how worried Barack Obama is about Joe Biden's chances of winning in 2024. 

According to the report, Obama's first concern about the campaign is about the structure, that Biden's chief advisers are in Washington, D.C., while his campaign is in Wilmington, Delaware. Obama thinks the top people should either be in Wilmington or that the people there should be empowered to make campaign decisions, because as it is now, according to the report, they have to go through D.C. Obama believes that doesn't make for an agile, quick response campaign. 

While Obama hasn't recommended anyone to help the Biden team, he has mentioned David Plouffe, the Obama report says. 

That's sort of fascinating because when he was on MSNBC the other day, Plouffe was urging the tactic of liberal voters coming out to vote for Nikki Haley in the primaries to sabotage Trump or extend the primary. 

"I think it’s probably too distasteful for a lot of people," Plouffe said of intentionally casting a vote for Haley to hurt Trump in the presidential election on MSNBC Wednesday. "But for those who would be up for it," the political strategist said, it could be a good "tactical" move.

"I don’t know if it will stop Trump," he added, "but it could help extend the primary."

That shows, again, that Democrats will try all kinds of tricks to block out Trump.

It's clear they're worried about Trump, according to the report about Obama.

Obama has long harbored worries about Trump’s political strength, telling Biden during a different private lunch last summer that Trump is a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize. He cited Trump’s intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem and a polarized country as advantages for the former president in 2024.

The very unpopular Biden at the top of the ticket is a cause for concern. 

But some Democrats running on the ticket with Biden are worried. Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is running for her state’s open Senate seat, has expressed concern to allies that she may not be able to win if Biden is at the top of the ticket, according to people familiar with the conversations. A spokesman for Slotkin’s campaign said she “looks forward to running with President Biden.”

Obama has put out a fundraising video with Biden. Not exactly inspiring, when Obama looks more alive than Joe--and Joe even slurs in such a short video. Again, all they do is fearmonger; they have nothing else. 

However, one of the funniest things about the report was how aides to both Obama and Biden admitted that the bromance was "always an exaggeration". 

The relationship between Obama and the man who served as his vice president for eight years is a complex one. The two men developed a strong working relationship and their families bonded well, but aides to both men say the “bromance” depicted in some pop culture accounts was always an exaggeration.

No kidding, but it was Obama and Biden who were doing the exaggerating about it, not just the media. Just another thing to try to deceive the public. 

And why are they backing off of it now and telling the truth? Could it be because at least some of the Obama people can read the room - and want to distance themselves from all the failure that is Joe Biden - even though they might want him to win in 2024.

Not only are the aides admitting things aren't as tight as Biden would have liked you to believe, but it turns out the Biden people are still sore about some things. "Tensions still linger between Obama and Biden camps," the report said. 

Some Biden allies who have heard about Obama’s musings on their campaign structure are dismissive, still feeling burned by Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election instead of Biden.

The mention of Plouffe in particular irritates some longtime Biden aides, because it was Plouffe whom Obama dispatched to warn Biden that he faced long odds if he decided to seek the presidency in 2016. “The president was not encouraging,” Biden wrote in his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.”

The Biden aides note bitingly that Clinton, despite Obama’s support, lost to Trump in 2016, a defeat that remains traumatizing for many Democrats.

Oh, and Biden is very upset about his bad poll numbers, tossing fits about it. 

But even Biden is frustrated by his public standing, frequently complaining about his low poll numbers in private conversations with aides. In one meeting shortly before Thanksgiving, he demanded to know what his team and his campaign staff were doing about it. 

Biden hit his record low at the end of 2023, at 38 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval. 

In sum, it's fascinating that Obama is dictating to the Biden campaign how they should deal with things. It perhaps says something about who's running things here. But there's only so much they can do to sell a very bad product in Joe Biden, and it sounds like people in both groups are losing patience with each other.