AND YET THEY STILL RESIST CHANGE: Harvard Reluctantly Admits that Woke Politics Have Destroyed the School.
May 1, 2025
THOSE SIDE EFFECTS ARE BAD: Side effect fears prevent many depression, anxiety sufferers from taking meds, survey shows.
QUESTION ASKED: Has Keir Starmer watched Groomed: A National Scandal yet?
I look forward to Keir Starmer hosting a special summit on the Channel 4 documentary, Groomed. And to hearing him gush about it every time a reporter puts a mic anywhere near his mouth. And to seeing his proposals for showing it to teens in schools across the land in order that we might prise open their innocent eyes to the dangers of so-called grooming gangs.
After all, he did all that for Adolescence, a Netflix drama about a made-up crime against a fictional working-class girl. So surely he’ll do it for a documentary that lays out in grim, eye-watering detail the industrial-scale horrors that were inflicted on real working-class girls by gangs of mostly Muslim men in towns across England.
Groomed: A National Scandal aired on Channel 4 last night. It is a searing piece of journalism, a fearless document of the barbarism of the rape gangs and the unforgivable nonchalance of officials who looked the other way. Director Anna Hall deserves every accolade for getting this film out there, in the face of a cultural elite that would rather talk about anything else on earth than the brutalisation of white working-class girls by Muslim men.
Watching Groomed is an enraging experience. I think Hall intends it to be. It focuses on five young women who survived the gangs. We learn they were passed around like pieces of meat. Chantelle, 32, recounts being groomed from the age of 11, when she was in a children’s home. Sometimes she was kept in a hotel room for days on end and ‘passed about’ between Pakistani men in their 20s and 30s. This went on for years.
Another girl, Erin, was groomed from the age of 12. The police were utterly uninterested in her suffering. One time, Erin was covered in signs of extreme abuse — she had ‘bite marks [from] head to toe’. Her underpants were full of semen. Her mother, desperate, took her to the police. They didn’t act. Later, a social services report called Erin a girl ‘who frequently puts herself at risk’. It was victim-making of the most sick-making variety.
Horrendously, many of the girls were essentially blamed for their own abuse, for their own violent debasement. Social services called them ‘promiscuous girls’. They were referred to as ‘child prostitutes’. The moral pygmies and shameless cowards of officialdom were so determined to keep a lid on this scandal that they came to see the girls, rather than the men, as the villains, as the authors of their own terrible fates.
And then there was the racism card, the chief means by which discussion of these horrors was suppressed for so long. Local protest groups said the rape-gang members were victims of racism and were only being investigated because they were Muslims. In much of the liberal media and across the left, the cry went up: it’s ‘Islamophobic’ to say there is a specific problem of Muslim grooming gangs.
Flashback: BBC Breakfast hosts’ brains explode when Kemi Badenoch told them that she hasn’t watched Adolescence.
HOW COULD IT? The Democrats’ Abrego Garcia Problem Got a Whole Lot Worse.
NO-BRAINER, INDEED:
Worse than I thought it would be. If Bob Jones U deserved to lose its tax-exempt status, doing the same to Harvard—and every other school that so baldly fails to uphold its civil-rights obligations—is a no-brainer. https://t.co/3v3gpBzt9W
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) April 30, 2025
CLEAN YOUR HOME: Solareye Electric Air Duster – 300000RPM Compressed Air Duster. #Commissionearned
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL THE NEW TRENDS KIDS GET INTO THESE DAYS: The Intrepid New York Times Tries to Get to the Bottom of Why People Wear Crosses.
LIVING THE SMUG LIFE: The unbearable smugness of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Much of the British media may be insufferable, but by and large we manage to avoid pushing the idea that democracy itself is at stake if anyone dislikes us.
American journalists, by contrast, as they dress up in black tie and ballgowns and descend on the capital, seem to think that it is they who are on the front line of the battle for democracy. US soldiers may be based around the world, its firefighters and police may be on the streets, but it is American newsrooms which really stand between democracy and disaster. To quote just one of the straplines with which the American media has promoted itself over recent years: “Democracy dies in darkness.” In fact democracy can die perfectly happily in the bright light of day. Indeed, it seems eminently capable of karking right in front of the blaring lights of news lenses while most journalists pretend not to notice.
So it was with considerable amusement to me that the American media handed out awards to other American media for noticing things the public had noticed years before. One of the biggest awards and cash prizes of the evening was given to Axios news for its report – offered up last year – that Joe Biden may not be at his mental best. The award for this scoop is named the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence. Wherever Aldo’s relatives are, I hope they sue.
At least the recipient – Alex Thompson – had the grace to admit that the cover-up which many journalists had engaged in over President Biden’s mental and physical decline was one reason why the public don’t much trust them any more. Don’t forget that until Biden’s disastrous debate performance last summer, most commentators were saying that he was in tiptop shape and that, as one reporter put it, 2024’s Biden was actually the best version of Biden.
Thompson’s mild criticisms landed into a strange silence. Some – notably the New York Post – had covered Biden’s decline for years, but were accused by the White House and other media organizations of publishing “cheap-fakes.” If you ran a story about Biden not knowing quite where he was, you could be sure of a slurry of attacks from the White House and the rest of the media. Those same journalists are now releasing books admitting that during his last years in office, Biden didn’t always seem to be aware that he was president.
More here: The White House Correspondents Dinner Taught Me That Media Bias Isn’t About Politics, Just Insanity.
Thompson himself tweeted, in June, 2023, “Biden’s weird phrases are sometimes weaponized by the GOP to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline.”
“Some.” For sure.
To close the evening, White House Correspondents Association President Eugene Daniels delivered this, like, fire-and-brimstone lecture, declaring the organization “an example of American exceptionalism” and admonishing anyone who doesn’t submit to that claim.
This was the moment my realizations came into focus.
“Those of us who have chosen the public service of journalism … The work we do helps strengthen the fabric of our democracy … essential for democracy.”
He paused to allow a short video to play of Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama attending past dinners— in an elaborate and highly produced dig at the administration that ditched.
Having an audience with the President for this stupid dinner of medium-well filet mignon is “to remind them that a strong fourth estate is essential for democracy,” Daniels insists to the hive.
“We miss our families and significant life moments in service to this job. We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust. What we are not is the ‘opposition.’ What we are not is the ‘enemy of the people,’ and what we are not is the ‘enemy of the state.’”
Standing applause. I’m sitting there, listening, not sure if there is someone in the room who went to actual war, like, combat, to defend the Constitution. Or, like, operated underground under threat of violence. No, he’s just talking about himself and his friends with laptop jobs. Alright.
Then it occurred to me.
“The sun in the heavens,” “truth tellers,” “fascism,” “fabric of our democracy”— what? This is actually crazy.
The media isn’t biased because it’s liberal, it’s biased because it has no concept of reality. The people who make media content are incapable of separating their own self-worship from objective truth. Their egos dictate that they are so important, they decide “the truth.”
Exit quote: “That they can sit less than two miles away from [Trump], declare their importance, and no one cares. The next day he’ll ban a few of them from his plane, or call them a name, and millions of people will cheer, and otherwise life will go on as normal. That’s the big threat; it’s a threat against their vanity. That is what they can’t tolerate. The warped coverage is not political, its personal.”
No wonder the media fell so deeply in love with Obama – at long last, they found a politician whose ego and pretensions were as big as theirs.
MONEY WELL SPENT? Federal ‘Job Corps’ Spends Up To $764K Per Graduate. Participants Go On To Earn $17K Annually.
A Labor Department program designed to train 16- to 24-year-olds to join the workforce spends more per person annually than Ivy League colleges, but participants wind up making minimum wage on average — raising questions about whether it should continue to exist.
The Job Corps pays teenage runaways, high school dropouts, and twentysomething ex-cons to live in dormitories and receive their GEDs and vocational training. The national cost per graduate was $188,000, with the average graduate staying 13.5 months. Of more than 110 campuses, the 10 least efficient averaged a cost of $385,000 per graduate. Job Corps participants earn $16,695 per year on average after leaving the program, according to new government data.
Nearly $2 billion in federal taxpayer money is spent annually on residential Job Corps campuses, a boon for the for-profit contractors who run them. But the dismal statistics about the program’s efficacy have never been fully public until the Trump administration released a “Transparency Report” last week.
Maybe there’s something that could be done to help those folks, but Washington is much more about helping contractors than anyone who actually needs it.
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
With very few exceptions, Republicans in Congress don’t seem interested in doing anything other than being in Congress. As our country teeters on collapse, the most powerful branch in our government is run by do-nothings who are terrified of using their power to save the country,… https://t.co/5n7lopKwwA
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) April 30, 2025
I noted a few weeks back that Congress is no longer a place for legislating, but for gaining access to sweet insider trades and launching lucrative social media accounts.
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Islamic Attacks on Nigerian Christians Escalate.
READER FAVORITE: COOFANDY Men’s Cotton Linen Henley T-Shirts. #CommissionEarned
I GUESS WE’LL KNOW FOR SURE SOMETIME TODAY OR TOMORROW: Pakistan Warns It Has ‘Credible Intelligence’ India Will Attack Within 36 Hours. “Gunfire has already been exchanged between the nuclear-armed rivals over the last several days, with neither side reporting any casualties or major incidents.”
CATHERINE SALGADO: Economic News Good, Bad, and Optimistic.
BAN FOREIGN INFLUENCE-BUYING: Harvard accepted over $1.4B from foreign sources, Campus Reform audit finds.
IT’S ALMOST LIKE TRUMP SETS THESE THINGS UP AS TRAPS: Abrego Garcia Case Keeps Getting Worse for Dems.
SLUSH FUNDS: Environmental ideologues enjoying the Colorado taxpayer dime.
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) describes itself as “…an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit that transforms global energy systems through market-driven solutions to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all.”
Anyone that is familiar with their work would not dispute their claim to working towards a zero-carbon future, but as someone who’s looked into what they are doing in Colorado, I can tell you that the “market-driven” and “nonpartisan” claims are a real stretch to say the least.
I say that because RMI sure seems to have a cozy relationship with Governor Polis, and the things they are all working on are decidedly more government mandate than free market. In fact, of the approximately $718,000 tax dollars the state has paid RMI, the vast majority ($706K) has flowed to them just since Polis was elected. Further, the money has mostly funneled through the Colorado Energy Office (CEO), a division within the governor’s office.
A CORA request to see the contracts with RMI since Polis took office returned 15 files, and reading through them provides an intriguing look at how Gov. Polis is putting this supposedly free market, nonpartisan group to work.
Much more at the link.
I’d just add that Polis sure seems to enjoy those public-private “partnerships” an awful lot for a so-called libertarian Democrat.
HAHA:
Never gets old. This year and every year… https://t.co/I1MAraCbTf
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 1, 2025
Note, however, that the commies did not just give up and go away.
FISH, BARREL, DO THE MATH: Jesse Watters Humiliates Jessica Tarlov in Heated Debate Over MS-13 Gangmember.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Tim Walz Still Believes MSM’s ¿Quién Es Más Macho? Shtick About Him. “Part of creating the Kamala Harris fiction out of whole cloth involved turning her running mate Tim Walz into a believable human being. They pitched him as some sort of testosterone-laden man’s man who disenfranchised males would flock to. It was a story so patently absurd that only one person in America bought it — Tim Walz.”
MAN, DID I EVER VOTE FOR THIS: EPA canceling nearly 800 environmental justice grants.
In a filing that was entered last week but first reported by The Washington Post Tuesday, a high-ranking EPA employee states that the agency has already told 377 grantees that their awards were canceled.
The agency plans to send cancellation notifications to an additional 404 — meaning a total of 781 grants are being canceled, said the filing, a declaration from Daniel Coogan, the EPA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Infrastructure and Extramural Resources.
The grants are primarily related to programs that deal with environmental justice — that is, dealing with pollution in communities that face disproportionate impacts and have limited resources. This includes low-income and minority communities.
The Trump administration has targeted environmental justice programs — firing 280 staffers and reassigning another 175 who worked on the issue, saying it’s part of a broader effort against diversity initiatives.
It’s all just slush funds and payouts for progressive groups.
CONFRONTING FICTION BECAUSE THE FACTS ARE TOO HARD TO FACE: UK Parliament Hosts Incredibly Embarrassing Hearing Over Netflix Show ‘Adolescence.’
When African immigrants murder people, we must crack down on adolescent white Britons.
META IS GARBAGE: Robby Starbuck Sues Meta Over False Claims Its AI Made About Him. “Large language models like Meta’s AI can hallucinate false answers about a topic, but he wondered if these specific claims may have absorbed from some “source” when Meta’s AI was scraping the internet for training material. However, Starbuck’s research team couldn’t find anyone making these specific claims about him anywhere else online. Also, other AI companies did not make the same errors. . . . This is the first time I’ve heard of a company being sued for defamation over what its AI said about someone, but it turns out this is not the first such case. There was a similar case in Georgia last year involving Open AI’s ChatGPT. That case also involved a conservative.”
