Image 01 Image 03

Progressives Tag

Here at LI, we've been covering the various attempts by the left to use global warming climate change as an excuse for everything from a falsely predicted "bee-pocalypse" to #Brexit to the rise of ISIS (or is that vice versa?). Bored with pointing out how climate change is responsible for everything bad in the world, some progressives have switched over to urging population control in the name of their "settled" science.  This time it's not an intellectual exercise, it's being "taught" by Johns Hopkins' Travis Rieder. NPR reports:
Standing before several dozen students in a college classroom, Travis Rieder tries to convince them not to have children. Or at least not too many. He's at James Madison University in southwest Virginia to talk about a "small-family ethic" — to question the assumptions of a society that sees having children as good, throws parties for expecting parents, and in which parents then pressure their kids to "give them grandchildren." Why question such assumptions? The prospect of climate catastrophe.

A few weeks ago, my colleague Mary reported that an Australian artist removed his mural of Hillary Clinton after a local council vote. His first rendition put her in a very revealing swimsuit; the second featured a burqa after the council first told him to paint over it. In the US, an "anonymous art collective" has focused its questionable creative efforts on Donald Trump.
It's Donald Trump like he's never been seen before. Life-size naked statues of the Republican presidential nominee greeted passers-by in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Cleveland on Thursday. They are the brainchild of an activist collective called INDECLINE, which has spoken out against Trump before. In a statement, the collective said the hope is that Trump "is never installed in the most powerful political and military position in the world."

Now that Hillary Clinton is the official Democratic nominee, a significant number of Bernie Sanders supporters are gravitating to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who seems happy to have them. The question is whether support for Stein will have any impact on the outcome of the election and if she's capable of picking up where Bernie left off. Clare Foran writes at The Atlantic:
Can Jill Stein Lead a Revolution? Jill Stein takes public transportation to the Democratic National Convention. On the day after Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to win a major party presidential nomination, the Green Party presidential candidate is on the subway en route to the Wells Fargo Center. Adoring fans spot her on the way over and demand selfies. A heavily tattooed woman complains to Stein: “It’s been a Hillary party the whole time. It’s like brainwash, like waterboarding. It’s awful.”

The left is celebrating the passage of a new tax on soda and sugary drinks in Philadelphia. It's the second tax of its kind, the first was in Berkeley, California. This victory will only embolden proponents. CNN reports:
Philadelphia passes a soda tax In a final vote of 13-4, the Philadelphia City Council on Thursday passed a 1.5-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-added and artificially sweetened soft drinks. That would add 18 cents to the cost of a can of soda, $1.08 for a six-pack or $1.02 for a two-liter bottle.

In another banner moment for the University of Missouri, student race activists hijacked a vigil for the victims of the Orlando terror attack this week. The College Fix reported:
WATCH: Mizzou race activist hijacks Orlando vigil as gay community rebukes her A vigil Monday planned by several University of Missouri student organizations was supposed to honor victims of Sunday morning’s deadly shooting rampage in a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. It turned into a blame session against Mizzou’s LGBTQ community for not being intersectional enough. Latino activists, including a Mizzou official, scolded the mostly white gathering for ignoring racial issues. That led one attendee to fume on Facebook that the organizers had invented a “race issue” out of a “homophobic attack” by gunman Omar Mateen.

Social justice warriors at Yale are angry that the study of English involves reading the work of old white men. In a move that defies history and logic, they have launched a petition which makes specific demands on Yale's English Department to put an end to this travesty. Robby Soave writes at Reason:
Yale Students Tell English Profs to Stop Teaching English: Too Many White Male Poets Some Yale University students are demanding changes to the English Department curriculum: specifically, they don't think it should feature so many English poets who were straight, white, wealthy, and male.

San Jose media appears to be following the same template used by San Diego's press last Friday: Make the focus of the Donald Trump rally reports the protests that occur after the event, instead of the thousands of enthusiastic supporters who attended. During the rally within an annex of the San Jose Convention Center, Trump addressed about 5,000 Californians. Interestingly, his remarks included sharp retorts to Hillary Clinton's supposed "national security" speech in San Diego that was mainly a tirade against the GOP's presumptive nominee:

Last fall a large group of Dartmouth students who are also Black Lives Matter activists, marched into the school's Baker-Berry Library and caused a disruption. This was no small affair. Campus Reform reported that students in the library who were simply trying to study alleged physical and verbal assaults such as “F*** you, you filthy white f***s!” An investigation was launched, and the Alumni Relations office has now concluded that no punishment is warranted.

Last fall, Yale sent out an email which encouraged students to show sensitivity in their choice of Halloween costumes. Erika Christakis, Associate Master of Silliman College responded to the email by reminding students of the importance of free expression. Her husband Nicholas Christakis, Master of Silliman College, defended his wife's email. My colleague Fuzzy Slippers covered the story at the time. Angry Yale students confronted Nicholas Christakis on campus and screamed at him, demanding that Yale must make them feel comfortable and safe on campus.

Breitbart author/media personality Milo appeared at DePaul University tonight, and was met with a stage takeover and threats of violence. Breitbart News has the details:
Milo Yiannopoulos’ event at DePaul University had to be cut short Tuesday night after protesters stormed the stage, blew whistles, grabbed the microphone out of the interviewer’s hand, and threatened to punch Yiannopoulos in the face.
Our friend Rebel Pundit (aka Jeremy Segal), who is the husband of Legal Insurrection author Anne Sorock, was outside filming protesters.

Ithaca, NY, loves it some Democratic Socialism of the Bernie Sanders type. Ithaca is the second Most Pro-Sanders Zip Code in the nation, just behind the Mission District of San Francisco. https://res.cloudinary.com/crowdpac/image/upload/v1/posts/sqxrdtsjkv8eqenihsjf.jpg Here are the directions to my house, circa November 2008:
To live in Ithaca is to live in a city alive with anti-Bush, anti-war protest.  I often joke that the directions to my house in Ithaca  read as follows:  Take a right at the fifth Obama sign, a left at the third “Impeach Bush” placard, bear right at the “Support Our Troops, End the War” poster, and we are the house just after the “There’s a Village in Texas Missing its Idiot” banner.
Ithaca really is "10 Sq. miles surrounded by reality"

My wife and I walked into a pizza place in Boston near the hospital one of my daughters has been in (*) when my wife noticed this poster about getting paid to protest. The poster promised pretty good summer money, that certainly would be attractive to otherwise unemployable SJW's. The poster was by "Grassroots Campaigns." Sounds pretty grassrooty, doesn't it? Grassroots Campaign poster cropped logo The poster had the type of tear-off strips so common on posters on or near campuses:

Madeleine Albright is set to deliver the commencement address at Scripps College. You would think that the nation's first female secretary of state would be welcomed at the women only school but we live in strange times. Back in April, students objected to Albright for being white, now they've decided the real problem is that she's a war criminal. The Los Angeles Times reports:
Madeleine Albright a war criminal? Scripps College's baffling crusade for simple thinking Ah May, when flowers are blooming, allergens are wafting and aggrieved college students are mewling about commencement speakers whose politics don't sufficiently hew to the ultra-liberal standards set by the campuses' most outspoken activists.

Disgraced communist and former Obama "Green Jobs Czar," Van "Cash for Clunkers" Jones, hasn't been resting on his laurels since his abrupt 2009 middle-of-the-night departure from the Obama administration. He was busy serving at the front of the progressive campaign to diminish and demonize the Tea Party into obscurity, and he has now, apparently, turned his attention to Donald Trump's candidacy and is warning progressives not to underestimate The Donald. In a video posted at the MoveOn FaceBook page, Van Jones lists three specific "dumb ideas progressives have about Donald Trump." Via Mediaite: 1. Trump will self-destruct 2. He’s bad on policy, so he will lose 3. Demographics will save us

The Family Policy Institute of Washington recently spoke with some students from Seattle University and asked them simple questions about gender and the differences between men and women. Here's a description from their blog:
The second episode in FPIW’s wildly popular College Kids Say the Darndest Things series launched Monday afternoon, just hours after the federal government inserted themselves into the battle between the unrealistic social justice agenda and biological science.

Harvard is instituting a new policy which will punish students who join single-sex clubs by prohibiting them from serving in leadership roles. While many students are unhappy with the new rules, it was women at the school who recently staged a protest. The Harvard Crimson reports:
Hundreds of Women Protest Harvard Sanctions Continuing to mount pressure on administrators, more than 200 women rallied in front of Massachusetts Hall Monday against a new Harvard policy that will bar members of unrecognized single-gender social organizations from holding leadership positions in official clubs and receiving top fellowships.