Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Jedediah Tucker Ward: It’s not hypothetical to Dr. Pavel, he wrote it.

Michael Grazier: So he says.

Jedediah Tucker Ward: So he says under oath.

Class Action 1991

There are three reasons why we should not be surprised at either the testimony of these “ladies” who are running elite colleges concerning calling for the genocide of Jews

or the sudden volte face when no longer under oath from Penn

and Harvard

Let’s take them in Order

1. Under Oath

You see when under oath you are in a position that there are sanctions for lying so as long as they were under oath they didn’t want to assert something that would have been provably false. Particularly with GOP representatives ready to call them out on it.

But once they were no longer under oath, they could make any assertion they wanted without fear of the law.

2. Support for Antifa & BLM

The second reason is less legalistic. At colleges all over the country we have seen people support and even join in on the looting and torching of American cities since 2018. We have seen such actions defended and even promoted by groups on campus with facility and administration giving very public support to such things.

Given those facts how could they credibly claim that such statements are violations the policies of their universities.

3. He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune:

The third reason is a bit more mercenary and can be summarized in one word: CASH:

Over 200 US universities including elite institutions Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been accused of raking in $13 billion in “undocumented contributions from foreign governments,” according to a new report.

A sizable portion of the funds were said to be donated from authoritarian regimes around the globe including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China and the UAE, the report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) claimed.

Furthermore consider this:

I’ll say this for these universities, when someone buys them they stay bought.

4. No Enemies on the Left

Finally let’s look at a simple reality.

If I walked onto the campus of Harvard, or MIT, or Penn or frankly almost any university in Massachusetts and sat down to pray my Rosary with a sign next to me that said:

  1. There are two genders
  2. Transgenderism is a form of mental illness
  3. Marriage is between a man and a woman

I would likely at best be escorted forcibly off campus and at worst surrounded and attacked by a raging mob of leftists with no consideration of my 1st Amendment rights. After all I’m a conservative Catholic who actually believes

But the reality is that those people who are screaming “From the River to the Sea” and calling for the death of Jews are reliable votes for Democrats and for all the failings of modern Universities they can do the Ghastly Tom Hagen Math:

Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future.  In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.

It’s only been seven years since I wrote those words but they are certainly coming true.

Frankly if they wanted to deflect the question all they would have had to say, is something like:

“While I and the university find such speech horrific as long as it’s just speech it’s not actionable under the Constitution. The first amendment doesn’t have an exception for ‘evil'”.

Alas for them, such a statement would be the source of many lawsuits for all those who have been cancelled, fired and harassed over the last few years for having mainstream conservative opinions.

The left never expels useful idiots until their usefulness is over.

I think if the woke students saw this their jaws would drop off and roll under a car somewhere.

Now I will give this guy 10 out of 10 for actually believing his religion and making the argument that “sin” is not justified by a “good cause” and noting that obeying God is more important than advancing any cause, even a good one. But note what he is defining as sin:

  1. Free mixing with women
  2. Prayer time that is missed
  3. Muslim woman coming out without wearing “at the very least a jibab”
  4. Standing next to a guy taking it up the arse (vs ‘ass’ as this is British English) at night

And note what this Islamic scholar asks at the end: “Is Allah going to give victory to people who are disobeying him outright?”

Even better maybe we should play it for those Ivy League president and watch them dissemble in their reactions.

Plot: The Doctor and Donna are lost at a spaceship at the end of the universe. The Tardis has skedaddled and they are only left with each other a robot and each other and each other but who is who?

Writing: It’s a tough call because it’s such a different type of episode. It’s both deep and loose with various clues all over the place. Also given the nature of the episode we don’t know how much is necessary to set up the final special, how much is just for the sake of now and how much is just for fun. I think it’s the type of episode you need to watch 2 or 3 times to really judge and thanks to the nature of the specials you might not be able to judge it standing alone till you see number three but one thing is certain, it’s head and shoulders above the last one and more in keeping with the hopes of fans. Too bad they couldn’t have led with this one but I guess you needed Donna on board and functional to do so.

Acting: With the exception of the very start and the very end it’s pretty much Tate and Tennant and they carry it very well. I’m likely biased because I’m fond of him but Bernard Cribbins appearance at the end is the icing on the cake.

Best Moment: The penultimate appearance of Wilfred Mott (like it could be anything else)

Worst Moment: The whole “War Song” Debate and why would British Choir students be singing the US Airforce Hymn anyways?

Oh Brother Moment: The “why is Mrs. Bean funny?” business. The answer should be obvious to a brit: “because it reminds you of Mr. Bean which is hilarious.” How do you not get that?

The What’s going on? Moment(s): Why is Tennant 2.0 constantly crashing the TARDIS into things. Is that basically what the revised Tennant does when flying the TARDIS these days, just crash?

The Ah HA moment: The HADS. You see a lot of it in Big Finish Doctor Who but not so much of it on TV.

The “I Don’t Give a Fig about Newton” moment: Again the Newton stuff might all be a one off gag although the “Mavity” stuff suggests otherwise. Newton is mentioned a bit in the original series and a bit in Big Finish. (For the best of the batch see David Warner as Sir Isaac in the 30 min 5th Doctor and Nyssa story “Summer” in the Circular Time CD. You can buy it here for under $4 )

The Elephant in the Room Part 2: Is it just me or was there a solid attempt to cement the new canon during one of those exchanges?

Bottom Line: Again this isn’t the type of story I’m generally into and to some degree is was CGI driven, possibly to make the writing easier but it generally works as straight Sci-fi, as a psychological thriller and as a deep dive into the characters. It has an unfair advantage as it not only so much better than the one before it and by default so much better than anything of the last few years and it’s slightly hurt by references to said episode but that’s just talking about established events and thus not something that should effect this as it’s own story which it is. But even if The Star Beast and the Jodi Whitaker era didn’t exist this story would stand as a solid if not spectacular Tennant Era story.

4 1/2 stars, but I reserve the right to go as high as 4 3/4 or down to 4 1/4 after watching it a few more times and that’s the thing that gives this a real advantage. Jacqueline King‘s performance not withstand I have absolutely no interest in watching The Star Beast a 2nd time. This story however is very re-watchable in fact it almost demands it.

Ranking in the current season (counting the children in need special)

  1. Destination Skaro
  2. The Wild Blue Yonder
  3. The Star Beast

I wasn’t ranking my top 10 of an era during the Tennant Years as quite a few of them predated the blog but if you take my top 10 of the Capaldi era which is the last list I made from 2017 (via the wayback machine)

1st The Husbands of River Song
2nd World Enough and Time
3rd. Last Christmas 
4th. The Caretaker
5th  Extremis
6th. The Return of Doctor Mysterio
7th. The Girl who Died
8th. The Witch’s Familiar
9th. Hell Bent
10th. Mummy on the Orient Express

And consider the bottom episode on the list: (reviewed via wayback here) it doesn’t make this list, although in fairness it’s again not the type of episode I usually go for.

Update: It just hit me after I published that The other than corrupting the English language the Doctor doesn’t actually save anyone or have any real effect on events except to almost screw things up. If he never lands there the ship explodes and the bad guys are defeated, it just happens without Donna & he almost dying in the process.

Cue Amy Farah Fowler:

By John Ruberry

In an op-ed from last month that was credited to the Washington Post editorial board–ominously, it was published to mark Thanksgiving Day–readers are warned about the continuous ideological divide among young people. 

Ideological polarization is now a mainstay of American politics. Millions of young Americans went home this Thanksgiving and potentially found themselves in uncomfortable situations with relatives — especially uncles, apparently — who love former president Donald Trump, hate vaccination or think the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection had very fine people on both sides. 

Of course, the Washington Post doesn’t mention in that op-ed the many failed and unpopular leftist policies of the Joe Biden administration, such as reckless spending and an attack on fossil fuels that have caused the worst inflation rates in decades, open borders that have migrants sleeping in police stations and worse, an American-weakness approach to foreign affairs that has led to wars in Ukraine and Israel, and ramming anti-nature transgenderism down our throats.

Locally, our major cities are becoming unlivable because of rampant lawlessness caused by full-time criminals who are emboldened by catch-and-release Democratic so-called prosecutors. 

When, you are a liberal, you are never wrong. Never. Just ask a liberal about that.

More from that editorial:

The problem with polarization, though, is that it has effects well beyond the political realm, and these can be difficult to anticipate. One example is the collapse of American marriage. A growing number of young women are discovering that they can’t find suitable male partners. As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives. But it’s not just that. There’s a growing ideological divide, too. Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the percentage of single women ages 18-30 who identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over 20 percent to 32 percent. Young men have not followed suit. If anything, they have grown more conservative.

 However, that polarization is the fault of libs. Yes, I said it.

Look at what Axios, in a biased piece, said in 2021. The stats come from a Generation Lab/Axios poll:

Between the lines: Democrats argue that modern GOP positions, spearheaded by former President Trump — are far outside of the mainstream and polite conversation [bold print emphasis mine].

  • Some have expressed unyielding [again, my emphasis] positions on matters of identity — including abortion, LGBTQ rights and immigration — where they argue human rights, and not just policy differences, are at stake.

Women are more likely than men to take a strong partisan stance in their personal choices.

  • 41% of women would go on a date with someone who voted for the opposing candidate, compared to 67% of men.

A woman named Lyz, who has a Substack titled Men Yell at Me, doesn’t think the Post op-ed goes far-leftist enough. Her post has the headline “Liberal women should not marry Republican men.” Lyz used to be married to a conservative man. And her idea of “compromise” is that liberals–by now a theme will be apparent here–are always right. 

The use of the word “someone” here is particularly nefarious, because it’s not just “someone” being asked to compromise. It’s women. It’s women being chided for not partnering with men who do not agree that they should have the right to an abortion, equal pay, a living wage, and childcare for those inevitable children they ought to have. (Because, in case you missed it, there is a moral panic about women not having babies as well.) It’s women being asked to martyr themselves on the cross of heterosexual marriage in order to prop up the status quo.

I’m a conservative and many of my friends are. Not one of us doesn’t believe in “equal pay.” Some conservatives are pro-abortion–but almost no liberals are. I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I won’t. 

Returning to marriage: Successful relationships involve compromise. And that does not mean changing your political stances. What happened to, “We agree to disagree?”

Some liberals–maybe most–don’t get it.

“It’s my way or the highway,” leads to traffic jams filled with cars with no passengers.

Dan Bongino often says, “The problem is we as conservatives think liberals are people with bad ideas. Liberals think conservatives are bad people with ideas. There’s a big difference there.”

Indeed, there is.

John Ruberry, who has been happily married for nearly three decades, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.