The NY Times, a FASCISTIC Institution Which Hasn’t Much Grown Up, Can’t Figure Out Why Elon Musk Might Have Been A Teeny Bopper!

NYT: Say, why didn’t Elon Musk end apartheid as a teenager? Update: “The opposite of the thesis”

ED MORRISSEY May 05, 2022 at HotAir:

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Britta Pedersen/Pool via AP

Just how desperate has mainstream media grown over Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter? The New York Times’ deep dive on Musk’s childhood in South Africa demonstrates how far they will go to hype the dangers of, um … free speech in the public square, or something. Social media has dragged the Gray Lady all morning for this “profile,” which sets itself up as a look as to how Musk’s white privilege makes him problematic in some way.

Here’s the headline, which sets the tone:

Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege

And the lede:

Elon Musk’s impending takeover of Twitter has many people probing his public statements and his past for clues about how he will shape one of the world’s most influential public platforms.

But Mr. Musk, best known for owning the companies Tesla and SpaceX, has not talked much in public about a significant swath of his past: How growing up as a white person under the racist apartheid system in South Africa may have shaped him.

“It’s telling — white kids were insulated from the harsh reality of it,” said Terence Beney, who is white and graduated with Mr. Musk from Pretoria Boys High School in 1988.

Interviews with relatives and former classmates reveal an upbringing in elite, segregated white communities that were littered with anti-Black government propaganda, and detached from the atrocities that white political leaders inflicted on the Black majority.

Oooooh — sounds damning! Or at least it does until you read past the jump. As it turns out …

1. Musk left South Africa for Canada at 17.
2. In part, he chose to leave because he didn’t want to serve in the apartheid-enforcing South African military [paragraph 14]
3. His parents belonged to the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, and his father Errol ran and won office on that platform
4. His black schoolmates recall that Musk “spent time with Black friends” [paragraph 9].
5. Praetoria Boys High School had “a socially progressive undercurrent,” where the headmaster, teachers, and students “participated in freedom struggle activities” [paragraph 17].
6. Musk rebuked a fellow student for using an “anti-Black slur,” and got bullied for it [paragraph 27], and later was one of only a handful of white people at the funeral of a black student [paragraph 28].

So, with that in mind, it doesn’t sound at all like Musk was “detached from the atrocities,” trapped in a disinformation bubble, or was unaware of the implications of South African policy. It sounds much more like Musk saw all of that and got away from it as soon as he could, and made choices that demonstrate his formation around the realities of both apartheid and propaganda campaigns.

The rest of this “profile” has nothing at all to do with Musk’s life in South Africa, although it touches on worker-discrimination complaints in Musk’s companies that have no connection at all to apartheid. It’s a classic smear effort that juxtaposes a target with a discredited political regime with zero evidence that the target either bought into the regime or its propaganda, helped shape or sustain it, or acted in accordance with it. It’s character assassination by proxy, when the facts are so obvious as to undermine the entire premise of the headline and the lede.

In fact, isn’t this the profile of someone who’d make a good steward of the public square, to the extent that a public square needs a steward at all?

Actually, I’m still agnostic on that point. I really have no idea whether Musk will stick to his professed free-speech values as the owner of Twitter, and acknowledge that his track record on that is at best spotty. I suspect that the financial pressures of private ownership will force Musk to bend significantly on that point, as may some of Musk’s new private-equity partners joining his bid to secure the financing for the buyout. He’ll be less susceptible to governmental bullying once he takes Twitter private, but I’m skeptical that there will be a long-lasting, dramatic change in direction — except maybe to end throttling and shadow-banning.

However, Musk’s bid has had the hygienic effect of forcing media outlets to take off their First Amendment masks and agitate for censorship and government control over speech. It’s the classic drawbridge impulse, and it takes someone of Musk’s heft to force it out into the open. The Carlos Slim-financed New York Times and Jeff Bezos owned-and-operated Washington Post seem the most nervous of all about free speech online. I wonder why.

Update: Peter Hamby reaches the same conclusion about this wretched piece of narrative journalism:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1522251165324353542&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Fed-morrissey%2F2022%2F05%2F05%2Fnyt-say-why-didnt-elon-musk-end-apartheid-as-a-teenager-n467262&sessionId=ffeccb618dd0e00d66dbeb6156271304dcd03c99&siteScreenName=hotairblog&theme=light&widgetsVersion=c8fe9736dd6fb%3A1649830956492&width=550px

I don’t think you have to be a curmudgeon to notice this. It helps, of course, but this is so blatant that it’s impossible to defend.

Beware: That Devious Scene, Dem C. Schumer, IS ABOUT TO BE SEEN OR BE ON SCENE!

Politico, HuffPo: Schumer’s maximalist abortion bill “doomed” … and not woke enough

ED MORRISSEY May 05, 2022 4:41 PM ET

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Screenshot via C-SPAN

“Schumer tees up doomed abortion vote,” Politico reported. It’s not just doomed because Chuck Schumer can’t break a filibuster, but because the bill that Democrats will push can’t get to 50 votes, and maybe not even 49. The Left has become riven with conflict over abortion policy in the wake of the purloined Samuel Alito draft opinion in Dobbs to the point of paralysis.

Nevertheless, Chuck persists:

Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER said his chamber will vote Wednesday on a bill to codify abortion rights into law. It is unlikely to have the support necessary to break a filibuster (or even to pass without it).

But the high-profile vote will be followed May 14 by coordinated marches planned for D.C., Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, per Vice’s Elizabeth Landers. A variety of groups, including the Women’s March and Planned Parenthood, expect that the protests could draw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.

Democrats want to start generating enough heat on abortion to boost their fundraising numbers. As Allahpundit pointed out yesterday, the early returns looked worrisome as an expected spike in donations didn’t materialize at ActBlue. The news was a little better at the DLCC, but still small potatoes:

“We don’t know exactly what the political environment will be,” said Jessica Post, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which helps Democratic candidates for state legislature. “But abortion has the potential to be a game-changing issue.”

State legislative races are not glamorous, high-dollar affairs. But the Democratic group had its biggest fund-raising day of the year after the publication of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s draft opinion, and raised more than $650,000 over 48 hours.

The surge reflected a growing recognition among Democratic donors and voters, Ms. Post said, that “the federal government isn’t coming to save us.”

In other words, Schumer’s not putting this bill on the floor to pass it — he’s trying to kick-start a political rally. Unfortunately, the very people Schumer’s trying to rally oppose the latest version of his bill, according to HuffPo. Why? It’s not radical enough, or more to the point, woke enough:

The new version of the bill is the same as the old version ― except it does not include the legislative findings, a nonbinding part of a bill that gives important context and intentions regarding the proposed legislation. The findings that were cut from the new WHPA bill described in detail the history of abortion restrictions, the ways they’ve intersected with racism, classism and misogyny, and how bans like those now playing out at the state level disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. They’re the kind of thing that help establish the intent of a piece of legislation and can be pointed to later if there are court challenges.

Several abortion rights groups met with Democratic leadership Wednesday afternoon to discuss why they stripped the findings from the latest version of WHPA, sources tell HuffPost. Schumer ― along with the main sponsor of the bill, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) ― were in the meeting, one source confirmed to HuffPost.

At that meeting, Schumer reportedly told the organizations that he was concerned some senators would take issue with the language included in the findings, leading them to vote against the bill. According to one source close to the story, Schumer estimated that WHPA could lose up to 10 Democratic votes if the findings on racism and misogyny were included in the legislation.

That sets up a very curious conflict in Schumer’s coalition. What sacrament matters more these days in the Democratic Party — abortion or critical race theory? The answer may surprise you!

One source close to the story said they are deeply frustrated with Democrats stripping the findings from the bill, especially when it’s not likely WHPA will pass anyway.

“What’s really frustrating is that we are working overtime to try to fix what we’ve been trying to deal with and what we’ve been worrying about for over a decade ― and here they are throwing our most important communities under the bus for votes that don’t even exist,” they said. “So once again, Democrats continue to waste our time and not actually show up for abortion rights in a way that’s going to make a difference to patients and providers.”

That’s, um … rather surprising. And incoherent too, because neither part matters in terms of “fixing” anything. It’s a stunt bill that doesn’t have the votes to pass even apart from the filibuster. Schumer’s just trying to protect the ever-expanding list of vulnerable Senate Democrat incumbents in the Red Wedding/The Shining Elevator Scene wave that will crest in November.

Although the rest of the bill isn’t peaches and cream in that regard either:

John McCormack

@McCormackJohn

·

May 5, 2022

Four key parts of the abortion bill Schumer will bring up for a vote next week: https://nationalreview.com/2022/05/schumer-will-hold-another-vote-on-radical-abortion-bill/… 1. How it creates a right to abortion through 9 months of pregnancy in all 50 states:

John McCormack

@McCormackJohn

2. It would strike down almost all state laws on abortion, including parental-consent laws supported by 70% of Americans:

John McCormack

@McCormackJohn

Replying to @McCormackJohn

Parental-consent laws are so popular that from 2013 to 2018, Democrats carved them out and protected them from their federal legislation to strike down almost all state abortion laws. But the bill they voted for dropped the parental-consent carveout: https://congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3755/text…

7:28 AM · May 5, 2022

88Reply

NOTE: CAN YOU MAKE ANYTHING NOTABLE FROM THE ‘MASS’ ABOVE? GHR.

Elon Musk….An American We Should Get To Know Better!

MAY 5, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ELON MUSK, MEDIA BIAS

ELON, SOUTH AFRICA, AND THE NEW YORK TIMES

Elon Musk is a native of South Africa, although he left that country at age 17. The New York Times obviously saw some potential in Musk’s heritage. Hence this tweet:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1522191917135638529&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F05%2Felon-south-africa-and-the-new-york-times.php&sessionId=69b902d3e59f8eab9896d24365fbcfac1ae7da05&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=c8fe9736dd6fb%3A1649830956492&width=550px

That last sentence tries to make a point: “He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation.” But I can’t quite figure out what it is.

In any event, the actual Times story linked in the tweet is anything but an indictment of Musk, whatever the reporters and editors may have intended:

Mr. Musk left South Africa shortly after graduation at 17 to go to college in Canada, barely ever looking back. He did not respond to emails requesting comment about his childhood.

Why would he?

Mr. Musk has heralded his purchase of Twitter as a victory for free speech, having criticized the platform for removing posts and banning users. It is unclear what role his childhood — coming up in a time and place in which there was hardly a free exchange of ideas and where government misinformation was used to demonize Black South Africans — may have played in that decision.

I dunno, it’s just a wild guess, but maybe growing up in a place where, as the Times reports, “Newspapers sometimes arrived on doorsteps with whole sections blacked out,” impressed upon him the importance of free speech.

But enough about South Africa. What about Elon Musk?

Black schoolmates recall that he spent time with Black friends.
***
Mr. Musk’s father, Errol Musk, said in an interview with The New York Times that Elon, his brother and sister were aware from a young age that there was something wrong with the apartheid system. Errol, who was elected to the Pretoria City Council in 1972, said they would ask him about the laws prohibiting Black people from patronizing restaurants, movie theaters and beaches. They had to make calculations when they were going out with nonwhite friends about what they could safely do, he said.

“As far as being sheltered from it, that’s nonsense. They were confronted by it every day,” recalled Errol, who said he belonged to the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. He added, “They didn’t like it.”
***
According to a biography of Mr. Musk, written by Ashlee Vance, Mr. Musk said he did not want to partake in South Africa’s mandatory military service because it would have forced him to participate in the apartheid regime — and that may have contributed to his decision to leave South Africa shortly after high school graduation.
***
Mr. Musk became friends with a cousin of Mr. Netshituka’s, Asher Mashudu, according to Mr. Mashudu’s brother, Nyadzani Ranwashe. One time at lunch, a white student used an anti-Black slur, and Mr. Musk chided the student, but then got bullied for doing so, Mr. Ranwashe said.
***
Mr. Mashudu was killed in a car accident in 1987, and Mr. Ranwashe said he remembered Mr. Musk being one of only a handful of white people who attended the funeral in the family’s rural village.

“It was unheard of during that time,” he said.

The Times evidently didn’t find what it was looking for in researching Elon Musk’s childhood–no gems like, say, Mitt Romney helping to cut a fellow student’s hair. But they couldn’t let it go without this quote:

Mr. Musk’s current views on free speech seem to reflect the philosophies students were exposed to at Pretoria Boys, said Mr. Beney, the classmate — like that of the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, a champion of unchecked expression.

“I think his ideas about free speech are very classic liberal and not nuanced,” Mr. Beney said of Mr. Musk.

“Not nuanced” means he doesn’t favor censorship by the government and its minions. The Times will never forgive him for that.

Charming Joe HAS BEEN WINSOME AND A GANGSTER FOR THE PAST 40 AMERICAN YEARS!

MAY 5, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN 2024 ELECTION, JOE BIDEN

WE LOVE YOU JOE, BUT PLEASE GO AWAY!

These Rasmussen numbers are grim for the Democrats. To begin with, I have been saying for a while that the polls overstate Joe Biden’s actual standing with voters. There is no way that 40% or so of voters look at the carnage of the last year and say, “Heck of a job, Joe!” Many of those who claim to approve of Biden’s job performance are lying to pollsters to stick up for their beleaguered party.

You can see that in today’s numbers. While 42% of likely voters say they approve of Biden’s performance in Rasmussen’s current polling, only 28% say he should run for re-election. We like you, Joe, but please don’t stick around any longer than necessary!

These numbers are really stunning: in a rematch of the 2020 presidential race, 50% now say they would vote for Donald Trump, while only 36% say they would vote for Biden. A 14-point margin for Trump is great, unless it cements his determination to run again. Ron DeSantis, still nowhere near as well known as Trump to the general public, beats Biden too, by 46% to 35%.

But take these numbers with a grain of salt, as Biden won’t be on the ballot in 2024.

Note from Glenn: I used to be a Democrat….and worked for Democrats in my neighborhood where Walter Mondale lived when he was at his best! Democrats were civil, honest, and JudeoChristian then. Fems had not yet become Dem Witches.

It was candidate Ronald Reagan who made me become Republican in 1980.

I was very, very pleased Donald J. Trump became Presidential over crooked Hillary. I was CERTAIN Donald would win……I had followed Donald Trump when he was still working for his Dad….and found him brilliant as a THINKER AND DOER! I knew he loved his country!

(Getting To Know Today’s Dummy Dems Better!)

 MAY 4, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at PowerLine:

HYSTERIA IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Joe Biden and his minions have stoked the fires of hysteria following on the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs case. I haven’t been able to find an embeddable video, but Biden talked about the decision today:

President Joe Biden delivered a sharp political speech from the White House on Wednesday warning of the “extreme” agenda from “MAGA” Republicans.

“This MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that has existed in American history,” Biden said, referring to the Make America Great Again movement sparked by former President Donald Trump.

A typically sane comment from Dementia Joe, which he later amended to say “recent” American history. Antifa? Hey, they’re middle of the road!

“This is about a lot more than abortion,” he said.

The president warned that Republicans might pass a law preventing “LGTBQ children” from attending public school with other children.

Of course, no Republican of any stripe has proposed any such thing. The idea is ridiculous.

“Let me tell you about this ultra-MAGA agenda, it’s extreme,” Biden said.

He also suggested that the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade could mean that government could regulate couples from using birth control.

This refers to Griswold v. Connecticut, a terrible Supreme Court decision that started in a Yale classroom and inaugurated the “right to privacy” that has bedeviled us ever since. Biden pretends not to understand the difference between something that is constitutionally required–a small universe–and something that is obviously a good idea and will happen regardless, i.e., the sale of contraceptives.

Jen Psaki, meanwhile, did a press briefing today in her usual hyperpartisan style. Peter Doucy followed up on Biden’s bizarre reference to LGBTQ children, but Psaki had no coherent explanation:

Q The President said today: “What happens if you have states change the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children?” What is he talking about?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I think, Peter, we’ve seen extreme laws that target LGBTQ families, their kids across the country. And I think what he’s saying is: We don’t know what they’re capable of, given what they’ve already done to date.

Q Which state is trying to segregate LGBTQ children in the classroom?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I think we’ve seen laws that are incredibly discriminatory. That’s what the President is referring to and the fact that he doesn’t know what additional steps could be taken by extreme wings of the party that would rather divide rather than work on issues that the American people actually are focused on and actually are impacting them.

The administration isn’t much concerned about the unprecedented, enormously damaging and perhaps illegal leak of a draft opinion being circulated among the justices:

Q Jen, back to abortion, if I can: Yesterday, you said the leak raises eyebrows, including for many here in the White House. But does the White House condemn — explicitly condemn this leak and — or has seeing this draft been seen as welcome by some here?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t think we have a particular view on that other than to say that we certainly note the unprecedented nature of it.

What we are mindful of — and I spoke with the President about exactly this question yesterday, and obviously it’s up to the Department of Justice to determine what, if any, action they will take. And I know, obviously, there have been calls for that from some Republicans but also members of the Supreme Court.

But our focus is on not losing sight from what the content is in the draft and what is at risk here. And while we have heard a number raised concerns about the leak, our focus is on highlighting what the content in there would risk — put at risk for women across the country.

Psaki was not willing to say that a decision overturning Roe v. Wade would be legitimate. Sort of like a presidential election, only with the shoe on the 2000, 2004 or 2016 foot.

Q And as for the content of the draft — the document, the draft — it is, of course, a draft — but if the Supreme Court does move to strike down Roe, should Americans be prepared to just accept that decision as legitimate? And would President Biden accept that decision as legitimate?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I can’t speak for what actions could be possible on the legal front; I would point you to the Department of Justice on that.

But what I can tell you will happen is — and this is what we are preparing for the possibility of — that if Roe were to fall, abortion would probably be illegal in about half the states in the country…

That is a false statement. I doubt that there would be any state in which abortion would be illegal. The Mississippi law that was the subject of the Dobbs case permitted abortions through 15 weeks.

…up to 26 states, particularly in the South, the Midwest, and West, who have all spoken out — many leaders — about how they’re poised to restrict or ban access. …

… And as a result of all of this, tens of millions of women may lack access to reproductive healthcare services…

“Reproductive health care services” means killing unborn babies.

…as soon as this summer, if that were a decision to be made.

There is much more at the link. Suffice it to say that the Biden administration is doubling down on killing the largest possible number of unborn babies as a core principle of the Democratic Party. I am not sure this will work out as well for them as they seem to expect.

…”she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is!”…….

MAY 4, 2022 BY STEVEN HAYWARD at PowerLine:

THEN AND NOW

Two quotes for today:

The seven-to-two judgment in Roe v. Wade declared “violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” a Texas criminal abortion statute that intolerably shackled a woman’s autonomy; the Texas law “except[ed] from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the [pregnant woman].” Suppose the Court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the Court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force. Would there have been the twenty-year controversy we have witnessed, reflected most recently in the Supreme Court’s splintered decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey? A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day . .. might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1992

New York Times, March 29, 2019:

Mr. Biden entered the Senate in 1973 as a 30-year-old practicing Catholic who soon concluded that the Supreme Court went “too far” on abortion rights in the Roe case. He told an interviewer the following year that a woman shouldn’t have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body.”

And yet now the Dobbs draft is a “radical” opinion.

P.S. I had forgotten that Harvard’s Lawrence Tribe wrote to President Obama in 2009 when Obama had his first Supreme Court seat to fill with the advice that Obama should not name Sonia Sotomayor to the Court:

“Bluntly put, she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is, and her reputation for being something of a bully could well make her liberal impulses backfire and simply add to the fire power of the Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas wing of the Court on issues like those involved in the voting rights case argued last week and the Title VII case of the New Haven firefighters argued earlier, issues on which Kennedy will probably vote with Roberts despite Souter’s influence but on which I don’t regard Kennedy as a lost cause for the decade or so that he is likely to remain on the Court.”

Just food for thought.

What About Reviewing The 2020 Presidential Election THE FASCIST DEMS STOLE?

May 4, 2022

Why the Democrats Can Expect to Lose a Lot of Elections

By Frank Friday at American Thinker:

Twenty twenty was a bitter defeat for many of us, and the charges of fraud were not without merit.  What wasn’t true however were the tales of rigged voting machines swinging the election.  As I wrote not long afterward, the truth emerged, and it was just the same illegal ballot-harvesting operation the leftist activists always run, but this time with hundreds of millions in Silicon Valley dollars and the connivance of some election officials.

The new documentary out this week brilliantly documents how all this happened: D’Souza’s 2000 Mules.

For all the illegality, though, I think 2020 is going to be seen as a Pyrrhic victory, with so many of the Democrats’ bad ideas catching up with them and as the black and Hispanic base sours on Biden and his party.  A wipe-out in 2022 will surprise no one.

To a certain extent, we have been here before. Voters back in the 1980s walked away from the Democrats, heralding the Reagan Revolution, and many never looked back.  But a lot of party leaders understood their problems and did something about it.  The moderate Democratic Leadership Council, the DLC, which launched Bill Clinton’s national career, was effective in pushing back on the McGovern wing and at least pretended to be sensible centrists.  “The era of big government is over,” they said.

Today, the DLC is long gone, and even in the face of upcoming election collapse, the Democrats seem to be happy to take their marching orders from the kookiest people they can find, like AOC, who wants Biden to go even farther to the left.

We may never again see a moderate wing of the party.  Ruy Teixeira thinks the problem is that the Dems have lost touch with blue-collar workers.  So do Sohrab Ahmari and many other pundits.  But it is deeper than that.  White-collar suburban voters also hate CRT/transgender stuff in the schools, the rising crime rate, the inflation crisis, the open border, and the general obtuseness of Biden’s foreign policy.

The problem is that there really is no longer a functioning Democrat party worthy of the name.  There is just an election plaything that goes by that name, run from the gilded board rooms of America’s wealthiest non-profits.

People on the left are also starting to realize this, like Sam Adler-Bell.  Michael Lind complains of the end of dissent in opinion journals, also the creature of the elite non-profits.  There is a lock-step conformity expected of all.  “Debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned: Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women Are Women, 1619, Defund the Police.”

I would go farther: although it’s often said politics is downstream from culture — at least for Democrats and the American left — politics, culture, elite media, popular media, religion, education, and anything else are all downstream from the non-profit foundation complex that writes the grant money checks.  Checks for journalists, checks for activists, checks for politicians.

Political parties must be about the business of winning arguments and winning elections, at some point, lest they wither away.  But for the foundations and their executives, there is never any pressure to achieve such popular success.  They have their billion-dollar endowments, all invested in blue-chip American stocks paying huge dividends. They are secure and go on their merry way.  The biggest shame of it is that so many of these enormous foundations were begun by businessmen on the political right — Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, Mellon, etc. — only to have lefty activists hijack their boards.

Elected Democrats now have no interest in the average voter because that’s not whom they work for.  It’s the big money foundations and the armies of their paid activists.  They are the ones doing all the ballot-harvesting that is finally being exposed in the 2000 Mules documentary.  They are the ones who can hand a presidential nomination to an Obama, a mansion to a BLM leader, or make a failure like Stacey Abrams very rich.

But that still raises a big question: why are so many Democrats, practical politicians, supposedly in touch with ordinary people, deep in the thrall of elite foundations?

I think it goes back to the formative days of our current politics, the early 1960s.  Amity Shlaes wrote a brilliant book about this era, Great Society, A New History, and her thesis is that just two men on opposite sides created much of the America we live in today.

One of them is Ronald Reagan, and you likely know a lot of his story, from running the Reds out of Hollywood in the 1940s to teaming up with the visionary leaders of General Electric to fight the shop-floor militants of the 1950s and inspire a new kind of American business ethos, more entrepreneurial and participatory — the Theory Y leadership model.  Reagan then went into politics, as governor of California, to champion law and order and limited government.  This was when California really was the Golden State.

The other person is all but forgotten today: the UAW president, Walter Reuther.  Reuther started out as part of the anti-communist left of the labor movement.  He was happy to expel the Reds from the CIO in 1949 and merge with the much more conservative AFL not long afterward.  This also obliterated the UAW’s chief rival, the communist-dominated Farm Equipment Workers Union.  Then, by the late 1950s, American unions were rolling in money from their dues and pension funds.  They scarcely knew where to put it all.  The Teamsters famously lent it to mob associates to build Las Vegas.

Reuther’s UAW, thanks to all those booming Detroit assembly lines, had more money than anyone, and he meant to use it to transform America into what he understood was the worker’s paradise of Sweden.  Millions in union grant money went to his pet projects and activists.

Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Council would have been but a footnote in American history without the UAW’s money and people helping him.  This allowed MLK to organize the enormous marches and protests that made him famous.  MLK even became something of a Reuther disciple in his later years, embracing Scandinavian economic ideas.  Reuther also got the far-left SDS and Tom Hayden going, organizing a youth movement at the UAW’s resort complex at Port Huron in 1962.  Just about every Alinsky-style group in America was eventually getting UAW money.

And then Reuther convinced LBJ to have the federal government fund the massive Great Society programs.  Unlike the New Deal, where federal dollars were distributed directly through government agencies, thanks to Reuther, the Great Society was run in large measure in partnership with non-profit groups on the left, from older organizations like Planned Parenthood to new Alinsky-style inner-city groups funded by the Community Action Agency.  The outfit Obama worked for in Chicago is a good example.  Even at the time, old-school Democrats like Mayor Richard Daley saw the danger of CAA funding so many radical groups, with no real political constituency or accountability.

But it was too late.  A vast network of activist groups grew in every state, with their billions in federal grant money, union support, and private corporate foundations, to swallow up local party Democrats one after another.  In effect, the “mules,” the foundation-funded activists, have replaced the donkeys of the old party.

So that’s what we see today, the culmination of mega-rich woke foundations creating a political party in their own image.  The modern Democrat party, led by Joe Biden, has become nothing but a Potemkin façade, with no real organic constituency.  It doesn’t even matter to them if the Democrats lose a lot of elections from here on out.  Their massive endowments keep paying the bills for their luxury lifestyle.  The Democrat party is just a flashy “loss leader.”

Several cycles of defeats may eventually lead to a new generation of actual politicians wanting to reclaim the party from the foundations.  But that is a long way off.  The foundation mule Democrats don’t seem to have a winning future.

As an old Republican philosopher once remarked, the mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, KY.

Those Fascist Dems Who Wreck Our American Children

 Ways Democrat Policies Work To Destroy Children’s Lives

BY: J.B. SHURK at the Federalist:

MAY 04, 2022

Once again, children have become objects unworthy of life, protection, or tutelage. What kind of society does this to children?

J.B. SHURK

Americans who would sacrifice anything to protect their children may be surprised to learn that their inclination is a rather modern phenomenon. For most of human history, the most dangerous period of any person’s life was childhood. Only if a newborn survived the first decade of disease, warfare, hunger, and all the other mundane threats to ordinary human existence would the survivor gain any type of social recognition.

O.M. Bakke explores this reality in his book, “When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity.” Before the spread of Christianity transformed prevailing cultural beliefs, children had no legal standing in the pagan societies of the Roman Empire and elsewhere.

In human history, it has been normal for unwanted babies to be aborted, smothered, or abandoned to wildlife. Parents could beat or kill their children at will. Children were routinely sold into slavery. And it was quite ordinary for adults to use low-class or enslaved children as sexual playthings.

Christianity revolutionized the way Western society thought of children. They gained recognition, inherent value, and special focus. Rather than seen as burdens not worthy of consideration until they could contribute to a family’s survival, children became blessings deserving of protection, education, and guidance. As Bakke concludes of this momentous change in Western history: children became people.

Today, we sadly are witnessing the reverse of this civilizational achievement. Once again, children have become objects unworthy of life, protection, or tutelage.

Their mere right to exist is balanced against a mother’s right to convenience. Their childhoods have become sexualized. Their education has been abandoned and replaced with regimens of indoctrination that make them easy targets for governments, corporations, and predators to exploit.

Right before our eyes, those with power are stripping American children of their personhood. Here are five ways I see this clearly happening in our society right now.

1. Child Murder

Not long ago, abortion was commonly understood as the murder of a baby and an act deserving of shame. Now abortion is perversely defended as both a “human right” and a part of “family planning,” even though it extinguishes entirely the rights of at least one human and diminishes a family forever.

Abortion lobbyists have succeeded in reducing babies to “clumps of cells” or “fetuses” or “tumors,” anything that can be used linguistically to dehumanize a living being. Far removed from the moral constraints of shame, some women actually celebrate the deaths of their children.

Nearly 65 million babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade in 1973, and still, the pagan bloodlust toward children can’t be slaked. Before every genocide, before every moral degradation, the perpetrator first looks toward his victim and justifies it by saying, “You are not human.” With abortion, it’s been no different.

2. Child Sexualization

It is simply astonishing that the Democratic Party finds it controversial when parents demand that teachers not discuss sexual acts with their five-year-old children. On what moral plane does one have to exist to believe that a child learning to ride a bike and tie shoes should also be introduced to graphic lessons in sexual intercourse, homosexuality, and transgenderism?

In the past, an adult pushing sexual instruction on children would have earned a ticket to prison and a lifetime ban from ever getting closer than 1,000 feet to a school. Now we hire them as teachers.

3. Instigating Terror of Imminent Apocalypse

One of the most treacherous psychological crimes ever committed by adults against children is the former’s endless propaganda to convince the latter that the world is under threat of imminent doom. Children are being told to fear we’ve already invited the climate apocalypse and now all we can do is mitigate it. As a result, “In a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll of American teenagers released in September [2019], 57 percent said that climate change made them feel scared and 52 percent said it made them feel angry, both higher rates than among adults.”

Governments, schools, public figures, and Hollywood entertainment bombard young minds all day long with the falsehood that we are mere years away from a global cooling…er, global warming… I mean, climate change apocalypse. As the Washington Post noted in 2020: “The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2018 that policymakers have just 12 years to avert the worst consequences of global warming.”

Children have no idea that adults have been telling this lie for more than 100 years. Whether or not you believe hydrocarbons are evil and man’s industrial ingenuity is really sufficient to destroy our 4.5 billion-year-old planet Earth, one thing is indisputable: no such apocalypse is likely to take place imminently. Yet, as indoctrination works best when it is applied early in a person’s life, we terrify our children with the lie that the world as we know it is coming to an end tomorrow.

4. Teaching Self-Hate

If it were not enough to scare children with lies of an impending apocalypse, the Democratic Party has decided to drain children of their self-worth and confidence as well. We were not long ago on the path toward a colorblind society in which race was properly dismissed as an inconsequential trait that has no bearing on a person’s talents or character.

Today, schools around the country indoctrinate children to believe there is nothing so important as a person’s skin color. How we have flipped the civil rights movement on its head!

Not long ago, Americans could acknowledge past national failures while still joining in celebration of America’s great achievements. Now the drumbeat from leftist schools and institutions is constant: there has never been anything exceptional about the United States.

Instead of learning how America’s struggle for independence advanced the cause of human liberty around the world, young students are routinely taught that America’s founding was institutionalized “white supremacy” disguised as freedom. Instead of learning how vital individual rights are in protecting the public from inevitable abuses of government power, government-run schools have redefined personal freedoms as “selfish” while lauding government bureaucracy as “trustworthy” and “beneficent.”

How can the United States of America survive as a nation when its youngest generations are taught in schools that America is a force for evil? How can adults of all races coexist when the children of all races are taught to distrust one another? How can American freedom survive when young minds are taught that only government is good?

5. Unnecessary Lifelong Harm from Lockdowns

Two years of irregular school schedules and mandatory remote learning have taken their toll on the next generation. Truancy has skyrocketed, while academic achievement has plummeted. Toddlers’ speech and language development have predictably suffered.

Schoolchildren have never been more lonely and suicidal. Even as most mask mandates have finally been lifted, too many Democrat-run cities around the country, and lied-to parents, still force our youngest to hide their faces.

As any American with common sense tried to warn more than two years ago, these draconian Covid-19 measures purportedly enacted in the name of health have done nothing but harm children’s health. Worse, these harms will scar young Americans for life.

What kind of society does this to children? Such casual cruelty disguised as “protection” is nothing short of horrendous. It is as if we have stepped 2,000 years back in time to an age when children were not regarded as people at all.

.B. Shurk is a proud American from Daniel Boone country.

Will Crooked “Lady” Clinton EVER PAY HER PRICE?

Judge will review attorney-client privilege claims made by Clinton campaign and Fusion GPS

JOHN SEXTON May 04, 2022

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AP Photo/Bob Child, File

So far it’s just a procedural win but it could turn into a bigger win for John Durham’s case against Michael Sussmann. The judge in the case has agreed to privately review documents which lawyers for the 2016 Clinton Campaign and Fusion GPS claim are covered under attorney-client privilege.

The judge in the case of Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann has agreed to review dozens of records currently withheld because of assertions of attorney-client privilege by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign to see if they have been improperly concealed...

Judge Christopher Cooper said Wednesday he would grant the government’s motion, arguing he did not believe it was breaking attorney-client privilege for him to review the records in dispute in an “in camera” setting, away from the public and the press.

The Clinton lawyers have claimed that Fusion GPS was hired solely for legal services that included advising the campaign on defamation and libel laws, which is clearly nonsense. As the judge pointed out, there’s evidence directly from the founders of Fusion GPS that the company did more than just give legal advice:

The judge quoted from an email by [Fusion GPS co-founder Peter] Fritsch to a reporter in October 2016 in which the Fusion co-founder said to “do the f***ing Alfa bank secret comms story.”

The judge said: “How is that assisting Mr. Elias providing legal advice? … That is assisting a media strategy.”

The judge said he was “not convinced” that the Clinton campaign should just have a blanket assertion of privilege.

Durham has some additional support for that claim that Fusion GPS did more than just offer legal advice covered by privilege. In February the FEC fined the DNC and the Clinton campaign for mislabeling their expenditures:

The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.

The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.

A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Durham included a copy of that FEC decision in a filing he made with the court earlier this week:

Durham’s motion attached recently public FEC filings, including the FEC’s “conciliation agreement” with the DNC and Hillary for America. The FEC found “probable cause to believe” the Clinton campaign and the DNC improperly reported their payments to Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s opposition research as “legal and compliance consulting,” the special counsel said.

The special counsel said evidence at trial, set to begin this month, will show that beginning in late July 2016, Sussmann, Joffe, and “agents of the Clinton campaign” were “assembling and disseminating the Russian Bank-1 allegations and other derogatory information about Trump and his associates to the media and the U.S. government.” The special counsel said he will “establish that these efforts amounted to a joint venture.”

It certainly sounds like team Clinton is going to lose this round. They were fined for not labeling their expenditures accurately and the judge is aware Fusion GPS did more than offer legal advice. More to the point, it seems Durham’s team already has concrete evidence Sussmann lied to the FBI. If the judge gives Durham the documents he wants I think the next question becomes whether Sussmann will fall on his sword or if he’ll decide to make a deal to cooperate with Durham. That has to be the ultimate point of all of this. And if Sussmann starts cooperating there’s no telling what we’ll find out next.