Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Some thoughts about last night and about character

First thought--thank goodness it came out the way it did.  My relief is palpable.  Trump came out and lauded his family and his team as well as the voters.  Of course wins are awesome, but he spread the wealth--didn't take the glory for himself.  And that shows character and true teamwork.  The fact that he had RFK Jr on his team.  And different groups getting on the MAGA bandwagon shows an ability to unify by actually addressing the concerns of Americans. Glorious.  

Taking the Senate along with McConnell stepping down (I think he saw the writing on the wall) is going to make a huge difference as well.

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Second thought--the Left has a laundry list of reasons why they lost last night.  It includes pretty much everything and everybody except for Harris herself.  The fact that NO ONE cast a vote for her in the primaries and yet was still allowed to continue is still a mystery to me.  I do wonder where that war chest will go as well...  but that's for a different post on a different day.

Here's the thing that's most telling, and, to me, shows what a bullet we just dodged as a country (I mean there's a bunch of reasons, but this is a true measure).

She didn't show up to give a speech to her supporters last night.  

All of those people who (for whatever reason) supported her and were waiting for her to tell them that even though it was a loss, their world is still going to be okay.

She bailed.  Jammed.  Took it on the lam.  Called a lid. Was a no-show.  Whatever.

And they were left with nothing.  Ashes.

And it woke up some of her supporters.

Barbara Heineback, a former White House staffer and the first black press office employee for the First Lady's office, said she was disappointed with the Democrat.

'I am so disappointed and really insulted that I’m a Howard alum and that she didn’t have the decency to walk out and say to her, to her university, make a comment to the United States,' Heineback said. 'Things were not looking well for her. It wasn’t completely over.'

'I mean, it shows us how classless she actually is, a sore loser,' the former White House staffer continued. 'Even though it’s painful for her, for the Democrats, I think America might be relieved at recognizing and realizing they don’t have to put up with this any longer.' 

I think this is pretty telling...

San Jose State--The beatings will continue until morale improves

One of the assistant coaches for the San Jose State University volleyball team has been suspended for  “breaches of student and employee privacy.”

This happened after she filed a Title IX complaint regarding the inclusion of a male on the women's team (if you'll recall, five universities have forfeited rather than play against this team because of this as well).

The base of the complaint is that the male (Fleming) met with a player from Colorado State and told her that he would not block any shots aimed at his teammate, Brook Slusser, opening her to possible injury.  This is presumably because Slusser had signed on to a petition sent to the NCAA regarding the inclusion of men in women's college sports.  Slusser had also begun to *gasp* refer to Fleming by male pronouns (because he's a dude).

Interestingly enough, that game was the only one that SJSU lost so far this season.

During that match, Batie-Smoose claims in her Title IX Complaint, Fleming’s play style was bizarre. Fleming defied her coaches’ instructions by allowing Jones an unhindered diagonal hitting lane that exposed Slusser to kills. Batie-Smoose also reports that she repeatedly saw Fleming laughing together with Jones after the latter targeted Slusser in this manner.

This comes on the heels of San Jose State's volleyball program requesting money from two of the teams (Boise State and Utah State) who took a forfeit because....

“Your institution’s arbitrary decision not to play an otherwise eligible NCAA team has resulted in harm to SJSU financially and our institution’s brand,” 

 Nope, the fact that they put a dude on their team and hid that fact is what damaged SJSU's brand.

The University of Nevada-Reno tried to force its women's team to play San Jose State but the women refused to do so.

San Jose is cheating, they've been called out, externally and internally, and they can't handle the heat.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

It's a man, baby!

 The boxer from Algiers who literally smashed through his female opponents at the Olympics, is, indeed, a man.  Biological man.  XY chromosomes.  High testosterone levels. No breasts, no uterus.  Not intersex.  Has a condition that caused his testicles not to drop (but they are there) and, according to reports, has a micropenis (that's why he had to take his aggression out on women).  Regardless of what it said on his passport.  It wasn't even a trans issue, surprisingly enough.

The article I read indicated that his parents were situated almost on the same branch of the family tree, if you get my drift.

So the boxing commission that disqualified him was right and the Olympic committee was wrong.  What's worse is that both the Algierian and French governments knew that he was a man with this condition and Algiers put him in the Olympics anyway.  So this was a whole new way to cheat. To the fair to the hospitals, they did stick to patient privacy which is probably why they didn't blow the whistle.

I wonder if the Olympic committee is going to take away his gold medal and pass it to the real women who actually stood up and fought this guy?  The question is rhetorical because of course they won't.  That would be admitting that they were wrong and can't have that!

Universities as data brokers

Arizona State's student body (plus some parents and alums) got a text from the Harris campaign.  It has raised some concerns about student privacy but it was all legal.  You see, there's a loophole in FERPA regulations (the academic version of HIPPAA) that says that anything that is considered to be 'directory information' (and this list is publicly available) is good to be sold or given away as long as the student hasn't put a privacy hold on his or her record.

And ASU's directory information is a storehouse of information, especially if you were looking to engage in identity theft since they also include Date of Birth in information that can be disseminated.

But they aren't alone--it happened in Wisconsin too, although was just targeted at student emails, rather than their cell phones.

More than 1000 universities signed on to an Obama era 'study' where data from the National Student Clearinghouse (which collects data from pretty much every university and college in the country on a student/extremely granular level) was (is) given to a group called L2.

According to a description by UC Berkeley, “L2 Voter Data supports research into voter behavior and demographics, by providing detailed demographic profiles, historical voting records, party affiliation data, and geospatial analysis tools. L2 Voter Data is a regularly updated database of all registered voters in the US, and contains voting records going back, in some cases, to 2001.”

L2 describes itself online as “working with clients from presidential campaigns to small advocacy organizations” with an “easy-to-use web-based interface [that] gives you the power to instantly analyze, purchase and export records.”

This release is being classified as a something to 'improve student learning' in order to get around FERPA.  But no one seems to be able to find out if the student data received is actually destroyed or not.  It's supposed to be.....

 “Institutions that choose to participate in NSLVE sign an authorization form permitting the Clearinghouse to provide student names, addresses and dates of birth to a voter organization to match to that organization’s voter registration data,” a clearinghouse media relations official told The College Fix in a statement. “The matched dataset is then sent to the Clearinghouse, and the organization destroys the data it received from the Clearinghouse.”

It seems that the Dems are the ones who are pulling end-runs around student privacy.  But here's another tidbit.  Students can use the privacy hold for university processes, but EVERYTHING goes to the Clearinghouse since they are a government contractor.

So if anyone has kids in college right now, best have them check their privacy holds in their student portal. 

Monday, November 4, 2024

Monday Pre-Election Day Meme Drop

I do want to make a comment about all of the squirrel memes below.  There was absolutely NO reason to kill those animals, even if they bit someone (big if).  Ten day quarantines work.  I hope anyone involved with it reaps a backlash that feels like a chainsaw up their nethers.  Democrats have no concept of the value of any life whatsoever.  Thus endeth the rant.

I checked this as best as I could and it seems legit.  
Anthill, honey, blazing sun would be too good.