This is apparently a serious column

I ran across someone writing about this at Reason.com and decided to check it out for myself.

It is a column written to Penn St.'s university newspaper by a student named James Fisher. The column is titled: 'Privilege' does not exist to White Penn professors — and they keep 'trying it' and then sub-titled: Spilling the Real Tea | White Penn professors inhibit black students with their privilege

Fyi, before beginning this it is important to note that tuition to Penn is $69,340 per year.

Yeah. Talk about who has privilege . . . I couldn't afford $300k for a degree and I work full time.

Anyway . . .

This dude starts off whining about how bad his last year was at Penn because he had three white professors! Oh the horror! This poor young black man is being forced to sit in a class run by white men! No wonder he is so triggered. And on top of it, they simply don't understand that they have the scourge of our time white privilege and apparently don't have any inclination to be instructed on their privilege by some onesie wearing millennial. Or at least to James Fisher's satisfaction as he claims one teacher actually spoke to him after he broke down in class (oh brother . . .) saying, and I quote: "There is no way that I could acquire the wisdom that you possess."

Now I've never been a student at Penn, but I did go to college and I cannot imagine any teacher, at any level for that matter, saying that to me about any subject. Period. Ever.

Apparently Fisher is triggered simply by the fact his professors are white, that they may be from the suburbs and that they may do terrible things like not constantly point out their own privilege or that they show pictures of slaves on plantations (I wonder what class that is for? It's never mentioned.) and allow the white students in the class to make ignorant comments (like what I wonder? Again, there's never any real examples in the column. I wonder why?).

When his teacher responds that he has to respect all the voices in his classroom and that everyone's opinion has validity, well little whiny James had enough. He left the class for a month:

"I stopped going to his class for a month. With different emotions going through my head from not only this class but from the Trump election, I did not want to step foot into another white space until I made sure that my mental health was restored."

Got that? He couldn't go to class because his candidate didn't win the election. But he has much more to lecture his ignorant privileged professor about:

"These are the types of things that happen when white teachers do not want to acknowledge their privileges; they can psychologically hurt their students. It is not enough to be aware of your privilege. It is also not enough to be a nice person. Your niceness does not mean that you are not capable of contributing to racial systems of oppression.

It is not enough that you are sorry for the injustices caused by your people. It is not enough that you read one article on the Black Lives Matter movement because your black friend recommended it to you. It is not enough that you gave your black students extensions on their papers because Trump got elected."

So I wonder, did profs at Penn give all their black students a month off after Trump got elected? Did they give all of the black students extensions on papers and make up tests because of the election? Wow. Instead of whining like a baby, these students ought to be praising these professors for tolerating their slothful behavior.

I also wonder -- how does one constantly acknowledge one's privilege to the satisfaction of young James here? Does the white professor, whom I'm assuming has a PhD in whatever he's teaching allow the uneducated "triggered" student like James run the class? Does the professor allow the student to dictate the course's direction or pre-approve the syllabus before each term? I can see that working out just great in a physics or math class --

Teacher: Since physics was in part created by an old white man, Isaac Newton, who by virtue of his skin color is inherently a racist, I'm going to allow James Fisher here to teach this semester on thermondynamics. James . . .

I was sort of heartened by a lot of the comments below the article where students were slamming this guy on his infantile maturity and below college level writing skill (their comments not mine, I'm in no place to rag on someone else's composition skills).

Part of Fisher's rap is to complain that his professor's stance on allowing everyone to have an opinion and that everyone's opinion matters is part of what is wrong with the #AllLivesMatter movement. This in and of itself is very telling. Like the rioters at Berkeley the other night, those at NYU last night and others . . . conversation isn't wanted, dialog isn't wanted, debate isn't wanted, Fisher and those like him want you to shut up, give them whatever they want and then go away. The #BlackLivesMatter movement, the Equal Rights Movement of the 70s, and all these other protest movements that are spiraling towards anarchy today aren't about equality. They're about removing those the protesters don't like and replacing them with those who adhere to the preferred philosophy on whatever topic is in vogue at the moment -- climate change, lbgtqetc rights, reparations (incidentally I saw someone talking about pushing for individual reparation accounts whites could donate to to salve their white guilt/privilege . . . unfuckingbelievable!) and so on.

A lot of commenters wrote that they thought the column was satire. I hope it is. Sadly, I doubt it though. These stances politically and philosophically are getting a lot of positive push in the liberal media and from Hollywood. I'm not sure we've even come close to a tipping point yet. And I'm not sure we have the steadiest hand on the tiller in government right now.

Got my fingers crossed. We'll see.

F*ck you Grant Starrett

*sigh* I get so tired of reading things like this, especially from politicians, or those who want to be politicians and/or conservatives/Republicans.

Whilst perusing National Review Online today, I ran across an article by the gentleman mentioned in this post's title. His article was titled: Make all federal employees fireable. As soon as I saw the title, I knew where this guy was going to go, even if the article wasn't specifically targeted at the USPS.

Sure enough, only four paragraphs in I find this (emphasis mine):

"The spoils system’s most famous advocate was another populist rabble-rouser with a magnificent mane, also sneered at by the elites: Andrew Jackson. Jackson believed that no particular class should dominate government decade after decade, and that government jobs were readily fillable by those in the private sector. For a modern analogy: There’s no reason why a FedEx employee couldn’t replace a bad postal worker".

A few more paragraphs down, Starrett begins another paragraph thusly:

"Most federal employees are presumably competent, but not 99.8 percent. Set aside your personal experience with the Post Office . . ."

Grant Starrett is a lawyer who went to both Vanderbuilt and Stanford. He ran for a congressional seat in Tennessee last year and lost. I would assume he is a fairly intelligent fellow, but he is witheringly ignorant of how the federal government and the USPS interact. Though technically a federal agency, the USPS is a stand alone operation, self funding with it's own regulatory agency overseeing budgets and things like stamp prices and such.

The myth of the non-fireable postal worker is just that . . . a myth. Though there are unions to protect workers and negotiate contracts, and I'm no big fan of unions, the myth that they run the USPS is just that . . . a myth.

There are plenty of things wrong with the Post Office, just like there are plenty of things wrong with FedEx and UPS and Walmart and every other company in this country that employs over a half million workers. And I could go on for days writing about all the things the PO does wrong and why this happens.

Two of the biggest internal problems, just to give you an example, are the facts that no one in management was promoted from craft based on merit, if you want to be a boss, simply fill out the paperwork and viola . . . you're in. In this way, the organization is not promoting its best and brightest to the upper levels of management, so you don't get the best decision making at the local, district and nationwide levels.

The other problem is universal pay rates, which is to say that I, in Florida, work for the same pay rate as a letter carrier in New York, or L.A., or anywhere else the cost of living is double or triple what it is in Florida. What is good money down here is garbage man wages north of the Mason-Dixon line. You get what you pay for. And you combine unattractive wages with management that might not be the best and you get a lot of the problems folks up north keep complaining about. Simply firing people isn't the answer here.

I'd like to think someone running for Congress might be a little more interested in understanding the situation than simply going for the low hanging fruit of bashing an entity that employs half a million American citizens and gives preferential hiring to veterans.

But no, Grant went for the cheap shot. If this is any indication of the depth of his intellectual curiosity about our government and how it functions, it might explain why he lost his bid for a Congressional seat.

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And just so I don't seem like a grumpy grouper, here's some unpublished pics of the always sexy and beautiful Elizabeth Marxs in SFW format just to show I'm not always about shameless clickbait:

Orrin Hatch spanks childish Democrats

Petulant baby Democrat senators messed with the wrong committee chairman yesterday as Orrin Hatch pushed through the confirmations of Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary and Tom Price for the head of Health and Human Services without a single Democrat senator in attendance.

Hatch is legendary for his ability to craft compromise and work across the aisle with Democrats on even the most prickly issue. After Senate Dems refused to show up for a vote on three consecutive meetings of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch simply changed the committee rules to allow a vote without any Dems in attendance and confirmed both Trump appointees. Both Price and Mnuchin will now move to the Senate floor for confirmation.

This is simply shameful behavior on the part of Senate Democrats. As Hatch stated, if these committee members had lingering questions about either nominee (the complaint is apparently over Price in a now thoroughly debunked claim of insider stock manipulation), they had plenty of time to request more info and discuss their concerns like grown ups.

Instead, like those buffoons in Wisconsin a few years back, they simply refused to show up to do their jobs. Choosing instead to stand in the hallway outside the committee and hold whiny press conferences.

The same day, Jeff Sessions was confirmed for Attorney General. He goes to the floor for a vote as well.

If I'm remembering this correctly, crazy uncle Harry nuked the filibuster for anything short of a Supreme Court appointment some years back. So I'm pretty sure all these guys will get their appointments. It seems only Betsy DeVos is having problems within the Republican party in terms of support.

The Democratic party is going to lose all these fights. And they're not looking good doing it. Like the insane riots at Berkeley yesterday over a gay conservative man's speaking tour, the left may look great to Hollywood, whose directors keep advocating violence and murder towards anyone who disagrees with their politics, but it's not playing well outside those few counties that went blue in the election.

I'm not very good at the prognostication thing, as I'm sure you've noticed, but if this trend continues and if Trump can refrain from self-immolation during his term (fyi Donald -- stop tweeting about punishing protesters, simply shame them for their actions), then there may be even fewer blue counties come 2020.

How did I miss this?

My girl, Martha MacCallum has her own show on FOX. yay

After Megyn Kelly and Greta left FOX for NBC and MSNBC respectively, there was a big hole in the evening line up to fill. FOX tagged Tucker Carlson to take over Greta's 7:00 pm slot and when Megyn finally left, they moved him into her old 9:00pm slot. From what I'm hearing, he's killing it in the ratings, doing far better than Megyn who had been killing it against other FOX hosts.

I imagine there's a bit of the old perfect storm at work here. Carlson came in after Trump was elected and into an increasingly hostile news environment towards conservatives/Republicans. Whereas Megyn was more of a centrist with conservative leanings, Carlson is a full on righty and doesn't hesitate to take on liberals and beat them up on his show. In a much more intelligent sounding way than either O'Reilly or knuckle-dragger Hannity can manage. So it's red meat for red state masses at a time when a lot of people are recoiling at the hysterical overreaction of liberals to the new Trump administration.

To fill the empty 7:00pm slot, FOX has created a show -- The First 100 Days about, obviously, Trump's first 100 days in office. You know, that time period when, prior to this administration, news networks sort of sat back and gave the new President some time to formulate their message and direction for the country.

Yeah. That's off now, isn't it?

Anyway, MacCallum's been a favorite of mine for a while. Obviously I think she's gorgeous, but I like her demeanor on air as well. She's intelligent and informed and does a good job in interviews without the combative nature of most political hosts these days.

Prior to his death, my buddy and I used to chat about her appearance on television when she would fill in for Megyn or appear on O'Reilly (though I rarely saw her there since I can't stand that pompous gasbag), and my friend, knowing I liked her would just goof on her mercilessly. His favorite jab was that she didn't know how to apply makeup because there was this dark spot on her forehead. I would point out that was a shadow from her hair, he'd counter, we'd go back and forth . . . it was fun. My boss would be overhearing us and be asking "Who are you talking about?" and we'd just ignore her and keep goofing on one another.

Boy do I miss him :-(

Along those same lines, both of us used to do the same thing for Laurie Dhue, a FOX host in the early 2000's. Tall and blonde and busty and leggy, she was great eye candy on the network:

But God love her, she couldn't read a teleprompter to save her life.

We'd be waiting to get on the clock in the morning or meet at break and just chuckle at whatever she struggled with during the news breaks or whatever for the prior evening. It was all in good fun, but unbeknownst to both of us, Dhue was struggling with alcoholism during her time at FOX. Apparently a pretty severe case of it too, which would explain her problems reading a scrolling text. Impressive that she managed to do as well as she did for all those years.

She's clean and sober now and after a stint at Glenn Beck's Blaze TV, she's started her own media consultant and training firm and is apparently shopping a tell-all book about sexual harassment she suffered from Roger Ailes during her time at FOX.

Amusingly, both Martha MacCallum and Laurie Dhue have similar pedigrees -- both had B.A.'s in political science and both dabbled in the performing arts, something I guess is a good idea if your goal is to be live in front of a camera for a living.

I'm glad Dhue has righted the ship of her life and wish her well as she goes on. I'd be pleased if she didn't join the dog pile on Ailes for no other reason than he's gone and she's moved on with her life. Just let it go and don't give any more energy to that chapter in her life.

And as for Marther (something she joked about one night on air) . . . I just may have to turn my television back on in the evenings and check out the show.

Yeah I know, it's an O'Reilly shirt . . . but it's nice to see her in regular clothes, and the b&w pic . . . well, you know how I am about that :-)

Harley Davidson USA is run by cowards

President Donald Trump was scheduled to meet with the ownership of Harley Davidson USA, as part of his promotional tour to showcase his trimming of regulations on small businesses in this country. Trump campaigned hard on a pro business platform and has already signed executive orders requiring that two regulations be cut for every new regulation implemented. There isn't really another business in this country that screams "American" like the iconic Harley Davidson.

But Harley execs cancelled the visit because they were afraid of protests and the bad publicity that might arise from them.

Got that? They were actually afraid to be seen with a sitting President for fear of how it might look to the whiny left wing babies in this country. Pathetic.

We're getting a very good look at the liberal playbook for the next four years. Astroturfed protests funding in large part by America-hating George Soros punishing anyone who would dare support a Republican President. In DC recently, the guy who owns a chain of local hoagie shops is being excoriated on Twitter for posing with Trump after the EO on small businesses. Whiny lefty babies are screaming for boycotts of the chain which humorously touts on it's billboards -- no politics, just good hoagies.

You would think those who vote Democratic would be embarrassed by this situation, but like Muslims in this country that stay silent of Islamic terror attacks, Dem voters say nothing while their party descends into liberal madness with knee-jerk reactions to every little thing. Once again, the election map:

Donald Trump won 2626 counties across the country, Clinton won 487. Almost the entire total of her lead in the individual vote count was due to her winning the five counties that make up New York.

The country is tired of business as usual from Washington. Leftist/socialist theory on economics and social justice don't work or resonate with the majority of the country. It's going to be interesting to see how the Trump administration responds to these hate/scare tactics by the left. Trump isn't known for his measured responses to attacks, and neither is Bannon. Hopefully others around Trump can moderate his lash out first, apologize for it later mentality.

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On a more pleasing note, Trump has pegged Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. I'm no expert on this, but most conservative scholars seem to like this guy, feeling he's sort of Scalia v2.0. Scalia himself seemed to like Gorsuch when he was working his way up through the judge ranks, and Dems had no problem voting for him for circuit court appointments. Of course, now they're saying they will filibuster any and all SCOTUS picks, claiming in one instance that the seat was stolen by Republicans (looking right at you Jeff Merkley D-Ore.). Which just shows that you can be a complete blithering idiot and still win a Senate seat in this country.

And by the way, speaking of "astroturfed" protests, check out this tweet from Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, quickly becoming one of my favorites in the Senate, as he points out how Dems were ready to protest whomever Trump nominated with fill-in-the-blank signs:

Went to the Supreme Court to talk to the protesters. But it turns out to be a Mad-Lib protest.#Fill-In-The-Blank pic.twitter.com/y156wBskMf

— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) February 1, 2017

Surrender monkey Mitch McConnell swears Gorsuch will be immediately confirmed without using the nuclear option. We'll see. I'm one of those who doesn't have much faith in McConnell. Obviously. But those who do, swear he's some sort of procedural genius who will get the Dems to do his bidding. We'll see.

The party of No is already refusing to show up to work to even hold votes on Trump's cabinet picks, so the Republican majority in Congress has it's work cut out for them.

Frankly, if it was me running the House or Senate, I'd schedule these votes and fill the empty Dem seats with cardboard cut outs of the various Dems photoshopped as crying babies in their diapers and make sure it was viral on every social media platform.

Tanya Mityushina had a red carpet moment

Tanya Mityushina was at the recent John Wick, Chapter 2 premiere the other night. I don't believe she's actually in the movie itself, and frankly, I've never even heard of her before, but she wore this stylish little shorts and overcoat number to the premiere:

Of course, an outfit with that much deliberate cleavage is just an invitation for a wardrobe moment and sure enough:

I think I've mentioned in posts before, I have a hard time believing that these ladies, many of whom do professional modeling, don't know exactly how exposed they are. But just in case, here's a tip -- when the photographers keep telling you to turn sideways, put your hands on your hips and arch your back . . . you might want to check your outfit. Just sayin'

As I said, it's not actually all that bad looking of an outfit, we've seen this look in various iterations before. I wouldn't be surprised to see Ariel Winter turn up in something like this in the near future.

And speaking of young Ariel, she went commando at the recent SAG Awards in what was actually a very pretty dress. Got to hand it to her . . . she's consistent.

Groan . . . I may have to watch this in theaters

The third movie in the Wolverine series is supposed to come out in March of this year (I think). The writers are riffing off an alternate reality storyline from the comics referred to as Old Man Logan. In the comics, the world is some dystopian hell where the U.S. has been conquered and divided up between various super-villains to control. Logan has killed the X-Men while under the spell of another villain and has run off to live out his life in the desert.

This movie seems to be taking bits of that storyline and running with it. In Logan, we have an aging Logan, his regenerative powers fading, hiding out in Mexico with a mildly insane Professor X. They encounter a young girl who is not at all what she seems and end up on the run from those out to capture this girl.

It seems the girl is supposed to be what the comics referred to as X-23, real name Laura Kinney, and she is basically a clone of Logan with the same mutant abilities -- regenerative healing, heightened senses and seemingly, at least from the trailer, the same berserker rage the comic version of Wolverine was known for.

She also has adamantium claws in her arms, two instead of Logan's three, and if they stay true to the comics, she'll have one in each foot as well.

I've railed long and loud about Disney's butchering of the X-Men character mythology, storylines, timelines and pretty much everything they've done with a comic book series I loved as a kid. I've hated much of what has been done with the Wolverine character, and I hated the first two movies in this series. But I'm liking the look of this one so far. I like that they're going for the R rating. And I know that Hugh Jackman is looking to send this role off in the best possible way. So it might turn out okay.

It's going to be a cool year for movies. Logan, then Wonder Woman, then the Justice League, and I don't know what else in in the pipes. I'm going to feel like a real person actually going out for some entertainment a few times this year.

Hell, maybe I'll even get a date too.

I know . . . that's just crazy talk.