Woking Kindergartens

Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in Falls Church, VA, put a woke video on its Web site in which kindergartners were used to push an anti-police agenda. The video, it turns out, was part of a summer curriculum that also included critical race “theory,” Black Lives Matter stuff, and news articles critical of white parents.

After a hue and cry, the video (but only the video, apparently) was taken down from the Web site.

A spokesperson for the Fairfax County Public Schools, just outside Washington, DC, said the video had been posted by mistake and was removed as soon as officials became aware.

Sure it was a mistake. And maybe there’s some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that folks might be interested in, too. Or maybe the mistake was in getting caught.

There’s a larger set of questions, though, a set that’s not being asked, especially by the Fairfax County Public Schools. That set includes the circumstances under which the video was made in the first place, why it was made, who made it.

And whether the persons who made the video still are employed by Fairfax County.

Oh, and whether the BLM and trashing white parents sewage also was taken down, or why not.

Not a Bad Gig

Who needs work when Uncle Sugar will take care of you?

Under emergency response legislation, the federal government expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits, extended the number of weeks, and gave bonuses to state unemployment benefits. The expansion will sunset in September, but congressional Democrats have pressed President Biden for an extension.

The current state of affairs according to a report by Alli Fick, a Senior Research Fellow with the Foundation for Government Accountability, is this:

An individual can receive nearly $3,700 a month—or more than $44,000 a year—by staying at home. On top of tax credits, food stamps, and state unemployment benefits, an individual can receive an additional $1,300 per month with the $300 weekly unemployment bonus.

It’s not a bad gig, and nearly anyone can get it. All courtesy of virtue-signaling politicians of both parties.

It can get worse, too. Progressive-Democrats are pushing the trap of free income—universal basic income.

Color Me Surprised

…or not. It seems Ted Wheeler, the Progressive-Democratic Mayor of Portland, OR, who doubles as the Portland police commissioner, is having trouble finding folks idiot enough willing to work for him in what used to be a critical section of his police facility.

Leaders in Portland, OR, are looking to combat the city’s rising homicide rate by resurrecting a police unit focused on gun violence. But after a year of growing tension within the department, they can’t find enough officers to join.
Since 14 job openings were announced in May, only four police personnel have applied to work with the new version of Portland’s Gun Violence Reduction Team, which was shut down last year amid long-running protests….

Given the few willing, those four have not yet been taken up on their offer.

Daryl Turner, Portland Police Association President has his finger on the problem.

They’re demonizing and vilifying you, and then they want to put you in a unit where you’re under an even bigger microscope

That bigger microscope is the new unit’s very own private citizen-advisory board of woke civilians who would be more interested in the new section cops’ ability to fight systemic racism than in their ability to fight violent crime.

I’m surprised there are any men or women willing to be a Portland cop of any sort as long as Ted Wheeler and the others in his city administration remain in office. They’ve shown they cannot be trusted to support the police in any endeavor.

Dishonesty?

Or Cowardice?

Recall The New York Times‘ reporter, Katie Benner, who tweeted out the following, regarding 10s of millions of Americans:

Her tweets read, in case the image proves unreadable,

Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores the America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state. /1
As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat? /2
This dilemma was unresolved by the Russia probe and 2 impeachments. With many Republicans denying the reality of the Jan. 6 attack, I doubt the #January6thCommittee will resolve it either. That leaves it up to voters, making even more essential free, fair access to the polls. /3

This time, I’m less interested in this…journalist’s…slur than I am in what she did about it. Amid the backsplash against her despicable smear of all of us average Americans so impudent as to disagree with her august self, Benner deleted those tweets. She claimed her tweets were unclearly worded.

Hogwash. If Benner truly were concerned about clarity, she would have left her tweets up, cited them in a quoting tweet or series of tweets, said they were “unclearly worded,” and then said in clear, concrete terms what she truly meant.

Benner chose not to. Instead, she chose to attempt to white wash her history—which is part of all our social history, part of the information database that all of us must use, for good or ill—to try to pretend her history didn’t actually exist.

Dishonesty or cowardice? You make the call. For me, it’s a tough call since there’s so much overlap: much of dishonesty is a form of cowardice.

“We stand for what is right across the world”

In a virtual Congressional hearing last Tuesday—Corporate Sponsorship of the 2022 Beijing Olympics—there was this exchange between Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Paul Lalli, Coca-Cola’s Global Vice President for Human Rights and corporate representative at the hearing:

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): So your company said at the time that we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the United States. So are we to take from your statement at the time that Coca Cola will not stand up for what is right outside the United States? Because that’s what it sounds like this morning in this testimony.
PAUL LALLI, COCA-COLA’S GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: No, Senator, we stand up for what is right across the world. We apply the same human rights principles in the United States that we do across the world.
COTTON: Do you believe that the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide against the Uyghur people?
LALLI: We’re aware of the reports of the State Department on this issue as well. There are other departments of the US government. We respect those reports. They continue to inform our program, as do reports from other from civil society.

Think about that deliberately vapid non-response. Coca Cola stands for what’s right across the world, and Coca Cola doesn’t object to the People’s Republic of China’s abuse, much less genocide, of the Uyghurs in the PRC’s Xinjiang province.

Nor was it just Cotton that the Coca-Cola rep refused to answer. Progressive-Democrat Tom Malinowski (D, NJ) pressed Lalli specifically on whether Coca-Cola would condemn any Chinese government abuses against Uyghurs. Lalli’s carefully empty response:

We respect all human rights.

It seems pretty clear: Coca Cola considers that abuse, that genocide, to be part of what’s right across the world. Because Uighurs, in Coca-Cola’s august consideration, don’t count as human or otherwise worthy of human rights.