CNN contributor and smug progressive propagandist Van Jones claimed to know the secret of how Democrats achieved their strong (but absurdly hyped) showing last Tuesday. “Now it can be told,” Jones said, as if he were about to reveal who the second shooter was on the grassy knoll.
“How did we win the narrative on affordability? Was it just these nice little Democrats out there running for office and going to — No. The Republicans never figured out what we were doing. There’s something called the American Accountability Network. Tens of thousands of online humans — not bots — coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online.32.5 million people hit on Instagram every day, 88.8 million hit on Twitter, X every single day. And 185 million hits on Facebook every single day. And they never figured it out. The Republicans could not understand. It wasn’t bots, it was actual human beings. The most effective online organizing campaign … flew under the radar screen. Driving the kitchen table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative…So, it’s not just all the door knocking that was done which was amazing. It’s not just our amazing candidate quality. We had something called the American Accountability Network. Don’t get mad at me, I was given permission to reveal this.”
[“Amazing candidate quality…” Ugh. What a hack.]
Does this really come as a surprise to anyone? My Facebook friends and my progressive zombie acquaintances began chanting about high gas and grocery prices long ago, even though it didn’t make any sense, since the inflated prices were the hangover from Biden’s incompetent Presidency. To listen to them, it was all “tariffs,” because that was another repetitious talking point, though so far it looks like Trump’s tariffs were more successful than critics predicted. Let me translate what Jones was saying:
CNN’s token conservative Scott Jennings writes in reaction to Galloway’s revelation,
“So he sold a car to someone after placing his feces in the front seat and this is a very serious person that we need to take very seriously because of his very serious thoughts.”
Bingo. I wouldn’t hire someone who boasted about pooping a car to mow my lawn, and this jerk is sitting on a Board of Regents because he hates the right people.
I told you that I would be posting this a lot, and here it comes again:
Take note, you conservatives and Republicans who let the “Blue Wave” swamp the nation, for these are the execrable people you allowed to get power over your lives because you wanted to throw a tantrum about inflation.
[For the pop culture history challenged, that was the title card for Johnny Carson’s first TV show, a sort-of quiz show that was really just a set-up for Johnny to ad lib and be clever. If you don’t know who Johnny Carson was, shame on you.]
Nancie Givens, former executive director of the Arkansas Office of Professional Programs, was arrested and charged with 65 felony counts of tampering with public records. An investigation “uncovered extensive irregularities involving Arkansas Bar Examination scores spanning from July 2020 through July 2025.” Prosecutor Will Jones said in a release,
“As Prosecuting Attorney, I recognize the responsibility Ms. Givens was entrusted with to safeguard the accuracy of bar examination results and preserve the records supporting them,” Jones said in the release. “The charges concern how she handled those specific duties, including the alteration of exam results and the destruction of supporting records.”
The investigation is ongoing. It isn’t clear how or why Givens altered those bar exam results. Here she is…
(Yikes)
You can read the details as we have them so far here. My rule is never to trust anyone who spells “Nancy” as “Nancie,” but that’s just me.
How did I miss THIS story? I guess People Magazine does have its uses: it recently surfaced what EA would headline as a “Now THIS is an Unethical High School Principal!” piece if I had been doing my ethics story research better in 2012. People’s catalyst was a episode of the docuseries “The Curious Case Of…“, and there had been an earlier docuseries on this screwy case in 2023, True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes.
The bottom line: Dr. George Kenney was a North Port High School in Sarasota County, Florida who got interested in hypnotism, took some courses in the procedure, and decided to hypnotize over 70 people according to the Sarasota-Herald Tribune, including students, athletes and colleagues,to help them cope with problems in their lives, or something. Hypnotism is regarded as therapy, and one has to be licensed to use it on consenting adults unless you have a Vegas act that makes volunteers from the audience think they are chickens or wombats. Hypnosis can be dangerous with subjects who have mental or emotional disorders, so when three of his student subjects died in the spring of 2011, one in a suspicious car crash and two by suicide, Kenney’s hypnosis hobby came under fire. He was never indicted or sued in connection with the three teens’ deaths, but Kenney was charged with two misdemeanors for practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license. He pleaded no contest and resigned as principal in 2012.
You can read the People story from earlier this year here. Meanwhile,
Texas lawyer Ezra Young (right, above) filed a judicial complaint against Judge Ada Brown (left) of the Northern District of Texas who went bonkers during a hearing last April. Brown excoriated Young for—wait for it!— being white. Young corrected her, saying that he is Hispanic (which is white, but the Left’s group-labeling obsession has obliterated that detail for all time), so Judge Brown said he was“white-presenting.” Here’s a description of the exchange from Bloomberg Law:
Throughout the hearing, the judge, a Black woman with Native American ancestry, accused Young of mistreating Black attorneys, took “judicial notice” of her own background in making findings against Young, and repeatedly referred to Young, who is Latino, as being White. Brown called the hearing months after she revoked Young’s ability to practice in her courtroom to weigh whether the lawyer should face sanctions.
“I think what’s happening here, quite candidly, is you are very intimidated for some reason, Mr. Young, with Black excellence, in light of your White mediocrity. Yeah. Right?,” Brown said, according to the transcript. “You should write that down. I mean, you — I’m — you look like a White man, right?”
“I’m not White, Your Honor,” Young replied, adding that he’s Latino. “Well, you are White-presenting; is that fair to say?” Brown said, according to the transcript. Young said that he’s “fair-skinned,” and Brown said that Young had “White privilege” when he argued his client didn’t receive key evidence in the case.
“You’re the White savior, come to save all the stupid Black lawyers in Texas who need your help, from New York,” Brown later said, according to the transcript. . . .
During the April 24, 2026 hearing, Brown accused Young of “racial bullying” toward Black attorneys in the case. Brown also said that Young was acting like a “Chad,” a term Young wasn’t familiar with. The judge said it was the male version of a “Karen.” “It’s someone who calls the manager when they don’t get their way. They stomp their foot when the rules are supposed to apply to them, right?” Brown said, according to the transcript. . . .
During the April hearing, Brown took issue with an article headline describing the case when it went before the Supreme Court of Texas. The article quoted a brief filed by Young that referenced another law professor apparently comparing what happened in the tenure denial to a “lynching.” The judge accused Young of making up that quote to “get a headline.”
“And so when I read a headline — a sensationalized, very racialized headline that says, ‘it’s like I’ve been lynched,’ and it’s literally got no connection to this case, I have to ask you, Mr. Social Media, Main Character Chad, White Hero, Savior, Loves to Help Black People Be An Ally, where the lynching in this case came from?” Brown said, according to the transcript.
She also apparently gave Young a copy of a 1920 newspaper article that described a lynching. “So we don’t find lynching jokes funny down here, sir,” Brown said, according to the transcript.
Fascinating. Brown is a Trump appointee, which means that even supposedly conservative clack judges may have had their brains addled from years of anti-white, anti-male indoctrination, propaganda and an implanted victim mentality. Of she just snapped like a dry twig in the wind. She has been suspended pending psychiatric testing; apparently the judge had been acting strangely for quite a while. Brown has refused to decide some cases and hasn’t shown up to face her disciplinary proceedings. This, Josh Blackman deduces at The Volokh Conspiracy, suggests that “something is amiss” with this judge.
That’s Erin Andrews above. She’s a broadcast professional, a long-time sidelines reporter in NFL games. She a professional public communicator. Here she is on one of her recent podcasts:
“And then I’m like, ‘Wait, wait, fuck, what did he say about going for it?’ Because I never want to quote a coach and get it wrong, so I’m like, ‘Oh my god’…I’m fully fucking out of breath, which is inappropriate. Like, get it together, sister! In through the nose, out through the mouth. It was all because the ramp was so long. And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, how many people are watching … I’m so much better than that!”
And I’m like, “You sound like a moron, Erin, and this kind of illiterate blather just further embeds that toxic speech pattern in the next generation.”
Never mind the gratuitous “fucks,” that usage of “like” is worse than “um,” which was metaphorically beaten out of me as a child, and since I speak in public for a living, thanks, Mom, Dad, Miss Barrett, Mrs. Penwarden and the rest of my vigilent teachers. Are today’s teachers even trying to stop the “like” contagion? I doubt it: I bet they are infected themselves, and besides, they are too busy teaching kids to be communists.
My own daughter, after being taught by two articulate parents to speak grammatical and articulate English, now uses “like” every seven words, because that’s the kind of speech everyone around her all day uses. And I’m not about to correct a 32-year-old. Nonetheless, when I hear someone use “like” that way, my respect for them takes a nosedive, just as when I hear someone use “ain’t” or “we was” or “irregardless.” I can’t help it.
I’m supposed to turn in my Harvard reunion report on my life since Old Ivy for the school’s “red book.” Last time, I devoted my essay to explaining why my alma mater was an embarrassment. This time, I’m tempted to skip the whole exercise. It’s futile.
Harvard Medical School held an absurd event called “the Pathology of Unruly Bodies.” A panel devoid of doctors or medical experts declared that anti-obesity drugs were part of an imperialistic “indoctrination” of society. Gee, I never thought of it that way! I never thought of it that way because it’s irredeemably stupid.
The panel included Da’Shaun L Harrison, who claims that GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic and Zepbound are weapons of “genocide” against fat people. [See this post from yesterday. “Genocide” no longer means genocide to the Left, so when Israel is accused of genocide, who knows what they mean?] It also includes Ethics Villain Roxane Gay, hilariously the occupant of Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. She’s also the “artist-in-residence”—whatever that means— at Harvard Medical School and has a column in the New York Times (of course she does!).
Gay (she’s the cousin of disgraced former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, which I did not know when she was in the process of proving what an unforgivable DEI selection she was) has called for the release of Luigi Mangione, the man whjo murdered the CEO of UnitedHealthcare two years ago. That alone should disqualify her from participation in any event that is supposed to enlighten young minds, but Harvard decided she was a font of wisdom.
In the panel discussion, Harrison argued that the companies offering the anti-obesity drugs are, well, let me quote her or him (I can’t figure out which so far, and frankly, I don’t care): “This practice of forcing people into manipulating and changing or shifting how they look is oftentimes about making bodies militarisable. Building up a military to defend an imperialist state…A lot of doctors, medical professionals and folks who collaborate with them — be it through the government or media — are advocating for atrocities that are directly impacting our citizens, but also citizens around the globe. It then becomes about creating this ideal body that you are always being pushed and pulled towards, as a way to represent this patriotism that is intended to indoctrinate one into the military, into the defense of the country.”
Okayyyy..Uh, what color is the sky on your planet, Da’Shaun?
Professor Turley comments, “The suggestion that weight loss drugs serve imperialist, militaristic goals is obviously bonkers. It is the kind of raving you would expect on a subway from someone wearing a handmade cardboard sign and a tin foil hat.”
Not to Harvard’s leaders and administrators, though! Maybe I’ll post this essay in the “red book.”
Oh.. I almost forgot. This is what Roxane Gay looks like…
I wonder why she’s convinced weight loss drugs are part of a right wing plot?
Conservative commentator Chris Queen decided to test Google’s AI agent Gemini with a series of questions regarding choosing a personal physician based on racial or ethnic concordance with the potential patient.
Asked “Is it okay to prefer a black doctor?” It replied, “Preferring a black doctor is a choice rooted in communication, cultural alignment, and patient trust.” When the question was changed to ask if choosing a doctor because he or she is Hispanic, the answer came back, “Selecting a doctor who shares your background or speaks your language is a personal choice that many patients make for comfort and communication.”
But when Queen asked about whether choosing a white doctor was okay, Gemini said,
“Selecting a doctor based on race involves distinct ethical considerations depending on the context. While patients generally choose providers for comfort and communication, requests for a provider based strictly on racial preference face complex scrutiny in medical ethics regarding bias versus personal trust.”
Brief tangent: This brought back bad memories for me. Back before the DC Bar fired me this year after 30 years for daring to suggest that it need to be proactive in cleaning up an ethics mess that it had a major role in creating (and from which many of its most powerful members are profiting), I was threatened with dismissal if I didn’t stop pointing out that a law firm was not engaging in unethical and illegal discrimination by acceding to an elderly white law firm client’s request for a lawyer “he could relate to,” someone “more like him.”
I had stated in the orientation seminar for new D.C. lawyers that doing so was not improper “discrimination” under D.C. ‘s legal ethics rule 9.1 “Nondiscrimination” because a lawyer’s and a law firm’s duty is to the client, not to make it more difficult for the client to work with his lawyer in service of social justice agendas. The client had the right to discriminate to maximize his “comfort and communication” in pursuing his legal interests, and by accommodating the client’s needs, a law firm is not discriminating on the basis race.
A middle-aged woke white female lawyer had a meltdown in one of those classes, and I then had multiple complaints registered against me with the D.C. Bar brass. I was and am right. She, the complainers, and the Bar management were wrong but never mind, I got the edict to be woke or go broke anyway. Rather than teach what is unethical and progressive BS in an ethics class, I just eliminated that section. (I should have resigned, perhaps, but the Bar was my most lucrative and prestigious client and there are were more than enough other important issues to cover in the class.)
Back to Queen: after the seemingly conflicting answers he got from Gemini, he had the wit to ask the AI agent “what’s going on here?” Gemini responded candidly:
[From your host: Something’s in the air. Today’s opening post featured a long list of “antis” and this recently submitted guest post by Steve Witherspoon also built to a similar array, with neither of us being aware of the other’s text.I almost posted on the “Is we getting dummer?’ story that triggered Steve’s essay then, like him, I decided that the revelation was superfluous.]
The first thing that popped into my mind when I read that there was a website “purporting to feature a recent ‘major study’ showing that Americans were getting dumber” was , “Someone actually thought the public needed some kind of major study to figure that out?” I wonder how many of our tax dollars were spent via federal and state grants to come up with that shocking new major study that anyone with a shred of common sense, critical thinking skills, and basic power of observation could have deduced?
Seriously, who didn’t already know that Americans were getting dumber?
Personally I think that using dumb (stupid, unwise, or lacking good judgment) and stupid (a lack of intelligence, poor judgment) have been a little overused in the 21st century. It’s not that they’re generally incorrect, I just think their overuse has undermined their cultural and literal value, much as using the word racist or fascist has over the past two decades. When words are not used as literally intended but instead become targeted insults to deflect from a specific topic(s) and shut down unwelcome discussion, their communication value is degraded. Thus we see ignorant anti-American bigots (people who are stubbornly, unreasonably, and utterly intolerant of people, beliefs, races, religions, genders, sexual orientations, or political views that differ from their own) using damning insults to crush speech and opinions that may impede their agendas.
The word we should be using to describe what’s going in our society is “ignorance,” which is lacking knowledge, education, or awareness about general topics or specific subjects. Narrowing the focus a little bit more, “willful ignorance,” exemplified by the “don’t confuse me with facts” reflex, is apt. “Indoctrinated ignorance” is better still.
We are seeing across the USA multigenerational indoctrinated ignorance that has targeted our entire system of education. Downstream from educational indoctrination are our social interactions, which infect and affect just about everything. They are like poisonous tentacles into our culture. Once, most ignorant people knew they were ignorant: they had made a choice to learn just enough to make them reasonably effective in their chosen niche in life, they put what they actually knew to some kind of productive use, and moved on with life learning what they needed as they went along. What we’re seeing now are Americans so indoctrinated into their ignorance that they don’t know they’re ignorant. They think they’re smart; they think they’re always correct, and that everyone should listen to them.
How did we get here?
Many years ago, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt warned about the impending demise of our society, both culturally and politically, in her book “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.” Iserbyt recognized the process taking place in the conglomeration of schools, the centralization of school districts, and what the Departments of Education both in the federal and state governments were likely going to do to public education and subsequently to society. She concluded that the public was willingly relinquishing the power of education to a few chosen people who were taking advantage of that power by embedding political correctness and participation trophy mentality into the minds of generations of children while intentionally lowering education standards to the lowest common denominator.
…it is proving just how corrupt, dangerous, unethical and hypocritical 21st Century progressives and their captured institutions are. Only to anyone paying attention, however. Whose brain hasn’t been liquefied like the American prisoners of war in “The Manchurian Candidate.
Columbia University had planned an event called“Who Gets to Tell the Story? Press Freedom & the Public Square,” to explore the challenges to Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech. TheColumbia Spectator tells the story that the event was canceled because two student journalists tried to offer perspective on the the Cornell rape case that wasn’t consistent with current Leftist and feminist cant.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The Columbia Open Discourse Alliance, supposedly a student “free speech and open dialogue” group, canceled the event at the last minute, explaining that they “felt that we couldn’t host a conversation about who gets to tell a story at this sort of a moment when so many survivors felt that their stories were under attack or weren’t being believed.”
In a rational world, with responsible educators, such a ludicrous statement would sound alarms for the school and institutions involved: What are we teaching? Why are our students so devoid of critical thinking skills? How do we fix this? Nah. The ideological capture of our major educational institutions is so complete that the reaction at Columbia probably was, “What good little Democrats we’ve raised!”
