Don't call it theft, or looting, use the UN's term employed to describe Hamas's interception of food aid for Gaza: "self-distribution of assets"

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As Civil War Consumes Black Lives Matter, $8.7 Million Goes Missing

The left-wing dark money giant Tides Foundation raised more than $33 million on behalf of the national Black Lives Matter group during the George Floyd riots in 2020. Now, Black Lives Matter is suing Tides over its refusal to hand the funds back. There’s just one problem—nearly $9 million of those funds have seemingly disappeared.

From 2020 through 2022, Tides transferred $8.7 million from the fund to Black Lives Matter Grassroots, an offshoot of the national Black Lives Matter group led by Melina Abdullah, a longtime activist and professor. But Black Lives Matter Grassroots reported to the IRS that it never received that money, and no one involved in the transactions will say what became of the funds. These discrepancies have left charity watchdogs mystified, while legal experts say they could lead to massive fines and penalties.

Having released wolves into the western range, Denverites now step up the plate themselves

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Bon Appétit!

Colorado livestock ranchers are none too happy about the predation of wolves on their cattle (Livestock attacks become flashpoint in wolf restoration effort) , but the population of mountain bike-riding urbanites on the state’s Eastern Slope far outnumbers voters further west, so deal with it, buster.

Still, and to give the out-of-state immigrants their due, they’ve shown that they’re willing to inflict pain on themselves, and not just cowboys, by inviting in their own form of punishment to atone for their sins agains POC and Mamma Gaia and lessen their sense of white guilt.

Denver Writes the Book on How to Make Your City Migrant Friendly

David Strom, HotAir:

Denver has been groaning under the weight of the Biden Border Crisis. It has slashed police, fire, and every city service out there to pay the freight for illegal immigrants flooding their city. 

It has worked so well that city bureaucrats have put together a playbook on how they have turned Denver into a migrant paradise where border crossers can suck down public resources efficiently. 

Denver is providing food and housing, along with other assistance to "newcomers" to ensure that everybody who entered the country and found their way to Denver feels especially welcome. 

Since December 2022, Denver has welcomed and assisted nearly 42,000 newcomers from the U.S. southern border, providing them with essential services and resources. Our efforts include helping people with onward travel as needed, offering temporary shelter, facilitating the search for permanent housing, and providing vital support in terms of medical and mental health, work authorization, legal assistance, school enrollment, and more.

In April 2024, Denver introduced the new Denver Asylum Seekers Program. This program will open its doors to approximately 1,000 people currently in our newcomer shelter system. We will connect newcomers to housing assistance options for up to six months from the date of their asylum application. Additionally, newcomers will be connected with an innovative pre-work authorization readiness program called WorkReady. They will be able to collaborate with case managers to ensure they are moving on the right track and be connected with workforce training opportunities via partnership with nonprofits, local businesses, educational institutions and training organizations. The program also includes access to language instruction, career pathway explorations, industry-recognized credential training and work-based learning opportunities.

Strom: “It's good to see that Denver has solved all the problems that its own residents have. Not many places are so wealthy and have so few problems of their own that they can do so much for citizens of other countries that just show up on their doorstep. 

“Denver has decided not to use nasty words like illegal alien or even migrant, as these may have negative connotations. They have chosen "newcomer" instead because it sounds very nice and friendly. Generally when there is a newcomer to your neighborhood, you do your best to make them feel welcome, and Denver is certainly rolling out the red carpet. 

“Not every city wants to cut its police force, but then again, Denver has solved all its problems. 

“A few notable things stand out in the playbook, but the one that caught my eye was the fact that every "newcomer" gets a concierge to guide them through the free stuff cornucopia.” 

Step 12: Assign a case manager to each family and individual

For individuals and families who are new to the U.S., understanding and navigating the various processes required for success can be overwhelming. To ensure everyone has the support they need to succeed, it is important to provide a case manager to each family and individual. This case manager will help their assigned guests in accessing legal resources, medical, dental, and mental health services, onward travel, potential workforce resources, and housing options.

Here are some things to consider:

Will one organization provide this support, or will there be several?Identify who will coordinate and organize all resources and entities to ensure all sheltered individuals have equitable access to support.Assess whether the resources being provided to guests have the capacity to support the potential volume of individuals and families seeking assistance.

"Guests." That's even better than "newcomers."


Hollywood's having a dreadful time of things, and these collegiate researchers know why

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political police squad to the rescue

From amusement palace to lecture hall: yeah, that’s the ticket!

Some curmudgeons out in the potential-viewers pool blamed the studios for remaking films whose primary appeal was to adolescent 14-year-old boys and replacing the male leads with females: Ghost Busters, for instance, flopped both anatomically and at the box office, Karate Kid was savagely chopped by the critics and ignored by audiences, Mad Max — Hot Flash in the Desert — is going nowhere, and if the rumors of James Bond becoming Jamine Bond are true, we can expect bad things.

But that’s not the real problem, a band of self-proclaimed experts has discovered; it’s the melting ice cubes in viewers’ drink cups — “no one’s mentioning the melting ice cubes!”

Aquaman might not mind if the oceans rise, but moviegoers might.

That’s one of the takeaways from a new study conducted by researchers who set out to determine if today’s Hollywood blockbusters are reflective of the current climate crisis. The vast majority of movies failed the “climate reality check” proposed by the authors, who surveyed 250 movies from 2013 to 2022.

The test is simple — the authors looked to see if a movie presented a story in which climate change exists, and whether a character knows it does. One film that passed the test was the 2017 superhero movie Justice League, in which Jason Momoa’s Aquaman character says, “Hey, I don’t mind if the oceans rise” to Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne.

But most movies fell short — fewer than 10 percent of the 250 films passed, and climate change was mentioned in two or more scenes of fewer than 4 percent of the films. That’s out of touch with a moviegoing public that wants “to see their reality reflected on screen,” said Colby College English professor Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, lead researcher on the study.

“The top line is just that the vast majority of films, popular films produced over the last 10 years in the United States, are not portraying the world as it is,” Schneider-Mayerson said. “They are portraying a world that is now history or fantasy — a world in which climate change is not happening.”

Researchers at Maine’s Colby College published the study in April along with Good Energy, a Los Angeles-based environmental consultancy. The results were peer reviewed, and the authors are seeking publication in scientific journals. The researchers view the test as a way for audience members, writers and filmmakers to evaluate the representation of climate change on screen.

Some results were surprising. Movies that at first glance appear to have little overlap with climate or the environment passed the test. Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s emotive 2019 drama about the collapse of a relationship, passed the test in part because Adam Driver’s character is described as “energy conscious,” Schneider-Mayerson said.

The 2022 whodunnit Glass Onion and the 2019 folk horror movie Midsommar were others to pass the test. Some that were more explicitly about climate change, such as the 2021 satire Don’t Look Up, also passed. But San Andreas, a 2015 movie about a West Coast earthquake disaster, and The Meg, a 2018 action movie set in the ocean, did not.

The study is “valuable for marketing purposes, informational purposes, data accumulation,” said Harry Winer, director of sustainability at the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Winer, who was not involved in the study, said it could also help serve as an incentive to connect audiences with climate stories.

“The audience will be more open to hearing a dialogue about what is right and what is wrong,” Winer said. “It’s a conversation starter.”

“I do worry that screenwriters might do it in a kind of rote way, which could be counterproductive, just like rote ‘strong female characters’ are,” [Alison] Bechdel said. “But injecting an awareness of our communal plight into the stories we ingest seems like a no-brainer.”

A breathless world awaits.

So, were you thinking that at least the Ivy League's hard science departments were immune to the ongoing self-demolition? Think again.

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building bridges (snicker)

JOANNE JACOBS: Yale wants science profs to ‘promote DEI through teaching.’

Yale wants biophysics and biochemistry professors to place “DEI at the center of every decision,” according to its website, Sailer writes. Every job advertised links to a rubric that tests candidates’ “knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,” their “past DEI experiences and activities,” and their “future DEI goals and plans.”

The “exceptional” candidate will have a “clear and detailed plan for promoting DEI through teaching,” he notes. Anyone who expresses doubts about microaggressions, implicit bias and systemic racism need not apply.

“Diversity statements raise serious issues about free expression, and they also signal an ill-advised shift in priority — away from disciplinary excellence and toward social activism,” writes Sailer.

Cornell’s DEI policies are “corrupting” its science, math and engineering hiring, according to a report by the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, writes Carl Campanile in the New York Post. Twenty-one percent of applicants in a recent faculty search in a hard-science field were rejected because their views were deemed ideologically suspect, according to the alliance.

The W Lyon Farm resurgence continues

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I’ve posted here before on the rise, fall, and rise again of this development on our west side, but here’s another example; 405 W Lyon Farm, priced at $1.695 million, has sold for $1.875. It sold for just $1.3 in 2018, $1.650 in 2015, and $1.870 in 2007. And notice the days on market (“ADOM”) for those previous sales: 650 days for that 2018 sale at $1.3 after starting at $1.750 in 2016; 223 days for the $1.6 sale in May, 2015, starting price $1.795.

Chart of the Day

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…. By matching that data to percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants (which are awarded to students from moderate- and low-income families), we came to an unsurprising conclusion: Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still. A few outliers exist, such as Cal State Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Rutgers University–Newark. But in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity. For example, at the 78 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the Monthly’s list, 64 percent of the students, on average, receive Pell Grants. Yet according to our data, none of those institutions have had encampments and only nine have had protests, a significantly lower rate than non-HBCU schools.

From Rand Paul to RuPaul. Or, How to go from garnering 3% of the vote to 0.003% in one easy nomination

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Trump accepted the Libertarian Party convention’s invitation to appear and was roundly booed, especially when he told them, "You can keep going the way you have for the last long decades and get your 3 percent and meet again, get another 3 percent."

Sp, having rejected Trump (and even that ultimate whack job, RFK, Jr,), the delegates went with one of their own, a Mr. (?) Chase Owens. Here he is:

A lot of conservatives, including myself, hold libertarian leanings, but the party has grown increasingly as strident and as insistent on purity as the farthest-left Marxists, and, always irrelevant on a national scale, it’s now just a laughable organization to be ridiculed and then ignored. Trump doesn’t need them, but they might have benefitted had they joined him, however grudgingly.

Two unrelated videos that I ran across this weekend

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well, i think they are

You can skip ahead on this next one, but you really have to watch (at least most of) the the entire 3 minutes to fully appreciate the surprise ending:

"I had no knowledge of my son Hunter's business dealings"

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oh, for heavens sake, did i say that?

Joe and Hunter Biden used a visit to Sandy Hook memorial service to set up secret meet with Chinese over $10m-a-year deal, new emails reveal


Hunter Biden used Joe Biden's appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad  and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal.

The messages come from a fresh tranche of documents released by Congress on Wednesday, given to them by IRS agents who investigated the First Son.

On December 12, 2017 Hunter wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat to Liu Yadong, a top executive at Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father.


Hunter Biden used Joe Biden's appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad  and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal.

The messages come from a fresh tranche of documents released by Congress on Wednesday, given to them by IRS agents who investigated the First Son.

On December 12, 2017 Hunter wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat to Liu Yadong, a top executive at Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father.

The texts to set up a meeting with Joe came after months of negotiation about the Biden family's involvement in the deal with the Chinese government-linked company, in exchange for $10 million a year.

In July 2017 Hunter sent 'threatening' texts to CEFC official Runlong Zhao demanding he follow through on the $10 million deal, and noting his father's involvement.

'I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,' Hunter wrote, in text messages obtained by the IRS investigators and published by Congress last year.

Weeks later, on August 3, 2017, Hunter texted CEFC associate Gongwen 'Kevin' Dong that he wanted a '[$]10 M per annum budget' and that 'the Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the [CEFC] Chairman wants from this partnership.'

At the time Joe Biden held no government post. He had left the vice-presidency the previous year and wouldn't be elected president until 2020. 

The new whistleblower documents released on Wednesday also appear to show that in November 2017, Hunter set up a group text conversation on the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp with his father and uncle, who was also a partner in his multi-million-dollar deal with CEFC.

Hunter marked one of the contacts in the three-person WhatsApp group as 'Jim Biden' and the other as 'Dad'.

Along with Yadong's WeChat messages about setting up a meeting with Joe, the House Ways and Means Committee published a photo of Yadong's business card, which describes him as CEO of CEFC Global Strategic Holdings, with an address at the United Nations Plaza in New York City.

Yadong helped run CEFC's sham charity, used by its chief Patrick Ho to funnel bribes to foreign officials. Ho was convicted of the bribery in 2018.

Joe Biden gave a different version of events back in 2018:

WASHINGTON — President Biden denied Wednesday that he interacted with his relatives’ foreign business associates — despite photos and other evidence of him doing so — as the House of Representatives prepares to vote on authorizing an impeachment inquiry.

Biden denounced as “lies” reports that he met with son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden’s contacts despite confirmation he interacted while vice president with their Chinese, Kazakhstani, Mexican, Russian and Ukrainian associates.

“I did not. And it’s just a bunch of lies. They’re lies. I did not. They’re lies,” the 81-year-old president said in response to a question from The Post.

Biden’s blanket denial is contradicted by records from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, as well as published photos and numerous witness recollections.

Of course, Biden can no longer remember that he’s president*, let alone his son’s name, or having ever met with Hunter’s business associates, but still, it’s not a good look.

*2021:

*2022, 2023

Biden again refers to his VP as 'President Harris' - Fox News

Jan 11, 2022 President Biden Tuesday referred to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as "President Harris" in yet another verbal flub by the gaffe-prone leader. "Last week, President Harris and I stood in the ...

And:

Biden again calls VP 'President Harris' at Stanley Cup celebration

Nov 13, 2023 WASHINGTON — President Biden referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as "president" at a Monday White House event honoring the Stanley Cup-winning Vegas Golden