Saturday Smorgasbord

     I’ve grown terribly weary of the presidential campaign, so please forgive me if I go a decade or two without mentioning it. Perhaps some Gentle Reader will kindly ring me up when it’s truly behind us.

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     1. Same Lunatics, Different Asylum.

     The Kentucky Derby, one of America’s most celebrated (and briefest) sporting events, will soon be upon us once again. For most, it means party hats and mint juleps, with maybe a little horse racing thrown in for flavor. But not for all:

     There will not be a Kentucky Derby party at Dartmouth College this year because some students allege that one of the nation’s most prestigious horse races is racist....

     Back in 2015, a group of Black Lives Matter protestors targeted an exclusive Kentucky Derby party hosted by the ladies of Kappa Delta Epsilon – calling the event overtly racist and “recreating an Antebellum South atmosphere on the Ivy League campus.”

     The protestors accused the party of being a “bastion of racism, exclusion and oppression.” They chanted, “What is Derby? It’s the face of genocide” and “What is Derby? It’s the face of police brutality.”

     Accordingly, the Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority at Dartmouth University has canceled its traditional Kentucky Derby party. Can’t go commemorating the “antebellum South” when as prestigious a group as “Black Lives Matter” is against it, can they. However, as columnist Todd Starnes notes, there’s just one wee problem with that: The Derby was first run in 1875.

     Perhaps Dartmouth’s core curriculum omits all mention of the Reconstruction period. It wouldn’t surprise me.

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     2. Wisconsin, Birthplace of American Progressivism.

     Scott Walker’s term as governor of Wisconsin has done the state a great deal of good...but don’t imagine everyone is happy about that:

     Wisconsin's right-to-work law, championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker as he was mounting his run for president, was struck down Friday as violating the state constitution....

     Three unions filed the lawsuit last year shortly after Walker signed the bill into law. Right-to-work laws prohibit businesses and unions from reaching agreements that require all workers, not just union members, to pay union dues. Twenty-five other states have such laws.

     The unions argued that Wisconsin's law was an unconstitutional seizure of union property since unions now must extend benefits to workers who don't pay dues. Dane County Circuit Judge William Foust agreed.

     He said the law amounts to the government taking union funds without compensation since under the law unions must represent people who don't pay dues. That presents an existential threat to unions, Foust wrote.

     "While (union) losses today could be characterized by some as minor, they are not isolated and the impact of (the law) over time is threatening to the unions' very economic viability," he wrote.

     The people most concerned about “unions’ economic viability” are, of course, those whose paychecks draw from union coffers. The rest of Wisconsin’s workers are apparently less than concerned. But what’s more important here is the perpetuation of a pattern: judicial activism as the Left’s last bastion.

     No other state with a right-to-work law has suffered this sort of judicial setback...yet. But I’m quite sure that the unions’ success in Wisconsin will inspire emulation in those other states. Stay tuned.

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     3. On The Globalism Front.

     Seventy percent of the surface of the Earth is covered by its seven oceans...and the UN is preparing to assert hegemony over them:

     The United Nations has launched a far-reaching initiative that could give U.N.-sponsored authorities sway over the biological resources of the high seas—all the waters that lie outside national territories and economic zones.

     The potential shift in power involves multi-trillion-dollar issues, such as whether large areas—conceivably, as much as 30 percent-- of the world’s international waters should be designated as no-go areas to protect biological diversity; whether and how to require elaborate “environmental impact assessments” for future ocean development projects; and how to divide up the economic benefits from the future development of “marine genetic resources.”...

     Overall, the hoped-for treaty will cover “two-thirds of the oceans, almost half the planet,” says Lisa Speer, a senior official of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is in turn a lead member of a squadron of 33 environmentalist groups banded together as the High Seas Alliance to lobby for protectionist measures during the talks.

     Don’t imagine that the Obamunists are uninvolved in this:

     One of the biggest backers of the preliminary talks is the Obama Administration. Even though the U.S. has never ratified the 1982 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention—the new talks are aimed at creating an “implementing agreement” under the Law of the Sea umbrella—the Administration is deeply involved in the negotiations, as are some of the world’s most powerful environmental organizations.

     Given the terrible destruction wrought by the collectivization of real estate on dry land, you might think the world’s largest supranational body would be at least a little tentative about collectivizing 70% of the Earth’s surface. You’d be wrong:

     One of the “most animated” areas of discussion, prep-com chairman Charles told Fox News, was how the rewards of the world’s undersea bio-heritage could be shared. “We do not yet have a legal code for their exploitation,” he declared.

     Some countries were arguing that all such resources be considered the “common heritage of mankind,” a code term for a socialist-leaning vision of shared international ownership.

     There are certain tunes you can’t get some bands not to play.

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     4. Restroom Follies.

     Remember when seeing an obvious man in the ladies’ room was cause enough to summon the gendarmes? Well, as the poet said, the times they are a-changin’. But there remain a few holdouts...and God bless ‘em:

     PayPal, the website known for processing online payments, believes grown men have a constitutional right to use the same bathrooms as little girls.

     So when North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a bill that banned people from using bathrooms not assigned to their birth sex, PayPal became enraged and retaliated.

     They canceled plans to open a new operations center in Charlotte – a facility that would’ve employed more than 400 workers.

     “The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” CEO Dan Schulman wrote in a memorandum on the company’s website.

     Oooh! Discrimination. The evillest thing in the whole world! Except that you, I, and your halfwit uncle Harley do it every single day, in choosing friends, business associates, leisure time activities and locales, and which brand of yogurt to buy. PayPal, that staunch defender of “equality,” simply won’t have it...or will they?

     “PayPal does business in 25 countries where homosexual behavior is illegal, including five where the penalty is death,” NC Rep. Robert Pittenger wrote on Facebook. “Yet, they object to the North Carolina legislature overturning a misguided ordinance about letting men into the women’s bathroom? Perhaps PayPal would like to try and clarify this seemingly very hypocritical position,” he suggested.

     Needless to say, our cultural midgets are also lining up against North Carolina. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

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     5. Merely One More Reason For MGTOW.

     A European in Los Angeles has discovered the latest trend in feminist perfidy:

     Dear Amy: I’m a European man living in Los Angeles. I use a dating app and the following situation has happened many times to me (as well as to other friends):

     We meet at a cool wine bar at 8 p.m. Kiss on the cheek, casual conversation.

     We order glasses of wine. She orders the most expensive ($23 a glass). OK.

     Then she says, “Do you mind if ‘we’ order an appetizer? I’m starving.” She orders lobster bisque — the most expensive appetizer on the menu. OK.

     She says, “My family comes from money…I work with them in a nonprofit.” Then she says, “I’m meeting some girlfriends for karaoke after, but I’m still hungry, so do you mind if ‘we’ order another appetizer?” OK. Then she says, “I need to use the restroom. Let’s leave after that. Can you get the bill in the meantime?” OK.

     So, Amy, am I a gentleman, or a sucker? — L.A. Confused

     A gentleman? Perhaps. A sucker? Perhaps not. This is growing common among American women who identify as feminists, including some in undisclosed “long-term relationships.” They regard it as a form of income augmentation at “the enemy’s” expense.

     Dating app, eh? Have you ever wondered who designed and popularized these apps? These anonymizing tools for luring in lonely men and parting them from their valuta? What his / her / its unexpressed motivations might have been?

     I’ll ask once more: Do feminists have an agenda? That is, an agenda other than merely vilifying half the human race? If so, what might it be?

     One of my readers’ favorite characters has expressed the matter admirably:

     "We hold the veto power. We compel them to woo us, seduce us, cater to us. When we oh-so-generously let them near, they do almost all of the work, yet their orgasms involve only a tiny portion of their bodies and last a mere second or two. Ours are incomparably fuller and longer -- and at so much smaller a cost that it doesn't bear comparison." She shook her head. "We get so much more out of it than they do, it's a wonder they bother with us at all. So why do they bother with us, Marilyn?"
     Helen's silent glare accused her of having missed something critical, something she ought to have known without needing to be told.
     "I don't know. I...never thought about it."
     The reproof in Helen's eyes remained strong, but something else entered to temper it, something wryly amused.
     "You ought to have thought about it. But you're not the only one. Harridans all across this land have been telling women like you that you're owed, that men's desire for you is barely a hair's breadth from chattel slavery, that 'a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.' And you're too afraid to contradict them, or too proud to ask your mothers whether it might just possibly be some other way. So they go on to catechize the men, telling them what oppressors they are, and how awful the burdens of womanhood are, and how unfair it is that they should get to exhaust their bodies and erode their spirits with wage labor while women sit in the safety and comfort of their homes, being most oppressively provided for." Helen shook her head. "If a hundredth of that were true, the race would have died out thousands of years ago. It's we who owe them, Marilyn. Without them, we would still be cowering in caves. They have made us a world where we can be whatever we please."

     [From Priestesses]

     Have a nice day.