"From far and wide", Canadians support Ukraine

Although there are some dissenters, the vast majority of Canadians support the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion of their country. Support for a free Ukraine is visible "from coast to coast to coast", as witness this photo, sent to us by Agent 78, who was visiting the most famous town in Newfoundland.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Dildo in Canada's easternmost province, in the easterly part of the Avalon Peninsula. Agent 78 says the people there are very friendly and hospitable. The chief industries are fishing and sign-making.

And, having managed to avoid being swallowed up by Canada until 1949, they appreciate the Ukrainians' desire to keep their independence and the freedom to be who they are. God bless them, and God bless the Ukraine. Слава Україні!

ANOTHER great day for America! SCOTUS rules freedom of speech trumps LGBTetc "rights"

Today is a great day for America! This morning, the Supreme Court released its judgment in the case of Lori Smith, an Evangelical Christian web designer in Colorado who refused to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings, contrary to her religious beliefs. The basis for the ruling is that to force her to affirm the queer lifestyle would violate her rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The case, 300 Creative LLC v. Elenis et al., was decided by 6-3 majority, with all of the Court's male, Republican appointees siding with the website designer. All three of the female Democratic appointees dissented.

Ms Smith wanted to expand her web design business, 303 Creative,  to create wedding websites to express "God's design for marriage as a union between one man and one woman." She also wanted to post a message on her website saying same-sex marriage is "a story about marriage that contradicts God’s true story of marriage." 

For some reason (!) Ms Smith feared that message would run afoul of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, so she filed for a declaratory judgment. She lost in the lower and federal appeals courts, but then appealed to SCOTUS, which held that "The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees."

The majority opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who issued the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores decision as an appellate judge, and often writes for the court in religious liberty cases.

The dissent was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who, as Walt told you yesterday, admits to being an affirmative action appointee.

The case picks up the argument over the First Amendment and same-sex "marriage" where SCOTUS left off in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a 2018 decision in which the Court sided with a Christian baker who did not want to prepare a cake for a same-sex "wedding". As that decision was largely on procedural grounds, the Court did not decide the question of whether the baker could be compelled to join in the celebration of "gay marriage".

The issue in 300 Creative is slightly different, because it involves the actual expression of words. Ms Smith said she would have been happy to work for same-sex couples, but not to create messages that conflicted with her own Christian faith.

Justice Gorsuch reviewed the history of the Court’s jurisprudence on freedom of expression and association. He then gave reasons for the Court's ruling, summarized here. [Citations of previous cases are omitted. Click here to read the full text of the ruling.]

[T]he First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned or deeply “misguided,” … and likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable grief.” … Equally, the First Amendment protects acts of expressive association. …

Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages. …Nor does it matter whether the government seeks to compel a person to speak its message when he would prefer to remain silent or to force an individual to include other ideas with his own speech that he would prefer not to include. … All that offends the First Amendment just the same. … 

Consider what a contrary approach would mean. Under Colorado's logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic — no matter the underlying message — if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait.

Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty. The government could require "an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a film with a Zionist message," or "an atheist muralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal," so long as they would make films or murals for other members of the public with different messages. … Equally, the government could force a male website designer married to another man to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage. … 

Of course, abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all of us will encounter ideas we consider "unattractive," … "misguided, or even hurtful." …. But tolerance, not coercion, is our Nation’s answer. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. 

While laws against discrimination in places of public accommodation were important, Justice Gorsuch wrote, they did not violate fundamental civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights. 

Hooray for the judge, and long live free speech! Try to make me write pro-queer propaganda for WWW! I dare ya. I double-dare ya!

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell told the truth about affirmative action in college admissions... 33 years ago!

As Walt told you in "SCOTUS bans racial discrimination in college admissions", today was a great day for America! President Trump said so and Walt agrees, not just because The Donald said it, but because the decision corrects an injustice that has been perpetuated in the name of "social justice" (more recently "DEI" -- "diversity, equity and inclusion") for decades.

Thomas Sowell, an American economist, author, and social commentator, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, recognized and talked about the unintended negative consequences of affirmative action 23 years ago.

This video is clipped from a C-SPAN Booknotes interview on 10 June 1990. Dr Sowell, while discussing his book Preferential Policies: An International Perspective, explained how affirmative action and campus ideologues create a vicious cycle of black student failure and resentment by both blacks and whites. Give a listen.

 

A brief history of the affirmative action debate.

Affirmative action has its pros and cons. [Some say affirmative action is itself a "con". Ed.] The issue has been hotly debated since the 1970s, when colleges and universities on the east and west coast, in a paroxysm of white liberal guilt, started to give priority to applicants for admission whose SAT scores were lower than others because the tests were Eurocentric, racist, yada yada yada.

Thet issue had been canvassed by the Supreme Court for half a century (!), and until now SCOTUS has geneally upheld affirmative action (read: reverse discrimination), with some limits. Racial quotas that reserve a certain number of seats for minority students have been deemed unconstitutional, but the court has said colleges can consider race as long as it's one of many factors in the decision. 

Prospective students' race can be used as a "plus factor" to give them an edge, said the court, can't be the defining factor. Schools must be able to show they consider race in a "narrowly tailored" way, because there is no "race-neutral" approach that would meet the same "compelling interest" in increasing student diversity.

That language comes from Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 Supreme Court decision which upheld admissions policies at the University of Michigan's law school. SCOTUS last examined affirmative action in 2016 -- 26 years after the publication of Dr Sowell's book -- when it upheld the admissions process at the University of Texas in a suit filed by a white Texan who was denied admission to the university

The lawsuits which were decided today were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a Virginia-based group that says race should play no part in the admission process. The group argued that Harvard and the University of North Carolina intentionally discriminate against Asian-American applicants.

Examining six years of data at Harvard, the group found that-Asian American applicants had the strongest academics but were admitted at the lowest rates compared to students of other races. It also found that Harvard's admissions officers gave Asian Americans lower scores on a subjective "personal" rating designed to measure attributes such as likeability and kindness... as if these things were indicators of intelligence or the likelihood of academic success!

In 2019, a federal judge upheld Harvard's admissions practices, saying they were "not perfect" but not unconstituional. The judge said race-conscious practices always penalize groups that don’t get an advantage, but are justified "by the compelling interest in diversity" on college campuses. An appeals court upheld the ruling in 2020. 

Students for Fair Admission brought similar claims against UNC, saying its process disadvantages white and Asian-American students. A federal judge sided with the university last year. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the group asked the Supreme Court to review both cases, and also to overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, saying it was impossible to construct a "narrowly tailored" approach which would not offend the equal rights provisions of the Constitution. 

The Supreme Court of the United States agreed at last! It's a great day for America!

SCOTUS bans racial discrimination in college admissions

Two former US presidents disagreed strongly on today's ruling by the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in college admissons, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies. President Donald Trump wrote on his social media network that the decision is "a great day for America. People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded." 

His predecessor, President Barack Hussein Obama, wrote "Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions -- it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table." A little problem with the structure of that last sentence doesn't prove that the Prez was himself a beneficiary of reverse discrimination.

The SCOTUS decision to which the presidents referred His predecessor  overturned admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have "concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice." 

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, who had long called for an end to affirmative action (and who happens to be black), said that the decision "sees the universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes."

Both Justice Thomas and Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- a Latina -- acknowledged that affirmative action played a role in their admissions to college and law school. They took the unusual step of reading a summary of their opinions aloud in the courtroom. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor said the decision "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress." 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's poster child for affirmative action, called the decision "truly a tragedy for us all." She took no took no part in the case against Harvard because she had been a member of an advisory governing board. In the UNC case, she wrote, "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life."

The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case. The third dissenter in the Harvard case was Justice (((Elena Kagan))). All six men on the Supreme Court joined in the majority decisions. 

Further reading: "Democrats Devastated As Supreme Court Bans Racism", from the Bablyon Bee (of course!), 29/6/23.

VIDEO coming later today: Thomas Sowell on the unintended consequences of affirmative action. 

VIDEO: Recommended for Canadians, a great independent newspaper

"A paper by the people, for the people!" What a novel idea, especially in Canada where the "legacy media" is overwhelmingly controlled by the Laurentian elites who in turn are controlled by the WEF and part of the New World Order.

If you've had enough of the Groan & Wail, the Toronto Red Star, and (sad to say -- see footnote), the Notional Pest, there is an alternative, a real newspaper that you can hold in your hands to read the news and information that the mainstream media won't give you. It's called Druthers. Check this out!

 

For more intformation, click here to go to the Druthers website. If you decide to donate or (even better) subscribe, tell `em Walt sent ya!

Footnote: The newspapers named (you know the ones I mean) are funded by millions of tax dollars paid by the Canadian sheeple to their federal government (J. Trudeau, prop.), yet claim to be "independent". Remember the old adage: He who pays the piper calls the tune. 

In spite of the subsidies received from Blackie McBlackface, they are losing money hand over fist, particularly the Red Star, which is now the print/digital version of the CBC. The Star is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Since the Gliberals can't be seen to own the alleged newspaper directly, its owners are now in talks with Postmedia to merge with the National Post. 

The Canadian Press* calls the plan a "Hail Mary pass". If it comes off, the editorial policies of either the Star or the Post will have to be "adjusted" so as not to flatly contradict each other, as they sometimes do now. Guess which one will have to change? If I were Conrad Black, John Ivison, Terry Glavin or Rex Murphy, I'd learn the lyrics to that fine old gospel song, "I Don't Wanna Get Adjusted".

* Torstar (an owner of the Toronto Star) holds an investment in The Canadian Press as part of a joint agreement with subsidiaries of The Globe and Mail and Montréal’s La Presse. See what I mean?

À nos amis Québécois...

C'est aujourd'hui la Fête nationale du Québec (known originally and still as la Fête Saint-Jean-Baptiste / Saint-John-the-Baptist Day). Throughout la Belle Province and in many communities across Canada, "Canadiens de souche" (old stock francophone Canadians) gather to mark the feast day of the patron of French Canada, and celebrate francophone culture with public events including concerts, parades, and firework displays. Families and neighbourhoods also get together to hold their own smaller celebrations -- picnics, bonfires and barbecues -- for la fête Saint-Jean-Baptiste. 

Walt and (especially) Poor Len Canayen, [and Ed.! Ed.]

wish all our French-Canadian friends and readers

BONNE FÊTE NATIONALE!

Looking for a good place to live?

Readers who live in dirty, crime-ridden, broken but expensive American city -- all Democrat-controlled, by the way -- may be wondering if there is somewhere better to which they can move. The answer is yes, but not in the Excited States of America, where peaceful and prosperous, Republican-controlled cities are few and far between. 

The Economist Intelligence Unit has just published its index of the world's most liveable (and unliveable) cities. Not one American city made it into the Top 10. The could-be-worse news for Crooked Joe Biden is that not even San Francisco or Portland sank into the 10 worst. Here's the Economist map. I know it's a bit hard to read, so I'll elucidate [and magnify -- thank you! Ed.) in my comments follow.

The best city in the world in which to live is... wait for it... Vienna, which the EIU scores at 98.4 out of a possible 100. I note that both these cities are the capitals of countries which put up walls of dykes and sandbags to divert the tsunami of "refugees", asylum-seekers and other riff-raff which has swept across Europe over the last decade.

The Danes, in particular, have been sticking to their guns [made from Lego kits? Ed.] about keeping Denmark for the Danes. See "New Danish law: refugees will no longer become immigrants", WWW 23/2/19. No wonder they're the happiest people in the world! 

Third and fourth on the index of liveable cities are Melbourne and Sydney, in the wonderful land of Oz. Auckland, New Zealand, is in 10th spot. If you want to get away from it all/get away from them all --  you know what/who I mean -- the Antipodes is a good bet. Australia sends all the boat people and other undesirables to desolate islands off its north coast. New Zealand had a couple of years of wokeism under former Jacinta Ardern, the pinko feminist prime minister, but has gone back to a peaceful slumber.

No fewer than three Canadian cities make the list: Vancouver in 5th spot, Calgary tied for 7th, and Toronto behind the 8-ball. I'll give you Calgary. Poor Len Canayen says they'd rank higher if they had a better hockey team. 

But the inclusion of Vancouver surprises me. I think it must have ranked so high because of the location between the seashore and the mountains. You can drive an hour east or west and go water-skiing or snow-skiing. As for the city itself, all that can be said is that it looks great in comparison with Seattle or Portland. 

As for Toronto, my guess is that the EIU researchers haven't actually been there, and have been taken in my the relentless advertising of the Wormy Apply as "the city that works", "a world-class city", "the world's most multicultural city", yada yada yada. It's all bullshit, except for the multicultural part. Folks with pale complexions are a beleaguered minority in the "Greater Toronto Area". IMHO, Montréal is a much more liveable city than Toronto. The difference is like that between the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs. Nuff said.

What cities remain to be discusssed? Geneva is tied with Calgary for 7th. Like the Danes and Austrians, the Swiss don't welcome foreigners and aren't hopelessly woke... yet. But I've been to Geneva more than once, and find it clean to the point of sterility, expensive, and boring. But at least they speak French. I imagine Zurich (6th) to be the same except that it's German-speaking, and full of bankers rather than watch-makers and chocolatiers.

And then there's Osaka, Japan, tied with Auckland for 10th. I note that the Japanese are even more xenophobic than the Europeans, and they don't like foreigners very much either. Your chances of being allowed to live there range from slim to none, and after endless meals of suski and seawood you wouldn't want to.

About the most unliveable cities, I shall say very little beyond giving you the EIU's ranking. Four of them -- Douala (164 - 46.4 out of 100), Harare (167), Lagos (170) and Algiers (171) and Tripoli (172 - 40.1) -- are in Africa, which is all ye need to know. 

I lived in Ha-ha-harare, the fun capital of Zimbabwe, for six years in the 90s. When it was known as Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia, it was the best sub-Saharan African city outside3 of South Africa. But the roads, water and electricity forced on the poor black people by the evil colonialists are no longer functioning. That too is all ye need to know.

I was dismayed to see Kiev (aka Kyiv) in the Worst 10 list (165 - 44.0). In normal times it's a city of beauty and culture. But now it's a war zone, so what can be said except Слава Україні! 

As any traveller knows, South Asia is rich in shitholes, and you can apply that word literally. It's no accident that millions of people from thatblighted sub-continent risk everything to our blighted continent. One would expect to see Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and "New" Delhi on the list, but believe it or not, there are two worse cities: Dhaka, Bangladesh (167, tied with Harare) and Karachi, Pakistan (169 - 42.5). 

From World War I until its independence in 1975, New Guinea was a dependency of Australia. Even today it is largely unexplored and undeveloped, peopled by "savages" [Be careful, now. Ed.] who not very long ago wore penis sheaths and hunted heads for sport. Now they have their own country, its capital being Port Moresby (168 - 43.4 out of 100).

And now it's time for the presentation of the Economist Intelligence Unit's award for Least Liveable City in the World. May I have the envelope please? The winner is [drum roll]... Damascus, the capital of Syria, scoring 30.4 out of 100 and dead last of the 173 cities studied. 

Kind of discouraging, isn't it. I'm considering Asuncion, which I hear has become quite popular with Germans fleeing the new multicultural Stepfatherland. Meanwhile, I'll just stay right here.

Andrew Carnegie and the Titan submersible

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history.

During the last 18 years of his life, he became a leading philanthropist in the United States, Great Britain, and the British Empire. In that time, he gave away around $350 million (roughly $5.9 billion in today's dollars, almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities.

He funded Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.

Mr Carnegie was an auto-didact, hence his special project was the funding and building of libraries, especially in small places like the Scottish town from which he came. Carnegie libraries sprung up all over the United States and Canada. I remember fondly the little library in the my hometown, which 30 years after the benefactor's death had a population numbering in the low thousands.

What does this have to do with the Titan submersible, which, as I write, is lost somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Newfoundland, somewhere near the wreck of the RMS Titanic?

Consider the list of those aboard, destined, it would seem, for a watery grave near that of the souls who remains are still there, in the ruins of the great ship.

Those on board the Titan are: 

* Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Frenchman, her pilot; 

* Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the American entrepreneur making big bucks by turning the Titanic into a tourist attraction;

* Hamish Harding, a British billionaire (basesd in the United Arab Emirate), pilot, explorer and adventurer;

* Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani businessman, one of the richest men in Pakistant, and 

* his son and heir Suleman.

Mr Rush's company reportedly charged Messrs Harding, Dawood et fils $250,000 to go down in the briny deep for a spot of disaster tourism. The spending of three quarters of a million dollars for not-so-cheap thrill of being able to get close to the watery graves of the unfortunate passengers of the Titanic is what Thorsten Veblen would call "conspicuous consumption" -- a means to show one's social status, especially when publicly displayed goods and services are too expensive for other members of a person's class.

In other words, no-one benefits, except perhaps Mr Rush and his partners. To the spoiled billionaires who want to play with a new toy, $750,000 may be chump change, but it could so a lot of good for the less fortunate multitudes of No-longer-great Britain or (especially) the shithole that is Pakistan. Had they given the money to charity, Messrs Harding, Dawood and Dawood Jr might have something to say for themselves when they answer to their Maker... later today.

Wokeism rules!

Welcome to Biden's America, and Trudeau's Canada, where it's now mandatory to fly the Nazi 2SLGBTQQIA+++ flag. If some other flag, like Old Glory or the Maple Leaf Flag, is to be flown on the same pole or building, the New Nazi flag must have the place of honour. So it is in the Land of the Queer and Home of the Perve.

 Flag design scraped from Blazing Cat Fur. Well done, Arnie.