Alligator News Roundup

Number Nine. American Free News Network. Even the Wall Street Journal sees that “woke” is killing military recruitment. 

Leave it to our high-ranking military leadership to do what high-ranking leadership does best: Serve the organizational imperatives that even higher ranks have established and implement those imperatives to the exclusion of every obstacle that may stand in their way.  

This means prosecuting the woke agenda even though unenlightened naysayers point out it results in fewer recruits, reduced physical fitness, increased combat gentleness and near-zero testosterone levels. The only nations that seem to be in favor of America’s full-throated lurch into political correctness are places like Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela. 

Something like 80 percent of those who serve in military uniform came from parents who served in military uniform. Because of woke leadership, those parents no longer urge their children to join up. This explains why recruiting goals are regularly missed, leaving the USA in a position where no sane nation would place itself while there are enemies about. And there are always enemies about. 

Enemies come about when there is weakness. We could debate which comes first, weakness or wokeness. Or we could simply refuse to have the conversation over how we got here and go back to being both the best friend and the worst enemy in the world, whom no one should dare to challenge.  

Number Eight. CBS News. Chinese barge suspected of looting World War II shipwrecks. 

Ever since the atomic age opened in 1945, radioactive particulates, left over from tests and the wartime explosions, have remained in Earth’s atmosphere. Apparently, these cause steel manufactured ever since to be less pure than that produced pre-war. Which has caused something of a run on pre-war steel. 

Enterprising Chinese salvage operators, ever on the lookout for a bargain at Western expense, have begun high-tech ocean grave-digging. World War II-era craft sunk in that conflict have been located at various times by teams of explorers, and the Chinese have been watching.  

Now, manufacturing processes for high-tech medical and scientific equipment have created a demand for non-radioactive “low-background” steel. Because these shipwrecks, recognized by virtually every nation in the world as hallowed memorials to the dead who repose therein, are guarded only by decades-old corpses who no longer put up much of a fight, the steel that has become their coffin is easy pickings.  

To add a slight bit of additional disgust, the technique for raiding ships like, say, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, torpedoed on December 10, 1941 in the South China Sea, is to detonate explosives at the site, blowing the once-proud British dreadnoughts – and their 842 silent crewmembers – into bits and shards of twisted wreckage which can be dredged up piecemeal. 

I’ve tried “disdainful,” “disrespectful” and “despicable,” but I cannot seem to find a word adequate to describe such contemptible grave-robbing. I hope the market value of the product is worth the degradation of the soul. 

On balance, this might make for a juicy horror movie plot: “Revenge from the Sailors of the Deep.” 

Number Seven. Sara A Carter dot com. Nation’s largest teachers union passes “business item” to promote sex-change procedures for youth. 

The National Education Association, not to be out-woked by ultra-woke purveyors of underage child mutilation, has approved an expenditure of over half a million dollars to “promote and facilitate access to sex-changing procedures for LGBTQ youth.” Also, to ensure no teacher is left behind, funds will also be made available for school employees who feel the need to have their own body parts chopped away or others sewn on. 

The initiative is supported by “member mobilization” training to ensure NEA dues-payers know how to adequately respond to hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric which despises and disrespects children (as opposed to pro-LGBTQ rhetoric which not only despises and disrespects children, but also physically and permanently disfigures them) and which is sure to be front-and-center in the 2024 presidential election. 

I wonder if they have time for multiplication tables? 

Number Six. New York Post dot com. Nearly 40% of students at Brown University identify as LGBTQ+. 

This Ivy League institution’s student newspaper has been polling students’ self-reported sexual identification since 2010. Back in those dark ages, the only categories offered were Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bisexual and Other. This year, in a desperate – and probably losing – attempt to stay ahead of the cultural narrative, the poll included new categories: Queer, Pansexual, Asexual and Questioning. 

I cannot actually define these, and I truly wonder if any of the respondents can either. Nevertheless, a huge upswing in self-identification has brought the total number of non-binary students up to nearly 40% of the entire Brown U population, about five times the general U.S. population. 

So: Is it representative of pent-up demand to express one’s true self with heretofore taboo terminology, fearful of ostracism for taking an unpopular stand? Or is it merely the latest popular trendy superiority, a sort of social contagion? If the former, it does not speak well for the future leadership of our society. If the latter, it may be even worse. 

Number Five. The Gateway Pundit. Damaged Solar panels from hailstorm will likely end up in landfill because recycling isn’t possible. 

A thunderstorm last month at Scottsbluff, Nebraska, featuring baseball-sized hail and 150 mph winds, destroyed a large solar farm operated by the Nebraska Public Power District. Given that the Power District was treating the environment so well by using sweet, gentle, low-cost and unlimited sunlight to displace nasty, smelly and we’re-almost-out-of-it coal in electricity generation, you would have thought the environment would have kept the thunderstorm away. It’s almost like the environment has no feelings and cannot be directed by mere humans.  

As for the solar panels, their disposal presents something of a problem. They actually cannot be recycled like any self-respecting shampoo bottle, because they contain cadmium, lead, arsenic and other life-altering substances that will nuke the groundwater. Think nuclear waste material. Further, the volume of such nasties is quite small relative to the environmental damage they inflict, and the limited amount that can be harvested from hail-damaged or past-their-prime panels makes recycling impractical. 

Which means all these solar panels, so trendy and safe and good for our planet, will eventually all have to be buried deep someplace where their deadly components must never be allowed to reach groundwater. This suggests an extremely limited set of locations. Like maybe somewhere in the third world where woke Americans won’t have to worry about water quality.

Because we’re all in this together. 

Number Four. Breakthrough Ideas dot com. YMCA accuses teen girl of hate speech for opposing man in girls’ locker room.

Another teenage swimmer, another hater.

This time a healthy, athletic, blonde 16-year-old female swimmer (that would be a CIS person, which, for the non-woke among you — and you know who are — is a pejorative term disrespecting those who believe that boys are boys and girls are girls and that such homophobic and transphobic gender-assumptive accusations can be proven by a simple physical examination) has been piously expelled by the YMCA — that would be the Young Women’s Christian Association — in Springfield, Illinois, for objecting to the very reasonable accommodation of allowing adult, male, naked biological men to share the locker room with underage, female swimmers. Who for some reason were reluctant to disrobe in their presence.

The young lady in question, and her parents, met with the YMCA swim coach, attended the YMCA Parents’ Meeting, discussed the matter with the YMCA Chief Executive Officer, and were advised in each venue that under Illinois law, the YMCA was not legally permitted to not legally permit shower room access to the obviously bio men in question.

In response, the young lady posted signs in the shower room reading “Women’s Rights” and “Biological Women Only.” For which incendiary and violence-inducing hate speech the young lady was immediately kicked off the swim team and denied any further access to the YMCA shower room.

There. Problem solved.

The Illinois law in question (775 ILCS 5/5-103), while prohibiting discrimination against trans people, reads, in part, “Nothing in this article shall apply to any facility which is distinctly private in nature such as shower rooms.”

This does not precisely explain why the YMCA thought that EVERYTHING in the article should apply to the shower room.

Which — I can’t help myself — sounds a lot like what Jeremiah said in about 600 BC: A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end? Jeremiah 5:30-31

Number Three. The Washington Post. Why tires – not tailpipes – are spewing more pollution from your cars. 

In their never-ending effort to prove the absolute evil that lurks within the gasoline-powered automobile, unnamed scientists and unidentified health officials have for decades warned of the murderous exhaust fumes emitted by these death-dealers. At least, that was the argument until the advent of the catalytic converter, which severely cleaned up emissions and completely removed the smoking tailpipe as a means of suicide, according to Malcolm Gladwell in Talking to Strangers (Little, Brown, 2019). 

Desperately reaching for the Next Big Panic Proving Internal Combustion Bad, a new breed of unnamed scientists and unidentified health officials have identified particulates thrown off from normal wear-and-tear on rubber tires and brake linings as having surpassed exhaust emissions as the new deadly threat. The fact that such particulates have eclipsed exhaust emissions only because exhaust emissions have become much cleaner in recent years has been lost in the obfuscating smog of data guru-ship. 

Some of the offending particulates – silent killers, one and all – are composed of sub-atomic metallic substances which can be conducted through the atmosphere to despoil freshwater reservoirs, then find their way through the water system into your bloodstream and produce toxic effects. (Whether these metallic substances are more or less threatening than similar substances used in mandated COVID vaccinations has not yet been addressed. But I digress.) 

Counter-intuitively, electric vehicles are more dangerous than gasoline-powered vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries used in the EV makes for a much heavier vehicle than a V-6 gas engine, putting more stress on tires and brakes. Gas cars bad; EV cars worse. It’s a real conundrum, where well-intentioned leftists without enough to do find themselves caught between the horns of a woke dilemma. 

Number Two. One America News. ‘Stoneos’ cannabis cookies look too much like Oreos, says FTC. 

For our “just because they can, somebody probably will” segment, the Federal Trade Commission has sent warning letters to seven producers of cannabis-filled snack foods because they look like snack foods. Of particular interest is the “Double Stuf Stoneo” which looks exactly like a Double Stuffed Oreo and has all the appeal – especially to minor children – of a Double Stuffed Oreo, probably because it looks exactly like a Double Stuffed Oreo. But the Double Stuf Stoneo contains THC, the main ingredient in marijuana, which produces the chemical high so sought after by hippie wannabes and stressed-out workers that we used to call Yuppies.  

Other products identified by the FTC include “Medicated Jolly Rancher Gummies Sours” and “Cheetos Crunchy XXTRA Flamin’ Hot.”  

Imagine the middle schooler home at 3:00 pm. “Mom, can I have one of these Oreos?” “Of course, Johnny, just make sure you get the right package.” “Whoa! Mom! These are great!” 

Number One. CNN dot com. Climate activists block golf course holes with seedlings and cement to protest water use. 

First they came for the cigarettes, and I did not speak out, for I am not a smoker. Then they came for the paper grocery bags, and I did not speak out, for I do not do the grocery shopping. Then they came for the incandescent light bulb, and I did not speak out, for the LEDs actually work better and last longer. Then they came for the golf greens, and there was no one left to speak for the golf greens. 

No one thought it would come to this, but the climate activists have now crossed the line. Members of Extinction Rebellion, the climate activist group, have taken direct action in using cement to fill holes in golf greens in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other Spanish mainland locations.

The claim is that each hole of a golf course uses some 22,000 gallons of fresh water per day and benefits only half of one percent of the population who play golf, even in a country where the cost of living is one of the lowest in Europe.

As usual, the 1% of the population that is “the rich” have pillaged the land with private jets and big cars that generate lots of pollution (perhaps they should see above for the article suggesting tires on EVs are worse), although how exactly the jets and cars caused a three-year drought is left a little sketchy. Nevertheless, the rich must be punished, and filling in the golf holes should do it.

Actually, it will likely stimulate the economy. It is probably a given that golfers will simply hire gardeners to remove the filled-in holes and place new holes on greens (moving the holes is a pretty common practice anyway, to manage traffic patterns that can damage the greens) and thus put more money in the pockets of blue-collar workers.

As for the drought, we all agree it’s a bummer. Perhaps more of the economy should be applied toward constructing new dams and reservoirs.

Such as should be done in the American southwest, come to think of it.

And that’s the Alligator News Roundup for Friday, July 14, 2023. See our website at alligatorpublishing dot com. Order your merch and impress your friends!

Curt