The Alligator News Roundup

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The Alligator News Roundup

September 29, 2023

Curt Ghormley

Sep 29, 2023

Here is the news you really need to know to be fully informed, well-rounded and seriously outraged American. These items will give you something important to talk about in your Friday night social outing.

Parent’s warning: If you have sensitive people with you, skip the first news story. On the podcast, fast forward to the 3:31 minute mark. In 3…2…1. Here we go!

Number Six, NBC News. California to fine school district $1.5 million for rejecting LGBT materials.

This is an article from July this year but is in the news again, once the State of California became aware that the wrath levied upon an evil-doer was insufficient to fully atone for the crime.

The miscreant in question is the Temecula school board, which rejected curriculum materials endorsing the LGBT agenda and intending to put what could only be called raw pornography into the hands of elementary students.

The school board includes three conservative members, apparently a majority, who oppose the position taken by liberal members. The liberals face recall because of their acceptance of LGBT-friendly curricula materials.

The president of the board, one of the conservatives, refuses to endorse the material that he says glorifies pedophilia.

On the other side, 47 teachers and 1,300 students are said to favor the use of the gay- and trans-supportive literature. Can 1,300 elementary students, who do not normally have access to pornographic images in their school libraries, possibly be wrong about this?

Is it just remotely possible that elementary-age students are more perplexed than passionate about the subject, and that the impetus for accepting unsavory curriculum may actually come from the teachers?

The questionable material that is characterized as pornographic has been endorsed by the all-pervasive, all-knowing and well-intentioned People’s Republic of, but the Temecula school board rejected it in favor of more traditional books.

Now the State has weighed in, in the person of Gov. Gavin Newsom. He has insisted that, when Temecula receives the non-approved, traditional curriculum it has ordered, that local school board will have to pay a $1.5 million fine for failing to abide by state-approved curriculum guidelines. It will also be required to pay $1.6 million in shipping expense for the non-approved materials.

The Governor has asserted that anyone who prevents student access to pornography serves a fringe ideology. Presumably this lunatic fringe includes those who accept traditional tenets of Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions, which all taken together have permeated western civilization for roughly 4,000 years of recorded history. Up until about the year 2020 or so.

If parents have not thought about home schooling in the Eureka state, perhaps they should.

Number Five. Redstate dot com. German homeschooling family faces deportation.

The U.S. southern border, with its 2.2 million illegal immigrants so far this year, and an unknown number of gotaways, may be a tiny thorn in our national side, but it is nothing compared the catastrophic social disarray in rural Tennessee caused by a single family.

Mr. and Mrs. Romeike, German nationals who have quite stringent opinions about how their children should be taught, legally entered the United States 15 years ago and took residence in that southern state. Once they arrived, they breathed the air of freedom and began to homeschool their children, a task they were not allowed in Germany. Germany demands that all children be educated in public school.

In 2018, homeschooling was made illegal in Germany, but the Romeikes had long since seen the writing on the wall and had left the country for the freedom-loving USA.

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Now, it seems, they have fallen afoul of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement people, whose charter apparently extends to seeing that immigrant children, unlike U.S. citizens, attend government-approved schools.

Why that would be the case is not made clear, but it is beginning to look like someone in authority simply does not favor a family having the freedom to see to their own childrens’ education.

If they return to Germany, the Romeikes will face legal penalties from their decades-old resistance to state schools. But that appears to be where they are headed.

The family has been ordered to procure passports for all family members and prepare to be repatriated to the Fatherland in two months.

It is unclear what the status of the two minor children, born in the U.S. and thus treated as U.S. citizens, will be. Nor the two adult children who have married U.S. citizens and are thus protected by marital status.

But ICE is apparently determined to have its way. And once the family is back in Germany, that legal system will begin its slow grind toward justice for all.

Perhaps they would have been better off to learn Spanish through Rosetta Stone and come across the bridge at El Paso.

Number Four. Daily Wire. Lawmakers investigate energy secretary’s electric vehicle road trip.

Everybody loves a road trip. Sometimes it is just nice to get out of the office and hit the road for some summertime highway freedom.

Biden Administration Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm got the bug and bugged out for Georgia — with a fleet of electric cars, to prove how good they can be, and her extensive staff running interference for her in traditional gassers, in case they proved not to be.

Which they did.

Things were fine until their entourage — a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a Ford F-150 Lightning and a Chevy Bolt — ran low on juice near Augusta, Georgia.

There were only 4 EV charging stations at the refueling spot they chose, and one was inoperable. Of the remaining three, two were occupied with civilian cars recharging.

No problem. One of the intrepid staff members, who understood just how much more important a Secretary of Energy is than a member of the consuming public, pulled his gas car into the vacant charging spot to hold it for Secretary Granholm’s car. He was lucky enough to sneak in just ahead of some low-life random family of nobodies with their infant child, who had to wait in the heat of a sweltering day while the staffer did not charge his car.

Because he actually could NOT charge his car at the EV station, owing to the fossil-fuel gas tank he carried. Which should not really have to be explained.

The random nobodies ended up calling 9-1-1 to report the obstruction, which caused some embarrassment for the secretary. Although why the Secretary should be the least bit embarrassed at having her staff exert authority on behalf of her God-given right to be first in line for the EV charger escapes me.

But now Republican House members are involved — curse them! — and are demanding an inquiry into what exactly the Secretary was thinking when her team blocked access to an EV charger in this manner. Or even why she took the road trip in the first place.

Given how it came out, her motivation certainly could not have been to show how easy an EV road trip is.

And come to think of it, why was Elon Musk’s Tesla not featured as part of the fleet, anyway?

Number Three. The Western Journal. Legos gives up latest effort to go green.

We may have to go back to wooden building blocks, Lincoln Logs and steel erector sets. It seems that woke Denmark is having real trouble finding a green substitute for the dreaded petroleum-based plastic in Legos.

Legos are single-handedly handing us our ecological heads on a biodegradable platter by robbing Mother Earth of her fossil progeny.

Not that enterprising toy block engineers are not working furiously to find a green solution to a serious problem (which may not be a problem at all, but never mind about that now; we have a public image at stake). They have tried lots of green, or at least green-er solutions to the Problem of Plastics: Making Legos blocks of sugar, corn and wheat.

All have fallen short, most failing to bind properly, which is what allows the Millenium Falcon to hold together while chasing the Death Star.

Recognizing the existential danger to mankind — er, personkind — in the use of traditional acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic — it just sounds like a killer, doesn’t it? — Legos finally hit on what promised to be a socially acceptable solution: recycled plastic bottles.

This stuff is made from polyethylene terephthalate (or PET, to those who know of such things), and may be just as dangerous, but least the empty water bottles are already here and their use will not represent a net increase in killing agents.

Given that these are recycled, the oil has already been pumped and represents no net loss to Mother Earth’s inanimate, liquid black gold offering.

A one-liter PET bottle — say, Mountain Dew — can produce 10 Legos blocks. All that is required is a source of heat, which requires a certain quantity of fuel oil which, when burned, releases a certain quantity of carbon emissions.

Turns out the oil and carbon used to recycle the polyethylene terephthalate products amount to more than is required to produce the politically unfashionable and scary-sounding acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic in the first place.

Never mind that Legos is one of the most successful toys in human history, and, for all its faults, actually teaches young fingers to learn dexterity and young minds to exhibit creativity.

The god of Green has spoken.

My prediction is that if our new Diety Science cannot find a way to supplant the petroleum, we will simply outlaw Legos, making the blocks a controlled substance, punishable by fine and imprisonment.

And why not? If the ruling political class has the green votes and the black guns, the yellow blocks can simply be made to go away. I’m waiting for the day they are collected and burned in some future dystopian public square through rabid activist citizen seek-and-destroy clubs.

I actually read Fahrenheit 451.

I wonder how much smoke they will generate?

Number Two. And now for the sports desk. The Right Scoop. Washington Commanders sued by Native Americans.

If this is not a kick in our patronizing, protective, paternalist White European teeth!

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It seems that when the Washington Redskins changed their team name in 2020 to the Washington Commanders in an effort to protect the sensibilities of those of Native American extraction, they actually ended up offending the Indians.

We all know those minority tribes are completely helpless to look out for themselves, or to weather personal insults, or even to recognize when they are being exploited, all owing to their inferior non-white genetic composition of which we never speak in polite company.

Except that now the Native American Guardians Association has shown the effrontery to challenge Modern Enlightened White Man Thinking by requesting that the Redskins name be restored to professional football. They are seeking $1.6 million in damages.

The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is not a caricature or a cartoon drawing; it is a simile of an actual Native American warrior, Chief White Calf. More fully known as Chief John Two Guns White Calf, Piegan Blackfoot Nation, Montana, 1878 - 1942, he was the last chief of the Blackfoot Tribe.

White Calf was instrumental in the development and preservation of Glacier National Park, and promoted the Great Northern Railway. He claimed to be the model for the profile on the Indian head nickel.

In 1971, his image was used as the basis for the Washington Redskins logo.

And now it develops that discontinuing the use of his image has deeply offended Native American groups, who allege the Commanders have dominated the narrative surrounding the name change and have thus dishonored the memory and heritage of an honorable ancestor.

“Every time they went out on the field,” says their attorney, “they were honoring Chief White Calf. They were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage that Chief White Calf showed in the past. They should continue to honor that.”

The Commanders have taken the position that the matter should be addressed in court, and that the tribal lawsuit is without merit.

Talk about being caught between the buffalo horns of a dilemma! Someone needs to break out the peace pipe.

You might almost think it would have been better if we never started the conversation.

Number One. And finally, another football story and another culturally appropriated Native American practice. Not the Bee. Taylor Swift could get Chiefs fan to stop the tomahawk chop.

Just when I thought the new football season would be about football, I find that it is all muddled with a new year of political correctness. When Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs Tight End, number 87, and apparently quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ favorite receiver, hooked up with megastar pop singer Taylor Swift, the season rapidly moved through paparazzi reporting and into the morass of alleged cultural appropriation.

As the Chiefs demolished the Chicago Bears in last week’s matchup at Arrowhead Stadium, the famed Tomahawk Chop was much in evidence among Chiefs fans.

Taylor Swift did NOT participate in the Chop, giving enormous hope to those seeking to end the practice. According to Not in Our Honor, an indigenous peoples’ group in Kansas City aiming to put an end to practices of cultural appropriation, Swift’s avoidance of the Chop may signify her opposition to it. Or so they fervently hope.

On the other hand, it may just mean that she went to the game because her new beau was playing, and he could get her into the box with his Mom, and she merely wanted to enjoy the game.

But, Not in Our Honor promises the conflict will not go away. Not if they have anything to say about it. For some, conflict is the stuff of life.

And that’s the News Roundup for Friday, September 29, 2023. Enjoy your weekend! But first, listen to one more section!

Christmas is Coming

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And Merry Christmas!

Curt

Paperback Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward, signed by the author.