What They're Teaching Kids At University of Michigan These Days

I have a friend who has a kid attending University of Michigan as a freshman.

His English class had this as his first required novel reading: 

My Lesbian Novel 

Described as a "genre-bending novel exploring queerness, art and desire through an interview interwoven with a developing lesbian romance".

Because of course they do.

Now, making freshmen read lesbian erotica is standard stuff to Épater la bourgeoisie to show how stunning and brave and progressive they are, along with making students read the article  If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? Without giving freshmen the viewpoint to challenge the claim. Quick note - It linguistically isn't. At most its a bastardized dialect of English, not a separate language.

Yep, its a progressive incubator with carefully curated curriculoum to push a singular leftist viewpoint. 

Now I'm not objecting to My Lesbian Novel  just because it is Lesbian Erotica that students are paying to be made to read to open their horizons ina politically correct manner (the horizon is only off to the left for some reason).

I'm objecting to it because it's really badly written lesbian erotica:

 For example:

 

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculously disappointing, with such an opportunity lost. 

You do not write a paragraph discussing miso where the woman is anticipating sex and miss the chance to have her reflect: "Miso horny".

Like I said, it is bad genre-bending lesbian erotica. 

Tuition at University of Michigan is $1,150 per credit for instate students and 3,158 per out of state students.  Neither taxpayers nor students are getting their money's worth out of the reading.

UofM: Strong in the sciences and business, but the  "liberal arts" have sadly gone progressively woke - and dumb.

Abdul El Sayed Wouldn't Say It

Michigan progressive Democrat Islamic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed had an opportunity.

He deliberately decided to miss it.

He was asked straight out yesterday at a townhall meeting by an University of Michigan student who his family in Iran ,who have suffered under the Islamist regime, a very, very, simple question:  

Does he stand "unequivocally against the IRGC?"

Fox22Bangor: Michigan student confronts El-Sayed over Iran stance in tense exchange: ‘Do you stand with us?’ 

He refused to answer and instead dodged and switched to saying the USA acted too often as the world's policeman.

It was truly a very simple question.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has killed at least  100,000 pro-democracy Iranians in the latest uprising against the theocratic Iranian dictatorship. The same folks who lead crowds in compulsory chants of "Death to America". The ones who beat women who don't wear hijabs. The models for the bad guys in Margaret Atwoods's Handmaid's Tale. Those guys.

It would have been very easy, and indeed reassuring to moderate voters, for him to have said that yes he does. Verily, any normal person would be against a massacre of 100,000 pro-democracy innocents.

He would not. 

Because both he and his base are for the IRGC and support their despicable acts.  

This is the same Sayed who would not comment on the death of Iran's dictator Khamenei because per his words "there's a lot of sad people in Dearborn" -- namely himself and  his supporters -- who were so sad about it.

Note well, neither the Detroit News nor the Detroit Free Press covered this exchange, which is rather interesting.

So we now know that El-Sayed stands firmly with America's and indeed the Free World's enemies. 

A Nice Day For An Instrument Currency Flight

Flying like shooting. It is a perishable skill. Instrument flying even more so.

Instrument currency can also be a pain to maintain as it is like herding cats to find a safety pilot sometimes, and you need a safety pilot for those practice approaches to count.

So I got up early this morning and headed to the airport to meet Scott who I had convinced to be my safety pilot.

It was a beautiful sunny day to fly, if a tad windy, with gusting winds at 10 knots from 100 degrees.

 After the preflight and adding some oil, we got ready to go.

I got flight following and let then tower know I would be doing practice approaches and they got me all setup.

A nice takeoff and tower had me initially turn on course for Flint and then changed their mind and had me go due north for traffic, and then handed me over to Detroit Approach, who almost immediately handed me over to Great Lakes Approach. 

This led to lots of good practice switching frequencies quickly with the new Garmin 650XI GPS unit.  We have just replaced the 23-year-old GPS 430Ws units that were in the planes with nice new 650XIs.

We went from this:

 to this:

 

 

Some serious improvements in 23 years, including a touchscreen, better integration with the autopilot, much easier entry of Arrival and Departure Procedures and T-Routes, and a much more intuitive process -- that does take some training and study to get used to and take advantage of to use it safely.

I had studied and used a simulator of 650XI, and had used it for a VFR flight, and this would be my first time using it for IFR approaches. 

So we headed to Flint and I put the foggles on, and we started doing approaches. Unfortunately Flint's main runway is closed so no ILS approaches were available, and it would be an RNAV day.

The first approach quite frankly sucked. 

The controller dumped us to join the approach right on top of the Final Approach Fix for the RNAV 36 at 3,500 feet and it was chop, drop, and try to get on glideslope and glidepath time.  The plan was to make it a missed approach even if it was good. This one truly was not and was blown from the start and was missed pretty much as soon as it began.

Went missed, climbed out, got a little bouncy at 2,500 feet in light chop from the wind shifting all around, and tried again and had a much better result.  The controller had us vectored in from a much more doable distance from the final approach fix rather than past it.

Then tried it with the 650 and Autopilot flying the vectors and then the approach to the final approach fix and that went well as I manually adjusted the altitude as we reached the waypoints.  Then hand flew it in the rest of the way. Then did it one more time.

After that it was back to Pontiac for two more approaches. 

The last approach I hand flew and was right on track on the glidepath and glideslope both, even with the crosswind. Landed it like butter and it was a great finish to some very focused practice, and I'm now instrument current again.

That's 1.9, 6 approaches, and 1 great landing. 

The Yom Kippur Islamic Hostility Scoreboard

As unfortunately expected, there were several attempted terrorist attacks on Jews worshiping during Yom Kippur.

First, in Belleville Ontario, a courageous police police was shot while engaging a terrorist shooting at a synagogue.  The officer is critically injured but will hopefully make a full and complete recovery, but thanks to him and another responding officer, the attacker will not.

An attempted attack in Manchester, United Kingdon was foiled by counter-terrorist police who captured two men of undisclosed ethnicity who were plotting to attack a  synagogue there on Yom Kippur. This on the anniversary of last year's attack in Manchester.

The FBI interdicted an ISIS-backed terrorist attach on a Pittsburgh synagogue before it could take place, arresting the terrorist who had pledged himself to ISIS in a hotel room.

In Germany, a disaster was averted when a member of a synagogue in Wuppertal saw an Afghan national throw three firebombs at the synagogue lighting it on fire just before Yom Kippur.

This doesn't even count the multiple terrorist attacks that took place in Israel.

Yes, Islamics do like to attack people on their holy days and on Islamic holy days as well. Happily, authorities managed to stop quite a number of them.

 Expect more attempts on the anniversary of October 7, and during Christmas and Easter.

Yom Kippur And Extra Security

As Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar approaches, arriving tomorrow, The Detroit Free Press had this sub-headline on their front page today: 

Clicking on it however changes the headline:  The Detroit Free Press: After tense year, Michigan Jews mark holidays with resilience and faith.

Why the change? Perhaps because then they would need to explain right up front exactly why the extra security is required these days.

The article does eventually get around to explaining this in part:

On the same evening, a few miles away at the largest synagogue in Michigan, Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, about 1,000 people packed the sanctuary for their first services since a terrorist struck the house of worship six months ago, in March.

It only takes another 7 paragraphs down past that statement in the article to find out the terrorist attack was not in fact by the Amish, but was "Hezbollah-influenced" and the I-word doesn't appear even once. 

Meanwhile, we still have to have extra police presence at synagogues here due to the Muslim's habit of attacking people on their religious holidays or indeed on Islamic holidays.

How often does your house of worship require a police presence to have presence and hopefully deter a terrorist attack? 

In any case, and completely aside from the Detroit Free Press' obfuscation,  I wish my readers G’mar chatima tova, and that you be sealed in the Book of Life. 

NAACP, Dems Want To Stop Immigration Enforcement Where?

Yahoo News/USA Today: NAACP sues ICE, DHS, FBI to prevent sending agents to midterm polls

The plaintiffs suing a group of agencies and officials – including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice and the FBI – allege that sending federal agents to the polls violates the Voting Rights Act because it is an intimidation tactic.

I was under the impression that it was illegal for illegal aliens to vote in our elections, and only citizens should be there to vote, and it thus shouldn't be an issue if immigration enforcement checks out things near the polls, right?

Indeed, I have been repeatedly assured of this by Democrats.

Funny their concern over federal immigration enforcement ensuring it is just American citizens voting then, isn't it?

Archfoolishness: The Archbishop And The Imam

The Archbishop of Canterbury, a known arch-progressive, and the first female head of the Church of England, in a fit of wokeness publicly honored a Muslim Imam -- on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11. 

She awarded him the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation 2026.

The Muslim imam in question, Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi himself had presented an earlier award.

He presented it to Osama Bin Laden.

Ashrafi awarded him the title of the award of "Sword of Allah"  and that's not all. Ashrafi has supported suicide bombing,  Islamic terrorist attacks against Britons and others.

Most people would consider this to be highly irreconcilable and uncooperative regarding other regions.

When these issues were pointed out, and a public outcry over the insanity of giving it to the Imam in the first place ensured, the award was revoked. 

MSN/Christian Daily International: Archbishop of Canterbury revokes award to Pakistani cleric after bin Laden remarks resurface

Ashrafi received the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation 2026 from Archbishop of Canterbury Dame Sarah Mullally at Lambeth Palace in London on Sept. 11, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States.

. . . 

The immediate controversy over the Lambeth award concerns comments Ashrafi made in 2007 following the British knighthood awarded to author Salman Rushdie.

Media reports quoted Ashrafi as saying that the Pakistan Ulema Council would honor bin Laden with the title “Saifullah”, meaning “Sword of God.” He described bin Laden as a “mujahid” (holy warrior) who had fought for Islam against Russians, Americans and Britons. 

National Post: Head of Church of England rescinds interfaith award given to Muslim cleric who praised bin Laden

We may also note that the archbishop, who has made feminism a keystone of her liberal progressive archbishop focus, and has publicly vowed to call out misogyny, also had no issues presenting the award to the Imam as female members of his family looked on - in full burkas. She then failed to call out such misogyny.  Funny, that.

The lack of self-awareness among the progressive left and their complete blindness to the clear anti-progressive intolerance of Islam is rather fascinating and disheartening.

Of Course They Did

After Macklemore was kicked off Ed Sheeran’s tour following his Gaza stunt—bringing partisan politics and what critics called antisemitic imagery onto the stage—he was out.

His past antics probably didn’t help either, including a performance in which he appeared to give a Nazi-style salute while dressed as a stereotypical caricature of an Orthodox Jewish man.

Off the tour he went.

And now the predictable outrage has arrived: the Left claims his removal somehow violated his free-speech rights.

So, of course, Dearborn’s Progressive Muslim mayor has invited Macklemore to perform a free concert in Dearborn—sponsored by the city and, therefore, supported by taxpayers.

Of course.

The Detroit Free Press: Dearborn mayor invites rapper Macklemore to perform free concert

Then there’s Hamtramck, another Detroit-area city with a large Muslim population.

Its former police chief, according to reports, advised officers that wife-beating should not be treated as a formal crime because it isn’t prohibited under Sharia law.

That claim takes on an especially ugly dimension given allegations that the former chief himself repeatedly beat his wife. Those allegations are just that—allegations—but they make his reported position on domestic violence all the more disturbing.

 Law Enforcement Today: Michigan: Muslim Police Department Chief Advised Officers to Follow Sharia Law 

The chief is now out of the job amid allegations involving this conduct and other corruption issues. He was also the founder of the NYPD Muslim Officers Society and the Yemeni American Law Enforcement Officers Association, and I'm sure there's no possible issues with either of those organizations.

The larger point is difficult to miss.

A movement that presents itself as progressive and tolerant can still make plenty of room for people and ideas that are deeply hostile to liberal democratic values.

And the history is hardly new. Islamist movements have, at various times, found common cause with fascist and Nazi movements, including the infamous alliance between Nazi Germany and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem beginning in the 1930s.

How very progressive.