Outside the Beltway

Comments

1. Bobert says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 06:49

   Yesterday’s forum closed on the pondering question, why rid the country of all these immigrants, particularly non-white and Hispanics.
   It seems to me that the marchers at Charlottesville provide a big clue. “YOU WILL NOT REPLACE US” doesn’t just apply to antisemitism efforts, rather more broadly with the dwindling white non-Hispanic majority. How do these ‘real mericans’ seek to stem this shift in culture? Just cleanse America of all these foreigners and their babies yet unborn.
   Yesterday I was listening to an academic who has been studying so called political violence, his theory is that it should properly be called cultural violence, that shifting of the cultural majority causes such anger and frustration that violent persons lash out at people they feel are allowing the diminishment of the white anglo majority.

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2. Scott says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 07:02

   This is pure out and out racism. They’ll come for the religious exemptions next.

   Troops with medical shaving waivers to face separation, Hegseth says

   Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s pursuit of a clean-shaven military took its latest step Monday when the Pentagon announced that troops who require medical shaving waivers for longer than a year will face involuntary separation, according to an official memo.
   …
   In the memo, Hegseth mandates that troops who seek individual exemptions must receive final waiver approval through their unit commander, which can only be granted after a written recommendation from a medical officer.

   Service members granted waivers must then “participate in a medical treatment plan,” the memo states.

   If medical treatment does not resolve the issue and a waiver is required beyond the one-year window, those troops will face separation.
   …
   About 60% of Black men are affected by the condition, according to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology.
   …
   ultimate goal of “returning service members to grooming standards and ensuring maximum warfighting readiness.”

   Apparently, these guys don’t have warfighting readiness.

   Nobody Asked Me, But… Beards Can Save Lives

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3. Scott says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 07:16

   Lest we forget. Bringing the past out of the memory hole.

   Why Reality Winner matters

   In June 2017, Winner was 24 and working as a contractor for the National Security Agency when she printed out a classified report and mailed it to an online news outfit.

   “I never talk about that document,” she said. If she does, then she could go back to prison. But it confirmed, with U.S. intelligence evidence, that Russia’s military intelligence agency had tried to penetrate America’s voting systems. They launched spear-phishing attacks on state election offices and even a private voting software company.
   …
   In June 2017, Winner was 24 and working as a contractor for the National Security Agency when she printed out a classified report and mailed it to an online news outfit.
   …
   President Trump continues to call this a Barack Obama-orchestrated hoax.
   …
   If it is a hoax, says Winner, “I would love my pardon then”— because Winner was arrested under the Espionage Act. She eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than five years in prison — the longest sentence ever given for that kind of crime.

   But both can’t be true. Winner can’t be guilty of leaking national secrets while simultaneously—according to Trump— RussiaGate is a hoax.

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4. Beth says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 08:17

   @Scott:

   I’d put money on the line that some racist pointed out that they could use the logic of the Skirmetti decision to get rid of a whole bunch of black men without saying that they are getting rid of black men.

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5. Charley in Cleveland says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 08:26

   @Scott: I suppose Hegseth is less of a national security threat when he is firing flag rank officers for the crime of being non-Caucasion, restoring the glorification of Confederate generals, and spending tax dollars on his Pentagon makeup room, but this move to remove men with shaving waivers is about as dumb and petty as can be. Apparently there are too many volunteers for the service, so Whiskey Pete will thin the ranks via revocation of a medical waiver that he seems to regard as DEI run amok. As to the necessity of clean shaven warriors, Pete will certainly order those Special Ops troops with full beards and long hair in Iraq and Syria to get to the barber shop….NOW!

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6. Gregory Lawrence Brown says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 08:33

   Robert Redford 89
   RIP

   2
7. becca says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 08:41

   @Gregory Lawrence Brown: dang.

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8. Scott says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 09:00

   @Charley in Cleveland: I didn’t want to mix another issue into the post but the article had some info on religious waivers for shaving, including Sikhs and Pagan (Norse):

   The Army, for example, amended its guidelines in 2017 after years of beard-exemption requests and legal pressure from Sikh soldiers seeking to preserve religious traditions while wearing a U.S. uniform.

   In April 2018, a heathen soldier applied for an exemption under the updated policy and was approved for a beard waiver in accordance with his faith. But while Norse paganism encourages beard growing, it doesn’t require it.

   It’s one thing to crap on minorities but to mess with religion…

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9. Erik says:
   Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 09:57

   Further restrictions on covid vaccinations for those under 75 coming per Ars Technica

   https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/09/covid-shot-access-could-tighten-rfk-jr-may-claim-they-cause-child-deaths/

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10. Jay L. Gischer says:
    Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 14:01

    They just keep coming at us:

    The more than 7,300-word proposal outlines a three-year agreement that calls on UCLA to:

    * Make five years of payments — $200 million annually — and set up a $172 million fund for people with claims of civil rights violations.

    * Ensure foreign students who are “anti-Western” will not be admitted.

    * Pay for all costs of the settlement, including the fee for an outside monitor.

    * Annually release demographic data for hires as well as students who have applied or have been admitted, broken down by “race, color, grade point average, and performance on standardized tests.”

    * Make a public statement declaring that transgender people’s identities are no longer recognized.

    * End gender-affirming care for minors at medical facilities.

    * Give the government access to “all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents, and data related to the agreement” not protected by attorney-client privilege.

    We are not going to get through this without standing up to these guys. Which could involved some suffering – more in the short term if less in the long term.

    Gov. Gavin Newson has called the demands “extortion” and said California will “stand tall and push back.” UC President James B. Milliken said the funding cuts represent “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”

    The document shows signs of being hastily put together. Nouns and verbs occasionally do not match in tense. There are references to the “president” of UCLA, but the top campus administrator, Julio Frenk, is a “chancellor.” A sentence about medical facilities references the “Feinberg School of Medicine,” which is at Northwestern University.

    If anything, this should bolster our confidence. What sort of clown show is this? Does this mean that few, if any, serious lawyers/negotiators are even willing to touch this?

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11. DK says:
    Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 14:02

    @Erik: I that note:

    Senator Cassidy urges RFK Jr. to support whooping cough vaccine amid deadly Louisiana outbreak (4WWL, Louisiana)

    Senator Bill Cassidy is calling on the Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK, Jr., to make a public statement in support of the vaccine for whooping cough.

    This comes as Louisiana is having the worst outbreak of the deadly respiratory infection in decades, which has already taken the lives of two babies…

    Videos from the past of children with whooping cough show just how serious the infection can be. Already, two children in Louisiana have died this year, with 368 cases reported, compared to the average of only 77 cases. LSU Health infectious disease specialist Dr. Fred Lopez says this is the worst outbreak in the state in 35 years. And there is a vaccine to prevent this.

    “I think there’s been a lot of misinformation about vaccines in general, and I think it’s spilled over to vaccines that we’ve had available for decades, that have been safe and quite effective,” said Dr. Lopez.

    Dr. Corey Hébert says the vaccine, which first came out in 1914 and has been updated several times, is proven safe.

    Dr. Hebert says older adults need to get booster shots from their childhood vaccine.

    “Yes, especially if you’re a healthy adult and you’re going to be around young kids, you definitely need it, especially people that are going to be around newborns,” explained Dr. Hébert…

    Senator Cassidy’s office says they have not heard back yet from RFK, Jr., about giving a public endorsement of the whooping cough vaccine.

    My understanding is cases of whooping cough have been rising for years, peaking under Biden last November — that this peak has stayed high, with rising outbreaks now under Trump. So not getting better, sadly, getting worse.

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12. Erik says:
    Tuesday, 16 September 2025 at 17:20

    @DK: yup. At least locally whooping cough and measles are no longer a zebra diagnosis. A huge share of that blame goes to run of the mill parent antivaxers, but making it actually hard to get vaccine for stuff that people want to be vaccinated for is 100% on RFKJ and his lackeys

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