Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 5/12

[SVPete]

Seattle Teachers Union’s Brand-New President on Leave for Abuse Allegations

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/05/12/seattle-teachers-unions-brand-new-president-on-leave-for-abuse-allegations-n4952772

A Seattle teachers’ union just elected a new president who is reportedly on extended leave over allegations of abusing a student. It is difficult to fathom the depths of our public education system's corruption.

It appears that the Seattle Education Association (SEA) has not actually inaugurated Ibijoke Idowu as president yet, but the union did certify its election results, with Idowu in the lead, on Friday, according to information SEA spokeswoman Julie Popper shared with The Seattle Times. Therefore, unless the scandal becomes too big for the union to ignore, the accused abuser will likely be leading her fellow deranged educators.

I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the union members who voted for Idowu had no idea who she was but thought her name sounded “diverse.” It remains to be seen if the union will decide to replace her immediately with someone else or whether they will consider her alleged child abuse immaterial.

She was (is? ) a special ed teacher.

[SVPete]

Sergey Brin’s ‘MAGA girlfriend’ denies pushing Google co-founder right: ‘If I could control him, I’d be married with a baby right now’

https://nypost.com/2026/05/11/business/sergey-brins-maga-girlfriend-denies-pushing-google-co-founder-right/

Sergey Brin’s “MAGA girlfriend” is pushing back on claims that she dragged the Google co-founder to the political right, insisting the billionaire tech mogul’s political change of heart can be laid squarely at the feet of Democrats.

“The Democrats red-pilled him. I didn’t have to do anything,” Gerelyn “GG” Gilbert-Soto told Bari Weiss’s online publication The Free Press last week.

The 32-year-old wellness guru added: “He has a mind of his own. If I could control him, I’d be married with a baby right now.”

Gilbert-Soto — whom President Trump once called Brin’s “really wonderful MAGA girlfriend” — spoke out after a recent New York Times report suggested she played a key role in the tech billionaire’s transformation from Democrat sympathizer to backer of Republican causes and Trump.

Looks like "GG" is arm candy with brains and a sense of humor, .

[SVPete]

The Language Got a Little Salty on CNN Monday Night

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/05/12/the-language-got-a-little-salty-on-cnn-monday-night-n4952771

If Bakari Sellers thought he could trot out an emotional guilt trip and quietly justify racist gerrymandering on live TV, Kevin O’Leary wasn’t about to let that slide. He didn’t just push back—he pulled the curtain back on the whole performance, forcing a raw, uncomfortable showdown between the U.S. Constitution and Sellers’ political theater. And Sellers let loose with some salty language in the process.
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O’Leary jumped in with a blunt take, saying the Supreme Court had effectively settled the matter. “I think everybody should take confidence in the fact the Supreme Court basically supported one vote, one person guaranteed in perpetuity, and the rest is just map wars,” he said. “And I think we should get used to it. And I think it's, as you said, a state-based situation. Add this to the mix. At the end of the day, the state decides at the state level. It's in the Constitution. Get over it.”

That, apparently, set Sellers off.

“The problem with that sentiment is that you were born in 1954,” Sellers shot back, immediately turning the argument into a generational and moral rebuke. O’Leary, never one to miss a chance to needle someone, replied, “Yes,” when Sellers noted his age, then joked, “By the way, I'm a vampire.”
...
“So, I'm going to finish this comment. So, what I'm telling you is that there are people in this country who fought, died, and bled for the right to vote. Don't be a d**k, just understand. Just understand.”

O’Leary didn’t care for that and pushed back immediately, insisting he was simply defending the Constitution. “I’m not a d**k. I’m pointing something out to you. The Constitution's being upheld. You have a problem with that? You have a problem with the Constitution of the United States of America?” he asked.

I'm not sure what, exactly, the problem is with being born in the mid 1950s. Does Seller imagine we could not, in our youth, have realized how awful racism was (and is)? I figured that out at about age 7 or 8, when my parents informed me that some people hate others because of the color of their skin. Does Seller imagine we did not see the efforts and suffering of many in the Civil rights movement? It was news about the Civil Rights movement that occasioned my parents informing me about racism.

It does not take seeing a racist face to face or seeing a loved one or friend assaulted/killed for their skin color to realize that racism is stupid and reprehensible.

[SVPete]

Dam Break in PA? Supreme Court Judge Dumps Dems Over 'Jew-Hatred'

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/05/12/dam-break-in-pa-supreme-court-judge-dumps-dems-over-jew-hatred-n3814850
  -grade pic at the top of the article.

Democrats worked hard three years ago to keep Pennsylvania state Supreme Court Judge David Wecht in office. They have worked even harder to alienate him ever since.

In a statement last night, Wecht announced that he would cease to identify as a Democrat. Graham Platner turned out to be one Totenkopf over the line, but Wecht's disillusionment with his former party goes well beyond the Left's 'good Nazi.' Far from being anomalous, Wecht argued that their embrace of "Jew-hatred" has made it a mainstream attribute in the Democrat Party:
...
Wecht doesn't sugar-coat his exit either. Rather than offer a soft approach with an ambiguous reference to 'shiffing values' as a reason, Wecht accuses his former party of deliberately embracing "Jew-hatred" and mainstreaming it:

"In 1998, my wife and I were married at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation, on whose Board of Trustees I served. Twenty years later, in the very same sanctuary where our wedding occurred, the worst massacre of Jews in American history was perpetrated. That terror came from the right. Jew-hatred has always festered on the fringe of that sector.

"In the years that have followed, that same hatred has grown on the left. Increasingly, it has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. It is the duty of all good people to fight this virus, and to do so before it is too late . ...

"From 1998 to 2001, years that preceded my judicial career, I served as Vice-Chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. In the quarter century that has passed since then, the Democratic Party has changed. Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled. Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.

"I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t. I am no longer registered within any political party.

WRT his comment that mass-killer Robert Bowers "came from the right", it would have been more accurate to say that Bower came from the cesspool at the end of "right-wing" that is as rejected by the mainstream "right" as it is by the "left". An example of the "right" rejecting those cesspoolians would be Trump's visit to Tree of Life.

IMO, the "left" very obviously has its own correspondingly crazed cesspool, but has embraced many of those cesspoolians, and that embrace is the cause of Wecht's move.

[SVPete]

Virginia Dems Appeal House Maps to the Supreme Court

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/05/11/virginia-dems-appeal-house-maps-to-the-supreme-court-n3814828

Having apparently backed off their Bond-villain-plan to remove all of the Justices from the Virginia Supreme Court and replace them with new ones, it looks like Democrats have settled on a Hail Mary to the Supreme Court.

Virginia Democrats have filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday in a last-ditch attempt to save redrawn congressional maps that could send four extra Democrats to the U.S. House, arguing that the state’s high court improperly overturned a redistricting referendum last week.

But some top Democrats express little hope that the appeal will affect this November’s congressional mid-terms and are pivoting to waging campaigns in the state’s existing districts.

In an interview, state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) said “the practical realities of our election calendar” will prevent candidates from running in new maps even if conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court were open to helping Virginia Democrats.

Short of the USSC ruling that the common-sense standards of VA's Constitution are somehow somehow unconstitutional or some arcane nonsense-definition of the start of an election, this is a stupid waste of $$. I did not see in the WashPost article whether the $$ wasted is the Dem Party's or the $$ of the citizens of VA.

[SVPete]

Russian Ship Likely Carrying 2 Nuclear Reactors Was Sunk in Mediterranean

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/05/12/russian-ship-likely-carrying-2-nuclear-reactors-was-sunk-in-mediterranean-n3814861

CNN reports that the mysterious sinking of a Russian cargo ship in 2024 was probably carrying nuclear plants from decommissioned submarines, on their way to be delivered to North Korea for its just-completed nuclear sub.

It also looks like somebody deliberately sank it. After, perhaps, a different somebody disabled the ship.
...
The story is extensively supported, although some of the key elements are built on circumstantial evidence, such as the implication that the Biden administration disabled the ship and that the Russians subsequently sank it to dispose of the evidence.

But that evidence is extremely strong, including multiple explosions on the ship after a Russian vessel spent days shadowing the cargo vessel, and more explosions days after it reached the sea floor. The original attack on the vessel appears to have been a limpet mine attached to the hull.
...
It's a remarkable story, with a lot of twists and turns. The information that the Ursa Major was carrying two Russian submarine nuclear reactors came from the captain of the sunken ship, who also said he didn't know if the reactors were fueled or not. While one would normally assume the reactors were not fueled, it turns out that refueling a submarine reactor is a massive project and not one that would easily be done by the North Koreans, so it is quite possible they were already refueled.
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Russian military vessels were escorting the Ursa Major throughout its journey, which is how they were able to so quickly destroy the vessel and sink it. If so, the operation to place a limpet mine on the ship would have been quite sophisticated, with few countries able to pull it off. Speculation that a torpedo took the ship out seems to me to be off base for any number of reasons, not the least of which being that the evidence left behind would be highly incriminating.

This video gives the timeline of this. As it was coasting Spain escorted by Russian naval ships, it was somehow damaged and slowed. A few hours later, it suffered internal explosions that crippled it. One of the Russian navy ships or the ship's crew scuttled the ship. a week or more later, another Russian vessel set off explosions at the wreck. Some 8 months later and again 13 months later a US WC-135 flew over the site, "sniffing" for signs of radioactive residue.

There's a lot of vagueness and not really 100% certainty about what was carried, bound for whom, why/how/whom of the initial slowing, what/whom disabled the ship, and why the ship was scuttled and then the attempt to further destroy the wreck.