Glad you’ve stopped in for Al’s Afternoon Tea. Let’s savor some of the latest news, including the Masters winner praising the Master, which we’ll get to in a bit. 

Taxes Due at the Chimes of Midnight

If you live on the East Coast, you now have eight hours to get your taxes done. (Well, unless your name is Hunter Biden.) I am excited to see how the IRS will react to me claiming 10 million illegal immigrants and millions of deadbeat student loan recipients as dependents.

If you want to make the rich pay their fair share, wouldn’t it make more sense to make more poor and middle-class people rich than to make rich people poorer?

It’s too bad the country isn’t run like Costco. If it was, we could return what the government buys with our tax dollars for a full refund. And we could start with the presidential salary.

What?! “Don’t” Meant “Well, Okay, If You Really Want To”?

On Friday, President Joe Biden sent his one-word message to Iran as it considered a strike against Israel: “Don’t.” At least, that’s what he told the American people he said to Iran. What he actually told Iran was something entirely different. According to Reuters, Biden told Iran via Turkey that any action it took against Israel had to be contained “within certain limits.”

That means the Commander-in-Chief gave the people who shout “Death to America” (meaning the ones on other shores, not ours) the green light to launch an attack that put our armed forces at risk. Our military was forced to engage Saturday night. The fact that it went well and the U.S. pilots returned safely is not the point; things might still spiral into a broader war. 

The point is that saying “Don’t” only to have Iran “Do” makes us look weak. Saying “Don’t” when he’d already told Iran, “Well, okay, but keep it limited” makes Biden a cynical manipulator.

There’s another way to look at it. Biden telling Iran to keep the attack “within certain limits” sounds an awful lot like Great-Grandpa saying, “Fine, do whatever you want Just keep the noise down. I’m trying to sleep.”

High School Girls’ Race Dominated by Male Who Identifies as Trans

Something is wrong when a biological male leaves female competitors in the dust like Secretariat at a high school girls track meet. That happened again this weekend at the Sherwood Need for Speed Invitational in Oregon.

In the 200-meter sprint, McDaniel High’s Aayden Gallagher won his meet by five full seconds — an eternity by sprinter standards. True, Gallagher ended up finishing second to speedy Aster Jones from Roosevelt High, but Gallagher’s presence in the race kept a female from advancing and a female off the podium. Gallagher took a medal while the girls took it on the chin.

A male just won the Girls 200m Varsity in Sherwood, Oregon. He set a new record for the girls race.

These high school girls just had their dream stolen from them because the school is catering the delusions of a boy who pretends to be a girl.

He is a cheater.

Video :… pic.twitter.com/DzQZ7fN5kv

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 14, 2024

According to Red State, Gallagher’s time of 25.49 seconds would have placed him 61^st in the boy’s competition. Gallagher also finished second in the 400-meter race. Adding to the insult is the fact that Gallagher is only a sophomore, while some of the girls he raced against were juniors and seniors. 

Mengele Party: Dem Gov. Vetoes Ban on Sex Change Surgeries for Minors

The Democratic governor of Kansas has vetoed a bill that would have banned sex-change surgeries on minors, along with giving them puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Gov. Laura Kelly excused her willingness to allow the permanent mangling of children by claiming the bill would violate “parents’ rights.”

Don’t believe for a minute that Kelly believes in parents’ rights; she believes in woke and radical ideology. In 2022, Kelly literally vetoed a “parents’ bill of rights” that would have allowed them to be informed of what is being taught in their children’s classrooms and letting them examine lesson plans, tests, textbooks, and other course materials. In other words, the bill would have made parents aware and let them challenge school administrators who are forcing smut and woke ideology down their kids’ throats.  

Little Victories: Top Schools Revert to SATs

Remember how elite schools were dropping SAT scores as a way of weighing a student’s application?

It seems dropping standards and standardized testing has helped contribute to a drop in college admissions, and schools are now reversing course. The latest to do so is Harvard. The university, which has been a PR piñata this past year, suddenly announced last week that it is bringing back the SAT-ACT requirements for undergraduates. It had previously said it would remain test-optional until the high school class of 2030 was ready to graduate.

“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra said in a statement.

More than a thousand schools adopted test-optional policies during COVID shutdowns when students’ ability to take standardized tests was limited. As Forbes reports, critics encouraged dumping the tests, claiming they favor wealthier students who can afford pricey test-prep courses.

MIT became the first major university to reverse its test-optional policy in March 2022. Other schools have slowly been following suit.

Complete and utter defeat for the anti-test crusaders pic.twitter.com/ubfbg2QTxL

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) April 11, 2024

Little Victories: Louisiana House Passes Resolution Requiring 10 Commandments to Be Posted in State-Funded Classrooms

Is Moses making a comeback? By an 82-19 vote, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a bill last week requiring The Ten Commandments to be posted in any classroom receiving state funds. Not just in K-12 — colleges, too.

If passed, Louisiana would be the first state to mandate posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.  

Little Victories: Opposing Player Deliberately Misses Free Throw to Earn Free Chick fil-A for Spectators

Houston Rockets center Boban Marjanovic won himself an arena full of new fans in Los Angeles on Sunday.  The Los Angeles Clippers were running a tasty promotion: If an opponent missed two consecutive free throws, fans at the game would get a free Chick-fil-A sandwich.

After missing his first free throw, the 7’4” giant signaled to the revved-up crowd what he was going to do. He deliberately missed the next free throw so the Clippers fans could get their free meal.

Boban intentionally missing a free throw to give Clippers fans free chicken is the craziest thing I’ve seen all season 😂 pic.twitter.com/Ok9Z5JGdTA

— Bradeaux (@BradeauxNBA) April 15, 2024

The best part? The announcer screaming, “He’s a man of the people! He’s a man of the people!”

Finally, a “Masterful” Victory: Scottie Scheffler Praises God After Second Masters Win

PGA golfer Scottie Scheffler won his second green jacket Sunday at the Master’s golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, ending up four shots ahead of his closest competitor and 11 under par for the course. Scheffler immediately gave credit to God. “It’s Jesus,” he said. “Not me.”

“I’m a faithful guy,” he told reporters. “I believe in a Creator. I believe in Jesus. … I feel like I’ve been given a platform to compete and show my talent. It’s not anything that I did…

“I’ve been called to come out here, do my best, compete and glorify God.”

Yes, Scheffler thanked God, but he also has to thank his wife Meredith for not going into labor while he was playing. The couple is expecting their first child, and Scheffler had vowed that if Meredith went into labor, even with victory within reach, he would have dropped his driver right there on the fairway and taken off to be with her.
(The way he’s been playing the past couple years, the other golfers hope she has a very, very, very long labor, lasting months — at least through the next major tournament.)

We can’t talk about the Masters without a nod to Tiger Woods. Although a disastrous Saturday led to his worst round ever at a major, Tiger dragged his reconstructed ankle and back up and down the punishing Augusta course, and made a record-breaking 24^th consecutive cut at the Master’s. Sometimes you win by having the lowest score. Sometimes you win by showing up and fighting through pain, even when you don’t have to and the odds are stacked against you.

Though he finished in 60^th place, Woods called it a “good week” and says he’s looking forward to competing in the other three majors this year: The PGA Championship next month, the U.S. Open in June, and the British Open in July.  

See you on the links … or at least in tomorrow’s Brew.

 

Al Perrotta is managing editor of The Stream, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.