VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The End of an Idea — Why Affirmative Action Should Stop. “First, what exactly is race today in America in which intermarriage and immigration have increasingly made it — and its ugly twin racial purity — often irrelevant? We are no longer a country largely 85-90% ‘white’ and 10-12% ‘black,’ but something almost hard to categorize in racial terms. Do university admission officers adopt the 1/16, one-drop racial rule of the old Confederacy?” Pretty much.

But then, the so-called “progressives” are keeping a death-grip on Jim Crow.

Related: Black Confederates Revealed. “Race is such bullshit. It’s important to keep that in mind.”

WHAT DONALD TRUMP CAN TEACH THE GOP FIELD: “The most important lesson? Confrontation is good. Confrontation works.”

PHIL BOWERMASTER: The Power Of The Empowered.

TAR, FEATHERS: Philly Police Harass, Threaten to Shoot Man Legally Carrying Gun. “A story in today’s Philadelphia Daily News shows why it’s so important that citizens be allowed to videotape cops – it can be citizens’ only way to fight back against police abuse of power.” And that’s why they’re so quick to threaten and arrest videotapers.

Related: Orlando man arrested for videotaping police, now the video is missing. “Kurtz said the camera was in his hand when he was arrested. But police say it was never taken into custody and secured as evidence. Nor was it among the personal possessions returned to Kurtz when he was released on bail.” How convenient.

UPDATE: Some background on the Philly incident.

JIM TREACHER: Remember when I said Donald Trump will never be president?

SYRIA UPDATE: New Video of Assad Brutality (Plus: ‘West Has No Choice but To Win Here’).

MORE DRILLING FOR OIL: “Environmentalist opposition to drilling in some areas has done us a favor by delaying the use of that oil until we really needed it. Of course, that wasn’t their intent.”

I remember back in the ’70s, Malcolm S. Forbes suggested a strategy of importing as much oil as possible, especially from Arab nations, and drilling as little as possible at home, so that when the Arabs ran out of oil, we’d still have some.

AT PJTV: A sit-down interview with Herman Cain.

HIGHER EDUCATION: A Bad Moon Rising? “Faculty members have never been known for being particularly Panglossian, but most of those interviewed noted that things now really do seem to be worse. While the current state of affairs is, in one sense, a reflection of the wider economic shocks that have hit other workers, many of the problems now surfacing pre-date the financial crisis. The erosion of status, stature, and prospects for a future that much resembles the past has occurred for complicated reasons, experts say, including long-term, systemic, external and ideological ones as well as more recent political and economic developments, and some self-inflicted wounds.”

Among the self-inflicted wounds: The conscious setting up of academia as an adversary to the larger society, something that makes the larger society less interested in footing the bill once it’s noticed that.

MARKDOWNS ON GRILLING TOOLS.

POLIWOOD: Sex Slaves for He But Not for Thee, The Perverted Politics of the Redgrave Family.

GROVER CLEVELAND on financial policy.

SOCIALISM: NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE.

Plus, guess who he shares a tailor with? Are we talking this guy?

PEOPLE UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT: “So these ‘anarchists’ object that the state might cut back on its income transfers and payrolls. That is, they object to the state reducing its size, scope, and power. Odd anarchists.”

UPDATE: “That’s because they aren’t anarchists. They’re barbaric, violent bums on the dole.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON DEBT AND TAXES: “So, today we banged our head against the current debt ceiling for the first time. Think of the country like a tall person who has just moved into an unusually cheap and small basement apartment. The first bang is the most surprising, but it’s not catastrophic. In fact, it’s not likely that any particular head bump will be catastrophic. Nonetheless, taking up residence in that space is a catastrophe. . . . Fiscal crises are–ahem–inherently unpredictable events.”

If you want to see just how bad the problem is, go here and spend some time working the calculators. You’ll quickly realize that minor adjustments in taxes and spending won’t fix things. Hell, zeroing out Social Security or defense won’t fix things.

MICHAEL WALSH: Democrats Not Giving Up In Wisconsin.

YA THINK? Poll shows Americans getting more pessimistic on economy, want spending cuts. The polls keep showing this, and the politicians keep ignoring them.

FOCUSING ON the core curriculum.

SO MAYBE I’LL PUT OFF GRADING MY EXAMS UNTIL NEXT WEEK, JUST IN CASE: Judgment Day predicted for May 21.

MARKDOWNS ON Primo Grills And Accessories. I notice that SayUncle has been blogging about how much he likes his.

UPDATE: SayUncle emails: “I do love it. Here’s a review.”

MY EARLIER POST ON RETIREES’ REAL ESTATE NIGHTMARES produced this email from reader Joe Johnson:

Glenn, your recent posting about retirees seeing all their home equity disappear was spot on. I would just add that both the Republicans and Democrats seem to have not noticed that one of the significant reasons home sales numbers (and therefore prices) continue to be in the toilet is that many retirees (my wife and myself included) cannot even dream about selling and relocating because selling our house would be so difficult, if not impossible, now or in the forseeable future. Basically, we are stuck in a high tax, union dominated state and I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to buy our house and live here. It is also notable that at least two of the states with the worst housing numbers are also ‘destination states’ for millions of retirees, i.e., Florida and Arizona. And thanks to Bernanke’s prolonged zero-interest-rate policy, people like us who saved our money for retirement now find that it is useless for providing an income stream unless we are willing to risk it in a stock market now dominated (and manipulated, as we saw in the ‘flash crash’ the SEC has yet to cogently explain) by computer driven algorithmic high
speed trading where stock fundamental values are essentially ignored.

Yes, savers are being punished all around.

STIMULUS! “Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “A majority of Americans (57 percent) believe that the higher education system in the country fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend, according to a survey released Sunday by the Pew Research Center. Three-quarters of those polled said that college is too expensive for most Americans. But among Americans who are college graduates, 86 percent said that college had been a good investment for them personally.” That’s not really a contradiction — college was much less expensive not that long ago.

GREAT: Treasury To Tap Pensions To Help Fund Government.

FRANK MUNGER: Supercomputing expansion at ORNL and the budding involvement of U.S. security agencies. “Brinkman was not specific when asked about the agencies involved in pushing the Oak Ridge plan. However, when asked if he was talking about the three-letter (intelligence) agencies, he said: ‘You’ve got the idea.'”