Archive for 2014
June 13, 2014
INSTAVISION: Now on YouTube: I talk with UCLA Prof. Tim Groseclose about affirmative action fraud and his new book, Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA.
SO IT’S A CASE OF INCOMPETENCE EXACERBATED BY DISHONESTY: Obama Administration Knew About VA’s Secret Wait Lists For Years. “The current VA scandal involving secret waiting lists that led to preventable veteran deaths at the Phoenix VA Medical Center claimed the scalp of Obama-appointed former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who resigned at the end of last month. Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that President Obama only found about the VA wait-list scandal from watching the news. But the Obama administration knew that an internal VA investigation into secret ‘paper’ waiting lists was conducted in 2010 under Shinseki.”
WAS MITT ROMNEY RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING? Flashback: When Obama And Romney Argued About Iraq And Russia.
VETERANS ADMINISTRATION SCANDAL UPDATE: WaPo: VA Docs Concerned About Retaliation. “Retaliation from management is a real concern among Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) employees, certainly the doctors who nodded with approval when Mitchell and others spoke about the use of sham peer reviews as a way to punish those who complain too much, too openly or to the wrong people.”
JAMES TARANTO: Vergara, Cloward and Piven: Judicial activism bites the left.
A judge handed “a groundbreaking win” Tuesday to “attorneys who argued that state laws governing teacher layoffs, tenure and dismissals harm students by making them more likely to suffer from grossly ineffective instruction,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Judge Rolf Treu stayed his ruling in Vergara v. California pending appeal, but if it stands, the Times avers, “the effect will be sweeping across California and possibly the nation.”
The teachers union response was priceless. . . .
It’s reminiscent of Otter’s oration in “Animal House”: “Isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? . . . Isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.”
Of course the plaintiffs in the case are not attacking “teacher and student rights”; they argue that students’ constitutional rights trump teachers’ rights under the employment statutes at issue, which Judge Treu termed “uber due process” (“overdue,” the English equivalent, not quite capturing the meaning). . . . The argument in Vergara is clear enough: By forcing schools to favor incompetent senior teachers over capable junior ones, the statutes deprive the incompetent teachers’ students of their right to an education. And because districts with large proportions of poor or minority families have a higher proportion of incompetent teachers, the state fails in its obligation to provide education on equal terms.
The California Supreme Court had applied the same legal premises to hold unconstitutional funding disparities among districts and one district’s decision to end the school year six weeks early owing to a budgetary shortfall. Vergara doesn’t break new legal ground so much as apply precedent in a way that threatens the education establishment. It’s a case of judicial activism coming back to bite the left.
Read the whole thing.
SLATE: The U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq Was A Terrible Mistake. Sure looking that way.
WHITE HOUSE: Iraq Violence Won’t Alter Afghan Drawdown.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson: America’s Medieval Universities. Today’s campus is more reactionary than the objects of its frequent vituperation.
Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. But university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged American universities’ international reputations.
For over two centuries, our superb system of American public and private higher education kept pace with radically changing times and so ensured our prosperity and reinforced democratic pluralism. But a funny thing has happened on the way to the 21st century. Colleges that were once our most enlightened and tolerant institutions became America’s dinosaurs.
POLITICO: GOP On Iraq: We Told You So.
FEET OF CLAY: ABC’s Jonathan Karl Casts Doubt on Obama’s Supposed Top Foreign-Policy Achievements.
Related: Remember When Obama Was Boasting about His Iraq Policy? Expiration Date: Reached.
June 12, 2014
SQUANDERED SACRIFICE: Veterans watch as Iraq teeters on the brink. But, then, what hasn’t Obama squandered?
TOO BUSY CHASING AFTER TEA PARTIERS, I GUESS: Jihadist Gains In Iraq Blindside American Spies. First Crimea, now Iraq. Why does America’s $50 billion intelligence community keep getting taken by surprise? “The intelligence agencies’ inability to predict the latest crisis in Iraq is likely to fuel critics of the Obama administration’s management of other global crises, including in Syria and Ukraine. In the case of Russia’s seizure of Crimea, in which U.S. spies were also caught by surprise, sophisticated electronic eavesdropping systems run by the National Security Agency were of little use because Russian forces limited their time on telephones and adopted the techniques of jihadists, sending couriers back and forth between their units.”
Tea Partiers, take note, I guess. . . .
FROM SECOND-STRING TO THIRD-STRING? The absurdity of electing Kevin McCarthy to replace Eric Cantor as House majority leader.
HOW LOW CAN HE GO? Poll: Obama As Unpopular As George W. Bush.
JOE PAPPALARDO: 4 Things You Need to Know About the Collapse of Iraq. Here’s one: “This will inspire a Vietnam-esque narrative of failure.” For some, that’s not a bug, but a feature, of course, just as the Vietnam experience itself was.
This seems more sensible: “If insurgencies are seen as effective against U.S. military might, more will spring up. It would be wiser for the U.S. to study the missteps. Learning from mistakes is how the aviation industry reduces airline crashes. Why should foreign policy be different?” Our foreign policy elites don’t know much about engineering.
Related: Jihadist Who Engineered The Fall of Mosul Was American Detainee Who Was Released in 2009. “Why such a ferocious individual was deemed fit for release in 2009 is not known.”
Also related: Michael Walsh: In the Middle East, the End of the Beginning. “Obama likes to boast that he ends wars. But wars only end when one side gives up.”
And from John Hinderaker, this bit of graphic design: Obama’s Mission Accomplished Moment.
UPDATE: Romney: Obama’s Decisions in Iraq Have Left Us With ‘Very Poor Options.’
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Should Runners Get Pedicures?
AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Lawn, Patio & Garden. Browse and save. Summer is coming!
HEH: A sneak peek at Dana Loesch’s new book, which will likely drive the left crazy.
You can pre-order her book, here.
UPDATE: For some reason it’ll only let you preorder the audio version. Well, don’t worry — I’ll let you know when it’s available.
SCIENCE: Two Israeli Inventions To Aid The Blind: “In two labs some 50 miles apart in Israel, computer scientists and engineers are refining devices that employ tiny cameras as translators of sorts. For both teams, the goal is to give blind people a form of sight — or at least an experience analogous to sight.”
So, what inventions are coming out of Arab countries? Oh, right.
WATCH OUT, PANDORA: Amazon launches music streaming for Prime members. “Starting Thursday, Amazon.com Inc. will offer more than a million tracks for ad-free streaming and download to Kindle Fire tablets as well as to computers and the Amazon Music app for Apple and Android devices. The service, called Prime Music, is likely to be integrated with an Amazon smartphone expected to be previewed on Wednesday. People who pay $99 a year for Prime can listen to tens of thousands of albums from artists including Beyonce, The Lumineers and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for no extra cost. By adding music, Amazon is hoping to hook new customers and retain existing ones on its Prime free-shipping plan, which also allows subscribers to watch streams of movies and TV shows and gives Kindle owners a library of books they can borrow once a month.”
But can I get Marconi Union and FC Kahuna? And Luciano?
SPACE: Nasa captures powerful X-class solar flares emitted by the sun.
Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory observed the sun as a significant solar flare burst from its left side, peaking at 7.42 am EDT on 10 June. The sun then released a second X-class flare which peaked just over an hour later at 8.52am.
The third, classified as an X1.0, erupted today and peaked at 5:06 a.m. EDT.
Nasa explains that solar flares are the most powerful bursts of radiation that cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground.
However, the flares can disturb the Earth’s atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
Tuesday’s flares, which measured X2.2 and X1.5, were reportedly powerful enough to temporarily interfere with radio communications in Europe.
Could be worse. Will be, one day.