IS TESLA DOOMED? “Tesla’s showing all the signs of a company in trouble: bleeding cash, securitized assets, and mounting inventory. It’s the trifecta of doom for any automaker, and anyone paying attention probably saw this coming a mile away.”

NEWS FROM THE CULTURE WARS: Feminists Are Panicking and Lashing Out at Cassie Jaye’s ‘The Red Pill’ Movie. “The movie sailed through its original goal of $97,000, and now — as icing on the cake — it is likely to exceed the amount raised by Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women in Video Games, a series that had the entire weight of the progressive media behind it.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 908.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: VIDEO: Administrators literally shred Constitution after reporter calls it ‘oppressive’ and ‘triggering.’

THE ATLANTIC ON THE DECAY OF TWITTER:

But I’m still talking in terms of feel: a biased, decidedly non-precise way of discussing something which emerges from more than 300 million minds. And that’s why I like one theory of what’s changed about Twitter from the Canadian academic Bonnie Stewart. I think it makes clear why Twitter the Company is finding such difficulty attracting new users, especially in the United States. And I think it even helps answer the Instagram question, namely: Why is Instagram (or Vine, or Pinterest) so much more fun than Twitter?

* * * * * * * * *

“The rot we’re seeing in Twitter is the rot of participatory media devolved into competitive spheres where the collective ‘we’ treats conversational contributions as fixed print-like identity claims,” she writes.

In other words, on Twitter, people say things that they think of as ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal political statements by people outside the conversation. Because there’s a kind of sensationalistic value in interpreting someone’s chattiness in partisan terms, tweets “are taken up as magnum opi to be leapt upon and eviscerated, not only by ideological opponents or threatened employers but by in-network peers.”

For the left, this is an old habit; as Pat Moynihan said nearly 20 years ago, “[Hannah] Arendt had it right. She said one of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

This would later be freeze-dried by Saul Alinsky into Rule #4 of Rules for Radicals, “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

As for the right, well, we just want to make sure that both sides live up to that, in order to reduce the ever-growing danger of Alinsky inequality amongst the left.

But ultimately, the decline of Twitter can be boiled down to just four words: “Has Justine Landed Yet?”

FIRST MY COLUMN, NOW THIS. MOMENTUM IS BUILDING! Breaking the Ivy League Monopoly:

America’s top universities, for all their rhetoric about equality, diversity, and social justice, actually do far more to perpetuate and sustain the upper class than they do to promote those values, racking up billions in tax-exempt donations, connecting their disproportionately wealthy students to lucrative job opportunities, and fostering exclusive social networks of the rich and powerful. . . .

One possibility is a system of national exams, sponsored by employers, that would allow students from less prestigious schools to demonstrate that they had learned as much as or more than Ivy grads. As it stands, the top companies companies tend to recruit only at the top schools, so it is difficult for students from West Texas University or California State Chico to demonstrate their qualifications. Hundreds of companies use university prestige as an imperfect proxy for intellectual ability.

Needless to say, this system is deeply unfair. Whether or not someone impressed an admissions committee at age 17 (and admission committees are imbued with the usual higher education pieties and prejudices) is hardly the best way to measure what he or she has learned by age 22. People mature in different ways and at different paces, and use their time in college differently as well. Since it can be hard to perform poorly at grade inflation mills like Harvard, especially in the soft subjects, almost everybody who gets in graduates—no matter how little they learn.

Imagine if a coalition of companies that hire large numbers of recent graduates (Bain, McKinsey, Google, Teach for America, etc.) on a national basis were to set up a system of exams that allowed students to demonstrate what they had learned and what they can achieve—and then those companies chose employees based on scores, with no regard to undergraduate institution. Some British companies have already taken steps in this direction. If American companies followed suit, they would unleash tremendous potential by broadening their applicant pool to a much greater number of potentially qualified candidates. They would also do more to promote social justice in America than armies of Ivy League diversity bureaucrats and Halloween costume police could do in a lifetime.

True!

THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERALISM: HOW MUCH IS LIBERALISM LIKE A RELIGION?

Almost entirely, particularly for those drink deep all of the SJW/global warming/BLM/BDS* Kool-Aid.

Which comes in stereo these days.

IRONY ALERT: Russia Today Slams Media Outlets Too Close Too Power:

Notorious propaganda outfit Russia Today is running commercials bashing the media for being too cozy with power? No, really. In an ad airing on RT’s Policking With Larry King, journalist Erin Ade promoted the network: “When politicians and the mainstream media work side-by-side, the joke is actually on you. At RT News, we have a different approach.”

Russia Today has been called “the Kremlin’s propaganda outfit” by the Columbia Journalism Review. It’s also funded by the Russian government.

So basically, Putin’s version of PBS, the NBC networks and the House of Stephanopoulos.

VIDEO: WAPO REPORTER EJECTED FROM KERRY MEETING WITH UZBEK PRESIDENT.

To paraphrase Mr. Kerry’s boss, let’s face it — if the Secretary of State can’t handle some reporter from the Washington Post, I don’t think the Uzbekistanis are gonna be too worried. And considering their human rights abuses, they should be.

Related: Some things never change; from SCTV’s classic 1981 episode when Soviet TV hijacked their satellite broadcast:

A DEEP DIVISION ON GUNS AND COPS: Has the liberal wing of the Democrats finally pushed the party too far?

Absolutely not. Double down, dudes!

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GERMAN TOWN OF 102 TO ‘WELCOME’ 750 REFUGEES, Rick Moran writes:

It’s amazing that Merkel never imagined that when you throw open the doors to your country, people beyond counting will want to come in. Nothing has been prepared for the crush of humanity that took Merkel up on her generosity. There is no shelter, no allowance for schooling for children, no plan to employ those who can work. Her ultimate goal — to change the demographic decline of her country so that more workers can support the rapidly growing number of retirees — could not justify the chaos and massive dislocations her refugee policy has wrought.

Meanwhile, the good people of Sumte — no doubt tolerant and broadminded — are about to be buried in an onslaught of Muslims who will be a supermajority in the tiny town. What are the chances of German law, German traditions, and German life being maintained in the face of people who want to change all that to suit their own preferences?

Before too long, I suspect the residents of Sumte won’t be so tolerant and broadminded.

Eh — what’s the worst that can happen? it’s Germany; they’ve always been a friendly, forgive and forget volk, after all.

DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Report: 5 out of 6 top university donations go to Dems.

ANDREW KLAVAN: IS THIS BLOODSHED ISLAM’S REFORMATION?

The current chaos in the Levant did not just happen. It has its internal causes but no small amount of the horror can be laid at the door of Barack Obama too. From his re-establishment of relations with the tyrant Bashar Hafez al-Assad to his surrender of George W. Bush’s victory in Iraq, to his standing by with his thumb up his brain while peaceful protestors took to the Syrian streets and the country then descended into civil war, to his weak sauce bombing campaign, Putin stealing his lunch at the UN and Obama’s puny U.S. response — through it all, President Right-Side-of-History has been on the wrong side of every decision. And so yes, now, the current mess looks remarkably like the Thirty Years War with its religious underpinnings, warring states and over-involved mega powers. And so it does indeed raise the question of whether it will be the turning point in Islam’s reformation, leading to an enlightened Westphalia-style peace.

One can hope. But the tenets of Westphalia grew out of Christian thinking and Christian religion. Christians were appalled by the bloodletting of the the Thirty Years War precisely because it violated the central preachings of the Prince of Peace: Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you. The outline for modern statehood and separation of church and state were written into the Gospels: Judge not lest ye be judged; render under Caesar that which is Caesar and unto God that which is God’s, and so on.

Does the same hope lie in the tenets of Islam?

Well, it would be nice if it ultimately turned out that way, but if so, I suspect things may take quite a while – and I’m not sure if the west can wait as long as Zhou Enlai’s apocryphal quip regarding the French Revolution to determine the outcome. In the meantime, as Mark Steyn asked in 2007, “What if we’ve already had the reformation of Islam and jihadism is it?”

THE VIEW FROM THE REBELLION: “Daniel Henninger’s hymn to Paul Ryan and The Party of Governing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal is a great example of the power of the establishment. What’s interesting about the increasingly desperate attempts by the Ruling Class to clear away the pitchfork carrying insurgents is that they really don’t understand why they’re out there in the first place. . . . I would think that the first thing people would do if they are faced with an internal rebellion is to try to understand why. I can only conclude that they really don’t have a pipeline to the people in rebellion and have concluded that they are gripped by a form of insanity. To help them out, here’s the view from the rebellion.”

ASHE SCHOW: Video highlights lack of understanding of ‘yes means yes’ laws.

In a new video, New York college students demonstrate the difficulty of living under a “yes means yes” or “affirmative consent” policy. Shelby Emmett of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education asked students what they thought of the policy, and their responses were telling.

College students in New York have to live by the government-mandated consent policy known as “yes means yes,” or “affirmative consent.” The policy states that students must get ongoing consent before and throughout each stage of sexual activity. Under these policies, sex basically becomes a question-and-answer session rather than a passionate activity, because participants must verbally ask each other (nonverbal cues are considered too ambiguous, even though the law doesn’t explicitly forbid them) for permission at every step.

So a sexual encounter would begin with one person asking, “May I kiss you now?” with the other person saying “yes” and then asking if they may touch the other person in a particular place. Advocates insist it doesn’t have to be this way, but with false accusations being regarded as acceptable, college students need to protect themselves.

Upon reading portions of the law, the students seemed to question what constitutes a sexual act, with some saying kissing counted and others insisting it didn’t. Some students said they used nonverbal cues (body language) to show their consent and suggested the new policies discouraged that.

Students were most confused by a question about how one would prove that he had obtained affirmative consent. It’s one thing to say that if one or both parties don’t obtain such consent (even though, as we’ve seen from cases that the only person required to obtain consent is the person being accused, putting a retroactive burden on them), it’s another to prove it.

“Oh my gosh,” said one student when asked how she would prove she obtained affirmative consent. “Well, I think that’s really difficult because it ends up being your word against the other person’s.”

“I don’t know, actually,” said another student.

Yet another student said he would have anyone he sleeps with sign a contract just to be safe (that wouldn’t help him with an accusation, however, since the law states that consent can be revoked at any time). . . . The students who have to live by them don’t understand them (when sober, mind you) and the administrators who design classes on how to teach them don’t understand them. Even Vice President Joe Biden, who has been advocating for them, doesn’t understand them.

Yet colleges are forcing students (especially drunk students) to know the intricacies of a law its own advocates don’t understand.

It’s as if the whole thing is designed to create a hostile environment for male students.

IT’S DEJA BARRY ALL OVER AGAIN: Obama yesterday: “If you can’t handle [CNBC], you know then I don’t think the Chinese & the Russians are going to be too worried about you.”

Roger Ailes in June of 2007: “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda. And that’s what’s coming.”

There’s one big difference though: the GOP candidates simply want to prevent another debacle; they handled the CNBC moderators with aplomb, which is why the MSM-DNC media complex are acting so butthurt. But we never got to see Obama or any other Democrat candidates debate Fox News moderators in 2008, and now seven years later, we know definitively that they couldn’t handle Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Chinese, or the Russians.

And now that Obama’s opened the door, I’m sure there will be at least one conservative moderator at every presidential and vice presidential debate next fall, and at least one hosted by the Fox News moderators, right? Think of it as one of John Kerry’s “global tests!”

CHANGE: “There was a time when Democrats were horrified at the idea of a president having an ‘enemies’ list.’ Now their probably presidential nominee brags about it during a debate. And no one seems to care except Republicans and Joe Biden.”

PRESIDENT PISSY: Man Who’s Whined About Fox News for Seven Years Accuses Republicans of Being Thin-Skinned.

His premise is incorrect anyway. If Obama had stood up to Putin the way Ted Cruz stood up to John Harwood, our foreign policy might not be such a complete debacle.