NEWS YOU CAN USE: 22 Excellent Reasons To Drink More Whiskey. Not sure that this is such a selling point though: “Hillary Clinton chugs whiskey on the regular.”
Archive for 2015
November 9, 2015
ACADEMIA’S SAUL BELLOW MOMENT: One of Rod Dreher’s readers is reminded of Bellow’s first novel:
Watching the video you embedded of [Yale’s] Christakis surrounded by SJWs, pleading along the lines of, “But we’ve eaten together for years, you’ve taken classes with me, how could you think I’m the kind of person you’re now accusing me of being? Doesn’t our having known each other count for anything, at all?” my mind went immediately to a scene from Saul Bellow’s first novel, Dangling Man, when Joseph, the narrator, encounters a former Party comrade in a restaurant.
Plus this:
One day, hopefully soon, we’re going to reach a point where those of us who dissent from the antiliberalism of the campus Left will simply announce, with e.e. cummings, that “There is some sh*t I will not eat.” I think in the refusal to apologize on that campus lawn, there’s a step toward it. (My breaking point came when I refused to write an e-mail apologizing to several colleagues for my insufficient expression of outrage at the “racist condiments” in the department break room. No one had asked me to; I just knew I needed to. And then I realized what I was doing and closed my computer. That was a thing that really happened in my life.)
I’d love to know the insane troll logic* behind which condiment was racist and why! But then, as Kurt Schlichter tweets, “I used to advocate destroying liberal academia, but now I say let’s laugh and watch it destroy itself.”
GOOD: U-Va. fraternity files $25 million lawsuit against Rolling Stone.
The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia filed a $25 million lawsuit Monday against Rolling Stone magazine, which published an article in 2014 that alleged a freshman was gang raped at the house during a party.
The lawsuit focuses on a Rolling Stone article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which detailed a harrowing attack on a freshman named Jackie at the Phi Psi house on Sept. 28, 2012. The article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, described how Jackie was raped by seven men while two others watched in a second floor bedroom while a fraternity party raged downstairs. The article alleged that the attack was part of a hazing ritual at the long-time U-Va. fraternity.
The Washington Post found significant discrepancies in the Rolling Stone account, including that the fraternity did not host a party that night in 2012 and that a student identified by Jackie as her main attacker was never a member of the fraternity and did not attend U-Va.
Other than that, the story was accurate.
I’M BEGINNING TO DISTRUST ALL SOCIAL SCIENCE ON RAPE: Pentagon ‘gay’ rape debacle: Report alleging male-on-male sexual trauma retracted.
The American Psychological Association has taken the extraordinary step of retracting an in-house journal article that asserted the rate of rape and other sexual trauma among military men was as much as 15 times higher than the Pentagon’s own survey.
In a press released posted Sunday night, the APA said outside scholars had examined the study, “Preliminary Data Suggest Rates of Male Sexual Trauma May be Higher than Previously Reported,” and determined the method for randomly selecting and surveying male combat veterans was flawed.
“Although the article went through our standard peer-review process, other scholars have since examined the data and raised valid concerns regarding the design and statistical analysis, which compromise the findings,” said Gary R. VandenBos, APA’s publisher, in announcing the retraction.
I mean, you know.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: The Hill: Ex-GAO head: US debt is three times more than you think.
Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Plan accordingly.
UNEXPECTEDLY! New Yorkers Face Hard Decisions After Collapse of Health Republic Insurance. “If anyone could manage to obtain treatment under the Affordable Care Act, it should have been Liz Jackson. With a severe nerve condition that forced her out of a job, Ms. Jackson did not just qualify for a government-subsidized plan, but she also knew her way around the new system, having been trained as a volunteer ‘health care navigator’ to help others sign up. Yet the collapse of her insurer, Health Republic Insurance of New York — the largest of 12 health care co-ops nationwide set to close this year — has left her and more than 200,000 others in a panic over medical coverage after their plan ceases on Nov. 30.”
Plus: “’I’m an advocate for the health care law,’ said Ms. Jackson, who lives in Harlem. ‘And if I can’t navigate this, who can?’”
It’s as if the whole ObamaCare thing was just a politicized Potemkin village.
MY SECRET PLAN TO END THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE BY USING INSIDERS TO MAKE HIGHER EDUCATION LOOK RIDICULOUS CONTINUES TO ADVANCE: Tim Wolfe Resigns as Missouri President Amid Protests, Boycott by Football Team.
What were these racist incidents? Someone shouted a slur at the campus’s black student government president. Someone smeared feces in the shape of a swastika on the wall of a residence hall. (In a letter announcing his hunger strike, student Jonathan Butler also cited “graduate students being robbed of their health insurance, and Planned Parenthood services being stripped from campus” among the reasons for Wolfe to resign, although these concerns don’t really strike me as being tied to race.)
I can understand why students were upset about these things. And if they want to call on Wolfe to do more, they are well within their rights. Maybe Wolfe was doing a bad job, although it’s difficult to say what he should have done differently; is there any policy a university could adopt that would prevent idiots from occasionally yelling immature, insulting things at people on the street?
This controversy, as with the current upheaval at Yale, suggests aggrieved students most desperately want administrators to acknowledge their pain and tell them they have a right to live free of emotional turmoil. But no competent administrator can provide them with this false sense of security, since the proper role of a university education is to help students overcome (rather than sidestep) challenges.
In any case, Wolfe’s resignation also means that hyper-offended students are not as powerless as skeptics of the campus speech wars claim they are. I’m often told by these skeptics that the actions of outraged students are harmless because they never amount to anything, but this development at Missori is a significant contrary example.
I would be disheartened, but not at all surprised, to see more professors and administrators driven from campus for the crime of failing to erect suitable safe spaces.
Just making it easier for President Cruz to abolish student loans. And if you don’t think that this will hurt Mizzou at budget time with the legislature, well . . .
Plus, online education seems like a big winner out of this. “In the fall of 2012, the most recent semester with complete data in the U.S., four million undergraduates took at least one course online, out of sixteen million total, with growth up since then. Those numbers mean that more students now take a class online than attend a college with varsity football. More than twice as many now take a class online as live on campus.”
Given that many college students seem to belong at home with Mommy, this trend is likely to accelerate.
LESLIE LOFTIS: Whose Brilliant Idea Was It to Have National Men Make Dinner Day? “I’ll go you one further, and this is a doozy, because what you’re also saying when you say that we need a special day to ‘get dad cooking dinner’ is that only moms cook dinner. And by saying that only moms cook dinner, well, you’re just this far away from saying … you guessed it … ‘Women belong in the kitchen.'”
Feminists, like most “progressives” seem to be stuck somewhere between 1958 and 1963.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How gun laws put the innocent on trial: If you care about civil rights for minorities, gun control is not the answer. “Police are horrible, racist monsters who want to lock up minorities over even trivial violations of the law! And police are also the only ones who should have guns!”
GEOPOLITICAL PREDICTIONS: PLACE YOUR BETS: “When I wrote about why Margaret Thatcher mattered, I concluded ‘that the political figures who matter have two rare gifts,’” Claire Berlinski notes at Ricochet:
First, they are able to perceive the gathering of historical forces in a way their contemporaries were unable to do. What do I mean by “the gathering of historical forces?” I mean, they are able to sense the big picture. Lenin was able to discern a convergence of trends in Czarist Russia — the migration of the peasants, the rise of revolutionary consciousness, the weakness of the Czarist government, the debilitation inflicted upon Russia by the First World War — and to recognize what this convergence implied: The old order could now be toppled — not merely reformed, but destroyed. Czar Nicholas II could not perceive this. It is thus that Lenin now matters and Nicholas II does not.
Second, when promoted to power, those who matter are able to master those historical forces. Chiang understood perfectly that China was vulnerable to communism and understood as well what communism in China would mean. But he was unable, for all his energy and efforts, to master them. And so, tragically, he does not matter.
Read the whole thing. At the conclusion of her post, Berlinski asks her readers:
So let’s hear from you. What will the world be like in six months, next year, in five years, in twenty? What are the most important gathering historical forces? What is the big picture? Which political figure, if any, has shown a sign that he — or she — has the ability to master them? If none of them do, and if the task by some accident fell to you, how would you approach it?
If you subscribe to Ricochet, their comment section awaits. Otherwise, this sounds like a topic equally worthy of debate in our own comments, below.
IN THE MAIL: The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age.
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And, also today only: 40% off Select Magformer Toys.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 914.
BLACK LIKE ME: Comedy gold: Salon/Daily Kos writer thinks National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson is black; Inspires #KevinIsSoWhite joke fest on Twitter.
As someone asked on Twitter, “Doesn’t the ‘D’ stand for Dolezal?”
And…why not? Hey, in the 21st century DNC-MSM-academia Play-Doh Fun Factory of identity and grievance politics, if Kevin “wants to be black he can be black. And a chick,” as Kurt Schlichter tweets.
YEAH, IT’S NOT CLEAR WHAT COULD SAVE BUSH NOW: GOP senators desert Bush for Rubio.
Republican senators are coming around to the view that Jeb Bush is unlikely to win the party’s nomination for president and that freshman Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) is the most viable prospect for the general election.
Rubio has had plenty of support among Beltway pundits since the outset of his campaign but Bush’s poor performance in the last Republican debate, together with his declining poll numbers, have begun to shift sentiment in even the upper echelons of the GOP’s establishment.
“Marco’s in the driver’s seat. There’s a lot of disappointment in Bush’s performance,” said one Republican senator, who requested anonymity to discuss the race candidly.
The lawmaker, however, left the door ajar to the possibility of a Bush comeback, noting that “expectations for Jeb are so low that it won’t be hard to exceed them.
“He just needs a little momentum,” the lawmaker added.
Most GOP senators are waiting for the race to shake out before venturing to make a public endorsement, in case there’s a late reversal of fortune, which has happened in previous election cycles.
But one pro-Rubio senator said “it’s nearly unanimous” in the Republican conference that Bush is floundering and Rubio is on the rise.
“You can’t look at the overall picture and not think it,” said the senator. “The polling shows it. It’s just amazing what’s happened.”
Yeah, when I was in DC last week, I had a couple of “what the hell happened to Jeb?” conversations. He’s run a consistently awful campaign, and his instincts have been unerringly wrong.
BERNIE SANDERS, LOVER OF GENOCIDAL TYRANTS, IS ANYTHING BUT CUTE, Kurt Schlichter writes:
The thing is, Sanders himself is just a stooge. He’ll excuse the blood on his heroes’ hands, but he doesn’t have the will to spill it himself. He’s a milquetoast Menshevik, the foolish, false face of the revolution. And if, heaven forbid, he ever took power, the Bolsheviks would put him up against a wall the minute they no longer found him useful.
And they likely would have, between Stalin’s anti-Semitic “Doctors’ plot,” and his telegram to Hitler a decade earlier, sent shortly before he violated the Non-Aggression Pact, “the reassuring message that Stalin, too, was gradually purging the government of Jews,” as history professor Peter Viereck wrote, quoted by Michael Walsh in his new book, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace. (Which Bernie would likely read as a how-to guide.)
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? European migration tsunami boosting conservative parties. “The European Union was created in the 1950s as an internal market where the free movement of goods and people would promote prosperity and security. Twenty-eight nations gave up sovereignty for this utopian ideal — except Switzerland, which never bought the Euro. The recent border collapse demonstrates that the EU is impotent when required to defend itself. Conservative political parties are succeeding as voters awaken to the fallacy of the European project. Nations just can’t give security away.”
Really? Because it looks like that’s what they did.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How gun laws put the innocent on trial: If you care about civil rights for minorities, gun control is not the answer. “Police are horrible, racist monsters who want to lock up minorities over even trivial violations of the law! And police are also the only ones who should have guns!”
LATEST DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SCIENCE THEORY: BARACK OBAMA AIN’T NOBODY SPECIAL:
Even if you assume that the master-the-pain theory is correct – to wit, that everything that happened that happened to the Democratic party since Barack Obama took office was inevitable, or at least unexceptional; and that the pendulum will swing back as soon as Barack Obama is replaced by a Republican – you’re still left with this rather stunning admission by the Left that Barack Obama is nothing special. All that stuff about him being a transformational figure in American politics? All those paeans of praise to the Lightworker? All those virtues that hysterics hysterically claimed were manifest in Barack Obama? …To quote the philosopher: “Well, that’s just what we call pillow talk, baby.”
Mind you, now would be the time for the grown-ups in the Democratic party – such as they are – to start distancing themselves from Barack Obama. He has, after all, almost reached the end of his effective shelf life; and it’s not as if he’s done Democrats any favors. In fact, it’s going to take them some time to repair the damage he’s done to them, and I hope that it takes them a nice, long, while. Because goodness knows the Democrats deserve this particular pain.
Indeed. But we should never forget the journalists who wrote tens of thousands of words of mythological praise in service to their party in 2008. In an ideal world, they would be sent back to covering planning board meetings in Weehawken. Instead, we should call into question their political coverage now. If the MSM is perturbed that they keep being called out by Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Christie, Fiorina, and Carson, well, such a reckoning was long overdue after what Bernie Goldberg dubbed the MSM’s slobbering lovefest of Obama. (QED, if you need a quick refresher.)
MILO YIANNOPOULOS: ONLY CONSERVATIVES CAN SAVE THE AMERICAN CAMPUS. BUT SHOULD WE?
You’ll forgive me if I lack sympathy. Conservatives have warned for decades that the proliferation of women’s studies, colonial studies, gay studies, and an assortment of other oppression-studies courses would end in tears. We also warned you that campus speech codes were a bad idea.
And when conservatives and critics of Islam started being banned on campuses up and down the country, we warned you that a tidal wave of zealotry, intolerance, and even totalitarianism was coming. Now it’s here. As a famous internet meme goes, you only had to listen. Now it’s too late.
The left always eats itself. And higher education has become just another leftist enclave. “It gives me so much pleasure to see liberal professors face to face with the monsters they created.”
HMM. NEW RESPECT FOR BEN CARSON:
We’re now inclined to think we overstated matters when we began an editorial six weeks ago by asking rhetorically, “How big a problem is it that the two leading Republican candidates for president aren’t actually qualified to be president?” . . .
Consider Ben Carson’s campaign, which suggests organizational and communications skills that would be welcome in the Oval Office. Consider his positions on the issues of the day, which, while not as well-developed as they will have to become, seem basically consistent with a reformist, constitutionalist, American-exceptionalist governing conservatism. . . .
This doesn’t mean Ben Carson should be the Republican nominee or the next president. Most of us at The Weekly Standard, if we had to vote tomorrow, would probably check the box next to the name of someone other than Carson, someone more conventionally qualified for the job.
But there is something heartening about the fact that so many Republican primary voters have rallied to Carson—so many in fact that he’s now the Republican frontrunner. James Webb, another impressive American, found no support and little sympathy in the Democratic party. That Republicans respect Carson, wish him well, and even would like to support him is a sign of the general health of the GOP.
Carson’s not my first pick, though I’d vote for any of the GOP field over Hillary, Bernie or . . . oh, right, O’Malley.
DAVID BERNSTEIN: Obama administration lawlessness: the top five.
It’s a damning list. And check out his new book, Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law. It’s a good book, as you can see from my blurb.
WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS, TO THE DECADE THAT NEVER ENDS: Liberals Say: Bring Back Busing!
Look, I love Led Zeppelin, Taxi Driver and the first Star Wars movie as much as the next guy, but how do we bring the eternal recurrence of the 1970s to its well-deserved conclusion?
SALENA ZITO: Democrats’ Scheme In Mississippi Fails:
In Mississippi, the teachers’ unions and some wealthy advocates put a referendum on the ballot that would require the legislature to fully fund the education formula, a massive increase over current funding.
If you sue the state of Mississippi for failing to do its job (like not funding the education formula), the case is heard in Hinds County where the state capitol, Jackson, sits — the state’s most liberal jurisdiction.
In other words, a judge elected by the state’s most-liberal electorate would have the power to overrule any legislative decision about school funding.
That could include consolidating districts. So, in theory, you could have a city district and a county district side-by-side — one sufficiently funded, the other not — and the judge could order the consolidation of those schools to equalize funding.
This push was an elaborate scheme, dressed up as “fairness,” to transfer control of education funding from the legislature to the courts.
I’m becoming more sympathetic to the idea of an elected judiciary, particularly at the highest levels.