PRESIDENT OBAMA’S THIRD CLASS TEMPERAMENT: “Like cult members awaking to find their leader swigging gin and squirreling money into a Swiss bank account, liberals are rubbing their eyes in disbelief at President Obama’s behavior. . . . So welcome to our world, liberals. Now that your eyes are opened, take a look at the completely unjust, snide, and dishonest way Obama talked about Republicans at the Georgetown University panel on poverty a few days ago. . . . During the discussion, Mr. Obama disparaged John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s interest in helping the poor. So it’s worth recalling that one of Obama’s first acts as president was to seek to defund the District of Columbia’s Opportunity Scholarship fund. When the Democrats controlled Congress, he succeeded. But someone who cared waited for a chance, and when Republicans gained control of the House and the Congress was in a tense budget showdown with the White House, John Boehner personally saw to it that the program was revived. So who is judging whom when it comes to the poor?”
Archive for 2015
May 14, 2015
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, RACISM AND SEXISM EDITION: Professor regrets calling white college males ‘a problem population.’
Black sociology professor Saida Grundy, who completed her doctorate at the University of Michigan last year, had declared on her now-private Twitter account that “white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.”
In other recent tweets, she said, “Deal with your white (expletive), white people. slavery is a (asterisk)YALL(asterisk) thing,” and “Every MLK week I commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. And every year I find it nearly impossible.”
Grundy on Tuesday said events in the United States over the past year have made “the inconvenient matter of race” an unavoidable topic, but she expressed remorse over what she had said.
“I regret that my personal passion about issues surrounding these events led me to speak about them indelicately,” she said in a statement. “I deprived them of the nuance and complexity that such subjects always deserve.”
Boston University continued to distance itself from Grundy’s racially charged tweets on Tuesday as its president penned an open letter to the campus, saying the comments were “hurtful.”
If I had a white son thinking of BU, I’d worry that the education environment was hostile on the basis of race and sex. I’d worry twice if he were enrolled in one of her classes.
SUPPORT THE TROOPS: Operation Baen Bulk 2015.
YEAH, THE MORE WE KNOW THE LAMER THE EFFORTS TO BLAME THIS ACCIDENT ON MEAN OLE BUDGET CUTS OOK: Amtrak speed control system installed but wasn’t turned on.
BECAUSE ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS A ONE-WAY STREET: The University of Western Australia has defunded a major research center because its director is a climate skeptic, and a very light version of skeptic, to boot. Because, you know, we can’t have an academic question the scientific “consensus” on anything.
WELL, NOW, THERE’S A SELLING-POINT: Chelsea Clinton could take on role of first lady if Hillary wins, White House expert says.
A COOL BOOK BY MY BROTHER: 30-Second Twentieth Century: The 50 most significant ideas and events, each explained in half a minute.
IRS ADMITS ERROR IN CIVIL FORFEITURE CASE: The IRS and Department of Justice are being forced to return $107,000 seized from a convenience store business in North Carolina. The money was seized by the government pursuant to the atrocious practice known as “civil forfeiture”— which is just a legal term for government larceny–after mandatory bank deposit reporting alerted the government to the fact that the store’s bank account had received several deposits of just under $10,000 in a 24-hour period.
The business owner, Lyndon McClellan, had been struggling since the forfeiture to keep his business afloat. Thankfully, the Institute for Justice agreed to represent McClellan pro bono. They do good work.
ANA MARIE COX: Why Cats Still Rule The Internet.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Boeing Shareholder Challenges Ethics of Company’s Relationship to Clintons: Boeing contributed $900,000 to Clinton Foundation, paid $250,000 for Bill Clinton speech.
America’s largest airplane manufacturer Boeing is closely aligned with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Boeing shareholders are now confronting company management about whether the relationship between Boeing, the Clinton Foundation, and the State Department under Hillary Clinton violated ethics rules, according to Fox News.
As secretary of state, Clinton had a beneficial relationship with Boeing. In 2009, she openly made “a shameless pitch” to a Russian airline to purchase Boeing aircrafts, leading to an eventual $3.7 billion deal for Boeing. Two months after the deal, the Clinton Foundation received a $900,000 donation from Boeing. Two years later, Boeing also paid Bill Clinton $250,000 to deliver a speech.
The chief lobbyist for Boeing, former Bill Clinton aide Tim Keating, also held a major fundraiser for Ready for Hillary Super PAC in 2014.
Fox News reports that Boeing shareholder David Almasi is challenging the company’s CEO on its relationship with the Clintons.
It’s all about the influence-peddling.
ANSWER: YES: Question (posed by Ed Whelan at NRO): Is China’s approach to religious freedom a model for U.S. progressives? Whelan notes:
The Washington Post reported last week that “Chinese authorities have ordered Muslim shopkeepers and restaurant owners in its troubled Xinjiang region to sell alcohol and cigarettes, and promote them in ‘eye-catching displays,’ in an attempt to undermine Islam’s hold on local residents.” According to the order, anyone who fails to comply with it “will see their shops sealed off, their businesses suspended, and legal action pursued against them.” Hmmm, sound familiar?
Why yes, yes it does. We shouldn’t let something as insignificant as “religious freedom” get in the way of anti-discrimination objectives, even when those “discriminated” against aren’t members of any protected class.
THIS IS NOT MUCH OF A SURPRISE: Men who exercise may delay age-related high cholesterol.
Men who get plenty of aerobic exercise may delay the onset of age-related high cholesterol, potentially lowering their risk for heart disease, a new study suggests.
Researchers followed thousands of men over several decades, periodically drawing blood to test their cholesterol and then making them run on treadmills to measure their cardiorespiratory fitness. Men who could run longer and faster – signs that their bodies more easily deliver oxygen to muscles – also had lower cholesterol.
“The benefits of physical fitness in improving cholesterol levels are greatest in young to middle-age adults and tend to decrease gradually with older age,” said Dr. Usman Baber, a cardiovascular researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“These findings should reinforce the importance of young to middle-age men incorporating regular aerobic exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle,” Baber, co-author of an editorial accompanying the study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, said in an email to Reuters Health.
I’d have been interested to see a comparison between aerobic exercise and strength training.
FREE ON KINDLE FOR A LIMITED TIME: Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Two Follow-Up Questions For Clinton Foundation Donor George Stephanopoulos.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How birds got their beaks.
THE PAST’S FUTURE: Watch General Motors’ Hilarious 1956 Movie on Smart Roads. “That it all happens to crowds of similarly choreographed cars threading through cloverleaf interchanges in the middle of a desert, complete with rocky prominences straight of a Roadrunner cartoon, is icing on the cake.”
AT AMAZON, take 25% off Swimwear.
Also, up to 60% off luggage.
ANTI-DEATH PENALTY DESPERATION: The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a death penalty case out of Oklahoma, Glossip v. Gross, which I’ve written about before. The case centers on an argument by death penalty opponents that Oklahoma’s 3-drug cocktail for executions is “cruel and unusual” punishment because it uses an anesthetic called midazolam.
In a bizarre post-argument twist, now the anti-death penalty lawyers in Glossip are hitting the media with a highly misleading accusation that Oklahoma “misrepresented” facts to the Supreme Court. The “story” was initially leaked to BuzzFeed, whose virulently anti-death penalty reporter, Chris McDaniel reported,
In the state’s brief to the justices, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s office highlights a letter that the lawyers describe as having been sent to state officials. That letter is real — but it was sent to an entirely different state. . . .
In Oklahoma’s brief, they state that the source of pentobarbital stopped supplying the drug to the state because the source faced “intense pressure” to stop.
As proof of their claim, Oklahoma’s lawyers presented a heavily redacted letter they claim was sent to “ODOC” — the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
Then the BuzzFeed reporter unveils his supposed “gotcha!”:
The Woodlands letter was actually sent to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice . . . .
Duh. This is the supposed “misrepresentation” by Oklahoma’s lawyers? That a letter that was sent to Texas—saying that pentobarbital was unavailable—was miscited as a letter sent to Oklahoma? This is the height of frivolity. Oklahoma never “claim[ed]”– as BuzzFeed‘s reporter asserts–that the letter was sent to Oklahoma.
BuzzFeed‘s McDaniel makes much of the fact that this Texas letter was redacted in Oklahoma’s filing. But this isn’t some nefarious attempt to hide the fact that the letter was sent to Texas—it is a common courtesy Oklahoma provided to Texas, as many States—including Oklahoma and Texas—keep confidential the identity of the source of their lethal injection drugs, due to intense political pressure imposed by death penalty opponents when such information is made public. BuzzFeed’s own prior reporting has acknowledged this reality.
Oklahoma’s Supreme Court brief did indeed miscite the Texas Letter as “Ltr. Pharmacy to ODOC (Doc. 64-6)”—with “ODOC” meaning Oklahoma Department of Corrections. But the document cited—Doc. 64-6—was clearly the Texas letter, and Oklahoma never represented it as anything other.
Indeed, Oklahoma introduced the Texas letter in the federal trial court to support Oklahoma’s request for a protective order, seeking to keep the identity of Oklahoma’s lethal injection supplier confidential. To support its request for a protective order, Oklahoma asserted that in both Oklahoma and other states, when compounding pharmacies supplying lethal injection drugs had been identified, those pharmacies came under intense pressure, and were forced to quit supplying. To support this assertion, Oklahoma included not only the Texas letter to support this contention, but also documents relating to Missouri’s lethal injection supplier, as well an email that an Oklahoma pharmacy received, in which the sender threatened to drive a truck filled with fertilizer in front of the pharmacy and blow it up.
Oklahoma never suggested to the district court that the Texas letter was a letter to Oklahoma. In fact, Oklahoma unambiguously stated that it was a letter from “an out-of-state pharmacy.” And in their response to Oklahoma’s motion, the anti-death penalty lawyers pointed out that the letter was from Texas. So there was absolutely no confusion at the district court as to the source of the letter or why Oklahoma was using it.
That Oklahoma has been forced to stop using pentobarbital—and thus turned to midazolam—was supported by unrebutted testimony of the director and general counsel of ODOC, who explained how Oklahoma’s pharmacy had been forced to quit supplying pentobarbital because of threats.
It’s painfully obvious (pun intended) that Oklahoma’s only “sin” was a simple citation error–no fair reader of the record below could conclude otherwise. The district court knew the letter was about Texas, and it was used to bolster a claim—that Oklahoma was forced to stop using pentobarbital—that no one has refuted, or reasonably could. Indeed, in a ThinkProgress article posted yesterday (critical of Oklahoma’s death penalty, of course), the reporter acknowledged,
As is common practice in many states, Oklahoma typically relied on compounding pharmacies that sold non-FDA approved drugs for lethal injections. But prior to Lockett’s execution date, the compounding pharmacies, including Oklahoma’s supplier, were pressured to cease sales of execution drugs. As a result, the ODOC was unable to get its hands on the desired sedative [pentobarbital]. . . .
Since no one disputes that Oklahoma could no longer obtain pentobarbital, why are the anti-death penalty zealots now trying to pawn off a simple mis-cite as some nefarious attempt to “mislead” the court? Because it’s just another example of guerilla legal warfare, in which anti-death penalty advocates cannot win on the facts or the law, so they resort to misleading antics like this.
If anyone is trying to “mislead,” its the anti-death penalty lawyers, and their progressive/liberal media minions.
IT’S ADORABLE, AND WARM-BLOODED: No, it’s not a kitten, puppy, or even a cute guy. It’s a the first warm-blooded fish ever discovered, called an opah.
HAPPENS ALL THE TIME IN PROGRESSIVE-LAND: When ideology trumps facts. The Amtrak crash is the latest example. As Rahm Emanuel once said, never waste a crisis.
NDAA AMNESTY PROVISION UP FOR HOUSE VOTE TODAY: Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) rightly says the House bill “betrays Americans” by containing a provision promoted by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) that encourages the Secretary of Defense to hire illegal aliens who’ve been granted amnesty by President Obama. Rep. Brooks asserts:
As America’s military downsizes, there are a limited number of enlistment opportunities for American citizens,” Brooks wrote. “Each time an illegal alien takes an enlistment opportunity, an American or lawful immigrant loses an enlistment opportunity. The ratio is one-to-one. Period. That is the math.
He’s right. If you agree with Rep. Brooks, today would be the day to call your Member of Congress and tell him/her that.