CAN GREEKS BECOME GERMANS? “Poll: 85% of Greeks Believe the Jews Have Too Much Power Over Global Finance.”

(Somehow, I don’t think this was the answer Thomas Friedman was expecting to his characteristically goofy 2011 headline.)

WHEN CO-EXIST MEANS COMPLY:

I didn’t like the Y. Improved it. @AceofSpadesHQ @MichaelHueser pic.twitter.com/LYXKDWYKow

— jon gabriel (@exjon) July 1, 2015

RELATED: “You Can’t Compromise with Culture Warriors,” Jonah Goldberg writes:

By no means are social-justice warriors always wrong. But they are untrustworthy, because they aren’t driven by a philosophy so much as an insatiable appetite that cannot take yes for an answer. No cookie will ever satisfy them. Our politics will only get uglier, as those who resist this agenda realize that compromise is just another word for appeasement.

Read the whole thing.

SULTAN KNISH: You Cannot Accommodate The Left. I recommend operant conditioning instead. Complaining and crusading is what they do, but even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain. Make it painful for them to mess with things that you consider important, and they’ll likely turn their attentions elsewhere.

LELAND YEE, THE GUN-HATING CALIF. POL. ACCUSED OF HELPING SMUGGLE GUNS, AGREES TO PLEA DEAL, Scott Shackford writes at Reason:

In March 2014, State Sen. Leland Yee, in the midst of a campaign for secretary of state, was arrested in part of a massive raid in the FBI area, accused of political corruption and helping arrange illegal firearm deals on behalf of violent group in the Philippines.

That scandal was crazy enough, but adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Yee, a Democrat, was also an open supporter of tougher gun control laws and was a proponent of legislation in California to ban the sales of violent video games to children, a law that the Supreme Court subsequently struck down as unconstitutional. Yee was a critic of games like Grand Theft Auto, even though he apparently behaved in real life like one of its characters. He took political hypocrisy to brand new heights.

Today it all ends with a plea deal. He has agreed to plead guilty of one count of racketeering in federal court and faces the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Shackford describes Lee’s crimes as “the craziest political scandal to hit California in a while.” And that’s really saying something considering the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the Mos Eisley cantina Sacramento.

WHEN SOCIOLOGISTS GO BAD, as spotted by Andrew Klavan:

I just finished reading Alice Goffman‘s in-the-field study of Philadelphia’s black slums, On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. I recommend it highly. It’s a wonderful piece of reporting. It’s also nuts. It’s worth reading for both reasons.

Goffman — a slight, attractive white girl and the daughter of famous sociologist Erving Goffman — lived for six years in a place she calls Sixth Street in Philly. There she befriended various black drug dealers and gangsters and their girlfriends. Completely losing her objectivity along the way, she actually reached a point where she chauffeured one of these thugs around town while he, his gun on his lap, searched for a man he wanted to kill. She’s lucky he didn’t find him. I don’t think that would’ve been sociology exactly. More like felony murder.

Somehow, I don’t think Christopher Reeve and Morgan Freeman intended Street Smart to be a how-to guide to journalism or sociology. And as Andrew notes:

Also, for myself, while I think it’s nonsensical to blame the police for the criminality of poor black people, it is not nonsensical to note that the dysfunctions of modern poverty are generationally self-replicating. A kid with no father and a crack whore for a mother is going to have a difficult time learning moral self control — and that’s going to be true of the fatherless child he fathers too. I do not believe such behaviors are related to race in any way. They’ve appeared too often in too many people throughout history. Read Germinal by Emile Zola. Read Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Read some of the writing about the Irish in England during the Victorian period. The poor have children out of wedlock and fatherless children commit more crimes.

There’s a reason why Life at the Bottom, Theodore Dalrymple’s report as a psychiatrist working inside the British prison system, is subtitled, “The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.”

“MY UTERUS LITERALLY ACHES:” “We built a luxury dream home but can only afford to have two children. Most people do not understand this statement.”

Actually, virtually everyone who is sentient understands on some level that there are tradeoffs in life in attempting to best calculate the equation of time, money, and goals. And to be fair, as one Twitter commenter noted, “at least [the writer and her husband] have a handle on living within their means, more than can be said for the average American.” But otherwise, this article is remarkably Fisk-worthy.

But then, as Tom Wolfe warned us all 40 years ago in “The Me Decade,” imagine living with millions of people who share the mentality of “my life becoming a drama with universal significance . . . analyzed, like Hamlet’s, for what it signifies for the rest of mankind. . . .”

Of course, the latest generation now entering the workforce, which Ashe Schow mockingly dubs “The Survivor Class,” is poised to make the Me Decade crowd appear in retrospect as industrious well-adjusted citizens: “Are employers going to start using precious resources to create safe spaces for people who are so unable to handle their anxiety they force the rest of the world to handle it for them?”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, PRUDES WOULD BE TERRORIZING OUR COLLEGES. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! LSU Prof Fired for Telling Jokes Is Latest Victim of College Anti-Sex Hysteria.

SCIENCE RAPPERS:  A rap performance summarizes findings in my NYT science column on the changing perceptions of “mate value.” One of the excellent rhymes: “We live in a world with mating that’s assortative / People care a lot about education and how short he is.”

I DID NOTICE THAT AIR SECURITY — ESPECIALLY ID CHECKS — SEEMED STRICTER THIS WEEKEND THAN IN RECENT YEARS: FBI Cancels ALL VACATIONS For Agents Over 4th of July Weekend.

DECLARING ‘THIS IS WHAT CHANGE LOOKS LIKE,’ OBAMA RE-OPENING CUBA EMBASSY.

RELATED:

If you don't think Obama comes from the stain of liberalism that's always been pro-Castro, you're not paying attention.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 1, 2015

Which is just the way the DNC-MSM wants it — just ask this woman, or Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Survey says: 35 percent of Americans would expatriate. A country that has generous social benefits, with high taxes and many political/regulatory barriers to success, will attract the unproductive and chase away the productive. End result: “Bad luck.”

UPDATE: Poll: Obama Millennials Want to Leave the America They Created.

UH OH: New Cases of Ebola Put an End to Liberia’s Status as Virus-Free.

REASON TV ON THE SECRET SCAM OF STREETCARS: How to Sell a 100-Year-Old Technology as the Future of Transportation:

[jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”209821″ width=590 height=360]

“Meet the Thighmaster of urban public policy: streetcars,” proffers Reason TV’s Rob Montz, who, other than borrowing one of Frank Gorshin’s Riddler suits from the old Batman TV series, delivers a spot-on indictment of the graft and Barack to the Future mentality that, as he notes, causes “municipal politicians across the country” to convince themselves “that this costly, clunky hardware can revitalize their flabby downtown economies.”

Or as a CATO report described such thinking a few years ago, “The Desire Named Streetcar.”

On Twitter today, Iowahawk, who spotted the video, quips:

Urban light rail: the billion dollar tax-paid version of gluing a spoiler on a '93 Honda Civic http://t.co/yMwMapV3T2

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 1, 2015

But that’s really an insult to ’93 Hondas, which as Montz notes, have far more maneuverability than a giant streetcar — as do taxis and municipal buses — but there’s not as much room for graft, given that the infrastructure for these vehicles doesn’t need to be built from scratch. And note who makes several prominent appearances pimping for more streetcars: Obama’s former transportation secretary, RINO Ray LaHood, the father of Darin LaHood who is running for Congress in the Illinois seat vacated by disgraced former Rep. Aaron Schock. Darin isn’t responsible for his father’s disasters, but still, why take a chance? Vote Mike Flynn for Congress.

SPACE: SpaceX Rocket Explosion: Can The Commercial Space Industry Recover From The Falcon 9 Rocket Failure? Rockets, whether commercial or governmental, blow up sometimes, especially new rockets. That’s just part of the business.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE! (CONT’D): False rape report filed by Manhattan girl. “Officers have filed a report for filing false information in the rape reported over the weekend. Investigators found that the juvenile female’s claims of rape against a 19-year-old acquaintance were not true. Because the case involves allegations of a sexual crime, RCPD is not releasing additional information at this time.”

Related: Woman accused of false rape claim ‘after fitness watch proved she wasn’t dragged from bed.’

IT’S GREEK TO THEM: Steven Hayward on “The Decadence of the Liberal Mind in One Sentence.“

ARE LAWYERS the new Linotype operators? “Don’t know what a linotype operator is? Exactly.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I lived like a man for a couple of weeks. It helped me understand my husband. Taking a dose of testosterone gave me a new sense of empathy.

I wanted to do them all. Men – young and old, thin and heavy, coiffed and shaggy – walked past my gate in Hartsfield-Jackson as I waited for my connection to visit my sister in Connecticut. Not all rated attractive, but I found the idea of sex with each captivating.

The young man with the tight shoulders, the bookish guy with Clark Kent glasses, the soldier in fatigues? Yes, yes and yes. The sweatshirt-clad-torn-jeans man was not my type, but I ogled him anyway.

I had been taking estrogen replacement therapy for four years prescribed after my hysterectomy at 36. But two weeks ago, my doctor added a special cream to boost my testosterone. She warned me of “odd symptoms,” but she didn’t mention this constant sexual distraction. Or the irrational anger. The day before, I dropped a fork in the kitchen and kicked it. It clattered into the base of the cabinet, but that wasn’t enough. I picked it up and threw it into the sink with a force intended to harm. When the mailman carelessly slammed a box onto the front steps, I resisted the urge to slap him silly.

At the follow-up, my doctor said, “Now you know what it’s like to have your brain bathed in testosterone.” In other words: What it’s like to live like a man.

All women — at least, all women who write on gender relations — should have this experience.

SUPREME COURT STALLS FINAL DECISION ON TEXAS ABORTION CLINICS.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 783.

MICKEY KAUS SAYS OBAMA’S OVERTIME MOVE IS A SCAM: “Isn’t that kind of pathetic? Obama’s increase (in the upper salary threshold covered by the overtime rule) may boost the pay of “nearly” 5 million workers. There are about 122 million workers in the U.S. economy — so according to my calculator the change will affect 4% of them. If that’s the biggest action Obama can take to help the middle class, it shows the severe limitations of his vaunted “pen and phone” strategy, no?” It’s not about actually helping. It’s about looking as if he’s helping to low information voters.

EMAIL BOMBSHELLS FROM HILLARY’S SECRET ACCOUNT SHOW SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHEN CABINET MEETINGS WERE HELD, WAS DUMBFOUNDED BY A FAX MACHINE AND EMAILED AIDES TO FETCH HER ICED TEA.

So Hillary can’t work a fax machine and hasn’t driven a car since 1996, but journalists are still recycling false stories about Bush #41 and barcode scanners?

On the other hand, Hillary has other transportation issues to wrestle with:

https://twitter.com/GPollowitz/status/616061484368445440/photo/1

THE JUNIOR ANTI-SEX LEAGUE AT WORK: The Future of Sex Is Terrifying: Proposed changes to U.S. sex-crime laws seek to set new sexual norms by criminalizing ordinary behavior.

Forget sex robots, virtual reality porn, and any of the other technological advances feared capable of disrupting current sexual mores. The biggest threat to sex as we know it is the coming revision of U.S. sex-crime laws. For a glimpse into this frightening future, look no further than Judith Shulevitz’s latest in The New York Times. Shulevitz chronicles how “affirmative consent” (the principle, often referred to as “yes means yes,” that the mere absence of a “no” is not sufficient permission to proceed sexually) has been quietly spreading from California universities to colleges across the country, and could soon mutate out of academia entirely.

The American Law Institute (ALI)—a respected body of professors, judges, and lawyers that draft model laws oft adopted in whole by state and federal government—has spent the past three years deliberating over sexual assault statutes (an area it hadn’t revisited since 1962). A draft of the group’s recommendations, released in May, endorsed “the position that an affirmative expression of consent, either by words or conduct, is always an appropriate prerequisite to sexual intercourse, and that the failure to obtain such consent should be punishable under” criminal law.

“The traditional premise in the law has been that individuals are presumed to be sexually available and willing to have intercourse—with anyone, at any time, at any place—in the absence of clear indications to the contrary,” states ALI. The new model “posits, to the contrary, that in the absence of affirmative indications of a person’s willingness to engage in sexual activity, such activity presumably is not desired.”

Perhaps officious busybodies need to meet with more aggressive pushback from normal people.