ALL CULTURES ARE NOT EQUALLY ADMIRABLE: “The Saudis? The simplest answer to their disinterest in helping refugees (except to the extent that they can convert them to Wahhabism) is that this is simply not a part of their culture.”

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE NIXONIAN: Robert Redford’s new Dan Rather biopic “Truth,” Rathergate, and George Orwell’s Minitrue, from Neo-Neocon:

…Sure, let’s base a movie about one of the most egregious journalistic errors/frameups/hitpieces ever run—which had as its aim the defeat of a president running for re-election—on the memoir of one of its self-serving perpetrators. And let’s call it “Truth.” Why not? After all, the vast majority of the young people we can reach with this revisionist “history” were kids in 2004, when it occurred. They will think that our history is the reality, our truth will become their truth. We will certainly reach far more young people than the real story, the details of which have faded into distant memory for most people, and never were heard of by the generation coming of age.

It’s been done by Hollywood many times before, most notably by Oliver Stone.

Robert Redford became a Hollywood superstar portraying a journalist who set Richard Nixon on a path towards eventual career destruction. In his twilight, he’s portraying — and defending — the television newsreader who destroyed his own broadcast career using Nixonian methods.

RELATED: When you’ve a lefty who’s lost Les Moonves…

TOP HILLARY CLINTON ADVISER SAYS NEXT PRESIDENT NEEDS TO ‘UNDERSTAND’ CYBER SECURITY.

USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES: Recommit to free speech on campus: University of Chicago takes the lead; other colleges fail to follow.

BERNIE SANDERS HAS AN INCONVENIENT MESSAGE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: “Currently, there is a 2016 presidential candidate barnstorming his way across the country to hyped-up, adoring crowds while caterwauling about the establishment failures of the ruling political class, claiming to be the candidate of the people and the only one in the running that cannot be bought by Washington special interests. His blustery non-conformities are reverberating throughout the fringe base of the party and captivating the media’s attention,” Stephen L. Miller writes at NRO. “I am of course referring to (*ahem* Democratic) socialist Bernie Sanders, who one day out of the blue seemingly just decided to get up and run for president after giving up on the New York Times crossword and Sudoku:”

But the biggest mystery seems to be how Sanders is able to get away with it after seven years of a president whom he ideologically agrees with almost point for point. If a “political revolution,” which Sanders often likes to declare is the goal of his candidacy, depends on the working poor or unemployed, then by definition it needs as many of those people as possible to carry it out. The key to this kind of messaging is mobilization, and in particular the mobilization of the angry and disenfranchised (See Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement). Saul Alinksy once referred to this dynamic as receiving power in reaction to a threat. If your goal is to get elected on the backs of the young, angry, poor, and unemployed, then the means to your end is not to create less of those kinds of voters, it’s to create more and keep them angry. Beyond this, Sanders’s hyper-populist message is dependent on the media reporting on how popular it seems. At Bernie campaign rallies, media almost always report crowd sizes like they’re reporting on a U2 concert, but the second he opens his mouth the tweets and the stenographing magically stop.

Yes, what on earth could be the cause for the media blackout?
.

SURE IT WAS FUN WATCHING RAND PAUL SHOOT THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THE TAX CODE, but Rand Misses the Target on Iran in his conversation today with Roger Simon.

THE MARBLE BAR MAKES ME WISH I WANTED A LUXURY BUS: Failed Techie Commuter Startup Is Selling Its Luxury Buses.

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals on Men’s Watches. Watches are back in style, you know. People got sick of looking at their phones for the time.

Also, deals on select Kwikset and Baldwin smartkey locks.

POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: Memo to the New York Times’ Foreign Desk from Kevin D. Williamson:

RE: Diaa Hadisept for AM interntional; mark-up attached

HEAD: Jewish Man Dies as Rocks Pelt His Car in East Jerusalem [ED: “As rocks pelt his car”? How exactly did the rocks go about doing this? Are these special angry Palestinian rocks that get up off the ground and hurl themselves at Jews? Unless we’re talking about The Rock, in which case he’s going by “Dwayne Johnson” these days, I don’t think a rock is capable of committing an act of violence on its own.]

BYLINE: Diaa Hadidsept

DATELINE: Ramallah, West Bank, 14 September 2015

COPY:  A Jewish man died [ED: “was killed.”] early Monday morning after attackers pelted the road [ED: “pelted the road”? They were aiming at the pavement? Please clarify.] he was driving on with rocks as he was returning home from a dinner celebrating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, the Israeli authorities said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an emergency meeting to discuss rock-throwing, mostly [ED: “mostly”? Which other rock-throwers were discussed at the emergency meeting?] by Palestinian youths.

Read the whole thing.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stimulating Damaged Spines Rewires Rats for Recovery.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO FLASH: Star Trek: Voyager’s ‘Kes’ charged with exposing herself to children in Harriman.

TRUE: Adblocking Wouldn’t Be A Problem If Ads Didn’t Suck So Much. I don’t mind ads. I do mind ads that freeze my screen. I try to police the InstaPundit ads as best as I can, but it’s hard.

9 GREAT DIY YOUTUBE CHANNELS.

TEXAS 14-YEAR-OLD TAKES HOMEMADE CLOCK TO SCHOOL, gets treated as terrorist. Police, school district refuse to apologize. And note this: “When he showed it to his teacher, explaining it was a clock, she said she thought it looked like a bomb. A few hours later, Ahmed found himself being questioned in a room with four cops, and then later in handcuffs on the way to a juvenile detention center.” So you thought it was a bomb — uh huh –and then you waited “a few hours” to do anything about it, but still treated it as terrorism. If you really think something’s a bomb, you don’t wait hours. If it can wait a few hours, you don’t need to go crazy.

Ken White’s take: “American lives are controlled by the thuggishly mediocre. The best measure of their control is this: when called out on their mediocre thuggery, they can comfortably double down.” I’m coming to believe that the only hope for addressing this phenomenon involves tar, feathers, and horsewhips.

Reminds me of this story. Note that when specifically warned about real terrorists, the Tsarnaev brothers, the law enforcement community twiddled its thumbs.

Also, sending your kids, especially boys, to public school is parental malpractice. You’ve been warned.

UPDATE: People are making a big deal about the kid’s name being Ahmed, but Razib Khan points out that school-administrator thuggishness knows no racial bounds.

WHY IS XIGNITE USING THE IMAGE OF A RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC MASS MURDERER IN ITS NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH?

FROM JAMES M. BURNHAM: Why Don’t Courts Dismiss Indictments? A Simple Suggestion For Making Criminal Law A Little Less Lawless.

Implementing this basic reform would require nothing more than apply- ing the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which already contain provisions for dismissing indictments that are materially identical to the familiar 12(b)(6) standard and the rules for dismissing civil com- plaints. Yet the same federal judges who routinely dismiss com- plaints for failure to state a claim virtually never dismiss indictments for failure to state an offense. The judiciary’s collective failure to apply the dismissal standard in criminal proceedings that is a staple of civil practice plays a central role in the ever-expanding, vague nature of federal criminal law because it largely eliminates the pos- sibility of purely legal judicial opinions construing criminal statutes in the context of a discrete set of assumed facts, and because it leaves appellate courts to articulate the boundaries of criminal law in post-trial appeals where rejecting the government’s legal theory means overturning a jury verdict and erasing weeks or months of judicial effort.

One of many places where our problems would be reduced if judges would do their jobs.

THIS IS GOING WELL: Christian Refugees in Sweden Fear Muslim Refugees.

ROGER KIMBALL: Cultural Suicide: A Do-It-Yourself Guide.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 860.

A MODEST PROPOSAL: Naturalized Citizen Emily Blunt Should Deport Herself.

SO MUCH FOR THE NOTION OF “SETTLED SCIENCE:” Way more trees than previously thought, new estimates show.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Turns Out The Housing Crisis Wasn’t All About Subprime.

When prices had been in a long, gentle rise for decades, high down payments looked like expensive and unnecessary insurance against something that rarely happened. They looked like a barrier keeping historically disadvantaged groups, like minorities and immigrants, from accumulating wealth the way that prosperous native white families had. They looked like something that regulators and bankers had needed to require before they got so darn smart about managing credit risks, and credit markets.

Everyone, from buyers to regulators, had reams of data telling them this. Who are you going to believe: years and years of statistics, or some crabby dude muttering about the Great Depression? The Great Depression was so long ago that men wore hats and the Beatles were not even gleams in their fathers’ eyes.

The crabby dudes seem to be getting vindicated a lot, lately.

UN AND OXFAM CAUGHT BRIBING NEW ZEALAND MEDIA TO WRITE CRUSADING CLIMATE STORIES.

In the US, way back on New Year’s Day 1970, Walter Cronkite marched into CBS’s news offices and bellowed, “God damn it, we’ve got to get on this environmental story,” according to one of his producers — and Uncle Walter’s network has been producing endless crusading climate stories ever since. In 1990, Andrea Mitchell claimed that when it comes to environmentally themed stories, “clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you’d have to call it advocacy.” And in 2007, old media house organ Editor & Publisher was advising its customers that when it comes to “Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity, Newspapers.”

I’m sure the Kiwi equivalent of the MSM appreciated the extra walking-around money, but how much bribery was really needed to sway them?

(Via SDA.)

YA THINK? Germany’s warm welcome to Syria’s refugees is earning the country good press, but it may also be sowing the seeds of long-term agony.