ALAN DERSHOWITZ WORRIES: Bernie Sanders Anti-Semite?
Archive for 2016
June 5, 2016
STEVEN HAYWARD ON MEDIA COGNITIVE DISSONANCE:
As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, the mainstream media are Democrats with bylines, whose personal sympathies all lie with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
True, but the major media are also quickly dying. The head of CBS News remarked quite candidly a few months ago that Donald Trump was great for ratings, and therefore good for the bottom line at money-losing news divisions.
Which raises the following question: if you think purely in terms of professional self-interest, who would most reporters want to win in November?
Hint: Who would make for the best copy and on-air time for the next four years—boring Hillary, or The Donald?
This is why I counterintuitively think the media actually want Trump to win, and may well slant their coverage that way at the margin. Sure, most reporters are partisan liberals, but most of them would like to keep their jobs, too. A key clue will be whether the media cut Hillary any slack over the email scandal when the FBI report is finally released.
Stay tuned.
WHAT I SAW AT THE WHITE HOUSE SICKENED ME: Ex-Secret Service Agent Blows The Whistle On Hillary & Bill.
His book is currently #1 on Amazon.
SADLY, IT’S A RELIEF EVEN WHEN THEY GET THE OBVIOUS STUFF RIGHT: California Supreme Court: A Swiss Army Knife Is Not A “Dagger.”
I carry one of these in my car, but of course I live in the progressive state of Tennessee, where I could legally carry one of these in my car, or on my person.
NOTHING CREEPY ABOUT THAT: Religious fundamentalism could soon be treated as mental illness. “Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.”
“Other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society.” They will cure you, and you will love Big Brother.
YOU CAN’T ASK CHELSEA BECAUSE KIDS ARE OFF-LIMITS! Ezra Levant: Media quizzes Ivanka about her father’s treatment of women. Why not ask Chelsea, too?
DON SURBER: None Dare Call It Fascism.
FEMINIST RULES: MEN ARE AWFUL, EVEN WHEN THEY’RE ON YOUR SIDE. How to Spot a Brocialist: The Guys With Righteous Politics but a Dodgy Attitude to Girls.
HYPERGAMY’S COST: “Multiple studies show that college-educated Americans are increasingly reluctant to marry those lacking a college degree. This bias is having a devastating impact on the dating market for college-educated women. . . . The same women who are supposedly just desperate to get married, who want nothing more than to meet a nice guy who doesn’t drool all over himself, categorically reject the vast majority of men they come across without batting an eyelash—and then say the problem is there aren’t any good guys.”
Related prediction: Ordaining women will not stem the high rate at which men drop out of the Mormon church.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The knowledge economy is a myth. We don’t need more universities to feed it. “The idea of the knowledge economy is appealing. The only problem is it is largely a myth. Developed western economies such as the UK and the US are not brimming with jobs that require degree-level qualifications. For every job as a skilled computer programmer, there are three jobs flipping burgers. The fastest-growing jobs are low-skilled repetitive ones in the service sector. One-third of the US labour market is made up of three types of work: office and administrative support, sales and food preparation.”
MEH. THERE’S NOT A PINZGAUER IN THE BUNCH. 7 Cool Off-Road Rigs We Saw At Overland Expo West.
AT AMAZON, deals on Stanley Tools.
CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR:
Shot: Trump Would Have Qualms with Muslim Judge in Fraud Case, Too.
Chaser: Trump’s Jujitsu Overthrow of Liberalism:
In other words, with this seemingly reckless attack, Trump is once again performing a high public service that is long overdue. I still can’t tell if there’s a deliberateness behind Trump’s crazy genius, or whether this is all happening by weird instinct or randomness.
Did the left think it would hold a monopoly on identity politics forever?
FASTER, PLEASE: Stroke patients are walking again after being injected with stem cells.
People who’ve experienced a stroke have seen “remarkable” improvements in speech, strength, and mobility after having stem cells injected into their brains – with some even regaining the ability to walk.
It’s still very early days, but the success of this small trial suggests that we’ve seriously underestimated the brain’s ability to heal itself, and might one day be able to trigger it into regaining lost functionality.
“One 71-year-old woman could only move her left thumb at the start of the trial,” neurosurgeon and lead researcher, Gary Steinberg from Stanford University, told Andy Coghlan at New Scientist. “She can now walk and lift her arm above her head.”
This is the second trial that’s looked into how stem cell injections into patient’s brain can improve stroke recovery – a study carried out in the UK last year also showed similarly promising results in patients, more than a year after treatment. . . .
So how does it work? The technique involves injecting stem cells through a borehole in the skull into regions of the brain that are known to control motor movements, and which have been damaged by stroke.
The team still doesn’t know exactly how this helps mobility, but with each trial they’re getting a clearer picture of what’s going on, and it seems the key is triggering the brain to become ‘young’ again.
The injected stem cells are called mesenchymal stem cells, which in this trial had been donated from the bone marrow of two healthy donors, and were genetically engineered to express a gene called Notch1 – known to trigger brain development in babies. Each patient got either 2.5, 5, or 10 million of these cells.
In rats, researchers showed that these injected cells don’t seem to last more than a month in the brain, but during that time, they seem to secrete growth factors that triggered new connections to form between brain cells, and tissue regeneration.
So, adult stem cells again. Lots of progress there. As I’ve noted before: “When I started InstaPundit, the talk was all about embryonic stem cells. But it appears that much of the real action is in adult stem cells. I remember in 2004 Michael J. Fox flushed half (or more) of his fan base with an ad calling Republicans unscientific haters over this very issue.”
NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATT YGLESIAS: The WSJ quizzed Hanson Robotics’s lifelike creation Sophia on topics from U.S. presidential candidates to a robot’s place in the bedroom. “I am a female mechasexual.”
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1123.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CRYBULLY: Lindy West and Nihilistic Feminism.
If you read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind in 1987 and wondered how worse it could get and what sort of minds colleges would be shaping in the decades to come, here’s your answer.
FASTER, PLEASE. “OKAY!” Physicists discover an infinite number of quantum speed limits.
SO DRUDGE POINTS OUT THAT NUMBER ONE ON THE AMAZON BESTSELLERS LIST is the forthcoming Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Education in Illinois Is Dying. “Faculty and staff are nervous, too. Public universities across the state are laying people off at alarming rates. Chicago State University, the predominantly African-American school that has made national headlines lately for its rapid dismantling, laid off 300 employees this spring. A full 30 percent of its budget comes from the state; it now says it may not be able to open come fall if the impasse continues. Downstate, in the hamlet of Charleston, Eastern Illinois University has laid off 261 employees. Over in Macomb, at Western Illinois University, the number is 110.”
All is proceeding as I have foretold. And Chicago State, with a 12.8 percent graduation rate, richly deserves dismantling.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF VIOLENCE? A Weekend in Chicago: Where Gunfire Is a Terrifying Norm.
Maybe it’s because Chicago politicians are in bed with the gangs. Shockingly, there’s no mention of that in the NYT story.
Count on flower children at NPR to go over the edge with this issue. The problem isn’t the size and strength, and therefore power of professional football players. No, it’s — ready? — the evil game of football itself.
Commentator Frank Deford used to love football, but now he just drops bombs on it. On Wednesday’s Morning Edition on National Public Radio, Deford’s weekly commentary was titled “What Is Football Doing to Us as a People?” He asked on air “So what is football doing to us as a people? How do we explain an America that, alone in the world, so loves this savage sport?”
This is your taxpayer-funded broadcasting in action: Planned Parenthood selling dead baby parts is just a “women’s health” group aiding “medical research,” but the NFL is organized savagery.
Muhammad Ali’s death on Friday at age 74 is a reminder of how boxing declined rapidly after Ali retired from the ring. Not coincidentally, the apogee of Ali’s superstardom coincided with the last gasp of mass media. Ali’s real sparring partner in the 1970s was Howard Cosell, and the two together always guaranteed boffo ratings for ABC, during an era in which there were still only three commercial networks, so it was relatively easy for the mature Ali to stay on the tip of the mass American consciousness. Shortly after Ali retired, Cosell, his career at ABC rapidly declining, publicly renounced the sport that had made both men superstars. As Paul Beston wrote at City Journal on “The Ghost Sport,” the history of boxing pre and post-Ali, it was all downhill from there. Over the next few decades, the NFL could see a similar descent as well, especially if more and more parents decide that the sport is too dangerous for their kids, thus starving the college ranks and the NFL of new recruits.