HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: New Diversity Initiatives Hurt the University of Wisconsin’s Campus Climate. “Campus ‘diversity’ entails not only having a critical mass of students from various groups, but also trying to ensure that those students never suffer any of the annoyances that are a normal part of life.”
Archive for 2016
December 14, 2016
GROWTH: Donald Trump’s Pledge to Loosen Regulations on Businesses Is a Heavy Lift.
Mr. Trump has said his administration will take aim at regulations across industries, and he will be backed by congressional Republicans eager to undo some of the more controversial Obama administration initiatives. Big targets include power-plant regulations and regulatory rules imposed on banks and financial institutions after the financial crisis of 2008, though the effort will also reach deep into the federal bureaucracy to include rules involving labor, telecommunications and health care.
Mr. Trump has a handful of ways to reach his goal, but they mostly point to a slow death of attrition for the Obama rules rather than an immediate elimination. He can opt not to defend rules currently tied up in court. His federal agencies can write new rules to justify revoking the ones he wants to eliminate. He can work with the GOP-controlled Congress to nullify recently completed regulations and restrict funding to certain parts of departments as a de facto way to hamstring a rule’s force.
The mere promise of regulatory easing ought to get money moving back off the sidelines. Delivering on the promise would really get things going.
IT’S OFFICIAL: Trump Picks Former Texas Governor Perry as Energy Secretary.
This should cause more than a few sleepless nights throughout the Department.
ASHE SCHOW: Could the Education Department’s Title IX overreach be nearing an end?
For those working at OCR, Clinton’s loss was a huge blow.
At an event held last week to honor the accomplishments of OCR, attendees were solemn, according to a report from the Weekly Standard’s Alice Lloyd, who noted “tearful sniffling and prayerful entreaties to stay strong and keep the faith” at the event.
Attendees praised the 66,000 investigations conducted during the Obama administration and the 34 “policy guidance documents” issued in the past eight years. The documents mandated rules for sexual interactions, gender segregation as it relates to bathrooms and transgender students and racial equity in disciplinary cases.
Education Secretary John King told the audience that “the work of OCR is just critical to the mission of schools to save lives.”
Former Assistant Secretary Russlyn Ali – who resigned following criticism of the 2011 Dear Colleague letter – provided a video statement to the audience. “OCR’s job is to protect young people, and young people and their teachers and communities need to have faith that OCR will respond to them. So call on it,” she said.
As has been demonstrated numerous times, OCR’s job, in practice, almost exclusively protects young women and LGBT students who accuse others of sexual abuse. For the most part, men need not apply. . . .
While Trump didn’t make explicit demands for Title IX reforms during his campaign, it is assumed by many on both sides of the issue — based on his aversion to “PC culture” and promises to rollback President Barack Obama’s executive overreach — that he will scale back or reverse some of the Dear Colleague letters of the past decade.
Even if that assumption proves correct, addressing inequities on college campuses could subsumed for a time by higher priority agenda items. Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos is an advocate of school choice, which seems to be a more central focus.
And when a Trump administration does get around to overturning past Dear Colleague letters and directives, the culture on college campuses is so ingrained that it could still take years if not decades to reverse.
Actually, I think regulations requiring that sexual assault complaints be directed to police, and mandating equal treatment for male students, could make a big difference, and pretty fast.
ERDOGAN’S PURGE: Turkey detains over 550 suspects in anti-terror sweep.
A total of 568 people have been arrested across Turkey on terrorism charges since Monday, the Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday.
Anti-terror operations, which began Monday, were carried out in 28 provinces to detain the suspects that included members of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who had allegedly participated in activities organized by the PKK terrorist organization and spread propaganda on its behalf, the ministry said in a statement.
The suspects included HDP officials from Adana, Balikkesir, Sanliurfa, Mersin, MAnisa, Eskisehir and Gaziantep.
How many of these arrests are actually connected to terrorism is impossible to know, because “anti-terror” is Erdogan’s Turkey is often just a cover for “anti-Kurd.”
WHY ARE FEMINISTS SO NASTY AND HATEFUL TOWARD PRETTY WOMEN? Feminists Love To Hate Melania Trump, And It’s Hurting Their Cause.
Related: Feminists Take a Swing at Kellyanne Conway—and Whiff Totally. “To be clear, there is very little that has come out of Kellyanne Conway’s mouth the last couple of months I have agreed with. But of all of the things for feminists, including myself, to take issue with, her comments about motherhood should not be on the list. The fact that liberal leaning publications attacked her shows just how out of touch they are with many women across this country and their values, and it explains why so many in the East Coast media bubble remain shocked these women didn’t vote for Hillary – and their specific brand of feminism.”
You mean “Mean Girls” feminism? “These attacks on Conway were irresponsible, and are a perfect case study in why some younger women eschew the feminist label. After all, why would they want to be part of a group that seems like a less-fun sorority?”
JILL GLAM’S RECOUNTS FLOP: Why pick Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, Jill? Neil Cavuto asks her that. Her answers strike me as fog, but judge for yourself. (Background on Jill Glam and Hillary Scam.)
THE NEXT STAGE OF TRUMP’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN OUTREACH: Ray Lewis after meeting with Donald Trump: ‘Black or white is irrelevant.’ “Urban development and job creation are everything, . . . What we believe with the Trump administration is if we can combine these two powers of coming together — forget black or white. Black or white is irrelevant. The bottom line is job creation and economic development in these urban areas to change the whole scheme of what our kids see.”
Plus: “I fell in love with him because he really talks about helping African American, black people and that’s why I’m here.”
December 13, 2016
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: This Northwest timber county hadn’t voted GOP since Herbert Hoover. But times have changed. Mister, we could use some men like Herbert Hoover again.
Plus: “And while they did not generate a single electoral vote for the president-elect, who lost by substantial statewide margins in Washington, Oregon and California, they did send a defiant message that coal country and the declining manufacturing core of the Midwest are not the only ‘old’ economic regions where many working-class families feel that the Democratic Party has forgotten them and the role they played in building the country.”
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: IBM unveils plan to hire 25,000 in US on eve of Trump meeting.
DEMOCRATS HAVE A HARD TIME REACHING THE “ACCEPTANCE” STAGE: 2 weeks ago it was Nazis, last week voter fraud, this week, Russians.
UPDATE: John Kass: Clinton Democrats build a mind palace.
The Clinton Democratic left has created a vast mind palace, an artificial world where they may craft a safe space, protected from post-traumatic Trump (election) disorder.
In this pleasant mind palace of theirs, where they don’t have to address Democratic failings, Hillary Clinton’s numerous faults and stupendous strategic blunders, two things stand out:
The CIA is now the left’s champion of truth and beauty.
And Russia, once the friend of the useful American left, is now its enemy.
Well, ever since the Hitler/Stalin pact, they’ve been accustomed to turning the party line on a dime.
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2016 CAN’T CONCLUDE SOON ENOUGH: Growing Pains Star Alan Thicke Dead at Age 69.
OFF-GRID SOLAR PANEL POWER IN RURAL AFRICA: This is a VOA report.
More than 600 million people in Africa have no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. But new technology could provide the solution. So-called off-grid solar systems have plummeted in price. Now consumers can spread the cost by renting the equipment and paying for the electricity as they need it, for less than a-half-dollar a day.
This isn’t a new idea. Developmental aid groups have been pushing this for at least two decades, in Africa and elsewhere. In 2003 I attended a presentation in Washington by an Afghan-American who had an off-grid “solar home” concept. He wanted to help isolated areas in Afghanistan but he believed his concept had utility in any locale with sufficient sunlight. If I recall correctly, the fellow was an electrical engineer. His design was simple, but included a storage battery so that a family could have a light for three or four hours during the evening. This was an aid to education. The light would give children the opportunity to read and do homework. As solar panel electrical generation efficiency improved and storage batteries improved (and over time he thought both would), he hoped his system could support a very small refrigeration unit to store medicines and milk. This would help improve family health.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The ‘H-Bomb’ Fizzles—The Harvard Brand Takes A Hit.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: “Want to shut the media from talking about the Russian ties of your new secretary of state? Do like President Trump, and meet with Kanye West.” As Don Surber writes, “President Trump wins another news cycle. Kanye dig it?”
DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS: George Stephanopoulos’ wife told ‘The View’ their upset 14-year-old girl screamed ‘no abortions!’ when Trump won.
Are you sure that’s what she screamed? Perhaps it was actually “Now, Australia!!!”, which is where her parents vowed to move if Trump won.
Any word yet when the Stephanopoulae will begin packing their bags?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Men Don’t Like Funny Women. I dunno, I had an anthropology TA in college who was hilarious. Her last name was Foxworthy, and I’ve often wondered if she was any relation to Jeff. But I think the evolutionary psychology point here is sound.
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ACTUAL HEADLINE IN THE WASHINGTON POST: Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow objectivists.
Would that it were true, but somehow I doubt very much that Rand — who famously proposed a 1962 collection of her anti-Kennedy essays be published under the title “The Fascist New Frontier,” until Bennett Cerf, her editor got an understandable case of cold feet — would have approved of Trump’s cronyism and foreign policies.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Lefties always seem especially afraid of Ayn Rand supporters. I think that’s because — at least until recently — Randians were almost the only people on the right who were both unafraid of lefties and willing to call leftism, even in its comparatively mile FDR form, immoral. Both traits can be very triggering.
LOOKING BACK AT THE historical origins of political correctness.
NOEMIE EMERY: Disgrace Under Pressure:
A month after the surprise election of Donald Trump in November (surprising to noone more than to Trump and Clinton), the losers are still working through the stages of anguish in ways that seem strange to many observers but of which they appear oddly proud.
Not only do they brag of the length and intensity of their bouts of sobbing —”crying as if someone died” was a common description — but, as New York magazine reported days later, professional women all over the country are making a brave stand to protest Trump’s election by doing hideous things to their hair. Because “the election results felt like an attack on minorities, women, and marginalized people in general,” a “vegan chef” cut her hair off to send Trump a “message.” Others like her got buzz cuts, flat tops or tossed out their extensions, and went platinum, or black.
Unfortunately, there was not a chance in the world that this message would reach Trump, or that he would care if he got it, but somehow the logic of making themselves ugly in the interests of spiting a well-know connoisseur of feminine pulchritude just seemed the right thing to do. . . .
Ever solicitous, the Post’s Style section would go on for days if not weeks with heartwarming tales of a congregation left scared and shaken, a planned “happy hour” at a wellness spa in Takoma Park that became a tear-sodden venture, and a man in rude health who stayed up till 5 when the last votes were in, called in sick to his office and spent the whole day in bed. Ah, Democrats, where the men are all weak, and the women odd-looking. But when have we heard this before? Perhaps the last time the Democrats lost an election they thought they were winning, and showed the same resilience and fortitude.
“Democrats Shellshocked by Bush Win Over Kerry,” ran the piece in World News Daily on November 11, 2004. “The Florida-based American Health Association has released symptoms of what it calls ‘post-election selection trauma’ or PEST, which include: feelings of withdrawal … isolation … anger and bitterness, loss of appetite, sleeplessness … moodiness [and] endless sulking,’ though no mentions yet about hair. “Manhattan psychologist Bonnie Maslin said many of her patients cried about the lost election,” Newsday reported days earlier.
“They talked about hopelessness … the level of devastation is enormous. Patients are saying they feel that the things they cherish and value are under siege.” Republicans felt the same things 2008 and 2012, but they went on ticking. Never change, Democrats, we need you, if just as examples of what not to do when things go against you: Grace under pressure, indeed.
Yeah, this month-long national freakout makes me wonder if Democrats are actually ready for democracy.
ANNALS OF DISCRIMINATION: Man Told to Leave Six Flags Because He Looked Too Much Like Santa Claus. “Sorry, St. Nick, but the only behavior males should exhibit around children is stony-faced oblivion while running in the opposite direction.”