Archive for 2017
May 10, 2017
STOP ME IF YOU THINK YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE: Democrats again fall short in a closely-watched election.
Democrats again fell just short in a closely-watched election as Heath Mello lost the Omaha mayoral race on Tuesday after a fierce debate within the national party over his anti-abortion views.
His loss was a setback for supporters who argued that the Democratic National Committee and abortion rights groups were wrong to attack the anti-abortion former state senator.
It was also another near miss for Democrats fighting in typically Republican territory since Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. Democrats lost a special election for a House seat in Kansas and narrowly missed an outright win in a special election in Georgia.
Left unsaid is that Georgia special election
:RICHARD EPSTEIN OF THE HOOVER INSTITUTE ON GENDER@FACEBOOK:
The best explanation for the lack of gender parity at organizations like Facebook is that the founders are self-selected from a larger talent pool of males at the far right of the ability distribution, without any affirmative action pressures. In starting new companies, major entrepreneurs—from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg—do not have to share their wealth. But once these superstars create a successful firm, like Facebook, they choose to use some of their profits to subsidize female engineers for a variety of reasons—which, as private firms, they are entitled to do. But any claim that they act with some form of implicit bias against female engineers is, as of yet, not supported by any credible evidence.
Since when do SJWs need actual evidence to agitate? Particularly when the base needs to remain fired up (read: really angry) for 2018 and 2020.
I DON’T KNOW, BUT I’M POSITIVE IT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH IMMIGRATION: Why is Minnesota experiencing the worst measles outbreak in nearly 30 years?
THE END OF REFORM? Federal Court Rules Firing of Felon Phoenix VA Director Unconstitutional.
THE WOES OF THE FEMINIST SJW: So Empowered, Yet Oppressed By Everything.
RUDE, CRUDE, AND NUDE: The face of modern motherhood?
Before becoming Secretary of Education, DeVos helped devise Detroit’s charter school system, about which one study concluded:
Based on the findings presented here, the typical student in Michigan charter schools gains more learning in a year than his TPS counterparts, amounting to about two months of additional gains in reading and math. These positive patterns are even more pronounced in Detroit, where historically student academic performance has been poor. These outcomes are consistent with the result that charter schools have significantly better results than TPS for minority students who are in poverty.
You’d think that Bethune-Cookman University alums would welcome the woman who helped so many students improve their grades enough to have hopes of attending a school like Bethune-Cookman University.
WAIT, I THOUGHT IT WAS TOXIC: Does Testosterone Help Protect Men From Asthma?
JAMES LILEKS ON GARRISON KEILLOR’S LATEST COLUMN: “No matter what the topic, his hatred of the right is always waiting in the wings to take the stage like Daffy Duck beating a bass drum and clashing cymbals. Wrap it up with some sonorous booshwa that sounds American — the ribbon of highway, the land that goes on, and new life where a man can still learn things, like the math he couldn’t grasp because a kid in fourth-grade had gas:”
Now the paragraph that gives you the bitter pit at the heart of the old mealy fruit:
At home I try to be kind, but out here, to the disgruntled voter who feels ignored by Washington, I say, “Put away the 12-pack and the three-cheese chips, lose the gut, stop smoking, turn off the TV. Papa is not responsible for your sad life. Go back to school, arise at dawn, take brisk walks, think big, show your kids how it’s done.” That’s me talking at 70 mph.
That’s a man driving in the dark, yelling at farmhouses and angry about wasabi potato chips. You wonder if he had to invent a fictional place full of curious Lutherans because the actual residents of such a place were a constant disappointment.
Read the whole thing. But no need to wonder — that’s exactly what Keillor believes, as quoted in his New York Times profile last year, when he retired from NPR at age 73:
Curiously, Mr. Keillor has always found it difficult spending so much time with the strong, good-looking, above average people of Lake Wobegon, which he based on his relatives, past and present.
In “The Keillor Reader” (2014), he complained bitterly about “their industriousness, their infernal humility, their schoolmarmish sincerity, their earnest interest in you, their clichés falling like clockwork — it can be tiring to be around.”
Speaking on his porch, Mr. Keillor said of Lake Wobegonians, i.e., his relatives, “I am frustrated by them in real life.” They were too controlled by good manners, he said, and “have a very hard time breaking through.”
So why devote so much of his professional life ruminating about them? “It’s the people I think I know,” he replied.
Will he miss them, and the weekly jolt of the show?
“No,” he replied. “No.”
Something tells me the feeling is mutual. Or as Paul Johnson wrote in Intellectuals, “Disregard for truth and the preference for ideas over people marks the true secular individual.”
Significant and worthwhile tax reform might get voters excited enough for the GOP to beat the historical norm and keep the House next year. But based on the record so far this year, I’ve been working under the assumption that the norm holds and the House returns to the Democrats.
Unless things change, the GOP is going to look back on 2017-2019 as a wasted opportunity, which is exactly opposite of how Democrats remember 2009-2011.
REVEALED: The secret deal the Associated Press made with the Nazis during WWII.
The report includes documents recently declassified at the request of AP’s management, including letters of approval from a wartime censorship office run by an ex-AP editor who reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As part of the arrangement, AP shared pictures of U.S. war operations and Allied advances, which were reviewed by Hitler and published in Nazi publications.
“With one known exception, the AP images that appeared in German publications through this arrangement were unaltered by the Germans, “ the report said, “but captions were rewritten by the Germans to conform to official Nazi views.”
U.S. counterintelligence agents unaware of the approval found “definite proof” that the AP was “engaged in operations coming within the purview of the Trading with the Enemy Act,” according to a document referenced in AP’s report. The case wasn’t pursued.
In an interview this week, AP officials strongly defended the arrangement, saying it was conducted in neutral countries, and that there was tremendous news value in offering its newspaper customers photos of Hitler and German military activities — even if the photos were taken by Nazis, who were expert propagandists.
Nothing sinister here, just an unusual — but White House-approved — arrangement for getting news out of a hostile totalitarian regime during wartime.
DESPITE THE INCREASE, THE ABSOLUTE RISKS ARE STILL LOW: Pain Relievers Tied to Immediate Heart Risks.
As a population, though, Americans are taking these at much higher rates than a few decades ago, yet heart attacks aren’t more common, in fact they’re less so. So what gives?
PREDICTION: MANY PEOPLE WILL SUFFER AVOIDABLE AGONY, BUT THE ADDICTION PROBLEM WON’T GET BETTER. New Jersey’s new opioid law raises concerns among doctors.
FEW NEW TAX IDEAS EVER DO: Why the Carbon Tax Is An Idea That Won’t Go Away.