Archive for 2017
February 2, 2017
ASIA PIVOT: Chinese Aircraft Carrier Program Progressing Substantially Into the New Year.
The country’s sole carrier, the refurbished Soviet-era Kuznetsov-class ship, now renamed the Liaoning, was declared “combat ready” in November by Senior Capt. Li Dongyou, the political commissar onboard the ship as it departed for a training cruise that included a stopover at the purpose-built pier at the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) base near Sanya on Hainan island on the edge of the South China Sea.
The ship sailed with a battle group comprising of several PLAN destroyers, frigates and corvettes, while the Liaoning itself carried more than a dozen Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark carrier-borne fighters and several Harbin Z-9 and Changhe Z-18 helicopters onboard, including at least two Z-18J airborne early warning (AEW) helicopters.
Meanwhile, the same shipyard at Dalian that refurbished the Liaoning is building China’s second carrier. Known for now as the 001A — the Liaoning was designated the Type 001 — the new carrier is broadly similar to the Liaoning and retains the ski jump for launching aircraft, but contains a revised flight deck arrangement and other differences.
China’s carriers are vulnerable, outdated, and carry an almost pitiably-small aircraft complement. But the lessons China is learning about training, doctrine, and operations are priceless.
THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO HOLD THE RIGHT ATTITUDES TODAY: How today’s academia risks outraging tomorrow’s historians. What should universities learn from their history with slavery? How about humility?
After all, the views of university professors have, if anything, become more uniform in recent years — and perhaps dangerously so.
It’s not just that academics claim consensus on issues such as manmade global warming. It’s not even their unflagging belief that the government is in the best position to determine how capital is allocated in our economy.
No: Modern academia also seems certain that gender is a “social construct” — and that surgically altering our bodies so they resemble those of the opposite sex is a good idea. A new survey, meanwhile, shows that less than a quarter of Americans think people should be able to legally change their sex. And while Americans have long been evenly divided on the question of abortion, one survey showed that 99 percent of Ivy League professors want no restrictions on abortion at all.
Diversity of opinion has been curtailed on campus so much that professors — even those with total job security — don’t want to rock the boat by disagreeing with the campus orthodoxy.
Maybe we’ll look back some day and conclude that we permanently disfigured thousands of young people in a misguided effort to “treat” a psychological disorder. Maybe we’ll see that abortion really was a moral outrage on par with slavery or forced sterilization.
Today’s intellectual elites have no interest in questioning such practices, let alone stopping them. But don’t worry: They can say they’re sorry later.
Hey, the progressive eugenicists never paid a price.
CHANGE: Fox Business beats CNBC in total viewers for 4th straight month. Fox Business, honestly, has more programs I like than Fox News. I especially like Kennedy.
KURT EICHENWALD: Neil Gorsuch Is Supremely Qualified, and Must Not Be Confirmed.
Gorsuch, unfortunately, must be sacrificed on the altar of obscene partisanship erected by the Republicans in recent years. Temper tantrums designed to undermine the Constitution for naked political purposes cannot be rewarded. Our government cannot survive the short-term games-playing that has replaced fidelity to the intent of the Founding Fathers’ work in forming this once-great nation.
This goes back to the unconscionable decision of Republicans who refused to consider any nominee put forward by President Barack Obama following the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama nominated Merrick Garland, another eminently qualified candidate who served as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second most important court in the nation. But in a decision that will go down as one of the greatest abuses of the Constitution in this nation’s history, the Senate’s Republican majority, under the leadership of their unprincipled majority leader, Mitch McConnell, declared they would not give Garland hearings, would not examine his qualifications and would not take a vote.
Instead, they made up a rule: A nominee for the Supreme Court can be considered for only three-quarters of any president’s term. In the fourth year, confirmations have to wait until after the election. And so the Supreme Court has been hobbled for coming up on one year—and, because the confirmation hearings will inevitably drag on, for months more to come.
It’s called “the Biden rule,” Kurt. Named after its author, Democrat Senator Joe Biden. You might have heard of him. He was Democrat President Barack Obama’s Democrat Vice President for the last eight years. Anyway, Joe came up with the Biden Rule in 1992 when the Democrats controlled the Senate, to stop Republican President Bush from naming a conservative to the court during the last quarter of his Administration. Some might have considered that a partisan act.
And a Republican-controlled Senate seems, shall we say, somewhat unlikely to tip the ideological balance of the Senate leftward, Kurt, when they have been armed with a weapon of pure partisanship — the nuclear option — forged by Democrat Harry Reid. You might have heard of him, too. Reid once used Senate trickery to pass ObamaCare over the strenuous objections of 41 Republican Senators — including a brand-new Republican Senator sent there by the people of Massachusetts, Kurt, for the express purpose of stopping Reid’s partisan antics. But Reid was a wily devil and overturned a couple centuries of Senate rules and traditions to pass the most partisan major legislation since… ever, maybe.
So if the GOP installs Neil Gorsuch — who earned his previous position with the vote of every single Senate Democrat — without a single Democrat vote, it will be thanks to the normalization of hyperpartisanship… by Democrats.
It might not be a very tasty sandwich, Kurt, but it’s Biden and Reid’s recipe.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: The Kids Can’t Write (or Reason). “Nearly 500 people — all college graduates — applied for a communications job at Marc Tucker’s organization. Candidates were asked to write a one-page summary of a report published last year. ‘Only one could produce a satisfactory summary,’ writes Tucker.”
NEVER MIND, I JUST WENT ON THE FLOOR: Family Finds Rattlesnake in Toilet.
OH, HERE IS MY SHOCKED FACE: GOP Defectors Have Received Thousands From Teachers Union.
BUT, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, OBAMA HAD A D AFTER HIS NAME: When it comes to callousness on Syrian refugees, Obama trumps Trump.
QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE, PRIUS DEMENTAT: Grassroots rage and the Democrats’ crackup.
NO, NO, NO, THERE ARE NO REPUBLICAN OR LIBERTARIAN GAYS. FACT: Sorry: the gay rage at Trump is just ridiculous. (Yes, yes, I know at least one of you has my phone number. I’m just saying what the left is sure is true.)
DUMPING KIDS INTO SCHOOL SYSTEMS WITH NO CAPACITY TO ACCOMMODATE THEM IS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER: How Trump’s refugee order targets educational injustice.
ROGER SIMON ON MILO AT BERKELEY: Looking for Mr. Good Anarchist.
NEW ENTREE AT THE LIBERAL CANNIBAL CAFE: Wild: Clinton team blames Obama for election loss.
WHY YOU HATE SOCIAL MEDIA: Let’s start with Jim Geraghty of NRO on the horrors of Twitter:
Christopher Cooper – a.k.a. “Coop” – is an artist with some libertarian sensibilities known for skateboards, concert posters, album covers. He noted Monday night that he’s thinking of leaving Twitter. His thoughts, cleaned-up for a family newsletter:
Had lunch today with a friend (with way more twitter followers that me) and we both agreed we’re just about ready to shutter our accounts. Neither of us needs the promotion badly enough to deal with the constant barrage of ****heads. If you tweet about politics, you get trolled by ****s, and if you deliberately do not tweet about politics, you get attacked by “woke” ****s. I’ve also seen too many of my friends on here get threats against their families from ****heads & I don’t want to go down that road.
Whatever Twitter once was – I initially used it to stay in touch with far-off friends – it’s now a way to reach a mass audience. Almost anyone can interact with almost anyone. The bad news is, this gives almost anyone in the world an ability to send you messages, and to do so anonymously. No inventor ever likes to contemplate the worst possible application of their new creation; surely Jack Dorsey didn’t think in 2006, “Hey, I’ve just found an amazing way to empower racists, stalkers, psychos, and the most malevolent voices in society!”
Will Rogers famously said he never met a man he didn’t like. Put him on Twitter today and within a week he would turn into H.L. Mencken. Jean-Paul Sartre was close; Hell is other people on Twitter.
The world is full of people who you would never choose to have a conversation with – not because you aren’t open minded or you’re hypersensitive, but because you have better things to do with your life than to spend time around people who mock, berate, sneer, or just overall hate you. And yet, on Twitter, they’re metaphorically right in front of you. Yes, you can block them with the touch of the button. But very few people like being hated, or being reminded that they are hated. And in 2017 America, whatever your view on politics is, someone hates you for holding that view, and is eager to let you know how much they hate you.
(All of this should be a deep, deep concern to the Twitter company.)
So why is anyone on Twitter? Because there’s positive feedback, and that feels good. It feels like an affirmation. You’re right. People agree with you. People like you. They like your one-line joke, your thought, your snappy headline, your photo of what you’re about to eat. Every once in a while, they react in ways that make you think or reconsider what you thought before.
On Twitter, the ratio of useful/enjoyable interaction to useless/unenjoyable interaction has been steadily sliding in the wrong direction.
And now over to Bethany Mandel of the Federalist on the excesses of Facebook, or as she writes, “Facebook Dead At 12, A Victim Of 2016:”
One of my many friends also feeling this way, Sarah Barak, wrote on Facebook recently: “I feel hectored. I’ll be happier if I unfollow the worst offenders. It’s just too much and the constant negative coverage is affecting my happiness.” It’s not just in our imaginations; there’s plenty of social science research that indicates surrounding oneself with Negative Nancies has a way of turning you into a Negative Nancy also. It’s impossible to know for sure, but it seems many who were once politically ambivalent at best are now caught in a negative feedback loop, perpetually hysterical because all of their friends are as well.
The problem with Facebook political rants is this: It is not Twitter. I do not “follow” my high school best friends because of their insightful political commentary; I want to see updates on their lives and pictures of their adorable children. Unlike Twitter, I don’t want to unfollow or unfriend them because of their rants, because if I do so, I’ll miss out on the all-important baby announcements and updates.
If all you’re using Facebook for is to yell into the digital void about politics, you will find your audience for such rants is getting smaller by the minute. Sorry, random friends from all walks of life: I just don’t care what you think about Donald Trump today.
I hoped the tone would improve post-election, but with the inauguration and every statement or story out of the Trump administration, the hysteria remains at a fevered pitch. And I’m sick of it.
My solution, and that of many friends, has been significant or total disengagement from the social network, shifting usage to Instagram instead to catch most of those important baby and kid pictures.
This past weekend, a self-described Princeton neuroscientist, whose amygdala was suddenly hijacked by all things Trump, decided to take out his concerns over our new president by doing what any serious academic would do at that moment: he addressed his anger towards Dave Burge, aka Iowahawk, who was busy, as is his wont, tweeting photos of hot rod cars. “Glad to see brave conservatives face up to a Constitutional crisis with…Sunday car talk,” our brave Princeton neuroscientist speaking truth to gearhead tweeted to the Bard of Des Moines.
In response, Burge tweeted (among other things), “let me break it down for you, ‘neuroscientist’: I’m not a conservative, and not a public utility to argue on topics you choose.” Eventually, he followed up with a series of 36 Tweets on why he’s burning out on Twitter. I was hoping a site like Twitchy or Storify would link them together in one place, but I haven’t found it yet. But If you’re reading this post on the day it went up, go to Iowahawk’s Twitter homepage and keep scrolling, and you’ll come across it eventually. Exit quotes:
YOU HAVE TO HAVE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH LIKE AN HYENA: Fleeing the Trumpocaust.
HE DIED A HERO: Briton Ryan Lock ‘killed himself’ to avoid IS capture.
February 1, 2017
DON SURBER: Orrin Hatch Joins The Party Of Trump.
But what about comity?
What about the long-term implications?
What about straining relations between the parties?
Don’t care. Democrats have never cared. Why should Republicans?
Democrats tried this crap in Wisconsin in February 2011. Remember the shouting mobs Democrats sent to the Capitol in Madison? Meanwhile, Democrats left the state to try to stop the vote in the legislature.
But Republican Governor Scott Walker did not bend, and he became the first governor in our nation’s history to survive a recall election.
And in November, Wisconsin flipped red in the presidential race for the first time since 1984.
What Dems really hate about Trump is that he campaigns and governs with the no-holds-barred approach of a Democrat.
YOU KNOW, THIS SORT OF THING IS PROBABLY TORTIOUS, AT LEAST: Marquette’s Faculty Tries to Sabotage Ben Shapiro Event.
Marquette University’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom will host conservative political pundit Ben Shapiro in just over a week, and while the club anticipates a sold-out 500-person lecture hall, club members made a startling discovery: Marquette University’s faculty is attempting to sabotage the event.
Young America’s Foundation, the parent organization to Young Americans for Freedom chapters, has obtained screenshots from club members that show a Marquette faculty member explaining her plan to block students from hearing Shapiro speak. “I just got off the phone with one of the directors of diversity on campus,” wrote Chrissy Nelson, a program assistant at Marquette’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies. “The suggestion I received and will be promoting is to go to the mission week events that day, reserve a seat through Eventbrite as a student (to take a seat away from someone who actually would go) and not protest the day of.”
Perhaps we need legislation to ban political viewpoint discrimination at institutions receiving federal funds. With civil damages readily available.
Related: Model Legislation To Protect Free Speech On Campus.