Archive for 2017
March 22, 2017
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: In anti-intellectual email, Wellesley profs call engaging with controversial arguments an imposition on students.
While paying lip service to free speech, the email is remarkable in its contempt for free and open dialogue on campus. Asserting that controversial speakers “impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley,” the committee members lament the fact that such speakers negatively impact students by forcing them to “invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers’ arguments.”
And here we thought learning to effectively challenge views with which one disagreed was an important part of the educational process!
They don’t do education at Wellesley. They do indoctrination
I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: Ezekiel Emanuel, an ACA architect, is now advising Trump as GOP works to level the law.
With the administration and GOP leaders in Congress working to rewrite the landmark 2010 law – and Democrats displaying little appetite for negotiating with them – Emanuel appears to be one of the only members of his party with a seat at the table.
Monday’s meeting was Emanuel’s third in-person conversation on health policy with Trump since the November election. According to one person familiar with the session, who spoke on condition of anonymity about the private discussion, it took place in the Oval Office and lasted about 40 minutes. Among the others also attending were Vice President Pence, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and the White House National Economic Council director, Gary Cohn.
Details of the conversation were not immediately available. But White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed the meeting took place – only days before Ryan hopes to bring the bill to a House vote.
FLASHBACK: OBAMACARE ARCHITECT EZEKIEL EMANUEL: Die Young, Please.
AND: RATIONING: In Top Journal, Obamacare Boosters Push ‘Global Spending Target.’
THE HILL: Key conservative: GOP doesn’t have votes on healthcare repeal.
Maybe they should offer a better bill, one that actually fulfills all their campaign promises. Just a thought.
GOOD: Failed North Korean missile exploded ‘within seconds,’ US says.
US officials confirmed North Korea had attempted to launch a missile near Kalma, on the country’s east coast, but early reports suggest it failed.
“South Korea and the US are aware of the missile launch and to their knowledge North Korea’s missile was not successfully launched,” South Korea’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Neither the US nor South Korea have released information on what type of missile was fired, or why it failed. The US Pacific Command said it was working with partners to assess it further.
Given North Korea’s geography, it wouldn’t be difficult for the US Navy to enforce a “missile launch quarantine” on Pyongyang.
MURKY BATTLELINES: The Race to Raqqa Could Cost Trump Turkey.
You can barely keep track of the players even with a scorecard, but here’s the gist:
“The situation has gotten very complicated, and we’re on the verge of a fierce war,” said Ilham Ahmed, the co-chair of the SDF’s [Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes the U.S.-supported YPG Syrian Kurdish fighters] political wing. “We are still getting support from the Americans, but if the Turkish attacks continue, we won’t be able to focus our efforts on Raqqa.”
The Kurdish-led forces’ fight with Turkey has also led them to pursue a tentative rapprochement with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Earlier this month, these groups invited the Syrian government to take control of several villages near the front line with Turkey – apparently seeing the Syrian government presence as a potential buffer against a Turkish advance.
“We believe that the use of terms such as opposition or regime supporters, despite its importance, it has to be put on the back burner,” said Sihanouk Dibo, a senior presidential advisor to the PYD.
On the other side of Syria’s battle lines, Abu Waleed, a commander with the Turkish-backed Sultan Mourad brigades, is preparing for the coming war with the Kurdish forces. He speaks warmly of the “historic stance” Turkey took in favor of the Syrian uprising, saying that it is the “only one that is standing with the Free Syrian Army.”
Got that? Turkey supports one group of rebels which includes terrorists. We support another group of rebels which includes Kurds which the Turks claim, apparently with some justification, includes terrorists. Turkey’s rebels are spoiling for a fight with “our” rebels who are cozying up to the Assad regime they’re rebelling against. Everybody is racing to take Raqqa away from ISIS, but nobody wants anyone else to take it first.
Raqqa isn’t so much a powder keg as it is a whirlpool, filled with knives, sucking everyone in.
GUNS JUST KEEP GETTING SAFER: Gun safety best ever, accidental deaths at new low, 0.3% of all in 2015.
WELL, THE LEFT IS THE CENTER OF ANTI-SEMITISM TODAY: Leftist Anti-Semitic Fliers Appear on College Campus.
While the Left bends over backward to conflate Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters with Nazis, they might want to take a look in their own backyard.
A number of fliers have appeared on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago bearing viciously anti-Semitic comments equating so-called “white privilege” with so-called “Jewish privilege”. . . .
Other fliers appeared in the above post’s comments, including one making the monstrous analogy that the terrorist-run Gaza is actually an Israeli-run Auschwitz.
Another flier argues that Jews make up a disproportionate number of students enrolled at various well-respected schools such as Harvard and Columbia due to special privileges rather than objectively qualified accomplishments. One flier took issue with a university that dismissed an employee due a tweet regarding the “genocide in Palestine,” and another flier argued in favor of Holocaust denial.
Notably, many of the posts are tagged with #BlackLivesMatter and #WeAreAllMuslim.
Charming, but not surprising.
THAT’S IT. WE’RE LIVING IN A PULP UNIVERSE:Massive ‘anomaly’ lurks beneath ice in Antarctica.
ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A CONSERVATIVE: A New McCarthyism in Hollywood?
NIGHTMARE INDUCING: My new vagina almost ruined my partner’s penis.
HAUNTED BY NON-EXISTENT RESTAURANTS? IT’S NOT SCIENCE FICTION: That awesome delivery restaurant you love doesn’t actually exist.
MORE DISPATCHES FROM THE CULTURE WAR:Watch where you step.
FOR EVERYTHING TURN, TURN, TURN: The Work of the Weavers.
TRY #7 ARM, MANNY: This climber lost his legs, so he built robotic replacements.
March 21, 2017
OUT: FAKE NEWS. IN: FAKE TWEETS. Pressure Grows on Twitter CEO Dorsey Amid Bot Scandal. A recent report estimated that 15% of Twitter’s users were robots. Honestly, that’s lower than I would have guessed. . . .
IS THERE ANYTHING TRUMP CAN’T DO? He’s got the New York Times and the LA Times calling for sanctions on employers who hire illegal aliens.
Based on the Knoxville experience, where just one well-publicized employer arrest produced a huge change in the local employment scene, that works.
TONY KATZ ON TOMI LAHREN. Okay, two thoughts of mine: (1) There are both pro-life and pro-choice libertarians. Libertarianism doesn’t answer the question. (2) When you announce you’re pro-choice on The View, it’s probably because you’re planning on moving out of right-leaning media and into legacy media, which comes across as opportunistic.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Secret Service had removed alarm sensors from fence intruder scaled.
The fence-jumper who wandered around the White House complex for 17 minutes was able to elude the Secret Service in part because the agency has taken down alarm sensors along an area of one fence that he scaled, according to two sources familiar with details of the incident.
The intruder, identified as Jonathan Tran, was able to jump over three different fences, including at least one between the Treasury Department and the east area of the White House complex shortly before midnight March 10.
Tran was able to scale that particular area of the fence without setting off alarms because they had been removed, leading to confusion among officers about his whereabouts and whether an intruder was inside the White House complex, the sources told the Examiner.
Trump still has his private security, right?
DEMOCRATS IN 2017: Susan Rice, who went on all the Sunday shows peddling the Benghazi YouTube lie, now has an oped in the Washington Post titled When the White House twists the truth, we are all less safe. Pathetic of WaPo to run this.
And speaking of less safe, “The troika made up of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Hillary Clinton was perhaps the most disastrous foreign policy crew in American history.”
UPDATE: Trump’s credibility is shot, says . . . Jen Psaki? Really, CNN? That’s what you’ve got?
Of course, if legacy media banned Obama officials who lied to the public, they wouldn’t be able to have many Obama officials on. . . .
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Europe’s first sex robot brothel FORCED OUT of base as prostitutes complain of competition. “Lumidolls – a pun on a Spanish slang term for prostitute – is believed to be the first such brothel to open in Europe after similar venues in places like Japan and China were hugely popular.”
POINT: Live-Action ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Is Magnificent.
COUNTERPOINT: The New ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Adds Way Too Much.
PJM reports. You decide.