TAXPAYER-FUNDED MARGINALIZATION: Young Americans for Freedom Labeled ‘Hate Group’ at UW Madison.
UPDATE: Ann Althouse points out that it’s students calling it a hate group, and petitioning the University.
Archive for 2017
January 7, 2017
DUDE, TRUMP HAS NOT YET BEGUN TO AGGRIEVE: Schumer Aggrieved At Being Called A Clown By Trump.
EMPLOYMENT: Some Blue-Collar Workers Probably Shouldn’t Do Pink Jobs.
Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Henry Higgins demands to know in “My Fair Lady.” These days, labor economists are asking the opposite question: Why can’t a man be more like a woman?
The decline of traditionally male blue-collar work like manufacturing has left many men adrift. There are growth industries, such as health care, where some of these men could get work. But they don’t seem to be taking advantages of the splendid opportunities to become home health care aides or day care workers. In part that’s because many of these jobs don’t start out paying as well as the manufacturing jobs these men have lost or had hoped to gain. But in part it seems to be because the work isn’t … well … manly enough.
“It’s not a skill mismatch, but an identity mismatch,” economist Lawrence Katz told the New York Times. “It’s not that they couldn’t become a health worker, it’s that people have backward views of what their identity is.”
This seems unnecessarily dismissive. If Katz lost his job as an economist, and had to take one changing the diapers of elderly patients, I’ve no doubt that he would find this emotionally difficult, but I wouldn’t say that this is because his preferences for his current occupation are “backward.” The patient-care work is necessary, and should be honored. It’s also, let’s be honest, much less pleasant than sitting in an office and writing about what other people should do with their working lives.
Moreover, people invest a lot in building up a professional identity, which helps make the work more bearable (and, by giving people pride in what they do, probably ensures that the work is better done). Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional.
Plus:
I wish I had a better idea what Plan B was. But the solution that economists and policy wonks have been pushing for decades — more education and transition into service work — is manifestly not working for a lot of people. Indeed, it sounds a lot like professional identity politics: The experts say that the solution to all problems is for everyone to be more like them.
Some related thoughts here.
APPARENTLY, EVERYBODY IS MAD AT DEBLASIO FOR BUMBLING SNOW-REMOVAL TODAY, NOT JUST PEOPLE IN STATEN ISLAND. I heard from a friend in Manhattan today that everyone is steaming, and that her Uber driver said he’d only seen one or two plows all day. Just making things easier for Hillary, I guess!
UPDATE: In the comments: “I’m sure it has something to do with Russian hacking.”
I’M POSTING THIS ED MORRISSEY COLUMN AGAIN BECAUSE EVERYONE SHOULD READ IT: Seven Tests That Can Keep Republicans from Screwing Up.
MEANWHILE, WOMEN ON AMERICAN CAMPUSES, THE BENEFICIARIES OF 50 YEARS OF FEMINISM, DEMAND “SAFE SPACES.” Female Kurdish fighters announce new training academies for Arab women to take on Isis in Syria.
2016 saw women’s participation in the fight greatly expand, Ms Abdullah said, with the formation of several new military councils designed to encourage the participation of freed Arab and Yazidi women across both Syria and Iraq.
In Manbij in particular, female residents were so inspired by the female YPJ soldiers who helped liberate them they have created their own all-female battalion to retake the neighbouring town of al-Bab.
Two units have now completed training for battle inside the umbrella Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition, Ms Abdullah said, and both a military training academy and college-style institution were being set up for 2017.
“Arab people were the predominant residents of the liberated areas. They were impressed when they saw that women participated in military affairs and played a leading role in clashes. This had important consequences…. From Shaddadi to Manbij, many women have joined us,” she said.
Good.
WHEN THE MOON IS IN THE SEVENTH HOUSE, AND JUPITER ALIGNS WITH MARS:
Starting January 7th and going through February 6th, 2017, all of the major planets will be moving direct (forward). Ancients saw this as a time of great fortune and a very opportune time.
This is the dawning of the Age of Trumpquarius. . . .
DAN HENNINGER OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Trump: FDR for Black Americans?
But of course. It’s not a coincidence that Milo Yiannopoulos, one of his earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, wrote that “Trump Would Be the Real First Black President” a year and a half ago.
In the 1970s, Tom Wolfe introduced into the American vernacular “Muggeridge’s Law,” named after the veteran British columnist, and stated that “We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.”
There needs to be a corollary for the age of social media and dysfunctional Beltway politics: It’s only a matter of time before today’s most insane trolling boast becomes tomorrow’s reality.
No word yet what 2009’s wannabe-FDR thinks about the notion of his successor donning the jaunty cigarette holder and fedora, however.
SCOTT ADAMS: Is The Onion Advising Democrats Now? I’m going with “yes.” Love the photo.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF MISOGYNY? New Republican Congresswoman, Puerto Rico’s First, Ignored By Univision.
TIM CARNEY: Democrats Refuse To Accept The Election Outcome — Again.
The last time Congressional Democrats peaceably accepted a GOP victory in the Electoral College was 1988. In 2000, 2004 and 2016, Democrats in Congress objected, tried to object, and generally disrupted the process of certifying the Electoral College vote. They did so with no substantive grounds, instead just for the political theater of it. . . .
This is part of a pattern of a specific species of political norm-smashing where Democrats seem to be leading the way: Refusing to concede when they lose.
Mike Dukakis was the last Democratic presidential nominee to concede on Election Night. Liberal protestors in many states shouted and protested the Electoral College votes last month, without any valid grounds for objection. . . .
When Democrats lose they are a lot slower to concede, it seems. Maybe it’s a deliberate strategy. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe I’m wrong in perceiving this pattern. But I expect this practice to spread, which won’t be good for politics.
They don’t care. They’re spoiled children.
EVERYONE IS MOVING TO TEXAS, ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT: “While we’re talking about bumper stickers, the ones that say, ‘Don’t California my Texas’ also may get more popular. The number one state these new Texans are arriving from? You guessed it: California.”
Man, those effete fedora-wearing sushi-loving prog-rock former Californians better not ruin my state.
GUNMAN IN MEXICO WOUNDS U.S. CONSULAR OFFICIAL: Mexican authorities report the attack occurred on Friday in Guadalajara (Jalisco state). Mexican security forces are looking for the gunman.
Surveillance video of the attack shows the gunman following the official in a parking garage. The official, whose name was not released, was dressed in shorts.
The shooting appeared to be a direct attempt to kill the consular employee.
The attacker doesn’t appear to try to approach the official while he is walking, but instead waits for him to exit the parking garage in his vehicle and fires a round into the car’s windshield.
A cartel “warning” or an assassination attempt? Who knows. The article discusses past attacks on U.S. consulate personnel.
BACKGROUND: StrategyPage.com’s latest Mexico update (from December 2016).
10 YEARS LATER: Remembering Christian-Newsom. “For him to be tortured, for both of them to be tortured the way they were, it just breaks my heart.”
NO MORE GIN AND TONICS? THAT WOULD BE AWFUL: The horror of quinine allergy.
SWEEPING A MINEFIELD: An American tank hits a minefield. Combat engineers move forward to clear out the mines. This superb (and cold) photo is the latest in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge series. Note the silhouetted fifty caliber machine gun on top of the disabled tank.
CLOWN NOSE OFF; SAD FACE ON: 2017 Is Shaping Up to Be Jon Stewart’s Worst Year Ever.
The main problem facing today’s aging women is not sexism but the lingering youth cult of the 1960s. Traditional mating patterns have been disrupted: Marriage is postponed by extended education and early career demands. Because of easy divorce, middle-aged women are now competing with younger women for both men and jobs — and thus are resorting to costly interventions to look 20 years younger than they are.
If aging stars want to be taken seriously, they must find or recover a mature persona. Stop cannibalizing the young!
Well, Hollywood is pretty cannibalistic. And, of course, “traditional mating patterns” were designed to give women important roles past their childbearing years. The cult of youth, not so much.
Plus: “Most disappointing about Madonna’s speech was her collapse into rote male-bashing, which has escalated in Hollywood and surely will increase its cultural isolation from the national audience.”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Amazon Wants to Ship Packages From a Flying Warehouse.
Here’s exclusive video of the aerial warehouse and its crack distribution team preparing to service Amazon Prime customers:
BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU MAKE POLITICS YOUR RELIGION: Meteorologist Eric Holthaus describes counseling, inability to function due to climate change & Trump.
But to coin a phrase, what difference at this point does it really make? After all:
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added.
—“President ‘has four years to save Earth’,” the London Guardian, January 17, 2009.
Update: The Federalist’s Sean Davis diagnoses cause of meteorologist’s climate/election despair.
I wonder if the 19th century’s infamous foursome of “Bearded God-Killers” pondered just how much existential despair they were about to usher in?