Archive for 2018
September 5, 2018
TELLING THE STORIES THAT MUST BE TOLD: HiT Episode No. 85 – John Sullivan (‘Gosnell’.)
STOP THE CANONIZATION, I’VE FOUND THE ADVOCATUS DIABOLI: I Come Not to Praise John McCain…
I’M STILL CONFUSED AS TO WHY THIS IS A BAD THING: Illegals drop out of government programs, welfare bureaucrats hardest hit.
SURE THEY ARE, BUT THEN AGAIN, EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IS: Beards Are Now Racist.
YEAH, BUT THESE DAYS THEY’RE IN PERMANENT FREAK OUT MODE: Kavanaugh Confirmation On Deck, Liberals Freak Out.
THAT’S WHEN YOU LEAVE. BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: Venezuela Says “Remain Calm. Nobody’s Leaving.”
HUMANS ARE SOCIAL ANIMALS: Not one of us!
September 4, 2018
ROGER SIMON: Bob Woodward’s Latest Novel.
THEY’RE ALL PUTZES, TOO: Salena Zito: The Twitter trolls attacking my work are all wrong.
YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: John Hinderaker: The Democrats Are Crazy.
WE GET ONE OF THESE EVERY FEW MONTHS: Mattis: New Anti-Trump Book ‘Fiction’ and Part of a ‘Uniquely Washington Brand of Literature.’ “The contemptuous words about the president attributed to me in Woodward’s book were never uttered by me or in my presence. . . While I generally enjoy reading fiction, this is a uniquely Washington brand of literature, and his anonymous sources do not lend credibility.”
SCRAPPLEFACE: Nike to ‘Sacrifice Everything’ for Black Community.
On the heels of its new ad campaign with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Nike announced today it would “sacrifice everything” to benefit the urban Black community for which Kaepernick has become a champion.
When corporate officers saw the public response to the new ad slogan — “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.“— they decided to “Just Do It.”
Starting today, Nike will put its $36.3 billion in annual revenue, and its U.S. employees, to work on behalf of inner-city communities hit hard by income inequality, by institutional racism, and most tragically, by President Trump’s Tweets about NFL players who kneel during the National Anthem.
Yes, it’s satire, but now that Nike has aligned itself with the SJW mob, how long will it be before the scorpion stings the swoosh?
OPEN THREAD: Insert Smithereens reference here.
THE LEFT HAS GONE BARKING MAD: A former Kavanaugh clerk sitting behind Kavanaugh at the hearing is accused of being a White Supremacist by a bizarre Twitter mob that imagines she is sending some sort of “White Supremacist” hand signal.
The woman—Zina Bash—is also a former Alito clerk. Just in case it matters to you, her mother is Mexican and on her father’s side she is the descendant of Holocaust survivors.
Stop the world. It’s time for me to get off.
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: More Teens Are Getting Plastic Surgery Because Of Social Media, Study Suggests.
Related: Social Media as Social Disease.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Evergreen State College president apologizes for professors who used state vehicles to shuttle students to a protest. “It’s not clear to me from how this is written if Bridges himself was involved in this protest or even knew about it at the time. In any case, I wonder what a strong reprimand looks like at Evergreen State. I’m guessing there’s a lot of winking and nodding involved but who knows. You would think a school already in the process of cutting staff because of a possible 20% drop in enrollment might be able to work up some genuine anger over another story that makes the school look like an anything-goes home for aging lefties.”
TRUMP’S SECRET SUPERPOWER IS MAKING LEFTIES BATSHIT CRAZY: New Resistance theory: A Trump staffer was giving white supremacist hand signals behind Kavanaugh today.
Look me in the (virtual) eyes and tell me we shouldn’t scrap this garbage spectacle altogether. There’s no reason we couldn’t have senators submit written questions to a SCOTUS nominee, give him two weeks to answer, then hold an up-or-down vote. There hasn’t been a meaningful Supreme Court confirmation hearing since Clarence Thomas’s, and those were extraordinary circumstances because of the sexual harassment allegations against him. Unless there’s scandal to explore, there’s simply no point to quizzing nominees in real time. Particularly in an age of the Ginsburg Rule, extensive pre-hearing meetings between the nominee and various senators, and extraordinarily close White House vetting of candidates to avoid any confirmation-process surprises. . . .
The accused “white power” signaler is of Mexican ancestry and a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Jewish Mexicans — the most dangerous white nationalists of all.
Maybe she’s under deep, deep cover. If so, it must be really deep: By more than one account, she’s a very nice person. . . .
What’s the hand signal for “The Resistance is filled with bad-faith morons”?
Bash is fortunate that her background disproves the accusation against her so obviously. If it didn’t, this charge would follow her around for God only knows how long no matter how innocent her hand gestures today were. As it is, the only semi-redeeming virtue of this pitiful episode is that the QAnon people are destined to notice and conclude that Bash was actually sending a coded signal to them about Trump’s and Mueller’s secret plan to liberate the kids from the pedophile camps or whatever.
Sheesh.
SILICON VALLEY IS WELL INTO ITS BAROQUE PHASE: Microdosing LSD Is A Growing Silicon Valley Trend. But Does It Actually Work?
AT AMAZON, Fall Deals on Appliances.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Sen. John McCain’s funeral put Washington’s vicious political hypocrisy fully on display. “Though some operatives tried to walk it back the next day, the McCain funeral was, despite his absence, all about our current president. As someone said on Twitter, they came not to praise McCain, but to bury Trump. And yet, despite solemn encomia to civility, honor, and integrity from the likes of Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger, amplified by the press’s Greek chorus, the notion that we used to live in some golden age of civility and bipartisanship exemplified by the career of Sen. McCain is belied by, among other things, the career of John McCain.”
NIKE STOCK PLUNGES AFTER TAPPING KAEPERNICK AS ‘JUST DO IT’ CAMPAIGN POSTER BOY.
But is that merely a temporary blip that was already calculated as an acceptable loss by the giant corporation? Jim Geraghty explores “The Audacity of Nike:”
You almost have to admire the audacity of Nike; for decades they’ve cemented their position as The Man by marketing an image of fighting The Man. Don’t let anyone tell you that they’re a group of daring, iconoclast rebels. They’re a massive publicly traded corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of athletic shoes, sporting equipment, and apparel, and their chairman is worth about $22 billion. They’re getting sued for “pay discrimination and limited opportunities for women to win promotions” and failing to address sexual-harassment complaints. They’ve settled class-action racial-discrimination lawsuits for millions of dollars. They operate a political-action committee that gives to both parties (although more to Democrats) and are quite active in Oregon state politics.
They are the kind of big, powerful corporation with a long history of documented exploitation of overseas labor that is usually the villain in leftist narratives. Staunch progressives who proudly wear the Nike swoosh are like impassioned environmentalists wearing Exxon Valdez t-shirts.
And now, for the cost of a few million — remember Nike had nearly $10 billion in revenue last quarter — the company bought the loyalty of the woke Social Justice Warrior crowd. Sure, some folks on the right will announce they’re boycotting, but nobody collects and analyzes marketing research data like Nike. They’ve no doubt run the numbers on this and concluded that the controversy was worth it. In fact, the controversy is the whole point of the marketing campaign. (It sure as heck isn’t Kaepernick’s performance on the field!) The aim is to get every Kaepernick-hater in the country publicly raging about it — the president, conservative-talk radio, sports-talk radio — so that everyone who agrees with Kaepernick feels almost obligated to go out and buy the Kaepernick sneakers, shirt, hat, etcetera.
To paraphrase Jonah Goldberg on Twitter, The Man Can’t Bust Our Sneakers!
MISMATCH STRIKES AGAIN: If you are a subscriber to the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may have seen an article entitled How a Liberal Arts College Is Rethinking Its “Soul Crushing” Core Curriculum. Reading between the lines, you’ll be able to see that it’s a good illustration of how affirmative-action mismatch doesn’t just harm the individual students it is intended to benefit; it ends up feeding identity politics and creating student pressure to water down the curriculum and grading scale. The article (behind a paywall) begins this way:
When Art Reyes received a generous scholarship to attend Harvey Mudd College, an elite engineering, science, and math-oriented institution in Claremont, Calif., he and his parents, both immigrants from Mexico, were thrilled. An alum warned him that tackling the intense coursework would be “like trying to drink water from a fire hose,” but the high-school salutatorian felt up to the challenge.
Reality soon caught up with him. With six classes and a lab in his first semester, his days and nights often stretched to 2 or 3 a.m. Sleep-deprived and stressed, he found himself slipping behind his classmates with whom he was wading lockstep through a notoriously challenging core curriculum. By his sophomore year, he had to take a semester off to catch up at a community college. His self-confidence was shattered.
Reyes later learned that he had plenty of company in feeling overwhelmed by the college’s academic requirements. In complaints first to mental-health counselors and then to outside evaluators, students described feeling like they had little time for showers or sleep, much less extracurricular activities or time to reflect.
The problem was particularly acute among the growing number of first-generation and minority students whose frustrations exploded to the surface last year after a leaked report quoted professors complaining that the college’s focus on diversity had caused standards to slip.
Students protested, classes were canceled for two days, and a period of soul-searching began. This year, Harvey Mudd, which is part of the Claremont Colleges consortium, is taking a hard look at its core curriculum and the mental-health and counseling services it offers students.
A curriculum committee is considering how to ease pressure on students without sacrificing rigor. But divisions remain among the faculty about whether this is a good idea, or just pandering to students who lack the work ethic or preparation needed to succeed.
“Ease pressure” “without sacrificing rigor”? That’s not an easy task.
Once again I offer the following articles in order to understand why our campuses behave as they do: Want to be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg Up May Hurt Your Chances and A “Dubious Expediency:” How Race-Preferential Admissions Policies on Campus Hurt Minority Students. This is serious. Harvey Mudd College is one of the last places to abandon a rigorous curriculum. Their graduates build our bridges and aircraft and things you really don’t want to go wrong.
And one student’s “soul crushing” core curriculum is another student’s educational adventure of a lifetime.