IS ANYBODY SURPRISED BY THIS? Report: United Nations Rife With Sexual Harassment And Assault.
Archive for 2018
January 20, 2018
IN THE MAIL: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals. New deals every hour.
DAVID SOLWAY ON THE SCOURGE OF MULTICULTURALISM.
Read the whole thing.
‘IT WAS AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT:’ Tom Petty’s family reveal he died of an overdose from a huge cocktail of pain medication — including Fentanyl and oxycodone — that he was taking for a broken hip.
But will we ever be given an explanation for the other tragedy that also dominated the news cycle that awful first Monday in October? Investigators still don’t know the motive behind the Las Vegas shooting.
WHEN AN EARTHQUAKE HITS NEXT DOOR.
Most days, it’s easy to forget that coastal California sits at the boundary of two tectonic plates—the Pacific and North American—which are slowly sliding by each other, creating the San Andreas complex of faults. It’s easy to forget that one strand, the Hayward Fault, runs the whole length of the East Bay, cutting under Berkeley and Oakland, just a mile from my house, and that there is a one-in-three chance that it will produce a devastating earthquake before I’m a senior citizen.
But then there are days like January 4, when a magnitude 4.4 quake struck. It hit in the evening, a couple hours after my wife and I had put the kids to bed. It was strong enough to make us wonder, for a few seconds, if this was the big one.
After it passed, we resolved to get another flashlight. My wife ordered MREs from a prepper site. A few days later, she sent me a map from the U.S. Geological Survey showing the epicenter of the earthquake. It was two blocks from our house.
Read the whole thing.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Old and Busted: “A Big Lie: Newsweek Claims On Cover ‘We Are All Socialists Now.’”
● The New Hotness: Newsweek probe looking at alleged money laundering.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Police have to protect Trump supporters from mob at USC. Sadly, these days it’s cause for celebration when the police don’t just stand back and let the mob have its way.
OF SHITHOLES AND SECOND THOUGHTS: A former Peace Corps volunteer says based on her experience, Trump was right.
Earlier: After “Fire and Fury” and the “shithole” smear, Trump isn’t any less popular than before.
“CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL:” University of Alabama Student Expelled for Racist Instagram Rant.
CHUCK SCHUMER ON GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS: “It’s a politics of idiocy.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Court denies college’s request to dismiss free speech case.
On Wednesday, California District Court rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against Los Angeles Pierce College and the Los Angeles Community College District on the grounds of First Amendment violations.
Pierce College is a part of the largest community college district in the United States, the Los Angeles Community College District, yet it provides only .003 percent of its 426-acre campus to exercise free expression. In November 2016, Pierce College student and Young Americans for Liberty member Kevin Shaw was handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution when he was approached by a campus administrator and told he could not distribute literature outside of the free speech zone, a space of approximately 616 square feet. Shaw filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles Community College District with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and co-counsel Arthur Willner, a partner at Leader & Berkon LLP, on March 28, 2017.
LA Pierce asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds of their campus policy, but the court ruled that open spaces on LA Pierce’s campus are public forums, “regardless of Pierce’s regulations.” Thus, the policy regarding the free speech zone is moot.
The purpose of a university is to encourage free and open discourse and a healthy exchange of ideas. In a press release, FIRE Director of Litigation Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon said, “The campus is a college student’s public square. It’s their space to be engaged citizens. The public recognizes this. So do courts across the country. Now it’s time for LACCD to follow suit.”
Since the motion to dismiss was pre-discovery and was rejected, now the case will move into discovery and proceed forward.
Schools keep losing these cases. I think it’s clear enough now that officials shouldn’t enjoy qualified immunity.
WORKING FOR THE CLAMPDOWN: Blogger Working Against Iranian Dissidents Awarded Harvard Fellowship.
NOW THAT NEW JERSEY HAS A DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR, IT’S OKAY BECAUSE HE’LL BE REPLACED BY A DEMOCRAT: Justice Dept intends to re-try Menendez in corruption case.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY SATIRIST TO COMPETE WITH REAL LIFE FOR ITS PURE ABSURDITY: Former FBI Director James Comey to teach ethical leadership class.
We have the worst elites in American history, to coin an Insta-phrase.
(Classical allusion in headline.)
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Employee Lawsuit Reveals Google as Intolerant Race Cult.
Just like Jim Crow of yesteryear, Google “formed opinions about and then treated Plaintiffs not based on their individual merits, but rather memberships in groups with assumed characteristics,” the complaint reads.
The complaint alleges that Google hires on the basis of race and sex, and punishes (and even fires) employees if they articulate political views that are not Leftist views. Worse, the complaint says that Google created company sanctioned blacklists, harassment committees, and even encouraged open vocal attacks on white males at company events.
Do you trust them with the Internet?
HOW PUBLIC UNIONS ENTHRALLED THE U.S.: Even labor-friendly Paris uses fewer workers than New York City, and for a fraction of the cost. American public unions pervert the process:
A new paper from Michael Lovenheim and Alexander Willen finds that “Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we demonstrate that collective bargaining law exposure leads to reductions in measured cognitive and non-cognitive skills among young adults, and these effects are larger for men.” In other words: If your teachers could collectively bargain, you got a worse education, and had worse life outcomes.
There are a number of mechanisms along which this could work. Unions might maximize wages at the expense of headcount, leading to too few teachers; they might bargain for work rules that eroded the quality of the teaching; they might protect ill-performing teachers; or they might inflate payrolls so much that other parts of the budget, such as textbooks, had to be cut back.
Of course, it’s only one study. But it is something we need to think about when we talk about the modern labor movement. The only thriving part of that movement right now is the government workforce. And they may be thriving at the expense of the rest of us.
May?
TRUMPING THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE: For Deregulators, It Was A Very Good Year.
WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE? Luis Gutiérrez and Jorge Ramos, or The Associated Press and the US Army? In every interview when asked why the opposition to the wall, they say “it won’t work.” Really?
“Recent assaults by tactical teams on prototypes of President Donald Trump’s proposed wall with Mexico indicate their imposing heights should stop border crossers, a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the rigorous assessment told The Associated Press….Military special forces based in Florida and U.S. Customs and Border Protection special units spent three weeks trying to breach and scale the eight models in San Diego, using jackhammers, saws, torches and other tools and climbing devices…”
Ramos last night again on Tucker Carlson’s show trotted out the exact same “the wall is useless” line he’s been pushing for months. No sale.
January 19, 2018
IN THE WASHINGTON POST: I wasn’t a Trump supporter. I am now. “This may seem like an odd moment for saying so, but a year into the presidency of Donald Trump, I’m elated. Trump was not my first or even second choice for president, but a full two years ago I predicted he would win. I also predicted he’d be a progressive president, which explained why I was not among his supporters and why I am so pleased now.”