WELL, YES. IN FACT, IT’S DESIGNED TO KEEP THEM UNDER CONTROL. Democratic Socialism Threatens Minorities: Nothing better protects victims of bigotry than a system where they can pursue their needs and wants outside the realm of popular control.
Archive for 2018
August 9, 2018
TO BE FAIR, MEYERS HASN’T ACCOMPLISHED THIS FEAT SINGLEHANDEDLY: Seth Meyers and the Dumbing Down of Society.
OPEN THREAD: Talk about stuff that matters. Or not.
FIGHT THE POWER: “Tons of fake Donald Trump stars popped up all over Hollywood Blvd. Thursday up and down the Walk of Fame. It’s unclear whether these are stickers or what … but they’ve flooded the boulevard, flanking A-listers’ like Rob Reiner.” Rob Reiner, an “A-lister?” I mean, Spinal Tap was good, but . . . .
YES, THAT WOULD BE A BIG CHANGE: Thomas Friedman: Media should work together to hurt Trump.
Remember when people thought Tom Friedman was smart?
COME BACK NEWTON MINOW, ALL IS FORGIVEN: Six of the Worst Reality Shows of All Time.
(Classical reference in headline.)
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Study: Profs Less Likely to Hire NRA Members, Republicans.
CAITLIN FLANAGAN: Why The Left Is So Afraid Of Jordan Peterson: The Canadian psychology professor’s stardom is evidence that leftism is on the decline—and deeply vulnerable. “Because all of this was happening silently, called down from satellites and poured in through earbuds—and not on campus free-speech zones where it could be monitored, shouted down, and reported to the appropriate authorities—the left was late in realizing what an enormous problem it was becoming for it. It was like the 1960s, when kids were getting radicalized before their parents realized they’d quit glee club. And it was not just college students. Not by a long shot.”
His 12 Rules for Life is still #1 most read on Amazon.
AT AMAZON, summer savings in Car Care.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Think of all the funeral expenses we’ll save under Medicare for All!
As Stephen Miller tweets, “I see a lot of people hitting AOC on the funeral thing but you’re not thinking of all the money we’ll save with the mass graves.”
A THREAD ON THINGS ONCE UNDERSTOOD, BUT NOW FORGOTTEN: Truman and the Atom Bombing of Japan.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED STATES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? California Protesters Harass Congressman’s Hispanic Wife for Not Staying on Progressive Plantation.
ART OF THE DEAL: Chinese leadership is facing a rare backlash for its handling of the US trade dispute.
A growing trade war with the United States is causing rifts within China’s Communist Party, with some critics saying that an overly nationalistic Chinese stance may have hardened the U.S. position, according to four sources close to the government.
President Xi Jinping still has a firm grip on power, but an unusual surge of criticism about economic policy and how the government has handled the trade war has revealed rare cracks in the ruling Communist Party.
A backlash is being felt at the highest levels of the government, possibly hitting a close aide to Xi, his ideology chief and strategist Wang Huning, according to two sources familiar with discussions in leadership circles.
A prominent and influential academic whose views have found favor in some party quarters has also come under attack for his strident views on Chinese power.
Interesting.
SCIENCE: She’s the world’s top empathy researcher. But colleagues say she bullied and intimidated them.
Tania Singer, a celebrated neuroscientist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, is known as one of the world’s foremost experts on empathy. In her research, she has sought to demonstrate that meditation can make people more kind and caring. The title of a profile of Singer written by this reporter in 2013 summed up her public image: Concentrating on Kindness.
But inside her lab, it was a very different story, eight former and current colleagues say in interviews with Science. The researchers, all but one of whom insisted on remaining anonymous because they feared for their careers, describe a group gripped by fear of their boss. “Whenever anyone had a meeting with her there was at least an even chance they would come out in tears,” one colleague says.
Singer, one of the most high-profile female researchers in the Max Planck Society (MPG), sometimes made harsh comments to women who became pregnant, multiple lab members told Science. “People were terrified. They were really, really afraid of telling her about their pregnancies,” one former colleague says. “For her, having a baby was basically you being irresponsible and letting down the team,” says another, who became a mother while working in Singer’s department.
Are you really surprised to hear this?
IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT YOU SHOULD, AND IT’S 99 CENTS ON KINDLE: Virginia Postrel’s The Future And Its Enemies.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Seven ‘Great’ Marxist Leaders Young Socialists Need to Know.
True, they couldn’t make socialism work — but it will be different this time, I’m sure.
YOU KNOW THAT VAN WAS A-ROCKIN’: History Channel Show Finds Aerosmith’s First Tour Van.
THE WONDER OF THE DANCING BEAR: Yahoo publishes a (reasonably) even-handed piece on Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway movement.
COLLUSION: Byron York: Emails show 2016 links among Steele, Ohr, Simpson — with Russian oligarch in background. “Emails in 2016 between former British spy Christopher Steele and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr suggest Steele was deeply concerned about the legal status of a Putin-linked Russian oligarch, and at times seemed to be advocating on the oligarch’s behalf, in the same time period Steele worked on collecting the Russia-related allegations against Donald Trump that came to be known as the Trump dossier. The emails show Steele and Ohr were in frequent contact, that they intermingled talk about Steele’s research and the oligarch’s affairs, and that Glenn Simpson, head of the dirt-digging group Fusion GPS that hired Steele to compile the dossier, was also part of the ongoing conversation.”