THAT’S NOT AT ALL SUSPICIOUS: Prison footage from Epstein’s first suicide attempt has gone missing.
Archive for 2019
December 19, 2019
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Makeup brand offers spray-on ‘skin’ to cover up zits and scars.
ALLIANCE AGAINST ANTISEMITISM: British Hindus are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with British Jews.
WELL, THIS IS 2019, AFTER ALL: Short-staffed at factory? Japanese-Israeli venture offers robots for hire.
LIFE IS ABOUT CHOICES: Childcare Commitments Are Driving Women Out Of Big Law. I left BigLaw because I didn’t want to live that way. (I remember one tax partner, who was always in the office, having a bit of a midlife crisis when his 5-year-old drew a family picture, and he wasn’t in it.) But it’s only a tragedy when women decide to leave, for some reason.
FAKE EDUCATION NEWS: Both the UVa education school dean and Washington Post fact checkers didn’t realize we spend much more on education per student in constant dollars than we did in the late 1980s. They really thought it sounded plausible to say we spend less.
For some reason, misinformation about education spending seems to be especially common. I wrote about it here.
BEEF: IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? Vegans may get worse hangovers than meat eaters.
THE GHOST OF JOHN MCCAIN COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Would Someone Please Put Obamacare Out of Its Misery and Kill It?
ROGER KIMBALL: The real impeachment scandal: The Democrats are always guilty of what they accuse Trump of. “If anything has become clear over the past couple of months, it is that the Democrats have no case against the president; there are no crimes alleged, just the emission of a turgid vapor about ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress’. There was no ‘quid pro quo’, no ‘pressure’, no ‘abuse of power’. All people with first hand knowledge of the infamous conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky acknowledge this. There was just the president doing the people’s business, legitimately exercising his power. . . . In this case, the real Ukraine scandal is the Biden family scandal. Yet somehow Joe and Hunter Biden’s corruption got transmuted in supposed wrongdoing by Donald Trump. How does that work? ‘How Did the Bidens’ Corruption Become Trump’s Scandal?‘ It’s the special alchemy at which Democrats excel. Republicans never learned the knack.”
NOW I CAN’T TELL IF I WAS RIGHT OR WRONG: What if they held an impeachment and nobody came?
IN THE MAIL: From John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.
AND TRUMP’S THE ONE SHREDDING OUR INSTITUTIONS AND PROCESSES? Nancy Pelosi Signals She May Freeze Impeachment After Vote So Trump Can’t Claim Senate Vindication. “After ramrodding through the tissue-thin impeachment articles in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now threatening to withhold the Democrats’ case unless she can dictate the terms of the Senate trial.”
McConnell ought to simply ignore the articles of impeachment until and unless Pelosi sends them over. What a sham, what disgrace.
ROGER KIMBALL: 1619 & all that — on the New York Times’ recent disinformation campaign.
The lead essay, by the black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the “architect” of The 1619 Project, set the tone. “[O]ne of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain,” she wrote, “was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” So, everything you learned about the American Revolution is wrong, or at least wrongheaded. Forget about the Stamp Act, the, Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts, “No taxation without representation,” etc. All that, utterly unmentioned by Ms. Hannah-Jones, was mere window dressing. The American colonists might talk about liberty. What they really cared about, according to this malignant fairy tale, was preserving and extending the institution of slavery. “[S]ome might argue,” as Hannah-Jones coyly puts it, “that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.” Gosh. Of course, “some might argue” any number of incredible things: that the earth is flat, that the moon is made of green cheese, that The New York Times is still a responsible source of news and even-handed commentary. The fact that “some might argue” X does not mean that X is credible.
So it is with the preposterous idea that America was founded as a “slavocracy.” Hannah-Jones asserts that “anti-black racism runs in the very dna of this country.” The claim is obviously metaphorical; countries do not possess dna. But if one were to take the metaphor seriously, as tantamount to asserting that anti-black racism is an essential and therefore unalterable characteristic of America, then the whole 1619 Project would be pointless from the get-go. It would be like complaining about the roundness of a circle or the wetness of water.
Related: “A lot of people who don’t like Trump really hate being treated by the media, by many Democrats, and by liberal spokespeople as if they’re ignorant, or wicked, or bigoted, because they aren’t Woke,” Rod Dreher writes:
The New York Times earlier this year undertook a big project with the goal of rewriting American history around the claim that the whole point of America was … slavery. Remember this from the leaked transcript of a Times internal meeting with executive editor Dean Baquet?:
Staffer: Hello, I have another question about racism. I’m wondering to what extent you think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that’s going to open us up to even more criticism from people who are like, “OK, well you’re saying this, and you’re producing this big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily reporting?”
I just feel like racism is in everything. And therefore should be systemically worked into all stories in the paper! And get this — Baquet didn’t challenge this. This is par for the course for our media today. I’m not going to go into a long list here; I talk about this a fair amount on this blog anyway. The point is, you don’t have to love Donald Trump to get sick and tired of being told by these people that to prove yourself a decent person, you have to hate yourself, hate the country, hate your traditions, hate your dad, hate your sons (especially the unborn ones), hate your religion, hate your pronouns, hate your people, hate the cops, hate what was just fine five minutes ago, hate your happiness, hate your penis, and hate your life — and oh, you also have to vote Democratic. Otherwise, you’re a HATER!
All the Democrats would have to do to get rid of Donald Trump is just be normal. They can’t do it. Just cannot do it. Even old Uncle Joe, the most normal of them, if he steps out of line, the wokesters whip him back into shape. Bernie doesn’t really care about that stuff, not like he cares about economics, but let’s not kid ourselves: under any Democratic president, the woke will be in charge, and will not compromise on any of it.
As Patrick Poole tweeted in July, “Gadsden flags. Betsy Ross flags. Apollo 11. Sure is interesting watching everything authentically American get deemed ‘racist’ by our brave firefighting media.”
ONLY NOW, AT THE END, DO YOU UNDERSTAND: Warning lights are flashing for Democrats as they prepare to impeach Trump. “Even as the House prepares for the historic vote, however, there’s growing evidence that the public impeachment proceedings in the House against Trump may actually be helping him politically.”
That’s from CNN’s Chris Cilizza, so you’ll have to forgive him for arriving so late to what you’ve been reading (and commenting) here at Instapundit for weeks.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, ST. OLAF COLLEGE EDITION: Conservative students ‘swatted’ as officers swarm dorm over false report.
The officers came to the College Republicans’ pod after an anonymous report they had guns and were a danger to campus. A campus spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from The College Fix.
However a public statement to students put out by a dean on Tuesday actually praised those who called in the false threat, this despite the fact that officers had found nothing and the College Republicans told administrators they suspect they were targeted for their beliefs.
“We know this is a stressful time on campus,” reads the statement, authored by Dean Rosalyn Eaton. “We appreciate the individuals who alerted the college to these concerns, the residents who were cooperative during the search, and the college staff members who acted quickly.” . . .
The contents of their trash cans were dumped on the floor, sheets pulled from beds, closets emptied. During the search, which lasted more than an hour, anybody who entered or exited the pod was frisked and had their bags searched, the students told The Fix.
“They made a huge mess,” Chris said. “They trashed our home and left stuff all over the floor.”
This seems like Dean Rosalyn Eaton is being deliberately indifferent to the welfare of students, based entirely on their politics.
She says “As your dean, I am one person to whom you may turn to for support.” Well, you know, unless you’re an icky Republican.
IT ISN’T FAIR WHEN YOU WON’T LET US CHEAT: Rightwing group pushes Wisconsin voter purge that ‘could tip’ 2020 election.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: VIDEO: Calif. grad students take over dining hall, steal food because school is ‘starving’ student workers. Nobody looks underweight to me.
FIXING LAW SCHOOLS – Inside Higher Ed has a nice interview with me where I discuss my new book Fixing Law Schools.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Donald Trump Is Still Your President Edition. “Many on the Left have remarked that this leaves a permanent stain on President Trump’s legacy. That stain can actually be washed out by re-election next year.”