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Archive for 2019
March 17, 2019
BUFF FROM ABOVE: A B-52 refuels off the English coast – March 14, 2019. The KC-135 Stratotanker that refueled the bomber is based at RAF Mildenhall, England.
WE SHOULD CANCEL SLS NOW AND PUT THE MONEY INTO CONTRACTS WITH PRIVATE LAUNCH COMPANIES: If SLS Won’t Launch NASA’s Moon Mission, What Will?
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Army of Geeks: Ohio Seeks to Create a Civilian Cyber Militia to Protect Elections.
ACTUAL INNOCENCE: Man exonerated after 43 years for Reston rape he didn’t commit. “Last week, the Virginia Supreme Court granted a writ of actual innocence in the case of Winston Scott, fully exonerating him for a crime he served time for from 1976 to 1981. In 1975, then-19-year-old Scott was arrested and charged with the rape of a 24-year-old woman. He was convicted largely off of a composite sketch and a blood-type test. According to court documents, the blood type test was not a match on the first try, but unexplainably matched on the second. Court documents also show the victim didn’t work with detectives on the composite sketch until a month or so following the incident.”
I REMEMBER 2004 WHEN MICHAEL J. FOX DELIVERED A MEAN-SPIRITED AD THAT SAID REPUBLICANS WANTED PEOPLE TO DIE BECAUSE THEY OPPOSED EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH: Adult Stem Cells Now the ‘Gold Standard.’ Related: MIT Technology Review: Will Embryonic Stem Cells Ever Cure Anything? “In fact, no field of biotechnology has promised more and delivered less in the way of treatments than embryonic stem cells.”
In 2004, of course, we couldn’t know how the science would turn out. But that didn’t stop Fox from making a mean-spirited ad for the Democrats. And how bad must he feel, to have flushed (at least) half his fan base for John Kerry?
I LINKED THIS PIECE THE OTHER DAY, BUT THIS PASSAGE IS WORTH REPEATING:
If Trump’s election really is a Hitlerian-scale catastrophe for the West, then civic friendship between Trump America and non-Trump America is impossible. And indeed, that is a premise shared by the #Resistance and the most hysterical of the Never Trumpers, Boot chief among them. They speak of “defending democracy,” as Boot does throughout his memoir, but what they really mean is defending the technocratic liberal consensus, even if that means undoing the popular will as it was expressed at the ballot box.
We should decline to go along.
When they talk about defending democracy, what they really mean is defending a privileged class from democracy.
REUTERS WILL REPORT NO STORY BEFORE ITS TIME: Reuters Admits They Sat On Bombshell Beto O’Rourke Story For 2 Years:
Reuters reported late on Friday night that their reporter who broke the story about Democrat Beto O’Rourke belonging to a hacker group had the story for two years and agreed to sit on it until after O’Rourke’s Senate race against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives, and it all makes sense.
COLLUSION, HIGHER-ED FOREIGN AGENT EDITION: Two in three colleges with Confucius Institutes violated the law by not reporting Chinese funding.
MICHIGAN IS TAKING “THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE” FAR TOO LITERALLY: “Popping balloons reportedly triggered an active shooter warning on University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus Saturday.”
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, THAT LINDA SARSOUR IS A TOTAL HYPOCRITE: But that’s different because Jews.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Connecticut Supreme Court Makes War On Civil Rights. “The Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision is not a good faith exercise of judicial judgment. The four-judge majority engaged in political activism by issuing an anti-gun ruling that is obviously wrong under the Constitution and federal law. It will be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. But there is a lesson here: liberals love to talk about the rule of law, but what they mean is rule by lawyers.”
UPDATE: Here’s my piece on the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
NEBRASKA: Rescue efforts, evacuations continue as floodwaters breach levees in Midwest. “Evacuation efforts in eastern Nebraska and some spots in western Iowa on Saturday were hampered by reports of levee breaches and washouts of bridges and roads, including part of Nebraska Highway 92, leading in and out of southwest Omaha. Authorities confirmed that a bridge on that highway that crosses the Elkhorn River had been washed out Saturday. In Fremont, west of Omaha, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office issued a mandatory evacuation for some residents after floodwaters broke through a levee along the Platte River. And in Mills County, Iowa, authorities ordered people in some rural areas to evacuate after the Missouri River overtopped levees.”
Related: We Walk The Levee.
REMEMBER, THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE PALESTINIANS, THEY JUST HATE ISRAEL: There have been street protests against Hamas in Gaza for the last several days. How many “pro-Palestinian” activists are out there protesting on behalf of those fed up with with Hamas’s disastrous, dictatorial rule? “None” is a reasonable approximation.
AIRBRUSHING LIKE STALIN:
MATT MARGOLIS: The Democratic Party’s Anti-Semitism Problem Is Obama’s Legacy. “Prior to being elected president of the United States, Obama spent twenty years in the congregation of Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks became a liability for Obama during the 2008 election but didn’t matter enough to the people who voted for him. Obama may have been forced to quit his church and distance himself from Wright, but that didn’t change who Obama was at heart—and it presented itself once he showed up to the White House.”
SO THEY FINALLY INDICTED THESE TURDS: Atlanta family plotted terror attacks on US service members from isolated desert compound, feds say. “A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted five relatives from Atlanta, charging them with plotting terrorism after kidnapping a toddler and retreating to an isolated desert compound in New Mexico. The defendants, whose site was raided last summer, have long been accused by authorities of planning terrorism, but the indictment is the first time they’ve been formally charged with such allegations. The Clayton County boy, was found dead at the compound on what would have been his 4th birthday. . . . Previously, attorneys for the suspects have claimed they were misunderstood because they are black Muslims.”
PEGGY NOONAN: Kids, Don’t Become Success Robots: Tennessee Tech is an amazing school, and nobody breaks the law to get admitted.
I’ll tell you where I saw success robots. I go to schools a lot, have taught at universities and seen a ton of great kids and professors who’ve really sacrificed themselves to teach. A few years ago I worked for a few months at an Ivy League school. I expected a lot of questions about politics, history and literature. But that is not what the students were really interested in. What they were interested in—it was almost my first question, and it never abated—was networking. They wanted to know how you network. At first I was surprised: “I don’t know, that wasn’t on my mind, I think it all comes down to the work.” Then I’d ask: “Why don’t you just make friends instead?” By the end I was saying, “It’s a mistake to see people as commodities, as things you can use! Concentrate on the work!” They’d get impatient. They knew there was a secret to getting ahead, that it was networking, and that I was cruelly withholding successful strategies. . . .
Here is a school that is an antidote to that. Three years ago I went to a smallish school that enrolls mostly students who are the first in their families to go to college. It was Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville. A lot of the kids are local, a racial and ethnic mix, immigrants and children of immigrants. They were so mature—gracious, welcoming, quick with smart questions on presidents and policy. At a reception I complimented a young woman on her pretty cocktail dress. She smiled and said, “I got it from the clothes closet.” I shook my head. The Clothes Closet, she explained, is where students go to get something to wear to a job interview or an event like this one. People contribute what they’ve got, the students can always put something nice together. In time they contribute clothes too.
Cheryl Montgomery, the college’s director of development, laughed when I called her about it this week and told me that the closet, which had literally been a closet, is now in an office renovated to function as one. “We’ve got everything,” she said. “Men’s suits, women’s professional suits and dresses, ties, belts, shoes. We don’t want a student to worry, ‘Am I dressed appropriately?’ ” Interviews are hard enough. A lot of students don’t have anyone in their lives to help them. “Last Friday a gentleman who’s a quite spiffy dresser came to see me, a very successful businessman, and he donated four sport coats, a trove of men’s dress slacks and very nice button-down shirts, all in style.” When a cash donation comes in, it goes toward clothes for the unusually large and the unusually small.
I came away from Tennessee Tech thinking what I always think when I see such schools: We’re going to be OK.
Well, but — by design — that’s not where our leadership class comes from. We’d be better of if it did, instead of from the Ivy League.
UPDATE: Second link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!