Archive for 2019
November 10, 2019
JUDGE JOSE CABRANES: Higher Education’s Enemy Within: An army of nonfaculty staff push for action and social justice at the expense of free inquiry.
American higher education seems to be in a permanent state of crisis. Almost monthly, a federal court has occasion to reprimand some college or university for improperly chilling speech, even as some students continue to complain that campuses are too friendly to the wrong kind of speakers. Many institutions have cut back on faculty hiring, even as the cost of tuition grows. Two basic, and mutually reinforcing, phenomena are behind the chaos on campus.
First, colleges and universities have subordinated their historic mission of free inquiry to a new pursuit of social justice. Consider the remarkable evolution of Yale’s mission statement. For decades the university said its purpose was “to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” The language was banal enough, but nevertheless on the money. In 2016, however, Yale’s president announced a new mission statement, which no longer mentions knowledge. Instead, Yale is now officially “committed to improving the world” and educating “aspiring leaders”—not only through research, but also through “practice.”
Second, American colleges and universities have been overwhelmed by a dangerous alliance of academic bureaucrats and student activists committed to imposing the latest social-justice diktats. This alliance has displaced the traditional governors of the university—the faculty. Indeed, nonfaculty administrators and activists are driving some of the most dangerous developments in university life, including the erosion of the due-process rights of faculty and students, efforts to regulate the “permissible limits” of classroom discussion, and the condemnation of unwelcome ideas as “hate speech.” . . .
The ambitions of university staff are much greater. They seek to achieve diversity, inclusion and equity—defined, ever vaguely, on their terms. And so the nonfaculty staff—who, unlike the faculty, are dedicated to doing rather than deliberating—set the tone on campus.
A similar conceptual confusion has facilitated the rise of today’s student activists.
As I say, he’s entirely right, and indeed you could write a book on all of this stuff. But it’s his bio that makes it particularly significant coming from him: “Judge Cabranes serves on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was Yale’s first general counsel, and later served as a trustee of Yale, Columbia and Colgate universities.” The establishment is beginning to realize what it’s done to itself.
THE PROBLEM ISN’T A “LACK OF RESEARCH,” IT’S THAT POLITICS AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAVE GOVERNED DIETARY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR 50 YEARS: How Washington keeps America sick and fat.
THEY DIDN’T CALL HIM “THE SENATOR FROM MBNA” FOR NOTHING: How Biden Helped Strip Bankruptcy Protection From Millions Just Before a Recession. Plus: “One of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden’s son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry’s top priorities.”
Related: Ivanka: ‘Our Wealth Was Created Prior to Government Service’ While Biden Made Money From It. Analysis: True.
TORE DOWN, ALMOST LEVEL WITH THE GROUND: The View’s Worst Week Ever, Courtesy of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump Jr.
To be fair, “worst week ever” is setting the bar awfully low for a chat show that helped mainstream 9/11 trutherism.
CALIFORNIA’S POWER OUTAGES ARE MAKING GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM RESEMBLE RECALLED GOV. GRAY DAVIS:
As wildfires scorch California and Pacific Gas & Electric turns off electricity in large swaths of the state to reduce the fire risk, our new progressive governor, Gavin Newsom, is facing the first real crisis in his young administration. “I own this,” he said, regarding the fires and related blackouts, but his press conferences have seemed less about a governor who is in control and more about a deer staring at the headlights.
Newsom isn’t the first California governor with national aspirations, but he’s not garnering comparisons to Hiram Johnson (who became U.S. senator), Earl Warren (later a U.S. Supreme Court justice), Ronald Reagan (the 40th president) or even Jerry Brown (who ran for president). Instead, the media is comparing him to Gray Davis, who was recalled in 2003 during the last round of rolling blackouts. That’s not a particularly good thing.
It’s a Red Queen’s Race: California has been in crisis mode over environmentalism and homelessness for decades, and “unexpectedly,” both of those problems continue to get worse and worse for the state. It’s also not surprising that Newsom is being compared an earlier fellow Democrat, since his administration is a reckoning over decisions made by his most recent predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, both in the immediate past, and during the 1970s.
SOUTH KOREA EXPLORES HIGH PERFORMANCE NAVAL AIR: Will South Korea purchase stealthy Vertical Take-Off and Landing F-35Bs? The post doesn’t come out and say it, but the betting line is yes. South Korea intends to build at least one 30,000 ton warship that looks a lot like a Japanese DDH (destroyer helicopter carrier). A DDH, depending on configuration, can handle a dozen F-35Bs. A dozen supersonic, stealthy fighter bombers can be a potent, multi-mission force, a point I made in a column written in 2017. It’s common knowledge South Korean naval planners have urged their government to buy F-35Bs, and the post notes that. I’ll add this. The F35B can also be dispersed on land to “hide locations” that are not airfields. The British Harrier had this capability and the British touted it. The post doesn’t mention that tactic, but it is a capability that defense planners world-wide discuss, especially in countries that confront enemies who just might try to launch a surprise attack on key airfields. Here’s a photo from 2011 showing a test model F-35B turning to approach the U.S. Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS Wasp. This photo from 2019 shows an operational F-35B “thrust vectoring” as it takes off from the USS Essex.
JOHN KASS: The ‘Whistleblower’ and Rep. Adam Schiff should be first to testify in Trump Impeachment Theater.
Is the whistleblower a heroic patriot fighting against overwhelming odds to save the republic, as Democrats insist?
Or is he a Democratic operative and pajama-boy tool of former CIA boss and Trump loather John Brennan, as Republicans have alleged?
Who is he? What’s his name? Does he have allies on Schiff’s committee? Why is he doing this?
When you hold hearings to take out a president, you want to know how it all began, don’t you?
You might want to read the fascinating and important piece in RealClearInvestigations by Paul Sperry. It discusses the “whistleblower” in detail.
If you don’t want to read it, then please just admit that all you want is just another steaming platter of “Orange Man Bad” analysis.
After the whistleblower is questioned about Brennan and who he met in Schiff’s committee and whether he was indeed booted out of the White House for partisan leaking, as alleged in the RealClearInvestigations story, then Schiff should take the stand.
And Schiff should testify, under oath, about how all this was orchestrated and what he did and whether he told the whole truth.
If the whistleblower is not compelled to testify under oath, Democrats risk a self-inflicted wound. And wounds become dangerous when infected in a swamp.
Read the whole thing.
Flashback: ‘Watergate’ Doesn’t Mean What the Press Thinks It Means.
GOING FULL VIKING: Victim uses battle axe to fend off home invader. “There was a bloody mess everywhere. . . . Police K-9s followed the trail of blood to apprehend the suspect.”
ROGER KIMBALL: Move Washington Out of Washington.
NPR: WAS ENDING HUMAN SACRIFICE AN ENTIRELY GOOD THING? 500 Years Later, The Spanish Conquest Of Mexico Is Still Being Debated.
Found via Popehat’s “Patrick Nonwhite,” who tweets, “Human sacrifice was just a harmless indigenous custom. What you call corn, we call maize. This has got to be the most NPR story ever.”
Related: Largest Child Sacrifice Graveyard Strikes Huge Blow To Native American Innocence Myth.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS:
Well, it is November of 2019, after all. Even if you’re notorious robophobe Matthew Yglesias.™
(This post sponsored by the Tyrell Corporation.)
EXTENSIVE CORRUPTION: Acting UAW head to examine ‘every inch’ of union in scandal’s wake.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: On the run: Jane Fonda flees from fifth protest arrest.
After the third arrest, they gave me a court date in November. And because I was arrested again before my court date, that’s when they said, “Well, you’re going to have to spend the night in jail.” I have to be careful not to get to a point where they’re going to keep me for 90 days because I have to begin preparing for Grace & Frankie in January. So I’m not going to get arrested every time. They give you three warnings and so I will step away at the third warning.
Earlier this month, Fonda told the View that “We have 11 years to avoid catastrophe and we can’t do it unless people mobilize by the millions in the streets, folks out there.” Fonda herself though? She’s got to fly back to the set of her Netflix series. But in addition to all that cross-country jet travel, is Fonda aware of this? Your Netflix habit ‘could be destroying the planet’, experts warn.
At the start of month, as Nicholas Ballasy wrote at the PJ mothership, Fonda claimed “‘I’m Not Buying Anymore Clothes’ to Fight Climate Change.” But stop taking checks from Netflix and telling her fans to turn off the Roku? C’mon, that’s just whacko doomsday environmental extremist nutter talk.
HISTORY IS MOSTLY LIES CREATED TO SHORE UP AN IDEOLOGY: Dances With Myths: Half-truths about American Indians’ environmental ethic obscure the rational ways in which they have lived with and shaped the natural world. This was always true to a degree, but is much more so in the Howard Zinn era.
MAKE NEW YORK GREAT AGAIN: Believe it or not, NYC Hooters Girls’ applications are on the rise.
I’M BEGINNING TO THINK THEY’RE JUST NOT VERY GOOD AT THEIR JOB: CDC Started a Vaping Panic, Now It’s Admitting Vitamin E Acetate In Illegal Products Is to Blame: The deaths and lung illnesses being associated with vaping have nothing to do with legal nicotine e-cigarettes.
IT’S COME TO THIS: New York Times art critic says Louvre should ditch Mona Lisa.
“The Louvre is being held hostage by the Kim Kardashian of 16th-century Italian portraiture: the handsome but only moderately interesting Lisa Gherardini,” art critic Jason Farago wrote, bashing Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned portrait.
He slams the painting — arguably the world’s most recognizable artwork — for turning the museum’s collection “into wallpaper for a cattle pen where guards shooed along irritated, sweaty selfie-snappers.”
“It is time for the Mona Lisa to go,” he proclaims.
Angry readers jumped on Twitter to say the paper of record may be losing it.
“They are after Mona… what’s next?!” one reader, @eliza7654, said.
Others accused the Times of churning out contrarian, shock jock-style pieces in a cheap attempt to become more social-media relevant.
“Are you guys desperate for readers? first the scathing takedown of peter lugers and now suggesting the louvre take down the mona lisa,” another Twitter user, @emily__abigail, wrote.
It may have worked — the hashtag #MonaLisa was trending on Wednesday afternoon with hundreds of people writing about it.
Still, another critic declared, “@nytimes is trying to cancel Mona Lisa!”
Is there a journalistic equivalent to the scam in Mel Brooks’ The Producers where a paper tries to blow through their backers’ money by producing the worst newspaper possible? Although to be fair, the paper spent the summer cancelling the American Revolution — why not the Italian Renaissance as well? Harry Lime, call your office!
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Developing New Antibiotics Is A Matter Of Life And Death.
WAR ON CHRISTMAS UPDATE: Starbucks ‘Merry Coffee’ cups look a lot like Christmas — without saying it.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Ilhan Omar strikes again.
“Not coincidentally, Omar’s tweet came a few hours before she was to address the the Muslim Brotherhood front group known as CAIR at its annual gala in Washington.”
RIDE THE CLIMATE CHANGE RECURSION!
● Shot: Naomi Klein on How Climate Change Fuels the Rise of White Supremacy.
—Headline, In These Times, September 16, 2019.
● Chaser: Supporting Greta Thunberg is evidence of ‘white supremacy’, activists claim.
—Headline, Newshub, October 2nd, 2019.
● Hangover: The Left Discovers Eco-Fascism.
It has always been considered bad form to point out that the German Nazis had a conscious environmental quotient to their ideology, but what’s this? The Washington Post noted yesterday that two of the recent mass shooters—the New Zealand shooter last year and the El Paso shooter two weeks ago—embraced environmental themes, fusing them together in fact with anti-immigration views. The Post is shocked and befuddled at this seeming anomaly (though to be fair, the Post notes as briefly as possible: “Ecofascism has deep roots. There is a strong element of it in the Nazi emphasis on “blood and soil,” and the fatherland. . .) But this is only anomalous to clueless liberals, who suffer cognitive impairment when it comes to imagining the connection between the anti-natalism of the “population bomb” mentality and seeing immigration as a driver of population growth.
—Steve Hayward, Power Line, August 20th, 2019.