THE “EXPERT” CLASS: Anti-gun ‘expert’ says ‘how you hold the gun makes it’ an assault weapon.
Archive for 2020
January 30, 2020
WHY DO WE NEED THE FISA COURT? We don’t, according to Issues & Insights, and the case presented there today seems as solid as cold blue steel.
Related: Coronavirus: ‘Dramatic increase in face masks being bought.’ Picking up a prescription at Walgreen’s yesterday, the pharmacist told me they’d been sold out for a week.
Plus: How prepared is the U.S. health system for a major coronavirus outbreak? (Here we see the first tentative efforts to figure out how to blame President Trump. But poor peformance by the public health bureaucracy goes way back.)
Also: U.S. Commerce Chief Says Companies Must Weigh China’s Coronavirus.
And: Dow set to drop 200 points as coronavirus death toll rises, Facebook shares tumble.
Plus: How the coronavirus outbreak in China could hit manufacturing.
Also: Coronavirus Cases Jump to More Than 7,000, as Four Countries Report New Infections Outside of China.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “We don’t talk about college.” This seems very sensible.
BOY CAN’T HELP IT: Schiff Lies Again, Misquotes Trump’s Phone Call With Ukrainian President.
IMAGINE WHAT HE’D DO WITH ALL THE POWERS OF THE OVAL OFFICE: Joe Biden puts hands on voter, angrily responds when confronted about climate change.
IT’S COME TO THIS: S.F. Police Union Slams New Progressive D.A., Says ‘It’s Open Season’ On Cops.
IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY: Impeachment ‘Whistleblower’ May Be Implicated in Biden-Burisma Caper, Trump Lawyer Says.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Tlaib Donor Praised Terror Backer Who Called for New Holocaust.
January 29, 2020
STILL NOT BANNED IN BOSTON: China flights still arriving at Logan International Airport as coronavirus fears grow.
QUESTIONS EVERYONE IS ASKING: Reporter Sneaks Onto Matt Drudge’s Property to Find Out Why He Doesn’t Support Trump Anymore.
WELL, THE ADMISSION BY BIDEN IS ON VIDEO: “Ukrainian ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has demanded that the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) open criminal proceedings against former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden for illegal influence on him as the prosecutor general of Ukraine.”
IN TRUMP’S SECOND TERM, HE’LL HAVE MORE FLEXIBILITY: “Elizabeth Warren wants to jail fellow Democrats who spread the Russia collusion hoax and, more recently, the Ukraine impeachment fraud. That, at least, is how I read her latest proposal: ‘Elizabeth Warren proposes criminal penalties for spreading voting disinformation online.'”
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Yale announced last week that it will stop teaching its famous survey course, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present.” Taught for decades by Vincent Scully, one of Yale’s most celebrated professors, the course was a riveting introduction to pulse of humanism.
It is being cashiered for all the usual reasons. Its focus is too white, too European, too male, too “problematic,” as Tim Barringer, chairman of the art history department, puts it. Mr. Barringer will substitute a course that challenges such Eurocentrism and promises to be very up-to-date. Mr. Barrginer says he’ll introduce a “global” perspective. Naturally, he writes, the course will consider art in relation to “questions of gender, class and ‘race.’ ” (Why the scare quotes around “race”? Is today one of those days when race is only a social construct?) It will also ponder art’s “involvement with Western capitalism.”
Globalism, gender, class, race, capitalism. Has Mr. Barringer neglected any trendy concern? How about the Greta Thunberg gambit? On it! Art’s “relationship with climate change will be a ‘key theme,’ ” the Yale Daily News reports.
The Daily News adds that the removal of “Introduction to Art History” is “the latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western ‘canon’—a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists.”
It is also yet another sign that Yale has succumbed to a life-draining decadence. A decadent institution isn’t necessarily impoverished or licentious. Rather, it is desiccated because it has lost the life-giving pith of its purpose. To a casual observer, a decadent institution may look healthy. The buildings may be expensive, well-kept and plentiful. Tidy, well-heeled people may bustle about. But the animating élan has evaporated. A decadent institution is one that has repudiated itself. . . .
Yale’s habit of self-repudiation targets much more than impermissible attitudes toward slavery. In 2017, Yale’s Committee on Art in Public Spaces first covered and then removed a stone decoration from an entrance to Sterling Memorial Library that depicted an American Indian and a Puritan. The Puritan was holding a musket—a gun! Susan Gibbons, one of Yale’s librarian-censors, sniffed that its “presence at a major entrance to Sterling was not appropriate.” Why not? She didn’t think it necessary to say.
The Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming and the Committee on Art in Public Spaces: Yale University has been impressed by Robespierre’s Committee on Public Safety, which had a similarly censorious and even more kinetic approach to heterodox opinions.
Also last week, Yale tapped Angela Davis as its Martin Luther King Day speaker. Ms. Davis, a two-time Communist Party USA nominee for vice president, is best known for fleeing justice after being charged with the 1970 kidnapping and murder of Judge Harry Haley. . . . The political philosopher James Burnham once observed that “suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization.” As Yale has been demonstrating for some years now, elite institutions are eager to take the lead.
Yale has been bad for years; under President Peter Salovey it’s been awful.
IT ONLY TOOK THE GOP 50 YEARS TO CATCH ON: Trump Boosters Accused of Using Democratic Tactic of Handing Out Cash in Black Communities. “Walking around money” — it’s just a cute American tradition when Democrats do it, but it’s oh-so-wrong when the GOP starts.
SPREAD: Coronavirus: Death toll rises as virus spreads to every Chinese region.
Related: South Korea’s Moon urges calm amid protests over coronavirus quarantine sites.
Plus: As coronavirus spreads, Beijing suburbs close themselves off.
And: My lab results say I have the coronavirus. Should I be worried? The radio says it’s just a bad flu.
UPDATE: China flights still arriving at Logan International Airport as coronavirus fears grow.
OUT: NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW. In: Hillary Clinton refuses to be served Tulsi Gabbard’s defamation lawsuit. “Dunne said their process server first attempted to effect service at the Clinton’s house in Chappaqua Tuesday afternoon — but was turned away by Secret Service agents. The agents directed the server to the Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, who on Wednesday claimed at his Washington, D.C. firm Williams & Connolly that he was unable to accept service on Clinton’s behalf, said Dunne.”
I don’t understand why service of process is any business of the Secret Service’s. They’re supposed to protect her from killers, not from the rule of law.