ANOTHER ORWELL BUMPER STICKER: In A Time Of Universal Deceit, Telling The Truth Becomes A Revolutionary Act – George Orwell, 1984 – Magnetic Bumper Sticker / Decal Magnet.

ONE MORE UNIVERSITY IN DISARRAY: In August, I posted something about the University of San Diego’s Black Lives Matter course currently being taught in the college. Here is the course description students were given:

“Heeding the call of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and global network, this course joins the nationwide effort to deconstruct anti-Blackness, dismantle white supremacy, center Black resistance and build solidarity movements that support the wellness and self-determination of Black communities. This collaborative, team-taught course will contextualize the complex histories of Black people in the US and center Black wisdom, joy and antiracist praxis. Students will be exposed to a range of interdisciplinary analyses of the movement for Black lives and engaged in critical, transformative reflection.”

As you can see, the course is not about education; it’s about “the nationwide effort to … dismantle white supremacy.” Put differently, it’s about fear mongering and indoctrination.

At the time of my August post, USD was seeking 25 faculty members to fill all the slots on the panels needed to teach the course. Given that I am the only person on the USD faculty with almost 15 years experience as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as well as many years’ experience teaching and writing about civil rights, I figured that I was more than qualified to be on a panel. I applied, because it was obvious to me that the course needed a large dose of ideological diversity.

Faculty members were requested to propose a topic or two in a few sentences. Here’s one of mine: “Labor and U.S. Racial Capitalism: I would discuss Nobel prize-winning economist Gary Becker’s work on race discrimination. Becker showed that competitive markets have tended to eliminate race discrimination, while protected markets (government jobs and jobs with heavily regulated or unionized industries) have tended to foster racial preferences. The empirical evidence tends to bear him out. For example, during the Jim Crow Era, jobs with government and public utilities went disproportionately to whites. Labor unions were often openly anti-black.   Competitive industries were usually more inclined to hire African Americans.”

As the pessimists among you might have expected, they thanked me and declined. Instead, they chose 26 other faculty members.

A comparison to the Federalist Society is worth making here: The Fed Soc’s Civil Rights Practice (more…)

DON SURBER: Hatriotism. “Not the Bee took a look at what liberals are saying on Tik Tok. They have gone from saying they want social justice to saying, ‘The United States of America needs to cease to exist.’ This is acceptable because we live in a country where half the people believe it is OK to have our top general call up Red China to warn them of any military attack.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: House delays infrastructure vote as negotiations among Democrats stall.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: COVID Protests Are Sweeping the World. Where’s the Media?

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Evergreen:

YOU SPELLED “F” WRONG: Biden’s ‘C-Team’ Administration.

If Obama’s team was motivated by the ambition to do something, then Biden’s team appears to be driven by a burning desire to be someone.

Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan were not well known for strategic or policy brilliance before their elevation to the top of the American National Security apparatus. Lloyd Austin was a general, but a largely unknown one.

The burden of anonymity hangs heavy over Biden’s team whenever they address the press. It is obvious in their prickliness when challenged, their quick resort to blaming their predecessors, their desperate efforts to claim no one could have done better. It is almost as if they need to reassure not just others, but themselves that they belong where they are.

Read the whole thing.

A-players hire A-players and B-players hire C-players.

Biden and his team are barely worth an F.

SPOOKY SEASON IS COMING: Bill Nye To Dress Up As Real Scientist For Halloween.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Rand Paul to HHS Xavier Becerra, “Are you a medical doctor?”

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Flawed COVID mandates are speeding up the flight out of public schools.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Former Bush Strategist Matthew Dowd Busy Deleting Tweets as He Announces Bid for TX Lieutenant Governor.

RUY TEXEIRA, WHOSE “EMERGING DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY” DEMOGRAPHICS HAVE INSPIRED THE PAST 20 YEARS OF WOKE POLITICS: There Just Aren’t Enough College-Educated Voters! You Can Ignore the Working Class If You Like, But That Would Be Very, Very Unwise.

Education polarization is increasing election on election in the United States. In 2012, the difference in Democratic support between college-educated and noncollege (working class) voters in the Presidential election was about 4 margin points (Catalist data, two party vote), with college voters being more favorable to the Democrats than noncollege voters. In 2016 that difference ballooned to 18 points. And in 2020, it went up again to 22 points.

Democrats seem remarkably relaxed about this polarization, despite liking to style themselves as the party for “working people”. One reason for this is the general perception that the college-educated population is growing while the working class is declining. True as far as it goes but the fact remains that noncollege voters far outnumber college voters. In the 2020 Catalist data, the tally was 63 percent noncollege/37 percent college. That means that any given shift among noncollege voters is significantly more consequential than a similarly-sized shift among college voters. This situation will continue for many election cycles, as the noncollege voter share is likely to decline only gradually.

Another reason for Democratic complacency is the firm belief that Democrats’ working class problem is solely confined to whites and that white working class voters are so racist/reactionary that it is a badge of honor to ignore them. This is highly questionable as a matter of political strategy and arithmetic, given that they are 44 percent of voters and a lot more than that in key swing states and districts.

But there is a deeper problem. The perception that nonwhite working class voters are a lock for the Democrats is no longer tenable. In the 2020 election, working class nonwhites moved sharply toward Trump by 12 margin points, despite Democratic messaging that focused relentlessly on Trump’s animus toward nonwhites. According to Pew, Trump actually got 41 percent of the Hispanic working class vote in 2016. Since 2012, running against Trump twice, Democrats have lost 18 points off of their margin among nonwhite working class voters.

The Dems’ big problem is that they are run and funded by the educated class, which gets enormous self-satisfaction from looking down on the working class, and from publicly denigrating it.

A PLACE FOR US … ÀPRES LE DÉLUGE: For years, I’ve been teasing my conservative and libertarian friends that we should colonize Baffin Island before things get worse here in the USA. They point out that Baffin Island is cold and that it’s already inhabited by fierce Canadians who might take a dim view of our invasion. And polar bears … we mustn’t forget the polar bears.

I’ve therefore been scouting out—via the miracle of the internet—uninhabited islands with better weather (and smaller predators).

Scratch Clipperton Island off the list.

Named for an 18^th century English pirate, Clipperton Island is about 700 miles southwest of Mexico. The two square-mile atoll is not close to anything but the Pacific Ocean. With the exception of a few coconut palms and some grasses, it is pretty barren. Technically its lagoon is full of “fresh” (i.e. non-saline) water, but it’s filthy, very acidic, and undrinkable except on those occasions when your next-best option is death from dehydration. Oh … and the island is home to lots of nasty little land crabs.

None of that’s a deal killer for me. I’m that desperate.

Alas, the island’s history gives me the creeps, so I’m reluctantly going to have to give Clipperton a pass.

Here’s the story as I understand it: In 1906 a British company in cooperation with the Mexican government started a settlement on the island to mine guano. Guano mining had been a huge industry worldwide in the 19^th century—often involving slave labor. The guano (yes, I’m talking about bird poop) was used for fertilizer before the rise of more modern agricultural methods.

The Clipperton mine came well after the industry’s heyday and was not particularly lucrative. The British soon lost interest. Mexico chose to keep the operation and stationed a number of military men there with their families. By 1914, there were about 100 men, women, and children on the island, all or almost all of them Mexican nationals. Every two months a ship would arrive from Acapulco with provisions—food, water, medicine, and whatever else was needed.

Then things went to hell. As the Mexican Revolution raged, the supply ship stopped coming. There was no food.  The 100 inhabitants were faced with the possibility of starvation. One by one, they began to die from scurvy. The military leader of the settlement, Ramón Arnaud, and three soldiers attempted to get help by pursuing a passing ship in a canoe. The canoe sank, drowning all four of them.

By 1917, all the men had died.

Except one—the lighthouse keeper. His name was Victoriano Álvarez and previously he’d been a bit of a recluse. He could have been the hero of the story. Instead he chose to be the villain. He confiscated the women’s guns and declared himself “king” of the island.

By that time there were only 15 women and children left. The self-anointed “king” raped and murdered a mother and daughter when they refused to cooperate with him. He brutally beat and raped most of the others.

If there is a hero to the story, it was 20-year-old Tirza Randon, one of his favorite victims. She bashed his royal head in with a hammer. Sic semper tyrannis.

Very shortly thereafter, the USS Yorktown came by looking for German U-boats.   Eleven half-starved women and children (the youngest one suffering severely from rickets) were rescued and returned to Mexico.

Álvarez’s unburied body was left to the crabs.

At least that’s the way the story is told.

Please find me a different island.

HOUSE DELAYS VOTE ON $1 TRILLION BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL.

HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? A huge asteroid almost hit earth but NASA didn’t detect it until a day later.

OPEN THREAD: We got nuthin’ but time.

WHAT DID SOCIALISTS USE BEFORE CANDLES? ELECTRICITY. Why are the Chinese eating by flashlight?

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China displays crewed moon landing mission elements.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Flawed COVID mandates are speeding up the flight out of public schools.

THREAD: “If you were preparing for a post-America, apocalyptic-type situation, what would you do to do to set yourself up for the most success? buy a generator? btc? precious metals? MREs? ammo?”

Condoms, antibiotics, vitamins, to start. I mean, after the obvious stuff.

THE SUPREME COURT WAS “ILLEGITIMATE” WHEN IT WAS A BARRIER TO LEFTY GOALS, SACRED WHEN IT WAS ADVANCING THEM, AND WILL RETURN TO “ILLEGITIMATE” STATUS WHEN IT STARTS THWARTING THEM: A Preemptive Attack on the Supreme Court.

AMERICA’S progressives have spent most of the past year wailing about people who undermine faith in democratic institutions. “Misinformation” that casts doubt on the election of President Biden, they tell us, must be combated at every level — by “calling it out” where possible and censoring it where necessary.

Unfortunately for their case, these same people call into question the legitimacy of virtually every election they lose: George W. Bush “stole” the 2000 election; the Koch brothers’ wicked weaponization of Citizens United gave us the Tea Party wave of 2010; and of course the 2016 election was handed to Donald Trump by Vladimir Putin. And all the while, they have pushed relentlessly to loosen voter-integrity laws, as if making election procedures a partisan issue can’t reasonably lead anyone to question election results.

Simply put, throwing a temper tantrum every time you lose an election has become a bipartisan habit, one that Democrats are at least as prone to as Republicans. Witness the preemptive strikes on the legitimacy of today’s Supreme Court.

The progressive narrative here is based on an essential piece of misinformation, albeit one whose falsity is lost on most proponents, including more than a few law professors. That is the contention that Republicans in the Senate illegitimately blocked Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a vacant seat during the 2016 election but then turned around and confirmed Donald Trump’s nominee four years later. Thus, through what Harry Reid used to call an “untoward maneuver” on Mitch McConnell’s part, the Republicans erected an illegitimate supermajority of conservative justices.

Lawrence Douglas, who holds the James Grosfeld chair in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College, recently argued in The Guardian that, to protect the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, one of the conservative justices should summarily step down so the Democrats can fill the seat. Douglas asserts:

And just as we might hope that a person who, through no fault of their own, has come into possession of a good not rightfully theirs, would return that object, Coney Barrett and Gorsuch could do the right thing for the nation by agreeing that one of them should step down.

Douglas argues that one of the two justices’ seats is “not rightfully theirs” because, “if presidents do not get to replace justices in an election year, then Coney Barrett’s confirmation is illegitimate; if presidents do, then Gorsuch’s is illegitimate. You can’t have it both ways.”

In fact, both confirmations complied with constitutional requirements.

The Constitution provides that Supreme Court seats are to be filled by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate. This assignment of roles can get confusing, but it’s not rocket science. Critics have argued that Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland was the same as Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett: Both occurred in an election year, and Mitch McConnell should have brought both of them up for a vote.

But the two situations were not analogous, for in both situations the Republicans controlled the Senate, and in Obama’s case, that required negotiating with the opposition party, not exactly his forte. In reality, Obama could easily have filled Antonin Scalia’s seat: All he had to do was nominate someone conservative enough that Republicans would be happy to confirm the nominee. But, with the 2016 election looming, Obama naturally saw a chance to flip the seat long held by Scalia and establish a solid progressive majority on the Court. He decided to nominate a solid progressive who was mainstream enough that Republicans might be pressured into confirming him; and if they didn’t, he was betting that Democrats would win both White House and Senate and would soon be able to fill the seat with anyone they liked.

The Constitution provides that Supreme Court seats are to be filled by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate. This assignment of roles can get confusing, but it’s not rocket science. Critics have argued that Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland was the same as Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett: Both occurred in an election year, and Mitch McConnell should have brought both of them up for a vote.

But the two situations were not analogous, for in both situations the Republicans controlled the Senate, and in Obama’s case, that required negotiating with the opposition party, not exactly his forte. In reality, Obama could easily have filled Antonin Scalia’s seat: All he had to do was nominate someone conservative enough that Republicans would be happy to confirm the nominee. But, with the 2016 election looming, Obama naturally saw a chance to flip the seat long held by Scalia and establish a solid progressive majority on the Court. He decided to nominate a solid progressive who was mainstream enough that Republicans might be pressured into confirming him; and if they didn’t, he was betting that Democrats would win both White House and Senate and would soon be able to fill the seat with anyone they liked.

So Obama decided to raise the stakes and put the onus on Mitch McConnell. Unfortunately for him, playing political poker against Mitch McConnell rarely turns out well. McConnell raised the bet and announced that no vote would be held on Garland’s nomination, thereby making the crucial seat a key issue in the 2016 election. McConnell has been endlessly pilloried for that move, but all he did was make precisely the same calculation that Obama had made, with just as much right and reason, except that he was arguably cornered into it by Obama’s high-stakes gamble.

It was a considered risk on Obama’s part and would have paid off hugely for progressives — if Democrats hadn’t lost the 2016 election. Instead of paving the way for someone even more progressive than Merrick Garland, the 2016 election paved the way for someone even more conservative than Scalia, if that was possible: Trump quickly nominated Neil Gorsuch, and the Senate quickly confirmed him. Brett Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett followed.

Douglas’s implied argument of “constitutional but illegitimate” recalls Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” defense of misinformation that he peddled during the 2004 election. But the tactic is even more unavailing here, for Douglas’s position is based not on any democratic principle, but rather on his reading of a principle that he vehemently disputes, namely the “McConnell rule.”

McConnell’s narrow justification for not holding a vote over Garland’s nomination in 2016 was basically this: When nominations occur during an election year, and White House and Senate are controlled by different parties, either the president or the Senate may elect to keep the seat vacant until after the election.

As noted previously, the failure to fill Scalia’s vacant seat during 2016 resulted from a combination of moves in which Obama had first-mover advantage. In fact, if the Democrats had won both White House and Senate in 2016, McConnell’s best move in the lame-duck session would have been to push for the immediate confirmation of Garland, to limit the damage. Obama’s best move would then have been to withdraw the nomination so Hillary Clinton could nominate someone even more progressive. These “manipulations” of the rules are not only not illegitimate — they are precisely the interplay of elected bodies that the Framers had in mind when they chose to divide the power to appoint federal judges between president and Senate.

Like the phrase “our democracy,” which just means “untrammeled Democratic Party power,” Democrats’ talk of legitimacy and the Constitution is just about . . . untrammeled Democratic Party power.

YESTERDAY’S HEROES GET THE CAN:

For most of spring 2020, rattled New Yorkers trudged out onto their stoops and balconies every night at 7 p.m. sharp to bang their pots and pans and holler appreciation for the first responders—cops, nurses, doctors, EMTs, firefighters—who, unlike them, did not really have the choice to stay home from work while the deadly coronavirus ripped through the five boroughs.

As of Tuesday, those same New Yorkers, through their representative government, are telling those same essential workers to go look for a new job, unless they have been vaccinated for COVID-19 or have filed for a religious exception from the statewide mandate.

If it’s really still a crisis, why are we letting health workers go?

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Can China really be on Mars before SpaceX or NASA?

#1 NEW RELEASE IN MEN’S NOVELTY SHIRTS: Think while its still legal T-Shirt.(Bumped)

AND NOW THERE’S THIS: COVID May Cause Restless Anal Syndrome (Just When You Thought COVID Couldn’t Get Any Weirder).

BRITAIN GETS SERIOUS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING: Government poised to approve 16 mini nuclear reactors to hit net zero. “Ministers are understood to have adopted a ‘change of focus’ towards nuclear power amid the current crisis caused by rocketing global wholesale gas prices.”

Plus: “Chancellor Rishi Sunak is said to have made clear in a meeting on Friday that he thought nuclear should play a more prominent role in future energy policy. A source close to Mr Sunak said his general view was that Britain should have had a weightier focus on nuclear ‘ten years ago, when it was cheaper’ but added that the country ‘can’t rely’ on wind and solar power.” Well, he’s right.