JONATHAN TURLEY: Biden allies move to intimidate witnesses ahead of GOP’s coming Hunter probe. “Just when you thought our politics could not get more poisonous, a recent meeting in California suggests the past is mere prelude. The Washington Post, which revealed the powwow, described it as Biden family ‘allies’ planning an offensive to blunt any investigation into the Bidens’ alleged multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes. . . . Morris’ plan could easily be taken as a declaration of all-out war on potential witnesses against Hunter Biden.”
Archive for 2022
December 12, 2022
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Daily Beast: White supremacy is racially diverse.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Twitter Files Expose Dangerous Deep State-Big Tech Revolving Door. More here.
It does seem that rather a lot of shady intel/law enforcement types found work controlling content at social media companies.
IDEAS SO GOOD PEOPLE CAN’T BE ALLOWED TO HEAR ANY CRITICISMS: The Twitter files: leftism requires censorship. “One of the funny (although not ‘funny ha-ha’) things about all of this is that these same people bleat on about ‘democracy’ and its great value and worth. And yet they think of the public as unable to sort out the wheat from the chaff, as children in need of control from – yes – Big Brother Twitter. And they’re not the least bit ashamed about it. They had to do it to save democracy.”
It makes sense when you realize that by “democracy” they just mean a system where Democrats are firmly in charge.
Related: America’s Ruling Regime Doesn’t Fear Disinformation. It Fears Truth.
IT’S OFFICIAL: Before Musk, Twitter Was the Worst-Run Tech Company in the World. “Almost unnoticed among the more salacious #TwitterFile reveals from Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger, ‘the stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is much crazier,’ according to Twitter user Avid Halaby. Halaby did a deep dive into the newly released insider materials, and his Twitter thread shows a company that was a Rube Goldberg device of bad policies and worse execution.”
NOT A TRANSFORMATION FOR THE BETTER: The transformation of Hong Kong.
What’s happening in Chinese-run educational institutions sounds disturbingly like what’s happening in many American institutions.
ANDOR SHOWRUNNER ADMITS SHOW IS “CHASING THE AUDIENCE” AFTER EXPECTING TO HAVE A “GIGANTIC INSTANTANEOUS AUDIENCE:”
Tony Gilroy, the showrunner and creator for the most recent Star Wars series, Andor, recently admitted the show is “chasing the audience.”
Gilroy recently spoke about the show to Variety, where he was asked how he felt the show had been presented to the world.
After getting some brief clarification about the question, he answered, “I’m very pleased with what they did. The materials are great. I think I was surprised. I thought the show would go the other way, that we would have this gigantic, instantaneous audience that would just be everywhere, but that it would take forever for non-“Star Wars” people or critics or my cohort of friends to get involved in the show.”
“The opposite happened. We ended up with all this critical praise, all this deep appreciation and understanding from really surprising number of sources, and we’re chasing the audience,” he admitted.
A couple of years ago, John Nolte explored: 11 Ways Kathleen Kennedy Killed the Star Wars Golden Goose.
Had you told me in 2015 that as a film franchise Star Wars would be dead in five years, that it would survive only as a television show, I would have called you crazy. I would have said, Lucas couldn’t kill Star Wars with those still-born prequels! TeeeVeee? You must be out of your mind!
I also would have said, Do you know who’s in charge of Star Wars now? Disney, you dolt. You know, Marvel’s Disney? Pixar’s Disney? Fifty-percent of the American box office Disney? The same Disney that’s been dry-humping the same 25 movies for the last 35 years into gold Disney? Disney is Disney. Disney bats a thousand. Disney does everything right.
But here we are, it’s 2020, and as a film franchise Star Wars is dead.
And in 2022, after the damp squibs of The Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi, the streaming franchise is looking dead as well. Which is too bad for Andor. As the Critical Drinker recently noted, it’s “The Best Show At The Worst Time:”
THOUGHTS ON THE LAW SCHOOL U.S. NEWS RANKINGS BOYCOTT: “Idiosyncratically defined diversity will likely continue to serve as a rationalization for profit-maximizing practices. Educators, public officials, and media organizations have been arguing for decades that diversity justifies departures from identity-neutral meritocratic standards. Nevertheless, most of the population still considers universities’ race, ethnicity, and legacy admissions policies unethical.”
Many of those policies are also illegal.
I THINK THIS WILL HAVE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Proposed legislation would force US higher education endowments to reveal where they invest.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DOWN: Third graders struggling the most to recover in reading after the pandemic.
Children in kindergarten when the pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020 are now roughly eight years old and in third grade this 2022-23 school year. A new report by the nonprofit educational assessment maker NWEA documents that third graders are currently suffering the largest pandemic-related learning losses in reading, compared to older students in grades four to eight, and not readily recovering.
Learning to read well in elementary school matters. After children learn to read, they read to learn. Poor reading ability in third grade can hobble their future academic achievement. It also matters to society as a whole. Students who fall behind at school are more likely to be arrested, incarcerated and become teen mothers. A separate December 2022 analysis calculated that if recent academic losses from the pandemic were to become permanent, it would add up to $900 billion in lower lifetime earnings for the 48 million students in public schools.
That’s why NWEA’s findings for third graders are alarming. The results emerged from an analysis of fall 2022 test scores of seven million elementary and middle school children across the nation, in which the reading abilities of third graders remained far behind what children used to be able to do in third grade before the pandemic. The differences between pre- and post-pandemic reading levels are smaller in older grades. While it’s good news that third graders are learning at a typical pace again and no longer falling further behind, they are also not gaining much extra ground. Their learning recovery is the smallest among students in grades three through eight.
Plus: “16 states plus the District of Columbia require children to repeat 3rd grade if they cannot read at a basic level. Based on this NWEA test score report, states could be facing an avalanche of held-back children if those retention rules are enforced later this school year.”
Remember that school closures weren’t a well-intentioned mistake, but a malicious power-grab done “for the children.”
ROBERT SPENCER: Why Is Biden’s DOJ Investigating the Accidental Killing of a Palestinian Reporter? “The government of Israel investigated and took responsibility for her death, saying the Israel Defense Forces killed her but also found that it was accidental. And now a new documentary offers compelling evidence that the Israelis didn’t kill Abu Akleh at all; the Palestinians did. Either way, why is Garland investigating?”
HOLIDAY DEAL: Keurig K-Elite Coffee Maker. #CommissionEarned
BREAKDOWN: The IEA “Net Zero by 2050” Report.
The IAE roadmap for acheiving net-zero emissions globally by 2050 includes massive spending on renewable energy, dramatic curtailing of fossil fuel use, and controversial “behavioral changes” to nudge human beings into less carbon-intensive lifestyles.
The IAE models several cases. The Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS) case includes only firm policies announced or implemented by countries. The Announced Pledges Case (APC) assumes all announced net-zero targets by countries will be fully met on time.
The Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE) is the IAE’s proposed pathway to actually achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 (a 50% chance of success).
Tons of details at the link, ranging from “unlikely” to “impossible,” often combined with “ruinous.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Education’s Sea Change. “Enrollment is down, longstanding traditions are crumbling and applicant pools are changing dramatically. . . . It suggests that there’s a broader question about the value of college and particularly concerns about student debt and paying for college and potential labor market returns.”
If only there had been some sort of warning.
Plus:
Columbia University fell 16 places on the ranking list earlier this year, to a spot last seen in 1988, in a dramatic shakeup that may have punctured perceptions of the decades-old list.
“That brought a lot more national attention to the weaknesses, the flaws, the foibles in the ranking system,” Colin Diver, former president of Reed College, which does not participate in the rankings, told Axios after Columbia’s fall.
Note that if an Ivy League school plummets, the problem must be with the rankings and not with the school. While Columbia’s fall doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem with the rankings, Diver’s take does cast doubt on how they’re received — the rankings are apparently useful only to the extent they reinforce existing prejudices about which schools are better.
“SYSTEMIC RACISM” IS JUST NEWSPEAK FOR “WE COULDN’T FIND ANY ACTUAL RACISM”: Brittney Griner Goes Free, but ‘Systemic Racism’ Is Still a Thing?
WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Faculties So White.
If, after multiple generations of yammering about diversity, universities still aren’t diverse enough, maybe it’s time to give up on that approach and try something different, like cutting costs and improving access for poor students.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US Vegetable Prices Soar Nearly 40% as Water Cuts Crush Supply.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: McCarthy Toughens Up Before Speaker Fight — Will It Be Enough? “To the surprise of no one, House Republicans are trying to ruin the smaller-than-expected victory that they had in November. Republican politicians are notorious for shoving their heads into the mouths of gift horses whenever they show up.”
ELECTORATE PLAGUED BY MASS SCHIZOPHRENIA: Four out of five voters say they are unhappy with their congressional representation and three-fourths of them say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Ben Wilson of the Washington Free Beacon wonders why then, for the first time in a century, every Senate incumbent seeking re-election won.
REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONE: LA is closing Griffith Park’s pony rides not for neglect, but bad paperwork: Animal rights groups protested at homes of city employees before the Dec. 22 closure was announced. “Allegations by animal rights activists that the ponies were being abused are not supported by official documents and other records as the cause of the city’s action, the Daily News has found.”
DEMOCRATS PUSHING A race-based primary calendar.
By now readers know that President Joe Biden and the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee have reshuffled the 2024 presidential primary to punish the Granite State and strip us of our traditional first in the nation status.
The official stated reason for doing this is that we have too many White people.
But of course.
SOME SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: McCarthy Pledges Big Move Against 51 Intel Agents Who Dubbed Hunter Biden Laptop Misinformation.