NEW VIDEO FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Californians Move to Texas, Episode 3: The Church.
Archive for 2022
October 22, 2022
WHY DO YOU THINK? Why liberal students oppose Ben Sasse. “Students in support of Sasse’s nomination noted that his background in education and his experience as a university president makes him a great fit for the role of President of UF. Those in opposition noted that his political affiliation and beliefs should disqualify him from being nominated, but when asked which beliefs they disagreed with, many could not point to any specifics.”
BRENDAN O’NEILL: Britain is a political wasteland.
So Liz Truss is out. After just 44 days her premiership is no more. ‘I’m a fighter, not a quitter’, she said in parliament yesterday, and now she’s quit. Her premiership deserves to live in ignominy. Not necessarily because her blunders were so spectacular – though many of them were – but because of what this strangled-at-birth stint in Downing Street tells us about British politics more broadly. Which is that it’s a wasteland. An ideological void. A dustbowl of ideas. The lack of even the faintest glimmer of leadership material anywhere in the Westminster circus is horrifying to me. Trussism is but a symptom of a wider malady afflicting our political class.
First, her mistakes. Where to start? Probably with the observation, harsh as it may be, that the very fact she became prime minister is an indictment of Westminster. How serious must the want of leaders be for someone like Ms Truss to ascend to the highest office in the land? She had virtually nothing to recommend her. Not in the way of belief, or style, or ability to connect. Ideologically she was a Lib Dem cosplaying as a Tory. It would be an insult to wood to call her delivery wooden. Every time she compared herself to Thatcher it only reminded us that Thatcher had substance and style, while Liz lacked both. ‘The lady’s not for turning’, Thatcher said, while Truss turned, turned, turned on every single thing over the past fortnight. ‘The lady’s not for turning up’, said Keir Starmer when she was a no-show in the Commons, which is the only funny thing he’s ever said.
She handled the mantle of prime minister poorly from the get-go. There was just such a lack of suss, such an absence of strategic nous. Her failure to bring on board her leadership opponent Rishi Sunak’s allies was a catastrophic misjudgement. A more seasoned, thoughtful leader would have bunged a high office or two to his or her adversaries, for the sake of party integrity and for the sake of oneself – it lessens the chance of challenges from old foes. Not Truss, though. This was The Liz Show. ‘Ner ner’, her Cabinet essentially said to other Tory factions, intensifying divisions from Day One. It was so, well, impolitic.
Ace of Spades notes, “Another reason that Liz Truss had to go:”
She broke the promises she made on immigration — deciding that she had to increase immigration for “growth” — and got into a 90 minute shouting match with the pro-Brexit, immigration-skeptic Home Secretary she’d brought on only to appease that side of the party over her betrayals.
That Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, resigned a day before Truss did.
Truss’s potential replacement? “Hasta la vista” to “I’ll be back:” BoJonator 2.0 looking more likely.
Mr Johnson – who has not ruled himself in or out of the race – already has the support of Defence Secretary Mr Wallace. Pointing to Mr Johnson’s record on defence spending and citing the mandate he achieved in 2019, the Cabinet minister said it was important to think about “who could win the next election” for the Conservatives.
Mr Wallace – who has ruled himself out of the Tory leadership race – argued that without national security there is “no economic security”, and said he believes it is “important” that whoever puts themselves forward for the top job indicates that. But he said he also has to “recognise the issue of the mandate”.
“This will be potentially our third Prime Minister since the General Election of 2019, that means we have to think about that legitimacy question that the public will be asking themselves, and also about who could win the next election – that’s obviously important for any political party at the time,” he told broadcasters. “So at the moment, I would lean towards Boris Johnson.
“I think he will still have some questions to answer around, obviously, that investigation (into allegations Mr Johnson misled Parliament), but I know when I was Secretary of State for Defence, he invested in defence, he supported me, he supported the actions this country has taken to keep us safe.”
Truss reportedly ditched a ban on fracking in the UK; would Boris reverse course? This is the man who went from writing car reviews for the British edition of GQ to last year, when he “spelt out the revolt against modernity that lies at the heart of climate-change alarmism when he used his speech at COP to complain about the invention of the steam engine. That contraption, which gave rise to the Industrial Revolution itself, was a ‘doomsday device’ that started the clock ticking on the eco-calamity we currently face, he madly said. And this is a PM who claims to stand up for British history and British greatness.”
“CHICAGO GROUP” DEMONSTRATES IT’S NOT MATURE ENOUGH FOR COLLEGE: Pro-life chalking ‘isolates’ and ‘victimizes’ black students: UChicago group.
Chalk. They’re calling chalk violence. Oh, and “white supremacy” too, of course, because these days what’s not.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:
If Hispanics keep trending Republican, Democrats will string claymores everywhere down there.
WHAT’S HILARIOUS IS, HE THINKS THIS IS A POSITIVE: Bill Kristol: Nancy Pelosi legacy will be Jan. 6 investigation, adding Liz Cheney.
MAYBE THEY’RE NOT SO MAINSTREAM: Mainstream leftists are backing nutty protests.
There is nothing new about spoiled brats acting like spoiled brats, and many folks go through an insanity phase in their teens and early 20s. Ever since we invented adolescence (which is mostly a creation of a post-industrial economy and the upper-middle class) these people with resources but no responsibility have decided that their real job is to change the world through pointless acts of vandalism.
What is disturbing is the growing cast of older characters who should know better, but don’t. The belief that the world is in such a crisis that direct action is necessary in largely democratic society is absurd on its face, and anybody over 25 should be embarrassed to be associated with it.
Instead our intellectual class revels in it.
If your ideas aren’t palatable to most people, but you’re obsessed with your own importance, non-democratic means are the only way to go.
And even David Brooks is noticing: “I’ve been watching the campaign speeches by people like Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona. G.O.P. candidates are telling a very clear class/culture/status war narrative in which common-sense Americans are being assaulted by elite progressives who let the homeless take over the streets, teach sex ed to 5-year-olds, manufacture fake news, run woke corporations, open the border and refuse to do anything about fentanyl deaths and the sorts of things that affect regular people. In other words, candidates like Lake wrap a dozen different issues into one coherent class war story. And it seems to be working.”
Well, it’s working because it’s obviously true.
UPDATE: From the comments at the Brooks link:
It is a class conflict. The best description that I’ve read is that the country is ruled by the “front row kids:” the ones who sit in the front rows of class, always ask for the extra credit, and generally make themselves a nuisance to the rest of us. They are about 120 IQ, so above average intelligence but not genius. They are smart enough to work well within the existing institutions, usually by figuring out how to game the system for their advantage. They take all the AP/Honors/IB courses in HS, get a varsity sport on their resume, all to get into the best college possible. From there it’s internships, masters in Public Policy/International Relations/etc., or law school. They end up mid-level management in some gov agency, buy an overpriced home in NoVA or Maryland, and post pictures of themselves wearing “finisher” medals from 5ks. Meanwhile, they are incredibly sensitive to social status and their position within their circle. This makes it difficult to push back on whatever latest stupid fad is making its way through the population. They are barely competent, at best, at handling the unexpected, because their entire lives have been defined by plans and an aversion to risk.
Well said. And from the comments below:
Brooks is right – for a change
Yet he’s upset about it
Go figure.
But the headline Monmouth chose to encapsulate its findings crystalized these disparate factors into a single, overarching grievance against Democratic governance. Joe Biden is, according to voters, just “not paying enough attention to [the] most important issues.”
What issues? Inflation, obviously, which is the single most important issue on all voters’ minds, regardless of party affiliation. Crime is another, as is immigration. Both issues matter more to voters today than they did a month ago. If there’s a common banner under which these seemingly disparate issues can be filed, it is a general sense of precarity. Voters who don’t feel safe in their homes or on their streets, who are concerned about the capacity limits of America’s social services, and who don’t know what the money in their bank accounts is going to be worth tomorrow will prioritize those concerns over just about everything else. Only 31 percent believe the president and his party are focused on those “bread-and-butter concerns.” They’re right. But that’s just what the voters that the White House is courting want.
There is a popular Twitter account that goes by the handle “Mueller, She Wrote.” The account is managed by a former employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Allison Gill; and she was fired for it. An internal audit of her conduct at the VA turned up some discomfiting questions “about how she could record a podcast and perform live shows while claiming to have post-traumatic stress disorder,” as Politico reported. But creating speculative “Resistance” fiction has proven a lucrative alternative to government work. It’s clearly much more personally rewarding, too.
“If you’re wondering why Twitter is so quiet today,” Gill wrote, it’s because so many of the people who constituted “Resistance Twitter” during Donald Trump’s presidency spent the day at the White House. Given how politically engaged these people are, it’s a safe bet that their agenda at the White House today was dominated by politics. For some participants, it’s the first time they’ve been in the president’s proximity since September, when the White House inexplicably threw a party for itself to celebrate what a great job Democrats had done to contain inflation. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson.
It’s tempting to question the competence of a political operation that would so indulge an unrepresentative sample of people who dominate an unrepresentative platform like Twitter. Are the president’s advisers cosseting Joe Biden in a cocoon of admirers? Is the administration settling into an information silo that filters out the many mounting signs of imminent disaster on the horizon? Maybe. But there appears to be an insatiable appetite among the president’s supporters for news and information that distracts, if only for a moment, from the pervasive sense of impending doom.
Also among the gang: “The White House invited Dylan Mulvaney — the transgender activist who went viral for documenting ‘days of girlhood.'”
Dylan has been a breakout sensation for making a series of TikTok videos documenting his “days of girlhood.” Dylan, you see, is a grown man pretending to be not even a woman, but a young girl. A sort of auto-pedophilia, I guess, and apparently just the sort of person that Joe Biden needs to meet so that he can sniff the hair of an exotic “child.” After 8 decades of sniffing cis-girls, the aging president needs ever stranger thrills to keep him interested.
Dylan is a perfect match for the insanity of our times.
Dylan’s rise to stardom has been meteoric. A few months ago he was an adult male with nobody to celebrate him, but since creating videos of himself pretending to be a female child prancing through forests he has become not just a TikTok sensation, but a cultural icon fit to sit down with the President of the United States.
Biden’s administration indeed takes most of its cues from DNC-MSM journalistic Twitter. But the gathering of “Resistance Twitter” and trans activists in the White House also seems eerily reminiscent of another stunt by the Democratic Party on the eve of its 2010 shellacking: Stephen Colbert Testifies in Congress, in Character:
During questioning, subcommittee members had some trouble navigating Colbert’s faux-serious turf. Conyers, who’d asked Colbert to leave at the beginning of the hearing, pointed out that Colbert’s spoken testimony differed significantly from his written one.
Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican, told Colbert that he would take his jab at congresspeople not reading bills as an implicit endorsement of GOP House members’ “Pledge to America,” which demands — among other things — a 72-hour window to give representatives time to read bills before voting on them. Colbert confirmed this assumption with his always straight face, saying, “I endorse all Republican policies without question.”
Smith then asked, “I know you’re an expert comedian, an expert entertainer … but would you call yourself an expert witness?” Colbert cited Rep. Lofgren’s invitation to him following their day working together in the fields. Smith asked if one day of farm work made him an expert, to which Colbert replied, “I believe one day of me studying anything makes me an expert.”
As they say at Sen Blutarsky’s old fraternity, “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part. And we’re just the guys to do it.”
NOT THE LEADER WE EXPECTED, BUT THE LEADER WE NEED: Judge Ho: Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture.
THIS IS THE BEST THE DEMOCRATS COULD DO IN THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA? John Fetterman Looks Bad in Suit, Analysis Finds: Bizarre fashion choice raises questions about stroke victim’s ability to dress himself.
Fetterman’s campaign, probably: Hey, he’s every bit as mentally fit as the President of the United States!
WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF VIOLENCE? Florida gov. candidate Charlie Crist’s top staffer resigned citing a ‘family matter.’ He was actually arrested. Crist campaign said that Austin Durrer departed to deal with a ‘family matter’ days after his domestic violence arrest.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Anker 100W USB C Charger. #CommissionEarned
WELL:
Puberty blocker ad put out by Planned Parenthood, which tells children that they can get puberty blockers to “put their puberty on hold” pic.twitter.com/yjHXpevEMk
— 👁 Inside The Classroom (@EITC_Official) October 3, 2022
A friend writes: “Might not be up your alley but if I were Rs I’d run an ad against every vulnerable D showing this planned parenthood ad pushing puberty blockers. And if possible a quote from the D praising PP, preferably with a photo of kids. Parents are breaking +35 or +50R right now and as Mark T pointed out this is an 80/20 issue. Remember How Youngkin won. Parents.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: I was fired from NYU after students complained that the class was too hard. Who’s next? Maitland Jones Jr., who taught at New York University from 2007 to 2022, writes:
Organic chemistry is a difficult and important course, a rite of passage for future medical doctors, scientists, and many engineers, professions that require the ability to reason well from a set of new data. No longer is “orgo” a memorization course — those of us who teach it aim to produce critical thinkers, future diagnosticians, and scientists.
* * * * * * * *
All went well at first as students prospered in the problem-solving setting and younger faculty began to adopt it. But about 10 years ago, I noticed that students were increasingly misreading exam questions. My careful attention to the wording of problems did not help much. Exam scores began to decline, as did attendance in the traditional large lecture section of the course then COVID hit.
Coteaching with two excellent professors, Paramjit Arora and Keith Woerpel, I commissioned and paid for a series of 52 videos to substitute for canceled in-person lectures. Students rarely watched them. They performed abysmally on exams that would have seemed too easy only a few years ago. A few did attend the zoomed office hours, but they were the best students in the class, not the ones who needed help.
Exams that should have yielded a B average dropped to C- or worse. Single digit scores became common and we even had zeros on exams, something that had never happened before. Despite those declining scores, about 60 percent of my students still got As and Bs this past semester. At the same time the bottom was dropping out under the poorly performing members of the class; the top students, while still deserving their excellent grades, were no longer being stretched. Previously, they would be getting 90s, now they were routinely getting 100. Their A grades would not change of course, but they were not being challenged and thus not learning as much as they should. It wasn’t their fault, it was ours.
Student evaluations, once highly useful, have become just another social media opportunity to vent. Evaluations are now often personal and sometimes profane. The good ones swell your head, and the bad ones upset you. It’s a pity that their usefulness has disappeared.
My coteacher and I began to receive anonymous emails, often just short of threatening. In the fall of 2020, we were accused of being insufficiently sensitive to the stressful issues of the day. We were urged to make “accommodations,” such as online, multiple choice exams. This spring some students sent a petition to the NYU deans evidently complaining about procedures and grades in the course. The deans never revealed the contents of the petition to me so I was unable to refute it in any way. After several months of silence on their part, on Aug. 2 the deans fired me over the objections of the chemistry department. The administration summarily dismissed the grievance I filed.
The point is not that I was unjustly treated. My reputation as a chemist and educator has not been seriously damaged. NYU is still using the videos I had made and the approximately 200 problems I developed for the problem-solving version of the course. In any event, I had been teaching for many years and the time for me to step aside was probably upon me.
What is overwhelmingly important is the chilling effect of such intervention by administrators on teaching overall and especially on untenured professors. Can a young assistant professor, almost all of whom are not protected by tenure, teach demanding material? Dare they give real grades? Their entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients.
More details on Jones’ firing from Reason’s Robby Soave: NYU Chemistry Professor Fired After Students Said His Class Was Too Hard.
But the question isn’t whether students deserve good teachers—of course, they do—but whether good teachers should feel compelled to pass students who fail to demonstrate mastery of an extraordinarily important and complex subject matter.
“Celebrated organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr. had high standards, and we can’t have that in 2022,” writes the leftist author and teacher Freddie deBoer. “NYU students—who are, by any rational measure, some of the most privileged people on planet earth—organized a petition and got him fired. I hope you never get treated by one of the doctors who emerges from this mess.”
As deBoer adds, “NYU students: the world is a hard, tragic place, and its pains will catch up to you sooner or later. Experience its inevitable hardships so that you grow resilient against them, or don’t, and suffer more later. It’s up to you.”
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The Quiet Desperation Of Woke Fanatics.
Make their behavior more painful than it is rewarding and they will stop.
JEFF GOLDSTEIN: The Age of Boutique Authoritarianism.
Lois Lerner refused to testify before lawmakers for her role in the targeted persecution of TEA Party organizations via her position as IRS Director of tax exempt non-profits, and was voted in contempt of Congress.
Eric Holder refused a Congressional subpoena for documents related to the “Fast and Furious” operation that ran guns to Mexican cartel members, ostensibly to track the weapons, one of which was later used to kill US Border Agent Brian Terry.
Neither received any jail time.
FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith intentionally and materially altered an email included in an FBI application to renew a FISA warrant against Carter Page. He was found guilty, but spent no time in prison, receiving probation and community service hours. He has since had his law license reinstated.
James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper, and the entire Mueller Report team, among others, repeatedly perjured themselves in Congressional testimony. Brennan and Clapper now have contributor gigs at cable news channels; Strzok has filed a wrongful termination suit against the FBI. Mueller’s Report was chastised by the IG’s office for its misleading assertions and its lies by omission, with no apologies amongst the fallout.
And no jail time for any of them.
Today, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was given a 4-month jail sentence for Contempt of Congress. Bannon initially denied the legitimacy of the Congressional subpoena, citing executive privilege in his role as presidential advisor, but ultimately did testify.
I no longer care what any of you think about Donald Trump. Nor do I care what you think of Bannon, who — full disclosure — invited me to New York for a preview of his Sarah Palin documentary over a decade ago. Neither man is the issue. Roger Stone isn’t the issue, either — whatever you think of him either as a person or a persona. The My Pillow guy? Not the issue.
Instead, the issue is that it is beyond obvious we have a completely politicized system of Justice in which equality before the law is irrelevant, and political prosecutions are becoming the norm under this Administration’s DOJ. AG Merrick Garland recommended a two year sentence for the two NY lawyers who fire bombed a police car — with law enforcement occupants inside — during a BLM protest; meanwhile, the same AG has acquired a 3 1/2 year jail sentence against a 24-year-old UCLA grad for briefly sitting in Mike Pence’s chair on Jan 6. The protestor had committed no violence and destroyed no property.
The disparity in both charging and sentencing is undeniable: Jan 6 defendants charged with parading do prison time. Antifa members who set fire to police barracks or federal courthouses were released en masse, often with financial assistance promoted by the now Vice President, and no charges ultimately brought.
I believe a similar one-sided enfocement of the laws helped provoke the Spanish Civil War.
NEWS A LITTLE MORE THAN HALF OF YOU CAN USE: Wrong bra size can lead to back pain, stretch marks, bad posture: study.
NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST: I’m a flight attendant — here are the 5 things you should never do on plane.
BRENT SPINER IS DISMAYED: 1 in 3 admits their brain ‘shuts down’ when they hear or see the word ‘data’.
OFFER GOOD ONLY IN CALIFORNIA, HAWAII & VIRGINIA – TERMS & CONDITIONS MAY APPLY: Inflation relief checks: Which Americans qualify and how to get your payment.
OH, DON’T WORRY, THE JOBS WANTED ARE FULL OF THESE: POSITION WANTED: WOKE, ENTITLED NARCISSIST WILLING TO CODE: Elon Musk planning to cut 75% of Twitter workforce: report.
GOOD THING IT WAS AN EMERGENCY, OTHERWISE THE WAIT WOULD HAVE BEEN >36 HOURS: UK mom told to wait 8 hours for ambulance after son has seizure.
If the last two years have taught you nothing, they should have taught you that no form of government belongs anywhere near healthcare.
AND ALL THIS BECAUSE THEY WON’T MANAGE THE FORESTS: LA Times reveals 2020 CA Wildfire CO2 Wiped Out 18 Years of the State’s Emissions Reductions.
Socialism is evil and only does evil. And I’m tired of this. It’s time to stop tolerating unbridled evil. It’s time.
Vote like your life depends on this. Pray that this time we can overcome the tidal wave of fraud. And then stay engaged. And do it again. If we vote our way out of this is a miracle. It’s the soft landing. The other way is much harder.
But hard or soft, it’s ours to do. Atlas shrugged? Atlas did that long ago. Now Atlas needs to get a broom and start making with the cleaning.