CONSEQUENCES? Separating the Juice From the Pulp At Stanford: How should SLS squeeze out students who violated the code of conduct?
The real question isn’t how, it’s whether administrators have the will to act. A couple of decades ago this would have been a no-brainer, but now we have administrators with no brains.
KRUISER: Democrats Continue Construction on Their High-Rise House of Lies. “As a conservative in the entertainment industry for over 30 years, I’ve had a lot of personal exposure to Democrats and progressives. I’ve witnessed their evolution in the 21st century from both macro and micro perspectives, and it isn’t pretty from any point of view.”
LOCAL CALIFORNIA OFFICIALS A TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT FOR CCP: First, there was then-Councilman-turned-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), then the big bucks donated to former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Mayor’s Fund” by two guys with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
And now it’s reported by Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon that Garcetti’s successor in the Mayor’s office, former Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), recently met with a key figure in China’s influence operations in the U.S.
HEH: Important Safety Tip. “Don’t attempt to steal a helicopter unless you can actually, you know, fly a helicopter.”
READER FAVORITE: MyPillow Premium Bed Pillow Set of 2 Queen Medium. #CommissionEarned
ANSWERING THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ON THE PLANET: Can you split an Oreo and get equal cream on both sides? A group of MIT scientists created the “Oreometer” to find out.
FASTER? PLEASE! It Sure Seems Like Darkstar, Lockheed’s Secret High-Speed Jet, Is Real. “Aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin recently tweeted about the famed SR-71 Blackbird ‘being the fastest acknowledged crewed air-breathing jet aircraft.’ (Italic emphasis our own.) As first noted by The War Zone, the tweet could be a subtle reference to the SR-72, the long-rumored hypersonic successor to the Blackbird.”
I wonder what they actually call it, assuming it exists.
KING OF COMEDY UPDATE: Watch the Jussie Smollett hate hoaxers re-enact the ‘crime.’ “Is this the best video to grace the internet today? Cockburn thinks yes. Check out Abel and Ola Osundairo, the Nigerian brothers who allegedly perpetrated a fake hate crime against Empire actor Jussie ‘Juicy’ Smollett, re-enacting how they carried out the staged attack:”
The Osundairo brothers were hired men for a con created to dupe America. They share what they were instructed to do the night of the staged attack on Jussie Smollett. https://t.co/jvWwGloz8k #FoxNation #JussieSmollett #AnatomyOfAHoax pic.twitter.com/3uOEHLFSoN
— Fox Nation (@foxnation) March 13, 2023
(Classical reference in headline.)
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ANALYSIS: ‘Microcredentials’ poised to disrupt higher ed as degrees lose relevance to employers.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: It’s the End of Women’s Colleges as We Know It, and You Know Why.
Wellesley College, an all-women’s school that has long prided itself as a place for “women who will make a difference in the world,” has truly lost the plot. Currently, the school’s policy is that students who were “assigned female at birth who identify as men are not eligible for admission,” but students who were “assigned male at birth who identify as women are eligible for admission.”
So, in reality, Wellesley hasn’t truly been an all-women’s college since 2015, when it last updated its policy to accept applications from biological males who identify as women. But even that policy allowing biological men to attend wasn’t woke enough for the student body, which, on Tuesday, voted in support of a non-binding resolution to allow “trans men and nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth” to be admitted as students.
Matt Walsh, call your office!
UNDER SOCIALISM, JEAN WOULD HAVE TO GIVE JACK CAKES FOR DOING NOTHING:
What you’re describing is free enterprise, not socialism. Jack and Jean are voluntarily bartering. Good for them.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” Adam Smith https://t.co/5uJ4AeS2y5
— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot) March 15, 2023
Happy to clear that up.
THE PRIMARY BATTLE LINES ARE BEING DRAWN: Prominent GOP Congressman Endorses Ron DeSantis.
HOW ELSE WOULD THE BROWNSHIRTS KNOW WHO TO ATTACK? UC Davis chancellor condemned Charlie Kirk hours before Antifa attacked event.
PRIMER ON WHO IS ACTUALLY ANTI-RACISM: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2007 opinion striking down race-based quotas in public schools that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
More recently, Critical Race Theory (CRT) huckster Ibram X. Kendi wrote in his 2019 book “the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Rather stark, no? Those contrasting quotes are included in this superb Freedom Matters video from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in connection with the legal defense foundation’s representation of five parents challenging CRT-based policies in the Albemarle County (Va.) public schools.
Josue Sierra, the articulate young Hispanic narrator of that video, has recently made the big jump to form his own marketing firm. Very smart guy who wants to make more videos like that for important freedom-loving causes. Our side needs to cultivate and encourage such talent.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘This Is Scary’: Financial Industry Panic Spreads as Credit Suisse Teeters. “The fresh crisis at Credit Suisse, which comes just days after two U.S. banks collapsed, compounded fears that seemingly isolated problems at individual financial institutions could signal a deeper systemic threat with far-reaching implications for the interconnected global economy.”
Meanwhile, Biden has “effectively nationalized the deposit base of the entire US financial system,” putting us all on the hook for everyone’s deposits, even the ones above $250,000.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: DeSantis Notches Another Win Against Woke Corporate Idiots. “The reason he gets so much attention here at the Briefing is because he doesn’t make any unforced errors. Some claim that his recent remarks on Ukraine could be construed as such. I don’t.”
FORMER DEPUTY TREASURY SECRETARY ROBERT ALTMAN: Biden Is Effectively Nationalizing The Deposit Base Of The Entire U.S. Financial System.
What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. And what that really means, and they won’t say it, and I’ll come back to that, what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system, the entire deposit base. Why? Because you can’t guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say at First Republic, sorry, yours aren’t guaranteed. Of course, they are.
And so this is a breathtaking step, which effectively nationalizes or federalizes the deposit base of the U.S. financial system. You can call it a bailout, you can call it something else, but it’s really absolutely profound.
Now, the authorities, including the White House, are not going to say that, because what I just said of course implies that they have just nationalized the banking system. And technically speaking, they haven’t. But in a broad sense, they are verging on that.
I’m so old, I remember when Biden ran as a “return to normalcy” moderate.
STANFORD HAS BECOME PATHETIC: Full Audio Confirms Stanford Law School Students Shouted Down Conservative Judge In Violation Of Policy. “Leftist legal trolls tried to portray the shout-down as contrived by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, exaggerated, and the video out of context. The full audio, however, proves it was as bad if not worse than the video showed.”
The behavior of the students was disgraceful, but the real disgrace is the weakness of the administrators’ response. They act as if the students have some sort of moral authority, which they do not. And a few expulsions would put an end to this sort of thing. Lots of work and tears goes into getting into a top law school. The students are being raised to think their actions have no consequences, though, and that’s the biggest disservice of all, to them, and to society at large.
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: How we forgot about Pol Pot.
In 1975, the ancient monarchy of Cambodia was roiled by the troubles shaking all of Indochina. Vietnam was at the end of its long war for independence, led by the communist Viet Cong. The USA was bombing, often with bestial inaccuracy, Vietnam’s neighbours like Laos and Cambodia (used as supply lines by the VC). Cambodia was thus semi-involved in the war.
[In 1975], a groupuscule of Paris-educated Cambodian ultra-Maoists, the Khmer Rouge, was rising to power. They started by radicalising and arming the peasantry, firing them with violent passion. Eventually they seized the capital (that terrible day witnessed by Roland Neveu). They then set about enforcing their crazed belief in an agrarian paradise, with everyone labouring like oxen in the rice-fields. A Maoist autarky. A place without money (they literally blew up the national bank, scattering now-worthless banknotes into the jacaranda trees). A place without religion, hierarchy, social class, intellectuals.
To do this, they killed all the middle classes. Everyone. If you had an education, you were killed. If you spoke a foreign language, you were killed. If you were a monk, a teacher, a lawyer, you were killed. People wearing spectacles were killed. Anyone who could dance was killed; ancient and exquisite Cambodian dance was a tradition handed on orally and practically – this meant that the nation of Cambodia forgot how to dance.
When the KR ran out of obvious bourgeoisie to kill, they killed each other. For any reason. People caught with snails in their pockets were killed. People were killed for having sex, or being happy, or laughing. In the end it is estimated the Khmer Rouge slaughtered about 2-3 million people in a population of 8 million. Cambodia is the nation that crucified itself.
Why? Why was this regime so mad? This is the question many have asked. After this latest visit, finally going to Choeung Ek, I think I perhaps have an answer. In his fine, troubling book – The Elimination – about his interviews with Duch, Khmer Rouge survivor Rithy Panh quotes Duch saying that in his world ‘there is no place for the individual’, and ‘beauty is an obstacle’.
This is important because it reveals the insane yet inexorable logic of the Khmer Rouge. If Marxism means enforced equality, its ultimate endpoint is this. Individuals cannot be ‘allowed’ as they might be ‘different’, they might laugh or be happy, unlike others. Beauty – physical, artistic, sexual, spiritual, intellectual – must likewise be ruthlessly extinguished, because it too prevents a Marxist Utopia. Beauty is unfair. It must be eliminated.
Does this matter? Yes, because we live in a time when kids think Marxism is cool again. When self-confessed Marxist Jeremy Corbyn is seen as an amusing old uncle.
“Cambodian genocide denial” has its own Wikipedia page; not least of which was practiced by Noam Chomsky in the 1970s.
While college campuses are obsessing over “safe spaces” and diversity, equity, and inclusion, one professor noticed that students are becoming less happy and much angrier.
Mary Gaitskill, a novelist who teaches creative writing courses as a visiting professor at several universities, made the observations in an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Gaitskill said that despite constant efforts to make campuses “safe,” students in her classes, especially white males, are writing violent and degenerate fantasies, and many students have spent time in mental institutions.
HAPPY 120th BIRTHDAY, MR. AMBASSADOR: Mike Mansfield was a Democrat back when people like my (only slightly misguided) late mother could proudly call themselves Democrats. He is best known as the U.S. Senator from Montana (1953 -1977) and Majority Leader (1961-1977).
My story, however, has to do with his later service as ambassador to Japan—a position to which Carter had appointed him. Since Mansfield was well-regarded in both parties, Reagan kept him on. The story’s source was George Shultz, secretary of state for most of the Reagan years.
It seems Shultz had a large, impressive globe in his Department of State office. When newly appointed ambassadors came for an interview or existing ambassadors came to Washington for their first meeting with him, he would tease them by saying, “You have to go over to the globe and prove to me that you can identify your country.” They would spin the globe and put their finger on the country they had been assigned. No mistakes were ever made. You don’t have to be a genius to be an ambassador, but you can’t be a complete dullard. Even if you’ve been assigned to Lower Slobbovia, you’d better be able to find it on the globe.
Mansfield was different. When Shultz asked him to “identify your country,” Mansfield confidently spun the globe and put his hand on the United States. “That’s my country,” he said.
And indeed it was.
Years later, Shultz said on C-Span’s Booknotes, “I’ve told that story, subsequently, to all the ambassadors going out. ‘Never forget you’re over there in that country, but your country is the United States. You’re there to represent us. Take care of our interests and never forget it, and you’re representing the best country in the world.’”
Mansfield served his country well—first in the military during WWI (he was only 14, but he lied about his age), then in both houses of Congress, and finally as ambassador. He died in 2001 at the age of 98.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Mollie Hemingway: Drew Barrymore Kneeling To Dylan Mulvaney, “A Dude In Ladyface,” Is Embarrassing As A Woman.
BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS: James O’Keefe Makes His Move After Project Veritas.
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