NEWS YOU CAN USE: Love Makes the World Go ‘Round. But where’s Bennie?

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. THIS IS SOMETHING. THEREFORE. . . “We had to do something.” Joe Nocera joins John Tierney to discuss the government’s disastrous response to the Covid pandemic.

WHY BOTHER REPLACING THEM, THEN? Five DEI officers have resigned from this university within span of a year.

Plus: “High-level donors such as billionaire financier Bill Ackman noted that DEI programs often exclude groups such as white men, Asians, and Jews, cutting against the notion that such initiatives foster an inclusive campus.”

Check out the race/gender makeup of pretty much any DEI (or Title IX) office and it won’t look like America.

THIS IS HARDLY A SURPRISE: Harvard board that ‘unanimously’ supports Gay is overwhelmingly liberal, funds Democrats.

YOUR REMINDER THAT CHINA IS A POLICE STATE AND THE CCP IS A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION: The Railroading of Jimmy Lai. “For 80 days, a pre-ordained theater will unfold in which the Department of Justice will present evidence of Lai’s political connections abroad, and three complicit judges will ensure the process is smooth for the prosecution and difficult for the defense. When it’s over, Lai will be convicted and sentenced to an obscene prison term—probably for the rest of his life. While this will be Lai’s biggest trial, it is not his first. Every trial against him has played out in the same way—highly tenuous allegations presented by the DOJ, followed by forced and illogical rulings from judges determined to send Beijing’s most hated Hongkonger back to prison.”

Another remind: Large chunks of our ruling class see China as a model to be emulated.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: ‘I’m Not Responsible For Charlie’s Situation:’ Wendi Coldly Dismisses Frantic Donna After Charlie’s Conviction In Dan Markel’s Murder.

REMEMBER WHEN THEY TOLD US THE JANUARY 6 PROTESTERS WERE “DESECRATING” THE HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE BY JUST WALKING AROUND? Here Are the Reactions to a Dem Staffer Getting Caught Having Gay Sex in a Senate Hearing Room.

ROGER KIMBALL: ‘Liberty and Justice For All’ – A Tattered Cliche? One set of laws for Donald Trump and his supporters, and another set for the harassers.

Every institution has been corrupted, but they get upset if you call them corrupt.

RACISM IN AMERICA, 2024: Boston’s ‘electeds of color’ party table posted by mayor.

Here’s the official photo of the no-whites-need-apply Christmas party at the Parkman House Wednesday night.

By my count, the table includes one jailbird ex-con, at least three hacks who’ve been fined by the State Ethics Commission and one who’s been jammed up with OCPF.

From left, clockwise: Rep. Samantha Montano; Rep. Russell Holmes (the organizer); Mrs. Holmes; fiance of lame duck City Councilor Ricky Ricardo Arroyo; Ricky Ricardo himself; Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden, who Arroyo tried to fix the 2022 election against with disgraced ex-US atty Rachael Rollins; Mrs. Hayden (woman in blue who covered her face going into Parkman House); City Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune; Ayanna Pressley’s ex-con husband Conan Harris, strangely sitting at the head of the table instead of the mayor; Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins; retiring City Hall aide Juan Lopez; incoming city councilor and City Hall hack Enrique Pepen; Mayor Wu; Rep. Brandy Fluker-Oakley (the woman who put up her hoodie to avoid being identified as she walked into the time); unidentified random dude in white Michael Jackson hat; Rep. Chris Worrell and Sen. Liz Miranda.

Those fined by Ethics Commission: City Councilors Arroyo and Pepen and Sheriff Tompkins.

By the way, Rep. Samantha Montano tweeted that his “white Italian” partner would have been welcome but she couldn’t make it. Why was jailbird Conan Harris there but not his wife, the invitee? And why did he grab Wu’s seat at head of table?

I wonder what Ricky Ricardo and Kevin Hayden discussed, maybe, “Hey, have you seen Rachael Rollins lately?”

At same time as the Wu Klux Klan party, regular City Council party was being held at Bell in Hand across the street from City Hall.

Wu Klux Klan. Heh. Indeed.

Flashback:

FLASHBACK: Mayor of Boston @MayorWu at a St Patrick’s Day Breakfast: "I'm getting used to dealing with problems that are expensive, disruptive and white" pic.twitter.com/6CSApprDOg

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 15, 2023

MAKE NO MISTAKE, THE PRIMARY MOTIVE HERE IS TO CONCEAL RACIAL DISCRIMINATION: Law Schools Embrace LSAT Alternatives Following SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ban.

POOR IRELAND: Eire, We Hardly Knew Ye.

The land of this writer’s ancestors was once known the world over for its stubborn, centuries’ long refusal to submit to the religion and laws of the global empire next door. Nowadays it’s better known for its enthusiasm, its desperation even, for submitting to the religion and laws of another empire just a little further east, namely the European Union.

Perhaps you heard about the riots that took place in Dublin last month, which began as an expression of rage after an Algerian-born man (holding an Irish passport and thus an “Irishman”) attacked several children with a knife outside of their school, leaving one little girl in critical condition. The Irish people had already been on edge, after the conviction of a Roma gypsy from Slovakia named Jozef Puska for the senseless murder of Aishling Murphy, a young Irish woman, as she was jogging in her native County Offaly. Murphy’s boyfriend, in a victim impact statement given at the time of sentencing, angrily noted that Puska had “come to this country, [to] be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years [but could] never hold down a legitimate job and never once contributed to society in any way, shape, or form.”

His words were instantly censored by the country’s one-party state media outlets, but they reflected the frustration of many normal Irish men and women who have watched their country’s radical transformation at the hands of its current Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar and his Uniparty coalition government over these past several years. And just how radical has it been? Here are some numbers from Philip Pilkington, writing in UnHerd:

“A full 2.8 percent of the population is made up of people who have moved to Ireland only in the last year. This means that if you walk down the average Irish street, one in 35 people will be newcomers to the country. While Ireland had been accepting large numbers of migrants for a long time, this was turbocharged by the war in Ukraine. Ireland, whose political and media classes have become notably outward-looking over the past decade, wanted to prove its liberal values and committed to hosting huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees. On a per capita basis, Ireland accepted six times more refugees than Britain — and made almost no plans for how to accommodate them. The latest numbers show that Ireland’s foreign-born population is 904,800 people. This means that 18 percent of the Irish population is foreign-born.”

Pilkington argues that there is no nation known to history that has successfully assimilated this percentage of recent immigrants. And Ireland, which historically has been known for out-migration — hence the prevalence of number of “Mc” and “O” prefixed surnames throughout the Anglosphere — is unlikely to buck that trend.

Why has the Irish governing class, almost without exception, actively encouraged this transformation? In part it is because it associates Ireland itself with backwardness, and that includes its people — the Muintir na hÉireann, in the old language — whom they refer to as “boggers,” and “culchies,” and find terribly unsophisticated and embarrassing. This is their opportunity to, as Bertolt Brecht facetiously suggested, “dissolve the people” and replace it with another. Which is exactly what they’re doing.

Most countries in the West are governed by a ruling class that doesn’t much like the people it rules.

MARK JUDGE: Why conservatives need reporters in Hollywood.

OUCH: Tobacco Company CEOs, Ivy League Presidents, And Race.

n the spring of 1994, the top executives of the seven largest tobacco companies testified under oath before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. Nearly 30 years later, Americans remember their laughable claims, their callous indifference, their lawyerly inability to speak plainly, and the general sense that they did not regard themselves as part of a shared American community. Those pampered executives, behaving with such Olympian detachment, put the pejorative big in Big Tobacco.

Last week, something similar happened. Thirty years from now, Americans will likely recall a witness table of presidents—representing not top corporations in one single sector, but the nation’s most powerful educational institutions—refusing to speak plainly, defiantly rejecting any sense that they are part of a “we,” and exhibiting smug moralistic certainty even as they embraced bizarrely immoral positions about anti-Semitism and genocide.

Perhaps we need warning labels on college applications.

OPEN THREAD: Hang on to your hopes, my friend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE, LEAD BOOTS PROVIDED BY THE BUREAUCRACY: Federal agencies caught in environmental crossfire over Starship launches.

FORTIFY, FORTIFY: The World’s Oldest Settlements Were Built by a Culture Nobody Expected.

Plus: “Several other Stone Age forts have been found in this region of the world, but none are as old as the Amnya I site. In Europe, comparable sites don’t show up until centuries later and only after the dawn of agriculture. . . . Researchers suspect that a shift in climate roughly 8,000 years ago created the stage for an abundance of seasonal resources in western Siberia, prompting an influx of human migrants.”

This was during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, when the climate was significantly warmer than today.

SO LESS NEED FOR A VACCINE THAT MANY DISTRUST? Open-Science Triumph: “COVID Moonshot” Discovers New Antivirals To Treat COVID-19.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Microbiome insights found in poop help predict infections in liver transplant patients.

HMM: Unstable ‘fluttering’ predicts aortic aneurysm with 98% accuracy.

WELL, THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Full-day, solar-powered, bidirectional thermoregulatory clothing that can respond to changing temperatures.

CHANGESAME: Progress toward eliminating child marriage in India has stalled, says study.

SPACE: Rocket Lab puts Japanese satellite into orbit.

GOOD: Melanoma vaccine may improve survival, study shows.

SCIENCE: Scientists Talk With Whales for First Time in Practice for Meeting Aliens.

THE WAR ON CIVILIZATION CONTINUES: Canadian Medical Schools Asked to Shift From “Medical Expertise” to Anti-Racism and Social Justice Training.