YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOUR DOCTOR: Why should we care about the opinions of aspiring doctors? “In 2015, the Association of American Medical Colleges revised the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) for the first time in nearly 25 years, stretching the full exam-day experience from around five hours to eight or more. The test drew attention at the time for its sheer length; less widely noted was the explicitly ideological bent of the new exam.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
April 10, 2018
SLATE: Neil Gorsuch’s Legacy Is Already Devastating.
Winning!
OOPS: Wisconsin Man Killed in Home Blast Had White Supremacist Materials, Stash of TATP and Guns. “TATP has been used in several high-profile terrorist attacks; warrant says Morrow also had Tannerite, which explodes when shot.”
MELISSA MACKENZIE: Those who’ve declared war on the elected president see this as the beginning of the end for him.
To the lawyerly among the Twitterati, there must be a there, there. One commenter mused upon the “slow roll of the Nixon investigation” and saw an analogy. And he’s right. There is an analogy. The media hate Donald Trump just as they hated Richard Nixon. Democrats hate Donald Trump just as they hated Richard Nixon. And there are enough Republicans who cannot abide the shift in the demographics of the Republican electorate that they profoundly desire to see Donald Trump fail. And then, Donald Trump’s own pugnacious streak makes him frustrating enough that even his devoted followers grow exasperated at his behavior.
But, Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon and America today is not the Vietnam-era times fraught with an unpopular foreign war. Today, the war being fought is cold and civil and cultural. In D.C. and cities around the country, elites are shocked and horrified that someone such as Trump even is in office. They hate him. They hate anyone who would support him. The fact that Donald Trump enjoys 86% approval among Republicans fills them with revulsion at him and them. Those people.
Many from Mueller on down believe they are doing God’s own work by investigating Trump and following the trail to wherever it leads, even though it’s leading away from Russian collusion and into the Siberia of business sleaze.
Read the whole thing.
“I NEED WIDER POWERS!” Knife-Control Debate Heats Up in the UK amid London Murder Spike.
Murders in the city have increased over the past year, and criminal knife use has been identified as a major contributing factor. Both gun crime and knife crime saw dramatic increases between fiscal year 2015/2016 and fiscal year 2016/2017, according to statistics released by the Metropolitan Police. Knife crime saw a 24 percent increase with a 20.5 percent increase in stabbings. Gun crime saw a 42 percent increase with a 57 percent increase in armed robberies.
The police have been actively engaged in anti-knife crime Operation Sceptre since July 2015. The operation has resulted in “2,294 arrests, 473 of which were for possession of a knife or weapon and the recovery and removal of 1,435 weapons from the streets of London” using a combination of weapons sweeps and sting tactics, police say. The operation is also partnering with a local charity on a drive to get people to anonymously turn in their knives at police stations or at 30 knife surrender bins located throughout London.
“You might be carrying a knife as you are worried that someone is after you and you might want to protect yourself,” Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie said in a public letter. “But that is not the way to go about it.”
Banning guns didn’t work, so they’re going after knives — what will they ban when the knife-ban fails?
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela stopped bond payments in September. “Central bank data suggest government is in ‘a stealth default’, says analyst.”
Margaret Thatcher, call your office.
SPENGLER: President Trump Is Magnificently Right and Catastrophically Wrong. “America’s trade deficit is like a giant benign tumor: It’s troublesome and ultimately dangerous, but it’s a symptom, not the cause, of the underlying problem. Cut it out with a rusty scalpel and the patient will bleed to death. Trump is entirely right to address the problem, but some of the advice he is getting may have disastrous consequences.”
Read the whole thing.
DIPLOMACY: The Peril of North Korea’s Charm Offensive.
North Korea’s ultimate goal since the end of the Korean War has been to weaken the U.S.–South Korean alliance. To accomplish this, North Korean leaders have devised both coercive and persuasive measures to raise the costs of entrapment and abandonment for Washington and Seoul.
This strategy is based on key differences between conservative and liberal South Korean presidents’ policies on North Korea. The South Korean right often supports a hard-line approach out of ideological confrontation, while the left embraces a reconciliatory tone in the spirit of shared ethnicity.
Pyongyang calibrates its South Korea policy to each administration accordingly, in order to widen the differences between Seoul and Washington. For the South Korean conservatives, Pyongyang increases the frequency and intensity of its nuclear and missile tests. This sets a hard-decoupling challenge, pressuring the U.S. to recalculate the value of the nuclear umbrella it provides to South Korea, and raising the central dilemma of trading New York for Seoul.
For the South Korean liberals, North Korea implements its soft-decoupling strategy, emphasising the shared bloodline between North and South Korea to encourage bilateral economic relations in defiance of international and U.S. sanctions.
It’s Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football — only now the football is nukes.
IT ISN’T ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: Take a look at these ‘weapons’ found by British police during a sweep.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Lawyer Gets Manafort-ed and Much, Much More. “One thing is curious: Mr. Cohen was cooperating with the authorities, so why were the jack-boots brought in? A special team of agents will need to go through the material in order to identify communications that are protected under attorney-client relationship. If the New York agents just happen to find something relevant to Mueller’s investigation, they can turn it over to the special counsel The New York Times reports.”
Show me the man, and I’ll find you a crime.
PRIVACY: 6 questions Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg still needs to answer.
The seventh question, likely on the mind of everyone in the hearing room: “What does he have on me?”
“CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW…” “Erotic Review” blocks US Internet users to prepare for government crackdown.
Congress recently passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act bill (SESTA), and President Trump is expected to sign it into law. SESTA will make it easier to prosecute websites that host third-party content that promotes or facilitates prostitution, even in cases when the sex workers aren’t victims of trafficking.
After Congress approved the bill, Craigslist removed its “Personals” section and Reddit removed some sex-related subreddits. The Erotic Review (TER) has followed suit by blocking any user who appears to be visiting the website from the United States.
“As a result of this new law, TER has made the difficult decision to block access to the website from the United States until such time as the courts have enjoined enforcement of the law, the law has been repealed or amended, or TER has found a way to sufficiently address any legal concerns created by the new law,” the website’s home page says in a notice to anyone who accesses the site from a US location.
Instead of sex workers and their customers screening one another from the safety of their computer screens, I guess they’ll be forced to go back to the streets.
NIKKI HALEY: Russian hands ‘covered in blood’ from Syria attack.
“The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered in the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims,” Haley said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday.
“We must not overlook Russia and Iran’s roles in enabling the Assad regime’s murderous destruction,” she continued.
Nekulturny at best, Vlad.
BLUE ON BLUE: Ex-AG Loretta Lynch alleges James Comey gave conflicting testimony about Hillary Clinton email probe.
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch says fired FBI Director James Comey didn’t raise any concerns when she directed him in 2015 to label the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server a “matter” as opposed to an “investigation.”
But, nearly two years later, Comey gave a different recollection of events during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling lawmakers that Lynch’s directive “confused and concerned” him.
Lynch drew attention to Comey’s apparent conflicting remarks during an NBC News interview set to air in full Monday night.
“It was a meeting like any other that we had had where we talked about the issues. We had a full and open discussion about it and concerns were not raised,” Lynch said.
I find that unlikely in the extreme.
April 9, 2018
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: London Mayor Sadiq Khan Isn’t the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Will Dwayne Johnson’s Trump Attack Hurt His Box Office Muscle?
I don’t know. But I do know, having seen the trailer last weekend, that his upcoming “Skyscraper” flick looks like a pastiche of every overworked Hollywood action trope dating back at least to “Die Hard.”
MARY JO’S REVENGE: Chappaquiddick Box Office Blows Past Projections.
DAVID MARCUS: 5 Big, Fat Lies Free Speech Opponents Love.
The last one is the biggie:
Speech Is Violence
Perhaps the most pernicious lie perpetrated by those who would hinder free speech is the idea that speech can be violence. We are told that trans people commit suicide at several times the rate of others because people are allowed to question whether gender is a matter of preference. Such questioning is considered an act of violence. This is abject hysteria.
We should probably worry about how our speech affects others, but to the extent that we truly believe something to be true, we cannot be afraid to say so because others may be bothered by it. Stating an opinion is not violence. Any philosophy of free speech that suggests so is wrong-minded and averse to the very concept of free speech.
It is a dangerous time for free speech.
It always is, which is exactly why we have an amendment recognizing and protecting it.
I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO BOTHER ASKING SARAH HOYT IF I MAY BORROW HER SHOCKED FACE: Shock: Facebook Is Tracking You Even If You’re Not on Facebook.
HIT ‘EM WHERE IT HURTS: End EPA’s Ideology-Driven Slush Funds.
Another, case in point is the Volkswagen AG scandal from 2015. As part of the VW’s emissions settlement, the company agreed to invest $2 billion on electric vehicle infrastructure in the U.S. While this money may seem connected to the emissions cheating, in reality, it went to a nonprofit interest groups unrelated to the settlement and parties involved. The VW settlement follows not one, but two unsuccessful requests for congressional funding for electric vehicle infrastructure by the Obama administration.
VW wasn’t the only company required to pay money to finance third-parties through slush funds. In the $20.8 billion settlement for the Gulf oil spill, the largest settlement in U.S. history, BP was ordered to pay up to $8.8 billion to the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees in order to fund restoration work on the Gulf of Mexico. Again, while this may seem related, the money going to coastal restoration was also used to fund projects not directly related to the spill.
This a problem.
Nah — quasi-legal slush funds are just another feature of Obama’s “remarkably scandal-free” administration.
And if you want to know why the Left is working so furiously to drive Pruitt from office? It’s all about the money.