Archive for November, 2022
November 30, 2022
WHY WHAT HAPPENS ON CAMPUSES MATTERS: Booklet describes the need for universities to be ‘drivers of equity and inclusion in American society.’
THIS IS A DIRECT RESPONSE TO TWITTER RE-EMBRACING FREE SPEECH: Google, YouTube spend MILLIONS to launch Global Fact Check Fund.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Government COVID Fascists Can’t Grasp That We’ve All Moved On. “The people tasked with doing everything they could to protect the public health did almost anything but that and most of the public is now aware of that. We aren’t in a state of early COVID panic and now have a lot of experience with them getting things very, very wrong.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: What’s Next for China’s Lunar Exploration Plans?
IF RANKINGS WEREN’T IMPORTANT, PEOPLE MIGHT FOCUS ON LOCATION AND COST: More Commentary On The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott. “The ire directed at U.S. News and other purveyors of rankings is understandable but can mask a deeper and more troubling reality: In the world of colleges and universities, reputation, brand strength, prestige — call it what you will — is now and has long been more important than anything else, including the nature and quality of the actual education provided. In fact it would be difficult to find another industry in which reputations are so fixed, so valuable, and based on so little hard evidence.”
The truth is, there’s much less difference between law schools than the rankings suggest. Faculty pretty much all come from the same handful of top schools, curricula are more alike than different, everybody has a nice building and library now (and nobody uses the library for research much, that’s nearly all online anyway). The students around you are on average smarter at top schools, but not that much smarter and often more deficient in other ways. The chief appeal of “top” schools is just prestige.
IT’S A WEIRD ADMINISTRATION: Theft case against Biden nonbinary aide Sam Brinton is admittedly ‘weirder.’
UPDATE:
WHY, INDEED? Why can’t Karine Jean-Pierre pronounce Nobel Prize?
SO MUCH WRONG WITH ‘RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT:’ With Senate passage Tuesday of the purposely mis-named same-sex marriage bill supported by all 50 Democrats and 12 Republicans, the deeply Orwellian character of American political rhetoric has become so obvious as to be undeniable.
That’s according to Dr. Al Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and author of the incisive analyst behind “The Briefing.” Don’t let his title mislead you because Mohler’s razor-edged analysis exposes the utter lack of logic behind the bill and the deceptive reasoning of advocates like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin. It’s lengthy at 25+ minutes, but well worth every second.
MEGAN FOX: 4 Reasons Police Haven’t Arrested or Named a Suspect in the Idaho 4 Murders. “For the sake of the families who just lost four beloved children on the cusp of their adult lives, this is a developing story that should be handled with extreme care. Already, just nineteen days into the investigation, the parents are starting to question the forthrightness of the police and their emotions are raw going into the first holiday season without their children. It would be helpful for them if the true crime die-hards didn’t fan the flames of upset for clicks and views. I’ve spent the day going over the facts of this case and to me, it’s looking like very good police work in a very difficult situation.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US consumer confidence falls in November for 2nd month.
THEY CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE THAT, SINCE NONE OF THEM ARE: Mark Judge: Hey Hollywood, maybe make a #MeToo film in which the men are innocent?
THE GROWNUPS ARE BACK IN CHARGE AFTER TRUMP! Biden Official Makes History: The First Nonbinary Federal Official To Face Felony Theft Charges.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Anti-Xi protests should end American left’s China envy.
LICENSED BARBARISM: The Most Passionate Science Deniers Are Pro-Trans ‘Experts’ Who Profit From Carving Up Kids.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that studies on transition, and especially transitioning children, are overwhelmingly conducted by those whose careers depend upon proving the benefits of transition. The doctors who are chemically castrating teenage boys, or amputating the healthy breasts of adolescent girls, are all-in. To admit that these procedures are a mistake would be a confession of horrific, possibly even criminal, medical malpractice that would end their careers.
Likewise, many of the formerly respectable gatekeepers of medicine and scientific research have been deeply compromised by transgender ideology. From medical associations to hospitals, there is a multitude of people who are in too deep to admit error, even as transgender ideology collapses.
The fact-free nature of transgender ideology is apparent in the latest standards of care issued by WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health), a pro-trans group that is treated as the leading authority on transgender medicine. The organization eliminated many of its recommended age restrictions for medical transition in order to protect from malpractice claims physicians who were transitioning children younger than the previous standards — after all, doctors can’t violate a standard of care that doesn’t exist. And bizarrely, WPATH declared “eunuch” to be a valid gender identity, a decision reached, in part, by relying on online forums filled with violent fantasies of child sexual abuse.
These cranks and creeps have captured the establishment, from medicine to academia to the Democratic Party. And they intend to use their power to intimidate and silence critics. They do not care that their attempts are dishonest and incoherent. For instance, the NEJM writers admit that the scientific “consensus is ever evolving,” yet they posit this as a reason to shut down debate and deregulate transitioning children.
Future generations will look back on ours as butchers of children, because that’s exactly what’s happening.
YEP: Are Biden Inc scandals warping US policy toward China’s protesters?
Kirby is a very smart and able guy. Unlike many administration lightweights who convey that they are in over their heads, he knows exactly what he is saying. He is well aware that his appeasing message is crushing to people who are risking their lives. Those people know that Xi’s regime despises America, yet sees that America is too cowed to speak up for them. They are not expecting a U.S. military invasion. They just crave the kind of encouragement that, in 1981, President Reagan gave to Poles who defiantly revolted against the Soviets and their puppet regime in Warsaw. The Chinese protesters just expect a self-proclaimed beacon of freedom to act like a beacon, not a power failure.
At the risk of belaboring what I’ve been saying for a couple of years, the Biden family scandal — the millions of dollars that agents of the Chinese government (among other agents of corrupt and hostile regimes) poured into the family coffers during the Obama and Trump years — cannot be disaggregated from Biden administration policy positions on China.
Nope.
THE GRAY LADY ON THE BALENCIAGA DEBACLE: REPUBLICANS POUNCE! When High Fashion and QAnon Collide. Two new Balenciaga campaigns ignited a firestorm that traveled from the internet to Fox News, fueled by allegations that the brand condoned child exploitation.
The internet is full of trolls. Why did this controversy take off?
As online criticism of the campaigns spread, the story was picked up across right-leaning media outlets, including The New York Post and the prime time Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” The show has helped to publicize and mainstream QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”
“Here you have a major international retail brand promoting kiddie porn and sex with children,” Mr. Carlson told viewers on Nov. 22, “and not promoting it subtly but right out in the open.”
He’s not wrong, but as Jim Treacher likes to say:
WOW, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING? China Used Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal to Score Propaganda Points, Pentagon Finds.
The Chinese Communist Party used the botched American military withdrawal from Afghanistan to portray the U.S. as an unreliable international partner and a nation in decline, the Department of Defense found.
In a Tuesday report to Congress on national security developments involving China, the DOD noted that the CCP exploited the Afghanistan embarrassment to undermine the U.S. and its reputation.
“In 2021, the PRC employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence, such as highlighting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and criticizing U.S.-backed security partnerships,” the department concluded.
The CCP used the foreign policy failure as “evidence that the U.S. is an unreliable partner and declining power,” the report said. . . .
In August 2021, the Biden administration presided over a messy military departure from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to seize control of Kabul before U.S. forces and diplomats had vacated the country.
The withdrawal ended in chaos, with 13 American service men killed in a suicide bombing and desperate U.S. citizens and Afghan refugees scrambling to evacuate the war-torn country. As the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, as many as 9,000 Americans were left in the country, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released in February 2022.
How many are still there?
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: China to have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035: Pentagon.
IF YOU NEED SOMETHING NON OFFENSIVE* TO GIVE SOMEONE THIS CHRISTMAS, CONSIDER: Notebook: Henry Stare (So Sez Henry).
#COMMISSIONEARNED
Yes, Mr. Henry Hayden, Esq is a very photogenic cat. And his image on a notebook is bound to make you wish to write more.
*Okay, so it will offend your aunt who thinks we should spend the money we spend on pets on one legged martians with broken UFOs. But you know what? She deserves to be offended. Buy her three So Sez Henry notebooks.
SOME OF US KNOW THIS. WE ALSO KNOW WE ONLY HAVE A CHOICE OF EVILS: Apple emerges as a villain in China, shutting down iPhone apps that help protestors.