WELL, SOMEONE NEEDS TO: CrossFit’s Greg Glassman Disrupted Fitness. Next, He’s Taking on Healthcare.
NEO: WOMEN LIED, BLACK MEN DIED.
Why didn’t it occur to Democrats that their approach to Kavanaugh might bother black men as well as white ones? My theory is that Democrats now think so completely along racial lines that it probably wouldn’t occur to them that a black man could identify with something happening to a white man, and a preppy white man at that. That must be why writer Jemele Hill of the Atlantic could write something like this [emphasis mine]:
On Tuesday night, I was in an auditorium with 100 black men in the city of Baltimore, when the subject pivoted to Brett Kavanaugh. I expected to hear frustration that the sexual-assault allegations against him had failed to derail his Supreme Court appointment. Instead, I encountered sympathy. One man stood up and asked, passionately, “What happened to due process?” He was met with a smattering of applause, and an array of head nods.
Hill, who is a black woman (formerly a sportswriter), assumed that these black men would identify with the woman’s story of sexual assault, rather than the man’s story of false accusation. She thought they would accept and perhaps join in with the Democrats’ ridicule and demonizing of Kavanaugh’s rage at being falsely accused.
On a related topic, note that the bill is coming due for American literature’s most celebrated rape apologist. A week ago, Steven Crowder posted this parody video:
And proving out Muggeridge’s Law, which as the late Tom Wolfe wrote, postulated that “We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known,” on Thursday, Milwaukee’s Fox affiliate posted this headline: “Shorewood School District cancels ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ play due to potential protests.”
The stated reason was the school district getting last-minute jitters over the play’s use of the N-word, but it’s still memory holing what was an American classic. “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches,” Ray Bradbury wrote in the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Which Witch Will Be The Witch To Bewitch Brett Kavanaugh?
Though Jeff Dunetz is on it, this might be a topic best outsourced to the Washington Post.
I BLAME STEVE GREEN: WaPo columnist blames Trump for Americans drinking more. As Jazz Shaw writes:
What I find odd here is that the booze business needed any sort of a bump. Traditionally, the liquor industry has been seen as one of the most recession-proof business channels in the country, perhaps second only to the Mafia. When times are good, people drink to celebrate. When times are hard, they drink to console themselves. Or at least that’s how it’s traditionally been perceived.
So is Parker onto something? Is Trump actually driving people to drink? I’ll wait until martini time this afternoon to decide, but if he is I say good for him. And now he’s got somebody on the Supreme Court who really likes beer, so we should be in good shape from here on out.
Say, I wonder if the DNC-MSM would be writing similar headlines if Hillary won? (No, actually I don’t.)
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Tiny Nanoparticles to Treat a Huge Problem: Snakebites.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Steve Carell: The Office Would Be Too Offensive Today. If So, What’s Left?
During the post-Weinstein “Pervnado” of late 2017, there were articles getting the vapors over 1970s-era sitcoms such as M*A*S*H, Taxi, and WKRP. But The Office went off the air in 2013. What will PC do to tighten the shackles on Hollywood in another five years?
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: The Week in Media Bias History: Barbara Walters Praising Cuba as ‘One of the Freest Nations on Earth.’
HILLARY CLINTON WANTS A WAR ON CIVILITY? THAT WILL COST DEMOCRATS, BIG TIME, Jon Gabriel writes in USA Today.
Earlier: How to Tell If You Are Part of a Mob.
AT AMAZON, save on bestsellers in Health and Personal Care.
Plus, deals on DVDs.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: What the media aren’t telling you about Jamal Khashoggi.
FASTER, PLEASE: Vaccine effectively protects against Lassa fever, rabies.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Save the Democrats: Crush Them at the Polls.
As Joycelyn Elders, Bill Clinton’s surgeon general would say, do it for the children.
AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Garden & Outdoors.
MY ENEMY, MY TRADING PARTNER: “America’s external enemies have been internalized. The globalized world no longer required Russian and Chinese forces to cross borders. They are here: in the supply chain, through their lobbyists, on the airwaves, in computer networks and social media. The combatants are everywhere mingled. Unlike past conflicts they are too close to risk calling in the proverbial artillery.”
THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Triumph of the Kanye West Edition.
SKYNET SMILES: Boston Dynamics’ Atlas Can Now Chase You Up the Stairs.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: ABC Regrets Firing Roseanne Over Bad Tweet?
SCRAPPLEFACE: Robert “Beto” O’Rourke: Big Bucks to Buy “F***ing Sh**load of Democracy.”
This comes on the heels of news that his U.S. Senate campaign raised an astonishing $38.1 million in the past three months — a total of $62 million to date — in an effort to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who leads in the latest poll by about nine percent.
“I used to look askance at money in politics,” said O’Rourke, beloved by Democrats for his use of profanity on the stump. “I now realize that having an f***ing sh**load of money means more egalitarianism, more fairness, and thus more Progressive policies for all of the people.”
O’Rourke said the reverse is also true: “The puny, paltry, $12 million raised by the Cruz campaign in the third quarter should be seen for what it is — a failure to buy enough Democracy for all of the people to have some.”
It’s satire, but is it really?
ROGER SIMON: Democrats’ ‘Kanye Derangement Syndrome’ Explodes.
IN THE MAIL: The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science.
BRUCE BAWER: Revisiting—and Politicizing—the 2011 Oslo Massacres.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: University of Virginia Health Center Is Hiring a ‘Masculinity Specialist’ for its Health Center, on the False Idea That Masculinity is a ‘Risk Factor’ for Sexual Assault.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Pro-life group accuses university employee of assaulting them during protest.
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: The UN climate-change panel that cried wolf too often.
(Classical reference in headline.)
NOTHING TO HIDE: Kent State asks student not to give interviews amid scrutiny.
HILLARY CLINTON’S SECURITY CLEARANCE SHOULD HAVE BEEN PULLED IN 2016: Good news that Hillary has finally lost her top secret security clearance. Loose lips do sink ships. Here’s essay from 2016 examining her criminal abuse of classified information.
The laws protecting national security are a fortification of sorts—a legal fortification that contributes to national security. Americans entrusted with security clearances and tasked with handling classified information must make every effort to avoid negligence. The laws help insure constant awareness. They promote self-discipline and institutional obedience.
Hillary Clinton’s criminal “negligence” followed by James Comey’s sellout of the rule of law is breaching the legal fortification.
Hillary ought to be serving time for her crimes.
MORE SUPPORT FOR THE MISMATCH THESIS: A recently-posted paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research web site contributes to the growing body of evidence that affirmative action preferences hurt, rather than help, their intended beneficiaries.
Interestingly, this study was of students’ experiences in primary school rather than in college or graduate school. But if competing with students that are much better prepared to do well can cause problems for primary school students, it’s hard to see why it is so unthinkable that it would do so for college students.
Richard Murphy and Felix Weinhardt write that their research “establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability.” To put it in more concrete terms: Suppose a primary school student has the experience of being toward the bottom of her class in math simply because her class happened to have a lot of high-ability students in it. After that experience, she is less likely feel confident of her math ability and less likely to study and do well in math in secondary school than a student who had the same demonstrated ability in primary school, but who ranked higher in the class because he happened to be competing with fewer high-ability students.
For more background on the problem of mismatch, read Want to be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg up May Hurt Your Chances and A “Dubious Expediency”: How Race-Preferential Admissions Policies on Campus Hurt Minority to Students.
TO BE FAIR, MANY OF THEM WERE ALREADY CLOSE ENOUGH TO WALK: Politico: ‘Trump Anxiety Disorder’ Is Driving Liberals Crazy.
GIZMODO CAN’T EVEN: Trump Signs Actually Good Bill To Clean Up Ocean Garbage.
ALASKAN AGGRESSOR: An F-16 assigned to the 18th Aggressor Squadron, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, takes off.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “Funny. I cant find any editorials about how all women should vote for Marsha Blackburn to break a Tennessee ‘Glass ceiling’.” Sometimes it’s important to advance women, sometimes it’s important to vote for the old white guy. What’s the difference? It’s a mystery.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Moons can have moons and they are called moonmoons.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Tell If You Are Part of a Mob.
Related: The left: An unhinged mob.
ME, A WEEK AGO ON WHAT TO EXPECT POST-KAVANAUGH:
►Strange new respect for judicial minimalism. As Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule remarked, “Law review editors: brace for a tidal wave of legal academic theories supporting judicial minimalism, Thayerianism, and strong — very strong — theories of precedent. Above all: the Court must do nothing without bipartisan agreement, otherwise it is illegitimate.” The past half-century’s enthusiasm for judicial activism will vanish, as legal academia turns on a dime to promote theories that will constrain the court until a left-leaning majority returns, at which point they’ll turn on a dime again.
►New disrespect for the court: . . . If the court shifts right as expected, you can also expect legal academia and the news media, both of which lean very heavily to the left, to shift quite rapidly from near worship of the court to nonstop denigration. Some on the left are already talking openly of packing the court with additional seats, as Roosevelt tried to, if they get back in power. Others are talking about impeaching Kavanaugh, because, well, of course.
Now: Vox: The Case For Abolishing The Supreme Court.
Plus: Slate: The Supreme Court is a historically regressive and presently expendable institution.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Teacher who smiled for mugshot pleads guilty to sex with student.
DAVID FRENCH: The Black Men Who Identify with Brett Kavanaugh Understand the Stakes. “The bottom line is that opponents of Kavanaugh didn’t just want to stop Kavanaugh, they wanted to create a cultural moment that many black men are very wise to be wary of. ‘Believe survivors’ is a slogan that resonates far beyond one single judicial confirmation. It’s the slogan of campus ‘justice’ that all too often echoes the injustice of America’s racist past.”
I yelled at my husband last night. Not pick-up-your-socks yell. Not how-could-you-ignore-that-red-light yell. This was real yelling. This was 30 minutes of from-the-gut yelling. Triggered by a small, thoughtless, dismissive, annoyed, patronizing comment. Really small. A micro-wave that triggered a hurricane. I blew. Hard and fast. And it terrified me. I’m still terrified by what I felt and what I said. I am almost 70 years old. I am a grandmother. Yet in that roiling moment, screaming at my husband as if he represented every clueless male on the planet (and I every angry woman of 2018), I announced that I hate all men and wish all men were dead. If one of my grandchildren yelled something that ridiculous, I’d have to stifle a laugh.
A man behaving this way would be accused of domestic abuse. And John Sexton’s comment is on point: “Someone needs to say ‘get a grip’ and it might as well be me.”
Nobody makes the case for patriarchy as persuasively as the feminists.
Related (From Ed): “If somebody starts a Go Fund Me account to pay for Mr. Brown’s tab at his local bar, I’ll kick in,” Rod Dreher writes.
SHE WENT FULL EMMET TILL. NEVER GO FULL EMMET TILL. Woman dubbed #CornerstoreCaroline BUSTED by surveillance video that ‘completely vindicates the child’ accused of groping.
LIBERAL SUPPRESSION: Section 501(c)(3) And The Taxation of Speech.
October 12, 2018
IT TOOK 1,279 DAYS BUT HILLARY CLINTON FINALLY LOST HER SECURITY CLEARANCE: Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed Friday that Hillary asked that her security clearance be withdrawn, according to a September 21 letter from the Department of State.
And if you believe she voluntarily did this, I have some incredible ocean beachfront lots in Oklahoma that are available at prices you won’t believe … Go here for the rest of the story.
MY TAKE ON THE CURRENT SCENE:
I HAD A VISIT AT THE SPACE COUNCIL IN DC AS THIS HAPPENED, AND THERE WAS SOME CONCERN: Russian launch failure “could set off a sequence of events that leads in January to the station being emptied of all crew for the first time in 18 years.” But not as much concern as this article suggests. And maybe SpaceX can pick up the slack.
BOOK PLUG FRIDAY RETURNS: Talking Plot on Book Plug Friday
AT AMAZON, deals on Men’s Casual Button-Downs.
Plus, deals on Men’s Outdoor Jackets and Coats.
IS THERE NO LIMIT TO THIS MAN’S EVIL?
“With the president’s signature Thursday, the Music Modernization Act is officially the law of the land. As we celebrate the harmony and unity that got us here, we applaud the efforts of the thousands of performers, songwriters, and studio professionals who rallied for historic change to ensure all music creators are compensated fairly when their work is used by digital and satellite music services,” Neil Portnow, President and CEO of the Recording Academy said in a statement.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF VERTICAL FARMING.
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING:
● Sinema “associated with a prominent 9/11 truther and told a radio host that she didn’t care if he joined the Taliban.”
Earlier:
● Sinema in 2010: My state is the “meth lab of democracy.”
● Sinema in 2011: “I want to talk to you about some of the things that I think that you can do to stop your state from becoming Arizona.”
● Sinema in 2003: Sinema’s anti-war group blasted ‘U.S. terror,’ depicted soldier as skeleton on flyers.
In sharp contrast, during that same decade, Martha McSally, Sinema’s GOP opponent, was leading a squadron of A-10s against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Sarah Silverman Shrieks ‘We’re All Gonna F*cking Die’ From Climate Change.
Buried lede: There are people still alive. I thought everybody had been finished off already by net neutrality, tax cuts, Kavanaugh, etc.
HILLARY CLINTON LOSES SECURITY CLEARANCE AFTER SERVER SCANDAL: “Chairman Charles E. Grassley also revealed top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills and four others no longer have clearance.”
NEAL STEPHENSON TOLD ME THE SAME THING ABOUT READING ISAAC NEWTON’S HANDWRITTEN NOTES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM: Walter Isaacson says going through Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks gave him a profound appreciation for paper: “Its battery never runs down. Its operating system never goes out of style…”
POLITICAL AD OF THE YEAR: Steve Ferrara Has the Most Badass Campaign Ad for 2018.
THE INDESTRUCTIBLE LIE: WaPo congressional reporter blames right-wing mobs for inspiring Gabby Giffords shooting.
From Neo yesterday: Blaming the Right for Leftist Violence began with the JFK Assassination — the politics of reporting on left-wing violence against the right.
ANDREW SULLIVAN BEGINS TO WORRY THAT MAYBE TRUMP IS A SUCCESS:
Along with Gorsuch, Kavanaugh cemented a 5-4 majority for the right on the court for the indefinite future — more quickly and decisively than any Republican had hoped for. If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, in stark contrast, we’d be looking at a 6-3 liberal tilt by now. That’s a huge, huge payoff for what looked at one point like a major gamble for establishment and religious Republicans — and there could be more vacancies ahead.
Second, it showed that the broader Republican coalition isn’t completely dead. The over-the-top tactics of the Democrats and the mainstream media in turning a Supreme Court hearing into an epic battle in a newly energized gender war may have riveted Democratic women and galvanized a younger generation … but it also brought moderate Republicans and Trumpers together again. When confronted with the rhetoric and ideology of the social justice left, NeverTrump conservatives came temporarily back to the fold. I felt it happening to myself.
Worse, there was evidence that some of the culture war issues the Democrats are relying on may not be so win-win. Yes, a focus on sexual assault and harassment in the workplace and elsewhere is important in its own right — and it strongly resonates with suburban women who may decide the midterms. But it can also energize conservative and moderate women in defense of what they see as threats to their own husbands and sons; it can further alienate more traditional working-class men from the Democrats; and it could cement a worrying shift among young white men toward the GOP since 2016.
Yeah, weird how when you constantly attack and denigrate a group of people, they start voting for the other side.
ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN . . . LA Passes Ordinance Requiring City Contractors To Disclose NRA Ties. It’s clear that the objection to McCarthyism was never about what it involved, just who.
WELL: Court Rules Ellison Divorce Records Will Be Unsealed. I thought that sort of thing was only for Republicans.
JESUS CHRIST, DUDE, GET A GRIP: GOP gov candidate says he will ‘stomp’ Dem opponent’s face with ‘golf spikes.’ This is wrong when Republicans do it, too.
PATRICK POOLE: Beware of Media Sourcing for Jamal Khashoggi ‘Scoops.’
STUPID CHINESE. IN MY EXPERIENCE, AT VOX THEY’LL DO IT FOR FREE: China Paying Vox To Publish Communist Propaganda.
IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Scientists Attempt to Clone Mice From Poop.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Teacher Who Claimed Stephen Miller Ate Glue as a Kid Has Been Suspended.
The teacher who claimed this week that controversial White House aide Stephen Miller ate glue as a kid has been suspended from her job. Miller—now the mastermind behind Donald Trump’s most hardline immigration policies—was an odd kid, according to comments from veteran teacher Nikki Fiske. She recounted this week to The Hollywood Reporter: “He would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off, and then eat it. He was a strange dude.” The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has placed her on “home assignment” while it decides what to do about the matter. A school-district spokesperson said they were concerned about “her release of student information.” Fiske also said of Miller, then aged 8: “I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk—he always had stuff mashed up in there.”
Benjamin Svetkey had the “as told to” byline on the original Hollywood Reporter story. Makes you wonder what he was doing in third grade.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: ABC Regrets Firing Roseanne Over Bad Tweet?
THE INSTAWIFE: When Bad Women’s Magazines Become Worse.
NOW RADICAL LEFT IS TURNING ON WHITE WOMEN: Tamika Mallory, the radical lefty who was seen at a Louis Farrakhan rally earlier this year, has a Huffpo oped up today, the title of which says it all: “White Women, Stop Waiting for Black Women to Save You.”
LifeZette’s Deirdre Reilly notes that Mallory also issued a tweet touting the oped, saying “We need white women to get comfortable with discomfort, to check their fellow white women when they prop up white supremacy and white male patriarchy.” In other words, being a white woman makes you as much a beneficiary of “white privilege” as being an angry white male.
And then there’s this from Mallory, according to Reilly: “In November, we will replace rape apologists with the women the march inspired to run against them. In January 2019, we’re coming back with an agenda to end rape culture, white supremacy and patriarchy in America.”
Does this tell us that when the radical Left has to choose between gender and race, race will win? And should a reasonable person then conclude that the goal of radical left activists like Mallory isn’t racial reconciliation but racial weaponization on behalf of political power?
THE NEW CIVILITY: Susan Rice’s Conservative Son Allegedly Assaulted at Stanford.
CONGRATULATIONS TO PROF. JACOBSON: Legal Insurrection is 10 years old: Dread has turned to cautious optimism.
POLITICAL TERROR: VANDALS HIT NYC GOP HEADQUARTERS: ‘ATTACK IS MERELY A BEGINNING.’
THE NEW, WOKE GOP IS AMAZING:
ALBERT MARREWA: The Kavanaugh Smear War Broke My Decades-Long Support For Feminism. “All these years I silently stood by and watched third-wave feminism (with assistance from the radical left) methodically take a sledgehammer to Western society as a whole, and males in particular. Foolishly, I hoped things would eventually turn around, only to see things get worse over time. Yet it wasn’t until I witnessed the Me Too movement snowball into an all-out, anti-male witch hunt that I realized good men were in real trouble. Astonishingly, after having been an advocate for women my entire adult life, I quickly learned I was still considered the ‘enemy,’ simply for being a man.”
Males are still OK; it’s masculinity which feminists have decided is a crime — “castration culture,” Glenn has taken to calling it.
HMM: Researchers find genetic risk factor for impotence. You’d think that such genes would be selected against.
BLUE ON BLUE: South Carolina Democrat Says Sanders Would Be ‘Doing Us All a Favor if He Just Got Lost.’
On Wednesday, only one day after Sanders announced he would be hitting the campaign trail for Democratic candidates on the ballot this year, high-ranking members of the South Carolina Democratic Party made it known that not everyone welcomed the senator’s visit, the Associated Press reported.
Amanda Loveday, a former executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, indicated that Sanders’ decision to journey to South Carolina ahead of the midterms struck her as “selfish,” especially as the senator is speculated to be weighing another run for the White House in 2020.
“I just think it’s extremely selfish of Bernie Sanders to think he could walk into South Carolina without an invitation from a candidate and think he’s going to be welcomed with open arms,” Loveday said. “It’s hard for me to think of an actual, legitimate Democratic candidate who would stand on stage with him here.”
There are at least a few Democrats worried about the direction their party has taken.
DIVERSITY IS THEIR STRENGTH: Migrant celebrates Swedish citizenship by raping woman and tells her: ‘Now I can do what I want.’
I DON’T LIKE THE SOUND OF THESE HERE ‘BONCENTRATION BAMPS’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reveals Her Plan to Overthrow the Supreme Court.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Sandia’s Swerve Could Lead To First-gen Hypersonic Production Line. “The veil of secrecy has lifted over one of the Pentagon’s largest hypersonic weapons programs, revealing new details of a triservice rush to adapt a nearly 40-year-old experimental maneuvering reentry vehicle concept into an air-, sea- or land-launched common-boost-glide weapon.” A rush, huh?
ARIZONA DEM SENATE CANDIDATE KYRSTEN SINEMA IN 2010: My state is the “meth lab of democracy.”
HEALTH: Bogus homeopathy data published in top journal sparks outcry, facepalms. “Editors at a respected scientific journal are reconsidering their decision to publish a study, which claims that a homeopathic dilution of poison oak can reduce pain in rats, after online critics pointed out that the study is rife with bogus, sloppy, and low-quality data.”