HE SHOULD BE HECKLED EVERYWHERE. HE’S A PUTZ. De Blasio holds press conference at Trump Tower — and gets heckled. “Trump supporters joined in the noise heckling the mayor with a steady stream of ‘Boos’ and ‘You s—ks’ as he tried to shout over the din. ‘Worst mayor ever,’ read one sign held by a protester as the mayor rode up and down an escalator.”
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WELL: AP source: Prosecutor to examine Russia probe origins.
Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday.
Barr appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry, the person said. The person could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Durham’s appointment comes about a month after Barr told members of Congress he believed “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016.
Stay tuned.
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DEMOGRAPHY IS CALIFORNIA’S DESTINY:
The decline in births and immigration and the aging of the baby boomers mean California, which has traditionally had a relatively young and vibrant population, is rapidly graying. We are becoming more like states in the East and the upper Midwest, while our neighboring states are more like California used to be.
The population boom of the 1980s pushed California from 24 million residents to 30 million, and after the 1990 census it was awarded seven additional congressional seats. Growth slowed in the 1990s, so we got just one new seat after the 2000 census, and none after the 2010 census.
Demographers say California will be lucky to break even in congressional seats after the 2020 census and could lose one seat—even if the count is not depressed by a very controversial citizenship question, as state officials fear.
Thus, one consequence of much slower population growth is relatively declining political influence, not only in congressional seats but in presidential electoral votes based on those seats.
Socialism: If you build it, they will leave.
YOU LEFT OUT PREDICTING FOOD RIOTS BY 1978, KURT, BUT HEY, YOU’RE NOT A SCIENTIST:
CRIMES IN CONCRETE: Theodore Dalrymple reviews James Stevens Curl’s Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism. Like Curl, it’s safe to say that the good Dr. Dalrymple is not a fan of modernist architecture:
The ideas of the modernists were generally expressed in the imperative mood and were frequently of a pseudo-mystical nature. Professor Curl’s description of some of the practices prevalent in the early Bauhaus make for hilarity; cranks are always a source of fun. In the early days, the modernists of the Bauhaus tended to a form of health mysticism involving vegetarianism, garlic paste, and regular enemas.Far more important, however, was their early and inherent attraction to totalitarianism. As the author points out, Gropius and Miës van der Rohe had no objection to Nazism other than that the Nazis failed to commission work from them. Gropius was an opportunistic anti-Semitic snob who espoused communism until it was no longer convenient for his career. Miës sucked up to the Nazis as much as he was able. The fact that both of them emigrated from Germany has done much to obscure their accommodation with the Nazis and even allowed the modernists to pose as anti-Nazi—though the most important proponent of modernism in America, Philip Johnson, had for some years been a rank Nazi in more than merely nominal terms. Moreover, as Professor Curl points out, the Nazi aesthetic, like the communist, had much in common with modernism.
The most startling instance of the modernists’ elective affinity with totalitarianism is of course Le Corbusier. To call him a fascist is not to hurl all-purpose abuse at him, but to state a literal truth. But, as Curl wryly remarks, you won’t hear any of this in a British architectural school—let alone a French one, despite the fact that in 1941, only a year after the Exode (the flight of eight million Frenchmen before the advancing Germans), Le Corbusier wrote a booklet, Destin de Paris, proposing to deport a large proportion of the population of Paris to the countryside, since in his elevated opinion they had no business living there in the first place.
It is possible however, to picture the twilight of those whom Tom Wolfe dubbed “the White Gods” in From Bauhaus to Our House, his classic 1981 demolition of modern architecture. Mies and Gropius died in 1969, just as the modern-day radical environmentalist movement was birthing itself. Last month, Green New Deal and SUV enthusiast Bill de Blasio uttered, “We are going to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers which are incredibly inefficient.” Yesterday, the Atlantic ran a column attacking another central tenet of modernism, the open plan, under the headline, “Open concept homes are for peasants.” Add to that books such as historian Jonathan Petropoulos’ Artists Under Hitler and French journalist Xavier de Jarcy’s Le Corbusier, un fascisme francais, both published in 2015, and the White Gods are looking increasingly tainted by the Maoist left that’s been awfully busy lately memory holing some of the 20th century’s most powerful cultural figures. Socialists devour their own, eventually.
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: The Dark Reason So Many Millenials Are Miserable And Broke.
DECISIONS BASED ON THE TEXT ARE SO OLD-FASHIONED. Hyatt, the Constitution, and the Common Law.
Today the Court decided FTB v. Hyatt, overruling Nevada v. Hall and declaring that states have sovereign immunity in other states’ courts. The majority opinion has gotten some rather pointed criticism—largely because it didn’t rely on any particular clause of the Constitution, but rather on general structural concerns.
Structure and relationship is fine, but I think they go too far in sovereign immunity cases. I wrote about this phenomenon some time ago in the Penn Law Review, in Penumbral Reasoning On The Right.
REALITY: Yes, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, The VA Is Badly Broken. Maybe we shouldn’t listen to health care policy talk from a woman who was recently amazed by a garbage disposal.
ISWYDT: Kurt Schlichter: Liberal Sex Strike Fails To Score.
Let’s review. Alyssa Milano is not going to have sex unless and until you allow her to kill babies. I am unclear on what our reaction is supposed to be. Does she expect us to pull a 180 on pre-birth infanticide in order to keep the Alyssa Option open?
Liberals are already thoroughly confused (at best – a lot of them know that liberalism is nonsense but embrace it as a vehicle for their personal power), yet when they get going on the abortion issue they get exponentially worse. It’s a pretty simple question – is it okay to kill a human being who has not yet been born? I say “No,” you say “No,” and they say it’s practically mandatory.
It’s not exactly clear why they draw their hardest ideological line on abortion, but they do. Maybe they love to freak out us squares. Maybe they hate the idea of traditional motherhood. Maybe liberalism is just a hideous death cult that has substituted Margaret Sanger for Moloch.
Probably some of all three.
But draw the line there they do, and it makes them stupid and crazy – well, stupider and crazier.
Which is an accomplishment.
Related, seen on Facebook:
ANALYSIS: TRUE. University Presses Shouldn’t Have To Make A Profit.
I BELIEVE IT: Demise Of A Close Friend Can Affect One’s Health For Years, Says Study. However, you can try to make the impact a positive one.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO… DO… THAT: ‘Snarling’ Burger King customer allegedly hid 7 syringes in vagina.
SNITCHES GET STITCHES: DC May Soon Allow Residents To Issue Parking Tickets.
“It would start small. Just 10 people per ward. They would be trained and made sure they would be ready to go. When they see a vehicle that is blocking a bike lane, blocking the crosswalk, blocking a fire hydrant, they would have the ability using an app on their phone to be able to take a picture and actually have a ticket that will be issued,” DC Councilmember Charles Allen, who introduced the bill, told Fox 5.
The photo taken by the authorized resident using the app would indicate when and where the photo was taken, and once submitted through the app, would carry the authority of a traffic injunction issued by a city employee.
Residents who applied for the program would be trained in “bicycle and pedestrian safety; the laws, regulations, policies, and best practices related to issuing notices of infraction for parking violations; proper use of the app; and conflict resolution techniques,” according to the bill.
There could be some legal issues involved in providing citizens such power.
They could call it the Standardized Ticketing and Safety Inducement program, or “STASI.”
WHERE YOU’LL PROBABLY NEVER TAKE IT: Here’s What the 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS Can Do Off-Road.
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DESPERATE BUT NOT (TOO) SERIOUS: What Is Iran Up to Now?
BREAK UP BIG TECH: Supreme Court ruling could threaten Apple’s 30 percent app commission. “A narrowly divided Supreme Court is allowing a group of consumers to move forward with a lawsuit charging that Apple overcharges customers for App Store purchases. Apple had asked courts to throw out the lawsuit, arguing that the law only allowed app developers, not customers, to bring such a case. The lawsuit has been underway since 2011 and is nowhere close to resolution. The stakes are high. Apple’s iOS platform is notable for completely shutting out alternative means of app distribution. Other major software platforms—including Android, Mac OS, and Windows—offer customers the option to download and install software they acquire from third parties without paying a commission to the platform owner. But ordinary iPhone users—those who are unwilling or unable to jailbreak or use developer tools—have no way to install apps other than through the official App Store.”
THANKS, BUT I’M FEELING BETTER ALREADY, HONEST: Smoking Psychedelic Toad Milk May Help Depression.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Everything You Need To Know About Fascia.
I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: The Russian army is getting “silent” mortars.
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: States seek explicit patient consent for pelvic exams.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. Anti-Israel Hamas-Linked CAIR Pressures Charities to Blacklist Conservative Nonprofits.
A LOOK AT THE 2020 GR Toyota Supra.
WEIRD: There’s a Bizarre Link Between Losing Your Appendix And Parkinson’s, Huge Study Shows. I’m going to speculate that it has something to do with the appendix’s role with the microbiome.
In an Opinium poll in the Observer, focused on this month’s European elections, Nigel Farage’s new party is predicted to hoover up 34 per cent of the vote. The same poll gave Labour 21 per cent and put the Tories in a miserable fourth place with 11 per cent
But an even more extraordinary poll, commissioned by a Brexit Party donor and published in the Sunday Telegraph, said for the first time the Brexit Party would beat the Tories in a General Election.
The ComRes survey of voting intentions put Brexit on 21 per cent to the Conservatives’ 20, which would see Farage’s team win 49 seats, becoming the UK’s second biggest party after Labour, with 137.
Don’t get cocky, of course, and this election is only for the European Parliament, not the actual British Parliament. Even so, Tories ought to weight this advice heavily: “If the Conservative leadership contenders are not careful, there will be no party for them to lead.”
UM: Buttigieg calls out Democrats for playing ‘identity politics.’ People are saying it’s a Sister Souljah moment but it’s as if Bill Clinton called out Sister Souljah after dropping his own album of “F*ck the Police” rap tunes.
Somehow related: Pete Buttigieg ‘had to Google’ Alfred E. Neuman after Trump diss; Mad magazine responds.
GODSPEED: Virgin Galactic is moving its spaceship and crew to Spaceport America. “That apparently means the company is nearly ready to take passengers to the edge of space.”
KAMALA HARRIS IS FAKE: How Many Things Can You Find Wrong with This Photo?
Related: Kamala Harris Lies About Truancy Laws, Defends Criminalizing Parents Whose Kids Miss School: Reason Roundup. “Maybe journalists are just confused. Maybe some are partisan hacks trying to rehabilitate Kamala Harris’ image for her. Either way, there’s been a rash of recent pieces suggesting that the Democratic senator from California and 2020 presidential candidate has revised her tough-on-crime tactics and stances. And almost every time they talk specifics, it turns out to be wrong.”
A SUCCESSFUL RULING CLASS REQUIRES A MEASURE OF SELF-DISCIPLINE:
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Nutrition, exercise prompt weight loss.
NARRATIVE MAINTENANCE IS HARD WORK: Seth Barrett Tillman: Orwell’s Newspeak and The Observer.
Orban was elected by the voters of Hungary. So it is difficult to see why meeting with him should be construed as an offense against democracy. One might as well posit the opposite: that failing to meet with an elected leader is a sign of contempt for normal democratic institutions. Of course, Tisdall, the editorialist, does not speak to anything like common or ordinary democracy; rather, he speaks in terms of something else—something more enlightened, more complex, and more nuanced: European democracy. The EU is a parliamentary “democracy” that lives and breathes absent anything like meaningful responsible government. What Tisdall means is that Orban—although popular with actual voters in his own country—among people who have an incentive to know precisely what Orban is up to—remains an object of suspicion among the bureaucrats in Brussels and among members of the European Parliament from countries other than Hungary. What Tisdall does not understand is that it is he who is illustrating a contempt for ordinary democracy and ordinary voters.
Oh, I think he understands.
Flashback: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad.
ROGER SIMON: Democrats Need Rehab from Trump Investigation Addiction.
If you’re unclear what Democrats stand for in the 2020 election — other than wildly outdated socialism and some creepy anti-Semitism – this could be, indeed undoubtedly is, the reason. All they do is investigate.
In the interest of a two-party system, an intervention is definitely needed — followed by rehab.
Indeed. Read the whole thing.™
IN THE MAIL: Medicare For Dummies.
NARRATIVE UBER ALLES: Why the Media Suddenly Lost Interest in the Latest School Shooting.
After the shooting, other than some virtue signaling by the media, the story has left the front pages, as the narrative may be inconvenient for the leftist agenda. CNN and MSNBC have lived up to their reputation as “drive-by media” by quickly moving on. No interviews with David Hogg or other gun control fanatics. So, what are some of the inconvenient aspects to this story that the media would prefer to drive by without any discussion or analysis?
Let’s start with the weapons. The two shooters, “opened fire with handguns that were concealed in a guitar case”, as reported by the Daily Mail in an unexpected good faith effort at honest journalism. Handguns? What happened to those evil AR-15’s or “assault weapons” that Democrats and the media constantly warn about? These are what the Huffington Post calls “weapons of war.”
The reality is that most gun crimes are committed with handguns not rifles. But this doesn’t fit the media narrative and it’s better to drive-by the story rather than explain this inconvenient truth.
Next are the bystanders. Remember the admonition, “When seconds count, help is minutes away”? This played out in the Colorado shooting. You can “hide under your desk,” as one option suggested by the New York Times.
In Colorado, a student who was also an aspiring Marine, took a different approach. He “jumped into action,” throwing himself on the shooter, and sadly died for his sacrifice.
He was joined by another brave student who “rushed to help his two classmates subdue the shooter.” The point is that these heroic students immediately went on offense, rather than passively hiding, perhaps unnerving the shooter and preventing this from becoming a mass casualty event.
Then there was the school vigil in Colorado, a time for holding candles and chanting about “common sense gun control measures.” Attending were local Democrat politicians, including Senator Michael Bennet, one of dozens running for president. Rather than a receptive audience, the vigil organizer, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, instead saw, “A walkout by students opposing what they viewed as politicization of the tragedy.”
This was not the narrative that the media wanted to report on. They would prefer David Hogg ranting and raving, blaming Trump, the NRA, and toxic white masculinity for the shooting. How inconvenient that the affected students chanted “mental health” and didn’t join in the predictable politicization of a tragedy by the left.
One of the two shooters didn’t fit this mold. He was anti-Christian, critical of President Trump, a registered Democrat, and supportive of left-wing Occupy Democrats. In other words, his views were perfectly aligned with the Democrat Party base, a perspective big media would prefer to avoid discussing.
Well.
IF YOU DON’T FOCUS ON TRADITIONAL HIGHER ED, TOO, THEN IT’S BOGUS: California Mulls Crackdown On Online Higher Ed. “The goal of the legislative package, bill sponsors say, is to make colleges put student success before profit — and to ensure that fewer students are saddled with debt and low-paying jobs.”
Reading the fine print on this one, it seems like it’s mostly about protecting California schools from out-of-state competition.
RUSSIA’S BELOGOROD, A VERY SPECIAL SUBMARINE: “Belgorod won’t work for the navy like other subs but for the GUGI (Main Department of Deep-Water Researches) which works for the intelligence services and is attached to the navy for ship and crew support.” Read the whole thing, especially the part about Poseidon autonomous underwater vehicles that carry nuclear warheads and can travel to enemy coastal cities then detonate underwater and create tidal waves.
HMM: Will Russia Abandon The OPEC+ Oil Deal?
OPEC’s task in estimating global oil supply going forward has been made more difficult by mounting uncertainty over Russian oil supplies to Europe via the Druzhba pipeline, expectations of further production declines in Venezuela, and the possibility of an outage in Libya, which is in the midst of a civil war with rival armies fighting for the capital Tripoli.
Amidst all this, Russia sent several ambiguous messages to the market last month. First, its Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that OPEC and Russia might choose to fight for market share against the U.S., even if this means quitting the OPEC+ deal and sending oil prices significantly lower.
Then at the end of last month, Putin said that he hoped the Saudis wouldn’t break their promises under the OPEC+ deal, adding that he hadn’t heard of anyone indicating willingness to quit the agreement.
As for Russia itself, it has been struggling to reduce its oil production to the agreed upon level under the pact.
Moreover, Russian oil companies have been balking at the output cuts because the OPEC+ deal has been meddling with their production growth plans.
The amazing thing about OPEC’s years-long effort to cut production and inflate prices is how well it’s worked. Success at raising prices usually induces cheating which causes prices to fall again. That hasn’t happened (yet) this time around, which I’ve taken as an indicator at just how desperate OPEC/Russia have become in the face of ever-increasing American fracking.
But maybe new cracks are finally starting to form.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Private College Tuition Discount Rate Hits All-Time High Of 52%.
Way back in The Higher Education Bubble, I warned that this was a major trouble sign to watch. Now it’s here. And if you’re paying full freight, you’re a sucker.
BUFF LEAVES BARKSDALE, HEADING TO CENTCOM: A B-52H assigned to the USAF’s Bomber Task Force leaves Louisiana for a deployment in the Central Command area of operations. Think of it as a message to Tehran.
THE IVY LEAGUE’S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Donors Endowed Coaching Positions; Children Subsequently Admitted. “The Boston Globe reported Sunday on a pattern in which donors to Yale University and other top colleges endow coaching positions. That’s a trend about which many colleges have been very open. But not known is what the Globe reported about the children of donors then applying to and being admitted to those colleges, and in many cases playing on the teams of the coaches whose positions have been endowed.”
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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Lindsay Graham Working to Declassify FISA Docs. “So, the bottom line is the dossier has never been independently confirmed. It was used to get a warrant. They knew the author of the dossier was on the Democrat Party payroll. He hated Trump; they got the warrant anyway. Most Americans should be very upset about that. I’m very upset about it. And we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
Good.
THINK OF IT AS A PREVIEW OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL: California May Go Dark This Summer, and Most Aren’t Ready.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Get a generator, or at least an inverter, while you can.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Resurfaced video shows Joe Biden pushing border fence, calling for employers who hired ‘illegals’ to be punished. The Trump 2020 campaign can just run this clip and add “I’m Donald Trump, and I endorse this message.”
FLASHBACK: Remember InstaPundit In Your Will!
Plus: “But here’s the truth of the matter. William Barr has pledged to answer the following questions: ‘How did the Trump-Russia investigation get started? Who started it? On what authority? For what reason? What was the rationale for the FISA warrants taken out against Carter Page and renewed several times? It has been alleged that assets of the DOJ spied on the Trump campaign: did they? The entire investigation was plagued by leaks of classified information, a felony: who leaked it that information? Who, for example, leaked the transcript of the phone call between Michael Flynn, Trump’s first, ill-fated director of the National Security Council and the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak? There is only a small circle of possible candidates.’ If William Barr’s behavior over the last month or two doesn’t convince you that he excels in doggedness and is very likely to answer all of these questions, take a look at his performance in that 1991 clip I linked to above. The man is part terrier (and another part Sphinx). He will get to the bottom of this whole rotten story.”
Well, that’s probably the reason for the histrionics. It looks as if the whole collusion narrative was designed to distract from what Barr is going to uncover.
DON’T GET COCKY, KIDS: Trump captures Biden’s blue-collar, older voter base.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s hope of riding the support of blue-collar workers and older voters to the White House has hit a wall called President Trump.
In a survey of key battleground states conducted after Biden entered the 2020 Democratic primary, Trump not only has a 46%-44% edge, but he has a 26-point lead among non-college educated workers earning $75,000 or less, considered the blue-collar base and a Biden target.
What’s more, the battleground state survey from WPA Intelligence showed that Trump does better with Biden’s other main support group, older voters, and has a 48%-44% lead over Biden in Florida, dubbed the Democrat’s “firewall.”
Well, Trump has been a successful President. Biden was an unexceptional Vice President.
DION J. PIERRE: “I wouldn’t participate in a blacks-only commencement. No grad should.”
The Department of Education really should look into neo-segregration on campuses. There is a lot of it.
CHRIS ARNADE ON RELIGION AND BACK ROW AMERICA.
His book, Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America, comes out in a few weeks. I think it’s going to be one of the most important books of the year.
OHIO: The Midwest state where Democrats should give up already.
Republicans have come a long way since 2012, when I ran Mitt Romney’s campaign in Ohio. President Barack Obama took an op-ed Romney had written with the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” four years earlier and used it to slam the GOP. Romney never had an answer to Obama’s attack depicting Romney as a heartless corporate raider who cared more about profits than people.
“When some wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt, we made a bet on American workers, on the ingenuity of American companies,” Obama said in a Columbus speech in May of 2012. He was still at it in October: “[We] refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way.” I had nightmares about that “bankrupt” headline; I couldn’t turn on a TV or pick up a newspaper without seeing Obama’s team relentlessly hammering that nail.
The gambit worked perfectly: Obama bested Romney by three points in Ohio, en route to winning a second term.
But four years later, Ohioans, like many other Midwestern voters, had soured on Democrats, with Trump owning Hillary Clinton by eight points. In fact, Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio was bigger than Georgia (5) and Arizona (3.5), states that pundits routinely think of as being redder than Ohio. And Trump’s work in the state will make it more likely than not that Trump will outperform any earlier poll that predicts a Democratic edge.
Flashback: Democrats Can Kiss Ohio Goodbye.
ROBERT REICH, CLOSET REPUBLICAN? There are many reasons not to impeach Trump. The House should do it anyway.
SKYROCKETING ATTACKS ON NYC JEWS IGNORED BECAUSE OF RACE:
Imagine that members of a religious minority were being frequently physically assaulted in America’s largest city at alarming rates. Imagine if members of that minority were being cold-cocked or spit on randomly for doing nothing more than being who they are and dressing how they dress. Imagine what a powerful and important story this would be to our country, how mobilized the media and government would be to stop it. But what if I told you that this is happening in New York City right now, and nobody seems to care very much? How can this be? I’ll explain it.
Read the whole thing.
“HARVARD CAVES TO STUDENT MOB, FIRES RONALD SULLIVAN FOR BEING HARVEY WEINSTEIN’S LAWYER“: This story is almost unbelievable. Does Harvard really want student mobs to decide whether an unpopular client gets an attorney?
If the ABA and the Massachusetts Bar Association don’t vigorously protest this, then they ought to be ashamed to call themselves lawyers.
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Real Democratic Agenda: It’s Impeaching Donald Trump. Well, good luck with that.
TOO LATE! Democratic female freshmen signal Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t represent them.
Plus: “Democrats with military, CIA backgrounds unite to fundraise for each other.”
JON CALDERA: The fun police come for CSU’s ‘Undie Run.’
Today the buzz-kills at Colorado State University are trying to snuff out the Undie Run. This prestigious collegiate tradition happens before the start of final exams as students run across campus clothed in only their underwear.
Not quite the high-brow sophistication of full-on streaking, which along with Led Zeppelin IV were the only real achievements of the 1970s, the Undie Run is a tip-of-the-hat to the public nudity of old.
CSU officials have emailed parents asking them to discourage their kids from participating.
There was a time when the range of helicopter parenting could not extend to college, which was the key ingredient in college fun.
CSU’s many nanny worries include, “After-parties where students remain in their underwear, creating a tone that breeds harmful situations for our students.”
Tone? Today’s kids are deluged with squishy, vague terms like “tone.” So, exactly what should be the tone of a college kegger?
I can barely keep pants on my kids and they still live at home.
SALENA ZITO: In front of a Philadelphia abortion clinic, Democratic lawmaker shows us the darkness of the cultural divide.
When Brian Sims first ran for state representative in 2012, he ran as a new pro-business voice. He was going to be a bridge-builder, brimming with commonsense ideas on pocketbook issues.
Sims never met that promise.
Instead, he became many other things: an outdoor adventurer who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, a partisan attack dog who accused fellow state Rep. Martina White of saying she wanted to deport all immigrants, something his staff had to admit she never said, and a celebrity activist whose lucrative, nationwide speaking circuit earned him an ethics investigation.
He also became the guy who tweeted a photo of himself wearing a suit and a smirk and raising his middle finger to the vice president of the United States as Mike Pence headed to Philadelphia.
Sims wrote: “Let me be the first to officially welcome you to the City of Brotherly Love and my district! We are a city of soaring diversity. We believe in the power of all people. Black, Brown, Queer, Trans, Atheist, & Immigrant. So … get bent, then get out!”
Last week, Sims decided to film his own harassment of a woman outside an abortion clinic here in Philadelphia, calling her an “old white lady” and her beliefs “grotesque” to her face and to the camera. The clear plan was to incite his audience against this peaceful protester, whom he saw as clearly bigoted and evil.
The whole act opened the window for Twitter observers into a dark, dark place in American culture, a gaping divide none of us quite know how to navigate.
Read the whole thing.
ANOTHER ONE OF MY PRIZE MILITARY GRADS THIS YEAR: With Eye to Military Career, Law Grad Shaped His Path. The University of Tennessee College of Law sent 5 grads to JAG careers this year. I wonder how many T14 schools can match that.
May 12, 2019
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I SAY SOMETHING SIMILAR IN MY FORTHCOMING BOOK ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Deplatforming the Platformers: Why Antitrust Legislation Is the Way to Go. Though I think existing legislation will do the job; we just need antitrust enforcement.
RIGHTISH COMEDIAN EVAN SAYET’S NEW BOOK MOCKING LEFTY APOCALYPSE FEVER, Apocali Now! is #1 in New Releases in Political Humor at Amazon.
COULD THERE BE LIFE ON MARS TODAY?
Well, I certainly hope not.
BREXIT UPDATE: British EU Parliament elections set to deliver a surprise.
You might assume that the backers of Remain would be ascendant, given what a hash the government has made of the process so far. And that would mean that the Labour Party and the Lib-Dems would be cleaning up. But the latest polling from the Isles tells a very different story. This was highlighted during a recent interview with former Prime Minister and Remain advocate Tony Blair.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Prime Minister Nigel Farage? “It would be unwise, we sense, to make too much of these polls. We all learned anything in 2016, it was that polls are fickle. A lot can happen in two weeks; the Brexit Party wasn’t even formally registered until February of this year. Yet it would also be unwise, we sense, to make too little of this. Come May, Britain’s biggest delegation in Strasbourg could be the party that doesn’t want to be there at all.”
TESTOSTERONE IS EVIL, EXCEPT WHEN USED BY WOMEN TRANSITIONING TO BEING MEN: Caster Semenya and the Twisted Politics of Testosterone. But Semenya isn’t just a woman with naturally high testosterone, she’s intersex: XY chromosomes but a female-appearing body.
YOU’VE GOT TO ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES AND GET TO WHAT’S REAL: Why You Feel the Urge to Jump — The science and philosophy of looking down from a high place.
I THINK I POSTED THIS LAST YEAR, BUT I’M POSTING IT AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S A GREAT STORY: This Plane Accidentally Flew Around the World: After Pearl Harbor, the crew of Pan Am flight 18602 was forced to do the impossible.
BILL ALLOWING ILLEGAL ALIENS TO WORK IN CONGRESS APPROVED BY HOUSE COMMITTEE: “The crazy part of this effort is that even if it passes the full house, it won’t pass through the Senate. It’s political Kabuki theater. There is no way the bill gets the sixty votes for cloture and a final vote on the Senate floor. I suspect that the supporters of the bill in either house doesn’t expect it to come up for a Senate vote either.”
CLEVER MARKETING: The Range Rover Astronaut Edition Is Only for Virgin Galactic’s Commercial Astronauts. “Are you signed up to fly to space on Virgin Galactic when the first commercial flights begin later this year? Are you in need of a new car for when you’re not in space? Do you like British SUVs? Are you very rich? (Okay, if you’re signed up for Virgin Galactic you definitely are very rich, we didn’t need to ask that.) Well, have we got the car for you. It’s called the Range Rover Astronaut Edition, and it’s only available to the ‘Future Astronauts’ who have signed up and paid to go to space.”
If I were an astronaut, I’d be hoping my spaceship was more reliable than a Range Rover.
CURRENTLY $2.99 ON KINDLE: Gary Taubes’ The Case Against Sugar.
Evans’ view is that Hobsbawm was a historian first and a communist second. He did not take his allegiance to the party to the extent of lying, distorting evidence or using his professional work for propaganda, the way many communists in other fields certainly did. Indeed, Evans makes good use of the transcripts of MI5’s wiretaps of CPGB’s London headquarters, which reveal that the party bosses saw Hobsbawm as more of a problem than an asset; for instance, he stubbornly refused to follow the party line on Hungary in 1956. Hobsbawm himself acknowledged that as a communist “you were supposed to write a straightforward line, and whatever I said did not fit in.” He noted that “not a single one of my books was ever published in Russia in the Soviet period”: His defenses of bandits as freedom fighters hardly matched the Soviet vision of total state control.
At the same time, Evans tends to discount—precisely because it is so obvious—the way that Hobsbawm’s communism informed his vision of modern history, particularly in his bestselling Age series. For Hobsbawm, capitalism was the great evil and disaster of the modern world, and communism a noble and necessary, if sometimes misguided, attempt to cure it. No amount of communist atrocity could change this equation. Late in life, Hobsbawm was interviewed by the Canadian intellectual Michael Ignatieff, who asked him whether “the loss of fifteen, twenty million people” would have been justified if the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating a world revolution; he unhesitatingly answered “Yes.” Unlike the repentant ex-communists he despised, Hobsbawm never gave up the barbaric doctrine that the end justifies the means.
This core conviction of the essential goodness of communism colors Hobsbawm’s interpretation of key moments in modern history, particularly when the Soviet Union is involved. When he comes to write about the Russian Revolution in The Age of Extremes, for instance, Hobsbawm romantically praises communist revolutionaries, who were responsible for untold amounts of suffering and death, as “the necessarily ruthless and disciplined army of human emancipation.” He chastises England and France for appeasing Hitler at Munich, but barely mentions Stalin’s alliance with Hitler to divide Poland between them. And he blames the origin of the Cold War, not on Stalin’s actual aggression in Eastern Europe, but on a putative American attempt to “turn an exhausted and impoverished U.S.S.R. into yet another client region of the U.S. economy.” Hobsbawm’s history may be legitimate left-wing interpretation rather than culpable communist propaganda, but clearly the line is a thin one.
As blogger Moe Lane once wrote, “Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people; it tends to attract the sort who can’t understand that an economic system that cannot feed its own population reliably has failed at the game of Life. Literally.”
ONE OF THE PRETTIEST KIT CARS EVER MADE.
MAYBE I SHOULD MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE: California may go dark this summer on windy days.
And, of course, California with its many wind mills doesn’t do well on windless days either.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Fastest Way to Get to New York City Airports? A $195 Helicopter Flight.
PERSUADING PARENTS BY BRAINWASHING THEIR CHILDREN WORKS: Somehow that doesn’t fill my soul with joy.
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