QandO

Here’s  a great idea  if ever I’ve heard one: The student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said on Wednesday that black students should be offered free tuition and housing because blacks were legally barred from education during slavery and university remains out of reach for black students today. The Associated Students of Madison said in a resolution that suburban high school students are over-represented. The group said consideration of ACT and SAT scores in applications upholds “white supremacy” because it restricts opportunities for the poor. The college has proposed measures aimed at improving diversity. “The university’s rhetoric suggests that it is committed to diversity and inclusion, so this legislation compels the university to move towards action — which is imperative,” the resolution’s author, ASM Student Council Rep. Tyriek Mack, said in a statement. “If no one challenges the university’s empty promises, then the racial composition will...

That’s a question I’d like progressives to answer honestly applying whatever standard they apply to Trump with Ellison. Not going to happen I know.   Roger Simon points to the obvious: Not only are more members of his immediate family — daughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law and therefore various grandchildren — Jewish than any previous president, his cabinet and advisers are chock-full of my coreligionists.  Trump — he of the “New York values” and the countless hours on the Howard Stern radio show — has lived a life surrounded by and working with Jews with no problem that I have ever heard about. And Keith Ellison?  He’s a product of the Nation of Islam, founded by unabashed antisemite Louis Farrakhan.  Ellison has gone to great extents to pretend he didn’t know that or somehow wasn’t effected by it.  But his words and deeds at that time betray him.  And somehow the Democrats and progressives are fine with ignoring his past affiliation. ...

Oh, good lord … this, this, this!   From George Neumayr: Whenever editors say that they refuse to acknowledge “two sides” on such matters as “marriage equality” or Darwinism or climate change, they are paying homage to Lenin’s devious politics by shorthand. They pay homage to it whenever they substitute their opinions of the news for actual reporting of the news. Even the squabbling among journalists recently over whether or not to suspend “conventional reporting” in Trump’s case, or whether front-page stories should declare his misstatements “lies,” is a tacit acknowledgment of that politics. With Lenin, the Christiane Amanpours have no use for the peskiness of precise responses. Just call Trump a “liar,” their attitude goes, and “everyone will understand everything.” But that demagogic shorthand only works as long as Republican politicians defer to it. For years journalists opined self-servingly under the guise of objectivity and got away it because Republicans were too afr...

Victor Davis Hanson has one of  the more interesting articles out today (over at NRO ).  He outlines the fire Trump has taken in his first month in office from both the left and right.  In a few paragraphs, he summarizes what these two sides of the same coin have done and accomplished.  In fact, it seems, they've accomplished very little. Of the left he says: The Democratic party has been absorbed by its left wing and is beginning to resemble the impotent British Labour party. Certainly it no longer is a national party. Mostly it’s a local and municipal coastal force, galvanized to promote a race and gender agenda and opposed to conservatism yet without a pragmatic alternative vision. Its dilemma is largely due to the personal success but presidential failure of Barack Obama, who moved the party leftward and yet bequeathed an electoral matrix that will deprive future national candidates of swing-state constituencies without compensating for that down...

They can’t seem to get out of their own way. We pointed out that after last week’s presser in which Trump called them everything but journalists, the AP set out to prove him right in every way by going with it’s false “National Guard” story and refusing to back away from it. It is fascinating to see a narcissistic industry focus on a narcissistic president in a negative way (as opposed to a narcissistic industry focus on a president in a positive way – like they did with Obama). It’s simply the other side of the coin.  The difference is while they were willing, for the most part, to tolerate it in the Obama era, they’re adamantly against it in the Trump era and are busily trying to rewrite history by declaring his action’s “unprecedented”. But is it? While Trump’s behavior hardly befits an American president, he is also crudely mirroring the Obama administration, which spent its first year in office seeking to discredit Fox News as a respectable media outlet. The Obama ad...

The Trump Press Conference sent the media into a tizzy, whereupon the AP Printed a negative story on Trump that immediately turned out to be untrue. The Media are nothing more than partisan cheerleaders. Americans just love them some opium. They’d like more jobs, too. An attempt at a lengthy discussion of monetary policy was brutally crushed. We can’t seem to do big things in this country any more, especially infrastructure projects. Mainly, the Federal government is why. Why is nationalism such a dirty word among the elites? Mainly because they don’t have to live with the consequences. Elites never do. This week’s podcast is up on the  Podcast page .

Sorry about the lack of posts recently.  Stomach “bug” did me in. On to “happier things”. No?  OK, then let’s talk about what’s happening in the world. You might find this interesting.   I doubt the left will: Social movements are critical agents of change that vary greatly in both tactics and popular support. Prior work shows that extreme protest tactics – actions that are highly counter-normative, disruptive, or harmful to others, including inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and damaging property – are effective for gaining publicity. However, we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement. Though this effect obtained in tests of popular responses to extreme tactics used by animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump protests (Studies 1-3), we found that self-identified political activists were willing to use extreme tactics be...

So Michael Flynn is out?   Can’t say I’m terrible disappointed.   I’m uncomfortable with Flynn, especially in a position as high and powerful as the National Security Adviser.  In fact, Stephen Green,  over at Insty’s place,  pretty much expresses my thoughts on the matter: I think Trump dodged a bullet with this one, even if he did originally fire it at himself. By most accounts, Flynn was a fine general, but was in over his head management-wise as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Whatever Flynn’s relations with Moscow might have been — and I suspect they were overblown — the President just can’t afford a bad manager as his National Security Advisor. Better that Trump take his lumps quickly and appoint someone better qualified for the job. Flynn also seemed to approach is duties in a manner that caused friction and dissension inside and outside of Trump’s cabinet.  I think, for the most part, this is a good thing.  I’ve alrea...

OK, maybe a little spark of outrage in the title,  but what do you call this ? The co-founder of Black Lives Matter’s Toronto chapter believes white people are “recessive genetic defects” and sub-human. Yusra Khogali wrote on Facebook that “Whiteness is not humxness” and that “white skin is sub-humxn,”  according to The Toronto Sun . (Khogali intentionally misspells “human” in order to eliminate “man” from the word, a common practice among left-wing feminists.) She goes on to say that white people are “recessive genetic defects” who “need white supremacy to protect their survival as a people.” Black people, Khogali writes, “simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to,” later adding that black people are “superhumxns.” This is pure racism.  This is the argument of the German Third Reich.  But BLM is the group Democrats and leftists support.  It’s no different than the group the Democrats...

The 9th Circuit ruled that Donald Trump’s Immigration ban was anti-Muslim. Fortunately, it’s the 9th Circuit, so nothing they say matters. Betsy DeVos is now the Secretary of education, a job that shouldn’t even be a thing. On the bright side, our education system sucks so badly, she can’t possibly make it worse. Will Donald Trump grow in office? Is Mike Flynn a bad government servant? Our national divorce approaches. Jeff Sessions, our new Attorney General, hates the drugs, but he loves civil asset forteiture. This week’s podcast is up on the  Podcast page .

After an election in which they do well, I always wonder when the “stupid party” will reemerge.   Wonder no more:  “A group of prominent Republicans and business leaders pitched a tax on carbon dioxide to top White House aides Wednesday, selling the plan as an economic win that could drive job growth and yield environmental dividends too… ‘This is not a climate proposal; it’s a tax proposal,’ said Thomas Pyle, head of the free-market advocacy group American Energy Alliance. ‘There’s no need to trade Obama’s climate regulations for a carbon tax. Donald Trump has already promised to undo them.'” Sigh. We heard all during the Trump run for the presidency that what was needed badly was a tax cut. But what is one of the first things that establishment GOP types approach the White House with? Yeah, a tax increase. The ever popular tax on “thin air”. Literally. Pyle is right.  Still … here they are pushing another new tax. And yes, imagine a  tax increase ...