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MAY 22,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:38 P.M. ET: 

GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM – "'NBC Nightly News' anchor and managing editor Brian Williams traveled to Moscow this week for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor's first-ever American television interview will air in an hour-long NBC News primetime special on Wednesday, May 28 at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 p.m. Central.  Williams's in-person conversation with Snowden was conducted over the course of several hours and was shrouded in secrecy due to Snowden's life in exile since leaking classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs a year ago. Williams also jointly interviewed Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has reported stories based on the documents in media outlets around the world, about how they came to work together and the global debate sparked by their revelations."  Hmm.  Something doesn't look right here.  Why would Snowden agree to an exclusive with Brian Williams?  Is it that Williams has something of a liberal reputation?  I don't know.  I'll judge the interview by the toughness of the questions, but I'm not expecting much.

KENTUCKY DERBY – From AP:  "Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes on Wednesday twice refused to say whether she would have voted for President Barack Obama's signature health care law.
Asked two times whether she'd have voted for the 2010 overhaul, the Kentucky Democrat who is challenging Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told The Associated Press: 'I, when we are in the United States Senate, will work to fix the Affordable Care Act.'  Grimes added: 'I believe the politically motivated response you continue to see from Mitch McConnell in terms of repeal, root and branch, is not in reality or keeping ... with what the facts are here in Kentucky.'"  An amateurish answer.   Lundergan Grimes is the new Wendy Davis.  Davis began a Texas liberal darling with a filibuster on abortion rights, and is now the Dem candidate for governor.  Along the way she self-destructed and is given no chance at election.  So Lundergan Grimes is now getting mucho money from out of state.  McConnell is already applying the heat, and let's hope he can end this threat early.

A MUST SEE – It's gone viral.  Admiral William McRaven gave the commencement speech at the University of Texas, his alma mater.  First, it's great that a university can invite a serving officer without the campus left driving him away.  Three cheers for UT.  Second, the speech was terrific, a kind of guide to life as seen by a Navy SEAL.  Watch it here.  You won't regret it.  There are still guys like this, and graduates willing to listen to them.

HOW LONG WILL HE LAST? – From PJ Media:  "FBI Director James Comey agreed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan was inspired by al-Qaeda.  The massacre at the Texas base is still branded an incident of 'workplace violence,' despite longtime efforts within Congress to have it properly designated as a terrorist attack.  'In your opening statement you mentioned al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism and I know you’re familiar — if not specifically, generally — with the facts of the 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, when Major Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people, injured a couple dozen plus more,' Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said when questioning Comey. 'Do you agree with the intelligence community’s assessment that Hasan was inspired by al-Qaeda to conduct that attack?'  'Yes, sir,' Comey responded. 'Based on everything I’ve read, again, I wasn’t in office at the time, but I’ve read about it since, and I do.'"  I suspect Obama regrets appointing Comey, who's made some terrific anti-terrorist statements recently.  He doesn't buy the company line. 

May 22, 2014       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – BABIES IN COLLEGE – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  We're finally beginning to see a backlash against the antics on American college campuses.  I think that the excesses this year – especially forcing out commencement speakers not approved by the fringe left or Muslim groups – have created a bit of an awakening.  This, combined with the vastly inflated cost of a college "education" may well stir the pot.  From conservative educator Chester Finn Jr. at The Politico: 

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry over the demand by U.S. college students for “trigger warnings” to alert them that something they’re about to read or see in one of their classes might traumatize them—apparently a new trend, according to the New York Times. Ditto for off-beat campus sculptures, placards displayed by protesters and more.

Poor dears. These are the same kids who would riot in the streets if their colleges asserted any form of in loco parentis when it comes to such old-fashioned concerns as inebriation and fornication. God forbid they should be treated as responsible, independent adults! After all, they’re old enough to vote, to drive, even (though it’s unlikely) to join the army.

Yet they want their professors to shield their precious eyes from anything potentially offensive. In the words of a course-syllabus guide produced by Oberlin College’s Sexual Offense Policy Task Force, that means flagging “all forms of violence” and examples of “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.” Although the Oberlin faculty has temporarily tabled the document, the school’s Office of Equity Concerns already admonishes instructors to “take steps to make the classroom more inclusive for … individuals of all genders, gender identities, gender expressions and sexual orientations.”

COMMENT:  This is juicy stuff.  Read the whole thing.  Parents are paying $60,000 a year to expose their children to other children with the title "professor." 

May 22 2014       Permalink

THE REAL WORLD – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  From CBS: 

"CHICAGO (CBS) — The principal of Curie High School has put out a warning to students and parents to leave immediately after school and use a different route after six shootings in 48 hours in nearby neighborhoods. 

The school is located at 49th and South Archer.

The warning was enough to worry people headed inside the school Wednesday night for an evening workout. 

“Pretty scary,” said Gabriela Perez. “You can’t be safe anywhere.”  The warning specifically points to the 79th and Pulaski area. About 2 miles from there, near 8400 South Kedzie, a 17-year-old walking in an alley was shot and killed around 5 p.m Monday, a case that’s reminding other teens who travel streets in the area about the potential for deadly violence. 

“You have to walk these streets every day,” said student DeMario Falls. “I know my way around the neighborhood. And I know people and I don’t feel like they would do harm to me.” 

COMMENT:  I don't note a sense of outrage.  Indeed, there was far more anger among liberals at the firing of Jill Abramson at The New York Times.

When will blacks realize that their so-called allies don't care about them.  They care only about feeling good about themselves ,they care about their ideologies, and they care about getting blacks to the polls on election day. 

Chicago is a shooting gallery.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel does, I think, take his job very seriously, but the problems are overwhelming.  I doubt if he'll survive a re-election campaign. 

Most of the horror is on the South Side, which was Barack Obama's neighborhood.  Notice his deep concern.

May 22 2014       Permalink

BENGHAZI PROBE TO INCLUDE DEMS – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:  Nancy Pelosi has decided to allow Dems to serve on Trey Gowdy's House committee that is investigating Benghazi.  One of them is Elijah Cummings, the intense Dem political hack who is correctly seen as representing the Obama White House.

Where did the pressure come from that caused Nancy to let Dems serve?  Originally we were told she was in favor of boycotting the committee.  Here's an enlightening report from The Politico: 

Hillary Clinton’s world was so worried about a Republican investigation of the Benghazi attacks, they sent a message to House Democrats: We need backup.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) publicly considered boycotting the panel, an idea that Clinton supporters feared would leave the potential 2016 candidate exposed to the enemy fire of House Republicans.

Hillary Clinton’s world was so worried about a Republican investigation of the Benghazi attacks, they sent a message to House Democrats: We need backup.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) publicly considered boycotting the panel, an idea that Clinton supporters feared would leave the potential 2016 candidate exposed to the enemy fire of House Republicans.

COMMENT:  The Dems will stall the hearings and try to turn them into a farce.  Cummings has already rendered judgment, declaring the hearings a witch hunt.  But I have great confidence in Trey Gowdy.  He handles himself well.  He's very smart and very verbal.

May 22 2014       Permalink

ARKANSAS STORY – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  One of the most critical Senate races this year is in Arkansas, and so far it has been disappointing for our side.  Congressman Tom Cotton, on paper an ideal Senate candidate, a Harvard Law graduate who gave up a lucrative career to fight as infantry in the war on terror, is taking on Democratic Senator Mark Pryor.

At first we thought this would be an easy pickup, but Cotton is not a great retail politician and Pryor comes from an old, respected Arkansas political family.  Recent polls show Pryor ahead of Cotton in the increasingly Republican state.  But data from Tuesday night's primaries give us some cause for optimism.  From the Washington Free Beacon: 

The number of Republicans who voted in Tuesday’s Arkansas primary surpassed the number of Democrats “for the first time since the Civil War,” according to a memo issued this morning by Republican Senate candidate Rep. Tom Cotton’s campaign.

The number of GOP primary voters increased by 32.4 percent since 2010 and 18.3 percent since 2012, communications director David Ray wrote in the memo.

The growing numbers signal an upsurge in GOP voter enthusiasm, according to Ray:

Last night, Arkansas voters cast 176,783 Republican primary ballots to the Democrats’ 150,101. That’s a 32.4 percent increase in GOP primary voting from 2010. Even more impressive is the fact that Arkansas Republicans surpassed even their 2012 primary total by 18.3 percent last night.

As our friends at the Arkansas GOP pointed out after a lopsided special election in a traditionally Democrat district in January, the electoral ground is shifting beneath Senator Mark Pryor’s feet in Arkansas. Last night, the Associated Press wrote: ”Tuesday’s primary highlighted Arkansas’ transformation from a Democratic stronghold in the south to a state where Republicans have made gains up and down the ballot.”

Cotton is locked in a fiercely competitive race with Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. Recent polls have shown Pryor gaining ground on Cotton, but some analysts say the surveys may underestimate the number of GOP voters who will turn out for the 2014 midterms.

COMMENT:  It will be a tough race.  Cotton has taken some unpopular stands, including support for raising the Medicare eligibility age.  His military record, and we see this often, can only get him a respectful hearing.  He's a brilliant guy who would probably, eventually, make a fine president, but he's got to travel the road first.

May 22,  2014     Permalink

MAY 21,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:58 P.M. ET: 

A LESSON – From Townhall.com:  "North Carolina restaurant The Pit was robbed at gunpoint on Sunday. Normally, local crime stories like this wouldn't merit a Townhall post, but this one is different: The Pit has a 'no weapons' sign displayed prominently on its door declaring the restaurant a gun-free zone, and bans patrons from carrying concealed weapons.  Authorities said just before 9 p.m. Sunday, three men wearing hoodies entered the restaurant through the back doors with pistols, and forced several staff members to lie on the floor.  The bandits assaulted two employees during the crime, but they were not seriously injured."  Nothing more need be noted.   As Jerry Lewis famously said, "Bad looks you can change, stupid is forever."

ACADEMIC FREEDOM? – From Fox:  "A substitute teacher in New York was fired after investigators say she asked students in her fourth-grade class for dating advice, DNAinfo.com reported.  Cassandre Fiering, 45, allegedly consulted her students on June 13, 2013, and acted out scenarios where her students would play her boyfriend and she would play herself, the report said.  At one point, she allegedly asked her Bronx class who she should date. The class went with the older man who returned her calls, the report said.  DNAinfo cited a report by investigators for the office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation for New York City Schools. The news site obtained the report under a Freedom of Information Law request."  Her defense will probably be that she was showing appreciation for the cultural understanding of her students.  Who could object?

BUSINESS NEWS – From Fox:  "Long after his death, Che Guevara, who some regard as a ruthless killer and others adore as an icon of revolution, is teaching a new generation of students about the failure of communism.  University of California-San Diego students have run the 'Che Café Collective' for 34 years, a vegan co-op and concert venue boasting 'exorbitantly low' prices and volunteer staffing. But it’s consistently in the red, costing the student body nearly $1 million over the years, and isn’t kept up to fire or safety codes. School officials are threatening to cut off funding, which would shut down the campus fixture, but a band of students is fighting back.  'The venue has been operating for 34 years and it’s the longest-running volunteer space in Southern California, if not in all of California,' café volunteer Rene Vera told FoxNews.com. 'And our building is covered in murals that document a lot of that history.'"  Who cares about safety codes?  Fire codes?  A million dollars lost that could have gone to scholarships?  Hey, we've got murals.  This is what happens when we raise children to be children.

YUCH! – From London's Daily Mail:  "First Lady Michelle Obama's healthy eating initiatives have been so unpopular among young people that more than a million students have stopped buying school lunches.  The Agriculture Department set new standards for what types of foods schools can serve students that have been phased in over the last three school years in response to Obama's push for healthier school lunches, and even more changes are coming in 2014."  Right.  Try to tell kids what they should like.  I say, give me ice cream or give me death!"

May 21, 2014        Permalink

PRIMARIES BOLSTERING GOP – AT 10:56 A.M. ET:  At least that's what a number of pundits seem to be saying this morning, after last night's primary results.  From WaPo: 

Republicans’ hopes of taking back the Senate received a big boost in primary elections Tuesday, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) easily winning and other candidates favored by the party establishment beating back tea party challengers.

After years of intraparty turmoil that cost Republicans key races, voters this year are coalescing around the GOP’s strongest candidates ahead of November’s general election, when control of the Senate during President Obama’s final two years in office will be up for grabs.

On Tuesday, the most consequential day of voting so far this year, Democrats were left disappointed. GOP Senate candidates prone to making controversial statements lost to better-financed, more disciplined rivals with the potential to capitalize on Obama’s unpopularity and the troubles with his signature health-care law.

Nowhere was this more evident than in Kentucky and Georgia, the only two states where Democrats think they can win Senate seats held by Republicans. Democrats had hoped McConnell would emerge from the primary campaign badly bruised, if not defeated, but he prevailed Tuesday largely unscathed and conservative groups quickly called for party unity.

And in Georgia, Democrats were banking on Republicans nominating a candidate so far to the right that he or she would alienate suburban centrist voters. But the two contenders considered to have the broadest general-election viability — businessman David Perdue and Rep. Jack Kingston — advanced to a July 22 runoff, complicating Democrat Michelle Nunn’s path to victory.

Upcoming primary elections are likely to yield similar results. The tea party’s best and perhaps only remaining chance for an upset is in Mississippi, where support for Sen. Thad Cochran seems shaky, although his conservative challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, has stumbled.

COMMENT:  The GOP is getting more professional, and its base more discerning.  But the party still has to fight as if it's 20 points behind.  None of these races will be easy.  Democrats do not fight like gentlemen, and they have the media behind them. 

May 21, 2014       Permalink

HE FIGURED IT OUT? – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:  Despite the usual hysterics, and John Kerry's periodic rantings, climate change hasn't exactly caught the imagination of real people.  The head of struggling CNN has noted this.  From Breitbart:   

CNN boss Jeff Zucker conceded that his audience is not interested in the network's global warming agenda, but he indicated that he will try to find more creative ways to make them care.

For starters they can look for actual facts. 

"Climate change is one of those stories that deserves more attention, that we all talk about, but we haven't figured out how to engage the audience in that story in a meaningful way," Zucker said Monday at an awards dinner in New York. "When we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience's part."

CNN's ratings have suffered because the network masquerades as being objective while backing a blatantly liberal agenda. However, its climate change push, by Zucker's own admission, may be even too much for the few people who still regularly watch what had once been the "most trusted name in news."

COMMENT:  How about CNN having a real panel on "climate change," including the best of the skeptics, some of whom are Nobel laureates.  I doubt they will because the true believers at the network, and that apparently includes Zucker himself, consider dissent the equivalent of original sin.  I've never seen a CNN story exposing some of the scandals in the "climate change" business, and it is a business. 

CNN has some fine reporters, but it suffers from its reputation as a liberal operation.  In effect, it loses half its audience every time it goes on the air. 

May 21, 2014       Permalink

THE FATE OF OUR COLLEGES – AT 9:03 A.M. ET:  Related to our first post of the day, below, is this from Glenn Harlan Reynolds, who doubles as Instapundit on the web.  Reynolds notes the decline in enrollment at many colleges and universities, and, also, the decline in esteem in which these institutions are held.  From USA Today: 

The decline in enrollment seems to be slowing, but the long-term problem remains: With costs growing, and post-graduation incomes stagnant or worse, students (and parents) are growing more reluctant to take on the extensive debt that is required to attend many private, and some public, institutions.

That is only made worse by the decline in higher education's image, damage that is mostly self-inflicted. As Twitter wag IowaHawk japes: "If I understand college administrators correctly, colleges are hotbeds of racism and rape that everyone should be able to attend."

And...

From the economics to the politics, colleges and universities are looking less like serious places to improve one's mind and one's prospects, and more like expensive islands of frivolity and, sometimes, viciousness. And that is likely to have consequences.

Industries with bad reputations face declining markets and more regulation. At this rate, that's where higher education is headed. It's not clear at all that its leaders appreciate the depth of the problem.

COMMENT:  There may be some slight improvement.  I've noticed in recent weeks a growing number of college administrators who've spoken out against the academic thugs of the left who've intimidated students faculty, and even commencement speakers. 

But I suspect that real improvement will only come with generational change.  The colleges are still run by the pseudo-intellectual leftovers of the 1960s.  Many have the intellectual maturity of 12-year-olds.  We hope it changes in time.  If not, our educational institutions will live in darkness.

May 21, 2014        Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  A number of readers have alerted us to the brilliant column by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal.  Stephens pretends that he's addressing the class of 2014, and he deals with the deterioration of the American university.  Here is quote:

And at least one basic teaching of true liberalism is that the essential right of free people is the right to offend, and an essential responsibility of free people is to learn how to cope with being offended.

I'll grant you this: It's not all your fault. The semi- and post-literates who overran the humanities departments at most universities long before I ever set foot in college are the main culprits here. Then again, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out what it takes to live in a free country. The ideological brainwashing that takes place on campus isn't (yet) coercive. Mainly, it's just onanistic.

There's good news in that. You can still take charge of your education, and of your lives. The cocoon years are over; the micro-aggressions are about to pour down.

Deal with it. Revel in it. No consequential idea ever failed to offend someone; no consequential person was ever spared great offense. Those of you who want to lead meaningful lives need to begin unlearning most of what you've been taught, starting right now.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's worth it.  I wish Stephens had the chance actually to deliver it to a real graduating class.  However, he's a conservative writer at a capitalist paper, so I assume he received no invitations.  The kids, and, more important, the professors, could learn from him.

May 21, 2014     Permalink