Guilt by Association

President-elect Donald Trump selected Kimberly Guilfoyle, his son’s fiance, and a former Fox News host, to be the next ambassador to Greece.

***

When the DOJ released the hopeful assassin Routh's letter offering a bounty on Trump's life, Bill Barr said he was "gobsmacked" that such an inflammatory letter would be publicized.
The adjective gobsmacked means flabbergasted, astounded, apparently, in reference to the shock effect of being struck in the mouth. this adjective is from:– the noun gob, of Irish-Gaelic and Scottish-Gaelic origin, denoting the mouth;– the adjective smacked, meaning struck, slapped.

***

In 2023, the Times of London reported, “The Chinese navy has lost 55 sailors after one of its nuclear-powered submarine [sic] was caught in a trap intended for American and British vessels, leaked intelligence reports”:

The British report, based on defense intelligence seen by the newspaper, said: “Our understanding is death caused by hypoxia [lack of oxygen] due to a system fault on the submarine.

“The submarine hit a chain and anchor obstacle used by the Chinese navy to trap US and allied submarines. This resulted in systems failures that took six hours to repair and surface the vessel. The on-board oxygen system poisoned the crew after a catastrophic failure.”

***

Guilt by Association

The Harvard disaster was clearly signaled by earlier events, most notably the 2019 firing of Dean Ronald Sullivan. Sullivan is a noted criminal defense attorney; he was the director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and he is the Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, he advised President Obama on criminal justice issues, and he represented the family of Michael Brown. He and his wife were the first black Faculty Deans in the history of the college.

Controversy erupted, however, when Sullivan joined Harvey Weinstein’s legal defense team. Student protests ensued. The students argued that they couldn’t “feel safe” if a legal representative of a person accused of abusing women was also serving in a role of student support and mentorship. This is, of course, ridiculous. Defending an individual accused of murder does not imply that a criminal defense attorney condones the act of murder.

Harvard should have educated their students. Harvard should have emphasized the crucial role of criminal defense in American law and history. They should have noted that a cornerstone of the rule of law is the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, irrespective of public opinion.

Harvard should have pointed proudly to John Adams, a Harvard alum, who defied popular opinion to defend hated British soldiers charged with murdering Americans at the Boston Massacre. (If you wish to take measure of the quality of our times it’s worth noting that Adams won the case and later became president—roughly equivalent to an attorney for accused al-Qaeda terrorists becoming President today.)

Instead of educating its students, Harvard catered to ignorance, bias, and hysteria by removing both Sullivan and his wife from their deanships. Harvard in effect endorsed the idea, as Robby Soave put it, that “serving as legal counsel for a person accused of sexual misconduct is itself a form of sexual misconduct, or at the very least contributes to sexual harassment on campus.” 

Thus Harvard tarred Sullivan and his wife, undermined the rule of law, and elevated the rule of the mob. Claudine Gay, then Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, contributed to the ignorance, bias, and hysteria. (It’s also notable, that Sullivan also criticized Harvard’s handling of the investigation of Roland Fryer as being “deeply flawed and deeply unfair.” This may have been Sullivan’s real sin, as the investigation of Fryer was under Dean Claudine Gay.)

Engines and Cabooses

‘Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.’ – Joseph Stalin

***

Engines and Cabooses

The train cars get to the same place, all at the same time--some with less work. So why does the caboose envy the engine? 

Technology and the individual make a powerful partnership and certainly are factors in the explosion of human economic development of the last 200 years. McClosky suggests that success is partly dependent upon the individual just being left alone to fulfill his vision.

The interference is usually assumed to be caused by religious or government entities. But it also seems to be true that success itself stimulates opposition. Royalty. Kulaks. The Rich. Somehow in us there arises a strange opposition to success. This has expanded from revolutionary minorities into democracies.

Perhaps this explains antisemitism. The proportion of people with an IQ of 140 or more is about six times higher among Jews than any other population. Jews, forming much less than a single percent of the world’s population, have won 32% of the Nobel Prizes awarded in the 21st century. They dominate classical music. Many Jews have been factors in the great economic revolution of the last 200 years.

The curiosity of this great growth over the last two centuries is that the expansion of the quality of life and wealth has been led by a very few. Their creations have expanded to fill the culture and enrich everyone. Those discoverers and developers have become more enriched than others, but the growth in wealth of the least in the culture has been extraordinary. A simple comparison of those cultures that have not participated shows the disparity.

So why would those in that successful culture, having benefitted so much from the creators in the culture, resent them?

Affirmative Action

In 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched by Xi Jinping, featuring an ambition to reinvigorate the old silk trading route along the East African coast. Chinese investment in Africa peaked around 2016. Since then, Chinese loans to African governments declined significantly, falling from $28.4 billion in 2016 to $1.9 billion in 2020 – partly due to changing priorities in domestic Chinese politics, and partly due to the apparent difficulty African countries had repaying loans. Citing data from China's National Bureau of Statistics, the number of Chinese workers in Africa has plummeted from 263,696 in 2015 to 88,371 in 2022.

***

Affirmative Action

"Disparate results" are quite the rage. Several of the next few days will be on that topic, culled from a Hillsdale lecture.

The Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) is an exam, like the SAT, that assesses students for application, specifically to med school. The average MCAT score for black applicants is a standard deviation below the average score of white applicants. The tests have been redesigned to try to eliminate this disparity. A quarter of the questions now focus on social issues and psychology. Some medical schools have waived the submission of MCAT scores for black applicants. The changes have been extended to the medical school curriculum which is being revised to offer more classes in white privilege and focus less on clinical practice.

The medical licensing exam has two parts. The first part is taken during or after the second year of medical school and tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the exam, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. That exam has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The answer, implemented last year, was to eliminate the grading disparity by instituting a pass–fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low-achieving students.

But sacrifices must be made.

The American Association of Medical Colleges will soon require that medical faculty demonstrate knowledge of “intersectionality”—a theory about the cumulative burdens of discrimination. Heads of medical schools and chairmen of departments like pediatric surgery are being selected based on identity, not knowledge.

The federal government is shifting medical research funding from pure science to studies on racial disparities and social justice. Why? Not because of any assessment of scientific need, but simply because black researchers do more racism research and less pure science. The National Institutes of Health has broadened the criteria for receiving neurology grants to include things like childhood welfare receipt because considering scientific accomplishment alone results in a disparate impact.

Disparities have explanations, explanations that can be addressed. But there is a real problem with any organized attack on quality--or should be. Not only is it damaging to the nature of the academic pursuit and its participants, it offers mediocrity as a cultural goal. 

We are simply not robust enough a culture to indulge in such an uncritical world.

 

Discrimination/Stats

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate

***

According to a report from Daily Faceff’s Frank Seravalli, Penguins general manager Ron Hextall has called all 31 other teams in the NHL about a deal for D-man P. O. Joseph.

***

One in seven Irish households still burns peat for heat. They can't wait for EVs, I'll bet. Probably will use them as generators.

***

The British statesman Lord D’Abernon referred to the 1920 Polish-Soviet War as one of the eighteen decisive battles of world civilization. “The history of contemporary civilization knows no event of greater importance than the Battle of Warsaw, 1920.″ In his evaluation of the Polish victory in 1920, historian Norman Davies noted: “Had Pilsudski and Weygand failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of Western civilization would have been imperiled.”

***

France spends about 14% of gdp on public pensions, compared with an OECD average of 8%.

***

Discrimination/Stats

A recent study (Quillian et al) on discrimination in 9 countries in Europe and North America finds there is some discrimination in every county but, if anything, the USA has one of the lower rates of discrimination while France and perhaps also Sweden have very high levels. These results run counter to the narrative that the US is uniquely or especially discriminatory because of its history of slavery and capitalism. Capitalism, in fact, is likely to predict less discrimination.

National histories of slavery and colonialism are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for a country to have relatively high levels of labor market discrimination.

China Baloney

                                China Baloney

At times of anxiety, we poor humans are inundated with a lot of posturing and baloney. The anxiety over calling The Virus "The China Virus" is a great example of both. The incredible efforts of the Chinese to propagandize the crisis aside, there is some real stupidity here. Below is an article by McGurn from the WSJ:


"Amid the coronavirus wreckage, there seems to be a bright spot. The pushback against referring to Covid-19 as the “China virus” indicates a welcome new sensitivity for the racial discrimination directed at Chinese-Americans. Or does it?

Ever since people began referring to “the China virus”—or to be precise, ever since the White House press corps realized it was Donald Trump’s preferred term—the American people have been given repeated warnings that this is not only insensitive but dangerous.

It’s hard not to notice the chasm between this new hypersensitivity and the indifference toward another, very real discrimination affecting this same community. That is the racial discrimination keeping Chinese-Americans out of America’s most elite educational institutions. Some of the same people who fret so loudly about how we refer to Covid-19 are utterly indifferent to this other racial discrimination affecting Chinese-Americans.

Start with the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio. After Mr. Trump tweeted out a reference to “the China virus” earlier this month, Mr. de Blasio clapped back. Asian-Americans, the mayor thundered, “don’t need you fueling more bigotry.”

If someone fuels bigotry by calling a virus a name accurately derived from its geographic origins, what about a mayor who works overtime to reduce the number of Asian-Americans in his city’s most competitive public high schools, not because they haven’t earned their entry but because they aren’t the right race.

Ditto for Harvard. Remember, the chief argument against “the China virus” is that using it stigmatizes both China and people of Chinese descent. But what about the stigmas that come from the subjective “personal ratings” Harvard applies in its admissions process? The Justice Department says these ratings produce “consistently poorer scores for Asian-Americans,” a racial penalty that brings down an Asian-American applicant’s overall score.

Asian-Americans as a whole score higher “on many objective measures than any other racial/ethnic group including test scores (see chart below), academic achievement, and extracurricular activities.” But if we are to believe Harvard, Asian-Americans are less likable, less kind and less courageous than those of other races. If that’s not stigmatization, what is?

….. “xenophobia wears many faces.” And in a nation of 330 million, America has its share of goons. What’s Harvard’s excuse?"

Results and Will

                                       Results and Will

Most of the social action generated by government and its adherents stems from the belief that decisions, indeed most behavior, is the result of hidden, unknown psychological pressures or intimidation, overt or subtle. This can be seen in action from disparity in results; everyone is assumed in a non-pressured environment, to arrive at the same point at the same time. If they do not, something is afoot.

There are only two academic fields where women were significantly underrepresented in 2018 and have been historically: Engineering (22.2%) and Computer Science (20.0%). It is interesting to note that the female share of Computer Science degrees increased every year between 1972 and 1984 when it reached a peak of 37.1% before falling almost every year since then to a low of 17.6% in 2008, less than half the share in 1984. Over the last decade, the female share of Computer Science has gradually increased by 1.4 percentage points from 17.6% in 2008 to 20.0% in 2018. But for whatever reason(s), women’s interest in pursuing degrees in Computer Science peaked 35 years ago and declined steadily ever since then except for a small uptick in recent years.

There has been similar though not quite as dramatic decrease in female interest in majoring in Mathematics/Statistics in recent years. After increasing steadily over time and almost reaching parity in 2001 when the female share of Math degrees reached 48.2%, the share has steadily decreased over the last 16 years and fell below 42% in 2017 for the first time since 1979 before increasing in 2018 to 42.4%.

This disparity has a number of explanations. Apparently, one is not free will.

More on the Bee

Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes, but let’s keep things in perspective. How many Twitter followers did she have?--Garg

Dinner with the Gordon girls, spouses and Dave and Thomas at an Asian restaurant in Monroeville--really good food.
Two patients in office yesterday brought personal pronoun information.
In their last 18 games, the Pirates have scored an average of 5.5 runs per game. Their record for that 18 games? 6-12.

Sam Wyche had a heart transplant?

This might be interesting. On 30 April 2019, St. Edmunds College, University of Cambridge, rescinded a fellowship to the young researcher Noah Carl, who self-identifies as a conservative, after pressure from leftist groups.

Catholics make up 12% of the population of Ohio and win 70% of high school state championships.

In Greek mythology, King Gordius of Phrygia tied a knot that defied all who tried to untie it. An oracle prophesied that one who would undo this Gordian knot would rule Asia. Alexander the Great simply cut the knot with one stroke of his sword. Hence the saying, "to cut the Gordian knot", meaning to solve a difficult problem by a simple, bold, and effective action.

The half brother of North Korea's Kim Jong Un - who was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February 2017, when two women smeared his face with the nerve agent VX - was an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and met with agency operatives on several occasions, Wall Street Journal reports. 

The countries that have the fewest mass murders and the lowest homicide rates as well are the least ethnically diverse — such as Japan and nearly all European countries. So, too, the American states that have homicide rates as low as Western European countries are the least ethnically and racially diverse (the four lowest are New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine and Idaho). 

Now that Mr. Trump is using tariffs as an all-purpose weapon, look for others to play the same game. Joe Biden’s climate proposal, released last week, suggests using tariffs against countries that don’t do what he wants on climate change. The danger is that future Presidents will also view tariffs as a diplomatic remedy for whatever ails them. Congress would do well to take back the “emergency” and “national security” blank checks on trade that it has given Presidents over the decades. (wsj)

From Brian: Folks keep talking about another Civil War. One side knows how to shoot and probably has a trillion rounds. The other side has crying closets and is confused about which bathroom to use.
      Now tell me, how do you think that's going to end?

The Energy Department is banning its researchers from joining Chinese talent-recruitment programs after finding personnel were recruited by foreign military-linked programs and lured with multimillion-dollar packages. (wsj)

In 1509, on this day, King Henry VIII of England married Catherine of Aragon.

                    

                                          More on the Bee

Jacoby had an article on the dominance of Indian-Asian kids in spelling bee championships. This is from it:

"The disproportionate success of Indians in world-class competitive spelling ought to elicit only admiration. But there’s no denying that it flies in the face of America’s vast diversity-industrial complex, which endlessly reinforces and endorses a great fallacy: that statistical disparities between racial and ethnic groups are proof of invidious discrimination.

Bigotry and injustice are real, of course, but they have no more to do with the dominance of Indians in spelling competitions than with the dominance of Kenyans in distance running, or of Russians in chess, or of African-Americans in the NBA. Or, for that matter, of men in commercial fishing or women in veterinary medicine, or of any of a thousand-and-one other examples of extreme statistical disparities among categories of people.

“Human beings are not random events,” the renowned scholar Thomas Sowell observes. “Individuals and groups have different histories, cultures, skills, and attitudes.”

What is true of high-stress spelling bees is true of workplaces and investments and college applications and entertainment: People do not randomly sort themselves out by color, background, and sex. Group disparities are not, as a rule, evil. They are normal, the result of a myriad of human choices, preferences, interests, and motivations.

The Scripps “octo-champs” are amazing spellers who worked fantastically hard to achieve something wonderful. True, they aren’t a diverse amalgam of races, colors, and ethnicities. Who cares?"

Such disparities are not like the random, hard to fathom "clustering" phenomena that you see in sampling--like the "Love Canal" disease rates. They are, in fact, not disparities at all. They are the norm. They are the expression of what we are like. 

That said, the article stimulated this letter:

I was offended by Jeff Jacoby’s column on the seven young spelling champions of Indian descent (“Diversity and the spelling ‘octo-champs,’ ” Opinion, June 4). He twisted their success into a weapon to tout “meritocracy” and bash affirmative action and diversity-promoting programs. If I were one of those young champions, I would resent his co-opting my achievement to advance his mean-spirited social theories. In fact I am a former champion, and I do resent it.

Henry Feldman

Newton

The writer was the 1960 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee champion.

 "I would resent his co-opting my achievement to advance his mean-spirited social theories." I must admit, I do not know what to make of that.

Un-Bee-Lievable

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”--Frankl

Chris is leaving today for Italy to see his girlfriend, the warrior Alyssa. Alyssa, by the way, finished 15th in her division in a recent Ironman competition, so hide the women....Oh, wait....
Liz is really working hard.

Chara played. Boston got a bad no-call.

A law that former Governor Jerry Brown signed last year that requires utilities in California to, by 2030, produce 60 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Yes, that's right.

“We didn’t ‘spy’ on anyone’s campaign,” writes former FBI director James Comey in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “We asked a federal judge for permission to surveil” former Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page,” but that’s not “spying.” Before that (unmentioned in the op-ed), we infiltrated an informant into the campaign to gather information on its operations, but that’s not “spying.” (from Knapp)

The female share of Computer Science degrees more than doubled from 13.6% in 1971 to 37.1% in 1984, and then decreased steadily and stabilized at about 18-19% a decade ago.

Just one day after CNBC’s Jim Cramer called it a ‘terrific’ buy-and-hold fintech play, noted short seller Andrew Left of Citron Research has issued a damning report on FleetCor Technologies Inc. that calls it the ‘largest clean energy fraud’ in U.S. history.

The John S. McCain, a destroyer named after three generations of McCains — two legendary admirals and the late Arizona senator — was in port in Japan during the president’s recent visit. Before his arrival there, someone from the White House asked the Navy to move the ship “out of sight.”

“It was probably someone on the advance team,” Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said on 'Meet the Press.' “The fact that some 23-, 24-year-old person on the advance team went to that site and said, ‘Oh my goodness, here’s the John McCain. We all know how the president feels about the former senator. Maybe that’s not the best backdrop. Can somebody look into moving it?’ That's not an unreasonable thing,” Mulvaney said.

Huh?

Saudi Arabia has "significantly" expanded its ballistic missile program through recent purchases from China, CNN reported on Wednesday.

WHO said in a fresh report that every day globally there were more than one million new cases of treatable sexually transmitted diseases (STD) or infections (STI).

WHO found that there were more than 376 million new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, trichomoniasis and syphilis registered around the world in 2016. 

On this day in 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution for independence to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; John Adams seconded the motion. Congress agreed to delay the vote on the Lee Resolution until July 1. In the intervening period, Congress appointed a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Its members were John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson, well-known to be the best writer of the group, was selected to be the primary author of the document, which was presented to Congress for review on June 28, 1776.

                                         Un-Bee-Lievable

For the first time ever, the Scripps National Spelling Bee ended with not one spelling champion or even two co-champions, but with eight winners. Winnowed down from 562 starting contestants, the final eight spellers had proved unconquerable through 20 rounds.
These were the winners, along with the final word each spelled correctly:

Rishik Gandhasri: auslaut.

Erin Howard: erysipelas.

Saketh Sundar: bougainvillea.

Shruthika Padhy: aiguillette.

Sohum Sukhatankar: pendeloque.

Abhijay Kodali: palama.

Christopher Serrao: cernuous.

Rohan Raja: odylic.

So, who the hell are Erin Howard and Christopher Serrao?
Certainly no one wants to make any generalization here but there is a coincidence that might be noticeable; many of these names may be of Indian origin. Now for the really bad news: Since 1999, the children of immigrants from South Asia have dominated the world's most prestigious spelling bee. In our belief in equality of outcome, this is more than disturbing, this is virtually treason. What is going on? What circumstances or series of circumstances has unfairly created this unnatural disparity? We know this kind of imbalance implies injustice. But something of this scope has to be more than simple bigotry. It has to be a conspiracy.

Insulated

The last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it. The best person to wield power is someone who is reluctant to do so, but who will do it for a while as a civic duty. That is why term limits should make it impossible to have a whole career in politics.--Sowell


Ned had a paper published in the British Medical Journal.
Mom and I went shoe shopping for walking shoes. They are really expensive.

A very nice man I knew died last week. He lived a strangely lonely life; the funeral home will probably be visited, though.

When researchers at the International Monetary Fund recently examined tariff increases in 151 different countries between 1963 and 2014, they found that correlated with such policies were significant declines in domestic output and productivity, more unemployment, and higher inequality. The United States is not immune to these harmful forces: Two new studies, from economists with the National Bureau of Economic Research, have found that the economic pain from Trump’s 2018 tariffs fell entirely on American consumers (companies and individuals).

Chief Executive Tim Cook told CNBC in a weekend interview from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s annual meeting that the tech giant has bought between 20 and 25 companies in the past six months.

According to data released by the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache (Society for the German Language), the most popular boy’s name for newborn babies in Berlin is Mohammed.

When Ronald Reagan took office the total amount of debt in our system (federal, state, municipal, personal and business) was less than 5 trillion dollars, and when George W. Bush took office the total amount of debt in our system was just over 29 trillion dollars. Just prior to the last financial crisis we surpassed the 54 trillion dollar mark, and so since that time we have added nearly 18 trillion dollars to our total to 77 trillion dollars. That's right. 77 trillion.

Medicare for all is "free" at the point of purchase/service. That's not Medicare, that's Medicaid.

African Swine Fever is the greatest threat to global food production since World War II ended.  The disease has now spread “to every province in mainland China”, and it has now infected “an estimated 150-200 million pigs”.  To put that number in perspective, that is more pigs than the entire U.S. pork industry produces in an entire year.  In other words, the equivalent of the entire U.S. pork industry has just been wiped out.  On top of that, African Swine Fever has also spread to Cambodia, Tibet, Romania, South Africa and Vietnam.  The losses are staggering, and this crisis continues to get worse with each passing week. 

Prince Charles has opened a Bed and Breakfast in Scotland.

On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned, including 128 Americans. 
At the time it was considered more than a microaggression although many on board were seeking a safe place.


                                        Insulated

"Insulated" is defined as "protected by interposing material that prevents the loss of heat or the intrusion of sound." Somehow society has created circumstances that allow for bizarre ideas to implant, grow and be nurtured without challenge. Like in hothouses, the culture allows dainty, fragile ideas to flourish. These notions have taken on cult-like status and are scattered, shard-like, among us, growing and interacting in a virtual bubble. Anyone who saw Sen. Mazie Hirono's shameless slandering of AG Barr saw a woman with peculiar, unsubstantiated and harsh beliefs speaking, presumably, to people of similar beliefs. Somehow the culture now allows the subtly irrational to bond and encourage each other when, historically, such outliers would have been swamped and diluted away. They certainly would never have been taken seriously.

One idea: White males.

The New York Times, in 2018, appointed Sarah Jeong to its editorial board. Jeong was born in South Korea in 1988 and emigrated at the age of three when her parents came to the United States to study. She became a U.S. citizen in 2017. Jeong, a graduate of the University of California Berkeley and Harvard Law School, had expressed publicly many interesting opinions about white people. Here are a few:

“Dumbass f***ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

It’s “kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”

I’m “just imagining being white and waking up every morning with a terrible existential dread about how I have no culture.”

“Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically only being fit to live underground like groveling bilious goblins?”

 “Have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation? There’s literally nothing.”

“The world could get by just fine with zero white people.”

This is strange stuff. Jeong is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley and Harvard Law School and a success story. How she has been harmed by white men, I don't know.

The country has apparently been harmed, though.

Believing that courses on American political thought are too fixated on white males, Professor Chad Shomura of the University of Colorado at Denver has solved the problem by banning discussion of white men in his course on the nation’s political thought. This means nothing from Washington, Jefferson, Tocqueville, Rousseau or any of the pre-Obama presidents. Discussion of the Hillary Clinton race for the presidency in 2016 is allowed, but how she managed to lose while apparently “running unopposed” is unclear.

But the inquiring mind never sleeps.

University of Kansas students will soon be able to study the rise of the “angry white male.”

The college course, called Angry White Male Studies, will dive into “the deeper sources of this emotional state while evaluating recent manifestations of male anger” in the United States and Britain since the 1950s.

No wonder.

The course catalog description states: “Employing interdisciplinary perspectives this course examines how both dominant and subordinate masculinities are represented and experienced in cultures undergoing periods of rapid change connected to modernity as well as to rights-based movements of women, people of color, homosexuals and trans individuals.”

After all, the menacing Manichean Moby Dick was a white whale and sounds very much like "white male." That couldn't be a coincidence. 

Outrage and its Absence

I have been trying to send this letter all morning but gmail keeps blocking it. It looked as if it wanted me to set up a group of some sort so I tried but it would not accept any of the email addresses.  This technology is really great. It is obscure, illogical and has no feedback that is meaningful. A redeeming thing about Kafka is the system hates you so there is at least an enemy. This system could not care less.

A "right" is a basic truth. There can be no material shortages of a "right." --Tess Roark

Good morning.

Mom is off to Florida.

Happy Pi Day.

This wonderful segment is from a NYT report in 1978: "The International Business Machines Corporation said yesterday that it had been notified by the Federal Trade Commission that the commission had terminated its investigation of whether the company had monopolized the office typewriter industry. A spokesman for IBM said that letter sent by the commission stated that its two‐year investigation had been closed and 'that it now appears that no further action is warranted by the commission at this time.'"

A typewriter monopoly!

Only 22 states require high school students to take a class in economics to graduate, less than 50 percent of high school students have any exposure to economics, and only three percent of colleges require an economics class.  

From a speech in the House of Commons by Codbon, 1846: How can protection, think you, add to the wealth of a country? Can you, by legislation, add one farthing to the wealth of a country? You may, by legislation, in one evening destroy the fruits and accumulations of a century of labour; but I defy you to show me how, by the legislation of this House, you can add one farthing to the wealth of this country. That springs from the industry and intelligence of the people of the country. You cannot guide that intelligence; you cannot do better than leave industry to its own instincts. If you attempt by legislation to give any direction to trade and industry, it is a thousand to one that you are doing wrong; and if you happen to be right, it is a work of supererogation; for the parties for whom you legislate would go right without you, and better than with you. (This is clearly a guy who would have underestimated the typewriter problem.)

The basic lesson of the post war period is the failure of central planning economies to succeed. Failure is in the very nature of central planning. And China's devotion to it is our greatest advantage over them. And our eagerness to control our own economy must come from a poor understanding--or belief--of history or simple, grasping political ambition.

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke announced he is running for president. So, in the sound and fury of the Democrat primary, three white men have emerged as the leaders.

New testimony from former FBI attorney Lisa Page, which was released by Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe, shows the Department of Justice killed the prosecution of Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton before the FBI officially had a chance to refer her for charges. That runs contrary to statements made by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and contradicts sworn testimony given by fired FBI Director James Comey about the case. So, now what? Do these guys get the same treatment as Cohen and Manafort? Will we bring these guys to justice? Is this fraud--in the halls of government--less important than faked SAT scores?

Investment in renewables in the EU fell 50 percent between 2011 and 2017, to $57 billion (€46 billion). --Bloomberg New Energy Finance  Now, what could that mean? And what could this mean: EU 28 household electricity prices are now more than double those in the G20, while industrial electricity prices are now nearly 50% higher. 

https://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2019/03/outrage-and-its-absence.html

Albert Einstein was born today in 1879.

S&H.

Love, Dad

The success of identity politics has yet to be proven to me. But it is certainly becoming a routine part of life, so much so that people are beginning to ignore the offense. We are daily marked out and separated from each other; it has become so routine that many of us no longer object. We save our rage for obnoxious wealthy actresses who bribe school officials and change their children's grades; we raid their homes with SWAT teams, guns drawn, while serious offenses are met with a shrug.

Universities admit to discriminating against Asian-Americans despite their superior grades, test scores and application credentials. (Incidentally, I heard a black commentator I have regard for argue that the current discrimination case between Harvard and the Asian students was a ruse, a stalking horse for white anti-black sentiments. So deep is this racial craziness, he could not see beyond his own small anger.) Unlike the actress and her child's manufactured sham, this is POLICY, a point of pride within the perpetrators.

Rep. Hank Johnson compared Jewish settlers on the West Bank to "termites."

Senators Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris, and Mazie Hirono have attacked judicial nominees on grounds that they are Catholic. Feinstein complained that one appeals court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, was a dubious choice because "the dogma lives loudly within you." Hirono claimed that judicial nominee Brian Buescher was suspect because he was a member of the Knights of Columbus, which held "extreme positions." Harris complained that the public-service Catholic organization was an "all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men."

The House could not bring itself to censor anti-Semitism, preferring to oppose everything offensive--and thus nothing--instead.

These are not "slips of the tongue," these are positions. These people see this bigotry as admirable.

One element essential to a productive, civil and free society is the assumption of certain bonding characteristics among its citizens--qualities that all recognize as held in common. Those qualities are being purposefully eroded by ambitious, malicious groups who want to substitute the high-minded ideals that formed the fabric of this country with simple, shallow--and malleable--resentment. And while resentment might be enduring, it is nothing to build on.