Changing of the border guard: Nielson out, McAleenan in

The New Neo Posted on by

A change has been announced:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned on Sunday after butting heads with President Donald Trump over policy and border control issues. He recently asked her “to close the ports of entry along the border and to stop accepting asylum seekers, which Ms. Nielsen found ineffective and inappropriate.”

Trump has chosen US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan as acting DHS secretary, but will he have the toughness Trump desires in the role? Some officials told CNN that they don’t consider McAleenan “an ideologue or fire breather” when it comes to immigration.

McAleenan began his career in 2001. President Barack Obama appointed him as deputy commissioner of CBP in 2017. He became the commissioner in March 2018 after the Senate confirmed him, 77-19.

It looks like McAleenan has respect from both Democrats and Republicans. The Washington Post reported that he “is generally well-liked by leaders in both parties and is viewed as a neutral, technocratic law enforcement official, rather than an immigration hawk.”

However:

McAleenan has shown agreement with Trump about the border. He told The El Paso Times that “the border has hit a ‘breaking point’” during a visit in March…

My read on this is that McAleenan is in basic agreement with Trump, or at least Trump thinks he is, or Trump wouldn’t have appointed him. But he’s a guy with whom the Democrats have been on good terms in the past, and it’s hoped that he will spark more cooperation from them.

Good luck with that. I believe that it an absolute foundation of the Democrats’ plan for 2020 to not give Trump what he wants on the border issue (or really, just about any other issue), in hopes that his base will turn against him in 2020 and allow them to glide to presidential victory.

[ADDENDUM: And this is rather surprising: Bernie Sanders comes out against open borders. Just an old white guy after all, I guess.]

Academics against merit

The New Neo Posted on by

David Solway writes:

The idea of merit has fallen on evil times, as has its corollary concept, objectivity…

In the interests of creating a society based on the axioms of “social justice”—which is really socialist justice—the principles of professional merit and scientific objectivity are dismissed by our mandarin class as forms of bigotry. As the professions, the educational institution, the political arena, and the scientific establishment engage in a process of diversification, accommodating claimants who trade on race and gender rather than ability and native endowment, merit is in the process of being replaced by outright mediocrity.

In the university, for example, no department is safe from the “inclusion and diversity” mania that is bringing higher education into the slough of disrepute—not law, not medicine, not business, not even the STEM subjects. As is, or should be, common knowledge, literature and the social sciences have long succumbed to the social justice, disparate impact, and feminist miasma that has clouded the atmosphere of thought, paving the way for pervasive academic decadence…

…[F]or most of our cultural and political power brokers, “appeals to merit” are merely “white supremacist dog-whistles.”

Solway’s article is excellent and I suggest you read the whole thing. It describes a process I first noted and vocally protested when I went back to graduate school in the early 1990s, a movement spearheaded by feminists, the left in general, and minority-studies academics, among others. My protests barely made a ripple, as you might imagine. At any rate, the whole thing was entirely too far gone already, having taken root outside of my awareness when I was busy doing other things like tending to family matters.

Another big turning point—at least, in terms of the public—was what happened to Larry Summers at Harvard in 2005. At the time I wrote this:

Larry Summers is under fire for daring to suggest that research be done into whether there are biological differences that account, at least in part, for the paucity of women at the pinnacle of science.

…[The reaction to Summers’ remarks] is a case where feelings seem to have triumphed over reason. That academics–and scientists, at that–would allow this to happen is not a good sign. Whatever happened to the Enlightment? If Galileo were to return at this point, he might be in grave danger again–at least, if he were to suggest that the earth didn’t revolve around women.

In my own experience in an academic environment during the ’90s, after decades of being away, I was shocked at how far the PC police had come in stifling academic freedom. It seemed the new criterion for censure was whether a remark had offended someone. However careful the professor might be to couch the remark with qualifications, however delicately it was stated, if it offended the tender sensibilities of anyone in the audience, the professor was in trouble.

My guess is that therapists bear part of the responsibility for this. The popularization of therapy and its portrayal in legions of self-help books and talk shows has helped foster an idea that, since all feelings are in some way valid (if only in the intrapersonal sense), therefore people have a right to demand that their feelings never be hurt. This is a distortion of what true therapy is all about, but it’s a popular one–even among some therapists, unfortunately.

So, Larry Summers seems to have stepped into this particular pile of steaming do-do. The first reports of the reaction to his remarks contain the following gem from MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, “I felt I was going to be sick…My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow. I was extremely upset.”

I assume that, as a scientist, Ms. Hopkins had other, more rationally-based objections to Summer’s remarks. But I have yet to read any that make sense. How could anyone have a rational objection to Summer’s call for research into this question? Unless that person were afraid of the truth.

That was fourteen years ago. And yes, they are afraid of the truth, so they must twist it and bury it and call truth a mere function of white male oppression. The truth is that maybe, just maybe, there are some differences that account for the great representation of men in the very top rung of scienctists. That doesn’t mean that a woman can’t aspire to and even achieve similar heights, but it does mean that women just might remain a lot more scarce there.

But those who are afraid of the truth cannot abide that situation and feel that jettisoning the entire idea of merit is worth it in order to equalize the numbers, not the playing field but the score. And we will all suffer because, as Solway puts it:

[Tomas Brage, director of the undergraduate program of studies in physics at Lund University in Sweden] seems blissfully unaware that, aside from unadulterated brilliance, meritocratic traits and criteria are precisely those that STEM demands if it is to prosper. He concludes: “Clearly, the subject of all physics is affected by the background of the researcher, teacher and student, and it follows that a gender perspective is needed.” No, it manifestly does not follow. The individual’s practice of physics may indeed be affected by “the background of the researcher,” but the subject of physics is not. The laws of nature are the laws of nature and must be dealt with on their own terms. Physics is physics—nature’s handmaiden, not feminism’s.

Hear, hear! But there is a long tradition of ignoring or even attempting to defy the laws of nature if they interfere with a deeply-held belief system. Leftism, feminism, progressivism, all of them have taken on the nature of belief systems that have a fundamental opposition to the values of the Enlightenment. In this, they are part of an ancient struggle that will probably never be ended.

The life of an atypical song: Killer Queen, then and now

The New Neo Posted on by

The number “Killer Queen” was a somewhat unusual offering from the band Queen when the song first came out in 1974. It’s catchy and has a musical theater rather than hard-rock vibe:

Freddie Mercury [said]:

“People are used to hard rock, energy music from Queen, yet with this single you almost expect Noel Coward to sing it. It’s one of those bowler hat, black suspender belt numbers – not that Coward would wear that. (…) It’s about a high class call girl. I’m trying to say that classy people can be whores as well. That’s what the song is about, though I’d prefer people to put their interpretation upon it – to read into it what they like.”

Brian May [said]:
“‘Killer Queen’ was the turning point. It was the song that best summed up our kind of music, and a big hit, and we desperately needed it as a mark of something successful happening for us.”

Watiching Mercury perform the number in this 1974 video, one word that came to my mind was “camp.” Remember camp? Sort of gayish, tongue-in-cheekish, over-the-top? Mercury was in fact bisexual and then exlusively gay, but at the time this was made he wasn’t “out” and I think this was considered play-acting rather than a statement of his sexual preferences. At any rate, it’s a lot of fun, and one of the things I like about the song is the quirky rhythm and the fabulous high harmonies for which the group is known:

Notice that the above YouTube video so far has over 127 million views; not too shabby for an old group.

Now, with the Queen revival, we have another interesting YouTube phenom, that of Marc Martel, who did some of the singing in the “Bohemian Rhapsody” movie. Martel fascinates me. He actually looks like Mercury in the facial sense, but is nothing like him in personality and performing style. He’s not really a showman and doesn’t have much star quality. Far more laid back than Mercury, and not at all camp, he possesses a voice that is indeed uncannily like Mercury’s (quite a feat) but with a slightly lighter smoother tone. His musicality is astounding, though, and (also like Mercury) he plays a mean piano. He may be even better than Mercury at the piano, and Mercury was quite good.

One of the most interesting things about Martel, in my opinion, is the fact that his voice doesn’t just conjure up something of Mercury’s tones, but he manages at times to imitate—all by himself—the entire group and some of its other stellar vocalists such as drummer Roger Taylor, who had an uncannily high clear almost-metallic falsetto (you can hear this particularly on the little recurring slide on the word “queen” in the phrase “she’s a killer queeeen”). Martel also uses not just his piano, but his voice—and a stellar whistle; please pay attention to the whistle!—to recreate something of the multi-instrument arrangement of the piece:

Here’s a mashup of the Queen rendition (minus Mercury’s voice, if I’m hearing it right) and Martel’s . Somehow it’s less good than either of the other videos, I think. But it’s interesting:

The rise in unhappiness among the young

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s almost a cliche now that unhappiness has been rising among young people. Surveys indicate that it’s a real phenomenon, and the suicide rate has increased sharply.

Social media is often blamed, but as this article describes, the research on that is conflicted and unclear.

There’s an “all-of-the-above” quality to theories about why this is happening. Pressure about grades, social isolation, the declining role of community and religion—you name it, it’s been theorized about.

My own observation, for what it’s worth, is that in addition to all that, two somewhat contradictory forces have combined to feed into the feeling of angst among the young. The first is the idea, fostered in part by social media, that other young people are having a lot more fun than the somewhat-depressed teen looking in at them from the outside. Of course, as the 120+-year-old poem “Richard Cory” describes, looks can be deceiving, and those who appear to be having fun often suffer secret grievances, sometimes of a very serious (and even suicidally fatal, in the case of Richard Cory) sort. But it’s appearances that other people see, and comparisons can be harsh and—well, depressing:

…he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

Along with this idealizing of the more-perfect lives of others as viewed in social media, there’s an availability of communities online that glorify (perhaps unintentionally) and instruct on self-harm. There are many websites for what’s known as cutters and for anorexics, for example. These can become arenas for competition in who can be most symptomatically extreme, or for instruction in better ways to outwit authorities (for example, gaming the weigh-ins for anorexics), and that cannot be a good thing.

It used to be that teens who were gay had a hard time, and those were felt they were transgender were quite isolated and alone. There was little information and acceptance, and that was not good. But now teens are confronted with an almost constant barrage of information that could have the effect of making young people almost constantly question their sexual identities even if they otherwise wouldn’t be having doubts. Not good either.

The article mentions something political as well, and it’s quite a statistic:

Sixty-one percent [of young people] have a favorable view of the word “socialism”…and 50 percent would prefer to live in a socialist country. This radicalism should concern many readers. But perhaps young people are flocking to socialism not out of intellectual commitment, but because they are looking for somewhere to belong.

I’m not at all sure those polls are accurate, but I am pretty sure that young people are far more inclined to favor socialism than older people are. Yes, there’s a desire to belong—what I’ve called the “circle dance” (after Kundera). But there’s also a profound ignorance of history and economics, as well as a concerted drive in education to teach young people that the US and the Western world are evil, wrong, and bad, and that they are guilty as participants of the culture to which they belong. This almost certainly plays a role in feelings of gloom, as well as looking to something like socialism for a way to overcome that guilt and make amends.

New Mexico legislature votes to circumvent the Electoral College

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written before about the drive to end the Electoral College. And I’m going to write about it again, because I think it’s very important and people need to become aware of what’s going on before it succeeds. Believe me, those pushing for this are very serious and very organized (as well as well-funded, I’m going to assume):

What [Democrats] want is for the extremely blue states of California and New York to decide the election, because that’s the way it would probably be if the Electoral College were to be eliminated. Before the 2016 election, you didn’t hear all that many calls from Democrats for the end of the EC, in part because the EC arrangement was seen to favor Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Remember all the cries that Trump had no Electoral College “path” to victory? I certainly do.

But since Trump somehow managed to blaze such a path, much to their intense astonishment (and somewhat to mine, I must say), they want the Electoral College gone. And because there is little chance of a constitutional amendment to that purpose passing (probably not enough states would support it), they’ve found a way around that little impediment [the following quote is from the Times editorial]:

“There is an elegant solution: The Constitution establishes the existence of electors, but leaves it up to states to tell them how to vote. Eleven states and the District of Columbia, representing 165 electoral votes, have already passed legislation to have their electors vote for the winner of the national popular vote. The agreement, known as the National Popular Vote interstate compact, would take effect once states representing a majority of electoral votes, currently 270, signed on. This would ensure that the national popular-vote winner would become president.”

Notice how far this movement has gotten without all that much fanfare, considering the enormous changes it would wreak on our entire political system. For example, this just happened, and it doesn’t seem to be that heavily covered:

New Mexico is the 14th state to move away from the traditional use of the electoral college in presidential elections. Yesterday, Governor Michelle Luján Grisham signed House Bill 55 for her state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. By so doing, the Governor agrees with New Mexico Democrat Party lawmakers to give all the state’s electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote. There were no New Mexico Republican lawmakers on board with the decision. The will of New Mexico voters would not be honored if they were to select a different candidate than the winner of the aggregated popular vote in the other NPVIC states. So far the NPVIC laws won’t go into effect. The states approving it must equal 270 electoral votes. With New Mexico’s alignment, there are now 189. Critics of the move away from the traditional use of the electoral college model claim there are constitutional problems with the compact and that if implemented, the end result would be that the most populous states such as California and New York could end up electing the U.S. president. NPVIC supporters deny the criticisms.

If this sort of thing were to pass only in blue states, it probably wouldn’t end up mattering much in terms of electoral results. But New Mexico is sometimes considered to be a swing state—although it’s been trending blue for quite a while.

And Ohio? That could be a big big deal. Ohio is a pivotal swing state that often has a big role in determining the outcome of an election. It’s hard to gauge how much support this has in Ohio, but it may not need all that much support if activists are energized by it and not enough other people realize what’s going on and what it means:

The proposed amendment was submitted to the attorney general’s office by Don McTigue, a Columbus election lawyer, who provided 1,000 signatures from Ohio voters. The signatures were collected by a Washington, D.C. canvasing outfit, but it’s not completely clear who all is behind the effort. Cleveland.com reported that McTigue “referred comment to Reed Hundt, a former Federal Communications Commission chair who is now chair and CEO of Making Every Vote Count, a non-profit pushing for a binding national popular vote.” Hundt declined to respond to Cleveland.com’s request for comment.

Making Every Vote Count is a 501(c)(3) organization registered in Washington, D.C., that is “dedicated to electing the president by a national popular vote,” according to the group’s website.

The Ohio Ballot Board has ten days to decide whether to approve the submitted ballot language and the attorney general must validate the signatures submitted with the petition. If approved, supporters will have until July 3 to collect 442,958 valid signatures (10 percent of the vote in the last gubernatorial election) from registered voters in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

A ballot measure, of course, is the worst possible way to change a law. The outcome largely depends on which activist organizations have the best fear-fueled ad campaigns. It’s the whole reason a comprehensive union reform law — passed by the duly elected legislature in Ohio and signed by the governor — was overturned by a popular-vote referendum in 2011.

I assume they will be able to collect those signatures. All they need is 442,958 Ohio voters who are on the left, and enough workers to reach them. Many many resources will be given to this effort, I’m assuming, because the left certainly realizes that success could change things, big time. Does the right understand what’s going on, and is it ready to fight this with enough resources to make a difference?

[ADDENDUM: I see that John Hinderaker has written on the same topic today. Good. He has a lot more traffic than I do, and I hope his post gets a lot of publicity and raises the alarm. His piece also contains a lengthy discussion of possible constitutionality issues connected with this movement.]

Trump’s creepy Creepy Joe Biden tweet

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, I admit it. I must be a bad bad person, because I find this Trump tweet very funny:

And yet I’m not supposed to find it funny. The Powers That Be have excoriated Trump for posting such an awful thing.

For example, we have this piece at Vox, “Trump, of all people, tries to score political points on Biden’s treatment of women: The utter shamelessness of the Trump administration, in one tweet.”

Oh yes; shame, shame on Trump. Utter shamelessness.

Sorry, I just don’t share that notion. Nor do I think that Trump “of all people” needs to hold back. I missed the part where Trump is accused of pawing all sorts of women, and doing so in public. What he used to do in private is another story, but it’s his wife’s (or wives’ or ex-wives’) problem, as far as I’m concerned.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this creepy behavior of Biden’s should disqualify him from office. I think plenty of other things disqualify him from getting my vote, though, mainly his political policies and his role as Obama’s veep (that’s not meant to be an exclusive list). His behavior with women is creepy indeed, and inappropriate, and doesn’t enhance his resume in my eyes, but it’s not nefarious although it’s evidence of a tone-deafmess to the personal boundaries of other people.

More on the fossil site described in that New Yorker article about the dinosaur die-off

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter Ted Clayton.]

Wednesday I wrote this post about a New Yorker article on a huge fossil find that purports to be evidence of the asteroid strike that caused widespread geological perturbations that swiftly killed the dinosaurs and many other creatures around the globe. Now the Smithsonian magazine has weighed in on the find and what’s been claimed about it:

Many paleontologists were quick to raise an eyebrow at the findings presented in the New Yorker, however, particularly because some of the claims in the article are not mentioned in a scientific paper about the site. That research, published by DePalma and colleagues, was released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The only dinosaur fossil mentioned in the paper is a weathered hip fragment, but the study is nevertheless causing a stir as a window into the extreme effects caused by the asteroid impact.

“Unfortunately, many interesting aspects of this study appear only in the New Yorker article and not in the scientific paper,” says Kirk Johnson, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “This is a sloppy way to conduct science and it leaves open many questions. At the present moment, interesting data are presented in the paper while other elements of the story that could be data are, for the moment, only rumors.”

As for the paper itself, the details are part of a broader picture of what transpired 66 million years ago in western North America, along the margins of a vanishing seaway that was draining off the continent at the time. According to DePalma and colleagues, seismic waves emanating from the asteroid impact reached the Tanis area within minutes. The disturbance sloshed local bodies of water in a phenomenon called a seiche—similar to water flowing back and forth in a bathtub—tossing fish and other organisms around in the wave. “As far as we can tell,” DePalma says in an email, “the majority of the articulated carcasses are from animals that were either killed when they were encapsulated by the muddy sediment, or very shortly prior as part of the same violent inundation surge event.”…

Sites demarcating the K/Pg boundary have been found all over the world, and vertebrate fossils at or within the boundary have also been discovered before. Part of what makes the Tanis site stand out, DePalma says, is that “this is the first known example of articulated carcasses, likely killed as a direct result of the impact, associated with the boundary.”

Despite the controversy over how claims of the site hit mass media before the peer-reviewed science paper was available, outside experts note that Tanis truly does seem to be an exceptional spot. “This isn’t the only site that preserves fossils at the K/Pg boundary, but it seems this might be the most sensational one ever discovered,” says Shaena Montanari, a paleontologist and AAAS science and technology policy fellow. The fossil preservation of the fish in particular stands out as unusual.

Here are some of the fish (the site is from 66 million years ago):

More reservations, not about the site itself but about its interpretation and meaning:

Other geologic details of the site also merit further investigation. “It seems like the geochemical data are scant and in some cases being stretched a bit to make interpretations,” Montanari says, “although this is not a new thing for paleontology.”,,,

University of California, Berkeley paleontologist Pat Holroyd says that the estimations of when and how quickly the Tanis site formed are based on models without consideration of other possible interpretations. “I don’t think there is any way to conclusively determine the exact amount of time represented in the site,” she says, “but it would have been useful to see how they estimated it.”

The details of what the site actually looks like, and how the layers were deposited, is not clear from what was published in the paper, Holroyd says. Such data is needed to compare Tanis to other K/Pg sites around the world.

It’s good to be cautious, although there are some very exciting things about this find. I also have to say that although computer modeling is certainly of interest, unless we know every variable (and certainly every variable of any importance) that goes into an event, modeling can mislead and create a false state of certainty where none exists.

Remember George Papadopoulos? Touted as the reason the whole Russiagate thing started?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s easy to get lost in Russiagate minutiae, and perhaps that’s part of the plan.

For example, George Papadopoulos, remember him? Perhaps not. Let me refresh your memory (and mine):

When the special counsel was appointed by Rod Rosenstein in May 2017, the special counsel took over an existing counterintelligence investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into what proved to be Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and numerous secretive links between Trump associates and Russian officials. According to reports, Australian officials informed American officials that in May 2016, a Trump presidential campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, told the Australian High Commissioner to Britain, Alexander Downer, that Russian officials were in possession of politically damaging information relating to Hillary Clinton, the rival presidential candidate to Trump. Since the FBI, in response to this information, opened an investigation into the links between Trump associates and Russian officials on July 31, 2016, the meeting between Papadopoulos and Downer is considered to be the ‘spark’ that led to the Mueller investigation.

Actually, it is considered to have been the “spark” that led to the pre-Mueller investigation, the counter-intelligence one launched by the FBI while Obama was still in office, the one that investigated candidate Trump and/or his associates.

You may have forgotten Papadopoulos or at least the details of his story. But Papadopoulos himself certainly hasn’t, and he’s being quite active on Twitter lately:

Papadopoulos sums it up this way:

Much more at the link.

[ADDENDUM: More here.]

Dan Davies was an accident waiting to happen…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and unfortunately for both Davies and Illinois State Trooper Gerald Ellis, that accident did in fact happen, and both are now dead.

It is indeed tragic, as well as a failure of the justice system:

…[O]fficials of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office say they cannot find any evidence Davies ever got a driver’s license.

Despite that fact, Davies was stopped by police dozens of times – receiving over 70 tickets – including repeated citations for driving without a license. Each time he was cited for having no license, a “suspension” was added to his record at the secretary of state’s office, which would make it more difficult for him to get a license, if he ever applied for one.

He also was arrested twice for drunk driving…

Investigators say Davies was driving the wrong way on the Tri-State tollway near Libertyville early Saturday, when he rammed a squad car driven by Trooper Gerald Ellis. Both were killed in the crash.

Records obtained by NBC5 Investigates show that Davies’ first citation for driving without a license was in 1996. Since then, he had received 71 tickets during 25 traffic stops. The Secretary of State’s office had used every tool available to them, including placing him under revocation following his second DUI arrest last November. That would have required him to go to an administrative hearing if he ever wanted to obtain a license in Illinois.

Only one problem: Davies didn’t want to get a license in Illinois. Why would he? He was able to drive without it, despite having been stopped 70 times.

But it appears nothing was ever done by local authorities to stop Davies from getting back behind the wheel.

“The only alternative is to put someone in jail,” Druker said. “They have no respect for the concept of law or a driver’s license.”

That didn’t happen. After his November drunk driving arrest, Davies’ case was eventually transferred to Cook County Criminal Court, where he faced multiple charges of aggravated DUI. But in that case, he was granted a $3000 I-bond, meaning he had to post no cash, and he was never jailed – despite what authorities say was one of the worst driving records in the state of Illinois. And remember – he had no license in the first place.

Hmmm—Cook County, Cook County—now where have I heard about Cook County letting people off easy? (That’s a rhetorical question).

A spokesman for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx did not respond to NBC5 Investigates’ repeated inquiries about what position prosecutors took to try to keep Davies in custody.

Well, you know, she’s busy with other things.

But that’s not all:

Davies was no stranger to the Cook County Criminal Court. NBC 5 Investigates has learned that since he was a teenager, in addition to his dozens of traffic stops, he also was charged in 22 additional criminal cases… where he faced repeated charges of criminal damage to property, assault and battery – including battery on a police officer and domestic battery – drug-dealing, and drug possession.

Davies was found guilty in seven of those cases, but served a total of only 53 total days in jail – less than two months, including a sentence of just ten days for a conviction stemming from his first DUI arrest in 2010.

This is a horrific and broken system all the more awful because it seems it was purposely broken to feed liberal social justice needs. Not only did this cause the death of Trooper Ellis, but it didn’t do Davies any favors, either. He’s dead, too.

RIP. But the Cook County “justice” system shouldn’t rest in peace.