Commenter “AesopFan” and some others have called my attention to this song parodist, Don Caron. Funny stuff.
Unfortunately, it will take more than the Mueller report to drive a stake through collusion’s heart, and the obstruction vampire is alive and well and living in the Democratic Party:
I can’t say that the results of this attempt at intervention are especially surprising:
San Francisco allows parents to apply to any elementary school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning 18 years ago in an effort to desegregate its classrooms. Give parents more choices, the thinking was, and low-income and working-class students of color like Cinthya would fill more seats at the city’s most coveted schools.
But last month, Cinthya’s parents, who are Hispanic, found out she had been admitted to their second-to-last choice, a school where less than a third of students met standards on state reading and math tests last year. Only 3 percent were white.
Results like these have soured many on the city’s school enrollment plan, which is known here as “the lottery” and was once considered a national model.
“Our current system is broken,” said Stevon Cook, president of the district Board of Education, which, late last year, passed a resolution to overhaul the process. “We’ve inadvertently made the schools more segregated.”
But this is San Francisco, and the NY Times reporting on it. So the solution being discussed? More Draconian measures that will also fail to benefit anyone, we can safely predict, and will harm the entire system much as forced busing did in Boston in the 1970s. I described that process in great detail here, and it was a resounding failure for all concerned.
But that dismal track record is unlikely to discourage the powers that be in San Francisco:
Parental choice has not been the leveler of educational opportunity it was made out to be. Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether. What happened in San Francisco suggests that without remedies like wide-scale busing, or school zones drawn deliberately to integrate, school desegregation will remain out of reach.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Outlaw private schools! That’ll do the trick, I’m sure.
More:
The district’s schools were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in 1990, even though the city’s neighborhoods have become more integrated, research shows. That pattern holds true in many of the nation’s largest cities, according to an analysis by Ryan W. Coughlan, an assistant professor of sociology at Guttman Community College in New York…
While black children were slightly less racially isolated in 2015 than in 1990, that was largely a result of their lower enrollment in the district, Professor Coughlan said — a change driven by astronomical housing costs…
Even the school district has acknowledged that a system of geographically zoned schools would most likely create more racial integration than the current, choice-driven approach.
There are several reasons the system has not worked as intended. One is a lack of transportation. Fewer than 4,000 of the district’s 54,000 students ride a bus to school. The city’s busing program was reduced in 2010, during the last recession, and has not been restored.
Much much more at the link.
I’ve had many occasions over the years to quote this line from “Hamlet,” and I’m going to do it again:
There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
It was true in Shakespeare’s day. And it’s true now:
The universe is getting bigger every second. In fact, it’s expanding at a much faster rate than it should [according to conventional predictions]…
When scientists look at what was going on 13 billion years ago, via Planck, and then extrapolate that into the present, the results don’t match what Hubble sees today. For several years, there’s been an assumption that the disagreement is due to a lack of precision in the measurements. But as scientists have fine-tuned their tools, the discrepancy has remained. On Thursday, researchers using Hubble said the chances the mismatch is some sort of user error or fluke have gone from 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 100,000…
Riess says the discrepancy strongly suggests there’s a piece missing in the puzzle that scientists have put together over the years to model the history of the universe.
Oh, I wouldn’t doubt it. And I’d wager it’s more than “a piece.”
In a Russiagate story full of abominable characters, John Brennan may just be one of the most odious.
I’m written before about Brennan’s history (here). Suffice to say it’s shocking that he ever rose to become director of the CIA. And yet rise he did.
Brennan has long been one of Donald Trump’s most vocal and accusative (Treason! Treason!) opponents. But apparently he also had a role behind the scenes in Russiagate :
Brennan’s personal role in the Trump-Russia collusion saga dates back to at least the summer of 2016 (and perhaps even earlier) when he met with a top British intelligence chief to discuss Trump’s supposed ties to the Russians. Around the time of that meeting, and following its conclusion, American and foreign spies began to make contact with members of the Trump campaign, with some claiming to have access to Russian secrets involving the Hillary Clinton campaign. Brennan later seemed to take credit and defend the espionage operation, which again, relied on the dossier to legitimize spying on Americans.
Brennan, as CIA director, reportedly inserted the Clinton-funded-and-manufactured Steele dossier into a draft version of the highly scandalous Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian interference, which was published under the auspices of Donald Trump’s political opponents in early January 2017, just two weeks before President-elect Trump took office.
Victor Davis Hanson lays it out, too:
Former CIA Director John Brennan is a paid analyst for MSNBC who often railed about Trump’s “treason” and predicted his indictment. Yet Brennan has lied under oath to Congress on two occasions. He likely misled Congress about his role in trafficking in the Steele dossiers. And Brennan’s CIA may well have helped the FBI use informants abroad to entrap Trump campaign aides in efforts to find dirt on Trump.
So here’s the question: will anything happen to Brennan as a result? We’ve all seen the ability of wrongdoers of the Deep State variety to evade all consequences (think, for example, Lois Lerner). Will the same be true of Brennan, who may have orchestrated the attempted coup through clandestine means?
This is at least somewhat encouraging:
Joe di Genova says an individual report from the IG is coming on James Comey, complete with criminal referrals and that he has so much on John Brennan, he will need five lawyers. As a former US attorney, there is no doubt that di Genova has his sources and he says that Comey and Brennan will both be indicted. In both cases, it will involve the cover-up of Hillary’s crimes and trying to enact a coup against President Trump based on a document paid for by Clinton and the DNC.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
…but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. (I refer you to this and this.)
Biden’s candidacy fills me with a powerful feeling of weariness as well as repulsion. The weariness is a very similar feeling to one I had during the 2016 campaign when I tried to write about Jeb Bush.
Not that Biden is Jeb Bush. But they engender at least some of the same reaction in me, which is basically: why would anyone want this person to be president?
Of course, if by some strange alchemy Jeb Bush were running against Joe Biden, I’d happily vote for the former over the latter. But still, they give me the same impression of general mediocrity as thinkers and as politicians. I think it’s a sign of the extreme weirdness and leftism of the Democratic field that Biden is the front-runner and might even remain so.
By the way, although Bernie Sanders makes Joe Biden look a tiny bit young (which is quite a feat), Joe Biden makes Trump look positively fresh as a daisy. Sanders is 77 years old now and Biden is 76, whereas Trump is a mere 72. And the election’s not for a year and a half, so they’ll be that much older.
Just what? Just watch it (and pay attention to the daughter’s reaction, too):
Matt Taibbi thinks so, and he thinks the media coverage of the Mueller report will have been instrumental in fostering that lack of trust:
News audiences were betrayed, and sooner or later, even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize it and tune us out. The only way to reverse the damage is to own how big of a screw-up this was, but after the last three years, who would hold their breath waiting for that?
I agree with Taibbi that the MSM will not be doing that. But I don’t know what I think about his contention that “even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize” that they were lied to about Trump and Russiagate. His article, which appeared in Rolling Stone, has no comment section, so it’s hard to gauge the tenor of what the responses would be from the periodical’s mostly-liberal readership.
But if I had to guess, I’d say that the number of Trump-haters who realize they were duped by the MSM will be vanishingly small. Maybe I’ve gotten too cynical, but I certainly haven’t seen a lot of soul-searching or mind-changing on this. Yes, the media’s stock has fallen even on the left and not just the right. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to mind-changing and the rejection of the basic message, or to trust of a source from the right such as National Review or Fox News.
Taibbi is about as far from a Trump supporter as you can get, and he is definitely not a Republican either (see this). But his outrage in the article is at the stupidity and mendacity of the press, and he is clear-sighted enough to see their errors in covering Russiagate. His interest doesn’t seem to be that people should have a change of political heart; his concern seems to be about the ever-falling reputation of the press, one they have justly earned.
I don’t think Bernie Sanders did himself any political favors when he said that even the Boston marathon bomber should have the right to vote. What constituency is he appealing to, besides hardcore libertarians?
It’s not that his argument lacks all merit. I don’t agree with Sanders—I think that certain crimes should mean that a person has forfeited the right to vote along with certain other rights, such as the right to roam freely around among us. But I well understand his argument, which he expressed this way. I just think it’s not going to wash with the vast vast majority of people, even many who otherwise support Sanders:
“This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy, and I believe every single person does have the right to vote,” he said, adding, “Even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”
He slammed Republican governors for blocking access to the ballot box for felons, in what he described as an effort to disenfranchise voters and influence elections in their favor. “They come up with all kinds of excuses why people of color, young people, poor people can’t vote. and I will do everything I can to resist that,” he said.
Vermont and Maine are the only states that allow incarcerated felons to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Massachusetts is among 14 states, along with the District of Columbia, that automatically reinstate voting rights to felons released from prison. Other states have additional restrictions, including bans on voting while a felon is on parole or probation.
I’m not the only person noting that Sanders’ extreme position is a sort of political poison of the self-inflicted kind (not that it is likely to deter his most fervent supporters—and does he really have any other kind?):
“You’re writing your own opposition ad against you,” CNN host Chris Cuomo said.
And Sanders gave this answer:
“I think I have written many 30 second opposition ads throughout my life,” Sanders replied. “This will just be another one of them.”
Well, that’s certainly true. But for most of his career he’s been in liberal/left cocoons. This is the national stage, which he entered only during the 2016 campaign. Sanders may not really want to win and actually become president; after all, he’ll be 79 by Election Day 2020. He may not think he can win. Or, he may think he can win with exactly the formula he’s had all his life, as an extreme leftist, and that his hour is finally at hand and he can let it all hang out in terms of voicing the extreme positions that made him what he is.
At any rate, his remarks have the function of moving the Overton window for the other candidates, stating the most extreme positions so that their own positions won’t seem quite as far left as they actually are. He is the lefty-ist leftist of all in that great big “who can be the furthest left?” competition that the Democratic Party has become:
Asked similar questions at CNN town halls later on, Democratic candidate and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg said he disagreed, arguing that losing the right to vote is one of the penalties inmates should face while incarcerated. California Sen. Kamala Harris said she believed “we should have that conversation.”
Harris’s polls must have told her that such a “conversation” is political cyanide, because she backtracked from that stance the very next day and declared that murderers and terrorists should “be deprived of their rights.”
I have to say that I am heartened by the Democrats’ infighting and voicing of off-putting positions (at least I think they’re off-putting; I sincerely hope so). I would rather have them state their extremism rather than hide it, wait till they’re elected, and then pursue far more extreme policies than the ones they’ve owned up to. Of course, many of them are probably still on track for that. How far left are they really, in their heart of hearts? Extremely far. Will the American public reject this leftism? That remains to be seen, but I have hopes.
The consequences of the sexual revolution (remember that?) crossed with #MeToo can be rather ironic:
Handshakes could be banned under new workplace rules to avoid expensive sexual harassment claims, an expert has said.
Kate Palmer, an associate director of advisory at HR consultancy Peninsula, said employers may ban all forms of physical contact to avoid confusion about what kind of touch is appropriate…
…[T]hree out of four people want a complete ban on physical contact in the workplace, according to a recent survey of 2,000 adults by Totaljobs.
Ms Palmer added putting a hand on someone’s back or giving them a hug when they are upset could be “too personal” and staff should be “mindful” of that kind of touch.
Various orthodox religions ban all physical contact between unmarried men and women, including handshakes, but most of the people who are demanding similar things in the workplace almost certainly don’t identify as religious at all.
People are becoming way too fragile and frightened. Ah well, pretty soon the entire workplace will exist no more, and people will only interface via computer.
A blast from the bold and racy past:
For some diseases, not as long as one might think.
For other diseases, a really long time.
And in addition, it’s not easy to ascertain how long they last, particularly for diseases that have mostly been wiped out and for which exposure is relatively rare.
I’m so old I’m of a generation that actually contracted a lot of these childhood diseases, pre-vaccine. I remember a memorable year or two early on when I had mumps, chicken pox, measles, and German measles (rubella) in succession. I emerged none the worse for wear, and more or less immune for life (although I did manage to later get a mild case of that chicken pox sequela, shingles).
But I’m also old enough to remember when measles was a potential killer. My own cousin contracted measles encephalitis and later died of complications from the disease. So no one had to tell me how important vaccinations for these diseases were when they finally became available later on.
SCOTUS will be ruling on whether a question about citizenship can be included on the next census:
[It is a question] which critics say would undermine its accuracy by discouraging both legal and unauthorized immigrants from filling out the forms.
So illegal immigrants, who have defied the law to come here and continue to defy it to stay here, are afraid of answering truthfully on a census question and therefore won’t answer and won’t be counted? And for that reason we shouldn’t have the question? I’m no expert on census law, but it seems to me that as long as there is an understandable and valid reason for a question, the mere possibility of discouragement from answering it for some unknown number of people is not a reason for courts to disallow it. There is an obvious bona fide reason for this particular question.
And why would legal immigrants be discouraged?
See also this:
Justice Ginsburg, who appeared to side with the challengers…asked a question that goes to the heart of the matter: Why are the courts involved in this anyway? Congress could prohibit Census questions about citizenship, but it hasn’t:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Letter, the Congress has the primary control over what the census will be, not the executive, and Congress has been alerted to this citizenship question for some time, and it has done nothing about it. So one question is who should decide? Congress is silent. Should the Court then step in? [Tr. 81-82]
Indeed.
I’ve done some genealogical research online about my family, and looked at quite a few census pages in many different years. Questions about citizenship were long a feature of the federal census. Here’s a timeline:
From the first time in 1820 to the most recent in 2000, when only a small sample of households were asked, questions about citizenship on the census have had a history of stops and starts, twists and turns over 200 years.
There’s a chart at the link, describing the changes in the question over the years, with examples. It’s clear that this is not a new question, and that even quite recently it’s been asked of a sampling of households (usually 1 in 6). Why it was okay to ask 1 in 6 but not okay to ask everyone? It seems an obviously valid question to me.
It also seems quite obvious why Democrats and the left are fighting this. They are afraid of what it will reveal. Note, though, that the question does not take the form, “Is this person an illegal immigrant?” The proposed question is the same one that’s been asked of a sample of respondents for decades: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” It is ludicrous to think a nation has no right to ask such a question on its census. If for some reason that nation—the executive branch and Congress, not the courts—decides that in practice the question is actually inefficient and/or discourages responses in general, then those branches of government can decide not to use it again. SCOTUS should not be the branch to make that decision ahead of time, based on some theory about what might happen.
…to measure Cher for her MAGA hat?