Tuesday mid-day round-up and Open Thread
Fasten your seat belts, because it’s going to be a wild ride with more links than any single post should possibly have.
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Stunning: A California judge ruled today that teacher tenure is unconstitutional, insofar as its practical effect is to deprive students of their right to a quality education. I was taught by tenured teachers, many of whom were just counting the years until retirement, so I can attest to the fact that the judge is right. Here’s the opinion, if you’re interested.
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Great moments in personal responsibility:
Harry Truman: “The buck stops here.”
Bart Simpson: “I didn’t do it.”
Barack Obama: “Yeah, I know that I spiked the football in the Rose Garden about what I said was my decision to trade a deserter for five of the worst terrorists in a war still being fought against us. But now that I know you, the public, think that was a bad decision, it’s time for me to come clean: It’s Chuck Hagel’s fault.”
Obama is so low, he doesn’t even achieve the standards of the most dishonest, weasel-like, school-yard bully.
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If you were willing to give Bowe Bergdahl the benefit of the doubt, would it matter to you to learn that contemporaneous communications available through Wikileaks show that those troops who are speaking out are correct when they say the word on the street in 2009 was that Bergdahl was (a) a deserter and (b) looking for the Taliban?
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The New York Times is done with these pesky facts. It’s come up with the ultimate excuse: Serving in the military is the cause of mental illness. Troops need to be kept locked up because, if they don’t desert, there’s something wrong with them. They imply that Bergdahl, who deserted, was the sane guy; and those who stayed behind to defend our country cannot be trusted. It’s the new Catch-22 for Obama’s America.
Thankfully, despite DemProg purges and despite their being high up in the chain of command at an innately weak, palsied, government bureaucracy, at least some generals still exist who find this attitude distasteful and think that actual military service (not enlisting and then running away, but actually serving) is honorable and praiseworthy. Ralph Peters has some words on the subject.
And by the way, Bergdahl was never in such poor health that his life was at risk. Or if he was, he was in the same kind of poor health as the Lockerbie bomber who lived for years after the Brits released this mass murderer to Libya.
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Most DemProgs claim to support the troops . . . and then stab them in the back. One L.A. Times columnist is foregoing that hypocrisy. In her considered opinion, all troops, especially Marines, are potential peacetime killers, so she is profoundly grateful that the Mexican government so fit to lock up former Marine Andrew Tahmooressi. I have no words. I’ll leave you to come up with some.
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Meanwhile, evidence continues to turn up demonstrating that Bergdahl Sr. either had Stockholm Syndrome by association, or went crazy when his son vanished, or is the type of guy who goes a long way to explaining why his son was out looking for the Taliban — and not to kill them either.
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If the drive-by media bothered to update their story, this is what they’d have to say: “Yeah, about that melting glacier in the West Antarctic, the one we said was caused by anthropogenic global warming, a report that sparked a blind panic among the true believers. You can just forget about it for now. We kind of, you know, didn’t notice the volcano under the ice sheet. Our bad.
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Navel-gazing has always been the Left’s purview. The University of California system (the one that sparked outrage amongst students when it raised tuition), just wasted a million dollars on consultants, in-house analysis, employee time, etc., to find out if students and faculty are satisfied with the system. Of the minuscule number who wasted time participating in the study, most are happy, which is pretty good for a vast institution. But in dictator-land, everyone must be happy (as happiness is defined by the dictator), or else! So UC is contemplating spending more money to achieve happiness perfection.
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Contrary to DemProg claims, mass murderers are not disproportionately white. They are, in fact, disproportionately Asian.
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James Taranto examines the core logic underlying the climatistas’ demands for government dictatorship to deal with the problem:
Americans are being urged to submit to “dictatorial” government because democracy is incapable of controlling the weather. “In college classes, climate change is taught as a textbook example of where democracy fails,” Graves asserts in the very first sentence of her [Lucia Graves’] column.
Well, that settles it. America might have been a noble experiment, but science has proven it a failure.
Graves is not alone. Laer Pearce sent me a link to a web page that has dozens of quotations from well-placed individuals in the environmental movement demanding a mass human die-off to save the planet. It makes for horrifying reading. Even the Nazis weren’t this open about their genocidal plans.
And there’s Pete Singer, of course. Do I need to remind you that he’s the highly respected, endowed-chair, Princeton ethicist who started the animal rights movement, but thinks that parents should have a month after birth to kill their baby if they find it defective?
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Obama’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) plan should terrify everyone who doesn’t want to live in a government designed urban hub. And don’t think you’re safe because you’re in the suburbs. They’re target Number One for communities that will henceforth be made up of scientifically determined dwelling sizes and styles, all of which will be peopled by a government-mandated mix of races. Getting the economic mix correct, though, won’t be a problem. We’ll all be poor, except for the DemProg elites, who will continue to live in their obscene, un-green mansions.
I know precisely what the plans make me think of. If you’ve ever read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time
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Liberalism killed the Super Hero. The Super Hero used to be a glowing antifascist; now he’s a conflicted character wandering aimlessly between cultural relativism, anti-American feeling, and fascist behaviors (for people’s own good, of course).
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As always happens when elections near, the DemProgs start attacking traditional religion. Their easiest target is creationism. Steven Hayward, however, makes a very good point about that line of attack:
Here it must he remarked that a belief in a literal six-day creation harms no one. Who cares. So what. But the belief, popular with many prominent liberals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that vaccines cause autism and other diseases despite piles of “settled science” to the contrary, has real consequences when people act on it—which too many gullible parents have.
This reminds me of the rules governing writing wills. People are allowed to be crazy when they write their will, provided that they are compos mentis as to the nature of their estate and their proposed heirs. Just because you believe in Martians doesn’t mean you’re incapable of properly distributing your property. However, if you think that you own the White House, and want to bequeath it to the Muslim Brotherhood . . . well, that’s a problem.
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One of the things the Founders feared terribly was a standing domestic military, one charged, not with fighting against external enemies but, instead, with targeting the American people. This chart would make them very, very sad:
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How do you get around a strong, blanket proscription against negotiating with designated terrorists? You say, “We’re not negotiating with Mr. X, a member of Hamas, we’re just negotiating with Mr. X.” That’s a little simplistic, but basically, that’s what Obama is trying to do now that Abbas has joined forces with Hamas.
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The WaPo reports facts showing that the VA Scandal — which Obama long ago promised to solve — is much worse than any one first realized. Honestly, even if Obama doesn’t really hate the military, he sure acts as if he does.
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Jews are, of necessity, a frugal people. That’s probably why happiness is affordable in Israel.
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If it bleeds, it leads. That’s long been the rule in the news. In our lifetime, the notion of blood got modified to include killer pesticides, killer bees, killer cars, killer gangs, killer drugs, killer GMOs, etc. The latest killer is gender dysphobia. Apparently American children suddenly hate their birth sex. If this trend continues, I know who our new American role model should be:
As for me, I’d say that the big sex problems American school children are having come from their schools, which “instruct” them about sex in the most horrifying terms.
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Do I have to say anything about how ludicrous it is that Hillary’s crying poor? If I had to recommend a single article pointing that out, I’d go for Charles C.W. Cooke’s article about her entitlement problem.
You kind of have to admire Hillary, though. She’s got balls. Without a blush, she’s offering the totally incoherent argument (complete with baseball metaphors) that her performance before, during, and after Benghazi somehow proves that she has the leadership skills America needs.
Balls, yes. Smart friends? Welllll, maybe. One of them valiantly said, “yes,” Hill and Bill were broke when they left the White House, never mind the $8 million book deal signed before they’d even packed up, the endless stream of government benefits, and the obvious possibility of lucrative speaking deals. But, adds the oh-so-helpful friend, they’re kind of disconnected from ordinary middle class economics now.
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Among the many, many re-vamped pieces of history in Hillary’s new fiction book (which masquerades as an “autobiography,” which is a nice marketing touch) is her claim to be a friend to Israel; or, at least, more of a friend than Obama. In fact, she was Obama’s willing executioner.
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Muslims: Can’t live with them, can’t live . . . with them. If they world is a sandbox, they don’t want to share.
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Remember that time you got food poisoning after eating at that cute, hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. Well, we now know why that it happened. It’s because racism. And no, I’m not kidding. You were puking your guts out and suffering from liquid bowels because you’re a hater.
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The reality at America’s colleges: DemProg fantasies about health, science, food, Jews, Muslims are all acceptable. Traditional religious beliefs, however, must be purged.
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Victor Davis Hanson offers a thoughtful look at what constitutes a scandal in Obama’s America.
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There’s still more to learn about the Black Death. Apparently on that subject we can admit that the science isn’t settled.
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And just for fun, what influences your slang? I’m Yiddish, British, and Folk American.
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Some pictures:
