The Other McCain : Page 1382 : "One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

B.A. in Special Snowflake Studies

Posted on January 18, 2014Comments

Instapundit wants to be lenient on Randye Hoder — “it’s not a ‘useless’ degree if in fact it teaches students ‘to think critically and analytically, read widely and write well’” — which means that I’m obliged to play bad cop with this overindulgent mother:

My oldest child, Emma, just returned to campus after a long holiday break to finish up her last semester of college.
But even before she has put the final period on her senior thesis, friends and family have been bombarding me with one question: What is she going to do after graduation?
The job market is, after all, awfully tough. Just this month the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study showing that “recent graduates are increasingly working in low-wage jobs or working part-time,” if they’re lucky enough to find work at all.
The bright spot, according to the Fed analysis, students who majored in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — areas in which recent graduates “have tended to do relatively well, even in today’s challenging labor market.” But Emma is a student of the much-maligned humanities — an American Studies major with a focus on the politics and culture of food at a small liberal arts school. . . .

Whoa. Stop right there: “an American Studies major with a focus on the politics and culture of food at a small liberal arts school.”

First of all, that’s not “the humanities.” It just isn’t.

Second, if you’re going to study some ridiculous made-up gimmick of a major — “the politics and culture of food”? really? — why on earth would you study it “at a small liberal arts school,” i.e., an expensive college for overprivileged trust-fund babies?

[W]e are not immune to the high cost of college. Emma’s father and I have made sacrifices to give her, and her brother, the kind of education we value. There will be loans to pay when she graduates—and, yes, my husband and I will foot that bill.

Oh, now I see! Mommy and Daddy will pay the bill for their daughter’s luxurious four-year-vacation — “the kind of education we value” — because their Special Snowflake (a) didn’t have the scores to get into Berkeley, and (b) Cal State’s for losers.

See, this is the niche that “small liberal arts schools” fill: The offspring of permissive parents who will give their Special Snowflakes whatever their selfish hearts crave. The kid isn’t smart enough or hard-working enough to get into a genuinely elite school, but they’re just too doggone special to attend a state school (let alone community college), and so there’s always that trendy little campus that will charge them $35,000 a year to pretend that they’re better than those disgusting low-brow slobs at State U.

This is not about education, it’s about aspiration.

The “small liberal arts school” is a luxury that the rich can afford, but borrowing money to attend one? That’s just crazy.

Maybe Randye Hoder‘s daughter can apply her knowledge of “the politics and culture of food” at Burger King.

Latina Actress Blacklisted for Supporting Republican Candidate

Posted on January 18, 2014January 18, 2014Comments

WOW! Cuban-American actress @MariaConchita_A supports GOP candidate in Calfiornia http://t.co/1M8tAhJpyv @regularrightguy #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 18, 2014

If I had ever heard of Maria Conchita Alonzo before now, I don’t remember it, but I know I’ll never forget her after this:

A famed actress is facing backlash in San Francisco’s Latino community, after she voiced support for a conservative candidate for California governor.
Maria Conchita Alonso starred in a campaign ad for Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County, a Tea Party favorite who is seeking the Republican nomination. . . .
“Politicians and big government are killing our prosperity, pushing welfare costs through the roof and driving our schools into the ground,” Donnelly said in the ad.
Standing next to Donnelly, Alonso jokingly translated in Spanish, “We’re screwed.” . . .
Alonso is an actress of Cuban and Venezuelan descent. She is perhaps best known for her role in the movie “Moscow on the Hudson” which also starred Robin Williams.
The actress was to perform next month at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District in a Spanish-language version of “The Vagina Monologues,” scheduled for a run from February 14th through 17th. The show is being produced by none other than Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.
“We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately,” Lopez told KPIX 5. . . .
“Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe,” Lopez said.

Regular Right Guy notes the irony that Alonzo escaped totalitarianism in Cuba only to suffer political repression in San Francisco.

A couple years ago, Alonzo called Sean Penn a “communist a–hole,” a statement that everybody knows is true, but which has so much more authority when it is said by a refugee from Cuba.

By the way, Michelle Malkin had a very heartfelt column this week about the hurtfulness of left-wing identity politics. It is sadly remarkable how some “progressives” think it is clever to deride Malkin — an Oberlin College alumna who is one of the most successful businesswomen of the New Media age — with such grossly derogatory slurs as “Manila whore” and “Subic Bay bar girl.”

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread with more commentary by Ann Althouse, Vox Day and Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom.

The ObamaCare ‘Death Spiral’ Debate

Posted on January 18, 2014Comments

ObamaCare is exactly the kind of policy failure its opponents predicted, although it has also failed in a few unpredicted ways. The only way anyone can call ObamaCare a “success” is in a political sense, i.e., it helped re-elect Obama. We might also say ObamaCare is a “success” in the sense that its unmistakable failure will likely be leveraged as an argument for a single-pay government takeover of health care in some future Democrat administration, but we have not yet reached that point. Where we are now is Ezra Klein and other liberals trying to pretend that ObamaCare’s failure is not yet certain:

Ezra Klein is back in line. The Journolist founder, who now runs Wonkblog for the Washington Post, took some flak from other left-liberal journalists last year when he acknowledged that the ObamaCare exchanges had serious technical flaws. But now, as we move into Phase 3 of the ObamaCare failure — the unraveling of its economic assumptions — Klein and his wonkblogger staff are in full denial.

James Taranto’s recounting of the arguments is amusing, with Ezra Klein in the role of the Monty Python pet shop owner who insists that the Norwegian Blue is merely “pining for the fjords.”

Mexican Murder Suspect Is Finally Deported After 13-Year U.S. Crime Spree

Posted on January 18, 2014January 18, 2014Comments

Mexican criminal Fabian Godinez-Oseguera deported by ICE.

This case “ought to make your blood boil,” indeed: Fabian Godinez-Oseguera was wanted on a warrant in Mexico for a 2000 murder. He fled to the United States and — despite multiple felony convictions here and having been repeatedly deported to Mexico — was still running around loose in Washington State until 2011:

A former Bremerton man has been transferred to the custody of the Mexican Attorney General’s Office to face murder charges there from 2000.
Fabian Godinez-Oseguera has been deported to Mexico four times in the past. Each time, he returned to Kitsap County, where his wife and children reside.
Kitsap County Sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson said Godinez-Oseguera has had many interactions with local law enforcement, using a variety of aliases. He was arrested in 2006 by Bremerton Police under the name Francisco Ramos Campos for outstanding warrants ranging from marijuana possession to DUI to unlawful possession of a firearm.
According to Andrew Munoz, public affairs officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Godinez-Oseguera is a documented gang member who has been involved in methamphetamine trafficking. He was remanded from Kitsap County Jail in October 2011 to the custody of ICE. He was presented for federal prosecution and sentenced. After serving a 13-month sentence at the NW Detention Center for Civil Immigration, ICE officers have now turned him over to Mexican authorities.

Let’s recap: A drug dealer and gang member wanted for murder in Mexico repeatedly returned to the United States “where his wife and children reside” and evaded apprehension for his crimes by “using a variety of aliases.” If that’s not enough to make your blood boil, how about this Obama administration press release?

A former Seattle-area man was deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operation (ERO) Thursday to Mexico where he faces homicide charges.
Fabian Godinez-Oseguera, 37, also known as “El Güero Loco,” was turned over to Mexican authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas. . . .
“Criminals who seek to escape responsibility for their actions by fleeing to the United States will find no sanctuary in our communities,” said Nathalie Asher, field office director for ERO Seattle.

Three words: Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Foreign criminals are provided sanctuary in many U.S. communities. Michelle Malkin has written extensively about “sanctuary cities” like New York, San Francisco and Seattle that have an official policy of deliberate non-cooperation with immigration enforcement.

Has anyone ever heard Obama — or any member of his administration or any Democrat member of Congress — say a single critical word about these “sanctuary cities” that make an open mockery of our nation’s immigration laws? Of course not. They’re all liars.

They should be ashamed of themselves, but if they had any sense of shame, they wouldn’t be Democrats, would they?

(Hat-tip: Larwyn at Doug Ross.)

Federal Court Upholds Bloggers’ Rights

Posted on January 18, 2014January 18, 2014Comments

Eugene Volokh cites a ruling yesterday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Obsidian Finance Group v. Cox:

The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others’ writings, or tried to get both sides of a story. As the Supreme Court has accurately warned, a First Amendment distinction between the institutional press and other speakers is unworkable: “With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media … the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred.” Citizens United, 558 U.S. at 352. In defamation cases, the public-figure status of a plaintiff and the public importance of the statement at issue — not the identity of the speaker — provide the First Amendment touchstones.

This is obviously relevant to the Maryland lawsuit Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., as well as to the federal lawsuit that my co-defendant John Hoge has dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

It’s interesting that the Ninth Circuit cited the Citizens United case, which figured prominently as a casus belli for the anti-Clarence Thomas campaign of Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution.

It’s also interesting that in neither his state nor federal lawsuits against bloggers does Brett Kimberlin mention his role in founding Velvet Revolution which, the last time I checked, was located at the same Bethesda street address — i.e., Kimberlin’s mother’s basement — listed on Kimberlin’s legal filings in both cases.

BomberSuesBloggers.com

Scientists Decide Americans Are Too Stupid to Understand Global Warming

Posted on January 17, 2014Comments

The science is settled!

New polling data show the American public is growing increasingly skeptical of an asserted climate crisis. Alarmists have responded by claiming Americans are not smart enough to make proper decisions on climate policy.
The Yale University Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication released a survey showing only 15 percent of Americans are “very worried” about global warming, compared to 23 percent who believe global warming is not happening at all. A plurality of Americans — 38 percent — believe global warming is happening but are only “somewhat worried” about it. . . .
Survey author Edward Maibach bemoaned the results and claimed Americans do not understand global warming issues.
“Our findings show that the public’s understanding of global warming’s reality, causes, and risks has not improved and has, in at least one important respect, gone in the wrong direction over the past year,” said Maibach.

This explains everything. Once there is an Official Scientific Consensus, only stupid Americans remain skeptical.

Psychiatrist Arrested With Crack Cocaine and a Dead Man Buried in His Backyard

Posted on January 17, 2014January 17, 2014Comments

Allegedly, I hasten to add:

The body of a 31-year-old man who went missing in October was buried behind the home of a psychiatrist affiliated with the University of Rochester Medical Center. Police say Dr. William Lewek, 62, confessed to hiding Matthew Straton‘s body “in his backyard under a patio chair and a pile of dirt, grass and other debris,” the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported Friday.
Police did not say how Straton died, and Lewek was not immediately charged with homicide after the missing man’s badly decomposed corpse was found behind the home on Rochester’s Rowley Street. Lewek was charged with tampering with physical evidence, a felony, and an arrest affidavit said Lewek admitted moving Straton’s body from a third-floor bedroom of the home and burying it in the backyard.
Lewek also faces a felony charge of possessing a controlled substance after police say they found 17 small bags of crack cocaine “packaged for street sale” hidden in a shoe in Lewek’s house.
Lewek’s psychiatric practice dealt with drug addiction and his patients said he treated them at the Rowley Street address. “I asked the policeman, I said I’ve got an appointment and he said not today,” said Carol Lovel . . .

Read the whole thing at Viral Read. No need to jump to any conclusions here, but if you’ve been seeing the same psychiatrist for 14 years and still need treatment, maybe you should get another shrink.

UPDATE: There are at least two mysteries here:

Why would a psychiatrist be holding crack cocaine “packaged for street sale”?
and
How did Straton meet up with Lewek?

It’s best not to engage in speculation — the full story will be reported in due time — but outside the Rochester court where Lewek was arraigned today, Straton’s mother told a reporter that “her son hurt his back a few years ago, and became addicted to pain killers.” However, the mother had never heard of Dr. Lewek until her son’s body was found in the psychiatrist’s backyard.

Pretty easy to guess how these puzzle pieces fit together, but as I say, we can wait until the full story is reported.