Dick Cheney Ramping Up New Policy Push

I mentioned the new book coming out previously, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

I'm looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Journal, "Former vice president to release book and mount lobbying campaign that is likely to play into 2016 presidential election":

CASPER, Wyo.—Few people noticed the 74-year-old in the tan Stetson at a high-school rodeo here. Dick Cheney was happy to blend in.

That is about to change. The former vice president is looking to make a splash on the national stage with a new book to be published in September and a group he and his daughter Liz launched to advance their views.

The effort is sure to play directly into the 2016 presidential debate, in which national-security policy is already a point of difference between the Republican candidates, many of whom are looking to turn the page on George W. Bush’s administration.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, Mr. Cheney previewed some of his likely positions:

• He characterized one leading GOP contender, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, as an isolationist. “He knows I think of him as an isolationist, and it offends him deeply,” Mr. Cheney said. “But it’s true.”

• An early critic of nuclear talks with Iran, he thinks the U.S. should be prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also favors additional arms shipments to U.S. allies in Eastern Europe and further military exercises in Poland to send a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• And he scoffed at the debate that tripped up Mr. Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, over whether or not he would have invaded Iraq with the virtue of hindsight. (Mr. Bush, after some back and forth, eventually said he wouldn’t). Mr. Cheney instead said Republicans should scrutinize the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq under President Barack Obama.

Mr. Cheney’s overarching message, and the theme of the book he is co-authoring with his daughter Liz Cheney, is that the U.S. needs to assert itself more on the world stage. “We thought, looking forward to 2016, it was very important to make sure those issues were front and center in the campaign,” he said.

By weighing in, Mr. Cheney is bound to make himself a flash point in the 2016 debate, stoking further questions about which policies of the George W. Bush administration Republicans embrace and which they reject, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the bulk collection of phone records and interrogation policy. That could prove particularly uncomfortable for Jeb Bush, who has struggled to define himself apart from his brother.

Mr. Cheney already exerts quiet influence over his party, making semiregular trips to the Capitol to address House Republicans and advising some GOP White House hopefuls. He wouldn’t discuss those conversations. Two of his top foreign-policy aides have signed on with Jeb Bush. And he is headlining donor events all over the country for the Republican National Committee.

“The party is very fortunate to have an active and engaged Dick Cheney for this upcoming political cycle,” said Reince Priebus, the party’s chairman, noting the number of candidates and elected officials who turn to the former vice president for advice. “He’s a top fundraising draw, in high demand.”

Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said “there’s no one happier about Dick Cheney becoming a foreign policy surrogate than we are…If he needs any assistance getting out his message, our team would be happy to help book him for interviews.”

Keep reading.

Blacks 75 Percent More Likely to Get Pulled Over in Missouri

Blah, blah, blah.

After everything else in Ferguson has turned sour for the race-baiting left, here's the ho-hum racial "disparity" statistics on Missouri traffic stops.

At the New York Times, "Missouri Reports Wide Racial Disparity in Traffic Stops."

And at 41 Action News Kansas City, "Report: Major racial disparity in Missouri traffic stops."

RELATED: For common sense perspective, see Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Ferguson’s Unasked Questions: In the Missouri city and elsewhere, the media clings to predetermined conclusions."

Albert Pujols Homers Twice, Mike Trout and David Freese Also Go Yard, in #Angels 7-3 Victory Over Tampa Bay

The boys are on fire, finally.

At the O.C. Register, "Final: Trout and Pujols homer to lead Angels over Rays, 7-3."

#HaloRecap: #Angels keep their bats hot with home runs from @PujolsFive, @MikeTrout & @Freeser6 in tonight's victory! pic.twitter.com/BrIQeyHrh0

— Angels (@Angels) June 2, 2015

Introducing Caitlyn Jenner

The obligatory Caitlyn Jenner transgender debut post.

See the reactions at Memeorandum.

I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

Another Jenner world record, and at 65? Who'da thought! Humbled & honored to have reached 1M followers in 4 hrs. Thank you for your support.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

I'll call you Caitlyn but you're still just a dude who tucks his dick between his legs😂😂😂 #CaitlynJenner pic.twitter.com/z1QzmUjQaT

— The Anti-Feminist (@FemsHaveBallz) June 1, 2015

What is it with trannies that they feel they have to dress like sluts? For God’s sake, you’re 65 years old. Decency! https://t.co/lerU80YnoC

— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 1, 2015

'Some of us now struggle to recognize the culture we live in...'

From Quin Hillyer, at National Review, "Where 'Normal' is Defined as 'Deviant'":

At Sea in an Alien Culture, Where ‘Normal’ Is Defined as ‘Deviant’ http://t.co/Qz8XRxs1kc pic.twitter.com/6ZbRzkPgdz

— National Review (@NRO) May 25, 2015

Elderly Man Accidentally Runs Over Wife in Studio City

Man, that's heartbreaking.

At CBS News Los Angeles, "Husband Accidentally Runs Over, Kills Wife In Studio City Crash."

Country Music Consultant Wants Fewer Women on Radio

Hey, it's just good business!

At WaPo, "One industry expert offers his plan to help country radio: Fewer songs by women."

And at CBS This Morning, "Miranda Lambert lashes out at radio exec."

California's Mandatory Water Restrictions Take Effect

At LAT, "As California drought worsens, experts urge water reforms":

As mandatory water restrictions took effect Monday across California, a panel of experts called upon the drought-plagued state to upgrade its water infrastructure and reform its antiquated water rights system.

"The reservoirs we built in California over the 20th century were designed for a climate with extensive snowpack, and frequent wet periods," said Juliet Christian-Smith, a climate scientist with the California office of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"We know that this drought is a bellwether of future conditions," Christian-Smith said. "This year's record-low snowpack is projected to be close to normal by the end of the century."

Christian-Smith was one of a handful of experts who spoke to reporters during a telephone news conference organized by the science group.

With droughts in California and other western states likely to grow more frequent because of global warming, planners needed to explore new methods of water conservation, they said.

Among the solutions was devising new ways to capture rainwater runoff so that it could be stored in soils, floodplains and groundwater basins.

"It's not about building bigger and higher dams," said Joseph McIntyre, president of the not-for-profit food sustainability organization Ag Innovations.

Instead, McIntyre said the state should focus on "capturing and storing water everywhere in the system -- on small ponds, on farms, in urban rainwater harvesting projects and in small-scale reservoirs. The future is small and distributed."

Michael Hanemann, a professor of environmental and resource economics at UC Berkeley, said also that the state's system of water rights was in serious need of updating.

However, he said the Legislature has showed "no appetite" to make reforms.

Among the most senior water rights holders in California are those who hold riparian rights -- that is, the right to siphon water from a river or stream that runs through or along a property owner's land. Those rights date back to the founding of the state in 1850.

Also, from Joel Kotkin, at the O.C. Register, "Why California's salad days have wilted."

The Soft-Soaping of Socialism in the U.S.

At IBD:

Bernie Sanders is coming on as a presidential contender, while polls show surprisingly large parts of the public look favorably on the socialism he espouses. The public apparently has forgotten socialism's record.

For years, Sanders, an avowed, unapologetic socialist, was viewed as an anomaly of U.S. political life, an eccentric whose atypical ideology reflected the supposed quirkiness of his home state of Vermont.

Now that's changed, and with Democrats worried about the scandals surrounding their top candidate, Hillary Clinton, Sanders is attracting ever-bigger audiences on the campaign trail. Polls show him at 15% of the Democratic tally.

Maybe that's because Sanders is portrayed in the media as "a normal guy" — as a Washington Post headline put it — while liberal media doyen Bill Moyer headlined a [news item "Despite What Corporate Media Tells You, Bernie Sanders' Positions Are Mainstream."
In the Huffington Post, Distinguished Professor Peter Dreier of Occidental College, one of Barack Obama's alma maters, declared, "Bernie Sanders' Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie."

Such is the new narrative about Sanders, 73, whose ideology grew out of the same 1930s roots as all past socialist movements, even as America since the Reagan era has moved toward free markets and taken much of the world with it.

Sure, Sanders calls himself a "democratic socialist" and says that his model is the all-encompassing welfare state of Sweden, not the Soviet Union. No comment from him, however, about the reforms that Sweden has made over the last decade to rid itself of the state embrace that's choked economic life or the demographic losses endured as the young move out or lose interest in forming families.

Also under the democratic socialist banner is Venezuela, where citizens have lost not only all their prosperity and access to goods but their civil freedoms as well.

Every last government agency there has been politicized since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, ending civil society, while the separation of powers has been rubbed away in the name of "the revolution."

As a result, political dissidents have been thrown in prisons without trial. Others have lost the right to leave the country. Still more have had their businesses expropriated. More still have been victims of political thuggery from government-sponsored private goons.

Like Sweden, Venezuela is no country for young men. A study of professors at Gervasio Rubio Rural Pedagogic Institute reported last week in El Universal showed that large numbers of Venezuela's young would rather deal drugs than go to school.

More.

We're surrounded by leftist idiots. But I repeat myself.

Elon Musk Defends $4.9 Billion in Government Subsidies

Background at Instapundit, "ELON MUSK’S BUSINESS STRATEGY: Take full advantage of government subsidies."

And see the Los Angeles Times, "Elon Musk defends $4.9 billion in government money for his companies."

Imagine the National Economy with a $15.00 Minimum Wage

I suspect if local governments, like Los Angeles, phase in the $15.00 minimum wage over a few years, the negative economic repercussions will be minimized. Still, once businesses relocate to more competitive cities and states, it's hard to get those enterprises back.

And as always, huge numbers of workers are going to be displaced as businesses shift to increasing automation and flexible (shorter), non-benefit, hours.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A new dawn for the minimum wage":

What has long been a hypothetical question may soon become a real one: What would the national economy look like with a $15-an-hour minimum wage?

Community activists and politicians see a $15 minimum wage as the antidote to the ills of rising inequality, a way to reduce poverty and stimulate the overall economy. Business owners warn it will tie their hands in downturns, drive small employers out of business and lead to millions of layoffs.

The reality is not that simple: An increase to $15 an hour would ripple through the U.S. economy in some unexpected ways that are, generally, not as bad nor as beneficial as each side claims.

The push for a higher minimum wage has gained momentum over the past few years. Seattle, San Francisco and most recently Los Angeles have adopted a floor of $15 an hour to take effect over the next few years. That's more than double the current federal minimum-wage law of $7.25.

Other cities such as Chicago. Oakland and Washington, D.C., have raised the minimum wage, but not as much. At least a dozen other cities and states, including New York and Oregon, may soon follow.

The recent movement is rooted in years of stagnant wages and a general disaffection from the slow and uneven recovery since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009. Like the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the last quarter-century has seen fabulous income gains for corporations and individuals at the top, but very little for everybody else.

It's true that higher minimum wages would address some of that inequality, lifting many Americans from poverty.

Almost 60% of workers who are paid on an hourly basis — some 44 million people — currently make less than $15 an hour, Labor Department figures show. If the minimum went up to $15 tomorrow, nearly half of those workers would get at least a 50% bump in pay.

And it's not just teenagers and young adults who would benefit. More than 8.4 million people earning less than $10 an hour today are in the prime of their work life, between ages 25 and 54. About 62% of these workers are women, many with children.

Yet the benefits from higher wages would be offset for many by a reduction in government benefits that low-wage workers now receive, such as child-care subsidies or public aid for food, housing and medicines.

Millions of workers would have more money in their pockets to spend, boosting demand for goods and services. But they would also likely face increased prices in the marketplace as retailers, restaurants, child-care centers and other businesses that employ low-wage workers shift the higher labor costs to their customers.

When Oakland's minimum wage jumped from $9 an hour to $12.25 in March, residents noticed many stores tacked on a dime or a quarter to an assortment of items. Creole food caterer David Smith went further, jacking up the price of his dishes by $2 to $3 a plate. "I had to," says Smith, 35, who has three employees.

Longer term, many low-paid workers could lose their jobs or find fewer openings as employers cut back to cope with the higher wage requirements.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which some lawmakers had proposed, would result in a half-million jobs lost. At $15 an hour, the hit would likely be in the millions.

"Fifteen dollars still scares me," says Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University economist, adding that what might be doable in high-priced cities like Seattle and San Francisco could prove more difficult in other areas...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Businesses Will Raises Prices and Cut Employee Hours Under Obama Minimum Wage Hike," and "$15 Minimum Wage Will Hurt Workers."

Drake Bell Disses Caitlyn Jenner

It's been awhile since "Drake and Josh" was topping the charts, so I guess fading actors take to Twitter to stay relevant, or something.

Still, the responses are pretty hysterical.

At Twitchy, "‘Burn in hell': Drake Bell branded ‘transphobic idiot’ after posting ‘still calling you Bruce’."

George Will: The Commencement Speech Every College Graduate Needs to Hear (VIDEO)

Old George is going to ruffle some super-sensitive feathers, via Prager University:



BONUS: At the Washington Post, "A summer break from campus muzzling":

Progressives frequently disparage this or that person or idea as “on the wrong side of history.” They regard history as an autonomous force with its own laws of unfolding development: Progress is wherever history goes. This belief entails disparagement of human agency — or at least that of most people, who do not understand history’s implacable logic and hence do not get on history’s “right side.” Such people are crippled by “false consciousness.” Fortunately, a saving clerisy, a vanguard composed of the understanding few, know where history is going and how to help it get there.

One way to help is by molding the minds of young people. The molders believe that the sociology of knowledge demonstrates that most people do not make up their minds, “society” does this. But progressive minds can be furnished for them by controlling the promptings from the social environment. This can be done by making campuses into hermetically sealed laboratories.

In “The Promise of American Life” (1909), progressivism’s canonical text, Herbert Croly said, “The average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.” National life should be “a school,” with the government as the stern but caring principal: “The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?” “Unregenerate citizens” can be saved “many costly perversions, in case the official school-masters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate.” For a survey of today’s campus coercions, read Kirsten Power’s “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.”

In “Kindly Inquisitors” (1993), Jonathan Rauch showed how attacks on the free market in speech undermine three pillars of American liberty. They subvert democracy, the culture of persuasion by which we decide who shall wield legitimate power. (Progressives advocate government regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech.) The attacks undermine capitalism — markets registering the freely expressed choices by which we allocate wealth. And the attacks undermine science, which is how we decide what is true. (Note progressives’ insistence that the science about this or that is “settled.”)

For decades, much academic ingenuity has been devoted to jurisprudential theorizing to evade the First Amendment’s majestic simplicity about “no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” We are urged to “balance” this freedom against competing, and putatively superior, considerations such as individual serenity, institutional tranquillity or social improvement.

On campuses, the right of free speech has been supplanted by an entitlement to what Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education calls a right to freedom from speech deemed uncongenial. This entitlement is buttressed by “trigger warnings” against spoken “micro-aggressions” that lacerate the delicate sensibilities of individuals who are encouraged to be exquisitely, paralyzingly sensitive.

In a booklet for the “Encounter Broadside” series, Lukianoff says “sensitivity-based censorship” on campus reflects a broader and global phenomena. It is the demand for coercive measures to do for our mental lives what pharmacology has done for our bodies — the banishment or mitigation of many discomforts. In the social milieu fostered by today’s entitlement state, expectations quickly generate entitlements. Students are taught to expect intellectual comfort, including the reinforcement of their beliefs, or at least those that conform to progressive orthodoxies imbibed and enforced on campuses. Until September, however, the culture of freedom will be safe from its cultured despisers.

The New Nationwide Crime Wave

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor":

@SykesCharlie @WSJ Libs don't care. This was never about Black lives mattering. It is about energizing the Black base for 2016 election.

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) May 30, 2015

The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias. The news media pump out a seemingly constant stream of stories about alleged police mistreatment of blacks, with the reports often buttressed by cellphone videos that rarely capture the behavior that caused an officer to use force.

Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.

Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.

The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, wants to create a special state prosecutor dedicated solely to prosecuting cops who use lethal force. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would appoint an independent monitor whenever a grand jury fails to indict an officer for homicide and there are “doubts” about the fairness of the proceeding (read: in every instance of a non-indictment); the governor could then turn over the case to a special prosecutor for a second grand jury proceeding.

This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.

Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014...

Keep reading.

And at Twitchy, "‘The New National Crime Wave’ explores the consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’."

Today's Feminists Are Too Fragile to Read

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "When a professor criticizes equal rights law, it is not a violation of equal rights":

They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, campus witch hunts would leave professors afraid to write about feminism. And they were right!

Barack Obama is the president, of course, not Mitt. But Obama's Department of Education has taken such a broad view of the federal Title IX antidiscrimination law ("No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.") that we have reached the ultimate in absurdity: Feminist students silencing feminist professors in the name of equality.

Feminist professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February, decrying "sexual paranoia" on campus and the way virtually any classroom mention of sex was being subjected to an odd sort of neo-Victorian prudery: "Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. ... In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound."

This article sat poorly with campus activists, who in response reported her for sexual harassment, on the theory that this article (and a follow-up tweet — yes, that's right, a tweet) somehow might have created a hostile environment for female students, which would violate Title IX as interpreted by the Education Department. Because, you see, female students, according to feminists, are too fragile to face disagreement. And they'll demonstrate this fragility by subjecting you to Stalinist persecution if you challenge them, apparently...

More.

Read about the professor (me) brought up on Title IX charges over an essay. My Title IX Inquisition https://t.co/7arRrbuUv6 via @chronicle

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 29, 2015

TITLE IX Update: After 72 days it turns out that a preponderance of the evidence doesn't support the allegations. https://t.co/EmIdJEWhYK

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

"My Title IX Inquisition." Here's a link to a PDF version. http://t.co/aaR3ZgjxaT

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

Gifts in Kitchen & Dining

Shop for Father's Day,Shop Amazon - Gifts in Kitchen & Dining.

Bernie Sanders' Foul Socialist Odor

From Michelle Malkin, at FrontPage Magazine:

Elect @BernieSanders and we'll have more hunger, not less. That's how #socialism works. http://t.co/FFGGyzXIr1 pic.twitter.com/1YitjBNqGB

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) May 31, 2015

Smells like socialist spirit! Mocktastic Bernie 'Old Spice' Sanders puts the 'rant' in 'deodorant' http://t.co/fYZRzIR5fE

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) May 26, 2015

Our store shelves have too many different brands of deodorant and sneakers. Just look at all those horrible, fully stocked aisles at Target and Walgreens and Wal-Mart and Payless and DSW and Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s a national nightmare! If only consumers had fewer choices in the free market, fewer entrepreneurs offering a wide variety of products and fewer workers manufacturing goods people wanted, Sanders believes, we could end childhood hunger.

Nobody parodies the far left better than far-leftists themselves.

In an interview with financial journalist John Harwood on Tuesday, Sanders detailed his grievances with an overabundance of antiperspirants and footwear. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don’t think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.”

Try to suppress a snicker: Sanders, Decider of Your Sanitary and Footwear Needs, is casting himself as the Everyman in touch with “ordinary Americans” to contrast his campaign with Hillary “my Beltway lobbyist and foreign agent operator Sid Blumenthal is just a friend I talk to for advice” Clinton.

Blech. By the looks of the 2016 Democratic presidential field, liberals really do practice the anti-choice principles they preach.

More.

Plus, from yesterday's morning talk shows, "Bernie Sanders Addresses 1972 Sex, Rape Fantasy Essay on Meet the Press."

He's a freakin' crackpot.

Tony Hawk Remembers His First 900 Air at the X-Games

This is really cool.

Barack Obama’s Anti-Semitism Test

From Caroline Glick, at FrontPage Magazine:

Is U.S. President Barack Obama an anti-Semite?

This question has lingered in the air since his first presidential bid in 2008. It first arose due to the anti-Semitic sermons that Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for more than 20 years, made as Obama and his family sat in the pews.

Throughout the six-and-a-half years of his presidency, Obama has laughed off the concerns.

But he has not dispelled them. And this failure has hurt him.

So last week, Obama went to significant lengths to answer the question about his feelings toward Israel and the Jewish people once and for all.

The timing of his charm offensive wasn’t coincidental.

Obama clearly believes he has to dispel doubts about his intentions toward Jews and Israel in order to implement the central policy of his second term in office. That policy of course is his nuclear deal with Iran.

Obama’s agreement with the mullahs is supposed to be concluded by the end of next month.

Obama argues that his deal will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in his address before the joint houses of Congress in March, from what has already been revealed about the nuclear deal Obama seeks to conclude, far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, the deal will provide several pathways for Iran to at a minimum become a threshold nuclear state, capable of developing nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat. If Iran cheats on the deal, it can develop nuclear weapons while the agreement is still in force. If it abides by the agreement, it can develop nuclear weapons as soon as the agreement expires.

Beyond his desire to conclude a nuclear deal that will empower a regime that has pledged to destroy Israel, there are Obama’s reported plans for changing the way the US relates to Israel at the UN Security Council.

For the past half-century, the US has used its veto power at the Security Council to prevent substantive anti-Israel draft resolutions from passing. But Obama and his top advisers have hinted and media reports have provided details about his intention to end this 50-year policy.

Obama reportedly intends to enable the passage of a French draft resolution that would require Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.

As these two policies, which bear directly on Israel’s ability to defend itself and indeed, to survive, near implementation, Obama is faced with the fact that he has a credibility problem when it comes to issues related to the survival and existence of the Jewish state.

In a bid to address this credibility problem, last week he invested significant time and effort in building up his credibility on Jewish issues. To this end, he gave an extensive interview to Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, and he gave a speech before Adas Israel, a large, liberal Conservative synagogue in Washington, DC.

To a degree, Obama was successful. He did put to bed the question of whether or not he is anti-Semitic.

In his interview with Goldberg, Obama gave a reasonable if incomplete definition of what anti-Semitism is. Obama said that an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to recognize the 3,000-year connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel. An anti-Semite is also someone who refuses to recognize the long history of persecution that the Jewish people suffered in the Diaspora.

According to Obama, an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to understand that this history of persecution together with the Jews’ millennial connection to the Land of Israel is what justifies the existence of Israel in the Land of Israel.

Moreover, according to Obama, anti-Semites refuse to understand that Israel remains in mortal danger due to the continued existence of anti-Semitic forces that seek its destruction.

And that isn’t all. As he sees it, even if you do understand the legitimacy of Israel’s existence and recognize the continued threats to its survival, you could still be an anti-Semite.

As Obama explained to Goldberg, there is still the problem of double standards.

In his words, “If you acknowledge those things, then you should be able to align yourself with Israel where its security is at stake, you should be able to align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not held to a double standard in international fora, you should align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not isolated.”

To his credit, Obama provided a clear, well-argued and constructive definition of anti-Semitism.

But there’s a bit of a problem. Right after Obama provided us with his definition of anti-Semitism, he endorsed and indeed engaged in the very anti-Semitism he had just defined.

As Goldberg, who is sympathetically inclined toward Obama, put it, Obama “holds Israel to a higher standard than he does other countries.”

Both in his interview with Goldberg and in his speech at the synagogue, Obama judged Israel in accordance to what he defined as Jewish values.

According to Obama, Jewish values require Jews to prefer the interests of others over their own interests in order to “repair the world.”

As Obama reads Israeli history, the state’s founders didn’t only seek to build a Jewish state.

They set out to build Utopia.

Obama explained, “I care deeply about preserving that Jewish democracy, because when I think about how I came to know Israel, it was based on images of… kibbutzim, and Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir, and the sense that not only are we creating a safe Jewish homeland, but also we are remaking the world. We’re repairing it. We are going to do it the right way. We are going to make sure that the lessons we’ve learned from our hardships and our persecutions are applied to how we govern and how we treat others. And it goes back to the values questions that we talked about earlier – those are the values that helped to nurture me and my political beliefs.”

In his address at the synagogue, Obama made his expectations of Israel explicit. As he sees it, Israel’s concerns for Palestinians should outweigh its concerns for itself.

“The rights of the Jewish people… compel me to think about a Palestinian child in Ramallah that feels trapped without opportunity. That’s what Jewish values teach me.”

In other words, when Obama thinks about Israel, he cannot avoid blaming Israel for the feelings he assumes Palestinian children feel.

It is important to mention that in neither of his attempts to address concerns about his perceived biases regarding Jews did Obama note the behavior of the Palestinian Authority. He ignored its endemic corruption and authoritarianism.

He ignored the wild anti-Semitic incitement and indoctrination practiced at all levels of the Palestinian governing authority. He ignored the longstanding Palestinian refusal to accept an independent state that would peacefully coexist with the Jewish state.

So in the end, Obama’s charm offensive did provide a clear answer to the question of whether he is anti-Semitic.

It bears noting that the fact that Obama failed his own test of anti-Semitism doesn’t necessarily mean that he hates Jews. It is certainly possible that he likes Jews.

But loving Jews and being an anti-Semite are not mutually exclusive...

Still more.

Obama hates Israel and the Jews. All this, seriously, is an exercise in futility. Don't give him the benefit of the doubt. The sooner the Democrats are out of power the safer Israel will be.

General Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) on the Battle to Defeat #ISIS in Iraq

From CNN's State of the Nation yesterday:

Carly Fiorina on Fox News Sunday, May 31, 2015 (VIDEO)

I still don't expect her to get too far, mainly because she'll be destroy by the media, and ultimately, she'll be subjected to the Herman Cain treatment --- although I expect, having run for office previously, Ms. Fiorina's much more prepared for the left's character assassination.

In any case, she's extremely well-informed and loquacious.



More from Ashe Schow, at the Washington Examiner, "Carly Fiorina breaks top 10 of 2016 GOP candidates in latest national poll."

And from Katie Pavlich, at Town Hall, "While Rick Santorum Whines About Rules, Carly Fiorina Steps Up To GOP Debate Challenge."

Michael LaCour and the 'Endemic Problems' of Political Science

From Steven Hayward, who is the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy 2014-2016, at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy.

He's a cool dude!

Why everyone's missing what's really wrong with the retracted La-Court-Green Science magazine article: http://t.co/yVQbOw51D1 @powerlineUS

— Steven F. Hayward (@stevenfhayward) May 31, 2015

Some "clear subtexts of this article that reveal endemic problems within the world of academic political science": https://t.co/8eqcKM0Qjn

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 31, 2015

And ICYMI, "Michael LaCour, 'Gay Canvassers' Fabulist, Responds to Attacks on Retracted Homosexual Marriage Study."

Roasting 'Progressives of Palor' LOL!

You gotta love Twitter!

Love it when progressives of pallor get roasted ==> https://t.co/LtGi2aFrnW

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 31, 2015

'Show the GOP who is the party of old, fat, white people': Instapundit mercilessly mocks Bernie Sanders event http://t.co/ygAeE4qydN

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) May 31, 2015

TV's 'Golden Age' Won't Last Because You're Not Watching Enough

A lot of times after I've watch a ball game or a favorite show I'll just turn off the tube and cruise my iPhone and Twitter. I can go for a couple hours easily, especially if all my apps are working properly, heh. (LAT's app was screwed up for awhile and wouldn't load, but it's been working beautifully lately.)

In any case, here's this a Bloomberg, "Quality, expensive TV shows need more viewers to be sustainable, but audiences are dwindling":

The entertainment industry will air more than 400 original TV shows this year, lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on top talent and exotic locations in the hopes of creating the next “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones.”

The gusher of quality programs has prompted TV critics to proclaim a Golden Age of Television. But as any viewer knows, keeping up with all the shows is impossible. You’d have to watch TV 24 hours a day for at least eight months to catch every scripted series that aired last year, according to a Bloomberg calculation. With too many shows chasing too few viewers, say industry executives, most original programs lose money and half the shows now running probably will disappear by next year.

“The market is flooded with too many people chasing the same prize,” said Jeff Wachtel, president of NBCUniversal’s cable unit, which includes the USA and Syfy channels. “What used to be the golden age of television has now become a gold rush.”

With production costs soaring and shows being canceled with increasing frequency, executives say many niche channels will vanish as networks with the most popular shows swallow rivals that fail to create enough hits of their own.

More.

Yu Tsai Emily Ratajkowski Photo Shoot for Sports Illustrated

Lovely.

#SISwim photographer @yutsai captured @emrata like you've never seen her before! http://t.co/FdNGaji3RZ pic.twitter.com/pFrAg0HaUX

— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) May 21, 2015

And after the show its the... pic.twitter.com/zTfjms54ZN

— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) May 6, 2015

The Feminist-Industrial Complex: Fat Lesbians vs. the ‘Heteronormative Gaze’

At the Other McCain:

Does the “fat acceptance” movement “destabilize the heteronormative gaze”? Can women overcome “gender inequality” by a “radical rejection of beauty as feminine aspiration”? Those possibilities are suggested by two Canadian sociologists in an article, included in a leading Women’s Studies textbook, that compared Dove’s “Real Beauty” advertising campaign to a protest by lesbian activists in Toronto.

FEMINISM: "We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy. We have been f**ked over all our lives ..." http://t.co/KTpYIcE5ke #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) May 31, 2015

Why #feminists fear #heteronormativemalegaze http://t.co/JEGXhqtWwp #heteronormative http://t.co/j6XO1nyVAn @rsmccain pic.twitter.com/WJmwJQOL9L

— JeSuisEBL (@MsEBL) May 31, 2015

The Obama 'Recovery' Stalls Again — U.S. Economy Shrank 0.7 Percent in First Quarter!

Yay progs!

At WSJ, "U.S. Recovery Stumbles Yet Again":

Why U.S. GDP shrank: http://t.co/w1ZE5tZmnw pic.twitter.com/5diRPfaBqi

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 29, 2015

The U.S. economy shrank during the first quarter as another brutal winter highlighted the fragility of the nearly six-year-old expansion, a historically choppy stretch during which the nation has struggled to thrive in an uneven global environment.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the U.S., contracted at a 0.7% annual rate during the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.

That was far worse than the agency’s initial estimate that showed 0.2% growth, marking an abrupt reversal from the prior nine months when growth surged and the economy appeared on the verge of a long-delayed breakout.

The economy has now contracted in three separate quarters since the recession ended in mid-2009, a series of disappointments unmatched since the expansions of the 1950s.

Harsh weather, a strong dollar and a labor dispute at West Coast ports appeared to be the biggest culprits this time, all sapping demand for American goods at home and abroad.

“When you’re this weak, little things can knock you off course, whether it’s the Arab Spring…or ‘Snowmageddon,’ ” said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at brokerage firm BTIG. “We have an incredibly weak economy that’s susceptible to momentary interruptions.”

The Federal Reserve has viewed the first-quarter stumble as due largely to transitory factors—such as the stronger dollar—that will dissipate in coming months. The central bank is looking for signs of a rebound soon as it plots when and how quickly to raise short-term interest rates, which have been near zero since December 2008 to stir economic growth.

Economists generally expect the economy to bounce back this spring, as it did after first-quarter contractions in 2011 and 2014. But they warned growth will likely remain modest, in line with the roughly 2% overall pace of recent years. The first half of 2015 is shaping up to be one of the weakest six-month stretches of the expansion, with economists predicting annualized growth of between 2% and 3% during the current quarter. By comparison, the economy grew more than 3% a year on average between 1983 and 2007.

Further complicating the outlook is that other signs point to the economy humming along at a steady, though modest, growth pace. Company layoffs are exceptionally low and hiring across the U.S. remains solid. Mortgage applications are up amid other signs of growing housing demand.

“We’re still growing at a relatively steady pace, although one that just doesn’t feel satisfying,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp. “Six years into the recovery, we still really haven’t absorbed all of the idle capacity in the economy. When your underlying trend of growth is so slow, it doesn’t take much to just kind of stop the train.”

Some of the strongest headwinds facing the U.S. are tied to economic woes around the globe, including the U.S.’s biggest trading partners. Canada reported Friday that its economy unexpectedly contracted at a 0.6% annual pace in the first quarter. Mexican officials recently slashed their forecast for growth this year after reporting that the economy grew in the first quarter at the slowest pace in more than a year.

The stronger dollar, which makes U.S. goods more expensive abroad, also hasn’t helped. Friday’s GDP report showed that U.S. exports of goods fell by the most since early 2009, during the waning months of the recession. While a key measure of U.S. corporations’ after-tax profits grew 3.1% over the period, it wasn’t on pace to match the growth of the prior two years.

“We have a macro-slowdown around the world,” Stephen Angel, chief executive of industrial gas supplier Praxair Inc., told analysts this past week. “There’s less capital investment. China is decelerating…so there’s less proposal activity.”

His company, based in Connecticut, is one of many being hit by depressed oil prices. While the price of oil—around $60 a barrel—is up in recent months, it’s far from the 2014 peak of $107.26.

The oil-price drop has boosted consumers’ finances by lowering their gasoline bills, a development expected to boost the economy throughout this year. But the most dramatic effect thus far has been a drop in business investment, with energy companies holding off on drilling and equipment purchases as they deal with squeezed profits.

A measure of business spending on construction, machinery, and research and development fell at a 2.8% pace in the winter. That was the biggest decline since late 2009.

The strength of an economic rebound will hinge largely on the health of consumers. Consumer spending, representing more than two-thirds of overall economic output, grew at a 1.8% rate in the first quarter, far slower than the fourth quarter’s 4.4% growth. Household spending on long-lasting manufactured items was the weakest in nearly four years...

'Ted 2' Star Jessica Barth 'Very Sexy' for Playboy

I expect "Ted 2" has got to be one of the stupidest movies ever, but then Jessica Barth is a smokin' hottie, so I'll forgive her for foisting this demented leftist drivel.

Watch: "Jessica Barth Taps Into Her Sex Appeal for Playboy."

Former Marine George Hood of Carlsbad Sets Abdominal Plank Record of 5 Hours and 15 Minutes

The video's cool. They're down at the Oceanside Pier, at the amphitheater.

He went 5 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds.

Watch: "Local man sets new record for longest held plank."

And at the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Marine vet obliterates 'planking' record."

Bob Schieffer's Final Commentary at CBS 'Face the Nation'

He's a lefty, but a good patriotic lefty, a throwback to an earlier era. I'm going to miss him.



More at LAT, "Bob Schieffer signs off from 'Face the Nation' and 46 years at CBS News."

Radical Feminism and the 'Rape Culture' Lie

From Heather Wilhelm, at Commentary, "The ‘Rape Culture’ Lie":

In September Barack Obama launched the “It’s on Us” campaign, designed to fight what he called the “nightmare” of campus sexual assault. “An estimated one in five women has been sexually assaulted during her college years,” Obama announced, pausing for emphasis. “One in five.” America, the president went on to argue, suffers from a “quiet tolerance of sexual assault,” all too often blaming victims, making excuses, or looking the other way. To combat sexual violence, he said, we need a “fundamental shift in our culture.”

With these words, the president of the United States went all in on the idea that America’s academic institutions have been taken over by a “rape culture” —a culture that normalizes, trivializes, and quietly condones male sexual assault against women, blaming female victims while subtly celebrating male predators.

Once rather obscure and confined to sociology and women’s studies departments, the term “rape culture” has slowly invaded the national consciousness. According to Google search analytics, the topic generated almost no traffic in 2005 or before. After 2011, its popularity slowly began to rise—as we’ll later see, this is no accident—and then, beginning in 2013, it spiked, the graph forming a hockey stick that would make global-warming doomsayer Michael Mann proud.

The idea that one in five college women has or will be sexually assaulted is mind-boggling and horrifying. It’s also not true. As Slate’s Emily Yoffe pointed out in December, the statistic—together with two other dubious studies that, just for the heck of it, upped the ante to one in four—would “mean that young American college women are raped at a rate similar to women in Congo, where rape has been used as a weapon of war.”

Both the “one in five” and “one in four” sexual-assault numbers, it turns out, have been repeatedly and resoundingly discredited. The former statistic comes from the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study, an online survey of students at two college campuses that reportedly compensated respondents and categorized actions such as “kissing” and “rubbing up against” someone as sexual assault. (Even the author of the study, Christopher Krebs, told Yoffe that “one in five” is not “a nationally representative statistic.”)

“One in four” has proved even more resilient, given that it first popped up in a 1988 Ms. Foundation study by an Ohio State professor named Mary Koss—a survey later dismantled by Christina Hoff Sommers in 1994 based on work originally conducted by the Berkeley social-welfare scholar Neil Gilbert. As Sommers wrote, “For Gilbert, the most serious indication that something was basically awry in the Ms./Koss study was that the majority of women she classified as having been raped did not believe they had been raped. Of those Koss counts as having been raped, only 27 percent thought they had been; 73 percent did not say that what happened to them was rape.”

A more recent “one in four” study, conducted by the Department of Justice in 2000 and subtly titled “The Sexual Victimization of College Women,” went even further afield. Its initial results were within the boundaries of reason; it estimated that 2.8 percent of college women had been victims of rape. After performing some serious statistical voodoo, however, the authors estimated that one in four women “might” be raped—but, they admitted, “these projections are suggestive.” Oh. Well, OK. Good thing we don’t have a national panic on our hands.

Well, cancel that last thought: Actually, we do.

This month, CNN Films, in partnership with the Weinstein Company, is slated to release The Hunting Ground, which the Sundance Film Festival has called “a piercing, monumental exposé of rape culture on campuses.” The film’s promotional poster, as the New York Times noted, “resembles an ad for a horror movie.”

This follows the release of yet another “study,” thrown into the pack in January. It declared—allow me to paraphrase—that men are soulless, earth-ravaging ogres. “Nearly one-third of college men admit they might rape a woman if they could get away with it,” Newsweek reported, breathless and giddy. As it turned out, this new survey, which was eagerly splashed across international media, had a sample size of 83, a participation number of 73, highly questionable survey methods, and was conducted solely using volunteers seeking extra credit at the University of North Dakota.

If your professional dream is to concoct a completely biased yet well-received and well-publicized study, congratulations: It’s apparently fairly easy. If you wish to soberly present facts and data, well, good luck. The latest Department of Justice hard data on sexual assault, released in December 2014, estimates that 0.61 percent of female college students are the victims of sexual assault. That’s 6.1 cases per 1,000 women. Curiously, these new numbers, which come from the Obama administration, aren’t making headlines at the Obama White House’s official website. In fact, in a special public service announcement broadcast during February’s Grammy awards, the president informed the nation that “nearly one in five women in America”—not just college students—”has been a victim of rape or attempted rape.”

Speaking of culture, what does it say about ours when such clearly preposterous statistics are so easily believed? More important, what does it mean that discredited and long-debunked rape “statistics” are repeated, over and over, all the way up to the bully pulpit of the highest political office in the country?

In fact, if the latest official statistics are accurate—the unfortunate yet not-so-dramatic 0.61 percent that many feminists seem intent on ignoring—then America seems to have the opposite of a “rape culture.” Rather than pushing actual rape under the rug and celebrating male predators, in other words, we’re inventing fictional rapes and throwing actual men under the bus.

“Rape culture,” in other words, is an idea that swings, cocky and unhinged, from media and campus chandeliers. It dodges logical bullets, performs backflips around statistical cannonballs, and waltzes right through ground-leveling factual nuclear bombs. Much like an Olympic diver, it’s an idea that easily slices, clean and quiet, into the crevices of supple brains.

And once it’s settled in, it’s hard to pry it out. Like a poorly stabbed and strong-limbed B-movie villain, it refuses to die. This is, in part, because it’s an idea with a long, storied provenance, dating back more than 40 years. It has been a central feature of American feminism for nearly as long: “Feminism,” as legal theorist Catherine MacKinnon wrote in a 1988 book, is “built on believing women’s accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.”

But the enduring power of the rape-culture concept comes from another source as well. It addresses, albeit in a scrambled and unjust fashion, a deep problem in contemporary American life—a huge cultural resistance to the fact that sex is a profoundly serious business.

Well, Heather Wilhelm is a rape apologist!

But keep reading, heh.

Woman Killed Falling 36 Feet to the Ground at San Bernardino County Fair (VIDEO)

Man, this is a bizarre.

And extremely sad.

At LAT, "Woman dies after falling from San Bernardino County Fair attraction."

Angels Hit Five Home Runs in 8-6 Win Over Tigers

Last night's was them most enjoyable game I've watched in a while --- even better than the beating the Angels gave Boston last weekend. Angels pitcher Jerod Weaver was smokin' last night. All the parts were humming against Detroit. And Game 4 is tonight, on ESPN. It's going to be a good one. Angels have a chance to sweep the Tigers!

At LAT:

KEY MOMENT: The Angels had already hit four solo homers against Tigers starter Shane Greene — including back-to-back, second-inning shots by Matt Joyce and Carlos Perez — when Albert Pujols came to the plate later in second with two outs and two runners on. Pujols blasted a homer to left field to give the Angels a 7-1 lead.

The was freakin' sweet!

More.

And at ESPN, "5/30/15: Five home runs help Angels beat Tigers, 8-6."

Ann Coulter Takes On Pro-Amnesty Media

From Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, at NewsBusters:

Ann Coulter has another best-selling book coming out, provocatively titled Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole. One major target of Coulter barbs is our “objective” media.

Lord knows Coulter understands they deserve the hectoring. News reports are slavishly sensitive to the Latino Left’s political correctness. Start with the terminology. The factual term “illegal immigrants” is somehow an extremely mean-spirited description, even though that’s 100 percent accurate. They claim to prefer less loaded lingo. Like “Dreamers.”

Coulter took exception to a New York Times story from last November reporting that a Mexican-themed restaurant in Fort Collins, Colorado called “Illegal Pete’s” was hounded by leftists to change the name, even though it was named for the Anglo business owner’s father.

A group calling itself “Race Forward” bizarrely claimed in the Times that “illegal immigrant” is “a tactical term promoted by anti-immigration groups starting in the mid-2000s. The epithet, the group said, is dehumanizing, but quickly moved into the mainstream.”

This is preposterous. Coulter reported a quick search of Nexis found 3,000 uses of the term “illegal immigrant” in The New York Times alone before the year 1990. It’s like pretending the term “Hispanic” emerged in news accounts in 2005.

Then there’s the loaded media polls. A November 2014 NBC-Wall Street Journal poll used this typical lingo: “If a proposed pathway to citizenship allowed foreigners staying illegally in the United States the opportunity to eventually become legal American citizens if they pay a fine, any back taxes, pass a security background check, and take other required steps,” would you favor it?

With all those conditions, 74 percent said yes. But Coulter points out that these kind of provisions for back taxes or background checks have been summarily eviscerated by government agencies in past “reform” laws, like the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill signed by Ronald Reagan...

Here's the link to Coulter's new book, Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.

Conservatives Are Much More Likely to Vote Than Leftists

Heh, "Much more."

From David Leonhardt:

Much more. https://t.co/r1JmtdckIe

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) May 31, 2015

Surge of Chinese Applicants Tests U.S. Colleges

It'd be racist to call this an "invasion," but no doubt the Chinese are gaming America on a number of fronts. The birth tourism racket is over the top, for example. And now here comes college admissions fraud. Top that off with the surge in Chinese immigrants, to the point that they've overtaken Hispanics as the top immigrant group to the U.S., and you can see how this stuff's getting out of control.

At WSJ, "Wider admissions from overseas leave schools vulnerable to fraud, experts say":

As U.S. universities search farther afield for international students, they are boosting not just their cash flow and their campus diversity, but also the likelihood of admissions fraud, experts say.

On Thursday, a U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh announced indictments against 15 Chinese nationals on charges that they cheated on college-entrance exams by hiring impostors to take the tests for them. Several of the students ended up at schools across the U.S.

“This is a group of Chinese, but I believe the problem of protecting the integrity of [college admission tests] is bigger than that,” U.S. Attorney David Hickton said.

In recent years, fraud on college-entrance exams has also been uncovered in students from South Korea, as well as from several states in the U.S. More students from a greater number of countries are seeking admissions to American campuses, bringing recruiters into more rural areas where academic standards and test-taking security can be less stringent, said Michael Reilly, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

“What we hear from schools is that when students arrive at college campuses from China, you see once they begin their studies an incongruity between their performance and what their portfolio suggested they should be able to do,” Mr. Reilly said.

In the 2013-14 academic year, the number of international students studying at U.S. colleges and universities rose 8% from a year earlier to nearly 900,000, according to the Institute of International Education. Leading that surge were 274,439 Chinese students, an increase of nearly 17% from the year before.

While earlier students from China were largely the cream of the crop, more of these recent arrivals are struggling with academics, Mr. Reilly said.

China’s colleges rely almost exclusively on results from the national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao, in their admission decisions. As a result of that singular focus on test scores at domestic institutions, Chinese students put extra emphasis on their exam performances when applying to U.S. schools, said Marc Zawel, co-founder and chief executive of AcceptU, a Boston-based admission-consulting firm that works extensively with international students.

“They see the gaokao as essentially deciding where they’re going to go, and they see the SAT or ACT doing the same,” he said. Mr. Zawel said some U.S. schools struggle to validate high-school transcripts from overseas students, and so rely on standardized scores with the assumption that they are more authentic or reflective of a student’s abilities.

Schools have begun to shift their international admissions strategies in an acknowledgment that the tests can be gamed. Mr. Zawel said some of his clients now must participate in interviews with schools to prove their mastery of the English language, even if they scored well on the Educational Testing Service-administered Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl. A high score could indicate comprehensive test preparation rather than actual fluency.

Mr. Zawel said most applicants want to follow the rules, though his team sometimes loses prospective clients after explaining that they won’t write essays or forge recommendation letters on applicants’ behalf—both of which he said are common services among Chinese admission consultants.

“China is the wild west of admission counseling,” he said. “Many agencies advise students in ways that cross a line.”

More.

Beau Biden, Son of Vice President Joseph Biden, Dies at 46

He was so young, in the prime of life.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Beau Biden, son of vice president, dies at 46":

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Beau Biden. Requiescat in Pace cc @vp

— #JeSuisJuive (@lamblock) May 31, 2015

Joseph “Beau” Biden, the son of Vice President Joe Biden and a promising young figure in Democratic Party politics, died Saturday of brain cancer at Walter Reed Medical Center near Washington, his father said. He was 46.

“The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words,” the vice president said in a statement. “We know that Beau's spirit will live on in all of us.”

President Obama issued a statement saying, “Michelle and I are grieving tonight. Beau Biden was a friend of ours.”

Earlier this month, the vice president's office said Beau Biden — who was considered a leading contender in next year's governor's election in Delaware — was undergoing treatment for an undisclosed condition.

Beau Biden was elected Delaware's attorney general in 2006. During his time in office he helped launch the state's Child Predator Task Force that targeted child molesters. He also pushed initiatives aimed at domestic violence and juvenile crime, and he established programs to help financially stressed homeowners keep their homes.

The vice president, in his statement, said his son “fought for the powerless and made it his mission to protect children from abuse.”

Beau Biden campaigned for his father's vice presidential campaign in 2008 and paid tribute to him in a speech at the Democratic National Convention.

After his father's election as vice president, some speculated that Beau Biden might be appointed to replace him in the Senate. But he insisted that he wanted to continue as attorney general and focus on a major case his office was pursuing. The Senate appointment ultimately went to Ted Kaufman, a longtime aide to Joe Biden. Though the elder Biden relished the idea of his son following him in the Senate, he had also warmed to the idea of Beau in executive office...

More.

"Pray I will, sing I must, but yet I weep." Must-read by @cathleendecker on Biden and loss http://t.co/7fsV0QnNa0 via @latimes

— Seema Mehta (@LATSeema) May 31, 2015

Also at Memeorandum.

Elton John's Homosexual Husband Named as 'Mother' on Couple's Children's Birth Certificates

God, what vile pigs!

It's never about just basic truth with the homosexual left. It's gotta be some bizarre, deranged cooked-up lie designed to eradicate the existing "heteronormative" hierarchies of "homophobic" society.

In other words, the left has to deep-six fundamental decency to ram down its butt-banging agenda.

At Breitbart, "FEMINIST GREER ATTACKS ELTON JOHN FOR ‘DECONSTRUCTING MOTHERHOOD’":

Feminist commentator Germaine Greer has criticised Elton John for calling his partner David Furnish “mother” of their two sons.

Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival, Greer accused the men of “deconstructing motherhood”, criticising them for the fact that Furnish was listed as mother on their children’s birth certificates.

“Sometimes I think that really the problem is the concept of motherhood, which we can’t give any real structure to,” she said.

“Sir Elton John and his ‘wife’ David Furnish have entered on the birth certificate of their two sons that David Furnish is the mother. I’m sorry. That will give you an idea of how the concept of motherhood has emptied out. It’s gone, it’s been deconstructed.”

The Express says the couple’s children were born with the help of IVF treatment and share the same surrogate mother, who John and Furnish claim they “love like a sister”.

However, Greer, who wrote The Female Eunuch, also criticised IVF: “We now have a ‘genetic’ mother, who supplies eggs.

“It depends entirely on where she is if she is going to be allowed to know what happens to the eggs. And women tend to care. An egg is not a sperm, we do not produce 400 million of them in one go. One miserable little egg pops every month.

“Then they give you follicle stimulating hormones and you have seventeen or something [eggs] and they give you cut price IVF and distribute the rest of your eggs where they see fit. In some places you are allowed to know what happens to them, in other places you are not.”

She added: “What you get is a reduced bill for IVF because a child is being born by the people involved using your eggs.

“I’m sorry. Did we talk about this? Did we sit down and talk about what eggs mean to women?”

Elton John has not yet responded to Greer’s comments, but he got into a war of words with gay Italian fashion designers Dolce and Gabbana earlier this year after they called John’s children “synthetic”.

And see Rush Limbaugh, "Militant Feminists Hate Motherhood -- Except When a Man Tries to Take It Over."

Michael LaCour, 'Gay Canvassers' Fabulist, Responds to Attacks on Retracted Homosexual Marriage Study

Stick a fork in him, this dude's cooked.

Michael LaCour, the embattled UCLA political science graduate student, has released his long-awaited response to the incendiary controversy surrounding his retracted research paper, published at Science, "When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality."

If you're now just getting up to speed on this, see my previous entries, "'In a couple weeks I'm betting there's going to have to be a shakeup at UCLA...'," and "The Journal Science Retracts Homosexual Marriage Paper After Lead Author Accused of Falsifying Data."

LaCour's response is here, "Response to Irregularities in LaCour and Green (2014)." Also at Political Science Rumors, "Michael J. LaCour - Response to Irregularities in LaCour and Green (pdf)."

As I continue to learn more about this controversy, I'm increasingly convinced of one thing: LaCour needs to own up to his responsibility, tell the truth, and move on while he still has a (sliver of a) chance to salvage his life.

His main argument at the response is that the research data was sound, but that his methods were flawed. One problem, however, is that no one can review his data, because he deleted the entire data set that was the basis for the study. LaCour claims that he was required to delete his data in order to protect the privacy rights of the survey participants, and that he was required to do so by UCLA's North General Institutional Review Board (NGIRB) of the university's Office of the Human Research Protection Program (here and here). But the NGIRB indicates that LaCour conducted all of his research prior to ever contacting the Review Board, and thus without official pre-clearance, LaCour "was in violation of University policy." Also noted by the Review Board:

The NGIRB notes that your paper in the December 12, 2014 edition of Science indicated that the research had UCLA approval. The NGIRB recommends that you notify Science that the research was not reviewed by the UCLA IRB. [Bold in the original.]

LaCour wasn't required of anything by the NGIRB, because the university washed its hands of the matter. They cut the dude loose. Threw him under the bus. Whatever you wanna call it. His claim that he had to delete his files is belied by the facts.

In any case, LaCour's critics David Broockman, Josh Kalla, and Peter Aronow stand by their original rebuttal of the study, and they've rejected LaCour's attempt to respond to the allegations:

BKA's statement on "Response to Irregularities in LaCour and Green (2014)" cc @dbroockman pic.twitter.com/IbZ7c0SXNK

— Josh Kalla (@j_kalla) May 30, 2015

The New York Times has more, "Study Using Gay Canvassers Erred in Methods, Not Results, Author Says":

I suspect this is what the LaCour story will eventually come down to: http://t.co/LztMWk6HTa pic.twitter.com/PVHYvFTvmj

— Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) May 30, 2015

Need to repeat again, LaCour claiming he deleted data at IRB behest while posting letter showing study not approved! https://t.co/kVYT0rjTL8

— femonomics (@femonomics) May 30, 2015

Seriously, I'm done with this story until I know a survey firm that admits to doing the interviewing and someone who admits to paying for it

— Jonathan Ladd (@jonmladd) May 30, 2015

"Mr. LaCour said he lied about the funding of his study to give it more credibility." http://t.co/xQnwGq1i8u

— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) May 30, 2015

This is just sad - lies upon lies at this point from LaCour. How much longer until UCLA strips his PhD? http://t.co/Hpy0dNbuTB

— Edward Miguel (@tedmiguel) May 30, 2015

.@UCLaCour meets self-imposed deadline to answer faked-data claim and includes fighting words https://t.co/MTjrTOB4Ws pic.twitter.com/220xOHhxww

— Carl Bialik (@CarlBialik) May 30, 2015

The graduate student at the center of a scandal over a newly retracted study that has shaken trust in the conduct of social science apologized for lying about aspects of the study, including who paid for it and its methodology, but he said Friday in his first interview that he stands by its finding that gay canvassers can influence voters’ attitudes on same-sex marriage.

The student, Michael J. LaCour, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the attack on his study — which was retracted Thursday by the journal Science — amounted to an academic ambush. “It’s completely unprecedented in the way it was done,” he said, referring to an account of the case posted by two colleagues last week, questioning his work. “They never contacted me directly, there was no transparency, and as a grad student I don’t have the same protection as a professor.”

Mr. LaCour disputes one of the main charges against him: that he improperly erased his raw data. That was one of the charges that led his co-author, Donald P. Green, a widely respected political scientist at Columbia University, to ask the journal to retract the study last week. The destruction of the data was not improper, he said, but in fact was required by U.C.L.A.’s institutional guidelines to protect study participants.

“At the end of the day, I was the one responsible for the raw data, and if something were to happen and reporters tracked people down, that’s a lawsuit,” he said.

But a researcher familiar with U.C.L.A. guidelines, but who declined to identified by name because of the continuing investigation of the case at the university, said the language in the guidelines requires only that researchers erase “unique identifiers” and not the entire data set.

Mr. LaCour said he lied about the funding of his study to give it more credibility. He said that some of his colleagues had doubted his work because they thought he did not have enough money to pay for a such a complex study, among them David Broockman, a political scientist at Stanford and one of the authors of a critique of his work published last week. Mr. LaCour said he thought the funding sources he claimed would shore up the plausibility of the work. “I messed up in that sense, and it could be my downfall,” he said.

Three funding sources that Mr. LaCour listed as providing support for his published paper denied on Thursday that they had done so. The Ford Foundation, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and the Williams Institute at U.C.L.A. said they had not given Mr. LaCour any money. But the Haas Jr. Fund had provided money to the group that Mr. LaCour was working with, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, and the graduate student had applied for and received a grant from the Williams Institute, but it came too late to help with the study, he said.

“The Ford Foundation grant did not exist,” Mr. LaCour wrote in a public timeline posted late on Friday.

One of the most damning facts in the critical review of Mr. LaCour’s work was that the survey company he told the Los Angeles LGBT Center he was working with did not have any knowledge of his project. He now says that, in fact, he did not end up using that survey company but another one.

In an earlier interview, Dr. Green of Columbia said he had asked Mr. LaCour repeatedly to store his raw data in a databank at the University of Michigan. Asked about that, Mr. LaCour said he had not been sure whether Dr. Green was referring to the analyzed, “clean” data, or the raw material, which included names, addresses and phone numbers. “Again, I was under strict guidelines to protect identities, and it’s not that commonplace to ask for that data,” he said.

More.

I suspect the lawsuits LaCour alludes to are far from a distant possibility. Indeed, as you can see from the embedded tweets above, it looks like the Los Angeles LGBT Center may be gearing up for litigation already.

Expect updates. Meanwhile ICYMI, from Maria Konnikova, at the New Yorker, "How a Gay-Marriage Study Went Wrong."

Anti-Islam Protest in Phoenix

Bikers organized a "Draw Muhammad" protest, heh.

The local Islamists weren't please. At the Arizona Republic, "Phoenix Muslim leaders decry protest as anti-American."

Also at ABC-15 Phoenix: