At Amazon, Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’
This isn't new, though indeed folks don't talk about it on campus, at all (at least at my college, and I surmise others, most others, in fact).
Props to WSJ for the excellent reporting here.
ICYMI, Christina Hoff Sommers has written on this stuff, here: The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men.
And from the article:
Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels. At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline. This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse. No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. “Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students. American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention. The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women. “Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?” Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter. “It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said. At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said. Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said. Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ” Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women. “We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply. The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal. No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?” Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.” The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men. The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school. “The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said. It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic...The number of men enrolled in college this year trails women by record highs, part of a nationwide education gap. Nobody wants to talk about it. https://t.co/RzPzSDIDPd
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 8, 2021
I don't trust this Framingham study.
I'm at community college. I've been teaching online since March 17th last year. I suspect just as many women have been working outside the home to support their families as have men.
Who know, though? I'd have to see the data.
Either way, boys and young men are indeed getting screwed. Gender identity theory, and whatever other brain dead ideological abominations, have left men high and dry.
Still more.
Monday, September 6, 2021
Actor Michael K. Williams Found Dead in His New York City Apartment
As they say, life imitates art sometimes, and in this case, it's particularly sad.
At the New York Post, "‘The Wire’ actor Michael K. Williams found dead in NYC apartment."
It's weird, but I just watched "The Wire" a few weeks back for my first time. Williams plays "Omar," a gangland stickup man, who by far is the most lovable character on the show, if that's the best way to describe him.
He won't soon be forgotten, as apparently he was universally beloved among television fans.
May he rest in peace.
Amazing Surf Photography
Amazing.
Click on the photo and notice that dude giving the hang loose sign.
So wicked.
Your Shot photographer Philip Thurston captured these two perfectly timed waves pic.twitter.com/L27VLNuAAn
— National Geographic (@NatGeo) August 5, 2021
Happy Labor Day!
Here's to all those hard-working Americans (that is, all of us who actually work, rather than suck at the teat of the sow of the American social welfare state).
On Twitter:
Also, lusty blonde.
And tremendous Tessa.
American Honor
Bernard-Henri Lévy, at the Tablet, "Even in the midst of deep humiliation, there are still signs of the exceptional nation I’ve loved since childhood."
Indian vs. Black: Vigilante Killings Upend South African Town
Ugly down there.
Just nasty.
At the New York Times, "As rioting and looting swept the country this summer, Indians in the suburb of Phoenix set up roadblocks to police their streets. Dozens of Black people passing through wound up dead":
PHOENIX, South Africa — The blows thundered down — bats, a hammer, a field hockey stick — as Njabulo Dlamini lay curled on the pavement, trying to summon the strength to move. He and five friends, all of them Black, had been driving in a minibus taxi through the streets of Phoenix, a predominantly Indian suburb created from the forced racial segregation of apartheid South Africa. A mob surrounded them, dragged them from the taxi, made them lie on the pavement and beat them furiously, according to witnesses and video footage obtained by The New York Times. Some of Mr. Dlamini’s friends managed to escape. Others were chased and beaten again by the crowd, which had been whipped up in recent days by WhatsApp warnings and reports of violence by Black people streaming into their community to loot shopping centers. Mr. Dlamini barely made it across the street. He later died of his injuries at the hospital, his family said. South Africa was convulsed this summer by some of its worst civil unrest since the end of apartheid. The imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for refusing to appear before a corruption inquiry set off violent protests by his supporters. Soon, riots and looting erupted in parts of the country, fed by broad disgust at poverty, inequality and the government’s failure to provide even the most basic services, like water or electricity. Officials have called the violence an insurrection — an attempt to sabotage Mr. Zuma’s rival and successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in part by stoking some of the nation’s oldest racial tensions. Nationwide, more than 340 people died in the mayhem, many in stampedes or circumstances that remain unclear. But government officials have been alarmed by a dynamic that, they say, dangerously undermines the social order: dozens of vigilante killings by ordinary citizens. The vigilantism was especially pronounced in Phoenix, a working-class community of about 180,000 near the country’s east coast. The country’s police minister said that 36 people there — 33 of them Black — were killed in what some officials are calling a massacre. Fifty-six people have now been arrested in connection with the violence in Phoenix. “Most of the people who died were innocent people who were traveling,” said Sihle Zikalala, the premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, where Phoenix is. Mobs of mostly Indian residents, worried that their community was under siege, erected roadblocks on street corners. They indiscriminately stopped Black people, and sometimes beat or killed them, the police said, inflaming the long-fragile relationship between Black and Indian South Africans — two marginalized groups under white apartheid rule. “We need to confront racism in our society,” Mr. Ramaphosa wrote in a letter to the nation, specifically addressing the Phoenix unrest. “We need to have honest conversations not only about our attitudes to one another, but also about the material conditions that divide us.” The authorities have been far less open about their roles in the upheaval. Interviews with dozens of Black and Indian residents in the Phoenix area, as well as a review of previously unreported video footage, show that at least some of the violence and deaths could have been prevented if the police had provided basic security...
Five Sailors Dead in Navy Helicopter Crash off San Diego Coast (VIDEO)
Tragic.
At the Sand Diego Union-Tribune, "Navy identifies 5 San Diego sailors killed in helicopter crash off coast":
SAN DIEGO — Five sailors killed when their helicopter crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and fell into the sea were identified by the Navy on Sunday.
The six-person crew of the MH-60S Seahawk helicopter were conducting routine operations on the flight deck of the carrier Tuesday afternoon when the helicopter crashed.
One of the helicopter’s crew was rescued from the water following the crash and is in stable condition ashore. Five Abraham Lincoln sailors were injured in the crash; two were also taken ashore for treatment.
A three-day search for survivors was called off Saturday morning and the Navy switched to an effort to recover their bodies. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
The sailors killed include two pilots, an aircrewman and two corpsmen, the Navy said. All were attached to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, which is based at Naval Air Station North Island.
The Abraham Lincoln also is based at the air station.
The MH-60S helicopter typically carries a crew of about four and is used in missions including combat support, humanitarian disaster relief and search and rescue.
The Seahawk was conducting routine flight operations from the ship when it crashed about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The ship has been conducting exercises off the San Diego coast in preparation for a deployment next year, the Navy has said.
Lt. Sam Boyle, a spokesperson for the San Diego-based 3rd Fleet, said the Navy is making every effort to recover the helicopter and the remains of the sailors.
They are:
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Climate Change Debate
Longtime readers know I'm a hardcore "climate change" skeptic. (See my earlier post, "The Climate Emergency.")
That said, to me, this current concatenation of violent weather events, from East to West (here in the U.S., not to mention worldwide), reveals something very significant happening with weather patterns and events.
In my international relations class one year, I showed the Patrick Moore video, which resulted in literally a revolt in the classroom, with students enraged at someone, something, anything that challenged their pre-fed beliefs that the Earth is burning up.
It was an unpleasant experience. Honestly, it was so bad I hesitate to show that video in class these days, though Moore is exactly right: In science, the key is always skepticism --- and, most importantly, scientists can really never know all the potential causal factors that may result in any particular event, in political science, or climate science, or any field of inquiry.
Of course, this is the age of "cancel culture," and especially the dominance of leftist indoctrination in the schools, extreme political polarization, and a general postmodern trend toward the rejection of authority, especially among the young.
In any case, check out this scientific debate today, up at RealClearPolitics:
From Christopher Lingle, at the American Institute for Economic Research, "Climate Science: Seeking Truth or Defending Consensus?"
And from Adam Sobel, at CNN, "This Is a Dystopian Climate Change Moment."
Try to stay safe, dear readers.
Thirty-Seven Percent Containment at Lake Tahoe's Caldor Fire (VIDEO)
Extreme weather. All over the country.
It's really biblical, and, frankly, all you can do sometimes is pray. It's all in His hands.
At the San Jose Mercury News, "Caldor Fire containment jumps to 37% as weather calms":
Friday a ‘monumental day’ for more than 4,500 crews battling blaze. One week after the Caldor Fire made a terrifying push into the Lake Tahoe basin, a promising shift in weather conditions allowed crews to start gaining sizable containment of the Northern California wildfire that has threatened thousands of homes and forced mass evacuations in two states. Thanks to cooler, more humid weather conditions, an influx of 1,000 more firefighters and the strengthening of lines on both western and eastern flanks of the fire, crews had contained about 37% of the blaze as of Saturday, more than doubling progress in the past week and evoking a cautious sense of optimism for the first time since the fire broke out in mid-August. “It’s starting to come together,” said Cal Fire spokesman Capt. Keith Wade. “It seems like big containment jumps, but it’s days and days of work.” Terror surrounding the blaze’s spread skyrocketed on the evening of Aug. 29, when it roared across the face of Echo Summit, flung embers that set spot fires across Highway 89 and crept down toward the beloved Tahoe Basin, home to more than 40,000 people and the iconic lake. Some 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe were ordered to evacuate, creating a massive traffic jam that lasted for hours. But just two days later — as crews staved off flames from the communities of Christmas Valley and Meyers — a favorable shift in winds arrived before the fire could explode farther northeast, giving more than 4,500 firefighters the chance to clear new firebreaks with dozens of bulldozers, strike down dry trees, lay hoses near homes and drop 500-gallon buckets of water on hotspots. By Saturday, with 13 large wildfires burning across California, nearly a third of personnel, engines, helicopters and even bulldozers battling the blazes were committed to the Caldor Fire — a massive effort that fire officials say is beginning to pay off. Overnight Friday, the wildfire grew just a few thousand acres to reach 214,017 acres total. High winds that gripped the region last weekend receded Wednesday and remained calmer through the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service, bringing relief to hand crews charged with stopping spot fires that soared out a mile ahead of the fire and letting helicopters make more water drops. Temperatures meanwhile cooled slightly and humidity rose. A thick layer of smoke bearing down over the fire also helped to block out the sun and quiet its spread, though it brought air quality to hazardous levels around South Lake Tahoe and blew smoke toward the Bay Area, where the Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued a Spare the Air alert for Sunday...
Still more.
New Jersey. God Have Mercy
No matter your politics, this story is heart-wrenching.
At NYT, "New Jersey’s Stunning Storm Toll Includes Many Who Drowned in Cars":
Malathi Kanche was heading home after dropping her son off at college Wednesday evening when the small S.U.V. she was driving was overwhelmed by floodwaters set off by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. With the vehicle stalled in waist-deep water on Route 22 in Bridgewater, N.J., she and her 15-year-old daughter climbed out. They clung to a tree as the torrent rushed past, according to a close family friend and neighbor, Mansi Mago. Then the tree gave way, and “the water took her,” said Ms. Mago, recounting what another stranded motorist told her hours later. A 46-year-old software designer who emigrated from India, Ms. Kanche was one of six people who were still missing two days after Ida caused the deaths of at least 25 people in New Jersey — more fatalities than in any other state — as the monster storm whipped its way onto the Gulf Coast and tore north to New England. At least a third of the fatalities in New Jersey were people who drowned after being trapped in vehicles in a densely packed state known for its car culture, its tangle of highways, suburban commuter towns and limited public transportation. Screeching alerts had sounded repeatedly on cellphones late Wednesday, warning people to stay inside, but no travel bans were put in place in New Jersey or New York, where 16 deaths — including 13 in New York City — have been linked to the storm. On Friday, in an acknowledgment of the growing risk of flash flooding as climate change unleashes increasingly intense storms, New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced that the city would increase its use of evacuation orders and travel bans. In New Jersey, officials have not said whether they would apply new measures to protect the state given the likelihood of severe storms happening more frequently. As the region faced the daunting task of cleaning and clearing debris, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York both said that they were expecting large infusions of recovery aid from the federal government. President Biden was expected to soon declare the states a federal disaster area. Mr. Murphy, speaking from Millburn, whose downtown commercial corridor had been ravaged by the rain, said the state would make $10 million in aid available to small businesses. “If you’ve been crushed and you can prove it, you’re eligible,” Mr. Murphy said. Early Friday, Mr. Murphy was still warning people to remain off the roads, especially near waterways that had not yet crested. “Many motorists have been caught by surprise that the depth of the water on a road that they thought they knew — not to mention the swiftness of the current,” Mr. Murphy said. “You can easily be swept away or trapped,” he said. “And sadly, we have many examples of just that.” The stories of devastation and death were tempered by the many tales of rescue in New Jersey, where the National Weather Service said three tornadoes also touched down during the storm, leveling homes in South Jersey but killing no one. In South Plainfield, N.J., a 31-year-old man, Danush Reddy, lost his footing as he was walking alongside a flooded roadway and was swept into a 36-inch-wide sewer pipe, borough officials said. His body was found miles away...
Police found Ms. Kanche's body on Friday.
Biden’s Shameless Exploitation of His Dead Son
At Frontpage Magazine, "As bad as you think Joe Biden may be, he’s even worse":
After getting 13 American military personnel killed in Kabul, Biden met with family members and, instead of listening to their pain and apologizing for his actions, lectured them about his son. Former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the scion of the family who took up the family business, figured large in his father’s speeches defending his disastrous retreat in Afghanistan. It was the same stump speech that Biden had been giving about his dead son for six years which he dusted off to explain why he was abandoning Americans in the hands of terrorists. It was the same speech to which he subjected the family members of the men he killed. “When he just kept talking about his son so much it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Cpl Jared Smitz, said. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.” The loss of a son is unimaginably painful, but Biden has spent the remainder of his political career exploiting Beau Biden, the way that he spent his early career exploiting his dead first wife and daughter by accusing the truck driver of being drunk or having broadsided her. In reality, his first wife drove into the path of the truck. What should have been a private tragedy was weaponized into a public spectacle with Biden taking his Senate oath at his son’s bedside. The infamously theatrical scene of Beau as a little boy lying in a hospital bed in a room filled with reporters and photographers was not an act of devotion, but disturbing exploitation. Two young boys, Beau and Hunter, who had lost their mother could have used some privacy while they recovered. Instead, Biden dragged them into the spotlight in a public relations bid. In death, Biden exploited Beau even harder than he had in life. After his son’s death, Biden contemplated building an entire political campaign around his dead son...
Still more.
Thursday, September 2, 2021
This is What Victory Looks Like?
*Shrug*
At the Other McCain, "Biden Speech Signals Beginning of Media Effort to ‘Pivot’ Away Afghanistan."
Mollie Hemingway: 'We Can Never Fight Another War Like Afghanistan Ever Again' (VIDEO)
BRET BAIER: They have hosted radical Islamic terrorists and others, they say they are fighting ISIS-K. It's really a witch's brew there, Mollie. How about who knew what went and this leaked Reuters report the transcript from this call between President Biden and the Afghan President Ghani? MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Yeah, we impeached a president for a phone call and now we have this leak of phone call that President Biden had where he asked someone to lie, in exchange for military support. It sounds like something that last year would have caused major problems for the previous president. I think we cannot lose sight of how we can never fight a war like this ever again. There was a Pew poll last week that showed that Americans are broadly supportive of the departure from Afghanistan. That's the Trump policy that Biden supported. They have even more agreement that the manner in which we fought this war was a failure. You don't see people talking about World War II the way we talk about this war. This war has been prosecuted poorly, according to the American people for decades. And then there is even more agreement that the manner in which Biden departed was a complete debacle. That's not really up for debate. It was a debacle. It was a national humiliation and disgrace. The proper response to that is to clean out our military like we did after the Bay of Pigs and make sure that people are replaced with people who know how to do their jobs. Unfortunately, the current president who was involved in this phone call is incompetent and unable to replace the military leadership who failed. So it remains to the American people in their elections to replace him and the woke generals who cannot do basic jobs like winning wars or exiting a country...Video at the link.
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