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Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Will Bunch, After the Ivory Tower
Out today, from Will Bunch, at Amazon, After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics―and How to Fix It.
The Left's Assault on the Middle Class (VIDEO)
Here's Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, for the Rising on the Hill TV:
Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster Antitrust Case Goes to Court
Opening arguments were held yesterday.
The attorney for Penguin Random House, Daniel Petrocelli, is a freakin' firecracker.
At the New York Times, "The trial to decide whether the publishing giant may buy Simon & Schuster is a test of the Biden administration’s push to expand antitrust enforcement."
And at Vanity Fair, "The Antitrust Showdown to Determine Simon & Schuster's Fate Is About to Begin":
Jonathan Karp is rallying the troops at S&S as its suitor, Penguin Random House, heads to trial Monday against Biden’s Justice Department. The witness list is a who’s who of publishing bosses, power agents, and authors—including Stephen King—with a $2 billion deal on the line. On Monday, as lawyers for Penguin Random House and the Department of Justice were sharpening their sabres ahead of the antitrust duel of the summer, CEO Jonathan Karp fired off an email to his approximately 1,500 employees at Simon & Schuster, the nearly century-old publishing house that Karp has lorded over for the past two years. The fate of Simon & Schuster—whose catalog stretches from the classics of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, to the mass-market gold mines of Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark, to the recent political blockbusters of Bob Woodward and Mary Trump—has hung in the balance since the publisher was put on the block in March 2020 by its parent company, now called Paramount Global, which arose from the tortured recombination of Viacom and CBS, whose focus on mounting an offensive in the streaming wars leaves little room to manage a comparatively antiquated book-publishing business. Almost nine months after the sale was announced, Bertelsmann’s PRH bested Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins with a $2.18 billion bid for S&S, a proposed mash-up that would turn the Big Five publishers into the Big Four. However, the Champagne toasts turned out to be premature: Last November, Joe Biden’s merger-averse DOJ sued to block the deal, citing concerns that it would give the world’s largest book publisher “unprecedented control” over the industry, resulting in “lower advances for authors and ultimately fewer books and less variety for consumers,” a string of claims that PRH characterizes as ludicrous. S&S has been in limbo ever since—a discontinued operation as far as Paramount Global’s earnings releases are concerned, and yet still bereft of its suitor’s embrace. Which brings us back to Karp’s memo, a sort of pep talk to counteract the lingering uncertainty. “As I’ve told you before, I am hopeful that Simon & Schuster will become part of Penguin Random House,” wrote Karp, a 58-year-old former reporter and theater buff who rose up to become one of the most powerful and highly regarded figures in the publishing industry. “I spent 16 years at Random House, and I know their culture is a lot like ours—wholeheartedly devoted to books and deeply committed to its employees and authors. Penguin Random House’s parent company, Bertelsmann, has been in the book business since 1835 and shares Penguin Random House’s profound commitment to improve public readership. I strongly believe that Penguin Random House will be an excellent steward of Simon & Schuster’s legacy, and that we, and our authors, will benefit greatly from becoming a part of this superb publishing company.” The fate of S&S will soon be decided one way or another, with PRH and the DOJ gearing up to face off in court. The bench trial is set to begin Monday, adjudicated by Judge Florence Pan at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Three weeks have been allocated for the trial, which is slated to run from August 1 to August 19. The attorneys will then have until September 7 to submit any additional briefings to the court, and Pan is expected to rule sometime in November. The witness list is stacked with A-listers from the publishing world, including executives from S&S and PRH, as well as top literary agents and authors. Karp and Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle are both due to be called, as are King (for the government), Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch (ditto), and power agents Andrew Wylie (whose client roster includes Vanity Fair), Gail Ross, Joy Harris, and Elyse Cheney. (Those agents and a few others are notably being called by the defense.) The array of potential witnesses includes PRH honcho Andy Ward and the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author Charles Duhigg. “During the trial, our ability to comment on the testimony and proceedings will be limited,” Karp told his staff. “We will keep you informed of further developments when we have news that we can share.” PRH buying S&S is a small deal in the grand scheme of things, but the merger is being closely watched insofar as it reflects the Biden administration’s push to stem corporate consolidation. It also has obvious implications for the already much-consolidated publishing space, where there’s skepticism about creating another behemoth in an industry that has been upended by Amazon. As one big shot editor told me when the lawsuit was first announced, “I don’t know anyone who would think this is a great thing to happen.” Both sides filed their pretrial briefs last Friday...
Fit to Print? UNC's Settlement with Nikole Hannah-Jones is Bad News
Great piece from Phil Magness, for the James G. Martin Center, "A reporter who hasn’t dreamt of one day writing for the New York Times is a rare bird..."
Jessica Simpson Daisy Dukes
Oh this woman is my tormenter.
At Us Magazine, "Jessica Simpson Wears Daisy Dukes, Shows Off Her Toned Legs in New Pic.
Monday, August 1, 2022
Last Conviction in Salem Witch Trials Is Cleared 329 Years Later
Amazing story.
At the New York Times, "The exoneration of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last person whose name was not officially cleared, came from the efforts of an eighth-grade civics teacher and her students":
Elizabeth Johnson Jr. is — officially — not a witch. Until last week, the Andover, Mass., woman, who confessed to practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, was the only remaining person convicted during the trials whose name had not been cleared. Though she was sentenced to death in 1693, after she and more than 20 members of her extended family faced similar allegations, she was granted a reprieve and avoided the death sentence. The exoneration came on Thursday, 329 years after her conviction, tucked inside a $53 billion state budget signed by Gov. Charlie Baker. It was the product of a three-year lobbying effort by a civics teacher and her eighth-grade class, along with a state senator who helped champion the cause. “I’m excited and relieved,” Carrie LaPierre, the teacher at North Andover Middle School, said in an interview on Saturday, “but also disappointed I didn’t get to talk to the kids about it,” as they are on summer vacation. “It’s been such a huge project,” Ms. LaPierre added. “We called her E.J.J., all the kids and I. She just became one of our world, in a sense.” Only the broad contours of Ms. Johnson’s life are known. She was 22 years old when accused, may have had a mental disability and never married or had children, which were factors that could make a woman a target in the trials, Ms. LaPierre said. The governor of Massachusetts at the time granted Ms. Johnson a reprieve from death, and she died in 1747 at the age of 77. But unlike others convicted at the trials, Ms. Johnson did not have any known descendants who could fight to clear her name. Previous efforts to exonerate people convicted of witchcraft overlooked Ms. Johnson, perhaps because of administrative confusion, historians said: Her mother, who had the same name, was also convicted but was exonerated earlier. The effort to clear Ms. Johnson’s name was a dream project for the eighth-grade civics class, Ms. LaPierre said. It allowed her to teach students about research methods, including the use of primary sources; the process by which a bill becomes a law; and ways to contact state lawmakers. The project also taught students the value of persistence: After an intensive letter-writing campaign, the bill to exonerate Ms. Johnson was essentially dead. As the students turned their efforts to lobbying the governor for a pardon, their state senator, Diana DiZoglio, added an amendment to the budget bill, reviving the exoneration effort. “These students have set an incredible example of the power of advocacy and speaking up for others who don’t have a voice,” Ms. DiZoglio, a Democrat whose district includes North Andover, said in an interview. At least 172 people from Salem and surrounding towns, which include what is now North Andover, were accused of witchcraft in 1692 as part of an inquisition by the Puritans that was rooted in paranoia, according to historians. Emerson W. Baker, a history professor at Salem State University and the author of “A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience,” said there were many reasons innocent people would confess to witchcraft. Many wanted to avoid being tortured, or even believed that perhaps they might in fact be a witch and just didn’t know it, the result of a pressure campaign by religious ministers and even family members. “At what point does she say,” Mr. Baker asked, “‘For the good of the community, I probably should confess? I don’t think I’m a witch, but maybe I had some bad thoughts and I shouldn’t have had them.’” It would have been a logical thought process for a society that widely believed in the existence of witches, he said. Another common reason for confessions, Professor Baker said, was for survival. It became clear by the summer of 1692 that those who pleaded not guilty were quickly tried, convicted and hanged while those who pleaded guilty seemed to escape that gruesome fate...
U.S. Says Drone Strike Killed al Qaeda Leader Ayman al Zawahiri (VIDEO)
I watched President Biden's address live this afternoon, now available at the video below.
And at the Wall Street Journal, "First known U.S. counterrorism operation in Afghanistan since exit last year targeted a private residence in Afghan capital":
WASHINGTON—The White House said Monday that a U.S. missile launched from a drone in Afghanistan killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, a founding member of the jihadist movement and one of the key strategists behind an international campaign of terror that culminated in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. The U.S. strike targeted a safe house in a residential area in central Kabul on Sunday morning, in what was the first known counterrorism operation in the country since U.S. forces withdrew last year. The Biden administration said the Taliban was aware that al Zawahiri was hiding in Kabul, the clearest display of the continuing alliance between al Qaeda and the group now ruling Afghanistan. Speaking from the White House balcony on Monday, President Biden announced the strike, describing al Zawahiri as a terror leader who for decades “was the mastermind behind the attacks against Americans.” Those attacks included the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens of others and 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500. Al Zawahiri, 71, was an Egyptian national and longtime deputy of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. In the lead up to 9/11, Zawahiri was the most important of bin Laden’s advisers as they planned the hijackings. He was also instrumental in shaping how the terror group used the 2001 attacks to gain members, often through propaganda letters and videos. Mr. Biden during his eight-minute address said he approved the “carefully planned” operation a week ago “after being advised conditions were optimal.” “The United States did not seek its war on terror. You came to us. We answered with the same principles and resolve that has shaped us for generations upon generation to protect the innocent and defend liberty,” Mr. Biden said. The Taliban seized power during America’s final weeks in the country after two decades of war. The group has publicly pledged to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for terrorist organizations, and claims that it seeks peaceful relations with all countries. The revelation that al Qaeda’s leader and family moved to a safe house in one of the most affluent parts of Kabul soon after the Taliban returned to power undermines those claims. A senior Biden administration official said Zawahiri was killed by two U.S. Hellfire missiles fired from a drone as he stood on the balcony of the safe house in downtown Kabul. “Senior Haqqani Taliban figures were aware of Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul,” the official said. Pentagon officials said they had no knowledge of the strike and the senior Biden administration official declined to specify which U.S. agency was responsible, suggesting it was a CIA operation. The CIA declined to comment. The strike is a badly needed victory for the Biden administration after the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal last summer that helped return the Taliban’s most conservative factions to power. The White House said no civilian casualties resulted from the strike just after 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. There was no known response from al Qaeda. The Taliban condemned the attack, calling it a violation of international law and the agreement it signed with the U.S. in 2020 that set the terms of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Such actions are repetitions of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against U.S., Afghanistan and the region’s interests,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman. The last U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan one year ago killed 10 civilian members of an Afghan family in the final week of U.S. presence in the country. The casualties included seven children. The operation was initially described as successful. The U.S. later admitted that the target was a mistake. The U.S. intelligence community has “high confidence” that the dead individual is Zawahiri, the official said. The president was first briefed on plans for a strike on July 1 in the White House Situation Room by advisers including CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Christine Abizaid, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, the Biden official said. Mr. Biden made the decision to order the strike at a July 25 meeting with top advisers at which all the participants recommended going forward with it, the official said. The official said that for several years, U.S. intelligence agencies had been aware of a network of individuals that supported the al Qaeda leader. Intelligence agencies tracked several members of Zawahiri’s family, including his wife and children, as they moved to Kabul. The United States then got confirmation that Zawahiri himself was in Kabul. In early April, that intelligence was briefed to deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer and White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then later to national security adviser Jake Sullivan and the president, the official said. As with the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. spy agencies built a replica of the house where Zawahiri was staying, and brought it to meetings with Mr. Biden and his aides, the official said. Specialists used the model to confirm that Zawahiri could be killed in a missile strike without collapsing the entire structure and killing civilians, including members of his family. After the strike, Haqqani Taliban members sought to cover up the fact that Zawahiri had taken shelter there by moving Zawahiri’s family to another location, according to the administration official. “The safe house used by Zawahiri is now empty,” the official said. Under the terms of the agreement signed with the Trump administration in February 2020, the Taliban vowed to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to plan attacks against the U.S. and its allies. But the Taliban didn’t explicitly commit to continuing operations to target the group or to break ties with them. The United Nations has since reported that the Taliban and al Qaeda remain closely connected...U.S. Says Drone Strike Killed al Qaeda Leader Ayman al Zawahiri
In Monkeypox, Gay Men Confront Echoes of the Past
Check Inez Stepman for the truth bomb of the century, on Twtter below:
At at the New York Times, "‘It’s Scary’: Gay Men Confront a Health Crisis With Echoes of the Past":
One month of monogamy to flatten the curve
— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) July 28, 2022
Monkeypox has sparked frustration and anxiety among gay and bisexual men in New York, who remember mistakes and discrimination during the early years of the AIDS crisis. It was happy hour at a gay bar in Harlem, 4West Lounge, and the after-work crowd had come to drink rum punch and watch “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” But instead, perched on stools, the men talked about the rapidly spreading monkeypox virus: their efforts to snag a coveted vaccine appointment, in a city where demand for the shots far outstrips supply; the slow government rollout of vaccines and treatment; and their confusion about how the disease spreads and how to stay safe. “It feels like survival of the fittest, with all the pandemic waves and now monkeypox and all these vaccine problems,” said James Ogden, 31, who secured a vaccine appointment after weeks spent navigating the city’s glitchy online sign-up process. Kelvin Ehigie, 32, the bartender, agreed. When asked about the future, he said: “I do not feel confident.” For gay and bisexual men in New York, the summer has been consumed with similar conversations as monkeypox cases spike among men who have sex with men. There is widespread fear of the virus, which primarily spreads through close physical contact and causes excruciating lesions and other symptoms that can lead to hospitalization. There is fear of the isolation and potential stigma of an infection, since those who contract monkeypox must stay home for weeks. And some fear the vaccine itself, in an echo of the hesitancy and mistrust that hindered the coronavirus response. Many are also furious at the lags and fumbles in the government’s effort to contain the disease, including delayed vaccines and mixed messaging about how the virus spreads and how people should protect themselves. And some are anxious that monkeypox could be twisted into a political weapon to be used against gay and transgender people, whose rights have come under increasing fire from Republicans in recent months. Last week, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, after it spread from parts of Africa where it is endemic to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people around the world over the course of three months. As of Thursday, there were more than 3,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and 1,148 in New York, but experts suggest cases are being undercounted. Mr. Ehigie received the first shot of the two-dose vaccine regimen after a referral from his therapist, but worried the city might never give him a second. And, while he said everyone understands how H.I.V. spreads, monkeypox still felt like a mystery to him and many others. “Especially being in New York,” he said, “where everyone is in close contact with everyone else all the time, it’s scary.” Nearly all of the cases outside of Africa have been in men who have sex with men. In New York, only 1.4 percent of monkeypox patients self-identified as straight, with the rest describing themselves as gay, bisexual or declining to say, according to city data. The disease is rarely fatal, and no deaths have been reported outside of Africa. But the combination of government failure and a virus that has so far primarily affected gay and bisexual men has drawn frequent comparisons to the early years of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic. Those years were marked by acts of homophobia that remain seared in the minds of many gay Americans. The White House press secretary made jokes about AIDS at a 1982 press briefing. Churches refused to provide funerals for the dead. And President Ronald Reagan did not deliver a public speech on the epidemic until 1987, by which point roughly 23,000 Americans had died of the disease. Disagreements within the New York City Department of Health about how to communicate the risks of the disease spilled into public view last week. Some epidemiologists have argued that officials should more explicitly advise men who have sex with men to reduce their number of partners, or even consider short-term abstinence. (The director general of the W.H.O. made a similar recommendation this week, including that men should reconsider having “sex with new partners,” according to STAT News.) A department spokeswoman has said messages advising men to abstain from sex in particular could stigmatize gay and bisexual men and repeat the mistakes of the past. That history was on many people’s minds (and many people’s banners) at a protest last week in Manhattan that was organized by activist groups including ACT UP, which formed in 1987 in response to government inaction on H.I.V./AIDS. “I am sad that we have to be here,” said Erik Bottcher, a city councilman whose district includes Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, neighborhoods that have been hit hard by the outbreak. “We have been forced to do this for so long, we have been forced to fight for our own health care when we got let down by the government,” he said. “Shame on the government for letting us down again.” Nearby, protesters carried signs comparing President Biden to Mr. Reagan. Jon Catlin, 29, a graduate student, said he knew several people with monkeypox in New York and many more in Berlin, where he lives part time to do research. He said he studies the evolution of the idea of catastrophe in German thought, and “whose suffering counts as a crisis.” “Because it is happening to queer people,” Mr. Catlin said, the government has been slow to treat monkeypox as a true crisis, waiting to deploy vaccine doses until cases had grown exponentially...
The Commie Colonization of America
From Michelle Malkin, at the Unz Review":
From California to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf stream waters, the land that used to belong to Americans has been milked and bilked by investors and paid government agents of the People’s Republic of China. The National Association of Realtors reported last week that wealthy Chinese spent $6.1 billion on U.S. real estate in the past year. They’ve captured more than 10% of the market and have the highest average purchase price of all foreign real estate investors at over $1 million per home. California is their top pick, with more than a third of all homes located in the Golden State. (Or is it the Maoist Red State now?) In addition, China-tied entities own nearly 192,000 acres of American farmland and forest land — the bulk controlled by ShuangHui International after it acquired U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods in 2013. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made headlines this week blasting the takeover as a “huge problem.” Indeed, the commie colonization of America has been taking place for decades. But it’s not rapacious Beijing enemies abroad who deserve the most blame. It’s traitorous Democrats and globalist Republicans who’ve pimped and profited off of fraud-ridden green card rackets that allowed foreigners to gobble up our country. In my books “Invasion” (2002) and “Sold Out” (2015), my 2017 mini-documentary, “The Dark World of EB-5: U.S. Citizenship for Sale,” my 2016 report on Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s China deals, and countless syndicated columns dating back to 2001, I’ve blown the whistle on the national security nightmare posed by China’s favorite vehicle for gobbling up our neighborhoods: the bipartisan-boosted EB-5 investor visa scam. This is the same racket exploited by former Democrat Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, lobbied for by the late Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and Department of Homeland Security official Alejandro Mayorkas, and embraced by South Dakota Republican officials. In “Sold Out,” I plunged into the Atlantic Yards EB-5 boondoogle, 70% owned by the Shanghai government-run Greenland Group. A source in the foreign real estate investment industry alerted me in 2016 to some of the other top Chinese land grabs facilitated by the bipartisan EB-5 racket, including: — A $620 million luxury condo project in San Francisco by Chinese-owned Vanke; — A $1.5 billion development deal in Oakland, California, with Chinese company, Zarsion; and — The $60 million Europa Village residential development in Temecula, California, wine country involving over 100 Chinese EB-5 investors. The Chinese are buying up north Texas, charter schools and adjacent properties in Arizona, North Carolina and Florida, and 40% of the iconic General Motors building in New York. Just last week, a pair of Chinese investors were finally arrested for their alleged role in an EB-5 scheme to create a “China City” in the Catskills. The liberal media only pounced on the story because the investors illegally gave money to the Trump campaign; but the scam had been exposed back in 2013 by the Center for Immigration Studies’ EB-5 watchdog, David North.Still more.
Can the Biden Presidency Be Saved?
From Andrew Sullivan, "If he can sustain the deal-making, why not?":
Now we’re talking. The entire promise and rationale of a Biden presidency was not, I hate to break it to my lefty friends, a total transformation of the country in favor of green energy and “social justice.” It was a return to constitutional normalcy, and the kind of legislative deal-making that offers gradual progress on the biggest challenges of the day. We wanted a better rollout of vaccines, competent economic management of the bust-and-boom cycle of the pandemic, progress on the urgent question of climate change, and responsibility again on the world stage. Biden gets a B on the first, a C- on the second, a B+ on climate, and a solid B in foreign policy. That B+ on the climate depends of course on whether the Schumer-Manchin deal struck this week can get to the president’s desk. It looks like it can, if Senator Sinema doesn’t blow it up, and some geezers can recover from Covid quickly enough. And it represents what a Biden presidency promised to a center-right voter like me. It’s an old-fashioned political deal between two Senators, with Biden on the sidelines. Manchin gets some goodies for the carbon industries in exchange for the biggest federal investment in clean energy ever. There’s a tax on the super-rich. There’s even some incentives for keeping nuclear plants alive. There’s a popular move to reduce Medicare drug prices; and more secure access to healthcare for the less privileged. And this popularist package is branded as an inflation reduction measure! That’s a bit of a stretch, of course, but it may have a mild deflationary effect in a couple of years. The widely detested Larry Summers — see the Dishcast below — reassured Manchin on the inflationary impact this past week, and, as Chait details today, Summers has credibility on the issue after his sane and prescient warnings about inflation a year and a half ago. It comes after a bipartisan computer chips bill to better compete with China. It’s not a New Green Deal; and it’s not socialized medicine. It’s what we used to call pragmatic progress...
RELATED: At NYT, "Manchin, in Reversal, Agrees to Quick Action on Climate and Tax Plan."
Cameras in Public Schools
Darleene's been hammering this point:
This keeps coming up. NO teacher should ever be getting their "affirmation" "validation" jollies from his or her captive audience of minors. Why aren't these people who USE children for their own ends screened out?
— Darleen Click ♦ I support #LibsOfTikTok (@darleenclick) August 1, 2022
Public schools need cameras in the classrooms NOW. https://t.co/4ShfHMvsn4
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