Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

I gave my oldest son this book last Christmas, and now it's coming out in a feature film, due in theaters November 19th.

At Amazon, Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give. (The "movie tie-in" edition is here.)

And Judy Woodruff has this, at the PBS News Hour:

Ann Coulter on 'Watters' World' (VIDEO)

Coulter's new book is here, Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.

And at Fox News:

Why China's Rise Won't Happen

From Gordon Chang, at the National Interest, "China's Rise (and America's Fall) Just Won't Happen. Here's Why":

China's Rise (and America's Fall) Just Won't Happen. Here's Why https://t.co/qoBzTM9dh6

— National Interest (@TheNatlInterest) October 13, 2018

"This geopolitical recession is something really simple—it’s the end of the U.S.-led global order," Ian Bremmer, head of risk advisors Eurasia Group, told the ANZ Finance & Treasury Forum in Singapore this week.

Bremmer’s message plays well, and not just to those attending financial conferences. Most American policymakers, for instance, have bought into his “declinist” predictions about China’s rise and America’s fall. At least two—and maybe all three—of President Donald Trump’s immediate predecessors accepted the premise of eventual Chinese dominance.

For a long time, those predictions were generally accepted. Most recently, however, there are even more reasons to challenge the assumptions underpinning the narrative of declinism.

Declinists make one fundamentally incorrect assessment. “So that is one big reason why we have entered a geopolitical recession,” Bremmer told the crowd in Singapore. “All of the major international underpinnings of the U.S.-led order have become unmoored over the last 25 years.”

The most important reason for the establishment of the U.S.-led order after the Second World War was the dominance of the American economy, and the most important justification for declinist views has been China’s stunning four-decade economic revitalization. There is no shortage of predictions when in dollar-denominated terms China’s gross domestic product will overtake that of the U.S.

The gap between the two economies is still wide, however. Last year, the U.S. produced $19.39 trillion of GDP. China’s 2017 GDP, at a reported $12.84 trillion, was only 66.2 percent of America’s.

And that gap is, in reality, widening. Beijing’s official National Bureau of Statistics reported 6.8 percent growth for the first half of the year, far in excess of the American rate.

Yet China’s number is surely exaggerated. Beijing claimed nearly identical 6.7 percent growth for 2016. The World Bank, however, has cast doubt on that figure by releasing a chart in the middle of last year.

So what was China’s gross domestic product increase in 2016 according to the World Bank? Answer: 1.1 percent.

Shocked? The 1.1 percent figure is surprisingly close to the single best overall indicator of Chinese economic activity, total primary energy consumption. In 2016, total primary energy consumption, according to Beijing’s official numbers, was up 1.4 percent.

America’s economy, thanks to Trump’s deep cuts in taxes and regulations, is powering ahead. In the first two calendar quarters of this year, the economy grew 2.2 percent and 4.2 percent. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow forecast for the just-completed third quarter is 4.2 percent.

China’s economy is beset by excessive debt accumulation and other maladies, but the main factor inhibiting economic potential is not a systemic debt crisis—a concern to be sure—but the abandonment of reformist policies. Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, has turned his back on Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening up” program that is credited with sparking Chinese growth for almost four decades. Instead, Xi for a half decade has been reinstituting the Stalinist state model that Mao Zedong embraced in the early 1950s.

Xi’s reversal of liberal economic policies has been matched by his reversal of political and social policies. He has de-institutionalized the Communist Party, thereby heightening the risk of political instability. At the same time, he has demanded conformity—“absolute loyalty”—and tightened social controls. The institution of a nationwide social credit system , which will assign a score to every resident for all his or her actions, is but one example of the state’s attempt at total control of society.

China, as a result, is moving from authoritarianism back to totalitarianism, readopting a model that brought the People’s Republic to the brink of economic failure twice, once during the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and early 1960s and again during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s to mid-1970s. China’s economy cannot be expected to do well in an increasingly intolerant political atmosphere, as the country’s own history suggests.

And there is one more reason to doubt Chinese economic dominance: demography. China will soon join the ranks of shrinking nations. The population will peak somewhere around 1.44 billion people at the end of next decade according to the U.N.’s World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision. By the end of the century, China will have a population of 1.02 billion.

China’s decline has implications for its competition with the U.S. In 2015, China’s population was 4.4 times larger than America’s. By 2100, China is projected to have a population only 2.3 times larger.

China’s projected decline—and we should remember the U.N.’s estimates seem to overstate that country’s demographic potential—does not mean the Chinese economy cannot succeed, but it does mean it will have to succeed in spite of demography. China’s four-decade burst of growth occurred during the reaping of the “demographic dividend,” an extraordinary increase in the size of its workforce...

Still more.

Amber Lee's Sunday Forecast

More rain this weekend?

Well, here's the lovely Ms. Amber with the forecast, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future

Following-up, "America's New Mainline Ideology."

I do read a lot of the current Marxist revolutionary literature, but I've fallen a bit behind. (It takes a lot of time, and I've been enjoying a lot of classic fiction literature this past year.)

In any case, perhaps it's time to order some more books.

See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work.

Democrats Becoming 'More Ruthless'

Folks are noticing, dang!

Here's the recent piece at Politico that got some pushback on Twitter the other day, plus more from the Republican National Committee Below:

After failing to stop Kavanaugh's confirmation, Democrats wonder if it's time to be more ruthless https://t.co/NyserWzlvR

— POLITICO (@politico) October 7, 2018

The Left: An Unhinged Mob. pic.twitter.com/d4YhXrAsXe

— GOP (@GOP) October 11, 2018

.@GOPChairwoman: We at the RNC certainly do not want to see people create problems around Democrat leaders or attack people in restaurants. We need a return to civility. pic.twitter.com/Ffg41tLcEf

— GOP (@GOP) October 12, 2018

Evelyn Taft's Weekend Forecast

Lots of rain last night, and tremendous thunder and lightning.

Here's Ms. Evelyn with the forecast, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Lots of thunder and lightning in #Irvine. Lots! ☔️

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 13, 2018

Killer lighting and thunder in #Irvine, Evelyn. One boom was so loud it sounded like a rocket blast over my house. Scary. ☔️👀🙏

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 13, 2018

America's New Mainline Ideology

This is perhaps the best explanation of "cultural Marxism' I've read. (ADDED: With the exception of Linda Kimball, "Cultural Marxism," at American Thinker back in 2007; a great piece.)

Very good.

At the Mises Institute, "Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology?":

Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology? | Antony P. Mueller https://t.co/SO4stcEbeq @realjameswoods

— Janie Johnson (@jjauthor) October 13, 2018

Another name for the neo-Marxism of increasing popularity in the United States  is cultural Marxism.” This theory says that the driving force behind the socialist revolution is not the proletariat — but the intellectuals. While Marxism has largely disappeared from the workers' movement, Marxist theory flourishes today in cultural institutions, in the academic world, and in the mass media. This “cultural Marxism” goes back to Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and the Frankfurt School. The theorists of Marxism recognized that the proletariat would not play the expected historical role as a “revolutionary subject.” Therefore, for the revolution to happen, the movement must depend on the cultural leaders to destroy the existing, mainly Christian, culture and morality and then drive the disoriented masses to Communism as their new creed. The goal of this movement is to establish a world government in which the Marxist intellectuals have the final say. In this sense, the cultural Marxists are the continuation of what started with the Russian revolution.

Lenin and the Soviets
Led by Lenin, the perpetrators of the revolution regarded their victory in Russia only as the first step to the world revolution. The Russian Revolution was neither Russian nor proletarian. In 1917, the industrial workers in Russia represented only a small part of the workforce, which mainly consisted of peasantry. The Russian Revolution was not the result of a labor movement but of a group of professional revolutionaries . A closer look at the composition of the Bolshevist party and of the first governments of the Soviet state and its repressive apparatus reveals the true character of the Soviet revolution as a project that did not aim at freeing the Russian people from the Tsarist yoke but was to serve as the launchpad for the world revolution.

The experience of World War I and its aftermath showed that the Marxist concept of the "proletariat" as a revolutionary force was an illusion. At the example of the Soviet Union, one could also see that socialism could not function without a dictatorship. These considerations brought the leading Marxist thinkers to the conclusion that a different strategy would be required to establish socialism. Communist authors spread the insight that the socialist dictatorship must come in disguise. Before socialism can succeed, the existing culture must change. Control of the culture must precede political control.

Cultural Control Rises in Tandem with Political Control
Helping the neo-Marxists was the fact many of their efforts in taking control of culture happened parallel to the encroachment of the state on individual liberties. Over the past decades, at the same time when so-called political correctness has been on the rise, the American government obtained a vast arsenal of repressive instruments. Few Americans seem to know that the U.S. is still under emergency law that has been in force since George W. Bush used the executive privilege to declare a state of national emergency in 2001. In the same year, 9/11 opened also the path to push through the Patriot Act . From a score of around 95 points, the Freedom House "Aggregate Index of Freedom" of the United States has fallen to 86 points in 2018.

Moral Corruption
The way toward the rule of the cultural Marxists is the moral corruption of the people. To accomplish this, the mass media and public education must not enlighten but confuse and mislead. The media and the educational establishment work to put one part of the society against the other part. While group identities get more specific, the catalog of victimization and history of oppression becomes more detailed. To turn into a recognized victim of suppression is the way to gain social status and to obtain the right to special assistance, of respect and social inclusion.

The demand for social justice creates an endless stream of expenditures deemed essential — for health, education, old age, and for all those people who are "needy," "persecuted" and "oppressed," be it real or imaginary. The flood of never-ending spending in these areas corrupts the state finances and produces fiscal crises. This helps the Neo-Marxists accuse "capitalism" of all evils when, in fact, it is the regulatory state that provokes the systemic failures and when it is the excess of public debt that causes the financial fragility.

Politics, the media, and the judiciary never pause at waging the new endless wars: the war on drugs or against high blood pressure or the campaigns that assert the endless struggle against fat and obesity. The list of the enemies grows every day whether racism, xenophobia, and anti-Islamism. The epitome of this movement is political correctness, the war against having one's own opinion. While the public tolerates disgusting expositions of behavior, particularly under the cult of the arts, the list of prohibited words and opinions grows daily. Public opinion must not go beyond the few accepted positions. Yet while the public debate impoverishes, the diversity of radical opinion flourishes in the hidden.

The cultural Marxists drive society morally into an identity crisis by the means of the false standards of a hypocritical ethics. The aim is no longer the "dictatorship of the proletariat," because this project has failed, but the "dictatorship of political correctness" whose supreme authority lies in the hands of the cultural Marxists. As a new class of priests, the guardians of the new orthodoxy rule the institutions whose power they try to extend over all parts of the society. The moral destruction of the individual is a necessary step to accomplish the final victory.

Opium of the Intellectuals
The believers of neo-Marxism are mainly intellectuals. Workers, after all, are a part of the economic reality of the production process and know that the socialist promises are rubbish. Nowhere was socialism established as the result of a labor movement. The workers have never been the perpetrators of socialism but always its victim. The leaders of the revolution have been intellectual party politicians and military men. It was up to the writers and artists to conceal the brutality of the socialist regimes through articles and books and by films, music, and paintings, and to give socialism a scientific-intellectual, aesthetic and moral appearance. In the socialist propaganda, the new system appears to be both fair and productive.

The cultural Marxists believe that someday they will be the sole holders of power and be able to dictate to the masses how to live and what to think. Yet the neo-Marxist intellectuals are in for a surprise...

Still more.

Gordon Chang, The Coming Collapse of China

At Amazon, Gordon Chang, The Coming Collapse of China.

Gay People Are 'F–king Terrified' to Criticize #TransCult Ideology

Arielle Scarcella's a cool chick, and actually kinda hot, even though she's lesbian.

She's something of a career sexologist, or at least she's monetized her "hobby" of sexual identity and identity politics. Robert Stacy McCain calls folks like this "occupation activists" --- that is, the make a job out of their politicized sexual identity.

Anyway, the Other McCain has a post up on Ms. Scarcella. See, "Arielle Scarcella: Gay People Are ‘F–king Terrified’ to Criticize Trans Ideology":

.@PatriarchTree "Arielle Scarcella: Gay People Are ‘F–king Terrified’ to Criticize #Trans Ideology." 😨 https://t.co/cQBxuMn6hO #TransCult pic.twitter.com/Js2gM7efDK

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 13, 2018

Arielle Scarcella has 550,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, which makes her one of the most popular lesbian YouTubers. Some of her videos have more viewers than the average program at CNN (but let’s be honest, CNN is barely more popular than the Hallmark Channel). Her popularity is the only reason Ms. Scarcella has been able to survive telling the truth about transgender activists, who have harassed her viciously for months because of her criticism of their bizarre ideology.

In a video this week, Ms. Scarcella explained that most gay and lesbian YouTubers are “f–king terrified to even touch on an trans topics — about the blatant misogyny that the SJW trans activists promote, about how the Left is so far left at this point that they are suggesting conversion therapy and hiding it behind the agenda of ‘queer’ progressiveness, about how some bisexual YouTubers have made videos and public statements saying that our ‘genital preference’ is a whole bias, when in reality it’s not a bias, it’s not a preference, it’s our sexual orientation and it’s not something we can help, about how little gay men are actually policed for their sexual orientation in comparison to lesbians — not very much at all.”

Fear of being labelled a “TERF” (trans-exclusive radical feminist) causes many lesbian YouTubers to avoid the topic of transgenderism entirely, Ms. Scarcella explains, because SJWs (social justice warriors) like Riley Dennis have specifically targeted the lesbian community as “bigots” for rejecting relationships with men who think they’re women...

Keep reading.

Looks Like Democrat Heidi Heitkamp Is on the Way Out (VIDEO)

If Heitkamp loses, there's really no path for the Democrats to retake the Senate.

Republicans are absolutely gleeful about race. Heitkamp voted against Brett Kavanaugh, which to me doesn't make sense, other than what some say was the senator's pledege of allegiance to leftists who'll secure her a fat think tank job when she's out of office, or a university administration position, or some such far-left progressive sinecure to fatten the woman's coffers.

In any case, at Politico, "GOP closes in on Heitkamp knockout — and control of the Senate":

The North Dakota Democrat is down in polls. And if she loses, Democrats can all but kiss their hopes of winning the Senate goodbye.

Republicans say they’re on the cusp of delivering a knockout blow to North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp — and virtually ending Democrats’ hopes of winning the Senate.

Heitkamp is down in public polls by a significant margin, and most political handicappers think Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) is the favorite to beat her. If she goes down, Democrats would basically have to run the table in every other battleground race to take the chamber.

Republicans have had Heitkamp losing by double digits in their private polling for weeks, according to a GOP strategist working on Senate races. Democrats argue the race is closer but acknowledge she is down even in their polling, after her vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

“At this point, it’s really ours to lose,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “The race, probably to her detriment, has been nationalized around the Supreme Court and Trump.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Heitkamp acknowledged she’s facing an uphill battle but hinted that she believes Cramer could still self-immolate, pointing to his comments on sexual harassment and a new trade deal with Canada. In a story published last weekend, Cramer told The New York Times that sexual assault accusations and the #MeToo campaign against Kavanaugh were a “movement toward victimization” of men. He also was scolded by Canadians over his comments about new NAFTA negotiations.

“There’s a level of arrogance and rash statements that doesn’t reflect the typical North Dakota, common-sense contemplative, work-together kind of attitude,” Heitkamp said. “You can say all these crazy things, but sometimes the crazy things you say and how you behave has real consequences here.”

And her allies assert that Heitkamp is far from done. They point to her universal name ID, retail campaign skills and her surprise win in 2012 despite being down in the polls. In a state of just 750,000 people, and where perhaps 150,000 votes could win the race, winning over even 15,000 voters in the next month could make the difference, they argue.

“This is certainly the state that seems to be the most vulnerable. But that was probably the case a year ago,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). But he added, “It’s a tiny state, where you can make a lot of progress” meeting voters in person.

Democrats say their private polling shows Heitkamp's numbers recovering after dropping by double digits during the Kavanaugh fight, according to two Democrats familiar with the race. Heitkamp came out against Kavanaugh shortly before he was confirmed.

She's also seen a gush of online money into her campaign coffers since she came out against Kavanaugh, Democrats say. But she needs to mount a dramatic comeback in order for Democrats to have any shot at taking the Senate. It’s a long shot in any case, but nearly impossible if she loses.

Democrats need to net two seats to win majority, even as a half-dozen of their incumbents are in tough races. The party has four opportunities to flip Republican-held seats. But if Heitkamp loses they'd need to win three of those four, plus hold nine seats in states carried by Trump in 2016...

More.

No PAC Money: Republicans Cutting Loose Vulnerable GOP Congressional Candidates

This was at NYT yesterday, "Republicans Abandon Vulnerable Lawmakers, Striving to Keep House."

And then this today at LAT, discussing my district and Huntington Beach, "Top GOP funding group snubs incumbents Rohrabacher and Walters 3 weeks before midterm election":

A top GOP funding group snubbed two Orange County incumbents three weeks before the midterm election https://t.co/dV2UkbXiuk

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 13, 2018

In a worrisome sign for two endangered Orange County lawmakers, a major Republican Party funding group has passed over the pair in its opening round of broadcast television advertising across Southern California.

The omission of Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Mimi Walters by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a political action committee closely aligned with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), comes at a crucial inflection point in the midterm election when the two parties begin assessing their likely winners and losers.

The decisions are particularly acute for the GOP, which is facing a tsunami of Democratic campaign cash ahead of a feared blue wave on Nov. 6.

“Republicans are taking a cold-blooded look at races to decide where to put resources and where to withdraw resources to put somewhere else,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan election analyst who has spent decades sizing up campaigns.

The GOP has already cut loose several incumbents, including Reps. Mike Coffman in the Denver suburbs and Mike Bishop in southern Michigan.

Democrats need a gain of 23 seats nationwide to take control of the House, which they surrendered after a blowout loss in the 2010 midterm election.

Candidates in California, where more than half a dozen seats are being seriously contested, are at particular risk of being cut off financially because of the state’s exorbitant advertising costs. Money saved in the costly Los Angeles media market can be spread over several contests in other states that may be considered more winnable.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, which collects multi-million-dollar checks from the Republican Party’s biggest donors, says it is spending nearly $12 million on cable television ads in four House contests in Southern California

On Friday, the super PAC launched an additional $5-million ad campaign on the main broadcast stations in Los Angeles, the nation’s second most expensive media market after New York.

But the fund’s opening broadcast ads support only two of the four Republican candidates in the Southland’s hardest-fought races: Rep. Steve Knight of Palmdale and Young Kim of Fullerton, relegating its Rohrabacher and Walters ads tocable channels with fewer viewers.

Courtney Alexander, the super PAC’s communications director, declined to comment on its advertising maneuvers.

“If the election were held today, we believe that both Mimi Walters and Dana Rohrabacher would win their reelection,” she said.

The fund is free to add Walters and Rohrabacher to its broadcast lineup later. But millions of Californians have already received their ballots by mail, so immediate advertising is crucial to the fate of the two lawmakers, who are each facing their most serious challenges ever.

Rohrabacher has served 15 terms in Congress and Walters is bidding to win her third term.

Their Democratic challengers are already spending heavily on broadcast television ads. Walters has aired some broadcast commercials too, but Rohrabacher has not.

Nationwide, Democratic candidates have raised far more money than Republicans. As a result, GOP candidates are counting on outside groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund to come to the rescue.

But those groups must pay as much as quadruple the rates that television stations are required by law to offer to candidates, so the Democratic dollars are buying far more ad time. And those dollars are expanding the political battlefield, pressuring Republican strategists to make hard decisions on where to commit precious resources and which candidates to let go.

“While most people talk constantly about whether [Democratic enthusiasm] will translate into turnout, it’s definitely translating into dollars,” said Rob Stutzman, a veteran Republican strategist in Sacramento. “Dollars aren’t decisive always, but it’s always a big advantage.

“When you’re these national committees and you’ve got problems in the suburbs of Dallas, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, you’ve got to start making decisions on where you can most effectively spend,” Stutzman said...

Still more.

Pregnant Kate Upton

Maybe Ms. Kate will be at the ALCS game today in Boston.

But see Drunken Stepfather in the meantime, "KATE UPTON PREGNANT NIPPLES OF THE DAY.

Rita Ora in Clash Magazine

Fantastic!

See, "Rita Ora Is The Fourth Face of Issue 109."

FLASHBACK: "Rita Ora for 'Lui' Magazine."

Chrissy Teigen Big Fat of the Day

At Drunken Stepfather, "Chrissy Teigen Big Fat Hard Nippled Tits of the Day."

Emily DiDonato in White Pant Suit

At Taxi Driver, "Emily DiDonato Areola Peek in White Pant Suit."

There's No Such Thing as a Moderate Democrat in 2018

From Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist, "Tennessee Senate Race Shows There's No Such Thing as a Moderate Democrat in 2018":

In 2018, There Is No Such Thing As A Moderate Democrat - The Federalist https://t.co/STEYIgNPPS

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) October 12, 2018

While the national media encourage the radicalization of the Democratic Party and highlight how that radicalization excites its base in liberal states, the result is the crushing of moderate Democratic pols.

Donald Trump was elected president despite low popularity ratings in 2016. While both Hillary Clinton and Trump were viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans polled, Trump set the record, with 61 percent viewing him in a negative light, according to Gallup.

For millions of Americans, disliking Trump was not a barrier to voting for him. In some cases people voted for him enthusiastically despite not particularly liking him.

Tennessee has a smaller version of the opposite issue. Volunteer State voters like the Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen. A popular former governor and mayor of Nashville, his entrance into the race made the open seat competitive despite the state’s Republican leanings. Cook Political report rates it as a toss-up. The Real Clear Politics average has Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn up by less than three points.

Bredesen is certainly a standard Democrat in his politics, but he’s downplaying that fact and is willing to buck his party. He opposed the manner in which Obamacare was implemented and occasionally criticizes his party for its extremism.His approach is persuasive to some, including the Washington Post opinion journalist Radley Balko.

He notes that Blackburn’s approach is more politically savvy. But it’s worth thinking about why. As the recent Kavanaugh debacle showed, at best the Senate has a grand total of one Democrat who can be labeled moderate: Joe Manchin. Even Democratic senators from all the other states that desired a Kavanaugh confirmation voted against him.

More important than the ultimate vote, though, were the Democratic leaders responsible for the debacle. Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) stage-managed the accusations against Kavanaugh for maximum political effect. After hearings were reopened, she read the outlandish Michael Avenatti gang rape cartel allegations into the record. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) kept Democratic votes in line and told them to disregard the principle of presumed innocence.

Looked at this way, Blackburn’s focus isn’t just a cynical ploy but an understanding of how the current Senate’s party control has a far greater effect on the average voter than any individual senator does. Blackburn likely emphasized it because it’s a message that resonates with voters more than the one where a politician claims he or she will be one way when they frequently abandon their commitments when in Washington.

How many times have politicians claimed they wouldn’t vote for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or Schumer only to do just that or otherwise fail to put other Democrats in power? Bredesen claimed he wouldn’t vote for Schumer for leader, but voters likely understand that his no vote would have no effect on Schumer’s success. It is perhaps worth noting that new undercover video from James O’Keefe casts Bredesen’s moderation pledges in a questionable new light.

A new National Republican Senatorial Committee ad dealing with the race understands this issue well...

There's still more, including all the linked tweets and embedded videos at the piece.

Asian-Americans and the Secrets of Getting Into Harvard

This is really interesting.

At WSJ, "The Secrets of Getting Into Harvard Were Once Closely Guarded. That’s About to Change" (and see this alternative link):

Harvard's secretive admissions practices are going on trial on Boston https://t.co/askp9RnnrR

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 11, 2018

This year, 42,749 students applied to Harvard College, and only 1,962 were admitted. How Harvard decides who makes the cut has long been a mystery.

That’s about to change. A trial beginning Monday in Boston federal court will examine how the elite institution uses race to shape its student body. It will force Harvard to spill details about its admissions practices.

The case has transfixed the world of higher education—both for the peek it provides into a process cloaked in secrecy, and the prospect that the court decision will upend the admissions practices of other colleges as well.

A lawsuit accuses Harvard University of illegally discriminating against Asian-American applicants by holding them to a higher standard than students of other races. Harvard denies the accusation, saying race is just one of a complex matrix of factors it considers before handing out its coveted acceptances.

Harvard uses what it calls a holistic approach to admissions, considering not only an applicant’s academic record and test scores but also activities, formative experiences and personal attributes. The model is widely used by other top colleges.

Elite colleges, 60% of which consider race in admissions, say the trial’s outcome could threaten their autonomy to craft undergraduate classes. If forced to exclude race from admissions considerations, many schools say, their student demographics would change significantly.

For years, Harvard has fought against the public release of documents showing the inner workings of its admissions office. Court filings in advance of the trial offer tantalizing details about how Harvard rates prospective students and how it considers race. The trial is expected to shed light on the magnitude of admission preferences for athletes, children of alumni and applicants with connections to major donors.

Among the more controversial aspects of the admissions process: Each applicant receives a “personal rating” reflecting, in part, an analysis of personality traits such as humor, courage and kindness.

The plaintiffs claim that Harvard’s own data show Asian-Americans received the highest academic and extracurricular ratings of any racial group, but the lowest personal ratings. In court filings, Harvard has attributed lower Asian-American personal scores to “unobservable factors” that come through in teacher recommendations, applicants’ essays and interviews, which are also factored into the rating.

The lawsuit seeks to ban Harvard from considering race in future admissions decisions. It was brought by a nonprofit group, led by a conservative legal strategist, whose members include Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard.

Over the past 40 years, the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that universities can consider an applicant’s race to promote the educational benefits that flow from diverse campuses, including better preparing students for the workforce.

The presidents of Yale University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, have filed a brief in support of Harvard, arguing that prohibiting colleges from weighing race in admissions would represent an “extraordinary infringement on universities’ academic freedom.”

The Justice Department has weighed in on the other side, filing a “statement of interest” supporting the plaintiffs. It launched its own civil-rights investigation last year into whether Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The Education and Justice Departments also recently opened a similar investigation into Yale.

A senior Justice Department official said the investigations are a priority for its Civil Rights Division. Harvard’s lawyers have called the government’s actions a “thinly veiled attack” on Supreme Court precedent and “so outside ordinary practices.”

California banned its public universities from considering race in admissions two decades ago. Since then, University of California, Berkeley has grown by roughly 8,800 undergraduates but has about 275 fewer black students. At the private California Institute of Technology, which says academics are the most important admissions criterion, 43% of the undergraduate population last year was Asian-American.

Harvard said in a court filing that eliminating affirmative action would give the biggest boost to white students, increasing their share in a recent admitted class to 48%, from 40%. The share of Asian-Americans would rise to 27%, from 24%, while African-Americans would drop to 6%, from 14%, and Hispanics to 9%, from 14%.

The lawsuit was brought in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit run by Edward Blum. Mr. Blum has funded other challenges to affirmative action, including a Supreme Court case involving Abigail Fisher, a white applicant rejected from the University of Texas...

Wow, this is major.

RTWT.

I'm voting with the plaintiffs. Discrimination is wrong. The Asian students are being punished for being successful. Next to blacks and Native Americans, Asian-Americans have faced some of the worst racial discrimination in American history. It's reprehensible that they're being made to pay for the radical left's policies of diversity and "affirmative action," which benefit those who're less well prepared for the rigors of elite higher educaion.

Poor, Rural Communities Stuck in Hurricane Michael

This is really interesting.

At the New York Times, "‘I Got Stuck’: In Poor, Rural Communities, Fleeing Hurricane Michael Was Tough":

The town's called Panacea, but when Hurricane Michael hit, the name seemed overly optimistic. Gene Bearden, who's been trying to leave for 4 years, doesn't have much left now. https://t.co/gaNMx0f52O

— NYT National News (@NYTNational) October 11, 2018

PANACEA, Fla. — The orders came down to mobile home residents as the menace of Hurricane Michael approached in the Gulf of Mexico: Get out. Get out now.

The evacuation mandate reached Gene Bearden, 76, in this blink-and-you-miss-it town with an aspirational name south of Tallahassee and in an area where a storm surge of up to 13 feet had been forecast.

Mr. Bearden wanted to leave. He had been wanting to leave Panacea, in fact, for four years, but had not mustered the financial wherewithal to do it, and the arrival of a Category 4 hurricane did nothing to change that.

Versions of his story played out across the eastern edge of the Florida Panhandle, home to modest coastal communities where people already hard on their luck had little means to escape the storm’s wrath.

Mr. Bearden had not planned to stay in Panacea when he visited his aunt in 2014. But when he tried to renew his driver’s license, he ran into a problem with his birth certificate, which he couldn’t fix unless he went to Atlanta — he was born in Georgia. He couldn’t make it there. So he stayed, without a license, in an RV park here.

“I got stuck,” he said.

With the storm looming this week, sheriff’s deputies showed up on Wednesday to get residents out. Mr. Bearden explained why he could not just drive away. A kind deputy found a solution, Mr. Bearden said: He wrote him a letter authorizing him to drive, with no license and no current vehicle registration, to a place far enough north to be safe. Mr. Bearden packed up a white pickup and drove — but only to the next town, Medart, where he rode out the storm inside his parked truck.

“It wasn’t fun,” he said on Thursday, back at the RV camp, now almost entirely empty. “Everybody left. They had to.”

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'Jeremy'

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, Pearl Jam's, "Jeremy."

(A lyrics video is here.)

Lyin' Eyes
Eagles
6:53am

Rebel Yell
Billy Idol
6:48am

Semi-Charmed Life
Third Eye Blind
6:44am

Welcome To The Jungle
Guns N' Roses
6:39am

Our House
Madness
6:36am

In The Air Tonight
Phil Collins
6:23am

Feel It Still
Portugal. The Man
6:20am

Back In Black
AC/DC
6:16am

Our Lips Are Sealed
The Go-Go's
6:13am

Jeremy
Pearl Jam
6:08am