Posted on September 21, 2023 by Steven Hayward in The Daily Chart

The Daily Chart: What’s the Matter with Liberal Arts Colleges?

I have been arguing for a while now that elite private liberal arts colleges are much more woke, leftist, and conformist than large public universities like Berkeley, Ohio State, Michigan, etc. And here’s a data set that demonstrates one way in which this is evident:

Lesson: DO NOT send you child to any of the small elite private liberal arts colleges. Cross them all off your list. Save money; send your kid to a state college instead. To study petroleum engineering.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Biden corruption, Biden Justice Department, Merrick Garland

Mum’s the word

Miranda Devine reviews Attorney General Merrick Garland’s performance before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday in the New York Post column “Ignorant, pathetic Merrick Garland wilts on the hot seat before Congress.” Garland added the twist of a Mafia don to his usual protestations of rectitude. He don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’. And your question is a personal insult.

I would have missed the deconstruction of what has become the stupid Dem deflection if it weren’t for Devine’s column:

[Garland’s] favorite line was to point out that Weiss, whom he has elevated to special counsel despite manifest failures, was a “Trump appointee.”

He said so nine times.

He seems to think that bias can be ascribed to prosecutors depending on which party appoints them. Presumably he applies that logic to himself, as a Biden appointee.

Usually smart people find it tedious to say the same thing nine times in a row, but Garland seemed to enjoy it, until the wonderful Liz Cheney-slayer Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) wiped the smirk off his face.

“Mr. Garland, one of the things you have done and repeated over and over and over again is to point out that Mr. Weiss was appointed as US attorney by President Trump, as though that somehow inoculates him from criticism by us. Is that really how this game is played, that if someone is appointed by a Republican, then they’re supposed to be on the Republican team, or if they’re appointed by a Democrat, they’re on the Democrat team? You were appointed by Mr. Biden, weren’t you? Are you on the Democrat team?”

Touché. He never said it again.

Hageman’s line of questions for Garland appears in the video clip below. This is classic. He don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Biden Foreign Policy, Iran

Money for nothing

When it comes to the Iranian mullahcracy, the Biden administration has formulated a policy that it has deftly kept under wraps. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in it.

Former National Security Council Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction Rich Goldberg spells it out in the column “Biden has a secret, illegal deal with Iran that gives mullahs everything they want.” In the Call Me Back podcast with Dan Senor below, Goldberg explicates the Biden policy. Slightly adapting the words of the Dire Straits hit, this is how it goes: “Money for nothing and your nukes for free.”

After writing yesterday about Goldberg’s revelation of what’s happening here, it occurred to me I had left out the most important part of the story — the “money for nothing” part. Goldberg elaborates in the podcast.

Deepening Obama’s folly, Biden’s Iran deal represents something worse than appeasement. Say what you will about Neville Chamberlain, he never thought of funding Hitler’s ambitions.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Loose Ends

Loose Ends (229)

• It’s almost as if Zelenskyy wants Republicans in Washington to block further aid to Ukraine:

• Meanwhile, the invasion of the Italian isle of Lampedusa continues:

But remember that Camp of the Saints is a racist book!

Chaser:

But remember, Camp of the Saints is a racist book.

At least there’s one country trying seriously to stop this nonsense:

• Update to our item yesterday on the apparent collapse of Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University: the Boston Globe reports:

Boston University announced Wednesday it would conduct an “inquiry” into Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research after complaints emerged about the center’s culture and financial management.

The assessment comes the week after Kendi, a celebrity author, scholar of race, and antiracism advocate laid offmore than half the center’s staff.

The complaints, a BU spokesperson said, “focused on the center’s culture and its grant management practices.” The inquiry announced Wednesday represents a broadening of a previous “examination” of the center’s grant management practices, according to the spokesperson, Rachel Lapal Cavallario. . .

“I don’t know where the money is,” said Saida Grundy, a BU professor who worked at the center from fall 2020 to spring 2021.

I have an idea where the money is (or went).

• There may be something fitting about the George H. W Bush statute pedestal in Budapest being behind a fence because of damage and the need for “accident prevention.” Certainly the “pedestals” of Bush-era foreign policy have crumbled perhaps beyond repair. (Happy to report that the nearby statue of Ronald Reagan is doing just fine.)

• I have found my patron saint of pondering (hopefully not ponderous) writers, Gyula Krúdy, the writer of “Sinbad.” (And no, I am not styling my best John Fetterman wear: I was out for a morning jog when I happened across Mr. Krúdy in bronze.)

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Steven Hayward in Climate

Extremism about Extreme Weather

We’ve periodically debunked the way the climatistas jump on every notable weather event as proof of the imminence of the climate apocalypse, but our friends at Kite & Key Media have put together this nice seven-minute summary of what’s wrong with these claims. Among other things, the video cites Steven Koonin, whose book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters is the best overall treatment of climate change for the layperson yet published (though I do hope to get Judith Curry on a podcast for her terrific new book Climate Uncertainty and Risk after I get back to the U.S.). See my review, “Who Broke Climate Science?“, if you missed it before.)

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Biden Justice Department, Merrick Garland

Grilling Merrick Garland

The politicizing of the Department of Justice has been underway for quite a while. It reached a sort of apotheosis when Eric Holder declared himself Barack Obama’s “wing man,” and Holder didn’t mind being held in contempt of Congress as he pursued his higher duty to the Democratic Party.

Now we have Merrick Garland as Attorney General, if anything a worse political hack than Holder. He testified today before the House Judiciary Committee, which has oversight responsibility for DOJ. No doubt there were other highlights, but this one caught my attention. Representative Jeff van Drew asks Garland about Garland’s FBI going after Catholics:


Garland is a classic bureaucrat who purports to be surprised by the outrages that are committed under his authority, and takes no responsibility for them. Nor, for that matter does anyone else, since he is not aware of anyone being disciplined for spying on Catholics.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Annals of Government Medicine

Annals of Government Medicine

James Freeman documents the inevitable failure of socialized medicine, this time in the U.K.–a story we have covered many times:

One of the world’s most celebrated socialized medical systems is doing what socialized medical systems do: limiting patient care. Pending work stoppages could mean that the worst is yet to come for patients of England’s National Health Service.

Doctors, who are low-level government employees in the U.K., are going on strike.

Josephine Franks reports for Sky News that senior doctors, called consultants in Britain, will be joining their less experienced colleagues in withholding treatment:

Consultants and junior doctors are set to strike for several more days this week and early next month, bringing more chaos to the NHS after several months of walkouts and delayed appointments…

A health chief said the NHS is in “uncharted territory” due to the strikes, with thousands of patient appointments expected to be cancelled.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said this week’s strike action “can’t become the status quo”.

Sadly it can.

The problems are inherent in government medicine. And, of course, doctors in the U.S. are increasingly public servants, too.

Turning doctors into unionized government bureaucrats brings a host of problems, including the fact that politicians, not patients, decide what doctors are paid. This is of course a problem in the U.S. as well. England is a sort of preview of just how badly government management can mangle the incentives to provide medical services—and the duty to provide care.

So why are doctors in the U.K. striking?

On the picket lines of the March strike, junior doctors told Sky News why they were striking and described having to borrow money off family for medical exams, watching colleagues leave for better paid jobs abroad and how they were struggling to pay rent.

Canada’s socialized system has a problem with “watching colleagues leave for better paid jobs abroad,” which are pretty much always in the U.S.

Freeman notes that Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) points to the U.K. as a model of government-controlled health care:

If anyone asks Mr. Sanders to comment, no doubt he will rail about the British government not spending enough, just as his answer to every question about U.S. health care involves a greater burden on taxpayers and fewer free choices for consumers.

But adopting the Sanders model for decades in the U.K. has led to a system that is now in constant crisis, with a plague of cancelled appointments and procedures.

And with doctors on strike because they can’t pay their rent. Socialist health care systems are absurdly inefficient, so they come under political pressure to reduce costs. How do they reduce costs? By underpaying the people they actually need, the doctors and nurses, and by limiting patient access to care. Their huge budgets mostly disappear into the bureaucratic maw, as with any government program.

This is the future that the Democratic Party wants for the United States.