• CNN is announcing that Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has given birth to a baby boy:
London (CNN)Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, gave birth to a boy in the early hours of Monday, Buckingham Palace has announced. . .
The boy will be the eighth great-grandchild for Queen Elizabeth II and the seventh in line to the throne behind Prince Charles, Prince William and his three children and Prince Harry.
But isn’t this fake news? First of all, CNN assumes the gender of the baby, and I thought I read somewhere that Prince Harry and Wokehighness Meghan were planning to allow the baby to determine its own gender . . . eventually. I’ll be curious to see whether they indicate the gender on the birth certificate. This whole new gender self-ID thing could really enliven royal succession schemes. . .
• The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that that San Francisco spent over $70 million last year cleaning poop and other debris from the homeless from its streets. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy a whole bunch of porta-potties? You could even get custom-built ones with automated needle exchange devices—no new needle unless you deposit your old one in a sanitary receptacle.
Oh, wait, that might be a magnet for homeless people to pitch their tents on city streets.
• About this proposal for free college, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand—free stuff! Yay free stuff! Of course it is not really free, but never mind. On the other hand, a robust free college program would inflict a lot of collateral damage. It will kill off a lot of small, private liberal arts colleges. Who says there isn’t an upside? Keep in mind that “free college” will almost surely be limited to public universities, and private universities won’t be able to compete on price—not with all those highly paid associate deans of diversity to support—no matter how much loans may be subsidized. And why go to an expensive private liberal arts college when you can go to Wayne State for free, and receive superior STEM instruction in most cases?
I’m explain some other time why I conclude that small private liberal arts colleges like Middlebury, Oberlin, and Trinity (which right now is apparently refusing to recognize a student Churchill Club because, as everyone in the wokerati knows, Churchill was Hitler) are actually much worse ideological cesspools than large public universities like Ohio State, Michigan, and yes—even Berkeley. Free college at public universities would reveal small liberal arts colleges for what they increasingly are—a luxury good for the rich. This will drive them further into madness I predict (like the Sarah Lawrence students who are demanding free laundry detergent in every dormitory laundry room). As Marx said, heighten the contradictions! Also the hypocrisy.
• The NY Times, at it again. In their story today about Hamas firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, the Times story (I’m not linking—paywall anyway) includes this sentence:
“The outbreak of violence appears to have begun on Friday, when a sniper wounded two Israeli soldiers, a violent but localized expression of Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.”
Prof. Joshua Dunn of the University of Colorado sensibly asks: “How exactly does the NY Times know that this was the sniper’s motivation?” Dummy: This tells the editors’ motivation at the Times.
• On sale now—the Clintons! You may have heard that Bill and Hillary are attempting to do a paid speaking tour, with asking prices for premium tickets going for north of $1,000. Only one problem: the market has collapsed faster than you can say “Solyndra!” From the Daily Mail:
Prices for Bill and Hillary Clinton‘s 13-city tour have taken a plunge as the pair near the end of a string of dates for their speaking engagements.
The event billed as ‘An Evening with President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’ continued at the LA Forum in Inglewood, California Saturday night and tickets were listed for as little as $2. . .
The Seattle Times reported tickets on the secondary market were being sold for just $20 for Friday’s appearance at Seattle’s WaMu Theater. The best tickets were $829 but that was a 54 percent drop from $1,785 when the tour was first advertised.
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