Loose Ends (103)

So the Federal government ran a fake university, the University of Farmington, that charged students tuition for the purpose of entrapping aliens abusing student visas. But this part of the Washington Post story is worth a pause:

But Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney involved with these students’ cases, told the Detroit News that U.S. officials running the fake University of Farmington operation preyed upon unsuspecting students. “They should not punish these people who were lured into a trap,” Reddy said.

Just how do we tell the difference between a “fake” university preying upon unsuspecting students and a “real” university (say Evergreen State or Oberlin , for example) that preys on unsuspecting students and delivers a useless or fraudulent education? Talk about entrapment!

Speaking of the Washington Post, just what will Max Boot do when Trump is no longer president? I suspect he’ll end up on a street corner somewhere, fedora firmly in place, mumbling about Russian collusion till the end of his days.

Speaking of Russian collusion, I wonder whether any of the usual people on the left will pick up on the evidence of the massive Russian propaganda campaign to hobble fracking for oil and natural gas in Britain and elsewhere? Here’s the heart of a new story by Matt Ridley in The Critic in the UK:

The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.

The Centre for European Studies found that the Russian government has invested $95 million in NGOs campaigning against shale gas. Russia Today television ran endless anti-fracking stories, including one that “frackers are the moral equivalent of paedophiles”. The US Director of National Intelligence stated that “RT runs anti-fracking programming … reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.” . .

And speaking of Britain, John noted here a couple days ago that the polls show the Conservative Party with a substantial lead in the run-up to next month’s election, but one factor to be kept in mind is that the Tories, who haven’t exactly distinguished themselves in office the last couple years, get to run against Jeremy Corbyn, arguably the most radical major party leader in the history of any modern industrial democracy in the postwar era.

Corbyn appeared last week on one of the leading political talk shows, and by all accounts bombed worse Ted Kennedy with Roger Mudd in 1979. Here’s part of the account that appears at Spiked under the title “Jeremy Corbyn just gave the worst political performance of modern times.”

It was terrible from beginning to end. Corbyn fluffed every single issue. Four times he was given an opportunity to apologise to Jews and he refused. He was asked if saying that ‘Rothschild Zionists control world affairs’ is anti-Semitic and he couldn’t bring himself to say it was. For crying out loud. It was unacceptable, he said. Eventually, when pressed, he said it was an anti-Semitic trope. So why hasn’t the Labour member who uttered those very words been suspended, Neil asked? Oof. And again from Corbyn, just boredom. Irritation. He looked like a man being bothered by flies rather than a man being asked why a significant majority of Jews think he’s a racist. . .

He wouldn’t even say whether he would kill an ISIS leader. Neil gave him the scenario. The military has its eyes on an ISIS leader, that ISIS leader is plotting terrorist attacks in the UK, and you are given the option as PM to kill him – yes or no? Corbyn’s response was as predictable as it was yellow-bellied. Can’t we arrest him, he said? Of course, Jeremy – maybe we should send the Old Bill over to Syria to put him in handcuffs? The idiocy of it. Corbyn is so lacking in principle, in basic decisiveness, that he won’t even commit to killing the leader of the closest thing to religious fascism that exists in the world right now. So much for his anti-fascism. . .

He can’t answer basic economic questions, he won’t take a stand on the biggest issue of the day (Brexit), and he won’t even drop a bomb on a mass-murdering, woman-enslaving, child-killing religious lunatic. Most strikingly of all, Corbyn looked like he just didn’t want to be there. Which is one thing he has in common with the rest of the country: we don’t want him to be there, either.

Corbyn’s unelectability ought to be an object lesson for Democrats here. But probably won’t be.

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