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August 2018

A Free Tuition Education Ken Langone’s book should be required reading at NYU.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-free-tuition-education-1534805635

New York University announced late last week that it will offer free tuition for every current and future student attending its medical school. That’s pretty cool and will save students some $55,000 a year and a lot of debt. But in the spirit of Milton Friedman’s line that there is no such thing as a free lunch, allow us to suggest that every NYU student should have one obligation in return for accepting the gift—read and write an essay on Ken Langone’s autobiography, “I Love Capitalism!”

The medical students should at least know where the money for their free tuition will come from. It doesn’t flow from the good intentions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it isn’t a product of the Cuban health-care system.

It will come from capitalists like Ken Langone and his wife Elaine, who donated about $100 million of the $600 million that NYU says it will need to fund the scholarships. The son of a plumber and a cafeteria worker, Mr. Langone went to Wall Street after Bucknell and NYU business school. He went on to found Home Depot , the national home-improvement chain that now provides a livelihood for some 400,000 people.

Mr. Langone has channelled much of his wealth into philanthropy, including the medical center at NYU that is named for him and his wife. As Mr. Langone explains in his book, this is how a free society creates wealth and then redistributes it. Socialism creates little wealth and redistributes poverty, as Venezuelans are discovering. The medical students could spend a semester in Caracas to learn these lessons, but they can save time and considerable pain by reading Mr. Langone.

College Offers Class on ‘Consequences’ of Whiteness By Toni Airaksinen

https://pjmedia.com/trending/college-offers-class-on-consequences-of-whiteness/

The University of Oregon is offering a course this summer to teach students about the “consequences” of masculinity in the United States.

Taught by Ashley Woody and Tony Silva, Sociology 399: Whiteness, Masculinity, and Heterosexuality is a featured course on the sociology department’s website, and it aims to take a critical approach to the historical development of masculinity and heterosexuality.

The class —which also goes by “Sociology 399: Straight White Heterosexuality Masculinity” — must be taken for a grade by sociology majors, but its description notes that grading is “optional for all other students.”

“What do whiteness, heterosexuality and masculinity mean today? How do they differ across contexts? How do they intersect, and what are the consequences?” the course description opines.

Neither Woody nor Silva responded to a request for more information about the class, but they appear to take a social constructionist approach to gender theory. In one of Silva’s recent works, for example, he interviewed 19 men from Grindr and Craigslist to document the “centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity.”

According to Silva’s research, hobbies such as hunting, fishing, cutting firewood, ranching, and farming are ways that certain men “perform a rural masculinity,” as Silva documented in his seminal article “Bud-Sex.”

Emails Show Cuomo Administration Officials in Regular Contact with Corrupt Lobbyist By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/andrew-cuomo-administration-regular-contact-corrupt-lobbyist/

Senior New York state officials regularly corresponded with, and acted on behalf of, a lobbyist and former aide to governor Andrew Cuomo in the months and years leading up to his indictment on federal corruption charges.

While the Cuomo administration has downplayed lobbyist Todd Howe’s access to senior officials, emails obtained by the New York Times after a protracted legal battle with the administration demonstrate Howe’s continuing influence.

In one particularly revealing email sent to Jim Malatras, then the director of state operations, Howe urgently requests payment for his clients, two developers contracted by the state for a public-private infrastructure project.

“Both need some payment as a sign of good faith before the close of business tomorrow,” Howe wrote to Malatras and his deputy, Andrew Kennedy, in December 2014 .

Chelsea Clinton Says Future Political Career Is a ‘Definite Maybe’ By Mairead McArdle see note

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chelsea-clinton-future-political-career/

At least Caroline Kennedy knew when to quit…..terminally insipid Chelsea should know better…..rsk

Chelsea Clinton is leaving the door open to a possible run for political office down the road.

In an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Sunday, Clinton said that a political career is a “definite no” at the moment, but a “definite maybe” in the future.

“At federal level, as much as I abhor so much of what President Trump is doing, I have a great amount of gratitude for what my congresswoman and my senators are doing to try to stop him at every point,” Clinton said. “While I disagree with the president … I think my family … is being really well represented. But if that were to change — if my city councilor were to retire, if my congresswoman were to retire, my senators — and I thought that I could make a positive impact, then I think I would really have to ask my answer to that question.”

In wide-ranging remarks that touched on her family and her feelings about the Trump administration, Clinton went out of her way to assert that she feels “incredibly protective” of twelve-year-old Barron Trump, recalling her own experience as a teenager in the White House during her father’s presidency, when critics mocked her appearance.

“I disagree with [Barron Trump’s] father on everything, but people have made fun of him, bullied him for his appearance or for him being more private,” the former first daughter said. “Equally I have no patience for that because he’s a child and he deserves a childhood as every child does.”

Clinton has upped her social-media presence since the 2016 presidential election, defending Barron Trump several times from online bullies and advocating for LGBT and women’s rights.

In McGahn Report, the New York Times ‘Attempts’ to Find Corruption Andrew McCarthy

The president’s critics are trying to build an obstruction case based on reading Trump’s mind.

The thing to bear in mind is that the president of the United States does not “attempt” to fire anyone in the executive branch. The chief executive either fires an inferior executive official or he does not. “Attempt” does not enter into it.

Yet “attempt” is the foundation on which the New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman build their blockbuster report this weekend about the decision by President Trump — apparently on the advice of his first team of lawyers — to waive executive privilege and attorney-client privilege so that prosecutors on the staff of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III could interview White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II.

I will in another column address the significance of the waiver. (To my mind, it bolsters the already strong argument that the president should not agree to be interviewed by the special counsel.) For now, let’s keep our eye on the ball: the question of whether there is an obstruction case against the president. The Times report is lengthy, but here is the critical passage:

Robert Mueller Shouldn’t Even Ask Trump for an Interview By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/robert-mueller-donald-trump-inte

With testimony from the president’s top lawyer, the special counsel is in no position to claim he needs to speak with Trump.

For months, these columns have contended that, on the question whether President Trump should agree to a request by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III for an interview, the burden of persuasion has been imposed on the wrong party. That is, the president should not even be asked to submit to questioning at this point; the prosecutor must first establish that the president (1) is implicated in a serious crime and (2) has information or evidence that the prosecutor is unable to obtain from any other source.

That argument is bolstered by this weekend’s New York Times report that, with the president’s consent, Mueller’s team has conducted 30 hours of interviews with White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II. Having secured testimony from the president’s top lawyer, the special counsel is in no position to claim that he needs the president’s own testimony.

The president’s consent to make McGahn available to prosecutors is extraordinary, as it involves waiving both executive privilege and attorney–client privilege. As to the latter, some claim that there is no real waiver involved because McGahn purportedly represents “the presidency” in the abstract, not the actual incumbent. (The Times pushes this line, claiming that McGahn “viewed his role as protector of the presidency, not of Mr. Trump.”) This is nonsense. McGahn’s client is the president in the latter’s official capacity — in contrast to Trump’s private lawyers (Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow).

Democrats Are Fielding Even More Anti-Semitic Candidates For Congress Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib is representative of the Democratic Party’s march beyond the embrace of candidates who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place.Warren Henry

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/20/democrats-fielding-even-anti-semitic-candidates-congress/

Last week, J Street, the lefty group created to counter the bipartisan American Israel Public Affairs Committee, withdrew its endorsement of Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. The unprecedented move followed Tlaib’s endorsement of a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and comments supporting the left-wing boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement.

Tlaib is running unopposed in the general election, blunting the effect of the de-endorsement. But Tlaib is representative of the Democratic Party’s gradual march beyond the embrace of candidates and officials who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place in politics.
BDS Is Definitely Anti-Semitic

To put this trend into context, consider that the U.S. State Department has adopted a “working definition” of anti-Semitism, as a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The “working definition” provides illustrations of anti-Semitism, including “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The founders and leaders of the BDS movement support a “one-state solution” that destroys Israel as Jewish state. The movement is the intellectual descendant of the 1945 Arab boycott, which did not distinguish between Jews and Israel. It is based on the premise that Israel is a racist apartheid state requiring the sort of action once taken against South Africa.

Accordingly, when Tlaib compares the two-state solution to the idea of “separate but equal,” even the J Street doves begin to worry. Tlaib carefully claimed she merely supports the free speech of the BDS crowd, which is a very weak claim.

Her answer also seems disingenuous, not only because she supports a one-state solution, but also because she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Last year, the DSA overwhelmingly endorsed the BDS movement, with many chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” afterward.
It’s Not Just Rashida Tlaib, Either

In Papers Saying Papadopoulos Lied, FBI Reveals It’s Either Lying Or Incompetent To say that George Papadopoulos’ lies (or inaccurate memory of the events, as his wife puts it) prevented the FBI from questioning, detaining, or arresting Joseph Mifsud is unbelievable. Margaret Cleveland

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/20/papers-saying-papadopoulos-lied-fbi-fbi-shows-either-also-lying-incompetent/

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office filed a sentencing memorandum Friday in its pending criminal case against George Papadopoulos, the former Donald Trump campaign advisor who pled guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI. Papadopoulos is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Mueller’s team provided the court a detailed background of Papadopoulos’ criminal offense in the sentencing memorandum and suggested Papadopoulos’ lies justified a sentence of 0 to 6 months of incarceration. While much of the ten-page memorandum merely rehashes facts previously known, one passage includes a significant new admission that proves the FBI is either incompetent, or incompetent at lying.
Let’s Run Through the Context First

Before we get to why, a quick refresher. In early March 2016, Papadopoulos learned he would serve as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. Later that month, Papadopoulos met a professor while traveling in Italy, Joseph Mifsud.

Chinese Infiltration in American Schools By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/chinese_infiltration_in_american_schools.html

In April of 2017, Rachelle Peterson of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) published an in-depth study titled “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education.” Her findings reveal China’s Trojan horse under the guise of intellectual sharing.

The Confucius Institutes are funded through an agency called the Hanban, which has direct ties to the Chinese government, thus ensuring that China gets to weigh in on topics. There is outright suppression on certain subjects – e.g., praising the Dali Lama, the status of Taiwan, and the persecution of members of Falun Gong.

With “China footing the bill, critics say Confucius Institutes are ready-made platforms for … promoting an overly rosy image of China while discouraging discussion of the ‘three Ts’: Tibet, Taiwan and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.” In fact,”[t]he Chinese director of one Institute explained that if a student asked about Tiananmen Square, she would ‘show a picture and point out the beautiful architecture.'”

Moreover, any discussion of China’s oppression of 10 million Muslim Uyghurs in its Xinjiang province, where up to one million Muslim Uyghurs have been detained in camps, would be verboten.

Trusting the Untrustworthy by Linda Goudsmit

Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), a Scottish jurist and historian, provides an explanation for why great societies do not survive for more than 200 years:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship (bondage).”

Our forefathers founded the United States of America as a republic and not a democracy to avoid this existential threat. So, what happened?

The Bern happened. Snowflakes and millennials discovered leaders in representative government who would provide the largesse from the treasury that they could not vote for directly. Bernie Sanders promised them the cradle-to-grave government support of socialism and its attendant breakdown of representative government – they trusted the Bern and they were all in. After Hillary and the DNC managed to deny Bernie the candidacy Hillary’s campaign moved further left politically to pick up Bernie’s constituents.

Hillary tailored her message toward Bernie’s followers and in the aftermath of her shocking loss to candidate Donald Trump her followers disavowed the American electoral system entirely. They have withdrawn their trust because they don’t like the outcome. This is unprecedented in American history. For 242 years the American public has accepted election outcomes and moved on. As in any competition there is a winner and a loser and everyone moves on to try again next time.