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Two Americas Collide at the Supreme Court By Matthew Boose

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/06/two-americas-collide-at-the-supreme-court/

When President Biden fumed that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling is “not normal,” he spoke more truth than he may have intended. It is certainly not normal nowadays to acknowledge, even implicitly, that discrimination against whites is possible, or even wrong. The Supreme Court blasted the vaporous pretexts that elites have used to justify this invidious scheme, which has carried on indefinitely, feasting on countless dreams without satisfying a bottomless hunger of unquantifiable grievance. The sentimental and, arguably, self-serving wailing of the dissenters, particularly Justice Jackson, draws from that same source.

Although affirmative action has long been unpopular with the public, the outcome in this case is paradoxically more provocative than the Dobbs decision, which cut against popular opinion on abortion. The reason is that racially conscious discrimination has been the rule of American life for the better part of a century. When, in the majority opinion, the famously milquetoast John Roberts asserted that all racial discrimination is bad, he was appealing to a supposed truism that has been repudiated in theory and practice by this country’s ruling class.

To the left, the court’s colorblind worldview is casuistry. Judging by the fruits of civil rights, the left would seem to have the better argument. From its inception, civil rights has meant almost exclusively treating certain groups favorably and others disfavorably. Affirmative action at elite universities was merely the most high-stakes example of this system. From corporate hiring to television advertising and the way newspapers report, or do not report, crime, life in America is now encoded in the subtlest of ways by racial preferences. Even in the most informal of situations, everyone understands the power of the proverbial “race card.” Some employees are virtually unfireable because of their skin color. Freedom of speech has been throttled by a pervasive dread of retaliation for causing even unintentional offense on the basis of race.

Justices Sotomayor and Jackson envision a totalitarian nightmare where wealth, honors, and opportunities are perpetually redistributed until some intangible state of “equality” is reached. Yet this terror, indistinguishable from communism, is the reality in which Americans have lived for a long time. The disruption of that reality makes the court’s ruling anomalous. Can civil rights law now be repurposed to protect everyone, as originally advertised? Perhaps, but the role of blind luck and accident in this ruling should not be underestimated. Had Donald Trump lost in 2016, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a bit more humility, these opinions would have been flipped.

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A Tale of Two Boats Valuing certain people over others. by Armstrong Williams

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-tale-of-two-boats/

ATHENS, GREECE — In the course of a single week, two tragedies unfolded, both exposing the stark, divergent responses by our media and governments based on the affected demographics and the narratives they spin. Intriguingly, both tragedies involved the ocean and rescue attempts, starkly underlining our inconsistent approaches to different crises. One tragedy revolved around the implosion and subsequent deaths of five individuals who had invested $250,000 each for an underwater journey to explore the Titanic’s ruins. The other was a catastrophe at sea off the coast of Greece, resulting in the tragic assumed loss of nearly 700 migrants in pursuit of better lives overseas. Now, take a guess, which incident garnered more media attention? If your instinct was to go for the event that claimed up to 700 lives, you would be dead wrong.

On June 13, a distress signal from a migrant vessel carrying up to 750 individuals was first brought to light by Italian activist Nawal Soufi, prompting a range of rescue efforts from different parties throughout the day. Nonetheless, differing narratives surfaced concerning the vessel’s readiness to receive aid and its overall condition. Despite obtaining supplies from the Maltese-flagged tanker Lucky Sailor and from Greek authorities, the boat’s occupants reportedly declined any further assistance, staying their course. Adding to the confusion, Soufi and Greek parliament member Kriton Arsenis alleged that the Greek coast guard attempted to tug the boat toward Italian waters, a claim vehemently denied by Greek officials. Ultimately, the boat succumbed and capsized during the early hours of June 14, with further conflicting stories on whether it was a result of overcrowding and engine malfunction, or if it was because they were being tugged by a Greek coast guard. Tragically, of the estimated 750 souls onboard, 104 have survived.

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Three Landmark Supreme Court Decisions Protecting a Free America The guardians of the Constitution take a noble stand. by Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/three-landmark-supreme-court-decisions-protecting-a-free-america/

President Biden and his left-wing base are furious at the Supreme Court for the three historic decisions that the Court issued on the last two days of its 2022-2023 term. President Biden disparaged the Supreme Court, claiming it was “not a normal court” and accused its conservative majority of misinterpreting the Constitution.

President Biden’s attack on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court was not only a reckless assault on a co-equal branch of the federal government. It evidenced President Biden’s complete misunderstanding of the core constitutional principles of equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, and separation of powers, all of which the Supreme Court majority underscored in its landmark decisions.

With these three decisions, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority firmed up the underpinnings of America’s constitutional republic that the Left seeks to destroy.

On June 29th, the Supreme Court struck down race-based admission practices used by colleges and universities such as the defendants Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 conservative majority, rejected the notion that one’s racial group identity should supersede the totality of one’s own individual life experiences, skills, and aspirations as a prime criterion for admission. A diverse class of entrants can be assembled without having to discriminate against one racial or ethnic group in favor of another.

The cases brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina involved admission practices that pitted one minority group, Asian American students, against another minority group, African American students, for admission purposes.

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After the French Riots “Laxity and submission.” by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-the-french-riots/

So the latest round of rioting in France seems at last to have burned itself out. In the end, it didn’t expand into a Muslim revolution; it didn’t succeed in overthrowing the French Republic; it didn’t lead to the first transformation of a Western republic into a sharia state. But this doesn’t mean that France won’t eventually be brought down in such a way, and sooner rather than later. All it will take is one more minor police action that triggers the nation’s Muslims into a tsunami of fierce and extraordinary violence – a tsunami that, unlike this time, doesn’t end until it makes the Reign of Terror look like a scene from Gigi.

Certainly the cooling-off of Muslim rage owed nothing whatsoever to the efforts of Emmanuel Macron or any other French leader. Nor did it owe anything to the French electorate which – although it’s been offered the opportunity in recent years to install in the Élysée Palace a principled and intrepid agent of change like Marine le Pen, Valérie Pécresse, or Éric Zemmour – has instead voted repeatedly for more of the same. Voted, that is, for hopeless establishment types like Macron, who over the years has spoken out of both sides of his mouth on the immigration issue – celebrating Muslim imports as an economic boon, then formulating a five-point program to defeat “Islamic separatism,” then “clarifying” his plan with a declaration of his deep respect for the Islamic faith.

Well, there’s one positive thing to be said about last week’s riots: they brought Western Europe’s alarming predicament into focus in a manner that few events in recent years have succeeded in doing, and, one can only hope, have opened the eyes of a considerable number of people who’d previously managed to avoid facing up to reality. How many people? Who knows?

Even before the rioting, to be sure, most Frenchmen understood very well what they were up against. Although heroic truth-tellers like Zemmour have been condemned in the French media for promoting the so-called “replacement theory” – i.e., the belief that native Europeans are being gradually supplanted by foreign peoples whose mass immigration over recent decades is the consequence of policies instituted by political elites without the consent of the populace. In fact, surveys have shown that most Frenchmen subscribe to the “replacement theory.”

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The Folly of Wind-John Hinderaker

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/the-folly-of-wind.php

The U.S., like much of Europe, has supposedly committed itself to replacing fossil fuels with “green” energy, which mostly means wind. This will never happen, and the effort to make it happen will collapse in ignominy and economic and social chaos. The reason is simple: wind turbines, and even more so solar panels, fail to produce electricity a large majority of the time. Just as bad, their failures are unpredictable and often ill-timed.

Here in the Upper Midwest, we have experienced a couple of hot weeks, which means that air conditioners have been running. MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, has a nominal 28,572 megawatts of wind energy on its grid. Surely the wind turbines were able to keep the air conditioners running. Right?

Just kidding. Isaac Orr explains:

The graph below shows wind capacity factors in MISO during the same period in blue. A capacity factor is a percentage of how much electricity a power plant generates compared to its theoretical maximum output.

The graph also shows the capacity value that MISO gives to wind turbines, which is intended to measure the reliable capacity that the asset is supposed to contribute during peak electricity demand. In 2023, MISO expects wind turbines to operate at an 18.1 percent capacity factor during times of peak demand, shown in red in the chart.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Here’s What You Need To Know About France’s ‘Summer Of Love’ Riots By: Shawn Fleetwood

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/06/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-frances-summer-of-love-riots/

The ongoing situation in France bears a striking resemblance to the Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence that engulfed American cities following the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

French authorities have estimated that rioters have burned or looted more than 1,100 public and private buildings over the past week in their violent response to a police shooting involving a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent.

On Wednesday, a French news outlet reported that, according to the country’s Ministry of the Interior, roughly 1,105 buildings including police stations, town halls, and schools have been assaulted since riots began on June 27. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told a CNN affiliate that more than 1,000 businesses have been “vandalised, attacked or set on fire.” The damages are estimated to cost over $1 billion.

The impetus for the nationwide violence occurred on June 27, when a French police officer shot and killed 17-year-old “Nahel M.” during a traffic stop. While exact details of the situation remain unclear, early reports indicate the situation unfolded after police pulled the young man over in a Paris suburb for allegedly breaking traffic rules. According to Fox News, police have reportedly claimed Nahel “drove his car at one of the officers, while the video [of the incident] shows one of the officers pointing a weapon at him and saying, ‘You are going to get a bullet in the head.’”

“The officer then appears to shoot Nahel as the car suddenly pulls away, traveling only a short distance before crashing, with Nahel dying at the scene. Police took the offending officer into custody and opened an investigation into charges of voluntary manslaughter, with charges brought against him on Friday,” the Fox report reads. The officer’s lawyers have since claimed their client meant to shoot Nahel in the leg but was bumped into when the car took off and did not intend to kill him.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Boast About Jobs Is Coming Undone

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/07/bidens-boast-about-jobs-is-coming-undone/

We’ve pointed out how President Joe Biden is being purposely deceptive when he brags about creating 13 million jobs. An honest accounting shows the job gains to be more like 3.7 million. But what if even that altogether unimpressive number is itself a wild exaggeration?

Job growth is one of the only things Biden has to justify his reelection. He can’t talk about inflation – it’s still punishingly high. He can’t talk about real wages – they’re falling. He can’t talk about economic optimism – it’s in the dumps. He can’t point to any poll about his handling of the economy – they all give him failing grades. He can’t claim to have unified the country – as our poll this week showed. So, he plays up job creation.

Last week, Biden gave a speech claiming that “Bidenomics is working,” and tweeted out a chart showing average monthly job growth in each of the past seven presidents, with a caption that reads: “My administration has created more jobs in two years than any previous administration has created in the first four years. It’s no accident. It means our economic plan is working and this is only the beginning.”

This is the dictionary definition of lying with statistics.

Data from Biden’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 72% of the jobs the president brags about weren’t “created,” they were simply reclaiming jobs lost during the pointless COVID lockdowns.

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China Tariffs: A Solution That’s Simple,Direct,Plausible…..and Wrong David Goldman

Posted By on July 6th, 2023

https://www.newsweek.com/china-tariffs-solution-thats-simple-direct-plausible-wrong-opinion-1810578

Donald Trump’s chief trade official, Robert Lighthizer, devised the 2018 tariffs on many Chinese imports, and now wants to double down on a failed policy. His new book No Trade is Free proposes “strategic de-coupling” from China through even higher tariffs and related measures. This brings to mind H. L. Mencken’s crack that “for every complex problem, there is a solution, that is simple, direct, plausible—and wrong.”

U.S. imports from China have risen despite Trump’s tariffs on a range of Chinese products, as the $6 trillion in COVID stimulus spending created demand that American manufacturers couldn’t fill—but China could. U.S. and Chinese data diverge, because (as the Federal Reserve showed in a 2021 study) China counts exports that reach the U.S. via a third country while the U.S. doesn’t.

If a policy failed the first time around, why double down on it? It would be better for the U.S. to revise the tax code to favor capital-intensive manufacturing, restore Reagan-level funding for high-tech R&D, build infrastructure, ease up on environmental restrictions, provide apprenticeships for skilled workers, and subsidize industries critical to national security.

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Tal Fortgang Hollow Words After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, law schools belatedly (and unconvincingly) assert the importance of viewpoint diversity.

Posted By on July 6th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/law-schools-hollow-commitment-to-viewpoint-diversity

Just hours after the Supreme Court announced its decision in the Students for Fair Admissions cases, the president of NYU, from whose law school I recently graduated, sent out an email to alumni, announcing on behalf of the institution that June 29—the date that race-based admissions schemes were found to violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection for all—was “a difficult day,” because “diversity is a core part of our identity.” Nonetheless, NYU would find a way to stand defiant: “we will not forsake our commitment to building and sustaining a scholarly community that is diverse and inclusive, a community to which you all rightly belong.”

Peer institutions sent similar messages to their alumni and posted on social media. Georgetown, though “deeply disappointed,” vowed that it would continue “ensuring that the full range of voices, histories and experiences are included in our academic community.” Yale “emphatically” affirmed that it remained “fully committed to creating an inclusive, diverse, and excellent educational environment” and “to ensuring that our university is home to a diverse range of ideas, expertise, and experiences.” The University of Southern California’s statement stood out for its flair. The Court’s decision was “very disappointing,” but USC would carry on providing an atmosphere “where differing backgrounds and points of view are embraced, where ideas collide, beliefs are challenged, and innovation thrives.”

Paragraph break, for flourish: “We will not go backward.”

Apparently our best and brightest missed the glaring contradiction at the heart of their messages. While lamenting a decision that they say strikes at their ability to foster, for instance, “a diverse range of ideas, expertise, and experiences,” they all take the same institutional position on a highly contested issue. Do USC students who agree with the Court’s decision—who would, if the student body reflected national opinion on the issue, constitute at least half the student population—feel that their university welcomes a point of view that their administration equates with backwardness? Does Yale advance its mission of hosting a “diverse range of ideas” by announcing that it considers a 6-3 majority’s decision beyond the pale?

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Ian Kingsbury Selective Research from the AAMC The Association of American Medical Colleges goes cherry-picking for data supporting “racial concordance” in patient treatment.

Posted By on July 6th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-association-of-american-medical-colleges-selective-research

Early last month, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)—the organization that oversees the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and cosponsors the accrediting body for all medical schools— published a story claiming that black patients fare better with black doctors, an idea that has become popular across the health-care establishment. That it was being amplified just as the Supreme Court prepared to hand down its landmark ruling on affirmative action was neither subtle nor coincidental. Woke activists are determined to sell the idea that race-based medical school admissions are noble and sensible to justify skirting bans on affirmative action. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson even paid lip service to the purported benefits of doctor-patient race concordance in her dissent.

The notion that patients benefit from seeing doctors who share their race is dubious to the majority of us who know better than to essentialize race in our encounters with others. So is the implicit claim that lowering standards and elevating race in medical school admissions maximizes patient welfare. Indeed, the quality of the studies that AAMC cited to support these claims are as poor as one might expect.

Take, for example, a recent study published in JAMA Network Open. It observes that black life expectancy is longer in counties with higher proportions of black primary care providers (PCPs). But the researchers make no allowance for how their results are shaped by their modeling of the relationship between black representation among PCPs and life expectancy—including a curious decision to omit the roughly 50 percent of counties that don’t have any black PCPs. Data can be manipulated to reach just about any conclusion. The researchers’ failure to demonstrate that their results are robust, and not dependent on their very specific parameters, should leave readers deeply skeptical.