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The Closing of a Newsroom’s Mind By Donald E. Graham

Posted By on October 31st, 2015

I’ve seen how for-profit colleges can help students—many of them older and seeking better jobs—but the government and the media want to shut them down.
For the first time since I left the newspaper business, I feel I have some news. And it’s news that might shake up a stagnant Washington policy debate.

For-profit colleges have become a standard target of the progressive left (and not them alone). Their charges include: The students are recruited aggressively; the prices are too high; most of the students drop out and many incur high levels of debt and then default; for those who stick it out and graduate, the degrees aren’t worth much.

These charges have been so widely publicized and so often repeated that they have entered the realm of accepted truth. In some quarters, to defend any for-profit education company is to defend the indefensible. Hear me: There are huge differences among for-profit colleges, as among other colleges. Some for-profit colleges have behaved disgracefully to their students; I do not defend them.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Marilyn Penn: Dementia in Manhattan

Posted By on October 31st, 2015

Recently, an old friend was moved into a dementia unit on the upper west side. It appeared to be as cheerful, well-run and upbeat as one could hope, with art-filled corridors and photos of patients’ families outside their rooms. Within a few weeks of his move, families were suddenly informed that the unit was closing and patients requiring this special security and care would have to be evicted. Although the facility encompassed only 28 beds, the panic and distress this notice caused made me curious about the availability of residential dementia units in NYC and I was shocked by what I discovered.

Going by the population numbers of the 2010 census, there are approximately 320,000 seniors who live in Manhattan. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that 1 in 9 people over 65 has dementia, leaving us with approximately 34,450 Manhattan residents who are afflicted with this disease. Out of these, a significant number will eventually require custodial care outside the home, preferably in Manhattan so that elderly spouses (and family and friends) would be able to visit without driving or the expense of car service. Yet, in all of our medically sophisticated borough, there are only a handful of residential facilities which accept patients with dementia – under 200 beds in all.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Israeli start-up uses Trojan horse technology to kill cancer cells By David Shamah see note please

Posted By on October 31st, 2015

This should not be available for the BDS scoundrels…..rsk
BioSight has figured out a way to fool cancer cells into allowing themselves to be killed off – without harming normal cells.

BioSight, a medical technology start-up, has developed a technology that enables leukemia patients to avoid the worst effects of chemotherapy.

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“Our interim results in a major study of patients with leukemia shows that our system yields the maximum efficiency from chemo, with a minimum of toxicity,” said Dr. Ruth Ben Yakar, CEO of BioSight. “Our method of using chemo does not cause brain damage or weaken blood cells,” with all its attendant phenomena, such as lethargy, loss of hair, etc.

BioSight’s “Trojan horse” chemo technology doesn’t only work for leukemia patients, said Ben Yakar. “We believe it will be effective in many other kinds of cancer as well. It’s a matter of finding the amino acid that a specific cancer is ‘allergic’ to, and packaging it in a structure that the cancer cell thinks contains material that strengthens it, while in reality it contains material that destroys it.”

The technology, said Ben Yakar, could become very important in the field of cancer treatment.”This really could be the cure for cancer.”

BioSight was one of a dozen start-ups that presented their technology at the annual Go4Israel conference in Tel Aviv Monday. Considered one of the most important gatherings of international investors in Israel, the conference discussed issues relevant to investors and start-ups, including raising funds and establishing strategic alliances between corporate, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. Companies presenting at the event included firms in high-tech, life sciences, renewable energy, and others. Among the investors was a large delegation from Europe – particularly France – and from China.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Assault on Common Sense The phony campus rape crisis Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

In August 2012, two rapes by unknown assailants were reported at Harvard University, sending the school into crisis. Police cruisers idled around the campus; uniformed and plainclothes officers came out in force. Students were advised not to walk alone. A member of the undergraduate council called for the closing of Harvard Yard. “I thought Cambridge wasn’t a dangerous area,” a freshman told the student newspaper. “It was Harvard—it was supposed to be safe, academic.” (In fact, Harvard still was safe. The campus authorities ultimately deemed at least one of the rape allegations baseless, judging by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Since Harvard never disclosed the outcome of either of its investigations, its findings regarding the other supposed incident remain secret.)

In September 2015, Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust announced that Harvard students experience sexual assault with “alarming frequency.” Faust was responding to the results of a sexual assault survey conducted at Harvard and 26 other colleges earlier in the year. According to the survey, spearheaded by the Association of American Universities (AAU), 16 percent of Harvard female seniors had experienced nonconsensual sexual penetration during their time at the college and nearly 40 percent had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact. The “severity of the problem” required “an even more intent focus on the problem of sexual assault,” Faust said. Harvard professor and former provost Steve Hyman decried the “terribly damaging” problem that “profoundly violates the values and undermines the educational goals of this University.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

HOW DO YOU SPELL APPARENT FRAUD? THE CLINTON FOUNDATION, SHADY ACCOUNTING AND AIDS : KEN SILVERSTEIN

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

The Clinton Foundation has until November 16 to amend more than ten years’ worth of state, federal and foreign filings, but it’s going to be virtually impossible to do so without acknowledging that it has engaged in massive accounting fraud since its inception
The Clinton Foundation has gotten a good deal of unflattering attention as of late, which isn’t surprising given that its best known namesakes are Bill, a former president and chronic philanderer, and Hillary, who hopes to be the nation’s next leader. Furthermore, the foundation portrays itself as do-gooder nonprofit organization but a cursory look reveals questionable and incomplete disclosures of its activities and accounts, as well as incredible misspending of donor money, virtually since its inception.
Naturally, this can’t be stated in polite society. For example, the New York Times just had a story on the Clinton Foundation that found highly questionable conduct but buried it under the bland headline, “Rwanda Aid Shows Reach and Limits of Clinton Foundation.” Other stories have mentioned that the foundation has partnered with assorted dictators and robber barons. Among the latter is Canadian “mining magnate” (read: “penny stock artist”) Frank Giustra, who donated millions to the foundation after Bill Clinton helped him land a mining concession for him in Kazakhstan.
(Note: I have an upcoming story on the Clinton Foundation’s links to Giustra and to Washington-based consultant Alexander Mirtchev, who is a front-man for powerful Kazakh government officials.)

BOOKS Comments turned off

Rashid Khalidi Heads Pro-PLO Panel in Bashing Israel The Jewish State is, apparently, a greater threat to America than anything emanating from the Muslim world. Andrew Harrod

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

Israel is a greater threat to America than anything emanating from the Muslim world, according to participants in an October 15 panel titled “The Future of Bipartisanship on Israel.” One of the nation’s largest Democratic Party campaign contributors, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), provided an appropriately partisan setting in their Washington, DC, headquarters for this biased panel. Columbia University professor and former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi moderated before an audience of around seventy, including Jerusalem Fund director Zeina Azzam.

Former CIA analyst and Georgetown University security studies researcher Paul Pillar (“one of the wisest people” on the Middle East, according to Khalidi) began the panel by dredging up the well-worn assertion that the U.S. suffers from its alliance with Israel. Downplaying broader jihadist motives, he claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a “highly exploitable issue” that exacerbates “extremism and specifically, terrorist threats to the U.S.” American support for Israel is a “major drain on U.S. political and diplomatic capital,” he added.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Where is the Church Militant on persecuted Christians? Robin Mitchinson

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

Of the 100-200 million Christians at risk, the majority are in Muslim-dominated countries. Of the world’s three largest religions Christians are the most persecuted with 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination being directed at them. So why the inaction from the Church?

My text for the day is, ‘By their fruits shall ye know them’, inspired by the 84 bishops who have called upon the Prime Minister to admit not 20,000 refugees over the next five years but 50,000, with 20,000 over the next 2 years.

Here is what they wrote:

“We believe such is this country’s great tradition of sanctuary and generosity of spirit that we could feasibly resettle at least 10,000 people a year for the next two years, rising to a minimum of 50,000 in total over the five year period you foresaw in your announcement. Such a number would bring us into line with comparable commitments made by other countries. It would be a meaningful and substantial response to the scale of human suffering we see daily.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Watch Rubio School Charlie Rose on Hillary’s Benghazi Lies Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

In last night’s debate, Marco Rubio aptly described the mainstream media as the Democrats’ super PAC, but that didn’t hold him back from reentering the arena this morning. And, as day follows night, CBS’s Charlie Rose went after him, playing defense lawyer for Hillary Clinton. During the debate, Senator Rubio pointed out that last week’s Benghazi hearing brought Hillary Clinton’s lies into sharp relief. Rose tried to defend her, blathering about how the CIA’s understanding of the attack evolved, but Rubio would have none of it — explaining how Clinton knew it was a coordinated terrorist attack from the start, told her family and others that, and yet lied to the country, blaming the attack on an anti-Muslim video. Rose badgered Rubio, but the candidate calmly stood his ground, and was particularly good when Rose sought to brush him back by sternly warning that Rubio was making “a very serious charge” — it’s not a charge, Rubio said, “It’s the truth.” My inclination is always to ask why our candidates bother to go on these programs. But the fact that it’s very much worth your time to watch proves it was very much worth Rubio’s time to appear.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Daniel Greenfield: Austria Stops Criticizing Hungary’s Border Fence, Builds Own Border Fence “The refugee crisis can’t be solved with the building of fences”

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

Not that long ago, Austria’s Nazi collaborationist party was accusing Hungary of being Nazis for the whole border security thing. Now Austria appears to have had enough and has caught fence fever.

Austria on Wednesday said it plans to build a fence at its main crossing with Slovenia, the first such barrier between two members of Europe’s document-free travel area, in one of the clearest signs to date of how Europe’s migrant crisis is undermining Europe’s institutions and sowing discord across the bloc.

News of the plan, aimed to slow the stream of migrants headed toward Germany via Austria, drew sharp criticism from Berlin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has sought to preserve freedom of travel across the continent, even as she struggles to maintain her own open-door refugee policy in the face of mounting opposition at home and growing impatience in other European countries on the migrants’ route.

“The federal government and the chancellor repeatedly have stressed that we believe that the refugee crisis can’t be solved with the building of fences,” Ms. Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Wednesday.

BOOKS Comments turned off

College Campuses: Intellectual Diversity-Free Zones The telling case of a conservative journalist being thrown out of Cornell. Jack Kerwick

Posted By on October 30th, 2015

I still believe in the ideal of a liberal arts education—even if, in practice, I’ve become more than a bit disenchanted.

As an undergraduate some 20 years ago majoring in religion and philosophy at Wingate University—a small, Southern Baptist institution in North Carolina—I was fortunate to have been taught by genuinely dedicated teachers who saw to it that their students received the classical education in the liberal arts for which they signed up.

To put this point another way, my professors resisted the temptation—a temptation that’s all too common among the professoriate in the contemporary academy—to abuse their vocational privileges by preaching to, rather than teaching, their students. The classroom, my instructors seemed to realize, was not the proper venue in which to air their political and ideological predilections.

In pursuing my master’s degree in philosophy from Baylor University, I became increasingly aware of some of my instructors’ political views, but there existed a reasonable degree of intellectual diversity in the department. This latter fact, coupled with my professors’ unquestionable commitment to the welfare of their students, made my time at Baylor one of the most enjoyable periods of my life.