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The Affirmative Action Education Bubble Behind the Campus Protests The Left creates misery and then profits from it.Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

Forget the housing bubble, the education bubble is about to burst.

Student loan debt is at $1.2 trillion. College enrollment increased under Obama, but graduation rates fell. Barely half the students who enrolled in 2009 graduated. His plans for expanding enrollment rates worked, but the plans for expanding graduation rates didn’t.

And some of the biggest casualties were black students.

81% of black graduates had taken out loans and 39% of black borrowers drop out of college. This money helped keep colleges that were deeply in debt afloat. But it didn’t do much for graduation rates.

Black student loan rates had increased by 20 percent since the ’90s. But black male graduation rates had hardly increased at all.

Only a third of black male college students graduate. Among black women, it’s 44%. And the college graduation gap between white and black students has continued to increase under Obama.

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Hating Whitey on Campus Welcome to the totalitarian world of “student activism” at America’s elite universities. Jack Kerwick

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

It isn’t just Woodrow Wilson who’s got to go.For the social justice warriors on America’s college campuses these days, force and intimidation are paying off in spades.

Following the occupation of the president’s office courtesy of the “Black Justice League,” Princeton University is the most recent “institution of higher learning” to relent to students’ demand to reject “racism.”

President Christopher L. Eisgruber has “agreed”—more accurately, was bullied into agreeing—to petition the Board of Trustees to consider reevaluating “the legacy” of America’s 28th president and one-time Princeton University president, Woodrow Wilson.

The website Inside Higher Ed informs us that the Black Justice League regards Wilson’s as a legacy of “racism” that continues to inform “campus policy and culture.”

These elite, Ivy League universities are indeed a dangerous place for racial minorities. Perhaps this is why it isn’t only the eradication of every last vestige of the ominous name and image of Wilson from their school that these fonts of wisdom and courage demanded. They as well demanded—wait for it—the retirement of the distinction of “master” at the school.

You read this correctly: Students at one of the most elite academic institutions in the world feel threatened by the word “master.”

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Obama’s Increasingly Surreal War on ISIS By Deroy Murdock —

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

America’s role in the Global War on Terror grows stranger by the hour. President Obama’s fight against ISIS and other radical Islamic terrorists — such as it is — has entered the Twilight Zone. That is the only explanation for Obama’s increasingly bizarre tactics and statements against these existentially dangerous savages.

• After 15 months of airstrikes against ISIS, America finally managed to bomb 116 trucks that smuggle oil out of ISIS territory, generating some $1.2 million in clandestine cash daily. That sum buys plenty of knives for beheadings, Kalashnikovs for mass shootings, and plastique for suicide vests. France now leads the War on Terror, in the wake of ISIS’s November 13 massacre in Paris. Obama must have reckoned that, with France bombing from in front, he might as well bomb from behind.

But even this is kinder and gentler.

“This is our first strike against tanker trucks,” Operation Inherent Resolve Colonel Steve Warren told journalists from Baghdad on November 18. (A November 23 raid destroyed 238 more trucks.) Then he added this detail:

“To minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike.” Each leaflet reads, “Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them.” It continues, “Warning: Airstrikes are coming. Oil trucks will be destroyed. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life.”

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Oklahoma Wesleyan President Rebukes Whiny ‘Safe Space’ Students By Stephen Kruiser ****

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

All hope may not be lost. (The following is the note from the university president in its entirety.)

This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.

I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”

I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience! An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad! It is supposed to make you feel guilty! The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization!

So here’s my advice:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

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Europe Learning to Live with Islamist Terror By Mike McNally

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

As was the case in the wake of January’s attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, it was remarkable how quickly the narrative about the latest terror rampage in the city became less focused on the appalling details of the attacks themselves, and more about reporting on — and celebrating — the public’s response to the attacks.

After the January attacks it was #JeSuisCharlie and cartoons of broken pencils that were going viral. This time it was Eiffel Tower peace signs doing the rounds, along with more fatuous tweets (#TerrorismHasNoReligion, etc.) and montages of national landmarks lit up in red, white, and blue.

And, of course, that guy playing “Imagine” on a piano. They invoke Allah, and we invoke John Lennon.

As in January, this narrative has been crafted by politicians and the mainstream media, and embraced by millions in France and around the world, especially by liberals. It’s a narrative that justly celebrates the resolve of the French people, but which also allows millions with no connection to the horrific events in Paris to join in vicariously. And it enables liberals to indulge in their favorite pastime of virtue signalling and to congratulate themselves on how downright tolerant they are.

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Merv Bendle:Leadership Defined as Appeasement

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

Rather than address the consequences of a multiculturalism it promoted as signifying nothing more than happy-clappy falafels and exotic costumes, our political class prefers to decry the public’s alleged intolerance. The next election might bring quite a surprise
The enemy is within, and it is not only gun-toting, bomb-wearing sociopathic jihadists that Australians must worry about — it is their vast anti-Western ideological and institutional support system that must be confronted. This ideological support is essential to the jihadists, as it provides a ready-made justification for their murderous rampages. It also shapes the utterances of their fellow travellers and useful idiots amongst the political elite, in academia, the news media, social media, the ABC, the Human Rights Commission, and NGOs as they trot out the cliché-ridden rationalizations for mass-slaughter in the name of Allah and demand that the West accept responsibility for the attacks upon it.

The most recent glaring example of this ideological mindset is the now infamous statement made by the Muslim Grand Mufti, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, about the Paris atrocities. His Muftiness’s worldview is obviously indebted to the anti-Western post-colonial theory that dominates our universities and serves as the basic ideological paradigm of the Greens and the far left. Consequently, he indulged in a classic case of ‘blaming the victim’, declaring that the murder of the innocents in Paris had been prompted by “causative factors”, whose origins lie solely within the imperialist and oppressive West, including “racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention”. It is the policies of Western nations, allegedly directed against innocent Muslims, that are the cause of all the trouble. As Andrew Bolt recently observed, “So clearly did the Mufti’s statement read like a warning to submit [to Islam] or die that even Turnbull Government ministers attacked it.”

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Peter Smith Radical Islam = Islam

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus, but peaceful Islamists cut off his head.

The strength and resilience of Muslim terrorists in their various guises is built on an extremely solid and graduated structure underneath them. One level supports the next above. And the connectivity is bonded with a powerful adhesive, Islam itself
Has there been a hush-hush Islamic revolution? Have the grand muftis produced a redacted version of the Koran, in which only the peaceful passages remain, and slipped it secretly to politicians? It is one of those riddles wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Yet it seems to be the only explanation. Otherwise, how could textual exhortations to kill and enslave be described as peaceful by our elected elite?

Imagine a cone divided into segments. At the base are non-practicing Muslims. In the next are Muslims who occasionally attend mosque. In the next are devout Muslims who ‘religiously’ attend mosque. In the next are extreme Muslims who would like a world caliphate and sharia law. And at the top (‘coneheads’?) are terrorist Muslims who want to kill people in the name of Allah and often do.

Now it is possible, of course, to come up with finer and more complex divisions but these will do. Is my description of the cone’s segments objectionable? I can’t see any reason why it would be. It is simply putting the different views of Muslims into broad categories.

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Combating climate change: The left’s strategy to defeat ISIS By Tiffany Tryniszewski

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

President Obama claimed last week that his plans to attend an upcoming climate change conference will be “a powerful rebuke” to Islamic State terrorists, who took credit for the brutal November 13 Paris attacks.

“I will be joining world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference,” stated Barack. “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.”

Obama isn’t the first politician who has spoken of the relationship between climate change and terrorism. Secretary of State John Kerry recently stated in a speech that climate change is a threat to the security and stability of the US and other countries.

Not surprisingly, liberal celebrities are also on board with the climate change-terrorism correlation. At a U.N. climate summit, Leonardo DiCaprio (seen here aboard his 450-foot super-yacht in Cannes) stated that he agrees with the notion that climate change is our single greatest security threat.

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Hillary and Misogyny By Bruce Walker

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

The recent decision by Princeton to repudiate its most famous president, Woodrow Wilson, for his racism – after a century of adoration – is part of a pattern in leftism. Wilson was the first “liberal” or “leftist” or “progressive” president, and he was the most racist president in American history as well. His son-in-law, McAdoo, was supported by the Klan for the 1924 Democrat nomination.

Like virtually all Democrat presidents until Carter, Wilson was a bigot. If this sounds extreme, consider this Democrat presidential legacy. Grover Cleveland appointed Klansmen to the Supreme Court. Wilson purge blacks from federal jobs. FDR appointed a Klansman to be attorney general and another to the Supreme Court. Truman joined the Klan, albeit briefly, and his writings discovered a few years ago showed him as an anti-Semite as well. JFK banned Sammie Davis, Jr. from performing in the White House. LBJ opposed every Civil Rights bill while in the Senate. And so on.

Hillary professes to support women, but she actually supports those who treat women atrociously. Her husband is the worst sexual predator in American political history. This is not the problem Clinton had with his myriad affairs while married to Hillary, although that is what the left professes to be the issue.

The real problem was not whom he had consensual sex with while married – the Monica story was about Clinton’s looking into the camera and lying to America – but the women he forced himself upon. The list of women making this accusation is long, and none of these women were Republicans. The story is depressingly familiar.

Paula Jones was crudely harassed as an Arkansas state employee by Governor Bill Clinton. President Bill Clinton groped a horrified Kathleen Wiley on the very day her husband had committed suicide. Arkansas attorney general Clinton beat and savagely raped Juanita Broaddrick, according to her utterly credible report.

Here is real misogyny, not the invented fantasies of crazy feminists. Here Hillary is either stonily silent or lashing out at these women, who made serious charges against her dishonest husband. How can someone like her be taken seriously when purporting to defend women?

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Einstein, Your GPS (and Me) By S. Fred Singer

Posted By on November 27th, 2015

Just 100 years ago, Einstein announced his General Theory of Relativity. Four decades later, I used it to calculate the rate of a clock orbiting the Earth. It has turned out to be of importance for the GPS system, which depends on accurate clocks in navigation satellites.

Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity (GR)

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (“Without Albert Einstein, We’d All Be Lost”), Robbert Dijkgraaf (director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study) reminds us that on Nov. 4, 1915, Albert Einstein, working alone in wartime [World War-I, 1914-18] Berlin, submitted the first of four scientific papers that would change the course of physics and our view of the Cosmos: “His general theory of relativity (GR) is perhaps the greatest achievement of a single human mind.” Although it made Einstein the most famous scientist in history, he did not live to see the full impact of his ideas. He did not foresee earth satellites, lunar landings, or the application of GR to GPS, the Global Positioning System of navigation satellites.

As Dijkgraaf writes:

“Only now, a century later, are we gathering apples from the tree he planted: black holes that tear stars apart … ; cosmic gravitational lenses that distort images of faraway galaxies, as if seen through a funhouse mirror. And perhaps the biggest wonder of all: a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the evolution of the universe. Amazingly, in just 100 years, humankind has uncovered 13.8 billion years of cosmic history.