Philosophy Professor: ‘Don’t go to College! Become an Electrician.’ By Richard McDonough

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/philosophy_professor_dont_go_to_college_become_an_electrician.html

I don’t think you should send your kids to any universities.  [I told] my daughter, “Don’t go to college.  Become an electrician.”  I never would have imagined 10 years ago that I would [say] that. … It’s better to stare at a wall … [or] do nothing than to learn things that are false.  — Peter Boghossian, former Philosophy Professor Portland State University, Feb. 28, 2023

It is astonishing when a liberal philosophy professor tells people, including his own daughter, not to go to university because they have become “indoctrination mills.”  Many other types of professors can make a living outside universities.  However, there is no real market for specialists in Kant’s transcendental deductions outside the university.  With slight exceptions, philosophers have little choice but to work in universities.  So, when Prof. Boghossian tells his own daughter not to go to university, he must believe that universities have become dangerously unhealthy.  Although Boghossian cites Harvard, Yale and Oberlin as “non-starters”, he says that all universities have been destroyed by “woke” nonsense and should be defunded.  University people, Boghossian says, “live in make-believe land.”

Boghossian was one of the professors who exposed the lack of academic standards in a set of “woke” journals in the 2017-2018 “Grievance Studies affair,” also referred to as the “Sokal Squared” scandal (referring to a similar case in 1996 perpetrated by NYU physics professor Alan Sokal). James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, using pseudonyms or borrowed identities, submitted absurd papers to journals in culture, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to test the integrity of their editorial peer review process. 

The World Economic Forum and the West’s Next Act? by J.B. Shurk

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19512/world-economic-forum-crap

[E]conomic writer Charles Hugh Smith has repeatedly warned [about] the “crapification” of the U.S. economy…. customers with scant other buying options are forced to accept that few purchases will last.

Politicians seem to be heading in a similar direction…. Western governments are filled to the brim with people entirely lacking in real-world experience or specialized knowledge.

In recent decades, a noticeable trend in the West has been to elevate politicians, as young and inexperienced as possible, into offices as high as possible…. Such a system — in which those who have proven themselves the least are given responsibilities that would test even those who have proven themselves time and again — hardly looks ideal.

If Western politicians seem just as second-rate these days as what customers all too often find in stores, there may be a simple reason why: International financial titans make, sell, and own both… and may be planning to own you, too.

If you are a consumer today, inflation is only one of the problems harming you. As prices go up, quality continues to go down. What most stores have to offer you might crassly be called “cheap crap.” In fact, economic writer Charles Hugh Smith has repeatedly warned that the “crapification” of the U.S. economy is the natural result of a “neoliberal-hyper-financialization-hyper-globalization model,” in which quasi-monopolist manufacturers mass-produce goods with the cheapest possible components, while customers with scant other buying options are forced to accept that few purchases will last.

The Legally and Morally Flawed Case Against Trump A twisted perversion of the justice process. by Philip Holloway

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-legally-and-morally-flawed-case-against-trump/

Although we don’t yet know entirely how it will be structured, enough of the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Trump has found its way into the public domain so that we know the general parameters. The centerpiece of the case is a misdemeanor charge under Section 175 for supposedly falsifying his business records. The theory is that Trump paid his former lawyer $130,000.00 in a series of reimbursements to Cohen and labeled them as legal expenses to conceal that the money was really to pay Adult Film Actress, Stormy Daniels for a nondisclosure agreement and that somehow this scheme violated federal election laws.

From a legal perspective, this bizarre wielding of State prosecutorial power in pursuit of what is essentially an alleged federal crime is seriously flawed.

For starters, it is not a crime to be a philanderer, if in fact Trump did have an affair with Ms. Daniels. She has claimed publicly that there was no affair – but who knows. It is not a crime for Trump to pay so-called “hush money” either. I hate it when people call it that. It is a legal contract called a “nondisclosure agreement” and it is not in the least uncommon. Particularly for a celebrity who is a married man with many business interests. There are myriad reasons – unrelated to his Presidential Campaign – for Trump to pay the money to Ms. Daniels.

The case is legally flawed for a second major reason. Specifically the Manhattan DA has a major Statute of Limitations problem.

It’s worth noting that the Federal Elections Commission and the Department of Justice have already looked at all this and took no action back when it was fresh. Nevertheless DA Bragg is essentially trying to stuff a federal campaign finance crime into a state law business records charge. The business records case under Section 175 is a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations is two years. If DA Bragg manages to shoehorn an alleged violation of the federal campaign finance laws into the Section 175 charge – despite being a state DA and not a US Attorney – then the business records case becomes a felony and has a five-year statute of limitations. My iPhone tells me this is 2023 – nearly seven years after any such Section 175 business record crime would have occurred. So, the statute of limitations has clearly run. Nevertheless, I wait on pins and needles to see what whackado legal theory DA Bragg pulls out of his…..hat to claim the statute of limitations has somehow not expired.

The Gulf War: 20 Years Later Was the war worth the blood and treasure we spent on it? Here’s whom to ask. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-gulf-war-20-years-later/

Monday marked the twentieth anniversary of the second Gulf war, which detractors call the invasion of Iraq. I have always looked at it as the liberation, as do many Iraqis.

But most Americans have been taught a history of lies, a history forged by left-wing political activists and their allies in the media and rarely contradicted by those who knew the truth.

Even Britannica, the once authoritative encyclopedia, has bowed to the political orthodoxy, referring to Saddam Hussein’s “alleged” possession and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.

That is the founding myth of the “Bush lied, people died” Democrats and the media.

So were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion?

Absolutely. We know that because the United States and its coalition partners assembled a team of over 1,400 special forces operators, scientists and intelligence analysts to scour Iraq for the evidence. And what they reported has been wildly mischaracterized – at times, even by the leaders of that very effort.

David Kay, a former IAEA inspector who became famous for his parking lot “standoff” with Saddam’s goons, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 23, 2004, that WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. “I don’t think they existed,” Kay said.

“Stockpiles” quickly became the defining term. But in Kay’s interim report to the House intelligence committee, just four months earlier, he painted a very different picture. “We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002,” he said.

This included:

*  A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and “that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N.” Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn’t have a biological weapons program?

*    New research on BW agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

Our Response to Russia’s Invasion Still Muddled No wonder Iran, Russia, and China are licking their chops. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-response-to-russias-invasion-still-muddled/

Last week Florida governor Ron DeSantis kicked the foreign policy establishment hornets’ nest in his response to a questionnaire Tucker Carlson sent to potential 2024 Republican primary candidates. Asked about our Ukraine policy, DeSantis called the Russo-Ukrainian war a “territorial dispute,” which his critics claimed suggested a moral equivalence between the two sides. But such criticism and dudgeon still leave unaddressed DeSantis’ questions and caveats about our “vital national interests” being served by our open-ended, yet hesitant support of Ukraine.

Politics, of course, is a big reason for the attacks on DeSantis, as well as our muddled policies on Ukraine. You know politics is afoot when ad hominem attacks and distortions are deployed. Phrases used to smear DeSantis like “pro-Russia stance” and “sides with Russia against the West” are political dog-whistles for inciting attacks on a likely presidential candidate whose youth, political success, and anti-“woke” pushback scare the Dems and Republican Petainists.

This political weaponization of “Russia,” moreover, is a continuation of the 2016 campaign and the subsequent assaults on Donald Trump’s administration and person, fueled by the big lies of “Russia collusion” claims that Trump was under Putin’s thumb. Wasn’t that why Trump was “soft” on Putin?

That canard is easily exploded. It wasn’t Trump who, through Dmitri Medvedev, promised Putin “flexibility” on missile defense systems for Poland and Czechoslovakia, and followed through by stopping their delivery. It wasn’t Trump’s administration that prioritized a solicitous “reset” of relations with Russia. It wasn’t Trump who scoffed at his presidential election opponent’s warnings about Putin’s malign intentions, by saying “The Eighties called and they want their foreign policy back,” or who met Putin’s 2014 adventurism in Crimea with carefully parsed diplo-rhetoric and flabby sanctions.

Diversity Training Disaster By John Stossel

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/03/22/diversity-training-disaster-n1680355

All big American companies now require DEI training: diversity, equity and inclusion. All big companies!

Really.

It sounds responsible. But it turns out DEI courses are often useless and sometimes racist.First comes groveling.

My new video about DEI shows a conference that begins with a “land acknowledgement.” A Microsoft employee apologizes for taking land from “the Sammamish, the Duwamish, Snoqualmie, Suquamish, Muckleshoot” and more.

I guess it’s a nice gesture. But they aren’t giving the land back!

Companies go through the motions.

“They feel like they have to,” says York College professor Erec Smith. “They have to signal to the world that they’re doing something.”

They hope it will protect them from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and lawsuits.

Smith was once a diversity officer. He left the position because he thought it was “useless.”

Or worse. “It makes people less likely to interact with people unlike them,” he says. “It’s a minefield now.”

At diversity trainings, employees learn about “microaggressions,” speech that’s subtly biased.

“If you ask somebody what they do for a living, somehow that’s racist,” says Smith. “If you learn that, then why would you take a chance? … ‘I’m going to silence myself’ … not talk to Black people.”

Biden Executive Order on Equity Rhymes With Jim Crow By J. Christian Adams

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/03/21/biden-executive-race-order-on-race-rhymes-with-jim-crow-n1680276

President Biden recently issued an executive order entitled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” Make no mistake: this executive order has the effect of pushing us backward toward a racially divided nation, just like the good old days.

What a shame. Not thirty years ago, a very different spirit animated civil rights. Call it the Martin Luther King vision. Dr. King’s vision was fundamentally the Christian one, where every person has dignity, where racism is a sin, where race matters not at all compared to character.

Dr. King held the moral high ground here. His vision ushered in a few short decades of getting it right.

America had just emerged from two centuries as a nation embracing the opposite of Dr. King’s vision. First human slavery, then violent, racially motivated lawlessness ruled the night. This was followed by segregation in housing and transportation, separate and unequal schools, and bar-b-que only by takeout for blacks.

At the heart of all this wickedness was treating fellow Americans based on their race, not on what matters.

I fear America has lost the moral high ground. Instead of equality and dignity, new generations are schooled in racial division and the fundamental building blocks of the segregationist policies the nation fought so hard to end.

The foundation of segregation, simply, was treating people differently based on their race.  This immoral foundation supported all the structures of Jim Crow, from dilapidated schools to separate water fountains.

So why does the new executive order push us back toward that wretched past?  Why does it elevate race like the segregationists of old?

The executive order establishes offices throughout the federal government with legions of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” bureaucrats at the highest levels. All bureaucrats pushing race consciousness will be coordinated out of the White House.

Is the Mask of the Green Cult Finally Coming Off? By Adam Vicari

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/is_the_mask_of_the_green_cult_finally_coming_off.html

For decades now, you have heard leftist ear sores bloviate endlessly about “climate change.”  The world will end in a decade if we don’t take action now! screams AOC.  However, the more skeptical and rational among us tend to question the true motivation of the environmentalist Green cult.

The best example of a real environmentalist was probably conservationist John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.  Muir’s work helped to establish a number of national parks throughout the country, an act that did not regress the progress of society for the sake of nature, but sought to preserve nature while simultaneously allowing industrial society to progress at a steady rate.  Thus, Muir sought to build something, while the modern environmentalist movement seeks only to destroy everything and anything that gets in the way of its climate crusade. 

Just take a look at the Sierra Club’s website today, and see what its goals are for 2030.  Within the next seven years, the Sierra Club hopes to eliminate enough coal and gas in the energy sector to make for 80% carbon “pollution”–free electricity by that time, in addition to decreasing oil used in the transportation sector by 18%, ending the sale of gas appliances, and halting the fossil fuel market by banning oil and gas exports and petrochemical expansion at the same time.  This is an ambitious plan…and also a complete load of BS and magical thinking. 

Although it may not faze most people at first, notice how they call carbon a “pollutant” and claim they want to reduce it by 80% in electricity production.  Since when is carbon a pollutant?  Carbon is an element necessary to all life on earth. No organism can survive without it.  Indeed, the entire process on which all human life depends, photosynthesis, requires carbon dioxide.  In order for plants to produce oxygen for living beings to breathe, they must first collect carbon dioxide dispelled from the living being breathing the air they are producing.  Numerous studies have indicated that areas with higher carbon concentration are more green and more fertile, not less. 

Silicon Valley Bank Was on Federal Reserve’s Radar For More Than a Year – Fed Reserve of San Francisco Issued Six Citations and Flagged Bank as Ticking Time Bomb by Cristina Laila

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-was-on-federal-reserves-radar-for-more-than-a-year-fed-reserve-of-san-francisco-issued-six-citations-and-flagged-bank-as-ticking-time-bomb/

Silicon Valley Bank was on the Federal Reserve’s radar for more than a year before it collapsed.

SVB’s balance sheet was a ticking time bomb but somehow the bank regulators ‘missed it’ and the bank ultimately collapsed.

Silicon Valley Bank reportedly held $173 billion in deposits – $117 billion of its deposits were in mortgage-backed securities.

The so-called bank regulators somehow ‘failed’ to notice Silicon Valley Bank was a ticking time bomb when more than two-thirds of its deposits were invested in mortgage-backed securities that yielded 1.5% as the Fed raised rates 450 basis points last year, according to its balance sheets.

The Federal Reserve of San Francisco issued six citations and flagged Silicon Valley Bank.

By July of 2022, Silicon Valley Bank was under a “full supervisory review” and “placed under a set of restrictions that prevented it from growing through acquisitions,” according to the New York Times.

The regulators knew Silicon Valley Bank was in trouble and did not have enough cash to cover depositors.

But they were bailed out anyway.

Liz Peek: Economy is in the tank, banks are reeling, inflation is sky-high and there’s more Biden isn’t telling you

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/economy-tank-banks-reeling-inflation-sky-high-biden-telling

Are you angry yet? You should be. Our economy is slowing, banks are reeling, inflation remains scorching-high, real incomes are dropping, home prices are falling and Americans everywhere are becoming poorer by the minute.

On top of everything else, now we have the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, infuriating bailouts and the resulting panic over banks. As with nearly everything that has gone wrong on their watch, including the inexcusable border chaos, the catastrophic pullout from Afghanistan and harmful inflation, the go-to response by the White House has been to blame President Trump.

Specifically, to blame Trump for signing legislation that loosened regulations on regional banks in 2018.That was Joe Biden’s message in the pitiful 5-minute address in which he tried but utterly failed to reassure the nation that our banking system is sound.

Here’s what Biden didn’t say: they knew. Regulators knew that Silicon Valley Bank was on the brink of failure. Supervisors spotted fatal weaknesses at the tech lender last summer, including some deemed “matters requiring immediate attention”; they told SVB management last fall that its model was flawed and could result in a run on deposits. 

Despite the grave warning, the New York Times reports, management failed to change course and supervisors failed to act. By early this spring, SVB was in yet another review, this one on its risk management practices. Bottom line: there were none.

In other words, there were plenty of regulations and processes in place to prevent the catastrophe that occurred at SVB. Critics have assailed the San Francisco Fed, the supervisory authority, and its chief Mary Daly, for negligence. Some have rightly said that having SVB CEO Greg Becker on the overseer Fed board posed an obvious and dangerous conflict of interest.

It is hard to dismiss those who assert that the eagerness with which the Fed, the Treasury and the White House stepped in to bail out SVB and Signature Bank, caught in SVB’s backdraft, stemmed from the cozy relationships and giant political donations that Democrats receive from the tech community. It is, indeed, one big Happy Valley.