Friends, the John Durham situation fascinates me. I don't know, frankly, whether to be pleased or chagrined about this latest twist in the Trump-Russia saga. But here are my thoughts. See if they match up with yours.
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2019/05/16/note-to-bill-barr-only-a-special-prosecutor-will-do-n2546440
In other news, here's a great defense of the importance of free speech and pluralism. We are, as the article suggests, becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting views, and that bodes ill for our democracy.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/16/the_rise_of_artificial_freedom_140351.html
Now here's an interesting development. The College Board will soon be reporting "adversity" scores to colleges, as well as SAT scores. Apparently, the organization feels competent to decide who's had a hard time in life and therefore deserves a leg up. What colleges do with the scores is, of course, up to them, but the truth is that class diversity has never been that important to higher education anyway. A lot of the applicants from poor and lower-middle class backgrounds that colleges might be interested in otherwise are white or Asian, and that naturally lowers their progressive stock value. The real miracle is that the College Board doesn't already adjust students' actual test scores based on their race or class. That may be coming soon, if we're not careful.
https://www.axios.com/sat-college-board-adversity-score-standardized-tests-50a107e3-e5d6-4731-8eba-1d38d7642b5d.html
Lastly, take note of this ad sponsored by Tom Steyer's "Need to Impeach" group. It seems that the Trump-haters are growing frustrated with the Democrats in Congress. Sure, the Dems love to investigate Trump and drop endless hints about impeachment, but the last thing in the world they want to do is put it to a vote. The Dems are, in effect, stonewalling, and at some point the hard left is going to realize it. Unpleasantness will ensue, mark my words...
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/16/steyer-backed_group_need_to_impeach_blasts_house_dems_hes_laughing_at_you_hes_getting_away_with_it.html
Dr. Waddy: Re: Mr. Durham. I agree with everything you said. The President owes his supporters and justice demands, an investigation fully as vigorously prosecuted as the left's now discredited and disingenuous disgrace was.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: No doubt, progress in AI will be measured in the degraded American Academy by its leftist political correctness. Those forms found best suited to arbitrary radical control of information acquisition, storage and dissemination will be favored.
ReplyDeleteResistance to intolerance of opposing views must begin with acknowledging its origin and the responsibility for the dangerously and disgracefully antidemocratic state which now obtains. It lies completely with the incipiently totalitarian American left. Over the last 50 years it has embraced the Marxist principle that ANY means is acceptable in the pursuit of "justice". Leftist regimes in power have proven to be murderously and reflexively reactive to expressed opposition.
Since we cannot hope to change leftist minds, as they have demonstrated their withering contempt for anyone who questions their irrefutable virtue, the solution to the present poisonous situation is to disempower and marginalize its originator and its disingenuous champion,the American left.
Dr. Waddy: It may well be that the College Board has embraced the increasingly totalitarian composition of the American Academy and wishes to earn accreditation as properly obsequious factoti to those who dictate political correctness.
ReplyDeleteYour evaluation of the consequences of its presumptuous categorization of relative hardship, in the light of leftist doctrines of degrees of oppression, is well taken.
Dr. Waddy: What form would a prospective schism between those Dems determined to ride the Quixotic impeachment road and those with, well, relatively level heads, what form would it take? Naturally it will mean support for those Presidential candidates who share their passionate picque. The thought of Warren or Sanders as the nominee invokes delicious images of 48 state landslides for the real America. But, even should they settle for acceptance of one of their own as the Vice Presidential pick,think also of the potential for assured Biden goofs paired with the insolent and independent blatherings of one representative of the loony Dem ideological majority.
ReplyDeleteWhat a Danteesque experience the 2020 Dem convention will be. AOC will of course keynote a celebration of politically correct vindictiveness and intolerance for flyover country and any others who dare to dissent from the utopian intentions she so casually expresses. Dante emerged from the Inferno physically intact but I would not bet on the long term survival of any but the elect who hazard that hell hole.
Jack, I have no doubt that the College Board has been infiltrated by "woke" academics, but at the same time it's also a business, of sorts, and its "customers" are American higher education, and academia wants racial diversity at all costs -- and views academic standards as a quaint holdover from the days of Jim Crow. Unless the College Board produces tests and metrics that give colleges the student body they're seeking, in other words, it won't find any takers for its tests and metrics.
ReplyDeleteWhat a neat image -- AOC at the Democratic convention! She could indeed make a splash. A whole host of progressives could. And your suggestion that a searing contest within the Democratic Party over impeachment could be its undoing in 2020 (and beyond) is on point. It seems that the movement to impeach is getting hard for the leadership to resist. "Resist" -- ha! You're right that more of the candidates for the nomination will have to come out FOR or AGAINST impeachment, and how could be a Democrat be against it, given the prevalence of Trump hatred among primary voters? Liberal logic will push these candidates towards the abyss.
Just as intriguing to me is what will become of those in the Democratic Party who balk at impeachment. Will they be welcome at all? Things could get mighty acrimonious in blue country!
Dr. Waddy: AOC - well, Napoleon too made a splash for awhile but in the end . . . . Though they share similarly precocious and inflated self regard I do not, though,suggest AOC capable of Bonaparte's sometimes positive achievments.
ReplyDeleteYour metaphor of the "circular firing squad" is very well taken now in considering the seething Dem bedlam at hand.
Ha ha. To misquote Lloyd Bentsen, "I knew Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon Bonaparte was my friend. AOC, you're no Napoleon Bonaparte!"
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Would that it had been done to turn Bentsen's haughty remarks back to him. So you knew Jack Kennedy did you? Did you know the details of a personal life so reckless that it may have persuaded the Soviets that he was a silly voluptuary weakling? Do you realize the nearly nuclear consequences that had for us in 1962? Are you accusing Dan Quayle of the same? By what evidence, pray?
ReplyDeleteOne thing is for sure about AOC: she has not begun to divine the soul of the real America, so very recently emergent from NYC she is. She has a hard road to tread; is she up to it? Nah!
Bentsen's remark was classic leftist snobbery -- not that Bentsen was much of a leftist, mind you. I frankly welcome the Left's sanctimony, because it's always been a significant drag on its popularity. A less genuinely "populist" movement would be hard to imagine.
ReplyDeleteTo the extent that AOC understands America's "soul," I think it's clear that what she sees there is dark and menacing. Will 2020 come down to an optimistic Trump versus a doom-and-gloom left-winger? Maybe, and that bodes well for the good guys.