|
The blame game does not go public until the end is near and the blame game is suddenly going very public with Team Bush.
The University of Chicago announced Sunday that all classes and other activities planned for Monday on its Hyde Park campus will be canceled after FBI counterterrorism officials informed the university of a gun violence threat to the campus.
University President Robert Zimmer sent an email to students and staff warning them of a threat posted online by an unknown individual, which specifically mentioned "the campus quad" at 10 a.m. Monday.
President Zimmer is a coward.
Students at several universities have been protesting over some legitimate, and even some illegitimate, grievances and “injustices” recently. In unsurprisingly duplicitous fashion, they have engaged in the same type of tactics they denounce: bullying, intimidation, and bigotry, in what should be the most open and diverse setting – institutions of higher learning.
At the University of Missouri, there was a report of a swastika of human excrement on a wall in a lavatory. Surprisingly, in this era of everyone having a cell phone that takes pictures, not a soul on a campus of 30,000 students was able to document it. Then apparently some inebriated student said some inappropriate things of a racial nature. He was suspended. So basically, a couple of incidents of bad behavior.
Primarily because of those incidents, protests broke out all over the campus, even leading a communications professor to request some muscle to prevent a student newspaper reporter from taking pictures. Isn’t that interesting, that a professor of communications, you know, that industry that is so dependent upon First Amendment rights, would attempt to suppress and stifle the First Amendment rights of others?
As part of an event on diversity and inclusion in the labor movement, professors at Cornell University displayed cartoons depicting Republicans as knife-wielding terrorists, raving lunatics, and even molesters.
The drawings were displayed at a social justice roundtable on November 13 sponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) as a way of putting students in touch with labor and social justice representatives, according to Hypeline.
Headlines like "Steady debate performance banishes gloom for Jeb Bush" and "Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio Make Big Impressions During Debate" were typical over the last few days, but the reality was far different. You and I saw an unhappy candidate; someone who is obviously uncomfortable at the dais, less than eloquent, and unsuccessfully marketing unpopular positions on virtually every issue imaginable.
The racist, McCarthyite, totalitarian movement rearing its ugly head on college campuses as diverse as Missouri, Yale and Vanderbilt is being treated by conservatives as a case of kids too fragile to handle views with which they disagree.
This may work as a debating tactic but it misunderstands both the malignancy of the politics behind the campaign and the ferocity of its radical leaders.
Now they are calling for the heads of liberals (and getting them). But quaint American prejudices like the First Amendment still stand in their way. But for how long? If this movement, which includes large contingents of the Democratic Party – including the president, achieves critical mass and succeeds in its agendas and acquires the necessary power, who can doubt that they will be putting dissenters in prison and worse?
As an Arab student, who pays 400 shekels at the start of each year, I would like to ask you: Why does the Student Association hold its ‘Student Day’ on the day Jerusalem was conquered? Why should the Student Association ignore the Arab students, who constitute a sizable percentage of the students of Hebrew University?
Hillsdale College, a 1,500-student liberal arts college in Michigan, is ranked by U.S. News and World Reports as the 67th-best national liberal arts college in the country. The college is well-known for the conservative identity of its student body and its focus on a core curriculum that emphasizes Judeo-Christian tradition and the U.S. Constitution. It’s also known for its refusal to accept any federal funding (including federal student loans), in order to remain free of most federal regulatory control.
Despite its name, the Obama administration’s new College Scorecard doesn’t grade schools (though it was originally planned to) and instead just offers a bevy of data, such as schools’ graduation rate and the average salary of graduates. But notably, Hillsdale can’t be found on the scorecard, as though it doesn’t exist.
This is a pic of the device Irving police say they found on the student. @CBSDFW pic.twitter.com/WNKMew783W
— Jennifer Lindgren (@JLindgrenCBS11) September 16, 2015Data point 2:Uh-Oh: Hillary Losing White Women.. and Every Other Demographic
The Wall Street Journal is sounding the alarm for Team Hillary after the results of a new WSJ/NBC News poll show her losing white women voters and, well, basically every other demographic...
But WSJ notes that that's not the only "worrisome trend" for the Democratic presidential frontrunner. She's also lost many Independents, whose opinion of her has plummeted from an "evenly split" perception earlier this year to now being underwater 27/52. The opinion of Clinton among African-Americans also dropped in the last few months, falling from 81/3 to 66/15.
Behind a garden modeled on Monet's, Jeb Bush addressed a lawn-full of chief executives and hedge-fund managers at an East Hampton, New York, estate Saturday morning. While the candidate is no stranger to courting wealthy donors, this time was different: about half the attendees were Democrats.
"This guy sells well," said Kenneth Lipper, the money manager and registered Democrat who hosted the event, after Bush left. Virtually the only one who left without writing a check, Lipper said, was a buck deer that wandered past the group assembled on the wooded grounds...
...In some ways, the Hamptons are Hillary Clinton territory. The Democratic candidate and her husband have often rented summer homes here, and it's popular with movie stars and entertainers who tilt liberal. Suffolk County favored Democrats in the last three presidential races.
But Lipper estimated that the crowd of about 70 at his event was almost evenly split between the parties, and virtually every one of them donated to Bush. Lipper, 74, said he introduced Bush as the candidate who will "bring unity and civility to the process." He was impressed when Bush started his visit by introducing himself to Lipper's kitchen staff.
More prisoners may soon have access to federal subsidies to pay for college under a new Obama administration initiative, ending a 20-year ban on Pell grants for state and federal prisoners.
The move could come as soon as this week. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch are scheduled to visit ... the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup on Friday, to make “an important announcement related to federal aid.”
On Monday, Duncan said that restoring Pell eligibility for those potential students is one way his agency hopes to "increase college affordability" [Ed: quotes added for comic effect]...
...The Obama administration has increased total federal aid available to students by more than $50 billion and increased tax benefits and credits by an additional $12 billion, part of a total of about $150 billion a year in grants and loans for higher education...
There were two accidents on the Schuylkill Expressway last Monday morning. You know what this meant. I had the pleasure of traveling to work on the scenic 30 Blocks of Squalor. The 30 blocks from 69th Street in Upper Darby to 39th Street in West Philly is a tribute to government incompetence, failed government policies, shoddy union labor practices and fiscal mismanagement.
This entire thirty block trek could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes if the hundreds of union government drones in the Philadelphia Streets Department would get off their fat asses and timed the lights. The blocks are identical in distance. They don’t need advanced degrees in physics or calculus to set the lights to go green every ten seconds in order. They were timed in the 1970s and 1980s. Would smoothly flowing traffic be such a bad thing? Do they not care or are they really this incompetent? The first light at 61st Street was red when I arrived. It turned green and before you could touch the gas, it immediately turned yellow and red again. I wondered how long they’d allow this to go on. My guess would be days.
I’ve noted in previous 30 Blocks screeds that Philadelphia put a thin veneer of blacktop on the entirety of Chestnut Street about two years ago. I’ve also detailed the dozens of water main breaks that occur on a regular basis under the streets of Philadelphia, causing tens of millions in property damage. This is how corrupt incompetent government drones run the show. They gloss over the long-term real structural problems with a thin veneer of cheap half assed faux solutions that provide the false appearance of fixing something.
A new milestone must have been established recently – we’re now officially in a new era of the $400 new college textbook and the $300 used college textbook, see accompanying graphic showing the top 15 most expensive textbooks at the University of Michigan-Flint based on a new unpublished report by Matthew Wolverton, an electronic resource management librarian at the Thompson Library (UM-Flint’s library). The graphic below shows the most expensive college textbooks by discipline at UM-Flint, based on the average price of new textbooks for each discipline in winter 2015 semester.
For business students taking five classes per semester and paying an average of $250 per textbook, their textbook bill would be $2,500 per year and $10,000 over four years! Of course, those students would be taking courses in non-business disciplines where the average textbook price is lower, but even at an average price of $200 per new textbook, students could be facing costs as high as $8,000 over four years. And even though renting textbooks is a less expensive option compared to purchasing books, rental costs per semester are running above $200 per new book and well above $100 per used textbook (and as high as $180), see top graphic above. Even if students could rent used textbooks for all of their college classes at $100 per course (which is probably on the low side), that would still amount to $1,000 per year (for ten classes) and $4,000 over four years (for 40 classes).
The graph below shows the historical increase in college textbooks (981%) between 1978 and 2014 in comparison to increases in the overall CPI (262%), the CPI for medical care (604%), and the median sales price for new homes (408%) over that 37-year period. Textbook prices seem like they are clearly on an unsustainable trajectory, especially in the face of new low-cost alternatives as discussed below.
Please check this story out. Consider what it means to many Americans. Until there is some legitimate effort to embrace the conservative base, the Republican Party stands no chance of winning the presidential election in 2016.
"Question: If John Boehner Was a Democratic Plant, What Would He Be Doing Differently?," by Jim Hoft
As a side note, you do realize that Jeb Bush has zero chance in a general election? Or has the Bush brand name secretly been repaired when I wasn't looking? Any cash you direct to Jeb!™ would be better invested by dousing it in gasoline and then applying a lit sparkler.
Best, Doug
MT @darmercurio: Determining if we need another Bush President (using the #CommonCore method). pic.twitter.com/otFpz16yEk #StopCC #PJNET
— barbara (@sunbeltgirl) June 29, 2015It just got surreal. George Washington University Law School Professor John Banzhaf filed a human rights complaint to the D.C. Office of Human Rights against Catholic University for hindering Muslim students’ free exercise of their faith due to the “excessive” amount of “Catholic imagery” on the campus. It seems that this man – who teaches at a different school across town – thinks that Catholic University’s adherence to the cultural aspects of Catholicism (we have a lot of artwork, Crucifixes, and statues in every nook and crany) keeps muslim students from praying the required five times a day.
...Just as an aside from a graduate of Catholic high school, at least, did Prof. Banzhaf not see the title of the university? Did he not see the GIGANTIC church on the university property we know as the National Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception? ... What part of “Catholic” isn’t sinking in? We’re into high art, Jesus hanging on the Cross, defending the separation of the sexes in dorms, etc. It’s part and parcel of the deal when you attend Catholic school.
Across the board, the 60-page complaint filed by Banzhaf has officials at Catholic University and just about every other corner scratching heads. [It seems that] no muslim students have voiced concern for the issues of which Banzhaf writes.
Since the death of Freddie Gray the media and liberals have been making excuses for the riots in Baltimore and have been whining that the city has a lack of funds and jobs. But Obama sent the city nearly two billion dollars. So, what happened to that money?
The city of Baltimore received over $1.8 billion from President Barack Obama’s stimulus law, including $467.1 million to invest in education and $26.5 million for crime prevention.
President Obama claimed last Tuesday that if the Republican-controlled Congress would implement his policies to make “massive investments in urban communities,” they could “make a difference right now” in the city, currently in upheaval following the death of Freddie Gray.
Federal law, under No Child Left Behind, requires 95 percent of students in a state to take the annual standardized tests in reading and math from grades 3-8. It is a requirement which until now has never needed enforcement or consideration.
With as many as 184,000 students in New York choosing to opt out, the 95 percent threshold will not only be in jeopardy, it will be an easily missed mark.
When asked what would happen in states with such a high opt out rate, whether they would have to force consequences upon schools, parents, and students, Duncan responded “We think most states will do that.”
He added, “If states don’t do that, then we have an obligation to step in.”
