Iran To The Rescue

Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Israel

“Leave ISIS To The Homies” (Sept. 2014) observed that “ISIS’s neighbors, Israel included, didn’t seem particularly concerned about the barbarians at the gate.” The column worried that the “promise of eternal American intervention had, likely, enabled inertia and apathy among regional players,” when the wise thing for “U.S. meddlers” would be to “quit degrading the Syrian Army,” and “leave ISIS to Syria, Tehran and Tel Aviv.”

It has come to pass. the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is leading Shiite militias in battle against ISIS, near “the Islamic State-held city of Tikrit,” Iraq. And Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like myself, thinks “it could turn out to be ‘a positive thing.’”

Yes, “let the locals take out their trash.”

Hillary And Her Bipartisan Village Idiots

Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Media, Republicans

“Hillary And Her Bipartisan Village Idiots” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Big media are all about the angle, the spin. Look to the overarching theme that runs through each and every news story. Be hip to the meta-narrative peddled.

Recent examples:

A perfectly logical statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in February, was framed by CNN anchorette Brooke Baldwin as “controversial.” In view of rife, Islamic anti-Semitism in Europe, Mr. Netanyahu told “all of the European Jews, and all Jews wherever [they] are [that] Israel is the home of every Jew.”

To the rational individual, unburdened by the obtuse thinking of a teletart, Netanyahu’s statement was utterly uncontroversial. It follows from an irremediable reality: The subordinate satellite states of the European Union refuse—and no longer have the power—to properly and vigorously defend their innocent, Jewish and Christian citizens from an identifiable threat.

Another example of the meta-shaping of news came courtesy of Fredricka Witless (whose intellectual prowess I chronicled in “Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism”).

Ms. Witless used leading questions in an interview with a man she introduced as the “controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks.” In a free society, a painter—impressionist, realist, muralist, cubist, cartoonist—would never be considered controversial. He harms no one in the fulfillment of the requirements of his benign profession.

However, with her leading question, wittingly or unwittingly, Fredricka Whitfield was essentially asking an innocent cartoonist, who ekes out a life hiding from Muhammadans, whether he felt responsible for crimes perpetrated by his assailants. After all, the criminals were spurred by his drawings of their prophet.

Leading questions suggest a certain reality. They force defensive replies. They shift blame. They invert morality and reality.

Likewise has the logic of the debate been lost in the hyperventilating over Mrs. Clinton’s unorthodox email account. The dynamic at play: Hound Hillary Rodham Clinton for lesser, technocratic offenses, thus allowing her to gracefully evade responsibility for serious war crimes: the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, for one. Benghazi, for another. …

… Read the rest. “Hillary And Her Bipartisan Village Idiots” is now on WND.

The Data Are In: Even American PhDs Are … Dumber

America, Education, Intelligence, Literature, Science, Technology

I’ve been saying it for years, based on my encounters with a relatively smart cohort, through this column. My husband, a South African PhD (received at the age of 24), has been saying it for a long time based on encounters in his field. Barely A Blog correspondent Myron Pauli, a physics PhD from MIT (of which he thinks poorly), has been saying it over these pixelated pages:

American millennials, in general—but even with masters degrees and doctorates—are unimpressive, to put it charitably. They do, however, score high in self-esteem, which is part of the problem. From a 2007, Ottawa Citizen article I wrote:

Paradoxically, while our high school students score near the bottom in international competitions, when asked to rate themselves, they consistently give themselves top marks. But then so do their parents and teachers. Thanks to constant, unwarranted worship, and no moral or rigorous intellectual instruction, American schools are full of lame and lazy megalomaniacs.

The Washington Post cites a recent report by “the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, better known as the OECDU.S,” according to which “millennials with master’s degrees and doctorates did better than their peers in only three countries, Ireland, Poland and Spain. Those in Finland, Sweden and Japan seemed to be on a different planet.”

Top-scoring U.S. millennials – the 90th percentile on the PIAAC test – were at the bottom internationally, ranking higher only than their peers in Spain. The bottom percentile (10th percentile) also lagged behind their peers. And the gap between America’s best and worst was greater than the gap in 14 other countries. This, the study authors said, signaled America’s high degree of inequality.

The “daunting” PIAAC Test showed that “U.S. millennials performed horribly.”

That might even be an understatement, given the extent of the American shortcomings. No matter how you sliced the data – by class, by race, by education – young Americans were laggards compared to their international peers. In every subject, U.S. millennials ranked at the bottom or very close to it, according to a new study by testing company ETS.

“We were taken aback,” said ETS researcher Anita Sands. “We tend to think millennials are really savvy in this area. But that’s not what we are seeing.”

By the way, note how forthrightly readers of the liberal WaPo discuss the well-documented racial differences in scholarly achievement. Alas, could the “dumbassery” documented in the WaPo article be manifesting in the reading and comprehension skills of its readers? For the article explicitly states that results were consistent across “class” and “race.” Yet many readers missed this crucial tidbit.

The information comes courtesy of Vox Day, who also quips as follows about the findings:

This isn’t surprising to me. Generation X had to understand its toys in order to play with them. There is nothing creative about a tablet or a smartphone. You can’t do anything on it. It’s basically a dumb terminal on the mainframe of the Internet. These digital natives are actually digital cargo cultists, comfortably familiar using things they don’t actually know the first thing about. As far as they’re concerned, it might as well be magic.

Presstitutes & Politicians: Seamlessly Unseemly

Democrats, Ethics, Media, Morality

As was noted in “Brian Williams: Member Of Media Circle Jerk,” America’s presstitutes are “no better than the lobbyists and the politicians they petition, they move seamlessly between their roles as activists, experts and anchors; publishers and authors; talkers and product peddlers; pinups and pontificators.”

And their wives follow the gravy train.

In the tradition of keeping you in the loop of the corrupt conflict-of-interest unseemliness that typifies the American media—I’m glad to report that Chris Matthews’ “queen” (no, it’s not Barack Obama) is running for office. The anchor promised that if Kathleen Matthews “runs for office her campaign will be covered fairly by the network.”

That’s not the point, pinhead: The point is that the male Matthews’ access has likely facilitated his wife’s access.

The queen of conflict on interest is Hillary Clinton (and the subject of this week’s column). Just one of her infractions had to do with enabling Anthony Weiner’s long-suffering wife, Huma Abedin, to get “status in June 2012 as a “Special Government Employee,” enabling her to hold down multiple jobs in the private sector while she also collected a State Department paycheck.”