Grouchy Old Cripple picks up on something I had intended to comment upon but then set aside for other things, probably less important.
He refers to the tale of the perfessor in Caliphornia who made so bold as to correct the capitalization and spelling of a (privileged) minority student. The resulting foofaraw at UCLA, formerly an institution of learning set off the usual sort of mau-mauing.
The act of correcting a black student was "micro-aggression," according to the members of the student group "Call 2 Action: Graduate Students of Color," which launched a sit-in during a subsequent meeting of the class.
This is the first instance in my entire life of encounter with the term "micro-aggression," but it is one which I'll add to my ever-increasing vocabulary, not all of which consists of bad words.
Let us ponder for a moment the literal meaning of the term: an aggression which is microscopic. It is too teeny-tiny to be seen with the naked eye, something in the category of a whack on the elbow by a gnat, perhaps even a hefty blow delivered by a parmecium.
This is Eric Margolis on steroids... No. Wait. It's simply the logical evolution of Eric Margolis and his description of a nation laboring under repression so subtle as not to be felt.
At some point, probably in the time of our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, they're going to deal with this kind of ideological aggression, which is not micro at all. The pendulum will swing the other direction, the tumbrils will roll, and their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be shocked at how blood-thirsty they're going to be.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/07/2013 22:00 ||
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#2
But it wasn't "microaggression" at all when the elementary school that he went to let him get all the way to UCLA without learning how to spell or capitalize.
#3
At some point we will look around and find that certain groups within the US are undereducated and thus unemployable because they used the race-card to slide through school. This is akin to the hot blonde who learned she could get by with a wink of the eye. There are some who continued to do the work and study hard, but the easy way out has to be pretty enticing.
#4
"There are some who continued to do the work and study hard, but the easy way out has to be pretty enticing." For some of us, the hard way out was the ONLY way out.
[WASHINGTONTIMES] Boris Johnson, the irrepressible mayor of London, said some provocative things the other day to a private think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, and political London -- mostly the scribblers, anyway -- has been in a tizzy since.
The mayor playfully invoked Gordon Gecko, who exists only in a movie, and his economic philosophy that "greed is good" to make the point that intelligence, ambition, inspiration and above all perspiration is the irresistible driver of prosperity for everyone. He observed that some people are smarter than others, and that the 2 percent pulls the 98 percent into the good life. To the consternation of conservatives in the government and the left-wing columnists and commentators, the mayor is still upright and walking around.
The 98 percent should be grateful to the 2 percent and not spend a lot of time cultivating resentment. "Some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy," he said, "and keeping up with the Joneses is, like greed, a valuable spur to the economy." This reflects an unremarkable understanding of what was once called human nature before the liberals -- "progressives," they call themselves now -- decided that the state can install a better nature than God did.
Mr. Johnson then went even further. He said nice things about Margaret Thatcher, who has never been forgiven in certain of these precincts for pulling Britannia out of the deep coma imposed by a welfare state that had reduced an empire to "a little England."
The mayor sometimes talks less like a mayor than a newspaper columnist, which he is as well, for The Daily Telegraph. The squeals from the left and the harrumphs from the right after his Maggie Thatcher remarks may be less about the interpretations of his message than about the folly of electing a newspaper columnist to high office. Instead of bashing the rich, he wrote the other day, "we should be offering them humble and hearty thanks. It is through their restless, concupiscent energy and sheer wealth-creating dynamism that we pay for an ever-growing proportion of public services."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/07/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Schizophrenia most often includes hallucinations and/or delusions, which reflect distortions in the perception and interpretation of reality.
Me thinks, we have observed a "swing".
Posted by: Au Auric ||
12/07/2013 1:00 Comments ||
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Praise for Maggie Thatcher, eh? Sounds to me that maybe Boris has been reading a little Hayek or Milton Friedman. Or maybe he just woke up one day and realized he no longer believed what one might call a lot of stupid shit. "When I was a child, I thought as a child..."
[NYPOST] 'Nothing distinguishes pension debt in a municipal bankruptcy case from any other debt."
These thirteen words come from a ruling this week by US Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes. In strictly legal terms, they're part of a larger decision that does little more than confirm the obvious: bankrupt, increasingly impoverished, reliably Democrat, Detroit ... ruled by Democrats since 1962. A city whose Golden Age included the Purple Gang... is bankrupt.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/07/2013 00:00 ||
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As Detroit goes, so goes the nation (bankrupt cities, no exception)
Posted by: Au Auric ||
12/07/2013 1:04 Comments ||
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Those who leave their jobs before retirement -- between 40 and 50 percent of teacher do so within their first five years -- lose out big-time.
Er huh....yea, all by design, Ponzi design. Same-same for SSI recipients who waive their eligibility to accept benefits at age 62. Has no one ever played POWERBALL ?
#3
Detroit is testament to the fact that arithmetic always wins in the end. You can shuck and jive, you can hope and lie, you can demagogue and cook the books, but when the chickens come home to roost, it will be numbers they carry in their tiny little beaks.
Detroit is only the first, the bleeding edge of auto-apocalypse (heh, Detroit, auto...). It won't be the last. Others are swirling the bowl even now...
#4
I hope one of the impacts of this pension "reform" - is rather a collective coming to one's senses. Promising to pay what cannot possibly be paid will only come to disaster in the end, exactly like all Ponzi schemes.
#5
My hope as well Anguper. In his new book 'Things That Matter' the Hammer opines that, and I paraphrase a bit here...."everything eventually boils down to politics. If the politics are not right, nothing will be right". To the Hammer's boiling down statement I might also add, simple mathematical probabilities.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/07/2013 00:00 ||
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Yes, it is .... when I was in school it was called --- one thing --- today another... same thing /diffent day .... Global Warming = Anyone can talk about the weather, but no one can change it.
Posted by: Au Auric ||
12/07/2013 0:54 Comments ||
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Reports yesterday from fly-over near New Harmony indicate nearly of foot of global-warming just before dinner.
#12
You guys just don't understand: extra snow is just weather. Summer heat, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes - those are climate.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/07/2013 16:37 Comments ||
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Oh, some understand, Rambler. My civil engineering newsletters are full of cities, towns, and states setting up (costly) programs to help deal with 'climate change'-'especially after "Superstorm Sandy. I'm sure they are all funded by the Feds.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/07/2013 17:20 Comments ||
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Bobby, I'll get worried when Denver and Albuquerque set up a program to deal with rising sea levels.
As Glenn Reynolds says, I'll start believing it's a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/07/2013 17:55 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
He refers to the tale of the perfessor in Caliphornia who made so bold as to correct the capitalization and spelling of a (privileged) minority student. The resulting foofaraw at UCLA, formerly an institution of learning set off the usual sort of mau-mauing.
[WASHINGTONTIMES] Boris Johnson, the irrepressible mayor of London, said some provocative things the other day to a private think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, and political London -- mostly the scribblers, anyway -- has been in a tizzy since.
[NYPOST] 'Nothing distinguishes pension debt in a municipal bankruptcy case from any other debt."
