It’s Monday, September 25th, 2017…and here’s The Gouge!

First up, writing at the WSJ, Jillian Kay Melchior offers incontrovertible evidence the inmates are running the asylum…which is what so many of our “institutions” of supposed “higher learning” actually are today, as she goes…

Inside the Madness at Evergreen State

The school denies it is a racially hostile work environment, but internal emails belie that assertion.

 

Biology professor Bret Weinstein has settled his lawsuit against Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Mr. Weinstein became a pariah last spring when he criticized an officially sanctioned “Day of Absence” during which white people were asked to stay away from campus. He and his wife, anthropology professor Heather Heying, alleged that Evergreen “has permitted, cultivated, and perpetuated a racially hostile and retaliatory work environment.” They claimed administrators failed to protect them from “repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence.”

Last week the university announced it would pay $500,000 to settle the couple’s complaint. Evergreen said in a statement that the college “strongly rejects” the lawsuit’s allegations, denies the Day of Absence was discriminatory, and asserts: “The college took reasonable and appropriate steps to engage with protesters, de-escalate conflict, and keep the campus safe.”

A different story emerges from hundreds of pages of Evergreen correspondence, which I obtained through Washington state’s Public Records Act. The emails show that some students and faculty were quick to levy accusations of racism with neither evidence nor consideration of the reputational harm they could cause. The emails also reveal Mr. Weinstein and Ms. Heying were not the only ones concerned about a hostile and dangerous campus.

Consider a February exchange, in which Mr. Weinstein—a progressive who is skeptical of identity politics—faulted what he called Evergreen administrators’ “reckless, top-down reorganization around new structures and principles.” Within minutes, a student named Mike Penhallegon fired back an email denouncing Mr. Weinstein and his “racist colleagues.”

Another student, Steve Coffman, responded by asking for proof of racism within the science faculty. Mr. Coffman cited Christopher Hitchens’s variation of Occam’s razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

Jacqueline McClenny, an office assistant for the First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services—a campus office that helped organize the Day of Absence—observed that because Hitchens’s razor is an “Englishman’s popularization of a Latin proverb,” it “would seem to itself be the product of at least two traditionally hierarchical, imperialist societies with an interest in disposing of inconvenient questions.”

Media professor Naima Lowe urged one of Mr. Weinstein’s defenders to read about how calls for civility are “often used to silence and/or dismiss concerns about racism.” She also said that the “white people making changes in their white supremacist attitudes and behaviors” were those “who do not immediately balk and become defensive,” instead acknowledging that “white supremacy is literally ingrained in everything.” In other words, merely defending oneself against the accusation of “white supremacy” is evidence of guilt.

The implications of such a mind-set became clear later last spring, when hundreds of students protested Mr. Weinstein’s opposition to the Day of Absence. To them, the existence of dissent was sufficient to prove the college condoned racism. Mr. Weinstein was not their only target.

After a mob occupied the library, the college’s facilities engineer, Richard Davis, wrote in an email that he believed “the students are testing how much lawlessness will be tolerated,” and “they have not found a boundary yet.” He described how two students stalked him and screamed at him, adding that he was disturbed by the lack of police. “Many of us are stating that as long as the students are not violent, their behavior is acceptable,” Mr. Davis continued. “Apparently, violence in this context is bloodshed.” (Mr. Davis retired in June.)

The protests were “loud and at times intimidating,” wrote John Hurley, Evergreen’s vice president for finance and administration. “Unfortunately some members of our community were stopped as they tried to leave campus and that was scary and others felt barricaded in their office.”

Nancy Koppelman, an American studies and humanities professor, described being “followed by white students who yelled and cursed at me, accused me of not caring about black and brown bodies, and claimed that if I did care I would follow their orders.” Ms. Koppelman, who is 5-foot-1, said the students towered over her, and “the only thing they would accept was my obedience.” She reported that the encounter so unnerved her that she was left physically shaking.

Ms. Koppelman wrote that she was worried about “features of the current protest strategy that violate the social contract, and possibly the law.” Tolerating such tactics, she argued, “may create a working environment which is too hostile for some of us to continue our employment at the college.” Her email concluded: “I have not decided whether or how to share these thoughts more widely. If I do, I will very likely be tagged as ‘a racist’ by some of my colleagues and the students they teach.”

As for Mr. Weinstein and Ms. Heying, there’s no doubt the environment at Evergreen was too hostile for them to continue their employment. The college declared in its statement: “They have agreed to resign from their faculty positions at Evergreen, effective today.”

Like Crazy Eddie’s prices, these people are, quite literally…

Friends, it’s all there in Romans 1:22…it’s all there in Romans 1:22.

Next up, another item from the WSJ, as the editors detail how, thanks to a number of self-serving senators, America’s confronting an…

ObamaCare Groundhog Day

John McCain and Rand Paul all but doom a second reform attempt.

 

We’ve never truly wished a politician ill…until today!

John McCain is an American war hero with many political accomplishments (though we’d challenge the WSJ to name even one…outside of McCain-Feingold and the Keating Five scandal). That legacy, though will be diminished by not one but two decisions to kill Republican health-care reform. And no one should let Senator Rand Paul off the hook, either.

Mr. McCain said in a Friday statement that he “cannot in good conscience” vote for a proposal from Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy that would devolve ObamaCare funding to the states, as well as repeal the medical-device tax and the employer and individual mandates. The deadline to pass the bill with 51 votes is Sept. 30 thanks to arcane Senate budget procedures. Mr. McCain’s no vote almost certainly dooms the project, as Mr. Paul has already declared his opposition and Susan Collins of Maine is thought to be a reliable no vote as well.

Mr. McCain said that “a bill of this impact requires a bipartisan approach.” This is a pipe dream. (No, it’s a deliberate deception for personal political purposes.) Democrats think they can use the troubles with ObamaCare against Republicans next year, and they may be right. More to the point, Democrats are mobilizing behind single payer, an idea that about one-third of Senate Democrats have endorsed.

Mr. McCain says he favors regular order, so perhaps Mr. Graham and company should go ahead with that and see if they can attach their bill to the next reconciliation vehicle after hearings and more debate. Our guess is Mr. McCain will oppose the bill even then. He’ll be waiting forever if he wants a bipartisan solution on an issue that is so polarized over the underlying role for government in delivering health care.

Mr. McCain’s objections are about also about process, including that the Senate wouldn’t have a full score from the Congressional Budget Office in time for a vote. We won’t insult Mr. McCain by suggesting that he actually believes that several economists on Capitol Hill could forecast how 50 Governors across the country would use the money to experiment with health-care coverage.

Lunacy and smug sanctimoniousness runs in the family!

Then there’s Mr. Paul, who has trashed the Graham-Cassidy proposal as ObamaCare lite because it isn’t sufficiently perfect reform or total repeal. But that is never coming either. Perhaps Mr. Paul should leave the Senate for the priesthood, so that he can live up to his chaste principles. On this earth he is abetting a further government takeover of health care. He is killing this bill, and reform, as surely as Mr. McCain.

What’s bizarre is that in another life—two months ago—Mr. Paul claimed to understand this reality. In July on Fox News he said he’d vote for the Senate’s “skinny repeal,” which would have nixed discrete features such as the individual mandate, because it was “the best I can get, given the colleagues that I have. You send me some better colleagues, and I will repeal more of it.” Now who needs better colleagues?

What’s likely to be a bitter irony of Sen. McCain’s decision is that his action will endanger the fellow Republicans whose moderation he claims to revere. The ObamaCare failure is certain to enrage the Trump base. That anger will be channeled at his fellow moderates, either as primary challenges or efforts to drive them out of the Senate. It will erode what little is left of Donald Trump’s faith in the Republican Party. The worst outcome from this second GOP failure is that millions of Americans will continue to face higher costs and fewer choices for their health care.

Let’s not omit Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, two additional RINOs as useless as a…

And about as attractive as the…

…back end of a goat.

As Jim Geraghty noted in the Friday edition of his The Morning Jolt:

“…The U.S. Senate will attempt to pass the Graham-Cassidy health care reform bill, and again come close but no cigar. At least three of the following senators will vote “no”: Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, or John McCain.

In this scenario, everyone gets close to what they want, except the American people who want to get rid of Obamacare. About 48 to 49 Senate Republicans will be able to say they voted multiple times to repeal and replace. House speaker Paul Ryan will point to the House’s passage of the American Health Care Act, and that he was ready to pass Graham-Cassidy if it passed the Senate.

John McCain will get cheered by the media for being a maverick — “The Republican who ran against Barack Obama in 2008 turned out to be the man who saved his signature accomplishment” — and Collins and Murkowski will insist they’re just being sensible moderates who want to protect the most vulnerable in their state.

Rand Paul will continue to insist that he supports repeal and replace, just not this repeal and replace, and lots of Kentucky residents will keep their benefits from Medicaid expansion. Republicans will insist you need to reelect them to get rid of Obamacare and fix the health care system, and they won’t be responsible for the condition of the health care system in November 2018…”

We’d seriously suggest this isn’t politics, but a violation of their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States; and therefore treason.  And we’d be more than happy to administer the appropriate punishment.

Turning now to the Sports Section, while we find many, if not most, of Trump’s tweets objectionable…

NFL’s Goodell says Trump’s comments about league, players show ‘lack of respect‘

 

…the stands show…

…The Donald isn’t the only one demonstrating a dramatic lack of respect for Goodell’s increasingly liberal league!

As longtime contributor and good friend Bill Meisen observed:

First, there’s no such thing as free speech rights at work. I can’t go to the office every day and protest in favor of my favorite political cause and expect to be around very long. Second, the only reason the liberal media and professional sports organizations support this is because they agree with the message. What do you think the reaction would be if Tim Tebow kneeled during the Anthem holding a sign reading ‘Abortion is Murder’? I can almost guarantee the MSM wouldn’t be out there praising his courage and defending his free speech rights.

Could you imagine what would happen if an ESPN anchor opened their show requesting a moment of silence because abortion is murder? Then said they would open every show this way until the abortion laws change.

ESPN wouldn’t be able to kick them to the curb fast enough. It would also be a very long time, if ever, that this person would ever be employed as a sports anchor again. There would be no cries of blacklisting. Nobody would be arguing that they shouldn’t be punished for using their platform to exercise their free speech rights.

You have every right to protest. Just do it on you own time, with your own platform and not at work. What a bunch of crap!

This meme from another highly-valued friend says it all:

Meanwhile, if this next meme is accurate, the NFL may have bigger problems than Trump’s tweets:

Most importantly, remember, as the facts from Ferguson have shown…

The facts were so inescapable even the WaPo’s Jonathan Capehart had to acknowledge the lie!

…and as this next item from Phillipe Lemoine writing at NRO clearly demonstrates, the basis of this protest isn’t even accurate, because…

Police Violence against Black Men Is Rare

And the media narrative to the contrary is damaging.

 

“A few days ago, former police officer Jason Stockley, who is white, was acquitted of first-degree murder; he had fatally shot Anthony Lamar Smith, who was black, in 2011. Protests started in St. Louis, where the shooting took place and Stockley was judged, immediately after the verdict was announced. Although they were initially peaceful, they soon turned violent, and dozens of protesters were arrested while several police officers were injured. Since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, just outside St. Louis, in 2014, this has become a familiar pattern.

This article is not about whether Stockley should have been acquitted. Instead, I want to talk about the underlying narrative regarding the prevalence of police brutality against black men in the U.S., which is largely undisputed in the media.

According to this narrative, black men are constantly harassed by the police and routinely brutalized with impunity, even when they have done nothing wrong, and there is an “epidemic of police shootings of unarmed black men.” Even high-profile black celebrities often claim to be afraid of the police because the same thing might happen to them. Police brutality, or at least the possibility that one might become a victim of such violence, is supposed to be part of the experience of a typical black man in the U.S. Events such as the death of Brown in Ferguson are presented as proof that black men are never safe from the police.

This narrative is false. In reality, a randomly selected black man is overwhelmingly unlikely to be victim of police violence — and though white men experience such violence even less often, the disparity is consistent with the racial gap in violent crime, suggesting that the role of racial bias is small. The media’s acceptance of the false narrative poisons the relations between law enforcement and black communities throughout the country and results in violent protests that destroy property and sometimes even claim lives. Perhaps even more importantly, the narrative distracts from far more serious problems that black Americans face.

A single-parent household being the SINGLE biggest determinate of poverty in America.

First, despite what the narrative claims, it’s not true that black men are constantly stopped by the police for no reason. Indeed, black men are less likely than white men to have contact with the police in any given year, though this includes situations where the respondent called the cops himself: 17.5 percent versus 20.7 percent. Similarly, a black man has on average only 0.32 contacts with the police in any given year, compared with 0.35 contacts for a white man. It’s true that black men are overrepresented among people who have many contacts with the police, but not by much. Only 1.5 percent of black men have more than three contacts with the police in any given year, whereas 1.2 percent of white men do.

…Now, it’s true that there are significant differences in the rates at which men of different races experience police violence — 0.6 percent is triple 0.2 percent. However, although people often equate racial disparities with bias, this inference is fallacious, as can be seen through an analogy with gender: Men are vastly more likely to experience police violence than women are, but while bias may explain part of this disparity, nobody doubts that most of it has to do with the fact that men are on average far more violent than women. Similarly, if black men commit violent crimes at much higher rates than white men, that might have a lot to do with the disparity in the use of force by the police.

…Some might say that, instead of consulting statistics like these, we should defer to black Americans’ own perceptions of how the police treat them. As various polls have demonstrated, black people are much more likely than white people to think that police violence against minorities is very common. But the issue cannot be settled this way.

Since individuals have direct knowledge of what happened to them personally, you can trust them about that. But when it comes to larger social phenomena, people’s beliefs are influenced by far more than just their personal experience, including the media. The far more compelling fact is that, if you draw a representative sample of the population and ask each black man in that sample whether a police officer has used physical force against him in the past year, you find that it’s extremely rare.

On many issues, liberals have no problem recognizing this problem. For instance, there is a cottage industry of articles deploring the fact that, although crime has fallen spectacularly in the U.S. since the 1990s, most Americans believe it has increased. Liberals are absolutely right to point out this misperception, but if people of any color can be wrong about this, there is no reason to think black people can’t be wrong about the prevalence of police violence against minorities.“

Unless of course Liberals are purposefully promoting this poppycock for purely political purposes.

Look, here’s the juice: there’s a time and a place for fact-based protest; and the National Anthem during sporting events at any level ain’t it!

And in News of the Bizarre, brought to us today, appropriately enough, by the Bizarro state which continues to keep Bernie Sanders in office, we learn…

Vermont teacher fired after leading third graders in Nazi salute

 

A veteran Vermont teacher was axed after she was caught instructing a class of third graders on how to give the Nazi salute. The substitute teacher had the children perform the stiff-arm gesture as they were walking to the cafeteria Thursday at Georgia Elementary School, accoriding to a report.

“The children were standing with their arm out in front of them and the teacher was modeling the position,” District Superintendent Ned Kirsch told parents, according to the Vermont publication Seven Days. “She then raised her arm slightly and said, ‘And now we say, Heil Hitler.'” “I’m at a loss on the whole thing,” Kirsch told the paper Friday. “People are shocked. People I’ve spoken to are at a loss for words.”

The teacher admitted saying Heil Hitler and demonstrating the gesture, the paper reported. Her name wasn’t released. She has taught as a substitute teacher at the school for years.

“It’s not a pattern,” Kirsch told Seven Days. “[I] never had a report about her, nothing. No one can quite understand what happened.”

Including, we’d be willing to bet, the teacher herself.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with this report from The Daily Caller, and yet another example of how the 2nd Amendment as intended by the Framers saves lives:

Tennessee Church Shooter Suspect Identified As 25-Year-Old From Sudan

 

“Nashville Police have identified the suspect of a mass shooting at a church Sunday morning as 25-year-old Emanuel Kidega Samson. Samson is being charged with murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in the attack that killed one and left at least seven other people injured at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, a town just south of Nashville, Tenn.

Samson is a bodybuilder who attended high school in Tennessee and is originally from Karthoum, Sudan, according screenshots of the suspect’s Facebook page obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation before the account was taken down. Police say he is a legal resident and came to the U.S. in the 1990s.

A Nashville Police Department spokesman said the shooter entered the church after 11 a.m. CST wearing a neoprene ski mask. One woman was shot in the parking lot before the shooter entered the church and opened fire on about 42 people still inside.

One church member, 22-year-old Caleb Engle…

…confronted the shooter before being pistol whipped in the face. Engle then went to his car to retrieve a gun, which he has under a concealed carry license. Engle returned the church to confront the gunman again. The gunman shot himself in the face when the man returned, possibly on accident.

“He’s the hero here,” Nashville police chief Steve Anderson said. “He’s the person who stopped this madness in its tracks.”“

Any questions?!?

Magoo