In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

While researching Wednesday's post on foreign students, I ran into this essay from last July at Forbes by Michael Nietzel, President Emeritus of Missouri State University, How The Admission Practices Of Elite Colleges Perpetuate The Advantages Of The Wealthy . Again, received opinion by writers like David Brooks of the New York Times and The Atlantic has been that the elite colleges are meritocratic, admissions are driven by SATs, grades, and extracurriculars. Nietzel's argument is that the numbers simply don't point in that direction. While only 10% of students scoring at the 99th percentile on the SAT/ACT from middle-class families attend an Ivy-Plus college, 40% of similarly high-scoring students from families in the top 1 percent of the income distribution do so. . . . The authors [of a recent Brown University study] estimate that this higher admissions rate leads to 103 extra students being admitted from the top 1% in a typical Ivy-Plus class (of 1,650 student...

I've put up a post with more information from a former insider at Church Militant on the Cold Case File blog.

I've already posted on MIT backing down on its threat to suspend the foreign students who violate policy during their pro-Hamas or anti-Semitic demonstrations. This story at the Washington Free Beacon adds only one new tidbit: At elite institutions like MIT, nearly a quarter of all students hail from another country. The story goes on to make the already recognized point that administrators want to keep them on campus; suspending them would threaten their visas, and since foreign students pay the published full fees, it would badly hurt the school's revenue. The only new point here is the size of the foreign-student contingent at ostensibly highly selective schools like MIT. Nobody so far is putting two and two together. As writers like Jerome Karabel have pointed out in The Chosen , universities have separate admissions categories for high-profit markets like the children of alumni and other major donors, as well as the children of politicians, celebrities, and other ...

Looking for the current outlook on the Russia-Ukraine War, I found this article at Responsible Statecraft : George Beebe, Director of Grand Strategy at [Quincy Institute], highlighted the perils of extrapolating a “stalemate” from the current lack of significant battlefield movements in Ukraine. “Those who believe this war has settled into a long-term stalemate make the mistake of measuring the relative progress of each side with maps. They see that the frontlines have not moved significantly over the last year and conclude that the sides are stalemated,” Beebe told me. “But other metrics, though, paint a different picture. Ukraine is using up its quite limited supplies of men, weapons, and ammunition, and the West cannot provide what Ukraine needs. That is not a formula for stalemate; it's a formula for Ukraine's eventual collapse or capitulation,” he continued. . . . “Despite everything that’s happened, despite all the stuff we have given, the Bradley’s, the M1 [Abrams]...

From the UK Telegraph via Yahoo Neews : Germany and the US will put pressure on Ukraine to negotiate with Russia by scaling back weapons deliveries in what would be a major blow to Kyiv’s hopes of victory, German media reported on Friday. Bild, a German tabloid, reported what it described as a “secret” German-American plan to force Ukraine’s hand on opening peace talks, citing sources in the German government. Under the plan, Washington and Berlin would supply Ukraine with sufficient weapons and armour to hold the current front line, but not enough to retake occupied territory. . . . “Zelensky should realise that it can’t go on like this,” a German government source told Bild, referring to Ukraine’s stalled counter-offensive against Russian in the east. “He needs to, of his own free will, turn to face his nation and explain that there is a need to negotiate.” German government sources also told Bild that the White House shared Germany’s view on the need to shift the focus from...

Is Biden drunk? pic.twitter.com/ex6IjBoZ0J — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 24, 2023 Nick Arama responded to the post at Red State : After the press conference, some on the X platform began asking questions about Biden's condition and how he came into the press conference. Some of those questions didn't hold back and were blunt. Unfortunately, farther down, he unintentionally reveals something about the condition of journalism at Conservative Inc: He has gait problems, in addition to his incoherence and deterioration. I'm not sure that it matters what name you put on it at this point--except to say that he has continuing problems. If it were just that he was drunk, that might be beer, because at least that would goes [sic] away. "That might be beer"? Wha? What on earth is he trying to say? Maybe he meant to type, "that might be bad enough, but at least that would go away". But then he followed it up "that would goes ...

I've put up a post with my thoughts on the recent developments over Michael Voris over on the Cold Case File blog .

I ran into a recent article that points to the same questions I had about Sam Bankman-Fried when I posted on the scandal a year ago : [T]he received narrative goes on to say that FTX was run by a dozen or so polyamorous hippie-style geniuses who suffered from ADHD, lived communally in a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas, and had their own doctor-therapist who prescribed amphetamines for their ADHD. The only female in the group I'm aware of was Caroline Ellison, so according to that doctor, there wasn't really that much action. Nevertheless, it was the synergy between Beanbag Boy Bankman-Fried and Queen Caroline that drove the whole enterprise, or something like that. But they let Caroline lose $10 billion in unsupervised trading, and John Ray III says he's nver seen anything like it. Never underestimate what a beautiful woman can do. At the time, I was scratching my head: I kept doing web searches on ADHD and came up with discussions like this : In order for peopl...

I ran into a piece by Walter Shapiro at The New Republic, The Real Reason Why Biden Shouldn’t Drop Out : Panicked Democrats, vibrating with anxiety over the polls, continue to nurture an unlikely fantasy: Joe Biden looks at his family across the Thanksgiving table on Nantucket and says with a weary sigh, “I can’t do this for another five years. I’ve tried my best. But I just don’t have the stamina to keep going through 2028.” Nothing in the president’s makeup suggests that he would abruptly jettison his reelection campaign. . . . Every sign emanating from his inner circle and reelection campaign suggests a stubborn refusal to even acknowledge his growing legion of Democratic doubters. But even if Biden were to accept the truth embedded in the polls, as Harry Truman did when he bowed out in 1952, the subsequent multicandidate scramble for the Democratic nomination would create as many (if not more) political problems as it would solve. This echoes David Axelrod, who says , ...

Even in 1980, the incipient Reagan landslide seems to have taken Democrats, or at least those speaking for public consumption, by surpise. In 1972, especially after the Eagleton fiasco , there was never any serious expectation that McGovern could beat Nixon, so that election is an outlier -- but even then, the real pessimism didn't even take hold until McGovern was nominated. In the 2024 cycle, we're seeing gnashing of teeth and rending of garments a full year before the election. The closest equivalents to the current environment that I can remember were in 1988 over Dukakis and 2004 with John Kerry, when, after the Democrat conventions, "sources" spoke to reporters without attribution about how badly those campaigns were going. But again, this was during the summer and early fall before those elections, not during the fall a full year ahead, and few people are now publicly trying to maintain a happy face. And the Democrat insiders aren't just talking on backgr...

I'm a contrarian on many things, but I'm especially contrarian on the subject of Kevin Morris, the Hollywood lawyer who's been funding Hunter Biden's lifestyle since the wheels came off in 2019-20 and more recently, as best anyone can surmise, paying Hunter's lawyers and guiding his overall legal strategy. How's that going? Well, this past summer, the tentative plea deal and diversion agreement negotiated by Chris Clark, Hunter's attorney who was apparently paid and supervised by Morris, collapsed in a Delaware courtroom, and apparently at Morris's order, Clark withdrew from the case, replaced by Abbe Lowell. This controversy forced Attorney General Garland to take the leash off the Delaware prosecutor, David Weiss, and make him a full special counsel with the ability to pursue the case in other districts. Now, as a result, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig suggested it doesn’t bode well for Hunter Biden that a California grand jury is being...

J oe Biden recently reignited speculation on what's up with Gavin Newsom's not-a-campaign for president next year: President Biden late Wednesday quipped that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) could have any job he wants, including potentially being president, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the governor’s much-discussed White House ambitions. . . . “Matter of fact, he could be anything he wants. He could have the job I’m looking for,” Biden added, eliciting laughter in the room. The California governor has widely been considered as a possible presidential contender, and some see him as a potential candidate come 2028. Newsom has repeatedly fended off speculation he could challenge Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024. Biden, who will turn 81 this month, has faced persistent questions about whether he is too old to run for a second term. Polls have consistently shown large percentages of Democrats would prefer a different nominee in 2024. Last month ...

Alan Dershowitz recently remarked that of all the Get Trump cases, the prosecutions have been putting on the weakest ones first. The New York civil case under Judge Engoron is hurning out to be not just weak but farcical. A recent commenter on Xwitter posted on the judge: Dude! He looks like Mr. Burns off of the Simpsons. And he looks like he drives a van with no windows. For comparison, here's Mr Burns. Judge Engoron is simply playing into Trump's hands -- in their motion for a mistrial and appeal of the judge's gag orders against Trump himself and his attorneys, they cite in particular evidence from the the judge's comments in his high school newsletter , of all things. He's 74 years old and hasn't left high school, despite his degrees from Columbia and NYU. The Hill says of the appellate stay of his gag order: The former president’s legal team requested an interim stay of Engoron’s gag orders — and the sanctions that resulted from his violatio...

According to the New York Post , Photos have emerged of cocaine that was found last summer at the White House — before the Secret Service executed a quick investigation into the matter without arresting a suspect. A small baggy containing roughly one gram of the white, powdery substance is visible in locker No. 50 near the White House’s West Executive entrance, according to photos the Daily Mail received after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the protective agency. The Secret Service concluded its probe just 11 days after the cocaine was discovered by an agent sweeping the West Wing on the night of Sunday, July 2, forcing a brief evacuation and a response by a hazmat team before the substance could be identified. This at least clarifies one part of the confusion surrounding the story : July 4: The New York Times reported the substance was found in the White House “library.” July 5: Reuters reported the substance was found in a “cubby hole” near the Si...

Something's missing from the media coverage of the incident Sunday night when Secret Service agents protecting Naomi Biden "opened fire" on three people trying to break into an unoccupied fedmobile they were using to ferry her around Georgetown. The UK Daily Mail's account seems to be the mopst complete: Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden's granddaughter Naomi opened fire after three suspects tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle. The agents, assigned to protect Naomi Biden, 29 and the daughter of Hunter Biden, were out with her in the Georgetown neighborhood late Sunday night when they saw the three people breaking a window of the parked and unoccupied SUV, the Secret Service said in a statement. Around 11:58 pm ET, one of the agents opened fire, but no one was struck by the gunfire. The incident took place near Naomi Biden's Georgetown home, NBC News reported. . . . 'During this encounter, a federal agent disc...