CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT

Interview of Egyptian Christians by journalist Michael Totten. The concern is what will happen if the Muslim Brotherhood gains power.

If liberal Muslims get what they want, it will be better for us. That’s the dream of the revolution. Your real focus should be on those people. Because if they get their freedom, we will get even more freedom. But if they don’t get freedom, we’re goners.

CLIMATEGATE COLLUSION

From the Daily Mail.

• 5,000 leaked emails reveal scientists deleted
  evidence that cast doubt on claims climate change was man-made


• Experts were under orders from US and UK officials to come up with a 'strong message'


• Critics claim: 'The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering'


• Scientist asks, 'What if they find that climate change is a natural fluctuation? They'll kill us
  all'

LAX STANDARDS AT FOR-PROFIT COLLEGES

From The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This time, the agents attempted to enroll in online programs at 15 for-profit colleges using a home-school diploma or a diploma from a closed high school. Twelve of the colleges accepted them.

The "students" then proceeded to skip class, plagiarize, and submit "substandard" work. Though several ultimately failed their classes, some got credit for shoddy or plagiarized work along the way.

At one college, a student received credit for six plagiarized assignments; at another, a student submitted photos of political figures and celebrities in lieu of an essay, but still earned a passing grade. A third student got full credit on a final project, despite completing only two of the three required components. That same student received full credit for an assignment that had clearly been prepared for another class.

In two cases, instructors confronted students about their repeated plagiarism but took no disciplinary action against them. One student received credit for a response that was copied verbatim from other students' discussion posts.

ROMNEY CAMPAIGN AD

Here is a case of the left Huffington Post exposing a false claim in a Romney campaign ad and challenging the media to call it a "lie."

REZKO SENTENCED

Obama's name is never connected to Rezko, yet he was one of Obama's biggest fund raisers. Would a Republican have been treated the same way? And I am waiting to see how Corzine's MF Global scandal will be covered.

"FOLLOW THE MONEY"

This phrase is used in the movie "All the President's Men"--but it was never used in the book of the same name by Woodward or is there any Watergate evidence that it was ever used. A discussion of how a Hollywood phrase becomes an historical reality and is being quoted by the media as historic fact.

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS

"Five Lessons for America from the European Crisis." An Italian students gives 5 reasons and then the writer of the blog adds: If I was doing this video, I would have added one more message. If nations want a return to fiscal sanity, they need to follow “Mitchell’s Golden Rule,” which simply states that the private sector should grow faster than the government.

WHO IS STUDYING IN COLLEGE?

It is not business and education majors.

SOME DEMS CRITICIZE REMOVAL OF OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTERS

From The Hill. Gives responses from Democrat congressmen to the removal of Occupy Wall Street protesters in NYC. There are some who support Mayor Bloomberg's actions.

OBAMA GAFFES

I just wish the media would report all gaffes made by politicians reasonably equally. Here is one with Obama placing Hawaii in Asia. Does this mean Alaska is in Asia--it is further to the East than Hawaii? Some of the errors made by Perry and Cain are bone-head errors, but Biden and other Democrat gaffes just don't get the same coverage.

WEALTHIEST MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

I was watching a news program the other night which highlighted the richest men in congress and discussed a Republican whose name I forget. Now I find that 7 of the top 10 richest congressmen are Democrats.

THE FAILURE OF AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION

From a physics professor in North Carolina.

Education reform models, like outcome-based education, exacerbate academic problems and lead to mediocrity, a model that resembles a sausage factory with good quality control. Lip service abounds for teaching excellence but none for learning excellence. The failure of K-12 education is finally creeping and crippling our entire university system. Too bad.

THE FAILURE OF BABY BOOMERS

A "boomer backlash" has begun! Walter Russell Mead mentions some significant contributions but then writes:

But at the level of public policy and moral leadership, as a generation we have largely failed. The Boomer Progressive Establishment in particular has been a huge disappointment to itself and to the country. The political class slumbered as the entitlement and pension crisis grew to ominous dimensions. Boomer financial leadership was selfish and shortsighted, by and large. Boomer CEOs accelerated the trend toward unlimited greed among corporate elites, and Boomer members of corporate boards sit by and let it happen. Boomer academics created a profoundly dysfunctional system that systemically shovels resources upward from students and adjuncts to overpaid administrators and professors who by and large have not, to say the least, done an outstanding job of transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to future generations. Boomer Hollywood execs created an amoral morass of sludge — and maybe I’m missing something, but nobody spends a lot of time talking about the towering cultural accomplishments of the world historical art geniuses of the Boomer years. Boomer greens enthusiastically bet their movement on the truly idiotic drive for a global carbon treaty; they are now grieving over their failure to make any measurable progress after decades spent and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away. On the Boomer watch the American family and the American middle class entered major crises; by the time the Boomers have finished with it the health system will be an unaffordable and dysfunctional tangle — perhaps the most complicated, expensive and poorly designed such system in the history of the world.

EVALUATING REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

Drezner analyzes how well the Republican presidential candidates did on the November 12th debate on foreign policy. I liked his comment on Gingrich:

That said, Gingrich's "I'm smarter than everyone else" schtick wears thin fast. I say this as someone who encounters academics on a daily basis. Gingrich gives off the same insufferable mien of academics who think they're much smarter and more knowledgable than they actually are. Grade: B.

OVERTHROWING THE ISLAMIC REGIME IN IRAN

An interesting proposal by the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran who is now living in exile. So far nothing has worked and it has only made the current regime stronger. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr's proposals look quite possible and would seem to avoid some of the problems US policy has faced in places like Libya.

. . .the threat of military intervention and the use of economic sanctions that bring suffering to ordinary Iranians only strengthens the grip of Iran’s mafia regime on its power. Corrupt regimes become stronger by creating the sense of permanent threats.

CHINA MOCKS US POLITICAL MODEL

A sign of American decline and weakness? The US no longer inspires credibility.

Chinese political and business leaders are increasingly triumphant after two decades of rapid economic growth that lifted unprecedented millions of people out of poverty and turned the nation into an economic superpower, saying their success proves its political and economic system is superior to the Western model.

TEA PARTY & OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENTS

A double-standard in how each group is treated by the media.

HISTORY PUT TO SONG

Interesting. Here's the one on Martin Luther.

COMPARING SEX SCANDAL COVERAGE IN MEDIA

From Mickey Kaus (ran for Senate in California Democrat primary in 2010). Democrats get a "pass" on these issues according to him.

RICH GET RICHER UNDER OBAMA

Well, this is interesting. The rich actually got poorer under Dubya's tax policies and have become richer under Obama's policies. So much for Democrat rhetoric. What's more, the biggest increase in income inequality over the past three decades took place when Democrat Bill Clinton was in the White House.

FERTILITY RATES IN T HE ARAB WORLD

The rates are falling--this is an interesting chart. Israel's fertility rate may actually be higher than that of the Arab countries.