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November 2021

EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Leadership’ and Dirty Tricks at Harvard The student council’s extreme measures to stave off a ‘vote of no confidence.’ By Michael Cheng

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/leadership-and-dirty-tricks-at-harvard-election-votes-university-11638220916?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

“Leadership means more than simply climbing to the top and staying there. Leadership shouldn’t be about the title of your position; leadership should be about what you do for those you serve.”

Cambridge, Mass.

Harvard University claims to produce future leaders. So do other colleges. But constantly telling young people they’re leaders seems to bring out some of their worst qualities.

Harvard undergraduates routinely joke about their student government, the Undergraduate Council, which often appears to be a racket for politically ambitious students to accrue résumé lines and titles. The council has a record of waste and mismanagement; between spring 2017 and spring 2018 it lost more than $100,000 in student-activity funds—the groups that got the money didn’t return it as unspent funds or submit valid receipts showing where it went. Even so, the student activities fee that funds council activities increased by 167% in fall 2018.

During this year’s election, the council’s leaders faced attacks from multiple candidates, including me, who argued that Harvard’s student government was wasteful, ineffective and ought to be drastically reformed. In response, council leaders tried to cling to power.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Omicron Non-Emergency Vaccine mandates are hurting hospitals, as a judge blocks Biden’s on healthcare workers.

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-omicron-non-emergency-joe-biden-south-africa-kathy-hochul-11638225480?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Markets rebounded Monday following their Friday freak-out over the Omicron variant of Covid-19. President Biden also seems to be calming down, though other politicians continue to impose restrictions and mandates that will do more harm than good.

Speaking at the White House on Monday, Mr. Biden said Omicron is a cause for concern but not panic. He stressed the need for vaccinations and booster shots, but he said new lockdowns aren’t being considered. That’s a relief after his rush to block air travel from several countries in southern Africa on Friday.

The World Health Organization escalated its rhetoric, warning Monday that the new variant poses “a very high risk.” But there’s little we know about the variant beyond that it has a large number of mutations in its spike protein, some of which have been linked to increased transmissibility and could make vaccine antibodies less effective. But mutations may also be making the variant less virulent.

South African doctors say Omicron cases they’ve seen are milder and cause different symptoms, notably fatigue. Many are young people who might be expected to have milder symptoms. But breakthrough infections have also been mild. “I don’t think it will blow over but I think it will be a mild disease hopefully,” said South African Medical Association chair Angelique Coetzee. “For now we are confident we can handle it.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Sunday the country won’t impose a lockdown or increase restrictions. “When we encountered previous waves of infection, vaccines were not widely available and far fewer people were vaccinated,” he noted. “We also know that the coronavirus will be with us for the long term. We must therefore find ways of managing the pandemic while limiting disruptions to the economy and ensuring continuity.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Flip-Flop Fauci’s partisan political point-scoring shows he’s more interested in promoting himself than saving lives – he should park his gigantic ego, stay off TV and shut up Piers Morgan

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10254589/PIERS-MORGAN-Faucis-political-point-scoring-shows-hes-interested-promoting-himself.html

I’ve never heard Dr Anthony Fauci’s cell phone voicemail greeting, but I imagine it says: ‘Yes, I’ll come on your show.’

For someone whose day job is supposed to be leading America’s scientific and medical war against Covid-19, he seems to have an incredible amount of spare time for self-promotional media interviews.

Barely a week seems to go by without him popping up on TV or in newspapers and magazines, and as time has gone on, Fauci’s become more and more brazenly political in those interviews since the Biden administration took over.

Yesterday, he was everywhere again, speaking about the new Omicron variant.

What he said in these new interviews should give every American serious for concern, not just about the latest Covid threat but about some of the outrageously partisan statements the country’s top doctor made.

The most egregious came on CBS’s Face The Nation when Fauci burst out laughing after he was asked about Republican senator Ted Cruz calling for him to be prosecuted over his links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from where many think the coronavirus outbreak leaked.

‘I should be prosecuted?’ he chuckled. ‘What happened on January 6th, senator?’

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Voters are saying ‘no’ but Biden isn’t listening Could the message to politicians be any clearer? Any louder? Charles Lipson

By on November 30th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/voters-saying-biden-isnt-listening/

Plummeting polls are sending a clear message to the Biden administration, but the president is deaf, dumb and blind to it. And it’s not just the polls. Take congressional retirements. Democrats who chair congressional committees, reading the grim poll numbers, figure life will be a lot more comfortable as highly paid lobbyists than as powerless minority members. They are retiring in droves. Historically, retirements by well-informed insiders are strong predictors of the next House majority.

Local elections are sending the same message. They tell Democrats they have moved too far left and that voters’ quality of life is suffering. Voters are especially troubled by inflation, Covid and crime. They are also concerned about illegal immigration, the flood tide of drugs crossing the border, and indoctrination in schools.

That’s what they are saying, repeatedly, at the ballot box. In the heavily Democratic city of Buffalo, for example, the party’s mayoral nominee, an avowed socialist, lost to a write-in candidate, the city’s former mayor. In South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, a Republican narrowly defeated the Democrat in a city Biden carried by forty points only a year ago. In New York City — the biggest prize of all — the far-left incumbent, Bill de Blasio, will be succeeded by a former police officer. Voters there recoiled from pervasive violence on streets and subway platforms. They know “broken windows” policing once worked in the city and made it much more livable. What they see now is “please break our windows” policing, and they don’t feel safe.

Crime is a major issue across the country — and it is hurting Democrats badly. Last year, as progressives shouted “defund the police,” a cowed Democratic convention failed even to mention the riots breaking out in city after city. Total silence. The “bail reform” they pushed is directly responsible for putting violent offenders back on the streets and behind the wheel in Waukesha.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

A President Betrayed by Bureaucrats: Scott Atlas’s Masterpiece on the Covid Disaster By Jeffrey A. Tucker

By on November 30th, 2021

https://brownstone.org/articles/a-president-betrayed-by-bureaucrats-scott-atlass-masterpiece-on-the-covid-disaster/

I’m a voracious reader of Covid books but nothing could have prepared me for Scott Atlas’s A Plague Upon Our House, a full and mind-blowing account of the famed scientist’s personal experience with the Covid era and a luridly detailed account of his time at the White House. The book is hot fire, from page one to the last, and will permanently affect your view of not only this pandemic and the policy response but also the workings of public health in general. 

Atlas’s book has exposed a scandal for the ages. It is enormously valuable because it fully blows up what seems to be an emerging fake story involving a supposedly Covid-denying president who did nothing vs. heroic scientists in the White House who urged compulsory mitigating measures consistent with prevailing scientific opinion. Not one word of that is true. Atlas’s book, I hope, makes it impossible to tell such tall tales without embarrassment. 

Anyone who tells you this fictional story deserves to have this highly credible treatise tossed in his direction. The book is about the war between real science (and genuine public health), with Atlas as the voice for reason both before and during his time in the White House, vs. the enactment of brutal policies that never stood any chance of controlling the virus while causing tremendous damage to the people, to human liberty, to children in particular, but also to billions of people around the world. 

“Restrictions on liberty were also destructive by inflaming class distinctions with their differential impact,” he writes, “exposing essential workers, sacrificing low-income families and kids, destroying single-parent homes, and eviscerating small businesses, while at the same time large companies were bailed out, elites worked from home with barely an interruption, and the ultra-rich got richer, leveraging their bully pulpit to demonize and cancel those who challenged their preferred policy options.”

In the midst of continued chaos, in August 2020, Atlas was called by Trump to help, not as a political appointee, not as a PR man for Trump, not as a DC fixer but as the only person who in nearly a year of unfolding catastrophe had a health-policy focus. He made it clear from the outset that he would only say what he believed to be true; Trump agreed that this was precisely what he wanted and needed. Trump got an earful and gradually came around to a more rational view than that which caused him to wreck the American economy and society with his own hands and against his own instincts. 

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Sex Lives of College Students  By Madeleine Kearns

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/the-sex-lives-of-college-students/

Our cynical, burned-out culture

 I t seems that some college students have become so cynical about sex that they have even begun prostituting themselves. In England, Durham University Students Union noticed an “emerging trend” of students selling themselves for sex and responded by offering two courses in “sex work.” The university’s justification was that they wanted to “ensure students can be safe and make informed choices.” On that basis, should they also provide courses in drug-dealing?

Considering the cultural influences at play, this trend is hardly surprising. Just look at our coming-of-age stories, which are less about attaining maturity and character and more about conforming to ever-lower expectations of prolonged adolescence. Take, for example, the new HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls, which is the tale of four female freshman roommates as they screw around at a preppy college. Forget love or character development — the show’s male characters are weak, shallow, and interested in only one thing, while the young women are spoiled, feckless, and only too happy to give the men what they want.

In episode one, we meet Bella, an 18-year-old, who introduces herself as “super sex positive and ready to smash some Ds.” Bella wants to get into the comedy club and so is thrilled at the chance to give hand jobs to the six young men on the admissions committee. We meet Whitney, a senator’s daughter, who, after ending a sexual relationship with her soccer coach on account of his being married, rebounds with a one-night stand. There’s Leighton, a secret lesbian, who uses apps for casual hook-ups and then blocks the women she’s hooked up with. And then there’s Kimberly, the comparatively innocent one, who has sex for the first time with her high-school boyfriend, only to be dumped by him the next morning.

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