OT the PIT - reincarnation

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler fact-checks politicians for a living, but on Sunday he got a fact-check of his own after a clumsy attempt to rip former President Donald Trump.

As Trump blasted President Biden for continued school closings during his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, Kessler tried to hold Trump responsible for the closures.

"Trump complaining about kids not back in schools yet. Who was president a month ago?" Kessler asked, apparently sarcastically.

Is he trying to get recalled...idiot. 

Where is LeChuck?

www.newsweek.com/we-have-data-prove-it-universities-are-hostile-conservatives-opinion-1573551

Threats to academic freedom stem from two interrelated forces. Threats from management and colleagues for unpopular opinions represent what I call hard authoritarianism, in that the censure is imposed by the institution and the consequences run the gamut from being fired all the way down to being assigned an unpopular course or being shunned by colleagues. But there is also a soft authoritarianism that arises from political discrimination in hiring, promotion, grants and publication.

What we found was that conservative academics take increasing levels of care not to offend those in positions of power like department heads or to let their views become known to people in their field who will be evaluating their applications or paper submissions.

We also found that both hard and soft authoritarianism are pervasive in academia. In the U.S., a staggering one in three conservative graduate students or academics has been disciplined or threatened for discipline for their views. Meanwhile, 75 percent of conservative academics in the social sciences and humanities in the U.S. and Britain say their departments are a hostile environment for their beliefs. In the U.S., fully seven in 10 conservative academics in the social sciences or humanities say they self-censor. Over 90 percent of Trump-supporting academics wouldn't feel comfortable sharing their views with a colleague, and 85 percent of their Democratic colleagues agree that Trump supporters would stay silent.

Chilling effects for political minorities stem from fears of being disciplined as well as worries about the consequences of being marked out as ideologically deviant in a world where those on the left typically outnumber those on the right by a ratio of over 10 to one.

Sadly, these fears are well-founded. Using a concealed survey technique called a list experiment, I found in an August 2020 survey that four in 10 American academics would not hire a known Trump supporter. Meanwhile, one in three British academics would discriminate against a known Brexit supporter for a job, despite the fact 52 percent of the population voted to leave the European Union.

Between a fifth and a half of academics would mark a right-leaning grant application lower.

There are also social consequences to being outed as conservative, or as someone who believes that gender should be defined biologically. Fewer than three in 10 American and Canadian academics in SSH disciplines would feel comfortable sitting down to lunch with a scholar who opposed admitting transwomen to women-only shelters, and barely four in 10 would be comfortable breaking bread with a Trump supporting academic.

The combination of hard authoritarianism and political discrimination makes life very uncomfortable for non-conformists, now a matter of hard data as well as plentiful anecdotes; my findings replicate those of previous studies.

The problem is not that leftist academics discriminate more than right-wing academics, or that academics discriminate more than others. In fact, academics display similar levels of political prejudice to the rest of the highly-educated population. The difference lies in the high ideological skew and transparently political nature of people's work in SSH academic disciplines. When you are outnumbered 10 to one, your prejudice matters a lot less than bias from the majority when it comes to getting a job, or getting ahead. In a British survey, I compared those working in universities to those working in other professional settings and found a much higher level of self-censorship in universities.

And another one:

www.fox5ny.com/news/man-beaten-and-robbed-on-bronx-sidewalk

A retired cop vacationing in Las Vegas was killed in the early hours of Sunday morning on the strip when a man attacked him in a "single punch pre-dawn confrontation," authorities said.

Thomas Driscoll, 57, was walking across a street bridge around 4 a.m. with a female when Brandon Marcus Leath, 33, started shouting at them and following them.

Leath waited for them at the bottom of an escalator then allegedly punched Driscoll, causing him to fall to the ground unconscious.

Victim:


Perp:

If he got hired at 21, like many cops, thats 36 years, or he could have been injured and retired out. If its so easy, you should strap on a gun and bulletproof vest and give it a go...

This must be Trumps fault. Notice how the Mom takes zero responsibility to be involved.

BALTIMORE (WBFF) – A shocking discovery out of a Baltimore City high school, where Project Baltimore has found hundreds of students are failing. It’s a school where a student who passed three classes in four years, ranks near the top half of his class with a 0.13 grade point average.

Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June. But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over. He’s been moved back to ninth grade.

“He's stressed and I am too. I told him I'm probably going to start crying. I don't know what to do for him,” France told Project Baltimore. “Why would he do three more years in school? He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that.”

France’s son attends Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in west Baltimore. His transcripts show he’s passed just three classes in four years, earning 2.5 credits, placing him in ninth grade. But France says she didn’t know that until February. She has three children and works three jobs. She thought her oldest son was doing well because even though he failed most of his classes, he was being promoted. His transcripts show he failed Spanish I and Algebra I but was promoted to Spanish II and Algebra II. He also failed English II but was passed on to English III.

“I'm just assuming that if you are passing, that you have the proper things to go to the next grade and the right grades, you have the right credits,” said France.

As we dig deeper into her son’s records, we can see in his first three years at Augusta Fells, he failed 22 classes and was late or absent 272 days. But in those three years, only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened. No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class.

“I feel like they never gave my son an opportunity, like if there was an issue with him, not advancing or not progressing, that they should have contacted me first, three years ago,” said France.

In his four years at Augusta Fells, France’s son earned a GPA of 0.13. He only passed three classes, but his transcripts show his class rank is 62 out of 120. This means, nearly half his classmates, 58 of them, have a 0.13 grade point average or lower.

Project Baltimore talked with a City Schools administrator, who works inside North Avenue, but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. That administrator says the school system absolutely failed France’s son.

The administrator told FOX45 News, City Schools failed because it has protocols and interventions set up to help students who are falling behind or have low attendance. In France’s son’s case, they didn’t happen.

“I get angry. There's nothing but frustration. We see on the news the crime that occurs, the murders, the shootings, we know that there are high levels of poverty in Baltimore. Things like this are adding to that. His transcript is not unusual to me. I've seen many transcripts, many report cards, like this particular student,” said the City Schools administrator.

I am shocked!

www.yahoo.com/news/researchers-controversially-pitch-policing-driver-132037084.html

Alayna Alvarez
Thu, March 4, 2021, 5:20 AM
Data: City and County of Denver; Reproduced from David Pyrooz; Chart: Axios Visuals

A research team believes de-policing is a key factor driving Denver's violent crime surge. The term describes a pullback from active policing, often in response to public scrutiny.

Why it matters: The controversial claim comes as police in Denver and across the country continue to face sharp public criticism over excessive force and brutality against people of color, with local policymakers actively working to divest from police forces or abolish them altogether.

The so called community:

Phoenix police this week arrested a suspect on suspicion of murder in connection with the violent slaying of an elderly man.

Juanito Falcon, 74, was walking in a Phoenix neighborhood on the morning of Feb. 16 when he was allegedly hit in the face by the suspect "for no apparent reason," court documents said, according to FOX 10 of Phoenix.

Falcon fell and hit his head on the pavement. He reportedly suffered a fractured skull and brain bleeding and died two days later in a hospital.

The suspect ran from the scene but Falcon managed to describe the suspect's car and part of the license plate number to police before he ultimately died, the Arizona Republic reported.

The suspect, identified as Marcus Williams, was arrested Wednesday and booked into jail on a $500,000 bond.

See if you can guess perp and victim: