Jun
3
2024

Rose and Jack Could Have Fit on That Door

But that's not important right now:

Also of note:

  • Maybe they'll learn something? Katherine Mangu-Ward observes a recent trend in higher education: SWAT Goes to College

    A gray-haired Dartmouth professor was tackled, zip-tied, and detained on May 1 along with about 90 other protesters. "I've been teaching here for 34 years," Annelise Orleck told The New York Times after video of the arrest went viral. "There have been many protests, but I've never, ever seen riot police called to the green."

    Much of the debate about the campus protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war has centered—quite reasonably—on
questions around free speech, civil disobedience, and violence. When do chants become threats? When does blocking access to a building become the use of force? Less attention has been paid to the role of policing. But even as Americans have become numb to the militarization of police in other contexts, there's something shocking about the sight of cops in riot gear on college campuses.

    I get that, I do. Certainly our local news media hastened to point out that the cops who broke up the attempted "encampment" at the University Near Here back in May were adorned in "riot gear".

    But that leaves the question: what is the proper attire when you're dealing with activists who "peaceably" refuse to adhere to a university's time/place/manner restrictions? Who set up a arm-linked human fence to prevent law enforcement from doing their job?

  • I don't want to know what my spirit animal is. But Kat Rosenfield has done her homework, and finds: Trump is Hillary Clinton's spirit animal. RTWT, but here's an excerpt:

    It’s hard not to see the current state of the discourse as an obvious outgrowth of an earlier phenomenon that Vox writer Emmet Rensin termed the “smug style” in American liberalism, “predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what’s good for them”.

    It is also hard not to find Hillary’s armchair quarterbacking of the upcoming election a bit rich, considering the source, and particularly when her own smug style is at least partly to blame for getting us into this mess. We all have that highlight reel of cringeworthy moments that runs through our head when we’re awake and anxious at 3am: the verbal fumbles, the jokes that didn’t land, that time a waiter said, “Enjoy your linguini”, and you, an idiot, replied: “You, too!” If I were Hillary Clinton, I would be lying awake at night, wondering how different my life — all our lives — would be, had I never uttered the words, “basket of deplorables”.

    But that’s me; the former candidate, on the other hand, seems disinclined toward accepting any culpability for the current state of affairs. Rather, she imagines herself as Cassandra, standing athwart the ignorant public and the ideologically blinkered members of her own party alike, a grandiose notion that appears to have only intensified in the wake of Trump’s conviction. About five minutes after the verdict came in, Hillary took to Instagram to announce the addition of a new product to her merch store: a mug emblazoned with her likeness and the words, “TURNS OUT SHE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

    How can we miss her if she won't go away?

  • The odds were in my favor, I had 'em five to one. Jeff Jacoby has an excellent question: If you can wager on the price of orange juice, why not on elections? Considerable time is spent on the antics of Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy in Trading Places, which you should watch if you haven't, great cast. But:

    Last month […] the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted 3-2 for a new rule forbidding the use of event contracts for betting on national elections. Its purpose, The Wall Street Journal reported, was "to clarify the boundaries between gambling and financial markets." The proposal — still preliminary — would prevent [prediction market] Kalshi from expanding its business into political wagers. It would also force PredictIt, an exchange that does offer markets on the outcome of elections, to shut down that part of its operation.

    According to Rostin Behnam, the CFTC chairman, political betting markets must be suppressed because they threaten "election integrity and the democratic process." If wagering on politics is allowed to continue, the commission could find itself obliged to investigate charges of election fraud — an especially unwelcome prospect for a Wall Street regulator given the degree of American polarization. Two activists who agree with him — Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets and Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen — argued in the Los Angeles Times last week that "to allow betting on elections through the commodities market . . . could unleash a torrent of misinformation" and "create powerful new incentives for bad actors to influence voters and manipulate the results to favor their bets."

    But there is little or no evidence to substantiate such fears. To be sure, misinformation has always been a feature of political campaigns and will continue to be with or without political futures contracts. As for inducing "bad actors" to manipulate the results — such vote-tampering is already illegal and would be subject to prosecution. In any case, to shift the outcome of a national election would require a daunting level of coordinated corruption, something far beyond the scope of a crooked county official or polling-place judge.

    The line between "investing" and "betting" is pretty fuzzy, and a lot depends on the psychology of the investor/bettor.