Saturday Miscellany

First, two days ago I wrote about the situation in South Africa, especially regarding the rank persecution of white farmers. As you recall, the Trump administration has fast-tracked their requests for refugee status, and several dozen have now relocated to the USA.

I also noted that the South African war against white farmers was likely to produce a food shortage. Now Wanjiru Nyoya explains the problem, clearly:

90% of farms seized from the Boers by the Bantu commies are lying derelict. Nobody told the Bantus that farms require hard work, so they didn't bother. This was a catastrophe for the farm animals, most of which had to be euthanized.

Second, CNN’s token conservative Scott Jennings has offered a few remarks about the negotiations between America’s Treasury Secretary and Chinese officials in Geneva. You will recall that the talks yielded an agreement to tone down the trade wars, and that the markets were thrilled to hear the news.

Jennings explained that the Chinese negotiators told Bessent that they did not need to follow the agreements made with the Biden administration because the Bidens were too weak to enforce anything:

“This whole idea that he’s weak on China, did you not read the news about what Secretary Bessent found out in these meetings, that during the Biden Administration the Chinese officials said, ‘Yeah, we knew we could ignore Biden. We could ignore whatever agreements we had because he was too weak and would never, ever stand up to us or stop us,’” Jennings said. “Now they’ve been drug to the table by a strong American president.

It was another story in Geneva:

And for all the talk from China, from Beijing, ‘Oh, we’re going to outlast the Americans. We’re fortified to outlast the Americans,’ a few days into this, they’re in Switzerland cutting the beginnings of a deal that‘s going to be good for the United States, admitting some of the things that they have to admit in order to get a more balanced situation with us.”

As we have noted, Bessent is quickly becoming a star of the administration. As Trump opined the other day, every time Scott is on the air the markets go up:

“This is a total win for the president, and it’s a total win for the rock star Scott Bessent, who goes overseas and pulls an amazing rabbit out of a hat,” Jennings continued. “But do not forget, they told him, ‘We ignored Biden because he was so weak and we could afford to do it.’”

Third, it feels almost redundant at this point. If you have not figured this one out, you need some serious time off.

The issue is what is euphemistically called “gender affirming care.” About which Dani Activist has this to say:

They call it “gender-affirming care.” But real care doesn’t sterilize confused teens. Real care doesn’t amputate healthy body parts. Real care doesn’t trap people in lifelong medical dependence. Call it what it is: mutilation disguised as compassion.

Fourth, the news from the Supreme Court. Not about the cases but about one of the justices. Charlie Kirk explained:

A Supreme Court expert friend responding to today's oral arguments: "KBJ really is stunningly stupid in ways you cannot exaggerate."

Fifth, if you thought that DEI was going to disappear off the face of the planet, you were too optimistic. Take the case of the Palo Alto, CA school district. They have canceled advanced and honors courses, because of racial disparities.

Nellie Bowles reports on TGIF, from the Free Press:

Palo Alto Unified School District voted to remove honors biology as an option for the smart kids, after already having removed honors English, lest some advanced reader get to talk to other advanced readers (on this I support Palo Alto wholeheartedly).

It was such a bad idea that even Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna spoke out against it:

“They call it de-laning,” said Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna. “I call it an assault on excellence. I took many honors classes at Council Rock High in PA.”

Bowles offered her own explanation:

Being somewhat familiar with Palo Alto, a wealthy, highly competitive school district, let me tell you what’s going on, just based on gut: The white parents are mad that the advanced classes are disproportionately Asian. And they think their kid will have a better shot at an Ivy League spot if it’s harder for the college to tell who’s smart and who is, like, really smart. But guys, colleges already will discriminate against the smart Asians. You don’t have to cancel biology to get there.

Sixth, from Rob Jenkins, on Minding the Campus, a problem students are encountering in STEM classes. Their professors are not native born, and can barely speak English.

These days, institutions have come to rely more and more on non-native Ph.D.s. Just scan through the faculty roster at any American university and see how many names you can pronounce. This is a problem for some of the same reasons Jared mentions: Not only did many of these professors take grad-school seats from American students, they eventually took jobs that might have gone to American candidates.

There’s another problem with foreign-born professors, though, on an even more basic level: Students often struggle to understand them in class. If students literally can’t grasp what the professor is saying, due to a language barrier, how can they learn the material? Often, they resort to essentially teaching themselves, using textbooks, study groups, and online aids.

It is even happening in medical school:

The daughter of a good friend is currently in medical school at a large, highly respected Southeastern university. I had a chance to chat with her over the holidays and asked her how it was going. What she said frankly shocked me.

According to her, not a single one of her medical school professors, so far, has been American-born. All speak with thick accents, although some are clearer than others. Asking questions in class doesn’t help much, because she often can’t understand the answers. And she isn’t alone. Her classmates all have the same problem.

One agrees wholeheartedly with the observation. And yet, upon reflection, when you choose a surgeon to perform open heart surgery on you, how important is his ability to speak English?

Finally, I now have some open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.