September 8, 2026

GOODER AND HARDER, MASSACHUSETTS:

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green

THAT’S A REAL SHAME: Georgetown U. students miffed pre-orientation program no longer ‘identity-focused.’

According to The Hoya, the center’s Young Leaders in Education, Advocacy & Dialogue program, aka YLEAD, was changed last August to Total Hoya Readiness: Intro to Vocation and Experience, or THRIVE, which no longer has programming related to identity and diversity.

YLEAD used to “foster dialogue” about “ability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, and social class,” according to the Hoya’s review of the center’s archived webpages.

Solene DeGaynor, a former YLEAD participant who later became a THRIVE coordinator, said she was “disappointed” the university moved away from the original program.

“We did a lot of presentations on what it means to be a woman on campus, what it means to be a person of color in a predominantly white institution,” DeGaynor said. “That was really helpful in terms of understanding how identity intersects and plays a role in how you operate on a college campus.”

DeGaynor added that the new THRIVE is more about “academic success” and “access[ing] to all of the resources” at Georgetown.

Campus relations were so much better before schools started to “foster dialogue” about “ability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, and social class.”

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

ANOTHER STIMULUS, XI? China says it will pump $54 billion into banks and insurers — but their stocks still fell. “The moves build on a 500 billion yuan capital injection into four major state banks last year and a pledge in March to issue 300 billion yuan in special treasury bonds this year to replenish capital at large state lenders. China’s banking sector has been grinding through a multiyear margin compression, as Beijing pushes lenders to keep credit cheap for struggling borrowers. The net interest margins — the spread between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits — fell to record lows this year.”

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green

INSTANT KARMA:

Also, that thing that never happens happened again.

Posted at 9:21 am by Stephen Green

ROGER KIMBALL: The Democrats are both cynical and naive.

Which leads me to the political principle a friend summed up in a pithy observation: “To be a liberal is to be unable to learn from the past.” Sometimes experience is a great teacher. Sometimes it is hardly more than a distraction. My friend’s point is that Democrats seem to derive no sustenance from their experience. The failure of their policies does not lead them to adjust their expectations or their actions. It causes them to double down on their mistakes.

The history of America’s welfare apparatus since the time of FDR and, especially, since the time of LBJ and the so-called Great Society programs, is a case in point.

Well, it depends. If the purpose of the Great Society was to make America better and happier, it was a mistake. If the purpose was to enrich a vast bureaucratic parasite class while holding the nation’s poor in government-funded serfdom, then it succeeded brilliantly. Just remember: The purpose of a system is what it does.

Posted at 9:10 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s Going to Be a Big Week for IslamoFAUXbia. “I frequently write about the fact that American leftists live in an alternate, fictional reality. One of the biggest fictions that they peddle is that Islamic terrorism isn’t a problem but the white Christians are a powder keg that’s ready to blow. It’s wearisome and dangerous. When Democrats are in charge, they’re never looking for the real bad guys.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Remember when higher education was supposed to have a civilizing influence?

Posted at 8:43 am by Glenn Reynolds

THAT’S BRAVE: Small-scale protests break out in Iran over cost of living. “The protests come after DW Persian reported that many Iranians, including cancer patients, were forgoing or delaying critical treatment as healthcare costs become increasingly unaffordable. The prices of some medications had risen by 120%, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported. Some medications had increased in price by as much as 543%, German news channel Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.”

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green

IMPRESSIVE:

Posted at 8:19 am by Stephen Green

MACARTHUR PARK IS CLONING IN THE DARK: Adam Carolla: Los Angeles is “number one in artist renderings. You say whatever you want about your city, we’ll kick your ass with our renderings. Our actual product is shit, but if you want a bullet train or a park or a  bridge, we got a rendering, and it’s amazing. Except we’ll never realize any of it:”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

LEFTISM IS BAD FOR PEOPLE AND OTHER LIVING THINGS: America’s Bad Cities Are Costing You. “Does crime reduce the extent of agglomeration economies? To a major extent, yes, and we know it thanks to a suite of different disasters—bombings, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.—, to random events that displaced populations—the Mariel Boatlift, Japanese internment, close elections that appointed discriminatory mayors, etc.—, to the historical period known as the Great Migration—the mass movement of African Americans from the southeastern U.S. to the rest of the country’s urban areas. My replication package deals with all of these, and they produce convergent results, but for this article, I’ll just talk about the clearest example.”

Some fascinating stuff at the link.

Posted at 7:33 am by Stephen Green