Latest news with #SethMandel
New York Post
20-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
‘Iraq Syndrome' is dead, why PBS & NPR had to go and other commentary
Foreign desk: 'Iraq Syndrome' Is Dead 'Fear of the expression of American military power has now dissolved,' cheers Commentary's Seth Mandel. In his first term, President Trump 'adopted a modified Murphy's Law that also governed his predecessor's foreign policy: Anything that can be Iraq, will be Iraq.' But that looks to have changed 'when President Trump ordered the successful strikes on Iran's nuclear program.' Notably, 'Ukraine is now benefiting from the Iran strikes because reality has dispelled the fog of Iraq Syndrome and the president is seeing more clearly.' Fact is, 'the 'just like Iraq' line of thinking isn't accurate, and now Trump realizes that.' How 'fitting that Donald Trump, who rode the effects of Iraq Syndrome all the way to the presidency (twice), would be the one to cure American politics of this malady.' Health beat: Med-Schools' Merit Malpractice 'The Supreme Court banned racial preferences in university admissions, but finding ways to maintain them has become a cottage industry in higher education,' blasts The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Medical schools are one of the worst abusers. A new study finds 'admitted black applicants had lower MCAT scores than admitted white and Asian applicants at 22 out of 23 schools.' At places like the University of Wisconsin, 'a black medical school applicant was about 10 times more likely to be admitted than white or Asian applicants with identical test scores and GPA.' 'In the admissions cycles since 2023, little has changed.' 'Preferences that elevate less qualified doctors won't reduce inequities in public health, but they will stigmatize successful minority applicants who excel.' 'Oh, and to remind, racial preferences are against the law.' Media watch: Why PBS & NPR Had To Go 'Let us call a spade a spade: NPR and PBS have earned the 'woke' label,' roars TIPP Insights' editorial board. That's why it's so great Congress just cut off federal funds. 'NPR is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It enjoys the tax-exempt privileges of a 501(c)(3) organization, yet operates as a de facto mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and progressive ideology.' Two GOP senators, Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), voted against the cuts, crying about the 'impact on rural and tribal communities.' 'It's a flimsy argument': Both 'stream through the internet and airwaves,' so 'even the most rural communities can access their content instantly.' As we've asked before,'In a world of endless streaming and podcasting, why are taxpayers still funding a media cocoon for coastal elites?' Spy world: Russia-Hoax Document Bonanza The 'floodgates' of 'long-classified information' about the Russia-hoax scandal may finally be opening, reports Paul Sperry at RealClearInvestigations. Documents include a secret audit revealing that an 'intelligence community assessment on Russia ordered by President Obama after the 2016 election' was framed to portray Trump as beholden to Putin. A US intelligence official 'alleged the outgoing administration weaponized' Russian intelligence 'to sabotage President-elect Trump.' The information could 'strengthen a criminal case' against Obama intelligence officials like former CIA chief John Brennan. Former FBI officials say prosecutors have 'sufficient grounds to charge Obama's FBI and CIA officials with criminal conspiracy.' Statistician: Medicaid Fearmongers' Bad Math Yale law professor Natasha Sarin's claim that 'at least 100,000 more' Americans will die over 'the next decade' due to Medicaid cuts 'reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of 'statistical lives saved,'' warns Aaron Brown at Reason. Sarin 'and several other prominent journalists misinterpreted a recent working paper' by economists Angela Wyse and Bruce D. Meyer, which estimated 'that the Medicaid expansion reduced mortality among eligible adults between 0.40% and 4.52% ,' or about 27,400 lives. But these are 'statistical lives,' and 'these same government programs also take many statistical lives.' 'Counting statistical lives' is 'a debased currency, because it counts each actual life multiple times. And citing only the good side of the ledger makes it impossible to evaluate.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Page
New York Post
18-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Behind Trump's Israel backing, leftist rot ruins universities and other commentary
Foreign desk: Behind Trump's Israel Backing 'There are several plain reasons why President Trump has been vocally supportive of Israel's mission in Iran so far,' explains Commentary's Seth Mandel. The prez 'loves a winner' and 'so far, Trump likes what he sees and doesn't want to stop seeing it.' He 'said he would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon' and 'the IDF has gotten results.' 'If all he has to do is sit back and watch it happen, why wouldn't he?' Advertisement He also likes prefers flexibility, and: 'At this point, Trump hasn't overcommitted to anything and hasn't ceded control of his own ability to adjust as he sees fit.' Backing Operation Rising Lion lets him be a winner and fulfill a key campaign promise. Campus watch: Leftist Rot Ruins Universities 'The radical-left [campus] monopoly is a threat to America's democracy, institutions and national well-being,' warns John Ellis in The Wall Street Journal. Advertisement Treating 'criminals as victims' along with 'pronoun madness, defunding the police and so on' all began and metastasized at universities, 'the national headquarters of the radical left.' Team Trump is spot-on in aiming to 'end wokeness by targeting DEI and critical race theory in universities and the federal government.' But more's needed: 'Ending woke foolishness and returning universities to their former brilliance is possible only if the political monopoly is broken up.' With that, the country 'would take care of DEI, critical race theory and even antisemitism, because these are all created by the monopoly.' Advertisement Republican: Radicals Betray Mexican-Americans 'As someone proud of my Mexican heritage and deeply patriotic about my American identity, I find it offensive' that 'American citizens, many of Mexican descent' are 'setting fire to vehicles' and 'waving foreign flags' to protest Trump policies, fumes Rep. Myra Flores at The Hill. 'President Trump is doing what any responsible leader would: enforcing the laws already on the books,' yet Democrats 'deliberately blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants so they can demean Republicans as 'anti-immigrant' or 'xenophobic.' ' 'They want to lump us all together so that criminals and patriots alike share the same label.' So 'the actions of a few radicals now tarnish entire communities.' Advertisement No! 'We are a nation of immigrants, yes — but more importantly, we are a nation of laws.' Conservative: Randi's Power & Dem Corruption Teacher-union boss Randi Weingarten's long tenure as a member of the Democratic National Committee 'is proof of the open corruption of the Democratic Party,' thunders the Washington Examiner's Zachary Faria. While her union 'was funneling money to Democrats,' she 'was directing CDC guidance.' Hypocritical Democrats rant 'about Republican 'dark money' and the undue influence of groups such as the National Rifle Association,' yet 'the DNC was happy with this corrupt relationship with Weingarten and her union.' The liberal media are just as corrupt as they 'made next-to-no mention of her DNC role and offered almost no pushback against her as she used her union and DNC influence to write CDC policy and keep schools closed.' Legal beat: Colorado's Pro-Trans Oppression 'You'd think that after two significant losses at the U.S. Supreme Court, Colorado would tread more carefully with its anti-discrimination laws,' snarks USA Today's Ingrid Jacques. But a new law making 'deadnaming and misgendering transgender individuals a punishable offense' has 'already attracted lawsuits on the grounds that the law violates the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment.' Advertisement One federal suit outs the measure's aim as 'suppressing traditional views on sex and gender and punishing those who refuse to address transgender-identifying individuals using so-called chosen names and preferred pronouns.' A second defends the rights of businesses like XX-XY Athletics to use language 'vital to the company's branding and advertising.' Any law 'requiring citizens to use language that's simply not true or accurate will never pass muster when squared with the First Amendment.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
New York Post
19-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Minimums for a new Iran nuke deal, beware fake experts and other commentary
Iran beat: Minimums for a New Nuke Deal Even if Iran's leaders are 'willing to dispose of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, restrict itself to a purely civilian program and commit to never developing a bomb,' argue Bloomberg News' editors, they must also agree to see their advanced centrifuges (not needed for any civilian nuclear program) 'destroyed or removed from the country.' Unlike the flawed 2015 deal, new 'restrictions on enrichment will have to be indefinite or pushed out so far into the future that they might as well be.' Also, Tehran must agree 'to accept intrusive monitoring by American or European inspectors' as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency 'to demonstrate compliance.' Conservative: Beware Fake Experts 'The propaganda campaigns against Israel rely on an industry of manufactured 'expertise,' ' explains Commentary's Seth Mandel — but the game is collapsing. A Sky News anchor recently denouncing 'Israel's strike on a tunnel system beneath a Gaza hospital to eliminate senior Hamas officials, notably its de facto leader Muhammad Sinwar,' cited 'our experts' in insisting 'Israel was wrong to say there were tunnels underneath the hospital' — but then 'Hamas confirmed that the targeted area was indeed the site of a tunnel system,' followed by 'reports that Muhammad Sinwar's body was indeed found in the tunnel system targeted by the IDF.' Fact is, news organizations now find 'experts' whenever 'they're needed to lend an academic gloss to rank speculation and conspiracy theories.' From the right: Blacks' Bad Bet on Political Clout Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prompted groups like the NAACP to fast-track 'efforts to elect more black officials,' believing 'that black political power would naturally lead to black upward mobility,' but the election of black mayors, congressmen and aldermen hasn't resulted in 'the broader economic and social uplift that many expected from increased black political clout,' grumbles City Journal's Jason L. Riley. 'Political integration' and 'influence' have 'proved insufficient' as history shows 'political clout' has 'never been a prerequisite for minority socioeconomic advancement.' Blacks needed 'more than political saviors and affirmative action schemes,' they needed 'economic growth and opportunity' plus 'the development of self-reliance, work skills, and cultural norms that have succeeded in lifting so many other groups.' Advertisement Washington watch: Good Riddance to FBI HQ 'The closure of the J. Edgar Hoover building and the dispersal of the toxic Washington-centric [FBI] hierarchy is welcome news,' cheers Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness. 'Most of the FBI scandals of the last decade were born in the Hoover building headquarters.' Special counsel Robert Mueller ran a '20-month, 40-million-dollar legal circus chasing the unicorn of 'Russian collusion.'' And FBI chief James Comey found 'Hillary Clinton likely guilty of, but somehow not indictable for, a number of felonies.' His successor, Christopher Wray, 'infamously oversaw FBI agents spying on parents at school board meetings' and the 'discredited Mar-a-Lago SWAT team raid.' And the agency suppressed 'any news considered problematic to the then-2020 Biden campaign' on social media. Let this closure ' also mark the end of the most sordid' chapter in the FBI's history. Hate patrol: Medicine's Antisemitism Problem Antisemitism is 'a problem among doctors, and a lot of that problem is concentrated among doctors educated overseas,' warn Jay P. Greene & Ian Kingsbury at Tablet. In a set of over 700 people 'profiled by the organization Stop Antisemitism,' Do Not Harm 'found that health professionals were more than 2.5 times more likely to be found among antisemites than their share of the workforce. Doctors were almost 26 times overrepresented,' and 'half of those Jew-hating doctors received their medical degrees abroad.' Among those, '68% were trained in the Middle East (40%) or Pakistan (28%).' 'This problem will only get worse as the rate of importing doctors from abroad is rising.' 'To be clear, the average foreign doctor is not an antisemite,' but 'in such large numbers, extremists among foreign doctors become more common.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
New York Post
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Music world's anti-Israel blinders, restore parents' opt-out rights and other commentary
Culture critic: Music World's Anti-Israel Blinders Commentary's Seth Mandel wasn't 'surprised' by the Coachella anti-Israel 'sloganeering'; bands think slamming it will further their careers. But it's 'strange' that music artists pay 'so much attention' to the Israel-Hamas war without acknowledging how it started: 'with the biggest music festival massacre in history.' Indeed, 'it requires an extraordinary level of sliminess to use the music stage to boost the army that carried out that massacre.' And Nova is just 'one of the many ways that the world's support for Hamas against Israel has exposed the hypocrisy of the self-styled liberal humanists.' When Recording Academy head Harvey Mason did recognize Oct. 7 in 2024, he contextualized it and never even mentioned Israel. Better than what's most common: 'Nova victims get nothing — or worse.' Schools beat: Restore Parents' Opt-Out Rights 'When my local school board stripped away parents' right to opt out of storybooks that promote controversial gender ideology, I knew I had to act,' sighs Billy Moges at RealClearPolitics. The Supreme Court must 'uphold the principle that it is parents — not government authorities — who should guide their children's education.' The Montgomery County Board of Education introduced new storybooks that 'went beyond teaching virtues and instead spotlighted themes like pride parades, gender transitions, and inappropriate romance for pre-kindergarten students,' and parents didn't want their children exposed to them. Before the opt-out ended, Maryland law and school-board policies allowed parents to have their kids skip 'classroom lessons that violated a family's faith.' Parents, the county should realize, are 'our children's primary teachers, not obstacles.' Foreign desk: An Untenable Ukraine-Peace Plan The terms of the Ukraine peace talks 'are unacceptable to all parties to this conflict save the Kremlin and the Trump administration,' thunders National Review's Noah Rothman — especially 'recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula' and the US refusal to 'provide Kyiv with direct security guarantees or even a commitment to provide future assistance.' 'The administration does appear to be racing to conclude an agreement — any agreement that it can call a cease-fire — within the president's first 100 days in office. That political objective is now running counter to America's strategic interests.' In other words, it's 'clear what Donald Trump would get out of the conclusion of this framework. How his country benefits is another matter entirely.' From the right: Prove Your Critics Wrong, Pete 'The Beltway press would love to knock Pete Hegseth out as Defense secretary, but that doesn't come close to explaining the mess at the Pentagon,' quip The Wall Street Journal's editors — all the 'staff infighting, dismissals, and leaks over Signal app chats look to be the self-inflicted mistakes of a management neophyte.' Can Hegseth 'handle the job'? 'As GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell warned' in voting against his confirmation, 'the desire to be a change agent isn't a sufficient credential to run the giant Pentagon bureaucracy.' Hegseth should 'use the staff shakeup to hire some loyal grownups who know the building.' Remember, 'his calling card is enforcing high standards and accountability at every military level.' 'Is the secretary accountable himself?' Higher-ed watch: Trump's Right To Target Ivies 'Trump is on to something vital in trying to reform a higher education system that has long excluded conservative students and faculty while promoting a leftist agenda,' cheers USA Today's Nicole Russell. The president 'isn't wrong to leverage taxpayer dollars in an attempt to force Harvard' to 'review the ideological diversity of administrators, faculty and students.' 'A 2022 Harvard Crimson survey found that more than 80% of the university's faculty self-identified as liberal or very liberal,' and less than 2% 'said they are conservative.' 'It would be one thing for the university to favor progressives over conservatives in hiring if it didn't receive federal money,' but Trump is simply 'against taxpayers funding universities that teach America's young people to hate our country and Western values.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
