IVC President Glenn Roquemore seriously oversteps his authority

     As you know, IVC President, Glenn Roquemore, has long had a troubled relationship with the college faculty. In general, he and his regime perennially operate in a manner that leaves faculty, represented by the IVC Academic Senate, with little meaningful voice in important governance issues, even when, by law, they are given special authority.
     Over the years, we’ve discussed these issues on this blog.
     Rumors have been swirling that Roquemore recently overstepped his authority in promoting the curriculum of one of his curious hobby horses, the "Laser" or Photonics program.
     I have made inquiries. Here’s what I’ve learned—from very reliable sources.
     The curriculum specialist is the (non-faculty) employee at IVC who assists the Office of Instruction and faculty in creating and approving curriculum. Supervised by the VPI, he works closely with the (faculty) Curriculum Chair, managing curriculum at the College. (The specialist has permissions in the curriculum system [CurricuNet] at a high level, able to move programs and degrees through the system.)
     The Laser Technology (Photonics) program at IVC, a program in which President Roquemore seems to take a keen interest, recently lost its only full-time faculty member, Desiré Whitmore; unable to make load due to low enrollment, Whitmore took a job elsewhere. The program has few students, and, in truth, there are few or no laser tech jobs in California. Meanwhile, California Ed Code now requires Career Technical Education programs, such as Photonics, to demonstrate, with Labor Market Data, that they are educating students for an actual job. (Such data should be presented to the board.)
     I should mention that the current Curriculum Chair, who was appointed in Spring, is new and untenured. The Academic Senate is presently working with him to fix a very confused and troubled curriculum process.
     Over summer 2018, Roquemore emailed the Academic Senate president, asking about the curriculum status of the Laser Technology Associates degree. The Senate Prez responded, saying that she would check. Summer was a busy time for curriculum because of AB 705 and other pressing curriculum matters. The curriculum chair was alerted to the President’s concern.
     Later this summer, the college president asked the curriculum specialist for an update on the Laser Technology curriculum. The specialist informed him that the curriculum was then at the board level and would not be moved forward—not until a process was developed in collaboration with Saddleback College for how Labor Market data should be presented to the Board.
     Roquemore said he would look into the process and get back to the specialist.
     A few weeks later, Roquemore informed the specialist that he had spoken to Saddleback and that the requirement to show Labor Market data was waived for this program; hence, he said, the specialist should move the Associate degree forward.
     Is Glenn once again helping one of his worthless pals?
     The specialist believed he should comply with Roquemore's direction and did so.
     Education Code gives academic senates (i.e., faculty) primary responsibility for making recommendations regarding curriculum. The Curriculum Chair was not part of this action and was not consulted. Beyond the summer email, neither was the Academic Senate President.
     In our system, no administrator may touch curriculum; it is the faculty’s purview. Roquemore has clearly overstepped his authority. This, at any rate, is the view of many faculty and others at the college.
     The Saddleback Senate has been alerted to the situation. They too are alarmed.
     It is my understanding that IVC's Academic Senate President is now pursuing an appointment with the Chancellor to discuss the matter.
     Some members of the IVC Academic Senate are discussing the possibiity of at long last pursuing a vote of no confidence in Roquemore.
     Stay tuned.

Shoveling shite against the tide

I was deluded. You can't beat fake news with science communication
Jenny Rohn (Guardian UK)

     …I believe, like many, that we are living through a dangerous era of untruth, one that will be recognised in the history books as a dark blight on our civilisation. Fascists, charlatans and propagandists are as old as time, but never before have they been mobilised with today’s powerful tools, which can coalesce forces globally and amplify messages in a flash. Ne’er-do-wells formerly had their village pub, their back-alley rendezvous, their circus stall – an influence confined by geography to a small canker.  Newspapers reached more widely, but still they were binned each evening to yellow with irrelevance. Even the terrible dictators of the past who managed large-scale atrocities were constrained by the limitations of an internet-free world.
     Scientists are human too, so why are we shocked when they fall short?
     Now, it’s a free-for-all, and we’ve all witnessed the shocking spread of lies and the way their sheer frequency has numbed us into impotence. Any one of Donald Trump’s dodgy dealings would have brought down any other president, but the creeping paralysis of untruth-overload has de-sensitised the population to his many scandals as effectively as “aversion therapy”– as when an arachnophobe is thrown into a pit with a thousand spiders and soon cured. Even definitive proof that the Russians have been meddling in the elections of Western states and sowing general discontent via social media has met with a collective shrug from the inured populace – while individuals might get riled up, each bit of fake news is just another defused spider to the collected whole.

     I think writers like me, who specialise in evidence-based communication, have been deluded as to the power of our pens in the face of this inexorable tide. We write our polite pieces in mainstream outlets and expect to change the world. We brace ourselves for the inevitable trolls in the comments sections and on social media, but we feel cheered and bolstered by the praise and support from like-minded members of the audience. We convince ourselves we are doing good, that we are shining a light – no matter how dimly – on an accumulation of evil disinformation. We feel smug when we get a thousand retweets – until we notice that the anti-vaxxers, the racists and the nutters are getting hundreds of thousands more.
     I am now starting to think that none of this makes much difference. When does any of our evidence, no matter how carefully and widely presented, actually sway the opinion of someone whose viewpoint has been long since been seduced by the propagandists?....

What else is new?

Top student loan official at consumer agency quits over Trump policies
(Politico)
By MICHAEL STRATFORD

     The top official overseeing student loans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resigned on Monday in protest of Trump administration policies that he said were harming students and families.
     Seth Frotman, the student loan ombudsman at the CFPB, said in a letter to acting Director Mick Mulvaney that political leadership at the consumer bureau over the last 10 months had repeatedly undermined efforts by career employees to take action against abuses by student loan companies and for-profit colleges.
     "It is clear that current leadership of the bureau has abandoned its duty to fairly and robustly enforce the law," Frotman wrote in the scathing resignation letter, which was obtained by POLITICO. "The Bureau's new political leadership has repeatedly undercut and undermined career CFPB staff working to secure relief for consumers."
     Frotman has served as the consumer bureau’s top student loan official since 2016. He initially joined the CFBP when was being created in 2011, working on military service member issues as a senior adviser to Holly Petraeus.
     Frotman’s resignation, which is effective Sept. 1, underscores the growing frustration by consumer advocates and Democrats that the Trump administration is dismantling protections for the nation’s more than 42 million student loan borrowers who collectively owe $1.5 trillion….

The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine
(Mother Jones)
     Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?
BY RYANN LIEBENTHAL- SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE

Music for surviving, etc.

Just tell the truth
Did I ever stand a chance?
Against all your rules
And the people that will dance for you



If you're travelin' in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine



My baby don't care for cars and races
My baby don't care for high tone places

Oh I just wanna go to work --
And get back home, and be something
I just wanna fall and lie --
And do my time, and be something
Well I just wanna prove my worth --
On the planet Earth, and be, something
I just wanna fall in love
Not fuck it up, and feel something

Down in the Willow Garden - Everly Bros
My father he had told me
his money would set me free
if I would poison that dear little girl
whose name was Rose Connelly.

A Newsy, Trumpy Kind of Day ("No collusion!")

• Cohen says he paid hush money at candidate Trump’s direction (Politico)
• Manafort found guilty on eight counts (Politico)
• GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter and wife indicted on charges of misusing campaign funds (Politico)
• Trump Reacts to Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen Verdicts: No ‘Russian Collusion’ (Breitbart)
• President Donald Trump told reporters on the ground in Charleston, West Virginia, on Tuesday evening that the convictions of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, had nothing to do with “Russian collusion.”

Why are land use specific plans violated so often? (More OC corruption)

On OC: Defending Orange County’s Backcountry
(Voice of OC)

     Orange County backcountry activist and land use attorney Gloria Sefton talks about the constant development pressures on Orange County’s land use specific plans, especially those in the canyon areas, and her numerous successful lawsuits to defend the public planning process for canyon residents.
(Podcast)

     OC: Why are land use specific plans violated so often?
     The latest controversy: Santiago Canyon Corridor (Red Rock Canyons)

Another epic economic collapse is coming
George F. Will (Washington Post)

Trump and Truth

A philosopher explains America’s “post-truth” problem (Vox)
“We can never really be post-truth.”
By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com

     ...To get some answers, I reached out to Simon Blackburn, a philosophy professor at Cambridge University and the author of On Truth. We talked about what’s misleading about the phrase “post-truth,” and why the real problem may stem from a lack of trust....

BLACKBURN: …There’s always been selection of news — people basically read what they want to hear and gloss over things they don’t want to hear. I don’t think that’s a new phenomenon. But it has become easier to do this, and the insidious power of things like Facebook and Twitter exaggerates it.

ILLING: Is the phrase “post-truth” useful? Does it capture something unique about this moment?

BLACKBURN: I think there are legitimate concerns out there, which I sympathize with, but I don’t think this phrase pinpoints them accurately. The message of my book [On Truth] is that you cannot be post-truth.
     You know perfectly well that if you go out in the street and there’s a bus bearing down on you, it’s very important that you believe that there’s a bus bearing down on you. If you’re wrong about that, you could be dead. Your whole life is premised on things like that.
     In that sense, we can never really be post-truth.
     What we do have, though, is a problem in other domains, like politics and religion and ethics. There is a loss of authority in these areas, meaning there’s no certain or agreed-upon way of getting at the truth.
     This is a very old problem in philosophy that goes all the way back to Plato, so it’s not exactly new — although it’s interesting that it’s come to the fore again in the way that it has.
. . .
ILLING: Even the most ardent Trump supporter doesn’t challenge his oncologist’s cancer diagnosis, or walk into a physics conference and question the validity of string theory. It’s only when a proposition is contaminated by politics that truth suddenly flies out the window.

BLACKBURN: The problem is that in politics, people get very attached to hope. They hope for a vision which may or may not be realistic, and may or may not be grounded in truth and facts.
     It’s a bit like conspiracy theorists, who actually thrive on the fact that all the evidence points against their theory, because that just shows that the establishment is clever enough to conceal what’s really going on. People get attached to certain ideas and nothing will shake them. And when convictions start to live in opposition to reason or truth, that’s a very dangerous thing.
     . . . In [my] book, I write about a great American pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, who thought that doubt was such an uncomfortable position that people would do almost anything to seize on a belief or conviction that removed it.
     I think that’s what we’re seeing in politics.
. . .
     One of the first things that a serial liar wants to do is undermine your trust in the providers of fact that would check his lies. If you’re a criminal bent on asserting your innocence, then you undermine trust in the police. You undermine trust in the judiciary. You may be a murderer and a rapist, but you claim it’s the system that’s against you. This is sort of Trump’s best move: It’s the thing he understands most.
     He sprays around accusations of fake news while knowing full well that he’s the liar. It’s a tactical move that absolutely works in a media landscape like ours, and he knows it.

ILLING: …If the choice is between believing something false that provides meaning and comfort or believing something that’s true but inconvenient, why choose the latter?

BLACKBURN: It’s a good question, and I’m not sure how to answer it concisely. Of course, many people vote with their feet, in terms of believing something that’s false but provides meaning and comfort. After World War I, many people thought they could talk through mediums to their dead children, and unsurprisingly, a whole industry of fake mediums appeared to help them.
     Like Nietzsche, who I know you’ve written about, I’m very cautious in matters of truth. If there is no evidence for a belief and lots of evidence against it, it should not matter what you would like to be true or hope or wish to be true. Follow the probabilities and put up with the inconvenience.
     That’s an academic or a scholar speaking, but it has always been the only hope for human progress

Flex week follies

     Finally went to the college today, a step from a long, hot summer into a chirpy and earnest new semester.
     When I got to the Liberal Arts Building, I encountered several colleagues and friends who complained about President Roquemore’s then-occurring “Breakfast” and “Welcome,” held at the Performing Arts Center. It featured, they said, an inexplicable presentation by an Automobile Club executive about “texting and driving.”
     Don’t do it, he said, I guess.
     Members of the audience were perplexed and annoyed. The situation was sufficiently absurd that some people just walked out.
     “WTF?” they told me.
     I was also told that the session was very poorly attended. The story is that Roquemore had moved the session to Thursday precisely because he was sick and tired of low turnouts on Monday.
     But today’s turnout was especially bad. He even commented on it.
     A sour note.



     Evidently the fellow is unaware that he is a distinctly unpopular president. He is not respected, and he is not liked.
     Nevertheless, the clueless fellow has been the chief exec at IVC for 16 miserable years.
     —Oh. He also showed some baby pics. Sans music.
     Whatever.

     A couple of days ago, at the (new) Chancellor’s welcome, also held at the IVC Performing Arts Center, things came off without a hitch, or so I'm told. The new Chance seemed promising.
     That was followed by the usual SOCCCD Faculty Association Meeting and Luncheon, where the head of the union’s contract negotiating team laid out the facts about summer’s negotiations.
     With the Chancellor and some of the Board present, Comrade Long laid it all out. It was devastating. Or so I'm told.
     The Board is seriously low-balling the faculty, both full-time and part-time. It's as plain as day.

     Below, I’ve posted some videos about opening sessions and board meetings (etc.) from 10 years ago and 20 years ago. Enjoy.

TEN YEARS AGO:

     For some reason, the execrable Raghu Mathur was fascinated with Elvis, and he somehow befriended the "OC Elvis." In the spring of '08, the latter was hired to do his ultra-kitchy Elvis/Neil Diamond show for the Chancellor's Opening Session.
     For this occasion, Raghu arranged for some sort of direct involvement in the entertainment—and it somehow went seriously haywire. Never found out the how or why (Trustee Fuentes alludes to some kind of snafu). And so we all—i.e., OC Elvis, Tom, and the audience—waited while the Vegas-era Elvis music played. But Raghu the Entertainer failed to emerge. Finally, Raghu broke through the drapes and.....
     What did he think he was doing? No-one knows, as near as I can tell. Perhaps the idea was that there can be no greater pleasure, no more elevating experience, than beholding the Great Man, Raghu, lip-sincing Elvis.
     What an asshole.
     One time Raghu showed up as Johnny Carson's "Carnac" character. Sheesh. I'll try to dig that up.

FALL 2008












20 YEARS AGO

Hooker 'n' drug activity?

In case you missed it: amazing admissions—and "chickenshit Republicans"

A racist faction within the GOP?
Over 80% of Republican voters remain enthusiastic about Trump.

How Broad, and How Happy, is the Trump Coalition? (NYT)

UnF*ckingBelievable

For-Profits Keep Access to Billions in Aid 
(Inside Higher Ed)
     Education Department's decision to drop gainful-employment rule will mean lowest-performing programs keep $5.3 billion over next decade.
    By Andrew Kreighbaum - August 13, 2018

     More than 2,000 career education programs serving over half a million students risked losing access to Title IV federal student aid under the Obama administration’s gainful-employment rule.
     Those programs look to be in the clear after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Friday she plans to rescind the regulation.
     The move, which was widely expected and reported weeks earlier, is the latest step by DeVos to roll back Obama era student loan regulations that largely targeted the for-profit college sector. The announcement also made clear the Education Department’s new preference for consumer information in place of accountability rules that could trigger the loss of access to federal aid for programs that perform poorly on federal standards.
     Rescinding the rule, the department estimates, will mean an additional $5.3 billion over 10 years goes to programs, most of them for-profit, that would likely otherwise be cut off from federal funds -- about $4.5 billion of that from Pell Grants and the rest from student loans.
. . .
     Bob Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said that taken together those steps amount to a “not-so-implicit stamp of approval on predatory colleges, while simultaneously stripping what few protections students have to protect themselves against abuse.”....

This Fire, this morning

Again, the small green dots at left represent the Reb's place (upper) and my place (lower).
The fire is much bigger than it was 24 hours ago. But it has not yet (it seems) crossed westward
past Santiago Peak. The fire is very big, but its rate of growth has shrunk considerably in the
last 12 or so hours. Wind is 5 mph and headed east. Containment is about 30%. So things
are looking up.

Here is the latest update from the US Forest Service:

Steep inaccessible terrain continues to be a factor to spread into new areas and align for strong head fire runs and lateral movement. Fire continues to spread east and north with only limited spread to the west. The fire will continue to impact subdivisions along the foothills of Riverside County. There remains the daily potential for an "Elsinore" down slope event. The fire spread will be an impact to Orange County Subdivision of El Cariso Village. The atmosphere over the fire continues to be very unstable and will allow for large smoke column development and active to extreme fire behavior. Fire continues to directly impact communities during the next shift.

The incident has issued mandatory evacuation notices for Mayhew/Sycamore Creek, Glen Eden, Machado and South El Cariso, Riverside and voluntary evacuations in Shoreline zones. The evacuation area covers 7,449 single family homes and numerous commercial structures with estimated evacuees totaling 21,484 people.
There are hard road closures for the areas under evacuation order. Until these closures are lifted, residents are not permitted back to check on or get small animals.
After completing a structure assessment in the Holy Jim community, there are 12 confirmed structures lost during the initial attack phase of the fire.
The incident is now in unified command with US Forest Service, CAL Fire, Riverside County Fire, Orange County Fire Authority, and the California Highway Patrol.

Forecasted weather for the fire area will see temperatures between 91-97 and relative humidity of 30-40 percent and could see gusty winds to 25 mph from the west and strong down slope winds on the eastern slopes of the fire. These conditions will increase the likelihood of extreme fire behavior as well as heat illness issues for the firefighters and the public. Monsoonal moisture coupled with an approaching eastern hurricane will increase instability and bring scattered thunderstorms to portions of Southeastern California. This combination will result in a period of near critical fire weather over the Holy Fire. Drying and warming over the weekend with gusty local winds with midlevel moisture will return to the area leading to more instability, gusty winds and a chance for thunderstorms.

Your everyday Republican has some galling views,
Washington Post

     …Let’s lead with a poll conducted by the global marketing firm Ipsos and reported by the Daily Beast. It found that 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”
     When asked if President Trump should shut down The Post, CNN and the New York Times, 23 percent of Republicans said yes….

The fire

Click on graphic. The Reb's place and my place are indicated by the green dots at left.
The fire has spread eastward and northward. From our perspective, it is "behind"
Santiago Pk. and the north end of Trabuco Canyon (i.e.. Holy Jim Canyon).
The fire can seem quite menacing, especially at night, but that is owing to various
illusions mostly. For instance, last night, Santiago Peak was weirdly aglow, and yet,
according to the map, the fire was well behind and below the peak. We've been dealing
with such illusions since Monday.
At night, it's best not to look at Mr. Fire.
He looks like the Hellmouth.
Hellmouth, OC.

Updated map: the fire is spreading quickly
The wind continues to blow about 10 mph to the east/northeast, which is bad for
Corona/Elsinore but good for us in OC
As you can see, despite the wind, the fire has crept up the slope toward the top of
Santiago Peak, but, at the top, the winds will be favorable for containment.
I think.
Hope so.

Most recent map (see secondary red area)

Here is the latest update from the US Forest Service:

Holy Fire Evening Update

August 10, 2018, 1800

Trabuco Canyon, CA (August 10, 2018) – The fire remained active today and is currently estimated at 19,107 acres and containment increased to 10%. The combination of air resources, dozers and fire crews made great progress along the fire edge to control the fire spread and provide structure protection. Containment lines have been strengthened on the northwest side of the fire in Coldwater Canyon, north of the North Main Divide Road. Air resources continue to drop fire retardant around structures to create a fire break while firefighters work to strengthen lines east and southeast of the fire. A dozer line has been constructed around El Cariso Village to keep fire from entering the community.

Steep terrain, dry fuels, and inaccessible areas continue to be a factor in fire spread. Expected high temperatures, low humidity and easterly monsoonal moisture aloft will continue through tomorrow and gradually decrease through the weekend. This weather pattern could result in critical fire behavior and large column development. Air quality in the surrounding areas may be impacted.

Suppression efforts remain focused on community defense, and limiting the spread south towards Hwy 74. Firefighting efforts will continue overnight with 2 night flying helicopters and multiple ground crews. Currently, a total of 5 firefighting personnel have been confirmed injured.

A damage assessment team began assessments this afternoon. The number of structures burned remains at 12. More than 20,000 people have been placed under mandatory evacuations with others under evacuation warning. Residents are asked to evacuate as early as possible so as not to hinder firefighting operations. 

The Idiot in Chief

Did Trump Call Most Chinese Students Spies?
(Inside Higher Ed)
Politico reports that the president called "almost every student" from China a spy.
By Elizabeth Redden; August 9, 2018

     President Trump characterized the vast majority of Chinese students in the U.S. as spies during a dinner Tuesday night with CEOs at his private golf club in New Jersey, according to a report in Politico.
     According to the report, which quoted an unnamed attendee:

At one point during the dinner, Trump noted of an unnamed country that the attendee said was clearly China, “almost every student that comes over to this country is a spy.”

     The White House declined Politico’s request for comment. An account of the dinner from CNN is much more mild, noting that during the dinner "Trump expressed concern that some foreign students were acting as foreign agents, particularly from China, according to one of the attendees."
     There are more than 350,000 Chinese students studying at U.S. universities — the largest group of international students by far — and Chinese students earned about 10 percent of all doctorates awarded by American universities in 2016….

Transfer fail

Report: Most Transfer Students Leave College Without 2-Year Degree
(Inside Higher Ed)
By Ashley A. Smith; August 8, 2018

     A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that only 60,000 students out of more than one million who started their educations at two-year institutions [i.e., fewer than 6%] transferred to another college after receiving a certificate or associate's degree.
     The report also found that more than 350,000 community college students transferred to another institution without getting a degree….
. . .
     Transfer students who go on to earn a four-year degree don't count toward the graduation rates of community colleges unless they also earned an associate's degree....

Rescued From the Flames of Judgment: A Family’s Escape from the Holy Jim Fire
(OC Weekly)
LIAM BLUME; AUGUST 7, 2018

...They were running out of land ahead of them, and to remain still would mean certain death. Melodi wanted to stay on the trail and continue the clear ascent to the Mesa clearing. Tilson wanted to scramble the face of the mountain to the clearing. Tilson’s route would be shorter, but more daunting, and for the Schumates–who’d already struggled through nearly ten steep miles of rugged terrain–the choice between weary expediency over bushes and an unimpeded longer path could also be the choice between life and death. After a short argument, they chose Tilson’s route, climbing toward the Mesa, hoping a rescue helicopter would pull them from the flames....

1968

As of Thurs afternoon

OC is changing

Will the Birthplace of the Modern Right Turn Blue?
(NYT)
Thanks to Trump, Democrats have a shot in Orange County.
By Michelle Goldberg

     July 31, 2018, was a Tuesday, which meant that constituents of Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman from Orange County, were out protesting. Until recently, the weekly demonstrations had been in front of his office, but for the summer, activists from Rohrabacher’s district, the 48th, are teaming up with those from the neighboring 45th, represented by Republican Mimi Walters. Fifty people met in a small park in Newport Beach, then stood with protest signs by the side of the road. They earned a surprising number of appreciative honks, given that Orange County was once at the very heart of the American right.
. . .
     A few years ago, this might have seemed fantastical. Since its creation in 1993, no Democrat has ever represented the 48th district. Hillary Clinton won it by 1.7 points in 2016, but Rohrabacher was re-elected by more than 16 points. But since 2016, Rohrabacher’s odd Russophilia has been thrown into high relief by the Russia investigation. (“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a secretly recorded 2016 conversation.) Some of his constituents are up in arms by the prospect of oil drilling off their gorgeous coast.
. . .

     The affluent seaside region [OC], after all, used to be so far right that in 1968 Fortune Magazine called it “nut country.” In her book “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right,” the historian Lisa McGirr described how Orange County activists in the 1960s “organized study groups, opened ‘Freedom Forum’ bookstores, filled the rolls of the John Birch Society, entered school board races and worked within the Republican Party,” believing their very way of life was in danger.
. . .
     Since then, the demographics of the region have changed, thanks to an influx of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. More significant, however, may be the demographic changes in the Republican Party. The former Trump strategist Steve Bannon recently told Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, “The Republican college-educated woman is done.” Unlike many things he says, this appears to be true. In one recent poll of House preferences, college-educated white women favored Democrats by a staggering 47 points. (College-educated white men favor Democrats as well, but by much smaller margins.) Thanks to the fear and revulsion Trump evokes, the intense suburban civic awakening is now happening on the Democratic side….

Ocasio-Cortez in OC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Excites OC Liberals to be Bold in Hopeful Address
(OC Weekly)

     Before June, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s name barely registered a blip outside the Bronx. After besting longtime Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district primary that month, now everyone across the nation can’t get enough of the remarkable 28-year-old puertoriqueña. Her newfound political celebrity was on full display at the Anaheim Sheraton last night where OC liberals swarmed her for selfies as soon as she walked into the banquet hall hosting a WELead OC fundraising dinner.
. . .
     “Whoever has traditionally held power usually holds on to it for a really, really long time,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “Despite the demographic changes, despite economic changes, power in this country is overwhelmingly concentrated in the wealthy. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be that way.” ….

Judge Orders DACA Be Restored
(Inside Higher Ed)
By Elizabeth Redden; August 6, 2018

     A federal district court judge in Washington ordered the full restoration of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but delayed the decision for 20 days to give the Trump administration a chance to appeal.
     Two other federal judges have issued preliminary injunctions that have required the government to continue processing applications for DACA renewals, but Judge John D. Bates’s ruling, if allowed to go into effect, means that the administration would have to begin processing new DACA applications. DACA provides temporary protection against deportation and renewable work permits to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants known as "Dreamers" who came to the U.S. without documentation as children.
. . .
     Judge Bates issued an order in April setting aside the Sept. 5 policy memo ending DACA, finding that the government failed to adequately explain its judgment that the program was illegal. Judge Bates delayed the effectual date for the order for 90 days to give the Trump administration "an opportunity to better explain its view that DACA is unlawful."
     Now that the 90-day period has passed, Judge Bates found that the administration failed to elaborate meaningfully on its rationale….

Seeking a New 'Golden Age' of General Education
 (Inside Higher Ed)
What's a general education? Book by noted literary critic advocates a return to the basics.
By Colleen Flaherty ; August 6, 2018

James Bryant Conant

     …Harpham says that Mr. Ramirez arrived in that classroom at just the right time, during the general education movement. Articulated by Harvard University faculty members in a 1945 report called "General Education in a Free Society" and referred to as the "Redbook," in reference to its cover hue, the movement -- in the words of James Bryant Conant, then-president of Harvard -- was not about the "development of the appreciation of the 'good life’ in young gentlemen born to the purple."
     Rather, Conant said in commissioning the report, "It is the infusion of the liberal and humane tradition into our entire educational system. Our purpose is to cultivate in the largest possible number of our future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are Americans and are free."
     Those ideals made such an impression that they influenced the Truman Report, which was commissioned by then-President Truman and is widely seen as spurring the creation of many community colleges with a broad mission of helping students who otherwise might not have gone to college. Crucially, this humane vision for general education applied not only to Harvard but to all institutions, not least community colleges....

Why am I not surprised?

Files contradict Trump claims of voter fraud, Maine official says
(Politico)
By REBECCA MORIN

     A review of nearly 2,000 documents from President Donald Trump’s now-defunct Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity contradicts claims of widespread voter fraud, Maine’s secretary of state said Friday.
     Matt Dunlap, who was a part of the commission’s board, said the files showed no evidence to support such assertions.
. . .
     In November 2017, Dunlap filed a lawsuit claiming that he had been denied access to the commission’s records and effectively frozen out of its activities. A judge later ruled that he had the right to the same information shared to other members of the commission.
. . .
     The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New Documents Show Trump’s Election Integrity Commission Was Preparing Report on Voter Fraud Without Proof
(Mother Jones)

Kobach

     …Trump disbanded the commission in January as it faced a bevy of lawsuits from voting rights and government watchdog groups. One of those lawsuits came from one of the panel’s own members, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap. A Democrat, Dunlap came to believe that he was being excluded from the work of the commission, which he suspected was being conducted almost entirely by [Kansas Secretary of State Kris] Kobach and a handful of other conservative voter fraud alarmists on the panel. Last November, Dunlap sued the commission for the materials that had not been shared with him. A federal judge ordered the government in June to turn over those records, even though the commission had ceased to operate. The government handed over more than 1,800 documents on July 18, and on Friday, Dunlap made them public.
     “Contrary to what we were promised, these documents show that there was, in fact, a pre-ordained outcome to this commission to demonstrate widespread voter fraud, without any evidence to back it up,” Dunlap said in a statement Friday.
     Among the documents turned over to Dunlap were outlines and a draft of a report to be issued by the commission. The draft, dated November 2017, included headings for evidence of “improper voter registration practices,” “instances of fraudulent or improper voting,” “instances of other election crimes” and “voter suppression.” But there was no evidence below these headings and sub-headings. “That the Commission predicted it would find widespread evidence of fraud actually reveals a troubling bias,” Dunlap wrote in a letter to Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence, the chair of the commission, that he also released Friday. “While individual cases of improper or fraudulent voting occur infrequently, the instances of which I am aware do not provide any basis to extrapolate widespread of systematic problems. The plural of anecdote is not data.”
. . .
     On Friday, Dunlap revealed that Kobach and two other commissioners considered requesting additional information federal court clerks, including “lists of individuals deemed ineligible or excused from federal jury service due to death, relocation, convictions, or lack of citizenship.” The draft of one such request to a clerk in San Diego, which was never sent, asked for the names, addresses, and “other identifying information” of individuals excluded from jury duty since 2006. The commission was in the process of building a database of names and other information that, by producing false-positive matches, would create the appearance of voter fraud and illegal voter registrations where few if any actual instances likely existed. The documents show some discussion of detailing a statistician to the committee from the Voting Section of the Justice Department to analyze the voter registration and other data collected by the commission.

Random images for a Thursday night

Zombyism is prevalent at IVC

With my bro in Anaheim, some crazy Italian place

Orange Man

"Districtular" always reminds me of "testicular"
"Visions" and "Mission statements" are inevitably gagworthy

Yes, some very uncivil people have insisted on "civility"

This is what I see. Makes it hard to teach

I looked around. "Why don't others see this?" I thought

How come the last weeks of Spring semester always feel like the end of the world?

Maggots are useful yet disgusting

The President of the college—he's, well, not an academic.

I was visiting downtown Orange one night and saw this at the back of one of those old buildings

I've personally witnessed Satan hanging out in A100

Again, what I see. What my camera saw, too. Mega-saturated

I still don't own one of these things. People think that's weird.

Many at IVC are inspired by such horrors to take action. I.e., more bullshit

ATEP has a hilarious history. It remains hilarious.
Site of an infamous pissing contest.

Poor Lupe

MUSIC FOR YOU

I kinda liked this song (1975?), especially the "she doth protest too much" lyric.
I found a documentary about it on YouTube. It was 10cc's moment in the sun

\
Always loved this one. Lots of energy.
The "Rich Kids" sought to distance themselves from other punk outfits.
Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols wrote this. It was his band but he and the singer didn't get on, so they split up after a year, never rich

Who can fail to thrill to this song?