Mideast desk: We’re ‘Effectively at War’ With Iran
“With the Houthis firing missiles” regularly, cargo companies are diverting ships from the Red Sea to “much longer” and “more expensive alternate routes,” observes National Review’s Jim Geraghty, but not China’s state-owned COSCO.
“Iran, through the Houthis, is effectively shutting off the Red Sea” to countries it dislikes “and only allowing ships from countries it does like” — e.g., China — “to safely pass through.”
“The Axis of the Devils is operating right in front of us,” yet our president “has made no public remarks” about it. And with the Houthis “shooting at our navy” and our navy “shooting back,” we’re “effectively at war with the Houthis and Iran.”
Unfortunately, “some parts of our government just don’t want to acknowledge it.”
From the right: Conservative Parents, Happier Kids
The Spectator’s Amber Duke sums up a recent Gallup study: “Children of very conservative parents have much better mental health outcomes than the children of liberals.”
Its main finding is that “specific parenting practices” yield “better mental health outcomes for adolescents. Children respond the best to parents who are warm and affectionate but also set boundaries and discipline their children when necessary.”
And it found that “conservative parents are more likely to adopt the warm, authoritative parenting style and thus have stronger relationships with their children.”
Liberals lean to a “permissive parenting style, which is associated with . . . poorer mental health outcomes for the child.”
Libertarian: Media’s Ludicrous Defense of Gay
“In some corners of the media,” Claudine Gay’s plagiarism “matters much less than the reality that it was conservative writers who caught her,” scoffs Reason’s Robby Soave.
The Associated Press tweeted: “Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism.”
Responds Soave: “Many mainstream journalists have made entire careers out of digging up speeches, books, and articles written by conservatives and checking them for plagiarism,” and “the media has never chosen to ignore a plagiarism scandal or write it off as trivial or unfair, merely because the accuser has a political agenda.”
Now “some mainstream standards-keepers have decided that the ideologies of the accusers have essentially discredited the accusations.”
Eye on Harvard: Bill Ackman’s Awakening
Interviewed by The Wall Street Journal’s Tunku Varadarajan, hedge-funder Bill Ackman discusses his Oct. 8 awakening to the rot at the alma mater he’s given $50 million: A day after Hamas’ mass atrocities, he “saw students supporting terrorists — Harvard students, no less.”
Then 34 student groups “come out to say that Israel is solely responsible for the most heinous acts we’ve seen in modern history.”
This was why he pushed to oust the school’s president: “Had Claudine Gay had a perfect academic record, she’d still be a failed leader at Harvard”: Look at “how she led the institution, how she let antisemitism erupt on campus; how she responded to the 34 student groups; the lack of free speech on campus, the campus culture, the speech codes . . . the DEI department.”
The DEI movement is “not about true diversity, equity and inclusion.”
And “my business interests and my patriotic interests are perfectly aligned,” since “we have $18 billion invested for the long term in our country’s best companies.”
NY beat: Albany’s Alt-Energy End-Run
Wind-power developer Equinor’s claim to be pulling “the plug on its Empire Wind 2 (EW2) offshore wind project” is mostly “theater, because Equinor looks poised to squeeze even more money from ratepayers,” thunders the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin.
The Public Service Commission nixed Equinor’s demands for more subsidies as “not in the best interest of the State’s ratepayers” — yet then, Girardin flags, “NYSERDA, the state energy agency which negotiates and dispenses subsidies, endorsed the demands for higher payments.
And NYSERDA now appears to be end-running the PSC to make them happen,” with “a plan for new ‘expedited’ subsidy opportunities seemingly tailored for existing solar or wind projects that had been denied extra funding.”
So much for “ensuring affordability and reliability for electricity customers.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
