Believe a Woman

Last weekend, a woman accused a Texas State Trooper of sexually assaulting her during a traffic stop.  Sherita Dixon-Cole

alleged that after she failed a field sobriety test, Hubbard had “suggested she could go home in exchange for sexual favors,” according to [Dixon-Cole’s lawyer Lee] Merritt’s initial press release. Dixon-Cole said that after she refused, she was taken to Hubbard’s police car where she was “forcefully groped, fondled, and vaginally penetrated during a prolonged arrest.”

She went on to say Hubbard continued his sexual advances on the way to the police station, even alleging that he offered to take her to a remote location where she could provide sexual favors in exchange for her release from custody.

Never mind.

Texas’ Department of Public Safety reviewed and released two hours of dashcam video of the incident as soon as they received the woman’s accusation.  After seeing actual evidence,

Lee Merritt issued a statement saying the evidence “directly conflicts with the accounts reported to my office” by Sherita Dixon-Cole.

Then he—not Dixon-Cole—apologized for the false accusation.

It’s instructive that Dixon-Cole has yet to apologize to the officer or to the Texas DPS for her smear.  Instead, lacking integrity (which she’s already shown) and the moral courage to apologize, she’s cowering behind a third party.  Her lawyer apologized, allegedly in her name.  That’s grossly insufficient.

Nevertheless, a woman should be believed whenever she accuses.  Except when she lies.  Or except when it’s inconvenient to believe her, as with Juanita Broaddrick.  #MeToo, indeed.

Student Loan Delinquency

…rates are declining.  Or so a headline number implies.

The share of new delinquencies on student loans has fallen to the lowest level in more than decade—and it’s not just due to the healthy labor market.

In the first quarter, slightly over 9% of student debt outstanding was newly delinquent….

Aside from employment rates, which encourage jobs as trade-off for college, the decline is laid off to a couple of causes.

[F]forbearance[] allows borrowers to go months without making a payment while remaining in good standing on their debt.

And

[I]ncome-driven repayment[] sets borrowers’ monthly payments as a share of their income….

These are legalist sophistries only; the debts still aren’t being repaid along the timelines nominally agreed.  The lenders—us taxpayers—still are being hurt by these legal shenanigans, and there’s no real expectation that these loans actually will be repaid, even in the long (much longer) run.  Nor is there any serious hope that the opportunity cost of the forgone monies, tied up as they are in those practically, if not legally, nonperforming loans, will be repaid at all.

Offensive

Three dentists in North Carolina dressed up in traditional clothing of an American Indian, a Japanese, and a Scot in order to run an advertisement under the catchphrase “Everyone smiles in the same language!”

Oh, the hoo-raw.  SJWs crawled out through their baseboard holes on this one, proclaiming the ad to be “ignorant and offensive” and racist.

No.  What’s ignorant and offensive is the naked racism of manufacturing a beef where there is none for the sole purpose of supporting the professional victim industry.

An Education Failure

A Miami-Dade police officer’s 14-year-old daughter dissed her teacher at Pinecrest Cove Preparatory Academy charter school, and her father was called to the school.  The video at the link shows the ensuing abuse: the “father” whipped his daughter with his belt, slugged her, yanked her hair.  Fortunately, no serious physical damage appears to have been done, but I have to wonder about the emotional damage, I have to wonder about the quality of her home life, and I have to wonder whether that life might have been a factor in her relationship with her teacher.

But that’s not what the only thing wrong here (the cop has been charged with a felony child abuse beef, so there may be a measure of justice coming on that front).

Look at the video carefully.  The abuse occurs in the school’s office with two school employees alternately watching and going about their business (one is at the bottom of the video imagery; she’s not easy to see).  They didn’t lift a finger to intervene, they didn’t say a word in intervention.  The employee plainly visible just goes on about her job, if not her duty; the other employee is similarly uninvolved.  The reporter narrating the scene says this woman was pregnant and feared for her baby’s welfare as well as the 14-year-old; maybe that’s an excuse.  But she waited until the cop had left before she called any authority or otherwise reported the beating.  The reporter didn’t say anything about the other woman, who was similarly too timid to act, but without an apparent excuse for her avoidance.

This…timidity…gives charter schools a bad name.  And it’s despicable in its own right.

“Not Culturally American”

That’s what April Ryan, CNN’s star news analyst has said about First Lady Melania Trump.

Not culturally American.  Never mind that Melania Trump emigrated to the United States and has enthusiastically embraced our American culture with open arms and all her heart.  She’s as American as it gets.

Since Ryan wants to go there, let’s do.  Who’s really not “culturally American?”  How about ex-First Lady Michelle Obama who never thought well of our country and only claimed pride in it when hubby Barack started gaining ground in the 2008 Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primaries and she started gaining status?

How about that same hubby who spent his eight years in office playing un-American identity politics, calling cops ignorant, and ridiculing Americans as bitter Bible-clingers and gun-toters?

How about Hillary Clinton, who spent her campaign ridiculing Americans as irredeemably deplorable misogynistic and racist homophobes because they didn’t support her campaign?

And how about April Ryan who insists that a white woman émigré isn’t culturally American?

Ryan’s attitude is disgusting.  And CNN is just as disgusting for condoning such smears by its…associate.