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Well, that stinks. 

Senate health boss Bill Cassidy excoriated President Trump's executive order last week requiring measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines to be administered to children separately.

Cristiano Ronaldo and his wife Georgina Rodriguez kept their wedding small and quiet for a reason.

The Decline Of Higher Education Continues

Authored by Mike McDaniel via AmericanThinker.com,

During my second career teaching high school English, I noticed several darkly funny but disturbing trends in “higher” education.  They were fueled by three primary drivers: abandoning merit, the federal government taking over the student loan industry, and DEI hysteria.

It was Barack Obama who federalized the student loan industry, pushing the idea that everyone should go to college.

To make that idea a reality, it was necessary for the government to guarantee student loans.

That had plenty of unfortunate and foreseeable effects. Because Colleges no longer had any financial skin in the game, they went on a mad administrator-hiring binge, which required enormous amounts of money, which required unprecedented numbers of students. 

Combined with a faux-religious devotion to DEI, colleges admitted all manner of people who in past years would have reasonably been found to be poorly suited to do college-level work. To cover this, it was necessary to do away with any sort of predictive testing like the SAT. All that was required for college admission was a student loan, unless one was a white male applying at an Ivy League school. Those guys, regardless of academic qualification, were often denied.

Enormous DEI departments with all manner of administrators and functionaries were established, and hundreds of millions were wasted on DEI gurus imported to inspire them.

So unprepared were so many, colleges were forced to establish remedial high schools on campus. It was a great scam. Full tuition for no credit, and blame students’ lack of ability on high school teachers like me, who could have told them who wasn’t academically capable if anyone had bothered to ask.

Grade inflation was a direct result of these disasters. It was necessary to hide the scams, so professors were required not only to dumb down the content of their classes and to require far less work, but to award unearned grades. An entire generation of college students was conditioned to expect maximum grades for minimum and poor work. And God help any professor who gave a minority student the grade their lack of work deserved.

As a result, innumerable students took 6-7 years to get a 4-year degree at enormous cost, but many simply dropped out without a degree, bearing enormous debt they had no credentials or ability to pay off.

I’m certainly not arguing college should be denied to anyone. I’ve known many people who struggled greatly but managed to earn a degree and were better and more productive people for it. I am arguing for rational decision-making and fiscally sound, ethical colleges.

The second Trump Administration has seen substantial success in forcing higher education to do away with DEI and to restore some degree of credibility to college degrees, which in recent years have come to mean little or nothing. But as the University of Michigan has recently demonstrated, there remains much to be done:

Graphic: X Post

So, students get a semester off to “acclimate to the demands of a University of Michigan education?” Not terribly long ago, students were expected to be ready for that when they first set foot on campus, and if they weren’t, academic probation was ready to encourage them.

And there’s a “mental health crisis” at the University of Michigan caused by expecting college students to do college-level work? Graduating people who lack the mental stability to be sufficiently responsible to do college assignments tends not to give employers faith in University of Michigan degrees, particularly in science-related fields.

The misadventures of Jason Arday at Cambridge, one of the Western world’s storied universities, are instructive. Without question an outrageously DEI hire, Arday didn’t show up to teach classes, had no teaching ability, was a blatant plagiarist, and, when challenged, cried “racism,” and so did Cambridge in defending his indefensible conduct and manifest lack of ability. How he managed to obtain a doctorate remains unanswered, perhaps unanswerable. In the aftermath of Arday’s forced resignation, a Cambridge faculty member felt the need to remain anonymous:

Graphic: X Post

That academic’s conclusions are remarkable mainly because circa 2026, it would be necessary for anyone to publicly state such obvious understandings about the nature of higher education. Arday, whose supposed qualifications and accomplishments should have set off every alarm at Cambridge, was instead praised and defended despite being far more of a charlatan than Professor Harold Hill, but without the roguish charm.

Those lies apparently cost Arday far more than an academic reputation.

Replacing merit with identity/sexual politics and eternal grievance has been a disaster for higher education and for America.

College has been, and ever must be, a proving ground, a place where one not only learns a body of useful knowledge but demonstrates the character necessary to apply it.

Hard work, determination, reliability, sincerity, honesty, and more must be forged in that crucible, just as it still is in the professional trades where one produces or walks.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/16/2026 - 11:40

“Girl, what the hell, just watch the movie,” one commenter pushed back.

You may see him on the silver screen before you see him on the football field.

The "Black-ish" actress recalled stars from other less popular TV shows appearing as guests on Leno's famous talk show.

The "Black-ish" actress recalled stars from other less popular TV shows appearing as guests on Leno's famous talk show.

Saslaw, who was a "senior producer" for the campaign, said she is no longer associated with Mamdani or his campaign.

'Delusional': Iran Fires Back At Trump's Make 'Hormuz Strait A Territory Of The US' Ambitions

Predictably, Iran has on Saturday issued a full-throated rejection of President Trump's Friday evening words related to the status on the conflict and energy transit in the region.

In a speech on New York's Long Island, Trump introduced the idea of declaring the Strait of Hormuz a US territory. "After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated — pretty soon, I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump told a crowd of law enforcement officers.

Trump on declaring the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory post the conflict with Iran 👇 pic.twitter.com/BjgW8pNKIQ

— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbWSJ) August 14, 2026

"Essentially, that's what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to," he added. He claimed oil prices were coming "way down".

Some pundits pointed to what seemed like classic hyperbole and his penchant for floating extreme scenarios in off-the-cuff fashion; however, Trump made the statement without any qualifiers other than it will happen when Iran is "badly defeated" by the United States. That seems to be the big if in the future scenario.

A Saturday X response from Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi asserted the US has zero authority to claim the strait:

"The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian," he wrote, as translated from Persian to English. "This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command."

The Iranian official then claimed all of Trump's assumptions about the conflict were delusional, showing that Washington does "not accept the reality of defeat" and so must stop indulging in its "delusions".

The Iranians have been reiterating that they will continue to enforce their blockade, also as the US Navy continues blocking imports and exports from Iranian ports.

Tehran continues to present the Oman deal - still pending finalization - as completely independent of US desires and conditions, and so better not interfere:

Iran has reached an agreement with Oman on a shipping route map for the Strait of Hormuz after weeks of technical negotiations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has told state-run Defa Press.

"Despite US obstruction, the talks have made positive progress over the past three weeks and an agreement has been reached on the shipping route map."

He added that both sides were still negotiating outstanding issues, including a statement to be issued by Tehran and Muscat, noting that exchanges between the two countries would continue until the process was finalized.

Given the two sides continue holding to conflicting absolutist demands and conditions, there's a likelihood of further fighting - though it could continue to at a limited, tit-for-tat and slow pace.

Some Republican hawks are calling for some kind of bold military action by Trump, such as ordering the takeover of Kharg Island in order to show the Iranians and the American public that Tehran does not have the upper hand ahead of US November midterm elections.

However, the nearly six months of war so far has tended to demonstrate that each new escalation has not tended to go well for Washington, as Iran digs in its heels and escalates a response in turn.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/16/2026 - 11:05

Everything you need to know about how to watch the new Lanterns show.

Drone footage showed massive damage to roads and infrastructure after a powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia early Saturday, killing at least 40 people.

Travis Kelce sported a new accessory loud and proud on Saturday.

The pups played their hardest for superlatives like "Sharpest Nose" and other titles.

Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema opened up about the sordid details of her dalliance with her then-married ex-bodyguard during a deposition in the $75,000 "homewrecker" suit brought by his angry ex-wife.

The next batch of preseason games is almost here.

Christian Scott will take the mound for the Mets on Sunday against the Nationals. 

A high school soccer player went viral for all the wrong reasons, kicking and repeatedly punching his opponent in the head on Friday, resulting in calls for a lifetime ban.

At least one person was killed in a storm-related car crash on Hawaii’s Big Island as Hurricane Lala struck late Saturday night. Gov. Josh Green confirmed the death, along with 19 roofs ripped off buildings after what he described as an “enormous storm.” Powerful waves pounded the Big Island’s coast as Lala slowly passed by....