Like most Democrats, I reacted to the stunning 2016 election of Donald Trump with a combination of confusion and dread. After all, Hillary Clinton was the favorite and, to Democrats like me, a Trump victory seemed to portend certain economic disaster, nuclear war, and pretty much the end of America as we knew it.
But now nearly two years into his administration, Trump has presided over a “winning streak” that includes a booming economy and stock market, an unemployment level at a nearly 50-year low, two Supreme Court appointments, no new foreign wars or domestic terrorist attacks emanating from abroad, a significant degree of progress on trade relations with Canada and Mexico, a “needed reset” on the China relationship, and the prospect of peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Perhaps it is time that even his opponents reconsider Trump. Does Trump have a strategy that we can describe? Is Trump a return of Richard Nixon, of Ronald Reagan, or of something else entirely? After several months of watching the news without gaining any answers, I finally canceled my cable subscription and sought out other sources. I found some insights in unexpected places.
Trump’s presidency marks a return to realpolitik and great power politics.
Snip.
A third insight was from the unlikeliest place: the critically acclaimed animated show, “Rick and Morty.” During Trump’s campaign, his supporters frequently talked about how funny the candidate was. This humor was lost on most of my left-leaning peers. But “Rick and Morty” showed me what I have may been missing. Here is a popular TV show about a mad scientist Rick, an amoral, sociopathic man who considers himself the smartest man in the universe and tells dirty jokes in front of his grandson Morty. The slapstick, low-brow, and nihilistic insults and dirty humor of “Rick and Morty” — much like Trump — resemble some of the comedic greats from the decades prior to the 1990s: “The Honeymooners,” “Benny Hill,” “Abbott and Costello,” “The Three Stooges,” and “I Love Lucy.” These comedic devices can be traced back hundreds of years to Asian and European theater, which used slapstick, puns, insults, and innuendo.
Compare that oeuvre to the 1990s-2000s, during which comedy was more satirical, knowing, self-referential, meta, and smug. This idea is far from perfect, but examples of satire that use slapstick as well include “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “South Park,” “Team America: World Police”, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s parodies. American society today seems to be witnessing a return of what columnist Noah Smith calls “goofy” humor and a decline of “knowingly sarcastic” humor. Even The New Yorker complained that the 2018 Emmys were too smug and later described Trump’s rallies unfavorably as a “vaudeville routine.” Perhaps our shift toward a reversion in history also means we are seeing a cultural reversion as well. Smugness has become politically tone deaf.
Snip.
The Trump Doctrine takes previous policy assumptions and turns them on their head. Trump’s “America First” approach is a reversion to the idea of realpolitik and great power competition. It is better suited to a moment in which American power is much less dominant. The president takes each state-to-state relationship on its own terms. That’s why he’s often antagonistic with allies and friendly with threatening dictators. The consequences of insulting friendly countries, such as Canada, might be hurt feelings in exchange for better trade terms, while souring relations with an antagonistic one, such as North Korea, could result in serious security threats. He pursues the optimal outcome in a utilitarian sense rather than follow previous rules about diplomatic etiquette. Trump keeps his enemies even closer than his friends, while previous presidents did the opposite. Niccolo Machiavelli might have been familiar with these tactics.
Trump’s diplomatic method can be reduced to the four “B’s”: bullying, bargaining, burden-sharing, and bragging. He starts an interaction by bullying the subject — usually on Twitter, seeks a chance to sit down with the target to bargain as hard as possible toward what Trump may see as a more reciprocal relationship of burden-sharing, and then finally brags about whatever the results are. Trump treats all relationships as transactional, deploying tit-for-tat tactics toward achieving his goal of “reciprocity.” His message is that he wants to make America great again but does not spend much time lecturing or moralizing to foreigners. Finally, his use of insults, jokes, and slapstick, physical humor creates an image of honesty and authenticity with his supporters. Overall, these techniques and worldviews are becoming increasingly common around the world, including with the leaders of countries as diverse as Turkey, the Philippines, Russia, Israel, Mexico — and potentially Brazil.
Trump described his realpolitik-with-no-sacred-cows approach during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September: “America’s policy of principled realism means we will not be held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies, and so-called experts who have been proven wrong over the years, time and time again. This is true not only in matters of peace, but in matters of prosperity.”
Overall, Trump’s approach represents a reversion to a style of statecraft that flips previous approaches. Technocracy, meritocracy, and bureaucratic approaches are giving way to establishing top-level personal rapport, trust, and loyalty. Free trade ideology is giving way to trade as a means to enrichment. Building institutions gives way to questioning the utility of each institution. Moral diplomacy gives way to talking to anyone who will bargain. Careful speeches give way to saying anything that gets results. Saving sacred cows gives way to killing them or threatening to do so. Open markets give way to using U.S. markets, military, and migration as bargaining chips. Every relationship is subject to maximum leverage of what is possible.
West is nothing if not independent. He doesn’t need the approval of the Democratic establishment or the usual suspects among the liberal Hollywood elite. He is untethered from the traditional liberal gatekeepers in the same way Trump was untethered from the Republican establishment as a presidential candidate. There is a reason that the Democrats and their allies in the media insult, marginalize, ridicule and try to “Uncle Tom” West. It is obvious they are afraid of him and the discussion he might start.
“Beto O’Rourke Raised Record Breaking $38 Million in 3Q.” And he’s still losing. Just imagine if Democrats had used that money to protect endangered incumbent senators instead…
O’Rourke’s “extraordinary political success” is illusionary. His national popularity is contingent on aesthetics and mass of coverage. It is merely that Beto looks and acts like the type of guy producers at most cable news networks and talk shows think—or more precisely, wish—a senator would look and act like. Unlike, say, Cruz (nearly two years older than Beto), who is always blathering about the Constitution or whatnot.
It’s not as if O’Rourke is a special talent by any measure. His speeches and talking points are just as vacuous and predictable as those of any other middling politician. His positions on guns and abortion—and a multitude of other issues—are in lockstep with his party, not the state. O’Rourke has never offered any substantively impressive policy ideas. He’s not led on any notable issues in the House. He’s remarkably unremarkable.
The son of a onetime Republican county judge and a longtime furniture store owner, the Democratic congressman from El Paso married into the family of one of his hometown’s most prominent developers and has assembled real estate investments worth millions.
Congress is rife with rich people, but O’Rourke had a 2015 net worth of about $9 million, ranking 51st out of 435 House members, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than double the $3.8 million worth of his Republican opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, who ranked 41st of 100 senators.
Think Progress alum thinly disguised as a journalist does 50 Shades of Beto. Ick.
The hits keep coming:
The lies flow easily from 'Beto':
Beto O'Rourke's Mother, Who He Says Is A 'Lifelong Republican,' Donated To Obama, Voted In 15 Of 17 Democratic Primaries https://t.co/I5QC9SEjlF
The Russian government kills journalists, among others. I do not recall the Washington Post protesting on this basis the Obama administration’s “reset” of relations with Putin’s government or Obama’s promise to be more “flexible” with Russia after his reelection. Nor, as far as I remember, did the Post cite Russia’s murderous ways as a reason not to farm out to Putin enforcement of the “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Cuba’s treatment of journalists and others has been atrocious. Yet, the mainstream media supported the Obama administration when it radically reset U.S. relations with Cuba without insisting on any change in the regime’s treatment of dissidents.
What are the differences between Russia/Cuba and Saudi Arabia? I see two. First, Russia and Cuba are adversaries of America. Saudi Arabia is an ally.
For the sane, this difference would, if anything, cut in favor of the Saudis. For the left, it cuts against them.
Second, the Trump administration has very visibly allied itself with Saudi Arabia as a means of countering Iran and achieving other American objectives in the Middle East. Thus, the Khashoggi slaying provides the mainstream media with the opportunity to do what it does best — hammer President Trump.
In my view, the Khashoggi slaying should not cause America substantially to alter its foreign policy. Our relatively close relationship with Saudi Arabia is predicated, as it should be, on mutual interests and mutual adversaries. Either the geo-political predicate justifies the relationship or it doesn’t.
1. Vilification (Alt-right, racist…) 2. Guilt by association ("Did the *Koch brothers* fund this?") 3. Misrepresentation ("So basically, you think trans ppl should just *die*…") 4. Reduction to privilege anxiety ("White fragility!") https://t.co/tOPJGl0zWp
Florida man does it again. Not only is he a registered sex offender who hired a federal informant for a mad-bombing spree aimed at target stores, he did it all for…making money off shorting the stock?
Welcome to the season where ugly monsters in lurid costumes go running around shrieking at the sheer delight at scaring other people. And those are just the Democratic protestors on Capitol Hill!
The Brett Kavanaugh cloture vote today, and the Supreme Court confirmation vote is Saturday. And Kavanaugh links dominate the top of this LinkSwarm:
Republicans are fired up after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and the Democratic edge for the 2018 midterms has disappeared. Or so says that notorious Republican shill organization, NPR.
Let’s say you’re Joe Manchin in West Virginia. What you needed was for this nomination to be uncontroversial, and a sure thing for confirmation. A party-line contested vote the whole country is watching is a nightmare. Why? Because in a red state like the one Manchin represents, the majority will favor confirmation and find it to be a decisive issue in their vote — so Manchin voting against Kavanaugh will set him up to reap the wrath of the voters in a state which went 65 percent for Trump in 2016.
But it’s worse than that for Manchin, because he doesn’t have a good escape from the Kavanaugh confirmation. You’d say his easy way out is to vote yes, except what the Left has done is to so whip up their voters with the Ford allegations and the copycats who followed that Manchin will lose votes from his own side if he votes to confirm the judge.
This isn’t a theory, by the way. It’s what the polls show.
A new poll finds that 58 percent of voters in West Virginia think Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court following his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
The Public Opinion strategies poll commissioned by the Judicial Crisis Network found an overwhelming majority of West Virginians (59 percent) thought Kavanaugh’s testimony was more believable than Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the federal judge of sexually assaulting her more than 35 years ago at a drunken high school party. Those who believe Kavanaugh include 81 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independent voters.
Manchin is locked in a dead-heat race against Patrick Morrissey, West Virginia’s Attorney General, and his vote is now going to be the defining issue in that race either way.
Manchin’s conundrum isn’t unique. Claire McCaskill in Missouri is already a committed no on Kavanaugh, and her troubles have begun as well…
A new poll released by The Missouri Scout on Saturday shows that Republican challenger Josh Hawley has taken a two-point lead over Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the Missouri Senate race just days after she announced she will be voting against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Hawley leads McCaskill by a margin of 48 percent to 46 percent in the poll conducted by Missouri Scout over two days, from Wednesday, September 26 to Thursday, September 27.
McCaskill announced her opposition to Kavanaugh on September 19. The second day of the poll was conducted on the same day Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of attempting to sexually assault her 36 years ago at a time and place she cannot recall and with no corroborating witnesses or evidence, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Missouri Scout poll had worse news for the incumbent Democrat — in that what’s driving down her numbers is unquestionably the Kavanaugh vote…
Significantly, the poll found that 49 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh has made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while only 42 percent said it made them more likely to vote for her.…
Among female respondents, 47 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 42 percent said it made them more likely.
Among male respondents, 50 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 41 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Non-Partisan respondents, 46 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 39 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Republican respondents, 85 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Democrat respondents, 82 percent said the confirmation process made them more likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them less likely.
Also, a new poll commissioned by NBC North Dakota News showed the race between Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp and Republican challenger Kevin Cramer has the latter with a commanding 51-41 lead. That poll has the Kavanaugh nomination as the most important (with 21 percent) of nine named issues in the race, with 60 percent of North Dakota voters polled saying they support the judge’s confirmation against only 27 percent opposed. Heitkamp has publicly called herself a “no” vote, which amounts to more or less a surrender in the race. Without North Dakota, there is only a minuscule chance of the Democrats winning control of the Senate.
Of all the cohorts measured by the poll (including Independent men and women), Democratic women are the only group to display less enthusiasm for the midterms this week than they did in July. Meanwhile, Republican women seem invigorated. In July, 81 percent of Democratic women said the November elections were very important, compared to 71 percent of Republican women. Now, Republican women are 4 percentage points likelier to view the midterms that way (83 percent to 79 percent). That’s a 14-point swing in female voters’ interest in the midterms—after the hearings, and in Republicans’ favor.
“Accused doxxer of GOP senators allegedly threatened to publish lawmakers’ children’s health info.” I just can’t imagine why Republicans are so upset with Democrats in congress…
UPDATED: He also worked or interned with the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as with at least one other unnamed lawmaker. https://t.co/k5QXv4RvYN
There is no circumstance where everyone involved with those norm-breaking steps suddenly wakes up, has a crisis of conscience, and realizes that they were morally wrong. The only way they decide not to take similar steps in the future is if they conclude that those steps are not effective.
If these sorts of tactics work, we will get more of them. Right now, Kavanaugh could be a squish who wimps out on Roe vs. Wade and I’d still want him on that court, because this isn’t really about him anymore. This is about what kind of proof is needed before you believe a man is a monster. This is about whether decades of respected public and private life can be wiped away by an allegation without supporting witnesses. This is about whether anyone who ever knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind . . . or whether people who never knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind.
Social justice presumes the guilt of certain people because of their politics, their positions, their races and their genders. It creates different rules for different classes of people with some entitled to an absolute presumption of innocence, even in the face of indisputable guilt, and others forced into an equally absolute presumption of guilt, even in the absence of any indisputable proof of their guilt.
America cannot operate under two systems of guilt and innocence, one public and one private. If the majority of Americans are to be judged by a system that presumes their guilt, that attitude will inevitably go on to permeate the courtroom. By eroding the presumption of innocence in public life, the left is eroding it as a legal right. Lynch mobs and kangaroo courts can’t be expected to stop at the courthouse door when they are celebrated and operate freely throughout the rest of the land.
Kavanaugh’s case is about more than the malicious exploitation of the #MeToo movement to destroy a political opponent. It’s the latest assault on the social presumption of innocence by shadowy forces whose ‘scoops’ dominate the media through cut-outs while their sources remain silently invisible.
If kangaroo courts and media lynch mobs succeed in overturning a Supreme Court appointment, they will have proven that their war on the presumption of innocence extends even to the highest court in the land. If a Supreme Court justice can’t be presumed innocent, what hope do the rest of us have?
In order to believe that Ford is not lying, we have to believe that Ford's ex boyfriend, Ford's friend, two other witnesses, along with Kavanaugh are all lying. Only a partisan would make that assumption. The rational conclusion is obvious: Ford is a liar.
China used it’s supply chain to implant a spy chip in many of America’s top companies, including Apple and Amazon. This is why outsourcing so much of your technological infrastructure is a national security issue.
Apple and Amazon issue strenuous denials. I’m not sure they could do otherwise, even if the allegation is true, especially since Amazon currently derives the lion’s share of its profits from AWS. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
President Donald Trump’s approval rating hits 50%.
Worse than Remain? Well, yes. May’s Brexit proposals — now known as “Chequers,” after the PM’s country house, where they were imposed on a surprised cabinet days after May had personally assured the secretary of state for exiting the EU that she had no such intentions — would effectively keep Britain inside the EU’s single market (i.e., by accepting its current and future regulations) and its customs union, and keep it subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice while forfeiting its votes in all EU institutions.
Not enough for you? Then ponder this: The London Times has reported that the government is now prepared to cut a deal with the EU that would prevent a post-Brexit U.K. from reaching free-trade deals with other countries such as Australia, Canada, and . . . the United States. Such a deal would breach the reddest of red lines laid down by Theresa May and the Tory party since the 2016 referendum. Yet no one thinks the report is mistaken. And May has continued to say in interviews that final agreement with the EU will require concessions from both sides. But what has May left to concede?
Themes for today’s LinkSwarm: Jihad, rape and China. Not necessarily in that order…
So let me see if I have this story straight: New Mexico jihadis, one related to a New York City imam who might have been involved in 9/11, murdered three children, abused and starved 11 other children while teaching them to be school shooters, and the judge let them out on bail?
A New Mexico state judge ruled Monday that five alleged Muslim extremists accused of training children to conduct school shootings do not have to remain in jail while they await trial for child abuse.
Judge Sarah Backus released the five defendants, Siraj Wahhaj, Hujrah Wahhaj, Subhannah Wahhaj, Jany Leveille, and Lucas Morten, on a $20,000 “signature bond,” according to the Albuquerque Journal. That means that the defendants will not have to pay money unless they violate the conditions of their release
It’s a good thing there’s not a huge foreign nation immediately to the south with a porous border they can flee to…
If China really had a savings rate of 46%, the economy would look quite different. There would be very little debt in the system; the banks would have a very low loans to deposits ratio and low leverage, like banks in nineteenth century Britain. Consumer debt would be almost non-existent, while the Chinese market would have an enormous variety of saving and investment schemes, to take care of all the accumulated wealth. New company formation would be very high, but “venture capital” would be very scarce, because new companies would be capitalized from the savings of the founders’ relatives and friends. Overall, China might well have a rapid growth rate, but it would be a very contented, stable economy.
A recent Financial Times examination of China’s economy illustrates the problem; it shows consumer debt almost doubling as a share of GDP, from roughly 20% to 40% in the last five years and tells pathetic stories of young, highly educated Chinese who max out their credit cards, desperately hoping to boost their earnings sufficiently to pay that debt back. But Chinese elite youths brought up in a society with a 46% savings rate would have neither the desire nor the need for heavy credit card usage. First, they would have been brought up in families with a fanatical devotion to deferring consumption, so would regard the over-indebted Western Millennial lifestyle with undiluted horror. Second, because of their families’ savings habits, such elite youths would be beneficiaries of very substantial trust funds from their relatives, and so would have no need of credit cards.
If the savings rate is fiction, then so are all China’s economic statistics. GDP is at least one third lower than claimed, to account for the missing savings, and growth rates over the last decades correspondingly lower, On the other hand, China’s foreign debt is all too real, and most of the domestic debt also appears to be solid, so China’ s gross debt, already alarmingly high at 299% of GDP according to the Institute for International Finance, is in reality about 450% of true GDP, substantially higher than that of any other country. With such a level of debt, China is not about to overtake the West, it is in imminent danger of collapse. Indeed, it is at first sight something of a mystery why it has not collapsed already under the weight of its excesses.
Also: “China Buckles, Sends Trade Delegation to Washington to Seek End of Trade War.” Maybe, just maybe, President Donald Trump knows a thing or two about negotiating strategy…
“Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.” That quote comes from an American bicycling across several foreign countries, including one where Islamic State followers killed him, his wife, and two fellow-travelers thanks to their “different perspectives.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Google has released a report on the paid ads they’ve run on political campaigns. It’s not completely useless, but then you drill down to congressional district, it only shows you total spending, not how much was spent by each campaign, much less links to the relevant ads.
A theme that keeps recurring in histories of the worst abusers is that they were trained in seminaries that were run by homosexual men and saturated with gay-liberationist subculture. Reading accounts of students at one notorious California seminary making a Friday-night ritual of cruising gay bars, it becomes hard not to wonder if gay culture itself has not been an important enabler of priestly abuse.
Ace of Spades is surprised to find Disney holding firm on it’s firing of James “I Make Pedophile Jokes” Gunn. Also, in the course of slamming (perhaps a littler too strenuously) Trump-skeptical establishment conservatives on their hypocrisy on the issue (RE: Roseanne), he does nicely articulate the logic of taking’s the Guardians of the Galaxy director’s scalp, even if Gunn was only joking:
I will not be subject to one of your rules and yet permit you to be free of your own rule. If it’s your rule, you shall suffer under it just the same as me.
We do not (yet) have a formal caste system in America, despite the obvious longing from the left and the NeverTrump rump to establish over-castes and under-castes.
And it’s MUH #SacredPrinciple that we shall not have a tiered system of citizenship that the leftwing establishment as well as the “right”-leaning establishment so clearly crave.
And I’ll sacrifice anyone to make sure that they do not put me in their designated under-caste.
Trump may be both more relentless and obnoxious than his predecessors, but cries of “Fake News!” from the Oval Office are old hat. Presidents always blame the messenger. Even Barack Obama, the object of so much media fawning, groused about distorted coverage.
This time, though, we are taking it personally. Striking at the bait Trump dangles. Joining the war he’s declared. Allowing him to goad us into abandoning the fundamental principles of our profession.
Donald Trump is not responsible for the eroding trust in the media. He lacks the credibility to pull that off. The damage to our standing is self-inflicted.
The independent press was built on a foundation of objectivity. Through a tradition of conscientious commitment to telling all sides of a story we convinced our readers, listeners, viewers that we were the source of fair and balanced coverage. We were equal opportunity scourges of scoundrels on both sides of the political aisle.
Now, too many of us are following the websites, cable networks and blogosphere into point-of-view journalism that presents the news with equal parts fact and opinion. We’ve infused our reports with commentary and call it context.
Journalists once kept their personal views personal, lest anyone challenge the motives behind their reporting. Now reporters post their opinions on Facebook and Twitter. They sob in newsrooms over the results of an election. News meetings and editorial boards are often indistinguishable.
Respected journalists openly question whether remaining objective in the Donald Trump era is a sell-out rather than a virtue. Some have joined the resistance movement, blending journalism with activism.
No one in our profession can say with a straight face that we cover Donald Trump the same way we have past presidents. We are not only giving him more scrutiny — rightly so — but we are making more mistakes in our haste to discredit him. Our accuracy ratings have fallen as we turn to poorly vetted anonymous sources and repeat every rumor that fits the narrative that Trump is a disaster.
Yes, Trump is an extraordinary case. Chaos is the hallmark of his governing style. His personal conduct falls well short of presidential. But his administration has had successes, and the press is not as eager to cover those as it is his failures.
Journalism seems to have turned a corner in search of some higher purpose beyond simply digging out the truth, presenting it to our readers and letting them decide what to do with it.
Nothing about Donald Trump justifies tossing aside the standards that have allowed journalists to remain the trusted eyes and ears of the people.
MoviePass is getting ready to bite the moose. I can imagine a way you could make this thing work out: Make deals with large theater chains, exclude the first week of all movies, and the first few weeks for blockbusters, and make a deal to buy tickets at a steep discount to put butts in seats so theater owners can make more money off concessions. All things that MoviePass evidently never attempted…
The great plastic gun panic…of 1986. I think we can all remember how the widespread availability of the Glock resulted in the downfall of America…
I’m hoping that this week is Peak Busy for me. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Rasmussen: “Today’s [President Donald Trump] approval ratings among black voters: 29% This time last year: 15%.” Overall Trump approval rating at 50%.
Related: “President Donald Trump was lauded by inner-city pastors, including one who said he may go down as the ‘most pro-black president’ in recent history, during a White House roundtable on Wednesday that was focused on efforts to reform the prison system.” (Hat tip: Da Tech Guy via The Other McCain.)
At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking issued Wednesday reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting. The new rule will expand consumer protections for the sick, cover up to two million uninsured people, reduce premiums for millions more, protect conscience rights, and make Obamacare’s costs more transparent. And unlike President Barack Obama’s implementation of his signature healthcare legislation, it works within the confines of the law.
Federal law exempts “short-term, limited duration” health insurance from having to carry the unwanted coverage and hidden taxes Obamacare requires. Many consumers have understandably taken refuge from soaring Obamacare premiums in short-term plans.
Hoping to force those consumers into Obamacare plans, the Obama administration sabotaged short-term plans by stripping them of crucial consumer protections. It cut the maximum plan term from 12 months to three months, and forbade issuers from offering “renewal guarantees” that allow the sick to continue purchasing short-term policies at healthy-person rates. State insurance regulators protested that these restrictions literally stripped sick patients of their coverage.
Wednesday’s rule reinstates and even expands the consumer protections Obama curtailed. It allows short-term plans to last 12 months, and allows insurers to offer them with renewal guarantees.
You read that right. Democrats curtailed consumer protections; Republicans are expanding them.
Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?
From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.
A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!
Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro admits that socialism doesn’t work. Just think how much pain could be avoided if he had admitted this before people had to eat their dogs…
Mistaken police call for an active shooter at a McAllen mall turns out to be an illegal alien robbery gang. Result? Seven illegal alien criminal suspects arrested.
Sheldon Silver Sentenced: Seven in Sing Sing. (Actually, it’s not clear the former New York Assembly speaker will be serving his sentence in Sing Sing, but we can only hope, for the sake of the alliteration…)
China cracks down on illegal coffins. Which is to say, any coffins, since cremation is now mandated. Including seizing and destroying coffins old people have spent their entire lives saving for.
When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York in 2014, things changed drastically. I started to hear rumblings early on. My former colleagues who were dedicated public servants were concerned by a large-scale rollback of Bloomberg’s strategic initiatives. These seemed to be based on partisan politics and black-and-white thinking as opposed to critical analysis. It was very disappointing for me since I had also voted for de Blasio.
Although I was still working in the same social-services agency where I had remained at the end of Bloomberg’s term, my job changed radically. I had no contact with the new commissioner who appeared to be disengaged from substantive discussions about social-services programs for an extremely vulnerable population. In fact, she was much more preoccupied with renovating her office — I heard her new desk alone cost thousands of dollars. She even requested that a private bathroom be built for her. She had the attitude of an oligarch and was disturbed that she had to vet invitations to galas through legal and City Hall. She wanted carte blanche to attend expensive events.
She also refused to meet with the lawyers in her department and she kept the door to her office closed and didn’t know the names of the people who worked in her agency.
Under my commissioner, there were no benchmarks, no goals and she did not hold regular meetings with her general counsel. Under her tenure, the legal unit was gutted. And there were no consequences for failing to meet performance goals because there were no performance goals.
Comics video blogger Jeremy Hambly attacked at GenCon. “The Quartering also provided another update claiming five eyewitness have identified the attacker as Matt Loter, the owner of Elm City Games.” GenCon promptly expelled Loter. Ha! Just kidding!
GenCon is blocking and muting and banning people who talk about @TheQuartering’s assault on their official channels and social media accounts.
It’s almost as if they want to make people angry by censoring all conversation about the topic.
“Millennial Drops Support For Socialism After Learning How Hard It Is To Get Avocado Toast In Venezuela.” The Babylon Bee has just been tearing it up recently. I probably need to add them to the blog roll.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth granted royal assent to Prime Minister Theresa May’s flagship Brexit legislation on Tuesday, ending months of debate over the legislation that will formally end the country’s European Union membership.
The House of Commons speaker John Bercow said the EU withdrawal bill, passed by both houses of parliament last week, had been signed into law by the monarch, to cheers from Conservative lawmakers.
“I have to notify the House in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967 that her Majesty has signified her royal assent to the following acts … European Union Withdrawal Act 2018,” Commons Speaker John Bercow told lawmakers during a session of the house.
This means that the UK’s formal withdrawal from the European Union will occur on March 29, 2019.
LABOUR Live – the troubled Glastonbury-style festival where the party was hoping to recreate the success of their rousing General Election rallies – has been mercilessly slammed for its dwindling crowds and lack of interest.
The event, dubbed ‘Jezfest’, is taking place at the 20,000-capacity White Hart Lane recreation ground in north London today.
It features appearances from music acts including Clean Bandit and the Magic, alongside a speech from Jeremy Corbyn himself, who appeared in front of tens of thousands of people at the Glastonbury Festival last summer to give a rousing speech prior to the General Election.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and left-wing activist Owen Jones were also billed to speak.
It was meant to be a money-spinner for Labour but a reported 3,000 tickets had only been sold and according to insiders, the party could lose more than £1 million as a result.
This is getting silly: with so few socialists attending and so many conservative journalists turning up, #LabourLive is at risk of turning into a Spectator garden party. https://t.co/M6x3r7x3rj
If you're one of the lucky ones who got a ticket for #LabourLive – Get yourself over to the WT Tent……it's absolutely banging!! pic.twitter.com/0VAvhwDi8c
Despite Obama’s recent projection that his eight-year tenure was “scandal-free,” along with the reality that the media’s biased compliance sought to make such a startling fantasy true, the Obama administration was in many respects lawless. It will eventually rank as the most scandal-ridden administration since Warren G. Harding’s.
The Fast and Furious scandal was, among other things, about deliberate government gun-running of weapons to Mexico, perhaps in a warped effort to discredit current U.S. firearms laws. The Benghazi debacle involved a cover-up of a preplanned terrorist hit on our consulate, an attack that was possible only because it was well known that the consulate’s security was lax. The Benghazi cover-up involved U.N. ambassador Susan Rice lying five times on national television in a single day, when she claimed that the terrorist operation was the result of a spontaneous riot over a video. And to justify that reelection-cycle concoction, the video maker, a foreign resident on U.S. soil, was summarily jailed on a trumped-up probation charge.
An IRS regional high official, and Obama partisan, Lois Lerner, weaponized and discredited the IRS, by hounding conservative groups that were seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner staged a self-serving public stunt to leak her misbehavior to friendly ears — she had a reporter ask her a planted question about targeting conservatives. At her later congressional testimony, Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. She was never charged by the Obama State Department. Indeed, Obama himself, after expressing initial pseudo contriteness in the face of public furor, waited the public out before finally announcing that there was not a “smidgeon” of corruption in the IRS. Lerner, in effect, was rewarded for successfully neutralizing many conservative activist groups just months before the 2012 election. In October 2017, facing a lawsuit by conservative groups, the IRS admitted in court that it had unfairly targeted them during the Obama administration. It agreed to a multi-million-dollar settlement, and the current attorney general, Jeff Sessions, apologized to the more than 450 conservative organizations in question.
Nadine Strossen, a liberal and the former president of the American Civil Liberty Union, conceded — but only in hindsight when both Obama and she were out of their respective offices — that Obama was one of the most hostile presidents to civil liberties in history. Perhaps she was referring to the fact that Eric Holder’s and Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department had spied on Associated Press reporters, monitored the communications of Fox reporter James Rosen, and subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen to force him to reveal his confidential sources. Holder was also the first Attorney General in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over subpoenaed documents.
But it was during the 2016 election cycle that the Obama administration descended to a level of corruption not seen in a century. Right in the middle of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Obama, as judge and jury, announced that candidate Clinton had violated no criminal law while secretary of state. Obama also lied when he stated that he’d known nothing about such an unlawful server, although emails prove that he himself had communicated over it on several occasions. His FBI director, James Comey, deliberately scrambled the law and exonerated Hillary Clinton from wrongdoing, not because she had not broken the law, but, according to Comey’s own invented interpretations of the statute, because she had not intended to violate the law. Comey also admitted to tailoring his circus-like investigation of Clinton around the assumption that she would soon be president.
We are slowly appreciating over the last year that lying under oath was an Obama-administration requisite for a high position in the intelligence community.
The most frustrating aspect of all is the lack of communication. If the goal is to create a better overall experience on the site, then it would make sense to tell people who have had their accounts restricted exactly why it happened so the problem could be avoided in the future.
The fact that they don’t do so really heightens the perception that it isn’t about anything other than punitively targeting accounts that don’t fit in with the hive mind. The appearance of deliberate censorship could be gotten rid of with a bare amount of transparency and communication from Twitter. That, sadly, does not seem to be a priority.
Sharp-eyed readers will note that I referred to Robinson as an “activist” while Peter refers to him as “Alt-Right”. I used this journalistic technique intentionally, partly because it highlights what the left-wing media does all the time when referring to Left Wing terrorists like Earth First! and the like. But it also cuts to the heart of this question. If we don’t look at who the messenger is and whether we like him, and instead look at who is speaking the truth, things start to look grim for the UK establishment. The Government certainly did not speak the truth, and in fact covered up these crimes for decades. The media did at least publish the stories when they came out, but there is a strange soft peddling of the story.
The alleged perpetrators are described as “asian males”, as if some of them were from China or Korea. This leads to more questions, as we try to peel the onion to get to, you know, the truth.
Are the “asian males” actually Pakistani immigrants? Are they all muslim? Is their muslim identity a key factor in why they chose English girls as victims? To simply ask these questions is to answer them.
The Government officials damn themselves by their silence here. It’s actually worse – one single person in a position of power (a Shadow Cabinet Secretary – the Cabinet of the out of power party) actually did speak the truth here, and was promptly sacked.
It seems very unhealthy that the only people who appear to be speaking the truth here are what we’re told is an “Alt-Right” fringe.
Question 3: Is the root cause of all these crimes the fact that Europe is really bad at assimilating different cultures?
This is the Question That Must Not Be Asked, whether in Leeds Crown Court, in Cologne or Berlin, or in Paris. If Europe does a particularly poor job at assimilating immigrants from other cultures into a collective Body Politick, then the Europe-wide governmental policy of massive immigration from the 3rd World assumes a very different perspective.
You might get, you know, mass instances of gang rape.
This is a particularly ugly question, and it the question that all European governments (and their lap dog media) are trying desperately to suppress.
Because if the State will not protect the public, then the whole deal is off. Blood feud may be the only option.
On May 16, agents discovered 2,119 pounds of marijuana concealed in a commercial shipment of charcoal into the U.S. On May 20, agents discovered 56 pounds of cocaine, approximately $432,500 in street value, on a Mexican commercial bus on the McAllen-Reynosa International Bridge and another $1.4 million worth of cocaine at the Kingsville checkpoint. In the first week of May, $247,000 worth of methamphetamine was apprehended at the Falfurrias checkpoint. Over Memorial Day weekend, $2.2 million in marijuana was seized in Harlingen, another 300 pounds was confiscated in Roma, and another 90 pounds of marijuana along with 35 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the checkpoints.
Bonus: Seized baby tiger.
Charles Krauthammer is is dying of cancer, and is only expected to have weeks to live. There was probably no columnist or pundit more vital to holding Obama to account during the first year of his first term.
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez has yet to run a single Facebook ad since she won the primary. It would be some kind of anti-miracle for Valdez to run a worse campaign than Wendy Davis ran in 2014, but thus far she’s been all but invisible. Also this: “The Valdez campaign was also recently ensnared in a bit of controversy after the Houston Chronicle unearthed public records showing Valdez, ‘owes more than $12,000 in overdue taxes on seven properties in two counties.’ Valdez had been ‘campaign[ing] to close loopholes in the state’s broken property-tax system,’ according to the report.” (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)
We told liberals they wouldn’t like the new rules being applied to them, but they didn’t listen. Liberals get Roseanne Barr fired, conervatives get Samantha Bee’s sponsors to pull out. (Disclaimer: I didn’t watch either of their shows.)
How #NeverTrump came to be a lifestyle choice: “These people aren’t operating from principle. The are operating from pique. Trump’s mere presence offends them because they just know they are his social and intellectual superiors.”
Indeed, how many of these widely accepted (sometimes downright cherished) assumptions can one man challenge (disrupt) in such a brief period of time? The answer is plenty. He does it by questioning what often goes unquestioned in Washington, D.C. He simply asks “Why?” Why help fund a Shiite crescent in the Middle East? Why send tax dollars to a terrorist-friendly PLO? Why support anti-American programs at the U.N.? Why a “One China” policy? Why placate deadbeat NATO partners? Why pay premium prices for the F-35 and a new Air Force One? Why force nuns to provide birth-control coverage? Why tolerate sanctuary cities and a porous border?
Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. We went there because the night sky is so dark, you can walk in the high desert by starlight and cast a shadow, so dark you can see distant galaxies and the zodiacal light. There are three types of people in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and illegal aliens.
If you climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.
It is not even a secret that the 60 miles between the border and Interstate 10 are treated as a no man’s land. We live and vote and pay taxes in America, but the government acts as if we are beyond the defensible perimeter of the country. Border Patrol is everywhere, but even with President Trump, they are just going through the circular motions of catch and release.
They have high tech listening stations in the mountains, trucks equipped with radar on the back roads. They know when drugs are moving through, know regular drop-offs, are adept at finding caches. But if they can’t secure the border, they can’t keep the families that live here safe—and they don’t even try.
We are the deplorables. All of my rancher neighbors have guns. Most are Evangelicals. To Democrats and open-borders Republicans, we are throwaway people. The Other. Disposable.
The reason I am not naming names, even place names, is that these are my neighbors’ stories, not mine, and my neighbors—farmers, cowboys, and ranching families, strong, resourceful, tough people—my neighbors are wary and they are weary. They fear retribution by the drug runners and coyotes who bring the illegals across, because they have seen it happen.
All of my neighbors have had encounters with illegals. Every single family. Everyone knows dozens of families whose homes have been broken into and worse—loved ones tied up, kidnapped, threatened, shot, permanently crippled by a hit and run attack, when they made too much of a fuss to authorities.
Evergreen State College is eliminating dozens of staff positions as it struggles to cope with plummeting enrollment in the wake of the protests that engulfed campus last year.
John Carmichael, the chief of staff and secretary to the Evergreen State College Board of Trustees, announced in a memo to staff and faculty members on Tuesday that the school has already cut 24 faculty lines and eliminated 19 vacant staff positions, and warned that up to 20 additional staff members could soon be laid off.
“Over the past several days, 20 staff members have been notified that they are at risk for layoff,” Carmichael wrote. “These layoffs, although necessary to stabilize the college’s budget, represent a profound loss felt by many.”
The staffing cuts, which include not renewing contracts for several adjunct faculty members, come shortly after the college revealed that it would be cutting $5.9 million from the budget in anticipation of a shortfall in applications of up to 20 percent.
Twenty-five million dollars in investable wealth. The kind of money you could afford to see dip into the red for a quarter or three, maybe even a year or two, without breaking a sweat. With $25 million, maybe, just maybe, you’re starting to be rich.
Because in this era of hyper-wealth and hyper-inequality, that is simply where rich begins—a ticket, in truth, to the first, lowly rung of rich. For most of the planet, $25 million represents unfathomable wealth. For elite private bankers, it buys their basic service.
Call it economy-class rich. Business class? That’s $100 million. First class? $200 million. Private-jet rich? Try $1 billion.
I grew up thinking that rich was owning a two-story house, so I’ve got it made. Top of the world, ma! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Texas Supreme Court strikes down short-term rental rule. The only surprise this time is that it was San Antonio rather than Austin making the stupid law.
Solo underperforms. I’m not sure there are any larger lessons to be drawn. For what it’s worth, I saw Deadpool 2 last Saturday, and recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the original Deadpool.
Republicans have serious leads in West Virginia, where incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin trails by 14 points; North Dakota, where incumbent Democrat Heidi Heitkamp trails by 8; Indiana, where incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly trails by 5; Missouri, where incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill trails by 5; Montana, where incumbent Democrat Jon Tester trails by 5; Florida, where incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson is locked in a near-deadlock with Rick Scott; and Pennsylvania and Ohio, where incumbent Democrats Bill Casey and Sherrod Brown are leading by less than two points each, plus Virginia, where Tim Kaine leads by just 3 on the generic ballot.
When Obama left the White House in a helicopter that horrible day, I had the impression our true father was leaving & the nation was stuck with a stepfather who was going to rape us. Now I increasingly believe that the media is the mother who won’t stand up for us & defy him.
Bill Clinton Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski have been expelled from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Forty years of tolerating a Hollywood director anally raping a 14-year old is enough!”
Israel steals a ton of documentation that proved that Iran lied about the nuke deal. Duh. Everyone in the world except Obama’s moronic clutch of idiot weasel sycophants knew Iran was lying.
The NHS simply cannot afford the extremely expensive prospect of keeping alive a little boy who most likely will not live much longer due to an incurable condition. Alfie’s chances of any meaningful recovery were slim to none. It isn’t outside the boundaries of reason that the government tasked with his treatment would deem it simply not worth the effort expended.
It’s cruel, but logical…the inevitable result of a single-payer system.
I may not agree with such reasoning, but I can at least derive the path that such woeful decisions must take in a place like the UK.
What is not logical and nearly incomprehensible is the decision of the court not simply to deny Alfie further treatment, but then deny his right and the right of his parents to leave the country to seek treatment elsewhere. Even that decision might make a tiny bit of sense if it were to add to the NHS’ costs. That would be a problem for that pesky algorithm. However, Italy had already sent an airlift equipped to take the young child. His transportation and hospital provisions were covered by donations and the state of Italy. In fact, to move Alfie out of the care of the NHS would only save them money and labor. Alfie’s parents would have one more shot at rescuing his life. It seems like a win-win for everyone.
And still, the courts have barred the family from leaving the country.
Let’s ponder that for just one moment. Great Britain is a nation with a proud history of freedom and democracy. Most other nations around the world and Britons themselves would describe it as a “free country”, and yet here is a case where its free citizens are not allowed to leave its borders.
Is this something that should happen in a “free country”? Would Alfie’s parents be barred from taking a vacation? Would anyone in their right mind in that country find it acceptable or consistent with British values to deny any family the right to leave for a vacation or to visit a relative abroad? Why then is it allowable for this family to be virtual hostages in their land simply because their reason for travel is medical care rather than pleasure?
Some years ago I watched a documentary on the design and building of the Berlin Wall between East Germany and West Germany. It included extremely rare clips of interviews with the architects (I was shocked to learn there was actually a deliberate design to that monstrosity).
Snip.
In one clip, an aging (former) East German Wall architect spoke briskly about the strategy of his designs. Although the interview was conducted during what must have been the last years of his life, he still seemed deeply resentful that he was being asked to defend the wall’s erection even after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. I’ll never forget what he said in that interview – it made the hair stand up on my arms.
With great sincerity – almost pleading with the interviewer – he said, “We had to build the wall. Too many people were leaving for the West and you need people to make socialism work. We had to build the wall to keep them in so they could see how great socialism was, so they could see that it works.”
Snip.
This is exactly the point in the ruling by the NHS and the courts to forbid their free citizens from leaving the country. If they are allowed to flee the heart-wrenching consequences of socialism, then others will want to do the same. How can a socialist system work without the cooperation of everyone? And how can you force people to participate in that socialist system when they discover that system may kill them or their loved ones?
You build a wall.
Great Britain doesn’t yet have a wall to keep its citizens in, but the courts have built one with the law. Just as East Germany could not tolerate the massive loss of defectors who were leaving with their training, intellect and tax dollars, Great Britain’s healthcare system cannot tolerate the defection of those who might find better healthcare somewhere else.
After all, how would it look if Alfie were allowed to leave England (allowed to leave a free country! Even to write the words feels absurd!) and then found a successful treatment in another country?
It would be an abject embarrassment to a government that holds up their socialist healthcare as one of the wonders of the Western world. Not only would they be forced to admit that their own doctors and bureaucrats were wrong for denying this baby life-saving measures, but they would then have to deal with hundreds, maybe thousands of other citizens fleeing the bondage of NHS algorithms for a chance at swifter, more modern healthcare.
For some bizarre reason, a nation that boasts figures like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, a tiny island nation that was once so powerful and broad it was said that the sun never set on the British empire…for some inexplicable reason that nation has chosen to hang its pride and joy on socialized medicine.
If you think I exaggerate just look up the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics.
To release this child to the care of any other nation would be to admit failure, and heartless bureaucrats who will never have to watch young Alfie struggle for air or dehydrate to death have decided that their misplaced pride is more valuable than the lives of their citizens.
Doctors cut off water from a baby. How could that have happened?
The religion of socialized medicine rules the land that used to be Great Britain. That religion has a priesthood, trained in the Universities and ruthless in their demand to be appeased. They control the purse strings of the hospitals, and therefore the doctors. Their sacred writ (the “Liverpool Pathway”) is enforced – and they pay cash money for sacrifices, to the tune of millions of pounds sterling each year.
The priesthood’s rule is so complete that the parents were forbidden to take their baby out of the country, even though there were other countries willing to take him.
There’s an Ursula K. Le Guin story called “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” about a utopian city whose prosperity is dependent (how it is never stated) by keeping pne child locked away in torment and misery. It won a Hugo Award, back when they actually meant something, despite all but having a giant blinking neon sign proclaiming COME SEE THE METAPHOR!
The story ends with those whose conscience is shocked by this one great injustice walking away from the city, but now we know that’s not true. Now we know that the “good” people, the one’s most insistent on their own virtue, wouldn’t walk away, Instead, like NHS, they’d be indignantly guarding the child’s door to prevent him from escaping.
