Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Stunts like this are why we have deemed Squirrel-Hair, um, problematic to say the least from the outset

Ben Shapiro at Daily Wire is exactly right about S-H's latest Twitter blurt:

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump opened a new can of worms via Twitter, this time regarding flag-burning. “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”
There are a number of questions to be asked. First, why would Trump raise this issue right now? Flag-burning hasn’t been in the news. It’s not a hot-button issue. The Supreme Court decided in 1989 in Texas v. Johnson that flag-burning was protected by the First Amendment. While politicians including Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have raised the issue for political gain in recent years, it’s been a dead letter nationally for two decades at least. That means that Trump is attempting to distract from other issues – or perhaps, to offer some red meat to his allies before announcing some heresy that will anger them.
I'm inclined to concur with Ben that this looks like a smokescreen:

Trump loves to pick a fight. That’s what he’s doing here. And it’s not a politically stupid fight – he’s happy to once again attempt to play to his populist base against the effete coastal elites who would stand alongside Occupy Wall Street hippies burning the flag in front of veterans. But that doesn’t mean that his proposed penalties are decent or right. They’re not. Perhaps they’re not intended to be. After all, this is a distraction.
Now we just have to wait to see what Trump wants to distract us from. 
And are we really going to have to endure four years of those idiotic exclamation points?

Now, this looks like a very good pick

Put this one in the getting-one-right column:

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) has been the tip of the Congressional spear in the battle against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for the past six years.
Today, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the agency that over-sees and administers Obamacare. (WaPo)
As HHS secretary, Price would be the incoming administration’s point person for dismantling the sprawling 2010 health-care law, which candidate Trump promised to start dismantling on his first day in the Oval Office. The 62-year-old lawmaker, who represents a wealthy suburban Atlanta district, has played a leading role in the Republican opposition to the law and has helped draft several comprehensive bills to replace it. The GOP-led House has voted five dozen times to eliminate all or part of the ACA but has never had a chance of accomplishing its goal as long as President Obama has been in the White House.
As many Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, wavered in their attitudes towards Trump during his campaign, Price was a devoted foot soldier. In May, he organized a joint statement by nine GOP House committee chairs, pledging loyalty to Trump and calling on “all Americans to support him.”
Price has been far from “all talk and no substance” when it comes to calling to repeal Obamacare. In fact, as Chairman of the Budget Committee Price has proposed various “Repeal and Replace” bills that have stalled with President Obama’s veto pen looming at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
In fact, as recently as May 2015 Price put for the “Empowering Patients First Act” which would have provided more free-market solutions to the skyrocketing costs of health insurance, and health care.
“Under Obamacare, the American people are paying more for health care and getting less – less access, less quality, and fewer choices. The status quo and its defenders are empowering Washington and harming patients and doctors. With real, patient-centered reforms we can build a more innovative and responsive health care system – one that empowers patients and ensures they and their doctor have the freedom to make health care decisions without bureaucratic interference or influence.
“The Empowering Patients First Act puts patients, families and doctors in charge by focusing on the principles of affordability, accessibility, quality, innovation, choices and responsiveness. Those principles form the foundation of the solutions in H.R. 2300 – solutions including individual health pools and expanded health savings accounts, tax credits for the purchase of coverage and lawsuit abuse reforms to reduce the costly practice of defensive medicine. The solutions in the Empowering Patients First Act will get Washington out of the way while protecting and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship.”

I think movement on the health-care front is going to be immediate and exciting next year.


Thoughts on filling the Secretary-of-State position

The latest bit of excitement, of course, is General Petraeus's visit to Trump Tower.

Peter Bergen at CNN makes a compelling case for Petraeus:

There would be no learning curve for the retired four-star general. Consider that Petraeus commanded US Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2008 to 2010. In many ways the CENTCOM commander has the most demanding job in the US military, because the command oversees America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. The CENTCOM commander also oversees military operations and alliances with 20 countries across the Middle East and Central Asia, which means regularly meeting and working with the top officials in those regions.
Petraeus also was the on-the-ground commander in both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the commander in Afghanistan, Petraeus dealt extensively with the dozens of NATO and other countries who were part of the coalition he led there.
Bergen goes on to discuss Petraeus's role as an architect of counterinsurgency strategy, and then looks at how the general has rounded out his understanding of the world stage through his exposure to the business view, and points out that Petraeus definitely has Vladimir Putin's number:

Since leaving government four years ago, Petraeus has traveled around the globe in his job as chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which acts as a kind of internal think tank for the leading private equity firm, New York-based KKR. In this role, Petraeus has interacted with business and political leaders around the world, which has given him another perspective that supplements the senior military and intelligence posts he has already held.

Petraeus' foreign policy positions haven't always been in sync with Trump's. In the June interview, for instance, Petraeus was clear about the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised, and the continuing relevance of NATO: "God bless Vladimir Putin because he's given NATO another reason to live. Having just been in Europe, I can assure you there is new urgency about the threat posed by Putin, and the farther east you go the greater the urgency is felt. And if you're in the Baltic States or Poland, the threat indicator is blinking red." 

But if his foreign policy positions haven't been fully aligned with Trump's, Petraeus avoided taking any public political positions during the presidential campaign. He did not, for instance, declare support for Hillary Clinton during the campaign, as more than 100 flag officers did.
All very well. There's just one little problem, as Patterico at RedState points out:

Even if you think Petraeus is a smart guy who might do a good job — and I do — the comparison to Hillary Clinton [for having been convicted of reckless handling of classified information] is a tough mental hurdle to surmount.
And now, with word of a new investigation related to the Petraeus scandal breaking today, it’s getting tougher still:
The Defense Department is conducting a leaks investigation related to the sex scandal that led to the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus, The Associated Press confirmed Monday, the same day Petraeus was meeting with President-elect Donald Trump in New York.
Petraeus, who could be in line for a Cabinet nomination, arrived at Trump Tower in early afternoon. He walked in without taking any questions from reporters.
A U.S. official told the AP that investigators are trying to determine who leaked personal information about Paula Broadwell, the woman whose affair with Petraeus led to criminal charges against him and his resignation. The information concerned the status of her security clearance, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Disclosure of the Broadwell information without official permission would have been a violation of federal criminal law.
The latest twist in the case could complicate Petraeus’ prospects of obtaining a Cabinet position in the Trump administration, resurfacing details of the extramarital affair and FBI investigation that ended his career at the CIA and tarnished the reputation of the retired four-star general.

Another Trump Tower visitor currently garnering buzz  is Mitt Romney. I do not get this one at all. What in Mitt's resume comes anywhere close to any kind of experience in international diplomacy? Plus, it's pretty clear he and DJT loathe each other.


I really don't understand why the obvious choice, John Bolton, is not front and center in this process. Is there something of a sensitive nature involved that no one wants to bring to light?

If not, I see this as a no-brainer.



Monday, November 28, 2016

Very interesting rumblings across Europe

Yesterday, we reported on Angela Merkel's rather abrupt turnabout on the issue of immigration.

An eye-opening development on a continent that has been on the expressway to oblivion.

Much to add to the list today:

Eight of Italy's major banks are teetering under the burden of bad-debt vulnerability, and if prime minister Renzi loses the referendum currently underway on restricting the Italian Senate's powers, the ripples could extend across the continent.

It looks like it's going to be Francois Fillon who will represent the French equivalent of three-pillared American conservatism in next year's presidential race, having won about twice as many votes as Alain Juppe in the primary. He'll be facing Marine LePen, the standard-bearer of the Western world's "populists'" hopes for France's future, as well as whoever the socialist left puts up.

What kind of guy is he?

It was in 1981, aged 27, that he was first elected as a member of parliament, becoming the National Assembly's youngest member.
His party was the Gaullist RPR of Jacques Chirac. Gaullism features a strong centralised state with conservative and nationalist policies.
Mr Fillon's parents, a history professor mother and lawyer father, were also Gaullists, and he was brought up in comfortable circumstances near the western city of Le Mans. 

He studied journalism and then law. In 1974 he met his future wife Penelope Clarke. She is Welsh and they have five children, the last born in 2001. They live near Le Mans, in the Sarthe department which remains Fillon's powerbase.
Mr Fillon's first ministerial post, higher education, came in 1993 under Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. He went on to hold five other cabinet posts, before serving as prime minister for five years until 2012 under Nicolas Sarkozy. 
He's a devout Catholic, he understands that marriage is the union of a man and woman, and he understands that the extermination of fetal French people is wrong. He also seems to understand that free-market economics is essential to human liberty. As his relationship with Nicholas Sarkozy developed as they worked together politically, he came to loathe Sarkozy. He has an odd inclination to foster closer relations with Russia. On the other hand, he feels very strongly that French culture and tradition must be preserved, and that the influx of Muslims does not serve that end.

Then there's the latest development in the Netherlands:

Geert Wilders, chairman of the Party for Freedom (PVV), has been celebrating on Twitter today. The reason? His party is now the biggest party in the Dutch polls. With elections coming up in March 2017, the populist politician seems to be on track to become the Netherlands' next prime minister.
According to the latest poll of Maurice de Hond, the Netherlands' most famous pollster, the PVV would become the biggest party in parliament if elections were held today (link in Dutch): they'd get 33 seats in the 150-seat lower chamber.
The PVV is the Netherlands' one and only populist party. It's more or less "conservative," although certainly not conservative on issues such as health care. Wilders is especially well-known for his criticism of Islam and Europe's open-borders policy, which he routinely -- and accurately -- describes as suicidal. His main goal is to end "the Islamization" of Europe generally and of the Netherlands specifically. 
Additionally, Wilders and his party are the most Eurosceptic of all the parties currently in parliament. He is the Netherlands' very own Nigel Farage, which he once again proved earlier this year when he and his allies won the Dutch referendum on the EU's upcoming treaty with Ukraine. Wilders campaigned hard against the deal, arguing that it would eventually lead to the poor (and not entirely democratic) Eastern European country joining the European Union. Although proponents of the treaty said that would not be the case, the Dutch voter wasn't convinced. Wilders and the "no" campaign won.
Europeans seem to have taken a square look at where they were headed and said, "What are our alternatives?"

 






 

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Merkel gets a clue on unbridled Middle-East and south-Asian immigration; better late than never, we suppose

This is pretty noteworthy stuff:

In one of the most shocking flip-flops in recent political history, German Chancellor Angela Merkel now says she will deport about 10% of recently arrived migrants -- 100,000 of them.
But more than that, her tone on granting asylum to migrants has radically changed.
The beleaguered Chancellor said authorities would significantly step up the rate of forced returns as she battles to arrest an alarming slump in her popularity which has fuelled a surge in support for the far-right.
Mrs Merkel, whose decision to roll out the red carpet to migrants from across Africa and the Middle East spectacularly backfired, has taken an increasingly tough tone on immigration in recent months.
And in her toughest rhetoric yet the German leader told MPs from her party this week: ”The most important thing in the coming months is repatriation, repatriation and once more, repatriation.”
The stance marks an astonishing U-turn from the once pro-refugee Chancellor, who has been widely pilloried by critics at home and abroad for her decision to throw open Germany’s borders to millions of migrants.
Her extraordinary change of heart has been prompted largely by a series of catastrophic local election results for her ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, which was trounced by the populist Alternative fur Deutschland in both her home state and the capital Berlin.
The party’s slumping poll ratings have sparked alarm amongst her allies in both the CDU and its coalition partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU), with talk that senior officials would try to oust her.
But instead Mrs Merkel last week announced her intention to stand for a fourth term as leader of Germany, and now she is striking an increasingly anti-immigrant tone as she attempts to restore her battered reputation ahead of next autumn’s election.
Speaking at a conference of conservative MPs in Neumünster yesterday evening the Chancellor revealed that she expects 100,000 migrants to leave Germany this year, of which a third will be forcibly removed.
And employing a tough new form of rhetoric, she warned local regions to deport all migrants whose asylum applications are rejected, using force if necessary.
She warned them: "If state governments refuse to forcibly deport migrants, then of course everyone will say, 'I will not do this voluntarily, because they will not do anything anyway’.
And in a stunning U-turn on her open borders policy, she added: ”It can not be that all the young people from Afghanistan come to Germany.”
Perhaps she was motivated by such developments as these:

  • Residents of Essen complained that police often refuse to respond to calls for help and begged city officials to restore order. One resident said: "I was born here and I do not feel safe anymore." City officials flatly rejected the complaints.
  • The Sarah Nußbaum Haus, a kindergarten in Kassel, said that "because of the high proportion of Muslim children," and because of the different cultures of the children, the school was "renouncing" Christian rituals.
  • During the first six months of 2016, more than 2,000 migrants who requested asylum were found to be carrying false passports, but German border control officers allowed them into the country anyway. Migrants with false papers could be linked to the Islamic State, security analysts warned.
  • German President Joachim Gauck said he believed that Germany will eventually have a Muslim president.
  • Muslims are attacking Christians at refugee shelters throughout Germany. "The religious minorities in refugee accommodations are now experiencing the same oppression prevalent in their countries of origin," according to the NGO Open Doors.
  • The Federal Statistics Office reported that the birthrate in Germany reached the highest level in 33 years in 2015, boosted mainly by babies born to migrant women.
  • A 49-year-old Syrian refugee in Rhineland-Palatinate is seeking social welfare benefits in Germany for his four wives and 23 children.
October 1. Two migrants raped a 23-year-old woman in Lüneburg as she was walking in a park with her young child. The men, who remain at large, forced the child to watch while they took turns assaulting the woman.
October 2. A 19-year-old migrant raped a 90-year-old woman as she was leaving a church in downtown Düsseldorf. Police initially described the suspect as "a Southern European with North African roots." It later emerged that the man is a Moroccan with a Spanish passport.
October 2. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called for the development of a "German Islam" to help integrate Muslims in the country. In an opinion article published by Welt am Sonntag, he wrote:
"Considering the diverse origins of Muslims in Germany, we want to promote the development of a German Islam, the development of self-assurance of Muslims living as Muslims in Germany, in a free, open, pluralistic and tolerant order, according to our laws and the religious neutrality of the state.
"There is no doubt that the growing number of Muslims in our country today is testing the tolerance of mainstream society. The origin of the vast majority of refugees means that we are increasingly dealing with people from very different cultures.... In this tense situation, we should not allow for the emergence of an atmosphere in which well-integrated people in Germany feel alien."
October 4. Münchner Merkur reported that the 2016 Munich Oktoberfest recorded its lowest turnout since 2001. Visitors reportedly stayed away due to concerns about terrorism and migrant-related sexual assaults.
October 6. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on a German intelligence study which found that almost half the German Salafists who left for Syria or Iraq were active in mosques. "The mosques continue to play a central role in the radicalization of Islamists in Germany," a spokeswoman for the German domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), said. The ongoing study analyzes the background and course of the radicalization of persons who left for Syria or Iraq. The study has collected data from 784 Islamists who left Germany or were actively trying to leave the country. The BfV estimates that there are 9,200 known Salafists in Germany.

October 6. More than 400 residents of the Altenessen district in Essen met local politicians in a televised "town hall meeting" to discuss spiraling violence and crime perpetrated by migrants in the area. Residents complained that police often refuse to respond to calls for help and begged city officials to restore order. One resident said: "I was born here and I do not feel safe anymore." City officials flatly rejected the complaints. Mayor Thomas Kufen said: "Altenessen is not a no-go area, the people here are just angry." Police Chief Frank Richter added: "I am sick and tired of hearing about no-go zones in Essen." He insisted that Essen und Altenessen are perfectly safe.

October 7. The Sarah Nußbaum Haus, a kindergarten in Kassel, announced that it would not be celebrating Christmas this year, "because of the high proportion of Muslim children." According to local media, there will be "no Christmas tree, no Christmas stories and no Christmas spirit." Non-Muslim parents said that celebrating Christmas is a normal "part of the integration process to get to know the new culture." School officials responded by saying that because of the different cultures of the children, the school was "renouncing" Christian rituals. They also said that teachers at the school are now required to ensure that the children do not exchange their sandwiches, to prevent Muslim children from eating pork.

October 8. Welt am Sonntag reported that during the first six months of 2016, more than 2,000 migrants who requested asylum were found to be carrying false passports, but German border control officers allowed them into the country anyway. Migrants with false papers could be linked to the Islamic State, security analysts warned.

October 10. Jaber al-Bakr, a 22-year-old refugee from Syria, was arrested after police found explosives in his apartment in Chemnitz. He was suspected of plotting to bomb an airport in Berlin. Two days later, he hanged himself in a jail in Leipzig.

October 14. German President Joachim Gauck, who is stepping down for health reasons, saidhe believed that Germany will eventually have a Muslim president. Of the eleven German presidents so far, nine have been Protestant and two have been Catholic. Gauck's statement caused a stir in Germany. Some said that all German citizens are eligible for the position, regardless of confession, and others said a Muslim president would further divide society. Vice President of the European Parliament Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said: "A mullah with a turban would be impossible, but a representative of modern, enlightened Islam, such as the mayor in London, of course." The Office of the President told Bild that the oath of office would never be changed from "so help me God" to "so help me Allah."

October 14. Green Party politician Volker Beck called on Germans to learn Arabic so that they can communicate with migrants who do not speak German. When asked on NTV how migrants can integrate if there are no German speakers in many parts of German cities, he replied: "Other countries are more relaxed about the fact that, in some areas, a different language is spoken by a migrant community. In the US, you will find your Chinatown, you will find areas where Mexicans live, or whatever community is strong in a city." He also said it was good that German is not spoken in many German mosques. "Arab sermons are a piece of home," he said.
It goes on and on, per the linked piece.

Chancellor Merkel seems to be realizing that her country and the civilization of which it is a part are dying.

 
 

Saturday, November 26, 2016

The Fidel-is-dead post

The last five paragraphs of Against All Hope by Armando Valladares:

The hour of my departure arrived. The procession of several cars headed down Rancho Boyeros Avenue toward Jose Marti International Airport. The plane was scheduled for seven in the evening. The setting sun dyed the afternoon pomegranate-red. My heart sent up a hymn of thanks to God, and I prayed for my family, who hadn't been allowed to come to say goodbye, and for my friends remaining behind in the eternal night of the Cuban political prisons.

As the cars sped along, a flood of memories rushed over me. Twenty-two years in jail. I recalled the two sergeants, Porfirio and Matanzas, plunging their bayonets into Ernesto Diaz Madruga's dying body; Roberto Lopez Chavez dying in a cell, calling for water, the guards urinating over his face and in his gasping mouth; Boitel, denied water too, after more than fifty days on hunger strike, because Fidel wanted him dead; Clara, Boitel's poor mother, beaten by Lieutenant Abad in a Political Police station just because she wanted to find out where her son was buried. I remembered Carrion, shot in the leg, telling Jaguey not to shoot, and Jaguey mercilessly, heartlessly, shooting him in the back; the officers who threatened family members if they cried at a funeral.

I remembered Estebita and Piri dying in blackout cells, the victims of biological experimentation; Diosdado Aquit, Chino Tan, Eddy Molina, and so many others murdered in the forced-labor fields, quarries and camps. A legion of specters, naked, crippled, hobbling and crawling through my mind, and the hundreds of men wounded and mutilated in the horrifying searches. Dynamite. Drawer cells. Edwardo Capote's fingers chopped off by a machete. Concentration camps, tortures, women beaten, soldiers pushing prisoners' heads into a lake of shit, the beatings of Eloy and Izaguirre. Martin Perez with his testicles destroyed by bullets. Roberto weeping for his mother.

And in the midst of that apocalyptic vision of the most dreadful and horrifying moments of my life, in the midst of the gray, ashy dust and the orgy of beatings and blood, prisoners beaten to the ground, a man emerged, the skeletal figure of a man wasted by hunger, with white hair, blazing blue eyes, and a heart overflowing with love, raising his arms to the invisible heaven and pleading for mercy for his executioners.

"Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." And a burst of machine-gun fire ripping open his breast.

Friday, November 25, 2016

More on the chasm between the grandstanders' Dakota Access Pipeline narrative and the truth

You've seen the Facebook rants.

Here's what's really going on:

The record shows that Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, spent years working diligently with federal, state and local officials to route the pipeline safely and with the fewest possible disruptions. The contrast between the protesters' claims and the facts on record is stunning.
Protesters claim that the pipeline was "fast-tracked," denying tribal leaders the opportunity to participate in the process. In fact, project leaders participated in 559 meetings with community leaders, local officials and organizations to listen to concerns and fine-tune the route. The company asked for, and received, a tougher federal permitting process at sites along the Missouri River.
This more difficult procedure included a mandated review of each water crossing's potential effect on historical artifacts and locations.
Protesters claim that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to consult tribal leaders as required by federal law. The record shows that the corps held 389 meetings with 55 tribes. Corps officials met many times with leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which initiated the lawsuit and the protests.
Protesters claim that the Standing Rock Sioux pursued meetings with an unresponsive Army Corps of Engineers. Court records show that the roles in that story were in fact reversed. The corps alerted the tribe to the pipeline permit application in the fall of 2014 and repeatedly requested comments from and meetings with tribal leaders, only to be rebuffed over and over. Tribal leaders ignored requests for comment and canceled meetings multiple times.
In September 2014 alone, the Corps made five unsuccessful attempts to meet with Standing Rock Sioux leaders. The next month, a meeting was arranged, but "when the Corps timely arrived for the meeting, Tribal Chairman David Archambault told them that the conclave had started earlier than planned and had already ended," according to a federal judge.
At a planned meeting the next month, the tribe took the pipeline off the agenda and refused to discuss it. This stonewalling by tribal leaders continued for a year and a half.
Typical of the misinformation spread during the protests is a comment made by Jesse Jackson, who recently joined the activists in North Dakota. He said the decision to reroute the pipeline so that it crossed close to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's water intake was "racism."
He did not mention, possibly because he did not know, that the company is paying to relocate the tribe's water intake to a new spot 70 miles from the location of the contested pipeline crossing.
The pipeline route was adjusted based on concerns expressed by locals — including other tribal leaders — who met with company and Army Corps of Engineers officials.
The court record reveals that the Standing Rock Sioux refused to meet with corps officials to discuss the route until after site work had begun. That work is now 77 percent completed at a cost of $3 billion.
It's just an irresistible flashpoint for identity-politics-and-earth-worship-mongers.

They hate human advancement, even as they enjoy its fruits.


Thursday, November 24, 2016

What Ben said

Mike Pesci of Slate interviews Ben Shapiro, and the whole thing is worth your reading, but let me give you a taste:

 . . . everyone’s taking the wrong lessons, right and left, away from this election cycle.
I think on the right, people are taking it like Trump won this big, broad victory; Trump lost the popular vote by over 1 million votes, and he won by very, very narrow margins in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida. And the fact is that when all is said and done, the groups that are growing demographically in the United States are minorities, women, young people—millennials will be 40 percent of the voting population in 2020. And so if you’re banking on this ever-shrinking group, the alt-right, in order to put you over the top, that seems like bad politics. It’s alienating politics; it’s not something that’s going to help.

By the same token, I think that the left is making a huge mistake by labeling everybody on the right “alt-right.” Because what they’re doing is they’re pushing people into the arms of the alt-right. You call people racist enough, and they begin to think OK, well, who’s not calling me a racist—I’ll side with that guy. So the worst thing the left can do is continue to suggest that everyone who backed Trump was a racist, sexist, bigot homophobe; everyone’s evil, everyone’s terrible. What they really should be doing is they should be saying, “Look, we understand one of the reasons that we lost is because Hillary Clinton was a uniquely terrible candidate”—she really was—“and because of that, we’re not trying to throw you guys out of the tent. We think it was a bad choice to choose Trump, but we would sort of appeal to the better angels of your nature—that if we think he’s divisive as time goes on, that you recognize that he’s being divisive.” I think it’s a big mistake to have the left pushing the notion that they’re just going to double-down on the Obama coalition and tell everybody else to go screw.
That's the level of insight you get in the whole thing. 
 

Actually, it sounds like Squirrel-Hair did not reverse himself on the global climate

So says Marc Morano at Climate Depot:

The media spin on President Elect Donald J. Trump’s sit down with the New York Times on November 22, can only be described as dishonest. Trump appears to soften stance on climate change & Donald Trump backflips on climate change  & Trump on climate change in major U-turn
The ‘fake news’ that Trump had somehow moderated or changed his “global warming” views was not supported by the full transcript of the meeting.
Heartland Institute President Joe Bast had this to say about the full transcript of Trump’s meeting: “This is reassuring. The Left wants to drive wedges between Trump and his base by spinning anything he says as “retreating from campaign promises.” But expressing nuance and avoiding confrontation with determined foes who buy ink by the barrel is not retreating.” The Heartland Institute released their skeptical 2015 climate report featuring 4,000 peer-reviewed articles debunking the UN IPCC claims.
Trump’s climate science view that there is “some connectivity” between humans and climate is squarely a skeptical climate view. Trump explained, “There is some, something. It depends on how much.”
Trump’s views are shared by prominent skeptical scientists. University of London professor emeritus Philip Stott has said: “The fundamental point has always been this. Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2) is as misguided as it gets.” “It’s scientific nonsense,” Stott added. Stott is featured in new skeptical climate change documentary Climate Hustle.
Scientists at the UN climate summit in Marrakech commended Trump’s climate views. See: Skeptical scientists crash UN climate summit, praise Trump for ‘bringing science back again’
Trump also told resident NYT warmist Tom Friedman: ‘A lot of smart people disagree with you’ on climate change. (Note: Friedman has some wacky views: Flashback 2009: NYT’s Tom Friedman lauds China’s eco-policies: ‘One party can just impose politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward’)
Once again, Trump was 100% accurate as very prominent scientists are bailing out of the so-called climate “consensus.”
Green Guru James Lovelock reverses belief in ‘global warming’: Now says ‘I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy’ – Condemns green movement: ‘It’s a religion really, It’s totally unscientific’
Trump correctly cited the  Climategate scandal: “They say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between scientists…Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about.” See: Watch & Read: 7th anniversary of Climategate – The UN Top Scientists Exposed
Trump cited his uncle, a skeptical MIT scientist: “My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject.” (Yes, other MIT scientists are very skeptical as well. See: MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Mocks 97% Consensus: ‘It is propaganda’
It is also worth noting that Trump’s often cited 2012 tweet about climate change stating “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” was clearly a joke and he has said it was a joke. It is further worth noting that climate skeptics do not believe the conecpt of “climate change” was “created” by China.
Trump countered: ‘We’ve had storms always, Arthur.’

Clearly, S-H is far from the most articulate spokesperson for the understanding that the notion that the global climate is in any kind of trouble is a lot of hooey, but the "M"SM really had to stretch to make this look like a reversal of viewpoint.


Wednesday, November 23, 2016

The relentless march of the tradition-and-God-hating jackboots

Not sure where this one took place, but some school has turned its Thanksgiving commemoration into "wear your favorite color day":

The creeping politicization of the holidays is now starting to poison Thanksgiving  . . ., and this year it affected my household when my daughter’s school cancelled the day set aside to celebrate Thanksgiving during the school’s spirit week. Parents balked at “Thanksgiving Thursday,” the only day of the week designated to something cultural as opposed to something silly like pajama day or wacky hair day, because it might have promoted “racism” and “discrimination.” First, the school apologized and barred children from in any way representing the Native American part of the Thanksgiving story. And then it capitulated altogether and replaced it with “wear your favorite color” day.
Faster than you can shout “Trigger Warning!” these school kids were robbed of the chance to learn about and celebrate one of America’s most cherished holidays. And they aren’t alone—a quick Google search yields endless stories of schools banning everything from Valentine’s Day to Christmas lest someone be offended by history and culture. Thanksgiving is the latest schoolyard victim.

Now I do know where this one occurred: the People's Republic of Bloomington, just a few miles over the hills from where I reside:

Mayor John Hamilton recently announced that are renaming two paid holidays for city workers -- in an effort to respect "differing cultures."
Columbus Day will henceforth be known as "Fall Holiday" and Good Friday will be known as "Spring Holiday." 
Mayor John Hamilton told Fox 59 the name change will “better reflect cultural sensitivity in the workplace.”
The local paper, the Herald Times, no bastion of rightie-ness, deserves props for standing up to at least the Good Friday half of this outrage:

"It was not necessary and just stands to divide rather than unite when it comes to Good Friday," the Herald Times wrote in a staff editorial.
The newspaper said a case could be made for changing Columbus Day.
"To some in our country the idea of celebrating him is akin to celebrating a marauding invader who sought to destroy a culture," they wrote.
But Good Friday?
"It’s a day important to the faith of many in this country," they wrote. "The idea of acting as if city leaders don’t acknowledge its existence and would rather stick a “Spring Holiday” name on it is insensitive to those for whom it means a lot. It’s an unnecessary poke in the eye to many Christians."
To reiterate what I said in another recent cultural-rot post, we could rev the economy up to 10 percent GDP growth and, without eradicating this poison, it would be meaningless.


The cultural overlords may parade their preening grandstanders as paragons of virtue, but eventually their scumbag track records come to light

Case in point: Brandon Dixon:

On Tuesday, Heat Street dug into Dixon's Twitter account to reveal that he was staunchly against police and had written questionable posts about 'white women' and St Patrick's day.  

In one tweet, Dixon wrote about police officers: 'More good than bad? Until I see LEGIONS of good cops in the street holding the bad cops accountable, they're all complicit.'

The tweet came just days after two high-profile shooting deaths of black men in September: Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott. 

Another tweet by Dixon was a response to someone else's tweet about Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old Florida boy who was shot dead by George Zimmerman. 

'4 every racist comment I get about Trayvon Im going 2 turn 1 white married suburban housewife & mother n2 a jump off,' a Twitter user called J Lee wrote.Dixon responded: 'The. Best.'

'Jump off' is a term that refers to someone who is a casual sexual partner.  After Trump earned the endorsement of the National Fraternal Order of Police, Dixon took to Instagram, sharing a screen grab of the article. 

On it he wrote: 'This is a statement and a HALF. Well, this and the regular, paid leave, remorseless murder of unarmed people of color.' 

A tweet from March of 2012 showed that Dixon said: 'St. Patty’s day weekend is like Christmas for black dudes who like white chicks. Happy holidays boys.'

A real charmer.





Wednesday roundup

In the course of an essay at The American Thinker entitled "How to Blast Away the Left's Attacks on Manliness," a sneak peak at the argument he fleshes out more fully in his new book This Will Make a Man Out of You: One Man's Search for Hemingway and Manliness in a Changing World, Richard Miniter makes an observation on a scene from cinematic history that I'd never quite looked at in the way he invites us to see it:

If being “manly” is akin to sexism and worse, men should then be something else, but the cabal of Hollywood, academia, and the mainstream media haven’t given men anything else to be. They are simply told not to be men. They are guilty from birth and so should just shut up.

This empty view actually can be traced back to Rebel Without a Cause, the 1955 classic movie starring James Dean. In the movie Dean keeps asking his father “what does it mean to be a man?” but his father doesn’t know. Dean is given no answers. He keeps slouching and looking at the ground and playing the lost young man brilliantly, but no one gives him any answers. Now, well over a half-century later, this is still where liberal Hollywood, academia, and the mainstream media have left the question. They are very concerned about women and women’s rights, but they are not inquisitive at all about what makes men -- and therefore with what they have been attacking.
Of course, we know that the logical - make that utterly illogical - conclusion to which leftist attacks on manliness bring us is the idea that people whose self-obsession has rendered them deeply troubled - that would be the "transgendered" and the even more exotic strains of "gender fluidity" that continue to appear in the fetid petri dish that is post-American culture - are perfectly normal and ought to be treated as such.

Which is how you get to situations like this:

The current law in the State of Texas requires schools to allow parents access to 100% of all their children’s records, academic, disciplinary, health, you name it. The only exception are instances where something has happened that has triggered the school to report suspected child abuse. This should be commonsense and self-evident as schools have zero role or responsibility for the parenting of children. Hell, public schools only make a cursory effort to educate them. But educators, being what they are, frequently think they are better equipped to raise a child than the parents. Such was the case in Fort Worth. This is an op-ed by Texas State Senator Konni Burton:
Unfortunately, this basic democratic opportunity was recently denied to the parents and taxpayers within Fort Worth ISD, and the repercussions could be extremely serious.
Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Dr. Kent Scribner recently announced new guidelines for faculty and staff on the handling of its transgender student population. These new guidelines require the recognition of the preferred gender identity of the student, the use of the pronoun he or she prefers, accommodations for the use of bathroom and locker room facilities and participation in the physical education of their preferred gender identity. These guidelines will affect all students, not just transgender students, and to act as if they do not need public and parental input is quite alarming.
Dr. Scribner and his executive team created the new transgender student guidelines through the use of “administrative regulations,” a rule-making process that does not require action by the publicly elected Board of Trustees. Without the need for a vote by the Board, there was no organized forum for an open debate on the merits of the new policies.
Fair minds can certainly argue whether the superintendent overstepped his authority by unilaterally enacting expansive new transgender policies; however, it cannot be argued that bypassing a public debate and avoiding parental input was a wise decision. Parents, not schools, are the primary decision-makers for their children; their opinion and input is absolutely invaluable and Fort Worth ISD was remiss in not tapping into the wealth of their perspective and experience. Involving parents should be the default position for any potentially controversial new policy of an independent school district, and unfortunately in this instance, it was not.
The new guidelines make it plain that parents are on a strictly “need-to-know” basis, and that “notifying a parent or guardian carries risks for the student in some cases.” Yet, within those same guidelines, Fort Worth ISD makes it clear that they can and will share this same private information with a third party without parental consent should they decide it’s in the student’s best interest. Frankly, I’m appalled by this language, and I hope the parents whose children attend Fort Worth ISD are as well.
Our schools are a place of learning; they are not replacements for the support and love of the family. I’ve heard it argued already that leaving parents in the dark is in the interest of safety, yet research shows transgender people are at an exponentially higher risk of suicide than the general population.
Essentially what the Forth Worth school superintendent did was say that parents would not have to be notified that their child suffering from a mental disorder, that would be “gender dysphoria,” and,indeed, encouraged schools NOT to inform parents. Never mind that this rule is a direct violation of state law. Never mind that it would prevent the parents from seeking treatment for the condition and possibly damage the child for life.
It takes a village, as they say.

Just because Squirrel-Hair won the presidency doesn't mean that his slavish devotees don't have anything more to answer for. In fact, it looks like the avalanche of "stuff to answer for" is just getting started:

President-elect Donald Trump strayed far from the talking points of his campaign during his wide-ranging interview Tuesday with New York Times journalists. Trump suggested he does not necessarily need to sever ties to his businesses while president. He said he has an open mind to acting on climate change. And he even offered some praise for the Clinton Foundation.
On the business ties, Trump was vague about when he will wind them down and how. He suggested he intends to transfer ownership to his kids, but then he also noted that the president is immune from federal conflict-of-interest laws. 
Congress, you are going to have to show some actual understanding of conservative principles, consistency in applying them, and a sense of urgency about doing so.

Not sure what to make of S-H's appointment of Nikki Haley as UN ambassador (which she has accepted).  She has little foreign policy experience beyond South Carolina-related international trade issues. Maybe S-H is trying to send signals that he is broad-minded, since Haley supported Rubio during the primaries.

A German court rules that roving bands of "sharia police" that approach people on the street and tell them not to drink alcohol and listen to music are not illegal.

Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier at NRO look at the wastefulness, data-cooking and general intrusiveness of one of the most tyrannical bodies in the world: the EPA:

In one analysis by the Office of Management and Budget, of the 30 least cost-effective regulations throughout the government, the EPA had imposed no fewer than 17. For example, the agency’s restrictions on the disposal of land that contains certain wastes prevent 0.59 cancer cases per year — about three cases every five years — and avoid $20 million in property damage, at an annual cost of $194 to $219 million.
The authors also look at such EPA boondoggles as the Superfund and the Clean Power Plan, just to set the table for their reportage on the agency's latest bit of tyranny:

The most recent new EPA travesty is new rulemaking on methane emissions, which have elicited more than a dozen legal challenges. Driven more by politics than by science, they are based on dubious data and would bring the American energy revolution to a halt, devastating not only the economy but also the environment.

Last year, the EPA reported that since 2005, net methane emissions from natural-gas infrastructure had fallen 38 percent, while total methane emissions from natural gas had dropped 11 percent. This year, however, the EPA claims that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are one-third higher than previously thought and that overall methane emissions from natural gas have dropped only 0.68 percent since 2005. What can explain such a huge turnaround? Have America’s cows been put on a diet of hummus and baked beans?
The agency says it now has better data to determine methane emissions, but this claim is highly suspect, not only because of the administration’s political objective on this issue but because of the methodology. For one thing, the EPA’s latest figures are based on older sources developed in the 1990s, which has the effect of inflating the current measurements.

The EPA has chosen to ignore that the energy sector has taken numerous steps to reduce emissions. For example, fuels and oils that have been contaminated are now filtered by producers so they can be reused to yield maximum performance with fewer emissions. Birmingham’s Alabama Power has invested in technology that produces electricity more efficiently, lowering overall emissions. Since 2000, oil and gas companies nationwide have invested roughly $90 billion in technologies designed to reduce harmful pollutants.

The EPA is now using the cooked data to justify imposing much tighter limits on methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure. For instance, other studies have found that the annual price tag to comply with these regulations could hit $800 million, and National Economic Research Associates has concluded that, by 2020, the regulations could be three times more expensive than the EPA estimate.  
We'll pay for it, of course.

Speaking of the environment and energy policy, LITD very much likes this:

The route has been approved and it’s not going to move.
Energy Transfer Partners LP Chief Executive Officer Kelcy Warren said the company will not consider rerouting its Dakota Access oil pipeline despite concerns voiced by U.S. native groups, according to an Associated Press interview published on Friday.
President Barack Obama said earlier this month that the government was examining ways to reroute the pipeline.
Energy Transfer did not immediately respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Warren did tell the AP that he would like to meet with tribal leaders to ease their concerns about the project.
While all this was going on, the protests have continued to take one violent turn after another. When the largely imported protesters continued to block highways and damage construction equipment, officials took to using water cannons to disburse them and clear a path. That’s not normally a terribly worrisome tactic, but when you get soaked down in North Dakota in November and the temperature is hovering around 23 degrees, well… let’s just say it might make you reexamine your lifestyle choices a bit.
But that didn’t stop the protesters from fighting back. Things once again got out of hand, with violence erupting. This led to one woman nearly getting her arm blown off (literally) when an explosion took place behind the protesters’ blockade. (NY Daily News)
A New Yorker was hospitalized with a gruesome injury while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline on North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation, activists say.
The woman — identified by activists as 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky — could lose her left arm after a Monday explosion behind the protest blockade near Cannon Ball tore through her winter jacket and skin, exposing bone.
The Bronx woman was airlifted nearly 400 miles to the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis following the 4 a.m. incident, said Wilansky’s friend and fellow activist Vaimoana Niumeitolu.
The protesters are claiming that it was a concussion grenade launched by law enforcement which injured her, but the local sheriff claims that they weren’t using anything like that and that the protesters had been hurling “fuel canisters” at them. (Can we all say “Molotov Cocktail” here?) It’s a he said she said situation so far, but this isn’t the first time Ms. Wilansky has been on the front lines of protests. In June she was arrested while protesting a different pipeline in Vermont.
One has to wonder where she finds the time to travel to all of these far flung sites and battle the authorities and how it hasn’t impacted her day job thus far.
Give it up, you self-congratulatory little human-advancement-haters.










Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Mose Allison, RIP




Jaunty, somewhat florid piano style. Acerbic wit. Lyrics structured like poetry. Always an interesting take on standards. A disarmingly offhand singing style with just a touch of an accent from his Mississippi bringing.

I saw him live in 1982 in an intimate little club in Indianapolis called the Hummingbird when he was on tour promoting the album for which this is the title cut.


Monday, November 21, 2016

Un-poisoning millenials' minds likely won't happen without a fight

Daniel Payne at The Federalist explores the generational aspect of the rift between what is left of moderate Democrats - and, of course, you have to employ that term in the postmodern context, given the drift of the party over the last four decades  - and the radical-to-the-point-of-being-insane impetus which is in charge of liberalism's levers of control. Left-of-center millennials are clearly on board with the latter:

At The New York Times last week, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla made a case for this “post-identity liberalism,” a politics that would “[appeal] to Americans as Americans and [emphasize] the issues that affect a vast majority of them.” That means no more “war on women” hysteria, no more wild claims that Republicans are going to send black Americans back to the antebellum South, no more screaming that proponents of traditional marriage are morally and functionally equivalent to Nazis. Regarding the “narrower…highly charged” issues, especially “those touching on sexuality and religion,” Lilla writes, this new liberalism “would work quietly, sensitively, and with a proper sense of scale.”
Good idea. But this could prove much more difficult than the optimistic Lilla is willing to concede. After decades of aggressive identity politicking, many if not most liberals—and younger ones in particular—will probably not take kindly to working “quietly” or “sensitively” on these hot-button issues.


Democrats will have to come to grips with the young activist bloc sooner or later. The older generations—Baby Boomers and others—might be amenable to softening the relentless liberal identity game, if only because they can remember a time when things were done differently. But the share of older generations within the voting population is shrinking, and will continue to. As Pew pointed out, 2016 may have been the last election dominated by voters born prior to 1980.
This will be a problem for Democrats looking to soften the party’s approach to identity issues. On questions of “identity,” or what is often broadly termed “social issues,” younger voters are far more liberal than their older counterparts.
Consider, for instance, the millennial position on LGBT rights. Data suggest that overwhelming majorities of young voters favor “LGBT nondiscrimination protections,” while nearly three-quarters of millennials favor re-defining marriage to include same-sex couples. Half of the same demographic believes “gender isn’t limited to male and female.”
Young Americans have embraced the LGBT agenda en masse. Will young progressives go along with a proposal to work “quietly” and “sensitively” regarding these issues? Not likely. Young liberals are markedly fanatical and overbearing about the LGBT agenda. They see it as a choice between progress and something resembling 1920s Mississippi. “It’s not uncommon,” wrote Hunter Schwarz last year, “to see Millennials compare LGBT rights to civil rights struggles of the past, and posting about it can feel like a way to be a part of that tradition — a way to be ‘on the right side of history.’”

My colleague Hans Fiene calls this “Selma Envy,” and it’s probably not going anywhere for a while. A liberalism that tries to tone down the wild rhetoric on gay rights will likely meet stiff resistance from these modern-day wannabe Freedom Riders.

Then, too, the notion that younger liberals will be willing to restrain themselves about issues “touching on…religion” is dubious at best. Young voters have opinions on religious institutions that are noticeably more negative than the rest of the population; those low numbers are the result of a favorability decline of about 20 percentage points over the past five years. 

This astonishing dip is likely due in no small part to the beating religion has taken in the media over the past half-decade: the contraception debate, the gay marriage debate, and other rancorous public dialogues have targeted churches, and millennials have responded accordingly. Young people do not like religion, and they will probably grow to like it even less as the years go on. If someone comes along and tells them, “Hey, you have to start listening to and respecting these religious people you’ve been taught to despise,” how do you think they will respond?
What about identity issues surrounding race? A poll earlier this year revealed that a majority of young adults 18-30 supports the Black Lives Matter movement; a plurality “strongly” supports it. Many millennials have grown up in a toxic social-media-fueled stew of racial histrionics and paranoia: they have been taught that every police shooting of a black man is a modern-day lynching, every real or imagined “microagression” against an ethnic minority is an act of mini-terrorism, and every criticism of a black president is a hatred-fueled injustice. Knee-jerk beliefs like this are difficult to unlearn, particularly as mainstream liberals in politics and the media have more or less reinforced them for the better part of a decade. 
Maybe a way out of this prospect for ugly confrontation is if the older, "moderate" Democrats join with conservative alumni of those expensive loony-bins known as America's colleges and universities in ceasing to fund them  and they dry up, the main source by which the millennials are getting brainwashed will not cause further harm.

But there's still music, cinema and television, all of which are also working overtime to legitimate the madness.