The erosion of colleagues' respect for James Comey

The immunity deals, the destruction of Cheryl Mills's laptop, the brevity - and volunteer basis - of the FBI's interview of Madame BleachBit are tarnishing Comey's reputation in the investigative world:

Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.

Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”

But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.

“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.

Others share this view:

“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time,” Hughes said. “I hold Director Comey responsible.”

Agreed retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello: “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”

The accommodations afforded Clinton and her aides are “unprecedented,” Biasello added, “which is another way of saying this outcome was by design.” He called Comey’s decision not to seek charges “cowardly.”

“Each month for 27 years, I received oral and computer admonishments concerning the proper protocol for handling top secret and other classified material, and was informed of the harsh penalties, to include prosecution and incarceration,” for mishandling such material, he pointed out. “Had myself or my colleagues engaged in behavior of the magnitude of Hillary Clinton, as described by Comey, we would be serving time in Leavenworth.”

Former FBI official I.C. Smith knows a thing or two about Clinton corruption. After working at FBI headquarters as a section chief in the National Security Division, he retired as special agent in charge of the Little Rock, Ark., field office, where he investigated top Clinton fundraisers for public corruption and even Chinese espionage.

“FBI agents upset with Comey’s decision have every reason to feel that way,” Smith said. “Clearly there was a different standard applied to Clinton.”
“I have no doubt resourceful prosecutors and FBI agents could have come up with some charge that she would have been subject to prosecution,” the 25-year veteran added. “What she did is absolutely abhorrent for anyone who has access to classified information.”

Smith said Congress should subpoena the case’s agents to testify about the direction they received from Comey and their supervisors: “It would be interesting to see what the results would be if those involved with the investigation were questioned under oath.”

Comey made the 25 agents who worked on the case sign nondisclosure agreements. But others say morale has sunk inside the bureau.
“The director is giving the bureau a bad rap with all the gaps in the investigation,” one agent in the Washington field office said. “There’s a perception that the FBI has been politicized and let down the country.”

It's sad - along, of course , with chilling - to see what Comey's really all about. Until this episode, I'd always thought of him as a guy who respected his profession and himself.

It's clear we don't know the full story of how he's been leaned on, which he obviously has.

 

The "A"CA is a perfect example of the contempt Democrats have for the post-American cattle-masses

Last night, on her FNC television show, Megyn Kelly grilled Ezekiel Emmanuel - who is surely running in some kind of contest for Post-American Who Hates Freedom The Most - about the abject failure of the "A"CA.

When the subject turned to premium hikes, he had this to a say: "on average, we do not have higher than 15% increases in the premiums."

Notice he said nothing about areas in which premiums stayed the same, let alone where they decreased.

But it was when they turned to "risk corridors," which is pseudo-wonk-speak for the damn government taking up the slack when insurance companies couldn't cover costs - never mind make a profit - from covering the sick people the damn government made them cover.

Emmanuel ranted about Republicans being responsible for the "A"CA's current dismal state and when pressed for specifics, cited Marco Rubio's elimination of "some of the risk adjustment that actually buffered and helped the insurance companies in this situation."

You think we're so stupid we don't have a clue, or know you know what the del is, you SOB?

According to The New York Times, during the insurance exchange's first year, "losses were so steep that insurance-company requests for risk corridor payments were $2.9 billion."

Of course, any and all government money ultimately comes from taxpayers, so any and all cost covering measures taken to prop up the ACA would be removed from the pockets of working Americans. However, since many of the so-called risk corridors were eliminated, Americans are seeing hikes on the other end of the spectrum--their insurance premiums.

When all is said and done, the money necessary to maintain the bloated behemoth that is the ACA is coming from the exact same place, it's simply taking different avenues. Emanuel can blame Republicans all he wants, but he knows very well that regardless of the means by which the money is acquired, it's all coming from the American taxpayer. 

Confirming what Jonathan Gruber let us know what our overlords think of us.

The Wilkinson letters

The attorney representing Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson worked in cahoots with the damn Justice Department to establish the terms under which the FBI could investigate the entire Clinton email scandal.

Yeah, for real:

Department of Justice (DOJ) officials let the attorney for two of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s closest aides shape the FBI’s investigation into her private email server, including allowing the assistants to destroy official records and laptops.

Four leaders of key House and Senate oversight committees pointed to two June 10, 2016, letters Beth Wilkinson drafted in conjunction with DOJ officials saying the FBI could only review Clinton email archives dated between June 1, 2014, and Feb. 1, 2015, and maintained by the Colorado firm Platte River Networks. The letters also “memorialized” the FBI’s agreement allowing the Clinton aides to destroy their records and laptops.

“The Wilkinson letters raise serious questions about why DOJ would consent to such substantial limitations on the scope of its investigation, and how Director (James) Comey’s statements on the scope of the investigation comport with the reality of what the FBI was permitted to investigate,” the four told Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a letter made public Wednesday. “This is simply astonishing given the likelihood that evidence on the laptops would be of interest to congressional investigators.”

The four included Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Chuck Grassley; House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz; House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte; and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.

 

The DOJ agreed to Wilkinson’s terms after learning Clinton IT tech Paul Combetta used BleachBit to delete Clinton’s emails, “further casting doubt on why the FBI would enter into such a limited evidentiary scope of review with respect to the laptops,” the congressional leaders said.

“These limitations would necessarily have excluded, for example, any emails from Cheryl Mills to Paul Combetta in late 2014 or early 2015 directing the destruction or concealment of federal records,” the congressmen wrote. “Similarly, these limitations would have excluded any email sent or received by Secretary Clinton if it was not sent or received by one of the four email addresses listed, or the email address was altered.”
The DOJ granted immunity to Mills, Samuelson, Combetta, and two other Clinton aides — Bryan Pagliano and John Bentel.

You owe it to yourself to also read Andrew McCarthy's piece about this at NRO:

For anyone who worked in the Justice Department for any length of time, the striking of side deals with a defense lawyer (in this instance, Beth Wilkinson, who represents both Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson) is bracing. Written agreements with the Justice Department (regarding, for example, guilty pleas and cooperation) customarily include a clause explaining that the four corners of the document contain the entirety of the understandings between the parties. This is done precisely because defendants often claim they were enticed into signing the agreement because of this or that side deal purportedly agreed to by the government. The Justice Department likes to be able to say, “We don’t engage in those sorts of shenanigans. The agreement is the single agreement as written.” Why did the Justice Department make side deals in this case (which we’ve been told was treated like any other case . . . except, alas, when it wasn’t)?

More fundamentally, as I’ve been arguing since we learned of the immunity agreements, why did the government grant immunity in the first place? Unfortunately, the question, at this point, is rhetorical. Immunity was granted because the Justice Department would not use the grand jury against Mrs. Clinton. 

Let this sear the forefront of your mind in the remaining days until November 8.

 

Veep debate - initial thoughts

I share the consensus one is finding around the Internet this morning. Pence maintained the upper hand. Regarding Kaine, I have already seen the word "jerk" appear a couple of times, as I have the adjective "unflappable" being applied to Pence.

When Russia came up, Pence spoke for an actual grown-up foreign policy - that is to say, he deviated somewhat from his running mate's spewings to date.

He deftly injected assertions that were clearly generalizations on matters such as the economy in such a way that kept the proceedings from getting in the weeds.

The head-nod and quick taking of a pass on something lobbed his way are among Pence's best-honed politician chops.

Kaine's goofily aggressive demeanor and his obsession with getting in as many Trump attacks between flecks of spittle have been noticed even at the Washington Post.

Is there anything to these rumblings that Pence comported himself with an eye toward 2020? I suppose so, but the fact that he put all his career eggs in the 2016 basket, abandoning a bid for being reelected Indiana governor in mid-campaign, must be considered.

He's kind of stiff and obviously square, but Pence did let the world know last night that conservatism has not completely died.

Speech control at a university named for the father of the Constitution

Yesterday we looked at a school controlling what goes in students' mouths. Now let's have a look at a school controlling what comes out:

Student leaders of this year’s freshman orientation at James Madison University were given a list of 35 things they should avoid saying, including phrases such as “you have such a pretty face,” “love the sinner, hate the sin,” “we’re all part of the human race,” “I treat all people the same,” “it was only a joke,” “I never owned slaves,” and “people just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” among other expressions.

Those phrases and others on the list “widen the diversity gap” and do not “create a safe and inclusive environment,” according to the seven-page handout, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a campus spokesman.

Adapted from Dr. Maura Cullen’s book “35 Dumb Things Well-Intended People Say: Surprising Things We Say that Widen the Diversity Gap,” the list also classifies some compliments and encouraging words, such as calling someone “cute” or saying “I know exactly how you feel,” as a no-no.

Many of the “dumb” statements also pertained to race. “I don’t see color,” “I’m colorblind” and “I don’t see difference. We’re all part of the same race, the human race” were all advised against. “If you are going to live in this country, learn to speak the language” also made the list.

After each phrase, an explanation as to why it should be avoided was given. Expressions on race allegedly make people of color feel invisible and diminish their life experiences, the handout states. Statements of empathy supposedly “shuts the other person down,” it adds. Saying to LBGTQ people “what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your business” is “hurtful and annoying” because it does not acknowledge the quality and depth of their relationship outside the bedroom, the handout states.

The last item on the list warns against labeling something as political correct, calling it “an attempt to shut the other person up.”

James Madison University’s director of communications Bill Wyatt told The College Fix via email that “this was just an exercise, prior to orientation, to get our volunteers to understand how language affects others. The list was not distributed to our first-year students nor were the volunteers instructed not to use the phrases.”

Yet page one of the handout, written by JMU, reads that orientation leaders should “use this handout as a resource” to help accomplish the goal of creating a “safe and inclusive environment for your first year students.”

They were also called upon by the handout to “take some time to reflect on your prejudices and biases, and how that might affect your interactions with students.”

Ruining minds from day one of the process by which minds are supposed to be cultivated.

If the ostensible objective is for the world's great powers to have common aims, what's up with the S-300 system in Syria?

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air looks at not only the speciousness of the Russian claim that this move is a routine security precaution, but also at post-America's gosh-dang-it why-do-you-have-to-go-and-be-counter-productive response:

Russia admitted today that it had installed a new S-300 air defense system in Syria, a story first reported yesterday, but denied it had any other purpose than Russia’s own defenses. The move comes as diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow near collapse, and appears to be intended as a message from Vladimir Putin to Barack Obama:

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it had deployed an S-300 missile system to its Tartus naval base in Syria.

“The missile battery is intended to ensure the safety of the naval base … It is unclear why the deployment of the S-300 caused such alarm among our Western partners,” the ministry said in a statement.

State-owned TASS offered a more detailed apologia for the deployment of the S-300, including a claim that it’s not actually a new move, nor the most advanced system it’s placed:

“Let me remind you that S-300 is an exceptionally defensive system and it poses no threat to anybody. Moreover, a ship-born equivalent of that system – called Fort was present in the region before. The Black Sea Fleet’s guided missile cruiser The Moskva is armed with it,” Konashenkov said.

Russia last year moved to Syria its newest air defense system S-400. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said in the middle of last March, S-400 systems and short-range systems Pantsir would remain on permanent combat duty in Syria.

Well, maybe. Both the S-300 and S-400 systems operate as surface-to-air defenses against traditional air attacks, but perhaps more pointedly both also operate as anti-ballistic missile defense systems. Recall that Russia objected so strenuously to those systems in eastern Europe that the Obama administration backed out of a deal with Poland and Czechia to install our own there as part of a strategy to contain Iran. Adding more components to their existing capability in Syria isn’t just a business-as-usual event, and makes our retreat in 2009 look even more foolish in retrospect.

Moreover, what threat prompted this defense? Ostensibly, the Russians are fighting Syrian rebels, militias without air forces or any ballistic missile capability. Clearly they’re not worried about the rebels achieving air supremacy in the area around Tartus. It’s meant as a message to the US, and it presents a new threat to our aircraft and the anti-ISIS coalition’s aircraft flying sorties in the region. However, the stationary S-300 probably presents less of a threat to the eastern sorties, as its range is generally limited to 200 km less, than the mobile S-400, with a range of 400 km. The introduction of the latter system was more provocative than the fixed-range installation of the S-300 is, all factors considered. Still, the message is clear to the US — stay out of western Syria and don’t mess with Bashar Assad.

So much for Hillary Clinton’s reset button, eh? John Kerry ripped Russia earlier today for its reliance on projections of power rather than diplomacy, and their support of Assad’s criminal regime . . . 

And he goes on to remind us that the Most Equal Comrade snarkily said to Mitt Romney in one of the 2012 debates, "The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back."

This is the kind of clown show that is supposed to keep you safe in your bed at night.

His point makes impeccable - and nearly unbearably painful - sense to me, but I can't bring myself to sign up for his solution

First Things columnist Peter Spiliakos, writing at NRO, goes through the ins and outs of why Madame BleachBit and Squirrel-Hair are both horrible and of no use to post-America, and then really rubs our nose in the gravel by reminding us that demographic trends are by no means our friend:

Some Trump supporters argue that, because of demographic change, this is our “last chance” to stop the Left, but they are mistaken. If taken at their word, that means that Trump’s victory would be not our last chance, but our last hurrah. Demographic change, with or without amnesty, is baked into the 2020 cake. Any conservative recovery would require a coalition that combines the mass of Trump voters with non-whites whose answers to survey questions places them on the center-right but who vote for Democrats in elections. If Trump had never been born, we would face the same problem on the same schedule.

What happens if Trump wins and — as I think would be likely — makes fabulous deals with incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on judges and immigration? I expect that Trump’s principled supporters will join us Never Trumpers to stand up against him (even though their leverage will be minimal to nonexistent and they will draw Trump’s hate). But the opportunists and the party apparatchiks will stick with President Mister Trump and tell us that we are traitors, and that we will get even worse judges, amnesties, and guest-worker programs with the Democrats. There are also the inevitable disasters that will arise from Trump’s erratic personality.

The result of all this will be civil war in which all sides will lose. As Ross Douthat wrote, in the event of a failed Trump presidency, the general public will not distinguish between conservative factions. They will not distinguish the false conservatism of a traitorous Trump from the hard-edged tea party-politics of Ted Cruz or the pro-middle-class constitutionalism of Mike Lee. In the short term, all will be smashed. By 2020, any voter under 40 will be able to remember only two Republican presidencies — both failures.

The downside risk of Trump is not just that we get the worst of Trump. It is that we get the worst of Trump followed by a president from a radicalizing Democratic party — and probably another overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. Then, you shall see national transformation.

Even after such a succession of disasters, we conservatives (Trump supporters and Trump opponents) will still have the responsibility to work together to build a better politics. The hour will be later and the ruin will be more complete, but we would still have the duty to redeem what we can of the situation. That responsibility is what endures. Most conservatives will vote for Trump. Some will not. I will write in someone’s name. But if Trump wins, his principled critics and his principled supporters should work together to help him when he is right and oppose him when he is wrong. If Trump loses, those same groups should work together to build a post-Trump Right that addresses the concerns of Trump’s working-class supporters and earns the votes of persuadable Americans who could not be persuaded to vote for Trump. Whatever happens, we should recognize one another as friends divided by prudential differences in difficult circumstances. Whatever happens, we should reconcile on the basis of our shared principles — because whatever happens, we will share the same fate.

That last part - his prescription for a way forward - is where I get off the bus.

Early on in his piece, he identifies Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich as contemptible figures, and rightly so, but goes on to make much of how many Trump supporters are people of integrity and intellectual clarity.

Mr. Spiliakos, you needed to go much farther in naming names. Laura Ingraham. Ann Coulter, Conrad Black. Wayne Allen Root. And you needed to point out how poisonous they have been to the future of conservatism.

It's going to be far more difficult - make that far less possible - than you're making out for righties to do a kumbaya after whichever disaster befalls us at the end of this horrible year.

What you are right about is how much darker things are going to get from here. What you need to see more clearly is how needed the ability to see things clearly is going to be when it gets that dark.

Why our cultural rot matters regarding our national security

You know it and I know it.

The whole "transgendered" push is utter madness.

There are two genders, make and female. Anyone who says otherwise is being infantile and delusional. Whoever made up that "cis" term, not to mention all the "ze"-type pronouns, is operating at the level of a second-grader at best.

Five years ago, the notion of transgendered bathrooms seemed silly and snickers-inducing to effectively all who had heard of it. Now it is the stuff of NBA boycotts and Justice Department intrusions into state-level policy.

But now it is putting us in mortal peril:

The story is now that the Pentagon has given the nod for transgender troops to receive gender alteration surgery to better fit their personal identity. According to the Daily Mail, things can get pretty expensive.

However, only active service members will be eligible for gender-reassignment surgery which can cost anywhere between $7,000 and $50,000 per operation, as experts say the move could cost up to $8.4 million a year, Circa Politics reports.

While this may seem like great news for the transgendered, it's never enough for the social justice community. The National Center for Transgender Equality believes that this can only really be a good thing if veterans and their families can get the surgeries as well.

For what purpose, or how this further benefits our military, I'm not sure. What I can see is people signing up for the surgery, then discovering the world of the military is not a place of safe spaces, and identity politics. In fact, they will discover it's the opposite.

What worries me is that instead of conforming to the world they signed up for, they will complain and spark activists and organizations into making even more changes to the military that further cater to the feelings, and emotions of soldiers, turning them into the whimpering, easily offended, and highly emotional people you find on college campuses and activist groups.

If you don't think that the social justice community will attempt this, or have no chance of succeeding, I'll remind you that nothing is safe from the social justice agenda. Infiltrating, and changing is what they do.

Furthermore, the money being used for this procedure isn't coming out of thin air.

"The DOD is so under budget, so where is the money coming from? They need to prioritize the funds for guys that are in distress, and need it," says veteran and Sgt. Phillip McChulloch.

Our military is what stands between this nation's security and well being, and a world that would love to do some very awful things to it. Our might is a deterrent. The threat that we may come knocking keeps much of the world in line. Should that same military find itself in the same position as colleges, businesses, and organizations consistently beholden to the social justice agenda, then that powerful wall of force will crumble.

According to Army Col. Don Bartholomew, it already is.

"The military has become an institution for social experiments and, as a result, the military has undergone a number of changes to regulations with regard to women in combat, transgender rights and other issues," Bartholomew said. "None of these P.C. actions were combat-effective or readiness-driven. In fact, the opposite is happening. Deployability, readiness and morale are all adversely affected."

Just what we don't need at a time like this:

RUSSIA is holding a massive evacuation drill for more than 40million people to prepare for nuclear war.

More than 200,000 emergency services personnel and soldiers will use 50,000 pieces of equipment during the massive civil defence exercise.

The former Soviet nation is ramping up fears over nuclear war and blaming the West for the unsettling possibility of a conflict.
As international tension builds following attacks in Syria, Russian state officials are preparing terrified citizens for a nuclear war – which they say would be started by America.

Today’s exercise is being run by EMERCOM, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. 

Civil Defence Department director Oleg Manuilov told Interfax: "Training will be held from October 4 to 7 and will be attended by more than 40 million people, more than 200 thousand professionals rescue units and 50 thousand pieces of equipment."

This follows the suspension of the weapons-grade plutonium disposal deal between Russia and post-America, as well as suspension of bilateral communications about Syria, as well as large-scale Russia-China war games in the South China Sea in September, as well as drills involving 12,500 Russian troops, fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles in Crimea.

It also follows 31 unsafe and / or unprofessional interactions the US Navy has experienced with Iran so far this year, as well as three missile tests by that nation in the last year.

It also follows the fifth and most powerful North Korean nuclear-weapon test a few weeks ago.

This points up the counterproductive nature of compartmentalization of the challenges facing this gravely imperiled country into "social issues," national security issues and economic issues.

Everything starts with the so-called "social issues." A nation that can't even come together to say, "There are only two genders; case closed," let alone denounce the marginalization of, and making legal trouble for, Christians who insist on adhering to a definition of marriage considered basic throughout the world throughout history until less than a decade ago, let alone discontinue funding to an organization that murders its fetal citizens and sells their organs is a nation that won't have the will to defend itself against mortal threats.

We could, at this juncture, explore the question of whether either of the two viable presidential candidates has any interest in restoring sanity to this situation, but I doubt that it matters much. The next president may well be handed on day one a crisis too terrifying to contemplate  that transpires between now and the third week in January.

If you think post-American life is grotesque now . . .

 

This is what you get when government runs schools - today's edition

Leviathan controls the kiddies' lives, right down to what is going in their mouths:

More than 30 parents in Durham, Ontario shared stories about teachers telling their kids what items they could and could not eat, and even confiscating food, Canada's The Star reported last Thursday. Teachers reportedly told children their parent-given foods were "too unhealthy" to eat.

Tami DeVries said that when her son took his lunch to kindergarten, it was confiscated. A teacher took away his kielbasa, cheese, and Wheat Thins crackers, replacing them with Cheerios. Alicia Nesbitt reported that her stepdaughter, in first grade, had chips removed from her lunch during the first week of school.

“She came home and told me they weren’t a ‘healthy choice,’” Nesbitt said. “That may be true, but the rest of her lunch and snacks were very healthy and it’s up to parents if they want to put a little treat in for their kids. Unless the school wants to provide lunches, I don’t really think it’s their business.”

Janae Brangman recalled several times last where, when her daughter, then in first grade, had her entire lunch sent home because it contained pizza. The school didn't have a problem with pizza per se, after all it has designated pizza days. Her daughter just needed to eat her pizza on the right day.

Local mom Tami DeVries says when her son was in kindergarten his lunch of kielbasa, cheese and Wheat Thins crackers was confiscated and replaced with Cheerios, while Alicia Nesbitt was “furious” that her stepdaughter, currently in Grade 1 with the Durham Catholic District School Board, had chips removed from her lunch the first week of school.
"It's not like he had chips or a chocolate bar," explained Eliana Daoust, a mother of two. The offending piece of food? A snack-size banana bread. Her son was told not to eat a small piece of banana bread for his morning snack, because it contained chocolate chips.

"He came home with a chart (listing healthy snack ideas) and told me he and the teacher talked about it and healthy choices," Daoust said. "She also sent a note to me. I was really, really, really mad for several reasons." 

The Durham District school board doesn't see a problem.

Reset much?

Our overlords sure are wizzes at diplomacy. Post-America's relations with other major world powers get more unicorns and rainbows all the time:

Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended a deal with the United States on Monday on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium because of "unfriendly" acts by Washington.

In a decree, Putin accused the U.S. of creating "a threat to strategic stability" and Russia said the U.S. failed "to ensure the implementation of its obligations to utilize surplus weapons-grade plutonium," Reuters reported.

The two countries are currently at odds over the Ukraine, where Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and the five-year conflict in Syria, according to Reuters.

Putin said in the decree that Russia had to take "urgent measures to defend the security of the Russian Federation," the BBC reported.
Under the 2000 agreement, the U.S. and Russia is expected to get rid of 34 metric tons of plutonium by burning it in reactors, according to the BBC. The deal came into effect in 2010 and was signed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"For quite a long time, Russia had been implementing it (the agreement) unilaterally," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

"Now, taking into account this tension (in relations) in general ... the Russian side considers it impossible for the current state of things to last any longer," Preskov said, according to Reuters.

That's why we pay the likes of Global-Test and Madame BleachBit the big bucks.

Feminism has been leading to this step all along

The demonization of rational rigor and empirical observation, that is.

College science classes are hostile to women and minorities because they use the scientific method, which assumes people can find reliable truths about the natural world through careful and sustained experimentation, concludes a recent dissertation by a doctoral candidate at the University of North Dakota.

Laura Parson, a student in the university’s education department, reviewed eight science class syllabi at a “Midwest public university” and said she discovered in them a hidden hostility to women and minorities:

Initial exploration of the STEM syllabi in this study did not reveal overt references to gender, such as through the use of gendered pronouns. However, upon deeper review, language used in the syllabi reflects institutionalized STEM teaching practices and views about knowledge that are inherently discriminatory to women and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging, a view of teaching that promotes the idea of a passive student, and by promoting a chilly climate that marginalizes women.

Even though the course syllabi contained no “gendered assumptions” about students or other overtly discriminatory implications, Parson writes, they display prejudice against women and minorities because they refuse to entertain the possibility that “scientific knowledge is subjective.”

Throughout her dissertation, Parson assumes and asserts that women and minorities are uniquely challenged by the idea that science can provide objective information about the natural world. This is an unfair assumption, she says, because the concept of objectivity is too hard for women and minorities to understand. “[N]otions of absolute truth and a single reality” are “masculine,” she says, referring to poststructuralist feminist theory.

Instead of promoting the idea that knowledge is constructed by the student and dynamic, subject to change as it would in a more feminist view of knowledge, the syllabi reinforce the larger male-dominant view of knowledge as one that students acquire and use make the correct decision.

So, in other words, using logic and the scientific method are inherently “male” ways of knowing that women and minorities cannot employ. Rather than rejecting this insulting view of women and minorities’ intellectual and rational capacities, Parson uses it as a pretext to advocate that science classes abandon the scientific method itself (which rests on the assumption that truth is unchanging and knowable) and all other “male” forms of oppression, such as “weed-out courses, courses that grade on a curve, a competitive environment, reliance on lecture as a teaching method, an individualistic culture, and comprehensive exams.” 

Further, hidden inside these syllabi are imperative statements that — and I am not making this up — Parson says contribute to a “chilly climate” for women and minority students. A “chilly climate,” she says, is “a classroom environment that is not welcoming, inclusive or supportive for women.” (Note, please, her latent bias against cold climates and their inhabitants.)

She gives an example: “the competitive, difficult chilly climate was reinforced in the syllabi through the use of unfriendly and tough language, ‘Do not ask me to figure out your grade standing. I’ll be glad to show you how to do it yourself, but the homepage includes that explanation already.'” Brrrr. How dare professors assume you’re computer literate and can do basic problem-solving. 

Intellectual weakness as virtue.

Human advancement is screeching to a halt.

Let's check in with the "A"CA

Disaster looms in the land of lakes:

The Minnesota state insurance commissioner says the state's Obamacare insurance exchange is "near collapse" and to save it, insurers must raise their rates on average by 60% and allow the companies to limit enrollment.

Bloomberg:

“It’s in an emergency situation -- we worked hard and avoided a collapse.” Rothman said in a telephone interview. “It’s a stopgap for 2017.”
On average, rates in the state will rise by about 60 percent, said Shane Delaney, a spokesman for MNSure, the state’s marketplace for Obamacare plans. About 250,000 people, or 5 percent of the state’s population, were covered under plans bought on the individual market, including plans bought on the Affordable Care Act markets as well as outside it.
Many people in the exchanges are eligible for tax credits to help reduce the cost of the premiums, Rothman’s office said, though those subsidies cut off once a family of four has an income of $97,200 or more. The law requires all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty. In Minnesota, a low-cost plan for a single person last year had annual premiums of about $2,800, before any tax credits, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Most of the insurers in Minnesota’s individual market also plan to limit enrollment, to avoid taking on too many customers from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which is leaving the exchanges after financial losses, the state said. Taking on too many new customers could harm insurers’ finances or overwhelm the doctors and hospitals that they contract with.
Jonathan Gold, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Minnesotans would still have affordable options for coverage next year. “Headline rate changes do not reflect what these consumers actually pay because tax credits reduce the cost of coverage below the sticker price,” Gold said in a statement.
Of the about 70,000 people who had insurance on the Obamacare markets this year, 63 percent got subsidies last year, according to the commissioner’s office.

Mr. Gold is delusional. Thousands of families in Minnesota will bear the full brunt of premium increases. Even those who receive subsidies will pay more for their insurance this year. The idea of "affordable" health insurance in Minnesota is a cruel joke.

The recent exit of Blue Cross Blue Shield from the exchange has reduced consumer options to the bare minimum. This is something we are going to see in other states with federal exchanges as companies can no longer bear the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses they are experiencing and pull out of the program.

Follows on the heels if Indiana University Health leaving that state's exchange, Aetna, Humana and United Health pulling out of most exchanges, and the CBO estimating that over the next decade the "A"CA will add $1.4 trillion to the nation's debt.

You have to admire the elegance with which the overlords have executed their Cloward-Piven  designs.

Only himself to blame

Squirrel-Hair is the architect of his own sinking.

Michael Goodwin at the New York Post is a good example of someone whose principles are reasonably in order but for some unfortunate reason developed an enthusiasm for S-H, but is now having to publicly express his frustration.

Dude, you're the one who writes this in your column today. Are you really holding out for your man to get serious before November?

n less than four months, a new president will take the oath and swear to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is Twitter fighting a former beauty queen.

Among potential supporters gobsmacked by Trump’s latest screwball turn, some believe it proves he doesn’t want to win the White House. Their theory holds that the possibility of victory must terrify him, so he is intentionally making himself unelectable.

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As evidence, they point to his habit of self-destructing just when things look best. Then as now, Trump pushed the race to almost even before taking a detour to wage a fight that made no sense.

And it's not just Twitter. The guy carried it to television:

On Tuesday, Trump called into Fox News to essentially repeat the behavior Clinton had raised: He said Machado "gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem." 

On Wednesday, Trump went back on Fox to tell Bill O'Reilly that Machado should thank him for demanding she lose a few pounds: "I saved her job," he said. 

On Thursday, Trump's own campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told "The View" that she had personally reprimanded him for his language regarding women, even as she defended him over the Machado story. 

Another S-H water-carrier is publicly nervous about all this:

"You can't tweet at 3 o'clock in the morning. Period. There's no excuse. Ever. Not if you're going to be president of the United States," former Speaker Newt Gingrich, another of Trump's most prominent supporters, said on Fox News.

And while the argument can - should - be made that our nation's tax code is too convoluted and driven by the leviathan's confiscatory zeal, given S-H's various types of mouthings-off about his and others' tax behavior, the New York Times's October-surprise release of his tax returns causes him problems of his own making:

The New York Times story alone, which both reported that Trump declared he had lost a staggering $916 million in 1995 tax forms, and that experts believe that loss could have allowed him to pay no federal income taxes for up to 18 years, fed into three lines of attack that Hillary Clinton had used to needle him in Monday's debate. 

One: That his refusal to release his taxes suggested he was concealing something important. Two: That his returns might show his business acumen was overstated. Three: That he paid little or no taxes despite his vast wealth. 

And it lent credence to her larger argument that Trump is a heartless scrooge who left a trail of financial destruction on his path to wealth, and who according to the Times even refused to check off a box on his tax form to donate to a veterans' memorial fund. 

As if that wasn't enough, Trump has a long history of both bragging about his efforts to avoid paying taxes while shaming others for paying too little.

And it's not like the Machado business and the tax revelations are the only bad turns he had last week:

There was a Newsweek expose that alleged Trump's businesses had illegal dealings in Cuba — some details of which Trump's campaign manager appeared to confirm on television. There was Trump's rambling debate answer on nuclear weapons, where he seemed to announce what would be a historic shift towards a "no first use" policy only to contradict himself in the next sentence, alarming national security experts days later. 

The Washington Post continued its investigation into Trump's charitable foundation. The Post has already found compelling evidence Trump previously violated the law by using the foundation to settle lawsuits against his private businesses. 

All the while, an array of old comments by Trump about women over the years, from ogling and hiring a teenage waitress to promising his then-17 year old daughter he wouldn't date anyone younger than her, resurfaced in various outlets. As did a lawsuit alleging he demanded unattractive women working at one of his golf resorts be fired and replaced with prettier women. 

USA Today, the country's widest circulation newspaper, broke with its 34-year policy of neutrality in the presidential race to declare Trump "unfit for the presidency." Several historically Republican newspapers endorsed Clinton outright, along with an editorial board member at the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz. 

Meanwhile, Forbes downgraded Trump's net worth by $800 million dollars. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can have at least a paltry degree of respect for conservatives I know to be principled who have decided to rally around the S-H candidacy since he became the official candidate of the Pubs. They're wrong about that decision, but they are still people with basic clarity of vision. It's the ones who had long assumed a conservative mantle, but beginning in the summer of 2015 made very high-profile displays of giddiness about a rising populist / nationalist wave - and even turned on their supposed brethren at National Review, RedState and the Weekly Standard for not getting on board - for whom I harbor nothing but scorn.

It is they, not any NeverTrumpers, who brought us to this nightmarish juncture.

Yet another reminder of the Most Equal Comrade's West-hatred

No doubt if pressed on the matter of wiping the word "Israel," which had followed the word "Jerusalem," out of the press release about the MEC's address at the Shimon Peres memorial service, the overlords will point to the US always having had its embassy in Tel Aviv.

Doesn't wash. The service took place at the national cemetery in West Jerusalem. That's because Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and had been for thousands of years.

Mount Herzl is in West Jerusalem and, as Bill Kristol noted, has been the national cemetery for Israel for over 60 years. It's Israel. It is the capital of Israel.

Obama and the rest of his anti-Israel cabal refuse to say so, and have long refused, on the thin premise that it "presupposes" the outcome of peace talks. As the Free Beacon reports, this is an especially offensive policy in light of the circumstance of this visit.

One senior congressional aide who works on Middle East issues told the Free Beacon that the White House’s actions are offensive and out of line, particularly in light of Peres’ recent death.

“For the White House proactively reject Jerusalem as the capital of Israel after President Obama’s remarks memorializing one of the state’s founders is beyond insulting,” the source said. 

They were in Israel's national cemetery in their capital city laying a former president to rest. That's what all those flags are about in that picture of you, Mr. President. That is Israel. If not there, then nowhere. 

Obama's White House is presupposing wiping them off the map.

The MEC clearly places a higher priority on cementing his legacy as He Who Ushered In The Age Of Unicorns And Rainbows.

On refusing to surrender in the culture war

Damon Linker, a columnist at The Week, is an odd duck ideologically. If you read a few of his pieces, you get the sense that conservatism has considerable appeal for him, but he's one of these guys who feels compelled to resist the urge to fully embrace it. It's as if he's afraid the wackier outposts around conservatism's fringes would somehow taint his integrity.

Funny, it's not something I or most conservatives worry about.

But his main reason for opposing Donald Trump - a position I'm inclined to share - is admirable, and is rooted in conservatism as commonly defined:

  . . . there is at least one respect in which Trump and his movement could never be considered conservative. This is the aspect of conservatism that has persisted down through the decades and the centuries from Edmund Burke to Reagan and beyond. It's this aspect of conservatism that appealed greatly to me as a young man, and that still maintains a grip on my soul to this day, long after I began voting for Democrats and defending (most of) their policies. It's also what contributes to Trump's persistent difficulties with Mormons — the most consistently and authentically conservative voting bloc in the country.

This is the conservatism of forms and formality, order, modesty, nobility, moral rectitude, private and public honor, and steadfast adherence to standards of right conduct and traditional restraints. Trumpist populism, with its roots in the sleaziest side of tabloid culture, including the world of reality TV in which Trump honed his public persona, could never be mistaken for conservative in this rarified sense.

To get a sense for why, let me share my experience at a dinner of conservative writers and intellectuals in 1999, shortly after Bill Clinton managed to survive the first presidential impeachment in over 130 years. There was genuine sorrow in the room, mainly about what Clinton had done to debase the office of the presidency. Everyone sitting around the table worried about young people, in many cases their own children, growing up in a world in which the married president of the United States had engaged in such sordid acts with a much-younger intern in the Oval Office and lied about it under oath — and in which all of the scummy details had been publicized for all to hear and know. It was a moment, they thought, of national disgrace.

My response to these laments was decidedly mixed. On the one hand, as the imperfect conservative I was even then, I thought the reactions overwrought. I never supported the impeachment, and I didn’t feel the same weight of despair about the outcome. I was mainly relieved that the effort to remove Clinton from office had failed.

But I nonetheless admired and respected the moral seriousness of my dinner companions. They believed in high standards, strove to live up to them in their own lives, and felt genuine disgust and dejection when they witnessed their country’s noblest institutions degraded by ignoble behavior.

That, for me, will always be the core of conservatism. 

In another recent column, he was clearly striving for that oh-so-objective-I'm-just-callin'-'em-as'I-see-'em  stance as he proclaimed the culture wars over:

Once Ronald Reagan won the White House and the modern-day Republican electoral coalition coalesced, with millions of evangelical Protestant voters (who as recently as 1976 had thrown their support to Democrat Jimmy Carter) joining the GOP, the issues and rhetoric surrounding cultural questions had shifted in the direction of traditional morality and religiosity. The cultural war had become a battle against the sexual revolution waged in the name of faith.

Abortion rights were of foremost importance, but other issues also galvanized the ascendant religious right, including the rise of divorce and illegitimacy, the mainstreaming of homosexuality, the growing prevalence of pornography and an openly sexualized popular culture, the specter of cloning and stem-cell research, and, last but not least, the growing privatization of religious faith and thoroughgoing secularization of American public life.
That's the culture war that was completely absent from Monday night's debate. There are several overlapping reasons for its demise:

• As with vast, expensive military campaigns for democratization, the culture war was discredited by its association with the ineptitude of George W. Bush's presidency.
• The increasing secularization of the electorate, especially among millennials, has meant that fewer and fewer voters are animated by the issues that drove an older generation to the polls.
• The rout in the fight against same-sex marriage has been so decisive that even many who remain nominally committed to the religious right's agenda feel thoroughly demoralized and dejected.
• Donald Trump's stunning electoral success has demonstrated to all not only that a thrice-married philanderer who displays no religious piety whatsoever can win the GOP nomination, but also that he can then receive the support of roughly 94 percent of white evangelical Republicans in the general election.

Trump called the religious right's bluff, and no Republican running for president will again feel the need to make an appeal to the dwindling number of conservative religious voters.

None of which means that the issues wrapped up with the religious culture war have gone away entirely. Worries about an ongoing or looming assault on religious freedom persist among many social conservatives. And abortion remains a highly potent issue at the state level, with legislatures across the South and Midwest moving to restrict abortion rights (and the courts often blocking their efforts).

But at the national level — especially when it comes to presidential politics — the culture war is well and truly over. 

Maybe he feels he's doing those of us who have been waging it a courtesy, that we need the bracing cold splash of bluntly conveyed reality so we can proceed on a factual basis.

Is he right?

The sewer that is our current cultural environment would pretty uniformly substantiate it.

Such a resignation-based conclusion was surely a main motivator for Rod Dreher to write his new book, which is due to come out in March. 

From the Amazon page description:

The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West, and only the willfully blind refuse to see it. From the outside, American churches are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they are being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the triumph of gay marriage and the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicate, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age.

The bad news is that the roots of religious decline run deeper than most Americans realize. The good news is that the blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline is older still. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire, and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict's monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. What do ordinary 21st century Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- have to learn from the teaching and example of this great spiritual father? That they must read the signs of the times, abandon hope for a political solution to our civilization's problems, and turn their attention to creating resilient spiritual centers that can survive the coming storm. Whatever their Christian tradition, they must draw on the secrets of Benedictine wisdom to build up the local church, create countercultural schools based on the classical tradition, rebuild family life, thicken communal bonds, and develop survival strategies for doctors, teachers, and others on the front lines of persecution.

Now is a time of testing, when believers will learn the difference between shallow optimism and Christian hope. However dark the shadow falling over the West, the light of Christianity need not flicker out. It will not be easy, but Christians who are brave enough to face the religious decline, reject trendy solutions, and return to ancient traditions will find the strength not only to survive, but to thrive joyfully in the post-Christian West. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resistance and resilience to face a hostile modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to the complacency of contemporary Christianity, Dreher shows why those in all churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren't going to make it.

This has appeal to me, but also brings up an uneasiness I posted about the other day: where is the line of clear demarcation beyond which people of faith are indulging in escapism? It's true that we are to be in the world but not of it, but on the other hand, we are called to go and make disciples of all nations.

Then there is the basic undeniable sadness that many people in our society, at least those above a certain age, feel for the loss of the whole idea of the cultivation of virtues like honor, modesty, humility, wisdom, industriousness and valor. Without them, there is no real art. No sense of romance. There's not even any real humor or levity. Just the buzzsaw of indoctrination and hedonism, coming right for our brains.

Clearly, the most important thing to do in this moment is to pray.

Still, something in me is not ready to concur with Linker.

It may be very, very late in the day, but I still see a sliver of light on the horizon.