Archive for 2014
November 4, 2014
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Why Do White Feminists Want To Put Minority Men In Jail?
SAD REFLECTIONS IN THE WAPO: Where did Obama go wrong? I dunno. By being inexperienced, arrogant, narcissistic, and politically thuggish? Among many other reasons.
EVERYTHING HE TOUCHES: Michael Barone: Obama Will Leave The Dems In Shambles.
Before the election results are in, and keeping in mind that there may be some unpleasant surprises for one party or the other — or both — it’s possible to assess how the Democratic Party has fared under the leadership of President Obama. To summarize the verdict: not so well.
By one metric it has done very badly indeed. When Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, there were 257 Democrats in the House of Representatives. Going into this election there are 201 (including two vacant Democratic seats). . . .
Why has the Democratic Party fared so poorly under Obama’s leadership? I can see two reasons: one ideological, one demographic.
Start with demographics. The Obama coalition, even more than Bill Clinton’s, is based on overwhelming support from constituencies with some conflicting interests. It’s a top and bottom coalition: he carried the very lowest and highest income and education groups, while his support sagged among those in the middle.
His strongest groups are blacks and gentry liberals — the same two groups he gathered together when he got to design his own state Senate district in 2002. Majorities of both groups still support him, but perhaps with diminished enthusiasm. Black crowds unexpectedly started walking out before he finished talking at recent events in Prince George’s County, Md., and Milwaukee.
Moreover, the geographic clustering of blacks and gentry liberals in central cities, sympathetic suburbs and university towns puts the Obama Democrats at a disadvantage in equal-population districts where Republican voters are spread more evenly around.
Meanwhile, the thrill is clearly gone among two groups that backed him heavily in 2008 and 2012, and which will inevitably be larger parts of the electorate in the future: Hispanics and Millennials.
Well, they haven’t exactly prospered under Obama.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Lies, Damned Lies, and College Admissions.
THAT’S OKAY, IT WASN’T MEANT TO LAST PAST TODAY ANYWAY: By the way, Obama’s ISIS strategy has all but collapsed in Syria.
JOEL KOTKIN: Rich Trustafarians Want To Tell You How To Live.
One place we can see this is in the cultural sphere. Hollywood, in particular, has always had a weakness for helping its own. Dorothy Parker once noted that “the only ‘ism’ Hollywood cares about is plagiarism.” But increasingly there is another “ism”—nepotism. And the trend can be seen across the the entertainment industry in such families as the Paltrows, Fondas, Douglases, and Smiths. You can see the wheels turning when someone like Jay Z puts his newborn baby’s cries—no doubt a budding rapper—on his songs.
But some of the most obvious places where dynastic power can be seen are on the executive side of the business. In the early years, the big powers were often rough, self-made men such as Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer. People like David Geffen who worked their way up from the mailroom are increasingly rare. Today the hottest new producers tend to come from the richest classes, such as William Pohlad, son and heir of a Minnesota billionaire; Gigi Pritzker, an heir to the Pritzker fortune; and Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s 10 richest men.
At the same time, the media itself, particularly in its most visible manifestations, is increasingly populated by the children of prominent politicians and by those who come from the ranks of the plutocracy. Middle-class parents may have to grind their teeth and empty their wallets as their kids work in unpaid internships in pricey Gotham, but this is not the fate of the offspring of the Reagans, Bushes, Clintons, McCains, Pelosis, or Kennedys, all of whom have ascended to levels of media power that mere mortals take years to achieve, if ever. If you need a show for millennials, why not hand it over to Ronan Farrow, the offspring of celebrity parents. In my time, generally speaking, the icons of a generation were likely to be outsiders; the “screwed generation” of millennials get to have theirs defined by whose birthright landed them on third base.
But perhaps the biggest long-term impact may come from the nonprofit institutions that the wealthy fund. Nonprofit foundations have been growing rapidly in size and influence since the late ’20s, paralleling the expansion of other parts of the clerisy like the universities and government. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent to more than 1.5 million. Their total employment has also soared: By 2010, 10.7 million people were employed by nonprofits—more than the number of people working in the construction and finance sectors combined—and the category has expanded far more rapidly than the rest of the economy, adding two million jobs since 2002. By 2010, nonprofits accounted for an economy of roughly $780 billion and paid upwards of 9 percent of wages and 10 percent of jobs in the overall economy.
Nonprofits, due to their accumulated wealth, are able to thrive even in tough times, adding jobs even in the worst years of the Great Recession.
The nonprofit sector is ripe for closer regulation.
IN THE LAND WHERE COMPLAINING EQUALS POWER, THE NONCOMPLAINER IS SHUT OUT: Yes, men struggle with work-life balance, they just don’t tell women.
PHILIP KLEIN: Beware A Wounded Obama.
I HEAR THIS IN MARGE SIMPSON’S VOICE: The New York Times Became a Student Newspaper So Slowly, I Hardly Even Noticed.
November 3, 2014
KEN WHITE: #TeamHarpy and “Taking One For The Team.” Punch back twice as hard.
ELLEN WEINTRAUB, PARTISAN HITWOMAN: FEC Commissioner Weintraub Launches Partisan Hit on Partisan Network on the Eve of the Election. “By the way, Weintraub is married to William G. Dauster, who is one of Democrat Sen. Harry Reid’s chiefs of staff.”
The FEC is unconstitutional and should be abolished. Weintraub should be ashamed, and should be shunned by all decent people.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, IT WOULD BE OPEN SEASON ON BLACK WOMEN: New emails show White House role in Sherrod ouster.
A 2010 email from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says his department was “waiting for the go-ahead” from the White House before accepting the resignation of employee Shirley Sherrod, according to newly released documents, despite Obama administration assertions that her ouster was Vilsack’s decision alone.
The email, which was made public Friday in an ongoing federal court case over the matter, shed more light on the evening of July 19, 2010, when the USDA hastily asked Sherrod to resign after a video showing her making supposed racist remarks surfaced on a conservative website. Her dismissal turned into a racial firestorm after it became clear that the video had been edited and her remarks were meant to tell a story of reconciliation.
Both the White House and Vilsack have repeatedly said the agriculture secretary made the decision to ask for Sherrod’s resignation without White House input. The emails, along with earlier emails obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act in 2010 and 2012, make it apparent that Vilsack wanted Sherrod to leave the department and ordered her resignation. But a newly-released email sent by Vilsack himself suggests he was awaiting a decision from White House officials on how to proceed.
I never doubted that there was White House involvement in that decision. Nor did anyone else who was paying attention.
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“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Susan Rice Mocks Israeli Ambassador: ‘He’s Too Busy Travelling to Sheldon Adelson’s Events.’ Everything’s about domestic politics to these people. Everything. Well, there’s also the anti-semitism.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Lena Dunham Threatens To Sue Truth Revolt For Quoting Her; Lena Dunham may not like our interpretation of her book, but unfortunately for her and her attorneys, she wrote that book. “We refuse to withdraw our story or apologize for running it, because quoting a woman’s book does not constitute a ‘false’ story, even if she is a prominent actress and left-wing activist. . . . In particular, the letter from Ms. Dunham’s lawyers labeled as ‘false and defamatory’ our claims that she ‘experiment[ed] sexually with her younger sister Grace,’ ‘experimented with her six-year younger sister’s vagina,’ and ‘use[d] her little sister at times essentially as a sexual outlet.’ In her desire to curb First Amendment freedoms, Dunham’s attorneys threatened legal action seeking ‘millions of dollars; punitive damages which can be a multiple of up to ten times actual damages; and injunctive relief.’ We assume that both Ms. Dunham and her attorneys are capable of reading Ms. Dunham’s book, which contains the following direct excerpts.”
The legal threats seem unwise under the circumstances.
UPDATE: Jim Treacher: Lena Dunham Cancels Tour Dates After Evil Right-Wingers Quote Her Book.
Related: Don Surber: Conservatives out Lena Dunham as a pervert.
LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: A sexual harassment policy that nearly ruined my life.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO HAZE! Two Medgar Evers College freshmen have blown the whistle on a CUNY sorority’s secret hazing. “After the repulsive ritual, members told the shaken girls to ‘lighten up.'”
THERE REALLY ARE TWO AMERICAS: OBAMA’S OLIGARCH-DONORS, AND EVERYONE ELSE. Struggling in the shadow of Silicon Valley wealth.
WISCONSIN’S “DEEP STATE” AT WORK: Wisconsin Mailman Accused of Trashing Hundreds of Pro-Republican Mailers.
PERSONALLY, I SLEEP LIKE A BABY: Here’s Why You Can’t Get a Good Night’s Sleep … and how you can fix it.
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