NEW YORK OBSERVER: Sex, Lies, and . . . White House Counsel; Ruemmler Blunders Into Secret Service Mess: White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler lands on the short list for AG but USSS disaster might undo her ambitions. “A dozen Secret Service Agents and military personnel were fired over ‘Hookergate.’ But a young member of the advance team from the White House itself, Mr. Jonathan Dach, was protected by Ms. Ruemmler’s “investigation.” Just so happens that his father, Leslie Dach, was a significant donor to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, and a key figure in Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move’ wellness campaign.”
Archive for 2014
October 13, 2014
THEY USED TO SHILL FOR INTOURIST, TOO: Times Touts Tours Of Iran.
THEY’VE CAUGHT THE DISEASE OF DESPERATION: Democrats Blame GOP For Ebola.
But the thing is, the CDC doesn’t have a funding problem, it has a mission creep problem. They had plenty of money, but squandered it on things like junk food and obesity, instead of their core mission.
But, as I say, this is just Democrats’ pre-midterm desperation. They’ll do, and say, anything to hold on to power. And that’s a disease for which there seems to be no cure.
UPDATE: Don’t look now NIH director, but here are things that #TookMoneyFromEbolaResearch.
Two thoughts: First, is there coordination here? The NIH director and the Democrats’ political ad come out saying the same thing on the same day.
Second, somebody on the House side needs to go through the NIH/CDC budgets for next year and strip out all the non-disease funding and move it over to infectious diseases, since apparently they could achieve miracle cures with just a little more money.
I mean, sure, lesbian obesity is a pressing matter, but . . .
JOHN FUND: Colorado Braces for Voter Fraud In Country’s Closest Senate Election.
UPDATE: Or maybe we’ll be outside the margin of fraud: Gardner Pulls Away from Udall as Colorado Democrats Face Upset.
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY! Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:
At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .
Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.
Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:
This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.
Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit. (Reposted from 2005, but it still fits.) [Doesn’t this leave you vulnerable to charges of recycling too? –ed. I prefer to think of it as “They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way.”]
I post this every year, as it’s evergreen. The original link to Bennett’s column seems to have succumbed to link-rot, but I believe this is it.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: From Comedy To Farce.
THE ONE PERSON WHO NEEDS TO BE SHAKEN UP WILL BE ON THE GOLF COURSE: Dems want White House shakeup.
President Obama needs to shake up his White House staff to give new life to his presidency, top Democratic strategists and former White House veterans say.
They argue Obama needs an infusion of talent if he hopes to recover over his final two years in office.
One prominent party strategist said Obama “should take a flamethrower to his office.”
“He needs dramatic change — it’s not even a debatable point,” the strategist said. “The general consensus that the president is surrounded by people who do him more harm than good because they are more focused on pleasing him than they are challenging him or proposing a different course.”
Obama has endured a brutal two years since his reelection, with a legislative agenda stalled and his approval ratings in the dumps.
On the midterm campaign trail, he’s mostly been persona non grata, with Democratic candidates wishing he’d stay away.
With reason.
JOHN LOTT: The FBI’s bogus report on mass shootings.
It’s disheartening to see the FBI used to promote a political agenda, but that’s what we got with the bureau’s release last month of a study claim to show a sharp rise in mass shootings, a la Newtown, Conn.
The FBI counted 160 “mass” or “active” shootings in public places from 2000 to 2013. Worse, it said these attacks rose from just one in 2000 to 17 in 2013. Media outlets worldwide gave the “news” extensive coverage.
Too bad the study is remarkably shoddy — slicing the evidence to distort the results. In fact, mass public shootings have only risen ever so slightly over the last four decades.
While the FBI study discusses “mass shootings or killings,” its graphs were filled with cases that had nothing to do with mass killings. Of the 160 cases it counted, 32 involved a gun being fired without anyone being killed. Another 35 cases involved a single murder.
Book-cooking is de rigeur these days in the federal government.
ED DRISCOLL: Looking For Anarchy In All The Wrong Places. “The modern anarchists are just the far-left’s muscle. Look at when and where they show up, who they march with and for, and how carefully the press ignores them and their acts.”
NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY: Liberal bias in academia is destroying the integrity of research.
JAMES JAY CARAFANO: Obama’s Great Big Ebola Error. “The last time a president tried to make a disease a national-security issue, he helped trigger a global pandemic that killed 50 million people.”
WHY JAMEIS WINSTON SHOULD JUST DROP OUT. “While the argument is nuanced, the crux of the argument seems to be that university disciplinary proceedings are kangaroo courts and that any evidence or findings could provide fodder for a future, inevitable civil action.”
A paradox haunts America’s first black president. African-American wealth has fallen further under Barack Obama than under any president since the Depression. Yet they are the only group that still gives him high ratings. So meagre is Mr Obama’s national approval rating that embattled Democrats have made him unwelcome in states that twice swept him to power. Those who have fared worst under Mr Obama are the ones who love him the most. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of perception-driven politics. As the Reverend Kevin Johnson asked in 2013: “Why are we so loyal to a president who isn’t loyal to us?”
The problem has taken on new salience with the resignation of Eric Holder. America’s first black attorney-general has tried to correct the gulag-sized disparities in prison sentencing between blacks and whites. His exit leaves just two African-Americans in Mr Obama’s cabinet. Given the mood among Republicans, it is hard to imagine the US Senate confirming a successor to Mr Holder who shares his priorities.
Well, since those priorities are racial discrimination and protecting Obama from accountability, I can live with that.
More:
Since 2009, median non-white household income has dropped by almost a 10th to $33,000 a year, according to the US Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances. As a whole, median incomes fell by 5 per cent. But by the more telling measure of net wealth – assets minus liabilities – the numbers offer a more troubling story.
The median non-white family today has a net worth of just $18,100 – almost a fifth lower than it was when Mr Obama took office. White median wealth, on the other hand, has inched up by 1 per cent to $142,000. In 2009, white households were seven times richer than their black counterparts. That gap is now eightfold. Both in relative and absolute terms, blacks are doing worse under Mr Obama.
But, thanks to carefully-cultivated racism, they don’t mind.
GREG ORMAN, KANSAS MYSTERY BUSINESSMAN. Mystery? Nothing mysterious. He’s a Democrat pretending to be an independent, and the press will play along until after the election. Which he might very well win.
Of course, it was the NRSC’s ineptitude that led to this. Nice job, guys.