LANNY MAY BE ONTO SOMETHING HERE:
—Tweet last night by Joshua Green of Bloomberg and the Boston Globe.
Chaser: “Atticus Finch: American literature’s most celebrated rape apologist.”
—Ashe Schow, the Washington Examiner, December 14, 2014.
Hangover: “Rape victim claims Hillary Clinton smeared her, lied in court documents.”
—Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, June 20, 2014.
OBAMA NAMES FIRED CAMPAIGN OFFICIAL AS TOP ADVISER ON ISLAMIC STATE:
President Obama on Monday promoted an official to be his top adviser in the fight against the Islamic State, one he fired from his presidential campaign in 2008 for talking to Hamas.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Rob Malley, now a senior director at the National Security Council, would be his senior adviser for the counter-Islamic State program. Malley, a Clinton administration alumni, will work closely with Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter the Islamic State, Earnest said.
Malley was fired from then-Sen. Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 for meeting with Hamas officials when he was an informal adviser to the campaign. Obama at the time was downplaying the idea he would negotiate with groups opposed to Israel.
Why it’s as if every campaign promise of Barack Obama came with an expiration date or something.
DANIEL DREZNER: Four tough things columnists should do before writing about universities. I think Drezner’s way too sanguine about the state of higher education, but this is worth a read.
JOHN HINDERAKER: DO HILLARY’S EMAILS CONFIRM CLINTON-OBAMA ENMITY? “Blumenthal’s emails display an open contempt for the president and his closest advisers.”
TRUMP RECEIVES COVETED TWISTED SISTER ENDORSEMENT: Dee Snider gives thumbs up to use his song, “We’re not gonna take it” during campaign events, Jazz Shaw writes at Hot Air.
Perhaps Al and Tipper Gore shouldn’t have pissed him off all those years ago.
WHY IS THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION SPENDING TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO DESPOIL THE ENVIRONMENT?
Shot: $450,000 Federal Grant Went to Make Climate-Change Video Game.
—Bridget Johnson, PJ Media, yesterday.
Chaser: Black Friday warning: video games waste energy and contribute to global warming.
—Scientific American, November 28, 2008.
Also in Bridget’s article:
The Waste Report highlighted the 1980s prediction of President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, that a billion people would die of global warming by 2020 through famine induced by carbon dioxide emissions.
In the decade before that “prediction,” Holdren considered population reduction quite a desirable goal.
ROGER SIMON: Climate Change: Last Year’s Fad Goes to Paris:
In the immortal words of H. L. Mencken, “When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”
I saw this up close and personal myself while covering COP-15 in Copenhagen for these digital pages back in 2009. Even then there was something more than vaguely dubious about the enterprise and it seemed appropriate that the conference was taking place in a blinding snow storm, a winter wonderland of global warming. And what a boondoggle it was! Half the U.S. Congress seemed to be there, all arriving on a chartered jet in Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen. When I ran into Cong. Charlie Rangel in the gift shop of the Marriott, where he was perusing some elegant Scandinavian jewelry, and asked him if he believed in man-made global warming, he stared at me in astonishment. How could I ask anything so preposterous, he seemed to be saying, questioning the received wisdom of the ages, and turned to the clerk, gesturing toward some silver cufflinks.
Earlier that day I had asked the same question of a delegate sitting beside me at one of the interminable panel discussions. By chance he came from one of the Pacific Islands said to be in danger of disappearing from the rising ocean level. His response to my question was much more forthcoming than Rangel’s. He laughed and shook his head. Then why are you here, I asked? “For the money,” he said, still grinning. And then he punched my shoulder playfully.
Even beyond the Gleichschaltung and crony corporatism (but I repeat myself) aspects of COP-21, it’s tailor-made for a president whose bespoke clothes contain no one within them: As Charles Krauthammer noted last night, Mr. Obama “Lives in His Own ‘Idealistic and Deluded, Undergrad Imagination.’”
TWO HILLARYS IN ONE!
● Hillary Clinton calls for more ground troops as part of hawkish Isis strategy.
—The London Guardian, November 19th.
● Clinton can’t “conceive” any condition for combat troops in Iraq, Syria.
—CBS, yesterday.
Unless she’s quietly added extra reinforcements to the exoskeleton, a Hillary divided against itself cannot stand!
Related: Huma vindicated! In just released emails, Hillary Clinton confirms being ‘very confused.’
‘MY BAD’: LEFTWING POLITICO ADMITS CHELSEA CLINTON OFFERED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE:
Translation:
“It’s not Politico’s policy to offer interview subjects the questions in advance but I did it anyway. Nevertheless, I will pay no price at Politico or from our so-called competitors in the DC Media because when it comes to electing Democrats, we all do it, we all know we do it, and if anyone comes after me I will expose them. In short, Democrats sure got it good.”
Related: “A July 2009 email to [Hillary] reads, ‘I just heard from a friend who is wired at Meet the Press that David Gregory is going to ask you about…’”
More: Tammy Bruce on the chairwoman of the DNC: “’Myzled?’ Listen to this clip, it’s unbelievable. How do you mispronounce a word you’re not reading? Unless, of course, MSNBC has a script for her in the teleprompter.”
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE SECULAR PROGRESSIVE-ISLAMIST ALLIANCE:
One of the frequently cited quips in the halls of Congress is that politics makes for strange bedfellows, meaning that some alliances between Democrats and Republicans, especially given today’s toxic environment in Washington, are hard to fathom. However, perhaps even more difficult to understand is the strange affinity that has developed over the past two decades between Islamists – radical Muslims – and the American progressive movement, or what Michael Walsh has termed the “unholy left.”
At first glance, the two entities seem utterly different – one proceeding from the darker recesses of Islamic culture, and the other a seemingly quintessential product of American idealism. In fact, however, what we find between the two political movements is a confluence of interests and perspectives on a variety of matters. Indeed, often the affinity of these two outlooks is frightening.
Both agencies have rather heavily invested in the business of “Fundamental Transformation,” so naturally they would seek allegiances and share tactics when expedient.
(Via SDA.)
WHAT’S A CAMPUS RAPE ACTIVIST? Someone Who’s Disappointed That They Don’t See Enough Campus Rapes.
Most mainstream news publications publish, you know, news. Except when it’s about “rape culture” on campus, when no news is also considered news. Case in point: following a winter survey they initiated last year on campus sexual assault, CBC News this fall conducted a survey of 87 post-secondary institutions to investigate the reporting of sexual assaults in 2014 on and off their campuses.
Since the received activist wisdom on the subject assures us that one in four (or five, depending on the polemicist) women on campus will be sexually assaulted during her college tenure, the researchers were chagrined to find that the actual number of reports came to 700 – averaging out to 1.85 per 10,000 students – a figure that jibes with rates of sexual assault in the general population. In 16 schools – seven in Quebec and nine in western Canada – not a single sexual assault has been reported in the last six years.
To feminists, there can be only one explanation for the dearth of reports, and certainly not the explanation that sexual assaults are either rare or considered not worth reporting by those involved. “It’s undercounting” is the immediate conclusion leapt to by University of Ottawa criminology professor and domestic violence researcher Holly Johnson. “It’s not counting what is the true experience of students, because there is no campus in which this doesn’t exist.”
Well, if campus rapes are that uncommon, a whole grifters’ empire will collapse. And what else are you going to do with a Gender Studies degree?
MISSING LINK NECK: How did giraffes get their long necks?
CROSS-DRESSING IN DEATH: Was King Tutankhamun’s famous burial mask originally intended for his stepmother Nefertiti?
THEY DO REALIZE ONE OF THESE GUYS WAS FICTIONAL, RIGHT: What James Bond and Steve Jobs Have in Common: Absent Fathers.
CAN I GET A “DUH”: No, America Doesn’t Have a Christian Terrorism Problem.
THE TIMES WE LIVE IN: Short takes on the drifting wreckage.
ALCOHOL, TOBACCO AND FIREARMS SHOULD BE A CONVENIENCE STORE: Untouchable: The tradition continues for the ATF and not like in the movies.
WHAT IF WE STOPPED BOWING AND SCRAPING: What if… (Language warning.)
RUMORS OF THEIR DEATH HAVE BEE-N EXAGGERATED: Bee of Good Cheer.
MOMMAS DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP IN THE IVIES: Ivy Leaguers need to stop with the PC obsession.
THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND: Unless he’s your drunk friend who throws up in your new car and steals your girlfriend. How Uncle Sam chases away US jobs.
ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE BOMBS A CHANCE: Bombing alone won’t destroy ISIS — but it’s a good start.