COLLEGE STUDENTS NEED FREE-SPEECH ORIENTATION THESE DAYS, and Purdue’s program offers a good model. I have to say, Mitch Daniels is doing an excellent job there.
Archive for 2016
December 8, 2016
WELL, YES. AND TRUMP IS A MASTER AT ELICITING THOSE. Conservatives often win elections because of the hysterical, overblown reaction their common-sense plans receive from the left.
PERHAPS SARAH HOYT WILL LET ME BORROW HER SHOCKED FACE: OPEC expected to deliver only half of target production cut.
Most energy professionals expect OPEC output will decline to around 33.0 million barrels per day in January 2017, down from 33.6 million bpd in October but well above the deal’s target of 32.5 million bpd.
Most of the 260 respondents to the survey think the organisation will succeed in cutting output, but on average by only 600,000 bpd, or half its stated target of 1.2 million bpd.
Less than 8 percent thought OPEC would achieve its target in full. More than twice as many thought output would stay the same or rise.
DAMON LINKER IN THE WEEK: How conservatives out-intellectualized progressives.
Profitably read along with Freddie de Boer’s comments.
SALENA ZITO: Even anti-Trump working-class voters are having second thoughts.
What is astounding, post-election, is the total lack of contrition Democrats have displayed for ignoring the workingman and -woman bloc that has been the party’s horn of plenty. The only regret they display is that they lost the election, not the voters.
What Democrats, academics and pundits keep refusing to see is that the loss was never about Trump’s candidacy; it was all about how Democrats have increasingly lost touch with their voters outside of coastal America — until those voters finally hit their breaking point.
“The Democratic Party has become a coastal elitist club and if there is any decision or discussion made to broaden that within the ranks it is squashed,” said Dane Strother, a legendary Washington, DC-based Democratic strategist.
“We have completely lost touch with Middle America,” he admits, “How did we go from the party of the little man to the party of the elite?” Then he answers; “Yes, we rightfully should protect the rights of minorities, African-Americans, Hispanics, the LBGTQ communities and we always should — but we can’t forget the rest of the country along the way,” he said.
It isn’t that the Democrats forgot the rest of the country, it’s that they disdain the rest of the country.
THIS IS ALL ABOUT DELEGITIMIZING TRUMP: Dems push for panel to probe Russian interference in election.
Two Democratic House members on Wednesday announced legislation to create an independent commission to investigate efforts by Russia to interfere with the U.S. election.
The bill comes from Oversight Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee’s CIA subcommittee.
The structure of the nongovernmental panel would be modeled after the 9/11 Commission, and would include 12 bipartisan members.
Specifically, the commission will be charged with investigating Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and former Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta’s personal email, as well as the scanning of electoral systems in some states and the dissemination of fake news and propaganda.
Republicans should probably encourage Democrats’ obsession with this stuff, though, as it will distract them from thinking about why they actually lost.
OBAMACARE: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T RUIN? Drug price hikes put sex beyond reach.
Soaring prices for prescription medicines for impotence and other problems have put the remedies out of reach for some.
Without insurance coverage, Viagra and Cialis cost about $50 a pill, triple their 2010 list prices. The new “female Viagra,” a daily pill for low sex drive called Addyi, costs $800 per month. Older products for women also have seen huge price run-ups, Truven Health Analytics data show.
“Many of them don’t get past the pharmacy counter once they see the price,” says Sheryl Kingsberg, a University Hospitals-Cleveland Medical Center behavioral psychologist and researcher who counsels men and women.
What people actually pay out of pocket varies. Some insurance prescription plans, including Medicare, cover some of the medicines. Some plans don’t cover any, arguing they’re not medically necessary. Many require steep copayments or limit the number of impotence pills per prescription.
“Once you get to a certain price point, sex becomes a financial decision,” says Dr. Elizabeth Kavaler, a sexual dysfunction specialist at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital. “It takes a lot of the joy out of this.”
Indeed.
AT AMAZON, The Best Boots of the Season.
HONESTLY, I THINK SHE HAS A PRETTY STRONG CASE THIS TIME: Jill Stein Demands Recount Of “Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums Of 2016.”
PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: The Most Potent Federal Regulatory Agency Will Answer Solely to Donald Trump.
The [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] was unaccountable to Congress and the president—but not the courts.
A federal appeals court ruling in October changed the fundamental structure of the CFPB and will allow future presidents to have direct control over the agency that has direct control over wide swaths of the country’s banking and financial sectors. Regulatory agencies headed by a single executive must be directly accountable to the president, the court observed, while independent agencies authorized by Congress—like the SEC and the FCC—must have a multi-member commission at the helm.
Practically, that means that Trump might be able to replace the director of the CFPB, Richard Cordray, before his term officially ends in 2018.
More importantly, it means Trump will be able to use the CFPB’s powers for his own ends, if he wants, because the person who gets to determine whether a banking practice is unfair, deceptive, or abusive will now serve at the whims of the president.
In other words, nothing changes on January 20.
Obligatory:
NUCLEAR THRESHOLD FLASHBACK:
WELL, YES: Comprehensive Terrorism Strategy Needed.
Bruce Hoffman, Director for Security Studies at Georgetown University:
Clearly during the eight years of the Obama Administration there was an effort to shift from the deployment of U.S. ground forces for prolonged periods overseas to using other forms of engaging terrorists, principally unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, as well as the increased deployment of Special Operations forces. Tactically, it was successful – it eliminated at least three-dozen senior al Qaeda commanders following the ramp up of drone strikes in 2009 – and it crystalized of course with the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. These tactics served to disrupt terrorist operations and keep these groups off balance. Tactically, it was unquestionably successful.
But strategically, the U.S. faces the most parlous international security situation in terms of terrorism, at least since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. According to the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC), despite our ongoing efforts in Iraq and Syria over the past two years, ISIS has expanded geographically. The NCTC reported that in 2014, when the U.S.-backed campaign against ISIS began, the group had branches in seven countries. By 2015, they had branches in 13 countries, and by 2016, this number had increased again, now to 18. So clearly the Obama Administration’s strategy hasn’t stopped the spread of ISIS.
Read the whole interview.
ROGER SIMON: The Stock Market vs. The Media: Who Do You Trust?
Today, as the Dow approaches 20,000, the Washington Post is moaning about the president-elect’s choosing too many generals for important positions, as if all military minds automatically think alike. The Post certainly wouldn’t say that about, say, Muslims. Nor would anybody who’d actually read a history book.
But never mind. Look at it this way. Whom would you trust — people who put their money where their mouths are (i.e. investors) or people who put their mouths where their mouths are? (Notice I didn’t pick another notable orifice. This is a family column and tries to set an example.)
Now, as well all know, past performance is not a… etc., etc., but things are looking remarkably good for the moment, which is upsetting our liberal media friends all the more. How’re they going to react if U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi actually does bring back 10,000 jobs, as he indicated on CNBC he might under the new Trump tax program? Oh, the vapors… the vapors. Lena Dunham may have to move to Canada after all.
Trump elected President, Canadians hardest hit.
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE END OF THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993.
Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death.
“I think we should be very concerned,” said Princeton economist Anne Case, who called for thorough research on the increase in deaths from heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States. “This is singular. This doesn’t happen.”
A year ago, research by Case and Angus Deaton, also an economist at Princeton, brought worldwide attention to the unexpected jump in mortality rates among white middle-aged Americans. That trend was blamed on what are sometimes called diseases of despair: overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. The new report raises the possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider group of Americans.
This report will probably become bigger news after January 20.
I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN SHUTTING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT WAS TREATED AS “TERRORISM:” Senate Dems hold out on spending deal, risking shutdown.
LEGAL TRADE ASSOCIATION DECLARES WAR ON LEGALLY MEANINGLESS TERM: American Bar Association Pledges To Fight “Hate Speech.” Legal Blogger Scott Greenfield is not impressed, and announces the ABA’s self-inflicted demise via its president, Linda Klein:
The ABA hasn’t aged well. It’s been taken over by the fragile, the intellectually weak, the dishonest, who have subverted the organization to their fantasy of social justice at the expense of the Constitution. And now. under the “leadership” of Klein, it has publicly announced that it will fight against the First Amendment to the Constitution, the defense of free speech, and forsaken any claim to defend liberty or support the rule of law.
To the extent anyone thought the American Bar Association could survive, Linda Klein’s announcement of its death, a brutal, painful death, ends any hope. The American Bar Association committed suicide in a disgraceful demonstration of cowardice and intellectual dishonesty. It will not be missed.
It’s been largely dominated by social-justice types for years. Back in the mid-1990s I wrote a positive review of Joyce Malcolm’s excellent To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Enough With The West’s Imaginary Threats.
GLENN LOURY: Black Lives Matter — And Maybe Trump Is The Answer: “The discourse about race, violence, and the value of human life has been held hostage to partisanship — Black Lives Matter vs. Blue Lives Matter. We can do better than that. The election is over. And, the body count mounts. I’m interested now in SOLUTIONS and, frankly, I don’t give a damn where they come from. Obama ignored this catastrophe unfolding in his adopted home town for nearly a decade. At the moment, I’m inclined to #GiveTrumpAChance to ‘fix it.’ Anybody with a better idea? Speak now.”
HONESTLY, WHO’S SURPRISED BY THIS? Obama’s Outgoing Attitude on War and Terrorism: Do as He Says, Not as He Did; A speech on respecting rule of law and transparency from an administration that did neither.
It looks like President Barack Obama will be leaving office the same way he arrived: overestimating his actual commitment to rule of law and government transparency.
That’s one takeaway from the president’s counterterrorism speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa Florida, yesterday. As is typical of an Obama speech, particularly one coming as his administration winds down, it’s heavy on summarizing his successes and calling on actions from Congress, yet flat out either refuses to acknowledge or is quick to justify his misuses of power. . . .
Reminder: This is a president who has developed a complex system by which he executes suspected terrorists in countries where America is not legally involved in a war through the use of drone strikes in a system that is both deliberately secretive but also not subject to review by the judicial branch. The Department of Justice under Obama has, in fact, used claims of national security to try to keep judges from even being able to hear cases connected to the constitutionality of some of its practices.
Furthermore, this is a president who oversaw military intervention in Libya without authorization by Congress. And in this very speech he calls on Congress to use its authority to determine whether to allow for military force, an absurd incongruity Tim Carney makes note of in the Washington Examiner.
Obama calls for an updated Authorized Use of Force (the Congressional authorization for warmaking) but stubbornly clings to an insistence that everything he’s been doing is already authorized. It’s a muddled argument. Either the president’s military actions have been legal and a new authorization isn’t needed, or the president’s military actions have not been legal (in which case he should stop). He even recently added, via executive declaration, a terrorist group in Somalia that didn’t even exist at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks to the list of authorized targets.
Honestly, we’re just lucky he didn’t add the Tea Party to the list. But then, for them he has the IRS.
IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD ISSUED A WARNING ABOUT THIS AGENCY: The Most Potent Federal Regulatory Agency Will Answer Solely to Donald Trump: And the potential for Trump to abuse the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is huuge.
And this never gets old: