DAVID RIVKIN & ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY: Can Trump Cut Off Funding For Sanctuary Cities? The Constitution Says Yes.
Archive for 2016
December 7, 2016
PARTY OF SNOWFLAKES: Trump traumatizes Democrats.
The left is comfortable with the status quo, but nothing about Trump suggests that he will be content with going along to get along. Trump’s measures suggest that he is willing to be aggressive, think creatively and take some risks. The United States needs all of these traits to make up for the lethargic demeanor of the Obama years and the lawyerly approach that resulted in inaction more than it produced fresh initiatives.
The past month has given us some insight into how Trump will operate as president. His campaign and some of his personnel selections so far have been associated with clusters of tweets and some drama, but it’s clear that Trump and his team will be able to get some things done. You can argue about whether he is right or wrong on this or that issue, but there is no doubt that Trump is going to be bold.
Boldness and safe spaces don’t mix.
OBAMA’S LEGACY: Worst GDP in 50 years, stagnant wages, poorer health. “Now they tell us. A new report on the economy finds that productivity growth is at a 50-year low and that much of the positive talk about the nation’s financial situation in the last election, much of it coming from the administration, was a lie.”
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Response to a Liberal Journalist’s Inquiries.
It was nicer than this one.
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Time: 65 Million Americans Should Threaten to Not Pay Taxes. “Until democracy is restored.”
AN INTERVIEW WITH A 92-YEAR-OLD PEARL HARBOR VETERAN.
I’M NOT SAYING IT’S MICROWAVES… BUT IT’S MICROWAVES: Move over, fracking. There’s a new technology in town.
As strange as it sounds, producers are experimenting with ways to zap previously unextractable oil resources with microwaves, which has the potential to kick-start an even bigger energy revolution than fracking — and appease environmentalists while they’re at it. This is potentially “a whole shift in the paradigm,” says Peter Kearl, co-founder and CTO of Qmast, a Colorado-based company pioneering the use of the microwave tech. Some marquee names are betting on the play: Oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips are pouring resources into developing similar extraction techniques, which can be far less water- and energy-intensive than fracking.
If producers can find a way to microwave oil shales in the Green River Formation, which sprawls across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the nation’s recoverable reserves could soar and energy independence could become more than an election slogan. Even with existing methods — strip-mining the shale and then cooking it, or injecting steam to cook the rock underground (hydraulic fracturing is useless here) — the formation contains enough oil to last the U.S. 165 years at current rates of consumption. Microwave extraction could goose those numbers even higher.
Peak oil would seem to still be some ways off.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Report: Student journalists face administrative backlash.
Student journalists at college and university newspapers are facing consequences for reporting on concerns that show their schools in a negative light, according to a report from the American Association of University Professors.
The report, endorsed by the College Media Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Student Press Law Center, focused-in on two examples of students facing backlash after doing their jobs.
At the University of Missouri, a student journalist and videographer were threatened with “muscle” by an assistant professor as they tried to cover protests at the university. At Wesleyan University, a student who wrote an opinion piece critical of the Black Lives Matter movement was harassed, and the student government slashed the paper’s funding for publishing the piece.
These two incidents were not isolated, the AAUP report found.
Why are universities such cesspits of censorship and intimidation?
HUFFPO EDITOR: The FBI Is Investigating Me Because I Tweeted A Joke About Fake News.
Journalists benefit from special protections because the Justice Department doesn’t want to embarrass itself by picking a fight with people who buy server space by the terabyte. Non-journalists in my position have fewer ways to fight back — and lots of reasons to worry. They don’t have easy access to millions of readers. Many companies are more likely to fire an employee for causing trouble than to provide legal counsel. Many people feel compelled to talk to the bureau even though saying the wrong thing can lead to a felony charge for lying to the FBI.
The FBI has limited resources and must choose its targets carefully. As fake-news websites grow in influence, and people on the president-elect’s transition team spread ludicrous and dangerous claims — like the idea that a pizza place in Washington, D.C., is the site of a Clinton child-sex dungeon — it’s crucially important that the agency charged with investigating terrorism be able to tell the difference between what is a joke and what’s not. An agency that is using people’s tweets — and retweets — as evidence in terror trials should probably understand how Twitter works. The bureau needs a bullshit meter.
This episode has not inspired confidence.
Enjoy Obama’s weaponized FBI before Trump gets hold of it.
THE SIEGE OF ALEPPO: Syria rebels ‘withdraw from old city’
Activist monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the pull-back in Syria’s second city came after days of heavy fighting.
State media confirmed the military had taken over the whole of the old city.
Government forces now control about 75% of eastern Aleppo, held by the rebels for the past four years.
The rebels, who had been left with just a spit of land north-east of the citadel after recent government advances, abandoned it by Wednesday morning, retreating to territory they still hold further south.
…
The SOHR said remaining rebel-held areas in the south-east of the city came under heavy artillery fire overnight.
The only thing as ugly as the Syrian Civil War will be the reprisals once it’s over.
YEAH, HOW ABOUT THAT? Obama Warns the Country About How Much Power He’s About to Hand Trump.
And this never gets old:
And yet the press never learns, as it’s now asking the White House to censor “fake news.” Is that really the direction they want to go in?
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Hudson Proposes National Concealed Carry Bill.
Rep. Richard Hudson, R-North Carolina, says he is preparing legislation that would allow those with concealed carry permits in their state to cross state lines.
According to the Daily Caller, Hudson’s legislation would allow people with a state-issued concealed carry license to carry a handgun to any other state that allows concealed carry if the person is not banned from possessing or transporting a firearm by federal law.
Hudson said he planned on introducing the legislation, called the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, during the next Congress. He introduced a similar bill in 2015.
I think any such bill also needs a provision limiting the maximum penalty a state can assess against a gun-carrier who is entitled to possess firearms under federal law to some relatively small fine, like $250. That will prevent the sort of injustices we’ve seen in places like New Jersey and New York.
BREAKING: Missing Pakistan International Airlines plane with 40-45 people on board has crashed in northern region – regional police official
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 7, 2016
And that’s all we know at this early hour.
BUT OF COURSE: Clinton to throw thank-you party for millionaire donors.
The party at the Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom on Dec. 15 is expected to feature fashion icon Anna Wintour, investor Alan Patricof, hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and more, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.
“Hopefully there’s no balconies so nobody can jump,” an insider told Page Six.
Clinton raised far more money than President-elect Donald Trump — as much as $1.3 billion, according to the The Washington Post, compared to Trump’s $795 million. But despite her edge in fundraising and in the popular vote, Trump won last month’s election via the Electoral College.
As though winning “via the Electoral College” was some sneaky new thing Clinton was unaware of?
MY SECRET POLICE FRIEND CAYLA: These talking toys can tell a defense contractor everything your kid says.
The problem with these toys, the complaint alleges, is that their terms of service allow them to record everything they hear and then send that information back to Nuance Communications, a voice recognition software company that supplies the underlying technology behind the toys, but that also does work as a defense contractor.
In particular, the groups are crying foul over the fact both toys are covered by Nuance’s general privacy policy, which states that they “may use the information that we collect for our internal purposes to develop, tune, enhance, and improve our products and services, and for advertising and marketing.”
On the plus side, Nuance Communications is probably less likely to consider you to be a terrorist than Obama’s Homeland Security Department might.
THE HILL: Trump announces $50B investment by SoftBank.
Japanese tech company SoftBank will invest $50 billion in the U.S. and introduce 50,000 new jobs in the country, President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday.
Trump announced the deal after meeting with SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son at Trump Tower in New York.
“Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs,” Trump tweeted. “Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!”
Hmm.
I ALREADY HAVE: Start Worrying About Long-Term Care.
The only good thing that can be said about aging is that it’s better than the alternative. It’s also more expensive, and as society ages, we’re going to have to figure out how we pay for it.
Most Americans will not end up lingering on in a nursing home for years. But for those who do, the costs will be astronomical. That’s largely not a problem for the bottom half of the income distribution, because Medicaid will pay the bill if you’re destitute. But middle-class people who have been carefully hoarding resources for years in the hopes of passing something down to their children can instead see their entire legacy handed over to the nursing home; an affluent couple with a spouse still living in the community can see that spouse forced into a sharp reduction of both savings and income.
Enter the idea of long-term care insurance. Buy a policy when you’re still relatively young and healthy, pay the premiums every year, and if you do end up needing intensive support services, you can go to a nursing home secure in the knowledge that your spouse and your legacy are protected. Personal-finance columnists have been solemnly recommending long-term care insurance for years, though in my experience, this advice is often just as solemnly ignored.
That’s because the policies are now quite pricey. When long-term care policies were introduced a few decades ago, they seemed like an attractive deal. As it turns out, that’s because they were underpricing the insurance.
The problem is, the risk is high, and the costs are high.
AND IT MIGHT HELP US CONQUER SPACE: The Secret is Out: Scientists Figured Out How Tardigrades Became Immune to Radiation.
SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Way Up High.
LET’S MAKE GENDER STUDIES MAJORS CRY SOME MORE: Since some demon possessed Tom Knighton to put his book The Essence of Man: A Real Guide To Masculinity In The 21st Century under Gender Studies on Amazon, and since you guys made him dominate that category last night, I figure we should have some near-suicidal feminists by now. I say you can’t have too much of a good thing. Let’s push that baby higher.
SALAD IS MURDER: Do plants learn like humans? Smart seedlings can be taught to adapt to their environment.
AND PROMPTLY WON SEVERAL INTERNATIONAL COMEDY PRIZES: Georgetown Installs Work of Art Honoring Hillary Clinton as ‘Beacon of Dignity and Guiding Light’. I remember when Democrats were saner or at least less bombastic and merely named a water treatment plant after Al Gore. (Or was it John Kerry? Democrats all run together in my memory after a while.)
YOU CAN’T PAY FOR THIS KIND OF ENDORSEMENT:Guy Who Wrote Book Arguing U.S. Should ‘Talk to’ Terrorists Really Doesn’t Like Jim Mattis.