THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: GOP lawmaker: Bill Clinton ‘doesn’t want to let go.’
Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., argued Tuesday that former President Bill Clinton is trying to delegitimize President-elect Trump by reminding voters that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, when Clinton should instead by helping to unite the country.
Which is funny, because Bill never won a majority of the popular vote. Were his two terms illegitimate?
PROCUREMENT: Pentagon Arsenal Plane to Fly With F-35, F-22.
An “Arsenal Plane” networked to F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters would enable the fighter aircraft to maintain their stealth properties while still having substantial offensive bombing capability. If stealth fighters attach weapons to their external pylons, they change their radar signature and therefore become more vulnerable to enemy air defenses. If networked to a large “flying bomb truck,” they could use stealth capability to defeat enemy air defenses and still have an ability to drop large amounts of bombs on targets.
Such a scenario could also likely rely upon now-in-development manned-unmanned teaming wherein emerging algorithms and computer technology enable fighter jets to control the sensor payload and weapons capability of nearby drones from the cockpit of the aircraft. This would enable Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance assets to more quickly relay strategic or targeting information between fighter jets, drones and “Arsenal Planes.”
Aboulafia explained that air fighters being developed by potential adversaries, such as the Chinese J-20 and other fighters, could exist in larger numbers than a U.S. force, underscoring the current U.S. strategy to maintain a technological edge even if their conventional forces are smaller. An “Arsenal Plane” could extend range and lethality for U.S. fighters, in the event they were facing an enemy force with more sheer numbers of assets.
In the air dominance role, an arsenal plane should also serve as a flying warehouse for medium- and long-range air-to-air missiles. The arsenal plane would remain out of harm’s way, while stealthy F-22s detect enemy aircraft and guide the missiles to target — without losing any of their stealth characteristics and effectively with a much-increased anti-air payload.
LAWFARE: Families of three Pulse victims sue Facebook, Twitter, Google.
Family members of three men killed in the Pulse nightclub attack are suing Twitter, Facebook and Google, claiming that the social media companies allowed the so-called Islamic State to post propaganda and push its agenda, and saying that they are seeking justice for their loved ones.
The suit was filed Monday in a federal court in eastern Michigan on behalf of the families of Tevin Crosby, 25; Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40; and Juan Guerrero, 22. Crosby was a Michigan native, and Jorge-Reyes has a sister who lives there.
The three men were among the 49 people killed when Omar Mateen opened fire June 12 in the nightclub. In conversations with police that night, Mateen pledged his allegiance to ISIS.
Twitter in particular has been lax in who and what it allows online — except of course for certain conservatives and their viewpoints.
There’s a lot to worry about in the coming presidency of Donald Trump, but a few bright spots appear for those of us who want to run our own lives with minimal government interference. In particular, the naming of Betsy DeVos as the president-elect’s pick for Secretary of Education holds a lot of promise for parents who want to move past decades of crappy politician-directed schooling to gain more say in how their children learn.
To go by her enemies, DeVos offers promise, indeed.
DeVos is “best known for her anti-public education campaigns” the National Education Association fulminates in its official response to her nomination. The NEA goes on to take her to task for supporting “vouchers—which take away funding and local control from our public schools—to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense.”
Oh, horrors.
“It is clear that DeVos, like the President-elect who has chosen her, is comfortable applying the logic of the marketplace to schoolyard precincts,” complains Rebecca Mead at The New Yorker. Encapsulating the nominee’s sinister vision for America, Mead draws a quote from an interview DeVos gave to Philanthropy in 2013 summing up her educational dream: “That all parents, regardless of their zip code, have had the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children. And that all students have had the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential.”
Can’t you just taste the evil?
Well, if supporting vouchers and other means to choose the best educational settings for children constitutes the oncoming headlights of America’s educational doom, I say we throw ourselves right into ’em.
Actually, when it comes to real doom, public schools are already doing a hell of a good job.
Sadly, that’s true.
MAD DUCK: President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia from oil exploration and the potential for spills.
The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.
White House officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.
How is it possible for one President’s signature to mean more than another, or that Congress suddenly can’t pass new legislation superseding old legislation?
In any case, it’s long past time for Congress to start reclaiming the powers it has ceded to the Executive — but don’t hold your breath.
ONCE THEY LOST, THEY CHANGED THEIR VIEWS ON A LOT OF THINGS: Robby Mook didn’t think [the Comey announcement] was a headwind the day before the election.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: More On The Department Of Education’s Decision To Cut Off Federal Student Loans For Charlotte Law School.
WAR ON SCIENCE: Congress: Obama Admin Fired Top Scientist to Advance Climate Change Plans. “A top DoE scientist who liaised with Congress on the matter was fired by the Obama administration for being too forthright with lawmakers, according to the report, which provides an in-depth look at the White House’s efforts to ensure senior staffers toe the administration’s line.”
WHEN YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH LEFTIES HAVE INVESTED IN POLITICS, AND IT’S CRAZY: When Trump’s America Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore.
“I feel personally hurt by my neighbors, by my friends, by my teachers, by my coaches,” Smiley says — all the people who defined her childhood in the “very, very conservative” town of Rockford, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids with a population of around 6,000 people. “All the values of the Midwest — working hard and doing good and being kind — how can you turn your back on that … and vote for someone who has acted against and represents everything that is fundamentally against those values?”
You could ask them why they voted that way, but that would require talking to someone who is different from you.
DON’T BE SILLY, THOSE RULES ARE FOR DEMOCRAT PRESIDENTS:
YOUR OBAMACARE FAIL OF THE DAY: Another Obamacare Co-Op Exits Exchanges, Leaving Only 5 Co-Ops in 2017.
Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. of Maryland announced earlier this month that it is withdrawing from the Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, leaving only five co-ops in operation. The co-op will not offer or renew individual health policies in 2017.
“After many months of working closely with Evergreen management, leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and outside investors to find a workable solution, we have run out of time to meet the deadline for a January 1 effective date,” said Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. “We remain committed to a viable, competitive insurance industry in Maryland.”
This action will force 6,000 customers serviced by the co-op to be automatically enrolled in new plans. The co-op was awarded $65.5 million in taxpayer-funded loans in 2012.
Assuming the incoming Congress repeals ObamaCare, it will be a much bigger story that ruthless Republicans put the remaining co-ops out of business — and never mind that 18 others did little more than suck up tax dollars before going broke all on their own.
JUDICIAL WATCH: Austin Mayor, Feds Colluded as Texas Gov. Sued to Keep Syrian Refugees Out.
After the governor of Texas announced that the state would stop accepting Syrian refugees, the Obama administration went behind his back secretly conferencing with a mayor that offers illegal immigrants sanctuary and Syrians a welcome mat. The plan, evidently, was to continue sending Syrian refugees to the Lone Star State, even as the governor initiated litigation to halt the flow. This week Judicial Watch obtained records of the administration’s behind-the-scenes efforts to keep sending Syrians to Texas despite fierce opposition from state officials over the security threats created by refugees from an Arab nation that’s a hotbed of terrorism.
The White House looked to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, going around the governor to confer with a city leader who espoused the controversial Syrian resettlements, the records show. Shortly after Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state wouldn’t accept any more Syrian refugees, the administration responded by colluding with Adler, according to records of a conference call between the mayor’s office and the White House. The administration also furnished Adler with “talking points” involving the refugee resettlement and the parties discussed Abbott’s lawsuit. It seems bizarre that the feds would discuss legal action with a town mayor operating in the state suing them.
“Bizarre” is spelled “Modus operandi” for the outgoing administration.
IS THERE ANYTHING TRUMP CAN’T DO? US liberals are now buying guns too. “Gun ownership has traditionally been associated with the right wing in America but the election of Donald Trump has prompted some left-wingers to join gun clubs – and even start preparing for the collapse of society.”
Well, we’re all soldiers of fortune now. But can I get them to stock up via my Amazon links?
HELPFUL ADVICE FOR LEFTIES, FROM BRENDAN O’NEILL: Just because you disagree with someone, it doesn’t make them a ‘fascist.’
The worst thing about 2016 — an otherwise bracing year of political upset and oligarchical tears — has been the mainstreaming of the insult ‘fascist’. Anyone who sticks it to the status quo, whether by rejecting the EU or plumbing for Trump over Clinton, risks being smeared with the F-word. Even the normally measured New York Times flirted with the idea that loads of Americans and Europeans might be fascists, or at least facilitators of fascism. Trump’s victory speaks to a possible ‘revival of fascism’, it said, echoing the fears of an army of observers and tweeters who see in Brexit and Trump the stirrings of a kind of Nazism.
The terrifying casualness with which the F-word is now flung about could be glimpsed in the Michael Sheen controversy. Achieving ‘peak luvvie’, Sheen said, in an interview with the Times, that he was cutting back on acting to fight the new ‘demagogic, fascist’ politics. Where is this fascism? Wales, apparently. A Times editor summed it up: ‘The great actor Michael Sheen is quitting acting and going back to Wales to battle the rise of populism and fascism’. So are there Blackshirts in Cardiff? Swarms of Hitler Youth in Merthyr Tydfil? No. These people are talking about Brexit voters. They’re talking about those largely working-class Welsh communities that said ‘Screw you’ to the EU. In the eyes of the snootier sections of society, these people are fascists, or midwives of fascism.
It’s been a hard year on the snooty.
AT AMAZON, Gift Cards Galore.
Plus, Shop Amazon’s Holiday Toy List – Treasured Toys.
Plus, Save up to 25% on select power and hand tools.
Also: save big on Calphalon.
And, also today only: Save on Speedo swimwear and accessories.
Plus: Up to 45% off ’47 NFL and NCAA Hats, Socks, and Sweatshirts.
DEMOCRATS PANICKING AS REPUBLICANS START DOING THE SORTS OF THINGS DEMOCRATS HAVE DONE FOR YEARS: How Republicans’ frightening power play in North Carolina will go national.
JUSTICE: Pro-Trump Students at Babson Cleared After False Harassment Claims. “The school officially ruled that Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso did nothing wrong. Babson did not, however, apologize to the students for Babson President Kerry Healey’s apology to Wellesley, or for several professors signing a letter condemning the now-disproven actions on the night of Nov. 8.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The ABA’s Proposed 75% Bar Passage Rule And The Coming Legal Job Destruction Caused By Artificial Intelligence.
IT’S NOT TOO LATE: Shop Amazon’s Last-Minute Deals.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION EXAMINES ITS CRISIS RESPONSE PROCESS: And well it should. Unfortunately, much of this article is devoted to the “We Don’t Have Enough Money” syndrome.
TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL: Lawyer speech code proposed by American Bar Association would violate the First Amendment.
FALKLANDS WAR FALLOUT: Britain and Argentina have agreed to “a deal to identify 123 Argentine soldiers buried on the Falkland Islands. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been negotiating an agreement on taking DNA samples from the remains of men who died in the 1982 conflict. The graves in the Argentine memorial cemetery, in Darwin, are currently marked as “soldier only known to God”.”
Why did this take so long? My bet: the Argentinian government’s perpetual use of the Falklands as a political distraction. The article makes that argument, albeit less directly.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
