ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can We Make a Laser Blaster?
Of course — and the Gizmonic Institute is here to help! Just watch out for side effects, which can be very unpleasant, indeed.
Archive for 2016
January 19, 2016
THE HONEST ANSWER IS “OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT.” THAT’S NOT THE ONE THIS ARTICLE GIVES. Why Some States Want Strong Public-Sector Unions.
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Because while he talks a good game, depending upon who has written his speech for him, ultimately, as a politician, and as a leader, both at home and abroad, he sucks — to put it bluntly. But now he has a lengthy track record of suckniness, and it’s not going to get any better between now and January 20, 2017. You’re only fooled by a slick used car salesman once.
Related: “Obama is so anxious to be seen as creating a legacy that he isn’t really creating one at all.”
True. But chaos and destruction are their own reward for the punitive lefist. As is knocking America’s reputation down a notch or ten throughout the world. And in Obama’s narcissistic mind, his ultimate legacy is himself — he is the one he’s been waiting for, after all.
METAPHOR ALERT: On coldest night of 2016, Birmingham’s homeless warming station used for Sanders rally.
Every nightly news show would play story in a loop — a 24/7 loop at MSNBC — if it involved a Republican presidential candidate.
MATH IS HARD: Ashe Schow: Women cheer for Hillary Clinton’s gender wage gap lie.
Women in the audience for the fourth Democratic debate in South Carolina cheered loudly when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton alluded to the gender wage gap myth.
The first question asked of candidates was what they would make a priority in their first 100 days as president. As Clinton rattled off a list of standard talking points, she included the wage gap, saying she would ensure “equal pay for women’s work,” a play on the claim “equal pay for equal work.”
She can’t say “equal pay for equal work” because that is not what causes the gender wage gap. The wage gap is caused by the different choices men and women make in their careers, including what fields they choose and whether they take time off to raise a family. There is no concrete evidence that discrimination causes any part of the gap, as Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin recently noted.
But saying “equal pay for women’s work” is a new take on the myth. It still ignores the reality that equal pay has been the law since 1963.
I’d like to see some reporters ask Hillary what, exactly, counts as “women’s work.” I think that’s a Victorian term from her childhood.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME. Juan Williams: Let’s face it, you Republicans are to blame for the breakdown in political civility.
Perhaps a better headline for this story would be: “Man whose career was nearly destroyed by political correctness attacks side that defended his right to free speech.”
DAILY BEAST CLAIMS PENTAGON MAY DEMOTE DAVID PETRAEUS:
The Pentagon is considering retroactively demoting retired Gen. David Petraeus after he admitted to giving classified information to his biographer and mistress while he was still in uniform, three people with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.
The decision now rests with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who is said to be willing to consider overruling an earlier recommendation by the Army that Petraeus not have his rank reduced. Such a demotion could cost the storied general hundreds of thousands of dollars—and deal an additional blow to his once-pristine reputation.
“The secretary is considering going in a different direction” from the Army, a defense official told The Daily Beast, because he wants to be consistent in his treatment of senior officers who engage in misconduct and to send a message that even men of Petraeus’s fame and esteemed reputation are not immune to punishment.
Carter is the fourth Secretary of Defense under Obama, and each of his predecessors have slammed their erstwhile boss, who is far more eager to go to war against the American Midwest than any enemy in the Middle East. (And then there’s Israel, a onetime-ally whom Obama essentially treats as an enemy.) Demoting Petraeus — heck, even just Carter’s saber rattling — sends a message to everyone in the military not to discuss how badly Obama has wrecked morale and wrecked the Middle East since 2009. And it illustrates how badly Carter apparently wants to suck up to Obama in the final days of this craptacular administration.
It’s also reminiscent of how Harry Truman treated Douglas MacArthur. As Jeffrey Lord wrote at the American Spectator in 2010 when Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal, “MacArthur Defeats Truman: The Real McChrystal Message.” Lord noted that while Truman dismissed MacArthur, the showdown led to Ike’s victory in 1952, and MacArthur’s strong anti-Communist stance “shaped decades of Cold War politics.”
And presumably Cruz, Rubio and Trump are following this story carefully as well.
BLAME THE STATE’S REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR, LET THE DEMOCRATIC CITY GOVERNMENT — AND THE OBAMA EPA, WHICH KNEW AND DID NOTHING — OFF THE HOOK. Clinton ‘outraged’ by inaction over Flint lead contamination.
I’m predicting that the Democratic hacks actually in charge of this will pay no penalty at all.
TODAY IN HISTORY: Bill Clinton Admitted Lying About His Affair With Monica Lewinsky (VIDEO).
NORMALIZING IRAN: Bret Stephens writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Today’s liberal foreign policy, to adapt Churchill, is appeasement wrapped in realism inside moral equivalency. When it comes to Iran policy, that means believing that we have sinned at least as much against the Iranians as they have sinned against us; that our national-security interests require us to come to terms with the Iranians; and that the best way to allay the suspicions—and, over time, diminish the influence—of Iranian hard-liners is by engaging the moderates ever more closely and demonstrating ever-greater diplomatic flexibility.
That’s a neat theory, proved wrong by experience at every turn. The Carter administration hailed the Ayatollah Khomeini as “a saint.” Our embassy was seized. Ronald Reagan sent Khomeini a birthday cake, along with secret arms, to facilitate the release of hostages in Lebanon. A few hostages were released, while others were taken in their place. The world welcomed the election of “moderate” President Mohammad Khatami in 1997. Iran’s illicit nuclear facilities were exposed during his second term.
Getting it wrong with Iran has been a bipartisan project stretching back nearly 40 years, but it took Barack Obama to bring the country’s theocrats back into the community of nations — with a welcoming gift of $150,000,000,000.
THESE DAYS, IT’S MORE LIKE GALLOPING: Larry Summers: ‘Creeping Totalitarianism’ on College Campus. “The main thing that’s happening [on campus] is what always happens, professors teach courses, students take courses, students aspire to graduate, they make friends, they plan their lives… That said, whether it’s the President of Princeton negotiating with people as they took over his office over the names of schools at Princeton, whether it is attacks on very reasonable free speech having to do with adults’ right to choose their own Halloween costumes at Yale, whether it’s the administration using placemats in the dining hall to propagandize about what messages students should give their parents about Syrian refugee policy, there is a great deal of absurd political correctness.”
Remember, the people doing this aren’t good people overcome with well-meaning zeal. They’re awful people, who are engaging in bullying and totalitarianism. They should be treated accordingly. Note also that much of this is encouraged/enabled by administrators in “student life” bureaucracies, and remember that those people don’t have tenure.
PAM GELLER: The Nation That Gave the World the Magna Carta Is Dead.
It’s been a long time coming; Peter Hitchens’ brilliant 1999 book, The Abolition of Britain is an excellent reckoning of how the nation that won the battle over national socialism by the 1970s had nationalized and socialized most of its industries — and its culture as well. The immune system was severely weakened, making the patient’s death in recent years that much more likely.
CNN REPORTER ‘FELT BAD’ FOR CLINTON CAMPAIGN AFTER BERNIE’S LAST-MINUTE HEALTH CARE PLAN DUMP:
On Monday’s New Day, CNN’s Phil Mattingly revealed his sympathy for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. John Berman pointed out how Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, unveiled his Medicare-for-all health care plan mere hours before Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate on NBC. Mattingly remarked, “I felt bad for the Clinton staffers who had so many great lines written up about his health care plan and its lack of details — that they just had to toss into the wastebasket two hours before — very, very depressing on that end.”
And thus CNN comes full circle, singing the blues for Hillary’s socialized medicine after inviting a school choir on to sing the praises of the glorious Obamacare revolution to come, in October of 2009:
And poor, poor Hillary — just like in 2008, better candidates just keep stealing her healthcare lunch money right out from under her nose when she’s on the campaign trail!
NOW THAT THE SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS ARE GOING AFTER LEFTIES, IT’S SUDDENLY A PROBLEM: The younger generation’s new wave of political correctness is a danger to society. “Suddenly, those of us who had never worried about being seen as politically unsound are being cast as ageing, right-wing bigots.”
RON RADOSH: No New York Post, Bernie Sanders is Not a Communist:
Conservatives should oppose Sanders not for his views of twenty to forty years ago, since he has obviously rethought his old Leninism and discarded it. They should oppose him because what he advocates today would bankrupt our country, destroy American business, increase taxes, and lead to suffering of the very working and middle classes whose interests he purports to favor. But to write, as Sperry does, that he is a “hardcore commie” only creates sympathy for him among those naïve followers who will bemoan the new Red-baiting taking place.
* * * * * * * *
Sanders favors big government social-democratic measures, most of which most Democrats now support since the party moved further and further to the left. The old-style centrist Democrats in the party, like the old Bill Clinton and the now defunct Democratic Leadership Council in the 90s, are almost extinct.
So perhaps Sanders could be best defined as a socialist — with “a whole lot of nationalism mixed up in the socialism,” as Kevin D. Williamson noted last year.
MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Marissa Mayer Has Become A Symbol Of Silicon Valley’s Disastrous Tokenism. “The jokes write themselves. But just in case you’re out of ink: a token female CEO who immediately goes on a disastrous spending spree — colour me shocked!”
PROF. BAINBRIDGE: The University of Louisville pulled back the curtain to expose an ugly law school secret.
Apparently the University of Louisville law school has decided to meet declining enrollments and dwindling funds not by upping their game, but by “branding” itself as a “progressive” institution committed to “social justice.” . . .
The real tragedy, however, is that what’s happening at U of L is just an express embracing of the leftist hegemony that pervades American legal education. Conservatives, libertarians, people of faith … heck, anybody to the right of Hillary Clinton are hugely underrepresented in the legal academy and our students who profess such values have learned to hide their light under a bushel lest they be sent off to the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Tolerance, and Goodness (higher education’s version of the Ministry of Love).
Ultimately, of course, this is why U of L’s branding effort will fail miserably. Virtually every other law school the country–with very few honorable exceptions–has precisely the same identity, they just don’t advertise it. And why should they when everybody knows the dirty little secret, except the parents and state legislators who fund this cuckoo in their nest.
Indeed. Worse than the lame branding effort, as Bainbridge notes, is the thuggish response to critics. But talk of “social justice” always goes hand-in-hand with thuggery. I would say that social justice is to justice as military music is to music, but that would be unfair to military music.
Meanwhile, if you want to see how the term is perceived by non-academics, check out Ann Althouse’s poll.
Related: Megan McArdle: Academics Are So Lefty They Don’t Even See It.
WHY TAKE A CHANCE ON CREATIVITY WHEN YOU CAN STRIP-MINE THE CULTURE? The P.C. Casting Call.
MEN AT WORK: Building The Second Ave Subway.
NEO NEO HAS A TRUMP PROBLEM (BUT SHE’S TRYING TO QUIT): Disturbing news from the Trump front.
SON OF MALAISE, ENTER THE ANGER: Americans Giving Up on Jobs.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIKE TRUMP TO GET THE METAPHOR: ‘13 Hours’ captures how Americans really feel about our global standing.