REPORT: NBC ‘TODAY’ ANCHOR BILLY BUSH LEAVING NETWORK AMID SEX-CHARGED TRUMP CONTROVERSY.
Because, hey, not just everybody gets to be Howard Stern, Alec Baldwin, Al Sharpton, and Brian Williams at the Peacock Network.
Archive for 2016
October 11, 2016
ESPN TURNED INTO MSNBC SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: ESPN Gives President Obama an Hour of Air Time Tuesday Night.
Related: NFL Ratings Set To Drop Again In Week 5 As NFL Downplays The Problem.
REVIEW: 2017 BMW 330i Automatic.
AT AMAZON, Fall savings in Camera & Photo.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Why ADHD Drugs Are the Hottest Study Aid on College Campuses.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: THE PERILOUS WHITENESS OF … PUMPKINS? “I learned about the true meaning of the pumpkin-spiced latte in a scholarly paper, called The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins. It was peer-reviewed and published in a genuine academic journal…. Vast tracts of the social sciences have gone insane. If you doubt it, I urge you to check out New Real Peer Review, a Twitter feed whose purpose is to expose the absurdity of what passes for scholarly research.”
D.C. MCALLISTER: A Conservative Woman’s Defense of the Brave Men Who Support Trump.
BUT OF COURSE: NBC planned to edit Billy Bush out of Trump footage before releasing it, People magazine claims.
Flashback: Just NBC yet another deceptive edit, from the network that brought you Brian Williams and Al Sharpton.
Related: Hypocrisy alert: NBC suspends Billy Bush, celebrates Alec Baldwin, Howard Stern.
SMOKE ON THE WATER, THEN AND NOW:
Shot: TBS “used 2015 Moscow river oil fire (injured 3, including child) to symbolize” Cleveland Indians sweeping Boston Red Sox.
Chaser: “The 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga was a relatively minor story in Cleveland at the time. Although reportedly intense, the fire lasted less than 30 minutes. It was so quick that the flames were out before local photographers arrived. All the local papers could show was a fireboat spraying down a railroad trestle after the fire was under control. Time magazine ran a striking photo of the river ablaze–no doubt the photograph Carol Browner remembers–but this picture was not of the June 1969 fire. It was an old photo of an earlier, more serious, fire from 1952.” *
Man, even the airbrushes are a half century old on the left.
* Which Time would eventually confirm.
PUSHBUTTON PLACEBOS: 4 Common Buttons That Probably Don’t Even Work.
THE OBAMACARE STOOL WOBBLES: This is an opportunity for Republicans, if they can hold the House.
“If.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Five Conservative Reasons to Vote for Hillary Clinton.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students Flood College Mental-Health Centers.
Back when college cost less, and there were a lot fewer “student life” administrators, student life seems to have been less stressful. . . .
WHY NOT START MODESTLY, BY ELIMINATING ALL OF THE AIR CONDITIONERS IN FOGGY BOTTOM, PER JOHN KERRY’S WISH? “Described by the Boston Globe as ‘America’s most important environmentalist’, 350.org founder Bill McKibben says America’s defense budget must ‘be put to work defending us against the most dangerous adversaries we face’ — climate change.”
Freud called it displacement.
BREAKING: Federal Appeals Court Finds Structure of CFPB Unconstitutional.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the consumer-finance watchdog violated the Constitution’s separation of powers because its director isn’t sufficiently answerable to the president.
It rejected the idea of shutting down the CFPB, and instead said the remedy is to give the president the power to remove the agency’s director at will and to supervise and direct the director. The court also sent the enforcement action back to the CFPB for review.
The CFPB, created by a Democratic Congress after the 2008 financial crisis and long-criticized by Republicans, is headed by a single director who can be removed by the president only for cause.
“In light of the consistent historical practice under which independent agencies have been headed by multiple commissioners or board members, and in light of the threat to individual liberty posed by a single-Director independent agency…We therefore hold that the CFPB is unconstitutionally structured,” the court said.
IN THE MAIL: The Spartan Regime: Its Character, Origins, and Grand Strategy.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1251.
IF ONLY THEY VOTED THIS WAY: Gallup: Majority of Americans still think gov’t encroaching too much on individuals, businesses. “Given the consistent response from the electorate over the last 25 years, it’s remarkable that the one party most oriented toward small-government conservatism has not been able to find a way to take advantage of this consensus.”
Well, as Prof. Tim Groseclose’s research has found, if it weren’t for media narrative-control, America’s politics would look like Utah’s instead of, well, what they do. Sort of surprised that the GOP, and even non-GOP free-market donors, can’t seem to take the lesson here.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama Blows Off Putin, Encouraging Kremlin Aggression Against NATO: U.S. President just ignored his Cuban Missile Crisis.
Late last week, Vladimir Putin went all-in and executed the brazen geopolitical move of transporting nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea north of Poland that’s surrounded by NATO countries.
As I told you on Friday, the Kremlin’s deployment of Iskander missiles, what NATO calls SS-26s, into Kaliningrad is a direct challenge to the Atlantic Alliance, since it puts all of Poland and the Baltic republics into range for a sudden nuclear strike. An Iskander’s flight time from Kaliningrad to Warsaw is just two minutes, so NATO would functionally have no warning.
In military terms, this is a game-changer for the Baltic region. Politically, it’s deeply destabilizing too. It’s nothing less than a regional version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Moscow placing nuclear missiles close to the Western camp for strategic advantage. Why Putin would do this when Obama has just three months left in the White House is the key question—and answering it reveals disturbing truths. . . .
The Kremlin’s no longer hiding its actions, even when they are profoundly destabilizing to European security. Knowing that President Obama will do nothing, Moscow is now openly boasting of its Iskander gambit. Stating the move is “no secret” and just part of military drills, Kremlin media isn’t shying away from the story. . . .
ndeed, four days into Putin’s Cuban Missile Crisis on the Baltic Sea, our president remains invisible. There has been no public statement on the Iskander deployment from either the White House or the Pentagon. The U.S. military has made some quiet moves in response to the Russian move, including flights by our spy planes over the Baltic to monitor Kremlin moves. However, the lack of any public support or demonstrations of NATO solidarity by Washington right now is deeply troubling to our allies in Eastern Europe, most of whom had minimal confidence in Obama’s courage even before his latest no-show.
Vladimir Putin is no madman, rather an opportunist. He will get away with what NATO and especially the United States—who in military terms are vastly more powerful than Russia—allow him to. Barack Obama seems to think that letting the Kremlin do whatever it wishes will bring peace and stability. Ukraine and Syria tragically demonstrate that Obama’s laissez-faire attitude towards Putin beings anything but peace, yet it seems highly unlikely that our president will grow a backbone with just three months left in office.
He has more flexibility now.