REUTERS: Exclusive: Top U.S. spy agency has not embraced CIA assessment on Russia hacking – sources. Is there even a “CIA assessment?” I thought there were just anonymous sources within the CIA saying this, and that’s what this story (not the headline) says, too.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “Yesterday I learned that releasing hacked — but true — emails is a threat to democracy, but suborning electors to reverse an election is not.”
FAKE NEWS: NY Times Debunks Its Own Reports That Claimed NY Prison/Parole System Is Racist.
That’s Andrew McCarthy reporting for PJM, so you’ll want to read the whole thing.
CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR:
Announcer: It’s time for “The Franken & Davis Show”, starring Al Franken and Tom Davis. And now, here’s Al and Tom!
[ dissolve to Al and Tom standing on stage ]
Al Franken: Thank you, thank you! Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! It’s GREAT to be back!
Tom Davis: That’s right. And, tonight, we’d like to stick our necks out a little bit on national television, and call for a violent overthrow of the United States government! [ he bows, as the audience applauds ]
Al Franken: Thank you! Thank you! You see, besides being a professional comedy team, Tom and I are international Communist revolutionaries… and we believe that nothing can really be changed in this country, through the Democratic process! [ brief applause ] Oh, thank you! We’re glad a lot of you feel that way!
—Excerpt from the “Franken & Davis Show” sketch on the October 21st, 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live.
But these were suddenly unfunny days. A shellshocked aura was cast over Capitol Hill, particularly among Democrats. I went to see Franken in his Senate office on a rainy Tuesday as lawmakers were trickling back to town after Thanksgiving. They convened in caucus meetings and hallway quorums that became commiseration sessions. Since Nov. 8, Washington has felt like a fortressed village bracing for a guerrilla invasion.
—“Al Franken Faces Donald Trump and the Next Four Years,” the New York Times, today. (Don’t miss the Schadenfreudelicious photo atop the article.)
Franken was a longtime cog in the machine that SNL creator-producer Lorne Michaels built that utterly changed the tone of NBC and much of old media as well, which created the all-snark-all-the-time response towards what the DNC-MSM contemptuously dubbed “flyover country.” I wonder if either man feels any guilt over the rise of the Trump?
Nahhh.
IN THE MAIL: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, on kindle and still $1.99.
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PROBABLY, BUT PROBABLY NOT FOR VERY LONG: Can OPEC Send Oil To $70?
The latest, by hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand, is that crude will reach US$70 by June 2017. Andurand made this call before the weekend deal between OPEC and external producers was announced, noting that the Vienna agreement reached among the members of the organization was a “major turning point”.
Three months ago, Andurand had forecast that crude would reach US$60 by the end of the year and US$70 in 2017, so he’s now just repeating his earlier prediction, with a sounder basis this time. Back in September, he had said that Saudi Arabia is aware of the long-term implications of a depressed oil market and was ready to take steps to avoid a deficit in the longer run.
And if OPEC and the major non-OPEC states actually stick to their cuts, that’s just more $60 or $70 oil we get to sell to a thirsty world.
THE PRICE OF PERSECUTION: Michael Barone: Did the Duke lacrosse case have reverberations in the 2016 election?
UNEXPECTEDLY: New York Times Hires Reporter Who Sent Stories To Hillary Staffers For Approval.
Fortunately for the Times, unlike his pose during the previous eight years, I doubt Glenn Thrush will be feigning much boredom during the Trump administration. (Perhaps a little ignorance of history, though.) And I doubt he’ll dub their worst decisions as “badass.”
Just think of him as a Democrat operative with a byline, and you’ll rarely go far wrong.
SHOCKING: Press encouraged to turn up heat on Trump. “The national press is renewing its call for even more scrutiny of the incoming Trump administration, and is cheering on reporters who challenge President-elect Trump and his team.”
Given that for the last eight years they saw themselves as extended members of Obama’s political staff (and that’s really not an exaggeration), it’s nice to see them getting back to doing their actual jobs. It’s just too bad that the only way you can get them to do their jobs is to elect a white, male Republican.
FRACK, BABY, FRACK: Trump to choose Perry as secretary of Energy, sources say.
NOT QUITE GRASPING THE IRONY: “It’s unacceptable this is happening in a class where I’m supposed to be learning about ancient humans and how they painted caves and used tools.”
SO IF PICKING THE SECRETARY OF STATE IS A “BRAND DECISION” FOR TRUMP, what does the Rex Tillerson pick say? Honestly, to me it looks like a bad pick. As CEO of Exxon, I’m sure the guy is competent, and he probably knows more about foreign relations than the average Senator, even those with Foreign Relations Committee experience. (Cough! *Joe Biden* Cough!)
But we’re talking branding here. What signal does Trump send with this pick? Some possibilities: (1) The Business Of America Is Business! (2) Remind me why Russia is our adversary? (3) We’re the #1 oil producer in the world thanks to fracking, and we’re going to increase our lead, so we want someone who understands how we can use the Oil Weapon. (4) I got nothin’.
As for #1, well, fine, but I don’t think that’s where Trump wants to go, is it? As for (2), Russia pretty clearly is our adversary. Just because you don’t want to risk nuclear war with them like Hillary did doesn’t mean that they’re our friend. Putin fooled Bush, who thought he looked into his soul, but Trump should have the benefit of that experience. (3) The oil thing kinda makes sense, but do you need an Exxon CEO for that? (4) This is pretty much my main take. I’m comforted, though, that Robert Gates and Condi Rice like Tillerson. Maybe Trump just thinks his own brand is so strong that he doesn’t need to make a branding statement with his Secretary of State pick? Or maybe it’s a literary conspiracy. “Ayn Rand was perhaps the leading literary voice in 20th century America for the notion that, in society, there are makers and takers, and that the takers are parasitic moochers who get in the way of the morally-superior innovators.” Well, if Rand didn’t convince people of that, Obama should have.
Any thoughts? Weigh in in the comments.
HIGH PRICES TODAY, EFFECTIVE DRUGS TOMORROW:
America pays higher prices for drugs because the government doesn’t negotiate with insurers. The government doesn’t negotiate with insurers in part because we have a powerful pharmaceutical industry that lobbies the government not to, but also in part because we’re not willing to have the government say, “Nope, we’ve decided you can’t sell your expensive treatment here,” which is a major way that other governments get their bargaining power. Telling Americans they can’t have stuff is really politically unpopular, so we mostly don’t do that. Instead, we pay some of the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
That sounds terrible! But it also has a benefit: Those profits give drug companies the necessary incentive for innovation.
This issue is often misunderstood on the left, where the argument goes: “If we slashed their profits by 90 percent, they’d still be making money, so obviously they don’t need such high profits in order to do research.” This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how profits function in the pharmaceutical industry, where funding research is not a budget problem; it’s an investment problem.
Most lefty policy pronouncements are based on fundamental misunderstandings of economics. The rest are based on the hopes that voters have a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.
WELL, GOOD: Alphabet’s self-driving car may keep the steering wheel after all.
Google’s parent company does not yet have the courage to build a car with no steering wheel or pedals, preferring to put its self-driving technology into existing cars from traditional auto manufacturers.
Thats the conclusion of news site The Information in a report published Monday citing people close to Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle project.
The technology is moving closer to market, and the company no longer considers it a “moonshot,” the head of its “X” research lab Astro Teller told The Wall Street Journal in October.
It’s over a year since it appointed former head of Hyundai U.S. John Krafcik to oversee its autonomous driving activities, which it began accounting for as a separate business on Jan. 1.
But now, The Information said, the company is moving away from plans to build and sell cars itself, preferring to partner with existing auto manufacturers to put its technology in their cars alongside traditional driver controls.
I don’t care who builds it or how intelligent the automation is — it’s going to be a long time before I get into a car with no steering wheel.
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: “Keith Olbermann Is More Insane than Ever.”
THIS LIST SEEMS SHORT TO ME. DOES IT SEEM SHORT TO YOU? 10 Childish Behaviors from the Left in the Wake of Trump’s Election.
THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Mainstream Media Scream: Media tries to delegitimize Trump’s victory. “Question is: Who did more to interfere in the integrity of the U.S. election? The American news media which forwarded its own ‘fake news’ to discredit Trump or, if Russia really is behind the hacking, Putin’s regime which disclosed some emails that revealed truths about what Clinton’s team thought of her opponents?”
SALENA ZITO ON THE LAST HOPE OF DEMOCRATS IN DENIAL: Trump undone by faithless electors? Fuhgeddaboudit!
NIALL FERGUSON: I was wrong on Brexit.
For years I have argued that Europe became the world’s most dynamic civilization after around 1500 partly because of political fragmentation and competition between multiple independent states. I have also argued that the rule of law — and specifically the English common law — was one of the “killer applications” of western civilization.
I was a staunch Thatcherite. I was a proud Eurosceptic. So what on earth, many old friends wondered, prompted me to take the side of “remain” in the referendum on EU membership?
A part of the answer is that I sincerely convinced myself that the costs of Brexit would outweigh the benefits. But I too readily trotted out the doom-laden projections of a post-Brexit recession from the International Monetary Fund, the Treasury, and others. I accused the proponents of Brexit of being “Angloonies” as opposed to Eurosceptics. My most desperate sally was to compare Brexit to a divorce — desperate not because the analogy is a bad one (it still fits rather well) but because I myself am divorced.
Why? The answer is partly that 14 years of living in the United States had taken their toll. Americans since the 1960s have wanted the Brits inside the EU to counterbalance the French, whom they do not trust. I had started to think that way. But a bigger factor — I must admit it — was my personal friendship with David Cameron and George Osborne. For the first time in my career, I wrote things about which I had my doubts in order to help my friends stay in power. That was wrong and I am sorry I did it.
I think if Ferguson spent more time here in Flyover Country, he’d find that the Americans who “wanted the Brits inside the EU” are mostly clustered in the Blue coastal enclaves, where many other bad ideas go to flourish.
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