Archive for 2016
December 20, 2016
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Title IX is ‘bureaucratic sex creep’ gone wild.
DID ANY EDITORIAL BOARD ANYWHERE CALL FOR THIS BEFORE THE DEMOCRATS LOST THE ELECTION? NYT: U.S. should end ‘antiquated mechanism’ of Electoral College.
EUROPE’S BAD DAY: Gunman Who Shot 3 at Zurich Islamic Center Is Found Dead, Police Say.
A gunman who wounded three people attending prayers after opening fire at an Islamic center in Zurich has been found dead, apparently after committing suicide, the Swiss police said on Tuesday.
“Our investigation says the dead man is the shooter,” Peat Jost, a spokesman for the Zurich police, said by telephone.
Mr. Jost declined to identify the gunman, who the police said was in his 30s, but he said investigators believed he had killed himself.
On Monday, in the hours after the attack, the police found the body of a man on the Gassner Bridge, near the city center and not far from the Islamic center, but did not immediately link him to the shooting.
As tense as Europe is, we’ll likely see more attacks like this.
THE NEW YORK TIMES’ READERS WILL LOVE THIS:
Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest political feats in modern history by defeating Hillary Clinton and the vaunted Clinton machine. . . .
The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships. . . .
Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes, not all of them cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other “ists.” I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not good preparation for the coming storm. The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks and cable stations in their midnight meltdown.
The media’s criticism of Trump’s high-level picks as “not diverse enough” or “too white and male” — a day before he named two women and offered a cabinet position to an African-American — magnified this fact.
Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.
As Eddie Murphy so eloquently stated in the movie “48 Hrs.”: “There’s a new sheriff in town.” And he is going to be here for 1,461 days. Merry Christmas.
True.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. ‘Fake News’ Is The Legacy Media Shaking Down Facebook.
Robert Tracinski:
An overview of studies on the fake news phenomenon indicates that Facebook’s critics have it completely backward. People don’t form their political preferences by reading fake news, they seek out fake news to support their political preferences. That goes for both sides, mind you, but given the organizations Facebook has tapped to deal with this issue, I have a feeling that in the new system one side is going be flagged way more often.
Yet for readers of those stories, gaining the official disapproval of Facebook is going to be like being “banned in Boston.” For the right audience, it’s a selling point: “Read the news Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want you to hear!”
That’s why Facebook doesn’t just leave it to users to make their own choices. Instead, flagged stories will be harder to find in Facebook news feeds and won’t be able to promote themselves with advertising. Given how “fact checkers” have played favorites with their ratings, there is a massive incentive for them to abuse this power simply to suppress facts and interpretations that support the other side of the political debate.
That’s kind of baked into the whole idea. After all, nobody was all that bothered by “fake news” until they thought it produced an election result they didn’t like. Then it suddenly became an issue. So from the very beginning, this push to suppress “fake news” is motivated by a desire to suppress undesirable political outcomes.
If you think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, it all makes sense.
MICHAEL BARONE: How the political rules changed in 2016. “The Trump campaign seems to have had a pretty good idea of what its Republican opponents and the Clinton campaign were up to, but the reverse was clearly not true. In post-election interviews Clinton campaign operatives were blaming their defeat on racism, the FBI director, the Russians. Mature adults would be seeking to understand how they had missed out on how the rules were changing.”
FAKE NEWS: Dallas Cops Have No Record Of Eichenwald Police Report.
A Twitter user under the handle “@jew_goldstein” tweeted an image Thursday with flashing colors saying Eichenwald deserved a seizure. Theresa Eichenwald, his wife, responded from his account, “@jew_goldstein This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.”
Kurt said Friday that police are investigating whether this is a federal crime as he said it is a “cross-state assault.” The Dallas Police Department told TheDC that there is no police report from those dates from either Eichenwald and that they cannot have an investigation without one.
Newsweek told The Daily Caller on Friday that they could confirm that what Theresa has said was true. Newsweek’s managing editor Ken Li told TheDC Monday they had no comment about the lack of a police report filed with the Dallas Police Department.
Li had no further comment regarding Eichenwald. “We’re not handling that, you’re going to have to talk to Kurt,” the Newsweek managing editor said.
If I were having a seizure, I’d rather have my wife by my side than trolling Twitter trolls.
TIME FOR DEMOCRATS TO ACCEPT REALITY:
It’s possible that the Democratic National Committee leaks were caused by Russian hackers—but given that the hack took place thanks to John Podesta clicking on a link in a phishing email, displaying all the technological savvy of someone’s aunt extremely excited by the new iPhone she thinks she’s won, it could have been anyone. . . .
Whatever Russia did or didn’t do, the idea that its interference is what cost Hillary Clinton the election is utterly ludicrous and absolutely false. What cost Hillary Clinton the election can be summed up by a single line from Sen. Chuck Schumer, soon to be the country’s highest-ranking Democrat: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” As it turned out, he was fatally wrong. It wasn’t the Russians who told the Democratic Party to abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base. It wasn’t the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail—“vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins.” The Russians didn’t come up with awful tin-eared catchphrases like “I’m with her” or “America is already great.” The Russians never ordered the DNC to run one of the most widely despised people in the country, simply because she thought it was her turn. The Democrats did that all by themselves.
What the Russia obsession represents is a massive ethical failure on the part of American liberals.
To be fair, so was the Hillary campaign.
SALENA ZITO: Wisconsin’s red realignment.
Eight years ago, Wisconsin Democrats were in the catbird seat; they held the Governor’s office, the majority in both chambers of the state legislature, two U.S. Senate seats, five of the state’s eight congressional seats and handed Barack Obama a rousing victory in the presidential election.
So it’s no wonder that Wisconsin’s winning election night results for Republican president-elect Trump and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were a bit of a jolt to most pundits’ sensibilities; for years they have believed that Wisconsin was a deeply blue state, powered by the public sector unions, that traditionally supports Democrat candidates in a big way.
It isn’t.
For the past seven years, beginning with Reince Priebus taking over Wisconsin’s Republican Party in 2009, the state has been anything but trending blue.
Many things our pundits “know” aren’t actually so.
GOOD LORD: At Least 48 Dead in Russia After Drinking Scented Bath Lotion.
At least 48 people died in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after consuming hawthorn-scented bath lotion containing methanol as a cheap substitute for the ethanol in standard alcoholic beverages, the Russian authorities said on Monday.
As the death toll climbed throughout the day, a local prosecutor, Stanislav Zubovsky, told the Interfax news agency that a total of 57 people were known to have consumed the deadly liquid over the weekend.
Consumption of surrogate alcohol is widespread in Russia, particularly in the struggling districts outside the more prosperous cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The sheer number of victims in Irkutsk evoked memories of the years of lawlessness, poverty and social depression that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Leave it to The New York Times to portray Russian life as rosier under Soviet rule.
THE NEW YORK POST EDITORIALIZES: Bill Clinton’s sad excuses for Hillary’s defeat.
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: Obama warns Trump against using the executive order too much — for real.
TRANSITION: Priebus flexes muscle in Trump Tower.
Reince Priebus is never far from Donald Trump’s side.
The outgoing chairman of the Republican National Committee and incoming White House chief of staff often joins Trump when he interviews candidates for his Cabinet in his cozy Trump Tower office. He accompanies Trump at high-level meetings, like their well-publicized dinner with Mitt Romney.
And he frequently makes jaunts with the president-elect in Trump’s jet, from a victory rally in Priebus’s native Wisconsin to a recent Army-Navy football game.
The consummate D.C. insider, Priebus has not just emerged as Trump’s public liaison to a still-skeptical GOP establishment; the 44-year-old political operative has also become a trusted adviser to and staunch defender of the president-elect, even as he competes for power and influence with rivals like Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, who were with Trump from the beginning.
Those who have been in the room with both Trump and Priebus say they wouldn’t describe Priebus as deferential to his new boss. In fact, Priebus appears at ease with Trump. He doesn’t hesitate to interject and offer his opinion, and the two often banter back and forth.
That’s not surprising to me.
WHAT’S SO UNFRIENDING ABOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING? Dems more likely to unfriend people due to political posts.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Berlin Christmas market attack suspect a refugee, security sources say.
The man suspected of deliberately ramming a large truck into a Christmas market in Berlin is a refugee from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, two German intelligence officials and a police official told CNN.
The sources said the suspect in Monday evening’s attack, which killed 12 people and injured dozens more, arrived in Passau, a city on Germany’s border with Austria, on December 31, 2015, after traveling through the Balkans.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a press conference on Tuesday saying it would be “especially disgusting” if the suspect turned out to have been given asylum in Germany.
Indeed.
UPDATE: Berlin police – “We have the wrong man”
Welt via Google Translate:
The allegations of the alleged perpetrator had been examined and considered to be correct. “We have the wrong man,” says the Berlin police. “And thus a new situation. For the real culprit is still armed at large and can cause new damage. “The capital’s preparedness police and the special forces were informed.
Earlier Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) had informed that the arrested suspect denies a complicity . According to him, he comes from Pakistan. He was submitted to Germany on 31 December 2015 and registered, said the minister. His asylum procedure has not yet been concluded after several attempts at a hearing have not taken place.
In the cab of the truck was found according to information of the news agency dpa blood-smeared clothes. In the case of the suspect who was later arrested at some distance from the crime scene, on the other hand, no clothing stained with blood was found, according to security circles.
According to de Maizière, “there is no longer any doubt that the terrible event last night was an attack.” The semitrailer was consciously controlled in the human population. “We are dealing with a brutal assassination attempt,” said the minister. An official confession of a terrorist group does not yet exist, but indirect assurances.
Did they simply arrest the wrong man, or was he acting as a decoy?
OUCH: Appeals court overturns probation case, rebukes US Attorney Ortiz. “In a stinging rebuke to U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. First Circuit Appeals Court reversed a centerpiece of her anti-corruption prosecutions and overturned the convictions of the state’s ex-probation chief, John J. O’Brien, and two of his deputies.”
UPDATE: Fed court: Carmen Ortiz ‘overstepped’ in probation case.
SCOTT JOHNSON: The persistence of “locker room talk.”
REMEMBER, IF YOUR SCHADENFREUDE LASTS FOR OVER A MONTH…. OH, WAIT, IT’S GOING TO BE AT LEAST FOUR YEARS, ISN’T IT? The Associated Press did all it could to elect Hillary Clinton, but today it (almost) gave up the ghost.