21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Researchers Caution Public About Hidden Risks of Self Administered Brain Stimulation.
Archive for 2016
July 8, 2016
RUN, BERNIE, RUN! Green Party Candidate Invites Bernie Sanders To Take Over Ticket.
TEACHABLE MOMENTS: 5 Times Obama Hated On The Police. “Before the facts were determined in either St. Paul or Baton Rouge, President Obama was on television making broad statements about the practices of law enforcement nationwide. Not that allowing an official investigation to take its course has mattered much to him before. Here is a short history of Obama’s habit of jumping to conclusions when it comes to the police.”
NRA CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION of Philando Castle shooting.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: 26 police killed so far in 2016, up 44% from 2015.
As Kevin D. Williamson wrote today, “The people who blamed Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs as a graphic-design element on a poster (‘targeting’ certain Democrats for electoral challenges) for the shooting of Gabby Giffords suddenly have nothing to say about violent and irresponsible rhetoric. I myself hold to the view that we hold criminals responsible for their actions and that speeches given by third parties are generally, at most, tangential questions. Maybe your view is different, and that’s fine: But pick one.”
Over to you, CNN’s Sally Kohn.
AS USUAL, NOBLE SAVAGES MORE SAVAGE THAN NOBLE: Neanderthals ‘Thoroughly’ Butchered Their Own.
DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE: University of Northern Colorado Defends Orwellian ‘Bias Response Team’.
DENIAL DIES IN DALLAS, Richard Fernandez writes:
Dallas leaves the Narrative with no place to go. What’ll it be? Withdraw the police from the streets? Crack down on the usual suspects? Announce this was the work of that Jayvee team, ISIS? Close the borders? Confiscate the guns? Call in the FBI?
Or maybe we can listen to another speech about how hatred is on its last legs? There’s nowhere to turn without admitting failure. Or perhaps we can just change the subject and talk about the war on women and Christian hatred? What’ll it be? It’s always worked before, maybe it’ll work again… Denial will no longer work. That is the single most important thing to understand.
When Democrats with bylines were busy in 2008 churning out endless articles on what kind of transformative president their self described “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views” would be, Lyndon Johnson rarely made the list. But the Obama administration began with a typically disastrous Great Society-style program (Obamacare), spent its middle years micromanaging from the White House a war they seemed oddly determined to lose and now spend their waning days “recreating ’68,” as the left promised it would do in 2008.
And Hillary is campaigning as his successor. Four more years of this?
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IN THIS BANANA REPUBLIC, MRS. CLINTON COULDN’T GET INDICTED IF SHE TRIED, Kevin D. Williamson writes, comparing James Comey’s “oogedy-boogedy about how she didn’t really break the law” with the career-ending fates of Republicans Tom DeLay and Rick Perry:
DeLay and Perry were indicted in Travis County, Texas, which is run by Democrats who like to make ritual sacrifices of the occasional Republican politician. They know that they can do this with no fear of sanction from, say, Barack Obama’s Justice Department. The Democratic party in Texas is a criminal enterprise (my friend Michael Walsh describes the Democrats at large as a crime syndicate masquerading as a political party, which isn’t inaccurate) that is sustained by corruption and old-fashioned ward politics that would have been familiar to a Chicago boss in the 1920s or a denizen of Tammany Hall. The Democrats happen to run Washington, too, which is why Hillary Rodham Clinton knows that she can violate the law, at will, for obvious personal political reasons, with very little fear of official sanction. And the fact is, the Democrats prefer their politicians a little crooked, a little dirty. It helps them, a Chavista party constrained mainly by the temperamental (rather than ideological) conservatism of the American electorate, to make up in viciousness what they lack in policy ideas appropriate to the 21st century.
That lack of policy ideas isn’t really very important. The Left isn’t interested in policy; it is interested in power, and the things you can do with it, meaning rewarding one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. Barack Obama has been, in his less guarded moments, fairly plain about that. For the Left, all justice is Wonderland justice: decision first, arguments afterward as necessary. There is seldom if ever any doubt about how the so-called liberals on the Supreme Court (who are not liberals at all) will vote on any question: They will vote the way the Left wants them to. Elena Kagan, you may recall, testified in her confirmation hearings that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage lurking in the penumbras to be discovered. Once confirmed, she reached a little deeper and pulled one out. Conservatives can never really guess which way a Kennedy or a Roberts is going to come down on a question, but you know how the judges of the Left are going to vote. Arguments do not matter; only outcomes matter.
Which brings us to this charming quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “It’s likely that the next president, whoever she will be, will have a few appointments to make.” The article containing it is headlined, “AP interview: Ginsburg doesn’t want to envision a Trump win.”
As with Nixon in ’68, I suspect after last night, a lot more people are envisioning it. Or as this post from May by John Hinderaker at Power Line was headlined, “Electing Trump, One Riot at a Time.”
MICROBIOME UPDATE: Gut Bacteria Are Different In People With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
WORDS. JUST WORDS. BURIED FOUR PARAGRAPHS DEEP: DNC statement on this week’s shootings mentions Dallas in last line of 4th paragraph, calling it “unacceptable.”
Related: Representative John Lewis, a timeline of two tales.
That sort of schizophrenic partisanship is nothing new for Lewis, sadly.
PARTICULARLY IF NEIL “DEEP THOUGHTS” TYSON IS YOUR MODEL FOR RATIONALITY: A rational nation ruled by science would be a terrible idea.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Yes, the Dallas horror is today’s big story, and it should be. But Hillary’s loose lips damaged and will continue to damage US national security.
ACCELERATING RESEARCH INTO DARK ENERGY.
JOURNALISM: Sign of the Times? Congresswoman to be indicted, no story in NYT. “Florida outlets, including News 4 Jacksonville, First Coast News and the Orlando Sentinel are all carrying the story that federal law enforcement officials say a grand jury has voted to indict Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., on corruption charges. (Kelly Cohen of the Washington Examiner has details here.) A search of the Times’ website at 10 a.m. had zero stories on the matter.” Repeating the search now shows an AP story from 15 minutes ago.
FLASHBACK: Politicians benefit from American tribal warfare.
“What if I told you,” asks a Matrix-themed photo meme circulating on Facebook, “that you can be against cops murdering citizens and citizens murdering cops at the same time?”
Judging by the past few weeks, this really is a Matrix-level revelation. We have Americans protesting because of police shootings, and we have police turning their backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over lack of support after two officers were assassinated by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a gunman who said he was seeking revenge for the choking death of cigarette-tax evader Eric Garner.
And, as blogger Eric Raymond notes, the response has been divided: “Because humans are excessively tribal, it’s difficult now to call for justice against Eric Garner’s murderers without being lumped in with the ‘wrong side.’ Nor will Garner’s partisans, on the whole, have any truck with people who aren’t interested in poisonously racializing the circumstances of his death.”
This is a tragedy, but not a surprise. Tribalism is the default state of humanity: The tendency to defend our own tribe even when we think it’s wrong, and to attack other tribes even when they’re right. Societies that temper those tribal tendencies do much better. But there is much opportunity for political empire-building in tribalism, and if the benefits of stoking tribal fires exceed the costs, then expect political actors to pour gasoline on even the smallest spark.
That’s pretty much what has happened. In America, we have both a police culture that is too quick to escalate force, and an aggressive victim culture, embodied by the loathsome Al Sharpton, that seeks to portray every police use of force, at least against members of the wrong racial and ethnic groups, as excessive.
A healthy society would stigmatize, marginalize and shun the tribalizers.
We do not live in a healthy society.
UPDATE: And this remains evergreen, alas:
(Bumped from last night.)
US TO DEPLOY THAAD ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILES TO SOUTH KOREA: North Korea’s threats produce a military response. This deal has been in the works for quite some time. The article comes from a South Korean publication. Note how it emphasizes that this was a mutual decision. It improves South Korean and Japanese anti-missile defenses (regional defenses).
Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the U.S.-led Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) system in Korea, a move aimed at countering North Korean nuclear and missile threats, the Ministry of National Defense announced Friday.
OKAY, I WAS SNARKING, BUT IT’S A SERIOUS QUESTION AND I WONDER WHY MORE PEOPLE AREN’T ASKING IT?
BENNY JOHNSON: Meet Patrick Zamarripa: The America Loving, Dallas Police Officer Who Was Tragically Killed Last Night.
This was his last tweet.
IT’S NOT 1968 YET, THOUGH SOME PEOPLE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT SO:
There’s some evidence that violent crime has gone up a bit in the last year, but not enough to move this chart much.
NBC’S CHUCK TODD: TOUGH TO TRAIN ‘PREJUDICE AND HATE’ OUT OF POLICE HEARTS.
How do you train those emotions out of Al Sharpton’s heart, who’s sitting alongside Todd opining on Dallas?
Speaking of the shooting of Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota, and discussing the need for better police training, Todd said: “how do you train prejudice and hate out of somebody’s heart? That’s a tough thing.” Is there racism among police? Of course, as there is in every segment of society. Was the Minnesota governor right when he said Castile would be alive if he were white? Quite possibly. But for Todd to focus on police “prejudice and hate” was a gross and unfair overgeneralization. Chuck Todd: please spend a few days in a police cruiser in an inner city. See what the police see and have to deal with every day. Then come back and tell us whether police “prejudice and hate” is the key to the problems facing our society.
Someone should remind Todd and Sharpton that this isn’t the America of 1963; why is Todd assuming the worst of an apparently Asian-American officer?
And speaking of NBC, “Brian Williams’ Dallas coverage makes him social media laughingstock,” T. Becket Adams writes at the Washington Examiner. “Though Williams anchored from his now-regular perch at MSNBC, the feed was carried live on NBC’s main network,” Adams notes. As John Ziegler tweeted, “So after hrs of watching Brian Williams tonight the only thing I’m sure about is that Dallas is where Kennedy was assassinated & this sucks.”
This is what happens when someone with Very Important Hair™ used to doing a heavily scripted half-hour nightly news program is turned loose to improvise on air for hours and hours.
IT’S DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN, Michael Walsh writes.
Recreate ’68 was the slogan of the far left in 2008; apparently it’s their goal during every election year – and as Glenn has noted, without Apollo 8 to redeem what Michael accurately describes as “The worst year in modern American history.”