WHO EMPOWERED PUTIN?: This is a bump, but the last half of the essay documents the culprits– with dates and actions.
Archive for 2016
July 29, 2016
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THIS DOESN’T SEEM ESPECIALLY SURPRISING: Being Unfit May Be Almost as Bad for You as Smoking. “Poor fitness turned out to be unhealthier even than high blood pressure or poor cholesterol profiles, the researchers found. Highly fit men with elevated blood pressure or relatively unhealthy cholesterol profiles tended to live longer than out-of-shape men with good blood pressure and cholesterol levels.”
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED: U.S. Economy Grew Less-Than-Forecast 1.2% in Second Quarter.
So much for “Morning in America.” As Jim Hofted noted in April, Obama will be the only president never to have seen a year of three percent or more economic growth during his administration.*
Of course some radical environmentalists, such as John Kerry and Claire McCaskill consider that to be good news.
* No wonder Paul Krugman longs for “the miracle of the 1940s,” his euphemism for that minor bit of unpleasantness the rest of us call World War II.
I HOPE WE PUT AN EXPLOITABLE FLAW IN THE PLANS THEY STOLE: The Chinese CH-4B looks and acts a lot like the American Reaper drone.
HEADLINES FROM 1965: CARLIN, PRYOR, AND BRUCE MOURN FREE SPEECH:
In an interview with free speech advocacy group FIRE, George Carlin’s daughter Kelly Carlin, Richard Pryor’s daughter Rain, and Lenny Bruce’s daughter Kitty confirm their dads would have a few choice words on today’s “thought police.”
Kitty Bruce brings up campus censorship: She’s found no comic willing to open the Lenny Bruce archives at Brandeis. Those she’s asked tell her, “Kitty, they want our comedy to be beige.” Lenny Bruce, like him or not, was anything but beige, and his bestselling album recorded live at UC Berkeley.
And according to Ms. Pryor, political correctness holds us back from a collective healing: “We’re afraid to laugh at what is painful. Do you know what I mean? We’re afraid to go to that line and cross it and then, if we do cross it, we’re not crossing it for the sake of enlightenment, right?”
“Enlightenment” may be a bit of a stretch. The legacy of the three funny men led to the erasure of the lines they, sometimes brilliantly, crossed. They made their livings and won their fame offending and amusing the cultural sensitivities they helped to push our culture past. And yet new lines, too many to keep in order, have replaced these. Kelly Carlin cites identity politics’ requirement everyone honor everyone else’s self-image, leaving little room for laughs.
As with John Cleese in 2011 having second thoughts about the current state of England after Monty Python spent years on the (state-owned) BBC going to war against its former postwar version, all of the (admittedly brilliant) comedic fathers referenced above worked very hard in the 1960s and ‘70s to coarsen American culture. Curiously, as their daughters belatedly discovered, their efforts to advance the left didn’t result in a liberated free-speech nirvana. If only someone could have predicted that.
JACK DUNPHY ON ‘THE MOTHERS OF THE MOVEMENT:’
Last Friday, a funeral was held in Baton Rouge for a police officer murdered there last week. Saturday brought two more police funerals, one in Kansas City, and another in Baton Rouge. The funeral for the third Baton Rouge officer killed last week was held on Monday.
Also on Monday, to far greater attention than any of these funerals received, the Democratic National Convention began in Philadelphia. Among the speakers to address the convention on Tuesday night was a group of women collectively known as the Mothers of the Movement, the members of which are connected by way of having lost children under violent or otherwise controversial circumstances. The group includes the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Dontré Hamilton, Jordan Davis, and Hadiya Pendleton.
Read the whole thing.
TALKING POINTS MEMO: How These Former Obama Voters Came To See Trump As Their Champion. Short version: They voted for Obama but now they’re racist.
WHY ARE ALL THESE DEMOCRAT-ALIGNED COMPANIES hiding so much money overseas to avoid taxes?
IN THE MAIL: From Charles J. Sykes, Fail U.: The False Promise of Higher Education.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1177.
I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE VIOLENT, CHAOTIC ONE: One of Clinton’s most aggressive surrogates, super PAC maestro David Brock, was chased through the halls of the Wells Fargo Center by two Sanders delegates after Bill Clinton’s Tuesday night speech, according to a Democrat who witnessed the spectacle. “They were yelling ‘you f—g jerk,’” said the Democrat.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The World is at War and the Peace Has Been Lost.
From the quiet country churches of Normandy through the civil wars of Africa, the killing fields of Syria, Putin’s war against the modern European order and China’s lawless surge into the waters beyond its shores, the dark storm clouds gather. Pope Francis has noticed. . . .
Francis is not always the world’s clearest thinker on matters of politics and policy, but he hit the nail right on the head here: we have lost the peace. It is an interesting counterpoint to the Democratic establishment’s celebration of itself and its wisdom last night. And the Pope’s point suggests what is likely to be the starting point of historians’ analysis of Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy: not how he succeeded, but how and why was the peace lost on his watch?
Hillary Clinton is pursuing a job that will be much harder than the job her husband faced, and she will need to do something that many of her most ardent supporters hope she won’t have to do: when the world is at war because it has lost the peace, you have to think outside the box and go well beyond the world of stale liberal truisms of the Boomer Progressive Synthesis.
ANDREW McCARTHY ON THE BROUHAHA OVER TRUMP’S ‘TREASON:’ “Hillary has committed serious felony violations of federal law. So naturally, the left is acting as if Trump committed ‘treason:’”
Come in from the strange echo of the Cold War and read the whole thing.
CAMBODIA BACKED CHINA: And may pay a political price for its sell-out. I posted on this a few days ago.
Cambodia ignored its neighbors and used its support for China to water down a traditional statement in regards to the South China Sea dispute. The communique failed to mention China’s July 12 defeat in The Hague where an international tribunal ruled “there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea falling within the nine-dash line.” China refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the court – a move backed by Cambodia – or the legal action initiated by the Philippines.
Thanks to Cambodia, China won a tactical political victory at the ASEAN meeting. Beijing didn’t want the arbitration decision mentioned– nope, can’t state that fact. China’s bought Cambodia’s vote. As the article notes, over the last two decades China has given Cambodia $15 billion in aid and soft loans.
ANOTHER POLICE OFFICER SLAIN: In San Diego. One officer killed, one wounded. Blue Lives Matter.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Dems go full Joe McCarthy.
TWO WEEKS SINCE TURKEY’S COUP: No, it isn’t ancient history. Erdogan is consolidating personal power. Today the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet says the government is claiming Gulen planned to return to Turkey like Khomeini returned to Iran.
JAMES O’KEEFE GOES #IMWITHHER UNDERCOVER AND FINDS NO HILLARY LOVE OUTSIDE #DNCINPHL (Video): Watch as an enraged Bernie supporter (is there any other kind) tackles a Hillary t-shirt-wearing O’Keefe to the ground.
HILLARY AT RISK OF BEING UPSTAGED:
Few would ever want to follow that Dream Team lineup of gifted political orators at the Democratic National Convention.
Then again, Hillary Clinton doesn’t really have a choice.
She wants to be president, and the acceptance speech is a rite of passage for anyone seeking the White House.
When the former secretary of State and first lady steps on stage here at the Wells Fargo Arena Thursday night, she will become the first woman in American history to accept the presidential nomination of a major political party.
But Clinton also finds herself in the difficult spot of going last, after some tremendous speeches by her top surrogates — all of whom have demonstrated an uncanny ability to inspire and connect with huge audiences like the one that will fill the Wells Fargo Arena.
When I was in the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota at the start of September of 2008 as part of the team that kicked off PJTV, I’ll never forget how Sarah Palin had the crowd absolutely enraptured by the end of her speech. (She was so good that night, no wonder the DNC-MSM decided they needed to utterly crush her.) Then the last night was McCain, who seemed oddly flat, particularly by comparison. I remember walking out of the arena thinking that it’s never a good sign when the opening act blows away the headliner, and this does not bode well for November. I wonder if Hillary voters in Philadelphia had a similar reaction last night.
Related: Bernie Sanders’ delegates wore glow-in-the-dark t-shirts reading “enough is enough” during Hillary’s speech, Joel Pollack tweets with an accompanying photo.