JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: How Journalists Purge Peers Who Don’t Lick Hillary Clinton’s Boots.
Related: 20 Mins on ‘Miss Piggy’ Remark, Silence on Cheryl Mills Immunity.
Archive for 2016
September 30, 2016
MAYBE IT’S WITH HER MISSING EMAILS: Hey, what happened to Hillary Clinton’s middle-class tax cut?
So why isn’t Hillary campaigning hard on her own middle-class tax cut, as Leonhardt suggests? One theory: Clinton long ago assumed she would be the 45th POTUS, and has been running on more of a governing agenda. No need to “pander” so much.
And along those lines, perhaps she sees infrastructure spending as a better use for taxpayer dough than pricey middle-class tax cuts. Perhaps she buys the reasoning of Democratic economist Larry Summers: “In the short run, expanded infrastructure investment would put people to work, create demand, and move the economy forward. In the medium run, it would expand the economy’s capacity, and reduce [debt] burdens on my children.”
Cutting taxes allows people to keep more of their own money, and decide how to spend it themselves. “Investing” in ill-defined infrastructure keeps the decision-making power with our betters in Washington.
LASHING OUT: White House lashes out at ’embarrassing’ Senate veto override. Well, having your veto overridden 97-1 is pretty embarrassing.
Related: Dem leaders defend overriding 9/11 bill veto.
Plus: James Taranto: Jasta la Vista, Baby. Obama’s veto gets overridden, and everyone looks foolish.
“Congress Disses Obama One Last Time” reads a Politico headline. “Diss” (or “dis”) is a slang term for “disrespect,” so the implication is that lawmakers have personally slighted the president, when in fact all they have done is exercise their authority under the Constitution.
And what they did is more aptly characterized as a first than a last. The House and Senate both easily mustered the two-thirds majorities required to approve the only veto override in Obama’s more than 7½ years in office. In this column’s view Obama is right on the substance—the new law is a bad one—but the story of how it came to pass is one in which everyone in Washington, including the president, looks terrible.
To be fair, they mostly are terrible.
SYRIAN CEASEFIRE UPDATE: Syria military says it retook hospital, refugee camp in Aleppo.
The military said its forces captured the Kindi hospital and were strengthening their positions in the Handarat refugee camp, the Associated Press reported.
The state-run SANA news agency said that government soldiers retook buildings in Aleppo including Aleppo Club, the electricity department and a garage.
Doctors without Borders called on the Syrian government and its allies to “stop indiscriminate bombing in Aleppo.”
Awful as the Syrian assault is, it seems to be a more effective method of ending a war than President Obama’s weak attempts to talk Assad out of power.
Aleppo is the rebels’ last major stronghold, and the Turks are helping Damascus by clearing the north of Syria of ISIS and Kurdish forces. Assuming the dust ever settles, Russia and Iran will have strengthened their hand across the Levant, and the U.S. will have shown that we’re incapable of finding new friends in the Middle East (among the rebels) or supporting the friends we already have (the Kurds).
But Obama will still have his Nobel Peace Participation Trophy.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Beyond the Presidency, Reasons to Go on Living.
DEUTSCHE BANK UNTER ALLES: The Deutsche Bank crisis could take Angela Merkel down – and the Euro.
I love this line in CNBC’s take, which is headlined, “Pressure is building for Germany to show it’s ready to rescue Deutsche Bank:” “German officials could be about to find themselves in an uncomfortable position: Being called on to show they’re ready to rescue a bank in a part of the world where such operations are considered taboo.”
Yes, if it’s one thing that Germany has no experience whatsoever with, it’s corporatism.
INCREDIBLE: Tennessee school counselor talks student with gun out of shooting.
A 14-year-old boy went to Sycamore Middle School on Wednesday asking to speak with counselor Molly Hudgens, according to WKRN-TV.
Authorities said he told her he was having problems and was going to kill teacher and a police officer, but no students; he told her she was the only one who could talk him out of it.
She did.
Read the whole thing.
Donald Trump raced to the front of the GOP pack by focusing on illegal immigration. For months, liberals inside and outside of the press denounced Trump’s immigration views, accusing him of being a bigot, etc. But immigration has now disappeared from the news. In the first Clinton-Trump debate, moderator Leslie Holt never mentioned the subject. Why? Democrats understand that most voters side with Trump.
Likewise with trade. Here, in my opinion, Trump is vulnerable, but the issue is still too risky for the Left. Therefore, the less said the better.
How about our declining military, the Iran deal, Hillary Clinton’s criminal mishandling of classified information, the weakest recovery since WWII, stagnant wages, the war on cops and a suddenly rising crime rate, the Libya fiasco, and Obamacare, a failure by any accounting? Where have all the issues gone? Off the front pages, every one, and so far, out of the debates.
The issues that voters care most about appear to be off the table until the election is safely over. Instead, editors and reporters are feeding us a steady diet of Trump’s tax returns, a reprise of birtherism, and Alicia Machado, a person, evidently, of great significance. You could say she is the Quemoy and Matsu of this election, but that understates the case.
It is obvious what is going on here.
Trump can push back on that, but he tends to be reactive.
SHOT: CHELSEA CLINTON TAKES PRIVATE JET TO ‘CLEAN ENERGY’ CONFERENCE IN HIPPIE PARADISE.
CHASER: Hillary Clinton Vows To Prosecute All Climate Change Deniers.
I’m sure even as we speak, Hillary is planning to dispatch an eco-SWAT team arrest her own daughter. But in the meantime, as Glenn likes to say, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.
Earlier: As Americans Tire of Eco-Panic, Hillary Quietly Drops ‘Climate Change’ Rhetoric.
I’m sure it will resume being an even bigger crisis than terrorism come January though.
THE NEW CIVILITY: Obama Cabinet Official Says It’s A Good Thing Justice Scalia Died.
It’s a good thing for labor unions that Antonin Scalia died earlier this year, Tom Perez, President Obama’s Labor Secretary, said on Thursday.
Perez, a progressive whom Hillary Clinton considered choosing as her running mate, was answering questions during a session at the Washington Ideas Forum when he was asked about strategies to increase labor union membership.
“Well, I think you have all these — there’s an unmitigated assault on labor unions across a number of states and there was a case that went before the Supreme Court recently, and frankly if Justice Scalia had not passed away it would have really made it very difficult for public sector labor unions to organize and that would have been one step in a very transparent and well-choreographed set of objectives from folks on the far right to eviscerate the labor movement,” Perez told the audience.
Let’s hear more about what Trump said a couple decades ago about a beauty pageant contestant.
NONSENSE: VOTER FRAUD IS A MYTH. He fought in World War II. He died in 2014. And he just registered to vote in Va. “The FBI and local police are investigating how at least 19 dead Virginians were recently re-registered to vote in this critical swing state. One case came to light after relatives of a deceased man received a note congratulating him for registering, Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst said Thursday.”
I blame Putin.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Don’t Ignore Default Rates at Public Colleges.
FISHING FOR PAGEVIEWS: Media Says Netanyahu Totally Booed At ‘Hamilton,’ Video Says Otherwise.
Video of non-booing at the link.
TOO BIG TO FAIL, JUST NOT TOO BIG TO FAIL ITS CUSTOMERS: Wells Fargo Troubles Mount With Penalty for Soldiers’ Loans.
The bank has previously been accused of not adhering to the military lending law, which Congress approved decades ago to protect soldiers from legal hassles while they’re on active duty. Wells Fargo agreed to compensate borrowers as one of five mortgage servicers sanctioned for improper home foreclosures, paying $28 million for so-called non-judicial foreclosures that didn’t pass through courts and $59 million for those handled in the judicial system, according to statements issued by the Justice Department last year. The bank didn’t admit or deny the allegations.
In the Santander case, the Justice Department was tipped off by the U.S. Army’s legal assistance program that vehicles might have been repossessed illegally.
Charming.
GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE: Veterans With Cancer Died After Delays at VA Hospital.
Dozens of veterans who tested positive for colorectal cancer at the New Mexico VA Health Care System in Albuquerque were not notified of their results in a timely manner, according to the inspector general report released this week, which faulted a lack of oversight from the system’s leadership.
Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Screening can detect the cancer in its early stages, making it easier to beat.
Nine veterans who sought care at the New Mexico VA hospital in fiscal years 2013 and 2014 and who were eventually diagnosed with colorectal cancer “experienced delays and, in some instances, significant delays that may have affected the patients’ clinical outcomes,” investigators found.
Abolish the V.A. and give vets a voucher for the health insurance plan of their choice — or would that not provide enough opportunities for graft, featherbedding, and parochialism?
September 29, 2016
WELL, UNTIL THE ELECTION, SURE: Should the Media Downplay the New Murder Spike?
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Pumpkin spice French fries are a sign of the pumpkin apocalypse.
AT AMAZON, savings in Seasonal Decor.
HARD TO IMAGINE WHY, WITH THIS SLATE OF INSPIRING, YOUTHFUL CANDIDATES: Poll: Millennials less interested in voting than ever.
10 POLITICALLY CHARGED COSTUMES FOR HALLOWEEN 2016.
But what about those highly problematic sexist dog costumes that so terribly vex the Washington Post?
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Facebook Thinks I’m a Black Democrat Who’s Into Toes and Rawhide.
A LAW PROFESSOR EXPLAINS why you shouldn’t talk to the police.
BRAIN BENEFITS OF EXERCISE REQUIRE CONSTANT MAINTENANCE: After just 10 days of inactivity, “results showed striking changes in blood flow now. Much less blood streamed to most of the areas in the runners’ brains, and the flow declined significantly to both the left and right lobes of the hippocampus.”
RED BULL GIVES YOU DUI: Non-alcoholic energy drinks that give you wings linked to drunk driving.
In a six-year study following 1,000 college students, researchers found that the more non-alcoholic energy drinks a person reported throwing back, the more likely they were to drive drunk. The finding squares with past studies that have linked alcoholic energy drinks to such dangerous behaviors. However, the study, published Tuesday in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, is the first to decouple the bad effects of alcohol from those of the energy drinks alone.
“[The] results shed light on the complexity of the relationship between [energy drink] consumption patterns and an important public health problem: drunk driving,” noted the authors of the study, led by public health researcher Amelia Arria of the University of Maryland.
How exactly a non-alcoholic beverage correlates to more drunk driving—which obviously involves alcohol—is not yet clear from the survey data, the authors note. However, the researchers speculate that drinking energy drinks prior to or alongside alcoholic ones may allow a drinker to become “wide-awake drunk,” paving the way for more drinking and risky behavior such as drunk driving.
Legal or otherwise, it’s never a good idea to mix uppers and downers.