MICHAEL LEDEEN ON THE McMASTER TURMOIL.

AS BEN RHODES SAID, THE AVERAGE REPORTER IS A 27 YEAR OLD WHO LITERALLY KNOWS NOTHING:

This from the Washington Post sounded awkward to my ears, but standards of cultural literacy change:

“Flake routinely catalogs Trump alongside evil and danger — at one point, he compares the Republican Party trying to make peace with this president to a German scholar who sold his soul to the devil.”

“A German scholar who sold his soul to the devil”? Just write what the senator did, “Faustian bargain,” trust that your readers will get it, and trust that anyone who doesn’t can look it up online. (“Many years ago I read a piece on WF Buckley that described his writing style as ‘Look it up, serf,’” a friend commented when I posted about this on social media last week.)

In the article we linked to last night titled “Monkeeing Around with Culture,” Joseph Buttom of the Washington Free Beacon wrote, “I can’t decide whether Phillips gave her gloss because she herself had to look up the meaning of what she considered an obscure phrase, or whether she merely thought that readers of the Washington Post wouldn’t know the meaning of the image from Goethe’s Faust.”

Given Rhodes’ infamous quote about the Democrat activists with bylines he spoon-fed his talking points to, my money is on the former.

BEN ROSE: Jimmy Duncan, Bill Clinton, and Stephen Breyer’s “Taj Mahal” Courthouse.

Plus: “During my time in Washington, I loved talking with Jimmy Duncan. I recall one of our conversations about the problem of ever increasing (even back then) college tuition, and the possible role cheap federally-subsidized loans may have played. I told him my theory of how tuition seemed to track in lockstep with increases in federal funding for school loans, and how the latter may have caused the former. ‘You’re exactly right!’ I recall Congressman Duncan responding.”

ROBERT VERBRUGGEN: A Google Employee’s Awesome ‘Anti-Diversity Screed.’

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POINTS AND FIGURES ON THE FUTURE OF LAW AND LEGAL EDUCATION.

Traditionally, lawyers have been risk averse. They do a lot of research. They methodically go through layers and layers of information. Then, they render an opinion based on what they found. Great lawyers are able to interpret old precedent and apply them bringing new innovation and creating new things. Typically what we get though is a staid and reserved opinion that should hold up in court.

One reason is that the law is stuck in the past. Schools don’t teach law from a “design” frame of reference. The power sits in the attorney office and with the language, not with the customer. They don’t test for it either on the LSAT.

Doing basic grunt research is easily done with Artificial Intelligence. AI can also be trained and render a statistically significant opinion. Algo’s can make simple if/then decisions.

Automation is coming to law and lawyers might not see it coming.

Well, some do.

JUST SPITBALLING HERE, NEWSWEEK, BUT MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE AMERICA IS A MOSTLY-WHITE COUNTRY? Why are most politicians still white 52 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law?

FLASHBACK REMINDER: CNN’s Tapper: Obama has used Espionage Act more than all previous administrations.

ABSOLUTELY SUPER WEBSITE: As I understand it, the fellow who runs this website, Cem Devrim Yaylali, loves snapping photos of ships passing through the Bosphorus. The site has photos of ships — primarily warships– passing right past Istanbul. The shutterbug’s got Russian, Chinese, British, French, Turkish, American, etc. warships. Welcome to 21st century open source naval intel.

CHANGE: India pulling it together on infrastructure is entering a China scale buildout.

FLASHBACK: U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis.

Last week, India suffered two huge blackouts. Tuesday’s cut power to 370 million people; another one on Wednesday blacked out 670 million people, making it the worst blackout in the history of humanity.

Talking about this with a colleague, I said, “Don’t worry. That can’t happen here.” “Why not?” she asked. “Because we don’t have 670 million people,” I replied.

This wasn’t the comfort she was looking for.

Sadly, things aren’t much better now.

ANN ALTHOUSE READS THE LEAKED TRANSCRIPTS.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

SEGREGATION TODAY, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! NC State admin proposes exclusive housing for ‘women of color.’

TIME MAGAZINE SLIMES KOCH IN HEADLINE: Time Magazine covered a Charles Koch speech with the headline “Charles Koch says U.S. Can Bomb Its Way to $100,000 Salaries.” Except what he actually said was:

“I think we can have growth rates in excess of 4%. When I’m talking about growth rates, I’m not talking about that GDP, which counts poison gas the same as it counts penicillin,” the 79-year-old industrialist said, veering off his prepared remarks. “What a monstrous measure this is. If we make more bombs, the GDP goes up — particularly if we explode them.”

Time later changed the headline to say “Charles Koch Mocks Common Measure of Prosperity.” Reason points out that the URL still has the telling phrase “charles-koch-bomb-economy/” and goes on to take apart the reporters’ woefully inadequate understanding of basic economics.  This is a classic case of a form of libel (privacy, actually) called “false light”, generally wherein untrue implications, rather than directly false statements are made. For instance, an article about sex offenders illustrated with a stock photograph of an individual who is not, in fact, a sex offender could give rise to a false light claim, even if the article and photo caption never make the explicit false statement.

If legacy media had spent the last 10 years practicing responsible journalism and less time being party apparatchiks, they might not be in the trouble they’re in.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: California’s governor just signed the most pro-trans bathroom bill in the country into law.

—Splinter News.com, September, 30, 2016.

Chaser:

California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown made the point Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his party should stop making issues, such as abortion, litmus tests for their candidates. He told Chuck Todd that Dems should advocate for the “common man.”

—“California Gov. Jerry Brown ADMITS that the Democratic Party’s strategy has been a miserable failure,” Twitchy, today.

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A Bentley SUV. “An exquisitely detailed, nearly three-ton luxury barge that accelerates almost like a Chevrolet Corvette Z06.”

Personally, I’m holding out for the Mercedes pickup.

THAT’S CONSIDERATE: The 2018 Ford Mustang GT Has a “Quiet” Mode So You Don’t Wake Up Your Neighbors. “Alternatively, if you don’t like your neighbors, you can start it up in ‘Track’ mode.”

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FLASHBACK: Bill Whittle: Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs.

USA TODAY: We need answers in Democrats’ congressional IT drama: Something shady is going on and former Democratic National Committee chief Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz doesn’t want to talk about it.

NO, BUT HE CAN SMASH SOME OF ITS ENEMIES: Rod Dreher: Trump Can’t Save American Christianity. Contemporary American Christianity has too many lovers and not enough fighters.

SMALL-SCALE ANTI-MADURO REBELLION CRUSHED IN VENEZUELA: That’s the Reuters report. All the facts aren’t known.

Venezuelan authorities suppressed a small rebellion at a military base near the city of Valencia on Sunday, arresting seven men who they say participated in a “terrorist attack” against the government of unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro.

Earlier on Sunday a video circulated on social media showing a group of men in military uniform announcing an uprising in the wake of the creation of a pro-government legislative superbody on Friday, which was widely condemned as a power grab.

Hundreds took to the streets in Valencia to support the uprising, said resident Carolina Herrera, who like other witnesses reported shots through the night.

A former National Guard captain announced the revolt.

There’s evidence that many lower ranking officers oppose Maduro. I mentioned that in a recent column on Venezuela’s slide toward civil war.

JOURNALISTS. What’s Killing Journalism?

Wealthy traders and merchants underwrote the first news in the Americas, and it was all route intel. In the colonial period political parties footed the bill for most papers—party organs that were far more partisan and acrimonious than what we cry foul at today. It wasn’t until the penny-press era—the 1830s on—that a new funding model developed: scale up the circulation, then sell readers’ attention to advertisers. That advertising revenue could bring the cost of the paper down to something many could afford.

Writing to a mass audience, publishers began to recognize there was a market for real, honest news that could cross political divides and speak with a relatively neutral voice. This paved the way for professional journalism standards. And for most of the 20th century, it made newsrooms the information power brokers.

Then the internet smashed the model.

It would have lasted longer if the power brokers weren’t so shameless in abusing their power.

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