Archive for 2017

JOHN HINDERAKER: Is Trump’s Immigration Order the Worst of Both Worlds? “President Trump is taking a lot of political heat, and therefore expending a considerable amount of political capital, for an immigration order that doesn’t go far enough to be meaningful.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND RADICAL CHIC: “George Washington University is no longer employing one of its most controversial researchers—a former al-Qaeda recruiter who spent three years in U.S. prison—after he was arrested on drug and prostitution charges in December.”

Earlier: “GWU’s ‘ex-jihadist’ Jesse Morton wants to dismantle ‘entire counterterrorism component of military-industrial complex.’

The annual cost of attending GWU is $68,275. Parents and students, choose where to spend your money wisely.

OUCH:

Susan Rice, policy wonk and former Dukakis & Clinton aide, who had no military experience whatsoever* before getting tapped as National Security Advisor by the Obama administration in 2013, blasts Trump’s decision to “remove military advice” from the National Security Council.

Conveniently not mentioned is that Rice was replaced as National Security Advisor by LTG Michael T. “Mike” Flynn, USA (Ret).

I swear, Susan, self awareness is so rare these days it should be considered a f$cking super power.

The troika made up of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Hillary Clinton was perhaps the most disastrous foreign policy crew in American history. She’s got no room to talk.

THOMAS FRANK: The intolerance of the left: Trump’s win as seen from Walt Disney’s hometown; Ivy League graduates micromanaging the country – that’s how some in Marceline, Missouri, saw the status quo.

By and large, these were men who had voted for Trump, but few of them seemed to really support him in the full sense of the word. They were apprehensive about his presidency, they didn’t know what to expect from it, but many of them had made the choice anyway.

Why? One of the men present told me you could summarize it with a single word: “Hillary!” Another described it with a variant on Trump’s famous proposition to black voters, which these white people clearly felt applied to them, too: “Whaddaya got to lose by making a change?”

Certain predictable conservative issues came up: meddlesome government, for example. Farmers these men knew of complained bitterly about the Environmental Protection Agency. Small bankers, too, were said to feel micromanaged. “We don’t like to be told what to do, how to do it,” someone said.

But it was not all standard-issue Republican talking points. These men groused about how big banks avoided being taken over by the FDIC, they used “Goldman Sachs” as verbal shorthand for wealth and influence, and I even heard complaints about billionaires controlling the state’s political process.

What did crop up persistently when I talked to this group was a disgust with the perceived moral haughtiness of liberals. More than one member of the club referred to himself as one of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables”, for example. There was resentment of “Ivy League graduates” who felt entitled to “micromanage the rest of the country”. The man who told me that – a fellow wearing a US Army Retired cap – also told me that “if you want to be an obnoxious slob, you have a right to be one”.

This right-to-obnoxiousness raises a fascinating point: these men saw liberals as loudmouthed Pharisees, intolerant moralists who demanded that the rest of the nation snap into line – an exact reverse of the John Ashcroft stereotype liberals used to hold of conservatives.

Well, the shoe fits.

UPDATE: Brendan O’Neill on Facebook: “I wonder if those arguing that America has gone fascist and Islamophobia is rampant and Trump is an illegitimate president who should not be indulged by other world leaders realise how much they are confirming Trump voters’ view that a morally haughty liberal elite has replaced politics with hissy fits and has become so arrogant it thinks everything that doesn’t conform to its worldview is Nazism? I’m against Trump’s executive order, but this reaction… it is an own goal of epic proportions.”

I DON’T TRUST THE “INTERNET OF THINGS:” Hotel ransomed by hackers as guests locked in rooms.

Lesson learned: “We are planning at the next room refurbishment for old-fashioned door locks with real keys. Just like 111 years ago at the time of our great-grandfathers.” Real keys and paper ballots — appropriate technologies for the 21st Century!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Charlotte Law School Launches Food Drive For Students. “Cut off from millions of dollars in federal loans because of their school’s chronic failings, students at Charlotte School of Law still don’t know how they’ll pay tuition, rent and utilities. Now they are apparently running out of food. In response, one of their professors announced Friday that some faculty and other law school employees have started a food drive to make sure students of the reeling school have enough to eat.”

The education apocalypse has struck, and struck hard. If only someone had offered a warning.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Is The Left Over?

If leftism is dead, the speech delivered by actress Ashley Judd in Washington D.C. may well serve as its eulogy.

Judd said her speech was written by a 19-year-old. That would make sense. Because, coming out of the mouth of a grown-up, it was just embarrassing.

What will future civilizations have to say about last weekend? This Star Trek-themed parody on encountering the strange alien world of “Progressivism” was a surprisingly dead-on metaphor.

NEW RULES FOR NURSING HOMES.