DAVID HARSANYI: Sorry, But The Republican Party Isn’t ‘Extremist’

In Slate, Jamelle Bouie asserts that the “Republican Party in 2017 isn’t an ordinary political party. It is an ideological outlier, the most extreme party coalition since the Civil War.”

If this depiction sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve been hearing iterations of it from the moment you started following politics — and it doesn’t matter how long ago you started. This Congress, this president, this Republican, is always the most extreme America has ever seen. If this were always true, we’d be living in the America of Meryl Streep’s fertile imagination.

It’s probably safe to assume that most contemporary liberals view conservatives in similar terms (although weren’t Republicans the good guys during the Civil War?). Then again, for liberals, extremism resides mere millimeters to the right of their own position, which has rapidly shifted left over the past 15 years.

The extremist card stopped working after the trillion-dollar stimulus and the party-line passage of ObamaCare. 900+ lost elective offices later, and the Democrats still haven’t caught on.

IF THE TEA PARTY HAD DONE THIS IN 2009, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN ACCOUNTABILITY AND DEMANDS FOR CIVILITY AND RESPECT: Spicer: Dems should be held ‘accountable’ for Sessions protests.

Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer says Democrats must answer for protesters disrupting confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

Spicer’s remarks follow demonstrators repeatedly interrupting proceedings for Trump’s attorney general pick Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Tuesday.

“I think Democrats should be held accountable and asked, ‘Do you think this is appropriate for left-wing groups to come in and interrupt a hearing?'” Spicer said on Fox News’s “Outnumbered.”

“I think the Democrats should be asked, ‘Are you going to denounce the tactics of Code Pink at a hearing like this?” continued Spicer, who is currently communications director for the Republican National Committee (RNC).

“They need to be held accountable for the tactics on the left the same way we’re apparently held accountable for the tactics of people who have a right-leaning thought.”

Make the enemy live up to his own book of rules. And it’s Dem staffers who let these Code Pink people in, as everyone has known for years. Alternatively, GOP staffers should let anti-abortion protesters in when Democrats are making pro-choice speakers. I predict that if this happens, suddenly people will care about civility and decorum again.

OH: I love America. It’s Americans I hate.

Tim Kreider for The Week:

Unlike a lot of people, who had to try to make conversation with conservative friends and family over the holidays, I only know two confirmed Trump voters. One of them is from Texas and the other’s a Marine, so they both have their excuses. I recently sent a text to the former woman, letting her know I wasn’t going to meet her for dinner while she was in town because I considered her vote for Trump unconscionable. I didn’t feel I could politely ignore this vote, as though it had been for any ordinary callous avaricious Republican. But, having inflicted the negligible penalty of my absence on her, I didn’t feel just or vindicated; instead I just felt like a heel. She’d just gone through a bad breakup with an abusive boyfriend, and my normal instinct would’ve been to have dinner with her just to cheer her up. Repressing your normal instincts toward kindness seems like the kind of thing Hitler used to recommend.

My feeling has always been that if a religion or ideology has become more important to you than actual human beings, something may have gone seriously wrong with your values. A religious aunt of mine was literally on her deathbed before she told her gay daughter that that she had always loved her and accepted her and her partner. It was a moving reconciliation, but it also seemed to me it might’ve been nicer if she’d done it 20 years earlier. It depresses me to see people obliged by moral or political convictions to repress their basic decency — even their love for their children — and act crueler than they really are.

I don’t subscribe to the sophistry that being intolerant of intolerance is just as bad as intolerance itself — that, for instance, the humorless dogma of political correctness is as great an evil as good old-fashioned bigotry. But, as Nietzsche said, he who does battle with shitheads must beware that he does not thereby become a shithead. The most prejudiced people also tend to be the most provincial; they’ve never actually met any of the people they think they hate. (e.g.: an elderly friend of my mother’s once complained about gays in the church to her male hairdresser.)

Emphasis in the original.

Presuming every male hairdresser to be gay is a hallmark of worldly and tolerant thought. Anything else is just the kind of thing Hitler used to recommend.

HE CHOSE… POORLY: Trump asks vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead commission on ‘vaccine safety’

THE 1980S CALLED: Democrats who spent eight years pretending everything with Russia is fine now find themselves faced with cold reality. “Perhaps the president can be forgiven for not being more forthright, since it would require acknowledging how spectacularly his reset failed.”

HONESTLY, THE GOP WOULD PROBABLY BE SMART TO ENCOURAGE IT: The Left’s Toxic Identity Obsession.

The modern activist left was reared on toxic identity politics, and it seems disinclined to abandon this addictive poison without a struggle.

As Democrats come to terms with a new era of Republican dominance, leftists have rallied around the idea that they constitute a “resistance.” It’s no fluke that this term evokes images of beret-clad partisans gathering around lantern light plotting the sabotage of railway lines; they fancy themselves a rebellion against an illegitimate regime. It’s an invigorating fantasy, but a flimsy and self-serving one. Gallingly, the liberal anti-Trump resistance doesn’t share the organizational competence or unity of purpose demonstrated by the underground anti-fascist movements they seek to mimic. The modern left is an amalgam characterized by enforced ideological homogeneity with a multicultural face. Increasingly, however, it’s a face that resents its own multiculturalism.

Take, for example, the so-called “Women’s March” that will descend on Washington D.C. to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 21. The masses gathered in opposition to Trump will create the appearance of unity, but a closer examination of the coalition united by their antipathy for the incoming administration paints a portrait of a movement at war with itself. . . .

Obviously, this kind of racial advantage-seeking creates moiety where none previously existed. It unnecessarily robs this movement of cohesion and, thus, efficacy. If Trump is the unique threat liberals claim him to be—one so mortal that it’s a fight they have equated themselves to anti-Nazi resistance efforts—it stands to reason that the left’s perpetual grievance-measuring contest could be put on hiatus for the time being. It would seem that is asking too much.

This kind of fractious identity-based stratification is not a phenomenon on the decline, either. A generation of liberals raised on identity politics is only now coming of age.

Decades of college diversity seminars bear their weak and misshapen fruit.

NEW YORK POST: BuzzFeed’s Trump Report Takes Fake News To A New Level. “There is literally no evidence on offer in these memos or from BuzzFeed that any single sentence in these documents is factual or true. What’s more, we know most major news organizations in America had seen them and despite their well-known institutional antipathy toward Trump, had chosen not to publish them or even make reference to them after efforts to substantiate their charges had failed.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Why Are Liberals Such Racists?

What else have they got?

AT AMAZON, save on Shoe Care and Accessories.

Plus, deals on Coffee, Tea, and Espresso.

FEMINISM: Madonna: Trump Presidency Is Like A Bad Breakup.

HMM: Yikes: Intel chiefs told Trump Russia claims to have compromising personal and financial information on him; Update: CNN video added; Update: Memos leaked to BuzzFeed.

Meanwhile, people on Twitter are claiming the original source is actually a 4Chan prank, which ordinarily would be absurd, but these days, well, who knows?

Meanwhile, of course, Trump has survived so many scandals that it’s hard to imagine what would count as “compromising.” But stay tuned. This may well be “Fake News,” but it’s not as if Trump and Putin haven’t been friendly. However, every time we’ve had word of the big pending scandal that will definitely kill off Trump’s presidency this time, it’s been a bust.

And if it by some chance does work out that way? Enjoy President Pence, Dems!

UPDATE: 4Chan Claims To Have Fabricated Anti-Trump Report As A Hoax.

Related: Fake News: BuzzFeed Runs ‘Unverifiable’ Trump-Russia Claims. “BuzzFeed acknowledges that it has not verified the accusations and even notes that the document contains a number of basic factual errors. Yet it published the full document.”

Question: Did they run the question of publishing claims that they admit are “unverifiable” by libel counsel? Because while Trump is probably the world’s ultimate “public figure,” well . . . .

Most damning: “Even Mother Jones declined to publish the full details and dossier.”

If this collapses, as it likely will, it will have the effect of making Trump pretty much scandal-proof.

Related:

Maybe the whole thing is a Trump “False Flag” operation! The truth is out there!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Lawfare Blog: Take A Deep Breath. “First, we have no idea if any of these allegations are true. Yes, they are explosive; they are also entirely unsubstantiated, at least to our knowledge, at this stage. For this reason, even now, we are not going to discuss the specific allegations within the document. Second, while unproven, the allegations are being taken quite seriously.”

MORE: From the comments: “A friend pointed this out: In this ‘report,’ British intelligence describes events surrounding the ‘World Cup Soccer tournament.’ Soccer. Let’s repeat that… Soccer!! What self-respecting Brit would call the biggest sporting event in the world a ‘soccer tournament?'”

A rational one that recognizes that Third World Kickball is barely even a sport? But yeah, point taken.

IT’S COME TO THIS: I Love America. It’s Americans I Hate. “A vote cast for Trump is kind of like a murder.”

Sounds like a guy who’s scared of his plumber.

AT AMAZON, save on bestselling Game Downloads.

Plus, savings in Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense.

US ARMY M1A2 TANKS IN POLAND: Snow, so it’s a type of cold war exercise.

NOTHING IS EVER HIS FAULT: Obama Blames “Circumstances” for Decimation of Democratic Party During his Presidency.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: What Happened To The Law School Class Of 2010? “The analysis offers strong evidence of structural shifts in the legal market. Job outcomes have improved only marginally for the Class of 2010, those outcomes contrast sharply with results for earlier classes, and law firm jobs have dropped markedly.”

RECURSIVE A.I. IS RECURSIVE: TV news report about unwanted Alexa orders triggers unwanted Alexa orders.

ANDY KESSLER: Siri, Am I About To Have A Heart Attack?

ObamaCare was always about paying for health care—costs have outpaced inflation for decades—but seldom about keeping people healthy. As Republicans repeal and replace, they need a vision for the path to better care. Technology now exists to provide cheaper and higher-quality health care, but giant roadblocks stand in the way.

That technology is artificial intelligence and machine learning. The algorithms behind AI are painfully complex, but the final product is simple—think Google Translate or Amazon’s Alexa. Saying a phrase and immediately having it translated is cool. Being told that your week of bad sleep and slight stomach pains could be cancer is life-altering.

Machine learning is already invading health care. Experts at Kaggle, an artificial-intelligence research firm, shared a few real-world applications of the technology with me: Predicting heart failure by looking at massive amounts of MRI scans, diagnosing diabetic retinopathy from eye imaging, and successfully predicting seizures with a machine analyzing electroencephalogram data.

The key is data. With more of it, accuracy gets better over time.

But the people who have the data don’t want to share it.

NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATTHEW YGLESIAS: Chinese humanoid robot turns on the charm in Shanghai.

CHINESE DEMOCRACY: China is still deciding whether to allow Pokemon Go.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s Why It Hurts So Much When You Step on a Lego.

I stopped going barefoot when I started being a dad.

DEPARTMENT OF PRE-CRIME: In Missouri, Kids Could Now Go to Jail for Getting into Fights at Recess.

Missouri has lost its damn mind.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Austria police investigate Afghans over New Year’s sexual assaults. “Austrian police are investigating six Afghan refugees over sexual attacks on 18 women during New Year’s Eve celebrations in the western province of Tyrol, a police officer involved with the case said on Monday. . . . The women reported that assailants had groped and tried to kiss them that evening as they stood in or near a crowded central square in the city of Innsbruck for a concert and fireworks display. Some women said they had been clasped by a man from behind while others groped their breasts and genitals, said Kranebitter.” Why are these women so unaccepting of a different culture?

A VERY SAD BATTLE OF THE BULGE PHOTO: Casualty evacuation. It’s the latest in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge commemorative series. The photo of the stretcher/sled team does a fine job of recording the action.

MEXICO’S GREAT GASOLINE PRICE WAR CONTINUES: The attacks on gas stations in Mexico continue. There is no doubt that Mexican citizens across-the-board are angry with President Enrique Pena Nieto specifically and the government in general.

The L.A. Times lead is a bit sensational but essentially correct:

In Tijuana and Nogales, massive demonstrations over rising gasoline prices forced authorities to temporarily close crossing stations on the U.S.-Mexico border, while in Rosarito protesters cheered as a man intentionally drove his pickup into a group of federal police officers.

More than a week after the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto deregulated gasoline prices, which instantly rose as much as 20%, Mexico is engulfed in a nationwide rebellion.

Four people have been killed and more than 1,500 arrested while looting, staging road blockades and marching in protests such as the weekend demonstrations in Rosarito and along the border.

The price hike, which many believe will lead to higher prices for food and household goods, is opposed by 99% of Mexicans, according to a recent poll, and has drawn the condemnation of business groups, truckers unions, leaders of the political opposition and even the Catholic Church.

Pena’s pulling an Obama and blaming his predecessor for the price hikes.

Do the gas protests connect to the Cartel War? Good question. There is a very reasonable fear in Mexico that some cartel gunmen will toy with political revolt.

That’s why the December 30 report that cartel gunmen had threatened attacks on gas stations caused an immediate sensation. However, within a day the Jalisco state attorney generals office determined the message was a fake.

Here’s part of the alleged message from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG):

“The CJNG, in support of the working class, commits itself to making burn all the gasoline stations that to December 30 of the current year, at 10:00 p.m.” — before the price increases go into effect — “have not normalized the sale of fuel at the fair price,” the message said, according to the Mexican news outlet Aristegui Noticias.

Stay tuned.

RELATED: A little background on the “impunity issue” that haunts Pena.