LIKE ANYONE HAS THE TIME TO CLEAN THEIR CLOSETS: Americans love hoarding junk.
Archive for 2017
December 13, 2017
WELL, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: “Roy Moore does not concede, states ‘God is always in control.’??”
THE WONDERS OF CHINESE COMMUNISM: ‘Rentable parents’ will meet your teacher or significant other.
December 12, 2017
MY PAPER ON MILITARY COUPS JUST KEEPS LOOKING MORE TIMELY: Movie director flirts with the idea of a military coup ‘to defend democracy here at home’ from the GOP.
AP IS NOW PROJECTING a Doug Jones win in Alabama, despite Gloria Allred’s best efforts. But a lot of GOPers ought to be wondering if Mo Brooks would’ve won. (Answer: Yes.)
SKYNET SMILES, AND SAYS “OH, YOU’LL KNOW:” Will AI Ever Become Conscious, And How Would We Know if It Did?
ANOTHER OPEN THREAD, because people seem to enjoy them.
#BELIEVETHEWOMEN: “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was the victim of a fake news hit on Tuesday, and has turned over to Capitol Police a document that purports to detail lurid sexual harassment accusations by a former staffer.”
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Why Bredesen is Democrats’ Only Hope in Tennessee.
He’s a good guy, and the only Democrat with statewide prospects anymore. But I wonder how well he’ll play in a Year Of The Woman rerun, given his administration’s history of being charged with sexual-assault coverups. Odd that this National Journal piece by Alex Rogers didn’t even mention that.
I wrote this about Bredesen’s national chances for the Wall Street Journal, back in 2005.
PROF. JACOBSON: “Democrats’ #Resistance is creating a genuine constitutional crisis.” “It reflects a subject I, and others, have been focusing on since election night — the refusal of Democrats and #NeverTrump Republicans to accept the outcome of the election not just emotionally, but as to the transfer of power that continues to this day, over a year since the 2016 election.”
IT’S NOT OVER IN WISCONSIN: Schimel says Ethics Commission chairman should recuse himself from matters related to leak investigation. “Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel is disputing arguments made by the state’s Ethics Commission and asking its chairman to recuse himself from matters related to a recently released Department of Justice report. . . . Schimel argued Halbrooks, who was a witness in the first John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker and his associates during his time as Milwaukee County Executive, should recuse himself from any involvement related to the most recent DOJ investigation. The first John Doe investigation was used as a basis for the second secret probe and, Schimel argued, a third investigation DOJ refers to as ‘John Doe III.’ The ‘previously unknown and secret investigation into a broad range of Wisconsin Republicans’ was uncovered during the DOJ investigation of the Guardian leak.”
THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR TRUMP SPOKESWOMAN SARAH SANDERS:
Liberal male columnists have written about Sanders in terms that, if applied to a progressive woman, would be recognized as despicable and borderline misogynistic. In the most infamous example, Los Angeles Times writer David Horsey called her a “slightly chunky soccer mom” in a scathing column. It was so clearly offensive that he was forced to issue an apology: “I want to apologize to Times readers — and to Sarah Huckabee Sanders — for a description that was insensitive and failed to meet the standards of our newspaper. I’ve removed the offending description.”
Just when you think a media establishment that has lost its collective mind, credibility, and sense of decency since last November can’t go any lower, it does. These sexist, cruel taunts have little to do with Sanders’s job performance or making sure the American public gets the facts from a sometimes fact-averse White House. Viewed from a wider lens, the treatment of Sarah Sanders has little to do with Sanders at all. The vicious ridicule is directed at all conservative women — particularly women from the South — whom the Left will never forgive for helping elect Donald Trump. It’s on a continuum with attacks against conservative women such as Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, and Betsy DeVos. The hatred is aimed at all female Trump voters — Sanders is simply a proxy. A year that began with faux feminists participating in the Women’s March, where aggrieved women loudly pledged to defend their sisterhood against sexist bullying or attacks, is ending with a whimper.
As all the best people who hold themselves out as progressive intellectuals believing in hope, tolerance and diversity told me about Sarah Palin in 2008, “She’s not a woman, she’s a Republican.”
HOT MIC IS LIVEBLOGGING the Alabama election returns.
CONTEMPT FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL DO THAT: NFL woes: Three straight months as America’s most hated sport. But hey, Roger Goodell just got a big-bucks contract renewal.
SO IT WAS MORE ABOUT SOCIAL-CLIMATE CHANGE THAN, YOU KNOW, ACTUAL CLIMATE CHANGE: Cooking fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes, officials say.
WE’RE GONNA FIND OUT HE WAS A PARTNER IN FUSION GPS, AREN’T WE? Politico: Justice Department won’t disclose details on Mueller ethics waiver.
RICHARD VEDDER AND JUSTIN STREHLE: The Case For Taxing College Endowments.
There are two good reasons why the endowment tax makes sense to some politicians. First, public attitudes toward universities have distinctly soured in recent years. What the public perceives as outrageous student behavior, feckless university leadership, and excessive tuition fees has combined with a growing hostility by Republican lawmakers angered over the large political donations and public criticism that academics have made attempting to oust them from office. Lawmakers are growing tired of feeding the mouths that bite them. Revenues raised by taxing colleges can modestly help fund other tax reductions that lawmakers want to make, which are probably economically beneficial to the well over 90 percent of the population living outside the Ivory Towers of Academia.
Second, our econometric examination of college endowments suggests a large portion of endowment income is dissipated in relatively unproductive fashions, financing a growing army of relatively well-paid university administrators and giving influential faculty low teaching loads and high salaries. We estimate that roughly only about 15 cents out of each additional dollar of endowment income goes to lower net tuition fees.
Read the whole thing.
YESTERDAY, PASTA PERVNADO. TODAY, PORK PERVNADO! Famed restaurateur allegedly has ‘rape room’ in trendy NYC eatery the Spotted Pig:
The owner of one of the city’s most famous celeb hangouts, the Spotted Pig, has been accused of routinely groping female employees and demanding sex and nude photos from them — while allowing his buddies to molest them too, a new report says.
An after-hours space on the third floor of restaurateur Ken Friedman’s tony Village hot spot is even known among workers and industry insiders as “the rape room” — where public sex is on display, according to the New York Times, quoting 10 women who are accusing the powerful businessman of unwanted sexual advances.
As the late Andrew Breitbart told Occupy Wall Street in 2012, stop raping people!
AND THUS, ESPN COMES FULL CIRCLE: ESPN Suspends Donovan McNabb, Eric Davis Amid Sexual Harassment Allegations.
Kind of ironic to see McNabb’s name in that headline, considering the tangential role he played in ESPN’s first declaration that conservatives were not invited to be fans of the NFL.
Related: NFL Network Suspends Marshall Faulk, Two Others Due to Sexual Harassment Allegations.
USA TODAY: Why the fuss over adolescent relationships? My grandmother was 15 when she married.
There is absolutely no excuse at all for a 32-year-old man to be seeking a relationship with a 14-year-old girl or sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. But a century ago or even 40 years ago, being 14 or 16 meant something entirely different than it does today. Adolescence, to the extent it was even acknowledged was a quick bridge between childhood and adulthood.
In recent decades, our culture has been extending that bridge without thinking things through and now it often seems as if it leads nowhere. Parents and the government are dangerously elongating years of adolescence because they feel their kids need to be “safe.”
I wrote something about this very problem 15 years ago.