Archive for 2017
March 15, 2017
AS WITH THE ORIGINAL ROUND OF MCCARTHYISM, THE ACCUSATIONS GET WILDER WITH THE PASSAGE OF TIME: John McCain accuses Rand Paul of ‘working for Vladimir Putin.’
McCain seems increasingly erratic of late.
STEALTH ANNEXATION: Moscow moves to absorb rebel Georgian region’s military.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered his officials to seal an agreement which will, in effect, incorporate the armed forces of Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region into the Russian military’s command structure.
Georgia condemned the move, which is likely to spark accusations from its Western allies that the Kremlin is absorbing the breakaway region into Russia by stealth, even though under international law it is part of Georgia’s sovereign territory.
Moscow has de facto controlled South Ossetia, a sliver of mainly mountainous land in the northeast of Georgia, for years. But it has, on paper at least, treated South Ossetia as a separate state, not part of Russia.
According to the text of the draft agreement that Putin ordered his officials to conclude, the separatists will adopt new operating procedures for their armed forces which will be subject to approval by Moscow, and the forces’ structure and objectives will be determined in agreement with Russia.
FLASHBACK: Russia Keeps Moving Border With Georgia.
The border of Russia-controlled South Ossetia continues to encroach on the Georgian village, displacing residents who once had a home in Jariasheni but who now would be arrested for trespassing if they tried to enter it.
“Russia starts right here,” one resident told the Times. “But who knows where Russia will start tomorrow or the next day.”
The new border is sometimes noted by newly-installed barbed wire or a “state border” sign that has moved.
It’s unclear what Russia’s motive or end game is, but the Times reports the Russian seem intent on restoring borders to match a 1980s era Soviet Union map.
Since Putin is on record saying that the dissolution of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” and has since waged war on Ukraine and Georgia, annexed Crimea, threatened the Baltics, and is now encroaching farther into Georgia, it should be perfectly clear what his end game is.
SO. MUCH. WINNING. Trump to announce review of vehicle emissions rules.
The move by Trump would be a victory for automakers after months of pushing the new administration to reconsider the rules, which they say would be too expensive, could cost jobs and are out of step with vehicles consumers want to buy.
Trump will visit an autonomous vehicle testing facility in a Detroit suburb on Wednesday and meet there with chief executives of several U.S. automakers.
His administration has decided to review the feasibility of the vehicle emissions rules, which apply to the years 2022 through 2025, sources told Reuters last week. Former President Barack Obama moved to keep them in the final days of his administration.
Reuters reported on the planned announcement on March 3. A formal notice by U.S. regulators to restart the review is expected to be made public on Wednesday.
All these high-powered, four-cylinder, CAFE-inspired engines are technological marvels, but in the end there’s still no replacement for displacement.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Trump Message And Messenger.
ORGANIZING FOR… WHAT, EXACTLY? What’s Up? Obama Meeting with Deep-Pocketed Donors, Warren Buffet, Tech Leaders…
TRANSPARENCY! Obama’s final year: US spent $36 million in records lawsuits.
The figures reflect the final struggles of the Obama administration during the 2016 election to meet President Barack Obama’s pledge that it was “the most transparent administration in history,” despite wide recognition of serious problems coping with requests under the information law. It received a record 788,769 requests for files last year and spent a record $478 million answering them and employed 4,263 full-time FOIA employees across more than 100 federal departments and agencies. That was higher by 142 such employees the previous year.
A spokesman for former President Obama did not immediately respond to an email request for comment late Monday. The White House under Obama routinely defended its efforts under the information law in recent years and said federal employees worked diligently on such requests for records.
Uh-huh.
PRIVACY: New App Lets You Find Strangers on Facebook Just by Taking Their Picture.
A new app developed by British entrepreneur Jack Kenyon called “Facezam” is seeking to become the Shazam of faces. While the latter lets you identify music you like through audio recognition, Facezam matches your photos of strangers with their Facebook accounts.
It works scanning billions of Facebook profile shots by second and can reportedly match up with the right out in just 10 seconds and with 70 percent accuracy.
It is an incredible testament to the efficacy of facial recognition technology, even if it destroys all public anonymity in the process. Likewise, the app is either totally creepy, or kind of intriguing, depending on whether you’re the one being messaged by a stranger who took your picture, or trying to break the ice with a hot stranger you randomly snapped a pic of.
“Facezam could be the end of our anonymous societies,” Kenyon told the London Telegraph. “Users will be able to identify anyone within a matter of seconds, which means privacy will no longer exist in public society.”
Big Brother never had it so easy.
CHINA SYNDROME: Why Beijing won’t solve Washington’s problem with Kim Jong Un.
North Korea is on the brink of a nuclear breakout. With its recent advances, the Kim Jong Un regime may acquire a large number of powerful nuclear warheads and the long-range missiles to deliver them, posing a direct threat to America. A burgeoning nuclear arsenal would also tempt a cash-starved North Korea to proliferate nuclear materials and missiles in exchange for foreign currency.
Such developments would force the United States and its regional allies, Japan and South Korea, to beef up their deterrence and even consider pre-emptive strikes to defang Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. The military deployment required for such efforts, such as the recent installation of Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an advanced anti-missile system, will raise fears in China. Beijing, as is widely reported in the Chinese press, believes that the United States wants to use the brewing crisis on the Korean peninsula as a pretext to introduce capabilities that will make the Chinese military more vulnerable. As a result, China regards the U.S. response, not North Korean provocations, as the primary threat to its security. This underlying dynamic could eventually spark a collision between China and the United States.
If Beijing’s current policy risks such a disaster, the alternatives are hardly more palatable.
North Korea has always been a bad situation. It’s about to become a bad situation with nukes and the means to deliver them.
WHEN LAW PROFESSORS SELF-BECLOWN: Another oblivious critique of Neil Gorsuch and Originalism.
In my previous post Out of touch law professor criticizes Judge Gorsuch and “originalism,” I characterized the argument by Richard O. Lempert, the Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology, emeritus, University of Michigan, as “ignorant” because it was “apparently unaware of–and uninformed by–the past 25 years or more of originalist theory, methodology and practice.” Now in the National Law Journal (free registration required) comes a new and similarly flawed critique of Judge Gorsuch by David Rudenstine, a professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University (and its former Dean), which is entitled Gorsuch’s Adherence to Originalism Should Keep Him From SCOTUS. I am sad to say that this piece, like Professor Lempert’s, presents a highly distorted description of originalism, which once again attacks a straw man.
Shocking, I know. But you really don’t want to attract the attention of Randy Barnett with a half-baked criticism of originalism.
FASTER, PLEASE: Michelle Obama’s School Lunch Reign of Terror Is Nearly Over.
UPDATE JUST IN FROM AL CAPONE’S VAULT: Five Things to Know About Rachel Maddow and Trump Taxes.
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST. FLASHBACK: NY Times Predicted The ‘End Of Snow’ In 2014.
Related: Photos: Snowstorm hammers East Coast.
(Classical reference in headline.)
March 14, 2017
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Fish Oil Pills May Help After Heart Attack, Specialists Say.
DISPATCHES FROM AL CAPONE’S VAULT: All of Twitter breathes deeply into paper bag, searches for angle on Rachel Maddow’s tax return tweet.
Also at MSNBC tonight, in mammoth case of projection, lack of self-awareness, or a yuuge quantity of chutzpah — Brian Williams Chastises White House for Creating ‘Alternative Universe.’
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Drudge is having fun tonight.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 16 Reasons Not To Live In California. “Once again, I don’t have anything against California or the people that live there. It is such a beautiful place, and it once held so much promise. Unfortunately that promise has been shattered, and there is a mass exodus out of the state as families flee the horrific nightmare that California is in the process of becoming.”
Hence California’s horrific income inequality:
THE PRESS TAKES SIDES: Washington Post describes Trump golf course vandalism as ‘daring act of defiance.’ I’m sure they’ll feel the same way when Trump fans blockade their printing plant, right?
The left will miss civility when it’s gone.
I DUNNO, IT’S TERRIFIC MARKETING: Organic food isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, study suggests.
WASHINGTON RUINS EVERYTHING: Government marijuana looks nothing like the real stuff. See for yourself.
While the real stuff is chunky and dark green, the government weed is stringy and light in color. It appears to be full of stems, which most consumers don’t smoke. “It doesn’t resemble cannabis. It doesn’t smell like cannabis,” Sisley told PBS NewsHour last week.
Jake Browne, a cannabis critic for the Denver Post’s Cannabist marijuana news site, agrees. “That is, flat out, not a usable form of cannabis,” he said. Browne should know: He’s reviewed dozens of strains professionally and is running a sophisticated marijuana growing competition called the Grow-Off.
“In two decades of smoking weed, I’ve never seen anything that looks like that,” Browne said. “People typically smoke the flower of the plant, but here you can clearly see stems and leaves in there as well, parts that should be discarded. Inhaling that would be like eating an apple, including the seeds inside it and the branch it grew on.”
It’s unclear if this is an exceptionally bad batch, but there’s reason to strongly suspect it’s typical of what most researchers are given.
That’s almost 50 years of government-approved research on pot using pot which is nothing like pot.
I’M SURE IT’S SOMEHOW TRUMP’S FAULT: Americans Are Having Sex Less Often. Why? I wonder if it has anything to do with our national obesity epidemic.
AT AMAZON, deals in Amazon Instant Video.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why Do Corporate Leaders Became Progressive Activists? Kevin Williamson knows why:
Far from being agents of reaction, our corporate giants have for decades been giving progressives a great deal to celebrate. Disney, despite its popular reputation for hidebound wholesomeness, has long been a leader on gay rights, much to the dismay of a certain stripe of conservative. Walmart, one of the Left’s great corporate villains, has barred Confederate-flag merchandise from its stores in a sop to progressive critics, and its much-publicized sustainability agenda is more than sentiment: Among other things, it has invested $100 million in economic-mobility programs and doubled the fuel efficiency of its vehicle fleet over ten years. Individual members of the Walton clan engage in philanthropy of a distinctly progressive bent.
In fact, just going down the list of largest U.S. companies (by market capitalization) and considering each firm’s public political activism does a great deal to demolish the myth of the conservative corporate agenda. Top ten: 1) Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, is an up-and-down-the-line progressive who has been a vociferous critic of religious-liberty laws in Indiana and elsewhere that many like-minded people consider a back door to anti-gay discrimination. 2) When protesters descended on SFO to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, one of the well-heeled gentlemen leading them was Google founder Sergey Brin, and Google employees were the second-largest corporate donor bloc to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. 3) Microsoft founder Bill Gates is a generous funder of programs dedicated to what is euphemistically known as “family planning.” 4) Berkshire Hathaway’s principal, Warren Buffett, is a close associate of Barack Obama’s and an energetic advocate of redistributive tax increases on high-income taxpayers. 5) Amazon’s Jeff Bezos put up $2.5 million of his own money for a Washington State gay-marriage initiative. 6) Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has pushed for liberal immigration-reform measures, while Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz pledged $20 million to support Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats in 2016. 7) Exxon, as an oil company, may be something of a hate totem among progressives, but it has spent big — billions big — on renewables and global social programs. 8) Johnson & Johnson’s health-care policy shop is run by Liz Fowler, one of the architects of Obamacare and a former special assistant to President Obama. 9) The two largest recipients of JPMorgan cash in 2016 were Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and the bank’s billionaire chairman, Jamie Dimon, is a high-profile supporter of Democratic politicians including Barack Obama and reportedly rejected an offer from President Trump to serve as Treasury secretary. 10) Wells Fargo employees followed JPMorgan’s example and donated $7.36 to Mrs. Clinton for every $1 they gave to Trump, and the recently troubled bank has sponsored events for the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and other gay-rights groups, as well as donated to local Planned Parenthood franchises.
Even the hated Koch brothers are pro-choice, pro-gay, and pro-amnesty.
You may see the occasional Tom Monaghan or Phil Anschutz, but, on balance, U.S. corporate activism is overwhelmingly progressive. Why?
Read the whole thing.