THAT’S NOT THE ONLY DECLINE: Vegas Weddings Declining.
Archive for 2017
July 12, 2017
WELL, THEY SAY A LOT OF STUFF: Your Baby Gender Reveal Party Is Probably Scarring Your Child, Say Feminists.
FOR WORRIED READERS IN ANCHORAGE, HONOLULU AND POSSIBLY SAN FRANCISCO: My latest New York Observer essay. Six policy options for dealing with the fat kid, his noxious North Korean regime and his ICBMs.
WEIRD HOW THE PRESS DIDN’T REALLY COVER THIS: Obama’s White House Boys’ Club: New Obama White House Memoir Reveals Staff Drinking, ‘D*ck Jokes,’ and Womanizing.
I mean, who could’ve seem that coming when it started out with things like this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
Imagine the difference in treatment if these had been Trump staffers. “Fraternities have been closed for less.”
Related: In Early Obama White House Female Staffers Felt Frozen Out.
ARMY TACTICAL MISSILE PREP IN KOREA: Great photo of a U.S. Army MLRS battery firing an ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) precision surface to surface missile. The rocket battery is deployed on a beach in South Korea. In 1997 I participated in a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization exercise. The exercise included using ATACMS to destroy a a couple of mobile SCUD launchers — before the launchers erected and fired their missiles. ATACMS has a range of over 160 kilometers.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Yes, Trump Jr. Was ‘Collusion Curious,’ But Where’s the Outrage About Hillary’s Ukraine Collusion?
GIVEN THE FBI’S RECENT PERFORMANCE, THEY SHOULD BE MOVED TO AN ABANDONED STRIP MALL IN HAGERSTOWN: Federal government cancels costly, decade-long search for a new FBI headquarters.
LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS: Did CNBC’s John Harwood fall for fake James Comey account?
If a tweet seems too good to be true, does that mean it’s too good to verify?
GOOD QUESTION: Why’d Army allow soldier who allegedly showed ISIS support to stay active?
Col Gregory A. Gross, who severed as the initial judge in the court martial of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan in 2009, told The Associated Press Tuesday that the Army may have decided Sgt. 1st Class Ikaika Kang was just mouthing off and was not a threat.
Gross said he was concerned by the similarities between Kang and Hasan’s case. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.
“He was making all these statements, and giving these presentations,” said Gross, who is currently a civilian defense attorney for military service members.
Noel Tipon, an attorney in military and civilian courts, said there’s nothing in the Army manual on removing soldiers from the service that would address allegations like speaking favorably about a group like Islamic State.
He suspects the FBI wanted to Kang to stay in the Army while they investigated whether he had collaborators.
“They probably said `let’s monitor it and see if we can get a real terrorist cell,’ ” said Tipon, who served in the Marine Corps.
That was my first guess, but after the last eight years — who knows?
FINALLY, A MOVE TOWARD GENDER FAIRNESS: Betsy DeVos to Meet with Men’s Rights Groups, Reports Say.
While the Department of Education has scheduled meetings with sexual assault advocate groups such as the National Women’s Law Center, Know Your IX, and End Rape on Campus, they have also reached out to SAVE: Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, Families Advocating for Campus Equality, and National Coalition for Men, a group that describes itself as “dedicated to the removal of harmful gender-based stereotypes, especially as they impact boys, men, their families and those who love them.”
Naturally, there is much pearl-clutching at the idea of men’s rights groups, or even just men’s rights.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED COUNTIES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Problems with discretion: Few Concealed Handgun Permits Given to Hispanics, Blacks, or Women in Los Angeles County.
NOBODY, APPARENTLY: Alan Dershowitz on James Comey’s leaked memos: Who will guard the guardians?
President Trump has accused former FBI Director James Comey of illegality in leaking memos that may have contained classified information. If it is true that the leaked Comey memos – laundered through a law professor in an effort to pressure Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein into appointing a special counsel – contained classified information, who will investigate Comey?
Surely the special counsel, Robert Mueller, Comey’s friend who he helped get appointed, could not conduct a credible investigation. Nor could Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller. Will yet another special counsel have to be appointed to conduct an investigation into Comey’s leaking?
Well, that’s kind of what I’ve recommended.
Related: Is Mueller Too Conflicted To Investigate Trump Fairly?
Plus: Comey’s Breach Of Trust.
FINGERS CROSSED: Monitoring group says ISIS members confirm leader’s death.
A London-based monitoring group with a solid history of accurately reporting incidents from inside war-torn Syria said Tuesday that it had been able to confirm the death of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Russia said in June that there was a “high degree of probability” al-Baghdadi had been killed in a Russian airstrike at the end of May. Moscow first made the claim on June 16, saying it had evidence he was among a group of ISIS leaders targeted at a meeting just outside the terror group’s de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria.
U.S. and Iraqi officials cast doubt on the claim then, however, saying they had no evidence to suggest al-Baghdadi was dead. There have been numerous erroneous reports of his demise since ISIS seized a vast swath of northern Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014.
The Reuters news agency quoted U.S. military officials in Washington again on Tuesday as saying they had no reason yet to believe al-Baghdadi was dead.
A spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition told CBS News in an emailed statement that, “we cannot confirm this report, but hope it is true. We strongly advise ISIS to implement a strong line of succession, it will be needed.”
That’s some deep trolling by the Pentagon.
GOP SENATOR DAVID PERDUE: Time ‘Running Out’ to Pass Trump Agenda.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: “Obviously if anyone conspired in advance with another to commit a crime – such as hacking the DNC – that would be criminal. But merely seeking to obtain the work product of a prior hack would be no more criminal than a newspaper publishing the work product of thefts such as the Pentagon Papers and the material stolen by Snowden and Manning.”
JOURNALISM: New Amelia Earhart Theory Might Be Crushed: Blogger says newly surfaced photo was published before Earhart vanished. Stupid bloggers, always crushing great news stories with their “facts” and “research.”
AT AMAZON, 70% off or More on Hammers.
CONTRAST THIS WITH THE DAVID BROOKS PIECE EVERYONE WAS TALKING ABOUT YESTERDAY: “It was like everyone’s grandpa walked in:” Diners surprised by President Bush at local cafe. Best bit:
Debbie said the former president took time to visit with every diner before leaving, but there was one conversation she overheard from a soldier eating at a table next to her that she won’t soon forget.
“There was another young couple he turned to and the man was in the army,” Debbie said. “He told him ‘it was an honor to serve you’ and President Bush said ‘thank you for your service, but you didn’t serve me, you served your country.”
Very nice.
A DAY OF ACTION FOR NET NEUTRALITY, A DAY CLOSER TO ACTION ON ANOTHER OBAMACARE REPLACEMENT, AND A FRENZY ABOUT INACTION ON RUSSIA: All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Trump’s Warsaw Speech Was The Antithesis Of Obama’s Cairo Speech.
About five months after the inauguration of Barack Obama, the president gave a strange address in Cairo. The speech was apparently designed to win over the Muslim world and set Obama apart from the supposed Western chauvinism of the prior and much caricatured George W. Bush administration. Obama started off by framing past and present tensions between Muslims and the West largely in the context of explicit and implied Western culpability: past European colonialism, and the moral equivalence of the Cold War and disruptive Westernized globalization. . . .
Donald Trump’s speech in Poland was an implicit corrective to Barack Obama’s Cairo speech. Whereas Obama had blamed the West for many of Islam’s dilemmas, Trump praised the singular history and culture of the West. (His implicit assumptions might have been that “better than the alternative” was good enough, and American sins are those of humankind, but its remedies are uniquely Western.) Whereas Obama listed supposed cultural achievements of Islam (most of them of dubious historicity), Trump rattled off examples of Western exceptionalism, its unmatched culture, values, and concrete achievements, all of them persuasive.
The West is the most successful culture in history. The argument to the contrary is just more Gramscian Damage.
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Explaining the decline in US entrepreneurship.
From Axios reporter Kim Hart: “The birth rate of new companies collapsed with the Great Recession, and the number of firms that opened during the recovery period is lower than that of any other post-recession period.”
I should note the piece uses analysis from the Economic Innovation Group (EIG). Its analysis from earlier this year, “Dynamism in Retreat,” speculates the startup decline stems from “declining population growth, a sharp decline in startup capital (notably home equity) during the recession, and changes to the regulatory environment,” according to Hart.
Now as it happens, the San Francisco Fed is out with a report on this issue of falling US business formation. It finds that in recent decades “the number of businesses in the United States has moved much more closely with workforce size” and that “[increasing] the labor supply and hence the supply of potential entrepreneurs can stimulate business formation by increasing demand without raising costs.” And now this bit: “Possible strategies could include encouraging more immigration, later retirement, or higher labor participation among women.”
I’m skeptical, to say the least, of any centralized effort to fine-tune national policy to somehow encourage entrepreneurship.
Instead, Washington could follow the wise man’s advice and just “Get the hell out of my way!”
TERRY GILLIAM’S BRAZIL WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: Why must government seem like Idiocracy outtakes?