Egypt’s previous authoritarian leader, Mohamed Morsi, was also a leader of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the praised choice of former U.S. President Barack Obama — which is something NYT reporters Peter Baker and Declan Walsh chose to omit from their story.
It would help, Messrs. Baker and Walsh, in a story about changing course, if your readers were informed what the previous course was.
WHY DO DEMOCRATS HATE WOMEN? Elizabeth Warren’s Female Staffers Made 71% of Male Staffers’ Salaries in 2016.
IN THE TENNESSEE STAR: Constitution Series: A Republic, If You Can Keep It.
2017: WHEN MATT TAIBBI AND GLENN GREENWALD HAVE BECOME VOICES OF SANITY. Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives: Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria.
The psychic shock of losing an election they thought was in the bag, plus the need to hold the base together and distract from late-era Obama misdeeds, have combined into a toxic psychological stew. Plus:
This testimony was brought out by Virginia Democrat Mark Warner. Warner has been in full-blown “precious bodily fluids” mode throughout this scandal. During an interview with The Times on the Russia subject a month back, there was a thud outside the window. “That may just be the FSB,” he said. The paper was unsure if he was kidding.
Warner furthermore told The Times that in order to get prepared for his role as an exposer of 21st-century Russian perfidy, he was “losing himself in a book about the Romanovs,” and had been quizzing staffers about “Tolstoy and Nabokov.”
This is how nuts things are now: a senator brushes up on Nabokov and Tolstoy (Tolstoy!) to get pumped to expose Vladimir Putin.
Even the bizarre admission by FBI director (and sudden darling of the same Democrats who hated him months ago) James Comey that he didn’t know anything about Russia’s biggest company didn’t seem to trouble Americans very much. Here’s the key exchange, from a House hearing in which Jackie Speier quizzed Comey:
SPEIER: Now, do we know who Gazprom-Media is? Do you know anything about Gazprom, director?
COMEY: I don’t.
SPEIER: Well, it’s a – it’s an oil company.(Incidentally, Gazprom – primarily a natural-gas giant – is not really an oil company. So both Comey and Speier got it wrong.)
As Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg noted, this exchange was terrifying to Russians. The leader of an investigation into Russian espionage not knowing what Gazprom is would be like an FSB chief not having heard of Exxon-Mobil. It’s bizarre, to say the least.
Cognitive dissonance, plus status anxiety, plus complicit news media yield a toxic stew indeed.
STILL A FIGUTIVE: Judge rejects Roman Polanski’s bid to end sex abuse case.
Superior Court Judge Scott M. Gordon refused to address how Polanski would be sentenced if he returned to the U.S. after 40 years abroad. He noted that other courts, including a California appellate court, have ruled that the Oscar winner is a fugitive and must return to Los Angeles for sentencing.
“There is no sufficient or compelling basis for reconsideration of these issues,” Gordon wrote.
Polanski was charged with six felonies in 1977 after he was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of a sedative pill, then raping her at actor Jack Nicholson’s house.
Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, but he fled Los Angeles on the eve of sentencing in 1978. He has sought to resolve the case several times without personally appearing in court.
It was rape-rape and Polanski did flee-flee.
THE HILL: Gorsuch sherpa: Dems giving GOP ‘no choice’ on nuclear option. I think it’s for the best, so long as McConnell doesn’t blink, or pull his punches. Just a few years ago, I was constantly hearing that the filibuster is outdated, undemocratic, and probably racist.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S OF A PIECE WITH HER CORPORATE MANAGEMENT HISTORY: “Ms. Sandberg’s effort is a stunt based upon a grotesque misinterpretation of statistics and ignorance of economics.” It’s also illegal, but . . . .
QUESTION ASKED: Dear CNN: Why Is A Former Obama Appointee Reporting On Susan Rice Revelation?
Just another Democrat operative with a byline.
ROGER SIMON: Susan Rice, Obama’s Hatchet-Woman, Proves Lord Acton Right Again. “From her serial lies about the Benghazi terror attack being caused by a video to this latest surveilling — incidental or otherwise — of political enemies and its own attendant dishonesties, Rice seems to have been the ‘go to’ person for Obama White House dirty work and cover-ups, Obama’s hatchet woman. She did not and could not, however, have acted alone. She was part of a culture.”
WHEN RACE-AND-GENDER DIVISIVENESS BITES BACK: “I knew just what one of my graduate students meant when I asked her how millennial feminists saw Hillary and she said ‘a white lady.'”
This echoes my question right after the election: “What if minority voters just won’t turn out for non-minority candidates any more? That’s a real problem for the Democrats, especially if all the racial politics they pursue in order to try to motivate minority voters (Black Lives Matter, immigration protests, etc.) actually serve to make minorities less likely to vote for whites, even if they’re Democrats. And if working-class whites start to vote Republican the way minorities have voted Democratic — and all that racial politics is likely to encourage that — the Dems are in trouble.”
DUMBEST PR PITCH EVER? I got this in the mail yesterday:
From: Jim ____
Date: April 3, 2017 at 4:26:06 PM EDT
To: “” <> Subject: STORY IDEA: Increased sexual violence in the Trump eraHi Glenn Harlan,
The recent sexual assault charges on FOX News star, Bill O’Reilly, is more reason to believe that the Trump era is leading to increased normalization of sexual assault against women. According to relationship expert, Wendy Strgar, “the culture of sexual violence not only remains rampant but is condoned at the top levels of our national leadership.”
Wendy’s company “Good Clean Love” recently surveyed college students on 15 campuses and found that 35% of female students have had non-consensual sex. Strgar worries that the normalization of some of Trump’s remarks like “locker room talk” will not only increase the already high number of sexual assaults on college campuses – but in society overall.
Can I arrange an interview with Wendy? I can also send the survey results.
Thanks,
Jim
First, all the O’Reilly stuff is supposed to predate Trump, so how is it evidence of “increased normalization of sexual assault against women?” Then there are the statistics, which seem extremely likely to be bogus.
And “Hi Glenn Harlan?” Really?
But if it’s really true that 35% of college women have been raped (oh, for the good old days when it was just 1 in 5 — now it’s more than one in three!) then obviously we need to shut down colleges immediately. Or at least make them single sex.
THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: Wellmark to halt sales of individual health-insurance policies.
Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield’s decision means more than 21,000 Iowans who bought health-insurance policies from the company in the past three years will need to find another carrier — and it’s not clear all of those people will have another choice.
Wellmark President John Forsyth said his company’s decision was painful but necessary, because the carrier had lost $90 million over three years covering that group of people.
“We’re an Iowa company, we’re here for Iowans, we want to do the right thing for Iowans, but we can’t allow a small subset to put the broader group in jeopardy,” he said in an interview Monday.
Forsyth said the overall problem is too few healthy, young consumers are buying health insurance.
Say it with me now: “Unexpectedly.”
BUT OF COURSE: If Ivanka Trump Were A Democrat, She’d Be A Feminist Hero.
In addition to allegations of fake feminism, Ivanka faces charges of nepotism. Last week it was reported she would have an office in the White House and access to classified information sans a top-secret clearance or official title. This is indeed not only nepotism but stupid. If President Obama had done this with a 35 year-old Sasha Obama, Republicans would have been crying “nepotism!” faster than Jason Bourne can shimmy into a SCIF. That said, it’s not as if this hasn’t happened in previous administrations (looking at you, Bill Clinton, circa 1990s).
This brings me to Chelsea Clinton. Before Ivanka was the president’s daughter, she was heralded as an intelligent woman, a dedicated wife and mother, and a businesswoman with a burgeoning clothing line. Yet in a recent Fast Company longread, editor Anjali Mullany writes:
Ivanka has built her business on a brand platform that champions working women, so why is calm, polite Ivanka supporting an unpredictable and combative candidate so many professional woman have accused of sexual harassment, they wonder? Is the root of her loyalty pure filial duty? Does she support him because he’s rich (though how rich is anyone’s guess?) Because she suffers from a form of Stockholm Syndrome? Because the exposure is good for her business? Because deep down, she’s actually just like him? Because of her stated reason: that she truly believes he’s the best man for the job?
Compare that to this glowing review in The Atlantic of Chelsea Clinton, the daughter not only of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton but President Bill Clinton, who was impeached for perjury related to sexual misconduct, and both of whose lifelong political careers have been constantly dogged with scandal.
To be fair, it’s different when they do it.
HOW NICE: Trump donates first-quarter salary to National Park Service. “Spicer handed a check for $78,333.32 for the National Park Service to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Spicer said the paycheck starts from Jan. 20, when Trump took office, until now. At Monday’s briefing, Zinke said the donation will go to the maintaining historic battlefield sites.”
ROGER KIMBALL: “What if?” The Evelyn Farkas Fracas.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that conservatives and Republicans (no, they are not necessarily the same) enjoy playing the counter-factual game of “What if?”
What if a Republican had presided over Benghazi instead of Ms. “At-this-point-What-Difference-Does-It-Make” Clinton?
What if a Republican administration had intervened to prevent Arizona from enforcing federal immigration laws?
What if a Republican had decided to enforce provisions of the Affordable Care Act selectively, omitting, for the time being, those that were politically inexpedient?
What if a Republican had made a deal with Iran that all-but guaranteed their acquisition of nuclear weapons within a few years?
What if a Republican administration had spied on a rival presidential candidate, who then, to the surprise of wise men everywhere, became the disfavored president-elect?
What if a Republican administration had illegally leaked, from classified intelligence reports, the names of private citizens to the media?
What if, what if, what if?You know the answer: The well-oiled outrage machine of the media-industrial complex would have been wheeled into action. Oh my God, Mitt Romney once carried his pet dog on the roof of his car! Can you believe it? There are reports that he was mean to a kid in his high school! Obviously the heartless bastard is not qualified to be president. When asked in 2012 what was the most serious national security America faced, he said Russia. Russia! What a rube. And there was Barack Hussein Obama, really letting him have it: Now the 1980s are calling and asking for their foreign policy back! Yuk, yuk, yuk.
It’s as if our media is a bunch of politically partisan Mean Girls. Plus:
This story is in the process of putting itself together even as I write. Klavan is correct that what we are looking at here—“that the Obama Gang was using intelligence on Republicans to try to thwart a Trump administration from erasing Obama’s legacy”—is a “huge story.” He says “almost as big as the fact that Obama used the IRS to decimate the Tea Party movement.” In fact, it’s much, much bigger.
On Thursday, Kimberly Strassel wrote a blistering piece in The Wall Street Journal describing how 1) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes saw and reported on classified information detailing such surveillance, 2) How Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, went into full flak mode, emitting a storm of obfuscations, non sequiturs, and procedural cow patties, and 3) how the cold-light-of-day finger of accusation is pointed directly at the heart of the Obama administration. “Mr. Nunes,” Strassel wrote, “has said he has seen proof that the Obama White House surveilled the incoming administration—on subjects that had nothing to do with Russia—and that it further unmasked (identified by name) transition officials. This goes far beyond a mere scandal. It’s a potential crime.”
Big time. As Michael Goodwin put it in The New York Post on Sunday, “If it can be proven that a sitting president used government authorities to spy on a candidate who then became president and orchestrated leaks of classified material, Watergate, by comparison, really would be a second-rate burglary.”
And the longer they cover for Obama now, the less they’ll be able to protect him later.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Dad is diagnosed with breast cancer for third time.
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HEY, DOUBLE STANDARDS ARE STILL STANDARDS YOU GUYS: Democrats Are Applying Litmus Tests To Gorsuch Their Favorite Justices Wouldn’t Pass.
AND NOW THEY’RE REPRISING THE SAME TACTICS ON A NATIONAL LEVEL: Wisconsin Democrats Are Still Paying for Their Anti-Walker Protests: Six years after the statehouse protests in Madison, the state is red—and getting redder.
OFTEN, AND WITH GUSTO? How to Drink Wine the Right Way, According to Science.
THE GENERATION THAT WOULD CHANGE THE WORLD IS NOW LOOKING FOR ITS CAR KEYS: How to Find Your Missing Keys and Stop Losing Other Things.
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