PHOTO: Knoxville, 1905. Thanks to reader Howard Isaacs for the link.
Archive for 2017
February 20, 2017
TRUMP ANNOUNCES LT. GEN. H.R. MCMASTER AS HIS NEW NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER.
Related: H.R. McMaster: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.
JUST A WHIFF WILL SEND LEFTISTS RUNNING FOR THEIR SAFE SPACES: Trump “Success” Deodorant and Cologne for men.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: 5 Great Jack Nicholson Movies (After He Hit 50).
I was disappointed not to see The Departed on there, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere — and Nicholson’s after-50 credits is a rich vein to mine.
AT AMAZON, books on Health, Fitness, and Dieting.
Plus, deals on Bedding.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump And The Crisis Of The Meritocracy.
HANG UP AND DRIVE: Smartphone Addicts Behind the Wheel Drive Car Insurance Rates Higher.
State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest U.S. auto insurer by market share, said 36% of the people it surveyed in 2015 admitted to texting while driving, and 29% said they access the internet, compared with 31% and 13%, respectively, in 2009.
State Farm’s survey found that 52% of respondents in 2011 owned a smartphone, and 88% owned one in 2015.
The connection between phones and collisions surfaced in insurers’ earnings. Fourth-quarter underwriting results for personal auto insurance worsened at Travelers Cos., Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., and Horace Mann Educators Corp., and all three said distracted driving was partly to blame. The three companies insure millions of vehicles across the U.S.
“Distracted driving was always there, but it just intensified as more applications for the smartphones became available,” said Bill Caldwell, executive vice president of property and casualty at Horace Mann, in a recent interview. The insurer expects to raise rates 8% this year, on top of average 6.5% increases in 2016.
Ouch.
FACE, MEET PALM: New Campaign Seeks to End Use of Black Targets at Gun Ranges.
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Lawyers could be the next profession to be replaced by computers. I find this super depressing. Can you imagine a world without lawyers?
FOLLOW THE CHOCOLATE: Nestlé Leaves California to Get Away from Anti-Capitalist Lawmakers and Activists.
UPDATE (Ed): To get a sense of how far to the left Sacramento has gone, a reminder that Nestlé’s corporatist instincts were one of the chief inspirations for Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. But then, as Robert Conquest once said, everybody is conservative about what they know best.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Right Way To Take Every Type of Sleeping Pill. In my opinion, unless you’ve got serious problems it’s mostly “don’t.”
FROM GLENN’S INBOX:
Having listened to Milo’s podcast and the deceptive editing on the video, as well as comparing his statements to what was said “on the air” as it were, I’m more than a little disappointed that Stephen Green fell for a clickbait headline saying “Milo advocates for sex between men and boys.” In my opinion this was not true but if the goal is to remove Milo’s pro-Trump rhetoric from CPAC than it makes sense to use whatever dirty tactics are at hand. (I especially liked the touch where the headline was left standing but Milo’s rebuttal was not quoted, especially the relevant bits where he lists the pedos he’s personally busted and said that the legal age of consent is in the right place.)
I don’t know if anyone else was planning to partake in this but if anyone does I’d be even more disappointed if no one weighed the value of Milo’s words on their own merit. Smear campaigns shouldn’t have a place at Instapundit or any other blog.
Per longstanding Instapundit tradition, the link in a post is the headline as written on the linked site. Those words are Paula Bolyard’s, not mine.
On an issue like this one, sometimes the best thing a blogger can do it provide context. So I gave you three links: First, to the hysteria. Second, to the transcript. Third, to Milo’s defense of himself.
Milo’s money quote, which was edited out of the video, is this:
The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them, people who are sexually active younger. I think it particularly happens in the gay world by the way. In many cases actually those relationships with older men…This is one reason I hate the left. This stupid one size fits all policing of culture. (People speak over each other). This sort of arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent, which totally destroys you know understanding that many of us have. The complexities and subtleties and complicated nature of many relationships. You know, people are messy and complex. In the homosexual world particularly. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. Some of those relationships are the most -”
And this was edited out as well:
“You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty… That’s not what we are talking about. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not.”
“It’s complicated” is usually the correct answer about questions concerning sex. But Milo’s actual position on pedophilia — he’s outed three pederasts in his reporting — doesn’t seem complicated at all.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Alt-Right Leader Richard Spencer Crashed a Student Libertarian Conference and Was Shunned.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Physicist Explains Why Humans Probably Didn’t Pop Into Existence Last Tuesday. Well, to be honest, I felt a little run-down last Tuesday. Now Wednesday was kinda nice.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: 11-Year-Old Docked Points for Not Bashing Trump.
TRESPASSING IN CHRISTINA’S WORLD.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump And The Crisis Of The Meritocracy. “Strong nations can fail when their leadership class, or a part of it, succumbs to pettiness, and places its narrow factional interests above those of the nation. Americans have often assumed that we are immune to such things. Perhaps earlier Americas, with a more disciplined, more patriotic ruling class, were. But today’s America is not. Beware.”
WELL, YES: Trump may have been unclear, but Sweden experiencing a migrant crime wave.
Trump’s comments during a Florida campaign rally on Saturday – which some took as a misstatement about a supposed terror attack – dovetail with what Springare has been seeing during a typical week in Orebro, Sweden. Five rapes, three assaults, a pair of extortions, blackmail, an attempted murder, violence against police and a robbery made up Springare’s caseload for a five-day period earlier this month, according to a Feb. 3 Facebook post he wrote. The suspects were all from Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Turkey – save for one Swedish man nabbed in a drug-related case.
“Mohammed, Mahmod, Ali, again and again,” Springare wrote of those arrested.
Springare, who is now being investigated for possible hate crime incitement based on his post, managed to elucidate what Trump only hinted at during a Florida campaign speech – somewhat opaquely.
“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
Many analysts took issue with Trump’s “last night” framing, and immediately compared the line to recent misstatements by Trump spokespeople, such as counselor Kellyanne Conway’s infamous “Bowling Green Massacre” blunder.
But Trump explained on Twitter late Sunday that he was only referring to a Fox News segment that aired on Friday night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” dealing with the Swedish refugee crime.
This is a fine example of Salena Zito’s formulation: “The press takes Trump literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THE OBAMA BOYS CLUB WHITE HOUSE, but I’m supposed to be outraged at this: Men outnumber women more than 2-1 among top White House aides.
I guess it’ll be a hotbed of woman-grabbing misogyny like this scene, involving Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau:
“Fraternities have been closed for less.”
Related: In Early Obama White House Female Staffers Felt Frozen Out.
WHAT BETSY DEVOS CAN DO FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: Appoint Richard Vedder:
DeVos’s department is also deeply involved in higher education, but the issues are different. What roils higher education are problems such as excessive costs, lack of intellectual diversity, faltering academic quality, federal overregulation, and threats to free speech and due process. DeVos must appoint a deputy undersecretary for higher education who will address those issues capably and with respect for individual freedom.
I recommend Richard Vedder for that job. Vedder is an emeritus economics professor at Ohio University, an accomplished and prolific writer on higher education issues, and a genial provocateur who will stand up against political correctness.
Vedder has a solid pedigree in higher education analysis—even though he was an academic economist for nearly 40 years before plunging into the study of higher education. His 2004 book, Going Broke by Degree, was prescient; it was the start of a wave of trade books undermining the assumption that all is well in our colleges and universities.
Soon, he was appointed to the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which issued a report in 2006 that severely criticized higher education. Named for Margaret Spellings, the education secretary under George W. Bush who authorized it, the commission sounded an alarm. It cited “a lack of clear, reliable information about the cost and quality of postsecondary institutions” and found a “remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms.” Its message was tough enough to win opposition from both the university establishment and the Left.
Vedder was more libertarian than most of the commission, but he got along with the other members, probably because he listens to what others say and because he has an engaging sense of humor.
Which will be needed when dealing with Higher Ed.
AS OBESITY RISES, REMOTE PACIFIC ISLANDS PLAN TO ABANDON JUNK FOOD.
To be fair, you really don’t want Pacific islands such as Guam tipping over. And I’m assured by prominent Democratic officials that it could happen!