Archive for 2017
March 7, 2017
CHANGE: White House Offers to Let Planned Parenthood Keep Federal Funding if it Halts Abortions.. “Planned Parenthood says it rejected the informal offer, noting that federal funds cannot be used for abortions anyway.”
Money, some people need reminding, is fungible.
WHY ARE LEFTY MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF . . . WELL, HELL, I’M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT THIS IS, EXACTLY: Sources: Wash. Post employee allegedly impersonated ICE agent; guns found at his Md. home. “The FBI and other authorities raided the home of a Maryland man last month after he allegedly impersonated an ICE agent in Virginia on more than one occasion and attempted to enforce criminal laws, court documents show and sources confirmed with ABC7’s Kevin Lewis Monday. The man, who was arrested at his home and has since been released on bond, was working at the Washington Post at the time, according to court documents. . . . When the warrant was served on Feb. 22 at Ozderman’s home in the 100 block of Elmira Lane, court documents say 10 weapons, including handguns, assault rifles, and a shotgun, were recovered.” Well, that’s what we call a “nice starter collection” in Tennessee, but okay.
Plus: “Sources tell ABC7’s Kevin Lewis that Ozderman impersonated an ICE officer throughout Falls Church, Va. on more than one occasion. According to sources, Ozderman would ‘patrol’ while wearing a bullet proof vest with an ICE placard and a Baltimore County police badge.”
UPDATE: From the comments: “Maybe the constant exposure to left wing indoctrination at the WaPo drove him crazy. That would be my defense.” Heh.
SECURITY THEATER: TSA warns about more invasive airport pat-downs.
This is a guy who, in not even a single term as a U.S. senator before running for the highest office in the land, accomplished little but did try to filibuster Sam Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and supported a “poison pill” to kill immigration reform. Who ran as a celebrity, helping pave the way for the sort of hero worship that President Trump’s fans now employ.
He won office at a time when America felt like it was already coming apart, and given the opportunity to be a true post-partisan leader who could unite the country, chose instead to run a highly partisan and ideological presidency. That began with his choice of the divisive issue of health care reform as his landmark legislation—Obamacare being Obama’s original sin—using every means necessary to pass it on a party-line vote. And he frequently resorted to unilateral decisions outside the scope of his constitutional authority. Sound familiar?
Along the way, he got us used to a lot of things that his team is now accusing Donald Trump of inventing. Think Donald Trump is an undignified reality star? Yeah, remember the time that Obama gave an interview to a YouTube star who drinks cereal out of a bathtub? Cultural degradation doesn’t just happen overnight.
Do you think President Trump was the first politician to have a casual relationship with the truth? Then answer this: Who said, “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” and that ISIS is the “JV team”?
A horrible president, and not a very good man, either.
HERE IT IS: House GOP Releases Plan to Repeal, Replace Obamacare.
The legislation would provide tax credits to people who don’t get coverage through their job, replacing the subsidies the ACA gave to a narrower set of lower-income people to help them afford insurance policies.
The proposal wouldn’t kill the ACA’s exchanges where people can obtain insurance, but far fewer people are expected to use them because the subsidies that reduce premium costs would no longer exist. Those subsidies are only available now to people who obtain coverage through the state and federal ACA exchanges.
The refundable tax credits have been a thorny issue for Republicans. Conservative Republicans vowed not to support an earlier draft that would have provided the tax credits regardless of income.
Under the House GOP proposal released Monday, the refundable tax credits would be tied to age, with people under 30 eligible for a credit of $2,000 per year, increasing steadily to $4,000 for those over 60. The size of a tax credit would grow with the size of a family, but would be capped at $14,000.
To assuage the concern among conservative lawmakers that the credits would be available to wealthy Americans, the tax credits would start to shrink for individuals making more than $75,000 or households making more than $150,000. For every $1,000 in income over $75,000, the tax credit would be reduced by $100.
What the legislation doesn’t appear to do is create a national market for health insurance, and instead keeps in place our current system of having 50 little state-based insurance fiefdoms — which limits risk pools and, more critically, competition between insurers.
Another complaint against ObamaCare is that it hugely increased the regulatory burden on doctors, clinics, and hospitals, but it’s impossible to tell from this story if the GOP legislation repeals any of that.
Rand Paul calls it “ObamaCare Lite” and says he won’t vote for it.
I’M NOT SURPRISED: IBD/TIPP Poll: Public Turned Off By Media’s Relentlessly Negative Coverage Of Trump. “The poll found that 55% of the public says they’ve grown ‘weary from the media’s persistently negative coverage of President Trump.’ A roughly equal share (54%) also believe that the news media ‘has assumed the role of the opposition party, constantly opposing the president and his policies at every turn.'”
I SENSE A GRAVE DISTURBANCE IN THE NARRATIVE: While You Weren’t Looking, the Democrat–Media Election-Hacking Narrative Just Collapsed, Andrew McCarthy writes.
Related: So, the timing of all these Trump/Russia leaks is pretty suspicious, huh?
(Classical reference in headline.)
GREG GUTFELD: Remembering Andrew Breitbart — Random thoughts on the fifth anniversary of his death.
Related: From 2005, shortly after I met him for the first time at the PJM launch in New York, my first interview with Andrew, on his book, Hollywood Interrupted.
IN APPRECIATION OF ROBERT OSBORNE, WHO DIED MONDAY AT THE AGE OF 84: “The man who brought classic movies and Hollywood history to a generation will be missed.”
What’s fascinating about TCM is how culturally, it’s almost the Fox News of the Time-Warner empire: while CNN and HBO act as if all of America was nothing but Black Armband History except during the years Obama was in office, TCM is a reminder how just awesome a product the (mostly conservative) founders of Hollywood could create, until they were pushed out by the socialist Young Turks of the late ’60s. (Who aged far differently from the genteel Osborne, as witnessed by last month’s Oscar embarrassment involving Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. As Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader of all people eventually lamented, “It was fun watching the applecart being upset, but now where do we go for apples?”
Well, other than TCM, that is.
March 6, 2017
ACE: Charles Murray and the Flight 93 Election. “How far along the decline do you imagine we are? How close to the Point of No Return are we? Because I guarantee you, your answer to this question largely determines your answer to the Great Trump Question.”
UNEXPECTEDLY! Here Come Big ESPN Layoffs. You went full SJW. You never go full SJW.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Did Obama spy on Trump? It isn’t out of the question. The former president’s administration wiretapped journalists and spied on Congress. Shockingly, the lefty commenters at USA Today largely disagree with my take.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: KING VS. KING:
The most singular thing about Donald Trump’s wiretap accusation against Barack Obama is how he’s refusing to play the game of extremities –losing a Flynn here and getting a Sessions paralyzed there — and getting right into lethal range. Trump’s gone right past Schumer, ignored the surrogates and gone straight for the former president himself.
The Sunday Guardian writes some believe Trump’s key mistake was believing “in mid-November … that it would be a statesmanlike gesture to (in effect) pardon Hillary Clinton”. He must have expected a reciprocal courtesy. The next thing he felt were his digits being sheared away.
“Acting through their contacts in the incoming administration, the Clinton machine … ‘dismissed National Security Advisor Michael Flynn … [and] ensured that the green light got flashed to launch an attack on another known foe of Hillary Clinton’, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose sought after resignation would energize the Clinton machine to move on to their next targets, Counsellors Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon.”
Trump’s response to the finger-lopping campaign was not to respond proportionately but to attack Obama himself. . . .
This escalation represents a real threat to Obama. Suddenly everything is out of control. Nobody would have minded much if Trump had gone after one of Obama’s henchmen — which is probably what was expected — but none can foresee how an exchange of blades between principals will end. It is safe to say however that unless the combatants disengage someone will get hurt. It will be a terrible moment for American political civility when a king lies on the political floor. The whole point of a peaceful transition of power is to prevent a clash between kings. Yet the very tragedy the electoral process is intended to prevent is happening before our eyes.
In such a fight anything can happen.
One of the ways American political culture prevents such a fight is to have only one king at a time. Former presidents are expected to retire and vanish. Obama, however, decided to stay in DC and try to destroy Trump’s presidency. That was a choice that showed little concern for America, but then, the lack of such concern has been a hallmark of Obama’s career.
And who was foolish enough to think that Trump would respond to attacks by playing small ball?
UPDATE: From the comments:
FAKE BLACK GUY ALSO WEAK ON CIVICS: Shaun King thinks there should be an amendment thingie to oust Trump (should we tell him?). “It’s seriously like these people only started paying attention to politics because it was an opportunity to get all shaky-fisted and throw tantrums. Perhaps there should be a new rule that states one cannot become any sort of activist until they pass a basic civics class?”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Rod Dreher on The Madness At Middlebury:
Middlebury College is on trial now. Its administration will either forthrightly defend liberal democratic norms, or it will capitulate. There is no middle ground.
Read the whole thing.
LIMBAUGH SELDOM RALLIES HIS LISTENERS TO DIRECT ACTION LIKE THIS: What Trump Supporters Can Do to Help. “You need to let these members of Congress know, I don’t care if it’s McCaskill, if it’s Emanuel Meat Cleaver, I don’t care who it is, you need to tell them and you need to get all your friends to tell them that there’s nothing they can do, that you are with Trump to the end. Because all they’ve got is trying to separate you who voted for Trump and support Trump, separate you from him. . . . And I think that one of the desires is, on the part of establishment Washingtonians, is that after so much time goes by, that you Trump supporters are just gonna get tired and abandon him or just give up and not care because nothing’s changing even after this election. And I think the one thing you all can do is demonstrate however you do it that you are with Trump, that you’re not wavering, that this is not causing you to weaken or lose resolve in any way, shape, manner, or form. You’re never gonna be able to change the media, if that was gonna be your next question. I’m just assuming it was.”
THE RESISTANCE: So, the timing of these Trump/Russia leaks is pretty suspicious, huh? “‘[I]s it really just pure coincidence that the Sessions story broke just after Trump delivered a widely acclaimed address to Congress?’ writes Marc Thiessen in a column today at WaPo. Jay Cost had the same thought this weekend. The collection of information on Trump aides’ contacts with Russians may not be suspicious, Cost argued, as there may be good reason for the FBI to have found the extent of their communications unusual. But the dispersion of that information to that press, coinciding as it has with moments of good press for Trump, seems dodgy.”
AND HE’S RIGHT: Justice Thomas sharply criticizes civil forfeiture laws.
PERHAPS FACEBOOK AND TWITTER ARE LIKE TOBACCO, AND NEED TO BE REGULATED FOR THE SAKE OF PEOPLE’S HEALTH: Too Much Social Media Use Linked to Feelings of Isolation.
IT’S WHAT ACTIVISTS DO: Activists Seek to Increase Government Scrutiny Over Homeschool Families.
I’M GUESSING SCOTT ADAMS WOULD UNDERSTAND: What if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Had Swapped Genders? A restaging of the presidential debates with an actress playing Trump and an actor playing Clinton yielded surprising results.
Many were shocked to find that they couldn’t seem to find in Jonathan Gordon what they had admired in Hillary Clinton—or that Brenda King’s clever tactics seemed to shine in moments where they’d remembered Donald Trump flailing or lashing out. For those Clinton voters trying to make sense of the loss, it was by turns bewildering and instructive, raising as many questions about gender performance and effects of sexism as it answered. . . .
We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman—that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.” Another—a musical theater composer, actually—said that Trump created “hummable lyrics,” while Clinton talked a lot, and everything she was was true and factual, but there was no “hook” to it. Another theme was about not liking either candidate—you know, “I wouldn’t vote for either one.” Someone said that Jonathan Gordon [the male Hillary Clinton] was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. And a lot of people were just very surprised by the way it upended their expectations about what they thought they would feel or experience. There was someone who described Brenda King [the female Donald Trump] as his Jewish aunt who would take care of him, even though he might not like his aunt. Someone else described her as the middle school principal who you don’t like, but you know is doing good things for you. . . .
I remember turning to Maria at one point in the rehearsals and saying, “I kind of want to have a beer with her!” The majority of my extended family voted for Trump. In some ways, I developed empathy for people who voted for him by doing this project, which is not what I was expecting. I expected it to make me more angry at them, but it gave me an understanding of what they might have heard or experienced when he spoke.
So switching genders basically allowed Democrats to see clearly.