GEORGE KORDA: Political supporters candidates can (and can’t) count on. “When candidates for elected office ask me if I have any advice as they enter into a political campaign, I offer them a practical suggestion having spent most of my adult life working in and observing political campaigns. Get yourself a small notebook, I say to them, one that will fit in your coat pocket. When someone of whom you’re unsure tells you they’re solidly in your corner, take the notebook from your pocket and start writing down their name, saying you’ll be proud to list them as a supporter. When you do that, I add, one of several things will happen.”
Archive for 2017
July 18, 2017
IN THE MAIL: From D. LawDog, with a foreword by Larry Correia, The LawDog Files.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How Long Do You Want To Live? “We’re probably a ways from curing aging but even modest progress in extending people’s healthy years could be enormously valuable to the United States — and many other nations — as we face a coming tsunami of pension obligations.”
ROGER SIMON: Obamacare Survives Thanks to Republican Moral Narcissism.
Shades of P.J. O’Rourke’s famous line that “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
RETAIL COLLAPSE: A BEZOS RECESSION?
As the article notes, there is a possibility that a retail collapse could spill over into the commercial real estate market—a somber second-act to the residential housing crisis that is now almost a decade in the rear-view mirror.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Greg Ip wrote earlier this month: “If you drew up a list of preconditions for recession, it would include the following: a labor market at full strength, frothy asset prices, tightening central banks, and a pervasive sense of calm. In other words, it would look a lot like the present.”
So even as the bull market keeps running and solid jobs numbers keep coming in, it’s important to remember the economy’s potential vulnerabilities in this time of technological change. And if a recession does strike, our political vulnerabilities will be exposed as well.
On the upside, the “recovery” was so anemic it barely counted as one, and there’s a lot of pro-growth low-hanging fruit in terms of deregulation and tax cuts — but to the extent the dysfunctional Congress has to act, that low-hanging fruit may still be out of reach.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How Long Do You Want To Live? “We’re probably a ways from curing aging but even modest progress in extending people’s healthy years could be enormously valuable to the United States — and many other nations — as we face a coming tsunami of pension obligations.”
A-10 FLIP SIDE: The A-10 in the photo was participating in Operation Inherent Resolve. You can’t see the pilot but you can see the ordnance.
TRUMP, MCCONNELL, PENCE CALL FOR CLEAN OBAMACARE REPEAL. That should pass handily. It did in 2015, right? . . .
ROGER KIMBALL: The Russia House: Pope, or Kafka?
POINTS AND FIGURES: Leadership is Hard: “Yesterday the Senate which is barely controlled by Republicans failed to repeal and replace Obamacare. Too bad. To be honest, it had a hard time getting through the House. This shows you how hard laws are to repeal once installed. Especially laws that come with lots of free benefits you don’t pay for until later years. It also illustrates something else. Leadership is hard. Being a true leader can be lonely.”
IMPROVING THE GROUND-BASED INTERCEPTOR: The next U.S. ICBM intercept will test new command and control technology.
Given the North Korea threat, missile defense upgrades are progressing at a crucial time for the Pentagon’s Ground-Based midcourse defense. Following the completion of current Pentagon review of nuclear weapons, policy and defenses, there is a distinct possibility that funding for missile defense technology will continue to climb.
Yes, the North Korean threat’s for real.
RELATED: A GBI being placed in a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Swampland’s Ten Commandments.
Just read it.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Our Corrupt Media Is Now Haunted By All The Precedents They Set While Colluding With Obama.
Barack Obama trafficked guns to Mexican drug lords, secretly delivered pallets filled with billions in cash to Iran’s America/Jew-hating mullahs, left four Americans to die in Benghazi and then lied about it, allowed his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to exchange government favors for hundreds of millions of dollars slushed into the Clinton Foundation, sic’d his IRS on everyday, law-abiding Americans, and used a trillion dollars in “stimulus” funds to pay off his cronies, like those behind a boondoggle called Solyndra.
And all along, over eight terrible years, our media did a whole lot more than just let Obama get away with it. They wholeheartedly colluded. They allowed Obama to persecute them through the Department of Justice and to lie to our face (remember: I just now read about it in the newspaper, the IRS did nothing wrong, you can keep your insurance). And when that wasn’t enough, the media mercilessly attacked as racist anyone who criticized the Precious and ginned up nothingburgers like Todd Akin to distract from those four dead Americans. And when even that wasn’t enough, they themselves lied and obfuscated, covered up and dissembled, and most of all they set all kinds of precedents that, in a delicious form of irony, are now driving this utterly failed institution to the edge of insanity. . . .
And now — now! — this very same media (with the help of #NeverTrump’s forever-preening moral narcissists) is using the spear of Muh Principles to demand that those of us on the political right agree to destroy ourselves in their corrupt crusade, that we acquiesce like second-class citizens to their separate sets of rules?
Like hell.
People do notice hypocrisy.
THE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT HAS HAD ISSUES FOR A LONG TIME — THE LATE JOEL ROSENBERG BUTTED HEADS WITH THEM REPEATEDLY — AND NOW THIS: Mohamed Noor: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.
Mohamed Noor, the Minneapolis police officer who is accused of shooting and killing Justine Damond, an Australian yoga teacher and spiritual healer, was the first Somali-American officer in his precinct.
A year ago, the arrival of Noor on the Minnesota police force was celebrated by the mayor and Somali community he hails from. There is a pending federal complaint against him, though, by a former social worker from Minneapolis who says Noor and other officers violated her constitutional rights in March by ordering her detention at a hospital after she called 911 to report a drug crime and other issues. You can read that complaint below.
Damond was shot in the abdomen and killed while wearing her pajamas and speaking to another police officer, identified as Matthew Harrity, after calling 911 to report a possible assault in an alley behind her home on July 15, reports The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
The shooting death has caused outrage in both Australia and Minnesota, where Damond, who also went by the name Justine Ruszczyk, was a beloved teacher of meditation who held betterment workshops and was supposed to be married in August.
My first thought was that this was an accidental discharge, but I’m not sure now.
I’M DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED IN SESSIONS’ PERFORMANCE SO FAR, AND THIS IDIOCY ONLY MAKES IT WORSE: Jeff Sessions Announces Justice Department Will Increase Asset Forfeiture. It’s fine to say “no criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” but you’re not a “criminal” when you haven’t been convicted of anything. This is federal robbery at gunpoint, not law enforcement, and Sessions should be ashamed.
AT AMAZON, 70% off or More on Vitamin B.
SALENA ZITO: Why these Canadians would take Trump over Trudeau.
It is fascinating to listen to their impressions of the US president. Given the coverage of him throughout Ontario and America — you would think any Canadian would conclude the opposite. The Bowens are well versed in the policy entanglements Trump faces with health care and tax reform and are aware of every House special election since January that’s happened in Kansas, Montana and Georgia.
They are also very pragmatic about his approach.
“The man has his weaknesses, that is for sure, but voters knew that going in, and he has as much admitted he is not a groomed politician. Any problem he has faced has mostly come from his use of social media, but his policies are spot-on,” said Dave.
While many Americans point to the universal health care enjoyed by our northern neighbors as a point of envy, Dave says his countryfolk have reason to admire the US — especially on the issue of immigration.
Imagine how things would be for Trump, abroad and at home, if he got the fawning coverage that Obama got.
CULTURE OF HATE: Online Game Encourages Users To ‘Push Trump Off A Cliff.’
Have you no decency? No decency at all?
BE VERY AFRAID: Senate Democrats Are Losing Their Minds at the Thought of Senator Kid Rock.
Well, judging from this, maybe they should be:
I can imagine it resonating.
UPDATE: From the comments:
He could be our first Senator to have had sex with Pamela Anderson.
I’m not certain about that.
Heh.
IN THE PROCESS OF SECURITIZATION, OFTEN THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS ARE LOST: As Paperwork Goes Missing, Private Student Loan Debts May Be Wiped Away.. “Judges have already dismissed dozens of lawsuits against former students, essentially wiping out their debt, because documents proving who owns the loans are missing. A review of court records by The New York Times shows that many other collection cases are deeply flawed, with incomplete ownership records and mass-produced documentation.”
Back during the financial crisis, a desperate InstaPundit reader wrote me for help with their mortgage company, which was being quite nasty. “Demand to see the original mortgage papers,” I suggested. They did, and there was an instant change from “pay up now or else” to “how can we work with you?”