OOPS: Woman Pictured in Oscars’ ‘In Memoriam’ Video Is Still Very Much Alive.
Any publicity is good publicity?
Archive for 2017
February 27, 2017
ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: EPA Employees Spend $15k in Government Money on Gym Memberships.
YOU WENT FULL NEO-CONFEDERATE, DEMS. NEVER GO FULL NEO-CONFEDERATE: Sanctuary Cities Use Legal Tactics From The Civil War South.
FAIRE LA FRANCE GRAND ENCORE: Yes, Le Pen could win in France.
Even some of her rivals concede a victory for the far-right firebrand is possible.
“I think Madame Le Pen could be elected,” former conservative prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said this month.
Another former premier, the Socialist Manuel Valls, has also warned of the “danger” of assuming that Le Pen cannot win.
Polls show that support for the 48-year-old anti-immigrant and anti-EU candidate has been consistent for four years now.
Since 2013, surveys have shown she will progress through the first round to reach the runoff stage in France’s two-stage presidential election.
For all the fuss, French voters seem poised to do nothing out of the ordinary: Trade one brand of collectivist for another one.
“YOU LIE!” House Democrats plan to troll Trump at big speech.
It’s different when they do it.
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: CNN’S Brian Stelter: We Don’t See CNN or New York Times ‘Rooting for Any President.’
Flashback: How the Wright-Free Zone was Built.
Flashback: CNN Uses Singing Children to Campaign for ObamaCare.
Flashback: DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile feeds debate questions to Hillary, reportedly passed to her by former CNN anchor and Rev. Wright acolyte Roland Martin.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Interview: This Male Student Was Expelled for Raping His Girlfriend Even Though She Said He Did Nothing Wrong.
CHANGE: Colorado’s Governor, Who Opposed Pot Legalization in 2012, Is Ready to Defend It.
The president, whose press secretary last week predicted “greater enforcement” of the federal ban on marijuana in the eight states that have legalized the drug for recreational use, may be interested in what Hickenlooper had to say in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press yesterday:
Todd: If this were put on a ballot today, I know you opposed it before, but if it were put on a ballot today, would you now support it?
Hickenlooper: Well, I’m getting close. I mean, I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but we have made a lot of progress. We didn’t see a spike in teenage use. If anything, it’s come down in the last year. And we’re getting anecdotal reports of less drug dealers. I mean, if you get rid of that black market, you’ve got tax revenues to deal with, the addictions, and some of the unintended consequences of legalized marijuana, maybe this system is better than what was admittedly a pretty bad system to begin with.
Hickenlooper’s views on legalization have been evolving since 2014 based on what has actually happened in Colorado, which suggests the “big problems” that Trump perceived in 2015 may have been exaggerated by the prohibitionists who were feeding him information. Even if legalization were a disaster in Colorado, of course, that would not mean the federal government should try to stop it. The federalist approach Trump has said he favors allows a process of trial and error from which other states can learn.
Indeed.
Read the whole thing.
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DAVID GOLDMAN: A deplorable vote for Angela Merkel.
Deplorably, I would vote for Angela Merkel, and urge my American friends to support the present Christian Democratic-Social Democratic coalition rather than the alternative: a “Red-Red-Green” coalition (Social Democrats plus the successor to the old East German Communist Party plus the Green Party. If Merkel loses Germany will be ruled by Russian stooges. That’s the opposite of what some of Donald Trump’s closest supporters think. Most of them agree with British gadfly Nigel Farage, who told Germany’s national radio yesterday:
Well, I wouldn’t vote for Angela Merkel, that’s the first piece of advice I’d give. I mean, look at the catastrophic errors she made: opening up the doors to so-called refugees, it turned out that 70 percent of them were young males, economic migrants. And because she’s given up border controls, the most wanted man in Europe if not the world is able to catch a train to France, and then to Italy, without anyone checking who he is.
Farage is right, but he’s wrong. Many of my friends are making the same mistake that the neo-conservatives did, that is, attempting to export American ideas to place where they don’t belong. When they look at any part of the world, Americans ask: Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? In most places, there aren’t good guys and bad guys. There are just bad guys and worse guys. Merkel’s migration policy is bad, but it is neither stupidly bad, nor wickedly bad. Rather, it is tragically bad. Germany has a gap in its soul. In between the citizen-of-the-world liberalism that characterizes its elite and the atavistic nationalism that attracts a small fringe, there is nothing there at all.
This is a lengthy piece, but a fascinating one. It would be well worth your time to read the whole thing, even if you don’t reach the same conclusions.
TRUMP MUST PUT ON HIS WONK SUIT TUESDAY NIGHT: Roger Simon wargames Trump’s upcoming State Of The Union speech.
WELL, GOOD: Environmental Chief Vows Swift Rollback of Obama-Era Rules.
Those policy reversals, set to start next week, will empower the Environmental Protection Agency to focus on its core mission of protecting the air and water, Pruitt said Saturday in a speech and question-and-answer session on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
“The previous administration was so focused on climate change and so focused on CO2, some of those other priorities were left behind,” Pruitt said in his first detailed remarks since being sworn in to lead the EPA on Feb. 17. “I really believe that at the end of eight years, we’re going to have better air quality, we’re going to have better water quality because it’s going to be vested in a partnership” with states.
The Animas River could not be reached for comment.
WELL, IT’S ALL ABOUT VIRTUE-SIGNALING ANYWAY: ‘Authentic’ Food Is Not What You Think It Is.
Americans of a certain social class love nothing more than an “authentic” food experience. It is the highest praise that they can heap on a restaurant. The ideal food is one that was perfected by honest local peasants in some picturesque locale, then served the same way for centuries, the traditions passed down from mother to daughter (less occasionally, from father to son), with stern admonitions not to dishonor their ancestry by making it wrong.
These American diners are constantly in a quest for their own lost heritage, along with the traditions of other peoples they don’t know very well. We live, the lore says, in a fallen state, victims of Big Agriculture and a food industry that has rendered everything bland, fatty and sweet. By tapping the traditions of centuries past — or other, poorer places — we can regain the paradise that our grandparents unaccountably abandoned.
And who could be against wanting a more authentic, genuine food experience? I’m so glad you asked.
In fact, authenticity is an illusion, and a highly overrated one.
The phonier people are themselves, the more they seek “authenticity” elsewhere. And that’s especially true of “a certain social class.”
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Jimmy Kimmel tweets at President Donald Trump during Oscars.
DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: With Obamacare in jeopardy, California considers going it alone with ‘single-payer’ system.
“Why wouldn’t we take this as an opportunity to create what we want in California?” Dr. Mitch Katz, head of L.A. County’s health department, said at a conference in December. He mentioned a single-payer system as a possible solution.
Other suggestions for how California can capitalize on the threat to Obamacare include creating a public option, a state-run health plan to sell on the state’s insurance exchange, and mimicking how Massachusetts provided universal healthcare.
“Just as [healthcare] was a lightning rod and a rallying cry for opponents of the law for the past seven years, now it’s becoming a rallying cry for the supporters,” said Dr. Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) introduced a bill Friday that would make California the first state to adopt single-payer, also called “Medicare for all.”
Colorado had a similar measure on the state ballot last November. Most state Democrats came out against the initiative, which would have nearly doubled state spending and payroll taxes in the first full year alone. “ColoradoCare” would have depressed jobs and wages, and voters rejected it by a massive four-to-one margin.
California’s taxes are already about 60% higher, per capita, than Colorado’s. If California decides to go enact single payer, it’s impossible to say where the money will come from. But it’s easy to predict where the jobs will go: Away.
WHY, INDEED? Why is the Liberal Media Silent About UK Suicide Bomber Jamal al-Harith? “Al-Harith’s civil rights, including the right to travel abroad, were defended by pressure groups and his supporters right up to the point where he blew up those poor Iraqi soldiers. His victims’ main desire was to liberate their country from the rampage of a death cult.”
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WHEN TOM PEREZ WAS AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, Justice’s inspector general, an Obama appointee, issued a stinging 256-page report slamming Perez’s unit for “deep ideological polarization” and a “disappointing lack of professionalism.”
Plus, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said Perez lied: “The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in that case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.”
FACT-CHECKING: Is Trump Responsible for Drop in National Debt by $12 Billion Since Taking Office?
Probably not, but that’s nothing compared to Obama’s routine claims (deceptions, really) about being a bigly deficit-cutter.
SALENA ZITO: Women with guns: The next threat to the Democratic Party.
As Democrats continue to make gun control a wedge issue in elections, they underestimate the damage they are doing to their own chances among women, who have been flocking to buy guns in the past few years.
These same voters, whom the NRA calls the “shy voters,” also flocked to Donald Trump, and they are unlikely to reverse course before next year’s midterm elections. So as wedge issues go, this one is becoming more of a loser for the Left. . . .
In a large survey of people who voted in November’s presidential election, conducted for the NRA by On Message, Inc., pollsters found that nearly 20 percent of those who chose Trump never told anyone they intended to do so. They interviewed voters in Florida, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The OnMessage survey of 5,100 battleground voters was fielded in December, and stratified by county to match actual 2016 turnouts, in order to give the most granular view of voter preferences.
Eighteen percent of those interviewed in the battleground states said they were “uncomfortable telling people they supported Donald Trump.”
Who were these voters? They were more female than male and twice as likely to live in suburban counties compared to the rest of Trump’s vote, according to On Message.
They also were a little more educated than average voters — 24 percent had a post-graduate degree — and, while right-of-center, they’re not as conservative as the rest of Trump’s voters.
A very important nugget from the poll: Like every woman interviewed at the outdoor show, an overwhelming 80 percent of them support the goals and objectives of the NRA.
Read the whole thing — but it’s a Salena Zito piece, so you knew that. And can we credit Dana Loesch for this change?
SKYNET SMILES: Supersmart Robots Will Outnumber Humans Within 30 Years, Says SoftBank CEO.
These beliefs underpin the wave of large and surprising deals the Japanese internet and telecommunications giant has pulled off in the past year, [SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son] said on Monday. These include starting a $100 billion technology-investment fund with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, buying British microprocessor designer ARM Holdings PLC for $32 billion and acquiring U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group PLC for $3.3 billion.
This 30-year forecast created urgency, Mr. Son said in a speech at the telecom industry’s biggest trade show, Mobile World Congress. “That is why I’m in a hurry to aggregate cash to invest.”
In a brief interview after his speech, Mr. Son said his $100 billion project with the Saudis, dubbed the SoftBank Vision Fund, was bigger than the $65 billion in combined investments from the venture-capital world. He said the SoftBank Vision Fund would be focused. “Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots: those are the three main things I’m interested in,” he said.
The Internet of Things is the technology world’s term for connecting everyday objects, from refrigerators to sneakers, to the web.
Mr. Son said he didn’t expect the planned initial public offering of oil colossus Saudi Aramco to affect the size of Vision Fund. “They are a great partner,” he said of the Saudis. “They’re already rich. They have lots of money, even before the IPO.”
The Saudis already outsource much of their labor to millions of foreign guest-workers from India, Pakistan, and around the Arab world. Their numbers are huge — it’s estimated that about 31% of the Saudi population of 27 million is made up of expatriates. The wages those workers repatriate help keep their home economies afloat. If Son is correct, that cashflow is about to be diverted away from the Third World, and towards Japan, China, the U.S., and other makers of automated systems.
Those workers getting the boot and that money drying up could create the next big disruptive wave to come out of the Middle East and South Asia.