NO KIDDING: Iran’s expansionist aims pose problems for the U.S.
RELATED: Obama’s Iran nuke giveaway was a very bad deal.
VERY MUCH RELATED: Iran is watching the U.S.-North Korea stand-off very closely.
Archive for 2017
August 12, 2017
DEEP STATE UPDATE: The real story of that Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting gets even stranger.
Two obvious questions leap to mind immediately. The first is a no-brainer which somebody at Justice should be addressing for us. Lynch had, by that point, already essentially recused herself from the question of possible prosecution of Hillary Clinton, saying she would leave the decision entirely up to the FBI, so why was her staff sending a blizzard of information and press talking points to the FBI after the secret meeting was revealed?
The second question is even more puzzling and deserves a thorough scrubbing if anyone in the MSM can be bothered to ask. There are generally accepted rules for when the government can or should redact information being released to the public. These can include privacy considerations if the personal information of individuals (such as their Social Security number) are included. Also, the government can withhold sensitive information which might endanger national security. But this was a document which contained a list of talking points to be used if they had to answer questions for the press. In what version of reality would a set of press talking points qualify for redaction?
The more we learn about this the worse the general odor coming from the story becomes. And as the old saying goes, the fish rots from the head down.
Indeed.
BERKELEY EAST: Charlottesville declares state of emergency before white supremacist rally begins.
The roots of this are in the Obama Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute armed Black Panthers who stood outside polling places. That small initial tear in the social fabric has continued to unravel.
UPDATE: 2017.
ANOTHER UPDATE: I hope this turns out to have been an accident, but it doesn’t sound entirely like it so far: Car plows through counter-protesters at white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
According to reports from the scene, counter-protesters were celebrating driving the white supremacists from Emancipation Park, which was supposed to be the site of the main rally. A silver vehicle reportedly drove through a crowd, and multiple people were severely injured.
Video shows counter-protesters walking down a crowded street around some cars that are attempting to drive through but are stopped by the crowd. A silver vehicle comes up at a much higher rate of speed and plows into the back of a vehicle, shoving it and another vehicle forward into the crowd.
The driver then backs his car up at a high rate of speed and flees the area.
Video from the scene showed blood on the hood and windshield of a vehicle, and people screaming from their injuries. Reports indicated at least four people were injured in the incident.
Nonviolent political demonstrations are better for everyone.
AT AMAZON, late-summer deals in Hunting & Fishing.
HURRY, BEFORE THE REAL ALIENS GET HERE! What AI Needs to Learn to Master Alien Warfare.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Photograph A Meteor Shower.
THE SURPRISINGLY DIVERSE SOUNDTRACK OF THE MAD MEN ERA: The Best Albums of the JFK Presidency.
ROGER SIMON ON KOREA AND THE DEMOCRATS’ DEEP PSYCHOLOGICAL FEAR THAT TRUMP IS RIGHT.
Read the whole thing.
STILL RELEVANT WITH ALL THE NORTH KOREA STUFF: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.
IDENTITY POLITICS MAY BE ANTISOCIAL, BUT IT’S PROFITABLE:
The most interesting response to the firing of James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote a provocative memo questioning his company’s diversity practices, didn’t come from the establishment center-left, which predictably proclaimed Damore’s arguments beyond the pale, or the conservative right, which predictably said Silicon Valley elites had become intoxicated by political correctness. Rather, it came from the lonely members of the old-fashioned, class-conscious, social democratic Left, which framed the issue in terms of worker rights and the unaccountable power of employers over their employees.
Writing in The Week, Jeff Spross argued that even if Damore was in the wrong, the episode highlights the way American companies as a whole have too much power to fire workers at will. . . .
In the firing of Damore, we have a fantastically wealthy mega-corporation—a symbol for the kind of profit-producing creative destruction the Reagan Dispensation lionized—practicing identity politics in its rawest form. The content of Damore’s memo is besides the point (I certainly don’t agree with everything he wrote). What matters is that he questioned the design and execution of Google’s lavishly-funded but not particularly successful diversity initiatives, created a firestorm of outrage, and was summarily dismissed for his offense. After all, Lilla says, a defining feature of identity politics is that argument is replaced by taboo.
Google’s decision is being taken by many liberals as a blow for justice—a strong stand against discrimination in the workplace. But it’s also possible to see how the corporate diversity apparatus that led to Damore’s dismissal is actually a self-interested mechanism for big companies to get bigger, to extend control over their workers, and ultimately command even bigger profits. First, a code of inviolable political taboos disempowers workers and gives them less of a say in how their company is being run, putting Spross’s “democratic” workplace even further out of reach. Second, buying into campus style identity politics helps mobilize the coalition for immigration reform, which technology companies are lobbying for aggressively. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the self-conscious mixing of social justice politics with profit-making adds valuable luster to technology companies’ brand and recruitment capacity—allowing them to attract idealistic and intelligent young people who think that they are carrying out a wider social mission even as they act as cogs in the machine of a ruthlessly efficient quasi-monopoly.
Antitrust enforcement is one answer.
ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Stanford University course to study ‘abolishing whiteness.’
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Sherlock Holmes investigates Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her rogue computer techs.
He’s cracked a case The New York Times and FBI failed to crack.
RESTING AT SUNSET: A USMC M1A1 Abrams tank and a dramatic desert sunset. The tank crew was participating in an exercise at Twentynine Palms.
SOMALIA: Where the Global War on Terror continues.
The Pentagon conducted drone attacks on against Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militants in Somalia this week, U.S. Africa Command said.
The two strikes, in which armed but unmanned aircraft hit targets in Somalia’s Banadiir region, were the first since President Donald Trump authorized expanded offensive operations against the militant group in March.
The article doesn’t specify the types of drones used in the attacks. But MQ-9 Reapers are replacing Predators.
RELATED: Reaper on a night mission.
ON THE ONE HAND, THIS IS GOOD NEWS, ON THE OTHER IT ADDS TO THE FEELING THAT WE’RE CLOSE TO A MARKET TOP: Consumer Comfort Reaches 16-Year High on U.S. Economic Optimism.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Applicants Plunged 52%, And Acceptance Rates Increased 20%, At Non-T14 Law Schools From 2008 To 2016. Here at Tennessee, we’ve managed to increase our class size while holding numbers steady, but that seems to be counter to the general trend.
Plus, from the comments: “Depending on where we look in the T14, the drop in applicants has had a more pronounced effect. At Georgetown, for instance, the 25th / median 75th percentile LSAT splits have gone from 168 / 170 / 172 for matriculants in 2010 to a 162 / 167 / 168 this past fall. In other words the 25th percentile LSAT score at Georgetown six years ago is equal to the 75th percentile LSAT score there last year.”
WEIRD. I HAD SOMEHOW MISSED THIS UNTIL I SAW WHERE TRUMP TWEETED IT: Trump approval rebounds to 45%, surges among Hispanics, union homes, men.
REPLACING JOE MANCHIN: Trump may get a 53rd Republican senator. “Rumor has it President Trump will move Rick Perry over to Homeland Security, and then pick Manchin to run the Department of Energy. The deal apparently hinges on Governor Jim Justice appointing a Republican to replace Manchin.” (Bumped).
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Is the World Slouching Toward a Grave Systemic Crisis?
But honestly, we’ve been slouching since at least 2009.