BADASS OF THE WEEK: “On another occasion, he recalled, he was having drinks with a Wehrmacht colonel in a Paris hotel when a Gestapo officer asked for their identification. The colonel expressed such indignation that the frazzled Gestapo officer stalked off, and Mr. Refkin sardonically declared, ‘These young Gestapo guys don’t even check papers well anymore.'”
Archive for 2017
November 11, 2017
BLUE ON BLUE: Democrats Deeply Divided on Transgender Issues, Pew Survey Finds.
The “acceptance by our constantly shifting definition — or else” attitude isn’t winning many independent friends, either.
CASTING COUCH: This Writer Says Rolling Stone Founder Jann Wenner Offered Him Work In Exchange For Sex.
I think all the moralizing from our celebutainment class is displacement, based on their knowledge that they’re immersed in a deeply evil system. See also this guest post from John Ringo.
HEALTH: Mushrooms are full of antioxidants that may have antiaging potential.
I’m just going to assume that sautéing in butter and wine, then pouring over a steak helps to lock in the antioxidants for maximum benefit.
IN THE MAIL: From Lee Edwards, Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
NOW THAT THE DEMOCRATS DON’T NEED HIM ANYMORE: Chris Hayes: Bill Clinton and his supporters are overdue for a reckoning.
While the backstory in the United States is quite different, the underlying political dynamics at play today are strikingly similar. Faced with a broad revolt against the common-sense liberal worldview, panicked American elites are prophesying an apocalyptic, totalitarian future for the Republic. And when it comes to “doing politics,” liberals seem keen to double down on what worked in the past.
I have noticed that a kind of sickly grey hope hangs around most people’s hottest anti-Trump vitriol, lingering like stale morning breath: a hope that once everything is sorted—all the disinformation exposed, all the dossiers verified, all the tax returns audited, and all the President’s men jailed—the “adults” will wrest back control of politics, and things can get back more or less to the way they were before.
Well, the old regime was pretty good for them. For others, not so much.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia newspaper silent after College Republicans doxing.
Well, they’re prepared for a career in professional journalism:
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.
Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.
MEANWHILE, IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: South Korea, China agree to manage North Korea issue peacefully, in stable manner.
Sounds like the North Korea diplomacy is working.
SEX, DRUGS AND BALLISTIC MISSILE SUBMARINES: Cruising undersea in the Royal Navy.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: George Takei Accused of Sexually Assaulting Former Model in 1981.
“We have the drink and he asks if I would like another,” Brunton recalls. “And I said sure. So, I have the second one, and then all of a sudden, I begin feeling very disoriented and dizzy, and I thought I was going to pass out. I said I need to sit down and he said sit over here and he had the giant yellow beanbag chair. So I sat down in that and leaned my head back and I must have passed out.”
“The next thing I remember I was coming to and he had my pants down around my ankles and he was groping my crotch and trying to get my underwear off and feeling me up at the same time, trying to get his hands down my underwear,” Brunton says.
More at the link.
BEFORE IT’S ALL OVER, WE’RE GONNA FIND OUT THAT EVERYTHING WAS RUN OUT OF A PIZZA JOINT IN DC, AREN’T WE? Former ‘Smallville’ Actress Allegedly Second In Command Of Sex Cult. It really does feel more and more like Bizarro world.
SUMMARY: How Roy Moore answered each accuser’s allegations. The claims regarding the 14-year-old seem clearly disqualifying, if true. The press accounts that conflate those claims with Moore’s dating of 18 or 19 year olds under the catchall “teenager” are shady, and make it look more like a witch hunt.
But I don’t think Moore’s Hannity appearance helped him; it may have sunk him.
Has she been hanging out with Sally Quinn?
STEPHEN PRESSER ON ROY MOORE: Sex, Politics, and the Judiciary: We’ve Seen This Movie Before.
LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF: Tax Reform Passes The Fairness Test:
The GOP tax plan should do three things. It should expand the economy while raising wages. It should pay for itself. And it should be fair.
The new plan’s business-tax provisions will reduce the effective marginal tax rate on U.S. investments dramatically, from close to 35% to under 19%. Depending on the year in question, my global dynamic macroeconomic model predicts a 12% to 20% expansion in the U.S. capital stock, producing an average $3,500 real wage increase for each American working household. Moreover, economic growth spurred by the business-tax cuts will raise tax receipts enough to make the plan revenue-neutral.
That means the plan passes the first two tests. What about fairness? Using conventional methods for assessing fiscal fairness, government agencies and Beltway think tanks have declared the House bill a giveaway to the rich. But these methods were developed before the advent of computer modeling and big data. Their conclusions are unreliable.
Myopic conventional fairness measures consider only the current year’s net taxes—that is, taxes paid minus benefits received. They ignore net future taxes, making it impossible to account for phased-in reforms as well as consumption and estate taxes. Moreover, these methods understate the tax burden on the rich who save more relative to the nonrich and thus face higher relative taxes in the future based on their resulting taxable asset income.
Conventional measures also fail to account for the roughly 5.5% rise in pretax income I predict the tax plan will generate. Ultimately inequality is about relative spending, not relative taxes. And what we spend depends on what we earn, not just what share of our earnings we hand over to Uncle Sam. By lumping together people of all ages, conventional fairness measures compare apples and oranges: the young, most of whose taxes lie ahead, and the old, most of whose taxes have already been paid. . . .
There are many steps, like lifting the ceiling on Social Security taxable earnings, that could make the reform more progressive and produce badly needed revenue. But the new tax plan, while far from what I and other tax specialists would design, will boost the economy, generate more revenue, maintain fairness, and raise Americans’ living standards. It’s imperfect but worth passing.
Well, it won’t be perfect until it includes my Blog Tax Credit proposal.
HMM: Biden sees one Democrat who can beat Trump in 2020: Joe Biden.
Maybe by then this whole sexual harassment thing will have died down. Flashback: Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:
“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.
“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.
“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”
Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?
Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.
Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?
Plus:
XCOR AEROSPACE Files for Bankruptcy. I was a (small) investor in XCOR. I’m glad I wasn’t a big investor.
JUST ASKING SOME QUESTIONS: The Roy Moore sex allegations.