NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why your risk for divorce is probably lower than you think.
Archive for 2017
January 20, 2017
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW: Former President Obama’s new memoir, My Secret War Against Big Government opens with this:
The wingnuts on the right thought I was a poison pill. And they were right, only I was on their side. Only Nixon could go to China. And only an Ivy League-educated black man could bring down leftism in America. What did they think? That after seeing firsthand in Indonesia — and in my parents’ lives — the destructive impact of leftist thought, I wouldn’t have noticed? I saw the weakness in the system, and I exploited it. Ruthlessly, it’s true — but I learned at an early age that revolutionaries must be ruthless.
I don’t expect President Trump to thank me. But the truth must be told.
In retrospect, it’s obvious. . . .
“GO ON NOW, GIT:” Departing Obama Tearfully Shoos Away Loyal Drone Following Him Out Of White House. “At press time, a heartbroken Obama had thrown a rock in the drone’s direction, causing the unmanned aerial vehicle to flee into the sky, where it paused to look back one last time at its old master before flying off toward a Yemeni tribal wedding.”
FORGET IT CHARLIE, IT’S DAILYBEASTTOWN:
I’m so old I can remember when “Fake News” was supposed to be bad.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: It’s Not 1934, writes Mickey Kaus:
Yet those who adhere to this unnamed tendency — let’s call it ’34ism, unless you can come up with a better name *** –allow the power of their terrifying dream to overwhelm sober consideration of everything Trump does or intends to do, good or bad (on trade, taxes, regulations, immigration, etc). We’re supposed to draw up sides — condemning (and ostracizing) those who are “complicit” in Trump’s administration and welcoming those who “stand on the right side of history” — even before we know whether the authoritarian seed will grow or wither, disregarding all the other positively auspicious seeds (reform of trade, control of borders, fewer foreign miliary adventures, ending the Republican threat to Social Security and Medicare, etc.) that might flourish instead. In Slate 34ist Yascha Mounk’s head it’s practically Life During Wartime already, with brave Trump critics fired from their jobs, sleeping on the couches of their secret colleagues in the Resistance. Keep the car running.
Suggested alternative: See what happens first! Don’t let the reaction to Trump be dominated by one extremely unlikely bad possibility, at the expense of nurturing the far-more-likely good possibilities.
Those asterisks above connect to a footnote from Mickey that “Better name ideas [are] appreciated — just put them in the comments section below [his post], or tweet them to @kausmickey.”
The month after Obama won the election in 2008, Virginia Postrel noted that a lot of journalists (read: Democrat operatives with bylines) had heavily invested in the notion that it was the 1930s all over again, and had a major case of what Virginia dubbed “Depression Lust,” and were busy cranking out “Depression Porn” in service to the Office of the President-Elect. Not least of which was Time magazine’s infamous cover of Obama Photoshopped into the second coming of FDR and the headline “The New, New Deal,” thinking it was a compliment, and not an ominous prediction of an economy as similarly atrophied as Roosevelt’s. Pretending that Trump is Hitler allows you, oh brave foot-soldier in the DNC-MSM, to pose as the new Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s simply the funhouse mirror image version of the same sclerotic meme.
For the modern left, if the economy is relatively good*, and the incoming president has a (D) after his name, he’s the second coming of JFK (see: Clinton, Bill); if the economy is bad, and he has a (D) after his name, he’s FDR — and no matter what the shape of the economy, if the president has an (R) after his name, he’s Hitler (QED: Nixon, Reagan, Bush #43, and Trump).
* And it was, despite Clinton’s rhetoric. Would Time magazine lie to you? Well yes, of course. But look what they admitted in December of 1992.
CLASH OF THE TITANS: 2017 Chevrolet Volt Premier vs. 2017 Toyota Prius Prime Advanced.
PHOTOS OF UGLY LEFT AT THE INAUGURAL: Satanists, Pussy and Red Fists.
UPDATE (From Glenn): “Trump’s Inaugural address took a dark depressing tone, as if there were windows being smashed and cars being set on fire in America’s cities.”
YOU STAY CLASSY, NBC: SNL Writer Tweets That Barron Trump Will Be Country’s ‘First Homeschool Shooter.’
According to NBC’s own rules, that’s racism straight up, right there.
SINALOA CARTEL SENIOR COMMANDER EXTRADITED TO U.S.: The extradition occurred yesterday. Though the Mexican government had indicated Joaquin Guzman would be extradited, the actual extradition was a surprise and carried off suddenly. Today Guzman was arraigned in federal court.
MOVING FAST: Senate Confirms James Mattis as Trump’s Defense Secretary.
Also confirmed: Gen. John Kelly to head Homeland Security. “Neither vote was controversial, as both Mattis and Kelly had sailed through their confirmation hearings earlier this month. Senators were also familiar with both men, who previously served in the Obama administration.”
YOU WENT FULL JOHN LEWIS, NBC. NEVER GO FULL JOHN LEWIS:
● Shot: Chuck Todd: Trump Needs to ‘Erase the Asterisk’ of His Election.
● Chaser: MSNBC Panel: Bush Gave Warm Greeting to SCOTUS Justices Because They Got Him Elected.
(Classical reference in headline.)
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, today was quite the dumpster fire at NBC and its subsidiary networks. Chris Matthews “unexpectedly” dialed the Godwin meter up to 11 and then some — throwing in Mussolini murdering his own son to boot:
“But I’m thinking when he said today ‘America First’ it was not just the racial, I mean the, um, I shouldn’t say racial, the Hitlerian background to it. But it was the message I kept thinking, what is Theresa May thinking this morning, when she picks up the papers and goes ‘My God, what did he just say, he said America first, what happened to the special relationship,’” Matthews complained.
* * * * * * * *
MATTHEWS: [B]ut Mussolini had a great solution to that. He had him executed. So, it’s —
MADDOW: Jesus, Chris!
MATTHEWS: So, if I were Jared, I’d be a little careful.
MADDOW: Well, all the people who are waiting for the reference to Mussolini have just started drinking.
And for others keeping score at home, Chris has now compared Republicans as diverse as Trump, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul to Hitler. And in 2012, when faced with the patrician Mitt Romney as the GOP’s presidential candidate, declared words such as “golf” and “Chicago” to be racial dog whistles.
But if Trump is Hitler, why didn’t Matthews warn the NBC brass while the 45th president was still on their payroll?
(Bumped.)
TODAY IN A NUTSHELL:
An anti-Trump protester screams 'no' as Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th US President pic.twitter.com/qmsaFmMSkr
— ITV News (@itvnews) January 20, 2017
UPDATE:
WHY TRUMP WON, PART 10,457:
Everything ends. I know some of you have reservations about America — a Republic founded on the bloodstained hands of ethnic cleansing and the monstrous crime of slavery (the enduring legacies of which it has not yet escaped); invariably imperfect, occasionally murderous, often disappointing — but I’ve always been quite fond of it, despite the fact that I have spent most of my life in pitched opposition to its leadership.
Well, okay then.
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THE LESSONS OF JOURNALISM FOR 2016: “They also suggest there are real shortcomings in how American politics are covered, including pervasive groupthink among media elites, an unhealthy obsession with the insider’s view of politics, a lack of analytical rigor, a failure to appreciate uncertainty, a sluggishness to self-correct when new evidence contradicts pre-existing beliefs, and a narrow viewpoint that lacks perspective from the longer arc of American history.”
TROLL LEVEL? PRESIDENTIAL: Video: Trump inauguration speech echoes … Bane.
Which seems odd, since Trump himself is Batman – just ask him!
But to be fair, quoting Bane is probably better than quoting Neville Chamberlain, which is what Obama did in his second inaugural address.
HE WAS FOR IT BEFORE OBAMA AND HILLARY, BEFORE DICK CHENEY, EVEN BEFORE ME! Historic Fact: Donald Trump Will Be The First President To Support Gay Marriage From The Beginning.
TRAINED PROFESSIONALS: It Didn’t Take Long for the Media to Compare Trump to ‘Hitler’s Rise’
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