AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
Also, shop today’s Kindle Daily Deals.
Plus, today’s Digital Deals.
And don’t miss today’s deals in Grocery and Gourmet Food.
Archive for 2017
January 20, 2017
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump’s Pre-Presidency: A Report Card.
IF HE GETS IT, MIGHT AS WELL SHUT DOWN THE ANTITRUST DIVISION: Google Ally Joshua Wright Under Consideration as Trump’s Antitrust Chief, Source Says.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Sun Also Rises.
The unhappy children making a nuisance of themselves in Washington, D.C., ought to take a leaf from the sage of Ecclesiastes. Yes, Donald Trump is about to become President (in 3 hours and 45 minutes from now, but who’s counting?). But fear not. Life will go on. The sun also ariseth. The winds will continue to blow. Spring will come. The tulips will bloom.
It will go on even if that bulletin in The Hill yesterday is true. “Donald Trump,” it announced, “is ready to take an ax to government spending.” Can it be so? If The Hill is right, Spring may be coming early this year.
That would be awesome, but it won’t make the unhappy children any happier. Which is fine.
UPDATE: Reader Andrew Guidi sends this photo of the sun rising from the Capitol this morning, captioned “Dawn of a new era, 4.5 hrs before the swearing in.”
CHUTZPAH: Dennis Hastert Countersues Assault Victim to Pay Back Hush Money.
Imprisoned former House Speaker Dennis Hastert wants one of his sexual-abuse victims to return the $1.7 million in hush money the Illinois Republican paid him over several years, according to a court filing this week in a civil case.
The document is a counter claim to the victim’s breach-of-contract lawsuit that he filed last year, arguing that Mr. Hastert owed him $1.8 million, what he said was the unpaid balance of an unwritten $3.5 million hush-money deal.
If I’m understanding this correctly, Hastert wants his hush money back because his victim didn’t stay hushed, while his un-hushed victim wants the other half of the hush money.
THIS SEEMS AWFULLY ONE-SIDED: Lawyer Presidential Campaign Contributions: 97% To Clinton, 3% To Trump.
MOVING FOR EN BANC REVIEW IN THE MICHAEL MANN LAWSUIT AND INVOKING TRUMP:
Political thinkers would certainly like to believe that historical analogies are integral to expressing their views on important political choices. Just in the last year, one candidate for office has been compared to Hitler, 21 Hitler, 22 Hitler, 23 Hitler, 24 and Mussolini. 25 Indeed, that public figure was so annoyed by this criticism that he threatened to “open up the libel laws” to prevent such speech in the future. Luckily for him, the division’s decision has done this work for him.
Purveyors of fake news, Michael Mann only seems like your friend. . . .
ROGER SIMON: Should Trump Defund the National Endowment for the Arts? “What will Meryl Streep say?”
ED MORRISSEY: The Sneaky Democratic Politics Behind the Scary New Obamacare Numbers.
You know, I used to trust places like the CBO or the BLS to be reasonably honest and non-political. I don’t anymore.
ROBERT TRACINSKI: When you read a science report claiming that 2016 was the hottest year on record, you might expect that you will get numbers. And you would be wrong.
I just got done combing through a New York Times report titled, “Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year.” The number of relevant numbers in this article is: zero.
We are not told what the average global temperature was, how much higher this is than last year’s record or any previous records, or what the margin of error is supposed to be on those measurements. Instead, we get stuff like this.
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016—trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
Note to the New York Times: “trouncing” and “blown past” are phrases appropriate to sports reporting, not science reporting. Except that no sports reporter would dare write an article in which he never bothers to give you the score of the big game.
Yet that’s what passes for “science reporting” on the issue of global warming, where asking for numbers and margins of errors apparently makes you an enemy of science. Instead, it’s all qualitative and comparative descriptions. It’s science without numbers.
It wasn’t just the New York Times. Try finding the relevant numbers ready at hand in the NASA/NOAA press release. You get numbers comparing 2016’s temperature with “the mid-20th century mean” or “the late 19th century.” But there’s nothing comparing it to last year or the year before except qualitative descriptions. So the government’s science bureaucracy is setting the trend, making reporters dig for the relevant numbers rather than presenting them up front.
It’s almost like they’re hiding something.
Almost! Read the whole thing to find out exactly what they’re hiding.
DAVID HARSANYI: Public School Is Often The Most Destructive Institution In American Life. Yet Democrats demand the status quo.
Many liberals, for instance, tell us that racism is one of the most pressing problems in America. And yet few things have hurt African Americans more over the past 40 years than the inner-city public school system. If President Obama is correct, and educational attainment is the key to breaking out of a lower economic strata, then no institution is driving inequality quite as effectively as public schools.
Actually, teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, most typically black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.
The National Education Association spent $23 million last cycle alone working to elect politicians to keep low-income Americans right where they are. Public service unions use tax dollars to fund politicians who then turn around and vote for more funding. The worse the schools perform, the more money they demand. In the real world we call this racketeering.
Yet according to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, it is people like DeVos who are “a grave threat” to the public schools “that made America great.”
Well, for starters, studies consistently show that minority groups in America’s largest cities are lagging in proficiency in reading and math. Most of them are at the bottom 5 percent of schools in their own state. There is only so much an education secretary can accomplish, but being accused of being a “grave threat” to this system is a magnificent endorsement.
True.
MAD DUCK: With midnight regulation, Obama Energy Department just outlawed your three-way bulb.
Three-way bulbs, which have two different filaments and thus three different brightnesses, are currently exempted. DOE just ruled that they now need to be covered. The Department’s reasoning: “DOE expects these sales will likely increase since these lamps could be used as replacements for other regulated lamp types.” In other words: People might start buying these bulbs because they want regular light bulbs rather than expensive LEDs or crappy fluorescents.
DOE also spiked the exemption for globe-shaped bulbs. Many manufacturers make, and many retailers sell, globe-shaped bulbs that met the standards, but consumers were left with the option to buy globe-shaped bulbs of the old type. That couldn’t stand.
This rule doesn’t go into effect for three years, but it could lead pretty quickly to domestic bulb makers ceasing production.
It’s Friday.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Charlotte Law School Fires Two-Thirds Of Faculty And Staff, Abandons Teach-Out Plan As Negotiations With Department Of Education Collapse; Classes Begin Jan. 23.
TAXPAYER-FUNDED ELECTIONEERING: NEA urges teachers, students to protest Trump at schools.
BERNIE SANDERS SAYS THAT WE’RE NOT A COMPASSIONATE SOCIETY.
What he means by that is that we don’t give enough money to grifters like Bernie Sanders so that they can redistribute it to their political allies. In fact, as the numbers make quite clear, Americans Are Far More Compassionate than “Socially Conscious” Europeans.
I JUST WANT TO REASSURE ALL OUR FRIENDS ON THE LEFT: Trump is not going to put you all in camps and install a Nazi state. He can’t, because George W. Bush already put you all in camps and installed a Nazi state. Oh, wait, he never got to do it, because we were already all dead in the nuclear war our cowboy president, Ronald Reagan, started by talking tough to the Russians. And that is when I got to the States. I’m sure people who’ve been here longer can explain to you how other republican administrations already destroyed everything, ALL THE THINGS WITH ALL THE DRAMA, in the most terrible way. Sorry guys the song has gone thin and only children believe the lyrics anymore. And honestly? That’s only because they haven’t seen the drama you guys create long enough to know better.
NOT MINE, BUT THEN I’VE KNOWN OTHER DORM-ROOM LEFTISTS: How President Obama Broke My Heart The Story of Two Farewell Addresses.
TICK, TICK TICK, THE COUNTDOWN TO NOON CONTINUES: Doesn’t look like Obama has any interest in pardoning Hillary. (You mean there’s something to pardon? I’m shocked, shocked, shocked.)
PROTESTING THE PRESIDENT ELECT’S “LACK OF RESPECT” FOR THE CONSTITUTION: Which we presume this person intuited from the voices in his head or the lies of the MSM, since he has no actions to base this on yet. (BTW does it never occur to them all these hysterics ahead of his having any power mean no one will take them seriously if/when he does trespass?) Protester attempts to light himself on fire outside Trump hotel.
CNN’S BURIED LEDE: Hidden CNN poll: Only Pope, Queen Elizabeth rank higher than Trump.
BUT BUT BUT OBAMA PARDONED HIM! HOW CAN YOU IMPLY OBAMA IS WRONG? STOP calling Bradley Manning a hero!
“TRUMP IS LIKELY TO FACE A WALL OF OPPOSITION FROM DEMOCRATS AND THE UNIONS” — SO, SAME OLD, SAME OLD (AND THEY FORGOT THE MEDIA.): Boom: Trump eyes 10% spending cuts, 20% slash of federal workers.
ABOUT THAT TRANSITION TEAM CHAOS: Trump nominee prep: 30 mock hearings, 70 hours, 2,600 questions. And about that “chaos” read this. Trump is taking office with his entire Cabinet named and a slew of other positions announced. This is actually not normal. Other presidents have been way slower. Also, note that Democrats are afraid that Trump’s nominees will usher in the apocalypse, then complain about a dearth of apocalypse bringers. You just can’t please some people: A Close Look at Donald Trump’s Cabinet.