A HALF A BILLION DOLLARS HERE, A HALF A BILLION DOLLARS THERE, AND PRETTY SOON, YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT REAL MONEY: NFL TV Partners Set To Lose Up To $500 Million On Ratings Decline.
Archive for 2017
November 17, 2017
MICHAEL BARONE: Will political setbacks unite the Republican Party? “Now, things look different. With Republicans holding the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress, the purism that resulted in defeat of the House’s first attempt at Obamacare revision, followed by the defeat of a second in the Senate, leaves Republicans double digits behind Democrats on the generic which-party-would-you-back-for-Congress question. Democrats’ big victories in the Virginia and New Jersey governor races also struck a chord. These states, dominated by high-education suburbs in major metro areas, tilt more Democratic than the nation. But Republicans have been losing legislative special elections even in red-state Trump districts.”
LIBYA: The Forgotten Reason North Korea Desperately Wants Nuclear Weapons.
It is unlikely that the DPRK will ever return to nuclear virginity. Pyongyang has multiple reasons for retaining its nukes. For a country with an economy roughly the size of Paraguay’s, a bizarre political system that has no external appeal, and an increasingly antiquated conventional military force, a nuclear-weapons capability is the sole factor that provides prestige and a seat at the table of international affairs. There is one other crucial reason for the DPRK’s truculence, though. North Korean leaders simply do not trust the United States to honor any agreement that might be reached.
Unfortunately, there are ample reasons for such distrust. North Korean leaders have witnessed how the United States treats nonnuclear adversaries such as Serbia and Iraq. But it was the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011 that underscored to Pyongyang why achieving and retaining a nuclear-weapons capability might be the only reliable way to prevent a regime-change war directed against the DPRK.
Thanks, Obama.
WHICH IS WEIRD, BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL LAUGHING AT HIM NOT LONG AGO: Maybe All of Congress (and Hollywood) Needs to Adopt the “Pence Rule.”
WHISKEY AND THE MILITARY: Liquor ration update.
Whiskey, as any enlistee will tell you, is popular among America’s fighting forces. Military installations’ drinks shops (“Class 6” stores) are stocked with a galaxy of intoxicating drinks — beer, spirits, wines — but whiskey is especially popular. And it isn’t just any whiskey — it’s the American-made bourbons, ryes and Tennessee whiskeys that really move off the shelves.
Certainly, the popularity of whiskey among soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines can be explained partly as a reflection of American taste in general. Americans purchased more than 30 million cases of American whiskey last year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
But for military men and women, whiskey holds an additional appeal beyond its glorious amber color, robust flavor and mood-alleviating powers — it may even be more American than apple pie (which seems to have been invented in England). Whiskey has been with the America’s armed forces since the earliest days of the republic.
More:
Gen. George Washington, who was fond of beer and all sorts of drink, nonetheless felt something heartier was required. “The benefits arising from the moderate use of strong Liquor have been experienced in all armies, and are not to be disputed,” wrote Washington to John Hancock, then president of the Congress. Washington directed that each soldier be issued a gill — 4 ounces — of whiskey each day, and later directed field commanders to reward valor with additional rations.
Read the entire article.
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SJW TYPES WILL KILL COMEDY, UNLESS COMEDIANS HAVE THE GUTS TO DESTROY THEM: “I guess the comedy club owners are suddenly — to save their own skin? — supposed to embrace affirmative action and hand their power over to people who don’t merely deplore the masculine ‘pathologies’ that dominate American stand-up comedy, but deplore it because of the identity group they belong to.”
But let’s be honest: “Comedians” have just been propagandists for the left for a long time now. At this point, if the left kills them off, why should the rest of us care?
MICHAEL WALSH: The Suicidal Narrative of the Modern Environmental Left.
OK, WHERE’S THE FLYING CAR I WAS PROMISED? The world’s first human head transplant has been carried out on a corpse in China in an 18-hour operation that showed it was possible to successfully reconnect the spine, nerves and blood vessels, The Telegraph reports.
At a press conference in Vienna on Friday morning, Italian Professor Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, announced that a team at Harbin Medical University had “realised the first human head transplant” and said an operation on a live human will take place “imminently”.
I suggest they harvest heads from Congress, because you’d want one that’s never been used.
IRONIC: MOVEON TACKLES AL FRANKEN BUT SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN WHY IT WAS FOUNDED.
Al’s much more expendable than Bill was in 1998.
CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Blue State Tax Revolt.
Across high-tax jurisdictions, productive citizens aren’t necessarily waiting for the turnaround. This week a Journal editorial chronicled the stampede of residents headed to more favorable tax climes with faster-growing economies. Among the biggest blue-state losers was Illinois, which had to say goodbye to residents generating at least $3 billion in adjusted gross income in each of the years from 2012 to 2015.
Are politicians finally getting the message? Let’s not overstate the possibilities. But Illinois is now home to some local pols who, pressed by angry residents, are contemplating a few precious baby steps toward less expensive government. The editorial board of the Chicago Tribune explains how Cook County of all places—home to Chicago and a legion of public employees—became ground zero for a recent tax revolt.
More like this, please.
THE FEDERALIST: To Avoid Debacles Like Roy Moore, Repeal The 17th Amendment.
CHANGE: Israel Ready To Share Intel With Saudis “Against Iran” Ahead Of Possible War.
If a Israeli/Arab-Iran War does break out, we should call it Obama’s War in honor of the man who made it necessary.
THAT SEEMS RIGHT: “If Al Franken stays in the Senate, the odds of Roy Moore getting elected go way up.”
But also: “If Al Franken resigns, everyone will have to resign — everyone who’s done at least as bad. There must be quite a few members of Congress who know what happened to Al can happen to them.”
Drain the swamp!
PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER: LIBERTINISM CREATED A HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT.
This is not the stuff of #metoo. I believe I had recovered from the trauma of that particular encounter by the time I exited the building. Still, as Hollywood’s hunt for celebrity-predators intensifies, I’ve been reflecting back on my own experiences of aggressively libertine environments. It remains to be seen how far the present round of scandals will spread, but this much is clear: Inappropriate sexual behavior is widespread in the entertainment industry, and in some cases has provided camouflage for serious crimes. If you’re accustomed to thinking of Hollywood as a cesspool of sin and vice, you may not find this surprising. Many were surprised, though. Progressives assume that their own mores protect and affirm women while the traditionalists objectify and repress. It’s worth thinking through the logic of a libertine environment, to see how mistaken this reasoning may be.
Over my two years in the Peace Corps, I would get many more openings for that cinematic slap. It’s the only place I’ve ever worked where one steps up to a conference check-in desk expecting to receive a room key, welcome folder, and bag of condoms. There was, to be sure, a method to this madness. For the most part, the Peace Corps was a magnet for educated, unwed twenty-somethings with broadly left-leaning views. Our Washingtonian handlers wanted us to spread goodwill abroad, but in an Islamic society, a recent-college-graduate approach to the bodily appetites was likelier to spread resentment and venereal disease. Thus, an implicit compromise was struck. We were not technically forbidden to have sex with locals, but we were urged to be “culturally sensitive” at our assigned work sites. Then, periodically, we were summoned to conferences at health sanatoriums deep in the mountains, where we were issued condoms and left largely to ourselves for a couple of days. Some Volunteers started referring to these scheduled get-togethers as “shore leave.”
Read the whole thing.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A RESET: Pentagon begins research on missile banned by arms treaty with Russia: report.
“The idea here is we need to send a message to the Russians that they will pay a military price for violation of this treaty,” one U.S. official told the newspaper. “We are posturing ourselves to live in a post-INF world … if that is the world the Russians want.”
The 1987 INF Treaty was a landmark deal between the U.S. and then-Soviet Union that banned ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
The United States has repeatedly accused Russia of violating the treaty, including by deploying a nuclear-tipped cruise missile.
The goal of the United States’s recent research is not to end the treaty, but rather to show Russia what type of U.S. arsenal it could be facing if the pact were to end, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Good.
The Pershing II missile scared the crap out of the Soviets, and its deployment in Europe — over strong protests (financed in part by Moscow) from the Left — helped set the stage the INF Treaty and for victory in the Cold War.
If the Russians want to copy from the Soviet playbook, well, we can copy from Reagan’s.
KURT SCHLICHTER: At Least My Generation Will Have Our Revenge On The Millennials.
Sure, I’m going to die a lot sooner than them – unless someone invents some sort of expensive life extension potion that I can buy but they can’t because they will still be paying off their degrees in Oppression Studies and Virtue Signaling Arts until the year 2083. But at least I’ll know that we left them a suitably terrible world, since they are a terrible generation.
Millennials are the spawn we deserve – annoying, posturing, and frequently pierced. They are utterly convinced of their own moral superiority, and yet they don’t even believe in morals. Well, that’s not quite true – they just confuse morals with the increasingly bizarre patchwork of taboos and fetishes of the social justice weirdos they use as their moral compasses. When you ask people, “What’s the world’s biggest problem,” and they answer, “The structural paradigm imposed by cisgender Western males,” and you reply, “How about, I dunno, ISIS?” and they answer “Well, who are we to judge their culture?” it’s slappin’ time. . . .
But while we’re still here together, with me owning stuff and you struggling to afford your daily kombucha smoothie, we face many shared challenges. There’s that giant debt, and there are those foreign people who want to kill us, and there is the terrifying fact that we are at each others’ throats here at home. We know how this plays out if we don’t fix it – bad for me, but super-bad for you. Maybe we should try and square things away. Maybe we should stop assuming the worst about each other, start thinking about what unites us instead of what divides us, and work together to make a better tomorrow. Maybe.
But I guess that’s kind of up to you though, because as so many of you on Twitter like to point out, I’m going to die a lot sooner than you are. And that kind of makes the future your problem.
Ouch. Me, I’m hoping for the potion.
WHILE THE AL FRANKEN SHOW DOMINATED HEADLINES YESTERDAY, More than 200 MS-13 members were arrested in a major Trump administration gang sweep.
November 16, 2017
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THIS STORY KEEPS ADVANCING, SLOWLY: Dem IT Aide Used Political Influence To Have Fraud Charges Dropped In Pakistan, Paper Says.