I’M WITH THE MAJORITY FOR ONCE: 75% Of US Motorists Fear Self-Driving Cars.
Archive for 2017
May 4, 2017
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Dartmouth’s idea of “broadening the ranks.”
A SHAMBLES OF A CAMPAIGN: FBI’s Comey: Huma Forwarded Classified Information to Pervy Husband Anthony Weiner.
MIDDLE CLASS EUROPEANS comparable to poor Americans.
In 2010, for instance, the median household income in Mississippi (in 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars) was $37,838; the equivalent in Maryland was $70,976. By comparison, the average Italian household took home $35,608 that year, while a middle-income Norwegian household earned a median income of $56,960. Put another way: average households in states like Maryland, Connecticut, or Massachusetts are richer than those in Norway, Denmark, or the Netherlands, while residents of Mississippi or West Virginia are better off than the Spaniards and Italians.
For all the talk about rising inequality and a shrinking middle class, then, we Americans should count our blessings: when it comes to disposable income, you are still better off living in Mississippi than Italy.
Indeed.
DAVID HARSANYI: Comey Didn’t Sink Hillary. Hillary Sank Hillary.
Clinton’s counterfactual tale about the infamous “Comey letter” has been a security blanket for many Democrats. But, as luck would have it, the FBI director was testifying in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee today, and he reminded us of some factors that Clinton ignored. That’s because even if we concede that Comey’s letter to Congress helped sink Clinton, Hillary deserved that letter, and the FBI director had no choice but to send it.
In essence, what many Democrats have been arguing for the past six months is that Comey should have actively buried evidence that was pertinent to an ongoing congressional investigation — one that, incidentally, had turned up plenty of potential wrongdoing — because it might hurt their preferred candidate’s chances.
On Tuesday, Comey, in fact, confirmed that the FBI had learned that classified emails were forwarded from Clinton’s email account by Clinton aide Huma Abedin to her husband Anthony Weiner so he could print them out. (This appears to be illegal, but perhaps all those immunity deals Comey was handing out came in handy.) Her computer, like other servers and laptops that Hillary’s staff tried to dispose of, hide, clean, and whatnot, were supposed to have been in the hands of the FBI.
It’s worth pointing out that everything in the Comey letter was almost surely going to leak anyway. Not only because of its connection to the Hillary investigation, but because this “fella Anthony Weiner,” as Comey referred to him today, had access to classified information. That may not have made things any better for Hillary, but it certainly would have made the FBI look like it was actively protecting a candidate — which is undoubtedly why Comey said it was potentially “catastrophic.”
The fact is that Comey’s superiors at the Justice Department did actively protect Hillary Clinton as best they could, as Charlie Martin posited yesterday:
Comey knew that the Justice Department was no way going to indict Hillary. The “intent” excuse was just that — an excuse (18 USC 793(f) again.) At the same time, he could not bring himself to let a multiple felon be elected President.
There’s no way of knowing what Comey’s thinking really was, but Charlie’s theory goes a long way towards explaining Comey’s erratic behavior.
The best thing for the Democrats would have been not to use the DNC to stack the deck against Bernie Sanders, and not to use Justice to “hack” the election for Clinton — but it seems they just couldn’t help themselves.
And for once, a Clinton was hoist on her own petard.
BUT THE NARRATIVE! A common talking point about African Americans’ views on crime has been debunked.
The assumption that African Americans are somehow “soft” on crime is sharply at odds with new scholarship suggesting that, in fact, African Americans have long supported tougher penalties for crime.
In his new book, Locking Up Our Own, Yale University Law School Professor James Forman Jr. points out that in national surveys conducted over the past 40 years, African Americans have consistently described the criminal justice system as too lenient. Even in the 2000s, after a large and sustained drop in the crime rate and hundreds of thousands of African Americans being imprisoned, almost two-thirds of African Americans maintained that courts were “not harsh enough” with criminals.
It’s easier to be soft on crime when you don’t experience firsthand the violent results of the War on Drugs.
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ADRIANA COHEN: Stephen Colbert takes hypocritical gutter-dive.
ANYONE WHO’D SAID SOMETHING SIMILAR ABOUT OBAMA WOULD HAVE BEEN UNEMPLOYED — AND UNEMPLOYABLE — BY NOW: Stephen Colbert reacts to online backlash over Trump jokes.
Stephen Colbert responded Wednesday to the online backlash and #FireColbert internet campaign that cropped up after he made insult-laden jokes about President Trump.
Colbert will open his show Wednesday night by saying: ”Welcome to ‘The Late Show.’ I’m your host, Stephen Colbert. Still? I am still the host? I’m still the host!!,” according to an advance transcript provided to USA Today.
Colbert slammed the president for abruptly walking out of CBS’s “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson’s interview, after the reporter pressed Trump about his claims that President Obama wiretapped him. Both Colbert and Dickerson are CBS employees, as well as friends.
“Now, if you saw my monologue Monday, you know that I was a little upset at Donald Trump for insulting a friend of mine,” Colbert will say Wednesday. “So at the end of that monologue, I had a few choice insults for the president in return. I don’t regret that. He, I believe, can take care of himself. I have jokes; he has the launch codes. So, it’s a fair fight.”
Yeah, nobody would have bought that about Obama.
And I’m now referring to this whenever Dems pull their “have you no decency?” routine in the future. Because they’ve made clear that decency isn’t actually anything they care about.
INDEED: Don’t Like Trump’s Bluster? Sometimes It Works.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump denounced Chinese trade policies, saying he would not allow Beijing “to rape our country” any longer. In early April, when President Trump met President Xi Jinping of China at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., he continued the tough talk. He and his aides told the Chinese delegation that the administration would impose restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States if Beijing did not lower its barriers to American investments in China.
It is too soon to tell whether the Chinese will change their policies. But there are signs that the president’s antagonistic approach has opened the door to strategic cooperation on one of the world’s biggest problems: North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
China already has suspended coal imports from Pyongyang in compliance with United Nations sanctions, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that China would impose more sanctions if North Korea continues its nuclear testing program. China’s foreign ministry spokesman said last week, “I can say in terms of solving the North Korean crisis, China’s efforts can’t be overstated.”
There are also signs that Mr. Trump’s style is resonating with ordinary Chinese. Considering the harshness of his past statements about China, I was surprised by the number of people I met there who expressed respect for him. “He is a very successful businessman,” one said. “He is strong,” another said. One person noted, “I think in the past your country respected such people.”
Apparently, the Chinese never took Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric personally. They saw it as his starting point — a “negotiating position,” as Mr. Trump himself might say.
It’s no small deal that even the New York Times is catching on.
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UH-OH: U.S. Firm in Iraq Overlooks Smuggling, Security for F-16s.
Robert Cole and Kristie King were in Iraq working as investigators for Sallyport Global, a U.S. company that was paid nearly $700 million in federal contracts to secure Balad Air Base, home to a squadron of F-16 fighter jets as part of the U.S.-led coalition to annihilate the Islamic State.
Cole and King had spent more than a year together in Iraq investigating all manner of misconduct at Balad and beyond.
They’d uncovered evidence that Sallyport employees were involved in sex trafficking , they said. Staff on base routinely flew in smuggled alcohol in such high volumes that a plane once seesawed on the tarmac under the weight. Rogue militia stole enormous generators off the base using flatbed trucks and a 60-foot crane, driving past Sallyport security guards.
Managers repeatedly shut down Cole and King’s investigations and failed to report their findings to the U.S. government that was footing the bill, the investigators said.
Right before they were fired, Cole and King had opened an investigation into allegations of timesheet fraud among Sallyport employees. In a call with Sallyport lawyers, they said, they were advised to keep two sets of books about potential crimes and contract violations.
“One for the government to see and one for the government not to see,” King told The Associated Press.
There’s nowhere the swamp doesn’t need to be drained.
#NARRATIVEFAIL: Hispanics give Trump higher approval rating than rest of U.S.
Hispanic support for Donald Trump has surged since Election Day, and now tops that of the president’s overall approval rating.
In its latest survey, Zogby Analytics said that Hispanic support has hit 45 percent, two points higher than the president’s generic approval.
That is 55 percent higher than the total Latino vote for Trump in the election. He won just 29 percent.
“The biggest surprise in this new poll is Trump’s approval among Hispanic voters, which is at 45 percent approval/51 percent disapproval. In February the numbers were less among Hispanics at 39 percent approval/53 percent disapproval,” said Zogby.
Keep this up and it’ll be Democrats who oppose Mexican immigration. . . .
RUN, HILLARY, RUN! Hillary Clinton Will Launch a New PAC.
The Democrats’ bench is as thin as it’s ever been — so why not?
GOOGLE DOC ATTACK: What to Do if You Clicked.
Shut it down.
If you accidentally clicked on the Google phishing attack and gave spammers third-party access to your Google account, you can revoke their access by following these steps:
Go to https://myaccount.google.com/permissions
Revoke access to “Google Docs” (the app will have access to contacts and drive).
Change your passwords … again.
If you’ve been phished, change your passwords to something you have never used before. Ideally, your passwords should be long and should not be words that could be found in a dictionary. The first things hackers do when breaking into a site is use computer programs that will try every word in the dictionary. Your email account is a ripe target for hackers because your inbox is the key to resetting the passwords of, and potentially breaking into, dozens of other accounts.
Make your password long and distinctive. Security specialists advise creating anagrams based on song lyrics, movie quotations or sayings. For example, “The Godfather” movie quotation “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli,” becomes LtG,tTcannol1.
Report it.
“Report Phishing” is located under the down arrow on the top-right corner of your Gmail inbox.
STONEWALLING: Susan Rice refuses to testify on Russian interference.
THEY SAY THEY HAVE THE VOTES: House Republicans to Vote on Health Care on Thursday.
FASTER, PLEASE: “Exercise-in-a-pill” boosts athletic endurance by 70 percent. “Mice in the control group could run about 160 minutes before exhaustion. Mice on the drug, however, could run about 270 minutes—about 70 percent longer. For both groups, exhaustion set in when blood sugar (glucose) dropped to around 70 mg/dl, suggesting that low glucose levels (hypoglycemia) are responsible for fatigue.”
GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief is up, too.
OUR SAD, RACIST, FORMER PRESIDENT TREATED WOMEN AS OBJECTS: “A close mutual friend of the couple recalls Obama explaining that ‘the lines are very clearly drawn. . . . If I am going out with a white woman, I have no standing here.'”
“Hollow core.” Weird that none of this stuff came out before now. On the other hand, if it had come out in 2008, we would have gotten President Hillary. So thanks, conspiracy of silence!
OH, TALCUMX, RACHEL DOLEZAL HAS CALLED: BLM activist Shaun King has threatened to shut down multiple American cities in a boycott to address “police brutality.”
OUT OF THEIR MINDS! The Handmaid’s Tale?
IT’S THE CANNONBALL EXPRESS, AND I DON’T SEE ANY CANNONS: We wuz robbed! Good luck topping this hot ‘Orient Express’ take.