Archive for 2018
January 21, 2018
I’M SURE THAT EVEN ASKING THIS QUESTION IS SOMEHOW RACIST OR SOMETHING: If Trump is an authoritarian, why don’t Democrats treat him like one?
THIS IS CHILDISH AND SILLY: Meet the woman confronting public figures with their immigrant histories. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that America needed immigration a century or two ago, and also that it doesn’t need anything like those levels today. It’s even reasonable to think that we got a better class of immigrants then than we’re likely to get now.
Terming people “anti-immigrant” is just another example of the Democrats’ project to squash everything into the racism-framework, whether it belongs there or not. When the only card you have is the race card, it gets played a lot.
NED RYUN: Red Flags Raised: Blue Wave Building?
But it doesn’t matter what pundits think. If you care about politics, pick a 2018 race and go all-in on donations and volunteering and whatever else you can do.
HERE’S TONIGHT’S OPEN THREAD. THREAD AWAY!
DEMS SAID NET NEUTRALITY WOULD KILL VAST NUMBERS OF PEOPLE, BUT THEY’RE CLUTCHING THEIR PEARLS ABOUT THIS: “Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”
YES, IT DOES: Elizabeth Warren’s Native American problem goes beyond politics.
There’s a ghost haunting Elizabeth Warren as she ramps up for a possible 2020 presidential bid and a reelection campaign in Massachusetts this year: her enduring and undocumented claims of Native American ancestry.
Warren says now, as she has from the first days of her public life, that she based her assertions on family lore, on her reasonable trust in what she was told about her ancestry as a child.
“I know who I am,” she said in a recent interview with the Globe.
But that self-awareness may not be enough, as her political ambitions blossom. She’s taken flak from the right for years as a “fake Indian,” including taunts from President Trump, who derisively calls her “Pocahontas.’’ That clamor from the right will only grow with her increasing prominence.
And, more telling, there’s also discomfort on the left and among some tribal leaders and activists that Warren has a political blind spot when it comes to the murkiness surrounding her story of her heritage, which blew up as an issue in her victorious 2012 Massachusetts Senate race. In recent months, Daily Show host Trevor Noah mocked her for claiming Native American ancestry and the liberal website ThinkProgress published a scathing criticism of her by a Cherokee activist who said she should apologize.
I’m entirely willing to believe that she originally thought she was part Cherokee — lots of families think they have some sort of American Indian ancestry, and many (perhaps most) are wrong. But her real crime wasn’t in being wrong, it was in doubling down and refusing to admit the possibility of error once people questioned her. That character is neither appealing, nor good for a presidential candidate. Much less a president.
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NO, CHUCK, I DON’T BELIEVE IT IS 1995 ALL OVER AGAIN: At least that’s what it seems reading Bloomberg News, The New York Times, AP and The Washington Post. No, really.
CONGRATULATIONS TO UT LAW STUDENT BRIAN ADAMS, AND MY COLLEAGUE BRIAN KRUMM: UT Law student dominates transaction law competition.
AT AMAZON, deals in Handbags and Shoes.
SCIENCE: Face of Teenager from 9000 Years Ago Reconstructed. “Having reconstructed a lot of Stone Age women and men, I think some facial features seem to have disappeared or ‘smoothed out’ with time. In general, we look less masculine, both men and women, today.”
Well, life is softer now. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Stone Age men had testosterone levels several times what’s considered normal now. Maybe the women did, too!
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL TWEET OF THE DECADE:
THIS IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT: Adolescence now starts at 10 and lasts until 24.
Young people continuing their education for longer, as well as delayed marriage and parenthood, has redefined common perceptions of when adulthood starts, scientists wrote in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.
Societal and biological changes have prolonged the adolescent years from the ages of 10-19 to now ending at 24 years old, scientists said, leading to a debate about whether new policies would benefit or “infantilize” the older adolescents.
Puberty used to occur around age 14, but now has lowered to the age of 10 because of improved health and nutrition in much of the developed world, the BBC reported.
As a result, in the past 150 years, the average age for a girl’s first menstruation has become younger by four years in industrialized countries like the UK.
Young people are also getting married and having children later, the report said.
Like I said, I don’t think this is better for anyone.
AMERICA UNDER TRUMP IS EDGING CLOSER TO LIBERTARIAN PARADISE: “The federal government remained shut down, but [Stormy] Daniels was open for business.”
But the real question is, who was the #journalist who got the lap dance:
Women swaggered by in tights, leatherette and heels that could dent metal, brushing past a vending machine that spits cigarettes. Bartenders shooed too-stingy visitors from the good seats, returning $15 in singles for a $5 drink order paid with a 20, and mouthing the lyrics to “Super Freak.”
Dancers pawed playfully at their prey, flipping their hair at patrons like a fishing line.
“All right — one,” a member of the news media relented eventually, disappearing for a few minutes as a dancer led him to a back room. She returned a short while later to flip her hair at the other scribes.
Was it Glenn Thrush?
FLU? OR “FLU-LIKE?” The Difference Matters.
THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF INCOMPLETION: I’m a day late linking to it, but as Mark Steyn writes, “it was twenty years ago today/Slick Willie taught the intern to play!”
The drama of January 1998 put certain words and phrases in the public discourse for the next two years, including “impeachment”, “vast right-wing conspiracy”, “the meaning of ‘is'”, and “completion”, which President Clinton was said by Monica in the Starr Report not to reach.
Yes, it was twenty years ago today/Slick Willie taught the intern to play! In a sense, the Clintons have never reached completion — which is why, two decades on, the news is full of Uranium One, Hillary-commissioned dirty dossiers and Huma’s emails — not to mention the exposure of Harvey Weinstein and other Clinton buddies for availing themselves of the same interns-with-benefits approach to the workplace. We may run some old pieces from the Dawning of the Age of Incompletion in the weeks ahead. But, if you’re wondering what we were talking about before Monica, the answer is Paula – who became near totally eclipsed by Miss Lewinsky.
The Age of Incompletion also kicked off the age of new media, beginning with a young man with a DIY Website named Matt Drudge, who published the Lewinsky story that then-Washington Post-owned Newsweek had spiked, because – say it with me:
The bill came due eventually, though — the Post sold Newsweek for a dollar in 2010, only for the Graham family to see its newspaper acquired three years later by Jeff Bezos, reportedly for about the same amount of money he paid for three seasons of his Grand Tour car TV series on Amazon Prime.
THIS STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN: FBI ‘Failed To Preserve’ Five Months Of Text Messages Between Anti-Trump FBI Agents.
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THERE IS NO WAY ANY SATIRIST CAN IMPROVE UPON REAL LIFE FOR ITS PURE ABSURDITY — ESPECIALLY WHEN CNN IS INVOLVED.
Here’s Jonah Goldberg channeling Ken Burns yesterday:
Here’s CNN’s perpetually-histrionic Jim Acosta, today:
Acosta’s lamentations are best accompanied by the appropriate period music:
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Many Women Unnecessarily Get a Hysterectomy.
YOU MEAN IT’S JUST A FAD? Study suggests ‘hot’ yoga no better for the heart than regular yoga.
HUH, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? Katie Hopkins: ‘The Sh*thole Countries Are Here in Western Europe.’