YOU COULD MAKE AN ENTIRE ARGUMENT FOR RESTORING THE PATRIARCHY BASED SOLELY ON FEMINISTS’ STATEMENTS ABOUT HOW WEAK AND GULLIBLE WOMEN ARE: Sandra Bernhard: Women Who Support Trump Unable To Think For Themselves.
Archive for 2018
March 29, 2018
PRIVACY: Security flaws in gay dating app Grindr expose users’ location data. “The availability of users’ location data, experts say, could lead to increased harassment — especially in places where homosexuality is criminalized.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Distortions of Our Unelected Officials.
On March 17, ex-CIA Director John Brennan tweeted about the current president of the United States: “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. . . . America will triumph over you.”
That outburst from the former head of the world’s premier spy agency seemed a near threat to a sitting president, and former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power tweeted that it probably was: “Not a good idea to piss off John Brennan.”
If there is such a thing as a dangerous “deep state” of elite but unelected federal officials who feel that they are untouchable and unaccountable, then John Brennan is the poster boy. . . .
Brennan is typical of the careerist deep state.
Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice lied about the Benghazi tragedy, the nature of the Bowe Bergdahl/Guantanamo detainee exchange, the presence of chemical weapons in Syria, and her role in unmasking the identities of surveilled Americans.
Andrew McCabe, recently fired from his job as FBI deputy director, openly admitted to lying to investigators, claiming he was “confused and distracted.” McCabe had said that he was not a source for background leaks about the investigation of the Clinton Foundation. He wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post that “some of my answers were not fully accurate . . .”
Former FBI Director James Comey likely lied about not drafting a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in her email scandal before interviewing her.
Comey misled a FISA court by not providing the entire truth about the Steele dossier. He falsely assured the president that he was not under investigation while likely leaking to others that Trump was, in fact, under investigation.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee when he said that the National Security Agency did not collect data on American citizens. When caught in the lie, Clapper claimed that he had given the “least untruthful” answer to the committee that he could publicly provide.
In the past, Clapper had also misled the country about the “secular” nature of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the threat posed by the Islamic State.
Note that Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, and Rice so far have not been held to account for their distortions.
Not yet, anyway.
JEB! Classy, dignified, substantive Jeb Bush attacks 12-year-old Barron Trump.
Speaking at Yale University, the former Florida Governor first claimed he would not get into a re-hash of the 2016 election (what would he have to say about it, anyway? He got 3 delegates after spending $150 million of other people’s money) But, according to Yale News, he eventually exorcised some demons by looking at the sunny side of his crushing defeat.
At one point, Bush described the current president as “Republican in basically name only.” And earlier in his speech, Bush said that after the 2016 Republican primary in South Carolina, he returned home to children who “actually love me.” His comment was met with raucous laughter from the crowd, and several audience members interviewed after the event said they interpreted Bush’s comment as a jab at Trump.
Raucous laughter from elitist, Ivy League students! Well… that should translate into a renewed run for the White House, right? Good on you, Jeb!
But… what, exactly, are these snobs laughing at? Donald Trump’s children not loving him. That’s funny, right? I mean, is anything funnier than Donald Trump coming home to his 12-year-old son’s loathing? And surely Jeb Bush’s secret torment over not getting his turn in the White House after his father and brother got their turn justifies an attack on a pre-teen boy.
I did a spit-take on Jeb’s use of “Republican in basically name only.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Michigan State University Spent Half A Million Dollars Monitoring Nassar Victims’ And Journalists’ Social Media Accounts.
EXCEPT THAT HOLLYWOOD SEEMS TO CARE MORE ABOUT IN-GROUP VIRTUE SIGNALING THAN MAKING MONEY: Roseanne revival is a wake-up call for Hollywood.
IN THE MAIL: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
CREEPING SHARIA: Italian Police Arrest Islamic Teacher Who Supported ISIS, Taught Jihad to Children as Young as 4. “You must break the skulls of the unbelievers and drink their blood.”
A PREVIEW OF WHAT A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY WOULD LOOK LIKE: Dem vows to press ban on Pentagon paying for border wall.
“We can’t allow Donald Trump to steal already-limited resources from our troops to fund a pointless border wall that will serve little other purpose than to satisfy his own fragile ego,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in a statement Wednesday. “This money is meant to help our men and women in uniform — not to fulfill ill-advised campaign promises.”
“Last year, I introduced an amendment that would have prevented Trump from irresponsibly siphoning our defense funds to pay for a useless wall that will do nothing to keep our nation safe. I plan to reintroduce that amendment this spring when the House Armed Services Committee marks up this year’s defense spending bill.”
We’ll see what happens in committee — or beyond.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Intolerant leftists drive out founder of Wellesley program that promotes diverse views.
NOAH ROTHMAN: No One Is Saying That.
Did you hear? They’re talking about repealing the Second Amendment. It started with former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley. And it sure does seem like those calls prompted skeptics of American gun culture to echo their remarks. Turley and Stevens were joined this week by op-ed writers in the pages of Esquire and the Seattle Times. Democratic candidates for federal office have even enlisted in the ranks of those calling for an amendment to curtail the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. Of course, this is just the most mainstream invocation of anti-Second Amendment themes that have been expressed unashamedly for years, from liberal activists like Michael Moore to conservative opinion writers at the New York Times. Those calling for the repeal of the right to bear arms today are only echoing similar calls made years ago in venues ranging from Rolling Stone, MSNBC, and Vanity Fair to the Jesuit publication America Magazine.
Are you sitting down? You might be surprised to learn that none of this occurred.
Who you gonna believe — Chris Cuomo or yer own lyin’ eyes?
GREAT. NOW LET’S DO TAIWAN: First F-35 for South Korea rolled out.
A GERMAN-STYLE APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM IS LIKELY AN UNATTAINABLE GOAL FOR THE USA: The USA certainly should encourage apprenticeships as an alternative to college. But thinking we can come anywhere close to replicating the German system—in which considerably more than half of Germans participate—is unrealistic. The German system works because of its unusually powerful unions and complex system of job “certification.”
WELL, HE DID FOUND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Students call Thomas Jefferson ‘icon’ of white supremacists.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: New Texts from Strzok & Page, Shulkin Down and Much, Much More. “New evidence was released yesterday that shows how close the FBI, CIA and Democrats were during the ‘early stage’ of the Trump-RUSSIA investigation. By ‘early stage’ I mean during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
SARAH RUMPF: Fine, Don’t ‘Defund’ Planned Parenthood. Do This Instead. “Take all of the money we send to Planned Parenthood clinics, and instead, send the money to medical clinics that provide services to the poor.”
I think the federal government should send $500,000,000 to the NRA to fund safe-shooting and firearms history classes.
DEEP RESENTMENT AND ANGER SPURRED BY THE LOSS OF POWER AND INTERNATIONAL STATURE: Putin’s Kremlin, not Hillary.
RAPTOR OVER SYRIA: Photo snapped March 5, 2018.
IT’S THE SPENDING, STUPID: Why Are States So Strapped for Cash? There Are Two Big Reasons. “The proportion of state and local tax revenues dedicated to Medicaid and public pensions is the highest since the 1960s.”
And of course there wasn’t even any Medicaid until the 1960s.
More:
The only speaker standing between state budget officers and the opening cocktail hour at a Washington conference was the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. What he said left no one in a celebratory mood.
Medicaid costs, said then-Secretary Michael Leavitt, were projected to grow so fast that within 10 years they would “crowd out virtually every other category of spending.” State spending on higher education, infrastructure and safety, he predicted, would all get squeezed.
Nearly 10 years after that October 2008 speech, Mr. Leavitt’s prediction—part of HHS’s first-ever annual projection of Medicaid’s costs—is looking prescient.
As state and local officials prepare their next budgets, many are finding that spending decisions have already been made for them by two must-fund line items that barely mattered when baby boomers such as Mr. Leavitt were growing up: Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled, and public-employee health and retirement costs.
Some of us have been sounding this warning since long before 2008, but lawmakers have kicked the entitlement reform can about as far as it can go, leaving us with nothing but the cold comfort of Stein’s Law.
SUPPORT DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT: If you’re an academic or grad student and you are uncomfortable with the one-party system on campuses today, you should consider joining Heterodox Academy.