FROM ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY: A coming test of tolerance and political accountability. “Prognosticating about the future is always a tricky business. But 2018 is likely to be a year that tests the nation’s commitment to two core constitutional values: tolerance and political accountability. The first is reflected in the Constitution’s First Amendment; the second, in its separation of powers.”
Archive for 2018
January 2, 2018
I HAD BEEN ASSURED IN 2009 THAT “BUSINESS CLIMATE” WAS A MYTH: New Wave of Optimism Prompts Business Investment: The ‘Trump Effect” Will Cause Leftist Heads to Explode.
“AL FRANKEN HAS OFFICIALLY RESIGNED HIS SENATE SEAT, effective as of noon central time Tuesday. A top Franken staffer said the senator submitted his resignation letter to Gov. Mark Dayton Tuesday morning,” Minnesota Public Radio reports.
THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL: Internal Chinese government document shows Beijing really is playing the U.S. for a fool, telling North Korea not to worry about getting more nukes and reassuring Pyongyang that China will continue supplying critical resources. In other words, China’s vote in favor of tougher UN sanctions against North Korea meant absolutely zilch.
BETTER THAN THE 1200 VEGAN CALORIES: This Is What 1,200 Calories On A Paleo Diet Looks Like.
THREE ADDITIONAL HORSEMEN TO FOLLOW: Talk about a new year! NYT praises Trump.
NEW YEAR’S DAY: Baltimore Police Investigating First Murders Of 2018.
WELL IF IT DOESN’T, CAN WE CALL IT A STRONG IMMUNE SYSTEM? Does a ‘Strong’ Immune System Ward Off Colds and Flu?
NEWS FLASH: POLITICIANS CAUGHT POLITICKING. Democrats are already campaigning for 2020 — and so is Trump.
The “permanent campaign” was devised by Bill Clinton and his crew in the early ’90s, and instantly became the most exhausting and inescapable feature of American politics.
THOUGHTS ON Feminist First Dates.
CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammunition? Texas AG Says It’s OK to Pack Heat in Pews.
PETER KOHANLOO: An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity.
After nearly four decades of plunderous and fanatical Islamist rule, Iranians are desperate to become a normal nation-state once more, and they refuse to be exploited for an ideological cause that long ago lost its luster. It is a watershed moment in Iran’s history: The illusion of reform within the current theocratic system has finally been shattered. Iranians, you might say, are determined to make Iran great again.
Their movement is attuned to the worldwide spirit of nationalist renewal. From the U.S. to India, and from South Africa to Britain, political leaders and the voters who elect them are reaffirming the enduring value of the nation-state. Iran hasn’t been immured from these developments, as the slogans of the current protests indicate. No longer using the rights-based lexicon of votes and recounts, Iranians are instead demanding national dignity from a regime that for too long has subjugated Iranian-ness to its Shiite, revolutionary mission.
It’s notable, for example, that protestors chant “We Will Die to Get Iran Back,” “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My Life Only for Iran,” and “Let Syria Be, Do Something for Me.” Put another way: The people are tired of paying the price for the regime’s efforts to remake the region in its own image and challenge U.S. “hegemony.” Some have even taken to chanting “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul,” expressing gratitude and nostalgia for the Pahlavi era, which saw the modern, pro-Western nation-state of Iran emerge from the shambles of the Persian Empire.
Read the whole thing.
BLUE ON BLUE: Senator Al Franken’s Resignation Is Deeply Unfair.
Michael Tomasky:
Sometime today, Al Franken will resign his Senate seat. The Democrats are hoping for a banner year, and from all indicators it looks like they’ll have one, and I hope they do—if they take back one house, this horrid Trump/GOP agenda is done for.
But the Democrats’ 2018 is sure getting off to a dubious start. Franken should not be going. When he announced his resignation on December 7, I wrote a column saying that Democrats would come to regret what they’d done to him. Nevertheless, I wrote, his resignation was probably the right and necessary thing under the circumstances.
The Twitter response to the piece was huge—about four or five times the normal response I get. And it was, as near as I can remember, literally unanimously in defense of Franken. This made me start rethinking things. Yes, I still think the Democrats will regret this. But was his resignation really the right and necessary thing?
Right or wrong, it was probably the inevitable thing in the Left’s ever-escalating, hyper-competitive victimhood Olympics.
BLUE STATE BLUES: Baltimore breaks city record for killings per capita in 2017.
A surge of homicides in the starkly divided city resulted in 343 killings in 2017, bringing the annual homicide rate to its highest ever – roughly 56 killings per 100,000 people. Baltimore, which has shrunk over decades, currently has about 615,000 inhabitants.
“Not only is it disheartening, it’s painful,” Mayor Catherine Pugh told The Associated Press during the final days of 2017, her first year in office.
The main reasons are the subject of endless interpretation. Some attribute the increase to more illegal guns, the fallout of the opioid epidemic, or systemic failures like unequal justice and a scarcity of decent opportunities for many citizens. The tourism-focused Inner Harbor and prosperous neighborhoods such as Canton and Mount Vernon are a world away from large sections of the city hobbled by generational poverty.
Generational poverty, eh?
IN THE MAIL: A Spy’s Guide to Thinking.
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POWER PLAY: Beijing is pursuing a complex strategy to corner natural resources.
By building cascades of large dams on international rivers just before they leave its territory, China is re-engineering cross-border natural flows. Among the rivers it has targeted are the Mekong, the lifeline of South East Asia, and the Brahmaputra, the lifeblood for Bangladesh and north-eastern India.
With the world’s most resource-hungry economy, China has gone into overdrive to corner natural resources. On the most essential resource, freshwater, it is seeking to become the upstream controller by manipulating trans-boundary flows through dams and other structures.
China now controls vast transnational water resources. By forcibly absorbing Asia’s “water tower”, the Tibetan plateau, in 1951, it gained a throttlehold over the headwaters of Asia’s major river systems. Its actions in more recent years have sought to build water leverage over its downstream neighbours.
Such an approach has fostered increasing water-related tensions with India, most of whose northern rivers originate in Tibet. In 2017, in violation of two legally binding bilateral accords, China refused to supply hydrological data to India.
The most disturbing part of this report might be that China already feels it can act with such impunity — which is exactly how rising world powers stumble into regrettable (and major) wars.
LIKE JURGEN, GOOGLE IS DISCOVERING THAT CLEVERNESS IS NOT ON TOP, AND NEVER HAS BEEN: The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students.
In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis by crunching every bit and byte of hiring, firing, and promotion data accumulated since the company’s incorporation in 1998. Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.
Those traits sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer. Could it be that top Google employees were succeeding despite their technical training, not because of it? . . .
Project Aristotle, a study released by Google this past spring, further supports the importance of soft skills even in high-tech environments. Project Aristotle analyzes data on inventive and productive teams. Google takes pride in its A-teams, assembled with top scientists, each with the most specialized knowledge and able to throw down one cutting-edge idea after another. Its data analysis revealed, however, that the company’s most important and productive new ideas come from B-teams comprised of employees who don’t always have to be the smartest people in the room.
Jurgen learned.
REALITY BITES: Deep Freeze Ends a Dreadful 2017 for Climate Activists.
Folks are being warned about the health risks associated with sub-zero temperatures, which could last beyond the first week of the year and stretch as far south as east Texas. It’s even too cold for the most intrepid thrill-seekers: Cities are canceling the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day due to inhumane air and water temperatures.
It marks a frustrating end to a dreadful year for climate-change activists, who have been frozen out of the Trump Administration. After Trump’s election, environmentalists prophesied the end times, labeling the president and his advisors “anti-science” and bracing for catastrophe. Climate scientists and bureaucrats at scientific agencies reached out for counseling, seeking ways to cope with life under the Trump regime; many have resigned “in disgust.”
But for once, the climate crowd’s “dire” predictions came true. Our “Denier-in-Chief” wasted no time dismantling Obama’s climate change legacy by appointing climate skeptics to fill top cabinet posts, exiting the Paris Climate Accord, repealing the Clean Power Plan, scrubbing government websites of climate change references, and promoting American fossil-fuel use abroad. If this wasn’t bad enough for them, now the climate crowd is trying incoherently to explain to frigid Americans — who are muttering “global warming, my ass” under their double – wrapped scarves—how this frigid weather is actually caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
You’d think all the hot air would warm things up at least some, but no.
THIS DOESN’T SOUND LIKE SUCH A BAD LIFESTYLE: We’re semi-retired and living in an RV. It’s not as ghastly as it may sound.
UPDATE: Bad link before. Fixed now. Sorry!
THANK YOU: I wanted to abuse a little privilege of indulgence and publicly thank Glenn Reynolds and the Instateam for letting me contribute to the dialogue here from time to time. I’d also like to thank all the people commenting on my posts, which I submit to spur intelligent discussion on media and free speech issues, and the occasional chuckle. Some of you have me down as the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky while others place me somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan…so I figure I’m doing it correctly. So please, hit the tip jar at right so Instapundit can prosper. Happy New Year, all!
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: 2018: What could possibly go right? Five possibilities.