THE HAIR SHIRT LEFT SURE ARE OBSESSED WITH SHIRTS: Ex-Muslim Customers Kicked Out of Houston Starbucks For Wearing Ex-Muslim T-Shirts.
Archive for 2018
September 4, 2018
WHY, INDEED? Why Haven’t We Cured The Common Cold Yet? “Polio, smallpox, hepatitis A and B are all serious viruses humanity learned to subdue with effective solutions. Even the flu, which can shift and mutate each year, has a vaccine. And yet, there’s no remedy for the lowly cold. That’s not for lack of trying, though.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: “Trump has drawn much of the media into a distortion of their traditional roles,” claims Ted Koppel in the Washington Post:
Whether by strategy or inadvertence, President Trump has drawn much of the media into a distortion of their traditional roles. Editors and reporters insist that they are bound by the strictures of objectivity, but the very nature of the president’s character — the preening, the boasting, the torrent of careless tweets and the avalanche of lies, the seemingly reckless assaults on pillars of the establishment — provokes reactions that confirm precisely what Trump’s most avid supporters already believe: The creatures of “the swamp” belong to a secret society from which they are excluded.
For a quarter century, Koppel hosted Nightline on ABC, the network where Clinton Foundation contributor George Stephanopoulos poses daily as being “objective,” and whose former equally objective anchor, the late Peter Jennings derided the arrival of a Republican House and Senate in 1994 as the American voters having a “temper tantrum.” Speaking of Jennings, as John Fund noted on Sunday at NRO in his encomium to the capriciousness that was Sen. John McCain:
During the 2000 Republican presidential convention in Philadelphia, I went to a tony restaurant to attend a reception. By accident, I stumbled into a room chock-full of top-shelf media types: Dan Rather of CBS, the late Peter Jennings of ABC, Tom Brokaw of NBC, Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times. After a few minutes, I realized I was at the wrong event. It was a birthday party for John McCain. I recall telling Peter Jennings that it was a strange party for a politician to have. As far as I could tell, there were no family members present, no donors, no party officials. In a deadpan tone, Jennings told me: “Well, this is really the first meeting of John McCain’s next precinct-organizing committee.”
But when McCain ran a more conventionally conservative campaign in 2008, competing with the media’s new heartthrob, Barack Obama, the pundits turned on him with a vengeance. According to the Pew Research Center, between the Republican National Convention’s close on September 4 and the final presidential debate on October 15, McCain’s media coverage was negative over positive by a 4-to-1 ratio.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd complained that McCain had “turned on his former base, the news media.” He now had feet of clay: “Even some of McCain’s former aides are disturbed by the 73-year-old’s hostile, vindictive, sarcastic persona.”
Gosh, whatever could have soured McCain’s mood?
Incidentally, Koppel’s essay arrives a day after Chuck Todd of NBC wrote in the Atlantic that “It’s Time for the Press to Stop Complaining—And to Start Fighting Back.”
WELL, I CAN FEEL BETTER ABOUT THE ORBITAL DEBRIS PROBLEM, BUT AT THE COST OF FEELING WORSE ABOUT RUSSIAN ENGINEERING: Hole responsible for space station leak caused by drill, not meteorite, Russia says.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Fool Yourself — The Blue Wave Is Probably Real.
GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT’S ‘THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND’ OUT TODAY: Their new book is #12 on all of Amazon as I write, with positive comments from everyone from Niall Ferguson to Michael Bloomberg to Cornel West. Pick up a copy, and look out for Greg and Jon on book tour, as they may be coming to a venue near you.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to change wiper blades and washer fluid.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Sen. John McCain’s funeral put Washington’s vicious political hypocrisy fully on display. “Though some operatives tried to walk it back the next day, the McCain funeral was, despite his absence, all about our current president. As someone said on Twitter, they came not to praise McCain, but to bury Trump. And yet, despite solemn encomia to civility, honor, and integrity from the likes of Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger, amplified by the press’s Greek chorus, the notion that we used to live in some golden age of civility and bipartisanship exemplified by the career of Sen. McCain is belied by, among other things, the career of John McCain.”
EMPLOYMENT: Desperate For Data Scientists.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Comparing People To Hitler For Supporting Donald Trump Is Crazy Talk:
My favorite part of this is that he told me not to be offended right before he compared me to enthusiastic Nazis or Joseph Stalin supporters. He also says he’s “not saying Trump is Hitler,” then proceeds to make precisely that comparison. While Eisman is saying this, you can hear the [NPR] host, David Folkenflik, try but fail to stop him. It’s like watching — or in this case, listening to — a car crash in slow motion.
Folkenflik handled it professionally, letting me respond and apologizing for the short length of time left for that. I took advantage of it to talk about my family’s history of sacrificing everything to flee from authoritarian strongmen to become Americans. To compare a conservative to Nazis and communist revolutionaries is so inaccurate, and Eisman deserves to be called out for it.
I am writing this to draw attention to the tone from some of Trump’s critics. To them, everything merits a comparison to Hitler, and to make the “mistake” of saying a positive thing about President Trump — even when that positive thing is sandwiched between skeptical comments about him — is labeled as tantamount to helping the Nazis construct concentration camps. That’s so detached from reality people who cannot see that should have no credibility and not be allowed to fearmonger to a broader audience.
So what is and what is not allowed to be said in public about the president without being called a Nazi? I said I wish Trump could tweet less and focus his lib-owning powers on regulatory rollbacks and taking down the administrative state. To Eisman, for some reason, that sounded like support for Nazis. One of us needs a reality check, and it’s not me.
Every Republican president is Hitler, until he leaves office, and then he is magically rehabilitated by the media as a distinguished and wise statesman to bash the current Hitler.
FORMER SENATOR JON KYL WILL SUCCEED JOHN MCCAIN: “Cindy McCain, who was reportedly consulted during the search process, celebrated Kyl’s appointment in a statement on Tuesday morning.”
STARBUCKS, ARBITERS OF APOSTASY: Ex-Muslim Customers Kicked Out of Houston Starbucks For Wearing Ex-Muslim T-Shirts.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Sounds like a religious-discrimination lawsuit to me.
He is? Gosh, what on earth were the 49ers thinking in 2016 when they benched him for Blaine Gabbert?
Back in January of 1981, both teams playing in Super Bowl XV wore yellow stripes on the back of their helmets to commemorate the freeing of the American hostages from the US embassy in Tehran, and a huge yellow bow was attached to the exterior of the Louisiana Superdome. Yesterday, the former president of Iran trolled the NFL. (I wonder what Nike thought about that?) The 21st century is not working out the way I had hoped, to coin an Instaphrase.
VIDEO: Dems and Protesters Derail ‘Regular Order’ in Kavanaugh Hearing, Seeking to Adjourn.
Well, what else have they got, really?
SCRAPPLEFACE: American People: ‘No Thanks’ to More Kavanaugh Docs. “‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ the people said, ‘We enjoyed the first 430,000 pages, but we’re good’.”
WELL, IF YOU’RE FAT ENOUGH TO BE SPOTTED FROM SPACE: Scientists Have Trained an AI to Spot Obesity From Space.
IN OTHER NEWS, SCORPION STINGS FROG: Lying About Brett Kavanaugh’s Civil Rights Record.
THE ATTACK ON THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY IS SILLY: Today’s Kavanaugh hearing appears to have descended into chaos. Amid the hooting and hollering is the accusation by Senator Durbin that Kavanaugh is the nominee of the Federalist Society. Untrue. But if it were true, I’d be happy about that (and Trump’s detractors should be happy too). You’d be hard-pressed to come up with an organization that that tries harder to engage in free and fair debate. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the positive views of these left-of-center lawyers about the 65,000-member organization:
“For over a decade, I have been privileged to be involved in Federalist Society events, and it’s a really interesting thing that they have seen fit to invite me even though I generally don’t think like them on a lot of things, and the quality of the speakers and the free-for-all discussion is unparalleled, so it’s really been a privilege.”—Neal Katyal, Acting Solicitor General (Obama Administration).
“I think one thing your organization has definitely done is to contribute to free speech, free debate, and most importantly, public understanding of, awareness of, and appreciation of the Constitution. So that’s a marvelous contribution, and … in a way I must say I’m jealous at how the Federalist has thrived a law schools.”—Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, New York Law School & Former President, American Civil Liberties Union.
“[T]he Federalist Society has brought to campus the commitment to real, honest, vigorous, and open discussion. It is a result of the works of the Federalist Society to create a wonderful environment for discussing social, political, legal and constitutional issues.”—Paul Brest, Professor of Law & Former Dean, Stanford Law School.
The Federalist Society’s programs are not held in secret; even Sen. Durbin is welcome. It is one of the most open organizations I have ever known. And it strives to include speakers from across the ideological spectrum in its panel discussions. I can recall only one occasion, in 2003, when I panel I was involved in was not balanced (only because the liberal speaker failed to show up). Although, as a speaker, I had already given my own view on the topic (which was a more conservative view), I spontaneously got up and gave the liberal point of view too, just to make sure that the Federalist Society maintained its tradition of presenting the many sides of each issue.
By contrast, the supposedly mainstream Association of American Law Schools is famous for having brought in over 20 speakers to discuss the then-recent passage of California’s Proposition 209 (which prohibited discrimination or preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment, public contracting and public education). Every last one of the speakers opposed the initiative; not a single supporter was invited to speak, despite the fact that several law professors who had worked on the campaign, including me, were present at the meeting. And that’s not the most outrageous story I know about the AALS’s leftist leanings.
NBC: WE KILLED OFF THAT PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING HARVEY WEINSTEIN STORY IN A TOTALLY LEGIT MANNER, YOU KNOW.
Regardless of motive, [the statement by Emily Nestor, one of Weinstein’s accusers] flat-out contradicts [NBC News chairman Andrew] Lack’s argument. Even one on-the-record testimony from a Weinstein insider should have made this an easy journalistic decision. Shutting it down with Nestor on board certainly makes McHugh’s accusation of the story being killed at “the very highest levels at NBC” more believable than Lack’s belated defense of NBC’s actions. And at any rate, the results speak for themselves. Farrow and his team at The New Yorker got a Pulitzer and touched off a major social movement, while NBC News had to fire Lauer and offer explanations for why they let the story get away. This story doesn’t seem any more convincing than those preceding it.
Which is why Chuck Todd is going all-in attacking Fox News as the anti-Christ to deflect from the chaos in NBC’s upper management.