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Archive for 2018
December 9, 2018
LIVING THE SMUG LIFE: Democrats Are Just Too Darned Smart.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Top 10 ‘War On Christmas’ Fails Of All Time.
HMMM: Don’t blame Trump for the demise of the Weekly Standard.
[I]n the public mind, the name Weekly Standard is associated with one thing that’s unpopular with almost everyone (the Iraq War), and another that’s unpopular with its formerly intended audience of conservatives (opposition to Trump). The person most identified with the brand is Kristol, by far. He stepped down as editor at the end of 2016, but his public persona still defines the magazine: his bitter, flippant, or sarcastic tweets about Trump and Trump supporters are the Weekly Standard’s brand in the public’s eye. Few people look at the masthead of a magazine closely enough to realize when a prominent editor such as Kristol has been replaced by a less prominent once such as Steve Hayes — and because Kristol remains on the masthead as editor-at-large, ordinary readers have even more cause for confusion. (‘Editor-at-large’ sounds a lot like ‘editor’ to most people, but in fact usually means ‘ex-editor.’)
Fairly or not, Bill Kristol is the brand.
And when that once-conservative brand is tweeting things such as this…
…That brand is severely tarnished. But it does explain why the Weekly Standard tried to remake itself as TNR Lite in its (apparently) last days.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON SURPRISE COLLAPSE: “Interest in the Bronze Age collapsed is fueled no doubt by fears that our own civilization may meet the same fate. A 2017 BBC article exploring ways our current civilization could collapse warns against dangers roughly analogous to those which brought down the world of Troy.”
IT’S INTERESTING WHEN PEOPLE DIE, GIVE US DIRTY LAUNDRY. NBC Reporter: Deadly Disasters = ‘Good News’ for Climate Change Agenda.
Earlier: Prominent Environmentalist Finally Discovers His Religion’s Catch-22.
Earlier: “[Don] Hewitt, who created [CBS’s 60 Minutes] in 1968 and produced the show for 36 years, [was] a journalistic legend. But investigators revealed that CBS continues to pay out a settlement to a woman who claimed that Mr. Hewitt sexually assaulted her on repeated occasions and destroyed her career. The settlement, reached in the 1990s, has been amended multiple times, including this year. In total, CBS has agreed to pay the former employee more than $5 million.”
THIS WAS LOW EVEN FOR THE MEDIA: USA Today smears Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray for tweets he wrote when he was 15.
UPDATE: John Ekdahl notes that USA Today gave then-Villanova basketball guard Donte Divincenzo, then-21, the same treatment, “after he was named most outstanding player and won a national championship. He was 14 y/o and quoting rap lyrics.”
GEORGE ORWELL DIDN’T INTEND FOR 1984 TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: NY Dem Wants Cops to Fish Through Gun Buyers’ Social Media, Search Engine Histories.
ROGER SIMON: The Russia Probe Becomes a Banal Sex Scandal.
THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT WORKING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Steve Bannon Declares War on Pope with Academy for Western Culture in Pontiff’s Backyard.
REX MURPHY ON JORDAN PETERSON: If You Strike Me Down, I Shall Become More Powerful Than You Can Imagine. “I’ve adverted to this point before, but it is such a vat of sweet ironic syrup, it’s worth a repeat. If, in place of honourably debating him, his opponents hadn’t tried to howl him down, tag him as a bigot, and have him fired, he’d today most likely still be placidly wandering the grounds and groves south of Bloor Street, one among many of the unsung pedagogues of the University of Toronto. Honourable men and women, all, but not, as a rule, to be found lecturing in Madrid one day, Oxford the next, felling shallow leftist interviewers on the BBC (redundancy) the next, podcasting to hundreds of thousands, and racking up more twitter hits than everyone except, maybe, Taylor Swift and Meghan Markle. So here he is, just two years on, with 12 Rules for Life surpassing two million in sales, YouTube his (almost) private dominion, his ideas radiated through all the old and new media, and saluted and high-certified by one of the most independent minds in this age of mush-think, Camille Paglia, as ‘restoring a peak period in North American thought, when Canada was renowned for pioneering, speculative thinkers like media analyst Marshall McLuhan and myth critic Northrop Frye.'”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM EDITION: Lawsuit: Harvard dean blackmailed fraternities.
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I REMEMBER WHEN SUGGESTING THAT MEANT YOU WERE A RUSSIAN PUPPET: Judge suggests Justice, State colluded to protect Hillary Clinton in email scandal.
A federal judge has raised speculation that Hillary Rodham Clinton and her State Department “colluded” to keep her missing emails secret from the public and courts, an escalation of scrutiny into Obama-era scandal.
Senior District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth in a new memo also called the Clinton email affair “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
In it, he demanded that State and Justice work with Judicial Watch, which has sued in the case, to develop an evidence seeking schedule into whether Clinton sought to avoid the federal Freedom of Information Act by using a private email system in her New York home. . . .
Terming Clinton’s use of her private email system, “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency,” Lamberth wrote in his MEMORANDUM OPINION:
… his [President Barack Obama’s] State and Justice Departments fell far short. So far short that the court questions, even now, whether they are acting in good faith. Did Hillary Clinton use her private email as Secretary of State to thwart this lofty goal [Obama announced standard for transparency]? Was the State Department’s attempt to settle this FOIA case in 2014 an effort to avoid searching – and disclosing the existence of – Clinton’s missing emails? And has State ever adequately searched for records in this case?
***
At best, State’s attempt to pass-off its deficient search as legally adequate during settlement negotiations was negligence born out of incompetence. At worst, career employees in the State and Justice Departments colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this Court.
Turning his attention to the Department of Justice, Lamberth wrote:
The current Justice Department made things worse. When the government last appeared before the Court, counsel claimed, ‘it is not true to say we misled either Judicial Watch or the Court.’ When accused of ‘doublespeak,’ counsel denied vehemently, feigned offense, and averred complete candor. When asked why State masked the inadequacy of its initial search, counsel claimed that the officials who initially responded to Judicial Watch’s request didn’t realize Clinton’s emails were missing, and that it took them two months to ‘figure [] out what was going on’… Counsel’s responses strain credulity. [citations omitted]
The Court granted discovery because the government’s response to the Judicial Watch Benghazi FOIA request for Clinton emails “smacks of outrageous conduct.”
Citing an email (uncovered as a result of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit) that Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Benghazi was a terrorist attack immediately after it happened, Judge Lamberth asked:
Did State know Clinton deemed the Benghazi attack terrorism hours after it happened, contradicting the Obama Administration’s subsequent claim of a protest-gone-awry?
****
Did the Department merely fear what might be found? Or was State’s bungling just the unfortunate result of bureaucratic redtape and a failure to communicate? To preserve the Department’s integrity, and to reassure the American people their government remains committed to transparency and the rule of law, this suspicion cannot be allowed to fester.”
Indeed.
SO MUCH HATE FROM THE LEFT THESE DAYS: Princeton Feminist Noa Wollstein Hates Men and ‘Heteronormative’ Kissing.
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO HEAR THIS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Is ‘Pretty Much All Fantasy-land.’ We’ve had enough Enrons and Solyndras.
JON GABRIEL: The U.S. may not ‘believe’ in climate change. But we’re the only one doing something about it.
Nineteen nations “believe” in climate change. How are they backing up their statement of faith?
China was praised for signing on to the Paris Climate Agreement and in Argentina reaffirmed its commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, however, China increased those emissions by 1.7 percent.
India, the fourth largest source for CO2, saw their emissions grow by 4.6 percent in 2017. Luckily for them, they too were praised for signing that “nonbinding communiqué.”
Overall, the European Union raised their CO2 output by 1.5 percent.
France, home of the Paris Agreement, is leading the diplomatic effort to save the planet. They increased their greenhouse gas emissions by 3.6 percent. . . .
If the nations paying lip service to climate change aren’t meeting their goals, imagine how poorly the oil-drilling, coal-mining Americans must be doing. President Donald Trump was pilloried for withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and for being only G20 leader who refused to sign the climate change statement in Argentina.
From 2016 to 2017, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 2.7 percent. Emissions from large power plants declined 4.5 percent since 2016, and nearly 20 percent since 2011. All without signing a piece of paper in Paris or Buenos Aires.
It’s almost as if they’re more interested in submission to a transnational bureaucracy than in results. And note that the U.S. reduction comes from the switch to cleaner fuels made possible by fracking, which environmentalists opposed.