SALENA ZITO: For Republicans, A Lesson for 2018. “One of the biggest advantages Conor Lamb had in his victory last week in the special election for Western Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District was that his campaign manager lived in his district. Abby Nassif Murphy did not have an office at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; she did not hold daily meetings with fellow Democrats in the Beltway who, on average, are fairly progressive both culturally and politically. She understood the heartbeat of the district not because of polls and data, but because she spends the bulk of her time carting her sons to and from their activities. Untethered from the pressures of Washington consultants, agenda items, and resistance talking points, she was able to respond to what she saw the community wanted.”
Archive for 2018
March 19, 2018
and LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Another Austin Bomb, McCabe DOWN and Much, Much More. “If you ever doubted that there was a group of senior government bureaucrats working against the election of Trump and the Trump administration, doubt no more.”
NEO-OTTOMAN EMPIRE: Turkish Forces Seize Syrian City of Afrin.
Turkey’s offensive against Afrin began on January 20th, and the Associated Press reports it slowly pushed the Kurdish militia and civilians into the town center. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says nearly 200,000 people have fled the Afrin region in recent days, and cites witnesses who say intense clashes between Turkish-backed forces and YPG Syrian Kurdish fighters are ongoing. A Kurdish official told the AP YPG fighters have evacuated remaining civilians “because of massacres” by Turkish and allied forces.
The Turkish government says the Kurdish forces in Afrin are tied to an insurgent group that has fought for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey. The AP reports that Turkey “fears the establishment of a Kurdish self-ruled zone in Syria that could inspire its own Kurdish minority to press for greater autonomy.” While the Turkish government sees the YPG as a “terrorist army,” the militia has been an important ally to the U.S. in the fight against the Islamic State group.
According to the BBC’s Mark Lowen, “President Erdogan has achieved his twin objectives: to remove a key area under YPG control and to rally the vast majority of Turks behind their commander-in-chief. The jingoism here has been breathtaking. Targeting Turkey’s age-old enemy of the Kurdish militants is a rare uniting force in a polarised country.”
Plus: “The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says nearly 200,000 people have fled the Afrin region in recent days.”
That’s mission accomplished for Erdogan.
WHAT TRUMP LEARNED FROM OBAMA: President Obama embraced base-first politics. President Trump is taking a page from his predecessor’s playbook. One strange phenomenon of the Obama years is my progressive friends insisting, to this day, that Obama, who oozed (admitted generally polite) supercilious contempt for anyone to his right, bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. If you know people like that, send them this article
REGARDLESS OF TRUMP, LIBERALISM IS IN TROUBLE: After noting that the liberalism of the rule of law and skepticism of government power and foreign adventurism and so forth was abandoned during the Obama years, Oliver Traldi writes: “Perhaps the most interesting dynamic post-Trump is that there has been no reassessment this time. Instead, there’s been an acceleration. Just as a terrorist attack can be spun to support counterterrorism policy — it’s not that the policy didn’t work; it’s that we need more of it! — the 2016 election seems to have proven to liberals not that their shift in principles was wrong, but that they didn’t shift enough, because they didn’t realize just how powerful the hateful, mystical forces arrayed against them really were.”
I have seen virtually no soul-searching among progressives about what they might have done differently that might have prevented the Trump counter-reaction. Instead, it’s all about how to seize power back and crush the enemy.
PEOPLE POWER? Maduro challenger shakes up Venezuela’s presidential vote.
“Traitor!” cry socialist stalwarts, who cannot forgive the former state governor for breaking with their beloved late leader Hugo Chavez in 2010.
“Chavista lite!” say opposition radicals, always suspicious that Falcon came into their ranks as a Trojan horse.
Now that the 56-year-old former soldier is running for president in a May 20 vote, both groups are united in scoffing at his chances.
After all, Falcon is up against not just a powerful President Nicolas Maduro but also an election system widely considered unfair and an opposition boycott that will deprive him of votes.
And yet, a clutch of opinion polls show Falcon ahead, bolstering his campaign mantra that he is a natural transition candidate with appeal to a moderate majority fed up with political polarization and economic chaos.
Widely-followed pollster Datanalisis, for example, put him more than 10 percentage points ahead in voter intentions.
Stay tuned…
FIRST, SEXUALLY ASSAULTING A YOUNG MAN, NOW THIS: Nun says she’s broke after legal battle with Katy Perry.
YOU WENT FULL CALIGULA, MAN. NEVER GO FULL CALIGULA. Peak Hollywood, reached: Celebs are using ‘cloned baby foreskin’ in facials.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: How Broward County funneled offenders from prison to school.
THE TWO MILLION DOLLAR DEM: More Dems offer to hire McCabe.
More Democratic lawmakers are coming forward with offers to hire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe after he was fired Friday, just two days before he was eligible for his pension.
Democratic Reps. Seth Moulton (Mass.), Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Luis Gutiérrez (Ill.) have all made job offers on Twitter. The lawmakers are extending the offers in an attempt to help McCabe to qualify for his benefits.
Outrageous.
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook may have broken FTC deal in Cambridge Analytica incident.
Facebook may face more legal trouble than you might think in the wake of Cambridge Analytica’s large-scale data harvesting. Former US officials David Vladeck and Jessica Rich have told the Washington Post that Facebook’s data sharing may violate the FTC consent decree requiring that it both ask for permission before sharing data and report any authorized access. The “Thisisyourdigitallife” app at the heart of the affair asked for permission from those who directly used it, but not the millions of Facebook friends whose data was taken in the process.
Facebook, for its part, said that it “reject[s] any suggestion” that it violated the consent decree. It maintained that it “respected” users’ privacy settings.
If the FTC did find violations, Facebook could be on the hook for some very hefty fines — albeit fines that aren’t likely to be as hefty as possible. The decree asks for fines as large as $40,000 per person, but that would amount to roughly $2 trillion. Regulators like the FTC historically push for fines they know companies can pay, which would suggest fines that are ‘just’ in the billion-dollar range. Given that there are already multiple American and European investigations underway, any financial penalty would be just one piece of a larger puzzle.
$40,000 per user might not be realistic, since it would force Facebook into liquidation and users would still never see that much restitution.
But just think of the message it would send to the surviving data-harvesting platforms.
IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL:
WELL, GOOD: South Korea may buy more Apache helicopters to lead the fight across DMZ.
This news comes on the heels of last month’s decision to purchase 90 more German-made bunker-busting Taurus air-to-surface missiles.
President Moon Jae-in ran on a dovish foreign policy platform, but it Li’l Kim’s recklessness may have forced a change of mind.
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST:
● Old and busted:
In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.
In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington’s C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.
—Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2008, as quoted by David Freddoso in a 2010 Washington Examiner article headlined, “RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC.”
● The New Hotness Coldness in DC?
D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) posted the video to his official Facebook page at 7:21 a.m. as snow flurries were hitting the nation’s capital. The video, shot through the windshield of a car driving west on Interstate 695 through downtown Washington, shows snowy skies while White narrates.
“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”
The Rothschilds are a famous European business dynasty descended from Mayer Amschel Rothschild, an 18th-century Jewish banker who lived in what is today Frankfurt, Germany. The family has repeatedly been subject over the years to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories alleging that they and other Jews clandestinely manipulate world events for their advantage.
—“D.C. lawmaker says recent snowfall caused by ‘Rothschilds controlling the climate,’” the Washington Post, yesterday.
H/T Steve Bartin of Newsalert, who adds that “The Anti-Semitism Problem of the Democrat Party Grows.”
(Classical reference in headline.)
KEVIN MCCULLOUGH: The Coming Collusion Bloodbath.
What the universe has truly ignored is the fact that the Inspector General’s investigation (which has been far less publicized than Special Council Robert Mueller’s), and in large measure has had much more devastating impact. Agents have been fired, reassigned, and otherwise dealt with just within the process of the investigation. The limited amount of what we’ve seen from the efforts thus far have painted a picture of corruption at the highest levels, and potentially “Watergate” comparable outcomes upon the report’s issuance.
McCabe’s firing was directly linked to the IG’s findings, and once revealed to the Justice Department’s disciplinary powers a concurrent recommendation was termination.
That Comey, McCabe, and others have practiced an obvious double standard in the email case of Hillary Clinton where ample evidence caused 106 of the case agents and attorneys working on the case to believe indictment would occur, and simultaneously going to such extraordinary measures through the assistance of essentially Hillary’s campaign operation to attempt to thwart the outcome of the election is more than enough reason to go after them on a criminal basis alone.
That McCabe reportedly lied to the low key Inspector General, while attempting to send General Michael Flynn to prison for lying to the same FBI is of highest hypocrisy.
But hypocrisy is what Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and others seem especially gifted at.
Well, to be fair, it takes a hypocrite to play the corruption game at this level.
SOME GOOD NEWS TO BRIGHTEN YOUR MONDAY MORNING: DC economy slows as federal employment shrinks.
PERSPECTIVE: Former FBI agent Fred Humphries calls McCabe firing justified. “Humphries said McCabe’s firing was good for the organization because it is important for top officials to be held accountable for the same transgressions agents like him are. The McCabe firing is fitting, Humphries says, for a man accused of lack of candor about media contacts whose office launched an investigation into him talking to a newspaper.”
Related: Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom on McCabe Firing: Sighs of relief at FBI
SOCIAL JUSTICE: Student Assaulted for Pro-Second Amendment Views, Then Suspended for Defending Himself.
“Social justice” is whatever the mob feels like it can get away with at the moment — and the Administration at too many schools has joined in.
JOSH BLACKMAN: The Irrepressible Myths of Cooper v. Aaron.
Related: The Supremacy Sham.
ILYA SOMIN: Why We Shouldn’t Give Special Credence to the Political Views of Young People and Victims. “Kids today do know something that the rest of us don’t: what it’s like to be kids today. But the rest of us do remember what it was like to be kids. If children really were special repositories of virtue, then it is doubtful so many people would recall their school days as the lifetime peak of personal meanness — both receiving and giving.”
Yes, junior high is an emotional hellscape because it’s filled with teenagers.
IN THE EMAIL FROM J. P. MEDVED: Justice, Inc.
Tough, brash, and resourceful, former Army Ranger Eric Ikenna is the CEO of the powerful, private military corporation, Justice Incorporated.
But when his company successfully topples the government of South Sudanese dictator and international war criminal Ahmed al-Bashir, Eric and his operators suddenly become public enemy number one for a very deadly, very secretive branch of the United States government. Because what Eric doesn’t realize is that the world order is surprisingly fragile, and there are those who would kill to maintain it.
The ensuing struggle, from the marble halls of power in Washington, D.C., to the bleak waters of the North Atlantic and the tropical savannas of South Sudan, will force Justice, Inc. to use every tool and weapon at its disposal, and will test Eric to the breaking point.
And as advanced as it is, even Justice, Inc.’s high-tech arsenal of bio-ceramic body armor, semi-autonomous drones, and invisible, stratospheric artillery may be no use against an enemy just as sophisticated, and much more ruthless.
With time running out and the international balance of power at stake, Eric must decide between his principles, and the lives of his friends and employees.
Combining bleeding-edge technology from tomorrow’s wars with heart-pounding, nonstop action, Justice, Inc. is a geo-political military thriller and the first novel in the Justice Incorporated series.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Where’s Waldo? Unraveling the “Collusion” Mystery.