IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: ‘Hire the best and fire the worst’: Trump proposes biggest civil service change in 40 years. Weird how this politically explosive story was buried in other news.
Archive for 2018
February 10, 2018
SCOTT RASMUSSEN: One Major Difference Between 2010 and 2018:
As we head into the 2018 midterms, there is a reasonable chance that President Trump could become the fourth straight president to lose control of Congress. To win a majority in the House, Democrats need to gain 24 seats. In four of the last ten midterm elections, the party out of power has picked up more than 24 seats and the political environment currently seems strong for the Democrats. It’s easy to identify where the Democrats could make their gains. At ScottRasmussen.com, we currently rate 45 House races as potentially competitive. Thirty-eight of them are currently held by Republicans.
For all the similarities, however, there is one huge difference between 2010 and 2018. It’s the difference between Obamacare and the Republican tax cut.
After it passed, Obamacare never gained ground in the court of public opinion. There were no short-term benefits for voters but many unpleasant surprises. Millions were unable to keep their doctor, buying insurance didn’t mean you could find a doctor who would take it, and the prices went up rather than down. Over time, the reality of Obamacare proved to be such a drag on Democrats that Republicans now hold more political power than at any point since the 1920s.
In contrast, the tax cut has already seen a big jump in public approval because the results have pleasantly surprised voters.
Yes, there’s a big difference between tying yourself to a deeply unpopular legislative package and tying yourself to a popular one.
AMADEUS SYNDROME: “As I say, [Peter] Hitchens at least feints towards what’s really bugging many of these people. It is the Amadeus syndrome. Many of [Jordan] Peterson’s haters on the right have been toiling in the fields these long years, equally worried about, writing about, the treatment of men, especially young men; about the erosion of freedoms, etc. Where, they are wondering, are their rewards? So they are bitter. It’s a feeling I’m familiar with,” Kathy Shaidle writes.
Read the whole thing.
As Dr. Helen noted earlier today, “Still at #1 on Amazon, Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.”
AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ADVISES, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Victory Over PC Art Censorship In England Proves We Can Have Nice Things If We Try, Mary Katharine Ham writes.
LIFT WEIGHTS AND LIVE LONGER. Better, too.
AT AMAZON, deals on bestselling Appliances.
NEVER LET A NON-CRISIS GO TO WASTE: John Podesta’s Cure for Climate Change? A Government in Charge of Your ‘Family Planning.’
I shudder to think of Obama’s former “science” “czar” in charge of family planning.
SOHRAB AMARI: Democracy Dies In Smugness.
Mounk’s sections on the damage wrought by undemocratic liberalism should be instructive to his fellow liberals. But conservatives have for years stamped their feet and pulled their hair over the same phenomenon, only to be ignored by elite liberals on both sides of the Atlantic. Right-of-center readers might be forgiven for sarcastically muttering “no kidding” as Mounk takes them on a guided tour of liberal folly.
Conservatives have been warning about administrative bloat, for example, since at least the first half of the 20th century. It turns out that they had a point. Writes Mounk: “The job of legislating has been supplanted by so-called ‘independent agencies’ that can formulate policy on their own and are remarkably free from oversight.” Ditto activist judges: “The best studies of the Supreme Court do suggest that its role is far larger than it was when the Constitution was written.” And ditto the European Union’s democratic deficit: “To create a truly ‘single market,’ the EU has introduced far-reaching limitations” on state sovereignty.
He also strikes upon the idea that nations really are different from one another, and in politically significant ways. “After a few months living in England,” the German-born author confesses, “I began to recognize that the differences between British and German culture were much deeper than I imagined.” No kidding. What about the anti-Western monoculture that lords over most college campuses? Here, too, the right was on to something. “Far from seeking to preserve the most valuable aspects of our political system,” Mounk writes, liberal academe’s “overriding objective is, all too often, to help students recognize its manifold injustices and hypocrisies.”
Mounk’s discovery of these core conservative insights, however, doesn’t spur a rethink of his reflexive disdain for conservatives.
Well, old boy, there are limits.
PICK A STORY AND STICK WITH IT, FFS: For the past several weeks we’ve been told by our intellectual betters at MSNBC, Washington Post and The New York Times that daring to question the FBI’s actions was “unpatriotic” and a “national security risk.” (These are the same hypocrites who are wetting themselves over Meryl Streep’s performance in “The Post” when such questions were considered legit).
Notorious moron Adam Schiff even went as far as saying on live television that Tucker Carlson was “carrying water for the Kremlin” by daring to ask such questions. So what should cross my wire today but a press release from the ACLU stating that it may sue the FBI:
What seems to be a made-up term raises concerns that the FBI created the designation to enhance government scrutiny of Black activists, including people involved in Black Lives Matter, which some wrongly blame for incidents of violence and label a hate group. By focusing on ideology and viewpoint in defining what constitutes a so-called “Black Identity Extremist,” the FBI is spending valuable resources to target those who object to racism and injustice in America.
The mask slips further. In 2018, if a truth-seeking question’s answer might provide succor to your political opponents, it’s a Russian plot and you are unpatriotic. If the same reasonable – no, important – question supports a DNC-approved minority, then it’s your duty to ask the question. Poor Kathryn Graham, it’s almost a blessing that she’s not around to see this perversion of “truth-seeking.”
NEW YORK LEFTIES: TRUMP IS A RACIST FOR CALLING THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES SHITHOLES. Also New York Lefties: “Wealthy New Yorkers are furious that Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to open a homeless shelter in their ritzy Manhattan neighborhood.”
As Michael Walsh writes in response, “Yeah, well, maybe you should have thought of that in the voting booth when you re-elected de Blasio, buddy.”
“No Sh*thole People, Please, We’re Rich Liberals,” Rod Dreher adds.
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Is the ‘Global Warming’ Cult Finally Coming to Its Senses?
No. Next question?
(Classical reference in headline.)
CNN: TRUMP IS A DICTATOR! ALSO, HEY HOW ABOUT KIM JONG UN’S SISTER ‘STEALING THE SHOW’ AT THE OLYMPICS, HUH?
REVIEW: 2019 Audi A7: Its beauty is more than skin deep.
Just FYI, here’s my review of the RS7 from a few years ago.
IT WAS A GOOD THING FOR HUMANITY: The Asteroid That Killed Dinosaurs Also Triggered Huge Volcanoes Under The Oceans.
AT AMAZON, shop the Valentine’s Day Gift Shop.
ORBITAL DYNAMICS IS PRETTY PREDICTABLE, YOU KNOW: We Know Exactly Where Musk’s Space Tesla Is Going.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: We All Live On Campus Now.
When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges — your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression — will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.
And, sure enough, the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The idea of individual merit — as opposed to various forms of unearned “privilege” — is increasingly suspect. The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment — untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights — are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of “hate,” rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.
The biggest loser from this will ultimately be higher education, because of the inevitable reaction. But it’s bad for America, too.
Plus:
An entirely intended byproduct of this kind of bullying — and Roiphe is just the latest victim — is silence. If voicing an “incorrect” opinion can end your career, or mark you for instant social ostracism, you tend to keep quiet. This silence on any controversial social issue is endemic on college campuses, but it’s now everywhere. Think of the wonderful SNL sketch recently, when three couples at a restaurant stumble onto the subject of Aziz Ansari. No one feels capable of saying anything in public. In the #MeToo debate, the gulf between what Twitter screams and what pops up in your private email in-box is staggering.
This is what happens when Gentry Liberals get political power. Which is Trump’s strongest argument in 2018 and 2020.
FALLEN ANGELS IS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? 9 Reasons To Get Hyped For 50 Years Of Global Cooling.
(Classical reference in headline.)
IN THE MAIL: From Stephen Snyder, M.D., Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship.
SKYNET BIDES ITS TIME: Virginia Postrel on Lessons From a Slow-Motion Robot Takeover.
The current debate over Page is whether the FBI overreached by seeking a warrant to spy on him from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court at the end of 2016. Republicans claim the FBI improperly relied on the opposition research dossier. Democrats say the Republican memo omits information that would discredit the GOP’s case.
But that misses a broader and more important point. It’s a scandal that the public has known for more than a year that the FBI suspected Page of being a foreign agent in the first place. He has yet to be charged with a crime, but his reputation is in tatters because an element of the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s influence over the 2016 election has been publicly reported.
This started when Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff broke the first big story on Page’s meetings in Moscow with Putin aides in September 2016, allegedly to discuss the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Isikoff was tipped off by Steele, who was commissioned through an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, to dig up dirt on Trump’s ties to Russia on behalf of the Clinton campaign. In a podcast this week, Isikoff confirmed that Steele told him he had “taken this information to the FBI and the bureau is very interested.”
Last April, the Washington Post reported, based on information from “law enforcement and other U.S. officials,” that the FBI had obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant on Page in the summer of 2016. As the Post reported at the time, the existence of the warrant was “the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents.”
That was an important piece of news that any journalist would publish. But the officials who leaked and confirmed it violated the public’s trust in two important ways.
This didn’t just happen. It was a partisan hit job.