#METOO PROBLEM: Sacramento Bee Editorial Board to Kamala Harris: You Should Have Known Better. “There are only a few possible interpretations here, and they are unpleasant. Wallace wasn’t out on the periphery of Harris’ staff; he was a senior aide she knew for 14 years — hardly a stranger. For Harris to flatly deny any knowledge of this settlement seems, shall we say, far-fetched. For the moment, let’s take her at her word. A second and equally troubling interpretation is that Harris isn’t a terribly good manager, and that her staff was insulating her from information critical to the performance of her duties. This is hardly a propitious beginning to a presidential candidacy.”
Archive for 2018
December 7, 2018
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WELL, WELL: Even before Mueller was appointed, FBI opened investigation to “rein in” Trump. Note that they were planning an obstruction probe even before Comey was fired. Leaked to CNN because it’s friendly media, meaning they thought it was about to come out somewhere less friendly. This is huge, and people should go to jail.
Put this together with the collusion between the press and federal prosecutors and the “Deep State” narrative looks pretty solid.
SJWs COLLECT ANOTHER SCALP: Kevin Hart Missed A Big Opportunity To Stare Down The Outrage Mob.
HMM: Senator-Elect Josh Hawley Being Investigated by Missouri Secretary of State. “Did Hawley spend campaign funds on his official business as attorney general?”
AND JOURNALISTS WONDER WHY NOBODY BELIEVES THEM NOW? Journalists lauded former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from all matters involving the investigation of allegations of collusion between 2016 Trump campaign aides and Russian interests in order to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest.
But what about the mainstream media’s conflicts of interests? Journalism ethics dictate that journalists never make themselves part of the story, but, as the Last Refuge’s Sundance makes clear, there have been more than a few reporters who made themselves part of “The Resistance” to President Donald Trump, via the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his staff.
Virtually all of the major mainstream media players are involved in this kind of ethical corruption, but Exhibit A is the meeting first reported by Sara Carter of federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman with four AP reporters to discuss the investigation of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
As Sundance writes, “later it was revealed that Andrew Weissman, Robert Mueller’s #1 special counsel prosecutor, was coordinating investigative efforts with the full support of four AP reporters who were giving Weissman tips. That’s information from journalists to use in his court filings and submitted search warrants. Make sure you grasp this: The AP journalists were feeding information to their ideological allies within the special counsel.”
Put another way, instead of getting information from their sources to be reported to the public, it appears that these AP operatives effectively made themselves researchers for Mueller’s operation, via a federal prosecutor long known to have committed serious violations of judicial ethics.
They joined the team they were supposedly covering.
No wonder Sundance asks:
“Think about a New York Times, CNN, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Yahoo News or Washington Post journalist now having to write an article deconstructing a foundation of two-years worth of lies they participated in creating. Do we really think such a catastrophic level of corrupted journalism could reconstitute into genuine reporting of fact-based information?”
Not gonna happen.
STEPHEN KRUISER: Democrats’ 2020 Field Shaping Up To Be an Entertaining ‘Old vs Young’ Slugfest. “Grab your popcorn and beer.”
Consider them grabbed.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Public university removes white instructor for telling students to ‘be respectful in class.’
WINNING: Fiat Chrysler plans to open factory in Detroit to build new three-row, Jeep Grand Cherokee.
The move comes as the industry faces pressure from President Donald Trump to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and stands in stark contrast to the recent decision by General Motors to stop production and idle five plants in North America including four in the United States.
GM has come under fire after announcing last week that it plans to cut 14,000 jobs in the U.S. and Canada, citing a weakening economy, the escalating trade war and a desire to reposition itself as a smaller, more nimble company. Ford is also scaling back, saying last week that it planned to cut a shift at two of its U.S. plants in an attempt to avoid more onerous layoffs.
Detroit will lose two GM facilities altogether. Both were performing well under capacity and contributing to a dismal capacity utilization rate of just 76 percent across the United States, far below Fiat Chrysler’s rate of 90 percent.
Fiat Chrysler’s plants are running at close to capacity due to continued strong demand for trucks and SUV’s. Overall, Fiat Chrysler’s sales in the U.S. are up 8 percent this year, easily outpacing the industry less than one percent according to the market research firm Autodata.
Jeep has been on an impressive roll in recent years, showing growth even with some older models. If I camped more often, I’d be in line for a new Gladiator on Day One. It’s a shame though that Fiat continues to starve Chrysler of product — they make just two models, a large sedan and a minivan — which look like dead-end categories in this market.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: A college kid running for 13th Ward alderman gets a lesson in the Chicago Way.
CYBERSECURITY: 22 apps with 2 million+ Google Play downloads had a malicious backdoor. “Device-draining downloader used for ad fraud could have recovered other malicious files.”
The 22 rogue titles included Sparkle Flashlight, a flashlight app that had been downloaded more than 1 million times since it entered Google Play sometime in 2016 or 2017, antivirus provider Sophos said in a blog post published Thursday. Beginning around March of this year, Sparkle Flashlight and two other apps were updated to add the secret downloader. The remaining 19 apps became available after June and contained the downloader from the start.
By the time Google removed the apps in late November, they were being used to click endlessly on fraudulent ads. “Andr/Clickr-ad,” as Sophos has dubbed the family of apps, automatically started and ran even after a user force-closed them, functions that caused the apps to consume huge amounts of bandwidth and drain batteries.
I don’t have much experience with Android, so I’ll have to ask Instapundit readers how an app steals permission to continue running after a force-close.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Professor: Virgin Mary Didn’t Give Consent. ““The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario.”
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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Comey Testifies in Private Today and Much, Much More. “Former FBI Director James Comey, also known as Comey the Redeemer will be testifying behind closed doors today with the House Judiciary Committee before the Democrats take over in January and use the Committee to attack the President. Comey tried to fight the subpoena but agreed to testify privately if the Committee would release his testimony in a timely manner. If you are a Comey-head, you have a great weekend ahead of you reading his transcripts.”
ANN ALTHOUSE CALLS OUT THE NEW YORK TIMES’ EMILY BADGER for racial dishonesty. “Emily Badger is a great name for someone who knows a lot about Madison, but did she even bother to look up the demographics before she lobbed her accusation of racism? Madison is overwhelmingly white — 78.9% White, 7.3% African American.”
Just by knowing Madison’s politics, you should be able to guess that it’s overwhelmingly white.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: The Price of a Cup of Coffee in Venezuela Is Up 285,614% in a Year.
Instead of celebrating minimum wage hikes in hyperinflation-pummeled Venezuela, consumers now run as fast as they can to buy goods before the inevitable price increases.
In other words, higher wages are as much bad news as good news as they simply mean the printing press will run faster at the central bank and businesses will react accordingly.
So after President Nicolas Maduro raised wages by a staggering 150 percent last week — the sixth minimum wage increase in 2018 alone — perhaps it comes as no surprise that a cup of coffee in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas doubled from the week earlier to 400 sovereign bolivars or about ($0.76).
Unexpectedly.
BYRON YORK: Ten Questions For James Comey.
Some Republicans want to ask him more about the Hillary Clinton case, but even some of them acknowledge that the case is over and done with. Others want to focus on the Trump-Russia affair. That includes a lot of material. There will, for example, undoubtedly be some questions about the Trump dossier, the origins of which Republicans have done extensive work to expose.
But one particularly useful area of questioning would be the case of Michael Flynn, the short-term Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI and who this week received a no-jail sentencing recommendation from Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller. Comey spoke privately to Congress about the Flynn case on a few occasions in 2017. But so far, all the public knows about those statements are a few snippets of testimony included in a House Intelligence Committee report and a few others from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley. If Comey were questioned about it in some detail Friday, and if the transcript of that conversation were released, then the public might finally learn more about the case. With that in mind, here are ten questions for Comey on the subject of Michael Flynn.
Read the whole thing.
FOX LOCKED OUT OF HENHOUSE: US ices Iran out of Yemen talks.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry recently informed Sweden, which is hosting this week’s UN-sponsored talks, of its desire to send a senior adviser to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the shuttle diplomacy between the Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in Stockholm. But the request was denied, according to several Iranian sources, because of US pressure.
The State Department would not confirm its role in shutting out Tehran, saying it doesn’t detail the contents of its private diplomatic discussions. Neither the Swedish Embassy in Washington nor UN envoy Martin Griffiths responded to requests for comment.
But the State Department did suggest the Iranians are not playing a helpful role.
I’ve already contacted Sarah Hoyt about borrowing her shocked face.
ANGRY ACADEMY MOB LYNCHES BLACK COMEDIAN: “Did you hear that comedian Kevin Hart was picked to host the Oscars? To be totally honest, I probably wouldn’t have known it myself if I didn’t follow Christian Toto on Twitter. But as it turns out, Hart was the selected host for all of about fifteen minutes before the uproar began. It seems that he (*gasp*) told some bad jokes about gay people back in the day, making him Unfit For Duty. And after some back and forth with the angry mob, Hart wound up stepping down.”
