Archive for 2019
September 4, 2019
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Although to be honest, Rolling Stone has always had a soft spot for terrorists, from Jann Wenner proposing the headline “Charles Manson Is Innocent” according to biographer Joe Hagen, to its cover story in 2013 making Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev look like he’s just walked out of a photo shoot for the Doors in 1967.
JAMES MATTIS GIVES BLISTERING CRITIQUE OF BARACK OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY.
Most of the coverage of James Mattis’s new book, Call Sign Chaos, co-authored with Bing West, deals with the former defense secretary’s relationship with President Trump. The Atlantic‘s pre-publication interview with Mattis was headlined, “The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore.” The New York Times editorial page ran a column about Mattis called “The Man Trump Wishes He Were.”
Both articles establish that Mattis doesn’t have much to say right now, in either the book or in interviews, about President Trump. Neither piece, though, mentions another president about whom Mattis is more than willing to dish. That would be Barack Obama, who was Mattis’s commander in chief when the then–Marine general led Central Command. Mattis’s critique of Obama isn’t just harsh. It’s blistering.
Mattis’s tenure at Central Command lasted from 2010 to 2013. It was during this time that the Obama administration took steps that diminished American influence in the greater Middle East and empowered Iran. The spillover effect includes the migrant crisis that contributed to the rise of national populism in Europe. Mattis dissented from Obama policy. “In 2010,” he writes, “I argued strongly against pulling all our troops out of Iraq.”
But as Glenn wrote of Obama in 2014, “For some people, ‘another Vietnam’ is a favored outcome.”
Besides, Obama had much more important goals for the military than preserving George W. Bush’s victory in Iraq: How Obama turned the military into a social justice experiment.
THIS IS HOW DEMOCRATS DEAL WITH POLITICAL OPPONENTS: Defending ‘Reasoned Debate About Public Safety,’ San Francisco Supervisors Declare the NRA a ‘Domestic Terrorist Organization.’
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Jussie Smollett’s Latest Legal Strategy: Blame Cops for Investigating.
Plus a hilarious video assist from Dave Chappelle.
WHY YES, WHERE IS THE INFAMOUS ANTHONY WEINER/HUMA ABEDIN LAPTOP? Inquiring minds still want to know.
MEH. I HEARD PEOPLE USE THAT TERM IN THE SEVENTIES. UGA professor: Teens now describe their sexual encounters as ‘body counts.’
AT AMAZON, save in Pet Food and Supplies.
HE DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT THEM, HE’D JUST RATHER PUT ON A VIRTUE-SIGNALLING PERFORMANCE FOR HIS PEERS: Did Walmart’s CEO Forget About These Armed Heroes Who Stopped Massacres at His Stores?
Our country’s single biggest problem is that most of its major institutions are run by people who care more about the opinion of their peers than about doing their jobs. Especially since their peers are mostly idiots.
SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF SUPERVISORS MAKES SURPRISE IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION TO TRUMP 2020 REELECTION CAMPAIGN: San Francisco Labels NRA a ‘Domestic Terrorism Organization.’
Related: San Francisco counts 4,000 homeless, addicted and mentally ill, but timeline for help still unclear.
TREATING RECURRENT UTIS WITH FECAL TRANSPLANTS?
GET IN THEIR FACE, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD, AS A LIGHTWORKER ONCE SAID: 2,000 People Plan BBQ At House Of Vegan Who Sued Neighbours For Cooking Meat.
INTERSTELLAR SNUFF FILMS: Dying Star’s Colorful Demise Captured by Hubble Telescope.
WE ALWAYS KNEW THAT: Christine Blasey Ford’s Lawyer: Okay Fine, Protecting Abortion Was Part of Why She Accused Kavanaugh. And so did all the people eagerly promoting her bogus victimhood.
GREAT MOMENTS IN OBJECTIVITY: NBC’s Today Show Celebrates Sotomayor’s 10 Years on Supreme Court With Cake.
Flashback: In 2010, CNN baked a cake to wish Obama’s failed “Stimulus” program a “happy birthday:” “Over at the most trusted name in news, they sure know how to party when it’s called for. That was evident this afternoon on CNN Newsroom when anchor Ali Velshi gushed: ‘Happy birthday, dear stimulus. Our producer Ben Tinker (ph) baked this cake. It is a stimulus happy birthday — first birthday cake, which is also a pie chart. It is the birthday of the stimulus.’”
ANOTHER CAMPUS FREE SPEECH LAWSUIT: “Some people get in trouble for smoking weed, but at Jones College, I got in trouble just for trying to talk about it.”
WE’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY: Lee Jurras & The Development of Personal-Defense Ammo.
AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Automotive.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: It’s time to stop funding local governments with unfair court fines.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Bloomberg’s Hit Piece On Trump Official Is Why Americans Distrust The Media.
In other words, Penn admitted the entire point of his reporting was to get a Trump appointee fired. In the article, Penn explained that Olson was part of the administration’s efforts to draft wage-hour regulations, which, one assumes, Penn opposes on ideological grounds. That’s probably why Penn was combing through Olson’s Facebook history in the first place. He later tweeted that the entire episode is “the latest in a series of mishaps under the Trump administration personnel vetting system”—in this case, a “mishap” orchestrated by Penn himself.
And when you’ve lost both the Washington Post and the Anti-Defamation League…
The [Post’s] Erik Wemple Blog checked with the ADL on Tuesday afternoon to see if it wished to revise its evaluation in light of social media’s verdict on the Olson post. It did indeed. “We appreciate Mr. Olson’s clarification that he intended to be sarcastic with his posts and accept his explanation of the content in question,” said Hyman.
Yet Bloomberg Law is sticking with its original formulation, including its reputation-damaging headline: “Trump Labor Aide Quits After Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts Surface.” Those posts aren’t anti-Semitic if they’re written with satirical anti-anti-Semitic sentiment. Here are other segments of the story that require correction or retraction in light of Olson’s tone:
So far though, for Penn and his editors at Bloomberg, as Bethany Mandel writes at Ricochet, “For Journalists, There Are No Consequences.” But they’re not journalists – they’re Democratic Party activists with bylines, as Penn himself admits above.
FASTER, PLEASE: Hospitals Should Replace Infection-Prone Scopes With Safer Models, F.D.A. Says. “Companies that make reusable, snakelike cameras to examine patients internally should begin making disposable versions, because the current models cannot be properly sterilized and have spread infections from one patient to another, the Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday. In the meantime, hospitals that use the instruments, called duodenoscopes, should start to transition to models with disposable components to reduce the risk of infection to patients, the agency said.”