TYLER O’NEIL: Trump’s Popularity Rose Despite 90 Percent Negative Media Coverage in 2018. “Trump-Russia was still the top topic on ABC, CBS, and NBC.”
Despite or because?
Archive for 2019
January 15, 2019
AT AMAZON, on sale, Gerber GDC Money Clip w/ Built-in Fixed Blade Knife.
BETO SOON TO LAND COVETED VOX.COM ENDORSEMENT:
Throughout the two-hour interview — which was often interrupted by bystanders urging him to run for president — O’Rourke boomeranged between a bright-eyed hope that the United States will soon dramatically change its approach to a whole host of issues and a dismal suspicion that the country is now incapable of implementing sweeping change.
When asked which it is, O’Rourke paused.
“I’m hesitant to answer it because I really feel like it deserves its due, and I don’t want to give you a — actually, just selfishly, I don’t want a sound bite of it reported, but, yeah, I think that’s the question of the moment: Does this still work?” O’Rourke said. “Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?”
O’Rourke doesn’t yet know the answer, but he’s ready to discuss it.
I think what he means is that “The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.”
SHE’S JUST A POOR GIRL FROM A POOR FAMILY: A Virtue Signaling Nancy Pelosi Is STILL Receiving Pay When Federal Workers Aren’t, And Trump Wonders Why.
TRADE: Blood pressure drug recalls: FDA inspection reports reveal problems even before the cancer-causing impurities were found. “FDA inspections of factories in China and India that made carcinogen-tainted ingredients that forced dozens of recalls of blood pressure drugs in recent months show a history of problems. Drug companies recalled dozens of lots of the front-line blood pressure and heart medications valsartan, losartan and irbesartan – alone or in combination with other drugs – after testing revealed the drugs had cancer-causing impurities in trace amounts. The Food and Drug Administration is investigating the underlying causes of the impurities. The federal agency hasn’t completed its inquiry, but inspection reports reveal problems at both factories – Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical in China and Hetero Labs in India – before the carcinogen-tainted drugs were discovered.”
SATIRE… OR IS IT? Conservatives Selflessly Raise $12 Billion For Ginsburg Retirement Fund.
THE SUPREME COURT CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER TO DECIDE: Powerline reports that three petitions are pending before the Supreme Court on issues of whether the law covers various LGBT-related issues, but the Court keeps putting off deciding whether to take the cases. Does this signal something about Kavanaugh’s and/or Roberts’ willingness to take on controversial issues? Or are those who think so reading too much into the tealeaves?
The other LGBT-related issue that has thus far escaped the Supreme Court’s decision is whether Title IX requires schools to assign transgender students to the bathrooms, locker rooms, showers and athletic teams that they psychologically identify with. When Attorney General Sessions withdrew the Obama-Era guidance that said it does, the issue suddenly became less pressing. But that doesn’t mean the issue was resolved. The argument remains, and there are still private lawsuits and potential lawsuits out there. Pete Kirsanow and I argued that Title IX does not so require here.
LEON IS GETTING LARGER: You’re Not Getting Much Taller, America. But You Are Getting Bigger.
Meet the average American man. He weighs 198 pounds and stands 5 feet 9 inches tall. He has a 40-inch waist, and his body mass index is 29, at the high end of the “overweight” category.
The picture for the average woman? She is roughly 5 feet 4 inches tall, and weighs 171 pounds, with a 39-inch waist. Her B.M.I. is close to 30.
That’s a not at all how Americans used to look. New data show that both men and women gained a whopping 24 pounds on average from 1960 to 2002; through 2016, men gained an additional eight pounds, and women another seven pounds.
I wonder how much of this is influenced by immigration, given that we have a lot of immigrants from Mexico, where people are shorter, and where obesity is actually worse than the United States? The story breaks numbers down into black, white, and hispanic, but doesn’t say anything about changes in relative numbers, or distinguish between immigrants and native born. But they do say this about average height: “The decrease may result from an increasing population of Mexican-American men, whose average height in 2016 was 61.5 inches.”
J.E. DYER: The Real Deal With Steele, An Actual BOMBSHELL From House Testimony Of Lisa Page.
It is extraordinary to discover this next passage in Lisa Page’s testimony from 13 July 2018, when she was asked about the events of August 2016, and pressed as to whether she knew Steele was talking to Fusion GPS or others outside the FBI:
Rep.: “Were you aware that Christopher Steele had conversations or multiple conversations with Fusion GPS and others outside of just working special intel for you?”
Page: “As of August of 2016, I don’t know who Christopher Steele is. I don’t know that he’s an FBI source. I don’t know what he does. I have never heard of him in all of my life. So let me just sort of be clear. When the FBI first receives the reports that are known as the dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele’s handler in September of 2016 at that time, we do not know who—we don’t know why these reports have been generated. We don’t know for what purpose.”
With this response, Lisa Page seems to put in question the basic narrative about Steele’s longstanding value to the FBI.
It may undoubtedly be the case that in-house attorneys for the investigative branches of the DOJ and FBI don’t know the actual identities of all of the agencies’ confidential sources. But Steele was supposed to have been a particularly valuable source, on whom the U.S. agencies placed particular reliance. His expertise was in Russian government, business, organized crime affairs, and the nexus between them – the nexus, in other words, of the suspicions in both the UK (where Steele was hired as an investigator by the football association) and the U.S. that the World Cup venues for 2018 and 2022 had been selected through a bribery operation.
The FIFA case has explained throughout the Russiagate narrative Steele’s prominent role in the “Russia-Trump” investigation and the personal links and trust he had with the DOJ and FBI. The connections Steele provided insight on in working FIFA were ones with which Bruce Ohr’s office was familiar. And Lisa Page would have had at least some expert knowledge of them, given the background outlined for her in the Wired blurb, even if she didn’t perform dedicated work on the FIFA case during her time with Ohr.
So it seems quite curious that she had “never heard of Steele in all her life” before the cognizant CI officials at the FBI became aware of the Steele dossier in September 2016.
Much more at the link.
AT AMAZON, Winter Deals on Men’s Shoes.
NANNYSTATISM, ALL TOO LITERALLY: Oregon could become first state with universal home visits for families of all babies.
SLEEP HYGIENE IS IMPORTANT: Study: Less than six hours sleep per night increases risk for heart disease.
READINESS (OR LACK THEREOF): One-Third of Britain’s Air Force Can’t Fly.
“Figures unearthed by freedom of information campaigners show 142 of 434 of the air force’s planes have been sidelined,” said the British tabloid Daily Mirror .
Some planes and helicopters have been mothballed, while others are down for major maintenance. The problem spans numerous models, including the Royal Air Force’s flagship fighter, the Eurofighter Typhoon.
“Military top brass revealed 55 of the 156 Typhoon jets are in the RAF’s ‘sustainment fleet’ – and not in its ‘forward fleet’ ready to be deployed on operations,” the Mirror said. Even aircraft in the forward fleet, which should be available for operations, are down as “short-term unserviceable aircraft.”
In addition to the Typhoons, “five out of 20 Atlas A400M transport planes are in the sustainment fleet – despite the first of its type only being delivered in 2014,” said the Mirror.
Almost half of the RAF’s jet trainers are down. “Some 44 of 81 Hawk T1 jets – used by trainee fast jet pilots and the world famous Red Arrows [RAF aerobatics team] – are in storage or maintenance,” the Mirror said.
Glenn commented earlier about the USS Fitzgerald probe that “this is what a Third World navy looks like.”. Well, the RAF as a whole is looking more like a Third World military. Poorer nations are notorious for buying lots of shiny new equipment, which looks intimidating on parade, but then can’t afford the training, maintenance, and spares which turn men and equipment into an actual fighting force.
HEH: Women Need to Stop Being So Passive-Aggressive and Start Dueling. Actually, in the chapter I wrote on dueling for a forthcoming book on legal issues and the Hamilton musical, I have this footnote: “William Oliver Stevens, Pistols at Ten Paces: The Story of the Code of Honor in America 140 (1940) reports two instances of women dueling, one at a bridge in Buffalo, New York over causes unknown, and one in Georgia in 1817 over ‘the love of a swain.’ One girl was seriously wounded, ‘and the other carried off her beau in triumph to the bonds of matrimony.'”
GLENN GREENWALD: It’s Not the FBI’s Job to Criminalize Policy Differences.
When he’s right, he’s right.
IT DOES HAVE A LONG HISTORY OF POLITICIZED INCOMPETENCE: Joel Pollak: Time To Scrap The FBI And Start Over.
FROM THE COMMENTS ON MY USA TODAY COLUMN: “Reynolds is a modern day Cassandra. He’s dead on and no one’s listening.” Oh, some people are listening.
COCAINE MITCH: The Senate majority leader’s low-key shutdown strategy is working.
William McGurn:
In the received wisdom, because Mr. Trump infamously welcomed a shutdown in December’s televised and contentious Oval Office meeting with Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he gets all the blame for it. It’s only a matter of time, it follows, before skittish Republicans abandon him and he is forced to cry uncle. Naturally this is feeding regular news stories about “cracks” in the GOP coalition.
Enter Mr. McConnell. By making clear he won’t send up a bill the president won’t sign, the Kentucky Republican has empowered Mr. Trump while sparing his Senate GOP caucus the pressure that would come from the meaningless votes to reopen government that his Democratic counterpart, Mr. Schumer, is so desperate to have. It works even better because Mr. McConnell isn’t a grandstander.
Read the whole thing.
HMM: Facebook is committing hundreds of millions to local news.
Facebook says the project is meant to support local journalists and newsrooms with their news-gathering needs in the immediate future and help them build sustainable long-term business models, on and off its platform.
Roughly one-third of the money from the effort has already been allocated to local news non-profits and programs, as well as Facebook’s own local news initiatives.
Facebook says it’s investing heavily in local news, in particular, because having spent more time with local news publishers via its accelerator programs over the past year, the company believes it will have the biggest impact in those areas.
“I strongly believe that because smaller publishers don’t have the same resources as larger ones, this is really where we can have the most impact.”
Local news organizations ought to bear in mind that in the modern economy, once you take the Danegeld, you’ll never be rid of the Danes.
TRUMP TRIGGERS THE LEFTIST FOOD SCOLDS:
President Trump [yesterday] hosted the Clemson Tigers NCAA football championship team, and served them fast food in the Oval Office.
Trump really is a genius, because faster than you can say C. Everett Koop, a leftist was triggered. In this case it is David Roberts of Grist and Vox, who writes some really excellent energy articles on Vox, but suffers from an advanced case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
* * * * * * * *
Two observations. First, did Roberts or anyone else on the left react so indignantly when Bill Clinton ate conspicuously at McDonald’s when he was a candidate and then president? (And just why do you suppose he made such a public spectacle of eating Big Macs, eh? He wasn’t called “Bubba” for a deficient grasp of populism.)
Second, as a long-time McDonald’s stockholder, I’m happy with the twin dividends the Golden Arches provide me on a daily basis. It’s almost as good as owning Dow Chemical stock back in the good old days when they made napalm in large quantities.*
Heh. Not surprisingly, the Clemson players loved it, with offensive guard Matt Bockhorst tweeting, “I mean you’re not just gonna NOT eat the Big Macs stacked in a pile right?” And safety Nolan Turner adding, “One of the greatest buffet lines I’ve ever been through.”
Naturally, the DNC-MSM had the vapors in response. Whatever his myriad excesses, does Trump know how to play the left or what? Their meltdown over his serving a football team a stack of fast food hamburgers reminded me of Mark Steyn’s comments in his classic 2004 “Could Kerry slum it in the White House?” column in the London Telegraph, when John Kerry and John Edwards posed at the Newburgh, NY Wendy’s, but in reality served Ben Affleck and the DNC-MSM reporters on their bus food catered by the Newburgh Yacht Club:
During their triumphant 1939 tour of Canada, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth took a brief detour south of the border to visit the Roosevelts at Hyde Park. It was the first time a reigning monarch had set foot on American soil and, to mark the occasion, President and Mrs Roosevelt introduced the royal couple to a local delicacy called “hot dogs”.
There’s an important lesson there: an American president, even one as wealthy as FDR, is obligated to share the tastes of the people in a way that the House of Windsor is not, even today. Try to imagine the roles reversed: the Roosevelts at Windsor, and the King serving up jellied eels and mushy peas.
And that’s the problem with John Kerry: it’s not that he’s rich, but that he’s rich in a very un-American way. His swank has a European air about it.
When he eats a hot dog, it appears as foreign to him as it did to George VI.
Even though his regal lifestyle is funded by the enduring popularity of his wife’s hot dog condiment.
Twitchy notes that the Washington Post is swinging into “Zapruder-like analysis from The Post’s Philip Bump of all of the wire photos to determine just how many hamburgers were served at the event…Even worse? Bump fact-checked when Trump said, the burgers were ‘piled up a mile high’…Because what else could a Washington Post reporter be doing with his time?
Democracy dies in double-beef cheeseburgers.
CHANGE: Steve King Stripped of Committee Assignments by House Republicans. “Let us hope and pray earnestly that this action will lead to greater reflection and ultimately change on his part.”
IN THE MAIL: Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics.
