Archive for 2019
November 4, 2019
THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITY FAIR: Emo, Childish Beto Supporters Think He Got ‘Punitive’ Media Coverage.
As I wrote a few hours before Beto kick-turned his skateboard out of the race, this is why a media that largely consists of Democratic Party operatives with bylines hurts their candidates. In the mid-1920s, H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” And a decent politician knew how to rise above that coverage. Today, anything less than glowing 5,000 word profiles to accompany Reagan-esque Vanity Fair covers by Annie Leibovitz (as Jon Gabriel noted last week at Ricochet, the source of our headline) is considered “punitive” media coverage.
Related: ABC’s Joy Behar Says Beto Shouldn’t Have Warned Americans He Was Going To Take Their Guns. “‘They should not tell everything they’re going to do,’ Behar jumped in then, suggesting that candidates shouldn’t warn Americans the gun confiscation was coming. ‘If you are going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected and then take them away. Don’t tell them ahead of time.’ [Meghan] McCain pushed back, adding, ‘By the way, that’s what people like me think you’re going to do, so I appreciate his honesty.’”
HOME DEFENSE: Pregnant Florida mom uses AR-15 to kill home intruder.
PARTY TIME, IRANIAN STYLE: Iran announces nuke deal violations 40 years after U.S. Embassy takeover, hostage crisis.
JOHN DURHAM: THE LAST TRUSTED PROSECUTOR IN WASHINGTON.
From all this, we can surmise a few things about Durham’s ongoing investigation into the launch of the probe of Donald Trump and his potential connections to Russia during the 2016 campaign. Durham will not speak to the press at all until he is done, and probably not even then. He and his team are extremely unlikely to leak. He is not afraid to reach conclusions that will disappoint or frustrate Attorney General Barr or President Trump. He will not be rushed; there is no guarantee that Durham will reach any prosecutorial decisions before the 2020 elections. And he will investigate so extensively and thoroughly that no reasonable observer will be able to argue that something important was missed. As Sullivan describes Durham, “He will be in constant pursuit of the truth and the facts and the evidence. John doesn’t take days off. He is methodical, but he is always working.”
If Durham chooses to bring charges against any official who launched the Trump probe, history suggests he is extremely likely to persuade a jury to convict the accused and sustain those convictions upon appeal. And if he does not bring charges, it is extremely unlikely that any other prosecutor could have succeeded; regardless of what the official did, the evidence would not be there to convict or sustain a conviction.
John Durham’s career is full of big, high-stakes, politically charged cases, but this one is the biggest, highest-stakes, and most politically charged of all. Luckily, it seems like his whole life has prepared him for this moment.
Read the whole thing.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): No, Ted Cruz Is Not an Anti-Science Bigot for Opposing Trans ‘Treatments’ For 7-Year-Old Boy.
Chemically and surgically altering a seven-year-old because “science.”
AMERICAN DECLINE, ILLUSTRATED IN ONE MAN’S LIFE: A Retired JPL Engineer’s Journey: From Space Probes to Carbon-Neutral Farming.
THIS IS CNN: Serious Journalist Brian Stelter Investigates Trump’s Twitter Typos.
And that’s not even the dumbest thing Stelter did this weekend. He also lashed out at Trump’s claim that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “whimpered and cried” before blowing himself up. Stelter is demanding proof. He hates Trump so much that now he’s defending the honor of a dead terrorist.
To be fair, that last item is pretty on-brand for CNN.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for November 4, 2019. “Beto goes bye bye, sticker shock sets in for Warren, Grandpa Simpson forgets which state he’s in (again), and a failing Harris goes all-in on Iowa.”
UGH. GO AWAY. Slow rise in flu cases seen as season ramps up.
SCOOP: CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears. “These close connections between the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and people connected to U.S. and U.K. intelligence raise grave concerns about the deep state using media to push propaganda.”
The concerns aren’t new, but the evidence for them sure is coming in hot and heavy.
AS LONG AS IT’S FOLLOWED BY PLENTY OF LONG DROPS AFTERWARDS: Yazidi woman who was held as a sex slave by ISIS calls for all of the captured jihadists to be tried like the Nazis were at Nuremberg.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Bureaucrats’ Hurt Feelings On Foreign Policy Don’t Justify Impeachment.
You see, it’s perfectly fine for Hillary Clinton to use her campaign funds to hire foreign national Christopher Steele to investigate Trump using (probably made-up) Russian sources. And there’s nothing wrong with the FBI using those partisan Steele smears to investigate the Obama administration’s political opponent.
Crossfire Hurricane, the official operational title for the investigation, employed assistance from the British government and an Australian diplomat. So the left believes there’s nothing wrong with asking a foreign government for help to investigate a domestic political opponent — so long as that opponent is Trump. After all, “Nobody is above the law, not even Donald Trump.” But if the shoe ends up on the other foot and Trump is the one investigating, it’s a constitutional crisis!
If you listen for more than a few minutes, you realize what’s really going on here is that Trump failed to prostrate himself before the “dedicated career professionals” who possess the “experience and expertise” that Trump supposedly lacks in foreign policy. Read your Constitution. Article II vests the power of foreign policy in the elected president. These “dedicated career professionals” aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution.
Maybe the framers made a drafting error in the Constitution? Or maybe we shouldn’t have a national impeachment circus over the hurt feelings of bureaucrats.
To me, the fuss indicates that this is over much more than “hurt feelings,” but actual criminal activity at risk of exposure.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”
ADRIANA COHEN: Stick a fork in Liz Warren, Medicare-for-All has cooked her.
CALIFORNIA’S ROAD DIET COMES TO BOSTON: Bike wars: West Roxbury pushes back at City Hall’s bike lane ‘road diet.’
Frustrated West Roxbury residents and business owners are pushing back against City Hall’s relentless bike lane agenda, saying the “road diet” that is chopping car lanes out of Centre Street will starve neighborhood businesses.
“It really comes to a matter of survival for businesses in West Roxbury,” said Jim Hennigan of James W. Hennigan Insurance Agency in the neighborhood’s business district. “This just comes down to common sense — people like to shop locally in West Roxbury, but if you can’t get into it, people are going to go somewhere else.”
Why, that’s crazy talk right there — at least to the ears of the Bike Path Left.
Flashback: L.A. Is Creating Traffic Jams to Push Commuters to Ride Bikes and Rail.
“LEARN TO CODE”: Warren Suggests Laid Off Health Insurance Workers Sell Auto or Life Insurance Instead.
Because under the Warren plan, there’s suddenly going to be much greater demand for life insurance?
IN THE MAIL: Atomic Habits.
RONAN FARROW WANTS TO REVISIT JUANITA BROADDRICK’S “CREDIBLE” ACCUSATIONS AGAINST BILL CLINTON: Is It Time to Cancel Bill Clinton? “Let’s not forget the Left’s famous excuse for Clinton during his impeachment: ‘Everyone lies about sex.’ At one time or another, sure, of course, especially in high school. But hardly anyone lies about sex as President of the United States while under oath because decades of sexual misadventures landed them in a years’-long sexual harassment suit. In fact, I can pretty much only think of just the one.”
Read the whole thing, if you don’t mind me saying so myself.
DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Latest Developments In The Dan Markel Murder Case.
DARK MONEY: Soros Sends Last-Minute Cash to Virginia Prosecutor Candidates. “Liberal billionaire bids to reshape state’s criminal justice system.”
Previously: Democrats Launch Effort to Win 2020 Election… in Court.