THE TWO-MINUTE HATE: Flashback to crowd booing George W. Bush at Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009:
As Joel Engel tweets, “Bush and Cheney going to see Hamilton in 2009.”
Archive for 2016
November 20, 2016
THIS WAS UTTERLY PREDICTABLE: Obama refuses to say he’d hold to the tradition of avoiding public comment or political attacks on Trump, once out of office.
In his heart of hearts, Obama is an MSNBC anchor, and is narcissistically in love with the sound of own voice, and his deep, deep Vox-like worldview. There’s no way he won’t be out of the limelight once he’s left office. Not having a Democrat succeeding him, he’ll soon be free to explore his destiny.
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CRACKS AMONG THE CULTURATI?“‘Politics is downstream from culture,’ Andrew Breitbart liked to argue, and given the near-monopoly of the left on America’s cultural scene (Hamilton hecklers anyone?), the ballot box is the only place where the American people get to fight back. So it is worth taking in instances when the cultural world seems to get it, like this sketch on Saturday Night Live last night about the liberal ‘bubble.'”
“The Bubble is a planned community of likeminded freethinkers. And no one else.”
WHEN THAT HAPPENS, THE PRESS USUALLY JUST DOESN’T MENTION THE RACE OF THE OFFICER: Study: Black police officers more likely than white officers to shoot blacks.
Just as in the indefensible Philando Castile shooting, they ignore that the officer in question is a Latino. Because narrative.
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MY BOTS WILL CALL YOUR BOTS: New Chrome Extension Automatically Negotiates With Comcast For Rate Discounts.
WITH THE REACTIONLESS THRUSTER STARTING TO LOOK KINDA REAL, IS THIS NEXT? The Artificial Induction Of Space Warp. Well, I’m not so sure. But we can hope.
BRENDAN O’NEILL: Best Thing About Trump’s Win? America Called Bullshit on the Cult of Clinton. “By the Cult of Hillary Clinton, I don’t mean the nearly 62 million Americans who voted for her. I have not one doubt that they are as mixed and normal a bag of people as the Trumpites are. No, I mean the Hillary machine—the celebs and activists and hacks who were so devoted to getting her elected and who have spent the past week sobbing and moaning over her loss. These people exhibit cult-like behavior far more than any Trump cheerer I’ve come across. . . . It’s all incredibly revealing. What it points to is a mainstream, Democratic left that is so bereft of ideas and so disconnected from everyday people that it ends up pursuing an utterly substance-free politics of emotion and feeling and doesn’t even realize it’s doing it. They are good, everyone else is bad; they are light itself, everyone else is darkness; and so no self-awareness can exist and no self-criticism can be entertained. Not for even one second, in Heffernan’s words. The Cult of Hillary Clinton is the clearest manifestation yet of the 21st-century problem of life in the political echo chamber.”
SUSAN GOLDBERG: ‘Hamilton’ Star’s Plea to Pence Highlights Liberals’ Screwy Notion of Presidency.
If our founding fathers, so lovingly portrayed in the Broadway musical, were to hear such a plea spoken to a newly elected member of the executive branch, they’d most likely do a double-take and wonder if they were still in America. The presidency was never supposed to be an absolute monarchy ruled by a leader from which the people beg benevolence. In fact, precisely because of our ugly relationship to England’s monarch, the founders established a government that would grant the least amount of power possible to one single person.
I guess the presidential oath isn’t in the script. Here’s a little refresher: The incoming president swears to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” (Emphasis mine.) The entire cast and audience of Friday night’s performance conveniently forgot that fact when pleading for mercy. Perhaps that is because Democrat administrations starting with F.D.R. and culminating with Barack Obama have manipulated the media and the law to give the presidency the regal image and legal authority the founders, most notably President George Washington, despised and rejected.
Read the whole thing.
STEPHEN L. CARTER: Judge Jeff Sessions By What He Does Next.
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Millennial Tantrums Signal a Huge Boomer Parenting Fail.
OH, YOU THOUGHT A BREAKDOWN IN CIVILITY AND DECORUM WOULDN’T AFFECT YOU? Trump Supporter Disrupts Chicago ‘Hamilton’ Performance, Makes Actors Cry.
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KEEP CRYING WOLF ABOUT TRUMP, AND NO ONE WILL LISTEN WHEN THERE’S A REAL CRISIS, Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post:
Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds’ characterization of reporters as “Democratic operatives with bylines” is taking root in the American mind. Among independents, according to Gallup in September, the media had an approval rating of 30 percent; among Republicans 14. Almost everyone but Democrats think the media are biased, and support for that view goes way back.
In November 2008, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said readers who complained about shallow coverage and pro-Obama bias were “right on both counts,” publishing tallies that proved the paper had been far more critical of Obama’s opponent Sen. John McCain than of Obama. A few weeks later, “Game Change” co-author Mark Halperin said the media showed “extreme pro-Obama coverage” in a “disgusting failure.”
In 2012, The New York Times’ public editor Arthur Brisbane said the paper “basked a bit in the warm glow of Mr. Obama’s election in 2008” and cited a study that showed the Times’ coverage had been far more approving of Obama than it had been of President Reagan and both Presidents Bush.
In January 2008, NBC’s Brian Williams was honest enough to point out that the network’s reporter covering Obama had said, “It’s hard to be objective covering this guy.” Williams immediately demanded the reporter be fired for admitting to being unable to do his job.
Just kidding: Williams praised the reporter, calling him “courageous.”
In 2016, the media didn’t even pretend it wasn’t working in Hillary Clinton’s interests.
Read the whole thing.
SPACE: EmDrive: Nasa Eagleworks peer-reviewed paper finally published by AIAA saying it works. “Similar to an early draft of the paper that was leaked onto the Nasa Spaceflight forum earlier this month by Australian fan Phil Wilson, the published paper reveals that Nasa Eagleworks did indeed build a drive that generated 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt of thrust in a vacuum. Of course, this amount of thrust is incredibly low, but the scientists said that they were more concerned about trying to prove that the device worked at all.”
If it works, we can probably increase the thrust. And even small thrust is a big deal when it’s created reactionlessly. If this pans out — and it’s looking better and better — this will be what our era is remembered for, not our elections.
DEBRA SAUNDERS: She pulls no punches in this essay: “‘Sanctuary’ means career criminals can run and hide.”
Donald Trump understood something that many Washington insiders missed. Many Americans and some naturalized citizens bristle at elected officials constantly defending the rights of non-Americans to migrate here illegally — and to be rewarded for breaking the law with a path to citizenship. Toward that end, and in deference to his campaign promises, Trump seems primed to deport undocumented immigrants and withhold some federal funds from sanctuary cities like San Francisco.
Trump has dispensed with some of his magical thinking. For example, Trump has ditched his one-time (but impossible to fulfill) promise to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Now he says he would focus on 2 million or more undocumented immigrants with criminal histories. That is, his focus now is on mainstream ideas that the news media can brand as extreme only at the peril of their credibility.
Yes, he’s setting a trap.
More:
There is also a principle involved here. “As a lawyer for 60 years and a judge for 10,” Superior Court Judge Quentin Kopp recently told me, “I’m a believer in the law. That’s why I don’t understand accepting, much less rewarding, disregard of the law.” That’s a pretty basic belief.
Ouch. Remember, Deb Saunders writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. She’s witnessed sanctuary city hell first hand. Read the entire essay.
PHOTO GALLERY: Cruising Van Nuys Boulevard In The Summer Of ’72. The last year of a golden age that I missed out on, both temporally and geographically.
