NARRATOR: NORTHAM IS STILL GOVERNOR, AND STILL HAS A 2-1 APPROVAL RATING AMONG VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS:

THE ISLAND FORMERLY KNOWN AS “SCHLEPROCK”:  The Tiny Island with its own Personal Cloud.

THE NEED OF SOME TO FIT EVERY CONTROVERSY INTO A “RACIAL” BOX APPROACHES A PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER: “Palestine” is a not a racial justice issue.

LIZ’S LIES: Senator Warren claimed that she listed herself in the minority section of the law school professor directory because she wanted to meet other professors with Native American heritage. That was a lie, because the directory didn’t specify that she is Native American, just a member of an unspecified “minority” group.

She also claimed that she never tried to use Native American heritage for career advantage. Another lie; Harvard boasted when it hired her that it hired a “woman of color,” and who else could have been the source of that information?  Plus, she mysteriously stopped listing herself as a “minority” law professor just after Harvard hired her.

Finally, she asserted that she had never claimed to be an American Indian. Strike three, as we know thanks to the the Washington Post today.

UPDATE: In fairness to Warren, I’ve seen many secondary sources stating that she never claimed to be an American Indian/Native American, but I nevertheless am not 100% sure she ever said that she’s never claimed to be an American Indian, as opposed to never claimed to be citizen of a tribe, or never claimed to be an Indian to help herself get a job. But you, like me, are probably having a hard time believing that she would put herself in the law school directory as a minority, and list herself as an American Indian on her bar registration card, but not let it be known to potential law school suitors that she was “woman of color” eligible for affirmative action.

FURTHER UPDATE: Warren claimed she never used her Native American heritage “for anything.” 

MORE SIGNS WE ARE DESCENDING INTO IDIOCRACY: Mary Poppins branded racist by US academic – for ‘blacking up’ in iconic sweeps’ rooftop scene.

SPEAKING OF OFFENSIVE PHOTOS OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS INDULGING RACISM:

I assume Northam’s photo was meant to be a joke, though in very poor taste. Obama is smiling, but I don’t think it’s a joke.

Meanwhile, the standards on past indiscretions confuse me. If we had had a picture of Ted Kennedy driving a car off a bridge and leaving his passenger to die while he planned a cover up, would he have had to resign?

SINCERE QUESTION: Sincere question: Did any of the experts who are now saying the “polar vortex” increasingly coming south is a result of climate change (in particular, polar ice melting due to warming) *predict* this would be a result of climate change before it happened? If so, it would give me much greater faith in their understanding of climate change. If not…

THE COMEY EFFECT HAS BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED: It seems to have become an article of faith among Democrats and progressives, even statistically-oriented ones like Nate Silver, that the Comey letter on Clinton’s emails, released on October 29, 2016, swung the election to Trump. Given how close the election was, almost any minor event could have swung the election. But the evidence that the letter had a significant effect, e.g., swinging the popular vote by 3 or 4 points isn’t there. Consider my Facebook post from Monday, October 30, 2016:

BUT IT WON’T STOP THE USUAL SUSPECTS FROM CLAIMING THAT ISRAEL IS USING “EXCESSIVE FORCE AGAINST CIVILIAN DEMONSTRATORS”: Examination of the list of fatalities in the “return marches” reveals that most of them are operatives of terrorist organizations, about half of whom affiliated with Hamas

WHO WOULD HAVE PREDICTED IN 1945 THAT THE UK’S LABOUR PARTY WOULD BE THE CLOSEST IDEOLOGICAL DESCENDANT OF THE NAZIS IN THE WEST? British t.v. presenter Rachel Riley describes the anti-Semitic abuse she’s encountered since publicly criticizing rampant Jew-hatred in Labour. Transcript here.

BECAUSE THEY NEED THERAPY: Conor Friedersdorf: This is How the Left Destroys Itself. Conor asks why so many on the left get caught up in politically counter-productive overreaction to the Covington kid. A lot of it is revenge fantasy against some obnoxious jerk from middle or high school. The “smirking” Covington kid (or Brett Kavanaugh before him) becomes a stand-in for the hated adolescent alpha, who probably was as bad as they remember. They couldn’t retaliate properly then, so they publicly join a twitter mob that fantasizes about committing violence, while engaging in doxxing designed to effectuate it. Of course, Nick Sandmann was not actually one’s high school tormentor, and getting caught up in this sort of psychological drama is a good way to alienate those who notice the gap between the vitriol and the evidence purportedly justifying it.

HEY! Want to get outraged over a video that’s not taken wildly out-of-context, involves people who are actually powerful, and, if that’s your cup of tea, still has a juvenile white male villain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kjpNyvw9Z84

There are some Americans out there who are actually *unhappy* when what normal people would think of as good news is revealed. They are upset and even in denial when it turns out  that a horrific gang rape at U. Va or by the Duke Lacrosse team never happened, or that a bunch of white kids didn’t surround and threaten a “Native American elder,” or that the Trayvon Martin case didn’t involve a white man shooting a black kid unprovoked, or that a deranged Israeli,  not a dangerous white supremacist cabal, was responsible for a series of bomb threats to Jewish institutions, because they want reinforcement for their worldview that demands that the U.S. be a dystopian hatefest. These are some of the worst people in the United States

I’ve found myself arguing on social media with seemingly otherwise intelligent people who claim that someone wearing a MAGA hat is properly seen as a “threat” and a supporter of “racial oppression” by many. I noted that (a) wearing a MAGA hat just means some combination of “I like Trump” and “I am patriotic,” which applies to about 43% of the population; (b) the kids from Covington High School may not have even meant that much, as they probably just picked up the hats as souvenirs on their DC school trip; (c) that almost a million of these hats have been sold, and reported acts of violence by people wearing the hats are non-existent or close to it. I’ve been told in return that “threat” doesn’t mean threat of physical or verbal abuse, though it’s not clear what it does mean. And that the subjective intent of even 99% of the wearers has nothing to do with whether the hat is properly seen as a symbol of racial oppression. Sigh.

WORST “DE-ESCALATION EXPERT” EVER: Susan Schorn: I’ve been avoiding chiming in on the Maga-hat-wearing larval Catholics. Because nothing says “de-escalation” like analogizing high school kids on one side of a public dispute to immature insects. The far left has become such a parody of itself, if it were a parody people would think it’s too unrealistic.

NETANYAHU’S STRATEGIC GENIUS?: After Chad ties restored, Israel set to host Mali’s PM in coming weeks.

I have lots of reservations about the Israeli PM, but credit where credit is due. He has a strategic vision for the country, which he has been pursuing relentlessly:

(1) Preserve and expand market reforms to increase Israel’s wealth, thereby making emgiration less attractive, and immigration more so. Since 2001, Israel has moved from number 40 in the world in per capita nominal income to 20th.

(2) Expand ties with Arab neighbors who have a common fear of Iran and a common impatience with Palestinian extremism and intransigence. Reports of not-so-secret secret meetings of Israeli officials with Arab officials from countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel are frequent (e.g.).

(3) Instead of relying on fair-weather friends in Europe, expand diplomatic ties with India, China, and, as in the headline above, African countries, including Muslim-majority countries.

(4) Very much under the radar (because there is no domestic political gain from doing so), take significant, expensive measures to integrate the Arab population of Israel into the economic mainstream, including aggressive civil service hiring, additional spending on infrastructure in Arab towns, and perhaps most important, significant steps taken to close the education and career prospects gap between Arab and Jewish residents of Israel. If successful, such steps will dampen irredentist and secessionist views within the Arab population.

Admittedly, some of Bibi’s successes have been more luck than skill–Trump beating Clinton, and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt were two very fortuitous events from his perspective. And he doesn’t seem to have any clue about what, if anything, can be done to alleviate the long-term conflict with the Palestinians, or how to stop the slide in Israel’s support among U.S. Democrats. But his successes shouldn’t be underestimated.

THE CAUSE THAT NEVER SHUTS UP: Michelle Alexander’s Call to “Break the Silence [on Palestine]” is New York Times’s Latest Israel Smear.

The op-ed pages of the Times, Washington Post, and other major media outlets are wide open to those on the ideological left who hate Israel regardless of whether, as in the case of Alexander, they have no particular expertise on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The media especially love the supposedly anguished “as a Jew” pieces, in which Jews, generally with no connection to the Jewish community and with no record of ever having been sympathetic to Israel, purportedly express anguish about how “as a Jew” they just can’t tolerate Israel’s alleged misbehavior anymore.

Do the Israel-haters even recognize the irony of constantly whining about about how their perspective is “silenced” from the op-ed pages of the world’s most influential newspapers?

RANDOM THOUGHT: The folks who worry about “toxic masculinity” tend to be the most gung-ho about giving women with gender dysphoria testosterone shots and fake penises. Hmmm.

THE IDIOCY OF MODERN IDENTITARIANISM SUMMED UP IN ONE STORY: Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Finds Its Maria, Anita, Bernardo & Chino.

“When we began this process a year ago, we announced that we would cast the roles of Maria, Anita, Bernardo, Chino and the Sharks with Latina and Latino actors. I’m so happy that we’ve assembled a cast that reflects the astonishing depth of talent in America’s multifaceted Hispanic community,” said Spielberg. “I am in awe of the sheer force of the talent of these young performers, and I believe they’ll bring a new and electrifying energy to a magnificent musical that’s more relevant than ever.” ….

“I am so thrilled to be playing the iconic role of Maria alongside this amazing cast,” said [Rachel]  Zegler. “West Side Story was the first musical I encountered with a Latina lead character. As a Colombian-American, I am humbled by the opportunity to play a role that means so much to the Hispanic community.”

Why do Puerto Rican characters in West Side Story need to be played by Latinos, but not Italian characters by people of Italian or (better yet, given the demographics of New York’s Italian community, specifically Sicilian) descent? Why is having a Colombian-American a politically-correct choice to play a Puerto Rican? What do Colombia and Puerto Rico have in common besides different dialects of the Spanish language? If you were trying to cast an Australian of 1960, would casting an English-speaking actor from the US, or India, be “authentic”? Isn’t kind of insulting to assume that all Spanish-speaking countries are interchangeable?

I’ve been working on a paper about legal definitions of race and ethnicity in the U.S., and the designation of “Hispanics” as non-white was not exactly historically inevitable. “Mexicans,” along with other Spanish-speaking peoples of the Americas, were usually considered to be legally white in the census and otherwise, though Mexicans were sometimes sent to segregated school thanks to local policy. When affirmative action programs started in the Sixties, “Chicano” (Mexican-American) groups lobbied for Mexican-Americans to be included as a “minority” group. Once Mexican-Americans were included, the category gradually expanded. First, it was anyone with a Spanish surname. But that proved overbroad, because many Italians have last names that sound Spanish, and many people of Hispanic descent do not. So eventually this morphed into “Latino” or Hispanic. But why, for example, an Argentine immigrant of Italian heritage is less “white” than a native-born American of Italian heritage is a mystery. Having lived in Peru, the irony of seeing like-skinned Latin Americans of mostly European origin who are generally contemptuous of darker-skinned Latin Americans suddenly becoming “people of color” eligible for minority preferences if they immigrate to the U.S. is something to behold.

But as Glenn might note, dividing people into artificial “races” creates extra opportunities for graft.

Oh, and while we’re at it, here is Zegler’s “racial” background:  “Her father is of Polish ancestry on his own father’s side, and of Irish, German, and Italian ancestry on his own mother’s. Rachel’s mother is of Colombian origin.” So do we give Spielberg only half-credit for finding an actor who at best is half-Hispanic? Why does anyone sane want to go down this rabbit-hole?

UPDATE: And speaking of double standards, friend read this and commented, “And why is it OK for almost none of the actors on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are Jewish in real life?”

WHAT WOULD BE RACIST WOULD BE GIVING HER HORRIFIC RECORD A PASS BECAUSE SHE’S BLACK: Jonathan Tobin: Opposing Honors for Angela Davis isn’t Racist: “Opposing honors for Angela Davis isn’t so much an indication of support for Israel or remembering the moral imperative of anti-Communism as it is as matter of public decency.”

A MODEST CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM: People keep informing me that I can’t claim that Angela Davis was involved in the criminal conspiracy that resulted in the murder of a judge because a jury acquitted her.

This reflects a common misconception that being “acquitted” in a criminal trial means that the defendant was found to be “innocent.” What it actually means is that the jury found that “the prosecutor failed to prove that the defendant was guilty (a) of the precise crime charged and (b) beyond a reasonable doubt.” (On (a), a prosecutor may, for example, have a slam-dunk case on negligent homicide, but decide for strategic reasons to only charge first degree murder, and fail to persuade the jury that the defendant met the specific criteria of that charge.)

It wouldn’t solve the entire problem, but I think it would help clarify things if instead of “guilty/not guilty,” the jury form provided for “proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime(s) charged”/”not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime(s)” charged/and “likely innocent of the crime(s) charged.”

Besides clarifying matters, it would be informative to the public and a prosecutor’s supervisor if a prosecutor more than very infrequently pursued prosecutions that resulted in “likely innocent” verdicts.

UPDATE: That whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing? That’s in the eyes of the law. If the jury acquits OJ, the government has to treat him as “innocent.” I, on the other hand, can conclude for my own purposes that he is 100% guilty based on the evidence presented.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Someone in Birmingham should respond to the Angela Davis controversy by endowing an award named after Judge Harold Haley, the judge murdered with firearms purchased by Davis.

UNLESS YOUR IDEA OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS BOLSHEVISM: Cathy Young: Sorry, Angela Davis is No One’s Human Rights Hero.

The Davis kerfuffle reminds me of when Davis came to speak at Brandeis when I was a student there. I got to ask the first question. She had given a rather moving account of she and her family being denied voting rights as black people in the Deep South, so I asked her why, given that history, she would join the Communist Party when that party deprives *everyone* of the right to vote when they take power. She skillfully avoided answering the question, but I heard through the grapevine that my question caused quite a stir in left-wing classes in sociology and whatnot, as students wondered why I would think that her American communism had anything to do with communism elsewhere. In other words, the leftist students were utterly ignorant of the widely-known fact that the USSR controlled the American Communist Party. From what I can tell, the current generation of leftist student activists are that much more ignorant about relevant matters, as incredibly insipid “intersectional” analysis substitutes for actual knowledge of history, economics, philosophy, and other forms of knowledge.

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO SUPPORT OUR PREFERRED NARRATIVE: New York Times: Angela Davis Says She’s ‘Stunned’ After Award Is Revoked Over Her Views on Israel.

Let’s get a few basic facts out of the way. Angela Davis was a long-time Soviet apologist (and VP candidate for the Soviet-controlled U.S. Communist Party) who was implicated in the murder of a  judge, though a jury failed to convict despite strong inculpatory evidence. She has never met an anti-American totalitarian dictatorship or terrorist group that she didn’t like.

In short, she likely belongs in prison as an accomplice to murder, and she certainly doesn’t deserve any awards.

An Alabama civil rights organization nevertheless planned to give her an award. Some members of the Jewish community, apparently, objected. With regard to Jews in particular, she has long been complicit in antiSemitism. As recounted in his book Chutzpah, when Alan Dershowitz, who worked on her legal defense, asked her to speak out on behalf of Soviet Jews imprisoned as dissidents, Davis responded that they were all “Zionist fascists” who deserved their fate. She also had a long “professional” association with radical black antiSemites such as Stokely Carmichael.

The New York Times, rather than recounting any of this relevant history, essentially publishes a Davis press release, suggesting that no one could possibly have any objections to her beyond her advocacy for “Palestinian rights.”

And the “mainstream media” wonders why a large segment of the American public doesn’t trust it.

YES, IT DID: Media Fabricated Narrative About Conservatives Mocking Ocasio Cortez Dance Video.

(Bumped, by Glenn).