Author Archive: Stephen Green

ANALYSIS: HALF-TRUE. Complaining About the ‘Senate Popular Vote?’ You Suffer From Civic Illiteracy.

As Will Collier pointed out on Twitter the other day, Ezra Klein floated this trial balloon as a mythical “House popular vote,” and it was quickly picked up across the Journolist spectrum. Er, journalist.

These folks aren’t civic illiterates, but they are counting on their readers to be just that — with the apparent goal of further sullying Constitutional rule of law.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Fight Against Last Vestige of ISIS in Syria Stalls, to Dismay of U.S.

Booby traps, land mines and a militant counterstrike during a fierce sandstorm after the campaign began in September have knocked the coalition back on its heels.

And last week, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led militia that is fighting the Islamic State with American help, suspended operations after Kurdish positions farther north were shelled by Turkey — not far from United States advisers.

American diplomats and generals rushed to ease tensions with the Turks, who consider Kurdish fighters terrorists despite their partnership with the United States.

But the episode underscores the shifting nature of the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, a still-potent threat as it pivots from its battlefield losses in Iraq and Syria to directing guerrilla insurgencies in the Middle East and beyond.

Trump made remarkable progress against ISIS almost from the moment he was sworn in, but the terror group was given ample opportunity to grow and dig in under Obama.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Orange Man Says ‘Bye’ to Sessions, Acosta and Much, Much More. “At The Borderline Bar and Grill, Thursday night is ‘country nights.’ Make of that what you will. ‘The gunman was throwing smoke grenades all over the place,’ a different witness told KABC. ‘I saw him point to the back of the cash register … and he just kept firing. I ran out the front door’.”

WELL: Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury.’

Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed plans for House Democrats to investigate and impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh for alleged perjury and investigate and impeach President Donald Trump for alleged treasonous collusion with Russia.

In post-election chats with various callers while riding the Acela train from New York to Washington, Nadler gave advice to a newly elected representative and discussed potential 2020 Democratic presidential nominees with another. He also lamented identity politics and the thriving economy and worried about Democrats losing working-class voters while gaining elite former Republicans and suburban women.

Nadler was headed to DC for a two-day planning session with his staff and Judiciary Committee staff. “We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing,” he explained in a phone call with a friend. Nadler requested that the friend’s name be concealed on the grounds he is a private citizen.

The two discussed two routes for investigating new Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.

The Kamikaze Wing is in charge and they haven’t even been sworn in yet.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: We Are Never, Ever, Ever, Campaigning Together and Much, Much More. “What a night. I slept in 20 minute increments most of the night/morning but I caught the most shocking part of the election live because it happened early: Fox News made a call that the Democrats won the House around 9pmET. WHY? How many people were still voting? At the very least the west coast voters were still going to the polls. At the time, the Democrats had only picked up 2 seats, can you imagine hearing that on your way to the polls if you live west of New York City? What a horrible, horrible decision FNC, shame on you. Rumor is the never-Trumpers run the news division at the network. Indeed.”

JOHN ELLIS: The Left Is Normalizing Hatred. “It’s frightening that it’s okay for women to write articles about how they hate men.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Good Election Day morning. “A reporter in Michigan called and left a voicemail for GOP Senate candidate John James and thought she had hung up the phone when the voicemail recorded her saying ‘fucking John James … that would suck.’ She’s been fired. ‘I have listened to the voicemail left by Brenda Battel to Mr. James’ campaign, and find no reason to defend this behavior,’ Huron Daily Tribune editor Kate Hessling said in a statement. ‘Brenda Battel’s employment has been immediately terminated.’ Now James is black and if he had been a Democrat, this woman would have to go into hiding or leave the country after the SJWs got done with her. We’d be talking about it and university classes would be designed around this hate incident. Alas.”

AS GLENN WAS SAYING, THEY DO SEEM LIKE AN EMOTIONALLY FRAGILE BUNCH: NYT Makes Changes To Election Needle So Readers Won’t Get Upset.

The NYT is working to avoid triggering panic attacks among people who felt the election needle duped them into believing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would easily win. The needle supposedly created confusion between real-life election data and flawed predictive polling.

“Until we get a sufficient sampling of early results to make that model meaningful, we won’t even surface the needle,” Managing Editor Joe Kahn told Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo Monday. There will now be two needles – one for the House and one for the Senate – and neither will be placed high up on the front page, he said.

“People have expressed a concern that even though our real-time election model is extremely valuable, that despite that, we should still be very cautious about featuring the needle prominently in our coverage on Election Night—not because we’re not confident in it, but because certain readers may have a nervous reaction to the re-introduction of the needle,” he added.

I’ve noticed a lot more pre-election, pre-excuse-mongering from the Left in just the last few days — but I’m still not getting cocky.

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? Google wants to improve your smart home with iRobot’s room maps. “Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. The two companies say the aim is to make smart homes ‘more thoughtful’ by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes.”

For what it’s worth, I have a non-WiFi-enabled Neato Botvac and have been quite happy with it.