ED MORRISSEY: Come on, man. “The party that spent sixteen years plotting the Clinton Restoration finds itself horrified by the fact that the DNC became a subsidiary of Bill and Hillary Inc?”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
November 3, 2017
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Would Happen If You Became Dark Matter?
HERE WE GO AGAIN? Dubious Hate Crime at Kansas State University Under Investigation.
KEEP DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: Saints in public feud with disabled veteran over anthem protests.
NANCY PELOSI: While Black Lives Matter, ‘White Lies Matter.’
LID BLOG: Immigrant Population Hits Record High And Growing Too Fast. “In July 2016 the immigrant population (foreign-born immigrants both legal and illegal) hit a record high of 43.7 million, by September of 2017 that number had climbed to a likely 45.6 million and there is no end in sight to the rising number. The rate of immigration into American is too high.”
This would be less of a problem if assimilation hadn’t been sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism. But even then, a nation would struggle mightily to maintain its cultural identity when one out of seven people is foreign-born.
ANOTHER BRICK FROM THE WALL: House Votes To Abolish Obamacare Board That Conservatives Called A ‘Death Panel.’
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: How Class Realignment Broke the Democrats.
I live in the bubble. Always have, even if I have come to disagree with what my college professors would call the “hegemonic discourse” of postmodern liberalism, and to gag at the vanity and solipsism of many of my fellow residents. But never, especially after the 2016 campaign, would I mistake the confines of the bubble for the whole of reality. That is the mistake Hillary Clinton made when she decided that she could win the presidency without the support of a white working class mangled by economic stagnation, family breakdown, and drug addiction. And it is the same mistake the Democrats at the Obama Foundation and on Capitol Hill are making now, in real time, as they wrap themselves in the illusions that growing minority populations will carry them ineluctably to power, and that identity politics is somehow an electoral winner.
As racially and sexually diverse as the crowd at the Obama Foundation summit may have been, everyone at the breakout session on “Who Narrates the World?” had, I’d wager, the following in common: a college or postgraduate degree, the mark of distinction and privilege and wealth in our society today. Yet most Americans do not possess such credentials, and live very different existences from those who do. Recently I asked an elections expert to describe the modern analogue to the “Dayton Housewife,” the prototypical swing voter of the late ’60s and ’70s behind the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. My friend told me the median voter is a believing Catholic woman with children who works part time, attends Mass sporadically, dropped out of college, lives in a household earning between $50,000 and $65,000 a year, votes in general election years, and resides in the Columbus exurbs.
Do you suppose that our hypothetical Westerville mom would write on a chalkboard that she hopes her son will be rescued from “toxic masculinity”? Or cares in the slightest about José Andres? She probably voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 because he talked a good game, has a nice family, and sympathized with the challenges of working people. But then Obama’s second term brought no real improvement in her prospects, and a lot of ancillary cultural and social upheaval besides.
I’d argue that the “cultural and social upheaval” was far from ancillary, but instead was the deciding factor in making enough Obama-to-Trump voters to tip the election. The Democrats could get away with disdaining or even hating white and/or male voters for so long before they went somewhere else.
FASTER, PLEASE: Syria says ISIS defeated in long fight for Deir el-Zour.
WITHOUT REMORSE: How Democrats Cheated Sanders and Lied About It.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Seven Ways Hollywood Can Recover from Its Worst Year Ever.
Better product, fewer creeps?
MORNING BRIEFING, TGIF EDITION: Donald, Donna, Jake, and much more.
BLUE STATE BLUES: Republican tax plan would hit Seattle, Eastside homebuyers dealing with pricey market.
Aspiring homeowners in the Seattle region, dealing with the hottest housing market in the country, would be hit especially hard by the new GOP tax plan unveiled Thursday.
The proposal would cap the federal mortgage-interest deduction at $500,000 for new-home purchases, down from the limit of $1 million. Basically, new homeowners would only be able to deduct the interest on the first $500,000 of their mortgage.
This won’t impact most Americans because they don’t own homes that expensive. But it’s a big deal locally, where the median single-family house selling today is worth $725,000 in Seattle and $855,000 on the Eastside.
Maybe Seattle should consider loosening restrictions on housing development.
CHINESE NAVY: Breakthrough to power most advanced jet launch system on China’s second home-grown aircraft carrier.
The development of the integrated propulsion system (IPS) would allow the vessel to be more efficient, allowing more power for an electromagnetic catapult, rather than a less technologically advanced steam-driven catapult launch system, the sources said.
China’s first two carriers, the Liaoning and its sister ship, the Type 001A, are conventionally powered vessels equipped with Soviet-designed ski-jump launch systems.
But an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) on the Type 002, China’s second home-grown aircraft carrier, would mean less wear and tear on the planes and allow more aircraft to be launched in a shorter time than the ski and steam-catapult systems.
According to a source close to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s Central Military Commission was keen to use EMALS on the Type 002.
“[But] the obstacle … was whether a conventionally powered carrier would be able to support EMALS, and now that problem has been solved,” the person, who is close to the PLA’s equipment department, told the South China Morning Post.
Beijing has been patiently developing the technologies, skills, and naval traditions required to become a first-rate seapower. Getting EMALS without nuclear propulsion is an impressive achievement, if it really works.
TYLER O’NEIL: ‘A Wave of Eco-Terrorism Against the Trump Administration.’
It isn’t terrorism when they do it; it’s social justice.
IT’S THE PEOPLE WHO COUNT THE VOTES: How Venezuela Fell Victim to ‘Clear Manipulation’ in Election.
“This is illegal,” said Luciano Mendoza, the election supervisor, who showed The Wall Street Journal the voting-machine receipts that counted just a third as many votes from the hamlet as reported by electoral authorities later. “They say they bring justice, but instead they commit fraud.”
Mr. Pérez’s evidence prompted opposition officials in Ciudad Bolívar to make more comparisons of voting receipts to an official tally on the National Electoral Council’s website. All told, in records reviewed by the Journal, they discovered that more than 2,500 votes were added statewide, flipping the winner of the Bolívar state election from the opposition candidate—briefly listed as the winner on the Electoral Council’s website—to the government choice. The declared winner, Justo Noguera, a National Guard general who never held political office from outside the state, took office two days later in a surprise midnight ceremony.
“There’s clear manipulation here,” said Luis Lander, director of the Venezuelan Electoral Observatory, a nonpartisan group in Caracas that tracks elections after he examined voting-machine receipts that the opposition alliance posted online. “The results were altered to allow the losing candidate to be declared the winner.”
Wreckers, hoarders, saboteurs, Trotskyites, kulaks, Yankee Imperialists, counterrevolutionaries, and (of course) Jews are to blame.
OPEN A NEW CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT, HAL: Amazon’s Alexa now knows your credit score.
The credit agency Experian EXPN, +1.02% announced this week that Amazon’s AMZN, -0.86% Alexa devices have a new “skill” — telling people their FICO credit score, a version of the score named for the Fair Isaac Corporation. Customers can also use voice commands to ask what behaviors are helping or hurting their score and how much outstanding debt they have.
“Consumers use Alexa daily to check the weather, manage bank accounts, play music and more,” said Guy Abramo, the president of consumer business at Experian, in a statement. “It’s natural to incorporate another important element — credit services.”
What could possibly go wrong?
November 2, 2017
THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE PREMISE FOR AN OVER-THE-TOP TOKYO ACTION FLICK: Melania Trump to be protected by special all-female Japanese police squad.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Sayfullo Saipov, Winner of Chuck Schumer’s Diversity Lottery.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Study shows humans love dogs more than other people.
NOT THE TV SHOW: New Map of Dark Matter Puts the Big Bang Theory on Trial.
A new cosmic map was unveiled in August, plotting where the mysterious substance called dark matter is clumped across the universe. To immense relief — and frustration — the map is just what scientists had expected. The distribution of dark matter agrees with our current understanding of a universe born with certain properties in a Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.
But for all the map’s confirmatory power, it still tells us little about the true identity of dark matter, which acts as an invisible scaffold for galaxies and cosmic structure. It also does not explain an even bigger factor shaping the cosmos, known as dark energy, an enigmatic force seemingly pushing the universe apart at ever greater speeds. Tantalizingly, however, a small discrepancy between the new findings and previous observations of the early universe might just crack open the door for new physics.
That’s the intro to a fascinating interview with three of the scientists who created the new map.