CHARLES HURT: Trump speech leaves Democrats befuddled, in ruins, with question marks.
As I noted in last night’s drunkblog, Trump is going after traditionally Democratic constituencies in way some of us on the right-leaning bloggers have been pushing for since George W. Bush’s first term.
IT’S LIKE THE FAILED OLD AGENDA ON STEROIDS: The Environmentalist Left’s New Agenda.
Indeed, as President Trump and GOP leaders breathe new life into the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, left-wing environmentalists are pushing their anti-fossil fuel “Keep it in the Ground” movement even further out of the mainstream with a proposal, called “The Solutions Project.”
Conceived by Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson and endorsed by McKibben and others, The Solutions Project is a plan to move America to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. McKibben offered glowing praise for the proposal in a recent op-ed, saying it comes “as close to winning this war [on climate change] as we could plausibly get.”
What McKibben and his allies fail to tell Americans is that Jacobson’s plan would totally devastate the U.S. economy to the tune of 4 million lost jobs, and would be a land grab the size of North Dakota, as a new AR2 white paper makes clear.
Jacobson buries these details deep in his long report and offers scant analysis or consideration of the costs. He casually notes the project will cost $14.6 trillion – or $429 billion per year if spent equally over the 34 years between now and 2050.
Insane.
But so long as there’s enough money and power concentrated in Washington, they’ll keep coming up with bigger and grander and more despotic schemes to impose on the entire country.
FORMER DEMOCRAT SENATOR BEN NELSON: ‘Adequate Vetting’ of Travelers Important ‘Even If You Make Some People Angry.’
HMM: Trump’s $54 billion defense budget increase isn’t what it seems. And Congress is mad.
The Trump administration billed the $603 billion budget as an increase of 10 percent or $54 billion, but that number is only in comparison to sequestration levels of $549 billion. Sequestration has not been triggered since 2013. President Obama’s 2017 budget request and 2018 plans both went over the sequestration limits and put the onus on Congress to pass a budget deal to avoid the cuts.
“The new administration claiming a 10 percent increase that’s really a 3 percent increase is fake budgeting,” said House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner. “Our military’s readiness has suffered immensely over the past 8 years due to stringent budget cuts. It is imperative we can make a real attempt to reverse dangerous trends in defense spending.”
Of course, getting a handle on how the Pentagon spends is just as important as how much the Pentagon spends.
UBER CEO: ‘I must fundamentally change and grow up’
Kalanick’s apology, also posted to Uber’s website, began, “By now I’m sure you’ve seen the video where I treated an Uber driver disrespectfully. To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement.”
The language then grows increasingly more melancholy, stating the incident “cannot be explained away.” It continued:
It’s clear this video is a reflection of me — and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.
It closed with Kalanick “profoundly” apologizing to Fawzi and the “driver and rider community” as a whole. The entire letter is posted below.
Such language from the CEO suggested the apology was inspired by more than simply the video. The past few months have not been kind to company.
Most of Uber’s wounds have been self-inflicted.
More:
People underestimate how big a change extremely cheap data storage and processing and communication at a distance have made.
No, mass production for some things is not going away, any more than agriculture went away. But it is going to shrink, products are going to become more customizable. And one size fits all government will be almost impossible, the further we get into that change.
I’ve talked about this, and the necessity to build under, build around, build over to take the weight of the structures that aren’t working.
But it wasn’t until this weekend and the conversations about last week that I GOT it. It’s not just government. If it were just government, it would be easy. But the same stick hitting politics is hitting EVERYTHING from Hollywood to your local grocery store.
Read the whole thing.
The Automation Revolution has been going on for a while now, but so far progress has been relatively slow and steady. The almost-impossible thing to understand is that for all the change and disruption we’ve undergone, we’re just now starting the big swoop where the graph turns all hockey stick.
DISRUPTING THE NARRATIVE: Hey Dems, Trump and the GOP Just Signed Bills to Help Women, Black Colleges.
KURT EICHENWALD: How Donald Trump is fueling ISIS.
IRAQI COMMANDER: ISIS leaders ‘running away’ from Mosul.
Who you gonna believe — Kurt or the Iraqi commander’s own lying eyes?
BECAUSE NOT EVEN EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA COULD KNOCK OUT MY LIVER: Drunkblogging Trump’s Alternative State of the Union.
YOU’LL TOTALLY BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT: A 27-year-old man with patchy facial hair decided to grow a beard.
Before you click the link, understand that this isn’t The Onion — it’s the New York Times.
I’M SURE GLENN DOESN’T WANT TO HEAR ONE MORE GODDAMN WORD ABOUT HIS CARBON FOOTPRINT: Leonardo DiCaprio flew eyebrow artist 7,500 miles to do his brows for the Oscars.
AUTOMATION: Ordering kiosks coming to 1,000 Wendy’s.
“They are looking to improve their automation and their labor costs, and this is a good way to do it,” said Darren Tristano, vice president with Technomic — a food-service research and consulting firm. “They are also trying to enhance the customer experience. Younger customers prefer to use a kiosk.”
Kiosks are also valued by the company for its ability to provide data about customers.
Wendy’s spokeswoman Heidi Schauer said higher-volume stores will get priority for the kiosks because demand for the technology is so high.
“This move puts them at the forefront of the kiosk and tech movement,” Tristano said.
Presumably they’ll cost less than $15 an hour to operate and won’t fall under the ObamaCare employer mandate.
They’ll also keep much closer tabs on customers’ buying habits.
PROGRESS: Kingston 2TB DataTraveler Ultimate GT Now Shipping As World’s Highest Capacity USB Flash Drive.
At $1,625, it isn’t cheap. But my first USB-capable computer cost almost twice that much (not adjusted for inflation), and came with a hard drive with one-one-hundredth the storage of Kingston’s little stick.
NANCY PELOSI: No ‘You lie!’ moments during Trump’s speech.
“I think we have to deal with this in the utmost dignity. We cannot become them; we don’t like what they did to our president,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday morning.
“We cannot be out-classed by Donald Trump, that would be the worst of all outcomes.”
Has Pelosi actually laid down the law, or was her plea merely for public consumption?
YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON TELEVISION! Trump Invites Victims of Illegal Immigrants to Congressional Address.
Did I mention you’ll be able to find me on the PJMedia home page this evening, drunkblogging tonight’s festivities?
NOAH ROTHMAN: The contrived campaign to make Chelsea Clinton a thing.
You might be surprised to learn that Clinton “takes down Trump” on Twitter on a regular basis, as Mashable helpfully informed its readership. In fact, Clinton is occupying a role that cannot be performed by either Hillary Clinton or even Michelle Obama: “a woman who doesn’t hold office but possesses both political power and the ability to speak forcefully about threats to American democracy.” The “political power” Clinton enjoys seems to have been conferred upon her exclusively by the reporters glowingly praising her snarky tweets.
Those tweets, by the way, are written entirely in her own voice. At least, that is the revelation provided to CNN by Clinton’s spokesperson. And it’s a “distinctive, sometimes sassy, voice America hasn’t heard before.”
Politico agreed. Chelsea Clinton’s tweets reveal “a spicy, sarcastic online personality” that contrasts mightily with “the uber-careful, wonky-like-her-mother” personality she cultivated on the 2016 campaign trail. Politico noted that Clinton has not “ruled out” a political career for herself, which is hardly a shock. Surely this barely concealed hagiographical coverage of what are a string of anodyne tweets softens up the beachhead.
If she runs, it won’t be Clinton’s connected handlers and the stories they place in influential news outlets that provide the next generation of Clintons with a national platform. It will be Clinton’s vaunted wit; the “spicy,” “sassy,” Casandra-like truth-teller the left needs so desperately in the age of Trump.
And it’s all about as genuine as her mother’s laugh.
TURNS OUT IT ACTUALLY DOES FEEL GOOD: Why do people swear?
TRUMP SLAMS PELOSI: ‘I think she’s incompetent, actually’
Incompetent, Actually might make for a charming holiday spoof.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My New Girlfriend Alexa.
THE NEW ANEMIA: U.S. GDP Advanced 1.9% in Final Quarter of 2016.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected an upward revision to a 2.1% growth rate.
The latest figures are a marked deceleration from the third quarter’s 3.5% pace, which had been the strongest reading in two years. They are, however, broadly in line with an economy that has, through ups and downs, settled at a roughly 2% growth pace since the recession ended.
The current expansion has endured for more than seven years, longer than the historical average, but its rate of growth has been the weakest since at least 1949.
Despite the low trajectory, GDP data from the end of 2016 and more recent indicators suggest the economy is on fairly solid footing as February comes to a close.
Tuesday’s report showed consumer spending, the main driver of the economy, was stronger than thought. Personal consumption expenditures were revised to a growth rate of 3%, compared with an earlier estimate of 2.5%.
3% spending growth isn’t sustainable for very long when the economy is growing a third slower than that.
BECAUSE THEY CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE: Dakota Access Protesters Leave Abandoned, Frost-Bitten Dogs.
DEMOGRAPHICS IS DESTINY: China considering offering financial incentives for second child.
YOU HAD ONE JOB: Tweeting accountant blamed for Oscar best picture blunder.
In a gaffe that stunned the Dolby Theatre crowd in Hollywood and a television audience worldwide, “[Accountant Brian] Cullinan mistakenly handed the back-up envelope for Actress in a Leading Role instead of the envelope for Best Picture” to Beatty and Dunaway, PwC said.
“Once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner.”
The Wall Street Journal and celebrity website TMZ.com reported that Cullinan had posted a backstage photo of actress Emma Stone on social network Twitter minutes before the mix-up.
The photo, from Cullinan’s Twitter account, was later deleted but was still viewable on Monday on a cached archive of the page. Cullinan could not immediately be reached for comment.
The mistake was not rectified until the “La La Land” cast and producers were on stage giving their acceptance speeches. It was left to the musical’s producer, Jordan Horowitz, to put things right.
“Guys, guys, I’m sorry. No. There’s a mistake,” Horowitz said. “‘Moonlight,’ you guys won best picture. This is not a joke.”
It took three hours for PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has been overseeing Academy Awards balloting for 83 years, initially to confirm that Beatty and Dunaway received the wrong category envelope.
PwC said it took full responsibility and apologized to the casts and crews of “La La Land” and “Moonlight.”
It’s easy enough to get distracted by Emma Stone, but that’s not what Cullinan was getting paid to do.
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