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FEBRUARY 23,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:41 P.M. ET: 

AN ENDORSEMENT? – FROM THE HILL:   President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is “very easy to get along with,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday, according to the Associated Press.  “I’ve worked with him and I think he’s very easy to get along with,” she said during an appearance at George Washington University. “He writes very well.”  Ginsburg, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton and assumed her seat on the court in 1993, said she met Gorsuch during a trip to the United Kingdom years ago.  Gorsuch, a conservative federal judge on the Colorado-based Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, was tapped by Trump earlier this month to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last year.  I don't know if that's an endorsement or just a passing compliment.  Judge Gorsuch, assuming confirmation, will take Justice Scalia's place.  Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg were close friends, despite their deep philosophical differences.  Maybe there's another friendship brewing.

MAYBE SWEDEN IS IN TROUBLE AFTER ALL – FROM FOX:   Now this is what you call workplace innovation.  A Swedish politician is pushing to give employees an hour-long paid break to go home and have sex.  Per Erik Muskos, a member of the Swedish Social Democrat party, made the proposal during a council meeting in the northern city of Overtornea.  Mr Muskos said he’s backing the measure because he believes midweek sex breaks will improve wellness and boost childbirth in the northern region he represents.  “Childbirth should be encouraged,” he told the Stockholm-based newspaper Aftonbladet.  “When sex is also an excellent form of exercise with documented positive effects on wellbeing, the municipality should kill two birds with one stone and encourage employees to use their fitness hour to go home and have sex with their partner.”  When President Trump suggested last week that Sweden had a serious crime problem because of its immigration policies, he was mightily criticized.  Then came a major riot in a Swedish suburb, and now this, uh, proposal.  Sweden used to be the land of technical innovation and Ingrid Bergman.  Standards have slipped. 

THEY'RE NUTS – FROM THE HILL:   A group of voters in France is urging former President Obama to run in the French presidential election this spring.  “At a time when France is about to vote massively for the extreme right, we can still give a lesson of democracy to the planet by electing a French President, a foreigner,” the French website for “OBAMA17” reads, ABC News first reported on Thursday.  "[It’s] because he has the best resume in the world,” the site, which is not connected with Obama, continues.  ABC said OBAMA17 posters have been spotted across Paris, and the group’s website has a petition begging Obama to enter the race.  The group is jockeying for 1 million signatures, even though Obama is not French and France requires its presidential candidates to be natives.  Just what Obama needs, another birther issue.  Just what France needs, another screwup president.  Can't we all get along?

February 23, 2017       Permalink

THE CHAIRMAN? – AT 11:12 A.M. ET:   The Democrats will meet this weekend to choose a new party chairman.  The candidates debated last night on CNN.  Their debate proved that we need emergency federal funding to fight mental illness. 

The presumed leader in the race is Bernie Sanders supporter Keith Ellison, a black and Muslim congressman from Minnesota who spent some serious time in Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam before "renouncing" it.  (He was for it before he was against it.)   Several years ago Ellison demonstrated his intellectual chops in a TV interview by informing us that Germany had attacked Pearl Harbor.  Imagine how I felt having thought all those years that it had been Japan.  I wish I'd had a better education.

Now the probable Democratic chairman tells us that President Trump is already ripe for impeachment.  From the New York Post: 

President Trump has done enough already to justify him getting booted out of office, according to a leading candidate to be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.

“I think that Donald Trump has already done a number of things which legitimately raise the question of impeachment,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said Wednesday on CNN.

“On day one, he was in violation of the emoluments clause. This is a part of the Constitution that says as president, you can’t get payments from a foreign power,” Ellison continued after the CNN audience, assembled for a debate between prospective DNC chairs, broke into applause.

“The day people checked into his hotel and started paying him, who were foreign dignitaries, he was in violation of that law. There’s already a lawsuit filed against him. And right now, it’s about only Donald Trump. It is about the integrity of the presidency,” said Ellison.

Another candidate for DNC top boss, former Fox News analyst Jehmu Greene, agreed.

COMMENT:  I guess that's where the Dems are today.  They certainly have learned much from the election.  Losing the presidency, both houses of Congress, most governorships, and most state legislatures just haven't convinced them that they're on a losing streak.  Just little bumps.  Maybe some miscounted ballots.  Nothing to see, nothing to see.

Or maybe Keith is just auditioning for Comedy Central.

February 23, 2017       Permalink

ABSURD – AT 10:51 A.M. ET:  Apropos of our post just below, there is news of a proposal at the University of Michigan that defines the very culture of too many campuses.  From College Fix:

A student activist group at the University of Michigan is demanding campus officials provide them with “a permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work.”

The demand is one of several lodged by “Students4Justice,” who this month ratcheted up campus demonstrations to pressure administrators to cave, complaining in a newly launched petition that President Mark Schlissel has snubbed their demands.

The clamor for a segregated space for students of color to organize social justice efforts comes even as the public university builds a $10 million center for black students in the center of campus.

In their demands, students explain why the new black student center is not enough, “because we want a space solely dedicated to community organizing and social justice work specifically for people of color.”

“We want documentation of past, current, and future student activism and this should be a permanent space that is staffed, and has resources for students to organize and share resources,” the demand letter states.

Leaders of “Students4Justice” did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment. Campus spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told The Fix that at “this point, our colleagues in Student Life have been working with the Students4Justice leaders to better understand their concerns. This is our normal process.”

COMMENT:  I have a better idea.  How about studying physics, chemistry, math, and engineering.  Why do I think that might result in a better society than all the "movements" and "social justice centers" combined?  Because I look around and see what works, and who's doing what works. 

The fact is that people of color, from southern Asia, get off planes at American airports every day and get great jobs at high salaries.  Why?  Because they've studied what we need.  Because they're focused.  Because they spend more time honing their expertise than marching in demonstrations.  Because they understand that one of the greatest antidotes to poverty and racism is being needed, not demanding more "programs."

But that's a tough lesson to sell on campuses dominated by the socialist left, and worse.

February 23,  2017     Permalink

WONDERFUL – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:40 A.M. ET:  Educators these days are not known for bravery.  They often wilt before their own students.  But a major educator has now spoken out against the growing intolerance and totalitarianism on college campuses.  From the Stanford News: 

Former Provost John Etchemendy, in a recent speech before the Stanford Board of Trustees, outlined challenges higher education is facing in the coming years. Following is an excerpt from that talk:

Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.

This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve.

It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned.

The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.

But we must do more. We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.

COMMENT:  Wonderfully stated.   I wonder if he'll ever be invited to speak again.  Maybe he'll seek a peaceful retirement.

One of the great myths is that intellectuals love freedom.  In fact, the record is pretty bad, and universities today are in the business of making that record even worse.  Totalitarianism and suppression have a long and sordid history on college campuses all over the world.  It's been argued that all genocides begin in places of "higher learning."   Students are often too immature to resist, and just as often become part of the problem.

There are bright spots of resistance to the horrible and threatening atmosphere on college campuses, but the battle will take a long time, and victory for intellectual diversity is not guaranteed.

February 23,  2017     Permalink

FEBRUARY 22,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET:

LOOKING FORWARD – FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:   Professional hidden camera stinger James O'Keefe revealed Tuesday that he is on the cusp of releasing "hundreds of hours" of footage from "one corporation, multiple newsrooms."  O'Keefe let slip a telling hint about which corporation is the target of his sting operation despite declining to mention it by name.  It is the one President Trump has been discussing recently, O'Keefe told Sean Hannity in a radio interview.  "It's the one he's always targeting."  That can only mean CNN, the first name in views. 

GORSUCH MOMENTUM – FROM DAILY CALLER:  Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand conceded that Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, will likely be confirmed by the Senate.  Gillibrand told NY1 that Senate Republicans can easily overcome any procedural roadblocks Democrats deploy. For example, a Democratic filibuster could be broken in short order by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, should he choose to abolish the 60-vote threshold currently required to end debate on Supreme Court nominees. As Republicans hold a majority in the chamber, Gorsuch would almost certainly be confirmed in the ensuing floor vote.  Yeah, kind of obvious.  The Dems still haven't accepted that they lost their Senate majority, and they can't figure out a way to kidnap enough GOP senators to make a difference.  So it looks like Gorsuch is in.   He is, also, an absolutely outstanding nominee.

ANOTHER ADVANCE IN EDUCATION – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Students at Michigan State University soon will not be permitted to hang whiteboards on the outside of their dorm room doors.  The new policy, effective Fall 2017, was created in an attempt to eliminate opportunities for students to write mean words and racial slurs, according to a campus official.  “Their utility as a communication tool no longer outweighed the attractive nuisance that they are,” Kat Cooper, director of university residential services communications, told The College Fix via email.  In a statement to The Detroit News, Cooper added: “In any given month, there are several incidents like this [hurtful words]. There was no one incident that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sometimes these things are racial, sometimes they’re sexual in nature. There are all sorts of things that happen.”  They're not going far enough.  They should ban literacy.  That will take care of all these problems.  Illiterate people are happy people.  They cannot be offended by words they cannot read.  Isn't that obvious?

February 22, 2017       Permalink

CRAZY – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:  The Democrats have lost about a thousand legislative seats in the last eight years, and have lost control of the White House, the Senate, and the House.  But they still aren't getting the message.   Ignorance is indeed bliss.  From McClatchy: 

Liberal leaders have a warning for their lawmakers in Washington: Get in line, or else.

Frustrated by the party’s performance on Capitol Hill and emboldened by the mass protests against President Donald Trump, a coalition of progressive groups say they are open to supporting primary challengers next year against Democratic members of the House and Senate – even if many inside the party believe that intra-party races might ultimately only help the Republican Party gain more power.

The organizations, many run by former members of Bernie Sanders’ insurgent presidential campaign, say they haven’t drafted a list of targets just yet. But they vow to recruit, fund and support intra-party challengers if Democratic lawmakers don’t start doing more to oppose the new president and his congressional Republican allies.

“Every single Democratic incumbent considering aiding and abetting the Trump administration needs to consider their jobs at high risk,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, a grassroots progressive advocacy group based in Vermont.

COMMENT:  If these people were in Japan in the early 1940s they'd be lining up to become kamikaze pilots. 

These amateurs don't realize that the Democratic Party can't afford to lose another election.  If it does, there will be an impetus for more thoughtful people to start a third party, a center-left party with broad appeal.  Or, the Republicans will just keep winning elections.   That's why some on our side our hoping for the Dems to go further and further left.  They seem to be obliging.

February 22, 2017       Permalink

THEN THERE'S THE REAL AMERICA – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:   If you watch CNN, you'd think America was on its last leg, or heading down the road to fascism.  Strange, out in the real America they really don't think so.  From IBD: 

Hope And Change: You'd never guess this from the end-of-the-world treatment President Trump gets in the mainstream press, but his election has unleashed a wave of optimism about the economy we haven't seen in more than a decade. This is huge news that has big implications about economic growth.

The latest business leaders' survey from JPMorgan Chase finds a dramatic increase in optimism among the 1,400 middle-market executives polled. It found that 80% of these executives are optimistic about the economy, which is nearly double the share expressing optimism just one year ago. And it's the highest level since this survey began seven years ago.

These executives, the survey found, "expect improved performance in the global, national and local economies, as well as their own businesses."

The survey also found that more than three quarters of these midsize business owners say that Trump's election will have a positive impact on their companies because of his promise of pro-business policies, tax reform and cutbacks in federal regulations.

A National Federation of Independent Business survey found the same surge in optimism among small businesses since Trump won the election in November. At 105.9, this index is the highest it's been in more than 12 years.

"Small-business owners like what they see so far from Washington," said NFIB head Juanita Duggan.

Investors like what they're seeing, too. In fact, since Trump's inauguration in January, the Dow Jones industrial average has climbed more than 4%, the biggest post-inaugural jump in that index since FDR.s

COMMENT:  Now it is up to the Republican Congress to pass programs that will set the country right.  I know that many readers have serious doubts that the Republican Party is up to the task, and they may be correct.  But constant public pressure, and appropriate arm-twisting by the White House, may produce the result we want.  No party has ever been better positioned than the Republican Party is today. If it fails, it has no one else to blame.

February 22, 2017       Permalink

THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE... – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:  Ah, the Oscars are coming up.  Can you sense the excitement? 

Most Americans will watch the show.  But the movies themselves?  From Hollywood Reporter:

Yes, you read that headline correctly — come hell or high water, six out of 10 Americans could not name a single best picture nominee, according to a new poll commissioned by The Hollywood Reporter that canvassed moviegoers on both sides of the political fence. But, hidden in the figures, there is some good news for the Academy: Seven in 10 respondents say they’ll be watching the Oscars anyway.

THR’s poll — conducted by the National Research Group, which in early February surveyed 800 people (half Hillary Clinton supporters, half Donald Trump voters) for their opinions about movies, awards shows and politics — reveals some deep fissures in the moviegoing public, as well as some deep ignorance that crosses party lines. When prompted with the titles of nominated films, only 39 percent of Clinton voters, for instance, knew that La La Land was up for an Oscar, and even fewer Trump voters (26 percent) did. Only 16 percent of Dems knew that Moonlight was a best picture contender, compared to 6 percent of Republicans. But both sides were equally oblivious of Hell or High Water; 95 percent of each group didn’t know it’d been nominated.

On average, Clinton fans were slightly more cinema-aware and were more likely to have seen the nominated films: 31 percent of Clintonites said they had seen Arrival, compared to 28 percent of Trumpsters while 22 percent of Democrats had seen Manchester by the Sea compared to 19 percent of Republicans. The big exception was Hacksaw Ridge — 27 percent of Trump-voting moviegoers had seen the Mel Gibson World War II drama, while only 18 percent of Clintonistas had.

COMMENT:  Hollywood ain't what it was, say, 60 years ago, when things really started to fade.  It's mostly television now.  "Going to the movies," once an American obsession, is today an occasional pastime. 

I think there's a realization in Hollywood that it's mostly over.  Sure, the feature-film industry will continue on some level, probably as an extension of the industry's left-wing culture.  You'll see that on your TV screens Sunday night when the anti-Trump speeches dominate the evening.  A lot of TV sets will be clicked off.  The star has dimmed.

February 22,  2017     Permalink