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JULY 14,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE INTERESTED IN? – FROM REUTERS:  The top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives' antitrust subcommittee has voiced concerns about Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) $13.7 billion plan to buy Whole Foods Market Inc (WFM.O) and is pushing for a hearing to look into the deal's impact on consumers.  The deal announced in June marks the biggest acquisition for the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has not said what it would do with Whole Foods' stores and other assets, but analysts and investors worry the deal could upend the landscape for grocers, food delivery services and meal-kit companies.  U.S. Representative David Cicilline requested the hearing on Thursday in a letter to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee chairman.  Typical elitist Democrat.  It's Whole Foods he's concerned about.  If a basic supermarket chain were sold, he wouldn't care. 

JOB DESCRIPTION – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   The wit and wisdom found within the works of William Shakespeare may soon be taught through the lenses of social justice and identity politics at one public university in Northern California.  California State University East Bay seeks to hire an assistant professor of English who has an eye toward “diversity” while teaching renaissance and medieval literature, with a special emphasis on Shakespeare, according to a recent job posting.  “Candidates must demonstrate awareness of innovative pedagogy and issues of diversity and social justice, as well as evidence of teaching effectiveness,” states the listing, posted earlier this month. “Candidates who bring global approaches to their teaching and scholarship are preferred. Candidates who engage with issues of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality in their teaching and scholarship are preferred.”  Taxpayers pay for this.  If you raise objection, you're called a bigot or a racist.

OH, AGAIN? – FROM THE WRAP:  For the first time since 2013, the public will see O.J. Simpson live next week when he appears at a televised parole hearing.  The hearing will take place at 10 a.m. PT on Thursday, July 20, from Nevada and will be broadcast in a video pool, with networks including ESPN airing it live.  The televised Trial of the Century back in 1995, in which Simpson was acquitted in the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, captivated the nation. All eyes will no doubt be on the former USC and Buffalo Bills football star once again, though Simpson, who just turned 70, will look very different.  That plus Donald Trump Jr's amateurish meetings.   Journalism is certainly emphasizing the important stories, isn't it?

July 14, 2017        Permalink

A CHILLING WARNING ABOUT NORTH KOREA – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:   Let us not forget that the most serious national-security threat is currently coming from North Korea.  From Fox: 

Forty years ago this week, lightning struck an electrical power station, blacking out the city of New York and surrounding suburbs. Believe it or not, such a scenario is even more likely now, thanks to North Korea.

That’s because America’s electrical grid has become increasingly reliant on digital control systems since 1977, making it more vulnerable to an outage. And now, the possibility of a terrorist attack, most likely to be launched by North Korea, means the entire country could be plunged into darkness.

Even worse, due to the high degree of digital reliance, restarting a power plant that has gone offline is more difficult than in times past.

“The grid has become highly automated and, if remote digital communication goes down, you need someone at the substation to flip the switch to turn it back on after an outage,” says Tom Popik, chairman of the Foundation for Resilient Societies, which has been warning for years about the threat to America’s electric supply system.

That point was underscored last weekend, when a heatwave knocked out a power station in the San Fernando valley of Los Angeles. Though terrorism was quickly ruled out, the effect was the same: more than 100,000 residents were left without power.

And that’s the best kind of blackout. The nightmare scenario is an attack on the grid from an electro-magnetic pulse weapon, or EMP. North Korea is believed to have purchased the necessary technology to create an EMP from a Russian supplier more than ten years ago. If that technology has been sufficiently developed, a North Korean EMP could be launched via rocket into space, and detonated. The resulting pulse waves could knock out multiple power stations in the U.S., and cause a domino effect.

COMMENT:   Do you think this is more important than the fact that Don Trump Jr took a dumb, pointless meeting with a Russian wannabe?  Not according to CNN, where the meeting is all there is.

July 14, 2017       Permalink

OH DEAR, SHE'S GETTING POPULAR; CALL THE THOUGHT POLICE! – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:   Melania Trump is, for good reason, getting more and more popular.  This is a crisis of unprecedented proportions on the left.  Melania's numbers are beating Hillary's.  It's rigged!  And there is suspicion of Russian involvement.  She speaks foreign languages, you know.  From Independent Journalism Review: 

President Trump may not be the most popular president Gallup has ever seen, but his wife is rocking it.

According to a recent Fox News poll, Melania Trump's approval ratings have increased by 14 points since the last poll was taken in December and by 16 points since the first poll was taken in August. While Melania's 51 percent approval rating does not measure up to former First Lady Michelle Obama's (73 percent), she is doing dramatically better than her husband in the polls and is even more popular than former First Lady Hillary Clinton.

While in the White House, Clinton had an approval rating of about 49 percent, which her husband Bill trumped her with his approval rating of 51 percent during the first year of his presidency.
Despite this, Gallup noted it is “not uncommon” for first ladies to be more popular than their husbands, most likely because “their role is far less controversial than that of the president, which often results in less partisan ratings of the first lady.”

Back in July 2016, Gallup had Melania's approval rating at 28 percent, the lowest a potential first lady has been rated since 2000. She was least popular among Democrats and minorities. After Melania, the next least favorable potential first lady was John Kerry's wife (31 percent approval), who never made it to the White House.

Melania's favorability has surged across all demographics, most notably among voters under age 45, the most skeptical age group during her husband's campaign. She might not be as popular as former first ladies Michelle Obama or Laura Bush during their first years in the White House, but she sure seems to be getting there.

COMMENT:  I try to be a decent fellow, and I hope they don't show this to Hillary.  I mean, she's really suffered enough.

Melania is becoming a star.  Will CNN ever admit it?  They're probably looking for evidence that she once met with a Russian violinist.  There are apparently photos.

July 14,  2017     Permalink

THIS IS RIDICULOUS – AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  Democratic Party "progressives" continue to live their illusions.  They aren't progressives, of course.  They're regressives, wanting to go back to the grand days of the sixties.   "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"  Ah, wasn't it fun.  From The Hill: 

Democrats risk losing election after election if they focus too much on winning back white blue-collar voters from Donald Trump, according to progressives worried that young minorities are abandoning the party.

“We are not going to get back to national majorities again without these voters,” said Cornell Belcher, the top pollster who worked on both for former President Barack Obama’s campaigns. 

Belcher recently conducted focus groups in Florida and Wisconsin for the Civic Engagement Fund that point to the problems Democrats have with young millennials of color. The group, founded by progressive leader Andrea Hailey, analyzes data from past elections to increase voter engagement. 

COMMENT:  What weirdness.  Hey, don't concentrate on working people, once of the rock of the Democratic Party.  Concentrate on "millennials of color," who are also leaving the Democratic Party.  Why, we're just not left-wing enough!

Such genius.

The Democrats haven't figured out just how unpopular they are.  Sure, Obama was a "liked" president, but he wasn't particularly trusted, and his policies were rejected.  Simply trying to appeal to "millennials of color" will not bring back voters disenchanted with Democratic policies.

And new polling shows that the young people just behind the millennials are less leftist, not more leftist, than the millennials themselves.  They are more like moderate Republicans.  Take note, Democrats.  Marxism ain't exactly in.

The first rule of politics is to learn to count.  If Democrats were smart, they'd try to rebuild their party as a national party, with appeal to a broad group of voters.   Right now it's a coastal party, with some happy spots around the country where the anthropologists and multicultural-affairs professors live.

The Democrats will not win with their current, narrow strategy.  However, Republicans can lose if they do not quickly become a governing party and get the job done.  That has been the Republican failure in the past.

July 14,  2017     Permalink

JULY 13,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

BRAVA! – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   Bienvenue!  The First Couple arrived in Paris this morning and wasted no time attending to their schedule, with First Lady Melania Trump going straight from the tarmac at Orly Airport to the Necker Hospital for children in Paris.  Stunning in a red suit, the first lady met Martin Hirsch, the director of Paris’ public hospital system and posed with hospital staff.  The former model also spoke with children at the hospital in French, one of five languages she speaks. She introduced herself, asked them where they grew up and gave them words of encouragement.  Mrs. Trump read the sick tots a French classic — “The Little Prince” — in a room filled with Legos and other toys, and was given a French-language copy of the book by the hospital’s director.  She was elegant and superb, and spoke in their native language.  Will Melania get credit for the great work she's doing as first lady?  I doubt it, but the public knows what it is seeing.

DEBUNKED! – FROM CNN:   A newly discovered photo that claimed to hold the key to the 80-year-old mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart's disappearance may have been published two years before she vanished, new evidence suggests.  The blurry photo, used in a History Channel documentary, was alleged to show the groundbreaking pilot and her navigator Fred Noonan alive and well on a dock in the Marshall Islands in 1937.  But two bloggers say they have found the photo in a Japanese coffee-table book from 1935 -- when Earhart was safely in the United States.  I've always loved following the Earhart theories.  This one, centered on a newly discovered photo, was debunked within days of being featured on the History Channel.  Read the whole story, which contains the photos.

ESCAPE OF THE YEAR – FROM NBC:    A Texas man who became trapped inside an ATM slipped notes to customers via the receipt slot pleading for them to help him escape, police said Thursday.  The contractor became stuck Wednesday when he was changing a lock to a Bank of America room that leads to the back of the ATM, Corpus Christi police Lt. Chris Hooper said. He couldn't let himself out of the room because he didn't have a keycard on him and was unable to notify bank employees for help.  "Apparently he left his cellphone and the swipe card he needed to get out of the room outside in his truck," Hooper said.
When he realized customers were retrieving cash from the machine, he passed notes to them through the ATM receipt slot. One read, "Please help. I'm stuck in here and I don't have my phone. Please call my boss ..."  Some customers appeared to dismiss the notes as a gag, Hooper said. But one called police, who detected a faint voice coming from inside the ATM. An officer kicked in the door to the room and freed the man, whose name has not been released.   Okay, okay, we all have questions about this story.  The police only heard a faint voice?  How thick are those walls?  The guy passed notes through the receipt slot?  Why didn't he just put his mouth up to the slot and scream?  It's an open space.  But it's a great story.  Always take your phone and keys with you?

July 13, 2017       Permalink

ON FOREIGN POLICY, THUMBS UP ON TRUMP – AT 11:50 A.M. ET:   President Trump is sometimes called "Reaganesque" in foreign policy.  And Reagan's foreign policy is still preferred by the American people.  He outranks Obama, despite the protection Obama receives from an admiring media.  From Rasmussen: 

Following his speech in Poland last week, some are calling President Trump’s remarks touting the values and strengths of the West Ronald Reagan-esque. And half of voters think that’s whose foreign policy Trump should emulate, rather than that of his most recent predecessor.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters prefer a president with a foreign policy more like Reagan. Forty-two percent (42%) prefer a foreign policy more like Barack Obama.

COMMENT:  The fact that Reagan's popularity has lasted all these years is remarkable.  If Trump follows Reagan's peace-through-strength policies, he'll do just fine.

That a recent president can only score 42% on foreign policy, where people traditionally rally 'round the president, tells part of the story of Obama's failure.  His foreign policy was a series of mistakes and losses, and Americans don't like to lose.

July 13, 2017       Permalink

A WARNING TO THE DESTROY-TRUMP CROWD – AT 10:56 A.M. ET:  Michael Barone, one of our best political observers, sends out a warning to the left about overreaching in its hatred of Donald Trump.  Will the left listen?  Probably not.  Brain death is permanent.  From the Washington Examiner:   

Overreach. President Trump seems to have an uncanny knack for provoking it in his opponents and critics. This often hurts him and the country. But it has the potential to hurt those doing the overreach as well.

Start with Trump's speech in Warsaw last week. "As the Polish experience reminds us," he said after recounting in vivid detail how Poland rebounded from decades of horrors, "The defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive."

But Trump's text included praise of Poland's and Western civilizations' resistance to Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, empowering women, striving for excellence, valuing the dignity of human life, debating and challenging "everything." Presumably, Trump's critics embrace each of these products of Western civilization.

Nonetheless, they sneer at Trump's pledge to oppose "another oppressive ideology — one that seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe." But that threat of Islamic terrorism is real.

And...

To call these statements "racism" or "dog whistles" to "white nationalists" is nonsense.

This week's lead story about Donald Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting with a Russian apparatchik revived the meme of Russian "collusion" and provoked similar overreach. This meeting, which included campaign manager Paul Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner, seems to have been a waste of everyone's time, and it's easy to argue that it was ill-advised.

But Democratic politicians and bloggers, who haven't given up on dreams of somehow ousting Trump from office and who are eager as always to delegitimize his presidency, have gone farther. Some have argued that attendance at the meeting violates a federal criminal statute prohibiting foreigners from giving "money or other things of value" to a federal or state campaign.

That's obviously a stretch. People involved in campaigns get information every day from foreign sources — starting with the Daily Mail website — which could conceivably help their cause. Common sense tells us this is not criminal behavior.

And...

There's no bipartisan consensus now that Trump should go, and an obvious political peril, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has recognized, in Democrats' campaigning not just for a check on the president — the usual off-year opposition theme — but for a futile 1999-style impeachment trial. Overreach is not usually good politics.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's a good warning.  The Democrats are going crazy, and I don't see where it's actually helping them.  Every little revelation produces declarations that this is the worst catastrophe in human history.  Trump as Hitler.  As Mussolini.  As BUSH!!!  Even Cheney!!!!!!

The Dems need tranquilizers.  And new leadership.

July 13, 2017       Permalink

BAD NEWS – LITERALLY – AT 10:30 A.M. ET:  Mainstream journalism is bad enough.  We don't need to make it worse.  But that's what's just happened.  CBS News has signed a baffling agreement to join with Britain's BBC in a joint operation.

The BBC is, stretching it, a second-rate news organization, perhaps the most overrated news outlet in history.  It is famously left-wing, snotty, rather anti-American, with some historic anti-Semitic overtones thrown in.  Other than that, it's great.  It is overrated by the chattering classes in large measure because it sounds so good.  They speak well at BBC.  Very big on enunciation and the Queen's English.  The pseudos love that kind of stuff.  If it sounds good, it must be good.  Not like those Americans.  From The Hill:

CBS News on Thursday announced a new "editorial and newsgathering relationship" with BBC News "that will significantly enhance the global reporting capabilities of both organizations," the networks said in a joint statement.

“CBS News is completely committed to original reporting around the world—a commitment clearly shared by the BBC,” said CBS President Ben Rhodes. “There’s no better partner to strengthen and extend our global coverage than BBC News. I look forward to working with James Harding as we increase the capabilities of both organizations.”

Ha ha.  A little Freudian slip there.  It isn't Ben Rhodes, it's David Rhodes.  He is the brother of Ben Rhodes, the famously deceptive Obama administration operative who openly bragged that he'd established a false narrative to advance Obama's Iran nuclear deal. 

I hope David Rhodes is a bit more honest.

“There’s never been a more important time for smart, courageous coverage of what’s happening in the world,” said BBC Director of News and Current Affairs James Harding. “This new partnership between the BBC and CBS News is designed to bring our audiences—wherever you live, whatever your point of view—news that is reliable, original and illuminating.

"Our ambition is to deliver the best in international reporting on television. We’re really looking forward to working together.”

BBC was founded by Lord Reith of Britain in the 1920s.  Reith later became, while head of BBC, an admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement in Germany.  That is not a controversial statement.  His sentiments are found in his diaries and in the acknowledgments of his own daughter.

One of the great myths about BBC is that Winston Churchill used it to rally Britain to the anti-Nazi cause in the late 1930s.  In fact, Reith constantly tried to keep Churchill off the BBC.  Churchill used other means to deliver his message. 

Some recent government reports in Britain have been highly critical of BBC's bias in international reporting.

Nice move, CBS.  Nothing like digging the grave deeper.

July 13,  2017     Permalink