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JULY 6,  2018

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

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER – FROM UPI:   July 6 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump's British visit next week will include a state dinner and a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, the U.S. ambassador to Britain announced Friday.  Diplomat Robert "Woody" Johnson revealed the itinerary of the trip in a conference call with reporters Friday.  Trump will arrive at London's Stansted Airport Thursday, following a NATO summit in Brussels. After visiting the ambassador's residence in London, he and first lady Melania Trump will be guests at a state dinner. The event will be hosted by Prime Minister Theresa May at Blenheim Palace, a castle and UNESCO World Heritage site built in the early 18th century.  I do hope the president is on his best behavior and doesn't advise the queen to turn the palace into condos.

STARTLING – FROM THE HILL:  Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said on Friday that women are more likely to oppose abortion rights than men.  “Women are much less likely to be pro-choice," Lake, who is the president of Lake Research, told Hill TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking."   "Women are more religious than men, and so women are slightly less pro-choice than men," she continued.  It's only one pollster, but the thought is intriguing.  Maybe some of these "feminist leaders" don't speak for women.

NO TIPPING NEEDED – FROM THE L.A. TIMES:  A growing number of hotels have begun employing robots to deliver towels, toothpaste and other items to guests — an addition viewed primarily as a novelty to appeal to tech-loving travelers.  But less than a year after the mass shooting near a Las Vegas hotel, a Southern California casino resort has added camera-wielding robots to enhance security.  The Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula last month began employing two robots — one that stands motionless in the valet parking area and a mobile rocket-shaped automatron that patrols the lobby area — in addition to the 300-person security staff and thousands of mounted surveillance cameras.  But we still won't harden most schools and colleges.  I wonder why.

July 6,  2018    Permalink

A WELL-DESERVED VICTORY – AT 3:29 P.M. ET:  One by one, those who've been abused on college campuses by local radicals are winning their cases in actual courts.  From Fox:   

A conservative political science professor who sued Marquette University after the Milwaukee Jesuit school terminated him for blogging about gay marriage won his case Friday in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The high court ruled that Marquette University should immediately reinstate former political science professor John McAdams, finding that the college failed to give him the academic freedom he is guaranteed under his contract.

The court’s conservative majority opinion ruled the private university’s faculty panel exhibited “unacceptable bias” when it fired him. The liberal justices disagreed, saying in the minority opinion that academic freedom “does not protect McAdams from discipline.”

The university had argued McAdams was not fired for the content of his 2014 post, but because he named an instructor and linked to her personal website. That instructor, a graduate student, received a barrage of hateful messages and threats after he posted her information.

“A tenured faculty member put a graduate student’s name and link to her contact information on the Internet so that people could go after her,” said Marquette attorney Ralph Weber. “That’s not academic freedom – it’s cyberbullying,”

The ruling has been eagerly awaited by conservatives, many of whom see universities as liberal hotbeds. It was also closely followed by private businesses that exercise control over employee discipline.

In the 2014 post that got McAdams fired, he discussed an incident involving a conservative student who recorded a graduate student instructor of philosophy. That instructor allegedly shut down any oppositional speech against gay marriage and suggested the student drop the class because of his views.

McAdams, who called himself a "whistleblower" at Marquette, said it was just another example of liberals trying to silence those they disagree with and then he linked to the instructor’s personal website. She received so many threats that the university decided to post a security guard outside of her classroom. The graduate student eventually moved to another university, where she had to repeat three semesters and revise her doctoral thesis.

“Had he written the exact same blog post and not included the student-teacher’s name and contact information he would not have been disciplined,” Weber argued. “He’s being disciplined for his conduct, not any viewpoint.”

But McAdams’ attorney, Rick Esenberg, said all he did was link to publicly available information.

COMMENT:  A close one, but the court decided correctly.  McAdams did not reveal a private email address, but a public one.  If someone writes something critical of me, and then links to Urgent Agenda to show how awful I am, I can't claim that the writer is invading my privacy, or exposing me to unacceptable ridicule or offense.  I've put our email addresses out there.

Glad the professor got his job back. 

July 6, 2018        Permalink

PHONY! AND CAUGHT! – AT 2:43 P.M. ET:  Once again we are confronted with the dime-store Evita, the new national sensation, socialist pet and Democratic Congressional nominee from the 14th District in New York.  Uh, apparently, Bernie Sanders's little confection has some further credibility problems.  From Daily Caller:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the upstart Democratic Socialist who shocked the political world in the June primary when she defeated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York, once advocated for tax cuts when she was running a business of her own, uncovered news reports from 2012 reveal.

Ocasio-Cortez, 28, is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that calls for the abolishment of capitalism and argues that “private corporate property is not only wrong, but also nonsensical.” Her campaign platform calls for instituting a single-payer health care system, a federal jobs guarantee and housing as a human right, radical and expensive policies she says will be funded through raising taxes on corporations and high-income Americans.

But Ocasio-Cortez appeared to have a different outlook on capitalism and taxes in 2012 when she was running a business of her own, Brook Avenue Press, an incorporated publishing firm for children’s books set in the Bronx. As a business owner, she came out in support of a bill that would provide tax deductions for business start-up costs, arguing that taxes directly impacted her business profits.

“You don’t really make a profit in your first year,” Ocasio-Cortez told the now-defunct DNAinfo when she was 22. “To get taxed on top of that is a real whammy.”

Ocasio-Cortez was then a member of the Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, a city-sponsored business hub that attracted dozens of entrepreneurs trying to get their businesses off the ground.

“You see a huge return on your investment here,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Daily News of her involvement with the Business Incubator. “People pay $500 an hour for consulting that we get for free by the water cooler.”

COMMENT:  Why, the sneaky little capitalist scoundrel.  She's been one of us all this time, or maybe just a Kremlin spy.

Whatever she is, it seems to change from day to day.  Next week, corporate mogul.

Another POP, Person of the people.

July 6, 2018       Permalink

WE MUST BEWARE OF PROGRESS! – AT 1:30 P.M. ET:  The Democratic Party, plunging headlong in defense of its right to commit suicide and end the agony, is actually protesting today's jobs report, which is superb.  First, the report, from CNS:

(CNSNews.com) - "Our economic policy can be summed up in three very simple but beautiful but beautiful words," President Donald Trump told a rally in Montana Thursday evening: "Jobs, jobs, jobs," he said.

On Friday, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 213,000 jobs in June, a strong number; the number of employed Americans, 155,576,000, set its tenth record of the Trump presidency; but the number of unemployed Americans  (which includes people who are actively looking for jobs) increased by almost half-a-million.  The unemployment rate increased two tenths of a point to 4.0 percent.

In June, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 257,642,000. Of those, 162,140,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 162,140,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.9 percent of the 257,642,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population, a slight increase from last month's 62.7 percent.

But Nancy Pelosi, fighting for her job as leader of the increasingly deranged Democrats, sent us the kind message: 

The June #JobsReport shows what is at stake from the brewing storm of rising health costs, spiraling trade uncertainty & an economy being hollowed out to enrich big corporations & the wealthiest 1 percent. Americans deserve better than the GOP’s raw deal.

COMMENT:  It's so terrible I can hardly contain my grief.  All those people working.  All that food on the table.  And...what's this?  A Honda in the garage?  Traitors.  Deplorables.  Global warmers.  Hillary was right.  Full employment is for the dumb masses!

I need my pills.

July 6,  2018     Permalink

JULY 5,  2018

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

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD? – FROM FOX:  James Woods has been dropped by his talent agent, and received the announcement in an email sent during the Fourth of July holiday.  The Oscar-nominated actor shared a screenshot of the email with the subject line “Well…” on his personal Twitter account.  The talent agent, Ken Kaplan, said that he’d come to the decision to no longer represent the outspoken conservative star because he was “feeling patriotic.”  “It’s the 4th of July and I’m feeling patriotic,” Kaplan wrote. “I don’t want to represent you anymore. I mean I can go on a rant but you know what I’d say.”  Woods, in return, tweeted his response to Kaplan, who he described as a “political liberal.”  “Dear Ken, I don’t actually. I was thinking if you’re feeling patriotic, you would appreciate free speech and one’s right to think as an individual,” Woods replied.  “Be that as it may, I want to thank you for all your hard work and devotion on my behalf. Be well.”  Fear dominates Hollywood.  This is a second McCarthy era, but, because the victims are conservatives, Hollywood doesn't much care.

AND SOME IN THE FILM BUSINESS CARRY ON, WITH COURGE – FROM HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:   Nick Loeb, famous for battling ex Sofia Vergara over frozen embryos, is co-directing a pro-life story of the landmark Supreme Court case, with a cast including conservative stars Jon Voight, Robert Davi and Stacey Dash.  As Nick Loeb walked to his car with a production assistant during a day of shooting his upcoming feature film, Roe v. Wade, outside Tulane University last week, a woman wearing a headset approached and asked: “Are you the director?”  “When I told her I was, she told me to go f... myself," Loeb recalls. "Then she threw her headset on the ground and walked off. I found out later she was our electrician."
Anecdotes such as this have become fairly common since Loeb and his production partner, Cathy Allyn, began shooting their pro-life feature film June 15 in and around New Orleans. The industry must end its hypocrisy, and offer support to those who make controversial films.  Otherwise, freedom of expression will be badly, perhaps fatally, damaged, and the industry will be on permanent life support.

REMARKABLE – FROM LMTONLINE:   Seventy may be the new sixty, eighty may be the new seventy, but 85 is still pretty old to work in America. Yet, in some ways, it is the era of the very-old-worker in America.  Overall, 255,000 Americans, 85-years-old and over, were working over the past 12 months. That's 4.4 percent of Americans that age, up from 2.6 percent in 2006, before the recession. It's the highest number on record.  They're doing all sorts of jobs - crossing guards, farmers and ranchers, even truckers, as my colleague Heather Long revealed in a front-page story last week. Indeed, there are between 1,000 and 3,000 U.S. truckers age 85 or older, based on 2016 Census Bureau figures. Their ranks have roughly doubled since the Great Recession.  America's aging workforce has defined the post-Great Recession labor market. Baby boomers and their parents are working longer as life expectancies grow, retirement plans shrink, education levels rise and work becomes less physically demanding. Labor Department figures show that at every year of age above 55, U.S. residents are working or looking for work at the highest rates on record.  I like this.  If people want to work into old age, and can, let 'em.

July 5, 2018        Permalink

INCREDIBLE – AT 1:08 P.M. ET:   The American economy is literally on fire.  We can't even fill job openings.  It is great news for the country, and especially for minority citizens seeking work.  From CNBC: 

America’s labor shortage is approaching epidemic proportions, and it could be employers who end up paying.

A report Thursday from ADP and Moody’s Analytics cast an even brighter light on what is becoming one of the most important economic stories of 2018: the difficulty employers are having in finding qualified employees to fill a record 6.7 million job openings.

Truck drivers are in perilously low supply, Silicon Valley continues to struggle to fill vacancies, and employers across the grid are coping with a skills mismatch as the economy edges ever closer to full employment.

“Business’s number one problem is finding qualified workers. At the current pace of job growth, if sustained, this problem is set to get much worse,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in a statement. “These labor shortages will only intensify across all industries and company sizes.”

And...

Economists expect that employers are going to have to start doing more to entice workers, likely through pay raises, training and other incentives.

COMMENT:   We think politically here, and clearly this economic boom is the president's biggest issue going into the midterms.  The only thing that could disrupt its effect would be a sudden, unexpected downturn, or a direct hit by the Mueller office. 

But we've rarely seen an economy quite like this.

July 5, 2018       Permalink

WHAT?  YOU MEAN AMERICANS LIKE FREE ENTERPRISE? – AT 11:51 A.M. ET:  We are now in the second week of clinical hysteria over the nomination of a socialist to be the Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 14th Congressional District.  Some journalists believe their messiah has come.  Others believe that this means Bernie Sanders will be our next president.  And how about a statue of Karl Marx on the White House lawn?  Or a Joe Stalin Day, with half off for baseball tickets?

Just a sec.  Aside from the fact that the aforementioned socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, won with a voter turnout of 13%, and each day sounds more like a dime-store Evita Peron, the American people don't seem quite ready for the little red books.  From Rasmussen: 

In New York, a Democratic Socialist candidate just unseated a near-20-year veteran in one of the state’s Democratic congressional primaries, and she contends she represents the Democratic Party's future. But voters reject socialism in no uncertain terms.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 74% of Likely U.S. Voters prefer a free market economic system over a socialist system. Only 13% think socialism is a better economic system, and just as many (13%) are undecided.

COMMENT:  Even liberal Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois commented that Evita, I mean, Alexandria, was not the kind of Democrat who could win in the Midwest.  Once voters get to know what socialism really means, I think this new hotshot will be cooled down considerably.

July 5, 2018       Permalink