Archive for 2016

WELL, HE’S SELDOM MISSED A CHANCE TO BE A DIVIDER INSTEAD OF A UNITER: The painful twilight of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Call it the curse of high expectations. When Barack Obama took office, the world swooned, America exhaled and pundits declared an end to centuries of racial division. Gazing at the 1.5m people who braved the cold to witness Mr Obama’s inauguration, Steven Spielberg said it would have been impossible to stage for a movie. That was then. Today America’s first non-white president is winding down at the nation’s tensest moment of racial polarisation in decades.

Of course, it’s all Donald Trump’s fault or something. But read this and contrast.

And, of course:

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ANOTHER CELEBRITY THREATENS TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY — MILEY CYRUS CRIES OVER TRUMP PHOTO.

Perhaps she can hop in the Hot Tub Time Machine and expatriate to the Weimar Republic.

LIVE-BLOGGING TONIGHT’S DEMOCRATIC DEBATE. “Somehow, the debate over the Import/Export Bank meanders into Sanders calling for European-style universal health care; Clinton says we’ve already gotten closer to that goal with Obamacare.”

UPDATE: Heh.

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HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, WASHINGTON POST STYLE.

Read the whole thing.

RAY TOMLINSON, GODFATHER OF EMAIL, DIES AT AGE 74. “‘Thank you, Ray Tomlinson, for inventing email and putting the @ sign on the map,’ read a Tweet from Gmail’s official Twitter account.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Girl, 15, raped by transgender woman. “Judge Ian Pearson, sentencing, said a serious aggravating factor was Ayrton’s interest in teenage girls after a previous conviction for possessing indecent images. . . . ‘I accept you have been agonising over your gender issues as you now wish to live as a woman, but no operation has been done.'”

HUMAN PROGRESS: What Cell Phones Reveal About the Failures of Government-Run Telecommunications.

Almost all African countries had state-owned and state-run telecommunications monopolies until recently. Some, including Kenya and Zambia, still retain a monopoly on the provision of landline services. No wonder, therefore, that the number of fixed telephone lines in Africa peaked in 2009 at 4 lines per 100 people. In Tanzania, there is just one landline per 100 people. The vast majority of Africans, in other words, never had reliable means of calling a doctor or a loved one.

The rise of the cell phone changed all that. In 2014, 84 percent of Africans had a cell phone. In addition to massively improved communications, cell phones enabled Africans to side-step another problem plaguing people in poor countries—limited banking opportunities (especially in the far-flung rural areas). Users of cell phone services, like Kenya’s M-Pesa, can deposit, withdraw and transfer money, and pay for goods and services, without ever having to visit a bank or access a bank account on a computer.

The private sector has also been instrumental to mitigating the negative effects of African governments’ failure to provide their people with adequate education and drinking water.

Yes, but it’s more moral when the government tries and fails to do these things than when the private sector succeeds. Because greed!

‘I’LL TAKE YOU HOME:’ VET REUNITES WITH HIS MILITARY DOG: “On Saturday, Army veteran Julio Muñoz finally found the dog he has been missing for three years — Ben, the canine that fought alongside him in Afghanistan. Muñoz, 32, of The Bronx, was supposed to have been given the chance to adopt the dog after deployment. But as The Post revealed, at least two Pentagon employees, along with contractor K2 Solutions, have been secretly dumping military dogs out to civilians instead of offering them to their handlers.”

CONRAD BLACK: Don’t underestimate Donald. He will win. “Foreigners like Robson should remember that Americans, unlike most nationalities, are not accustomed to their government being incompetent and embarrassing.” To be fair, we’re starting to get into the swing of things.

PEOPLE KEEP SENDING ME THE HOAX ABOUT A Sunken Nazi U-Boat Recovered in the Great Lakes. What’s funny is, Nick McCall and I plotted out a thriller novel on just these lines several years ago, but never got around to writing it.

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN ALL MEN CARRIED POCKETKNIVES. BUT CAMPUS SNOWFLAKES CAN’T HANDLE IT. Student’s Knife Alarms Some at Cal State Long Beach. “California State University at Long Beach on Thursday said that it has taken seriously an incident in which a faculty member saw a student with a small knife, in class, and asked him to leave and notified authorities.”

Related: What The Campus Crybully Wars Are Really About.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails:

When I was a kid I spent a fair amount of time with my paternal grandparents in the country. One day my grandmother asked me to take my knife and cut her a switch of a certain length. I answered that I did not have a knife. She was astounded to hear that.

The next time I visited she gave me a nice pocket knife with a 3 inch blade she had bought for me. “Every boy should have a knife”, she said.

Smart woman.