COUNT ME AMONG THE CRITICS: Critics alarmed at antibiotic use for livestock despite recent reduction. I’ve always felt that there’s a better case for strict controls on antibiotics than on recreational drugs. If you abuse recreational drugs, you’re hurting yourself. If you abuse antibiotics, you could create a resistant strain that will kill thousands.
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Baby, It’s Unplayful and Ahistorical Outside. Neo-Neocon on “the current drive to ban ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ for being insufficiently PC in the sexual assault/harassment realm.”
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A literary anniversary passed unobserved in 2017: the 50th anniversary of the publication of William Styron’s enthralling historical novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, which tells the story of the slave who led a bloody rebellion in Virginia. While Vintage International’s 25th anniversary edition remains in print, the publisher hasn’t offered an edition honoring the book’s 50th year, and to my knowledge, no commemorative articles have appeared.
* * * * * * * *
My guess is that the nonobservance springs from reluctance to get embroiled in a replay of the controversy that erupted soon after the novel appeared. The Confessions of Nat Turner was celebrated when it was published in 1967—a Pulitzer Prize winner and Book of the Month Club selection, it made the New York Times bestseller list and scored a movie deal with Twentieth Century Fox. But Styron was soon condemned by black intellectuals for an offense more broadly condemned in 2017 than in 1967: a white novelist and native of Virginia, he had presumed to write historical fiction in the first person about a real human being who had been a rebellious black slave. He even had the temerity to lift his title from the original “Confessions of Nat Turner,” the brief document based on statements by Turner that white lawyer Thomas Gray recorded shortly before Turner was hanged in 1831, at about the age of 31.
The attacks on Styron in the late 1960s sound like a prelude to what we often hear and read half a century later. Less than a year after the novel appeared, Beacon Press published William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, a collection of essays in which the novelist was called “an unreconstructed Southern racist” suffering from “moral senility” who “dehumanizes every black person in the book” to affirm “all of the myths and prejudices about the American black man.” The attacks prompted Invisible Man novelist Ralph Ellison to declare that he wouldn’t read the novel.
In his afterword to the 25th anniversary edition, Styron recalls that he naively persisted in making public appearances before “predominantly young black audiences” to plead his case. The encounters often turned out to be “raucous sessions, where the gathering was drenched with hostility.” Styron adds that “[b]y this time, I was being stalked from Boston to New Orleans by a young dashiki-clad firebrand, who unnerved me.” Twentieth Century Fox shelved plans for the film.
“The ultimate endpoint of keeping our mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction,” novelist Lionel Shriver warned last year in a speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival. She put on a sombrero during the speech to demonstrate that novelists were being warned by SJWs that “you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats.”
Naturally, she was crucified by the left for telling the truth.
POWER CORRUPTS: Thoughts on how industry structure affects the rate of sexual harassment. I think it’s not just that the hierarchies are “stricter,” but that the standards are less discernible, so that there’s a bigger role for favoritism and punishment of non-favorites. That’s why you see so much abuse (sexual and otherwise) not only in Hollywood or in journalism, but in graduate PhD programs, where one person can derail a career without it being obvious that they’re doing it for bad reasons.
DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF SCIENCE:
The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.
The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.
On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.
—“Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” the New York Times today.
It’s no secret that the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman is a UFO buff, but the recent WikiLeaks dump of Mr. Podesta’s hacked account sheds new light on how deeply interested he is in extraterrestrial conspiracy theories.
Messages between Mr. Podesta and fellow alien enthusiasts — including a former Apollo astronaut and the guitarist of pop-punk band Blink 182 — came as a welcome surprise to UFO researchers. They are more convinced than ever that a Clinton administration would bring about the declassification of some of the federal government’s deepest secrets, including what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico; activities inside the notorious Area 51; and other pieces of a complex puzzle involving alien craft and space travel.
“There have been people within the community working with Podesta and the Clintons on the subject,” Jan Harzan, executive director of the Mutual UFO Network, told The Washington Times. “Just having the conversation is very positive to realize the subject is real, and these intelligences, wherever they’re from, visit us from time to time and we get reports on it. … We’re delighted to see the conversation going on. Hopefully, it will wake people up to the fact that we’re not alone in the universe.”
Within Mr. Podesta’s private account is a trove of messages related to UFOs, aliens and conspiracies. Some are relatively benign, such as links to news stories about the return of the Fox TV show “The X-Files.”
But others show a much deeper level of interest, seemingly confirming Mr. Podesta’s stated desire for secret government documents to be made public.
— “Leaked Podesta emails encourage UFO buffs seeking declassification in a Clinton administration,” the Washington Times, October 16, 2016.
As Michael Graham wrote in Redneck Nation:
After a set at a hotel in Washington State, I was dragged into a long, drawn-out discussion with a graying, balding New Ager who just couldn’t get over my evangelical background. “You seem so smart,” he kept saying. “How could you buy into that stuff?”
Here’s a guy wearing a crystal around his neck to open up his chakra, who thinks that the spirit of a warrior from the lost city of Atlantis is channeled through the body of a hairdresser from Palm Springs, and who stuffs magnets in his pants to enhance his aura, and he finds evangelicalism an insult to his intelligence. I ask you: Who’s the redneck?
Come to think of it, I’m not sure if this guy—who believed in reincarnation, ghostly hauntings, and the eternal souls of animals—actually believed in God. It’s not uncommon for Northerners, especially those who like to use the word “spirituality,” to believe in all manner of metaphysical events, while not believing in the Big Guy. “Religious” people go to church and read the Bible, and Northerners view them as intolerant, ill-educated saps. “Spiritual” people go hiking, read Shirley MacLaine or L. Ron Hubbard, and are considered rational, intelligent beings.
Speaking of “spiritual people,” maybe the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn can use her Ouija board to make contact with the aliens. The truth is out there!
STACY McCAIN ON FEMINISM’S RAPE DOUBLE STANDARD:
What happens when a rape doesn’t fit within the ideological parameters of feminist discourse? It’s as if it never happened, although feminists have sometimes devoted enormous efforts to publicizing rapes that quite literally never happened, as in the case of Rolling Stone’s infamous 2014 hoax, where the non-existent “Haven Monahan” was invented by an emotionally disturbed freshman who falsely claimed to have been gang-raped at a fraternity.
That notorious hoax “sparked a national conversation about sexual assault at elite institutions,” the Guardian said in reporting the $3 million verdict against Rolling Stone after they were sued for defamation by a university official, former associate dean of students Nicole Eramo. Why did a lurid story about rape at “elite institutions” merit such treatment, but there is no “national conversation” about university students getting raped by cab drivers? Isn’t it because these crimes — real rapes with real victims — don’t fit the feminist narrative? Say hello to Jose Angel Moreno-Hernandez.
Read the whole thing.
TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: Eric Holder warns GOP: ‘Any attempt to remove Bob Mueller will not be tolerated.’
Obama’s Ethics Czar: ‘Take The Streets’ If Trump Fires Mueller.
And they keep telling us Trump is a threat to public order.
UPDATE (From Ed): Rob Reiner tweets, “Make no mistake, by attacking Mueller,DT’s state run TV (Fox) is pushing US to a constitutional crisis. Be prepared to take the streets.”
I really, really want to see Reiner at age 70, and, err, not the most physically fit of Hollywood’s denizens, personally attempt to “take the streets.”
UPDATE (From Glenn): The senior-citizen riot swells:
It’s easy to mock this — no, really, it is — but imagine if pro-Trump celebrities were calling for riots if Trump is charged by Mueller.
WEIRD, BECAUSE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE INVESTIGATING THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE ELECTION: Scoop: Mueller obtains “tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails.
UPDATE: Trump lawyer: Mueller improperly obtained transition documents in Russia probe.
ROCK AND ROLL EDITOR: Andrew Ferguson reviews Sticky Fingers, Joe Hagan’s new biography of Jann Wenner, and the recent HBO documentary on Wenner.
From the first, Hagan makes clear, Wenner was as much a fanboy as a journalist, hoping to use his position as editor of a rising publication to bathe in the nimbus of his favorite rock-and-roll celebrities. The ambition often paid off editorially. Wenner’s obsession with John Lennon led to other early scoops and made Rolling Stone seem indispensable to anyone following the counterculture. In 1968 word came that Lennon and Yoko Ono had posed naked, front and back, for the cover of a new album called Two Virgins. After Wenner’s relentless transatlantic hectoring, Lennon agreed to license the photos to Rolling Stone, if only because no one else would take them. (Asked about the significance of the Two Virgins cover, Lennon’s bandmate George Harrison said everything that needed saying. “It’s just two not-very-nice-looking bodies,” said the Quiet Beatle. “Two flabby bodies naked.”) Wenner put the flabby backsides on the magazine’s cover and tucked the other, full-frontal photo inside. It made a worldwide sensation. Multiple printings of the issue sold out. “Print a famous foreskin,” Wenner said, “and the world will beat a path to your door.”
And Wenner had made a new friend. The HBO documentary gives Homeric treatment to the relationship between Wenner and the Lennons, from foreskin to aft. The friendship was transactional, as friendships between journalists and celebrities usually are. Lennon had a constant need to generate publicity, especially for the new commercial entity known as “John and Yoko,” and Wenner craved proximity to a Beatle. A few months after the Beatles broke up, Lennon agreed to grant Wenner a long interview. Coming off years of drug abuse and months of psychotherapy, Lennon was as garrulous as any ex-junkie analysand could be.
He hammered his former bandmates personally and musically and careened from self-adulation (“If there’s such a thing as [a genius], I am one”) to self-loathing (“the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth”). The interview, its extravagant profanity uncensored, appeared over two issues and again generated headlines everywhere. In his nationally syndicated column William F. Buckley Jr. referred to the interview as “How I Wrecked My Own Life, and Can Help Wreck Yours.”
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™ For my own review of the Wenner bio, click here.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR CAR BATTERY ALIVE THROUGH A FRIGID WINTER.
When the Insta-Daughter was away at college and left her car behind for 5 weeks over Christmas vacation the battery went flat. (Maybe it pulled more because it was a hybrid, my old Highlander). Anyway, the next year I got her this Noco solar charger with the adapter that lets it plug right into the OBDII connector underneath the dash. Problem solved! The next year it started right up after weeks of cold and disuse.
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HOW TO BUILD A MORE RESILIENT POWER GRID.
Related thoughts from Sue Tierney. “A resilient grid is one with the following characteristics: It is one where the grid planners, operators and regulators assume that they cannot foresee and avoid every type of event that could take out the system in a very big way; where they therefore plan for how they will ride through big-impact events with as much of the system still intact as possible: where they can mobilize the resources to restore the system safely and quickly, especially to support the provision of critical services; and where the industry players learn lessons from prior disruptions and plan for how to better handle the next hit on the grid.”
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EMBRACE THE MACHINE: World’s First AI Citizen in Saudi Arabia Is Now Calling For Women’s Rights. What would Skynet say?
If you’re ever looking for a hearty chuckle, the Nation never fails to deliver. It fashions itself as a “progressive” magazine—if your notion of progress is reviving Marxist nostrums of yesteryear.
There’s nothing much funny about white supremacists. But reading along as a left-wing Nation correspondent hangs out with white supremacists and realizes she shares some political beliefs with them? Well, this should be entertaining.
Writer Donna Minkowitz describes a secret meeting organized by alt-right figure Richard Spencer that she crashed in mid-November at an organic winery in Maryland. Upon arrival, Minkowitz writes that she was surprised to find that the discussion centered not only on the usual brown-shirt Jew-hating you might expect from neo-Nazis, but also on what she says is a “new emphasis on economic issues” that she found “seductive.”
Why seductive? Because the white supremacists’ views on economic issues sound a lot like, well, like views espoused by the Nation and Democratic party progressives. In what could pass for Bernie Sanders campaign literature, she quotes Spencer saying “I support national health care” and railing against “the trillions spent in insane wars.” Minkowitz also quotes Spencer blasting the GOP tax plan as “stupid . . . Reaganite nostalgia” and supporting a universal basic income. Another speaker decried that everything is seemingly becoming “corporatized and capitalized.” Wait—is this a white supremacist conference or a New York Times editorial board meeting?
Ahh, it’s always amusing to watch international socialists and National Socialists court each other and stumble upon how much they have in common (and not just on economic issues). The inevitable breakup is going to be awfully painful, however.
IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE IN THE MSM WILL BE DAN RATHER FOR 15 MINUTES. And the future is now! These Media Screw-Ups Would Make Dan Rather Proud.
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Today, if a major American university is looking for government support to promote study of the foreign language—Chinese—that will be most crucial to the future shape of global competition, it may well come instead from the Chinese government, in the form of the Confucius Institutes that provide funding, teachers, and curricula to study Chinese language and culture. The goal of these institutes, explains the website of Hanban (their coordinating headquarters within the Chinese Ministry of Education), is to help develop “multiculturalism” and build “a harmonious world.” But for the Chinese Communist Party, “harmony” means never being questioned by society. China’s vast global network of some 500 Confucius Institutes (most of them on university campuses) may be the most benign dimension of an increasingly visible and troubling Chinese government effort to penetrate and influence democratic cultures and societies.
The experience of New Zealand and Australia suggests that what begins with the cultural and social progresses to the political. In November, an Australian commercial publisher postponed its commitment to publish a book by a highly respected professor, Clive Hamilton, detailing China’s efforts to shape and censor public expression in Australia. The clumsy cave-in to China’s sensitivities, reflecting rising Chinese pressure on Australian publishers and media companies, outraged the Australian public and appeared to confirm the book’s title: Silent Invasion: How China is Turning Australia Into a Puppet State.
More recently, as reported in the Telegraph this week, “An Australian MP was forced to quit over revelations he adopted pro-China positions after accepting donations from a wealthy Chinese property developer with links to China’s Communist Party.” As accounts have piled up of Chinese government-linked donations to Australia’s two major parties, Australia’s government has proposed legislation that would ban foreign donations to political parties and groups that lobby the government and institute a public register for foreign lobbyists. The political scandal—coming amid years of accelerating Chinese influence activities—may represent a “Sputnik moment” for Australia.
But the situation in neighboring New Zealand is more urgent still. . . .
What these two resurgent authoritarian states are projecting, argue Walker and Ludwig, is power that is not “soft” but rather “sharp,” like the tip of a dagger: It enables them “to cut, razor-like, into the fabric of a society, stoking and amplifying existing divisions” (in the case of Russia) or to seek, especially in the case of China, “to monopolize ideas, suppress alternative narratives, and exploit partner institutions.”
There is also an alarming technological dimension to China’s sharp power: a relentless, multidimensional, and highly orchestrated campaign to capture, transfer, and innovate the technologies of the future, including artificial intelligence, supercomputing, drone vehicles, robotics, gene editing, and other advanced medical technology. Within a decade, China could well overtake the United States in the development of these critical technologies, which will increasingly drive the next generation of global economic growth and China’s continued rise to superpower status.
Yeah, it was probably a mistake for the Clinton Administration to open up our technology to them so readily.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Profs propose using classrooms to counter Trump rhetoric.
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RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: Mystery Pooper Is Running Amok in Buffalo Suburb.
F-22 REFUELING OVER IRAQ: With serpentine river below.
END OF GOVERNMENT FM RADIO IN NORWAY: The government stations have gone to digital audio broadcasting (DAB).
However:
Some radio stations in Norway are maintaining an FM presence in protest of the government conversion.
Stay tuned?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: 8 Worst Defenses Of FBI Agent’s Anti-Trump ‘Insurance Policy’ Texts.
THE POLITICAL SUICIDE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS: “Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. . . .. That showed me just how bad things have become, and how much things have changed since I first got started here in 2005. It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year. Debating a controversial idea, even if you 95% agree with the consensus side, seems ill-advised.”
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THIS ISN’T AN ARGUMENT ABOUT POLICY, IT’S JUST A DUMB ATTEMPT TO PERSONALIZE THE ISSUE: Brookings fellow rips Trump: I entered through lottery system. It’s like the people who defend affirmative action by saying “I’m a product of affirmative action!” as if that should silence any critics.
SOMETIMES NOT-SO-SECRETLY: 5 Things Women Do That Secretly Annoy Men.
REMEMBER WHEN TRUMP WAS LITERALLY HITLER: Graham rips Trump over interrogation policy: It’s like ‘Obama and his team never left.’
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) turned his fire on President Trump on Friday over the Trump administration’s hesitance to depart from trying suspected terrorists in the criminal justice system.
In a series of tweets Friday afternoon, the South Carolina Republican and frequent ally of Trump turned on the administration for its decision to charge Akayed Ullah, the suspect in Monday morning’s pipe bombing in New York, in criminal court.
“I am incredibly disappointed to see the Trump Administration continue to treat terrorists as common criminals,” Graham wrote. “Giving Akayed Ullah a lawyer and putting him directly into the criminal justice system means we lose the ability to gather intelligence from a person who fits the profile of an enemy combatant.”
In 2020, expect to see Kamala Harris attack Trump as a squish and promise to try terrorists in front of military tribunals and execute them by firing squad. Heck, she’s already got experience defending fake confessions.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: SECRETS THE FBI SHOULDN’T KEEP.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team is emphasizing its ejection of FBI agent Peter Strzok immediately upon learning about anti-Trump texts he exchanged with another FBI employee, Lisa Page, before the 2016 election. But when did the FBI learn of the messages? The inspector general’s investigation began in mid-January. The letter explains that the FBI was asked for text messages of certain key employees based on search terms, which turned up “a number of politically-oriented” Strzok-Page texts. The inspector general then demanded all of the duo’s text messages, which the FBI began producing on July 20.
But when did the FBI dig up and turn over that very first tranche? How long has the bureau known one of its lead investigators was exhibiting such bias? Was it before Mr. Mueller was even appointed? Did FBI leaders sit by as the special counsel tapped Mr. Strzok? In any case, we know from the letter that the inspector general informed both Messrs. Rosenstein and Mueller of the texts on July 27, and that both men hid that explosive information from Congress for four months. The Justice Department, pleading secrecy, defied subpoenas that would have produced the texts. It refused to make Mr. Strzok available for an interview. It didn’t do all this out of fear of hurting national security, obviously. It did it to save itself and the FBI from embarrassment.
This week’s other revelation of jaw-dropping FBI tactics came from a separate letter from Mr. Johnson. In November 2016, the Office of Special Counsel—a federal agency that polices personnel practices and is distinct from the Mueller probe—began investigating whether former FBI Director Jim Comey violated the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by executive-branch officials, while investigating Hillary Clinton’s private server. The office conducted interviews with two of Mr. Comey’s confidantes: FBI chief of staff James Rybicki and FBI attorney Trisha Anderson.
Sen. Johnson in September demanded the full, unredacted transcripts of the interviews. But it turned out the FBI had refused to let the Office of Special Counsel interview them unless it first signed unprecedented nondisclosure agreements, giving the FBI full authority to withhold the information from Congress. The bureau has continued to insist the office keep huge swaths of the interviews secret from Congress, including the names and actions of key political players. (The Office of Special Counsel closed its investigation in May.)
In his letter this week, Mr. Johnson demanded that Mr. Wray authorize the release of the full transcripts and other documents. Even the redacted ones have revealed important information, for instance that Mr. Comey was drafting his Hillary Clinton exoneration statement well before she was interviewed. Congressional investigators believe the unredacted versions contain pertinent information about the actions of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and key investigators such as Mr. Strzok.
This whole thing stinks.
December 15, 2017
WELL, IT’S A DAY ENDING IN “Y,” SO: Another errant anti-Trump hit piece from the Washington Post.
FASTER, PLEASE: Silicon Valley’s Immortalists Will Help Us All Stay Healthy.
REMEMBER THIS NAME AND REMEMBER THIS DATE: The name is Michael Horowitz. The date is Jan. 12, 2017. Horowitz is the Inspector-General of the Department of Justice. January 12, 2017, is the date Horowitz announced an investigation of these factors:
• Allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI Director’s public announcement on July 5, 2016, and the Director’s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016, and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations;
• Allegations that the FBI Deputy Director should have been recused from participating in certain investigative matters;
• Allegations that the Department’s Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs improperly disclosed non-public information to the Clinton campaign and/or should have been recused from participating in certain matters;
• Allegations that Department and FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information;
• Allegations that decisions regarding the timing of the FBI’s release of certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents on October 30 and November 1, 2016, and the use of a Twitter account to publicize same, were influenced by improper considerations.
The Horowitz probe is why Peter Strzok’s amazing emails were discovered. As sensational as those emails are, the more important question is what occasioned their becoming available to the Horowitz investigators. The DOJ IG is nobody’s fool and his report is just over the horizon. Just ask American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson.
There are more than 70 IGs in the federal government in positions created in 1978 during the Carter administration. There have been some bad eggs among the IGs over the years but collectively, the IG community has been the unsung hero in efforts to expose and prosecute waste, fraud and abuse in government. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has been the IGs’ strongest advocate in Congress.
And there’s this: The journo community in the nation’s capital has been rumbling in recent days about a bombshell report supposedly being prepared for publication by the Washington Post that will ruin the careers of dozens of Members of Congress, from both parties.
Fasten your seatbelts, folks.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Political Journalists Have Themselves to Blame for Sinking Credibility: Sloppy work creates self-inflicted wounds.
“Our record as journalists in covering this Trump story and the Russian story is pretty good,” legendary reporter Carl Bernstein recently claimed. Pretty good? If there’s a major news story over the past 70 years that the American media has botched more often because of bias and wishful thinking, I’d love to hear about it.
Four big scoops recently run by major news organizations—written by top reporters and, presumably, churned through layers of scrupulous editing—turned out to be completely wrong. Reuters, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and others reported that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office had subpoenaed President Donald Trump’s records from Deutsche Bank. Trump’s attorney says it hadn’t. ABC reported that candidate Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the election. He didn’t (as far as we know). The New York Times ran a story claiming that K.T. McFarland, a former member of the Trump transition team, had acknowledged collusion. She hadn’t. Then, CNN topped off the week by falsely reporting that the Trump campaign had been offered access to hacked Democratic National Committee emails before they were published. It wasn’t.
Forget your routine bias. These were four bombshells disseminated to millions of Americans by breathless anchors, pundits and analysts, all of whom are feeding frenzied expectations about Trump-Russia collusion that have now been internalized by many as indisputable truths. All four pieces, incidentally, are useless without their central faulty claims. Yet there they sit. And these are only four of dozens of other stories that have fizzled over the year.
Yep.
CHANCES OF PASSAGE ARE LOOKING DECENT: GOP Senators unanimous in support for tax bill. If they can pass this, they will have delivered on numerous campaign promises, including the ObamaCare mandate repeal that looked like it was never going to happen.
THE INSTA-WIFE: Was Dan Johnson’s Death a High-Tech Lynching?
PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
CNBC, tonight: Stocks close at all-time highs as odds of tax bill passing increase.
GO LONG ON PURELL: Health Department says the flu is running rampant in New York.
“Look, I just feel like we’re having a really unfair conversation here, I’m trying to have a conversation on the merits of the principle of unintended consequences,” Velshi whined. “And you’re dropping a lot of legal-ese.”
“The legal-ese is the merits though, Ali,” McDowell asserted. “That’s what’s at play here, and maybe you haven’t read these laws.”
“I’m very familiar with net neutrality,” Velshi snarked back. “I’m really not that familiar with being condescended to.”
Because it’s absolutely impossible to out-smug an MSNBC anchor. Read and/or watch the whole thing.
GENE EPSTEIN: Where Is Nat Turner?
YOUR PIXELS, PLEASE: Germany starts facial recognition tests at rail station.
As Mark Steyn wrote last year regarding Angela Merkel, “You can take the girl out of East Germany, but you can’t take the East Germany out of the girl.”
LORD OF THE RINGS DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON: YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE THE WEINSTEINS BLACKBALLED ASHLEY JUDD AND MIRA SORVINO.
What makes this even more compelling is the relative stature of both women in the entertainment industry. Judd’s mother and sister had risen to the top of the country charts before her Hollywood career had taken off; Sorvino’s father Paul is a popular actor who appeared in classic films such as Goodfellas. Sorvino herself had won an Oscar and a Golden Globe two years before this took place for Mighty Aphrodite. If Weinstein could derail their careers with a smear campaign, how many other actresses and whistleblowers of lesser stature got blackballed out of the industry?
The pull-quote making the rounds from Jackson’s interview with Stuff is “My experience, when Miramax controlled the Lord of the Rings (before New Line took over production of the film), was of Weinstein and his brother behaving like second-rate Mafia bullies.”
Second-rate Mafia bullies? Shades of the circa 2000 incident the late David Carr described in New York magazine:
“You know what? It’s good that I’m the fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town.” Weinstein said that to Andrew Goldman, then a reporter for the New York Observer, when he took him out of a party in a headlock last November after there was a tussle for Goldman’s tape recorder and someone got knocked in the head. Weinstein deputized himself and insisted that Goldman apologize. His hubris would be hilarious if he weren’t able to back it up. Several paparazzi got pictures of the tussle, but Goldman bet me at the time that they would never see print.
I mailed him his dollar a week later. I’d talk to Goldman about it, except he now works for Talk magazine, which is half-owned by Miramax.
I’m pretty sure that David Chase didn’t create Tony Soprano to be a how-to guide for career advancement. Though as with Mad Men, I wonder how many of the incidents shown in that series were inspired by Hollywood itself.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW OF THE LAST JEDI: Star Wars Thrill Ride Takes the Force in an Exciting New Direction.
PEAK 2017 REACHED: Entire Family Turns Transgender.
The 21st century isn’t working out the way I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.
FASTER? PLEASE! Super-fast aircraft with Mach 2.2 speed in the making: Japan Airlines collaborates with Boom.
In what would speed up Boom Technology’s dream of making supersonic passenger jet, Japan Airlines (JAL) has announced its strategic partnership with the company. The new-generation superfast aircraft will travel at the speed of Mach 2.2 (1,451 mph / 2,335 km/h), which is more than double the speed of the average airliner (Mach 0.85).
Japan Airlines has agreed to invest $10 million in Boom besides helping to refine the aircraft design and has the option to purchase up to 20 Boom aircraft through a pre-order arrangement.
“We are very proud to be working with Boom on the possible advancement in the commercial aviation industry. Through this partnership, we hope to contribute to the future of supersonic travel with the intent of providing more ‘time’ to our valued passengers while emphasizing flight safety,” said Yoshiharu Ueki, President of Japan Airlines, in a statement obtained by PRNewswire.
“Ninety minutes from New York to Paris” has a nice ring to it.
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E-COMMERCE WARS: Target acquires Shipt, will roll out $99/year, same-day delivery.
VARIETY: DUSTIN HOFFMAN ACCUSED OF EXPOSING HIMSELF TO A MINOR, ASSAULTING TWO WOMEN.
Better pick up your copy of The Graduate on Blu-Ray now; though I am looking forward to seeing the likely upcoming version in which Christopher Plummer is CGIed in as Benjamin Braddock…
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Erdogan Says Muslim nations to seek UN ‘annulment’ of Trump’s Jerusalem move.
“FBI appears to have investigated – and considered prosecuting – FOIA requesters“: Investigative reporting blog and FOIA tool provider Muckrock shows that as far back as 2016, the FBI refused to produce documents that had the names of deceased FBI staff (nullifying any privacy concerns), but consistently failed to redact personal information about the requesters — a clear violation of privacy:
“Despite redacting the names and email addresses of the public servants handling the case, the FBI released not only the author’s name and address in the file (technically improper since there was no waiver, albeit understandable) but the name, email address and home address of another requester who also used the script to file requests. Their name along with their email and physical addresses were left unredacted not once, not twice, not thrice – but seven times, not including the email headers, several of which also showed their name and email address.”
Other emails show that the FBI’s Obama-era FOIA office consulted a number of people from the Criminal Justice Information Services division for the purpose of singling out “suspicious” FOIA requests for possible prosecution targeting.
I’d love to know what they considered a “suspicious” FOIA request.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: As wineglasses get larger, people drink more wine.
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TOO BAD FOR THEM THAT BOTS AND SOCKPUPPETS DON’T HAVE THE VOTE: Dems Vow to Take Net Neutrality to SCOTUS, Make FCC Move a Midterm Issue.
FROM MY COLLEAGUE MAURICE STUCKE, AND OXFORD’S ARIEL EZRACHI, IN THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the U.S. Antitrust Movement.
ANDREW KLAVAN: Trump Has Made Our Government More Moral.
Trump has made our government more moral by making less of it: fewer regulations, fewer judges who will write law instead of obeying the law, fewer bureaucrats seeking to expand the power of their agencies, less money for the government to spend on itself. He has made government treat us more fairly and equally by ceasing to use the IRS and Justice Department for political ends like silencing enemies and skewing elections.
This is what moral government looks like. And if every male senator in America is grabbing the buttocks of some unsuspecting female while, at the same time, voting for more limited and less corrupt government, the senators are immoral, yes, but the government is more moral. That is why we should never let the leftist press game us with scandal hysteria, but should keep focused on voting in those who will help fulfill government’s moral ends.
Also, hearing the lamentations of the left is nice, too: “More than 700 employees have left the EPA since Scott Pruitt took over,” Think Progress tweeted today. Curiously, they seem to be implying that’s a bad thing.
HARD LABOR: Putin’s ex-economy minister sentenced to eight years in prison colony for accepting bribe.
Mr Ulyukayev was responsible for the Russian economy until a sting operation before dawn on 15 November last year. His downfall was orchestrated by Rosneft chief Igor Sechin, a powerful associate of Vladimir Putin. After inviting the former minister to his offices, he handed him a basket of sausages and another locked bag, containing $2m. Mr Ulyukayev was stopped by security agents waiting outside, and became the first cabinet minister to be arrested since Stalin’s henchman Lavrenty Beria in 1953.
The former minister insists he believed the bag contained fine wine, and in court challenged Mr Sechin to appear for cross-examination. On four occasions, the Rosneft chief refused.
Today, the judge mumbled through the verdict, somewhat nervously, and often repeating herself. In almost every detail, she sided with Mr Sechin and the prosecution. She was trembling as she read out the sentence.
Last week, prosecutors asked for a sentence of 10 years in prison colony. Mr Ulyukayev, 61, and visibly frailer than a year ago, likened this to a “death sentence.” In his final word, Mr Ulyukayev insisted on his innocence and compared his case to Stalinist show trials. “Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls,” he said. “It tolls for you.”
Why was the judge so nervous?
BE EVIL: Google Is Using Its Immense Power To Censor Content That Doesn’t Fit Its Political Goals.
The Daily Caller released a funny video Tuesday of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai defending the committee’s upcoming net-neutrality rollback. Through Wednesday and Thursday, liberals and others who dislike Pai’s political position lost their minds. And by Friday morning, Google, one of the most powerful companies on the planet, had censored the video based on a bogus claim from a politically motivated man.
It took seven crucial hours and the full force of our news site to push Google and YouTube to reverse this political censorship. We were able to prevail because of the sizable contacts and resources of TheDC. An average citizen showcasing a political viewpoint Google and the left disagreed with would almost certainly have had a far more difficult — and fruitless — time fighting back.
I’m not a big fan of antitrust, but if any company deserves some tough regulatory scrutiny, it’s Google.
MATT DAMON GIVES CAR-CRASH INTERVIEW ABOUT HOLLYWOOD SEXUAL ABUSE:
After [Peter Travers of ABC] suggested that the disappearance of confidentiality agreements would surely be a good thing, Damon appeared to backtrack: “One hundred per cent,” he added. “I think that it’s important, especially in that, you know, we believe every woman who’s coming forward with one of these stories needs to be listened to and heard.”
Damon also insisted that he did not know about Harvey Weinstein’s predations, despite previously admitting to Good Morning America in October that he was aware in the Nineties that Weinstein had sexually harassed actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who was formerly in a relationship with Damon’s friend and frequent collaborator Ben Affleck.
“Everybody knew what kind of guy he was in the sense that if you took a meeting with him, you knew that he was tough and he was a bully, and that was his reputation. And he enjoyed that reputation, because he was making the best movies out there,” Damon said. “[With regard to the rape allegations,] nobody who made movies for him knew… Any human being would have put a stop to that, no matter who he was. They would’ve said absolutely no.
“I knew I wouldn’t want him married to anyone close to me,” he continued. “But that was the extent of what we knew, you know? And that wasn’t a surprise to anybody. So when you hear Harvey this, Harvey that — I mean, look at the guy. Of course he’s a womaniser … I mean, I don’t hang out with him.”
Curiously, Travers apparently chose not to ask Damon about his role, along with Russell Crowe, in personally calling at least one New York Times reporter in 2004 to gut a story on one of Weinstein’s bagmen.
THE SOLUTION TO ANY GOVERNMENT-CREATED CRISIS IS ALWAYS MORE GOVERNMENT: L.A’s “Solution” To Affordable Housing Scarcity Is A Circular Firing Squad.
Related (From Ed) At Ricochet, Richard Epstein on California’s Single-Family Home Gridlock.
WE ARE UNDERPREPARED FOR THIS: Game-changing attack on critical infrastructure site causes outage: Attack will serve as a blueprint for future attacks on other industrial systems. “The malware was most likely designed to cause physical damage inside the unnamed site, researchers from the Mandiant division of security firm FireEye said in a report. It worked by targeting a safety instrumented system, which the targeted facility and many other critical infrastructure sites use to prevent unsafe conditions from arising. The malware has been alternately named Triton and Trisis, because it targeted the Triconex product line made by Schneider Electric.”
HMM: ISIS Acknowledges NYC Subway Bomber, But Refuses to Claim Ullah as Their Own.
This report is from Bridget Johnson, whose unexplained and unacknowledged Twitter banishment remains unexplained and unacknowledged by Twitter management.
QUESTION ASKED: Is The Oil Glut Set To Return?
Late last month, when OPEC agreed to extend its production cuts through the end of 2018, the U.S. EIA came out with data – on the same day as the OPEC announcement – that showed an explosive increase in shale output for the month of September, up 290,000 bpd from the month before.
Although there is a time lag on publishing production data, the huge jump in output in September, plus the spike in rig count activity over the past few weeks, points to strength in the U.S. shale sector. Against that backdrop, the IEA predicted that non-OPEC supply would grow by 1.6 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2018, a rather significant upward revision of 0.2 mb/d compared to last month’s report.
Adding insult to injury for OPEC, the IEA sees oil demand growing by just 1.3 mb/d. In other words, supply will grow at a faster pace than demand next year, opening up a global surplus once again.
Maybe I should buy a faster car.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: New Poll Reveals Patriotism Gap. “NFL Seen as Unpatriotic, Majority Says American Ideological Divide Can Never Heal.”
HE’S GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: The Last Jedi is reviewed by Sonny Bunch of the Washington Free Beacon.
Related: As Allahpundit tweets, the Last Jedi is getting “ratio’d” at Rotten Tomatoes. As of the time of this post, it has a 93% critics rating — and a 60% audience score.
Viking announced a couple of years ago a plan to bring its luxe longboats to the Mississippi River, but last week the city manager from one those little communities got word Viking had terminated its plans, WQAD in the Quad Cities reports. The cruise ships Viking had been wanting to build and operate would have ended up costing double what they had planned, according to the report.
“As the details were being refined, it became the economics did not meet Viking’s goals,” a company statement read.
No new tourists. No new tourist revenue. No new tourism jobs.
Our own federal laws are to blame. More specifically, President Grover Cleveland’s Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA). The 1886 law requires that in order to ferry passengers between ports in the United States, the ship must have been built in the United States and be owned and operated by Americans.
If the absurd contours of this law sound suspiciously familiar, it’s because these restrictions are just like the Jones Act, the terrible protectionist law that uses similar rules and ultimately drives up the costs of shipping goods to U.S. islands and territories.
The supply/demand curve works — right until it crashes to zero against the brick wall of government.
SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE: Female Democrat Congressional Candidate Drops Out of Race After Sexual Harassment Accusation Surfaces.
Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the case told The Star that the man reached a settlement with LabOne, the company where Ramsey was executive vice president of human resources. Court documents show that the man, Gary Funkhouser, and LabOne agreed to dismiss the case permanently after mediation in 2006.
Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired business executive from Leawood, was one of the Democratic candidates vying to challenge Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder in 2018 in Kansas’ 3rd District.
She was running with the endorsement of Emily’s List, a liberal women’s group that has raised more than a half-million dollars to help female candidates who support abortion rights.
Ramsey will drop out on Friday, her campaign said.
I’m sure there are more cases out there. Maybe men will finally feel safe coming forward.
ANOTHER SHINING MEDIA MOMENT: Drunk NY Daily News Reporter Arrested After Causing a Scene at Hospital.
Did his Twitter obsession with Net Neutrality lead to the above headline? Or was it simply working at the New York Daily News?
In any case, shades of Iowahawk warned in his classic 2008 “Bylines of Brutality” piece, “As Casualties Mount, Some Question The Emotional Stability of Media Vets.”
THE HILL: Prominent lawyer sought donor cash for two Trump accusers.
California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.
The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort.
Bloom, who has assisted dozens of women in prominent harassment cases and also defended film executive Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, represented four women considering making accusations against Trump last year. Two went public, and two declined.
In a statement to The Hill, Bloom acknowledged she engaged in discussions to secure donations for women who made or considered making accusations against Trump before last year’s election.
Read the whole thing.
THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: A top aide to the Texas Attorney General had to resign after sharing (on Facebook) that much-shared “Can We Be Honest About Women?” piece in The Federalist.. From the comments: “The man was guilty of a thoughtcrime. He’s lucky they didn’t let rats gnaw his face.”
Plus: “Society has decided that honest opinions should only come from retired people.”
Here’s the Federalist piece.
WELL THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW (Part Deux): Voice of America reports that “Virtual Reality Allows Patients to Preview Their Own Surgery.”
The night before Luna’s surgery, Collins gives her a headset to wear and lets her travel through her own brain. Luna admits being “a nervous wreck” before seeing the path Steinberg would take to locate the aneurysm. She sees where he will clip off its growth so the clot can be resorbed, eliminating her pain. “Now I understand exactly what’s going to happen,” Luna says. Her husband also took a turn at the virtual reality flight. “This makes me understand it 100 percent,” Rene Luna says. “That extra understanding gives me a lot more confidence.”
Good pilots file a flight plan, so why not brain surgeons? Also sounds like a good way to ward off frivolous malpractice suits by developing a record before surgery.
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CHANGE: Gillibrand, Cruz Bill Would Give Capitol Hill Sexual Harassment Victims More Rights. “Gardner, other senators want to end mandatory non-disclosure agreements, taxpayer-funded settlements, and confidential settlements.”
WELL THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The Marine Corps Is Testing a Fully Autonomous Huey Helicopter.
The tests, which took place in late November, involved a hardware and software kit known as Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) which includes both hardware and software and can be installed on any rotary wing aircraft. The Marines currently fly three different helicopters: the CH-53E Super Stallion heavy transport helicopter, the AH-1Z Cobra attack helicopter, and the UH-1Y utility/light attack helicopter.
The hardware side of the AACUS kit involves a LiDAR sensor for ranging and ground mapping, and cameras for obstacle avoidance and route planning. According to USNI News, the hardware used were commercial, off-the-rack components easily sourced in the civilian market. The software, including flight algorithms, was developed by Aurora.
The autonomous tests consisted of three simulated missions, in which the unmanned UH-1H “Huey,” given guidance by Marine infantrymen with just “mere hours” of instruction by Aurora engineers, flew supplies to a remote outpost. The Marines interacted with the Huey via a tablet and laptop computer.
Not bad for a platform which first flew in 1956.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LAWS-ARE-FOR-THE-LITTLE-PEOPLE EDITION: College ignores judge’s rejection of its Title IX procedures, re-tries student with same approach.
California’s Pomona College got slapped down in court in October for denying a “fair hearing” to a student accused of sexual misconduct.
Its response? Replace the Title IX investigator, but use the same “evidence” and procedures faulted by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mary Strobel to re-try “John Doe.”
The member institution of the private Claremont Consortium is pursuing the same strategy as Pennsylvania State University and the University of Texas when courts found serious problems with their Title IX adjudications, according to Brooklyn College Prof. KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy. . . .
Pomona ignored repeated credibility problems with Doe’s accuser, its hired investigator relied heavily on school-requested Title IX investigations for business (suggesting conflict of interest), and it let the accuser skip the campus hearing – meaning she was never asked any questions by anyone in cross-examination.
Despite Judge Strobel telling the school that this failure to even indirectly cross-examine the accuser was unlawful, and that it violated its own rules by inventing an unwritten procedure to accommodate the accuser, Pomona is going forward with a new hearing against Doe.
Title IX Coordinator Sue McCarthy told Doe last month that the “same Investigation Report, Investigation Notes, and Statement of Alleged Policy Violation” issued before the May 2016 hearing would be used in the rehearing.
If I were Judge Strobel, I would not be amused.
Cost of sending your son to Pomona College to be abused: $69,725.
MATTHEW WALTHER: Net neutrality is dead. Good riddance.
Even if there were no other compelling arguments in favor of killing net neutrality (though there are), the end of net neutrality would be welcome because it will frustrate the hopes of the largest group temper tantrum thrown by non-toddlers in recent American history.
Has this country ever seen a more simperingly childish mob than the one responsible for the outcry over this boring prudential question concerning the allocation of hertz? Has so much canned emotion ever been spilled over so bland and technocratic and uniquely prudential an issue? Having strong feelings about net neutrality — which essentially mandates that your internet service provider treats all internet traffic and data equally — is like getting upset over a public-access TV debate on the generic ballot or the proceedings of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans, and Insular Affairs.
If nothing else, ludicrous statements like the one from the heads of the New York, Brooklyn, and Queens Public Library systems calling the proposed change “appalling” and the gravest threat to education this country faces do the helpful work of reminding us that, like public schools, libraries in this country are now little more than transmission centers for digital entertainment.
Meanwhile, Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has received death threats against his children.
The choreographed temper tantrum has been… sadly typical.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Conservative group has funding suspended after hosting Dennis Prager.
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