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RACISM IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: White Reporter Pulls Out Of Milwaukee Because Of Racial Threats.
THERE’S A LONG HISTORY OF THIS STUFF AMONG GUN-CONTROL “RESEARCHERS,” GOING ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE MUCH-HYPED KELLERMAN STUDY: Gun Control Researcher: You Can’t See My Data.
And, of course, disgraced scholar Michael Bellesiles, who claimed to have personally reviewed gun records that were in fact destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, then claimed that all his notes were lost in a flood.
MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: New Sitcom Mocks Millennials — and They Need a Safe Space.
(Classical allusion in headline; link found via Small Dead Animals, who filed under the appropriate headline of “Generation P.”)
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India, there is a new status symbol on proud display. An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.
It is cheaper than a car, and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions, where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep.
But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world, scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run. All are potent agents of global warming.
—“In Rising Use of Air-Conditioning, Hard Choices,” the New York Times, June 20th, 2012.
Flash-forward to today’s New York Times headline: “In U.S. Jails, a Constitutional Clash Over Air-Conditioning.” Alan Blinder, the Timesman who wrote the story tweeted a link to his article, noting that “Most of Texas’s state prisons don’t have air-conditioning. That’s not just a Texas thing.”
Given the brutal Texas summer heat, I’m pretty sympathetic to his argument that prisons deserve some level of climate control in the summertime. But I don’t work for a newspaper that has spent the last 30 years or so tut-tutting its benefits for the rest of us. Or as Glenn tweets, “How can air conditioning be a constitutional right? Euros think it’s stupid and WaPo says it’s sexist.”
Not to mention John Kerry’s recent assertion that air conditioning is more deadly than ISIS.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT GOING AS WELL AS I’D HOPED: Polio Response in Africa to Be Fast, Difficult and Possibly Dangerous. “After two years with no cases in Africa, experts were elated at the imminent taste of victory on the continent, considered the toughest front in the fight against infectious diseases. Those hopes were dashed this week when two new cases were discovered. Now Nigeria rejoins Pakistan and Afghanistan on the list of countries where the disease has not been completely eliminated.”
THAT’S NOT GOING TO MAKE ENOUGH VITAMIN D: 10-trillionths of your suntan comes from galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
A TALE OF TWO HEADLINES: Juanita Broaddrick Wants To Be Believed.
—BuzzFeed News, yesterday.
On Rape, Clinton Campaign Deletes ‘You Have The Right to Be Believed’ From Website.
—Breitbart.com, today.
HEALTH WATCH: Hillary Clinton’s ‘Erratic’ Behavior Raises Eyebrows.
There are many things much more worrisome about Hillary Clinton than her health.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Twitter Used to Help Organize New Social Movements. Now It’s Just a ‘Honeypot for Assholes.’
And note this: “The head of Trust & Safety at Twitter is a woman who doesn’t use her legal name. Just let that sink in….”
Related: Meet Del Harvey, Twitter’s Troll Patrol.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE: Chemtrails Aren’t Real, In Case You Were Wondering.
Yeah, and there’s no alien invasion on the way, either.
WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU?
Shot: “Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.”
― British poet Philip Larkin, “Annus Mirabilis,” 1974.
Chaser: “Goodbye to sex: a short and heartfelt eulogy:”
Born in 1963, died 2016 – alas poor Sex. We knew you well. Well, not WELL. We knew you. Slightly. That was a good summer.
But it was with great regret and some tears that last week we learned of your death. All of us will remember where we were when we heard, of course – we were not having you. We were sitting on sofas, TV on, loungewear on, jointly scrolling through our phones for more updates on what the millennials are thinking, eating Doritos.
* * * * * * * *
But why? Why have young people stopped having you? Why have they stopped building their lives around you, the peg their tents were tied to, the mistakes they yearned to make? Why have you died just when, some would argue, we needed you most?
—Eva Wiseman, the London Guardian, yesterday.
—The Daily Beast, August 5th.
(Guardian essay found via Kathy Shaidle.)
21ST CENTURY HEADLINE: How states use facial recognition to sniff out driver’s license fraud.
Deep learning makes it easy and cheap to scan millions of photos for duplicates and fraud, and since it doesn’t involve any extra data collection or access — you just need to find matching entries, not link them to an identity — privacy groups see it as one of the more benign forms of facial scanning. Forty-three of the 50 states have used some form of that technology, with seven of those states adopting the system for driver’s licenses in the last three years. (The holdouts are California, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.) But while the scans are still limited, some worry those systems could be the first step toward something more troubling.
One of the driving forces behind the new DMV systems has been a new wave of federal requirements — and newly available federal money to meet those new standards. The RealID Act was passed in 2005 in response to the 9/11 Commission’s identification requirements — including the requirement that driver’s licenses be stored in digital form. States are still in charge of their own licenses, but if licenses don’t meet the new federal requirements, they’ll stop being valid for use in airports as early as 2018.
What about for voting?
FLASHBACK: How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico.
Now, Eisenhower was one of those “good Republicans” who are somehow all dead now. So if we do what he did, that’ll be good, right?
ANDREW McCARTHY ON CLINTON CORRUPTION AND US: “If someone as squalid as Hillary Clinton is a viable political candidate, that is not a failure of our legal system. It is a failure of our culture.”
Read the whole thing.
WHY CAPITALISM WORKS AND SOCIALISM DOESN’T: ARBITRAGE.
But of course, in a world of socialism — that is, where a government attempts to create perfect fairness and justice by means of coercive distribution — arbitrage poses a mortal threat. Do you understand why? If not, there are some good examples coming out of Venezuela, not to mention the ongoing saga of “affordable housing” here in New York.
At the Washington Post’s Wonkblog on Monday, a guy named Matt O’Brien reports on the ongoing disaster in Venezuela. The title of the article is “Venezuela’s death spiral is getting worse.” I will give serious credit to Mr. O’Brien for actually doing some investigation of what is causing Venezuela’s problems. (Contrast that to the likes of idiots from such outlets as the New York Times, CNN and Time Magazine, cited in my posts from May here and here, who purport to give reasons for Venezuela’s economic disaster without ever mentioning socialism, price controls, nationalizations, or anything else of significance.)
Venezuela of course has made a run at creating perfect justice and fairness by the device of price controls. Included among items with controlled prices are most consumer staples, as well as the currency itself. As a result, the consumer staples with controlled prices have completely disappeared from stores. As to the currency, you can’t buy anything with a bolivar, so you need to get dollars; but you can’t get dollars at the controlled price unless you are somehow connected. On the other hand, if you are importing, say, butter, and you have the right connections, you can get the dollars. Yet somehow butter still does not appear in the stores. The government blames “hoarders” — but is someone really hoarding tons of butter somewhere?
As Glenn noted on Saturday in regards to Venezuela, “Leftism impoverishes and kills, again and again. But politicians like it because it offers them control, and opportunities for graft. Voters like it because, well, it’s a con game designed to take advantage of greed and envy. Remember, under free markets the rich become powerful. But under socialism, the powerful become rich. Entirely unrelated: Candidate Who Said There Were Too Many Kinds Of Deodorant Buys His Third House.”
And finally, an exit question: Why Couldn’t What Happened In Venezuela Happen Here?
(Via Maggie’s Farm.)
CHANGE: Congress is getting richer.
The median net worth of lawmakers was just over $1 million in 2013, or 18 times the wealth of the typical American household, according to new research released Monday by the Center for Responsive Politics.
And while Americans’ median wealth is down 43% since 2007, Congress members’ net worth has jumped 28%.
I’ve long thought that elected federal officials should be required to place their assets in a blind trust.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Whole Foods CEO Drops the Mic on Why Socialism Will Never Work.
John Mackey, chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market, recently debated John Roemer, a Marxist economics professor at Yale, on the question of “Capitalism vs. Socialism: Free to Choose or Free to Lose?”
Roemer, a supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, wrote a book called “Free to Lose,” challenging the theme of free-market economist Milton Friedman’s classic, “Free to Choose.” Roemer blames the 2008 financial crisis and growing inequality of wealth on “greedy” capitalists.
Yet during the debate, hosted at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Mackey pointed out that countries with high economic freedom such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Chile have improved prosperity, while socialist countries such as Greece, Venezuela and North Korea are poor and getting poorer all the time. He also looked at Sweden as a case study, which he reported has lowered its corporate tax rate and reduced its top marginal tax rates and achieved improved economic growth. More broadly, Mackey contended people are better off financially as they enjoy freer markets.
If you think Whole Foods is expensive, wait’ll you try government ownership of the means of production.
ISLAMIC STATE ALTERS VICTORY CONDITIONS: As it loses territory, the Islamic State is returning to “dispersed organization” mode.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: ‘Nightly Show’ Canceled; Larry Wilmore “Saddened” By “Unblackening” at Comedy Central:
Wilmore, who informed his staff of the network’s decision early Monday, didn’t hide his disappointment. “I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity,” he says in a statement to THR, leaning on his “Keeping it 100” mantra as he continued: “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”
Three questions: On the one hand, if you run with Wilmore’s claim and it’s how it’s framed by the Hollywood Reporter in its headline to its logical conclusion, they’re accusing Comedy Central and its parent company Viacom of institutional racism for cancelling him. If so, why are Democrat-run media outlets such cesspits of racism?
On the other hand, what does Wilmore’s cancellation say about the viewing habits of Comedy Central’s core audience of leftwing coastal elites and those who virtue signal that they wish to be members of the corporatist caste?
And finally, on the gripping hand, didn’t Jon Stewart “jokingly” warn Wilmore in 2010 that his race card had been maxed out?
IN THE MAIL: From Kimberly Strassel, The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech.
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QUESTION ASKED: After Trump, can the Republican Party be rebuilt? From Ricochet’s Jon Gabriel, writing in the Arizona Republic:
Accomplishing these recommendations is far from easy. Not only will it require years of hard work, it also will require elites to place their fellow Americans’ welfare above their own vanity, power, and quarterly dividend statements. This cannot be a temporary pose to trick the “rubes,” but a change in heart, mind and direction. The new party bosses must admit that much of the work they do in Washington is either useless or downright counter-productive.
If the GOP isn’t willing to make these changes, a new party will have to rise from its ashes.
Read the whole thing.
Related: When it comes to rebuilding the GOP, “Evolutionary Change Isn’t Going To Cut It Any More,” one of Ace’s co-bloggers posits.
GERMAN INTELLIGENCE: We Have Evidence ISIS Hides ‘Hit Squads’ Among Syrian Refugees.
According to Politico, Manfred Hauser — the vice president of BayLfV, the Bavarian region’s intelligence gathering apparatus — told the BBC Thursday that officials must “accept we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany.”
“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads,” he added. “There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves.”
Hauser stated that BayLfV is currently following up on the reports of ISIS operatives inside German borders, but maintained the investigation is far from complete.
Why must Germans “accept” this?
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1194.
KATIE PAVLICH: ‘THERE AREN’T AS MANY CONSERVATIVES IN THE COUNTRY AS WE THOUGHT.’ “When people like [conservative Sen.] Ben Sasse are the ‘enemy,’ we’re in a really bad spot,” she added.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Anti-Semitism At The Olympics Is Completely Out Of Control.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. PAC Operative Confesses, “We Killed the Tea Party”
What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds.
A lot of well-intentioned people have been duped out of millions of dollars, with nothing to show for it but increasing electoral outrage.
SUBSIDIZING THE RICH AND CONNECTED: Poor Ohioans’ Tax Dollars Fund Rich People’s TV Shows.
If the existence of the show “Vanilla Ice Goes Amish” is not ridiculous enough, try the idea of giving it government funding. Believe it or not, Ohio taxpayers paid for this show’s production.
Under the recently revised Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit, annual funding for film productions in the state will double to $40 million. This credit is refundable, meaning Ohio taxpayers actually have to cut checks to production companies that film timeless classics such as “Alpha Dogz Presents: Pups United.” (Buckeyes, you need to watch this trailer to see how your tax dollars are being used.) To be fair, since the state’s film tax credit program was first passed in 2009, blockbuster hits including “The Avengers” and “Captain America: Winter Soldier” have also been filmed in Ohio. But does subsidizing film actually pay off?
Well, it pays off for some people. . . .
I had a piece about this in the Wall Street Journal a while back. Also, repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts!
THE CALIFORNIA BAY AREA IN A NUTSHELL: Housing official in Silicon Valley resigns because she can’t afford to live there.
Related: The Extinction of Palo Alto?
DON’T DO STUPID SH*T: U.S. allies unite to block Obama’s nuclear ‘legacy’
The governments of Japan, South Korea, France and Britain have all privately communicated their concerns about a potential declaration by President Obama of a “no first use” nuclear-weapons policy for the United States. U.S. allies have various reasons for objecting to what would be a landmark change in America’s nuclear posture, but they are all against it, according to U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and nuclear experts.
Japan, in particular, believes that if Obama declares a “no first use” policy, deterrence against countries such as North Korea will suffer and the risks of conflict will rise. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally conveyed that message recently to Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the head of U.S. Pacific Command, according to two government officials.
U.S. allies in Europe have a separate, additional concern. They don’t want any daylight between their nuclear policies and those of the United States, especially since Britain, France and the United States all are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In the case of an emergency, those differences could cause real coordination problems.
Nuclear deterrence against rogue states and bad actors just isn’t as important as giving progressive voters a temporary case of happy feelz.
ROGER SIMON: Donald Trump Should Go for the Black Vote—NOW!
As Roger writes, Trump needs to change the narrative ASAP – and here’s the plan. Read the whole thing.
ANOTHER RUBE SELF-IDENTITIES: Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It.
In nearly eight years in office, President Obama has sought to reshape the nation with a sweeping assertion of executive authority and a canon of regulations that have inserted the United States government more deeply into American life.
Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power, Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history.
That was always the intention.
THAT ’70S CATALOG: Absolutely Hilarious JCPenney Catalog From 1977.
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NEVER TRUMPNIKS PAVE HILLARY’S PATH TO POWER: “Rather than encourage Trump — whose victory could secure these and other conservative goals after 16 years of molar-grinding Bush-Obama statism — the Never Trump crowd slaps away his extended hand. These malcontents should help Trump develop the best conservative ideas and present them to the voters as attractively as possible. Supply-side heavyweights Arthur Laffer, Larry Kudlow, and Steve Moore helped craft Trump’s economic proposal. The man who Never Trumpniks say ‘never listens’ heeded these free-marketeers on taxes and the Heritage Foundation on judges. Conservative Trump haters should do something productive: Offer the GOP nominee issues and ideas he can use to win.”
Read the whole thing.
Related: An Illustrated Story: What it means to be #NeverTrump.
HOOSIER DADDY? Records contradict Bayh’s assertion over staying in Indiana.
A CNN review of public records since Bayh left office in 2011 shows the Democrat repeatedly listed his two multi-million dollar homes in Washington as his main places of residence — not the $53,000 condo he owns in Indianapolis.
Just three weeks after leaving office in 2011, Bayh changed his address to his $2.3 million home in a leafy neighborhood in Washington, according to Indiana records. And often when Bayh registered his address — whether it was on an Alaska fishing license, a donation to Hillary Clinton or on the deed to his beachfront property in Southern Florida — he listed Washington as his home.
Even when Bayh returned back to Indianapolis last summer for an Indiana Democratic Party dinner, he stayed at a JW Marriott just 12 miles away from his condo. A source with Indianapolis Power and Light said Bayh’s monthly electric bills averaged less than $20 per month since 2012, suggesting little — if any — use at his Indiana condo.
CURIOUS, COMING FROM A MAN WHO HAS NO SHAME WHATSOEVER. Dan Rather: Media Must Publicly Shame Donald Trump Supporters.
THE THING TO REMEMBER IS THAT THIS HAS ALL HAPPENED IN SPITE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, NOT BECAUSE OF IT: U.S. energy independence looks ‘tantalizingly close.’
HOPE: What Conservatives Did to Pull Off Religious Liberty Win in California.
Facing a maelstrom of grassroots controversy, state Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat, said Wednesday that he would remove the portions of his bill, SB 1146, that would have harmed the right of religious colleges to operate according to their principles.
Under the previous wording, SB 1146 would have ultimately blocked low-income students from receiving Cal Grants, California’s system of need-based education aid, if they attended colleges with policies such as bathroom use based on biological sex that violated the state’s LGBT policies. It also would have enabled students who feel discriminated against in light of these policies to bring a lawsuit against their college.
“Without a doubt, the unmodified version [of the bill] would have jeopardized Christian institutions and egregiously penalized all students of faith, especially Latino and African-American individuals,” Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said in a statement.
If a win like this is possible in California, then it’s possible in any state.
PUTIN’S WEB: Manafort blasts NYT, denies he accepted Ukraine cash payments.
It’s unclear if Manafort actually received payments, but prosecutors told the Times that Manafort “must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.”
But Manafort strongly denied that he ever received off-the-books payments or has done work with the governments of Ukraine or Russia.
“My work in Ukraine ceased following the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2014,” Manafort says. “In addition, as the article points out hesitantly, every government official interviewed states I have done nothing wrong.”
The Times story was retweeted by Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager and Manafort rival who was fired in June.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, Robby Mook, called the alleged connections between Manafort and members of pro-Russian factions troubling.
Oh really?
SIX PROBLEMS WITH MEDIA’S HYSTERICAL REACTION TO TRUMP’S ISIS COMMENTS, including:
Listen, Trump might be an effective communicator with his core audience, but others have trouble understanding him. His speaking style couldn’t be more removed from the anodyne and cautious political rhetoric of our era. This can be a challenge for political journalists in particular. His sentences run on into paragraphs. He avoids specificity or contradicts himself when he doesn’t. His sentences trail into other sentences before they finish. He doesn’t play the usual games that the media are used to. It’s frustrating.
So the media immediately decided Trump was claiming that Obama had literally incorporated ISIS a few years back. And they treated this literal claim as a fact that needed to be debunked.
Related: Hyperliteral media wasn’t prepared to handle sarcasm from a candidate – or at least from a Republican candidate.
Plus a video rewind: Chris Matthews Said Cheney ‘Created al-Qaeda,’ ‘Created ISIS.’
BIRTHRATES ALWAYS PLUMMET UNDER SOCIALISM: America’s falling birth rate is now a national emergency.
The new birth rate numbers are out, and they’re a disaster. There are now only 59.6 births per 1,000 women, the lowest rate ever recorded in the United States. Some of the decrease is due to good news, which is the continuing decline of teen pregnancies, but most of it is due to people getting married later and choosing to have fewer children. And the worst part is, everyone is treating this news with a shrug.
It wasn’t always this way. It used to be taken for granted that the best indicator of a nation’s health was its citizens’ desire and capacity to reproduce. And it should still seem self-evident that people’s willingness to have children is not only a sign of confidence in the future, but a sign of cultural health. It’s a signal that people are willing to commit to the most enduring responsibility on Earth, which is raising a child.
But reproduction is also a sign of national health in a more dollars-and-cents way. The more productive people you have in your society, the healthier your country’s economy. It’s an idea that was obvious back in the 17th century, when economist Jean Bodin wrote “the only wealth is people.”
Yes, but then we got Paul Ehrlich.
A CLASSIFIED MATTER AT THE WHITE HOUSE: SEMI-RETIRED PRESIDENT’S STAR-STUDDED GALAS.
Or to put it another way, world’s biggest celebrity much prefers hobnobbing with other superstar performers than actually doing the job he was hired to do by the American people. But then, it’s not like voters weren’t warned this would be the likely result.
Related: President Ash Carter Shows Bold Leadership While Obama Vacations.
BORROW, SPEND, STAGNATE, REPEAT. Japan’s economy stalls in April-June, casts doubts on Abe’s policies.
“Overall it looks like the economy is stagnating. Consumer spending is weak, and the reason is low wage gains. There is a lot of uncertainty about overseas economies, and this is holding back capital expenditure,” said Norio Miyagawa, senior economist at Mizuho Securities.
“The government has already announced a big stimulus package, so the next question is how the Bank of Japan will respond after its comprehensive policy review, which is sure to lead to a delay in its price target.”
This time stimulus will work, honest.
OOPS: Hillary scrubs sexual assault pledge after allegations against Bill resurface.
The Clinton campaign has removed a pledge from its website stating that all survivors of sexual assault “have the right to be believed.”
On a page dedicated to “Campus sexual assault” on HillaryClinton.com, this passage from the Democratic presidential candidate used to be prominently featured last year: “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault: Don’t let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed, and we’re with you.”
But by February of this year, those lines had been deleted, according to BuzzFeed News.
The online website says the scrubbing came after the election-cycle reemergence of Juanita Broaddrick, who has accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978 when he was lieutenant governor of Arkansas.
More on Broaddrick here.
THERE’S A LOT TO WORK WITH IN THESE EMAILS, IF THE GOP HAS ANYONE SMART ENOUGH TO DO IT: Leaked DCCC Memo Offers Window into Committee’s Candidate Research.
THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES WILL ALMOST SURELY DECIDE THE ELECTION.
As with both the Kennedy-Nixon debate and the Obama-Romney debate, I wonder what the MSM will do to give their candidate the upper hand?
CORN, POPPED: Democrats Brace for More Leaks From Hackers.
Some computer experts and Democrats in Congress believe both websites—the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress page and DCLeaks.com—have ties to Russian intelligence services and that the sites are using hacked information to try to influence the November elections.
The precise motives of the entities controlling these webpages cannot be learned because their identities are unclear.
U.S. officials are now debating whether to publicly accuse the Russian government of conducting the attacks, two people familiar with the deliberations said, though no final decision about how to proceed has been made.
“I certainly believe that this is a coordinated Russian effort against the U.S. political process,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D., Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, in an interview Sunday. “It’s an act of hostility by a foreign power.”
The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back.
WHY DO THE PROGRESSIVES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES HATE PROGRESS SO?
Last week: Fire bad! Fire hold back feminism, advance patriarchy!
This week: Electric light bad! “Now new research in animals shows that excessive exposure to ‘light pollution’ may be worse for health than previously known, taking a toll on muscle and bone strength.”
And don’t get ‘em started on the eeeeeevils of air conditioning…
IT’S HUGE: California’s Rich-Poor Gap.
EMAILS REVEAL: The Clintons’ Crumbling Foundations.
The implication in these email communications is that those with close connections to the Clinton Foundation had easy access to the Secretary of State’s office, and received quick and unusual assistance in their queries—some of which appear to be employment-related. If proven, that would be a clear violation of an ethics agreement signed by Clinton Foundation chairman (then CEO) Bruce Linsey and senior advisor to President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, in 2009 as a precondition for Clinton’s appointment to serve as Secretary of State.
You would think the Obama Administration would have an interest in enforcing an ethics agreement made with its own Secretary of State. Unless of course the agreement was merely for show.
JOEL KOTKIN: California For Whom?
California has been bleeding people to other states for more than two decades. Even after the state’s “comeback,” net domestic out-migration since 2010 has exceeded 250,000. Moreover, the latest Internal Revenue Service migration data, for 2013-2014, does not support the view that those who leave are so dominated by the flight of younger and poorer people.
Of course, younger people tend to move more than older people, and people seeking better job opportunities are more likely to move than those who have made it. But, according to the IRS, nearly 60,000 more Californians left the state than moved in between 2013 and 2014. In each of the seven income categories and each of the five age categories, the IRS found that California lost net domestic migrants.
Nor, viewed over the long term, is California getting smarter than its rivals. Since 2000, California’s cache of 25- to 34-year-olds with college, postgraduate and professional degrees grew by 36 percent, below the national average of 42 percent, and Texas’ 47 percent. If we look at metropolitan regions, the growth of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees since 2000 has been more than 1.5 to nearly 3 times as fast in Houston and Austin as in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Even New York, with its high costs, is doing better.
In fact, the only large California metropolitan area which has seen anything like Texas’ growth has been the most unlikely – the Inland Empire. The coastal areas, so alluring to the media and venture capitalists, are losing out in terms of growing their educated workforces, most likely a product of high housing prices and, outside of the Bay Area, weak high-wage job growth.
The location of migrants tells us something about where the allure of California remains the strongest and where it has been supplanted. Almost all of the leading states sending net migrants here are also high-tax, high-regulation places that have been losing domestic migrants for years – New York, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. In contrast, the net outflow has been largely to lower-cost states, notably Texas, as well as neighboring Western states, all of which have lower housing prices.
You could revitalize California by making it as easy to get a building permit as it is to vote. I remember talking to the Investor’s Business Daily folks a few years ago — they were headquartered in Marina Del Rey, a lovely place but one where they were constantly visited by inspectors, tax people, etc., all posing problems. When they opened an office in Texas, the state and local government people were all “tell us if we can help you.” Very different experience.
LONDON TELEGRAPH: JEWISH LABOUR DONOR COMPARES JEREMY CORBYN’S INNER CIRCLE TO NAZI STORMTROOPERS.
H.G. Wells just called to ask if that was a bug or a feature for Labour.
YAWN: MOVIE AND TV STAR ROSE McGOWAN THINKS TRUMP IS A ‘MURDEROUS’ ‘TERROR CANCER.’
Gee, as opposed to mild-mannered patrician Mitt Romney – whom the Obama campaign accused of literally giving his employees cancer?
Not to mention his wife: Newsweek Columnist Michelle Goldberg likened “insufferable” Ann Romney to Hitler, Stalin.
But then, when it comes to our would-be elites, as Richard Fernandez writes, there are “None So Deaf as They Who Will Not Hear.”
THE HILL: Former NY gov: Clinton shouldn’t have taken ‘victory lap’ after email report.
Former governor of New York and state Democratic Party Chairman David Paterson said his party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, could have handled the FBI and Justice Department’s decision on her use of a private email server with more humility.
Paterson told radio host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on Sunday that Clinton could have used the FBI and Justice Department’s decision not to bring charges against her as another chance to try to right the scandal.
“When the attorney general absolved Hillary Clinton and said that there were no criminal penalties that she would be held accountable for, she goes and basically takes a victory lap with President Obama,” Paterson said.
“What if Hillary Clinton had a press conference and said, ‘You know something? I am really happy that there are no criminal charges being levied against me, but I recognize I did a lot of things wrong. I used poor judgment, and I want the voters to know that I have learned a lesson from this situation, and I will never be in violation this way again’? ” he said. “I think that would have been a much better message than what went on that day.”
Paterson also lauded current New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Democratic National Convention speech, saying it showed an ability to work with Republicans.
Hillary is no more capable of admitting error than Trump.
NEW YORK IS GETTING REALLY TRASHY:
New Yorkers are making a big stink about the city not picking up their trash.
They’ve called in 16,936 complaints of missed pickups to the city’s 311 hotline from Jan. 1 to Aug. 1 — a surge of 26 percent from 13,489 over the same period last year, and 32 percent more than the 12,784 gripes in the same period in 2014, according to city records.
And the number of complaints was a massive 76 percent more than the 9,598 called in by disgusted denizens five years ago.
Well, this is what happens when you elect an SJW as your mayor. Say what you will about Michael Bloomberg’s ban the Big Gulp nanny statisms and obsession with bike lanes, he made the trash trucks run on time.
August 14, 2016
IN THE HEART OF DIVERSITY CULTURE: “Such is the parochialism of a Manhattan childhood that it seems entirely plausible I simply never imagined that anyone I was fond of could be a Republican.”
UPDATE (From Ed): There’s a reason why Manhattan liberal turned conservative Harry Stein’s book published shortly after Obama was elected was titled I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican!
It’s the phrase an elite lefty bellowed the previous year when Stein punctured the tulip-mania level groupthink a dinner party in tawny Hastings-on-Hudson (Keith Olbermann’s childhood town!) by suggesting that perhaps Obama might be just a tad ill-suited and unprepared for the presidency.
PRIME MINISTER ZOOLANDER: Trudeau’s leadership MIA during terror scare.
THIS IS WHY ELITES ARE SO EAGER TO DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER: German President Booed, Attacked; Claims “The People Are The Problem, Not The Elites.”
This kind of thinking is a worldwide problem.
YET ANOTHER REASON NOT TO TRUST THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Nest thermostats offline in massive outage during U.S. heatwave.
ON THIS DAY IN 2003, THE HUGE NYC BLACKOUT BEGAN.
Here’s Amy Langfield’s blog tick-tock. Her advice about keeping a stash of small bills handy — because ATMs and credit-card readers don’t work when the power’s out — is good.
Some related items here.
And here’s an InstaPundit post from that night, featuring live on-the-scene reports from Insta-readers. Much more of a novelty in 2003 than today!
THE INSTA-WIFE: Will Women’s Pets Now Have More Rights Than Men?
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DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Man harpooned in brawl over photo of women in burkinis in Corsica: Fracas between North Africans and local youths a day after French court upheld ban on swimsuits.
Hatchets and harpoons were thrown in a beach brawl that broke out after a tourist was seen taking pictures of women wearing burkinis in Corsica.
The fracas between a group described as North African ‘Muslim families’ and local youths broke out a day after a ban on the head-to-toe swimsuits was upheld by a judge in Cannes.
A tourist was seen taking pictures of women wearing the full-body swimwear on a creek near the village of Sisco on the French island.
When the bathers objected, a group of local teenagers are said to have come to the photographer’s defence.
Local reports said that the group of North African men armed themselves and took on the young Corsicans. One man was hit by a spear-like weapon and a pregnant women was taken to hospital with injuries.
Tension between local communities in France and Muslims of North African origin has grown since 85 people were massacred by a lorry driver in a jihadi-linked terror attack in Nice on July 14.
This is fine.
LOUISE MENSCH AND VOX DAY debate Marital Rape.
RIOT FIRST, LEARN FACTS LATER: Milwaukee man shot by police seen with gun in body camera footage, officials say.
Black officer, black police chief, but Black Lives Matter is, ultimately, about ending the policing of black neighborhoods.
ROBO-CALLS IN GENERAL ARE OUT OF CONTROL: Student debt collectors want to robo-call your cellphone, but FCC says not so fast.
I want a system that charges people a dollar to call me if they’re not on my whitelist.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Milwaukee is the latest example that the American Left are “Lying Black Folks to Death,” writes Andrew Klavan.
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Plus, get the Fire TV Stick with voice remote for just $49.95. When we went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, I took the Fire TV Stick and plugged it into the TV in our rental condo, so that the Insta-Daughter and I could continue binge-watching That 70s Show. It was a huge success.
METAPHOR ALERT: US monuments are getting covered in slime, and no one knows how to stop it. “Besides the Jefferson Memorial, the NPS reports that the biofilm – which they’ve not gone into specifics about yet – has also started to cover the Lincoln Memorial and some tombstones at the Congressional Cemetery.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s why time seems to go by more quickly as we get older. So is there a limit to how long a human life might seem, even if it were actually endless? So that adding an extra century or millennium would just approach that limit asymptotically?
TRUMP SAYS HE’D BE UP 20 POINTS IF NOT FOR CROOKED MEDIA: He’s running against Media Privilege. And he darn well should.
NORTH KOREA’S NUMBERS STATION: The post includes a brief history of numbers stations.
DIGITAL DEVASTATION: Excess Light Exposure May Take Toll on Muscles and Bones.
LESS THAN YOU THINK, BUT MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE GET: How Much Exercise Do You Really Need to Protect Against Disease?
BLACK LIVES MATTER MAY STILL GET TRUMP ELECTED:
IN THE MAIL: From Neil Strauss, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Save Up To 25% on Ello and Pogo Water Bottles.
And, also today only: Save Up To 45% on Osprey Backpacks.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1193.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Hillary’s short circuit.
AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER IS WONT TO SAY, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Calif. Religious Leaders Stand Up, Dem Lawmaker Backs Down on Campus LGBT Rights.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Why Are American Workers Growing Less Productive? For most of the last year, employees haven’t been getting as much done with their time at work. What’s happening?
The worker productivity rate is gauged by the output of goods and services produced for each hour worked. Ultimately, a decrease in that rate suggests that Americans are working more to create less. When held against more uplifting recent economic news, including the 500,000 jobs created in the past two months alone and a perking-up of wages, lower efficiency could have a surprising bite, potentially lowering long-term income and living standards, as well as encouraging the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low.
So what gives? Well, according to one economist, it has little to do with social-media-inspired slacking off and more to do with workers having outgrown existing technology. “We have an $18 trillion economy,” explains Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, whose book The Rise and Fall of American Growth came out earlier this year. “Most of it is operating by the same business methods and procedures that have been in place for at least 10 years.”
Maybe. But workers are always less productive under socialism.
JAPANESE BATTLE OF MIDWAY AFTER ACTION REPORT: An Army buddy sent me the link a few days ago. Lots of details, a bit of a slog, but worth the look for military history fans.
THE SLOW CRAWL TO MOSUL CONTINUES: Today Kurdish forces launched a limited offensive southeast of the city. More here.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Tinder is destroying men’s self-esteem.
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REPORT: TRUMP EXHAUSTED, BEWILDERED.
WELL, TO BE FAIR, HE’S HAD A LIFETIME OF EXPERIENCE PREYING ON COLLEGE STUDENTS: Bill Clinton netted $1.6 million from for-profit colleges.
Bill Clinton netted $1.6 million last year from a pair of for-profit education companies that caused controversy for the future president during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton nearly $1.1 million in 2015, according to tax returns released by his wife’s campaign Friday. GEMS Education, a Dubai-based firm, paid him more than $560,000.
Both companies are major donors to the Clinton Foundation.
Bill Clinton’s lucrative consulting contracts with the corporations have raised questions about how closely his personal fortune is linked to his philanthropic activities.
What’s more, the State Department handed Laureate’s chairman taxpayer-funded grants under Hillary Clinton’s watch.
Culture of corruption.
CLASS, NOT RACE: Study: Americans care more about poor students than black or Hispanic students.
According to a new study published in the Educational Researcher, Americans care more about the academic gaps between poor and wealthy students than they care about gaps between minority students and white students.
“We find that Americans are more concerned about — and more supportive of proposals to close — wealth-based achievement gaps than Black-White or Hispanic-White gaps,” researchers wrote. “High-income, low-income, and White respondents all indicated it was a higher priority to close poor-wealthy gaps than to close Black-White and Hispanic-White gaps.”
Almost two-thirds of American adults say it is “essential or a high priority” to close the test score gap between poor and wealthy students. Roughly one-third say the same about the gap between black and white students or Hispanic and white students. “Respondents were also more supportive of proposals to narrow wealth-based rather than race- or ethnicity-based gaps,” researchers wrote.
Among black respondents, the average response was roughly the same when they were asked how high a priority it was to close the poor-wealthy gap and the black-white gap.
But politicians want to tribalize us along race lines.
LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Milwaukee erupts in arsons, violence, looting after ARMED suspect was fatally shot: photos, video.
THIS SEEMS LIKE A SAFE PREDICTION: HuffPo Will Be Just As Freakin’ Nuts Without Arianna.
Nora Ephron certainly wrapped up her career in grand style there.