ANALYSIS: TRUE. Active-shooter training for office workers used to be about hiding. Not anymore. “The idea: Work as a team to disrupt and confuse shooters, opening up a split second to take them down.” This is a better approach than cowering under desks.
HOW TO RUN AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON.
WAS OBAMA SOMEHOW INVOLVED? “This must be the worst disaster in pageant history.”
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TO HIDE THE INSULIN PUMP? “Speaking of Hillary and fashion, can anyone explain the extremely frumpy knee-length coat she wore last night? I’m especially curious about the big patch pockets at belly level. I understand that’s something a woman might choose as an alternative to carrying a purse, but Hillary has people to hold her things for her, and the pockets are so crude — huge and stuck on and bulgy. If I had to guess, I’d say she wears clothes as a deflection of attention from her body.”
FOR APPENDICITIS, choosing antibiotics over surgery.
NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, GUYS, AFTER ALL, HOW MANY OF YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE WHITE MALES? Americans Boycott Sam’s Club After CEO’s Racist Comments About White Males.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Pros and Cons of Making Your Bed.
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DON’T FEEL BAD FOR WHAT THE COUNTRY’S DOING TO HIM. FEEL BAD FOR WHAT HE’S DONE TO THE COUNTRY: Inside Obama’s secret pity party. “Poor Barack Obama. Americans don’t appreciate his wisdom, and those nasty Republicans are picking on him again. Woe is the leader of the free world. That was the essence of his private meeting with friendly journalists, where the president gave his water-carriers talking points so he could jet off to Hawaii and still look as if he’s engaged in national security. The session was off the record, so Obama couldn’t be quoted or put on the spot with tough, public questions. But his trademark self-pity, partisan pique and warped ideas came through in the subsequent stories and columns.”
AFTER ERIC CANTOR, YOU’D THINK THEY’D HAVE LEARNED: Movement to Primary Speaker Paul Ryan Out of Congress Picks Up Steam.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Sheldon Adelson Just Revolutionized American Politics.
The purchase is going to revolutionize politics because Adelson will have done something that Democratic billionaires like Warren Buffett have been doing for decades: purchasing newspapers. As of this writing, Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway owns 71 newspapers across America including swing states Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Over the years, he’s also donated billions of dollars to various liberal causes including Planned Parenthood; he also very publicly endorsed Barack Obama for president and agitated for higher income taxes on wealthy people.
This is not Adelson’s first newspaper, however. He already owns several others in Israel, including that country’s most popular daily publication, Israel Hayom (Today).
The Review-Journal has long had a libertarian-conservative editorial page which isn’t likely to change under its new owner. Like many regional dailies, has seen its profits and staff shrink as the metro newspaper industry continues to contract. That might change considering the massive amounts of money that Adelson has poured into Israel Hayom, purported losing millions of dollars a month on the free paper.
While there are a handful of media companies in the U.S. which are owned or operated by right-leaning individuals, the industry as a whole is overwhelmingly dominated by corporate executives who support Democrats. Even the employees of News Corporation, the former parent company of Fox News Channel, were revealed to have given far more money to Obama’s re-election campaign compared to his Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
The continued dominance of liberal media magnates like Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone has been interesting in light of the billions of dollars that their conservative counterparts have poured into generally inefficient television advertising.
The one large exception to this rule has been News founder Rupert Murdoch who, despite his reputation as a hardcore Republican, had given less than $1 million to members of the GOP since 1990 as of 2011.
Will Adelson’s move inspire other conservative donors to stop wasting their money on television ads in pursuit of a defunct base mobilization strategy? Who knows.
Well, I’ve been encouraging the GOP donor class to do this sort of thing for quite a while.
SO PRACTICES HAVE CHANGED MORE THAN ATTITUDES: 76 percent of Americans approve of Christmas in public schools, as do 82 percent of parents. “A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that 76 percent of Americans believe Christmas should be celebrated in public schools. Among adults with school-age children at home, 82 percent favor celebrating Christmas in the classroom. Another 61 percent overall believe there should be more religion in those schools. Another 54 percent say there’s not enough religion in the public schools; 70 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of the parents and 44 percent of Democrats agree. The survey of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted Dec. 10-13. Rasmussen Reports notes that the findings are virtually unchanged from similar surveys in recent years.”
THE PALACE GUARD DEFENDS THE PALACE: CBS Edited Out Harsh Critique of Obama, U.S. ‘Militarism’ by Muslim Focus Group. “They ripped into Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but CBS wanted its own tidy narrative of patriotic Muslims who have no problem with this president.”
Plus:
He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims. . . .
The edited version of the focus group interview was mainly about proving our American identity, condemning terrorism, and Trump’s bashing of Muslim-Americans. This is problematic.
He kept saying how he felt bad that no one listens to Muslims and how he wanted to give us an opportunity to talk to the general population. But how can that happen when we’re manipulatively edited to have us fit their own narrative and agenda?
They call that journalism, these days. Interesting that they muted criticism of Obama and Hillary, but focused on complaints about Trump.
CHANGE: Theranos Founder Faces a Test of Technology, and Reputation. “Ms. Holmes said that she needed secrecy to keep others from stealing her ideas, but several former employees say that Ms. Holmes’s steely focus on her mission — an attribute deeply admired by outsiders — made it difficult for her to acknowledge any serious shortcomings in the company’s products. They say she would become angry and sometimes fire people who pointed out problems. She often spoke as though the company’s technology already existed, they said, rather than as if it were still in development.”
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EVEN THE NYT IS PRODUCING HEADLINES LIKE THIS: As Obama Checks Off List of Goals Met, a Nervous Nation Dwells on Terror. “Mr. Obama has the lowest rating of his presidency for terrorism, with 37 percent approving of the way he has handled the issue, according to a national survey by the Pew Research Center. Fifty-seven percent disapprove, even as terrorism has catapulted to the top of the public’s list of concerns.”
THE ROTHERHAM RAPE GANGS GOT A PASS, BUT THERE’S THIS: UK police busts karaoke “gang” for sharing songs that aren’t commercially available.
FUNNY, THAT’S NOT WHAT PEOPLE TOLD US IN 2009: There’s No Miracle Cure for Health-Care Costs.
Flashback: Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance. “That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them. Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, ‘if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,’ was still saying in 2012, ‘If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.'”
XCOR AEROSPACE makes some progress. (Disclosure: I own a small amount of friends-and-family stock in XCOR).
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS for old-house owners.
FASTENER NEWS: These Are The Screws You Should Be Using.
THE NEW YORK TIMES CAN ASK THIS QUESTION, BUT WON’T THINK ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICAN POLICY: Has Europe Reached The Breaking Point?
Key bit: “It is a perfect recipe for public cynicism: a system of intrusive regulators whose tentacles can spread into your personal life, even as leaders appear indecisive in the face of genuine crises.”
Luckily nothing like that could ever happen here.
I DON’T THINK THAT HELPS: Muslim in Face The Nation focus group: If Trump keeps talking, number of Muslim terrorists in America “will skyrocket. . . . He’s driving and fueling anger.” Starts about 2:10. Most of the others, I should note, disagree with him.
SO THIS CRUZ AD CAME OUT YESTERDAY, and already has over 700,000 views on YouTube.
UPDATE: Oops — wrong link. Fixed now. Sorry! Now up to 720,000. (Bumped.)
IN THE MAIL: The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 955.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: President Pangloss and the Refugee Crisis.
There should be no mistake about this: If some kind of world order isn’t restored and, therefore, the refugee crisis isn’t brought to an end, pressure to prevent migration into the West will only grow. The West’s own geopolitical failures of nerve and execution, that is, are the cause of its deteriorating ability to live up to its values when it comes to the treatment of the victims of war. President Obama and the hand wringers generally think that the solution to the migrant crisis is to scold people for being unwilling to absorb ever growing numbers of refugees escaping from ever more disastrous failures of foreign policy. But this is a dead end. You can’t have an orderly world without a world order, and a world order can’t exist unless somebody is willing to do what it takes to defend it. President Obama’s Jeffersonian decision to let the Middle East burn without launching any American response is the direct cause of the flare-up in nativism, Islamophobia, and anti-refugee sentiment in both Europe and the United States.
That doesn’t mean the U.S. should be sending ground troops into every conflict zone on planet Earth. Our foreign needs to be politically and economically sustainable for the long term. We need allies, we need a prudent awareness about limits and costs, and we need a strategic approach to international politics that allows us to focus our resources and attention on the things that matter most.
But as one ex-Obama official after another has made clear, we haven’t been doing that over the last seven years—and one of the consequences is the weakening hold of exactly the values that President Obama cares most about over public opinion across the West.
America chose the form of its Destructor in 2008.
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AS ED NOTES, Roger Simon wasn’t impressed with the Democrats’ debate.
There was a time when I made joking references to Hillary Clinton as the most uncompromising wartime president in U.S. history. But that was before I saw this photo.
To be fair, she was uncompromising about the length of her bathroom break, schedules be damned.
ROGER SIMON ON LAST NIGHT’S DEBATE: The Democratic Candidates Do Their Best to Preserve ISIS:
But talk of passing the buck, Hillary, during the debate, accused Donald Trump of being ISIS’s best recruiter, specifically that they had already used him in a propaganda video. That turned out not to be true. You will be amazed to hear that Hillary lied.
Inconceivable!
GEORGE WILL: “Higher education is increasingly a house divided. In the sciences and even the humanities, actual scholars maintain the high standards of their noble calling. But in the humanities, especially, and elsewhere, faux scholars representing specious disciplines exploit academia as a jobs program for otherwise unemployable propagandists hostile to freedom of expression.”
THE BEST 2016 CAMPAIGN BOOK IS ABOUT 1988: “The best way to understand the 2016 presidential campaign is to read ‘What It Takes,’ Richard Ben Cramer’s 1992 masterpiece on the 1988 presidential primary. If you don’t have time to read its 1,047 pages, here are some of its most important insights.”
THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY THAT TELEVISION ONCE PROMISED ME: Company selling ‘fake hymens’ to Muslim women in Germany — which burst with fake blood to trick husbands into thinking they are virgins – sees sales surge as migrant influx spikes.
SWEDEN DESCENDS INTO ANARCHY:
Once upon a time, there was a safe welfare state called Sweden, where people rarely locked their doors.
Now, this country is a night-watchman state — each man is on his own. When the Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson, encourages breaking the law, it means opening the gates to anarchy. Mr. and Mrs. Swede have every reason to be worried, with the influx of 190,000 unskilled and unemployed migrants expected this year — equivalent to 2% of Sweden’s current population. The number is as if 6.4 million penniless migrants who did not speak English arrived in U.S. in one year, or 1.3 million in Britain.
And speaking of Britain, as Michael Walsh writes, “Things Getting Ugly at the Chunnel as ‘Migrants’ Attack.”
NAHH. THIS CALLS FOR DEFCON 10: Al Gore demands we go to Defcon 5 to fight global warming!
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT LAST WEEK, Frank Cagle’s Must-Read Column On The GOP and Trump:
What I don’t understand about the Republican establishment these days is that they fail to recognize that Trump uses outrageous statements to garner attention, but he taps into issues of real concern to the American people. But if you want to stop Trump, don’t attack him; appeal to the people who support him. Offer sensible solutions to problems he has identified, rather than his half-baked, unrealistic rhetoric.
For example, when the Syrian refugee controversy erupted Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz suggested that maybe we could take only Christian refugees from the Middle East. They were excoriated for the idea. President Barack Obama stood in the Oval Office and said America could not have a religious test for admission and it was un-American. He should know better.
The 1965 immigration reform act, which still governs, has specific criteria for the admission of refugees: people fleeing religious persecution. Who is facing more religious persecution than the Christians in Syria and other areas controlled by ISIS? Beheading, buried alive, machine gunned. Any country has the right to decide who can be admitted and who cannot. Until 1965 Third World immigration was prohibited. There are Christian relief agencies in the Middle East that could help vet refugees facing persecution and help them resettle here.
Did Bush double down, make the case and provide an alternative to Trump’s bellicosity? No, he just attacked Trump’s idea to stop Muslim immigration temporarily, instead of making the issue his own. Trump’s plan? How would that work? Offer anybody getting on the plane a ham sandwich and bar anybody who didn’t eat it? His half-baked idea is about as practical as his plan to have Mexico pay for the border wall.
I think a Trump presidency would be a disaster. While he talks a good game, he has no practical way to carry out his promises. Like Cas, he will say anything to grab attention, get a headline and get on television. But his success should be a warning to the political establishment. The American people are fed up with political correctness, and if you do not provide sensible solutions to the issues Trump has raised, don’t be surprised when he stand on the podium as the GOP nominee.
Jeb’s not the guy to do this, it appears.
SOMETIMES INQUIRING MINDS DON’T WANT TO KNOW: CNN “media reporter” doesn’t see NYT deleting Obama’s ‘revealing’ comment as a big deal.
Some things never change; shades of Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings circling the wagons to publicly defend Dan Rather in October of 2004.
GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Right name, wrong man: Knoxville veterinarian can’t get off no-fly list.
Dr. Patrick Stephen Hackett is a veterinarian — not a terrorist.
Try explaining that in the airport security line.
Hackett, a lifelong resident of the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area, was named Outstanding Practitioner of the Year in 1992 by the Tennessee Veterinary Medical Association. He serves as president of the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley.
He’s on the no-fly list.
Hackett has never been arrested and never traveled to the Middle East or other centers of terrorist activity, but he found out more than a decade ago he’s on the federal watch list because he shares the same name as notorious Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Joseph Hackett, who was jailed in the 1970s for planting bombs in Britain.
The difference should be easy to spot. The terrorist is missing an arm and a leg — blown off when a bomb exploded prematurely — while the Knoxville veterinarian has all his limbs intact.
“I don’t know how I got on the list, and I don’t know how to get off the list,” Hackett said.
And nobody will ever pay a price for what’s happened to him.
INSOMNIA THEATER (WE CAN’T LIVE ON LOVE EDITION): This week’s video highlights all the great work FIRE has been doing this year, and why you should take Glenn’s advice (thanks, Glenn!) and donate to FIRE.
As we say in the video, it’s been quite a year for FIRE. We’ve seen the percentage of schools with ‘red light’ speech policies fall below the 50 percent mark for the first time, continued our 100% litigation success rate, and scored a high profile cover story for The Atlantic, to name just a few highlights.
But we’ve also faced a lot of struggles too. Between increasing student illiberalism and overreach from the Department of Education, the fight for free speech on campus is far from over.
The fight is bigger than I’ve ever seen, so FIRE needs your help now more than ever.
EVEN IN JAPAN, communists are losers who can’t get women.
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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law School Enrollment Slumps 5 Percent.
Enrollment in the nation’s law schools dropped nearly 5 percent in 2015, including a slump by 2.2 percent in first-year class sizes, according to data provided by the American Bar Association. …
Although total enrollment for juris doctor degrees is down by nearly 6,000 to 113,900 this year, total first-year matriculation is more of a mixed bag. Ninety-seven schools reported same or increased first-year classes compared with last year’s 69 schools, while 107 schools reported decreased first-year enrollment compared to 127 last year.
The overall first-year numbers, however, continue a downward trajectory. This year, first-year students totaled 37,058 students, compared with last year’s tally of 37,894, marking a nearly 30 percent drop in first-year enrollment since 2010’s high-water mark of 52,488 students.
At the University of Tennessee College of Law, our enrollment is up. Tennessee increased its 1L class by 20% with no decline in quality (median 158 LSAT, 3.64 GPA).
But we’re not the biggest news: “William Mitchell College of Law’s 320 first years in 2015 is almost double 2014’s matriculation figure thanks to the school’s January launch of a hybrid online/on-campus program that brought in a vastly increased part-time student population.” Gosh, who could have predicted that that might work?
HISTORY: Hitler really did have just one ball: historian. “After Hitler’s arrest in 1923 following his failed Beer Hall Putsch, the future Führer underwent a medical exam, according to documents found in a Bavarian archive by University of Erlangen history Professor Peter Fleischmann. At the Landsberg prison, Hitler was examined by Dr Josef Brinsteiner, who found that he suffered from ‘right-side chryptorchidism’, or an undescended right testicle, Fleischmann told Bild.”
RUN, BERNIE, RUN! Maybe The Wrong Guy Is Threatening To Run Third Party: “Sanders has leverage in this situation, though he clearly won’t use it. He could be making threats to run third party just the way Donald Trump has. Given his passionate fan base, a Sanders third-party run would all but guarantee a Clinton loss.”
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What If The Donald Spoke Like a Brit?
YES, AVOCADOS ARE GOOD FOR YOU. Also, delicious.
WELL, OF COURSE:
What if Muslims in the community objected to a lesson about Christianity that demanded that students read the Nicene Creed out loud? Would the New York Times portray the Muslims as potentially violent? I don’t think it would. In fact, I think the NYT would portray the reading aloud of the Nicene Creed — “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty… And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God” — as a violation of the Establishment Clause.
The NYT quotes one of the parents as understanding the assignment to be an instruction “to denounce our Lord by copying this creed of Islam,” which is “an abomination” to her family’s faith and that the school had simply “cloaked in the form of multiculturalism.” And therein lies the problem. How do you know what the school is really doing? And quite aside from what the school meant to do, there’s the question of how it is perceived, which is an important part of Establishment Clause analysis.
Our various elites have gotten dangerously out of touch with the country. They are being forcefully reminded of this fact, and those reminders are likely to become more frequent, and more forceful, in the future.
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CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: PAC Tied to Challenger Slams Congresswoman Over Alleged Links to Sheldon Silver.
IN THE SOVIET UNION, ONLY THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN; THE PAST IS ALWAYS CHANGING: Rhodes Scholars bully University of Cape Town into removing Cecil Rhodes’ statue; England’s Oxford University likely next. In March, the UK Guardian quoted this charming fellow:
Adekeye Adebajo, a Nigerian Rhodes scholar and executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, said on Friday: “At the time I got the Rhodes scholarship, all I could think about was getting a good education and fighting for pan-Africanist issues. This wealth was stolen from Africa when Rhodes plundered the continent, so I felt absolutely no guilt about using the money to criticise what he stood for.”
Yesterday, Daniel Hannan wrote in the London Telegraph that Cecil Rhodes’ statue at Oxford’s Oriel College is next to fall — and now sports a warning label:
Earlier this year, a student at the University of Cape Town emptied a bucket of faeces over a statue of Cecil Rhodes on campus. The bronze sculpture, he and his friends maintained, was symbolic of the “institutional racism” and “white supremacy” that apparently dominate the university.
How did the campus authorities react? By explaining that almost every prominent figure in the late nineteenth century held some views that our generation finds jarring? By gently pointing out that you can disagree with someone, even detest someone, without defacing his statue? By expelling the instigators on grounds of sheer oafishness?
Sadly not. The university senate convened to discuss what to do about the offending mass of metal. Outside, as they deliberated, protesters chanted “One Settler, One Bullet!” Eventually, it was decided that the right not to be offended trumped everything else, and the statue is now boarded up, awaiting its fate.
Now, an Oxonian mob, using the same cretinous #RhodesMustFall hashtag as in South Africa, has complained that walking past that statue inflicts violence on them. Incredibly, rather than telling them to mind their own business, Oriel has rushed out a statement to the effect that it is talking to the planning authorities about removing the effigy and, in the mean time, has put a notice next to it, with the following text:
“Many of Cecil Rhodes’s actions and public statements are incompatible with the values of the College and University today. In acknowledging the historical fact of Rhodes’s bequest, the College does not in any way condone or glorify his views or actions.”
As Hannan writes, “Cecil Rhodes is commemorated by Oriel because he left money to the college. Accepting that money in 1902, and honouring the benefactor, doesn’t mean endorsing his opinions today. If you’re really too dim to understand this, maybe you shouldn’t be at university.”
Read the whole thing.
(H/T: Milo Yiannopoulos.)
STAR WARS MEETS KEN BURNS: Dan Drezner and a couple of friends have put together a delightful parody of Ken Burns’s Civil War series, using the Star Wars civil war instead of the real-world one. It’s a happy reminder of a phenomenon I first wrote about in 1998 whose positive aspects have become too easy to forget in today’s grouchy environments. Dan writes:
But the above video should also remind us of one of the Internet’s glories: It’s the place to discover that there are other people out there who share your enthusiasms, and can help you express those enthusiasms in socially tolerant ways. Yes, LOTS of people are “Star Wars” fans, but only a small fraction of these people probably “get” the idea of mashing up “Star Wars” with a 25-year-old PBS civil war documentary. In the pre-Internet age, I suspect Rosenberg, Bunch and I would have just kept these quirky thoughts to ourselves, unaware that others might share the same goofball enthusiasm. Thanks to the Long Tail, however, we have discovered that we were not alone. And discovering that you are not alone is a pretty wonderful feeling in this galaxy.
I can’t figure out how to get PJ Media and the WaPo site to cooperate with an embedded video, but you can see the here.
NEED A HOSTESS OR HOLIDAY GIFT? Here’s one that looks pretty on the coffee table but is still full of actual words and ideas. Good for guys too! (It says so right in the Amazon reviews.)
UPDATE: Thanks to the wonderful readers of InstaPundit, Amazon actually sold out of the book for a couple of days. It’s now back in stock.
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: And now it’s out of stock again, until 12/23. You folks are amazing (or Amazon restocked with just a couple of books).
YEAH, NICE WEATHER CAN REALLY MESS UP YOUR SHOPPING EXPERIENCE. AP Blames Warm Weather For Slow Christmas Season Sales: “This morning, Anne D’Innocenzio at the Associated Press actually told readers that this year’s relatively warm Christmas season weather is what’s hurting Christmas shopping season sales. It couldn’t possibly be the ‘slowdown reality’ USA Today cited in headlining Friday’s second straight steep stock market drop, could it, Anne? Most other Americans participating in the real world have recognized the existence of a ‘slowdown reality’ for at least the past few months…Maybe, just maybe — no, make that probably — this ‘strategic buying’ behavior, which the press would likely consider alarming if it were occurring during a Republican or conservative presidential administration, is occurring because people don’t have a lot of discretionary money to spend because of the pathetic economy of the past seven years.”
Unexpectedly.
IN DOCS VS. GLOCKS, IT’S GLOCKS 1, DOCS 0. Eugene Volokh notes why this is a bad free speech decision, and he’s right. But it’s also a response to overreach by the medical community. And while I agree with Eugene’s analysis, I think that the battle for physician autonomy has been largely lost, and with a lot of collaboration from the medical community. Once you let the state into your medical practice — or, as is often the case, welcome the state into your medical practice — then what do you expect? Things will be driven by politics, and they’re likely to be politics you don’t share. As Eugene notes, the well-being of doctors isn’t the real concern here, but this is a point that needs to be stressed.
THIS IS BEING SPUN AS PROOF OF HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY GUNS, WHEN IT’S REALLY A SIGN OF HOW FEW ARE KILLED BY CARS NOW: Good News, Americans! Cars Are Now Killing as Few People as Guns! “I cannot imagine why people’s trust in the media is so low. Christopher Ingraham, in writing the piece that goes along with graph, is at least not oblivious to what the numbers actually mean, despite the deliberately misleading headline.”
Plus: “Two out of every three gun death is actually a suicide. So actually, if that ‘gun violence’ line only counted violence against others, it would plunge down as well. And then the two lines wouldn’t even be converging. So the whole chart itself is a bit questionable. But despite what the numbers actually mean, the gun control obsession is whatever Democrats decide this time counts as an ‘assault weapon.'”
ANIMALS ARE EATING ANIMALS, and something must be done!
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Oberlin crybullies demand “An $8.20/hour stipend for black student leaders who are organizing protest efforts,” just one part of their “Gargantuan 14-Page List Of Demands.”
And don’t even get them started on the existential crisis that is General Tso’s chicken made with steamed instead of fried chicken, and the “disrespectful” “appropriative” nature of Oberlin’s undercooked sushi rice.
Iowahawk’s response is terse: OBERLIN DELENDA EST; another Twitter user suggests appropriate relief efforts for their students deprived of haute cuisine:
OPTICS: Obama Stops in San Bernardino, Meets Some Families of Terror Victims:
President Obama made a quick stop in San Bernardino on Friday night to meet with some of the families of the victims of the county Christmas party terrorist attack.
Obama landed in the Inland Empire after 7:30 p.m. and was met at the airport by Mayor Carey Davis. He and Michelle Obama then motorcaded to Indian Springs High School. The White House pool report noted “onlookers and a handful of protesters lined the route.”
He stayed for almost three hours before hopping on Air Force One, headed for Honolulu for his two-week vacation.
Which brings us to…Aloha Hawaii! The Obamas touch down for their annual Christmas getaway to the tropical islands… as the cost of their vacations since 2009 tops $70m.
DO WE REALLY WANT THAT? WOULDN’T IT MAKE IT EASIER FOR THE WHOLE THING TO GO DOWN? Will the U.S. Finally Get a Unified Power Grid? The claim is that it will increase reliability, but I wonder.
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MICHAEL WALSH: Air Slowly Going Out Of Rubio Balloon. Rubio has a lot of strengths, but Walsh is right about this: “Just as Mitt Romney’s devotion to Romneycare should have instantly disqualified him in the 2012 GOP nominating process, so should Rubio’s opportunistic advocacy of ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ rule him out of serious consideration.” That’s a real problem, and the crappy omnibus bill just made it worse for him.
LAW PROFESSOR: Why I Sued My Law School.
REPURPOSING OLD RADIOS AS Bluetooth speakers.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Go To College Or Go To Jail? “I’m thinking, I’m thinking!“
IN THE MAIL: MEAT: Everything You Need to Know.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 954.
“WHOEVER THE NEXT PRESIDENT IS, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS:” Watch a U.S. Marine open the door for R2-D2 at the White House (video).
CBS NEWS: Data dispute rips open Democrats’ race before debate.
There’s a civil war inside the Democratic Party.
Hillary Clinton is accusing Bernie Sanders’ campaign of theft, saying the Vermont senator’s aides stole millions of dollars’ worth of voter data held by the Democratic National Committee.
The breach of information led to a suspension for the Sanders campaign, which then sued the DNC, but late Friday night, a deal was reached to clear up the mess ahead of Saturday night’s Democratic debate.
CBS News’ Julianna Goldman reports this dispute has laid bare tensions between the DNC and the Sanders campaign that had been simmering for months.
The Sanders campaign is accusing party officials of trying to undermine his campaign and to help Clinton.
Well, that’s because they are. I think Bernie should mount an independent run.
UPDATE: And I guess Hillary’s worried about that too: DNC, Sanders Reach Deal Restoring Access To Voter Data.
Related: Dem Rivalry Takes Nasty Turn.
The long-simmering notion among many grassroots liberals that the national party is in the tank for Hillary Clinton spilled into public view on Friday, as a nasty fight between Bernie Sanders and the Democratic National Committee tore into the open.
Some liberals have long held that the DNC’s sanctioning of fewer debates this cycle, with half of those debates taking place over a weekend, was an attempt by the national party to shield Clinton from scrutiny and ease the path to the nomination for the prohibitive front-runner.
But the Sanders campaign and supporting liberal activist groups didn’t start making that case publicly until Friday, when controversy erupted over the DNC’s handling of revelations that a Sanders staffer had been fired for inappropriately accessing Clinton voter files housed on a central party server.
Some Democrats believe that bringing the hammer down on Sanders — his campaign has been shut off from its own database of voter files until the situation is ironed out — hands grassroots liberals the ammunition they needed in a war they’ve been agitating for.
It’s clear that the DNC is just an arm of Hillary’s campaign.
NOW HE TELLS US: Former SecDef Chuck Hagel Blasts Obama Foreign Policy Failures:
Specifically, Hagel criticized the “red line” incident in Syria (“There’s no question in my mind that it hurt the credibility of the president’s word when this occurred”), the Administration’s handling of Russia (“I think we should have done more, could have done more,” with regard to Ukraine), and micromanagement. And as Micah Zenko notes on the CFR’s blog, sometimes what Hagel didn’t say was as damning as what he did. One of his comments makes it clear, for instance, that the Obama Administration had never reached a clear decision on whether we would defend friendly rebels in Syria before Hagel gave vital Congressional testimony on the subject.
Furthermore, as Foreign Policy notes, these are not isolated criticisms:
Hagel’s predecessors, Gates and Panetta, as well as Michèle Flournoy, the former No. 3 official at the Pentagon, have all criticized the White House’s centralized decision-making and interference with the workings of the Defense Department.
And other high-level officials, including Ambassadors Robert Ford and Martin Indyk, have also spoken at length about the Administration’s foreign policy follies. The sense that emerges from all the criticism by President Obama’s closest, most senior ex-officials is: The President is a terrible foreign policy president who has made serious and serial mistakes. Has any American president in the history of the Republic taken this much flak from ex-officials at the highest level?
Worst. President. Ever. I mean, even Woodrow Wilson won a war.
UPDATE: From the comments: “To be fair, he’s a terrible domestic polcy president, too.” Good point!
NATIONAL REVIEW EDITORS ON THE OMNIBUS: What were Republican leaders thinking? Don’t be too hard on them. The NSA probably has lots of dirt.
WELL, I FEEL SAFER. HOW ‘BOUT YOU? Mexico Foreign Secretary: Immigrants Not ‘Security Concerns.’
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AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES TOM WOLFE: Students at Lena Dunham’s college offended by lack of fried chicken:
Gastronomically correct students at Oberlin College — alma mater of Lena Dunham — are filling the school newspaper with complaints and demanding meetings with campus dining officials and even the college president.
General Tso’s chicken was made with steamed chicken instead of fried — which is not authentically Chinese, and simply “weird,” one student bellyached in the Oberlin Review.
Others were up in arms over banh mi Vietnamese sandwiches served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables, and on ciabatta bread, rather than the traditional French baguette.
“It was ridiculous,” gripes Diep Nguyen, a freshman who is a Vietnam native.
Worse, the sushi rice was undercooked in a way that was, according to one student, “disrespectful” of her culture. Tomoyo Joshi, a junior from Japan, was highly offended by this flagrant violation of her rice. “I f people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative,” she said.
Oberlin’s black student union joined in the fray this month by staging a protest outside Afrikan Heritage House, an on-campus dorm.
The cafeteria there wasn’t serving enough vegan and vegetarian options and had failed to make fried chicken a permanent feature on the Sunday night menu, the school newspaper reported.
The whole article is a riot, and reads like outtakes from I Am Charlotte Simmons. But then, I’m from a simpler era — I don’t recall General Tso’s Chicken, sushi and vegan options in my school’s cafeteria, which largely doled out barely edible food that seemed like Civil War surplus. Has there ever been a generation of college crybullies simultaneously so spoiled, and so angry?
DO IT, BERNIE! Why This Latest DNC Flap Could Make Bernie Go Third Party.
OBAMA AND FRIENDS’ INCREDIBLE MALFEASANCE ON IRAN: “It’s official: on October 10, Iran tested an Emad ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead…Iran is also known to have tested yet another nuclear-capable missile on November 21,” P. David Hornik writes, asking, “Why are Obama and his allies so gung-ho to get the deal moving, and the sanctions lifted, at any conceivable price?”
“And for the other answer, you have to follow the money. The lifting of sanctions will mean Iran gets its hands on up to $150 billion in unfrozen assets. That’s a huge infusion for doing business with eager European and Russian entities that have already been trooping to Tehran, intoxicated by the smell of ink — that is, the inking of business deals — in the air.”
Read the whole thing.
THAT MOST SCHOOL CHILDREN LEARN THIS REVERSED IS A SCANDAL: This Day in History… Republicans Pass Anti-KKK Act – Outlawing Democratic Terrorist Groups.
BYRON YORK: What If Democrats Had A National Security Debate?
The Democratic presidential field, such as it is, gathers for its third debate Saturday, in Manchester, N.H. Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine it were devoted entirely to national security.
The Republican debate in Las Vegas Tuesday night focused almost exclusively on security and foreign policy. The CNN moderators had not originally billed the debate that way, but after Paris, San Bernardino, the Islamic State and more, that’s what it became. . . .
Bernie Sanders, for example, has not been able to hide his annoyance that questions of terrorism and security have imposed themselves on his campaign. Sanders prefers to talk about corrupt billionaires, universal healthcare, and evil super PACs, but troubling world events keep happening.
Earlier this month, Sanders appeared in Baltimore for a discussion of economic inequality and the Black Lives Matter movement. Before Sanders talked to reporters, his press secretary warned, “Don’t ask about ISIS today.”
Of course that didn’t work. So Sanders told the assembled journalists, “You want to ask me about ISIS? We will talk about ISIS. But what I have said … is that obviously ISIS and terrorism are a huge national issue that we have got to address, but so is poverty, so is unemployment, so is education, so is healthcare, so is the need to protect working families. And I will continue to talk about those issues.”
That is not a man who wants to talk about national security threats. Hillary Clinton, as a former secretary of state, is more comfortable discussing terrorism. But she, too, sticks more to domestic issues — in part because that’s what her base voters want.
Also, Hillary doesn’t really want to discuss — much less debate — anything.
IT’S GOT ELECTROLYTES: Welcome to 2015, the world envisioned by Idiocracy. “It will be up to Republican voters, beginning in February, to determine just how far down the road to Idiocracy the GOP has traveled. Trump is clearly betting we’re almost there.”
HMM: HGTV, Fox News Among Only Top Cable Networks to Boost Ratings This Year. “ESPN averaged 2.1 million viewers, an 8% drop compared with last year when it averaged 2.3 million viewers.”
MESSAGE: GOOD HOLIDAY NEWS FOR GUN RETAILERS. Obama Poised to Tighten Gun Laws After Holidays.
Senior congressional aides and sources in the gun-control community expect the White House to use its executive powers to tighten federal gun laws shortly after President Barack Obama returns from a Hawaiian vacation in early January.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday he anticipates a legal review to continue through the holidays.
Since the deadly shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., White House officials have been, as Earnest has put it, “scrubbing through the law” to determine whether and how Obama can use his constitutional authorities to make it harder for terrorists and other potential mass shooters to legally obtain firearms.
On both sides of the Capitol, sources involved in the guns debate say, as one senior House GOP leadership aide put it, “something is brewing on guns.”
The hot-button issue returned to the front burner of American politics following the lethal Islamic State-inspired California shooting.
Since, however, Republican lawmakers have blocked Democratic measures on stiffening gun laws; and Democrats have kept a mental health bill the GOP has tied to mass shootings from passing, saying they would rather close loopholes in gun laws first.
A recent CNN/ORC poll suggests the American public is siding with GOP arguments. The survey found a majority (52 percent) of those polled oppose tighter gun laws. And a Washington Post/ABC News poll found 53 percent are against the assault weapons ban the White House has endorsed.
I think the more the Democrats talk about gun control, the happier the GOP should be. And, to be fair, it’s one of the relatively few areas where the GOP hasn’t sold its constituents down the river, probably because it knows that gun-rights folks are attentive and unforgiving.
IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A NOISY MINORITY, GINNED-UP BY “STUDENT LIFE” AND GRIEVANCE-STUDIES EDUCRATS TO DEMAND MORE MONEY FOR “STUDENT LIFE” AND GRIEVANCE-STUDIES EDUCRATS: New Poll Shows College Students Reject Absurd “Microagression” Culture, Black Lives Matter.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH HELLHOLES OF CORRUPTION, RACISM, VIOLENCE — AND SEXISM? Barriers to prenatal health care in DC endanger women.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Ukrainian officials feel betrayed by President Barack Obama’s support for a key anti-corruption prosecutor in their government who is closely tied to Russian corporate interests in Ukraine. “Ukrainian officials are also disillusioned that Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is on the board of one of those interests, Ukraine’s biggest privately owned gas company, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.”
NOT THE ONION: Obama Ends Press Conference So He Can Go Watch Star Wars (Video).
Semi-retired President Chauncey Gardiner certainly is a voracious consumer of pop culture escapism, isn’t he? No wonder his handlers likely demanded that the Times expunge its reference on Thursday night that “Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.”
(Say it with me — unexpectedly.)
ROGER SIMON ON Angela Merkel, Paul Ryan, and the Islamization of America:
Can you imagine Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton saying such a thing [as Merkel recently did] about the sainted “multiculturalism”? Obviously not. They wouldn’t dare risk alienating their voters or questioning their own sclerotic ideologies — this even though Europe’s problem with Islamic immigration is far greater than ours… for now.
Get ready, however. I have always been milder in my criticism of GOP lawmakers than some, but nothing appalls me more than the latest démarche by Paul Ryan et al in acquiescing to Obama’s immigration strategy vis-a-vis the Muslim world. This is all the more reprehensible since the GOP surrender occurred after the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks and before any even remotely effective programs have been put in place to separate out those inclined to blow up innocent citizens in the name of Allah, let alone to integrate other Muslims into our society in a manner consonant with our values and not Sharia law.
Shame on Ryan.
Read the whole thing.
Incidentally, I’m not at all sure anybody remembers the early ’60s James Garner/Julie Andrews movie The Americanization of Emily, but that’s what popped into my head when Roger told me his headline. Fortunately, I was able to find images of Merkel and Ryan in the same poses as Garner and Andrews to Photoshop the poster.
ACTUALLY, AFTER WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK MCCONNELL NEEDS TO PERSUADE REPUBLICANS THAT IT MATTERS WHETHER GOP CANDIDATES WIN: Leader McConnell warns GOP voters: We need candidates ‘who can win.’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday warned Republican voters to steer clear of nominating Tea Party candidates who can’t win in next year’s general election.
“The way you have a good election year is to nominate people who can win,” he told reporters during his final Capitol Hill press conference of 2015.
He urged Republican primary voters to avoid the mistakes of the past, mentioning several Tea Party candidates who went down in flames in recent Senate elections.
“What we did in 2014 was we didn’t have more Christine O’Donnell’s, Sharron Angles, Richard Mourdocks or Todd Akins. The people that were nominated [last year] were electable,” he said of the last mid-term election.
“That will happen again in 2016. We will not nominate anybody for the United States Senate on the Republican side who’s not appealing to a general-election audience,” he added.
Can we elect people who won’t fold to the Democrats and vote for more pork?
Related: Roll Call: Pelosi’s Victory Lap.
WHAT ISIS SHOULD REMEMBER: We maybe be slow to action, but… (from facebook.)
BY THEIR FRUITS: Wherever ISIS [trans:Daeshbags] go, disease and pestilence follow.
I STILL PREFER PRIVATE INITIATIVES: But if this will make us less dependent on Soviet goodwill to get to the international space station… Congress wants to give NASA $19.3 billion next year, even more than Obama asked for.
