FLASHBACK: Tom Shales and his NPR interviewer try to make sense of a new movie called Star Wars, this strange new “complete science fiction fantasy with absolutely no redeeming moral values or moralistic values either” that’s “taking the country by proverbial storm.”
Are the special effects any good?, Shales is asked at one point. “Gee, it’s kind of hard to describe the whole universe blowing up in your face.”
YEAH, BARACK, YOU BLEW IT — WAIT, WHAT? ‘I Started The Arab Spring. Now Death Is Everywhere, And Extremism Blooming.’
IT’S COME TO THIS: Kentucky School District Censors A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Actually, considering where CBS was headed at the time, I’m kind of surprised it got on the air in the first place. As Lee Habeeb wrote in his 2011 article, which NRO republished this month to celebrate the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas:
As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.
It took them half a century, but CBS finally managed to spread the “Progressive” word from Black Rock to Johnson County, Kentucky.
DON SURBER: Your Political Joke Of The Day.
PRIVATE COLLEGES: ‘WHERE FREE SPEECH IS LEAST FREE IN AMERICA’: I encourage everyone to check out this new article by George Leef about the growing threats to free speech on private college campuses. In addition to deftly summarizing what is expected of private campuses in regard to protecting free speech, Leef describes one of the most recent examples of blatant administrative censorship: Colorado College student Thaddeus Pryor’s suspension for making a six word joke on Yik Yak.
You can read Leef’s article over at Forbes.com, and read more about Colorado College’s war on Yik Yak comments over at FIRE’s news blog.
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WAS ANYONE SACKED? Harvard Apologizes For “Social Justice” Placemats. Because when lefties complain, somebody is usually sacked.
TEXAS ALUMNI ORGANIZATION apologizes for Scalia smear.
As I recounted in The American Spectator, and here, the University of Texas alumni organization (of which I am a Life Member) denounced Justice Scalia for a question he asked during the December 9 oral argument in Fisher v. UT, irresponsibly calling his remark “racist and offensive.” I promptly demanded a retraction and apology, which Texas Exes’s vice president of digital strategy, Tim Taliaferro, stridently refused. (The entire e-mail exchange is reproduced in the TAS piece.) I went public (as I had threatened to do if an apology was not forthcoming), and within days, the President of Texas Exes issued an apology. Tepid? Yes. Inadequate? Undoubtedly. (Taliaferro should have been fired.) But gratifying? Certainly. Even the most politically correct, Left-leaning alumni organizations can be confronted and forced to back down if only vocal members speak up. As I stated in my previous Bench Memos post, “silence is assent.” Texas Exes is eating crow. Make it happen at your alma mater.
As a famous leader said: Get in their faces. Punch back twice as hard.
TIME MAGAZINE: U.S. Race Relations at 20-Year Low, Survey Finds.
Well, that’s a form of change, I suppose. When does the hope arrive?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor: I Don’t Care Where My Children Go To College.
DOUBLE DOWN: Sam’s Club responds after black CEO’s anti-white male discrimination stirs calls for boycott. “The president and CEO of WalMart Stores Inc., who owns Sam’s Club, Doug McMillon said the company supports Ms. Brewer and added that they ask their suppliers ‘to prioritize the talent and diversity of their sales teams.'”
PROBABLY ALL PLACED IN KEY “SWING” PRECINCTS: As lawmakers clash over refugees, Syrian immigration quietly tops 100,000 since 2012.
I SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED BUYING MYSELF A DRONE FOR CHRISTMAS — THIS ONE — BUT THIS TOOK THE SHINE OFF OF IT SOMEHOW: Next Monday, Mandatory Drone Registration Begins.
My prediction, however, is that most people will just ignore the rule, which is how things should work.
BLOOMBERG: Why This Year’s Christmas Season Is So Angry:
Yup, it’s an angry Christmas, and it’s worth thinking about why. Something has changed to create such a shift in the public’s leanings, from taking a chance on Obama’s audacity of hope to delighting in Trump’s straight-up audacity. Fear of Islamic terrorism has something to do with it. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that achieved approximately nothing* and the stunning rise of China as a rival power have also left many Americans feeling confused and vulnerable. But the most potent fuel for Trumpism is undoubtedly the sick economy. A long stretch of underperformance** has seeded mistrust in the American Dream among millions of would-be breadwinners, especially people without college educations.
Related: ‘Go To Hell’: Chris Matthews Curses MRCTV for Asking If His Leg Is Still Thrilled for Obama.
* Nice use of passive voice there, champ.
** Unexpectedly.
DISPATCHES FROM THE RPG WORLD: The Long Shadow of D&D’s Alignment System.
From Moe Lane at the PJ Lifestyle section.
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DIDN’T HE SAY THAT RIGHT BEFORE PARIS AND SAN BERNARDINO? Obama Reassures Americans No Credible Threat of Terror.
TO BE FAIR, IT SCREWS UP PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING: User Error Compromises Many Encrypted Communication Apps.
COULDN’T YOU SHOW THAT SIMPLY BY NOTING THAT IT ORIGINATED WITH ROSIE O’DONNELL? Metalworker Shows Why ‘Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams’ Is Such a Dumb Argument.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The GOP Needs Conservative Insurgents. “If conservative policies are to become a reality, insiders must think not just about the short-term but also the long-term conflict with the Left, and outsiders must participate in the grueling day-to-day. This dynamic is inherently more challenging for those of us on the Right, who have good reason to believe that politicians’ incentives to placate various factional constituencies are so often at odds with the long-term effort to rein in the federal footprint. While political parties can exist as factions rather than ideological entities, conservatism cannot succeed as a factional constituency to a political party.”
Well, I have some recommended reading.
VA HASN’T RUN OUT OF SOMEONE ELSE’S MONEY JUST YET: Maybe that’s why the federal government has paid out $871 million in medical malpractice settlements in suits against the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2006. That’s an average of “only” $87 million a year, but something happened because things got much worse in 2014 and 2015, with $230 million in settlements, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak.
ACTUALLY, OVERT RACISM IS THE CULPRIT: Sigal Alon writes in The Nation about “How Diversity Destroyed Affirmative Action.” Alon is reading the Supreme Court tea leaves after it heard oral arguments Dec. 9 in Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin (Fisher II):
The Bakke case is often looked upon as the landmark ruling for legitimizing race-conscious admissions policies in higher education. Justice Powell set the stage for what came to be known as the “diversity rationale” for race-conscious admissions policies—the argument that having a diverse student body in postsecondary institutions serves a compelling government interest because “the ‘nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure’ to the ideas and mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples.” Race-conscious admissions, then, are permissible because, when narrowly tailored, they serve this substantial educational interest.
The Bakke ruling shifted the rationale for affirmative action from reparation for past discrimination to promoting diversity. This, in essence, made the discourse about affirmative action race-neutral, in that it now ignores one of the key reasons for why we need to give an edge to minorities. Today the University of Texas, Austin, when defending the consideration of race and ethnicity in admission decisions, cannot say that this practice is needed because of persistent racial inequality; because minority students do not have the same life chances as white students; because there is extensive racial discrimination in the labor and housing markets; because students who study in poor high schools have less chances for learning and lower achievements; or because growing up in poverty impedes your cognitive development. The only argument at the disposal of UT Austin in defense of its admission practices is that it needs a diverse student body to enrich the educational experience of privileged white students.
Today, the fate of affirmative action rests solely on the Court’s endorsing diversity as a compelling societal interest. The oral arguments in Fisher this week demonstrate the fragility of this situation. Chief Justice Roberts questioned the educational benefits of racial diversity, asking, “What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?… I’m just wondering what the benefits of diversity are in that situation?” . . .
The root causes for the practice of affirmative action in higher education—that is, the systemic effects of racism and segregation in America—were shoved under the rug. This likely causes a frustration among minority students, especially blacks. But what is more troubling it that it also may lead to race-neutral admissions.
The point Chief Justice Roberts was making (as Alon surely knows) is that no one benefits from the notion that a physics class is improved by having the “black perspective” in the room, not even the poor black kid who, under affirmative action, inevitably bears this heavy burden.
God forbid we should be a colorblind nation with a colorblind Constitution. It’s far better, in the warped liberal/progressive mind, to have all Americans in 2015–not just white, but Asian, Hispanic, native American, or purple polka-dotted–relinquish their dream of attending X, Y or Z college so that someone who is black (regardless of socio-economic status or other “privilege”) can achieve theirs.
In the liberal/progressive worldview, the U.S. history of slavery forever brands all blacks (even those whose ancestors were not slaves) as perpetually “behind” the rest of society, entitled to special “help” from other Americans (even those whose ancestors were not slave owners), as a sort of penance for the pain suffered and inflicted by those long dead. The very articulation of this “benign” justification for affirmative action reveals its ugly, rotten, racist core.
In 2015, if a black child performs poorly in school–rendering him/her academically non-competitive with a non-black child–how could it ever be “fair/just/equitable” and consonant with “equal protection of the laws” to to reward that black child (and thus necessarily punish the non-black child who performed better) with the functional equivalent of college admissions “extra credit”?
If the problem of poorly performing black students is going to be solved, it must be solved within the black community, starting with the parents, but extending also to the teachers, administrators, and the students themselves. But of course this commonsensical approach will never be embraced by the race-baiting “civil rights” leaders, who make their living by fueling the fire of perpetual black victimhood.
For the rest of America, however, colorblindness is the only way to ensure “equal protection” of the laws in an increasingly racially diverse society. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” It’s really not that complicated.
BRUCE THORNTON: The Stakes In The War On Christmas.
IN THE MAIL: From David Limbaugh, The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 952.
CORRUPT PRESIDENT CONSULTS WITH BILLIONAIRE BEFORE DOING HIS BIDDING: Obama meets Bloomberg as he prepares order on guns. I remember when money in politics was bad.
What’s interesting about Trump’s rise is that it reveals how little power that establishment actually has. Trump is not somehow taking power away from a self-satisfied elite. But he is revealing that the elite never had the kind of dominance that populists like to imagine.
Consider the two great villains of the populist mind. The left thinks that politics is controlled by the vast fortunes spent on elections by corporations and right-wing billionaires. The right thinks that similar influence is exerted by liberal media and economic elites. Trump’s poll numbers belie both theories.
But isn’t Trump a billionaire, you will ask. Ah, but Trump is spending very little money on this campaign. The reason he’s doing so well is that he’s getting a ton of media coverage. While other candidates have to spend money to hire staffers and air ads in order to get their message out, Trump just has to say something outrageous and wait for the media to swoop down and give him eons of free air time.
The other billionaires, meanwhile, hate him. Virtually everyone in the professional Republican establishment hates him. . . . Yet the establishment, and the billionaires, with all their money, can’t seem to do a darned thing to stop Trump. So much for money buying elections. Media matters much more than money. . . . And yet, the media is also curiously powerless here. If the news media actually operated like the tacit conspiracy that many conservatives imagine, we would have all quietly gotten together and agreed to bury Trump.
Trump isn’t just a billionaire; he’s a media star who’s been building his image for decades. That does affect things.
SO THIS EU MULTICULTURALISM PROJECT IS PROCEEDING SWIMMINGLY: Riot police fire warning shots as THOUSANDS of protesters storm the site of a planned asylum centre for 1,500 migrants in Holland. They left the town hall looking like a “battlefield.” I guess they were following Barack Obama’s “get in their face” advice. . . .
“The mayoress, Miranda de Vries, said she was shocked at the violence caused by an estimated 2,500 people in the town of 27,000 that lies near the city of Utrecht.” When ten percent of your population is rioting, it’s not just a fringe phenomenon.
DRUDGE EXPLAINS WHY TRUMP IS LEADING THE GOP PRIMARY:
TAKING MY ADVICE? Adelson family confirms it bought Las Vegas Review-Journal.
I did suggest buying smaller papers in swing states. Next: Ohio? Florida?
WHY DOES SILICON VALLEY HATE THE ENVIRONMENT? The Environmental Toll Of A Netflix Binge.
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WELL, THAT’S EXACTLY HOW IT’S SEEMED FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS: DHS Whistleblower: Obama More Concerned with Protecting the Rights of Islamists Than Protecting the American People.
JACK DUNPHY: Meet Garry McCarthy, Rahm Emanuel’s Patsy.
Will McCarthy take the fall for Rahm?
IT’S BEEN A DECADE SINCE EPA’S WATCHDOG AUDITED ONE OF EPA’S $542 MILLION IN COLLEGE GRANTS: The grants are for research on such vitally important topics as harvesting fog, measuring how much water we use in hotel bathroom showers and avoiding pollution caused by grilling steaks in the backyard. Sleep tight tonight, folks, your EPA has got it covered. Your wallet, that is.
HARRY REID SEEMS TO ACCOMPLISH LOT, CONSIDERING HE’S IN THE MINORITY: Democrats Are Celebrating These Conservative Policies Not Being In Omnibus Spending Bill.
IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? ISIS Becomes a Household Word — How to Explain the Unthinkable to Your Child.
WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IF YOU’RE A RICH SAUDI IN BRITAIN: Millionaire Cleared of Rape Charge After Claiming He Tripped and His Penis Fell Into Teen.
Ehsan Abdulaziz, a Saudi millionaire property developer, was cleared of rape charges in London this week after he claimed that he had tripped and fallen on an 18-year-old girl who was sleeping at his apartment after partying with him, penetrating her by accident.
Hm: That’s not how gravity or bodies work at all.
Nope. But it’s how influence works.
HOW TO PLAY THE TRUMP CARD. Charlie Martin tries to make sense of The Donald:
He can say all the things they want Republicans to say, and he gets all the free press he wants. He clearly loves it too: whenever anything — terrorism, Clinton’s ongoing email scandal (remember that?), Benghazi and the repeated lies from the administration — threatens to become a political story that’s not about Trump, Trump says something new and outrageous, and the legacy media story is all about the outrageous thing Trump said. Again. No one has benefitted more, politically, from this than Hillary Clinton.
There seem to me to be two explanations for this.
One of them is that Trump really does want to be president, and thinks this is the way to do it, all — in Jonah Goldberg’s phrase — for the Greater Glory of Trump. After all, a term as president and he can really raise his price for a reality show.
The other is that he’s actually doing this to help his great friends the Clintons, who came to his wedding and whom he was very complimentary about just a few years ago.
I just wish I could tell which one to believe.
I’m not sure either — I’ve had a serious case of Trumphrenia* since his emergence on the scene this summer, but feel free to break out the hammer and tongs and hash it out in the comments below.
* Soundtrack by Dee Snider, not Pete Townshend, alas — at least for now.
IS THE MUSLIM GOD THE SAME AS THE CHRISTIAN GOD? Professor at small evangelical school suspended for saying that the Muslim God and Christian God are one in the same. “By the way, she consulted those religious experts at CAIR before starting this campaign.”
Related: Public School Students Told to Practice Calligraphy by Writing ‘There is No God but Allah.’
IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY.
HE’S A NASTY LITTLE MAN, IN A PARTY FULL OF NASTY LITTLE MEN: “Famously vindictive, [Rahm Emanuel] alienated the local press and others, turning those who might have helped him into enemies.”
CLUELESS OR TRUE BELIEVER? Obama’s Theology of Original Sin, Fundamental Transformation and Utopia. Leftism is a religion. It’s just a shitty one that promises heaven on earth, while always yielding something closer to hell.
IMMIGRATION POLICY IS ALL ABOUT CHEAP LABOR AND BOUGHT VOTES FOR BOTH PARTIES: Funding deal hits backlash over increase in foreign worker visas. “The $1.1 trillion omnibus bill includes language that would dramatically increase the number of visas available for foreign workers, setting off alarm bells among conservatives and labor unions. Congressional leaders quietly slipped the provision into the 2,009-page funding bill, with rank-and-file lawmakers only discovering it Wednesday morning. The move immediately sparked protests from both ends of the political spectrum.”
At the risk of repeating myself, this kind of behavior from the Bipartisan Governing Party is why we get Trump. And, if things go on, will get someone much worse than Trump.
ON HIS WATCH: Abe Greenwald on “The meltdown of Syria. The rise of ISIS. The worst refugee crisis of our time. Homegrown terror in the United States,” at Commentary:
All these issues, however, are but manifestations of the larger encumbering reality: Barack Obama’s theological opposition to exercising effective American power abroad. The president’s inflexibility on that point has nurtured the rise of ISIS and tied our hands in the fight against it. But, with so few prudent options left, his stubbornness may have made a larger conflict with ISIS inevitable, either during the remainder of his term or after it. If so, Obama will have worked for eight years to avert a fate his very actions have summoned.
Today, the president still dismisses significant “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Syria as a nonstarter. On December 6, Obama spoke from the Oval Office, saying, “We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria.” He then added this bizarre coda: “That’s what groups like ISIL want. They know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield.” ISIS wants to engage the United States in a war in order to lose? And we should therefore resist the fight? This is theology outweighing logic.
Perhaps in this period of post-Bush America, however, a ground war against ISIS really is out of the question. But we should be clear about something. ISIS controls vast swaths of land, out in the open. In adopting the structure of a state, the group has given up some measure of the asymmetrical advantage enjoyed by terrorists who traditionally “melt away” into the shadows after an attack; ISIS, in short, can be targeted and defeated like a state. If an American commander in chief cannot even countenance deploying ground soldiers and Marines to defeat a state comprising the worst terrorist threat we’ve ever faced, then we might have finally forfeited our last defense against evil. We are in the final year of a presidency that unwittingly midwifed a monster.
Which is why, as Glenn linked yesterday, Mollie Hemingway writes that “We’re All Being Pretty Quiet About Obama’s Failures, Aren’t We?”
Why yes — to the point where “NBC Ignores Own Poll Showing ‘Plummet’ in Obama Approval.”
But as Jim Geraghty reminds his readers, “Don’t let the 2016 campaign news obscure a year of defeats for the president.”
NO TRUE SCOTSMAN: Perfect: ‘You Ain’t No Muslim’ Guy Now Afraid Of Being Killed By Muslims.
BASICALLY, IT’S A JAYVEE ADMINISTRATION: Defense Secretary Ash Carter Used Personal Email for Work.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter occasionally used his personal email for work-related matters, the Pentagon acknowledged late Wednesday.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Carter believed it “was a mistake,” adding in a statement that the defense secretary had stopped such use of his personal email.
The statement from Cook follows a report in the New York Times which said Carter used personal email to conduct some work matters during his first months at the Pentagon — a violation of Defense Department rules — and even after Hillary Clinton came under fire for doing the same while secretary of state.
There was no comment from Carter himself, who on Thursday arrived in Erbil, Iraq, for meetings with U.S. commanders and personnel there.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
OMNIBUS BILLS PRODUCE CHICANERY. BAN THEM. Ominous Cybersharing Legislation Finds a Seat on the Omnibus: CISA is alive and appears to have the White House’s support.
Lodged toward the bottom of the 2000-plus page, $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill is the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (it starts on page 1,728 here if you’re feeling like a masochist). This is what has come of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), the controversial (in tech quarters where people are paying attention anyway) legislation that encourages private businesses to share customer data with the federal government in exchange for liability from lawsuits in the case of data breaches, all under the guise of fighting cybercrime.
The controversy is that this alleged cybersecurity legislation actually appears to be a new form of authorization for surveillance. Experts say it won’t actually improve cybersecurity at all (partly because the federal government has a poor reputation for handling such data), and major tech companies like Apple, Google, and Twitter oppose it.
But here it is, being shoved into a “must pass” bill, escorted in by new Majority Leader Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, an activist group fighting the passage of CISA-style privacy-threatening Internet regulations, has a dim view of the legislation.
“There’s been a bunch of negative changes to the bill over the last couple of weeks,” Greer says. “It went from something that was supposed to be a cybersecurity bill and has become a surveillance bill. It has even become a mass incarceration bill. … They’ll be able to investigate, prosecute and jail people for a wide variety of offenses that having nothing to do with cybersecurity and terrorism.”
Message to the GOP: You have the Trump threat because you pulled crap like this after 2010 and again after 2014.
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IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN: What Happens When Homes Have No Books.
CRONY CAPITALISM AT WORK: Congress’s $12 billion giveaway to health insurers.
WELL OKAY, BUT BE CAREFUL HANDLING SALMON WHILE IN ARMOR: Britain Prunes Silly Laws on Salmon Handling and Armor Wearing.
YES. NEXT QUESTION: Are Mandatory Electronic Medical Records Causing Doctor Burnout?
A FACADE OF NORMALCY: Listen to Scott Weiland’s widow about the dark side of rock fame.
TO THE POINT: A short course in counter-terror theory.
THE BOY LIBERALS WHO CRIED WOLF: Hate Breeds Hate.
IS THAT A FLIP OR A FLOP: America surrenders on Assad, and Putin wins again. The only thing sure is that Jean Kerry is a disgrace.
AND YET THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE: Unaccompanied children crossing southern border in greater numbers again, raising fears of new migrant crisis.
THE PAST IS ANOTHER COUNTRY: And the world is much bigger there. Travel Before Flight.
THERE HE GOES WITH RAMPANT SANITY: Could It Be The Cost?
A CELEBRATION I CAN STAND BEHIND: To Commemorate the Paris Climate Conference, Let’s Celebrate Coal.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Feds Fund Plays About Food Stamps, Gun Control Activist Lesbians. And as an artist who earns her living with the sweat of her brow, I take this opportunity to quote Robert A. Heinlein (who also earned his living and paid his own way): “Support for the arts — merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!”
IT’S NOT THE PRINCIPAL, IT’S THE PRINCIPLES: Behind the lunatic Santa ban: Don’t just blame the principal.
POINTING OUT BERNIE’S FALSE DICHOTOMIES IS A DIRTY JOB: But someone has to do it.
YEAH, THE US IS THE PROBLEM:“Gender Equality” In The United States
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: John O McGinnis on the need for political diversity on campuses.
REALITY IS SO LIMITING: Bob Zimmerman: The Democratic Party’s Disconnect From Reality.
TESTING THE 2016 Audi R8 V10 Plus. “The Plus’s combination of more-than-sufficient power, all-wheel traction, and launch control yields a zero-to-60-mph leap in 2.7 seconds, with 132 mph available in the quarter-mile after a brief 10.6 seconds. The run to 170 mph takes only 21.1 seconds. For reference, a $1.7-million Bugatti Veyron is going just 20 mph faster after 21 seconds of acceleration.” It’s amazing that we have cars nowadays with motorcycle performance.
NOT TOO OFTEN: How Often Should You Get Dental X-Rays?
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QUEEN OF EXCESS? STRUGGLING YAHOO CEO MARISSA MAYER UNDER FIRE FOR $7MILLION GATSBY-THEMED HOLIDAY PARTY WHERE SHE SAT ON A WHITE ‘THRONE’ AND POSED FOR PHOTOS WITH EMPLOYEES.
Well, that could explain why the latest iteration of the My Yahoo homepage sucks so badly — perhaps all of its design money was diverted here?
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: This 475-Pound Gingerbread Model of the White House Took 11 Months To Build:
White House executive pastry chef Susan Morrison spent almost a year planning and constructing a gingerbread house to put on display at the White House this holiday season. Weighing in at a total of 475 pounds, the enormous gingerbread house consists of 250 pounds of dough, 150 pounds of dark chocolate, 25 pounds of gum paste, 25 pounds of handcrafted sugar poles, and 25 pounds of icing, according to Bon Appétit.
A scale replica of the White House, the gingerbread masterpiece has been in the works since January 2015. Morrison tracked down White House blueprints and even consulted an architect to make sure she got all of the details right. The gingerbread mansion will be on display at the White House for 30 days, and approximately 68,000 guests are expected to check it out. As Morrison noted in a chat with Bon Appétit, “Many people come into the Dining Room and cough on it and stuff.” So while the gingerbread mansion is fully edible—and looks delicious—Morrison wouldn’t recommend actually taking a bite.
Related: In 2012, Mars Inc. dropped king-sized Snickers bar as concession to Michelle Obama’s campaign against obesity.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UMass brass cash in despite budget woes.
University of Massachusetts President Martin T. Meehan handed out hefty raises of up to $20,000 to his staff and other brass, including high-paid cronies of former President William M. Bulger, months after hitting up students for stiff tuition hikes, a Herald review has found.
The raises included a $19,000 increase for UMass Executive Vice President James Julian Jr., Bulger’s former top aide, who is now earning $371,384 a year — or about $221,000 more than what Gov. Charlie Baker makes, records obtained by the Herald show.
The salary hikes went into effect this fall, around the same time Meehan and other UMass administrators moved into plush new offices on Beacon Hill that the Herald reported costs $1.5 million a year more in rent than what UMass was paying at its old location.
The pay raises also came despite a budget stalemate between Meehan and the Legislature, which is refusing to approve $10.9 million in funding to cover a 3.5 percent pay hike for unionized UMass teachers and staff.
Payroll records obtained by the Herald show that in the president’s office alone, eight people, including Meehan, make more than the governor, who earns $150,000 annually. Ten employees in Meehan’s office make more than Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg and Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, whose annual pay is $102,000.
People are always cutting costs by replacing faculty with adjuncts, but nobody ever talks about cutting costs with adjunct administrators.
‘THAT’S INSANE’: DID TWITTER SERIOUSLY LOCK OUT ADAM BALDWIN FOR THIS?
Non shall question The Narrative.
“DONALD TRUMP HAS WON THE NOMINATION,” Roger Simon writes from Vegas: “All hail, Caesar! All hail, Trump!”
I’LL TAKE THE SANDWICH, THANKS: Death and Sandwiches.
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Here’s a Rebodied Self-Driving BMW i8 That Comes With a Drone.
23 AND COUNTING. THAT’S HOW MANY ACTIVE FOIA LAWSUITS JUDICIAL WATCH HAS NOW AGAINST THE STATE DEPARTMENT. The latest one was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the government failed to comply with the FOIA regarding the non-profit transparency watchdog group’s Aug. 18, 2015, request for the employment documents for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. Why do you suppose the State Department wouldn’t want the public to see what Mills and Abedin told the government about themselves?
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Democrats’ Terror Compassion Gap. “Democrats are supposed to be the party of compassion, but lately a lot of Americans are feeling as if the Obama administration doesn’t much care about them. The reason is terrorism and the way Obama and Hillary Clinton have responded to it.”
VIA SEN. FRANK NICELEY, AN EXCELLENT FRANK CAGLE COLUMN ON TRUMP AND THE GOP:
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 stands on the podium as the GOP nominee.
Yep. And Cas Walker, long dead, is still remembered in Knoxville.
NEW GLOP CULTURE PODCAST ONLINE AT RICOCHET, with Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz, who eventually wind up discussing the little known cult science fiction movie opening this week. Along with a reminder of how soul crushingly grim science fiction movies were pre-Star Wars, when they had been co-opted by Hollywood to discuss their grim predictions of crushing overpopulation and environmental horrors in the 21st century — and forty years later, look like the Reefer Madness movies of the 1970s.
LOOKING TO MAKE YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATIONS? Consider the Institute For Justice and, of course FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. 2015 was a particularly important year for FIRE, and I fear 2016 will be more of the same.
IT WILL HAVE BROADER IMPLICATIONS: Cheap LIDAR coming for driverless cars.
TIME FOR AN INTERVENTION BY JEFF BEZOS: WashPost Reporter: GOP Debate Is ‘a Bunch of Old White Men Yelling At Each Other.’
Ishaan Tharoor, foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Post “formerly wrote for Time magazine, where he romanticized Occupy Wall Street, in multiple articles, while throwing softballs while interviewing anti-conservative Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas.”
MAGICAL THINKING: Victory! New York stops sale of toy guns, levies massive fines.
FASTER, PLEASE: Advances In 21st Century Medicine.
COMPANY UNVEILS AIRPLANE DESIGN WITH SEATS ON TOP OF AIRCRAFT: This would be a lot more fun if it had twin 50-caliber machine guns attached.
CHRIS MATTHEWS NOT AMUSED WHEN ASKED IF HE STILL HAS ‘THRILL’ UP HIS LEG: Tells interviewer to “Go to Hell.”
So where the muse for the mentor of both Obama and Hillary resides, in other words.
