AT AMAZON, save in Sports Nutrition.
Archive for 2017
May 21, 2017
MIKE PENCE: “As new graduates of this exceptional university, I urge you – be leaders for the freedoms of thought and expression.”
Since Pence is making an offer that the modern, hair-triggered student lacks the mental toughness to accept, naturally, “Special snowflake students walk out en masse during Pence’s commencement speech at Notre Dame.”
OUR SOURCE WAS THE NEW YORK TIMES: Writers From the Right and Left React to This Week’s Trump News – and the Gray Lady is on it.
Longtime PJM readers should recognize at least three of the voices from the right.
SHOCKING CELEBRITY NEWS: Ex-wife finds it “creepy” that ex-husband is dating younger, hotter woman. When Kardashians purport to tell us what’s acceptable in relationships.
ACADEMIA, LIKE CAMELOT, IS A SILLY PLACE: The Uproar Over ‘Transracialism.’
NOW THIS IS A 21ST CENTURY HEADLINE: When scientists saw the mouse heads glowing, they knew the discovery was big.
ANIMALS EVENTUALLY RETURN TO THEIR BASER INSTINCTS, NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE ANTHROPOMORPHIZE THEM. Video going viral today: Sea lion grabs girl off pier and drags her into the water.
GRABBY SAYS WHAT? “Joe Biden blasts Donald Trump in Colby College speech over his ‘coarse rhetoric’ and ‘political chaos’ before congratulating graduates with hugs and handshakes — and the ladies seem to get the lion’s share of the cuddles.”
Speaking of “coarse rhetoric,” “Biden: I’ve Never Criticized The Tea Party, Just Those Times I Said They Were Crazy And Acted Like Terrorists.”
And speaking of “political chaos,” Biden referred to the passing of Obamacare, which was preceded by arguably the greatest non-wartime lie in American political history, as a “big f***ing deal.” (Which he meant as a compliment, apparently.)
(Classical allusion in headline.)
ROGER KIMBALL: “Let’s play ‘One of these things is not like the other one.’ Compare, if you will, Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo to the Muslim world with Donald Trump’s speech today in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.”
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D EXPECTED: Instead of fighting superbugs, new approach is learning to live with them.
SALENA ZITO: The opioid epidemic tightens its grip on America.
Yes. Next question?
And note this:
In fact, my most recent research, focused on the events of 1967, casts important new light on how domestic conversations about war can have a decisive effect. Among the most fascinating developments of 1967 was the Johnson administration’s regret about its decision to refrain from generating support for the war by discussing the necessity for it in public. The lack of public enthusiasm for the war, administration officials now realized, was encouraging the enemy to believe that the United States would eventually abandon its ally, and therefore North Vietnam had no reason to desist.
“The administration made a deliberate decision not to create a war psychology in the United States,” Secretary of State Dean Rusk remarked that October, because it was “too dangerous for this country to get worked up.” Johnson, Rusk and other officials had feared that war fever would undermine the domestic programs of the Great Society and heighten tensions with the Soviets. But now, Rusk conceded, “maybe this was a mistake; maybe it would have been better to take steps to build up a sense of a nation at war.”
During 1967, White House advisers and foreign leaders repeatedly urged Johnson to change course, to tell the American public why the United States was in Vietnam and what it was trying to achieve. But Johnson could not bring himself to do it, even as he increasingly recognized the damaging consequences of his silence. “If history indicts us for Vietnam,” Johnson admitted in the fall, “it will be for fighting a war without trying to stir up patriotism.”
In the absence of presidential cheerleading, American public support for the war declined over the course of 1967. As administration officials had feared, the apparent weakening of American resolve hardened the determination of the North Vietnamese to persist. Hanoi rebuffed every American overture for peace negotiations, anticipating that the coming Tet offensive would destroy what remained of America’s will.
There was another factor as well. When the buildup in Vietnam was led by the handsome young charismatic JFK, DC elites were happy to go along; they only began to sour on the war when it was led by someone who was “not our class, dear.” As Jeffrey Lord wrote in the American Spectator in 2012:
Slowly, and then not so slowly, these elitist, arrogant and if not outright snotty attitudes sought out a new target during the years when LBJ was sitting in the White House — when, in the view of these people, “Uncle Cornpone and his Little Pork Chop” had replaced the King and Queen of Camelot.
That new target?
The American people themselves. They had, after all, elected LBJ in a landslide in 1964. Now Uncle Cornpone was the elected President of the United States. To make matters more unbearable, LBJ was using his newfound power and popularity to actually pass the liberal agenda of the day, which Johnson labeled “The Great Society.” Uncle Cornpone, it seemed, wasn’t such a ridiculous figure after all when it came to getting the liberal wish list through the Congress.
No one better than JFK would have known instantly what a huge mistake this elitist attitude would be. Discussing the relationship of a presidential candidate with the American people, JFK had told historian and friend Theodore H. White, author of The Making of the President series, that, in White’s re-telling, “a man running for the Presidency must talk up, way up there.” It was a principle Kennedy surely would have applied to his own party — and did so while he was president. Not from JFK was there a drop of elitist contempt — from a man who unarguably could claim the title in a blink — for his fellow countrymen.
But in a horrifying flash, JFK was gone. And the elitist tide spread.
Not coincidentally, east coast elite “liberals” such as David Halberstam would sour at the war being led by someone they despised for class reasons, a story that would be repeated once again, and is happening today.
CUOMO CALLS ON TRUMP TO PROVIDE EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE AT PENN STATION:
The delays at Penn Station will have domino effects that impact the overburdened subway, regional transit and more.
Cuomo asked Trump to lend his support to getting Amtrak — a quasi-federal entity — to turn over control of Penn Station to a private terminal operator.
He also requested federal funding for the state’s planned construction of a new entrance to Penn Station from the Farley Post Office. Cuomo wrote that money is also needed for a “long term resolution for Penn Station,” as well as investment in alternative modes of transportation.
Just as a reminder, that “planned construction of a new entrance to Penn Station from the Farley Post Office,” aka Moynihan Station, has been discussed since the early 1990s, when Pat Moynihan first championed the idea. In 1999, Chuck Schumer “sponsored and passed legislation formally naming the yet-to-be-constructed facility ‘Moynihan Station’ in his honor,” according to Wikipedia. I wrote up the concept for Tech Central Station in 2005. If it ever actually gets built, it would take a fair amount of pressure off of Penn Station – but in Cuomo and de Blasio’s New York, construction moves at a snail’s place.
TEST FLIGHT: Up in the air in the Cirrus Vision, the single-engine “personal jet.” “The Vision is a proper regional jet that could seat up to seven people and carry them a thousand miles or more, making trips such as New York to Chicago possible. And yet even at a price tag of $2 million, the Cirrus comes in well below the cost of typical corporate jets that ferry America’s titans of industry.”
AT AMAZON, 70% off or more on Computer Glasses.
TEST DRIVE: First Drive: 2017 BMW M760i xDrive.
ORDINARY STARVING VENEZUELANS: YOU KNOW, A PIG OR TWO WOULD BE NICE ABOUT NOW. Venezuelan tyrant tells Trump to, “get your pig hands out of here.”
Hell, they’d probably settle for some pigs’ feet.
NEVER THOUGHT I’D MISS MIKE BLOOMBERG: Bill de Blasio Honors a Puerto Rican Terrorist.
Bill Ayers could not be reached for comment.
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Human blood stem cells grown in the lab for the first time.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Nearly 40 Years After Mount St. Helens’ Deadly Eruption, It’s ‘Recharging.’
AT AMAZON, Power and Hand Tools.
My old Bosch cordless drill is dying (well, the batteries are). Thinking of replacing it with this one.
ANTITRUMP FANTASIES OUT OF CONTROL: Breaking News from the Axis of Krazytown — President Hatch!
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Scientists One Step Closer To 3-D-Printed Ovaries To Treat Infertility.