Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Over the 40-some years that I have been working or closely observing the political campaign business, the rules of the game haven't changed much. Technology has changed the business somewhat, but the people who ran campaigns in the 1970s could have (and in some cases actually have) run them four decades later.
But suddenly this year, the rules seemed to change. Let me try to count the ways...
I remember in the spring I told my students that if Donald Trump won the presidency he'd have broken all the rules of politics. Indeed, I expect he's rewritten the rule book now.
This literally warms my heart, especially since she's super smart, close to the president-elect, and has a mellowing effect on Trump and his public statements.
She's going to be a huge asset to this White House.
Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.
Despite a rebounding economy and recent job growth, the share of those between the ages of 18 and 34 doubling up with parents or other family members has been rising since 2005. Back then, before the start of the last recession, roughly one out of three were living with family.
The trend runs counter to that of previous economic cycles, when after a recession-related spike, the number of younger Americans living with relatives declined as the economy improved.
The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Analysts point to rising rents in many cities and tough mortgage-lending standards as the culprit, making it difficult for younger Americans to strike out on their own.
“I don’t think those are challenges that are going to keep young households permanently out of the housing market, but it may keep their homeownership rate near historic lows for likely the indefinite future,” said Ralph McLaughlin, Trulia’s chief economist.
The share of young Americans living with parents hit a high of 40.9% in 1940, just a year after the official end of the Great Depression, and fell to a low of 24.1% in 1960. It hovered between about 31% and 33% from 1980 to the mid-2000s, when the rate started climbing steadily.
The census data on living arrangements goes back annually to 1980, and prior to that was collected each decade.
Household formation is closely correlated with housing affordability and income. Among those aged 25 to 34, 40% of those earning less than $25,000 headed their own household. The share rose to 50% for those earning between $25,000 and $50,000, and 58% for those with incomes above $50,000, according to the Harvard Joint Center.
Census data also show younger Americans are getting married and having children later in life than previous generations. Even so, economists project the historically large millennial generation will more than double its current number of households through 2025...
Like the effort to force recounts in swing states won by Trump, the attempt to persuade the Electoral College to see the president-elect as part of a Russian plot or to channel The Federalist Papers and pick someone else flopped. So now that the fantasies that the bad dream can be made to go away are exploded, what are Democrats who are still refusing to accept they lost to do?
The answer from the left is “resistance.” That’s what Moveon.org — which helped organize some of the protests at the various Electoral College ceremonies as well as other anti-Trump demonstrations — is saying. What form will “resistance” take? That’s far from clear. The group’s leader Anna Galland seems to be primarily interested in more mass street theater. According to radical TV talker Keith Olbermann, it should consist of daily reminders to Republicans that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and refusing to refer to Trump as the president.
Such comically futile gestures don’t sound terribly inspiring or productive, but might make some people feel better. Yet those elected officials tasked with the duty to reconstruct the Democratic Party sound just as confused as nudniks like Galland and Olbermann.
A small number of centrist Democrats like Ohio’s Rep. Tim Ryan, who led a spectacularly unsuccessful challenge to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, think the party should try to cooperate with Trump on issues where they might agree. But that’s something a party increasingly dominated by its Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren leftist faction has no interest in doing. Ellison, who is continuing his effort to be elected the head of the Democratic National Committee, believes the party should refuse to support the infrastructure proposal in spite of the fact that it is remarkably similar to President Obama’s own first term stimulus legislation. While his hopes to be the DNC Chair are still up in the air, he probably speaks for most of his party when he says they don’t trust Trump and will resist him on every front.
The point here is not so much their understandable hard feelings about the election results. Rather, it is that they are still stuck in the denial stage of grief and can’t shake it off. Though they’ll pay lip service to the notion of serving the best interests of the country, there’s little doubt that they are far more interested in continuing the project to delegitimize Trump. That’s why so many of them continue to harp on the farcical notion that Vladimir Putin elected Trump or to hope some other Hail Mary play like parlaying disputes over the president-elect’s admittedly tangled and far-flung financial interests into an impeachment putsch even before he takes office will do the trick.
What this means is that rather than a fraction of the party’s extremists starting the new administration enmeshed in a new derangement syndrome, it appears the critical mass of the party that won 48 percent of the vote is unable to move past a disappointing election...
Remember, it's the left that's fomenting fascism in America. All these attempts to delegitimize Trump are textbook examples of fascist political agitation, right out of the last days of Weimar.
.@oreillyfactor: “The left wants power taken away from the white establishment and they want a profound change in the way America is run.” pic.twitter.com/EggkBz7kvZ
Born in 1979, the Dish was the first skatepark in SF. Over the years it's seen broken bones, race riots, Animal Chin—all of it. The Trust for Public Land came at me about a year ago to redo the Dish; I recommended Grindline and they got the job. Fast forward to Dec. 3, 2016 the ribbon was cut and the park was open. Senators, skaters, builders and city councelors all made this day special. Anyway, it's there. Come and get it at the top of Hudson St. SF, CA. Nobody does it better — Jake Phelps.
12 December 2016 (Vista, CA) – Youth in San Francisco are enjoying their new skatepark at the city’s rebuilt Hilltop Park, and other communities can now take advantage of the same Tony Hawk Foundation construction grant that helped fund that amazing project.
A public skatepark typically requires funding from several sources, and over the past fifteen years the Tony Hawk Foundation has become one of the most significant, with over $5.6-million awarded to projects in all 50 States. As THF’s 519th skatepark to open, Hilltop is just the latest.
According to Will Rogers, Chief Executive Officer of The Trust for Public Land, THF’s contribution may not have been the largest, but it was pivotal. “The Trust for Public Land is deeply grateful for the Tony Hawk Foundation’s support of the Hilltop Skatepark. They didn’t just give generous financial backing, their support generated real excitement in the local community and being able to call on the Tony Hawk Foundation for technical advice and suggestions was tremendous. You can already see how popular the new design is with skaters of all ages and abilities, and we thank them for helping make that possible.”
The 16,000-square-foot concrete flow course and bowl was the result of local residents collaborating with several agencies and organizations, including San Francisco Recreation And Parks, The Trust For Public Land, Parks 94124, and the Tony Hawk Foundation.
In recent years, many THF Skatepark Grant recipients have reported that the contribution from Tony Hawk’s foundation also catalyzed their local fundraising. “The value of winning the Tony Hawk Foundation Grant cannot be measured by sheer numbers,” said Sarah Anderson, who led the Nyack, New York public skatepark to its grand opening in 2015. “The esteemed THF grant not only filled the skatepark coffer, it legitimized the project in the eyes of the public and activated donors, both public and private, to carry us forward to the finish line.”
Germany's probably swarmed with criminal jihadists, and Merkel doesn't even care. It's all about humanitarianism. That is, until your own citizens are massacred.
Merkel's party's going to be toast in this year's federal elections. Merkel's going to be toast in this year's federal elections. I'm surprised she's running or a fourth term.
A Tunisian man wanted in connection with the deadly truck attack on a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market had been previously investigated over an earlier terror plot, a senior German official has said.
Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, said an investigation had been launched against ... Anis Amri, who was due to be deported, earlier this year on suspicion of "preparing a serious crime endangering national safety".
He moved around Germany and lived in several places, Mr Jäger said. Since February this year he lived mostly in Berlin, but he had been back in North Rhine-Westphalia recently.
The man is aged 21 or 23 and known by three different names, according to reports in the daily Allgemeine Zeitung and the Bild newspaper.
Both said asylum office papers believed to belong to the man were found in the cab of the truck.
The documents, which announced a stay of deportation, were found under the driver's seat of the 40-tonne lorry that barrelled through the Christmas market in the heart of the German capital.
Police were reportedly searching for the suspect, who was born in the southern Tunisian city of Tataouine, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Twelve people were killed in what German authorities have called a "terrorist attack" in Berlin late Monday, including the Polish driver of the truck. Twenty-four remained in hospital, 14 of whom were seriously injured.
The scenes instantly revived nightmarish memories of the July 14 truck assault in the French Riviera city of Nice, where 86 people were killed by a Tunisian Islamist...
While Monday’s final tally wasn’t known when we went to press, the count was headed toward 304 for Mr. Trump, with two dissenting GOP electors from Texas.
It is nonetheless worth noting the extraordinary lengths that Democrats and the progressive media have gone to attempt to lobby electors to vote for Hillary Clinton or a Republican alternative. “Electors under siege,” said a headline in Politico, reporting that many “have been inundated by harassing phone calls and hate mail,” even “death threats.”
So much for the calm deliberation that progressives claim to want as they lobbied electors under the rubric of Hamilton’s Electors. The spectacle of the last month has been an exercise in political intimidation, precisely the kind of pressure politics that Alexander Hamilton wanted an Electoral College to protect the country from. There’s a case for independent judgment by electors, but only in extraordinary circumstances—such as learning something new and disqualifying about a candidate....
The larger cynicism at work is the continuing attempt to undermine Mr. Trump’s democratic legitimacy. First Democrats tried a recount, which failed when the Republican gained votes in Wisconsin. Then they turned to the Electoral College, whose vote won’t technically be official until the new Congress certifies the result in January. Look for Democrats to make speeches before the vote questioning Mr. Trump’s authority to be President.
Then there are the charges that Vladimir Putin elected Mr. Trump. Mr. Podesta—perhaps still trying to purge his conscience for not campaigning in Wisconsin—even suggested on Sunday that “Trump Inc.” advisers colluded with the Russians to hack Democratic emails. That would be some story, though we’ll wait for evidence. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump will be President, but he shouldn’t anticipate a honeymoon.
It's not Donald Trump who's raising the specter of fascism in America, it's the Democrats and the radical left. We've been witnessing it since the voters repudiated Hillary Clinton on election day.
Three weeks before Election Day, as she sat at her kitchen table to fill out her ballot, Kim McKinney Cohen was angry and fed up. The Democratic Party, to which she had been unswervingly loyal for four decades, had sabotaged her chosen candidate, Bernie Sanders, and then lectured her about the need to vote for a woman whose hawkishness and arrogance rubbed her the wrong way. When Hillary Clinton said dismissively supporters of Donald Trump were “a basket of deplorables,” Cohen had heard enough.
“Well, then,” she sighed, "I guess I'm a deplorable.”
His rants against illegal immigration cost him his job at CNN, but he's riding high now on Fox Business News, and he's basking in the political power of the Trump movement.
The radical left has been reduced to irrelevance, and the radical left is frankly the establishment Democrat Party. They haven't learned the lessons of the election, and their chances of returning to power looks smaller as each day goes by.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the “Caliph Ibrahim” of the so-called Islamic State, had an excellent week last week.
The fall of Aleppo to a consortium of Iranian-built militias backed by Russian airpower and special forces constitutes not only a loud victory for Damascus but also a quieter one for ISIS, or the Islamic State, which mounted a surprise attack that retook the ancient city of Palmyra.
The contrast could not have been starker or a more clear vindication of one of ISIS’s longest-running propaganda tropes: the “infidels” and “apostates” will do nothing to save Sunni Arabs from the pillage, rape, and barrel bombs of the Russians, Alawites, and Shia. But Aleppo’s fall also buttresses one of the lesser-scrutinized claims made by ISIS’s former spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, shortly before his demise.
In May, months before he was taken out by a U.S. airstrike, Adnani issued what would turn out to be a final communiqué refuting a common Sunni criticism of ISIS, namely that the group’s takeover of Sunni towns and cities invariably brought only devastation. See Fallujah and Ramadi. For Adnani, however, such devastation was never the fault of ISIS, as rival jihadist enterprises had discovered at their peril.
“If we knew that any of the righteous predecessors surrendered a span of land to the infidels, using the claim of popular support or to save buildings from being destroyed or to prevent bloodshed, or any other alleged interest,” he said, “we would have done the same as the Qa’idah of the Fool of the so-called Ummah.” Only steadfastness, even in the face of overwhelming odds, would restore Sunni dignity.
Thanks to Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—not to say Barack Obama—Adnani now gets to play the posthumous prophet. Rather than die fighting for Aleppo, the Free Syrian Army (and its Western backers), plus rival Islamist or jihadist groups such the Syrian al Qaeda franchise Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, negotiated the terms of their surrender through a series of failed and humiliating “ceasefires” and evacuations, which are in fact forced population transfers. And Aleppo was still pulverized.
The loss will be compounded by the sectarian context. Aleppo fell to what Der Spiegel correspondent Christoph Reuter once aptly called the “first international Shia jihad in recent history,” led by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and relying largely on a patchwork of guerrilla fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iraq. This is precisely what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian founding father of ISIS, wanted. He once described the Shia as “the insurmountable obstacle, the prowling serpent, the crafty, evil scorpion, the enemy lying in wait, and biting poison… Whoever takes the time to look carefully at the situation will realize that Shiism is the greater danger threatening us and the real challenge we must confront.” And the only way to confront this enemy in Iraq was to render Sunnis hopeless that anyone else would, by attacking the Shia so that the Shia took revenge by attacking the outnumbered Sunnis.
In Syria, the Zarqawi thesis is even more relevant, as the country is a Sunni majority one and is now subject to occupation by a minority. And as bad as the physical collapse of the symbolic citadel of Syria’s revolution is, worse still is the chauvinist triumphalism attending it, which plays directly into the Zarqawi strategy.
Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, one of the Iraqi militias which the United Nations accused of murdering 85 civilians, including women and children, broadcast a song on an affiliated Iraqi TV channel. “Aleppo is Shia,” it ran. In his Friday sermon, delivered in Tehran, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani declared the “liberation” of the city from “infidels”—using more or less the same language of sectarian incitement that ISIS reserves for the Kashani’s coreligionists. In this case, the cleric was declaring all 150,000 Sunnis who’d been besieged for months in East Aleppo, and now driven from their homes, godless. Even he must be aware of the lasting repercussions of such imprecations.
Rhetorical provocation has also been met by the visual kind. Images circulating on social media to show Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s spymaster and head of the expeditionary Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, treading the rubble in Aleppo in an unmistakable show of who was really responsible for the siege and recapture. (Bashar al-Assad, the nominal sovereign of “all of Syria,” is nowhere to be seen on this hollowed-out and Iranian-occupied battlefield.) Any of these photographs could easily grace the forthcoming issue of Rumiyah, ISIS’s propaganda magazine...
The idea is that the Sunnis will be so heavily wiped out that they'll rise up and join arms with the most murderous thugs of Islamic State. That's why the fall of Aleppo's a gift to ISIS.
German police have said they may have arrested the wrong man over the Berlin terror attack, and the real culprit could still be at large and armed and dangerous.
"We must get used to the idea that he was possibly not the perpetrator or that he didn't belong to the group of perpetrators," Germany's chief prosecutor Peter Frank told a press conference.
Police urged people to remain "particularly vigilant" and to report "suspicious movement" to a special hotline.
"We have the wrong man," an unnamed police source told Welt newspaper. "This means the situation is different. The real culprit is still armed and can commit further atrocities."
The man arrested on Monday night under suspicion of ploughing a 7-tonne truck through a Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing 12, was named in German media reports as Naved Baluch, a 23-year-old asylum seeker of Pakistani origin.
Baluch has denied involvement in the attack, according to police.
He was picked up about 2 kilometres (1½ miles) away from the scene of the attack, near the Victory Column monument.
At least 48 were injured, some seriously, in the attack, after the vehicle mounted the pavement at about 40mph and crashed into them.
A passenger in the lorry – believed to be the original driver – was later found dead inside. German authorities confirmed that the passenger was a Polish national and that he was not the person in control of the vehicle, which belonged to a Polish delivery company, at the time of the crash...
Los Angeles city and county leaders on Monday unveiled a $10-million fund to provide legal assistance for residents facing deportation, the region’s boldest move yet as it prepares for an expected crackdown on illegal immigration by Donald Trump.
If approved by lawmakers, Los Angeles’ two top government agencies could find themselves in the position of using public funds to challenge policies sought by the White House and Republican Congress.
The fund represents another provocative pushback against the Trump agenda in heavily Democratic California, but outside legal experts said the local government agencies are likely within their right to use the money for these purposes.
Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer said the fund will ensure that there is “more fairness and more effectiveness in the immigration system.” He cited statistics showing that immigrants who have representation have a better chance at succeeding in court.
Still, some anti-illegal immigration activists criticized the move, saying it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars and interferes with the federal government’s immigration policies.
L.A. officials “should be focused on assisting the citizens, [not] taking tax dollars to pay for services to assist illegal residents countywide,” said Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising, a Claremont-based organization against illegal immigration. The money, she added, would be better spent on unemployed citizens, veterans, disabled and the elderly.
L.A. Justice Fund would receive at least $5 million total from city and county government. Philanthropic groups would donate the rest of the money. The California Endowment, the state’s largest private healthcare foundation, plans to give the fund $2 million, according to a foundation spokeswoman.
The legal fund, aimed at helping immigrants who can’t afford attorneys, follows similar efforts at the state and national level to provide protections for migrants...
Almost half of Americans do not agree with the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that the Russian government was behind cyberattacks on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, according to a new Morning Consult/POLITICO survey.
When asked to pick the statement that most aligned with their views, 46 percent of respondents chose one that said the U.S. can’t be sure who is primarily responsible for the hacking because tracing cyberattacks is complicated and because intelligence groups were wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In contrast, 29 percent chose the statement that said there was “near certainty” that Russia is responsible for hacking and that intelligence agencies had used advanced techniques to determine that the former Cold War adversary is responsible. A quarter said they didn’t know or had no opinion...
Well, the public's perfectly reasonable about thing. Leftists not so much.
The biggest drama surrounding this whole thing is how the far-left has sought to destroy and delegitimize the process. It's never been disrupted like this.
But Trump's sealed his election with the vote today around the nation.
Monday’s Electoral College proceedings drew a record number of votes for candidates other than Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton. That reflected the lingering deep divisions within the country that played out during an election season in which Mr. Trump won more electoral votes, but trailed Mrs. Clinton in the popular vote. At least seven electors defied the will of the voters in their states—a number not seen in roughly a century and a half.
Two Texas Republican electors cast ballots for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul. On the Democratic side, four Washington state electors refused to cast ballots for Mrs. Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine. Three voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, while one cast a ballot for Native American activist Faith Spotted Eagle. In Hawaii, one Democratic elector also cast a ballot for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
In the vice-presidential vote, the Washington vote was even more unusual, with electors casting votes for a trio of female U.S. senators: Democrats Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Maria Cantwell of Washington, as well as Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine. Another elector cast a ballot for Winona LaDuke, an environmental activist. One Texas Republican voted for former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on the vice-presidential ballot. Another Hawaii elector also voted for Ms. Warren.
Several other attempts by electors to cast ballots for alternative candidates were unsuccessful. Democratic electors in Colorado and Maine tried to cast votes for Mr. Sanders. In Maine, the elector was ordered to vote again, while in Colorado the elector was replaced with an alternate...
The idea is that current welfare rules prohibit part-time workers from receiving benefits, but if you lift the rules and provide a basic income, that'll free up people to get out and work.
Okay, as long as the monthly checks aren't too big. If you give people too much money, they won't want to work. It's human nature.
Interesting, in any case, especially in how leftists just love it. There's a failure of capitalism, and all that.
At NYT:
Free Cash in Finland. Must Be Jobless. (Universal basic income, a bad idea.) https://t.co/tWXRPbLcTr
BERLIN—A truck drove onto the sidewalk at a Christmas market in the German capital on Monday, killing nine people and injuring at least 50, police said.
A semi-trailer drove onto the sidewalk near Breitscheidplatz in Charlottenburg, a tony district in West Berlin, at about 8 p.m., a spokeswoman for the Berlin police said. After hitting the people, the truck swerved back into the street where it came to a stop, the spokeswoman said.
The circumstances of the incident weren’t immediately clear, but a security official said authorities believe it was a deliberate act. One person, suspected to be the truck driver, has been arrested, a police spokesman said on German television. A passenger in the truck died in the incident, he said.
The crash took place at the site of the Christmas market in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a popular site for tourists...
Russia’s ambassador to Turkey was shot dead on Monday by an assassin who told him: “We die in Aleppo, you die here.”
The gunman – an off-duty policeman – opened fire at an art gallery in Ankara as Andrei Karlov was making a speech, then stood triumphantly over his body shouting “revenge for Syria and Aleppo”.
Photographs taken by an Associated Press photographer who kept his finger on the shutter while others dived for cover captured the aftermath of a murder which Russia described as a “terrorist act”.
The murder followed days of protests in Turkey over Russia’s role in Syria as a backer of President Bashar al-Assad and came on the eve of talks in Moscow about the future of Syria involving Russia, Iran and Turkey, which will still go ahead today.
The Turkish foreign ministry insisted it would not allow the murder to “cast a shadow” over Turkey’s improving relations with Russia.
The killer was named on Monday night as Mevlut Mert Altintas, a 22-year-old riot squad police officer who has been based in Ankara for the past two years.
He shouted “Allahu Akbar” – God is great – as he pulled the trigger, but was unclear whether he was inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) or the rebels who have finally been crushed in Aleppo after four years of war.
Reports in Turkey suggested he recited a message in Arabic similar to a phrase associated with the rebel group Al Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.
He was shot dead by police in a shoot-out that lasted 15 minutes. Three other people were wounded in the attack.
President Putin spoke on the phone to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the shooting and Moscow said it was “a tragic day in the history of our country and Russian diplomacy”.
Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, had entered a diplomatic crisis when the Turkish air force shot down a Russian jet in November 2015, but in recent months Mr Putin and Mr Erdogan have been in regular contact, and have held talks about a general ceasefire in Syria.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "We qualify what happened as a terrorist act. The murderers will be punished.
"Today this issue will be raised at the UN Security Council. Terrorism will not win out."
WARSAW — The Law and Justice Party rode to power on a pledge to drain the swamp of Polish politics and roll back the legacy of the previous administration. One year later, its patriotic revolution, the party proclaims, has cleaned house and brought God and country back to Poland.
Opponents, however, see the birth of a neo-Dark Age — one that, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, is a harbinger of the power of populism to upend a Western society. In merely a year, critics say, the nationalists have transformed Poland into a surreal and insular place — one where state-sponsored conspiracy theories and de facto propaganda distract the public as democracy erodes.
In the land of Law and Justice, anti-intellectualism is king. Polish scientists are aghast at proposed curriculum changes in a new education bill that would downplay evolution theory and climate change and add hours for “patriotic” history lessons. In a Facebook chat, a top equal rights official mused that Polish hotels should not be forced to provide service to black or gay customers. After the official stepped down for unrelated reasons, his successor rejected an international convention to combat violence against women because it appeared to argue against traditional gender roles.
Over the weekend, Warsaw convulsed in street protests amid allegations that the Law and Justice party had illegally forced through a budget bill even as it sought to restrict media access to Parliament.
Cheered on by religious conservatives, the new government has defunded public assistance for in vitro fertilization treatments. To draft new sexual-education classes in schools, it tapped a contraceptives opponent who argues that condom use increases the risk of cancer in women. The government is proffering a law that critics say could soon be used to limit opposition protests.
Yet nothing has shocked liberals more than this: After a year in power, Law and Justice is still by far the most popular political party in Poland. It rides atop opinion polls at roughly 36 percent — more than double the popularity of the ousted Civic Platform party.
“The people support us,” boasted Adam Bielan, Law and Justice’s deputy speaker of the Senate.
The party's a little hardcore for me, but like I said, it's not the end of the world. If at least a third of the voters support them, then in fact we're looking a democracy in action. Call me back when Auschwitz starts firing up the ovens again.
Climate change itself is already in the process of definitively rebutting climate alarmists who think human use of fossil fuels is causing ultimately catastrophic global warming. That is because natural climate cycles have already turned from warming to cooling, global temperatures have already been declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will continue to decline for another two decades or more.
That is one of the most interesting conclusions to come out of the seventh International Climate Change Conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute, held last week in Chicago. I attended, and served as one of the speakers, talking about The Economic Implications of High Cost Energy...
NEW YORK — The glass revolving doors of Trump Tower were doing what they have done every day since Donald Trump became the president-elect of the United States: briskly allowing a steady stream of mostly tourists from the interior of the country get a glimpse, sometimes longer, of the comings and goings of the man and his Cabinet members who will soon govern this country.
"The energy of the people who come just to stand behind the ropes is sort of unbelievable," said one of two New York City fireman charged with keeping an eye on things in the lobby of the building where the president-elect has been going about the business of putting his government together for his January inauguration.
"If you see Mr. Trump can you please tell him that the Murphys' from Minnesota wish him good luck and that we pray for him?" a gentleman told one of the police officers as he and his wife strolled past the elevators where Trump, his children, future Cabinet members, U.S. senators, members of Congress, business leaders, a former vice president and a rapper have all taken the golden elevators to the 26th floor.
Carlos, from Florida, a third-generation Hispanic American also wanted to pass on good wishes to the Trump family, as he lingered with his family in the lobby, "We saved up to come to New York for Christmas for the first time, I wanted my family to see the best city in America, first place we stop is here to maybe see the next president," he told an officer standing off to the left of the gold elevators.
"It's like that all day long," the fire chief said, adding, "To be honest I didn't know what to expect during the transition process, but honestly the well-wishers come from all over and really just want him to know they are behind him," he said.
It's not exactly the same reception that Trump is getting from those who opposed him, loathed him, still have not accepted that he has won the election and worse yet still have not understood why he won.
They have blamed Russian interference and James Comey's letter for Hillary Clinton's loss; yes the Russians have appeared to interfere and yes Comey's letter was damning to Clinton, but if we all had the ability to be honest with ourselves the DNC emails and the Comey hesitation only reinforced people's view of Clinton's character whether for or against her.
In short, if more journalists had spent time in Middle America, they would have understood that this election wasn't decided at the last moment...
USA Today revised the piece, correcting a statement about quoting the Constitution to quoting the Federalist Papers, but the first paragraph still has a problem with subject/verb agreement:
A coalition of outside groups seeking to pressure Republican members of the Electoral College to vote against Donald Trump are sinking half a million dollars into a final ad buy in all 50 states.
The "coalition" is the subject." The verb should be "is."
I tweeted again. We'll see if they correct the error.
@HeidiPrzybyla Still got subject verb (dis) agreement at the piece. The subject in first graf is the "coalition," verb is "is."@USATODAY
He broke her jaw. She was on the floor for minutes.
A black athlete beating a white woman. You'd think you'd be hearing more about that angle as well, not just the violence against women. Violence against women is part of black hip hop culture, but to raise the point would "racist."
And that's at the Monkey Cage blog, which is run by political scientists, who of all people know that most Americans --- not just Republicans --- have in fact minimal knowledge of politics. That's why the 52 percent figure is in fact not "astonishing." BFD. A bare majority thinks Trump won the popular vote? A probably higher percent of Democrats thinks Hillary Clinton should be president, despite the fact that we don't use the popular vote. That's why you've got idiot leftists like Martin Sheen pushing these fake propaganda videos agitating for the Republican electors to reject Donald Trump in tomorrow's voting.
We have a fake political system at this point.
A new poll shows an astonishing 52% of Republicans incorrectly think Trump won the popular vote https://t.co/PyIHuOeVSH
Law, principles, facts ... the liberals have shown us none of those exist. Now they don't. There is only power. Enjoy the world you made. pic.twitter.com/qHPozfU4YQ
So, I'm driving with my son the other day, coming home from the Obey warehouse sale in Irvine, and Sheryl Crow's "The First Cut is the Deepest" comes on the radio. My son laughed because I used to play the song all the time when the CD came out back in the day.
I love CBS This Morning. I post videos from the show quite a bit.
But my wife can't stand Gayle King, who stars on CBS along with Norah O'Donnell and Charlie Rose.
In turn, I can't stand "GMA." George Stephanopoulos is not a journalist. He's a Democrat political hack. And Lara Spencer has got to be the biggest airhead on daytime television. She's like a grown forty-something year-old woman who comes off like she's still a giggly teenager. I can't stand her.
Well, "GMA's" coming under some tough competition, apparently.
What’s happening to Jewish and pro-Israel students on many American universities and colleges from coast to coast is horribly ugly. On “hotspot campuses” the problem is only getting worse.
“Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus”, a new 70 minute documentary recently released by the organization Americans for Peace and Tolerance, chronicles the rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activism prevalent on many of America’s institutions of higher learning.
We featured the film’s trailer in a recent post and the movie premiered in NYC on November 30.
Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the film in its entirely. In this follow-up post, I review the documentary’s central themes and take-home messages.
A 10 minute clip prepared by executive producer, director and writer Avi Goldwasser for our use in this post is included below. Also included below is a statement from him exclusive for "Legal Insurrection."
I really don't get where the "game theory" part is coming in here, which is apparently what this dude Eric Garland, who went on a Twitter rant about Russian meddling in the election, argued.
But the response from this Sam Kriss dude is the best ever:
It’s possible that the Democratic National Committee leaks were caused by Russian hackers—but given that the hack took place thanks to John Podesta clicking on a link in a phishing email, displaying all the technological savvy of someone’s aunt extremely excited by the new iPhone she thinks she’s won, it could have been anyone. The “leaked” CIA concerns over Russian meddling were quite clearly leaked deliberately by the CIA itself, an organization not exactly famed for its commitment to the truth; they’re the conclusions of an investigation that hasn’t even happened yet and on which there’s no consensus even among the gang of petty Caligulas that calls itself the intelligence community. Still, it’s possible. Countries sometimes try to exert influence in each other’s internal affairs; it’s part of great-power politics, and it’s been happening for a very long time. When Americans meddled in Russia’s elections, it was by securing victory for Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s very own Donald Trump, a man who had sent in tanks to shell his own parliament. Leaked cables suggest that Hillary Clinton’s own State Department interfered with the political process in Haiti by suppressing a rise in the minimum wage. And American involvement in the politics of Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Iran was mostly through military coups, sponsored by none other than the CIA. There was no question of these countries repeating their elections; anyone the generals didn’t like was tortured to death. Next to the mountain of corpses produced by America’s history of fixing foreign elections, a few hacked emails are entirely insignificant.
Whatever Russia did or didn’t do, the idea that its interference is what cost Hillary Clinton the election is utterly ludicrous and absolutely false. What cost Hillary Clinton the election can be summed up by a single line from Sen. Chuck Schumer, soon to be the country’s highest-ranking Democrat: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” As it turned out, he was fatally wrong. It wasn’t the Russians who told the Democratic Party to abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base. It wasn’t the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail—“vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins.” The Russians didn’t come up with awful tin-eared catchphrases like “I’m with her” or “America is already great.” The Russians never ordered the DNC to run one of the most widely despised people in the country, simply because she thought it was her turn. The Democrats did that all by themselves.
What the Russia obsession represents is a massive ethical failure on the part of American liberals. People really will suffer under President Trump—women, queer people, Muslims, poor people of every stripe. But so many in the centrist establishment don’t seem to care. They’re far too busy weaving themselves into intricate geopolitical power plays that don’t really exist, searching for a narrative that exonerates them from having let this happen, to do anything like real political work. They won’t accept that Trumpism is America, in all its blood-splattered horror—that the dry civics lesson of a democracy they love so much is capable of creating a monster. Decades of neoliberal policy disenfranchised people to the extent that Donald Trump could look like a savior; far better to just hide your bad conscience somewhere far away in Eastern Europe. It wasn’t us, it wasn’t our country, we were all duped by Putin. And if this means falling into reactionary paranoia, screaming red-faced about traitors and spies, slobbering embarrassingly over the incoherent rants of any two-bit con artist whose name isn’t Donald Trump—so be it. None of this will help anyone or achieve anything, but that’s not the point. And then, at the end, with nothing solved, they shrug at us like Eric Garland’s imagined game-theory version of Hillary Clinton. Jesus, what can you do?
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