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December 13, 2017
SALMA HAYEK IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too.
One of the forces that gave me the determination to pursue my career was the story of Frida Kahlo, who in the golden age of the Mexican muralists would do small intimate paintings that everybody looked down on. She had the courage to express herself while disregarding skepticism. My greatest ambition was to tell her story. It became my mission to portray the life of this extraordinary artist and to show my native Mexico in a way that combated stereotypes.
* * * * * * * *
And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.
I don’t think he hated anything more than the word “no.” The absurdity of his demands went from getting a furious call in the middle of the night asking me to fire my agent for a fight he was having with him about a different movie with a different client to physically dragging me out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival, which was in honor of “Frida,” so I could hang out at his private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was told later were high-priced prostitutes.
The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”
When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.
In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.
One of Kahlo’s final paintings before her death at age 47 in 1954 was titled “Self Portrait with Stalin.” As Nick Gillespie wrote at Reason last year, “That is some fucked-up art right there. Uncle Joe had died the year before and only the most deluded bitter-clingers were under any illusions about his reign of terror.”
When Hayek writes, that in Weinstein’s eyes, “I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body,” she’s also neatly describing how the dictator whom Kahlo worshipped viewed his subjects in the Soviet Union, where, the Times staggeringly claimed earlier in August, the sex was awesome. I wonder if the Gray Lady would still have the chutzpah to run that article today, seeing as how the Weinstein allegations set in motion an ongoing Soviet-style cultural purge by the American left.
THE PAST IS ANOTHER COUNTRY: THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THERE. Former SI cover girl: Sexual harassment was once ‘a compliment.’. “As a matter of fact, you almost got offended if you did not get harassed. Like, if this photographer is known for hitting on [models] — or goes for all the brunettes — and you show up at the studio and you are a brunette and he does not hit on you . . . it is like, ‘What is wrong with me?’”
WITH NO PAYWALL! The Volokh Conspiracy has moved from the WaPo to Reason. A better home for a lot of, er, reasons.
VIDEO: Butchering A Complete Beef Round. “I had never heard of an Oyster Steak. The butchers have been holding out on us.”
MARY KATHARINE HAM: The Sad People Who Watched ‘A Christmas Prince’ 18 Days In A Row Craft A Statement.
Names have not been changed to protect the innocent.
‘GUT-WRENCHING’: Salma Hayek shares HORRIFIC stories of ‘monster’ Harvey Weinstein.
A LOOK AT THE Porsche Panamera Diesel.
JEFF DUNETZ: 18 Differences Between Chanukah & Christmas.
WHAT DOES YOUR BODY NEED MORE? SLEEP, OR EXERCISE? “That’s a terrible choice.”
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, EXACTLY? FBI Officials Discussed ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump Presidency.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok wrote in a cryptic text message to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and his mistress.
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok wrote in the text, dated Aug. 15, 2016.
Andy is likely Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Read the whole thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Should Get More Magnesium In Your Diet.
MICHAEL WALSH: Twenty Steps to Last Night’s GOP Disaster.
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QUESTION ASKED: Can Democrats Take Back the House in 2018?
Mr. Moore was a seriously flawed candidate, controversial enough to have been tossed off his own state’s Supreme Court twice, and more recently accused of having made improper sexual advances on teenage girls. (He denies the allegations.) Thus, much of the loss to Mr. Jones will be laid at the candidate’s feet. Still, the loss is a huge blow to Mr. Trump personally. He now has backed three straight candidates for statewide office who have lost. And the implications are enormous. “The challenges the GOP faced remain and the finger pointing will only increase,” said Douglas Heye, a longtime top Republican congressional aide. “We remain bitterly divided.”
For Democrats, the victory in a state they never dreamed of winning just a few months ago delivers a jolt of energy—and, perhaps as important, could encourage balky donors who have left the party’s national machinery seriously underfunded this year. Perhaps most encouraging for Democrats, the same coalition of voters that propelled the party to victory in Virginia last month also emerged in Alabama.
I’ve been arguing for a while now that the Republicans need to legislate as though there’s no tomorrow, and if they had, maybe things would have turned out differently in Alabama.
MEN HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN THIS: Study says flu hits men harder than women. As usual, the lived experience of men has been overridden by prejudice-based womansplaining. But now the science is settled!
Vox Day’s Castalia House publishing company has a new book out by Moira Greyland entitled The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.
BRUCE BAWER: Rigging the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
LAWPROF SENATOR IGNORANT ABOUT HOW ELECTION TO THE SENATE WORKS: Elizabeth Warren embarasses herself — BADLY — over demand for McConnell to seat Doug Jones ‘without delay.’ And yesterday she was “slut-shaming” fellow Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Kind of an embarrassment to the people of Massachusetts, huh?
NFL NETWORK NIGHTMARE: EXEC ASKED IF I PLANNED TO GET ‘KNOCKED UP.’
As disturbing allegations of sexual misconduct mount against several NFL Network employees, Tuesday on Instagram broadcaster Lindsay McCormick detailed her experience with a network executive.
“I’ve been quiet about this for too long,” wrote McCormick, 30. “In my last interview with NFL Network a few years ago, the head of hiring talent said to me, ‘If we hire you, do you plan on getting knocked up immediately like the rest of them?’
Why are Democrat-dominated industries such cesspits of misogyny?
SPECIAL DELIVERY: Package of marijuana mysteriously delivered to Colorado Springs home.
Marian Goss tells 11 News the special delivery arrived at her door with a failure to deliver notice. Goss’ home was listed as the sender. The recipient was listed as an address in Virginia. Somehow, the package ended up at her home and she had no idea what she would find inside.
“I never thought in a million years that I would see what I saw in that box,” said Goss.
Goss opened the package because she feared it might be someone else’s Christmas present that was sent to the wrong house. She opened it up to find bundles of marijuana, stuffed in a dog food container, then into a cardboard box.
“It was in a dog food container, so we thought it was dog food,” Goss said. “But that’s not something you want to feed to your dog.”
Goss said she has no idea how it ended up at her house with her address on it.
“They attempted to deliver the package once and it came back to us, saying that it failed to be sent to the person in Virginia. It said that we are the sender and it came back to us, and we are definitely not the sender of that.
“I actually panicked.”
She thinks maybe someone else wanted to snag the box off her porch before she did.
Merry Christmas?
IT’S BASICALLY A POWER-GRAB BY ADMINISTRATORS, LIKELY TO BE WIELDED POLITICALLY: University of Arkansas professors want to stall a vote on system policy changes they say would upend the definition of tenure. Many fear the system is trying to focus on the vague concept of collegiality.
IN THE WASHINGTON POST: Democrats should ditch Robert Menendez.. Their principles will not demand that until there’s a Democratic governor to appoint a Democrat replacement.
A COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, 100% UNBIASED AND NONPARTISAN INVESTIGATION, WE SWEAR, PART 1,000,008: “Trump Should Go F Himself” – Texts Leak From FBI Agents On Russia Probe, Hillary Emails Investigation.
IN THE WAKE OF HARVEY WEINSTEIN, THE ART WORLD BEGINS TO PURGE “THE HIDDEN ENEMY:”
Forgive my cynicism, but I cannot help but think that the key to the timing of the letter is that the “workers of the art world” who signed it, having already achieved the desired “institutional access and career advancement,” and emboldened by the long-overdue disclosures around rape and sexual violence in the entertainment industry, decided to take this opportunity finally to cleanse the environment of what they perceive as undesirable elements. In the process, they risk going into a purging mode strikingly reminiscent of what happened under Comrade Stalin in my native country, the former ussr. It seems to me that despite the bombastic phrasing that recalls the furious tone of Russian avant-garde manifestos, these women do not realize where the primrose path of purging is likely to lead. If Soviet history is any indication, we should be seriously concerned by such ignorance. Once the processes are initiated, the enemy is identified, and the cogs of the apparatus are set in motion, there will be little reason to stop the purging at alleged sexual harassers. The clean-up will continue until the ranks of the art world are rid of any and all offensive elements. It is by no means impossible that even the righteous signatories of this letter may one day find themselves denounced for racism, classism, transphobia, ableism, homophobia, or any of the proliferating multitude of microagressive offenses.
Read the whole thing.
HMM: Kim Jong Un’s Mount Paektu visit may signal big decision.
“It’s unlikely that Kim went up the so-called sacred mountain for fresh air. He is likely to have considered how he will formulate external policies after having declared the regime a nuclear state,” a Seoul-based source told Dong-A Ilbo.
Some have suggested the regime may shift its external policy to seek dialogue with the United States, after declaring itself a nuclear state with its Hwasong-15 ICBM launch on Nov. 29.
“Resorting to further provocations could be difficult for North Korea since further nuclear tests at the Punggyeri site have become impossible due to safety concerns and there is growing talk in the U.S. Congress of a pre-emptive strike,” a former diplomat told Chosun Ilbo.
However, other analysts believe these speculations are merely guesswork, noting how Kim visited a symbolic palace after the Hwasong-14 missile launch on July 4.
In short, Kimology is probably no better a predictor than Kremlinology ever was.
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ROGER SIMON ON STEVE BANNON’S BIG LOSS IN ALABAMA.
As featured, shortly after the election was called, atop the Drudge Report.
(Bumped.)
HACKED? CNN is investigating who accessed @AndersonCooper’s account and called Trump a ‘pathetic loser.’
The funniest take is this one:
BITCOIN MAY OR MAY NOT BE SOUND LONG-TERM, BUT IT’S A BUBBLE RIGHT NOW: The Force Behind Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise: Millions of Asian Investors: Retail investors, mostly in Asia, are pushing the price of bitcoin to new heights.
Despite the attention focused on the launch of bitcoin futures in the U.S. last weekend, the center of gravity for trading the virtual currency, measured by volumes, has been in the East—starting in China, before shifting earlier this year to Japan and recently to South Korea as the latest hot spot.
Unlike past financial frenzies—such as the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, when U.S. retail investors only piled in at the later stages of the rally—individual investors have been first to the party, fueling bitcoin’s 1,600% rise this year. . . .
Various forces have stoked Asia’s bitcoin fever. While individual wealth has been growing in recent years, particularly in China and South Korea, lucrative investment opportunities can be hard to find, with property markets expensive and stock markets fully valued.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that Asians are more comfortable with the concept of virtual currencies such as bitcoin, particularly younger people who have grown up in a world of e-commerce and mobile payments.
When bitcoin pops — and it will — a lot of these people are going to be ruined, and angry. While people look at the Middle East, it’s entirely possible that a bitcoin crash will be the most destabilizing event of the decade. I wonder if anyone’s prepping for that.
BILL GERTZ: Russia Sharply Expanding Nuclear Arsenal, Upgrading Underground Facilities.
Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and is expected to deploy a total force of 8,000 warheads by 2026 along with modernizing deep underground bunkers, according to Pentagon officials.
The 8,000 warheads will include both large strategic warheads and thousands of new low-yield and very low-yield warheads to circumvent arms treaty limits and support Moscow’s new doctrine of using nuclear arms early in any conflict.
In addition to expanding its warheads, Russia also is fortifying underground facilities for command and control during a nuclear conflict.
That’s disconcerting.
RED HOT ENGINES, COLD WHITE SNOW: A B-1B takes off from Ellsworth Air Force Base in snow-covered South Dakota.
UNDER MAO, THIS WAS CALLED “REVOLUTIONARY SELF-CRITICISM:” “A Harvard student recently made a bold public declaration, admitting that, while at a bar with friends one time, he talked about the attractiveness of the women in his class.”
BUT OF COURSE: Fusion GPS Paid Top DOJ Official’s Wife To Dig Up Dirt On Trump.
There is no part of this which does not stink.
IT’S THE SPENDING, STUPID: Feds Collect Record Taxes Through November; Still Run $201.8B Deficit.
Despite these record tax revenues, the federal government still ran a deficit of $201,761,000,000 for those same two months.
That is because the government spent $645,476,000,000 in October and November.
The $443,715,000,000 that the federal government collected in taxes in the first two months of this fiscal year was $12,873,120,000 more in constant 2018 dollars than it collected in the first two months of fiscal 2017 and $11,352,180,000 more than it collected in the first two months of fiscal 2016.
We’re on track for the second consecutive $600 billion-plus deficit, absent an economic downturn or major war.
SO GIVEN THE PARTY-DEFLATOR FACTOR, THAT WOULD BE FOUR IF SHE WERE A REPUBLICAN: Three Pinocchios for Pelosi on Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.
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TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): “Sexually assaulted in full view of millions, the 18-year-old boy really has no option but to treat it as a joke.”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Jones Wins, FBI Agents’ Shocking Trump-Hating Texts Revealed and Much, Much More.
PETER HASSON: Steve Bannon Blamed, Mocked After Roy Moore Loss.
“Luther Strange would have won in a landslide… Just too much crazy in nerve racking times,” influential news kingpin Matt Drudge wrote on Twitter following Moore’s loss. “There IS a limit!”
“This is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running,” Steve Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, said in a statement. “Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco,” Law said.
Democratic strategist Paul Begala mockingly thanked Bannon for making Democratic candidate Doug Jones’ victory possible.
“Special thanks to the genius strategist who did so much to make this happen: Steve Bannon,” Begala gloated.
Roger L. Simon predicted weeks ago that Bannon had overplayed his hand.
BONFIRE OF THE ACADEMIES: Two professors on how leftist intolerance is killing higher education.
At colleges and universities all over the country, students are protesting in increasingly virulent and sometimes violent ways. They demand safe spaces and trigger warnings, shouting down those with whom they disagree. It has become rote for outsiders to claim that the inmates are running the asylum; that this is analogous to Mao’s Red Guard, Germany’s brown shirts, the French Revolution’s Jacobins; and, when those being attacked are politically “left” themselves, that the Left is eating its own. These stories seem to validate every fantasy the Right ever had about the Left.
As two professors who recently resigned from positions at a college we loved, and who have always been on the progressive-left end of the political spectrum, we can say that, while none of those characterizations is exactly right, there is truth in each of them. . . .
Hateful white nationalists comprise a tiny but exceedingly loud minority of people on the Right. The analogous group on the Left is the virulent social justice crowd. Those who would have us destroy Martin Luther King’s dream comprise a small but disproportionately loud minority of people on the Left. Also, we would argue that “Right” and “Left” make little sense in either of these contexts. Both fringe groups, extremists wherever they are found, are more accurately described as authoritarian.
We come from the Left, and our values and worldview have not changed. But our understanding of the landscape has, as has our understanding of who is most likely to be interested in pursuing democratic goals through democratic means. A democratic system needs intelligent dissent, which means that it must create and protect the conditions in which people can learn how to think critically, and how to critique ideas and proposals. Those are longstanding values on the Left, but today, they are hanging by a thread. . . .
At Evergreen, a small fraction of students was the face of the protests, some even going so far as to patrol campus with baseball bats, threatening people, and vandalizing property. But the vast majority of students were not part of the protests. Some were yelled at, insulted, assaulted, even battered. Some left the school. Some graduated. Some are keeping their heads down, angry and scared, until they, too, graduate, while they wonder why their experiences are apparently of no interest to the college administration.
Read the whole thing.
WASHINGTON GOP BLEW THE ALABAMA RACE BUT NOT LIKE YOU THINK: LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby quotes a former Alabama Republican State Chairman Marty Connors pointed to the GOP’s failure to produce on its promises as a determining factor:
“If you go to any watering hole in suburban Alabama or rural Alabama, everybody is very, very angry at Washington and they are blaming Republicans, which is the rise of Roy Moore in this race. Had tax reform had been passed two or three months ago, this would not have been an issue. If Obamacare had been repealed, this would not have been an issue.”
Hmmm, maybe that Barnett feller at Georgetown has a point!
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The Navy report, titled The Submarine Industrial Base and the Viability of Producing Additional Attack Submarines Beyond the Fiscal Year 2017 Shipbuilding Plan in the 2017–2030 Timeframe, was delivered to Congress on July 5, 2017, Navy officials told Scout Warrior.
The current or previous status quo had been for the Navy to drop from building two Virginia-Class boats per year to one in the early 2020s when construction of the new Columbia-Class nuclear armed submarines begins.
The completed study, however, maintains that the Navy and industry can produce two Virginia-Class boats and one Columbia-Class submarine per year, increasing the current plan by one Virginia-Class boat per year.
Navy leaders have consistently talked about an expected submarine shortfall in the mid 2020s and that more attack submarines were needed to strengthen the fleet and keep stay in front of near-peer rivals such as Russia and China.
Maintaining a two-per year Virginia Class build-rate will help the Navy reach its goal of 66 SSNs, as identified in the December 2016 Force Structure Assessment, Navy officials added.
The Virginia-class attack boats have been a rare procurement success story for the Navy this century. The most recent boat completed — the USS South Dakota — was christened back in October. And even though it was built with new “acoustic superiority” technology and other innovations, was delivered on-time and on-budget.
AFTER LAST NIGHT’S UNFORCED DEFEAT, RANDY BARNETT OFFERS A SOLUTION FOR THE GOP THAT’S SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK:
D.C. MCALLISTER OFFERS HER TAKE ON REALITY AND RELATIONSHIPS: Can We Be Honest About Women? Here’s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty.
Women want to be desired by men, to attract them, to be the only woman in the world for that man. Their beauty is an essential part of their allure, especially when men and women first meet. They have little else to go on because they don’t know each other, and beauty serves as a guidepost to greater interest.
Outside of a woman looking for a mate, her beauty is a source of power because men and other women value it. This is why married women still want to be beautiful. It’s an expression of their femininity, which doesn’t disappear at the altar.
We don’t need studies to bear this out, though we do have them. A recent Pew Research study says society values physical attractiveness in women the most. Nurturing and empathy are second. The top traits most valued in men are morality and professional success. In other words, men want women who are attractive and emotionally connective, and women want good men who are financially successful.
Read the whole thing.
BRIDGET JOHNSON: Transgender Military Recruits to be Accepted in New Year Per Court Orders.
Meanwhile, Bridget’s unexplained and unacknowledged Twitter banishment remains unexplained and unacknowledged by Twitter management.
I HAD BEEN ASSURED THIS KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENED: Firms reach $7.8-million settlement over allegations of selling fetal tissue.
Prosecutors opened an investigation into the companies in September 2015 after a complaint was submitted by Irvine-based Center for Medical Progress. The anti-abortion group gained national attention in 2015 after releasing a video showing Planned Parenthood affiliates discussing the sale of aborted fetuses.
In October 2016, prosecutors filed a complaint against the companies in Orange County Superior Court alleging unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business practices.
The lawsuit accused the companies of illegally selling cells from fetal brain tissue for up to $1,100 per vial from 2009 to 2015, prosecutors said. Fetal tissue and cells were sold to pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions in Japan, China, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada and the United Kingdom, authorities said.
Furthermore, “DV Biologics LLC and sister company DaVinci Biosciences LLC, both based in Yorba Linda, must cease all operations in California within 60 to 120 days.”
CHANGE: Trump Poised To Set Record In Appeals Court Judges.
Senate Republicans are set to confirm three more of President Donald Trump’s appeals court picks this week, a push that will help set a record for the most such appointments in a president’s first year in office.
The Senate is expected to confirm Steve Grasz for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, and James Ho and Don Willett for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, over the objections of Democrats who question whether they can be unbiased.
That would mean at least a dozen Trump appointees would join the nation’s appeals courts — which have the last word in all but the 100 or so cases that the Supreme Court decides each year — in his first year in the White House. That comes in a year the Senate also confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in April.
Compare that to Barack Obama, who successfully appointed three appeals court judges in his first year in office in 2009, as well as Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Obama followed up with 13 appeals court appointments in his second year in 2010. Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy successfully appointed 11 appeals court judges in their first year in the White House.
“Each of these nominees will make strong additions to the federal bench and I look forward to considering them in the coming days,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Monday.
There are currently 17 vacancies on the nation’s 13 appeals courts, with seven nominees pending, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
You should give Mitch McConnell credit for speeding these through. And Harry Reid, too!
THE MOST 2017 HEADLINE EVER (EARLY WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13 EDITION): North Korea Hacks Bitcoin Exchanges Attempting To Steal Amid Bubble Warnings.
ALLIES: Turkey Places Bounty on Two Former U.S. Government Officials.
A bounty of three million Turkish lira, or nearly $800,000, was placed on the heads of former Pentagon official Michael Rubin and former top CIA official Graham Fuller for what Erdogan’s allies claim is their role in a 2016 failed coup that nearly toppled Erdogan’s ruling government.
Both Rubin and Fuller have been vocal critics of Erdogan’s, often publicly highlighting his widespread corruption. Rubin, in particular, has been in constant conflict with Erdogan, who once filed a lawsuit against the former Pentagon official in a bid to silence him.
The Turkish prosecutors office has issued arrest warrants for both Rubin and Fuller.
Current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation called allegations that Rubin and Fuller played any role in the coup attempt “absurd,” and said the bounty is part of a larger effort by Erdogan to silence dissent against his government across the globe.
Some also criticized the State Department for doing very little to combat Turkey’s threats on former American officials.
Erdogan’s government has threatened and intimidated several prominent Americans in recent years and is currently holding hostage U.S. citizens who his government claims played a role in the failed 2016 coup.
What to do? The Turkish military’s size, strength, and location makes it NATO’s southern and Middle Eastern pillar, but the country’s political leadership is increasingly retrograde and even hostile.
THE HILL: Senate Dem warns of lack of diversity in AI engineering.. Priorities!
WE DON’T HAVE TO HANDICAP OURSELVES TO MAKE THEM HAPPY: Europeans Endorse GOP Tax Plan.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Strzok-Page texts show hatred of Trump by the two ex-Team Mueller members.
RUN LIKE THE WIND, MY BROTHER: Dating in the Age of Intersectional Feminism: Knowing When to Run.
OF COURSE THEY DO: Port Authority Bomber’s Family Is ‘Outraged’ And Blames The NYPD.
YEAH. THAT’S ABOUT IT: Tax Cuts, Theft, and Other Lies.
A CHEMICAL IS A CHEMICAL AND SUGAR MAY BE WORSE THAN SYNTHETIC SWEETENER: Diet Coke might not be so bad for your health after all.
DOESN’T THIS SIMPLY ENCOURAGE BAD ECONOMIC HABITS? Anonymous donor pays off layaway items for 200 families.
NEWS OF THE OBVIOUS: What you eat affects your mood, scientists say.
8 ASIAN, 2 AFRICAN: 10 rivers are responsible for 90% of the plastic in the ocean.
ROGER SIMON ON STEVE BANNON’S BIG LOSS IN ALABAMA.
UPDATE: Currently featured atop the Drudge Report.
LIKE ANYONE HAS THE TIME TO CLEAN THEIR CLOSETS: Americans love hoarding junk.
WELL, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: “Roy Moore does not concede, states ‘God is always in control.’??”
THE WONDERS OF CHINESE COMMUNISM: ‘Rentable parents’ will meet your teacher or significant other.
December 12, 2017
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MY PAPER ON MILITARY COUPS JUST KEEPS LOOKING MORE TIMELY: Movie director flirts with the idea of a military coup ‘to defend democracy here at home’ from the GOP.
AP IS NOW PROJECTING a Doug Jones win in Alabama, despite Gloria Allred’s best efforts. But a lot of GOPers ought to be wondering if Mo Brooks would’ve won. (Answer: Yes.)
SKYNET SMILES, AND SAYS “OH, YOU’LL KNOW:” Will AI Ever Become Conscious, And How Would We Know if It Did?
#BELIEVETHEWOMEN: “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was the victim of a fake news hit on Tuesday, and has turned over to Capitol Police a document that purports to detail lurid sexual harassment accusations by a former staffer.”
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Why Bredesen is Democrats’ Only Hope in Tennessee.
He’s a good guy, and the only Democrat with statewide prospects anymore. But I wonder how well he’ll play in a Year Of The Woman rerun, given his administration’s history of being charged with sexual-assault coverups. Odd that this National Journal piece by Alex Rogers didn’t even mention that.
I wrote this about Bredesen’s national chances for the Wall Street Journal, back in 2005.
PROF. JACOBSON: “Democrats’ #Resistance is creating a genuine constitutional crisis.” “It reflects a subject I, and others, have been focusing on since election night — the refusal of Democrats and #NeverTrump Republicans to accept the outcome of the election not just emotionally, but as to the transfer of power that continues to this day, over a year since the 2016 election.”
IT’S NOT OVER IN WISCONSIN: Schimel says Ethics Commission chairman should recuse himself from matters related to leak investigation. “Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel is disputing arguments made by the state’s Ethics Commission and asking its chairman to recuse himself from matters related to a recently released Department of Justice report. . . . Schimel argued Halbrooks, who was a witness in the first John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker and his associates during his time as Milwaukee County Executive, should recuse himself from any involvement related to the most recent DOJ investigation. The first John Doe investigation was used as a basis for the second secret probe and, Schimel argued, a third investigation DOJ refers to as ‘John Doe III.’ The ‘previously unknown and secret investigation into a broad range of Wisconsin Republicans’ was uncovered during the DOJ investigation of the Guardian leak.”
THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR TRUMP SPOKESWOMAN SARAH SANDERS:
Liberal male columnists have written about Sanders in terms that, if applied to a progressive woman, would be recognized as despicable and borderline misogynistic. In the most infamous example, Los Angeles Times writer David Horsey called her a “slightly chunky soccer mom” in a scathing column. It was so clearly offensive that he was forced to issue an apology: “I want to apologize to Times readers — and to Sarah Huckabee Sanders — for a description that was insensitive and failed to meet the standards of our newspaper. I’ve removed the offending description.”
Just when you think a media establishment that has lost its collective mind, credibility, and sense of decency since last November can’t go any lower, it does. These sexist, cruel taunts have little to do with Sanders’s job performance or making sure the American public gets the facts from a sometimes fact-averse White House. Viewed from a wider lens, the treatment of Sarah Sanders has little to do with Sanders at all. The vicious ridicule is directed at all conservative women — particularly women from the South — whom the Left will never forgive for helping elect Donald Trump. It’s on a continuum with attacks against conservative women such as Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, and Betsy DeVos. The hatred is aimed at all female Trump voters — Sanders is simply a proxy. A year that began with faux feminists participating in the Women’s March, where aggrieved women loudly pledged to defend their sisterhood against sexist bullying or attacks, is ending with a whimper.
As all the best people who hold themselves out as progressive intellectuals believing in hope, tolerance and diversity told me about Sarah Palin in 2008, “She’s not a woman, she’s a Republican.”
HOT MIC IS LIVEBLOGGING the Alabama election returns.
CONTEMPT FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL DO THAT: NFL woes: Three straight months as America’s most hated sport. But hey, Roger Goodell just got a big-bucks contract renewal.
SO IT WAS MORE ABOUT SOCIAL-CLIMATE CHANGE THAN, YOU KNOW, ACTUAL CLIMATE CHANGE: Cooking fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes, officials say.
WE’RE GONNA FIND OUT HE WAS A PARTNER IN FUSION GPS, AREN’T WE? Politico: Justice Department won’t disclose details on Mueller ethics waiver.
RICHARD VEDDER AND JUSTIN STREHLE: The Case For Taxing College Endowments.
There are two good reasons why the endowment tax makes sense to some politicians. First, public attitudes toward universities have distinctly soured in recent years. What the public perceives as outrageous student behavior, feckless university leadership, and excessive tuition fees has combined with a growing hostility by Republican lawmakers angered over the large political donations and public criticism that academics have made attempting to oust them from office. Lawmakers are growing tired of feeding the mouths that bite them. Revenues raised by taxing colleges can modestly help fund other tax reductions that lawmakers want to make, which are probably economically beneficial to the well over 90 percent of the population living outside the Ivory Towers of Academia.
Second, our econometric examination of college endowments suggests a large portion of endowment income is dissipated in relatively unproductive fashions, financing a growing army of relatively well-paid university administrators and giving influential faculty low teaching loads and high salaries. We estimate that roughly only about 15 cents out of each additional dollar of endowment income goes to lower net tuition fees.
Read the whole thing.
YESTERDAY, PASTA PERVNADO. TODAY, PORK PERVNADO! Famed restaurateur allegedly has ‘rape room’ in trendy NYC eatery the Spotted Pig:
The owner of one of the city’s most famous celeb hangouts, the Spotted Pig, has been accused of routinely groping female employees and demanding sex and nude photos from them — while allowing his buddies to molest them too, a new report says.
An after-hours space on the third floor of restaurateur Ken Friedman’s tony Village hot spot is even known among workers and industry insiders as “the rape room” — where public sex is on display, according to the New York Times, quoting 10 women who are accusing the powerful businessman of unwanted sexual advances.
As the late Andrew Breitbart told Occupy Wall Street in 2012, stop raping people!
AND THUS, ESPN COMES FULL CIRCLE: ESPN Suspends Donovan McNabb, Eric Davis Amid Sexual Harassment Allegations.
Kind of ironic to see McNabb’s name in that headline, considering the tangential role he played in ESPN’s first declaration that conservatives were not invited to be fans of the NFL.
Related: NFL Network Suspends Marshall Faulk, Two Others Due to Sexual Harassment Allegations.
USA TODAY: Why the fuss over adolescent relationships? My grandmother was 15 when she married.
There is absolutely no excuse at all for a 32-year-old man to be seeking a relationship with a 14-year-old girl or sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. But a century ago or even 40 years ago, being 14 or 16 meant something entirely different than it does today. Adolescence, to the extent it was even acknowledged was a quick bridge between childhood and adulthood.
In recent decades, our culture has been extending that bridge without thinking things through and now it often seems as if it leads nowhere. Parents and the government are dangerously elongating years of adolescence because they feel their kids need to be “safe.”
I wrote something about this very problem 15 years ago.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Ed Helms’ Apolitical Fake News Can’t Help Bashing Guns.
Can’t or won’t?