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January 27, 2018
STILL AT #1 ON AMAZON, Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
MONICA SHOWALTER: Trump’s ‘go-yuuuuge’ ‘in-their-face’ DACA deal. “It makes sense because studies show that most Dreamers are underachievers, many of whom are just high school graduates, heavy welfare users, have petty crime backgrounds, and do not speak English. It’s almost a given that most won’t make it to the twelve-year finish line without getting into a bar fight, getting caught graffiti-spraying, or be picked up for drunk driving. The only ones who make it will be those with a work ethic and family values. Those actually are the ones who could become Republicans in the long run. Trump knows this. Democrats don’t. They believe their own propaganda about all DREAMers being valedictorians.”
THE DOGS BARK, BUT THE CARAVAN MOVES ON: Democrats flail and fail to stop another well-qualified Trump judicial nominee.
Wednesday, while the media continued to focus on the fallout over the impotency of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in leading the Democrat’s unnecessary government shutdown, Republican leaders in the Senate concentrated on the courts. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, moved forward with hearings on President Trump’s judicial nominees — including consideration of the president’s nominee to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Michael B. Brennan.
Trump nominated Brennan to fill the Wisconsin seat on the court of appeals in early August, but Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., held up Brennan’s appointment by refusing to signify her acquiescence to the president’s nominee by returning her “blue slip.” But because “blue slips,” as Grassley explained, do not serve as “single-senator vetoes,” Grassley moved forward with the hearing with hopes of finally filling the circuit court seat that has been vacant since January of 2010. . . .
While Brennan’s stellar performance over the course of Wednesday’s two-hour hearing should cement his confirmation, critics had already instituted a preemptive strike on his nomination. Days before the hearing, the inaccurately named far-left organization People for the American Way in a piece headlined, “Moving Forward on Michael Brennan Nomination Would Mark Dangerous Surrender to Trump,” condemned Brennan’s nomination as violating “a longstanding bipartisan arrangement between Brennan’s home-state senators, Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin.”
Challenges to Brennan based on the lack of a blue slip from Baldwin aren’t likely to succeed, however, given Grassley’s previous success in moving forward David Stras’ nomination to serve on the Eighth Circuit Court, without the typical two-senator blue slips. At the time, Grassley countered critics’ claims that he was abolishing a 100-year tradition of deferring to home-state senators’ views on judicial nominations, and last week, the Judiciary Committee advanced Stras’ nomination to the full Senate on a 13-8 vote. Stras, a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, is expected to be confirmed in the coming days.
I’m glad the Senate is moving faster, but why keep the blue-slip rule?
MARY KATHARINE HAM IS NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH:
NOBODY SHOULD EVER TRUST CHUCK SCHUMER. ASK MARCO RUBIO HOW THAT WORKS OUT. The Hill: After shutdown surrender, why should progressives ever trust Chuck Schumer again?
THE INSTAWIFE ON MEN WHO DO TOO MUCH.
NY DAILY NEWS EDITOR ACCUSED OF HARASSMENT FOSTERED A CULTURE OF SILENCE:
When people did complain about Moore’s behavior, he would publicly express his anger, said three staffers. Tabloid newsrooms are known for being crude and volatile places to work, particularly for young reporters ― another top editor at the paper is also currently under investigation ― but Moore’s brand of harassment could be “more cruel” than the tongue-lashings often delivered to young reporters, said a fourth former staffer.
“He always seemed like someone who revelled in having power and lording it over the people that he could,” said a fifth former staffer. A sixth added, “He had all the power there, and it wouldn’t be good to be on the receiving end of his fury.”
Earlier this week, the Daily News’ new corporate parent, Tronc, launched an investigation into Moore after NPR asked the company about a sexual harassment complaint lodged against him in December, soon after he reportedly interviewed to become the newspaper’s new editor-in-chief.
For many people who’ve worked with Moore, the surprise wasn’t that he had come under investigation, but that it had taken so long.
Oh sure, the Daily News’ work environment is toxic, but just think of the top quality product that it generates…
GET WOKE, GO BROKE:
The polarization is almost entirely the result of the fact that the NFL let players play politics on the field all season long with their National Anthem protests.
This, in turn, helps explain why NFL ratings took a nose-dive in 2017. NBC’s viewership, for example, was the lowest it’s been since 2008. In-game ad revenue dropped 1.2%, and attendance fell 3% to the lowest level since 2011.
Baseball, in contrast, appeals almost evenly to Democrats and Republicans, avoided political intrigue, and gets virtually identical (and very positive) promoter scores — with just a 4-point difference.
The NFL is a case study in the perils of playing politics to which other companies would do well to pay heed. No matter what side a company takes in a charged political debate, it’s guaranteed to upset a large chunk of its customer base. And for what?
Too many of our institutions — the vast majority, in fact — are run by people who are more concerned with their reputation among fellow elites than with the performance of the institutions they are responsible for.
MISANDRY EN PARADE: Duke’s ‘Men’s Project’ Seeks to ‘Destabilize Masculine Privilege’.
NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE: Scare-tistics.
IMPEACHMENT DREAMING: Parallel media universes: the MSM is obsessed with Trump and Mueller . And it’s blinding them. Not that, you know, they hadn’t already carved their metaphorical eyes out with grapefruit spoons under Bush, then Obama, then…
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: It’s Official: Liberals Hate Constitutional Government.
THE DEVIL SHALL NOT BE MOCKED: George Soros – Trump Will Disappear.
LET THEM EAT CRUMBS: Shutdown Chow Down, Crumbs and Swiss Cheese.
IT WOULD EXPLAIN MUCH: Could getting rid of dairy be making you dumb?
CHANNELING BILLY IDOL: WITH A REBEL YELL SHE CRIED MOO, MOO, MOO! Rebel cow escapes her farm to run free with bison crew.
THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS TOLD TO EXPECT: These next-generation weapons will blast asteroids out of the sky.
THEY’RE NOT LISTENING STILL: The Parable of the Man of Many New Words.
January 26, 2018
AT AMAZON, low-price Men’s Clothing with free shipping.
REVIEW: 2018 Mercedes-Benz S-class.
REMY: “Wedu Nagivafaka.”
BACKLASH: Should Aziz Ansari’s Accuser Be Exposed?
It’s a tough question to answer; if Ansari’s accuser should have been exposed, and one I don’t have an answer to. Clearly, Babe was at fault for publishing her account, but given what we now know of them, it’s clear that their Ansari hitjob was far from the worst thing they’ve ever published. With journalism where it is; where anyone can publish anything, should it also be fair game for those who wish to expose those who peddle in revenge porn masked as a compelling accounting of sexual misconduct or assault?
Read the whole thing.
TAMARA KEEL: Magazine Multiplier: Mossberg 590M. A home-defense shotgun with a 20-round box magazine would be pretty formidable.
PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: If You’re Poor, Don’t Move to San Francisco.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Surprising history of the “Canadian Tuxedo,” starring Bing Crosby.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN: The Art of the Shutdown. “President Trump didn’t respond to the so-called shutdown of the federal government in the way that the political class thought he should. He didn’t get personally involved in detailed negotiations to end the impasse and didn’t convey a sense of crisis to the American people. When all was said and done, this skirmish showed the dangers of underestimating President Trump and his ability to connect with voters on issues the political elites ignore. His approach worked because he instinctively understood the strategic situation far better than Senate Democrats, establishment Republicans, and his other beltway critics.”
Weird how this keeps happening, at the same time we’re constantly told he’s a big fat idiot with the emotional stability of a toddler.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Social Justice Warrior Jemelle Hill Steps Down from ESPN’s Little-Watched Nostalgia Trip, Sports Center, Ace of Spades writes:
Trouble is, as Marvel Comics is finding out, Social Justice Warriors are not consumers of any of these products, and will not buy them even if they have been converted into full Social Justice Warrior propaganda outfits.
These organizations are being infiltrated by Social Justice Warriors not because Social Justice Warriors like them or the cultural products they produce, but because Social Justice Warriors know that non- Social Justice Warriors enjoy these products, and thus these cultural artifacts must be seized and repurposed to serve leftist indoctrination ends or simply destroyed.
Read the whole thing. As Robert Conquest’s third law of politics states, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”
UPDATE: Outkick the Coverage Claims Jemelle Hill Was Forced Out Due to Ratings “Collapse.”
As Glenn noted in October, “So in ESPN we see an institution that is recklessly alienating its prime customer base, and only now — much too late — beginning to dimly sense that it’s in trouble.” And like the rest of the Ruling Class, “their loyalties are essentially tribal. They care more about what their peers think of them than, basically, anything else, including the success or failure of the institutions they manage. Thus, they are prone to suicidal levels of virtue-signaling. And — because they are socially and intellectually isolated from non-ruling-class Flyover America — they often have no idea how badly their actions resonate.”
Huh — I thought the left was obsessed with the concept of “sustainability.” Who knew that mixing toxic SJW politics and sports would be a recipe for disaster?
MAYBE THE DRUGS WORK AS INTENDED BUT THE DISEASE MODELS ARE WRONG: Failure of Alzheimer’s drugs in trials makes researchers wonder what is going wrong. “The basic assumption that removing amyloid will automatically lead to an improvement in Alzheimer’s patients needs to be re-evaluated, said Michael Murphy, an associate professor with the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. Although the genetic evidence has been convincing that amyloid drives the disease, that doesn’t mean that removing the protein from people already in the throes of Alzheimer’s is going to help them, Murphy said.”
WELL, THERE’S PLENTY OF ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Making the GOP Great Again.
BRUCE BAWER: The MSM Faces the Truth About Sweden.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Intersectionality for Dummies.
THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF HEINLEIN’S BAD LUCK: Veteran Immigrant Recalls Poor Quality of Life in ‘Ancient’ Israel of the 1980s. “Israel has morphed from socialist backwater to (mostly) capitalist, high-tech dynamo in a remarkably brief interval.”
Funny how the reverse is happening in much of the rest of the Middle East.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THIS MUST BE THE MOST PHOTOSHOPPED MAGAZINE COVER IN HISTORY:
● James Franco Was Digitally Erased from Vanity Fair Cover After Sexual Harassment Allegations.
● Reese Witherspoon Appears to Have 3 Legs on the New Vanity Fair Cover, and We Have Questions.
● Please Explain Why Vanity Fair Gave Oprah 3 Hands In This Photo.
The Ministry of Truth is really falling down on the job these days.
THUNDERTRUCK: What You Learn After Driving the Chevy Tahoe RST.
MESS WITH THE BEST, DIE LIKE THE REST: James Woods, who wields a 50. cal Twitter feed like it’s nobody’s business wins his libel suit:
Portia Boulger alleged that Woods defamed her by tweeting out a post that falsely claimed she was a Bernie Sanders supporter who was planted at a March 2016 Trump campaign rally in Chicago and photographed giving a Nazi salute…On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge George Smith threw out the case, finding that Woods had not defamed Boulger because his post could be seen as posing a question about her identity and was “susceptible of more than one interpretation.”
Ohio law has the “innocent construction rule” in libel cases, wherein if a word is capable of multiple meanings, it isn’t defamatory per se. The court also went on to explain that questions are not statements of fact.
THERE’S THAT MODIFIER “SOCIAL” AGAIN: Blackrock CEO says businesses need to serve a “social purpose.” At USA Today, I argue that they already do.
DIGITAL NAG: Amazon’s Alexa Will No Longer Tolerate Sexist Abuse. “Amazon’s Alexa software has now changed its response to a certain stimulus — namely, calling it sexist names — from ‘thanks for the feedback’ to ‘I’m not going to respond to that.’ Further, the device will also respond to the question of whether it’s a feminist with: ‘I am a feminist. As is anyone who believes in bridging the inequality between men and women in society.'”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Sorry, but “Woke Alexa” doesn’t sound promising at all.
Related (From Ed): Not so smart? Man upset Google Home device can’t answer ‘Who is Jesus?’
FASTER, PLEASE: The Last Gasps of Outrage Culture? Jordan Peterson’s popularity as an author and commentator may indicate a coming backlash.
SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Humans expanded out of Africa 40,000 years earlier than we thought.
OPPRESSION, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Number of Arab students in Israeli universities grows 78% in 7 years.
CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Tesla employees say to expect more Model 3 delays, citing inexperienced workers, manual assembly of batteries.
Tesla’s problems with battery production at the company’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, are worse than the company has acknowledged and could cause further delays and quality issues for the new Model 3, according to a number of current and former Tesla employees. These problems include Tesla needing to make some of the batteries by hand and borrowing scores of employees from one of its suppliers to help with this manual assembly, said these people.
Tesla’s future as a mass-market carmaker hinges on automated production of the Model 3, which more than 400,000 people have already reserved, paying $1,000 refundable fees to do so.
The company has already delayed production, citing problems at the Gigafactory. On Nov. 1, 2017, CEO Elon Musk assured investors in an earnings call that Tesla was making strides to correct its manufacturing issues and get the Model 3 out.
But more than a month later, in mid-December, Tesla was still making its Model 3 batteries partly by hand, according to current engineers and ex-Tesla employees who worked at the Gigafactory in recent months. They say Tesla had to “borrow” scores of employees from Panasonic, which is a partner in the Gigafactory and supplies lithium-ion battery cells, to help with this manual assembly.
You can’t mass-manufacture anything using boutique methods.
ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY: The immigration fight isn’t really about the Dreamers — it’s all politics. “President Trump’s immigration proposal offers a pathway to citizenship for approximately 1.8 million people. . . . Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, allowed approximately 800,000 individuals to stay, without any path to citizenship, for renewable three-year periods under his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order. If the Trump proposal is a hateful middle finger to Hispanics, presumably Obama’s much narrower order was a violent assault. Yet the far left’s leaders, including Congressman Gutierrez, praised DACA as an ‘antidote for do-nothingism’ and now thinks that Trump’s more robust proposal — replete with a path to citizenship — is a surefire sign of xenophobia. Such comments imply that the far left’s goal is not finding a workable solution for Dreamers but instead, keeping their base ginned up with hatred toward President Trump. By reflexively crying racism in response to reasonable policy proposals — which would achieve far more than any Democratic president or Congress has ever achieved — the political left undermines its credibility and suggests its goal is sowing racial division, not solving problems.”
Trump has made them a very generous offer, and — as I suspect he expected — they’re rejecting it and screaming racism. I think that leaves him right where he wants to be.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Researchers reveal sexual prowess of older males not to be underestimated. “Quality sperm, good genes, and courtship knowledge are just a few reasons why females might benefit from mating with older males.”
BURDEN-SHARING: German military too small to aid ‘collective defense,’ official says.
Although the budget has increased slightly following criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump, the operational readiness of the German forces has further deteriorated this past year.
“The hard currency, in which the success of the [defense] minister is measured, is the readiness of the Bundeswehr,” Bartels said. “And that has not really improved in the last four years, but rather has become worse.”
“While foreign missions with small contingents went well, the Bundeswehr as a whole cannot currently be used in the collective defense,” he added.
Germany’s geographical location and industrial might make it one of Europe’s vital countries, but was is to be done with a people who won’t breed, won’t defend their borders, and can’t live up to their defense treaty commitments?
JOE PAPPALARDO: No Treaty Will Stop Space Weapons: Russia and China are shaming the U.S. for not signing a treaty against weapons in space. In reality, all three nations are racing to weaponize the final frontier on their own terms. Pushing the US to join an arms-control treaty that they will then violate with impunity is an old Russian trick. They did the same with biological weapons.
BLUE MODEL BLUES: New York City, Chicago Top List of Cities with Worst Fiscal Health.
IN OTHER WORDS, PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY: Consumers, businesses seen buoying U.S. economic growth in fourth-quarter.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Questions for 6th graders on drug use, gender identity outrage parents in small Missouri town.
HIGHWAY TO THE DANGER ZONE: Earthquake fault runs through Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills’ shopping district, California geologists say.
Glenn’s plan to tax the blue zones would help put an end to such risky and short-sighted overdevelopment.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: Obama’s Conflict Tanked the Clinton E-mail Investigation — As Predicted: Hillary couldn’t be proven guilty without proving the president guilty as well. “Thanks to Friday’s FBI document dump — 189 more pages of reports from the Bureau’s year-long foray (‘investigation’ would not be the right word) into the Clinton e-mail scandal — we now know for certain what I predicted some eight months ago here at NRO: Any possibility of prosecuting Hillary Clinton was tanked by President Obama’s conflict of interest.”
TO BE FAIR, SHIELDING HARASSERS IS HER CORE COMPETENCE: Hillary Clinton Chose to Shield a Top Adviser Accused of Harassment in 2008.
IN THE MAIL: From Lawrence Eubank, The Liberal Ethos.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
TYLER O’NEIL: Five Gems from Trump’s Davos Speech.
ALLIES: Turkey’s Erdogan vows to fight Kurdish forces as far as Iraq.
I used to joke — pre-Erdogan — that maybe the locals would be better off if Turkey took back the Levant, but that the Turks were too smart to take it. It doesn’t seem nearly as cute now that the Turkish leadership might actually be dumb enough to try.
IT’S ALWAYS NICE to make Twitchy.
YOU MEAN OBAMA NEVER CLOSED IT AFTER EIGHT YEARS? Trump planning to keep Guantanamo open with new executive order.
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Social scientists have warned Zuck all along that the Facebook theory of interaction would make people angry and miserable.
Cory Doctorow:
Since the earliest days of Facebook, social scientists have sent up warnings saying that the ability to maintain separate “contexts” (where you reveal different aspects of yourself to different people) was key to creating and maintaining meaningful relationships, but Mark Zuckerberg ignored this advice, insisting that everyone be identified only by their real names and present a single identity to everyone in their lives, because anything else was “two-faced.”
Zuck was following in the footsteps of other social network entrepreneurs who attempted to impose their own theories of social interaction on mass audiences — danah boyd has written and presented extensively on the user rebellions of Friendster from people who wanted to form interest-based affinity groups and use pseudonymous identities for different activities, which Friendster rejected out of a mix of commercial concerns (it wanted users to arrange their social affairs to make it easier to monetize them) and fringe theories of social interaction.
But while all the other social networks collapsed, Facebook thrived, and imposed the Zuckerberg model of “one identity, one context” on billions of users, who, research consistently finds, are made unhappy and angry by their use of the service, but are nevertheless psychologically compelled to continue using it, creating a vicious feedback loop that even Zuck has acknowledged as a risk to his business.
Read the whole thing.
Over the last couple of years I’ve been off Twitter except for the occasional silly remark, and limit my Facebook time to little more than similar silliness and pictures of my kids. And I’ve found I’m much more relaxed.
FDR DIDN’T KNOW PEARL HARBOR WAR COMING, GRASSY KNOLL WAS EMPTY AND RR DIDN’T HAVE ALZHEIMER’S IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Craig Shirley, a former colleague in the 1980 Reagan campaign, has since become the pre-imminent biographer of the former president’s campaigns and administration. So the man knows what he’s talking about when he writes this morning on LifeZette concerning recent comments by the White House physician:
“It would be nice to dismiss Dr. Jackson’s ill-informed and without-substance comments and move on, just as the White House would like to put the hearsay concerning Trump’s mental health behind it.
“But he and Trump’s tweets have now given new life to an old and most-thought extinguished and ridiculous rumor. So once again, Reagan historians have to beat it down. Dr. Jackson’s uninformed comments made news and, even worse, they were uttered by a White House physician, giving the veneer of officialdom.”
In other words, no, Reagan’s capacity to govern was not impaired during his second term, contrary to the myth first propounded by those who fought him at every step in his efforts to restore American liberty and win the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Almost Got “You’re Fired,” More Text Messages Released and Much, Much More. “More text messages between DOJ/FBI power couple Peter Strzok and DOJ attorney Lisa Page have been released where we learn the duo was concerned that if they were ‘loaded for bear’ in the interrogation of presumed presidential victrix Hillary Clinton, they might face retribution when she ascended to her Queendom. Contrast this with the stormtroopers that raided former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s house.”
HAWAIIAN WHO SENT FALSE MISSILE ALERT WON’T COOPERATE WITH INVESTIGATION: “The offending employee has not been identified. Here is a wild guess,” John Hinderaker writes at Power Line. “the employee who ‘pushed the wrong button’ is a fanatical anti-Trump Democrat who believed that causing hysteria over a presumed North Korean missile attack would somehow make the president look bad. If that guess is incorrect, maybe the anonymous employee should start cooperating with the investigation.”
WITHOUT DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY WOULDN’T HAVE ANY STANDARDS AT ALL: Environmentalist Millionaire Candidate Heavily Invested in Fossil Fuels.
Millionaire congressional hopeful Dean Phillips invested as much as $2 million in energy companies even as he criticized Rep. Erik Paulsen (R., Minn.) for supporting fossil fuel development.
Phillips, a Minnesota liquor heir, is campaigning as an environmentalist in a bid to win a crowded Democratic primary and unseat Paulsen, a five-term congressman. He has supported a massive carbon tax as well as a shift away from automobiles to cut down on emissions.
“I care about the environment and I’d like to see fewer cars burning fossil fuels,” he said at a May townhall with voters. “Anybody who argues that a carbon tax would kill jobs is simply, fundamentally misguided.”
Phillips’s financial records show that the environmentally conscious candidate has no problem profiting off of automakers and fossil fuels. He has invested between $780,000 and $2 million in energy companies and major car companies. He held stocks valued between $65,000 and $150,000 in Energy Transfer Partners, owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline that has inspired numerous protests and arrests from radical environmental activists.
Well, what else is he supposed to do now that the “clean” energy crony bonanza is drying up?
MICHAEL BARONE: Eschewing euphemisms frames the immigration issue Trump’s way.
Euphemism has been the weapon of the liberals on this. You can’t say illegal immigrants, you have to say undocumented aliens. (By the way, have you ever heard those two words spoken together in ordinary conversation?) You can’t say amnesty, you have to say legalization. You can’t say illegal immigrants brought in illegally as children, you have to say “Dreamers” (a phrase irresistibly appealing to journalists, like me, trying to keep their word count down).
You have to say that any immigration legislation providing a path to citizenship for the bulk of the estimated (by the widely respected Pew Research Center) 11 million illegal immigrants is “comprehensive.” You have to say that more restrictive plans are “hardline” and therefore presumably undesirable.
In previous debates over immigration legislation, in 2006, 2007, and 2013, euphemisms held sway. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both sought “comprehensive” legislation, including mass amnesty. That was the policy of every president since mass immigration picked up in the early 1980s.
President Trump, notoriously, campaigned for something different, starting just moments after he stepped off that escalator in Trump Tower in June 2015. His use of confrontation and sometimes vile language strikes many Americans, including me, as distasteful. But it has also helped him frame issues, including immigration, his way.
He was attacked as racist for saying that Mexico “does not send its best.” But Pew Research Center data confirms that immigrants from Mexico have on average the lowest education and skill levels as those from any country. His use of the term “chain migration” was attacked by Dreamer advocate Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., as offensive because slaves arrived in North America in chains. This effort at euphemism enforcement was a stretch: People of varying views have been using the term “chain migration” for two decades.
Including Durbin, but the race card is the only card they’ve got.
SCIENCE: Cuckolding can be positive for some couples, study says.
According to a recent study by David Ley, Justin Lehmiller and the writer Dan Savage, acting on cuckolding fantasies can be a largely positive experience for many couples, and hardly a sign of weakness.
References to cuckolding appear in literature as early as the 13th century, usually in the form of male characters who fear that their child has been sired by another man during an act of infidelity. Today, however, cuckolding has become fetishized into a powerful sexual fantasy for some men, who get aroused by the idea of their romantic partner engaging in sexual activity with someone else. Women also share this fantasy, but less so than men.
“This fantasy has been around as long as marriage and sexuality,” said Ley, whose book “Insatiable Wives” addresses cuckolding in heterosexual couples. “But we’re hearing more and more about it these days, and more people are rejecting the social stigma against this fantasy.”
If nothing else, “I’m screwing your wife, and it’s for your own good” does seem like the ultimate Alpha play.
THE PRESS KEEPS CAN’T KEEP UP: Trump at Davos — not as hated and hateful as hoped.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: “We Are All Socialists Now.”
—Headline, the cover of Newsweek, then-still owned by the Washington Post, February 6th, 2009.
● Chaser: “Welcome to the Golden Age of Conservative Magazines.”
—Headline, the Washington Post, yesterday.
PRIORITIES: Amid funding cut fears, PA purchases $50 million private jet for Abbas – report.
The report, which did not provide sourcing, said the plane was set to be delivered to Amman within weeks, and will be stationed there for use by the PA chief.
Funding for the plane was said to have been provided both from the PA budget ($20 million) and from the Palestinian National Fund ($30 million).
The report comes amid deep cuts to US aid to the Palestinians, and reports that further cuts may be coming.
If true, that’s a lot of hungry Palestinian children who won’t get fed, or more likely, a whole lot of American largess the PA has been able to count on for years.
Or both.
THE RETURN OF KING DOLLAR? Dollar rallies off a 3-year low in sudden reversal after Trump says it will get ‘stronger and stronger.’
And why not? Even the XFL is making a comeback.
WELL, HE’S A MAN AND THE JUDGE WAS A WOMAN, SO YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE, BIGOT: Larry Nassar Sexually Abused More Than 100 Girls. That Doesn’t Mean He Should Be Raped in Prison. “Nassar would not be a particularly sympathetic rape victim. Some would doubtless consider any violence he suffers to be cosmic justice. But Aquilina is an agent of the law, not of divine retribution.”
Related: Performance Justice. “The punishment fits the crime. However, the judge, Rosemary Aquilina, meted out the sentence in a disturbing, over-the-top performance. She couldn’t stop talking about herself. We heard about her family, her dogs, her ethnic background (Maltese and German, in case you were wondering), her military service, her soccer coaching. We heard boasting. . . . Egomania and grandstanding are not uncommon on the bench. However, Aquilina’s performance was, I hope, off-the-charts.”
She was mugging for the cameras, which is why cameras in courtrooms are a bad idea.
HAVE THEY CHECKED UNDER MADURO’S OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS? Half of Venezuelan economy has disappeared.
This year will mark the third consecutive year of double-digit contractions in Venezuela’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity. The nation’s GDP declined 16 percent in 2016, 14 percent last year and it’s projected to fall 15 percent this year, according to the IMF.
Venezuela is deep into an economic, political and humanitarian crisis, largely inflicted by the government’s own policies, economists say. Food and medical shortages are widespread. People are scavenging for food in dumpsters. Citizens are fleeing by the thousands. The currency, the bolivar, is nearly worthless. The government has defaulted on its debt. World leaders are calling President Nicolas Maduro a dictator.
The political turmoil is not expected to get better. Maduro’s administration said this week it will hold presidential elections this spring. Maduro has already excluded opposition leaders from participating in the election. It’s unclear if anyone is actually allowed to run against him. Meanwhile, the economy shows no signs of recovery.
This is just the socialist state withering away so that the fruits of full communism can be enjoyed by the survivors, if any.
HEH: The fix was in. The 2016 election was rigged — and Donald Trump won anyway.
We all know — thanks to former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile — that Hillary rigged the Democrat presidential primary against Bernie Sanders. That was a precursor of what was to come.
Does it shock anyone that someone brazen enough to rig a presidential primary would also try to rig the general election?
Don’t look now, but Donald J. Trump may be the first person in world history to win an election rigged against him. Hillary — with the backing of Barack Obama and the leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice — fixed the general election so Trump couldn’t win. And Trump — this relentless bull in a china shop — won anyway.
No wonder Hillary was so confident in the days leading up to Election Day. No wonder she was so shocked and distraught on election night. Keep in mind the point of fixing the election. It wasn’t just about Hillary winning. It was about covering up her crimes.
It’s all coming down upon this cabal of criminals like a ton of boulders. Hillary, Obama, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Podesta, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, Huma Abedin and leaders of the FBI and DOJ — they’re all looking at possible prison terms as this massive, brazen scandal and conspiracy unravels.
It’s an entertaining piece, but things almost always look as though the Clintons or their cronies are about to do the perp walk.
HARVEY WEINSTEIN HAS KILLED THE GLAMOUR OF HOLLYWOOD: Lawsuit: Weinstein’s Assistant Was Made to ‘Clean Up the Semen on the Couch.’
All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
TAMARA KEEL: UFO Sighting.
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD: Most Men Aren’t The Predators The #MeToo Movement Portrays.
What unsettles me about #MeToo is that the norm it broadly describes — a desolate moonscape of predatory men, vulnerable women suffering a litany of abuse and indignity — is so contrary to my experience.
I don’t mean here that I am the lucky one who wasn’t physically assaulted, either. There are millions of women equally lucky. Most men don’t attack women, or flash their privates about or parade about the office naked, or masturbate as an opening gambit. . . .
I had dinner last week with two women friends. One was for decades a secretary at a newspaper.
She was brilliantly capable — she organized the predominantly male department and all of us in it — and hideously underpaid. She was the very sort of woman you would imagine male bosses preyed upon: She needed the job, she was cute as a bug, she was vulnerable.
Yet, she said, no one had treated her badly or unfairly (except to pay her less than she was worth), and if that was perhaps because of the immense dignity with which she carries herself, it is also because she worked for and with good and decent men.
The other woman is a producer in the traditionally male-dominated sports world, smart as a whip.
She had gone through none of the ordeals #MeToo would have us believe are universal. My own experience, as a female sportswriter decades ago, when the number of women covering professional sports could be counted on one hand, was similar.
We aren’t the freaks who escaped harassment. I suspect we’re the norm. And whatever percentage of the female population we are, we’d best start speaking up.
Making this about all men, instead of about predators like Harvey Weinstein, serves the interest of feminists, and of predators like Harvey Weinstein.
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