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DECEMBER 5,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET:

HOW CAN WE STAND THESE LOSSES? – FROM POLITICO.COM:  Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is calling close allies and informing them he is not running for president in 2020, sources close to the governor tell POLITICO.  Patrick informed staff and advisers of his decision today, the sources say, with an announcement to come as soon as this week.  A close ally of former President Barack Obama, the Democrat rejoined the private sector at Bain Capital after serving two terms as Massachusetts' governor. But he ramped up his political activity this fall in advance of a possible presidential bid, traveling to a handful of races across the country.  Close advisers to Patrick launched a new political action committee in August, the Reason to Believe PAC, aimed at "promoting Governor Patrick’s positive vision for Democrats to rally around in 2018."  Patrick, who was encouraged by members of Obama’s inner circle to run in 2020, met with the former president earlier this year as part of Obama's string of meetings with prospective candidates.  Another delusional Dem who thought he'd detected a deluge of support.  Maybe from his family.

ANOTHER STEP ON THE MARCH TOWARD EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Around the Honors College at Appalachian State, you may hear a different way of labeling first-year college students. While they’re commonly referred to as freshmen at most universities, students at the North Carolina-based university often use a different term: “freshmores.”  The term was brought to Appalachian State University by Dr. Jefford Vahlbusch, hired in July of last year as dean of the Honors College. Vahlbusch previously held the same post at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, where he first started using the term.  In an article in The Appalachian, Vahlbusch said he started using “freshmore” as a “non-sexist way to talk about freshmen.” He said he “got tired of listening to female students say freshman” and that it “just didn’t seem to be right that we didn’t have a non-gender specific way of talking about college students.”  Vahlbusch told the campus newspaper the term has since caught on at the honors college.  When discussing why he feels using the term is important, Vahlbusch said it “shows awareness in regards to college students.”  I'd prefer that this conformist devote his attention to academic excellence, rather than to children's name games.

OH, NOW I UNDERSTAND – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   Sen. Mazie Hirono suggested Tuesday that Democrats have a hard time connecting with voters because their breadth of knowledge tends to turn people off.  The Hawaii Democrat made the comment during a discussion at the “Bend Towards Justice” conference in Washington when she was asked by Slate editor Dahlia Lithwick how to make the judicial system a top campaign issue for voters.  “One of the things that we Democrats have a really hard time is connecting to people’s hearts instead of here,” Ms. Hirono responded, pointing at her head, according to a clip flagged by the Republic National Committee. “We’re really good at shoving out all the information that touch people here [points to the brain] but not here [points to the heart].”  “I’ve been saying it at all our Senate Democratic retreats we need to speak to the heart, not in a manipulative way, not in a way that brings forth everybody’s fears and resentments, but truly to speak to the heart so that people know that we’re actually on their side,” she continued.  “We have to kind of tell everyone how smart we are, and so we have a tendency to be very left-brain,” the senator added.  Just what the public wants – a pompous fool.

December 5,  2018     Permalink

AND BEATIN' THEM FOREIGNERS, TOO – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:   The president is not only rising in polls here, he's beating the pants, or the burkas, off foreign leaders who look down their noses at him. From Fox:

President Trump routinely takes grief from the pundits for his underwater approval ratings – but compared with some of his embattled European counterparts, facing civil unrest in the streets and internal government tensions, the U.S. president is riding high.

While Trump’s approval ratings have hovered well below 50 percent ever since he took office, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May are nowhere close to that right now.

Macron’s political troubles were dramatically exposed over the last two weeks, as rioters burned cars and looted stores in response to his push for gas taxes to fight climate change.

On Tuesday, the widespread violence prompted Macron to delay the fuel tax by at least six months.
Amid the chaos, Macron's approval rating in France is just 23 percent, according to the latest poll from international polling company Ifop, as many on both the left and right see him as out-of-touch. That compares with a 47 percent approval rating for Trump in the most recent Fox News poll.

Macron once had a friendly relationship with Trump, but that relationship soured after the U.S. president spurned Macron's advice on climate change and relations with Iran. Macron then publicly jabbed at Trump – attacking the notion of nationalism after Trump embraced the term, as well as calling for the formation of a European army to protect Europe against China, Russia, and even the United States.

Trump responded by swiping at Macron's approval ratings.

"The problem is that Emmanuel suffers from a very low Approval Rating in France... he was just trying to get to another subject," Trump tweeted last month.

COMMENT:  If truth be told, a president's approval rating at this stage doesn't necessarily translate into the result of his run for re-election.  Predicting the future of presidential elections is a hazardous business.  President Bush 41, being memorialized as we write, saw a major plunge in his approval as his first term came into its last year.  There was no second term because he was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992.  He was also hobbled by the presence of Ross Perot in the race, who took votes mostly from Bush.

And don't forget the famous 1936 poll that showed the Republicans beating Franklin D. Roosevelt.  FDR won his second term by a landslide.

Polls are fun, part of the game of politics.  They are not predictions.

December 5, 2018       Permalink

MR. TRUMP RISES – AT 9:58 A.M. ET:  The president's poll standings are rising again.  I suspect they'll rise even more because of the president's elegant handling of the Bush funeral.  Very classy.  From Rasmussen: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove. 

The latest figures include 35% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 40% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -5.

COMMENT:  As we always say, this is one poll.  A Harvard poll a few days ago had the president at 46%.  He is doing as well or better than Obama did in polls at this stage of his presidency, but I doubt if you'll learn that at CNN.

The 2020 race has begun.  There is a boomlet for Beto O'Rourke, the laughable but engaging Dem Senate candidate who just lost to Ted Cruz in Texas.  Many Democrats apparently are deliriously in love with Beto, or Robert Francis, or whatever his name is, and the Democratic Party's mistress press sees him as the second coming of Bobby Kennedy.  He is dangerous because, if the press gets behind him, he could win in a close election, despite his lack of a functioning brain.  I have a feeling the Trump people are already deciding how to run against him.

The great fear of Republicans is that we will be in a recession in 2020.  It's a legitimate fear, which Trump would have to turn around and attribute to fear of the Democratic House's economic plans.  He could do it.

December 5, 2018     Permalink

DECEMBER 4,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

ONE DOWN – FROM TOWNHALL:   Well, it’s official. Trump has beaten his first Democratic opponent, and I use that term generously. Creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti has decided he’s not running for president in 2020. BASTA! Yeah, we’ve all had enough of this clown, even Democrats—who are probably secretly fuming that he inserted himself into the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation fight with a nut job who had a totally unbelievable and completely unsubstantiated story that the judge was part of a gang rape ring in high school. The two other women who had accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct also had similar shoddy stories that were totally baseless. How bad were they? The New York Times refused to do stories on two of them because they couldn’t confirm anything.   So sad.  Everywhere I heard the wanting of Michael.  How often do you get such presidential talent?  Well, I guess there was Warren Harding.

GREAT MOMENTS IN EDUCATION – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Good news for Columbia University undergraduates of modest intelligence: Your graduate instructors are being taught to let you grade yourselves.  The Ivy League university’s Center for Teaching and Learning is hosting a five-part “Inclusive Teaching Seminar” this spring, covering topics including “learning through diversity, growth mindset, microaggressions and implicit bias, trigger warnings, stereotype threat, and inclusive assessments.”  It’s intended for graduate and postdoctoral students who are “committed to creating inclusive classroom environments.”  The fourth session is titled “Inclusive Grading and Assessments,” and it says participants will learn how to reduce “stereotype threat” in their classrooms.  I'm excited.  We'll produce another generation of mature, informed students, just like the ones we see in the streets of Berkeley.

THE CRISIS OF OUR TIME – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   An a cappella group at Princeton University has temporarily stopped singing a hit Disney song after at least one student complained that it can “catalyze violent tendencies toward, and assault against, women.”  The group, the Princeton Tigertones, have stopped singing the song “Kiss the Girl” from the movie The Little Mermaid until “the members can perform it in a way that’s comfortable for the entire audience,” Inside Higher Ed reports.  That song, which in the film is sung largely by the anthropomorphic crab Sebastian, features lyrics urging a suitor to “go on and kiss the girl, kiss the girl.” At their performances of the song, Higher Ed reports, the Tigertones would pick a young woman and a young man from the audience, sing to both of them, and then urge them to smooch, “and the couple will comply, sometimes on with a peck on the cheek, sometimes briefly on the lips.”  Yet in a recent op-ed in The Daily Princetonian, sophomore Noa Wollstein argued that the Tigertones “elevate [the song] to an offensive and violating ritual.”  “The song launches a heteronormative attack on women’s right to oppose the romantic and sexual liberties taken by men, further inundating the listener with themes of toxic masculinity,” Wollstein writes, claiming:  “The fervor with which the all-male Tones press the man to kiss the female subject eerily amplifies the song’s assertions of toxic masculinity.”  There was a time when college students were fighting World War II.

December 4, 2018       Permalink

JOE SPEAKS, AND HE SOUNDS LIKE A CANDIDATE – AT 1:16 P.M. ET:   The former vice president has his eyes on 2020, and would enter the race as, probably, the best-known candidate.  From The Hill:

Former Vice President Joe Biden fueled speculation he might make a 2020 bid for the White House, saying Monday night that he believes he is the “most qualified” person to take on President Trump.

“I'll be as straight with you as I can. I think I'm the most qualified person in the country to be president,” Biden said at a stop for his book tour in Missoula, Montana. “The issues that we face as a country today are the issues that have been in my wheelhouse, that I've worked on my whole life.”

“No one should run for the job unless they believe that they would be qualified doing the job. I've been doing this my whole adult life, and the issues that are the most consequential relating to the plight of the middle class and our foreign policy are things that I have – even my critics would acknowledge, I may not be right but I know a great deal about it,” he added.

Several election prognosticators believe Biden is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign and that his association with former President Obama, who remains popular, and the Scranton, Pennsylvania native's appeal to middle America could make him a worthy opponent to the Republican nominee. However, Biden said the decision will be made in consultation with his family. 

“I have two young grandchildren my son left who love me and adore me and want me around. I want to be there to take care of them, so we've got to figure out whether or not this is something we can all do as a family,” he said. “We're going to make that decision in the next six weeks to two months, and that's the basis of the decision.”

Biden deflected several possible disadvantages of a potential campaign, including his gaffe-prone rhetoric, his age and his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Anita Hill hearing, which has sparked concerns that he is not in touch with the concerns of the #MeToo movement.

COMMENT:  Biden is generally seen as one of the more decent liberal Democrats, but he has a history of being wrong on foreign-policy issues, and he is hardly a dazzling campaigner.  He will be 78 in 2020.  The president will be 74. 

Biden could be useful as a compromise candidate, a party peacemaker, someone who is respected by most factions.  That is also a weakness – the proverbial voice from nowhere. 

December 4, 2018       Permalink

FRENCH KISS – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:  The president of France, facing enormous demonstrations that were turning into near-riots, has backed down, to try to cool tempers.  From Reuters:

PARIS (Reuters) - France’s prime minister on Tuesday suspended planned increases to fuel taxes for at least six months in response to weeks of sometimes violent protests, the first major U-turn by President Emmanuel Macron’s administration after 18 months in office.

In announcing the decision, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said anyone would have “to be deaf or blind” not to see or hear the roiling anger on the streets over a policy that Macron has defended as critical to combating climate change.

“The French who have donned yellow vests want taxes to drop, and work to pay. That’s also what we want. If I didn’t manage to explain it, if the ruling majority didn’t manage to convince the French, then something must change,” said Philippe.

“No tax is worth jeopardizing the unity of the nation.”

Along with the delay to the tax increases that were set for January, Philippe said the time would be used to discuss other measures to help the working poor and squeezed middle-class who rely on vehicles to get to work and go shopping.

Earlier officials had hinted at a possible increase to the minimum wage, but Philippe made no such commitment.

He warned citizens, however, that they could not expect better public services and lower taxes.

COMMENT:  We get the feeling that this is a Band-Aid, and nothing more.  Discontent in France, and, actually, throughout Europe, is great, and the economic situation is only part of it.  Mass immigration is the seething issue, as Europeans see their cultural identity ridiculed and degraded by governing elites that despise their own people.

December 4,  2018     Permalink