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DECEMBER 10,  2018

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

THE NERVE – FROM AFP:   Paris (AFP) – The French government on Sunday urged Donald Trump not to interfere in French politics after the US president posted tweets about the protests rocking the country and attacked the Paris climate agreement.  “We do not take domestic American politics into account and we want that to be reciprocated,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told LCI television.  “I say this to Donald Trump and the French president says it too: leave our nation be.”  Trump had on Saturday posted two tweets referring to the “yellow vest” anti-government protests that have swept France since mid-November and sparked rioting in Paris.  “Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it’s time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes?” he suggested.  Trump had earlier posted: “The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. Okay, Trump went a little over the line in criticizing the French government.  But two weeks ago Macron went way over the line in slamming Trump.  All's fair.

I COULDN'T HAVE LIVED WITHOUT HIS OPINION – FROM FOX:   He's been known to take long-distance shots, but this one might be the farthest out there.  NBA superstar Stephen Curry said he does not believe the U.S. landed on the moon, according to a podcast Monday.  The Golden State Warriors guard made the comments when he was a guest on the "Winging It" podcast, according to The New York Times.  Curry asked one of the hosts if he believed that the U.S. landed on the moon. When the host said no, Curry agreed, but said he didn't want to "start conspiracies."  Despite insurmountable evidence to the contrary, conspiracy theorists have claimed for years that man did not walk on the moon, that the landings were fake. Conspiracy theories have continued to pop up since man first walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to ever set foot on the lunar surface.   They ought to send Curry up there to collect the old Coke bottles.

PATHETIC – THE OSCARS HAVE HAD IT – FROM FOX:   Following Kevin Hart’s announcement that he was bowing out of as host of the 2019 Academy Awards, a report on Monday suggested that organizers behind the annual event are considering airing next year’s telecast without a host.  The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is exploring all options, sources with knowledge of the situation told Variety.  The show may go sans host, an insider told the outlet, and instead would feature “a bunch of huge celebs, something ‘SNL’ style, and buzzy people to throw to commercial.”  Organizers reportedly are leery of booking a host considered too controversial or “off the cuff,” the report claimed.  There was a time when hosting the Oscars was one of the greatest honors in the industry.  Now look at it.

December 10,  2018     Permalink 

NOT A GOOD SIGN FOR 2020 – AT 8:12 A.M. ET:   It is clear that the Clintons want to get back into the White House.  Maybe Bill left his Lionel trains behind.  But there are suggestions that the return trip is unlikely to happen.  From Daily Mail: 

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been forced to resort to selling half price tickets for their 13-city tour on Groupon in a desperate bid to put bums on seats. 

The former president and first lady launched their tour in a Canadian hockey arena last Tuesday to an underwhelming crowd and swaths of empty seats.

Ticket prices were plummeting shortly before the event, with the cheapest seats selling on Stubhub for single-digits -  $6.55 Canadian Dollars, or less than $5.

Now the couple are taking drastic action to avoid another embarrassment on the next stop on their An Evening With the Clintons tour.

They have slashed tickets by up to 60 per cent, and even offered them on Groupon, to try and entice more fans to come and listen to them speak. 

On the official site, there were still seats for the tour available for up to $325, with other floor seats going for $83 plus a hefty service charge, but on Groupon, they can be picked up for as little as $35.

The tour is currently on a break for the holidays and reconvenes in New York on April 11, 2019, before moving on to nine other cities including DC, Boston, LA and Las Vegas. 

COMMENT:  Why do I think the April tour may not come off?  Why do I think Hillary will accept a position as head of a college, or think tank? 

Why do I think it's over? 

December 10, 2018       Permalink

NOW WE KNOW THE TRUTH – AT 8:02 A.M. ET:  The truth about Google has come out.  We knew all along.  From College Fix: 

A professor from UCLA and the University of Southern California recently told an audience to “stop telling students to Google things” … because the search engine behemoth is racially biased.

Such is the topic of Safiya Noble’s new book, “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.” Noble was the keynote speaker for the “Year of Data” conference held at Princeton University’s Center for Digital Humanities on Thursday.

Noble said that in her previous career she had assisted clients to “get better representation” in Google search results, and as such knows how the game is played, so to speak.  According to The Daily Princetonian, Noble said “corporations who pay the most money secure appearance on the first page, and thus those corporations gain the most prominent representation.”

She believes her research “fill[ed] a void” in the conversation regarding “the politics and power systems embedded in different kinds of platforms.”

“[T]here weren’t people who were centering around black women or vulnerable people at the epicenter of the questions they might ask,” she said. “Of course that was leading them to look for different kinds of evidence, or it precluded their ability to see evidence [of racism] that was everywhere.”

COMMENT:  Stuff like this isn't a joke anymore.  The future of this country depends heavily on its educational system, and especially its great research universities.  These places are becoming, increasingly, sandboxes filled with kooks and trivia hunters.  Words like "racism" are thrown around so loosely they have lost their power.

There is certainly racism, but that is far from the American story.  Unless we tell that story to the next generation, we are doomed.

December 10,  2018     Permalink

DECEMBER 9,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 7:06 P.M. ET:

MADNESS – FROM TIMES OF ISRAEL:  A host on the Palestinian Authority’s official television channel recently praised a man who attacked and stabbed three Israeli policemen at a police station in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood.  In a remarkable statement, Palestine TV’s Dana Abu Shamsiya said of assailant Abdul Rahman Abu Jamal that he “harvest[s] souls in the battlefield” and was “desired by the black-eyed virgins [of Paradise].”  On November 14 Abu Jamal arrived at the entrance to the police station, attacked and lightly injured three officers. During the scuffle a fourth officer was lightly hurt by shrapnel as others shot at the attacker.   Black-eyed virgins of Paradise?  Who in this day and age talks like that?  And what else do they believe?

I'M SO SHOCKED – FROM DC WHISPERS:  Via Zero Hedge:  The CFO of the Clinton Foundation, thinking he was “meeting an old professional acquaintance,” admitted to investigators that the charity had widespread problems with governance, accounting and conflicts of interest, and that Bill Clinton has been commingling business and personal expenses for a long time, reports The Hill’s John Solomon.  Clinton Foundation CFO Andrew Kessel made the admissions to investigators from MDA Analytics LLC – a firm run by “accomplished ex-federal criminal investigators,” who have been probing the Clinton Foundation for some time.  Kessel told MDA “There is no controlling Bill Clinton. He does whatever he wants and runs up incredible expenses with foundation funds, according to MDA’s account of the interview. “Bill Clinton mixes and matches his personal business with that of the foundation. Many people within the foundation have tried to caution him about this but he does not listen, and there really is no talking to him.”  Haven't seen this in The New York Times.  I wonder why.

HOW FAR BACK YOU WANNA GO? – FROM YAHOO SPORTS:   Kyler Murray won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night, making him the second straight quarterback from Oklahoma to win college football’s most prestigious award.  Just hours after winning the award, though, several of his old homophobic tweets surfaced on Twitter.  Update: He apologized in the early hours of Sunday morning via Twitter:  I apologize for the tweets that have come to light tonight from when I was 14 and 15. I used a poor choice of word that doesn’t reflect who I am or what I believe. I did not intend to single out any individual or group.Murray used an anti-gay slur both on its own and when tweeting at his friends in 2011 and 2012 — when he was 14 and 15 years old. The tweets in question were deleted from Murray’s account late Saturday night.  It's absurd to go back to someone's early adolescence to find something damning.  Can we grow up?  At the same time, this is another lesson in the need to be careful when using social media.  You may only get one, "I'm sorry."

December 9, 2018       Permalink

YOU MEAN, COMMON SENSE IN EDUCATION? – AT 1:12 P.M. ET:  Stories like this give me hope for the future of our country.  And I love it when "educators" are taught what education really means.  From The Hill: 

The Ohio Senate passed a bill Thursday requiring each student in the state to be able to write in cursive by the end of the fifth grade. 

The measure, also known as House Bill 58, was passed by the Ohio Senate and would require the state’s Department of Education to craft a new curriculum for students before the start of next year. 

Under the new measure, students in the state would be required to legibly write letters in print by the end of third grade and write in cursive before going on to sixth grade.

According to a local Fox station, the Ohio House of Representatives first approved the bill in June.

The legislation was first introduced in February 2017.

Any changes to the measure must reportedly be approved by the Ohio House before heading to Republican Gov. John Kasich to be signed. 

COMMENT:  This is great.  It is outrageous for children to go through school without learning how to write in basic cursive...the kind of writing we all do to write notes, memos, letters, and anything else.

There are smug "sophisticates" who tell us that, in a world of computers and tablets, all with keyboards, no one really needs to learn cursive.

Oh yeah?

Grab, by the collar, anyone who tells you that, and march him down to the nearest Staples.  Point out the whole wall filled with choices of inexpensive pens.  Ask him if he wonders who uses those things, and why Staples carries them.  The answers are obvious.

I am about to write a shopping list, in cursive.  Eat your heart out.

December 9, 2018       Permalink 

SOME PEOPLE SHOULD SHUT UP – AT 12:15 P.M. ET:  There is no more obnoxious character around Washington these days than Adam Schiff, Dem congressman from the People's Republic of California, and next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. 

Schiff is a major talker.  Not a major thinker.  Just a major talker.  But his latest comments about the president are not only vulgar, they are dangerous.  The president's authority, especially when dealing with foreign nations, is undercut, even though Mr. Trump has not been seriously charged with anything.  From The Hill:

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said that President Trump might "face the real prospect of jail time" after prosecutors indicated last week that he directed illegal payments during his 2016 presidential campaign.

"There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

.@AdamSchiff on the Russia Investigation: My takeaway is there's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the justice department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. pic.twitter.com/3kfwumFkh7
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation)

Schiff's comments come after federal prosecutors said in a legal filing Friday that referred to Trump as Individual-1 that Trump coordinated with and directed his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 campaign to make illegal payments to two women claiming they had affairs with Trump. It was the first time prosecutors made those accusations against Trump.

Schiff, who is likely to be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, added that the next president may have to determine whether to pardon Trump.

"We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people," Schiff said. "The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump."

COMMENT:  Democrats might be advised to zip it before all the facts are known.  They've just been given control of the House of Representatives.  The American people will expect action on matters of concern to them, not simply to the Democratic base.

But, already, we hear the new landlords of the House actively discussing impeachment, jail time for the president, and all the things that will make life for American families better.  I'm being sarcastic.

I'm afraid the Democratic mindset may be set in stone, and that we're in for a rough and depressing two years.

December 9,  2018     Permalink