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10TH ANNIVERSARY SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE

SECOND WEEK

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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas yesterday.  It's here.

JANUARY 15,  2018

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

TECHNOLOGY'S DOWN SIDE – FROM CBC:  If you want to drive through the small residential streets of Leonia, N.J., you'll have to move there.  Starting Jan. 22, the town will ban all non-residents from driving on 60 of its streets during the morning and evening rush hours.  The new rules aim to crack down on urban-dwellers who take shortcuts through the town while following instructions from navigation apps like Waze, Google Maps or Apple — a phenomenon Mayor Judah Zeigler says is causing gridlock, costing money and putting people in danger.  "What's happening with the adoption of Waze and Google Maps and other navigational apps is these vehicles are ending up on our narrow streets," Zeigler told As It Happens host Carol Off.  "It takes people 15 minutes to get out of their driveway sometimes."  Excellent point.  These apps provide alternative routes when main roads are clogged.  The alternatives are often in quiet neighborhoods.  What's called for is some intelligent negotiation with the tech companies. 

OH, SO THAT'S THE SECRET? – FROM DAILY CALLER:   This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the NAACP wants man-made global warming to be seen as a civil rights issue, arguing King’s vision of a society free of racial injustice can’t be achieved without addressing warming.  “We see climate change as a civil rights issue,” Jacqueline Patterson, head of the NAACP’s environmental and climate justice program, said in an online radio spot for the Yale Center for Environmental Connection.  Environmental activists have been increasingly framing global warming as a matter of “environmental justice,” since “minority and low-income populations are disproportionately affected by global warming,” Patterson told Yale’s online radio Climate Connections.  Traditionally, such concerns focused on traditional pollutants from factories or vehicles, but the NAACP is expanding it to carbon dioxide, which scientists blame for warming the Earth in recent decades.  The environmental movement has fretted in recent years that it’s not diverse enough, and groups, like 350.org, have tried to draw parallels between global warming and alleged police brutality that sparked riots in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.  Hmm.  I'd look at this argument with two eyes, three if you have them. 

FINALLY GIVING TRUMP THE CREDIT – FROM TOWNHALL:   CNBC’s economic survey released prior to Christmas showed that for the first time in over a decade a majority was optimistic about the economy, and there was a shift as to who should receive credit for the booming economy: Donald J. Trump. The economic growth for the fourth quarter was near four percent. Over 100 companies gave bonuses of at least $1,000 or more to over a million workers, even some part-timers got a piece of that action. The GOP tax bill, which the Left said was going to be a prelude to Armageddon, was exactly the opposite for the American worker, who the Democratic Party decided to bet against to try and undercut Trump. Over 90 of middle class Americans will be receiving a tax cut. The Democratic Party is going to have to explain that move, especially when this tax bill becomes more popular.  As for the economy, economists said we should expect to see unemployment continue to go down and the economy to grow in 2018. Economists credit two things: President Trump and his tax bill. For Obama, his polices received good grades for providing financial stability, though they led to anemic economic growth and job creation.  In November, all Democrats in the House will be up for re-election, and they all voted against the tax cut.  Great GOP ammo.

January 15,  2018     Permalink

RETURN OF WESTERN CIV? – AT 11:51 A.M. ET:  Under assault on many left-wing campuses, Western Civ is making a comeback on some.  Be thankful for small blessings.  From College Fix:   

Back in the 1980s, Jesse Jackson led 500 Stanford students in a chant of “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go.” And it’s continued to be mostly downhill for Western Civ at colleges since.

The idea of learning important things from so-called “dead white dudes” has become a siren call for social progressives who argue that the skin color of the author they’re reading matters more than content.

A small but brave group of independent-minded thinkers who recently tried to re-champion Western Civ at Stanford failed in their effort. That’s not unique.

Today’s student protesters — backed by like-minded faculty — clamor for authors who “look like them.” Curriculums, unfortunately, acquiesced to that demand.

Yet at one college, the narrative has flipped — for the better. In November, The College Fix reported on the Bronx-based Hostos Community College, where Western Civ is taught at a school in a low-income neighborhood that enrolls mostly students of color.

And they’re loving it. Now The Wall Street Journal has picked up the story in a powerful piece that paints a picture on just how much:

On her first day of English class at Hostos Community College during the fall 2017 semester, Maria Diaz glared at the reading handout, a Plato excerpt on the trial of Socrates. “I used to be like, ‘Prof, why are we reading this? It’s so boring and confusing,” she recalls. But only months later, Ms. Diaz would gush about the merits of the Western canon, quoting Socrates’s claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

While much of academia continues its progressive and postmodern lurch, these courses at Hostos, first offered in 2016, represent a move in the opposite direction. One of the classes even was designed especially for students who score a “high fail” on their literacy tests. Profs. Andrea Fabrizio and Gregory Marks, along with their colleagues in the English Department, created the courses in collaboration with Columbia University. They borrowed heavily from the Ivy League school’s core curriculum for liberal-arts undergraduates.

COMMENT:  One small step.  I think it will be a long time before this becomes a national trend, as the left has a lock grip on many schools, and is often supported by the party-line press, and identity-politics "leaders."  But the fight is always worth it.

January 15, 2018       Permalink

ANOTHER KING SPEAKS – AT 10:57 A.M. ET:   It is Martin Luther King Day, and the usual suspects will be out denouncing President Trump.  But Dr. King's niece, Alveda King, has a different opinion.  From Breitbart: 

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., joined Breitbart News Sunday on the eve of her uncle’s namesake holiday, hitting back at racism accusations against President Donald Trump and levying her own complaints against ultra-liberal Facebook.

“I agree that President Trump is not a racist. He has done so much,” King told host and Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle.

“Just now … [Trump signed] the bill that was sponsored by Congressman John Lewis making the Martin Luther King Jr. historic site in Atlanta a national park — the first park to be named after an African-American man,” King continued. She defended the president against a rash of new “racism” accusations supposedly stemming from vulgar remarks Democratic staffers are claiming Trump made about third-world countries that send the United States massive numbers of immigrants.

She went on:

"And there’s all other kind of legislation and things that President Trump is passing, including getting a lot of black folks out of jail — he’s working on doing that believe it or not and putting them back to work. And putting America back to work — African-Americans especially because our job rate or our hiring rate was so low and it’s going up along with everybody else’s rate. So President Trump is not a racist. He cares about America period. And he said, 'No matter what color our skin is, we all bleed red.' So he sees black people, all people as people. He sees Americans as the people he is supposed to serve and he’s doing that. And he is not a racist. I just really want to say that."

COMMENT:   Read the whole thing.  President Trump, whether you like him or not, has been a public figure in New York for decades.  If he were a racist, we would have known it long before now. 

The cry of "racism" is itself the new McCarthyism.  It is used to destroy the reputations of political opponents, whether they are racists or not.

January 15,  2018     Permalink

IT'S BRAINWASHING, IT'S BRAINWASHING, THAT'S WHAT IT IS – AT 10:38 A.M. ET:  Stunning poll results show President Trump's popularity rising among blacks, just as the establishment left and establishment black leaders try to pin the label of "racist" on him.  From Breitbart: 

Two new polls show President Donald Trump’s rising support among black voters, highlighting his political gains from pushing employers to hire Americans instead of lower-wage migrants.

The growing support from blacks — despite furious Democratic claims of racism — could become a shocking political validation in November when Trump will face millions of upper-income Democratic voters who are angry at his “Buy American, Hire American” policies.

Among black men, Trump’s “2017 average approval rating significantly exceeds his 2016 vote share,” admitted a January 11 article in the Atlantic by author Ronald Brownstein. “23 percent of black men approved of Trump’s performance versus 11 percent of black women,” said the article.
That score averages out to 17 percent, or twice the 8 percent score he was given in the 2016 exit polls.

In November 2016, Trump got 13 percent support among black men and 4 percent support among black women, according to the exit polls....

...The poll was “a cumulative analysis of 605,172 interviews SurveyMonkey conducted with Americans in 2017,” according to the Atlantic.

COMMENT:    There have also been reports that the president is cutting into Democratic support among Hispanic voters.  If he can make dents in the huge Democratic advantage in black and Hispanic communities, it would severely damage the Democratic Party in national elections.

January 15, 2018       Permalink

JANUARY 14,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET:

I'M SO GLAD WE KNOW – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   A Rutgers University women’s and gender studies professor thinks she has the answer to why white women seemingly voted against their interests in the 2016 presidential and last month’s Alabama US Senate elections.  “Simply put,” Kyla Schuller writes in a guest post for the Duke University Press blog, “sex difference is itself a racial structure.”  The professor, whose research interests include feminist science studies, biopolitics, and Transnational American Studies, claims that “sexual difference, as a concept, emerged as a function of race.” Her new book, The Biopolitics of Feeling, “zeroes in on this generally overlooked phenomenon.”  Indeed. Weird how so many think of sexual difference in terms of biology.  “The binary entities of man and woman were newly understood as thoroughly distinct in terms of mental, physiological, emotional, and psychological capacity,” Schuller writes. “Sex difference was presented as the singular attainment of a teleological evolution moving toward ever greater specialization.”  No doubt about it.  I've been thinking this way for a long time.  I'm glad to be getting new support.  Choke.

SAY IT AIN'T SO – FROM FOX:   An illegal immigrant on a Greyhound bus who allegedly threatened to shoot and kill passengers on Friday — leading police on a chase from Wisconsin to Illinois — was deported five times, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told Fox News.  The spokesperson said on Sunday Margarito Vargas-Rosas, 33, who faces terror charges, was in the U.S. illegally and was "removed" from the U.S. the last five times Border Patrol agents encountered him.  Police responded to a call around 9:40 p.m. Friday from a bus passenger who claimed there was a person threatening to kill people, Fox 6 reported, citing the Racine County Sheriff’s Department.  Vargas-Rosas, of Chicago, was reportedly pacing the aisle toward the back of the bus, and appeared to draw what passengers thought was a weapon from his waistband.  Obviously a misunderstanding.  We're sure Barack Obama can clear it all up.

TAX REFORM COMETH – FROM CBS LOCAL, BY CNN MONEY:   (CNN Money) — The U.S. Treasury and the IRS on Thursday put out new guidance and withholding tables for employers that incorporate changes from the new tax law.  Under those new tables, the Treasury estimates that 90% of people who get a paycheck are likely to see more in take-home pay, as soon as February. Employers will have until Feb. 15 to incorporate the changes in their payroll systems.  But for many taxpayers, they will need to assess whether the new tables really are withholding enough money so that they’re not saddled with a big bill when they file their taxes next year.  The major changes affecting individuals include new tax brackets, (mostly) lower income tax rates, a near-doubling of the standard deduction and the elimination of both personal exemptions as well as many itemized deductions.   We hope this works well.  If it does, it will be another great shot in the arm for the economy, as well as providing ammunition for the GOP in November.

January 14, 2018       Permalink

STRIKING BACK – AT 1:50 P.M. ET:   Some senators who were actually at the meeting in which President Trump is alleged to have uttered the foul phrase are defending him, arguing that the president never actually said what he's accused of saying.  From The Hill: 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday reiterated that he didn’t hear President Trump call Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole countries,” suggesting Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) misrepresented the president’s comments.

"I certainly didn’t hear what Sen. Durbin has said repeatedly. Sen. Durbin has a history of misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings, though, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by that,” Cotton said on CBS's “Face The Nation.”

Pressed on whether he didn’t hear the comment or if it wasn’t said, Cotton said, “I didn’t hear it.”

“And I was sitting no farther away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was, and I know what Dick Durbin has said about the president's repeated statements is incorrect,” Cotton added.

Trump during a meeting with lawmakers last week reportedly questioned why the U.S. accepted so many immigrants from “s...hole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador and some African countries. He suggested the U.S. should instead should take in more immigrants from countries like Norway.

Cotton, Durbin, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) were among those present during the meeting.

Cotton and Perdue have said they did not hear the comment.

Durbin confirmed Trump’s comments, then reiterated that claim even after the president denied making them.

COMMENT:  One way of dealing with this dispute is to demand that the Senate Select Committee on Ethics investigate Senator Durbin, who has a history of making comments for which he's had to apologize.  Then we can get to the bottom of this matter. 

I'd also suggest that all White House meetings with opposition members of Congress present be recorded. 

January 14, 2018       Permalink 

IS DACA DEAD? – AT 12:44 P.M. ET:   The president thinks it may well be.  From Fox:

President Trump on Sunday argued again that Democrats and their demands -- not him or fellow Republicans in Congress -- have throttled negotiations to provide permanent legal protection for young illegal immigrants and made clear that any such deal also must end the United States’ lottery-immigration program.

“DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military,” said Trump, in one of several tweets on the issue of immigration reform and on the related Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

The president and Congress are attempting to reach a deal on comprehensive immigration reform as part of a federal spending bill that Congress must pass by Friday to avoid a government shutdown.

Trump’s tweets Sunday follow an intense week of negotiation on the issue, including a 55-minute, televised White House meeting with him and Democratic and Republican congressional leaders.

Among the issues are Trump’s desire for any such deal to include money for a U.S.-Mexico wall for border security and changes to the lottery and so-called “chain migration” immigration programs.

Democrats want the deal to include the permanent protections for young illegal immigrants, now that Trump is ending such safeguards under DACA, the executive order by former President Barack Obama.

COMMENT:  The president is probably right.  The Democrats are not a policy-oriented party any longer.  They are the anti-Trump party, and, indeed, the anti-military party.  Our military is desperate for the funds being held hostage to DACA.  Dems don't care.  They're far to the left, and their spiritual leader, Bernie Sanders, has proposed cutting the military budget in half.

January 14, 2018       Permalink

CRACKPOT – AT 11:53 A.M. ET:  It is time to call out Jeff Flake, the so-called "Republican" senator from Arizona who has, thankfully, decided not to run for re-election. 

I have no problem at all with members of his own party criticizing the president.  In fact, it should be done more often with all presidents.  But Jeff Flake abuses the privilege.  From the Washington Times: 

President Trump is employing techniques “popularized by Joseph Stalin” to demonize the press and his approach could do great harm to the nation in the long run, Sen. Jeff Flake said Sunday.

An absolutely absurd comment.  If Joseph Stalin didn't like a journalist, the journalist suddenly disappeared.  All Trump does is criticize.

In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” the retiring Arizona Republican and outspoken critic of the president said he’s deeply troubled by how Mr. Trump attacks the media.

“You can talk about crowd size, and this is pretty innocuous if there’s a falsehood. But when you reflexively refer to the press as the ‘enemy of the people’ or ‘fake news,’ that has real damage,” Mr. Flake said. “It has real damage to our standing in the world. And I noted how bad it is for a president to take what was popularized by Joseph Stalin, the ‘enemy of the people,’ to refer to the press.”

Mr. Flake announced his retirement last year amid continued clashes with the president. Before Mr. Flake’s announcement, the president endorsed his would-be challenger in the GOP Senate primary in Arizona, Kelli Ward.

Since then, Mr. Flake has continued to be one of the loudest Republican critics of the president. Specifically, he takes great issue with how Mr. Trump demeans the media.

“I’m going to talk about how damaging that is,” the senator said. “I just want the president to know that this has real consequences.”

COMMENT:  No, it really doesn't.  Attacking the press is a time-honored tradition.  The press is a powerful institution, and could use a good spanking from time to time.

John F. Kennedy famously banned the old New York Herald-Tribune from the White House because he didn't like how it reported his administration.

Dwight D. Eisenhower denounced "sensation-seeking columnists" at the 1964 Republican convention.

Harry S. Truman scathingly denounced a Washington Post music critic for giving a a poor review to the president's daughter, an operatic singer.

Nixon's fights with the press were beauts.  The press survived.  Nixon did not.

Don't worry about the press being damaged by presidential attacks.  Worry about presidents being damaged by bad reporting.

January 14,  2018     Permalink