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JULY 7,  2018

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

COMMON SENSE – FROM THE HILL:  Hollywood celebrities have been raising the heat in their rhetoric against President Trump, but critics say the often-profane criticism could actually inflame a pro-Trump backlash ahead of November’s midterm elections.  Trump is considered vulgar Enemy No. 1 in much of the entertainment world, and more and more performers — from Robert De Niro to Michelle Wolf — are following him into the mud, though their harshest insults may actually be giving Republicans a boost.  “I think that they live inside this cultural bubble where they all talk among themselves and make the incredibly erroneous conclusion that the rest of the nation must think like they do,” GOP consultant John Brabender said in an interview with The Hill this week.  Good political sense.  Hollywood doesn't have much glitter anymore.  It's a fading scene, and the hateful rhetoric of the Hollywood crowd is just another sign of how out of touch they really are. 

WHEN A LIBERAL IS ACCUSED – FROM THE SEATTLE TIMES:   OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada has repeatedly denied accusations he acted inappropriately with a young reporter at a charity event 18 years ago. On Friday, he said his accuser might have experienced their interaction differently.  “I do not feel that there was any inappropriate action of any type,” Trudeau said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s (CBC) Toronto radio station. “But, and this is the really important thing, it is not just my experience that matters in this.”  He added, “The way the same interaction can be experienced by different people is a really important thing to get our minds around.”   The philosopher speaks.  If he were on the right, they'd be screaming for his head.

A MATURE NEGOTIATOR – FROM FOX:   U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday shrugged off North Korea’s accusation of the U.S. making “gangster-like” demands regarding denuclearization, saying he’d “go nuts” if he paid attention to everything the media reports.  In a trilateral news conference in Tokyo, accompanied by officials from Japan and South Korea, Pompeo reaffirmed the U.S. goal of complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, reiterating that his talks with North Korea last week were conducted in “good faith.”  When a reporter asked about North Korea’s Saturday comments, Pompeo didn’t seem too bothered.  “Look, people are going to make stray comments after meetings,” Pompeo said. “If I paid attention to what the press said, I’d go nuts, and I refuse to do that.”  “And so if those requests were ‘gangster-like,’” Pompeo added, “then the world is a gangster because there was a unanimous decision at the U.N. Security Council about what needs to be achieved.”  I trust Pompeo and his judgment.  He's a first-class guy with a very fine mind.  He also thinks America is a good place.

July 7, 2018       Permalink

RUDY THE TOUGH – AT 12:15 P.M. ET:   This is the Rudy we saw when he was mayor of New York.  The man does not like to lose.  He doesn't consider it noble.  Now he's representing the president, and he doesn't intend to lose.  From Fox: 

President Trump’s lawyers have told FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller that they want him to produce evidence that Trump has committed a crime before they agree for the president to be interviewed as part of Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Rudy Giuliani, the top lawyer on the legal team, told Fox News on Saturday he is asking Mueller for a “factual basis for the investigation” before the team considers allowing Trump to be interviewed by Mueller’s team.

Trump and his team have become increasingly frustrated with how long Mueller’s probe is taking to complete, and Trump in particular has taken a more aggressive stance toward Mueller since the Department of Justice criticized the FBI’s actions in 2016 in relation to the Hillary Clinton email probe.

The new demands by Trump’s legal team indicate that it is likely to take a more aggressive and combative stance toward Mueller going forward.

The New York Times, which first reported on the new demands, reported that Giuliani has acknowledged that Mueller is unlikely to agree to them, and also left open the possibility that Trump may still agree to be interviewed. Trump has repeatedly said he is keen to sit down with Mueller.

COMMENT:  At least the White House is showing some spine.  This president has been investigated, and probed, and harassed.  The other side wants him gone...and doesn't care if it sullies American democracy to get him gone.  They know they have the Establishment and the mainstream journalists with them.

This is the danger of special prosecutors.  They operate on their own, but it's the American people who elect the president.  It is an inherent contradiction.

July 7, 2018       Permalink

WHOOPS – AT 11:52 A.M. ET:  The first high-level talks between Secretary Pompeo and the North Koreans have concluded, with the sides giving contradictory versions of what happened.  This may not succeed.  From Fox: 

North Korea on Saturday accused the U.S. of undermining the spirit of last month’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un after what it says were “regrettable” talks with a delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

A statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, accusing the U.S. of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nuclear weapons, came shortly after Pompeo’s delegation left the country.

"We had expected that the U.S. side would offer constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders' summit ... we were also thinking about providing reciprocal measures," Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.

"However, the attitude and stance the United States showed in the first high-level meeting (between the countries) was no doubt regrettable," the spokesman said.

Pompeo had struck a different tone, telling reporters as he left that the talks with senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol had been “productive.”

"We had many hours of productive conversations,” he said. “These are complicated issues, but we made progress on almost all of the central issues. Some places a great deal of progress. Other places, there's still more work to be done.”

COMMENT:  It's impossible to know what to make of this.  They're negotiating.  The president promised he would grant no concessions to the Norks if our requirements were not met.  It doesn't look as if they were met.

I would not be shocked if the talks broke down for a time.  That's the business.  Play the long game. 

July 7,  2018     Permalink

JULY 6,  2018

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

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER – FROM UPI:   July 6 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump's British visit next week will include a state dinner and a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, the U.S. ambassador to Britain announced Friday.  Diplomat Robert "Woody" Johnson revealed the itinerary of the trip in a conference call with reporters Friday.  Trump will arrive at London's Stansted Airport Thursday, following a NATO summit in Brussels. After visiting the ambassador's residence in London, he and first lady Melania Trump will be guests at a state dinner. The event will be hosted by Prime Minister Theresa May at Blenheim Palace, a castle and UNESCO World Heritage site built in the early 18th century.  I do hope the president is on his best behavior and doesn't advise the queen to turn the palace into condos.

STARTLING – FROM THE HILL:  Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said on Friday that women are more likely to oppose abortion rights than men.  “Women are much less likely to be pro-choice," Lake, who is the president of Lake Research, told Hill TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking."   "Women are more religious than men, and so women are slightly less pro-choice than men," she continued.  It's only one pollster, but the thought is intriguing.  Maybe some of these "feminist leaders" don't speak for women.

NO TIPPING NEEDED – FROM THE L.A. TIMES:  A growing number of hotels have begun employing robots to deliver towels, toothpaste and other items to guests — an addition viewed primarily as a novelty to appeal to tech-loving travelers.  But less than a year after the mass shooting near a Las Vegas hotel, a Southern California casino resort has added camera-wielding robots to enhance security.  The Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula last month began employing two robots — one that stands motionless in the valet parking area and a mobile rocket-shaped automatron that patrols the lobby area — in addition to the 300-person security staff and thousands of mounted surveillance cameras.  But we still won't harden most schools and colleges.  I wonder why.

July 6,  2018    Permalink

A WELL-DESERVED VICTORY – AT 3:29 P.M. ET:  One by one, those who've been abused on college campuses by local radicals are winning their cases in actual courts.  From Fox:   

A conservative political science professor who sued Marquette University after the Milwaukee Jesuit school terminated him for blogging about gay marriage won his case Friday in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The high court ruled that Marquette University should immediately reinstate former political science professor John McAdams, finding that the college failed to give him the academic freedom he is guaranteed under his contract.

The court’s conservative majority opinion ruled the private university’s faculty panel exhibited “unacceptable bias” when it fired him. The liberal justices disagreed, saying in the minority opinion that academic freedom “does not protect McAdams from discipline.”

The university had argued McAdams was not fired for the content of his 2014 post, but because he named an instructor and linked to her personal website. That instructor, a graduate student, received a barrage of hateful messages and threats after he posted her information.

“A tenured faculty member put a graduate student’s name and link to her contact information on the Internet so that people could go after her,” said Marquette attorney Ralph Weber. “That’s not academic freedom – it’s cyberbullying,”

The ruling has been eagerly awaited by conservatives, many of whom see universities as liberal hotbeds. It was also closely followed by private businesses that exercise control over employee discipline.

In the 2014 post that got McAdams fired, he discussed an incident involving a conservative student who recorded a graduate student instructor of philosophy. That instructor allegedly shut down any oppositional speech against gay marriage and suggested the student drop the class because of his views.

McAdams, who called himself a "whistleblower" at Marquette, said it was just another example of liberals trying to silence those they disagree with and then he linked to the instructor’s personal website. She received so many threats that the university decided to post a security guard outside of her classroom. The graduate student eventually moved to another university, where she had to repeat three semesters and revise her doctoral thesis.

“Had he written the exact same blog post and not included the student-teacher’s name and contact information he would not have been disciplined,” Weber argued. “He’s being disciplined for his conduct, not any viewpoint.”

But McAdams’ attorney, Rick Esenberg, said all he did was link to publicly available information.

COMMENT:  A close one, but the court decided correctly.  McAdams did not reveal a private email address, but a public one.  If someone writes something critical of me, and then links to Urgent Agenda to show how awful I am, I can't claim that the writer is invading my privacy, or exposing me to unacceptable ridicule or offense.  I've put our email addresses out there.

Glad the professor got his job back. 

July 6, 2018        Permalink

PHONY! AND CAUGHT! – AT 2:43 P.M. ET:  Once again we are confronted with the dime-store Evita, the new national sensation, socialist pet and Democratic Congressional nominee from the 14th District in New York.  Uh, apparently, Bernie Sanders's little confection has some further credibility problems.  From Daily Caller:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the upstart Democratic Socialist who shocked the political world in the June primary when she defeated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York, once advocated for tax cuts when she was running a business of her own, uncovered news reports from 2012 reveal.

Ocasio-Cortez, 28, is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that calls for the abolishment of capitalism and argues that “private corporate property is not only wrong, but also nonsensical.” Her campaign platform calls for instituting a single-payer health care system, a federal jobs guarantee and housing as a human right, radical and expensive policies she says will be funded through raising taxes on corporations and high-income Americans.

But Ocasio-Cortez appeared to have a different outlook on capitalism and taxes in 2012 when she was running a business of her own, Brook Avenue Press, an incorporated publishing firm for children’s books set in the Bronx. As a business owner, she came out in support of a bill that would provide tax deductions for business start-up costs, arguing that taxes directly impacted her business profits.

“You don’t really make a profit in your first year,” Ocasio-Cortez told the now-defunct DNAinfo when she was 22. “To get taxed on top of that is a real whammy.”

Ocasio-Cortez was then a member of the Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, a city-sponsored business hub that attracted dozens of entrepreneurs trying to get their businesses off the ground.

“You see a huge return on your investment here,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Daily News of her involvement with the Business Incubator. “People pay $500 an hour for consulting that we get for free by the water cooler.”

COMMENT:  Why, the sneaky little capitalist scoundrel.  She's been one of us all this time, or maybe just a Kremlin spy.

Whatever she is, it seems to change from day to day.  Next week, corporate mogul.

Another POP, Person of the people.

July 6, 2018       Permalink

WE MUST BEWARE OF PROGRESS! – AT 1:30 P.M. ET:  The Democratic Party, plunging headlong in defense of its right to commit suicide and end the agony, is actually protesting today's jobs report, which is superb.  First, the report, from CNS:

(CNSNews.com) - "Our economic policy can be summed up in three very simple but beautiful but beautiful words," President Donald Trump told a rally in Montana Thursday evening: "Jobs, jobs, jobs," he said.

On Friday, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 213,000 jobs in June, a strong number; the number of employed Americans, 155,576,000, set its tenth record of the Trump presidency; but the number of unemployed Americans  (which includes people who are actively looking for jobs) increased by almost half-a-million.  The unemployment rate increased two tenths of a point to 4.0 percent.

In June, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 257,642,000. Of those, 162,140,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 162,140,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.9 percent of the 257,642,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population, a slight increase from last month's 62.7 percent.

But Nancy Pelosi, fighting for her job as leader of the increasingly deranged Democrats, sent us the kind message: 

The June #JobsReport shows what is at stake from the brewing storm of rising health costs, spiraling trade uncertainty & an economy being hollowed out to enrich big corporations & the wealthiest 1 percent. Americans deserve better than the GOP’s raw deal.

COMMENT:  It's so terrible I can hardly contain my grief.  All those people working.  All that food on the table.  And...what's this?  A Honda in the garage?  Traitors.  Deplorables.  Global warmers.  Hillary was right.  Full employment is for the dumb masses!

I need my pills.

July 6,  2018     Permalink