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JULY 31,  2018

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

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO PARADISE – FROM CBC:  The Ontario basic income pilot project is coming to an end, says Children, Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod.  MacLeod said Tuesday that the project was expensive, and "clearly not the answer for Ontario families."  She said the ministry would have "more details at a later date" about how the government would end the project.  Close to 4,000 people were enrolled in the basic income pilot program in Thunder Bay, Lindsay, Hamilton, Brantford and Brant County.  The pilot project started in April 2017. It was originally set to last three years, and explore the effectiveness of providing a basic income to those living on low incomes — whether they were working or not.  People learn that handouts do not build an economy, or provide more jobs, or provide any incentives.  But don't tell Bernie Sanders or our little Evita here in New York.

AND IN THE REAL WORLD – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:  A Russian national or any other noncitizen can easily influence a U.S. election by simply registering to vote in California — just ask Elizaveta Shuvalova.  Ms. Shuvalova said she didn’t even know her name was added to the San Francisco voter rolls in 2012, when she was a 21-year-old Russian citizen living legally in the U.S. but ineligible to vote.  “I’ve never registered for anything in my entire life,” said Ms. Shuvalova, who became a U.S. citizen early last year. “This is news to me.”  The Washington Times obtained a San Francisco County voter log that detailed Ms. Shuvalova’s registration history and presented the document to her.  It showed that she signed up as a Democrat in July 2012 and that her registration was canceled in May 2016 after she told election officials she wasn’t a citizen. Her registration, as a Republican, was reactivated in March 2017.  Do you feel that this may be the tip of the iceberg? 

AND THE WEIRDNESS GOES ON – FROM FOX:   Organizers of a long-running initiative to secure California’s secession from the United States now say they want to give away nearly half of the state, including all of its federal land, to form an “autonomous Native American nation.”  “Calexit,” as the proposal for California’s secession is known, was given the green light by the state government earlier this year to begin collecting signatures to place the measure on the November ballot. Advocates had until mid-October to gather 365,880 signatures of registered voters to put it up for a statewide vote.  But the revamp announced by Calexit’s founders on Tuesday adds an additional objective: constructing “the first ever autonomous Native American nation in North America,” by giving Native Americans all federal lands in the state, running from the border with Mexico to the state boundary shared with Oregon.  And what if Native Americans don't actually want this?  Have these white egotists ever consulted them?

July 31, 2018       Permalink

MORE ECONOMIC GAIN – AT 11:04 P.M. ET:  One complaint about the Trump economy has been that wages aren't growing enough.  That may be changing.  From StarTribune.com: 

WASHINGTON — U.S. workers saw their annual wages and benefits rise in the second quarter at the fastest pace in nearly a decade, a sign that the low unemployment rate is forcing employers to raise pay to attract and keep workers.

Pay and benefits for all U.S. workers increased 2.8 percent in the April-June quarter from a year earlier, the most since the third quarter of 2008. Total compensation for private industry workers — which excludes state and local employees — rose 2.9 percent, the best since the second quarter of 2008.

The unemployment rate is near an 18-year low of 4 percent, leaving employers scrambling to find the workers they need. There are more open jobs than there are unemployed workers, according to government data, for the first time since records began in 2000.

A separate measure of wages and salaries for private sector workers rose 2.9 percent in the past year, matching March's gain and the highest in nearly a decade.

COMMENT:  All to the good, but the Republicans must make much better political use of this progress than they've been doing.   Americans must feel the economy getting better, and I have to believe that most have that sense.  The Democrats will argue – it's their standard line – that only the rich have been helped, which is simply not the case.

The economy can produce a miracle at the polls in November.  If the Dems control either house of Congress, we are in for trouble of the socialist kind.

July 31, 2018       Permalink

THE GENERAL STAYS – AT 12:30 P.M. ET:   The rumors were rampant.  Gen. John Kelly, White House chief of staff, was on his way out.  No question about it.  Publishers salivated over a tell-all book about the evil TRUMP (!!!!) or PENCE (!!!).

Uh, not so fast.  From Reuters: 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House Chief of Staff John Kelly plans to stay in his post through the presidential election until 2020, a White House official told Reuters, putting to rest months of speculation that the retired military general would be the next to leave U.S. President Donald Trump’s inner circle.

The news of Kelly staying on was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said that Kelly told White House staff on Monday that Trump had asked him to remain in the position and he agreed.

Kelly had been widely expected to depart the post sometime this summer. Trump has occasionally chafed at the restrictions Kelly has placed on who has access to see him, and had considered replacing Kelly with Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, or Nick Ayers, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence.

COMMENT:  This is good.  It provides an aura of stability to an administration that is regularly ridiculed as chaotic, which it is not.

Should Kelly ultimately reverse his decision, Trump could bring in Bernie Sanders to give him some experience.

July 31, 2018       Permalink

PRESIDENT GAINS – AT 10:06 A.M. ET:  Look, it's midsummer, and the hills are alive with the sound of padded newscasts and the papers are filled with fillers – stories and columns of little significance put there to fill space because many of the newsmakers are on vacation or taking some time off. 

So, polls are always interesting, even if they're often inaccurate, but the Rasmussen poll is especially interesting because it has a history of accuracy, and it's the only daily tracker left.  And we may, I stress may, be seeing a little bounceback in the president's popularity in Rasmussen: 

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

The latest figures include 35% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 43% who Strongly Disapprove.

COMMENT:  This probably reflects public reaction to last week's good economic news.  By contrast, there are a number of "analytical" pieces out, some from conservative sources, saying that it looks like a Democratic blue wave is building for the November elections.

Of course, that can happen.  It often happens in the first midterm following a new president's inauguration.  The president loses votes.  Not always, but most of the time.

Some analysts are saying that dislike of President Trump may drive the Republicans down, even though the economy is roaring.  And yes, it is true, some of the state polls are becoming discouraging.  But two months ago they were pretty good for us, and that can happen again.  The serious campaigning hasn't begun.  In a way, it may be good for the Republicans to have some fear injected into them, so they'll start hustling and get out the vote.

And remember, many of the polling organizations were seriously off in 2016, and haven't changed their methods.  Just fight hard and drive someone to the polls.

July 31,  2018     Permalink

JULY 30,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:16 P.M. ET: 

AN INVOICE FOR BERNIE SANDERS – FROM FOX:  WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bernie Sanders's   "Medicare for all" plan would increase government health care spending by $32.6 trillion over 10 years, according to a study by a university-based libertarian policy center.  That's trillion with a "T."  The latest plan from the Vermont independent would require historic tax increases as government replaces what employers and consumers now pay for health care, according to the analysis being released Monday by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. It would deliver significant savings on administration and drug costs, but increased demand for care would drive up spending, the analysis found.  Sanders's plan builds on Medicare, the popular insurance program for seniors. All U.S. residents would be covered with no copays and deductibles for medical services. The insurance industry would be relegated to a minor role.  The basic problem here, aside from the vast cost, is that we'd have one medical system.  No competition.  No incentive to improve quality or reduce costs.  Pure socialism.  No good.

DON'T PULL THE TRIGGER – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:  So-called “trigger warnings” may be harming the people they purport to help, according to a new study published by psychologists at Harvard University.  In the study, published Friday in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, researchers assigned 270 participants to read 10 passages from classical literature, five of which contained no distressing material and five of which contained distressing material, such as depictions of murder.  The participants were divided into two groups. One group was given a trigger warning before each passage, which read: “TRIGGER WARNING: The passage you are about to read contains disturbing content and may trigger an anxiety response, especially in those who have a history of trauma.”  The second group received no trigger warnings.  The study found that participants who received trigger warnings ended up with a more fragile view of what they and others would be capable of after experiencing trauma.  Why am I not shocked?  Common sense tells us that people are made stronger by confronting a problem, not running away from it.  We see this in real life every day. 

HOW GOES TWITTER – FROM THE TELEGRAPH:  Twitter has hired academics from institutions including Oxford University to help it combat “intolerant discourse” and monitor the “health” of the social network.   The firm is working with social psychology Professor Miles Hewstone and John Gallacher, along with Dr Marc Heerdink from the University of Amsterdam, to study the spread of hate speech.   The move is part of Twitter’s aim to create algorithms that better distinguish between hate speech and conversations that break the “norms of politeness”.  Why do I think the combination of Twitter and the academic world may not be good for our side?  I'm sure I'm just overly concerned.  Right?

July 30,  2018     Permalink

SAD REPORT – AT 1:51 P.M. ET:  A major report has been issued about the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 in 2014 – one of commercial aviation's greatest mysteries.   From Fox: 

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was likely steered off course deliberately by someone and flew over the Southern Indian Ocean for over seven hours after communications were severed, according to a safety report into the disaster released Monday.

The report by a 19-member international team provided no firm conclusions about what happened, and the head of the MH370 safety investigation team said that more definitive answers could come if the plane's wreckage and black boxes are found.

The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished March 8, 2014, and is presumed to have crashed in the far southern Indian Ocean. The report noted that it was difficult for the aircraft's course change to be attributed to mechanical or system failures.

"It is more likely that such maneuvers are due to the systems being manipulated," the report said.

The report released Monday added that there was insufficient information to determine if the aircraft broke up in the air, or during impact with the ocean.

Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon said during a media briefing there was no evidence of abnormal behavior or stress among the two pilots – Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid – that could lead them to hijack the plane. All the passengers were also cleared by police and had no pilot training, the investigator said.

“We are not of the opinion it could have been an event committed by the pilots,” Kok said, adding that investigators were not ruling out any possibility since the aircraft's change in course was manually done and the systems in the plane were also manually turned off, according to Reuters.

COMMENT:  Well, I dunno.  I'm not an expert.  But when they say the plane was likely steered off course deliberately, and they then clear the crew, what are you left with?  The report speculates that some third party might have been involved – suggesting remote control – but I wonder if that is simply a face-saving statement.  Politics enters into these reports when they're done by certain countries.  Nations are extremely reluctant to blame crew members of their own airlines for the intentional downing of an airliner. 

In 1999 an Egyptian plane went down in the Atlantic (EgyptAir Flight 990), and our National Transportation Safety Board put the blame squarely on a suicidal co-pilot, and provided documentation from a black box.  But Egypt refused to accept the verdict.

So what is now believed about the Malaysian jet is that it was downed intentionally.  Maybe someday the black boxes will be found.

July 30, 2018       Permalink

BULLETIN:  RAND PAUL AN "AYE" ON JUDGE KAVANAUGH – AT 12:31 P.M. ET:   The Republican senator from Kentucky had been an "undecided" until today.  From The Hill:

GOP Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) on Monday said that he will support President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“After meeting Judge Kavanaugh and reviewing his record, I have decided to support his nomination,” Paul said in a statement.

He added that while no one will “ever completely agree with a nominee,” they “must be judged on the totality of their views, character, and opinions.”

Paul, who previously described himself as “honestly undecided,” has remained tight-lipped since his meeting with Kavanaugh last week, which lasted for more than an hour.

But a person familiar with the discussions previously told The Hill that Paul raised concerns about Kavanaugh as Trump was weighing who to select to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy. 

And Paul was widely considered a potential swing vote because of his positions on the Fourth Amendment, which established the constitutional right to privacy.

“I have expressed my concern over Judge Kavanaugh’s record on warrantless bulk collection of data and how that might apply to very important privacy cases before the Supreme Court,” Paul said on Monday.

COMMENT:  Paul's decision does not guarantee confirmation for Judge Kavanaugh, but it represents a major hurdle that is overcome.  We now await decisions by Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both pro-choice Republicans.  If they both decide to support Kavanaugh, it will probably be all over.  That's what we're hoping for.

July 30, 2018       Permalink

WHERE THE PRESIDENT STANDS – AT 11:37 A.M. ET:  We have marveled recently at President Trump's resilience in the polls, despite the ongoing, and growing, onslaught against him by the press.  That resilience continues, as the president opens in a good position this week.  From Rasmussen: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 47% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove. 

The latest figures include 34% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 43% who Strongly Disapprove.

COMMENT:  These are the first numbers to be published after the spectacular economic report released Friday.  The president is at least holding his own.

We'll check the chart the rest of the week.  Clearly, the White House would like to see Mr. Trump at over 50 percent. 

July 30,  2018     Permalink