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OCTOBER 24,  2017

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

GREATEST SCANDAL IN HISTORY – FROM DAILY MAIL:  An actress alleged that President George H.W. Bush 'sexually assaulted' her and touched her from behind while in his wheelchair, and now Bush has apologized saying it was an 'attempt at humor.'   Heather Lind, 34, who starred in AMC's series 'Turn: Washington's Spies' made the allegations against the 93-year-old former president on Instagram in a lengthy post with accompanying photos.  'When I got the chance to meet George H. W. Bush four years ago to promote a historical television show I was working on, he sexually assaulted me while I was posing for a similar photo. He didn't shake my hand. He touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side. He told me a dirty joke,' Lind alleges.  I guess we'll have to put Bush in jail, or maybe even send him to the gallows.  Look, I don't defend improper behavior, but the sudden gang-up of recent weeks makes a mockery of a serious issue.

COMPLETELY NUTS – FROM BREITBART:   Fox Sports 1’s “Undisputed” brought civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson on to discuss the National Anthem protests in the NFL.  Jackson bashed Trump for referring to the anthem kneelers as “sons of b******,” and then took aim at the NFL.  “To go from picking cotton balls to picking footballs and basketballs without freedom is not very much progress,” Jackson said Monday.  That is absolutely disgraceful, and an insult to all those who've worked for civil rights.  Jesse Jackson's turn to get off the stage was sometime in the last century.

EVERYBODY'S GOT TO BE SOMETHIN' – FROM NBC WASHINGTON:   To celebrate Samhain, a Wiccan festival that falls on the evening of Oct. 31, Washington, D.C. resident Elizabeth Stephens usually prepares a pot of jambalaya to honor her late grandmother and a plate of roast beef in memory of her parents. She marks the festival with witches and fellow Wiccans, who offer their own dishes as a part of the day’s feast. The table they set becomes patterned with platters that were the favorites of family members and friends.  As a part of the celebration, a black cloth is held above the heads of the attendees and cut with a knife through the center, representing an opening between the spirit and material worlds. After some time has passed, participants encourage the spirits to return to their realm and the cut in the cloth is sewn.   Sounds more efficient than Congress.

October 24, 2017       Permalink

ANOTHER STEP FORWARD IN EDUCATION – AT 2:56 P.M. ET:   Yeah, forward.  That's what they label it on today's college campuses.  From Daily Caller:  

A University of Illinois math professor believes that algebra and geometry perpetuate “white privilege” because Greek terms give Caucasians unearned credit for the subject.

But that isn’t the professor’s only complaint. She also believes that evaluations for math proficiency perpetuates discrimination against minority students, if they do worse than their white counterparts.

Rochelle Gutierrez argues in a newly published math education book for teachers that they must be aware of the identity politics surrounding the subject of mathematics.

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”

Gutierrez argues that subjects like algebra and geometry, which relate to arithmetic, also perpetuate racism and white privilege. She worries that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”

COMMENT:  When will some "leader" step forward and tell this teacher how much harm she is doing to minority kids?  She's turning them into perpetual victims, with an excuse machine all prepared for them. 

That, of course, is the objective.  Keep the peasants down so we can control them, and the revolution.

October 24, 2017       Permalink

THIS IS ABSURD – AT 11:30 A.M. ET:  A traditional gimmick of the Soviet Union was to declare political opponents mentally ill.  They'd be sent to the Gulag, and they disappeared into "treatment programs."

The left in America periodically tries the same gimmick.  They tried it with Goldwater, Nixon, occasionally with Reagan, and now full blast with Trump.  Strange, we never hear of any liberal declared mentally ill.  From Buzzfeed:   

A member of the House Intelligence Committee is going where many of her colleagues have not: reaching out to people in the mental health field to talk about President Donald Trump.

“It’s one thing from my non-professional, non-clinical standpoint [to] believe that someone does not have the capacity to do the job, it’s another thing to talk to experts and [those] who can deal with mental psychosis on a daily basis, so I wanted to hear from them,” Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, told BuzzFeed News.

Speier is one of the most left-leaning members of Congress.

While many Democrats have steered clear of speculation about Trump, Speier appears not to be alone in talking to mental health professionals. Half a dozen lawmakers have contacted Bandy Lee, a psychiatry professor at Yale, to talk about the president’s mental state over the past several months, Lee told BuzzFeed News. Although Lee wouldn’t identify the politicians, she said they were Democrats in both the House and Senate.

Speier said she has not spoken with Lee, but that she reached out to two experts to discuss Trump’s mental health, including John Gartner, a psychologist. Gartner is the founder of Duty to Warn, a network of mental health experts across the country making a concerted push into politics and who appear to be circumventing their profession's own rules about diagnosing public figures they have never evaluated themselves. (The traditional concept of a “duty to warn,” ingrained in law in most states, says mental health professionals who have reason to believe a patient may become dangerous or violent toward others must reveal that information, or else risk legal liability.)

Without having directly evaluated him, the group is arguing that the president, as Gartner put it recently, is “deeply and dangerously psychologically disordered."

The roughly two dozen vocal mental health professionals involved in the group have drawn harsh criticism from others in the industry who argue that their statements have little clinical basis and risk casting their field in an unprofessional light and stigmatizing mental illness.

“The solution to Trump is not psychological name-calling, it’s political action,” Allen Frances, former chair of the department of psychiatry at Duke, told BuzzFeed News.

COMMENT:  And that, of course, is the point.  The Dems couldn't win the election, so they fall back on the old left-wing argument that their opponent is deranged. 

Both Lincoln and Winston Churchill had moments of severe depression – Churchill called it the black dog – but neither man was tossed from office. 

October 24, 2017       Permalink

AN IMPORTANT STATEMENT – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:   One of our biggest headaches in the Mideast has been the extreme brand of Islam that Saudi Arabia spread throughout the world.  Some 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers were Saudi.

But there is a change now, at least an announced change.  And it's a good change if carried out.  From AFP:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday vows to restore “moderate, open” Islam in a kingdom known for its ultra-conservative rule.

“We are returning to what we were before — a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” he says at an economic forum in Riyadh.

“We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today,” he adds. “We will end extremism very soon.”

The crown prince’s statement is the most direct attack by a top official on the Gulf country’s influential conservative religious establishment.

Since his sudden appointment on June 21, Prince Mohammed has pushed ahead with reforms. He is widely regarded as the force behind King Salman’s decision last month to lift a longstanding ban on women driving

COMMENT:  If he does what he says, it could transform a good part of the Mideast and a good part of Islam.  We hope the crown prince has a long life, and completes his vision.

It has also been widely reported that there are now regular contacts between Saudi Arabia and Israel, bringing the Saudis closer to the Western orbit.  All to the good.

October 24,  2017     Permalink

OCTOBER 23,  2017

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

WHY ARE WE STILL HERE? – FROM THE INDEPENDENT:  Our universe shouldn't exist, scientists say.  The most elite scientists in the world are still struggling to find why exactly our universe didn't destroy itself as soon as it came into existence. That's what science says should have happened – but it clearly hasn't, since you're here reading this, as far as we know.  At the beginning of the universe, according to the standard model, there were equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. The trouble with that is that they would each have annihilated each other, leaving none of the matter that surrounds us today.  But if our universe didn't exist, we wouldn't have CNN.  Hmm.  Okay, blow it up.

WILL WE EVER LEARN? – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:  The illegal immigrant whose case turned Massachusetts into a “sanctuary” state is behind bars yet again.  Police say he committed a stunning daylight robbery by taking a wheelchair-bound woman, slapping her and stealing the $2,000 she had just carried out of the bank.  Sreynuon Lunn had been free on the streets of Boston because his home country won’t take him back, leaving immigration officers no choice but to release him under a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.  His case gained headlines over the summer when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that state and local authorities could no longer legally hold immigrants for pickup by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Now ICE is trying to decide whether to try again to pick up and deport Lunn, even as he faces local charges from the latest robbery.  I always thought that the federal government controlled immigration policy.  Maybe I'm just old-school. 

POISONOUS ATMOSPHERE – FROM AOL:  A principal in Massachusetts has issued an apology after a mock tombstone for President Trump was displayed at a school Halloween event. “Our school, and this includes school events sponsored by related groups, is not the place for politics,“ Dr. Telena Imel wrote in a letter sent to the parents of students at West Parish Elementary. "In planning future events, it will be made clear to organizers that school is not the place to engage in or to display political agendas or opinions.”  We are getting more and more reports of anti-Trump hatred that is so great that it spills over into suggestions that something awful should happen to the president. 

October 23,  2017     Permalink 

IS THE "RUSSIA ISSUE" SUBJECT TO CHANGE? – AT 11:11:20 A.M. ET:   Have you noticed that the word "collusion" seems to be fading away?  From the Washington Examiner: 

Have you noticed? In recent public comments, the lawmakers investigating the Trump-Russia affair, along with some of the commentators who dissect its every development, seem to be focusing more on the facts of Russia's attempts to interfere with the 2016 election and less on allegations that Donald Trump or his associates colluded with those efforts.

Some of that could be just an impression. But the fact is, the subjects that have dominated discussion of the Trump-Russia matter lately -- Facebook and other social media ads and the most recent update from Senate Intelligence Committee leaders Richard Burr and Mark Warner -- do not necessarily point toward collusion. Rather, more often than not, the latest talk points toward Russian "active measures," that is, the effort to disrupt the 2016 campaign.

Why the change?

"Because that's where the evidence is going," one lawmaker who follows the matter closely told me in a text exchange. "I mean, things could always change, but that observation is just the reality of the situation right now, as I see it."

"Because they've been spinning their wheels on something for which evidence has yet to emerge," said another lawmaker.

COMMENT:  Raises serious questions about how the mainstream media has handled this issue.  The media had Trump guilty before a single hearing was held or a single witness sworn.

Donald Trump may be his own worst enemy – he is – but the media can be its worst enemy as well.  If the press cannot be believed, the bad guys in government and industry get a pass.

October 23, 2017       Permalink

IT AIN'T JUST NUKES – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  We've been focusing on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.  They apparently are working on a broader canvas.  From The Sun: 

KIM Jong-un is feared to be secretly mass producing biological weapons to unleash nightmarish plagues on US troops, a report has found.

Under the cover of a farm lab, it is claimed North Korean chemists could be weaponising some the world’s deadliest diseases such as smallpox, Black Death and cholera which could lay waste to millions of people if an epidemic was sparked.

Radio Free Asia cited a report released by Belfer Centre of Harvard University’s Kennedy School, which says the rogue state already has biological weapons.

And it is feared that North Korea has the industrial facilities to mass produce them, flouting a UN ban on the doomsday weapons.

The chilling report states that the highly infectious diseases could be spread via a missile, drones, planes and sprayers. 

North Korea's 200,000 special forces could also unleash the bio-weapons.

The report states: “While nuclear programs can be monitored by the number of nuclear tests and the success of missile tests, weaponise and cultivating pathogens can stay invisible behind closed doors.

COMMENT:  Such a dangerous world, and our college students are seeking "safe spaces" on campuses, places where they're free from any idea with which they disagree.

We are not ready.

October 23, 2017       Permalink

COUNT ONE IN – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  It's not too early to think about the 2020 presidential election.  The Republicans may have just gotten the first primary challenger to Donald Trump.  From Daily Mail:

Billionaire Mark Cuban has said that if he were to run for president in 2020, then he would run as a Republican and would therefore challenge the incumbent, Donald Trump, in the party's primary.

'I think there’s a place for somebody who is socially a centrist but I’m very fiscally conservative,' Cuban said in a Sunday night interview at his Dallas, Texas home with Fox News show 'OBJECTified'.

Cuban discussed with the show's host, Harvey Levin, how he fashions himself as 'fiercely independent' but would decide to run as a Republican under the United States two-party system.

'We’re going into an era where people want someone who comes up with solutions. I think we’re going into a time where you need somebody who can connect to people and relate to people at a base level and appreciate what they’re going through.

'And I think I qualify on each of those,' Cuban said.

The Dallas Mavericks owner also said that he is asked '100 times a day' whether or not he would run. He said that on a 1-10 scale of the likelihood of him running, he is currently at a '4'.

Sounds more like a six to me.

Cuban also discussed how he initially supported Donald Trump. He eventually endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Speaking of Trump, he said: 'I liked the fact that he was honest, outspoken, that he wasn't like I told him a Stepford candidate.'

In late September, Cuban said that Trump needs to be able to 'take the blowback' after criticizing the NFL and revoking a White House invitation to Golden State Warriors' star Stephen Curry.

'If the president's going to say something condemning a person, an industry, a sport, then he's got to be able to take the blowback that's going to come back,' Cuban told NBC News.

COMMENT:  I wonder if we'll see a trend toward businessmen and businesswomen running for the presidency.  I would not be surprised.

Of course, at this stage everything is speculation.  Donald Trump may not run again.  He may not be able to for some medical reason.  He might be an impeached president.  We might have another serious terror attack.  Who knows.

I don't see a particularly strong bench in either party. 

October 23,  2017     Permalink