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DECEMBER 20,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:57 P.M. ET:

NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN...WELL...YOU KNOW – FROM AP:    ATLANTA (AP) -- Authorities say a former U.S. postal worker is charged with delaying and destroying mail after investigators found about 4,500 pieces of mail in the woods outside Atlanta.  Prosecutors say 25-year-old Thomas O. Beaurem of McDonough was indicted by a federal grand jury on the charge. He has pleaded not guilty.  Investigators say they found the mail in a wooded area in Decatur, and some pieces of the mail that was dumped had cancellation dates as early as Oct. 5. The Postal Service was first informed of the undelivered mail Oct. 18.  Authorities said that some of the correspondence was too badly damaged to deliver, but other mail from the woods has since been delivered.   Hillary would have made him postmaster-general.

THE DEMS HAVE AT LEAST ONE MATURE SENATOR – FROM BREITBART:   On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) stated that people “just gotta get over” President-Elect Donald Trump’s election in response to efforts to deny Trump a victory.  Manchin reacted to efforts to deny Trump an electoral victory by saying, “People just gotta get over it and go on. I mean, let’s get on with governing this country, making us the world leader, and keeping — maintaining that superpower status. And that means we’ve all got to get behind our president, whether you voted for him or not, and work with him, and try to make him successful, and be respectful if we disagree and find a different path forward. But I’m just — I mean, this is taking too much time and energy. There’s too much — too many other things to be concerned about. And I think we have the greatest system of democracy in the world. It’s not perfect. They’re going to make some mistakes, but it’s one we can trust. Now, I trust it, and I feel very comfortable with it.”  Sounds like a man who might switch parties if conditions are right.  West Virginia is becoming increasingly Republican and went for Trump.  Manchin is up for re-election in two years.

AT LEAST THERE WAS A FAIR INQUIRY – FROM HEATSTREET:  Two Babson College students who were alleged to have yelled racial slurs at black women during a celebration of Donald Trump’s election victory have been cleared of any wrongdoing.  After the election, Parker Rand-Ricciardi and Edward Tomasso decided to go out and celebrate their candidate’s win. They did so by driving onto the nearby Wellesley campus, an all-women college, with a Trump flag flying proudly.  Students at Wellesley, however, told a different story. Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso, they said, spit on a student and shouted “racial and homophobic slurs while parked in front of the Harambee House, an on-campus gathering place traditionally meant for African-American students.” As a result of that, the two students were told to leave the Babson campus and not return until Dec. 11.  But no one was ever able to prove that the two students did anything other than yell “Make America Great Again.”  On Monday, the school officially ruled that Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso did nothing wrong. Babson did not, however, apologize to the students for Babson President Kerry Healey’s apology to Wellesley, or for several professors signing a letter condemning the now-disproven actions on the night of Nov. 8.  I don't know what the facts are.  I wasn't there.  But at least the boys got what appears to be a fair hearing, which is rare in today's colleges and universities.  False charges are common.  This was handled correctly,  If the boys are innocent, justice has been served.  If they're actually guilty, they'll probably do something dumb again and get caught.  I hope they're innocent.

January 20, 2016       Permalink

OH PLEASE – AT 12:27 P.M. ET:  This is going much too far.  From College Fix: 

It’s going to be an interesting coming four years, to say the least.

According to The Huffington Post, three professors, two from Harvard and another from UC-San Francisco, tell the president in a letter dated November 29 that they have a “grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect.”

“Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally,” they write. “Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office.”

The profs — Judith Herman, Nanette Gartrell, and Dee Mosbacher — “strongly recommend” Mr. Trump get a “full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation” before assuming his duties as president.

COMMENT:  This was tried by psychiatrists in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran for president on the Republican ticket.  A group of shrinks got together and claimed he was psychiatrically unqualified.  Their outrageous "diagnosis" of a man they'd never met led to the stiffening of ethical standards for psychiatrists.

Now we find three professors doing pretty much the same time to Donald Trump, while inserting the qualifying language that they cannot actually do a diagnosis, but urging someone else to do it.

Trump might have some mental-health issues.  So might Obama.  So might Bill Clinton, given his sexual behavior.  But why is it that "professionals" are only concerned about conservatives?

Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, George McGovern's choice for vice president in 1972, had to leave the ticket because of psychiatric issues, but he had an actual history of treatment.

I know very little about this area.  Maybe there should be some means of evaluating candidates.  But the standard should be applied equally.  This new stunt looks entirely political, not medical.

January 20, 2016       Permalink

THE POWER OF PENCE – AT 11:15 A.M. ET:   Amidst all the flurry of activity around President-elect Trump, one element that's been largely ignored is the growing influence and power of Vice-President-elect Mike Pence.   He seems on track to be, possibly, the most consequential vice presidents in recent history.  From TIME: 

There is no one in America, save the President-elect himself, who has more responsibility to make Trump’s first term a success. Key among Pence’s tasks, after staffing the new Administration and keeping the peace with conservative activists, is finding a way to reach across party lines to make the government work. Perhaps that’s why he described his meeting with Pelosi as the first of many, called her “a worthy opponent” and reflected fondly on their debates over the years in the House. That same day, he offered incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer his personal cell-phone number with an open invitation to call. “Politics is the art of the possible, and knowing people and having relationships is finding out what is possible,” Pence told TIME weeks later during a brief interview at Trump Tower.

After 12 years in Washington as a Congressman (before becoming governor of Indiana), Pence has been putting a lot of his relationships to work. “If the President-elect is wise enough to use him very extensively, I think he will serve himself very well,” former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels tells TIME. “So much of what Vice President Pence brings fills gaps in President Trump’s background.”

Pence has already made a mark. “One of my great decisions in life was choosing Mike Pence to be my running mate,” Trump tells TIME. “He is truly a high-quality human being, first class in every respect. He is also a talented politician who loves people and wants to help them every step of the way.”

COMMENT:  Read the whole piece.  Agree or disagree with some of Pence's positions, he is clearly a man of action, with a remarkable sense of how to move.  He might be a future president.  We could do much worse, as the history of the last eight years demonstrates.

January 20, 2016       Permalink

ONE MONTH – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  Barack Obama leaves office one month from today.  It can't come fast enough.  More than being a failed president, this is a man who has shattered some of the fundamental ideals of the United States.  Leon Wieseltier, at the Washington Post, accurately articulates what this president has done: 

Contemplating the extermination of Aleppo and its people, I was reminded of a sentence that I read this summer. It appeared in an encomium to Elie Wiesel shortly after his death. It was a sterling sentence. It declared: “We must never be bystanders to injustice or indifferent to suffering.” That was Wiesel’s teaching, exactly. The problem with the sentence is that it was issued by the White House and attributed to President Obama. And so the sentence was not at all sterling. It was outrageously hypocritical.

How dare Obama, and members of his administration, speak this way? After five years and more in which the United States’ inaction in Syria has transformed our country into nothing other than a bystander to the greatest atrocity of our time, they have forfeited the right to this language. Their angry and anguished utterances are merely the manipulation of the rhetoric of conscience on behalf of a policy without a trace of conscience. You cannot be cold-hearted and high-minded at the same time. Historians will record — they will not have to dig deeply or interpret wildly to conclude — that all through the excruciations of Aleppo, and more generally of Syria, the United States watched. As we watched, we made excuses, and occasionally we ornamented our excuses with eloquence. The president is enamored of his eloquence. But eloquence is precisely what the wrenching circumstances do not require of him. In circumstances of moral (and strategic) emergency, his responsibility is not to move us. It is to pick up the phone. “Elie did more than just bear witness,” Obama said in his eulogy, “he acted.” And he added: “Just imagine the peace and justice that would be possible in our world if more people lived a little more like Elie Wiesel.” Just imagine.

COMMENT:  The most important responsibility of a president is foreign policy, which includes national defense.  There is an old saying in American politics that you can take four years of a bad domestic policy, but that four years of a bad foreign policy can be fatal.

We've now had eight years of a ridiculous, appeasement-ridden, hypocritical foreign policy, presided over by a cold man who speaks well, and carried out first by henchwoman Hillary Clinton and then by ace incompetent John Kerry.  It will be a relief to see the moving vans pull up to the White House.

At the same time we have no reason to rest.  While Donald Trump has taken a firm stand on terrorism, his curious relationship with Vladimir Putin deserves serious scrutiny.  His feet must be held to the fire.  We have seen what Obama's weakness has brought.  We don't need it repeated.

January 20,  2016     Permalink 

DECEMBER 19,  2016

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

NO STYLE – FROM BREITBART:  Political pollster and analyst Pat Caddell told Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Monday that, concerning the Obamas leaving the White House, “We are watching this ending here. It’s not quite as bad as the Clintons … but the lack of grace, that’s what’s missing here.”    Caddell continued, “The Bush people, they had a certain conduct. … George W. Bush kept his mouth shut about Obama forever. What’s Obama doing saying, ‘I’m going to be back here right after vacation. … I need to be in Washington. I need to comment’? Where’s the part where you gracefully leave the stage?”  Additionally, pointing out that, post-election, no one in major media was fired or demoted for getting the election so wrong. “None of them have been fired. Are you kidding?” he said.  “The pollsters who are bad,” he continued, “what are they doing? They’re back with new polls this week.”  Said Caddell, “The media has forgotten that the election even happened. They are giving no ground on anything.”  He is absolutely right.  The left is increasingly contemptuous of elections or any other democratic norms.  Their concept of democracy is that it's something that happens only when their side wins.

ANOTHER ONE WITH NO CLASS – FROM THE POLITICO:   President-elect Donald Trump “doesn’t know much,” former President Bill Clinton told a local newspaper earlier this month, but “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.”  Clinton spoke to a reporter from The Record-Review, a weekly newspaper serving the towns of Bedford and Pound Ridge, New York, not far from the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York. The former president held court on Dec. 10 in Pleasantville, New York, where he took questions from the reporter and other customers inside a small bookstore.  On the question of Russian cyberattacks damaging the candidacy of his wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the former president said “you would need to have a single-digit IQ not to recognize what was going on.” But he blamed FBI Director James Comey for her loss, telling those gathered around him that he had “cost her the election” by announcing with less than two weeks to go before the election that the bureau was examining fresh evidence related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.  I can understand disappointing.  Fantasy is another story.  Bill Clinton knows full well what happened and whose fault it was.  Maybe he's just trying to avoid another family blowup.

LATE NEWS ON TERROR – FROM FOX:    The man believed to have driven a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin Monday evening had come to Germany as a refugee from Pakistan this past February, multiple German media outlets reported.  The attack killed at least 12 people and left 48 others injured. Officials in Germany and the United States have described the crash as an apparent terror attack, though no group has claimed responsibility.  If confirmed, the revelations are likely to heap more pressure onto German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose decision to accept waves of migrants from Africa and the Middle East has stoked controversy and unsettled Germany and Europe.  Der Tagesspiegel reported that the suspect, whom the paper said was Afghan or Pakistani, was known to police for multiple minor offenses, but had not made the radar of anti-terror authorities. The dpa press agency reported that the suspect used multiple names, making it difficult for authorities to confirm his actual identity.   Watch.  The mainstream media will blame the attack on frustration with Donald Trump.  Don't be shocked.

December 19,  2016     Permalink

BULLETIN – AT 5:46 P.M. ET:  The Electoral College has elected Donald Trump as president of the United States.   Some votes still need to be tallied, but Trump has 304 votes, some 34 more than needed for election.  There was no revolt among electors.

NEWS NOTE:  The Electoral College votes today to formalize the election of Donald Trump.  Electors meet in their state capitols.  Despite all the craziness going on, especially the attempts to influence electors to abandon Trump and vote for someone else, the vote will probably be routine, and the results essentially the same as what we expect. 

LIKE OLD MAN RIVER – AT 10:51 A.M. ET:  The "reasons" for the Democratic loss just keep rolling along.  Maybe the Dems should just practice some silence.  From The Hill:   

President Obama is blaming his party's electoral losses this year on Democrats' failure to "show up" and make their argument all around the country.

In an interview with NPR broadcast Monday, the president said the country has a "scrambled political landscape."

"There are some things that we know are a challenge for Democrats — structural problems," he said.

Obama noted that Democratic voters are often clustered in urban areas and on the coasts.

"So as a consequence, you've got a situation where there're not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose," he said.

"And we can lose badly, and that's what happened in this election."

Obama said he doesn't think the Democratic Party's problem is its core argument. The values presented by the Democratic Party have strong support, he said, citing the minimum wage.

"There are clearly, though, failures on our part to give people in rural areas or in exurban areas a sense day-to-day that we're fighting for them or connected to them," he said.

COMMENT:  I'm glad he noticed.  Only now are Democrats starting to realize the full extent of their electoral disaster.  It's not just the presidency that's involved.  The party is in its worst political position in almost a hundred years.  The House, the Senate, state legislatures, governorships – all centers of Democratic loss. 

Will the party change?  Will it move back to the center left?  Will it recognize its mistakes?  If the answer to all three questions isn't "yes," the Democratic Party may cease to exist as a national party.  It's partly there already. 

December 19, 2016       Permalink

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK – YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS UP – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  Another day, another conference of the oppressed.  This one, partly paid for with your dollars, didn't go well.  From College Fix: 

This year’s University of California Students of Color Conference unproductively devolved into something of an “oppression Olympics” between different minority groups, prompting arguments between participants and ultimately leading to some canceled sessions at the annual event.

UCLA student Jacqueline Alvarez told The College Fix as much in a recent telephone interview, standing behind an op-ed she wrote in the Daily Bruin campus newspaper detailing the same.

She described the conference not only as an “oppression Olympics” but also “a safe space gone wrong” in her opinion article.

Ralph Washington, president of UC Student Association, which organized and hosted the conference, confirmed there were “tensions” at the mid-November gathering, and that its schedule was altered.

“The Students of Color Conference is always a space when tensions get a little high,” he said in a phone interview with The College Fix. “This mirrors that nature of our lived experiences. But this year there was a lot of harm thrown around to the various organizers, and some people came into the conference without understanding what the theme of the conference was. There are constructive things that we can do to prevent this happening in the future.”

“I think that sometimes in conferences schedules are changed to meet a more pressing need. It isn’t a problem when those who are organizing the conference change things around to meet the needs of participants,” Washington said.

Washington declined to provide to The Fix a copy of an apology letter conference organizers issued to participants after the conclusion of the event.

The crux of the debate centered around the conference theme: “Fighting Anti-Blackness.” Apparently it was not communicated to students that the conference would have a particular theme this year. At the event, held at UC Irvine, students of different minority groups began arguing when it became known that the conference would focus almost exclusively on discrimination against the African American community.

In one of the larger workshops, one of the students raised a question about why the only issues being discussed were those involving anti-blackness, prompting an African-American student to respond that black students are the most oppressed, to which a Muslim student made a comment about her people being bombed in the Middle East, according to Alvarez.

COMMENT:  I've got a radical idea:  Why don't some of these students try to understand that the best antidote to "oppression" isn't another movement, or another conference, but being needed?  The words that will set these children free are math, engineering, physics, and chemistry.  Not "marching, meeting, and demonstrating." 

They cannot or will not face reality and maturity, which is at the heart of their problems. 

December 19, 2016       Permalink

MORE TROUBLE IN EUROPE – AT 9:36 A.M. ET:  In another blow to the concept of multinational agencies, a French court has come down hard on a major figure.  From The New York Times:

PARIS — Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty on Monday of criminal charges linked to the misuse of public funds during her time as France’s finance minister, a verdict that could force her out of her post.

Ms. Lagarde, who began her second five-year term at the I.M.F. in February, will not face any jail time, the judge said. The scandal has overshadowed her work at the fund, to which she was appointed in 2011, after Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as managing director when he was accused of having sexually assaulted a maid in a New York City hotel.

The move is likely to destabilize the I.M.F. as it faces a host of thorny issues, including questions over its participation in a multibillion-dollar bailout for Greece and uncertainty about the United States’ role in the organization once Donald J. Trump becomes president in January.

The verdict was a surprise, after the prosecutor in the trial said last week that the case against her was “very weak” and did not appear to be enough to win a conviction. It is a theme prosecutors have previously repeated.

COMMENT:  The importance of this verdict is that it's one more example of an international figure acting in a high-handed way.  It is one more argument that will be used by those who argue, both in Europe and America, that government must be brought closer to the people. 

While the IMF is not the European Union, it has a similar symbolic status – an international body not directly accountable to democratic institutions.  In the next few years, France will decide whether to elect those who favor withdrawal from the EU, a step Britain has already taken.  Verdicts like this will indirectly hurt the EU cause.

December 19,  2016    Permalink