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DECEMBER 2,  2018

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

COLLEGE MADNESS – FROM PJ MEDIA:  Many left-leaning students at the University of Washington-Seattle harbor feelings that Republicans and conservatives are "evil," "inhuman," or "not even a person," according to a new study led by a team of UW psychology professors.  The study, "Improving Relations among Conservatives and Liberals on a College Campus," set out to do just that: bring students from opposing sides of the political divide together in an honest attempt to cultivate empathy and understanding.  The results, published November 10 in the Journal of Contextual Behavioural Science, should raise worry for any parent with a conservative kid in college.  "Here at UW, we're a predominantly liberal campus," said Jonathan Kantor, a professor at UW and the study’s lead researcher, on Tuesday.
"But we have a decent number of students who come from small towns or rural places who are feeling politically marginalized and isolated. That's problematic," Kantor told PJ Media by phone when asked what inspired his research.  It's good to see that there are some scholars who agree that bigotry toward conservatives is problematic.  It's a start, with a long way to go.

VIRTUE SIGNALING GONE WILD – FROM FOX:  Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) joined migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, on Saturday and blasted President Trump for creating a "humanitarian crisis" at the border.
Jayapal, first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, met with migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States. She told Politico on Friday that Trump is "lying about this caravan."  "He’s trying to use people who are seeking asylum and literally running from death just for his own political benefit and that’s a disgrace," she told the outlet.  In a video posted to Jayapal's Twitter page, she stated that there needs to be a way to process asylum-seeking migrants quickly and called the situation "a humanitarian crisis of Donald Trump's making."  She's a far leftist, a socialist from Seattle, where socialism is all the rage.  But you may be sure the mainstream media will take her seriously.

TROUBLES OF THE NFL – FROM BLOOMBERG:   (Bloomberg) -- For the TV industry, this National Football League season has brought good news and bad news.  The good: Ratings for professional football -- the most valuable type of TV programming -- are up 5 percent compared with last year. NFL broadcasts are averaging 15.8 million viewers this season, boosted by record-high scoring and more competitive games.
The problem is, advertisers typically buy commercial time before the season starts and negotiate ad prices based on ratings from the previous year, and last year’s ratings were down 10 percent from 2016-17. As a result, ad revenue for NFL broadcasters like CBS Corp., Comcast Corp.’s NBC, Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN and 21st Century Fox Inc. fell 19 percent in the first two months of the season, according to Standard Media Index.  “The effects of the lower audiences last year are spilling into this season,” said James Fennessy, chief executive officer of the advertising research firm.  If this year’s NFL ratings increase holds through the end of the season, however, it could mean those TV networks will see a bump in advertising revenue next season.   I suspect the real reason for the audience increase is the fading of the "take a knee" controversy of last year.  But the NFL handles crises badly, and the league's image is tarnished.  One more round of bad publicity could be devastating.  Football, in part because of concern over serious industries, has lost a part of its luster.

December 2,  2018     Permalink

AND ABOUT THAT ELECTION – AT 2:08 P.M. ET:   We have been assured by the highest level of the punditry that we've just had a wave election, won by the purest of people.  But, as the late George Gobel used to say, wait a gosh-darned minute.  There is probably no better political analyst writing today than Salena Zito, who accurately predicted the 2016 presidential election, and gives her cool, sane analysis to the one we've just had.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Between the time Barack Obama took the oath of office in 2009 and the time Donald Trump took the oath in 2017, Democrats lost nearly 1,000 congressional, state House, and Senate seats in nearly every nook and cranny in the country. They also lost the majorities in the state legislatures, governors' offices, and statewide elected offices.

Two years into the Trump presidency, Democrats swung nearly 380 — about one-third — of those state House and Senate seats back into their column. They also flipped seven governors' seats their way as well as 40 congressional House seats, additionally regaining several of the statewide elected offices.

What does this tell us? And how will Washington, D.C., interpret these results?

In 2006, when the Democrats took the House and scored wins up and down the ballot, the party seemed to mistakenly read that as a sign that America really liked them.

Four years, billions in bailouts, and an Obamacare later, Republicans erased the Democrats' House wins and demolished the Democrats in governors’ and state legislative seat races. Republicans, in their folly, thought: Well, America must really like us now.

Eight years later, we swung again as Democrats wiped out the House Republicans' majority with fairly moderate candidates who ran on not voting for Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the House again.

And Democrats are tempted to think: Oh look, America likes us again, and we’ll just get right back on that same the path with the same leadership team, which is very good at raising money!

But does the coast-heavy Democratic leadership know anything about the districts outside of their super ZIP codes of the Beltway, California, New York, and Chicago?

COMMENT:  Read the rest of the piece.  It's an object lesson in the practicality of American politics, which is its strength.  Americans demand a return to the equilibrium in politics.  If Democrats, or Republicans, stray too far from the center, the voters push them back.  American politics is not ideological, it's idealistic.  Zito argues that the fringes, like the socialists, may get the headlines, and make the noise, but the great body of voters keep things on an even keel.

I look forward to more from Salena.  She's based in Western Pennsylvania, outside the punditry capitals of the world, so her mind is clear, and adult.

December 2, 2018       Permalink

THE NEW LANGUAGE – AT 12:46 P.M. ET:  Occasionally there are new phrases that enter into politics, and become part of our political vocabulary.  The newest phrase is "ballot harvesting," and it appears to have had a major impact in flipping Republican congressional seats to the Democrats in the recent election.  From Daily Caller:

As the polls closed on election day last month, six California Republican House candidates, including Representatives Dana Rohrabacher, Steve Knight, and Mimi Walters, were ahead in their prospective races. However, as the absentee and provisional ballots rolled in over the intervening weeks, all six lost to their Democratic opponents.

The case of Korean-American GOP candidate Young Kim was another example critics cited. On election night, Kim held an 8,000 vote lead over her Democratic opponent Gil Cisneros, and even attended freshman orientation in Washington, D.C. before watching her lead, and her victory, slowly evaporate over the subsequent weeks.

The results drew the attention of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“California just defies logic to me,” said Ryan at a Washington Post live event. “We were only down 26 seats the night of the election, and three weeks later, we lost basically every California contested race. This election system they have — I can’t begin to understand what ‘ballot harvesting’ is.”

The stunning turnaround in California, of all states, can be attributed to several factors, as conservative critics like The Federalist’s Bre Payton wrote, but the most significant of those seemed to be the practice of “ballot harvesting.”

Passed as a barely noticed change in the state’s vote by mail procedures in 2016 and signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, California’s AB 1921 allows voters to give any third party — not just a relative or someone living in the same household, as was previously the law — to collect and turn in anyone else’s completed ballot.

Called “ballot harvesting,” critics say the practice is ripe for fraud. Consider “Lulu,” who was recorded trying to “harvest” what she thought was a Democratic voter’s ballot in Rep. Knight’s district.

It’s a “new service,” said Lulu, for “like, people who are supporting the Democratic party.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that 250,000 such ballots were used in Orange County alone, resulting in a Democratic sweep there.

And...

The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Republicans who admitted that Democrats clearly beat them at the new game and that, to compete, they will have to conduct their own “ballot harvesting” efforts.

Before its passage, a group opposed to the bill wrote: “AB 1921 would allow anybody to walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote by mail envelopes with ballots inside, no questions asked, no verified records kept. It amounts to an open invitation to large-scale vote buying, voter coercion, “granny farming," and automated forgery. AB 1921 solves no problem that a simple stamp can’t solve.”

COMMENT:  Please notice that there are few questions asked about this by the mainstream media.  Why would there be?  The correct side, the liberal side, won in every case.  Why ask questions? 

This has the makings of a major scandal.  It is absolutely true that the new system of "ballot harvesting" has the potential for fraud, for even swinging a presidential election. 

Will it be stopped?  In California the Dems control all the political machinery.  The press is on their side.  Who's there to stop it?

December 2,  2018     Permalink

DECEMBER 1,  2018

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

AND AGAIN – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Three thousand protesters, one campus street and student paper website painted black, and one “emotionally charged” meeting later, officials at Drake University have concluded that four of five racist notes discovered in residence halls were hoaxes perpetrated by the same student.  A freshman has admitted to writing one note and receiving “at least” one other, but Drake officials said she faces criminal charges for four of them.  Drake spokesman Jarad Bernstein noted the student also faces discipline via the Drake Code of Student Conduct “up to and including expulsion,” according to the Des Moines Register.  The fifth incident involves freshman Keith Walker who has refused to cooperate with law enforcement and has denied interview requests. He did take to social media, however, to say he left school on November 9 for “mental health reasons” but would return. He also wrote that if he was white, he’d have been accommodated with a room at “the Holiday Inn” near the university.  There are, of course, real incidents of bigotry, but the number of proved hoaxes is disturbingly high.

EVEN SANTA ISN'T SAFE FROM PC – FROM FOX:   A substitute teacher filling in in a New Jersey classroom reportedly informed a group of first graders on Thursday that what they thought they knew about  Santa Claus wasn’t true, and St. Nick wasn't real.  The holiday disclosure occurred at Cedar Hill School, Montville schools spokeswoman Susan Marinello told Patch, and reportedly prompted the school’s principal to notify parents via a letter about what had happened.  “I am sending this letter so that you are aware of the situation, and if the conversation comes up at home over the next few days you can take appropriate steps to maintain the childhood innocence of the holiday season,” Principal Michael Raj wrote to parents, according to Patch.  He reportedly told them that upon learning what transpired, he quickly addressed the matter with the unidentified substitute “regarding her poor judgment in making this proclamation.”  In the letter, Raj, himself a parent, recognized the “sensitive nature” of the topic, The Associated Press reported.  Montville Schools Superintendent Rene Rovtar was “disheartened” by what took place in the classroom, according to a statement obtained by Patch.  “The childhood wonder associated with all holidays and traditions is something I personally hold near and dear in my own heart,” Rovtar said.  Delighted to see, for a change, school officials acting with sensitivity and respect for families.

WEDDING NEWS – FROM FOX:   One happy couple tied the knot in a ceremony that reflected both their passions and love story, saying “I do” in a Harry Potter themed wedding at a California Costco, the site of their first date.  On Nov. 29, Margot Schein and Julian Parris said “I do” at a Costco in the Mission Valley neighborhood of San Diego, Fox 47 reports. The lovebirds got hitched on the date of their three-year anniversary, after first connecting on dating app OkCupid, as per Today.  “We have so much in common, but Costco is the first thing,” the bride told the outlet.   At least they're frugal, and that's a good thing.

December 1, 2018       Permalink

PARIS IS BURNING – AT 5:37 P.M. ET:  This has not gotten anywhere near enough attention.  France is deteriorating.  The current government seems to have support only among the wealthy, educated elite.  (Sound familiar?)  From AP: 

PARIS (AP) — The most violent urban riots in a decade engulfed the French capital on Saturday, as “yellow jacket” protesters torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores, and tagged the Arc de Triomphe in Paris with multi-colored graffiti.

Protesters angry about rising taxes and the high cost of living clashed with riot police, who closed off some of the city’s most popular tourist areas and fired tear gas and water cannons in running street battles with activists dressed in the fluorescent yellow vests of a new protest movement.
It was the third straight weekend of clashes in Paris and the worst urban violence since at least 2005. Hours later, cars still smoldered and law enforcement and protesters continued to face off elsewhere in the capital.

The scene contrasted sharply with protests elsewhere in France, where demonstrations and road blockades Saturday were largely peaceful.

Paris police said at least 92 people, including 20 police officers, were injured in the violent protests in the French capital and 224 others were arrested. Thousands of police were deployed to try to contain the mayhem.

A piece for Gatestone Institute describes what France is facing, under the pompous, thoroughly self-satisfied government of President Macron, who never misses a chance to lecture President Trump:

When Macron was elected in May 2017, he promised to liberate the economy; however no significant measures, were taken. In spite of some cosmetic reforms– such as limits on allowances for unfair dismissal or the slightly increased possibility that small businesses could negotiate short work contracts -- the French labor code, still one of the most rigid in the developed world, expertly blocks job creation. The tax burden (more than 45% of GDP) is the highest in the developed world. Even if some taxes were abolished since Macron became President, many new taxes were created. Public expenditure still accounts for about 57% of GDP (16% above the OECD countries average) and shows no signs of waning.

Macron also promised, when he was elected, to restore security. Lack of security, however, has been exploding; the number of violent assaults and rapes has been steadily on the rise. No-go zones are as widespread as a year ago and fiercely out of control. The influx of unvetted illegal immigrants into the country has sadly turned entire neighborhoods into slums.

And...

The small minority of French people who still support Macron are not affected by these measures. Surveys show that they belong to the wealthy layers of society, that they live in affluent neighborhoods, and almost never use personal vehicles. The situation is painfully different for most other individuals, especially the forgotten middle class.

COMMENT:  And in Germany, the government is a mess, having gambled on immigration policies so reckless that even Hillary Clinton denounced them.

Read the whole Gatestone piece.  It's worth it.  The question that must be asked is whether Western Europe will become a true basket case, and a burden to the United States.  There is even a possibility that Jeremy Corbyn, a true socialist, anti-American nut will become prime minister of Great Britain.  Aside from his casual indulgence in anti-Semitism, Corbyn despises Western values. 

We may be seeing the start of "Europe the irrelevant."  Or, there could be a populist backlash that leads to a new fascism.  In Europe, the worst is always possible. 

December 1, 2018       Permalink

GET HER MEDICATED – AT 1:20 P.M. ET:  Some people in politics wear out their welcome before they're even welcomed.  Consider this prize example from the annals of bad taste.  From Fox: 

Democratic Socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday said fellow progressives’ and her election victory – in an overwhelmingly Democratic district – was akin to the 1969 moon landing and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“We've done what we thought was impossible,” she told a crowd during an event hosted by an environmental group, the Sunshine Movement, that aims to combat climate change.

“We went to the moon. We electrified the nation. We established civil rights. We enfranchised the country. We dig deep, and we did it. We did it when no one else thought that we could. That's what we did when so many of us won an election this year,” Ocasio-Cortez added...

...But Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that their election victory is on par with the historical moments in American history appears to be exaggerated.

She became a household name after defeating a 10-term Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley in the party’s primary, sending shockwaves across the Democratic Party’s establishment.

Yet she easily cruised to victory because her district doesn’t have a Republican presence and no viable opponent was put forward to oppose her candidacy.

Even in her primary election against Crowley, less than 16,000 people voted for the Democratic Socialist, out of total 27,744 ballots, despite the district having hundreds of thousands of registered Democrats.

COMMENT:   I'm glad Fox set the record straight on that.  Little Evita's victory was minor and easy.  She is an immature clown, a public embarrassment, but all too typical of a political party that is increasingly petty and childlike.  Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy would never recognize their party today. 

The sad fact is, though, that elements of the media will elevate this brat to iconic status, and that is a danger to us all.

December 1, 2018       Permalink

THIS WEEK IN WASHINGTON – AT 12:53 P.M. ET:  The funeral for President George H.W. Bush will be held this week in the nation's capital.  It is now confirmed that President and Mrs. Trump will attend.  Clearly, the media focus will be on the interaction between Trump and the Bushes.  The Bushes have no love for the president.  Maybe there will be a reconciliation, maybe not.  From USA TODAY:

WASHINGTON – President Trump and first lady Melania will attend the funeral of former president George H.W. Bush at the National Cathedral, the White House said Saturday, and Wednesday will be declared a national day of mourning.  

Trump was set to speak with George W. Bush Saturday morning to offer his condolences, the White House said.

Details and timing of the funeral service at the cathedral in the nation's capital were still being determined.

“The president and first lady were notified late last night of President George H.W. Bush’s passing. President Trump is scheduled to speak with President George W. Bush this morning and offer his condolences on behalf of himself, the first lady and the entire country," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"A state funeral is being arranged with all of the accompanying support and honors. The president will designate Wednesday, Dec. 5 as a National Day Of Mourning. He and the first lady will attend the funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.”

The state funeral for the 41st president will be the first presidential funeral since Gerald Ford died in 2006.

Bush died Friday night in Houston at the age of 94, family spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. His death sparked tributes from around the world and across the political aisle following the announcement.

Bush's death comes months after the passing of his wife of 73 years, Barbara. The former first lady died in April. Her memorial service in Houston drew hundreds of people from past presidents and pizzeria owners, to heads of state and historians. Noticeably absent was Donald Trump, who declined an invitation "out of respect" for the Bushes. 

COMMENT:  I assume the other living former presidents will attend – Carter, Clinton, Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush. 

I hope that the event is not politicized by a speaker appearing to lecture Mr. Trump.  If all goes smoothly, it can be an important moment of national continuity.

December 1,  2018     Permalink