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JANUARY 16,  2017

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

SAD – Monica Crowley, the distinguished conservative commentator, has withdrawn her acceptance of a national-security position with the Trump White House after being accused of multiple cases of plagiarism.  Her withdrawal announcement made no reference to the charges, simply saying that she wanted to explore other opportunities.  It was clear to anyone with a publishing background that the charges were extremely serious and well documented.  They included assertions that she had plagiarized part of her Ph.D. thesis at Columbia.   One wonders if Crowley, who has done fine work on television and in print, can recover from this blow.  My own assessment, which is surely tentative, is that she can't. Plagiarism is considered sinful among writers and editors.  Multiple cases will almost certainly end a career.  It is very sad.  She's been one of my favorite commentators. 

THIS IS A SPORT? – FROM ESPN:   The Super Bowl ticket resale market slumped minutes after the Dallas Cowboys lost to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night.  Before Sunday's playoff game, the cheapest ticket to Super Bowl LI on StubHub was $4,195. Shortly after the Cowboys were defeated 34-31 on a field goal as time ran out, the get-in price was down 20 percent to $3,349. Tickets in the lower end zone dropped 18 percent to $4,307.  Whaa?  Would you look at those prices?  I mean, who can afford to go to these games?  What kind of a sport is this?  Are children being starved to pay for tickets?  At any rate, I'd rather be watching at home, with my own supply of popcorn and ice cream.

MAJOR CIVIL RIGHTS ADVANCE – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   Hollywood activist Ashley Judd wants media companies to issue “standard issue” black emojis – those little smiling or sad faces you see in e-mails and other messages – as a way of combating “white privilege.”  A Facebook post on Tuesday promoting Jan. 21’s “Women’s March on Washington” turned into a lecture on race for Mrs. Judd’s nearly 300,000 followers. The long-time Democratic Party supporter and activist allotted her “evening interaction” to the prevalence of “white/yellow-ish” icons as in indicator of “white privilege.”  “If you’re other than white, you have to scroll to search for an emoji of color that more closely resembles your experince [sic],” the actor wrote. “A little thing, perhaps. But … what if emojis, came, standard issue, in black? So WE whites had to scroll to find a color that more accurately resembled US? Multiply that times the incalculable. … And that gives me a glimpse of what it may be like to be a person of [color] in a white-centric world. Everything set to the standard of whiteness, everything else a variation thereof.”  The former Golden Globe nominee then shifted to her Twitter account to inform another 280,000 followers that yellow emojis are allegedly “code for white.”  I know this will mark a major step forward in race relations and social justice.  And I will never buy a white car again.

January 16, 2017       Permalink

ORLANDO COMES UP AGAIN – AT 11:54 A.M. ET:   A new arrest has been made in connection with last year's massacre in Orlando.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — The wife of the man who carried out a deadly terrorist attack in Orlando, Fla., has been arrested in connection with the mass shooting, a law enforcement official said Monday.

The woman, Noor Salman, was taken into custody by F.B.I. agents at her home outside of San Francisco. Prosecutors had been weighing charges against her in the aftermath of the attack that killed 49 people and wounded dozens. A person familiar with details of the arrest said Ms. Salman was charged with obstruction.

Ms. Salman’s husband, Omar Mateen, was killed in a shootout with police during the rampage in a gay club on June 12, 2016. Investigators interviewed Ms. Salman for hours after the attack and came to believe she was not telling the truth about her husband’s plans to carry out the rampage.

She is expected to make an initial appearance on Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco.

COMMENT:  I want to know a lot more about this.  Who inspired Mateen?  Who, if anyone, directed him?  He claimed he'd been taunted because he was a Muslim.  So he went out and murdered 49 people? 

There may well be a bigger story here.  Maybe, with this arrest, we'll learn the whole truth.

January 16, 2017       Permalink

BULLETIN:  IVANKA THINKS! – AT 11:09 A.M. ET:  Ivanka Trump is smart as a whip, but you'd never know it from some of the reporting, in which she's portrayed as a rich lady married to a rich man, who just bought a rich house in Washington so she could dabble in politics.

Ivanka is anything but a dabbler.  She could probably be president, and might be some day.  From the Daily Mail:   

Ivanka Trump attended a dinner last Thursday with a group of female leaders to discuss women's economic empowerment, suggesting that she will be focusing her energies on these issues after she moves to Washington DC this week.

The dinner was held at the $34m penthouse apartment of her close friend Wendi Deng, and among the invitees who turned up to give Ivanka advice were Tory Burch, Mika Brzezinski, Tina Brown, Christy Turlington Burns, and former White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Pattie Sellers, the executive director of Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit, was another guest at the dinner, and wrote about the evening for Fortune.

'Trump explained that she wanted to learn from the efforts of leaders in their fields,' said Sellers.
'We talked about entrepreneurship, equal pay, paid leave, and a lot about where the Donald Trump Administration may have the most opportunity: education.'

Also on hand Thursday night was Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell, who the Trump team announced earlier that same day would be joining the administration in a senior role focused on entrepreneurship, economic growth and the empowerment of women.

It is expected that Ivanka will now be working closely with Powell once her father is in the White House.

Powell put the dinner together on Thursday, and was in charge of coming up with the guest list for the event.

COMMENT: I suspect that Ivanka will turn out to be one of the most interesting people in Washington in the next four years.  Her husband will be a counselor to the president, and together they will be Washington royalty.

I fear she may be a Democrat, but I'm hopeful that she is not.  Smart she is.

January 16, 2017        Permalink

FOUR MORE DAYS – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  In four days, at noon, Donald Trump will be president.  It happens automatically.  He doesn't actually have to take the oath of office to become President Trump.  If a president dies in office, it is usually hours before the vice president takes the presidential oath, but he is already president.  Trump will be the chief executive as the clock strikes twelve.

There are certain things that we know will happen this week, by law or tradition.  But there are certain things we don't know.  We don't know how far the anti-Trump extremists will go to block the inaugural activities.  We don't know what actions foreign nations will take.  We don't know what recklessness is in the minds of ambitious, career-advancing journalists of the left.  On inauguration day, for example, will journalists try to make a scandal out of a line that might appear in the inaugural address that appears similar to a line once delivered by someone else?

And...we don't know what Barack Obama will do this week.  What policies might he put in place at the last minute?  And one thing a president does as he's leaving, just before he shuts out the lights, is to grant pardons.  Many eyebrows were raised high during President Clinton's last hours in office when he granted pardons to some very strange candidates.  Some of those pardons, like those for members of the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN), an extremist Puerto Rican terror group, presumably helped Hillary Clinton's political career in New York.  Who cared about the families of the terror victims?  They're the flyover people.

Who will Obama pardon?  Hillary herself?  He could, even though she's never even been charged with a crime.  Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon, after all.  But I wonder if Hillary would want it.  Once pardoned, there is a public perception of guilt. 

He could pardon Bowe Bergdahl, who is charged with desertion and misbehavior in Afghanistan.  Bergdahl was eventually captured by the enemy, became a POW, and was famously, and controversially, returned to the United States in a trade.  There are those who claim that the search for Bergdahl, after he left his post, cost American lives.

He can pardon any number of drug dealers.

We just don't know.  But we'll be watching.

January 16,  2017     Permalink