Posts on Sunday, November 3, 2019
Two years of interviewing Trump family
from inside, author says it’s nothing
like what you think replies
from inside, author says it’s nothing
like what you think replies
Author Doug Wead penned a Fox News editorial dishing on what he learned in two years of interviewing the Trump family.Wead, author of “Inside the Trump White House: The Real Story of His Presidency,” characterized the effort as “an insider history of the Trump White House.”He included a quote from President Donald Trump in the op-ed, focused on best-selling presidential historian Michael Beschloss, to suggest how deep his access was.“Michael Beschloss came to Mar-a-Lago right after I won the election,” Wead recalled Trump telling him. “He kissed my a** for a week, now he’s on television getting paid money to attack me.”
The smear campaign against Gibson’s Bakery continues in interview during CBS Sunday Morning segment about the case. One of the most disturbing aspects of the Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College case has been the almost obsessive demonization of Gibson’s Bakery and its owners by the college. It started not just during the protests and pre-litigation interactions that gave rise to the lawsuit, but in the Answer filed by the defendants in response to the lawsuit. (Snip) Oberlin and Raimondo seek to portray the College as the victim in this scenario, including the confessed shoplifters. I can’t imagine, based on what is publicly available, this will work.
New York - Donald Trump has refused to rule out forcing a government shutdown if Democrats do not stop their impeachment inquiry into him.
"We'll see what happens," the US president said when asked about the possibility of agencies being shuttered. (Snip) Asked about Democrat concerns that he could shut down the government again if they continue to pursue and impeachment inquiry against him, Mr Trump replied: “I don’t think they believe that at all,”
Speaking on the White House lawn, he added: "I wouldn't commit to anything. It depends on what the negotiations are."
Congress has a deadline of 22 November to reach a funding agreement before triggering a shutdown.
President Donald Trump teased the release of information Sunday he says will show that a National Security Council official who provided damning testimony in the Democratic impeachment push is a so-called “Never Trumper.”In a press gaggle with reporters, Trump criticized Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the director for European affairs on the National Security Council. Vindman told lawmakers on Oct. 29 that he raised concerns with White House lawyers following Trump’s phone call on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that is at the center of a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry.The impeachment push began after revelations that a CIA analyst filed a whistleblower complaint regarding the phone call
Thin Lizzie's Wedge
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I’m starting to wonder whether Elizabeth Warren is another Karl Rove/Steve Bannon dirty trick—a plant inside the Democratic Party with the perfect appeal to make the party sign up for the biggest political suicide note since the Labour Party decided to run on unilateral disarmament against Margaret Thatcher in 1983. (Labour lost in a historic landslide.)
Warren’s Medicare-for-All will depend apparently on a 6 percent wealth tax on the super-rich, up from a previously proposed 3 percent. (Funny how the tax rate is rising already.) Here’s a riddle. Let’s just take Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, each worth something like $100 billion in round numbers.
David Krayden at Daily Caller noted The New York Times is once again describing the national anthem as a wildly divisive song. Media liberals also think "God Bless America" is controversial, when they weren't quoting radicals saying that song was "a whitewash of everything wrong in America."
Times culture reporter Julia Jacobs reported on Wednesday on the "divisive" trend of TV stations returning to broadcasting a national-anthem video in the wee hours of the night.
President Trump’s dangerous Twitter. That was the paper’s overriding obsession in Sunday’s edition. The enormous story launched on the top half of the front page and jumped to a special 10-page section, “The Twitter Presidency.” The timing is apt, considering the paper is pressuring Twitter to be better than Facebook and actually squelch political messaging as the 2020 campaign nears. This enormous, breathless expose, which reviewed every tweet and retweet the President sent from Jan. 20, 2017- Oct. 15, 2019, was put together by (inhale)
Nearly 900 city jailbirds could be celebrating Christmas early courtesy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a plan to quietly free them before the state’s bail-reform law goes into effect next year, The Post has learned.And if that weren’t enough of a gift, Mayor Bill de Blasio is promising to follow up with even more presents for the lucky accused criminals — by giving them free baseball tickets, movie passes and gift cards to encourage them to return to court, sources familiar with the program said.“You’re literally rewarding them for committing a crime,’’ said a disgusted senior staffer in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Rudolph Giuliani didn’t hide the fact that he was investigating whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Yet most media have treated Giuliani’s efforts as sneaky and suspect because he acted at the personal behest of the president and not as an official representative of the bureaucracy. (Snip)
In fact, presidents since George Washington have turned to individuals without formal government positions to pursue foreign policy interests and objectives. Private citizens, often acting as special envoys, have helped negotiate issues ranging from trade to war. While critics deride such efforts as “back-door,”(Snip)many presidents have found it useful to dispatch people they trust, who can think and operate outside
The Army had two black infantry officers in 1936 when Benjamin O. Davis Jr. graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was one of them and his father was the other. Now the Air Force—where he later became a legend as commander of the famed Tuskegee Airmen in World War II—is honoring the late Gen. Davis by naming their airfield at the U.S. Air Force Academy after him. Davis was “instrumental in driving this institution towards a much more diverse and a much more inclusive population, reducing attrition rates of minorities and crucial in developing the plan
One America News reporter Neil W. McCabe followed up on information from multiple sources that the alleged whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, was hiding out at his parents’ home in Connecticut. After McCabe knocked on the front door and rang the doorbell, a man who gave the same name as Ciaramella’s father drove up and spoke to McCabe in the driveway. He acknowledged that he knew Eric and asked McCabe for his business card.McCabe also called two numbers associated with the family at that address and left a message with each. At the end of this news package, McCabe tells the so-called whistleblower he is welcome to respond to OAN.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed to investigate the impeachment of the patently guilty of something President Donald J. Trump “in a way that brings people together, that is healing rather than dividing.
True to her word, the Speaker and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), are pleased to announce the HPSC’s new legal counsel, Andrei Vyshinsky, Esq., the impressively credentialed former Procurator General of the (late) Soviet Union(Snip)
“As a barrister who could have been the inspiration for Lavrentiy Beria’s dictum, ‘show me the man and I will show you the crime’ who better to investigate the president?”
Despite being a pro-abortion Democrat who now wishes to fund the practice with taxpayer dollars, former Vice President Joe Biden said that Pope Francis has given him Holy Communion, and that he had never encountered a priest or bishop who would refuse him.Speaking with PBS News Hour, Joe Biden said that the issue of receiving Holy Communion as a pro-abortion politician has never come up in his life until just recently.“It’s not a position that I’ve found anywhere else, including from the Holy Father, who gives me Communion,” Biden said,
Is the Flynn case hurtling to a final reckoning? On October 24, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, filed a bombshell brief in which she accused the prosecution, led by Robert Mueller alumnus Brandon Van Grack, of spearheading a politically motivated prosecution characterized by shocking (alleged) misconduct on the part of the investigators and the prosecution team.
(Snip) . Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to the crime of making false statements to the FBI. But we now learn that Flynn’s attorney has produced evidence that Flynn’s statement was actually edited and doctored by a group of FBI officials who were not present during the interview
On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg labeled President Donald Trump a “very weak individual” in response to a commercial that featured Trump during the World Series last week.Partial transcript as follows: STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, President Trump, already turning to the general election, had that ad in the World Series on Sunday night. Let’s play a bit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANNOUNCER: President Trump is changing Washington, creating six million new jobs, 500,000 new manufacturing jobs, cutting illegal immigration in half, obliterating ISIS.
On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) said House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was not talking about lawmakers when she said impeachment must be bipartisan.Guest-host Dana Bash said, “I want to start by reading you something the speaker said back in March, she said, ‘Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country and it’s just not worth it.’
President Donald Trump's business is back in the spotlight. Less than a week after the President reversed course on his plan to host next year's G-7 at his Trump National Doral Miami in Florida, reports surfaced that his company plans to sell its DC Hotel, which has been the subject of several lawsuits alleging the President is profiting from it in violation of the Constitution.
Trump's defense is that he says he's put his business "stuff" in a trust and that his family runs it. As of 2018, the President held more than $130 million in foreign assets in this trust, according to an analysis compiled by Open Secrets.
The food might be finger-lickin' good, but some people still need utensils and napkins when eating KFC.
One customer in Shelbyville, Ky., reportedly shot out the window of a KFC’s drive-thru after receiving her food and drink items. Apparently, she was unhappy that she did not receive a fork and napkin with her order.
The incident occurred around noon on October 28, Newsweek reports. No one was injured in the shooting, but the restaurant was forced to close down for the remainder of the day.
Ellie Goulding, Chris Packham and Jaime Winstone are among the stars who have teamed up in a new video for Extinction Rebellion. The clip, which is titled: 'Governments–where is your plan?' was developed by Love Actually film director Richard Curtis. The short film outlines the demands of the group and asks governments where their plan is to tackle climate change. It features a variety of people aged between eight and 80, including children, XR activists and a selection of famous faces. The celebrities involved include Jaime Winstone, Daisy Lowe, Jim Carter, Stephen Frears, former Love Island stars Camilla Thurlow
Minnesota state Sen. Scott Dibble said Friday that he is the victim of revenge porn after a former intimate partner sent explicit images to Dibble’s colleagues, a crime that comes just days after a junior congresswoman from California stepped down in a similar situation. In his surprise statement, Dibble revealed that for the past five months he has been harassed by “a former friend.” “I was involved in a brief intimate and consensual relationship with this person,” wrote Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis.(Snip) Dibble, who married his husband, Richard Leyva, in 2008, asked for privacy on what he described as “one of the hardest
A former Navy SEAL invited on Fox News to talk about military dogs suddenly went off-topic when he blurted out, “Epstein didn’t kill himself.” Warrior Dog Foundation founder Mike Ritland was on “Watters’ World” Saturday to discuss the heroism of dogs like Conan, the Belgian Malinois wounded as he helped take down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. At the end of his segment, Ritland asked to do a “PSA” to discourage people from rushing out to adopt the military-used dogs—then sneaked in at the end, “And Epstein didn’t kill himself.” “Alright,” host Jesse Waters initially replied, quickly breaking into laughter
In the Oval Office, an annoyed President Trump ended an argument he was having with his aides. He reached into a drawer, took out his iPhone and threw it on top of the historic Resolute Desk: “Do you want me to settle this right now?” There was no missing Mr. Trump’s threat that day in early 2017, the aides recalled. With a tweet, he could fling a directive to the world, and there was nothing they could do about it. When Mr. Trump entered office, Twitter was a political tool that had helped get him elected and a digital howitzer that he relished firing.
Washington — A lawyer for the whistleblower who reported concerns about the president's dealings with Ukraine told CBS News he offered to have Republicans on the House Intelligence Community submit questions to his client directly without having to go through the committee's Democratic majority. Attorney Mark Zaid told CBS News he contacted Representative Devin Nunes, the committee's ranking member, on Saturday to say his client is willing to answer Republicans' questions under oath and penalty of perjury if lawmakers submitted written questions to the whistleblower's legal team. The inspector general of the intelligence community, a Trump appointee, could verify the whistleblower's
Orinda, Calif. – The Contra Costa County sheriff announced late Friday night that a fifth victim who was injured in a shooting at a Halloween party in Northern California has died. No one has been arrested. The latest fatality was identified as 19-year-old Oshiana Tompkins, CBS SF Bay Area reported. The sheriff's office previously identified four other victims as 22-year-old Tiyon Farley, 24-year-old Omar Taylor, 23-year-old Ramon Hill Jr. and 29-year-old Javin County. The FBI is assisting in the investigation into the shooting, and police are trying to piece together what happened at the party that was held in a mansion
Fighters in the ISIS terror organization now being held by Turkey will be shipped back to their home countries, even if they don’t want them, government officials in Ankara said.
Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, has criticized European governments who have refused to repatriate their nationals who joined the Islamic State group to fight in Syria and Iraq.
“This is not acceptable to us. It’s also irresponsible,” Mr. Solyu said, according to Reuters. “We will send the captured Daesh (ISIS) members to their countries.”
President Trump also has talked about sending the captured ISIS members to their home countries but so far says he hasn’t gotten any takers.
Rep. Jim Clyburn believes that the House Democrats' impeachment investigation into President Trump could hurt his party at the ballot box in 2020. Clyburn, 79, was elected to Congress in 1993 and is serving his party in the House as majority whip. The South Carolina Democrat appeared on CNN on Sunday and asserted that while impeachment could backfire on the Democrats, the party's political concerns should not drive the process."Sure, it could, and that would make this whole process much more political than I would like this to be," Clyburn told State of the Union guest host Dana Bash after she asked if impeachment proceedings could harm Democrats in 2020.
Trump is not on the ballot, but he's
front-and-center in this month’s
key gubernatorial elections replies
front-and-center in this month’s
key gubernatorial elections replies
President Trump is betting that he can still work his electoral magic in three deeply red southern states that he won big in the 2016 presidential election.
Nail-biting gubernatorial contests Tuesday in Kentucky and Mississippi and in Louisiana on Nov. 16 -- three conservative states that also have a tradition of electing Democratic governors -- will be the first key electoral tests since House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against the Republican president.
And the results of the showdowns could serve as a barometer on whether Trump still has the proven ability to rally Republicans at the voting booth.
A new wave of wildfires is likely to reduce the availability of home insurance in vulnerable areas of California. Home insurance already became scarce and expensive in some regions after insurers’ massive payouts for wildfire losses in the state in 2017 and 2018. Home insurers have declined to renew tens of thousands of home-insurance policies in areas with high wildfire risk in the past two years. Now, as firefighters battle several large blazes across the state, 2019 could shape up to be another year of outsize wildfire losses, though this year’s fires have so far not caused significant damage compared
Another Friday, another arrest for Jane Fonda and her celebrity friends. The 81-year-old actress and political activist spent Friday night in jail thanks to her participation in a Fire Drill Fridays protest on the steps of Capitol Hill. Fonda recently told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that people around the world must come together and bring governments to a halt if “we can’t make them do the right thing.” Besides the fact that it is pie-in-the-sky kind of talk that all the countries around the world will band together to do anything, much less agree on what can be done to ease the effects of climate change, who died
Iran will not lift its ban on talks with the United States, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday, describing the two countries as implacable foes on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.
“One way to block America’s political infiltration is to ban any talks with America. It means Iran will not yield to America’s pressure,” Khamenei, who is Iran’s top authority, was quoted by state TV as saying. “Those who believe that negotiations with the enemy will solve our problems are 100 percent wrong.”
Measles is alarmingly contagious: It’s spread through the air and can linger in a room for up to two hours after an infected person has left. The disease is responsible for more than a hundred thousand deaths each year among unvaccinated people.
What’s more, danger still lurks even for those who survive an outbreak.
Measles not only weakens your immune system in the short term, bouts with the virus seem to wipe your immune system's memory, causing the body to forget how to fight off things that you may have already conquered. For some people, this so-called immune amnesia may linger for months to years after an infection.
They’ve got a pan for that.
Saturday Night Live poked fun at Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to hike taxes to pay for her sweeping Medicare-for-all proposal on the show’s cold open Saturday night.
Show favorite Kate McKinnon played the “She’s got a plan for that” presidential hopeful at a mock event in Iowa, excitably rolling up the sleeves of a red cardigan and mimicking the Massachusetts Democrat’s matronly tones.
“Look at me, I’m in my natural habitat — a public school on a weekend,” she says, before teasing one-time rival Beto O’Rourke for being in her “dust” after dropping out of the race.
Like others, I have enjoyed reading the titillating, racy stories that have issued forth from bestselling books about the Trump White House. At times I felt nagging pangs of doubt, wondering why the stories always have come from anonymous sources. (Snip) What I discovered inside the Trump bubble was quite different from what had been reported. No, Melania and Donald were not estranged, they were tender lovers, who playfully teased each other. On almost any subject--North Korea, China, Mueller--the president brought up her name.
A blood test that may be able to detect breast cancer up to five years before symptoms develop could be available by 2025 if development is fully funded, U.K. researchers said.
Doctors at the Centre of Excellence for Autoimmunity in Cancer at the University of Nottingham compared blood samples from 90 patients being treated for breast cancer with the same number from a control group without the disease to measure the body’s immune response to substances produced by tumor cells. They’re now testing samples from 800 patients for nine markers and they expect the accuracy of the test to improve.
Until Aspen’s mob shouted it down it, valet parking service was planned this winter at the base of the Aspen Mountain gondola. No longer.
Local politicos saw an opportunity to bash business, which they always find profitable, and to accumulate some political capital — which is apparently the only kind of capital that is permissible to accumulate these days.
Take our mayor, a former tennis instructor. He whined: “I question the equitability and ethic of” the valet parking service.
Some supporters of President Trump have adopted the following defense of the (at times) nasty, over-the-top rhetoric Trump uses against his adversaries: Trump is “no Mr. Nice Guy,” but “sometimes it takes a Donald Trump to change Washington.” In fact, Trump’s recently released campaign ad makes this pitch in just that language. As a means of making ethical Trump supporters feel better about backing the president, this defense has appeal. But is there anything to it? Not much. Ronald Reagan changed Washington without being Trump-like. Headline corrected*
Last week in a dinner speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., Princeton professor Robert George had some advice for social and religious conservatives: “You must fight.”
It was an exhortation that does him no good in the academic world. A distinguished Ivy League scholar and teacher isn’t supposed to talk about the “culture war.” George has strong connections with the established conservative world, too, which balks at the confrontational style. In my year at the James Madison Program at Princeton, which George directs, visitors included George Will, Steve Forbes, and Andrew Napolitano. But the other night was a firm declaration of resistance.
It was fantastic.
One of the people cheering
Doing the Impeachment Math
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Welcome to the new and improved Get Trump Daily, special impeachment edition. A couple of days ago, on Halloween, a cute kid of about 7 came to our door dressed up as a dinosaur. It was a pretty nifty costume, green with spindling protuberances, tail with spiky-things, and bits on the head that expanded in a showy way when the budding tyrannosaur pressed a button.
This had two effects: One, you could tell that it was supposed to be scary, so it was a cue to say, “Oooh!” and “Ah! That’s scary!” Two: it made the costume’s occupant feel important, and I think that was probably the major effect.
“Trick or treat."
Our founding fathers were well versed in Latin. In fact, Latin phrases and mottoes adorn our national treasures and pepper our corpus of political discourse and jurisprudence. Today, one stands out above all as the Dems, desperate to usurp the upcoming presidential election, embark on an impeachment coup: quid pro quo.
When considering the apparatus of our government, the founders favored a distribution of power similar to that of the Roman Republic. Benjamin Franklin captured their admiration of the early republic's virtue and its representative nature when responding to a question about what the constitutional delegates had crafted: "A republic, if you can keep it."
The monsoons in Mumbai are particularly punishing especially when you are the sole occupant of open-air rickshaw, engulfed in traffic beyond your range of vision. After several minutes the static traffic began to move, the collective noise of automobile engines was about to drown every sounds in the vicinity.
Suddenly a shrill wail penetrated through, the sort of cry that would cause the most heartless of individuals to shudder. Quite soon, it was discovered that a puppy had surreptitiously crept under a taxi cab to avoid the heavy rains. Everybody stepped out of their cars fearing the worst. Then the taxi driver emerged with the puppy in his arms
Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a mental disorder in which a person has effectively been driven insane due to his hatred of Donald Trump, to the point where he abandons all logic and reason. Such people are impervious to facts that contradict their preconceived notions of the president.
As to a syndrome, it's a group of symptoms that consistently occur together and indicate the presence of a particular mental or physical disease. For example, symptoms for the onset of diabetes include things like increased thirst and urination, insulin resistance, high belly fat, blurred vision, and so on.
One of the symptoms of TDS is envy.
Reclaiming Common Sense
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How has it come to pass that in America, a man can identify as a woman, and his linguistic affirmation by itself, at least in New York City, obligates others to refer to him as "her"? And why is it increasingly considered mandatory to declare that men taking female hormones can compete against women in sporting events? What aberrant philosophical doctrine, you may ask, is behind the assertion that there are sixty-three genders or that marriage must no longer be considered the union of a man and a woman? The answer to these and other absurdities can be found in Robert Curry's new book, Reclaiming Common Sense
Women and girls are being sucked into the sex change industry by reckless clinics that give out “testosterone like candy,” says Andrew Sullivan, the sometimes-conservative gay activist.
Sullivan’s break from the transgender movement comes after he met with a group of women who have walked away from their teenage claims of being transgender. He wrote in New York magazine:
By their own accounts, they had been adamantly trans in their teens. “I was the student trying to get a professor fired because he wouldn’t allow they and them to be used for a singular person in my papers … I threatened my parents and friends with suicide.
If college kids’ political views are a clue to the nation’s future, America is headed over a left-wing cliff. Consider: A recent Chegg/College Pulse poll found 69% of students say they’d vote for a Democrat in 2020, while just 23% back President Trump. Yet for voters of all ages, recent RealClearPolitics poll averages put the president within 7 points of the top Dems (Joe Biden, Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders).Among kids who lean Democratic, Chegg found, more than half back Sanders (28%) or Warren (30%) — the two left-most wannabes.
Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke spent about 14 million on his failed presidential campaign, according to campaign finance records.The latest campaign finance report issued on September 30 showed O’Rourke spent $13,965,478, according to Open Secrets. The former Texas congressman ended up with only about $3 million cash on hand. Final numbers for his campaign have yet to be released, but he likely surpassed $14 million in money spent the 30 days since his last report.Beto made a big splash after announcing his run for president by raising $6.1 million in the first 24 hours, but his early success faded as other candidates caught the imaginations of Democrat voters.
Like the expensive California fast train to nowhere, Schiff’s funhouse impeachment hearings are a useless waste of time and money, and subject him to well-deserved ridicule. They are certain not to prevent President Trump’s reelection in 2020 and may well cost the Democrats their majority in the House. With a pack of losing candidates and a series of “now we got him” flops ahead of them, this is a losing desperation ploy.Roger L. Simon notes that the market figured this out this week. What does it mean after the House of Representatives -- on an almost one-hundred-percent pure partisan vote, save for two Democrats who wisely demurred
Beto O’Rourke’s Moment of Truth
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The dashing of Beto O’Rourke’s presidential hopes can be traced, in our estimation, to one moment of truth. It wasn’t his tendency to flap his arms, say, or his radical green agenda or his claim that he was born to be in the political fray, unconvincing as all those might be. It was his vow after the mass shooting at El Paso. “Hell yes,” he shouted during the Democratic debate in Houston, “we’re going to take your AR-15.”
It happens that we were watching the debate live when Mr. O’Rourke erupted with that threat. We exclaimed immediately that he would have to drop out. It’s not that the erstwhile congressman
Better Boris than Kremlin Corbyn
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Britain has been in chaos for many weeks and in a state of uncertainty since before the 2016 referendum in which voters demanded departure from the European Union. The mayhem is due not to the impending Brexit but to the machinations of a large group of politicians who, having been elected promising to fulfill Brexit, went on to stymie it by any and all means possible.
Since Boris Johnson became prime minister, the anti-democratic, anti-Brexit forces have brought the United Kingdom's politics to a standstill. Johnson's opponents not only refused to approve a deal for an orderly Brexit, but they also refused for weeks to vote to allow
It has now been just over two years since the Harvey Weinstein allegations were reported in the Times as well as in this magazine, in the early days of October, 2017. In the months that followed, accruing #MeToo revelations led to the downfall of producers, performers, and executives for long-employed tactics of harassment, intimidation, and assault. As these events began to unfold, it was gratifying to think that women in Hollywood might now be able to pursue their professional goals more fully, unharmed and untrammelled. But it also made me realize how much I have been gripped,
I met Lawrence 17 years ago. It was the first week of his first year at Harvard Law School. He came to a social event sponsored by a journal I edited. You couldn’t miss him — and not just because he was a head taller than everyone else. Think Legally Blonde, except this movie is about an earnest, salt-of-the-earth Montanan who comes to Harvard to mix with the boarding-school crowd. I could relate. Only two years earlier I’d come to Harvard Law after graduating from a small Christian college in the Midwest. I remember thinking, “This guy is going to get eaten alive.”
The National Rifle Association wasted no time on Friday trolling Beto O’Rourke’s failed presidential dreams by referencing his “Hell yes!” response on the idea of AR-15 confiscations.
“Beto O’Rourke has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race. That makes it two failed campaigns in one year!” the NRA tweeted after Mr. O’Rourke ended his campaign. “Let this be a lesson: Running on destroying the Second Amendment and stripping Americans of their firearms is never a good idea. #ByeBeto.”
The gun rights organization’s tweet also included an image that read “Hell yes. Beto Fails,” with the former Texas representative giving a “thumbs up” sign.
This week there was an unfortunate blow-up on cable news where Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, one of the witnesses against Donald Trump in the impeachment inquiry, was accused of having loyalty to Ukraine over the United States, since he was born in that country. This argument was unfortunate on two fronts. One, it ironically echoed the absurd and unfair charges that Trump and his supporters — and heck, in the case of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, anyone who doesn’t express complete fealty to Democratic Party elders — must be Putin’s handmaiden.
Two, while antisemitism almost certainly didn’t motivate any of the people who made this argument, the “dual loyalty” canard was unfortunate
Joe Biden’s Catholic Problem
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John F. Kennedy was a checkered Catholic, to say the least. But most Catholics didn’t know that or didn’t care, and they voted enthusiastically for him. The checkered Catholics in today’s Democratic Party don’t have it so easy. The useless bishops are still in the tank for them, but members of the laity and a few brave priests have wised up to their lies. In recent years, ironically, the non-Catholic Obama won the Catholic vote while crappy, albeit baptized, Catholics such as John Kerry lost it. Hillary Clinton added Tim Kaine, who wore his “social justice” Catholicism on his sleeve, to the ticket, and she ended up losing
Elizabeth Warren is the current favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, but one wonders how voters will react when they learn about her bizarrely radical agenda. Warren openly advocates making all private health insurance–the kind that a large majority of Americans have–illegal. She hasn’t begun to think through the implications of this extreme proposal, but when voters begin to contemplate it, my guess they will vote against her, enthusiastically.
Yesterday Warren was asked what would become of all those people who are now employed in the health insurance industry. Her answer shows her ignorance of insurance, as well as of the economy in general:
President Barack Obama’s first act as a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2009 — nine months after he took the oath of office — was to try to wriggle out of accepting it.
“The morning the prize was announced, his staff investigated whether anyone had failed to travel to Oslo to receive their prize,” writes Nobel insider Geir Lundestad in “The World’s Most Prestigious Prize” (Oxford), out this month.
Apparently, the president was among the 61 percent of Americans who believed he didn’t deserve it.
“It is true, Obama did not do much before winning,” Lundestad, 74, a member of Norway’s Nobel Committee until 2014, told The Post.
Proponents of daylight saving time – which ends at 2 a.m. Sunday – argue that it gives more daylight hours after a workday and decreases energy consumption. But the negatives far outweigh any positives.
It’s time to get rid of daylight saving time once and for all.
Daylight saving time (DST) was first proposed as a way to have longer evenings of light in the summer. At 2 a.m. Sunday most of your smartphones will automatically turn their clocks back an hour, giving you a precious extra hour of sleep. But come March, when DST returns, you will be moving your clocks an hour forward – losing an hour of sleep.
The so-called “whistleblower” (who dd not follow the protocol necessary to qualify for whistleblower protections) could well be facing serious legal jeopardy. Sean Davis writes in the Federalist:
Testimony by Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson revealed that the whistleblower, whom Real Clear Investigations has identified as former National Security Council (NSC) staffer and current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Eric Ciaramella, concealed his contacts with Schiff from the ICIG in his complaint form. If the anti-Trump complainant did, in fact, refuse to disclose previous disclosures of his allegations to Congress or the news media, he could be subject to felony criminal penalties for making false statements.
Skateboarding hacker poet pervert with
drunk driving and burglary raps drops
out of presidential race replies
drunk driving and burglary raps drops
out of presidential race replies
Beto O'Rourke, the smarmy, smug, monied Texas junior who got rich on his wife's inherited fortune, is out of the Democratic presidential race.
According to the left-wing, but unable-to-stifle-a-snark Texas Monthly:
We gather today to say a hearty RIP to the Beto O’Rourke political project, helmed by one Beto O’Rourke, who ran one of the most remarkable Senate campaigns and one of the most underwhelming presidential campaigns in modern American history—all in the space of about 31 months.
Late on a Friday afternoon, O’Rourke and his loved ones made the decision to pull the plug, releasing a Medium post explaining why.
Bishops from the U.S. and Mexico held a highly political Mass at the border separating their two countries on Saturday morning, insisting in a statement that “there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’”
El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, a vocal pro-immigration advocate, celebrated the Eucharist together with Las Cruces Bishop Peter Baldacchino and Bishop Guadalupe Torres of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
“In this time of high polarization around the immigration debate, discrimination, militarization of the border and a widespread spirit of exclusion in our nation,” a diocesan statement read, “the Border Mass continues to remind us, missionary disciples of Christ, that we are primarily called to live in communion.”
Advice: unload your Fitbits
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News: Google to acquire Fitbit, valuing the smartwatch maker at about $2.1B.
How does this acquisition make your life better? What can possibly go wrong? "Nothing," based on this reassurance from Fitbit's CEO:
“With Google’s resources and global platform, Fitbit will be able to accelerate innovation in the wearables category, scale faster, and make health even more accessible to everyone,” Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park said in a statement.
Fitbit has 28 million active users worldwide and has sold more than 100 million devices. The company said that its privacy and security guidelines won’t change
Fall Back, Spring Ahead
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Get ready to go through the routine of turning the clocks back an hour this weekend. Daylight savings time is leaving us... yet again.
Daylight savings time has been with us in the United States since the days of World War I. It has seen several changes since then but still exists essentially in its original form. Clocks are changed during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.
The stated intent of daylight savings time is to make better use of daylight. The supposed tangible benefits are that it reduces crime, lowers energy usage, and reduces traffic accidents.
In case you’ve been living under a rock or been trapped deep inside an ultra-leftist bubble, allow me to enlighten you. There is a definite, concerted, war on gender in our society today. And if you had even the slightest doubt about it, look no further than the November edition of GQ magazine. (Snip) According to editor-in-chief Will Welch, GQ has been working on this special edition since January, not only tackling abusive aspects of masculinity in our culture, but also featuring an article from “a gender-nonbinary actor who is simultaneously advocating for greater inclusivity in Hollywood and acknowledging their own privilege (Asia Kate Dillon).”
A horrific crash in Delaware last year left a New Jersey man and his four daughters dead – but the Maryland driver whose pickup truck crossed a highway median, according to authorities, won’t be going to prison.
Instead, defendant Alvin Hubbard III, 46, of Cambridge received one year of probation from Judge Calvin L. Scott Jr. The sentence came Friday in a Delaware courtroom.
Scott was appointed to the Superior Court of Delaware in 2003 by former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, a Democrat who served from 2001 to 2009, according to the official website of the Delware Courts. Prosecutors had asked that Hubbard serve six months behind bars,
Portland, OR - A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday put on hold a Trump administration rule requiring immigrants prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can get visas.
US District Judge Michael Simon granted a temporary restraining order that prevents the rule from going into effect Sunday. It's not clear when he will rule on the merits of the case. Seven US citizens and a nonprofit organization filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday contending the rule would block nearly two-thirds of all prospective legal immigrants.
A new blood test could detect breast cancer in patients five years before a lump or other physical symptoms appear, says a new study out of the UK.
The information out of Nottingham University, reported in the Sunday Times of London, says the test would look for antibodies that signal tumor growth before a mass becomes visible.
Earlier detection means earlier treatment, which could possibly save thousands of lives.
A 15-year-old boy was hit with an attempted murder charge for shooting a 7-year-old girl in the neck and chest while she was trick-or-treating on Halloween in Chicago, a report said Friday.
The teen gunman, who was not identified, was also charged with two counts of aggravated battery for the shooting on city’s west side, the Chicago Tribune reported.
He allegedly opened fire at about 5:30 p.m. on Thursday while aiming at a 32-year-old man, according to the report.
The 32-year-old was shot in his hand, the Tribune reported.
Arguably one of President Donald Trump's biggest successes since he took the office in 2017 is the record low unemployment rate, which currently sits at 3.6 percent. More people are back to work than ever before and yet former Vice President Joe Biden refuses to give Trump praise. During an interview with "PBS News Hour" host Judy Woodruff, Biden attempted to buck the narrative that Trump's economic policies are working for average Americans. “The economy — new jobs numbers out today, look pretty good," Woodruff said. "The unemployment rate is staying very low, 3.6 percent.
On the same day the Washington Nationals celebrated their World Series triumph with a victory parade in D.C., their fans learned that Series MVP pitcher Stephen Strasburg may be heading out of town. According to reports, Strasburg – who went 5-0 in the MLB Postseason as the Nationals won the first world championship in franchise history – has opted out of the final four years of his contract, making him a free agent. The decision means 31-year-old Strasburg leaves $100 million on the table – with the prospect of earning more, either from the Nationals or another team. Strasburg becomes the second member
President Trump can catch a break at arena sporting events.Some two dozen angry protesters armed with bright orange anti-Trump signs were stationed outside Madison Square Garden on Saturday night as President Trump arrived at the arena for UFC 244 — but there were twice as many fans happy to see the commander in chief.
Trump, who traveled with Reps. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, and Mark Meadows, (R-NC), touched down at John F. Kennedy Airport at 8:05 p.m.The entourage arrived at the Garden an hour later, after a quick hop on Marine One to the downtown
The Hollywood Left is all about preaching non-violence and tolerance...EXCEPT when it comes to Republicans. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen the so-called tolerant celebrity left enraged at Ellen for laughing it up with former President George W. Bush and expressing gratitude for a Republican senator getting beaten up. One actor threatened Donald Trump with a “left hook from Hell” and another even fantasized about Donald Trump being assassinated. The following are a few of the most absurd examples of celebrity rage from the past month: [LANGUAGE WARNING]
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., on Friday called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to release the full transcripts of all depositions in the Trump impeachment inquiry, and demanded the end to what she called “selective leaking” of documents to the media. “Despite the vote in the House on October 31, House Democrats continue to conduct the partisan effort to impeach the President in secret,” Cheney wrote in a letter to Pelosi. Your duty to the Constitution and the American people, as well as fundamental fairness, requires that you immediately release the full transcripts
David Axelrod warned that Pete Buttigieg's public opining about the 2020 Democratic primary is "unhelpful" to the South Bend, Indiana, mayor and a "campaign strategist's nightmare." "The campaign strategist’s nightmare: When the candidate goes all pundit in an interview. Unhelpful," tweeted the chief strategist for President Barack Obama's campaigns on Saturday. Linking to a Newsweek article, Axelrod added the mayor's punditry was "Honest but unnecessary. All part of learning the rules of a game in which candor can sound like hubris." (Tweet)
A judge has ordered a teenager jailed on charges of shooting and critically wounding a 7-year-old girl who was trick-or-treating along a busy Little Village neighborhood street on Halloween night.The 15-year-old boy appeared in Cook County juvenile court Saturday, facing two counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery with a firearm for the Thursday night attack, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.The shooting also wounded a 32-year-old man who police say was the intended target. Judge Joanne Rosado ordered the boy held in custody at least through the weekend,
One of the best ways to understand a person's state of mind about politics is to ask him whether he thinks that a politician he generally disagrees with has ever done anything good. Is there one decision or policy he favors? Just one? If the answer is "no," you know you're dealing with someone who's so blinded by and obsessed with hatred that he can't possibly be taken seriously. About anything.Case in point: a Twitter conversation I had today with Doug Mataconis, who blogs at Outside The Beltway, a once respectable and much respected conservative-libertarian blog. Doug started it all by tweeting out that he has lived through 10 presidents