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December 2018

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All the FBI’s Documents Trump rages about Comey but he still won’t release FBI records.

By on December 9th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-the-fbis-documents-1544398491

Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday to rage about “Leakin’ James Comey, ” claiming the former FBI director lied to Congress. We can understand his pique, since we advised Mr. Trump in January 2017 to fire Mr. Comey as soon as he became President. But fuming in frustration now won’t do any good. The way to expose the truth about the FBI’s behavior in the 2016 presidential campaign is to declassify and release all the relevant documents.

Mr. Trump promised this fall to release many of these records only to renege under FBI and insider pressure. After the election the President again threatened to release them if Democrats went ahead with their multiple investigations into the 2016 campaign.

Well, what are you waiting for, Mr. Trump? Every Democrat in range of a microphone is promising to investigate your every Presidential decision, plus your taxes, business and family.

Meanwhile, New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who will chair the House Judiciary Committee in January, said Friday he will shut down the investigation into FBI and Justice decision-making. He called it “a waste of time to start with.” If Mr. Trump really wants Americans to know about the FBI’s 2016 political machinations, he’ll have to be the agent of transparency.

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Wrap It Up, Mr. Mueller Democratic dilemma: Impeach Trump for lying about sex?

By on December 9th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wrap-it-up-mr-mueller-1544398545

Last week was supposed to be earth-shaking in Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, with the release of sentencing memos on three former members of the Trump universe—Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Yet Americans learned little new and nothing decisive about the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion that triggered this long investigation.

The main Russia-related news is the disclosure, in Mr. Mueller’s memo on Mr. Cohen, of a previously unknown attempt by an unidentified Russian to reach out to the Trump presidential campaign. “In or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,’” the memo says.

The Russian also offered the possibility of a meeting between Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Alas for conspiracy hopefuls, Mr. Cohen “did not follow up on this invitation,” the memo says, because Mr. Cohen says he was already talking to other Russians about a Trump Tower hotel project that has been previously disclosed. Mr. Trump has said he shut down that hotel negotiation in 2016 because he was running for President.

So a Russian wanted to insinuate himself into the Trump orbit but nothing happened. Why drop this into a sentencing memo? The press is breathing heavily that it signals Mr. Mueller’s intention to promote a narrative that the Trumpians were all too willing, for commercial and political reasons, to hear Russian solicitations.

This would make Trump officials look dumb or naive, as Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were when they took that famous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. Such a narrative would be politically embarrassing, but it’s not conspiring to hack and release the email of Democratic Party officials.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the Google CEO’s Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill could inform what kind of regulatory action GOPs might pursue against the search engine by Bridget Johnson

By on December 9th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/mccarthy-self-policed-nature-of-google-to-be-probed-at-ceo-hearing/

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the Google CEO’s Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill could inform what kind of regulatory action GOPs might pursue against the search engine.

Sundar Pichai had been scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee last week, but that was bumped to this week because of President George H.W. Bush’s death.

“Two-thirds of every adult American gets their news from the Internet. But there’s no other company that has a greater control over the Internet on searches than Google,” McCarthy told Fox News this morning. “And Google has not been coming to any of our hearings, whereas Twitter, Facebook, and others — 90 percent of all Internet searches goes through Google.”

McCarthy noted that he “gave Google credit in 2010 when they pulled out of China, what China was asking them to do in their searches.”

“But now there’s talk of them coming back, this Dragonfly. But then Google pulled out of working with the armed forces of America because they disagreed with the A.I. platform, which our armed services want,” he said, stressing the China relationship will be among the questions asked Tuesday.

“I give Sundar credit. Their CEO came in to see me after I put out a tweet. He promised he would come to a hearing… But these are questions that have to be answered. Then — that’s about China, but what about the privacy of Americans? How long do they keep those searches that are supposed to be private that you go through? How do you get the — what is it that you doing with the data that you’re finding? Because they know almost everything about us.”CONTINUE AT SITE

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Facebook Censors at Random The social network’s rules on political advertising burden nonprofits and are impossible to understand. By Daniel Gallant

By on December 9th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-censors-at-random-1544395970

If you used Facebook in late November, you probably saw a stream of fundraising campaigns for charities and cultural organizations. That’s because Facebook offered up to $7 million in matching donations for nonprofits that used its platform to raise funds on Giving Tuesday. But this gesture masks the negative impact Facebook’s newly adopted advertising policies have had on nonprofit organizations that rely on social media.

In response to public scrutiny stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal this year, Facebook has implemented enforcement measures aimed at improving election security and discouraging anonymous political messages. These measures have been poorly executed and inconsistently applied. They unfairly burden charitable organizations and small businesses, yet are easy for organized or well-funded actors to circumvent.

Several paid advertising campaigns run by my colleagues and clients have been inexplicably obstructed by Facebook’s policing in the past several months. Facebook refused to allow my New York cultural nonprofit, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, to pay to promote a post encouraging people to vote in the midterms because our page was not “authorized to run ads related to politics.” A campaign promoting a lecture about sculpture at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was blocked because Facebook’s censors mistakenly believed it was intended to influence an election in Ireland.

Similarly, Arts Japan 2020, an entity that highlights Japan-related cultural programs in the U.S., was unable to promote a post celebrating an award given by the emperor of Japan to an American arts curator. Facebook claimed the topic was of “national importance.” These harmless posts remain on Facebook in unpromoted form, but unpromoted content has a limited reach.

The problem is widespread. The Atlantic reported on Nov. 2 that Facebook’s election-security policies have caused it to block advertising campaigns from organizations including community centers, national parks and charities that serve wounded veterans.

Representatives of charities are often reluctant to register as political advertisers on Facebook because of privacy concerns. Facebook requires users to disclose significant personal information before promoting posts about politics or national issues. To be authorized to run such advertisements on behalf of my nonprofit organization, I would have to send Facebook my residential address, my Social Security number, and a photo of myself holding my passport or driver’s license. I’m loath to entrust any entity with all of that sensitive information—especially Facebook, which could use its facial-recognition software to match my personal information with photos of me that might appear online.

But suppose I did submit those items and was therefore allowed to promote political content. If I subsequently broke the rules, Facebook wouldn’t necessarily hold the nonprofit I represent responsible. Under Facebook’s policies, the person who operates an ad account is accountable for any ads placed by that account.

The only real protection Facebook’s identification requirements might provide is a guarantee that Facebook users can determine the true identity of the marketer responsible for a political advertisement. Or can they? A well-resourced advertiser with nefarious intent could simply hire a patsy (or use fake credentials) to pass Facebook’s screening process and establish a nominal presence at an American address. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

SHOOTING IN OFRA, SAMARIA

By on December 9th, 2018

https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-pregnant-woman-critically-injured-in-shooting-attack-in-samaria

A pregnant woman was among six people injured after 9 p.m. in a shooting attack outside the commmunity of Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Her condition is critical. The others are in light to moderate condition.

“Shots were fired at Israeli civilians standing at a bus station from a passing Palestinian vehicle. IDF troops nearby responded by firing towards the vehicle, which fled. IDF troops are currently searching the area,” the IDF tweeted.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

MARK STEYN ON MOVIES AND HANNUKAH

By on December 9th, 2018

https://www.steynonline.com/9075/eight-crazy-nights

Happy Hanukkah to all our Jewish readers around the world. I thought it appropriate to look out a slab of Hanukkah Hollywood, but the pickings are thin, save for this 2002 offering from my sometime fellow Granite Stater Adam Sandler. Born in Brooklyn, Sandler grew up in New Hampshire and was discovered in an LA comedy club by Dennis Miller, who recommended him to “Saturday Night Live”. Eight Crazy Nights was a flop on its first release but has become something of a cult film, and is in its way a significant cultural artifact: a big-budget multiplex animated gross-out comedy about a Jewish holiday. Only in America!

It takes its title from a lyric in a comedy sketch Adam Sandler first did on American TV three decades ago. Surrounded by Christmas standards, he decided to create the first Hanukah song – or, if you prefer, Channukah, it being the first major American holiday without an agreed spelling (the Presidents Day/Presidents’ Day/President’s Day variables are a punctuation dispute). Anyway, Sandler’s song includes the attitudinal line that “instead of one day of presents we get eight crazy nights”. Other than that, all I recall from it is basically a laundry list of famous Jews not generally known as such:

David Lee Roth lights the menorah
So do James Caan, Kirk Douglas and the late Dinah Shore-ah…

There was nothing much else in the way of Hanukkah pop, although a couple of decades back, just before he bombed out in the Iowa caucuses, the Utah Senator and songwriting Mormon Orrin Hatch disclosed to me that he was writing a Chanukah number. I don’t know what became of that, but, in the absence of Orrin, Sandler’s song, by default, got an enormous amount of airtime from culturally sensitive radio stations, grateful for a Hannukah anthem the goyim could get a handle on. I think I first heard it on WQEW New York, in between Perry Como’s “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and Peggy Lee’s “Winter Wonderland”. Having become Mister Hanukah, Sandler then parlayed his hit into Hollywood’s first mainstream animated musical Chanukkah movie. I’ve no idea why they even bothered to release this picture in Belgium or Germany. No other culture but America could have produced this film: not because it’s a mainstream movie about a Jewish religious festival, but because its view of that festival, as just another pretext for an all-purpose secular holiday celebration anybody can be a part of, is so American. Indeed, Seth Kearsley directs, Rob Schneider narrates and A. Film and Yowza! Animation animate the picture consciously in the style of those perennial Rankin-Bass Christmas specials also built around songs: Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman and, of course, the now reviled Rudolph. The animation is affectionate and reassuringly familiar. Coming soon: ‘Twas The Night Before Ramadan.

The story opens in Dukesberry, New Hampshire, where a thirtysomething criminal alcoholic (which struck me as a comparative rarity back in 2002, but is now near universal in the state) steals a snowmobile, attempts to total the town ice sculptures, and is delivered by the district court into the care of a septuagenarian basketball coach. Aside from the fact that “Dukesberry” seems to be the most Jewish town in New Hampshire other than the once popular Jewish summer resort of Bethlehem (seriously), Mr Sandler’s first animated feature is, at least initially, in conventional heartwarming holiday mode.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The New Confessionalism: Anthony Daniels

By on December 9th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/new-confessionalism/

Hardly a week goes by without some famous person or other revealing one detail or other of his disreputable personal life, whereupon there is an outpouring of praise for his candour and an avalanche of similar confessions. We have given up fortitude and replaced it with psychobabble.

Dr Christina Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when he was seventeen and she was fifteen years old, initially claimed that a fear of flying made it difficult for her to come to Washington to testify. It emerged, however, that she flew regularly to places as far apart as Tahiti and Delaware.

President Trump mocked her claim to suffer from fear of flying. I am not sure that it is the place of a president to mock a citizen of his country in this fashion, but I couldn’t help smiling nonetheless. “I’m no psychology professor,” he wrote, “but it does seem weird to me that someone could have a selective fear of flying. Can’t do it to testify but for vacation, well it’s not a problem at all.”

I was familiar with this selective type of fear from my medico-legal practice. People would claim to have been rendered agoraphobic by some negligent act or omission such that they could no longer leave the house and go to work, and therefore were entitled to large sums in compensation, but when I examined their medical records I would discover that they had been immunised against yellow fever for a holiday in Brazil. The man in the street might think that this discovery would have put paid to the claim. If you can leave your home to go to Brazil (64,000 murders last year), surely you can catch the Number 17 bus to go to the office twenty-five minutes away?

But the man in the street would be wrong. The apparent discrepancy would be explained away by a psychologist, and this is precisely what a psychologist did in the case of Dr Blasey Ford. He said that it was not uncommon for a fear of flying to wax and wane according to destination. In other words (though he did not pronounce them), it was the destination, not the flying, that created the anxiety. But oddly enough courts never seemed to draw this conclusion, perhaps because it would have threatened the lucrative livings provided by the tort system. That is why practically no claim was too outrageous to be entertained.

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Rep. Jim Jordan: Comey Said 245 Times “Don’t Remember, Don’t Recall, Don’t Know”

By on December 9th, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/12/09/rep_jim_jordan_comey_said_245_times_dont_remember_dont_recall_dont_know.html

Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican member of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, blasts former FBI director James Comey for answering more than 200 questions at Friday’s closed-door hearing with, “I can’t recall.”

“245 times he said ‘don’t remember, don’t recall, don’t know.’ The biggest takeaway for me was the ‘don’t know’ part. Specifically, he didn’t know much about Christopher Steele, the guy who used his work product, the dossier, to get the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign,” Jordan explained. “Here’s the key player, the guy who wrote the document that was the basis for getting the warrant, and he didn’t know anything about it.”

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There is No Such Thing as Free Lunch (Nor Free Healthcare) By Christopher Roach

By on December 9th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/08/there-is-no-such

Americans are really beginning to sour on Obamacare, misleadingly titled the Affordable Care Act. Every year premiums go up, out of pocket costs go up, and care is only marginally better and in some cases worse, due to the influx of the sickest people into the healthcare system seeking generous, subsidized insurance.

Obamacare hasn’t delivered, even on its own terms. The most productive and enterprising Americans—small business owners and independent contractors—must foot monthly premiums of $1,000 or more in order to have the privilege of shelling out even more thousands in the event they get seriously ill.

In light of this debacle, some have resorted to magical thinking. Our favorite magician, young congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), tweeted the following in favor of “Medicare for All”:

While conservatives have generally rejected solutions like this, the impulse that drives the desire is understandable. Medical inflation is enormous and grossly disproportionate to improved outcomes. Medicare is a generous and expensive program, but one that mostly serves its clients well. The elderly, who often need substantial medical care, are generally able to partake with minimal personal expense.

Medicare costs incurred by patients are certainly a fraction of what self-employed, the young, and others pay for healthcare. And medicare remains more or less solvent because lots of healthy and younger people are paying into the pool. In other words, there are multiple payers for each recipient. The same is true of Tricare, the medical insurance plan for military service members and their dependents.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

DAVID WEINBERGER REVIEWS THOMAS SOWELL’S “DISCRIMINATION AND DISPARITIES”

By on December 9th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/07/thomas-sowell-explains-the-economics-of-discrimination/
Thomas Sowell Explains The Economics Of Discrimination
The revered economist’s latest book, ‘Discrimination and Disparities,’ takes a look at the high cost of misguided policies aimed at achieving social justice.

At 88 years old, Thomas Sowell continues to demonstrate why he’s one of the most formidable intellects of the age. In Discrimination and Disparities, released earlier this year, Sowell rebuts common misconceptions regarding socioeconomic differences among individuals, groups, and nations, and demonstrates that disparities are often explained by economics.

For instance, emotionally loaded phrases like “systemic racism” and “exploitation” are frequently used to explain differences between blacks and whites, rich and poor, and even individual nations. But a better understanding of economics refutes these notions.

Sowell begins by noting there are different types of discrimination. Discrimination I he defines as “an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, and choosing accordingly”—in other words, “making fact-based distinctions.” Discrimination II he defines as “treating people negatively, based on arbitrary assumptions or aversions concerning individuals of a particular race or sex, for example”—in other words, what most people mean today when they talk of “discrimination.”

Ideally, Discrimination I—judging each person individually—would be universally practiced. Rarely, however, is the ideal “found among human beings in the real world, even among people who espouse that ideal.” He gives an example:

If you are walking at night down a lonely street, and see up ahead a shadowy figure in an alley, do you judge that person as an individual or do you cross the street and pass on the other side? The shadowy figure in the alley could turn out to be a kindly neighbor, out walking his dog. But, when making such decisions, a mistake on your part could be costly, up to and including costing you your life.

In short, cost is the relevant factor when determining a course of action. The cost of Discrimination I—judging the person as an individual—may be prohibitively high in some cases, as when you approach a shadowy figure in a dark alley. But that does not mean that choosing to cross the street to avoid that shadowy figure is automatically Discrimination II—arbitrarily expressing antipathy toward a group.

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