December 29-31, 2016
Dec 29 06:52 Hillary's Wisconsin decision Dec 29 07:47 Thomas Friedman, blithering idiot Dec 29 11:33 Kerry's award-winning speech Dec 29 17:26 E.J. Dionne on drugs? Dec 30 10:03 Why the media missed the Story of the Year Dec 30 13:53 Minnesota's Story of the Year Dec 30 23:59 Gov. Dayton, BLM vs. Miners Dec 31 18:03 Obama isn't leaving the stage
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Hillary's Wisconsin decision
It isn't a secret that Hillary Clinton made a mistake by not campaigning in Wisconsin. People of all political persuasions have criticized her. IMO, those criticisms are justified ... to a point. Let's first stipulate that Hillary campaigning there would've helped. The question remaining is how much it would've helped. After spending this past weekend in the hospital thinking about that question, I'm not certain it would've put her over the top.
Here's why I think that: Hillary outspent Trump by a wide margin but still lost by a wide margin. It isn't that Hillary's message didn't get out. It's that Hillary's message got out and voters utterly rejected it. It's that some voters simply were tired of the Clintons so they rejected her. It's that Hillary tried cozying up to the construction unions while pandering to the environmental activists.
My theory is that it's impossible to satisfy both constituencies. It's like trying to date 2 jealous one-man women and not hiding that fact. The simple truth is that construction workers and environmental activists fit together like oil and water.
I know that because I've watched Ken Martin, Rick Nolan and the DFL try walking that tightrope the past few years. While Nolan has survived, barely, the DFL has suffered, losing the House and Senate in the last 2 elections.
Democrats, whether we're talking nationally or here in Minnesota, face some difficult questions. They shouldn't assume that they can successfully court both constituencies. They'll have to pick and choose.
Posted Thursday, December 29, 2016 6:52 AM
No comments.
Thomas Friedman, blithering idiot
The opening paragraph of Thomas Friedman's latest column is proof positive that he's a blithering idiot. It's proof, too, that he's overpaid.
The opening paragraph of Friedman's column says "For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it simple: Barack Obama and John Kerry admire and want to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. I have covered this issue my entire adult life and have never met two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy."
It's difficult to comment on such breathtaking stupidity. In the next paragraph, Friedman continues, saying "But they are convinced - rightly - that Netanyahu is a leader who is forever dog paddling in the middle of the Rubicon, never ready to cross it. He is unwilling to make any big, hard decision to advance or preserve a two-state solution if that decision in any way risks his leadership of Israel's right-wing coalition or forces him to confront the Jewish settlers, who relentlessly push Israel deeper and deeper into the West Bank."
Speaking of someone who "is unwilling to make any big, hard decision to advance or preserve a two-state solution if that decision in any way risks his leadership", this is who fits that description:
It's impossible to make a thoughtful argument that President Obama and John Kerry are pro-Israel. First, they sell out the entire Arab Peninsula, north Africa and Israel by negotiating a sweetheart nuclear proliferation deal with Iran, then giving the biggest state sponsor of terrorism $150,000,000,000 to spend on Hezbollah, Hamas and other anti-Israel proxies in the Middle East. Then, to 'prove' their loyalty to Israel, they ship systems to bolster Israel from the missiles that Iran's proxies will buy with the money they got from Mssrs. Obama and Kerry. Then there's this:
That is what precipitated this fight over Obama's decision not to block a U.N. resolution last week criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The settlers' goal is very clear, as Kerry put it on Wednesday: to strategically place settlements "in locations that make two states impossible," so that Israel will eventually annex all of the West Bank. Netanyahu knows this will bring huge problems, but his heart is with the settlers, and his passion is with holding power - at any cost.
I won't rebut that BS. Instead, I'll let Alan Dershowitz obliterate Friedman's BS :
Before June 4, 1967, Jews were forbidden from praying at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. They were forbidden to attend classes at the Hebrew University at Mt. Scopus, which had been opened in 1925 and was supported by Albert Einstein. Jews could not seek medical care at the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus, which had treated Jews and Arabs alike since 1918. Jews could not live in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, where their forbearers had built homes and synagogues for thousands of years. These Judenrein prohibitions were enacted by Jordan, which had captured by military force these Jewish areas during Israel's War of Independence, in 1948, and had illegally occupied the entire West Bank, which the United Nations had set aside for an Arab state. When the Jordanian government occupied these historic Jewish sites, they destroyed all the remnants of Judaism, including synagogues, schools, and cemeteries, whose headstones they used for urinals. Between 1948 and 1967 the UN did not offer a single resolution condemning this Jordanian occupation and cultural devastation.
What Friedman doesn't say is that this UNSCR, #2334, classifies these settlements as "territories being illegally occupied by Israel, and any building in these areas - including places for prayer at the Western Wall, access roads to Mt. Scopus, and synagogues in the historic Jewish Quarter - 'constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.'"
I'll finish by stating emphatically that Thomas Friedman isn't a journalist. He'd fit right in at Media Matters or Think Progress or other far left fever swamp websites.
Posted Thursday, December 29, 2016 7:47 AM
No comments.
Kerry's award-winning speech
Lost in all of the criticism of John Kerry's long-winded speech yesterday is 'praise' he received from Alan Dershowitz. In an interview on Fox News' Kelly File, Prof. Dershowitz said "this speech should win an Academy Award for best fictional presentation."
The interview started with Sandra Smith asking Prof. Dershowitz "Do you think there was collusion here"? Prof. Dershowitz immediately replied "I think it's obvious. First of all, if the United States did not have a role in having this go through, it would show that we had abdicated responsibility. Of course, we had a role." President Obama and Secretary Kerry played their parts as useful idiots perfectly in letting UNSCR 2334 pass.
To put Prof. Dershowitz's quip in perfect context, Prof. Dershowitz said "It is so undemocratic for a lame duck president, when Congress is not in session, to take out his anger and pique at another country by tying the hands of the incoming president. It's going to make peace much, much more difficult to achieve. And this speech today, the idea that Secretary Kerry would talk about Israel not wanting to make peace, not mentioning that it offered a 2-state solution in 1937, 1948, 1967, 2000, 2005, 2008. Every time, the Palestinians have rejected it. You wouldn't know thanks to John Kerry's rewriting of history. This speech should win an Academy Award for best fictional presentation."
Watch the entire interview. It's must-see TV if you support Israel and you want a detailed, fact-filled, presentation on the subject:
Prof. Dershowitz has been on fire on this subject since President Obama, Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Power stabbed Israel in the front .
Earlier this week, Prof. Dershowitz said "What he did was so nasty, he pulled a bait and switch. He told the American public this is all about the settlements deep in the West Bank. And yet, he allowed he representative to the U.N. to abstain, which is really a vote for, a resolution that says the Jews can't pray at the Western Wall, Jews can't live in the Jewish Quarter [of Jerusalem] where they have lived for thousands of years . And he's going to say, 'Whoops! I didn't mean that!' Well read the resolution! You're a lawyer, you went to Harvard Law School."
Later in that interview, Prof. Dershowitz said "He will go down in history -- President Obama -- as one of the worst foreign policy presidents ever." Hillary Clinton started the negotiations with the Iranians, which makes her one of the worst Secretaries of State in US history. Secretary Kerry, though, IMO, is worse because Hillary did this to curry favor with the left. Kerry made this decision because he's that stupid.
Let's remember that then-Sen. Kerry criticized President Reagan for putting Pershing II missiles into western Europe, saying that this would start an arms race that the US couldn't win. A short 5 years later, the Soviet Union collapsed. Let's remember that, as a presidential candidate, then-Sen. Kerry downplayed Qaddafi turning over his WMDs, saying that was inevitable. It became inevitable because Libya was afraid of getting invaded after the US finished off Iraq.
Posted Thursday, December 29, 2016 11:33 AM
No comments.
E.J. Dionne on drugs?
After reading just a couple paragraphs of E.J. Dionne's latest humorfest , it's difficult to take the left seriously anymore. I can't say that Mr. Dionne's opinions are representative of the left's worldview. Unfortunately, I can't say that they aren't commonplace, either.
For instance, Dionne wrote that "It is this spirit that began to take hold almost immediately after Trump's election. Americans in large numbers, particularly the young, quickly realized that the coming months and years will require new and creative forms of political witness and organization. Trump's ascendancy is already calling forth social and political initiatives aimed at defending the achievements of the Obama years (particularly Obamacare), protecting the environment, standing up for immigrants and minorities, preserving civil liberties, civil rights and voting rights, and highlighting how Trump's policies contradict his promises to working-class voters. Here is a bet that the mobilization against Trump will rival in size and influence the tea party uprising against Obama."
I can't identify the types of drugs Mr. Dionne is using but they're undoubtedly expensive. I don't doubt that progressives' morale is lower than a snake's belly. That doesn't mean that they've got the right to totally ignore reality. Since President Obama's inauguration, Democrats have gotten utterly devastated. They've literally lost 1,000+ legislative seats. They've gone from having a majority of the governorships to having less than one-third of the governorships. After the 2008 election , Democrats had a 257-seat majority in the House. After the 2016 election, Democrats controlled 194 seats in the House of Representatives, a drop of 63 seats.
From the outline of his policies so far and from the right-wing Team of Billionaires he has chosen to run large parts of his government, it's hard to see how Trump will advance the material interests of those who voted for him.
If you're an elitist, it's impossible "to see how Trump will advance the material interests of those who voted for him." If you aren't an elitist, then it isn't difficult to see how President-Elect Trump's agenda will advance the agenda Trump ran on.
EJ Dionne Jr.'s delusional thinking aren't helping him connect with voters. Rather than listening to the DC Echochamber, he should listen to real people. If Dionne listened to more people, it isn't likely he'd say this:
Lastly, it's hard to imagine a president more likely to inspire Obama Nostalgia than Donald Trump.
Obama's agenda never was popular after 2009. We voted in 2010, 2014 and 2016 to kill it. It isn't like people are insisting on more pathetic economic growth or overregulation or stabbing allies.
Originally posted Thursday, December 29, 2016, revised 30-Dec 9:52 AM
No comments.
Why the media missed the Story of the Year
Salena Zito's article turns the spotlight on the MSM, aka the Agenda Media, to highlight why the media got this election badly wrong. Early in the article, Salena wrote about the NY Times, saying "Take The New York Times' public editor's laudable call for more diversity in the newsroom. 'The executive editor, Dean Baquet, is African-American,' Liz Spayd wrote. 'The other editors on his masthead are white. The staff with the most diversity? The news assistants, who mostly do administrative jobs and get paid the least.'"
Then she made the important recommendation (I'd argue it's essential) that reporters "need more people who come from a blue-collar background, who perhaps didn't go to Brown and can be found in a pew on Sunday on a fairly regular basis."
Yesterday, I wrote this post to highlight the absurdity of E.J. Dionne's column. He's totally certain that a Trump administration will be a disaster with a silver lining for Democrats. Last night, on the Kelly File, Nomiki Konst 'debated' Marc Thiessen and Guy Benson about whether Democrats were learning the lesson of this election. Konst insisted that it was all drive about the economy.
While there's no doubt lots of people voted for Donald Trump because they think a billionaire might know a thing or 2 about reviving this pathetic recovery, it's more than that. Mr. Trump promises to clean up the VA scandal, build a wall on the US-Mexican border, simplify the federal tax system and rein in the out-of-control EPA. In other words, he promised to make their lives better.
Voters didn't just reject Mrs. Clinton's message. In battleground state after battleground state, they essentially said 'are you out of your flipping mind? We've suffered through 8 years of this crap and we're tired of it.' But I digress.
Benson and Thiessen both talked about how the Democratic Party is incapable of talking to people of faith or blue collar workers. It's clear that they haven't learned their lesson because the people who are the 2 'finalists' for DNC chair, Keith Ellison and Thomas Perez, are incapable of connecting with those voters.
Paul Krugman thinks the Trump economic policies will tank. Thomas Friedman thinks that the Obama administration is the best friend Israel has ever had. Other inside-the-Beltway columnists missed the fact that miners and farmers are fed up with the EPA's regulatory overreach.
It isn't surprising why some of the biggest punchlines in Mr. Trump's stump speeches were criticisms of the corrupt media. That was a galvanizing message. It's what tied the blue collar workers together with the millionaires who built their companies from the ground up.
The journalist who didn't miss what was happening this election was Salena Zito. This video illustrates why Salena got it right:
This weekend, I spoke with Ed Morrissey. Admittedly, neither of us predicted Trump winning. We both, however, gave Trump a shot at winning going into Election Night. When I told Ed that the common denominator for both of us is that we both listened to Salena Zito, he quickly agreed. We didn't know that he'd win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but we knew that Trump's message resonated with those economically disenfranchised voters.
If newsrooms don't start sending their reporters out into the real world, if they don't put a high priority on building a newsroom with cultural diversity, they'll continue missing the big stories.
Finally, it's time to thank Salena for her fantastic reporting. If she doesn't win a slew of awards for her political reporting, it'll prove that political editors are clueless.
Posted Friday, December 30, 2016 10:03 AM
No comments.
Minnesota's Story of the Year
Minnesota's story of the year is simple. In fact, the top 2 stories of the year are intertwined. When Gov. Dayton stated that " the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable " to growing numbers of Minnesotans, jaws dropped because they knew he'd just issued a death sentence to DFL legislators in November's elections. Though he tried rehabilitating their campaigns with this op-ed , pundits knew that it was too little too late.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Dayton's statement was Minnesota's Story of the Year. That was so straightforward that even Gov. Dayton figured it out.
The highlight of Gov. Dayton's op-ed was when he wrote "I ask you to vote for two years with DFL majorities in both the Minnesota House and Senate, to fulfill my pledge to you: A better Minnesota." Not only did Minnesotans reject that request, they voted for a bigger majority for Speaker Daudt in the House while flipping the Senate from a DFL majority body to a GOP majority. You can't send a clearer, more unmistakable, message to Gov. Dayton.
Voters didn't just reject Gov. Dayton's request. They sent the message that they were rejecting his hard-left agenda. They sent the message that the pressure is on him to abandon his my-way-or-the-highway negotiations.
Frankly, Minnesotans are tired of fixing Gov. Dayton's messes. They're tired of his constant giving the environmental activist wing of the DFL everything they want while shafting the blue collar workers of outstate Minnesota.
If Republicans get popular things done the next 2 years, they'll keep their majorities in the House and Senate and elect a real governor. Not getting everything they want done over the next 2 years isn't failure. It's success because that gives voters motivation to elect a Republican governor in 2018.
Gov. Dayton admitting that President Obama's "signature issue" is a failure was Minnesota's story of the year. Minnesota voters' resounding rejection of Gov. Dayton was Minnesota's next biggest story.
Posted Friday, December 30, 2016 3:37 PM
No comments.
Gov. Dayton, BLM vs. Miners
Gov. Dayton is the gift that keeps giving fantastic quotes to Minnesota's bloggers. This article provides another such gift.
The second paragraph of the article says "In an interview with The Associated Press, Dayton said he expects Twin Metals Minnesota and its supporters to try their hardest to persuade President-elect Donald Trump's administration to reverse the Obama administration's decision this month not to renew the federal mineral rights leases needed for the underground mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness near Ely in northeastern Minnesota."
The third paragraph continues by quoting Gov. Dayton as saying "I don't think it's ever dead. It's stymied at present. And if the Trump administration doesn't intervene and override what President Obama has decided, it's not going to go forward."
That's pretty amazing considering what Gov. Dayton said about Twin Metals last March:
If Gov. Dayton thinks that killing the project is the same as it being stymied, then I might buy into this fantasy. Otherwise, I'd recommend that his staff buy him a dictionary. If he isn't interested in using the dictionary, then I'd simply tell him to start telling the truth.
Thus far, he hasn't done a good job with that.
Originally posted Friday, December 30, 2016, revised 31-Dec 12:05 AM
No comments.
Obama isn't leaving the stage
True to his character (or lack thereof?), President Obama promised that he won't leave the world stage after PEOTUS Donald Trump is sworn in at noon on Jan. 20,2017. This isn't even slightly surprising.
President Obama's legacy requires tons of spin because it's such a pathetic legacy on multiple fronts. The ABACA (Anything But Affordable Care Act) isn't affordable. President Obama's record in the Middle East is a profile in stabbing our allies (Israel) in the back while propping up the biggest state sponsor of terrorism (Iran) and the biggest genocidal maniac (Syria) in the region. Economically, Obamanomics was a total failure. President Obama's administration became the first administration in history to never achieve a year of 3% economic growth.
During his weekly radio address, President Obama said "As I prepare to take on the even more important role of citizen, know that I will be there with you every step of the way to ensure that this country forever strives to live up to the incredible promise of our founding - that all of us are created equal, and all of us deserve every chance to live out our dreams."
In late November, President Obama said this:
I promise you that next year Michelle and I are going to be right there with you, and the clouds are going to start parting and the sun is going to come back out, and we're going to be busy, involved in the amazing stuff that we've been doing all these years before.
Early in his administration, President Obama display a tin ear. It's now apparent that he's got a tin ear.
Since President Obama took office, there are 12 fewer Democratic governors, 63 fewer Democrats in the US House of Representatives, 12 fewer Democrats in the US Senate and almost 1,000 fewer Democrat state legislators. History is clear. When President Obama isn't on the ballot, Americans sharply reject his ideas.
For instance, there's broad bipartisan rejection of his stabbing Israel in the back. There's broad bipartisan support here in Minnesota (with Gov. Dayton seemingly being the only holdout) to return to Minnesota's health insurance and health care system that Obamacare destroyed. Who can blame them? Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing and deductibles are totally unaffordable. Networks are tiny and access to care in rural Minnesota is difficult.
That's what President Obama, MIT 'economist' Jonathan Gruber, Ezekiel Emanuel and media lapdogs like Paul Krugman will attempt to spin into the greatest health care system in the history of western civilization. Useful idiots like Thomas Friedman and Ben Rhodes are already spinning the stabbing of Israel in the back as proof that President Obama loves Israel more than any other American president.
With a disgraceful record like that, President Obama doesn't need more spinmeisters. He needs divine intervention, which won't be forthcoming. This is the most likely outcome:
Posted Saturday, December 31, 2016 6:03 PM
No comments.
