Gotham on the Mississippi

 This amused me:

Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Minneapolis has a “very detached, bourgeois liberal mentality,” according to a New York Post story posted Friday as the city this week approaches the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by police.

O’Hara said he became accustomed to a very Democratic city when he worked in Newark, N.J., but that nothing had prepared him for the “ultra-liberal orthodoxy,” as the Post put it, that he found in Minneapolis. O’Hara was Newark’s public safety director.

“Here it’s very, very ideological and a lot of times it’s like reality and facts can’t get through the filter. It’s a very detached, bourgeois liberal mentality … It’s bizarre," he is quoted as saying to the Post, a tabloid generally considered to be a conservative publication.

Yeah, but you're not supposed to talk about it, Chief O'Hara. I would have thought Commissioner Gordon would have told you that. 

Unsurprisingly, our betters were not amused:

O’Hara’s comments irritated some Minneapolis City Council members. Council President Elliott Payne said progressives in Minneapolis are not a monolith, which he said is hard for some “to wrap your head around, especially for people new to our city’s political ecosystem.”

“Some people come into their politics through a more academic process, others through solidarity, others through lived experience,” Payne said. “No matter how people develop their core values, one should have a deeper understanding of the diverse perspectives of our community before engaging in conversations with New York tabloids.”

Translation - you're not supposed to tell them we're a great herd of independent minds, capisce? 

The irritated members of the Minneapolis City Council are all grifters. They talk about "lived experience" and "solidarity," but that's all a ruse. They get rich from milking the taxpayers and it's a pretty good gig. Devotion to one's rice bowl is a perfectly understandable incentive - the vanguard guards the avant garde and being called bourgeois is an intolerable insult, especially when the audience is likely simps from Staten Island. Why should Payne have to explain his activities to anyone so utterly lacking in nuance? The sniffing is audible.

What remains a mystery is what Donk voters get out of the deal. I have lived in the Twin Cities for more than 30 years and I lived in Chicago before that, and most people in both places recognize that their rulers are scoundrels, but they continually return them to office anyway. I used a Batman reference early on; speaking of cartoonish individuals, Tim Walz and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker are Rocky and Bullwinkle villains, but they win almost by acclimation. And if you try to ask the question in polite circles, you are cast into the outer darkness.

Do you spot the real issue with O'Hara's remarks? The mentality in question isn't detached. It's unhinged. 

Recommendation

 Trump has so many "scandals" swirling about him that he really ought to combine a few to make things more efficient. My first recommendation - use the Qatari plane to fly in white refugees from South Africa.

You should not find it surprising...

... that the modern Democratic Party is full of scoundrels. But in case you weren't sure, spend two minutes with this video.

 

Justice Barrett

 Amy Coney Barrett is now a Supreme Court justice. This is good news for many reasons. A few observations:

Justice Barrett

• I don't know what happens with Roe v. Wade going forward, and neither does anyone else. A challenge may never reach the Supreme Court. In fact, that would be my guess.
• The two cases that matter more to me are Citizens United and Heller. Both of these are now safe for a generation or more.
• Liberals hate the result, because they have plans and they need the Supreme Court to make things happen for them. Even if John Roberts lets his freak flag fly and sides with the liberals going forward, he's going to be on the wrong side of 5-4 majorities in many instances. 
• Will the Dems pack the Court? They would like to, but I don't think Joe Biden is going to win the election, so it's moot at this point. But that's a subject for another post.
• Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer are morons. If the Dems are upset at what Cocaine Mitch McConnell has wrought, they need to remember why the judicial filibuster is gone. 
• My guess? Barrett will be one of the all-time greats on the Court. She is brilliant and principled. Her intellect is second to none. It's no surprise the Dems hate her, because she is the antidote to the dim cynicism of the modern Left.

No epiphanies

 

As news came over that President Trump and the First Lady have the 'Rona, the reaction was typical -- most of the leftists on my social media feeds were almost gleeful. I could publish several examples, but frankly, what's the point? We all know how leftists are. While it's momentarily disheartening to see your otherwise sensible friends become raving loons when Orange Man Bad is the topic of conversation, it's no longer surprising.

I am hopeful the President recovers quickly. We need him.

The Sound and the Fury

 Yeah, the first debate was a straight-up shitshow. A few very brief thoughts:

• Biden didn't drool on himself, so that's positive. I kinda think Trump made his life easier, because if he'd just dropped the insults on Joe and let him respond, Biden might have said something he would later regret, but Trump can't help himself. Also, many people will object to the full frontal assault on Biden's son Hunter. But my guess is this: if Trump gets a sufficient amount of voters to do a little research on Hunter Biden's, ahem, career, it will work to Trump's benefit.
• Trump is a rat bastard, but he fights. And in a moment where the Left is bidding fair to destroy much of what I hold dear, a rat bastard is probably the right guy for the job of opposing the Left.
• Chris Wallace begged a lot of questions, none to Trump's benefit. And he lost control of things more than once. As annoying as Trump and Biden were, Wallace was a bigger disgrace than either of them. 
• Trump did make one important point concerning the peaceful transition of power; he never got one when he was elected and he's been at war with the Deep State from the jump. I think a lot of people understand that but haven't thought about it much. Maybe the message got lost in the brawling, but it's possible that may resonate with a few people.
• I'd like to say we deserve better candidates for president, but based on my social media feed I don't think that's right. We have the campaign and the candidates we have because we allow the worst government class ever to maintain their sinecures.

If you have thoughts, share 'em in the comments.

Math is hard

 My hometown newspaper, the Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin, has an alarming headline:

Some. What's going on in Wisconsin? The article reports:

Eight Wisconsin metro areas have landed on the New York Times' list of places across the country where new cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest. 

La Crosse is number one on the New York Times' list, which was updated Thursday afternoon. In third is Whitewater, and the Oshkosh-Neenah area is in eighth. Stevens Point, Appleton, Platteville, Madison and Green Bay take up the 15th through 19th spots of the list, respectively. 

With the exception of Appleton, all the Wisconsin cities on the list are home to a University of Wisconsin System campus. 

Appleton, in the crosshairs, even without a UW campus! And then we get the numbers:

According to the New York Times' analysis, comparing the number of cases from a week ago to now, adjusting for population, the following Wisconsin metro areas have seen an increase of:

La Crosse: 436 new cases per 100,000 people

Whitewater: 228 new cases per 100,000 people 

Oshkosh-Neenah: 157 new cases per 100,000 people 

Stevens Point: 106 new cases per 100,000 people

Appleton: 105 new cases per 100,000 people 

Platteville: 101 new cases per 100,000 people 

Madison: 98.4 new cases per 100,000 people 

Green Bay: 97.9 new cases per 100,000 people

105 cases per 100,000 people! But let's do the math -- that's 1/10th of 1%. That means 1 out of 1000. This is a crisis?

The Post Crescent used to be an interesting newspaper, but like most daily newspapers in Wisconsin it is now a Gannett property. Those are the same simps who run USA Today. And the dumbed-down version of journalism they've been pumping for 40 years is now what you get in my hometown. This is not progress.

Friends and neighbors

On the streets of Minneapolis last night:

In the end, at about 4:22, the Alpha News reporter gets a face full of temporary bollard and her phone is stolen. The phone was apparently found in a fountain the next day, destroyed, but the footage was retrievable. And this video is the footage in question.

You can argue that protest movements are about justice, but this isn't justice. These are not people seeking justice. Larceny and aggravated battery are not justice. There is a fundamental emptiness in their lives, which you can hear in the desperation of their F-bomb laden screeching. And all the SJW cant and street violence cannot fill the void. These are fundamentally broken people. And in their rage, they are intent on dragging others into their void. Don't let them.

Revelations

 At this point we learn more about Trump’s detractors than we do about Trump. The story making the rounds now details how Trump’s older sister, a retired federal judge, apparently shared some uncharitable views of her brother. We know this because Trump’s niece, who is currently marketing a critical book about Trump, had made this known. Trump’s niece apparently recorded 15 hours of conversations with her aunt without disclosing to her aunt that she was recording the conversations. Does that behavior strike you as crappy? It strikes me that way. 

And some of the stories seem, well, off. One states that Trump cheated on the SAT to get into Penn. Since Trump entered Penn as a transfer student from Fordham, it’s preposterous — transfer students don’t retake the SAT to transfer; the college has a transcript to evaluate. That’s a tell.

Trump hate porn is a lucrative industry; my social media feed is replete with lefty college friends who buy all the latest dirt; they have shelves full of books. But these books never move public opinion, because everyone already knows who the Bad Orange Man is. And we should not hesitate to call the industry what it is — an unimaginative circle jerk. 

Pour encourager les autres

Oberlin College has an eight-figure problem:

A Lorain County jury awarded Gibson’s Bakery $33 million in punitive damages in a case against Oberlin College on Thursday bringing the total damages in the case to more than $40 million.

The jury found the the college and Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo liable on three different counts last Friday, awarding more than $11 million in actual damages. 

The counts were:

• Defamation - Oberlin College and Raimondo were found liable

• Infliction of intentional emotional distress - Oberlin College was found liable

• Intentional interference of business relationships - Raimondo was found liable

$44 million is a huge sum, even for a school with an endowment of over $850 million. Oberlin is going to keep fighting, apparently. From the linked article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar in a letter to the campus community on Friday expressed dissatisfaction with the jury’s decision, and signaled the college plans to appeal its findings.

“Let me be absolutely clear: This is not the final outcome. This is, in fact, just one step along the way of what may turn out to be a lengthy and complex legal process,” Twillie Ambar said. “We are disappointed in the jury’s decisions and the fragmentary and sometimes distorted public discussion of this case. But we respect the integrity of the jury, and we value our relationship with the town and region that are our home.”

While the first rule of holes applies in this case, I get it -- it's likely the punitive damage award will be reduced on appeal, but the chances of getting the case thrown out entirely are about nil. The facts of the case aren't good for Oberlin:

The case filed in 2017 stemmed from Oberlin and Raimondo’s conduct after a string of student protests outside the bakery where protesters called the owners racist.

Three black students were arrested in 2016 after one tried to use a fake ID and shoplifted from the bakery, according to the Chronicle-Telegram. The owner’s son, who is white, followed the students and got into a fight with them.

Soon after, students protested outside of the bakery to the extent where local police testified that they considered pulling in outside help.

Protest might be soft-pedaling things a bit. Legal Insurrection adds some context:

After the initial protest that said Gibson’s was racist, Oberlin College did nothing to put out the fire, and in fact added to it. That is more than likely what made the jury think they school had acted with “malice’ toward Gibson’s, the primary piece of the punitive damage puzzle. Rather than put out a statement that Gibson’s was not racist, the school put out a letter on Nov. 11 from the school president and the dean of students that said, “Regarding the incident at Gibson’s, we are deeply troubled because we have heard from students that there is more to the story than what has been generally reported. We will commit every resource to determining the full and true narrative, including exploring whether this is a pattern and not an isolated incident.”
That statement was not part of the defamation claim, but set a tone of indifference. And it was that indifference by the school, plus emails and texts that showed vitriolic attitude in them, that perhaps caused the jury to go very high on the punitive damages.

According to the evidence presented, the school never did determine “any full and true narrative” and found out as most everyone in the community knew, that the Gibsons had never had and history of racism on any kind. But the school still cut the business off from its cafeteria delivery business (bagels, pastries and pizza dough). Students stopped shopping at the store. Revenues dropped by a huge amount (from about $900,000 in 2016 down to about $500,000 in 2018) and Oberlin College never did anything to rectify the situation.

Of course. Facts aren't important in a narrative-driven world. And even now, the facts don't matter on the Oberlin campus:

The damage was worse than most realize. On a walk through campus several weekends ago, this reporter talked to about 20 students at random on campus, and every one of them said they would never shop at Gibson’s because the business and family are racist. When shown the police reports and the fact that the three shoplifters plead guilty and claimed “no racial profiling” was involved, most of the students I spoke with said, “Cops lie.”

Do cops lie? Some do. But SJWs lie as well. And that's the crux here. The town of Oberlin has less than 10,000 citizens. Oberlin College is the center of the community. And it's been a lefty enclave forever. But there's a difference between conventional liberalism and the the SJW lunacy emanating from college campuses these days. Back to Legal Insurrection:

But in the end, this was. a case that will be one that is pointed to as a “tipping point” of sorts. [Plaintiff attorney Lee] Plakas repeatedly told the jury that this was bigger than them, and that they could make a statement to the country “that this type of behavior is unacceptable to any community because a big collegiate institution like Oberlin College has a responsibility to their community and neighbors, and not just to themselves.”

The message has to send a shudder through other liberal arts colleges, especially ones less well-heeled than Oberlin. My alma mater, Beloit College, has an endowment about 1/4th of Oberlin's. If Beloit were hit with an 8-figure judgment, the college would probably end up closing its doors. A similar result would put every other liberal arts college in Wisconsin out of business as well. The saying is, "get woke, go broke." The pathology of totalitarian thinking can survive on campus, but for the moment the real world isn't having it.

Man of the Moment

You really should read the transcript of Attorney General William Barr's interview with Jan Crawford of CBS News. I'm going to point out two examples of why Barr is exactly the guy we need at this moment:

Honey badger

JAN CRAWFORD: You're saying that spying occurred. There's not anything necessarily wrong with that.

WILLIAM BARR: Right.

JAN CRAWFORD: As long as there's a reason for it.

WILLIAM BARR: Whether it's adequately predicated. And look, I think if we -- we are worried about foreign influence in the campaign? We should be because the heart of our system is the peaceful transfer of power through elections and what gives the government legitimacy is that process. And if foreign elements can come in and affect it, that's bad for the republic. But by the same token, it's just as, it's just as dangerous to the continuation of self-government and our republican system, republic that we not allow government power, law enforcement or intelligence power, to play a role in politics, to intrude into politics, and affect elections.

JAN CRAWFORD: So it's just as dangerous- So when we talk about foreign interference versus say a government abuse of power, which is more troubling?

WILLIAM BARR: Well they're both, they're both troubling.

JAN CRAWFORD: Equally?

WILLIAM BARR: In my mind, they are, sure. I mean, republics have fallen because of Praetorian Guard mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, is somehow an enemy of the state. And you know, there is that tendency that they know better and that, you know, they're there to protect as guardians of the people. That can easily translate into essentially supervening the will of the majority and getting your own way as a government official.

JAN CRAWFORD: And you are concerned that that may have happened in 2016?

WILLIAM BARR: Well, I just think it has to be carefully look at because the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed.

Emphasis mine. Partisanship is one thing, but Barr points out the real danger, which is the certainty of thought that flows from Orange Man Bad. As I've observed the last 3-4 years, the greatest realization I've had to face is discovering that many of the things I believe weren't, ahem, adequately predicated.

The end of the interview is even more important:

JAN CRAWFORD: But when you came into this job, you were kind of, it's like the US Attorney in Connecticut, I mean, you had a good reputation on the right and on the left. You were a man with a good reputation. You are not someone who is, you know, accused of protecting the president, enabling the president, lying to Congress. Did you expect that coming in? And what is your response to it? How do you? What's your response to that?

WILLIAM BARR: Well in a way I did expect it.

JAN CRAWFORD: You did?

WILLIAM BARR: Yeah, because I realize we live in a crazy hyper-partisan period of time and I knew that it would only be a matter of time if I was behaving responsibly and calling them as I see them, that I would be attacked because nowadays people don't care about the merits and the substance. They only care about who it helps, who benefits, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits, everything is gauged by politics. And as I say, that's antithetical to the way the department runs and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital and I realize that and that is one of the reasons that I ultimately was persuaded that I should take it on because I think at my stage in life it really doesn't make any difference.

JAN CRAWFORD: You are at the end of your career, or?

WILLIAM BARR: I am at the end of my career. I've you know--

JAN CRAWFORD: Does it, I mean, it's the reputation that you have worked your whole life on though?

WILLIAM BARR: Yeah, but everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don't believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?

Emphasis mine. This is a man who doesn't care if he gets dissed in the Washington Post, or doesn't get to hang at the cocktail parties in Georgetown. He understands there is no value in holding the esteem of jackals. He may look like a cross between John Goodman and Roger Ebert, but he is Shane. This is the man of the moment.

UPDATE: if you weren't certain that Barr is the guy we need, consider this: swamp denizen Jonathan Chait is terrified.

Hear the children/Don't turn around oh oh oh

It's great fun to be a commissar, Megan McArdle reminds us:

Revolutionaries and reformers, working from outside the system, can't force people to renounce wrong-think by threatening to strip them of their livelihoods and drum them out of the public square. Those weapons are available only to the powers-that-be.

To advocate such tactics is therefore to admit that you are no longer fighting the system, but that you are the system -- that in the centers of cultural production, at least, Rosa Luxemburg is giving way to the commissars, and Martin Luther to the Grand Inquisitor.

McArdle is referencing recent events at Middlebury College, but she could have just as easily used any number of other liberal arts colleges, including my own alma mater. To get a sense of what's going on, consider the demands of the Middlebury student government:

Any organization or academic department that invites a speaker to campus will be required to fill out a due diligence form created by the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in coordination with the SGA Institutional Diversity Committee. These questions should be created to determine whether a speaker’s beliefs align with Middlebury’s community standards, removing the burden of researching speakers from the student body.

Heterodox opinions need not apply. There's more:

Additionally, administrators will ask Faculty Council to require all academic departments to have Student Advisory Boards which will have access to a list of speakers invited by the department at least a month in advance. The Student Advisory Boards’ purpose will be to ask the student body for potential community input when necessary.

They won't really be asking, though.

One tradition that many schools have is to assign a book to all incoming freshmen. I might suggest future Middlebury students ought to be given a copy of Lord of the Flies and a mirror. But in the meantime, there is the matter of all the undergrad commissars and their enforcement of woke orthodoxy. Back to McArdle:

Woke-ism may have some of the emotional tenor of church, but it lacks the supernatural beliefs and cohesive ritual of a real faith.

As for cultural socialism ... what could "collective ownership of the means of production" mean when applied to culture, which is collectively produced now and always has been?

I suspect that both sides are searching for a different word, one associated with both religion and Marxism: What they are trying to describe is an orthodoxy, a received wisdom enforced not by argument but by social, economic or even violent coercion.

So how do you enforce it?

Existing orthodoxies are largely self-enforcing, transmitted by a million little social signals you absorb without noticing.

Adopting a new orthodoxy, however, is messy. And while the new orthodoxy gropes toward its final shape, people living under it experience a special, debilitating terror: the fear that anything you say might be held against you, that what is mandatory today might be forbidden tomorrow, with ex post facto justice meted out to anyone who failed to anticipate the change.

It's a clear case, Herr Kommissar
'Cause all the children know
They're all slidin' down into the valley
They're all slipping on the same snow

Alles klar? 

Ask an expert

The pot calling out the kettle:

It's going to be so sweet when Trump declassifies everything. And I remain convinced he will.

The last honest Democrat?

Mark Penn, who worked as a pollster for Bill Clinton during the Whitewater investigation that morphed into Lewinskygate, has been probably the sanest portside observer of the continuing Mueller fandango. Writing for The Hill, he's got it nailed:

Most people don’t understand what it is to not only be personally investigated for something you didn’t do but also have your friends, family members and associates placed in legal jeopardy over it. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team systematically targeted the people around the president, squeezing them like lemons, indicting them on mostly process crimes created by the investigation itself. They reviewed everyone’s emails, text messages, phone calls, bank statements — and yet their conclusion on collusion was clear and definitive. It has to be believed.

But it's not likely to stop Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff from staying on the trail. Why? Ask Penn:

But the problem is that Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) are congressmen from safe districts who are nobodies if they have no investigations to launch. It’s in the interest of their egos to keep it all going so that they can have daily press availabilities. And they are whipping up their political bases. It will take some Democrats of courage to turn this off and stop the abuse of going after the president’s financial records. These are the kinds of things Nixon was doing, and there is no justification for those in Congress to be doing exactly those things for which Nixon resigned from office — going after his political enemies.

Exactly. The Democrats are projecting more than a 20-screen multiplex and have been since the inception of this drama. Will they take Penn's advice and call off the chihuahuas? The bet here -- not a chance.

Now showing across the internet

A very old song

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 
But still I'd look to find a reason to believe

-- "Reason to Believe," Tim Hardin, 1966

A very old song, indeed:

The national outrage that simmered after actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked by people shouting racial and anti-gay slurs was fueled in part by celebrities who spoke out loud and strong on social media.

But the outrage has now been replaced by surprise, doubt and bafflement as the singers, actors and politicians who came out in support of the “Empire” star struggle to digest the strange twists the case has taken. Some conservative pundits, meanwhile, have gleefully seized on the moment.

The narrative that just a week ago seemed cut-and-dry has become messy and divisive — and it’s all playing out again on social media.

Seizing, or pouncing? I can never be sure. But c'mon, it was so believable:

Smollett, who is black and gay, said he was physically attacked last month by two masked men shouting racial and anti-gay slurs and “This is MAGA country!”— a reference to the Make America Great Again slogan used in President Donald Trump’s election campaign. Smollett said the attackers looped a rope around his neck before running away as he was out getting food at a Subway restaurant.

I lived in Chicago for five years. I remember things like this happening all the time. Well, at least the racial slurs, but the noose is a little edgy. But there's a pattern to the reportage:

But still I'd look to find a reason to believe:

In a statement on Saturday, the Indigenous Peoples Movement identified the man in the videos as Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder, a veteran and the former director of the Native Youth Alliance, a group that works to ensure that traditional culture and spiritual ways are upheld for future generations. Mr. Phillips also holds an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, the group said.

Mr. Phillips could not be reached for comment on Saturday. He told The Washington Post that he noticed the teenagers taunting participants at the Indigenous Peoples March.

“It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: ‘I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,’” Mr. Phillips told The Post. “I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true:

The Texas restaurant company which banned a customer after an employee’s story of a receipt scrawled with a racial epithet went viral said that it had parted ways with the employee and learned that the story was made up.

“We have learned that our employee fabricated the entire story,” Terry Turney, the chief operating officer of Saltgrass steakhouses, said in a statement. “Racism of any form is intolerable, and we will always act swiftly should it occur in any of our establishments. Falsely accusing someone of racism is equally disturbing.”

The incident unfolded earlier this month when Khalil Cavil, a 20-year-old waiter at a Saltgrass outpost in Odessa, Texas, posted an image to Facebook that showed a $108 bill with zero on the tip line, and “We don’t tip terrorist,” written in ink at the top.

But still I look to find a reason to believe:

The morning of December 9, 2017, launched one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public. Within an hour, MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to have “independently confirmed” this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC videos here).

There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before. Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all got the date of the email wrong.

Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 

[Lara] Logan said that many journalists have abandoned consistent standards in reporting when it comes to the Trump administration.

“Standards are out the window, I mean you read one story after another or hear it and it’s all based on one anonymous administration official, former administration official,” she said. “That’s not journalism, that’s horses**t.”

“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” she argued. “We bear some responsibility for that, and we’re not taking ownership of that and addressing it. We just want to blame it all on somebody else.” 

The MSM is a faith-based initiative. Christians look for evidence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit for the MSM is confirmation bias.

Nobody does it better

Trump feeds the Clemson Tigers fast food and turns the outrage meter up to 11:

Have some

The sputtering rage on my social media feed was something to see. A representative sample:

REPREHENSIBLE. In America it has been customary for champions of any sport to be invited to the White House for a celebration. Prior to Jan 20, 2017 it was a high honor. Now that the criminal occupant of the WH is there, the ceremony is ridiculous. For the football national champions Clemson University, the “menu” is McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s; fast food chains. There’s a 5 STAR CHEF at the White House, and this imbecile serves the champions junk food. Disgusting!!!!!!

It's all there. And you don't need to figure out which fork to use.

The nub of it

Ann Althouse identifies why it's becoming just about impossible to blog in the age of Bad Orange Man:

I can barely read the news these days (and I absolutely cannot watch it on TV). The negativity toward Trump is so relentless, cluttering up everything. It's crying wolf times a thousand. If anything is worth taking seriously, I'm afraid I won't be able to notice.

That's it. If we're in mortal peril 24/7 and nothing actually happens, why the hell should we take any of the caterwauling seriously? In his always-entertaining year in review opus, Dave Barry notices the same thing:

So when 2018 finally dawned, we were desperately hoping for change. It was a new year, a chance for the nation to break out of the endless, pointless barrage of charges and countercharges, to move past the vicious, hate-filled hyperpartisan spew of name-calling and petty point-scoring, to end the 24/7 cycle of media hysteria, to look forward and begin to tackle the many critical issues facing the nation, the most important of which turned out to be…

…the 2016 election.

Yes. We could not escape it. We were like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except that when our clock-radio went off, instead of Sonny and Cher singing “I Got You Babe,” we awoke to still MORE talk of Russians and emails; MORE childish semiliterate presidential tweets about FAKE NEWS and Crooked Hillary; MORE freakouts by cable-TV panelists predicting that — forget about the previous 300 times they made the same prediction — THIS time impeachment was IMMINENT, PEOPLE. IMMINENT!!

Meet the new year: same as the old year.

I can't take 99% of what I read in the MSM seriously. It means nothing.

Mind Over Mattis

It's the rarest of all things in modern Washington -- a resignation in protest:

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position. 

Those are the words of James Mattis, the current SecDef, who is resigning, most likely, because Donald Trump wants out of Syria. Is this a crisis? No. And Mattis is correct; if he can't get on board with what Trump wants to do, he should resign. In that regard, he's a hell of a lot more honorable than nearly all the major figures in the Department of Justice who have treated their offices as sinecures and sniper's nests.

Is Trump wrong about leaving Syria? I don't personally think so. Trying to discern the good guys in that particular place is a fool's errand. We have been doing the empire thing for over a century and over time I've grown increasingly skeptical about the value of what we do in many parts of the world. Engaging with the world does not mean subsidizing it. And we continue to put many people in harm's way for reasons that are often contradictory.

I'm glad James Mattis served our country. He is an honorable man. I'm sorry he is leaving, because honorable men and women are in short supply within the Beltway. Trump will find another individual to serve in his administration. We'll see how it plays out.

Wisconsin politics, yet again

The Wisconsin legislature and outgoing governor Scott Walker are busy at the moment and his successor doesn't like it one bit:

The new legislation tries to protect some of the GOP's achievements in recent years, including a work requirement for some people receiving state health care and the state's role in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act. The bill could also make it harder for Gov.-elect Tony Evers to renegotiate a $3 billion subsidy for a Foxconn electronics manufacturing facility, a deal spearheaded by Walker.

"Wisconsin has never seen anything like this," Evers said in a statement. "Power-hungry politicians rushed through sweeping changes to our laws to expand their own power and override the will of the people of Wisconsin who asked for change on November 6th."

 In other words, the moment the election results were posted, Evers should immediately have power. That's not how it works. Evers knows that, of course.

Evers also knows he's going to be governor because he ran up incredibly lopsided vote totals in Milwaukee and Madison, while in other parts of the state he and his party have significantly less popular support. There's a reason why the Republicans will still control the legislature in 2019 and, contrary to the bleatings of the left, it's not because of gerrymandering. You can't simply import the votes of Milwaukeeans and apply them to a Fond du Lac district.

We don't have a pure democracy and it's a good thing. Walker did not demand that his predecessor, Jim Doyle, immediately cease and desist when he was elected in 2010. Walker had to wait until he was actually in the office before he set out to change things. We all remember how that went. I don't know how it's going to go for Evers once he's in office, although I suspect he's going to be a very weak governor regardless of what Walker and the current legislature do. Voters in Wisconsin might have been tired of Walker, but there's little evidence the voters want public employee union hegemony to return, either, to say nothing of untrammeled bureaucracy. And when Evers attempts to raise taxes next year, he'll find that out.