Saturday, December 31, 2016

Last Rachel Maddow Post of 2016

WHAT A GREAT YEAR!

Body Language On "The View"

STUDIES IN WARM AND CUDDLY

Even The Dems Are Piling On Our Failed President

ERIC ZUESSE | 31.12.2016 | WORLD

Obama’s Failed Presidency

I’m a former lifelong Democrat, stating here a clear and incontestable fact: Barack Obama is a failed President.
It’s true not just because of the sad realities such as that «Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94 % Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time» — or, as the economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz wrote in the original of that study: «94 percent of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements». («Alternative work arrangements» referred there to Americans who were involuntarily working only part-time jobs — they simply couldn’t find full-time, though that’s what they wanted.) In other words: Obama’s failure isn’t just because of America’s increasingly sales-clerk, and burger-flipping, workforce.
And Obama’s failure is also not just because «Poverty Rose In 96 % Of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency». (However, that reality turned out to be decisive in Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on November 8th, as Nate Cohn pointed out in The New York Times on December 23rd, headlining, «How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump». Hillary was running on Obama’s poor record.

The Russians Hacked The Election (Insert Laugh Track Here)

I am starting to believe there might be something to that post-modernism after all. The purveyors of fake news create a fake news witch hunt while promoting a fake news bonanza stating that "the Russians hacked the election."

The silly ass meme could be halted with one question: "Specifically, what constitutes election hacking?"

Even if the worst accusations against (that are not all that grievous) were proven to be true, that the Russkies used advanced cyber technology to gain access to Podesta's emails and then handed them over to Julian Assange--Assange denies any Russian connection--does this mean that we should sanction or punish foreign nationals who have aided and abetted the Democrats?

Citizen of the World-At-Large, George Soros, has interfered in American elections for three decades. In 2016 he extended his scope to successfully influence local races. Do his actions constitute election hacking?

Carlos Slim, a Mexican national who at various times has been listed as the wealthiest man on Planet Earth, is rabidly anti-Trump. In 2015 he became the largest single investor in "The New York Times." Ironically (said with a hint of irony) it was this esteemed purveyor of fake news that illegally procured Donald Trump's tax records in the 2016 presidential election season. Does this illegality constitute election hacking?

Does the slanted reporting of foreign news entities, like BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Times constitute election hacking? Regarding Russia Times, does anyone care to make the point that they have promoted a pro-Trump agenda? Good luck squaring that circle.

This from Ricochet.

The media is intentionally lying to the public because they want a better excuse for Election Day than the reality. They would rather focus on hacking, the popular vote, FBI Director James Comey, or the minuscule alt-right, instead of accepting that American voters slightly preferred Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton, at least in the states where it counted. People wanted change over the ineptness, cronyism, and stagnation of the Obama era. They didn’t trust the utterly untrustable Clinton and liked her even less.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

A Sad, Sad Day: Thomas Sowell's Last Column

It would be a sadder day if I was announcing Thomas Sowell's passing. That is not the case. The 86 year old will no longer write columns, however, and that is tragic.

I know of no writer who is so sharp and so blunt at the same time. In researching something else I traipsed through Sowell's Amazon gallery. I read the One-star comments on his book. I could not find one review that actually refuted anything Sowell had written. If you are not aware, there is an "Occupy Amazon" movement that assigns bad reviews to Non-Leftist writers, sometimes minutes after a book is released. The reviews are usually three sentences or fewer, snide if not vicious, and woefully lacking any evidence that the reviewer had read the book. Perhaps it says more about the Left than about Sowell that no one ever disproved anything he had written.

Sowell was a teacher by trade, and a damn good one. If I could recommend just one of his books, that book would be "Vision Of The Anointed," perhaps the best insight yet into the Leftist mind.

Enjoy your retirement, Dr. Sowell. You deserve it.

Sowell's Farewell