Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.”) Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.
Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, aka Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science.
“The debate is settled,” says Obama. “Climate change is a fact.” Indeed. …
___________________________
I gave up network TV in the 70’s when it went bad. I don’t watch movies made after 1960, since that is when they went bad. Now ESPN has become Ever Sodomite and Perverted Network. I will miss it.
The presidential election is increasingly being waged online, giving an outsized influence to Internet power brokers.
Social media has become one of the most powerful ways to reach voters, with candidates in both parties using the technology to raise money, distribute ads and win over supporters. Online news and video sites, meanwhile, have become a place where the campaigns compete to “drive the narrative” with their preferred storylines. ….
* Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
* Matt Drudge (Drudge Report)
* John Oliver (comedian; HBO, YouTube)
* Adrianna Huffington (Huffington Post)
* Erin Hill (ActBlue)
____________________________
A title in this one about Prince says “More than a Weirdo in a Blouse”. Yet the article confirms my impression that he was simply a weirdo in a blouse.
Writing for The Intercept earlier this year, Jim Lewis pointed out that “… it wasn’t some Klan newsletter that first brought Trump to our attention: It was Time and Esquire and Spy. The Westboro Baptist Church didn’t give him his own TV show: NBC did. And his boasts and lies weren’t posted on Breitbart, they were published by Random House. He was created by people who learned from Andy Warhol, not Jerry Falwell, who knew him from galas at the Met, not fund-raisers at Karl Rove’s house, and his original audience was presented to him by Condé Nast, not Guns & Ammo.”
This gave Trump a huge advantage when he started pandering to the right-wing fever swamps. …
… Think of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and a host of lesser Trump-enabling Fox News personalities — most of them northeastern white guys with outer-borough affects and more of ethnic Catholicism’s pugilism than its piety. Think of the Trump-voting Rudy Giuliani and the Trump-endorsing Post and even the not-quite-#NeverTrump Wall Street Journal editorial page.
They all have a style that reflects New York’s distinctive culture (worldly, striving, ever-so-slightly-impolite), and its distinctive right-of-center constituencies (Manhattan hedge funders, Staten Island cops). Which means that their conservatism differs, in large ways and small, from the conservatism of Utah or Texas or Wisconsin. …
______________________
Although Hannity & O’Reilly bother me for other reasons I suppose …
But that reminds me, what’s up with Fox now using those two as part of the post-election coverage? Election nights should be under the purview of a station’s news division, not it’s commentators. Straight news people should host panels of political watchers on both sides of the aisle.
Fox is blowing it, in my opinion, by cutting away to Hannity (who long since sold out to Trump in a very transparent manner) as soon as the results are in and Bret Baier leaves the stage. It’s become my cue to flip over to CNN, which I find myself watch more and more of these days.
“bor Markets: Hundreds of employees at the University of California at Berkeley are getting schooled in basic economics, as the $15 minimum wage just cost them their jobs. Too bad liberal elites “fighting for $15” don’t get it.
A week after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s $15 minimum wage boost into law, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent a memo to employees announcing that 500 jobs were getting cut.
Coincidence? Not really.
Last year, University of California President Janet Napolitano announced plans to boost its minimum wage to $15 at the start of next school year, independent of the state law. Since UC Berkeley was already in financial trouble — it ran a $109 million deficit last year and is projecting a deficit of $150 million this year — number crunchers there had to have factored in the higher mandated wage when making their layoff decisions.
Those workers might want to have a chat with the folks at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research, who just days before Brown signed the wage-hike bill released a study touting the minimum wage as a boon to low-income household breadwinners.
After that report came out, Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley center, told the Los Angeles Times, “This is a very big deal for low-wage workers in California, for their families and for their children.”
It is a big deal, as well, to those soon to be out of work UC Berkeley workers.”
“President Obama’s call for British voters not to pull out of the European Union is an act of hypocrisy so blatant, it’s breathtaking.
The president wrote a column for the Daily Telegraph calling the outcome of the June 23 referendum “a matter of deep interest to the United States.”
He admitted the vote is an internal matter, but insisted that membership in the EU “magnifies” British influence in Europe instead of diminishing it, as pro-Brexit leaders maintain.
On Friday, Obama upped the ante — flatly threatening in London that Britain would head to “the back of the queue” on any future trade deals if it leaves the EU.
To say his comments have touched off a firestorm of resentment is putting it mildly.
London Mayor Boris Johnson, a leader of the Brexit movement, replied that “the Americans would never contemplate anything like the EU for themselves.”
“For the United States to tell us in the UK that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy is a breathtaking example of the principle of do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do,” he added.”
An interesting point that the London mayor makes, but he is wrong. The U.S. is much like the EU, except some parts were held in against their will for the last 151 years.
We are watching Brexit closely. If it works, we must try Texit.
Karen, And others think that imposing tariffs and threatening a trade war would actually “bring back” American jobs. And those two large groups of economic illiterates are why Trump and Sanders are doing so well.
At some point certain nations become capable of self-government. Others, through a decline in intelligence and moral values, become incapable of self-government. The U.S. as a whole lost its ability to govern itself sometime between 1988 and 1992.
Raising the minimum wage is well-intentioned. But there is a good reason to believe that there will be many unintended consequences, including job losses, fewer people employed, more automation (restaurants going to using iPads or other technology for people to self-order), actual job layoffs, businesses going under.
We ran a story today about how California’s minimum wage hikes “are going to force logistics firms with low-paid warehouse workers to invest more heavily in robotic technology” according to one economist.
“That’s the conveyor belts and things that pack boxes and move them down the belt. That sort of thing is going to increase, and it’s already been increasing.”
Wandering Views 
Skeptical about apocalyptic-style climate change scenarios?
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/04/21/settled-consensus-du-jour/83348376/
_________________________
Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.”) Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.
Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, aka Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science.
“The debate is settled,” says Obama. “Climate change is a fact.” Indeed. …
___________________________
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I gave up network TV in the 70’s when it went bad. I don’t watch movies made after 1960, since that is when they went bad. Now ESPN has become Ever Sodomite and Perverted Network. I will miss it.
http://dailysignal.com/2016/04/21/espn-has-a-right-to-fire-curt-schilling-what-rights-do-people-of-faith-have/
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Most of us new Trump was pro-perversion. After all, he is really an amoral Democrat.
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http://thehill.com/policy/technology/277344-five-internet-powerbrokers-who-could-shape-the-election
________________________
The presidential election is increasingly being waged online, giving an outsized influence to Internet power brokers.
Social media has become one of the most powerful ways to reach voters, with candidates in both parties using the technology to raise money, distribute ads and win over supporters. Online news and video sites, meanwhile, have become a place where the campaigns compete to “drive the narrative” with their preferred storylines. ….
* Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
* Matt Drudge (Drudge Report)
* John Oliver (comedian; HBO, YouTube)
* Adrianna Huffington (Huffington Post)
* Erin Hill (ActBlue)
____________________________
LikeLiked by 1 person
Christianity Today is running some strange articles.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/april-web-only/remembering-prince-pop-music-priest-in-secular-world.html
A title in this one about Prince says “More than a Weirdo in a Blouse”. Yet the article confirms my impression that he was simply a weirdo in a blouse.
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This is a good article on the favorable treatment which the New York media gave to Trump.
It explains why I detest Sean Hannity and Bill O’Yankee as much as I dislike Rachel Maddow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
From that story linked above:
_____________________
Writing for The Intercept earlier this year, Jim Lewis pointed out that “… it wasn’t some Klan newsletter that first brought Trump to our attention: It was Time and Esquire and Spy. The Westboro Baptist Church didn’t give him his own TV show: NBC did. And his boasts and lies weren’t posted on Breitbart, they were published by Random House. He was created by people who learned from Andy Warhol, not Jerry Falwell, who knew him from galas at the Met, not fund-raisers at Karl Rove’s house, and his original audience was presented to him by Condé Nast, not Guns & Ammo.”
This gave Trump a huge advantage when he started pandering to the right-wing fever swamps. …
… Think of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and a host of lesser Trump-enabling Fox News personalities — most of them northeastern white guys with outer-borough affects and more of ethnic Catholicism’s pugilism than its piety. Think of the Trump-voting Rudy Giuliani and the Trump-endorsing Post and even the not-quite-#NeverTrump Wall Street Journal editorial page.
They all have a style that reflects New York’s distinctive culture (worldly, striving, ever-so-slightly-impolite), and its distinctive right-of-center constituencies (Manhattan hedge funders, Staten Island cops). Which means that their conservatism differs, in large ways and small, from the conservatism of Utah or Texas or Wisconsin. …
______________________
LikeLike
Although Hannity & O’Reilly bother me for other reasons I suppose …
But that reminds me, what’s up with Fox now using those two as part of the post-election coverage? Election nights should be under the purview of a station’s news division, not it’s commentators. Straight news people should host panels of political watchers on both sides of the aisle.
Fox is blowing it, in my opinion, by cutting away to Hannity (who long since sold out to Trump in a very transparent manner) as soon as the results are in and Bret Baier leaves the stage. It’s become my cue to flip over to CNN, which I find myself watch more and more of these days.
And they go on to O’Reilly right after Hannity.
Sheesh.
Enough of these guys already.
LikeLiked by 1 person
More hypocrisy from the left….
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/uc-berkeley-touts-15-minimum-wage-then-fires-hundreds-of-workers-after-it-passes/
“bor Markets: Hundreds of employees at the University of California at Berkeley are getting schooled in basic economics, as the $15 minimum wage just cost them their jobs. Too bad liberal elites “fighting for $15” don’t get it.
A week after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s $15 minimum wage boost into law, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent a memo to employees announcing that 500 jobs were getting cut.
Coincidence? Not really.
Last year, University of California President Janet Napolitano announced plans to boost its minimum wage to $15 at the start of next school year, independent of the state law. Since UC Berkeley was already in financial trouble — it ran a $109 million deficit last year and is projecting a deficit of $150 million this year — number crunchers there had to have factored in the higher mandated wage when making their layoff decisions.
Those workers might want to have a chat with the folks at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research, who just days before Brown signed the wage-hike bill released a study touting the minimum wage as a boon to low-income household breadwinners.
After that report came out, Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley center, told the Los Angeles Times, “This is a very big deal for low-wage workers in California, for their families and for their children.”
It is a big deal, as well, to those soon to be out of work UC Berkeley workers.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
And even more from the Clueless in Chief….
http://nypost.com/2016/04/22/obamas-lecture-to-brits-is-absurdly-hypocritical/
“President Obama’s call for British voters not to pull out of the European Union is an act of hypocrisy so blatant, it’s breathtaking.
The president wrote a column for the Daily Telegraph calling the outcome of the June 23 referendum “a matter of deep interest to the United States.”
He admitted the vote is an internal matter, but insisted that membership in the EU “magnifies” British influence in Europe instead of diminishing it, as pro-Brexit leaders maintain.
On Friday, Obama upped the ante — flatly threatening in London that Britain would head to “the back of the queue” on any future trade deals if it leaves the EU.
To say his comments have touched off a firestorm of resentment is putting it mildly.
London Mayor Boris Johnson, a leader of the Brexit movement, replied that “the Americans would never contemplate anything like the EU for themselves.”
“For the United States to tell us in the UK that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy is a breathtaking example of the principle of do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do,” he added.”
LikeLike
An interesting point that the London mayor makes, but he is wrong. The U.S. is much like the EU, except some parts were held in against their will for the last 151 years.
We are watching Brexit closely. If it works, we must try Texit.
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The $15 minimum wage — many predict, even here in California — will have some not-so-good consequences
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Donna – Many seem to think that the only reason to oppose the minimum wage is because you hate the poor & don’t think they deserve to be paid well. 😦
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Karen, And others think that imposing tariffs and threatening a trade war would actually “bring back” American jobs. And those two large groups of economic illiterates are why Trump and Sanders are doing so well.
At some point certain nations become capable of self-government. Others, through a decline in intelligence and moral values, become incapable of self-government. The U.S. as a whole lost its ability to govern itself sometime between 1988 and 1992.
LikeLike
Raising the minimum wage is well-intentioned. But there is a good reason to believe that there will be many unintended consequences, including job losses, fewer people employed, more automation (restaurants going to using iPads or other technology for people to self-order), actual job layoffs, businesses going under.
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I’ve tried pointing those things out to a Facebook friend (yes, YF), but she ignores them, as do many other liberals.
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It’s something that will have to just play out, I suppose.
Kind of like Obamacare. 😉
And the people who support either of those measures, of course, will never admit it didn’t work out well.
It will be either Reagan’s or Bush’s fault.
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We ran a story today about how California’s minimum wage hikes “are going to force logistics firms with low-paid warehouse workers to invest more heavily in robotic technology” according to one economist.
“That’s the conveyor belts and things that pack boxes and move them down the belt. That sort of thing is going to increase, and it’s already been increasing.”
LikeLike