… This is the peril of nominating a candidate who has no track record in public life. Donald Trump hasn’t spent his adult life studying and dealing with public policy issues. That is precisely why many of his voters liked him; fair enough. But the down side of a candidate with no track record and a lack of fully thought-out stands on the issues is that he may blow with the wind. …
_______________________________
“Senate Democrats are eager to make Donald Trump pay a political price for nominating staunch conservatives to fill out his Cabinet, hoping to exact revenge for the GOP’s stubborn opposition to President Barack Obama’s nominees.
But there is little they can do about it — and some top Democrats are now coming to regret it.
That’s because Senate Democrats muscled through an unprecedented rules change in 2013 to weaken the power of the minority party to filibuster Cabinet-level appointees and most judicial nominees, now setting the threshold at 51 votes — rather than 60 — to overcome tactics aimed at derailing nominations.
With the Senate GOP poised to hold 52 seats next Congress, some Democrats now say they should have thought twice before making the rules change — known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option.”
“I do regret that,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who voted for the rules change three years ago. “I frankly think many of us will regret that in this Congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency break, to have in our system to slow down nominees.””
There you go Donna! It’s another gun related incident. I am surprised that BB guns are even sold anymore. The only way this could have happened is
1. It did happen in a backwoods, Red State
2. The kid must have inherited the BB gun, because no one would sell to a kid without doing a background check and being a kid they probably didn’t have much of a background. And because no ADULT would begin to trust a kid with a BB gun.
Yet another reason to never trust the SPLC, or their numbers. And just like with many media outlets, it’s what they leave out that is most enlightening. But it doesn’t fit their agenda, so it’s ignored.
“At least 2,000 educators around the country reported racist slurs and other derogatory language leveled against white students in the first days after Donald Trump was elected president. But the group that surveyed the teachers didn’t publish the results in its report on Trump-related “hate crimes.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center partnered with the American Federation of Teachers, which formally endorsed Hillary Clinton, to circulate the questionnaire among its 1.6 million mostly Democratic members. The survey was sent out to K-12 teachers and administrators who subscribe to its “Teaching Tolerance” newsletter.
The SPLC’s widely cited report — “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on Our Nation’s Schools” — reported that 40 percent of the more than 10,000 educators who responded to the survey “have heard derogatory language directed at students of color, Muslims, immigrants and people based on gender or sexual orientation.”
The takeaway was that Trump-supporting white kids have been harassing minorities at the nation’s schools. And SPLC’s schools report, along with a broader report on alleged Trump-inspired hate crimes — “Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election” — sparked breathless coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and other major media.”
————————-
“But the SPLC didn’t present the whole story. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit self-censored results from a key question it asked educators — whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students.”
Asked last week to provide the data, SPLC initially said it was having a hard time getting the information “from the researchers.” Pressed, SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp finally revealed that “about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question.””
————————–
“One of the websites The Washington Post labeled “fake news” in a November story demanded a retraction and threatened the paper with a defamation lawsuit in a demand letter Sunday.
A lawyer for Naked Capitalism accuses WaPo of running a debunked list of “fake news” sites in the “sensational” story compiled by a dubious team of researchers, without substantiating their claims or giving Naked Capitalism a chance to respond to the allegation. The Washington Post’s actions constitute defamation, the lawyer writes in the letter published Monday.
“You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist,” James A. Moody writes. “You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the ‘team’ at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.”
Naked Capitalism is a finance and economics blog started in December 2006, with a stated goal of “shedding light on the dark and seamy corners of finance.”
Moody demands a retraction of the story and a public apology from WaPo in the letter, threatening a suit if the paper does not comply. He lists a series of damages to the site itself, as well as the writers and editors associated with the site; these include “ridicule, emotional distress, loss of reputation, and risk to future career advancement” for writers and editors.”
Another well intended idea with real life consequences for it’s innocent victims. We need real reform to our justice/prison system, not this social justice nonsense.
“The violent crime rate in the District of Columbia is a subject which doesn’t receive as much attention as some other spots like Chicago and Baltimore, but it’s just as serious in many ways. The local news section of the Washington Post has an excellent multi-part series which is delving into the numbers and complicating factors that are plaguing the area. In the installment I’m reading today they examine the history of a law known as the “Youth Act” which seems to be doing more harm than good. Originally designed to give judges more leeway in the sentencing of young offenders, offering a chance at rehabilitation rather than a life behind bars, it seems to be resulting in a revolving door of younger criminals who graduate from minor offenses to everything up to and including murder.
Hundreds of criminals sentenced by D.C. judges under an obscure local law crafted to give second chances to young adult offenders have gone on to rob, rape or kill residents of the nation’s capital.
The original intent of the law was to rehabilitate inexperienced criminals under the age of 22. The District’s Youth Rehabilitation Act allows for shorter sentences for some crimes and an opportunity for offenders to emerge with no criminal record. But a Washington Post investigation has found a pattern of violent offenders returning rapidly to the streets and committing more crimes. Hundreds have been sentenced under the act multiple times.
In dozens of cases, D.C. judges were able to hand down Youth Act sentences shorter than those called for under mandatory minimum laws designed to deter armed robberies and other violent crimes. The criminals have often repaid that leniency by escalating their crimes of violence upon release.
This “Youth Act” as it’s known has produced some dramatic results to be sure, but not in a good way. There’s a laundry list of examples, charts and graphs in that article which are worth your time to look at but the stories are uniformly depressing. They’ve identified at least 121 violent offenders who were basically given a slap on the wrist under this law and then went on to be charged with murder. The number charged with rape and other assaults is even larger.
One provision of the law allows judges to overlook mandatory minimum sentences for violent gun crimes. This has led to a number of those given early release dates going on to shoot somebody again. For a city which works so studiously to restrict the Second Amendment rights of the law abiding they certainly don’t seem to be interested in doing some actual gun control when they find a violent felon with an illegal weapon. The original intent of the law may have been noble enough, but it seems like it’s being misapplied.”
—————————
And similar actions in Baltimore, Chicago, and elsewhere are an abysmal failure as well. Same goes for Obama’s federal version of early release/intervention.
Say anything that could be construed as critical of one of his screwball ideas, and he will turn vindictive. Now is the time for businesses to leave the US. The Democrats are all socialists and the top Republican promises to be a petty tyrant.
“Masayoshi Son, the CEO of the Japanese telecom SoftBank, announced Tuesday that his company will invest $50 billion and bring 50,000 jobs to the US after he met with President-elect Donald Trump.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Son told reporters at Trump Tower that the investment would come from a $100 billion fund created in partnership with the Saudi Arabia sovereign-wealth fund and other investors.
SoftBank in October announced a $100 billion tech fund with the Saudis called the SoftBank Vision Fund. The fund had not detailed where it would invest.
Details about the jobs or what sort of businesses the fund would invest in were not announced. But Son showed reporters a PowerPoint slide signed by Son and Trump with the vague numbers.
Shortly after the meeting, Trump tweeted the details of the agreement and said the deal never would have been done “had we (Trump) not won the election.””
The Washington Times had their own take on Trump’s Boeing tweets. The Clinton connection is said to be alive and well. Of course their stated source is Rush Limbaugh, so at least a grain of salt is recommended. :–)
Businesses like stability. They want a level playing field. Investors prefer countries where their investments are governed by the rule of law, not the whims of a childish buffoon. Trump will continue to pull publicity stunts, but those impress the gullible, not businessmen or investors.
I read today that Trump’s corporate “tax cuts” will be violations of trade agreements because they contain tariffs. We shall see, but I am losing confidence that the Republican Party will remain a conservative party. Trump may lose interest, he may continue to focus on publicity stunts, but if he actually becomes engaged on major policy issues, we are in trouble.
It will be interesting to look at the various Freedom Indexes in a couple of years. Trump’s policy of bribing some companies and threatening others will likely cause the US to drop below most countries in Europe and Asia.
Wandering Views 
No news is good news.
😉
LikeLiked by 2 people
Not for editors who have pages to fill 🙂 “Somebody find something!”
LikeLike
Here, work with this…
http://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-144/silent-sacrifice-military-spouse-unemployment-america/
LikeLike
Donna, an innocent bird was murdered in my neighborhood. Suspects include four cats and a kid with a BB gun.
LikeLiked by 2 people
We could work with that.
LikeLike
On Trump’s curious meeting with Al Gore:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/12/say-it-aint-so-donald.php
____________________________
… This is the peril of nominating a candidate who has no track record in public life. Donald Trump hasn’t spent his adult life studying and dealing with public policy issues. That is precisely why many of his voters liked him; fair enough. But the down side of a candidate with no track record and a lack of fully thought-out stands on the issues is that he may blow with the wind. …
_______________________________
LikeLiked by 1 person
Poor babies. Hoisted by their own petards……
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/05/politics/senate-democrats-nuclear-option-donald-trump/index.html
“Senate Democrats are eager to make Donald Trump pay a political price for nominating staunch conservatives to fill out his Cabinet, hoping to exact revenge for the GOP’s stubborn opposition to President Barack Obama’s nominees.
But there is little they can do about it — and some top Democrats are now coming to regret it.
That’s because Senate Democrats muscled through an unprecedented rules change in 2013 to weaken the power of the minority party to filibuster Cabinet-level appointees and most judicial nominees, now setting the threshold at 51 votes — rather than 60 — to overcome tactics aimed at derailing nominations.
With the Senate GOP poised to hold 52 seats next Congress, some Democrats now say they should have thought twice before making the rules change — known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option.”
“I do regret that,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who voted for the rules change three years ago. “I frankly think many of us will regret that in this Congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency break, to have in our system to slow down nominees.””
LikeLike
There you go Donna! It’s another gun related incident. I am surprised that BB guns are even sold anymore. The only way this could have happened is
1. It did happen in a backwoods, Red State
2. The kid must have inherited the BB gun, because no one would sell to a kid without doing a background check and being a kid they probably didn’t have much of a background. And because no ADULT would begin to trust a kid with a BB gun.
OK, my snark outbreak is back under control
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yet another reason to never trust the SPLC, or their numbers. And just like with many media outlets, it’s what they leave out that is most enlightening. But it doesn’t fit their agenda, so it’s ignored.
http://nypost.com/2016/12/05/report-buried-trump-related-hate-crimes-against-white-kids/
“At least 2,000 educators around the country reported racist slurs and other derogatory language leveled against white students in the first days after Donald Trump was elected president. But the group that surveyed the teachers didn’t publish the results in its report on Trump-related “hate crimes.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center partnered with the American Federation of Teachers, which formally endorsed Hillary Clinton, to circulate the questionnaire among its 1.6 million mostly Democratic members. The survey was sent out to K-12 teachers and administrators who subscribe to its “Teaching Tolerance” newsletter.
The SPLC’s widely cited report — “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on Our Nation’s Schools” — reported that 40 percent of the more than 10,000 educators who responded to the survey “have heard derogatory language directed at students of color, Muslims, immigrants and people based on gender or sexual orientation.”
The takeaway was that Trump-supporting white kids have been harassing minorities at the nation’s schools. And SPLC’s schools report, along with a broader report on alleged Trump-inspired hate crimes — “Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election” — sparked breathless coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and other major media.”
————————-
“But the SPLC didn’t present the whole story. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit self-censored results from a key question it asked educators — whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students.”
Asked last week to provide the data, SPLC initially said it was having a hard time getting the information “from the researchers.” Pressed, SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp finally revealed that “about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question.””
————————–
LikeLike
Hit ’em where it hurts. It’s the only way they’ll stop.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/05/website-labeled-fake-news-threatens-to-sue-wapo-for-defamation/
“One of the websites The Washington Post labeled “fake news” in a November story demanded a retraction and threatened the paper with a defamation lawsuit in a demand letter Sunday.
A lawyer for Naked Capitalism accuses WaPo of running a debunked list of “fake news” sites in the “sensational” story compiled by a dubious team of researchers, without substantiating their claims or giving Naked Capitalism a chance to respond to the allegation. The Washington Post’s actions constitute defamation, the lawyer writes in the letter published Monday.
“You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist,” James A. Moody writes. “You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the ‘team’ at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.”
Naked Capitalism is a finance and economics blog started in December 2006, with a stated goal of “shedding light on the dark and seamy corners of finance.”
Moody demands a retraction of the story and a public apology from WaPo in the letter, threatening a suit if the paper does not comply. He lists a series of damages to the site itself, as well as the writers and editors associated with the site; these include “ridicule, emotional distress, loss of reputation, and risk to future career advancement” for writers and editors.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
This. Isn’t. Working.
Another well intended idea with real life consequences for it’s innocent victims. We need real reform to our justice/prison system, not this social justice nonsense.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/03/hundreds-of-d-c-murders-committed-by-youths-who-received-lenient-sentences/
“The violent crime rate in the District of Columbia is a subject which doesn’t receive as much attention as some other spots like Chicago and Baltimore, but it’s just as serious in many ways. The local news section of the Washington Post has an excellent multi-part series which is delving into the numbers and complicating factors that are plaguing the area. In the installment I’m reading today they examine the history of a law known as the “Youth Act” which seems to be doing more harm than good. Originally designed to give judges more leeway in the sentencing of young offenders, offering a chance at rehabilitation rather than a life behind bars, it seems to be resulting in a revolving door of younger criminals who graduate from minor offenses to everything up to and including murder.
Hundreds of criminals sentenced by D.C. judges under an obscure local law crafted to give second chances to young adult offenders have gone on to rob, rape or kill residents of the nation’s capital.
The original intent of the law was to rehabilitate inexperienced criminals under the age of 22. The District’s Youth Rehabilitation Act allows for shorter sentences for some crimes and an opportunity for offenders to emerge with no criminal record. But a Washington Post investigation has found a pattern of violent offenders returning rapidly to the streets and committing more crimes. Hundreds have been sentenced under the act multiple times.
In dozens of cases, D.C. judges were able to hand down Youth Act sentences shorter than those called for under mandatory minimum laws designed to deter armed robberies and other violent crimes. The criminals have often repaid that leniency by escalating their crimes of violence upon release.
This “Youth Act” as it’s known has produced some dramatic results to be sure, but not in a good way. There’s a laundry list of examples, charts and graphs in that article which are worth your time to look at but the stories are uniformly depressing. They’ve identified at least 121 violent offenders who were basically given a slap on the wrist under this law and then went on to be charged with murder. The number charged with rape and other assaults is even larger.
One provision of the law allows judges to overlook mandatory minimum sentences for violent gun crimes. This has led to a number of those given early release dates going on to shoot somebody again. For a city which works so studiously to restrict the Second Amendment rights of the law abiding they certainly don’t seem to be interested in doing some actual gun control when they find a violent felon with an illegal weapon. The original intent of the law may have been noble enough, but it seems like it’s being misapplied.”
—————————
And similar actions in Baltimore, Chicago, and elsewhere are an abysmal failure as well. Same goes for Obama’s federal version of early release/intervention.
LikeLike
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/december/opposition-to-assisted-suicide-dies-out-lifeway.html
___________________________________
Opposition to Assisted Suicide Dies Out
Most Americans, including 4 in 10 evangelicals, want doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Corporate executives are now on notice: The President-elect is a petulant child.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/12/06/trumps-boeing-attack-follows-article-with-ceos-pro-trade-argument.html?client=safari
Say anything that could be construed as critical of one of his screwball ideas, and he will turn vindictive. Now is the time for businesses to leave the US. The Democrats are all socialists and the top Republican promises to be a petty tyrant.
LikeLike
Ricky,
I doubt many companies are really seeking to flee. Why would they when Trump has promised to cut their taxes here, the reason most flee anyway?
And like it or not, he appears to already be making deals to bring businesses and jobs here for a change.
http://www.businessinsider.com/softbank-ceo-announces-us-investment-jobs-after-trump-meeting-2016-12
“Masayoshi Son, the CEO of the Japanese telecom SoftBank, announced Tuesday that his company will invest $50 billion and bring 50,000 jobs to the US after he met with President-elect Donald Trump.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Son told reporters at Trump Tower that the investment would come from a $100 billion fund created in partnership with the Saudi Arabia sovereign-wealth fund and other investors.
SoftBank in October announced a $100 billion tech fund with the Saudis called the SoftBank Vision Fund. The fund had not detailed where it would invest.
Details about the jobs or what sort of businesses the fund would invest in were not announced. But Son showed reporters a PowerPoint slide signed by Son and Trump with the vague numbers.
Shortly after the meeting, Trump tweeted the details of the agreement and said the deal never would have been done “had we (Trump) not won the election.””
LikeLike
The Washington Times had their own take on Trump’s Boeing tweets. The Clinton connection is said to be alive and well. Of course their stated source is Rush Limbaugh, so at least a grain of salt is recommended. :–)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/6/rush-limbaugh-donald-trumps-boeing-tweet-signals-t/
LikeLike
Businesses like stability. They want a level playing field. Investors prefer countries where their investments are governed by the rule of law, not the whims of a childish buffoon. Trump will continue to pull publicity stunts, but those impress the gullible, not businessmen or investors.
I read today that Trump’s corporate “tax cuts” will be violations of trade agreements because they contain tariffs. We shall see, but I am losing confidence that the Republican Party will remain a conservative party. Trump may lose interest, he may continue to focus on publicity stunts, but if he actually becomes engaged on major policy issues, we are in trouble.
It will be interesting to look at the various Freedom Indexes in a couple of years. Trump’s policy of bribing some companies and threatening others will likely cause the US to drop below most countries in Europe and Asia.
LikeLike