JustOneMinute

Throw Another Straw On the Fire

We're grilling nothingburgers today - looks like Ivanka better not run for President.

If Money Talks...

If money talks, Beto runs, not walks. On to 2020!

For Democratic strategists eager to advance a younger nominee contrasting with President Donald Trump, O’Rourke’s appeal rests on his perceived ability to bridge a gulf within the party — between Democratic contenders who are older but come with pre-existing donor networks, and Democrats who are younger but have not yet developed a substantial fundraising base. O’Rourke, at 46, has both.

I've said many times that Republicans want to nominate Ike or Reagan. hence the preference for elder statesmen such as Bush 41, Bob Dole, McCain '08 (but not the 200 insurgent!), Romney '12, etc.

Democrats, on the other hand, are desperate to nominate a young, energetic, telegenic John Kennedy. Or Robert. But definitely young, in part because older normally means Positions Taken and Factions Alienated - Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had the blank slate thing working for them. John Kerry was a bit of an exception but since he had been a stealth Senator he was virtually free of legacy barnacles. Hillary of course was the Establishment "We Owe You One" pick and we saw how that worked out (She won the popular vote!).

Beto should be perfect for the Dems in 2020. Go, go Beto!

Down And (Finally) Out in Florida

Politico recaps some of the Florida Follies. My favorite is the faulty ballot design that, like the infamous butterfly ballot of 2000, may have swung the election.

The Trump Interview

The President sat down with Chris Wallace for a wide-ranging interview.

Sunday Morning

The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ, comes back decades later for a second look...

Very interesting piece on the reaction to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, now 155 years old. As to "reality", it's hard to say. However, this bit of contemporaneous coverage of the Gettysburg ceremony from the NY Times archive is classic:

We devote a broadside of this morning's TIMES to the publication of two orations which we are sure will command the attention of the day. And not of this day only. Elaborate and finished discourses from two such men as EDWARD EVERETT and HENRY WARD BEECHER, upon topics of such great National interest as those they discuss, will not lightly be passed over, much less ignored altogether, by any intelligent citizen. Mr. EVERETT's theme is the "Battle of Gettysburgh," and the occasion is the dedication of that historic field as a National Cemetery. Mr. BEECHER's discourse was upon his recent tour in Great Britain -- his experiences there, and his views as regards British feeling and policy toward this country.

These orations from two masters of oratory, delivered on the same day, but upon such different topics -- one historical and domestic, the other practical and foreign -- admit of little comparison.

Yeah, they missed the lede. They also have some criticism of the Everett oratory as too weedy (NOT their word):

Mr. EVERETT's oration is, of course, classical and ornate in its diction, felicitous in illustration, well-wrought and strong in its logic, correct and explicit in its statement; in a word, it is eloquent, in the best sense of that much-abused term. His exordium is of great beauty; and his peroration is splendid. If we might offer a single point of criticism on the oration, it would be upon that part of it, constituting one-half of its body, which gives a narrative of the marches, manoeuvres, skirmishes and strategy of Gens. HOOKER and LEE, Gens. PLEASONTON and STUART, from the time at which the two armies left the opposite banks of the Rappahannock until they confronted each other on this side of the Potomac, and also the detailed account of the preliminaries of the battle, and of the action itself. Mr. EVERETT enters into a very minute statement of these things; and the elaborateness of the details, the large number of names, places and circumstances he has occasion to recall, will tend to confuse and repel those who are less familiar with the events than himself, and crowd out those "glittering generalities" which he or any other great orator might be expected mainly to deal in on such an occasion.

 The Times also ran a version of Lincoln's speech as part of their coverage. Lincoln was dedicating a cemetery so I don't want to say he killed it, but the report notes frequent applause.

 

 

Saturday Morning

We kick off another Football Saturday with all the Big Games a week away. Yankee Stadium is the center of the college football universe today as it hosts Syracuse-Notre Dame.

THE BUTLER DID IT: Celtic and Raptor fans can relax - they won't need to watch their team lose to the Warriors in the NBA Finals.

Acosta Back, For Now

The judge has granted CNN's Jim Acosta a temporary restraining order restoring his hard pass to White House press conferences. Hard passes for the hard asses!

Apparently the judge was concerned that the unwritten rules of appropriate press conference behavior were, well, unwritten. Team Trump will now write up some rules and the whole exercise may be a Phyrric victory for the media:

“This could backfire,” said William L. Youmans, a professor of media law at George Washington University. Mr. Acosta “gets his credential now, but it empowers the Trump administration to come up with conduct-based criteria.”

“A ‘rudeness’ or ‘aggressive behavior’ policy would have a huge chilling effect, and would be much more damaging to the whole system,” Dr. Youmans added. “If it lowers the bar for pulling credentials, it’s a recipe for a more tepid press.”

Twitter has already lit up with leaked video of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jim Acosta discussing the rules for a press conference.

Keep Hate Alive!

I guess this is good news for the 'Keep Hate Alive' crowd exemplified by Paul Krugman - a growing number of us think the other party is evil and stupid. Also corrupt, racist, sexist, and terrible at ballroom dancing. As I have said before, there is no money in moderation; its the angry and energized that write checks and buy books.

Often a country can unite against a common foe. However, that is more successful when the foe is external. Right now the Democrats view the legacy white patriarchy as the root of all evil in this country. it's going to be hard for them to get all of us on board with that.

WORD QUIZ: One of these words is quite unlike the others:

How Democrats view Republicans:

• Of the 22% who provided open-ended descriptions of Republicans, responses included: selfish, greedy, corrupt, spineless, fearful and bad.

How Republicans view Democrats:

• Of the 26% who provided open-ended descriptions of Democrats, responses included: socialist, angry, hypocritical, uniformed, power-hungry and violent.

Oh, FFFFFFFFudge!

How great would it be to see Pelosi dumped for anybody, but especially a politico named Fudge? The hackneyed 'dad jokes' write themselves.

When The Elephants Scuffle...

The NY Times takes a long look at Facebook and won't be getting many likes from that quarter. Oliver Roeder of Vox has a nice summary:

Facebook seems to materialize in this column an awful lot. But when a service has “connected” more than 2.2 billion people, I suppose that makes sense. The New York Times published a deep dive into the company, based on interviews with “more than 50 people,” many of whom are anonymous. We learn, for example, that the company hired a Republican opposition-research group to discredit protesters by linking them to George Soros, and that it lobbied a Jewish civil rights group to label criticism of Facebook as anti-Semitic. Just normal, cool, I-started-a-company-in-my-Harvard-dorm-room stuff.

One of the mice that got trampled as the elephants battled is the Republican oppo-research firm Definers Public Affairs, which lost Facebook as a client amidst the hue and cry. Facebok's position: senior execs knew nothing and anyway, the media knew full well that DPA had Facebook as a client:

Late Wednesday, Facebook decided to terminate its relationship with Definers after the publication of the Times article prompted an outcry, said a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Top Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were not aware of the specific work being done by Definers, the person said.

In a statement, Facebook said it had not hidden its ties to Definers and disputed that it had asked the firm to spread false information.

“It is wrong to suggest that we have ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf, or communicate anything untrue,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in the statement.

“The relationship with Facebook was well known by the media — not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf,” the spokeswoman added.

Well. We wouldn't expect Facebook to stand up to a left-wing mob. With a different alignment of politics and players the Times follow-up headline would be "Republicans Kvetch About Business As Usual".

Just for example, the Times also included this detail in their original expose (with a picture of the offending poster):

By then, some of the harshest criticism of Facebook was coming from the political left, where activists and policy experts had begun calling for the company to be broken up.

In July, organizers with a coalition called Freedom from Facebook crashed a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, where a company executive was testifying about its policies. As the executive spoke, the organizers held aloft signs depicting Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg, who are both Jewish, as two heads of an octopus stretching around the globe.

Eddie Vale, a Democratic public relations strategist who led the protest, later said the image was meant to evoke old cartoons of Standard Oil, the Gilded Age monopoly. But a Facebook official quickly called the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish civil rights organization, to flag the sign. Facebook and other tech companies had partnered with the civil rights group since late 2017 on an initiative to combat anti-Semitism and hate speech online.

That afternoon, the A.D.L. issued a warning from its Twitter account.

“Depicting Jews as an octopus encircling the globe is a classic anti-Semitic trope,” the organization wrote. “Protest Facebook — or anyone — all you want, but pick a different image.” The criticism was soon echoed in conservative outlets including The Washington Free Beacon, which has sought to tie Freedom from Facebook to what the publication calls “extreme anti-Israel groups.”

Hey, maybe the posters were meant to be anti-Semitic. Or maybe not! But it was lefties, so no biggie.

Let's Fly Under The Bridge!

It seems like the Typepad registration problem has been solved, so let me flip the switch and set the comments to registered mode.

I'll be keeping an eye out for problems. If you can't find a way in, contact me or someone else who can get the word out. Cumbersome, and we all feel vexed by it. But as we have seen, one undermedicated screaming boor can drown out a room full of conversation.

The Science Was Unsettled

A new study showing the world's oceans were taking in more heat than previously modeled got worldwide attention. It also got the attention of a math/science jockey who didn't like the way the numbers were coming together.

And now the original authors are admitting that there are problems. So the good news is, unlike a modern media outlet, errors are addressed. The bad news? Here is the critic's headline and lead in the blog post that began the unraveling:

A major problem with the Resplandy et al. ocean heat uptake paper

Posted on November 6, 2018 by niclewis | 231 Comments

 

by Nic Lewis

 

Obviously doubtful claims about new research regarding ocean content reveal how unquestioning Nature, climate scientists and the MSM are.

 

If the conclusion fits the favored narrative it slides more easily through the peer review process.

Saving Bob Mueller

While we await the spinning of the Wheel of Indictment the Senate contemplates the "No Special Counsel Left Behind" Act of 2018.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday he supported a bill that would protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from any politically motivated firings and would urge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow a vote on it.

“I would certainly vote for it,” Graham told reporters of the bill, which he supported when it passed the Senate Judiciary in April.

“I don’t see any movement to get rid of Mueller. But it probably would be good to have this legislation in place just for the future,” he said. 

McConnell told reporters in Kentucky last week he did not think legislation was necessary because he did not think Mueller was in danger.

 

A Great American

I guess when you are a Navy SEAL with an eye-patch from an IED in Afghanistan there is no need to bluster about you manhood with a youngster from SNL. David French describes a bit of hope for a better tomorrow in our political sphere.

Do let me add: the SEAL turned Congressman-elect is only 34. When he beats Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in the Presidential showdown of 2032, Saturday Night Live can remember who launched his rocket.