Here are my observations and opinions on some of the news of the day.
(Courtesy open-site.org)
A POINT OF PRIDE – I have written much about the crazy goings-on at colleges and universities, with radical liberal faculties supporting nonsense like white privilege, introducing gender pronouns, masculinity, safe spaces, crying closets, and denying first amendment privileges to conservatives.
Having spent the weekend attending the Change of Command/Pass in Review ceremony at Texas A&M Galveston, the maritime branch of the College Station university, my faith has been affirmed in the school’s mission. I couldn’t have been more impressed with the young men and women – Sea Aggies – who will soon represent us in a variety of maritime disciplines.
I came away with a sense of esprit de corps, a missing ingredient in most educational institutions.
SHAME ON THE MEDIA – I have been writing here that real journalism is dead. On Saturday night, at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, they proved it without writing a word. They hired foul-mouthed comedienne Michelle Wolf to insult White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders while she sat on the dais just feet away. This wasn’t a typical roast. It was a vile personal attack.
DAN MCLAUGHLIN, who tweets at @baseballcrank, responded succinctly:
“Core problem with WHCA and Wolf comedy routine is not that it was cruel (it was), or unfunny (it was) or disrespectful to women (it was), but that it revealed yet again the agenda-setting national political media holds an annual event reveling in angry Democrat partisanship.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP tweeted that “the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is DEAD as we know it.” He chose not to attend this function for the second time, choosing instead to hold a rally at the same time. This year he held a rousing rally in Washington Township, Michigan.
THE WHCA CLAIMS to hold this event to raise scholarship funds for aspiring young men and women. However, they were only able to raise $100,000 for scholarships, even though its membership includes many members drawing six-figure salaries. Disgraceful.
MARGARET TALEV of Bloomberg News, who heads the association, owes Sarah Sanders a serious apology for allowing Wolf to cross the line with her cruel personal attack. As I write this, I am thinking that it would be appropriate for her to do this during a White House briefing. I have heard, however, that she has no intention of apologizing to Sanders.
CNN’S JAKE TAPPER said “maybe no U.S. president should ever feel comfortable in a room full of White House reporters.”
President Trump is strong enough to take good-natured slings and arrows, Jake, but you and your colleagues have turned what was always a light-hearted affair into a vendetta against him.
THE FLIPSIDE BLOG noted that some on the left thought “it was a missed opportunity for the president to ingratiate himself with the public,” while the website Outside the Beltway more correctly called the event, “a festival of vain self-absorption and self-congratulatory nonsense in which reporters and politicians gather together and seemingly forget that large segments of the American public look upon them with disdain.”
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE – Remember how President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and the president’s request that “I hope you can let this go,” referring to Mike Flynn, was all over the news as obstruction of justice?
Obviously, Comey didn’t see it as obstruction, because he never mentioned it in those memos he wrote after his meeting with Trump
A WASTE OF TIME – The obsession of Congress that President Trump is going to fire General Counsel Robert Mueller is getting tiresome. Four Republicans joined the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Grassley (Iowa), Graham (S. Carolina), Tillis (N. Carolina) and Flake (Arizona), to approve a bill to protect Mueller from being fired.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not intend to bring it to the floor for a vote. “There’s no indication that Mueller’s going to be fired,” he said, “I don’t think the president’s going to do that and just as practical matter, even if we passed (the bill), why would he sign it.”
What a waste of time.
THAT BLUE WAVE is turning out to be a ripple among millennials, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll. The poll reveals that enthusiasm for the Democrat party is waning among millennials as the midterm elections near. “Millennials’ support for Democrat congressional candidates has declined over the last two years, especially among young white people who made up a majority of the millennial vote in 2016,” according to the poll.
DEMOCRATS TAKE NOTE – Finland has announced that it will end its universal basic income program by year’s end and is exploring new measures to cut benefits to those who do not actively seek employment.
Why can’t your lawmakers, including Senators Booker, Gillibrand and Sanders, who are now pushing guaranteed jobs paying $15 an hour plus health care, see that guaranteed jobs and the UBI are losers.
Even the often liberal labelled Mother Jones calls the guaranteed jobs plan “insane,” reporting that “it would cost a fortune; it would massively disrupt the private labor market; it would almost certainly tank productivity; and its unlikely in the extreme that the millions of workers in this program could be made fully competent at their jobs.”
REMEMBER MEGYN KELLY? Sure you do. She’s the former Fox News Channel anchor who I opined got too big for her britches when she left for NBC.
Well, it appears that Kelly has “struggled to make the shift to daytime broadcast television, with its delicate balance of soft features and hard news,” reports The Wall Street Journal, “Her ratings declines and high production costs have been a drag on a critical franchise for NBC.”
DID YOU NOTICE the announced U.S. economic growth of 2.3 percent for the first quarter? While growth has slowed less than most forecasters expected, it beat the first quarters of 2016 (0.6 percent) and 2017 (1.2 percent). “First quarter GDP has been an anomaly in recent years,” according The Wall Street Journal.
