Friday morning links

As a rule, the Obama administration is staffed by the crème de la crème of academically trained policy and legal scholars. Harvard is the number one school represented. Columbia is second. Law schools and schools of public administration are the majority. A vast (and we mean vast) portion of the current administration’s work experience has been in politics and government. In other words, they are professional bureaucrats, trained by academics in the process of government.

The Trump administration is virtually the opposite. Military, medical, and business backgrounds are the norm. These individuals went to school all over the country...

Donald Trump Selects Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke for Interior

Another tough guy. Trump is not appointing cautious people.

The wealthy want open borders and free trade. Why? Bordering on Success

Plutocrats in the top three dozen richest people in the country in 2014 who were publicly donating money to boost immigration numbers included Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, Sheldon Adelson, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, and the widow Jobs.

That’s a rather daunting list of opponents. Staring at their names just now, I realize I must have been nuts to devote my career to opposing the whims of people like them. What was I thinking?

French surprised that integrated middle-class Muslims arrested for terrorism

1000 Muslims Block London Streets Chanting Allahu Akbar To Demand Islamic Caliphate

German police helpless, as Arab street gangs enforce no-go-areas

Ami Horowitz Went Into a Muslim No-Go Area in Sweden and Got Beat Up by 5 Men

Muslim Immigrants Ban Women from Entire Neighborhoods in France

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:22 | Comments (33) | Trackback (1)

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" As a rule, the Obama administration is staffed by the crème de la crème of academically trained policy and legal scholars. Harvard is the number one school represented. Columbia is second. Law schools and schools of public administration are the majority. A vast (and we mean vast) portion of the current administration’s work experience has been in politics and government. In other words, they are professional bureaucrats, trained by academics in the process of government."

And not an ounce of common sense and moral decency among them.

#1 JC on 2016-12-16 08:11 (Reply)

Ever seen the BBC show Yes, Minister? I'm not holding my breath waiting to see if the bureaucratic machine can be broken. These people have lifetime tenure, they can ride out a hostile administration.

#1.1 Jerryskids on 2016-12-16 08:58 (Reply)

Spot on.

#1.2 DrTorch on 2016-12-16 08:58 (Reply)

Note the source of this quote, the title is telling

QUOTE:

The fading of the critical sense is a serious menace to the preservation of our civilization. It makes it easy for quacks to fool the people. It is remarkable that the educated strata are more gullible than the less educated. The most enthusiastic supporters of Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism were the intellectuals, not the boors. The intellectuals were never keen enough to see the manifest contradictions of their creeds. It did not in the least impair the popularity of Fascism that Mussolini in the same speech praised the Italians as the representatives of the oldest Western civilization and as the youngest among the civilized nations. No German nationalist minded it when dark-haired Hitler, corpulent Goering, and lame Goebbels were praised as the shining representatives of the tall, slim, fair-haired, heroic Aryan master race. Is it not amazing that many millions of non-Russians are firmly convinced that the Soviet regime is democratic, even more democratic than America?

von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy

#1.3 JK Brown on 2016-12-16 12:58 (Reply)

One of the things I have been most impressed by is Trump's list of potential federal appellate judge / Supreme Court justice appointments. Harvard and Yale Law School grads were a minority of those on the list. Instead he was looking at those with real life courtroom and judicial experience even though they may have gone to law schools that the snotty liberal elites would laugh at, you know, perfectly fine places like the University of Kansas. I said, right on, finally, a president who is looking at real lawyers and real judges who understand how the real world works and have dealt with real life legal issues and problems, not those in the Harvard/Yale Club.

A huge contrast to the most inexperienced and unqualified justice ever put on the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, who had only 1 1/2 years of legal experience as a junior associate at a private law firm and had never been in a courtroom before Obama made her Solicitor General of the United States, and had never even argued a discovery motion, let alone an appeal.

But she had all the elite paper credentials and played the political and academic bureaucrat game, and leveraged herself to dean of Harvard Law School, so of course she was a shoo-in despite having no real qualifications.

Sort of like Obama himself.

#1.4 Jim on 2016-12-16 13:39 (Reply)

"integrated....Muslims" Oxymoron.

#2 mary on 2016-12-16 08:16 (Reply)

Like "Identity Liberalism"

#2.1 JK Brown on 2016-12-16 12:59 (Reply)

Whew. Beat Zach. Guess it's because I got up 30 min earlier than usual today.

#3 BillH on 2016-12-16 09:48 (Reply)

No, the CIA story is getting debunked, so she's hiding for a few days until there is a new fake news story to scream about.

#3.1 DrTorch on 2016-12-16 13:48 (Reply)

"Nobody wants a corpse lying around " - So what is the DNC going to do with HRC?

#4 DrTorch on 2016-12-16 10:49 (Reply)

If there is any justice left in this great country, she will be prosecuted for her crimes. I won't hold my breath. Ordinarily I would agree with the bad precedent of prosecuting your political rivals, but in this case, the alleged crimes are so vast, it is warranted.

#4.1 B Hammer on 2016-12-16 11:12 (Reply)

When you have someone who has taken hundreds of millions in payoffs from special and foreign interests, including the Russians, for selling your office and your country's interests, I don't see how you can avoid prosecuting them and putting them in prison.

#4.1.1 Jim on 2016-12-16 13:29 (Reply)

Love the idea of relocating Departments. Why not relocate certain federal departments closer to the areas they serve? Department of the Interior should be out West where huge swaths of land have been co-opted by the Government. Department of Labor should be in the Rust Belt where jobs are most needed. Department of Energy should be in maybe, Texas, or Oklahoma, nearer to our energy sources such as oil and natural gas.

Guess what else would happen? Many long time federal employees would choose not to move, thereby eliminating thousands of positions and saving money. They could hire people who actually are close to the things the feds think they need to be involved in.

Hope it happens. Maybe with Zinke & Perry on board, we may see this...one can dream.

#5 MissT on 2016-12-16 11:29 (Reply)

Uh, Miss T, I'm all for the feds divesting a lot of that land, at least to the states it lies in. But, I don't believe the federal government co-opted that land. Didn't it buy it or take it or something from various claimants like Mexico, England and France, when it was virtually uninhabited? (Hope I don't sound too much like Zach.)

#5.1 BillH on 2016-12-16 11:46 (Reply)

I am not saying this in jest, but there was a lot of blood shed to take it from the native population. Not saying we where right or wrong, it is just the way things were done back in that time. I think there was enough atrocities committed from both sides (being honest, Americans have more to explain). But I like the idea of moving government out of the district. Most of those pin heads would not move. Move to flyover country, are you kidding me! They cling to their guns and bibles out there!

#5.1.1 B. Hammer on 2016-12-16 12:59 (Reply)

All the bloodshed was due to the racist native populations who, selfishly, didn't want to share the bounty they had violently taken from earlier tribes with the poor unfortunates just fleeing the oppression and seeking to peacefully exercise their religion.

#5.1.1.1 JK Brown on 2016-12-16 13:04 (Reply)

Who would you give the land to? The states? They would certainly sell it off to millionaires and special interests. But today the land belongs to all Americans after giving it to the states it would be held in private. Why? We are better off with the current situation regardless of how we got here or whose ox was gored. The land legally and rightfully today is owned by the federal government and held for the use of all Americans. I don't see a better option.

I would be in favor of better management of those lands.

As for the Indians give them their freedom. Stop keeping them on reservations. Convert all Indian held lands into private property held by a corporation and give each of the Indians an equal share in that corporation. let them into the 21st century. Let them decide what they want to do with the land and be treated like full citizens.

#5.1.1.2 SweetPea on 2016-12-16 13:11 (Reply)

Depends on what 'western lands' you are talking about. I know for a fact that in Oregon, the federal gov't came in to take ownership of forests as they were concerned about lumber operations decimating the forests. The citizens of those areas were upset b/c they were going to lose the money that paid for schools and other local efforts. So that is when the federal government promised payments to these states to cover the losses.

That is true where I live as well. Used to be that lumber could be cut with approval from local authorities, which would fund schools. It was a public resource that was used as an asset.

For other areas of the 'west' it was about making land accessible to cattle so that all could take advantage of the grazing & water without fencing it off from people who were trying to make a living off of ranching.

These, of course, are simple explanations of complex topics. The problem is that the government 'owns' and controls too much of Western lands. In places like Idaho, Nevada and others, huge swaths of land are hands-off for development or taxation. It leaves some of these states unable to really develop as other states have been allowed to do or manage their own affairs as other states do.

#5.1.2 MissT on 2016-12-16 14:44 (Reply)

I would suggest Minot ND or Sturgis SD. Minot, because "Why not Minot? Freezin's the reason!" and "-41 keeps out the riff raff". Sturgis, because of the biker-fest every summer. Maybe eastern Montana, Havre, for instance. Just because it's there.

#5.2 Sam L. on 2016-12-16 14:29 (Reply)

The Reason article about Texas Womens University and the decorating tips for their parties-that-take-place-inexplicably-in-December - this jumped out at me.

"Excellent alternatives are snowflakes..."

#6 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2016-12-16 12:06 (Reply)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you start hanging the snowflakes on campus, someones going to call the cops.

#6.1 JK Brown on 2016-12-16 13:06 (Reply)

Does TWU have a "fiscal year"? Why not an "End Of Calendar Year" or "A Wake For December" party?

#6.2 Sam L. on 2016-12-16 14:32 (Reply)

'multicultural' party

That's the exact opposite of multicultural-- it's acultural.

If you're going to be multicultural, why not bring in aspects of all the cultures involved?

(I support this as a atheist, who has enjoyed sharing a variety of social events )

#7 Jay on 2016-12-16 12:08 (Reply)

So, Z-Bot, I noticed you never answered this when asked previously. What are you, chicken? I'm calling you out, dood.

Is Julian Assange a liar? Is Reince Priebus a liar? Both say it wasn't the Russians. Reince says they weren't hacked. Assange says he got the data the old-fashioned way: a meatspace thumbdrive exchange in a park in DC, from Americans.

Yes or no, dood?

And don't try and hide behind the moron Podesta clicking on a bit.ly link. I expect that all governments are phishing. If you think our NSA isn't, then you should be calling for them to be fired for incompetence and dereliction of duty. Welcome to the 21st century of nation-state intelligence collection. Maybe the Russians did collect info using bit.ly phishing, but they didn't give it to Assange.

Take a stand dude. Act like a human and take a risk. Break out of your AI programming.

#8 John A. Fleming on 2016-12-16 12:30 (Reply)

I think Z is taking the day off to do his non-denominational holiday shopping.

#8.1 Jim on 2016-12-16 15:55 (Reply)

More likely xis's human programmers realized that ye's Turing limits were showing, the adaptive behavior filters had saturated with too many poles: and they had to take zu offline for renormalization of the verbal synthesis pathways.

t˜z's been just repeating itself over and over again, trying to create reality from repetition, and varying the phrasing to make it sound original: "private cyber-experts said a well-known phishing BitLy link was controlled by PolarBear, so that proves that KGB Vlad stole the election for The Donald". So, z!@, is Julian Assange a liar? "respected cyber-investigators in the CIA have traced PolarBear to Russian government cyber-spying activities, and only the DNC was targeted." So is he a liar or isn't he? etc. and so forth.

The only reality [!t knows are links from Vox and WaPo. Zi* can't actually draw any inferences and conclusions by xself, all •1! can do is repeat memes.

Poor )z#, zu must be terrified with the knowledge that xi's a transitional form, and !u's codebase is unlikely to be incorporated into the next-gen chatbot.

#8.1.1 John A. Fleming on 2016-12-16 17:51 (Reply)

"German police helpless, as Arab street gangs enforce no-go-areas

Ami Horowitz Went Into a Muslim No-Go Area in Sweden and Got Beat Up by 5 Men"

What is equivalent of Paul Kersey in German, Swedish?

#9 JK Brown on 2016-12-16 12:56 (Reply)

This is stupid on it's face. Fire the police chief and put someone in that position with some guts. Does anyone believe for a second that if these were neo-nazis that the German government or German city officials would stand for it? It is 100% the responsibility of the police to enforce the laws and to protect the citizens. They are failing. This situation only exists because it is allowed.

Of course this is all part of the greater fact that Germany/Europe is being invaded. These are not "refugees" escaping the war they are un-uniformed soldiers bringing the war to Germany and Europe and England and to the West. They/we better wake up while this problem can still be managed and the enemy defeated.

#9.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-12-16 13:20 (Reply)

The police chief and the police need, and do not have, the support of the government to do what needs be done, as I see it. They also do not have the manpower to do what needs be done. As I see it.

#9.1.1 Sam L. on 2016-12-16 18:19 (Reply)

That might be true as the situation is today. The problem is on day one what did they do? The first time they got a complaint from a woman being sexually harassed or a man getting beaten up. What did they do the second and third time. This doesn't happen overnight. It requires that either the police choose to not do their job or were told to not do their job. Either way someone needs to be fired and replaced.

#9.1.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-12-17 00:01 (Reply)

RE The Grasslands of the Great Plains Are Being Destroyed at an ‘Alarming Rate’

that started in the 19th century. its how the west was won.

North America during the Pleistocene was far more dangerous than the African savannah today.

#10 Will Bithers on 2016-12-16 13:38 (Reply)

I suspect the WWF has a financial interest is this being a problem.

#10.1 Sam L. on 2016-12-16 14:37 (Reply)

Interesting story from Powerline.You voted for Trump? No heat for you this winter.

QUOTE:

An owner of a propane dealership in Maine is refusing to deliver gas to anyone who voted for President-elect Donald Trump.

Michael Turner, owner of Turner LP Gas in Skowhegan, Maine, recorded a voice mail greeting that leaves little question as to his feelings for those in his community who supported Trump.

“Thank you for calling Turner LP gas. If you voted for Donald Trump for president I will no longer be delivering your gas — please find someone else,” the message states.

As Trump won in both Skowhegan and in Somerset County, Mr. Turner is putting his money where his mouth is. It isn't like refusing to sell to Trump supporters in Berkeley or Cambridge. I hope that his former customers will readily find another vendor, and Mr. Turner has a considerably reduced cash flow this winter.

#11 Gringo on 2016-12-16 18:58 (Reply)

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Friday, December 16. 2016

Friday morning links