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● Atlanta Mayor Signs Order Banning ICE Detainees
● ‘Not Here, Not Now’: Gov. Brown Signs Bill Blocking Trump’s Offshore Drilling Plan.
● Cities defiant after Justice Department’s threat on ‘supervised injection sites.’
Old and busted: Confederate-era Democrats believe they can pick and choose which federal laws they wish to enforce.
The new hotness? Err, pretty much the same in the Trump era.
From Mark Perry:
“…Naomi Osaka, 20 years old, just became the first player from Japan to win a Grand Slam.
Yet rather than cheer Osaka, the crowd, the commentators and US Open officials all expressed shock and grief that Serena Williams lost.
Osaka spent what should have been her victory lap in tears. It had been her childhood dream to make it to the US Open and possibly play against Williams, her idol, in the final.
It’s hard to recall a more unsportsmanlike event.
Here was a young girl who pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever, who fought for every point she earned, ashamed.
At the awards ceremony, Osaka covered her face with her black visor and cried. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams, chairman and president of the USTA, opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionizing Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing.
“Perhaps it’s not the finish we were looking for today,” Adams said, “but Serena, you are a champion of all champions.” Addressing the crowd, Adams added, “This mama is a role model and respected by all.”
That’s not likely the case now, not after the world watched as Serena Williams had a series of epic meltdowns on the court, all sparked when the umpire warned her: No coaching from the side. Her coach was making visible hand signals.
“I don’t cheat to win,” Williams told him. “I’d rather lose.”
She couldn’t let it go, going back multiple times to berate the umpire. At one point she called him a thief.
“You stole a point from me!” she yelled.
After her loss, Williams’s coach admitted to ESPN that he had, in fact, been coaching from the stands, a code violation. The warning was fair.
Everything that followed is on Williams, who is no stranger to tantrums. Most famously, she was tossed from the US Open in 2009 after telling the line judge, “I swear to God I’ll take the f—king ball and shove it down your f—king throat.” John McEnroe was taken aback. Even Williams’s mother Oracene Price couldn’t defend her daughter’s outburst…
Harry Callahan: Well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That’s my policy.
Dirty Harry
The Mayor: Intent? How did you establish that?
Harry Callahan: When a man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher’s knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.
Karin McQuillan:
“…My intuition is that the Democrats are not panicking enough about the pending confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. They’ve been so busy ginning up their base with claims that Kavanaugh will spell the end of abortion and gay marriage that they haven’t focused on the more likely, and larger, impacts of an originalist court. Trump’s court will change America.
Kavanaugh is most robust in defending the Constitution on foundational questions, not the headline grabbers. This is good news.
An originalist court will bring needed changes to everyday life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We’ve already seen several dramatic victories when Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court last term. This was a foretaste of far-reaching changes to come. Reinstating constitutional safeguards against government power will be significant for religious freedom, free speech, curtailing racial preferences, unleashing free enterprise, and stopping unaccountable government…It has been almost a century since progressives on the Supreme Court radically transformed America’s legal traditions. We will not see abrupt and rapid change, as when progressives legislated from the bench in Roe v Wade or dictating gay marriage. The Trump court will be the beginning of a new era of slower, case by case progress back to constitutional limits on government power…”
Conrad Black:
“…Also on Tuesday, the Democrats fired an instantly fizzling cannon with the inevitable Bob Woodward’s customary pastiche of fabrications, unsourced misquotations, and malicious gossip. Woodward’s credibility has been impugned by almost all of the last nine presidents; his original co-mythmaker Carl Bernstein has almost battered himself into insensibility with his pronouncements in the last six months that Trump was finished because under the 25th Amendment he was mentally incompetent and then because the Manafort and Cohen cases put him into the legal self-ejection seat. Woodward, the old sniper who never dies, on Tuesday had the distinction of being called a liar by two four-star Marine generals, John Kelly and James Mattis, both among the very few holders of high public office in living memory whose integrity could not be and never has been questioned. In this toxic atmosphere they were confirmed in the Senate last year by a combined vote of 186 to 12, nonpartisanship’s last gasp, for a while.
The United States is now like Egypt, in that the armed forces are the only respected institution left standing. A narrow majority disapprove of the president, and steadily larger majorities are doubtful of the judiciary, despise the Congress, loathe the academy, and detest the national media. In a democracy, somebody will pay for this, and it is unlikely to be Donald John Trump, the principal accuser of the others. Woodward should never have survived as an author after inventing the deathbed confession of a comatose William Casey in his nasty novel Veil about the Iran-Contra fiasco, but this time he took one for the losing team and shot himself in the head with a howitzer. Sending him into battle to win it for the Democrats two months before the election is like dispatching a small brigade of very aged arsonists to fight one of the California summer forest fires that the new prophet of the Democrats, Bernie Sanders, says was caused by this president’s opinion of climate change.
Finally (still on the first day of the campaign), Robert Mueller accepted written answers to questions from the president on collusion matters. Inspector Javert is hanging up his badge. This is a concession that he can’t subpoena the president and has no evidence of Trump–Russia collusion and no chance of a perjury trap. The thought, expressed by many in the media, that Mueller could still hang tough on questioning of the president about obstruction of justice is, like the Democratic-media echo chamber’s joyous ululations over the Woodward drivel, rubbish. That circus has flopped; strike the tents. Day One was a disaster for the Democrats.
Either the Democrats will win the House of Representatives and force an utterly hopeless impeachment trial on the Senate with only the ravings of Maxine Waters and the false pieties of Dick Durbin et al. as a case, or they will win the House but recognize that they have no case and leave it there after an excruciatingly futile debate; or the Republicans will hold the House and Donald John Trump will grind his heel in the faces of his rabid enemies. The conventional wisdom remains that the Democrats will win the House. I don’t think so. No president has ever run a midterm campaign remotely as determined as this president will, his objective performance in office is good — the economy, the border, and trade; his only weaknesses are stylistic, but he is a good deal more substantial and even likable than his gutter-sniping enemies.
My uninformed suspicion is that the president has not accepted Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s letter of resignation of last May, and has delayed ordering the release of all the documents the congressional committees have demanded from the Justice Department, for a reason. The right moment for the documents is very soon. The president has made a hero out of Sessions to the Democrats, although all 48 Democratic senators opposed his confirmation and Elizabeth Warren promised vengeance on the Republicans for installing him. If Sessions repossesses his office as collusion evaporates, it will be difficult for the Democrats to change lanes again on Sessions. It would also not be surprising if something were heard in the next two months from John Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, whom Sessions appointed ten months ago to look into the FISA and Clinton Foundation–Uranium One matters. He would be a much more dangerous rabbit to emerge from the pre-electoral hat than the Ancient Mythmaker, Woodward.
Trump has not got to this historic point by being the blustering and crooked buffoon portrayed by his enemies. He is a cunning and pitiless enemy. This is political mortal combat, and in evidentiary as in electoral matters, you can’t fight something with nothing…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/donald-trump-political-opponents/
“…The anonymous op-ed published by The New York Times Wednesday is the most stunning proof we have seen so far of the liberal media’s aggressive bias and the very real efforts by parts of the institutional establishment to undermine President Trump, the U.S. Constitution and the will of the American people.
In its fervor to attack the White House – and influence the midterm elections – The New York Times happily eschewed basic journalistic standards and offered its page and waning credibility to a nameless, disgruntled, elitist coward who seems to believe he or she has the moral authority to ignore and undermine the elected leader of the free world.
The paper’s editorial board clearly said it granted the writer anonymity to “deliver an important perspective” to readers and to protect the writer from losing his or her job. This is a naked endorsement of the subversive efforts described in the piece – The New York Times wants the author to keep it up.
The collusion between this supposed senior administration official (who could be one of thousands of minor-but-experienced appointees) and the newspaper (which is the standard bearer of elite media power) is also clear evidence that members of the old guard, institutional establishment are working to protect old Washington power structures and prevent the changes that the American people elected President Trump to bring to our country…”
Byron York:
“…1) It concedes Trump’s accomplishments are big. Early in the piece, the author admits that the Trump administration has had significant success on the issues most important to American voters. . . .
2) Its complaints are small. Why does the author object to Trump? The president is not a true philosophical conservative, he says.
3) It suggests there is a government conspiracy to thwart the president…”
“…Americans are rightly concerned that Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley have an outsized influence over the news and opinions we see on social media platforms and in Google searches. The fact that most of these platforms originate in some of the most liberal strongholds in the country — Mountain View, San Francisco, and Menlo Park, California — raises questions about whether they’re either intentionally or subconsciously putting their oversized thumbs on the scales to promote points of view they agree with and hide views they find odious or dangerous. A study released today from GovPredict shows that more than 90 percent of political donations by Alphabet employees went to Democrats. This news will only amplify fears that everything we read, see, and hear is being controlled by tech industry employees with a left-wing political bent…”
The report features over 8,000 interviews conducted among American adults, including 1,694 interviews pre-campaign launch (8/26/18 – 9/3/18) and 5,481 interviews post-campaign launch (9/4/18 – 9/5/18). Additionally, Morning Consult conducted a study among 1,168 adults in the U.S. about Nike’s ad and the decision to choose Kaepernick as the face of the campaign.
Key Findings
Nike’s Favorability Drops by Double Digits: Before the announcement, Nike had a net +69 favorable impression among consumers, it has now declined 34 points to +35 favorable.
No Boost Among Key Demos: Among younger generations, Nike users, African Americans, and other key demographics, Nike’s favorability declined rather than improved.
Purchasing Consideration Also Down: Before the announcement, 49 percent of Americans said they were absolutely certain or very likely to buy Nike products. That figure is down to 39 percent now.
The Effect on the NFL Seems Small, For Now: Forty percent of consumers said Nike’s campaign does not make them more or less likely to watch/attend NFL games — 21 percent said more likely and 26 percent said less likely (14 percent didn’t know).
Nike’s Reputation Takes A Hit Overall and Across Key Demographics.
“…Attorney General Jeff Sessions has scheduled a meeting with state attorneys general in September to discuss a “growing concern” that tech companies may be “intentionally stifling” the free flow of ideas on their platforms.
In a statement issued right after executives from Facebook and Twitter finished testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Department of Justice (DOJ) also suggested that the platforms were running afoul of antitrust laws.
“The Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms,” DOJ spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement issued near the end of the congressional hearing…”
This is about the best take I’ve seen on the coward in the White House. It is despicable. The person should resign immediately.
Glenn Greenwald:
“…Many of the complaints from the NYT’s anonymous WH coward – not all, but many – are ideological: that Trump deviates from GOP orthodoxy, an ideology he didn’t campaign on & that voters didn’t ratify. Trump may be a threat but so is this covert coup to impose these policies. The irony in the op-ed from the NYT’s anonymous WH coward is glaring and massive: s/he accuses Trump of being “anti-democratic” while boasting of membership in an unelected cabal that covertly imposes their own ideology with zero democratic accountability, mandate or transparency…”
“…We hear a lot about norms these days. We live in a time when alleged pre-existing norms of decency, civility, and respect are being cast aside for the sake of “winning.” The ends justify the means, and a dignified loser is just that: a loser. There is a real sense that we’re losing something irreplaceable, a shared respect that once allowed partisans to battle over ideas while remaining bound together as citizens of the world’s greatest constitutional republic.
John McCain’s funeral this weekend was supposed to have reminded us of these national values, to have pricked our consciences. It was an occasion for the Washington establishment to unite in the face of an angry, temperamental president and say, “Enough! There is dignity in public service and advocacy. There is a better way.”
Unfortunately, it appears that all too much of the talk about norms and civility and decency is just another weapon of convenience, to be dropped the moment it is perceived to pave the path of defeat. Just look at the disgusting spectacle that was day one (and the opening of day two) of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.
Before I continue, let me remind you that Kavanaugh is the opposite of a norm-violating, civility-straining, Trumpist jurist. He is the very definition of a GOP-establishment lawyer. He would be a front-runner for a SCOTUS nomination in any Republican administration. He is not only solidly within the mainstream of originalist legal thought, he’s so respected across the aisle that Elena Kagan hired him to teach at Harvard Law School.
In other words, throughout his career, Kavanaugh has helped maintain norms rather than violating them. He’s the living embodiment of the kind of person — and the kind of politics — that Democrats now claim they miss in the age of Trump.
Yet yesterday, from the top down, from senators to protesters to online trolls, the Democrats offered a preview of how they’d react to any Republican nominee, and it was a shining example of how and why conservatives don’t believe for one moment that Donald Trump is the sole source of American dysfunction…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-hearing-democrats-lack-civility/