Amanpour Appeals to Authority - WSJ

Amanpour Appeals to Authority - WSJ: "In claiming “real objectivity” while rejecting neutrality, Amanpour recasts the journalist’s role as that of publicist for expert opinion. She quotes Justice Minister Michael Gove, who during the Brexit campaign told Sky News, “People in this country have had enough of experts.” She answers with a sneer: “Say what again?”

To be sure, expertise has its value. By definition an expert has superior knowledge in his particular field. But an expert opinion is still an opinion, and experts are no less prone than laymen to prejudice, motivated reasoning, groupthink and other forms of cognitive bias."



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Team Hillary’s absurd hysteria over Bernie’s ‘Excuse me’ line | New York Post

Team Hillary’s absurd hysteria over Bernie’s ‘Excuse me’ line | New York Post: "The debate flap demonstrates how feminism is caught between its dual insistence that women are indistinguishable from men and at the same time due special consideration because they’re uniquely vulnerable to slights, intended or unintended."



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Michael Moore Can't Make Good Propaganda Anymore - The Daily Beast

Michael Moore Can't Make Good Propaganda Anymore - The Daily Beast: "Moore’s veneration of Italy—which forms the bulk of the film’s case for European economic practices over American ones—is telling. Along with other spendthrift Mediterranean states, Italy has essentially been a laboratory for the exact same statist structural economic policies Moore (along with a certain septuagenarian presidential candidate widely supported by people too young to know any better) has advocated across his three-decade long career. Inflexible labor markets, intransigent and powerful unions, titanic social spending, confiscatory taxes: these policies engender economic stagnation wherever they’re implemented. Carried out by successive governments over many years, socialist clientelism is largely responsible for the swelling, long-term unemployed European underclass, which is voicing its frustration by supporting the very right-wing populists Moore claims to oppose."



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Hill Fire and Damnation - WSJ

Hill Fire and Damnation - WSJ: "Lessin is paraphrasing; Mrs. Clinton has not, as far as we know, used the word “uterus” on the campaign trail. But her appeals to female solidarity have left little else to the imagination. In last week’s debate, she interrupted her opponent to say: “Honestly, Sen. Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment.”

We thought that was ridiculous. Later we wondered why she didn’t go all in and describe her Goldman Sachs speaking fees as “675,000 cracks in the glass ceiling.” But then, we would scoff—we’re male, and men constitute less than half the voting-age population. If Mrs. Clinton can lock down the female vote, she can’t possibly lose.

Yet Mrs. Clinton’s I-am-woman message is getting a poor reception from women, at least from young ones. An MSNBC report from New Hampshire, noted by the Washington Free Beacon, features a couple of 20-something female Democrats who took offense at the debate declaration."



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Trump: “When I’m president, I’m a different person” « Hot Air

Trump: “When I’m president, I’m a different person” « Hot Air: "Glenn Beck, a Cruz supporter, called that sentiment “dangerous” this weekend. Trump obviously meant it as a joke, an exaggerated statement of how loyal his fans are. But it’s striking even as a joke because it proves that not only is he aware of the cult of personality around him, he’s counting on it to increase his freedom of political movement — and that is a little dangerous. Try to imagine the reaction among Cruz fans if he went out onstage today in Iowa and promised he’d be a “different person” as president with forays into political correctness as circumstances require. They’d be mortified. If you like Cruz, you like him because of what he stands for and the fact that he’s not afraid to piss off the right people in doing so. The instant he ceases to fill that role, he’s disposable. What Trump’s telling you in these two quotes is that those rules don’t apply to him. Barring some truly core betrayal, like signing a new amnesty into law, he thinks he can count on his fans to follow him anywhere. And if he decides that he needs to dispense with the tone, or the policies, that he’s been pushing on the trail and become the most politically correct person you’ve ever seen as president, then he, in his wisdom, must have his reasons. (Relatedly, Obama cultists started off as anti-war and anti-drone and anti-“unitary executive” in 2008 and have been shrugging at Obama’s deviations from that line ever since.) The amazing thing about the “Fifth Avenue” quote is that it’s a joke at his own followers’ expense. A friend called it his “Lonesome Rhodes moment,” in which a populist hero ends up laughing at the devotion of his own fan base. "



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Great news: nearly half of all aliens left the US last year after their visas expired « Hot Air

Great news: nearly half of all aliens left the US last year after their visas expired « Hot Air: "Are you serious? Nearly half a million people came here “legally” with a visa last year and just stayed. (Illegally.) And that’s in a single year. A 2015 study concluded that 1.5 million to 1.7 million illegal immigrants arrived in the United States from 2009 through 2013. Even taking the outside number, that average will tell you, as the study concluded, that people using visas as a throwaway, safe method of getting inside the country is probably as great of a border control failure as those climbing fences, if not even more so.

Sure, everyone had a good laugh when Chris Christie suggested some sort of bio-metric monitoring scheme similar to FedEx package tracking for those arriving here on a visa, but we’ve obviously passed the point where some new options have to be considered. Yes, I realize that tagging people to track their movements sounds like something out of a dystopian future sci-fi film. And, of course, any suggesting of tracking people at all is automatically considered racist or xenophobic or what have you, but the alternative is essentially doing nothing."



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Sarah Palin Just Threw Away Years of Goodwill as a Principled Conservative

Sarah Palin Just Threw Away Years of Goodwill as a Principled Conservative: "Sarah Palin spent years being a strong voice for conservative principles. She jumped into Republican primaries to endorse candidates who she believed would carry the torch for the same limited government, pro-life, pro-family, and strong national security values.

Today, Palin is standing in Ames, Iowa to put her support behind someone who cannot be trusted to protect the unborn, who has twice traded in his wives for younger models (literally), who claims to be for the “little guy” but who has been all-too-willing to use government as a hired thug to line his own pocket, and who spent years making significant donations to Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.

I miss the Sarah Palin I thought I knew. I miss the tough-talking governor who energized the 2008 ticket. I miss the tea party champion. I miss the brave woman who didn’t just talk the talk, but walked the walk on the pro-life issue, no matter how nasty the attacks on her and her family. I don’t know where this Sarah Palin went, but she wasn’t in Iowa today."



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