Columnist.
A shocking new poll shows Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa, the first caucus state, and in New Hampshire, the first primary state. The YouGov poll, paid for by Moveon.org, found Warren ahead of Clinton in Iowa, 31 percent to 24 percent, among likely Democratic primary and caucus voters. In New Hampshire, Warren's lead was 30 percent to 27 percent. Other polls, however, show Clinton enjoying a substantial lead. This poll is an outlier, and the upstart 15-year-old polling firm gathers its data via the Internet, using complex methodology and algorithms. Some of their polls in recent years have been astonishingly accurate, even beating out the traditional big polling firms.
If Brian Williams, the anchor and face of NBC News, goes, others should march right out the door behind him. Williams, in 2003, filed a report about his experiences in Iraq. He accurately reported that a helicopter an hour in front of his took fire from an RPG. But over the years the story morphed into Williams claiming that his helicopter took an incoming RPG and other small arms fire. Other stories Williams told and filed are under review, including apparently exaggerated or false claims filed or stated during Hurricane Katrina. Williams claimed he saw a dead body floating in the street outside his New Orleans hotel, and that his hotel had been assaulted by gangs. Neither of which apparently is true. Due to concerns about the credibility of the $10-million-a-year newsreader, NBC announced Williams' six-month unpaid "suspension." Now six months is forever. When his replacement, the capable Lester Holt, settles in, soon it will likely be, "Brian, who?"
President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for a minimum-wage hike and for government-mandated paid family and medical leave. "We are the only advanced country on Earth," said the President, "that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers." On the minimum wage, Obama issued this challenge: "And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise." Minimum wage and paid family leave are not only moral imperatives, says Obama, but good economics to boot. Employees, he tells us, are happier and therefore more productive. Minimum wage and paid medical leave, understand, actually benefit business. It's just that dumb businessmen and women don't realize it.
"What do you think you missed not having a dad around?" Marshawn Lynch, the grumpy, often-fined National Football League star for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, was asked that question. Lynch, raised on the mean streets of Oakland, California, by a single mother, said: "Nothing. My mama played both parts." When asked, however, why he finds it difficult to "trust" people, Lynch tells a story about his father: "I think it started earlier, when Mom would (take me over to my dad's) house. And when I get there, my dad like, 'Oh, OK, I be right back,' and then you don't see this guy for like, two days or something. And then after a while you, like, sh--, you build up numb feelings to that. So you start to expect the worst out of people."
Where's the Clint Eastwood Million Cowboy March on Hollywood? The case for bias against Eastwood is far stronger than that of the alleged "snub" of the movie "Selma." "American Sniper," a new film directed by Clint Eastwood, set box-office records for a film opening in January. Yet he was "shut out" of the director category. Was Clint Eastwood, a white, unabashed George W. Bush-supporting Republican, a victim of political discrimination? The Martin Luther King Jr. biopic received two Oscar nominations, one for "Best Picture." Cause for celebration? No, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "unexpectedly" overlooked the film's director and actors for the other prestigious categories.
Islamic terrorists slaughtered 17 innocents in Paris in an attack described as "France's 9/11." The two terrorist suspects at the satirical newspaper massacre are brothers, born and raised in France, children of parents who emigrated from Algeria. Some blame France's failure to "assimilate" Muslim youth on their attraction to violent jihad. While almost 25 percent of French youth is out of work, the number of young French Muslim people without jobs is over 40 percent. Muslims account for 10 percent of the French population but occupy 60 percent of its jails. Never mind that Osama bin Laden was wealthy. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current head of al-Qaida, is a doctor. Several of the terrorists who crashed planes into buildings and into Pennsylvania on 911 were middle-class or better, and several were college grads.
Move over, radical Islam. Step aside, poverty and political oppression. Pope Francis is expected to soon issue a rare papal encyclical, an official statement about what the pontiff believes is the world's most pressing issue -- "climate change." A month ago, during the U.N. climate change conference in Lima, Peru, the Pope warned of the dire consequences of climate change and declared that the "time to find global solutions is running out." Last October, the Pope said: "An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.
What to say about "activists" pushing the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" "movement," even as police shootings of blacks are actually down 75 percent over the last 45 years? Some protestors, many old enough to know better, say ridiculous things about race relations, like "things have gone backward." Time for perspective.
Gloria Allred has graciously offered a deal to embattled comedian Bill Cosby. Allred says so many alleged victims have called her office, she's "literally lost count." She says she told these women, however, you're "too late." By this, Allred meant that the statute of limitations has passed for both criminal and civil charges to be filed against Cosby. Some of the claims date back to the '60s, '70s and '80s, with one going back as far as 1965. Former Playboy bunny P.J. Masten claims that Cosby raped her in 1979. The comedian, says Masten, invited her to dinner, asking her to meet him at his hotel room where he gave her a cocktail of Grand Marnier. "The next thing I knew, it was 4 o'clock in the morning," Masten alleged. "I woke up in a bed naked, bruised. He was laying next to me, and I slithered out of the bed ... I got myself together, I went downstairs, I got in a cab, and I went home. ... There were bruise marks all over me. I knew I was raped."
In 2012, according to the CDC, 140 blacks were killed by police. That same year 386 whites were killed by police. Over the 13-year period from 1999 to 2011, the CDC reports that 2,151 whites were killed by cops -- and 1,130 blacks were killed by cops. Police shootings, nationwide, are down dramatically from what they were 20 or 30 years ago. The CDC reported that in 1968, shootings by law enforcement -- called "legal intervention" by the CDC -- was the cause of death for 8.6 out of every million blacks. For whites the rate was was .9 deaths per million.
The recent "rash" of police officers killing blacks is prompting "civil rights activists" to describe America -- despite the election and re-election of a black president -- as still a simmering caldron of racism. Never mind that according to the CDC, in 2012 (the most recent year with available data) 140 blacks were killed by cops -- versus 386 whites killed by cops. This dreary movie scene comes from a film about inner-city black teens called "Menace II Society." A black high school teacher speaks to two former students: "Being a black man in America isn't easy. The hunt is on, and you're the prey! All I'm saying is ... all I'm saying is -- survive! Alright?" In case the identity of the alleged "hunter" is unclear, we hear a police siren in the background. Cops are out to get young black men.
Is it relevant that St. Louis, near Ferguson, recently had the third-highest per capita murder rate of any large city (with 250,000 or more residents) in America, ranking behind New Orleans and Detroit? And, according to an analysis of 2011 FBI crime stats, St. Louis had the second-highest overall crime rate among large cities. Is it relevant that the state of Missouri ranks second among states in per capita black homicide victimization rate? According to the Violence Policy Center, only Nebraska has a higher per capita murder rate for black victims, based on 2011 FBI data. Last year, according to FBI statistics, more than 6,300 blacks were homicide victims, or almost 18 per day, almost all at the hands of other blacks. Even more disturbing, a decreasing number of murders are "cleared" (solved). In 1961, 93 percent of all homicides were cleared. That number now is down to 64 percent in 2013, primarily because of drug and gang-related murders where people don't talk because of a "no snitch" culture or fear of retaliation.
From the very beginning, this was much ado about an aberration, a tragic aberration to be sure, but an aberration nonetheless. Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, 2014. Immediately, according to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, witnesses began to give different versions of what happened. The apparent would-be star witness, Dorian Johnson, was with Brown when the shooting occurred. He gave a dramatic account of a trigger-happy bigoted cop who shot "my friend" in the back and gunned him down despite the victim attempting to surrender by placing his hands up. Other alleged eyewitnesses came forward with similar, if not identical, descriptions of an aggressive, out-of-control cop.
Economist Milton Freeman said the promotion of bad policy requires two types of advocates. "Do-gooders," he said, act in good faith but out of ignorance in promoting counterproductive policies. The second type are the "special interest" rent-seekers, those who stand to personally profit from the scheme. For economist Jonathan Gruber, the primary architect and intellectual godfather of both Romneycare and Obamacare, we need a new category. Gruber is a two-fer -- both a do-gooder and a rent-seeker. Gruber, so far, has pocketed $6 million advising the federal and state governments on the very law he helped design.
"I don't want to try to read the tea leaves on election results," said President Barack Obama following last Tuesday's historic defeat. Who's he kidding? A month earlier, the President was honest and accurate when he told a crowd at Northwestern University, "I'm not on the ballot this fall ... but make no mistake -- these policies are on the ballot, every single one of them." Fair enough. Republicans won governorships in Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts. As of now, with two races still undecided, Republicans gained seven seats in the Senate and at least 11 more seats in the House, with several races still undecided. Republicans now control 31 governorships, and Democrats control both state houses in only 11 states.
Former Obama White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, now a political commentator for CNN, casually admitted that, yes, his party uses race to convince minorities that Republicans seek to oppress them. Before the midterm election, Carney said: "Republicans are going to pick up seats in the Senate and the House, and they may win control of the Senate. So (Democrats) need to mobilize their base voters, and that is especially true of minority voters." Carney also admitted that the use of the race card is cynical: "Equating support for stand-your-ground law ... doesn't mean you supported the action that took Trayvon Martin's life. So that's the kind of, you know, rough ad -- similar to the one we saw from the Republican. I think we've come to expect that, and hopefully a lot of voters ... kind of tune it out."
PunditFact strikes again. For the second time. PunditFact is a so-called truth-seeking column by the Tampa Bay Times. Its website describes the feature as "dedicated to checking the accuracy of claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers, political analysts, the hosts and guests of talk shows." President Barack Obama, for example, recently made the following patently wrongheaded claim: "The states that have raised the minimum wage have had faster job growth than the states that haven't raised the minimum wage." This claim implies a causal connection between raising the minimum wage and prosperity. Minimum-wage hikes do not provoke growth. Indeed, the reverse is true. Yet PunditFact's sister site, PolitiFact, gave Obama a generous "half true."
Contrary to the expectations of all 16 of our U.S. intelligence agencies, the "weapons hunters" sent to Iraq by President George W. Bush found no "stockpiles" of WMD. Never mind that there was a 15-month run-up to the war, during which time Saddam was not combing his moustache. A former Iraqi general, Georges Sada, who met with members of Congress, has long claimed Saddam Hussein moved tons of WMD by land and air into Syria during the run-up to the 2003 invasion. James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, has also said publicly that he, too, believes the WMD were there. But Bush's two weapons hunters found no stockpiles.
The head of a Los Angeles-based nonprofit "sustainable economy" association calls for a higher minimum wage. No surprise there. But he cites a major pro-minimum wage study that responsible academics long ago abandoned. Daniel Flaming of the Economic Roundtable, in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, said: "The conclusion that wage fairness is not a zero-sum game was established by a landmark study comparing neighboring counties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, after New Jersey increased the minimum wage but Pennsylvania did not. It found that after the wage hike, employment in the fast-food industry increased more in New Jersey counties than in neighboring Pennsylvania counties."
Maher Should Apologize to Christians and Jews
