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SEPTEMBER 8,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:35 P.M. ET: 

CHANGE IN SWEDEN? – FROM AFP:  Swedes vote in legislative elections on Sunday expected to see the far-right surge amid a deep rift over the integration of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, with the election outcome seen as uncertain.  Neither Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's left-wing bloc nor the centre-right opposition were seen obtaining a majority.  The far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), an anti-immigration party with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, are tipped to win around 20 percent of votes, according to an average of seven polling institutes published in the past 10 days, up from 13 percent in 2014 elections.
That could make SD Sweden's second biggest party behind Lofven's Social Democrats.  SD has capitalised on voters who feel left behind by traditional parties in favour of the 400,000 asylum seekers who have arrived since 2012, whom they believe are straining the country's famed welfare model.  Immigration, integration, health care, the climate and education have been Swedes' main concerns in the election campaign.  We may not like the origins of the SD, but it's a good thing that Sweden is being shaken up politically.  It's about time.  The country has been asleep for years.

TENNIS:  ANOTHER DISGRACEFUL MOMENT IN AMERICAN SPORTS – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:  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.  The deserving winner will take her impression of America back to Japan.  We are better than this.

NOT THE GREATEST GENERATION – FROM STUDYFINDS:  BOSTON — For some, it’s the best four years of their lives. For others, it’s a period of constant struggle, whether academically, socially, or both. College brings about new experiences and challenges for young adults that can be difficult to adapt to and overcome, so perhaps it’s no surprise that a new study reports high rates of stress and mental health conditions among students.  The newly-published report out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital shows that a quarter of college students received were diagnosed with a mental health condition in the past year, and a fifth have had suicidal thoughts.  Researchers looked at survey results from 67,308 students across 108 American colleges and universities during the spring of 2015. Students were questioned on the frequency of stressful events, depression or anxiety in their daily lives, and reported whether or not they’d been diagnosed with a mental health condition in the past year. Stressful events were viewed as anything that students viewed as traumatic or difficult to handle, whether academic or personal. That includes financial struggles, family problems, trouble sleeping, self-esteem issues, or health matters.  I don't diminish the importance of mental-health issues, but this is the most pampered generation I've ever seen.  I wonder if that has something to do with the inability of many to cope.   

September 8, 2018       Permalink

A MAJOR EMPLOYMENT TREND – AT 2:30 P.M. ET:  This is long overdue, a recognition that we have over-worshipped the college degree.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Big companies like Google, Apple, and IBM are no longer requiring applicants to hold a college degree.

This is a significant change. Historically, employers have required a college degree whether or not it was necessary to do the job.

Is this because colleges are no longer teaching the needed skills, or because there are so many job openings to fill that standards are dropping? Could it be that vocational training and self-taught skills are enough for certain jobs in the modern-day economy?

IBM is now looking at candidates with experience in non-traditional education, such as coding boot camps or industry-related vocational classes.

Glassdoor compiled an August list of 15 big companies that no longer require a degree to apply:

• Google
• Ernst & Young
• Penguin Random House
• Costco Wholesale
• Whole Foods
• Hilton
• Publix
• Apple
• Starbucks
• Nordstrom
• Home Depot
• IBM
• Bank of America
• Chipotle
• Lowe’s

This is a welcome change for many jobseekers, as well as high school graduates considering whether college is worth the exorbitant cost. With college tuition soaring nationwide, these companies are giving young people an opportunity to succeed without going into debt for a degree they may not even use on the job.

This change should not alarm those with a college degree, however.

“Academic qualifications will still be taken into account and indeed remain an important consideration when assessing candidates as a whole, but will no longer act as a barrier to getting a foot in the door,” Maggie Stilwell, Ernst and Young’s managing partner for talent, has stated.

COMMENT:  I suspect that some employers have also found out that many college degrees are useless, pointless, and have more to do with indoctrination than education.  They may have also found out that many "college graduates" cannot write an English sentence and cannot read anything above a high-school level.

An important trend.  I wonder if the mainstream media will show much interest.

September 8, 2018         Permalink

COMMITTING POLITICAL SUICIDE – AT 12:31 P.M. ET:  As Jerry Lewis once said, bad looks you can change, stupid is forever.  From the Resurgent: 

Bob O'Rourke, Ted Cruz's Irish-American opponent who has culturally appropriated the name Beto to sound hispanic, has been in full defense of protestors taking a knee to the national anthem. Now he's going directly after the American flag.

O'Rourke rented out a Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall in Navasota, TX to hold a campaign rally. According to VFW Post 4006 Commander Carl Dry, O'Rourke's campaign insisted the VFW Hall take down its American flags.

“I do not normally attend rental events, but I attended Saturday to make sure things ran smoothly,” said Dry, who noted there were only two requests he could not allow at the VFW Post. “They wanted to open the doors (to the Flight Deck Lounge) and I couldn’t allow that and they wanted to take the flags down, I didn’t only say no, I said hell no, you don’t take the flags off the wall. I can’t believe any American would ask us to do that and I don’t know why he wanted them down or what he was going to put up instead.”

This seems to be a pattern with O'Rourke. He supports protesting the national anthem, he wants to take people's guns away, and his campaign team sees no problem asking a group of veterans to take down their American flags so he can have an American flag free rally.

This is an instinct thing, folks. When your campaign staff does that, it is a reflection of the candidate himself. It is more and more clear that Bob O'Rourke is not just okay with protesting our flag and national anthem, but he's okay with getting rid of them altogether.

COMMENT:  We've said here before that O'Rourke is a fraud.  He not only uses a fake name, he portrays himself as a homeboy, when in fact he's a national ultra-liberal Democrat.  But he's young and Kennedyesque, an intentional pose, and he's attracted a lot of attention and some young screamers.  He has become a political threat to Senator Ted Cruz, one of the great and true intellects of the Senate, and he must be stopped cold.

September 8,  2018     Permalink

SEPTEMBER 7,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:40 P.M. ET: 

THE CLOWNS ARE AT IT AGAIN – FROM FOX:    The social studies curriculum for seventh graders in Texas learning about the Alamo could reportedly face some new changes, at least one of which has drawn the ire of the governor.  Removing the word “heroic” to describe those who protected the Alamo was among the items included in a report penned by an advisory panel to the State Board of Education on how to structure the curriculum, Dallas News reported on Friday.  As it stands now, curriculum phrasing of the topic is the “siege of the Alamo and all of the heroic defenders who gave their lives there,” according to the outlet.
However, the word in question was reportedly described as being “value-charged” and the panel has suggested doing away with everything except the “siege of the Alamo.”  Republican Gov. Greg Abbott took a firm stance on the proposition, arguing that the “political correctness in our schools” needed to “stop.”
“Stop political correctness in our schools. Of course Texas schoolchildren should be taught that Alamo defenders were ‘Heroic’!” Abbott said in a tweet.  The left has infiltrated everywhere. 

A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE – FROM DAILY CALLER:   Democratic Senator Kamala Harris referred to SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s pocket Constitution as “that book you carry” on Thursday.
Harris was listing what she believes to be unenumerated rights that are not explicitly listed in the U.S. Constitution and asked Kavanaugh which ones he would get rid of.  “I’m gonna ask you about unenumerated rights,” Harris said. “‘Unenumerated rights’ is a phrase that lawyers use but I wanna make clear what we’re talking about. It means rights that are protected by the Constitution even though they’re not specifically mentioned by the Constitution.” “So they’re not in that book that you carry,” she said derisively.
Kavanaugh replied to Harris’s assertion with a smile.  “The Constitution — it is in the book that I carry,” Kavanaugh retorted.  Kamala wants to be president.  If she gets there, she'll take an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."  She won't mean it.

WHAT A MOVIE! – FROM DAILY MAIL:  The Trump administration has trimmed the list of White House officials who could have possibly penned the blistering New York Times op-ed published this week, an insider has revealed.   A source close to the White House told CNN Friday that the hunt for the op-ed's anonymous author is now zeroing in on 'a few' individuals, with counselor Kellyanne Conway revealing that President Donald Trump believes the writer is from the national security sector of the government. The insider said Trump remains 'obsessed' with nailing the 'sick person' responsible - while his chief of staff John Kelly tries to talk the president into letting it go, fearing that Trump's repeated calls to reveal the author have drawn more attention to the unfavorable editorial itself.  Why doesn't the president just consult the real experts at sniffing out stool pigeons – organized crime?  I know a guy named Johnny Three Fingers who'd have this creep nailed in ten seconds.

September 7,  2018     Permalink

THE ECONOMY – MORE GOOD NEWS – AT 2:30 P.M. ET:  Jobs, jobs, jobs.  From MarketWatch: 

The numbers: The United States created 201,000 new jobs in August, keeping the unemployment rate at an 18-year low and generating the fastest increase in worker pay since the end of the Great Recession.

Economists polled by MarketWatch had forecast a 200,000 increase in new nonfarm jobs.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, was unchanged at 3.9%, the Labor Department said Friday.

The increase in hiring in August was another solid gain that reflects broad strength in an economy that accelerated in the spring and showed little sign of slowing down toward the end of summer.

The biggest news in the August employment report was a sharp increase in pay.

The average wage paid to American workers rose by 10 cents to $27.16 an hour. What’s more, the yearly rate of pay increases climbed to 2.9% from 2.7%, marking the highest level since June 2009.

What happened: White-collar professional firms filled 53,000 positions, bringing the total created over the past 12 months to more than half a million. These are the fastest growing jobs in the country.

And...

Big picture: The economy surged in the spring and is still growing rapidly as the fall approaches.

Most companies are hiring and layoffs have tumbled to a nearly 50-year low.

COMMENT:  The president can take that into the election campaign.  It's the most powerful argument he can make, and there's not much the Democrats can claim in reply.  The Dems will run against Trump the man, not Trump the president. 

Barack Obama was out on the campaign trail today, starting his drive on behalf of Democrats.  I'm not sure it will help them.  Obama's presence will simply remind the country how much better conditions are today than when he was in office.  I don't think he has much magic left.

September 7, 2018       Permalink

PRESIDENT BOUNCING BACK – AT 12:22 P.M. ET:  We have to be tentative about evaluating any poll result, but it does appear that Mr. Trump is starting to bounce back after a recent, and serious, decline.  He was as high as 50% approval in the Rasmussen poll in recent weeks, but as low as 44% earlier this week.  For two days running now, he's snapped upward.  From Rasmussen: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) disapprove. 

The latest figures include 32% who Strongly Approve of how the president is performing and 43% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11.

COMMENT:  We'll soon see if other polls follow the upward trend.  Also, we'll be tracking the generic congressional poll, which turned sharply in the Democratic direction in the last few weeks, but can easily turn back.  Americans could not possibly be impressed by the Democratic performance at the Kavanaugh hearings, which almost came up to a junior-high level.

September 7, 2018       Permalink

DECISIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES – AT 8:48 A.M. ET:  Even for Nike.  This is a lesson for corporations who believe they can defy the public.  From Conservative Treehouse: 

Never before in the history of corporate branding decisions has a multi-billion dollar company had such a massive and swift drop of brand image as Nike.  The results from Morning Consult Intelligence, a firm that specializes in monitoring and measuring the brand image and reputation for thousands of major companies, reflects a massive drop in brand image across every single demographic.

We suspected there would be a diminishment of brand image, but nothing like the scale discovered within the polled data:

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.

? 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.

COMMENT:  Clearly, Nike is out of touch with its own country, kind of like the Democratic Party.  How did their executives make such a crazy decision?  Were the spouses of executives involved, as is too often the case?  Did they talk only to people who agreed with them politically?

Will their board of directors speak up, or will they fear accusations of racism?  That may be the key question.

September 7,  2018     Permalink