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Home » Don’t be too hard on him, after all he’s only a kid

Don’t be too hard on him, after all he’s only a kid

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’re wondering who Jake Sherman is and why I’m picking on him:

Jake Sherman is a senior writer for POLITICO and co-author of POLITICO’s Playbook, the nation’s leading political newsletter. He is also the co-author of New York Times and national best seller, “The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump’s America,” which was published by Crown in 2019. Jake is an NBC and MSNBC political contributor.

Senior writer. Pretty good credentials as far as the news business goes.

So, how old do you think Jake Sherman is? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

Sherman’s thirty-three years old. Another cub journalist who has become a senior reporter at a very young age.

Also from Sherman’s Politico profile:

Since 2009, Jake has chronicled all of the major legislative battles on Capitol Hill, and has also traveled the country to cover the battle for control of Congress.

So he started as a political journalist ten years ago, when he was 23.

If you think about it, it’s not the least bit surprising that Sherman didn’t know that Nixon was not impeached. Sherman was born eleven years after Nixon resigned, and he would have been in high school during the 90s and college during the two-thousand-oughts. Are the details of modern American history something students learn in any of those venues these days? I very much doubt it. And if you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know you don’t know it.

Sherman’s defenders on that Twitter thread are all too happy to go to bat for him, as they would any good Democratic member of the MSM. Some of their excuses go like this: “The outcome was the same so it really doesn’t matter.” “Well, he wasn’t but he would have been.”

The other thing about Nixon’s resignation, as opposed to what’s happening today, is that the pressure brought to bear on Nixon was bipartisan. I would guess Sherman doesn’t know that either, and what’s more would not understand its significance.

Comments

Don’t be too hard on him, after all he’s only a kid — 53 Comments

  1. We’ve always had elites. It used to be something you were born into. Then it became something you could earn your way into and then your kids could be born into it.

    A lot of our elites today were neither born into it nor earned it. They just put themselves on a certain career path and rose up through the ranks as much by attrition as by achievement. That’s how you end up with a “political expert” who doesn’t know Nixon wasn’t impeached.

    Mike

  2. It always amazes me how young some of these supposedly influential reporters are.

    My theory is that it was a perfect storm of the rise of the internet combined with the recession of 2008/2009 leading to massive layoff/retirements of older more experienced journalists.

    But whatever the reason it leads to a shockingly historically illiterate media combined with massive partisanship. Bad mix.

  3. “He’s only a kid” meshes quite beautifully with recent exhortations I’ve seen that the children of politicians — specifically in this instance Hunter Biden — ought to be left alone out of the public tussle of electoral politics. He’s “just” a child (or alternatively in the then Pres. Pseudonym administration’s version, “a private citizen”, as if same diff).

    And yet we hear comedy is going out of style! Hardly, with stuff like this abroad.

  4. I find that, generally speaking, the generation coming up after us GenXers really doesn’t care at all about actual facts anyway.

  5. He probably could have found this out at Wikipedia. I am skeptical of articles there, but they seem to get things right about dates of birth, years of service,etc. I thought thes younguns were supposed to be tech savvy.

  6. He probably could have found this out at Wikipedia. I am skeptical of articles there, but they seem to get things right about dates of birth, years of service,etc. I thought these younguns were supposed to be tech savvy.

  7. “[I]f you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know you don’t know it.”

    Positively Rumsfeldesque!

  8. While I did recall that Bill Clinton’s special council did find that he had perjured himself, I did not know until recently that there were multiple finding of guilt, he had to pay fines, and was disbarred. Ken Starr stated as much on Fox recently, and Newt Gingrich said that he felt his hands were tied to some extent, in the impeachment proceedings, by actual findings of criminal activity.

    MSM omissions are the most effective.

  9. TommyJay:

    Bill Clinton was not actually disbarred. I bet Starr didn’t say “disbarred” but used some other words like “stopped being able to practice law” or “suspended” or something of that sort. See this for a fuller explanation, but the important part is this:

    Clinton actually was not disbarred permanently, either; he was suspended and unable to practice for five years in Arkansas and then would become eligible, although as far as I know he has never petitioned to do so. His suspension from practicing before the Supreme Court followed automatically from the Arkansas action, and there was absolutely no judgment on the merits by SCOTUS either involving perjury or contempt of court.

  10. And yet, my grandson’s generation, many in charter or private schools, are turning to the right. It may be the absurdity or the social engineering but my son tells me all the kids his son goes to school with are more conservative than he is. Which is saying a lot.

  11. It could save America if Mike K is correct that many kids are turning right. The PC folk are far too willing to be untrue, for partisan purposes, as well as to be hypocritical.

    Maybe more will learn more history, like Nixon resigning before being impeached.
    Trump ain’t gonna go like that, tho.

    I remember wanting Nixon to go to jail, and being angry at Ford for pardoning him – one reason I voted for Jimmy for my first vote. Second reason was physical: Ford often stumbled getting out of planes or in moving, and he was too often pictured standing on a desk bent over with a football ready to snap it (he was a college center). Never voted Dem after that mistake, tho.

    So fitting to know, now, that “Deep Throat” was just an early Deep State criminal, illegally passing on secrets about Nixon immorality and crime cover-up actions to the news. Passed over for advancement.

    There are so many lies, repeated so often. It’s so tiring, and sad.

    It was said (Roger Simon?) that Pelosi knows impeachment is a loser, so she wants to ramrod it thru. Fast. Get the vote early, like this year. And be done with it. Trump is out or stays, but once impeached, “impeachment” comes off the table. No other way for the Dems to take it off.

    This makes sense, but I don’t believe it. Too many Dems seem too sure that Trump is really guilty. Like the B. Bee says: “Impeachment filed, crime TBF later”. (They’re funny!)

  12. Fair comment on Jake Sherman but the map post by Lara Trump is very misleading. A lot of that red area has very small population and actually isn’t 100% red; it would be more accurately purple. While the smaller areas that are blue have a very large population and too would be closer to purple. In other words, although a candidate gets all the electoral votes of a state it does not mean that every single person in that state voted for only one candidate. It’s worth noting that Clinton received more votes nationwide than Trump so the number of people who are presumably against impeachment would not be reflected in that map at all. [Polling shows close to a 50/50 split which one would expect based on the 2016 election results].

    Where Sherman is somewhat correct is that Nixon won 49 states and beat McGovern by 17 million votes! But it didn’t matter because Nixon could see the writing on the wall and as you note the push to impeach was bipartisan.

    So if anything Jake Sherman is posting incorrect information about a map that has misleading information. This is frequently the new reality we get on social media. Fake news begets more fake news….

    [The ability to edit has come back!]

  13. “special council did find that he had perjured himself,”

    A special council finding. I was trying to careful. I had heard sometime in the last year or two that Clinton had the option to reapply to the bar (or whomever), but had forgotten that.

  14. History starts on the day you’re born. For many people, that’s just fine. Some of us become history junkies.

  15. TommyJay on September 30, 2019 at 2:56 pm said:
    …
    MSM omissions are the most effective.
    * * *
    I read a piece at Vox the other day, which was “voxplaining” the process of impeachment, and encountered a perfect example of your observation and the general lack of historical knowledge among the populace in general, not just the media “kids” (although 23 does make you a child for insurance purposes now, I suppose).

    https://www.vox.com/2019/9/25/20882860/house-democrats-impeachment-inquiry-donald-trump-nancy-pelosi

    Most of the information is AFAICT procedurally and historically accurate, except when they (Ella Nilsen, Li Zhou, and Matthew Yglesias) are discussing Donald Trump.
    And then they printed this:

    Johnson was charged with 11 articles of impeachment that centered on his firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in 1868 and ongoing disagreements he had with Congressional Republicans over Civil War Reconstruction.

    What’s wrong with this paragraph? (Don’t everyone raise their hands at once.)

    First of all, what historical context does Vox give for Johnson’s administration?
    He is mentioned by name five times in the article; the other four include a picture caption:

    Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both charged with articles of impeachment but acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before the House had the opportunity to charge him.

    The Senate vote for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 shows signatures under the headings of “Guilty” and “Not Guilty.”
    Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    (Interestingly, one of the articles of impeachment also called out Johnson for delivering remarks “with a loud voice, certain intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues,” and argued that his behavior was unbecoming of a president.)

    Johnson was seen as violating the Tenure of Office Act (a measure that has since been repealed) and ignoring Congress when he fired Stanton.

    Okay. Now, pretend you are part of the crowd watching the Left movie screen.
    You probably know nothing about his disagreements with Stanton and the Republicans.
    What is your immediate conclusion regarding President Johnson’s actions?

    Answer: he was probably being opposed by Wascally Wepublicans obstructing his attempts to solidfy freeing the slaves and driving out the vile Confederates from political life.

    And you would be wrong — because you don’t know history, and don’t bother even to go to Wikipedia for basic facts.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson

    Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson assumed the presidency as he was vice president of the United States at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. …Johnson’s main accomplishment as president is the Alaska purchase.

    Okay, you probably guessed that he was a Democrat, but you may not have known he was elected as the running mate to a Republican President, who only served 6 weeks from the inauguration to his assassination.
    No party has made that mistake again.

    (At least he gave us Sarahcuda!)

    As Southern slave states, including Tennessee, seceded to form the Confederate States of America, Johnson remained firmly with the Union. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his state’s secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as military governor of Tennessee after most of it had been retaken. In 1864, Johnson, as a War Democrat and Southern Unionist, was a logical choice as running mate for Lincoln, who wished to send a message of national unity in his reelection campaign; their ticket easily won.

    Now the part you probably didn’t guess.

    (President) Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments. When Southern states returned many of their old leaders, and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, Congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency. Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to former slaves. In 1866, Johnson went on an unprecedented national tour promoting his executive policies, seeking to destroy his Republican opponents.

    Remember that attempt to pass bills forbidding President Trump to fire his “disloyal” Cabinet Secretaries, aka #TheResistance?
    Been there, done that, got the Supreme Court Ruling.*

    As the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, restricting Johnson’s ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office. After failing to win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination, Johnson left office in 1869.

    Johnson returned to Tennessee, was elected to the Senate again in 1875, making Johnson the only former president to serve in the Senate, and died months into his term.

    You can check the link to learn the details about the contention regarding Reconstruction; I won’t attempt to address which, if any faction on either side, would have had the better plan.

    However, Johnson was NOT fighting to solidify the rights of the freed slaves, including an over-ridden veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and should not get implied credit for doing so just because Vox did not clarify what the positions actually were.
    * * *

    *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure_of_Office_Act_(1867)
    Congress repealed the act in its entirety in 1887.[3][4] While evaluating the constitutionality of a similar law in Myers v. United States (1926) 272 US 52, 71 L.Ed. 160, 47 S.Ct. 21, the Supreme Court stated that the Tenure of Office Act was likely invalid.[5]

  16. Addenda about Stanton & Impeachement — there were two failed resolutions to impeach before the successful one, which came after Johnson tried to fire him several times.

    …on March 2, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over the President’s veto, in response to statements during the Swing Around the Circle that he planned to fire Cabinet secretaries who did not agree with him. This bill, requiring Senate approval for the firing of Cabinet members during the tenure of the president who appointed them and for one month afterwards, was immediately controversial, with some senators doubting that it was constitutional or that its terms applied to Johnson, whose key Cabinet officers were Lincoln holdovers.[148]

    Remember, Johnson is a (D), and the Cabinet officers most likely (R)s, although some supported Johnson and some did not.

    Secretary of War Edwin Stanton … worked to undermine the president’s Southern policy from within his own administration. Johnson considered firing Stanton, but respected him for his wartime service as secretary. Stanton, for his part, feared allowing Johnson to appoint his successor and refused to resign, despite his public disagreements with his president.[150]…Later in June, Johnson and Stanton battled over the question of whether the military officers placed in command of the South could override the civil authorities. The President had Attorney General Henry Stanbery issue an opinion backing his position that they could not. Johnson sought to pin down Stanton either as for, and thus endorsing Johnson’s position, or against, showing himself to be opposed to his president and the rest of the Cabinet. … Johnson notified Congress of Stanton’s suspension and Grant’s interim appointment. In January 1868, the Senate disapproved of his action, and reinstated Stanton, contending the President had violated the Tenure of Office Act. Grant stepped aside over Johnson’s objection, causing a complete break between them. Johnson then dismissed Stanton and appointed Lorenzo Thomas to replace him. Stanton refused to leave his office, and on February 24, 1868, the House impeached the President for intentionally violating the Tenure of Office Act, by a vote of 128 to 47. The House subsequently adopted eleven articles of impeachment, for the most part alleging that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, and had questioned the legitimacy of Congress.[157]

    With some wheeling & dealing, and some Republicans fearing that Johnson’s successor would be even worse, he managed to get just the barest possible majority to escape conviction. The Senate acquitted him on 3 separate votes of the 11 articles, and then the Republicans gave up on the rest.

    After which there were: hearings, reports, accusations of bribery both for (special interest money) and by (quid pro quos) Johnson, collusion, obstruction of justice, and the usual fare of Congress.

  17. I recall there was confusion even at the time of the Watergate hearings. I argued at length with an older cousin who was certain that “impeach” meant “remove from office”.

  18. Dwaz:

    A lot of people don’t understand what “impeach” means and can’t differentiate it from “impeach and convict.”

    But that’s not the confusion here, because Nixon was neither. He resigned. He was forced to resign because he would have been impeached and convicted, and that was because quite a few Republicans would have voted for that and they told him so.

  19. And yet, my grandson’s generation, many in charter or private schools, are turning to the right. It may be the absurdity or the social engineering but my son tells me all the kids his son goes to school with are more conservative than he is. Which is saying a lot. –Mike K

    Good to hear; hope it scales.

    I keep thinking the kids have got to start rejecting the adult PC because it’s no fun, it’s often obviously stupid, and because kids rebel because kids rebel.

    It seems we’re overdue, but I could be wrong.

  21. In the 80s I knew a New Mexico woman with three kids who liked the hippies-living-poor-in-the-woods lifestyle. She was smart, had a Master’s and worked as hard as anyone I’ve known short of doctors and lawyers. But she couldn’t hack any sort of city life. Eventually New Mexico became too much for her. She moved literally to an island in Alaska.

    However, her daughter had enough of the hippie life. She worked her tail off in school, got a Congressional internship while in high school, got through college and law school, and now practices law with a good firm in Santa Fe.

  23. neo: As I’ve mentioned, I’m confused on where the House is with impeachment.

    It seems Pelosi has set an impeachment process in motion without obtaining a vote to do so. The Dem representatives don’t seem interested in an inquiry and would vote to impeach tomorrow morning, if they could, without any investigation. I don’t understand why Pelosi doesn’t call a vote for impeachment inquiry. I guess she keeps more options open this way.

    As usual, if laws or protocols don’t work for them, Democrats just do stuff anyway, e.g. Obama’s unilateral, unconstitutional DACA program for so-called DREAMERS.

  24. “I don’t understand why Pelosi doesn’t call a vote for impeachment inquiry.”

    As I’ve mentioned before I don’t think she has the requisite 218 votes huxley. I think she knows this. Other people say she doesn’t wish to put her members who’ve won seats in Trump carried districts in jeopardy. This may or may not be her concern.

  25. “History starts on the day you’re born.”

    Nah. I was born in 1971 and recently listened to an old radio show from the mid-1940s. I could recognize five out of the six stars of the show and tell you whether they were an actor, singer, or comedian. Those people were more or less in the prime of their career 25 years before I was born and I still knew who most of them were.

    Likewise, I could have at 33 given you a thumbnail sketch of the presidencies of JFK, Truman, and FDR and not missed anything as significant as the fact that Nixon wasn’t actually impeached. And I’m just some rando on the internet.

    I do believe the constant deluge of information swamping us every second of every minute of every hour of every day IS having a negative effect on our actual knowledge base.

    Mike

  26. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t think she has the requisite 218 votes huxley.

    sdferr: Apparently so. I’m surprised. Here’s a bit from a sub-blog within DailyKos(!):

    Some here [at DailyKos] seem to think that we “own” the house. Well, yes, we do have a majority. But just to clarify, here are the numbers: 235 democrats, 198 republicans. Yeah, I bet it surprises many how many republicans remain in the house.

    And how many of those republicans do you think will vote to impeach? Which means Pelosi needs at LEAST 199 Democratic house members to agree on impeachment.

    Currently from what I’ve heard on Thom Hartman’s show, from two different Democratic house reps there are only 60 in the house as of now who are committed to impeachment, out loud. Both of these reps have said in “read between the lines” ways, we are not sure we have the votes.

    This is why It’s important to bring this up. Has anyone here considered the idea that Pelosi simply doesn’t think she has the votes right now to pull this off?!?!

    –https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/14/1864957/-Something-I-don-t-hear-here-regarding-impeachment-Does-Pelosi-have-the-votes

    If so, this isn’t a serious impeachment effort, but more grandstanding for the base.

  27. huxley:

    Not just grandstanding for the base, IMHO.

    It has these functions in addition to that one:

    (1) hurts Biden, whom they think is going to fall anyway
    (2) might hurt the economy because of the turmoil and uncertainty, and they hope people will blame Trump
    (3) they are planning a LOT of discovery and will ask for lots of documents. If they get them, they will spin them and comb them for any irregularities. If they don’t get them, they will sue to get them, and accuse the administration of hiding something. They hope to find something on which to build a stronger case. The inquiry is a fishing expedition.

  28. Hmm. That’s old (June 14) news. Nonetheless, it appears Pelosi is playing a weaker hand than I thought:

    CNN legal analyst Ross Garber — an impeachment attorney — mocked New York magazine for breathlessly tweeting that Pelosi’s brief presser yesterday means that she’ll pass articles of impeachment.

    Garber tweeted: “Silly take. No. This isn’t how you’d do an impeachment process if you thought you’d actually impeach. You’d form a select committee or you’d staff up the Judiciary Committee.”

    Ross Garber underscored that Pelosi’s political theatrics are merely a hollow gesture to mollify the far-left radicals in the Democratic Party.

    https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/09/25/impeachment-fail-nancy-pelosis-strategy-is-weak-say-experts-829810

  29. neo: Thanks.

    However, can Pelosi run an inquiry with all the discovery without a House vote? Or are we through the looking-glass and the Red Queen will call for “Sentence first, verdict afterward.”

  32. SEPTEMBER 30, 2019 By Tristan Justice, The Federalist:
    https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/30/trump-demanded-accountability-of-nations-that-fed-russia-hoax-thats-impeachable/

    New revelations emerged Monday that President Donald Trump urged the Australian prime minister to work with the Department of Justice to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

    In a recent phone call, Trump requested his Australian counterpart provide assistance to Attorney General William Barr in an investigation to hold nations that fed the conspiracy theory accountable, according to The New York Times.

  33. neo: If Pelosi and her minions lack legal authority, the Trump side can simply ignore discovery requests — I would assume.

    But I don’t know what constitutes such authority in this case.

  34. If we think about the Speaker’s authority alone, woof! It arises by rulemaking in the House (and, I assume can be extinguished by the same). Yet can the Speaker be assumed to represent the representatives in everything without taking a vote of determination? Hardly seems democratically kosher at first blush.

  35. sdferr: So it would seem. From the earlier link:

    Similarly, Republican Congressman Doug Collins, an attorney, noted that Democrats are no closer to impeaching Trump than they were last week, last month, or last year.

    Collins tweeted: “Speaker Pelosi’s decree changes absolutely nothing. Merely claiming the House is conducting an impeachment inquiry doesn’t make it so. Until the full House votes to authorize an inquiry, nobody is conducting a formal inquiry.”

  38. Wasn’t it Ben Rhodes, the architect of the hype in favor of Obama’s Iran deal, who said that reporters knew literally nothing? I hear there are thirty-three-year-olds who actually think Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat.

  40. I’ll have everyone know: Ben Rhodes has an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU.

    Know your place, peasants.

  42. https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/30/why-nancy-pelosi-now-supports-impeachment-even-though-its-insane/
    By George S. Bardmesser, SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

    The answer is simple: the absence of impeachable offenses makes no difference whatsoever, because the outcome is pre-determined, and Pelosi’s options are stark: start the impeachment now, and retain control of the narrative, or start a month or two from now, and lose control completely, with the impeachment hearings dragging on into the primary season.

    Pelosi understands perfectly that an election where the Democratic Party is framed as a single-issue party, whose sole concern is an impeaching a president over two casual sentences in a phone call, will be catastrophic. But she has run out of rope.

    On the other hand, President Trump insists on giving them additional coils.

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/30/trump-demanded-accountability-of-nations-that-fed-russia-hoax-thats-impeachable/

    You say tomato, I say tomahto.
    One man’s accountability is another man’s corruption.
    Strong-arming another nation is always legal in the first person…

  43. and that was because quite a few Republicans would have voted for that and they told him so.

    Barry Goldwater told him he had only 15 votes in the Senate. Part of the reason he had only 15 votes in the Senate is that we were better people back then. That Nixon had persistently lied publicly and had had characters like Gordon Liddy working for him disgusted a critical mass of the political class and the public. What counted as a scandal during the Carter Administration was Billy Carter’s Libya shenanigans and accusations of cocaine use by Peter Bourne and Hamilton Jordan. Hunter all by his self conjoins all of the Carter administration scandals scaled-up.

  44. Clinton actually was not disbarred permanently, either; he was suspended and unable to practice for five years in Arkansas and then would become eligible, although as far as I know he has never petitioned to do so.

    He’d never actually practiced. He’d had a three-year stint on the law faculty of the University of Arkansas ‘ere being elected state attorney-general.

    That an oily grifter like Billy Jeff Blythe has had such a sparkling career is also indicative of national decadence. Compare him to Michael Dukakis.

  45. Has Rhodes ever read “Ulysses” ?

    AesopFan: Yeah! Good question.

    Hard to say. In my experience creative writer types usually don’t have the stamina for the hard stuff. The three people I know who read “Ulysses” were two programmers and a lawyer.

    OTOH, Rhodes did graduate Phi Beta Kappa with majors in English and Political Science from Rice in 2000, whatever that means.

  46. When I graduated from Rice in 1974, it would have meant quite a good something.
    However, there are plenty of smart people who can game the grading system without ever really learning anything.
    Some of them are even dishonest people.
    Not to mention: knowledge is not the same as wisdom.

    After 26 years, the leftist rot was probably creeping in, but I don’t keep up with the academic standards anymore and don’t know how bad it’s gotten. English and PoliSci can both get pretty loosey-goosey, especially at the Bachelor’s level.
    (I have a Master’s in the latter meself.)

    FIRE gives the Owls a “yellow card” so they are not yet irredeemable.
    https://www.thefire.org/schools/rice-university/

    Back when I was a quasi-degenerate pseudo-hippie, we had a pretty free-wheeling administration in terms of personal freedoms (two dorms went co-ed my senior year); a classically liberal social environment (I attended one event where the invited speaker was the local Kleagle, but we all cheered for Nixon’s impeachment); and academic standards were top-notch, despite my disclaimers above.
    Good times.

  47. AesopFan: Interesting! Things were weird in the 70s and the standards were shaking but still largely in place.

    Here’s a bit from the Rice U magazine:

    Rhodes’ advice for current Rice students is, “The best plan for your career is to have no plan – that’s what allowed me to make some pretty dramatic shifts in my twenties, and ultimately led me to the Obama campaign and the White House.”

    https://socialsciences.rice.edu/news/political-science-alumnus-benjamin-rhodes-00-foreign-policy-adviser-and-speechwriter-barack

    That’s how I did things, but I don’t particularly recommend it.

  48. AesopFan: Interesting! Things were weird in the 70s and the standards were shaking but still largely in place.

    Here’s a bit from the Rice website:

    Rhodes’ advice for current Rice students is, “The best plan for your career is to have no plan – that’s what allowed me to make some pretty dramatic shifts in my twenties, and ultimately led me to the Obama campaign and the White House.”

    That’s how I did things myself, but I don’t particularly recommend shambolicism as a non-plan.
    _______________________________
    I included the Rice link but the spam eater kept eating it.

  49. To briefly defend my generation- I’m 33 and my husband is 34, and we both know more about US history and politics than most of the baby boomers we work with- even the stuff they lived through. Though our schools were on the way to whole-hog social justice even in the 90s, we’re both readers, and we’re naturally curious (and naturally skeptical) people, and were raised with traditional values of hard work and discipline. That’s the difference. There are ignorant lemmings in every generation, my gen has been encouraged that way more perhaps than any yet, but there are many, many people my age who are WAAAAY more informed and knowledgeable than people twice our age. We’d just never work for a newspaper, we’ve got better things to do 😉

  50. “We’d just never work for a newspaper, we’ve got better things to do.” Oh, yes, Kristen, I know there are informed people in your age group! As you say, they’re not found in “journalism.”

  51. “they’re not found in “journalism.”” – Kate
    Too true, and that is part of the problem, possibly the primary reason why MSM leans left like a tree on the high plains in the wind.
    Education has the same problem.
    I trace it to the rise in schools of journalism and education, whose training and standards (/sarc) supplanted substantive knowledge.
    My own view (having briefly considered careers in both) is that everything you need to know about reporting and teaching can be learned in one semester AFTER mastering a meaningful discipline (“X studies” doesn’t count).

  52. The Ego doesn’t know that it is not alone. The Ego also doesn’t know that it is incorrect and in rebellion to the divine.

  53. Education quality has certainly gone down, partly because so many great teachers left ed to get much higher paying jobs. Great Female teachers, especially, as feminism got the early equal access (90%? from 70%) to jobs & success women deserved. As women left teaching to higher paid careers, less qualified/ less good teachers filled in.
    Big parts of the extra cash spent on “education” has gone to administration, NOT the K-12 teachers.

    I think Trump, too, WANTS to get over impeachment. Do it or not, but the threat is a pain. Still, maybe he’s also fine with calling them clowns and cowardly clowns for talking about it but not doing it.

    I read Trump’s tweets. So does David French, who complains about Trump congratulating China for 70 years after the People’s Republic was founded.

    https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1179042188283523078

    Don Surber explains the anti-Trump problem well:
    David French, however, opposes doing anything to thwart Red China, as President Trump is doing in his trade war. Like the rest of National Review’s phonies he prefers words over actions. They fund Red China through Fake Free Trade while clucking their tongues about communism.

    President Trump flatters Red China while cleaning its clock.

    I truly prefer results over actions, and actions over words.
    And Trump’s results far more than some of his words. (& edit!)

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