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USA Today has done an excellent investigation into the Department of Veteran Affairs. Its latest bombshell shows that the VA has hired doctors they know have malpractice claims and felony convictions. How could this possibly happen? A not so thorough hiring process:
Applications are vetted, education and licenses verified, references checked, and interviews conducted. For clinical hires, a review and approval by a professional standards board also is required. But when applicants disclose prior problems with medical licensing short of revocation, malpractice or criminal histories, VA hospital officials have discretion to weigh the providers’ explanations and approve their hiring anyway.

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This weekend, Obama proved once again that he is incapable of affording his successor the same courtesy shown by his predecessor. While speaking in Paris, Obama cited a lack of American leadership on climate change.

All the way back on November 21, 2017, I suggested that given the state of the Alabama Senate special election, Roy Moore was likely to win assuming no new allegations or proof of sexual misconduct came out. In my post, If Roy Moore wins, thank Gloria Allred and Al Franken, I focused on Gloria Allred's entry into the case and her refusal to produce for forensic inspection a yearbook allegedly containing Moore's handwriting:

Okay, this story made me giggle.  A lot.  The very idea of Chelsea Clinton relegating herself to the boonies of Arkansas, a state her parents disdained and couldn't leave quickly enough, is hilarious to me.  Not so to Politico, however. The idea of the Clinton dynasty just will not die, and poor Chelsea is going to be sacrificed on its altar.  Remember when the media and left was pushing the idea of a Chelsea run for the U. S. House of Representatives in New York?  That fizzled out quickly.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough cause a Twitter storm when he posted a misleading tweet about Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT).  Scarborough misrepresented Hatch's comments about entitlements generally as being specifically about CHIP, a program created back in 1997 when Hatch co-sponsored the legislation with then-Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Scarborough has since taken down the tweet, but here is a screen cap of it:

In the wake of the recent spate of sexual offense allegations, particularly against politicians such as Roy Moore, "credible" and "credibly" have become the latest buzzwords. Take this Politico piece, for example, written by a former Bush speechwriter named Matt Latimer [emphasis mine]:
In the wake of the Roy Moore fiasco, a number of “hot takes” have made their rounds in the media. How obviously hypocritical it is, for example, for evangelical leaders to stand behind a man credibly accused of sexually assaulting a minor...

Public health experts are warning that the upcoming flu season may a rough one in this country, as data from Australia indicate the vaccine selected for this year's strain isn't effective against the virus.
The flu vaccine used this year in Australia — which has the same composition as the vaccine used in the U.S. — was only 10 percent effective, according to a preliminary estimate, at preventing the strain of the virus that predominantly circulated during the country's flu season,an international team of medical experts wrote in a perspective published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Michael Flynn pleaded guilty last week to lying to FBI investigators regarding conversations Flynn had with the Russian Ambassador in late December 2016, barely three weeks before the Trump administration was sworn into office. Such transitions contact with foreigners are routine, and took place during prior administrations, including the Obama administration. That makes perfect sense, since an incoming administration needs to hit the ground running with its foreign policy. Certainly there would have been howls of outrage from the media and Democrats had the incoming Trump administration waited until after the inauguration to make contact with our primary geo-political foes; it would have been portrayed as a sign of incompetence and amateurishness. There was nothing illegal about Flynn speaking with the Russian ambassador and others. But he ran afoul of the law when he lied about it to the FBI.

Christmas is coming early for America's schoolchildren, as the Trump administration rolls back even more Obama-era lunacy. Chocolate milk will soon be back on public school lunch menus as new rules ease nutritional standards established by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and championed by former first lady Michelle Obama.

I'm a Yuge fan of the Talking Heads. Back in the day, when I did triathlons, I used to train to the Talking Heads live Stop Making Sense concert on my iPod. I've also run the Talking Heads as Video of the Day, the last time in September 2014 (which reminds me to re-up them early next year). One of their (many) best songs is Once in a Lifetime:

The Senate voted early this morning to pass a Tax Reform bill. That bill is not yet law, because differences with the Tax Reform bill passed by the House need to be worked out in conference. Nonetheless, this procedural step forward was considered a big win for Trump and Republicans after Senate Republicans could not pass even a weak repeal and replace of Obamacare because of defections. But this time the caucus held together with just one defection, Bob Corker. How have liberals reacted?

It's hard not to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton at times.  Here she was the heir apparent to the White House, a long-time party go-along and malleable puff of air ready to say she believed whatever the driving trend of a given historical moment might be, and at the last minute, her turn was snatched away from her by the American people. She was left spinning, angry and bemused, and she's still not sure what happened. But it's not complicated.  At rock-bottom, it was Hillary's  go-along readiness to manifest Obama's third term and "protect" his legacy, that ever-shifting never-quite-real belief system that Americans rejected. Hillary was for DADT before she was against it, she was for military engagement in the Middle East before she was against it, she pilloried and destroyed women who alleged sexual assaults before she thought they should be believed, she was for more taxes before she was against—and then once more for—them, she supported single-payer healthcare before she didn't (and then did again), she wanted lower taxes before she wanted to gouge the "rich," she was a foreign policy hawk before she was a dove.  The list goes on.  And on.

One of the only times I've ever seen my father, a career military man and Vietnam veteran, express genuine concern over the direction of our country was in the wake of the FBI's fall from grace under James Comey.  Generally, my dad is upbeat about the perseverance of Americans because of his extensive study of our nation's history and his belief in American exceptionalism.  His disappointment that the FBI, one of the last agencies to lose its good standing among the American people, had succumbed to blatant partisan politics and could no longer be trusted on points of law enforcement and investigation was palpable . . . and heart-breaking. I mention this only because the revelation that an FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who supervised both the Hillary email investigation and the Trump-Russia probe sent anti-Trump text messages to his alleged mistress, an FBI lawyer, goes straight to the heart of many Americans' sense that the FBI should be fair and impartial, working with an eye on the bigger historical and legal picture, above the petty politics of the day.