INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Growing IRS Scandal Requires A Special Prosecutor. “This scandal reeks of criminality and, at the very least, constitutes an attempt by a government agency to sway the 2012 election.”
Search Results
LABOR: Court: First Amendment protections don’t allow unions to engage in nuisance lawsuits. “Here’s a case worth keeping an eye on: the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a union’s First Amendment rights do not allow it to engage in a pattern of legal harassment against a non-union business. Given that such legal campaigns are major tool of Big Labor, this case could have broad implications.”
BRYAN PRESTON: A Few of the Crazy Things the IRS Asked Conservative Groups to Divulge Add Up to a Pattern and Purpose. “It’s pretty clear that gathering the information through the IRS was not the end game, it was a stop on the way to an end: Public exposure, humiliation and attack against the individuals that the IRS had scooped up on these forms — donors, staff, members, and their families. Secondarily, anyone thinking about donating to or working with any of the targeted groups would have to think twice about the consequences that might follow their exercise of their free speech rights. . . . It’s clear from the questions above that while the IRS may not have had an enemies list when its intrusive questioning regime began in 2010, it was building one, and a very large and sophisticate one at that.”
Well, unsealing private records is an Obama signature move.
And hey, lookie here: IRS Office That Targeted Tea Party Also Disclosed Confidential Docs From Conservative Groups.
AN ANSWER TO THE FERMI PARADOX: Humans May Be The First Generation of Advanced Life In The Milky Way.
That would actually be good, since if aliens exist, they probably want to destroy us.
I recommend this piece by Gregg Easterbrook. Key bit:
James Trefil, of George Mason University, has cautioned that if evolution functions approximately the same way on other worlds that it has functioned here — conferring survival upon the fittest — advanced extraterrestrials might still be aggressive, territorial, and quick to reach for the sword. In that case, counting on poor alien marksmanship might not be prudent. Even if a message arrived from a great distance, we might for defensive reasons be compelled to assume that the senders knew something about the speed-of-light barrier that we didn’t, and withhold our reply.
The most disquieting aspect of natural selection as observed on Earth is that it channels intellect to predators. Most bright animals are carnivores: stalking requires tactics, pattern recognition, and, for social animals, coordinated action, all incubators of brainpower. Though the martial heritage of mankind has been exaggerated in popular fiction (there’s no proof, for example, that our Cro Magnon ancestors waged war against the vanished Neanderthals), it’s reasonably certain that the forebears of modern Homo sapiens were hunters, and it’s definite that man has been savage during the historical era. This isn’t much of a testimonial to “intelligence.”
Well, not as tending to nonviolence. On alien invasions generally, a good fictional treatment is in Greg Bear’s The Forge Of God, For the more technically-inclined, there’s Ernst Fasan’s Relations With Extraterrestrial Intelligences, or some chapters in McDougal, Lasswell, and Vlasic’s Law and Public Order In Space. Kind of old, but still good. A more recent popular treatment that’s worth your time is Ben Bova and Byron Preiss’s Are We Alone in the Cosmos? The Search for Alien Contact in the New Millenium.
if aliens just don’t like us, there’s no need to invade. They could send a half-pound of deadly nanodevices on a stealthed probe. We probably wouldn’t even recognize what was happening as an alien attack.
FIRST THE HORSE, NOW THE BARN DOOR: State Dept. focusing on ‘deteriorating security’ at diplomatic posts.
State Department officials on Thursday said the department is evaluating all high-risk posts in the wake of a report that found systemic security problems were to blame for the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides told panels in the House and Senate that the department would focus on a troubling pattern of “deteriorating security” at U.S. diplomatic posts. . . . An independent report released Wednesday found State should have been paying more attention to broad political changes that were affecting security.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sidelined by a nasty case of athlete’s foot, was unavailable for comment.
THE HILL: Veterans Affairs head blasts administration over hospital incident.
The Democratic chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee lambasted the Obama administration over its handling of an incident at a St. Louis VA center in which more than 1,800 veterans were told they may have been exposed to HIV.
“It’s outrageous, one, that this happens, but even worse is this secretive, almost cover-up mode that they go into when something like this happens,” Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) said on CNN Monday.
That does seem to be the pattern, doesn’t it?
CAN I CALL ‘EM, OR WHAT? Back in September, noting a continuing pattern of White House incompetence, I predicted: “Expect this to play out in thumbsucker columns on whether America is ‘ungovernable.'”
And, right on cue, here’s Matthew Yglesias: “The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.”
Funny, that dumb cowboy Bush seemed to get a lot done with fewer votes in Congress. . . .
Plus, from the comments: “There have been no major institutional changes in the United States government in recent history that have caused it to ‘become ungovernable.’ There just isn’t enough political support to enact various news laws and policies that you favor. Tough. If you hadn’t become seduced by the delusion that Obama is a ‘progressive’ and that last year’s election represented some kind of historic realignment in favor of ‘progressive’ policies you might have seen this coming.”
Or, as Ed Morrissey noted a while ago: “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.”
UPDATE: Moe Lane says Matt and I are both right. “The country is indeed ungovernable. …By Democrats.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “What I appreciate especially is how Matthew notes that the smarter elements are starting to pick up on some observation of his…”
MORE: Ed Morrissey offers some fresh thoughts.
Plus, reader Zachary Terry writes: “That silly, silly Constitution. It always seems to get in the way. In all seriousness, though, wasn’t the United States intended to be relatively ‘ungoverned?’ Why is it not surprising that blatant deviation from the intended structure and function of our national government has led to this quandary?”
Can we get a T-Shirt that says Proudly Ungovernable Since 1776?
Further thoughts over at TalkLeft. “I suppose this is all a set up for a Truman-like ‘Do Nothing Republican Congress’ campaign in 2012 by Obama. Of course that will require the Democrats lose the Congress in 2010. Hey, wait a minute . . .”
FINALLY: Reader John Hendrix writes:
The MSM didn’t start saying things like that until Carter’s fourth year.
So can we now say that the Obama’s main achievement was to get the MSM to go all “The country is too big for one man to govern” in his first year instead of his fourth year?
Yeah, it’s like Carter on fast-forward or something.
ATTACKING EPILEPSY PATIENTS via computer exploits?
The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.
The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users’ browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.
Good grief. That’s just tacky.
MORE ON JIMMY CARTER’S BOOK:
On his first visit to the Jewish state in the early 1970s, Carter, who was then still the governor of Georgia, met with Prime Minister Golda Meir, who asked Carter to share his observations about his visit. Such a mistake she never made.
“With some hesitation,” Carter writes, “I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government.”
Jews, in my experience, tend to become peevish when Christians, their traditional persecutors, lecture them on morality, and Carter reports that Meir was taken aback by his “temerity.” He is, of course, paying himself a compliment. Temerity is mandatory when you are doing God’s work, and Carter makes it clear in this polemical book that, in excoriating Israel for its sins — and he blames Israel almost entirely for perpetuating the hundred-year war between Arab and Jew — he is on a mission from God.
More thoughts at Extreme Mortman.
UPDATE: Further thoughts here.
INTERESTING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS in The Netherlands and elsewhere:
The backlash against Hirsi Ali has astonished and disappointed many Dutch feminists, who continue to count themselves among her biggest fans. Margreet Fogteloo, editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, said flatly that Mak is crazy. “People like him feel guilty because they were closing their eyes for such a long time to what was going on,” she said. In what appears to be a Europe-wide pattern, some feminists are aligning themselves with the anti-immigrant right against their former multiculturalist allies on the left. Joining them in this exodus to the right are gay activists, who blame Muslim immigrants for the rising number of attacks on gay couples.
Stay tuned.
A study of the first year of the Iraq war revealed some typical Pentagon failures. The main problem was the lack of war reserve stocks. These are supplies (especially ammo and spare parts) that are stockpiled in peacetime so that, when a war comes, the troops would have adequate supplies for the first few months of the conflict. Or at least until new supplies could be ordered and delivered. After the Cold War ended in 1991, the war rather large reserve stocks were allowed to run down, or were sold off. The Cold War stocks were large, and expensive to maintain. It made sense to reduce them. But not much was purchased to create “post-Cold War” war reserve stocks. To compound the problem, the Pentagon had not developed an effective inventory control system for wartime operations. The military war reserve stocks were managed like there would never be a war.
As the piece notes, this has always been the historical pattern, but we need to do better in the future.
YESTERDAY’S RAZORBLOGGING produced a surprising amount of email. First, several readers happily assured me that I’d love the razor that I meant to buy. Yeah, I actually own one, and it’s quite good. (Just worn out).
Several readers wanted to know what razor I bought by mistake. Hunting around, I found it on Amazon, and it’s this one. Note the strong resemblance.
A buyer from Target asked how I liked the knock-off. My response: It sucks. Or, more accurately, it plucks, rather than cutting, often enough that I quit using it and went back to the old one. I just ordered the Norelco from Amazon; the other one will go back to Target next time I’m there.
UPDATE: Lots of razor-mail, too. A reader named “Will” (no last name) recommends this rather pricey setup, saying: “I’ve tried many electrics, this is the best for me. Better than the three-head Norelco.” But is my face worth that much money? No need to respond; I think I know the answer . . . .
Reader Dart Montgomery emails: “Razor trivia – straight razors cut hair evenly, while electric razors act like shredders and leave the end of the hair follicle with a ragged edge. Of no practical importance that I’m aware of, but makes me glad I use a straight razor. :)”
You’re a brave man, Dart Montgomery, if you mean one of these lethal implements.. Or do you just mean a blade? Perry Eidelbus thinks that’s the way to go:
While stationed in Panama during World War II, my father won an electric shaver in a raffle. I believe it was a Remington, which wouldn’t be surprising
considering how bad it was. He said it would “jump” at him, and it just wasn’t a good shave.He used blades for the rest of his life. He and I generally favored Sensor Excels.
I seem to alternate, on no fixed pattern, between electric and blades. [LATER: “Pricey setup” link above was bad; fixed now.]
ANOTHER UPDATE: The email is pouring in. Reader Christopher Hagin emails:
As a former straight-razor user, I’d just like to say that straight-razors are very overrated. They are undeniably glamourous (as the cult of straight-razors attests), but they don’t give you as close a shave as modern cartridge blades. If you are prone to ingrown hairs, as are many black men, straight-razors are good because they do not cut the hair as closely as modern blades. In an emergency I once used a cheap disposable-it shaved as well as the straight-razor. I believe that the difference is the little rubber microfins you find on modern blades. Instead of a marketing gimmick, it seems IMHO that they actually make a big difference.
Go figure. Of course, if you want to be retro, but not that retro, Countertop Chronicles recommends the Shick Injector. Reader Mark Hessey likes the M3Power Razor:
It’s the best shave I’ve found. I guess, because it has an AAA battery that it’s hybrid blade/electric. They’re still overcharging for the blades as the volume goes up, but the less expensive blades for their previous models fit this one with no discernable difference in performance.
Well, hybrids are stylish this year! But reader David Needham wonders why we’re wasting our time in front of the mirror:
I decided some years ago that since
a.) my wife frequently commented on the beard I had when we met and married (and how much she liked it) and
b.) I dislike the process of scraping my face anyway
that I’d just grow it and trim it with the same clippers/scissors/razor combo I use to cut my own hair. (Yeh, I also decided some years ago that griping about the loon that butchered my hair would be better directed at the loon in the mirror.)
Noticeably warmer in winter. Extra care keeping clean in summer (sweat & dirt from yard work–more care than bare face).
Added benefit? I get to shave it once a year for my April 15 “National Day of Mourning” ritual. (I keep hoping that holiday will catch on… )
Added benefit #2? I buy about 4 disposable razors a year.
Problem? My beard is MUCH grayer than anything else. On second thought, not so much of a problem…
My brothers both do the facial-hair thing, but I’ve always been clean-shaven. I’ve considered a beard, but never enough to grow one.
MORE: Reader Michael Kim emails: “Don’t overlook Panasonic. I have tried them all, from Braun to Grundig. Panasonic is by far the best. Various models priced from less than $100 to $200. I think this is the top of the line.” At that price, it ought to be.
Donald Sensing emails with similar sentiments:
Glenn, I used for a long time a Panasonic Wet-Dry electric razor. Magnificent shave, best I’ve ever had. I smeared shaving cream all over my face just as if I was using a blade razor, and the Panasonic shaved more comfortably and closer than anything I’ve ever used, including the M3 Power Razor I’ve been using lately. Rinsed the Panasonic under running water, too.
Anyone transitioning to an electric of any kind needs to remember that it will take 1-2 weeks to achieve maximum comfort and closeness. I don’t know why, but all three electric razor’s I’ve owned said so in their manuals, and they were right.
It’s true. Michael Demmons, meanwhile, says to stick with a blade if you can:
Men, in general, always had smoother skin when they became older because they shaved with a blade. What do you need when you shave with a blade? You need cream. Where does that cream go? On your face, obviously. What’s in the cream? Moisturizers. Since men have largely stopped using blades, they’re now as wrinkled up as old ladies are, when they never were in the old days!!
Interestingly, my grandmother has made that claim for years.
STILL MORE: Michael Ubaldi hasn’t had enough razorblogging: “Don’t end the discussion there – these are serious matters. Canister cream or soap and brush?”
I favor Barbasol menthol when I’m using a blade. Nice and cool. But it’s gone out of style.
Fraters Libertas is claiming primacy: “We were razorblogging before razorblogging was cool.”
MORE STILL: Kevin Menard emails:
If you’re still razorblogging…
I used all three but 10 years ago grew a beard and stay with that. I use a straight razor to trim around the edges because the longer edge gives a neater appearance, but it does not shave as close as a modern cartridge does (or a modern electric). You got to sharpen the sucker about once a year too. . . .
I imagine so. Douglas McIntosh, meanwhile, thinks that shaving cream is for sissies:
I shave in the shower with shampoo. Prell conditioned shampoo. Gives me a closer shave than with any cream I have ever used. Plus, I can shave in the shower.
Not with a straight razor, I trust.
CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER — CONT’D: What a day. First Eric Alterman was being defended in The Corner. Now The Daily Howler is defending the Bush Administration and says the press is deliberately getting the story wrong to make Bush look bad:
But what “new evidence” do the writers mean? What new evidence suggests that the Admin had early warning that the uranium-from-Africa claim could be false? Uh-oh! Priest and Milbank cite yet another 2002 mission to Niger, in which General Carlton Pulford concluded “that Iraq probably could not acquire nuclear material from Niger” (our emphasis). Of course, since the Bushies have said that the SOTU statement refers to other countries as well as Niger, Pulford’s report—even if believed—doesn’t contradict Bush’s speech. But in this article, that point is obscured right from the start. A reader has to work very hard to dig that info out of this article.
Indeed, all over the press corps, reporters are now mysteriously failing to get the point the Admin made this weekend. In particular, many scribes are conflating the earlier uranium-from-Niger report with the later uranium-from-one-of-several-countries claim—the claim which the Brits still affirm. Last night, Chris Matthews conflated these claims on Hardball; Jim Angle even conflated the claims on last night’s Special Report. But the most striking conflation is found in the lead of Nicholas Kristof’s column this morning. . . .
Apparently, there’s a great deal to this story that Kristof doesn’t know, like what the Bush Admin said all weekend. Did Bush’s statement constitute a “Niger uranium hoax?” All weekend long, major spokesmen explained that Bush’s statement concerned nations other than Niger. But legions of scribes don’t seem to have heard. Kristof is just one of many.
For the record, Kristof pushes this point very hard. He persistently implies that Bush’s statement was a reference to Niger only. “[T]he White House, eager to spice up the State of the Union address, recklessly resurrected the discredited Niger tidbit,” he says. And he never reports what the Admin has actually said—that the statement referred to other countries. Kristof complains about the Administration’s “dishonesty and delusion,” and he calls the Bush statement a “falsehood.” But given his column’s shaping of facts, he may have a slight problem himself.
What is happening here? In the case of individual scribes, we can’t tell you, but in the aggregate, this pattern is familiar. To all appearances, the press corps has reached an overall judgment—the Bush Admin spun the intelligence on Iraq. That overall judgment may well be true. But as you know, when the press corps reaches an overall judgment, they often start looking for easy-to-tell stories to illustrate their global belief. If they have to change or make up facts, all too often they’re willing to do it. In this case, the Washington press corps has clearly decided that the Bush Admin mistreated intelligence. And, as they have done many times in the past, they seem to be massaging some basic facts to convince you of that global conclusion.
There’s much more to this post, and you should read the whole thing. (Via Erik Peterson).
BRANDON MORSE: Hollywood Can’t Get It Through Its Head That Racism Doesn’t Sell.
If you didn’t hear about a movie being released called “The American Society of Magical Negroes” then you couldn’t be blamed. It’s not a movie that was given a ton of attention…or at least positive attention.
The movie is probably one of the most racist things that has ever been put to a silver screen. The summary is that the protagonist is a young black man who is welcomed into a secret society of magical black people whose entire existence is to make white people feel safe and cared about. Throughout the movie, the protagonist struggles with his new role and eventually falls in love with a girl. However, when the white person he’s charged with looking after also falls in love with the girl, he’s told he can no longer pursue her.
* * * * * * * *
And this racism is clearly not selling. According to Bounding Into Comics “The American Society of Magical Negroes” has officially bombed:
As per information collected by The Numbers, the Justice Smith-led film was barely able to pass the 1 million mark, making a total of $1,304,270 on opening weekend — debuting on 1,147 theaters across the United States. While the film’s production budget is being kept under wraps, these numbers are still abysmal.
To better illustrate, The American Society of Magical Negroes grossed a mere $524,695 on Friday, a measly $469,070 on Saturday, and an even more pathetic $310,505 on Sunday, seeing a 34% drop from opening day.
This is becoming a pattern with social justice-fueled plots and storylines. No matter what the medium, whether it’s movies, television, or video games, the push to bring “awareness” to the racism (or other social sins) of America just isn’t being bought.
And from this, we can actually deduce some things.
America isn’t the racist country it’s being sold as by the social justice left, and that’s not just because people aren’t lining up to see it generally. It’s because black people aren’t lining up to see it either. If that film resonated with the black community, there’d be a lot more fervor about it, not just from the black community itself but from the media.
It’s also a rebuke against bad cinema.
And it’s a rebuke against a theme that may be far too “inside baseball” for a film to be a hit at the box office. In March of 2007, the L.A. Times ran a column by David Ehrenstein headlined “Obama the ‘Magic Negro:’”
As every carbon-based life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.
But it’s clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the “Magic Negro.”
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. “He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist,” reads the description on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .
He’s there to assuage white “guilt” (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that’s not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is “Magic.”
Poitier really poured on the “magic” in “Lilies of the Field” (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and “To Sir, With Love” (which, along with “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)
After Ehrenstein’s column, in January of 2009, National Review noted:
Paul Shanklin, a parodist, saw the opportunity: He penned a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Shanklin is associated with Rush Limbaugh, and is a friend of Chip Saltsman. Saltsman is a politico running for chairman of the Republican National Committee. For Christmas, Saltsman sent to committee members a Shanklin CD, bearing 41 tracks—including the “Barack” song. A controversy ensued. The current RNC chairman, Mike Duncan, flipped out: “I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.” One of Saltsman’s rivals for the position, Kenneth Blackwell, who is black, took no offense, speaking instead of “hypersensitivity.” He was right; the controversy is baloney.
As Morse writes today:
If you’re really going to make a movie that condemns racism and highlights the absurdity of it, then I’ll refer you to probably the best condemnation of racism Hollywood ever produced; “Blazing Saddles.”
“Blazing Saddles” was a hysterical movie with a great message behind it, delivered in such a way that left everyone laughing. More importantly, it left everyone laughing at racism.
While Blazing Saddles did indeed leave “everyone laughing at racism,” it was also a thorough demolition of a genre that until only a few years before Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor wrote their comedy, was ubiquitous since the dawn of both the American film industry and television: the western. At least prior to its long shutdown thanks to Covid, film was the last form of mass media left in the world – movies require large numbers of people to fill seats in theaters to be judged financially successful. And that requires mass audiences “getting” the theme of the movie. Perhaps deconstructing an otherwise little-known trope pushed by Spike Lee and Wikipedia almost a quarter of a century ago, and the L.A. Times and Rush Limbaugh over 15 years ago isn’t the best approach to put butts in seats.
(Brandon Morse’s article is just for Townhall VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.)
LUXURY BELIEFS, LUXURY LIFESTYLES: Freddie DeBoer: Polyamory is a Luxury of the Affluent, Just Like Everything Else We Have and Do: “X works better for the most educated/accomplished” is just generically true.
That was true with drugs like LSD, heroin, and cocaine, too. Of course, “better” doesn’t mean “well.” But generally speaking the better-off have more reserves, financial and otherwise, to support them during risky behavior.
An alternative take: You Don’t Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books.
Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article.
The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now I hate polyamorous people.” This is a common pattern. Sometimes, if someone’s very careful, they read three or four books about polyamory. Everyone in all the books is awful and unhappy. Then they conclude they hate polyamorous people.
But this is an unfair generalization. They should hate people who write books. . . .
I know many people in happy, successful, polyamorous relationships. None of them write advice books. If they did, they would say something vapid, like “Treat every day as a gift from God.”
The actual best-known polyamory advice book is More Than Two, by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert. A few years after it was written, Eve and three of Franklin’s other partners accused him of abuse, which he vehemently denied and turned back on her. Every so often I check to see how things are going, and one of them has come up with some new volley against the other.
In retrospect, I think it’s not surprising that the best-known relationship advice book was written by people in a terrible relationship. Terrible relationships have a way of making you overanalyze your relationship dynamics. They encourage you to come up with lots of strategies for dealing with conflict, given all the conflict you’re constantly getting into. They happen when you’re the sort of person who over-promises and under-delivers, which is also the kind of person who can write an exciting-sounding book shilling something.
Well, maybe you should just hate the kind of people who write books on relationships. Plus: “Not all memoirs are written by narcissists. Some are written by activists. This is not an improvement.”
And this sounds right: “I think this goes beyond polyamory. The people I know from various oft-discussed groups – transgender, super-religious, autistic, rich, etc – are all nicer and more normal than their public representatives would lead you to believe.”
DECOUPLING: After 17 Years, China Set To Lose ‘Top Spot’ As No. 1 Exporter To US; China-US Trade War Benefits Others.
China’s share of total US imports has plummeted to 13.9%, marking the lowest percentage since 2004. This decline is substantial compared to its peak of over 21% around 2017. US exports to China have shown minimal growth throughout the year.
Stepping into the void left by China, Mexico is positioned to become the leading exporter to the US for the entire year, a status it hasn’t held since 2000. US imports from Mexico are set to record a high in 2023, constituting over 15% of the total for the first 11 months of the year.
The European Union has also experienced a surge in exports to the US, reaching an all-time high during the same period.
This shift in US trade patterns is particularly evident in the diversification of sources for critical products, such as consumer electronics, which have traditionally relied heavily on China.
Notably, smartphone imports from China have seen a 10% decrease, while imports from India have surged fivefold. Similarly, laptop imports from China dropped by approximately 30%, but those from Vietnam quadrupled.
Chairman Xi has no one to blame but his own belligerence.
GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Risk Is Our Business.
It’s impossible to discuss the politics of Star Trek without focusing on the original 1960’s series, which is where the entire ethos of the Star Trek Universe received its DNA. No series produced since then could exist without the context, the canon if you will, that this first series provided.
So first, let’s be clear about what the original Star Trek series, Gene Roddenberry’s first creation, actually was… it was a smart, muscular and unapologetic defense of the power of Western Civilization to change the world (universe) for the better… and it was a series which celebrated courage and risk taking as among the most important of all human virtues.
If any of that sounds like something that would send Conservatives fleeing for their lives like vampires before a runaway garlic truck with a busted brake line, well then you’re probably a BLM activist… or at the very least you are admitting that you’re entirely ignorant of the things that modern Conservatives actually believe.
The problem, in my experience, is that most Progressives have not actually seen much of the original series (TOS), and have only a very rudimentary understanding of the show’s ethos. To the extent they are familiar with TOS at all, it is often through modern media “criticism” of the show which focuses on what mainstream critics, which is to say Leftists, have concluded… that the show’s politics were proudly and unapologetically Progressive.
The problem is that this conclusion just ain’t true… it’s a misunderstanding often based on a single episode… “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, which has become the most famous episode of Star Trek precisely because it is about race… our modern culture’s most fraught, most talked about, most obsesssed-over issue.
Plus, a look at “A Private Little War” and “Patterns of Force,” so you’ll want to read the whole thing.
It’s utterly remarkable. Is the public to accept that the Department of Defense, which has an annual budget of nearly $820 billion, can’t handle a single sick-out? This isn’t some mom-and-pop grocery store.
No, this whole fiasco is symptomatic of something else – a gerontocratic administration that has no one at the wheel.
Sources let it be known that Biden was ‘exasperated at not more quickly being informed.’ But the 81-year-old, who himself held no public events for two solid weeks over the holidays, didn’t even speak to Austin until January 6. Then Biden reportedly said he would not accept a resignation if Austin were to offer one.
This is a pattern. An administration led by a declining octogenarian, lacking in vigor, focus and mission, is incapable of demanding excellence from its staff.
In 2021, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg – then part of Biden’s ‘Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force’ – was on paternity leave for two whole months while a logistical crisis rattled the economy and stoked runaway inflation.
The public wasn’t told and Buttigieg kept his job.
It’s utterly remarkable. Is the public to accept that the Department of Defense, which has an annual budget of nearly $820 billion, can’t handle a single sick-out? This isn’t some mom-and-pop grocery store.
No, this whole fiasco is symptomatic of something else – a gerontocratic administration that has no one at the wheel.
Sources let it be known that Biden was ‘exasperated at not more quickly being informed.’ But the 81-year-old, who himself held no public events for two solid weeks over the holidays, didn’t even speak to Austin until January 6. Then Biden reportedly said he would not accept a resignation if Austin were to offer one.
This is a pattern. An administration led by a declining octogenarian, lacking in vigor, focus and mission, is incapable of demanding excellence from its staff.
In 2021, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg – then part of Biden’s ‘Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force’ – was on paternity leave for two whole months while a logistical crisis rattled the economy and stoked runaway inflation.
The public wasn’t told and Buttigieg kept his job.
The look the other way attitude from Biden and his handlers descends all the way down to the lowest rung of White House staffers: Message Discipline: Zero — Biden Admin Plagued by Anonymous Letters From Young Staffers.
It’s the same old story: When the staffers of a leftist politician object to their employer’s policies or positions, anonymously, the legacy media faithfully reports that this is done out of respect, even love, for the principal and his/her positions. When the staffers of a politician on the right do this – and by on the right, I mean anyone to the right of Che Guevara – they are bravely coming forth to expose corruption, bad faith deals, and oppressive behavior on the part of their principle.
You can set your watch by it.
Here’s what is happening here, spin by the legacy media notwithstanding: The Biden Administration doesn’t have any idea what much of their staff really thinks, and they have zero message discipline. They have lost control, if indeed they ever had it. Since the word go they have relied on DEI hires and checking off “diversity” boxes instead of experience and competence; they are running cover for a principal who has very little idea of what goes on from day to day, and as the high-pressure campaign season kicks into high gear with the first primaries, it’s very apparent that they aren’t up for the task.
Firing some staffers — even if the White House still has no clue who is leaking — would at least send the remainders that there is some level of accountability. But as we’ve seen, absolutely none exists within this administration.
NOBEL LAUREATE VERNON SMITH: Fire Claudine Gay:
I see Gay as getting her post at Harvard because she was a diversity, equity and inclusion candidate, not on the basis of strong academic qualifications. There are plenty of accomplished blacks who need no such ‘help.’ Harvard is reaping the negative consequences. I am not much concerned about Gay’s success in exercising her power as I don’t think she has much. She is a discredit to Harvard, and that is being revealed. See: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-harvard-cant-fire-claudine-gay-dei-hiring-lack-of-merit-b1d480ec.
She’s a diversity hire, the rules don’t apply.
Related: 2022 Nobel Laureate Philip Dybvig:
Claudine Gay has power now and she is the oppressor of any group not favored by her and other people in power. This is a common pattern in governments heading for totalitarianism. First, say you represent the oppressed. Then you get power and oppress non-favored groups. This leaves you in a morally indefensible position that could not survive given free speech, so you do what you can to destroy anyone (“counterrevolutionaries”) who disagrees with your narrative.
Maybe this isn’t over, though in some ways the best outcome is for her to remain as a lasting discredit to Harvard.
I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM EARLY 1945 FOR $500, ALEX: Germany, Growing Desperate.
Well before the events in Gaza, Germany was nervous over migration. Today, 24 million of Germany’s roughly 80 million people—almost 30%—are of “migrant background,” and 2.7 million migrants settled in the country in 2022 alone. The demographic transformation of the West that began slowly with European decolonization and American civil rights has accelerated over the past decade and a half. Two events stand out: First, the 2011 Anglo-Franco-American invasion of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, carried out over the strong objection of then-German chancellor Angela Merkel. Barack Obama’s NATO “victory,” which culminated in the killing of Gaddafi and three of his sons, has proved almost as damaging to the West as George W. Bush’s Iraq defeat. It delivered the Tripolitan coast to smuggling mafias and thus opened the prospect of residence in Europe to the entire African continent, which is projected to add a billion people before mid-century.
A second key event was the huge migration of refugees from the Syrian war in 2015. Merkel welcomed the migrants in the name of a German Willkommenskultur, or “culture of welcome.” By this she seemed to mean a less focused version of the postwar tolerance for others that Habeck would lay out in his early November speech about Israel. Of course, if Germany really does have the responsibilities that Habeck and Merkel describe, then its immigration policy has been reckless. The perverse effect of Merkel’s invitation was to summon others from throughout the Muslim world who had nothing to do with the Syrian wars—Pakistanis, Afghanis, Iranians. Their arrival would radicalize and divide Europe. Poland and Italy elected anti-immigrant governments. Hungary and Denmark tightened their laws on migration. Merkel opted to lead the liberal bloc in Europe, calling on the European Union to require that other countries house their “fair share” of the migrants she had welcomed.
A majority complied at the time. But over the years, all have tightened their migration policies. In early November, France’s national assembly passed an immigration law proposed by its president, Emmanuel Macron. The law is meant to address the main problem with immigration enforcement in Europe—the category of migrants who in France are called OQTFs. To explain: Angry voters have compelled governments across Europe to tighten laws on labor migration. But governments supposedly cannot tighten laws on political asylum, because those are regulated by the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees. This means that virtually every economic migrant picked up in a smuggler boat off the Italian coast (or in one of the rescue boats sent by progressive foundations to ply the waters nearby) claims to be a victim of political persecution seeking asylum. This gives newcomers the right to a lengthy sojourn in Europe while awaiting an asylum hearing. Nowadays most such claims are rejected, but it is expensive and bureaucratically difficult to ship the applicants back to where they came from. The denied applicant is simply dismissed with a written notice that he is required to leave French territory (obligé de quitter le territoire français, or OQTF). He almost never does. Macron’s bill would, among other things, end this charade by restoring the criminal offense of illegally staying in the country, a measure that 82% of French citizens back.
The Macron bill is not particularly robust. It contains a giant loophole inserted at the behest of corporations—permitting the hiring of undocumented migrants for “occupations under pressure.” This may wind up undoing everything the bill achieves, much as the anti-discrimination provisions in the U.S. immigration reform of 1986 ended up promoting rather than controlling migration.
What is clear is the direction Europe wishes to go. Today Denmark, where financial support for asylum seekers is negligible and where it takes an average of 19 years for a migrant to become a citizen, gets about 2,000 asylum applications in an average year. Germany is expected to get 400,000 by the end of 2023. Denmark is the country on which virtually all European governments have announced they wish to pattern their policies. Germany is the country whose example other countries most wish to avoid.
Merkel took a wrecking ball to the liberal values of postwar Germany, but hey, she made Time magazine’s “Woman of the Year” in 2015. I hope the tradeoff was worth it, both for her and Europe’s future, or the lack thereof. Or as Jim Geraghty tweeted in 2015:
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: What happened to the great West Coast cities?
Migration patterns have changed as well. During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Seattle participated in the region’s boom, which saw the addition of 187,000 domestic migrants. But now the Seattle metropolitan area is losing net migrants while many residents are moving to the state’s smaller metropolitan areas such as Bremerton, Spokane and Olympia.
Portland never achieved Seattle’s economic dynamism but was widely hailed as a model for dense, progressive planning and social liberalism — it positioned itself as a leisure-oriented San Francisco where “young people go to retire.” Despite being the whitest of America’s big cities, it was wracked with almost constant violent protests for much of 2020, extending even to the gentrified Pearl District. Spurred by crime and disorder, the Portland area is now losing domestic migrants. The region added 252,000 net domestic migrants between 2000 and 2020, but since then the Census Bureau has found that Portland’s urban core county, Multnomah, lost 13,000 net domestic migrants while the surrounding suburbs grew modestly.
Some still praise Portland as “an anarchic wonderland.” But now its streets are best known not for quirky food trucks and street musicians but growing fentanyl use. Over the past three years, the LA Times reports, the number of unhoused people in the Portland metro area has jumped from about 4,000 to at least 6,600. Shootings in the city have tripled. Homicides climbed from thirty-six in 2019 to ninety-seven last year. Lower-level crimes have spiked too: more than 11,000 vehicles were stolen in 2022, up from 6,500 in 2019. According to Portland’s KGW-TV, “every forty-two minutes there is a report of vandalism,” often involving broken windows. There were more reports of broken windows last year than during the 2020 riot year.
It is certainly too early to write off the once mighty Pacific cities. They retain many critical natural assets: they’re near mountains and spectacular water views; they have relatively mild climates (likely a big plus in a period of global warming), and a concentration of promising industries. The education base from the University of Washington, Berkeley, UCLA, Caltech and other top schools still gives the region a headstart in many promising industries.
In each of these Western cities, the key challenge is political. No one should expect a GOP resurgence, but there has been some modest pushback to the progressive agenda. San Francisco, for example, removed some particularly radical school board members and replaced its ultra-lenient DA, as did Seattle. There are stirrings in minority communities, as evidenced by a growing shift of Asian and Latino voters to the right, and in Oakland, the local NAACP recently denounced lax policing as a cause of growing violence, particularly in the black community.
Gooder and harder.
JAY BHATTACHARYA: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. We Fought Back—and Won.
On Friday, at long last, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled that we were not imagining it—that the Biden administration did indeed strong-arm social media companies into doing its bidding. The court found that the Biden White House, the CDC, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, and the FBI “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorship aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints.”
The judges described a pattern of government officials making “threats of ‘fundamental reforms’ like regulatory changes and increased enforcement actions” if we did not comply. The implication was clear. To paraphrase Al Capone: Nice company you have there. It’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.
It worked. According to the judges, “the officials’ campaign succeeded. The platforms, in capitulation to state-sponsored pressure, changed their moderation policies.”
In exposing this behavior—and in declaring it a likely violation of the First Amendment—the ruling is not just a victory for my fellow scientists and me, but for every single American.
Read the whole thing.
JIM GERAGHTY: Why the Ohio Train Derailment Is Becoming a Bigger Story.
Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg — who is rapidly accumulating a reputation for being in over his head and promising more than he can deliver — conceded a few days ago that he wishes he had addressed the public more quickly about the derailment and its consequences:
HUEY-BURNS: And I just have to ask, because it did take you a couple of days to respond publicly or several days to respond publicly to this particular incident. Do you wish you would have spoken out sooner?
BUTTIGIEG: Yes, I was focused on just making sure that our folks on the ground were all set, but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident. And that’s a lesson learned for me.
Buttigieg’s first public comments about the derailment, a series of tweets, came ten days after the disaster.
A Bloomberg headline declared that “Buttigieg Bashing Over Response to Ohio Derailment Turns Bipartisan,” but it’s worth noting that the Democrat they cite, David Sirota, is a former speechwriter for Senator Bernie Sanders, who has been a vociferous critic of Buttigieg since Day One. Then again, just because Sirota has a beef with Buttigieg going back to the 2020 presidential primary doesn’t mean that his criticisms aren’t valid. Sirota points out that Buttigieg’s public statements flipped pretty quickly from insisting he was “constrained” in regulating safety on railways to announcing a slew of new rules.
Buttigieg didn’t help himself last night: WTF Alert: Pete Buttigieg Asks To Photograph Young Female Reporter Asking Him About Ohio Chemical Disaster.
I asked Secretary Buttigieg about the crisis in East Palestine and I guess he didn’t like that so he took a pic of me. Im just doing my job, sir. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/HjKNgF25FJ
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) February 22, 2023
In reaction to the bizarre behavior from the Secretary of Transportation, DCNF managing editor Mike Bastasch told me, “We are damn proud of Jennie Taer for asking a powerful government official tough questions. As for Secretary Buttigieg’s photo request, only he can tell us the real reason behind it, but if it was meant to intimidate us, it’s not going to work.”
What was Buttigieg thinking with this question?
Of all the insanely weird things to say to a reporter, asking to photograph them late at night on a street is right near the top of the list.
Is this how Biden administration officials treat the press? They get a question they don’t like and the strategy is to stonewall, deflect and then make the interaction as uncomfortable as possible? Am I understanding this correctly?
Why, yes you are. That’s been Biden’s pattern when talking with journalists for decades, when he’s not locking them into closets.
UPDATE: East Palestine Mayor: Biden ‘Doesn’t Care About Us.’
Publicly, the government has said it mitigated the spy balloon’s intelligence gathering capabilities. But [House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) said he is not convinced.
“My assessment — and I can’t get into the detail of the intelligence document — is that if it was still transmitting going over these three very sensitive nuclear sites, I think if you look at the flight pattern of the balloon, it tells a story as to what the Chinese were up to as they controlled this aircraft throughout the United States,” he said.
“Going over those sites, in my judgment, would cause great damage. Remember, a balloon could see a lot more on the ground than a satellite,” he added.
Later in the interview, McCall hypothesized that China sent the spy balloon to assess U.S. military capabilities in the event that China and Taiwan end their cold war.
UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: From ‘defund the police’ to ‘reimagining’ policing.
Lacking a race card to play in the police beating death of Tyre Nichols, left-wing Democrats and their media allies have turned their attention not to the local government of Memphis, Tennessee, under a Democratic mayor and Democratic police commissioner, but toward the supposed entire system itself.
They now claim that policing, per se, is a racist institution that must be defunded and abolished. This time around, however, they are not stating this outright. They tried the “defund the police” argument two years ago and found it deeply unpopular. In turn, a new slogan, “reimagining policing,” has replaced the “defund” movement’s particular vernacular of choice. This reflects a pattern on the Left. When an idea is unpopular, it just changes the language and terminology around said idea (see “gender-affirming care,” for example). But the impact is the same.