AT AMAZON, save on Wheels and Tires.
AS USUAL, IOWAHAWK WINS THE INTERNET:
SAYING GOODBYE to Sig’s P239. I’ve had one for 20 years or so; it’s a very nice gun.
TAMARA KEEL CALLS THIS ARTICLE IN THE ATLANTIC ON JOHN CORREIA “SHOCKINGLY EVEN-HANDED.” The Gun Guru of YouTube: John Correia wants you to prepare for the worst day of your life.
DON’T GET COCKY: Democrat Advantage on House Ballot Slips Below Four Points.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT HOW I’D HOPED: Brazilian Butt Lifts Are Resulting In An Alarmingly High Mortality Rate.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Southern Poverty Law Center Could Face As Many As 60 Defamation Lawsuits For Its ‘Hate Group’ Labels.
WELL, LET’S GET STARTED: The US Would Need a Mega-Constellation to Counter China’s Hypersonic Weapons.
HOT OFF THE PRESS: THE MONOLITHIC MEDIA MAY BE BIASED! Dr. Hal Pashler and I ran a psychology experiment showing that one’s ideological point of view will tend to color one’s judgment on what is newsworthy. If a news story seems to provide ammunition for one’s own viewpoint, it’s more likely to be viewed as newsworthy. The result may not come as a bolt from the blue for savvy Instapundit readers. But by golly, it’s science now. (Note that the article contains lots of groovy graphs. I’ll bet that you didn’t think I could make graphs like that.)
SCRAPPLEFACE: Charlottesville Rally Bust Made White Man Feel Blue.
DON SURBER: ANTIFA IS THE FUTURE OF THE DEMOCRATS.
Think not? People in the 1970s blew off the Weather Underground as radicals who had nothing to do with the party.
But whom did Democrats nominate in 2008? And who was his political mentor? And who was his religious mentor? And who was the communist he put in charge of the CIA?
This was no accident or coincidence. Democrats have plotted this for 50 years, going back to Teddy the Drunk Kennedy’s first immigration reform, which he reformed again 31 years later, which 32 years later, they want to reform as open borders — which was their goal all along.
Read the whole thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Critical Mistakes Made by Defensive Gun Owners. This leaves out the worst mistake: Not having a gun.
EXERCISE WITH A CHILEAN SUBMARINE: A Chilean diesel-electric submarine conducts operations in the Pacific with the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet. In typical DESI exercises (Diesel Electric Submarine Initiative), USN anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft play “cat and mouse” with diesel-electric subs from friendly South American nations. The South Americans portray “potential adversaries” who deploy diesel-electric subs — like Iran, Russia and China.
D. C. MCALLISTER: America Is Plagued by Privilege, but It’s Not What You Think.
THE DEPLATFORMING CONTINUES: Vimeo Removes Infowars Content as CNN Continues Blacklist Crusade. “Vimeo’s decision comes exactly a week after a slew of major companies including Facebook, Google, Apple podcasts, Spotify, LinkedIn and Pinterest concurrently removed Jones’s content from their service following a blacklist campaign led by CNN Senior Media Reporter Oliver Darcy.”
So when a media competitor (CNN) gets a bunch of companies to take down its competitor, and they do, is that a conspiracy in restraint of trade? Asking for a friend.
SIMPLE JUSTICE: Prof. Avital Ronell And The Lie of The Feminist Academy.
When law and philosophy prof Brian Leiter revealed academic and feminist superstar Judith Butler’s disgraceful and flagrantly hypocritical letter defending her sister superstar, NYU prof Avital Ronell, I was ready to pull the trigger. I have a post, dated June 13, 2018, fully written, but never published. I knew something Leiter didn’t.
At the time the Butler letter was sent around for signatures, threatening NYU with the wrath of scholars if Ronell wasn’t exonerated, the university had already found Ronell responsible. The only remaining question was what to do about it, one of the university’s brightest academic lights had sexually harassed a gay male student under her care.
This wasn’t one of the faux Title IX cases of post-hoc regret, but the real deal. Ronell was grad student Nimrod Reitman’s doctoral adviser. He came to NYU because of her, to study under her. And from the start of his graduate studies, she turned him into her boy toy upon the implicit threat of destroying his career. And it continued throughout his graduate studies, as proven by Ronell’s emails.
Professor Avital Ronell used her academic power over Reitman to coerce him to be her sexual plaything for years, or else.* And the feminist academy, via Judith Butler and myriad other signatories to a letter, demand that NYU lay off Ronell, or else. And it’s incredible to believe that the finding of responsibility wasn’t the impetus for the threat letter. Yet, these scholars sought to coerce a university into silence and impotence to conceal Ronell’s conduct.
If the patriarchy had been as self-interested and shameless as the feminist Old Girls Network, feminism never would have been a thing.
Plus: “Diane Davis, chair of the department of rhetoric at the University of Texas-Austin, who also signed the letter to the university supporting Professor Ronell, said she and her colleagues were particularly disturbed that, as they saw it, Mr. Reitman was using Title IX, a feminist tool, to take down a feminist.” It’s never actually about equality.
YUGE: Maduro to curb fuel subsidies.
Venezuela’s president has said its subsidised fuel prices should rise, to stop smugglers cheating the country out of billions of dollars.
“Gasoline must be sold at an international price to stop smuggling to Colombia and the Caribbean,” Nicolás Maduro said in a televised address.
Like many oil producing nations, Venezuela offers its citizens heavily subsidised petrol.
A fuel price rise in 1989 caused deadly riots in the capital, Caracas.
Cheap gas is one of the popular bribes employed by Venezuelan autocrats to take, maintain, and increase their political power. Under the Bolivarian Socialists, cheap gas has also helped to destroy the country’s oil industry — so the irony here is schadenfreudelicious.
I AGREE: An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep. I always figured I was better off bullshitting with a clear head than trying to cram overnight. But actually, if you go to class and do the reading all along, you don’t have to worry that much.
SAD NEWS: Aretha Franklin in hospice care, CNN reports.
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal, Mens Slim Front Pocket Wallet ID Window Card Case with RFID Blocking.
LIZ PEEK: Obama’s economist grasps at straws trying to devalue Trump’s impact.
A recent Rasmussen poll showed that 50 percent of likely voters say Trump deserves plaudits for the improving economy, while only 40 percent credit President Obama.
Even in a Quinnipiac poll taken at the height of the controversy over Trump’s Helsinki summit, when the president came under extreme criticism, respondents by a 49-47 margin were positive on his handling of the economy.
Larry Summers not only disagrees that President Trump has anything to do with our improving economy, he is also reluctant to bury his gloomy “secular stagnation” theory that income and job growth will forever be severely restricted.
He is, of course, in the position of having to explain why the Obama administration, in which he served as director of the National Economic Council, failed to excite higher investment and spending and instead presided over the slowest post-recession growth in modern times.
I had been assured by all the smartest people, starting in 2009, that “business climate” was just a myth.
HMM: Weak grip may signal future health trouble for adults, children. “During the study period, those children with weak grips were over three times more likely to remain in poor health or to have declines in health than those with strong grips. Previous studies have shown that muscle weakness as measured by grip strength is a predictor of poor health in adults, but this is the first to do so in children, according to senior study author Paul Gordon.”
The question is whether exercise would help, or just mask the effect of an underlying problem.
SHE WENT KETO: Jenna Jameson Opens Up About The Tough ‘Mental Aspect’ Of Losing Weight. Mindset is key.
HE DIDN’T INHALE: British Labor Party Leader Corbyn Admits Attendance at Ceremony Honoring Munich Terrorists. “He ‘doesn’t think’ he was involved in laying a wreath at the graves of terrorists.”
GET YOUR Space Force T-Shirt Right Here.
BLUE WAVE? If Trump’s Voters Turn Out This Fall, They’ll Give Republicans A Big Senate Majority.
In Minnesota, where two Senate seats are in play, both Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, who replaced Al Franken, would face close votes if Minnesota’s smaller-town voters continue as they voted in 2016. Similarly, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, and Claire McCaskill in Missouri would likely lose if those voters come back this year.
Joe Donnelly looks almost certain to lose in Indiana at this point. Bob Casey’s continued career in the Senate appears to depend on his winning back the blue-collar voters who deserted Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Not every election goes by the numbers: incumbency, a willingness to chase after every voter in every village, hamlet, and farm community, and likable personalities can often give a popular incumbent a significant edge in a statewide race. The Midwestern voter shift that was so dramatic in 2016 may prove to be sharply watered-down in the 2018 midterms. However, this is not an excuse for Democrats’ campaigns to relax or become complacent.
Focusing the 2018 statewide elections on Trump may not succeed for Democrats. It certainly killed Hillary’s momentum to devote so much time to her opponent’s weaknesses, because it left so little time to emphasize her own strengths.
Considering her actual “strengths,” what else could she have done?
HEH: Outside of All the Violence, Those Antifa Protests Sure Were Peaceful.
By all accounts Antifa is radical, anarchist, and avowedly pro-violence, to the extent that the Barack Obama FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a warning calling them “anarchist extremists” and “domestic terrorists,” a warning that has since been vindicated by many, many, many, many, many, many violent protests. Why, two years later, are the national media still downplaying the criminal elements of so-called “anti-hate” protesters?
I think we all know the answer to that.
Related: The News Media Bet On Trump Emboldening White Supremacy And Lost.
Flashback: Last year, CNN published the headline “Unmasking the leftist Antifa movement: Activists seek peace through violence,” then “scrubbed the headline of its article and changed it to ‘Unmasking the leftist Antifa movement.’ Benny Johnson [then with] the Independent Journal Review took a screenshot of the two different headlines and claimed CNN altered the original title because antifa did not like it.”
IT WAS GENOCIDE, NOT ECOCIDE: New evidence suggests that Easter Island was still a cohesive society before the arrival of the Dutch explorers, contradicting the Jared Diamond-popularized view that the Easter Islanders committed ecological suicide, or “ecocide.” Of course, those of us who read Benny Peiser’s exhaustive critique over a decade ago already knew this.
SALENA ZITO: Trump’s not the reason the GOP sputtered in Ohio.
Both Ohio and Pennsylvania represent the new coalition of Trump voters — Rust Belt states that were expected to swing blue in 2016 but in fact went for the unorthodox billionaire who promised to “Make America Great Again.”
So why, two years later, is the GOP having so much trouble connecting with these people? Is it Trump? The party establishment?
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Balderson’s weak showing was a referendum on the president. “Voters here sent a message to the Republicans to knock it off,” Kasich told CBS News last week. “Stop the chaos, the division, no more of this family separation that we see at the border or taking people’s health care away. I think [people] have . . . basically had enough and they’re sending a message to the Republicans, including the Republican in the White House . . . This district is so Republican, there should never even have been an election here. And it was so close and — in one of the counties that’s so solidly Republican — where a Republican would normally win by 70 percent, it broke basically 50-50.”
But Kasich, who hasn’t yet ruled out a run for president in 2020, has got the wrong end of the stick. The GOP’s problem isn’t its president. The problem is its message.
Trump is the sun around which the solar system of American politics operates. You can’t outshine him.
And his base is solid.
I’d missed this one over a weekend long on chores and entertaining, but it’s still germane and you’ll want to read the whole thing.
THOMAS LIPSCOMB: FAKE NEWS AND NEWS FRAUD.
After hearing that part of the tape, any decent newsman would say, “Wait just a minute. Where’s the part of her tape with the lawyers? If it exists, we have to hear it too. We can’t just let her accuse Kelly of being a ‘criminal’ after what Kelly said about questions of her ‘integrity.’”
The film script of “All the President’s Men” dramatizes the editorial problem from a newsman’s point of view: “Ben Bradlee: Now hold it, hold it. We’re about to accuse Haldeman, who only happens to be the second most important man in this country, of conducting a criminal conspiracy from inside the White House. It would be nice if we were right.”
Did anyone try to “hold it” at NBC News? I’ve contacted the network to see if such a conversation took place and if anyone heard the rest of the tape, if it existed. As of yet, after several exchanges, I haven’t gotten an answer. But the fact remains, in spite of Kelly’s rather lengthy and moderate (certainly for a Marine general) summary on the tape of what kind of issues had occasioned his meeting with Manigault Newman, NBC showed no on-air interest in the second part of the meeting with the lawyers, which appears to have dealt extensively with issues directly relevant to her credibility. . . .
Manigault Newman was allowed to proclaim her willingness to make her White House personnel file public while NBC made no attempt to ask her what accusations regarding her integrity the White House lawyers had listed in their meeting with her that might impeach her credibility.
Sounds like another instance of Treacher’s First Law of Journalism:
ILLINOIS POLITICS: Holocaust Denier on GOP Ballot Gets a Write-in Challenger, Harasses Him at Home. “Arthur Jones shouted ‘you want to debate the Holocaust, I’ll debate the Holocaust’ as Justin Hanson announced his candidacy in Illinois district.”
Maybe the most important reason to field candidates even in unwinnable races is that it prevents crazies from hijacking the party.
THE ERDOGAN CLOWN SHOW CONTINUES: Stephen’s right that this joker has no understanding of basic economics. Latest example: he has threatened a Turkish boycott of the iPhone. That’ll show ’em. All those young Turks with money in their pocket are sure not to want the latest and best technology. Note – Turkey cannot raise retaliatory tariffs on the US because it is inside the EU’s customs union, hence the feeble call for a boycott instead.
UH-HUH: Erdogan Shifts Blame for Turkey’s Woes to Social Media. “President, who had targeted U.S., now condemns ‘terrorists’ disseminating alleged disinformation about lira’s plunge, nation’s economic downturn.”
“There are economic terrorists on social media,” Mr. Erdogan told an audience of Turkish ambassadors gathered in Ankara’s presidential palace. “They are a genuine network of treason.”
The president said spiteful social-network posts had been spread in a bid to cause panic by saying authorities were preparing to limit bank withdrawals. The government said it had no plan to introduce capital controls.
Also on Monday, Turkey’s Interior Ministry said it would take legal action against owners of 346 social-media accounts identified as having been used to express views that had harmed the lira, the state-run news service, Anadolu Agency, reported.
Yesterday Iain Murray linked to a piece stating that “It is not clear that Erdogan understands basic economics.” But that’s not quite right. It is actually quite clear that Erdogan doesn’t understand basic economics.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes the Sarah Palin of the Left.
NO ONE IS WOKE ENOUGH: Ruby Rose Quits Twitter Following Trolling Over ‘Batwoman’ Casting.
The Australian actress, who co-stars with Jason Statham in this weekend’s global box office champ “The Meg,” quit Twitter and deactivated public comments on her Instagram account over the weekend following social media backlash against her casting as “Batwoman” in The CW’s “Arrowverse,” which was announced last week.
The openly gay actor faced a range of criticism over her casting as the character, reintroduced by DC Comics in 2006 as a lesbian of Jewish descent. Some of that criticism focused on Rose not being Jewish, but the comments that appear to have caused her to leave Twitter were those suggesting she wasn’t the right actress to play a lesbian superhero.
Before deleting her Twitter account, Rose posted a series of tweets addressing the issue, which she described as “the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read.”
It’s early yet.
IN THE MAIL: From Tim Ferriss, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World.
Plus, Today’s Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
ROGER SIMON: Feinstein, Strzok and the Sinister Russia Probe.
WHEN DO WE GET TO RULE IN A MOTIVE? ISIS, Political Motives Ruled Out as Las Vegas Shooter ‘Found Religious People to be Ridiculous.’
IT’D BE A START: Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy says that overturning the Chevron doctrine would not gut the Administrative State—but it would strengthen the Rule of Law.
TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1921: Federal Judge Approves $3.5 Million Payout From IRS To >100 Tea Party Groups To Settle Targeting Claims. “A few issues are still being fought over in the courts — including whether former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner will be allowed to forever shield her deposition explaining her behavior from public view, and whether the IRS should pay attorney fees — but this week’s decision closes out five years of litigation over the targeting itself.”
And congrats to Paul Caron for continuing to follow this, despite shameful criticism from some of his fellow tax law professors, who tried for years to maintain that there was no scandal here.
A NEW CLIMATE: Rupert Darwall notes that things are changing internationally in regards to the global warming alarmist consensus. Germany is rejecting tougher renewable energy targets, Nigeria and other developed nations want to use coal, and people are twigging that the World Bank is pandering to China. At the center of this new awakening:
Trump is breaking the spell of inevitability of the transition to renewable energy. The impression of irresistible momentum has been one of the most potent tools in enforcing compliance with the climate catechism. Like socialism, the clean-energy transition will fail because it doesn’t work. But it requires strong leadership to avoid the ruin that will disprove the false promise of cost-free decarbonization.
RTWT.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Deflation of the Academic Brand.
America was never meant to be a place that valued people based on where they went to school.
TITLE IX SCOFFLAWS BEWARE: The University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) has been found in contempt of court after it violated a court order to re-evaluate its findings and punishment against a male student accused of stalking a female student. “On August 10, Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Donna D. Geck, an Arnold Schwarzenegger appointee, found that UCSB hadn’t followed her earlier mandate to re-evaluate accusations against a male student based on evidence presented in court and in a campus hearing, instead of just what was included in a campus administrator’s report. In finding that the school violated its mandate — by copying word-for-word its original findings against the male student but adding a single sentence at the top claiming it reached the identical conclusion based on the additional evidence — Geck ordered the school to vacate UCSB’s decision against the student and reinstate him.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Identifying the Real Haters on Campus.
While radical feminism in the 1960s called for challenging existing gender roles and abolishing what the feminists saw as the pervasive patriarchy that permeated social institutions, churches, politics, and schools, today’s radical feminists call for the elimination of men.
In an offshoot of the #MeToo movement, the #YesAllMen campaign rejects the goodness of all men. Sociologist, Suzanna Danuta Walters, a lesbian gender studies professor at Northeastern University, published an op-ed in the Washington Post last month titled: “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” Walters advised men to “Step away from the power…Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything…And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you.”
Walters believes that gender is a social construct—one that privileges men unfairly. To remedy this, she suggests that gender be simply eliminated. In an interview published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Walters said that “the world would be a better place for men and for women if we did away with gender altogether—gender nouns, gender binaries, and so on. And God knows men would be happier and better people if we did away with that.” Believing that we can “break apart the binary oppositions” to create more “fluidity,” Walters concludes that “gender demeans, constructs, produces power, constrains.”
Rejecting any criticism of her thesis that all men deserve to be marginalized, Walters has attacked those who voiced some concerns about her proposal to eliminate gender—and men.
When taxpayers tire of subsidizing this sort of thing, we’ll be told that it’s because of “anti-intellectualism.”
AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: Taliban blindsides U.S. forces with surprise Afghan offensive.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said Monday a Taliban assault on the city of Ghanzi — a key provincial capital linking other areas under the Islamic militant group’s control just 75 miles southeast of Kabul — has killed roughly 100 Afghan security forces and some 20 civilians over the past three days.
While the Afghan forces, backed by U.S. and NATO advisors, claimed Monday night to have retained control of central Ghanzi, local reports indicated Taliban fighters still held pockets of the city and had simultaneously swept in and taken over most of the surrounding province’s rural areas.
Analysts said the development has underscored the Taliban’s capability for a resurgence in Afghanistan and will likely increase the group’s political leverage over peace talks with U.S. officials that the Trump administration has quietly been trying to get off the ground.
The Taliban’s “political solution” is to create for itself a position strong enough to allow them to topple the Afghan government in Kabul with maximum speed as soon we leave. Call it “the North Vietnam solution.”
I’m not sure what advantage we create for ourselves by delaying the nearly inevitable.
WELL, GOOD: Trump approves defense budget delaying delivery of F-35 warplanes to NATO ally Turkey.
Further F-35 deliveries to Turkey should be contingent on Turkey refusing delivery of any Russian S-400 (or better) antiaircraft missile systems — at least.
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED: In his latest Bear’s Lair column, Martin Hutchinson takes a look at the official statistics underpinning China’s claim of economic plenitude, and finds they don’t add up. His advice to the President? Imitate Lord Liverpool and Ronald Reagan. Admittedly, this is pretty good advice about most things.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, PRIORITIES EDITION: Gender, Ethnic Studies profs earn about $12k more than peers. “A new report based on salary data from the 2017-2018 academic year reveals that professors of ‘Area, Ethnic, Cultural, Gender, and Group Studies’ earn almost $12,000 more than the average professor, overall. Notably, professors of subjects like Gender and Ethnic Studies also made about $15,000 more per year than their counterparts in fields like Math, Biology, and the Physical Sciences.”
NOBODY ELSE COMES CLOSE TO BALANCE, AND ONLY A SINGLE SCHOOL LEANS CONSERVATIVE: BYU And Pepperdine Are The Most Ideologically Balanced Faculties Among The Top 50 Law Schools.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Strzok, Ellison, the NDAA, and Much, Much More. “Finally.”
Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning.
HEADLINES FROM 1968: Democrats used to be for the middle class. Not anymore.
SALENA ZITO: While politicians court Google and Uber, fracking industry offers a different sort of high-tech job.
CANNONSBURG, Pa. — If there is mud on the floor, they say in the shale industry, that means cash is coming in the door. That is, when workers are out in the field and the boots are getting dirty, money is being made.
Thanks to an infusion of high technology driving the natural gas industry, it’s not just about dirty boots anymore – and it’s a good story. It’s a marriage of advanced technologies and dirt-under-your-nails hard work rarely told, because extracting shale is not a popular business politically.
Fracking, it turns out, is the one high-tech industry not embraced by politicians in Pittsburgh who are rushing to embrace the likes of Uber and Google.
Why? Because local progressive Democrats, very vocal climate activists, and the burgeoning Democratic Socialists of America party demand a wholesale repudiation of the natural gas industry. Local Democratic officials thus have to oppose fracking or risk losing in a Democratic primary.
Which is weird, because if you want to hurt Putin, you should want to support fracking.
UH OH: Another Keith Ellison Sexual Assault Charge Surfaces. With 911 records.
HEALTH: A Troubling Rise in Pregnancy-Related Heart Problems.
The rates of heart-related problems in women before and after childbirth have increased in the U.S., a problem that some experts think may be contributing to a rise in the country’s maternal mortality rate. The reasons behind the increase in heart problems aren’t yet clear, though researchers think women delaying pregnancy could be a contributing factor, in addition to traditional cardiovascular risks such as higher smoking rates and high blood pressure.
The number of women having heart attacks before, during and after deliveries increased by 25% from 2002 through 2013, according to a study published in July in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Around 4.5% of women who had heart attacks died, a high mortality rate for such a young age group, the researchers say. While deaths are still relatively rare, the increase in heart attacks is worrisome.
As Robert Heinlein wrote, a society based on “any foundation other than ‘women and children first!’ … is automatically genocidal.” So let’s get on this faster, please.
Plus, Deal of the Day, AncestryDNA: Genetic Testing.
THIS SEEMS INSANE: “A New Mexico state judge ruled Monday that five alleged Muslim extremists accused of training children to conduct school shootings do not have to remain in jail while they await trial for child abuse. Judge Sarah Backus released the five defendants, Siraj Wahhaj, Hujrah Wahhaj, Subhannah Wahhaj, Jany Leveille, and Lucas Morten, on a $20,000 ‘signature bond,’ according to the Albuquerque Journal. That means that the defendants will not have to pay money unless they violate the conditions of their release.”
DON SURBER: Antifa Is The Future Of The Democrats.
Let’s get something straight: Antifa is the fascist arm of the Democratic Party. If you want to know where the party is headed, look where its youths are. Antifa speaks for all Democrats when it chants, “No border, no wall, no USA at all!”
That’s absurd. If it were true, the Dems’ star politician would be a Marxist former bartender with no actual knowledge of economics.
SUSAN ESTRICH: Donald Trump numbers not as bad as some believe.
What’s striking from the numbers, at least as far as I can see, is not how much support Trump has lost but how, given the daily barrage of tweets and countertweets; ugly chants and ugly corruption trials (his campaign chairman); intense criticism in the media; all-out war in Congress; and foreign policy flubs and domestic failures, much remains firm, and how tough he will be to beat.
Boorish behavior seems like a small price to pay for increased wage growth in a hot jobs market. Or as Estrich’s former (Bill) Clinton campaign compadre James Carville liked to say, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And if anyone in Washington would understand that tradeoff, it would be someone from the Clinton Administration.
What gets me is that 20 years after L’affair Lewinsky, nearly 30 years after the first “Bimbo Eruption,” and longer still since JFK’s antics became widely known, that anyone is still seriously concerned about ill-behaved presidents.
Or is it just different when Democrats do it, because shut up?
STEPHEN MILLER’S INSUFFERABLE UNCLE:
Politico has published a opinion piece by David Glosser called “Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle.” Glosser’s piece is a shrill, hyper-personal rant of the “Give me your tired, your poor” genre. But for Glosser’s status as Stephen Miller’s uncle, I don’t think Politico would even have considered running it.
Glosser’s great-grandfather came to America from what was then Russia and now is Belarus (my father’s father also came here from there). Glosser’s thesis is that if Trump administration immigration policies, which Miller helped craft, had been in effect in the early 20th century, Miller’s forebears (and Glosser’s) would not have been able to immigrate to the U.S. Instead, they would have been wiped out by German Nazis. Therefore, Miller is a hypocrite for pushing these policies.
Glosser makes no real effort to support his claim that Trump’s policy would have stranded his great-grandfather in Belarus. Trump has not ended the taking in of refugees. Rather, he has cut the number of refugees admitted per year in about half — down to 45,000 per year — with further cuts a possibility.
Would Jews facing pogroms in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, and Jews threatened by Nazism 30 years later, have been among those excluded under a Trump-like refugee policy implemented back then? There’s no way to say for sure, but I think it’s unlikely they would have been. Nor does Glosser engage this question.
The analogy further disintegrates with the story that the left-leaning Tablet ran in April: “While [FDR] was uncertain about whether [Jewish refugees] would be better off on the slopes of the Andes or the savannahs of central Africa, there was one place he knew he didn’t want them: the United States of America.”
GOOD IDEA: The Air Force Wants Helicopters to Help Defend Nuclear Missiles. “The helos would carry rapid reaction security troops.”
The United States has 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles on alert across the western United States. Sixty feet long and weighing more than 37 tons, each Minuteman III carries a 300 kiloton thermonuclear warhead and has a range of more than 8,000 miles, enough to strike any target in the Northern Hemisphere. The missiles sit in reinforced concrete and steel silos in Wyoming (Warren Air Force Base), Montana (Malmstrom Air Force Base, and North Dakota (Minot Air Force Base.) Each silo is unmanned, with up to ten silos controlled by a nearby manned Launch Control Center.
Security is generally excellent but the spread-out nature of the missile fields means they are isolated. The fact that they control nuclear weapons makes them potential targets to anyone from anti-nuclear protesters to special forces troops and saboteurs. To deal with such situations, the Air Force has special security teams trained to fly in by helicopter and secure a threatened missile site.
The Achilles Heel of the security teams are their helicopters—old, slow UH-1N Hueys. They’re the last Hueys in the Pentagon’s inventory, and the Air Force would like to replace them.
Indeed.
I remember the climax of an old Tom Clancy novel that depended in part on a US black team, inserted into China and taking out their ICBMs on the ground, by damaging the silo doors. Surely something similar has occurred to people more dangerous than a technothriller novelist.
TROLL LEVEL: ANDREW STILES. 10 Ridiculously Old Celebs Who Are Still Younger Than Nancy Pelosi.
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Why Germany Should Get the Bomb.
CHUTZPAH: Fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok Starts a GoFundMe Page: ‘He Needs Your Help.’ “We are asking you to support a man who has dedicated his life to defending America.”
I’m taking a hard pass on this one.
I’M SORRY, BUT ALL THE BEST PEOPLE HAVE ASSURED ME THAT THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE: Trump’s foreign policy is actually boosting America’s standing.
EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH, THEY CORRUPT: Using the Truth to Lie.
READING THIS, I REALIZED THE SAME COULD BE SAID ABOUT THE DARLINGS OF THE LEFT IN SCIENCE FICTION: A fundamental truth behind PC humor reveals something critical about the modern Left.
NOW? HEAVENS, DON’T YOU REMEMBER WHEN OBAMA WAS ELECTED “WE’RE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW?” THE MASK JUST SLIPS MORE AND MORE: Democrats Now the Socialist Party.
HAVE WE REACHED PEAK UNHINGED? Dem Desperation Dialed to 11.
THEY KEEP TELLING ME TRUMP IS WAGING WAR ON THE PRESS: I’d pay good money to see Jim Acosta shoot his petulant self-important mouth off in China. Or Singapore. Or Saudi. Or Thailand. Or Venezuela. Or Cuba. Or Turkey. But unlike Washington DC, it’s hard to get a good facial massage in those places, and a man’s got to have his priorities. All in the name of brave journalism, you know.
#MeanTweetsHurtsMyFeels
EVERYONE HAS SOME HORRIBLE RELATIVES: Stephen Miller’s insufferable uncle.
QUICK, AIRLIFT FACTUAL BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION TO COLLEGE CAMPUSES: Male Professors of Pallor to Get “Reverse Mentors”.
DO THE PEOPLE USING THIS FOR BLACK POWER OR FEMINISM OR WHATEVER THE HECK REALIZE THE RAISED FIST IS TO COMMUNISM AS THE EXTENDED HAND SALUTE IS TO NAZISM AND THAT BOTH WERE VILE, RIGHT? The Hypocrisy of the NFL’s Raised Fist and Kneeling Players.
HEY, SOME WOMEN LIKE TO DATE FELONS AND SOME PROGRESSIVES LIKE TO GIVE MONEY TO FELONIOUS, SMIRKING CORRUPT OFFICIALS. MAKES SENSE: Fools And Money: Peter Strzok Is Raking In Cash Via GoFundMe.
FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF COA AS FAST AS YOU CAN: Climate Change Caused the California Fires, Not Negligent Power Line Maintenance.
GOOD. ABOUT TIME WE STOPPED CUISINARTING BIRDS: President Trump Mocks Subsidised Wind Energy.
August 13, 2018
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ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Social Justice Warriors Drive Lesbian Actress set to Play Lesbian Batwoman on the CW Off Twitter For Not Being Lesbian Enough and/or For Being an Inauthentically “Hot” Lesbian.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them, to coin an Insta-phrase.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN BIKER BARS: Trump Posed With ‘Sexist’ Motorcyclist Patch Wearing Biker, and the Washington Post is on it.
The Washington Post published an article on Monday complaining that President Trump posed next to a biker wearing a “sexist” patch on his vest.
Trump met with supporters in the “Bikers For Trump” group over the weekend and posed for photos with some of the group’s members at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.
The bikers typically wear vests with dozens of various patches on them, and the Washington Post zoomed in on the photos of the bikers with the president to see what the patches said.
One of the patches seemed to ruffle the feathers of one reporter, who called it “sexist.” The patch in question features an image of a topless woman with guns covering her breasts and the caption, “I [heart] guns and t***ies.”
Clay Travis, call your office.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: The media’s blatant hypocrisy — even about media-bashing.
Welcome to the age of self-congratulatory media. “Democracy dies in darkness” goes the ridiculous tagline on The Washington Post’s front page. Reporters openly call themselves heroes and firefighters.
Yet when it doesn’t fit the standard left-wing narrative, our Guardians of the Galaxy are MIA.
On Sunday, the Unite the Right II rally of white supremacists fizzled out. Antifa demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., who gathered to mark the anniversary of the first Unite the Right rally, threw eggs at Secret Service, were arrested for assaulting a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat, launched fireworks and smoke bombs at police and assaulted NBC reporter Cal Perry. Perry had his camera knocked out of his hands while the protester screamed profanities at him.
The story appears on various media sites, and several reporters tweeted about the attack, but the outrage was muted. Instead, nearly every outlet went out of their way to gently describe the Antifa mob. The headlines at CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post made sure to call the group “anti-hate protesters.”
After two years of constant self-applause, and furrowed-brow concern about President Trump sowing mistrust in the media as well as possibly instigating violence against its members, where is the outrage when a reporter is physically assaulted?
Had it been an alt-right member doing the attacking, is there any doubt the story would lead all news shows and make the front page of all the major newspapers?
Also on Sunday, Mayor de Blasio sat down with Brian Stelter at CNN to continue his crybaby “News Corp is mean to me so I wish they’d disappear” tour.
Stelter had been pummeled on Twitter for glossing over the mayor’s comments when he originally made them the prior week. When de Blasio commented, “If you could remove News Corp from the last 25 years of American history, we would be in an entirely different place” some people reported it as an attack on the “press.” Stelter made sure to clarify that this was merely an attack on Rupert Murdoch and his properties. Doesn’t count!
On Sunday, Stelter let de Blasio’s ludicrous claims about The Post stirring up racial animosity by, for example, opposing David Dinkins, go unchecked. He mostly nodded along as the mayor ranted about what a better world it’d be if everyone just agreed with him.
Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with time slots and you won’t go far wrong.
INTERESTING: Glaucoma May Be An Autoimmune Disorder.
TEST DRIVE: 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Driven: Longer, Lighter, More Fuel Efficient, and Extremely Refined. My sister is looking to buy a brand-new truck — they’ve always bought heavily used ones — and is astounded at how nice they’ve gotten.
I mean, these are the big complaints in the review: “Interior materials don’t rise to luxury level, transmissions fall short of perfection.”
NBC OPINION: IT’S ‘LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE, BY DEFINITION, TO BE RACIST AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE.’
Wait until NBC discovers that it employs a gentleman named Al Sharpton.
KURT SCHLICHTER: They Are Not Never-Trump, They Are Never-You.
The recent utterly unsurprising utter capitulation by the Fredocons to the SJW/tech/media campaign to deplatform and silence any right-wing voice who is not trying to sell you a cruise cabin is a symptom of a bigger problem. It’s not a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, though Trump has utterly deranged these pointy-headed geeks. It is a symptom of Conservative, Inc.’s contempt for you.
As usual, Kurt pulls no punches.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Antifa Is Just Plain Fa.
I don’t know of anybody, Nazi or anti-Nazi or otherwise, whose mind has ever been changed by a punch in the face. It’s never shown a guy like Ken Parker the error of his ways. That’s because violent rhetoric like this is just virtue signaling. It’s a way for liberals and leftists to remind all the other members of their chosen group that they still belong. “Hey guys, we’re just like the heroes on Normandy Beach. Yay!”
Speaking of which, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has deleted his tweet from last August comparing Antifa to the allies storming the beaches of Normandy. I wonder what changed his mind?
GOOD QUESTION: Why Does It Cost So Much to Educate a Child in America?