THERE’S A STINK OF DESPERATION TO THIS WHOLE MONTH: Letterbomb Campaign Bombs.
SOUNDS DISTURBINGLY PLAUSIBLE: Urgent Strategy Session at the Democratic Party Dirty Tricks Office.
WHAT TOOK THEM SO LONG? Arizona Troopers Association withdraws Sinema endorsement.
IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY WOULDN’T HAVE STANDARDS AT ALL: Of bombs and responsibility.
MAKE THE (SOCIALIST) RABBLE BOUNCE: Dear Americans, You’re Breaking Socialist Hearts!
October 25, 2018
ROGER SIMON: Does It Matter Which Crazy Sent the Bombs?
Even if Brennan was misspelled, Occam’s Razor is beginning to spell “HOAX” correctly. But by and for whom? Here as well we don’t know, but again followers of William of Ockham would tend to point you toward the left wing – a single leftie nutcase or some Antifa types, perhaps. After all, cui bono? With Kavanaugh and the caravan, things were not looking good for the Democrats. The subject had to be changed before it was too late and the blue wave turned red. So far, however, it’s not working.
No wonder the reliably left-leaning Chuck Todd is suddenly pointing toward Russia, not some MAGA-hatted redneck with a Confederate flag tattooed on his chest, as the perpetrator. It’s a dead giveaway. He’s probably hoping for the Russians now. Because if it goes as it’s currently looking, it’s bad news for his team.
Read the whole thing.
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ANOTHER 2020 CANDIDATE EXPLODES ON THE LAUNCH PAD. Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: 2020 Dem. Nominee ‘Better Be a White Male.’
THE U.S.ARMY: Ordered to grow again.
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: MSNBC’s Katy Tur Explodes On Guest Who Points Out Violent Left-Wing Rhetoric.
I WONDER IF TWITTER WILL CALL THIS ‘TARGETED HARASSMENT’:Russian trolls get DM from US Cyber Command: We know who you are. Stop it
SO, LIKE LIFTING WEIGHTS, YOU NEED RECOVERY DAYS? Skin tans the most when spending every other day out of the sun.
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THE TECHIES AND NERDS ARE GOING TO SAVE US FROM THE SJWS: Tech Community Outraged after SQLite Founder Adopts Benedictine Code of Conduct.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Breathing through your nose can boost memory consolidation.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How much a pint of beer costs around the world.
A NEW EFFORT TO “CHANGE THE TERMS” TO FIGHT ONLINE “HATE”: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some serious and valid concerns about this effort, saying, “Corporate Speech Police Are Not the Answer to Online Hate.” It’s difficult to think of any question for which “corporate speech police” will be a good answer.
THE DEFENSE INNOVATION ADVISORY BOARD STRIKES BACK AT LAZY BUREAUCRATS: Detecting Agile BS is the document cleared for publication. Warning: the Defense Innovation Advisory Board’s uses the acronym DIB. Why? Good question. Here’s Breaking Defense’s take on the pamphlet and description of the advisory panel.
CHRIS QUEEN: The 10 Most Bizarre Hits of the ‘70s.
I still have a small soft spot for Sweet’s “Love Is Like Oxygen,” which is either too awful or not quite awful enough to make the list.
ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICANS REALLY SEEM TO HAVE GROWN A PAIR: Chuck Grassley Asks the Justice Department to Investigate Michael Avenatti and Julie Swetnick for False Statements: “The obvious, subsequent contradictions along with the suspicious timing of the allegations necessitate a criminal investigation.”
In the old days, once the story died down they would have let bygones be bygones. Now they’re out to teach a lesson.
MEH, FEW OF MINE HAVE BEEN: Your Next Car Salesperson Won’t Be a Car Person, and Here’s Why. Many of them barely knew anything about their own merchandise — you’d think they’d at least read the brochures.
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BLUE WAVE? Republican Patrick Morrisey Takes Lead Over Sen. Manchin in West Virginia. “Morrisey, the state attorney general, leads Manchin 44 percent to 42 percent in new poll.”
CONRAD BLACK: About That ‘Blue Wave.’
Those repelled by Trump will not soften until he has retired as president, as with those who hated Franklin D. Roosevelt for spurious ideological or mythic reasons (such as that he gave Eastern Europe to Stalin); or those who disparaged Reagan as “an amiable dunce,” in the words of Clark Clifford, the ageless and elegant Washington fixer and an unsuccessful defense secretary. It would be at least premature, and perhaps wildly optimistic, to compare Trump to FDR and Reagan, the two greatest presidents since Lincoln, but as the voters proceed to the polls in two weeks, they will have to reflect on the indisputable fact of President Trump’s successes. He took a sluggish economy where GDP growth per capita had declined from 4.5 percent under President Reagan to 1 percent under President Obama, under whom federal debt increased by 233 percent in eight years. He has focused attention on the unutterable scandal of the steady influx of millions of illiterate peasants, including many violent criminals, across the southern border, and is the enemy of the permissiveness of “sanctuary” and the prohibition of constitutionally mandated census-takers to ask respondents’ citizenship. Trump has made himself the sole possible agent of enforcement of nuclear nonproliferation by his actions to prevent North Korea and Iran from becoming nuclear military powers, a status that his predecessors effectively conceded to them.
Obama said 2 percent economic growth is the “new normal,” as poverty, food-stamp use, and violence increased. Trump has created a full-employment economy and generated the first increases in purchasing power and job security in this millennium for the lower third of Roosevelt’s “forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” I don’t believe that most pollsters have adjusted their techniques to allow for a higher voting turnout from what used to be the white working class, or to allow for the reluctance of many Trump voters to identify themselves.
As I was saying earlier, there’s a big gap between the polls and how it feels like this election ought to go.
B-52 OVER THE INDIAN OCEAN: The photo was taken in June by an airman in a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker that’s refueling the bomber.
“THE FEDERAL HATE CRIMES LAW IS BOTH UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND UNWISE”: In today’s Washington Post, George Will urges the Supreme Court to review Metcalf v. United States.
This is the case for which Peter Kirsanow and I filed an amicus brief. Indeed, Will quotes our brief in his column. In a nutshell: Congress claims to be using its power to outlaw slavery in prohibiting hate crimes. And … well … hate crimes are bad things, but they aren’t slavery.
REFUGEE WAVES VERSUS MIGRANT MARCHES: My latest Creators Syndicate column. (bumped)
OIL FROM A STONE: Conoco Is Collecting $2 Billion From Venezuela—One Barrel of Oil at a Time.
Conoco has received an initial payment of $345 million in the form of “cash and commodities” from Venezuela’s state-run oil company, the Houston-based company said on Thursday. The remittance helped allay fears the cash-strapped nation wouldn’t be able to pay off the award in a long-running dispute over asset seizures.
Conoco didn’t provide more details in its statement, but people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News on Wednesday that the company loaded about 1.5 million barrels of Venezuelan crude from terminals in the Caribbean run by Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Conoco resold the cargoes to refineries in the U.S. and Asia, the people said.
It will be interesting to see which winds down first: Venezuela’s debt to Conoco, or Venezuela’s ability to barter it down.
FASTER, PLEASE: FDA approves first new flu drug in 20 years. “Xofluza is unique in that it acts to inhibit replication of the flu virus in the first place, at a step much earlier than the current medications available, such as oseltamivir or zanamivir, which only block release of virus that has already been produced from a host cell.”
SHOT: Trump tries nicer tone after bomb threats.
CHASER: Democratic Leaders Reject Trump’s Call For Unity After Bomb Scare.
Trump didn’t win by playing nice, and there probably is no playing nice (and winning) with today’s Democrats.
NUMBERS OR FEELINGS? Over at VodkaPundit, a few thoughts on how the contest for the House feels, versus what the polls say. “The numbers all say that the Dems take the House with a slender majority, and they’ve said that to varying degrees for months now. But it just doesn’t feel that way. A booming economy, wage growth, tax cuts… are American voters really willing to risk all that by giving the House to a party which promises to undo those things?”
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JOHN LOTT: The Problem With the FBI’s ‘Active Shooter’ Data.
The FBI’s first report claimed that only once from 2000-2013 did a concealed handgun permit holder stop one of 160 reported “active shooter” attacks. These active shooter attacks include any time a gun is fired in a public place, even if no one is injured or killed. They exclude gang fights or attacks that arise out of other crimes such as robberies.
The report got massive news coverage on the front pages of such newspapers as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, as well as all of the TV news networks. Gun control activists have frequently cited the report in court cases and in political debates to claim that civilians rarely use guns to stop public shootings.
Unfortunately, the problems with the reports have continued during the Trump administration. The latest FBI report, released in May, misses still more cases. The FBI claims that from 2014 to 2017 there were 90 active shooter cases and only seven where permit holders stopped these attacks.
In all, the FBI claims that concealed handgun permit holders have stopped 3.2 percent of active shooter incidents.
But the bureau misses at least 23 cases where permit holders saved the day. That means they stopped 11.5 percent of active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2017. We at the Crime Prevention Research Center are more confident that we have all of the cases from 2014 to 2017, when 16.5 percent of attacks were stopped.
I don’t trust much of anything coming out of the FBI these days.
BREAKING: Megyn Kelly out at NBC, will likely walk with $69 million.
I’d not work for NBC for half that much, if they’re looking for somebody.
COOL: Long lost, 1930’s novel that inspired ‘The Thing’ discovered and set for publication.
Before taking over editorial duties on the magazine and publishing seminal works by authors like Isaac Asimov, Jack Williamson, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt and others, Campbell himself was a writer, and the last major piece of fiction he published was “Who Goes There?”, in which a team of researchers stationed in the Antarctic battle the shape-shifting occupant of a crashed alien ship.
But now, according to The Verge, a longer version of that story may be coming to light decades after being locked away. While researching his new book, Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, author Alec Nevala-Lee learned that Campbell had actually written a novel-length version of the story, which he cut down for publication in the magazine.
I hope there’s enough there-there to make a solid, longer story, but I’ll read it regardless.
HILARIOUSLY AWFUL CLAIRE MCCASKILL RADIO AD: SHE’S ‘NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAZY DEMOCRATS.’
Narrator Voice: She actually is one of those crazy Democrats.
BIPARTISANSHIP: Sens. Ted Cruz and Doug Jones have introduced a Civil Rights cold case bill that is both righteous and politically clever.
“[I]n many cases,” Sens. Jones and Cruz write, “witnesses were intimidated into silence and evidence was intentionally brushed under the rug by corrupt officials. Victims and their families were often afraid to pursue justice against their attackers. And despite the best efforts of law enforcement in many cases, they did not have access to modern forensic methods, and trails went cold.”
They add: “Records and evidence from many of these cases sit locked away in files and vaults, outside of the public eye. As memories fade and witnesses, victims and perpetrators of decades-old crimes pass away, our window to solve these cold cases shrinks.”
The proposed legislation would require that the cold case files be made available at the National Archives and Records Administration. The idea here is that NARA would then create a “collection of documents that would be publicly disclosed, although for certain reasons disclosure of some information may be postponed.” The bill is also careful to take steps to provide identity protections where requested and/or necessary.
As Jones and Cruz explain it, the bill aims mostly to make the information available to “private detectives, historians, victims and victims’ families,” with the ultimate goal being that some of these cases be solved finally.
That would be nice.
TIM BLAIR: IT TAKES A LOT TO LAUGH, IT TAKES A TRAIN TO TEACH.
Don’t worry about that massive caravan of Guatamexicans or whatever they are. The real problem is refugee locomotive homelessness:
Thomas the Tank Engine is to introduce a “homeless” Kenyan train to teach children about refugees.
Oh good — kiddies’ TV shows about anthropomorphized toy trains really need to become much more woke.
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: New ISIS Threat of Knife, Gun Attacks to ‘Terrorize the Crusader Nations.’ “Days ago, media group released a poster with shadowy imagery of the Pulse nightclub attack, along with images of a soldier and an explosive device.”
They might find America a harder target than disarmed Britain or France.
IN THE MAIL: From John F. Carr, War World: Falkenberg’s Regiment.
SHARYL ATTKISSON: How the Russia Collusion Story Revealed a Scandal to Obstruct President Trump. “Taken together in context, the evidence points to two important findings. First, U.S. government insiders, colluding with numerous foreign citizens and governments, conspired to interfere in the 2016 election. Second, after the election, these figures conspired to undermine, oust, and perhaps even frame Trump and some of his associates.”
PROGRESS: SpaceX official says company about to launch a Falcon 9 for the third time.
SpaceX has since flown a handful of Block 5 rockets twice, but it has not taken the step of flying one of these rockets for the third time. However, that may happen quite soon, according to Lars Hoffman, senior director of government sales for the California-based rocket company.
“We’ve launched Falcon 9 over 60 times,” Hoffman said at the Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium on Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve landed our first stage booster 30 times now. And relaunched 16 times. We’re about to relaunch a booster for the third time. So we’re turning this into routine access to space. High-reliability, higher-performance, lower-cost access to space; that opens it up to everybody.”
The company has not officially confirmed its plans, but at present SpaceX intends to reuse a Falcon 9 rocket for the third time to launch a rideshare mission of dozens of small satellites for Spaceflight. This Spaceflight SSO-A mission currently has a launch date of November 19, according to a calendar maintained by Spaceflight Now. An earlier report in The Space Review previously indicated this mission may involve the third flight of a booster.
What a ride.
OBAMA: “YOU WOULDN’T LET YOUR GRANDPARENTS PICK YOUR PLAYLIST, WHY WOULD YOU LET THEM PICK YOUR REPRESENTATIVE WHO’S GOING TO DETERMINE YOUR FUTURE?”
James Lileks: “Youth is already besotted by its certainties — and simultaneously insecure about itself and its abilities and stature, for which they compensate by fervent embrace of Causes. (It’s been my experience that people on the left are more likely to extend this condition into adulthood, but I could be wrong.) Grandma probably saw a few of those in her time, and might have something to say about the ephemeral passions of the day and the odd way they end up burning underneath society like a coal seam fire.”
Read the whole thing.
ISN’T IGNORING MEN A TITLE IX VIOLATION? Hundreds of sex toys doled out to coeds as university hosts ‘Free Vibrator Day.’
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: FDA Approves ‘Novel’ Single-Dose Flu Drug — The First Of Its Kind In 20 Years.
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: NY AG Files Ridiculous Climate Change Lawsuit Against Exxon Mobil.
(Classical reference in headline.)
HEATHER MAC DONALD: Identity Politics in Overdrive. “From the Kavanaugh hearings to a lawsuit alleging that Harvard discriminates against Asian-Americans, the Left sees “white supremacy” at the heart of everything.”
The core premise of academic victimology is that whites game the system to disable non-whites. The effort seems to have failed miserably. But rather than acknowledging the implications of Asian success for the narrative of systemic pro-white bias, the proponents of identity politics simply trot out the “white supremacy” mantra as if doing so routs any countervailing evidence. That some left-wing Asians adopt the same rhetoric is a testament to the status accorded to alleged victims of white privilege and to the lure of oppositional identity politics in elite circles.
The use of “white supremacy” to characterize the Harvard racial-preferences lawsuit is a model of lucidity, however, compared with its deployment in the final days of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. Categories of privilege and oppression shifted, recombined, and split apart, highlighting internecine tensions within the intersectional Left.
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, ADMINISTRATIVE REVENGE EDITION: Professors fired for creating “distress in workplace” were actually fired for disagreeing with administrators.
TOM MAGUIRE: Flashback: Mass Murder Mailing of 2005. “Back when this story broke in 2006 some lefty bloggers promptly blamed an Ann Coulter ‘joke’ about poisoning Justice Stevens for this attack. OK, the timing was backwards since her joke followed the attack (but preceded the publicizing of it). And the sentencing memorandum explaining the motivation was available in the public record. But there were political points to be scored, so whatever.”
HE’S AN AMAZING MAN WHO WAS HORRIBLY SMEARED: Petition supporting Clarence Thomas gets 10 times more signatures than opposition. “A Change.org petition calls for the Savannah College of Art and Design to keep the name of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on one of its buildings. The petition was launched three weeks after a separate petition called for the Georgia college to remove Thomas’ name from the building, labeling the Supreme Court Justice a ‘sexual predator.'”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Bombs Away and Much, Much More. “Two things drive the news cycle: when the media can make itself the story (CHECK!) and when the media can use the news to beat up on President Trump (CHECK!). Yesterday was a jackpot.”
Indeed.
YOUNG-ADULT INFOTAINMENT SITE VOX: Fight Suicide By Adding Lithium To Drinking Water. It’s actually not a bad piece, but I couldn’t resist using Stephen Green’s Vox tagline.
WHY TRUMP IS GETTING MORE POPULAR.
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: Arizona state troopers withdraw Kyrsten Sinema endorsement after members object.
Related: “‘It was Rousseau,’ writes Frank M. Turner in European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche, ‘who made the hatred of one’s own culture the stance of the cultivated person.’ The Rousseau of Arizona is the alternately contemptuous and clownish Kyrsten Sinema, who is trying to persuade Arizonans to overlook her well-documented contempt for the state and tap her to be one of its two U.S. senators.”
FLOTUS: Melania Invited Ellen Producer to Kindness Event After His Cynical Tweets.
After Andy Lassner, a producer for The Ellen DeGeneres Show, tweeted the other day that he’s “way more afraid of another Melania getting in to this country than” he is of the thousands of migrants in the caravan marching towards the U.S. border.
First Lady Melania Trump’s office tweeted him an invite to her gathering of children at the White House to talk about kindness and screen the movie Wonder.
You can guess how this man child responded.
The First Lady deserves far more positive press than she’ll ever receive.
IT IS A RIDDLE, WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY, INSIDE AN ENIGMA; BUT PERHAPS THERE IS A KEY: California Has a Housing Crisis and Can’t Figure Out How to Solve It.
INTERESTING: Forget the A-10 Warthog: The Army Wants the F-35.
“When you are in a firefight, the first thing infantry wants to do it get on that radio to adjust fire for mortars and locate targets with close air support with planes or helicopters. You want fires. The F-35 has increased survivability and it will play a decisive role in the support of ground combat,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters at the Association of the United States Army Annual Symposium.
Gen. Milley’s comments are quite significant, given the historic value of close air support when it comes to ground war. His remarks also bear great relevance regarding the ongoing Pentagon evaluation assessing the F-35 and A-10 Warthog in close air support scenarios.
Over the years, close-air-support to Army ground war has of course often made the difference between life and death – victory or defeat. The Army, Milley said, wants next-generation close-air-support for potential future warfare.
To be clear, the Army doesn’t want its own F-35s, which it doesn’t have the logistical tail to support:
“We fight with the Navy, Marines and Air Force. Our soldiers have never heard an Air Force pilot say ‘I can’t fly into that low-altitude area,’ These guys take incredible risk. If there are troops on the ground, they are rolling in hot,” Milley said.
Good to know.
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I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY MANY PROMINENT DEMOCRATS THAT VOTER FRAUD WAS A MYTH: Former Democratic Party leader paid women in alleged Tarrant voter fraud ring, AG says.
A Fort Worth woman recently indicted on voter fraud charges paid others involved in the scheme with funds provided by a former Tarrant County Democratic Party leader, court documents filed this week show.
After learning about a state investigation, Leticia Sanchez — one of four women arrested and indicted on voter fraud charges — allegedly directed her daughter to send a text message to others in the scheme, urging them not to cooperate with investigators, state officials say.
The allegations are made in a state’s notice of intent to introduce evidence in Sanchez’s criminal case, where state officials say she was among those who collaborated to vote for certain down-ballot candidates on a number of north side residents’ mail-in ballots.
Sounds to me like a criminal conspiracy to disenfranchise legally registered voters.
TWO-MINUTE WARNING: The Democratic Party is Calling!
It’s satire, but is it really?
HMM: Trump Admin Will Allow Iran Key Financial Lifeline in Major Concession.
The United States is set to allow Iran to remain connected to the SWIFT baking system, an international monetary consortium that facilities cross-border transactions, according to sources familiar with ongoing talks between top U.S. officials and European allies who have been pressuring the Trump administration to take a softer line on Tehran ahead of the Nov. 4 implementation of new sanctions on Iran.
The move is being met with frustration by Iran hawks on Capitol Hill and elsewhere who have argued that SWIFT continues to provide Iran with a critical financial lifeline as the country continues to fund terrorist operations across the region despite its ailing economy.
In the past months, as European allies pressured the Trump administration to take a softer line with Iran, SWIFT has emerged as a key sticking point. While the Trump administration had vowed to choke off Iran’s financial routes, senior officials appear to have softened that stance in the face of European pressure.
To date, the speed with which the Administration had been able to get sanctions back on Iran had been a pleasant surprise. But now this.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Suicides Surge in a Hopeless Venezuela.
“We live between terror and impotence,” said Ignacio Sandia, who heads the psychiatry department. “We constantly think we can’t do what we should in the moment we’re able to, and we’re terrified that patients commit suicide and there’s nothing we can do for them.”
Suicides are rapidly rising across this once-wealthy nation, but particularly in mountainous Merida, where they are hitting levels never seen. The Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a nongovernmental organization, estimates that the state’s suicide rate was more than 19 per 100,000 in 2017. Only 12 nations have a rate so high.
Such deaths are becoming ordinary in a population plagued by hyperinflation, hunger and mass emigration. Xiomara Betancourt, a neurologist who heads mental-health services at Corposalud Merida, the public health system, blamed scarcities of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicine and loneliness as loved ones leave.
Unbelievably sad and unnecessary.
ANDREW GILLUM (D-FL): LET’S FACE IT, YOUR CONCERNS ABOUT MY DUBIOUS ETHICS ARE RACIST. “The bad news: He’s probably going to be governor. The good news: If there are any scandals during his administration, rest assured that they’ll merely be figments of your racist imagination.”
JOEL KOTKIN: One Nation, Two Economies.
Over the past few decades, the U.S. has developed essentially two economies. On the one side is the widely celebrated “post-industrial” economy: software, entertainment, media, and financial and business services. These sectors flourished as the stock market soared in the ultra-low interest-rate environment fostered by the Obama administration, whose recovery strategy was built around bailing out major banks, all headquartered in deep-blue cities. The winners under Obama included urban real estate, financial-service firms, and the tech oligarchs. These elements now constitute the Democratic Party’s burgeoning financial base, allowing it consistently to spend more than the GOP in key congressional races, while the GOP still gains support in energy and other less heralded “legacy” industries.
There’s a glitter gap between the parties, too. The Democrats now own the fashion, media, literary, and entertainment communities, in the process turning the putative party of the common man into the political vehicle of the leisure class. In contrast, during the depth of the recession, a much larger, more dispersed America struggled. As traditional industries like manufacturing, energy, agriculture, home construction, and basic business services declined, the progressive clerisy in forums like Slate crowed that these blue-collar jobs were never coming back. Unlike the tech oligarchy or the financial giants, these older sectors wielded little political influence under Obama and, in the case of energy, seemed destined for a radical downsizing.
These heritage industries and the people who work in them elected Trump. Despite repeated tales of how tariffs are destroying manufacturers, the industrial sector, after weakening at the end of Obama’s term, has been enjoying its best growth since the mid-1990s. Critically, incomes are up for the lower deciles of the labor force, including young workers. Nothing guarantees that this recovery will continue, but Trump can justifiably boast about accomplishing what Obama failed to deliver in eight years. Democrats might mutter that renewed growth has come from regulatory reforms and big corporate tax breaks, but that makes Trump’s point: a continuance of Obama-style economic and regulatory policy would have hurt most Americans outside of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
Despite the media’s national obsession with gender and race, American politics continues to follow broad geographic and economic lines. The battle lines have changed over time, from a conflict between coastal merchants and southern farmers to splits over tariffs between western farmers and eastern financiers, and eventually to the battle between an ascendant Sunbelt and struggling older states in the northeast. Today we have a new divide, what might be described as the “tangible” sector versus the ephemeral; the French Marxist economist Thomas Piketty has aptly called it “the brahmin left against the merchant right.” One economy trades in digits, images, and financial transactions, the other in real goods such as cars, steel, oil, gas, and food. These economic sectors have often radically different imperatives.
The Bay Area economy, for example, depends on noncitizens for as much as 40 percent of its workforce, including relatively cheap, work-visa-shackled, latter-day indentured servants from Asia. This explains why Trump’s travel ban and other, often crude or insufficiently justified moves on immigration have helped transform Silicon Valley into a one-party political goldmine. This software-dominated economy, along with its cousins in Hollywood and finance, also is far less exposed to regulatory excesses than firms in manufacturing, home-building, or energy. Tech servers can be located in low-cost regions like the Pacific Northwest or the South, while manufacturing, highly sensitive to environmental regulation and electricity prices, has been relocated to places like Texas or the Midwest—or preferably to China—so that firms can produce gadgets without expanding their localized “carbon footprint.”
Any return to Obama’s energy policy—or the even more extreme one enacted in California—could set back the economic recovery in much of the country, most notably Appalachia, but also across the energy belt that extends from the Permian Basin and the Gulf to the Bakken fields in North Dakota. Even Democratic Texas senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who in the past supported a $10 a barrel tax on oil, has a tough task justifying his position in oil-rich Texas.
The tangible and ephemeral economies create distinct political trajectories. In Texas or Tennessee, for example, working-class people can get decent jobs and aspire to homeownership and other aspects of middle-class life. Historically, Democrats and Republicans in these regions favored robust economic growth, battling mainly over how to achieve it. But today, a pro-growth bipartisan consensus is increasingly elusive, as Democrats adopt the environmental and lifestyle preferences of their often childless urban base. Superstar firebrands like Democratic congressional aspirant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can talk about going on a war footing to fight global warming because there’s not much industry left in her district in Queens and the Bronx.
Childless.
BASED ON THE OBAMA ERA, PRETTY PLAUSIBLE:
The press, of course, will ignore the Obama era history and pretend this is the first time an administration has ever acted this way.
SURE. HE’LL DO IT AS SOON AS THE LEFT APOLOGIZES FOR THEIR WORDS INSTIGATING VIOLENCE, AND THE VIOLENCE THEY INSPIRED: Schumer, Pelosi: Trump Bomb Condemnation ‘Hollow’ Until ‘He Reverses Statements That Condone Violence’.
WILL BE HERE TOO IF WE GET MANY MORE CARAVANS. THE LEFT REFUSES TO ADMIT THEIR “NOBLE SAVAGES” AND “DISADVANTAGED ETHNICITIES AND CULTURES” DON’T PLAY WELL WITH WESTERN TOLERANCE: Violence Against Gays on the Rise in Europe.
AND I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TOO: The Elephants.
AND NO ANSWERS: Some questions about the caravan.
DON’T GET COCKY, BUT I ADVISE YOU VOTE AS LATE AS YOU CAN AND LIE TO ALL POLLSTERS: Early Voting: Don’t Get Complacent.
YET MORE LIBERAL TOLERANCE: Now Wikipedia Is Threatening ‘Gosnell’ Film.
YES, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THEY’RE FATED TO WIN. ARROW OF HISTORY AND ALL THAT JAZZ. YES, THEY ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT WITH RELIGIOUS FERVOR: Do They Want Jackboots?
YES. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT GETS ME. IF WHAT THEY BELIEVE OF US WERE TRUE, THEY’D BE CRAZY: A caravan of migrant Jews demand free entry in Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
ONCE MORE, DEMS ARE THE PARTY OF MS-13: Migrant Invasion Army: Not all poor kids and pregnant women.
October 24, 2018
BRUCE BAWER: Violence Against Gays on the Rise in Europe.
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HMMM: Former bomb disposal officer weighs in on CNN’s ‘bomb:’ ‘That thing is just silly looking.’
Update: So Chris Hayes is saying the ISIS flag on those bombs was actually a … ‘Get Er Done’ sticker?
More: Limbaugh: Were Bomb Threats A ‘False Flag’ Operation?
Update (10:45 PM): Pipe Bomb and Powder Delivered to CNN Were Harmless.
(Bumped.)
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Woman Arrested After Posting Video Of Herself Raping 5-Year-Old Boy: Initially blamed her actions on a masked gunman.
THE INSTA-WIFE: Finally, Men Fight Back.
RIP: James Karen, Actor in Poltergeist and So Much More, Dies at 94.
He was constantly on the air in the Philadelphia area from the mid-‘70s onward as the friendly spokesman for Pathmark Supermarkets, which for me made his role as the angry jerk running the brokerage house in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street all the more surprising.