May 29, 2025

THE PRESS: EVERYTHING IS AWFUL!

The voters:

Posted at 12:43 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1

LESLEY STAHL HAS A SAD: It’s Hopeless, ‘I Don’t See a Path Out.’

America has no reason for hope – and there’s no way the nation can escape hopelessness – “60 Minutes” Correspondent Lesley Stahl says in a fearmongering PBS special purporting to examine the boundaries of presidential authority.

Stahl is a panelist in PBS’s misleadingly titled “How Much Executive Power Is Too Much? Breaking the Deadlock: A Power Play” – a transparently manipulative effort to vilify President Donald Trump by portraying the threat-to-democracy deeds of a hypothetical “President Powerton.”

After leading viewers to a foregone conclusion that Americans should fear and reject the drunk-with-power “President Powerton,” Moderator Aaron Tang asks panelists the following question:

“One last question: folks, is there any reason for hope?”

Not only is there no reason for hope, but there’s hope of having hope, because “all” of the nation’s institutions are irredeemable, Stahl answered:

“I am not hopeful. I look at all our institutions, all of which have lost the respect and trust of the American people. I worry about the future of democracy, obviously.

“And, I don’t see a path out. So, I’m kind of down.”

Not all panelists’ responses are shown, but the ones that “60 Minutes” chose to air express either hope for the nation or, at least, cautious optimism.

“America is crumbling because of this president,” Stahl declared earlier in the program.

In 2003, the year before Dan hit the fan at CBS, Stahl was asked about bias at her network by Fox News’ Cal Thomas:

[Stahl:] I’m going to attack your premise and say that I think the voices that are being heard in broadcast media today, are far more — the ones who are being heard, are far more likely to be on the right and avowedly so, and therefore, more — almost stridently so, than what you’re talking about.”

Thomas pounced: “Can you name a conservative journalist at CBS News?”

Stahl was flummoxed and denied that anyone at CBS is biased in any way: “Well I don’t know of anybody’s political bias at CBS News. I really think we try very hard to get any opinion that we have out of our stories. And most of our stories are balanced, and there are standards that say they need to be balanced. So if you have one side, you try to get the other side. And I’m not saying we don’t have opinions, but I’m saying we try to cleanse our stories of them.”

Such thinking is what drove the DNC-MSM into their box canyon; fast-forward to last December, where Megyn Kelly has some suggestions for Stahl’s industry on how to escape: Lesley Stahl, Van Jones ‘Extremely Worried’ About Death of Corporate Media Influence.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 19

MICKEY KAUS ON BIDEN’S “MODERATE” POLITBURO:

Flashbacks:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller in February of 2021: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

● Tom Cotton’s Response to Kamala Harris’ Border Failures Should Be the Default for All Republicans: “‘You know, Laura, Kamala Harris didn’t have to go all the way to Guatemala and Mexico to find the root causes of this border crisis because they’re not there,’ Cotton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham [in June of 2021]. ‘The root causes are in the White House.’ He further explained that it ‘happened on January 20th when Joe Biden took office, and he essentially opened our borders, reversing very effective policies that had our borders under control.’”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 31

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As always, if you like these essays, please take out a (preferably paid) subscription. I will thank you, and my family will thank you.

Posted at 11:34 am by Glenn Reynolds 61

TO BE FAIR, I’M SURE SHE RUNS A MEAN PICK SIX:

Fortunately though, Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon has compiled a handy guide to help bridge the language divide between Democrats and young men: Inside the Democratic Party’s Strategic Efforts To Enhance Receptivity in Masculine-Coded Heteronormative Cohorts Through Data-Driven Holistic Outreach.

Democratic donors and consultants have been meeting in luxury hotels to analyze the party’s inability to connect with male voters and propose alternative communications strategies. The results, according to the New York Times, have often resembled “anthropological studies of people from faraway places.” One liberal group is planning a $20-million campaign called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan,” or SAM for short, that will “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality” in masculine-coded heteronormative communities.

The Washington Free Beacon has exclusively and semi-legally obtained an early draft of the data-driven blueprint for communicative outreach. Enjoy!

Instead of:

  • “Hi there. What are your pronouns?”
  • “Nice to meet you. Read any good female novelists lately?”
  • “Good morning. Are you ready to combat fascism?”
  • “Good afternoon. May I have consent to shake your hand?”
  • “Crazy weather we’ve been having. Climate change is an existential threat to humanity.”
  • “Don’t call me ma’am. It reeks of patriarchy.”

Please try:

  • “Hi, how are you?”
  • “Nice to meet you. Where are you from?”
  • “What do you like to do in your spare time?”

Overcorrection (do not try):

  • “Sup, bro? What do you like more—tits or sluts?”

  • “Wanna meet up later and do some ‘roids?”

  • “For sure, I would totally let Joe Rogan bang my wife.”

It’s satire — or is it?

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll 219

EXACTLY:

Posted at 8:48 am by Glenn Reynolds 103

FREDDIE DEBOER: If Publishing’s Efforts to Diversify Haven’t Done Anything, Why Did You Fight for Them? Why Do You Defend Them Now?

Here’s the bigger thing. At one point cancel culture comes up, and they recite the usual progressive catechism about it – canceling doesn’t matter, people aren’t really canceled, canceling doesn’t hurt anyone. This is of course not true, and I don’t think the people who say it really believe that it’s true. (If you’d like to argue about it, let’s meet in the lobby of the movie theater the next time a movie starring Armie Hammer is released.) The trouble with saying that canceling doesn’t work is that it immediately prompts this question: then why did you take part in it? Why did you defend it? It’s been whiplash-inducing to live through the cancel culture era. Liberals lustily participated in canceling campaigns, throwing fuel on every Twitter fire, insisting that the social media pile-on was a vital tool for achieving justice…. Those of us who expressed reservations were called the enemies of progress or worse. BUT ALSO, now, we’re constantly told that cancel culture isn’t a thing, that nobody really ever gets canceled, that people often actually benefit from cancelation! etc etc etc. These are, of course, totally incompatible claims. And yet not only do people move from one to the other, many somehow manage to believe both at the same time.

And that’s what’s really at play here too, the same question: if publishing’s effort to publish more minority writers and fewer white men has not actually worked, why is it worth defending? Alternatively, if white men’s primacy in the book world really has been meaningfully reduced, in what way are the white men pointing that out in error? You can either tell me that efforts to de-white-man-ify publishing are worth doing, a meaningful effort to improve the world, or you can tell me that no white men ever lose opportunity because of that effort and it’s thus harmless. You can’t do both.

As Rod Dreher’s “Law of Merited Impossibility” states: “‘It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.’”

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll 41

JOSH BLACKMAN: President Trump Has to Obey the Constitution, But So Does Chief Justice Roberts. “Roberts is quite right that the rule of law is ‘endangered,’ the separation of powers are out of balance, and ordered liberty depends on a ‘normal appellate review.’ But what Roberts misses is that he has exacerbated these problems in crucial moments. For nearly two decades, Roberts has decided contentious cases not based on the best reading of the law, but rather on a crude calculus of political costs and benefits. These rulings have corroded the Supreme Court as an institution, such that reasonable observers will always question whether Roberts’s decisions are based on law or politics. Recently, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas declared in dissent that ‘Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.’ These justices are emphatically correct. As Roberts continues to lecture Trump about weakening the rule of law, the Chief should realize he shares in the blame.”

Nobody respects a trimmer.

And The Constitution isn’t a synonym for what lefties and NYT editorial boards want.

Related: Courts are infected with ‘injunctivitis’ — and tempting Trump’s defiance.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 143

THE CRUMBLING GIANT: How Germany’s Economic Might Was Squandered.

Angela Merkel served as Germany’s chancellor from 2005 to 2021, a tenure marked by her reputation as the “crisis chancellor.” 

Her administration skillfully navigated Germany through the 2008 financial crisis and the Eurozone debt crunch. But beneath the surface, problems fermented. 

Merkel’s government emphasized consensus over confrontation and caution over overcorrection. She deferred essential reforms in labor markets, pensions, and energy, passing the burden to her successors.

Perhaps her most damaging legacy* was the Energiewende, or “energy transition.” 

Germany abandoned nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 without a viable replacement strategy. This created an overdependence on Russian natural gas, a mistake that would become crippling after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Green Dreams, Gray Realities

While green advocates championed the end of nuclear and the rise of renewables, the reality is that solar and wind couldn’t fully cover Germany’s industrial energy demands. 

Germany now has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. As a result, companies such as BASF and Volkswagen have scaled back their operations or moved production abroad.

By 2024, even die-hard supporters of the green transition had to admit that industrial giants were packing their bags. A Handelsblatt editorial asked flatly: “Can Germany still be saved from deindustrialization?”

* But not her only damaging legacy. As Jim Geraghty tweeted a decade ago:

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll 57

AGREED. BUT IT WAS ALWAYS TEMPORARY DUTY, AND ELON HAS BIGGER FISH TO FRY.

Posted at 8:02 am by Glenn Reynolds 40

NO LESS THAN I’D EXPECT FROM NPR:

Posted at 8:02 am by Glenn Reynolds 65

THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR: Bowser to replace D.C. Streetcar with ‘next generation streetcar.’ It’s a bus.

After less than a decade of operation, the D.C. Streetcar is set to be phased out and replaced by an electric bus that Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) called a “next generation streetcar” when she announced the change Tuesday.

Funding for the streetcar ends after two more years in Bowser’s budget plan. City Administrator Kevin Donahue said at the announcement that the new streetcar would be “essentially buses that utilize” the streetcar system’s existing cables for power. It would make it possible “to more nimbly and quickly expand the streetcar line out beyond where we currently are,” he said.

Local leaders have been pushing buses as the future of the city and regional transportation network, a lower-cost alternative to rail in a time of federal cuts that limit transit funding. The single D.C. Streetcar line, which runs from Union Station to the edge of the RFK Stadium site, took far longer to build than planned.

Former DDOT Director Leif Dormsjo, who helped bring the long-delayed streetcar into service, said “the District and WMATA are cooperating far better than years ago and I’d be encouraged by any future crosstown transit service that has buy-in from Mayor Bowser and GM Randy Clarke.”

A lack of separation from car traffic means double-parkers can block the tracks, making bus service more reliable. After more than a decade and $200 million spent on construction, the streetcar carries a fraction of the number of riders of the express buses that travel the same route.

Unexpectedly! So why didn’t DC simply program a bus route right from the start? Because of the enormous amount of graft that a streetcar system can generate compared to busses: “A transit agency that expands its bus fleet gets the support of the transit operators union. But an agency that builds a rail line gets the support of construction companies, construction unions, banks and bond dealers, railcar manufacturers, electric power companies (if the railcars are electric powered), downtown property owners, and other real estate interests. Rail may be a negative-sum game for the region as a whole, but those concentrated interests stand to gain a lot at a relatively small expense to everyone else.”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 84