SCOTT JOHNSON: After Last Night. “Wyoming and Alaska held primaries yesterday. Pollsters in Wyoming had the direction of the Liz Cheney-Harriet Hageman race for Wyoming’s at-large House seat right. Cheney was going to lose. But was she going to lose by nearly 40 points? Pollsters vastly understated the magnitude of Cheney’s pending loss. She was not merely repudiated. She was crushed.”
THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT IS STARTING TO RACK UP SOME SUCCESSES: It represents shareholders who sue corporations that engage in thoroughly “woke” but plainly illegal activities.
Here’s this week’s success: Each summer, for the past two years, Lowe’s has been conducting an annual small business promotion called “Making It … with Lowe’s.” Small businesses are invited to submit their new products to an in-house “shark-tank” panel. The winner is rewarded with nationwide publicity, inclusion among Lowe’s vendors, and sales through Lowe’s 1,728 locations as well as over its website. The catch: In order to participate, the business owner had to be a racial minority, female, LGBT, disabled, etc. After receiving formal notice from the ACR Project that this arrangement in a violation of Section 1981 (as to race) and an assortment of other laws, Lowe’s initially sounded like it was going to be uncooperative. But when the project was renewed for the summer 2022 under a new name, it was open to small businesses generally. Good.
Next up for the ACR Project: Starbucks and then McDonald’s, JPMorgan Chase, and Dropbox. And plenty more are in the works. It warms my heart to have an organization to push back against corporate wokeness.
The ACR Project also has a few much bigger anti-woke projects in the works. I’ll tell you about those as they materialize.
(Full disclosure: I am chairman of the board, but the bulk of the work is being done by our sole employee Dan Morenoff.)
“SELF-PLAGIARISM” IS A MYTH. YOU CANNOT PLAGIARIZE YOURSELF ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN KIDNAP YOURSELF. Pre-Publication Publications: SSRN And Self-Plagiarism.
Some thoughts of mine on plagiarism, here.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: A Letter to Politifact. “Not one of your statements above is a fact. Each is a highly contestable legal claim, argument, or intuition.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Large Display Kitchen Timer. #CommissionEarned
ROD DREHER: Trans Totalitarianism: Time For Moral Panic.
When I was reporting Live Not By Lies, I talked to a senior physician at a major US hospital in a conservative state. The man only talked to me if I agreed not to use his name. His family emigrated to the West from the USSR when he was a child. Now, he said, he is seeing things that didn’t even exist in the Soviet Union. He told me that at his hospital, the management instructed all the physicians to give to any patient, including children, any gender-transition assistance they asked for — even if it violated the physician’s best judgment about that particular patient. There was no other health care issue in which doctors were told by the hospital to suspend their medical judgment to give a patient what he or she wants. Why do you think that is, reader? When the lawsuits begin, I wonder if “just following orders” will protect doctors?
By the way, this particular physician told me that the HR department at his hospital monitored their social media accounts, looking for wrongthink. He said that if he didn’t have a social media account, that would cause HR to flag him as a potential problem. So he kept his account up, but only put happy-clappy “wellness” things on it. This man is a top doctor at one of the country’s biggest hospitals, and he has to live in that kind of fear. Why doesn’t he quit? Because he has a family, and tuition to pay, and all the usual reasons. The other day in Vienna, I talked to a young Muslim from Canada, a man who works in IT. We agreed that the Canadian government is insane, and that trans ideology is destroying children and families. “Why don’t people stand up?” he said. I asked him if he would stand up, knowing that it would probably cost him his job. He thought for a second, and said, no, he guesses that he wouldn’t.
I understood. This is the condition most people are in. You maybe start to see why there were so few dissidents in the Communist world. It really and truly cost you a lot. Everybody likes to think that they would stand up, but when it comes right down to it, almost everybody conforms.
Rod has written an incredibly important essay and I can’t urge you strongly enough to read the whole thing — and to share it, and to speak up.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: To be fair, it’s not as though they’re learning anything at school anyway.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Kissinger says U.S. is heading aimlessly toward brink of war against Russia and China.
ALL YOU CAN DO IS KEEP GOING: Dancing on the Edge.
BUT IT DOESN’T SIGNAL VIRTUE NEARLY AS MUCH: Ice cream is better for you than granola: surprising snack study.
BECAUSE IT MAKES SENSE: This is the leading MAL-raid theory, shared by many.
THEY CAN NAME THE SPIN-OFFS “TWEEDLE-WOKE” & “TWEEDLE-WOKER”: Daniel Loeb’s Third Point suggests spinning off ESPN after taking stake in Disney.
BEING FAT IS NOT A MORAL FLAW BUT IT IS NO VIRTUE, EITHER: Woman sparks uproar by declaring that being fat is not beautiful.
What she actually said, though, is that it’s not okay to be fat. I’d like her to take a flying leap. Like all the skinny minnies who assume everyone’s metabolism is like theirs, I’d like her to consider she might be wrong.
THEY’D BETTER LEARN TO SWIM OR THEY’LL SINK LIKE A STONE: The Mar-a-Lago Wave.
SMILING WHEN YOU SAY THIS WON’T SAVE YOU: You’re Un-American.
THIS IS THE SORT OF THING THAT CALLS FOR NUREMBERG TRIALS: Report: 44 Percent of Pregnant Women in Pfizer Trial Lost Their Babies; FDA and CDC Recommended Jabs For Expectant Mothers Anyway.
Genocide isn’t somehow more acceptable if done for profit and to steal an election.
And before anyone kicks, I had six years of infertility. If this had happened to me when I finally got pregnant, they’d have taken two lives. Do you know how many of those women were in the same position? To all the *ssholes who hate people: Prove it. Go first. Leave the rest of us alone.
NO. ONLY CIVILIZATION: Green Fascists Are Destroying the World.
I PERSONALLY NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE INCLUSION OF THE T IN THAT: Trans Activists Shout Down 80-year-old Woman Who Spoke Out Against Biological Male In Women’s Changing Room.
BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE! Liz Cheney Goes Down In Defeat, Primary Called Soon After Polls Closed.
What will she learn? Nothing.
I’LL BELIEVE IN ACADEMIC FREEDOM WHEN THE UNIVERSITIES DO: The double-edged sword of “academic freedom”.
August 16, 2022
WELL, THERE’S NO DEMOCRAT-MANUFACTURED “CRIME” THAT WOULD DO THAT, WHICH IS ALL WE’VE SEEN SO FAR: WaPo’s Catherine Rampell: Is there no crime Trump could commit that would lose him GOP support?
And they hate that they can’t manufacture stuff that will cause GOP voters to flinch anymore.
UPDATE: In a brilliant display of modesty, Cheney not-so-subtly compares herself to Lincoln:
Liz Cheney: "Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and House before he won the most important election of all…” pic.twitter.com/3bIFVv2Ch0
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 17, 2022
(Which makes sense, since the Lincoln Project could be a future destination.)
ABOUT TIME: Germany: Finally Facing Energy Reality.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, CHAIRMAN XI: China is facing a real estate bust.
WALTER DURANTY: THE NEXT GENERATION. NYT Cuts Ties With Reporter Who Called For ‘Killing,’ ‘Burning’ Jews ‘Like What Hitler Did.’
The New York Times has cut ties with a fixer in the Gaza Strip after his Facebook posts calling Jews “the children of dogs” and expressing support for the late Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler resurfaced.
Fady Hanona has worked with multiple major news outlets to aid their reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hanona was listed as a contributor in six of the NYT’s eight stories written on the latest conflagration between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group in the Gaza Strip.
The NYT apparently ended its relationship with Hanona on Friday, according to The Times Of Israel. The fixer has a history of making anti-Semitic statements, and the media watchdog Honest Reporting uncovered a slew of Hanona’s Facebook posts in which he called for “killing” and “burning” Jews “like Hitler did,” according to translations of the posts preserved by Honest Reporting. The date of the post is unclear.
I hear the local AP office might be hiring, if Hanona is looking for his next gig…
THE DEMOCRATS’ ‘INFLATION REDUCTION ACT’* BETRAYS THE PEOPLE PROGRESSIVES CLAIM TO CARE ABOUT:
President Biden signed the “Inflation Reduction Act” into law on Tuesday, a behemoth tax-and-spending plan ostensibly intended to reduce inflation, grow the economy, and address climate change. Progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are already celebrating this major political victory. But if they were honest with themselves, progressives would admit that while it might be a political success, the actual details of this legislation betray the working-class people they claim to care about.
First and foremost, experts almost unanimously agree that the “Inflation Reduction Act” does absolutely nothing to reduce inflation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the legislation will have a “negligible” impact on inflation in 2022, and by 2023, “inflation would probably be between 0.1 percentage point lower and 0.1 percentage point higher under the bill.”
In the same vein, an analysis from the Wharton School of Business warns that the behemoth spending bill would have an impact on inflation that’s “statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
Even Sanders himself admitted that this bill will “have a minimal impact on inflation,” although he nonetheless voted for it.
Curiously transformed by the media, even before it passed as, “Democrats’ Climate and Health Bill.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission will carry 2 water-seeking cubesats.
A CHOICE, NOT AN ECHO: Greg Gutfeld and Stephen Colbert Late-Night Battle Reaches Its Apex.
Gutfeld described his competitors thusly when commenting on the launch of his new show in March 2021: “They’re as bland as string cheese and not nearly as appetizing. It’s the same jokes, the same assumptions, probably the same writers, all reading the same columns from the same hacks in the New York Times.”
The just-canceled Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, which aired on TBS, took that late-night mandate to the extreme, stating outright that its purpose was to “educate” and “empower” viewers with its liberal activism.
Bee’s most famous line from the show, “Ivanka Trump is a feckless c**t,” didn’t come off as empowering, so she was forced to apologize for it. But she still made time to set aside many a segment to lecture on the importance of a “woman’s right to choose.” After the Supreme Court declined to end Texas’ law empowering citizens to sue those who provided abortions, she said, “This was just the latest partisan abuse of the court’s shadow docket.”
Gutfeld’s show sounds quite different. Everything is over the top and absurd. He has no loyalty or special affinity for anyone; everyone is subject to being mocked and satirized. This is especially so because, as a libertarian, he doesn’t fit comfortably into either major political party. And his libertarianism allows him to look at the world with plenty of cynicism.
In response to the news last week of the cancellation of Bee’s show, he said: “As you know, TBS canceled the late-night show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Actually, I’ll bet Kat’s salary you didn’t know. But if you saw it, you’d wonder: if that’s Samantha Bee, I’d hate to see Samantha C, D, or F.”
He continued: “Its ratings were pretty bad but slightly higher than my colonoscopy and that’s only because I do my own. Oh, it’s easy. All you need is a flashlight, a rib spreader, and the flexibility of Gabby Douglas.”
In a world where the every other late-night talk show is, as Stephen Miller likes to say, “group therapy for liberals,” it helps to offer a product that actually satirizes everyone.
IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE WILL BE A SITH LORD FOR 15 MINUTES: NBC Now: Donald Trump Is Darth Vader! NBC in 2011: Dick Cheney Is Vader!
THE ONION: Dick Cheney Launches Last-Minute Invasion Of Wyoming To Bolster Daughter’s Reelection.
We’ll find out soon enough how successful it was: Live Results: Primaries in Wyoming, ‘Top Four’ Primaries in Alaska.
I’VE BEEN BLOGGING ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS: Scientists Gave Young Mice The Blood of Old Mice. Then Things Got Weird.
In a new experiment, young mice briefly experienced signs of old age when scientists infused them with the blood of older mice. A similar aging effect occurred when human cells were immersed in the plasma of older individuals.
The young mice – aged three months and all male – were given a blood transfusion from an older mouse, aged 22-24 months. The younger mice were then tested for muscle strength to see whether the old blood created the effect of tissue aging.
Compared to a control group (young mice who received a blood transfusion from another young mouse), the mice that received blood from an old mouse had “decreased maximal twitch force and significantly shorter rates of force development and relaxation during contractions”, the researchers reported.
The mice were tested for their physical endurance on a treadmill at baseline and seven days after the blood infusion. (Mice that refused to run were stimulated by a puff of air that kept them running until they were exhausted.)
Mice that received old blood became fatigued faster and ran a shorter distance on the treadmill than the control group.
These mice also had biomarkers for kidney damage and evidence of liver aging.
When older mice were given younger blood in this experiment, lipids and fibrosis and fatigue declined and muscle endurance increased.
It appears that the problem has more to do with toxic products of aging in old blood than with some youth elixir in the young blood: “The researchers hypothesized that cells from older mice were releasing a ‘senescence-associated secretory phenotype’ (SASP) that promoted aging, like muscle weakness, loss of endurance, and tissue damage.”
HMM: CDC changes guidance after dog contracts monkeypox from owners. “In this case, a 4-year-old Italian greyhound developed lesions and tested positive for monkeypox 12 days after its owners first showed symptoms. The owners are two male partners who live together but were not sexually exclusive. They routinely allowed their pooch to snooze in their bed. The couple began having symptoms of monkeypox a few days after sleeping with other partners. Both men said once their symptoms started they’d been careful to prevent their dog from coming into contact with other people or pets, CBS News reported.”
LIVE RESULTS: Primaries in Wyoming, ‘Top Four’ Primaries in Alaska.
THEY’RE EASY TO SPOT — THE ONES WITH THE CLEANING SOLUTION TASTE BETTER: 5,760 cases of Capri Sun have been recalled after being contaminated with cleaning solution.
OUT ON A LIMB: Bruce Springsteen does not care about you.
Many jilted Bruce Springsteen fans were still fuming Thursday morning, and for good cause. As some of The Boss’s 2023 U.S. concert dates went on sale Wednesday, prospective buyers were met with massive sticker shock — floor seats skyrocketing to more than $4,000 each retail, due to Ticketmaster’s “Official Platinum” dynamic pricing model, which allows costs to fluctuate based on supply and demand.
After my story reporting the unruly price hikes published Wednesday, I received dozens of emails from irate fans, most of whom repeated the same sentiment: Springsteen, the artist who has defined his career by singing about working-class and disenfranchised Americans, has forgotten his fans. They mirrored the notes I was sent in 2017, when “Springsteen on Broadway” tickets climbed to $850 each for orchestra seats.
As Christian Toto adds, “Springsteen’s devotion to the Democrats is part of the problem. New polling shows that middle class voters are switching to the GOP as progressive policies pummel Joe and Jane Sixpack. The rock legend, who campaigned hard for President Joe Biden, indirectly brought hardship to countless Americans facing soaring gas prices and shocking inflation rates. That’s a political miscalculation, but an apology would be nice.”
Obviously, that’s not going to happen, but whenever a candidate Bruce backs gets into the Oval Office, hard economic times aren’t far behind.
AS WITH OBAMA, THE PROBLEM ISN’T THAT SHE’S BLACK, BUT THAT SHE’S TERRIBLE: “I would never, ever say that I regret supporting the first Black woman vice president, ever. But the disappointment is real.”
But, as with Obama, her blackness caused people to overlook her terribleness until it was too late.
TDS REIGNS SUPREME: Trump is still scrambling the minds of the elites.
One of Trump’s greatest gifts has always been his ability to make his political enemies match him flaw for flaw in a race to the bottom. But Trump has never mattered as much as who he is supposed to speak for – an abandoned and demoralised multiracial working class, whose communities and families have been destroyed by the elites of both parties, and is viewed by those same elites with nothing but smug condescension.
To many of those people, there is something inevitable about the FBI targeting Trump over what might turn out to be a red herring. Because they can imagine that happening to them – not for having access to classified documents, but for holding the wrong kinds of views in the eyes of the liberal media elites, who sneer at them day in and day out.
Instead of trying to understand these people – who were once the Democrats’ base – liberal elites choose to mock and dehumanise them. As Obama adviser Ben Rhodes tweeted last week as the raid became public news: ‘The strangest thing about this epoch of American history will always be that tens of millions of grown-ups decided to form a cult-like devotion to, of all available people, Donald Trump.’
Apparently, for the left, the working class traded in clinging to their guns, Bibles and bigotries for clinging to Trump. How childish it was of these alleged grown-ups to have voted for someone who promised to overhaul NAFTA – and then did so. Who promised to stem illegal immigration – then did so. Who promised to get unemployment down – and then did.
So often, when you scratch at the pundit class’s claims to ‘expertise’, this is what you’ll find lurking just beneath the surface: a smirking condescension towards those with different views and different interests. And yet those very same grown-up experts are the ones who believed in the ‘pee tape’.
Related: The Elite Panic of 2022. “What terrifies elites is the loss of their cultural monopoly in the face of a foretold political disaster. They fear diversity of any kind, with good cause: to the extent that the public enjoys a variety of choices in cultural products, elite control will be proportionately diluted. Our cultural monolith, never popular, is today pounded by crosscurrents that undermine its solidity. Alongside the vast progressive choir, quieter voices—conservative, libertarian, religious, none-of-the-above—could soon arise, leaving our culture more fractured, more divided, and more representative of the nation as a whole. If that were to occur, sullen elites will point to 2022’s springtime of discontent, and remark, with typical vehemence, that their panic was fully justified.”
JOHN NOLTE: Kamala’s Husband’s Motorcade Caught Blocking Handicap Spots.
As someone who needs a handicap spot for my wife, it is beyond frustrating to see people parked in those spots who don’t need them. It’s not the close proximity to the store as much as the extra space needed to set up the walker or wheelchair. That’s what makes those spaces so necessary. And although we have all the necessary credentials, I don’t use that space unless we need it. We park in a normal spot if my wife isn’t exiting the car. Of course, when alone, I never use it—which is illegal anyway.
It’s the arrogance and hypocrisy of these people that’s so galling. Democrats seem to believe that if they profess to care about something, they can abuse it. Democrats claim to care about racial minorities, and yet Democrats are openly racist. Democrats claim to care about women’s rights, and yet they are openly sexist. Democrats claim to care about the handicapped, unless it might inconvenience their jaunt into Whole Foods.
Or to put it another way: ‘Grab [That Leftist] Privilege And Ride It Home, Cowboy!’: Harris Faulkner Blows Up After 2nd Gentleman Blocks Handicapped Parking.
FASTER? PLEASE! American Airlines’ Overture Order Boosts Boom Supersonic Backlog. “American Airlines has announced plans to acquire up to 60 Boom Supersonic Overture airliners, overtaking United Airlines as the biggest customer yet for the in-development Mach 1.7 transport.”
OUT SOON: The Elephant in the Room: Donald Trump and the Future of the Republican Party. I have a chapter titled “Donald Trump and America’s New Class War.”
John Hinderaker of Powerline was a contributor, too.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Wake Up! 2022 Is More Important Than 2020, and I Don’t Just Mean the Elections. “There aren’t any lefty riots taking place at the moment, but my Spidey sense tells me something way more sinister is afoot.”
READER FAVORITE: SHARPAL 191H Pocket Kitchen Chef Knife Scissors Sharpener. #CommissionEarned
KEEP LOADING UP THOSE BUSES AND SENDING THEM NORTH: NYC moving migrants into famed luxury Times Square hotel. “Mayor Eric Adams plans to convert the Row NYC — formerly known as the Milford Plaza and located in pricey tourist-packed Times Square — into an intake center and shelter for as many as 600 migrant families amid the city’s spiraling homelessness crisis, three sources familiar with the matter said.”
“Spiraling homeless crisis.”
GOOD. NOW BUILD MORE. California to consider keeping last nuclear plant open.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: A Response to Professor Kevin Jon Heller’s “Norway Murders Freya the Walrus.” “I suppose there is another possibility. Heller’s blog post is not indicative of prejudice. And, it is not an attempt to persuade. Rather, it is an attempt at self-identification to other members of the Elect. Heller is identifying himself to other similarly minded people as one who deeply cares; he has his heart and mind in the right place. Moreover, he wants other similar thinking individuals to know he is one of them. That would be why his relying on unsupported stereotypes is OK—because he is not trying to change future policy and he is not really trying to persuade those thinking differently from what he thinks. That might be the explanation. But it is not a good approach for an academic to take.”
It is, however, a very common approach.
UPDATE: From the comments: “Ultimately power is all liberals can value, because it’s the only thing that can force changes that other people don’t want.”
And the point isn’t forcing change. It’s forcing change that other people don’t want. Making people do things they don’t want to do is the only source of joy the left has.
I BLAME RENAISSANCE S.U.V.s: The European Climate Megadrought – Which Happened 482 Years Ago.
YOU GET MORE OF WHAT YOU SUBSIDIZE: City gives $150K to start Safe Parking program for Denverites living in their vehicles.
HOW IT STARTED: Joe Biden: I’m going to ‘shut down the virus’, not the US.
—The Grauniad, October 23, 2020.
How it’s going: First lady Dr. Jill Biden tests positive for Covid-19.
—CNN, today.
TRUST THE SCIENCE, APPEASE THE GODS! Pelosi: Biden-Manchin climate bill will appease ‘angry’ Earth: ‘Mother Earth gets angry from time to time, & this legislation will help us address all of that.’
How about we throw a few congressional leaders into a volcano just to be safe.
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR CHEVY SUBURBANS! Climate Change May Finally Reveal Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and Other Cryptids.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Methamphetamine use propels drug overdoses in rural America, study finds.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: As DC Plans to Ban 40% of Black Teens From School, Mayor Rejects DC COVID-19 Vaccine Numbers. “In response to a question from The Daily Signal about how 40% of black school aged children were unvaccinated, Bowser responded, ‘I don’t think that that number is correct. We have a substantially few fewer number of kids that we have to engage with vaccination.'”
“Engage with vaccination” is the new “mandate.” Update your Newspeak dictionaries accordingly.
GOODER AND HARDER, NYC: Rents for One-Bedroom Apartments in Manhattan Hit a Record High of $5,100 in July. Here’s Why.
I ASSUME THAT’S ENOUGH TIME TO SCAN WHATEVER THEY WANT: DOJ Admits FBI Over-Collected Trump Docs, Will Give Back Passports and Privileged Docs in the ‘Next Two Weeks.’
SAVE YOUR EYES WHILE DRIVING: Rand McNally 2023 Large Scale Road Atlas. #CommissionEarned
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: A Constitutional Crisis Is Just What Merrick Garland Ordered. “Merrick Garland’s ‘runaway train’ creating a constitutional crisis — just to stop Trump — is the big crazy on Insanity Wrap.”
Plus:
- Festival organizers shut down little girl’s lemonade stand
- Scottish government officially puts the “men” in “menstruate”
- The automaker bailout that dare not speak its name
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
THE FLASH STAR EZRA MILLER SEEKING TREATMENT FOR ‘COMPLEX MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES:’
“The Flash” star Ezra Miller says they are seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues.”
In a statement provided to Variety by a representative of the actor, Miller broke their silence about the troubling behavior that they have exhibited in recent years, which has led to a series of legal issues and assault and abuse allegations. Miller also apologized for their actions.
“Having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, I now understand that I am suffering complex mental health issues and have begun ongoing treatment,” Miller says. “I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. I am committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe and productive stage in my life.”
He’s not the only one with “complex mental heath issues,” as can be spotted by the many instances of “they” and “their” in the above Variety article. As Jim Treacher asked last month: Why Should I Use Ezra Miller’s Preferred Pronouns?
RICH LOWRY: Merrick Garland looks set to indict Trump — despite his glaring conflict of interest.
It’d be one thing if Trump had shot someone on Fifth Avenue — a clean, no-doubt crime that wouldn’t require any novel theories or difficult-to-probe contentions about his state of mind to prosecute.
In contrast, Trump’s Jan. 6 offenses involve alleged crimes like obstructing Congress or defrauding the United States that are going to involve tricky questions about his motives and where the legitimate exercise of his powers ends and the supposed criminality begins.
Needless to say, the country is not prepared to adjudicate such questions in a calm, high-minded manner. It will be the O.J. Simpson trial meets the Hiss-Chambers case, with a presidential race not in the background but very much in the foreground.
The fact of the matter is that while Trump’s moral blameworthiness for Jan. 6 is not in doubt, his legal culpability is. It’s easy to write an op-ed or say on cable TV that Trump incited an insurrection. As a legal matter, though, Trump didn’t come close to crossing the line to incitement, which has very specific and high standards under law.
Even his infamous Georgia phone call looks different on the close reading it would get as part of any court case — by the end of the call, his lawyers were only asking that the secretary of state’s office tell them why their count of suspected fraudulent votes was off.
In an environment of ever-spiraling political conflict, it’s difficult for anyone to exercise forbearance — to realize the most emotionally satisfying course isn’t necessarily the correct one and to be constrained by the public interest, even if that enrages his or her own side.
Merrick Garland can still err on the side of statesmanship. He looks set, though, to choose the abyss.
Related: Trump deserves the Hillary treatment. The FBI has once again put the country in a no-win situation.
More: The Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal. What went around [last] Monday will come around hard for the Democrats when Republicans control the Justice Department and FBI.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Contrary to Rich Lowry, I don’t think that Trump is even morally responsible for January 6, which I also think has been wildly overblown, especially against the 2020 background of government-sanctioned riots in cities across the country.
OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED PROTECTION RACKET: BLM-Themed Groups Are Still Getting Paid Not to Burn Madison, Wisconsin.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: Berkeley co-op Person of Color Theme House bans white guests from common spaces.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CRIMEA EDITION): Moscow admits sabotage caused blast at military depot in Crimea this morning.
NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST HERE: Can you guess which Squad member was expanding her rental property inventory at the same time she was pushing for federal landlord subsidies?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: So… What Caliber Rosary Are You Packing? “Full disclosure: I have two rosaries on my desk and they just happen to be on a shelf with some knives and a handgun. That was purely a coincidence but thanks to the paste-eater at The Atlantic, I might start playing it up and give his tiny mind another Roman Catholic prayer warrior to be afraid of because he’s an emotionally weak blithering idiot.”
FROM MY COLLEAGUE BRAD AREHEART: The Top 100 Law Reviews: A Reference Guide Based on Historical USNWR Data.
RAUNCHY, BUT NOT WRONG: ‘Ask your kids’: Kari Lake says Trump and DeSantis have ‘BDE’.
FASTER, PLEASE: The Covid Reckoning Is Coming.
If Republicans retake the House next year, they should dedicate themselves to a full accounting of where this money went. Much of it did not find its way to the people who needed it. This spring, the Labor Department estimated that “at least” $163 billion in “overpayments” went to both legitimate recipients of unemployment benefits and fraudsters. The Paycheck Protection Act, which provided forgivable loans to businesses adversely affected by the pandemic, was described by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz as an “invitation” to defraud the government. “What didn’t happen was even minimal checks to make sure that the money was getting to the right people at the right time,” he said. That program has disbursed roughly $800 billion, about half of which has been forgiven.
And that’s just the unintended misuse of pandemic-related relief. What about the intended squandering of this taxpayer-funded largess? The Republican Study Committee’s review of where some of these funds were supposed to go is just as enraging as the abuse of those funds: “tree equity work,” environmental justice “boot camps,” “safe smoking kits,” and syringes for using illicit narcotics, refurbishing a minor-league baseball stadium in New York, upping the prize money at Arizona horse-racing tracks, and providing public-school staff with instruction in “high-need topics” like “implicit bias” training and “restorative practices.” As a Department of Education document averred, the pandemic was a perfect time to engineer a “culture shift” in America’s schools.
This investigative work is only one element of a comprehensive retrospective on the pandemic. Americans should confront the impulses that led governments to close houses of worship, abrogate the rights of property owners, and draft private enterprise into the work of law enforcement in what were patently obvious violations of the Constitution. There should be hearings into the conduct of teachers’ unions and into school boards in the major metropolitan areas that clung to school closures long after the terrible consequences for young people’s mental health and educational advancementwere known. And what connection was there between the engineered breakdown of society and the eruption of social tensions culminating in some of the costliest rioting the country has ever seen?
The public health apparatus’s reluctance, throughout this miserable event, to meet the public where it lives has become a cliché. They won’t budge, and the country is moving on without them. But moving on is impossible in the absence of a thorough reckoning. The Covid pandemic already seems unlikely to be “forgotten” by history like the outbreak of Spanish Influenza a century ago. Unlike our forebears, we marinate in our trauma. It’s incumbent on this generation to establish for posterity what went wrong over the last two and a half years, if only so that we will never do this again.
Indeed. Much more like this, please: The Elite Panic of 2022.
THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Hysterical Reinhart Meme Goes Viral After Twitter Ban.
THE PRESS DOESN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS BECAUSE IT’S BAD FOR DEMOCRATS: ‘A Nation in Anguish’: One Year After Biden’s Disastrous Withdrawal From Afghanistan.
YES, AND ALTHOUGH THEY PRIDE THEMSELVES ON THEIR INTELLECT THEY AREN’T ESPECIALLY BRIGHT OR KNOWLEDGEABLE: “Highly educated metropolitan elites have become something of a self-enclosed Brahmin class.”
Plus: “Why was the trigger pulled on the search? Wasn’t it about a fear that Trump’s 2024 momentum was getting out of control? They just misjudged how people would react to the Mar-a-Lago raid. Now, I suppose they need to try to say, the raid was entirely nonpolitical, just following normal procedure, without any thought for whether it would increase Trump’s power, which, unfortunately, it did.”
Unexpectedly!
Also: “Brooks is still holding out hope of containing the Trump monster. The man must be put in a cage! It’s the only way. But it’s this overreach that puts you and your highly educated metropolitan elites in an ever-worse position to do the one thing that you need to do: Be better than him and win the contest!”
Hypothesis: They’re not trying to be better than him because they know they can’t.
And: “No honorable way but we absolutely need to make sure that the enemy is defeated? If Trump wafted those 2 ideas, the self-enclosed Brahmin class would be accusing him of fomenting insurrection.”
They seem to want a civil war, given how hard they’re working at provoking one.
Plus, from the comments: “And this is the miscalculation that the Feds made in this ridiculous stunt. Many people who have mocked Trump supporters for believing he has been wrongfully pursued by the ‘Deep State’ for the past six years (initial crime was beating HRC), are starting to think, ‘Hey, they may have a point there’.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: New Congressional Report: U.S.-Trained Afghan Special Forces Forced to Flee to Iran: They could divulge sensitive U.S. military training and intelligence to Tehran, a U.S. lawmaker warns.
Related: One Year Later, Afghanistan Is a Land of Shrugs and Sadness.
Greatest unforced military/diplomatic error in U.S. history.
GODSPEED: NASA fast-tracks Artemis I Moon rocket launch. “NASA announced today that the engineers and technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida completed the final testing and checkouts of the Artemis I Moon rocket, making the new rollout date as soon as 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, August 16 ahead of the targeted August 29 launch.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Seat Cushion Pillow for Office Chair. #CommissionEarned
INTERESTING POLIO FACTS:
The Salk vaccine, generally known as the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), developed first and used exclusively in the US since 2000, is incredibly effective (99%+) at preventing paralytic poliomyelitis but does not convey mucosal immunity, and therefore does little to reduce transmission of the poliovirus. . . .
The live attenuated Oral Polio Vaccine, developed by Dr. Albert Sabin, is cheap, easy (taken as a few drops of liquid by mouth), and remarkably effective both at preventing infection in the gut as well as severe neurological disease, but has an Achilles heel: it can mutate back into a virulent form of polio!
So when you blame the “unvaccinated” for the spread of polio, you’re wrong. One vaccine doesn’t stop the spread, the other does — except when it causes the spread.
Plus: “We really don’t know how long the immunity from polio vaccination lasts.”
That’s encouraging. I had both kinds of vaccine as a kid, and have always assumed lifetime immunity. Maybe not!
NOTHING NEW IN MATERIALISTS’ BASHING INTELLIGENT DESIGN: It turns out those who insist material processes alone account for the universe have been ripping for more than two millennia those who suggest a designer behind design, according to Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute. In other words, the debate was hot and heavy long before the Scientific Revolution.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: We’ve Seen This Kind of Denial From the White House Before. “You know, the President and the White House learned about this FBI search from public reports. We learned, just like the American public did yesterday, and we did not have advance notice of this activity.”
Athena Thorne: European ‘Hunger Stones’ Blow Up Key Climate Narrative. “When you see me, cry.”
Yours Truly: It’s Official: Biden Trashed the Economy. “The Empire State Manufacturing Index just collapsed to the third lowest level ever measured.”
FROM DAVID CARRICO: The Blood Is the Life. #CommissionEarned
Chaim Caan was just out for a night of fun, blowing off some steam the way a young man will. After the better part of a year spent in COVID lockdowns, he was ready to let his hair down at a night club. But the fascinating young woman who he encountered that night left him with something to remember her by: she turned Chaim into a vampire.
Soon, Chaim finds himself thrust into a weird underground world of mysticism and enchantment as he navigates life as the newly undead, trying to reconcile his beliefs as an Orthodox Jew with the new reality that has been thrust upon him.
He is forced to deal with a lot of change: to his body, to his mind, to his perceptions, to his relationships, and even to his world. He finds himself in parts of the world he had never dreamed of being in, and he finds himself doing things that he had never envisioned being a part of his life.
And if he can come to terms with these changes, this mild-mannered young man might just find himself a hero.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Shrinking of Higher Ed.
Nearly 1.3 million students have disappeared from American colleges during the Covid-19 pandemic, raising alarms that the enrollment emergency projected to arrive a few years from now is already here.
High-school seniors uninterested in studying online chose to defer. Working parents strained by the demands of full-time pandemic child care put their studies on hold. International students couldn’t get visas. Those in majors with hands-on practicums or lab work found they couldn’t register for courses required for their degrees.
It’s not coming back as expected, either.
NEW BOOK: Science in an Age of Unreason.
THE RACISTS SELF-IDENTIFY: Today’s blacklisted American: White teachers blacklisted by union contract in Minnesota.
LEAVE IT TO THE PROS? SCREW THAT – THIS IS AMERICA: High school football players hailed as heroes for saving woman trapped in car crash.
THE PEOPLE KNOW. THEY KNOW WHO THE ENEMY IS: Biden Administration’s Successful War on American Energy Industry.
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