April 23, 2025

April 22, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Sorry for the delay. This got accidentally sked for tomorrow night.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THIS SEEMS RIGHT:

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WELL:

Posted at 7:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HEH. THIS IS SO TYPICAL.

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WHY FIXING EDUCATION IS IMPORTANT:

And at this point, “fixing” will require a lot of demolition work.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WHY, INDEED? Why Does The IRS Need Guns Act. “Disarming Americans is a sore subject around these parts, as it should be, considering the natural right to self-preservation recognized by our Constitution. But, something tells me today’s disarmament discussion may be better received, as this time it is focused on the federal government, specifically the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Republican Representative Barry Moore from Alabama has introduced a bill that seeks to disarm the agency aptly named the Why Does The IRS Need Guns Act.”

Also disarm the EPA and a host of other agencies.

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Top Producer of 60 Minutes Quits, Saying He Lost Independence.

CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said that he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program because he had lost his journalistic independence.

In an extraordinary declaration, Mr. Owens — only the third person to run the program in its 57-year history — told his staff in a memo that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

“So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

“60 Minutes” has faced mounting pressure in recent months from both President Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused the program of “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and its own corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

Don Hewitt, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, John Dickerson, Katie Couric and Scott Pelley ponder Owens’ reasons for leaving and smile: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses A Fight Rigged In His Favor.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MICHAEL WALSH: Fight with Soldiers, Not Lawyers.

When a group of German saboteurs were caught in New York and Florida in June 1942, planning to blow up hydroelectric plants and other loci of American industrial power but ratted out by two of their fellows in Operation Pastorius, President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew exactly what he was not going to do. “I want one thing clearly understood, Francis,” he told his Attorney General, Francis Biddle. “I won’t hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?” Biddle understood: this was war. There would be no civilian “due process.” They would get what was coming to them.

* * * * * * * *

Now we’re fighting saboteurs and infiltrators from our own hemisphere, here on our home turf, “Maryland men.” After Pearl Harbor, FDR went before Congress to declare, “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.”

Now, instead of the chair, our enemies get the best lawyers your money can buy, and laugh in your face.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

APOLITICAL PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG ASKS: Did Joe Biden Photoshop Himself Into an Easter Family Photo?

And the answer is a very likely…No! Joe Biden did not Photoshop himself into an Easter family photo — because Joe Biden’s brain is made of tapioca, and wouldn’t have a clue how to manipulate the program. But somebody in his immediate orbit likely did:

Screenshot
Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

PRE-HISTORY: Human ancestors nearly went extinct 930,000 years ago.

Studying human evolution involves piecing together scattered clues about how we survived against tough odds. One of the biggest mysteries is understanding how large or small ancient human populations were. Typically, scientists rely on fossil records and ancient DNA to investigate these mysteries. But when it comes to periods as distant as the Pleistocene epoch—about a million years ago—such records become rare or nonexistent.

Now, a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science sheds new light on a dramatic event that nearly erased humans from existence. Researchers uncovered evidence that our ancestors survived a population crash that lasted over 100,000 years, leaving just around 1,280 individuals.

Just another reason to become multiplanetary at the earliest possible date.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S EARTH DAY. AGAIN. CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT:

Even the left finds the day more than a little glum just now though that’s because the world hasn’t ended yet. Remember—end-of-the-world doomsday scenarios make environmentalists happy, so when the end of the world fails to arrive on schedule, they get the sads.

Like The New Republic, which [asked] this week [in 2022]:

Remember When Earth Day Used to Be Cool?

A person could be forgiven for being cynical about Earth Day in 2022. Even ExxonMobil celebrates the holiday. . . ExxonMobil doing Earth Day is a lot like arms and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin co-opting International Women’s Day—a holiday which began as a protest of capitalism and war. . .

Many contemporary defenders of the planet despise Earth Day. In fact, at this point the hatred is an annual ritual, observed with headlines like “I’m an Environmental Scientist and I Hate Earth Day,” “I’m an Environmental Journalist and I Hate Earth Day,” and “I’m an Environmentalist and I Hate Earth Day.”

The author’s answer? More “mass protest.” Cue Greta Thunberg.

Well, that was the old Greta Thunberg. The current version is too busy hating Jews to worry about the environment:

Speaking of mixing anti-progress and anti-semitism: Coachella 2025: How the festival’s sustainability efforts inspire Earth Day activism.

Also at Coachella this year:

ExxonMobil “celebrating” “Earth Day” is a classic example of big business learning in the 1990s “that it’s pretty easy being green,” as Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason wrote in 2006:

Ask Bob Langert about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he starts to chuckle. “When we meet the regulators, it’s kind of nice,” says the senior director for social responsibility at the McDonald’s Corporation. “We just got an award from the EPA. When we see the regulators, we always hope it’s because they’re giving us an award.”

* * * * * * * *

The idea of the rich corporate villain gleefully dirtying Mother Earth is powerful and appealing. Children of the 1980s encountered this supervillain in comics, movies, public awareness videos, and science textbooks. Times were good for mandatory recycling, for mandatory emissions reductions, for anything mandatory aimed at restraining corporate polluters.

But in the late ’90s, something peculiar started happening. The men in suits were still middle-aged, round, and white. They were still just as concerned with profit and golf. Very few of them sported tie-dyed attire, aside from the occasional whimsical Jerry Garcia tie. But the men in suits started caring. Or at least acting like they cared. Which, if you ask a spotted owl, is the same thing.

So environmental activists across the nation bought their own ties and started dealing with corporations as almost-equal partners in planet saving. Businesses in turn learned that it’s pretty easy being green.

All the way up to Obama’s crony corporatism and beyond, which helped birth Tesla, which are currently being burned and vandalized by the same side of the aisle that demanded we switch to electric cars in the first place. But apparently not those electric cars. Best to look for something more “ethically sourced,” as the kids on the left like to say:

Related: Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of [2024].

54 years on, to paraphrase the late Kathy Shaidle on Trump as Hitler, I’m already on (at least) my fourth apocalypse:

Flashbacks:

Meanwhile, live look at how they’re celebrating Earthy Day in North Korea:

Exit quote, found via Jim Treacher: “Everybody wants to save the earth; no one wants to help mom do the dishes.” — P.J. O’Rourke.

UPDATE: Like I said, former environmentalists declare Mission Accomplished on Earth Day:

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALLIES: America’s NATO Allies Have Underfunded The Alliance By $827 Billion.

Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty requires NATO members to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” There are legitimate concerns that many nations may not be fully capable of defending themselves, let alone aiding the collective capacity to support one another in conflict.

According to a recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation, America’s NATO allies have collectively underfunded their defense commitments by more than $827 billion. Notable shortfalls include Germany ($249 billion), Italy ($150 billion), and Spain ($150 billion). These shortfalls represent a decade of underinvestment in capabilities and maintenance. The end result is less-capable militaries.

During this period, the U.S. averaged defense spending equivalent to 3.42 percent of GDP, while the average NATO member spent 1.59 percent—less than half as much as the U.S. spent and well below NATO’s 2 percent benchmark first articulated in 2006 and reaffirmed by all members at the 2014 Wales Summit.

Poland, the Baltic states, and (increasingly) the Nordic countries are welcome exceptions.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA: Can Democrats Pivot to the Center?

In a post at the Liberal Patriot, the disaffected Democratic strategist Ruy Texeira notes that it is “magical thinking” to believe that voters will suddenly forget about Democrats’ cultural radicalism and inept governance if the party focuses on class war. Much of Trump’s populist appeal, he observes, comes from working-class resentment of progressive cultural politics—“soak the rich” messaging will do nothing to address it.

But a pivot to the left would have at least one advantage: delaying any reckoning with the party leadership that brought the Democrats to this point. Reading Rhodes’s fulminations against the “rigged” system of the “oligarchic global elite,” it’s easy to forget that these are the words of the man whose identification with Obama was so total that George Packer judged the phrase “mind meld” insufficient to describe it.

It was, after all, the Obama administration that oversaw the rise of the new identity politics and its nationwide implementation through the coercive power of the federal bureaucracy. It was the outgoing Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign that cooked up Russiagate and tried to use the resulting hysteria to consolidate the national security establishment against Trump. It was the Obama and (contrary to myth) Biden administrations that oversaw the tilt in American foreign policy away from Israel and Saudi Arabia and toward Iran, paving the way for the Gaza war that, ironically, ended up inflaming the Left against Biden and serving as an electoral millstone around his neck. And it was the Biden administration that pushed an economic agenda that pundits described as “economic populism” and “social democracy” and inspired regular comparisons of Biden with FDR. That agenda yielded the inflation that voters last November cited as a key reason for giving Democrats the shove.

In the Italian novel The Leopard, set during the nineteenth-century movement for national unification, a young Sicilian nobleman urges his uncle, a powerful conservative landowner allied with the Bourbons, to flip his allegiance to Garibaldi’s nationalists to avoid being caught on the losing side. As the young man explains, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Democratic leadership seems to be thinking similarly. What advocates of the pivot to the left are suggesting, in effect, is a rehash of what they have pushed as party leaders over the past decade and a half—albeit with fresh young faces and “radical” new antiestablishment branding to “meet our moment.” Given the institutional strength of the party, they may succeed. But as Donald Trump proved in 2016, a party exhausted of ideas, with a leadership class sporting a record of failures, makes a prime target for a hostile takeover.

In the past, the left’s ability to pivot on a dime to play smashmouth politics made it astoundingly powerful:

We would see a similar deliberate case of amnesia a decade later: Memo to Paul Krugman and Rep. Van Hollen: My Search Was Not in Vain

In the midst of forgetting many things during 2020’s “Defund the Police” soft-on-crime fever, Joe Biden forgot how aggressive on crime he was in the early 1990s, which was an attempt by the left to play catch-up to the Reagan administration’s tough stance on crime during the 1980s: Biden 1992: My crime bill has so many death-penalty offenses, it does everything but hang people for jaywalking.

But pushing back on a decade’s worth of obsessing over the trans movement, and crafting a foreign policy that doesn’t demonize Israel means pushing back hard on the Democrats’ base. Can Oceania once again declare it has never been at war with Eastasia?

Sure it can! Alex Soros on Why Dems Lost: We Need to Lie Better.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll