AID AND COMFORT: New York Times Co. Sells Access To Iranian Oil Official: Sponsors Of London Conference Are Offered Introductions, VIP Treatment. “The news that the Times is selling $4,000 tickets for face time with Iranian oil decision makers at a fancy London hotel is likely to trigger criticism at a moment when a reporter of the Washington Post, Jason Rezaian, is languishing in a Tehran prison where conditions are known to be considerably harsher than at the Park Lane.”

CHANGE: Sessions: U.S. has 6X as many immigrants as Latin America, 48M vs 7M.

New statistics show that the United States has become the world’s magnet for migrants.

The figures provided by a Senate subcommittee show that the U.S. has six times as many immigrants as all of Latin America, even though the U.S. has half the population size of Latin America. That breaks down to 7.8 million in 21 Latin nations to 45.8 million in the U.S.

The result is that the U.S. also provides more benefits and welfare to migrants that any other nation, according the Senate subcommittee on immigration and the national interest, chaired by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions.

“The United States resettles the largest number of migrants in the world, and provides more funding and benefits than any other country in the world and any other region in the world. These are the facts,” said the subcommittee.

“The U.S. contains about 4.5 percent of global population but hosts about 20 percent of the world’s global migrants. As a matter of comparison, Latin America contains nearly twice as much of the world’s population – more than 8.5 percent – but houses only about 3.35 percent of the world’s migrants. While the United States takes in one-fifth of global migrants, no other nation on earth has taken in more than one-twentieth,” it added.

The stunning statistics come as the country is resettling and housing thousands more migrants from Latin America who arrived this year and considering accepting thousands of Syrian refugees.

Most impacted: Poor unemployed people already in America.

WELL, YES: Democrats: Sanders unelectable.

The surging popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders has done little to alleviate the chief concern that Democrats have about his presidential bid: Namely, that he’s simply unelectable on a national stage.

The Vermont Independent has quickly closed the gap on frontrunner Hillary Clinton in national polls, while overtaking the former State secretary in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Supporters say his rising momentum and populist message will carry him to the White House.

But Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, has spent a career operating largely from the left-most fringes of the Democratic Party with which he caucuses, stirring worry that he simply couldn’t compete against a Republican perceived as a more establishment figure.

“No matter how well you think of Bernie — and all of us do — … when the politics of it all hits the road, I don’t feel — and I feel most members don’t feel — that he can be elected,” said Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.).

Nothing says “fresh face for the Democratic Party” like a guy who resembles Montgomery Burns. And whose policy ideas are over 50 years old.

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL: EUROPE GETS BORDERS. “European leaders have generally mocked Orbán for his provincialism, then denounced him for his immorality, and then pursued his policies to the letter.”

NOTHING APPEALS TO CUSTOMERS LIKE ENTITLED THUGGISHNESS: Cabbie To Uber Passenger: ‘Take a Real Taxi You F***ing Cheapskate.’

Related: “I have totally forgotten grumpy yellow cab drivers and dirty NYC subways in my trip this time. I just rely on @Uber.”

REPEAL THE HOLLYWOOD TAX CUTS: Yelling ‘Cut!’ for Moviemaking Tax Breaks: States keep discovering that the dreamed-of benefits don’t materialize.

Lights, camera, tax credits! Apparently that’s how movies are shot in the 21st century. Hardly any major box office hit in recent years—from “Iron Man 3” to “The Hunger Games” to “Jurassic World”—made it to the silver screen without a hand from taxpayers. Yet negative reviews of these programs keep rolling in. North Carolina and Florida are examples that illustrate how difficult it is to let this corporate welfare fade to black.

Film tax incentives first took the stage in Louisiana in 1992. By 2009, 44 states and Puerto Rico had such programs. Film tax credits are expected to cost state taxpayers $1.8 billion this year, according to the Tax Foundation.

Many states offer refundable credits, say, for 20% of production costs. So when studios don’t owe taxes, they receive a cash payment. Other states, such as Georgia and Louisiana, even offer transferrable credits that studios can sell to another company—regardless of industry—seeking to lower its tax bill.

Proponents argue that film tax credits create well-paying jobs for local residents. Some even suggest that the incentives pay for themselves by boosting the economy and increasing government revenues. The Motion Picture Association of America claims: “Pure and simple: film and tax incentives create jobs, expand revenue pools and stimulate local economies.”

But real life is no Hollywood dream. Nearly every independent study has found that these arguments are more fiction than fact. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it best in a 2010 report: “State film subsidies are a wasteful, ineffective, and unfair instrument of economic development.”

No kidding. North Carolina and Florida, where we live, illustrate this reality. Mainly thanks to filming taking place in Wilmington, with its serene marshes, North Carolina began offering film tax credits in 2005. Lawmakers expanded the program in 2010 to cover 25% of a production’s cost up to $20 million, if the production spent at least $250,000 in the state. This cost taxpayers a high of $83.3 million in 2012.

A 2014 study by the North Carolina General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division found that much of this money went down the drain: “For every dollar North Carolina allocates to the state film production credit it loses 54 cents.”

The jobs picture was bleaker. Looking at 2011, the Fiscal Research Division found $30 million in credits created 55 to 70 new jobs with a total payroll of $2 million. State taxpayers forked over between $429,000 and $545,000 a job, and these positions paid an average salary of $36,000 a year. It would be more sensible to give 100 unemployed people briefcases with $100,000 in cash.

Don’t give them any ideas. I wrote about this back in 2013, but states do seem to be catching on. It’s all really about letting state politicos hobnob with Hollywood types, with taxpayer money as bait.

BREAKING NEWS FROM 1969: “Are Democrats and Republicans talking about the same country?”, asks a Washington Post astonished that anyone wouldn’t be enjoying the twilight of the era of Hopenchange.

I found this story much more interesting when it first ran 45 years ago. In December of 1969, Time magazine nominated “The Middle Americans” as their “Man and Woman of the Year:”

The American dream that they were living was no longer the dream as advertised. They feared that they were beginning to lose their grip on the country. Others seemed to be taking over—the liberals, the radicals, the defiant young, a communications industry that they often believed was lying to them*. The Saturday Evening Post folded, but the older world of Norman Rockwell icons was long gone anyway. No one celebrated them: intellectuals dismissed their lore as banality. Pornography, dissent and drugs seemed to wash over them in waves, bearing some of their children away.

* * * * * * *

The gaps between Middle America and the vanguard of fashion are deep. The daughters of Middle America learn baton twirling, not Hermann Hesse. Middle Americans line up in the cold each Christmas season at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall; the Rockettes, not Oh! Calcutta! are their entertainment. While the rest of the nation’s youth has been watching Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, Middle American teen-agers have been taking in John Wayne for the second or third time in The Green Berets. Middle Americans have been largely responsible for more than 10,000 Christmas cards sent to General Creighton Abrams in Saigon. They sing the national anthem at football games—and mean it.

The culture no longer seems to supply many heroes, but Middle Americans admire men like Neil Armstrong and to some extent, Spiro Agnew. California Governor Ronald Reagan and San Francisco State College President S.I. Hayakawa have won approval for their hard line on dissent. Before his death last year, Dwight Eisenhower was listed as the most admired man in the nation—and Middle America cast much of the vote. In death, John Kennedy is also a hero. Ironically, Robert Kennedy had the allegiance of much of Middle America along with his constituency of blacks and the young. Whatever their politics, both Kennedys had an idealism about America, a pride about it to which Middle Americans responded because they shared it.

To place the above “Gorillas in the Mist”-style paragraphs in perspective, Henry Luce, who founded Time magazine in 1923 precisely to appeal to Americans like himself — conservative center-right Americans whom the following decade would see through the New Deal, FDR, and collectivism — had been dead for less than three years when the above copy was written. And yet the gulf between the core subscribers whom Luce courted from the 1920s until he abdicated control over his publishing empire shortly before his death and Luce’s successors was already that large.

And it was never be bridged again by Time, or indeed much of the MSM. As James Lileks wrote a decade ago, when the Washington Post was still astonished that an insufficient number of Americans were swayed by the overwhelming charisma and raw animal sex appeal that is John Kerry, “once upon a time the major media at least pretended that the heart & soul of the country was a porch in Kansas with an American flag. Now it’s the outlands, the Strange Beyond. They vote for Bush, they believe in God, they’d have to drive 2 hours for decent Thai. Who are these people?”

* Gee, where would they get that idea?

GEORGE LEEF ON AUTHORITARIAN THUG JARED POLIS:

My own observation is that Polis has inadvertently shown how little “liberals” care about justice for actual people. Sure, they wail all the time about the supposed injustice of statistical disparities between groups (“It’s so unjust that this group earns more than that group; so unjust that this group has lower SAT scores than that group” and so on), but they are indifferent to palpable injustices that their various crusades inflict on individuals.

Indeed.

21st CENTURY PARENTING: How Can I Convince My 3-Year-Old They’re Transgender?

Dear Jane,

I’ve been in such a state of perpetual turmoil ever since giving birth. My child, pronoun “they”, is now 3-years-old. I have been mired in a heinous state of chronic depression because “they” do not want to play with girl’s toys. It destroys me that “they” might be another white CIS male, and another future agent of the patriarchy. That’s just not the type of lifestyle I can support or agree with. “Their” father has also been deeply despondent over our child’s reluctance to conform to our stance and ideals on gender. My husband identifies as gender neutral, and whenever “Xe” (my husbands current pronoun) witnesses our child playing with toy trucks and trains, it triggers “Xer” so hard that “Xe” crumbles into a quivering pile of inconsolable PTSD jitters.

My question is, how can I persuade my child to blossom into the fabulous transgender individual that I know in my heart “they” truly are? All I’ve ever wanted was a trans child, and the fact that “they” seem so drawn to boys toys and refuse to don the lovely dresses I so painstakingly choose for “them” just crushes my soul. What can I do to make “them” understand the harm that they inflict on our family through their identity as a CIS-gendered white male? Please Jane, help us, it’s tearing our family apart.

Sincerely, Ariana

Ariana, thank you for your touching letter. Truly the phrase, “a mother knows best”, has never been more appropriate than here. No one wants a white, CIS male child, and the people who pretend they do are merely deluding themselves.

But do no fret. There is still time for your child to see the light of femininity. One of the best ways to do this is to deprive them of male clothing, toys, TV programming, ect. If they never know toxic masculinity exist then it cannot tempt and/or hurt them.

Parody? Who can tell anymore?

HOW MANY SJWS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW IN A LIGHTBULB? THAT’S NOT FUNNY: Social-justice warriors can’t take the ‘South Park’ heat.

AND IF IT WEREN’T A GOVERNMENT SAYING THIS: City: Murder victim should have known ‘risks’ of public housing.

INSOMNIA THEATER (IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME EDITION): In 2013, Utah’s Dixie State University refused to recognize a local campus sorority because it used Greek letters in its name. Despite repeated efforts by students and FIRE, Dixie State continued to defend this unconstitutional policy, earning itself a spot on FIRE’s 2013 list of “The 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech.” As best as we can tell, the policy is still in place.

But the news coming out of Dixie State isn’t all bad. This week, Dixie State agreed to settle a First Amendment lawsuit filed by three students after the school refused to approve flyers promoting the students’ Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) group. As part of the settlement, Dixie State agreed to revise the policies targeted by the lawsuit to meet First Amendment standards, to provide training to administrators about the new policies, and to pay $50,000 in damages and attorney’s fees. As the Greeks might say: “Nike!”

COMING SOON TO A COUNTRY NEAR YOU: Shocking NHS postcode lottery for elderly care.

COMING SOON TO A COUNTRY NEAR YOU: Thursday 17th September 2015- The Telegraph: Pancreatic cancer patients denied life-extending drug by spending watchdog.

IS THERE SOMETHING IT CAN’T DO: Coffee stops jet lag by rewinding the body clock – but there’s a catch.  (Apparently yes. “Drinking a double espresso can turn back circadian rhythms by around an hour and could help fight jet lag, but it does depend on the direction of the flight”)

NOT A NEW THING:  Antidepressants raise risk of violence in young people.  And because that’s behind a pay wall, here is substantially the same thing.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Migration crisis creating ‘wave of criminality’ as gangs turn to people-smuggling.

REACHING PEAK VAPID: Range of glamorous dolls aimed at getting girls interested in maths and science go on sale in the UK.  Or, you could, you know, concentrate on training capable students in math and science and stop worrying about what’s between the students’ legs and some imaginary parity.

IT’S ALWAYS NICE to make Twitchy.

DOING JOBS AMERICANS WON’T DO: Martin Roth: Israel – Fighting for the Future of Christianity.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Conceived in Occupy Boston Tent and Disposed in Garbage Bag, Baby Doe Haunts City’s Gimme Culture.

JIM TREACHER: “Listen to the tone of Hillary Clinton’s voice when she was asked about this during the ’08 campaign. You’d think Obama had been accused of molesting children. What’s with the strident, almost panicky insistence that he’s not a Muslim, something he has every right to be as an American?”

Democrats are such Islamophobes. Plus: “Christians are the most backward, misogynist, racist ppl in America, and how dare you suggest Obama isn’t one.”

THE ROLE OF DOGS in home defense.

THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S STUPID AND VICIOUS, MUCH LIKE THE PEOPLE PROMOTING IT. U. of California’s Proposed Statement on Intolerance Is Widely Found Intolerable.