WHAT MAKES AMERICA DIFFERENT? Aussie Nick Adams explains it from the outside on behalf of Prager U:
(I think the clip art model on title card apparently not wearing pants adds to the greatness…)
Archive for 2016
July 4, 2016
REMEMBERING A GRIMLY PROPHETIC JULY 4: On our 50th Fourth of July, Jefferson and Adams died — and Robert Owen announced his malign intentions.
Read the whole thing.
SEASONING STEAK with a power drill.
AND THEN THE AUTHOR IS ASSIMILATED INTO THE BORG AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE: How vegetarians, gluten-frees, grain-frees and other L.A. food tribes ruined my BBQ tradition.
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN WORD ABOUT GLENN REYNOLDS’ CARBON FOOTPRINT: Guests Will Fly Halfway Around the World for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Climate Change Speech.
If only there was a method to view and listen to his speech remotely. Surely there must be top men working in DiCaprio’s industry to invent such a device, no?
As Michael Moynihan tweets, “This is pretty much the most patriotic story ever written.”
USA TODAY/SUFFOLK POLL: Clinton’s Lead Over Trump Narrows To 5 Points. “The nationwide survey shows a sharply polarized electorate that believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, feels less safe living in the United States than they used to, and gives negative ratings to the both presidential candidates.” Are you diggin’ the fundamental transformation yet?
NIGEL FARAGE RESIGNS AS HEAD OF UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY:
It is the second time Farage resigns as the leader of the party, but he says this time it is definite.
Farage said Monday he will retain his seat in the European Parliament to see out the negotiations for Britain’s exit from the EU following the country’s June 23 vote to leave the bloc.
As Jonah Goldberg tweets, “Getting really jealous of the UK. Their politicians accomplish the big things they promised to do and then go away.”
UPDATE: “During the referendum I said I wanted my country back. Now I want my life back.”
IN THE MAIL: From David Weber & John Ringo, March to the Sea.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1152.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: “Minority Wars: Why The Next Ten Years Will Set Everyone Against Everyone.”
DOES THAT INCLUDE GETTING IN THEIR FACES, PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD, OR BRINGING GUNS TO KNIFE FIGHTS? Labor Secretary Rallies Latinos: ‘Cause Good Trouble’ for Immigration Reform.
THERE IS MORE TO A NATION THAN STONEWORK: If You Seek a Monument, Look Around You.
BLUE CIVIL WAR: Pension Mismanagement Hits Blacks Hardest.
One of the under-appreciated tragedies of black history in the United States is that they have tended to win access to employment in certain sectors of the economy just as those sectors were starting to decline—or, as WRM put it several years ago, “blacks often only get to the gravy train when the locomotive is coming to the end of its run.”
Toward the end of the 19th century, when employers had access to mass low-skilled European immigrant labor, blacks were more-or-less shut out of Northern factory jobs, one of the underpinnings of middle class prosperity. Blacks started to make their way into manufacturing by midcentury, but by the 1970s, this sector of the economy had already peaked.Ditto for government employment. A key objective—and success—of the civil rights movement was to grant blacks access to middle-class professional jobs in the civil service. In the 1970s and 1980s, blacks flocked to public sector jobs that provided middle-class wages and strong retirement security. But now state and local finances are starting to deteriorate, burdened by can-kicking legislators and mismanaged pension funds.
A sobering report from the left-wing think tank Demos highlights the degree to which blacks are dependent on public sector pensions, and how disproportionately they will bear the burden of reforms that may be needed to bring public finances back in line.
Another way of looking at it is that blacks were the chosen prey of politicians who made promises they couldn’t keep.
IN A FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED AMERICA, YES. NEXT QUESTION? Yes, the Clintons are Playing Us. But Will They Get Away With It?
OF ROYALTY GOOD AND BAD: Still in England, Roger Simon compares and contrasts Elizabeth II and The Clintons.
As Roger asks, who would you have rule?
IT’S INDEPENDENCE DAY: Origins of the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Rutherford’s ‘Lex, Rex.’ “The point of the title was that the law precedes the king; the monarch must obey the law.”
We seem to have moved beyond that. Part of our fundamental transformation, I guess.
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BREXIT’S COMMON SENSE REBELS: Happy Independence Day, USA. July 4th’s a good day to applaud the British rebels of June 23rd.
The British separation from the European Union of June 23, 2016 doesn’t precisely replicate the American declaration of independence from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. However, Britain’s 21st century rebels and their 18th century American cousins share several provocative and encouraging traits…
WELL, YES: Trump: ‘Only a fool’ thinks the Clinton-Lynch meeting wasn’t arranged.
Donald Trump declared on Twitter on Sunday that the meeting last week between President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch was clearly arranged beforehand, and called it proof that the fix is in regarding the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Hillary Clinton violated federal law by using a private email server while secretary of state.
“Only a fool would believe that the meeting between Bill Clinton and the U.S.A.G. was not arranged or that Crooked Hillary did not know,” Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. . . .
The messages followed a day in which Clinton’s surrogates fanned out throughout the Sunday morning news shows to argue that the meeting between the Lynch and Clinton, which the attorney general herself conceded was a mistake, didn’t in any way taint the investigation and that Lynch should not have to recuse herself from it.
Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movements around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.
What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.
Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.
The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.
And, unfortunately, we have a truly dreadful political class to deal with them.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama Gives Up on Syria. Again:
This deal might be a way for the president to slink out of the White House without having to do more to resolve the Syrian crisis. But it is also a horribly fitting end to years of mistakes and cowardice. When the history of the Syrian civil war is written, there will be plenty of villains and plenty of blame to go around. But by choosing cowardice and placing his trust in Putin, President Obama has earned his share of infamy and then some.
As with those who’ve tried to salvage the wreckage of the Carter administration, in the coming years, the spin from leftwing historians to explain away Obama’s disasters as some sort of ninth-dimensional chess playing will be spectacular to watch.
Related: “We can be overwhelmed by the present. At the time I thought Bill Clinton was an extraordinarily bad man, but Barack Obama has helped me understand how good we had it with Bill Clinton. Not to say that Clinton isn’t the most repugnant, but we now have a larger context within which to judge him. Perhaps Hillary Clinton will lend a similar context to our judgment of Obama. Ah, the uses of history,” Scott Johnson writes at Power Line.