DANIEL MITCHELL: Brazil and Mitchell’s Theorem of Societal Collapse. “A nation is doomed when people think it’s okay to steal from their neighbors using the government as a middleman.”
Archive for 2016
January 4, 2016
FLASHBACK: 2007: Australian PM Howard Warns of Obama Danger:
Prime Minister John Howard has launched a broadside against US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, warning his victory could destroy Iraq and prospects for peace in the Middle East.
Mr Howard’s stinging attack against the popular Democrat, who formally launched his bid for the Democratic candidacy overnight, also appears to commit Australian troops to staying in Iraq well into 2008.
Only days after saying Australia’s alliance with the US was about more than his personal friendship with US President George Bush, Mr Howard warned that an Obama victory would be a boost for the terrorists. . . .
“I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for (an) Obama victory,” Mr Howard told the Nine Network.
“If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.”
Well, he nailed that one.
ROGER KIMBALL: Why I Like Antonin Scalia (Part 1 of 678).
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON OFFERS POLITICALLY INCORRECT NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS:
We live in an expanding culture of victimhood fueled by identity politics. Americans are supposedly saved from themselves by a new hipster generation of Silicon Valley zillionaires, socially aware techies, progressive government bureaucrats, crusading liberal journalists, and cranky, mostly irrelevant academics. So why do they not address the need for politically correct self-policing? Here are five examples of how postmodern do-gooders could help the nation in 2016.
Read the whole thing.
SO IS THIS TRUER POST-COSBY? Flashback: The Jeffrey Epstein Affair Imperils Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Prospects. “Exactly how tight is the friendship between former President and potential future first gentleman Bill Clinton and Mr. Epstein, who owns a private island in Florida and is now accused of having sex with girls as young as 12 and procuring young girls for sex with other friends of his? What was Bill Clinton doing on the island with Mr. Epstein on multiple occasions and why did he fly overseas on Mr. Epstein’s plane at least 10 times?”
IT’S OFFICIAL: THE LEFT HAS THROWN RAHM EMANUEL OVERBOARD. “Meanwhile, The New Yorker explains that the real problem was that Rahmbo was too conservative.”
Be careful what you wish for in Chicago, lefties:
Rahm’s last opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, was caught posing with Latin Kings gang leaders who had been arrested after working on a political campaign. His son was arrested for threatening police officers as a member of the Two Six gang. Garcia’s protégé, Ricardo Muñoz, benefited from an election in which the Latin Kings turned out to vote for him on pain of being beaten up by other gang members.
Garcia was the “progressive” choice in that election. His plan was to raise more taxes including income taxes and sales taxes, along with a mysterious proposal for “something bold, something that we’ve never considered before in terms of figuring out the revenue side of things.”
Considering that he was running against a man who had tried to tax Netflix, there was no telling what unexplored taxation territory he wanted to exploit. And Garcia won 34 percent of the vote.
No matter what happens, Chicago is screwed.
In 2012, Chicago magazine could run columns exploring “Why Chicago Isn’t Detroit.”
Not yet at least — but the Venn diagram separating the two cities’ differences is certainly merging fast:
Taken together, these passages suggest that the only way for Emanuel to regain the support he’ll need to govern is to back off of his reformist agenda — e.g., stabilizing finances and pensions, education reform, and economic development downtown — and kowtow to the ruinous demands of “black leaders.” In short, to make Chicago more like Detroit.
At a minimum, Emanuel will have to kowtow when it comes to policing, a process that has already started according to the Post. This raises the prospect that crime will increase due to less effective policing, as it seems to have done in Baltimore for example.
This would be a terrible outcome for a city where gun violence is already out of control. Indeed, Emanuel himself has blamed increased crime in Chicago on police officers becoming “fetal” out of concern they will get in trouble for actions during arrests — i.e., the Ferguson effect.
Well, I had a good time visiting Chicago last year — not least of which, being happy to have survived the experience.
FLASHBACK: As college student, Eric Holder participated in ‘armed’ takeover of former Columbia University ROTC office. “As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned. Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.”
JOHN HINDERAKER: Dean Minow, How’s That Investigation Going? “Since then, there has been radio silence on the investigation. This is, perhaps, because a group of students set up a web site called Royall Asses that argued, highly persuasively, that ‘anti-racist’ social justice warriors perpetrated the alleged hate crime as a hoax.”
If it weren’t for hate crimes by “anti-racist” social justice warriors, how many hate crimes would there be?
FLASHBACK: Clinton Reaches Deal to Avoid Indictment and to Give Up Law License.
On his final full day in office, President Clinton has reached an arrangement with a special prosecutor to avoid being prosecuted after he leaves office in connection with the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Mr. Clinton accepted a five-year suspension of his law license, agreed to pay a fine of $25,000 to cover counsel fees arising from the case and acknowledged that he had committed a breach of professional conduct because of testimony he gave in the sexual-harassment suit brought against him by Paula Jones.
“I have apologized for my conduct, and I have done my best to atone for it with my family, my administration, and the American people,” Mr. Clinton said in a statement released this afternoon. “I have paid a high price for it, which I accept because it caused so much pain to so many people. I hope my actions today will bring hope and closure and finality to these matters.”
Just, in Bernie Sanders’ words, something about “Bill Clinton’s sex life.”
This could be how our experiment with grassroots democracy finally ends. World leaders—the super-rich, their pet non-profits, their media boosters, and their allies in the global apparat—gather in Paris to hammer out a deal to transform the planet, and our lives. No one asks much about what the states and the communities, the electorate, or even Congress, thinks of the arrangement. The executive now presumes to rule on these issues.
For many of the world’s leading countries—China, Russia, Saudi Arabia—such top down edicts are fine and dandy, particularly since their supreme leaders won’t have to adhere to them if inconvenienced. But the desire for centralized control is also spreading among the shrinking remnant of actual democracies, where political give and take is baked into the system.
The will to power is unmistakable. California Governor Jerry Brown, now posturing as the aged philosopher-prince fresh from Paris, hails the “coercive power of the state” to make people live properly by his lights. California’s high electricity prices, regulation driven spikes in home values, and the highest energy prices in the continental United States may be a bane for middle and working class families, but are sold as a wonderful achievement among our presumptive masters.
Under President Obama, rule by decree has become commonplace, with federal edicts dictating policies on everything from immigration and labor laws to climate change. No modern leader since Nixon has been so bold in trying to consolidate power. But the current president is also building on a trend: Since 1910 the federal government has doubled its share of government spending to 60 percent. Its share of GDP has now grown to the highest level since World War II.
Today climate change has become the killer app for expanding state control, for example, helping Jerry Brown find his inner Duce. But the authoritarian urge is hardly limited to climate-related issues. It can be seen on college campuses, where uniformity of belief is increasingly mandated. In Europe, the other democratic bastion, the continental bureaucracy now controls ever more of daily life on the continent. You don’t want thousands of Syrian refugees in your town, but the EU knows better. You will take them and like it, or be labeled a racist.
This will not end well.
THE ONION, AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: Study Finds College Still More Worthwhile Than Spending 4 Years Chained To Radiator. Barely.
HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION 2015 IN SUMMARY: The 13 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses in 2015.
BUT IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION THIS DOESN’T EVEN STAND OUT: Flashback 2013: “Climate Change” Expert Jailed for Conning EPA out of $900K.
AND NOW LET’S PUSH OFF THE ROCK, SHALL WE: The Artist Who Helped Invent Space Travel.
THE RIGHT TO BE OFFENSIVE: Charlie Hebdo editor: Censorship must not win. Paid for in blood. Are we at absolute moral authority yet?
AT THIS POINT, REALLY, IT SHOULD MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE: Here’s the bottom line of the Hillary e-mail dump.
THIS IS NOT NEWS TO ANY PARENTS OF BOYS WHO HAVE BEEN AWAKE THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS: And personally it p*sses ME off. Campus Turmoil Begins in High School. Oh, and we’re not doing girls any favors either. You want to know why women fail at life and become unhappy adults? Look to the mollycoddling of girls in most schools.
EVENTUALLY HE’LL REALIZE IT’S JUST DIFFERENT, NOT WORSE: The Web We Have to Save. The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?
FASCINATING (AND SAD) STORY: An 18th-century outrage. Lèse humanité.