JAWBONING WORKS: Jeh Johnson: Trump ‘scared off’ illegal immigrants with ‘rhetoric.’
UPDATE: Link was broken before. Fixed now — sorry!
Archive for 2017
July 20, 2017
GOOD LORD: Low IQ costs Oregon parents their kids.
IT WAS ALWAYS JUST AN EXCUSE FOR GRAFT, AND THAT HAS GONE VERY, VERY WELL: California’s Green Policies Are Going Haywire.
Jerry Brown can label this extension as “courageous” as he wants, but it won’t change the fact that this is merely extending the life of a broken policy.
Let’s take a look at the current state of California’s carbon market. The system ostensibly works by auctioning off carbon credits to emitters, but these auctions have been resounding failures. Credits have been selling for the bare minimum price allowed by the scheme, and emitters are buying the bare minimum of credits required by the state. In other words, companies aren’t buying into the plan (literally), which doesn’t just reflect poorly on the outlook industry has on the state’s carbon market, it also dilutes the price of carbon to levels too low to actually incentivize heavy emitters to change behaviors.
Read the whole thing.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Has the Republican Party Lost Its Backbone?
MAKE AMERICA HAPPY AGAIN: Survey: Americans Are Happier Than They Have Been In Years.
ALL IS PROGRESSING AS MARK STEYN HAS FORESEEN: As Europe’s migrant crisis enters a new phase, it’s clear that European leaders have neither the will nor desire to preserve their own civilization.
John Daniel Davidson:
Take women’s rights, for example. In Europe as in America, the equality of the sexes has for decades been held as an immutable fact. But Europe is even more militant about its feminism than America. For Europeans, the very idea of a housewife is backwards and oppressive; mothers are expected to work and send their children to state-subsidized child care, not opt out of the workforce to raise a family. This is the official policy of the EU, which has entire commissions dedicated to ensuring more women enter the workforce.
For Muslim immigrants to Europe, who come from societies in which women are generally subordinate to men, this comes as a shock. Yet for a long time Europe insisted that newcomers adopt western attitudes regarding women’s rights and sexual freedom. As Christopher Caldwell has noted, this was the only non-negotiable demand Europe made of its immigrants. The European ruling class might have been willing to look the other way on free speech and denounce as fascist anyone who worries about Islam and terrorism, but on feminism there was no room for negotiation: “It is the litmus test according to which assimilation—and even membership in the national community—is judged. It is the one area where Europeans retain both a deep suspicion of Muslim ways and a confidence in their own institutions that is free of self-doubt.”
At least, that’s how it used to be.
Read the whole thing.
Professional feminists have no interest in protecting the rights of Western women, because it’s different when they’re being oppressed by oppressed “migrants.”
SO THIS REUTERS HEADLINE LOOKS BAD FOR TRUMP, BUT IF YOU READ PAST THE HEADLINE HIS BASE IS ACTUALLY MORE SUPPORTIVE THAN IN MAY: One in eight people who voted for Trump having second thoughts. In May, 82% of Trump voters said they’d vote for him again. In July, it’s 88%. His support has actually increased by 6%. A more accurate headline would be something like Trump’s Base Happier Than In May: Support Rises 6%. But, you know, narrative.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
YOU CAN’T JUDGE THEM. THAT’S THEIR CULTURE! Govt To Take Over Muslim School Where Child Died and Books Say Husbands Can Beat Wives.
EXPERTS WARY THAT U.S. COULD TRADE CHINESE SOUTH CHINA SEA CONTROL FOR NORTH KOREA DENUCLEARIZATION: I say this cynical trade and sell-out won’t happen but somebody sure needs to write about that. (HINT: It’s Option 3.) (Bumped from earlier this morning, but now with additional hint.)
HINT 2: Read the North Korea options essay (second link). This trade won’t happen. However, there are people in southeast Asia who are scared it might. It is a course of action option– a very bad one. However, I think it’s a deal Beijing’s imperialists believe is possible, which says something about Beijing’s imperialists.
SO I GUESS THIS MEANS THAT CHARLES C.W. COOKE IS WORKING FOR PUTIN TOO: Louise Mensch’s Destructive Fantasies. I think she’s actually secretly working for Trump, throwing out endless absurdities to discredit his conspiratorial opposition. In which case, Mission Accomplished!
SUPERB BOMBER PIC: A B-2 banks over Scott AFB. A majestic photo.
SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: UC Berkeley BLOCKS Shapiro Event At University On September 14.
On Wednesday, Young America’s Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans were told by the University of California, Berkeley administration that Berkeley would not facilitate an event by Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro on September 14 on campus. Instead, administrators have informed YAF and BCR that they are “unable to identify an available campus venue.”
I think what they meant to say is that they are unable to identify a safe campus venue, because the Berkeley administration has taken a sort of wink-and-nod approach to violence against conservatives.
IRAN THREATENS U.S. TROOPS NEAR ITS BORDERS:
The head of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard warned the U.S. that it better move its forces away from his country if Washington imposes new sanctions on his paramilitary group.
The Trump Administration just certified Iran as compliant with the Obama-Ayatollah Nuclear Collusion Arrangement and this is the thanks we get.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: Mueller’s Investigation Must Be Limited and Accountable. I predict it will be neither. I think that Mueller should resign, or alternatively be replaced by a second independent counsel to look at any obstruction issues, while Mueller is limited to the Russia issue, which appears to be a nonstarter.
Related: Is Mueller Too Conflicted To Investigate Trump Fairly?
Plus: Alan Dershowitz on James Comey’s leaked memos: Who will guard the guardians?
OUR BEST AND BRIGHTEST AREN’T: ‘Dunkirk’ reviewers show their lack of historical knowledge.
Never has so much ignorance been rendered about such a great feat by so few.
Such is the historical record of reviewers of the new movie, “Dunkirk.”
First, a brief historical primer. Dunkirk was the site of the British Army’s evacuation from northern France in May-June 1940. The evacuation was made necessary after the British Army in France, deployed as the British Expeditionary Force, was encircled by a rapidly advancing German army. Thanks to the immense courage of rearguard forces, RAF pilots, and British civilians (who lent their boats to the effort), 200,000 British soldiers and 140,000 French, Belgian and Polish soldiers were saved from capture.
Now to the reviews…
At USA Today, Brian Truitt laments “the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of color.” This, Truitt explains, “may rub some the wrong way.”
Let me be clear. The “some” that might be offended are the same “some” that attempt to swim with polar bears and saltwater crocodiles. The Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold beat me to it, explaining why Truitt’s review is so silly. But let me add one point. What measure of honor would there be to inject “actors of color” into a historical event in which no persons of color served? It would be like making the civil rights movie, Selma, but hiring all white actors to play the parts that black demonstrators played in real life.
In a similarly silly take, at Slate.com, Dana Stevens suggests the British Army at Dunkirk was the “last bulwark against Nazi invasion of the British mainland.”
Read the whole thing, and weep.
U.S. ARMORED VEHICLES SEEN POURING INTO SYRIA:
Over the last week videos and pictures posted by Kurdish activists on social media show flatbed trucks delivering U.S.-made MRAP, M-ATVs, and up-armored bulldozers into Syria.
Military officials say these vehicles are not part of the U-S.-led coalition’s aid to Kurdish allies on the ground who are currently engaged in a tense street-by-street urban battle in Raqqa — ISIS’s self-proclaimed capital.
Stay tuned for more on this.
EXPERTS WARY THAT U.S. COULD TRADE CHINESE SOUTH CHINA SEA CONTROL FOR NORTH KOREA DENUCLEARIZATION: I say this cynical trade and sell-out won’t happen but somebody sure needs to write about that. (HINT: It’s Option 3.)
WALTER WILLIAMS: The Key Facts About Slavery That the Left Conveniently Ignores.
Slavery is by no means peculiar, odd, or unusual. It was common among ancient peoples such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Armenians, and many others.
Large numbers of Christians were enslaved during the Ottoman wars in Europe. White slaves were common in Europe from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages. It was only after A.D. 1600 that Europeans joined with Arabs and Africans and started the Atlantic slave trade.
As David P. Forsythe wrote in his book, “The Globalist,” “The fact remained that at the beginning of the 19th century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”
While slavery constitutes one of the grossest encroachments on human liberty, it is by no means unique or restricted to the Western world or United States, as many liberal academics would have us believe.
Much of their indoctrination of our young people, at all levels of education, paints our nation’s Founders as racist adherents to slavery, but the story is not so simple.
Read the whole thing.
“Everybody does it” is no excuse, but not everybody fights a horrible Civil War over it, then constitutionally elevates former slaves to full citizenship.
LEGALIZARLA: Uruguay Becomes First Nation to Oversee Pot Sales, From Seed to Smoke.
The new policy comes as much of Latin America, Canada and numerous U.S. states have legalized marijuana for limited use, even as several countries continue to have tough interdiction policies against the cocaine trade.
Some leaders in the region on the front lines of the U.S.-backed war on drugs have increasingly voiced fatigue with those hard-line policies. But so far, Uruguay has most decidedly broken with the prohibitionist approach, making this country’s experiment a test case that is being closely watched by governments and activists on both sides of the drug-legalization debate.
The move has also encouraged businesses, like Vancouver-based International Cannabis Corp., which has a license to harvest and export the marijuana it is producing in Uruguay.
“We are ready to start exporting to more than 12 countries, and we will do it with a seal of quality from the Uruguayan Health Ministry,” said Alejandro Antalich, chief executive of the company.
The report also claims that Uruguay’s program has “enthralled pro-pot activists and smokers abroad but has lukewarm support at home.” But the expected tax revenues certainly have big support in Montevideo.
KURT SCHLICHTER: We Must Elect Senator Kid Rock. ” His campaign slogan should be ‘You’ve done a lot worse,’ because we have.”