I SIGNED IT: A letter from Yale Law students, alumni, and faculty supporting Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Note the praise from Dean Heather Gerken and other eminent YLS faculty. (Bumped).
Archive for 2018
July 12, 2018
BLUE ON BLUE: Ocasio-Cortez vs. Crowley feud erupts on Twitter.
“WHAT DO TRUMP AND WATERS HAVE IN COMMON WITH OZZY OSBOURNE AND TUPAC SHAKUR?” My weekly column is up at The Daily Caller.
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER? HE’S HISTORY:
And, as Aldous shows, Schlesinger’s case is especially problematic because his prominence and political engagement often diminished his credibility, rendering even the most serious writing suspect. In 1957 a critic used the term “hagiography” to describe Schlesinger’s first book on FDR. Similar assessments, such as “court historian,” would dog Schlesinger for the rest of his life. Christopher Hitchens, for example, described Schlesinger’s book on the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days (1965), as “the founding breviary of the cult of JFK.”
Schlesinger wouldn’t, or couldn’t, disprove such characterizations. A Thousand Days offers breathless puerilities that a stern editor would have removed from a high school valedictory speech. Kennedy, we are told, “gave the world for an imperishable moment the vision of a leader who greatly understood the terror and the hope, the diversity and the possibility, of life on this planet and who made people look beyond nation and race to the future of humanity.” Having made the Kennedy family’s political success his abiding concern after Dallas, Schlesinger would later contend that those who thought about Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning in just the right way would ultimately realize that it was one more reason to vote for Ted Kennedy in a presidential election:
Ever since Chappaquiddick, he has been spending his life trying to redeem himself for those hours of panic. He has become ever more serious, more senatorial, more devoted to the public good. I think this ceaseless effort at self-redemption may be for Teddy Kennedy what polio was for FDR.*
One can be a scholar. One can, out of careerism or conviction, be a publicist. But ultimately one must choose between those professions. The large but finite reservoir of prestige Schlesinger filled as a historian was drained dangerously low by his determination to interpret every political event he commented on as a vindication of liberalism and its leaders. Nor could Schlesinger and his defenders really be surprised, given the frequency and zeal of his advocacy, that the people who came to read his historical writings as part of this life-long political project strongly suspected that the entire oeuvre had the heft and reliability of a collection of press releases.
Read the whole thing. To be fair, Schlesinger’s version of Whig history — that mankind’s tumultuous past was ultimately redeemed by the 20th century arrival of the “Progressives,” the New Deal, FDR, JFK, and the creation of a benign liberal postwar Europe, is much more pleasant than the Black Armband History that the PC left would replace it with by the late 1980s and 1990s.
* Charles Pierce, call your office.
OH, I DUNNO, I’M KIND OF ENJOYING THE MELTDOWN: Roger Kimball: The left needs to calm down about Brett Kavanaugh.
Related: Religious Extremism: Kavanaugh Caught Serving Food To Homeless. Yes, it’s parody. But is it, really?
CRIME OF THE CENTURY: Burglar breaks into escape room, can’t figure out how to escape.
HOW THINGS WORK: “I’m hoarding my remaining pain pills for really bad nights or weather fronts, and I don’t want to take them on days I’m planning on going to the range, so it looks like I’ll just be gutting out some pain this week. Even if I weren’t shooting, I’d need to be parsimonious with them because all the drug-seeking yahoos who can’t hold their dope are making it hard for people in legit pain to find relief. (“I don’t have ‘overactive nerves’, Doc, I have a fractured clavicle. Are broken bones common drug-seeking behavior?“)”
NUTROOTS: Eight Shrieking Occupiers Arrested Outside of Portland ICE Facility. “What is f*cking wrong with you, you f*cking scumbags!”
AMELIA HAMILTON’S GROWING PATRIOTS PODCAST: The Jamestown Settlement. “This week, we talk to 9 year-old Elizabeth from Oklahoma, Nancy Egloff, a historian from the Jamestown settlement, and a special surprise guest. We chat about The Jamestown Settlement, and what the English settlers when they faced there, what really happened with Pocahontas, and more.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Late-life high blood pressure may harm the brain, study says.
HOW LABOR REGULATION HARMS UNSKILLED WORKERS: Warren Meyer of Coyoteblog fame is an old-fashioned entrepreneur, in that he runs businesses that hire unskilled workers. It’s old-fashioned because labor regulation has made it extremely difficult to do that today. Warren explains how in the cover story to this Summer’s Regulation magazine. He also has a follow-up post explaining how he came to write the story, and answering predictable objections to it here.
LET’S GET FRACKING: World oil supply risks being ‘stretched to limit.’
The IEA welcomed in its July report last month’s agreement between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia to open the taps in order to bring prices down from multi-year highs.
But it pointed to supply disruptions in Libya after a string of attacks on infrastructure.
It also highlighted continuing unrest in Venezuela and a drop in Iranian exports after President Donald Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the landmark nuclear deal reached in 2015.
“The large number of disruptions reminds us of the pressure on global oil supply,” the IEA said.
“This will become an even bigger issue as rising production from Middle East Gulf countries and Russia, welcome though it is, comes at the expense of the world’s spare capacity cushion, which might be stretched to the limit.”
The IEA report was published a day after both main oil contracts were sent into freefall by worries over a stronger dollar and the impact of the global trade war on demand.
The selling was also fanned by Libya’s resumption Wednesday of oil exports from its eastern production heartland after a showdown between the war-torn country’s rival authorities.
Even though Libyan exports have resumed, the IEA remains worried for the future.
“At the time of writing, the situation seemed to be improving, but we cannot know if stability will return,” it said.
Thanks, Obama.
CHARLIE STROSS, CALL YOUR OFFICE: A Massive, Black Sarcophagus Has Been Unearthed in Egypt, And Nobody Knows Who’s Inside. Do not wake The Sleeper.
THE BIG MAN SPEAKS: Turkish lira hits record low after Erdogan interest rate comments.
“Erdogan said yesterday interest rates must fall,” said a treasury desk trader at one bank. “This has been interpreted as a desire for a Turkish central bank rate cut at a time when additional tightening is expected and inflation has exceeded 15 percent.”
The central bank’s monetary policy committee, which has raised rates by 500 basis points since April in an effort to put a floor under the currency, will next meet on July 24.
Erdogan has described high interest rates as “the mother and father of all evil” and has repeatedly expressed a desire for lower borrowing costs to spur economic growth.
Investors believe the credit-fueled economy is overheating and want decisive interest rate hikes to tame double-digit inflation.
If Erdogan wants to cut interest rates and go on an official spending spree while inflation is rising, his country could go Full Venezuela — and everyone knows you never go Full Venezuela.