AT AMAZON, summer savings in Car Care.
Archive for 2018
July 11, 2018
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON “THE GOOD POPULISM:”
One in antiquity was known as the base populism. It involved the unfettered urban “mob,” or what the Athenians disapprovingly dubbed the ochlos and the Romans disparagingly called the turba. Such popular movements were spearheaded by the so-called demagogoi (“leaders of the people”) or in Roman times the more radical popular tribunes.
These were largely urban movements. Protesters focused on the redistribution of property, radical democratization, taxes on the wealthy, the cancellation of debts, vast increases in public entitlements, and civic employment. The French Revolution and European upheavals of 1848 reflect some of the same themes. Today, Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Bernie Sanders phenomenon all stand in the same current. Often, urban intellectuals, aristocrats, and elites—from the patrician Roman Republican street agitator Publius Clodius Pulcher and the Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre, to present-day billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer—have sought to assist the urban protesters. Perhaps these gentleman- agitators thought they could offer money, prestige, or greater wisdom, thereby channeling and elevating shared populist agendas.
The antithesis to such radical populism was likely thought by ancient conservative historians to be the “good” populism of the past—and what the contemporary media might call the “bad” populism of the present: the push-back of small property owners and the middle classes against the power of oppressive government, steep taxation, and internationalism, coupled with unhappiness over imperialism and foreign wars and a preference for liberty rather than mandated equality. Think of the second century B.C. Gracchi brothers rather than Juvenal’s “bread-and-circuses” imperial Roman underclass, the American rather than the French Revolution, or the Tea Party versus Occupy Wall Street.
And note this:
So Trump was a populist nemesis visited upon the hubris of the coastal culture. When he took on “fake news,” when he tweeted over the “crooked” media, when he railed about “globalists,” when he caricatured Washington politicians—and ranted non-stop, shrilly, and crudely—a third of the country felt that at last they had a world-beater who wished to win ugly rather than, as in the case of John McCain or Mitt Romney, lose nobly. As a neighbor put it to me of Trump’s opponents, “They all have it coming.”
Read the whole thing.
NEWS FROM THE HIGHLY MORAL WORLD OF HIGHER EDUCATION: This Professor Made Up a Job Offer From Another University. Now He Faces a Criminal Charge. “In January 2015, Brian R. McNaughton, an associate professor at Colorado State University, sent his administration an offer letter he’d received from another university. To entice McNaughton to stay, Colorado State raised his base pay by $5,000, a university spokeswoman said. Using offer letters from other institutions as leverage in salary negotiations is common practice at colleges and universities. There was just one problem with McNaughton’s case: The offer letter was fake.”
Sadly, the last time somebody tried to recruit me for their fancy endowed chair, the salary was less than I was already making.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: NBA’s Draymond Green, Praised for Skipping Trump Event, Gets Trashed by the Left for Israel Visit.
SUMMER’S HERE AND THE TIME IS RIGHT – FOR THE OBLIGATORY LEFTY FREAKOUTS OVER AIR CONDITIONING: We Could Have a Serious Air Conditioning Problem By Mid-Century.
Summers are growing warmer, and we’ll need cooler air—especially for our young students to focus during school hours, and for the sick and elderly. But using air conditioners shouldn’t be a careless act, not when some people are dying from the air pollution they create—and especially when these people are more likely to be low-income or of color.
That can change. Keep that in mind next time you crank your central cooling system to high.
Sod off, swampy.
Flashback: Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of 2009.
FLYING TRAINS COULD BE COMING YOUR WAY:
It sounds like something Q, the tech guy in James Bond movies, would create: A plane that lands on a runway, shrugs its wings off, turns into a train and rolls on to rails to drop you off at your local station.
That’s what a French entrepreneur, who’s made millions by connecting engineers with industrial groups, is pitching to Boeing Co. and others. “Link & Fly” is Akka Technologies’s new flagship aircraft design, with wings that come off to hasten turnover at airports and make boarding easier and closer to passengers’ homes.
As foretold by the prophesy.
U. OF KANSAS CAVES, AGREES TO REMOVE FLAG-BASED ART: Seems like a pretty obvious First Amendment violation. It’s odd, isn’t it, how quickly universities tend to give in when the demands are for censorship, but fight tooth and nail against free speech?
FASTER, PLEASE: Dying Organs Restored to Life in Novel Experiments. “He injected a billion mitochondria, in about a quarter of a teaspoon of fluid. Within two days, the baby had a normal heart, strong and beating quickly. ‘It was amazing,’ Dr. Emani said.”
WORRIED ABOUT RUSSIA? Then Keep an Eye on Germany’s Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Putin’s Chief European Lobbyist.
Related: ‘Whoops!’ John Kerry slammed Trump for criticizing Germany’s pipeline deal with Russia, then it got awkward (for Biden too). “As it turns out, Kerry was against that pipeline before he was apparently for it.”
Kerry’s entire political career has been devoted to living out Groucho Marx’s famous quip that “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Portland brewery introduces CBD-infused beer. “Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a non-psychoactive molecule in cannabis. CBD doesn’t make you high like THC, which is also found in cannabis.”
“That beer has 4 milligrams of active CBD,” said Phil Boyle, the general manager of Coalition Brewing. “It doesn’t get you high. It won’t show up on a drug test or make you feel weird.”
Brewers say CBD-infused beer doesn’t taste much different from a regular beer because the compounds in cannabis plants and hops have a similar taste and smell.
Dr. Nephi Stella, a professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine, has been studying cannabis for 25 years.
Stella says researchers are “very sure” CBD can reduce seizures and help fight glioblastomas, and researchers believe it is “very likely” that CBD fights pain, anxiety, PTSD and some cancers. He said you can’t overdose on CBD.
“There is no aspect of cannabidiol that we understand that it would actually harm [someone],” he said. “It has a very good safety profile.”
In June, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a CBD drug to treat severe epilepsy.
Any reason to drink beer will do.
WHEN “JAWBONING” WORKS: After Trump diss, Pfizer announces lowering of drug prices.
THE DEATH OF THE BIRTH DEARTH: Is Hungary Experiencing a Policy-Induced Baby Boom?
In 2015, the government of Hungary announced a major new policy: families would be given generous subsidies to buy or build new homes, and the subsidies would scale up based on their marital status and the number of children they had. This “Family Housing Allowance Program,” or CSOK (the abbreviation of the program’s Hungarian name), gives a maximum benefit to married couples with three or more children, equivalent to a $36,000 grant to buy a new home, alongside a major value-added tax deduction for each home, and a capped-interest loan for part of the home value. These interest and tax benefits are probably worth around another $15,000 to $50,000 per family, depending on the house they buy and their likely loan terms. In other words, for a married couple buying a new house with at least three kids, the value of their total payout could run anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000. Meanwhile, for a couple with just two kids, the payout could be from around $18,000 to $35,000. In other words, that extra kid earns the family somewhere between $15,000 and $62,000 extra dollars. Given that the average salary in Hungary is only around $11,000 to $15,000 per year, an equivalently-impactful subsidy for Americans, based on our higher incomes, would need to amount to somewhere between $40,000 and $250,000.
I’m curious to see if Hungary can avoid going bust on babies without breaking the bank.
A REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE ADMINISTRATION: Open bars, office romances, and more: What the latest Obama administration tell-all reveals about life in the West Wing. “Writing this book was basically an exercise in embarrassment.”
AND THEY GOT ONE: Our NATO Allies Need a Good Talking To.
SO THERE’S SOMETHING IT CAN’T DO: Research: Vitamin D doesn’t protect patients from brain-related disorders.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? New Sacha Baron Cohen series a Hollywood hit job on GOP, source says.
HERE’S THE COLUMN ON SCARLETT JOHANSSON PLAYING A TRANS MAN THAT BUSINESS INSIDER SPIKED.
Read this thoughtcrime at your own peril, citizen. Big [insert gender-neutral noun of your choice here] is watching you!
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Popular ‘peegasm’ orgasm trick is loved by women – but it’s actually really dangerous.
HMM: Was Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein Telling the Truth When He Denied Threatening GOP Staffers? “Somebody at the DOJ isn’t telling the truth about Rosenstein’s threats.”