Archive for 2018
December 11, 2018
KIRK KOLBO: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at 100.
In October 2010, I appeared on a panel to promote a book of essays by young conservatives, Proud to Be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation. The moderator was Jonah Goldberg. One of the other panelists was my ex-boyfriend Todd Seavey. During the Q&A, Todd launched into a rant about my personal failings. He accused me of opposing Obamacare on the grounds that it would diminish human suffering, which allegedly I preferred to increase; of wanting to repeal laws against fistfights for the same reason; of being a sadistic and scheming heartbreaker in my personal life; and of generally living according to a “disturbing” and “brutal” set of values. For three minutes and forty-five seconds, which, unfortunately for me, were captured on film for broadcast two weeks later on C-SPAN2, he made an impassioned case that I was a sociopath.
* * * * * * * *
I braced myself for the broadcast. Maybe no one would notice? Within minutes, the offending clip had been posted on YouTube, where it got half a million hits in the first forty-eight hours. It made the evening news on Washington’s Fox affiliate. Greg Gutfeld did a segment about it on RedEye. It was written up in Gawker, the Washington Post, Talking Points Memo, and a hundred lesser sites, and then written up again when Todd expanded his remarks about me into a series of blog posts on his personal website.
Read the whole thing.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Slate journalists vote to go on strike.
As prolific tweeter “Neontaster” writes, “The Slate strike will actually help fight Climate Change by reducing the overall global level of hot takes by 45%.”
A MINOR FISKING: Little Caracas on the Prairie.
EPA ADMINISTRATOR ANDREW WHEELER TALKS WITH HUGH HEWITT ABOUT THE EPA’S NEW “WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES” RULE: “I hope I don’t end up putting you out of business on the consulting side, because my goal for this is so that any property owner can stand on his or her property and be able to tell for themselves whether or not they have a federal waterway on their property without having to hire a lawyer or an outside consultant.”
Faster, please.
NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: The 21 biggest data breaches of 2018.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee could fight Parkinson’s disease, study says.
SUSTAINABILITY: Budget deficit soars in first two months of fiscal year.
The country’s budget deficit in the first two months of fiscal 2019, which began Oct. 1, was 50 percent higher than in the same period the previous year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), though the figure was inflated by timing.
In October and November, the federal government spent $303 billion more than it took in, compared to $202 billion in the same period of fiscal 2018, according to the CBO.
Tax revenues were just 3 percentage points higher than the previous year, largely because of the GOP tax law, while spending surged 18 percent.
Revenues, in other words, still grew faster than inflation — but spending grew six times fast than even that.
We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY. Oscars producers: Maybe we shouldn’t use a host at all.
Variety quotes a “top talent rep” that says that his clients are unhappy that [Kevin] Hart didn’t choose to “stay the course and serve as an example.” If that was the plan, maybe they should have made it more clear to Hart in his contract negotiations. “Say, Kevin,” they might have said, “we plan to hang you out to dry if activists go through years-old material to find something offensive, declaring you to be inappropriate unless you willingly go along with the public beating. How’s that sound?”
Clearly, Hart didn’t like the sound of it when the Academy did hang him out to dry, but at least he would have been prepared for it. Unfortunately, every comic worth hiring for the gig understands exactly how the Academy supports its partners in their big broadcast — or more accurately doesn’t. That may be why the Oscars will go without a host for the first time in 30 years, opting instead for a Rube Goldberg-ish rotating set of players.
That latter option may be difficult for the Academy to assemble: 18 Top Comedians Who Can Never Host The Oscars Now.
9 IN 10 AMERICAN COLLEGES RESTRICT FREE SPEECH: FIRE’s annual report on campus speech codes, out today, found that most schools still maintain policies stripping students of at least some free speech rights — though the number of schools with the most severe restrictions continues to drop. Of course, schools don’t always follow their own policies, but FIRE has received far fewer reports of censorship from “green light” schools with no unconstitutional speech codes. How does your school fare?
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Electrical Pulses Stem Blood Loss From a Hemorrhaging Artery.
STRIKE A POSE, THERE’S NOTHING TO IT: Washington Post Columnist Jennifer Rubin Runs Away When Asked How She’s ‘Conservative.’
Words are supposed to mean things. “Conservatism” refers to a specific set of ideas and principles — ones that Rubin has not espoused or championed in quite some time. It’s intellectually dishonest for her and the Washington Post to continue to call her conservative while she does and says the opposite.
Of course — but that’s business as usual for both the Post, and the DNC-MSM as a whole.
NICHOLAS BALLASY: Rolling Stones’ Chuck Leavell Says Longer Summers in South Prove Climate Change Is ‘Undeniable.’
Science!
UPDATE (From Ed): Get back to me when Leavell convinces Mick and Keith to stop touring with 130 trucks for their stage, lights, amps, speakers, instruments, and equipment, and a private Boeing 767.
THAT’S BECAUSE THE AMOUNT OF PAPER-PUSHING, AND MANDATORY DIVERSITY TRAINING, HAS GONE WAY UP, WHILE TIME TO ACTUALLY DO SCIENCE HAS GONE DOWN: ‘Dropout’ rate for academic scientists has risen sharply in past 50 years, study finds.
RICH LOWRY: May’s Brexit is becoming increasingly haphazard and provisional.
May has just pulled her Brexit deal from a parliamentary vote that she was going to lose in an embarrassing drubbing that might have loosed her increasingly precarious grip on power.
She has negotiated abysmally, giving away leverage right at the start when she prematurely invoked Article 50, beginning the process of Britain’s departure with no realistic fallback plan if talks with the EU failed. She ended up with an agreement that would effectively leave Britain within most EU rules, with no means of influencing them anymore. The London Spectator calls the deal “Remain-minus.”
There’s a reason that resignations of her Brexit negotiators have become a semiregular event.
Now, humiliated and her credibility in shreds, May says that she is going to go back to the EU to get more reassurances, when the EU has said that it is not conceding anything else of consequence. And why should it? There’s no guarantee that May can get any tweaked deal through Parliament, regardless.
And she’s already tried to sell so many meaningless gestures from the EU as concessions that Brexit supporters won’t be inclined to take her seriously, either.
The larger question is whether once the EU has its hooks in a nation-state, will it ever relinquish it?
Not willingly, no.
