MY TAKE ON THE KAVANAUGH APPOINTMENT is up at USA Today.
Archive for 2018
July 10, 2018
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Joel Kotkin: Watch Out! Here Come the ‘Woke’ Tech Oligarchs.
The buyout of mainstream progressivism has changed its nature. Big donor-driven candidates—who still dominate the party’s leadership ranks, even as small-donor powered insurgents like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez test that arrangement, at least in low-turnout elections—are less concerned with the fate of auto or communication workers than they are with issues of environmental regulation, identity, and culture.
Why should a small group of people enjoy such unaccountable power? Time for some trustbusting?
TREATING THE SYMPTOMS: Venezuela’s new series of bank notes, the bolívares soberanos, delayed.
Venezuela’s new series of bank notes, to be called bolívares soberanos, and necessary because the nation’s rampant inflation turned much of what it has been using into nothing more than play money, was supposed to be introduced on June 4.
When the Maduro government delayed it to Aug. 4, the national banker’s association asked for an extra month to prepare.
As of now, the Monetary Research Institute reports in its MRI Banker’s Guide to Foreign Currency, there is no indication that any of the seven new denominations, from 2 to 200 bolívares soberanos, have even arrived in Venezuela.
Maduro can knock as many zeros off the bolivar as he wants, but like weeds they’ll keep growing back.
VIDEO: NBC’s Chuck Todd: Kavanaugh Is ‘Very Confirmable.’
Hence all the shrieking about Trump’s nominee being literally Hitler.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents.
THIS DOES SEEM TO BE HOW IT WORKS: The new politics of the Left: no rights for bad people. “Mr. Liptak’s piece is so disingenuous that any attempt to answer his argument—if you can dignify it by that title—has the perverse effect of making it sound semi-reasonable instead of what it is, which is a mere howl of anger. . . . But it is one of the corollaries of the reduction of our politics to virtue signaling that, once you go in for virtue signaling, you have to keep doing it in order to re-affirm your own membership in the club of the virtuous. It must be like a drug to those who become addicted to it, for, like a drug, it requires ever more frequent and stronger doses to produce the same virtuous high.”
I’m a 29-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who was elected to the Chicago City Council in 2015. I ran on an unabashed platform of fighting for this city’s working class: fully funding public schools, opposing privatization, ending corporate welfare, preserving and expanding affordable housing and reopening shuttered health clinics. And I wasn’t afraid to call out the corporate-friendly Democrats who continue to cut vital social services while giving handouts to corporations and the wealthy.
The same has been true outside of major urban areas as well. Last year, in Rock Island, Illinois, millennial diesel mechanic and democratic socialist Dylan Parker won election to the city council on a broad platform for the many and not the few that included equitable economic development and universal broadband internet access.
Indeed, this hunger for anti-corporate, anti-establishment politics is spreading throughout the Midwest. You can see it in the massive growth of the Democratic Socialists of America — currently boasting over 44,000 members. Ocasio-Cortez and I are both members of DSA, which has seen chapters spring up everywhere from Indianapolis and Cincinnati to Des Moines, Iowa and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My own chapter in Chicago now has over 1,500 members.
The Democratic establishment may not want to acknowledge the growing popularity of the party’s left flank and its agenda of fighting for real social, racial and economic justice. But if they hope to win, it’s time they embrace it. If they don’t, we’ll take them head-on.
Blue-on-Blue infighting is always fun to watch. But when a major portion of a major party is ready to embrace ever-increasing statism, it isn’t a sign of political or cultural health.
HEADLINES FROM 2009: Socialism Isn’t the Future of the Democratic Party – It’s Their Present.
(Classical reference in headline.)
TYLER O’NEIL: Trump Selects Brett Kavanaugh to Safeguard ‘The Crown Jewel of the Republic, Our Constitution.’ “The nominee pledged to keep an open mind in every case.”
PROGRESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: Rate My Professors Drops ‘Hotness’ Rating 72 Hours After Vanderbilt Prof Started Social Media Outcry.
ON THIS DAY IN 1890, WYOMING BECAME A STATE: There’s an interesting backstory here: The Wyoming Territory’s constitution had been the first to guarantee women the right to vote. But when Wyoming initially applied for statehood, this created controversy. Fearing that women in long-established states would be emboldened by Wyoming’s example, some Members of Congress initially insisted that Wyoming withdraw women’s right to vote. But the Wyoming legislature stood its ground and cabled back to Congressional leaders, “We will remain out of the Union one hundred years rather than come in without the women.”
Congress eventually relented, and before the turn of the century, there were four women’s suffrage states–Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Idaho.
ONE CAN HOPE, BUT I WOULDN’T GO BACK TO SLEEP: Did Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Save America?
DERPY DIPPERY DIP: Here it is: Your Douchery Roundup.
I’D SAY THE MASS INDUSTRIAL ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX HAD LOST THE PLOT, BUT THEY WOULDN’T KNOW PLOT IF IT BIT THEM IN THE FLESHY PART OF THE BUTTOCKS: ‘First Purge’ Brings Trump Conspiracy Theories to Life.
THEY WON’T LIKE THE FIGHT THEY’RE SPOILING FOR: Phillippe Reines: Tweet About Black Swan Books And Steve Bannon Was Public Service.
THE ASTROTURF IS ALWAYS GREENER ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ISLE: Fake News and Grassroots opposition my ass.
CALL DIOGENES. WE’VE FOUND AN HONEST MAN (THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK): Somebody in the New York Times will not have a job come morning.
AS FORETOLD IN THE PROPHECIES: Feminists Clash with Transgenders at London Pride Parade.
IS CHEESY CHUCK OUT OF HIS TINY LITTLE MIND? McConnell Declares Kavanaugh ‘Superb’; Schumer Says Pick Is Meant to ‘Punish Women’.
IT’S NOT EVEN THE END OF THE BEGINNING: Europe: Things Fall Apart.
WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT? Green Weenie of the Week: “Petro-Masculinity”??
THIS IS USEFUL IF YOU’RE A WRITER, BUT IF YOU’RE NOT, READ IT FOR THE INCIDENT HE RELATES AT THE BEGINNING: I myself could tell you similar stories from the 70s in Portugal, and Robert A. Heinlein himself said there wasn’t a single incident at which he was present that was what the media portrayed it as being. Remember that when you read the news. Unreliable witnesses.
MAXINE WATERS COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Fox News Host Shannon Bream ‘Felt Threatened’ By Antifa Protesters at the Supreme Court, Retreated to Safety.
Related: CNN’s Poppy Harlow Doesn’t Flinch After Dem Justifies Harassment, Threats Against Mitch McConnell.
July 9, 2018
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A Hot Dog/Bun Toaster.
If that’s not enough, there’s always this.
ROGER SIMON: Why the NYT is Obsessed with Alan Dershowitz. “Here’s the short form: Muslims aren’t the only ones who abhor apostates.”