OLD AND BUSTED: “DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS.”
(And from the replies: “Start any time. You [re-tweeted] him.”)
Archive for 2018
October 29, 2018
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal, Van Heusen Men’s Poplin Regular Fit Solid Point Collar Dress Shirt.
Charges of “whataboutism” are just a lazy deflection from obvious double standards.
COLD WAR II HAS INTERESTING NEW PARAMETERS: China Regulator to Propose 50% Cut to Car Purchase Tax.
Carmaker shares surged after Bloomberg News reported the proposal, which would stimulate a market they’ve increasingly relied on for growth. Volkswagen AG, selling just under 40 percent of its vehicles in China last year, rose as much as 6.9 percent, the biggest intraday move since July 2016. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. rallied in pre-market U.S. trading, while BMW AG and Daimler AG gained in Germany.
The move would help shore up the world’s largest automotive market, which is facing its first decline in more than two decades as a trade war with the U.S. hits at consumer spending power.
It is a moral imperative that the United States not fall behind in the tax cut race.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. “If there’s no blue wave the Dems will blame it on gerrymandering, Russia, racism, sexism and xenophobia rather than having some introspection about why voters continually reject their ideas.” The Democratic Party is the crazy ex-girlfriend of American politics. They just can’t move on after a rejection.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: ‘Doormat Christianity’ and the Islamic Invasion. “Much of the West thinks acceptance of illiberalism is a Christian value.
IN THE MAIL: From Jefferson White, Destroying Progressivism: A Strategy.
ROGER SIMON: This Jewish Boy Is Going to Buy a Gun.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Four Things You Can Do Right Now to Harden Your Place of Worship Against a Shooter. “If you haven’t started taking this threat seriously by now, please do so immediately.”
BREAKING: Military to Deploy 5,000 Troops to Southern Border. “Deployment numbers are increase from initial estimates of 800 troops, in anticipation of migrant caravan.
CATCHING UP WITH THE SCIENCE: America’s Changing Attitudes About Fat: Fat Phobia In Decline.
Related: Sloppy science bears substantial blame for Americans’ bad eating habits. “A spectacular case of sloppy science came crashing to a close last month. Cornell University’s Brian Wansink, a world-renowned scientist who seized headlines with his research on American eating habits, had many of his papers retracted and resigned from his professorship. Wansink’s fall is not just the tale of a single scientist gone astray. It is, instead, an indictment of an entire type of nutrition science that has led to mistaken dietary advice dispensed to Americans for decades. . . . Defenders of the current guidelines’ argue that the urgency of our obesity and diabetes epidemics virtually demands that we march forward with recommendations based even on imperfect data. Yet mistakes of the past, such as the now-jettisoned caps on dietary cholesterol and total fat, show the real harm of rushing to create policy based on weak science. Most people still don’t even know about these reversals in our dietary guidelines — that the weight of evidence has now shifted to sugars and refined carbohydrates as the more likely dietary culprits. However, un-learning diet rules once they have been learned proves to be extremely difficult.”
MONICA SHOWALTER: Murderous communists? Who knew? Take a look at what they are doing in Venezuela.
There’s another reality about the place, and it’s not getting the attention, say, Saudi Arabia or Russia is, over the killings of dissidents. The Maduro regime is showing an alarming willingness to violently attack opposition leaders, and it’s moving in on high-profile ones who had previously seemed untouchable. They’ve already jailed politician Leopoldo Lopez and driven many others into exile. But the regime’s people have stepped up the thuggery to higher levels since then. They tortured to death a city councilman who was then flung off a ten-story building earlier this month. And they encircled and beat up leading opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, likely signaling intent to kill.
Maduro’s abuses aren’t getting the same attention Khashoggi’s murder has because they can’t be used to embarrass the right people.
TEACHING PC VIEWPOINTS AT GUNPOINT. “These courses aren’t mandated by Title IX, no matter what college administrators claim, either because of their ignorance of the law or their presumption that their students are ignorant and will accept their claims. . . . These are not courses about the law; there is no viable law as to what ‘consent’ means. Some teach students, male students, that when alcohol had touched a woman’s lips, she cannot give consent. Some teach that a woman can withdraw consent at any time, including the next day or a year later. Some teach that a woman who enthusiastically consents in the moment may be doing so because she feels coerced, or has no choice, or harbors some feelings of ambiguity in the back of her head, thus making her enthusiastic consent a mask for her lack of consent. None of these things are real. None make any sense. And yet, these are believed by many and taught by some.”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump’s Tragedy in Pittsburgh and Much, Much More. “The sad reality is that a jew-hating maniac shot up a synagogue, killing 11 congregants. And despite all the lip service about the victims and the tragedy, this mass murder was promptly co-opted by political interests and the blame placed on President Trump and Republicans. It’s disgusting.”
OLDEST WEAPONS EVER FOUND IN NORTH AMERICA WERE DISCOVERED IN TEXAS: I suppose that isn’t too surprising. There’s a debate over the age of the weapons. They may be 15,500 years old, which would make them “pre-Clovis.”
STACY MCCAIN’S COBLOGGER IS HOSPITALIZED AND NEEDS HELP. I just donated.
SOMEWHERE BELOW THE RAINBOW OFF NORWAY: An F/A-18E Super Hornet participating in NATO’s Trident Juncture exercise launches from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman — as a rainbow arches off the port side.
FLASHBACK: Demonization: Durham NC City Council bans police exchanges with Israel.
In a statement endorsed unanimously, the City Council prohibited international police exchanges “in which Durham police officers receive military-style training.” The statement, after an intense lobbying campaign by anti-Israel activists and over the objection of police groups, mentioned only Israel by name in the opening paragraph of the document.
It did so even though there have been no such exchanges for over a decade, and none are planned, with the Israel National Police. A single one-week trip that the former Durham police chief Jose Lopez once took to Israel involved how to deal with and manage mass casualty situations. By his own statement to the City Council, “none of the training had anything to do with militarization.”
There were a few other truly memorable speakers out of the 50—some who shamed the Council proceedings with their gross bigotry and others who dignified the meeting with measured and thoughtful commentary.
One speaker who identified himself as Jihad Shawwa struggled to get a video to play then went on a tirade about Zionism and the IDF being a “terrorist organization.” You can watch that circus beginning at the 1:07:33 mark.
Later, the crackpoterry resumed when a minister from the Nation of Islam delivered a 2-minute anti-Jewish rant, referring to a “synagogue of Satan” and accusing Jews of having “an inordinate amount of control” in city politics.
More at the link.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: Democrats Can’t Keep Dodging Immigration As a Real Issue.
It’s the optics that are fatal. The image of that caravan, crammed with thousands of desperate brown human beings, winding its way tortuously through Central America and Mexico, headed to a showdown at the U.S. border, is a white nationalist’s twisted fantasy. The question is not if George Soros funded it, but if Steve Bannon did (I’m kidding, I’m kidding). It reminds me of that infamous poster in the Brexit campaign which showed a long, packed line of migrants, in theory waiting to enter Britain, with the slogan: “Breaking Point.” . . .
I’m an immigrant myself. But it doesn’t answer a simple question. What do we do when the caravan gets here? And more saliently: What do we do if many more caravans show up behind it? This is not an abstract question. It’s a pressing, practical, and in some ways existential one. It cuts to the core of whether the United States has to choose between being inhumane to the point of betraying some core moral principles and remaining a sovereign nation in control of who joins its population. . . .
All of it is putting unprecedented strain on liberal democracy in the West itself. The connection between mass migration and the surge in far-right parties in Europe is now indisputable. Without this issue, Donald Trump would not be president. As we can see right now in front of our eyes, elections can turn on this. Which is why Trump is hyping this caravan story to the heavens — and why, perhaps, the last few weeks have seemed less promising for a “blue wave.” David Frum is right: “If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do.” And unless the Democrats get a grip on this question, and win back the trust of the voters on it, their chance of regaining the presidency is minimal.
One of the messages that Democrats’ unconcern sends to voters is that to Democrats, voters are fungible. They really don’t care about Americans who are already here, if they can get more votes by importing others. It’s basically “Message: I don’t care.”
#BELIEVEALLWOMEN: ‘Nothing to Gain,’ Kavanaugh Accuser Raises Nearly $1 Million. There’s always something to gain if you do the Left’s bidding at a key moment. She’s also fielding book offers. Plus: “Her lawyers said they were representing her on a pro-bono basis. Why does she need all of this money?”
