ROGER SIMON: Will Someone Please Review Dinesh D’Souza’s New Movie?
Fortunately, Roger has. Read the whole thing to make sense of the disparity between Ø critics’ approval versus an 88% audience score that D’Souza’s Death of a Nation has at Rotten Tomatoes.
TOLERANCE DOESN’T MEAN WHAT YOU AND I THINK IT DOES. AT LEAST NOT AT UVA: For one thing, it is absolutely verboten to be connected in any form or fashion with the Trump administration. LifeZette’s
MICHAEL WALSH: In Minnesota, a Muslim ‘Backlash’ Warning.
Spoiler: The backlash never comes.
GREAT SCOT! ALEXANDER FLEMING, DISCOVERER OF PENICILLIN, WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1881: The story is that just after returning to his laboratory after a month-long vacation, he saw that one of his staphylococcus-containing petri dishes had gotten moldy. Upon closer inspection, lo and behold, he saw the area adjacent to the mold was bacteria free.
Fleming was modest about his discovery, saying that sometimes one finds what one is not looking for. But it would be wrong to believe that the good doctor was just a lucky guy who happened to run across the moldy bread that revolutionized medical science—à la Jed Clampett discovering oil on the Beverly Hillbillies. Fleming already had a reputation as dogged and meticulous researcher (if occasionally an untidy one). And he was looking for a method to eradicate harmful staphylococcus. When he looked at that petri dish, he had a fighting chance of recognizing what he was looking at. The rest of us … not so much.
THEY SAY THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING: Hardline U.S. ‘gundamentalists’ pressure NRA from within.
Its rise has rattled the NRA leadership and threatens the association’s ability to hold on to moderate supporters and to make compromises that might help fend off tougher gun control measures, according to some of the two dozen gun-rights activists, policy experts and gun-control advocates interviewed for this story.
“Generally, they have a disproportionately huge amount of power in the gun-rights movement,” said Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist.
The NRA has faced divisions before. An internal revolt at the 1977 meeting in Cincinnati turned the polite, sport-shooting organization into a bare-knuckled political lobby that today claims five million members and is closely aligned with the Republican Party, funding pro-gun politicians. The NRA, which spent $30 million to support Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, is often viewed by gun-control advocates as implacably opposed to tighter gun laws.
The NRA leadership has put up obstacles to Kraut’s election, both with bylaws that make it harder for candidates not put forward by the nominating committee to get elected to the board, and by enlisting a senior member to campaign against him.
Positions on both sides of the gun control debate are hardening, but only one has the Constitution on its side.
NIALL FERGUSON: Chill. Donald Trump doesn’t mean democracy’s done.
I dunno. Whenever Democrats are out of power, it’s a sign of deep structural problems with our system.
COMBAT ENGINEER BRIDGING OPERATION: To combat a California fire. A good action photo of the California Army National Guard in action.
MIKE PENCE’S CYBERSECURITY SPEECH — ANNOTATED: Long article but worth the read.
PAULA BOLYARD PRESENTS: A quick and dirty guide to Ohio election fraud.
YID WITH LID: New “The Diary Of Anne Frank” Production Is Not About ICE And Illegals.
Read the whole thing.
SEE THE CRIMINALITY INHERENT IN THE SOCIALISM: Brazil’s Workers Party launches jailed Lula for president.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mark Pulliam: Cronyism 101 at the University of Texas. “The Burnt Orange Mafia at the University of Texas–the inner circle of overpaid administrators, influence-wielding donors, supplicant vendors, and political hacks who approve UT’s inflated budget in exchange for preferential admission for their (and supporters’) unqualified children–want to raise ‘protection money’ to ensure friendly treatment in the upcoming legislative session.”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Drone Strike on Maduro and Much, Much More. “I’ll go out on a limb and say there are probably plenty of people who have it in for Maduro, who has starved and murdered his people.”
SOME DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY (BUT THEY ARE OUT TO LUNCH): Duke Historian Nancy Maclean’s Wacky Conspiracy Theory. It’s not that the pro-immigration, free-trading libertarian Koch Brothers have real differences with the nationalist, protectionist Trump; it’s all just a smokescreen to distract you while your rights are eviscerated, claims MacLean.
IT’S NOT ALWAYS GOOD TO BE THE KING: China’s new woes unravel Xi’s personality cult.
Extraordinary veneration of Xi and promotion of his glorification led David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, who translated part of the article, to call it “China’s new science of sycophantology.”
Apparently, all praise of Xi now turns out to be not only sycophantic, but also false or even counterproductive.
Beijing is thus faced with a big dilemma. If the trade war escalates, then it will certainly greatly damage China’s economy and Xi’s ambition. The fundamental factor behind the country’s emergence as a major power is its impressive economic growth over the past four decades.
Such an economic performance is also the ultimate reason behind Xi’s overt ambition of transforming it into a global power and leader. His failure to maintain high economic growth and to achieve the “Chinese dream” that he has ardently championed will make many within the Party and wider society question his unalloyed power and indefinite rule.
If he blinks first and makes concessions, his country will also suffer, though perhaps less severely. But the greater damage will likely come to his reputation, as any concession to Trump could make the Chinese perceive their supreme leader is weak and outplayed.
A problem with one-man rule is that there’s only one man to the blame, and no easy or nice way to get rid of him.
COMPANIES FLOCK TO COLUMBUS, OHIO TO TEST MARKET PRODUCTS: It’s a pretty good cross-section of America. John Fund writes that we should think of Tuesday’s special election for Ohio’s twelfth congressional district (which includes parts of Columbus) that way. Though it leans Republican, it may be a useful barometer for measuring the mood of the electorate.
HEY, #METOO! Yes, the U.S. Military Loves Shotguns.
UH-HUH: Cory Booker ‘didn’t realize’ sign he held for photo was pro-Palestine.
Booker held a sign that read “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go,” as he was photographed with three other people at the Netroots Nation progressive political convention in New Orleans.
A spokesman for Booker told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Booker was caught in a rush of people asking for photos when he was handed the sign to hold.
“He didn’t have time to read the sign, and from his cursory glance he thought it was talking about Mexico and didn’t realize it had anything to do with Israel,” Jeff Giertz said in a statement.
As Bill Whittle likes to say, we need a wall because Democrats wouldn’t let us have a border.
THEY’RE FREE NOW. THAT’S EVEN BETTER: I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much fun Paul Taylor’s Kindle Books—The Big Picture: An Illustrated Guide to Modern American Trends (Volumes I and II)—are for policy nerds like me. Well, they are free now. Enjoy!
THEY MAY HAVE TO MOVE TO A BUSINESS MODEL BASED ON PROVIDING VALUE, RATHER THAN ONE BASED ON FORCIBLE EXTRACTION: Unions Take a Hit After Supreme Court Ruling: States are ordered to stop collecting millions of dollars in fees from public workers.
Public-sector unions are facing steep falls in revenue and trying to prevent the loss of members in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling.
In New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois, state governments have stopped collecting millions of dollars in agency fees following a high court ruling banning the practice. Before the ruling, public workers in 22 states who didn’t want to join a union were often required to pay agency fees, which cover collective bargaining costs and can equal as much as 90% of dues paid by members.
Pennsylvania stopped collecting agency fees from 24,000 state workers that totaled $6.6 million last year, a state official said. The figure is expected to grow because it doesn’t include workers at municipalities across the state. In New York, which has the highest rate of public sector union membership, the state stopped collecting agency fees in July from 31,000 state workers which totaled between $9 million and $10 million last year, a spokeswoman for the New York State Comptroller said. That tally is also expected to grow because it doesn’t include local agency fees.
By one estimate, unions in New York state overall will lose $112 million in agency fees from 200,000 state and local workers, based on what workers paid in 2016, according to the Empire Center, a conservative think tank in Albany.
These are the first signs of how the high court’s decision is hitting union coffers. The ruling could erode the financial and political clout of public-sector unions, in part by prompting unions to divert funds once used for politics to the costs of running a union. For some unions, agency fees had made up 5% or more of revenue, and some have trimmed budgets and staff. Unions had tried to shore up members ahead of the court decision in June. . . .
In its June ruling, the Supreme Court sided with Illinois child-support worker Mark Janus and said requiring public-sector employees to pay agency fees is unconstitutional, because bargaining contracts with state and local governments is inherently political.
Public sector unions should be outlawed, but this is a good start.
STICKER SHOCK: Cost to dismantle USS Enterprise set to top $1 BILLION if Congress doesn’t take action, warns watchdog agency.
The Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Enterprise was commissioned in 1961, and built at a cost of $3.9 billion, in current dollars.
The Enterprise was the first and only Enterprise-class carrier ever built, and the longest naval vessel ever constructed the world. The carrier sailed more than 1 million miles over 51 years of service.
Since she was decommissioned last year, the Enterprise has been awaiting strip-down and dismantling at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state.
Now, the GAO warns that the ‘unprecedented’ undertaking of dismantling and disposing of the ship could cost between $1 billion and $1.55 billion.
Under the current plan, the work on the ship’s nuclear components, including the eight nuclear reactors that powered the carrier, is to be carried out by Navy workers at the Puget Sound Shipyard, with the non-nuclear components handled by a private contractor.
It’s a shame she can’t be brought back into service to help get the US Navy up to 350 ships, but that’s an old hull with a lot of obsolete electronics — and that one-off, eight-reactor design had to have been a maintenance nightmare.
SHARP BREAK: UK Trade Minister Says ‘No Deal’ Brexit More Likely Than Not.
Trade Secretary Liam Fox told the Sunday Times newspaper that “intransigence” by EU officials “is pushing us towards no deal.” He put the chance of Britain crashing out without a deal at 60 percent.
Britain and the EU say they aim to hammer out an agreement on divorce terms and future trade by October so that it can be approved by all individual EU countries before the U.K. leaves the bloc on March 29.
But the talks have stalled, and the British government is trying to heap pressure on the other 27 EU nations to compromise by stressing the economic harm to all sides that would come from a “no-deal” Brexit that imposes tariffs and other barriers on U.K.-EU trade.
That’s assuming Brexit happens at all, of course.
Plus:
Fox accused EU officials of putting a “theological obsession” with sticking to the rules ahead of “the economic wellbeing of the people of Europe.”
That’s the history of the EU in a nutshell.
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