Archive for 2018

NOW THAT’S REAL SOCIALISM: Nicaragua is unraveling.

Nicaragua is showing all the symptoms of a failed state. At the center of the storm is the corrupt minority government of Daniel Ortega, the former revolutionary leader who now acts more like a cartel boss than a president. Over the past seven weeks, Ortega’s police and paramilitaries have killed more than 120 people, mostly students and other young protesters who are demanding the president’s ouster and a return to democracy, according to a human-rights group. Police hunt students like enemy combatants. Sandinista Youth paramilitaries, armed and paid by Ortega’s party, drive around in pickup trucks attacking protesters. Gangs of masked men loot and burn shops with impunity. Cops wear civilian clothing, and some paramilitaries dress in police uniforms. “This is starting to look more like Syria than Caracas,” one Nicaraguan business leader told me.

The asymmetrical fighting has claimed the lives of at least 120 people, including one U.S. citizen, and injured more than 1,000, according to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (known by its Spanish acronym Cenidh). Most of the fatalities have reportedly been unarmed young people, including a 15-year-old shot in the neck for bringing water to student protesters.

Reagan was 100% right about the Sandinistas.

AFTER KATE SPADE’S DEATH, THINK OF THE SURVIVORS:

If someone is contemplating suicide, they should know the utter devastation that will be left in their wake. While those who have died may have thought the world a better place without them, we survivors are living witness to the fact that it is not, that our worlds will not ever be whole without them in it.

In the wake of CNN’s announcement that Anthony Bourdain has committed suicide, read the whole thing.

Related: Playwright Christopher Shinn tweets, “Crucial after the suicides of Kate Spade & Anthony Bourdain to talk about, beyond individual psyche/biology, the superficial culture we’ve created in which one’s only value is their current, temporary desirability & in which one feels unforgivable for not living up to one’s image”

More: Ben Shapiro asks today, “What Can We Do To Stop Suicide?”

A FEW THOUGHTS ON ANTHONY BOURDAIN from a longtime fan.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Deep Stater Busted for Lying about Leaking and Much, Much More. “A former staffer on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI, actually pronounced “sissy”) was busted for lying to the FBI about leaking classified information to the press. He wasn’t busted for leaking, just lying, which is interesting.”