Archive for 2019

HEH:

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, NAT HENTOFF? Journalists Against Free Speech. The First Amendment is no longer sacred among  journalists steeped in progressive orthodoxy about “hate speech” and “repressive tolerance.” My piece in City Journal discusses the new censors at HuffPost, Vox, the New Republic, Slate, the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review and other media outlets.

These mostly younger progressive journalists lead campaigns to get conservative journalists fired, banned from Twitter, and “demonetized” on YouTube. They don’t burn books, but they’ve successfully pressured Amazon to stop selling titles that they deem offensive. They encourage advertising boycotts designed to put ideological rivals out of business. They’re loath to report forthrightly on left-wing censorship and violence, even when fellow journalists get attacked. They equate conservatives’ speech with violence and rationalize leftists’ actual violence as . . . speech.

Read the whole thing.

WOMEN WHO TAKE PAID MATERNITY LEAVE ARE MORE LIKELY TO BECOME STAY-AT-HOME MOMS, AND THAT’S A PROBLEM BECAUSE REASONS. “Maybe rational women, who respond to the incentive of paid leave, also analyze other aspects of life in economic terms and figure out the value of the work done in the home, the costs of going to work, and the good reasons to institute division of labor within the family, with only one parent engaged in money-earning outside the home. Maybe you get some perspective on life and economics when you’ve got the time to reflect and plan. When you’re outside of the workplace, you may develop a sense of the meaning of life that isn’t workplace-based? Does the government want that not to happen?!”

HOUSTON: Judge Alexandra Smoots-Thomas suspended following federal indictment. She’s already playing the race card, but it was maxed out under Obama. “She’s a black female Democrat, and I think they saw this as an opportunity to get her off the bench and try to start putting Republicans back on the bench in a county where there’s none that exist.”

The emerging rule is that it’s per se illegitimate to prosecute, or even to investigate, Democrats, because reasons. Of course, given cases like Tom Delay — or even President Trump — the notion that Democrats regard all prosecutions as inherently political seems plausible.

“THIS CATEGORY OF CRIME WAS NOT EVEN LOGGED BEFORE 2017.” Sweden’s 100 explosions this year: What’s going on? You imported a lot of explodey people. But we’ll never know officially: “Swedish police do not record or release the ethnicity of suspects or convicted criminals, but intelligence chief Linda H Straaf says many do share a similar profile.”

HMM: Lyft Says Ditch Your Car (and Ride in Ours), Teams with Carvana Used-Car Buying Service. “Lyft has brought back its ‘Ditch Your Car for a Month’ program and has doubled down by teaming with Carvana to suggest people ditch their cars forever. Last year, Lyft gave 150,000 people in 35 cities some free ride credits if they promised not to use their car for a month. This year, you actually have to sell your car to Carvana in exchange for the Lyft benefits.”

SAD: Mooney Shuts Down, Employees Furloughed. “To those watching Mooney’s sales numbers over the first half of this year, the shutdown is probably not a huge surprise. According to GAMA sales records, Mooney sold two Acclaim Ultras in each of the first two quarters, after selling 14 aircraft at a value of $10.7 million in 2018. For context, Cirrus sold 203 aircraft in the first half of 2019, while Mooney’s output trailed Extra, Pipistrel and Quest’s.”

The Acclaim was a really sharp-looking small plane, and quite the performer, too.