REST IN PEACE: NASA officially says goodbye to its Mars rover, Opportunity: Communication attempts have been unsuccessful for nearly a year now. “Opportunity went far beyond what anyone thought it would be able to withstand. NASA wanted this rover and its identical twin named Spirit to last 90 days. After 15 years and over 28 miles of martial terrain traveled, Opportunity is the most traveled and longest lasting rover ever launched to another planet.”
UPDATE: Much, much more here.
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: An armored Cadillac Escalade.
AT AMAZON, save in Arts Crafts and Sewing.
WHY DON’T WOMEN LIKE NICE GUYS?: Yale women demand admission to fraternities that they allege sexually harassed them.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 Campaign Spent $20,490 On Air Travel, $3,147 On Rail.
Related: Liz Cheney Stumps Green New Dealers With One Question: Did You Fly Here?
Cheney asked the expert panel, comprised of four Democrat and two Republican witnesses, to state how they each arrived in Washington D.C., for the hearing. Four of the six witnesses stated that they traveled by airplane, the very means of transportation they hope to diminish.
Exit quote: “Listen to Harrison Ford, who’s taken his private plane to get cheeseburgers.”
ANTITRUST: Left to Their Own Devices, Pricing Algorithms Resort to Collusion.
Related, from my colleague Maurice Stucke and Oxford’s Ariel Ezrachi: Sustainable and Unchallenged Algorithmic Tacit Collusion.
BRUCE BAWER: A Transgender Hero Breaks Ranks. “I believe that gender identity is a fraud perpetrated by psychiatry, the likes of something the United States and other nations hasn’t experienced since the lobotomy era. As a result, I have returned to my male birth sex.”
HOW TRUMP GETS REELECTED: Trump won in 2016 because a large chunk of those who strongly disapproved of him disliked his opponent even more. Progressive activists seem determined to provoke a repeat.
GAIA NEEDS NUKES: A Sensible Climate Change Solution, Borrowed From Sweden.
MORE FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Dave Hardy’s Dred Scott: The Inside Story. I read it last night and it reads like a mystery thriller. No, seriously, there are lots of longstanding questions about the Dred Scott case, and Hardy has dug up some answers.
Plus, I love this vignette about John Sanford’s brother in law, an anti-slavery member of Congress named Dr. Calvin Chaffee.
It related one incident by Rep. Preston Brooks, who had severely beaten Sen. Charles Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor. Brooks, drunk, told Chafee, “I thrashed one Massachusetts man today, and I’d like to thrash another.”
Chaffee responded by buying a revolver, the story continued, adding that Rep. Aiken of South Carolina saw Chaffee slide the revolver out of his pocket and into his desk on the House floor. Startled, Aiken asked if Chaffee was ready to use it and Chaffee responded, “If any of your chivalry irritate me, I shall certainly use this revolver.” [The report concluded] “After that, Dr. Chaffee’s southern friends were not only civil but cordial.”
As a man who might have been in Congress said in the following century, you get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. And they made Massachusetts men of stouter stuff back in those days, apparently.
I also like Hardy’s description of Scott’s attorney, Roswell Field: “He seems to have been the type of attorney that appellate lawyers dread: An idealist. A fellow that believes that if an impartial view of the law favors his side, he must inevitably win.” Hardy, no slouch of an attorney himself, knows whereof he speaks.
LIBERALS LOVE TRAINS, HATE ARITHMETIC: @AOC and the Magic Choo Choo
What if we had a transportation system that could go anywhere in the country at 500 miles an hour, and the right of way was as free as air?
JOE PAPPALARDO: The Air Force is Changing How Special Ops Fighters Are Trained.
TOM MAGUIRE ON COCAINE MITCH’S LATEST: Owning The Libs By Voting On Their Proposals.
BLUE ON BLUE: BuzzFeed votes to unionize after layoffs.
#JOURNALISM AND THE “MUSLIM BAN:”
They circulate outright lies nonstop, then complain when people call them “fake news.”
CONRAD BLACK: The Democrats’ French Dilemma.
An eminent former cabinet member and I are having an amicable running debate about what level of concern is justified by the steadily more extreme espousal of lunatic policy positions by influential Democrats. Personal income top tax rates of 70 percent (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders), nationalized health care (Kamala Harris), open borders and sanctuaries against federal immigration laws (most audible Democrats), the killing of live new-born children (flirtations by many, apart from the governor of Virginia, who took the initial plunge on his way all the way down last week), and now, a green dictatorship that would radically renovate every building in America, abolish road and air transportation, and require brigades of people to diaper flatulent cows (the inevitable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, inter alia). My well-travelled friend thinks that as the polls seem to support a good deal of this foolishness, it is very dangerous.
I think it is a welcome development, as in their frustration that Donald Trump has emerged as a serious challenge and not just an electoral fluke who can be easily purged and disposed of, the Democrats are getting everything off their chest in a mighty primal disgorgement.
Radical political change, even mere hustings-posturing and salonniere-bombast, always becomes more and more exaggerated before it snaps back. Genuine revolutionary movements go farther and farther until they reach the law of 22 Prairial—the French Revolution’s “Law of the Great Terror.” The Committee of Public Safety accelerated and expedited executions of the accused, after pro forma trials and on the flimsiest denunciations. (Michael Avenatti-level allegations, in other words).
Then, suddenly, Thermidor arrives. The majority soon is composed of people who think they might be next, chaos is at hand, and a little ordinary government starts sounding like a good idea again. . . .
The United States is not revolutionary France and these explosions of policy idiocy among the Democrats are acts of frustration and dispossession (of a sacred right to govern), and the level of civil disturbance is much less than it was during the worst of the Civil Rights-era divisions and the Vietnam War protests. The country is becoming very prosperous and is certainly not being defeated or humbled in the world, and no serious person is calling for violence, though Maxine Waters and a few of the other Democratic extremists come close at times, and the president has suggested that some of his hecklers could profit from a punch in the face. But instead of the logical course when a party in a democracy is defeated—regrouping and mapping out a strategy to win the next election—what we have is the Democrats fast-forwarding in a race to be the most outspoken and avant garde on every issue, as they watch their whole policy agenda go up in flames.
I’m a bit less sanguine than Black, but the entertainment value is certainly high.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED:
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, AmazonBasics 12 Sheet Cross-Cut Paper/CD/ Credit Card Shredder.
THIS PETER BEINART COLUMN HASN’T AGED WELL:
But instead of admitting his mistake, Beinart engages in a rather peculiar form of whataboutism. Apparently, Americans have no business criticizing a congresswoman for anti-Semitic statements unless they are equally critical of Republicans who defend Israel regarding policies that Beinart disagrees with.
RACIST, ANTI-SEMITIC STANDARD-BEARER: No, you’re the real racist! Rep. Ilhan Omar fires back at Trump: ‘You have trafficked in hate your whole life.’
CHANGE? Venezuela’s Guaido says he’s working to restore ties with Israel. “Self-declared president says he’s also open to relocating Venezuela’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Fail: WaPo & Vox Journos Get Northam Abortion Position Wrong, Accuse Trump of “Inciting Violence.”
The problem with what both Rupar and Gibson asserted regarding Trump “lying” about Northam’s stance on late term abortion? They’re both wrong. Trump got it right.
Here’s Northam’s actual quote from that WTOP interview, with bolded emphasis added:
When we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of the physician. More than one physician, by the way. And its done in case where there may be severe deformities, where there may be a fetus that is non-viable.
So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
Gaslighting. It’s not just for the Green New Deal anymore!
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