Archive for 2019
July 10, 2019
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Tell If Someone Is Bugging or Tracking You. I’m so old that I can remember when the impedance change produced by a parallel connection — literally, a “tap” — on your phone line gave it a characteristic hollow sound.
JOSH KRAUSHAAR: For Some, a Presidential Campaign Is No Résumé Builder.
My former governor:
John Hickenlooper
It’s tough to put an accomplished two-term governor on this list, but Hickenlooper has stepped on his bipartisan legacy in Colorado with his lackluster bid for the presidency.
The first sign things aren’t going as planned? When your home-state protégé, Sen. Michael Bennet, decides to run for president with a similar campaign message—despite your presence in the field. Bennet, while not yet catching fire, has raised nearly three times the campaign cash of his mentor.
The second? Suffering the indignity of not being recognized at the first Democratic debate, having to remind security that he actually was a candidate.
The third? Not being able to defend capitalism in his campaign kickoff despite his great success as a brewpub-founding entrepreneur. If there was a lane for Hickenlooper, it was as a free-market-defending Democratic moderate. By failing to define himself that way from the beginning, he lost his best opportunity.
Hickenlooper is still running, but much of his original campaign team has left. He raised less than most serious Senate candidates in the last fundraising quarter. A very winnable Senate race would have been a worthy capstone to his career. Now it looks like he’s headed to an early retirement instead.
Plus, Beto O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Tim Ryan at the link. Lots of ego and bad decisionmaking on display.
POLITICAL ZEALOTS DO NOT AN ENCYCLOPEDIA MAKE: Don’t Blame Wikipedia for Clinton and Epstein Edits.
THE BACKLASH OVER THE LITTLE MERMAID CASTING A BLACK ARIEL IS FAKE NEWS:
Last week, Disney announced that Halle Bailey, a black actress, would portray the fictional mermaid princess in a live-action remake. Allegedly, this infuriated some racists because Ariel is red-haired and white-skinned in the cartoon version. “Us white girls, who grew up with The Little Mermaid, deserved a true-to-color Ariel,” wrote one critic, Rebeccs, in a tweet that went viral. “Disney, you made a huge mistake by hiring Halle Bailey.”
Horrified? Don’t be. A troll account was responsible for the tweet, as Buzzfeed‘s Brandon Wall helpfully explained:
Moreover, there were a lot more people responding to the tweet and disagreeing with it than liking it.It’s true that a few Twitter users seemed genuinely upset about the casting. But the overwhelming majority of people tweeting #NotMyAriel are doing so in support of Bailey and expressing outrage that anyone would be offended by a black Ariel. Their fury is well-intended but largely unnecessary.
Giant corporations sure know what they’re doing when it comes to pressing the buttons of a mass audience on social media, even if their PR machines have to break a few eggs in the process:
JOHN KASS: Democrats might win census citizen question in courts but lose at the ballot box.
So why can’t Americans ask it of people in our country? Why can’t we ask people in this country — on the 2020 census — if they are citizens of the United States?
But if you dare ask it, or support the idea that it’s a reasonable question, you’ll be denounced by the Democratic left as a racist, a tool of Trump, and you’ll be exiled for your sins.
Is it racist and evil for a nation to ask if its residents are citizens of that nation?
No. Every citizen should have the right to know how many citizens are here. We are not the subjects of the government. We are citizens. And for now, at least, citizenship still counts. You must declare your citizenship if you wish to get a U.S. passport. So why shouldn’t the 2020 census be able to ask if you are a citizen?
Polls aren’t everything, but a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released the other day shows that 67 percent of people agreed that the question, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” should be allowed on the 2020 census. Eight-eight percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats and even 63 percent of independents said it was a legitimate question.
If those who agreed to the question are wise, they’ll keep their mouths shut, lest they be denounced for Thought Crime.
Dems, however, are trying to tilt things so that they never lose at the ballot box again.
RENATO MARIOTTI: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Make the Case Against Him.
Mr. Epstein can be prosecuted by the Southern District of New York because his agreement was with the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida. As New York federal prosecutors noted, the agreement does not bind other offices. In fact, Justice Department policy prevents United States attorney’s offices from making agreements that limit other offices.
In most cases, that is not an issue. Prosecutors can bring charges only in jurisdictions where the crime occurred, and typically, if they cut a deal after a long investigation, another office is unlikely to investigate the same crime later.
What Mr. Epstein’s lawyers did not count on was investigative reporting 12 years later that shined a new light on his alleged widespread sexual abuse of minors. The reporting, in The Miami Herald, led to outrage that his deal was unlawfully concealed from victims. The deal is now being reviewed by the Justice Department for misconduct. The questions surrounding that agreement, and the heinous nature of the crimes he is charged with, justified this indictment years later.
Mr. Epstein will not be able to stop the new charges from going forward. There is no statute of limitation in cases like this, and because he was never charged with a federal offense, there is no double jeopardy issue.
Better late than never.
FAKE NEWS: House Democrats Use Photo From Obama Administration To Promote Investigation Into ‘Inhumane Treatment’ At The Border. The Republicans should just run with this and subpoena Obama to testify about how this happened. . . .
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Anti-Christian Attacks in France Quietly Quadrupled. Why? I can guess why. Also why it’s being kept quiet.
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, Travelpro Citadel Deluxe 20″ and 24″ Hardside Spinner Luggage Set, Gun Metal Gray.
PURR: On this day in 1920, Ed Lowe, the inventor of kitty litter was born. I’m not kidding. “Kitty litter” wasn’t invented till 1947. Before that people used sand or dirt or they just let the cat outside.
Lowe and his father ran a business in Michigan that sold sand, sawdust, and clay in bulk to heavy industry. One cold January day, a neighbor, Mrs. Draper, asked him for some sand for her cat, since her own sand pile was frozen. Instead of sand, he gave her Fuller’s earth—a type of absorbent clay. She loved it. It worked much better than sand.
Ed got a bright idea—ultimately an idea worth hundreds of millions of dollars: Why not sell the stuff? The local pet store owner was dubious. He couldn’t see how anyone would be dumb enough to pay their hard-earned money for kitty litter when dirt and sand were essentially free. But Lowe persuaded him to give it away free so cat owners could see how great it was compared to what they were using. It worked! Like Mrs. Draper, customers loved it.
See how easy it can be to make hundreds of millions of dollars? I love America. And so does my little feline Leopold.
MIDDLE EAST: Netanyahu warns Iran about range of new F-35 fighter.
“Iran has recently threatened to destroy Israel, and it should remember that these planes can reach anywhere in the Middle East, including Iran as well as Syria,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister appeared to answer a comment last week from Iranian parliamentarian Mojtaba Zolnour. Amid growing tensions between Iran and the United States, Zolnour said any attack against Tehran would impact Israel as well.
“If the U.S. attack us, only half an hour will remain of Israel’s lifespan,” Zolnour said.
LAST MONTH: Khamenei Fires Air Force Chief over Israeli F-35 Deep Penetration of Iran’s Sky.
“DIGNITARY SAFETY” SOUNDS BETTER THAN “BEING A WHINY LITTLE SHIT WHO CAN’T STAND OPPOSING IDEAS.” Williams College rejects free-speech principles to protect ‘dignitary safety’ of students. But my translation is entirely accurate.
ECO-PAGANISM?: Classical Liberal and classicist Helen Dale, who wrote the fascinating Kingdom of the Wicked books, looks at echoes of ancient pagan religion in modern societies at Law & Liberty. While she argues against progressivism itself as a reassertion of pagan morality, she is less sure about environmentalism:
Whether one scrutinizes James Lovelock’s historic Gaia Hypothesis or considers how activist outfit Extinction Rebellion advances autistic savant Greta Thunberg as a type of child seer, one perceives a blend of immanent pagan orientation with millenarian Christian eschatology. ‘Gaia’, incidentally, was a popular Roman girl’s name.
This is a fascinating topic, and Helen goes into more detail in her podcast.
PRICE, MEET DEMAND: Minimum wage bill could eliminate 1.3 million jobs, CBO says.
IT’S TIME FOR SOME ACCOUNTABILITY: The University of Texas-Austin says it has contacted the Texas Attorney General’s office about recent threats against conservative students.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Media White Knights for Mueller, Discredited Steele Dossier. “A (Obama-appointed) New York judge has denied the Department of Justice request to change the attorneys who are working on the dumpster fire citizenship question on the census. The judge said the change request was denied because it was ‘patently deficient’ and provides no ‘satisfactory reasons.’ This is an unusual move but if you are a hyper-politicized judge intent on blocking and obstructing everything your specified political opponent does, it does makes perfect sense. That’s what is going on here, they are trying to drag out the clock since the census question issue needs to be resolved because of printing deadlines.”
WHY IS LEFTIST POLITICS SUCH A CESSPIT OF ABUSE? Dem donor Ed Buck accused of human trafficking by family of man found dead in his LA home.
TO BE FAIR, IF THEY CARED ABOUT THE WELLBEING OF MUSLIMS, THEIR OWN COUNTRIES WOULDN’T BE SUCH SHITHOLES: Foreign Policy: Muslim Leaders Are Betraying the Uighurs: The Trump administration has done more for the millions in camps than any Islamic leader.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Over Past Three Years, Seven Law Schools Have Tried To Be Acquired By Universities.
THERE’S ALWAYS A NEW SHINY OBJECT: In Search of Silver Bullet, The Media Moves From Russia to Epstein.