THE MOTHER OF ALL IRONIES: Iran unveils three new ‘precision guided missiles’ and warns of the ‘mother of all wars’ if the US attacks amid tensions in the Gulf.
Worked well the last time someone made that threat.
Archive for 2019
August 6, 2019
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Re-sinking CUNY: The City University of New York moves to eliminate objective testing—reversing the very reforms that had pulled it out of a long decline. Objective testing limits the freedom of professors and administrators to reward the people they like.
WHO HIRES THESE REPORTERS? THIS IS REALLY INCOMPETENT: “Washington Post Glibly Dismisses Mental Illness as Cause of Mass Shootings.”
MORE ON THAT NYT HEADLINE SWITCHEROO: New York Times caves to political pressure from Democrats, changes headline on top front page story.
The short version is that they caved to a high-profile Democrat outrage mob. Thomas Lifson has the full version at the link.
SHE WAS WEARING HEADPHONES AND THUS COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF HER SURROUNDINGS: Woman knocked over by bear during hike on Appalachian Trail. Unaware is a bad way to be when you’re out and about, whether in urban or wilderness settings.
UNEXPECTEDLY: New York City Businesses Struggle to Keep Up After Minimum Wage Increase. “Business owners and leaders say labor costs have forced cuts in jobs and work shifts.”
Many business owners said these changes were unintended consequences of the new minimum wage, which took effect at the beginning of the year.
Susannah Koteen, owner of Lido Restaurant in Harlem, said she worries about the impact raising wages could have on her restaurant, where she employs nearly 40 people. She hasn’t had to lay off anyone, but the increase has forced her to cut back on shifts and be more stringent about overtime. She said she changes her menu offerings seasonally and raises prices more often since the wage boost.
“What it really forces you to do is make sure that nobody works more than 40 hours,” Ms. Koteen said. “You can only cut back so many people before the service starts to suffer.”
Ms. Koteen said she shelved plans to move her restaurant to a larger location. That would require her to hire more staff, and she isn’t willing to take the risk with the unpredictability of her business. “You would just have no choice but to cut people at the bottom,” she said.
Plus: “Thomas Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said he has seen an uptick in small-business closures during the past six to nine months, and he attributed it to the minimum-wage legislation.”
If only there were some sort of predictable relationship between price and demand, perhaps one you could plot on an easy-to-understand curve, then politicians wouldn’t keep making this mistake.
UNDERREPORTED STORIES: The Great Baltimore Cleanup. “In the unending barrage of bad news, it’s easy to overlook the good things. Take, for example, this Republican effort to clean up Baltimore.”
To be fair, the press would mostly ignore this no matter what else was going on in the news cycle.
COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Anti-Gun Agitators Harass Sen. McConnell at His Home: ‘Just Stab the Motherf*cker in the Heart!’
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Daily electric ‘tickle’ could promote well-being, slow aging. A daily tickle of another sort can do the same thing, though . . .
WHEN EVERYTHING IS RACIST, NOTHING IS: Media: Condemning White Supremacy Makes Trump A White Supremacist.
MY IMPRESSION OF THEM IS LESS POSITIVE THAN THIS ARTICLE: Everything We Know About the USS Zumwalt Destroyers.
GAIL TVERBERG: The Biggest Problem With Renewables.
While a change to renewables may, in theory, help save world ecosystems, it will also tend to make the electric grid increasingly unstable. To prevent grid failure, electrical systems will need to pay substantial subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear electricity providers that can offer backup generation when intermittent generation is not available. Modelers have tended to overlook these difficulties. As a result, the models they provide offer an unrealistically favorable view of the benefit (energy payback) of wind and solar.
If the approach of mandating wind, water, and solar were carried far enough, it might have the unfortunate effect of saving the world’s ecosystem by wiping out most of the people living within the ecosystem.
If you talk to certain environmentalists, that’s a feature not a bug.
Until his car passed through the gates of Buckingham Palace en route to the kissing of hands, I didn’t quite believe Boris Johnson would actually make it to the premiership. That’s partly because many years ago he arrived late at a Spectator lunch, told us he’d just realized he was going to be prime minister, and we all laughed. Yet, a quarter-century later, here he is. As his sister Rachel points out, only fifty-five people have ever become UK PM, and, even if one has difficulty recalling the names of any of the recent occupants, that’s still fewer than have gone into space.
Back in those Speccie days, he was one of those writers you read not because of what he had to say but because of the way he said it. Here he is on the saskatoon – not the town, but an innocent Canadian berry that had fallen afoul of some control-freak Blairite regulatory agency (from which abyss it was rescued by the EU – a reminder that not everything that’s hellish about modern Britain is the fault of Brussels). At any rate, Boris turned in what is undoubtedly the best ever column written about the saskatoon:
You may not have been aware that the saskatoon is to berries as the Cohiba is to cigars. It is the king of the bush. It is used all over Canada to make jams, syrups, salad dressings and even creme brulee. According to some bumf I have from the Canadian High Commission, it is standard practice, at all Canadian state banquets, to sprinkle every course with saskatoons. When one contemplates the volcanic energy of this century’s great Canadians, from Mark Steyn to Conrad Black to Margaret Trudeau, one can only ascribe it to the saskatoon-based national diet.
That’s beautifully constructed. It’s just the ticket if you want to be a minor media celebrity and get invited on to BBC current affairs shows to be amusing about the day’s headlines. But it’s a tricky thing to parlay into a big-time political career:
Read the whole thing.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update. “Gravel is out, Creepy Porn Lawyer threatens a return, the Biden bunch banks big bucks, Ryan hits the showers, and Michelle says no (yet again).”
TO BE FAIR, AS A PROSECUTOR SHE LOCKED UP A LOT OF BLACK GUYS, SO THIS ACTUALLY KINDA MAKES SENSE: Kamala Harris Scolds President Trump for Working to Free A$AP Rocky.
Yeah, it’s from two weeks ago, but I just saw it.
HOW A DEFUNCT TRAIN STATION BECAME A “NEIGHBORHOOD” ON GOOGLE MAPS.
IN THE MAIL: From Frank J. Fleming, Hellbender.
LIBEL NEWS: Sarah Palin’s defamation suit against New York Times resurrected by appeals court. “A federal appeals court on Tuesday reversed a judge’s decision dismissing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for a 2017 editorial that suggested an image produced byPalin’s political action committee incited the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona. The appellate panel said Judge Jed Rakoff of U.S. District Court in Manhattan in 2017 had relied on facts outside of legal filings in the case to dismiss the suit against The Times by Palin, who was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008.”
UPDATE: That CNBC link seems not to be working now. Here’s another story, and here’s a link to the Second Circuit opinion. The Second Circuit tends to be pretty friendly to media defendants in general.
IT’S THE SAME OLD SONG: Obama Politicizes El Paso and Dayton Shootings, Blames Trump.
EXCLUSIVE: Firearms Expert Says Dayton Shooter’s Weapon Was Illegally Modified.
The weapon, which was obtained legally, was modified illegally.
Any rifle that has a barrel under 16 inches is regulated under the National Firearms Act, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Clearly, the barrel on the rifle used by the shooter is less than 16 inches.
“In order to have that configuration, he would have had to file for an ATF tax stamp, either as the original owner, or as a transferrer,” Maxey said.
The ATF has strict regulations for modifying a stock firearm. The owner has to fill out a 12 page form, and oftentimes submit to a secondary background check, separate from the standard background check completed when originally purchasing a firearm. There is also a $200 fee – known as a “tax stamp” – to modify the weapon.
According to Maxey, it is extremely unlikely that the Dayton shooter when through this process. Maxey said the important question is where or how the shooter obtained the illegally modified short-barreled rifle.
“If more gun control is what they want, how does this get stopped? What’s next? We just ban parts?” Maxey said.
Indeed.
IF IT WERE REPEALED, FACEBOOK AND TWITTER WOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS. BUT THERE ARE DOWNSIDES, TOO. Legal Shield for Websites Rattles Under Onslaught of Hate Speech.
Reminder: “Hate speech” is a legally meaningless term, referring simply to speech the left hates. I talk about Section 230 repeal in my The Social Media Upheaval.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: American University official says it plans to mandate use of preferred pronouns.