FBI PROBES CORRUPTION IN LOS ANGELES CITY GOVERNMENT:
“It looks bad,” said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State Los Angeles. “Nobody wants to believe that their city is going down a dark path. There is a point where the voting public will start to wonder, ‘What else will these investigations turn up?’”
The more they’re talking about “climate change” and “inclusion,” the less they’re doing their actual jobs. And, often as not, lining their pockets.
THEIR ENTIRE PLATFORM IS BUILT ON LIES: Amid Booming Economy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren Tells Crowd ‘These Are Hard Times for Our Country.’
Related: In Democrats’ war on Donald Trump, ‘stupid’ economy still stubbornly good.
UK politics just got fun again.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Boris used to be an American citizen, since he held dual citizenship until he renounced it in the face of IRS hounding. Background on the hounding, which also afflicts other U.S. citizens living abroad, here.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Status of the 3 Emoluments Clauses Cases Against the President.. “Today is 38 weeks (over 8 months) since oral argument in CREW v. Trump (2d Circuit). A baby goes from conception to birth in that amount of time.”
A MEDIA SMEAR UNDONE: Roger Scruton Re-Appointed to Government.
WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT: How the Left Turned Words Into ‘Violence,’ and Violence Into ‘Justice.’
Responding to news that journalist Andy Ngo had been beaten by antifa protestors in Portland last month, a woman named Charlotte Clymer tweeted that “Ngo intentionally provokes people on the left to drive his content. Being attacked today on video taken by an actual journalist (because Ngo is definitely not) is the greatest thing that could have happened to his career. You know it. I know it. He knows it. We all know it. Violence is completely wrong, and I find it sad and weak to allow a sniveling weasel like Andy Ngo to get under one’s skin like this, but I’m also not going to pretend this wasn’t Ngo’s goal from the start. I mean, let’s cut the shit here. This is what they do.”
Who is Charlotte Clymer? She is an activist who works at the Human Rights Campaign, America’s “largest LGBTQ civil rights organization,” which supposedly “envision[s] a world where LGBTQ people are ensured equality at home, at work [and] in every community.” Andy Ngo, who has written for Quillette, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other publications, happens to be gay.
Read the whole thing.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: The Shaky Standing of Mueller’s Footnotes. “Most of the citations are matter-of-fact support for claims made in the main text. But a close reading reveals that many of the footnotes raise more questions than they answer, especially regarding Mueller’s methods and intent. Some footnotes show that key allegations often rely on the flimsy say-so of media accounts; others show a willingness to accept the claims of anti-Trump critics at face value. Mueller and his team also used the footnotes as the place to include unsubstantiated gossip and speculation. . . . If Robert Mueller is going to defend his document, he will have to be prepared to defend the footnotes too. It is there where the strengths and weaknesses of the Mueller report are most clearly on display. Come Wednesday’s hearings, the advantage may go to the questioners who know where to look.”
THE GLOBAL THREAT of the Chinese Communist Party.
STEPHANIE GUTMANN: Turning The Tide Against Campus Kangaroo Courts.
JON GABRIEL: Democrats own the Obamacare mess. Can any presidential candidates fix it? “Conservatives didn’t create our ‘unjust and inefficient’ health-care system. You built that, Democrats.”
THE PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF ULYSSES S. GRANT: On this day in 1885, Ulysses Grant died at the age of 63, essentially penniless. Only a few days before he had completed his final task—writing his memoirs. Those memoirs would soon make his widow a wealthy woman. And that is exactly what he had been praying for.
Grant had been diagnosed with throat cancer not quite a year before his death. In order to run for President, he had forfeited his military pension, and a series of bad investments had left the Grant family in a dire financial condition. So he feverishly set about to write his memoirs so that his beloved Julia would be supported after his death. Mark Twain, an admirer of Grant, arranged for a book contract on very favorable terms to the former President.
The book was a hit, and Twain’s marketing strategy on behalf of Grant’s family was shrewd. Union army veterans flocked to buy it.
Historians, although enthusiastic about his literary talent, are sometimes surprised to find themselves praising Grant as possibly the best book-length author among the nation’s Presidents. They should not be. Those who knew Grant knew that he was a wonderful storyteller with a detailed memory for the events of the Civil War and much else. They weren’t in the least surprised at his ability to put it all down on paper.
Yes, the book is still available.
(p.s. these days former Presidents seem to do pretty well financially. There is no need to worry about penniless widows, widowers, or starving Presidential offspring. Obama’s net worth has been estimated at $40 million. The Clintons have made $240 million since leaving the White House. George W. Bush has been estimated to come in a little behind Obama, which may be surprising to some given that, unlike Obama and Clinton, he was born to wealth.)
HMM: Millions of Barrels of Iranian Oil Are Piled Up in China’s Ports. “Two and a half months after the White House banned the purchase of Iran’s oil, the nation’s crude is continuing to be sent to China where it’s being put into what’s known as “bonded storage,” say people familiar with operations at several Chinese ports. This supply doesn’t cross local customs or show up in the nation’s import data, and isn’t necessarily in breach of sanctions. While it remains out of circulation for now, its presence is looming over the market.”
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, ASICS Men’s GEL Venture 5 Running Shoe.
MODERN PROBLEMS: US Air Force Is Likely Getting The Weirdest Briefings About The Planned Raid On Area 51.
Given that the plan quickly went viral (which led to some incredible memes), somebody immediately pointed out that a US general was likely going to get a crash course on exactly what a Naruto run is. The Naruto run is a particular style of running, a reference to the manga and anime series whose protagonist Naruto Uzumaki runs with his arms stretched out behind its back. And while we don’t have evidence of the top brass in the pentagon getting this talk, there are pictures showing that some in the Air Force at least are getting a crash course on what a Naruto run is.
People on Reddit have pointed out that this might not be a serious exercise, but rather a training opportunity on how to give good briefs even on silly subjects. Although this is probably the case, many want to believe otherwise.
Whatever happens (or doesn’t) with the Area 51 raid, making plans for people doing dumb stuff inspired by social media is probably pretty smart.
WANNABE HEROINES DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR VILLAINS: “I have written elsewhere about how contemporary feminism needs the idea of an oppressive patriarchy in order to define women as victims of oppression, and as such it seeks to attach to men a primal stain of (toxic) masculinity so that third-wave feminism is righteously justified in all its complaints against them. . . . In contemporary expressions of male predatory sexuality told from the perspective of women, such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, now a popular television show, men are viewed as powerful, threatening, and in a real sense empty of humanity, a kind of monolith of authority.”
PRINCIPLES ONLY MATTER IF THEY HELP DEMOCRATS: Al Franken’s sexual assault is what #MeToo was created to address and now liberals feel victimized by it.
#TIMESUP FOR #METOO:
● Shot: Christian Toto: Hollywood And The Total Collapse Of #MeToo.
● Chaser: Poll shows Biden isn’t losing support from female Democrats.
● Hangover: The New Yorker Believes Al Franken Over Eight Women, Your Lying Eyes.
PUT ME IN THAT LAST DORM: UNLV provides separate dorms for African Americans, LGBT, and students who go to college to study.
DAN MITCHELL: Trump’s a Big-Government Big Spender.
He’s right, notwithstanding Trump’s excellent deregulatory efforts, but that’s what the American people seem to want, and keep electing. As I’ve written before, it’s not that I don’t care or worry about the booming debt, it’s just that I don’t think anything will be done about it until there’s a crisis. And as the Insta-Dad said about the stimulus back in 2008, the bad news is, that exercise convinced the federal government that it could borrow a lot more money than it had previously thought it could.
YEAH. I’VE BEEN ACCUSED OF THIS TOO. BECAUSE IN THE LEFT’S CRAZY, SCRAMBLED MINDS, AMERICAN=WHITE. IT COULD BE THEY’RE THE ONES WHO ARE RACIST, AND PROJECTING LIKE IMAX: No, Amy Wax Is Not A White Supremacist For Wanting Immigrants Who Support American Norms.
YEAH, WELL, THEY MIGHT STILL BE SMARTER THAN THE GATEKEEPERS OF WIKIPEDIA WHO ARE TRYING TO REMOVE AS NON-RELEVANT A BUNCH OF BAEN AUTHORS’ PAGES (SO FAR, TOM KRATMAN, MIKE WILLIAMSON, JOHN RINGO… AND ME.): The Gatekeepers of Facebook.
SO, STANDARD LEFTISTS, THEN? ‘View’ Hosts Take Bold Stand Against … Free Speech.
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