CHRISTIAN TOTO: How Netflix Hijacked That ‘Laugh-In’ Legacy. “The streaming giant brought back the classic comedy show to attack Trump and dole out some big, whopping lies.”
When I bought my first TiVo 15 or 16 years ago, its algorithm decided that I really wanted to watch old “Laugh-In” reruns — and, boy, was it right.
Conclusion: Old TiVo is smarter than new Netflix.
A LOOK AT THE 2019 LINCOLN NAUTILUS. I don’t see that as a great car name.
FRANCIS TURNER: A Tale of Two Coups.
On Brexit and Mueller:
One of reasons why elections are a good thing is that they provide a mechanism for peaceful transitions without the losers being shot or put in jail. The fact that the losers in this election appear to have attempted to undermine the winners is an extremely bad precedent because it leads to the winners deciding to take it out on the losers next time around and that in turn leads to people not relinquishing power short of being turfed out with violence – see Venezuela and any number of Latin American, Central Asian and African dictatorships.
In fact allowing the losers to come up with one way after another to try and delegitimise an election they lost is bad on its own because the ability to “throw the bums out” is a key feature of democracy. If voters can’t trust that their votes will be respected they are likely to resort to other methods of expressing their displeasure with the current set of rulers and that is something that these rulers may come to regret. The good news is that the New AG seems to be doing his job and turning over any number of stones that various parties would have preferred remained unexamined.
It is unclear to me how many of the plotters will end up in the poor house or jail – sadly I suspect most will skate – which means that the distrust of government which fired up the Tea Party and the Trump campaign is not going to dissipate.
Indeed — and read the whole thing.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Trey Gowdy: FBI withheld ‘game changer’ transcript material from FISA Court.
I THINK OF AMASH AS THE LIBERTARIANS’ VERSION OF JOHN MCCAIN: Justin Amash’s last stand. He’s always ready to stand selflessly for principle, so long as it gets him good press.
WORTH READING: John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport bring peace to the warring factions of constitutional originalism.
I’D LIKE FRIES WITH THAT: Whataburger hires Morgan Stanley to explore possible sale.
Orange-and-white beacon and Texas chain Whataburger has hired financial services company Morgan Stanley to explore expansion and a possible sale, the San Antonio Business Journal reports.
The possibility of a sale was first reported by Reuters earlier this month. According to the news organization, the chain, which boasts more than 800 locations nationwide, could be valued at more than $6 billion.
The spicy ketchup alone is worth that much.
HEH: Thaddeus Stevens Remembered. Now that’s a put-down.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Progressive Demagogue-in-Training Likes Billionaires After All. “Never one to let consistency be the hobgoblin of her little mind, New York congresscritter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to have done a 180 on the moral worth of billionaires.”
IN THE MAIL: From Hans G. Schantz, The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller.
WELL, GOOD: Google limits Huawei’s access to Android code. “As a result of a U.S. government order, Google has stopped providing non-public hardware or software to Huawei, severely impacting the Chinese device maker’s ability to create new smartphones and update existing ones.”
Kudos to the Trump Administration for tightening the screws on this communist front corporation.
LIFE WITH THE WOKE MOB:
What got our attention in that NYT piece was a reader (Rudy Breteler)’s comment:
Imagine in this happened in the medical school. Harvey Weinstein was diagnosed with cancer, and an oncologist who also happened to be a dean agreed to provide treatment. Would you say that the oncologist was unqualified to be a dean because he was involved in providing medical care to Harvey Weinstein?
Actually, Rudy, I’m afraid that in the present climate, a Harvard oncologist would face a similar backlash for treating Weinstein. This is not apartheid Israel, where terror victims could be made to wait while an injured terrorist is receiving treatment. The commies and Nazis were equally pragmatic in denying their enemies medical treatment, and I have little doubt regarding where the Harvard administration falls on this issue.
The woke mob, like all mobs, is vicious and stupid. And people join in such mobs so that they can let their own viciousness and stupidity flow freely without responsibility or guilt. So yes, if not this week, then probably next week.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The Air Force Wants to Use Air Taxis to Rescue Troops.
The U.S. Air Force wants a drone that can fly out the back of an air transport, land, pick up a soldier, airman, or Marine trapped behind enemy lines, and whisk them to safety. The Personnel Recovery/Transport Vehicle would leverage technology being developed to support the emerging air taxi industry to develop a new, autonomous, search and rescue vehicle.
The concept would work like this: a U.S. military pilot is shot down and lands in enemy territory. A C-130J Hercules transport is quickly loaded with a Personnel Recovery/Transport Vehicle, and the Hercules flies to the vicinity of the pilot’s location. The PR/TV is rolled out the back of the aircraft ramp, and with the help of parachutes the autonomous vehicle slows its descent and then begins operating under its own power. The PR/TV flies to the pilot’s location, the pilot gets inside, and the PR/TV flies back toward friendly lines.
Nifty.
TIME TO ADMIT THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION FAILED? Great prose ought to inform and inspire. Noelle Mering’s post today in The Federalist asking “Is Sexual Autonomy Worth the Cost to Human Lives” does both. I offer some brief thoughts on it as well in “Abortion, Sex and Working on Capitol Hill” on HillFaith.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Justin Amash Gone Wild. “One more thing, J-Am, where are your libertarian principles regarding illegal surveillance on American citizens? On Illegal FISA warrants, national security letters, human intelligence assets being placed around a political campaign by the unelected political bureaucracy? The jack-booted fedgov strong-arming people to plead to process crimes? U cool with that bro, because TRUMP?”
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Yosemite looks like a snow globe, and summer is just around the corner.
(Classical reference in headline.)
SOMETIMES DEALS UNRAVEL: On this day in 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act into law. It was supposed to be a compromise in which Democrats got some of what they wanted and Republicans got some of what they wanted. But for reasons I describe here, it hasn’t really turned out that way.
NOT JUST FINANCIAL: Eric Swalwell is a financial mess.
JOEL KOTKIN: America can’t ignore the economic threat of a rising China.
In the aftermath of the Communist victory in the late 1940s, the question often asked in Washington was: “Who lost China?” That fueled the McCarthyite inquisition that followed. The question our children might ask is: “Who lost America?”
The long-running side-show around Russian “collusion” focused on the nasty but largely inconsequential ties between some of Donald Trump’s more sleazy aides and their equally disreputable Russian or Ukrainian counterparts. Yet, compared to China, Russia represents at most a pesky but fundamentally second-rate power; Russia’s GDP is smaller than that of South Korea and barely a tenth of China’s. . . .
Until Trump, many influential voices tended to be soft on China. Some have seen China’s capitalist growth as a confirming the efficacy of market systems, and means to encourage some semblance of liberal democracy to the Middle Kingdom. This logic has collapsed given the increasingly obvious mercantilist and authoritarian nature of the regime.
China’s wealth has won it many prominent allies from both parties, including former GOP Speaker John Boehner, who have signed up to defend China’s interests. Wall Street investors and many of our leading manufacturing companies — notably Apple — have benefited massively from China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization in 2001. Since 1990 the United States deficit in trade goods with China has ballooned from under $10 billion annually to $419 billion last year. China’s ratio of imports to exports was four to one in 2018.
This trade, one can argue, has benefited American consumers. But it hasn’t come without costs, including the loss of an estimated 3.4 million jobs in the U.S. since China’s admission to the WTO.
It has also hurt many companies, particularly in technology. American firms in China, either as part of their entry fee to the country’s market, or through surreptitious means, have been forced to surrender the historic advantages of our innovative economy; the Chinese government, as one observer noted, encourages its large companies to work as “patriotic thieves.”
Flashback: While Everyone Is Distracted By Russia, Chinese Spying And Influence Runs Wild.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: The Past Is Another Country. Ever since the professional-historian fraternity locked arms in defense of Michael Bellesiles’ fraudulent Second Amendment history, admitting its falsity only when the evidence became overwhelming and then trying to rehabilitate him a few years later, my respect for the field has been tempered by a great degree of skepticism.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
