THE DIVINE RIGHT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: ‘They lost the battle:’ Peggy Noonan triggers #MeToo with piece on why they’re really targeting Kavanaugh.
(Classical reference in headline.)
Archive for 2019
September 21, 2019
JOEL KOTKIN: Silicon Valley’s Useful Idiots: Tech elites paid for the rope that may hang them.
The term “useful idiot,” often credited to Vladimir Lenin, applies to people supporting a cause or movement injurious to their own self-interest. Nowhere is this more relevant these days than in Silicon Valley, a place dominated by brilliant technologists and marketers who often seem to have the social and political acuity of middle schoolers, as evidenced by their strong support for progressive Democrats poised to destroy the underpinnings of their businesses.
California governor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the recently passed Assembly Bill 5, which will effectively turn many contractors into employees. AB5 codifies the California Supreme Court’s unanimous May 2018 ruling in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles that many contractors should be treated as employees. The legislation’s prime backers are the state’s unions, which see it as an ideal way to organize now out-of-reach workers.
The new measure is potentially devastating, though, for companies like Uber, Lyft, and Postmates, all built around part-time employees, and none yet profitable. Many other tech firms—including profitable ones—use contractors for everything from app development to catering to cleaning. As many as 2 million Californians are employed in so-called gig work. If AB5 passes, job losses won’t just be felt by the ride-hailing firms but also by many other businesses, including newspapers, small trucking firms, some medical providers, and even franchise owners.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Silicon Valley, like many industries, placed its bets on both political parties. Moderate Republicans like Pete McCloskey, Ed Zschau, and Tom Campbell routinely won congressional elections, as did similarly minded members of the state legislature. But over the past few decades, the Valley has become politically monochromatic, with virtually no elected Republicans. Almost all contributions from Silicon Valley tech owners and employees in the 2016 and 2018 elections went to Democrats. Tech money helped Newsom outspend his GOP rival by three to one—with major contributions from former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Lauren Jobs (widow of the Apple founder) at the top of the donor list. Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt heads data efforts for several Democratic presidential candidates, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and arch-populist Elizabeth Warren. Tech employees are, if anything, more progressive-leaning in their political contributions than their corporate masters.
Just a few years ago, these investments seemed to be paying off.
Now not so much.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Economist Calls for ‘Complete Overhaul’ of Economy to Fight Climate Change.
PETER SUDERMAN REVIEWS THE LATEST SPIDERMAN EFFORT: At times I had to remind myself that I was watching a Marvel movie, not paging through an issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.
My question: What did Alex Jones do that CNN and MSNBC don’t do every day?
BUT OF COURSE THEY DO: PolitiFact Somehow Blames PJ Media, Not NY Times, for Kavanaugh Accuser Mess.
Flashback: Politifact Exposed.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH ANDREW SULLIVAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Andrew Sullivan: Intersectionality comes for the children.
GREAT SLOGAN: “WE’RE GOING TO TAX YOU INTO VEGETARIANISM:” 2020 Dem Yang Says He’ll Get People to Stop Eating Meat by Taxing Producers to Make It More Expensive.
September 20, 2019
SOUTH AFRICA’S TRANSITION TO ZIMBABWE CONTINUES: Pregnant mom hacked to death in front of son at luxury South African resort.
IF I RAN FEDEX, I’D SUSPEND ALL SERVICE TO AND FROM CHINA: China ramps up ‘hostage-taking binge’ by detaining FedEx pilot.
UH OH: CNN Discovers Minnesota Is ‘Turning to Trump.’ I credit Ilhan Omar.
FLASHBACK: Politico: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire: Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton. “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”
AT AMAZON, Fall Deals on Outdoor Heating.
FLASHBACK: Why the Demand for Fake News is a Far More Serious Problem than the Supply. “The fake news generated by Russian and other foreign plants is trivial compared to that produced by our own political parties and their homegrown partisan and activist allies.”
Just look at the Kavanaugh accusations, or the entire “Russian collusion” story arc.
GOOD, THAT ARREST WAS CLEARLY ILLEGAL: Appeals Court Rejects Qualified Immunity Claim by Dallas Transit Cop Who Arrested a Photographer for Taking Pictures.
WELL, LET ME JUST SAY THAT JUDGE RACHEL RANCILIO IS AN ASSHOLE: A Michigan Man Has Been Acquitted by a Jury for Criticizing a County Judge on Facebook. Trying to imprison a man for criticizing a judge whose decision may have led to the death of his child seems pretty assholeish. But there are a lot of nasty, entitled government employees out there, and some of them are on the bench.
Juries are an important protection for liberty, but this should never have gotten that far. Judge Sebastian Lucido also seems unfit for the bench.
EXCEPT YOU ARE A JOKE.
And Trump isn’t exercising presidential power here, so much as speaking truth to media power.
UPDATE: For example.
OPEN THREAD: It’s Friday!
I’m so old, I can remember when the Babylon Bee was still churning out satire, before morphing into America’s Paper of Record.
Found via Ace of Spades, who has a tweet from Greta Thurnberg with a photo of her wearing an Antifa T-shirt, and the statement:
“Yesterday I posted a photo wearing a borrowed T-shirt that says I’m against fascism. That T-shirt can apparently to some be linked to a violent movement. I don’t support any form of violence and to avoid misunderstandings I’ve deleted the post. And of course I am against fascism.”
Says the girl (perhaps via a ghostwriter) who is being used by a mascot of the anointed by the those who want to rearrange and control every aspect of your life.
Meanwhile, as Scott Whitlock of NewsBusters notes, “MSNBC Hypes Simulated Hangings By Climate Protesters:”
No climate protest is too extreme for MSNBC. The network has been pushing global warming activism all week and on Friday featured, without any critical commentary, a simulated hanging. The network also touted the climate protests featuring far-left Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, anti-Semite Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Senator Bernie Sanders.
In the 2PM hour, guest co-host Yasmin Vossoughian approvingly hyped pictures of hangings, “Millions of young people are taking to the streets to call for action on climate change. The global march includes events in 150 countries. What started this morning in Australia, Asia and Africa is now surging across Europe and the Americas. In Berlin, protesters used a striking visual message to push for action. Standing on ice blocks with nooses around their necks. A stark call for change before it’s too late.”
With all the mental health issues and suicide prevention issues, it’s irresponsible to promote simulated hangings.
In January of 2011, in the immediate wake of the Tucson massacre, MSNBC had a guest on who demanded “a moral sanction against gun metaphors similar to the ‘N’ word,” as the Daily Caller reported at the time:
National Journal’s Michael Hirsh wants to raise the bar on decorum to an entirely new level. On Thursday’s MSNBC airing of “Hardball,” Hirsh told host Chris Matthews certain “gun” terms should be stricken from political discourse and referred to instances where Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Republican Nevada senatorial candidate Sharon Angle used such off-limits language.
“Well we don’t want any more duels and thankfully that was the last one,” Hirsh said. “[B]ut the point I was trying to make is you can draw a line particularly in the use of certain kinds of metaphors. The use of gun metaphors – killing, murdering, taking out, which was another metaphor for a – Michele Bachmann used in one of her statements, Sharon Angle – the Nevada Senate candidate’s now infamous comment about quote, unquote, ‘second amendment remedies’ to deal with the problem Harry Reid, her opponent.”
His proposal? Make such language inappropriate in the same racial slurs are inappropriate.
That’s the kind of language I think we got to have a hard think about now,” Hirsh said. “Do we really want to continue to use that kind of language at these levels? Or, should there be kind of a social sanction, not a legal one, but a moral sanction in the way that we’ve stopped using certain epithets like the ‘n’-word public forums. Stop using that kind of language, those kinds of metaphors.”
But simulated hangings on the same network? That’s fair game, because, hey, Gaia.
More: Child Hostages Obey Their Climate Captors. The emotional, physical, and intellectual damage wrought by the climate change movement now is coming into clear view. It’s an outcome that should enrage every parent.
AD ASTRA REVIEW: Brad Pitt Goes Interplanetary in a Stunning Space Epic.
AND RUNNING INTERFERENCE FOR JOE BIDEN’S UKRAINE DEALS: The ‘Whistleblower’ Is the Deep State Interfering in Trump’s Ukraine Policy.
UPDATE: Biden Used U.S. Aid as Weapon to Force Ukraine to Fire Prosecutor Looking Into His Son’s Business.
AIDE WHO CARRIED NUCLEAR FOOTBALL WARNS TRUMP ABOUT ‘CIVIL SERVANTS,’ ‘OBAMA HOLDOVERS: Former presidential military aide Buzz Patterson carried the bag with the big red button for President Bill Clinton for three years. He lived and worked in the White House throughout those years and when everybody else left for the day, he was the guy who screened incoming calls from all over the world.
Patterson told The Epoch Times’ Patrick Howley President Donald Trump should be especially wary of two classes of officials around him: “There are a lot of Obama holdovers who are still working in the State Department, White House, Pentagon. They’re not happy their team didn’t work. I was a commander for civil service people in 20 years.
“It is really hard to root out civil servants. Hard to root out people who are counter-productive. I think Trump has a lot of people still that don’t want him to last, or be successful in 2020. That’s how DC works,” Patterson said. As Glenn says, read the whole thing.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Long Civil War.
Computers, airplanes, population levels — nothing is off limits. But the downside of this militance is it engenders its mirror image. As Megan McArdle pointed out, in a zero sum game there are no points for second place. “Democrats who think court packing is justified by Garland forget that [Whispers] Garland was justified by Bork. In this game, you don’t move last.” When one side attacks the other must counterattack. The first side to falter loses. That fear, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, is what keeps the weary populists together. They will stand fast because for them the alternative to Trump is the abyss.
Read the whole thing.