Archive for 2019

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: A Black Eye for the Columbia Journalism Review.

Last month, the CJR published an article by trans activist Parker Molloy essentially demanding that when it comes to the issue of male-bodied individuals seeking to compete in female athletics, journalists should present only one side of the issue—on the basis that naysayers don’t “have all the facts,” and their words “could be used to reinforce ignorance.” These are thinly coded appeals to de facto self-censorship, and it is strange to see them published by an outlet whose nominal purpose is to promote excellence in journalism.

This month, CJR stepped over the line again. And this time, the resultant hit on the CJR brand was worse. Molloy’s piece was torqued and one-sided. But it did not contain any actual errors. The same was not true of Jared Holt’s June 12 CJR piece, entitled Right-wing publications launder an anti-journalist smear campaign, which attacks a study by researcher Eoin Lenihan that shows a close ideological connection between Antifa and the journalists who follow Antifa most closely on Twitter.

As a Quillette editor, I initially was interested to see what Holt had come up with, since he often has performed valuable work as an investigator with the progressive advocacy group People For the American Way, and because Quillette is featured as one of the “right-wing publications” that allegedly served to “launder” Lenihan’s work.

But, to quote a headline from last week, Holt’s article “backfired.”

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Will Collier, who tweeted, “The Columbia Journalism Review serving partisan and ideological ends is not a surprise. @VodkaPundit and I had a notable dust-up with the late Steve Lovelady, then executive editor of the CJR and not exactly impartial 15 years ago.”

AS I’VE BEEN SAYING: Asia has most to lose if Middle East turmoil hits oil supplies. “As Trump spelt out in the interview, the U.S. is no longer as dependent on oil from the Middle East as it was, thanks to burgeoning domestic production. Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized the message a day later, pointing out that China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea were heavily dependent on supplies moving through the Strait of Hormuz, and needed to protect their interests. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made similar comments.”

When Iran was America’s problem, much of the world was less than supportive. So Trump’s making Iran the world’s problem.

THE CASE FOR LOCKING JOE BIDEN IN A CUPBOARD:

Then there is the race issue. Biden entered politics in the 1960s, when desegregation was a contentious issue. He supported desegregation, naturally, but opposed ‘busing’, or the transportation of black and white children to different schools to increase their multi-racial mix. There were many different reasons to oppose busing, but to modern progressives Biden’s stance makes him look soft on racism.

Worse, for them, was Biden’s significance in promoting tough measures against crime in the Eighties and Nineties. For sure, Republicans like Charlie Kirk who opportunistically use this Biden’s past to smear him as some kind of racist are being ridiculous given that he was reacting against enormous rates of murder and rape – but progressives blame him for his role in establishing America’s sky-high rates of incarceration.

Of course, Biden was also the right hand man of America’s first black president, but, still, you might expect him to be warned not to say anything dubious about race which could offend the sensitivities of hot-tempered progressives. Bam. Out of nowhere, Biden decided to pay tribute to segregationists. It would have irritated liberals enough that Biden was singing the virtues of civility when most of them think nothing less than howls out outrage are a suitable response to the Age of Trump, but to use as an example his collaborative work with segregationist senators like Herman Talmadge is hilariously tin-eared. Doubling down and demanding an apology from fellow Democrat candidate Cory Booker for criticizing him must have made his staffers gaze longingly towards the cupboard door.

While the evidence continues to mount, as David Harsanyi writes today, that “Biden Was More Than ‘Civil’ With Segregationists. He Was An Ally,” you can’t lock up Joe in a cupboard — that’s where he locks up his operatives with bylines.

NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Please Don’t Shut Up, AOC, writes David Limbaugh.

It’s no secret that today’s leftist extremists are no friend of the Jews, but where are the famous liberal fact-checkers — the watchdogs so dedicated to truth? Let them explain to AOC that migrants detained for breaking the law are not being placed in concentration camps. If she persists, she also condemns former President Obama for the same sin.

But here’s the good news. AOC is unteachable, because she is unwilling to be taught. Full of hubris, she already knows everything and is the champion of every leftist cause. She leads with her unbridled emotions, happily ignorant of the facts. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi would love to corral her but would not dare even hint at that, shrewdly recognizing the mob attraction AOC enjoys with the Party’s shrieking base. Pelosi knows better than to chastise AOC and so ducked the question when asked why AOC never shuts up.

Well, I’m with Pelosi, for different reasons. Please don’t shut up, AOC. We appreciate your drawing a sharp contrast every day between the noxious views of your party, which now dutifully embodies your extremism, and those representing responsible governance. Thank you for liberally exercising your First Amendment freedoms.

As Glenn has noted, “getting Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar elected was Roger Stone’s finest dirty trick.”

THUGGERY: Oregon Governor Threatens to Send State Police to Round Up Republicans after Walk-Out over Cap-and-Trade Stalemate.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I don’t think this is actually thuggery, since legislatures generally can compel the attendance of absent members. (I’ve written about this before). Presumably, the state police would be deputized by the sergeant-at-arms or somesuch. But Ann Althouse notes the shifting media narrative here: “They were ‘stars’ when they were Democrats. And a bad old Republican — remember Bill O’Reilly? — had to be hypothetically dragged into the picture to give it a good-and-evil dimension. With the Republicans absconding, in Oregon, the fleebaggers are automatically bad and the Democrats — ready to legislate and deprived of the quorum — are the easy good guys. The narrative clicks into place.” As usual.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CULTURE OF CORRUPTION EDITION: University of Texas admissions still plagued by ‘cheating at a very high level,’ whistleblower says.

Wallace Hall made himself persona non grata with both the University of Texas System and state lawmakers by aggressively seeking to document an admissions scandal.

Not the one you’re thinking about. The one that stretches back 15 years and implicated Texas lawmakers.

Now the former regent – unsuccessfully impeached but successfully censured for his whistleblowing – is sowing doubt about the UT System’s commitment to root out fake placement on athletic teams, among other methods for admission of unqualified students.

Our moral superiors.

OUR CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER IS BORN: On this day in 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution. With that ratification, the Constitution went into effect. Further states could join, of course, but with nine states, we were going to have a union of at least those nine no matter what.

New Hampshire, like several other states, suggested some amendments to the Constitution in its ratification message, some of which it got when the Bill of Rights was subsequently proposed and ratified and some of which it did not get. Among its proposals:

“Congress shall never disarm any citizen, unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion.”

“Congress shall erect no company of merchants with exclusive advantages of commerce.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Iran’s Long Game, and Trump’s Too.

UPDATE: Also read Richard Fernandez this morning. “US energy independence has given Washington a far more powerful option than merely reprising an updated version of Preying Mantis. From a position of self-sufficiency Trump might use the prospect of oil disruption to organize ‘international convoys’ among the energy dependent as a kind of FONOPS in the Gulf. Or it could harness the fears of the Asian giants to add teeth to its sanctions regime against Iran. Either outcome would be both devastating to Tehran yet nonkinetic.”

Now that’s what I call smart diplomacy.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Pulls Back from Iran Strike, Media & Democrats Confused. “Let’s be honest, there are plenty of things the U.S. can do that don’t involve invasion and bombs: bank accounts can be emptied, people can disappear. It can be very dangerous to be an Iranian agent walking freely around Latin America and Africa. Things happen. ‘No comment’.”

FASTER? PLEASE! DoD Presses the Accelerator on Hypersonic Weapons.

Hypersonic weapons have several advantages over existing cruise and ballistic missiles. Because they fly so fast, they can close on their targets in a very short period of time. Compared to slower weapons, their extremely high speed means that these weapons can evade or outrun any existing air and missile defenses. Some hypersonic weapons are so fast and maneuverable that they are unlikely to even be seen by existing radars.

Aircraft capable of hypersonic flight will be able to penetrate layered anti-aircraft defenses. During its career as one of the Air Force’s premier Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, the venerable SR-71, which could fly at speeds up to Mach 3, was fired upon unsuccessfully hundreds of times. There are reports that a new hypersonic reconnaissance plane capable of cruising at Mach 6 is in the works.

Senior U.S. defense officials have publicly stated that Russia and China are ahead of us in this new arms race.

These things have the potential to be so destabilizing that you really don’t want to be the third guy on your block to get one.