Archive for 2019

THE DEEP STATE GUIDE TO RESISTING EXECUTIVE ORDERS: President Trump has started tackling one of the biggest abuses of the administrative state – the use of guidance documents that effectively have the force of law. The deep state, of course, and its allies in the progressive movement are already looking for work arounds. My colleague Wayne Crews discusses that here, as well as why the orders are so desperately needed.

PETER HITCHENS DIDN’T INTEND FOR THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: Harry and Meghan Join the Woke Victimhood Circus.

With the marriage between Markle and Harry, wokeness has spoiled the royal family. Markle was already woke, and when they married, Harry went along for the ride. It’s made royal-watching intolerable as a result.

When the documentary clips dropped, the hashtag #WeLoveYouMeghan trended and both were applauded for their “bravery.” I’m sorry… what? I cannot fathom that lack of self-awareness, to stand in Africa after doing a humanitarian mission and complain about your very, very privileged life.

Our culture has warped over the last decade or so, applauding and cheering on weakness, promoting self-pity instead of self-reliance. It’s yet another reminder that the kids aren’t alright. 

The next update to Hitchens’ Abolition of Britain is writing itself these days.

OH: Employees accuse Google of making a Chrome extension to spy on them.

Bloomberg reports that workers at Alphabet Inc.-owned Google discovered a new tool was being developed that would report employees who created large calendar events involving more than 10 rooms or 100 participants, according to a memo written by a staffer at the company. The tool would be part of the custom Google Chrome browser installed on computers at the company and used for searches of internal systems.

The employee memo says the Chrome tool is expected to roll out in late October. It calls the tool “an attempt of leadership to immediately learn about any workers organization attempts,” and said that while Google’s privacy team approved its release, the team noted “a number of concerns with respect to the culture at Google.”

Weird how such a progressive company might go to such lengths to prevent unionization.

WHY SHOULD A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY GET TO DECLARE “VALUES” THAT OTHERS MUST CONFORM TO? Purdue Senate favors requirement that all business ‘uphold the same values’ ahead of Chick-fil-A opening. “While the resolution fails to name Chick-Fil-A specifically, Purdue Equity and Diversity Committee Chair Audrey Ruple, who helped write it, referenced Chick-Fil-A directly in her presentation to the Senate, according to the Purdue Exponent.”

How about let Indiana taxpayers decide what Purdue’s values should be — subject, as the faculty senate apparently thinks it’s not, to the Constitution, of course.

Plus the usual Orwellian inversion: “The resolution states that Purdue ‘is committed to maintaining an inclusive community’ that ‘fosters tolerance.'” So exclude Chik-Fil-A, because we won’t tolerate them!

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Elusive Republican Backbone Spotted in District of Columbia. “None of the senators who have signed on to the resolution thus far are saying that the president is off-limits as far as being investigated for wrongdoing, they just want some of the Soviet trappings removed from whatever it is that’s going in the House right now.”

THIS IS WHAT THEY DO WHEN THEY THINK WE’RE NOT LOOKING: David Marcus of The Federalist is a conservative journo who is quite adept with the English language. That makes him the perfect byline for a report on how mainstream media types act in their natural habitat of Gotham City.

Here’s a sample: “By the end of the half hour, I can honestly say I had experienced the smarmiest, most self-congratulatory, dishonest, and squirm-inducing discussion I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing in person. It was like watching Bill Clinton and Stormy Daniels discuss their unyielding dedication to chastity.”

Marcus’ prose is a delight, but the folks he’s writing about … not so much. Read the whole thing, but you might want to keep a large bottle of Pepto-Bismol handy.

LEE SMITH: 10 Questions To Ask About Trump’s Removal Of Troops From Syria. “Trump’s critics appear to believe that backing a Marxist splinter group aligned with the anti-American, pro-Iranian axis in its war against a NATO ally is sound policy.”

The final question is the biggie: “How Could the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment Get It So Wrong?”

Trump simply saw U.S. support for the PKK for what it was: America fighting and paying to advance the interests of someone else, in this case U.S. adversaries, like Iran, Assad, and Russia. The complaint of Trump critics that the withdrawal will, conversely, benefit all warring sides—Iran and ISIS, Ankara and Moscow, etc.—is impossible to reconcile with the logic of conflict.

That Trump’s withdrawal showed more strategic clarity than the foreign policy establishment is hardly surprising. He ran against Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policies in the Middle East, in particular novelty items like Bush’s freedom agenda and Obama’s Iran deal.

From Trump’s perspective, those policies defined the divide between the Beltway bubble and the rest of the U.S. public that saw no wisdom in enriching an Iranian regime at war or spending American lives and money to promote democracy in places like Iraq, Lebanon, or the Palestinian territories where elections were certain to empower anti-American forces.

Why, it’s almost as though the establishment doesn’t give a damn about American interests.

CHINESE TOOLS SELF IDENTIFY: Charles Barkley Defends Chinese Government, Tells Mike Pence to ‘Shut the Hell Up.’ “It’s never a good look when an American citizen sides with a Communist country over America’s government. But this is the message Barkley was sending: NBA money is more important than America’s principles.”

Remember when the NBA saw fit to lecture Americans on “social justice?” I’m not saying that all “social justice” advocates are corrupt frauds, but that’s the way to bet.

HMM: The Navy Obfuscates On Shock Testing The $13 Billion USS Ford.

The only certain tasks that the Navy mentioned about the USS Ford schedule were that flight ops were set to start in early 2020, and that the Navy was trying to work in repairs for the ships nine non-functional lower deck ammunition elevators–which get ammunition to and from weapons magazines–sometime during the next 18 months of at-sea testing, where they want to put in thousands of aircraft launches and recoveries, shaking the ship out.

Unfortunately, it did not sound as if the Navy was setting aside time to fit in a Full Ship Shock Trial (FSST), a vigorous test where explosives are detonated near a new Navy vessel to simulate near-misses in a battlefield environment.

If the USS Ford is not shocked–and the validity of the design is not tested–the shock trials will supposedly be shunted to to the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), the next Ford Class carrier, when most of the remaining Ford class aircraft carriers (CVNs 80, 81 and 82) will be too far along in their production cycle to incorporate many fixes.

The Navy does not appear to be confident that the USS Ford will absorb a shock trial without major damage. The organization has not hidden it’s desire to push shunt shock trials upon a later Ford variant, shocking the next Ford class carrier sometime in the 2024 to 2026 time-frame.

Not good.