Archive for 2020
August 3, 2020
RADICAL CHIC: Leading Democratic VP contender Bass defends stance on Cuba. “Bass said she was trying to express her condolences to the Cuban people when she referred to Castro as ‘Comandante en jefe,’ a term that roughly translates as commander in chief but is reviled by some Cuban exiles in Florida. Bass, who represents California in Congress, said she was unaware of the phrase’s political significance in Florida when she issued the 2016 statement, which called Castro’s death a “great loss to the people of Cuba’.”
“BELIEVE IN SCIENCE” EXCEPT WHEN IT CONTRADICTS THE NARRATIVE: Evolutionary biologist forced out of academia for insisting male and female are not social constructs.
AT AMAZON, Merkur Razor Double Edge Razor Blades.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Keeps Finding New Ways To Be Stupid. “It’s not just that AOC is wrong about so many things, it’s that she’s always spectacularly wrong. Her hot takes sound more like the ravings of a toddler than what one would expect from a member of Congress. In this particular case, it seems that she knew nothing more about St. Damien than that he was white.”
Isn’t that enough?
LORD & TAYLOR, OLDEST U.S. DEPARTMENT STORE, FILES BANKRUPTCY.
This isn’t at all “unexpected,” even by Bloomberg standards: In early May, Reuters reported: Exclusive: Lord & Taylor to liquidate its stores as soon as they reopen – sources.
HUGH HEWITT IN THE WASHINGTON POST: The Case For Trump Will Come Down To His Record: It’s A Strong One.
President Trump’s record of accomplishments is easy to compile.
Most significantly, he has brought the existential threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party into the sunlight. No more nice words. No more treating the Tiananmen Square massacre as a bug, not a feature. The light is on. Trump has pulled the cord.
With huge help from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Trump has put two justices on the Supreme Court, 53 judges on the federal courts of appeals, 144 and counting on the District courts, and more than 20 on the specialty courts. The Constitution has been buttressed.
Trump’s tax cuts, along with the massive deregulation he orchestrated, led to 3.5 percent unemployment until the regime in Beijing acted with criminal recklessness toward a virus that has devastated the world. Economic recovery depends on those rule rollbacks, and not just grotesque overreaches such as the Clean Power Plan and “Waters of the United States” rule, but on hundreds of other intrusions into the private businesses and onto the private property of Americans.
Trump took a military operating in President Barack Obama’s last years at about $600 billion and moved that budget by his third year to $738 billion, with more in the budget coming soon. The Navy necessary to meet China on the high seas, all 355 ships of it, is being planned and built.
Trump tore up the so-called Iran nuclear deal, which was a tower of absurd hopes built on a policy of appeasement and a foundation of hostility to Israel.
Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and blessed Israel’s necessary annexation of the Golan Heights. His peace plan is the closest to reality of any since Oslo.
Trump took the United States out of the unbalanced, absurd, doomed-to-fail Paris Climate Agreement and has instead focused on and delivered American energy independence. People have real job security in Pennsylvania as a result, if not in jetting off to Paris for follow-up seminars.
Trump ordered Iran’s master terrorist, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, killed, accomplished the complete physical destruction of the Islamic State caliphate and successfully hunted down its terrorist chieftain, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The former was never contemplated by Obama, the latter couldn’t get done by him even though his scampering from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of Islamic State and its thousand barbarities. The Syrian butcher, Bashar al-Assad, has twice used chemical weapons and twice had cruise missiles remind him that the red line is back and is real. Russian mercenaries attacked U.S. troops in Syria and were mowed down. Not an American was killed. Those are “Trump rules of engagement.” Even Cuba is back in its box, joined there by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
At home, Trump pushed through the long-overdue justice reform legislation and the reorganization of Veterans Affairs, and, this year, the Great American Outdoors Act that fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund. House Democrats passed a piffling bill when covid-19 arrived, while Trump, McConnell and Senate Republicans advanced the innovative and massive Paycheck Protection Program that kept the U.S. economy from collapsing even as it contracted by nearly 10 percent in the second quarter as the China’s principal export, covid-19, ravaged the country.
Trump’s border wall, proceeding apace, makes obvious sense. More than 200 miles completed, with Trump tweeting Thursday the length with be 300 miles by September. . . .
Trump’s brawling, slugging, tempestuous approach to everything in every hour has worn down many, but his road is marked by these accomplishments. Former vice president Joe Biden’s near-50-year run in government is marked by . . . well, you fill that in. Polls say Biden is far ahead. We shall see.
There’s an aesthetic critique of Trump that has convinced elites that he must be beaten, that he is cruel and beneath the office. But Americans want their jobs and security back. They like the police. And, yes, most of the time they mostly admire Trump’s style and, almost always, his results.
It is a hallmark of elites — and especially decadent elites — that style is valued more than substance. One hopes voters feel differently.
THE FDA’S RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS HAS BEEN ONE DEBACLE AFTER ANOTHER: Out of the way FDA: Regulators must stop blocking medical technology.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Ratings Crash for NBA, MLB After Protest-Filled Debuts.
UGH: Ransomware feared as possible saboteur for November election. “Federal authorities say one of the gravest threats to the November election is a well-timed ransomware attack that could paralyze voting operations. The threat isn’t just from foreign governments, but any fortune-seeking criminal.”
NICE POLL, KID. DON’T GET COCKY. Poll: Trump Takes Lead over Biden. “A new poll released this weekend shows President Donald Trump, the incumbent GOP president, has taken a national and battleground states lead over his Democrat challenger presumptive nominee former Vice President Joe Biden. The survey, from the Democracy Institute commissioned by the Sunday Express newspaper, shows Trump leading Biden 48 percent to 46 percent. What’s more, Trump has opened up a bigger lead according to this poll in the crucial battleground states, meaning the president by this pollster’s estimates currently is projected to win 309 electoral votes—more than he did in 2016.”
May it be so. But if you care, get out there and donate, and volunteer. And if you don’t want to work in a campaign, consider an organization like True the Vote, which fights voting fraud.
REMEMBER, OUR POLITICAL CLASS FOR THE MOST PART ADMIRES THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT: Uyghurs bussed across China for forced labour in factories – new footage.
YOU GO GIRL: Olivia de Havilland wasn’t much like that sappy Melanie character in Gone With The Wind. Think of her more as an anti-communist action heroine.
DECOUPLING: How to Stop China From Imposing Its Values. “America’s alliances were built to address a Soviet military threat. The economic bullying that Beijing uses requires a different kind of collective self-defense.”
New threats demand new responses. During the Cold War, the U.S. created not just NATO but also the CIA and the Air Force to respond to Soviet threats. The period brought about a wholly new form of intelligence competition between the West and the Soviet Union. This led the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to enter into the alliance commonly known as Five Eyes, which allowed unprecedented intelligence sharing among nations in peacetime. This approach would have been unimaginable before the Soviet geopolitical threat.
Similarly, a new kind of alliance—like NATO, but for economic rather than military threats—is needed to respond to the kind of statecraft that China is practicing. Under such a system, participating nations would provide mutual support when China threatens one or more members with economic repercussions for political actions. That assistance could involve the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods by all member nations; the creation of a pool of capital to help a targeted nation withstand Beijing’s pressure; the release of strategic reserves of essential materials, such as rare-earth metals, that China produces and could withhold; and other forms of collective economic defense.
Read the whole thing.
ROGER KIMBALL: Read the Fine Print to Know What a Biden Presidency Brings.
Not least of which: “Everybody knows, and some people will even admit, that the next president of the United States will not be Joe Biden. This is true no matter who wins the election in November.”
WAGES OF BLUE-ZONE GOVERNANCE: Retail rents plummet across New York City, as America’s glitzy shopping districts turn into ghost towns.
COLLUSION FLASHBACK: A Rundown Of Major U.S. Corporate Media’s Business Ties To China.
WHY WOULD THEY COME BACK? New York’s wealthy taxpayers may not return, Cuomo fears. The government clearly values their lives and happiness less than those of homeless people and thugs.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE K-12 IMPLOSION AND THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH: Chicago-Area Leaders Call for Illinois to Eliminate History Classes. “Leaders in education, politics and other areas gathered in suburban Evanston Sunday to ask that the Illinois State Board of Education eliminate history classes at schools statewide.”
