As Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics states, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”
Archive for 2020
August 29, 2020
AT AMAZON, XMRE Meals 1300XT – 12 Case with Heaters.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: New dating site allows Jewish mothers to set up dates for their children. “Other dating sites are investing in algorithms and artificial intelligence. You really think a robot knows you better than your own mother? That’s meshugenah. Our site is powered by Maternal Intelligence!”
WILD CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE PRETTY MUCH HILLARY’S RAISON D’ÊTRE: Hillary Clinton Makes New Wild Accusations Against Trump as RNC Closes.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Minnesota college student pleads guity to offering support to terrorists. She also was convicted of trying to burn down campus buildings “in retaliation to the United States’ opposition to al-Qaeda.”
TO BE FAIR, IT WAS A MUCH BETTER SHOW PUT ON BY PEOPLE WHO GAVE A DAMN: Sorry Libs, the GOP Convention Had Better Viewership Than the Democrat Convention.
J.K.’S NOT PLAYING AROUND: J.K. Rowling Returns Kennedy Family Award Following Kerry Kennedy Remarks. “Rowling said Kennedy’s statement ‘incorrectly implied that I was transphobic, and that I am responsible for harm to trans people.'”
RAND PAUL: My wife and I were attacked by a mob — Dems would worsen problem by bowing to rioters. Note this detail:
My wife Kelley and I were attempting to leave the White House event. We were staying at a hotel directly across the street, maybe 50 yards from the gates of the White House. But as we went to leave, it became apparent there was no safe exit out the gates and through the unruly mob that had gathered there.
Why? Because another Democratic-run city had decided it would bow to lawless rioters instead of protecting its citizens. Mayor Muriel Bowser was asked by the Secret Service to allow wider and better protection for those leaving the White House Thursday night, but she refused.
As Paul asks, “Well, national Democrats, your people are listening to you. How does it feel to watch it happen? Are you comfortable watching the mob go after my wife and me?”
Sadly, for many broken souls on the left, the answer is very much “yes.”
ROGER KIMBALL: After the RNC, I am confident Trump will triumph.
TO THOSE CLAIMING THE RIOTS AND LOOTING AREN’T AN AUTHENTIC EXPRESSION OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT, NOTE THAT ACADEMICS ARE COMING FORWARD TO CLAIM THE OPPOSITE: Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting” makes the case that looting isn’t a betrayal of protests for Black lives, but a vital aspect of the movement.
Of course, there’s no action so vile that you can’t find an academic to defend it, particularly if it’s undertaken by someone who can be characterized as oppressed.
Related: “I don’t know if other people in ‘the movement’ are happy to see that idea spoken aloud. I’ve been hearing that there are 2 groups of people — the peaceful protesters and these mysterious other people, who, I’ve noted, the journalists don’t seem to care to identify and investigate. Osterweil is saying these are not 2 different groups. It’s one movement, and it’s been going on for a long time.”
Plus: “Osterweil’s looting is a switch from making the argument against property in words and to speak with actions — the destruction of property. But that doesn’t make the argument more convincing! It’s a nasty tantrum thrown because you can’t convince people with your ideas. Ironically, fortunately, it makes the argument for the other side.”
If the Black Lives Matter movement were being run by Roger Stone as a vote-getter for Trump, what exactly would it be doing differently at this point? As the saying goes, Oft evil will shall evil mar.
LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE GROOMED THROUGH THE RANKS IN A ONE-PARTY STATE, SHE’S JUST NOT A VERY GOOD CANDIDATE: “Kamala Harris has this revealing verbal tic, where she simply repeats herself over and over when she cannot construct a logical argument.” And when she’s really stuck, she adds peals of Hillary-like fake laughter.
ROGER SIMON: Watching Trump’s Acceptance Speech, Nashville Style.
COLLUSION: Acting Homeland Security secretary creates new subcommittee to probe foreign interference in academics. Well, “collusion” and “foreign interference” are bad, right?
IT’S THE RIGHT’S FAULT THE LEFT HAS SPENT DECADES CULTIVATING RACIAL HATRED: Nothing angers me more than hearing Lefty Loons claiming the Right is responsible for America’s growing racial divide, the riots and police brutality.
Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalez was a foreign affairs reporter for 15 years before joining the conservative think tank, so he has seen up close what racial division almost always produces: conflict, more hatred, destruction of civil society.
That makes Gonzalez the perfect guy to review “Let Them Eat Tweets,” a new diatribe from a couple of academics that is a solid example of Left-wing blame-shifting. He reminds us that JFK started affirmative action in federal contracting, but it was LBJ who turned race-based hiring into a battering ram against equal justice.
“’Affirmative action’ came to mean the opposite: making hiring, contracting, and housing decisions with regard to race, sex, and national origin. These immutable characteristics thus became the alchemy of something new: officially designated minorities. To justify the benefits and the balkanization, activists instilled the members of such minorities with a sense of victimhood.”
And so here we are today. But the Right is wrong to assume demography is the problem, according to Gonzalez. Preservation of the culture of the melting pot is the solution — “Out of Many, One.” Sound familiar?
THIS IS CNN: CNN guest: It’s okay for protesters to gather in D.C. today during a pandemic because their cause is important. “CNN could have at least informed its viewers that this tool is a former Democratic candidate for Congress instead of playing him off as a fair-and-balanced MD. By not doing that, they’re inviting viewers to attribute his hypocrisy to doctors generally instead of to a particular doctor with a partisan axe to grind.”
WELL, YES. THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS HAVE THE MOST CRIME. Defunding police would harm minority communities the most.
I feel like all the riots and assaults and arson and looting have really undermined the case for defunding the police. Heck, I’m starting to rethink my opposition to police militarization, a view that I held before cities were being assaulted with organized, hostile, often armed, mobs.
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: This is why Jacob Blake had a warrant out for his arrest:
The cops involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake — which touched off a fresh wave of angry, anti-police sentiment across the country — were attempting to arrest him for violating a restraining order stemming from an alleged sexual assault, The Post has learned.
Blake, 29, was forbidden from going to the Kenosha home of his alleged victim from the May 3 incident, and police were dispatched Sunday following a 911 call saying he was there. The officers were aware he had an open warrant, according to dispatch records, though it’s not clear if they knew the specific allegations of violence.
Not that the left needed much of an excuse to burn Kenosha down: Kenosha police find helmets, gas masks, more in out-of-state vehicles; arrest 9.
IF ROGER STONE WERE SECRETLY CONTROLLING BLM AND ANTIFA TO GENERATE VOTES FOR TRUMP, WOULD THEY BE ACTING AT ALL DIFFERENTLY?
HAWKEYE CHANGES THE OIL SMUGGLING GAME: It’s StrategyPage’s latest Intelligence update.
Iranian efforts to export oil in spite of sanctions have often been successful. That changed in 2020 when HawkEye 360, a new ship tracking service made it much more difficult for ships to conceal their smuggling activities. Since 2015 a growing array of sensors and software to track ships at sea, especially ships that don’t want to be tracked, have been developed. One of these new sensors appeared in 2019 when HawkEye 360 launched its own array of radar tracking satellites. This enables tracking ships via the signals their navigation radars produce. These can be spotted by a satellite. Other electronic signals can also be tracked, like those used by large ships to communicate with the port they are headed for to unload their cargo.
The update goes into great detail.