ANDREW STUTTAFORD: Treasurys Tremble. “It is hard to deny that some anxiety over inflation is called for. With rates as low (in absolute terms) as they are, and with government debt so high, it is not as if there is much margin for error for bondholders. . . . Let’s put it another (and wildly over-simplified, yet not) way. Would you lend money to Uncle Sam for ten years at that rate? Would you feel well rewarded for the risk that you were taking? The question, I think, answers itself.”
Archive for 2021
March 14, 2021
March 13, 2021
YES. US Air Force is guarding against electromagnetic pulse attacks. Should we worry?
I don’t want to live in One Second After, or in Bill Quick’s Lightning Fall. Though I am disappointed at the lack of a sequel to the latter.
“THE IRONY HERE IS THAT THESE ACCOUNTS ARE PROVING TUCKER CARLSON’S POINT ABOUT THE U.S. MILITARY’S PRIORITIES TO A ‘T’.” U.S. Military Twitter Accounts And Officials Attack Tucker Carlson For Questioning Woke Agenda.
I guess they were tired of being the United States’ most trusted institution. Get woke, go broke.
But they seem to be seeing the Argentine military as their role model these days anyway: An institution of domestic control whose competence at dealing with foreign threats no longer matters. At least, that’s what I take from this disgraceful episode.
GOING DOWN: Cuomo staffers have stopped showing up to work as scandals mount.
So why has the establishment turned on Cuomo? It’s not his misbehavior — they always knew about that and didn’t care. My theory: Kamala will be president before 2024, and she’s quite unlikable and didn’t garner a single Democratic delegate in the primary. They’re trying to bump off a potential primary challenger, and with Gavin Newsom already self-neutralized, Cuomo is the biggest remaining threat.
Related: Five of Andrew Cuomo’s Other Biggest Scandals.
Missing in action: Last year’s “Cuomosexuals.”
OPEN THREAD: Enjoy yourselves.
AS WITH HILLARY CLINTON, THE PRESS CHEERLEADING WORKS BETTER WHEN YOU DON’T SEE WHAT THE PRESS IS CHEERING: Popularity Ratings for Harry and Meghan Tank After Oprah Interview. “It showed that 45 per cent of Britons have a positive opinion of Prince Harry, while 48 per cent regard him negatively, giving a net score -3. This represents a drop of 15 points from March 2 and marks the first time attitudes have been more negative than positive towards the prince. Meghan’s scores have also fallen considerably. Only three in ten people said they had a positive opinion of her, while six in ten viewed her negatively. This gave her a net rating of -27, down from -14 a week ago.”
“SYSTEMIC RACISM” IS WHAT YOU TALK ABOUT WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE ANY ACTUAL RACISM TO TALK ABOUT: Systemic Racism – the Big Lie.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Nebraska Mother Found Guilty Of Sexually Assaulting Daughter’s Prepubescent Friends During Sleepovers.
WHAT DECADENCE LOOKS LIKE: OUR WORLD. No More Cakes and Ale. “The world we once regarded as normal no longer exists. If certain powerful figures in the political and medical communities have their will, we will never return to the way things were.”
Plus:
This is surely bad enough. It is perhaps even more alarming that many people don’t seem to care that their world is collapsing, an attitude that only hastens the collapse. They no longer believe in their culture, their nation, and the formative values of the Judeo-Christian West, having succumbed to civilizational fatigue. “A civilization can survive only if its members… believe in its basic values,” writes Joel Kotkin in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism. “Today our key institutions…reject many of the fundamental ideals that have long defined Western culture.”
This is a pan-historical dilemma. As Arthur Bryant points out in his fascinating The Study of England: Makers of the Realm, a major reason for the decay of Rome lay in “a lack of faith and hope,” the gradual demoralization of a people seeing “no purpose either in society or their own lives,” indifferent to their history, disdainful of learning, lacking “individual character,” and recognizing no “ideal strong enough to inspire the masses to perform duty.” The result is despondency and self-despising, and I would hazard the suggestion that, mutatis mutandis, the analogy holds for the contemporary West as well.
Indeed, there seems at times to be a masochistic contentment with the prospect of the end of normal civilized life. A community is being created, writes Charles Murray in Coming Apart, characterized by “weak social capital” where “the small daily pleasures of friendly exchange with neighbors and storekeepers dry up,” and the quality of life markedly decays.
And people are buying into it. One detects a certain frivolity of mind, the readiness and even eagerness to capitulate to a prevailing orthodoxy, in effect, a superficiality of thought, a dwindling of intellectual range, a loathing for the things we ignorantly take for granted and a perverse desire to see them taken from us.
This is what happens when you let your society be run by garbage people who fundamentally hate the society they run, because they quite reasonably hate themselves.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Surviving WW2 Veteran Recounts Harrowing Story Of The Lack Of Trans Representation On D-Day.
WATCH OUT FLORIDA MAN! Texas Man Drove Dealership Loaner Car To Rob Bank, Tried To Use Loot To Buy BMW.
THE LATE NIGHT PALACE GUARD ARE BACK: Joe Biden Is ‘Impervious’ to Comedy, Claims WaPo Columnist. “It’s one heckuva coincidence that the last time a Democrat was president, a leading comedy expert claimed it was impossible to make fun of him, too.”
Earlier: The Sovietization of the American Press.
TAMARA KEEL: Living and Learning.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Master True Concealment with Everyday Carry.
LIBERAL SUPPORT FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE IS GROWING: Wait a minute. Hold the phone! Isn’t that barbed wire and all those military vehicles and National Guardsman there to guard the Capitol from violent extremists supporting Donald Trump? So how can it be that the percentage of very liberal and liberal respondents to this poll who say “not at all” when asked if they view violence as an acceptable political tactic plummeted between 2016 and 2020?
“The survey found that 95.8 percent of ‘very conservative’ white respondents said violence should never be used to pursue a political ambition, which was up from 93.3 percent in 2016. ‘Conservative’ respondents were nearly identical, with 95 percent disavowing political violence in 2020 and 93.3 percent in 2016,” The Blaze reports.
“However, on the other end of the political spectrum, leftists are more likely to embrace political violence as a means to an end. According to the poll, only 66.5 percent of ‘very liberal’ white respondents said it was wrong to use violence to attain their political goals. That means that over a third of ‘very liberal’ Americans would justify using some or a ‘great deal’ of violence to pursue their political goals. In the 2016 survey, the percent of ‘very liberal’ respondents willing to endorse political violence was much higher at 86.9 percent.
BART ERHMAN ISN’T IT, EITHER: At least not the guy with the best argument for Paul’s pastoral letters in the New Testament being written by somebody not actually named Paul, according to Erik Manning. Just a small Saturday exegetical exercise.
LANNY FRIEDLANDER: THE ECCENTRIC GENIUS WHO CREATED REASON MAGAZINE. New video from Reason TV:
NOPE, ARDI ISN’T THE MISSING LINK, EITHER: That’s the conclusion of a team led by a Texas A&M paleontologist, anyway. Doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t one, but it’s not this one.
GOOD: RNA analysis shows most SARS-CoV-2 variants rarely persist through secondary transmissions. “The researchers suggest their findings indicate that, at least during early infection, mutations that are able to survive attacks by antibodies are quite rare.”
CNN MISSES THE BAD ORANGE MAN: The post-Trump cable-news apocalypse has arrived — CNN hardest hit. “I wonder whether something else is in play at CNN. This is the network that gave viewers The Cuomo Brothers Show in 2020, with Chris propagandizing for his brother Andrew. Andrew’s multiple scandals — especially the nursing-home scandal, with a potential body count in the thousands — exposed CNN’s crude narrative-building of Andrew as their anti-Trump. Having feted Andrew as ‘the Love Gov’ in 2020, a nickname with a sick connotation after multiple allegations of sexual harassment have emerged, CNN may be suffering not just a nadir of viewers’ political interest but a cratering of credibility as well that goes well beyond Trump.”
Also coming soon for CNN: “CNN’s president Jeff Zucker announced to staff that the airport TV network will end operations March 31, according to a memo posted on Twitter by CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy.”
“As O’Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. ‘You can turn it off!’ he said. ‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn it off. We have that privilege.’”
BECAUSE MANY JUDGES AREN’T JUDICIOUS: Why Are Some Courts Issuing Overbroad Injunctions Against Speech? “Many political or religious zealots throughout the history of First Amendment law may have come across as obsessed or irrational or lacking a sense of proportion. Indeed, the willingness to fight a case up to the Supreme Court, often at considerably cost and peril to oneself, may itself be evidence of that, especially to those of us who sharply disagree with the speaker’s views.”
HOW IT STARTED:
● Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands: Britain’s Strategy to Beat Virus.
—Bloomberg, March 11th, 2020.
How it’s going:
● UK’s Boris Johnson reveals plan to exit lockdown restrictions by June.
—CNBC, February 22nd, 2021.