Archive for 2022
January 8, 2022
MAYBE THE HIGH COURT SHOULD BE REDUCED: Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court, increasing its number to 13 justices. But listening to the questions from the liberal justices during Friday’s oral arguments on President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates may suggest there should be fewer, not more, justices.
I’M NOT SEEING THAT MUCH HUMILITY: “Humbled repeatedly by a virus that has defied expectations, scientists are reluctant to predict the future.”
If I got three polio vaccinations and then still contracted polio, I’d have questions.
#RESIST, IRANIAN STYLE: Iranians Set Fire to Soleimani’s Statue Hours After Unveiling.
I’M NOT GIVING UP YET: Questions about the feasibility of Bussard ramjets. But I’d rather have a Mannschenn Drive.
UNEXPECTEDLY: San Francisco trails other major metro areas in economic recovery. Tourists also appear hesitant to book travel to the city.
#RESIST: A reader sends this photo from the Bronx:
And another writes: “I live in Wilmington Delaware,and today I visited a place of business that Joe Biden used to frequent, and in the men’s room, someone had put up the ‘I did that’ sticker above the urinal.” Heh.
BECAUSE THEY’RE EXPECTING TO LOSE ELECTIONS, AND BADLY: Why is the left suddenly talking about a second Civil War?
BE PREPARED: Augason Farms 30-Day 1-Person Emergency Food Supply – QSS Certified. #CommissionEarned
THEY NEVER WILL BE, BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO BE: Duke’s minority students not ‘satisfied’ with racial climate despite numerous diversity employees. And of course, because stirring up racial division and dissatisfaction is basically the diversity employees’ job.
THE FAILED PRESIDENCY OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: William Bullitt’s Warning.
Recently in The American Spectator, I wrote a somewhat controversial article claiming that Franklin Roosevelt was a failure as president. One of the areas of failure, I argued, was FDR’s decision-making during the Second World War, which resulted in the replacement of the Nazi threat with an even greater Soviet threat. Some critics have retorted, What else could FDR have done? The postwar world was largely shaped by where the Anglo-American and Soviet armies ended up when the fighting stopped. But consider the case of William Bullitt’s warning to the president.
On January 29, 1943, William Bullitt, then a close adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, wrote a memo to the president that Bullitt characterized as “as serious a document as any I have ever sent you.” In that memo (which he followed up with related memos and letters in June and August of that year), Bullitt attempted to persuade FDR to approach U.S. relations with Moscow more realistically and to wage World War II with a view towards the postwar balance of power.
* * * * * * * *
But it was all to no avail. FDR thought he could use his personal charm and political skills to persuade Stalin to join the democracies in establishing a just and stable postwar world. It was a view based on personal naïveté, ignorance about communism, and advice FDR received from the likes of Harry Hopkins, Henry Wallace, Sumner Welles, and other Soviet accommodationists within the administration.
Those who argue that FDR’s options were limited by the positioning of the armies at the end of the fighting are correct. But had the president listened to Bullitt’s advice and waged war so that the Anglo-American armies met their Soviet allies, in Churchill’s words “as far to the east as possible,” the Soviet postwar threat would have been lessened and many of the peoples of central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans might have been spared the misery of 45 years of communist rule.
Add to the above Roosevelt’s decisions regarding the Holocaust and his prolonging America’s Depression, and it’s not difficult to have a revisionist view of his presidency:
● New Documents Reveal FDR’s Eugenic Project to ‘Resettle’ Jews During World War II.
● FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): To know if someone is a failure, you have to know what they intended. Roosevelt drastically and at least semi-permanently expanded the power and wealth of the professional/managerial/academic/political class and thus in their eyes his presidency will always be a huge success.
DESPITE ALL THE JANUARY 6 HYSTERIA: Rock bottom: Biden’s net favorable rating now lower than Trump’s. “It could be worse for him. He could be Kamala Harris.”
Let me correct the headline, though: Rock bottom so far. In fact, the January 6 hysteria has gotten so little traction because the Biden presidency so far has been so awful on the merits. On economics, on Covid, on foreign policy — you name it, he’s blown it. How long before a big swathe of voters looks on January 6 as a failed opportunity to save the nation? At this rate, not long, but certainly it’s hard to make the idea of blocking Biden’s accession look horrible when Biden’s accession looks so horrible. I mean, when a bunch of insiders more or less openly form a “cabal” to install a senile incompetent and then proceed to loot the treasury, we’re already into late-Roman Empire stuff and the cast of Hamilton only underscores that by way of comparison.
Related: More believe in cheating in 2020 election, hit ‘Zuckerbucks.’ “Angered by growing reports that Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg steered vote-generating donations to pro-Biden counties, more voters believe that cheating occurred in the 2020 elections. Shoving aside repeated liberal media dismissals of cheating claims, those who believe it occurred increased from 56% in October to 59% in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll previewed for Secrets.”
I GOT YER OFF-RAMP RIGHT HERE: Looking for an Off Ramp on COVID Policy. “The Omicron wave of COVID has many institutions scrambling. Depressingly, many are acting as if there have been no advances over the past two years. Despite requiring that everyone on campus be fully vaccinated, including boosters, my own university continues to impose aggressive masking requirements, comprehensive asymptomatic testing, extended isolation for asymptomatic individuals who test positive, and draconian restrictions on normal campus activities. In an effort to create some modicum of quarantine conditions, students are prohibited from leaving the county except when engaged in university approved activities. Some of those decisions are being driven by government policies. Princeton is hardly alone in partying like it is 2020. Enough already.”
Related: To Defeat Delta Variant, Experts Recommend Doing All The Things That Didn’t Work The First Time.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Is NPR In The Grips Of (Checks Notes) White Supremacy?
Celeste Headlee, who has hosted several public radio programs and written extensively about race in the industry, said she couldn’t speak to the specific reasons individual hosts have left but called the departures concerning. “It’s so common for companies to put resources into recruiting people of color and then put no resources into really retaining them or supporting them in the roles they have so that they will continue with the organization.”
She said she regularly hears from public-radio staffers of color who say they deal with daily slights and resistance to their ideas, despite a sense they got their jobs to help expand the audience.But Headlee — who founded a nonprofit for minority public-radio employees — credited John Lansing, NPR’s president and chief executive, for being “dead serious about solving these issues.” She added: “If there ever was a chance for our industry to move forward, now is the time.”
NPR employees raised questions about the exodus of women of color during an all-staff meeting last month headed by Lansing, who is generally well-regarded within the organization. But he received a cool reception when he told employees that turnover was common in the news media and that NPR couldn’t stand in the way of staffers seeking greater opportunities elsewhere, according to one participant.
Read the whole thing, as the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks fight it out.
EVEN A FLATWORM IS SMART ENOUGH TO TURN AWAY FROM PAIN: Zogby: US overwhelmingly wants less federal meddling.
And the federal meddling lately has been especially obvious in its ineptitude, corruption, and partisanship.
SALENA ZITO ON Mike Pompeo’s previously unexplained weight loss.
YOU’LL PRY MY GAS COOKTOP FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS: N.Y. governor proposes 1st-ever statewide ban on gas hookups in new buildings.
Democrats and environmentalists just want to make your life worse. And it’s moronic to call a building “zero emissions” just because it’s hooked up to a power plant somewhere else out of sight. Now if they were backing lots of nice clean nuclear plants that would be different, but of course they’re not.
#RESIST: ICYMI, A reader sends this pic from a truck stop in Segovia, Texas: “And they were there before I arrived!” It’s a genuine phenomenon.
Related: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
WELCOME BACK, CARTER! VP Kamala Harris admits a ‘level of malaise’ in US over COVID, gets compared to Jimmy Carter.
Does she not realize how damaging it is for a Democrat in office to utter the M-word?
COLLUSION: Former GlaxoSmithKline Scientist Pleads Guilty to Stealing Trade Secrets for Chinese Pharma. “Stolen information focused on monoclonal antibodies and its worth was estimated at $2 billion.”
