Archive for 2022
August 25, 2022
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Dinosaur tracks dating back 113 million years revealed in drought-stricken river.
OFFICIAL LAWLESSNESS: Biden Tries Again to Legalize Illegal Aliens Without Congressional Authorization.
ROGER KIMBALL: Liz Cheney: the self-appointed moral center of the GOP.
For reasons known only to herself, Liz Cheney appears to believe that she has been invested with the authority to tell us who may and who may not serve as president of the United States. She keeps droning on about the Constitution and the “constitutional” structure. But here is what the Constitution says about one’s fitness to be president. One must be a “natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution.” Moreover, one must have “attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” C’est tout. That’s it. Nothing about not being Donald Trump. Nothing about earning Liz Cheney’s approval.
That must come as a disappointment to the embryonic CNN hostess, almost as much of a disappointment as not being Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant.
Read the whole thing.
STOP WALKING, START DYING: Two studies, one finding: Keep walking to prolong life.
IT WAS NEVER THE GOAL: What Happened to Reducing Inflation?
When Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer revealed the legislative deal they’d negotiated in secret, they called it the “Inflation Reduction Act.” But when NBC News’ pollsters asked voters about it last week, here’s the language they used:
“Democrats recently passed legislation supported by President Joe Biden that addresses health care and prescription drug prices, climate change, taxes for corporations, and the federal budget deficit. Do you think it was a good idea or a bad idea?”
Notice what words are missing: “Inflation” and “reduction.”
It’s not just NBC. The New York Times’ coverage featured the headline, “What’s in the Climate, Tax and Health Care Package?” At NHPR it was “Biden Signs Sweeping Climate, Health Care, Tax Bill Into Law.” The Concord Monitor had a similar headline: “Biden Signs Massive Climate and Health Care Legislation.”
Inflation? Barely a mention, other than to note that independent analysts like the Congressional Budget Office and the Wharton School say the new law won’t have a significant impact.
The goal was to raid the treasury: Mission Accomplished.
IS IT? IS IT REALLY? Eating Pork While Black is Complicated. But to be fair, this piece is basically a defense of bacon and barbecue, so I endorse it.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY: Hard-Working Plumber Looking Forward To Paying For His Neighbor’s Gender Studies Degree.
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL: Why Are We in Ukraine?
Never has an official non-belligerent been more implicated in a war. Russia and its sympathizers assert that the U.S. attempt to turn Ukraine into an armed anti-Russian camp is what the war is about in the first place. Even those who dismiss this view will agree that the United States has made itself a central player in the conflict. It is pursuing a three-pronged strategy to defeat Russia through every means short of entering the war—which, of course, raises the risk that the United States will enter the war. One prong is the state-of-the-art weaponry it is supplying to Ukraine. Since June, thousands of computer-guided artillery rockets have been wreaking havoc behind Russian lines. A second prong is sanctions. With western European help, Washington has used its control of the choke points of the global marketplace to impoverish Russians, in hopes of punishing Russia. Finally, the U.S. seeks to rally the world’s peoples to a culture war against an enemy whose traditionalism, even if it does not constitute the whole of his evil, is at least a symbol of it.
It would be foolish to bet against the United States, a mighty global hegemon with a military budget 12 times Russia’s. Yet something is going badly off track. Russia’s military tenacity was to be expected—bloodying and defeating more technologically advanced armies has been a hallmark of Russian civilization for 600 years. But the economic sanctions, far from bringing about the collapse Blinken gloated over, have driven up the price of the energy Russia sells, strengthened the ruble, and threatened America’s western European allies with frostbite, shortages, and recession. The culture war has found few proponents outside of the West’s richest latte neighborhoods. Indeed, cultural self-defense may be part of the reason India, China, and other rising countries have conspicuously declined to cut economic ties with the Russians.
There have been signs for years that a new Iron Curtain was about to drop on the European continent. In 2008, the U.S. announced plans to bring certain non-Baltic republics of the former Soviet Union—notably Ukraine and Georgia—into NATO and the American sphere of influence. Should Ukraine prevail in this proxy war the U.S. will have succeeded, in a way. But it will have done so at an almost unspeakable price. It will have undermined the international economic architecture on which rests its control of global markets (and its ability to safely run government deficits). It will have carried out a shotgun wedding of Russia and China, forcing the most natural-resource-rich country on the planet into the arms of the West’s most dangerous adversary. Should Ukraine fail, the Ukraine policy of the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations will be counted among the significant foreign policy blunders in American history.
Read the whole thing,
AN UNNECESSARILY GENEROUS DESCRIPTION: Biden’s Student Loan Giveaway Is ‘Unconstitutional Flimflammery.’
I PREDICT WIDESPREAD DISAPPOINTMENT: More than a third of Gen Zers want to become social media influencers.
SPACE RESOURCES ON EARTH: Observe Vesta — And Own A Piece Of It, Too.
DEAL OF THE DAY: First Alert ABC Home Fire Extinguisher-4-Pk. #CommissionEarned
UNEXPECTEDLY! Canada Is Euthanizing Its Sick and Poor. Welcome to World of Government Health Care. “Roger, this is not my show. My piece of this was to talk to you, (to see) if you had an interest in assisted dying.”
IF I WERE A STUDENT I’D RETURN THE FAVOR: Striking staff reportedly block students from their dorms. “New American University students and their families were met with a blockade of protesters Tuesday afternoon as they attempted to move into their dorms to kickstart the fall semester. The strike, led by the AU chapter of SEIU Local 500, began on Monday but intensified on Tuesday as strikers prevented students from entering their dorms, according to Sarah Mattalain, managing editor of the campus newspaper The Eagle. The picket line blocked entrances to dormitories, according to coverage on Twitter.”
Move-in day is shitty enough without some bozos making it worse for selfish reasons.
TO BE FAIR, IT’S MEANT TO: Joel Kotkin: The Global Commodification of Housing Will Destroy Democracy. “Housing is an industry, but it is also where people live, raise families, and stake their future. Yet increasingly, all around the world, housing has increasingly become just a commodity to be traded, often by foreigner investors, notably from China, as well as by large well-capitalized financial institutions who plan to cultivate a generation of lifelong renters. In the notorious words of the World Economic Forum, ‘You will own nothing, and love it.’ Well, you may not love it, but the first part is coming true.”
IT’S ONE OF DECADES OF DEATH AND FAILURE, PROPPED UP BY MEDIA HYPE: Dr. Fauci’s Legacy. “If dissent had been welcomed from the start—which is what science demands—a lot of suffering could have been avoided.”
VIDEO: Ukraine’s Attrition Strategy. “Anders Puck Nielsen, a military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College, has some answers. What Ukraine is doing right now is not a traditional counteroffensive, but a prolonged attrition strategy to degrade Russian logistics and forces.”
Once again, if you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the video, Lawrence Person has done a fine job of breaking out the bullet points.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Village Idiot Biden Puts Another Nail in America’s Coffin. “Fatalism doesn’t really look good on me but I swear that the commies who run Joe Biden’s brain are beginning to convince me that they might just be able to destroy this great Republic before Christmas this year.”
LOYALTY OATHS ARE ILLEGAL AND BAD: Academic Freedom Alliance Calls For An End To Required Faculty Diversity Statements.
THE STUDENT LOAN BOONDOGGLE: If It Sounds Like an Election Year Handout, That’s Because It Is.
Mr. Biden is using questionable Covid health emergency authority — a very shaky assumption — to hand out this election year relief. More or less 70 percent of predominantly middle-class taxpayers are going to be bailing out something like 30 percent of those most well off. Oh, and that’s right, it does sound like an election year handout, doesn’t it?
Think of this: With the Schumer-Manchin bill and its business tax hikes and IRS assault squad, the government is coming after typical families and working people. That’s the way this shakes out.
Also there’s no debt reduction because in four years the student debt volume will be back to $1.6 trillion. Is this inflationary? Well, yes, at least indirectly. If the interest and principal on your student loan is canceled, then you’ll have more money to spend elsewhere.
It bids up demand while Mr. Biden’s enhanced tax and regulatory strangle holds down supply. I oversimplify here, but that’s one way to look at it.
If this whole student bailout business costs $300 billion over 10 years, as some are estimating, then that wipes out the Schumer-Manchin deficit reduction. I never bought into their deficit reduction anyway.
Another thought: The education department does not remotely have the expertise to handle a $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio. It’s a regulatory and policy agency, not a bank. Shades of the EPA running a $27 billion national “climate bank.” Same nonsense.
What these people lack in competence, they make up in hubris and ill-will. This is a giveaway to the Gentry Class at the expense of the working class. As a friend said, “People who have never lived this well are now forced to subsidize people who lived this well.”
Related: Why Team Biden Might Be Purposefully Crushing the Middle Class.