Archive for 2023
September 20, 2023
QUESTION ASKED: Does John Fetterman Really Want to Be a Senator?
Fetterman doesn’t want to be judged by his wardrobe. Okay. Let’s look at his record since joining the Senate.
So far in his Senate career, Fetterman has missed 33.4 percent of the Senate votes. He is the chamber’s second-most absent member, behind Dianne Feinstein of California, who has missed 46.3 percent of the votes this session. Much of Fetterman’s absence was during his six-week stay at Walter Reed Medical Center in treatment for clinical depression — he missed 85 percent of the votes in February and March. But not all of it was from that time period; Fetterman also missed 13 percent of the votes from July to September.
On July 19, he missed a vote to require the president to consult Congress before withdrawing from NATO. On July 11, he missed a confirmation vote on Xochitl Torres Small to be deputy secretary of Agriculture. And two days later, he missed confirmation votes for Kalpana Kotagal to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and David M. Uhlmann to be assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Confirmation votes like those are not the most exciting, dramatic, or consequential tasks of a senator, but they are part of the job. I would have figured that a guy who missed so many votes out of the gate would have tried to avoid missing many more for the rest of the session. The U.S. Senate has a lot of “state work periods” in which lawmakers aren’t in session, and the chamber rarely holds floor votes before Monday night or after Thursday evening. It’s not like Fetterman has the commuting challenges of senators from Hawaii, Alaska, or the West Coast.
In that New York Times interview in July, Fetterman did not sound like he was enjoying his new life as a senator. He told the paper that he thinks the Senate has “a fixation on a lot of dumb s***. Bad performance art is really what it gets down to.”
Exit quote: “Put Fetterman in a suit, where he can’t show off the arm tattoos, and he’s just a really tall, really big, bald senator.”
In accordance with the prophecy: Fetterman Prepares For Senate Job With New Dress Hoodie.
NOW OUT FROM THOMAS SOWELL: Social Justice Fallacies.
IT CERTAINLY ISN’T HELPING: Joe Biden’s Age Isn’t the Problem. “The media, which, don’t forget, was openly speculating who might replace Joe Biden in 2024 just a few years ago, is now struggling to figure out how to remove Joe Biden’s age as an issue.”
FREDDIE DEBOER: The Stations of the Meritocrat Cross. “I thought that this Atlantic piece by a current Yale undergraduate (likely paywalled, but I dunno) was pretty good. While it’s a little overwritten, the piece did a really good job of capturing the addiction to grinding and status culture that consumes our young people.”
Here’s an archive link to the Atlantic piece. “Yale is a place where everyone is a winner. Less than 5 percent of people who apply are offered a spot. You might think that this selectivity would make students feel confident and secure—if we had to beat out 95 percent of our peers to get in, we must be really special. But the opposite seems to be true: Students, fueled by insecurity, feel the need to over-justify their worthiness. And so they impose endless hierarchies on one another.”
That’s because although they excel in the rat race, they have limited real-world achievements to build genuine confidence. Requiring two years in the real world at an actual paying job — NOT an internship — would do wonders. Hell, Yale could require two years as a warehouse worker, it would be less than the current system demands of applicants, and societally useful as well.
BIDEN’S DEFENDERS ARE BLOWING SMOKE:
The interview ended after [James] Risen cast himself as a fearless journalist whose exoneration of Biden should have special weight because he had written one of the first articles, back in 2015 for the New York Times, addressing Hunter’s dealings in the Ukraine. I’m familiar with his piece and told him it reflected the problem with so much mainstream reporting on Hunter’s position on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma: It noted the company’s shady history but dug no deeper as it regurgitated spin concocted by the company, Hunter, and his team.
While we now know that Hunter was paid the princely sum of $83,000 per month for his service, I reminded Risen that he simply quoted a Burisma spokesperson who said Hunter’s pay was “not out of the ordinary” for similar corporate board positions. I also pointed out that he merely quoted a Burisma spokesperson who suggested Hunter was brought on to help with “strong corporate governance and transparency.” This seems fanciful on its face. As Lee Fang reported this week for RealClearInvestigations, emails from Hunter’s laptop show his employment was connected to lobbying efforts in Washington and access to his father.
In response, Risen said he refused to be “insulted,” and hung up the phone.
Read the whole thing.
DON SURBER: Corporate suicide: It is not that they are woke; it is that CEOs are incompetent.
Well, they’re incompetent enough to listen to woke people.
WHY NOT 12? OR 14? OR A MILLION AND SIX? CA Principal Claims There Are 13 ‘Genders,’ Justifies Drag Queen Discussion in Health Class.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Wyoming Schools to Biden: MOLON LABE!
ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE:
The national security expertise sought by the Biden Cabal is how to secure the nation from conservatives and other undesirables. And say what you will about this White House, but with Brennan, Clapper, and Kolbe they’ve chosen experience and expertise in the matter.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE A-BOMB: For filmmakers, ‘Oppenheimer’s’ $900M-plus haul is an important moment for Hollywood and theaters.
Hopes were always high for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” The studio knew the film was great, and commercial. But no one in the industry expected that a long, talky, R-rated drama released at the height of the summer movie season would earn over $900 million at the box office.
After an early screening, “ Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve said he knew he’d just seen “a masterpiece.” He even remembered saying that it would be a big success.
“But where it is right now has blown the roof off of my projection,” Villeneuve told The Associated Press. “It’s a three-hour movie about people talking about nuclear physics.”
Based on a book co-written by a pair of far left former Nation editors, to boot.
RULES FOR CAMPUS RADICALS: How Not To Respond To Campus Reform. “Faculty First Responders is a a rhetorical guide for left-wing professors and university administrators to respond to conservative media coverage.”
TIMELESS ADVICE FROM GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: How Will We Be Judged?
This undercurrent, let’s call it the “we have to do it to them before they do it to us” strain of modern politics, is turning this election cycle into something like a vindictive race to see which side can install their strongman before the other side can install theirs.
I fear that we may not like the place where such a race might take us. Judgment at Nuremberg gives us a hint of what that destination might be… by revealing that it’s a place humanity has visited many times before, to its eternal sorrow.
JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is a story about what can happen when that ugly strain of political escalation goes unchecked for too long and is allowed to infect the broader population. The film is nominally about a fictional “Nuremberg Trial” pitting four German Judges, former Nazi Party members all, against an international tribunal looking to make them pay for their crimes against humanity.
But that’s not really what JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is about about.
As most great movies are, Nuremberg is about a man. It is the story of Chief Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) who, even as he struggles to do what is right with respect to the case in front of him, cannot help but ask himself a much larger and more important series of questions… “How did we get here?”, “How could this have happened”, and “Could it happen again?”
In the end, Haywood delivers a verdict that is not so much an indictment of the men in the dock, but rather an indictment of unchecked human nature, and what it means to stand for justice rather than simple, horrible expediency.
Read the whole thing.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The ‘Newsom 2024’ Fever Dream Took a Bit of a Hit This Week. “Newsom’s hard sell on the job that President LOLEightyonemillion is doing is predictable, the Dem elites can’t be seen badmouthing the old boy while he is still the presumptive nominee. There’s no way he believes any of it, of course, and I think that may be another reason that Newsom isn’t keen on playing savior for the DNC this cycle.”
WELL, IT’S AWKWARD TO BRING UP THAT BIDEN IS ON THEIR PAYROLL: Why Aren’t The Presidential Candidates Debating China?
CHANGE: Russia’s Dependence On China Is Deep And Wide — It May Also Be Irreversible.
One of the most notable aspects of Russia’s pivot to the East is its growing trade dependence on China. Chinese imports to Russia increased after 2008, culminating in China surpassing Germany as Russia’s leading supplier of goods.
In 2006, China’s share of Russian imports was a mere 9.4%, but by 2021, it had surged to a substantial 24.8%. Likewise, China’s share of Russian exports nearly tripled during the same period, making China Russia’s largest export destination by 2017.
Since the 2022 invasion, Russia has stopped publishing detailed customs statistics. Consequently, we must rely on various sources, including occasional reports from Russian officials, data from other countries and expert assessments. According to Iikki Korhonen, who leads the Institute for Transition Economies at the Bank of Finland, China’s portion of Russian imports “likely exceeded one-third and may have reached as high as 40% by the end of 2022.”
The level of dependence in foreign trade that Russia currently exhibits is typically associated with colonial or former colonial relationships, as well as “center-periphery” systems. In these systems, the central entity’s share of foreign trade with peripheral countries is akin to China’s role in Russia’s foreign economic activities.
Throughout recorded history, no partner of Russia — except for China post-2008 — has accounted for more than 16% of Russian imports. Similarly, in terms of Russian exports, no partner, except China since 2018, has surpassed a 15% share. “In terms of imports,” Iikki Korhonen argues, “Russia is now, if not the most dependent country on China, then second only to North Korea.”
Someone else noted a while back that China has two kinds of foreign relations: Trade partners and vassals. I’d add that Putin’s stupid war has moved Russia far along the road from the former to the latter.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA GERMANY: WTF, Braun?
This time the malefactor is Braun, which makes stylish products that overpromise and underdeliver, all at a price that will break the bank for ordinary folks like you and me.
Budweiser got into hot beer over its decision to use the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to advertise its beer, so Braun had to go one better.
It is using a post-op trans-“man” posing shirtless while using a Braun shaver to get that silky smooth skin which she sacrificed by taking testosterone.
BRAUN 🪒 features a transgender biological female with double mastectomy scars in their new shaving advert for their men’s shaving range. pic.twitter.com/TYD01CEkdl
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) September 19, 2023
Braun was started in 1921 in Frankfurt, Germany. To paraphrase Mark Steyn, you can take the brand out of Weimar, but you can’t take the Weimar out of the brand.
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION AT U. PENN: Despite What Those Shadowy, Elite, Rich Jews Say, We’re Not Antisemites.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Van Heusen Men’s Dress Shirt Regular Fit Poplin Solid. ##CommissionEarned
DNC-MSM START TO NOTICE THE (P)RESIDENT IS A DESICCATED CABBAGE: Flashing Red Lights: CBS Airs Story on Voters Being Concerned About Biden’s Age.
Monday’s CBS Mornings decided to do its best David Ignatius impression by providing their liberal viewership with what could only be described as flashing emergency lights in the form of CBS’s latest polling showing that not only did former President Trump have a one-point national lead over President Biden, but it showed only 34 percent of voters believed Biden could finish a second term (which would end in 2028).
The chyron tried to cloak the issue in a both-sides problem given Trump was only three years younger and would also be an octogenarian if he were to receive another term (which he’d be limited to given he served from 2017-2021): “Age a Concern in Presidential Race; CBS News Poll Shows Voters Concerned About Candidates’ Ages”.
So if Biden is being eased out, who will replace him? Ted Cruz’s Prediction on How Michelle Obama Could Be the Democratic Nominee Makes a Scary Amount of Sense.
STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM AND BIGOTRY: Anti-affirmative action group sues West Point over race-conscious admissions.
VICTORIA TAFT: Well, Well, Well, Look at the ‘Conspiracy Theory’ the J6 Cat Finally Dragged in. Why Now? “Ray Epps, the man the news media said was the object of conspiracy theorists of the ‘hard right,’ was charged Tuesday with one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct for his antics at the Capitol Complex on Jan. 6, 2021. It has taken the federal government more than two and a half years to bring the single charge against Ray Epps.”