READER FAVORITE: COOFANDY Men’s Linen Henley Shirt. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2023
July 4, 2023
MACRON BLAMES VIDEO GAMES: Paris Resembles War Zone as France Endures Sixth Night of Migrant-Driven Rioting.
FRANCE’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Chaos In France As Rival Protesters Keep Trying To Surrender To Each Other.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Supreme Court Wakes Up.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) hasn’t given conservatives a straight flush.
Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh broke ranks with their conservative confrères in the so-called voter rights case in Alabama.
I say “so-called voter rights case” because, in fact, it had nothing to do with the law, which stipulates that everyone, black or white, be granted free access to the ballot.
No, that was mere cover for the real purpose of the case, which was to find a way to create more Democratic districts.
The Court said that there had to more black districts constructed.
But a black district is, as a matter of fact, a Democratic one. QED.
Let’s draw a veil over that unfortunate decision and celebrate two more recent ones: the (pardon) “so-called” affirmative action case and the student loan case.
Let’s take the second one first.
The easiest way to understand what just happened is to begin by understanding what the word “loan” means. . . . They wanted you, the taxpayer, to pay instead. President Joe Biden thought this was a good idea.
Indeed. Though any sentence beginning “President Joe Biden thought” is risky.
FOURTH OF JULY FLASHBACK: San Diego’s 2012 Fireworks Flop.
JEFFREY CARTER: Happy Birthday America! “Lefties are always about guilt or constraints. America is about choice and abundance.”
HOW ABOUT IF WE SHOOT BEARS THAT COME NEAR HUMANS OR THEIR DOGS?
Wildlife authorities say that dog owners should walk their pets on a short leash that doesn’t retract, and that people should remove all sources of food, including bird feeders or bird seed, from outdoor spaces because they can attract bears…. According to the National Park Service, if you surprise a bear and it is not acting in a predatory way toward you, you should wave your arms to show the bear that you are human and then “slowly and calmly back away while avoiding direct eye contact.”
The notion that predators are somehow morally superior to humans is moronic. They’re threats to be managed, with no special moral standing of their own, and the best way to teach them to avoid humans is to shoot them when they don’t.
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: ‘Groundbreaking’ Sharp Images of Distant Planetary System Show 3 Planets Are Missing.
THERE’S A 30-CALIBER SOLUTION TO THIS: ‘I’m terrified’: Woman said black bears keep coming to her home.
If you shoot bears who come around people, they’ll stop. That’s how we did it before. And by “before,” I mean, “before society went insane.”
DON SURBER: The Day John Adams Predicted.
The United States is a divided mess as Democrats have encouraged tribalism in their efforts to gain power, splitting us apart. Patriotism is at a low point. Fox reported most voters think America’s best days are a thing of the past.
Rubbish. When America turned four score and seven, Americans were slaughtering one another at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. America became great again by the time its centennial arrived.
The deterioration and abandonment of Manhattan in the late 1960s and early 1970s gave way to the tall ships arriving in New York Harbor to celebrate the bicentennial.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Christians Err If They Give Up On America, Especially On The 4th Of July.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Happy Independence Day—Hope We Have a Few More. “If the United States military spends much more time focusing on pronouns and wokeness we can forget about being overrun by China. We’re going to be conquered by a Guatemalan haberdasher named Reynard who just got bored one day and needed a new challenge.”
DON SURBER: The Bioweapon That Elected Biden.
As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Chairman Xi did so by using a bioweapon and bribes to eliminate the leader who opposed him. Xi replaced him with Biden who he bought off a few years earlier for a lousy few million dollars.
The Jerusalem Post reported, “China deliberately engineered the coronavirus virus as a bioweapon, a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher claimed this week in an interview conducted by Chinese-born human rights activist and author Jennifer Zeng.
“Researcher Chao Shao asserts that the virus was deliberately engineered by China as a bioweapon, and that his colleagues were tasked with identifying the most effective strain for spreading among various species, including people.”
Once this would have seemed unlikely, but not anymore.
ANOTHER REASON NOT TO VISIT CALIFORNIA, IN CASE YOU NEEDED ONE: Thousands Of SoCal Hotel Workers Go On Strike.
WELL, THE CEO DIDN’T WANT ANY “EX-MILITARY WHITE GUYS OVER 50,” SO: Lost Titanic sub: Vessel used electrical system designed by college interns: Report.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Inflation Causes Fourth Of July Cookout Items To Hit Record High: Report.
Average per-person spending on Fourth of July food items rose to $93.34 in 2023 amid persistent inflation, new data from a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey found.
The figure is the highest ever recorded by the NRF since the survey began in 2003, marking a $9.22 increase since last year when the individual cost averaged out to $84.12. The survey, conducted from June 1st to June 7th, fielded responses from 8,225 consumers.
The Biden Administration boasted last year that the cost had dropped sixteen cents, though that wasn’t actually true. Still, in a few years, when we’re eating bugburgers and bugdogs cooked over a solar cooker, we’ll look back on July 4, 2023 as luxurious.
Reminds me of the old Soviet joke: “How’s today, Boris.” “Average.” “Average?” “Worse than yesterday, better than tomorrow, so average.”
In the Biden era, we live in an old Soviet joke.
Related: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class. “Vladimir Lenin supposedly once said, ‘The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.’ There’s some doubt as to whether this line is genuine; regardless, it seems like a pretty good description of what the Biden administration is doing to America’s middle class.”
LIGHTNING DEAL: 15 Pieces Damascus Kitchen Knife Set with Built in Knife Sharpener Block. #CommissionEarned
Growing up in Benton, Ark., Malaya Tapp loved celebrating the Fourth of July with her family. “We would go to parades and see firework shows and hang out with friends,” she said. “It was always such a fun holiday.”
But now that she is an adult — she’s 18 and entering college next year — commemorating the holiday isn’t so simple.
It started in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement spotlighted many of the injustices across the country. “I lost a lot of my patriotic feelings,” she said.
Ms. Tapp, who now lives in Atlanta, also realized that many festive components of Fourth of July aren’t that palatable for her.
There are the fireworks. “It’s hard to tell the difference between guns and fireworks, and here there is always something on the news about a shooting or something, so it makes me nervous,” she said. “They are also bad for the environment. They release a lot of toxic chemicals.”
This year she is skipping the holiday altogether, opting instead to travel with her church youth group to visit a Navajo nation in Arizona, but the trip was canceled because of a Covid outbreak.
As the late Charles Krauthammer wrote in in 2002, “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” But there’s a problem, Christopher Caldwell wrote a couple of years later:
At some point, Democrats became the party of small-town people who think they’re too big for their small towns. It is hard to say how it happened: Perhaps it is that Republicans’ primary appeal is to something small-towners take for granted (tradition), while Democrats’ is to something that small-towners are condemned for lacking (diversity). Both appeals can be effective, but it is only the latter that incites people to repudiate the culture in which they grew up. Perhaps it is that at universities–through which pass all small-town people aiming to climb to a higher social class–Democratic party affiliation is the sine qua non of being taken for a serious, non-hayseed human being.
For these people, liberalism is not a belief at all. No, it’s something more important: a badge of certain social aspirations. That is why the laments of the small-town leftists get voiced with such intemperance and desperation. As if those who voice them are fighting off the nagging thought: If the Republicans aren’t particularly evil, then maybe I’m not particularly special.
For the rest of us, have a happy Fourth!
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Professor Ordered To Complete Free Speech Training After Failing Student For Using ‘Biological Woman.’
For a final project, [Adjunct instructor Melanie Nipper, 29] asked students to pick a research topic on feminism, and [Olivia] Krolczyk proposed to study women’s rights in athletics, from securing women’s place in the Olympic Games to trans-identifying men in women’s sports.
Nipper told the sophomore chemistry major, “Olivia, this is a solid proposal. However, the terms “biological women” are exclusionary and are not allowed in this course as they further reinforce heteronormativity. Please reassess your topic and edit it to focus on women’s rights (not just “females”) and I’ll regrade.”
“How am I supposed to do my project if I can’t use the term ‘biological women?’” Krolczyk questioned in her TikTok video.
The sophomore reported the incident to the school, and the university’s Gender Equality Office agreed to have a different professor grade Krolczyk’s assignment. Krolczyk eventually finished Nipper’s class with an A.
Evergreen:
SUMMER READING: Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, I hereby declare my anthology to be a law & policy classic.
It’s cheap too.
OUT: TWO-MINUTE HATE. IN: FOURTH OF JULY LOVE. A lawprof friend emails:
This July 4th, as you celebrate our Independence, please raise a glass, take a photo, or make a short video expressing admiration for Justice Clarence Thomas — and post it to social media, optionally with #NORTH-IS-STILL-NORTH.
No need to get legal or defensive, and no need for negativity or criticism of anyone. Instead, please praise him for his courage, independence, intellectual leadership, warmth, and personal humanity.
In response to the Orwellian “two minutes of Hate,” he should get some well-deserved Love!
As Justice Thomas said, “right is still right, even if you stand by yourself.” Let’s all stand with Justice Clarence Thomas this Independence Day. We love you, Justice Thomas!
I’ll post my glass-raising pic later today.
You know there’s no contradiction between saying that Harvard discriminates in favor of both black applicants and rich white applicants, right? Weirdly, those are also the Democratic Party’s top constituency groups.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY: Michael Walsh: Grant, The Indispensible Man.
I read Grant’s memoirs a few years ago and was quite impressed.
LIVING HISTORY: Ukraine finds British WW2 Hurricane planes outside Kyiv.
The rusting remains of eight British Hurricane fighter planes dating back to World War Two have been found buried in a forest in Ukraine.
The aircraft were sent to the Soviet Union by Britain after Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1941.
They were part of a package of allied military support for the USSR, paid for by the United States under the so-called Lend-Lease scheme.
So-called? Scheme? I’m not sure why decades after the fact the BBC is denigrating a material effort to keep anti-Nazi forces fighting, but, whatever.
Plus: “Some Hurricanes were deliberately broken up and buried after the war so the Soviets did not have to pay back the United States. Under the Lend-Lease legislation, the USSR was required to pay for any donated military equipment that remained intact after hostilities ended.”
DESPITE ALL THE THREATS MASSED ABOUT: Happy fourth of July.
We are a highly improbable nation, forever on the verge of disaster. And also the best, last hope of mankind. Let’s celebrate that.
