CHINA: China Scrambles to Mollify Wary Domestic Firms and Foreign Investors.

For years, Xi Jinping has browbeaten China’s big private-sector companies as he increased Communist Party control of the economy, all while codifying the primacy of national-security. Now it seems he’s surprised at the result.

With private-sector investment contracting in spite of the post-pandemic reopening, foreign capital inflows declining and more than one-in-five people aged 16 to 24 struggling to find a job, China’s leader and his lieutenants have launched a massive messaging campaign.

The message? We didn’t really mean it.

In recent weeks, there’s been a raft of party and government statements and pledges and meetings with executives (foreign and domestic) to assure them that China is open for business. Analysts at China consultancy Trivium observed on Thursday, “Beijing has devoted more attention to supporting private businesses this year than at any time we can remember since the founding of the People’s Republic.”

As Ronald Reagan liked to say, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

THIS SHOULD SURPRISE NO ONE WHO’S BEEN PAYING ATTENTION: Analytics show Democrats twice as radical, GOP more moderate.

To hear Democrats talk about Republicans, it’s pretty easy to get the impression that they are all right-wing rabble-rousers made more conservative after the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), for example, this week ranted about having to work with unbending “terrorists” across the aisle. . . .

But it’s not the Republicans who have radicalized over the past 50 years, but the Democrats, and by a huge margin, according to a deep dive into the latest CPAC ratings.

In one of the biggest surprises revealed since the ratings began, there are twice as many Democrats with perfect zero conservative ratings in the House and Senate today than in 1971. And there are significantly fewer Republicans with 100% ratings in the House and Senate today than 51 years ago.

The just-published 52nd Ratings of Congress from CPAC’s Center for Legislative Accountability found 14 House members and just three senators — Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Mike Braun (R-IN) — with 100% ratings on the issues the group cares about. In 1971, there were 61 perfect House Republicans and 11 100% senators, including conservative giants Barry Goldwater of Arizona, New York’s James L. Buckley, and South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond.

The CPAC report found Democrats much more moderate decades ago. In 1971, there were 23 senators with zero ratings on the CPAC report card of conservative issues. Today there are 38, more than half the Democratic Caucus. In the House, there were 39 perfect liberal voters in 1971 compared to 76 today. Plus, there are dozens of House liberals with a 3% rating.

CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp said the analytics show that many Republicans come to Washington and face-plant into the swamp’s deep end over time.

Gentry-class tribalism pulls Republicans left, while not restraining Democrats’ leftward lurches at all.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: IRS Whistleblowers Claim Political Interference in Hunter Biden Investigation.

At this point, does anyone doubt it?

KEEP GRINDING: SpaceX launches nearly two dozen more Starlink satellites into space.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Military Notes a Spike in Myocarditis Cases — Wonder Why?

ANDY KESSLER: ESG Is Blowin’ In The Wind: The ’60s produced some catchy songs. Today all we get is grievance culture.

Turns out the answer wasn’t blowin’ in the wind. The 1960s and ’70s were filled with protest songs against the Vietnam War, discrimination, and The Man! While heartfelt, these songs they didn’t do much except create an artsy activist political class committed to resisting anything resembling hard work to suppress the pending wave of innovation.

Songs can be inspirational, but they aren’t instruction manuals. With an air of despair, Bob Dylan’s 1963 “Blowin’ in the Wind” asked lots of breezy questions. I think “Puff the Magic Dragon” had more answers. Then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” in 1970 offered a solution to the horrible Kent State shootings: “Gotta get down to it,” which “should have been done long ago.” That’s it?

Gil Scott Heron sang “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in 1971. Instead, our television was digitized and revolutionized. I hate war, but I can’t help noticing that Edwin Starr’s 1970 “War, huh, yeah / What is it good for? / Absolutely nothing” wasn’t sung in German.

Saigon collapsed. The draft ended in 1973, and my age group didn’t have to register, which explains a lot of apathy. But the cultural damage lingered. In 1984, Bruce Springsteen released the gloomy “Born in the U.S.A.,” right on the cusp of the most spectacular economic boom in history, “I’m 10 years burning down the road / Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go.” Except, it turns out, up.

Nope, my friend, the answer wasn’t blowin’ in the wind. The answer was to roll up your sleeves and dig in. Work your way up. Create the future. Effort over easy. That’s what drove progress. . . .

Today’s DEI and ESG grievance industries are blowin’ in the wind. Three steps to redemption: Forget merit and striving for the highest level. Push equity over excellence. Feel virtuous. There are uproars because we don’t have enough female crash-test dummies—or paper straws, trigger warnings, unisex bathrooms, wind farms, disarmed police, censored songs or sidewalk tents for the “unhoused.” These are vacuous 21st-century versions of protest songs. Feels good. Does nothing. Greta Thunberg’s “How Dare You?” topped the charts.

A friend told me his latest movie idea: A disaster strikes and the world ends during the Burning Man festival. The chemically addled cosplaying steampunk “Burners” are the only ones left alive. Hilarity ensues. Looking at our culture, it often feels as if that has already happened: emo music, moralizing movies, pregnant men, crypto disasters.

Sorry, it wasn’t hot-airy activists or puffing politicians in the ’60s and ’70s that drove progress, but entrepreneurs and workers at all the companies started back then: Intel. FedEx. Walmart. Apple. Genentech. Nike. Home Depot. Starbucks. Microsoft. They put action into Mr. Dylan’s words in “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”

Life is constant change, turmoil, ruckus. It’s almost always for the better when we unleash progress from the shackles of whiny, wind-blowin’ protesters. Hard work and putting in the time turn inspiration into innovation. Reach into that bag and grab those handles.

The whiny artsy activist political class isn’t much into hard work, though they don’t mind enjoying the fruits of others’.

HMM: Putin Raises Elderly Army as Ex-Serviceman Up to 70 Deemed Eligible. “The State Duma said Tuesday it had adopted a law raising the maximum age by half a decade for those who had already completed military service.”

Positive Spin: Raising the eligibility age by five years isn’t actually all that much.

Negative Spin: It was already at 65?

“EQUITY” IS A TERM CHOSEN BECAUSE IT SOUNDS LIKE “EQUALITY,” WHICH AMERICANS LIKE, BUT MEANS THE OPPOSITE: “Equity Is Used To End The Middle Class.”

THE CLIMATE WITCH TRIALS: Questioning the climate-change narrative is now the ultimate form of heresy.

JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO THIS WAS A CONSPIRACY THEORY FOR RIGHT-WING NUT JOBS: First, They Came for Your Gas Stove. Now They’re Coming for Your Hot Water Heater.

FROM DENTON SALLE:  In the Hall of Eternal Music.

#CommissionEarned

Jeremy and Galena traveled with Bolgor to his home city, only to find the legendary city of the dwarves torn apart by politics. What was to be a pleasant visit turned into a struggle against the Dark attempts to corrupt it from within.

The young wizard, his bear-shifter lady, and his dwarven sword brother must find a way to deal with different political parties, monsters, and assassination attempts. They have to find the instigator in a different culture with very different rules. Rules that separate Jeremy from Galena. Among a people many of whom think the volkh are frauds.

And the fall of this city to Darkness would lead to a new reign of terror as its satellite cities fall and a new Dark Empire arises in the North. Only Jeremy and his friends stand in the way of a new age of war and the bloodshed that will bring.

Click above to join Jeremy as he faces the latest challenge of the dark. A challenge that threatens not only those he loves but an entire civilization and perhaps the world. If you like adventures set in a unique magical world, you will love the latest in the Avatar Wizard series.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Swiping and Dating Preferences: Gender divides in sex and relationships. “The survey found that women care a lot more about height than men do.”

Plus: “Interestingly, a recent survey found that men in cohabiting relationships are just as satisfied in their relationships as married men, but women in cohabiting relationships are much less satisfied than married women. Much of social progress was supposedly intended to benefit women and instead ended up benefiting men. Perhaps this is one contributing factor to the paradox of declining female happiness. Women used to report having higher well-being than men. Over the past several decades, though, this has reversed. Women’s self-reported happiness has plummeted. Today men report higher well-being than women.”

And:

Here’s a sketch of what might be happening: Men high on the Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism) use dating apps. They might make up 10-20% of users. They go on a rampage, sleeping with lots of women, playing games with them, leading them on, ghosting them, lying to them, etc. Dark Triad men are excellent impostors; they are good at mimicking desirable romantic qualities, and are thus able to procure lots of sex partners. The women they sleep with become disillusioned. These women begin to behave in psychopathic and narcissistic ways to protect themselves from emotional vulnerability and pain, and perhaps as a way to even the score with “men” as a category. They learn to avoid Dark Triad men and exploit normal men. These men become confused and upset, and begin to treat other women the same way to “get even.” In short, Dark Triad men mistreat women, who then mistreat ordinary men, who then mistreat ordinary women. Bad behavior drives out the good. A system tailor-made for psychopathic males (dating apps facilitate anonymity, superficiality, and deception) predictably gives rise to a defect-defect equilibrium. Eventually, you have a situation where everyone adopts Dark Triad strategies of emotional coldness, unfeeling callousness, and calculated duplicity to obtain sex and avoid getting hurt.

Everything is going swimmingly. But there’s much more at the link. Including this:

Regarding personal beliefs, there is an interesting paradox here for men and women. Most women today are liberal, yet women are also more likely than men to desire committed relationships. Men who are liberal are, on average, far less interested in committed relationships than conservative men, who are more likely to be interested in marriage. If you don’t date conservative (or “moderate”—a joke I’ve heard is that any man who calls themselves a moderate on the dating apps is a Republican) men, you’ll probably be on the dating apps for a long time. There’s already a scarcity of college-educated men. If you rule out everyone who is right of center, then your dating pool will be very small indeed.

Yes.

THE TALKING MOP VIRTUE SIGNALS!  Biden press sec refuses to accept gay press award in solidarity with Hollywood strike: report.

WE KNOW:  Fox News’ Conservative Stance Belies Hidden Liberal Agenda.

It’s been obvious for a while now.

AS THE DOG RETURNS TO HIS VOMIT AND THE PIG RETURNS TO HER MIRE:  Leftist Brazilian President Lula Signs Decree to Restrict Gun Ownership.

“Steal elections. Confiscate guns.”  Uh uh. Try that in a USA….

THEY ARE NOT WORRIED. THEY WILL NEVER BE WORRIED. THEY HAVE THE FRAUD SEWN UP:  Former Obama Adviser Sounds Alarm for Biden on Third Party Candidate Cornel West.

THIS IS THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY WE WERE PROMISED:  Real Science: Tooth Regrowing Treatment to Begin Human Trials Next Year.

DO THEY WANT TO MOVE TO THE COUNTRY OF THEIR CHOICE? COME ON, GUYS, LET’S HOLD A WHIP AROUND FOR THEIR FARE:  USWNT players largely silent during national anthem in 2023 World Cup opener against Vietnam, who proudly sang theirs.

IF WOMEN RAN THE WORLD, IT WOULD BE PEACEFUL AND THERE WOULD BE NO VIOLENCE: NYC mom knifed with box cutter by other women after kids fight, cops say.

Who are you going to believe? Your lying eyes or fifty years of stupid feminist science fiction stories that gave magazines a good excuse to publish lesbian fiction? And which caused me to wonder if the — sometimes female — authors had ever met a woman, ever.  Come on, no malarkey. Corn pop believes in peaceful women.

WHAT PRO-LYNCHING BACKLASH? THE LIBERAL IDIOTS?  Jason Aldean doubles down on ‘Try That in a Small Town’ amid ‘pro-lynching’ backlash.

Dogs barking, caravan passing. Same old, same old.  As for lynching, yeah, the left would know about that, wouldn’t they? Since their people were the ones lynching people back when. Again, same old, same old. They always resort to violence. And project like an Imax.

ARE INMATES SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY? I THOUGHT PRISON WAS PUNISHMENT?  Fellow inmates not ‘happy’ with Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann.

Also, predictable.

YES, YES.  RUSSIAN RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IS WIDELY RECOGNIZED:  Organizers of Russian Pavilion Say Exclusion From Edmonton Heritage Festival a ‘Violation of Human Rights’.

For given definitions of “human”.  And “rights.”

WARRANTS? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING WARRANTS!   EXCLUSIVE: FBI Carried Out Warrantless Monitoring on Man Who Posted Guns for Sale on Facebook.

OF COURSE THEY DID! EXCLUSIVE:  CDC Changed Definition of Breakthrough COVID-19 After Emails About ‘Vaccine Failure’.

That’s not the only definition they changed, either.

NOT A MINUTE TOO SOON:  The corporate fad to impose racial quotas appears to be fading fast.