Archive for 2024

JAMES LILEKS LOOKS BACK ON THE 1957 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS DREAM HOME:

I suspect this was a massive undertaking by the magazine, since they had to sum up everything the magazine was about. Even the traditionalists would want to know what the future would look like, if only to sniff in distaste. The young moderns eager to breathe free in the burbs would want to know what was expected of a forward-looking person.

In terms of a 1950s sneak preview of radical new architectural forms for the domicile, it isn’t exactly Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, but as Lileks writes, “Compared to how home had looked for decades, it was a great break, a clean break.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

WHY LEFT AND THE MSM DON’T ‘GET’ POPULISM: Former Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director (under Reagan) Donald Devine explains why, going back to the 1848 revolutions in Europe, progressives just don’t understand populist movements like that which is growing on the Continent, and that Donald Trump leads, for better or worse, in the U.S.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: How Tractor Supply Decided to End DEI, and Fast.

The beginning of the end of Tractor Supply’s diversity efforts started on June 6.

That afternoon, Robby Starbuck, a former Hollywood director turned conservative activist, posted a message on the social-media platform X saying, “It’s time to expose Tractor Supply.”

He laid out a string of complaints about stances taken by the company and its leaders, from a warehouse displaying pride flags to the CEO promoting the Covid-19 vaccine.

The company has conservative shoppers who don’t agree, he said. “Let’s start buying what we can at other places,” said Starbuck, who has about half a million followers on X.

The post spread quickly, and within hours executives at the Tennessee retailer began discussing how to quash criticism before the controversy was seized on by conservative media.

Three weeks later, Tractor Supply delivered its decision: Diversity, equity and inclusion at the rural chain were over, including related job roles, and so were some of its environmental initiatives and other causes frequently championed by social progressives.

Starbuck, in an interview, said “we definitely proved a model” of blitzing a company with a primarily conservative customer base. He intends to target other companies soon, he said.

Pushback works.

SO AS STEVE AND CHARLES HAVE NOTED BELOW, THE SUPREME COURT HAS RULED FOR TRUMP IN THE IMMUNITY CASE. Naturally, the question on everyone’s lips is “what does Glenn think?”

Well. I am in general against all of these immunities: Qualified civil immunity for most government officials, absolute immunity for judges and prosecutors — both doctrines created by judges who benefit from absolute immunity and most of whom are probably former prosecutors. I’ve always opposed both.

If there are to be legal immunities, there’s not much basis in the Constitution. You can make a good policy argument for them — and the unprecedentedly slimy, collusive, and over-the-top lawfare campaign against Trump certainly makes the argument for presidential immunity — but really these are policy choices that should be made by Congress, not by judges. But I’m not expecting that to happen anytime soon, and now that the Court has constitutionalized the issue legislation becomes harder. But while this is a suboptimal solution, we have a very, very suboptimal politico-legal system these days, so so be it.

Full opinion, which I have not read yet beyond the syllabus, is here.

OUCH: Record-High July 4th Cookout Costs: Inflation Hits the Backyard.

We’ve come a long way — in the wrong direction — since the Biden Cabal made this sad attempt at gaslighting in 2021.

Related (From Ed): Choosing Inflation:

Interestingly, [British economist Stephen D. King] points out that it’s easier to solve hyperinflation, like the notorious Weimar Germany episode of the early 1920s, than moderate inflation like today’s. Because outright monetary destruction benefits few, the many who suffer are prepared to support radical strokes of currency reform, no matter what the short-term pain. No such consensus of public opinion supports determined action against mild inflation (especially, perhaps, in a presidential election year). For one thing, a slow rate of currency debasement benefits some debtors and a certain class of leveraged speculator. For another, Congress has charged the Fed not only with delivering price stability (as the Fed perversely defines that concept) but also with supporting maximum employment. Tight money, whatever its salutary effect on consumer prices, may temporarily wound the economy, and therefore the job market and the stock market. Perhaps [Jerome] Powell recalls some unnamed diplomat’s rueful quip about the Balkans: “Anything you do is going to be wrong, including nothing.”

Exit quote: “Inflation is a disease you choose, and we moderns have cast our ballots.”

BREAKING: SCOTUS rules on Trump immunity.

Just the News reporting that “Supreme Court rules Trump has absolute immunity for some official acts, but not unofficial ones.”

Decision here.

HMM: EVs are giving new owners more headaches, and Tesla is a big reason why: J.D. Power study.

J.D. Power’s study tracks responses from nearly 100,000 purchasers and lessees of 2024 vehicles within the first 90 days of ownership, and for the first time in the study’s 38-year history, it incorporates repair visit data. Overall, internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles averaged 180 PP100 (or 180 problems per 100 vehicles), while battery electric vehicles (BEVs) averaged a whopping 266 PP100, 86 points higher than ICE vehicles.

Automakers have typically said that EVs are generally less problematic and require fewer repairs than ICE vehicles because they have a smaller number of parts and systems. However, J.D. Power’s study with newly incorporated repair data shows EVs, as well as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), require more repairs than gas-powered vehicles in all repair categories.

“Owners of cutting edge, tech-filled BEVs and PHEVs are experiencing problems that are of a severity level high enough for them to take their new vehicle into the dealership at a rate three times higher than that of gas-powered vehicle owners,” wrote Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power, in the study.

I’m so old, I remember when TCO was supposed to be EV’s big advantage.

JIM TREACHER: Biden vs. Democrats? Welcome to the “bedwetting brigade:”

A lot of Dems are revolting — in more ways than one — and Biden has just one message for them: Stop pissing your pants.

No, seriously. Look at this panicky email the Biden campaign just sent out to supporters:

“Bedwetting brigade”! Now they’re talking to their own supporters the same way they talk to the rest of us*. Utter contempt.

It might be a bad idea for a man who wears Depends to accuse his critics of wetting the bed, but then, I’m no political expert.

Will Dems sit down and shut up and do as they’re told? I assume so, but I’ve been wrong before.

And in case you’re wondering why Jill keeps pushing the old man to stay, get a load of this, hot off the presses:

No wonder she doesn’t want to go home. She craves power.

And she’s not the only one. Incredibly, this sentence actually appeared in the New York Times:

“Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of his father that he knows — scrappy and in command of the facts — rather than the stumbling, aging president Americans saw on Thursday night.”

Well, Hunter sees a lot of things the rest of us don’t see. Like pink elephants.

Of course he wants the Big Guy to stay in power. It’s not like Trump is gonna give him a presidential pardon.

* Now? Joe’s been pissing on his own party’s operatives with bylines for his entire career, long before his brain turned to tapioca. Speaking of the DNC-MSM, as Mark Hemingway writes: Democrat Media Aren’t Upset Biden Is Senile, They’re Mad They Can’t Hide It Anymore.

Shortly after Biden’s disastrous debate ended Thursday, Ben Rhodes tweeted: “Just think about what that debate looked like to people and leaders around the world.” Rhodes, a loyal Democrat soldier, was careful not to say that everyone was far more concerned about how the current president came off than Donald Trump, but he didn’t have to.

Besides, the concern abroad over Biden’s mental state wasn’t exactly new. Just a few weeks ago, concern over Biden’s addled appearances at the G7 summit was reported on unsparingly by the foreign press without the repugnant “don’t believe your eyes and ears” qualifications applied by the turnspits in the American media.

The only reason anyone ever believed Biden was up to the job is that they were lied to, even though most Americans have always understood Biden has been exhibiting signs of dementia before he ever became president. At this point, it’s impossible to deny that Democrats and their media allies have betrayed and endangered America by spending the last few years lying to us about Biden’s age-related mental competency.

Of course, it’s only fitting that Rhodes would come around, however circumspectly, to admitting that as far as Biden’s concerned, the wheel’s turning but the hamster is dead. Rhodes, “the boy wonder of the Obama White House,” is chiefly famous for admitting in print that he openly manipulated reporters on behalf of the president to push Obama’s ill-advised Iran deal because the “average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” Rhodes and his colleagues even bragged that certain reporters were so dedicated to helping them push their foreign policy narrative that they would just “find everything and retweet it.”

While this admission was briefly scandalous, it was only notable because Rhodes had merely said out loud what everyone knew to be true: The Beltway press corps will print whatever Democrat politicians tell them to, no matter how outrageous or even dangerous for America’s national security their policies are.

But this is isn’t 1919, an era before even national radio networks, let alone 24/7 news television, the Internet, and social media. It’s much, much harder for “Dr.” Jill to play Edith Wilson these days.

NOT JUST THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY, OF COURSE, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN HIT PARTICULARLY HARD: TV Host: Dem Policies ‘Devastate’ Restaurant Industry. “The host/executive producer of TV show ‘Bar Rescue’ is calling out how destructive Democrat policies are for the restaurant industry, urging voters to remember this crisis when they go to the polls.”

THEY ALL KNEW: Top aides shielded Biden from staff, but couldn’t hide the debate.

Current and former White House aides are feeling whiplash — and now questioning whether Biden could fulfill a second term.

“It’s time for Joe to go.” That’s what Chandler West, the White House’s deputy director of photography from January 2021 to May 2022, wrote in an Instagram story after the debate.

“I know many of these people and how the White House operates. They will say he has a ‘cold’ or just experienced a ‘bad night,’ but for weeks and months, in private, they have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago,” West wrote, according to screenshots obtained by Axios.

Reached by phone, West said he wrote the post because “the debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.” He declined to comment further.
The president and his team have acknowledged Biden had a bad night but said he had a cold.

Zoom in: Biden’s behavior stunned many in the White House in part because Biden’s closest aides — often led by Jill Biden’s top aide, Anthony Bernal, and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini — took steps early in his term to essentially rope off the president.

They roped him off in the White House for the same reason they roped him off during the campaign four years ago — because they knew he was unfit then. And he’s clearly less fit now.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: MSM Hacks Are Just as Guilty of Elder Abuse as Jill Biden. “The deluded media lapdogs have yet to come to grips with the fact that they don’t have the power in the American conversation that they used to. They believe that they can turn on a dime and no one will notice because they will tell the public what to think.”

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN IN A RECESSION: It’s Home-Building Season, but No One Is Buying Lumber.

Lumber prices have tumbled into building season, a sign that residential construction and home-improvement markets are buckling under high borrowing costs.

The price of two-by-fours, which skyrocketed during the pandemic, is a reliable leading indicator for the housing market. Lately it is flashing caution.

Lumber futures shed 3% Friday to end at $452.50 per thousand board feet, down 27% since mid-March. Wood has piled up in the market and pushed cash prices even lower.

Trade publication and pricing service Random Lengths said its framing-lumber composite price, which tracks on-the-spot sales, fell this past week to $366, the lowest since May 2020. Southern yellow pine, favored for fences and decks, has also dropped to its lowest prices since the depths of the Covid market crash. Random Lengths’ Southern pine composite price declined to $335 this past week.

“The spring rally never happened,” said Russ Taylor, a Vancouver wood-market consultant. “No one is making much money at these prices.”

Everything is going swimmingly.

BLUE STATE BLUES: State Farm seeking 30% rate hike for CA homeowners.

Many California homeowners are concerned about their home insurance, and that anxiety ratcheted up on Friday when State Farm requested one of its biggest rate increases ever, a sign they may be struggling financially.

“It’s critical to understand that nothing changes today for State Farm policyholders, said Michael Soller, spokesperson for the California Department of Insurance.

State Farm is asking for a 30% rate increase next year on the heels of a recent rate hike of almost 20% as they dropped many policyholders.

They are the largest residential homeowners insurers in California, insuring 1 in 5 homes.

And the insurance company is requesting a 52% increase for renters and 36% for condo owners, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

It’s been years and years since the median California income would buy a median California home and today’s news will just squeeze the middle class — or what’s left of it — that much harder.

MICHAEL BARONE: COVID-19: Another fail-safe institution proves not so safe.

At the time, I thought this was a good idea. Hadn’t health research produced cures and improved treatments for many diseases and conditions? Wasn’t health research the best thing for the government to spend money on after national defense?

Now I’m not so sure. After watching the public health agencies flounder and flail during the COVID-19 epidemic, and in light of testimony and retrospective evidence coming mainly out of Republican-run House hearings, it has struck me that putting all those huge piles of money in a small cluster of government bureaucracies was not such a good idea.

Centralization is supposed to prioritize competence and produce efficiency. But it can also squeeze out intellectual diversity and serve the selfish interests of those in charge.

Case in point: The question of whether COVID-19 resulted from a leak from the Wuhan, China, communicable diseases laboratory financed in large part by Francis Collins’s NIH and Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I’ve returned to this matter multiple times, in June 2021, March 2023, July 2023, November 2023, December 2023, and February 2024.

Obviously, Fauci and Collins’s centralized control over vast sums of research money produced this change of view among scientists with professional credentials but the personal ethics characteristic of a much older profession. Then, with breathtaking dishonesty, Fauci referred the press to the article as if he had nothing to do with it.

The question remains open, although it seems increasingly likely that a lab leak was responsible. However, given Chinese secrecy, there isn’t and may never be an indisputable answer. Nevertheless, Fauci and Collins sought to supply one almost instantly. They instructed NIH-supported scientists, including some who thought the lab leak theory likely, to write a “scientific” paper claiming that a lab leak was not “plausible.” Facebook and other social media platforms chimed in to suppress and discredit the disfavored theory.

Why the lies and dissembling? The facts point to the conclusion that Fauci, with Collins in tow, wanted to divert attention from the “gain of function” research that NIAID had sponsored and financed at the Wuhan laboratory in the past.

That’s because they’re terrible, horrible, awful people.