ROGER KIMBALL: Trump Trounces Everyone in Iowa: It’s game over for Ron DeSantis. “Trump trounced everyone. RealClearPolitics reports that it took him only thirty-one minutes to clear the table. The outcome or upshot? It’s game over for Ron DeSantis. Whether he suspends his campaign tonight or waits a few weeks doesn’t really matter. Time’s up for the governor of Florida. Nikki Haley will doubtless trudge on to New Hampshire, where she will also lose, and perhaps even to South Carolina, her home state, where Trump will win by a huge margin. It wasn’t much of a horse race, but it was, for those with eyes to see, a clarifying moment.”

If DeSantis could magically become President, I think he’d be great. I also don’t think he can be elected President, which is how you become President sans magic. And there’s a lot to be said for teaching the Deep State that it can’t, and shouldn’t try to, manipulate elections. I hope Trump wins, wins big, and makes a lot of people pay.

UPDATE:

One of the biggest signs of the Trump romp in IOWA tonight: He's winning comfortably in suburban Des Moines' Dallas County, with 3/4 of the vote in.

This was a Rubio stronghold in 2016.

Trump 39%
Haley 26%
DeSantis 26%

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) January 16, 2024

Related: How College-Educated Republicans Learned to Love Trump Again. By paying attention to what Democrats have done to the country?

OPEN THREAD: No matter where you go, there you are.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Increased Precipitation Across Nation Revealed To Be Cowboys Fans’ Tears.

NO PASARAN: Soviet machinations benefited from the same mixture of philo-communism among New Deal liberals and outright Soviet espionage that shaped Oppenheimer’s milieu.

As I said, McMeekin’s account is polemical, written as a corrective to other histories and open to counterarguments in turn. I don’t think he quite succeeds in displacing Hitler’s pride of place as the evil protagonist of 1939-45, and many of the choices that Western nations made in temporarily allying with Stalin seem retrospectively inevitable. It’s not surprising that the British and the French in 1939 would fear the dictator with troops on the French border more than the dictator poised to swallow the Baltic States, or that America would prefer a resilient Soviet Union to an all-conquering Nazi Germany in 1941.

McMeekin has a fascinating argument that the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 opened the possibility of a war of the liberal West against both totalitarianisms, with Britain and an as-yet-unconquered France bombing the Baku oil fields in the Soviet Union and thereby undermining both the Soviet and Nazi war machines. I’m not persuaded, however, that this counterfactual would have ended well for the democracies.

But the necessity of an alignment with Stalin against Hitler, like the necessity of hiring a bunch of scientists with communist connections in the same period — if that’s what it took to forge atomic weapons in a short span of time — has to coexist with a recognition that the world looked quite different as the German and then Japanese defeats became inevitable. By war’s end, our pivot toward an intense suspicion of everything that Stalin touched was both imperative and arguably (and I do think McMeekin makes a strong argument) insufficient, coming later than it should have for both American interests and for Stalin’s conquered peoples.

The necessity of that pivot doesn’t prove that Oppenheimer the man was treated justly. But what happened to him happened for reasons distinct from simple yahoo-ism and xenophobia. And any viewer of “Oppenheimer” the movie would be wise to hold the malignancy of Stalin, the scale of his success at both conquest and manipulation, in mind while watching its complex hero’s complex fate unfold.

Read the whole thing.

THE ECONOMICS OF PLANE SEATS:

In a saner world, 50 percent of the seats on a plane would be premium economy seats, priced at 30 percent (not 100 percent) more than economy. Yet this option does not exist.

And it’s kind of our fault. You see, the market for “pretty good” is a surprisingly difficult market in which to succeed. This problem arises whenever a logical assumption in economic theory collides with a quirk of human psychology. Economics assumes that every purchase decision involves a smooth trade-off between price and quality. If asked, consumers say the same thing: “I want good quality at a reasonable price.” In reality the mindset driving any one transaction is either primarily price-driven or primarily quality-driven. This leads to polarization in markets, where you get to choose between opulent but stupidly expensive or cheap and annoyingly crap — like grocery retail. Every time I see an article bemoaning the decline of a swanky department storie I want to say: “It’s not their fault, it’s their customers’ fault. They claim they want quality and value but they don’t.” You get a buzz from a bargain and a thrill from an extravagance — you don’t get an endorphin rush from mid-market retail. Fast-food restaurants have learned this lesson, which is why they practice something called “barbell pricing.” They have bargain items and treat items on the menu and nothing in between.

Not surprisingly these days, the airlines are often their own worst enemy on this topic: Outrageous: Southwest is giving free extra seats to obese people.

AMBITIOUS NIHILISM:

The Palo Alto suicides started in 2002, when Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto High School class of 2007 and author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, must have been in middle school.

I, a year ahead in the class of 2006, was adjusting to the awkward realities of the freshman PE locker room when the news began to circulate that one of our classmates had, instead of coming to school that morning, stepped in front of the Caltrain line just a block away and ended his life.

Harris vows in the introduction to Palo Alto not to write yet another personal account giving an unsatisfying answer as to why one student after another in our leafy suburban hometown, even then a global epicenter of wealth and academic achievement, chose to die like Anna Karenina in what the CDC calls a “suicide cluster.” He prefers, in the spirit of his hero Karl Marx (no HUAC investigation is required to find evidence of Harris’s communist affiliations) to delineate the great impersonal forces that have shaped Palo Alto’s history.

Nevertheless, he can’t seem to avoid focusing on those gaps in our ranks, and he chooses to frame his seven-hundred-page history, which begins long before the town’s incorporation or indeed the existence of the state of California, by describing the town as haunted. Harris has produced what he imagines is the People’s History of Palo Alto, and the reader cannot escape the feeling that he wants to write it from the perspective of those whom the “Palo Alto System” burned out, especially the dead.

* * * * * * * *

When Harris closes in on histories and subjects closer to my knowledge and experience, it’s clear how far from reality his ideological priors can take his tale. Laughably, he imagines Palo Alto to be a major hub of conservatism, and the heavily left-wing town is transmuted into the Reagan-and-Bush brain trust. Anyone at all familiar with the history of the conservative movement in the U.S. since the 1950s would not recognize Harris’s description of the Bay Area as its beating heart. The Heritage Foundation, which really could be described as the Reagan administration’s policy brain trust, and whose dossier of recommendations Reagan gave to each of his cabinet members upon assuming office, goes unmentioned. Instead, the (very fine) Hoover Institution on Stanford’s campus is magnified into a colossus, on the thin evidential basis of its public support of basic free-market policy prescriptions agreed upon by most right-of-center organizations and voters in America.

I love the Hoover Institute, but alas, they’re not the “colossus” that Harris makes them out to be, sad to say.

WELL, YES: The Iowa Caucus Doesn’t Pick the Winner. It Eliminates Losers.

YUGE: Egypt Discovers that Border Walls Work: Here’s Egypt’s Border Fence Against Gaza.

Could we hire Egypt to do our wall? I think theirs looks pretty good.

— SiLV3RH4WK (@silv3rh4wk1) January 13, 2024

LIVE RESULTS: Follow the Iowa Caucuses Here.

SOHRAB AHMARI: The Right’s Foolish Drive to Cancel MLK.

Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to Augustine and Aquinas to justify resisting racist laws. He elevated character high above skin color and moral universalism above separatism of all kinds. His political claims were grounded in America’s founding promises, his message garbed in a high-minded, critical patriotism. He called the United States his “beloved nation,” even as he denounced Washington’s forever war in Vietnam. At a moment of profound polarization, King is one of the few figures who can still supply us with unifying themes.

So naturally, some in the more excitable corners of the right have been taking an ax to his legacy. The latest comer is Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who last week declared that “MLK was awful,” and vowed: “We’re gonna be hitting him next week. Yeah, on the day of the Iowa caucus, it’s MLK Day. We’re gonna do the thing you’re not supposed to do. We’re gonna tell the truth about MLK Jr.”

Civic pieties should be scrutinized in the light of later historiography, to be sure. But that isn’t what the MLK haters are up to. Their anti-MLK crusade is the mirror image of progressive efforts to discredit national icons and narratives. Ironically, MLK himself has also been the target of such attempts from the left, on the grounds that his moderation stunted more radical projects of racial liberation.

“The United States, like every other nation, boasts plenty of flawed heroes.”

The anti-MLK turn on the right is an about-face* of sorts. Until recently, conservatives of even the Kirk variety tried to claim MLK as one of their own; indeed, Kirk himself in years past hailed him as a moral “hero.” But if these earlier attempts to appropriate King as a crypto-conservative were naively ahistorical, they nevertheless flowed from good intentions: a desire on the right to come to terms with the secular canonization of a figure who spoke from within a radical strain in American Protestantism and the prophetic voice of the black church.

Earlier: The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.—A Proud Unapologetic Zionist.

* And speaking of about-faces!

This #MLKDay, the #FBI honors one of the most prominent leaders of the Civil Rights movement and reaffirms its commitment to Dr. King’s legacy of fairness and equal justice for all. pic.twitter.com/tj9EUoXsFK

— FBI (@FBI) January 15, 2024

Flashback: The FBI and Martin Luther King.

On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy believed that one of King’s closest advisers was a top-level member of the American Communist Party, and that King had repeatedly misled Administration officials about his ongoing close ties with the man. Kennedy acted reluctantly, and his order remained secret until May of 1968, just a few weeks after King’s assassination and a few days before Kennedy’s own. But the FBI onslaught against King that followed Kennedy’s authorization remains notorious, and the stains on the reputations of everyone involved are indelible.

And on MLK day in 2024, the song remains the same from the Kennedy family: RFK Jr: Kennedy Admin Had ‘Good Reason’ to Wiretap MLK.

UPDATE:

While we're blaming the FBI, worth noting that the man in LBJ's WH responsible for monitoring King and disseminating the illegal recordings to humiliate him was none other than beloved progressive PBS icon Bill Moyers. https://t.co/suNCqrYWZ5 https://t.co/DVUUf7UZlO

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 15, 2024

(Updated and bumped.)

SUPPLY CHAINS: Tesla to Idle German Gigafactory Due to Red Sea Shipping Delays.

READER FAVORITE: TurboTax Premier 2023 Tax Software, Federal & State Tax Return. #CommissionEarned

IT’S A REAL MYSTERY: Why buying a car is more expensive than ever in the U.S.

DID YOU NOTICE WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE’S MLK DAY TWEET?

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s bust sits inside the Oval Office — handpicked by President Biden — as a reflection of President Biden’s promise to America: to restore the soul of America, to rebuild this country from the bottom up and the middle out, and to unite it,” reads the White House’s caption on social media outlets including X and Instagram.

There’s a problem though. Instead of merely highlighting the bust and acknowledging the holiday, the White House had to make the claim that Biden had “handpicked” the bust to somehow reflect his agenda. That’s just not true. Not only has the Biden agenda flopped spectacularly and divided the country, earning the president underwater approval ratings and causing significant pain for Americans, but Biden did not choose the bust for the Oval Office.

As the Washington Post reported at the start of Biden’s term, “[b]usts of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy flank a fireplace” in Biden’s Oval Office. The MLK bust first came to the Oval under President Obama, one that “Trump kept, though he moved it to a different area of the room,” WaPo noted in early 2021.

That is, Biden did not — as the White House stated — handpick the bust of MLK (that was Obama) or even decide to return it to the Oval Office (Trump kept it there). The only thing President Biden could truthfully be given credit for is setting it on another table after deciding to remove a bust of Winston Churchill that had been displayed by the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.

So, on the fact-checking front, this White House post earns a “false.” Biden didn’t handpick the bust of MLK and his White House didn’t have to claim that he did. But they did, thinking as always that they’d get away with saying the “right” but false thing.

Related: Kamala Harris Bastardizes the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Australia is DeNazifying. Why Can’t Gaza?

In the years following World War II, many other countries—now including Australia—implemented laws to obstruct neo-Nazi activity, even when such legislation ruffled the feathers of some civil libertarians.

Thus, in addition to Australia (and Germany), the Nazi salute is outlawed in Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. In Sweden, giving the salute is considered a hate crime. In many other European countries, it is prohibited if used to promote Nazism.

Public display of the swastika is banned in twenty-one countries. In some others, the symbol has partial restrictions, such as permitting its display only for educational or artistic purposes. Some countries have prevented neo-Nazis from running for office; earlier this year, Greece banned the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party from participating in the upcoming general election. And a number of democratic countries have outlawed various forms of hate speech. 

 Many Israelis support implementing a “deNazification”-type process in postwar Gaza. Terrorist groups and supporters of terrorism would be banned from any future political process. The curricula in Gaza schools would be completely overhauled to eliminate textbooks that glorify terrorists or teach hatred of Jews and Israel, and teachers would be re-trained accordingly. The news media would be required to engage in genuine journalism, not cheerleading for murderers and rapists.

Obviously the right intentions, but as with the de-Nazification of post-war Germany, you’ve got your work cut out making it happen:

How the Arab world talks about the Holocaust: the Holocaust never happened, and the Jews deserved it. Hitler was a hero, and the Jews are the real Hitler.

How many in the West are talking about Oct7: 7/10 never really happened, and the Jews deserved it. Hamas are the heroes,…

— George Deek (@GeorgeDeek) January 15, 2024

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Fed Abandons ‘Quantitative Tightening’ As Systemic Liquidity Crisis Arises. “The financial plumbing is starting to clog up.”

Plus: “The Fed may have to let inflation run wild again to hedge against bank instability in the short run, and that will mean more problems for people whose buying power has fallen nearly every quarter over the last three years.”

MATT WALSH TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE, PLEASE: Nikki Haley Refuses to Say a Man Cannot Become a Woman During Campaign Event.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S FAVORITE LION GUN: The Winchester Model 1895.

WITH 6″ OF SNOW IN MY BACKYARD AND MORE FALLING, I’M REMINDED OF THIS: What if global warming is a good thing?

FIRE THEM ALL: Biden Administration Antisemites Plan Massive Walkout.

SHOT: The economy is improving under Biden. But many voters aren’t giving him credit.

Chaser: Biden’s challenge: Convince voters this isn’t the economy they think it is.

Hangover: It Won’t Be a Recession—It Will Just Feel Like One.

If you have to keep telling people how great everything is, then everything is not so great.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities.

The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which claims “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”

The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.

All eyes have been on the FAA and airline industry in recent days, after a plug door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.

America’s Newspaper of Record notes that even airplane manufacturers are pitching in to advance the FAA’s new initiatives: Boeing CEO Assures Nervous Fliers That All 737 Aircraft Are Built To The Highest Diversity Standards.

That ought to blow the doors off the industry!

GOOD LUCK: Biden’s $623 million charging initiative faces struggles to get EVs over the finish line: Stubbornly high EV prices, cheaper gas, and production setbacks complicate the U.S.’ embrace of electric vehicles.

WHITE HOUSE IS SWATTED: Prank caller calls 911 to say residence was on fire and someone was trapped inside.

Fire trucks and ambulances swarmed the White House on Monday morning after a caller told 911 dispatchers the building was on fire and someone was trapped inside in what appears to be a ‘swatting’ incident.

President Joe Biden was at Camp David when the call came. D.C. fire and emergency services dispatched 13 units in response.

But the call was quickly determined a false alarm. The White House now appears to be the latest victim in the dangerous ‘swatting’ trend that is sweeping the country.

The call was made around 7am on Monday morning, sparking a large emergency response, before it was determined to be a false alarm.

The call to the White House was traced to a fake number, a source told CNN.

The call, which came at 7:03 a.m., was determined by District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services and U.S. Secret Service personnel to be a false alarm.

‘Fire in the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,’ a DC dispatcher said at 7:04 am.

An ‘all clear’ was declared at 7:15 a.m.

As Not the Bee adds, “Well, I know the FBI won’t investigate when Republicans are getting swatted, but now that it’s happened to a top-level Democrat, I’m sure all their efforts are gonna go into finding this guy!”

Of course — it’s the ultimate example of “riots for thee, but not for me.”

SCIENCE! I Can’t Believe This Is a Real Science Class at a Real University.