Archive for 2025

HARSH BUT FAIR:

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE:

CHANGE: Trump says India offering to cut all tariffs in US trade agreement. “What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest ‘client,’ but we sell them very little – Until now a totally one sided relationship, and it has been for many decades.”

SURPRISE: Conservatism-Basher Faults NY Times for ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Riot Coverage.

[Sam] Tanenhaus brought a welcome helping of reality to the liberal PBS viewership with his recent history lesson: “I think the year 2020 is one that’s going to reverberate in our history for a long time. It feels to me a little bit like 1968, one of those watershed years of violence and militarism, militancy. And we know how a lot of liberal publications, including my former publication, The New York Times, treated what were serious uprisings in some of the major cities in this country, rather what they didn’t report about them.”

[Firing Line’s Margaret] Hoover stood up for her friends on the left, wondering “why didn’t they report about them.”

But Tanenhaus remained undeterred and delivered the punchline by blasting the left’s “mostly peaceful” moniker. But check out how it’s Hoover — the alleged Republican — who comes to the woke mob’s defense (and nevermind their rank hypocrisy on mass gatherings amid the pandemic):

TANENHAUS: They didn’t report the attacks on shopkeepers, often black shopkeepers, right, black Americans owning shops, seeing their businesses destroyed. There was not a lot of reporting on that. A notorious phrase that conservatives pick up and you’ll probably be familiar with was when The Times described some of the events as ‘mostly peaceful,’ right? That phrase has not gone away.

HOOVER: Yeah, there were demonstrations across the country that were mostly peaceful.

TANENHAUS: That’s a meaningful phrase. So, yes, it’s the left as much as the right…..

Tanenhaus edited the New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013 and was a fierce and misleading critic of conservatism. That dubious history made his unbidden criticism of his former employer all the more surprising: Who would have thought the phrase “peaceful protest” would have even been uttered as part of a media critique by a liberal on PBS?

The Times did favor “mostly peaceful” and the similar euphemism “largely peaceful” as a description of 2020 rioting, while CNN could also claim “mostly peaceful” thanks to a notorious chyron that aired August 26, 2020 under a report about rioting after a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin: “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS AFTER POLICE SHOOTING”.

PBS’s counterpart in public radio broadcasting also cheerfully promoted an equally insidious attack on shopkeepers that year: Debunking NPR’s Bizarre ‘In Defense of Looting’ Interview.

HMM: People on Antipsychotics Should Have Their Gun Rights Paused. “The Violence Project’s analysis found that 24% of mass shooters had previously taken psychiatric medication. Again, to be clear: The vast majority of people prescribed antipsychotic drugs do not commit violent crimes. But it is still reasonable to create a temporary, reviewable pause of gun rights tied to active treatment with specified antipsychotics. To protect liberty and avoid stigma, the pause should be (1) time-limited, (2) rebuttable through a rapid petition or possibly through a physician’s attestation that the individual is not dangerous, and (3) privacy-respecting, relying on minimal, purpose-built reporting (or voluntary certificates) rather than broad disclosures of medical records.”

OUCH: Rudy Giuliani Injured in Crash After Assisting Crime Victim. “Michael Ragusa, head of Giuliani’s security, released a statement on X Sunday confirming that Giuliani had been injured in a car accident but that the former mayor and show host is now ‘in good spirits and recovering tremendously.’ It does not appear that the crash had anything to do with Giuliani’s effort to help the domestic violence victim, except that he was delayed and consequently in the spot where the crash occurred because of his stop. Giuliani reportedly sustained multiple serious injuries.”

WELL, GOOD: Kristi Noem confirms plan to expand ICE operations in major cities. “We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago and throughout Illinois and other states, making sure that we’re upholding our laws, but we do intend to add more resources to those operations.”

“NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE,” RAHM EMANUEL ONCE SAID…:

…And “even if you have to invent it” was strongly implied.

THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHEN: Social Security and Medicare cuts are coming because the bond market will eventually bring Congress to its knees, economist says.

The insolvency of the trust funds next decade will be the key driver for reforms, just as it was in the early 1980s when lawmakers hiked taxes to shore them up, Yaros said.

“For lawmakers to feel the urgency to take corrective fiscal action, voters need to connect the dots between the unsustainability of the federal budget and their own financial wellbeing,” he explained.

But the tightening that he predicts in the 2030s will mostly take the form of cuts to non-discretionary programs, like Social Security, because discretionary spending is a smaller share of total government outlays, he noted.

Without some reductions, the trust funds will run out of money and retirees would face even more draconian cuts, including a sudden 19% drop across the board for Social Security, as payroll tax revenue becomes the sole funding source for entitlements.

“Therefore, a return to fiscal responsibility in the forecast will be more painful than in prior episodes as it will fall heaviest on federal transfer payments to individuals, which have historically been spared from past belt-tightening,” Yaros said.

The ability of bond investors to force lawmakers to change course has earned them the “bond vigilantes” moniker, which was coined by Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni in the 1980s.

James Carville, 1994: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a 400 basball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Might End Hugo Chávez’s Posthumous Reign of Error in Venezuela. “Nicolás Maduro is the current commie dictator of Venezuela, but he’s pretty much just the ghost of Hugo Chávez, carrying on the work of destroying his country that his predecessor started early this century. The Venezuelan people haven’t been able to stop the madness, but the United States might soon give them an assist.”

DON’T GIVE UP TOO SOON: That’s the bottomline advice of David Tennent, a remarkable young former Capitol Hill aide and aspiring entrepreneur who heeded the Lord’s guidance even in the darkest pit of the COVID closure of Congress.

Three years later, Tennent’s CNCT, a digital platform that breaks down social and political isolation among congressional aides, is a great success, demonstrating that following God’s plan for your life and embracing the free market culture of opportunity and innovation is an amazing combination.

Happy Labor Day to my fellow Instapunditeers!

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Pentagon to build new task force to counter drone threats.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Department of Defense wants to address the growing threat and to improve its systems to protect people and equipment at home and overseas.

“We’re moving fast – cutting through bureaucracy, consolidating resources, and empowering this task force with the utmost authority to outpace our adversaries,” Hegseth said. “We will innovate, we will lead and we will win.”

Hegseth directed Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to establish the Joint Interagency Task Force 401. The task force will gather top talent from across agencies, according to a memo.

The Pentagon said drones, which it calls unmanned aircraft systems or UAS, pose a particularly dangerous threat.

Well, yes.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Dems, Please Cry More About the New Rules. “There’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in the misery of someone who richly deserves to be miserable. While crying about hypocrisy is the act of the impotent, being a hypocrite is still bad, and it’s still fun to see hypocrites suffer righteous retribution.”

Plus: “Remember, righteous retribution is proper, and it is the foundation of any functioning civilization. Wrongdoing must be punished, or all you’ll have is wrongdoing. The idea that we should somehow hand-wave away what they’ve done, maybe shaking our heads and tsk tsk tsking a bit, but definitely not taking any concrete action, is ridiculous. History bears this out. If you keep taking Schiff, all you’ll ever eat is Schiff sandwiches.”