CRISES BY DESIGN: The Coming Electricity Crisis.

President Biden and the press keep raising alarms about a climate crisis that his policies can’t do much about. Yet in the meantime they’re ignoring how government climate policies are contributing to a looming electric-grid crisis that is more urgent and could be avoided.

These pages have been warning for years about an electric-power shortage. And now grid regulators and utilities are ramping up warnings. Projections for U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years have doubled from a year ago. The major culprits: New artificial-intelligence data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition.

***

Georgia Power recently increased 17-fold its winter power demand forecast by 2031, citing growth in new industries such as EV and battery factories. AEP Ohio says new data centers and Intel’s $20 billion planned chip plant will increase strain on the grid. Chip factories and data centers can consume 100 times more power than a typical industrial business.

PJM Interconnection, which operates the wholesale power market across 13 Midwest and Northeast states, this year doubled its 15-year annual forecast for demand growth. Its projected power demand in the region for 2029 has increased by about 10 gigawatts—about twice as much as New York City uses on a typical day.

Don’t expect the power to come from New York, which is marching toward a power shortage as it shuts down nuclear and fossil-fuel power in favor of wind and solar. A new Micron chip factory in upstate New York is expected to require as much power by the 2040s as the states of New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

Electricity demand to power data centers is projected to increase by 13% to 15% compounded annually through 2030. Yet a shortage of power is already delaying new data centers by two to six years, according to commercial-real estate firm CBRE Group. It is also driving Big Tech companies into the energy business. Amazon this month struck a $650 million deal to buy a data center in Pennsylvania powered by an on-site 2.5 gigawatt nuclear plant.

Data centers—like manufacturing plants—require reliable power around the clock year-round, which wind and solar don’t provide. Businesses can’t afford to wait for batteries to become cost-effective. Building transmission lines to connect distant renewables to the grid typically takes 10 to 12 years.

Because of these challenges, Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz last week predicted that utilities will ultimately have to rely more on gas, coal and nuclear plants to support surging demand. “We’re not going to build 100 gigawatts of new renewables in a few years,” he said. No kidding.

As Lionel Shriver writes: Going electric requires electricity. Who knew? “Lo and behold, when you push people to electrify everything in their lives – cars, cookers, heating systems – while bribing them to go all-electric with lavish government subsidies, it turns out they use more electricity. Who would have thought? I guess this is why we need all those brainiac experts to analyse the ultra-complicated technical details of environmental policy.”

‘LIKE AN A**HOLE:’ Megyn Kelly Mocks Don Lemon After Report On List Of Demands For Musk.

Sirius XM’s Megyn Kelly mocked former CNN host Don Lemon’s list of demands from Elon Musk, and suggested Lemon looks “like an asshole” Wednesday.

Lemon reportedly gave Musk an extensive list of demands when the two negotiated the terms of their abandoned partnership to air the former CNN host’s new show, “The Don Lemon Show,” on X. Kelly laughed at the “hubris” of Lemon, who reportedly demanded a Tesla Cybertruck a trip on a SpaceX rocket and the authority to approve or reject Musk’s future news or current events talent deals.

“As somebody who actually has negotiated several contracts in cable news and broadcast news — no! That’s exactly the opposite of what you do,” Kelly said. “You make a demand that is reasonable, that is a big … because you want to leave yourself some room for negotiation. But you don’t want to make yourself look like an asshole, right? … You don’t want to make yourself look like an asshole.”

Unlike management at NBC, the New York Times, and the Atlantic, all of which tolerated the narcissistic explosions of their divas with bylines, give Musk credit for showing Lemon the door.

TO BE FAIR, I CAN SEE WHY THIS MOVIE WOULD BE RADIOACTIVE IN JAPAN: Oppenheimer Finally Opens In Japan; Met With Mixed Reactions.

“But the film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and, as a person with roots in Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch,” the person added, warning that he’s not “sure this is a movie that Japanese people should make a special effort to watch.”

Another Hiroshima resident, Agemi Kanegae, told the outlet, “The film was very worth watching. But I felt very uncomfortable with a few scenes, such as the trial of Oppenheimer in the United States at the end.”

While a younger movie goer, 19-year-old student Rishu Kanemoto, said after seeing the movie, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims.”

“But I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he’s also the victim caught up in the war,” he added.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka said, “From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” per a Japanese media outlet. “The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”

Yes. And as Roger Kimball wrote last year: The atomic bomb saved Japanese lives, too.

This year, the recent release of Christopher Nolan’s new movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb has given the controversy over the development and deployment of that awesome weapon a new urgency.

Something else that has contributed to the fraught atmosphere is the war in Ukraine. After all, one side in that conflict, Russia, controls the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, more than 6,000 warheads. My friend Roger L. Simon is right: atomic weapons are “as close or closer to being used today than ever since World War Two because of the endless war in Ukraine.”

That is a sobering thought. To his succeeding questions “Was this worth doing? Was it moral to build such an extreme weapon?” I would answer “yes” and “yes.” I also, by the way, support our use of this most horrible weapon in Japan. Why? Because its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War Two. In so doing, it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Data point: the military is still using the huge supply of Purple Hearts it manufactured in anticipation of an invasion of the Japanese home islands*.

But put the number of American lives saved to one side. The use of the bomb, by ending the war, also saved millions of Japanese lives.

This was widely understood at the time. In subsequent years, however,  a new, mostly left-wing, narrative has grown up which faults President Truman for using the bomb. Today, as Oliver Kamm noted in the Guardian, “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” are often used as a shorthand terms for war crimes.

That is not how they were judged at the time. Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave laborers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire — and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties. The destruction of two cities, and the suffering it caused for decades afterwards, cannot but temper our view of the Pacific war. Yet we can conclude with a high degree of probability that abjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still.

* Somebody should make a video about that:

OLD AND BUSTED AT THE WAPO: Woodward and Bernstein write All the President’s Men.

The New Hotness? Masked-up Taylor Lorenz attends Pornhub awards.

The Pornhub Awards party was announced at the end of January 2024 and is the 6th annual awards event put on by the company. A news release about the event stated, “The nominees and other event details will be announced shortly. For now, save the date – March 28!”

“A note for all Models; now is a great time to update your profile picture or upload a photo album with some sexy and SFW pictures! If you are nominated for an award, we will use photo assets from your Model profile to celebrate and share your achievement,” it added.

Pornhub, owned by the company Aylo, has come under fire for many controversies such as distributing child pornography.

It has also pulled its services out of several states such as Texas, Utah, and others over age verification laws that are designed to protect minors from being exposed to pornographic content.

As our sister site Twitchy asks: Career Change Coming? Taylor Lorenz Attends Adult Streaming Site Awards … in a Mask, Obviously.

Otherwise, what dirt does Lorenz have on her bosses at the WaPo that she continues to be employed there?

Flashback: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: The President’s War Against the Jews.

DISNEY, DESANTIS TOURISM BOARD REACH SETTLEMENT OVER SPECIAL GOVERNING DISTRICT:

The DeSantis administration is “glad” Disney won’t go forward with the lawsuit, according to DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin.

“No corporation should be its own government,” added Griffin. “Moving forward, we stand ready to work with Disney and the District to help promote economic growth, family-friendly tourism, and accountable government in Central Florida.”

Elsewhere, America’s Governor responds to America’s Newspaper of Record:

¯_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/yjNNWLpWxY

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) March 28, 2024

MUST SEE TV: Guyana President Lights Up BBC Host Who Tries to Climate Shame Him Over Extracting Oil.

A must watch!

This is my hero!

He is Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana. #Oil #Guyana pic.twitter.com/j0KAwRwWgr

— Anas Alhajji (@anasalhajji) March 29, 2024

IDIOCRACY WASN’T MEANT TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: Lizzo Says ‘I Quit’ and I Can’t Stop Laughing.

“I’m getting tired of putting up with being dragged by everyone in my life and on the Internet,” she wrote against an orange and yellow background. “All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better than how I found it. But I’m starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in it.”

She continued, “I’m constantly up against lies being told about me for clout & views… being the butt of the joke every single time because of how I look… my character being picked apart by people who don’t know me and disrespecting my name. I didn’t sign up for this s— — I QUIT [peace out emoji].”

The reaction was exactly what she wanted. There was an outpouring of love and tears from across the world. The post got more than 570,000 likes in a day and is still climbing.

But all of these people are kidding themselves and feeding an ego the size of the island of Manhattan. It’s not “fat shaming” to refer to a morbidly obese person as “fat.” That’s reality talking. And if you’re upset with the use of the word “fat,” get over it. Call it whatever you want, just don’t dare call it “healthy” or “normal.”

Lizzo’s Instagram handle is “Lizzobeeating.”

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA:

● Religious-themed designs banned from White House Easter egg art contest.

● Biden Proclaims Easter Sunday ‘Transgender Day of Visibility.’

● New York City’s mayor gets baptized in jail on Rikers Island by Rev. Al Sharpton on Good Friday.

Definitive proof that the Matrix that Tom Wolfe programmed before his death is still running absolutely perfectly.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Building Bridges Back Better Edition.

WOEING: It’s Raining Men! Remy’s new video from Reason TV:

KAROL MARKOWICZ: Your Jewish friends have a side group chat.

If you’re on a group chat, which includes more than two Jews, know your Jewish friends have a side chat. At last count I’m on more than 10 group chats like this, most with the word “Jew,” “Jewish” or “Israel” in the name, that have splintered off from main chats. Some of the side chats have a side-side chat, of course, two Jews, three opinions and all that.

It’s (probably) not because we’re a secret cabal ruling the world and we need you out of the way to discuss it. It’s that after October 7th Jews have found we needed to talk about it, a lot. The horrific attacks, the war, the violent protests aimed at upending our safety in the west, all of it, and we didn’t want to drag our non-Jewish friends down.

* * * * * * * *

Which takes us back to the group chats. We didn’t want to overwhelm our friends with our, well-founded or not, neuroses. So we took the conversation elsewhere and we discussed our worries about whether our kids could be safe on campus, or the weird “likes” of internet acquaintances, or the security we feel we have only in Florida, on our own time.

But the result of that is that your Jewish friends are on high alert for our safety and you may not even know why. “Wait, what happened with Candace Owens?” went one of my mixed chats recently. It’s very easy not to know all the minutiae. And it is all minutiae right up until it’s not. It’s all crazy worries, things that could never happen here, until your kids are skipping down the street in Toledo, Spain, where Jews used to live but don’t anymore.

QED: Fifteen Minutes of Flame: Aaron Bushnell’s agony didn’t start with Israel’s war in Gaza. It began with an abusive cult that traumatized its children, and saw the destruction of Israel as a gateway to heaven.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! AND BIAS BY OMISSION: Eight Brand New Biden Gaffes ABC,CBS, NBC Have Buried.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Sam Bankman-Fried might be eating a lot of rice, almonds and Skittles drink mix if he wants to stay vegan in prison.

Sam Bankman-Fried might have trouble maintaining his vegan diet in prison.

The disgraced crypto entrepreneur could carry out his 25-year sentence at Mendota, a medium-security prison in California, according to a prison consultant hired by his lawyers.

There, he might have to opt for vegan items on the prison’s commissary list such as rice, almonds and Skittles drink mix, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven counts, including fraud and conspiracy, by a jury in November.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who imposed Bankman-Fried’s 25-year sentence on Thursday, recommended he serve it in a low or medium-security prison near his parents’ home in San Francisco.

The judge said he’d factored Bankman-Fried’s wealth and autism, which could make him a target, into his recommendation, the Journal reported.

* * * * * * * *

Either way, food is likely to be an issue. Bill Baroni, a former New Jersey official convicted for his role in the Bridgegate scandal, told the Journal the only vegetables he ate in prison came from cans. “He’s not going to a Just Salad,” Baroni said. “He’ll probably have to do a lot of peanut butter.”

But like Epstein’s mother corresponding with esteemed New York teacher Gabriel Kotter, SBF’s mother wrote the judge a letter, you know: SBF Is an Empathetic Vegan Altruist MIT Grad!

SBF’s mom submitted a 6-page letter, so I won’t go through it all. But I will give you a flavor of it and give you my argument for why I think it represents something much more than a mother’s plea for mercy.

From the first paragraph, Barbara Fried tells us what matters to her: credentials.

Dear Judge Kaplan: I am Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother. | am also a law professor at Stanford, where | have taught for the past thirty-five years, and before that was an attorney at Paul Weiss in New York and a law clerk on the Second Circuit. 

She is speaking as a highly credentialed person to another highly credentialed person. I am a law professor. You are a judge. We are of the same class, you know. We are not plebs to be held to the same standards as others.

Cringe.

* * * * * * * *

The next part of the letter is particularly precious: Sam is a VEGAN, don’tcha know?

While he was still in high school, Sam started to think hard about the implications of utilitarianism for how he should live his life. His conversion to veganism was one outgrowth of that quest. Sam lived on steak and fries until he was eighteen years old. After looking into the treatment of factory farm animals in his freshman year at college, he became a vegetarian. After looking more deeply into it, he became a vegan. His determination to remain vegan in prison, where the absence of vegan food has forced him to live on commissary junk food, reveals a lot about his strength of character and moral commitment, He has lost 30 pounds since he was remanded to prison in August. He has never once complained to us or, as we know, the prison authorities. He has just made do because it was important enough to him to do so.

Seriously?

Yes, she is serious. Sam is so moral that he turned into a vegan!

All this is on the first page of a 6-page letter. She is seriously leading with this. And she is leading with this because this is how elites think. The fact that he defrauded and immiserated thousands of people is nothing compared to the fact that he is so principled that he is a vegan.

Decline is a choice, America:

DYLAN BYERS: Ronnaghazi and The Hunger Screams of Late-Stage Linear.

On Monday, after the Scarborough crowd opened the 6 a.m. hour with their own admonishment of the McDaniel hire, it became clear that the next 18 hours were going to be devastating for NBC. Early in the afternoon, I was notified that Nicolle Wallace and others intended to speak out that night, and that it was going to be an onslaught. (Wallace, a former Bush II aide, also used MSNBC to outrun some political baggage…) Around that time, Stephen Labaton, the executive vice president of communications for NBC News, and the top P.R. aide to Conde, reached out to McDaniel directly to try to reassure her that Psaki and other former political officials had faced scrutiny when they’d joined NBC, and that it might blow over. According to a source familiar with the discussion, he also told McDaniel that the MSNBC hosts were being “fucking insane.”

In a statement, Labaton told me: “Ronna and I spoke for six minutes on Monday after she indicated she was drafting some kind of statement. I never criticized anyone at MSNBC during that brief conversation. Your account of the conversation is coming from someone who was dropped by the network yesterday.”

Both Labaton and Budoff Brown’s efforts to quell the uprising seemed to emphasize a blind spot. Yes, the green rooms of television news are stuffed with former party chairs, press secretaries, and spokespeople. Indeed, an Axios analysis this week noted that, since 2000, “more than half (16 of 31) of White House press secretaries and communications directors have gone on to become paid contributors, commentators or hosts on news programs.” But as American politics has grown more fractured, these hires have become more problematic. In the Trump era, the most controversial hire was CNN’s appointment of Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a paid contributor. Of course, for all his myriad sins, Lewandowski had never participated in an effort to undermine or overthrow an election and then lied about it. The NBC News leadership seemed to overlook that distinction, and how much it would offend the anchors and correspondents who had bought into the “Lean Forward” and “This is Who We Are” mantras.

Of course, as Larry Elder notes, some “election deniers” have much better odds of being able to use MSNBC to rehabilitate their image: MSNBC: One Man’s ‘Election Denier’ Is Another Man’s TV Host.

After McDaniel’s hiring, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said he and his “Morning Joe” co-host would not allow McDaniel to appear as a guest. But Sharpton, Scarborough’s colleague, regularly appears on the show. In 2000, when Scarborough served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he proposed a resolution called “Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton.” It read in part:

“Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton;

“Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘bloodsucking [J]ews’, and ‘Jew bastards’;

“Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘white interlopers’ and ‘diamond merchants’;

“Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl; …

“Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton’s vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith, and in particular, a Jewish landlord, arising from a simple landlord-tenant dispute with a black tenant, incited widespread violence, riots, and the murder of five innocent people; …

“Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest in the Crown Heights neighborhood and marched next to a protester with a sign that read, ‘The White Man is the Devil …'”

Apparently, all is forgiven.

Sharpton is also, to use MSNBC’s parlance, an “election denier,” and an egregious one at that. About the 2016 election, Sharpton said: “There’s no question that the process that elected (Trump) was not legitimate. When you look at now the evidence from the intelligence agencies that there was the influence from the Russians …”

So, McDaniel out, Sharpton in. One man’s “election denier” is another man’s MSNBC host.

It helps Sharpton’s little-watched show to remain on air because,  “Without the support of Sharpton and his racist admirers, Comcast would not have been able to gain control of NBC,” Daniel Greenfield writes.

But as for Ronna McDaniel’s “election denialism,” the cool kids at MSNBC would have found another reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to sit at their lunch table, Ed Morrissey writes:

They’re “committed to the principle,” Conde claims — right up to the point where executives have to stand up to the down-twinkles of their own employees. That’s where their “commitment” ends. And that means, of course, that they’re not committed to it at all.

So Courage! Much Conviction!

This isn’t just about Ronna McDaniel or J6 either. Kevin Williamson got the exact same treatment at The Atlantic over abortion. Ben Shapiro got iced out of Politico Playbook over ambiguous charges of “bigotry” (likely referring to his opposition to gender ideology). An op-ed on using federal troops to break up urban riots by Senator Tom Cotton made New York Times staffers feel so “unsafe,” in fact, that they forced the paper to withdraw the column and fire the editor who approved it. And just a few months later, the same staffers would demand to know why Cotton’s strategy didn’t get deployed on January 6.

Jack Shafer deduced what actually happened to Williamson at the time, and it applies in all other cases as well, including McDaniel:

Without relitigating Williamson’s abortion views—which I don’t share—let’s agree that if he hadn’t been sent packing for his less–than-modern views on abortion, his critics would have griped about something else in his archives to engineer his removal. Let’s be real here: Kevin Williamson wasn’t sent packing for expressing strong language on abortion but for being Kevin Williamson.

Precisely. It’s not McDaniel, or J6, or even Trump. The Occupy MSM newsrooms hate any form of dissent to their orthodoxy and will stamp out any attempt to allow its expression. The Protection Racket Media’s idea of diversity — especially at NBC — is solely to allow Republicans on the air to cheer on progressives and criticize conservatives.

Meanwhile: NBC News Journos Now Worry About Lost GOP Contacts.

As the fallout from the hiring-crying-firing of Ronna McDaniel continues, Max Tani is reporting that inside NBC News offices, some of the saner journalists have looked over the aftermath of the on-air therapy-couch sessions across the network and now are facing further pullback from Republican and conservative sources:

‘Political reporters here didn’t take part in the backlash, nor did they get to give input on the hire,’ one NBC News journalist said. ‘But they’ll be the ones who have to pick up the pieces with sources who are now dismayed with the organization.’ Four NBC News staffers expressed concern that instead of fixing the problem, hiring and then firing McDaniel had only alienated liberal viewers while confirming Republican fears. Two Republican aides told Semafor they’d texted their NBC News contacts to express their anger with the decision.

There was similar wailing and gnashing of teeth by Republicans when CNBC’s John Harwood hacktastically blew up the debate by the GOP’s presidential candidates in 2015. But this time around, why would those inside NBC News be worried?

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Real Clear Politics’ Samizdat Prize, Behind The Scenes Stories Of Censorship: Matt Taibbi, Jay Bhattacharya, And Miranda Devine.

MATT TAIBBI: I grew up as a traditional ACLU liberal type. I remember the day after the first Twitter Files story came out, the Washington Post described me as a “conservative journalist.” That’s where we are, in this bizarre realignment. When I grew up, I didn’t know anybody who was for censorship. There was nobody among the liberals I knew… who had any feelings in that direction. I think as recently as ten years ago, 95% of journalists would have been in agreement on this issue. We saw this after Glenn Greenwald broke the Snowden story., In the last ten years or so, there has been this dramatic realignment where suddenly free speech is coded as a right-wing issue. I think that is basically a strategy to try to delegitimize the issue and to try to scare a certain demographic into not paying attention to what this story is all about.

If you actually pay attention to Missouri v. Biden or the Twitter Files, it is not a partisan story. It is more about the exercise of government power and the decision to make sure the government has the ability to place leverage wherever it wants at a moment’s notice. That doesn’t have anything to do with politics, it is big vs. small and government vs. ordinary people.

Remember when Trump first took office, and the left displayed a newfound interest in Orwell’s 1984? In 2024, we can see the efforts of those who read it as an instruction manual.

RIP LOUIS GOSSETT JR.: First Black Actor To Win Oscar For Best Supporting Role Dead At 87.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Prominent Ivy League LGBTQ activist, 53, is arrested on child porn charges at his home near Princeton University.

WEIMAR? BECAUSE WE REICH YOU! Jill Biden Outrageously Compares Florida To Nazi Germany.

While speaking to an audience of Democrats in California who had paid $100,000 a ticket to see her, Jill claimed that $100,000 a ticket [sic].

“History teaches us that democracies don’t disappear overnight,” Jill said, according to Daily Mail. “They disappear slowly, subtly silently. A book ban a court decision, a Don’t Say Gay law.”

“Before World War Two, I’m told, Berlin was the center of LGBTQ culture in Europe,” she continued. “One group of people loses their rights and then another, and then another, until one morning you wake up and you no longer live in a democracy.”

“MAGA Republicans are waging battles over our choices, our futures, and trying to drag us back to a dark and dangerous path,” Jill later added.

Social Media Users Fire Back

Unfortunately for Jill, however, social media users made it clear that they weren’t buying what she had to say.

“Enough with the Nazi references,” one user wrote. “Every time these people compare their political opposition to Nazis they diminish the horrors of actual victims of the Third Reich endured. This rhetoric is disgusting.”

“Did she mention Jews at all? I didn’t hear it. Is she trying to equate LGBTQ to the Jews murdered by Nazis?” questioned a second user, with a third adding, “No one is trying to ban books but not all books belong in the elementary school library.”

Given her husband’s advanced age and lack of control over his staff, I’m not sure why “Dr.” Jill would want to want to make Weimar-era references, when it reminds the rest of us of the (p)resident’s similarities to Paul von Hindenburg. (Not to mention confirming that the Biden administration sees Weimar not as a warning from history, but as a goal.)

On the flip side, when it comes to smears comparing DeSantis with Hitler, the Florida governor is in very good company these days: Churchill College panel claims wartime PM was a white supremacist leading an empire ‘worse than the Nazis.’

JOHN PODHORETZ: Joseph I. Lieberman, 1942-2024.

As a man in his private life and his everyday relationships, he defined the word “mensch.” As a Jew, he spent his life as a devoted follower of the obligations of Orthodoxy. As a public servant in Connecticut and Washington, he was never anything less than a man who served his state and served his country faithfully, rigorously, honestly, and with true honor.

It was one of the great blessings of my life that I got to know him over the past 20 years—to break bread with him, and celebrate the marriage of his daughter with him, and celebrate the birth of grandchildren with him, and honor him (for we do actually intend it as an honor) as one of COMMENTARY’s roastees. It is a mark of his amused and amusing character that he appeared at a COMMENTARY roast to pay tribute to the opposite number who had prevailed in that 2000 contest, Dick Cheney—and that Cheney returned the favor with comparable graciousness and high good humor when we roasted Joe two years later.

Indeed, the Lieberman-Cheney debate in 2000 was one of the last genuinely civil exchanges on the highest planes of American politics. And the memory of it stings—because we have spent the last quarter century doing what we can to rid Washington of exactly the kind of civility and respect Joe Lieberman extended across ideological and partisan boundaries.

Indeed, his career proved an early example of the nightmarish direction in which American politics was heading when, in 2006, he was targeted by leftists in his own party for defeat—even though he was the sitting senator from the state of Connecticut, only six years removed from his vice presidential candidacy, and only three years removed from his own bid for the presidency in 2004.

For the sin of supporting a war to remove a monstrous tyrant, and for the even more egregious sin of embracing George W. Bush at the State of the Union in 2005, Democratic voters in Connecticut voted for a primary rival, Ned Lamont, in his stead. To give you a sense of the emotional capaciousness of the man, just a week after he had lost his primary, Joe gave his daughter Rebecca away in marriage to my very, very dear friend Jacob Wisse. Notwithstanding the difficult circumstances he found himself in, Joe glowed with joy the entire weekend, so devoted was he to Rebecca (also one of my closest friends) and so aware of the value of a marriage that has thrived and has since produced two beloved granddaughters.

“I am so thrilled today,” he said in his toast at the wedding, “that I would love to give you all an earmark.”

He told me—I had not spent any time talking to him until this moment—that he felt confident things would be all right. He had decided to run as an “independent Democrat” in the November election. And indeed, he beat Lamont by 10 points because the entirety of the state of Connecticut understood and wished to pay tribute to Joe’s great and surpassing value. He served out that term, retired after 28 years in the Senate, and moved to New York, where he worked as a lawyer and continued to provide sage counsel on the most important matters facing America and the Jewish people.

Read the whole thing.

HOW IT STARTED: Houston Mayoral Runoff: Why It Might Matter to the Rest of the Country.

Kevin Williamson recently wrote the article “Republicans Must Save the Cities,” in which he noted that no city larger than San Diego has a Republican mayor. Tonight, if you hear that Bill King won Houston’s runoff mayoral election, then we will see what Republican fiscal leadership in a major U.S. city can do today. Because in many ways, Houston is like other distressed U.S. cities.

Lost in all of the Houston economic powerhouse stories of growth and employment are the city of Houston’s horrible finances.

Houston has odd borders complete with about half a dozen pocket cities. A true city of Houston map looks like a nibbled-on slice of Swiss cheese. It is all too difficult to explain in most urban-analysis reports, so the economic powerhouse everyone reads about is actually the greater Harris County area. The growth, the jobs happen there.

Why do businesses and residents locate outside the city limits? Taxes and regulations — the things others often moved to “Houston” to get away from.

The county is run by a county commissioner and treasurer, all fiscal Republicans. (Full disclosure, I have worked for Orlando Sanchez, currently Harris County treasurer, as a campaign and research advisor many times since 2001.) But the city of Houston has been run by Democratic mayors for decades and is on the brink of bankruptcy. Like other U.S. cities in dire financial straights, we have unfunded public pensions, poor budgeting, and tax base flight.

—Leslie Loftis, PJ Media.com, December 12^th, 2015.

How it’s going: Houston’s Democratic mayor reveals the Texas city is BROKE after decades of overspending that’s left it with a $160 MILLION deficit and has stopped them from even being able to pay firefighters.

—The London Daily Mail, today.

Houston’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1982.

RIP: Joseph Lieberman, senator and vice presidential nominee, dies at 82. “Joseph I. Lieberman, the doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party, died March 27 in New York City. He was 82. The cause was complications from a fall, his family said in a statement.”

THE PROPHECIES OF TITANIA MCGRATH:

Today is the fifth anniversary of the publication of Titania McGrath’s acclaimed book Woke: A Guide to Social Justice. I created this intersectional activist and slam poet in order to satirise this new intolerant and authoritarian identity-obsessed religion and its stranglehold on society. Having seen so many posh and entitled activists berating working-class straight white people for their privilege, I could think of no more appropriate reaction than mockery. Even Harry Windsor was at it. And he’s an actual prince.

Five years on, and I cannot decide whether I find it funny or depressing that so many of Titania’s ideas in that book ended up becoming reality. Nothing that Titania was ever able to suggest has not eventually been outdone by real-life activists. It is as though they were reading her book for inspiration.

For instance, in a chapter from Woke entitled “Towards an Intersectional Socialist Utopia”, Titania makes the following observation:

“Capitalism, after all, is a singularly male phenomenon. The ultimate symbol of capitalism, the skyscraper, is nothing more than a giant cock on the horizon, fucking the heavens.”

Sixteen months after the book was published, this article appeared in the Guardian:

Or what about this passage from a chapter in Woke called “White Death”? Here, Titania calls out Hellen Keller for her white privilege:

“Consider, if you will, the example of white American author Helen Keller (1880–1968). Even though she was left deaf and blind following an illness as a baby, she still managed to study for a degree, write twelve books and travel the world to give lectures. This kind of privilege is staggering.”

Compare this with an article that appeared in Time magazine over a year later, in which the author writes:

“However, to some Black disability rights activists, like Anita Cameron, Helen Keller is not radical at all, ‘just another, despite disabilities, privileged white person,’ and yet another example of history telling the story of privileged white Americans.”

Andrew Doyle, under his secret identity of Titania McGrath, is running straight into Muggeridge’s Law. Or as Tom Wolfe wrote:

While Malcolm Muggeridge was editor of Punch, it was announced that Khrushchev and Bulganin were coming to England. Muggeridge hit upon the idea of a mock itinerary, a lineup of the most ludicrous places the two paunchy, pear-shaped little Soviet leaders could possibly be paraded through during the solemn business of a state visit. Shortly before press time, half the feature had to be scrapped. It coincided exactly with the official itinerary, just released, prompting Muggeridge to observe: We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.

Wolfe wrote that in 1989; given that we’re living in the age of Idiocracy, the trend is accelerating exponentially.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Nation Starting To Wonder If Diddy May Have Done A Few Of Those Things He Repeatedly Rapped About Doing.

MV DALI CITED FOR PROPULSION ISSUES BEFORE BALTIMORE INCIDENT:

According to records from the public ship safety database Equasis, MV Dali – the ship that collided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge this morning – was cited by port state officials in San Antonio, Chile, on June 27 for a deficiency related to “propulsion and auxiliary machinery.”

According to the report, the deficiency was described in detail as issues with “gauges, thermometers, etc.” but there was no detention resulting from this single detected deficiency. Three months later the ship was subject to a follow-up inspection by the United States Coast Guard in New York but no deficiencies were recorded.

A few minor deficiencies is not uncommon for a ship like the Dali however, the recent incident in Baltimore has brought this previous citation back into focus, suggesting the possibility of a recurring issue with the vessel’s propulsion system.

Related: MV Dali Lost Propulsion Before Crashing Into Baltimore Bridge; Had Prior Crash in 2016.