MICHAEL ANTON: The Immorality of The Godfather.

In the second scene, a wistful Don Vito laments to Michael that his son was, in effect, forced into the mafia.

VITO: I knew Santino was gonna have to go through all this. And Fredo … Fredo was … uhh. But I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life—I don’t apologize—to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those … bigshots. I don’t apologize—that’s my life—but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone. Something.Note, first, that the don presents his own, and Michael’s, dilemma as a choice between starving his family or a life of crime. This is hokum. And it is immediately belied by the don’s sorrow that his youngest son couldn’t become a governor or a senator. What about a middle-class life practicing an honest trade? The idea isn’t even contemplated, for himself or his sons.

Note, too, that Sonny, the eldest brother, “had to” become a Mafioso. Why? This isn’t explained, beyond the hoary cliché to “take care” of the family. But the Corleones are richer than the dreams of avarice. “Need” stopped being a motivating principle for them well before 1920, with the first shipments of Corleone-financed Canadian booze to Corleone-controlled speakeasies all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. And why, in the end, did Michael have to follow his father’s and brothers’ footsteps? He didn’t. The central tragedy of the film is that he chooses to, ostensibly to save his father—this is what he tells himself—but really because he enjoys power.

There are three ways to interpret all this. The first is that Michael, and the don, really believe what they say. It may be genuine belief, or it may be rationalization, but it is not said to deceive.

The second is that Michael is just shining Kay on, telling her what she needs to hear so that she can justify to herself her otherwise shameful desire to marry a gangster.

The third interpretation hinges on Puzo’s and Coppola’s intent. Are Michael and the don speaking for author and auteur, channeling, especially, Coppola’s Watergate-era cynicism? (Though the break-in itself would not happen until three months after the film’s release, the movie is commonly lumped with other jaded products of the early 1970s.) Coppola justified to himself taking on what he considered a low-grade project unworthy of his genius by his ambition to transform the tale into an indictment of capitalism, greed, and the American Dream.

Leave the gun, take the cannoli, and read the whole thing.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Doctor pulls off ‘likely the world’s first’ electric car-powered vasectomy.

Electric cars are known for their lower fuel costs, emission reduction and, apparently, powering vasectomies.

Dr Christopher Yang, a urologist from Austin, Texas, revealed his unique solution to performing a vasectomy at his clinic after the power went out — using his Rivian R1T truck.

Yang had rescheduled other appointments when the outage hit on Aug. 25, and was set to do the same for the vasectomy when colleague jokingly suggested doing the procedure using Yang’s pickup truck as a backup power source, per NPR affiliate WGLT.

Futhermore, Yang said his patient didn’t want to reschedule because he’d already taken time off of work for the procedure, so he agreed to go through with it despite the novel power source.

Yang powered his operation by running an extension cord from the carpark all the way to the patient’s room.

That’s nothing — get back to me when Dr. Yang performs the procedure in a car that’s moving:

CON DNC EN MENTE, LA CIUDAD PROHÍBE LLEVAR ORINA, HECES: Marking Their Territory.

And in totally-radical-toilet news:

Female students at one of Latin America’s top Universities say trans activists staged a coup of a single-sex washroom on their campus, 

It started, you see, with feminist students painting a lesbian pride symbol on a wall near a campus library. As one does. This act of fearless self-involvement apparently inflicted nerve-shredding trauma on the trans activist contingent, who promptly denounced the lesbians as “TERFs, colonial fascists, and transphobes,” before announcing that lesbians are only permitted to use symbols of lesbianism that they, the trans activists, find congenial.

“Oh, and if the National Autonomous University of Mexico sounds familiar, you may be thinking of this odyssey of radicalism.”

DURHAM SHOCKER: Danchenko Was a Paid FBI Informant.

The purposes of making [Igor] Danchenko a [confidential human source (CHS)] should be quite clear. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was plagued with problems from the outset. The reasons for opening the investigation were bunk. Those problems continued as the investigation went on, with claims of Trump/Russia collusion proven unverified or outright false. (Thus the targeting of Flynn for a Logan Act violation.)

That developed into the Carter Page FISA applications, first submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in October 2016, and which relied substantially on the Steele Dossiers (aka Steele Reports). The FISA applications were renewed three times – more on that later. Each application had its own problems, from FBI lawyers lying about Carter Page to the Court being generally misled.

Realizing its own misconduct, the FBI made Danchenko a paid CHS in March 2017 – just before the third FISA warrant was submitted in April 2017. This would allow Comey’s FBI to work directly with Danchenko in support of its counter-intelligence investigation against President Trump.

Danchenko being a CHS also served another purpose: it protected the Bureau and the Mueller Special Counsel from revealing their “sources and methods.” How do you hide misconduct? Bury the witness.

Read the whole thing.

CALIFORNIANS ADJUST TO NEW LIFE IN TEXAS: New video from America’s Newspaper of Record.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:

https://twitter.com/knights_america/status/1568276361298743302

THE MATRIX PROGRAMMED BY TOM WOLFE IS STILL WORKING PERFECTLY: James Taylor sings ‘Fire and Rain’ to kick off White House Inflation Reduction Act celebration.

James Taylor is kicking off the White House’s Inflation Reduction Act celebration.

The six-time Grammy Award winner, 74, sang “Fire and Rain” in front of the White House on Tuesday afternoon. Taylor was seated in a navy-blue blazer and a gray hat as he strummed his guitar in front of the cameras and audience.

Taylor has shared his opinion on politics in the past. Under former President Barack Obama’s terms, the musician shared that he believed Obama was the greatest president of all time.

Related: NPR on the meaning of Taylor’s “Fire and Rain:”

Each of “Fire and Rain”‘s verses deals with an adversity Taylor has dealt with in his life. The first is about a friend, Susanne, who he found had died,

“At the time, I was recording in England with The Beatles, and my friends had sort of kept the information about this death from me because they thought, you know, `This is a crucial time for him, he’s doing his work, and we don’t want to upset him or bring him down.’ So my friend Richard Corey told me about it, but he had known about it for a month or so before he mentioned it to me. So that’s where `they let me know you were gone’ comes in.”

The second verse is when you’re still struggling to get off hard drugs,

“That was in New York, and that was when I came back to this country from London and was surprised that I’d picked up a habit. So I was physically very uncomfortable and having a rough time.”

And the third verse in the mental hospital at Stockbridge.

That’s quite a backstory for a song played on the day when the stock market tanked due to “unexpectedly” high inflation.

PLEASE, PLEASE TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ENJOY YOUR MSM SCHADENFREUDE!

The New York Times is experiencing labor issues, and I have to say I hope it goes on forever.

With any luck the reporters will go on strike and return sometime in 2480, so all the rest of us can get on with our lives without being subjected to the constant whinging of entitled Leftists living the high life in New York.

Reporters at the New York Times are up in arms over the paper’s demand that they actually return to the office 3 days a week rather than work entirely in their pajamas with an occasional jaunt to get a pumpkin spice latte.

The New York Post has the story, and I have to say a smile crept over my face as I read it.

As of Monday, 1,316 Times workers had signed a pledge not to return to the office. This includes 879 members of the News Guild, but also members of the Times Tech Guild and the union for Wirecutter, the paper’s product-recommendation spinoff.

“People are livid,” Tom Coffey told The Post. A 25-year veteran editor at NYT, he works on the news desk and serves on the union’s Contract Action Committee.

The New York Times is famous for being a sweatshop for the Ivy League crowd, and they have no shame about it. I say the Contract Action Committee should throw as much sand into the gears of the organization’s machinery as humanly possible. For justice! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

It gets better: NYT staffers fight for the right to ‘work’-from-home.

And given their paper’s famed tact and sensitivity, it’s no surprise that the NYT‘s management have responded by only making the situation worse: tacky branded lunchboxes. NYT video journalist Haley Willis tweeted today: “The @nytimes is giving employees branded lunch boxes this week as a return-to-office perk. We want respect and a fair contract instead.”

All this, at a time when remuneration at the top is soaring. The publisher of the Times A.G. Sulzberger pulled in a total package of $3.6 million in 2021 compared to $2.4 million in 2020 and his colleague CEO Meredith Kopt Levien saw hers go up from $4.4 million to $5.8 million over the same period. Kerching!

Couldn’t happen to a nicer newspaper, eh?

No word yet if there were toy moose dolls inside the lunch boxes — which reportedly lacked handles, to rub a further pinch of salt into our aggrieved journalists’ wounds.

RIP: Ken Starr, Clinton investigator, dead at 76. Attorney Ken Starr died in Houston at the age of 76 from complications from surgery, his family said in a statement.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! Breaking: Bidenflation still roaring as CPI hits 8.3%, core CPI near high at 6.3%; Update: Wage erosion continues.

How bad have things gotten?

UPDATE: Build Back Brandon! “So today, we’re celebrating.”

More: Great moments in optics:

More here: Inflation report sends Dow to worst day since June 2020.

(Updated and bumped.)

QUESTION ASKED: ‘Is Crist Actively Trying to Lose?’ Charlie Crist wants vaccine passports for Florida.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: King Charles will inherit millions and pay zero tax, thanks to this special exception for the royal family.

WAPO SAYS FETTERMAN HAS ‘SQUANDERED CREDIBILITY’ OVER HEALTH, URGES DEMOCRAT TO RELEASE MEDICAL RECORDS: “The scathing critique from a reliably liberal newspaper highlights the rising concern that Democrats have over Fetterman’s recovery. According to Reuters, several Pennsylvania Democratic officials privately expressed concern about Fetterman’s fitness for office. Last week, Fetterman’s hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, questioned his ‘ability to serve.’”

Earlier: So we’ve finally seen Senate candidate John Fetterman’s neck since his stroke and the internet has questions … and a whole lotta memes.

NEWS TO WARM THE HEARTS OF HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS AND GRUMBLETONIANS EVERYWHERE: 50+ Old Fashioned Insults We Should Bring Back.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Why Modern Movies Suck — They Hate Their Own Fans (Video; NSFW language):

As Will Jordan notes in the above video, Disney in particular absolutely loves this tactic to both gin-up hype, and wave away large scale fan hatred of their latest reboot. QED: Disney’s The Little Mermaid Live Action Trailer Dropped, And Fans Are Getting Called Racist For Hating It.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Stop with the Jetsons Nostalgia!

1) The Jetsons was not science fiction any more than The Flintstones was archeology. It was, like its Stone Age partner, a midcentury family sitcom—I Love Lucy/The Honeymooners/Father Knows Best with different backdrops and dumber jokes.1 The commentary (such as it is) about technology mostly consists of complaints about devices breaking down and costing too much. Automation also means George and Jane Jetson do nothing all day except push a few buttons. If real, their lives would incredibly boring. (The Feminine Mystique was a bestseller for a reason.) The show is definitely not Star Trek.

The Jetsons is graphically appealing, but it only works because we don’t take it literally as a portrait of the future. The Jetsons live in a world without trees, grass, or privacy. Anyone in a flying car can peer straight into their windows, which also appear to be open all the time. People live in the sky for no reason other than it makes for cool drawings. You can’t take a walk around the neighborhood. Ever wonder, What’s on the Ground in The Jetsons? (Spoiler: “Homeless people and walking birds.”)

2) Star Trek’s fundamental appeal was not about the future or technology per se. The show portrays a setting in which smart people have new experiences and learn new things, solve important problems, and forge deep friendships. Nobody worries about money or office politics. The show’s values are humane. Everyone’s job is important and the boss deserves respect. As I learned in a big survey I did while researching The Power of Glamour, for many of its fans Star Trek represents an ideal workplace.

Star Trek’s vision of a nerd-friendly universe made the future glamorous, but only to the select few for whom that vision resonated. When originally broadcast Star Trek had lousy ratings. Most people didn’t find it especially appealing.2 Its pop culture success dates to syndicated reruns in the 1970s, which is when I saw it. (The first fan convention was in 1972.) By then, its New Frontier spirit, complete with Cold War analogies, was already out of step with the times. The show attracted fanatical devotion partly because popular culture offered few (no?) other celebrations of earnest nerds and their values.

Fair enough; but the question must be asked at this point: Can we still get an electric car with a Jetsons-style bleebling sound?

LOVELY PEOPLE; LET’S SEND THEM MORE PALLETS OF CASH: “For the first time, two women known to have been lesbian have been sentenced to death in Iran. It marks a new stage in the Islamic republic’s persecution of LGBT people…It’s quite normal for the Iranian authorities to prosecute gay men under bogus charges. Under Iranian law, sex between two men is punishable by death, but the authorities often charge people instead with offences such as rape, incest, or drug-trafficking. According to Iranian activists, at least four other people have been executed for being gay in the last 12 months, two of them as recently as June.”

TUCKER CARLSON GOES OUT ON A LIMB: Drawing a parallel between January 6 protests and fall of the Twin towers — true lunacy.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/0IKu6I1bV9

— PragerU (@prageru) September 12, 2022

LATERAL MOVE: Jen Psaki says she will bring passion for ‘calling out BS’ to role at MSNBC.

Flashback to 2014: Two New MSNBC Hosts Bring News Media-Obama Revolving Door to 30.

CRIME SQUAD: A simultaneously adorable and terrifying new video from Reason TV.

LAS VEGAS DEMOCRAT ACCUSED OF KILLING REPORTER WILL REMAIN IN OFFICE AND GET PAID:

An elected official who allegedly murdered an investigative reporter in Las Vegas will remain in office for months and still get paid while he sits in prison.

Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles was denied bail last week after he was charged in the stabbing death of Jeff German, a Las Vegas Review-Journal journalist who had been probing Telles’ alleged misconduct in office.

But as he waits behind bars, a county leader said, Telles will keep getting paid.

“For now, he’s still an elected officer and he’ll get paid while he’s in jail,” Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom told WSAV on Friday.

Segerblom said voters have the option to recall Telles, who lost a Democratic primary in June. But 100,000 signatures are required to put the ballot initiative forward.

There is also the possibility that Telles could resign.

“We can take the scope of work away from him, but as far as him having the title and getting the salary, it is that way, because the voters picked him,” Segerblom told the television station.

Telles is reportedly paid $130,000 annually.

Found via Jim Treacher, who writes, “There’s an old saying that goes, ‘Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes.’ But I’d like to propose a third certainty in this world: Members of the Democratic Party will always misspend those taxes.”

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Tinder Generation Can’t Find Love.

Suzy Weiss is a 27-year-old journalist who is bright, thoughtful, and very lonely. She’s also wondering why Tinder and other apps like it have failed members of her generation.

Tinder and other apps like it have failed members of her generation.

Writing at her older sister Bari’s Substack “Common Sense,” Suzy claims in an article called “Generation Swipe,” that “Tinder promised it would revolutionize romance.” So far, however, it appears to have failed not only her, but her peers as well. And she wonders why.

Part of the problem can be found in the first paragraph, however:

“Every generation thinks they have it the hardest when it comes to finding love, but it’s hard to look at mine and conclude that we don’t have a good case. Never before have young people been having so little sex …”

Perhaps it’s because she and her generation equate sex with love. They’ve bought into the lie that lots of sex means happiness, that women can enjoy carnal pleasures like men, and that this is how to find your soulmate.

My mother’s generation, however, believed that good girls don’t, and while bad girls seem to have all the fun, men want to marry good girls. Trouble is, however, that now lots of men don’t want to get married. And some, notes Weiss, don’t even want to have sex, believe it or not:

“By the time my parents were my age, so the meme goes, they had a house and two kids. A lot of men in my generation aren’t even having sex.”

Earlier: “The ’90s was the last of the great decades, because after that, computers killed the world.”

AMSTERDAM, CIRCA 2000:

Amsterdam, 2022: How Amsterdam ceased to be gay heaven. The city is becoming Islamicized and gay people are paying the price. “Full points to Bev for standing up to transgender ideology. It’s a real menace. But if we battle it hard enough, it’ll go away: it’s too irrational to last. And when it’s gone, we’ll still have a Western Europe that grows more Islamic by the day. And Bev Jackson will, I presume, stay silent on that topic — along with millions of others. Yes, it’s baffling that Western Europeans fail to vote for their own survival. But is this failure any wonder, when even a veteran gay activist won’t be honest about the biggest threat to gays in our time?”

CHICAGO MAYOR BLUFFS; LOSES ROUND OF TEXAS HOLD ‘EM POKER: Lori Lightfoot Made Big Show of Accepting Texas-Bused Migrants, Then Immediately Ships Them Somewhere Else: Report.

When the first busload of illegal immigrants arrived, Lightfoot called the moment an important episode in Chicago’s history.

“This is such an important moment for Chicago as our city has been a sanctuary for thousands of newcomers. We are welcoming them and we will not turn our backs on those who need our help the most,” Lightfoot said in a statement, according to WMAQ-TV.

“We understand that many are fleeing violent, traumatic, or otherwise unstable environments,” the statement said. “We will respond with essential services while these individuals navigate the next steps of their journey and our community partners have been working diligently to provide a safety net.”

Lightfoot bashed Abbott for not working with her.

“We shouldn’t have to guess,” she said, according to WLS-TV.

“We shouldn’t have to have folks on the ground whispering to us about what’s happening. If you don’t want these folks to stay in Texas, then make sure that you collaborate with the cities before you put them on buses so that we can be here and make sure that our services are welcoming.”

But lo and behold, 64 of 175 illegal immigrants sent to Chicago were soon sent to a Hampton Inn in the suburb of Burr Ridge with no notice to local officials.

“I am concerned neither the village administrator nor I were told about this,” Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso said, according to WGN-TV. “We want to know: Why Burr Ridge?”

“Neither village elected officials nor staff were consulted or contacted about this decision and we are now gathering information to keep our community updated,” he said to WMAQ.

Grasso also said it was hypocritical for Lightfoot to criticize Abbott for sending illegal immigrants up north and then ship them out to his community, according to Fox News.

Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

Related: Democrats Discover Only The Federal Government Can Solve The Border Crisis.

More: Democrat mayors prepare to be next targets on Governor Abbott’s sanctuary city list.