NAZI HOLOCAUST ARCHITECT ADOLF EICHMANN IS HEARD ADMITTING TO DEVISING FINAL SOLUTION IN NEWLY UNEARTHED TAPES: ‘If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, ‘Good, we destroyed an enemy.’”

Audio recordings of the architect of the Holocaust boasting about his actions have been made public for the first time, 60 years after his execution for crimes against humanity.

Adolf Eichmann recorded 70 hours of interviews in Argentina, having fled to Buenos Aires after the war. The audio has remained under lock and key and is only being broadcast now thanks to the dogged efforts of a team of Israeli documentary makers.

They were given 15 hours of surviving recordings – the interviewer taped over much of the rest – in which Eichmann, who went to the gallows denying his crimes, admits to his role in what he infamously dubbed his ‘Final Solution.’

Flashback: Ron Rosenbaum: Eichmann and the Banality of ‘The Banality of Evil.’

Perhaps now is the time. Perhaps the imminent publication of the diaries alleged to be Adolf Eichmann’s makes this the moment to put to rest one of the most pernicious and persistent misconceptions about Eichmann and the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust: the fashionable but vacuous cliché about “the banality of evil.” It’s remarkable how many people mouth this phrase as if it were somehow a sophisticated response to the death camps, when in fact it is rather a sophisticated form of denial, one that can come very close to being the (pseudo-) intellectual version of Holocaust denial. Not denying the crime but denying the full criminality of the perpetrators.

You’re probably familiar with the origin of “the banality of evil”: It was the subtitle of Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. (She didn’t use it in the New Yorker pieces that were the basis of the book.) The phrase “banality of evil” was born out of Ms. Arendt’s remarkable naïveté as a journalist. Few would dispute her eminence as a philosopher, the importance of her attempt to define, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, just what makes totalitarianism so insidious and destructive.

But she was the world’s worst court reporter, someone who could be put to shame by any veteran courthouse scribe from a New York tabloid. It somehow didn’t occur to her that a defendant like Eichmann, facing execution if convicted, might actually lie on the stand about his crimes and his motives. She actually took Eichmann at his word. What did she expect him to say to the Israeli court that had life and death power over him: “Yes, I really hated Jews and loved killing them”?

But when Eichmann took the stand and testified that he really didn’t harbor any special animosity toward Jews, that when it came to this little business of exterminating the Jews, he was just a harried bureaucrat, a paper shuffler “just following orders” from above, Arendt took him at his word. She treated Eichmann’s lies as if they were a kind of philosophical position paper, a text to analyze rather than a cowardly alibi by a genocidal murderer.

I wonder how many who watch the 2012 biopic on Arendt are aware of Eichmann’s audio confession?

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Nervous NYT takes a closer look at Mayra Flores and ‘the rise of the far-Right Latina’ (not ‘Latinx’).

(Classical reference in headline.)

SORRY, BIDEN, GAS STATIONS CAN’T JUST ‘BRING DOWN THE PRICE:’

It would take no more than a few minutes of a White House adviser’s time to learn that the “companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump” in most cases aren’t companies at all. More than half the gas stations in the country are single-store operations run by an individual or a family, according to the Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing (NACS), a trade association representing the stores that sell more than 80 percent of the gasoline American consumers use.

A “Shell” or “Exxon” logo on the canopy above a filling station doesn’t mean those oil companies own the gas station. All it means is that the station’s owners have contracted with that company for the right to advertise the well-known brand. It’s the same as having a neon “Coors Light” sign hanging in a bar—which doesn’t mean MillerCoors owns the establishment.

And those gas station owners aren’t raking in massive profits, either. Over the past five years, retailer gross margins have averaged 10.7 percent of the overall price of gas, according to NACS data. But most of those profits come from selling food, drinks, cigarettes, and the like.

The Hustle, a business and tech newsletter, put together a useful breakdown of the economics of gas stations last year. “Selling gas generally isn’t very profitable” due largely to intense price competition among retailers and the ease with which consumers can shop around (because they are literally in their cars). On fuel alone, gas stations have an average margin of 1.4 percent.

If gas stations sold fuel at cost, consumers might hardly notice the difference—but the small-time entrepreneurs running those stations would have a harder time making ends meet.

Biden’s ignorance about gas stations sounds like a replay of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D–Mass.) attempt at blaming higher food prices on greedy grocery store owners—despite the fact that they often operate on similarly tiny margins. It’s also a worrying sign when coupled with the fact that the White House has ordered the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate companies for earning “illicit profits” due to inflation.

Exit questions: “How can the Biden administration be trusted to police companies’ profits when it is demonstrating such economic illiteracy?”

And, why can’t the administration coordinate their messaging on one of the most important issues to voters going into the midterms?

HOW BADLY IS THE WHITE HOUSE DOING? SO BADLY THAT EVEN CNN HAS NOTICED: After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands.

Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together.
Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn’t even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening.
That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok.

The call, three days after the decision eliminating federal abortion rights, encapsulates the overwhelming sense of frustration among Democrats with Biden. It offers a new window into what many in the President’s party describe as a mismanagement permeating the White House.

Top Democrats complain the President isn’t acting with — or perhaps is even capable of — the urgency the moment demands.

“Rudderless, aimless and hopeless” is how one member of Congress described the White House.

But why, considering the decision leaked weeks in advance? Democrats don’t know what to do after Roe overturning.

Despite having a six-week heads-up via a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Democratic Party appeared caught completely off foot by the Dobbs ruling, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade.

With abortion laws now the purview of the states, there is also growing consternation in progressive media circles. They fear that President Joe Biden’s tepid response to the ruling, which centered on his offering a brief statement and then boarding an airplane and flying out of the country, has been inadequate at best. Biden mustered some anger at the NATO summit in Spain, but policy-wise, he has conceded there’s not much the White House will do.

While Biden was overseas and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reading poems, Democratic firebrands Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren were offering incandescent but unrealistic ideas to a sympathetic national media. These included the idea of impeaching Supreme Court justices and opening abortion tents on federal lands. The closest the House and Senate Democratic majorities can come to resembling even a shell of codifying Roe would require abolishing the filibuster, a popular idea among the media intelligentsia. Unfortunately, naughty Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have already stated that this is a non-starter. Beyond that, the Democrats have no plan for a post-Roe world, an inconvenient truth that they dare not admit to a disheartened base. The base, after all, now increasingly sees a feckless aged majority and a president who seems out to lunch at all times.

However, the main problem for Democrats lies in their extreme position on abortion up to the moment of birth. Roe acted as a warm duvet over the operational procedures of abortion. It allowed Democrats to stand by a “pro-choice” talking point without having to defend it to a moderate electorate still not comfortable with a party willing to celebrate abortion. With Roe lifted, Democrats now have to go about the act of actually selling abortion by campaigning on it at state levels. For the first time in 50 years, national office seekers will have to specify their positions. Democrats will be forced either to stand firm on an unpopular extreme or moderate their positions and anger their base further. As of now, they cannot decide, and they are unprepared.

Between not being able to define “what is a woman?”,  and adopting a position on abortion that almost a quarter of a century ago was parodied on South Park as abortion up to “the fortieth trimester,” the Democrats seem to be  woefully positioned for the midterms. Ed Morrissey spots NBC reporting:Dems’ midterm strategy? Let Republicans bail out Biden.

Still though, don’t get cocky. As Ed writes, “It’s so crazy, it just might work. Even conservatives worry that Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in November, either by selecting fringe nominees, overplaying their hand after the end of Roe, or perhaps in some other imaginative and self-destructive manner. We’re kinda used to it by now.”

UPDATE: So is Nancy Pelosi scrambling to find a way to overcome Dobbs? On the contrary! She’s living la dolce vita: Nancy Pelosi’s Italian job. The House Speaker’s campaign war chest is raising eyebrows:

Pelosi may be on vacation in southern Europe, but that hasn’t stopped her from aggressively trying to fundraise off the fall of Roe. “I asked you Monday. I asked you Tuesday. I asked you Wednesday. I asked you Thursday. I’m truly sorry to ask you again today,” reads one Pelosi fundraising email from last week. “But my team just informed me we failed to meet yesterday’s FIRST End of Quarter Deadline since the Supreme Court’s ruling. I won’t sugarcoat this. If I don’t reach 1,387 more gifts before midnight to close the budget gap, it will be the single most devastating setback for Democrats’ chances of winning this election and protecting women’s reproductive freedoms nationwide.”

Reaction online to the photos of Pelosi was typically muted.

“If I have nightmares about Nancy Pelosi’s boobs tonight I am suing,” tweeted the Post Millennial’s Ashley St. Clair.

“Inflation has hit Nancy Pelosi,” wrote comedian Andrew Schulz.

“Please stop sharing Nancy Pelosi’s ta-tas this is a family site,” tweeted @beyondreasdoubt.

Click over for the photos — if you dare.

(Updated and boobed bumped.)

SENSITIVITY READERS ARE THE NEW LITERARY GATEKEEPERS:

In theory, sensitivity readers were a way to write outside your identity without causing offense by “getting it wrong.” But the emerging consensus, especially in Y.A., was that it was even more wrong to stray outside your lane in the first place. In a particularly revealing 2018 feature on the culture website Vulture, a sought-after sensitivity reader expressed profound contempt for the authors whose manuscripts she was paid to vet.

“These writers think they’re doing the world a service. Like, ‘Look at me, I’m showing up for the social-justice movement.’ But the problem is that they’re showing up and they’re taking a seat,” she said.

The implications were clear: If you were a white author writing black characters, you were taking up space that could have gone to a more deserving marginalized writer. If you needed a sensitivity reader, then was this really your story to tell?

These questions don’t serve as a deterrent for everyone. In the intervening years, sensitivity readers have become de rigueur—in young adult fiction, but also, increasingly, in work for adults. Sometimes a publisher will insist on this extra step; sometimes, a conscientious writer will seek it out on his own. The prevalence of the practice is more sensed than studied—there’s no data on what percentage of books go through this sort of vetting—and it’s highly variable depending on the writer’s own genre and community; the ultra-woke author of prestigious literary fiction is a lot more likely to request or receive a sensitivity read than, say, a hard-boiled crime novelist.

Those who put stock in sensitivity reads seem to mostly imagine that the practice offers a form of insurance, preempting allegations of this -ism or that -phobia, although it rarely pans out that way.

When The Men, Sandra Newman’s sci-fi novel in which everyone with a Y chromosome suddenly vanishes from the face of the earth, came under fire for what critics termed the “transphobic” implication that people with Y chromosomes are men, one of the chief questions was whether the author had engaged a trans sensitivity reader. But when Newman said that yes, she had, the outrage only multiplied. Why had she hired only one sensitivity reader? Did she think this was an excuse?

“That only makes it WORSE,” one commenter wrote, “because you’re claiming you KNOWINGLY did this.”

Indeed, not even the professionally sensitive are safe when a cancellation comes calling. In 2019, sensitivity reader Kosoko Jackson frantically pulled his own Y.A. debut novel after he was called out for setting a gay romance against the backdrop of the Kosovo War. (As is typical of these controversies, it’s hard to parse exactly what Jackson did wrong, but the complaints mainly focused on the offense of “centering” the wrong identity category—in this case, two American boys—in a story set amid a real-life tragedy that mainly affected people of another identity category.)

Related: The Social Media Mob Versus the Novelist, the new video from Reason TV:

As Ray Bradbury predicted in Fahrenheit 451, books will be burned to protect everyone’s feelings as much as to block the content within them. But I’m not sure if even he would have predicted that it would be the publishers who would be outsourcing those who manned the flamethrowers.

OKAY, GROOMERS: Disney Introduces Gay Spider-Man.

Come back Fredric Wertham, all is forgiven!

ROD DREHER: Himmler’s Kidswear, By Celine Dion.

Walter Kirn isn’t a conservative or a culture warrior. He’s a novelist who lives in Montana. And he’s right about this. You’ve got to see it to believe it. It’s satanic. Celine Dion came out in 2018 with a gender-neutral line of clothing for kids that ought to be sold in Hell’s Walmart. Maybe it didn’t do well, I dunno. But holy cow, it’s evil stuff. Check out this thread:

”Our children. They are really not our children.” Comcast and MSNBC agree completely.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? New York’s Orwellian New Attempt to Circumvent the Second Amendment, Explained.

PAST  PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

(Via Newsalert.) 

JEFFREY CARTER, WITH A VIDEO ASSIST FROM MILTON FRIEDMAN: No Stopping Inflation.

Government spending causes inflation, period.

The government prints the money. It’s not the gas station owner, the oil company, the farmer, the food processor, or anything like that. It’s the government period and The Biden Administration has no respect for the value of capital.

2022’s Joe Biden should meet some of his earlier incarnations:

JONATHAN TOBIN: SCOTUS Deals a Blow to the Unaccountable, Unelected Administrative State.

OKAY, GROOMERS: Virginia School District Prohibits Teachers From Contacting Parents When Students Change Gender.

JOYLESS ON THE FOURTH:

Your guts feel like they’re about to burst. You’re hungover. Your clothes smell like you’ve survived the battle of the Somme. The ordnance’s still smoldering husks litter the yard, and there’s ketchup in places ketchup should never be. These are the discomforts of July 5, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Those of you who spent the Fourth of July celebrating the 246th anniversary of America’s independence might have overindulged a bit, but with good reason. It’s a time to celebrate the miracle of self-government, the world’s oldest operating Constitution, and the infinitely complex continental republic that covenant preserves. It’s a day to take a break from the labors that accompany the responsibilities of citizenship and the agonies of our country’s imperfections. The Fourth is a day to admire the American experiment with revelry and carefree joy.

If you’re capable of that sort of compartmentalization, you should be grateful. Not everyone is comfortable making a cognitive divorce from the horrors of daily life, even for a few precious moments. Failing to dwell on America’s deficiencies and the distinctions that divide us, some believe, is an abdication of your responsibility to work toward erasing those blemishes. Even holidays—especially those that emphasize the nobility of the American mission—are an abrogation of your duty to be miserable in solidarity with those in misery. The Fourth of July is no exception.

How miserable? This miserable: “Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes called the founding of the United States ‘awful’ and said the country must take steps to ‘repair the harm’ through education, according to a video of his comments. ‘Things were bad. Things were terrible. The founding of this nation? Awful,’ said Barnes in a video clip of his remarks from a question-and-answer session in Portage, Wis., on August 19, 2021. ‘The impacts are felt today; they’re going to continue to be felt unless we address it in a meaningful way.’”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Top New Biden Staffer Defended Underage, Gay Prostitution Website Raided By Feds in Jaw-Dropping 2015 Article.

A recent, high-level hire at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy defended a controversial gay prostitution website with a track record of allowing children to be promoted for sexual services on the platform, The National Pulse can reveal.

The revelations, from unearthed op-ed, follow The National Pulse exposé of appointee Samuel Brinton’s past as a drag queen, LGBTQ+ activist who has “lectured” on kink at college campuses and participated in interviews about fetish roleplay.

In an article published on September 15th on the pro-LGBT+ website Advocate, Biden’s latest top nuclear hire dives into a defense of the “Rentboy.com” website, which shuttered following an August 2015 illegal prostitution raid. “Rentboy” is a colloquial term for young men who have sex with older men in exchange for money, often under dubious circumstances.

Read the whole thing.

Related: America’s new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition shows off their fierce pantsuit.

WAS IT OVER WHEN CHARLES DE GAULLE BOMBED PEARL HARBOR?! Forget it, they’re rolling:

WELL, WE KNOW IT WASN’T WOODROW WILSON HIMSELF: Did a White House “intern” write the ridiculous gas station price hike tweet?

JEFF DUNETZ: When Israel Showed The World The Spirit of 1776 Still Exists: The Raid on Entebbe.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Principal accused of trying to fire white teachers because of their race created school of ‘insanity’ plagued with low-quality education and ‘dangerous’ fighting, say students.

AGAINST THE GREAT RESET: ‘China, Covid-19, Realpolitik, and the Great Reset.’

Within a little over a year, politicians themselves seemed to be laughing at the phrase, even as they could not stop using it. In October 2021, Boris Johnson’s office seemed to imagine that the British public had become so thrilled by the “build back better” tagline that it was time for some riffs on the theme. At this stage, somewhere between lockdowns umpteen and nineteen, Johnson released a number of videos on his social media pages in which the slogan build back better was posted on the screen. Johnson seemed to imagine that the British public was in a playful mood around the theme. The videos included one of him spreading butter on some pieces of toast and looking at the camera and saying “build back butter.” In a second video, with the build back better motif over it, the Prime Minister could be seen unrolling a packet of fish and chips. “Mmm” he says appreciatively, before looking at the camera and saying “Build back batter.” Terms like “pathetic” and “inadequate” would fail to do justice to such political moments.

The obvious comparison to make at this stage is with great plagues in history. And though most were of a degree of seriousness that far outweighs the effects of Covid, it is a sobering consideration. Who, for instance, viewed the so-called “Spanish flu” of a century ago as an opportunity? Who would have dared in the early months or years after that pandemic ravaged the planet to see it as an opportunity to rebuild the global economy in a different way?

Read the whole thing.

AGING ROCKERS QUIETLY CRAWL BACK TO SPOTIFY AFTER SHORT-LIVED JOE ROGAN PROTEST: “Crosby, Stills & Nash have ended the protest they began against Spotify five months ago over the streaming service’s deal with podcast king Joe Rogan. The aging harmony rockers’ music returned to Spotify July 2, according to Billboard. They had pulled their catalog in solidarity with erstwhile member Neil Young, who was upset at Rogan’s penchant for interviewing guests with different points of view on COVID.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Happy Independence Day? [Updated.]

We have been seeing poll data for some years, indicating that liberals generally are not proud to be Americans. The Washington Times headlines: “Independence Day on track to be a conservative holiday, experts say.” The article cites the sorts of poll data that are now familiar. For example:

A nationwide survey of 2,000 college students reported Tuesday that 76% of self-identified conservative undergraduates feel “proud to be an American,” while 40% of liberals feel likewise.

This year, we are seeing more liberals not just ignoring the 4th of July, but condemning it.

Read the whole thing.

ROBERT CRIMO, HIGHLAND PARK PARADE SHOOTING PERSON OF INTEREST, TAKEN INTO POLICE CUSTODY.

Related: Highland Park 4th of July shooting person of interest: Who is Robert Crimo?

More: Concerning Social Media of ‘Person of Interest’ in Highland Park Mass Shooting.

THIS INSURRECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY TIME-WARNER-DISCOVERY: Is TBS Really Proud of Sam Bee Endangering Supreme Court Justices?

BEE: I can’t describe how painful it is to be here now in a place where the Supreme Court has the power to erase 50 years of constitutional law. Make no mistake, this is not where it ends. Conservatives will not rest until they have come for all of our rights. Everything we have fought for will be lost unless we take it back. It’s not just about voting in November. It’s about doing everything in our power to protect and help vulnerable people access abortion across state lines. And we have to raise hell in our cities, in Washington, in every restaurant Justice Alito eats at for the rest of his life, because if Republicans have made our lives hell, it’s time to return the favor.

It’s quite tempting to urge Bee to simply go back and raise hell in Canada. (She has dual citizenship after getting naturalized in 2014.) It’s also quite tempting to suggest Bee should have someone harass her at restaurants, and see if she likes it.

If violence actually does happen to a Supreme Court justice, Bee already has her excuse prepared, based on her response to Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson attempting to assassinate Steve Scalise in 2017: Sam Bee Rips Right-Wing ‘Idiots’ Blaming ‘Unhinged Left’ for Congressional Shooting.

And on Democrat Jon Ossoff’s loss to Republican Karen Handel in yesterday’s Georgia special election, Bee zeroed in on the one super PAC that “crossed the line” by claiming Ossoff’s supporters included “unhinged leftists” who were “cheering” the shooting of congressional Republicans.

Oh, that must be why he lost,” Bee said. “The ‘cheering last week’s shooting’ demographic is basically zero. The unhinged left is even less powerful than the hinged left, which is saying a lot.”

But since the right is “kind of short on boogeyman these days,” they have blaming everything from Snoop Dogg to Kathy Griffin to Shakespeare in the Park for inspiring violence against Republicans. “That is appalling,” Bee said of the pro-Trump activists who interrupted Julius Caesar. “Protesters managed to get tickets for Shakespeare in the Park? If you guys can get me into that treasonous play with black Founding Fathers who are rude to Mike Pence, give me a call.”

“Shakespeare and Snoop Dogg are not responsible for last week’s shooting just like Sarah Palin was not responsible for Gabby Giffords’ shooting,” Bee said. “The only violent assaults Palin has ever committed were against moose, grizzly bears, wolves, and the English language.”

“Look, can we all try to be vigilant without being fucking idiots?” she asked. “Guys, it’s summer!”

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Bette Midler gets mobbed by leftists after admitting biological women exist.

CHANGE: Britain Mandates Single Sex Bathrooms: No Forced Sharing.

The British government is expected to announce that all new office buildings, schools, hospitals and entertainment venues must have separate male and female lavatories, as a means of avoiding the “forced sharing” of gender-neutral facilities, according to The Telegraph.

The Telegraph reported the government wants to preclude non-residential buildings from being built solely with “universal” lavatories.

This construction mandate will involve changes to building regulations and planning guidance.

Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch spearheaded the plans that were quietly approved by ministers last month, after Badenoch learned that some children were avoiding using lavatories at school, since the facilities were gender-neutral.

Badenoch insists that it is both legal and “important” to provide single-sex spaces for men and women.

More like this please, gov’nor.