YEAR IN REVIEW: 2018 Libertarian Films.
Two films I’ve seen made the list, Chappaquiddick and Death of Stalin. Both are quite good, especially the latter. Mostly though I was shocked that either one got made without anyone’s Hollywood career being sent to a forced labor camp.
JONATHAN TURLEY: Donald Trump is completely transforming the Democrats.
Democrats are now defined by Trump the way that antimatter is defined by matter, with each particle of matter corresponding to an antiparticle. Take the secrecy. Democrats once were the party that fought against the misuse of secret classification laws by the FBI and other agencies. They demanded greater transparency from the executive branch, which is a position that I have readily supported. Yet, when oversight committees sought documents related to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation of Trump associates, Democrats denounced the very thought that Republicans would question the judgment of the FBI that any such disclosures would be tantamount to jeopardizing national security.
Democratic Party leaders including Pelosi declared that the oversight committees had moved beyond “dangerous irresponsibility and disregard for our national security” and “disregarded the warnings of the Justice Department and the FBI.” Likewise, House Intelligence Committee ranking minority member Adam Schiff expressed shock that the FBI was not given deference in withholding the information in the surveillance investigation.
Yet, when the information was finally forced out of the FBI, including the disclosure of previously redacted material, it was clear that the FBI had engaged in overclassification to shield not national security but to shield the bureau itself from criticism. It included discussion of the roles of high ranking FBI officials and their reliance on such sources as the Christopher Steele dossier, which were already publicly known. Democratic House members like Schiff presumably knew what was in the redactions and, nevertheless, wanted deference to the classification decisions of the FBI.
In supporting the investigation of Trump, Democrats have embraced expanding definitions of crimes like obstruction, conspiracy, and the like.
If it weren’t for double standards…
BECAUSE SOCIALISM: How Venezuela became a disaster state.
LEGAL BRIEFS: Women Attack ‘Sexist’ Ad for Ruth Bader Ginsburg Movie. “Even liberal movies can’t avoid ticking off feminists.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE? 5 New Year’s Eve Movies to Help Ring in 2019.
Number One is already a post-Christmas/pre-NYE tradition here at Villa Verde.
GOOD: German company linked with Iran’s rockets stops business with Tehran. “Corporations realize that doing business with Iran means funding the IRGC’s terror strategy.”
A spokesman for the German company Krempel, which provided construction material to Tehran businessmen that was used in rockets produced by the Iranian regime to gas Syrians earlier this year, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the global business firm has stopped trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Since several months ago, Krempel no longer delivers goods to Iran,” said Rainer Westermann.
“Corporations realize that doing business with Iran means funding the IRGC’s terror strategy,” US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told the Post on Thursday. The IRGC stands for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the US designated as a terrorist entity last year.
Grenell is widely credited with causing German businesses to leave Iran and has been praised for his efforts in seeking to counter companies that aid Iran’s terrorism and cause suffering for Syrians and Iranians within the Islamic Republic.
I’m old enough to remember when Trump’s reckless foreign policy was going to drive our allies into the arms of our enemies.
THAT’S WHAT MAKES THEM SO MUCH FUN: Canadian Study Claims Video Gamers Perpetuate ‘Toxic’ ‘Neoliberal Masculinity.’ “Games such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and DoD.”
SUSTAINABILITY: Federal Debt Up $1.37 Trillion Since Last Dec. 25; $10,743 Per Household.
That per household number jumps higher when you exclude households paying no income tax.
HE’D BECOME AN EMBARRASSMENT TO THE CAUSE, AND THUS DISPENSABLE: Anti-NRA Warrior And Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel No Longer Even Has The Support Of The Media.
The Sentinal made it very clear that they were once fully in Israel’s corner, but the mounting evidence against him has become too much for even they to defend. The Sun Sentinal editorial board has now recommended that the incoming Florida governor, Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis, kick Israel to the curb.
“We’ve suggested all along that people hold their fire until more details are known,” wrote the Sentinal’s editorial board. “But after seeing the damning details in the commission’s draft report — and Israel’s troubling testimony — we cannot encourage the governor-elect to wait and let voters decide the sheriff’s fate in 2020.”
He can’t go too soon.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: MAGA Hat Controversy and Much, Much More. “It’s not hard to understand why the media is hated and viewed as untrustworthy. There is an unprecedented amount of media labor directed at assaulting the president regarding any trivial issue. President Trump’s recent trip to visit Iraq really triggered the crazy to come out. Maybe it was because the media enjoyed wagging their finger at the president because he hadn’t visited the troops? Whoops.”
ASHE SCHOW: Mizzou Official Claims Tall Men Asking Out Short Women Could Constitute Sexual Misconduct.
When a Mizzou official was questioned regarding a case where a black male Ph.D. candidate at the school asked out a white female fitness trainer, she bizarrely suggested that the fact that the male student was larger than the female student gave him “power over her” and violated school policy.
The Daily Wire previously reported on the case in July. The male student, who the Daily Wire will refer to as John Doe, asked out the female fitness instructor, who will be identified as Jane Roe. She said she was busy but discussed with him possibly going out later that month. Two days later, she told him to “stop making romantic advances toward her,” according to John’s lawsuit against Mizzou. Despite not wanting to date him, Jane asked John to keep taking her dance classes.
John did this, and later asked Jane to recommend some YouTube videos to help him improve his dancing. She suggested private lessons but told him she didn’t teach privately. She then, according to John’s lawsuit, avoided him for the next week.
On Oct. 14, 2016, John wrote Jane a three-page letter “apologizing for being awkward around her, expressing sincere feelings for her, and asking [her] what if anything she wanted from Plaintiff,” his lawsuit said.
More groveling, apparently.
VENEZUELA: Nine military personnel sentenced for plotting to overthrow president.
Nine members of the Venezuelan armed forces were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for plotting to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro in 2014, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.
General Oswaldo Hernandez and retired Colonel Jose Delgado were among those sentenced to a minimum of five years, the court said in a statement.
Venezuela’s top court rejected a final appeal from the nine defendants who had already seen previous motions dismissed by both a lower court and a court-martial.
They were accused of “preparing in 2014 an insurrectional and destabilizing movement, called operation Jericho, against the government.”The opposition has accused the supreme court of “serving” Maduro’s interests.
All nine defendants were arrested between March and May 2014.
I wonder if any of them will survive past the length of their sentences.
HMM: Trump Didn’t Kill the Global Trade System. He Split It in Two. “Allies find relations modestly tweaked, despite the president’s rhetoric, while relations with China are entering a deep freeze.”
There are two big questions hanging over this realignment. The first is deciding how far the U.S. is prepared to decouple from China. The U.S. has given China until March 1 to avoid higher tariffs by addressing complaints it discriminates against foreign companies and steals their technology. Mr. Trump is counting on a deal that avoids a trade war. But many in his administration and Congress don’t trust China to make the necessary concessions and would likely advocate a sharper break.
The second question is whether the U.S. can persuade allies to join a united front to contain China. Other countries don’t relish the choice. Their economic ties to China are far greater than they ever were to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Nor are the ideological choices as clear cut. China isn’t waging an ideological struggle against the West as the Soviet Union did.
Greg Ip is sadly mistaken on that last point. Just because Beijing has toned down the Communist rhetoric doesn’t make them any less ambitious than the Soviets were — and flush with a lot more cash, too.
ANTITRUST: Silicon Valley May Rue the Day it Called for Government Intervention Against Microsoft. “Facebook, Google, Apple, and others are now facing the sort of regulatory and antitrust animus once leveled at Bill Gates’ company.”
All good things have got to end, and Clark documents how Washington started to take an interest in West Coast tech. Ironically, it was Silicon Valley who came a-calling first, “in the 1990s with the antitrust case against Microsoft, and again more recently in the battle with internet service providers over net neutrality.” In each case, he notes, the alarm was sounded by other tech sector people and now, “they entangled the federal government in their industry in ways that are coming back to haunt them.”
Clark writes that “net neutrality” rules were aimed at telecom firms (especially cable companies providing internet access) and promulgated and pushed by online bandwidth hogs including Netflix, Google, eBay, and Amazon. It was all good to start regulating the internet as long as it was the pipes being regulated and not what flowed through them (indeed, the rallying cry of net neutrality was that all data should be treated equally!). But that’s not the way it played out. The Open Internet Order of 2015 has been rescinded (that’s a good thing, incidentally) and now Washington is far more concerned with what’s being transmitted rather than what ISP is transmitting it or at what speed it’s being sent
However noble or well-meaning Net Neutrality supporters were at the start, it soon got coopted as a rent-seeking measure by the above-mentioned “bandwidth hogs.” And now that Washington’s nose is under the tent, good luck ever getting it out.
PAULA BOLYARD: Ohio Heartbeat Bill Goes Down in Flames after GOPs Side with Kasich, Planned Parenthood, and Democrats. “A despicable betrayal.”
The employer of more than 68,000 filed for bankruptcy in October. Its last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal put forward by its chairman, Eddie Lampert, to buy the company out of bankruptcy through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. ESL is the only party offering to buy Sears as a whole, people familiar with the situation tell CNBC. Without that bid or another like it, liquidators will break the company up into pieces.
But as Lampert stares down a deadline of Dec. 28 to submit his offer, he is quickly running out of time. As of Thursday afternoon, Lampert had neither submitted his bid, nor rounded up financing, the people familiar said. Should Lampert submit a bid, Sears’ advisors would have until Jan. 4 to decide whether he is a “qualified bidder.” Only then, could ESL take part in an auction against liquidation bids on Jan. 14.
It is possible Lampert, Sears’ largest investor, secures financing in time to meet the deadline, these people said. The hedge fund manager turned retailer has managed last-minute feats before. Due to requirements by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lampert will be required to make his bid public. That stipulation that could sway him to prolong the filing until its exact deadline of 4:00 p.m. ET Friday.
The clock is ticking.
BRUCE BAWER: Hijab in the House. “One of the notable results of the November 6 midterm elections was that the U.S. House of Representatives went from two Muslim members — Indiana’s André Carson and Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, who on the same day was elected his state’s attorney general — to three Muslims, Carson plus two new female members from Michigan and Minnesota. With few if any exceptions, the mainstream media rooted for these ladies throughout the campaign season and lustily cheered their victories, not because of their skills or experience or political views but because they represented ‘diversity’.”
Lots of info. Read the whole thing.
BECAUSE GOVERNMENT: One year of legal pot sales and California doesn’t have the bustling industry it expected. Here’s why.
As the first year of licensed sales comes to a close, California’s legal market hasn’t performed as state officials and the cannabis industry had hoped. Retailers and growers say they’ve been stunted by complex regulations, high taxes and decisions by most cities to ban cannabis shops. At the same time, many residents are going to city halls and courts to fight pot businesses they see as nuisances, and police chiefs are raising concerns about crime triggered by the marijuana trade.
Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, who played a large role in the legalization of cannabis, will inherit the numerous challenges when he takes office in January as legislators hope to send him a raft of bills next year to provide banking for the pot industry, ease the tax burden on retailers and crack down on sales to minors.
“The cannabis industry is being choked by California’s penchant for over-regulation,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, a pro-legalization group. “It’s impossible to solve all of the problems without a drastic rewrite of the law, which is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.”
After voters legalized marijuana two years ago under Proposition 64, state officials estimated in there would be as many as 6,000 cannabis shops licensed in the first few years. But the state Bureau of Cannabis Control has issued just 547 temporary and annual licenses to marijuana retail stores and dispensaries.
You might have thought California could at least get this one thing right, but no.
PATRICK POOLE: John Kerry’s Family Fights to Keep Peasants Away from Ancestral French Villa, Claiming Terror Threat. “‘Walls don’t work’ is for the little people.”
Where’s the fun in being rich and powerful if you can’t lord it over the serfs?
WELL, GOOD: IDF destroys additional cross-border Hezbollah tunnels from Lebanon. “Army says operation to ‘neutralize’ the subterranean passages has seriously undermined terror group’s plans in future war.”
RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Peru enforces tough measures for Venezuela migrants.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.