OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s all right for blogging. Get a little action in.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: ‘We mark this solemn day:’ Biden statement on anniversary of death of George Floyd.

Here is the official statement from U.S. President Joe Biden on the fourth anniversary of the death of George Floyd, Floyd died May 25, 2020 at age 46 while be detained by police in Minneapolis, His death sparked protests, calls for police and racial justice reforms and civil strife across the country.

The day before George Floyd’s funeral, his young daughter Gianna told me, “Daddy changed the world.” Four years after her father’s murder, there is no doubt that he has.

George Floyd should be alive today. His murder shook the conscience of our nation and reminded us that our country has never fully lived up to its highest ideal of fair and impartial justice for all under the law. What we witnessed as a result was one of the largest modern civil rights movements in our Nation’s history, with people from every background marching together against racism and systemic injustice.

Two years ago, alongside George Floyd’s family, civil rights leaders, and law enforcement officials, I signed an executive order to implement key aspects of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act with respect to federal law enforcement, including: restricting chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and establishing a database for police misconduct—all measures to advance effective, transparent and accountable policing.

My Administration has made significant progress in implementing this Executive Order, and will continue our work to build public trust and strengthen public safety. But real and lasting change at the state and local level will only come when Congress acts. That’s why I will continue to urge Congress to send the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which ensures law enforcement accountability, to my desk.

As we mark this solemn day tomorrow, we join George Floyd’s family in remembering his life and his legacy. We are vigilant of Black and brown communities who all too often have borne the brunt of injustice; and we recommit ourselves to honoring George Floyd’s legacy by ensuring our Nation lives up to its founding ideal that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.

Or as the Onion noted on June 10th, 2020, just as that summer’s riot season began: Biden Flattered His 1994 Crime Bill Suddenly Starting To Receive So Much Attention.

Of course, as Jon Gabriel recently wrote: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

In 2017, the Women’s March was launched in reaction to the #MeToo revelations, while in 2018, the anti-gun March for Our Lives dominated headlines. Neither attracted much violence; you could find that at anti-Trump protests.

In 2019, Greta Thunberg grimaced at the United Nations over climate change, which apparently was solved by blocking traffic and throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh paintings. This Monday was Earth Day, but it didn’t get much coverage. Environmentalism is so five years ago.

The pandemic put the kibosh on public gatherings, which made mass protests a bit hypocritical. So, the anger went online. In 2021, it was COVID masks and vaccines, while in 2022, anyone skeptical of funding Ukraine was labeled a Putin devotee.

But those annoying COVID restrictions were put on hold back in 2020, just as the virus was at its peak. Black Lives Matter protests swamped cities from coast-to-coast, often peaceful during the day but turning ugly by night.

Downtown Seattle was turned into the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone while Portland burned for months.

Exit question:

THE MONKS HAVE FOUND ALL THE NAMES OF GOD? Hundreds of Huge Stars Disappeared From The Sky. We May Finally Know Why. “But some massive stars, scientists have found, have simply vanished, leaving no trace in the night sky. Stars clearly seen in older surveys are inexplicably absent from newer ones. A star isn’t exactly a set of keys – you can’t just lose it down the back of the couch. So where the heck do these stars go?”

Classical reference in headline.

READER FAVORITE: Apple 2022 MacBook Air M2 Chip. #CommissionEarned I just bought this laptop as a travel computer and it is fast and light.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HERMIT KINGDOM: Photographer’s Rare Images Reveal Everyday Life in North Korea.

Upon arriving in North Korea, [Tariq] Zaidi had his equipment examined and documented before entering the hermit country. Afterward, he traveled all across North Korea visiting Dandong on the Chinese border down to the Demilitarized Zone in the south.

The photographer says that people were welcoming and hospitable, although he drew mixed reactions when raising his camera.

“Children were generally OK with me taking pictures, and adults allowed me to take photos after a few minutes of politely asking, although it did depend on where we were,” he says.

“In the metro, for instance, when I pointed my camera at people, they all shyly put their heads down to avoid being photographed. I’m unsure if that was due to cultural differences, shyness, or the lack of camera culture.

Gosh, could there possibly be another reason? Flashback to 2018: As Trump Plans North Korea Summit, Defectors Tell Harrowing Stories.

JIM TREACHER: Here’s Why I Hate Media Matters.

The next day, when the [Daily] Caller reported out the story, they got that incoming number from the office switchboard and called it back. Only then did McGuinn identify himself as a federal agent. I don’t know if he admitted to being the driver then, or later.

All of which is to ask you, dear reader:

How in the hell was I supposed to know who hit me?

Telepathy? Crystal ball? Authorial omniscience?

But Media Matters didn’t care about any of that. They just saw me as an enemy, for the crime of accepting a job offer from Tucker Carlson. So they maligned me as I lay in a hospital bed after being crippled for life. They compounded my suffering, because that’s their job.

It’s the sort of thing a fella tends to remember.

All of which is to say I’m glad those MMFA idiots decided to mess with Elon Musk, because he’s suing them and they’re panicking and yesterday they laid off a bunch of people whose only job was to watch Fox News and read conservative media and try to ruin the lives of those who dare to disagree with them.

Or, y’know, libel them after they were just in a horrible accident. For kicks.

I neither like nor trust Elon Musk, but today my hat is off to him. Not since Hulk Hogan took down Gawker have I been so happy.

Read the whole thing.

As James Taranto wrote in 2004, when Media Matters first began, holding itself up as a far left clone of the right’s Accuracy in Media and the Media Research Center:

See the problem here? [David] Brock’s new shop is devoted to faulting conservative opinion journalists for expressing conservative opinions. What the Media Research Center does is entirely different; it analyzes liberal bias in the news media, which are supposed to be objective. If liberals are willing to spend $2 million funding a Web site that does nothing more than expose conservative commentators for engaging in conservative commentary, can we really afford to trust them with our tax dollars?

Of course, once Media Matters did “expose conservative commentators for engaging in conservative commentary,” it was time to unleash the social media mob on them:

However, one man is holding up an olive branch this week:

PIXAR IS LAYING OFF 14% OF ITS WORKFORCE AS DISNEY SCALES BACK CONTENT:

Long-expected layoffs are hitting Pixar Animation Studios on Tuesday.

Pixar will lay off about 175 employees, or around 14% of the studio’s workforce, a spokesperson for parent company Walt Disney told CNBC. The cuts come as CEO Bob Iger works toward his overarching mandate to focus on the quality of its content, not the quantity.

Layoffs hit other Disney businesses last year, but Pixar’s cuts were delayed because of production schedules. Initially, it was reported that 20% of the animation studio’s employees would be laid off.

Iger, who returned to the mantle of CEO in late 2022, has been working to reverse the company’s box office woes, spurred both by the company’s content decisions and pandemic shutdowns. While Disney has seen mixed box office success with several franchises, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the company has found it challenging to get its animated features to resonate with audiences.

Or as Ed Morrissey paraphrased this month: Iger: We’re Reducing Output Because Audiences Realized We Serve Up C***.

Fortunately, despite the sluggish economy, one veteran Pixar employee bounced back surprisingly fast:

OKAY GROOMERS, BUT IN GERMAN: Germany’s Decriminalization Of Child Porn Reminds Us Why We Need Societal Taboos.

There was an instructional news item this week that helps explain the collapse of Western civilization we see all around us these days. The German parliament voted to decriminalize the possession of child pornography, downgrading it from a felony to a misdemeanor offense and reducing minimum sentences for possession and distribution.

German lawmakers justified their action by arguing that decriminalization gave “necessary flexibility” to deal with the “large proportion of juvenile offenders,” and would also protect parents and teachers who discover child porn on the devices of young people and pass them on to the relevant authorities.

But as critics rightly noted, instead of creating exceptions in the law to deal with these kind of contingencies, German lawmakers downgraded all possession and distribution of child porn — a move that was cheered by pro-pedophile advocacy groups. The members of these groups believe anti-child porn laws, and indeed all legal prohibitions on pedophilia, are nothing more than antiquated taboos that society must discard in the name of personal autonomy and self-determination. One such group, Krumme-13 or simply K13, praised the vote but bemoaned the fact that no politician had yet “apologized to the thousands upon thousands of those affected who fell victim” to the now-defunct criminal laws prohibiting possession and distribution of child porn.

The Weimar Republic called and told Germany to dial it back a notch or ten.

CONFIRMED: Hunter Biden’s ‘Laptop From Hell’ Is Authentic and Will Be Trial Evidence, Per Special Counsel.

Federal prosecutors on Hunter Biden’s illegal gun purchase case will now be using a wealth of information taken from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop in the First Son’s upcoming trial – and over the objections of Hunter’s attorneys, Special Prosecutor David Weiss told Judge Maryellen Norieka that the laptop is authentic and he can prove it. Hunter Biden’s past may be — finally — about to catch up with him.

Federal prosecutors plan to deploy thousands of pages of electronic records from first son Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” and other technology — including a message demanding more “chore boy” to smoke crack cocaine, court papers show.

President Biden’s 54-year-old son goes on trial June 3 in the Delaware federal case accusing him of illegally owning a gun while addicted to drugs and prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’ office have said they plan to show damning evidence taken from the laptop, a hard drive and an iCloud account linked to his iPad and iPhone XR.

In all, the feds say, they have more than 18,000 pages of Biden’s electronic records which they want to summarize in a chart for jurors.

—Ward Clark, Red State.com, yesterday.

And worse: Biden’s daughter Ashley has finally admitted her diary about ‘showers with dad’ as well as fears she was ‘molested’ is real. So, [the London Daily Mail’s] Maureen Callahan demands: What IS the truth, Joe?

THOSE FINGERS IN MY HAIR, THAT SLY COME HITHER STARE THAT STRIPS MY CONSCIENCE BARE, IT’S NICHE CRAFT: Driving stick shift has become a niche craft in America.

Shifting gears, the feel of the clutch underneath your foot. These mark the experience behind the wheel of a manual transmission car — now a rare breed in the U.S.

Though the American auto industry focuses on automatic vehicles, some car enthusiasts continue to hit the road with a stick shift. Manual transmission vehicles offer more control, with drivers maneuvering the shifter between gears.

Or, in some case, not: Automakers can’t quit manual transmissions so they’re cramming fake stuff into EVs. “Toyota is toying with an EV prototype that mimics driving a manual transmission, complete with a stick shift that doesn’t do anything and fake engine noises. What are we doing here, people?”

Decline is a choice, America:

JON GABRIEL: What Libertarianism Gets Wrong.

Remember the “New Atheists”? They were a big deal 15 or so years ago, bashing irrationality and superstition in bestselling books like “The God Delusion,” “The End of Faith” and “God Is Not Great.” Some of them ultimately ended up as believers, others turned to ayahuasca, and Richard Dawkins recently admitted to being a “cultural Christian.” He still doesn’t believe in the big J.C., but acknowledges his worldview was shaped in a Christian context.

In a similar way, I’ve always been a cultural libertarian. A son of the Mountain West, my traditional conservatism is heavily dosed with a “leave me the hell alone” contempt for Washington, Wall Street and anyone else who dares to tell me what to do. It’s more instinct than ideology. When policy wonks argue how government can best solve a problem, I’m the guy in back muttering, “Why should government be involved at all?”

That said, I’ve never described myself as a full-blown libertarian—never joined the party, haven’t even read “Atlas Shrugged.” Despite admiring the libertarian movement, I’ve always sensed a hollowness at its core that didn’t jibe with human nature.

Many politically minded people have filled out “The World’s Smallest Political Quiz” or the Political Compass. By answering a few questions, these questionnaires map your beliefs on a grid instead of a left-right continuum. The latter uses two axes: Authoritarian vs. Libertarian and Left vs. Right. You can take it here.

After taking and retaking these surveys, I always end up in the fourth quadrant: Libertarian Right. Here’s to freer markets, smaller government and individual rights. But this only covers economic and political issues while ignoring the many, many other elements of human flourishing.

Take the test and read the whole thing. (Or vice-versa.)

THE MASTERPIECE OF OUR TIME: On The Gulag Archipelago at fifty.

Western intellectuals usually supposed that Russian dissidents might suffer the sort of punishment that in their own countries is reserved for dangerous criminals. At worst, Westerners pictured conditions like those in tsarist Russia, long considered the model of an oppressive state. That is why Solzhenitsyn devotes so many passages to contrasting what passed for tyranny in nineteenth-century Russia with ordinary Soviet conditions.

Begin with numbers. Solzhenitsyn instructs: from 1876 to 1904—a period of mass strikes, peasant revolts, and terrorism claiming the lives of Tsar Alexander II and other top officials—“486 people were executed; in other words, about seventeen people per year for the whole country,” a figure that includes “ordinary, nonpolitical criminals!” During the 1905 revolution and its suppression, “executions rocketed upward, astounding Russian imaginations, calling forth tears from Tolstoy and indignation from [the writer Vladimir] Korolenko, and many, many others: from 1905 through 1908 2,200 persons were executed,” a number contemporaries described as an “epidemic of executions.”

By contrast, Soviet judicial killings—whether by shooting, forced starvation, or hard labor at forty degrees below zero—numbered in the tens of millions. Crucially, condemnation did not require individual guilt. As early as 1918, Solzhenitsyn points out, the Cheka (secret police) leader M. I. Latsis instructed revolutionary tribunals dispensing summary justice to disregard personal guilt or innocence and just ascertain the prisoner’s class origin: this “must determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning of the Red Terror.”

On this basis, over five million peasants (classed as “kulaks,” supposedly better off than their neighbors) were forcibly exiled to completely unsettled wastelands with no food or tools, where they were left to die. The same punishment later befell whole nationalities deemed potentially disloyal (such as ethnic Germans, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars) or dangerous because of the possibility of receiving subversive support from a foreign power (as in the case of Koreans and Poles). “The liquidation of the kulaks as a class” was followed by the deliberate starvation of millions of peasants. All food for a large area of what is now Ukraine was requisitioned, and even fishing in the rivers was prohibited, so that over the next few months inhabitants starved to death. Idealistic young Bolsheviks from the capital enforced the famine. In total, Stalin’s war on the countryside claimed more than ten million lives. As Solzhenitsyn makes clear, this crime is not nearly as well known among intellectuals as the Great Purges, which claimed fewer victims, because many purge victims were themselves intellectuals.

Arrests also took place by quotas assigned to local secret-police offices, which, if they knew what was good for them, petitioned to arrest still more. After World War II, captured Russian soldiers in German slave-labor camps were promptly transferred to Russian ones, as was anyone who had seen something of the Western world. Even soldiers who had fought their way out of German encirclement were arrested as traitors, simply because they had been behind German lines. Still more shocking, the Allies—who could not imagine why people would not want to return to their homeland—forcibly repatriated, often at bayonet point, over a million fugitives, some of whom committed suicide rather than face what they knew awaited them.

In his introduction Gary Saul Morson writes:

When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation appeared in 1973, its impact, the author recalled, was immediate: “Like matter enveloped by antimatter, it exploded instantaneously!” The first translations into Western languages in 1974—just fifty years ago—proved almost as sensational. No longer was it so easy to cherish a sentimental attachment to communism and the USSR. In France, where Marxism had remained fashionable, the book changed the course of intellectual life, and in America it helped counter the New Left celebration of Mao, Castro, and other disciples of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.

Which is why the American left hated Solzhenitsyn so, Tom Wolfe wrote in his 1976 article, “The Intelligent Co-Ed’s Guide to America:”

Solzhenitsyn’s tour of the United States in 1975 was like an enormous funeral procession that no one wanted to see. The White House wanted no part of him. The New York Times sought to bury his two major’ speeches, and only the moral pressure of a lone Times writer, Hilton Kramer, brought them any appreciable coverage at all. The major tele­vision networks declined to run the Solzhenitsyn interview that created such a stir in England earlier this year (it ran on some of the educa­tional channels).

And the literary world in general ignored him completely. In the huge unseen coffin that Solzhenitsyn towed behind him were not only the souls of the zeks who died in the Archipelago. No, the heartless bastard had also chucked in one of the last great visions: the intellec­tual as the Stainless Steel Socialist glistening against the bone heap of capitalism in its final, brutal, fascist phase. There was a bone heap, all right, and it was grisly beyond belief, but socialism, had created it.

Earlier: Why Isn’t Lenin As Condemned As Hitler?