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Californians are ramping up another recall for Gov. Gavin Newsom, a good thing for America even if it fails, as in 2021. A new recall in California will divert attention from races across the country, force Democrats to spend millions. The best outcome would be a successful recall of Newsom his own self.
The coiffed Democrat is a construct of the Brown, Newsom, Pelosi and Getty families, a belch from old money San Francisco. Like Joe Biden, whose administration he admires, Newsom is a semi-literate who shows little evidence of reading books. To be fair, the San Francisco Democrat probably outdoes Biden in his affection for China’s one-party Communist dictatorship, and current PRC boss Xi Jinping. For his recent visit, Newsom even cleaned up filthy San Francisco.
Like recurring governor Jerry Brown, who appointed Newsom’s father to judgeships, Gavin Newsom has never said anything that would make a sub-moron’s mouth twitch. He walks around posing, as he intones party platitudes in a scratchy pirate voice. Gov. Newsom inflicted a draconian Covid regime but now wants the people to worship him. This was evident in 2021 but Gavin Newsom prevailed.
The current recall might prompt an independent audit to see how many votes came from false-documented illegals registered to vote when they got their driver’s license. Squads of politiqueros coerce the illegals to vote “a certain way,” code for Democrats. With promises of “free” health care, welfare benefits, protection from deportation and so forth, Newsom shapes up as the politiquero-in-chief.
The new recall provides an opportunity to expose this massive fraud, which could inspire other states to true the vote. If only legitimate citizens and legal immigrants voted, as the law requires, the result could be quite different from 2020 and 2021.
Mitch McConnell announced today that he will resign his Senate leadership position in November, while remaining in office through his current term. I have generally thought well of McConnell and believe that on the whole, he has done a good job of leading his caucus. But it is notable that, as far as I know, not a single Republican has expressed regret at his decision.
It was time to go, if only because the geriatric era in Washington needs to end. While nowhere near as debilitated as Joe Biden, McConnell’s health issues in recent years have been visible. It is highly desirable for Republicans not to be seen, like the Democrats, as a party of octogenarians.
What comes next? The Wall Street Journal speculates:
Potential successors, including Sens. John Thune (R., S.D.), John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) and John Cornyn (R., Texas), have been quietly positioning themselves for the day McConnell steps down. Other possible candidates include GOP Sens. Steve Daines of Montana, Rick Scott of Florida and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Most of those senators are perceived as more conservative than McConnell, although that may be largely because McConnell has been in a leadership position for so long. As the leader of a caucus, responsible for negotiating agreements that can actually pass, you can’t be a firebrand backbencher–although, to their credit, that description doesn’t fit those the Journal identifies as candidates, either.
Finally, let’s hope Republicans do it the old-fashioned way by agreeing on a new leader behind closed doors, and then anointing him with a show of unanimity. A fiasco like the one we endured in the House of Representatives is to be avoided.
Yesterday we noted Trump’s rising strength among certain voting groups. How about by profession instead of ethnicity, gender, and the other usual things? Like professions perhaps? Everyone likes to say the political divide in America is between red states and blue states. But it looks like the division is more white versus blue when it comes to who is supporting Trump’s campaign—that is, white collar professionals against blue collar workers.
I keep seeing Trump skeptics and their media svengalis say that while Nikki Haley is not coming close to beating Trump in any primary battle, she is getting sufficient support to conclude that there is a critical mass of Republicans who don’t like Trump and may not turn out for him in November, and boy is he in big trouble because of this.
Don’t buy it.
I note that back in 1980, the Michigan primary was held May 20, and even though Ronald Reagan was well on his way to securing the Republican nomination, George H.W. Bush still pulled off an upset in that primary, beating Reagan by 150,000 votes. (Bush also beat Reagan in the Pennsylvania primary in April.) Michigan looks to be the kind of state that favors moderate Republicans.
When all the primaries were over, Reagan had received a cumulative 7.6 million votes, while Bush had received 3.1 million, with John Anderson a distant third with 1.5 million. But add Bush and Anderson’s totals together with the also-rans (Dole, Baker, Connally, Phil Crane, etc) and you conclude that Reagan’s majority was less than a landslide (7.6 million to 4.6 million for the rest of the field—certainly a much smaller margin than Trump’s margin in the current contest. Despite the massive doubts about Reagan—his age, his “controversial” opinions, etc—he walked away with a landslide.
But, you hear, Trump is essentially running as an incumbent, and should have incumbent-level margins. This is an unimpressive argument, especially when you allow for the circumstance, not seen since 1912, of a former president coming back to challenge for the nomination. To the contrary, Trump is running far ahead of his totals from the 2016 contest. He’s gotten stronger, not weaker, since 2016.
P.S. For trivia buffs, Harold Stassen got 25,000 votes in the 1980 GOP primaries.
The Venice Biennale is one of the world’s biggest art shows. The show has a national focus:
Held since 1895 and considered the world’s top art event, the Venice Biennale, which starts in April, gives nations the chance to show off their best artists at national pavilions.
That is the hook for pro-mass muder artists to try to boot Israel out:
A petition to kick Israel out of the Venice Biennale art show because of the war in Gaza signed by more than 16,000 artists, curators and academics has been angrily dismissed as “shameful” by Italy’s arts minister.
More to come from the culture minister, a Giorgia Meloni appointee.
Signed by art world luminaries including Jesse Darling, the British Turner prize winner, the petition claims: “The Biennale is platforming a genocidal apartheid state. No death in Venice. No business as usual.”
“Platforming” is a sinister term that generally means failing to discriminate against. Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano pushed back:
The petition drew a furious response from Gennaro Sangiuliano, the Italian culture minister, who lambasted what he described as “a diktat from those who think they are the custodians of the truth, and who with anger and hatred try to threaten the freedom of thought and creative expression in a democratic nation like Italy”. He added: “The Biennale will always be a space of freedom, meeting and dialogue rather than censorship and intolerance. Culture is a bridge between people and nations, not a wall of division.”
Israel is to be represented at the Biennale by Ruth Patir, who is plenty far left by any normal standard. But that doesn’t cut any ice with anti-Semites.
This flap is a reminder that art isn’t what it used to be. As noted above, Britain’s Jesse Darling is apparently the most notable of the artists trying to ban Israel. Here he is with some of his art works:
Which prompts the question: is there a connection between bad art and bad politics? Mr. Darling is, on this question, a data point.
CBS has fired Catherine Herridge, an investigative reporter who was “pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal, and the Hunter Biden laptop.” After dumping Herridge, “CBS officials took the unusual step of seizing her files, computers and records, including information on privileged sources.” These files, “likely contain confidential material from both her stints at Fox and CBS” and are now “presumptively the property of CBS News.”
Joseph Klein traces these issues to Dan Rather, but they really go back to CBS “anchorman” Walter Cronkite, once billed as the most trusted man in America. As Douglas Brinkley showed in Cronkite, many of Cronkite’s dispatches during WWII “were propagandistic.” Cronkite coached John F. Kennedy about “getting across” on television, and long before Watergate, Cronkite “orchestrated the secret tape recording of the Republicans’ credentials committee meeting.” This was conducted, “under the shady rationale that the covert act was good for democracy.” According to Brinkley, “it was a real black eye to Cronkite,” who said of Jimmy Carter, “He’s got one of the best brains of anybody I’ve known.”
Cronkite wrapped his regular broadcast with “that’s the way it is,” but as one wag put it, when you watched Walter Cronkite you not only saw CBS, you heard it too. That was also true of Dan Rather, who in 1986 made news his own self. A man confronted Rather demanding “Kenneth what’s the frequency?” and duly beat the fertilizer out of the CBS anchorman. The network put it off to mistaken identity, which could be true in one sense.
Government and establishment media are Siamese twins, joined at the mouth. As Catherine Herridge confirms, cross the government and you’re a goner, with your documents confiscated. Consider also former CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, author of Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, published in 2014.
Readers learn that CBS News president David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, advisor to Obama and up to his eyeballs in the Benghazi scandal. Joel Molinoff came to CBS after serving the Obama White House as director of the Intelligence Advisory Board, and before that worked for the NSA. CBS also hired Mike Morell, formerly a deputy director of the CIA. So as Attkisson explained, CBS stories on Benghazi, Obamacare and so forth might as well have been written by the White House.
Attkisson’s computer was infiltrated with spyware proprietary to government agencies such as the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The intruders planted classified information, adding “the possible threat of criminal prosecution.” Ten years later, those who expose the scandals of the Biden Junta can be sure that Big Brother is watching.
Attorney Terrence Bradley testified yesterday in the hearing on the possible disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Special Counsel Nathan Wade in the “conspiracy so immense” charges against President Trump et al. pending in Georgia state court. Bradley is Wade’s former law partner and lawyer in his divorce proceeding. He knows when the Willis/Wade romance began because Wade told him.
Indeed, as Techno Fog notes, Bradley has previously stated in text messages to Ashleigh Merchant (attorney for defendant Michael Roman) that: (1) the relationship between Willis and Wade started before he was appointed special prosecutor, (2) the relationship started while they were both magistrate judges, and (3) the motion to disqualify Willis, which alleged the start date of the relationship, was accurate.
However, that’s not the way it turned out on the witness stand. After long pauses, Bradley disavowed his previous statements. He couldn’t recall. He was speculating. As in the old Jack Benny joke, he was thinking about it. He knew nothing.
Mr. Fog offers pierces the fog with this clear summary of Bradley’s testimony: “[Bradley] speculated about the start of the relationship, only had one meeting with Wade about the relationship, and has no personal knowledge as to when the relationship started. All of that, of course, was contradicted by his prior representations to Ms. Merchant.”
It made for painful viewing. Everyone in the room knew that Bradley was lying. Which means that Willis and Wade had lied in their testimony, which was almost as obvious. Below is an excerpt of Bradley’s testimony that ran in full over two hours. As I say, it makes for painful viewing.
The Michigan primary was held yesterday. President Biden defeated Uncommitted, Marianne Willison, and my cousin Dean Phillips on the Democrat side. Dean commented on Twitter for the benefit of his former friends in the party: “If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!”
President Trump handily defeated Nikki Haley on the Republican side. Here are the current results posted by RealClearPolitics. Note the differential in turnout.
One can infer that Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s presidential nominees, but the results seem slightly more surprising than expected. Axios managing editor/politics David Lindsey offers a brief take on the results that I found helpful:
There wasn’t much doubt that President Biden and former President Trump would romp to victories in the Michigan primaries Tuesday. But Biden’s win in particular revealed his vulnerability in a crucial swing state that could decide the presidency in November….Arab American and young voters — key to Biden winning Michigan in 2020 — turned out by the tens of thousands on Tuesday to vote … not for Biden, but for “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
• The protest vote, driven by anger over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, had drawn more than 77,000 supporters with 70% of the ballots counted — several times more than organizers expected.
• That took some of the glow from a victory in which Biden got more than 80% of the vote, and confirmed that Biden has some serious persuading to do between now and November.
• “We need more than just nice words and hope. We need a permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, told CNN. The group was behind the “uncommitted” vote effort.
Other takeaways from Michigan:
1, Biden has other problems, too.
• Another jolt for the president’s campaign Tuesday: A jarring enthusiasm gap between the Democratic and Republican primaries.
• Nearly 40% more people voted in the Republican primary than in the Democratic contest — despite the protest campaign that aided turnout on the Democratic side.
• Trump, who once again defeated former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, got more votes on the GOP side than the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary between Biden, “uncommitted” and two other candidates.
2. It wasn’t all good news for Trump.
• That surge in GOP voters was driven in part by about 27% of Republicans voting for Haley, whose support continues to be not nearly enough to win the Republican nomination — but enough to show that a sizable chunk of the GOP may never be on board with Trump.
• Haley’s campaign might not last beyond Super Tuesday next week, when Trump is expected to score hundreds of delegates and put a virtual lock on the GOP nomination as 16 states hold contests.
• But Haley’s level of support suggests that many of her backers may stay home in November — or even vote for Biden, if Trump is on the ballot.
Whole thing here.
We seek to read the tea leaves in the results. As some sage has famously observed, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch puts it this way: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” To read the tea leaves we have to project ahead to next November. How will the candidates look at that time? Our crystal ball is cloudy. Both Biden and Trump are hobbled by weaknesses that will be magnified over the next eight months.
For Democrats this is the Weekend At Bernie’s election. It has become increasingly difficult to keep Biden upright during business hours. His brain is fried. His managers have to keep him under wraps. He is an embarrassment. Playing to his party’s activist base, he has left undone what should have been done and he has done that which should not have been done.
For Republicans this is the “In the Jailhouse Now” election. The electoral impact of the Democrat lawfare on Trump are particularly difficult to predict, but they can’t be good for him. They impose their own limitations on Trump in terms of time, money, and who knows what else. That’s what it’s all about. Anyone can see storm clouds ahead.
I absolutely hate the clichéd last resort of scoundrel pundits as the election approaches. You know, “it depends on turnout.” With respect to what should be the insuperable problems each candidate confronts, let’s just say “it depends on how it turns out.” They can’t both lose. One of them is going to prevail.
Social media alerts me to the fact that today would be Sir Roger Scruton’s 80th birthday. Sadly, Sir Roger passed away from cancer in 2020. I got to know Sir Roger fairly well in his last decade, and had several splendid exhilarating dinners with him and his lovely wife Sophie over very expensive bottles of fine Bordeaux (among his 50-plus superb books was, after all, I Drink, Therefore I Am—highly recommended), conversing and sometimes having extensive but very friendly arguments. Roger didn’t like Leo Strauss, for example, and I cross-examined him closely on this subject one leisurely evening. Wish I had run a tape. Anyway, nearby is the last time I got to see Roger in person.
As it happened, I had been working on a long essay “The Greatest Living Conservative” at the time of his death. I lost heart after the premise became obsolete, and I shall someday try to revise and complete it. But here are a couple excerpts from the draft:
In the introduction to The Meaning of Conservatism, Scruton writes that “Conservatism may rarely announce itself in maxims, formulae, or aims. Its essence is inarticulate, and its expression, when compelled, skeptical.”
Why “inarticulate”? Because, has he explains elsewhere, the liberal has the easy job in the modern world. The liberal points at the imperfections and defects of existing institutions or the existing social order, strikes a pose of indignation, and huffs that surely something better is required, usually with the attitude that the something better is simply a matter of will. The conservative faces the tougher challenge of understanding and explaining the often subtle reasons why existing institutions, no matter how imperfect, work better than speculative alternatives.
This kind of conservatism is criticized, sometimes with good reason, as being stand-patism.
I’m reminded of what might be called Hallmark Greeting Card conservatism, though it traces back to Pascal: “The heart has its reasons, which reason cannot know.” The more modern version was offered by Wittgenstein: “There are things that can be known, but not said.”
Or, as Roger put it more succinctly elsewhere in his reflections on the profundity of the common law: “English law, I discovered, is the answer to Foucault.”
From that one sentence entire dissertations could follow.
Postscript—another fragment from my unfinished essay:
Roger Scruton has written more books than I have read, including, beyond philosophy, books on food and wine, art, beauty, sport, architecture, music, and sex; environmentalism, theology, a novel, and a memoir, and, very recently, even a self-help book, How to Be a Conservative. Although I’m tempted to say that if I haven’t figured out how to be a conservative by now, it’s probably too late for a book to help me. To paraphrase an old Woody Allen joke, if Roger was American instead of British, I fear he might have written The Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Conservative. (The original joke: Kant: The Categorical Imperative, and Six Ways to Make It Work for You!) (Though I did notice on Amazon that you can get a Roger Scruton iPhone case.)
Though if asked where to start with Roger’s body of work, I typically recommend his memoir Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life. Having myself reached the galloping years of middle age, I can say that if your regrets are only gentle, you’re doing pretty well. But his chapter “How I Became a Conservative” is a good introduction to the four-way intersection of Roger’s philosophical, political, cultural, and aesthetic thought.
This fall will mark the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the famous “free speech” movement at UC Berkeley. You can find my account of it, written in the aftermath of the Milo Yiannopoulos riot of February, 2017, which I was present for, at this link.
The Yiannopoulos riot was bad enough, but last night there was a sequel at Berkeley. As loyal readers may know, I am not around campus much this semester, as I’m temporarily filling in for a recently deceased professor at Pepperdine’s graduate school. So I missed a mob that prevented Ran Bar-Yoshafat, a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces who has been deployed in Gaza, from giving a presentation on campus at the invitation of several student groups.
The mob was not peacefully protesting. As has happened to Jewish students at many campuses, the mob was banging on doors and threatening violence. The Jewish News of Northern California offers an account—some excerpts:
Jewish students at UC Berkeley evacuated from a campus theater Monday night after a mass of protesters, chanting “Intifada! Intifada!” and other slogans, shattered a glass door at the venue and shut down a scheduled lecture by an Israeli attorney and IDF reservist.
Several students who were attending or working the event at Zellerbach Playhouse were injured, including two young women, one of whom sprained a thumb wrestling to keep a door shut as protesters tried to muscle it open. Another female student reportedly was handled around her neck, leaving marks. A third student was spit on, he told J.
The lecture was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Ran Bar-Yoshafat, who is a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces and was deployed in Gaza, planned to discuss international law as it pertains to Israel. “He’ll explore whether Israel violates international law, the rules of wartime conduct, and how the IDF can better protect civilians,” a social media post publicizing the event said.
The talk was conceived of as a small lecture in a classroom at Wheeler Hall, but organizers moved it at the direction of campus police for safety reasons after the anti-Zionist group Bears for Palestine, the Cal affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine, called for a protest to “shut it down,” according to Joseph Karlan, a student leader of campus pro-Israel group Tikvah and one of the event organizers.
There’s more at the link.
Separately in the Jewish News, Daniel Solomon, a graduate student acquaintance of mine who was present, reports:
The people who were forced to flee apparently forfeited their right to security after committing the unpardonable sin of coming to hear an Israeli speak on campus. The university, which has touted its commitment to free speech while actually condoning a climate of antisemitic intimidation, did little to protect the safety of the speaker and audience — and even less to protect their free speech rights.
Parading through the campus in a fashion worthy of the finest paramilitary, the pro-Palestinian rioters exulted in their victory.
This latest episode at UC Berkeley caps months of harassment — and on occasion, violent outbursts— from wannabe Hamasniks. On Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas pogrom, Bears for Palestine released a statement praising its “comrades in blood and arms” for their operations “in the so-called ‘Gaza envelope.’” The same organization then mounted demonstrations at which participants clamored to “globalize the intifada” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
Again, more at the link above, and do read the whole thing if you have time.
If there are no consequences for this latest act, which is worse in many ways than the Yiannopoulos affair if you think about it for a few minutes, then it can truly be said that free speech is dead at UC Berkeley.
Here are some related videos and collateral material:
I didn’t know this but apparently students were spat on, called antisemitic insults, and even assaulted at last’s night event @UCBerkeley . Shame on this institution, which still has nothing to say.
https://t.co/AQO7Yu35yw— Daniel Solomon (@DanielJSolomon) February 27, 2024
Last night at @UCBerkeley, Jewish students were threatened, assaulted, and prevented from attending a speech by a Jewish speaker on campus. Campus police shut down this private event when it became clear that they could not protect the students. Multiple students reported being… pic.twitter.com/FKidts1FvZ
— JCRC Bay Area (@SFJCRC) February 27, 2024
I’ve reached the point where I hope a second Trump Administration will propose Nuremberg Trials for campus anti-Semites, on whom who foolish college administrations bestowed tenured faculty positions.
This picture of kids on a playground in 1912 popped up on my Instagram feed:
It got me thinking: if you encouraged that sort of activity today, someone would call the police. No one would consider it safe for kids to play that way, and when it comes to children, safety–or “safety”–is the supreme value.
I have been working, on and off, on a memoir about what it was like to grow up in a small town in South Dakota in the 1950s and early 60s. Looking back, kids in that time and place enjoyed an astonishing degree of freedom. Kids played, almost always without parents having anything to do with it. In some ways, you could say our parents were strict. On the other hand, they rarely had any idea what we were doing. As long as we were home for dinner at six, we were good.
Those days are gone. And yet, despite the hothouse environments in which children are raised nowadays, they aren’t safe at all. On the contrary: a great many of them can’t cope. I ran across this podcast by Bari Weiss: “Why the Kids Aren’t Alright.”
American kids are the freest, most privileged kids in all of history. They are also the saddest, most anxious, depressed, and medicated generation on record. Nearly a third of teen girls say they have seriously considered suicide. For boys, that number is an alarming 14 percent.
What’s even stranger is that all of these worsening mental health outcomes for kids have coincided with a generation of parents hyper-fixated on the mental health and well-being of their children.
Take, for example, the biggest parenting trend today: “gentle parenting.” Parents today are told to understand their kids’ feelings instead of punishing them when they act out. This emphasis on the importance of feelings is not just a parenting trend—it’s become an educational tool as well. “Social-emotional learning” has become a pillar in public schools across America, from kindergarten to high school. And maybe most significantly, therapy for children has been normalized. In fact, there are more kids in therapy today than ever before.
On the surface, all of these parenting and educational developments seem positive. We are told that parents and educators today are more understanding, more accepting, more empathetic, and more compassionate than ever before—which, in turn, makes wonderful children.
But is that really the case? Are all of these changes—the cultural rethink, the advent of therapy culture, of gentle parenting, of teaching kids about social-emotional learning—actually making our kids better?
Best-selling author Abigail Shrier says no.
In her new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, Shrier argues that these changes are directly contributing to kids’ mental health decline. In other words: all of this shiny new stuff is actually making our kids worse.
Today: What’s gone wrong with American youth? What really happens to kids who get therapy but don’t actually need it? In our attempt to keep kids safe, are we failing the next generation of adults? And, if yes, how do we reverse it before it’s too late?
That conversation is a little different from the kids playing on 20 foot high jungle gyms, but clearly related. It is a big topic, and that is enough for the moment.
Cornel West is the Princeton University Class of 1943 University Professor emeritus. He is running as an independent candidate for president. He fancies himself “one of America’s most provocative public intellectuals; a champion for Truth, Justice & Love.” That’s what the man said. In the tweet below, he celebrates the suicide of Aaron Bushnell in the service of “free Palestine” — free, Hamas style. If he gets on the ballot in Michigan, he poses a certain kind of danger to the reelection of Joe Biden.
Let us never forget the extraordinary courage and commitment of brother Aaron Bushnell who died for truth and justice! I pray for his precious loved ones! Let us rededicate ourselves to genuine solidarity with Palestinians undergoing genocidal attacks in real time!… pic.twitter.com/9F7dXOAYJt
— Cornel West (@CornelWest) February 26, 2024
My pal Henry Olsen explains in his recent Telegraph column that Trump is underperforming his polls in recent contests, and appears to be stuck between a very solid floor and a rigid ceiling. Perhaps, but the Telegraph included this graphic, taken from recent Pew polls, that suggests a different picture:
To be fair, a generic Republican ought to be polling about 60 percent of the white vote, and that’s just where Trump is stuck. It would be a delicious irony if Trump wins in November through an increased share of minority votes. It will plunge Democrats into a crisis.
Thich Quang Duc was the Buddhist monk who self-immolated to protest the Diem regime during South Vietnam’s so-called Buddhist crisis of 1963. The AP’s Malcolm Browne won the World Press Photo of the Year in 1963 with the famous photograph of Duc on fire. Ray Boomhower’s forthcoming book about it is titled The Ultimate Protest.
Air Force senior airman Aaron Bushnell replayed the scene outside the Israeli embassy in Washington this past Sunday afternoon. He called it “an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.” He posted a video online saying he did not want to be “complicit in genocide.” He repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine” as he burned. He died later that night, apparently of the injuries he sustained lighting himself up.
It’s a bizarre story. The New York Post reported on it here and here, the Washington Post here, and the Daily Mail here (with video before Bushnell doused himself).
The Washington Post reports that Bushnell’s “suicidal protest instantly won him praise among some antiwar and pro-Palestinian activists…” If you get your news from the Washington Post, support for Hamas is now “antiwar” and “pro-Palestinian” means pro-Hamas.
The New York Post unsuccessfully sought comment from the Israeli embassy. However, Brendan O’Neill is not so discreet. He comments in his Spiked column here.
Anyone contemplating self-harm or suicide should get help. Bushnell needed a friend to urge him to reconsider or to give himself time to reconsider. Mental illness runs deep.
Bushnell might have helped himself by applying critical thought to what he reads in newspapers like the Washington Post and figuring out who’s zoomin’ who in “Palestine.” Israel is not committing “genocide.” It is the victim of those who expressly seek to commit “genocide,” but I’m sure Hamas is grateful for Bushnell’s support.
And Bushnell wasn’t “complicit” in Israel’s effort to defend itself against genocide. A combination of political witlessness and mental illness appears to have rendered Bushnell impervious to the reality principle.
Star Tribune music reviewer Jon Bream put in a good word for Victoria Victoria last week and prompted me to buy tickets for the show this past Sunday at the Dakota. Victoria Victoria is the name of the band — Victoria Elliott on lead vocal, Charlie Hunter on guitar, Noah Elliott on electric piano and backing vocals, Carter McClean on drums, and Maia Kamil on backing vocals.
Jon tagged Victoria — she goes by “Tory” — as “a beguilingly jazzy alt-folk singer, pair[ed] with adventurous guitarist Charlie Hunter.” I can hear the influence of Norah Jones in her singing, but she has a wider dynamic range. She can belt it out.
Charlie Hunter is beyond “adventurous.” He is a phenomenal guitarist. He plays a hybrid electric guitar that lets him thump out a bass line while playing lead. I have never seen that before. I think he was playing one of his own Hybrid Six guitar models — smiling all the while. (I wrote his agent yesterday to ask but haven’t heard back.)
Carter McLean rounds out the rhythm section on drums. Victoria’s brother, Noah Elliott, plays piano and acoustic guitar and sings harmony. Maia Kamil is a singer-songwriter who supports Victoria on the vocals.
Elliott writes or collaborates on her own songs. She could use some help with the lyrics, but she has created a beautiful sound. The video below provides an acoustic take on her song “Over My Shoulder” (written with Hunter and Stephen Lee Price) with both brother Noah and sister Halle joining on the vocals along with Kamil. She winds up her current tour in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
You can catch a glimpse of Hunter playing the Hybrid in the video of Elliott’s “Sanctuary” below.
Okay, this is officially the funniest thing on the internet right now: “Tucker Carlson” explaining the real story of Lord of the Rings. (There are a bunch more of these on YouTube, like this one. YMMV.)
As promised,
Here’s an AI Tucker Carlson narrating The Lord of the Rings@MiddleearthMixr @TuckerCarlson pic.twitter.com/eiXtR0m2qz
— Dr. Maverick Alexander (@MaverickDarby) February 25, 2024
We haven’t checked in on Venezuela for a while. Formerly one of the world’s richest countries, Venezuela has become destitute since it was taken over by socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The country has gone downhill in an ever-worsening spiral of poverty and dysfunction. Things have gotten so bad that American liberals no longer hold up Venezuela as an example of “real socialism.”
The London Times reports:
[T]his is a country still suffering the trauma of the most spectacular currency collapse of our times. The Venezuelan bolivar, which in the 1960s was considered as solid a store of value as the Swiss franc, is now worth less than the paper it is printed on. If you converted a million dollars into bolivars in 2013 — when Nicolás Maduro first came to power — and left it in an interest-accruing Venezuelan bank for the past decade, your current balance would be about 3 cents.
Let’s hear it for socialism! And also for money-printing. Venezuela kept printing currency until it could no longer afford the paper and ink, but how different is that from the path our own government is currently on?
All this became glaringly apparent during an especially precipitous period of the downward spiral, during 2018 and 2019. With annual inflation touching two million per cent, a brick of notes was needed to buy a sandwich. The government ran out of the ink and paper physically needed to print more money.
Debit cards, along with bartering, became essential; with everyone from coconut sellers in the Caribbean to barbers in Caracas using cheap card readers to make transactions. But banks were slow to keep up with the devaluation, failing to raise their limits per transaction. Buying just a few items in a supermarket could therefore require three or four bank cards.
Life under socialism isn’t just poor and violent, it is crazy, too.
In mid-2019, the Maduro government quietly threw in the towel and allowed people to officially use US dollars. It turned out to be a transformational moment, taming price rises and bringing in some stability.
At least 60 per cent of retail transactions in Venezuela are believed to be in dollars, either in cash or with cards.
So the viciously anti-American kleptocrats are rescued, sort of, by the American dollar. But the damage is done, as Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by 75%. The last word:
[One Venezuelan] lamented, “Nobody’s got any money. There’s nothing much left to steal.”
I suppose the kleptocrats long for the good old days, when there was still something in Venezuela worth stealing. Chavez’s daughter Maria Gabriela, a perfect exemplar of leftism who represented Venezuela in the United Nations, made off with a cool $4.2 billion. But she was a piker compared to her father’s Treasury Minister, Alejandro Andrade, who slipped away from Venezuela with $11.2 billion in Swiss banks. As I wrote back in 2015:
If you want a world in which a few obscenely rich jet-setters lord it over a sea of poor people, socialism is the ideology for you.
But even those halcyon days have come to an end, as “[t]here’s nothing much left to steal.” It is as Margaret Thatcher memorably said: the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.
I wrote here about the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley by, allegedly, illegal alien Jose Ibarra of Venezuela. The case has spurred outrage across the United States. Which, I suppose, is why the Associated Press felt the need to spin the story in another–bizarre–direction: “The killing of a nursing student out for a run highlights the fears of solo female athletes.”
If only Ms. Riley had been walking across the University of Georgia campus instead of running, the AP wants us to believe, she would have been safe! It was being an “athlete” that did her in. Ibarra, meanwhile, is described discreetly as an “Athens resident.”
The AP compounds the absurdity of its reporting with this:
Riley’s death has once again put the spotlight on the dangers female runners face. Previously, the 2018 death of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts while out jogging prompted an outpouring from other women who shared their tales of being harassed and followed.
Mollie Tibbetts, like Laken Riley, was murdered by an illegal alien. What a coincidence! But to the AP, the lesson is that women should avoid running. How about if we close the border instead?
STEVE adds: Isn’t this pathetic excuse pretty close to saying, “She was wearing an awfully short skirt. . .”
By a unanimous vote, the San Francisco supervisors have made Kelly Wong a member of the San Francisco Elections Commission. The Chinese national is the first non- U.S. citizen to hold the post, and under U.S. law she is not allowed to vote. Wong’s priority is to ensure that voter materials are translated in a way that people can understand, work she already performs as an “immigrant rights advocate” at Chinese for Affirmative Action.
According to CAA, last year “more than 24,000 Chinese migrants have made a treacherous 60-mile trek through the Darien Gap risking death and disease to eventually cross from Mexico into the U.S.” The “numbers are unprecedented,” and the San Diego Migrant Welcome Center “asked CAA to assist with the influx of arrivals.” For many, “the number one priority was to arrange transit to U.S.-based family and friends.” While this was going on, another People’s Republic of China (PRC) development escaped notice.
In January, a team from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleaned up the site of an illegal biolab run by Chinese nationals in Reedley, California, near Fresno. The site jostled with dangerous pathogens, and viral agents, some untested by the federal Centers for Disease Control. That is no surprise since the CDC cooperates closely with the PRC, and the CDC’s vaunted Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), which failed to stop Covid from arriving stateside, includes Chinese nationals.
According to The Black Book of Communism, the PRC is the most lethal regime in history, with more than 60 million victims. If the PRC ever did anything with which the CDC disagreed, it’s hard to know what it might be. The same goes for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who passed away last September. Feinstein maintained a Chinese spy on her staff for 20 years. Gov. Gavin Newsom also has a soft spot for the one-party Communist regime.
San Francisco has become the world’s largest latrine, homeless camp and junkyard, but former mayor Newsom cleaned it all up when Xi Jinping came to town. That was hardly Newsom’s only service for the PRC.
In April 2020, Gov. Newsom announced a $1 billion deal for masks with the Chinese company BYD, which had no experience making protective equipment. Newsom hid the details, even from fellow Democrats and what became of the $1 billion remained something of a mystery. Other massive favors for the PRC stand in plain sight.
For the new span of the Bay Bridge, California rejected federal money and hired a Chinese company which, at the time, had no experience building bridges. The structure came in 10 years late, $5 billion over budget, and riddled with cracked bolts, corrosion and such.
All told, the Golden State is shaping up as Californiachukuo, a development and settlement zone for the PRC. Newsom is the colonial official, and a PRC national now serves on the San Francisco Election Commission, eager to ensure accurate translation of election documents.
As Commissioner Wong should know, back in 1986 a full 73 percent of California voters passed Proposition 63, the Official Language of California Amendment, designed to “preserve the role of English as the state’s common language.” According to this law, the voter guides should be only in English, with good reason. As legal immigrants know, some proficiency in English is a requirement for U.S. citizenship, in turn, a requirement for voting in U.S. elections.
By contrast, Joe Biden believes that illegals are “already American citizens” and should be able to vote. That’s why he brought in some eight million foreign nationals with no English ability, no background checks, and no health requirements. According to Chinese for Affirmative Action, “unprecedented numbers” of them are Chinese nationals, eager to link up with those already here.
All told, Californiachukuo is shaping up as the model for the nation. To paraphrase Walter Sobchak, this is what happens when a constitutional democracy collaborates with a genocidal Communist dictatorship.
Right now the unaffordability of housing has become a national issue, and not just one for the two coasts. The fundamental reason for this is the spread of coastal-style over-regulation of housing to the interior states of “flyover country,” which had for decades mostly resisted the over-regulation of housing. Rising interest rates have something to do with this too. In any case, maybe another housing crash is in the works?
Miranda Devine addresses “The Smirnov turnoff” in today’s New York Post column “New election year means another Russiagate as Biden, Dems try to smear impeachment probe.” Devine is of course the invaluable historian of The Laptop From Hell and the Biden family business. Here is the opening of her column:
For the 2016 election, Democrats launched Russiagate 1.0: the Trump-Russia collusion hoax proven groundless by the Mueller investigation.
For the 2020 election, it was Russiagate 2.0. Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken prompted former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell to concoct the “Dirty 51” letter falsely claiming that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop was Russian disinformation.
That lie justified censorship of The Post’s accurate stories from the laptop of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s international influence peddling schemes.
Now that we’re heading into the 2024 election, we have Russiagate 3.0. Democrats pretend the impeachment inquiry has “utterly collapsed” because of the curious indictment last week of trusted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on false statement charges after he allegedly told his FBI handler that Hunter and Joe each had received a $5 million bribe from the Ukrainians.
In a frantic effort to keep Smirnov in jail pre-trial, prosecutors for notorious Biden protector David Weiss, the Delaware US attorney, used language ripped straight out of the Russiagate textbook: “Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties [Joe] continues.”
Now Smirnov is being used as make-believe vindication of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed the fake laptop letter to help Biden win the 2020 election.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA operations officer who claims to be a victim of the dubious “Havana syndrome,” pounced on the Smirnov story.
“It validates exactly what we were warning about,” he told NBC News. “The Russians were going to push this narrative of Hunter Biden and corruption, to hurt Joe Biden.”
No. Hunter’s “laptop from hell” was not Russian disinformation. It still isn’t. The FBI has had it in its possession since December 2019 and has authenticated it as real and valid for use in court.
The Dirty 51 are grasping at straws to try to justify their interference in the 2020 election. It wasn’t the Russians. It was Trump-deranged former CIA management who felt any means justified the ends if they could stop Trump winning a second term.
But now, as the laptop is augmented by whistleblower receipts and witness testimony, and as House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer unravels the complex web of corrupt foreign payments to the Biden family, the president’s praetorian guard is desperate. They are drowning in evidence of corruption while burbling, “There is no evidence!” Russia is all they have.
The joke is on Biden’s media handmaidens still pushing Joe Biden’s absurd lies.
No, the laptop is not a “Russian plant,” as he claimed. And, yes, Joe did talk to Hunter about his “overseas business dealings.”
Heck, he did a lot more than talk.
He made himself available for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, coffees, and pleasant chit chat on the speakerphone with Hunter’s foreign benefactors, all to oil the wheels of the family business — which was selling access to him, as he well knew.
“Look after my boy,” he told Kremlin-backed oligarch Elena Baturina and her husband, Yuri Luzhkov, the corrupt former mayor of Moscow, when Hunter activated the speakerphone at a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn called Romanoff on May 4, 2014.
They sure did. Just three months earlier, Baturina had wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, the firm cofounded by Hunter, his “best friend in business” Devon Archer, John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz, and Jimmy Bulger, nephew of mobster “Whitey” Bulger.
Devine has much more here.
President Biden spoke at the Governors Ball Dinner in the State Dining Room at the White House on Saturday evening (video excerpt below). The White House has posted the transcript of his brief remarks here.
After the introductory blather, Biden referred to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln behind him — you can see it here — as he attempted to follow his text. This is how the White House transcript of the fourth paragraph reads:
And, you know, standing here in front of this portrait of the man behind me here, he — he said — and I want to make sure I get the quote exactly right. He said, “We — the better angels” — he said, “We must address the counsel — and adjust the better angels of our nature.” And we do the — and we do well to remember what else he said. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends.” This is in the middle of — this is in the — in the part of the Civil War. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends. We must not be enemies.”
“The [unnamed] man behind [him}” was Lincoln. Remember him? The attempted quotation comes from the famous passage that concludes Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The Daily Mail reports on Biden’s senescent ramble in “Biden completely butchering lines from Lincoln’s inaugural address – and then gets laughs when he jokes about his age after telling audience: ‘I wanna get this quote exactly right.'” However, I’m not sure that this was the worst of Biden’s brief remarks. He also took an incoherent stab at his phony remembrance of things past:
And, you know, it seems to me that — I’ll conclude by saying, I — I’ve spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping — someone whom I have a great deal of difference with. And I was — when I was vice president, President — my — my president was — told me that he wanted me to get to know Xi Jinping because it was clear he was going to be the head of Russia — of — of China and that he — we had a — we were having problems with Russia at the time and other countries as well. And so, what he said was, “Get to know him. He’s going to be there.” I — and he couldn’t because he was the president, and he couldn’t travel. So, I traveled 17,000 miles with him throughout the country — our country and — and in — in China, as well.
We were in the Tibetan Plateau. And he turned to me, and he said, “Can you define America for me?” And I — given this has been documented, and it’s real — I looked at him, and I said, “Yes, I can. In one word.” And he looked at me. And he said, “What’s that?” And I said, “Possibilities.” Possibilities.
You say president, you say vice president. You say Russia, you say China. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Biden has reached the stage of life described by Mark Twain. His faculties have decayed to such an extent that he cannot remember any but the things that never happened. This 17,000-mile shtick has been debunked many times. Glenn Kessler devoted one of his Washington Post Fact Checker columns — this one — to it in February 2021. He awarded it 3 Pinocchios.
However, it’s the substance of the story that is most absurd. Biden says it has been “documented.” That means he has told the story many, many times. According to Matt Viser’s 2022 Washington Post story, aides who were with Biden say that they do not recall that exchange. It has been “documented” by his repetition of it.
We can go this far with the story. When Xi observes an Obama or a Biden, he wonders how he can exploit the “possibilities.”
The White House transcript specifies the time of Biden’s remarks at 7:40 P.M. EST. He wound up at 7:44. It was past the guy’s bedtime. Fortunately, the State Dining Room is located in the Executive Residence of the White House. He only had a few pitty-pat steps to go before his head hit the pillow for the evening.
Biden completely malfunctions as he tries — and fails miserably — to read a quote from "the man behind me here" pic.twitter.com/anLx6NEAPx
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 25, 2024
People around the world are increasingly realizing that “green” energy is actually black–as in blackouts. Thus, in today’s Telegraph: “The UK is much closer to blackouts than anyone dares to admit.”
We are heading for a big electricity crunch as it is. Whoever wins the general election, the next government will be committed to decarbonising the National Grid – by 2035 in the case of the Conservatives and by 2030 in the case of Labour. That means either closing all the gas power stations or fitting them with carbon capture and storage technology – which does not yet exist on scale in Britain and whose costs are likely to be massive. At the same time every single one of our existing nuclear power stations is currently due to reach the end of its life by 2035. If Hinkley C is delayed much beyond its latest estimated completion, we could end up with no nuclear at all.
That could leave us trying to power the country pretty much with intermittent wind and solar energy alone – and this at a time when politicians want millions more of us to be driving electric cars and heating our homes with heat pumps, thus substantially increasing demand. How will we keep the lights on? One struggles to find satisfactory explanation from the National Grid ESO, which is trusted with this task.
Britain is not alone in that regard. It is extraordinary that no one in any country has actually tried, seriously, to figure out how to power a modern economy with intermittent and absurdly expensive wind and solar power. We are simply cruising toward disaster with inept and even senile politicians at the helm.
It has produced a vision for a winter’s day in 2035 which foresees massive amounts of energy being stored in the form of green hydrogen produced via the electrolysis of water – a technology which may not be ready by then.
Or may not be ready, ever. I’ve been hearing about miraculous hydrogen energy for decades.
It also sees Britain importing around a quarter of its electricity. What happens if the countries we import it from are also short of renewable energy, it doesn’t say.
That is what happened a year or so ago when Duke Energy’s customers suffered a blackout. Duke’s plan included importing electricity from other states when the wind didn’t blow and it was dark out. But–surprise!–the wind wasn’t blowing in nearby states, either.
But now we get to the real plan, to the extent there is one:
But another large part of the picture seems to be “demand flexibility” – a polite term for rationing energy through smart meters, jacking up the price whenever supply is short. No wonder the Government seems keener than ever to force smart meters on us.
A “smart meter” is one that will adjust the temperature in your house, or otherwise reduce your use of electricity, when the utility can’t produce enough electricity to meet demand. In other words, the plan is for us to get poorer through electricity rationing.
This is Great Britain, but you could say the exact same thing about the U.S. or most other Western countries.
One of the big stories in the New York Times today is another Clarence Thomas smear, but with a twist: “Justice Thomas Hires Law Clerk Accused of Sending Racist Text Messages.”
The story is about Crystal Clanton, who graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in 2022. She is coming off a clerkship with Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit, who calls her “an outstanding law clerk.” Justice Thomas has now hired her to clerk on the Supreme Court.
For the last seven years, Crystal Clanton has been dogged by reports of an email that she allegedly wrote, in which she supposedly said, “I hate black people.” The Times story admits that they have not seen any such message, and are relying on reporting by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, perhaps the least trustworthy source in America.
In 2017, Clanton was running field operations for Turning Point USA. Mayer did a hit piece on Turning Point that included a variety of allegations, including the one against Clanton. Mayer claimed to have seen a screen shot of the text. The story has dogged Clanton ever since. When she was offered a clerkship on the 11th Circuit by Judge Pryor, seven left-wing members of Congress lodged an ethics complaint against Pryor, based on Clanton’s alleged text. That complaint was investigated by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the complaint to be without merit and dismissed it.
This January 2022 story has the details. Clanton left Turning Point after the claim against her was first made, but the Second Circuit found it to be false:
The Turning Point executive “had determined that the source of the allegations against (Clanton) was a group of former employees,” [Second Circuit Chief Judge Debra] Livingston wrote. “One of these employees was fired after the organization learned that this person had created fake text messages to be used against co-workers, to make it appear that those co-workers had engaged in misconduct when they had not.”
Pryor and Maze knew about the allegations against Clanton when they interviewed and hired her. And both determined the allegations of racist behavior by Clanton were untrue and found she was highly qualified to serve as a clerk for them, Livingston wrote.
“There is nothing in the record to dispute any of this,” she noted.
Charlie Kirk is also quoted in that story:
“The media has alleged that Crystal said and did things that are simply untrue,” Kirk wrote. “I have first-hand knowledge of the situations reported on and I can assure that the media has made serious errors and omissions. The sources of these reports are a group of former employees that have a well-documented desire to malign Crystal’s reputation.”
The employee who was fired had “created fake text messages to be used against other employees,” Kirk wrote.
Crystal Clanton got to know Ginny Thomas when she worked at Turning Point, and she was evidently so distraught about her departure from that group that she lived with the Thomases for nearly a year. So Thomas knows her well. He wrote a letter in connection with the Second Circuit investigation:
“I know Crystal Clanton and I know bigotry,” Thomas wrote. “Bigotry is antithetical to her nature and character.”
Clanton didn’t respond to the Times’s request for comment in the story they published today, but back in 2017 she told The New Yorker that “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am, and the same was true when I was a teenager.”
So there the matter rests. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that the Left never forgets. No matter that she was cleared by an investigation by one of the nation’s courts of appeals; once the Left gets its hands on a smear it never lets go. It will never stop trying to destroy your life. And of course, The New Yorker and the New York Times are two of the worst offenders.
Also, what makes this old story worthy of the Times’s A section? Only the fact that Justice Thomas is involved. The Times doesn’t care about a law clerk of whom few people have heard, but it cares deeply about smearing the country’s top conservative African-American. But what, exactly, are we supposed to infer from the Times story? That Clarence Thomas is weirdly favorable to those who hate black people?
A final irony: Supreme Court justices have no doubt hired any number of clerks who have written and spoken favorably about DEI, which actually is racist. But there is no controversy there: on the contrary, endorsing that form of racism is a badge of honor.
Caroline Glick recommends Margaret Brennan’s interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this morning on Face the Nation as “very important.” In it he faces the Biden administration talking points argued by Sullivan. She does not ask a single question that reflects sympathy with Israel’s ordeal, yet the Jew haters are having their say in the comments at YouTube. I infer that Netanyahu was able to make his own points effectively. CBS has posted the transcript of the interview here.
This morning I stumbled across a Tweet linking to an Australian “60 Minutes” segment about the unassimilable migrants that are causing the crime rate and other social dysfunctions to soar in Sweden. Turns out the episode is seven years old, but since we don’t see Australia’s “60 Minutes” here (and our CBS “60 Minutes” won’t touch this subject with a ten meter pole), I doubt little has changed in the last seven years, so here’s the complete seven minute segment—watch to the very end:
I still contend that sooner or later, European nations are going to institute mass deportations of migrants. (If it wants to survive, anyway. It may not have the will to do so any more.) Germany has already said it is going to step up deportation proceedings against recent migrants whose asylum claims are unfounded, but look for other countries to ratchet up from there.
George Harrison was born in Liverpool on this date in 1943. He died on November 29, 2001, in Los Angeles. He added to the beauty of the world as a member of the Beatles and in his subsequent solo career. He also founded HandMade Films to produce Monty Python’s Life of Brian, still funny after all these years. I want to celebrate the anniversary of his birth this morning.
In an interview on the Dick Cavett Show way back when, Harrison was asked about his favorite Beatles songs. As I recall, he said he most enjoyed the Beatles songs with three-part harmonies. He would have contributed the third part on those songs. By my lights he was a talented and ingenious harmony singer. Among the songs he must have been thinking of would be “This Boy,” “Yes It Is,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” and “Because.” Check out the Galeazzo Frudua videos that break down the harmony parts on those songs. George’s contributions are something else.
I thought it might be fun to look back on George’s solo career through lesser known songs on his solo albums over the years 1970-2002. I may have let a hit or two sneak in, but I went in search of deep tracks. If you have a favorite Harrison hit, it won’t be here. My goal is to avoid the hits and see if we can enhance our enjoyment of his legacy along the way. Please accept my apologies in advance for any mistakes in my notes and for ads that may preface the videos. Keep your cursor poised to cut them off.
George’s All Things Must Pass made a huge impact when the Beatles broke up in 1970. You had to make your way over to side three to find “Apple Scruffs.” You can hear the influence of Bob Dylan wedded to the Beatles-style vocal backing that George supplied entirely by himself. This was my favorite track on the album.
George produced the Concert for Bangladesh and the released the related live album in 1971. He didn’t get around to making another solo album until Living in the Material World in 1973. Contrary to the urging of “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long,” he might have let us wait too long. For some reason or other this track wasn’t released as a single.
George always called on gifted musicians for instrumental backing on his albums. Dark Horse (1974) included work by Nicky Hopkins on piano, Willie Weeks on bass, and a guy named Ringo Starr on drums. They all back George on “So Sad.”
George wrote “Far East Man” with Ronnie Wood. “While the world wages war / It gets harder to see / Who your friends really are.” Tom Scott is on the saxophones, Billy Preston on piano, Willie Weeks on bass, and Andy Newmark on drums.
George kept the albums coming. He released Extra Texture the following year. “You” led off the album and turned into a hit single with sax solos by Jim Horn and Leon Russell on piano. However, we are avoiding the hits in search of buried treasure. “Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)” is one of George’s tributes to Smokey Robinson.
In addition to George’s work on guitar, “Tired of Midnight Blue” has Leon Russell on piano and Jim Keltner on drums. This is a most engaging restatement of George’s warning to “beware of Maya.”
George followed up Extra Texture with Thirty Three & 1/3 Third (1975) and included a second tribute to Smokey Robinson (“Pure Smokey”). Listening to the track, I think it’s fair to say once is not enough. George’s solos make the second time around even better. Tom Scott is on the saxes again, Richard Tee on piano, and Willie Weeks on bass.
“Learning How To Love You” closed the album. That’s Richard Tee on keyboards and Willie Weeks on bass. The track was released as the b-side to “This Song.” I think this one belongs in the department of buried treasure.
The self-titled George Harrison was released in 1979. He had originally recorded “Not Guilty” during the Beatles’ sessions for the White Album, but that track remained in the can until it was released on Anthology 3 in 1996. George retrieved the song and rerecorded it for his his self-titled album. Stevie Winwood is on keyboards, Willie Weeks on bass, and Andy Newmark on drums. It’s a beguilingly bitter song.
“Here Comes the Moon” is not to be confused with “Here Comes the Sun.” I think you will enjoy it if you haven’t heard it before. George is on the guitar parts, Stevie Winwood on harmonium and backing vocals, Willie Weeks on bass, and Andy Newmark on drums.
Next came Somewhere In England (1981). George covered Hoagy Carmichael’s “Hong Kong Blues.” You won’t hear it performed by anyone else any time soon.
“Lay His Head” is something of a literal buried treasure. It was one of four songs Warner Bros. rejected for the album, although it was the b-side of “Got My Mind Set On You.” The four songs were deemed insufficiently commercial.
I’m skipping over George’s uninspired Gone Troppo (1982). After a five-year break, George’s Cloud Nine (1987) represented a return to form, as in “That’s What It Takes” (written with Jeff Lynne and Gary Wright). I think that’s Eric Clapton on the guitar solo.
I love the playing on “Fish on the Sand.” That’s George on guitar, Jeff Lynne on bass, and Ringo on drums.
George was working on Brainwashed when he died in 2001. It was posthumously released in 2002. As far as his recordings were concerned, he went out on a high note. “Stuck Inside a Cloud” was released as a promotional single only. If you like George, you’ll love this.
George lovingly covered the Ted Koehler/Harold Arlen classic “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” That’s George on the uke. What a way to go.
As John notes just below, police in Georgia have arrested Jose Antonio Ibarra, “not a U.S. citizen” and not a student at the University of Georgia, where nursing student Laken Riley, 22, was found dead from “blunt force trauma.”
This is not an isolated incident. Consider California, the “sanctuary state” that protects criminal illegals from deportation.
In 2019, a false-documented illegal from Mexico murdered El Dorado County deputy Brian Ishmael, who left behind a wife and three daughters. In 2018, illegal immigrant Gustavo Perez Arriaga, also known as Paulo Virgen Mendoza, murdered Newman, California police officer Ronil “Ron” Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji who came the America to work in law enforcement.
In 2014, previously deported Luis Bracamontes gunned down Sacramento County police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. In court, the Mexican national said he wished he had killed more cops. Sometimes the victims are innocent children.
In Waseca, Minnesota, Lorenzo Sanchez raped 12-year-old Cally Jo Larson, stabbed her to death, then hung her body from a cord in the stairway. See the Forensic Files episode “The Music Case.” And now nursing student Laken Riley is found dead from blunt force trauma.
If a firearm had been in play, and the suspect a U.S. citizen, Joe Biden might have issued a statement on “gun violence.” At this writing, nothing from the White House on the case, and that comes as no surprise.
“You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens,” said vice president Biden in 2014. All the 11 million wanted was a chance to contribute, Biden said, so “let people vote.” Since 2020, Biden has bulked up the imported electorate by some eight million, possibly more, so when illegals commit crimes the Delaware Democrat looks the other way.
This year, millions of illegals will be voting, as they already do in California, with squads of politiqueros bribing or threatening them to vote “a certain way,” code for Democrats. That’s what the Biden Junta wants in November.
Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia. Thursday morning, she went for a run and didn’t return. Her body was found on the campus of the University of Georgia. Riley was murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela:
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, who was arrested Friday in connection to the murder of the 22-year-old Augusta University student, crossed into El Paso, Texas, from Venezuela in September 2022, NewsNation reported Saturday, citing Department of Homeland Security sources.
He had been released due to a lack of detention space, the sources added.
Laken Riley
Ibarra is one of millions of illegals whom Joe Biden has deliberately welcomed into the United States, in violation of federal law, the Constitution, and Biden’s oath of office. Biden’s motives are hard to understand. But in the law, one is held to have intended the natural and inevitable consequences of one’s actions. Occam’s Razor, like the common law, implies that Biden is trying to bring chaos and destruction to the United States.
Having entered America with no problem, Ibarra set out for New York. I don’t believe it has been reported how he got there, but he spent a year or so in New York City before relocating to Georgia. His social media accounts suggest that he was living it up:
In September 2022, however, the Venezuelan native looked carefree, smiling in Times Square and Rockefeller Center in New York City, posts on a Facebook account linked to his name showed.
Of course, he got into trouble in New York, too:
Police sources in New York confirmed to NewsNation that a suspect matching Ibarra’s name and age was arrested in the Big Apple for endangering a 5-year-old child last year.
But illegals who commit crimes are rarely punished. Ibarra eventually joined his older brother Diego, who I assume is also an illegal although I haven’t seen this reported, in Athens. The older brother is a criminal, too; he was arrested three times between September and December 2023. Ho hum. Liberals refuse to enforce our laws, until a known criminal commits a crime so heinous that it attracts national attention. Like this one.
So, because Joe Biden opened our southern border, Jose Ibarra waltzed in from Venezuela, spent a year or so hanging out in New York, where any crimes he committed went unpunished, then joined his brother in Georgia. Where, day before yesterday, he saw Laken Riley jogging on the University of Georgia campus and decided it would be fun to kill her. Congratulations, Joe. This one’s on you.
A postscript: the U.S. isn’t the only country dumb enough to admit large numbers of illegal aliens, often referred to in the press as “asylum seekers.” Western Europe has problems even worse than ours, as exemplified by this case:
Police in Vienna launched a criminal investigation after three women were found dead in a brothel, authorities said Saturday.
A witness discovered traces of blood outside the building, located near the Danube River, and alerted police on Friday evening. The bodies of the three victims had “cuts and stab wounds,” police spokesperson Philipp Hasslinger told The Associated Press.
A 27-year-old man was soon arrested in the vicinity of the brothel while carrying a knife, the supposed weapon. Police said the suspect is an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan and will be questioned by police later on Saturday.
The Vienna brothel was legal, but apparently the “asylum seeker” disapproved of it. Hey, some of us may disapprove of it, too. But we wouldn’t murder the women who work there. Open-borders immigration policies have been a disaster wherever they have been implemented.
UPDATE: It turns out that Jose Ibarra had a “wife.” Sort of:
“We got married so we could join our asylum cases,” she told The Post. “He was the person I thought I could see through. We’ve known each other our entire lives.”
So, just another species of immigration fraud. Honestly, though, Ibarra and his “wife” needn’t have bothered. Joe Biden’s welcome mat is out, and everyone is here to stay–especially those who will degrade our country.
As mentioned in a previous item, Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, had a sequel in the works, but turned up dead by gunshot in Amador County, California, in early 2020. Dr. Katherine Raven, who has performed more than 5000 forensic autopsies, signed off on a “homicide autopsy.”
Two years later, under a sheriff who graduated from the FBI academy, a deputy with no apparent medical training listed “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” as the cause of death.
The FBI held on to Haney’s computer, thumb drives, and “whistleblower documents.” The DHS accused Haney of harboring “contraband” and violating five federal laws. The signs point to a faked suicide, hardly a new tactic. As Sidney Hook recalled in Out of Step, Soviet defector Gen. Walter Krivitsky was “suicided” in a Washington hotel room by Stalin’s NKVD, forerunner to the KGB.
Danish diplomat Povl Bang-Jensen refused to reveal names of Hungarian patriots who testified to the UN about Soviet atrocities during the 1956 invasion. In 1959, after going missing for two days, Bang-Jensen was found dead in a New York park, shot through the right temple. The scene looked staged but the case was officially declared a suicide. See Betrayal at the UN, by DeWitt Copp and Marshal Peck.
In 1993, White House official Vincent Foster turned up dead in Fort Marcy Park. The death was ruled a suicide but the scene left plenty to ponder, especially as the Clinton White House senior staff behaved in highly suspicious ways after Foster’s death (removing—and likely destroying—files from his office, etc.) See The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, by Christopher Ruddy.
Communist assassins also killed by staging fake car accidents. That was the fate of Soviet actor Solomon Mikhoels, artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. By this time, Stalin had revived traditional Russian anti-Semitism, branding Jews “rootless cosmpolitans.”
Nobel laureate Albert Camus, author of The Plague and other books, opposed the Soviet invasion of Hungary and was on record that Communism equals murder. In The Death of Camus, Giovanni Catelli compiles evidence that Camus was the victim of a fake car accident set up by the KGB. The ultimate trick, as Whittaker Chambers explained in Witness, was to make the assassination look like a natural death. That is a distinct possibility in several cases, to be explored at length in future.
The death of Philip Haney, meanwhile, shows what can happen to those who expose Islamic terrorists and their enablers in the US government. That raises issues for those who expose the FBI as the government’s secret police and KGB. When booting up a computer or tablet, see if “FBI Van,” or “FBI Surveillance Van,” show up in other networks in your neighborhood, then suddenly disappear.
Watch for persons unknown offering to send materials to your residence. Take note of strangers who suddenly engage you in conversation and just before leaving ask where you live. Apprise colleagues, friends and loved ones of these realities. Most important, never stop calling out those who attack the God-given freedoms of the people.
Yesterday in San Francisco President Biden held what the White House termed a press gaggle. In the event it seemed more of a gag than a gaggle. This is the White House transcript of his remarks:
Hello, folks. This morning, I had the honor of meeting with Aleksey Navalny’s wife and daughter.
As to state the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage. And it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are — are emulating that. And we’re going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.
And — but the one thing I’ve made — that was made clear to me is that
Yulanda[Yulia] is going to — she’s going to continue to fight (inaudible) the way. So, we’re not letting up.
You say Yulanda, I say Yolanda. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Today, Biden said he "had the honor of meeting with" Alexei Navalny's widow, who he called "Yolanda."
Her name is Yulia. pic.twitter.com/ecBgLtZdn0
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 23, 2024
In 2001, 2005 and 2017, some Democrat House members objected to the certification of electoral votes for the winning Republican presidential candidate. Those objections, while “denialist,” were only symbolic. But Democrat leaders in the House are now suggesting that if they control that body following November’s election–as they well might–they may refuse to allow a victorious Donald Trump to take office.
The Atlantic did the original reporting, behind a paywall. This is from the Election Law Blog:
Murray and other legal scholars say that, absent clear guidance from the Supreme Court, a Trump win could lead to a constitutional crisis in Congress. Democrats would have to choose between confirming a winner many of them believe is ineligible and defying the will of voters who elected him. …
In interviews, senior House Democrats would not commit to certifying a Trump win, saying they would do so only if the Supreme Court affirms his eligibility. But during oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices alike seemed inclined to dodge the question of his eligibility altogether and throw the decision to Congress.
“That would be a colossal disaster,” Representative Adam Schiff of California told me. “We already had one horrendous January 6. We don’t need another.” …
The choice that Democrats would face if Trump won without a definitive ruling on his eligibility was almost too fraught for Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland to contemplate. He told me he didn’t know how he’d vote in that scenario. As we spoke about what might happen, he recalled the brutality of January 6. “There was blood all over the Capitol in the hypothetical you posit,” Raskin, who served on the January 6 committee with Schiff, told me….
The Democrats have become so insane on the subject of Donald Trump that it is hard to know which of their mutterings to take seriously. But if Trump wins the election and a Democrat-controlled House refuses to certify his election on the ground that he is an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment, we will be past the point of a constitutional crisis. If that happens, the only realistic path forward will be disunion, possibly accompanied by civil war, but preferably not.
This is one reason why the Supreme Court should put the 14th Amendment theory out of its misery, once and for all. It is obvious that the drafters of that amendment meant the just-concluded Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans lost their lives, when they referred to “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. In contrast, the January 6 protest was not one of the 50 most destructive riots of the last few years, and the only person killed was Ashli Babbitt. Not a single participant in the protest was arrested in possession of a firearm. Some insurrection!
In the interest of preserving the Republic, the Supreme Court should rule definitively that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.
Like John, it would be hilarious to observe the left’s sudden obsession with “Christian nationalism” if it weren’t based on an abysmal ignorance that is itself a grim threat to the continuation of our republic. I guess Thomas Jefferson was a Christian nationalist for the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, although in fairness to stupid leftists, they don’t believe in “self-evident truth” either, because they are unable to grasp the meaning of “self-evident” as Thomas Aquinas, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln learned from Euclid. (One of my core lessons in the classroom is the continuity of thought between the “Two Tommys”—Tommy Aquinas and Tommy Jefferson. Hardly anyone ever notices this.)
Or how about John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But you know who else turns out to be a “Christian nationalist”?
Joe Biden, Christian Nationalist:
"My rights are not derived from any government…they're given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our Creator."
— Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) February 23, 2024
Gosh—I wonder whatever became of that guy?
This episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald’s hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (I think the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn!
Say what?
Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump’s alleged fraud trial in New York City, apparently has a case of Anthony Weiner envy, and posted some rather racy locker room pics of himself some years back. And right in the middle of our discussion Lucretia flashed the pictures up on the Zoom screen, sending John and me rushing for some eye-bleach. There must be something in the bottled water Manhattan Democrats drink. (And doesn’t Engoron sound like the name of a dwarve or elve who goes bad in Lord of the Rings?)
In any case, we do finally get around to a new segment of the 3WHH, where we note three articles from the last week for what they can tell us about something. John chose those stupid presidential rankings; Lucretia chose an MSNBC articlefrom leftist columnist Paul Waldman that unwittingly admits that everything conservatives say about the administrative state is completely true; and I picked Karol Markowitz’s NY Post column reflecting on how recent social science that ratifies the conservative view that two-parent families are the best way to raise children is so controversial with the left, which is no surprise. (Honorable mention to a parallel column on the same subject by Mark Judge in the Washington Examiner.)
So listen here or from our hosts at Ricochet. But have your eye-bleach for your mind’s eye at the ready.
We are apparently meant to take last week’s indictment of long-time FBI confidential human source Alexander Smirnov as a repudiation of what we have learned about the Biden family business. Smirnov’s indictment was sought by Biden-friendly United States Attorney David Weiss. It is linked in the related Department of Justice press release.
Kim Strassel observes in her weekly Wall Street Journal column: “If th[e allegations are] true, it ought to be massive story that the FBI for 13 years relied on a man who prosecutors now worry has troubling and ‘extensive’ ties to Russian intelligence. Instead, the media in its desire to embarrass Republicans is working to absolve the FBI, with the New York Times explaining the bureau never did ‘think much’ of the Smirnov claims and concluded in 2020 that they ‘did not merit continued investigation.’”
This particular episode of the Biden saga reminds me of the phonetically linked Yakov Smirnoff. Smirnoff is the immigrant comedian who wielded his catchphrase to great effect: What a country! Smirnoff’s catchphrase might qualify as the motto of the entire saga of the Biden family business. Looking around for a photo of Yakov Smirnoff I discovered that Jonathan Turley also drew on Smirnoff’s work in his New York Post column on the indictment.
Peter Schweizer first outlined the Biden family saga based entirely on publicly available documents in Profiles in Corruption (2020). In one of the interviews about the book, Peter observed: “We’re not talking about a congressman who’s trying to get a road paving for his nephew from the federal highway funds…We’re talking about globalized graft and corruption involving actors around the world who don’t particularly have the interests of the United States at heart.”
Yesterday Andrew McCarthy elaborated on “David Weiss’s Very Peculiar Smirnov Indictment in the Biden Case.” He commented: “[N]one of the most critical evidence of Biden-family influence-peddling comes from Smirnov or Russians.”
I sat down intending to demonstrate the irrelevance of the Smirnov indictment in light of the evidence accumulated to date, but Andy has done my job for me this morning in today’s NRO column “The Smirnov Indictment Does Not Vindicate the Bidens.” Subhead: “There is already extensive evidence, having nothing to do with Smirnov, of corrupt Biden-family influence-peddling.” If you can’t see the corruption, you’re not paying attention or you’re not looking. It’s in plain view. Miranda Devine also makes this point in her accessible New York Post column “Despite media spin, there’s still overwhelming evidence Joe Biden knew of family’s business dealings.”
I’m sorry McCarthy’s columns are posted behind NRO’s paywall. I wish some public-spirited benefactor would make a deal with NR’s publisher to extract McCarthy from NRO’s paywall prison. He brings his long experience as a federal prosecutor to bear and is the best columnist out there on matters at the intersection of law and politics.
The Wall Street Journal has posted Mark Kelly’s accessible video below in connection with the appearance of James Biden for deposition by the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees behind closed doors this week (Fox News story here). The caption on the video reads: “The latest revelations in the House Oversight Committee investigation into Biden family business dealings surrounds two checks that landed in Joe Biden’s personal bank account, one for $40,000, the other for $200,000.” As I say, if you can’t see it you’re not looking.
This is the week we got confirmation that Joe Biden is not merely a doddering, senile fool, but a bad dog owner, which is cosmically worse. Meanwhile, the FBI continues its string of comic incompetence, arresting an informant it has had on its payroll for more than a decade (paging Inspector Clouseau!), but only when it became useful to embarrass Republicans. It’s enough to make you want to put a gold-gilted Trump high-top sneaker up something.
Headlines of the week:
Totally want. . .
And finally. . .
• Behold the newest frontier in “equity”—”vaccine equity.” Which is needed to counter “vaccine nationalism.” (And you thought “Christian nationalism” was the worst threat out there.)
You think I am making this up? From Nature magazine today:
Today, nearly one-third of the world’s population has still not received a single dose [of COVID vaccine], and the death toll resulting from vaccine nationalism continues to grow. . . As time runs out, we urge WHO member states to agree on a ‘science-for-science’ mechanism that ensures vaccine equity in the next pandemic.
• Sen. John Kennedy (the good one), speaking at CPAC (only a minute long, but with an epic editorial flourish at the end):
I wish he would run for president someday.
• Some of the best reporting about the rot at the top at Harvard has been done by the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. The Crimson is out today with a long piece exposing the fact that the Harvard Corporation “chose Claudine Gay as Harvard’s 30th president without conducting a scholarly review of her work, according to a person familiar with the process.”
More embarrassing is that the Harvard Corporation chose Gay “over two internal candidates who boasted both administrative experience and far more extensive scholarship credentials: Tomiko Brown-Nagin and John F. Manning ’82. Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, published two books and won the highest award in American History writing, while Manning, dean of Harvard Law School, argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and wrote more than 40 legal articles.”
Pretty much confirms what we’ve known all along about why Gay was selected. And raises the obvious follow up question: what are the clearly inept members of the Harvard Corporation going to resign?
• “You’ve lost another spy balloon, Xi?”
The Great Sort is under way, as normal people move to red states and liberals move to blue states. (That last is hypothetical and hasn’t actually been observed.) When massive numbers began leaving blue states like California and New York for red states like Texas and Florida, many conservatives worried that those blue staters might bring their bad voting habits with them. Happily, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
This Wall Street Journal story is headlined: “Blue-State Residents Streamed Into South Carolina. Here’s Why It Stayed Ruby Red.” But it deals with more than one state:
A Wall Street Journal analysis of census data found that a third of [South Carolina’s] new residents between 2017 and 2021 hailed from blue states and a quarter from red ones, according to census data. …
Yet the new arrivals are disproportionately Republican. Estimates from the nonpartisan voter file vendor L2 suggest about 57% of voters who moved to South Carolina during that time are Republicans, while about 36% are Democrats and 7% are independents. That places them roughly in line with recent statewide votes in South Carolina.
It shouldn’t be surprising that when conservatives leave liberal states, they likely will move to conservative ones. The same thing is happening in states other than South Carolina:
The Palmetto State is a prime example of why a yearslong wave of migration to the South has largely failed to change its partisan tint. Many people who leave blue states are Republicans gravitating toward a more politically favorable new home.
In Florida, for instance, 48% of people who moved there between 2017 and 2021 came from blue states while 29% came from red states, Census figures show. Among those who registered to vote, 44% are Republicans, 25% are Democrats and 28% are nonpartisan, according to L2 data. Texas also has a heavier flow of newcomers from blue states but a greater share who L2 data estimates are Republican.
There is much more at the link; it is fun to see Democrats try to spin the numbers:
McDougald Scott and other South Carolina Democratic officials are working to target these new voters and persuade them to vote Democratic by focusing on issues like education…
I live in a blue state (for the time being, anyway) where the public schools are almost unbelievably bad. To be fair, though, the schools in New York and California are likely worse.
…infrastructure…
Have these people never driven on a highway in California?
and healthcare…
What about healthcare? Most people get health insurance through their jobs, and jobs are much more plentiful in red states. Blue states spend incomprehensible amounts of money on Medicaid, but that isn’t exactly a magnet for desirable new inhabitants.
…which she believes the Republicans are neglecting.
Apparently millions of Americans who are moving from blue to red states do not agree. Perhaps this is what it comes down to:
She said South Carolina’s limited access to abortion—which is banned at six weeks of pregnancy—is also something that crosses party lines.
Right. Hey, blue state economies may suck, crime may be rampant, taxes may be too high, government may be corrupt–but if the occasion arises, you can always kill your baby. This is the sales pitch my state’s liberal government is actually trying to implement: come here to get an abortion or a sex change operation, especially if you are a kid! Somehow, it doesn’t seem to be working.
The bottom line is that the Great Sort continues to benefit Red America. The question is, to what extent is the out-migration of normals locking liberalism into the blue states?
Fani Willis’s prosecution of Donald Trump has descended into comedy, currently of the bedroom farce variety. As all the world now knows, Willis carried on a torrid affair with Nathan Wade, whom she hired to lead the Trump prosecution and to whom she paid an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money, and then helped him spend it. That is corruption of the most old-fashioned sort. Willis and Wade have claimed that their affair did not begin until 2022, some time after she hired him to prosecute Trump.
Which turns out to be a lie:
Phone records, recently unveiled in new court documents obtained by The Post, indicate a pattern of late-night visits by Wade to Willis’s apartment, raising questions about the timeline of their relationship.
According to the cellphone data presented in court, Wade frequented the vicinity of Fulton County District Attorney Willis’s condo in Hapeville at least 35 times before their confessed affair.
***
[Investigator Charles] Mittelstadt highlighted times that refuted both Wade’s and Willis’s testimony that they had not begun a relationship prior to November 2021, and that he had only visited the apartment on occasion to discuss business.“I was directed into a deeper analysis on two specific dates: September 11-12, 2021 (before I understand Mr Wade was hired) and November 29-30 (prior to what I understand was the in-court testimony that the romantic relationship began in 2022).
“Specifically, on September 11, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone left the Doraville area and arrived within the geoface located on the Dogwood address [Willis’s condominium] at 10.45pm,” Mittelstadt said.
“The phone remained there until September 12 at 3.28am at which time the phone traveled directly to towers located in East Cobb consistent with his routine pinging at his residence in the area. The phone arrived in East Cobb at approximately 4.05am, and records demonstrate he sent a text at 4.20am to Ms Willis.
“Additionally, on November 29, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone was pinging on the East Cobb towers near his residence and, following a call from Ms Willis at 11.32pm, while the call continued, his phone left the East Cobb area just after midnight and arrived within the geofence located on the Dogwood address at 12.43am on November 30, 2021. The phone remained there until 4.55am,” he added.
Willis and Wade are the most famous illicit couple since Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Like Strzok and Page, Willis and Wade appear to have made texting and phoning one another a full-time job:
Mittelstadt’s report also showed Wade and Willis had made more than 2,000 voice calls to each other and exchanged just less than 12,000 text messages over an 11-month period in 2021.
It makes you wonder when Wade found time to rack up all those billable hours.
I don’t know what the future holds for Donald Trump, but I think we can confidently predict that the Sun soon will set on Fani Willis’s political career.
According to the polls, the Tory Party over in Britain s heading for a wipeout at the hands of the Labour Party later this year, thereby squandering Boris Johnson’s record Tory landslide of 2019. Has there ever been a greater example of political malpractice in recent decades? There are lots of reasons for this dreadful scene (starting with Johnson’s own terrible handling of COVID and other unforced errors) which can be treated more fully on another occasion. Conservatives in America ought to pay close attention, however, and take some lessons perhaps.
For the moment, it is worth noting is that the Tory Party has especially lost ground among younger voters. Sound familiar? Actually, the Financial Times looked at cross-national survey data, and concludes that Britain’s Tories are an outlier (click to embiggen):
Affordable housing may have something to do with this:
I wrote here about the Left’s current bugbear, “Christian nationalism.” Despite being a Christian and a nationalist, I have no idea what that phrase means, and have never met anyone who describes himself in those terms.
On MSNBC, a Politico reporter explained the meaning of “Christian nationalism.” You have to hear it to believe it:
Oh, my. 'They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…' https://t.co/R4L8HzKriJ
— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 23, 2024
These liberals are living in a state of utter ignorance. They literally know nothing. What I can’t figure out is, how can we be losing to people who are so unutterably stupid?
Lifelong Democrat Jeane J. Kirkpatrick came to the attention of former Democrat Ronald Reagan though her 1979 Commentary essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards.” As America’s future UN ambassador contended:
The failure of the Carter administration’s foreign policy is now clear to everyone except its architects.
The pattern is familiar enough: an established autocracy with a record of friendship with the U.S. is attacked by insurgents, some of whose leaders have long ties to the Communist movement, and most of whose arms are of Soviet, Chinese, or Czechoslovak origin. The “Marxist” presence is ignored and/or minimized by American officials and by the elite media on the ground that U.S. sup- port for the dictator gives the rebels little choice but to seek aid “elsewhere.”
Our “commitment to the promotion of constructive change worldwide” (Brzezinski’s words) has been vouchsafed in every conceivable context. But there is a problem. The conceivable contexts turn out to be mainly those in which non-Communist autocracies are under pressure from revolutionary guerrillas. Since Moscow is the aggressive, expansionist power today, it is more often than not insurgents, encouraged and armed by the Soviet Union, who challenge the status quo. The American commitment to “change” in the abstract ends up by aligning us tacitly with Soviet clients and irresponsible extremists like the Ayatollah Khomeini or, in the end, Yasir Arafat.
So far, assisting “change” has not led the Carter administration to undertake the destabilization of a Communist country. The principles of self-determination and nonintervention are thus both selectively applied.
Carter’s doctrine of national interest and modernization encourages support for all change that takes place in the name of “the people,” regardless of its “superficial” Marxist or anti-American content.
Surely it is now beyond reasonable doubt that the present governments of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos are much more repressive than those of the despised previous rulers; that the government of the People’s Republic of China is more repressive than that of Taiwan, that North Korea is more repressive than South Korea, and so forth.
Groups which define themselves as enemies should be treated as enemies. The United States is not in fact a racist, colonial power, it does not practice genocide, it does not threaten world peace with expansionist activities. . . . We have also moved further, faster, in eliminating domestic racism than any multiracial society in the world or in history.
No more is it necessary or appropriate to support vocal enemies of the United States because they invoke the rhetoric of popular liberation. It is not even necessary or appropriate for our leaders to forswear unilaterally the use of military force to counter military force. Liberal idealism need not be identical with masochism, and need not be incompatible with the defense of freedom and the national interest.
That probably got by Sen. Joe Biden. As Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) noted in 2010, the Delaware Democrat “makes few references to books and learned influences.” In 2024, to paraphrase ambassador Kirkpatrick, the failure of the Biden administration is now clear even to its architects.
The Biden administration has fashioned another program of student debt relief forgiveness. The so-called SAVE plan was promulgated by regulation last year. It takes the load off the fanny of beneficiaries of certain federal college loan programs and puts it right on the back of taxpayers. Politico reports that Biden is emailing 153,000 student loan borrowers that he’s canceling their debt. “I hope this relief gives you a little more breathing room,” the message says.
Those of us who actually pay taxes could use a little breathing room, but there is no breathing room to be found. Suffocation is the order of the day.
President Biden is himself a suffocating demagogue, as in his victory lap in the video below (White House transcript here). We thought the Supreme Court had spared us this particular outrage by its decision last year in Biden v. Nebraska. Apparently the justices needn’t have bothered themselves.
Biden declares that he has discovered a workaround. To the extent that one can understand what he’s saying in the clip below, he strikes a defiant note. He’s unafraid of consequences. He’s daring someone to stop him.
Biden on student loan cancellation: “The Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn't stop me." pic.twitter.com/ZomPnhTU1k
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) February 22, 2024
NRO’s James Lynch has a good story on Biden’s announcement in “Biden Administration Wiping Out another $1.2 Billion in Student-Loan Debt.” Matt Continetti adds up the damage:
On February 21, Biden announced that he was canceling $1.2 billion in federal student loans for 153,000 borrowers. That’s on top of more than $130 billion in student debt that he has canceled to date. The Penn Wharton school says that Biden’s efforts will cost a total of $475 billion over 10 years.
NRO’s Charlie Cooke has posted a cry from the heart expressing his indignation over the unfairness of Biden’s action. In his concluding paragraph, he seems unfairly to blame House Republicans. According to Politico, however, the House actually voted to kill SAVE this past December, but the Senate saved it. Now what?
The regulatory background to the current monstrosity is set forth by Jill Desjean in “ED Releases Final Rule on Latest Income-Driven Repayment Plan.” The final regulation was announced in the Federal Register here last year.
In light of the Supreme Court decision in Biden v. Nebraska, the regulation purports to find authority for the regulation under section 455 of the Higher Education Act than under the HEROES Act. See the “Legal Authority” section of the Federal Register announcement linked above.
What we have here is a monstrosity. James Bovard has an entertaining New York Post column satirizing it, but Bovard has no proposal to kill it. The current monstrosity comes to life this coming July 1. What we need to kill it is a new president to rein in the Education Department, or Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, or some serious legal analysis on which to premise a challenge to the madness of King Joe.
Dan Senor’s most recent Call Me Back podcast features Matti Friedman. Among many other things, Friedman is a former AP Jerusalem bureau staffer. It is his AP experience that prompted him to think through the wide world of sickness that we see in the reaction of the outside world to Israel’s current life-and-death struggle with Hamas. Senor asks good questions and lets the incredibly articulate Friedman speak.
Senor has posted the podcast with this introduction:
Every day we see news accounts “reported” by reputable journalists. There is typically one frame in the post-10/07 War: “Gazan Palestinians are the victims of Israel.” How does this happen? How do journalists actually operate in Gaza and around the world? And is this a window into what had Hamas figured out long before 10/07 — that the forces of barbarism could manipulate the intentional press reaction to their massacre of 10/07? That is why we wanted to sit down with Matti Friedman, who is one of the most thoughtful writers when it comes to all matters related to Israel, the broader Middle East, and also trends in the world of journalism.
He writes regularly for The Free Press and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic. His newest book is called Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. Before that he published Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, and before that Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War.
Matti’s army service included tours in Lebanon. His work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. He is a former Associated Press correspondent and essayist for the New York Times opinion section. But it was his time covering Hamas’s takeover of Gaza that led him to study with great detail how Hamas manipulates the media, NGOs and the international community, and how they are working from the same playbook right now, perhaps quite masterfully.
I urge interested readers to check out the podcast below.
Here are the show notes citing Friedman’s work discussed in the podcast (I especially commend Friedman’s 2014 Tablet column linked below):
“The Wisdom of Hamas” — The Free Press.
“What if the Real War in Israel Hasn’t Even Started?” — The Free Press.
“There Is No ‘Israeli-Palestinian Conflict'” — The New York Times.
“An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth” — Tablet Magazine.
“What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel” — The Atlantic.
Vaunce News 