Vaunce News

🔒
❌ About FreshRSS
There are new available articles, click to refresh the page.
Before yesterdayYour RSS feeds

Is Biden’s Re-Election Campaign Driving US Foreign Policy?

(John Hinderaker)

It is widely believed that Joe Biden’s anti-Israel, pro-Hamas policy is driven by his desperate need to carry Michigan if he is to have any hope of re-election. That seems like a reasonable assumption, although, to be fair, it is also possible that he shares his old boss’s anti-Israel animus. But here is another one:

Scoop: The US has urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, warning senior SBU and GUR officials that drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation.
w/ @hallbenjamin @felschwartz @mylesmccormick_ https://t.co/DRussu4cAs via @FT

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 22, 2024


Biden’s team knows that Americans have had about all the Bidenflation they can stand, and a spike in energy prices between now and November could well doom Joe’s chances. Would Biden be willing to throw the Ukrainians under the bus, along with the Israelis, to improve his odds? I think we all know the answer to that one.

French Students Terrorized by Jihadists [Updated]

(John Hinderaker)

In France, at least two teachers have been murdered by Muslim students, one of them beheaded. The French press reports that “death threats and threats of rape have become common among pupils.” Those threats are directed toward both teachers and fellow students.

Now, students at dozens of French schools have been sent “threatening messages and beheading videos” by Islamic radicals. The story is hard to parse out, and more is, perhaps, being concealed than revealed:

At least 30 schools in the Paris region have this week received threatening messages accompanied by “shocking” footage of beheadings, the education ministry said on Thursday.

That effort is being made in support of Islamic terrorism:

The establishments – mainly secondary schools – have received “serious threats” containing “justification of and incitement to terrorism,” a representative of the education ministry told AFP.

The Muslims apparently made use of software that France uses to connect students and teachers. Reportedly, they “‘hacked a student’s email address’ in order to distribute the message and a beheading video.” They also have been making bomb threats:

In the department of Seine-et-Marne, to the east of the French capital, a secondary school received a message saying that explosives had been hidden throughout the establishment “in the name of Allah”, a police source said.

The latest threats follow a flurry of false bomb alerts targeted schools, airport and tourist sites in autumn 2023.

All of this is due to France’s feckless immigration policies. But, to be fair, their policies are a lot better than Joe Biden’s.

UPDATE: Of course, it could be worse. You could be in Russia.

Enemies of the People

(John Hinderaker)

When we started this site, exposing mainstream media bias was a big part of our mission. Using the then-new internet, we and many others held liberal outlets (i.e., virtually all of them) accountable in a way that hadn’t happened before. The effect of that effort was not that the liberal press became more accurate or more objective. Rather, they came out of the closet. For the most part, they no longer make any serious pretense of neutrality. Whether that is an improvement or not is debatable.

But, in any event, it no longer makes sense to criticize, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post for being biased. That would be like, if you were a soldier in World War II and a Panzer division was approaching, you were to say, “Those Germans are biased against us!” It isn’t a question of bias. They are just the enemy.

Donald Trump was perhaps the first major Republican politician to abandon the effort to curry favor with the press establishment. He famously denounced the fake news press (sometimes abbreviated to the press in general) as enemies of the people. The good news is, most Americans agree with him.

Rasmussen finds that Trump’s characterization is the majority view:

60% of Likely U.S. Voters agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” as Trump said in 2019, including 30% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree, including 21% who Strongly Disagree.

That is an extraordinary finding. Respondents were asked this question:

Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The media are “truly the enemy of the people”?

And a clear majority said that they agree. The press has utterly squandered whatever respect it once enjoyed.

The Rasmussen survey also asked about the Democrats’ “bloodbath” hoax:

Former President Donald Trump recently said that it would be a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win in November. Which is more likely, that he was talking about auto workers losing jobs or that he was talking about widespread political violence by his supporters?

The result:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters believe Trump was talking about auto workers losing jobs when he warned of a “bloodbath,” while 40% think Trump was talking about widespread political violence by his supporters if he did not win the election. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.

Basically, Democrats follow the Democratic Party press and swallow the Democrats’ talking points:

Among voters who Strongly Approve of Biden’s job performance as president, 78% believe Trump’s “bloodbath” comment was about widespread political violence by his supporters if he did not win the election. By contrast, among voters who Strongly Disapprove of Biden’s performance, 84% think Trump was referring to auto workers losing jobs.

But again, returning to good news, most voters believe that the media’s coverage is driven by the Biden administration’s talking points:

Among all Likely Voters, 63% believe it is likely that the major news media’s political coverage is dictated by talking points from the Biden campaign, including 42% who say it’s Very Likely. Twenty-nine percent (29%) don’t think it’s likely media coverage is dictated by the Biden campaign, including 11% who say it’s Not At All Likely.

Majorities of every political category – 78% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats and 61% of unaffiliated voters – believe it’s at least somewhat likely that the major news media’s political coverage is dictated by talking points from the Biden campaign.

So even half of Democrats admit that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press are servants of the Democratic Party. The bottom line is that the liberal press serves certain functions on behalf of the Democratic Party: it reinforces Democrats’ talking points and keeps Democratic voters riled up. Those are valuable contributions, to be sure. But the days when the liberal media could actually drive public opinion are long gone.

World’s Dumbest NCAA Bracket

(John Hinderaker)

It was Scott who first referred to the sacramental view of abortion, some years ago now. Abortion (much like slavery over the course of the 19th century) went from being a regrettable but sometimes unavoidable evil to being a positive good–indeed, these days, the noblest good to which political life can aspire.

To see this perverse attitude in full flower, you almost have to live in Minnesota. Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, is a far-left Indian activist despite being, to all appearances, Irish-American. (To be fair, she has much more Indian heritage than, say, Elizabeth Warren.) Flanagan actually tweeted this:

I filled out my brackets based on whether those schools are located in a state that protects access to abortion care.

By this measurement, it’s only fair that Minnesota didn’t make the tournament because they’d have been a favorite for the title. pic.twitter.com/nFQ5FKwFHG

— Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan (@LtGovFlanagan) March 21, 2024


So she had UConn facing Gonzaga in the final. Who wants to be the first to tell her?

One more thing–Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, liked Flanagan’s bracket tweet.

Don’t RIP, Karl

(John Hinderaker)

Via InstaPundit, I learn that Karl Marx died on this day in 1883. I concur with Glenn Reynolds’ suggestion that March 14 should therefore be a holiday:

Marx performed the difficult feat of being wrong about everything. Most people are right about some things and wrong about others; the law of averages sets in. But if you are an ideologue, like Marx, and if your ideology is stupid, you can be wrong across the board. Marx’s historical analyses were either recycled conventional wisdom or wildly off the mark. He knew nothing about economics, which is why his labor theory of value–the lynchpin of his entire philosophy–is absurd. (Even Marx recognized that; he never finished the key section of Capital, leaving that inglorious task to Engels.) And he pontificated endlessly about workers and the means of production, without even once, as far as is known, setting foot in a factory.

Marx survives in historical memory for two reasons. First, hardly anyone has actually read Capital or his lesser works. Even a person of moderate intelligence could hardly do so without recognizing their foolishness. Second, Marx’s philosophy has served as a pretext for sadists to seize control of governments around the globe. Which is exactly what Marx intended.

Marx was a bad man, equally so in his private and public lives. He should be remembered only as an exemplar of how much damage a single-minded and hate-filled man can do.

Living the Luxe Life

(John Hinderaker)

I am so old, I can remember when “public servants” used to earn less money than they could have expected in the private sector. But those days are long gone. Now, government employees have the rest of us by the throat. Our tax dollars are enriching them, on the average, far beyond what they could earn anywhere else.

This is from Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity:

The average cost for a government employee in December was $60 per hour, or 40.5% more than his or her private sector counterpart.

Benefits to government employees cost 80.3% more.

This chart shows the numbers:

I would think that if we looked at federal employees, the discrepancy would be even greater. And government employees pretty much can’t be fired, either, so they have these sweet gigs forever.

One interpretation of these numbers is that the rest of us are just serfs on the government’s plantation.

Election Interference

(John Hinderaker)

For years, the Democrats have been yammering about “election interference” by Russia that turned out to be either de minimis or entirely fabricated. Now, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, they are aggressively interfering in Israel’s internal politics.

Scott wrote here about the fact that the Biden Administration “obviously seeks to depose the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.” The administration has gone so far as to make public an alleged intelligence community assessment to the effect that Netanyahu is unpopular and his government is likely to fall.

Today, Chuck Schumer got into the act:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called for new elections in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is absolutely stunning. Since when is it the role of the Senate Majority Leader to tell another country–an ally–that they need to replace their government?

Netanyahu has “lost his way,” Schumer continued, “by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel” and by indicating he isn’t interested in the formation of an independent Palestinian state, which has been a U.S. goal for decades.

But it is not a goal of Israel, not if it can’t be done without threatening Israeli security, which is certainly the case today. One might think that the Israeli people are the best judges of their security needs, not an American senator.

Schumer said that Netanyahu has aligned himself with “far-right extremists” like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who he said are “pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.”

There is some truth in that last comment, as anti-Semitism, in the transparent guise of anti-Zionism, has erupted across the Western world. One might therefore think that this is a good time for American leaders to express support for Israel, not try to bring about the overthrow of its government.

But we are not living in normal times.

The Israeli response has been restrained, no doubt in the interest of trying to hold the alliance together:

Israel is a sovereign democracy. It is unhelpful, all the more so as Israel is at war against the genocidal terror organization Hamas, to comment on the domestic political scene of a democratic ally. It is counterproductive to our common goals.

— Ambassador Michael Herzog (@AmbHerzog) March 14, 2024


Let’s hope we have a more sensible administration in place as of January 2025.

Exploding the Myths of “Green” Energy

(John Hinderaker)

American Experiment’s Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling tell you what you need to know to respond to ill-informed advocates for “green” energy. There is much more at the link, but here is an overview:

1. Renewables can’t survive on their own

The renewable energy industry is a subsidy-based industry, as wind and solar are largely dependent on lucrative state and federal subsidies. However, renewable advocates justify these perpetual subsidies by claiming thermal generators receive more subsidies than wind and solar. This assertion is not based on reality….
***
In 2022, wind and solar generators received three and eighteen times more subsidies per MWh, respectively, than natural gas, coal, and nuclear generators combined. Solar is the clear leader, receiving anywhere from $50 to $80 per MWh over the last five years, whereas wind is a distant second at $8 to $10 per MWh.

Poor solar energy! No matter how many billions the government pours down the solar rathole, no one has figured out a way to generate solar power after the sun goes down.

2. Renewables increase the cost of electricity

Renewable advocates often claim that the adoption of more wind and solar will lead to lower electricity costs, but the opposite is true. In a previous Substack, we wrote in detail about how utility companies with the largest rate increase requests in the country admit the energy transition is a major reason behind increasing electricity prices for families and businesses.

“Green” advocates fake the numbers for wind and solar by the simple expedient of only counting a fraction of their costs. This chart shows the actual cost of the various energy systems if all costs are included:

3. More wind and solar means more blackouts

Advocates of renewable energy also don’t want to account for one of the most damning facts about policies that favor wind and solar energy at the expense of dispatchable generators: that they have led to electricity blackouts in more than one region.

Greenies are full of bogus reasons why increased use of wind and solar are not to blame for blackouts, but they can’t answer the simple question: why is that we didn’t have blackouts before spending hundreds of billions on wind and solar, but now we do have blackouts?

Isaac and Mitch conclude:

Despite claiming to be ardent followers of “tHe ScIEncE,” wind and solar advocates live in their own universe of alternative facts that deny the basic physics and economics of the electric grid. Hopefully, this piece is useful for you the next time a wind or solar stan is arguing with you in the comments section.

One more “green” myth remains to be exploded: the claim that wind and solar are better for the environment than natural gas, nuclear and coal-fired electricity. That myth will be addressed in an upcoming report.

British Muslims Seek to Ban Blasphemy

(John Hinderaker)

This long piece in the London Times describes the efforts of some British Muslims to prohibit blasphemy, either through legal action or through mob violence:

Britain faces an alarming rise in intimidation and threats of violence against those perceived to have insulted Islam, a new report will warn.

Protests condemning acts of apparent blasphemy have become more frequent and radicalised, according to independent research commissioned by the government’s counterextremism chief.

The report, seen by The Times, exposes links between activists at the forefront of recent protests in the UK and an extremist Islamist political party in Pakistan whose members have regularly called for blasphemers to be beheaded.

It has been a long time since anyone was beheaded in Britain on religious grounds.

Robin Simcox, the government’s counterextremism tsar, commissioned the research after three blasphemy flashpoints in the UK: the 2021 protests against a teacher in Batley, West Yorkshire, who received death threats and is still in hiding…

Still in hiding, three years later–a teacher in West Yorkshire.

…after showing pupils a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed; Birmingham protests the following year over the screening of the film The Lady in Heaven, which depicted Mohammed’s daughter; and last year’s controversy in Wakefield, also in West Yorkshire, after a copy of the Quran was slightly damaged at a high school.

Some of the anti-blasphemy initiative is coming from Pakistan:

It described as “most alarming” the emergence of a UK wing of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a political party that was temporarily banned there because of violent rallies and its support for mob executions of perceived blasphemers. British mosques have hosted speakers who are supportive of TLP and each of the protests in Batley, Wakefield and Birmingham involved activists with links.

The report warned that such rhetoric “has the potential to radicalise their audience around the issue of blasphemy” and that this in turn “may increase the likelihood of sectarian violence and terrorism in the UK”.

The report stresses that most UK-based blasphemy activists have rejected violence and condemn terrorist acts such as the 2015 shooting attack in Paris on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, in which 17 people died.

However, it says many are calling for stricter laws in the UK against blasphemy and seek to criminalise insults against Islam, which they present as part of a wider war on the faith by so-called enemies of Islam in the West.

Britain has admitted large numbers of Muslims from Commonwealth countries, and they now constitute a substantial political bloc. In recent months, they have repeatedly taken over large swaths of the city of London with kill-the-Jews rallies. While British authorities deplore these demonstrations, they seem to have been cowed by the implicit threat of violence that they manifest.

Who Needs DEI?

(John Hinderaker)

Black college athletes do, according to the NAACP. The NAACP is urging black athletes not to go to college in Florida:

The NAACP asked Black student-athletes to reconsider their decisions to attend public colleges and universities in the state of Florida, in response to the University of Florida and other state schools recently eliminating their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

In a letter sent to NCAA president Charlie Baker and addressed to current and prospective student-athletes Monday, NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote, “This is not about politics. It’s about the protection of our community, the progression of our culture, and most of all, it’s about your education, and your future.”

The idea that black athletes at major sports schools like Florida and Florida State need DEI departments to…what? Prevent them from being discriminated against? The idea is laughable, as is the NCAAP’s apparent suggestion that DEI bureaucrats are somehow helpful to a student’s education.

My guess is that not a single black athlete who otherwise wants to play for Florida, Florida State or any other public Florida college will be deterred by the NCAAP’s advice. What this episode really shows is how useless the once-relevant NCAAP has become. And also, how Florida has taken the lead in adopting common-sense policies that have put the state in the Left’s cross-hairs.

Biden’s DOA Budget

(John Hinderaker)

Joe Biden unveiled his 2025 budget proposal earlier today. In general, presidents’ budgets are hardly worth discussing. They project revenue and spending over the next ten years, and if you go back and look at them a few years later, they usually bear no relation to reality. And, in this instance, there is zero chance that Congress will pass anything resembling Biden’s budget, which can best be seen as a campaign document.

But, for what it is worth, this is what the Wall Street Journal had to say about it:

President Biden proposed Monday a $7.3 trillion budget for the next fiscal year that would raise taxes on wealthy people and large corporations, trim the deficit and lower the costs of prescription drugs, child care and housing.

Other than spending $7.3 trillion and raising taxes, it wouldn’t do any of those things. For purposes of comparison, federal spending in 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, was $1.79 trillion. So Biden wants to spend almost exactly four times that much.

The fiscal 2025 budget would cut the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade, and it would raise taxes by a net total of $4.9 trillion, or more than 7% above what the U.S. would collect without any policy changes.

Those hypothetical deficit cuts depend on economic forecasts in the out-years that won’t come true. The only meaningful fact is that Biden wants to raise taxes by nearly $5 trillion.

Biden’s purported budget is largely an exercise in fantasy:

The budget leaves some blank spaces. It lists principles for shoring up Social Security, without specifying a plan. It calls for paying for extensions of tax cuts for most households after 2025 but doesn’t detail how that would be paid for. And it calls for restoring the expanded child tax credit, but only temporarily, lumping that into the broader 2025 tax debate.

Biden’s budget proposes absurd taxes on corporations and “the rich”:

The budget repeats many past Biden tax-increase proposals, including higher tax rates on corporations and high-income individuals along with minimum taxes on the wealthiest Americans’ unrealized capital gains.

Which is insane. If the government taxes unrealized gains on unsold securities when the market goes up, will it write checks to investors when the market is down? Logically, it would have to, but of course that is not part of Biden’s proposal.

Biden rolled out several new tax increases last week, such as raising his new corporate alternative-minimum-tax rate to 21% from 15% and denying deductions when corporations pay any workers, not just top executives, more than $1 million.

The net effect of Biden’s proposals would be to give the United States one of the heaviest tax burdens in our history, equaled only once since World War II.

Is that because people are dying to give the federal government more money to waste? No, it is because many people are too naive to understand that, as has been said a million times, corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them. Those taxes are actually paid mostly by customers (i.e., all of us) and secondarily by employees (i.e., most of us). But Biden’s budget is not about economics or, for that matter, mathematics, as the numbers will never add up. Rather, it is about politics:

Biden’s advisers are betting that a focus on lowering costs for families will help push the president to re-election.

Needless to say, Biden’s budget, if actually enacted, would raise costs for families, not lower them. Fortunately, there is zero chance of that happening.

Biden Waffles on Apology

(John Hinderaker)

A final (I hope) footnote to Joe Biden’s disgraceful SOTU performance: he referred to Jose Ibarra as an illegal, which was, as I said here, perhaps the only true statement in the entire speech. But Biden met with blowback from Democrats who don’t seem to mind that Ibarra is an (alleged) murderer, but were horrified by Biden’s admission that his presence here is illegal.

So, as recorded at the link above, Biden apologized on MSNBC for using the word “illegal.” (The correct legal term is “illegal alien.”):

President Biden apologized Saturday for using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the Venezuelan migrant accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

“An undocumented person. I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart in an excerpt from an interview airing Saturday….
***
“So, you regret using that word?” Capehart asked.

“Yes,” Biden responded.

I, and everyone else, called that an apology. But the White House is now backtracking on its backtrack:

The White House on Monday pushed back against claims President Biden apologized for using the term “illegal” to describe the migrant accused of killing Laken Riley — just days after the president said he had “regret” for using the loaded term.
***
White House deputy spokesperson Olivia Dalton attempted to clarify on Monday, telling a reporter that “the president absolutely did not apologize” despite his expression of regret.

“There was no apology anywhere in that conversation,” Dalton told reporters on Air Force One. “He did not apologize. He used a different word. I think what we should be really clear about is the facts.”

“He used a different word.” All right, then! Biden said that he “shouldn’t have used” the word illegal, and he “regrets” doing so. Talk about a fine distinction. So, why did the White House bother to walk back, at least partially, Biden’s MSNBC comments? I suppose because if you apologize, you have to apologize to someone. In this case, who is that someone? The (alleged) murderer, Jose Ibarra. Many have criticized Biden for apologizing to a murderer for calling him an illegal. Hence his handlers’ most recent spin: it wasn’t an apology, it was only an expression of regret for something he shouldn’t have done.

Got it, Joe.

And, finally, for a spokesman for the Biden White House to say that “what we should be really clear about is the facts” is, in its own way, a classic of dark comedy.

America’s Most Important Political Trend

(John Hinderaker)

This is a good complement to Steve’s post immediately below. Why did Democrats decide, seemingly in unison, that it would be a good idea to enable millions of illegal immigrants? Because they (or, in any event, their children) will be voters, and the Democrats assumed they could count on minority votes for many years to come.

But that may have been a miscalculation:

NEW 🧵:

American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment.

I think this is simultaneously one of the most important social trends in the US today, and one of the most poorly understood. pic.twitter.com/QeRsuMSKaL

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 11, 2024


This is part of the broader realignment of the parties. The left’s current obsessions–the “trans” movement, global warming, the war on food and gasoline, and so on–are of no good whatsoever to working people. They are of interest primarily to wealthy whites, especially wealthy white women. Blue collar minorities, like other working people, are not stupid. They can see that it is the Republicans whose policies actually help them, and they are starting to vote accordingly.

Are All DEI Officers Bigots?

(John Hinderaker)

I think the answer to that question is Yes. In reality, the whole point of DEI is bigotry, so the fact that its exponents keep getting outed as haters is not at all coincidental. The latest case comes from Johns Hopkins, where the Chief Diversity Officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine has resigned following a hateful outburst:

The Chief Diversity Officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine resigned on Tuesday after criticism stemming from her distribution of a list of groups she believes have “privilege.”

As Campus Reform reported, Dr. Sherita Golden sent the list of groups in a January email sent to staff members, which defined “privilege” as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.”

Of course she wasn’t referring to welfare recipients, public employees or beneficiaries of political influence like “greens” or DEI officers.

Golden went on to name nine groups in the country that have been “granted” privilege “at the expense of members of other groups.”

According to Golden, these “privileged” groups are: “White people,” “Able-bodied people,” “Heterosexuals,” “Cisgender people,” “Males,” “Christians,” “Middle or owning class people,” “Middle-aged people,” and “English-speaking people.”

Doesn’t that cover almost everyone in the United States? The only “non-privileged,” apparently, are crippled, gay, female, Muslim illegal immigrants below the age of 40 who just arrived and haven’t yet learned English. That is a niche constituency, to say the least. It includes maybe three people.

“Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent,” she claimed.

The privilege fairy just hands them out. Work is superfluous.

Golden resigned as Chief Diversity Officer on Tuesday, but remains on the faculty at Johns Hopkins. After her email caused controversy, she apologized:

The “privilege” list was retracted shortly after it was sent out, and Golden said she “deeply” regretted her definition of privilege, adding it “did not meet [the] goal” to “inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins. . . . In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect of being exclusionary and hurtful to members of our community.”

Her email wasn’t “poorly worded,” but it certainly was “exclusionary.” Actually, it set out the DEI ideology very clearly, and exclusion of politically disfavored people is the whole point of DEI. But sometimes people notice, and a liberal needs to be sacrificed. So our condolences go out to Sherita Golden: she said what the Democratic Party believes, not poorly but too well.

Murder In Progress [Updated]

(John Hinderaker)

The people you see in this video are not fit to live in a civilized society. Problem is, I’m not sure we have a civilized society.

The white girl died.

Nothing is going to happen to the black girl who did this with the St Louis prosecutor, who is a Soros DA. https://t.co/pHcS493mCu

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) March 10, 2024

UPDATE: At last word, the victim of this incredibly vicious assault is alive but in critical condition. She was having a seizure on the street and apparently has sustained brain damage. But, at last word, she had not yet died.

FURTHER UPDATE: Per a PL commenter, the school district has released a mealy-mouthed statement that equates perpetrator and victim. But what else would you expect from DEI liberals?

“It is a tragedy anytime children are hurt. Bullying and fighting in the community is an issue for which we all need to take ownership and work towards a resolution for the sake of our children. The Hazelwood School District offers our sincerest condolences to everyone involved, and will offer additional emotional support from our support and crisis team to those in need. We look forward to continuing to partner with our community for the sake of our children. Please be kind and respectful of the families involved during this difficult time and pledge to help work toward the betterment of our entire community.”

The black girl apparently has Hamas status. She’s a victim deserving kindness and respect, just like the girl she put in critical condition.

Condolences to “everyone involved.” Bullshit. One girl beat another girl to within an inch of her life. She may yet die, and she likely will be brain-damaged. The only condolences are due to the victim and her family. As for the rest, the girl who assaulted her should be prosecuted for, at a minimum, attempted murder, and sent to prison for decades. Those who stood by and did nothing can’t, legally, be prosecuted, but they should be shamed and ostracized for the rest of their lives. They don’t need “emotional support” from a “crisis team.” They need to be taught what it means to be a human being. But that obviously won’t happen in the St. Louis public school system or, evidently, in their homes.

ONE MORE: A reader emails to say that the Soros prosecutor in St. Louis has resigned. I don’t know whether that is correct, or whether his or her successor is another pro-crime prosecutor. There are a lot of them around, these days. But I pass his message on for what it is worth.

DEI Destroys CHIPS

(John Hinderaker)

DEI (racial and other quotas) is intrinsically evil. At The Hill, Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson reveal a shocking, practical downside to DEI hysteria: “DEI killed the CHIPS Act.”

The issue is critical because Taiwan now produces 90% of the world’s advanced microchips, and China has indicated its intention to annex Taiwan in the near future. So the CHIPS Act sought to incentivize chip production in the U.S. Unfortunately, that isn’t what is happening.

Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. …
***
Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as [the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] discovered to its dismay.

Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.

Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.

It isn’t only TSMC that is being stymied by DEI:

Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.

In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. …

[C]hipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”

No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland.

Access to microchips is a national security issue, as well as being fundamental to a modern economy. And yet Congressional majorities care more about DEI shibboleths and feeding pork to their constituencies than about American security and prosperity. Of course, that isn’t really an irony. The whole point of DEI is hating America, and if it imperils our security and our prosperity, so much the better.

Transition? What Transition?

(John Hinderaker)

Robert Bryce is one of America’s foremost energy experts. At his Substack site, he describes his recent appearance before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The commissioners were glad to hear from Robert:

After I finished, about two dozen people (most of them were state regulators) came forward to say they appreciated my talk and that they’d never heard many of the points I’d made. One utility commissioner told me that the regulators who attend NARUC’s meetings are “not used to having anybody tell the whole story.” I also received several dozen emails from people who said NARUC had never had anyone like me give a speech.

Which is a truly scary reality. From whom are the commissioners accustomed to hearing? Financially self-interested left-wingers:

[A] few conference attendees took to Twitter to complain that I’d been allowed to speak at NARUC. One person in particular, a lawyer who works for Earthjustice, the San Francisco-based NGO that is funded by dark money, had a sphincter-puckered snit on Twitter, saying that I presented “nonsense.” Earthjustice had $151 million in revenue in 2023 and employs more than 200 lawyers in 15 U.S. cities. Another attendee, who works for San Francisco-based Energy Innovation LLC, which doesn’t reveal its donors, got his NARUC knickers in a twist. On Twitter, he claimed I provided so many “falsehoods” that he “couldn’t keep up.” It’s funny, though, that he didn’t name a single falsehood or refute even one of my points.

Typical. Leftists don’t argue, they censor.

What did Robert say that so frightened greenies? Follow the link above for the whole story, but I would highlight two points. First, increasing government-mandated reliance on expensive and ineffective wind and solar power is threatening the reliability of the electric grid:

On February 22, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) issued a report that put the danger facing America’s electric grid in stark terms. In an introduction, MISO’s CEO, John Bear, said, “There are immediate and serious challenges to the reliability of our region’s electric grid.” His remarks must be quoted at length:

The transition that is underway to get to a decarbonized end state is posing material, adverse challenges to electric reliability. A key risk is that many existing “dispatchable” resources that can be turned on and off and adjusted as needed are being replaced with weather-dependent resources such as wind and solar that have materially different characteristics and capabilities. While wind and solar produce needed clean energy, they lack certain key reliability attributes that are needed to keep the grid reliable every hour of the year. Although several emerging technologies may someday change that calculus, they are not yet proven at grid scale. Meanwhile, efforts to build new dispatchable resources face headwinds from government regulations and policies, as well as prevailing investment criteria for financing new energy projects. Until new technologies become viable, we will continue to need dispatchable resources for reliability purposes.

Second, perhaps the most extraordinary fact about energy is that the much-ballyhooed “transition” from fossil fuels to wind and solar simply isn’t happening, despite government mandates and massive subsidies. In fact, it is rapid growth in use of fossil fuels that powers the world’s economy:

There is much more at the link. The bottom line is that a transition from reliable and affordable fossil fuels to unreliable and prohibitively expensive weather-dependent sources of energy would be a human disaster, and therefore, it isn’t going to happen. Ever. Leftists may whine and gnash their teeth, and for now they may reap enormous amounts of ill-gotten money from “green” interests. But what they want, or more likely pretend to want, isn’t possible, and it won’t happen.

Biden Recants

(John Hinderaker)

In his State of the Union speech, Joe Biden correctly referred to Jose Ibarra, the alleged murderer of Laken Riley, as an illegal alien. Democrats aren’t at all concerned about the murder of a 22-year-old girl, but they were horrified that Biden didn’t use their preferred term, “undocumented.” Which implies, I guess, that the guy was perfectly legal but maybe misplaced his driver’s license.

Biden has now apologized for telling the truth–perhaps the only time he did so in the SOTU. He chose MSNBC to recant:

President Biden apologized Saturday for using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the Venezuelan migrant accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

“An undocumented person. I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart in an excerpt from an interview airing Saturday — which did not show him addressing or acknowledging that he referred to Riley as “Lincoln Riley” during the same speech.

Lincoln Riley is the head coach of the Southern Cal football team.

“And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do.

So the simple factual characterization as “illegal” is in the same category as “vermin” and “polluting the blood.” And what Biden is most concerned about here is not being like Trump, which is why he reversed all of Trump’s successful border policies.

“I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country.

Illegal immigrants built the country? What the hell is he talking about?

The reason our economy is growing.

Illegal immigrants are responsible for a tepidly growing economy? Why?

We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share his view at all,” continued Biden.

“So, you regret using that word?” Capehart asked.

“Yes,” Biden responded.

What a sad performance. And, by the way, what was the point of Biden’s throwing in “[w]e have to control the border”? The border was mostly under control until he took office and deliberately opened it so as to allow millions of illegals to flood into the country. He did it on purpose. It is you, Joe Biden, who have to control the border. Only there is zero chance that you are going to do so.

An SOTU Postscript

(John Hinderaker)

Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech began almost a half hour behind schedule. The reason apparently was that his route to the Capitol was blocked by an illegal “kill the Jews” protest. So an official government proceeding was delayed by protesters who were violating the law. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Blocking an official proceeding. I think we have recent precedent on this. https://t.co/fxOZ9vxc74

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) March 8, 2024


Don’t hold your breath waiting for the “kill the Jews” gang to be arrested and held for a year or two in solitary confinement.

How Illegal Can You Get?

(John Hinderaker)

Joe Biden can’t get far enough left to satisfy his base. In last night’s SOTU, he referred to Jose Ibarra, the career criminal who *allegedly* beat Laken Riley to death, as an illegal immigrant. Which is exactly what he is, although the correct legal term is “illegal alien.” Bizarrely, liberals were outraged, not that Biden referred to Ibarra as a murderer, but that he called him an illegal immigrant. This roundup is from Alpha News:

Democrats in Minnesota and across the country are infuriated that President Joe Biden referred to a criminal, illegal alien as an “illegal” during the president’s State of the Union address on Thursday. Specifically, President Biden was referring to the illegal immigrant who has been charged with murder in the killing of Laken Riley.
***
In response, left-wing Democrats have expressed outrage that President Biden referred to this criminal, illegal alien as an “illegal.” Just after President Biden’s speech concluded, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota put out a social media post on X saying, “Let me be clear: No human being is illegal.”

This message was parroted by Democrats all over the country. In Minnesota, state Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega, D-St. Paul, re-posted Congresswoman Omar’s message. Jason Chavez, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, also put out a statement saying, “No human is illegal.”

A myriad of other Democrats, including Congresswomen Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, and Delia Ramirez, put out social media posts with the exact same message. Last night, Nancy Pelosi went on CNN and said President Biden should have used the word “undocumented” when referring to the illegal alien.

Congressman Chuy Garcia, D-Illinois, put out a statement saying, “As a proud immigrant, I’m extremely disappointed to hear President Biden use the world ‘illegal.’”

Breaking the law is illegal. Is that really so hard to understand? And, oh–by the way–murder is illegal, too. Although liberals seem to care a lot less about a young woman who was beaten to death than they do about policing their wacko speech code. But I suppose there is nothing surprising about that.

SOTU Response, By the Numbers

(John Hinderaker)

Earlier today, I posted the official GOP response to Joe Biden’s SOTU hate-fest, by Senator Katie Britt. Britt’s speech was an impressive performance in its own way; if I were a Democrat, I think she would scare me.

But for us data guys, Stephen Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline has the numbers:

A lot of tall tales and a few outright fabrications in the Biden speech last night – and far too many to enumerate here. But we will revisit three here.

“My administration cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion.”

This isn’t just a little bit false, it’s an extraordinary and audacious misstatement of fact. The baseline deficit over 10 years, as measured when Biden came into office versus the latest forecast, shows nearly $6 trillion added to the debt since Biden arrived on the scene.

So how does a $6 trillion addition of red ink possibly equate to a $1.7 trillion reduction in the deficit. Someone didn’t pass his basic math exam in high school.

“We will make the rich pay their fair share.”

The top 1% of American tax filers now pay an all-time record high 46% of taxes. This is according to Biden’s own IRS. Does he think the rich should pay ALL the taxes?

That is actually a good question. I think that for many Democrats, the answer may be Yes. But within reason, experience shows that lower rates mean higher collections, especially from high earners.

“I inherited an economy [from Trump] that was on the brink…”

Actually, the economy grew by – ready for this? 33% in the third quarter of 2020 and 4.1% in the 4th quarter of 2020. The economy was in a full-scale COVID recovery when Biden came into office.

Oh, and Inflation was 1.4%.

Gas prices were $2.39 per gallon.

If you think of it as a relay race, Trump handed the baton to Biden in first place, with a rapidly growing lead. But Biden tripped over his own feet–both literally and figuratively–and turned the strong position that he inherited (and not only economically) into a fiasco. That I why I don’t see how he can be re-elected, despite Trump’s manifest flaws.

If you don’t get the Unleash Prosperity Hotline, you should. You can sign up for its frequent and always informative emails here.

How to Beat Biden

(John Hinderaker)

Joe Biden is a pitifully weak presidential candidate, but elections don’t win themselves. Economic malaise ought to make any Republican challenger the favorite, but the issue that will clinch the election is illegal immigration. And the gloves need to come off. Like this:

I am told that CNN is refusing to air this. They ran out the clock on a pre-SOTU ad buy — then rejected it, calling several of its claims unsubstantiated. Fox and MNSBC aired it. In case you missed it: https://t.co/4osMsLypnf

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) March 8, 2024

The Republican Rejoinder

(John Hinderaker)

Senator Katie Britt of Alabama delivered the Republican response to Joe Biden’s SOTU speech. Not many people watch these rejoinders–for that matter, not too many watch the SOTU–but Britt’s response is getting a fair amount of buzz. She likely was chosen to contrast with Biden’s angry, more or less demented persona; if so, she played that contrast to the hilt.

Her speech was really a thespian performance, and not my style at all. But she prioritized illegal immigration, and was highly effective on that issue. Her appeal was directed to swing voters, especially women. And as performances go, it was very skillful. Check it out:

A Best-Case SOTU

(John Hinderaker)

Whatever Doctor Feelgood is operating in the White House these days injected Joe Biden with whatever cocktail that enabled him to yell nonstop for over an hour last night. And that is a good thing.

Before the speech, my wife, with her usual knack for getting at the heart of things, said that we should be rooting for Biden to get through the speech. Because if he collapsed midway in, the Democrats would be able to replace him on the ticket. And in truth, the only question last night was not whether Biden would give a good speech, or whether he would convince anyone not already committed to voting against Donald Trump, but whether he would remain upright.

We conservatives should be glad that he did, as he now continues his march toward the nomination as one of the very few Democrats Donald Trump might actually beat. So thanks, Doc.

Mean-Spirited Joe

(John Hinderaker)

Joe Biden is delivering his State of the Union speech tonight. Apparently he will chide Americans for not appreciating his wonderful economy; declining real wages will not be mentioned. He will denounce “shrinkflation,” as though people are too stupid to know inflation when they see it. Nor will Biden mention the eight million or so illegals who have streamed across the border, wreaking havoc, since he opened it.

Biden has always been mean-spirited. He is a nasty person, and always has been. Take, for example, his recent interview in the New Yorker. The interview is replete with Biden’s trademark classlessness, but take just one example: his smearing of Justice Thomas:

In a concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the legal rationale for overturning Roe could be applied to “correct the error” in cases on same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and access to contraception. I asked Biden if he thought that the Justices would undo those protections. “I don’t think there’s a majority to go there,” he said, but added, “I think that a couple on the Court would go considerably further”—specifically “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”

“Thomas?” I asked.

Biden grinned.

Those familiar with Thomas’s history will appreciate the absurdity of describing him as a yachtsman. He is better known for driving around America in an RV. But in any event, it is Biden–not Thomas–who has enriched himself and his family to the tune of many millions of dollars through influence peddling. Worst of all, he peddled his influence to powers hostile to America. It takes a lot of nerve for Joe Biden to sneer at the Court’s foremost intellectual for accepting a ride on a boat.

But that is Joe Biden: mean-spirited, through and through.

New Frontier In Woke Capitalism

(John Hinderaker)

North Face is a left-wing clothing company that is breaking new ground in wokeness. It now has a program, where anyone who completes its “allyship” training module can get a 20% discount on North Face products. This is truly a new frontier: a company is actually engaging in price discrimination, offering lower prices to people who share (or pretend to share) its political views.

Intrigued by news stories about North Face’s left-wing discount, I signed up to take the “Allyship in the Outdoors” course. For reasons stated below, I didn’t complete it. But this is what I saw, starting with how North Face introduces its course:

It is all about race. There is, you see, a problem. Not enough POCs are venturing into the outdoors:

The statistics are grim, especially in England. Hey, North Face is international:

But let’s pause here for a moment. There is not a single human activity that is engaged in by equal proportions of members of different ethnic groups. Not one. In the U.S., blacks live mostly in cities. Urban populations do not hike and camp as often as rural populations. So what? Rural populations do not play basketball as much as urban populations. Should North Face offer discounts to rural whites for that reason?

Of course, North Face is on board with the Black Lives Matter Movement, even though the Black Lives Matter organization turned out to be a criminal fraud. Should someone tell them?

North Face thinks it is really important that women in full head coverings participate equally in the great outdoors:

Here’s the thing: I haven’t done so much hiking and camping in recent years, but I did quite a bit when I was younger, as well as skiing, fishing and other outdoor activities. There is no “barrier” to anyone doing any of these things. The national and state parks are open to all. Anyone can hunt or fish. Just buy a shotgun or a fishing rod. You don’t have to be a left-wing “ally” to encourage anyone who feels the urge to get outdoors. Maybe by joining the Boy Scouts, although I don’t suppose North Face would approve of that.

One thing about a far-left outfit like North Face, they lay it on the line. “Equity” means equal outcomes, i.e., exactly equal percentages of all ethnic groups engaging in all outdoor activities:

Let me know when all ethnic groups are equally represented in the NFL, and then I will get back to you.

Before getting too far into the “allyship” lesson, I had to take a quiz:

I clicked on f), but that turned out to be a thought crime:

So that was the end of the road for me. I had to either sign on with North Face’s rightthink, or forgo my opportunity for a 20% discount. Since I would not, under any circumstances, consider buying a product from North Face, it was an easy decision.

What to make of this? North Face has ventured beyond any other “woke” company, to my knowledge, in offering discounts to people with stupid political beliefs. Can that possibly work? I don’t know. The adage “Get woke, go broke” sometimes holds with regard to companies that rely on American sales, like Bud Light, but it generally doesn’t with regard to companies whose sales are mostly international, like Nike. I am not sure where North Face falls on that continuum.

I do suspect that North Face, which pretends to be “green,” is embarrassed by the fact that its products are made mostly from petroleum, and that may partly account for its insistent leftism.

So, is there an opportunity here for conservative companies? Should conservative companies (assuming there are some) offer discounts to customers who assert belief in values like patriotism and free speech?

It isn’t going to happen. Why? Because conservatives believe in inclusion and equality.

Arizona Cranks Up More Criminal Charges

(John Hinderaker)

Politico reports that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (a Democrat, of course) is accelerating an investigation that may lead to prosecutions of people close to President Trump’s 2020 campaign. Which is odd on its face, since the events that are the basis for the investigation happened more than three years ago. Why the sudden hurry? Obviously, Democrats see that Joe Biden is losing, and are throwing the kitchen sink at Trump:

Arizona prosecutors in recent weeks issued grand jury subpoenas to multiple people linked to Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, a sharp acceleration of their criminal investigation into efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

The new steps, first reported here, are a sign that Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, is nearing a decision on whether to charge Trump’s allies in the state, including GOP activists who falsely posed as presidential electors in December 2020.

“Falsely posed as electors.” What an absurd characterization! In a number of states, Trump’s campaign had people lined up to be electors on his behalf in the event that his various legal challenges might succeed before the Electoral College met. There is nothing wrong with this, let alone illegal. The same thing happened in Hawaii in 1960, and would have happened in Florida in 2000 if the Supreme Court hadn’t first put the matter to rest.

The “fake elector” theory is one of several ways in which the Democrats have tried to criminalize making claims of voter fraud. In the wake of the 2020 election, Donald Trump and many others believed that the election had been stolen by the Biden campaign. Were they right? I doubt it, but we will never know for sure. There wasn’t enough time between the election and Biden’s inauguration for claims of voter fraud to be litigated on the merits, and in no case did any court ever permit the necessary discovery, conduct a trial and make findings on the extent of voter fraud by the Democrats.

In multiple criminal proceedings, Trump is accused of “trying to overturn” — or “plotting to overturn” — the result of the 2020 election. Again, there is nothing wrong with this. Al Gore tried to overturn the result of the 2000 election, and Al Franken got into the U.S. Senate by overturning the result of an election. There is nothing wrong with pursuing legal election remedies. And where extensive voter fraud is suspected, an attempt to investigate, litigate and overturn a fraudulent result is commendable, not criminal. But the reality is that voter fraud can only be prevented; it can’t be litigated and corrected after the fact. The Democrats have blocked common-sense ballot security measures at every opportunity, and they have no one but themselves to blame if the public widely suspects that our elections are rigged.

Sadly, it appears that some Trump associates have been bullied into guilty pleas in shameful criminal proceedings alleging that they were “fake electors.” This reflects the reality that government at either the federal or the state level can destroy your life at will. At some point, nearly everyone will surrender rather than go through bankruptcy and see his or her life destroyed.

The misuse of criminal proceedings by the Democratic Party to punish its political opponents is the most vicious legacy of our current political crisis.

Happy Death Day, You Miserable Son of a Bitch

(John Hinderaker)

Josef Stalin died on this day in 1953. In his sleep; so, like Lenin, Mao and Castro, and unlike Hitler, Mussolini and Ceausescu, he never paid a price for his crimes. The Victims of Communism remember:

Stalin died on this day in 1953.

He left behind a legacy of terror, famine, and mass murder.

Remember the victims. pic.twitter.com/HUBBYUZMwh

— Victims of Communism (@VoCommunism) March 5, 2024


Stalin ranks second only to Mao among history’s worst mass murderers. Those who knew him best understood how evil he was: his wife committed suicide and his daughter defected to America. Stalin’s malignant legacy lives on, as Russia has never fully emerged from his dark shadow. It is unfortunate that he wasn’t strung up like Mussolini or shot like Ceausescu. At this point, all we can do is revile him.

Sinema Is Out

(John Hinderaker)

Kyrsten Sinema announced today that she will not seek reelection to her Arizona Senate seat:

Sinema’s move is significant but not unexpected. She raised only $595,000 in the final quarter of 2023, a fraction of the totals that Lake and Gallego each raised — although Sinema maintains nearly $11 million in her campaign account.

So it sounds like her mind was made up a while ago. Sinema’s withdrawal means the race will be between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Representative Ruben Gallego. Gallego is a far leftist; this is how Lake describes him:

He votes with Joe Biden 100% of the time, supported the Iran Deal, sanctuary cities, defunding the police, and voting rights for everyone pouring across the border. He even called the border wall “stupid.”

Lake will now be a heavy favorite to flip the Senate seat, obviously a desirable outcome. But I am a little sorry to see Sinema go. She was an old-fashioned–i.e, sane–Democrat. A dinosaur, in other words. While she no doubt voted with the Dems most of the time, there were important instances, as for example the original “Build Back Better” disaster, when she stood in the breach on behalf of the Republic. And I have it on good authority that she couldn’t stand her Democratic colleagues, which perhaps contributed to her decision to walk away.

In any event, while Kari Lake will likely mark an important step toward restoring Republican control of the Senate, we owe Kyrsten Sinema a debt of gratitude.

California Is About to Get Even Worse

(John Hinderaker)

You might think that the leftists who run California would be worried about the rapid decline of that state, but no: they are doing all they can to accelerate it. In the Wall Street Journal, Heather Mac Donald outlines California’s latest descent into racialist madness:

What would happen if lawmakers reinvented the criminal-justice system to target “systemic racism” instead of crime? California is about to find out. Thanks to a 2020 law called the California Racial Justice Act, every felon serving time in the state’s prisons and jails can now retroactively challenge his conviction and sentencing on the ground of systemic bias.

To prevail, the incarcerated prisoner need not show that the police officers, prosecutors, judge or jurors in his case were motivated by racism or that his proceedings were unfair. If he can demonstrate that in the past, criminal suspects of his race were arrested, prosecuted or sentenced more often or more severely than members of other racial groups, he will be entitled to a new trial or sentence.

We all know what this is about. Blacks are arrested, prosecuted and convicted more often than members of other races because they commit more crimes. Heather has some of the numbers for California:

In Los Angeles, blacks are 21 times as likely as whites to commit a violent crime, 36 times as likely to commit a robbery, and 57 times as likely to commit a homicide, according to police department data. Those data come from reports filed by victims and witnesses, who are themselves disproportionately black.

Blacks over-offend to an appalling degree in other states, too. But liberals cling to the hoary myth that “disparities” in law enforcement can only be due to racial bias in criminal jutice.

The Racial Justice Act is turning California’ criminal justice system into a farce:

When a felon in San Francisco contested his arrest and prosecution for having a loaded handgun in his car, a “race expert” testified that the arresting officer’s use of the phrase “high crime area” demonstrated “bias against people of color.” The trial judge disagreed, but an appeals court reversed and allowed the felon’s claim to proceed. (Speaking of bias, that same expert, Dante King, asserted at the University of California, San Francisco, on Feb. 8 that “whites are psychopaths” whose “behavior represents an underlying, biologically transmitted proclivity.”)
***
A case from Contra Costa County last year shows the snowballing potential of the Racial Justice Act. A judge found that four black gang members who had committed murder as part of a bloody feud between two Oakland gangs had been improperly sentenced to life in prison without parole. That conclusion wasn’t based on flaws in the four defendants’ trials, but simply on an alleged historical pattern of sentencing bias toward black gang murderers. The black comparison group in the case was made up of 30 black defendants who had also committed gang murder in Contra Costa County from 2015 to 2022 and who had also received life without parole. All 30 can now sue to erase those sentences.

It is hard to understand how there can be a political movement in favor of more crime, but there you have it. In California, that movement evidently represents the majority. If, for some reason, you still live in California, you should get out while you can.

Pope Francis Is a Fool

(John Hinderaker)

Pope Francis says that all nations have a moral duty to disarm:

Pope Francis said Sunday that military disarmament is not optional but constitutes a “moral obligation” for all nations.
***
“How many resources are wasted on military expenditure, which, because of the current situation, sadly continues to increase!” he told the estimated 20,000 tourists and pilgrims gathered in the square.

Actually, I think it is a fact that a smaller proportion of resources is going to military spending, in almost all countries, than at any time in history.

He went on to express his hope that “the international community will understand that disarmament is first and foremost a duty, and that disarmament is a moral obligation.”

“Let’s get this into our heads,” he added. “And this requires the courage of all members of the great family of nations to move from a balance of fear to a balance of trust.”

But some leaders, and some nations, can’t be, and shouldn’t be, trusted. Francis’s foolish advice is reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most overrated men ever, who urged Jews not to resist the Nazis. Wouldn’t want to dirty your hands with weapons. Back to Francis:

In the past, the pope has suggested that if people are really serious about world peace, the solution is to “ban all weapons.”

This is gun control writ large: blame the inanimate weapon, which can be used either for good or for ill, rather than the evil regime of Hamas, Putin, or the Chinese Communist Party.

For decades, the Catholic church has criticized the arms race and consequent build-up of nuclear arsenals, but Francis is the pope to call for the banning of all weapons. If he were to be taken at his word, this would imply outlawing everything from rifles to hand grenades to the halberds carried by the Pontifical Swiss Guards in the Vatican.

Good point! People used to go to war with spears and swords, tools which were sufficient to kill vast numbers.

The existence of weapons leads humanity to live “in fear of war,” the pope declared, and the only way to remove this fear is to eliminate all weapons.

People live in fear of war for excellent reasons. They lived in fear of war two thousand year ago, too, when weapons were much more primitive. The way to remove fear of war is to be more powerful than one’s potential adversaries.

I suppose Francis’s defenders would say that his call to disarm is aspirational, and that he doesn’t really want countries like the United States and Italy to turn their swords into ploughshares tomorrow. But when you tell people they have a moral duty to do something that it would be stupid and even fatal for them to do, you forfeit any claim to moral leadership.

Francis is a fool. Happily, there is no chance that anyone will listen to his bad advice.

“Get Me a Deal!”

(John Hinderaker)

That is what Joe Biden demanded of the Israelis, Hamas and representatives of Qatar and Egypt who are trying to broker a cease-fire agreement. As though he were the party in interest. The Telegraph interprets Biden’s motives:

Mr Biden is under major pressure from voters over the US alliance with Israel, and the president was punished at the ballot box by protesting young Democrats in the primaries last week.

So what would a proposed deal look like?

A potential deal could include a six-week pause in fighting, the release of approximately 400 Palestinian prisoners in return for the freeing of 40 Israeli hostages, as well as preparation for a gradual return of Palestinian citizens to the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Why 40 hostages? Why not all of them? Why should Israel even discuss a proposal that does not include a total release of kidnap victims? And how about a Hamas surrender? Normally, when a country starts a war and then loses it, if it wants the fighting to stop it has to surrender. It is bizarre that some people take seriously the idea that Hamas should survive the war it foolishly started.

Happily, Israel has decided not to attend the cease-fire negotiations in Cairo:

Israel will not be sending a negotiating team to Cairo, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Sunday, after receiving an unsatisfactory response from Hamas on the latest framework for a hostage deal hammered out in Paris last weekend.

The Gaza-based terror organization refused to address Jerusalem’s demand to provide a list of living hostages and to lock down how many Palestinian prisoners Israel must release for every hostage freed, added the official.

My guess is that Gaza doesn’t want to provide a list of living kidnap victims because a shocking number have been murdered. In any event, Israel shouldn’t allow Hamas’s transparent diplomatic maneuvering, or hysterical reactions from the Biden administration, to distract It from the total victory it needs to achieve over Gaza.

Squad Sneaks Off to Cuba

(John Hinderaker)

There was a time when, if you said that liberals suffer from Communism envy, they would deny it. Is that still true? Perhaps not, as to the Squad, two members of which were among a delegation that made a more or less secret trip to Cuba:

A delegation of the U.S. Congressional Progressive Caucus traveled to Cuba last week in a trip that has not previously been disclosed by the legislators nor reported in Cuban state media.

The group of about a dozen people was led by Democratic U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal of the state of Washington and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. It included a congressional staffer from the office of California Rep. Barbara Lee’s office, sources with knowledge of the trip told the Miami Herald.

Jayapal and Omar, members of the informal left-wing group of lawmakers known as “the squad,” did not reply to emails and messages seeking comment. Lee’s office also did not reply to a request for comment.

After the Herald published this story, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, comprising more than 100 lawmakers and chaired by Jayapal, confirmed the trip.

Odd. No press releases, no Cuban state media trumpeting the support it is getting from American liberals. So what was up with the visit?

“Representatives Jayapal and Omar traveled to Cuba last week, where they met with people from across Cuban civil society and government officials to discuss human rights and the U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationship,” said a Caucus spokesperson.

Oh. Okay. But the Squad is not in favor of human rights, so it would be interesting to know what the discussion was about:

Jayapal and Omar have been vocal critics of the U.S. embargo against Cuba and have supported bills to normalize relations with the island’s communist government. They were among the 40 Democrats who voted against a symbolic resolution supporting peaceful demonstrators who protested against the Cuban government in July 2021 and “calling for the immediate release of arbitrarily detained Cuban citizens.”

Well, they don’t want arbitrarily detained American citizens released either, so I guess that is consistent. All in all, the story is a valuable reminder that, while the rest of the world has given up on Communism, it still has a certain cachet with American liberals.

Burn Those Trees!

(John Hinderaker)

We have written a couple of times about biomass, which is a fancy term for burning wood. If you thought using wood fires for energy was out of date–it has been, actually, for a century and a half–you are behind the times. Wood burning is considered “green,” a wholly political concept, and therefore is heavily subsidized in Europe. Millions of trees in the U.S. and Canada suffer the consequences.

The latest from the United Kingdom:

Wood, the fuel that British industry thought it had left behind more than a century ago, is staging a comeback.

Powering the resurgence is Drax Group, owner of the controversial Drax power station that recently posted a 10-fold increase in its latest yearly profits.

Its plant in Yorkshire, Britain’s largest and most controversial power station, generated around 6pc of the country’s electricity in 2023 by burning 6.4 million tonnes of wood. In context, it is the equivalent of 27 million trees.

27 million trees! The same Telegraph article points out that the New Forest only has 46 million trees, less than two years’ worth. So where does the wood come from?

Last year alone Drax imported 4.6 million tonnes of wood from the US and another 760,000 tonnes from Canada, with further deliveries coming from Brazil, Latvia and Russia.

You might think that cutting down trees in the southern U.S., thus preventing them from absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere–do they still teach junior high kids about photosynthesis?–shipping them to Europe on diesel-powered ships, and then burning them, releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, must be the dumbest possible way of generating electricity. And, while it is appallingly stupid, and not “green” in any coherent sense, it is arguably not as dumb as wind and solar:

[Drax chief executive Will Gardiner says], “We have created a business which plays an essential role in supporting energy security, providing dispatchable, renewable power for millions of homes and businesses, particularly during periods of peak demand when there is low wind and solar power.”

Yes: burning wood on an industrial scale is idiotic, but at least it works in the dark and when the wind isn’t blowing.

Finally, why does such a foolish way of generating electricity exist? Mandates and subsidies, of course:

Sir Peter’s reference to cost relates to the taxpayer subsidies that Drax receives for producing green energy, which amounted to £617m in 2022 and £587m in 2023.

Meanwhile, China is humming along with more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants, and more coming on line constantly.

40 For the Big Guy

(John Hinderaker)

James Biden has now admitted that he paid his brother Joe $40,000 out of funds he received from CEFC China Energy, which is generally regarded as a front for the Chinese government.

“Where did you believe the source of the money that was going into [Hunter Biden’s company] Owasco, prior to being sent to you, was coming from?” an investigator asked James during the Feb. 21 interview.

“CEFC,” James conceded — following an extended back-and-forth in which the first brother’s attorney Paul Fishman tried to argue that “money’s fungible” before being reminded by a House staffer that James “did not have sufficient funds” to make the $40,000 alleged loan repayment on his own, “so it is traceable.”

Of course, the goalposts in the Joe Biden bribery scandal have repeatedly been moved:

Democrats have defended the alleged loan repayments as evidence of nothing more than Joe Biden being a supportive brother. But Republicans say it makes clear that the president benefited from his relatives’ dealings as he repeatedly interacted with their business associates, including in the CEFC venture.

I think Republicans have made a mistake in seeming to go along with the Democrats’ theme that money has to be traced to Joe’s bank accounts in order to count. Under federal bribery law, Biden is guilty if he “demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value” not just for himself, but for “any other person or entity” in return for “being influenced in the performance of any official act.” People who bribe politicians are rarely dumb enough to make checks payable to the politicians themselves. Most often, they go to family members.

Republicans also shouldn’t fall for the Democrats’ spin about Joe not being involved in “his son’s overseas business dealings.” So, what business was Hunter in? Did he own or run a company that produced any products or provided any services? No. Hunter’s only business was peddling Joe’s influence. And for that to work, it had to be plausible that Joe was in on the deal, and would use his influence to benefit CEFC, or whoever. This is why Hunter would bring his father in on the telephone when he was meeting with Joe’s customers.

Notwithstanding the ever-moving goalposts, I think this is an instance where the Democrats’ control over the news media actually works to their disadvantage. They have been lulled into thinking that they can get away with their candidate’s having turned his power as vice president into tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains for his family and himself, because the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the usual gang of suspects try to run interference.

But in their blundering way, Republicans have managed to convey to a large majority of voters that Joe Biden is a corrupt pol. It is one of several reasons why, in spite of Donald Trump’s grave defects as a candidate, I don’t think Joe Biden can be re-elected.

Mitch, We Knew Ye Really, Really Well

(John Hinderaker)

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.

Artists Try to Ban Israelis

(John Hinderaker)

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.

How Wimpy Are Our Kids?

(John Hinderaker)

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.

How Poor Can Venezuela Get?

(John Hinderaker)

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.

It’s Dangerous To Be an Athlete

(John Hinderaker)

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. . .”

Blackouts, Here We Come

(John Hinderaker)

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.

Clarence Thomas, Racist?

(John Hinderaker)

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.

The Price of Illegal Immigration [Updated]

(John Hinderaker)

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.

Democrat Denialists

(John Hinderaker)

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.

Red States Getting Redder

(John Hinderaker)

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?

Get a Load of Fani

(John Hinderaker)

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.

How Dumb Are These People?

(John Hinderaker)

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?

❌