Two fresh instances of the Washington Post having it in for conservatives

Brandon Morse at RedState:

Earlier this week, Kavanaugh was fortunate to return to coaching his daughter’s basketball team, which he feared he may never be able to do again due to the character killing media frenzy that washed over his family. WaPo reported that he had indeed returned and that should have been that. Alls well that ends well for a good guy.

But no. WaPo decided to publish the article in the “Public Safety” section, obviously indicating that Kavanaugh was a sexual risk to the girls he was coaching. The slap was subtle, but it was a childish slap nonetheless. No court in the world would convict Kavanaugh of being guilty of what he was accused of thanks to a complete lack of evidence and a stream of ridiculous stories told about him, one including him being involved in a high school rape ring that was so well hidden that no one spoke or heard of it.

But Kavanaugh is guilty according to them, and so that’s how they will treat him. Let me reiterate that they know for a fact that Kavanaugh is innocent of what he was accused of. What Kavanaugh is guilty of is being on the wrong side of the aisle and being successful. That’s good enough for WaPo to accuse him of being a likely committer of child-rape.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The Washington Post is also in the business of subtly accusing, but not outright accusing, Tucker Carlson of being a neo-Nazi. They have to avoid those lawsuits after all.

As my colleague Alex Parker reported, WaPo made the accusation that Carlson is a “neo-Nazi favorite” based on the fact that the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, mentioned Carlson in 265 articles. By comparison, fellow Fox News host Sean Hannity was only mentioned 26 times.

So clearly, according to WaPo, this means that Carlson is saying a lot of things that are Nazi-ish in nature and so while they’re not saying he’s a neo-Nazi, they’re saying he’s a neo-Nazi. Wink, wing, nudge, nudge. Not only is this is ridiculous logic, but it also sounds like something an angry high school girl would do to ruin that other girl’s life for stealing the guy she likes.

Of course, Carlson isn’t a neo-Nazi. He’s never said anything that would indicate he is. Again, however, Carlson is on the wrong side of the aisle and he’s successful. That makes him free-game for WaPo to label him the second coming of a national-socialist regime that actively targeted and eliminated millions of innocent people in some of the most horrid ways possible.

Meanwhile, WaPo is only too happy to host articles on their site written by actual anti-semites like Linda Sarsour.

The Washington Post is not well. As Jon Stewart pointed out, many in the mainstream media have had their narcissism pummeled by Trump and WaPo isn’t taking it well just like everyone else in their field. They’re angry, bitter, and vengeful. They’re okay with making wild claims or dealing out subtle, yet horrific insults.

Perhaps the folks at WaPo need to take a breath.

One way to look at the post-American populace is that there are two kinds of people comprising it: those who see this garbage for what it is, and those who swallow it hook line and sinker.

Is there a big protectionist groundswell in post-America? We might want to rethink that

Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute has a column today at Bloomberg entitled "Republicans Rejected Free Trade for No Reason."

LITD highly recommends it:

Donald Trump's election in 2016 was taken as clear evidence that Americans were fed up with globalization. Though elites and economists supported free trade, the silent majority of Americans, left to live with its effects, did not. Protectionist sentiment was resurgent. Economic nationalism and “America First” have since become the order of the day, the consequences of a bottom-up reaction from the people. 

 The problem with this new conventional wisdom about trade is that it may be wrong, according to a new study based on polling data from a variety of organizations.

The author, Scott Lincicome, an international trade lawyer and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, found that the solid majority of Americans support trade and globalization. A March 2018 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, for example, finds that “Americans overwhelmingly think trade is more of an opportunity to boost the economy than it is a threat to it”; the margin was 66 percent to 20 percent.

In the same month, Gallup found that 70 percent of U.S. adults “see foreign trade as an opportunity for U.S. economic growth through increased exports,” while only 25 percent see trade as a “threat to the economy” due to foreign imports. 

Lincicome contrasts the central role trade played in the 2016 campaign with evidence that the issue simply wasn't a priority even then for most Americans. He highlights a poll taken after the Republican National Convention in July 2016 nominated Trump for president. This poll found that half of respondents had no opinion on “rolling back free-trade agreements” like the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Out of the 12 issues polled, the second-highest “no opinion” score, on Medicare vouchers, was 29 percent.) 

Overall, two-thirds of respondents were largely disinterested — either indifferent, weakly supportive or weakly opposed to curtailing free-trade agreements. 

These results jibe with more recent surveys. Lincicome highlights a January 2018 Pew poll in which respondents ranked global trade last among issues that should be a top priority for the federal government. Pew noted that, historically, “dealing with global trade issues has been among the lowest-ranked priorities over the past two decades.” In June 2018, a Gallup poll found that only 1 percent of Americans think “foreign trade/trade deficit” is “the most important problem facing the country today.”

Importantly, Lincicome’s paper documents shifts in attitudes that correlate with the state of the economy and with politics. Support for trade fell during the Great Recession and rebounded during the recovery. 

I remember the 2015 - 16 era and how Laura Ingraham, on her radio show, kept harping away about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as if it was a front-burner issue, when no one else was nearly as preoccupied with it.

There seems to be little doubt that there is indeed a very large swath of post-Americans who feel that their everyday concerns are not understood or addressed by elected officials or policy wonks, but Trumpists may have read too much in terms of specific trade policy into that.

Strain offers a way to address those concerns that can actually lead to something other than a closing off of organic economic exchange:

It could be a focal point for frustration with economic and cultural change. In this sense, the conventional wisdom about trade might be evidence that public policy needs to create more real on-ramps to economic opportunity for lower-income and working-class Americans. 

But even that way of framing it makes me wary. We're awfully quick, it seems to me, to assume that "public policy" can "create" things that benefit sovereign individuals. I'm more inclined to think that truly organic economic opportunity happens on the level of particular needs and particular ideas for profitably meeting those needs.

Maybe Strain would say we're talking about the same thing, which is probably true, at least to a large extent. I just get wary of accepting the terms of discussion about economics as being what some big entity - generally government, or the administrative apparatus more broadly - can "do" for some amorphous "people."

In any event, his main point is spot-on. Protectionism is a road to nowhere.

Another problematic Acosta

And the question posed in a different context in the post below applies here. What is this guy doing still holding his job?

In his time as Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta has done much to accommodate liberals and little implement a conservative agenda. His inaction has attracted little criticism — virtually none unless you count the occasional posts about I have written for Power Line.

To make matters worse, President Trump, although he has attacked other cabinet members — especially Jeff Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen — has had nothing but public praise for Acosta. He lumps Acosta with Alex Azar, the Secretary of HHS, and touts them as “his two Alex’s.” Azar deserves the praise. Acosta does not.

Trump may have to think twice before praising Acosta again, however. In a blockbuster story, the Miami Herald reports that, as a federal prosecutor in South Florida Acosta gave pedophile Jeffrey Epstein the “deal of a lifetime.” 

Failing to populate the Labor Department’s Administrative Review Board or to overturn the Obama-era policies of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs may draw yawns even from those who know about it. Agreeing to a sweet deal with a notorious pedophile is quite another story. 

Readers may recall that Epstein is the guy who operated the “Lolita Express” which transported underage females to his private island for his sexual pleasure. Bill Clinton, Epstein’s friend, reportedly hitched some rides. (Donald Trump’s name appeared in Epstein’s little black book of personal phone numbers, according to the Herald..) 

Epstein’s practice, according to his victims, was to lure girls aged 13 to 16, to his mansion for a “massage.” He would molest them, paying extra for oral sex and intercourse, and offering more money to bring him new girls. In effect, this was an underage sex pyramid scheme. 

According to the Herald’s reporting, a federal investigation revealed 36 underage victims of Epstein (the Herald apparently found dozens of additional ones). Yet, through a plea agreement with then-U.S. Attorney Acosta, Epstein managed to plead to only two state prostitution charges. He served 13 months in state prison, where he was housed in a private wing at the Palm Beach County jail and allowed work release privileges. Epstein’s year of “incarceration” reportedly included trips to New York and the Virgin Islands. 

Not only did Epstein avoid a federal trial but, again according to the Herald, the agreement “essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe” and further granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators” in the case. Epstein was, however, required to register as a sex offender.

Shutting down the federal investigation apparently was not just Epstein’s priority, it was also Acosta’s. The Herald says: “Documents show Acosta, then a federal prosecutor, didn’t just buckle under pressure from Epstein’s lawyers; he and other prosecutors worked with them to contain the case — even as the FBI was uncovering evidence of a wider sex trafficking operation.”

Moreover, again according to the Herald:

The pact Epstein negotiated with federal prosecutors was sealed so that no one — not even his victims — could know the full scope of his crimes. Court records, letters and emails show that the deal was negotiated, signed and executed behind victims’ backs.

This was contrary to the requirements of federal law, says the Herald. And the agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.

Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims, asks: “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?” It’s a good question.

And what was the Very Stable Genius doing considering him, even if only for a moment, for Attorney General?

Marc Lamont Hill puts his Jew-hatred on display before the whole world

It's been about 24 hours or so since he let loose with this. Why hasn't CNN fired his vile ass yet?

The Left isn’t much for Israel. And that includes, apparently, Marc Lamont Hill.

On Wednesday, while speaking to the United Nations, the CNN commentator appeared to endorse violence against Israel, using a phrase which reportedly refers to the tiny country’s destruction.

On the U.N.’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Hill had this to say:

“Contrary to Western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandhi and non-violence. Rather, slave revolts and self-defense, and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom.”

Okay, so exclusively peaceful resistance is for the birds. Therefore…

“If we are in true solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility. If we are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend itself. We must prioritize peace, but we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote non-violence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.”

The particularly disturbing part of Hill’s remarks came when he championed commitment to action:

“[We must] commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires. And that is a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

The Anti-Defamation League’s Sharon Nazarian — senior vice president for international affairs — told the Jewish Journal that the phrase “from the river to the sea” refers to the end of Israel:

“Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel.”

The Washington Examiner confirms:

“The phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ has been a rallying cry for Hamas and other terrorist groups seeking the elimination of Israel, as a Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would mean that Israel would be wiped off the map.”

Such an idea isn’t misaligned with accusations in the past. In May of 2017, The Algemeine posted the piece “Yes, Marc Lamont Hill Is an Antisemite.” Two months earlier, the Times of Israel ran “Marc Lamont Hill’s Curious Hypocrisy on Racism in the Middle East.”

How about Temple University? Does he still have his job there? Why?


UPDATE: CNN fires him.

For the VSG cult, it's all about the personal loyalty

A tweet from radio host and former House member Joe Walsh:

Conversation today with a Trump supporter: Her: "I'm mad we lost the House, but I'm really glad that sorry-ass Mia Love lost. She took a shot at my President yesterday." Me: "But Mia Love voted with Trump 95% of the time." Her: "I don't care. You don't diss my President."

There really are people out there like that.

Wednesday roundup

Yay! Hyde-Smith gets elected to the Senate seat in Mississippi in that state's runoff.

The leftist media take commentary on Melania Trump's White House Christmas decorations beyond snark into the realm of cruelty:

Vice even declared that Melania's decor resembles a "circle of hell Dante could never have dreamed up."

"It's 2018: It's well-established that we live in hell. It only makes sense that the first lady's Christmas decorations would match the bleakness of the Trump era," said Vice.

Vanity Fair said Melania Trump's Christmas decor seem to always have "a touch of menace to them."

"It wouldn’t be a Trump White House Christmas without, again, a menacing touch to what is otherwise a lavishly and beautifully wrought winter wonderland," said VF. "This year, crimson red trees dotted a long hallway, dyed with what I assume is liberal blood a-boiling."

Both Slate and The Cut made similar denunciations of varying cruelty. A Funny or Die video spoof also mocked Melania’s accent and suggested the trees were dipped in blood.

Caleb Howe at PJ Media has exactly the spot-on take on Mia Love's concession speech. It was indeed a ringing espousal of the task before actual conservatives in late 2018:

This was a great, conservative speech and told the true story of her campaign and her time in office. The remarks about Trump will make the biggest splash, so we'll start there. But there is so much more, after that.

“When President Trump took a jab at me because he thought the race was over," said Rep. Love, "I was somewhat surprised at first."

In a way, no one should have been surprised, but even so, some of us were taken aback by the pettiness and vainglory in Trump's comments. Incrementally, he gets worse and worse, and more and more open about his demand for... not loyalty, but lickspittle devotion. You can only half-blame him. After all, it's the devoted lickspittles all around him and on Fox that make him feel so comfortable with his base desires.

But here's the core of what she is about as a public figure, an American, and a human being:

. . . it's about the achievements of the beliefs and policies for which the party once stood and should again. The second part begins with four pretty important words for context: I am a Republican.

"I am a Republican. I know conservative policies work. They lift everyone. They lift the poor, the young, the vulnerable, the black, and an the white. Our conservative policies save our young, and unborn children. When the pundits tell us that we're out of luck, the deck is stacked against us, we say no. No way. Not in this country. Because under conservative policies the deck is not stacked against us and we all have a chance. Conservative policies make it so that no one in this country is predestined to be poor. I know because I've lived them. I've put them into action. I've promoted them throughout our state and across our country. The problem is not the policy. It is that we are never taken into hearts and into homes."

And she offers this reassurance:

"The good news is, I'm not going away. But now, I am unleashed. I am un-tethered, and I am unshackled, and I can say exactly what's on my mind," said Love. Then she took questions from the press.

[Can we also take a second to point out what a di*k question the very first reporter asked? Why couldn't you speak your mind before? Because, right, this is the first time we've ever encountered a politician and we need this di*k reporter to flesh out the idea that politicians carefully plan what they say so they aren't ripped apart by [checks notes] oh right, DI*K REPORTERS. Anyway, aside over.]

It was an excellent speech and, the reason is that she puts into words what is so hard to make people on the MAGA right and the media left understand. That you can believe, understand, and know that the core principles and ideas behind what makes a Republican are not only sound, but beneficial. That there are those who look at the same ills and evils in this world that every do-gooder, virtue signaler, busybody, and SJW see, and hate those evils and ills with equal passion and compassion, but believe (know) that the way to address them and make them better is our way. Not the SJW way or the Democrat way or the bureaucrat way. She gave a validation to the idea that you can be true to that understanding and right ideas, no matter who is wearing the big red hat.

Truth remains true. 

Yesterday, I saw a vomit-inducing tweet from the vomit-inducing Laura Ingraham that said that "all the cool people are praising this highly rehearsed speech," and then asserted that Love deserved to lose. This is what Howe means by lickspittles.

Two great pieces at NRO this morning.

One is an editorial on GM's latest moves:

This is a politically embarrassing development for President Trump, who has sold himself as the tribune of American manufacturing and industrial concerns, who boasts — and no doubt genuinely believes — that the success or failure of these businesses vis-á-vis foreign competitors is only a matter of negotiating deals and being “tough.” Much progress has been made in the past two years — more than Trump’s critics expected — which have seen critical reforms in the tax code and a measure of regulatory relief. But the underlying economic realities cannot be negotiated away. And while political leaders should encourage a thriving and dynamic labor market — and the job-creation and wage growth that goes with it — jobs are not a social program. Jobs are a means, not an end, and jobs dedicated to producing products that consumers do not want are jobs that are not going to last and never were. 

GM’s business is putting dividends in the pockets of its shareholders. And while it is easy (and all too common) to overstate the president’s role in the economy at large, seeing to the continuing reforms that will help to drive economic growth, employment, and wages is President Trump’s job. GM isn’t asking for Trump’s advice, and he isn’t qualified to give it. Bluster isn’t going to see a single GM worker to his next job nor change the fact that Toyota builds cars that consumers want while GM doesn’t.

The other is Jonah Goldberg's piece on how Max Boot has made a conscious decision to become a silly goose. 

Russia is sending a fresh supply of S-400 surface-to-air missiles to Crimea. This one bears close watching, folks.

The kind of straightforward question you can't ask on Twitter

Yes, Laura Loomer has espoused some over-the-top views in the past, but this was not one of them. She merely asked this question:

My name is Laura Loomer. As many of you may have heard, I was permanently banned from Twitter for life on November 21, 2018, and then I was banned for 30 days from Facebook less than 24 hours later, in another example of collusion by tech giants to censor conservative voices.

What was my offense?

Did I spew hateful, violent rhetoric towards anyone as we frequently see leftist celebrities and politicians do online?

Nope.

Did I post racist comments or call for genocide against a group of people?

Nope.

Did I incite a riot or call for the President to be assassinated, like Leftists often do on Twitter?

Nope.

I merely shared a fact. Yes, the truth can now get you banned for life from the Internet, in America, the land of the free, and the only country with a First Amendment right.

The tweet that Twitter decided to ban me for was a tweet full of facts about Sharia law. It was a tweet directed at Ilhan Omar, a newly elected Congresswoman, a politician, a public figure, which pointed out that her support of Sharia law does not make her an ally for gay people, women, or Jews, as Twitter would like you to believe.

This is the tweet that earned me a lifetime ban. Is this “hateful conduct,” as Twitter accused me of practicing?

You decide.

And how much coverage have you seen about this aspect of Omar's life?

she is not legally married to the man she advertises as the husband and the father of her three children. In fact, she is legally married to another man—who may be her brother. A posting on the SomaliSpot discussion board alleged that Omar had married the man touted as her husband in 2002 before marrying her brother for fraudulent purposes in 2009. The post, which seems to have been written by someone from Minneapolis’s Somali community, was quickly deleted. By the time it came to my attention, the post was only available via a Google cache (now also deleted). If the story is true, however, it suggests that Omar had engaged in some kind of dishonest activity in connection with her marriage to her brother (which by itself would be illegal).

I originally checked out the SomaliSpot story online through the Minnesota Official Marriage System. Inputting Omar’s name, I found that the two marriages cited in the discussion board post checked out as indicated. The site reflected Omar’s 2002 marriage to her advertised husband, Ahmed Aden (later Ahmed Hirsi), and her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi (identified in the SomaliSpot post as Omar’s brother). A few days after the primary, I submitted written questions to representatives of the Omar campaign, citing the SomaliSpot post, and asking whether Omar’s second marriage had been entered into with her brother for dishonest purposes. That same afternoon, I received a message from Omar’s press contact indicating that the campaign would get back to me later that day. I didn’t hear back from campaign officials directly, but I did receive a response from Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Jean Brandl. It provided no answer to my question, and implied that the question itself evidenced bigotry against Omar and her candidacy for public office.

Okay, the above-excerpted article was written in 2016. There's been followup since then:

PJ Media’s David Steinberg has taken on the case this year. Unlike Forliti, however, he has actually advanced the story. Steinberg’s work supports our conclusion that Omar married her brother in 2009 for some dishonest purpose. Today Steinberg reports “Official School Records Support Claims That Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Married Her Brother.”

Working from New York, Steinberg has produced a truly dogged piece of investigative journalism that puts us all to shame. As is her custom, Omar has declined to respond to Steinberg’s inquiries. See the email to her that he has reproduced in his story. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding. To say the least, an explanation is called for. 

Following the special Fifth District DFL endorsing convention this past Father’s Day, Democrats had a competitive field of candidates to choose among in the August 14 primary. The Star Tribune did absolutely nothing to give Fifth District readers — the heart of their readership — any relevant information to make an informed selection among the candidates in the DFL primary.

The Fifth District being one-party territory — Osama bin Laden could win election on the DFL line in the Fifth District — Omar’s election is now a done deal. One can only hope that someone in a position of responsibility at the Star Tribune will be so kind as to take note of Steinberg’s work and hold a soul-searching public reckoning that accounts for their dereliction in this matter.

What is it about this Omar chick that makes news media and social media so reluctant to handle her with anything other than kid gloves?

And why does this chick still have a Twitter account?

Now contrast the fate of 30-year-old Sarah Jeong, who was named an editorial writer at The New York Times in August 2018. Her left-wing colleagues and admirers applauded her "verve and erudition." And they made much of her diversity status as a "young Asian woman." This person-of-color shield gave Jeong immunity to post several years' worth of hateful tweets attacking white people.

"White men are bull----";

"#CancelWhitePeople";

"oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men" and "f--- white women lol."

She has tweeted "f--- the police" and "cops are a--holes," derided fraternity members and athletes wrongfully accused of rape and fumed about "dumba-- f---ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants."

Let's review: Loomer was kicked off Twitter for calling out Sharia and a culture that promotes hatred of gays, boycotts of Jews and subjugation of women. Before the permanent suspension, Loomer -- who had built up a following of more than 250,000 -- had her blue check removed and was silenced during the midterm elections when her investigative work was making a difference. She called out Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey for anti-conservative bias at a congressional hearing and was mocked by establishment detractors in both parties.

Meanwhile, Jeong sits on her perch on The New York Times editorial board after using Twitter to spew hatred against all men, all cops, the entire white race -- and Twitter. Jeong denies Silicon Valley's political bias and selective speech suppression, which she has dismissed as a "paranoid fantasy."

Every day that blue check marked hate-monger Sarah Jeong gets to tweet while Laura Loomer remains silenced reminds us of how powerful social media conglomerates have rigged the free speech playing field.

It's no fantasy. It's a nightmare.

Let's look past the shiny objects of our decrepit culture and face the hard truth.

It's this kind of stuff - today's edition

Taking the notion of being full of oneself to a whole new level:

President Trump believes that his long list of achievements in office make him “far greater than Ronald Reagan.” 

In a new book out Tuesday about his “enemies,” the president said that while he feels “I blow Ronald Reagan away,” the “fake news” media is robbing him of bragging rights by ignoring his successes and focusing on his problems. 

And even more frustrating, he told “Trump's Enemies” authors and supporters Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, some established conservative columnists aren’t giving him any credit. 

“The amazing thing is that you have certain people who are conservative Republicans that if my name weren’t Trump, if it were John Smith, they would say I’m the greatest president in history and I blow Ronald Reagan away,” said Trump. 

“All these guys that if they looked at my agenda with a different name...and he got the biggest regulation cuts in history in less than two years, judges, environmental stuff, getting out of the Paris horror show. If you said that conservative president John Smith did that, they would say he’s the greatest president. Far greater than Ronald Reagan,” added the president. 

Trump has often declared that his list of achievements is historic. Secrets recently listed 289 major victories that stack up well against recent presidents.
In the interview, Trump heightened his attack on the media and said that “85 percent of it is totally corrupt.” What’s more, he said that some outlets make up sources and news. 

“You can do something great and they will make it look bad, to a point that you don’t even understand why they’re doing it. Why do they want to make it look bad? Whether it’s fixing the military or cutting regulation. But people have no idea how false and corrupt much of the media is. When you read some of these stories, you pick up the New York Times, and they don’t call you for sources. They’ll say, ‘sources say,’ and there are no sources. So that would be the one thing that surprised me. The level of corruption and the level of fake news,” he said. 

Here's the difference, Squirrel-Hair, between you and Dutch: Dutch had traits like wisdom, humility, warmth and a sense of humor. You're utterly lacking in all of those.

A little more on the Trump angle of the GM decision

Not that there would have been many of them, but anybody who harbored any vestiges of a notion that the Very Stable Genius was a free-market champion now has to deal. squarely with this:

“They better damn well open a new plant there very quickly,” he told the WSJ afterward, claiming that he told GM CEO Mary Barra in a phone call last night “you’re playing around with the wrong person.”

What a pig.

What a thug.

Observations that he behaves like a Mafia boss have been around at least throughout the three years of his being a politician, and they are proven here to be spot on.

But his ego and thuggishness aside, what we have here is the foremost symbol of government in America pronouncing on the decisions of a private entity. (Ah, therein may lie part of the problem. That "private entity" designation is a bit muddied, given the terms on which government allowed the company to survive its woes of a decade ago.)

One more aspect that bears noting: His drooling, zombie-eyed base sees this as "standing up for the American worker."

Well, I would posit that a term like "American worker" is one more mass categorization of sovereign individuals that encourages group think as well as further societal brittleness, given that people belonging to some particular demographic ("blacks," "the LGBT community") by definition are juxtaposed against some other demographic that can easily be presumed to have it in for them ("management," "whites," "straight people.")

The idea that he was going to grow into the presidential role, that he was going to start demonstrating some traits conservatives could admire, such as understanding economic liberty, or exhibiting personal dignity, is now thoroughly discredited.

And nothing any of his shills and throne-sniffers, or the brainy types who think they have given him cover, can seriously refute this fact.

There's only one reason GM is undertaking all these plant closings and layoffs: it has determined what it needs to do to survive

Nothing like cutting over 14,000 jobs and closing assembly plants to make for some strange bedfellows. Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and the UAW all hate it.

As with anything of this magnitude and complexity, there are several factors leading to the decision. Trump's tariffs certainly are one, as is the fact that the company never really fully got on its feet after the 2009 bailout. Demographic trends also figure in, with consumers shifting from sedans to SUVs and trucks, and people buying fewer motor vehicles overall. Milennials aren't even getting driver's licenses until later than their forebears.

A former GM executive's take that ought to get mentioned before the thirteenth paragraph of a story about it:

Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said the automaker historically would have raised sales incentives to try to sell more cars before resorting to plant closures.

"Nowadays GM looks at the hard reality, says we've got a demand problem on cars, what are we going to do about it. We have to shut some facilities and move production to truck plants," Lutz said on CNBC's "Halftime Report." "So I think what we are seeing is a fast-acting and reality-oriented GM management."

It gets back to the LITD first law of economics: The money has to come from somewhere.

The climate jackboots will not brook even the slightest deviation from their line

Per Noah Rothman at Commentary, look at what has been heaped upon an American Enterprise Institute scholar for daring to point out some undeniable facts:

American Enterprise Institute scholar Danielle Pletka attracted an unusual amount of attention for her remarks on the subject. In a brief soliloquy, she said that she doesn’t believe “we can have any doubt” about the existence of climate change, though we can join the scientific community in speculating about the precise degree to which human activity contributes to that change.

Pletka went on to note mitigating phenomena that, in her view, don’t receive due attention. The last two years were typified by the “biggest drop in global temperatures that we have had since the 1980s,” she said. Pletka added that carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. are declining even after America pulled out of the Paris accords, and American industry has shifted away from burning so-called “dirty coal,” unlike its European counterparts.

The AEI scholar’s critics noted that extreme temperature fluctuation doesn’t tell us much about the climate, which is fair. But “dirty coal” burning in America isdeclining at a terminal rate despite the loosening regulatory climate, and the United States has led the world in CO2 emissions reductions even without a non-binding international treaty compelling it to do so. Pletka observed in closing that this was the work of industry, consumer preference, and capitalist innovation, and not oppressive central planning (which is entirely correct).

“We shouldn’t be hysterical” about the problem of climate change, Pletka concluded. You’d think she shot someone’s dog on live television.

On Twitter, investigative reporter Alex Kotch insisted that this “non-scientist” perspective was advanced in service to “the biggest fossil fuel polluters in the world, Koch Industries.” Attorney Max Kennerly contended that it was “inexcusable” to allow Pletka to opine at all on this subject. “This is PR for polluters, not journalism,” he barked. “This is crazy,” ABC News analyst Matt Dowd said. “Balance shouldn’t be the goal, truth should.” “People tune in to be informed not be subjected to propaganda,” former Think Progress founder Judd Legum tweeted. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, and controversialclimatologist Michael Mann all attacked the network for giving Pletka a platform to discuss climate as it relates to public policy.

There was no such outrage over the response from Pletka’s counterpart, New York Times columnist and fellow “non-scientist” Helene Cooper, which tells you all you need to know about this ginned-up controversy. “I actually think we should be hysterical,” she said. “I think anybody who has children or anybody who can imagine having children and grandchildren, how can you look at them and think this is the kind of world that through our own inaction and our inability to do something, that we’re going to leave them?”

Charges of totalitarian motives and aims get bandied about in post-America with such regularity that  they they've become instantly banal as soon as they're lobbed, but this is indeed the real deal.

But look at what they demand we ignore:

For Pletka’s detractors, the likely source of consternation wasn’t her professional expertise but her refusal to accept a straight-line projection at face value. That is, however, the only prudent course considering how many climate-related prognostications have not panned out. In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s First Assessment Report’s predictions related to rates of warming and temperature changes were erroneous. The IPCC’s 2001 assessment that climate change would reduce the severity of snow storms did not materialize. The Arctic should be ice-free by now if climate scientists’ predictions were always accurate. As Abe Greenwald noted just last week, the scientific consensus around the rate of oceanic warming was successfully challenged not by the deliberate process of peer review but by a freelancing skeptic with time enough to critically parse the data. Given the failure of these near-term predictions to manifest, it’s only reasonable not to lend too much credence to a projection that takes us nearly 100 years into the future.

The Left demands you ignore these facts, just like it demands that you get on board with the idea of more than two genders.

These people mean business.

International-incident roundup

Ukraine's president is demanding the return of sailors and ships that Russia seized in a standoff near Crimea.


The EU likes the terms of Theresa May's Brexit-deal offer, but will the UK Parliament? 

Good on ya, Mexico:

Mexico’s interior ministry says the government will deport nearly 500 members of the Central America migrant caravan who tried to storm the U.S. border Sunday.

In a statement, the ministry said the mob was detained after attempting to cross the border “illegally” and “violently.”

But how will the incoming Lopez Obrador administration deal with it? 

For Twitter, even a feminist is ban-worthy if she doesn't hew to the gender-fluidity line

I guess I'm not surprised to hear that there is terminology ("misgendering," "dead naming") for the act of stating what all normal people know to be immutable truth, but I'll confess I hadn't heard of it until yesterday:

With no fanfare, Twitter has changed its terms of service to make it a banning offense for anyone to not play along with men who claim they are women and women who claim they are men.

Repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone
We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.

For those who aren’t immersed in the arcana of militant transgenderism, “misgendering” is the sin of calling a man, or woman, pretending to be a member of the other sex by the wrong pronoun. Calling Chelsea Manning and “he” would fall under this category. “Deadnaming” is calling a person who imagines themselves to be of another gender by the name on their birth certificate. For instance, referring to Bruce Jenner is “deadnaming.” Referring to Bradley Manning as a “he” would ring all the bells.

That makes it much easier to deal with in the LITD stylebook: "Transgender people will, with complete consistency, be deadnamed when referenced in posts."

But you can be a progressive feminist and get in trouble with Twitter for it:

At Feminist Current, Murphy writes about her ban:

What is insane to me, though, is that while Twitter knowingly permits graphic pornography and death threats on the platform (I have reported countless violent threats, the vast majority of which have gone unaddressed), they won’t allow me to state very basic facts, such as ‘men aren’t women.’ This is hardly an abhorrent thing to say, nor should it be considered ‘hateful’ to ask questions about the notion that people can change sex, or ask for explanations about transgender ideology. These are now, like it or not, public debates — debates that are impacting people’s lives, as legislation and policy are being imposed based on gender identity ideology…

On Twitter, Murphy regularly engaged in debates about sex, gender, and women’s studies. In fact, she holds a master’s degree in the field from Simon Fraser University. In other words: She isn’t stupid or a troll. She’s an educated, opinionated woman, seeking to use her Twitter platform to develop her understanding of the topics and to engage others in debate.

“In August, I was locked out of my Twitter account for the first time,” Murphy writes, explaining the timeline. “I was told that I had ‘violated [Twitter’s] rules against hateful conduct’ and that I had to delete four tweets in order to gain access to my account again. In this case, the tweets in question named Lisa Kreut, a trans-identified male.”

Her tweets called out Kreut for trying to boycott and defund Vancouver Rape Relief. Twitter didn’t care what the feud was about or that it was legitimate and fact-based. They only cared about the fact that Kreut was transgender and decided to define disputes about transgenderism as “hate speech.”

This move essentially immunizes transgender nutters from all consequences of their actions and makes any disagreement with them a banning offense.

Every day, Twitter and Facebook become more and more hostile to voices that will not hew to the politically correct line supported by executives in those organizations. Murphy isn’t a conservative she simply believes that men who may or may not have been surgically mutilated to resemble women can never be women (fact check: basic biology says this is true). Facebook and Twitter and Google need some serious attention from Congress and from the Justice Department. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that if they want to act like the publisher and make calls on content then they have to take the bad with the good. That means financial and penal liability for any copyright infringement or criminal act that is facilitated by their services. 

It's always an exquisite thing to see when the Left eats its own.