Saturday roundup

Jeh Johnson, who was Department of Homeland Security secretary under Obama, says that there is definitely a crisis at our southern border.

He told the [MSNBC Morning Joe] panel that during his tenure as Homeland Security Secretary, he would arrive at work each morning at 6:30 and would immediately read the intelligence report.

There would be my Intelligence Book, the PDB, sitting on my desk. And also the apprehension numbers from the day before and I’d look at them every morning…my staff will tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number and if it was over 1,000, it was a relatively bad number and I was going to be in a bad mood for the whole day.

On Tuesday, there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. So, we are truly in a crisis.

I want to see this exhibit! Brian T. Allen, writing at National Review, has a review of a show that is a collaborative effort between the Toledo Museum of Art and Belgium's Royal Museums of Fine Art. It showcases the work of Frans Hals, a Dutch painter who did most of his work in the 1620s and 30s. You have to look at the examples that accompany Allen's piece. Seriously, Hals was able to capture human moments among family members with photographic accuracy and  relaxed conveyance of their multidimensionality that doesn't much show up again for centuries.

Allahpundit at Hot Air on that truly goofy NYT column by a guy who's "brown" who admits that pressure from his woke peers is forcing him to quit dating white women:

The author’s Latino, he’s been reading Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, he’s tired of the petty asides he gets about dating white women — from nonwhites, let me stress — he’s positively aching to be properly woke. What’s a righteous free-thinking uncolonized brown-skinned man to do if he wants to move America forward after centuries of racism?

Allahpundit contextualizes the guy's "predicament" by pointing out not only its regressiveness, but placing it alongside a couple of other identity-politics occurrences from this past week:

He ends by observing that “something just doesn’t feel right” about his determination that interracial relationships are wrong or at least that enough other people think they’re wrong that he probably should too. Maybe he’ll do some more thinking and see if he can figure out why internalizing one of the most notorious pillars of America’s pre-civil-rights racist legal architecture might itself be “problematic.” Until then, may I interest you in a charming story out of the deep south about reporters of a certain race being barred from a political event while reporters of another race were allowed in? How about a hyper-woke take from Slate about how Pete Buttigieg, running to become the first openly gay president of the United States, isn’t remotely gay enough?

Your absolute must-read for the weekend: Marc Giller's "I Pledge Allegiance To the Tribe" at The Resurgent in its entirety. That's an order.  He quotes from the WSJ Peggy Noonan column from which I excerpted yesterday, in my post about the VSG's Grand Rapids rally. I knew Noonan's piece would show up elsewhere.

What the hell is Larry Kudlow doing calling for a shoring up of the Ex-Im Bank? 

Fabiana Rosales, wife of the legitimate Venezuelan president Juan Guaido, was in the United States as part of her international tour to raise awareness of what's going on in her country. She explained that the current instability is a national security threat for the US.