Oh, sheesh, not another one of these

This kind of stunt goes back at least to the Tawana Brawley hoax that really launched Al Sharpton's career as a fraudulent huckster, and of course the most recent particularly egregious example was the Jussie Smollett fiasco.

But just who goaded this girl to do this?

A girl of 12 who attends the private Virginia school where Vice President Mike Pence's wife Karen is an art teacher has admitted she made up her account of a racist attack in which three white boys cut her dreadlocks. 

Amari Allen said last week that she was about to use the slide at the Immanuel Christian School playground when three white classmates pushed her down, held her hands behind her back, called her names and cut off some of her “ugly, nappy” dreadlocks. Police were investigating the incident, which was widely covered in the media because Karen Pence worked part-time at the school. 

Allen's grandparents issued an apology Monday saying that the whole thing had been made up. 

"To those young boys and their parents, we sincerely apologize for the pain and anxiety these allegations have caused," the grandparents, who are also Allen's legal guardians, said. "To the administrators and families of Immanuel Christian School, we are sorry for the damage this incident has done to trust within the school family and the undue scorn it has brought to the school. To the broader community, who rallied in such passionate support for our daughter, we apologize for betraying your trust." 

"We understand there will be consequences and we’re prepared to take responsibility for them," they added. The principal of Immanuel Christian School confirmed Allen admitted her allegation was false. 

Allen alleged last week that three boys attacked her on the school's playground and cut off her dreadlocks. "They kept laughing and calling me names," she said, claiming they told her "I shouldn't have been born." 

She said: "One of the boys put his hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream while they used scissors on my hair,” she alleged to The Daily Beast on Thursday. "They were all laughing, calling me ugly, and saying I should have never been born.” 

The assault, she said, lasted “a minute or two” and ended when the bell rang to signal the end of recess and the three boys went to their math class. "They ran off laughing, and I was just sitting there. I’m hurt that it happened. All I want to ask them is, Why?” 

The Monday afternoon alleged racist attack at the private Immanuel Christian School—an already controversial school where Karen Pence, the second lady of the United States, teaches art class part-time—has “destroyed” the Allen family, and they are now seeking legal and administrative retributions. 

At the time, Allen's family was said to be seeking "legal and administrative retributions" from the school, which said in a statement: “We take seriously the emotional and physical well-being of all our students, and have a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of bullying or abuse. 

"We are deeply disturbed by the allegations being made, and are in communication with the family of the alleged victim to gather information and provide whatever support we can. We have also reached out to law enforcement to ask them to conduct a thorough investigation, and further inquiries should be directed to the Fairfax County Police Department.” 

Her mother Cynthia, 53, said that her daughter was "in real pain but she wants justice." It was said that it had taken the girl two days to report the incident and had initially told her mother that the missing parts of her hair were the result of playing “beauty salon” with another friend. 

“We continued to press her on it because it just didn’t sound like something she would do,” Cynthia Allen said. “Then she started breaking down crying, trembling, and shaking before telling us what happened.” 

Kinda takes the wind out of the sails of the mom's search for justice, doesn't it?

Look, I know there's a world of difference between a 12-year-old and an 8-year-old, or even a 10-year-old. My fertile 12-year-old brain was brimming with thoughts, impulses, notions, and drives to explore that had fired my curiosity, but any person that age needs some steering to even decide to try to pull something like this off.

The fact that Karen Pence is on the faculty at the school has to figure front and center in this. Somebody who hates sound Christian doctrine was almost certainly involved.

This smells really funny.

Just what post-America needs, at this time when its plate is already brimming.

Hey, everybody, here's a novel idea: how about we try the free market?

Two pieces came across my radar this morning that got me thinking about how far removed we are from a society in which sovereign individuals come to agreements with other sovereign individuals as to the value of particular goods and services.

The first has to do with a direct result of the Very Stable Genius's ignorance on the subject of free-market economics. He makes that clear with the pronouncement that farmers "can't be too upset, because I gave them $12 billion last year and $16 billion this year."

Um, no you didn't.

This is another display of his mindset, in which his role as the focal point of a cult of personality is conflated with that of his role as the chief of the executive branch - much like the business of lumping his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in with the Attorney General of the United States, Robert Barr, when dealing with Ukraine.

The VSG may have had the idea to use Market Facilitation Program funds already budgeted at the US Treasury, but it's not like he cut a check.

And what he's done is put farmers in a position of dependence on federal largesse.

And, as Taylor Millard demonstrates at Hot Air , Trump's ignorance is on display in a Health & Human Services scheme to create an "international price index" for pharmaceuticals - and is countered by Democrat Congressional proposal that is equally bereft of economic freedom - and common sense.

First this "index" idea:

“U.S. consumers and taxpayers generally pay more for brand drugs than do consumers and taxpayers in other OECD countries, which often have reimbursements set by their central government,” The administration wrote in their American Patients First plan while suggesting the burden of new drug development incentives needed to be spread equally between the U.S. and other nations. “In effect, other countries are not paying an appropriate share of the necessary research and development to bring innovative drugs to the market and are instead freeriding of U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Their ‘solution’ is to create an international price index looking at what other countries are charging for drugs and attempting to negotiate with pharmaceuticals on how to rein in the price.

HHS summarized the idea as Medicare setting drug prices based on whatever discounts American pharmaceutical companies give nations like France, Canada, or Germany. “With the model fully implemented, total payment for these drugs will drop by 30 percent,” HHS wrote last October noting there would be extra taxes involved in it. “The Target Price is 126 percent of the average price other countries pay for the drug. The model incorporates a new, larger add-on fee for hospitals and doctors that is independent of prices.”

Yay. New taxes. 

The obvious problem is the fact doctors and hospitals will simply raise prices to make up the difference in lost money. It’s the easiest way to pass prices along to consumers.

This is an excellent example of how Trumpist nationalism is definitely not conservatism. The idea of some kind of other countries being obligated to undertake an "appropriate share of the necessary research  . . . to bring . . . drugs to the market" runs counter to the understanding that private organizations are the entities that do the researching and developing - in a free market, anyway.

And everybody in the supply chain will adjust prices for their contributions as this "international index" affects them.

Now, the Dem approach:

Democrats, not to be outdone, have their own ideas on how to enact price controls. New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. introduced the Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 which puts Great Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Canada, and Japan on the price index list. Prices could be renegotiated each year:

In negotiating the maximum fair price of a selected drug, with respect to an initial price applicability year for the selected drug, and, as applicable, in renegotiating the maximum fair price for such drug, with respect to a subsequent year during the price applicability period for such drug, in the case that the manufacturer of the selected drug offers under the negotiation or renegotiation, as applicable, a price for such drug that is not more than the target price described in subparagraph (B) for such drug for the respective year, the Secretary shall agree under such negotiation or renegotiation, respectively, to such offered price as the maximum fair price.

There are plenty of problems with both proposals, especially with how they affect not only the public market but the private market.

“Both proposals give the government unprecedented price-setting authority in both the public and private markets,” FreedomWorks Regulatory Policy Manager Daniel Savickas to me in an email last week. “It threatens the ability for drug manufacturers to develop new drugs and market them in a timely manner, and we risk drug shortages beyond those already seen across the globe. These proposals are also tacit concessions that socialist economies have preferable drug pricing models, which (if that premise is accepted) puts our nation on the glide path to single-payer healthcare.”

The U.S. does have a drug price index as part of Medicare Part B. Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist noted in The Hill last December the U.S. bases its prices for certain drugs on the average sales cost for Americans. Why foreign countries need to be brought into the mix is anyone’s guess. 

And the rest of Millard's piece alludes to an important point in all this: crafting public policy based on subjective terms such as "high" and "fair" is a usurpation of the right of each sovereign individual to decides what constitutes either of those descriptions for himself or herself.

Cherish your humanity, fellow post-Americans. Let's not become the cattle-masses. Claim your freedom. Think deeply about your freedom. Talk to your kids about freedom.

Never mind what the government says about "fairness."

Teaching out-and-out presumption as legitimate theory

Would it be grabbing at the low-hanging fruit to say, "I'm guessing that this guy was chronically the last to be picked for gym-class teams"?

University of Rhode Island (URI) professor published a book chapter in September focused entirely on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his supposed relationship to white supremacy. 

URI English professor Kyle Kusz also dabbles in gender and race theory, as evidenced in a chapter, a full copy of which was obtained by Campus Reform, that the professor authored in a recently published book titled The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Sport.

Titled “Making American White Men Great Again: Tom Brady, Donald Trump, and the Allure of White Male Omnipotence in Post-Obama America,” the chapter attempts to provide evidence to back up Kusz’s suggestion that, like President Donald Trump, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has gained popularity due to the “latest wave of white rage and white supremacy” that he says developed since the Obama presidency alongside a “disturbing racial reaction among white conservatives in response to the idea that a black man would be [president].”

The professor’s work analyzes Brady in two ways: his representation in the media and his “relationship with Trump,” seeking to determine what these factors can “tell us about the specific ways that white masculinity is being re-coded and re-centered in post-Obama American culture.”

Kusz zeroes in on “the complex racial, gender, and class meanings that have been articulated with Brady’s body and his performances of white masculinity in the context of a backlash against the Obama presidency” and of “Trumpism,” which he claims is also rooted in both race and gender.

In addition to Brady’s representation as the epitome of “omnipotent, white masculinity” in his various media appearances, advertisements, and movie cameos, Kusz also focuses on Brady’s public image as it relates to what he calls “American myths of meritocracy and individualism,” which he says are “commonly used in sporting adverts.”
Among other media appearances, he specifically cites Brady’s appearance in a 2015 Under Armour commercial, which he claims “would not seem out of place in Leni Reifenstahl’s infamous Nazi propaganda film, ‘Triumph des willens,’” because of its military references and red and black colors.

Kusz told Campus Reform that it was this commercial that drove him to investigate Brady’s whiteness further.
“I decided to research Trump and Brady's public performances of their white masculinities and how they connect with broader debates about race and gender politics after a student in one of my classes brought the UnderArmour commercial to my attention and it piqued my interest,” the professor said.
Kusz also took issue in the chapter with a Beautyrest mattress commercial in which the camera angle is pointed upward at Brady so that the “viewer is compelled to see him as superior,” as well as Brady’s partnership with “upscale companies” like UGG and Aston Martin.
“In each of these sites, Brady is figured as an unconflicted and unapologetic embodiment of upper-class white exceptionality and manly omnipotence.”
Kusz also points to the “myths” of meritocracy present in “The Brady 6,” a documentary about the quarterback and his rise to stardom.
“By subtly coding Brady as a version of the 97 lb weakling in ‘The Brady 6,’ his subsequent transformation into Brady—the five-time Super Bowl champion and ‘G.O.A.T’—enables him to be easily read as an athletic variation of the self-made man,” Kusz writes, adding that “the self-made man is [a] seductive and potent ideological figure of American liberalism long used to mask the systemic privileges afforded to, and enjoyed by, white men, especially those with economic means.”
The professor also asserts that Patriots fans who backed Brady during the infamous “Deflategate” scandal were angry with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for “breaking the unspoken bonds of white brotherhood to leverage the NFL’s institutional authority” against Brady.  The “Free Brady” T-shirts sold by barstoolsports.com at the time combined humor with “reverse racism” and “political dissidence,” according to Kusz.
In addition to the media’s representation of Brady being “figured through conventional codes of upper-class elitism that are often exclusively associated with, and embodied by, white men,” Kusz also takes issue with the company Brady chooses to keep, mainly focusing on the quarterback’s relationship with Trump, but also pointing out the fact that Brady often takes “boys only” trips with “white majority groups” to the Kentucky Derby.

In each of the attempts at substantiation for his argument, this Kusz person makes an instant presumption that the connection is obvious without considering other possible explanations and employing rational arguments for rejecting them. Maybe he fleshes this out in his book, but on what basis does he assert the existence of this "white rage"? Has he researched why the marketing people at Under Armor or Beauty Rest constructed their commercials the way they did? And how can somebody articulate complex race, class and gender whatever with his body? And I daresay that scientific polling would indicate that a lot of predominantly white (and I'll bet predominantly black as well) groups of men attend the Kentucky Derby.

But this guy's seething resentment for meritocracy and individualism is the really creepy aspect of this. I think it's safe to say he's a fan of participation trophies. The University of Rhode Island is paying this guy to be an agent of the obliteration of excellence.

And obliteration of masculinity. Kusz is precisely what Christina Hoff Sommers warned us about.

Reduce sovereign individuals to one generic category: the cattle-masses. That's the agenda.

 

 

The current state of the impeachment / call transcript hot mess

As is the case with everything and anything these days, since nothing can appear on the national radar without being instantly imbued with an ideological charge, the hot takes are already zooming toward us like a meteor shower.

But there are some consideration-worthy aspects to what we really do know:

In May 2018, Dem Senators Menendez, Durbin and Leahy sent a letter to Yuri Lutsenko, general prosecutor for the Ukrainian government, that, in its mention of all that the US has done for Ukraine, is similar in tone to the approach Trump took with new Ukrainian president Zelensky in that phone call of July of this year, except with mirror-opposite intent. The Dem Senators wanted to know what was up with the Ukrainian government freezing four investigations related to the Mueller investigation happening at the time in the US.

Jim Geraghty at National Review makes this important point:

The conversation between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky did not occur in a vacuum.

Starting in February 2014, Russia backed separatist militant forces in eastern Ukraine, setting off an off-and-on civil war in that part of Ukraine. Around that time, Russian troops rolled into Crimea and the following month they declared it part of Russia. In July, Russian-backed forces shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, killing 298 innocent people. That same month, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the civilian-taken satellite images showing that Russia was firing shells across the border at Ukrainian military forces.

By August, two columns of Russian tanks had crossed the border into Ukraine. By October, independent analysts had determined that at least 30 Russian army units had moved into Ukrainian territory. By January 2015, several hundred civilians were killed in fighting between the Ukrainian military and heavily armed militia groups calling themselves “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia”; Ukraine’s government contended that this was all backed by the Russian army, and that same winter, separatists forces took over the Donetsk airport after months of bloody fighting. In 2018, Russian warships fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels.

Just because you’re not hearing much in the U.S. media about fighting in eastern Ukraine doesn’t mean it stopped. Day in and day out, there are more attacks, more casualties, more convoys of Russian military hardware spotted. Roughly 13,000 people have been killed. Russia and Ukraine are at war, and while there are intermittent glimpses of good news such as prisoner exchanges, Russia would appear to have the better prospects in the long term. 

Geraghty goes on to point out that, in the phone call with Zelensky, Trump doesn't even mention Russia, just implicitly using its hegemonic threat against Ukraine as a bargaining chip in the deal to be struck, a deal mainly driven by Trump's self-interest.

And the whistleblower complaint has just been released. At first glance, it doesn't seem any more conclusive than the phone call transcript.

But that won't stop tribalists from making instant assessments.

Minority Dems dig charter schools far more than white Dems do

This is some very noteworthy data:

There’s a sharp racial divide among Democrats on charter schools, according to national data newly released to Chalkbeat.

A separate poll commissioned by Democrats For Education Reform, an advocacy group that backs charter schools, was the first to illustrate a racial divide among Democrats on the issue. It found that white Democrats are strongly opposed to charters, while black and Hispanic Democrats are modestly in favor.

That gap is backed up by the new data from a poll conducted by Education Next, which has tracked opinion on charter schools for many years. Among black and Hispanic Democrats, support for charter schools held steady from 2016 to 2018. But among white Democrats, approval tanked, dropping from 43 to 27 percent.

Those results may factor into the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, as well as within broader debates about school reform, where all sides claim to champion the interests of students of color. A partisan dividehas emerged on the issue in recent years, with most Republicans favoring charters and a plurality of Democrats opposing them. Nationally, U.S. House Democrats recently moved to cut federal funding for charters.

“It creates a bit of a challenge for Democratic candidates in the presidential primaries,” said Marty West, a Harvard professor and editor in chief of Education Next, which is generally sympathetic to charter schools. “It’s not clear to me that many people will be basing their decisions on education, but voters of color are a substantial segment of the Democratic primary electorate.”

Education Next had not previously broken down the results of its poll by party and race at the same time, but West did so at Chalkbeat’s request. That poll asks a nationally representative group of American adults whether they support or oppose charter schools, described as “publicly funded but … not managed by the local school board.”
In the 2018 data, 47 percent of black Democrats supported charters with 29 percent opposed; similarly, 47 percent of Hispanic Democrats backed charters while 35 percent opposed them. (The remainder neither supported nor opposed charters.) Opposition has held steady among black Democrats since 2016, but ticked up among Hispanics. The biggest jump in opposition has been among white Democrats, though, going from 37 to 50 percent.

The article deep-dives into the internals, which qualify the general conclusion somewhat, but it seems to be of a piece with such a divergence on other issues. Blacks are less likely than whites, for instance, to support same-sex "marriage."

 

The call transcript - initial thoughts

Have you read it yet? By virtue of the fact that you are an LITD reader, it goes without saying that you are on top of political / economic / cultural / world-affairs matters as they develop, but here it is in case you've had a busy morning so far.

The first thing that struck me was that after all the congratulatory niceties, the back-and-forth thank yous, the next thing Trump wanted to do was bad-mouth the European countries for not doing more to help Ukraine, even calling out Germany, and Angela Merkel, by name. Why was that necessary? It has a distinct high-school-clique vibe to it. "Stick with me. I'm not a fair-weather friend like those kids who live in your neighborhood." Not exactly conducive to fostering cohesion among what should be our closest allies.

I guess it's just his crude way of buttering Zelensky up so as to kind of hint at a quid-pro-quo, but it's not explicit.

There's not a lot that the impeachment crowd is going to find particularly juicy, and what's there has the Very Stable Genius's signature word-salad quality to it:

. . . I· heard you had a prosecutor who· was very·good and he was shut down and that's really unfair.
_·A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your �ery good prosecutor down and you had some �ery bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the_ mayor bf New York Ci:ty, a great mayor, and I would like him to

call you. I will ask him to call yoti along with the Attorney·_· General.·:Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could _speak to him that would be great. Theformer ambassador from the United $tates,· the woman., was badnews �nd th� people she was dealing with in .the Ukraine .were bad news so I jtist wan� to_let you know that� The ot�er thing, There's a lot 6f. talk about Biden's son,. that Eiden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if

you ·can look into it... It sounds horrible to me. 

It's a tad unsavory, but that's all there is that's Biden-specific. A bit later, he reiterates that he'll have Attorney General Barr call.

And the Justice Department says it never got any such request from the VSG for Barr to call the Zelensky administration:

The DOJ said Trump has not spoken with Barr about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to Biden or his son. And the department said the president has not asked Barr to contact Ukraine on this or any other matter; nor has Barr has communicated with Ukraine about this or any other subject, or has he discussed this matter, or anything related to Ukraine, with Giuliani.

I'm no legal authority on anything, much less what a US president is authorized to discuss with other countries' leaders, but this seems like rather thin gruel for the impeachment bunch.

Not that it makes the VSG look like a principled, visionary statesman. Moments when he remotely comes close to that are pretty rare.

The impeachment two-step

It's 4:53 as I write this, and Nancy Pelosi is about to come before the bank of microphones and announce that the House will begin an impeachment inquiry. As we know, she has been on the side of wanting to put impeachment talk behind her party, seeing it as a political misstep. That's caused some rancor between her and some other House Dems. Either she's convinced that this pivot is justified on a circumstantial level, or that it has suddenly become a political boon.

But what does the fact that the Very Stable Genius has announced he's release the full transcript of his phone conversation with Zelensky do to the dynamics here? Has he outflanked her?

And the revelations laid on the table by John Solomon at The Hill surely affect the overall mix:

. . . there is a missing part of the story that the American public needs in order to assess what really happened: Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.

Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him. 

Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.

That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.

“I didn’t even know who he [Yermak] really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told me. “I reported back to them [the two State officials] what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”

So, rather than just a political opposition research operation, Giuliani’s contacts were part of a diplomatic effort by the State Department to grow trust with the new Ukrainian president, Zelensky, a former television comic making his first foray into politics and diplomacy.

Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it? 

According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.

The Ukrainians say their efforts to get their allegations to U.S. authorities were thwarted first by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, which failed to issue timely visas allowing them to visit America.

Then the Ukrainians hired a former U.S. attorney — not Giuliani — to hand-deliver the evidence of wrongdoing to the U.S. attorney's office in New York, but the federal prosecutors never responded. 

The U.S. attorney, a respected American, confirmed the Ukrainians’ story to me. The allegations that Ukrainian officials wanted to pass on involved both efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election as well as Joe Biden’s son’s effort to make money in Ukraine while the former vice president managed U.S.-Ukraine relations, the retired U.S. attorney told me. 

Eventually, Giuliani in November 2018 got wind of the Ukrainian allegations and started to investigate. 

As President Trump’s highest-profile defense attorney, the former New York City mayor, often known simply as Rudy, believed the Ukrainian's evidence could assist in his defense against the Russia collusion investigation and former special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

So Giuliani began to check things out in late 2018 and early 2019, but he never set foot in Ukraine. And when Ukrainian officials leaked word that he was considering visiting Ukraine to meet with senior officials to discuss the allegations — and it got politicized in America — Giuliani abruptly called off his trip. He stopped talking to the Ukrainian officials. 

Since that time, my American and foreign sources tell me, Ukrainian officials worried that the slight of Giuliani might hurt their relations with his most famous client, Trump.

And Trump himself added to the dynamic by encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to work with Giuliani to surface the evidence of alleged wrongdoing that has been floating around for more than two years, my sources said. 

All that said, John Podhoretz's Commentary piece entitled "Trump Did This To Himself" is a worthwhile read. The VSG is steeped in the whole everybody-does-whatever-they-need-to-do-to-win ethos throughout his life. This may be the ultimate test of whether that can serve him in any circumstance.

Spare me the case of the vapors leftists are getting over what Patrick Knowles said last night

I saw it live. Patrick Knowles was spot-on.

I did something I rarely do anymore when Chris Hahn tried to preen and assume the moral upper hand. I flat-out screamed at the television, spewing a barrage of vulgar epithets. It was the most disgusting display I'd seen in some time:

A Fox News segment about climate change grew heated after a conservative commentator called teen climate activist Greta Thunberg a "mentally ill Swedish child" who is being exploited globally by the Left.

Discussing how the idea of having "Meatless Mondays" was not helpful to the environment, the Daily Wire's Michael Knowles said, "If it were about science it would be led by scientists rather than by politicians and a mentally ill Swedish child, who is being exploited by her parents and by the international Left."

Chris Hahn, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, issued an immediate angry response, saying, "You're a grown man and you're attacking a child. Shame on you."

When Knowles tried to respond, Hahn continued, "Relax, skinny boy! I got this. Okay? You’re attacking a child, you’re a grown man. Have some couth. Maybe on your podcast you can get away and say whatever you want because nobody is listening. You're on national television, be a grown-up when you’re talking about children. 

"She’s trying to save the planet because your president doesn’t believe in climate change; and kids need to take to the streets to worry about their future. You are despicable for talking about her like that, and you should apologize on national television right now," Hahn continued.

"I think the international Left and her parents, who are exploiting a girl with many mental illnesses ..." Knowles began.

"You call her mentally ill! Take it back now! Take it back now!" Hahn interjected, again calling Knowles "despicable."

What really saddens and disappoints me is that Fox News apologized for what Knowles said.

Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger's, obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism. She is mentally ill.  And Hahn knows that, and so does the network. And they know that Knowles made his point as soon as he started talking: she's been exploited.

Her problems started around the age of eight, and it's because the adults in her life filled her head with the prospect of apocalyptic doom.

I'm also pretty disgusted with the rumblings of preening I'm detecting regarding the Children of the Corn comparison, It's spot on as well.

I'm not the first to point out that she's the same age as Covington High School's Nick Sandmann, and the advancement-freedom-and-basic-decency-haters had no qualms about unloading on him.

The Left will stoop to any level of low to wage its war on our civilization,.

Abortion distilled to its essence - today's edition

How's this for a stomach-turner?

In an unprecedented hearing in California this week featuring Planned Parenthood executives and the undercover videos made by the Center for Medical Progress, abortion doctors revealed uncomfortable truths about the industry. In one such testimony, Forrest Smith, an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed abortions in California, testified not only that Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics were selling aborted baby parts for profit, but babies were often born alive, then murdered, in order to ensure the organs to be sold were more fresh and intact.

Smith, who said he had done at least 50,000 abortions, testified that based on what he saw in the videos and what he knows about the abortion industry, he believes doctors performed abortion procedures so that babies would be born alive, even though it puts the mother at greater risk. 

Smith testified that he came to this conclusion after reviewing video footage of a presentation Alisa Goldberg gave at a 2014 Planned Parenthood conference and in another Center for Medical Progress video where a procurement manager for Advanced Bioscience Research talks about a “fetus falling out.” 

In her presentation, Goldberg suggested using large doses of misoprostol so a second-trimester induced abortion procedure could be completed in one day. According to Smith, large doses of that drug would trigger “tumultuous labor” and suggested the baby is often delivered so quickly, it needs no “assistance from the abortion doctor, no instrumentation,” or in another words appears to “fall out” of the mother and is born alive. Smith also testified that “very few people in abortion, outside of Planned Parenthood, do that.”

Life is utterly expendable to leftists.

The consensus grows that Iran blatantly attacked Saudi Arabia

There's an avalanche of breaking developments this afternoon, and so there are going to be a flurry of LITD posts in short order, but I think I'll lead off with this rather remarkable joint statement by the leaders of France, the UK and Germany:

We, the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, recall our shared common security interests, in particular upholding the global non-proliferation regime and preserving stability in the Middle East.

We condemn in the strongest terms the attacks on oil facilities on Saudi territory on September 14th, 2019 in Abqaiq and Khurais, and reaffirm in this context our full solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its population.

It is clear to us that Iran bears responsibility for this attack. There is no other plausible explanation. We support ongoing investigations to establish further details.

These attacks may have been against Saudi Arabia but they concern all countries and increase the risk of a major conflict. They underline the importance of making collective efforts towards regional stability and security, including finding a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Yemen. The attacks also highlight the necessity of de-escalation in the region through sustained diplomatic efforts and engagement with all parties.

In this regard, we recall our continued commitment to the JCPoA, agreed with Iran on July 14th, 2015 and unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council. We urge Iran once again to reverse its decisions to reduce compliance with the deal and to adhere fully to its commitments under it. We call upon Iran to cooperate fully with the IAEA in the framework of the JCPoA and its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement.

Conscious of the importance of collective efforts to guarantee regional stability and security, we reiterate our conviction that the time has come for Iran to accept negotiation on a long-term framework for its nuclear programme as well as on issues related to regional security, including its missiles programme and other means of delivery.

We are committed to continuing our diplomatic efforts to create conditions and facilitate dialogue with all relevant partners interested in de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, in the interest of preserving international peace and security, building upon our joint declaration on July 14th, 2019 and G7 conclusions adopted in Biarritz. We urge Iran to engage in such a dialogue and refrain from further provocation and escalation.

And I know Donald Trump is about to get a rather big dollop of something new on his plate (in about 50 minutes, in fact; stay tuned), but he did give a UN speech today that on the subjects of Iran and the Middle East generally, was spot-on:

Trump . . . sought in his UN speech to rally world opinion against Iran, saying no responsible government should “subsidize Iran’s blood lust.” 

Trump said Iran’s leaders were fanatical about acquiring nuclear weapons and vowed that U.S. sanctions won’t be lifted until Iran’s “menacing behavior” continues. 

And he served notice that it's time to make the realignment of power dynamics in the region more official:

"There is a growing recognition in the wider Middle East that the countries in the region share common interests in battling extremism and unleashing economic opportunity. That is why it is so important to have full, normalized relations between Israel and its neighbors."

It's good that he squeezed that into his busy day, because he has his hands full with other matters as evening approaches.

But to return to the main point, it's heartening to see that there's growing clarity on the world stage about what Iran is really all about

Some noteworthy new information in the Ukraine situation

I still hold to the view that, given that there are two aspects to the overall situation - how Joe Biden behaved toward Ukraine as Vice President and how Trump has been behaving toward Ukraine more recently, and given that hot takes meant to defend the turf of each party's tribalists based on incomplete information come pouring in with each revelation or seeming revelation, firm conclusions are still out of our grasp.

But Trump telling Mulvaney to hold up on the aid, and telling Zelensky to work with his personal attorney don't smell good at all. And someone of the foremost integrity, John Bolton, felt like this was no way to proceed:

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton reportedly pushed President Trump to release military aid to Ukraine that the administration withheld until earlier this month.

At least a week before Trump is said to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden's son, Hunter, who did business in Ukraine while his father was vice president, the president ordered his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to place a hold the $400 million in funds, according to the Washington Post.

Trump says he was concerned about "corruption" in Ukraine and a senior administration official denied there was any "quid pro quo" to withhold the money unless Ukraine agreed to investigate Trump's potential rival in the 2020 election.

But other officials in Trump's administration were alarmed, partly because they were worried the block might be illegal. Bolton advocated for the release of the money to help Ukraine counter Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country and a meeting between Trump and Zelensky.

Bolton is said to be shopping around for a book deal. Now, there's one that instantly goes on my to-read list.

Let's review some basics

1.) It's impossible by definition for there to be a right to health care.

2.) It's impossible by definition for there to be a right to a job.

3.) Until the last 20 years, no culture anywhere in the world defined marriage in such a way as to include the union of two people of the same sex.

4.) Gender is not fluid.

5.) The global climate is not in a state of crisis.

6.) A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth. Allowing any other party to be part of that agreement distorts the value that buyer and seller have agreed upon.

7.) Appeasement of rogue states and rogue regimes invites continued hostile behavior directed at the nation-state doing the appeasing.

Barney & Clyde - episode 15

It's here.

Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a bar-stool, and get in on the fortnightly exchange of libertarian and conservative perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically: 1. Making children into the spokespeople for climate alarmism 2. Our Fight or Not? - What is the proper US response to attacks on Saudi Oil production? 3. Old News: What's going on with Julian Assange? 4. Journalism's Death Rattle: the NYT attempt to revive the Kavanaugh smear. Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com Comment here or at: https://www.facebook.com/barneyandcly... Please consider supporting us! https://www.patreon.com/barneyandclyde

Monday roundup

Britain native Louise Gorsuch, wife of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, has written a magnificent short essay entitled "Why I Became An American Citizen." Don't worry, there's not a syllable of saccharine boilerplate in it. It's authentic, bits of it are funny, and the observations are keen.

Check out the before-and-after photos that show the transformation of a Los Angeles homeless camp after activist Scott Pressler and his team donned hazmat suits and removed 50 tons of garbage in nine hours.

This essay is actually from May 2018, but I came across it somewhere yesterday and it's far and away the most helpful, in terms of speaking to my biggest challenge as a faith-walk pilgrim, thing I've read in ages. It's by theology student Ethan Roe, and it's entitled "Is It Okay If I Don't Feel God?"

When Elizabeth Warren and her people use the term "accountable capitalism," understand that it is raw tyranny. One creepy thing to consider is that if she's - God forbid - in a position to implement it, she'll have the acquiescence of the Business Roundtable, which has already resolved that the long-standing understanding that a company's only responsibility is to show a profit to its shareholders has somehow been rendered obsolete.

Mass protests by Christians across Ethiopia to protest the spike in church burnings.

What the climate jackboots are really after

On today's episode of the Barney & Clyde podcast, which I should have up for you within the next day, I discuss with Clyde my position on the subject of hypocrisy. 

Generally speaking, it doesn't excite me much.

Say, for instance, some public figure has made a name for himself or herself proselytizing about how important monogamy is. Say he or she has spoken at length about how promiscuity is wrong on every level and how one man-one woman commitment is the cornerstone of a functioning society. Say he or she even emphasizes the moral level, even brings makes it a spiritual issue. Then say this person is found to have a track record of dalliances a mile long. This tells us nothing about whether the principle the person put front and center in public pronouncements was right or not. 

That's usually the case. 

Climate zealotry is an exception. 

The person in the above example may or may not believe what he or she has been putting forth. He or she may be undergoing the most searing degree of self-torment at the chasm between personal behavior and espoused principle. 

But it is obvious that climate alarmist do not believe their own s---. If they did, they would not take private jets to climate conferences, running up huge carbon footprints. 

This is about control, about obliterating individual freedom. 

In their moments of candor, they've said as much:

Strikers assert that “marginalized communities,” including the impoverished, disabled, LGBT and minorities, and the economically displaced should be foremost on the minds of policymakers.

The game is further given up when the strikers endorse progressive reforms that relate to climate change only as a result of a stretch of the imagination. Among them, the creation of state-owned banks, affordable housing, “local living-wage jobs” and “fully paid quality health care” for affected populations.

All this fits with the organizer’s prime directive: the “implementation of a Green New Deal,” the bulk of which is only tangentially related to environmentalism.

The jackboots understand that it doesn't matter that they've been completely wrong about everything their movement has been screaming about for 50 years. Their tactic - the screaming - has paid off, not only obscuring the truth about the global climate, but the whole notion of adult discourse as well:

Climate change activism is warming up this week with climate strikes, a U.N. summit, plus extra media coverage. Naturally, the apocalyptic rhetoric is warming up, too. To take only two examples among many: “2020 could be your last chance to stop an apocalypse,” warned a Los Angeles Times editorial last Sunday. What's more, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to criticism that her Green New Deal is unrealistic by saying, “What’s not realistic is Miami not existing in a few years.”

Before anyone is tempted to start believing any of these predictions, it’s worth recalling that similar predictions of impending environmental doom have been made regularly for the past half-century. They have been made by leading scientific experts as well as journalists and politicians.

Although the cause of looming disaster has changed over the decades, one thing hasn’t changed: Every prediction with a date attached has not happened. Most have been spectacularly wrong. Here are a few examples.

Young Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who became famous with publication of The Population Bomb in 1968, regularly predicted global mass starvation by the 1970s and 1980s because of overpopulation and resource depletion. In 1970, Ehrlich predicted that the oceans would be dead in less than a decade, that Americans would face water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.

Ehrlich, by the way, is older but not wiser. He’s still making similar predictions with the dates changed to a few years into the future.

The next wave of doommongers focused on global cooling and the next ice age. The Guardianreported in January 1974, “Space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.” Time got around to reporting the same news in July the same year. In 1976, the New York Times reviewed a book by young climate scientist Stephen Schneider about how to prepare for lower food production caused by global cooling. Some years later Schneider became a leading advocate of global warming alarmism.

Cooling was so '70s. By the late 1980s all the really cool people were predicting imminent catastrophes caused by global warming. James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies beginning in 1988 predicted major droughts and up to six feet of sea level rise in the 1990s. One reporter recalled that in the late 1980s, he asked Hansen in his Manhattan office whether anything in the window would look different in 20 years. Hansen replied, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds.”

The doommongers have made countless predictions of imminent climate catastrophes in the three decades since Hansen’s debut. Let’s focus on just one: the melting Arctic Ocean icecap.

Al Gore predicted in 2009 that the North Pole would be completely ice free in five years. A U.S. Navy scientist in 2013 concluded that the Arctic’s summer sea ice cover would all be melted by 2016. 

Bogus predictions confidently made are not always harmless. The Maritime Bulletin reported that on Sept. 3, 16 “climate change warriors” making a documentary film on the melting polar icecap had to be rescued by helicopter from their ship because it was stuck in the ice halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has compiled copies of news clips of these wrong predictions and many more. Most of them are hilarious in hindsight, but they raise a serious question. 

After 50 years of misinformed, misguided, and mistaken predictions, is there any reason to believe that the current prophecies of global warming apocalypse are likely to come true?

No, there's not, and it's time to fight this menace with every ounce of our ferocity.

Has Ben Sasse put a dent in his integrity? I'm not convinced

Charlie Sykes is. He's written a piece for the Think page at the NBC News website (which has given an airing to some pretty stinky leftist views; the editors were no doubt salivating at the chance to have Sykes beat up on a Republican). He hangs his argument on three somewhat narrow points of substantiation, though: the national-emergency vote in the Senate, the low profile Sykes claims that Sasse has been keeping since earlier this year, and Trump's endorsement of him.

But right now I'm listening to Sasse converse with Jonah Goldberg on the latter's podcast, and he sounds like the Ben Sasse I've always dug. Banter laced with salty humor. An understanding of heartland concerns. He says he has been very careful not to solicit Trump's endorsement ("I carefully kept the conversation going because I intentionally didn't want to think I'd ask for that") and how he took a pass on co-chairing the Very Stable Genius's reelection campaign. His explanation of his emergency-declaration vote satisfies me.

I basically resonate with where Sykes comes from, but I think he sometimes goes as overboard with looking for deviations from someone's stance of finding Trump objectionable as Trumpists do with looking for deviations from an insistence that he is the nation's savior from the Left.

Am I reading all this right?

The climate jackboots are either jumping the shark or they're on the verge of destroying civilization

It's going to depend on how fiercely determined they are. Since most of them are against guns as well, I'm not sure how they intend to enforce their tyrannical vision.

But they do seem determined. A lot of people are pouring into the streets of the world's cities to participate in this climate strike.

But their silliness undermines their effectiveness.

There's NBC's Climate Confessions Project that LITD told you about yesterday.

Consider the self-inflicted life collapse of this person:

Alex McKinnon‏Verified account @mckinnon_a

Since the federal election, I've been overwhelmed by feelings of dread, grief, and terror of what a heating planet will mean for my life, the ones I love, and our collective future. #ClimateStrike

10:21 PM - 19 Sep 2019

h12 hours ago

For months, getting out of bed has been atrociously difficult. Any thought of the future's terrifying implications, and what they will mean for the later years of my life, has sent me spiraling.

43 replies5 retweets42 likes

 

 

MoreI quit a good job. I took months off work. I started on medication. All of which has helped, but none of which has solved the cause of the existential horror I feel when I look the future in the face.

 

h12 hours ago

Verified account 12h12 hours ago

I have bawled my eyes out, and screamed into pillows, and felt a panic so intense it seemed impossible it could be contained in a small, human frame.

55 replies2 retweets29 likes

 

 

Or how about these people? 

The last time Californian climate scientist Peter Kalmus was on an airplane was in 2012: He says it made him feel physically sick and like he was "stealing" from his children's future, and vowed never to fly again.

and

Some people, like Tarek Maassarani, take their philosophy to what others may see as extremes.

The bespectacled 40-year-old with long blond hair does paid consulting for the United States Institute of Peace and is an adjunct professor at two Washington universities, but performs the bulk of his work in the volunteer sector.

Two years ago, he moved out of a co-housing community in a Washington suburb when his two sons shifted to Utah to live with their mother, and has been living between friends' houses ever since.

Apart from relying almost exclusively on his bicycle for transport, including deep into winter, Maassarani is focused on avoiding buying new products because of the energy-intensive nature of their production.

He instead depends on hand-me-downs, "and I sort of extend the life of things well past what most people would do," finding ways to keep tatty decade-old cell phones and laptops going. 

He gets much of his food from dumpster diving or from the leftovers at buffets from conferences he attends, describing himself as a "supply-and-demand vegan."

This is kind of a unique distortion of the free market. One presidential candidate wants to make bovine flatulence part of the cost of your ribeye or burger:

Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang said Thursday that he would encourage Americans to eat less beef by rolling the cost of the cows’ emissions into the the price of the meat.

These people have lost all claim to be considered adults.

Along with whether they can find an effective way to carry out their aims, another test of whether this thing is on the verge of petering out from its own ridiculousness - or imposing itself with an iron thud - is whether there is a sufficient number of people in this world who have an interest in being adults. It's fewer than it was even recently, but, because by definition they don't make spectacles of themselves, it's difficult to tell now many there are left.