Saturday roundup

 Focus on the Family's Glenn T. Stanton, writing at Quillette, says, "Knock off the climate alarmism and start making more babies": 

How is the world going to end? Polls consistently show that most believe the cause will be environmental. “Climate anxiety” has reached such a fevered pitch among young people across the globe that the Lancet recently issued a special “call to action” to help with the problem. Clinicians have even created “climate anxiety scales” to measure the runaway angst spreading through our children, and the rest of us.

But what if the best, emerging science is actually telling us quite firmly that such fears are not only deeply misplaced, but that the most realistic cause of our collective human demise is likely the precise opposite of what most assume? This is the conclusion of a very interesting body of highly sophisticated and inter-disciplinary research. The greatest threat to humanity’s future is certainly not too many people consuming too many limited natural resources, but rather too few people giving birth to the new humans who will continue the creative work of making the world a better, more hospitable place through technological innovation. Data released this summer indicates the beginning of the end of humanity can be glimpsed from where we now stand. That end is a dramatic population bust that will nosedive toward an empty planet. New research places the beginning of that turn at about 30 years from today.

This means that Thomas Robert Malthus, and his many influential disciples, had it precisely wrong. More people are not only not the problem, but a growing population is the very answer to a more humane future in which more people are living better, healthier, longer lives than they ever have in our race’s tumultuously dynamic history.

Pop voices like those of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg and countless Hollywood celebrities have warned that unless drastic action is taken at once, we face irrevocable global catastrophe. The Climate Clock in Manhattan’s Union Square pegs the start of the Earth’s deadline at a little more than seven years from today. But this is not science. The most sophisticated examination considering the Earth’s eco-deadline was just published in August in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Drawing upon 36 meta-analyses, involving more than 4,600 individual studies spanning the last 45 years, nine ecologists, working from universities in Germany, France, Ireland, and Finland, explain that the empirical data simply does not permit the determination of any kind of environmental dooms date, or “thresholds” as scientists call them.

These scholars state frankly: “We lack systematic quantitative evidence as to whether empirical data allow definition of such thresholds” and “our results thus question the pervasive presence of threshold concepts” found in environmental politics and policy today. They explain that natural bio-systems are so dynamic—ever evolving and adapting over the long-term—that determining longevity timeframes is impossible. Talk of a ticking eco-clock is simply dogma. 

The American Enterprise Institute's Frederic Hess, writing at The Hill, says contemporary public-school civics education needs more solid grounding in foundational principles and less wokeness:

Civic education today tends to focus on voting, protest, and the need to combat “injustice.” This is all to the good. But it leaves little room for stodgy notions of obligation, complexity, or the importance of respecting processes even when you don’t like the results.

Indeed, in a national survey of social studies teachers, the RAND Corporation found that barely half think it's essential that students understand concepts like federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances, and a third don’t think it’s essential that students embrace civic responsibilities like voting and jury duty.

As a one-time high school civics teacher, I firmly believe that it’s vital to promote democratic participation. The past few weeks, though, have been a stark reminder that democratic government is about much more than who wins. It’s also about respect for rules, magnanimity, patience, and a bevy of other old-fashioned values.

There would be a lot of competition for the title of World's Most Ate-Up Trumpist, but Eric Metaxas would surely be a top contender. It gives Rod Dreher, writing at The American Conservative, no pleasure to say so, but he feels it's important to point it out:

Before I get started here, let me say clearly that Eric Metaxas has been a friend for over 20 years. He is a dear man, very kind and sincere, and loves God with all his heart. Nothing I say here should be interpreted as a personal attack upon him. I am criticizing his words and his opinions, which, as a Christian and as a conservative, alarm me greatly. The fact that Eric is not a cynic, that I have every confidence that he 100 percent believes what he says, only intensifies the tragedy. I would prefer not to write about Eric’s views, out of respect for our friendship. But I cannot stand to see what is happening to what is broadly my tribe, without saying something. He is influential, and he speaks not only to a lot of people, but for them as well.

To start, and for readers who haven’t been following me: I am an Orthodox Christian and a political conservative (registered as an Independent). I did not vote for Joe Biden, and have never associated myself with Never Trump. I have praised Trump when he has done things of which I have approved, and I have criticized him when I thought he deserved it. I don’t “hate” Donald Trump, nor do I hate people who voted for him. I dread the Biden presidency, but I believe the man won the race. I think it’s possible that there was election fraud in some places in this big country of ours, but based on Trump’s performance in court since election day, I don’t believe that it is provable, if it existed at all.

Metaxas was a guest on Charlie Kirk's podcast recently and Dreher found their conversation jaw-droppingly appalling:

In characterizing the election result, it is hard to be more lurid than Eric in this interview. He believes that Donald Trump won the election “by a landslide” (in fact, Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump, and even if Trump had won the Electoral College vote, it would have been close, not anything like a landslide).

“It’s like stealing the heart and soul of America. It’s like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty,” Eric says, of the election.”

“You might as well spit on the grave of George Washington,” he says.

“This is evil,” he says. And: “It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered. … This is like that times a thousand.”

This. Is. Hysterical. But there’s more.

“This is trying to kill the American people. This is everything.” And he says to believe otherwise is listening to “the voice of the Devil.”

Think about that. An Evangelical broadcaster is saying that Donald Trump’s election loss is a thousand times worse than rape and murder, equivalent to the murder of a nation. And if you don’t believe it? You are demonized.

 

It gets wilder:

Well, here’s news: Eric Metaxas doesn’t care what the courts have said. In a clip that starts right here, he says,

“So who cares what I can prove in the courts? This is right. This happened, and I am going to do anything I can to uncover this horror, this evil.”

Evidence, or the lack of it, does not matter. He is declaring as a matter of faith that Donald Trump won the election. How can you argue with that? You can’t. It is a statement of faith.

So, when he talks about doing “anything” he can to fight this thing that is a thousand times worse than rape and murder, what does he mean? Quote:

“We need to fight to the death, to the last drop of blood, because it’s worth it.”

There is no way around it, and it grieves me to say it: Eric Metaxas is calling for violent bloodshed to defend Donald Trump’s presidency, and he doesn’t care that Trump’s lawyers have not been able to prove in court that Trump had the election stolen from him. He told Charlie Kirk that he is willing to kill or be killed for a political cause for which there is not enough evidence to advance a court case, even among friendly judges.

This is fanaticism. But according to Eric, to disagree with him is to be under the sway of the Devil. Actual quotes:

“This is sacred. … Every American should say I really don’t care what it takes, we will not let this happen in America.”

“The fact that Republicans would shrug, it’s just despicable, it’s very clarifying, and I just believe God is in this, what can I say?”

“I still feel that those of us who know this is massive fraud, we have no choice but to fight.”

He knows because … he just knows, is all. God is in it, after all. It’s holy war. He says too:

“Everything’s at stake. America’s at stake.”

“If we don’t get our people in … we go over the cliff, and we don’t come back.”

If you really believed that, then of course you would be willing to kill and be killed for the cause. My God.

Eric says that America is God’s instrument, one that he has used to spread “liberty” around the globe. The Christians of Iraq could not be reached for comment, most of them dead or displaced as the result of America’s unjustified invasion of that country, but what are facts to a Christian nationalist who just knows things. He says “I believe it is God’s will that we would continue to do that, at an increased level, for a long time… .”  Manifest destiny, I guess.

At this point in the interview, Kirk asks Metaxas — who has, recall, just called for fighting to the death to defend Trump’s sacred case — where he thinks Trump’s legal strategy stands. Know what Eric says?

“I am thrilled to be too ignorant of the details to answer that question in any substantive way.” 

I’m not kidding. Click on that link to see and hear it for yourself. He says that the courts are irrelevant, that America is in the crucible, that we have a fight to the death on our hands, and that anybody who disagrees is no better than Germans who stood by and let Hitler come to power … but he cannot give even one detail of the actual court cases, and is “thrilled” to be ignorant of the cause for which he is urging people to shed blood and die! 

AOC did the righteous-indignation schtick after Senator Mike Lee explained why her proposal for demographics-based history museums is a toxic idea:

On Thursday Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) blocked a bill that would approve two proposed Smithsonian museums, the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum. The bill, presented on a bipartisan basis by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), already unanimously passed the House. But, Sen. Lee believes the museums would "further divide an already divided nation."

"My objection to the creation of a new Smithsonian museum or series of museums based on group identity, what Theodore Roosevelt called hyphenated Americanism, is not a matter of budgetary or legislative technicalities," Lee explained. "It is a matter of national unity and cultural inclusion.”

"The so-called critical theory undergirding this movement does not celebrate diversity; it weaponizes diversity," he continued. "I understand what my colleagues are trying to do and why. I respect what they're trying to do. I even share their interests in ensuring that these stories are told. But the last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups."

Sandy from Westchester's tweet:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

No movement on COVID in the Senate but good to know Utah Sen. Mike Lee is spending his time today giving speeches about why Latinos shouldn’t have a national history museum and oh, while we’re at it, why there shouldn’t be a women’s history museum either

For damn cogent reasons that you don' care to address, toots. 

 

At least a couple of Republican Senators, Susan Collins and John Cornyn, think such museums are a good idea which is really disappointing, but that kind of kow-towing to leftist firebrandery is the equivalent of 126 House Republicans endorsing that stupid Ken Paxton lawsuit that the SCOTUS gave the thumbs-down to last night. That's just where we are. Both of post-America's major political parties are garbage.

Politico's John Harris has a reassuring piece today called "Relax, A Trump Comeback in 2024 Is Not Going To Happen." He cites three reasons:

Most important are the abundant precedents suggesting Trump does not have another important act in national politics. The perception that Trump will remain relevant hinges on the possibility that he is a unique historical figure. Trump, however, is singular in one sense only: No politician of his stripe has ever achieved the presidency. In multiple other ways, he is a familiar American type, anticipated by such diverse figures as Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Ross Perot.

Like Trump, they all possessed flamboyant, self-dramatizing personas. They tapped into genuine popular grievance toward elites, and had ascendant moments in which they caused the system to quake and intimidated conventional politicians of both parties. In every case, their movements decayed rapidly. Cults of personality in American politics are quite common. But they never live long, and Trump has offered no reason to suppose he will be an exception.

That’s the second reason Trump is not well-positioned to retain his hold on public attention: He has largely abandoned any pretense that he thinks about anything other than his personal resentments, or that he is trying to harness his movement to big ideas that will improve the lives of citizens. When he vaulted into presidential politics five years ago, Trump’s still-potent gifts — for channeling anger, for mockery, for conspiracy theory — were once channeled to an agenda that fellow Republicans were largely neglecting, over trade, immigration, globalization, and perceptions of national decline. These days, no one can follow Trump’s Twitter feed and believe that he cares more about the public’s problems than his own, and that is not a recipe for sustaining political power.

Here is the third reason to be bearish on Trump’s future: Politics never stands still, but Trump largely does. As he leaves the White House, Trump should be haunted by a stark reality — if he had any capacity for self-calibration, he wouldn’t be leaving the White House at all. He’s got one set of political tools. When things are going well, his instinct is to double down on those. When things are going poorly, his instinct is to double down on those. In political terms, the pandemic demanded modulation of Trump’s blame-casting brand of politics — but also would have lavishly rewarded him if he had done so.

Susan Wright has a great piece at Patheos called "Yes, It's Really Over." She speaks for me here:

Am I thrilled to have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, along with whatever motley crew of liberal thinkers they surround themselves with in office?

I am not. I know there will be a lot to rail against, and I’m prepared to blast them on every point.

That being said, I am absolutely thrilled to see our system still works. 

Let's end on an uplifting note: 2.9 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine will be distributed in the US over the next week. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday roundup

David French has moved from National Review to The Dispatch, the new project of Steven Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Among the things he'll be doing there is a regular newsletter. In today's edition of that, he looks at how the Supreme Court may well dismantle Elizabeth Warren's signature achievement, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

For years I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that Warren’s political biography is littered with landmines. Yes, she’s known for inflating claims of Native American heritage, but did you also know that she (strangely enough) claimed to be the “first nursing mother to take a bar exam in the state of New Jersey”? A Boston Herald writer spoke to a New Jersey Judiciary official who said there was no way to verify her claim. Women had been taking the New Jersey bar since 1895, and the official was “not aware their nursing habits were ever tracked.”

But her academic career isn’t even quite as glittering as you might think. In 2010, Megan McArdle wrote a fascinating analysis of Warren’s scholarship and found a “persistent tendency to choose odd metrics” that inflated the case for her leftist causes. McArdle said Warren’s famous scholarship on medical bankruptcies “isn't Harvard caliber material—not even Harvard undergraduate.” McArdle is hardly the only serious critic of Warren’s academic work, and the theme of the criticism is much the same—that she had a history of “overstating her findings to make ideological points.”

Now, I know that these critiques can feel like nit-picking when she’s running to take on a Republican president who is one of the most extraordinary (and ignorant) fabulists in the history of American politics, but sloppiness in her biography and sloppiness in her scholarship extend to sloppiness in her public policy positions, and this cuts directly against the core of her political image—as the person who has the “plan for everything.” What if her plans are illegal or unconstitutional? What if the veneer of wonkiness is hiding the unworkable substance?

And this brings us to the Supreme Court. Earlier this month SCOTUS granted certiorari in a case called Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The court will decide two issues:

(1) Whether the vesting of substantial executive authority in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency led by a single director, violates the separation of powers; and (2) whether, if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is found unconstitutional on the basis of the separation of powers, 12 U.S.C. §5491(c)(3) [it] can be severed from the Dodd-Frank Act.

Let’s put this in plain English. The CFPB is quite fairly described as Warren’s signature public policy achievement. She proposed, she built it, and she initially hoped to run it. Now the nation’s highest court is set to decide whether it’s structurally unconstitutional. The governing statute places substantial restrictions on the president’s ability to remove the CFPB director, and the smart money is betting that the Supreme Court will rule against the bureau.

SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe describes the stakes:

If the justices agree that the restrictions violate the doctrine known as the separation of powers – the idea that the Constitution divides the different functions of government among the executive, judicial and legislative branches – their ruling could potentially unravel all the CFPB’s decisions in the nine years since its creation.

And what is the precise constitutional problem? Here’s a nice summary from a CATO Institute amicus brief:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the most independent of independent agencies in the federal government. Despite its significant power, it is essentially accountable to no one. A single director heads the CFPB, this director serves a five-year term, and the director can be removed only for cause. The CFPB does not need Congress to approve its budgets because its funding requests must be rubber-stamped by another independent agency—the Federal Reserve. The CFPB has regulatory authority over 19 federal consumer protection laws, for which it is empowered to write regulations, investigate potential violations, and bring enforcement actions in its own administrative proceedings. This concentration of power in the hands of a single, unelected, unaccountable official is unprecedented and cannot be squared with the Constitution’s structure or its purpose of protecting individual liberty from government overreach.

In other words, the Obama administration created in essence a fourth branch of government. The CFPB exists almost outside our constitutional system of checks and balances. It’s an executive agency not truly run by the president. It’s a statutory creation not truly funded by Congress. 

It is true that the Ninth Circuit and the D.C. Circuit have upheld the CFPB’s structure, but there is one very notable dissenter from the D.C. Circuit’s en banc opinion—then-Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh. This was his assessment of the CFPB director in January, 2018:

Because the Director acts alone and without Presidential supervision or direction, and because the CFPB wields broad authority over the U.S. economy, the Director enjoys significantly more unilateral power than any single member of any other independent agency. By “unilateral power,” I mean power that is not checked by the President or by other commissioners or board members. Indeed, other than the President, the Director of the CFPB is the single most powerful official in the entire U.S. Government, at least when measured in terms of unilateral power.

There is no such thing as a foregone conclusion at the Supreme Court, but given the number of justices who’ve signaled a willingness to rein in the administrative state, Warren’s political creation is likely in for a rough ride. 

To uphold the structure of the agency, the court would have to extend the present understanding of the ability of Congress to create independent bureaucracies— and that’s exactly the opposite way that the Supreme Court has been trending. So, look for the court to rebuke Warren in the middle of a presidential campaign. 

It would be one thing if the CFPB was simply one constitutional swing and miss, but Warren has a habit of making policy proposals that cross legal lines. 

Can she keep her promise to “ban fracking everywhere”? No, she cannot. Her plan plainly conflicts with the Energy Policy Act, passed by Congress in 2005. 

Can she pass a wealth tax and raise hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for an explosion of progressive policies? No, she cannot. Her tax likely violates the 16th Amendment, which holds that any “direct tax” must be “in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration.”

She wants to create a national statutory right to abortion that overrides restrictive state laws. But once again she has proposed a plan that contradicts relevant Supreme Court authority limiting congressional authority under the commerce clause. 

Elizabeth Warren makes promises she can’t lawfully keep, and when those flawed promises become unconstitutional laws, they impose real economic and legal costs on American citizens. 

Great piece by Noah Rothman at Commentary entitled "The Blue State Model Is Failing." How have big, resource-rich states like California  and New York gotten to the point of deliberate blackouts?

Satan is on the prowl in Austin. Fortunately, a significant number of parents aren't taking it lying down:

On Tuesday morning, the Austin Independent School District (ISD) school board approved a radical new sex-education curriculum for grades 3-8 that encourages all kinds of sex at young ages, urges kids to join LGBT "pride" parades, and aims to redefine biological sex and erase the words "mom" and "dad" from children's vocabulary.

More than 100 people testified against the new curriculum on Monday night, and testimony lasted until after midnight. Yet the school board unanimously approved the new curriculum.

"This vote by the Austin ISD Board sends a clear message: people of faith and traditional moral values are not welcome in Austin ISD," David Walls, vice president of Texas Values and a parent in Austin ISD, said in a statement. "By passing this curriculum, Austin ISD has broken the sacred trust that parents put in their children’s schools. Austin ISD parents have no reason to entrust their children to a school district that weaponizes education to indoctrinate children into the LGBT political movement."

Do the right thing, Philippines:

An Iranian beauty queen who has spent almost two weeks inside Manila's international airport says she will be killed if she is sent back home and is seeking asylum in the Philippines.

Bahareh Zare Bahari, a contestant in the recent Miss Intercontinental pageant in Manila, claims Tehran is attempting to silence her because of her public stand against the government.

In a press release last week, the Philippines Immigration Department said the international police agency Interpol issued a worldwide request to arrest Bahari, known as a red notice. The statement did not specify which country requested the red notice, but Bahari told CNN that an immigration official told her Iran requested one in 2018. 

"I have been living here since 2014 and I've not gone back to Iran. I explained to them many times, how can I have a criminal case in Iran when I've been living here?" she told CNN by phone.

Bahari said she has been confined to a passenger room in Terminal 3 of Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport since she arrived from Dubai 12 days ago. "I'm really mentally sick," she said, adding that the uncertainty over her case is wearing her down. 

Bahari believes she is being targeted for supporting the exiled Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran overthrown in the country's 1979 revolution. 

The beauty queen blamed the situation on Iranian authorities, saying it came up because she used an image of Pahlavi and the flag of the former Iranian monarchy as props during a recent competition. Bahari said she made the statement "to try and be the voice of my people."

She also believes she may be targeted because of her social activism in Iran. Bahari said that she became a teacher there because she wanted girls to learn "they are not things, they are not toys, they are human and they have same right as boys."

The Philippines Department of Immigration and Department of Justice have not responded to CNN's request for comment. Requests for comment made to the Iranian embassy in Manila and the Iranian government in Tehran have not been answered. 

AOC is a walking caricature of her own worldview:

On Wednesday, far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linked the death of her grandfather to white people.

According to the socialist’s logic, “predominantly white” corporations and communities have set climate change in motion with their fossil fuel admissions; climate change apparently caused and/or amped up Hurricane Maria, a devastating Puerto Rico storm in 2017; AOC’s grandfather died in the aftermath of the storm, ergo: white people are connected to, if not the cause of, his death.

“[T]he people that are producing climate change, the folks that are responsible for the largest amount of emissions, or communities, or corporations, they tend to be predominantly white, correct?” the 29-year-old asked during a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing on civil rights and civil liberties, according to The Washington Examiner.

“Yes, and every study backs that up I know no one is intentionally trying to kill people and hurt people,” National Wildlife Federation’s Mustafa Ali answered the NYC rep. 

“My own grandfather died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria,” Ocasio-Cortez highlighted.

“We can’t act as though the inertia and history of colonization doesn’t play a role in this,” she added. 

At The Imaginative Conservative, Louis Markos imagines how Dante might have corresponded with us in the twenty-first century about the Beatific Vision.

And just what is her substantiation for this smear?

Speaking of the enemy, another of its most prominent faces, Sandy from Westchester, has really outdone herself:

Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York took a shot Wednesday at one of her fellow freshman lawmakers, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

It all started when Crenshaw responded to the story of a woman who fended off a pair of would-be robbers with her handgun.

Crenshaw noted on Twitter that “situations like this story are why we protect the 2nd Amendment.”

Referring to calls for universal background checks in response to several recent mass shootings, Crenshaw added: “Side note: With universal background checks, I wouldn’t be able to let my friends borrow my handgun when they travel alone like this.”

“We would make felons out of people just for defending themselves,” he added.

But his words caught the ire of Ocasio-Cortez, who appeared to assert Wednesday that the friends he’d be lending his handgun to are “likely” spousal abusers or violent criminals.

“You are a member of Congress. Why are you ‘lending’ guns to people unsupervised who can’t pass a basic background check?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. 

“The people you’re giving a gun to have likely abused their spouse or have a violent criminal record, & you may not know it,” she added.

The back and forth, with others chiming in, continued on Twitter, with Sandy from Westchester spewing forth a lot of sweeping generalization about how abusers are often pillars of the community who are adept at concealing their behavior.

Listen up, toots. You don't know a stinking thing about Dan Crenshaw's friends. Actually, you don't know much about anything.

 

When push comes to shove on Israel-hatred, The Squad does not have most House Dems on its side

Sandy, Rashid, Ilhan, let these numbers sink in:

Three hundred ninety-eight out of 432 seated members of the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to condemn the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, an amalgam of anti-Zionist interests that advocates for the delegitimization and ostracization of all Israeli institutions. It was a vote that Democrats would not have had to take but for the upstart progressives in their midst. The party’s progressive House freshmen have made a name for themselves by pushing their caucus to the left on a series of issues, one of which is support for America’s strategic alliance with Israel. They pushed too far.

And this appears to be a case of this chamber of the legislative branch living up to its name. The vote was truly representative of public opinion:

Twenty-seven states have adopted measures opposing the boycott of Israeli goods or imposing costs on institutions that comport with BDS’s demands. This March, Gallup found that 59 percent of American adults sympathize with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinian Authority. Only 21 percent backed the entities in Gaza and the West Bank. Although this represents a modest decline in support for Israel from 2018, pro-Israel sentiment remains palpable among a majority of Republicans and independents and a plurality of Democrats. Only among self-described “liberal Democrats” has sympathy for Israel collapsed to a virtually non-existent 3 percent.

And no, Ilhan darlin',  nobody's trampling on your First Amendment rights:

The anti-BDS resolution, she said, “attempts to delegitimize a certain people’s political speech and to send a message that our government can and will take action against speech it doesn’t like” (a federal judge in Arkansas has already dismissed Tlaib’s constitutional objections).

Now, this little utterance from Westchester Sandy is kind of creepy, don't you think?

“My concern with being overly punitive on nonviolent forms of protest is that it forces people into other channels,” said squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The congresswoman has a habit of speaking in vague terms so that she can plausibly deny the obvious implication, but her meaning is clear enough; if boycotting Israeli goods isn’t an option, opponents of the Jewish state will be forced to take more drastic measures.

Steve Berman at The Resurgent likens it to an experience he had overseas once:

One time I was in Italy and parked my rental car on the street near a nice restaurant. A man came up and asked for 500 lira (back then before the euro, about $5). I asked through my interpreter, Guido, “what for?” He wants to watch your car so nothing happens to it. I began to decline when Guido said, “give him the money, or something willhappen to your car.”

AOC issued the equivalent statement that the man outside the restaurant gave me. Since Congress has voted to condemn BDS, which she claims is the non-violent path to destroying Israel (*snort*), that will leave the Jew-haters who voted her, Tlaib and Rep. Omar Ilhan into office no choice but to resort to violence.

Sorry, gals, but most people don't harbor your animosity for the only Western nation in the Middle East.

Exit question: will these chicks become more desperate and outlandish as they realize how unpopular they are, or will it spur them to start acting more like stateswomen, respectful of the institutions and traditions of the body in which they serve (and of US allies)?

 

Perfect!

I so hope there's no hidden glitch regarding this:

Scherie Murray, a New York businesswoman who immigrated from Jamaica as a child and is active in state Republican politics, is launching a campaign Wednesday for the congressional seat held by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Fox News has learned.

In a phone interview, Murray, 38, confirmed her intention to run for the New York congressional seat as a Republican.

“There is a crisis in Queens, and it’s called AOC,” Murray told Fox News. “And instead of focusing on us, she’s focusing on being famous. Mainly rolling back progress and authoring the job-killing Green New Deal and killing the Amazon New York deal.”

Murray, who was born in Jamaica and moved to the United States when she was 9, is officially launching her campaign Wednesday with an introductory video that takes sharp jabs at the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez.

“Your representative in Washington chooses self-promotion over service, conflict over constituents, resistance over assistance," Murray said in the video. "Queens and the Bronx needs someone who will create jobs instead of turning them away."

Asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s brand of Democratic socialism, Murray said, “I think it’s far, far to the left and it is not connecting with everyday Americans.”

As for "Medicare-for-all," which Ocasio-Cortez has embraced, the Republican said: “Medicare-for-all, I think a lot of people are happy with their current health insurance.” And on the Green New Deal, the left-wing proposal to address climate change pushed by Ocasio-Ortez, she said: “We know that it certainly will kill jobs.” 

It sounds like she has a mature take on the AOC - VSG dustup:

She expressed disgust over the recent spat between Trump and Ocasio-Cortez and her allies. Trump has taken heat for telling Ocasio-Cortez and other minority progressives to "go back" to where they came from – provoking accusations from Democrats that Trump's comments are racist.

“I think it’s disgusting, to be quite honest,” Murray said of the controversy, without specifying which part of it disgusts her. “I think we are missing the point of why we’re elected to public office: to legislate on policy, to deliver results to those kitchen table issues that are affecting everyday Americans.”

Murray later clarified her thoughts on the back-and-forth, saying of Trump's tweet, "Is that how I would have worded it? No. Do I think the president is a racist? No." She added, "But I want to get back to the core of why we’re even talking about this – there is a crisis at our border." 

Entrepreneurial background, now focused on parenthood:

Murray, who grew up in Southeast Queens and worked for the city’s Jamaica Bus Depot as a teenager, founded a television production and advertising company called The Esemel Group in 2004. She said her business generated employment for minorities in New York City. She said she no longer works for the company and is now a full-time mother.

And, or course, she checks off the race and gender boxes that will preclude her getting accused of bigotry - although she might have to contend with castigations for not "being a black voice" or "being a woman's voice."

And she sure seems to have her head squarely on her shoulders. You bet she's set a Sisyphusean task before herself. Even if a Dem primary challenger were to knock Sandy from Westchester out of the running, that person would be overwhelmingly favored to win in that district.

But the chances of victory are zero if one is not in the running, and Pubs have the chance to offer the 14th district a straightforwardly conservative alternative to the current clown show.

We have misused the term "racist" until it's utterly useless

This latest round of its saturating our discourse is not where it got started. It was already depleted of real meaning years ago. Charges of racism have been hurled at presidents and legislators for decades.

It ostensibly has very clear parameters on its definition, but nobody bothers to regard them.

At least when they deal with people of actually different races, there's the ability to prove or disprove the charge. For instance, when the claim is made that there is systemic racism in America's law-enforcement agencies, we can look at statistics that show it just isn't so.

But the term "racism" gets trotted our when the groups juxtaposed against each other in a situation are all of the same race. Technically speaking, Arabs and Latinos are white. "Ethnic bigotry" is the accurate term for these situations, provided that in a given situation there actually is any.

I won't digress too far into the matter of Trump's Twitter habit and how he has been outdoing even his own track record for ill-advised tweets lately, only to say that it's too much of a stretch to draw the conclusion that he's implying that one race or ethnic group is inferior or superior to another based on his characterization of the countries of origin of the unnamed persons - or their forebears, in the cases of the ones born in the US - in Trump's recent infamous "go back" tweet as "broken and crime-infested." Let's assume, because we safely can, that he was talking about Somalia, Palestinian-controlled areas of the mideast, and Puerto Rico. These places plainly are broken and crime-infested.

The "of color" formulation has been the most effective way that identity politics hustlers have blurred the lines between racism and bigotry. And even so, bigotry charges often come off looking flimsy. AOC, in a provocative tweet of her own, strongly implied that Nancy Pelosi was motivated by it, and it just looked plain ridiculous. Spokespeople for the Congressional Black Caucus said so.

All this said, it must be noted here that Trump's tweet was, in the words of Power Line's John Hinderaker, "the worst unforced error of his presidency." Anyone with any sense in 2019 post-America knows that you don't put rhetorical minefields right in front of your feet. It's tactically self-destructive. A tiny bit of, if not contrition, at least acknowledgement that he was ineffective at expressing what he meant would build his political capital, but that's not how he rolls and it's almost certainly too much to expect.

To repeat what I say here often, and others say often as well, he's not playing chess, he's winging it.

And that's why his shills look so pathetic trying to parse what he said and make it look acceptable. The damage was done immediately and their after-the-fact polishing of the stool sample does nothing to ameliorate it.

So what could we do to lessen, perhaps even rid ourselves of, the current climate, which has everybody on edge, checking to see if her or she is vulnerable to charges of racism or bigotry, and jockeying to see who among one's ideological opponents might be ripe for being so charged?

We could just drop it.

That's right, we could, in the next moment, if we so chose, just knock it off with all this race and ethnicity talk.

There is only one way at this point to end or diminish racism and that is to shut up about it. Otherwise, what you really want, whether you admit it or not, is to perpetuate racism for your own advantage—like Al Sharpton (and many others, obviously, some of whom want desperately to be in the White House).

But don't believe me. Believe Morgan Freeman. Let's roll back to the Early Paleolithic Age (2005), when the great black actor was on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace:

MIKE WALLACE, CBS`s "60 MINUTES": Black History Month, you find...

MORGAN FREEMAN, ACTOR: Ridiculous.

WALLACE: Why?

FREEMAN: You`re going to relegate my history to a month?

WALLACE: Come on.

FREEMAN: What do you do with yours? Which month is White History Month? Come on, tell me.

WALLACE: I'm Jewish.

FREEMAN: OK. Which month is Jewish History Month?

WALLACE: There isn`t one.

FREEMAN: Why not? Do you want one?

WALLACE: No, no.

FREEMAN: I don`t either. I don`t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.

WALLACE: How are we going to get rid of racism until...?

FREEMAN: Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You`re not going to say, "I know this white guy named Mike Wallace." Hear what I'm saying?

Stop talking about it. Interesting idea, isn't it? I doubt Cory Booker would approve. 'The Squad" would doubtless go apoplectic. Nevertheless, it's the only way to end racism—stop talking about it. We already have laws against it, for a long time now, as we should. And they should be strictly enforced. But the rest of the blah-blah has got to go. It only makes people hate each other. It creates racism rather than solves it.

Why don't we do it? Because a whole lot of people would have to find something actually meaningful to do with their lives if they could no longer convince the rest of us that we still have an interminable docket of "uncomfortable conversations" about not much at all in front of us.

In short, the hustling industry insists on it.

Squad presser - initial thoughts

It just concluded, so these thoughts are fresh indeed.

Pressley came off as the most stateswomanlike, but that bar is set low, given her stressing of the term "occupant" and refusal to use the term "president."

Two ways to look at Omar's use of the requiting of Trump's foul language ("s--hole countries," "grab 'em by the pussy"). It could be seen as gratuitous and in our faces - the presser was held at 5:15 PM, after all, when kids are home and getting ready for dinner - but, on the other hand, hey, the Very Stable Genius said these things. They're fair game.

Can't see Omar's call for impeachment gaining any more traction than any calls so far have.

And she knows damn good and well what the Mueller report concluded, so her mention of "collusion with a foreign government" was rotten indeed.

All of them were fairly deft at using the "distraction" angle. Was surely coordinated. They want to steer the national knife fight conversation back to the pressing issues on out plate, doncha know. You know, like springing illegal alien kids from cages (this coming days after former acting ICE director Thomas Homan had explained to AOC in a House Oversight Committee hearing that that's because their parents had been arrested) and giving everyone government-provided health care (because in Squadworld, it's possible for health care to be a right). You see, the real problem with Trump, according to the Squad, is that because he's not on board with these aims, he's a racist and wants to see people die of terrible diseases.

Bottom line: Doubt if it moves the needle regarding public opinion. Enthusiasts of the brands involved had their confirmation bias massaged.

And post-America got a bit more brittle and ridiculous.

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

I think David Marcus's assessment at The Federalist that Donald Trump's recent behavior strongly indicates some kind of pivot to "normalcy,"  that he's becoming "calm and measure," is way too premature. The points with which Marcus substantiates his position are valid enough, but they have a bit of a desperate-to-be-convinced feel to them. They don't really add up to much:

In June he had a very normal state visit to England with no real gaffes. For the Fourth of July he gave a speech that liberals and progressives expected to be pure and ugly politics, but wound up being, again, pretty normal. His reactions to criticisms such as a new allegation of sexual assault were pretty mellow by his standards, and his brief walk into North Korea came off as a good bit of diplomacy, despite handwringing among North Korea hawks.

I'd point to two recent Twitter blurtings as counterweights to these. There was the business about calling Amash "disloyal." Telling term. It has that Mafia-boss / I-expect-my-ring-to-be-kissed connotation about it. Then there is Trump's choice to call Paul Ryan a "baby" who "didn't know what the hell he was doing," and a followup indulgence of his signature braggadocio and winner-loser formulation:

They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off the stage. He promised me the Wall, & failed (happening anyway!)......

 Granted, Amash had called for Trump's resignation, and Paul Ryan had unloaded to Politico's Tim Alberta in the course of Alberta's writing of a book about Trump not caring about being unprepared to address various issues. And a US president is not expected to be immaculately above the fray. Still, these responses are unprecedented. Trump thinks his insults wipe the record clean regarding Amash and Ryan having established themselves as intelligent, principled conservatives who have thought deeply about the scope of state power vis-a-vis individual sovereignty.

Recall that Trump called Charles Krauthammer a "dummy" in a tweet in 2016. Need I say more?

Gentlemanly restraint just ain't in the Very Stable Genius's wheelhouse.

Which brings us to his tweets about the radical House freshmen:

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......

@realDonaldTrump

....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....

5:27 AM - 14 Jul 2019 

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

5:27 AM - 14 Jul 2019 

Those who parse the uttering of their political enemies are going to have a field day with this point:

The series of tweets carried with it the suggestion that these women “go back” to the countries from whence they originated. AOC, Tlaib, and Pressley were all born in the United States, while Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia.

The absurdity is going to get plenty of titters, but the phrase "go back" is what's going to provide the Left with its real ammunition. At a moment when a truly well-crafted expression of outrage at the truly America-hating sentiment that these four House freshmen ooze would have been immensely helpful, the VSG lets loose with a major backfire. Anyone else now pointing out the poisonous nature of what these four routinely say is going to come in for a response along the lines of, "Yeah, 'go back to where you swarthy types came from' is what you right-wingers always really mean when you come after brown-skinned people."

Of course, none of this matters to Trump's slavish base. They think this sort of thing is a hoot. They see no reason to care one subatomic particle what anyone at any point on the left side of the spectrum is thinking. To that base, as long as the Left is trampled over come the first Tuesday in November 2020, it's mission accomplished. No matter that the embers of America-hatred will continue to glow and smolder, ready to reignite. And that will be because they weren't truly doused with sound refutation.

No, the pivot to normalcy remains a dream in the minds of those who, I guess admirably, want to see something more redeeming in what is probably going to occur in a year and four months than the cyclical trimming of the Left's sails. We'd all like real victory, but let's be realistic about what can deliver it and what - and who - can't.