Thursday roundup

 Kamala Harris, as part of a live-streamed event focused on empowering women, will be having a conversation with . . . Bill Clinton. 

Saying the uncomfortable part out loud: Bryan Walsh at Axios says that even if this "degrowth" movement has appeal to someone - and there are some very silly people to whom it does - you can't have the kind of advancement in terms of comfort, convenience, safety and general quality of life the human species has enjoyed over the last two centuries without economic growth. 

Lee Ann O'Neal - who, it bears mentioning, is Korean-American - at Real Clear Politics says that there is no statistical data to back up the current buzz suggesting that bigotry-driven acts for which Asian Americans would be on the receiving end are much of a thing. 

Good read by Daily Beast senior columnist Matt Lewis entitled "The Evangelicals' Trump Obsession Has Tarnished Christianity."

Speaking of the Very Stable Genius, he's endorsing Jody Hice, a House member from Georgia who supported the attempt to overturn Biden's election, in Hice's bid to unseat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the receiving end of that interminable "I-just-need-you-to-find-11,000-votes" call in January. 

Andrew T. Walker has a piece at The Gospel Coalition entitled "Emabttled on All Sides, Does Religious Liberty Have a Future?"

North Korea just test-fired some ballistic missiles. 

Thursday roundup

 My informal assessment of the ad featuring both the Republican and Democratic candidates for Utah governor calling for civility is that there's a consensus across the spectrum the it's a refreshing alternative to the societal brittleness that worsens every day. Well, maybe not complete consensus. It turns out that, even though Democrats are coming to see that Amy Coney Barrett is a jurist of impeccable integrity and a fine human being, the hardcore Left is throbbing with rage over her inevitable confirmation. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has strongly hinted that he has told Juciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein he's none too happy with her role in fostering civility during ACB's hearings. Not everyone is feeling the unicorns and rainbows. 

At Desiring God, Jon Piper has an excellent piece entitled "Politics, Persons and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election."

A couple of tastes:

This article is probably as close as you will get to an answer on how I will vote in the upcoming presidential election. 

Probably? 

Right. Only God knows what may happen in the next days. 

Nothing I say here is intended to dictate how anyone else should vote, but rather to point to a perspective that seems to be neglected. Yes, this perspective sways my vote. But you need not be sinning if you weigh matters differently.

Actually, this is a long-overdue article attempting to explain why I remain baffled that so many Christians consider the sins of unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like, to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.

And:

May I suggest to pastors that in the quietness of your study you do this? Imagine that America collapses. First anarchy, then tyranny — from the right or the left. Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prison, exile, and martyrdom. Then ask yourself this: Has my preaching been developing real, radical Christians? Christians who can sing on the scaffold, 

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.

Christians who will act like the believers in Hebrews 10:34: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Christians who will face hate and reviling and exclusion for Christ’s sake and yet “rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, [their] reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:22–23). 

Have you been cultivating real Christians who see the beauty and the worth of the Son of God? Have you faithfully unfolded and heralded “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8)? Are you raising up generations of those who say with Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8)? 

Have you shown them that they are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), and that their “citizenship is in heaven,” from which they “await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20)? Do they feel in their bones that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21)?

Or have you neglected these greatest of all realities and repeatedly diverted their attention onto the strategies of politics? Have you inadvertently created the mindset that the greatest issue in life is saving America and its earthly benefits? Or have you shown your people that the greatest issue is exalting Christ with or without America? Have you shown them that the people who do the most good for the greatest number for the longest time (including America!) are people who have the aroma of another world with another King?

Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute shows us the dark side of America First:

The 2016 election was hardly the first time that the U.S. political system alarmed many of the United States’ partners broad. After the election of 1832, the British complained that the United States was governed by “demagogues and non-entities,” and versions of that grievance have been repeated regularly by allied leaders since. Yet this time is different. During the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States’ friends have, for the first time, begun to hedge their bets in clear and consequential ways. A second term for Trump would accelerate such moves, with the result of transforming the international order for good.

Even before the start of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, support for the United States had plummeted to historic lows. Over the past six months, Washington has shown both indifference to the magnitude of suffering among its own citizens and sharp-elbowed selfishness in its approach to global cooperation on vaccines, medical supplies, and more—decimating support for both U.S. leadership of a mutually beneficial international order and global aspiration to the American way of life.

If Trump is reelected, his “America first” foreign policy will have been validated, and the result will be an America snarling into decline. The admiration for the United States that reduces the cost of everything it tries to achieve in the world will evaporate, and other countries will move on, shaping a new order to protect themselves from a self-seeking, often hostile United States. Washington will find that it has squandered an international order that was built to enhance its security and sustain its prosperity and instead faces a world without the institutions, alliances, and goodwill that have long bolstered U.S. interests. The president and the Republican leaders who support him will have to take responsibility for what they have wrought: a new order that excludes the United States.

So the Very Stable Genius is not such a great choice. How about the other choice? It's starting to look like we should not be dismissive about the new round of Joe-Biden-Hunter-Biden-China-deals allegations:

Wait until Scranton hears about this.

One of Joe Biden’s ways of contrasting himself with President Trump has been to declare the election a battle of Park Avenue values vs. Scranton, Pa., values.

Now we learn that Biden has secretly been playing footsie with China.

The statement Wednesday night asserting that the former vice president was a willing and eager participant in a family scheme to make millions of dollars by partnering with a shady Chinese Communist firm is a singular event in a presidential race already overflowing with drama and intrigue.

The dynamite assertion, believable because it aligns with earlier information we know to be true, came in a statement by Tony Bobulinski, who describes himself as a former partner of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Joe’s brother Jim in the China scheme. Bobulinski unloads his bill of accusations in blunt but precise language and detail.

He confirms that he was one of the recipients of the May 13, 2017, email published by The Post eight days ago. That email, from another partner in the group, laid out cash and equity positions and mysteriously included a 10 percent set-aside for “the big guy.”

Sources have said the “big guy” was Joe Biden. In a matter-of-fact manner, Bobulinski states that the “email is genuine” and that the former vice president and the man leading in the 2020 race is indeed “the big guy.”

That claim alone rips out the heart of nearly everything Joe Biden has ever said about Hunter’s many businesses and Joe’s knowledge of them. His repeated insistence that the two never spoke of the son’s global sources of money didn’t pass the laugh test.

After all, they traveled together to China on Air Force Two, where Hunter landed a $1.5 billion commitment from a government-controlled Chinese bank. Then there was Hunter’s $83,000-a-month gig on the board of a Ukrainian energy company — despite his lack of experience in Ukraine or knowledge of energy.

It was no coincidence that the vice president was the Obama administration’s point man in both countries. Wherever Joe went, Hunter went along, not to do good, but to do well. Very well.

Current national security advisor Robert O'Brien reminds us that, for all its trappings of modernity and urbanity, China is in its essence what it has been since 1949: a Marxist-Leninist state. Marxist-Leninists tend to be a fiercely determined lot, and that is playing itself out in China's machinations on the world stage:

Chinese-owned TikTok deletes accounts criticizing CCP policies. Since August 2019, Twitter has removed more than 170,000 CCP-linked accounts for spreading “manipulative and coordinated” propaganda. It is no coincidence that China has expelled so many Western reporters in recent months—Beijing wants the world to get its news about China, and especially about the origins of the novel coronavirus, from its own propaganda organs.

In addition to influencing the information Americans receive regarding China, the CCP is increasingly using its leverage to control American speech. When the general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team tweeted his support for peaceful protesters in Hong Kong, the CCP announced that Rockets games would not be shown on Chinese TV and pressed others associated with the league, including star players, to criticize the tweet. Under pressure from the CCP, American, Delta, and United Airlines removed references to Taiwan from their websites and in-flight magazines. Mercedes Benz apologized for posting an inspirational quote from the Dalai Lama. MGM digitally changed the nationality of an invading military from Chinese to North Korean in a remake of the movie Red Dawn. In the credits for its 2020 remake of Mulan, Disney thanked public security and propaganda bureaus in Xinjiang, where the CCP has locked up millions of minorities in concentration camps.

The CCP is also gathering leverage over individuals by collecting Americans’ data—their words, purchases, whereabouts, health records, posts, texts, and social networks. This data is collected through security flaws and backdoors in hardware, software, telecommunications, and genetics products (many operated by CCP-subsidized businesses such as Huawei and ZTE) as well as by theft. Beijing hacked Anthem Health Insurance in 2014; the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which holds security clearance information on millions of government employees, in 2015; Equifax in 2017; and Marriot Hotels in 2019. In these instances alone, the CCP gathered key information on at least half of all living Americans, including their names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, credit scores, health records, and passport numbers. The CCP will use this data the same way it uses data within China’s borders: to target, influence, harass, and even blackmail Americans to say and do things that serve the CCP’s interests. 

In what we know of Ghislaine Maxwell's deposition so far, she recalls the heyday of Jeffrey Epstein's sybaritic empire quite differently from Virginia Giuffre. She also waffles when pressed on whether Epstein and Bill Clinton could be characterized as friends. 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday roundup

That was one badass ship Britain used to keep Iran from storming that oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Was that move on Iran's part retaliation for Britain putting the kibosh on Iran's attempt to surreptitiously supply Syria with oil by rounding Africa recently?

A must-read for all you believers among the LITD readership: a Resurgent piece by Drew Holden entitled "The Biggest Threat to American Christianity Comes From Within."

On the left, a watering down of Scripture in certain churches to a point where it can’t reasonably be called Christian is taking place, one that denies the bodily resurrection, a physical Hell, and other central pillars of the Bible. In an effort to be expansive and welcoming, it minimizes or excuses sinfulness and contrition altogether, and elevates liberal priorities to religious convictions. 

There are many good and noble things to call an association of people who care deeply about human justice. But lacking a connection to (or flat out rejecting) the most basic, fundamental Christian doctrine and scripture, it’s a stretch to rightly call them Christian. And there’s a darker side as well, punctuated at times with a seemingly blatant disdain for the faithful, be they parents, bakers, or everyday people. 

On the right, the Jerry Falwellization of the Christian Church has been similarly bad. The President rivals Moloch in the devotion he receives from his adoring faithful. Religious leaders line up to lie prostrate before him, ignoring or forgiving (without a pretense of reconciliation) his worst impulses, past and present. And all the while, clear commandments go ignored by way of hard-hearted, inhumane policies toward the refugee, the alien, the poor, the widow, the least of these. 

Jim Geraghty at National Review has some very important questions about the Jeffrey Epstein situation:

One: How did Jeffrey Epstein make his fortune in the first place? One claim is a massive Ponzi scheme.

Two: Could Epstein really have been connected to some sort of intelligence service? In yesterday’s press conference, labor secretary Alex Acosta offered a weird, vague, contradictory, meandering answer when asked about this. If Epstein was working for some sort of spy agency, which one? What was the aim, to collect blackmail on prominent figures? Who was being blackmailed, and what did they do?

Three: Why did the office Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance try to keep Epstein from being registered as a top-level sex offender? “A seasoned sex-crimes prosecutor from Mr. Vance’s office argued forcefully in court that Mr. Epstein, who had been convicted in Florida of soliciting an underage prostitute, should not be registered as a top-level sex offender in New York.” The judge denied the request and declared, “I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this.”

Four: After Epstein was labeled a “Level 3 sex offender” — meaning the worst — Epstein was required by law to check in with the NYPD every 90 days. He never checked in at all over an eight-year span. How did that not generate any consequences?

Five: How did his private island off Saint Thomas get the nickname “Pedophile Island” and how does a rumor like that not get law enforcement to start snooping around?

Six: Bill Clinton’s public statement about his interactions with Epstein was laughably inaccurate, contracted by contemporaneous media accounts, never mind FAA flight logs. You would think Clinton and those around him would have a well-worn playbook for denying sexual impropriety and criminal behavior by now.

Seven: Doesn’t this paragraph in deep in a recent article of Vanity Fair seem to bury the lede, as they say in journalism?

Pecker, he later told me, used to send him articles and issues before they were published so that he and Trump could read them. After the meeting Trump called in Sam Nunberg, then a Trump Organization employee, who saw Pecker leaving Trump’s office. “Michael was sitting in there when I came in, and the issue of the National Enquirer with the pictures of Prince Andrew was on his desk,” Nunberg recalled. “He said not to tell anyone, but that Pecker had just been there and had brought the issue with him. Trump said that Pecker had told him that the pictures of Clinton that Epstein had from his island were worse.” (Cohen, speaking by phone from the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, corroborated Nunberg’s version of the events, though he declined to add any additional information about the meeting.)

So the National Inquirer has pictures of Bill Clinton with Epstein and the women he was using?

If Trump knew about these photographs, why didn’t he at least leak or hype them during the 2016 campaign?

And if Clinton really did nothing inappropriate in all of his interactions with Epstein, why didn’t Hillary Clinton’s campaign make a stink about Trump’s past friendship with Epstein, during a campaign where Trump’s unsavory treatment of women was a big issue? 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says that now that the "A"CA looks likely to die in its entirety, let's let states serve as policy laboratories for health care and see what works and what doesn't. 

Amy McGrath will clearly need to burnish her extemporaneous-speaking chops if she intends to pose any kind of serious challenge to Mitch McConnell, who this week demonstrated that his are in good working order. 

And Bob O'Rourke takes tone-deafness to an entirely new level:

Robert Francis O'Rourke recently reminded America he was running for president by telling a group of immigrants and new citizens that the country they just decided to pledge allegiance to was founded on white supremacy and is so entrenched in racism that to this day "every single institution and structure" is meant to keep minorities enslaved. 

“This country was founded on white supremacy and every single institution and structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression even in our democracy," the former Texas congressman told the group in Nashville, Tennesee.

That ought to boost his poll numbers!

 

David French at National Review is right and Wrongthink Radio at RedState is wrong

I read the RedState piece first.

Lately when I stop by RedState, I think back to the purge of its writers that happened when Salem Communications took it over. I did notice the shift in editorial tone that was all the inside-baseball talk of the punditsphere, but I felt that talk was a bit overblown. There were still a number of writers who insisted that the full picture regarding Donald Trump must be presented, and that that included his problematic traits.

But at this point, I think that shift has become as marked as the original assessments. It went from being a Trump-skeptical conservative outlet to a shill rag.

The piece that is the subject here is entitled "Where is David French's Article on Pete Buttigieg?" and its point is to take French to task for pointing out Franklin Graham's hypocrisy - castigating Bill Clinton in the 90s but giving unwavering support to the Very Stable Genius in our own time.

The byline is Wrongthink Radio. I guess that's a person. RedState has an increasing number of writers who go in for odd nom de plumes. There's someone called "Bonchie" whose stuff appears a lot lately. Streiff, who has been there a while, seems to be the editorial gatekeeper.

WR's rhetorical angle is lame indeed. His basic thrust is that French is presumptuous trying to be the arbiter off Christian morality for everyone (which French is not doing; he's deferring to the authority of doctrine to discuss morality) and convince his readers that French has some kind of moral obligation to write pieces about all the clearly flawed Democrat presidential candidates:

French’s consternation with Evangelicals was that they would dismiss sinful behavior, and he championed himself to be the judge of what behavior is acceptable for a Christian voter in the United States, so naturally, I wonder where French’s article is regarding Pete Buttigieg, a homosexual candidate running for President, or his vociferous condemnation of Kamala Harris for having an open affair with her former boss?

I bring these examples up because French felt he was qualified to impose judgement on American Christians, but suddenly seems to have lost his voice when that opinion would be deemed unpopular by the Liberal press. French only chastised Evangelicals because he knew he could take a moral position that the Left would celebrate, and he could condemn his detractors as members of the “Trump cult”. This all came into perspective this week following Franklin Graham’s criticism of Pete Buttigieg and his call for Mayor Pete to repent for his sins, and French responded with his ever popular “but Trump though” style. 

French makes the statement that marriage is “between a man and a woman” but can’t seem to bring himself to state that Franklin Graham is correct that homosexuality is indeed a sin according to Christian doctrine. French can call Graham a hypocrite all he wants, but since French appointed himself as the expert on Evangelical voting, does he not have an obligation to speak out against the moral behaviors of Democrats with the same ferocity with which he attacked Trump?

French of course is rudderless when it comes to morality, his morality is as subjective as anyone else in the media. French merely used Evangelicals as the straw man to attack Trump. His thinly veiled criticisms were nothing more than a coping mechanism to convince himself that not supporting Trump was a good decision and that his requirement to double down is also a good decision. French doesn’t actually care about whether Christian morals are reflected in national leadership, he merely cares that he will be able to tell everyone how morally sound he feels about his decisions, no matter what true societal effect they have on our country. 

Now, for the piece that launched WR's "refutation.  You tell me if this sounds morally "rudderless" and "subjective":

It’s hard to think of a single prominent American Christian who better illustrates the collapsing Evangelical public witness than Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son. His commitment to the Christian character of American public officials seems to depend largely on their partisan political identity.

Let’s look at the record. In 1998, at the height of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, the younger Graham wrote a powerful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal combating Clinton’s assertion that his affair was a “private” matter. Clinton argued that his misdeeds were “between me, the two people I love the most — my wife and our daughter — and our God.” Graham noted that even the most private of sins can have very public, devastating consequences, and he asked a simple question: “If [Clinton] will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”

Graham was right: Clinton, it turned out, wouldn’t just lie to mislead his family. He’d lie to influence courts, Congress, and the American people.

Fast-forward 20 years. By 2018, Donald Trump was president — and helping to win important policy victories for religious conservatives — and Graham’s tune had changed dramatically. He actively repudiated his condemnations of Clinton, calling the Republican pursuit of the then-president “a great mistake that should never have happened,” and argued that “this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”

Graham was wrong: Trump, it turns out, doesn’t just lie to mislead his family. He lies all the time to influence courts, Congress, and the American people.

So is this the “new normal” for Evangelicals? Is politics entirely transactional now? Do we evaluate politicians only on their policies and leave the sex discussions to the privacy of their own bedrooms? 

Apparently not, according to . . . Franklin Graham. Now that the Democratic primary is gaining steam and a gay candidate is surging forward, Graham has rediscovered his moral voice. Yesterday he tweeted this:

Franklin Graham‏Verified account @Franklin_Graham

Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian. As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman—not two men, not two women. 2/3

Yes, marriage is the union between a man and a woman, but Trump married a woman, then married his mistress, then married a third woman, then had an affair with a porn star while that third wife was pregnant with his child. Yet Graham says, “God put him” in the presidency and we need to “get behind him and support him.”

The proper Evangelical position toward any president is not hard to articulate, though it is exceedingly difficult to hold to, especially in polarized times when one party seems set on limiting religious liberty and zealously defending abortion: We should pray for presidents, critique them when they’re wrong, praise them when they’re right, and never, ever impose partisan double standards. We can’t ever forget the importance of character, the necessity of our own integrity, and the power of the prophetic witness.

In other words, Evangelicals can never take a purely transactional approach to politics. We are never divorced from our transcendent purpose, which always trumps political expediency. In scripture, prophets confronted leaders about their sin. They understood a core truth, one clearly articulated in the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1998 Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.” 

Wrongthink Radio is on seriously flimsy ground with that "rudderless" and "subjective" stuff as you can see.

If asked about it, I'm sure French would say that, of course Pete Buttigieg is wearing his sin like a badge of honor. But that's not the topic here.

I see this tactic employed a lot in my own polemical tussles. "If you're going to write about such-and-such problem with such-and-such figure, you have to write about these other people with the same, or similar, problems."

No, opinion writers get to select their subjects for given columns and narrow or widen the scope as they see fit. It may well be that David French will have something to say about Buttigieg at some point. But the topic here was Franklin Graham's cringeworthy turnabout and its harmful effects on evangelism's ability to participate in the public square. And he did a fine job of covering it.

 

 

Sunday roundup

That national treasure Kevin Williamson, writing at NRO, succinctly distills the three main camps, with regard to the relationship between taxing and spending, within the Republican Party:

What’s under way here is a contest of three distinct Republican visions: In the House, Diane Black is offering up an old-fashioned bottom-line Republicanism, reform this year, next year, the year after, and beyond; in the Senate, they’re hoping that a massive tax cut will resuscitate the Growth Faerie, who will sprinkle upon Washington the magic dust in which hard decisions are wondrously dissolved; and the White House is offering up President Trump’s usual incoherent content-free populism, a combination of gimmicky showmanship and wishful thinking.

Why has that 2016 Phoenix-airport-tarmac  meeting between Billy Jeff the Zipper and then-Attorney General Lynch been shrouded in mystery all this time? IT hasn't needed to be that way. There's ample documentation about it, but it looks like someone has been sitting on it - until now:

he FBI has been forced to admit that it has 30 documents pertaining to that June 2016 meeting between Bill Clinton and former attorney general Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix, after originally claiming to have no such documents.

That seems like a lot of docs for a chance, innocuous meeting about grandkids and golf, doesn't it?)

The FBI admitted to having the Clinton-Lynch tarmac docs only after conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch caught the bureau hiding them in another lawsuit. The FBI is asking for six weeks to produce the documents.
The new docs are being sent to Judicial Watch in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

According to the watchdog group,  the bureau originally informed them that they were not able to locate any records related to the tarmac meeting, but in a related case, the Justice Department located emails about the meeting in which the DOJ had communicated with the FBI. As a result, the FBI on August 10, 2017, stated: “Upon further review, we subsequently determined potentially responsive documents may exist. As a result, your [FOIA] request has been reopened….” 

Have you ever thought about who Duncan Hines actually was? Here's the skinny - or maybe not-so-skinny - on it:

Duncan Hines couldn’t cook. The white-haired man who smiled reassuringly at 1950s homemakers from grocery store advertisements and cookbook covers was relegated to tossing salad or brewing coffee in his own kitchen. But his name—now best known as a cake mix brand—was synonymous with good taste.

Unlike his baking-aisle colleague Betty Crocker, Hines was not created by a marketing department. That amiable, wrinkled face belonged to a real person, born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1880. A traveling salesman for most of his career, Hines had, on those long road trips, developed a hobby that was unusual for his time: he became an amateur restaurant critic, taking note of the best meals he had eaten in towns across the country, with special mention of the cleanliness of the kitchen.

There were few ways for travelers to find trustworthy recommendations in the early years of the 20th century, and Hines soon became a resource for fellow travelers, eventually self-publishing his restaurant guide, Adventures in Good Eating in 1938, which launched his second career as one of the country’s most recognized names. Metal signs announcing “Recommended by Duncan Hines” were a fixture of the restaurant landscape, a predecessor to today’s Zagat and Yelp signs, and by the time of his death in 1959, Hines was selling 300,000 copies of his regularly updated guide each year.

Hines was hooked up with Andre Arlen, a food scientist who focused on testing dry cake mixes by a marketer for a produce cooperative named Roy Park. The arrangement worked out among the three called for Hines's name to appear on any products he endorsed, which included the cake mix Arlen's team had settled on.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Steve Bannon came to this year's Family Research Council Values Voters Summit and shot off his mouth about waging war on the "GOP establishment" without a word about restoring God's presence in our culture, the ostensible reason for the gathering. Who ever booked the guy made a bad, bad move.

Great essay by Robert Tracinski at The Federalist. His main point is how the recent strong-arm protest by campus jackboots against the ACLU, of all organizations, shows that the Left's  intolerance is proving to be its undoing.

But in the course of fleshing this out, he takes us on a historical trip through the evolution of the word "liberalism" - and how the notion that intellectual freedom and economic freedom were two different critters:

The deepest roots of modern American “liberalism” go back to John Stuart Mill and his 1859 essay “On Liberty.” Mill was a prominent member of Britain’s Liberal Party back when it still stood for free markets, and to this day its remnant, the Liberal Democrats, use a copy of “On Liberty” as a symbol of the party’s leadership.

Mill set out to make a case for liberty that was not based on “natural rights” but on utilitarianism. He starts with the principle that everyone should be allowed to do whatever he likes, so long as it doesn’t harm others: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

But what constitutes a “harm”? Refusing to give someone a job? Charging “too much” rent for an apartment? Hurting someone’s feelings? To limit the concept of “harm,” Mill emphasized the difference between the private and the public, and between ideas and actions. The ideas you hold privately are nobody’s business but your own, while actions you take publicly might be harmful to others and can in principle be controlled by government. Here is how he summed up his argument:

The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.

Under this framework, you could still make a very compelling argument that, just as free speech leads to a more vibrant and creative society that benefits everyone in it, so do free markets—and Mill did just that. (His father, James Mill, was a classical economist influenced by Adam Smith, and he learned those lessons well.) But Mill’s main legacy was the creation of this division between intellectual freedom, which he treated as an inviolate basic principle—”over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”—and economic freedom, which was to be defended on purely pragmatic grounds. The first kind of freedom was way more important than the second.

But here's why you can't separate them:

This strict separation of ideas from action, of the private from the public falls apart the moment you try to apply it to reality. What’s the point of being free to think if you’re not free to act on your thinking? And how can we say that private thinking and private preferences have no effect on others, when they clearly influence the way people act?

Once that fallacy became obvious - most recently in the troubles that employees of corporations have found themselves in for speaking their minds about "diversity" initiatives and all such hooey - the Left had to start eating its own.

Monday roundup

Good morning, policy-and-culture observers.

Herewith a panoply of developments in the space-time realm as we commence Advent Week:

File this one under "I thought I was the only human being with this status": Tanza Loudenback at Business Insider proudly says she's never seen a Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movie.

Gordon Chang at the Daily Beast says China's seizure of the US Navy underwater drone was an act of war. Of course, it doesn't seem to even be on the Most Equal Comrade's radar screen:

Today, President Obama cannot even talk about Chinese aggression. He did not, for example, mention it in his opening statement at his press conference Friday and did not address it when answering Mark Landler of the New York Times, who raised the drone seizure in his question. 

And another of the MEC's foreign-policy successes fiascoes has yet to improve its human-rights record since its patty-cake with post-America culminated in full diplomatic relations:

Authorities across Cuba have cracked down on dissidents, arresting dozens, keeping others from marching in Havana, and detaining an American human rights lawyer, activists said Sunday.

In the first such anti-dissident operation since Fidel Castro's death last month, President Raul Castro seemed to indicate the Americas' only one-party communist state was in no mood for dissent.

A roundup in the country's east snared dozens and derailed street protests planned to demand that political prisoners be freed.

"There was a joint operation at 6:00 am in Santiago and Palma Soriano. They searched four homes, and so far we have 42 reported arrests -- 20 in Santiago, 12 in Palma and 10 in Havana," Jose Daniel Ferrer told AFP by phone.

The 46-year-old, who heads the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), had called the demonstrations to demand that political prisoners be set free. Castro insists there are no political prisoners, just lawbreakers.

Ferrer said he was detained in Santiago, Cuba's second biggest city, at a police unit known as Micro 9.

"They threatened me, and said by calling the demonstration I was facilitating public disorder.... disobedience and espionage," Ferrer said.

Most arrests of dissidents in roundups are brief. Sometimes, the authorities prevent them from leaving their homes to attend a protest or march.

- Ladies in White, shut in -

In Havana, the award-winning Ladies in White group, which presses for the release of jailed dissidents who are their relatives, said that at least 20 of its activists were "under siege," kept from attending their weekly march.

"At least 20 homes were blocking the residents to keep us from marching today," said group leader Berta Soler.

It was a step backward for the Ladies in White. They long have been considered the only dissidents the Cuban government allowed to march regularly; they hold one weekly protest outside a church in Havana.

But not this Sunday, Soler said.

- US rights lawyer held, freed -

Kimberley Motley, an American human rights lawyer, was briefly detained on Friday along with Cuban activists Gorki Avila and Luis Alberto Marino when they planned to visit graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, known as "El Sexto," in jail.

Maldonado was also arrested on November 26, a day after the death of Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, after painting on a wall in Havana the phrase "He's gone," her relatives say.

According to online newspaper 14 y medio, Motley left Cuba at the request of the government.

Now she tells us:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Sunday she regrets secretly meeting with former President Bill Clinton last June because of the negative impression it gave some voters.

"I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him because it did give people concern. And as I said, my greatest concern has always been making sure that people understand that the Department of Justice works in a way that is independent and looks at everybody equally," Lynch said on CNN's "State of the Union."

The Obama official said it has been "painful" for her to see how the infamous airport tarmac meeting played out during the height of an FBIinvestigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Moral preening and nanny-state finger-wagging in the Circle City:

The Indianapolis City-County Council passed a resolution in support of Meatless Mondays on December 5, 2016. The resolution encourages Indianapolis residents and institutions to try a meat-free day at the beginning of each week, aiming to reduce the city’s environmental footprint and raise awareness about healthy eating.

The resolution was championed by Council Vice-President Zach Adamson (D - District 17), and co-sponsored by Jared Evans (D - District 22), Blake Johnson (D - District 12) and Jeff Miller (R - District 16). “I’m excited the City Council has made clear both the importance of a diet high in vegetables and the negative impacts meat products have on our health and our environment,” Councilman Adamson said. “With Indianapolis ranking so high in diet-related illness, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, this is an important declaration that encourages our fellow residents to make healthy and environmentally sound food choices.”

Oh, please.

That said, Matthew Scully at NRO offers a viewpoint worth of consideration, namely, that humankind still lacks a truly humane approach to its interaction with the animal kingdom's lesser species.  You will notice though, that he does not call for any stinkin' government involvement.

Doug Band's 2011 memo

12 pages of searing truth about what the Clinton machine is about:

Longtime Clinton aide Doug Band wrote the memo in 2011 to justify himself to lawyers at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett who were reviewing his role and conducting a governance review of the Clinton Foundation at the insistence of Chelsea Clinton. In an email two weeks earlier, also published on WikiLeaks, Ms. Clinton said her father had been told that Mr. Band’s firm Teneo was “hustling” business at the Clinton Global Initiative, a regular gathering of the wealthy and powerful that is ostensibly about charitable activity.

Poor innocent Chelsea. Bill and Hillary must never have told her what business they’re in. If she had known, she would never have hired a blue-chip law firm to sweep through the hallways of the Clinton Foundation searching for conflicts of interest. Instead of questioning Mr. Band’s compensation, she would have pleaded with him never to reveal the particulars of his job in writing.

But she didn’t, and so Mr. Band went ahead and described the “unorthodox nature” of his work while emphasizing his determination to help “protect the 501(c)3 status of the Foundation.” That’s the part of the tax code that has allowed the Clinton Foundation to remain tax-exempt on the premise that it is dedicated to serving humanity. 

Mr. Band graciously copied John Podesta, then adviser to the board, who would eventually become Hillary’s campaign chief. His helpful reply was to suggest that Mr. Band “strip the defensive stuff out” and later “go through the details and how they have helped WJC” [William Jefferson Clinton].

The Band memo reveals exactly what critics of the Clintons have long said: They make little distinction between the private and public aspects of their lives, between the pursuit of personal enrichment, the operation of a nonprofit, and participation in U.S. politics.
Mr. Band writes that he and his colleague Justin Cooper “have, for the past ten years, served as the primary contact and point of management for President Clinton’s activities—which span from political activity (e.g., campaigning on behalf of candidates for elected office), to business activity (e.g., providing advisory services to business entities with which he has a consulting arrangement), to Foundation activity.” 

This excerpt and all the potential conflicts it describes, plus Chelsea’s warning about business “hustling” at foundation events, would seem more than ample cause to trigger an IRS audit of the foundation. For that matter, why aren’t the IRS and prosecutors already on the case? Any normal foundation has to keep records to show it is separating its nonprofit activity from any for-profit business. 

Mr. Band’s memo confirms that donors were not seeking merely to help the sick and the poor. He explains that the Clinton Foundation had “engaged an array of fundraising consultants” over the past decade but “these engagements have not resulted in significant new dollars for the Foundation.” In other words, it wasn’t working as a conventional charity.

Mr. Band then explains how he and his Teneo partner Declan Kellyhad to carry the fundraising load, and did so by packaging foundation solicitations with other services such as a meeting with Bill Clinton, $450,000 speeches or strategic advice. Many of the donations, from U.S. companies like Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical and foreign firms like UBS and Barclays, occurred while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

Why exactly were donors writing checks? The Band memo makes clear that donations untied to additional Clinton or Teneo services weren’t all that appealing to potential supporters. This is significant, because the large grant-making foundations in the U.S. are almost entirely run by Clinton voters. So you know they weren’t turned off by the brand name. They’d contribute more if they thought they were also buying goodwill and influence with a current Secretary of State and a potential future President. 

As the WSJ op-ed excerpted above points out, there's surely even more, and should Madame BleachBit be the next president  dictator of post-America, it makes her ripe for blackmail from all kinds of parties in this world that have her number.