BRICS is starting to take on a more discernible identity

 . . . and one that ought to concern the West and its allies throughout the world:

The BRICS bloc of developing nations agreed on Thursday to admit Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates in a move aimed at accelerating its push to reshuffle a world order it sees as outdated.

In deciding in favour of an expansion - the bloc's first in 13 years - BRICS leaders left the door open to future enlargement as dozens more countries voiced interest in joining a grouping they hope can level the global playing field.

The expansion adds economic heft to BRICS, whose current members are China, the world's second largest economy, as well as Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. It could also amplify its declared ambition to become a champion of the Global South.

Some factors could mitigate the drive toward unity:

But long-standing tensions could linger between members who want to forge the grouping into a counterweight to the West - notably China, Russia and now Iran - and those that continue to nurture close ties to the United States and Europe.

But what esprit de corps it's feeling right now is not something that smells very fragrant.

China's Xi is pretty fired up about the expansion. He no doubt sees it as an opportunity to breathe new life into the Belt and Road Initiative.  South Africa's Ramaphosa's public statement focuses on the more-fair-and-just-world-stage rhetoric. Putin, who attended remotely, also took the nicey-nice tack, saying BRICS isn't out to compete with anyone. No, that's not the Putinist way. He just invades.

As with any geostrategic development, things will not proceed in a linear fashion, but this is not a bunch united by any kind of vision with a recognizably moral component.

 

 

The Very Stable Genius continues to ruin US foreign policy

At some point last week, I saw a question posed somewhere - it might have been Twitter, or in some short opinion-site piece - that began with the observation that we'd been seeing "good Trump" for a little while. The question was whether that could be maintained during the NATO 70th anniversary gathering in London.

It's clear that we now have our answer. After indulging himself in lengthy pressers (52 minutes, 39 and 30) after meeting with some of the leaders present, at least one (the one with French president Emmanuel Macron) of which was acrimonious, he abruptly cancelled what was to be the official end-of-summit press conference and flew home.

About that Macron one-on-one, here's a taste of the vibe:

Macron tried to parry the flow of words, making clear that he disagreed with Trump on Turkey's intervention in Syria.

When Trump tried to joke about France taking back its citizens captured in the region — “Would you like some nice ISIS fighters? I can give them to you” — Macron responded.

“Let’s be serious,” he snapped back. “The very large number of fighters you have on the ground are ISIS fighters coming from Syria, from Iraq, and the region.”

“This is why he’s a great politician, because that was one of the greatest nonanswers I’ve ever heard,” Trump said, to Macron’s clear irritation.

There were several other blurting of note at that get-together, responses to media questions rather than barbs directed at Macron.

He would not commit to coming to any NATO member's defense if the nation was attacked, saying that in the case of countries paying less than the agreed-upon 2 percent of their defense budgets, saying, in his signature word-salad style, "Why is it they owe us for this year, but every time a new year comes along, they don't have to pay?" Um, they don't pay "us," they pay NATO, an organization that all the nations in question belong to.

The Very Stable Genius said of Chinese president Xi, "I don't think he likes me so much anymore, but that's okay." Probably the best face to put on the relationship given that the big trade deal the VSG has been saying was right around the corner is in fact still mired in sticking points, a development that cause the stock market to slide 250 points in real time.

About the Kurds in Northern Syria, he said, "We have taken the oil. I have taken the oil. We should have done it in other locations, frankly, where we were. I can name four of them right now, but we've taken the oil."

What caused his take-his-toys-and-go-home pout was an informal cocktail-party gathering of heads of state at which there was a chuckle had over the VSG's disregard for niceties like promptness:

The video, which quickly went viral online, showed Trudeau, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and others speaking at a Buckingham Palace reception. The video begins with Johnson looking toward Macron and asking, "Is that why you were late?"

Trudeau jumped in, "He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top."

After a cut in the footage, Trudeau adds, "I watched his team's jaws drop on the floor."

In addition to this NATO fiasco, the VSG is applying his customary hot-headedness to Brazil's and Argentina's currency devaluations:

President Donald Trump announced Monday that the US will "restore" steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil and Argentina, citing a "massive devaluation of their currencies." 

"Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies. which is not good for our farmers. Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries," Trump tweeted early Monday morning from Washington. He also called on the Federal Reserve to "act so that countries, of which there are many, no longer take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies." 

Formal notices of the tariffs were not immediately announced by the Treasury or Commerce Departments or the Office of the US Trade Representative. Both Brazil and Argentina were exempted from 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs last year when Trump was attempting to avoid a trade war with those countries. 

Brazil's President, Jair Bolsonaro, said Monday that he has an "open channel" of communication with Trump, according to state news agency Agencia Brasil.

Bolsonaro said he would meet with Brazilian Finance Minister Paulo Guedes Monday to discuss the issue and make a call to Trump if needed. 

Argentina's Production and Labor Minister called Trump's decision to impose the tariffs "unexpected."

"There was no sign given to our government, to the Brazilian government or to the public sector that there would be a change in the deal with the United States," Dante Sica told state-run news agency Telam on Monday.

Sica said he met with Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie after seeing the tweet in order to "analyze the course of action" and told Telam that he had contacted the US Embassy in Argentina, as well "all contacts in Washington DC" to get more clarity on the situation.

The President's decision amounts to retaliation against two countries that have served as alternative suppliers of soybeans and other farm products to China, grabbing market share away from American farmers, a key constituency the President will need to win reelection in 2020.

Just great.

Two points among those that comprise a generally agreed-upon understanding of basic conservatism are an understanding of the supreme importance of US leadership for maintaining the world-order framework established at the end of World War II, and a fealty to free-market economics. This guy is obliterating both.

Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel put the squelch on Macron's attempt to preen at the expense of free trade

One of the more amusing developments at this year's G-7 was seeing the UK prime minister and the German president get their hackles up over French president Emmanuel Macron (also the host of this year's pow-wow) trying to block a trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur-agreement (Latin American) countries as a grandstanding gesture because of the Amazon-region fires in Brazil.

A few things to note:

• Merkel goes in for the climate-crisis hooey, but she still has the sense to know you don't walk away from an economic opportunity that took 20 years to craft
• Brazil is not a G-7 member, so Jair Bolsonaro wasn't on hand to rebut Macron's stance
• Most of the fires that have the climatistas' panties in a knot have been set by farmers in Amazon-adjacent areas. They are clearing them for next year's crops.

At the above link, there's a very noteworthy graphic that originally appeared in the New York Times showing that Amazon-region deforestation rates since 2008 have been nowhere near their 1985 - 2007 levels.

Let people engage in economic activity. The climate is not in any kind of crisis.

Friday roundup

Stacey Abrams, the poster girl for delusion chic:

Speaking at the Center for American Progress’s Ideas Conference, Abrams said: "The notion of identity politics has been peddled for the past 10 years and it’s been used as a dog whistle to say we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the voices coming into progress. I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are and exactly how we won."

Why is this guy still drawing a breath instead of suffering Hell's eternal torment? 

John Walker Lindh, the man convicted of helping the Taliban following the September 11 attacks, was just released from federal prison in Terre Haute.

Lindh’s case began in November of 2001 when he was fighting alongside the Taliban. The California native had converted to Islam as a teenager and eventually traveled overseas to fight alongside radical Islamists.

Not two months after 9/11, Lindh was captured in Afghanistan, detained and interviewed by a CIA officer, a former Marine named Mike Spann. Just hours later, Spann was killed in a prisoner uprising at the same facility. In the aftermath of that uprising, Lindh was brought back to the U.S. and charged with conspiring to kill Americans and engaging in terrorism.

A conviction could have meant life in prison. Instead, attorneys accepted a plea deal approved by President George W. Bush. Those charges were dropped and Lindh only pleaded guilty to serving in the Taliban army and carrying weapons while doing so. That resulted in a 20-year sentence. With good behavior, Lindh will be released on May 23 after serving 17 years.

AOC finds the ideological significance of cauliflower:

 In a stream-of-consciousness discussion of composting, the Green New Deal, and community gardens, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lamented cauliflower as symbol of colonialism.

“Looks like they’ve got composting going on, which is so awesome, too, because composting is really hard to do in a neighborhood like this. We just don’t have the pick ups and the ease of it that a lot of other communities have. So that’s really how you do it, right, that is such a core component of the Green New Deal, is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context. And it’s an area that I — we get the most pushback on, because people say, like, why do you need to do that? That’s too hard. But when you really think about it, when someone says that it’s too hard to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something, what you’re doing is that you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism, and that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements, because they come with the colonial lens on them. And it should be no surprise that sometimes a lot of these projects don’t work out occasionally because our communities are naturally attuned to live in an environmentally conscious way.”

Or, you know, the decision to grow cauliflower might be a reflection of what plants will grow best in a garden with that temperature range, soil types, and rainfall level. Some yucca varieties can handle a range of temperature and rainfall, some can’t. All of this information is a Google search away, and one can fairly wonder why a U.S. congresswoman is weighing in on what vegetables should be grown in citizens’ gardens.

I always wonder about these situations in which a nation nearly immediately sours on a leader it has just elected. Such is apparently the case in Brazil:

Earlier this month a procession of Brazil’s military cabinet ministers came to President Jair Bolsonaro with the same clear message: muzzle your far-right keyboard warriors or your government will implode.

Propelled to the presidency by a vociferous army of online ideologues, including his sons, Bolsonaro’s government comprises an uneasy mix of radicals, pragmatists and economic liberals. In his five months in office, Bolsonaro has done little to rein in the extremist fringe, even when they target Congress, the Supreme Court and members of his own administration. The former members of the armed forces, who make up a third of his cabinet and constitute the moderate faction, have endured particularly vicious abuse.

Since the retired generals’ intervention, the public mud-slinging has ebbed a little, but the sense of division and improvisation in government has not. Bolsonaro’s approval ratings are sliding fast, while prominent erstwhile supporters who hoped for clean, decisive government have recanted, and legislators are beginning to jump ship. Even in financial markets, which helped carry the retired paratrooper to office, hope is fizzling. The real earlier this week reached an 8-month low. The presidency did not respond to a request for comment.

"I’m amazed by how weak Bolsonaro is politically. The government has everything going for it but sabotages itself with controversy and insults," said Renato Nobile, a Bolsonaro voter and the CEO of Genial Advisory, which manages over 30 billion reais ($7.4 billion) in assets. “Many people want the military, Mourao is more skilled than Bolsonaro,” he said in reference to Vice-President Hamilton Mourao, a four-star general.

The saving grace of the Trump administration is the grownups on board. Sohrab Ahmar interviews one of them in the New York Post:

“White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War” screamed a New York Times headline.

“When you see that headline, it’s flashy, but it doesn’t begin to reflect the depth of the work that’s been done,” Pompeo says as we sit down for an interview at the plush Palace Hotel in Midtown.

Yes, the Pentagon updated a military contingency plan in case the Tehran regime escalated its attacks against US assets and interests in the Persian Gulf. But the plan was one of several options presented to the commander in chief. To go by that Times headline, and others like it, you would think Team Trump is driving America to war, willy-nilly; that Washington is the aggressor and Tehran the victim without agency.

Fact is, Iran has a “revolutionary, theocratic regime that is intent upon the destruction of the United States and Israel,” Pompeo tells me. “That’s the backdrop to all this.”

President Trump hasn’t boosted the risk of a confrontation by ratcheting up sanctions. “The risk is the same” as ever, and it comes from Iranian leaders who “have made the decision that they’re willing to contemplate attacks — kinetic, military attacks — against the United States.”

What’s new is that the United States under Trump will no longer entertain the fiction that Iran’s various militias and terror proxies are somehow independent of the regime.

Pompeo warns the Iranians: “Whether you subcontract, or you partner, or you train, or you equip, or you operate it, or you lead it, if you allow it to engage in attacks against Western interests — we’re not going to allow you to create public deniability. Because we’ll know full well what’s happening. That’s not going to stop us from attacking those who made the decisions to put Americans at risk.”

Theresa May resigns as UK Prime Minister. I realize that a move like Brexit is fraught with arcane considerations, but it seems to me that that just argues for the cleanest, most decisive break that can be accomplished, and she just spent a little too long in the realm of if-this-then-we-have-to-consider-that.  Stock up on popcorn for the Boris Johnson-Jeremy Corbin scramble to succeed her.

Great Sarah Hoyt essay at PJ Media on why the Left has to gin up alarm about "white supremacy."

Thursday roundup

This J.J. McCullough piece at NRO is bracing, at least if one is still steadfastly in the character-matters camp. The gist: Face it, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters are fine with Trump on all levels, from personality to policy. The way he goes about constructing his argument is interesting. He starts out looking at the attitudinal gyrations Ann Coulter - she who authored In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome - has undergone, in order to give a stark example of what transactional support of the Very Stable Genius looks like. One of those you have to read in full to grasp the contour of what he's saying.

North Korea's interim ambassador to Rome has disappeared, and it sure looks like a defection.

LITD is still getting a handle on the totality of who new Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is, but is mightily impressed with this tweet of his from yesterday:

One of our strategies to get Brazil to climb from the lowest spots of the educational rankings is to tackle the Marxist garbage in our schools head on. We shall succeed in forming citizens and not political militants.

Wish he was on my local school board!

Lara Marlowe, Paris correspondent for the Irish Times and seasoned Brexit observer, thinks derailment and a second referendum are in the offing.

I was first exposed to pasta carbonara in college. An guy in an apartment full of bohemians down the block from my fraternity house, with whom I produced a few issues of a campus humor magazine, showed me how to make it. It's since had its moments of popularity, but according to Ellie Bufkin at The Federalist, it's often presented in compromised form. A purist is going to settle for nothing less than this:

Carbonara must contain these ingredients: Pasta, a hard, salty cheese, guanciale, fresh black pepper, and egg.

Pasta should be cooked only to “al dente” level of doneness. Carbonara is actually not assigned to a particular pasta shape and size. I prefer to make it with a long noodle, like spaghetti, but have also made it with rigatoni and cavatelli. 

No garlic and no parsley, ever!

As for whether guanciale is imperative, she says this:

Traditionally, Carbonara is made with guanciale, which is jowl bacon. It is available at fine butchers and gourmet grocers in major markets, but if you live in the sticks, you may substitute a good pancetta (not pre-diced!), or high-quality, thick-cut bacon from a butcher. Do not use limp, anemic bacon from the grocery store. Your Carbonara will be bland, gutless, and disappointing.

If there's a must-read among the pieces presented here, it's Peter Heck's at The Resurgent, entitled "What Can a Christian Do When Up Is Down, Right Is Wrong, and Boys Are Girls?"

Tuesday roundup

The ABA isn't making any changes to its "well-qualified" rating for SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Does this sound like a familiar set of circumstances?

It’s gotten to the point where even the most mundane parts of daily life -- waiting for the elevator, taking a cab, bumping into a neighbor -- can quickly turn into full-blown screaming matches. The tensions are dividing friends, family and colleagues. Many have taken to proclaiming that they’re voting for neither, whether that’s true or not, just to sidestep the whole mess.

It's Brazil, in the runup to the run off between presidential candidates Jair Bolsonaro and Fernando Haddad.

Today's must-read: "Controlling the Debt is Gonna Be Painful" by Robert Verbruggen at NRO.

You should also spend some time with the Manhattan Institute study that it discusses.

Bottom line: We've waited so long to deal with the debt and deficit that it's going to require some wrenching changes.

Somebody with requisite resources please step in and rectify the horrifying situation at this Albanian zoo.

Geostrategy is not for the squeamish. One's immutable principles may not always take the highest priority. But, in the Khashoggi case, a guy like Trump, who has no core principles anyway, may be just the person to thread the needle:

Whichever version of the story of his murder you believe, bin Salman emerges from this sorry saga weakened. If these really were rogue elements from the top-level of his security apparatus, he clearly does not rule with the total power and control he needs to turn his vision of a modern Saudi Arabia into reality. Taking note will be his many enemies inside the royal family, as well as the bitter military chiefs bin Salman has summarily dismissed. Alternatively, if bin Salman is about to throw to the wolves a bunch of assassins he did in fact send on their mission, including three of his personal bodyguards, he will be betraying the only people surrounding him he can trust apart from immediate family. The result is that Saudi Arabia is about to enter an era of even greater paranoia and political repression.

Looked at another way, though, it’s a win-win for all sides. Bin Salman’s most powerful opponent outside of the royal family is dead, and he can get back to dragging the kingdom into the 21st century. With the audio and video evidence of the crime apparently in his hands, Erdogan gains leverage over rival Saudi Arabia as they vie for influence in the region, just as frosty relations with the US thaw following the release of American Pastor Andrew Brunson. We can all breath a sigh of relief that Saudi Arabia will not carry out its threat to tank the global economy. The assassins will lose their heads. And Trump, once again, can prove that he is a master of diplomacy.

Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr. to Fauxcahontas:

Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal intrests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

I agree with every one of Chris Queen's choices at PJ Media for the 10 Most Overrated Hit Singles of All Time, as well as his rationales in each case. Gratified to see "Imagine" at number one.  Now, I'd better forget all about it, or I'll be playing the parlor game of constructing my own list in my head all day, and I have a busy lineup.

Monday roundup

From the I'm-so-clueless-about-what's-going-on-in-my-nation-that-I-reflexively-submit-to-the-identity-politics-jackboots file:

Scott Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy Captain, NASA engineer, and veteran of four spaceflights, was brought low on Sunday by those possessed of neither his accomplishments nor talents for the crime of advocating Churchillian generosity of spirit. “Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill. My apologies,” the astronaut wrote after what must have been a withering assault on social media. “I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support.”

This is only the most recent example of a menacing phenomenon. In the name of historical literacy, an absurd form of pseudo-academic reductionism has become the preferred means by which we “interrogate” Western (and only Western) history. We are told that we must abandon discretion, compartmentalization, and basic good sense if we are to be taken seriously by the self-appointed arbiters of such things. Nuance is for the naïve. Sensibility is found only in simplicity.

The bottom line on the notion that Kavanaugh will be "damaged goods" as a SCOTUS justice, based on how Clarence Thomas's stint on the bench has played out:

. . . let’s pause for a moment and consider what that “asterisk” next to Thomas’ name actually means. I can sum it up for you in one word: nothing. Zip, zero, nada. Are Thomas’ votes in Supreme Court decisions measured as counting for less than one each? (Dare I say… two thirds?) No, they are not. Are decisions where he’s taken part in a 5-4 split somehow less final in the nation’s system of laws? Nope. He’s been on the bench and voting for just shy of 27 years, and each and every one of those votes was recorded just the same as those cast by every other member of the court.

Barring a complete breakdown of our political ecosystem or some shocking new revelation involving provable illegal conduct, Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court to stay. And at the age of 53, barring any tragic health issues and with the grace of God, he’ll likely be there for the next quarter of a century or more. Those camping out on the steps of the Supreme Court and rending their garments in grief should probably come to terms with the idea.

American Thinker piece by Thomas Lifson entitled "Liberal Pope Francis Has Lost the Most Liberal Weekly in Europe":

You might think that the enthusiastic support Pope Francis has offered for environmentalism, open borders, and the normalization of homosexual behavior would buy him support from liberal media. But Der Spiegel, the most important weekly magazine in Europe, has turned against the Roman Catholic Prelate with a cover story that proclaims (auf Deutsch) the Ninth Commandment: “Thou shalt not lie,” with a subhead: “The Pope and the Catholic Church in their greatest crisis.”

Facebook is censoring ads for the new movie about Kermit Gosnell.

Great piece by Daniel Gelernter at NRO on a San Francisco Symphony performance at Carnegie Hall that included pieces by Gershwin and how it offers an opportunity to revisit the question of whether a pop tunesmith can also be a serious composer:

Gershwin is rarely performed by today’s leading orchestras. Howard Hirsch hit the nail on the head in his program notes for the evening: He observed that the musical establishment was profoundly irritated that “a more or less self-taught Broadway tunesmith presumed to write ambitious concert works” and that these works were “boisterously successful.”

Gershwin’s music is at once beautiful, exhilarating, and totally original. He captured the essence of a young, enthusiastic, but thoughtful America better than any other artist. He deserves to be considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. One could make a compelling case that he is the greatest composer of the 20th century, but music buffs and scholars tend to laugh: Gershwin, they say, is not “serious” music.

When did popularity become a strike against seriousness? Schubert performed his lieder at parties, and Bach played the harpsichord at Zimmermann’s Coffee House. How did we reach a point where music, to win scholarly approval, must be unpleasant and, to an untrained ear, unlistenable? It is funny to think that the same music buffs who praise contemporary composers for their iconoclastic rule-breaking also mock Gershwin for his supposed ignorance of classical symphonic structure. Even Leonard Bernstein once wrote, in an embarrassing screed, that Gershwin’s “nice” tunes were not “real composition” — but that they were so enjoyable he loved them anyway. Very generous.

The problem with Gershwin is that nobody else could do it: No one could write like Gershwin without being a grade-A, 100 percent, non-certified natural musical genius. So the academic music world hated Gershwin, and instead chose Schoenberg and Webern and, later, Cage and Glass as their role models: When music is based on a theoretical concept, rather than how it sounds, suddenly anyone can do it. This was the appeal of rule-based composition “systems” like Schoenberg’s terrible twelve-tones. This is why the only thing you’ll learn about Gershwin in a university music program is that he was Schoenberg’s occasional tennis partner.

Almost everyone who attends an academic composition program really wants, more than anything on earth, to be a composer. When these students discover that they’re simply not composers — that they haven’t got what 100 years ago would have been the obvious requisites of talent and imagination and a capacity for melody and harmony — there are two possible courses: They can admit defeat gracefully and move on to a different career. Or they can spend the rest of their lives pretending to be what they wish they were. Ever since the invention of conceptual music, the vast majority of failed composers have chosen the second and less honorable course, hiding their lack of talent behind a rulebook that proclaims talent no longer matters.

Brazil shifts abruptly to a populist-right political footing:

Far-right Congressman and former Army captain Jair Bolsonaro won nearly half the votes in Brazil's first-round presidential election on Sunday, as voters' anger at corruption drove a major shift to the right in Latin America's largest nation.

In what is likely to be a deeply polarizing runoff, Bolsonaro, an outspoken apologist for Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, will now face leftist Fernando Haddad, the former mayor of Sao Paulo, in a second round of voting on Oct. 28.

Dubbed a "Tropical Trump" by some pundits because of his nationalist agenda and anti-establishment tirades, Bolsonaro was swept from the political margins this year by a wave of antipathy toward scandal-plagued traditional parties.

His promise of a brutal crackdown on graft and crime have resonated with voters in the world's fifth most populous country, which registered a record 63,880 violent deaths in 2017. Bolsonaro has pledged to roll back gun controls and make it easier for police to kill.

With just three weeks until the runoff, Bolsonaro holds a commanding lead. He won 46.3 percent of valid ballots, far ahead of Haddad's 29 percent but short of the outright majority needed to avoid a second round, electoral authorities said.

In a seismic shift in Brazilian politics, Bolsonaro's once-tiny Social Liberal Party (PSL) was poised to become the second-largest force in Congress after legislative elections also held on Sunday, giving a boost to his agenda of slashing taxes and state involvement in the economy.

With no backing from major parties and little funding, Bolsonaro relied on his skilful use of social media during the campaign. He gained momentum after a near-fatal stabbing at a rally one month ago that kept him from campaigning.

"This was a great victory, considering we had no television time, a party that is still very small with no campaign money and I was in hospital for 30 days," he said in video streamed live over social media. "We have to believe in our Brazil. We have to remain mobilized."

I think repealing the 17th Amendment is a good idea, but I think Steve Berman's argument at The Resurgent merits consideration:

I think it would merely take the circus and $10 million (average) cost of Senate campaigns and move them to the individual state legislatures. It could, in theory, make your local state legislative races as nasty as some Congressional races have become. It could pour money (like the $50 million that went into the Handel/Ossoff special election in my home district) into local races in a way we have never seen.

In short, I think it's too late to even consider taking the new political landscape and trying to roll it back into a more pastoral time where state legislatures operated in relative calm (press-wise). A new crop of Wendy "Abortion Barbie" Davises and other demagogues and issue hogs would then dominate the race to get the coveted Senate seat. I think it would be a disaster, but YMMV.

Maybe in 1946, under Harry Truman, this idea could have worked. Not in 2018 under Donald Trump. And likely, never afterward. Some things have have their window of opportunity close, and the idea of states once again appointing Senators is one of them.

I'm not completely convinced, though. You know us conservatives. We're not too big on arguments of the it's-too-late-to-go-back variety.

Saturday roundup

This is the essence of the aloofness, skewed priorities and federal-level heavy-handedness with which the Most Equal Comrade and his Justice Department tyrannize post-America:

President Obama has refused so far to survey the Louisiana flood disaster, but he did let state and local officials know that he’s watching to make sure they don’t engage in racial discrimination.

In a 16-page guidance issued Tuesday, the Obama administration, led by the Justice Department, warned Louisiana recipients of federal disaster assistance against engaging in “unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin (including limited English proficiency).”

The guidance’s frameworks “highlight the importance of complying with nondiscrimination requirements of civil rights statutes, addressing the needs of the whole community, and ensuring equal opportunity to access recovery efforts.”

Needless to say, some Louisiana residents were offended, including the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, who took umbrage at receiving an anti-discrimination lecture from Washington, D.C., as locals struggle to rescue, house and feed their neighbors.

“[E]verywhere you look you can find black folks and white folks loving on each other, helping each other through this crisis,” Mr. Dreher said in a Thursday post.

He referred to the guidance as a “long bureaucratic memo” issued by the “Department of Justice and many other agencies of the executive branch overseen by He Who Cannot Be Troubled to Leave Martha’s Vineyard.”

Charles Krauthammer at NRO on how theMEC's agenda of planned decline has create a vacuum that Russia is only too glad to fill:

his week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now. The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace.

Where for 40 years the U.S.–Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia–Iran condominium is now dictating events. That’s what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That’s what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq, and utter U.S. immobility on Syria. 

He goes on to enumerate other fronts on which Russia is showing the world who's picking up the chalk and chairing the meeting, such as the eight staging areas along the Ukraine border where Russia has amassed tanks, artillery and troops, as well as the joint naval exercises with China in the South China Sea.

Speaking of Russia, don't think that, just because Manafort has resigned as Squirrel-Hair's campaign manager, S-H's Russia issues are all resolved:

Navy Senior Chief Michael Nance was on MSNBC discussing the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, and he believes there is another bomb yet to drop.

Nance, as well as many in the intelligence community, believe it is quite possible that Russian intelligence agent(s) were embedded within the Trump campaign. This goes along with the theory that many believe to be true; Russia is seeking to influence the Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, their preferred candidate. Trump has repeatedly called for better ties with Russia, even at the cost of abandoning our NATO allies.

Manafort was let go from the Trump campaign presumedly to save face after evidence began to surface of his ties with Russia, but it is concerning that the Trump campaign didn't actually care about Manafort's ties until there was actual evidence. Now this isn't some cold war fiction novel, and there is probably not a horde of Russian spies embedded within Trump's campaign, but these ties to Russia could be deeper than we thought before. Hopefully the American people see this as alarming, as Russia is one of the last countries on Earth that we want to be aligning with.

Not if you listen to Squirrel-Hair.

The Stupid Party is finally looking at a strategy for legislative races in the event of the nearly inevitable:

Republicans, worried about preserving their House and Senate majorities in the face of fierce headwinds, are accelerating their plans to distance themselves from Donald Trump – and may soon concede, if only implicitly, his defeat.

Party strategists are mapping out blueprints for down-ballot candidates, in TV ads and on the campaign trail, to present themselves as checks on a Hillary Clinton presidency. It’s an approach that would essentially admit a Trump loss. In interviews, nearly one dozen Republican operatives said they had begun poll-testing the idea – which one labeled a “break glass in case of emergency” strategy - to gauge how the public would react to it.

Do you think Assad gives a diddly about post-America's support for the Kurds?

Syrian regime jets pounded US-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria for a second day, even after the US-led coalition scrambled jets to protect its military advisers working on the ground.

In another escalation of Syria's bloody conflict, warplanes from President Bashar al-Assad's regime were bombarding the city of Hasakeh -- targeting Kurdish forces that for months have worked closely with coalition military advisers helping local fighters combat the Islamic State group.

On Thursday, the United States sent fighter jets to head off air strikes conducted by regime planes and to protect coalition advisers, but the Syrian planes had left by the time they arrived.

I wonder if Hillionaire still thinks of Assad as a "stabilizing force."

I din't really watch any of the Olympics. Generally speaking, my interest in them is passing at best. But what a sad capper the Ryan Locate affair is on a summer Olympics characterized by an opening ceremony that emphasized "climate change" hooey, raw sewage in the swimming water, severed body parts washing up on the beach, and Arab athletes refusing to compete against Israelis. That 32-year-old man-boy needs a spanking.




 

Wednesday evening round-up

The Brazilian left's response to the relieving of Dilma Rousseff of her presidential duties pending a conclusion to an investigation of her alleged corruption is in a range the parameters of which are disbelief and rage.

An Air Force witness who was stationed in northern Italy in September 2012 says his squadron was ready to go. Could have easily come to the rescue of the Benghazi people.

This is dandy:

As American and allied officials celebrated the opening of a long-awaited missile defense system in Europe with a ribbon cutting and a band, the reaction in Russia on Thursday suggested the system had raised the risks of a nuclear war.

Russian officials reiterated their position that the American-built system imperiled Russia’s security. But the public discussion in Russia was darker, including online commentary of how a nuclear confrontation might play out in Europe, and the prospect that Romania, the system’s host, might be reduced to “smoking ruins.”

“We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.

“Measures are being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia,” he said. “The president himself, let me remind you, has repeatedly asked who the system will work against.”

The United States has asserted that the anti-ballistic missile system would protect only against “rogue” states, particularly Iran, and provide no protection for either Europe or the United States from Russia’s far larger arsenal of nuclear missiles. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization site will be controlled by an American officer.

The system, called Aegis Ashore, was essentially transferred from a seaborne launchpad onto land in Romania, at the Deveselu air base. The United States on Friday planned to break ground on a second site, in Poland, that should be completed in 2018. But a deputy United States defense secretary, Robert Work, reiterated Thursday there are “no plans at all” to strengthen this missile umbrella to protect against Russia.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Russian defense experts consider the site a threat.

“We still view the destructive actions of the United States and its allies in the area of missile defense as a direct threat to global and regional security,” Ms. Zakharova said.

Are you buying this crap about a "glitch" being the reason why the 2013 video of the Rosen - Psaki exchange is missing?

 

Wednesday roundup

How clueless is the State Department? This clueless:

Obama administration officials disclosed Tuesday that Iran has been granted access to about $3 billion in unfrozen assets in the months since the nuclear agreement was implemented, but it remains unclear to the administration if the Islamic Republic has spent any of this money to fund its global terrorism enterprise, according to top officials.

In the four months since Iran and world powers began to implement the comprehensive nuclear agreement, Iran has been able to recover around $3 billion in funds that were unfrozen as part of the deal. Iran is expected to be given access to another $50 billion to 55 billion in the coming months.

However, the Obama administration was not able to say if Iran has spent any of this money to fund terrorism campaigns.

“We don’t know” if Iran has spent this money on terror activities, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We don’t know. We don’t have a way.”

Yes, indeed, there is no reprehensible regime that the Most Equal Comrade's nomenklatura won't rush to normalize relations with:

Weeks after President Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, officials from the Communist island have ramped up their attacks on the U.S.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Obama's visit "an attack on the foundation of our history, our culture and our symbols."

"Obama came here to dazzle the non-state sector, as if he wasn't the representative of big corporations but the defender of hot dog vendors, of small businesses in the United States, which he isn't," Rodriguez said.

The foreign minister’s response came days after Cuba President Raul Castro said that the United States is "the enemy" and warned Cubans to be vigilant about the United States' efforts to undermine the Communist revolution, according to Reuters.

The remarks came at the Cuban Communist Party's twice-a-decade congress, held over the weekend, where some of Cuba's most powerful officials criticized the creaking inefficiency of its state-controlled economy, tarred its vibrant private sector as a potential source of U.S. subversion.

Guess he needs to strive harder to get them to understand that he's one of them.


That Whole Foods store in Austin that was the target of an attempted wedding-cake-with-anti-gay-slur-on-it hoax is suing the slug posing as a human being who cooked the scheme up.  For cryin' out loud, the bakery staff member he dealt with was other than hetero.

Speaking of people with abnormal sex lives, Target saw fit to make a public statement saying that transgendered people can use whatever restrooms at their stores that they mentally identify with.

Brazil's Chamber of Deputies pulls the trigger:

It's been a tough week for leftist President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. The Chamber of Deputies voted to impeach her: 

Impeachment supporters netted 367 votes in the lower house of Congress, well above the 342 they needed.
The "no" camp took 137 votes, seven deputies abstained and two did not show for the ballot.

We move on to the Senate, or upper house, and let's see what happens there.

Post-impeachment will be uncharted waters for Brazil. In other words, Latin America does not have a history of replacing leaders by impeachment. Instead, they get overthrown by the military or escape at midnight to avoid justice.

Remember when there was so much excitement over the BRIC countries, Brazil Russia, India and China, how they were said to be a model for "developing" nations to come on board as economic powerhouses and world-stage leaders?

Monday morning roundup

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, a two-term Pub, caves to the goose-stepping jackboots of the Human Rights Campaign, several major corporations and the NFL and vetoes a religious-liberty bit that mirrors the national-level bill that Billy Jeff the Zipper signed into law in the 1990s, the gist of which is that the burden is on government to prove there's some compelling interest to make Christian business owners conduct business in violation of their faith. (No, such bills don't specifically mention Christians  - or homosexuals, for that matter - but does anyone doubt why such bills are necessary?)

San Francisco's mayor bans official travel for city employees to North Carolina over that state's legislature overturning a law that would have permitted Girls (who think they're boys) and boys (who think they're girls) from using each other's restrooms. Of course, the city by the bay has a history of using such bans to make statements. In 2010, the state was Arizona and the issue was immigration, and in 2014 the state was Indiana and the issue was a religious-freedom law.

Oh, sheesh, now there's a lawsuit about North Carolina's action, filed by a group of the terminally confused.

Speaking of California, the Land ofLa-La offers more proof that the minimum wage is bad and wrong:

deal that would raise California's minimum wage to $15 an hour was met with a mixture of joy and anxiety across the state Sunday.

Some workers and labor officials hailed it as a breakthrough in providing higher-wage jobs in fields where it's a struggle to make ends meet. But some business owners feared the shift would hurt their bottom lines -- and perhaps even put them out of business.

The debate is likely a preview for the weeks ahead as the minimum wage proposal works its way through Sacramento.

Selwyn Yosslowitz said that minimum wage hikes add increased pressure to restaurants, which already operate on very slim margins. With the minimum wage going up, Yosslowitz said he's going to have to rethink his menu and what dishes his restaurants serve.

"First, you have to raise prices, otherwise you'll be out of business," said Yosslowitz, president of the Marmalade Café, which operates seven Southland restaurants and an outlet at LAX. Restaurant owners also have to think about "re-engineering the menu" to require fewer kitchen workers.

"We will try to re-engineer the labor force," he said. "Maybe try to reduce the number of bus boys and ask servers to bus tables."

Death toll in the jihadist slaughter of Christians in that Lahore park is now up to at least 72.

When it comes to supposed anti-corruption icons to admire, Hillionaire share knows how to pick 'em:

The Brazilian president praised for “setting a global standard” on how to fight corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now has protestors calling for her impeachment thanks to her own alleged corruption.

The New York Times reported that this month’s protests calling for Dilma Rousseff’s ouster, including a 500,000-person gathering in São Paulo, were the largest since the protests that toppled Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1980s. Recent polling shows that 68 percent of Brazilians want the legislature to impeach Rousseff, who has made clear she will not step down and plans to fight the charges against her.

Clinton praised Rousseff in Brazil in 2012 at the first meeting of the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative co-chaired by Brazil and the United States aimed at fighting corruption.

“I want to commend and thank Brazil, in particular President Rousseff, for the leadership that they have given to this initiative,” said Clinton at the April 2012 meeting in Brasilia. “There is no better partner to have started this effort and to be leading it than Brazil, and in particular, President Rousseff. Her commitment to openness, transparency, her fight against corruption is setting a global standard.”

Despite this praise, Rousseff’s potential impeachment is based on charges that her administration illegally used money from state-run banks to cover up budget shortfalls amid the country’s economic problems

An audit court found that Rousseff borrowed up to $26 billion to pad government accounts in 2014, hiding economic problems that could have ended her reelection bid.

Brazil’s Superior Election Court is also looking into charges that Rousseff brought in money for her 2010 and 2014 elections through an illegal scheme involving state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Rousseff chaired the company’s board of directors from 2003 to 2010.

Rousseff claims that she knew nothing of the illegal Petrobras graft scheme, but other politicians implicated in the scheme say that’s not the case. 

One senator, a political ally of Rousseff who was arrested last year for trying to bribe Petrobras executives to keep quiet about his involvement, recently said that Rousseff “knew about everything” and “benefited from the scheme” she inherited from her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

And from the files of the-pattern-of-the-architect-of-post-America's-planned-decline-getting-his-outstretched-hand-gestures-to-evel-totalitarians-responded-to-with-contempt, check out this statement from the architect of the Cuban revolution:

President Barack Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during his historic visit to Cuba last week, but apparently that does not mean that Castro did not have any thoughts about el presidente norteamericano in his country.

Castro ripped into the president and his words during the visit in El Granma, the official state newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, bringing up Obama's relative youth, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the role of both countries in ending the apartheid in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent in an article titled "El hermano Obama."

Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama," Castro wrote. "Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old."

Referring to the 1961 failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Castro wrote of the U.S.' "mercenary force with cannons and armored infantry, equipped with aircraft ... trained and accompanied by warships and aircraft carriers in the U.S. raiding our country. Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded."

Castro referred also to Obama's invocation of both countries' role in the end of apartheid in South Africa, remarking upon his country's 1975 intervention in Angola backing the leftist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola against other U.S.-backed revolutionary forces. Ridding apartheid South Africa of nuclear weapons "was not the goal of our solidarity," he wrote, "but [rather] to help the people of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and other fascist colonial rule of Portugal."

In referring to the origins of South Africa's nuclear weapons, Castro mentioned the "help that racist South Africa had received from [Ronald] Reagan and Israel."

"I do not know what Obama has to say on this story now," Castro wrote, adding, "although it is very doubtful that I knew absolutely nothing."

"My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics."

And weep not for the polar bears:

A new study by Canadian scientists once again debunks the notion polar bears are currently being harmed by global warming. Researchers with Canada’s Lakehead University found “no evidence” polar bears are currently threatened by warming.

“We see reason for concern, but find no reliable evidence to support the contention that polar bears are currently experiencing a climate crisis,” Canadian scientists wrote in their study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Scientists looked at 13 polar bear subpopulations and found “much of the scientific evidence indicating that some polar bear subpopulations are declining due to climate change-mediated sea ice reductions is likely flawed by poor mark–recapture sampling.” This means researchers aren’t able to put together accurate “demographic parameters.”

And that's the state of things on the third stone from the sun.