Tuesday roundup

A New York high school tries to weasel out of recognizing a Christian club, but the Liberty Institute is on the case:

A New York school district violated federal law when it rejected a Christian student's request to start an on-campus Christian club, according to a nonprofit legal group representing the student.

The First Liberty Institute sent a letter to Wappingers Central School District on Wednesday demanding that it approve freshman Daniela Barca’s application to form the “OMG! Christian Club” at Roy C. Ketcham High School. 

The aim of the club, according to First Liberty Institute, is to offer “faith-based support” during biweekly student-initiated meetings where students have “discussions about living for God in a godless society.”

First Liberty Institute has accused school officials of stonewalling and slow walking approval of Barca’s proposal.

Ultimately, the student's request was denied on grounds that a Christian club was too “exclusive” and that a public school could not support a religious club. 

“[T]he discrimination toward Daniela’s religious speech has prevented OMG from pursuing their community-wide goals of ‘food drives, clothing drives, Operation Christmas Child’ and other charitable endeavors,” the letter from First Liberty Institute counsel Keisha Russell states. 

Eli Lake lays bare Adam Schiff's agenda-driven disingenuousness:

Eli Lake‏Verified account @EliLake

Schiff says on @FoxNewsSunday “there were serious abuses of FISA” but then says it wasn’t apparent two years ago. He had the same information as Nunes. Nunes called out those abuses. Schiff chose to attack Nunes instead of performing his oversight duties.

7:43 AM - 15 Dec 2019 

Excellent Maureen Mullarkey piece at The Federalist entitled "No, I'm not Buying A Little Boy A Tea Set For Christmas." A taste:

 . . . the saleswoman in an upscale toy store recommended one to me. I had told her the age and sex of the giftee when I asked her to point me to a suitable section in a tumble of displays. Reluctant to let me browse alone through fake mustaches, wooden puzzles, and Fisher-Price gear, the clerk insisted on being helpful.

She held up a boxed tea service. Inside was a round-bellied polypropylene pot and four miniature cups and saucers in watery pastels. Considering the sex of the recipient, even the washed-out color seemed emblematic.

“It’s quite adorable,” she purred.

“No, thank you. Not for a boy.”

“My son has one.”

Poor kid! Did I imagine it, or did she deliver that in a tone that signaled superior consciousness? Tea sets are paraphernalia for playing house, the hallowed pastime for girls. Was this mother of a son taking a stand against “gender apartheid,” the still-kicking bugbear of Gloria Allred and co.? The whiff of it rankled me.

I'm no Chris Cillizza fan by any stretch, but he has done yeoman's work here by archiving the VSG's 199 wildest lines of 2019, each with either a little commentary or the truth that stands in contrast to what the VSG uttered. A taste:

129. "We had 14 seasons, think of that. The Apprentice. I proudly signed four bipartisan human trafficking laws securing $400 million to support victims of human trafficking." July 17 (North Carolina rally) 

These were two sentences that the President said back-to-back. And, no, I have no idea what he believed the connection to be -- or if he believed there to be one.

108. "One person has a higher percentage than your favorite president, Donald Trump. Do you know who that president is? He's got a higher percentage than me and it's devastating. His name is George Washington." June 18 (Trump Orlando kickoff rally) 

First, Trump is saying his record of appointing federal judges is behind only that of America's first president. Second: "Your favorite president, Donald Trump."

81. "This is one of the true, in terms of war, in terms of, probably you can also say, in terms of peace, because this led to something very special." June 6 (Ingraham interview in Normandy) 

A real, unedited sentence from the President of the United States.

Uri Friedman piece at The Atlantic entitled "Under Trump, the U.S. Has Become A Leading Source of Instability":

 

For years, the Council on Foreign Relations has asked hundreds of U.S. government officials and foreign-policy experts to rate the potential security crises that could most threaten the United States in the coming year. Typically the respondents have focused on the world’s hot spots. More top of mind this year, it seems, was the destabilizing force at home.

Yes, there is “rising anxiety about the state of the world,” Paul Stares, who oversees CFR’s annual poll, told me. And that anxiety, he added, “probably has a lot to do with the policies of the Trump administration,” and the “turbulence” and “instability” it has created around the globe.

Over the past several years, as Donald Trump took the reins of American statecraft from Barack Obama, the United States as an actor in the world morphed from a known quantity to an unknown one to a “known unknown,” Stares observed, channeling Donald Rumsfeld.

“In the early months of [Trump’s] administration, there was some hope—call it wishful thinking—that he would become more appreciative of the U.S. role in the world, its contributions to international stability and peace and so on, and would essentially then follow the long-standing playbook of U.S. foreign policy,” said Stares, an expert on conflict prevention. “But that hasn’t been true. So we now are more prepared [for the] unexpected, or more cautious about how we project future U.S. policy.” 

China and Russia reach out to North Korea, saying, "We're forming a strategic alliance to serve as a foil to the US-led array of nations. Want to get on board?" 

While most everyone in America is obsessing over the impeachment follies, the situation on the Korean peninsula has gone from bad to worse, at least in terms of the goals of the United States and the west. Russia and China have prepared a UN resolution that would lift many sanctions on North Korea. The stated goal is to “enhance the livelihood of the civilian population.” But as admirable as such a goal might be, it would effectively take the handcuffs off of Kim Jong-un, leaving America and her allies nothing to go on but Kim’s promises to be a better actor on the world stage. And history has shown us repeatedly what his promises are worth. 

In March 2018, the VSG vowed never to sign another omnibus spending bill like the one he was signing at the time. Today, in a floor speech about how atrocious the current spending bills are, Texas Representative Chip Roy said he looks forward to the VSG getting out his veto pen. He also asked why the recent revelations about how utterly failed the US mission in Afghanistan has been aren't affecting spending on that.

In early 2019, Rudy Giuliani was just a private citizen - albeit the president's personal attorney - and Maria Yovanovitch was a government employee, the US ambassador to Ukraine. Still, Rudy knew what he had to do to further his client's aims:

In a long conversation with me this past November, Giuliani largely confirmed Lutsenko’s account of their relationship. He, too, saw Yovanovitch as an obstacle, hindering his attempt to dig up dirt against his client’s rival in advance of the 2020 election. “I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.” Giuliani compiled a dossier on the Bidens and Yovanovitch, which he sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and which was shared with the F.B.I. and with me. John Solomon, a journalist, had interviewed Lutsenko for the Washington-based publication The Hill. Giuliani promoted the project. “I said, ‘John, let’s make this as prominent as possible,’ ” Giuliani told me. “ ‘I’ll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.’ ”

Former Pakistani general and president (he assumed that latter position in a coup) Musharraf has been sentenced to death. But it's in absentia. He's been living in Dubai for years.

 

We're looking at one busy world stage in late February 2019

There is today's second summit between Kim and the VSG:

Although many experts are skeptical Kim will give up the nuclear weapons he likely sees as his best guarantee of continued rule, there was a palpable, carnival-like excitement among many in Hanoi as the final preparations were made for the meeting. There were also huge traffic jams in the already congested streets.
Officials in Hanoi said they only had about 10 days to prepare for the summit — much less than the nearly two months Singapore had before the first Trump-Kim meeting last year— but still vowed to provide airtight security for the two leaders.
“Security will be at the maximum level,” Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Hoai Trung told reporters.
The ultra-tight security will be appreciated by North Korean authorities, who are extremely vigilant about the safety of Kim, the third member of his family to rule the North with absolute power. Kim’s decision to take a train, not a plane, may have been influenced by the better ability to control security.
Vietnam is eager to show off its huge economic and development improvements since the destruction of the Vietnam War, but the country also tolerates no dissent and is able to provide the kind of firm hand not allowed by more democratic potential hosts.

Tensions flare between India and Pakistan in the wake of the recent car-bombing death of 40 Indian soldiers in Kashmir. The latest:

Pakistan’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor, said Indian planes crossed into the Muzafarabad sector of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. He said Pakistan scrambled fighters and the Indian jets “released payload in haste” near Balakot.
India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, told reporters in New Delhi that Indian fighter jets targeted Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in a pre-emptive strike after intelligence indicated another attack was being planned.

There will surely be more elucidation regarding this development:

The resignation of Iran’s most famous diplomat and the man often seen as the foreign face of Tehran [foreign minister Muhammad Javad Zarif], has plunged Iran’s highest levels of government and media into a momentary sense of bewilderment and lack of certainty. It illustrates not only the differences within the regime but also the ability of news organizations in Tehran to gather news with some levels of independence, more than in other totalitarian regimes. The Iranian Students News Agency, for instance, provides a discussion about various “sources” close to Zarif and President Hasssan Rouhani’s office.

US Vice President Mike Pence met with the Venezuelan president that the US recognizes, Juan Guaido, in Bogota, Colombia yesterday.  Pence announced more sanctions against the on-the-ropes outlaw regime of Maduro, as well as aid for neighboring countries dealing with an influx of desperate Venezuelans.

This is a welcome development:

Britain said on Monday it plans to ban all wings of Hezbollah due to its destabilizing influence in the Middle East, classing the Lebanese Islamist movement as a terrorist organization.

In a world such as this, it behooves post-America to have its wits about it. We shall see if it is up to the task. We certainly have some good folks on the case. I do wish Nikki Haley was still officially involved, but I think the tone she set will still drive policy to some degree.

Saturday roundup

An absolutely lovely essay at The Catholic Thing by Anthony Esolen. Seriously, I can't think of a more apt characterization than lovely:

A long time ago I wrote, in an article “The Lovely Dragon of Choice,” that the best things in our lives do not come as a result of our choice or planning.  You cannot draw up a blueprint for the manufacture of joy.  To the extent that you try, you render yourself numb to the possibility of joy.  The Spirit blows where it will.

I am teaching at Thomas More College, where there is much joy, and perhaps more of what I’ve called joy’s country cousin, mirth.  It is not planned.  It is the natural effervescence of young people who like one another, because they do know one another, all of them.

We are too small for loneliness.  They like one another, and they sometimes fall in love, because they have not been handed over, in libertarian manacles, to the vices of our time.  For there is no sin without those who suffer from it, as the collapse of family life and community life in our time has shown.

Yesterday as I was walking to class, two of my students, an alto and a bass, were singing “White Christmas” out of the window, in harmony, hailing the arrival of the first snow.  They sometimes hiccoughed in their harmony for laughing.  I sat at lunch next to a student and a colleague, the former carving up the latter over a chessboard.  Every day I see things I have not seen before.  They are ordinary things, in order, and not the result of a committee.

There is an intellectual and artistic liveliness among them too.  One of them, perhaps the quietest of all, spent fifteen minutes asking me questions about free verse, blank verse, why stress was the most prominent feature of English verse, whether that was so in other languages, and where he could learn more about the matter.  I gave him a book to read.

Another came by to talk about the interconnections among Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, the Book of Job, and the first chapter of Genesis.  This isn’t put on.  I walk downstairs to the lounge, and two boys are playing some fierce ping-pong, and other people are talking about old television comedies, and still others are chatting happily about some slippery point in philosophy.

There are two things we do plan, and it seems to me that other colleges are deliberate where they ought to be free, and free or apathetic where they ought to reason things out.

Our curriculum leaves little to chance or choice.  That is to say we have a curriculum, because we have a clear idea of what a person educated in the liberal arts should know.  We do not think that you get brains from a salad, a course in Victorian tailors here, a course in the New Orleans hurricane there, a course in elementary Spanish so that you can order a tequila in Tijuana, and a course in “gender and genocide,” so that you will want one.

He goes on to talk about how the absence of sexual libertinism is a major factor in that atmosphere in which real warmth, humanity, esprit de corps and interpersonal trust flourish.

And in the course of discussing a bit about how he wound up at Thomas More, quite contrary to his expectations for his career trajectory, he says this:

Not one good thing I have ever done or enjoyed in my life was the result of my foresight and determination.

It brought to mind today's devotional scripture, Proverbs 16:9:

A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps. 

I often say 1990 was the most incredible year of my life. I went to Japan for two weeks, I went to the Soviet Union for two weeks, I went to San Francisco twice, Washington D.C. twice (where I attended a Pentagon briefing by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and a breakfast-briefing plea from the Saudi and Kuwaiti ambassadors to the US to do something about Iraq's belligerence) and met and married my wife, all while running a manufacturing company and maintaining a 4.0 GPA in pursuit of my master's degree in history. And I didn't initiate or orchestrate any of it. (Well, I was already enrolled in school and I'd had my job for a while.)

More refutation of the climate assessment released yesterday:

The usual suspects are touting the release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (Volume II) yesterday. As far as I can tell it is the usual global warming rubbish recast in the name of “climate.” Matt Daily considers the political ramifications of the report in the Politico article “Trump’s dire climate report hands ammunition to Democrats.”

This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Let’s turn over our resources and our freedoms to the Democratic Party and the administrative agencies in the service of their will to power.

Until Steve or John can take up the report, we will have to turn to Willis Eschenbach at WUWT. He extracts a few of the report highlights in “The froth of the Fourth” and cruelly subjects the hysterical allegations to empirical analysis: “After reading all of that, I got to wondering about the recent temperature history of the US. I went to NOAA’s Climate At A Glance, got their recent monthly data, and graphed it up, along with the dates of the four US National Climate Assessments.” The result is below.

I'll bet that was a dramatic scene when North Korea blew up the ten DMZ towers in the space of four minutes.  But let's hold off on any unicorns-and-rainbows hot takes:

Denuclearization of North Korea, more freedom for their people and a formal cessation of the Korean War are all admirable goals. But while you may grow tired of hearing me repeat myself, there’s something important to keep in mind here. Kim Jong-un is still a monster. He and his family have been directly responsible for the murder of tens, hundreds of thousands or even millions of their own citizens. They assassinate prominent military leaders and government officials with impunity while sending countless citizens to die in hidden work camps. His history shows that any promises he makes are valid only as long as they serve his purposes.

Kim has to be watched like a hawk. While much of this recent news is positive and encouraging, North Korea can still not be trusted.

Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon on why it ought to be a no-brainer for the US to grant Asia Bibi asylum. He begins with a refresher about who she is:

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

And then offers the why:

Asia Bibi belongs in the United States. What better way to sustain America's history of religious freedom than to provide a home for this Catholic whose faith puts her life in danger? Not only would giving her shelter demonstrate our commitment to freedom, it also would highlight the differences between the United States and its sometimes-friend-sometimes-foe Pakistan. 

Great John Solomon piece at The Hill entitled "The Greatest Threat to American Journalism: The Loss of Neutral Reporting."

And let's wrap it up with a tweet yours truly posted a while ago:

Wayne Allen Root’s latest Townhall column is basically a public act of fellatio on Donald Trump. #cultworship

Now go fix some mulled cider and put on some Perry Como records.

Wednesday roundup

We may be polarized in 2018 post America, but somebody's buying something from somebody. Consumer confidence at highest level in 18 years.  Rise in wages and salaries of 3.1% in October.

The Pakistan Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of that Christian mother who'd been incarcerated for nine years. When the judge read the decision, she was free to go. Muslims have reacted by blocking roads in the nation's biggest cities.

Get your brain around the way he got both of these disparate assertions into one sentence:

"So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them," [CNN's Don] Lemon concluded. "There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban."

Remember a few weeks ago when I noted that and enthusiasm for "implicit bias" training had infected our local school board? I'll bet it won't be long until "equity" training, now gaining a foothold in Missouri, works its way to our district. It depends on whether a sufficient number of concerned citizens have the guts to call BS on it as they did there:

Yesterday, I noted that five of seven candidates for the Montgomery County, Maryland school board say the biggest problem facing the school district is lower achievement by “students of color.” I disputed the notion that this gap is the school board’s responsibility or problem, but that view seems to be an article of faith in education circles nowadays. 

It’s also generating a new industry — cultural and racial equity training. Pacific Education Group is an industry leader. According to the Kansas City Star, the California firm “has been in high demand in recent years, training educators, city leaders and corporate executives from Lawrence [Kansas] to New York and Philadelphia to Los Angeles and around the world.”

The Group’s founder, Glenn Singleton, is the author of “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools.” The “courageousness” of Singleton’s politically correct conversations is open to question, but according to the Star, his is the No. 1 book recommended by the Missouri School Board Association for educators and administrators to read this year. 

Recently, however, parents in a Missouri school district — Lee’s Summit — rebelled against paying Singleton and his group to provide cultural and racial equity training. They expressed their displeasure at a school board meeting and on social media. 

According to the Star, critics “opposed Singleton’s firm because of its cost, and its discussion of white privilege and the cultural competence of white teachers educating black children.” Some wondered why the focus should be on inequities related to race. 

The response, I suppose, is that race is where the most obvious unequal outcomes are. The Star tells us that “based on a formula involving Missouri Assessment Program scores, Lee’s Summit’s black students performed nearly 84 points below white students in 2015, 2016 and 2017.” And, according to district data, the margin is widening not narrowing.

I don’t think critics are denying that racial outcomes are unequal, though. Instead, it appears that they reject, as I do, the idea that responsibility for poor outcomes lies with the school district, rather than the students and/or their parents. 

They are striking a blow in favor of common sense and individual responsibility, and against fancy talk, group think, and victimology. 

We should expect no less from the Show Me State.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO on how we ought to regard Saudi Arabia:

We do not have common values with the regime in Riyadh. We are an un­matched pair, drawn reluctantly together by some common interests and enemies — which tend to be interests and enemies for saliently different reasons. We cannot avoid interaction, and better that it be cooperative than belligerent. It should, however, be strictly transactional, and there is no good reason to pretend it is anything but.

Did you know Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist dated each other when they were both Stanford law students circa 1950?

Thursday roundup

Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies on the outcomes of recent elections in Turkey and Pakistan.

Turkey:

In Turkey, votes cast in June gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan powers he has long coveted. He is now, effectively, head of state and government, the military and the judiciary. For quite some time now, he also has been censoring the media, instructing private industry and filling his jails with enemies and dissidents.

Brick by brick, he is dismantling the legacy of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and whose goal was the creation of a modern and secular nation-state.

Mr. Erdogan is increasingly allying with anti-American autocrats, in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin, notwithstanding Turkey’s membership in NATO, and the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran, whom he has helped evade sanctions.

Adding insult to injury, Mr. Erdogan has been holding an American citizen hostage. Andrew Brunson, pastor of a small Christian church, has been accused of “Christianization using religious beliefs and sectarian differences to divide and separate the Turkish people.”

What the Turkish president apparently wants is to trade Pastor Brunson for Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, a political rival living in exile in the U.S. The fact that Mr. Gülen appears to have broken no laws is just one reason it would be awkward for American authorities to acquiesce.

Pakistan:

Farahnaz Ispahani, a former Pakistani legislator now at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, is not alone in believing that last week’s elections were marred by “media censorship, arbitrary disqualifications of leading candidates, manipulation of political parties by intelligence services, and the mainstreaming of terrorists.”

The winner was 65-year-old former cricket star Imran Khan and the political party he founded in 1996, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Ms. Ispahani characterizes Mr. Khan as “the Pakistani equivalent of Turkey’s Erdogan.” She adds that he has “earned the military’s trust.” She is not paying him compliments.

The worldview of Mr. Khan, writes Sadandand Dhume, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “blends the laziest leftist clichés with absurd Islamist fictions.” Mr. Khan “supports fundamentalist positions, including a cruel blasphemy law that leaves religious minorities vulnerable to lynch mobs.”
Mr. Khan’s “signature economic idea,” Mr. Dhume adds, “to turn Pakistan into an Islamic welfare state, belongs in a fairy tale,” given the debilitated state of the Pakistani economy after generations of mismanagement and corruption.

During the campaign, Mr. Khan said: “Pakistan must detach itself from American influence and pull out of the ‘war on terror’ in order to create prosperity and achieve regional peace.” 

Excellent piece by Steve Berman at The Resurgent entitled "It's Difficult to Be  Conservative in a World That Worships Personality."

Contrary to everyone's perception, people like (and I'm naming names) Jonah Goldberg, David French, Caleb Howe, and Erick Erickson are not rich. Yes, they do okay--as white collar workers in their educational and skills bracket. David and Erick are lawyers. Jonah is a policy pundit raised in a family steeped in punditry and weened on obscure dictionaries and Strunk & White. But none of them are wealthy like the Kochs or the Trumps (the Kochs could buy and sell all the Trumps and not miss dinner, by the way).

In a world where people follow other people, it's difficult to be a true believer in conservative values.

There are two misconceptions that feed the public's ignorance here. First, the differences between media entertainment, journalism, advocacy, and political philosophy. These lines have been so blurred as to be nonexistent. When CNN can trot out a high school graduate with wet ink on his diploma to talk about 3D gun printing, we have lost all control of what would be referred to as "lanes."

When the president gets crowds to boo CNN, he's out of his lane. Way out of it.

The second misconception is that somehow, there's a lot of money in conservative causes, because people like the Kochs have a lot of money. Totally untrue.

And he articulates exactly the raison d'être for LITD (although he obviously doesn't know that):

 It doesn't make anyone rich.

But it's worth holding the torch. Values matter more than personality. Being civil matters more than "owning the libs." Compassion matters more than security. Earning and worth matters more than equality of outcome. Charity matters more than winning. And truth matters more than feelings, to borrow a phrase from Ben Shapiro (who isn't particularly rich).

We live in a world of pussy-hat vs. MAGA hat, CNN vs. Fox, Marvel vs. DC. Everyone finds it easy to be a follower, and to demonize those on the other side. Conservatism includes everyone, because it's based on tried and tested truths of human history, experience, and our nature.

Sadly, people won't pay much for truth these days. So we soldier on in our day jobs and write when we can. 

Today's flying-pigs moment: a leftist with a bit of sense:

A self-described liberal, feminist attorney named Lisa Blatt has written a piece for Politico in which she argues that Judge Kavanaugh is a “superstar” who deserves to be confirmed to the Supreme Court despite her political differences with him. Blatt says she expects blowback for publicly backing Kavanaugh but believes there’s no real doubt he’s qualified:

I have argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court, more than any other woman. I worked in the Solicitor General’s Office for 13 years during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Because I am a liberal Democrat and feminist, I expect my friends on the left will criticize me for speaking up for Kavanaugh. But we all benefit from having smart, qualified and engaged judges on our highest court, regardless of the administration that nominates them…

Unless the Democrats want to stand on the principle of an eye-for-an-eye—and I don’t think they should—folks should stop pretending that Kavanaugh or his record is the issue. He is supremely qualified. Although this fact is distressing, Republicans control both the White House and Senate. In comparable circumstances, when President Barack Obama was in office, our party appointed two Justices to the Supreme Court…

Democrats should quit attacking Kavanaugh—full stop. It is unbecoming to block him simply because they want to, and they risk alienating intelligent people who see the obvious: He is the most qualified conservative for the job.

Blatt specifically says she’s concerned about the future of Roe v. Wade and yet she believes any decision Kavanaugh would make would be one made based on legal principles, not politics. Meanwhile, she’s all but saying that Chuck Schumer is doing exactly the opposite, i.e. he and other Democrats are pretending there might be some legitimate reason to block Kavanaugh when they already know he’s qualified.

The new HHS rule has provided Dems the occasion for hanging out their "we hate economic freedom" banner:

On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services issued rules allowing people to buy "short term" insurance policies that last 12 months. These short-term plans don't have to comply with ObamaCare's massive array of rate regulations. They can charge the sick more than the healthy, and can deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. They also don't have to comply with ObamaCare's costly benefit mandates.

But those who buy these plans will pay far lower premiums, will often have access to a much wider network or providers, and can renew the plans for three years without having their rates change because of health issues that crop up after initially enrolling.

For millions of Americans who've been priced out of insurance because of ObamaCare, this opens the door to their getting some form of affordable health insurance. Obama tried to kill off the short-term insurance market entirely by limiting the plans to just three months.

As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explained: "These plans aren't for everyone, but they can provide a much more affordable option for millions of the forgotten men and women left out by the current system."

Or as HealthPocket and Agile Health Insurance CEO Bruce Telkamp put it, "one-year short-term plans will bring immediate relief to consumers needing low premiums and unrestricted provider network coverage so they will not join the ranks of the uninsured."

To Democrats, however, this choice shouldn't be available at all. They say that letting people buy skimpy short-term plans will result in fewer people buying ObamaCare-approved insurance. That, they say, will lead to higher premiums for ObamaCare plans.

This is poppycock. ObamaCare premiums have been spiraling upward from the get-go, even after Obama tried to kill the short-term market.
What's more, this year's premium increases are coming in lower than many expected, and in some cases much lower than in previous years.

The leftist Center for American Progress predicted that 2019 premiums for a "benchmark" ObamaCare plan in Colorado would be 27% higher than 2018 because of Trump's "sabotage" efforts. But rate requests from insurers have averaged under 6%, according to the state insurance commissioner, who called it the "smallest increase in years."

CAP claimed premiums would shoot up 20% in Michigan because of ObamaCare "sabotage." The average rate increase requested by insurers in that state for 2019: 1.4%. Compare that with last year's increase — before any "sabotage" took place — of 26.8%. And the year before that — when Obama was still president — the average hike in ObamaCare premiums in Michigan was 16.7%.

The truth — which Democrats will never admit — is that ObamaCare was failing long before President Donald Trump took the keys to the White House. It was failing because it was a horribly designed, centrally planned health care system built on regulations that had already failed in various states that previously experimented with them. 

I first saw this discussed last night on television, and my immediate thought was, in a normal-people world, these plans, which a lot of people are going to find very attractive, would be the kind of thing that truly competitive insurance companies would be selling a lot of.

 Pope Francis has exceeded his authority with his statement on the death penalty.

 

Friday morning roundup

Kimberley Strassel at the WSJ on the two moments in FBI director James Comey's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday that prove he intended to pass on recommending indictment for Madam BleachBit. Who has been leaning on him, and what form has it been taking?

Just when you thought maybe the south Asian subcontinent was no longer a place of hair-raising tension, the following chain of events has occurred: an Indian military base in Kashmir was attacked, leaving 18 soldiers dead. India retaliated with "surgical strikes." And now the Pakistani defense minister is threatening India with nuclear destruction.

The Stupid Party's lack of a spine is nearly as big a factor in the flatlining of post-America as the machinations of the Freedom-Haters:

The big story of the new Continuing Resolution is of course that Congressional Republicans caving to President Obama and affirmatively funding Planned Parenthood.

But there's a lesser-known story that's almost as big of a Republican failure: in addition to failing to protect the unborn, they also failed to protect the Internet.

Michael Brendan Dougherty  at The Week coins a term that I think is quite useful: esoteric Trumpism. It's the notion that Squirrel-Hair is an emblem of something much bigger than himself, that he embodies some kind of supposed recognition that the ideological fault lines that characterized American - indeed, Western - political life are now obsolete. Dougherty takes four arguments one hears from esoteric Trumpists and shows them to be utter hooey.

And then there's this . . .

Yesterday, we looked at Lebanese - Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury and his donations to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative and Hillioniare's communications to Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin telling them to put him in touch with the State Department's Lebanon point person.

It seems there's a pattern of this kind of thing. Now we learn about Pakistan and one Muhammed Yunus:

In today’s installment we learn that (1) Hillary Clinton, during an official visit to Bangladesh as Secretary of State, publicly defended the bank of a crooked long-time friend of her husband and major Clinton Foundation donor, (2) in response, the Clinton Foundation emailed top Hillary aide Cheryl Mills about accepting a donation from the bank and a giant Abu Dhabi oil company, (3) the Clinton Foundation accepted the donation, and (4) Bill Clinton ended up with a big speaking fee.

This information comes from a May 7, 2012, email chain between Mills and the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director, obtained through the legal efforts of Citizens United, and from the reporting of Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller.

As always with Clinton cash corruption, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. The players here, in addition to the Clintons and Cheryl Mills, are:

Muhammad Yunnus — a longtime friend of Bill Clinton. He has often been a featured speaker at the annual Clinton Global Initiative celebrity galas in New York. His Grameen America foundation donated between $100,000 to $250,000, according to the Clinton Foundation website. During Hillary’s tenure at State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a State Department division, awarded millions of grant dollars to Yunus and to his allies

The Grameen Bank — a Bangladesh bank run by Yunnus that was supposed to give out “micro-loans” to poor women in the country.

TAQA — a giant oil and gas company in Abu Dhabi, formally known as the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company. Owned mostly by the Abu Dhabi government, it operates in 11 countries, including Canada and the United States. In 2010, it won the first of three “blanket agreements” with the Obama administration to import billions of cubic feet of natural gas from Canada into the United States. 

Linda Andich — the Clinton Foundation’s development director.

Amitabh Desai — the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director.

The story begins when Yunus was charged by an official Bangladeshi commission with financial mismanagement of Grameen Bank. Eventually, he was forced to leave the bank. Hillary responded to the charges against Yunus by publicly urging the government of Bangladesh not to do anything to undermine his bank. She said this during an official visit to Bangladesh.

Then came the May 7, 2012 email chain that Citizens United recently pried loose. The chain kicks off when Linda Andich of the Clinton Foundation saw an Associated Press article about Clinton’s intervention on behalf of Yunus. Aldridge attached the AP article to an email to Desai (the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director) and wrote: 

Just reading about HRC’s support of the Grameen Bank, which prompted me to check in for any updates for the State Department, re: the Donation from TAQA.

She added: 

To refresh, they bought the ‘spend a day with President Clinton’ auction experience — donation to be split 50/50 with Grameen. The winners are top execs from their Scottish office, not Abu Dhabi.

Three hours later, Desai forwarded Andich’s email to Mills and wrote, “we’d welcome your guidance on accepting funds from TAQA.” Mills replied, “Will call to discuss.”

The donation of TAQA funds was being offered by TAQA’s managing director in Scotland. He had agreed to give $60,000 to the Foundation for Bill to speak at a Scotland charity and auction. 

Ultimately, the Foundation accepted the donation of $60,000. Bill went to Scotland where, in addition to collecting the donation to his Foundation, he received at least $250,000 for a speech before a group called “Business For Change,” according to the Foundation’s website. The black tie dinner raised funds for Yunus and his bank. 

And a good time was had by all.

This, folks, is the track record of the Freedom-Haters' candidate for dictator of post-America  president of the United States.

Monday roundup

Madison Peace at The Federalist speaks for moi in her essay entitled "Theologian Wayne Grudem is Wrong About Trump Being A Moral Choice," a response to the prominent Christian ethics professor's recent Townhall column.

Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast reports on the nasty Twitter war between Sean Hannity and the WSJ's Bret Stephens - over Squirrel-Hair, of course.

Suicide bomber strikes a hospital in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, killing 63 and injuring over 100. Patients, doctors, various others.

"Most of the victims are lawyers, journalists and common citizens," Abdul says.

Quetta is the capital of the province of Baluchistan, which is home to a number of militant groups, Abdul says. The Quetta Shura, a group of leaders of the Afghan Taliban, is believed to be based in the city.

Baltimore Ravens tight end Benjamin Watson speaks straightforwardly about the racist reason Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood.

When asked by a Colorado journalist about an anti-fracking ballot measure that that state's voters are considering, Squirrel-Hair gave a characteristic response - that is, it was only coherent enough that the only way to interpret it was as his siding with the anti-frack crowd.

Today's addition to the Hillionaire-was-worthless-as-a-Senator file. Will the nation as a whole fall for her empty job-creation rhetoric?

In her presidential bid, Hillary Clinton has made job creation a centerpiece of her platform, casting herself as a pragmatist who would inspire “the biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II.’’

Her argument that she would put more Americans to work has focused on her time in the Senate, when she took on the mission of creating jobs in chronically depressed Upstate New York. As her husband, former president Bill Clinton, put it recently, she became the region’s “de facto economic development officer.”

But nearly eight years after Clinton’s Senate exit, there is little evidence that her economic development programs had a substantial impact on upstate employment. Despite Clinton’s efforts, upstate job growth stagnated overall during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent, according to jobs data.

The former first lady was unable to pass the big-ticket legislation she introduced to benefit the upstate economy. She turned to smaller-scale projects, but some of those fell flat after initial glowing headlines, a Washington Post review shows. Many promised jobs never materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first presidential run, said former officials who worked with her in New York.

Clinton’s self-styled role as economic promoter also showcases an operating style that has come to define the political and money-making machine known to some critics of the former first couple as Clinton Inc. Some of her pet economic projects involved loyal campaign contributors, who also supported the Clinton Foundation, The Post review shows.

Clinton’s Senate record — rarely examined in detail this campaign cycle — offers a template for her approach to jobs creation. Her campaign has crafted a detailed jobs plan and cited her Upstate New York work as a blueprint for a Clinton presidency.

Um, yeah, examining that record might be advisable as we enter the last 90 days before deciding between the Alinskyite and Cheeto Jesus.

 

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.