Tuesday roundup

Erick Erickson at The Resurgent says that Squirrel-Hair, Ivanka and Jared all wanted Priebus gone, but none of them had the stones to do it, which is why Mooch was brought in. They knew he was a wild man who would flame out quickly, but he'd make a great short-term henchman. Yo, Mooch, any regrets about changing your tune re: S-H from your 2013 pronouncements? Convinced now that it's ill-advised to suck up to a viper's den that will make a sacrificial lamb out of anybody?

John Sexton at Hot Air on the grim modifications of estimates of North Korea's nuclear capabilities:

To put this in some perspective, at the beginning of July, the U.S. assessment was that North Korea could have a nuclear ICBM capable of reaching some parts of the U.S. before the end of Trump’s first term. Then, exactly one week ago, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had shaved a full two years off that estimate. The DIA was now convinced North Korea would have a nuclear ICBM by next year. One week later and we’re now hearing that North Korea already has an ICBM capable of reaching most of the U.S.

An avocational activity of Dennis Prager's for many years has been conducting symphony orchestras, and then taking a microphone around the stage to talk to musicians in various sections. It's a form of educational outreach he's engaged in to share his passion for classical music. Because he's conservative, he is - are you surprised? - running into attempts by identity-politics jackboots to stop him .

Squirrel-Hair needs a full-time babysitter:

Just as the dust had begun to settle on the Russian meeting scandal – where Donald Trump Jr. was forced to admit he did meet with a Russian lawyer during the campaign – the Washington Post has a new story out this evening that does not look good for President Donald Trump.

One of the more controversial aspects of the original story was that Trump Jr. claimed the meeting was about a Russian child adoption program. Later news reports proved that Jr.’s statement was misleading at best. The Post’s story now puts blame of the misleading statement squarely on the shoulders of the President himself.

The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged.

But within hours, at the president’s direction, the plan changed.

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared a story, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”

For a story which was actually much more a story of unethical practices than law-breaking ones, the President seems to have weighed the two options – tell the truth or lie – and come to the conclusion that another lie wouldn’t hurt. This is especially vexing, given that the administration leaks like an old boat with termite damage.

Planned Parenthood isn't too keen on fetal people surviving gestation, but if they do, the organizations wants them turned into gender-fluid freaks:

Planned Parenthood thinks your child needs to know about transgenderism and masturbation at the tender age of three. The Daily Wire reports:

In new guidelines  issued on the official Planned Parenthood website, the  federally subsidized corporation explains how parents should talk to their pre-schoolers about gender roles, sexuality, masturbation, and transgenderism, even offering tips on how to tell if your toddler "is transgender or gender nonconforming."

Advice from the guidelines includes:

Be mindful of how you talk around your kid, too. Talking to (or in front of) your daughter about growing up and having boyfriends or marrying a man (and vice versa) sends the message that girls are supposed to like boys, and boys are supposed to like girls, and that anything else is wrong or not normal. While kids this young don’t know their sexual orientation yet, assuming they’re straight could make them scared to come to you or feel bad about themselves later. This can lead to mental health issues, unhealthy relationships, and taking more health risks when they reach their teenage years.

So, along with freaking parents out over potentially triggering a mental illness in their child, Planned Parenthood provides the litmus test for determining whether or not your child is transgender. According to the organization that spends more time killing babies than birthing them, if your child is “Consistent, Insistent and Persistent” with the idea that he or she was born the wrong gender, you have no choice but to run with it.

And from the identity-politics-jackboots-dig-self-flagellation file, the Swarthmore Anti-Capitalist Collective has declared that it failed in its mission and disbanded because it was nearly all-white.

Looks like government is getting out of the arts-funding business - and that's a fine thing

Roger L. Simon at PJ Media makes the case cogently. For one thing, he has the credentials to do so:

As someone who has made his living in the arts for decades, writing novels and feature films, and was a former officer of PEN, I should be appalled. I'm not.  In fact, I'm supportive.  And not just because it saves taxpayer money.  Government sponsorship of the arts is fundamentally undemocratic and ultimately dangerous.

That's because, as with business, it puts the entity in society with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in charge of picking winners and losers:

State-sponsorship of the arts also creates what we could call a "Solyndra Effect," after the failed solar company whose financing was aided by the Obama administration.  Picking winners and losers in the arts is even more difficult than in business, with the government prone to choosing Salieri over Mozart even more frequently than it does a Solyndra over a more worthy company. This selection is better done by the public because art should really be for the pleasure and edification of the people themselves, not a tool of their rulers. In the arts, it's better for the market to rule.  It also makes for better art in the long run, no matter what some professor might tell you.

From time to time in my career as a writer and in my activities as a musician, I have had people say to me, "You should look into getting a grant." The idea is utterly foreign to me. Expressing yourself is an occupation like any other. There is either a market for what you are offering or there isn't. Forcibly taking fellow taxpayers' money just to keep yourself in groceries due to your occupational choice is antithetical to the American way.

Let's hope the new bunch acts on this promptly.

He had the depth to qualify for true-artist stature

Kyle Smith at PJ Media lists Robin Williams's ten most underrated movie performances.  I concur with all of them, and the order he put them in, particularly saving the 2002 Insomnia for the Number One spot.  Williams, Al Pacino and Hillary Swank all turn in stellar performances in this murder mystery set in an Alaskan fishing village. This was from the period when Williams was branching out beyond comedy (One Hour Photo dates from the same era), a move that would add depth to some of his subsequent comedy roles.  He's truly and utterly convincingly wicked and chilling in his villain role here.  It had to be gratifying, given that his original ambition was dramatic acting, and that he only turned to standup comedy when that didn't pan out.

He was a true artist - that is, he served the work always, but in the process revealed his full humanity as a person.

Heere's one playwright who won't stand for having his artistic vision messed with

A theater in Milwaukee tried to do some gender experimentation with a work by David Mamet.  He played his trump card and the theater company is out of a project:

David Mamet doesn’t play around when it comes to others taking liberties with his works. In this case, a Milwaukee theater tried to take liberties with the gender of one of Mamet’s characters.

Mamet wasn’t having any of it. The outspoken conservative probably doesn’t like having his cultural works appropriated by the left for purposes that have nothing to do with the original intent of the work.

Milwaukee’s Alchemist Theatre has canceled its production of the David Mamet drama “Oleanna” after one performance after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the playwright’s representatives over the theater company’s decision to cast a male actor in the play’s lead female role.

“Oleanna,” introduced to audiences shortly after the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, centers on the relationship between a professor and a female student who accuses him of harassment and rape. MORE…

Note to lefty creatives: If you spend the time and cash to stage a performance, make sure you don’t anger the artist who created the work by changing it and taking the whole meaning away just to suit your progressive agenda. You’ll get shut down and lose your cash, integrity, and credibility.

A delightful if rare win for us in the cultural realm.