■ Proverbs 22:8 strikes an optimistic note:
8 Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity,
and the rod they wield in fury will be broken.
To quote Hemingway: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
■ At NRO, Kyle Smith chronicles The Democrats’ Anthropological Field Trip to Study Americans.
The Democrats have sensed weakness, and chosen this moment to pounce. To capitalize on Donald Trump’s low approval ratings they are rolling out Elizabeth Warren (38 percent approval), Nancy Pelosi (29 percent), and Chuck Schumer (26 percent). Delivering the message that the party has fresh ideas are three emissaries who are a combined 211 years of age, deploying a phrase — “a better deal” — that harks back to the hottest policy proposals of 1933. To prove they’re in tune with the concerns of middle America the Democrats are dispatching emissaries from Harvard, San Francisco, and Brooklyn. Oh, and the Democrats’ chief problem, according to the Democrats? Americans just aren’t mentally supple enough to understand how great our program is for them.
Let me be the 637th person to point out that the new Dem slogan, while undoubtedly focus-grouped out the wazoo, sounds like a Papa John's ripoff.
■ A. Barton Hinkle, writing at Reason, pens a short history: Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: The Story of Government. One example:
[…] Consider a Kentucky program aimed at reviving poor rural areas
by retraining workers to become computer programmers. The effort to
breathe new life into the coalfields was part of President Obama's
TechHire
Initiative, and was conducted in concert with the Appalachian
Regional Commission.
According to report from The Daily Signal, the job-training program
was intended to turn out 200 skilled workers who could write code
for smartphone apps and similar high-tech ventures. But the effort
has fallen short: After $1.6 million, only 17 program participants
have landed tech jobs. Some are quite happy with where they landed,
but others who went through the program are not: "I am now in a job
that has absolutely nothing to do with programming," says one.
A worthwhile Constitutional amendment would be to require every new Federal program to state its objective, measurable goals; if those goals are unmet, the program is automatically killed.
■ I noticed some brouhaha over a new HBO series in the works: Confederate, a Civil War dystopia from the Game of Thrones creators, is already controversial
Per HBO’s July 19 press release, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s Confederate “chronicles the events leading to the Third American Civil War. The series takes place in an alternate timeline, where the Southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution.”
Some people went bonkers about this.
Dear @HBO:
— ReBecca Theodore (@FilmFatale_NYC) July 21, 2017
Black trauma is not for sale.
Black pain is not for your amusement.
Black bodies are not here for your award campaigns.
Gasp, sputter. It's a dystopia, right? Two recent examples are The Handmaid's Tale (male chauvinists won) and The Man in the High Castle (Nazis won). So here, Confederates won. It's not as if they'll be shown as the good guys. Why the outrage?
Well, the article resides at the young adult website, Vox, and this seems to be at the heart of the matter:
The one aspect of Confederate that has early critics breathing a tentative sigh of relief, however, is that Benioff and Weiss are being joined by the Spellmans as executive producers, so the creatives involved won’t be all white men. In fact, their partnership was heavily emphasized throughout that Vulture interview, with Malcolm insisting that he and Nichelle are “not props being used to protect someone else." Furthermore, he continued, Confederate will be “deeply personal” for them, “because we are the offspring of this history. We deal with it directly, and have for our entire lives.”
Ah, a sigh of relief that the people involved won't all be white men.
Coming up on 54 years since MLK had a dream that his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. People (like ReBecca Theodore) are doing everything they can to put that day off.
It's possible to imagine shows and movies constructed according to intersectional activist demands won't be tedious and lousy. It's just not the way to bet.
■ If you've been wondering about what all that public pubic shouting you've been hearing lately is for, here's an explainer from PJMedia's Megan Fox: Feminists Shout 'VAGINA' in Public for Planned Parenthood. WTF..
If I were paid to disrupt the left and make them look stupid, I would have invented Vagisil's #VaginaChallenge. Modeled after the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge of a few years ago, this one asks women to go into a public place and take a video of themselves shouting "VAGINA!" at the top of their lungs for "women's health" or something. (I don't know if wearing a vagina costume gets you extra credit or not.)
This must be a false flag GOP operation. Has to be. Right?
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