URLs du Jour

2019-07-03

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  • At Patterico's Pontifications, JVW has thoughts On Nike, Kaepernick, and Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons. Specifically, a message to Colin Kaepernick:

    Thank you.

    Thank you for removing from the market an overpriced shoe which cynically tried to tie itself to American heroism and sacrifice. Thank you for confirming once and for all that your campaign is not about police violence or uplifting minority communities, it is about your myopic view of American history that has been drilled into you by hard-left demagogues. Thank you for embarrassing Nike and forcing them to eat a product that had already been manufactured and shipped. And thank you for demonstrating that Nike, a company that has always had an absolutely garbage marketing program (I started a post on this topic over a year ago and just may get around to completing it), holds the American tradition in contempt, at least when it isn’t trying to exploit it for profit. Neither Nike not Colin Kaepernick meant for this to happen, but I think this is going to be one of those situations where almost everyone comes out a winner.

    As someone who has a flag-emblazoned t-shirt somewhere, I can't get sanctimonious about flag-adorned apparel. Some object, but if it's OK with the American Legion, I guess it's on Patriotically Correct ground. (There's no "except for shoes" on that page.)


  • At the Federalist, David Harsanyi also has thoughts on Why Nike's Capitulation To Kaepernick Matters.

    Colin Kaepernick has made a fantastic living out of protesting the America flag. That’s fine. No political speech should be inhibited, not even pseudo-intellectual historical revisionism. But let’s stop pretending that kneeling during the national anthem at sporting events is really about “respecting the flag” or criminal justice reform or any fixable policy problem.

    Whatever the underlying causes for Kaepernick’s popularity—some of them certainly legitimate—these protests are acts of contempt toward an irredeemable nation created in sin. This view of our founding is an increasingly popular position on the left. And if it ever takes hold in mainstream American life, we’re in real trouble.

    As said before, I would love to boycott Nike, but I've never bought any of their celebrity-driven walking-billboard overpriced stuff. And have no plans to. So a boycott would … change nothing whatsoever.


  • The Indispensible Jim Geraghty lists 20 Things You Didn’t Know about Long-Shot Presidential Candidate. But maybe suspected. For example, her "proposal for addressing the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon platform disaster":

    I completely understand why Republicans are donating money to keep her in the debates.

    And, not that it matters, but I've started in on Jim's new book, Between Two Scorpions, a very good deal on Kindle from Amazon, link over there on your right.


  • Reason's current issue is a clever Good News/Bad News theme. With the Good on half the magazine, the Bad on the other. And to get from one to the other, you flip the magazine over. Anyway, we had one from the Good side yesterday, and here's one from the Bad from Stephanie Slade: Bad Ideas Are Spreading Like the Plague.

    The defeat of measles in the United States was one of the great good news stories of the turn of the millennium. Prior to 1963, when a vaccine was developed, the highly contagious virus led each year to 48,000 hospitalizations and 400–500 deaths, mostly among small children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But immunization campaigns steadily eroded the disease's reach, and by 2000 it was declared eliminated from American shores.

    Today, the U.S. is grappling with the worst measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Some 981 cases were confirmed in 26 states between January 1 and May 31—a 26-fold increase from the total in 2004. The CDC anticipates one or two fatalities per 1,000 cases, so it looks like only a matter of time before the disease again starts claiming American lives.

    Other bad ideas making a comeback: socialism, toxic nationalism, protectionism, … and maybe a few more by the time your read this.


  • And LFOD turns up in some odd places, as revealed by our Google News Alert. For example, the Caracas Chronicles: Venezuelan Lives Drift Away at Sea.

    Aruba is so close to Venezuela that you can see its lights from parts of our Falcón state on clear nights, and only 70 km separate Trinidad and Tobago from the North-Eastern Venezuelan coast. Both islands are closer than Perú or Ecuador, but reaching them is a lot more dangerous: while Venezuelan caminantes have to endure a difficult journey through the Andes or the Gran Sabana on their way to the rest of South America, the toll of leaving the chavista-fabricated crisis by sea is getting higher.  

    What follows is a retelling of many Venezuelan lives lost, simply because they want to escape oppression. Bottom line:

    They say you should live free or die trying. Well, some people really die.

    Something to think about over the next day or two.


Last Modified 2024-01-24 6:01 AM EDT