Jan
26
2024

Welp, So Much For My Being Named Ambassador to Norway

One of Trump's Truth Social posts, reposted to Twitter:

I think the last part is cut off. Here 'tis, and I've added some bolding:

… importantly, Crooked Joe Biden and those that are destroying our Country - NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL SAVE IT. I knew Nikki well, she was average at best, is not the one to take on World Leaders, and she never did. That was up to me, and that is why they respected the United States. When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate’s “Donors” would immediately come to me, and want to “help out.” This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me. Anybody that makes a “Contribution” to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!

Permanently barred! From the MAGA camp! Give me a minute to regain my composure…

To make sure I was permanently barred, I took Nikki up on her recent offer, chipping into her campaign to get this bitchin' t-shirt:

[barred permanently]

And, at least for a while, clicking on the shirt will take you to page where you can be barred permanently too! If you are so inclined.

And just one more comment: in Trump's mind, "Put America First" is synonymous with "Put Trump First".

Over at National Review, Jeffrey Blehar claims In His Haste to End the Primary, Trump Is Losing the General. And he comments on the post above:

First, appreciate what Trump is doing here as an instrumental matter: He is making it as explicit as possible that, should he triumph in the presidential election, anyone who stands with Haley “from this moment forth” (note the unusually careful wording) is permanently on the outs. It’s a standard hardball negotiation technique, both in business and politics — and a quintessentially Trumpian one as well — and will of course be spun by Trump’s base as yet more confirmation of his “man of the people” bona fides: He doesn’t want that grubby Haley donor money! He doesn’t need it! He refuses to be tainted by association with these swamp creatures! (Unless they immediately switch their loyalties to him, that is.)

There are two problems with this. One is that such a tactic is only effectively executed from a position of strength. And while Trump’s strength within the Republican primary electorate is indeed nearly impregnable, his prospects in the general look a good deal hazier (indeed, to those who read polls carefully and understand the rhythms of presidential cycles, increasingly grim). Signing on with Trump is a gamble — one that implicitly suggests his intention to carry on even in defeat as the “MAGA camp” kingmaker — and while he is the only game in town between now and November 2024, beyond that? Well . . . desperate gamblers often make poor bets.

The other problem is also pretty obvious: A fantastic way to repel actual voters is by telling them you don’t want their support. I can already predict the counterargument: “He’s only talking about the donors! You know, the sinister globalist moneymen!” Folks, many more people than that have made donations to Nikki Haley, and preemptively kicking them out of your coalition is a dumb thing to publicly broadcast. But that’s beside the point: For people who read this sort of ranting, the takeaway isn’t the idea that Trump is talking only to the Donor Class, or even the average Jane who happened to donate $5 to Haley’s campaign after New Hampshire. Rather, they understand it, regardless of attempts to cavil technically, as applying to all of her voters and all those unpersuaded by him. “You’re not welcome back and we won’t accept you.”

Yeah,I guess I'm OK with that.

Ramesh Ponnuru also expresses my feelings better than I can: Nikki Haley Is Better Than Trump. Skipping down to the end…

Haley hasn’t tried to subvert the Constitution or called for terminating any part of it, toyed with destroying NATO, veered crazily between praise for and threats to Kim Jong Un, thrown away Republican Senate seats, attacked one appointee after another, supped with notorious anti-Semites. . . . I could go on. Trump will almost certainly be the Republican presidential nominee. That’s no reason to refrain from saying that she would be a better one.

It's not even close.

And George Will notes that Trump would drain the South Carolina wallets that Haley helped fill.

Trump’s inversion of conservatism is complete. His prospective program features higher taxes at home and retreat abroad.

To be fair to him, it is simply beyond his poor powers of comprehension to understand that tariffs — he vows 10 percent on all imports from everywhere — are taxes paid by American consumers and producers. So, to a nation furious about inflation, he promises to raise the cost of living, especially for his lower-income idolaters, who necessarily devote disproportionate shares of their incomes to consumption.

To remind you: it's estimated this would be a $300 billion/year tax increase.

Also of note:

  • If you need a chuckle… Jeff Maurer takes you Inside the Democratic Socialists of America's Budget Crisis.

    The Democratic Socialists of America is facing a financial crisis. In a note to members, DSA leadership revealed a two million dollar shortfall against a seven million dollar budget. I Might Be Wrong’s intrepid team of investigative reporters have obtained e-mails between a member of DSA leadership and an outside accounting firm that describe the severity of the crisis . Those e-mails are below.

    You won't want to miss them.

  • I'm sure there's a Harvard task force working on this. John McWhorter suggests We Need a New Word for ‘Plagiarism’.

    In December, a group of outside scholars appointed by a Harvard board was roundly criticized for describing the plagiarism that ultimately contributed to former President Claudine Gay’s resignation as “duplicative language.” This description was seen by many as an effort to minimize Gay’s transgression. And it was. But I think the board was on to something useful nevertheless. The term “plagiarism” is overstretched.

    Ironically, Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager who worked so hard to push Claudine Gay out of her job, would now seem to agree. In a twist so uncanny you couldn’t have written it any better, Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, a former M.I.T. professor, appears to have lifted chunks of her dissertation from other sources, including Wikipedia.

    In the blink of an eye after these revelations, Ackman acquired an exquisite sensitivity to the difference between real plagiarism and the other, accidental-word-copying kind. Yet the difference he suddenly understands is one that anyone can. To think that neither Gay nor Oxman “really” plagiarized, or to believe that the sanction for such errors should be less severe, is an entirely reasonable point of view.

    As someone who's overly fond of the <blockquote> HTML tag, I agree. There are at least three relevant kinds of laziness:

    1. Too lazy to come up with original ideas;
    2. Too lazy to come up with original wording;
    3. Too lazy to properly cite someone else's ideas or wording.

    I'm guilty of the first one all the time, not so much the second, and (I hope) never the third.

  • Tired of all the winning? I'm tired of all the losing. Joe Lancaster reveals another reason why we call it "Uncle Stupid": The Government Is Better at Picking Losers Than Winners.

    All investment is risky. What better way to avoid that risk than to use other people's money? Federal, state, and local governments dispense gifts, grants, and loans to private companies, generously funded by taxpayers and usually with vague promises of economic development in return. While politicians say they don't like to pick winners and losers, even the "winners" sometimes turn out to be losers for taxpayers.

    With plenty of examples. Here's one:

    In 2020, the Treasury Department was apportioned $17 billion in pandemic relief funds to disburse to companies it deemed vital to national security. It loaned $700 million of those funds to Yellow Corporation, a freight trucking company worth only $70 million that had lost $104 million the prior year. According to an audit released in 2023, Yellow had an outstanding balance of $729 million in March and had paid only a measly $230 toward the loan's principal. Yellow filed for bankruptcy in August 2023.

    Loaning $700 million to a company worth $70 million? Way to go, Unk.

  • But don't ever say America never does anything right. Uncle Stupid has some very smart people working for him, as evidenced by this bittersweet Ars Technica story: The amazing helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, will fly no more.

    Something has gone wrong with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore. (Shortly after this article was published, NASA confirmed the end of Ingenuity's mission).

    When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.

    This was especially difficulty on Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere, with a pressure of less than 1 percent that of Earth's. The solution they landed on was a very light 4-lb helicopter with four blades. It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.

    But it turns out that Ingenuity had other ideas. Since its deployment from the Perseverance rover in April 2021, the helicopter has flown a staggering 72 flights. It has spent more than two hours—128.3 minutes, to be precise—flying through the thin Martian air. Over that time, it flew 11 miles, or 17 km, performing invaluable scouting and scientific investigations. It has been a huge win for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the greatest spaceflight stories of this decade.

    When I was a kid, I thought we'd have people on Mars by now. But I'll take this.

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Last Modified 2024-01-26 3:52 PM EDT