Jul
25
2024

"The gas comes in pipes, ma'am."

"And I expect they get more gas in the pipes at some times, than they does at others."

And it seems to be getting pretty gassy around here, innit?

On that DEI bit, David Harsanyi wonders, perhaps with a smidgen of disingenuity: Why Is It Offensive To Call Kamala A DEI Hire?

Democrats are offended that Republicans are pointing out Vice President Kamala Harris was a diversity hire. What do they have against diversity, equity, and inclusion? Shouldn’t they be celebrating those concepts? It was the left, after all, that conceived and implemented DEI programs around the country.

“Kamala Harris faces racial ‘DEI’ attacks amid campaign for the 2024 presidency,” explains ABC News. “Incredibly insulting,” says Susan Rice. “Right-wing media figures call Kamala Harris a ‘DEI’ candidate as race-based attacks ramp up,” writes the perpetually confused Oliver Darcy. “Is it 1951?” asked “Morning Joe.”

Sort of, yes. In 1951, many white Americans still judged their fellow citizens by immutable characteristics like the color of their skin. Today, a new group of Americans are doing the same thing, including journalists who stopped using “black” as a descriptor of a color and then started capitalizing the word to strongly suggest that skin color defines a person. Scarborough should ask his good buddy Al Sharpton, a big-time defender of DEI, how all of it works.

As the tweet above shows, and Harsanyi documents, four years ago there was no controversy that Biden was picking his veep via DEI criteria; in fact, he bragged about it.

And with respect to another claim in the LeFevre tweet: At least for now, Wikipedia helpfully links to GovTrack's archived page: Sen. Kamala Harris’s 2019 Report Card. Which named her the "most politically left" among other senators, the least likely to join bipartisan bills among her fellow Democrats, and the 3rd most absent for votes among all senators.

But she did manage to get one bill through the meat grinder: the Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial Act!

And yes, GovTrack has apparently consigned all that to the Memory Hole.

(Headline du jour is a movie quote, of course.)

Also of note:

  • I served with George Washington. I knew George Washington. George Washington was a friend of mine. And Mr. President, you're no George Washington. Jeff Jacoby takes aim at a large fish in a small barrel: Joe Biden's flatterers compare him to George Washington. That's ridiculous.

    After briefly debunking the (now inoperative) Biden/FDR hagiography:

    But now, in the wake of Biden's decision to abandon his reelection campaign, his partisans and sycophants are comparing him to an even more towering predecessor: George Washington.

    Biden "gets to go out as the George Washington of his party," NPR's Mara Liasson said as she reported the news Sunday evening. The same Alter who formerly ranked Biden with FDR assured NBC that he "will be remembered as a great president" and "mentioned in the same sentence as George Washington" for "selflessly leaving power." Jon Meacham, a presidential biographer and sometime Biden speechwriter, gushed that Biden's decision to abandon his bid for a second term is "one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington." Multiple politicians, including Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Angus King of Maine, made similarly fawning declarations.

    Have Biden's flatterers learned nothing from their recent debacle? For months they loudly insisted that the president was in fantastic shape. He was so vigorous, they claimed, that people "can't even keep up with him" — not just mentally sharp but "better than he's ever been" and any video evidence to the contrary was nothing but "cheap fakes." Then came a debate performance so ghastly that all those lies were abandoned overnight.

    The president ended his campaign this week because he had no choice. It had become clear that he had no path to victory and leading Democrats made it clear that the pressure on him to bow out would keep intensifying until he did. Biden deserves full credit for facing reality and withdrawing from the race with a graceful statement. "I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down," he wrote. For someone who had craved the presidency for so long, to be forced to give it up prematurely was undeniably painful. But that put Biden in company with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon — not George Washington.

    Also, George Washington never told a lie. At least according to Parson Weems.

  • Why are you hitting yourself? No, I mean really: why are you hitting yourself? Robert F. Graboyes examines The Self-Harm of Economic Populism.

    Democrats want to punish the rich with taxes, and Republicans want to punish China with tariffs. The two are analytically equivalent, and both bring to mind H.L. Mencken’s chestnut, “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Maybe six weeks into an Economics 101 course, one encounters the “incidence of taxation” and learns why tax-the-rich and tariff-the-Chinese are fallacious and self-harming strategies. For the past 250 years or so, political leaders have gone through an endless cycle of learning this logic and then forgetting it.

    With respect to "Economics 101": Apparently this news came too late for Graboyes to include in his article: Vance, Like Biden, Flunks Econ 101: Backs Hiking Federal Minimum Wage.

  • Ready for some supercalifragilisticexpialidocious news? The original conspiracist, Eugene Volokh, looks at a recent legal decision: Nina Jankowicz's Libel Lawsuit Against Fox News Network Dismissed by Federal Judge. He mostly quotes the decision, here's the summary:

    The judge concludes Fox's statements about Jankowicz's plans as Executive Director of the DHS Disinformation Governance Board, and the circumstances of her leaving the position, were constitutionally protected opinion—and, even if they were viewed as factual assertions, were substantially true.

    Amazingly, this news seems not to be mentioned at all at Jankowicz's American Sunlight Project. I guess it's stuck somewhere the sun don't shine.

  • Alternate title suggested: Take the Money and Run. That state to our south continues to be a bad example, as reported by Joe Lancaster at Reason: Netflix's 'Don't Look Up' Got $46 Million From Massachusetts Taxpayers.

    Newly released state revenue data shows that Massachusetts taxpayers played a major role in funding a mid-budget Hollywood movie about climate change.

    The dark comedy Don't Look Up premiered on Netflix in December 2021. In the film, a team of scientists discovers that an asteroid will soon hit the Earth and destroy all human life, but they find that nobody wants to heed their warnings. A blunt allegorical tale, the movie tries to do for climate change what Dr. Strangelove did for nuclear war.

    The film grossed less than $800,000 worldwide against a budget estimated between $75 million and $110 million. (Since the film debuted on a streaming service, box office receipts matter less than viewership numbers: Viewers streamed the film for 111 million hours in its first two days and then for another 152 million hours over the following week.)

    Variety reported that stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence received $30 million and $25 million, respectively, {…]

    I'm sure some of that cash eventually trickled down to … somewhere in California.