Monthly Archives: July 2017
July 13, 2017 — Steven Hayward
My post on the problem of subsidies for electric cars here the other day prompted a vigorous discussion in the comment thread, much of it about things I didn’t say.* Let me step back and reset the discussion with a few broad propositions about the subject before introducing something new. 1. Electrification of our overall energy use is a trend that has been under way for some time, and will
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July 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott handles the music beat around here. Having little to offer on the subject, I rarely weigh in. On Saturday, however, I had the pleasure of listening to about an hour of music by Lee Wiley, a jazz singer prominent in the 1940s with whom I was familiar only by name. Her singing blew me away. She gave the lyrics their full due but added a layer of quiet sensuality
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July 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
This David Brooks column called “How We Are Ruining America” has received lots of attention on the internet, but I don’t think we have commented on it. According to Brooks, members of the college-educated upper middle class — the top 20 percent or so — are ruining America by making sure their kids have good opportunities and, supposedly, making sure that kids from lower classes don’t get them. Brooks says
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July 12, 2017 — John Hinderaker
At the moment, it appears that the Republican Congress will not be able to pass any meaningful health insurance reform legislation. I hope that assessment is too pessimistic, but in any event, President Trump doesn’t need to wait for Congress. There is a great deal he can do, administratively, to reverse the damage being caused by Obamacare and help to preserve private markets for health care. In response to a
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July 12, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Just imagine all of the problems this story is going to cause the left, who won’t be able to sort out the competing Victimology and Moral Purity claims: Fish becoming transgender from contraceptive pill chemicals being flushed down household drains A fifth of male fish are now transgender because of chemicals from the contraceptive pill being flushed down household drains, a study by has suggested. Male river fish are displaying feminised traits and even
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July 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The mainstream media is in a state of ecstasy over the story of Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with that Russian lawyer. It’s easy to understand why. After months with nothing to feed on, the media now has a scrap. In this context, the meal feels like a feast. It certainly seems that way to Ruth Marcus. She declares, absurdly, that the Trump Jr. emails “could hardly be more incriminating.” I
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July 12, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Does any sentient human being actually read the complete communiques that these splashy G20 summits produce every year? I doubt it. Still, it is kind of fun to take in two paragraphs about global warming climate change that appear in the most recent declaration from the meeting in Hamburg last week. Note the difference between these two paragraphs: We take note of the decision of the United States of America
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July 12, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Eighth Circuit Judicial Conference convenes today in Fargo. Driving into Fargo on Monday I heard Rush Limbaugh take his first call of the day from Fargo and note the impending Eighth Circuit Conference, which he said his cousin would be attending. Rush was on top of it. In advance of the conference the court held a memorial session on Tuesday in the beautiful courtroom on the fourth floor of
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016. Trump, Jr. met with her because he thought she might have information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Apparently, she had none and wanted to talk instead about the Magnitsky Act, about which more later. These facts are well known to anyone who has been following the news recently. What’s less known is that
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The mainstream media may be looking for evidence of Russian collusion in all the wrong places. So far, despite its epic search, the media has uncovered no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. There is evidence, though, that Russia has colluded with U.S. environmental groups. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, tells James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal: If you
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s my view that the stories about Donald Trump, Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer in the hope of obtaining negative information about Hillary Clinton or the Democratic party do not state a case of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Nor do they suggest wrongdoing on the part of Trump, Jr. However, the stories do raise concerns of a different type. The first concern arises from Trump,
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July 11, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Wall Street Journal has an important editorial about what it calls the “Schumer blockade.” For a while, President Trump was slow in making executive branch appointments. But he has nearly caught up, and the problem now is Democratic obstructionism. As the Journal says: The Trump Presidency is well into its seventh month but the Trump Administration still barely exists. Senate Democrats are abusing Senate rules to undermine the executive
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July 11, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The North Korean situation is reaching a crisis point, beyond which the United States will be in the position of having to acquiesce to the Nork’s status in the nuclear club. As is widely understood, the military options today are fraught with peril. Armchair generals might spin out scenarios of a decapitating strike on North Korea, but in the real world the chances of success are too uncertain. Austin Bay,
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
On July 11, 1967, the National League won the all-star game by a score of 2-1. The game, played in Anaheim, California, lasted 15 innings, tied for the most in all-star game history (the 2008 game also went 15 innings). The duration was 3:41. Nowadays, it often takes that long to play nine innings. The 2008 all-star game, a 4-3 affair, took 4:50. The National League used seven pitchers in
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July 11, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Earlier this morning, Donald Trump, Jr. released the email threads relating to his meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016. The emails support his account of the meeting. Here they are, with the earlier ones first. The early emails are the only significant ones; the later emails relate to scheduling. Click to enlarge: A few points are worth noting. First, the emails support Trump Jr.’s statement that he
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July 11, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I don’t know quite when it happened, but some time in the last decade or so Seattle decided it was losing too much ground to Portland, Oregon, in the Crazy Liberal Weirdness Department. Sure, Seattle brought us grunge rock (music to invade Poland by, as someone once put it) and the 2000 WTO protests that were the early prototype of today’s “antifa resistance.” But Portland got the TV show! We’ve
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I planned to call my first post of the day “The Shifting Meaning of Collusion.” Then I saw the title of Scott’s post. That’s the disadvantage of waking up at 10:00 in the morning rather than five hours earlier. But I want to amplify Scott’s point. Claims of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia arose in connection with Russian computer hacking. The hacking was the one significant set of
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