At AoSHQ, "Megan Fox has been on the hoax from the beginning, and now Ohio AG Dave Yost completely obliterates the false story."
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
'I Made A Huge Mistake Voting For Biden'
Ms. Zoe Nicholson from St. Louis:
Zoe, a Missouri resident: “I made a huge mistake voting for Biden.”
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 11, 2022
“I regret voting for him. I mean, it really was a terrible choice. " pic.twitter.com/EMki781Gu7
If Held Today, President Trump Would Win the #GOP Primaries
He's got a huge plurality of supporters in this this new poll out from the New York Times.
See, "Half of G.O.P. Voters Ready to Leave Trump Behind, Poll Finds":
Far from consolidating his support, the former president appears weakened in his party, especially with younger and college-educated Republicans. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is the most popular alternative.
As Donald J. Trump weighs whether to open an unusually early White House campaign, a New York Times/Siena College poll shows that his post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he wins the nomination. By focusing on political payback inside his party instead of tending to wounds opened by his alarming attempts to cling to power after his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump appears to have only deepened fault lines among Republicans during his yearlong revenge tour. A clear majority of primary voters under 35 years old, 64 percent, as well as 65 percent of those with at least a college degree — a leading indicator of political preferences inside the donor class — told pollsters they would vote against Mr. Trump in a presidential primary. Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, appears to have contributed to the decline in his standing, including among a small but important segment of Republicans who could form the base of his opposition in a potential primary contest. While 75 percent of primary voters said Mr. Trump was “just exercising his right to contest the election,” nearly one in five said he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.” Overall, Mr. Trump maintains his primacy in the party: In a hypothetical matchup against five other potential Republican presidential rivals, 49 percent of primary voters said they would support him for a third nomination. The greatest threat to usurp Mr. Trump within the party is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who was the second choice with 25 percent and the only other contender with double-digit support. Among primary voters, Mr. DeSantis was the top choice of younger Republicans, those with a college degree and those who said they voted for President Biden in 2020. While about one-fourth of Republicans said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion about Mr. DeSantis, he was well-liked by those who did. Among those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, 44 percent said they had a very favorable opinion of Mr. DeSantis — similar to the 46 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump. Should Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump face off in a primary, the poll suggested that support from Fox News could prove crucial: Mr. Trump held a 62 percent to 26 percent advantage over Mr. DeSantis among Fox News viewers, while the gap between the two Floridians was 16 points closer among Republicans who mainly receive their news from another source. The survey suggests that Mr. Trump would not necessarily enter a primary with an insurmountable advantage over rivals like Mr. DeSantis. His share of the Republican primary electorate is less than Hillary Clinton’s among Democrats was at the outset of the 2016 race, when she was viewed as the inevitable front-runner, but ultimately found herself embroiled in a protracted primary against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont...
Still more.
And Bill Schneider suggested the other day that Trump might announce his 2024 run before the November midterms. We'll see. That's not unprecedented. Howard Dean formally announced his bid for the 2004 Democratic nomination June 23, 2003, but he was campaigning way before then, in the second half of 2002.
If Trump's able to raise a massive war chest --- to the tune of say $2 billion or so --- then he'd certainly scare off much of the competition. But let's see how much DeSantis is able to raise in 2023, should he throw his hat into the ring. He's the one on fire right now. I like him. I hope he's the nominee. He'll crush any Democrat in the 2024 general election.
Ms. Kate Reads
CNN's Kate Bolduan.
She's reading an advanced copy of Daniel Silva's, Portrait of an Unknown Woman. The book hits stores on the 19th.
A good lady.
On Twitter.
The Strategy Behind DeSantis' Culture War
From Christopher F. Rufo, ,"The New Yorker reveals some of the governor's most effective tactics":
The New Yorker just published a report highlighting my work supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ policies on critical race theory and gender ideology. If you can set aside the obligatory editorializing—the disposition of the New Yorker is obviously left-wing—there is some valuable insight into the political strategy that DeSantis has adopted. The article begins with some behind-the-scenes details:In April, the conservative activist Christopher Rufo flew from his home, near Seattle, to Miami, to meet with Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, and to take part in the public signing of the Stop Woke Act. A former documentary filmmaker and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Rufo was the lead protagonist of last year’s furor over the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools and helped advise the Governor on the Florida law, which aimed to limit discussion of racial history and identity in schools and workplaces. Rufo was especially taken with how personally invested DeSantis seemed in the policy. “He shows up to the tarmac at 6:30 a.m. with a Red Bull energy drink, ready to roll through the policy papers,” Rufo said. The bill had not come from the Governor’s advisers or the grass roots: “It’s driven by him.”From there, the writer, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, recounts the story of DeSantis’ fight against Walt Disney after the company publicly announced its opposition to the Parental Rights in Education law, which prohibits public schools from promoting gender and sexual ideologies in kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis mobilized the public against Disney and quickly signed legislation to strip the company of its special tax and governing status—an aggressive move that most political observers did not anticipate. As Wallace-Wells writes:DeSantis made a second significant move during the debate over the bill, one that Rufo in particular emphasized: the Governor escalated. The C.E.O. of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Chapek, told shareholders during an annual meeting early in March that he opposed the bill and had called DeSantis to say so; DeSantis retaliated with a new bill that stripped Disney (Central Florida’s largest taxpayer) of certain special legislative benefits that it had enjoyed since its establishment, a half century ago. “At the time, I remember some conversation, ‘Oh, DeSantis will never be able to vanquish Disney, Disney’s too powerful, too beloved,’ and at the time Disney had a seventy-seven per cent favorability rating with the public,” Rufo told me. He credited the Florida Governor with two insights: “A, that the bill is popular, and B, that though Disney is an economic and cultural power, it is really a novice political power, and, as many people are saying lean out of it, he leans into the fight, I think, brilliantly”....The Left is starting to understand DeSantis as a major threat—and for good reason. In my view, DeSantis is the most courageous and effective politician in the United States today. He understands how to frame the issues, never buckles under controversy, and has demonstrated a deep knowledge of public policy. He can play the media game, but he can also play the legislative game, moving significant policies through the Florida state legislature with remarkable speed. DeSantis is the man to watch. He is making the necessary transition from “culture war as performance” to “culture war as public policy.” He is writing the new playbook for conservative politics and his enemies are starting to take note.
Sunday, July 10, 2022
J. David McSwane, Pandemic, Inc.
At Amazon, J. David McSwane, Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick.
Saturday, July 9, 2022
Friday, July 8, 2022
McLaren Speedtail: A $3 Million Zoom With a View (VIDEO)
Well, one can dream.
At the Wall Street Journal, "With a top speed of 250 mph, the Speedtail is the fastest McLaren ever built, but Dan Neil is most impressed by the sightlines from the center driver’s seat":Go ahead, yank. Give a squeeze. Imagine yourself strapped into this belt-high, $3-million hybrid hypercar, looking down the middle of that steep hood at your immediate and onrushing destiny. It’s a weathery June day in the south of England, with veils of rain and patchy sun along the M3 from the company’s headquarters in Woking, Surrey, to your lunch stop, near Portsmouth. Fluffy sheep and fluffier clouds, green hills, stone walls. While you’re at it, imagine you weigh what you did in high school. The Speedtail’s steeply bolstered driver’s couch fits like ’70s-era Calvin Kleins. This go-kart of the gods is officially the fastest McLaren yet (top speed 250 mph), and the most powerful (1,055 hp), hosting an AI-enhanced, twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 mated to a hybrid KERS system, seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and a torque-vectoring rear axle. The factory, usually conservative in these matters, says the Speedtail can accelerate from naught to 124 mph in 6.6 seconds and to 186 mph in 13 seconds—about the time it takes to read this sentence aloud. Can you feel that? Yet this is a case where the absurdity of performance—on what planet will anyone be driving at 250 mph?—takes itself out of critical consideration. Besides, if you go shopping among elite car builders, you (or your goony intermediaries) can acquire all sorts of instantly collectible, money-laundering hypercars with unbearable performance, including the Mercedes-AMG Project One, Aston Martin Valkyrie and Bugatti Chiron. But no other car can compete with this view. The Speedtail completes a generational quartet of limited-edition, science-on-a-rampage hybrid hypercars from McLaren—the Ultimate Series—including the Senna, the Elva, and the P1. For enthusiasts, these cars represent the proverbial best of times. Each has its inimitable and historic bits for which collectors will pay handsomely in years to come. The Speedtail’s immortal flex begins with the cockpit layout: the driver’s couch is in the center, flanked by two smaller seats, molded into the carbon-fiber/aluminum monocoque. The three-seat layout is a homage to the essential McLaren F1 sports racer of the 1990s. A way more comfortable homage, I might add. As with the F1, the company limited Speedtail production to 106 examples—all built and delivered in 2020 and 2021. I’m sorry I’m only getting around to it now. The center-seat experience is singular—solipsistic, even. In this car the driver’s perceptions sit in the middle of a spherical transparency, around which reality warps like the backgrounds of a first-person videogame. Fanning kinescopes of passing forests, hectic kaleidoscopes of council-owned agriculture, all lens around your POV in perfect symmetry. The center-seat driver experience is singular—solipsistic, even That. Is. Awesome! Having spent my driving life slightly askew, it seems, this sudden alignment of my somatic graviception and momentum vector-space was practically euphoric. This is the saddled symmetry of riding horseback, or on a motorcycle, or piloting a single-seat race car or fighter jet. Oh Maverick! Take me to the hangar! Then there’s the way it looks. I’ve studied the matter closely: The Speedtail is the most beautiful of a generation of very, very fast cars built in the hyper-hybrid era, the sweetest and most lyrical derivation of Navier-Stokes since perhaps the 1930s—”beauty” here being aesthetic satisfaction uncompromised by extreme speed. Generally, the faster a car is, the uglier. That collects the much-adored Aston Martin Valkyrie and Bugatti Chiron, among others. If not ugly then more cluttered with edges, blades, scoops and splitters, necessary to ensure stability at speeds where the angels fear to tread. And to look cool. The Speedtail’s form is like a glass javelin, long and balanced and piercing at both ends. Much of the downforce is generated by the unseen underbody and (pressure) diffuser. Instead of a rear wing waggling on pneumatic pylons, movable aero elements are integrated into flexible sections of trailing-edge body work that bend up and down, reacting to control-loop calls for downforce and braking. The flexi-bendy ailerons were not easy, said Andy Palmer, Vehicle Line Director, Ultimate Series. But to do otherwise would have been like spoiling the line of a good suit. The plan was to race Mr. Palmer to lunch near Southampton—he in the second validation prototype (XP2) of the Speedtail and I in the XP5. If that wasn’t the plan, nobody told him. Soon the XP2’s exquisite, filamentary taillights disappeared in a towering gray rooster tail, boiling up from the car’s mighty underbody diffuser. Crikey, he’s leaving me. But put your foot down and the Speedtail represents. Totes. In the time it took to zing the turbos three times—bu-bah-tweee, bu-bahhh-tweeee, bu-bahhhh-tweeeee—the Speedtail had closed in on the XP2 and I was flirting with extradition. It all happened so fast, officer. And so swimmingly. Why aren’t there more such delightful cars, ask the rest of us? According to the feds, the Speedtail isn’t even road legal, on account of its center controls, camera-based wing mirrors and, I’m sure, other homologation issues. About one-third of Speedtails produced have been imported to the U.S. under what’s known as the show or display rule, which restricts annual odometer-registered mileage to 2,500 miles...
Twitter Says It's Going to Sue Elon Musk for Trying to Back Out of Takeover Deal
Folks see Musk as a free-speech savior, so it'd be a bummer if the deal doesn't go through. That said, frankly, Twitter's valuation was below $44 billion when Musk first made the bid. It's dropped precipitously since then, not to mention the market value of Musk's Tesla electric car company, whose stock was being used to leverage the deal.
We'll see, in any case. It's still awful bad on that hellsite.
At the Verger, "Twitter says it’s going to sue Elon Musk for trying to back out of the deal."
Shinzo Abe's Influence Was Still Evident Long After He Left Office
Following-up, "Shinzo Abe Assassinated: Former Prime Minister Was Leader For a New, Stronger Japan (VIDEO)."
At the New York Times, "Japan’s longest-serving prime minister became perhaps the most transformational politician in the country’s post-World War II history":
WASHINGTON — In his record-breaking run as prime minister, Shinzo Abe never achieved his goal of revising Japan’s Constitution to transform his country into what the Japanese call a “normal nation,” able to employ its military to back up its national interests like any other. Nor did he restore Japan’s technological edge and economic prowess to the fearsome levels of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Japan was regarded as China is today — as the world’s No. 2 economy that, with organization and cunning and central planning, could soon be No. 1. But his assassination in the city of Nara on Friday was a reminder that he managed, nonetheless, to become perhaps the most transformational politician in Japan’s post-World War II history, even as he spoke in the maddeningly bland terms that Japanese politicians regard as a survival skill. After failing to resolve longstanding disputes with Russia and China, he edged the country closer to the United States and most of its Pacific allies (except South Korea, where old animosities ruled). He created Japan’s first national security council and reinterpreted — almost by fiat — the constitutional restrictions he could not rewrite, so that for the first time Japan was committed to the “collective defense” of its allies. He spent more on defense than most Japanese politicians thought wise. “We didn’t know what we were going to get when Abe came to office with this hard nationalist reputation,” said Richard Samuels, the director of the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. and the author of books on Japan’s military and intelligence capabilities. “What we got was a pragmatic realist who understood the limits of Japan’s power, and who knew it wasn’t going to be able to balance China’s rise on its own. So he designed a new system.” Mr. Abe was out of office by the time Russia invaded Ukraine this year. But his influence was still evident as Japan, after 10 weeks of hesitation, declared it would phase out Russian coal and oil imports. Mr. Abe pushed further, suggesting that it was time for Japan to establish some kind of nuclear sharing agreement with the United States — breaking his country’s longtime taboo on even discussing the wisdom of possessing an arsenal of its own. His efforts to loosen the restraints on Japan that date back to its postwar, American-written Constitution reflected a recognition that Japan needed its allies more than ever. But alliances meant that defense commitments went both ways. China loomed larger, North Korea kept lobbing missiles across the Sea of Japan and Mr. Abe believed that he needed to preserve his country’s relationship with Washington, even if that meant delivering a gold-plated golf club to Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower days after he was elected president. Mr. Abe was not killed for his hard-line views, which at moments triggered street protests and peace rallies in Japan, at least according to initial assessments. Nor was his killing a return to the era of “Government by Assassination,” the title that Hugh Byas, the New York Times bureau chief in Tokyo in the 1930s, gave his memoir of an era of turmoil. Mr. Byas recounted the last killing of a current or former Japanese prime minister: Tsuyoshi Inukai was killed in 1932 as part of a plot by Imperial Japanese Navy officers that seemed intended to provoke a war with the United States nine years before Pearl Harbor. In the postwar era, political assassinations have been rare in Japan: a Socialist leader was murdered in 1960 with a sword, and the mayor of Nagasaki was shot dead in 2007, though that appeared to be over a personal dispute. And the American ambassador to Japan in the 1960s, Edwin O. Reischauer, was stabbed in the thigh by a 19-year-old Japanese man; Mr. Reischauer survived and returned to his post as Harvard’s leading scholar of Japanese politics. Mr. Abe’s death will now set off a race to be the next leader of one of the most powerful factions of the Liberal Democratic Party. And the shock of it, President Biden said on Friday during a visit to the C.I.A., will have “a profound impact on the psyche of the Japanese people.” But it will hardly create a political earthquake. Mr. Abe left office, partly because of poor health, two years ago. And in the pantheon of current world leaders, he could not match the powers of Presidents Xi Jinping of China or Vladimir V. Putin of Russia; Japan’s humbling recession in the 1990s damaged its ranking as a superpower. But his influence, scholars say, will be lasting. “What Abe did was transform the national security state in Japan,” said Michael J. Green, a former senior official in the George W. Bush administration who dealt with Mr. Abe often. Mr. Green’s book “Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo” argues that it was Mr. Abe who helped push the West to counter China’s increasingly aggressive actions in Asia...
Shinzo Abe Assassinated: Former Prime Minister Was Leader For a New, Stronger Japan (VIDEO)
Japan is largely a gun-free society, which makes Abe's assassination all the more confounding. I haven't seen anything yet, but it's unimaginable to me that a gunman could basically walk right up an murder a former prime minister.
The moment of the assassination is here, on YouTube, "Shinzo Abe shot: TV cameras capture attack on former PM and suspect's arrest."
At the Los Angeles Times, "Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan, assassinated at campaign event":
NARA, Japan — Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech — an attack that stunned a nation with some of the world’s strictest gun-control laws. The 67-year-old Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020, collapsed bleeding and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara, although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said. Nara Medical University emergency department chief Hidetada Fukushima said Abe suffered major damage to his heart, along with two neck wounds that damaged an artery. He never regained his vital signs, Fukushima said. Prefectural police in Nara arrested the suspect at the scene of the attack and identified him as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, a former member of Japan’s navy. Public broadcaster NHK reported that he said he wanted to kill Abe because he had complaints about him unrelated to politics. Dramatic video from NHK showed Abe standing and giving a speech outside a train station in Nara ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election. As he raised his fist to make a point, two gunshots rang out, and he collapsed holding his chest, his shirt smeared with blood as security guards ran toward him. Guards leapt onto the suspect, who was face down on the pavement. A double-barreled device that appeared to be a handmade gun was seen on the ground. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet ministers hastily returned to Tokyo from campaign events around the country after the shooting, which he called “dastardly and barbaric.” He pledged that the election, which chooses members for Japan’s less-powerful upper house of parliament, would go on as planned. “I use the harshest words to condemn” the shooting, Kishida said, struggling to control his emotions. He said the government planned to review the security situation but added that Abe had the highest protection. Even though he was out of office, Abe was still highly influential in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest faction, Seiwakai. Opposition leaders condemned the shooting as an attack on Japan’s democracy. In Tokyo, people stopped on the street to grab extra editions of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper or watch TV coverage of the shooting. When he resigned as prime minister, Abe said he had a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis he’d had since he was a teenager. He told reporters at the time that it was “gut-wrenching” to leave many of his goals unfinished. He spoke of his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia and a revision of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution. That last goal made him a divisive figure. His ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to normalize Japan’s defense posture angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support. Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan’s defense capability. But Abe made enemies by forcing his defense goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition. Abe — who studied at USC for three semesters — was a political blue blood who was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs. Many foreign officials expressed shock over the shooting — especially because of Japan’s strict gun laws. With a population of 125 million, the country had only 10 gun-related criminal cases last year, which resulted in one death and four injuries, according to police. Eight of those cases were gang-related. Tokyo had no gun incidents, injuries or deaths in the same year, although 61 guns were seized...
Still more.
Thursday, July 7, 2022
War of Attrition
At WSJ, "Russia’s Tactical Shift in Ukraine Raises Prospect of Protracted War":
Kyiv says it needs more Western weapons and help training new soldiers to turn the tide. KYIV, Ukraine—Russia’s steady advances in eastern Ukraine, relying on superior firepower and larger numbers of troops, are grinding down Ukraine’s military and setting the stage for a protracted war of attrition in which Kyiv needs more Western weapons and help training new soldiers to turn the tide. After early missteps, Russia has found tactics that are working. In the invasion’s opening phase, Moscow’s armies tried to make daring thrusts deep into Ukrainian territory. They largely failed and lost elite units in the process. Now, Russian forces are advancing by increments under the cover of artillery. Russia is massing “a very heavy concentration of artillery and armor in every square kilometer that we are unable to cope with,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told The Wall Street Journal. “This is giving them the advantage.” Ukrainian forces are seeking to slow the Russian advance, wearing them down and preparing to counterattack when they can bring more Western weapons to bear. Ukraine has landed some counter-blows in the past few days with long-range rocket launchers from the U.S. and other Western allies. But Russia’s tactical shift raises questions for Ukraine’s backers, who must now confront the possibility of a long, drawn-out conflict. Russia seized the city of Lysychansk at the weekend, completing the takeover of the Luhansk region, and is now bombarding Ukraine’s remaining strongholds in neighboring Donetsk. Despite narrowing its immediate objectives to taking Ukraine’s east, Russia’s strategic goal of controlling Ukraine remains unchanged. The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said Tuesday that Russia is aiming to demilitarize Ukraine and force it to adopt neutral status, according to Russian state news agency RIA. Such statements suggest “that the Kremlin is preparing for a protracted war with the intention of taking much larger portions of Ukraine,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in an analysis Tuesday. Moscow’s success in the east recalls some of Russia’s previous wars. As in Chechnya in the 1990s, Russia is offsetting the shortcomings of its ground forces by using massed firepower. Ukraine is trying to impose high costs on the advancing Russians with fierce resistance, while also preserving troop strength by slowly falling back to more defensible positions as it awaits flows of heavy weapons from the West. It took Russia two months to take the city of Severodonetsk. Some Western leaders say they fear Ukraine won’t be able to win, despite its fierce determination, as the conflict further erodes the country’s economy and its military struggles against Russia’s advantage in sheer numbers. While the West has extended military aid to Ukraine, Kyiv says it needs more and warns that it will take time to train soldiers to use the multiple new weapons systems being delivered by the U.S. and its allies. In a report this week, the U.K.’s Royal United Services Institute think tank said Ukraine needs long-range artillery systems and electronic warfare equipment to counter Russia’s own advanced systems. The report said that Ukraine’s allies are capable of making up the shortfalls. But, in a nod to the complications of operating too many different weapons systems, the report said success “cannot be achieved through the piecemeal delivery of a large number of different fleets of equipment, each with separate training, maintenance and logistical needs.” Mr. Danilov said that the Ukraine army has used so many of its Soviet-era armaments and ammunition that it is gradually becoming a force that will have to rely on NATO weaponry. He said the arrival of U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or Himars, last month has enabled Ukraine to strike precisely at Russian targets beyond the front lines that were previously beyond the reach of Ukrainian guns. Mr. Danilov said nine mobile Himars and similar rocket-launch systems donated by the U.S. and its allies are now operating inside Ukraine with deadly effect. The Russians “are defenseless against them,” he said. “They are very worried.” A Himars strike devastated a command post in the east Ukrainian town of Izyum last week, and on Monday a top Ukrainian official confirmed that Himars were used to bombard Snake Island, a small but significant outpost in the Black Sea that Russia abandoned last week. But Mr. Danilov said Ukraine would need dozens more Himars launchers to shift the fighting in eastern Ukraine. For now, he said, Ukraine must fight a defensive war. The Royal United Services Institute report noted that Ukraine’s paucity of skilled infantry and armored-vehicle operators limit its abilities to launch serious counteroffensives. Russia’s artillery is also successfully targeting the Ukrainian military so that it is unable to mount attacks, the report said. Mr. Danilov said Russia’s own arsenal is showing signs of running low four months after launching its invasion, saying that it no longer has the strength to launch attacks on more than one front. Moscow has also increasingly been sending lower-precision Soviet-era missiles deep into Ukrainian territory, with less regard for whether they hit civilian targets, he said. Last week, one missile landed in a neighborhood in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, where Ukrainian officials said at least 21 civilians were killed. Mr. Danilov said the missile campaign was intended to blunt support for the war among the Ukrainian public, an overwhelming share of whom still say it would be unacceptable to reach a peace deal with Moscow by ceding territory lost to Russian forces. Mr. Danilov said that the high level of support for some kind of Ukrainian counterattack may be a rubbing point with some of Ukraine’s allies, who have pledged to support Ukraine until it wins, without specifying what victory means...
More:
The Ukrainian PM dropped the number in a presentation yesterday.
— Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com (@JordanSchachtel) July 6, 2022
Ukraine's entire GDP is $150 billion.
One of the biggest shakedowns in world history, only second to COVID Mania.https://t.co/mVaZtPvToM
The Price of an Unpopular Argument
It's Glenn Loury's introduction to the video below:
Thousands of hours of new race-related content pop up every day on cable news, talk radio, podcasts, newsletters, and YouTube. If you’re tired of hearing partisan left-right talking head punditry, the digital democratization of the media has made pretty much any point of view on race in America—from the benign to the malignant—available to you, if you do a little digging. On The Glenn Show, I often say things that I nevertheless categorize as “unsayable.” But I haven’t been booted off Twitter (at least not yet). I haven’t been fired or jailed for anything I’ve said. People have gotten mad and said disparaging things about me in public, but that’s their right. So why does it feel like there are certain things “one can’t say” about race? Violating the progressive line on race can have less easily definable social and professional costs than a Twitter ban or the FBI knocking on your door. As John McWhorter points out in the following excerpt from our recent live event at the Comedy Store, simply stating the facts about crime and racial disparities can lead people to look askance at you or cut you off entirely, to regard you as politically untrustworthy or disreputable. To insist, as I do below, that the out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans is a scandal can invite the same response. There is every reason in the world to ignore an unpopular argument...
Small Business Is America (VIDEO)
It's Carol Roth, author of The War on Small Business, for Prager University:
Why I'm Giving Up Tenure at UCLA
Very much worth your time.
From UCLA Anthropology Professor Joseph Manson, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "The ideological takeover of my university has ruined academic life for anyone who still believes in freedom of thought'."
Why the Left Truly Is Evil (and Not Stupid)
At FrontPage Magazine, "'When a person shows you who they are, believe them'”:
In America this minute leftists can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. They are pushing an agenda that is evil. They are hellbent on accomplishing it and they are saying so publicly. The late Charles Krauthammer was the person credited for the intriguing binary observation that “conservatives view the left as stupid,” but that “liberals view conservatives as evil.” We see evidence of that second part constantly. The vehement hatred of those who support America First is proven every day. The hatred burns so deeply in fact that they seek out ways to create out of whole cloth imaginative conspiracies of Trump working with Russia and double impeachments based on literally no evidence. They justify the advancement of ludicrous stories of deranged presidents lurching at steering wheels—even when one or more secret service personnel were present and are able to testify to the opposite. They claim pro-lifers hate women. They claim that parents who don’t want drag queens in their kids’ schools are bigots. And they especially despise people who are faithful to God, family, and nation. Nope, there exists plenty of evidence that the second part of Krauthammer’s theory is true. So what about the first half? Should conservatives any longer give the left the benefit of the doubt as to their policies? Should we innocently believe they are simply misinformed as opposed to radically devoted agents to an agenda that is not only anti-American but that in fact is… evil? New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz my long time friend and weekly guest on my show has consistently chided me on the air to take Krauthammer’s observation as true. Because I believe Karol to be immensely insightful and one of the most important voices of common sense in America—I usually try. Yet with apologies to Charles and Karol, I can no longer. Maya Angelou is famous for saying, “When a person shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Well this week (and honestly for the duration of their term in office) the Biden *Administration has been and is telling us exactly who they are. When asked directly by a CNN anchor on live camera, “What do you say to a family who can’t afford $4.85 a gallon for months, much less years?” Brian Deese a top economic advisor to *President Biden responded in essence by saying that the “stakes are too high” and that this is about “the future of the liberal world order,” and that they’d “have to stand firm.” In other words families who can’t afford to pay double or triple for the energy they need to merely survive must absorb the punch to the face and make the sacrifice for the greater good. And if we can’t do so, tough bananas our sacrifice will have been worth it all. He’s not lying or shading the message - he means exactly what he said and they are standing firm. They are willing to impose suffering onto the people they work for in order to bring about their newly enlightened, “we know better than you,” reality. This is Hitler gassing humans, Thanos snapping his finger, Stalin executing dissidents, and Bin Ladin toppling buildings—all for some greater good. And it’s not just energy, this group doesn’t care if babies have formula, your family has food, or if women bleed out from their monthly cycles. They don’t care if a boy exposes his penis to your daughter in her locker room, or if cashless bail states release criminals that just tried to rape or assault her. They accept all forms of racism so long as God fearing men ultimately get blamed for everything. They despise police—who are here to slow or stop evil in progress. And they help elect prosecutors who will refuse to hold evil people accountable. This is what the liberal world order looks like. But in order for them to bring it about they must starve the serfs and take away any resource that would prevent them doing rebelling. Hence no money or guns for you and me. Nope Charles and Karol, I’m taking a rare step in disagreeing with both of you. The left is evil—full stop. They are willing to kill, maim, bleed, assault, and starve you until you comply. And I think it’s time we take Ms. Angelou’s observation, call it what it is, and stop them. They are showing us who they are!
The Meaning of Patriotism
From Andrew Sullivan, "This July Fourth, two Republican women are keeping the flame of this republic alive":
To see what is in front of our noses is a constant challenge, and perhaps never more so in a time of such awful post-truth polarization. But what happened in the January 6 hearings this past week will, in my view, be seen one day as a watershed moment either in the history of this country’s revival as a liberal democracy or in this republic’s rapid collapse. Two women, Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson, went back and forth, asking and answering questions, slowly, calmly, and methodically laying out a story of an actual attempt by a president of the United States to rally and lead an armed mob to assault the Congress to overturn an election. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. Hutchinson’s testimony added critical facts to the record: that Trump knew full well what the mob was intending to do in advance; and knew that they were armed: “You know, I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not there to hurt me.” He knew what he was attempting was criminal; tried physically to lead the mob in their rampage; and when he was foiled, egged on the attack, and refused to quiet or quell the mob for hours — even as it threatened to kill his own vice president. There is no way now to deny that Trump was behind all of it, uniquely responsible. In the face of this, so many Republican men have kept quiet, caved, slunk away, equivocated, or changed the subject. So many, like Tucker Carlson, have responded with smears and foul lies. So many have refused to testify, or dodged subpoenas. These sickening cowards wouldn’t vote to impeach after the grossest attack on the Constitution in history; and wouldn’t cooperate with the committee. But two Republican women faced our hideous reality this week — even if it meant the obliteration of their careers, and being subject to real threats of violence. And let us pause to note just how Republican these two women are. Cheney is the daughter of the former vice president, a man who once defined Republicanism; she represents Wyoming, the most Republican state out of 50; she’s pro-life, defended torture, never saw a war she didn’t want to start; opposed even her own sister’s same-sex marriage; and voted with Trump 93 percent of the time, more than the woman who ousted her from House leadership, Elise Stefanik. Hutchinson, for her part, was at the heart of the Trump world. She ascended from mere intern — working in the offices of both Ted Cruz and the House minority whip — to become the primary assistant to Trump’s chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows. If she dyed her hair blonde, she could read the news on Fox. Hutchinson had a lot to lose by testifying — as women seem to in general compared to men:[T]here is evidence that women suffer more direct retaliation as whistleblowers. One study in 2008 found that women who reported wrongdoing within their organizations experienced more retaliation than men who did the same. And, while higher-ranking men who reported wrongdoing experienced less retaliation, higher-ranking women were not as insulated.And notice the tone of the exchange between the two women. In a world of hyperbolic, pontificating males, Cheney asked clear, direct, empirical questions, and Hutchinson replied with the same attention to detail, the same surety of voice, the same care not to exaggerate, and to get things right. Yes, some of it was hearsay — but Hutchinson herself took pains to note when it was. And both, it seemed to me, understood their grave responsibility. This is the Republican Party I used to respect. This is the conservatism I believe in. A conservatism whose first tasks are the defense of the Constitution, the rule of law, and a belief in objective truth. Like Margaret Thatcher in her day, Liz Cheney has a steel stronger than most men, and similar courage. In her superb speech at the Reagan Library this week, Cheney also emphasized the feminine qualities that made this week historic:I come to this choice [between Trump and the Constitution] as a mother, committed to ensuring that my children and their children can continue to live in an America where the peaceful transfer of power is guaranteed.And she paid tribute to the women, often low on the DC totem pole, who rose to the challenge of citizenship, when so many powerful men failed:I’ve been incredibly moved by young women who have come forward to testify, some who worked on the Trump campaign, some who worked in the Trump White House, some who worked in offices on Capitol Hill, all of whom knew immediately that what had happened must never happen again … Little girls across the country are seeing what it really means to love your country, what it really means to be a patriot. And so I want to speak to every young girl who may be watching tonight. The power is yours and so is the responsibility.Listen to it all...
Monday, July 4, 2022
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It’s the 10th Anniversary of San Diego Fireworks Show That Set Them All Off at Once (VIDEO)
Wild.
From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "OH, THAT EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: It’s the 10th anniversary of the firework show where San Diego accidentally set off all 7,000 fireworks at once."
Happy 10-year anniversary to the greatest fireworks show in history, when San Diego accidentally shot off 7,000 fireworks at once.
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) July 4, 2022
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/qihO4zeXP3
Who Are the Real Insurrectionists?
It's Victor Davis Hanson, at American Greatness, "In truth, “insurrection” has been fueled by the Left since 2015":
For 120 days in summer 2020, violent protesters destroyed some $2 billion in property and injured 1,500 police officers in riots that led to over 35 deaths.
Because blue-state mayors and governors saw BLM and Antifa instigators as useful street soldiers, most of those arrested were never tried in court. Street thugs paid no price for declaring themselves de facto owners of downtown areas of Seattle, which police themselves conceded were no-go zones. Why did public officials in blue states ignore the violence? They were certain that it enjoyed majority support among their leftwing constituencies.
Indeed, some leftist icons cheered on the violence. Well after the failed attempt to storm the White House grounds, in June 2020, the Democratic candidate for vice president Kamala Harris warned us that protestors were “not going to let up, and they should not.” What did Harris mean by “should not?”—when she knew numerous protests that summer had ended in terrible violence? Was she reckless in the manner Trump was said to be by encouraging a demonstration on January 6?
The architect of the “1619 Project” Nikole Hannah-Jones assured the nation that vast destruction of (someone else’s property) was not a real crime. CNN’s Chris Cuomo gushed that violent demonstrations and riots were American traditions. Were these national voices urging calm during weeks of violent rioting and looting?
There were no investigations, no congressional committees, and no voices of outrage from the left-wing establishment over months of such carnage. Indeed, much of the organization of the violent protests was facilitated by social media that was apparently unbothered that the medium under their stewardship was used to torch and loot...
California Governor Gavin Newsom Fuels Presidential Speculation With Television Ad Buys in Florida (VIDEO)
I can't see the appeal, personally, He's been a terrible governor. California's shot to hell, especially in San Francisco, Newsom's bailiwick.
At NBC News Bay Area, "Despite saying he has no interest in running for U.S. president, California Gov. Gavin Newsom will start airing ads in Florida starting Monday. So, what will be in them, and what does this mean?"
And on Twitter:
We’re about to celebrate Independence Day -- but Freedom is under attack by Republican leaders in states like Florida.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 3, 2022
Banning books.
Restricting speech.
Making it harder to vote.
Criminalizing women and doctors.
It’s time to stand up. Don’t let them take your freedom. pic.twitter.com/cFI5UzgZzX
Leah Pezzetti's Fourth of July Forecast
It's going to be a little cooler than normal today, but beautiful and clear for tonight's July 4th fireworks.
Here's the lovely Ms. Leah, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Supreme Court Ruling on Roe v. Wade Further Polarizes a Divided Nation
You'd think it couldn't get any worse. We've been viciously divided for years, but yeah, the Dobbs decision was like throwing gasoline on the fire.
At the New York Times, "Spurred by the Supreme Court, a Nation Divides Along a Red-Blue Axis":
On abortion, climate change, guns and much more, two Americas — one liberal, one conservative — are moving in opposite directions. Pressed by Supreme Court decisions diminishing rights that liberals hold dear and expanding those cherished by conservatives, the United States appears to be drifting apart into separate nations, with diametrically opposed social, environmental and health policies. Call these the Disunited States. The most immediate breaking point is on abortion, as about half the country will soon limit or ban the procedure while the other half expands or reinforces access to reproductive rights. But the ideological fault lines extend far beyond that one topic, to climate change, gun control and L.G.B.T.Q. and voting rights. On each of those issues, the country’s Northeast and West Coast are moving in the opposite direction from its midsection and Southeast — with a few exceptions, like the islands of liberalism in Illinois and Colorado, and New Hampshire’s streak of conservatism. Even where public opinion is more mixed, like in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, the Republican grip on state legislatures has ensured that policies in those states conform with those of the reddest states in the union, rather than strike a middle ground. The tearing at the seams has been accelerated by the six-vote conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which has embraced a muscular states-rights federalism. In the past 10 days the court has erased the constitutional right to an abortion, narrowed the federal government’s ability to regulate climate-warming pollution and blocked liberal states and cities from barring most of their citizens from carrying concealed guns outside of their homes. “They’ve produced this Balkanized house divided, and we’re only beginning to see how bad that will be,” said David Blight, a Yale historian who specializes in the era of American history that led to the Civil War. Historians have struggled to find a parallel moment, raising the 19th-century fracturing over slavery; the clashes between the executive branch and the Supreme Court in the New Deal era of the 1930s; the fierce battles over civil rights during Reconstruction and in the 1950s and early 1960s; and the rise of armed, violent groups like the Weather Underground in the late ’60s. For some people, the divides have grown so deep and so personal that they have felt compelled to pick up and move from one America to the other. Many conservatives have taken to social media to express thanks over leaving high-tax, highly regulated blue states for red states with smaller government and, now, laws prohibiting abortion. Others have transited the American rift in the opposite direction. “I did everything I could to put my mouth where my money was, to bridge the divide with my own actions,” said Howard Garrett, a Black, gay 29-year-old from Franklin, Tenn., who ran for alderman in recent years, organized the town’s first Juneteenth celebration and worked on L.G.B.T.Q. outreach to local schools, only to be greeted with harassment and death threats. Mr. Garrett moved to Washington, D.C., last year. “People were just sick in their heart,” he said, “and that was something you can’t change.” On abortion, history seems to be riffing on itself. Both supporters and opponents of abortion rights see a parallel to the abolition of slavery. As states like Illinois and Colorado vow to become “safe harbors” for women in surrounding states seeking to end their pregnancies, abortion rights advocates see an echo of past efforts by antislavery states in the North. But abortion opponents see themselves as emancipating the unborn, and often compare the Roe decision’s treatment of the fetus to the Dred Scott ruling in 1857 that denied Black people the rights of American citizenship. Conservatives are not resting on their victories: The anti-abortion movement, long predicated on returning the issue of reproductive rights to elected representatives in the states, talks now about putting a national abortion ban before Congress. Roger Severino, a leading social conservative and senior official in the Trump administration, invoked the struggle of Black Americans for equality, saying the 10 years that passed between the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ending “separate but equal” segregation and Congress’s passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 mirrored the struggle ahead on abortion. “I cannot see us living in two Americas where we have two classes of human beings in this country: some protected fully in law, some who are not protected at all,” said Mr. Severino, now the vice president for domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank...
ABC Considers Jan. 6 Whistleblower Cassidy Hutchison For 'The View'
She's going to be a television rock star pundit.
Not sure how long she'd make on The View, though. The women on the show who've held the "conservative seat" previously --- Abbey Huntsman, Jedediah Bila, and Meghan McCain, for example --- have quit after having enough of Joy, Sunny, Whoopie, and the other left-wing nut-job on the panel. (*Eye-roll*.)
At Radar Online, "ABC Mulls Whether to Screen Test Jan. 6 Whistleblower Cassidy Hutchison As Conservative Pundit On 'The View'."
Bette Midler, Tipping Point
I don't know if we're tipping or not, though I wouldn't have thought old Bette would be sounding the tocsin.
On Twitter:
Tipping point? https://t.co/5B1wkJxssq
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) July 4, 2022
Americans Are Cutting Back This Fourth of July — What? Biden's America! We Don't Cutback on the Fourth or Any Other Day, and This Guy's Blaming Gas Stations
Out of touch in putting it mildly, on Twitter below.
Americans should be enjoy the blessings and bounties of the country today, not worrying whether they can afford a couple of pounds of ground beef. It's ridiculous.
And at the Wall Street Journal, "Fourth of July Cookouts Attract Party Crasher: Rising Food Costs":
My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 2, 2022
Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.
The average cost of a summer cookout rose 17% from last year, according to a survey, prompting some Americans to dial back their festivities. As the price of food continues to climb with the Fourth of July approaching, Jayne Crucius had to decide whether she would grill her traditional beef tenderloin. When Ms. Crucius saw that a five-pound beef tenderloin would set her back about $135, she decided to skip it. Instead, she’s serving chicken and pork ribs at a Fourth of July party at her cottage in Atkinson, N.H. “We can eat a lot of chicken for that kind of money,” said Ms. Crucius, who is 74 years old. Consumers across the U.S. are choosing between dialing back on their Independence Day celebrations or accepting the higher costs at the grocery store. The average cost of a summer cookout for 10 people this year is $69.68, a 17% increase from last year, according to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, an advocacy group that represents farmers. The rise hit most Fourth of July staples, including hamburgers, pork chops, potato salad and ice cream, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The price of ground beef is up 36%, vanilla ice cream jumped 10% The AFBF attributes the price increases to continuing supply-chain disruptions, inflation and the war in Ukraine. The supply-chain problems and inflation have also increased the costs of farm supplies, putting the squeeze on farmers, according to the federation. Beer lovers are also going to pay more this year if they want to sip their lagers and ales while enjoying the fireworks. Beer prices are up nearly 25% for the year to date, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo, while wine prices have risen about 6%. U.S. consumer inflation rose by 8.6% in May, its highest jump since December 1981, according to the Labor Department. Increases in energy prices and a nearly 12% rise in grocery costs drove May’s inflation jump, the department said. There doesn’t appear to be any relief on the horizon for consumers. Some of the nation’s biggest food suppliers have said they would continue to raise prices as they face higher costs for labor, packaging, ingredients and transportation. The increase in fuel costs is also making it more expensive to produce and sell food. Rising gas prices are hurting consumers too. With less disposable income, more shoppers are searching for ways to stretch their dollars. Susan Doherty, who is semiretired and lives in Windham, N.H., said she and her husband are eating more chicken and pork for dinner because beef has gotten so expensive. Ms. Doherty said she typically serves marinated sirloin steak tips for her Fourth of July party. But this year, she plans on buying fewer steak tips and will supplement the beef with marinated chicken, she said...
Mass Shooting at Fourth of July Parade in Highland Park, Illinois
I'm sure most of you have heard the news already.
At the Chicago Tribune, "Highland Park shooting: ‘It was chaotic,’ reports of 6 dead, 2 dozen others likely shot during Fourth of July parade."
And on Twitter:
My first thoughts on word of the news, sadly. #HighlandPark https://t.co/gYRvLSroQW
— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) July 4, 2022
Thursday, June 30, 2022
Steve Koonin, Unsettled
At Amazon, Steve Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters.
Ghislaine Maxwell Sentenced to 20 Years In Prison For Conspiring With Jeffrey Epstein to Sexually Abuse Minors (VIDEO)
She's really a monster.
At the New York Times, "Ghislaine Maxwell Receives 20 Years for Aiding Epstein in Sex Trafficking":
Ms. Maxwell, who was convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and abuse underage girls, will spend much of the rest of her life in prison. Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite who conspired with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday by a judge who said she played a pivotal role in facilitating a horrific scheme that spanned continents and years. Ms. Maxwell, 60, the daughter of the British media magnate Robert Maxwell, was convicted on Dec. 29 of sex trafficking and other counts after a monthlong trial during which the government presented testimony and evidence depicting Ms. Maxwell as a sophisticated predator who groomed vulnerable young women and girls as young as 14 years old for abuse by Mr. Epstein. Her sentencing, which drew throngs of onlookers and journalists to a Lower Manhattan courthouse, brought a measure of resolution to a lurid case whose primary actor eluded justice by suicide. The case against Ms. Maxwell showed how she and Mr. Epstein, her longtime companion, used wealth and status to exploit and abuse the vulnerable. The trial afforded a gaze into a world where the patina of glamour hid the routine infliction of intimate, life-changing cruelty. “The damage done to these young girls was incalculable,” said Judge Alison J. Nathan of Federal District Court in Manhattan before imposing the sentence on Tuesday. The prison term was shorter than the government had recommended — federal prosecutors in Manhattan had asked the judge to impose at least 30 years. If the conviction is upheld, Ms. Maxwell, with potential credit for good behavior and the two years she has spent in jail, could leave prison in her 70s. Throughout the trial, Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys sought to discredit her accusers’ accounts and argued that the government was trying her for Mr. Epstein’s crimes. In court on Tuesday, one of those lawyers, Bobbi C. Sternheim, described the way Ms. Maxwell’s life had been clouded by two men: her “narcissistic, brutish” father and the “controlling, demanding, manipulative” Mr. Epstein. Ms. Maxwell herself spoke in court on Tuesday — her first public remarks since her July 2020 arrest. Standing at the lectern in blue prison scrubs, her ankles shackled, she acknowledged “the pain and anguish” of the victimized women who had addressed the court before her. But she stopped short of apologizing or accepting responsibility for her crimes. “It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Maxwell said. “Jeffrey Epstein should have been here before all of you.” Ms. Maxwell’s trial and conviction were widely seen as the legal reckoning that Mr. Epstein, 66, never had. The disgraced financier hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell one month after his July 2019 arrest as he awaited his own trial on sex trafficking charges...
The Left Killed the Pro-Choice Coalition
It's the great Kat Rosenberg, at UnHerd, "Feminists are increasingly demonising pregnancy":
In 1992, while the ascendant evangelical Right was pushing to roll back abortion rights as part of its “family values” platform, the Democratic party stumbled on a pro-choice message that would not only win the presidency but also define the party’s position for years to come. It consisted of three words, first spoken by then-presidential nominee Bill Clinton, and ultimately heard so often that they started to take on the air of catechism: an incantation whose mere utterance rendered a politician rhetorically bulletproof. Safe. Legal. Rare. For those whose interest in the American Left only goes back as far as the Obama administration, it’s hard to explain what a triumph this was. Not only did the phrase create a big tent under which even people who felt morally ambivalent about abortion could comfortably gather, it also forced Republicans into insane, reactionary counter-positions. As well as safe and legal abortions, the Democrats were promoting comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access, which would help prevent unwanted pregnancies from happening in the first place — and Republicans, rather than make common cause with their enemies, mostly opted to argue against these things. And so, for a brief but magical moment, the Democrats could reasonably claim to be the party of fewer abortions and more shagging, while conservatives were left to take the deeply unpopular position that all non-procreative sex was bad, actually. Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic has observed the remarkable staying power of “safe, legal, and rare”, which “translated into language the inchoate sentiments of millions of Americans so exactly that they had to hear it only once for it to become their firmly held position on abortion”. The message was so effective that Hillary Clinton even resurrected it in 2008 during her first (ultimately unsuccessful) play for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two years after that President Barack Obama explicitly identified the phrase as “the right formulation” when it came to discussing abortion. And yet, in the past 10 years, “safe, legal and rare” has fallen out of favour, as arguments emerged in the more language-obsessed corners of the Left that the “rare” part was unduly stigmatising. “It posits that having an abortion is a bad decision and one that a pregnant person shouldn’t have to make”, one activist wrote last year, in an essay demanding the phrase be retired. It’s hard to overstate the utter self-sabotaging lunacy of this argument, which not only undermined one of the most popular lines of party messaging in decades but is also farcically nonsensical: “safe, legal, and rare” are surely a solid and desirable set of criteria for any medical procedure that is both unpleasant and unplanned, as abortions (but not only abortions) invariably are. And yet, the argument prevailed: by the time Hillary ran for president in 2016, the word “rare” had been excised from the Democratic party platform. In its place arose a variety of messages, none nearly as effective, and some deeply strange, even ghoulish. Among the most notable side effects of the argument that abortion need not be rare is an increasingly prevalent notion that perhaps pregnancy should be. In the days following the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision that ultimately overturned Roe v Wade, the very online Left traded horror stories about what it can do to your body. One much-shared Twitter thread from an obstetrician enumerated the risks of pregnancy like a carnival barker marketing a house of horrors: “Hemorrhage from miscarriage or ectopic, sepsis, blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, hyperemesis and intractable vomiting, increased domestic violence, exacerbations of heart disease, lupus and rheumatologic disease, hypertension, seizures, and mental illness, diabetes” — it’s all right here, folks, and that’s before we even get to the torn anal sphincter and urinary incontinence! Step right up, ladies! The pro-choice press has only reinforced the horror, by giving us wall-to-wall coverage of the danger of pregnancy and childbirth. Here’s New York Times columnist Pamela Paul with a gut-twisting account of her emergency C-section, which culminated in “being held down by two doctors while my body parts were gathered and reinserted into my torso”. Here’s Kate Manning in the Washington Post talking about urine leakage, blood-covered bedsheets, “cracked nipples and infected breasts”. Here’s Scientific American warning us that “even a seemingly ‘safe’ pregnancy is not without significant risk”. Of course, the intention is only to emphasise that nobody should be forced to go through this — but you would be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that not only should abortion be available on demand, but that no woman in her right mind would ever carry a pregnancy to term unless she had some sort of death wish. Gone are the days when the Left took pains to emphasise that it was not pro-abortion, but against unwanted pregnancy; instead, this moderate stance has metastasised into a demonisation of pregnancy in general. Some have framed this as a look-what-you-made-me-do position forced by the anti-choice Right: “If there was ever anything beautiful about pregnancy, the anti-abortion movement has devoured it, and spat up something hateful in its place. Pregnancy, for many, will now end dreams, alter futures, maybe even kill,” writes New York Magazine‘s Sarah Jones. In a recent essay for The Bulwark, Mona Charen laments that “young women reading these stories may get the impression that pregnancy is a hellscape of pain, disfigurement, and degradation”. (I disagree with this argument not in substance but in scope: these stories are no less terrifying to women in middle age who, in their waning fertility, might have been on the fence about having kids and are now loathe to do so lest they turn into the Elephant Man.) But even if this type of rhetoric doesn’t ultimately put a dent in the birth rate, it seems to reflect a penchant on the Left for the opposite of coalition-building, for busting up the movement one taboo turn of phrase at a time. Goodbye, “rare”. Goodbye, “women”. Goodbye, “choice” — the beating heart of the movement, now categorised as “harmful language” — and goodbye to the allies who favoured these terms, now severed and drifting away from the movement like Inuit elders who have outlived their usefulness, cast onto an ice floe to die. Most remarkable is that abortion access is, in fact, an issue with direct bearing on the lives of a vast majority of Americans — not only women, but any man in a heterosexual partnership with one — and yet some of the loudest voices on this issue insist on describing it as anything but. Consider the now-notorious tweet in which the ACLU listed all the groups most impacted by abortion bans. “The LGBTQ community” was second; “women” were not listed at all. Such rhetoric is inevitably adopted in the name of inclusivity, which is funny, given how it not only sparks internecine infighting but also rules out virtually every position that might have had widespread resonance in the way that “safe, legal, and rare” once did...
Allie Beth Stuckey: Pro-Lifers Have Been Doing Everything
She's very passionate, on Twitter.
To the evangelical leaders telling us we shouldn’t celebrate overturning Roe when we’re not doing enough for moms and children: you’re wrong.
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) June 30, 2022
For decades, Pro-lifers have been doing all the work you say needs to be done. You are welcome to get off the couch and join us. pic.twitter.com/8NMKCnLOzy
Life After Roe Will Be Worse Than Democrats Feared
It's from Katha Pollitt, a well-known extremist on abortion rights.
At the Nation, "We are dealing with religious fanatics, with police chiefs on a mission and prosecutors looking to make their careers in deeply red places":
Let’s not kid ourselves. The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade, is going to be a catastrophe. There’s a German proverb that translates roughly as “the soup is never eaten as hot as it’s cooked,” meaning things won’t be as bad as you fear. Sometimes that’s true, but it wasn’t for the Germans, and it won’t be for us. For years pro-choicers have warned that the right to abortion was at risk, only to be called Chicken Littles by pundits and politicos, usually men. Some thought returning abortion to the states would lead to a middle-of-the-road practical solution and, more important, take abortion out of politics. Ha! Others were sure no one wanted bans to happen: Republicans only used “cultural issues” to distract voters from the party’s real agenda, screwing the working class on behalf of corporations. Thomas Frank made himself famous with a book devoted to that thesis, What’s the Matter with Kansas? I hope he apologizes to the women of Kansas, because the fears he dismissed have come to pass. What can be done? Abortion funds, which raise money for low-income patients’ procedures, are wonderful, and you should give them all your money now, but even before Dobbs, they couldn’t help everyone in need. Their work will be harder now. On Monday, abortion funds in Texas suspended operations because of laws criminalizing helping women seeking to end their pregnancies. If you thought, as many did, that abortion opponents would be satisfied with a return to pre-Roe hypocrisies, when millions of women got abortions while law enforcement mostly looked the other way, think again. What about traveling to pro-choice states, some of which have recently strengthened protections for abortion rights? That’s not so easy, even for people with money, although it will be much harder for low-income patients. Most women who have abortions are mothers, after all; many have jobs that won’t allow them time off. They can’t just pick up and fly to New York City or Chicago, or drive all day and night to reach the nearest clinic. They’ll need help, and help is expensive. The Brigid Alliance, an abortion travel service which pays all costs—transportation, lodging, food, child care—spends about $1,000 per patient. The influx of patients from states with bans will affect care in the states they travel to. Clinics are already overscheduled. Soon they will be overwhelmed. Ah, but there are abortion pills, some say, which make it possible to end pregnancies cheaply at home. Pills are crucial, but not a panacea. Yes, they are safe, unlike illegal abortions pre-Roe, but you have to know they exist, how to find them, how to take them, and what to say if you end up going to the ER so you don’t get arrested. You have to know how pregnant you are—they don’t work so well after 12 weeks. You have to avoid copycat anti-abortion websites. And around 5 percent of the time, they won’t work. Who knows how long it will be legal to send them, by mail or in person, to an abortion-ban state? Abortion opponents are already working on ways to criminalize pills and people who make it possible to acquire them. The latest: Facebook and Instagram are taking down information on how to obtain them. Remember when information wanted to be free? So let’s face it. In half the country, women are fetal vessels now. Their lives, their physical and mental health, their education, their employment, their relationships, their ability to care for their other children, their hopes, ambitions and dreams—none of that matters. What matters is that they incubate a fertilized egg and deliver an infant—which, as Amy Coney Barrett suggested, they can always drop off at the nearest safe-haven baby box. The law may not come after you if you give a pregnant friend money for the procedure or drive her to a free state; anti-abortion activists might not track your pregnancy digitally, as Jia Tolentino warns, but then again, they might (memo to readers: Delete your period tracker now). The capacity exists: to know your online searches, your travel plans, your proximity to a clinic. Does a fetal vessel have rights? I wouldn’t count on it...
Still more at that top link, if you're up to it.
Joe Biden Wants to Deep-Sex the Filibuster to Codify Abortion Rights
He's the biggest asshole.
Gawd.
At the Los Angeles Times, "Biden backs changing Senate filibuster rules as a way to codify abortion rights":
MADRID — President Biden said Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision ending a constitutional right to abortion is “destabilizing” and that he supports changing Senate rules to codify nationwide abortion protections. He maintained the ruling does not affect U.S. standing on the world stage as he took credit for modernizing the NATO alliance to adapt to new threats from Russia and China. Biden was speaking to reporters at the conclusion of a five-day foreign trip to huddle with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Madrid and the leaders of the Group of 7 advanced democratic economies in the Bavarian Alps, which came as the nation was still grappling with the fallout from Friday’s Supreme Court decision. “America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been,” Biden said. “But one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of United States in overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy.” He added: “I could understand why the American people are frustrated because of what the Supreme Court did.” RiseupforAbortionRights rallies throughout downtown opposing the recent Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v Wade. Biden said he would support changing the Senate filibuster rules, which require 60 votes to pass most legislation, to allow a bill extending nationwide abortion protections to pass by simple majority, but he said it would likely require voters to send additional Democratic senators to Washington to get done...
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