Gallup: Poor Life Ratings Reach Record High

We're in a Carteresque malaise.

The chart below tells a lot. 

Life evaluations dropped to 46.4 of Americans as "thriving" during the Great (Crash) Recession of November 2008, and during late 2020, during a coronavirus pandemic, in December of that year.

See, "In U.S., Poor Life Ratings Reach Record High":

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of Americans who evaluate their lives poorly enough to be considered "suffering" on Gallup's Life Evaluation Index was 5.6% in July, the highest since the index's inception in 2008. This exceeds the previous high of 4.8% measured in April and is statistically higher than all prior estimates in the COVID-19 era. Across extensive measurement since January 2008, the suffering percentage has reached 4.5% or higher on a handful of occasions.

The most recent results, obtained July 26 to Aug. 2, 2022, are based on web surveys of 3,649 U.S. adults as a part of the Gallup Panel, a probability-based, non-opt-in panel of about 115,000 adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

For its Life Evaluation Index, Gallup classifies Americans as "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering," according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Those who rate both their current and future lives a 4 or lower are classified as suffering. Those who rate their current life a 7 or higher and their anticipated life in five years an 8 or higher are classified as thriving.

The percentage of U.S. adults estimated to be thriving has steadily declined since it reached a record high of 59.2% in June 2021. The latest estimate of 51.2% is an 18-month low. The lowest recorded thriving rate of 46.4% was measured twice -- first, in November 2008 amid the Great Recession, and second, in late April 2020, during the initial economic shutdown associated with the outbreak of COVID-19 in the U.S...

 People are stressing. It's sad. 

Still more.

John Agresto, The Death of Learning

At Amazon, John Agresto, The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do about It.

Is Israel An Apartheid State?

It's Olga Meshoe, for Prager University:

SFSC Honey

A sweet young lady from South Florida State College, on Twitter.

California Voters Say Biden Shouldn't Seek a Second Term

 Heh. 

California's the looniest leftist state. That voters here reject Bident for 2024 is something. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "California voters favor Newsom over Harris, don’t want Biden to run again, poll finds."

Ukraine's Southern Forces Wage a Slow Campaign to Wear the Russians Down

The war in Ukriane is inching back up in the news. Ukrainian forces launched mysterious bombing strikes in the Crimea, taking out a number of Russia warplanes. 

More at the Wall Street Journal, "Ukraine’s Southern Forces Wage a Slow Campaign to Wear the Russians Down":

A VILLAGE IN KHERSON REGION, Ukraine—Until recently, Russian artillery pounded Ukrainian forces on the front lines of the war in the south.

But today, just 3 miles from the Russian line, incoming shells have become far less frequent since Ukrainian forces started taking out Russian ammunition depots and bridges in the Kherson region and Crimea.

“There’s about half as much incoming as three or four weeks ago,” says Yevhen, a Ukrainian infantry squad commander, who hasn’t fired his rifle in more than a month.

This is what Ukraine’s offensive to retake occupied territory in the south of the country looks like: not a dramatic ground assault, but a series of artillery strikes designed to cut Russian supply lines and isolate Russian troops in the region.

Using U.S.-supplied long-range Himars rocket systems, Ukrainian forces have disabled several bridges across the Dnipro River and the smaller Inhulets River in recent weeks. The Ukrainians have also taken out a series of ammunition depots, including one this week in Crimea, the peninsula in southern Ukraine that Moscow seized in 2014 and has used as a staging ground for its assault on the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

As a result of these strikes, Russian troops west of the rivers are now being resupplied by ferries and pontoon bridges, military analysts say, and keeping them supplied is already a challenge. Ammunition depots are being moved further away, out of artillery range, meaning supply trucks now run longer routes than they were designed for.

Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s Southern Command, said the Russians pulled their command centers back to the east side of the Dnipro River several days ago.

By starving the Russians of supplies, she said, the Ukrainians hope they can force an army with far more troops and greater firepower to retreat.

“There are more of them. They have more weapons. They’re more powerful in the air,” Ms. Humeniuk said. “So we have to find a way to beat them under these conditions. It’s not easy, but it’s doable.”

Kherson is the only regional capital that Moscow has taken since the full-scale invasion began in February, and the Kremlin has signaled its intention of holding on to the city. Russian-installed officials in Kherson and other occupied territories indicated they plan to hold a public vote on joining the Russian Federation as early as September. Kherson is also crucial to achieving what Western officials say was one of the Kremlin’s original aims: to take the coast from the Kherson region all the way to Odessa, thereby cutting off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.

When an ammunition depot is hit, a Ukrainian special-operations commander in the south said, the special-operations teams inside Russian-held territory work to pinpoint where the Russians moved their bases. “We’ll say, ‘Soldiers come between 6 and 8. Hit it then,’” he said. “Then we see who from the Russian side comes to check, and how they’re going to regroup.”

Partisans inside Russian-occupied territory have also helped the Ukrainian cause, Ms. Humeniuk said, sending the military information about logistics centers they want to target. On Tuesday, an ammunition depot in Crimea, more than 100 miles from the front, was blown up by Ukrainian saboteurs, according to both Russian and Ukrainian officials—a tactical blow and a warning to Moscow that even logistics centers far from the battlefield could be at risk.

Military analysts say the Ukrainian strategy takes advantage of existing weaknesses in the Russian military. The Russian army, they say, is far more reliant on rail transport than other modern militaries. As a result, it has a smaller fleet of trucks equipped to move ammunition and heavy weaponry. And with trains no longer able to get close to the front, those trucks are having to travel further than they were designed for to resupply troops west of the river.

Earlier this month, the Ukrainians hit an ammunition train, disabling the primary train line between Crimea and Kherson, according to the British Defense Ministry... Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said international sanctions have also put pressure on Russian supply lines, because the occupying forces can’t order replacements for certain parts and precision weapons. “The Russian logistics system is exhausted—it was never designed to sustain a long conflict outside of Russia,” he said. Gen. Hodges said the Russians would eventually have to pull back from their positions west of the Dnipro River—including the city of Kherson, which sits near where the narrow Inhulets River joins the wider Dnipro River, which Russians must cross to resupply the city. “If you can’t keep the required inflow of supplies, at some point you have to give ground,” said retired Maj. Gen. Edward Dorman, the former director of logistics and engineering for U.S. Central Command. “Wars have been lost because of logistics.” Along the southern front line, Ukrainian troops say they can feel the Russian supply problems. “Before we blew the bridges, when we’d hit their artillery positions, they’d replace it in the next moment,” said Roman, an infantry company commander in the same regiment as Yevhen. But in a sign of how difficult the Ukrainian campaign remains, he said there was still more incoming artillery from Russian forces than outgoing Ukrainian fire...

Beth Macy, Raising Lazarus

From the author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America.

See Beth Macy, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis.

Rhian on Holiday

On Twitter.

"Really, the Word You're Using to Fight Antisemitism is 'Jewface'?"

Wait for it, from Bill Maher, on Real Time:

'Conservatism' Is No Longer Enough

At the American Mind, "All hands on deck as we enter the counter-revolutionary moment":

Let’s be blunt. The United States has become two nations occupying the same country. When pressed, or in private, many would now agree. Fewer are willing to take the next step and accept that most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.

I don’t just mean the millions of illegal immigrants. Obviously, those foreigners who have bypassed the regular process for entering our country, and probably will never assimilate to our language and culture, are—politically as well as legally—aliens. I’m really referring to the many native-born people—some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower—who may technically be citizens of the United States but are no longer (if they ever were) Americans. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

What about those who do consider themselves Americans? By and large, I am referring to the 75 million people who voted in the last election against the senile figurehead of a party that stands for mob violence, ruthless censorship, and racial grievances, not to mention bureaucratic despotism. Regardless of Trump’s obvious flaws, preferring his re-election was not a difficult choice for these voters. In fact—leaving aside the Republican never-Trumpers and some squeamish centrists—it was not a difficult choice for either side. Both Right and Left know where they stand today… and it is not together. Not anymore.

Those who wanted to Make America Great Again may refer to themselves as Republicans, though many realize that, apart from Trump, the party does not really care about them. Many may also, in some loose way, consider themselves conservatives. But among these plumbers, insurance salesmen, gym owners, and factory workers there’s one question you can pretty much guarantee they never discuss with their family and friends: “What kind of conservative are you?” This question has virtually no bearing on the problems that overshadow their lives.

It is still a question, however, that occupies intellectuals, journalists, and the world of think tanks. And this matters, unfortunately, because however sensible and down to earth the voters may be, an effective political movement needs intellectual leadership to organize and explain the movement’s purposes and goals. This leadership is still divided into—to name a few—neocons, paleocons (not to be confused with paleo-libertarians!) rad-trads, the dissident right, reformicons, etc. A lot of these labels are a distraction. But before I reject these disputes as mostly irrelevant, let me make a couple of points about why we can’t immediately leave this debate behind—and so why an essay like this is necessary.

“The conservative movement” still matters because if the defenders of America continue to squabble among themselves, the victory of progressive tyranny will be assured. See you in the gulag. On the off chance we can avoid that fate, it will only be if the shrinking number of Americans unite and work together. But we can’t simply mandate that conservatives “set aside” their differences, no matter how urgent it is that they do so. So my goal here is to show why we must all unite around the one, authentic America, the only one which transcends all the factional navel-gazing and pointless conservababble.

Practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve. What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.

This recognition that the original America is more or less gone sets the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy apart from almost everyone else on the Right. Paradoxically, the organization that has been uniquely devoted to understanding and teaching the principles of the American founding now sees with special clarity why “conserving” that legacy is a dead end. Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is a sort of counter-revolution, and the only road forward...

Keep reading.

It’s Inevitable: Trump Will Be Indicted

From Julie Kelly, at American Greatness, "Americans should prepare for the spectacle of Donald Trump pleading not guilty to charges brought by the Biden Justice Department."

Umm, You Would Think: Germany to Keep Last Three Nuclear-Power Plants Running in Policy U-Turn

Leftists are so stupid, and they're proving with their disgusting, hypocritical u-turn on nuclear energy, which is obviously one massive key to reducing so-called climate changing emissions, though it's reallly not about that in the end. Leftists, like Germany's Greens and Socialists, want power and control. I mean, *everyting* is caused by climate change now, like making kids fat. 

I can't.

At WSJ, "Move prompted by the mounting economic war with Russia marks the first departure from a two-decade policy to abandon nuclear energy":

BERLIN—Germany plans to postpone the closure of the country’s last three nuclear power plants as it braces for a possible shortage of energy this winter after Russia throttled gas supplies to the country, said German government officials.

While temporary, the move would mark the first departure from a policy initiated in the early 2000s to phase out nuclear energy in Germany and which had over time become enshrined in political consensus.

The decision has yet to be formally adopted by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet and would likely require a vote in Parliament. Some details are still under discussion, three senior government officials said. A cabinet decision would also need to wait on the outcome of an assessment of Germany’s energy needs that will be concluded in the coming weeks but which the officials said was a foregone conclusion.

Still, while a formal decision could be weeks off, the government believes two key conditions allowing a temporary extension of the life of the three remaining plants, now expected to close on Dec. 31, have been met: Germany is facing a likely shortage of gas and letting the reactors operate longer poses no safety concern, the officials said.

“The reactors are safe until Dec. 31, and obviously they will remain safe also after Dec. 31,” a senior official said.

The plan underlines how deeply Moscow’s attack on Ukraine has scrambled politics in Europe, and particularly in Germany, which long enjoyed close economic relations with Russia and whose economy had grown highly dependent on Russian natural-gas supplies.

Shortly after the invasion, Mr. Scholz moved to ramp up military spending and deliver arms to Ukraine, breaking with years of pacifism and a legal ban on the delivery of offensive weapons in conflict zones. The nuclear move, while limited and temporary, would break a third long-held taboo in German politics.

Mr. Scholz hinted at the decision last week, saying for the first time that it could make sense to keep Germany’s last three nuclear reactors online.

A spokeswoman for the Economy Ministry, which oversees energy, denied that the government had made a decision on extending the life of the plants, adding that it would depend on the findings of the continuing assessment of Germany’s power needs.

Extending the life of the three plants beyond their current closing date is no panacea for Germany’s looming energy bottleneck this winter. The country is mainly missing natural gas, which is used primarily for heating and manufacturing.

Yet by allowing the plants, which together account for around 6% of the country’s electricity production, to stay online, Berlin would remove the need to replace them with gas- or coal-powered plants, allowing gas to be used in areas where it can’t be replaced by other fuels.

Mothballed coal plants have already been brought back online to prevent energy blackouts after Russia slashed gas supplies in June, a decision that will complicate Berlin’s plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce air pollution. The government has also drafted two executive orders outlining measures to reduce gas and power consumption in the country over the next two years, including by lowering the temperature in public buildings. The country’s energy regulator estimates that gas consumption will need to be cut by 20% if Germany is to avoid a gas shortfall this winter and next.

It is unclear for how long the reactors will continue to operate past the December deadline. The three officials said the extension would only be for a few months. Leading figures in the Free Democratic party, the government’s third coalition partner, have said the plant should run into 2024.

Several officials said that the extension would only affect the three plants that still operate today and that Berlin wasn’t considering reopening plants decommissioned earlier, including three that were shut down last winter.

The nuclear extension is fraught with technical, legal and political hurdles. Laws may need to be amended to allow for the reactors to remain online and obtain fresh fuel rods. Complex certification as well as insurance and nuclear-waste disposal procedures could be required.

It is also politically sensitive. The nuclear phaseout was initiated by the Social Democrats and Greens, the leading parties in the current coalition, and has become part of the parties’ identities, particularly for the Greens, a party that was born out of the antinuclear movement.

Leading Green politicians have already accepted a short extension of the nuclear-power generation. Ludwig Hartmann, the Greens’ parliamentary floor leader in the state of Bavaria, said that the life of reactors could be prolonged for a “few months” if the region faced the risk of power shortages.

The opposition conservatives, the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who greatly accelerated the phasing-out of nuclear energy following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, now also favors extending the plants’ lifespan.

“Not everyone [who keeps using nuclear energy] in the world is stupider than us,” Friedrich Merz, chairman of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, said in a recent radio interview.

While the phaseout has for years enjoyed overwhelming popular support, a recent survey by the Forsa Institut polling group showed three quarters of Germans wanted the planned reactor closures to be postponed. Forsa said it had recorded a gradual shift in public opinion in favor of keeping the plants online since Russia invaded Ukraine in February...

TikTok Influencers Push to Unionize Amazon

These people are kids with millions of followers on social media.  And they're demanding Amazon pay its workers $30.00 an hour. Right. Fucking brats. 

At WaPo, "Gen Z TikTok creators are turning against Amazon":

A coalition of top TikTok stars is pledging to cease all work with Amazon — including shutting down storefronts and halting new partnerships with the e-commerce platform — until the company meets the demands of the Amazon Labor Union.

Boasting a combined following of over 51 million, the group of 70 TikTok creators says that the campaign, called the “People Over Prime Pledge,” is designed to pressure Amazon to meet the requests of its workers, which include a $30 minimum wage, increased paid time off and halting activities the group considers “union busting.”

“Amazon’s widespread mistreatment of their workers and blatant use of union busting tactics will no longer be tolerated by the TikTok Community,” reads a statement from Gen Z For Change, an advocacy group that coordinated the pledge and works frequently with creators.

Amazon Labor Union, which did not help organize the People Over Prime Pledge, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The campaign is a public setback for Amazon, which has sought to develop tighter relationships with young influencers in recent years. In 2017, the company launched the Amazon Influencer Program, allowing creators to earn revenue by recommending products in personalized Amazon storefronts. Earlier this year, Amazon flew more than a dozen Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok stars to a luxurious retreat in Mexico to encourage influencers to grow their presence on the platform. In June, Amazon built a massive VIP lounge at VidCon, an annual conference for online video stars, where influencers could learn about ways to work more closely with the company.

Instagram knows you don't like its changes. It doesn't care.

“I think their method of offering influencers life-changing payouts to make them feel as if they need to work with them while also refusing to pay their workers behind the scenes is extremely wrong,” said Emily Rayna Shaw, 24, a TikTok creator with 5.4 million followers who has partnered with Amazon in the past. “I want to feel comfortable recommending Amazon products to my community because it is so reliable, but I can’t do so until I know that they are treating their workers fairly.”

Many of the creators behind the People over Prime Pledge have done promotional deals with the company but plan to shut down their storefronts and decline future partnerships because of concerns over worker treatment. Creators who have worked with Amazon say that the company requires them to sign nondisparagement agreements, so that they can’t speak negatively about the platform even when the deals are over.

Amazon — which is the second-largest private employer in the U.S., where it has a higher rate of worker injuries than its competitors — has increasingly become a target for organized labor. In April, the independent Amazon Labor Union won an election at a large fulfillment center in Staten Island, marking a major union victory. Amazon workers are also organizing facilities in Bessemer, Ala.; Garner, N.C.; Albany, N.Y.; Campbellsville, Ky., and San Bernardino, Calif.

But the company has cracked down on these efforts, disciplining, firing, and even calling the police on some workers who show support for unions. The National Labor Relations Board has said some of the company’s conduct violates labor law, but the agency has limited resources to police a company of Amazon’s size. Even at the warehouse where Amazon Labor Union won the election, the company has successfully delayed the start of the contract-bargaining process, which itself could take months or years to complete.

[Amazon could stymie unions for years by going to the courts.]

Jackie James, 19, a TikTok creator with 3.4 million followers said that she will not be doing deals with Amazon until they change their ways. “As an influencer, it’s important to choose the right companies to work with,” she said. “I don’t think that workers should be treated the way they are under Amazon.”

Yet as labor organizing efforts within Amazon have hit speed bumps — Amazon Labor Union lost a second election in Staten Island in May — the movement has remained high profile, attracting support from Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Biden. Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls appeared on a prominent Twitch stream last week, and the hashtag #hotlaborsummer has popped up on Twitter.

Amazon has previously denied discontent among its workers, arguing turnover is a function of the company’s flexibility. “A large percentage of people we hire are re-hires, showing that they will choose to work for us when they want to,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, told The Post in June. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

“We’re demanding that Amazon listen to their workers and make changes to provide a healthy workplace environment,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, founder of Gen Z For Change, who also posts on TikTok. “Until Amazon institutes these changes, we as creators will block Amazon from monetizing one of the largest social media platforms in the world.” ...

Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, Danger Zone

At Amazon, Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China.

In Wyoming, Likely End of Cheney Dynasty Will Close a Political Era (VIDEO)

Stick a fork in her. She's done.

At the New York Times, "If Representative Liz Cheney loses her primary on Tuesday, as is widely expected, the Cowboy State’s conservative tilt will take on a harder edge":

CODY, Wyo. — At an event last month honoring the 14,000 Japanese Americans who were once held at the Heart Mountain internment camp near here, Representative Liz Cheney was overcome with emotions, and a prolonged standing ovation wasn’t the only reason.

Her appearance — with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as former Senator Alan Simpson and the children of Norman Mineta, a Democratic congressman turned transportation secretary who was sent to the camp when he was 10 — was part of a groundbreaking for the new Mineta-Simpson Institute. Ms. Cheney was moved, she said, by the presence of the survivors and by their enduring commitment to the country that imprisoned them during World War II.

There was something else, though, that got to the congresswoman during the bipartisan ceremony with party elders she was raised to revere. “It was just a whole combination of emotion,” she recalled in a recent interview.

As Ms. Cheney faces a near-certain defeat on Tuesday in her House primary, it is the likely end of the Cheneys’ two-generation dynasty in Wyoming as well as the passing of a less tribal and more clubby and substance-oriented brand of politics.

“We were a very powerful delegation, and we worked with the other side, that was key, because you couldn’t function if you didn’t,” recalled Mr. Simpson, now 90, fresh off being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and as tart-tongued as ever about his ancestral party. “My dad was senator and a governor, and if I ran again today as a Republican I’d get my ass beat — it’s not about heritage.”

He was elected to the Senate in 1978, the same year that Mr. Cheney won Wyoming’s at-large House seat, and they worked closely together, two Republicans battling on behalf of the country’s least populated state in an era when Democrats always controlled at least one chamber of Congress.

It’s not mere clout, however, that traditional Wyoming Republicans are pining for as they consider their gilded past and ponder the state’s less certain political and economic future. Before Tuesday’s election, which is likely to propel Harriet Hageman, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, to the House, the nostalgia in the state is running deeper than the Buffalo Bill Reservoir.

Mr. Cheney and Mr. Simpson were not only in the leadership of their respective chambers in the 1980s; they, along with Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Yale-educated cold warrior whose grandfather served in both the British House of Lords and the Wyoming Legislature, got along well and often appeared together as a delegation in a sort of road show across the sprawling state (“A small town with long streets,” as the Wyoming saying goes).

Even headier was the administration of President George Bush. Mr. Cheney became defense secretary, and his wife, Lynne, served as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, while Mr. Simpson was both the second-ranking Senate Republican and one of the president’s closest friends. On top of that, the secretary of state at the time, James A. Baker III, spent summers on his Wyoming ranch, meaning two of the country’s top national security officials could be found doing unofficial promotional work for the state’s tourism industry.

“You’d have Army choppers snatching Cheney and Baker from fishing holes,” recalled Rob Wallace, who was Mr. Wallop’s chief of staff.

As conservative as the state was on the national level — Lyndon B. Johnson is the only Democrat to carry Wyoming in the past 70 years — the Wyoming Republican delegation worked effectively with two well-regarded Democratic governors in that same period, Ed Herschler and Mike Sullivan.

Now, Ms. Cheney hardly even speaks to the two other Wyomingites in Congress — Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both Republicans — and has little contact with Gov. Mark Gordon. Ms. Lummis has endorsed Ms. Hageman. But Mr. Barrasso and Mr. Gordon, who are mainline Republicans in the Cheney tradition, have sought to maintain neutrality in hopes of avoiding Mr. Trump’s wrath.

“They’ve got to make their own choices and live with the choices that they make,” Ms. Cheney said about the two men, before adding: “There are too many people who think that somebody else will fix the problem, that we can stay on the sidelines and Trump will fade.”

Asked about the Cheney legacy in Wyoming, Mr. Barrasso and Mr. Gordon both declined to comment...

 

We Ignored Salman Rushdie's Warning

From Bari Weiss, "Words are not violence. Violence is violence":

The words are violence crowd is right about the power of language. Words can be vile, disgusting, offensive, and dehumanizing. They can make the speaker worthy of scorn, protest, and blistering criticism. But the difference between civilization and barbarism is that civilization responds to words with words. Not knives or guns or fire. That is the bright line. There can be no excuse for blurring that line—whether out of religious fanaticism or ideological orthodoxy of any other kind

Today our culture is dominated by those who blur that line—those who lend credence to the idea that words, art, song lyrics, children’s books, and op-eds are the same as violence. We abore so used to this worldview and what it requires—apologize, grovel, erase, grovel some more—that we no longer notice. It is why we can count, on one hand—Dave Chappelle; J.K. Rowling—those who show spine.

Of course it is 2022 that the Islamists finally get a knife into Salman Rushdie. Of course it is now, when words are literally violence and J.K. Rowling literally puts trans lives in danger and even talking about anything that might offend anyone means you are literally arguing I shouldn’t exist. Of course it’s now, when we’re surrounded by silliness and weakness and self-obsession, that a man gets on stage and plunges a knife into Rushdie, plunges it into his liver, plunges it into his arm, plunges it into his eye. That is violence.

Read the whole thing.

 

Salman Rusdie, The Satanic Verses

From earlier, "Author Salman Rushdie Attacked During Speech in Chautauqua, New York: 'Multiple Stab Wounds'."

And at Amazon, Salman Rusdie, The Satanic Verses.

The Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "What went around Monday will come around hard for the Democrats when Republicans control the Justice Department and FBI":

Trump derangement syndrome has a curious way of scrambling coherent thought. Witness the Democratic-media complex’s blind insistence the Justice Department raid on Donald Trump’s home is just and necessary—rather than a dangerous move for their party and the republic.

In descending on Mar-a-Lago, the department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shifted the U.S. into the category of countries whose ruling parties use government power to investigate political rivals. No attorney general has ever signed off on a raid on a former president’s home, in what could be the groundwork for criminal charges.

Yet to read the left’s media scribes, Monday’s search was a ho-hum day in crime-fighting. The Beltway press circled the wagons around Attorney General Merrick Garland and primly parroted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s piety that “no one is above the law.” “The Mar-a-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn’t a Banana Republic,” pronounced the Atlantic, clearly worried readers might conclude the opposite. It is “bedrock principle” that those who “commit crimes” “must answer for them,” it lectured.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake attests it’s totally standard to investigate presidents—look at Israel! The New York Times soothingly explains that prosecutors “would have carefully weighed the decision,” and that the investigation therefore must be “serious.” Roll Call produced a law professor to remind all that a judge had to sign off on a “detailed affidavit that established probable cause.” The last time we got this level of reassurance about federal law enforcement’s professionalism was at the height of the Russia-collusion hoax.

The bar has always been at its highest when the investigation involves a former president. Even more so when the former president remains a contender for the office. Mr. Garland breezed past all this history and complexity in his “equal under the law” statement Thursday, even as he expressed outrage that anyone might mistrust the department and the bureau that brought us the Steele dossier and the Carter Page wiretaps.

Democrats may be betting that adverse coverage of Mr. Trump will help them in November, or in 2024. They’d better hope so....

All this tit for tat will further undermine our institutions and polarize the nation—but such is the nature of retributive politics. Which is why the wholesale Democratic and media defense of this week’s events is so reckless. Both parties long understood that political restraint was less about civility than self-preservation. What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard.

Henry Kissinger Is Worried About 'Disequilibrium'

The man's still in the arena, at 99.

At the Wall Street Journal, "The 99-year-old former secretary of state has just published a book on leadership and sees a dangerous lack of strategic purpose in U.S. foreign policy":

At 99 years old, Henry Kissinger has just published his 19th book, “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.” It is an analysis of the vision and historical achievements of an idiosyncratic pantheon of post-World War II leaders: Konrad Adenauer, Charles DeGaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan-Yew and Margaret Thatcher.

In the 1950s, “before I was involved in politics,” Mr. Kissinger tells me in his midtown Manhattan office on a steamy day in July, “my plan was to write a book about the making of peace and the ending of peace in the 19th century, starting with the Congress of Vienna, and that turned into a book, and then I had about a third of a book written on Bismarck, and it was going to end with the outbreak of World War I.” The new book, he says, “is a kind of continuation. It’s not just a contemporary reflection.”

All six figures profiled in “Leadership,” says the former secretary of state and national security adviser, were shaped by what he calls the “second Thirty Years’ War,” the period from 1914 to 1945, and contributed to molding the world that followed it. And all combined, in Mr. Kissinger’s view, two archetypes of leadership: the farsighted pragmatism of the statesman and the visionary boldness of the prophet.

Asked if he knows of any contemporary leader who shares this combination of qualities, he says, “No. I would make the qualification that, though DeGaulle had this in him, this vision of himself, in the case of Nixon and probably Sadat, or even of Adenauer, you would not have known at an earlier stage. On the other hand, none of these people were essentially tactical people. They mastered the art of tactics, but they had a perception of purpose as they entered office.”

One never goes long in conversation with Mr. Kissinger without hearing that word—purpose—the defining quality of the prophet, along with another, equilibrium, the guiding preoccupation of the statesman. Since the 1950s, when he was a Harvard scholar writing on nuclear strategy, Mr. Kissinger has understood diplomacy as a balancing act among great powers shadowed by the potential for nuclear catastrophe. The apocalyptic potential of modern weapons technology, in his view, makes sustaining an equilibrium of hostile powers, however uneasy it might be, an overriding imperative of international relations.

“In my thinking, equilibrium has two components,” he tells me. “A kind of balance of power, with an acceptance of the legitimacy of sometimes opposing values. Because if you believe that the final outcome of your effort has to be the imposition of your values, then I think equilibrium is not possible. So one level is a sort of absolute equilibrium.” The other level, he says, is “equilibrium of conduct, meaning there are limitations to the exercise of your own capabilities and power in relation to what is needed for the overall equilibrium.” Achieving this combination takes “an almost artistic skill,” he says. “It’s not very often that statesmen have aimed at it deliberately, because power had so many possibilities of being expanded without being disastrous that countries never felt that full obligation.”

Mr. Kissinger concedes that equilibrium, while essential, can’t be a value in itself. “There can be situations where coexistence is morally impossible,” he notes. “For example, with Hitler. With Hitler it was useless to discuss equilibrium—even though I have some sympathy for Chamberlain if he was thinking that he needed to gain time for a showdown that he thought would be inevitable anyway.”

There is a hint, in “Leadership,” of Mr. Kissinger’s hope that contemporary American statesmen might absorb the lessons of their predecessors. “I think that the current period has a great trouble defining a direction,” Mr. Kissinger says. “It’s very responsive to the emotion of the moment.” Americans resist separating the idea of diplomacy from that of “personal relationships with the adversary.” They tend to view negotiations, he tells me, in missionary rather than psychological terms, seeking to convert or condemn their interlocutors rather than to penetrate their thinking.

Mr. Kissinger sees today’s world as verging on a dangerous disequilibrium. “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” he says. Could the U.S. manage the two adversaries by triangulating between them, as during the Nixon years? He offers no simple prescription. “You can’t just now say we’re going to split them off and turn them against each other. All you can do is not to accelerate the tensions and to create options, and for that you have to have some purpose.”

On the question of Taiwan, Mr. Kissinger worries that the U.S. and China are maneuvering toward a crisis, and he counsels steadiness on Washington’s part. “The policy that was carried out by both parties has produced and allowed the progress of Taiwan into an autonomous democratic entity and has preserved peace between China and the U.S. for 50 years,” he says. “One should be very careful, therefore, in measures that seem to change the basic structure.”

Mr. Kissinger courted controversy earlier this year by suggesting that incautious policies on the part of the U.S. and NATO may have touched off the crisis in Ukraine. He sees no choice but to take Vladimir Putin’s stated security concerns seriously and believes that it was a mistake for NATO to signal to Ukraine that it might eventually join the alliance: “I thought that Poland—all the traditional Western countries that have been part of Western history—were logical members of NATO,” he says. But Ukraine, in his view, is a collection of territories once appended to Russia, which Russians see as their own, even though “some Ukrainians” do not. Stability would be better served by its acting as a buffer between Russia and the West: “I was in favor of the full independence of Ukraine, but I thought its best role was something like Finland.”

He says, however, that the die has now been cast. After the way Russia has behaved in Ukraine, “now I consider, one way or the other, formally or not, Ukraine has to be treated in the aftermath of this as a member of NATO.” Still, he foresees a settlement that preserves Russia’s gains from its initial incursion in 2014, when it seized Crimea and portions of the Donbas region, though he does not have an answer to the question of how such a settlement would differ from the agreement that failed to stabilize the conflict 8 years ago...

 

Actress Anne Heche on Life Support, Not Expected to Survive (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Anne Heche not expected to survive after fiery Mar Vista crash that left her in coma."

And from ABC 7 Eyewitness News Los Angeles: 

Author Salman Rushdie Attacked During Speech in Chautauqua, New York: 'Multiple Stab Wounds'

Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini placed a fatwa (death warrant) on Rusdie in 1989. Obviously claims that Muslims no longer adhere to it are false. Members of the audience were screaming, "Oh my god!"

At the New York Times, "Salman Rushdie is attacked onstage in Western New York."

And, "Stabbing sends ripples of ‘shock and horror’ through the literary world":

Literary figures and public officials said that they were shocked by the news that the author Salman Rushdie had been stabbed in the neck on Friday morning while onstage to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York.

“We cannot immediately think of any comparable incident of a public violent attack on a writer during a literary event here in the United States,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive officer of the nonprofit literary organization PEN America, who noted that the motivations for the attack and Mr. Rushdie’s current condition were unknown as of Friday late morning.

Mr. Rushdie is a former president of PEN America, which advocates for writers’ freedom of expression around the world.

She said in a statement that the organization’s members were “reeling from shock and horror.”

Ms. Nossel said Mr. Rushdie had emailed her hours before the attack to ask about helping Ukrainian writers in need of safe refuge.

“Salman Rushdie has been targeted for his words for decades, but has never flinched nor faltered,” she said. “He has devoted tireless energy to assisting others who are vulnerable and menaced.”

The author Neil Gaiman wrote on Twitter that he was “shocked and distressed” about the attack...

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Is Tearing Academia Apart

From John Sailer, at UnHerd, "Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in America":

Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in American academia. Already, many universities require faculty job candidates to submit “diversity statements” — 19% of the faculty job listings in one recent survey. Now, similar requirements increasingly apply to sitting faculty members, as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements and criteria have become standard components of the promotion and tenure process.

To give one example: last year, the highly-ranked Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine released its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan, listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing social justice. Here is an example:

“Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice. Reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.”

The reference to “consequences” reads like a warning to dissenters, especially given that concepts such as “equity”, “anti-racism”, and “social justice” often simply connote adherence to progressive political views. Thanks to the ubiquity of Ibram X. Kendi’s work, many American professionals are primed to point out that anti-racism, far from merely being “not racist”, entails embracing “race conscious” policies, coupled with the belief that any disparity is by definition racism.

With official DEI requirements for promotion and tenure on the rise, Kendian “anti-racism” has come closer to a formal requirement for many in academia. In its 2022 survey of tenure practices, the American Association of University Professors found that 21.5% of the institutions it surveyed had DEI criteria in their tenure standards. For larger institutions, it was 45.6%.As diversity officers increase, so too will their preferred policies.

Unfortunately, the diversity statements can easily stamp out dissenting viewpoints. At UC Berkeley, for example, job candidates will receive a low scores on their diversity statements for “explicitly state[ing] the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’”, and a high score for “Discuss[ing] diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as core values that every faculty member should actively contribute to.” Institutions from Emory University to the Texas Tech University Department of Biological Sciences have adapted the UC rubric, proudly policing the core values of faculty.

DEI requirements for promotion and tenure often come in the form of evaluation criteria, rather than required statements. The California Community Colleges (CCC) system — the largest system of higher education in America, serving almost two million students — recently mandated that all faculty, staff, and administrator evaluations “include DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] competencies and criteria as a minimum standard for evaluating the performance of all employees.”

The resolution mandating these competencies employs unmistakably ideological language...

Still more. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland Approved Decision to Seek Search Warrant for Mar-a-Lago (VIDEO)

Extremely partisan.

At WSJ, "Attorney General Merrick Garland Asks Court to Release Trump Search Warrant":

Garland says he requested the warrant be unsealed because of ‘substantial public interest’ in the matter.

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has asked a Florida judge to unseal the warrant FBI agents used to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday, raising the prospect that details of the extraordinary search of the former president’s home could soon be public.

“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter,” Mr. Garland said in his first public remarks since Monday’s search. “The department does not take such a decision lightly.”

Mr. Garland said he filed the motion—which asks to unseal both the warrant and the receipt that lists the items seized—in light of Mr. Trump’s confirmation of the search and the “substantial public interest” in the matter.

Aides to Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have time to respond to the Justice Department’s request, including raising any objections to the unsealing, before the judge makes a decision. Mr. Trump was given a copy of the warrant and a list of items that were taken during the search.

Monday’s search of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and social club in Palm Beach, Fla. was a dramatic escalation of a monthslong investigation into the former president’s handling of classified information. The move, while Mr. Trump was in New York, stoked a political firestorm with Republican lawmakers demanding an explanation for the unprecedented search of a former president’s home.

Mr. Trump and his allies have criticized it as a politically motivated stunt by Justice Department officials.

“I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” Mr. Garland said, adding that “the men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated patriotic public servants every day.” He didn’t take questions...

Antonia Angress, Sirens & Muses

There are some very enthusiastic plaudits for ths book. I'm looking forward to reading it.

At Amazon, Antonia Angress, Sirens & Muses: A Novel.

End of the Republic

From Robert Spencer, at Jihad Watch, "With the FBI raid on Trump’s home, America has fallen into the abyss":

When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday, a key aspect of what made the United States of America great and free has been lost, and likely cannot be recovered. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson detested one another for years before their eventual reconciliation, but neither one used the agencies of the U.S. government to hound, persecute or discredit the other. Other bitter political opponents throughout the history of the republic have never before used the government’s own mechanisms of justice to do injustice to their foes. Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their henchmen have brought America to a new phase of its history, and it is not likely to be one that is marked by respect for the rule of law or defense of the rights of individual citizens. Instead, we are entering an ugly age of authoritarianism, in which the brute force of the state is used to bend the people to the will of the tyrant.

Trump announced on Monday, “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”

The 45th president is not given to understatement, but the FBI raid on his home is much more than just unnecessary and inappropriate. It is criminal. The FBI that was heavily involved in trying to frame and destroy Trump in the Russian Collusion hoax is now trying once again to destroy him, apparently by claiming that he improperly took classified material from the White House. They never cared when Hillary Clinton misused classified material on a grand scale; what is the difference? They’re also likely trying to find something to link him more firmly to the January 6 “insurrection” that never was. The Left’s January 6 narrative has been full of holes from the beginning: Trump told the demonstrators to proceed peacefully, the people who entered the Capitol had no weapons, and no one had sketched out any kind of plan to do what the Left continues to claim that Trump was trying to do all along, overthrow the government and rule as a dictator.

But Joe Biden’s handlers are desperately afraid that Trump will return to the White House on January 20, 2025 and that things will go harder for them next time than they did during his first term. They’re afraid that a vengeful Trump will do a genuine and thorough housecleaning of the desperately corrupt and compromised Washington bureaucracy, and that many of them will, quite justly, end up out of power, and some of them will, even more justly, end up in prison. So they’ve determined to pre-emptively do the same to Trump. If they can’t actually find anything to prosecute him for (and Lord knows they’ve tried, this is the most investigated and poked and prodded and scrutinized man in American history, and still those who hate him have nothing), then at very least they hope to taint Trump so completely in the eyes of the distracted and indifferent public that they will have a fighting chance in 2024....

Many conservatives are saying that this ensures Trump’s victory in 2024. But what makes them think that this corrupt regime will allow the man whom they fear and hate above all others return to the White House? It’s clear now. They will stop at nothing.

This is no longer a republic, except of the banana variety. It may be a republic again someday, but for now, the great American experiment is over. Born July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, died August 8, 2022, in Mar-A-Lago, at the hands of Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray.

'Superstar'

I so love her. I miss her more than any rock star who's passed in my lifetime.

The Carpenters:

White House Files Under Scrutiny in Trump Search, Signaling Inquiry’s Depth

Yeah, let's see the files the FBI Seized. Perhaps they were ooking for evidence of criminal complicity on January 6th, no?

At the New York Times, "Questions swirl about what exactly the F.B.I. was looking for, and why":

The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida on Monday continued to rock Washington and, more broadly, American politics, amid a swirl of questions about what led the Justice Department to take such a stunning step.

The search came after a visit this spring to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., by federal agents — including a Justice Department counterintelligence official — to discuss materials that the former president had improperly taken with him when he left the White House.

Mr. Trump was briefly present for that visit, as was at least one of his lawyers, according to people familiar with the situation. Those materials contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents. By law, presidential materials must be preserved and sent to the National Archives when a president leaves office. It remained unclear what specific materials agents might have been seeking on Monday or why the Justice Department and the F.B.I. decided to go ahead with the search now.

Mr. Trump had delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, doing so only in January, when the threat of action to retrieve them grew. The case was referred to the Justice Department by the archives early this year.

In carrying out the search, federal agents broke open a safe, the former president said.

The search was the latest remarkable turn in the long-running investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he weighs announcing another candidacy for the White House.

It came as the Justice Department has stepped up its separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election and as he also faces an accelerating criminal inquiry in Georgia and civil actions in New York.

Mr. Trump has long cast the F.B.I. as a tool of Democrats who have been out to get him. The search set off a furious reaction among his supporters in the Republican Party and on the far right.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House, suggested that he intended to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans took control of the chamber in November. A delegation of House Republicans was scheduled to travel to Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for a dinner with him on Tuesday night.

Aggressive language was pervasive on the right as Monday night turned into Tuesday morning.

“This. Means. War,” the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet, wrote in an online post that was quickly amplified by a Telegram account connected to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser.

The F.B.I. would have needed to persuade a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that agents might find evidence at Mar-a-Lago, to get a search warrant. Proceeding with a search on a former president’s home would almost surely have required sign-off from top officials at the bureau and at the Justice Department.

The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime...

 

Peter Navarro, Taking Back Trump's America

At Amazon, Peter Navarro, Taking Back Trump's America: Why We Lost the White House and How We'll Win It Back.

Federal Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, Who Issued Warrant for FBI's Raid on Mar-a-Lago, Is Democratic Donor Who Represented Jeffrey Epstein After Leaving Justice Deparment in 2008

On Twitter, "BREAKING; Florida Federal Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, who approved the FBI raid on Trump's home, is also a Democratic presidential donor who previously represented several Jeff Epstein Associates after leaving the US Attorney's office in 2008."

Hmm.

At AoSHQ, "A Federal Judge Would Never, Ever Show Political Bias In Authorizing a Raid on a President * Except It Wasn't a Federal Judge -- It Was a Mere Magistrate * Who Was an Obama Donor * Who Was an Epstein Lawyer."

Judge Reinhart's page at the United States District Court Southern District of Florida is inaccessable: "Access denied."

Wait WTF????

THIS BRUCE REINHART???

Wtf!!! https://t.co/9fWqKeeUA2 https://t.co/f7LJqkZvmB pic.twitter.com/l9W1S1Eigk

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) August 9, 2022

A Nation in Decline': Trump Posts Video Hours After FBI Raided Mar-a-Lago

Care of Legal Insurrection, "Former President Donald Trump released a video in the style of a campaign ad on Truth Social hours after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago."

He's running. Makes you nostalgic, even if you're sickened by January 6th (as I am). 

He's going to announce before the midterms, I'm sure of it. It's been spectulation, but now after the FBI's raid it's almost a certainty. Even GOP non-supporters are expressing their outrage over the tyannical measures the Biden administration's using to take out his main rivil for the presidency in 2024. This is what banana republics do, I must concede, as so many folks on Twitter have suggested ad nauseum.

WATCH:

Emily

This woman is fantastic. 

On Instagram.

Garrett M. Graff, Watergate

Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History.

The FBI's Mar-a-Lago 'Raid' is About the Capitol Riot, Not the Mishandling of Classified Information

From Andrew McCarthy, at the New York Post, "This search was almost certainly about much more than classified documents":

The court-authorized search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is another unmistakable signal that the Justice Department is trying to build a criminal case against him arising out of the Capitol riot.

Ostensibly, the search relates to a long simmering dispute between the former president and the government over Trump’s potentially illegal retention and mishandling of classified information. But don’t be deceived.

National Archives officials alerted the Justice Department months ago regarding missing records and possible classified information violations. That owes to the chaotic atmosphere in which the Trump family decamped to Florida from the White House following the Capitol riot – with impeachment proceedings and even talk of removing Trump from office under the 25th Amendment then underway.

Reportedly, about 15 boxes of records were removed from the White House and shipped to Mar-a-Lago. The National Archives subsequently explained that much of the material should have been kept in the government’s possession, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act. After extensive negotiations, Trump agreed to return some of the materials in January 2022. Upon receipt, National Archives officials advised the Justice Department that the returned materials included classified information.

If true, that raises several issues. If Trump had not declassified these materials while he was president, then his continuing possession of them in a non-secure location was probably illegal. While presidents have unilateral authority to declassify intelligence, they only maintain that authority while in office – it may not be exercised in the post-presidency. The returned documents were thus potentially evidence of crimes. In addition, since it is believed Trump did not return everything that was shipped out of the White House in those hectic days of January 2021, there was significant reason to suspect he continued to retain classified information at Mar-a-Lago.

One of the potential law violations, under Section 2071 of the federal penal code, includes in its penalty provisions that, upon conviction, a defendant “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.” The ongoing proceedings implicating Trump – in particular, the Justice Department’s investigation and the House January 6 committee probe – seem geared toward undermining his capacity to seek the presidency again in 2024. Obviously, then, there is speculation that DOJ may be mobilizing now in order to trigger the Section 2071 disqualification.

I doubt that. The Justice Department well knows that the qualifications for a presidential candidate are set out in the Constitution. They may not be altered by statute, precisely because the Framers did not want the executive branch to be dominated by the legislature, as would happen if Congress could disqualify incumbent or potential presidents simply by passing a law. The Constitution’s qualifications for the presidency are minimal – one must be over 35 and a natural-born citizen. Being a felon is not a disqualification, so even crimes potentially far more serious than mishandling classified information are not a bar to seeking the presidency.

Moreover, the Constitution also prescribes the basis for disqualifying a person from seeking the presidency or other federal office: conviction by the Senate on an impeachment article voted by the House. Again, what is prescribed by the Constitution may not be altered by a mere statute. To trigger disqualification, Congress would have to impeach and convict Trump; it cannot be done by criminal prosecution.

The Justice Department obviously used the potential classified information as a pretext to obtain a warrant so it could search for what it is really looking for: evidence that would tie Trump to a Capitol riot offense – either a violent crime, such as seditious conspiracy to forcibly attack a government installation (which is highly unlikely), or a non-violent crime, such as conspiracy to obstruct the January 6 joint session of Congress to count electoral votes, or conspiracy to defraud the government.

As previously explained, I believe it would foolhardy for the Biden Justice Department to indict a former president on such debatable non-violent crime charges. That is especially so when it comes to a former president who could be the 2024 Republican nominee, since such charges would fuel the perception that Democrats are using the Justice Department as a political weapon...

 

Search of Trump’s Home Roils 2022 Midterms, 2024 Presidential Race

Yeah, it's big. There was virtually unanimous outrage on Twitter last night (follow scroll down here). Even some Democrats see the threat to republican democracy. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Many Republicans denounce FBI raid on former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence as politically motivated":

WASHINGTON—The FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home rallied many prominent Republicans around the former president and could shift the political course of both the midterm elections for control of Congress and the 2024 presidential race.

While many details of the FBI’s investigation remain unknown, the developments both challenge and underscore Mr. Trump’s hold on the GOP, just as he is publicly considering a third run for the White House. Many Republicans, including potential presidential rivals, denounced the search, casting it as a politically driven action by the Biden administration, while others demanded more details from the Justice Department but stopped short of criticizing its motives.

“This is a brazen weaponization of the FBI by Biden’s DOJ against his political opponent,” tweeted Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.), a member of the GOP leadership, reflecting the stance of many House Republicans.

People familiar with the matter said the search was part of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who was present during the search, said that federal agents “seized paper.”

The White House didn’t get any advance notice of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, an administration official said.

The Justice Department has been looking into the former president’s handling of official records and his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Monday’s search is separate from the Jan. 6 investigation, the people familiar with the probe said. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and casts the investigations as part of a long-running campaign by Democrats.

People close to Mr. Trump said the search could further motivate him to announce a run for president in 2024 before the midterm elections.

Shortly after midnight, Mr. Trump posted a campaign-style video on his TruthSocial account that teased a possible campaign. “We are a nation that has become a joke … but soon we will have greatness again.” It ends with an on-screen message: “The best is yet to come.”

Some GOP lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) have been pushing Mr. Trump to hold off on any announcement until after the election, to not upset the party’s chances of taking back the House. While Mr. Trump remains a powerful motivator of Republican voters, he repels many swing voters, and party leaders have focused their midterms pitch on the economy and inflation. Republicans are seen as heavily favored to win back the House, while the Senate is seen as a tossup.

Polls show Mr. Trump as the top GOP candidate in a hypothetical 2024 presidential field, and he easily won a straw poll at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “We may have to do it again,” he said in a speech Saturday at the gathering.

Mr. McCarthy said late Monday that “the Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and pledged to investigate Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department if Republicans take power.

Democrats have defended the raid. “No person is above the law, not even a former president of the United States,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on NBC’s “Today Show.”

House Republican leaders will have a chance to take the temperature of the conference at a previously scheduled members-only call on Tuesday that was set up to discuss the Senate-passed climate and health bill. Members of the Republican Study Committee, made up of House conservatives, are scheduled to have dinner with Mr. Trump on Tuesday night at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club.

The members-only call is shaping as a proving ground for Mr. McCarthy, who is in line for the House speakership next year if Republicans regain control. Mr. McCarthy needs to show that he can be tough on the issue to respond to the restive conservative wing of his base, a House Republican said. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) suggested this week on “The War Room” podcast, broadcast by Trump ally Stephen Bannon, that Mr. McCarthy shouldn’t be speaker.

A Republican takeover of the House in the November midterm elections would give them subpoena powers in 2023 and the ability to create committees and lead investigations. Many Republicans were already planning to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and said following the search of Mr. Trump’s home that they would hold hearings on the FBI’s actions as well.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is increasingly seen by many Republicans nationally as a potential Trump alternative, joined in the condemnation. The raid “is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents,” he said.

While some rivals were quick to defend Mr. Trump, the developments also underscored what they see as his vulnerability as a deeply divisive figure in American politics. He drew a record number of votes for an incumbent U.S. president in 2020, but lost by about seven million votes to President Biden.

“Other Republican leaders will see him as vulnerable,” said GOP donor Dan Eberhart. “There is now blood in the water.” He said that could give added reason for potential 2024 candidates, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, to look at the race...

William Gass, The Tunnel

This is the novel that predicted Donald Trump's America.

At Amazon, William Gass, The Tunnel.

Aubrey's Blue Athletic Outfit

Aubrey is previously here.

She takes good care of her body. Very fit looking.

Unmask Alice Cracks Open Story of Wildly Successful Literary Hoax

I have a copy of Go Ask Alice, though I've only skimmed. But I've read reviews of the new book just out, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries, and I'm eager to read it.

At Quillette, "Go Ask Beatrice: Notes on a Dishonest Decade."

"Beatrice" is Beatrice Sparks, the notorous Mormon youth counselor and inveterate hoaxer. 

Albert Woodfox, Survivor of 42 Years in Solitary Confinement, Dies at 75

Following-up, "Solitary: A Biography (National Book Award Finalist; Pulitzer Prize Finalist)."

At NYT, "His term in solitary was perhaps the longest in American history. He described how he kept his sanity, and dignity, in an acclaimed memoir":

Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary confinement — possibly more time than any other prisoner in all of American history — yet emerged to win acclaim with a memoir that declared his spirit unbroken, died on Thursday in New Orleans. He was 75.

His lead lawyer, George Kendall, said the cause was Covid-19. Mr. Kendall added that Mr. Woodfox also had a number of pre-existing organ conditions.

Mr. Woodfox was placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being accused of murdering Brent Miller, a 23-year-old corrections officer. A tangled legal ordeal ensued, including two convictions, both overturned, and three indictments stretching over four decades.

The case struck most commentators as problematic. No forensic evidence linked Mr. Woodfox to the crime, so the authorities’ argument depended on witnesses, who over time were discredited or proved unreliable.

“The facts of the case were on his side,” The New York Times editorial board wrote in a 2014 opinion piece about Mr. Woodfox.

But Louisiana’s attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, saw things differently. “This is the most dangerous person on the planet,” he told NPR in 2008.

Mr. Woodfox’s punishment defied imagination, not only for its monotony — he was alone 23 hours a day in a six-by-nine-foot cell — but also for its agonies and humiliations. He was gassed and beaten, he wrote in a memoir, “Solitary” (2019), in which he described how he had kept his sanity, and dignity, while locked up alone. He was strip-searched with needless, brutal frequency.

His plight first received national attention when he became known as one of the “Angola Three,” men held continuously in solitary confinement for decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which is commonly called Angola, after a slave plantation that once occupied the site.

In 2005, a federal judge wrote that the length of time the men had spent in solitary confinement went “so far beyond the pale” that there seemed not to be “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.”

Mr. Woodfox would spend more than another decade in solitary before becoming, in 2016, the last of the three men to be released from prison.

His first stint at Angola came in 1965, after he was convicted of a series of minor crimes committed as a teenager. The prison was notoriously harsh, even to the point of conjuring the days of slavery. Black prisoners, like Mr. Woodfox, did field work by hand, overseen by white prison guards on horseback, shotguns across their laps. New inmates were often inducted into a regime of sexual slavery that was encouraged by guards.

Released after eight months, he was soon charged with car theft, leading to another eight months at Angola. After that, he embarked on a darker criminal career, beating and robbing people.

In 1969, Mr. Woodfox was convicted again, this time for armed robbery, and sentenced to 50 years. By then a seasoned lawbreaker, he managed to sneak a gun into the courthouse where he was being sentenced and escape. He fled to New York City, landing in Harlem.

A few months later he was incarcerated again, this time in the Tombs, the Manhattan jail, where he spent about a year and a half.

It proved to be a turning point, he wrote in his memoir. At the Tombs, he met members of the Black Panther Party, who governed his tier of cells not by force but by sharing food. They held discussions, treating people respectfully and intelligently, he wrote. They argued that racism was an institutional phenomenon, infecting police departments, banks, universities and juries.

“It was as if a light went on in a room inside me that I hadn’t known existed,” Mr. Woodfox wrote. “I had morals, principles and values I never had before.”

He added, “I would never be a criminal again.”

He was sent back to Angola in 1971 thinking himself a reformed man. But his most serious criminal conviction — for murdering the Angola corrections officer in 1972, which he denied — still lay ahead of him, and with it four decades in solitary, a term broken for only about a year and a half in the 1990s while he awaited retrial.

The other two members of the Angola Three, Robert King and Herman Wallace, were also Panthers and began their solitary confinement at Angola the same year as Mr. Woodfox. The three became friends by shouting to one another from their cells. They were “our own means of inspiration to one another,” Mr. Woodfox wrote. In his spare time, he added, “I turned my cell into a university, a hall of debate, a law school.”

He taught one inmate how to read, he said, by instructing him in how to sound out words in a dictionary. He told him to shout to him at any hour of the day or night if he could not understand something...

Albert Woodfox, Solitary

At Amazon, Albert Woodfox, Solitary: A Biography (National Book Award Finalist; Pulitzer Prize Finalist).

Despite Climate Bill, Electric Cars Will Remain Out of Reach for Many

Well, blow me down! 

At the New York Times, "Electric Cars Too Costly for Many, Even With Aid in Climate Bill ":

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent.

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions. High prices are caused by shortages of batteries, of raw materials like lithium, and of components like semiconductors. Strong demand for electric vehicles from affluent buyers means that carmakers have little incentive to sell cheaper models. For low- and middle-income people who don’t have their own garages or driveways, another obstacle is the lack of enough public facilities to recharge.

The bottlenecks will take years to unclog. Carmakers and suppliers of batteries and chips must build and equip new factories. Commodity suppliers have to open new mines and build refineries. Charging companies are struggling to install new stations fast enough. In the meantime, electric vehicles remain largely the province of the rich.

To some extent, the carmakers are following their usual game plan. They have always introduced new technology at a luxury price. With time, the new features and gadgets make their way into cheaper cars. But emission-free technology has an urgency that voice navigation or massaging seats did not. Transportation accounts for 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Battery-powered cars produce far less carbon dioxide than vehicles that run on gasoline or diesel. That’s true even accounting for the emissions from generating electricity and from manufacturing batteries, according to numerous studies.

Only a few years ago analysts were predicting that electric vehicles would soon be as cheap to buy as gasoline cars. Factoring in the savings on fuel and maintenance, going electric would be a no-brainer.

Instead, soaring prices of commodities like lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries, helped raise the average sticker price of an electric vehicle by 14 percent last year to $66,000, $20,000 more than the average for all new cars, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Demand for electric vehicles is so strong that models like the Ford Mach-E are effectively sold out, and there are long wait times for others. Tesla’s website informs buyers that they can’t expect delivery of a Model Y, with a purchase price of $66,000, until sometime between January and April 2023.

With so much demand, carmakers have little reason to target budget-minded buyers. Economy car stalwarts like Toyota and Honda are not yet selling significant numbers of all-electric models in the United States. Scarcity has been good for Ford, Mercedes and other carmakers that are selling fewer cars than before the pandemic but recording fat profits.

Automakers are “not giving any more discounts because demand is higher than the supply,” said Axel Schmidt, a senior managing director at Accenture who oversees the consulting firm’s automotive division. “The general trend currently is no one is interested in low prices.”

Advertised prices for electric vehicles tend to start at around $40,000, not including a federal tax credit of $7,500. Good luck finding an electric car at that semi-affordable price.

Ford has stopped taking orders for Lightning electric pickups, with an advertised starting price of about $40,000, because it can’t make them fast enough. Hyundai advertises that its electric Ioniq 5 starts at about $40,000. But the cheapest models available from dealers in the New York area, based on a search of the company’s website, were around $49,000 before taxes.

Tesla’s Model 3, which the company began producing in 2017, was supposed to be an electric car for average folks, with a base price of $35,000. But Tesla has since raised the price for the cheapest version to $47,000...

Shoot, $35,000's still not cheap. Some schlup from the barrio, South Central, or any urban 'hood near you ain't buying this car, or any EV, for that matter. These cars are for the leftist climate change psychos. Teslas are everywhere in Irvine. They're boring af. They all look the same. Nothing against them in principle. But if that's your status symbol gtfo. (*Eye-rol*.)

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