Posts Tagged ‘National Review’

Dear National Review: El Paso Is Not A “Town”

Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

It’s not only the liberal mainstream media that screws up through parochial ignorance; sometimes the establishment conservative media does as well.

Today’s headline example from National Review: “Massive Weekend Migrant Caravan Overwhelms Texas Border Town.”

The name of that border “town”? El Paso.

You know, the 24th largest city in the United States.

The story is otherwise solid:

Over the weekend, a massive caravan of thousands of illegal migrants, mostly from Nicaragua, crossed the border into West Texas in a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.

By Monday, over 5,000 illegal immigrants had arrived at the Border Patrol’s central processing center in El Paso, Texas, officials told the New York Times. They estimated that about 2,000 people came to the U.S. each day, with the largest influx reaching 800 to 1,000 migrants on Sunday night.

State Senator César J. Blanco, who represents the region, argued that the situation is untenable, with El Paso, a community with limited capacity, being forced to accommodate scores of migrants regularly.

“We’re feeling it. It’s straining resources,” he told the publication, noting that El Paso has functioned as an Ellis Island but for illegal immigration. “Whether we want it or not, it is.”

El Paso’s predicament, which included 53,000 apprehensions in October alone, is the worst among U.S.-Mexico border towns, although all are bearing the brunt of the raging border crisis. So far in 2022, there have been 2,378,944 migrant encounters along the southern border, according to immigration data.

Homeless shelters in El Paso are flooded, as is the processing center, which typically releases the migrants into the interior with instruction to return for a future court date, which many do not oblige.

It’s obvious that the Biden Administration wants to cram as many illegal aliens as possible into America to amnesty them as future Democratic Party voters.

But how parochial do you have to be to call El Paso a “town”? I’m pretty sure nobody on the NRO staff would call Yonkers, NY or Worcester, MA (both considerably smaller municipalities) a “town.”

Maybe they just listened to Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” (“Out in the West Texas town of El Paso/I fell in love with a Mexican girl”) and didn’t realize how much it had grown since the cowboy heydays…

Max Boot Hits Bottom, Tunnels Down to the Hollow Earth, Falls, Somehow Keeps Digging

Thursday, August 15th, 2019

One inkling of just how important Max Boot was to the conservative movement prior to 2016 (when he famously declared he’d vote for Stalin over Trump) is the fact I never bothered to tag him in a BattleSwarm post prior to 2018, when his Trump Derangement Syndrome was already in full bloom.

Well, maybe not full bloom, since he’s managed to find a deep end of the deep end. Consider this triptych of National Review pieces:

John Hirschauer starts out:

One of Max Boot’s most recent columns in the Washington Post is titled “Get a grip, white people. We’re not the victims.” The headline says in nine words what the text says in 800, doing predictably little to elevate our national discourse at a moment of intense racial polarization.

Boot’s central contention is that whites in America are beset with a victimhood mentality, one that “can justify everything from a public temper tantrum to a shooting spree.” In the wake of the El Paso tragedy, Boot can make a plausible case that racial grievances (real and imagined) facilitate discord and violence, because, of course, they do. Instead, Boot denounces white-grievance politics (a politics well worth denouncing) while simultaneously granting other grievance groups a blank check to raid the expansive store of imputed guilt and collective punishment. As a matter of course, he favors any repatriation for injustices to which racial minorities and their ancestors may (or may not) have been subject — as long as it’s in an effort to “redress past wrongs,” as he puts it.

His ultimate prescription to the “white people” he instructs to “get a grip” is something like “Stop whining.” And that’s fine; we could certainly stand less whining in the United States. In effect, however, Boot sets up a Faustian choice for “white” readers: Side with the white supremacists and their detestable program, or sell your political soul to Max Boot and become one of the self-loathing whites so paralyzed by intersectional deference that they can hardly advance an argument without first reciting that neutered prelude: “As a straight, white, cisgender man with privilege, I . . .”

If Boot believes what he is saying — and I’m not sure he does — and assumes that “many” Trump supporters believe “that white supremacy is the natural order of things,” then he’d do well to provide them with a better set of options than white nationalism on the one hand and political impotence on the other.

Boot was shocked, shocked to find National Review calling him on his blatant social justice warrioring, prompting Hirschauer to deliver a second rhetorical beatdown:

Max Boot has devoted much of the past twelve hours to distorting a response I wrote to his column “Get a grip, white people. We’re not the victims.” Boot has insisted that mine is “a white supremacist piece,” and implied that I am a “white supremacist.”

Boot makes my point for me: In the world of Max Boot’s creation, there is only Max Boot’s policy preferences on the one hand, and white nationalism on the other. It’s toxic, and predictable from someone who writes so casually about “fears” that plague “white people” as an indiscriminate bloc in the Washington Post.

Snip.

In the piece, I state several times that white nationalists and white supremacists are evil people with repugnant ideologies. I did not do so to create an elaborate ruse to deflect attention from some deeply held, clandestine racist agenda of mine. I did so because I believe that white supremacy, in all its forms, is a sin against the Creator and His creation. I meant, in other words, what I said.

My point in the self-loathing comment: If Boot is really condemning all white people — and his piece often leaves out any qualifier and talks directly to the unmodified mass of “white people” — then he, as he admits, is part of this all-encompassing category he finds worthy of such rank condemnation (as are Bernie Sanders, Rob Reiner, Howard Dean, etc.).

This collectivization and mass imputation of guilt would not withstand scrutiny if it were applied to any other group, nor should it.

All throughout his initial Washington Post piece, Boot speaks in unqualified terms about “white people,” stating categorically that “they fear they are losing their privileged position to people of color,” and that they “can be pretty clueless.” Think, for a moment, of the utter outrage that would have met Mr. Boot had he stated that some other demographic category were in the grip of a group-wide “fear,” or were disproportionately “clueless.”

Such “totalizing racial language,” as I wrote in my response, is wrong. It treats fraught issues of race with a sledgehammer and stokes division at a time of “intense racial polarization.”

It only poisons public debate for Boot to pretend that any defection from his ex cathedra declaration of what constitutes a legitimate “attempt to redress past wrongs or foster equal treatment” is a form of white supremacy. No serious or respectable person has any objection to fostering “equal treatment” for all races and ethnicities, but there are basic political disagreements over what an “attempt to redress past wrongs” ought to look like.

When this takedown failed to have the desired effect, Charles C. W. Cooke stepped in to whale on him like Boom Boom Mancini pummeling Bobby Chicon:

Before yesterday, my primary criticism of the Washington Post’s Max Boot was political in nature. As I wrote in a recent book review, I found it regrettable that Boot’s opposition to the president had not prevented him from “succumbing reactively to Trump’s cult of personality, or from making Trump the origin of every graph onto which he plots himself.” As of yesterday, my primary criticism of the Washington Post’s Max Boot is that he is a narcissistic, dishonest, calculating, manipulative writer who is prone to engaging in precisely the sort of willfully dishonorable conduct that he claims to disdain in others.

Various line-by-line takedowns of manifest Boot dishonesty snipped.

Those who wonder why so few writers are willing to pen long, thoughtful, descriptive pieces that grapple seriously with the opposing arguments and incorporate honest appraisals of what voters actually want need look no further than this incident for their answer, which is: because bankrupt toadies such as Max Boot use their work as launching pads for calumny. In a sensible world, the editors of the Washington Post would have looked at what Boot has tried to do over the last couple of days, and tattooed “hack” on his forehead. But we are not operating in a sensible world.

Boot’s approach over the last couple of days has not only been at odds with both honesty and honor, it has been at odds with the reputation he had developed as a serious and rigorous thinker. Such as it is, Boot’s newfound modus operandi works as follows: First, he scans entirely innocuous pieces for sentences that he can willfully misconstrue; second, he presents those misconstrued sentences as evidence of a deeper flaw with a person or outlet or institution; and, finally, he submits the conclusions he has drawn as confirmation of why he, Max Boot, convert to truth and light, is on the Right Side of History. Because Twitter is an echo chamber and the Post is one-tracked, he does this safe in the knowledge that those whom his mendacity incites to outrage will never read the primary sources he is corrupting — and that, if they do, they will never comprehend them.

And thus the feedback loop is completed. In return for being so flattered, Boot’s readers provide him with wild, conspiracy-laden confirmations that the target he has chosen is indeed perfidious — confirmations that allow him to backfill his story on the fly, to flesh out any subsequent columns he feels compelled to write on the topic, and to insist that any pushback he receives is affirmation of his original critique. By this discreditable process did Boot’s nasty little lie about John Hirschauer’s original criticism become first an “attack”; then a “white supremacist” or “alt-right” attack; then a sign of the institutional decline of a magazine he once admired; then a sign of how awful that magazine has always been; and, finally, an indictment of the entire conservative movement in America that is apparently worthy of a prime-time appearance on CNN. Would that Boot had a sober friend who, early in his spiraling, could tell him, “Max, you messed up here.” Evidently, he does not.

In and of itself, Boot’s techniques are both tiresome and reprehensible. But when coupled with the ersatz I-take-no-pleasure-in-this lamentations that have become his hallmark in the Trump era, the affectation becomes too much to bear. Boot seems to fancy himself as Mark Antony, here to bury a Caesar he once loved, when in reality he is more like Romeo Montague: a callow, selfish, monomaniacal, self-pitying featherweight, who is constitutionally unable to prevent the escalation of petty infractions. Reading Boot these days is akin to listening to a teenager talk incessantly about himself. “And then I didn’t like this. And then I discovered that. And then this person was mean to me. And then I was attacked.” Oh, do shut up, dear, before we all die from nausea. And learn to read before you come back.

Boot is just the latest example of hysterical Democratic Party hacks giving up even the pretense of rational argument: “Support every word of the Democratic Party’s agenda or you’re a white supremacist!” It’s as though they looked at the 2016 elections results, then said to themselves: “You know why we lost the Midwest? We just didn’t call ordinary American voters there racists hard enough! Let’s double-down by calling them “white supremacists” at every turn! That will shame them into abandoning Trump!” “White supremacy” is the boogieman that replaced the Russian collusion fantasy, and Boot is a good little solider about parroting the latest lie, as long as it hurts Trump and Republicans.

Calling him a narcissistic, dishonest, calculating, manipulative hack is probably far too kind…

More on the Democratic Party’s Institutional Antisemitism

Saturday, March 9th, 2019

Not one, but two separate National Review pieces on the failure of Democrats to condemn Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar shows the grip victimhood identity politics has on the Democratic Party.

First, Jonathan Tobin:

It turns out you can accuse Jews of controlling the world, buying Congress, and harboring dual loyalty to Israel and still be considered a heroine by much of the Democratic party. The reaction to the latest example of anti-Semitic invective from Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) is a teaching moment for anyone previously unsure about how the toxic mix of identity politics, intersectional ideology, and naked partisanship could lead to a major American political party deciding that hatemongering from one of its members wasn’t deserving even of a slap on the wrist.

A week’s worth of national discussion over Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks didn’t result in her condemnation by the House. To the contrary, the House majority revealed itself to be deeply divided on the question of how to handle blatant anti-Semitism. The “compromise” Democrats finally agreed upon was a resolution that not only lumped in the question of the moment — the effort by one member of Congress to delegitimize Jews and supporters of Israel — with a laundry list of other hatreds. And they failed to single out Omar for her actions.

The result is an odd echo of those who criticized the Black Lives Matter movement by claiming that “all lives mattered,” a stand that was harshly criticized at the time by most liberals and Democrats as insensitive to — if not evidence of — racial bigotry. It is a stance they appear to have no shame echoing when it comes to anti-Semitism.

Indeed, Omar has emerged from this incident not only unscathed but also confident that many in the House, and several Democratic presidential candidates, consider her the aggrieved party in the discussion. With so many Democrats agreeing that Omar had been unfairly singled out because of her race and religion, that leaves Jews, one of the most loyal constituencies of the Democratic party, pondering the speed with which they had been discarded.

Jews and supporters of Israel are not the only losers in this incident. House speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear to Omar a month ago that expressions of anti-Semitism would not be tolerated and forced the congresswoman to issue a contrite apology claiming, as she had done after a previous anti-Semitic statement, that she was unaware of the hurtful nature of singling out Jews for demonization.

Snip.

How is this possible?

Many on the left believe that as a woman of color, a Muslim, and an immigrant, Omar cannot, by definition, be a purveyor of hate and prejudice. One way that identity politics manifests is that those who are considered oppressed receive immunity to do things that those considered more privileged cannot do. Hence many Democrats, particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, sought to defend Omar rather than to disavow her.

Just as important is the way intersectional theory — which, taking its cues from critical-race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, seeks to connect the struggle of all allegedly oppressed peoples — serves to legitimate anti-Semitism. For many on the left, the Palestinian war to destroy Israel is falsely linked to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Not only does that cause them to ignore the complicated truth about the conflict in the Middle East, it also justifies BDS campaigns and efforts to demonize those who support Israel.

Pelosi and other mainstream Democrats have long accused Republicans of trying to use their ardent support for Israel as a wedge issue and thereby damaging bipartisan support for the Jewish state. What they failed to realize is that much of their party no longer wants any part of that consensus. Three of the party’s leading presidential candidates — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris — all issued statements in support of Omar, even registering concern about her safety.

The second NR piece is from Matthew Continetti:

I have a new hobby. It’s collecting the excuses Democrats make for Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democratic congresswoman who has an unhealthy fixation on Jewish influence, Jewish money, and Jewish loyalty. Omar has said that Israel “hypnotized the world,” ascribing to Jews the power of mind control in the service of manipulating public opinion. She’s said the only reason Congress supports Israel is Jewish campaign donations. Most recently, using the classic anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty, she criticized supporters of Israel for having “allegiance to a foreign power.” A real treasure, Omar is. A typical freshman congresswoman sees her mission as — forgive the expression — bringing home the bacon for her district. Not Ilhan. Her project is to mainstream anti-Semitic rhetoric within the Democratic party. Once upon a time, you’d have to visit the invaluable website of the Middle East Media Research Institute to hear such tripe. Now you just need to flip on C-SPAN.

And Democrats are powerless to stop it. They’re tripping over themselves, making rationalizations, dodging reality, and trying to clean up this anti-Semitic mess. Omar is new to this, they say. She never intended to come across as anti-Semitic. She can’t help it. “She comes from a different culture.” She didn’t know what she was saying — she’s a moron! She’s just trying to “start a conversation” about the policies of Israel’s government. And why are you singling her out, anyway. “She is living through a lot of pain.” She’s black, she’s a woman, and she’s Muslim. You can’t condemn her without also condemning white men of privilege. What are you, racist? Islamophobic? Shame on you for picking on this poor lady, who just happens to say that American Jews serve a foreign power by buying off politicians and using the Force to blinker people’s minds.

Before such “arguments” — they are really assertions of victimhood to intimidate critics — Nancy Pelosi shudders. She’s supposed to be this Iron Lady, returned to power after exile, ruling her caucus with a vise-like grip. But her hands are covered in Palmolive. She’s spent the first weeks of Congress doing little more than responding to the various insanities of Omar and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Pelosi will condemn Omar one minute, before appearing with her on the cover of Rolling Stone the next. She’s lost a step. She can’t hold her caucus together when Republicans call for motions to recommit on the House floor. The policies her candidates ran on in swing districts vanished under the solar-powered glare of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. We’re not talking about covering preexisting conditions, we’re pledging to rid the world once and for all of the scourges of air travel and cow flatulence. Pelosi’s trigger-happy committee chairmen, firing their subpoena cannons into the air at random, look like goofballs desperate to impeach President Trump.

Whatever control Pelosi had over her majority vanished the second she delayed the resolution condemning Omar. It then became undeniable that AOC & co. is in charge. Identity politics has rendered the Democrats incapable of criticizing anti-Semitism so long as it dons the wardrobe of intersectionality. It’s nothing short of incredible that three women from three different cities — New York, Detroit, and Minneapolis — can run roughshod over 233 other House Democrats with a little help from social media, woke 24-year-olds in the digital press, and the Congressional Black Caucus. If you’re Ocasio-Cortez right now, you must love life from the comfort of the test kitchen in your luxury D.C. apartment building. What’s next for this trio — two of whom are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, two of whom support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that seeks Israel’s destruction, and all three of whom combine radical anti-American politics with radical self-regard — finding a candidate to primary pro-Israel Democrat Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, on which Omar sits? Challenging Chuck Schumer in the Democratic primary when he’s up for reelection in 2022?

One particular irony is that a movement which combines “intersectionality” and institutional hostility to Jews and Israel may produce a white Jewish socialist as its Presidential candidate:

The most pressing order of business has got to be the 2020 presidential election. Omar, AOC, and Tlaib don’t strike me as Cory Booker supporters. Amy Klobuchar might be too much of a taskmaster for them. Most likely the radicals will line up behind the current frontrunner, Bernie Sanders, who has already surrounded himself with anti-Israel activists. Sanders has said criticism of Omar is just a means to “stifle debate” over Israel’s government. He’s too smart to believe that. As the most successful Jewish presidential candidate in history, he has a responsibility to draw lines. After all, he’s no stranger to the dual-loyalty charge — though of course in his case the other country was the Soviet Union.

Bernie Sanders has no interest in stopping Omar. He recognizes that she represents the impending transformation of the Democratic party into something more closely resembling the British Labour party. Labourites elected avowed socialist Jeremy Corbyn party leader in September 2015. The years since have been spent in one anti-Semitism scandal after another. Sanders wants desperately to be the American Corbyn. If anti-Semitism is the price of a socialist America, so be it. Remember what Stalin said about the omelette. I’m sure Bernie does. If Democrats can’t rebuke Omar swiftly and definitively, if they have trouble competing with Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram cooking show, how will they be able to stop Sanders from carrying his devoted bloc of supporters to plurality victories in the early primaries, and using the divided field to gain momentum just as Trump did?

I’m not sure this is going to be the outcome. The party’s Social Justice Warrior leanings would suggest Kamala Harris as the candidate that checks the most diversity boxes, as well as a way to reknit the Obama coalition, but right now the enthusiasm for Harris’ candidacy seems confined to Democratic Media Complex’s chattering classes, with much less evident among actual Democratic voters.

Just as victimhood identity politics pushed white blue collar voters out of the Democratic Party, it’s now pushing Jews out. The old political joke about New York City Jewish voters was “they earn like Republican but vote like Puerto Ricans.” They’ve gone from being victims of oppression to being Super White in the eyes of Democratic activists. At an estimated 2% of the US population, Democrats have collectively decided that they need Muslim votes more than Jewish votes. But the Democratic Party will be hard-pressed to make the shortfall if Jewish donors realize that the party is actively hostile to them and stop giving entirely. Donors in New York and Los Angeles disproportionately fund many Democratic Party candidates nationwide, and Jewish donors make up a disproportionate share of the donors in both locales.

This shift in the Democratic Party has been underway for a long, long time, at least since the United States support Israel in The Six Day War and the new left added support for Palestinians terrorists to their adulation of the Viet Cong. By the 1980s, Democratic activists on campus were already hostile to Israel, and those people now make up the institutional core of the Democratic Party, electoral needs be damned. With the uptick in Muslim immigration under Obama, ideological opposition to Israel has been buttressed by actual hatred of Jews among a growing segment of the Democratic Party’s voting coalition. And social justice warrior victimhood identity politics has made Democrats institutionally incapable of resisting that trend.

This is another reason Democrats have been so desperate to smear Donald Trump as an antisemite, despite tons of evidence to the contrary. (And they become extremely testy when you try to point out they’re wrong.) They know the Democratic Party is increasingly institutionally hostile to Jewish interests, and only by projecting their party’s sins onto Trump can they hope to keep Jews as part of their coalition. After this week, I doubt that’s possible.

LinkSwarm for January 25, 2019

Friday, January 25th, 2019

How much of the vicious, fact-free attacks on the Covington kids were just baseline floating animus against Christians and Trump supporters on the part of the media, and how much are battlespace preparation over a possible nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg?

  • True tales from border enforcement. “I also had multiple cases where convicted child molesters were arrested illegally reentering the United States.” (Hat tip: Director Blue. )
  • Over at American Thinker, E.M. Cadwaladr is not a fan of recent immigration policy:

    The northeastern part of Columbus, Ohio used to be an unpretentious, unremarkable part of America. You could go there if you wanted to. It is now an unofficial colony of Somalia. The business signs, grimy and grey for decades, are now in Arabic. Somali women, grown fat on an American diet doled out by the public’s confiscated largesse, waddle along the street in their abysmal burkas. Somali men are something other than Americans with funny accents. Something has gone badly wrong.

    While I can still drive through this part of Columbus, I notice the Americans who used to live there, white and black, are fewer and farther between. I notice when I hear on the local news that a “refugee” has run his car into a group of students at Ohio State, then chased others down the street with a knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” I notice when another “migrant,” a Muslim from Ghana, enters a restaurant owned by an Israeli and proceeds to hack at the customers with a machete. America’s earlier minorities didn’t do these things. This is something new. I may be in Ohio, my dear Toto, but something tells me I’m not in my own country anymore. I’m in the middle of a pre-industrial, semi-literate, dystopian Islamic theme park.

    Unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I cannot simply tap my heels together and get back to the imperfect but largely harmless familiarity of home. One more part of America has been allocated to another alien population – squatters who have been brought here to feed on us and to drive us out. But where do we have left to go? This isn’t progress – though it is progressive.

    This situation did not occur by accident. It is the product of a premeditated and deliberate social policy. When immigration is talked about on what sneeringly masquerades as news, it is always painted in fatalistic phrases that make it sound like an unstoppable force of nature – as though the people surging into America were a swarm of Mexican butterflies or a herd of East African wildebeests that had somehow overwhelmed the TSA.

    Snip.

    They did not aspire to be Americans in any remotely meaningful sense of the word. We have seen them, and we are not that stupid. The African populations seeded in Columbus, Minneapolis, and many other places did not come here to learn our culture or our values. They were not blown here in some unavoidable freak storm, nor did they wander here in search of missing livestock. They were certainly not brought here centuries ago as hapless and unwilling slaves. People from Washington, Boston, San Francisco and New York have sponsored this invasion – people who staff committees and think tanks, people who show the residents of the heartland the same loving concern that the Jackson administration showed the Cherokee.

  • Human smugglers: extortion and death threats. (Hat tip: Governor Greg Abboyy’s Twitter feed.)
  • Are Democrats wavering on a border wall?
  • Luke Rosiak’s book on the Awan case, Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats, is out next week. I intend to pick up a copy.
  • How National Review stepped in it in the rush to denounce the Covington kids:

    It seemed way out of character for [Nick] Frankovich to author an angry post about the Covington Catholic High School incident just as the details were emerging. His article—”The Covington Students Might As Well Have Just Spit on the Cross”—went online in the middle of the night on National Review’s portal for short posts by contributors. Frankovich harshly condemned the students, referred to their actions as evil and sadistic, and questioned their Christianity.

    “They mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ. Bullying is a worn-out word and doesn’t convey the full extent of the evil on display here,” the deputy online editor wrote. He included accusations that had not yet been confirmed.

    On Sunday afternoon, as the media’s narrative fell apart and the reality of the situation came into view, National Review quietly removed Frankovich’s article from its website. Rich Lowry, the outlet’s editor, explained in a very brief post that he and Frankovich had been duped by a “hoax” and that Frankovich’s “strongly worded post” had been taken down. Lowry also deleted a few of his own tweets that inaccurately portrayed the incident.

    That was it. Rather than acknowledge that the editor and deputy editor for a once reliable and thoughtful conservative magazine were complicit in mob-shaming teenage boys attending a pro-life rally, they quickly excused their behavior as nothing more than gullibility. There was no apology, save for this quasi mea culpa. There was no “calling out” other conservatives who also had participated in the viral assault on innocent young boys.

    Two NRO articles addressed the the media’s malfeasance in the matter. In particular, “Nathan Phillips Lied, The Media Bought It,” wrote Kyle Smith.

    But the fact that editors for National Review also bought into the various lies escaped mention. This also included senior editor Jay Nordlinger, who deleted a January 19 tweet that read, “the images of those red-hat kids surrounding and mocking that old Indian are unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. An American disgrace.” Jonah Goldberg hand-waved away Frankovich’s vicious post as just “different people reaching different conclusions or having different opinions.”

    Snip.

    When confronted with evidence, there is no real apology or soul-searching. The public and the maligned families are just supposed to accept their vague, “oops, my bad” tweets and move on.

    Further, the same crowd of call-out conservatives, the nags who constantly are telling us which Republican lawmaker or presidential aide or Fox News anchor must be reprimanded for one imagined offense or another, have been silent on calling out their own tribe for joining the Covington High School outrage mob. Where is David French “calling out” his pal, Bill Kristol, for his two (deleted) tweets about the kids, including calling them “MAGA brats”? Where are the Referees of the Right demanding that Ana Navarro or Ben Howe or Jennifer Rubin apologize for vilifying innocent kids? Where are the conspiracy trackers like Jim Swift condemning Jim Swift for peddling this fiction? And why isn’t one conservative demanding that S.E. Cupp be fired from CNN for slandering these kids on her program? (She unconvincingly apologized on Twitter on Monday.)

    To be fair, French did address the issue in this piece. (Hat tip: Evil Blogger Lady via The Other McCain.)

  • It turns out that openly wishing for the deaths of children who hold different political views than you do is a career-limiting decision. Who knew?
  • MSM lies about Trump supporters again. Clip and save this sentence for reuse…
  • Let the lawsuits begin! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Press That Sicced Mob On Teenagers Based On 10-Second Video Clip Unsure Why Some People Call Them ‘Fake News.'”
  • Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and other media outlets announced layoffs. Maybe those outlets should consider, oh, I don’t know, not treating half their potential audience with naked contempt?
  • Ace of Spades had some pungent observations on journalists and Twitter:

    As Mollie Hemingway has said several times, Twitter did improve transparency, and that transparency in turn reduced trust in media.

    You showed yourselves for what you really are. We noticed. We adjusted our estimates of you according to the new information.

    The thing is, what twitter exposed was not that you were leftwing. We already knew that.

    What Twitter exposed was that you were also dumb, easily duped, eager to believe self-justifying conspiracy theories, thin-skinned, arrogant, incompetent, disgracefully lazy, psychologically (and almost certainly physically) inadequate, dunderheadedly unimaginative and unwilling to consider any idea not within the braindead leftwing Incela Corridor Conventional Wisdom Bubble, prone to the most cowardly go-along-to-get-along sort of groupthink, and weak.

    Before Twitter, you were removed from us. Anyone who’s removed seems exalted. We knew you were leftwing political operators, but, and I hate to admit this, your remoteness made you seem like you were… elite.

    Now we’ve seen what you really are. You’re C- minus students and fat-assed pencil pushers with a nose for sniffing out the right dicks to suck.

    Stop holding back and tell us what you really think!

  • The six axioms of Social Justice Warrioring. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott on Instapundit.)
  • “Ilhan Omar Endorsed Somalia’s New President. Four Days Later, Omar’s Brother-in-Law Had a Powerful Job in His Administration.” Naturally Nancy Pelosi has given her a seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Thanks to Intersectionality, Democrats are exploring bold new frontiers in graft! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “What if the FBI Had Probed Obama for Collusion with Iran?”
  • The Supreme Court has agreed to review New York City’s draconian gun laws.
  • David Kopel has more on the case: “Since the Sullivan Act in 1911, New Yorkers must obtain a license to own a handgun. As will be detailed below, the New York Police Department’s enforcement of the Sullivan Act was abusive from the very start, and has generally remained so ever since.” (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • In China, it’s not enough for Communist Big Brother to know you’re in debt, he has to let everyone around you know you’re in debt as well.
  • Germany catches an Iranian spy.
  • This just in: Shelia Jackson Lee is still a scumbag. And no longer leader of the Congressional Black Caucus.
  • Cahnman is a big fan of Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s committee assignments.
  • Powerline has a nice meme roundup of last week’s news. I’ll swipe a couple:

  • Could Alzheimer’s be caused by…gum disease? (Hat tip: David Shirpley on Twitter.)
  • Facebook is building an orbital death ray. Because they just weren’t evil enough before…
  • The fraudster behind the Fyre Festival.
  • Feel good story: A Puppy Saved From A Fire Becomes A Firefighter. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • LinkSwarm for April 6, 2018

    Friday, April 6th, 2018

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Today’s LinkSwarm runs the gamut from Ann Althouse to Zsa Zsa Gabor. So dig in…

  • This New York Times piece on the Islamic State is must reading for its glimpse as to just how the murderous would-be caliphate was able to hold on to and rule significant swathes of territory for years at a time. In short: Bureaucrats and taxes.

    Weeks after the militants seized the city, as fighters roamed the streets and religious extremists rewrote the laws, an order rang out from the loudspeakers of local mosques.

    Public servants, the speakers blared, were to report to their former offices.

    To make sure every government worker got the message, the militants followed up with phone calls to supervisors. When one tried to beg off, citing a back injury, he was told: “If you don’t show up, we’ll come and break your back ourselves.”

    The phone call reached Muhammad Nasser Hamoud, a 19-year veteran of the Iraqi Directorate of Agriculture, behind the locked gate of his home, where he was hiding with his family. Terrified but unsure what else to do, he and his colleagues trudged back to their six-story office complex decorated with posters of seed hybrids.

    They arrived to find chairs lined up in neat rows, as if for a lecture.

    The commander who strode in sat facing the room, his leg splayed out so that everyone could see the pistol holstered to his thigh. For a moment, the only sounds were the hurried prayers of the civil servants mumbling under their breath.

    Their fears proved unfounded. Though he spoke in a menacing tone, the commander had a surprisingly tame request: Resume your jobs immediately, he told them. A sign-in sheet would be placed at the entrance to each department. Those who failed to show up would be punished.

    Meetings like this one occurred throughout the territory controlled by the Islamic State in 2014. Soon municipal employees were back fixing potholes, painting crosswalks, repairing power lines and overseeing payroll.

    “We had no choice but to go back to work,” said Mr. Hamoud. “We did the same job as before. Except we were now serving a terrorist group.”

    Snip.

    After seizing huge tracts of Iraq and Syria, the militants tried a different tactic. They built their state on the back of the one that existed before, absorbing the administrative know-how of its hundreds of government cadres. An examination of how the group governed reveals a pattern of collaboration between the militants and the civilians under their yoke.

    One of the keys to their success was their diversified revenue stream. The group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes alone were not enough to cripple it.

    Ledgers, receipt books and monthly budgets describe how the militants monetized every inch of territory they conquered, taxing every bushel of wheat, every liter of sheep’s milk and every watermelon sold at markets they controlled. From agriculture alone, they reaped hundreds of millions of dollars. Contrary to popular perception, the group was self-financed, not dependent on external donors.

    More surprisingly, the documents provide further evidence that the tax revenue the Islamic State earned far outstripped income from oil sales. It was daily commerce and agriculture — not petroleum — that powered the economy of the caliphate.

    They also seized land and goods from Shia, Christians, etc. and redistributed it to their followers as ‘war spoils.”

    Also this: “Mr. Hamoud noticed something that filled him with shame: The streets were visibly cleaner than they had been when the Iraqi government was in charge.”

    Read the whole thing.

  • Last week: Kevin D. Williamson leaves National Review for The Atlantic. This week: The Atlantic fires Kevin D. Williamson for wrongthink. Well, there goes my chance to snag the Sarcastic Texan Chair at National Review
  • Black people should stop mindlessly voting for the Democratic Party says…Donna Brazile?

    “We have to stop giving up our votes. I have done just about everything in the Democratic Party but run for office – everything that they have asked me to do. I have done it. I have registered millions of people in my lifetime. I have knocked on so many doors that I cannot even see the black of my own knuckles. I have carried their water,” Brazile said during her keynote address at the Stateswomen for Justice Luncheon last week, which was organized by Trice Edney Communications.

    “I have put their platform within my heart to support. I have championed their issues. And when it came time for me to say what I believed was important, they said ‘shut up, Donna’ and I said ‘hell no, I am not shutting up,’” she added.

    Forgive me if my enthusiasm for Brazile’s truthtelling is tempered by the suspicion it comes less from deep philosophical conviction than resentment at taking the fall for Hillary’s dishonest and incompetence.

  • “Study: 70% of Europeans see rapid population growth of Muslims as a serious threat.”
  • “Anti-Mass Migration Sweden Democrats Polling First Among Young Voters.” It’s almost like a party standing against rape is more popular than the party standing for “multiculturalism.”
  • Chicago suburb Deerfield, IL passes law allowing confiscation of modern sporting rifles if they have more than a ten shot magazine. (Gun owners have already filed a lawsuit, backed by the NRA-ILA.) So remember: When Democrats state they “don’t want to confiscate your guns,” they’re lying. (Hat tip: Director Blue)
  • EPA Director Scott Pruett ends “secret science” (i.e., regulating on the basis of unpublished, unverifiable studies), and the New York Time (naturally) goes crazy. And here’s the debunking of same. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • 68% of India’s military equipment is “vintage” (i.e., old Soviet crap).
  • Apple to drop Intel? Maybe, but not until 2020. If so, does this mean Apple will build their own fab? That would be an expensive proposition, but one Apple would be one of the few companies in the world capable of affording. Or they could keep getting their chips fabbed by TSMC. (Or, the hybrid option, pay TSMC to open up a fab dedicated to producing the new chip at x number of years for y price, after which TSMC would own and run the fab, a technique Apple has used for other component manufacturers before.)
  • Man using the lady’s room at Target exposes himself to little girl. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Kurt Eichenwald pens a bold screed at the evil conspiracy to make him look foolish, mentioning Parkland kid Kyle Kover but oddly omitting a certain media figure whose initials are “K.E.”…
  • Republican Tim Pawlenty to run for Minnesota governor again, an office he held from 2003 to 2011.
  • If you view the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as Christ having “masochistic sexual relations with his own father,” then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching at Holy Cross.
  • Ann Althouse watches and annotates an episode of Roseanne so you don’t have to. However, one correction: I’m pretty sure that the Conners don’t think of themselves as “poor,” they think of themselves as “broke.”
  • Speaking of Roseanne Barr, never forget that she’s a nut case. Indeed, back in 2012 I got into a tiny Twitter spat with her over whether HAARP controlled the weather…
  • When it comes to basic technical facts about firearms, liberal gun grabbers are proudly ignorant.
  • ESPN’s revamped morning SportsCenter is losing to Peppa the Pig. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • If you ever wanted something from the Zsa Zsa Gabor estate, now’s your chance. Especially if you wanted a painting of Zsa Zsa or her sisters: she had plenty…
  • Trump is Serious About Securing America’s Borders

    Monday, February 6th, 2017

    President Trump’s first two weeks have been extremely busy, including making good on his campaign promises to secure America’s borders in the form of three Executive Orders:

  • Executive Order 13767, Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, which states:

    It is the policy of the executive branch to:

    (a) secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and supported by adequate personnel so as to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism;

    (b) detain individuals apprehended on suspicion of violating Federal or State law, including Federal immigration law, pending further proceedings regarding those violations;

    (c) expedite determinations of apprehended individuals’ claims of eligibility to remain in the United States;

    (d) remove promptly those individuals whose legal claims to remain in the United States have been lawfully rejected, after any appropriate civil or criminal sanctions have been imposed; and

    (e) cooperate fully with States and local law enforcement in enacting Federal-State partnerships to enforce Federal immigration priorities, as well as State monitoring and detention programs that are consistent with Federal law and do not undermine Federal immigration priorities.

  • Executive Order 13768: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, which states:

    It is the policy of the executive branch to:

    (a) Ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States, including the INA, against all removable aliens, consistent with Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution and section 3331 of title 5, United States Code;

    (b) Make use of all available systems and resources to ensure the efficient and faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States;

    (c) Ensure that jurisdictions that fail to comply with applicable Federal law do not receive Federal funds, except as mandated by law;

    (d) Ensure that aliens ordered removed from the United States are promptly removed; and

    (e) Support victims, and the families of victims, of crimes committed by removable aliens.

    Pursuant to which, Executive Order 13768 further states:

    Enforcement Priorities. In executing faithfully the immigration laws of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) shall prioritize for removal those aliens described by the Congress in sections 212(a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(6)(C), 235, and 237(a)(2) and (4) of the INA (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(6)(C), 1225, and 1227(a)(2) and (4)), as well as removable aliens who:

    (a) Have been convicted of any criminal offense;

    (b) Have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;

    (c) Have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense;

    (d) Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency;

    (e) Have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits;

    (f) Are subject to a final order of removal, but who have not complied with their legal obligation to depart the United States; or

    (g) In the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.

  • Executive Order 13769: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States, which states:

    It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.

    Sec. 3. Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries of Particular Concern.

    (a) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.

    (b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall submit to the President a report on the results of the review described in subsection (a) of this section, including the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determination of the information needed for adjudications and a list of countries that do not provide adequate information, within 30 days of the date of this order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a copy of the report to the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence.

    (c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies during the review period described in subsection (a) of this section, to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals, pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).

    (d) Immediately upon receipt of the report described in subsection (b) of this section regarding the information needed for adjudications, the Secretary of State shall request all foreign governments that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals within 60 days of notification.

    (e) After the 60-day period described in subsection (d) of this section expires, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit to the President a list of countries recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of foreign nationals (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas) from countries that do not provide the information requested pursuant to subsection (d) of this section until compliance occurs.

    (f) At any point after submitting the list described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security may submit to the President the names of any additional countries recommended for similar treatment.

    (g) Notwithstanding a suspension pursuant to subsection (c) of this section or pursuant to a Presidential proclamation described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.

    (h) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall submit to the President a joint report on the progress in implementing this order within 30 days of the date of this order, a second report within 60 days of the date of this order, a third report within 90 days of the date of this order, and a fourth report within 120 days of the date of this order.

  • Much has been written abut these executive orders, a great deal of which is wrong:

  • First, it was not the Trump Administration who selected the seven nations covered by Executive Order 13769, it was the Obama Administration, which in February of 2016 added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen to “Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals.”
  • Because they were chosen by the Obama Administration, the decision of which countries to include had nothing to do with Trump’s business interests.
  • It’s not a “Muslim ban”:

    What did Trump do? Did he implement his promised Muslim ban? No, far from it. He backed down dramatically from his campaign promises and instead signed an executive order dominated mainly by moderate refugee restrictions and temporary provisions aimed directly at limiting immigration from jihadist conflict zones.

    Let’s analyze the key provisions, separate the fact from the hysteria, and introduce just a bit of historical perspective.

    First, the order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically ramped up refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms.

  • Despite what various liberal protestors would have you believe, President Trump’s Executive Orders are firmly within the bounds of existing federal immigration laws:

    Federal immigration law also includes Section 1182(f), which states: “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate” (emphasis added).

    Section 1182(f) plainly and sweepingly authorizes the president to issue temporary bans on the entry of classes of aliens for national-security purposes. This is precisely what President Trump has done. In fact, in doing so, he expressly cites Section 1182(f), and his executive order tracks the language of the statute (finding the entry of aliens from these countries at this time “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States”).

  • The mainstream media would like you to believe that Trump’s orders limiting immigration are widely unpopular. That’s not the case:

    Politically, the open borders rhetoric helps Trump. Even in California, three-quarters of the population, according to a recent UC Berkeley survey, oppose sanctuary cities. Overall, more Americans favor less immigration than more. Most, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, also want tougher border controls and increased deportations. They also want newcomers to come legally and adopt the prevailing cultural norms, including English.

  • You know how all your liberal Facebook friends say that “no Muslim refugees” have been involved in terrorism in the United States? That’s false. At least 20 have. Among these lovely individuals was Ramadan Alwan. “He pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill U.S. nationals abroad; conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) against U.S. nationals abroad.” He also “boasted about attacks on American troops in Iraq.”
  • All of which makes it amazing that unlimited Muslim immigration seems to be the hill liberals want to die on.

    Even more ridiculous and blinkered is the suggestion that there may be something unconstitutional about refusing entry to refugees or discriminating among them on religious or other bases (a reaction that was shared at first by some Republicans, including Mike Pence, when Trump’s plan was announced in December 2015). There are plenty of moral and political arguments on these points, but foreigners have no right under our Constitution to demand entry to the United States or to challenge any reason we might have to refuse them entry, even blatant religious discrimination. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress’s powers in this area are plenary, and the president’s powers are as broad as the Congress chooses to give him. If liberals are baffled as to why even the invocation of the historically problematic “America First” slogan by Trump is popular with almost two-thirds of the American public, they should look no further than people arguing that foreigners should be treated by the law as if they were American citizens with all the rights and protections we give Americans.

    Liberals are likewise on both unwise and unpopular ground in sneering at the idea that there might be an increased risk of radical Islamist terrorism resulting from large numbers of Muslims entering the country as refugees or asylees. There have been many such cases in Europe, ranging from terrorists (as in the Brussels attack) posing as refugees to the infiltration of radicals and the radicalization of new entrants. The 9/11 plotters, several of whom overstayed their visas in the U.S. after immigrating from the Middle East to Germany, are part of that picture as well. Here in the U.S., we have had a number of terror attacks carried out by foreign-born Muslims or their children. The Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing were children of asylees; the Times Square bomber was a Pakistani immigrant; the underwear bomber was from Nigeria; the San Bernardino shooter was the son of Pakistani immigrants; the Chattanooga shooter was from Kuwait; the Fort Hood shooter was the son of Palestinian immigrants. All of this takes place against the backdrop of a global movement of radical Islamist terrorism that kills tens of thousands of people a year in terrorist attacks and injures or kidnaps tens of thousands more.

  • President Trump is also working to limit immigrants who need welfare.
  • John Hindraker thinks that President Trump’s orders are only a good first step.
  • Back in the dim, long ago fairy tale days of 2006, plenty of Democrats voted to build the border fence, including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Chuck Schumer.
  • Evidence suggests that Hilary Clinton received 800,000 votes from illegal aliens. Not the three million Trump claimed, but clearly more than the “zero” Democrats falsely claim.
  • Austin is now ground zero for cutting both state and federal fund for refusing to cooperate in enforcing immigration laws. Expect more detail on this at a future date.
  • “The House chairman who oversees Justice Department spending is telling so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ that funding for police, jails and housing will end under President Trump’s new executive orders tightening immigration control. ‘It’s real easy, their money disappears. There’s no fight, their money is gone,’ said Texas Rep. John Culberson, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds Justice.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • At least one sign that the sanctuary city crackdown is working: Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez has ordered his jail to start cooperating with the INS to deport illegal aliens.
  • Of course, people working to defy the law and keep illegal aliens from being deported are freaking out over Trump.
  • Current state of legal play on Executive Order 13769:

    It’s unfortunate that Judge [James] Robart’s decision, like the one handed down last weekend in the Eastern District of New York, includes nearly no legal reasoning or explanation, such that we could judge why he found the order unconstitutional or illegal. Federal district judges often issue very summary orders when they are asked to rule on an emergency basis on a request for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, so expecting a scholarly opinion is unrealistic. But with the order halting a nationwide Executive Branch policy in its tracks and sure to be used as a political club, it should not have been too much to ask the court to provide some clue to its reasoning for just saying “this is illegal.”

    Fourth, this is a TRO: it applies only until the court can hold a more complete hearing, which it scheduled for Monday.

  • Byron York also says that the Trump Justice Department demolished Judge Robart’s case.
  • Other border control actions are going to require congressional approval (including much wider use of E-Verify) and whatever tax changes “make Mexico pay for the wall” (there are ways).

    Could Trump’s orders have gone farther? Sure! But it’s a tremendous start for somehow who many in the Republican primaries thought was a secret fan of illegal alien amnesty.

    National Review Does Buc-ee’s

    Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016

    I can hardly resist throwing up a link to this Kevin D. Williamson National Review piece on Buc-ee’s, can I?

    Over the weekend, I stopped to buy gas at a Buc-ee’s in Bastrop, Texas, and was greeted by (in addition to a man dressed as a giant aquatic rodent) an A-frame sign advertising Buc-ee’s version of the minimum wage: cashiers, $12 to $14 an hour; food-service and car-wash help, $13 to $15 an hour; team leaders, $14 to $17 an hour; assistant, $17 an hour and up. Each job came with three weeks paid time off each year, which employees are welcome to use, roll over, or exchange for cash. If you want 40 hours a week, there’s 40 hours a week to be had; if you want more than 40 hours a week, that can happen, too.

    Everyone’s needs vary, of course, and I am not among those who believe that a two-income household is ideal for every situation. But I also believe that you can raise a family decently on $70,000 a year in Bastrop, where you can buy a perfectly serviceable house for less than $100,000 and where a nice, new one keeps you under the usual 2.5-times-your-income rule. Assuming a couple of raises and a bit of overtime, a married couple both working at a gas station could bring home something close to a six-figure income between them.

    He mentions the kolaches but not the fudge. He also omits something the non-Texan audience wouldn’t be aware of, namely of just how large Buc-ee’s is; the Bastrop location is bigger than most supermarkets…

    National Review Endorses Ted Cruz for President

    Friday, March 11th, 2016

    Not a surprise, but now it’s official:

    Conservatives have had difficulty choosing a champion in the presidential race in part because it has featured so many candidates with very good claims on our support. As their number has dwindled, the right choice has become clear: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

    We supported Cruz’s campaign in 2012 because we saw in him what conservatives nationwide have come to see as well. Cruz is a brilliant and articulate exponent of our views on the full spectrum of issues. Other Republicans say we should protect the Constitution. Cruz has actually done it; indeed, it has been the animating passion of his career. He is a strong believer in the liberating power of free markets, including free trade (notwithstanding the usual rhetorical hedges). His skepticism about “comprehensive immigration reform” is leading him to a realism about the impact of immigration that has been missing from our policymaking and debate. He favors a foreign policy based on a hard-headed assessment of American interests, one that seeks to strengthen our power but is mindful of its limits. He forthrightly defends religious liberty, the right to life of unborn children, and the role of marriage in connecting children to their parents — causes that reduce too many other Republicans to mumbling.

    That forthrightness is worth emphasizing. Conservatism should not be merely combative; but especially in our political culture, it must be willing to be controversial. Too many Republicans shrink from this implication of our creed. Not Cruz. And this virtue is connected to others that primary voters should keep in mind. Conservatives need not worry that Cruz will be tripped up by an interview question, or answer it with mindless conventional wisdom when a better answer is available. We need rarely worry, either, that his stumbling words will have to be recast by aides and supporters later. Neither of those things could be said about a lot of Republican nominees over the years.

    Not sure it moves the needle much, since National Review has made its preference for Cruz over Donald Trump clear over the last year, but maybe it will help some of Marco Rubio’s wavering backers push him more strongly to get out of the race.

    After $20 Million Down The New Republic Rathole, Chris Hughes Throws In the Towel

    Monday, January 11th, 2016

    No one could have possibly seen this coming, except, you know, every single observer who saw it coming:

    The New Republic, the century-old magazine that was rocked a year ago by the mass exodus of its staff following an effort by its owner to make it more digitally focused, is being put up for sale.

    Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who purchased a majority stake in the struggling title in 2012, said in a staff memo Monday that he had underestimated “the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate,” and would seek to find a new owner.

    “After investing a great deal of time, energy, and over $20 million, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for new leadership and vision at The New Republic,” the memo read.

    Translation: I took a still-important liberal opinion magazine and managed to turn it into a Salon-clone that managed to lose even more money than Salon.

    Also this:

    “Immediately following the tumult, the magazine’s Web traffic declined by more than 50%, according to comScore Inc., and hasn’t risen much in the last year. In November, the site attracted 2.3 million unique visitors, down 38% from the same month a year earlier.”

    Publishing an opinion magazine is an expensive, generally money-losing proposition. William F. Buckley, Jr. kept National Review afloat thanks to regular reader fundraising solicitations and money from his own pocket. This is why we’re willing to give NRO a lot of slack when they keep pushing their wine club and yearly cruises. (This path is of course open to The New Republic, except who on earth would want to be trapped on a boat for two weeks with current TNR writers?)

    The New Republic used to fill an important role as a voice of liberal hetrodoxy, despite the magazine’s general decline over the years. After the shakeup, it no longer fulfilled any important role whatsoever except as a cautionary example of what not to do and a method of sucking money from Chris Hughes’ pockets.

    Now let’s see if Hughes can find another clueless liberal millionaire to keep pouring money down the rathole…

    Florence King, RIP

    Thursday, January 7th, 2016

    Via Tam comes word that National Review writer Florence King has died at age 80.

    King was sharp and funny, and well worth reading even at her most iconoclastic (she often claimed to be a monarchist). And she could take down puffed up political functionaries like nobody’s business.

    Rest in peace, you magnificent southern broad…