Month: September 2019

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U.K. Parliament Gives A Full-Fledged Finger To The British People

Sure sounds like the #resistance/deep state in this country.

Sumantra Maitra:

“…The British Parliament stood firmly opposed to the British people, as 21 Conservative Party members of Parliament (MPs) defected and joined the Liberals-Democrats to damage the new Boris Johnson government and oppose a No-Deal Brexit on October 31. In a win for the European Union, keenly being watched from the Americas and the European continent, the British government is now paralyzed, with no majority for any Brexit, even a diluted one; no mandate for another election; no unified opposition to win in an election; and no government strong enough to push through.

Modern Western democratic societies, whether parliamentary or senatorial, have never faced a situation where the declared majority result is straddled against the checks for majoritarianism. The British parliament is nominally more powerful than the monarch or the prime minister. Ever since Brexit, it is aspiring to be more powerful than the people. And the outcome and direction of this will be a lesson for the entire English-speaking world…”

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Impeachment Follies

This is a small piece of another great article by Conrad Black. Click over for a good read.

Conrad Black:

“…The almost comically otherworldly Trump-haters in the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees—Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—will be back this week no doubt still trying to drum up interest in their still-born impeachment effort-their ludicrous mimicry of an investigation will be the last death rattle of the soon to be infamous Trump-Russian collusion fraud. It is not so surprising that a person’s acquaintances are often passionately hostile to this president, given that people in government and the media normally worthy of confidence in their sanity and up to a point their probity, are behaving so irrationally.

The former directors of central intelligence and national intelligence, John Brennan and James Clapper, obviously have lied to Congress about some aspects of their work, but that does not inhibit them for a moment from lining up behind Comey’s disgraceful conduct. “One man’s leaker is another man’s whistleblower,” said Clapper of Comey last week. But the “whistle-blowing” Clapper extols had to do with allegations about which Comey knew there was no evidence. He asked court approval for domestic espionage on a victorious presidential campaign for reasons, unless he was a completely incompetent police chief, he knew to be false.

All of those men participated in the creation of an artificial media echo chamber to lend credence to false allegations of great gravity, in the apparent hope of so destabilizing the incoming administration that it would be unable to function, and possibly would be deeply shaken by an unfounded impeachment of the new president.

It is clearer every week those who say what occurred was an attempted coup are substantially accurate. This is not only astounding and distressing, the extreme state of denial that grips the Trump-hating media makes it likely that the credibility of the national political press will be in tatters long after those responsible for the unconstitutional conspiracy to subvert and pervert the election have been exposed and legally punished…”

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Feelings…Nothing More Than Feelings

STEPHEN KRUISER:

“…Our friends on the left, alas, aren’t so carefree and fun-loving. We’ve discussed the permanently aggrieved nature of the modern progressives before. As I am often accused of never having anything nice to say about the other side, let me try something new here: I frequently find myself marveling at their ability to continue to surprise me, especially with their ability to concoct outrage and/or resentment in almost any given situation.

Take, for example, the young women’s rights writer for The Guardian, who finds the Starbucks policy of asking for people’s names a trigger for resentment.

Never mind that she doesn’t even go so Starbucks, which she readily admits at the top of the article. One doesn’t need something as mundane as firsthand experience to take offense to things that aren’t really offensive in the first place:

I do not drink the coffee in  Starbucks because it doesn’t taste good. But even if I did, I wouldn’t, for another reason: my name. Because if you’re a half-Turkish, half-Iranian second-generation immigrant like I am, it means you have a name that few can pronounce, and which even your parents can’t agree how to spell. (My father spells it with a Sh, my mother with an Ş. In their defence, they don’t agree on much.)

When your own parents can’t agree on the spelling of your name, and beloved co-workers continue to get it wrong after years of gentle admonishing – well, I’d rather not have to go through the rigmarole of painstakingly spelling it out to a barista.

My daughter has an unusual name — it’s Polish — and she loves Starbucks. Never once have they gotten her name right and never once has she been offended or traumatized by the experience.

Because she was raised by sane people…”

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Tony Blair

I like Tony Blair. I don’t always agree with him on issues, but he is reasonable. I am surprised that he is anti-brexit. I did not know that. I think it is further evidence of the western elite’s drift. They seem to think that citizens of democratic countries are not capable of deciding issues, only the governing elite can do that. When the citizens decide contrary to elite opinion, you simply redo the vote, over and over, until the citizens decide the issue correctly. I am inclined to agree with his analysis in this case with respect to Jeremy Corbyn. I am saddened to see what an elitist he has become.

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Master Tweeter

I should say master communicator. This is how Trump bypasses the media and communicates. He reaches his base. He reaches likely voters. The media cannot prevent this. The media cannot interpret it before Americans see it. The strategy is highly effective. This is why “Trump Tweets” upset the media so much. The more upset the media gets, the more effective the tweets become.

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What Went Wrong with Higher Education?

This is another great piece from Victor Davis Hanson. Required reading for parents about to send their children to college. Click over for the whole thing.

Victor Davis Hanson:

“…Most of us who came of age in the 1970s revered the university—even as it was still reeling from 1960s protests and beginning a process that resulted in its present chaos and disrepute.

Americans of the G.I. Bill-era first enshrined the idea of upward mobility through the bachelor’s degree—the assumed gateway to career security—and the positive role of expanding colleges to grow the new suburban middle classes.

Despite student radicalism and demands for reform, professors had been trained in the postwar era by an older breed of prewar scholars and teachers. As stewards they passed on their sense of professionalism about training future scholars and teachers—and just broadly educated citizens. In classics, I remember courses from scholars like British subjects like H.D. Kitto and Michael Grant, who lectured on Sophoclean tragedies or the late Roman emperors as the common inheritance of undergraduates.

Overwhelmingly liberal and often hippish in appearance, American faculty of the early 1970s still only rarely indoctrinated students, or bullied them to mimic their own progressivism. Rather, in both the humanities and sciences, students were taught the inductive method of evaluating evidence in hopes of finding some common explanation of natural and human phenomena…”

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Doug Santo