Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as they see it, conformity, yet they themselves are wholly intolerant when faced with opposing viewpoints.

All this reminded me of a friend of mine from my school daze. He’s a genuinely gentle and nice fellow, but he’s of the Leftist persuasion.

He posted this on facebook awhile back, before the election, and the resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.

I believe that the most valuable ideal is kindness.

I believe that all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religious belief
or non-belief, political alignment, sexual orientation and status in life
are deserving of respect.

I’m not perfect in embracing this next ideal but I do my best. It’s all
about having an open mind. I may not agree with the political positions,
religious beliefs, or phobias of others but I do my best to listen to and
respect others.

Then, pulling a 12-G turn, he posted this awhile later…

I am tired of listening to you all! And now I ask that if you truly believe
that we are better off under the current President, if you believe that we
don’t need stricter laws and bans of certain guns, and/or if you have or
intend to disparage the young people of March for Our Lives…then please
unfriend me now and save me the trouble of having to do so myself, which I already have done for some others.

I no longer have the patience to listen to you.

The resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.

This past Saturday, I had a Minnesota Fifth congressional district republican congressional candidate Cicely “Cee Cee“ Davis on the show.

Ilhan Omar is entitled to equal time.

If you’re one of Rep. Omar’s people, have her call my people. she is entitled to equal time.

I hope she claims it.

So over the weekend, DFL representative Kelly Morrison, and other DFLers, ran a loooong series of tweets from her district (SD45, the far west ‘burbs) endorsing convention on Saturday.

Looks like a typical bunch of urban DFLers; masked up like bank robbers:

I mean, their healthcare decision, their business. I don’t tell them what to do, and they don’t tell me…

…oh, Right.

But then we move on. Her staff was certainly with the program…

…as was her (presumably) husband or significant other…

(I mean, I have no idea who he is, or about Ms. Morrison’s personal life).

But wait – apparently you go to the other corner of the building, and – apparently, the Russians have invaded, because Covid has vanished – or at least, the masks:

And then – people with masks shunted to the back of the shot?

And then, posing cheek-to-cheek with Congressman Phillips, with their masks scientifically dangling from the ears – perhaps waiting for word of Russian invasion?

Good thing the #science is so settled…

Suwana Kirkland, DFL-anointed candidate to replace Dave “The Drunk Driver” Hutchinson, is running in a moldy blue country. She doesn’t have to worry about Real Americans votes.

So if she’s caught on camera snuggling with gun-grabbers at DFL caucuses, no biggie for her.

You just shouldn’t expect much new from the HCSO.

Well, less drunk driving.

Probably.

CORRECTION. I’m informed the woman in the HCSO uniform is Duwanna Witt. Not being a Henco resident, I’m not nearly as up on the candidates as I should be.

I regret the error.

Almost two weeks ago a UN-brokered ceasefire in Yemen brought a glimmer of hope for a way out of the years-long war there that according to this UNDP report has taken just under 400,000 lives.

By doing so, we found that by the end of 2021, Yemen’s conflict will lead to 377,000 deaths – nearly 60 per cent of which are indirect and caused by issues associated with conflict like lack of access to food, water, and healthcare.

The UN Special Envoy for Yemen said:

I would like to announce that the parties to the conflict have responded positively to a United Nations proposal for a two-month Truce which comes into effect tomorrow 2 April at 1900hrs. The parties accepted to halt all offensive military air, ground and maritime operations inside Yemen and across its borders; they also agreed for fuel ships to enter into Hudaydah ports and commercial flights to operate in and out of Sana’a airport to predetermined destinations in the region; they further agreed to meet under my auspices to open roads in Taiz and other governorates in Yemen. The Truce can be renewed beyond the two-month period with the consent of the parties.

The war in Yemen has become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and much like the dog that didn’t bark, Iran’s reaction to the ceasefire announcement was upbeat despite the supposed prospect at losing its weapons training ground. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman said:

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh has welcomed an initiative put forth by the UN chief’s special envoy for Yemen to stop military operations for two months and to allow ships carrying fuel and to partially reopen the Sanaa airport.
Khatibzadeh expressed hope that this move will be the prelude to the full lifting of the blockade on Yemen and a permanent ceasefire in order to find a political solution to the country’s crisis. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman reaffirmed Iran’s policy to support a political and humanitarian solution in Yemen, saying, “We hope that on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, humanitarian issues will be prioritized, the ceasefire will hold and we will see an improvement in the humanitarian situation and a prisoner swap between the warring sides.”

This excellent report by Katherine Zimmerman out of the AEI’s Critical Threats project goes into detail about Iran’s involvement in Yemen.

Shared interests underpin the relationship between the Houthis and Iran and the Axis of Resistance. Houthi leaders uphold Iran’s Islamic Revolution as a model to follow, and Iran’s revisionist ideas and efforts to reshape the regional order resonate with them. They thus have found common ground with other Axis members seeking to change the status quo through force, including Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi’a militias, among others. For Iran, the Houthis initially presented an opportunity to threaten Saudi Arabia’s southern border, and Iran has led an effort to cultivate the Houthis as part of its network. The Houthis now rely on Iran and the Axis to retain certain capabilities necessary for their ongoing projection of power from Yemen and have begun to support Axis initiatives from which they do not necessarily benefit.
…
The Houthis now form an integral part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance. Iran cultivates this network to expand its own influence, leveraging its partners in pursuit of its regional objectives: expelling the United States and establishing Iranian hegemony. Members, including the Assad regime, Hezbollah, some Iraqi Shi’a militias, Hamas, PIJ, and some Bahraini militias, benefit from Iranian state support and shared resources and capabilities among Axis members. The Houthis rely on Iran and the Axis to retain certain capabilities crucial to their continued success in Yemen and have begun supporting Axis initiatives that do not necessarily benefit them directly.

In this February 2021 speech, Biden announced an end to “American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.”

As players in the region deal with a disengaged United States, this ceasefire is an opportunity to clarify negotiating positions. From the Asia Times:

Iran’s expected surge following any lifting of sanctions becomes an “X” factor for all regional states, which Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt will have to handle in a different way than previously by taking into account the United States’ steady disengagement from the region.

Unlike former president Donald Trump’s administration, US President Joe Biden tends to regard the past uncritical support for the Saudi-led war as a delusional mistake. This is already a tipping point, where the Houthis will negotiate without having to surrender their weaponry. The advantage goes to the Houthis. Equally, Iran emerges as the regional player to gain the most. Its robust support for the Houthis has paid off.

If the Biden Administration buries its head in the sand when it comes to Iran’s wider aims, Zimmerman summarizes what the Administration might find when it comes up for air:

Yemen is now a single theater in a larger, regional war. The Houthis have developed extensive ties across the Axis of Resistance and have integrated Axis narratives into their own. Iran is waging proxy warfare through the Houthis, and Iran’s limited investment in them has expanded the scope of the conflict beyond Yemen’s borders. Weapons in the Houthis’ arsenal threaten Gulf states and Israel, as well as maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Iran and its Axis of Resistance oppose the deepening of relations between Israel and Arab states, particularly the UAE, and have signaled they will contest these developments. Understanding the Houthis only within the context of Yemen misses this shift in regional security dynamics. The United States must change its approach to securing its interests in the Middle East given the new reality of the Houthis as part of the Axis of Resistance.

Let’s start with a little music:

The facts we hate
We’ll never meet
Walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
But I’m waiting for you
I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts
When is this world coming to?

Can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s tough avoiding bad thoughts these days. The larger question isn’t having bad thoughts, but whether you can express them. John Hayward, a/k/a Doc Zero, notices something important — the calls are coming from inside the house:

There is a part of the conservative sphere that has always felt populism is the ultimate sin, only the Left should be allowed to fight culture wars, and genuine conservative grassroots movements should be immediately run down with rhetorical lawn mowers.

There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.

It’s always about the rice bowls. But there’s more:

For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.

Bad faith has been a growth industry on the port side since, I dunno, Rousseau maybe. It’s certainly not a recent development. Continuing on:

Run through the list of top issues: if you want border security, you must be a xenophobe. If you oppose abortion, you must be a blind religious fanatic or misogynist. If you want smaller government, you’re cruel and greedy. Question global warming? You’re a tool of Big Oil.

We are rat bastards, aren’t we? I must not think bad thoughts. But there’s more:

But as soon as any head of steam builds among grassroots conservatives for questioning the motives of the Left on similar grounds, the timid conservatives leap into action. Tut tut! That language is out of bounds! How dare you imply Lefty’s agenda is deliberately destructive!

They’ll tell you it’s paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.

I believe Mel Brooks had a number in Blazing Saddles about this, calling it the French Mistake. In modern parlance, that would be David French. But we’re not done:

Too much of the conservative commentariat is exactly that: commentators. They were comfortable remarking on the passing scene, not changing it. “Activism” was a dirty word, something the OTHER guys did. Tossing harmless Nerf footballs of theory around op-ed pages was good enough.

Change is hard and things are pretty cozy in the covens along the Potomac. And most of all, dudes wearing tricorner MAGA hats are not our kind, dear. We must not think bad thoughts. I’ve pulled a lot out of Hayward’s thread, but there’s even more. You should read it in full. But while his cri de coeur is compelling, it is clear our betters remain in their sinecures. And we’ll come back to that topic in the coming days.

I come neither to praise nor “improve” the Southwest Light Rail. I come to bury it.

Bill Lindeke – “urban geographer” and transitphile – is more or less the opposite. He wrote a critique of the troubled (doomed?)( project in the MInnPost a few weeks ago – fascinating on some levels, and a complete howler on at least one other.

Fascinating: Lindeke details the NIMBY-ism that led the line to skirt around the north and west edges of Kenwood (where people are more wont to take the Mercedes or the Tesla than take the train, thankewverymuch).

Unstated: it makes the same mistake rail transit always makes in this decentralized era. Rail transit was desiged at a time when the middle class woke up in a bedroom suburb and commuted downtown to their factory or office jobs. Today, as the decentralization of jobs and the economy continues, accelerated by the pandemic, that model is as quaint and obsolete as a rabbit-ear antenna for your TV. By their very nature, and that of society, trains these days largely take people who don’t exist from places they aren’t to where they don’t need to go. Only the money being transferred from taxpayers to the transit-industrial complex is real.

Now, the Howler: Remember how driving a train down 5th, Washington and University gutted the Midway?

Lindeke apparently doesn’t. His plans for Hennepin Avenue are…

…welll:

In the case of Southwest Light Rail, the best alternative — a tunnel underneath Hennepin Avenue, interlining with the Green Line downtown — was never studied as an option. Instead, early on in the process, planners studied an at-grade route down Hennepin Avenue that would have been disruptive to the existing urban fabric. Then, as the routing decision came to a head, planners analyzed a tunnel down Nicollet Avenue that would have been impossible to connect seamlessly downtown. Nobody ever studied a Hennepin Avenue tunnel that represented the best combination of speed, density and efficient use of infrastructure.

The Midway may never completely recover from the building of the Vomit Comet straight down the middle of its main street, University Avenue.

Can you imagine what years of excavation, tunnel construction, the associated utility and infrastructure rerouting and, let’s be honest, the inevitable planning blunders would do the Uptown?

Above and beyond the fact that tunnels cost at least 10 times as much as at-grade rail – likely raising the cost of the entire route from (I predict)( $3 Billion to (assuming couple of miles of subway) $7-8 billion (before the inevitable Met Council incompetence and government inflation kick in)?

Don’t praise it. Bury it. Not literally. Figuratively.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

CEO: “Alright everybody, settle down. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. First up, the White House proposes a tax on oil company profits as a way to stop . . . let me quote . . . “despicable price gouging and exploitation.” Any suggestions?”

VP Sales: “Sir, I don’t understand. How does raising taxes on our company help consumers at the pump?”

VP Diversity: “Higher taxes raise money to give to women, trans, and persons of color.”

VP Human Resources: “We could cut employees’ salaries, bring down our cost, reduce the price of gas at the pump?”

VP Finance: “Wouldn’t help. ‘Profits’ are what’s leftover after paying salaries, we’d still be taxed.”

VP Labor Relations: “The union wants wage increases. That would reduce our profits, right? Pay less taxes?”

VP Finance: “Yes, but profits are how we pay dividends to stockholders. Eliminate the profits and our stock price falls, including the value of all our stock options.”

-silence-

CEO: “We can’t cut costs, we can’t increase costs, we need a creative solution. Think people, think. Say, is there any more coffee? You there, I’m afraid I don’t know your name. More coffee?”

New Hire Secretary: “Yessir, right away. Um, sir?”

CEO: “Yes?”

New Hire Secretary: “Couldn’t you just pass along the new taxes to the customer? I mean, so the price of gas goes up, so what? What are people going to do, sell their cars and buy electric?”

CEO: “Meeting adjourned. You, miss, come with me. And bring that coffee, we have a lot to talk about.”


Joe Doakes

Not quite “ripped from the headlines “. Or… Is it?

Dennis Prager once wrote “whatever the Left touches it ruins.” In the 1950s, Leftists beheld Eisenhower’s America and set about trying to ruin it. In those years, America was the colossus astride the world. The only major power in the post-war years with its economy and infrastructure intact, America’s economic engine was roaring. Fueled by the GI Bill and real purchasing power, nuclear families ignited the rise of the suburbs while doubling the country’s Gross National Product.

Entertainment of the time reflected social norms. Programs such as Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver depicted stable, healthy families. Naturally the Left saw what was good and recoiled in revulsion.

The Beat Generation was a major Leftist reaction to 1950s culture. It began at Columbia University where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and other early Beats attended. William Burroughs attended Harvard, but he spent a lot of time in New York City’s subculture and was introduced there to Kerouac and Ginsberg.

I don’t think it is an accident that the Frankfurt School had relocated to Columbia University to escape the Nazis. Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm among others helped found the basis of critical theory, the destructive brew of Marxism and philosophy that is the grandfather of today’s wokeism.

Months after being exposed as a Federal “shake and bake” operation, the DOJ’s prosecution of the “kidnapping” case against Gretchen Whitmer ended in complete ignominy:

Exactly 18 months to the day, Birge’s prosecutors suffered a humiliating defeat in a Grand Rapids courtroom after a jury acquitted two of the men and deadlocked on the guilt of two others. (Two defendants pleaded guilty and testified for the government during the three-week trial). Despite endless resources and favorable rulings by the judge overseeing the case, the government failed to secure a single conviction in what the Justice Department considered one of its largest domestic terror investigations ever.

Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, after a year and a half in prison, went home to their families on Friday night; Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader, and Barry Croft, Jr. remain incarcerated while Birge’s office prepares to retry the men—a fool’s errand, as they didn’t know each other prior to the FBI’s involvement in the faux plot and live almost 1,000 miles apart. (Croft resides in Delaware.) It’s a desperate attempt to save face, regardless of the lives and the principles of justice at stake.

Not only were jurors unpersuaded by Birge’s prosecutors, the jury instead seemed to believe defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients were entrapped by the FBI. At least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants, working out of numerous FBI field offices across the eastern half of the country and at the direction of supervising agents, concocted and funded the sting operation. Dan Chappel, the main informant compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for “bringing people together,” as his FBI handler ordered him, took the stand to explain his role. But his testimony was lackluster and ultimately did not convince the jury the men were guilty.

So, let’s review the facts as we know them today. The “attempt”

• Was a federal “shake and bake” – a setup driven by FBI agents and informants.
• It was released precisely in time to affect the 2020 election, where Whitmer’s mortal enemy,, Trump, was a candidate.l

How is this not election interference – which, we are reliably informed, is a threat to the very fiber of democracy, when it’s “Republican” yahoos trampling through the Capitol?

Here’s one huge reason:

And beyond that, speaking for myself (and I suspect an awful lot of us)? Because they can say things like the WaPo’s Applebaum says in the video above out one side of their greasy maw, and ignore the fact that they said this out the other side, in public, with their own mouths.

They truly think you’re all idiots.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We’re told Lesko Brandon got more votes than Barack Obama. A friend asks where’s the show of support?

“We used to see Obama bumper stickers everywhere, that sun rising over the fields symbol. Drive the back roads out-state and you’ll still see Trump signs. I even saw a Wellstone bumper sticker in Mac-Groveland the other day (no, the driver was not a late-middle-aged white woman with resting bitch face and an ELCA haircut – her daughter was driving). So where are all the Biden/Harris bumper stickers? Did Biden voters scrub them off in shame?”

My guess is Biden voters ran out and bought new cars after the election, using their new-found prosperity under the Lesko Brandon administration. What other explanation could there be?

Joe Doakes

To be honest,I don’t recall ever seeing a whole lot of them, even during the campaign.

My non-satirical answer is, Donald Trump broke enough moderate brains to push Branden over the top. People are having their “morning after” moment – like all such moments, a day late and a dollar short.

I didn’t intend to make this “China Week”, it just sorta worked out that way as things caught my eye 🙂 That said, this interesting article from Prospect highlighted something that has probably flown under the radar as we go about our daily lives and wonder why our favorite Acme Widget isn’t on the shelf at Wal-mart this week.

Standardized intermodal shipping containers have revolutionized the worldwide transport of cargo. When a container can be shipped to a port, then lifted off the ship by crane and placed directly on a rail car, then transported to another hub and lifted off the train and placed directly onto a truck trailer, all without unloading that container, costs are greatly reduced.

Guess who manufactures the lion’s share of those containers, though?

Three large Chinese companies—CIMC, Dong Fang, and CXIC—produce approximately 82 percent of all containers, according to the report. Combined with some smaller firms, China makes over 95 percent of these containers, and the only other ones produced are for specific regional markets or in nonstandard sizes.

So essentially all standard-sized containers used in global shipping, roughly 44 million boxes, were manufactured in China, as well as around 86 percent of all intermodal chassis. China’s state-owned container manufacturers benefit from large government subsidies and other benefits. And in seemingly coordinated fashion, they slowed production of new containers when demand initially rose during the pandemic, leading to prices nearly doubling from early 2020 to today.

China took control of container manufacturing in the 1990s, stealing market share from South Korea, according to FreightWaves. A coalition known as the China Container Industry Association, or CCIA, directs most of the activity, and it’s dominated by CIMC, the world’s largest container manufacturer, producing about 40 percent of the world’s containers.

Some restaurants – including one Twin Cities favorite – are instituting “equity charges“.

They would appear to be doing it, at least in part, because they believe their customers are idiots:

On its website, Broders’ has a notice to customers notifying them of a new 15 percent “benefits and equity” charge they’ve instituted. They justify the charge, first, by explaining that “many states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit.” (More on this in a minute.)

But Minnesota (the restaurant being referred to is in southwest Minneapolis) is not one of them.

Oh, also they think you’re a bigot…

“Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips,” the statement reads. “In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well.”

Has anyone noticed how the phrase “studies show…” may as well be a shorthand signal for “weasel words will follow”?

I used to like to ask “what studies? Where?“, But that would get us into a Bergs 16th Maw situation, almost immediately, almost every time..

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Hillary figured out how to turn Haitian Relief donations into family funds. Of course she did, she’s the Smartest Woman in America (TM).

But Lesko Brandon figured out how to convert Ukraine foreign aid into 10% for The Big Guy, and he’s the dumbest man in Congress. He didn’t think up the scheme on his own, someone coached him. Who? And who else did they coach to use a similar scheme: maybe not Haiti but some other grant recipient, some other non-profit, some other book deal or art sale?

There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm in Washington for investigating money-laundering corrupt politicians, not even among Republicans. I wonder if the reluctance to throw stones has anything to do with living in glass houses?

Joe Doakes

That’s why I’m really, really, really hoping DeSantis gets the nod in 2024. Call me naïve, but I think he will at least have enough moral high ground, personally, to try to tackle this.

This year will see the 80th anniversary of the Guadalcanal campaign. Guadalcanal was at the end of a chain of Japanese bases radiating from their main bases at Rabaul and Truk. Japan pushed these bases out with the aim of interdicting supply routes between the US and their ANZAC allies. After relieving the threat to Port Moresby on New Guinea with the Battle of the Coral Sea, the US saw an opportunity to check Japan’s advance towards the New Hebrides. Guadalcanal’s strategic location was ideal for the airfield Japan had under construction. The Marines invaded in August 1942 and after a tough six month battle, the US had secured a base that set the stage for Operation Cartwheel, a major campaign aimed at neutralizing Rabaul.

Gudalcanal’s location in relation to sea lanes between the US and Australia is no less strategic today, which is why plenty of alarm bells are sounding after the government of the Solomon Islands announced a security agreement with China last week.

Solomon Islands Ministers of Foreign Affairs and External Trade Hon Jeremiah Manele and Minister of Police and National Security and Correctional Services, the Hon Anthony Veke jointly announced that officials of Solomon Islands and the Peoples Republic of China have initialed elements of a bilateral Security Cooperation Framework between the two countries today.

The draft Framework Agreement will be cleaned up and await signatures of the two countries Foreign Ministers.

Solomon Islands reiterate that the Framework of Cooperation is to respond to Solomon Islands soft and hard domestic threats. Solomon Islands continue to roll out the implementation of its National Security Strategy and uphold its Foreign Policy of “Friends to all and enemies to none.”

Voters in Kenosha County – which has been voting Democrat for literally decades – threw out Democrats for county executive and school board in county elections this week..

Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, a Republican candidate for governor, endorsed 48 school board candidates. Of those, 34 won including eight incumbents, based on preliminary results. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a former teacher, school administrator and state superintendent, did not endorse in any race…

Conservative candidates picked up school board seats in Waukesha, Wausau and Kenosha, but lost races in Beloit and the western Wisconsin cities of La Crosse and Eau Claire.

The Republican-backed candidate for a state appeals court seat in southeastern Wisconsin, Maria Lazar, also defeated a sitting judge who was appointed by Evers.

Kenosha?

Huh. Where have I heard of Kenosha.

I wonder why a habitually Democrat county seems to be swinging red?

Why could that be?

am a small-town Scandinavian at heart, and have spent decades involved in Minnesota and Metro Republican politics, so optimism doesn’t come easily. I’m waiting to see how the MNGOP screws this potential wave up.

Let’s not screw this potential wave up.

SCENE: A suburban family room. MOTHER and FATHER are anxiously looking at their SON, who’s watching…TV.

MOTHER: It’s all he’s watching lately. .

FATHER: What is it?

MOTHER: He’s binging Band of Brothers

FATHER: Again? This is like the third time.

MOTHER: And before that, it was 13 Hours. And then Taken.

FATHER: I caught him watching Die Hard the other day.

MOTHER: He has the scene of him rescuing his wife from being pulled out the window with Hans Gruber as his social media avatar.

FATHER: God. I wonder what’s going on with him?

So I started binge watching “The Flight Attendant” last night.

Pros: it’s really well written. That’s nothing to sneeze at. I’ve been terribly disappointed by the writing in a lot of things I’ve seen lately (I’m looking at you, Love Life, whose laziness completely wasted Anna Kendrick).

The writers toss out a completely un-subtle “Crime and Punishment“ reference in the first couple minutes, and then go on to deliver on it throughout everything I’ve seen so far (#StuffEnglishMajorsLike). And Kaley Cuoco makes a completely believable protagonist.

Bonus pro: it’s got Rosie Perez, who may be the most underrated actress of her generation (although she’s just a tad underutilized in the first couple episodes).

It’s not Dial M for Murder, much less Gaslight, but it ain’t bad.

Speaking of that Ingrid Bergman / Charles Boyer classic…

Cons: These aren’t all in re Flight Attendant alone – far from it.

Hollywood writers seemed to have gotten together and signed a weird, junior high quality pact amongst themselves: “For decades, we wrote women as one dimensional caricatures; madonnas, whores, bimbos and housewives. Let’s pack a century of retribution into a couple of years worth of television and movies.“

Apparently, women can be protagonists, or nuanced, complex characters, or turbocharged badasses, for good or evil – or at least not incompetent caricatures.  That’s a good thing.

On the other hand, rules for men of these days seem to be boiled down to:

• Gay besties
• stock black, Asian, Latino or Semitic guys
• The villain (usually an older white guy, usually played with all the subtlety of a mustache-twisting melodrama villain, although occasionally a white woman)
  – The love interest – who is usually safely ethnically ambiguous.
• pathetic, beaten down sacks
• Buffoons, tools, frat bros (apparently all white anglo-saxon protestant males get lacrosse scholarships. I didn’t know that), frat bros that have grown up to be buffoons and tools, cliché rednecks and every kind of cad ever offered up by central casting.. Almost inevitably white, although I guess it’s a sign of evolution the screen writers are showing the occasional less than bright/moral/ethical black male character.
• Part of a married couple – usually as a hapless schlub whose league his spouse is waaay out of, but with plenty of dysfunctional, abusive cads thrown in. (Same sex couples apparently are immune to most serious dysfunction in Hollywood. Who knew?)

Patronizing? I think so.

Virtue signaling? Sure.

 Lazy? Completely.

Gaslighting?

FATHER: Junior? Why are you watching all these…

MOTHER: …movies and TV shows?

SON: Because it’s fun, for a change, for the first time in my life, to see people like I am, or plan to become, not portrayed as idiots, buffoons, fools, blackguards and expendable simps?

MOTHER: (sotto voce, to FATHER). Do. you think we should call a therapist?

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Richard Fernandez writes an uncomfortable column about Ukraine, and the United States.

Joe Doakes

As with pretty much everything Fernandez has ever written, it’s worth a read; in this case, a pull quote:

In a counterfactual world where the Russian president agreed with this site and continued to feint, where NATO was still in awe of the supposedly unstoppable Russian army and Putin still hitting Biden up for nickels and dimes to keep him from unleashing it, the Kremlin might still be the capital of a great power. But it would be no more substantial than a fleet-in-being that is nine-tenths shadow and one part solid is; a thing powerful only in narrative. For in truth, Russia fell a long time ago with its crashing demography; its uncompetitive, oligarch-ridden industries; its incompetent autocratic leadership. Ukraine was a mirror into which Putin dared look when a man of his mien ought not. But whether he looked or not he was ugly just the same.

If there’s any lesson in this for Washington, it must be to ask: how much of America’s power is a myth, like Russia’s? Dare we collapse the wave function? If too much is spin, then put it not to the test, but keep on bluffing until the reality is restored. You can’t live in the narrative forever.

I’m going to suggest you read the whole thing anyway.

Leftism is all about harnessing the power of pixie dust and expeller pressed unicorn horn oil. I wish the laws of economics and of nature to be different, therefore they are. One way magical thinking manifests itself is the sun-dappled dream that we can get rid of fossil fuels, switch to electric vehicles, the changeover will be painless, and we won’t notice any change in our standard of living.

An electric car is, well, electric, and electric is easy because I can just plug in my Vitamix blender at home to make my artisanal kale smoothie and it just turns on and couldn’t be simpler. So having an electric car will be just as easy!

Michael Lind has a good article in Tablet outlining the difficulties in putting an electric car in every garage. Never mind how we’re going to “cleanly” produce all the electricity these vehicles would consume. Electric vehicles, and especially the batteries that power them, require the kinds of natural resources that don’t grow on trees.

But according to experts on global mineral production who belong to SoS Minerals, in a letter delivered to the British Committee on Climate Change:

The metal resource needed to make all cars and vans electric by 2050 and all sales to be purely battery electric [in the UK] by 2035. To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and 12% of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry. …

Challenges of using ‘green energy’ to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years’ worth of total global copper supply and 10 years’ worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms.

There is not enough cobalt, neodymium, or lithium being mined and refined in the entire world today for Britain to meet its green transition goals in the next generation. And Britain has only 67 million people. The United States has 330 million. The world has nearly 8 billion. Do the math.

“Every once in a while, a politician slips up and tells the truth“

“Lieutenant“ Governor Flanagan did that Monday on Twitter:

She’s right. After three generations of actively creating dependence on government, they have… created dependence on government.

It’s a feature, not a bug. To the DFL, anyway.

Given the glacial pace of John Durham’s investigation, it’s easy to assume that nothing is really going to come of his efforts; it’s a drill we’ve all seen before. Before Lucy pulls the football away yet again, let’s note that Durham did establish something long suspected:

John Durham released a potential smoking gun in the case against Michael Sussmann on Monday night, as he published documents showing the Democratic cybersecurity lawyer messaged the FBI general counsel that he was not working on behalf of any client, when in fact he was working for the Clinton campaign.

So what did Sussman say?

On Monday evening, however, Durham revealed Sussmann conveyed that lie in a text message to [FBI general counsel James] Baker on Sept. 18, 2016 — the night before their meeting at the bureau.

“Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss,” Sussmann wrote to the FBI top lawyer. “Do you have availibilty [sic] for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

Except he wasn’t. He was indeed representing the Clinton campaign. As the linked article from the Washington Examiner explains:

Sussmann’s lawyers have said Sussmann met with the FBI in September 2016 “to pass along information that raised national security concerns” and characterized this as simply “to provide a tip.” The lawyers contended that Sussmann was “charged with making a false statement about an entirely ancillary matter — about who his client may have been when he met with the FBI — which is a fact that even the Special Counsel’s own indictment fails to allege had any effect on the FBI’s decision to open an investigation.”

Durham countered that “the defendant made his false statement directly to the FBI General Counsel on a matter that was anything but ancillary: namely, the existence … of attorney-client relationships that would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.”

“The defendant’s false statement to the FBI General Counsel was plainly material because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign,” Durham wrote.

Do I have any reasonable expectation that Sussmann will ultimately be brought to justice, let alone his clients? Forget it D, it’s Chinatown. And as Sussmann’s client famously said in yet another context:

What difference does it make? We know. And while stories are soft pedaled or buried entirely, they are out there to know. And in the case of the Clintons, it means they won’t be coming back.

If there’s one thing people love, it’s feeling better than others.

And as America has undergone its “Great Sort”, pop psychology has provided a dysfunctional society boundless opportunities to do just that. Those opportunities are scientifically dubious, but just plain feel good, because they satisfy that primal need to dunk on other people.

These opportunities came in successive waves of theories: “Conservative/liberals have better sex lives than liberals/conservatives”, self-adulatory navel gazing about Boomers/Xers/Millenials/GenZs, the brief fixation on the joys and superiority of introversion, endless diagnoses (during the Trump years, “narcissistic personality disorder” was in vogue)…

…and, I suspect, this latest one: pathologizing “stupidity”.

In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Let’s take a look at Cipolla’s five basic laws of human stupidity:

The “five laws” are there, and make sense, more or less.

But I’m wondering – does nobody think this sort of affectation through? Ever?

Because if combine this (I predict) fad-to-be with the fad that is currently ebbing – the “Dunning Kruger Effect – people doing the diagnosing will realize that they are, largely…

…well, subject to which facile, self-adulatory cultural trope?

Again – don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…

Joel Doakes from Como Park emails:

If:

A sane man instinctively recoils in horror from harming another, and later suffers PTSD from the guilt;

A sociopath cares about his own group but not other groups and therefore has no problem harming them; and

A psychopath actively enjoys harming people and seeks out the opportunity to do so; then,

judging from behavior observed on freeways, grocery stores, Twitter and social media, ordinary Americans seem to be sliding from sanity to sociopathy, becoming less empathetic and more emphatic, less generous minded and more generally pissed at the world in general. And judging from crime reports and YouTube videos, young African-Americans seem to be sliding from sociopathy toward psychopathy.

If true, this change will make it easier for all Americans to resort to violence, murder, rebellion, revolution, which is what certain Liberal/Progressive/Leftists seem to desire: an end to the United States as it now exists.

Why has this happened?

Did we fall or were we pushed?

Joe Doakes

Well I’m not going to answer directly, I will remind you that the extremes like it when people feel the need to abandon the center.

Last week the Treasury Dept imposed sanctions on an individual and four related companies that “procured ballistic missile propellant-related materials for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research and Self Sufficiency Jihad Organization (IRGC RSSJO), the IRGC unit responsible for the research and development of ballistic missiles.”

This was in response to “Iran’s missile attack on Erbil, Iraq on March 13 and the Iranian enabled Houthi missile attack against a Saudi Aramco facility on March 25 as well as other missile attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

The individual had “been personally involved in high-level meetings and traveled with senior IRGC RSSJO officials and, in his role as the manager of Sina Composite, procured processing machines for nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) from China using falsified shipping documents.”

One of the companies “has procured centrifuge spare parts used in the production of ballistic missile propellant valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from suppliers in China.”

In response, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said:

“This move is another demonstration of the ill-will of the US government toward the Iranian nation, which is a continuation of the failed policy of maximum pressure by that government against Iran, and this clearly proves the fact that the current US administration, contrary to what it claims, uses every opportunity to level baseless accusations against the Iranian people and impose pressure on them,” Saeed Khatibzadeh said.

“The US claims to be ready to return to full implementation of its obligations under the nuclear deal, while it continues to significantly violate the UN Security Council resolution 2231.”

2231 is the resolution (text here) in support of the original JCPOA. That’s a bit rich, accusing the US of being in violation. The resolution said this of Iran’s missile program:

Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology…

If you believe Iran isn’t trying to build a nuclear missile program, there’s a place for you in the Biden Administration. This would be the same administration currently trying to negotiate a return to the JCPOA with Iran. I always wonder if the Treasury Dept’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ever gets invited to the White House Christmas parties. They are diligent about keeping tabs on Iran. I’m always amazed the commissars in the White House let them issue all these sanctions. It makes all these negotiations in Vienna look rather silly.

What’s more, this Iranian missile program is proceeding with the assistance of China. Factor things like this in when you wonder why China was sliding stacks of dollars to the Bidens.