All's well that ends well (but all is not well)

Doing it for 200 years

We finally have things figured out and we now know Fearless Maria will be headed to Saint Louis University in the fall. SLU wasn't necessarily her first choice, but I'm pretty sure it will be the right choice in the end. I really think the college chase is out of control. So many kids are chasing so few spots that the competition is becoming absurd. I've seen it written that many schools wouldn't accept their alumni today -- the board scores and high school grade point averages that could get you into a high-level school 25 years ago wouldn't be nearly enough now.

Has the product improved that much? I don't think anyone who pays attention would make that argument. Every day brings new word of some outrage of political correctness or scandal. Some schools seem to have sold their souls. Our friend Bike Bubba has been covering the unfolding scandal at his alma mater, Michigan State University, with great interest and even greater dismay. The stories coming out of Saint Olaf, a school Fearless Maria briefly considered, are scandalous. And it's clear that places like Evergreen State College are asylums, not academe. We line up to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to such places.

For what it's worth, Benster's school, Knox College, does a good job of keeping speech free on its campus. In many ways, Knox is a typical liberal arts college and is crawling with portsiders, but I had a good feeling about Knox from the outset, an impression that was verified when I heard its president, Teresa Amott, make a specific point that incoming students needed to listen to all voices, liberal and conservative, during her remarks at the opening convocation four years ago. Based on what I know about SLU, Fearless Maria should have a similar experience.

But they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason

Remember those lazy, hazy, crazy, days of summer? Those days of soda, and pretzels, and . . . treason?

 "This is moving into perjury, false statements and even into potentially treason," Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., says of investigations into Team Trump’s adventures among the Russians. “We understand why some are raising issues of treason,” ethics lawyers Norman Eisen and Richard Painter write in The New York Times.

So we were told. Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting with Russian operatives. It was treason. Tim Kaine was going to be Hillary Clinton's vice president, you might recall. It was quite the contretemps for a while.

Winter is approaching. And now what?

What’s the difference between the infamous Russian dossier on Donald Trump and that random fake-news story you saw on Facebook last year? The latter was never used by America’s intelligence community to bolster its case for spying on American citizens nor was it the foundation for a year’s worth of media coverage.

Then again, you get what you pay for. We now know Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid as much as $9 million for the discredited dossier on Trump.

According to The Washington Post, a lawyer named Marc Elias, who represented both the 2016 Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, had hired Fusion GPS, a DC firm working on behalf of the Russian government to soften sanctions at the time, to provide opposition research for them. The firm then hired a former British spy named Christopher Steele who reportedly purchased salacious rumors about Trump from the Russians.

Taking a meeting with Russia is treason. Spending $9 million for Russian oppo is not. Has anyone asked Tim Kaine for a clarification? This must be another cause where our lack of nuance is keeping us from a greater truth.

Do you remember your President Nixon

One of the charges you hear about Le Grand Orange is that he's like Nixon. It's true -- they both give Democrats what they want:

 President Donald Trump briskly overruled congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government operating and raise America's debt limit. The immediate goal was ensuring money for hurricane relief, but in the process the president brazenly rolled his own party's leaders.

In deal-making mode, Trump sided Wednesday with the Democratic leaders — "Chuck and Nancy," as he amiably referred later to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — as they pushed for the three-month deal. The deal had the effect of brushing aside the urgings of GOP leaders and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a much longer extension to the debt limit. Republicans want that longer allowance to avoid having to take another vote on the politically toxic issue before the 2018 congressional elections.

So, what do you make of it? A few brief thoughts:

• Trump is not a Man of Words. Words trip him up. Trump is a Man of Action. He wants to do things. Washington is not a place where it's easy to do things. So to Get Something Done, he decided to throw in with the Dems. It shouldn't really surprise anyone.
• Republicans are too busy fighting to figure out how to work with Trump. It's clear that Trump is tired of dealing with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Can't say I blame him for feeling that way, frankly.
• Because the MSM will always have the backs of Democrats, Schumer and Pelosi can concentrate on results. Ryan and McConnell believe they have to manage appearances first. And they can't do it, because no matter how many concessions they make to appear reasonable, they will always be monsters because the MSM says they are. Until and unless they embrace their monstrosity, they will remain ineffective. All the Strange New Respect in the world is provisional. John McCain was a great guy until he became a monster. Now he's back in the Strange New Respect business. That football is always going to be pulled away.
• Trump will learn that Schumer and Pelosi aren't his friends soon enough. What he does with that knowledge is anyone's guess.

Who is more likely to put a boot on your throat, if given the opportunity?

These people?

Deplorables

Or these people?

Is that a hardwood dowel, or are you just happy to see me?

Does it make a difference? I'm being told it does.

UPDATE: Apparently we have the wrong view of Antifa, so Andy Marlette sets us straight:

The dude with the dowel is really G. I. Joe

Make sure you have your mind right.

Home truth

Nicholas M. Gallagher, writing in The American Interest, with the line of the day:

Anyone who has spent two minutes in policy circles has met the kind of person who flaunts their ignorance of and disdain for football, or “sportball” in general, as a badge of honor. Bragging about your disdain for something in which the great majority of your fellow men find deep meaning in is a sign of spiritual impoverishment.

Yes it is.

For the record

Yes, the Obama administration does pay ransom:

The State Department admitted Thursday that the United States handed over $400 million in cash to Iran only after Tehran released four American hostages — two weeks after President Obama insisted the payment was not a “ransom.”

State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked at a press briefing: “In basic English, you’re saying you wouldn’t give them $400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?”

“That’s correct,” he replied.

You might recall this, from the Leader of the Free World:

I have been scolded recently for using the term "Leader of the Free World" in a derisive manner. One longtime commenter told me he would no longer read this feature because of my lack of respect for the President of the United States. I would argue the Commander in Chief gets about as much respect in this feature as he deserves.

Peggy dials in

Peggy Noonan is a former Reagan speechwriter who has had a perch at the Wall Street Journal for years. She seriously went off the rails in 2008, becoming an acolyte for Barack Obama. She was hardly alone in that season of self-deception, but given her prominence and pedigree she garnered a lot of attention and, subsequently, a lot of scorn, especially on the Right.

She's been better for the last few years, and her recent column concerning Donald Trump and the people who support him is pretty good. A lot of Trump supporters feel betrayed. She draws on the recent experience of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who threw open the doors of Germany to a sea of immigrants who aren't particularly attuned to Western culture, to make a salient point:

Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.

Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.

The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”

Emphasis mine. If you ask the average bien pensant liberal in the U.S. about Trump and his supporters, you'll hear many of the same adjectives. Back to Noonan:

The larger point is that this is something we are seeing all over, the top detaching itself from the bottom, feeling little loyalty to it or affiliation with it. It is a theme I see working its way throughout the West’s power centers. At its heart it is not only a detachment from, but a lack of interest in, the lives of your countrymen, of those who are not at the table, and who understand that they’ve been abandoned by their leaders’ selfishness and mad virtue-signalling.

I think "virtue-signalling" is a lot of it and although I live in flyover land, this "not our kind, dear" sentiment is plenty strong in our area. Although most people around here are closer in station to those who are objecting to globalism, Trump and his supporters are just too unseemly. Back to Noonan:

From what I’ve seen of those in power throughout business and politics now, the people of your country are not your countrymen, they’re aliens whose bizarre emotions you must attempt occasionally to anticipate and manage.

That last part matters. If our leaders assume that people in the hinterlands are alien, what difference does it make if you import some more aliens of a different sort? It's just something to be managed and the managerial class is all about that. Noonan again:

Affluence detaches, power adds distance to experience. I don’t have it fully right in my mind but something big is happening here with this division between the leaders and the led. It is very much a feature of our age. But it is odd that our elites have abandoned or are abandoning the idea that they belong to a country, that they have ties that bring responsibilities, that they should feel loyalty to their people or, at the very least, a grounded respect.

Is it odd? I don't think so. I've spent most of my adult life on the outside of the elite, but I know people who have made it there, mostly from my college days. You wouldn't have assumed, based on what was happening at the time, that they would rise to the heights they occupy. And that's where we'll leave things for now.

My social media feed this week

None of these people are in Cleveland, incidentally

I don't have to watch the GOP convention, because I've hired the work out.

Logic, Part 2

A smarter approach to the Orlando nightclub attack:

Gun shops typically see a spike in customers after mass shootings. But this time, many are seeing shoppers they’ve never really seen before: More gays and lesbians.

George Horne, the owner of The Gun Room, Denver’s oldest firearms dealer, said Tuesday business is booming at his store.

"For this time of year I’d say its three to four times what we normally have," he said.

Background checks that once took minutes can now take hours. It's a sales surge similar to what happened after Sandy Hook and the Aurora theater shootings.

“We’re not surprised by it,” Horne said.

You don't have to love guns. I don't, particularly. But the minute you are told you can't have a gun is the minute you need one the most.

Logic

Glad someone else noticed this:

Maybe not in Ferguson

It's emotion uber alles. And what's disconcerting is that so many people I know, especially from my college days, can't figure this out.

il miglior fabbro

It's Memorial Day weekend and we often get confused about the meaning of it. The purpose of the day is to remember those who fought and died in the service of our country.

Barack Obama was in Hiroshima the other day and was doling out the moral equivalence with a giant ladle. His remarks seem especially problematic given he was addressing a nation that was, during the time of the war, a monstrosity. The invaluable John Hayward reminds of us of a few things that Obama didn't mention:

Here’s another one every American school kid should know about: the Bataan Death March. There was no swift death for the thousands of Americans and Filipinos under siege by Japanese forces in the Philippines. They were already sick and starving when they surrendered to the Japanese.

In an act of pure, deliberate sadism, because they were enraged by stiff American resistance during the siege, the Japanese forced their prisoners to march a hundred miles to a prison camp on foot. Many of the prisoners were killed out of hand, including anyone who dared to ask for water… and anyone who collapsed from dehydration. POWs reported Japanese soldiers taking away their meager supply of water and feeding it to horses while they watched. Starving men were tortured with false offers of food. Prisoners who accepted gifts of food from civilians along the route were murdered.

Some were murdered merely for possessing Japanese items, including currency. They were killed by beheading and run through with bayonets, as well as gunshots. Bayonet victims died from orgies of frenzied stabbing, not clean and swift impalement. Some of the captives were reportedly driven insane by exposure to the sun.  They were also crammed into barbed-wire pens were malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, and other diseases ran wild.

It has been estimated that between 5,000 and 11,000 of Japan’s prisoners were killed during the Bataan Death March. That wasn’t the only death march the Empire perpetrated, either. The prisoners of Sandakan were subjected to multiple forced marches, once the Japanese lost interest in using them as slave labor. By the time they were finished, only six of the original 2,390 prisoners were still alive.

Hayward also reminds us of a few other things -- Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the penchant of the Japanese military to murder doctors and nurses, and the occasional episode of cannibalism.

These incidents are well documented. We spend a lot of time, and rightly so, remembering the horrors that the Nazis perpetrated, but there were atrocities galore throughout the Pacific Theater. Hayward makes the salient point (emphasis in original):

This is also not an assault on Japanese citizens of today. Japan is a good friend of the United States now, and that is the happiest ending one could ask from a story this horrible. The Empire of Japan is gone. It had to go. People who think like Barack Obama have no idea how to fight a war like that. God help us all if they are in power when the next such war is forced upon us.

This is, rather, an effort to help understand what was destroyed by the right, proper, and absolutely necessary bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is the horror that would have claimed countless more victims if Japan had not been forced to surrender. It is very easy for callow politicians in 2016 to say that more Americans, and more Japanese, should have died in battle during a conventional invasion of Japan, to spare it the fury of the atomic bomb. Not many people felt that way at the time, especially if they were aware of the atrocities chronicled here.

Barack Obama treats the bombing of Hiroshima as a unique “evil.” No, sir. It was the end of an evil.

But it was the end of just one evil. There are more, and there will always be more, because evil resides in the human heart. And if we want to honor those who died horrible deaths at the hands of the Empire of Japan, and Nazi Germany, and others who still operate today, we ought to be mindful of the presence of evil in the human heart. It is a struggle we will always face. Read the whole thing.

Madness takes its toll

I've got to keep control:

"I have a little announcement to make ... I'm voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary," noted conservative author P.J. O'Rourke said on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. The episode aired over the weekend.

If the Clinton campaign wants to tout O'Rourke's support as it tries to woo moderate Republicans who supported Jeb Bush and George W. Bush, it might want to end the quote there.

"I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises," O'Rourke continued. "It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."

Well, I was walking down the street
Just having a think
When a snake of a guy
Gave me an evil wink.
Well it shook me up
It took me by surprise
He had a pick-up truck
And the devil's eyes
He stared at me
And I felt a change
Time meant nothing
Never would again.

Some say that a ban on sex discrimination “require[s] unisex restrooms in public places.” “Emphatically not so,” according to a prominent feminist:

Separate places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy. Individual privacy, a right of constitutional dimension, is appropriately harmonized with the equality principle.

The author? Now-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in The Post on April 7, 1975, and explaining why the Equal Rights Amendment shouldn’t be opposed based on “the ‘potty issue.'” 

What will it be - some soothing herb tea?
That might be just the thing
Let's say we spike it with Deludin
Or else - maybe tonight a hand of solitaire

(Narrator) It's just a jump to the left.
(Guests) And then a step to the right.
(Narrator) With your hand on your hips.
(Guests) You bring your knees in tight.

A promise we're sure to keep

Nuance

It's possible I don't get around enough to know such things, but I'd never heard the term "CP Time" before New York Mayor Bill de Blasio got in trouble for using it (emphasis mine):

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is facing some criticism for joking about "CP time" while performing in a comedic sketch alongside Hillary Clinton at a charity event over the weekend.

During Inner Circle's annual event in New York City that includes musical and comedy performances by local politicians and reporters, Clinton made a surprise cameo during a scripted scene with de Blasio and Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Aaron Burr in the Broadway show “Hamilton.” 

Clinton joked with de Blasio about how long it took him to endorse her for president, to which the New York City mayor (and Clinton's former Senate campaign manager) quipped back, “Sorry, Hillary. I was running on CP time." The remark is an apparent reference to colored people time -- a phrase sometimes used as a stereotypical reference to black people supposedly being late to everything.

In a video of the skit, released by the mayor's office on Sunday night, the audience appears to laugh awkwardly at the remark. One man in the crowd can be heard shouting, “No!"

"That’s not -- I don’t, I don’t like jokes like that, Bill,” Odom, who is African-American, said.

Clinton then interjected. “Cautious politician time," she explained. “I’ve been there.”

I appreciate the explanation, but seriously, I'd never heard that term before. And in my experience, it makes no sense, because the only identifiable group of people I know who are always late are my siblings, and they're as Caucasian as they come. As always, it must be my lack of nuance.

Go figure

Least surprising news of the day:

Americans have been killed by prisoners released from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior Defense Department official told lawmakers Wednesday, triggering sharp criticism from Republicans opposed to shuttering the facility in the wake of deadly attacks by the Islamic State group in Brussels and Paris.

Paul Lewis, the Pentagon's special envoy for Guantanamo detention closure, declined to provide the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee with details. He would not say whether the incidents occurred before or after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

"What I can tell you is unfortunately there have been Americans that have died because of (Guantanamo) detainees," Lewis said during an exchange with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.

I honestly don't know if closing Gitmo will help or hurt. I would like it if we could be realistic about the implications, though.

Yep

Brilliant!

The greatest advantage Donald Trump has  is the self-indulgence and stupidity (pardon the redundancy) of his opponents.

Has this ever happened to you?

Have you ever written a 350 word blog post and then decided that your premise is bullshit? That's what happened to me this morning.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around the continued success of Donald Trump and I find myself having contradictory thoughts about it. I put up a quick squib yesterday that led to an extended conversation with Gino and then a long and thoughtful, yet dispiriting, comment from Picklesworth. In the process of sorting it all out, I have come to the conclusion that I can't sort it out, at least not yet.

I'm not much for Ayn Rand, but I've always thought she was right about one thing -- we need to check our premises. And I'm checking mine this morning. The process feels like this, however:

Hope is the thing with a combover

Comment of the day, from some guy in a thread at Powerline:

Mad as hell and not going to take it any more

One would think that, after seven glorious years of administration of Barack Obama, that everything would be copacetic. Happy days are here again and all that, right? So how do you explain this split screen image from the Star Tribune?

We'd tell you to get off our lawns, but lawns are not a public good and probably filled with chemicals from those Monsanto bastards anyway

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were in the Twin Cities yesterday, shaking the money tree and dispensing bile from 55-gallon drums. They were here for a fundraiser that carries the name of the eternally sunny Hubert Humphrey, who was known far and wide as the Happy Warrior. These people are not exactly happy warriors, are they? It's frankly bizarre that the party of Hope and Change now presents these two dyspeptic fugitives from Madame Tussauds as their prospective standard bearers.

Considering that these two seasoned citizens are career politicians, and all they see around themselves is failure and injustice, doesn't there seem to be a disconnect between their promises and their demonstrated ability to ameliorate social ills? I suppose it's impertinent to ask.

News You Knew

Yes, the FBI is actually investigating Hillary Clinton:

The FBI formally confirmed that its investigation connected to Hillary Clinton’s private email server remains ongoing in a letter released on Monday.

The letter from FBI general counsel James Baker comes one day before the New Hampshire primary.

The message does not offer new details about the probe, which the bureau has been reluctant to discuss. However, it represents the FBI’s formal notification to the State Department that it is investigating the issue.

Since last September, “in public statements and testimony, the Bureau has acknowledged generally that it is working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server,” Baker wrote to the State Department. 

So, would you know that if you read, say, the Star Tribune? Nope. Not a word on the homepage this morning. Would you find out about it from, say, the Washington Post or the New York Times? Mr. Google says:

We'd rather not discuss the matter

Actually, if you go through the first four pages of search results, you won't see anything from the Times, or the Post, or even from the Associated Press. It's almost as though we aren't supposed to know.

A coveted demographic, or "pictures or it didn't happen"

Finally, a phenomenon explained:

A nation of Trump fans turns its lonely eyes to you

While explaining that he believes that Donald Trump's success in the Republican party does not mean that establishment conservatism is dying, GOP strategist Rick Wilson dismissed the "childless single men" who support Trump's presidential bid.

"The fact of the matter is, most of them are childless single men who masturbate to anime. They’re not real political players. These are not people who matter in the overall course of humanity," Wilson said of Trump supporters on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes."

Empahsis mine. Well, glad to see that they've moved on from Fritz the Cat, although the level of specificity involved in the insult suggests more knowledge of the matter than a person really ought to have.