Monday, March 31, 2025
Long History
Democrats have a long history of using violence and threats of violence to achieve their political goals, going back to the Ku Klux Klan, and beyond. Today’s vote, and the resounding silence of every Democratic politician in the face of domestic terrorism, represent a disgusting continuation of that tradition.
Central Casting
Judge Reyes, born in Uruguay, was appointed to the federal bench in 2023 by Joe Biden. Wikipedia describes her as “both the first Latina and the first openly LGBT person to serve as a district court judge in Washington, D.C.” In private practice at Williams & Connolly, she “focused on cross-border legal issues and international arbitration, while also taking on pro bono work to represent asylum seekers and refugee organizations.” So the Democrats knew what they were doing when they got this case before her.
You can read Reyes’s opinion at the link. It cites a few cases, mostly for boilerplate propositions. It is basically a 79-page explanation of why she disagrees with President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Her memorandum literally has a section titled “Transgender Persons Contribute to Society.”
The Real Education Crisis
“Rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students.” What an indictment of our K-12 education system, both public and private! Sure, each Harvard class no doubt includes a few math geniuses—Asians, mostly. But the general run of bright high school students are not being educated up to a minimally acceptable level.
And it isn’t just math. How many incoming Harvard freshmen can diagram a sentence, know anything about history—slavery in America excluded, of course—or have even a nodding acquaintance with the world’s great literature? Very few.
This all results from the dumbing down of education that we have seen in recent decades. Teachers, generally unionized graduates of teacher training programs with no real academic expertise, are, with many noble exceptions, not what they used to be. And for the most part, the schools focus on socialization, inculcating liberal dogmas, DEI, and encouraging activism rather than actual knowledge and skills.
Who Do These People Think They Are?
Tar, feathers, and stocks.
There was a reason that these cruel punishments were put on people who engage in grievous antisocial behavior towards their fellow citizens. Some offenses are so grievous that the most just way to deal with them is public humiliation. It teaches a lesson to the offenders and serves as a stark reminder to others that cruelty to one's fellow citizens will bring harsh punishments.
Obviously, you don't bring out the big guns for small violations of public order and decency, and the abuse of these punishments led to their abolition. Unfortunately, the result of eliminating cruelty by the public--a very good thing--is an increase in such cruelty by those who are inclined to spit in the public's eye.
People like this School Board, teachers, and school administrators, who bullied Middle-school girls into undressing in front of a male student.
Case Closed
Anybody with access to the data, or for that matter even the smallest quantity of common sense, at least strongly suspected that the virus escaped from the lab. The evidence was overwhelming, and all the attempts to debunk the lab leak theory were ridiculous.
Raccoon dogs? Bats from a wet market? The raccoon dog theory was based on finding a fragment of the virus at the wet market near the raccoon dogs pens, but then again Wuhan was filled with people who HAD COVID while buying products at the market, so that tells you precisely nothing. The bat theory seems superficially plausible, until you realize that the only bats carrying a virus remotely similar were from hundreds of miles away, and those were collected and brought to...the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
I wrote last week about the leak from German Intelligence, which told Angela Merkel early in 2020 that the virus came from the lab, and now the same information is coming from the UK.
Zero Out the Funding For Travel, Too
Universities have gone from arguing that science is biased to claiming that even the overhead on their massive federal research budgets must not be cut by the Trump administration. Academic bureaucrats often collect surcharges of more than 50 percent on the federal grants that go to researchers. How could science ever progress without taxpayers subsidizing the six-figure salaries of deans of inclusion and community engagement?
"Elite" Mindset
As far as elite universities are concerned, another factor is at work. Their entire identity is bound up with considering themselves to be smarter than other Americans. That inherently inclines them to adopt minority views.
If you think America is a pretty terrific place, and men and women are different in ways that people have understood for thousands of years, and a productive society like Israel’s is better than a sick, terrorist society like Gaza’s, and people should be able to say pretty much whatever they think, and we ought to be grateful to the police for protecting us from criminals, and so on, then how are you any different from the average guy? How are you manifesting your superior intellect?
Of course, you might do this by mastering difficult technical skills or by a deep knowledge of history, literature or philosophy, but those paths are chosen by only a few. Nowadays, students can get As as long as they remember to show up for the tests. A sense of superiority is easily obtained, but it requires adherence to views that are different from those of the masses.
Importing Nazis
Astonishingly, Democrats are protesting against the Trump administration’s revoking the student visa of Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian anti-Semite who led the effort to shut down Columbia University, destroy university property, threaten Jewish students and prevent them from going to class. We have seen the Democrats take on one bad cause after another—advocating for men in women’s locker rooms is one of their recent doozies—but this one is truly mystifying. Apparently pro-Hamas militant Mahmoud Kahlil is the kind of guy the Democrats think we need more of. Thank God they are no longer in charge of immigration policy.
Green RINOs
At least 20 Republicans are pushing back against cuts to Joe Biden's Clean Energy Tax Credits because money.
Money money money. It doesn't matter that the money is wasted. It doesn't matter that the money spent here will cost taxpayers twice or three times as much in energy costs, or that many of the "jobs" created will disappear as these fake companies go bankrupt once the subsidies fade away. It certainly doesn't matter that this money is debt that will destroy our economy.
It's free money, and those Republicans want their cut, and are pushing back.
Consequences: Savage Edition
Perhaps I am an outlier here, but I am not in favor of any plan to rebuild Gaza at the expense of others. Should Gaza’s attempted genocide really be rewarded with $53 billion in other people’s money? I think Gazans need to learn the lesson that it is a bad idea to start a war, and lose it.Ed Morrissey:
The burden should be on them to build some kind of normal economy, and actually do productive work instead of living on global welfare. Their sad enclave should be reconstructed only to the extent they can pay for it, and are willing to prioritize construction over terrorism.
There is no track record to suggest that Gazans, given the opportunity, will do anything so rational. In the meantime, they should live with the consequences of their own sadistic folly, unaided by others.
Having one's government start a war has consequences, especially when your side can't win an all-out war. Among the consequences is the disruption of trade with that enemy, along with that enemy's allies and/or unengaged nations that don't wish to enter the war. If the Gazans want electricity, food, and water, then they'd better start figuring out how to get it themselves or capitulate to the Israelis and negotiate the surrender of their government.More:
This is why starting wars is bad. It's especially why starting wars by massacres of civilians, widespread rapes of women and children, and kidnapping women and babies makes the situation even worse. Gazans launched a war of annihilation against Israel while expecting to suffer no commensurate risk of complete destruction themselves, a fantasy perpetuated by the same Western nations that now cluck their tongues at Israel's refusal to play along with their own destruction. The only way to end this was is for the disincentives for conflict to be clearly, consistently, and completely applied so as to leave no doubt that wars of national destruction can mean losing everything for those who start them.
The Israelis are slowly dialing up those consequences now. Gazans have a choice between Hamas and survival. If they keep choosing Hamas, don't blame Israel for finishing the war that the Gazans and their government keep trying to start by violating ten cease-fires over the past 19 years. The lights may be out in Gaza, but Gazans still can choose whether the lights will go out for Gaza.
The war was never over in the first place, and now it's back on. This is what the Gazans bought when they elected Hamas to run their enclave, and then celebrated every disgusting atrocity Hamas committed. If they want an end to the war, then they need to do what every other aggressor whose war of annihilation backfired on them had to do: beg for mercy, deliver the hostages unconditionally, and surrender their leadership to the victors. Gazans should read up on the final days of the Nazis in Germany and the bushido cult in Japan. They're risking a similarly historical FO.
They Can't Help Themselves
So Mayorkas' argument fails any rational basis of consideration. Now let's tackle its moral vacuity. Mayorkas wants to argue that the real value of illegal aliens is only in how they can make life cheaper for Americans. They are apparently only good for manual labor, as a sort of Untouchable caste in the American context, with apparent anxiety that their absence will force elites to perform Untouchable tasks. Or at least Mayorkas thinks that's how the rest of America thinks, which would be an entirely different kind of cynical elitism, but just as despicable.
It also sounds aaaawfuuuuuullllly familiar as an argument from Democrats to exploit mass importation of labor to keep costs down for the nobility. Some things never change.
Storage Problems
Two hours? Wind-generated electricity would need to be stored for months to carry over from times of maximum production (spring and fall) to times of maximum demand (winter and summer). At a minimum, a week or two worth of storage would be needed to prevent fatal blackouts under adverse weather conditions.
Their Policies Are Trash
“Own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities and commit to improving local government.” How? Lower taxes? More support for law enforcement? Prohibit homeless encampments? Manifest a pro-business attitude with as light a regulatory burden as possible? Once again: they might as well be Republicans. Owning the failures of Democratic governance in large cities means acknowledging that liberalism doesn’t work. They can’t very well do that.
The Real Russian Stooges
Of course, if the White House were really an arm of the Kremlin, it would be suppressing domestic oil and gas production and pursuing “green” energy fantasies. That, much more than anything else, is how an American administration either helps Russia (Obama) or hurts Russia (Trump). Which is why for decades, as official intelligence reports have documented, Russia has provided covert support to American environmentalist groups.
Raw Materials For a Raw Deal
Paul Driessen (at Watts Up With That?):
These “clean, green” technologies require far more raw materials than the equipment they replace: electric cars need 4-6 times more metals and minerals than gasoline counterparts; onshore wind turbines require 9 times more raw materials than equivalent megawatts from combined-cycle natural gas turbines; offshore wind requires 14 times more materials than gas turbines; solar panels are just as resource-intensive. And we’d still need gas power plants or grid-scale batteries for windless/sunless periods.Also:
Those raw material needs would require mining at levels unprecedented in human history. Just meeting “green energy” plus “normal” needs for copper would require more than twice as much copper mining as occurred throughout human history up to now. That would mean mine shafts and open-pit mines; ore removal, crushing and processing; and land, air and water pollution — on unprecedented scales.
Via John Hinderaker.
Freeloaders
Europe sees us as the petulant child who deserves a scolding, when in fact they are freeloaders who act like 35-year-old manchilds living in their parents' basements lecturing their parents that they don't understand how important playing video games is.
I have some news for Europe: YOU CANNOT DEFEND YOURSELVES WITHOUT THE UNITED STATES. Every bit--every bit--of their current but declining prosperity stems from the fact that the US has acted as a protector and a referee for, if you include World War II, over 80 years.
Europe is deindustrializing--choosing to become actually poorer and more dependent--and lectures us about how we don't do enough for them. The average EU citizen is now poorer than the average Mississippian, but if you mentioned Mississippi to any of them they would laugh at them as rubes. They laugh at all of us as rubes, and then demand we defend them. Germany cannot put 20 fighter jets in the air. Its tanks are falling apart. No European country could defend its own borders, no less push back Russia.
