The Irish postal service (“An Post”) proposed and the Irish cabinet approved a new stamp honoring Che Guevara on the 50th anniversary of his death. (Irish Examiner)
Not sure why, but some sourpusses have said this was not a good idea.
Let’s make this more fun.
Let’s help the Irish postal folks pick their next honoree.
Who do you suggest?
Harvard’s idea of diversity is for everyone to look different and think alike.
–Harvey Silverglate
Silverglate, a distinguished lawyer and a long-time liberal, helped found FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Sadly, it is not just Harvard. It is virtually all elite liberal-arts colleges.
◆ The NFL players kneeling and Pres. Trump’s ferocious response have raised hard issues, once again, about race, class, patriotism, and other central questions of American life.
One of my lifelong friends–and someone who has devoted his life to helping others–read my previous posts on these issues and asked whether I was somehow excusing Pres. Trump for his role in the NFL controversy. Was I saying that Pres. Obama had started this divisive talk, shifting the onus from Trump’s speech in Alabama and his Tweets?
Short answer: No, I’m not. But let me share my other thoughts. I thank him for prompting this post.
This divisive talk didn’t start with Trump calling out the NFL.
It didn’t start with Obama calling out the Cambridge Police.
Both made things worse, but it didn’t really start with anyone.
It’s been bubbling up for a long time.
As I have made clear, I think Trump’s language about these issues is terrible and is beneath the office he holds.
Nor do I like the President of the United States calling for boycotts of private businesses, especially when people are invoking their free-speech rights.
On these issues, my complaints about Pres. Obama are relatively mild.
My bigger complaint is with the academic left which, for years, has attacked the American Dream–in principle as well as in practice–and fundamentally undermined the very idea of E Pluribus Unum. If you say you favor an American Melting Pot, you would be laughed out of any top department of political science or sociology. You wouldn’t have ever been hired in anthropology or the humanities if the faculty knew those views in advance. They would consider you a troglodyte, and think you couldn’t spell the word. You would kill your job chances as surely as asking the Dean what his Zodiac sign was.
These educators have played ethnic-division and identity politics for decades, partly because they think these groups are victims, partly because they want to make sure these groups see themselves as victims, and partly because they want to mobilize them politically. One key point here is that they do not see people as Americans but as hyphenated Americans, and they do not see them as individuals but as members of groups–victimized groups.
The Democratic Party plays a pernicious role here. Their longtime strategy has been to appeal separately to each group and tailor policies to provide government largess for each one. That gives the Democrats a vested stake in seeing that Hispanics, Blacks, Gays, Public Sector Workers, and so on see themselves primarily as members of that beleaguered, victimized subgroup. (Of course, both parties provide largess to major contributors, and big business is at the head of the line.)
The intellectual backing for this Democratic Party strategy has been provided by the academic left. They see an America divided into victimized groups. What unites them, in this view, is that they face the same hegemonic oppressors. They say that in course after course, article after article, and its fruits can be seen in the coalition of progressive activists on campus. What else would bring hard-line Muslims and Gay Rights Advocates together, save a common enemy? This academic ideology of identity/victim politics dovetails with the Democrats’ strategy of sub-group appeals for votes.
What has been happening for the past few years is populist pushback against this viewpoint and against an elite political leadership grouped in a few enclaves and increasingly divorced from the broader population politically, socially, and geographically.
This popular pushback is not led by the rich–the alleged oppressors in the academic tale. It doesn’t come from established conservatives. They want predictable, center-right or center-left governance. Jeb or Hillary, not Bernie or Donald.
The pushback comes from an angry lower-middle-class, mostly white but with many others. They are patriotic to the bone. They don’t like people disrespecting their country, constantly running it down, or thinking that Washington always knows best. If Washington knows best, why are their lives so hard?
Trump knows that. And he is their tribune.
A few years ago, it was a populist movement on the right, led by the amorphous Tea Party, that showed just how angry constituents were with their Republican representatives. That anger is still seething and shows up in the divide between Trump supporters and traditional Republicans of all stripes.
Today, we are seeing that same populist anger on the left, as all the identity-grievance groups the Democrats have mobilized for years have begun eating their own. It’s not surprising that, in an age when shouting beats quiet protests, students and teachers unions would try to impede speeches and school visits by conservative Betsy DeVos. What’s more surprising is to see Nancy Pelosi and even Barack Obama the subject of pushback.
We could see that shift in the Democratic Party in 2016 when Hillary Clinton had to disavow countless moderate successes in her husband’s administration, primarily on welfare reform and criminal justice. We saw it on the floor of the Democratic Convention when a mild pro-Israel resolution was boo’d. We saw it when it took a full-scale effort by all the party leaders to prevent Keith Ellison from becoming head of the Democratic National Committee. We saw it recently in San Francisco when Sen. Diane Feinstein had to retreat quickly after expressing a vague hope that Pres. Trump would do well in office.
We are continuing to see it as nurses in California protest any Democrats who won’t vote for a statewide single-payer system, at leftist demonstrations against Democratic leaders, and at speeches by people like former FBI leader James Comey, trying to explain his work on civil-rights and criminal-justice issues. The common theme: these people didn’t do enough to advance our progressive agenda.
They want single-payer health care, sanctuaries for illegal immigrants, free college tuition, and Trump out of office.
Expect more. People are angry, despite economic growth and very low unemployment, at least in the general population (though not among people with low skills). The Democratic Party has moved hard left, mobilized these supporters, and the intra-party competition for leadership gives politicians incentives to appease these angry voices, not quiet them.
In a stunning community meeting on Chicago’s South Side, protesting the lack of community benefits from the Obama Presidential Library, residents attacked Obama for “not doing enough for black people” and for “not being black enough.” His supporters’ defense for the last charge? He married a black woman and she will keep our racial interests in the forefront. That’s an amazing turn of events. (Link here)
And this from James Comey’s attempt to speech at historically-black Howard University in Washington. (The CNN reporter, by the way, is Valerie Jarret’s daughter.)
♦♦♦♦♦
Articles chosen with care. Your comments welcomed.
Linked articles in bold purple
◆ US Economy grew 3% last quarter. Fastest pace in two years
New York Times story here. The pace is particularly noteworthy because the recovery after the 2008 is now long-in-the-tooth.
◆ Federal judge (and former Democratic legislator) temporarily blocks Texas from cutting funds to sanctuary cities (New York Times)
A number of the state’s biggest cities, including Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, all of which are run by Democrats, joined a lawsuit against Texas seeking to strike down the law, which was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in May.
In his ruling issued Wednesday evening, the judge, Orlando L. Garcia of United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, granted a preliminary injunction preventing the law from taking effect while the suit continues.
Judge Garcia appeared to block three provisions of the law, including one that stated that local government entities and officials may not “adopt, enforce or endorse” any policy limiting the enforcement of immigration laws. –New York Times
Comment: The case will move to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in NOLA, one of the most conservative.
The word “endorse” might well be a constitutional problem since it seems to block the First Amendment freedoms of local officials.
◆ Pres. Trump begins to promote tax reform but doesn’t provide any specifics (New York Times)
He reiterated his pledge to slash corporate tax rates and simplify individual taxes.
Comment: It’s important to remember that overhauling the tax code is much more difficult and complex than simply cutting taxes. Every one of those “loopholes” is there because a special interest lobbied for it and a Congressman pushed it through. They will not want to see those benefits erased. But erasing them is the only way to reform the overall code. That’s why it hasn’t been accomplished since Reagan.
◆ How much do Californians hate Trump? Well, they boo’d Sen. Feinstein when she said he probably would not be impeached. (San Luis Obispo Tribune)
Democratic leaders across the state went berserk, so, naturally, Sen. Feinstein has “clarified” her remarks. 
◆ Jonathan Tobin: “Obama’s Mideast legacy: Iran’s puppets all around Israel with war on the way” (New York Post)
When the United States chose to let Syria slide into chaos while simultaneously seeking to end the isolation of Iran with a nuclear deal, President Barack Obama thought he was avoiding trouble and giving Iran a chance to “get right with the world.”
But it turns out those blunders are still paying dividends for Iran, creating new dangers in the Middle East and threatening the hopes of the Trump administration. That was made clear this week when Yehya al-Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, announced in Gaza that the terror group had reconciled with Iran. –Jonathan Tobin, NY Post
◆ Today in PC lunacy: Private school near Washington bans students from wearing anything with “Washington Redskins” on it (CBS Sports)
You can’t make this up: The school is named “Green Acres.”
Tip of the Redskins helmet to Hollis Taggart for that story.
Articles chosen with care. Local reporting where possible.
Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Despite more than 4 FEET of rain, search and rescue in Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi seems efficient. They learned from Katrina mistakes.
Houston paper: rain to continue through tomorrow, some earthen dams at capacity and could fail (Houston Chronicle)
Rain keeps coming and heading in Louisiana, where pumping problems in NOLA could compound the damage.
Pres. Trump has arrived in Texas with multiple cabinet secretaries who have responsibilities for the recovery.
Comment: Trump was wise to delay his visit until now and to avoid the Houston area until the weekend, when it won’t interfere with the real work on the ground.
Currently, it seems like both Washington and Austin governments are handling this well.
⇒ Related: University of Tampa fires a visiting prof. of urban sociology who said the storm was “Karma” because Texas voted for Trump (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
Comment: Maybe getting fired was karma, too.
◆ The parrot’s a stool pigeon (For News)
A Michigan woman was sentenced to life in prison Monday for the 2015 shooting death of her husband — and the man’s pet parrot may have been the only witness to the murder.
Christina Keller, Martin Duram’s ex-wife, said Duram’s pet parrot, Bud, mimicked some of his last words from the night of the murder.
Following the shooting, Bud repeated, “Don’t f—ing shoot,” in Martin Duram’s voice. –Fox News
Comment: The parrot then said, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ … You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.”
◆ North Korean missile fired over Japan. Trump says “All options are on the table” (CNN)
Comment: That’s formulaic. But after Trump’s prior warnings and Sec. of State Tillerson’s open hand were slapped down, the US and Japan will want to act decisively in ways the North Korean regime will feel, and China will notice, but still short of war.
◆ 
Unprovoked Antifa violence against peaceful demonstrators in Berkeley. Democrats: total radio silence (Fox News)
Thirteen people were arrested, and five were injured after more than 100 black-clad, hooded protesters with masks and weapons attacked conservative demonstrators in Berkeley. They allegedly were associated with the far-left Antifa. –Fox News
Comment: Antifa is a violent, noxious movement. The failure of Democrats to condemn it says they prefer political allies, even violent ones, over the First Amendment. Shameful.
UPDATE: Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker does condemn the Antifa from the left, calling them “morally wrong and politically vacuous.”
He makes an important point in noting that, unlike the Klan, they do not represent a tradition of murderous violence within the US.
That said, Cobb’s main concern is less with Antifa violence or suppression of speech than with the possibility that Trump “will manipulate such situations” to build support.
Thanks to Christina H. for sharing this article with me in her comments.
◆ New therapy for advanced cancers rolling out soon (Wall Street Journal, subscription)
The WSJ treats it as a business story (Gilead Sciences buys Kite Pharma), but the news for most people is why Kite is so valuable.
Kite’s main treatment, which is up for regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe, could drastically improve treatment of patients with some of the most advanced cases of cancer.
“This technology is really going to be transformative to the field,” Gilead CEO John Milligan said in an interview.
The new breed of treatments, known as CAR-T—or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell—therapy, work by extracting a cancer patient’s T-cells, a type of immune cell. The T-cells are then genetically modified outside the body to make them more effective at hunting down and killing tumors, and then re-injected into the patient.
Several other companies also are developing CAR-T treatments—including Switzerland’s Novartis AG , which already won a key regulatory nod in the U.S. earlier this year, and is expected very soon to get the first official green light to start offering the treatment. –Wall Street Journal
Articles chosen with care. Your comments welcomed.
Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Catastrophic Flooding in Houston after Hurricane Harvey and 24″plus inches of rain so far.
Report here in the Houston Chronicle
FEMA administrator says “We’re going to be there for years” (CNN)
Comment: The flooding and damage will only increase because the rain continues and the rivers from further inland are overflowing.
The aftermath will be a massive test for the competence of local, state, and federal relief agencies.
Private charities are already at work, as well.
◆ Success against Islamic State: Iraqi army reclaims Tal Afar after rapid IS collapse in one of its last strongholds (Washington Post)
Comment: IS’s speedy collapse in such a crucial spot illustrates how badly eroded its capabilities are.
My expectation: They will try to remain relevant by attacking more soft targets in the West. But without the dream of a Caliphate, they will find recruiting and “inspiring” much more difficult.
◆ Clarice Feldman’s powerful attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center: “The Shock Troops of the Anti-Free Speech Cadre” (American Thinker)
Besides targetting some mainstream conservative organizations and Evangelicals, SPLC has now attacked Aayan Hirsi Ali, whom Feldman rightly calls “a very brave woman who has made her mark decrying Islamic terrorism.”
Outfits like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and PayPal are shutting down sites and posters, often on the basis of SPLC recommendations. –Clarice Feldman in American Thinker
◆ Kimberly Strassel asks “What is its gift to the Southern Poverty Law Center telling bank customers?” She calls it “J.P. Morgan’s hate list” (Wall Street Journal, subscription)
Corporate America will do almost anything to stay on the safe side of public opinion—at least as it’s defined by the media. CEOs will apologize, grovel, resign, settle. They will even, as of this month, legitimize and fund an outfit that exists to smear conservatives. –Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal
She cites chapter and verse on SPLC and notes other corps funding it.
Comment: The best way to understand today’s SPLC is not as a progressive political operative, using its attributed “moral stature” to smear opponents of current leftist positions.
◆ Amazon starts cutting prices at Whole Foods (USA Today)
USA Today stresses Amazon’s savings through its massive, efficient supply chain
Hat Tip to
◆ Ed Vidal for the Houston flooding story
◆ Clarice Feldman for the SPLC story (and kudos for her weekly column at The American Thinker)
Articles chosen with care. Your comments welcomed.
Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Hurricane Harvey to hit near Galveston, Houston as Category 2.
Winds currently 100 mph. Huge flooding expected on coast and inland.
New Orleans, which has struggled with water pumping, is anxious, even though it is hundreds of miles from the storm center (New Orleans Advocate)
◆ Russian nuclear bombers fly near North Korea in rare show of force, aimed at US (Reuters)
◆ How low has Sears fallen? Some vendors have quit, others won’t restock the shelves without insurance (Reuters)
◆ NYT may be in real trouble over Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit (Wall Street Journal)
The newspaper is seeking to have her lawsuit dismissed. But Mrs. Palin’s legal team says that Times lawyers are demanding a legal standard that would effectively make it impossible for any public official to win a libel case….
To win her case Mrs. Palin will need to prove “actual malice” on the part of Times staff, meaning they knew the story to be false or they published with reckless disregard for the truth. This is a very high legal bar, as it should be.
The NYT editor who testified wanted to set the bar much, much higher. He did not say “we were misinformed and sometimes make mistakes in the rush to deadline.”
Nope. The essence of his testimony is that he “did not intend to write what his editorial clearly states” (in the words of the WSJ’s James Freeman).
Comment: You don’t have to like Sarah Palin to think that the NYT’s effort to directly link her to the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords by a crazy shooter was a disgusting smear job.
The Times should be held to account.
◆ Trump and his administration are letting Congress write the details of tax reform (Politico)
The so-called Big Six tax reform negotiators — a group that includes [Treasury Secretary Stephen] Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch — will essentially turn over what they have done to the [Congressional] committees and let them fill in the particulars. –Politico
◆ And finally, to summarize the most PC story of the day
◆ Easily the dumbest, most-PC move of the day: The Winner is ESPN
They removed an Asian-American announcer named “Robert Lee” from broadcasting an upcoming football game at the University of Virginia.
His name, they said, is just too close to Civil War general.
At first, people thought it was a parody.
It wasn’t, at least not intentionally. ESPN actually made this decision.
John Kass has an excellent column on this fiasco, calling (wisely) for “stupidity training” for their executives. (Chicago Tribune link here)
Comment: Who runs ESPN? The staff of Mad Magazine?
If the sportscaster has a horse named “Traveler” or has visited Appomattox, the network plans to try him for treason.
By the way, ESPN actually has a play-by-play guy named Doug Sherman.
The people of Atlanta want to know: Will Sherman be pulled from doing events in their city?
Articles chosen with care. Your comments welcomed.
Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Trump speech on Afghanistan
A full analysis in a separate ZipDialog post (link here)
◆ US Navy’s deadline collision at sea leads to temporary pause of naval ops in Pacific
Senior commanders have ordered a general reevaluation of “basic blocking and tackling” for these ships’ commanders
Comment: What the hell is going on? This has been happening far too frequently. Even if these collisions are purely accidental (we don’t know that yet about the latest one), the Islamists and other enemies will be watching and learning.
I’m sure more heads will roll for this.
◆ Univ. of Missouri is paying a very heavy price for gutlessly caving to radical racial demands a couple of years ago.
Fewer students matriculating. Fewer fans coming to sporting events. Alumni furious (WSJ)
As classes begin this week, freshmen enrollment is down 35% since the protests, according to the latest numbers the university has publicly released. Mizzou is beginning the year with the smallest incoming class since 1999. Overall enrollment is down by more than 2,000 students, to 33,200. The campus has taken seven dormitories out of service.
The plummeting support has also cost jobs. In May, Mizzou announced it would lay off as many as 100 people and eliminate 300 more positions through retirement and attrition. Last year the university reduced its library staff and cut 50 cleaning and maintenance jobs.
Mizzou’s 2016 football season drew almost 13,000 fewer attendees than in 2015, local media reported. During basketball games, one-third of the seats in the Mizzou Arena sat empty. –Wall Street Journal
Comment: Punishments can be thought of as “extrinsic” (if you don’t eat your veggies, you cannot have dessert) or “intrinsic” (if you don’t eat fruits, you will get scurvy as an inevitable consequence). What’s happening at Missouri are the intrinsic consequences of parents, prospective students, and alumni looking at the University’s actions and saying, we don’t approve, and we are so turned off we won’t associate with you.
◆ More sanctions re: North Korea, this time against Chinese and Russian companies doing business with them (Washington Post)
The news is just breaking. The Treasury’s own announcement is here. It focuses on companies aiding in Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction programs, as well as buying coal from the regime, a major source of its foreign-currency earnings.
Comment: Expect to see more and more of these sanctions.
◆ Most millennial job ever? “Talent and Vibe Manager” That’s the actual job title (New York Post)
Actual description:
You need to be plugged in enough to find us the right venues, connected to the right people at the right hotels and basically able to leverage the very best of what Brooklyn and San Francisco have to offer. –Fred Bateman, in NY Post
No one could handle such heavy lifting alone, of course. There’s a 10-person vibe team.
Comment: Actually, the job is “vibe and switch.” They do some party planning, yes, but they also do lots of administrative trivia for the company.
Hat Tip to
◆ Tom Elia for good vibrations
