Political Notes from All Over

“Anyone but Joe,” anyone?
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Spending the last few weeks laughing at the Republicans over their self-inflicted imbroglio/embroilment trying to elect a speaker for the House of Representatives was a treat. Well, now it’s our turn to suffer, as Uncle Joe’s Corvette winter plus the upcoming Hunter Biden follies, which the New York Times simultaneously previewed and sanitized here,¹ guarantee more than a few chuckles on the Republican side of the aisle.

I don’t know what, ultimately, will shake from the sieve in the case of either Biden, but I do know it certainly tempts the dreamers among us to cast a wandering eye over the Democratic “pack”, if such actually exists. I mean, who are these guys? I’ve read a number of articles on the subject and to say that anyone—anyone—pops out is a gross overstatement. There used to be a time—though I guess it was a hundred years ago—when there seemed to be any number of prominent Democratic senators available for the job—but now we seem to running on empty, with the “prominents” limited to almost as old as Joe Lizzie Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom, I think (and hope), have enough sense not to run. This is not a good situation.

Okay, enough about the père. What about the fils? The Times has this to say about Hunter’s consulting contract with the outstandingly corrupt Mykola Zlochevsky, head of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s largest energy companies: “Despite criticism of the oligarch within his father’s administration, Hunter did not want to give up his role at Burisma, which was not particularly demanding of his time and continued to pay him handsomely — about $600,000 a year — even after he started smoking crack and stopped responding to emails from Mr. Pozharskyi.” Apparently, “not particularly demanding” is Timesese for “not doing a damn thing other than serve as a front man for an international criminal”. Nowhere in the article does the Times explain what Hunter actually did in any of his business deals except be Joe Biden’s son. Even George W. Bush worked harder than that, though his investors seem to have lost about two dollars for every three invested—a 1984 prospectus for George’s “Arbusto Energy” shows $4.67 million invested, and $1.55 million returned—plus almost $4 million in tax write-offs, which was probably the whole point of the affair. Getting a tax write-off while doing the Veep’s kid a solid sounds like good business to me! (In Georgie’s defense, it seems he only got a salary of $75,000 a year, which, even taking inflation into account, isn’t exactly huge.)

No, it wasn’t the Russian Trump bots that sank Hillary in 2016. It was the New York Times
Yes, Matt Yglesias, subject of an admiring/envious profile in the Washington Post (Postie Dan Zak apparently feels Matt is making too much money) points the fingerbone of shame, and guilt, at the NYT for devoting the entire top half of its front page on Oct. 29, 2016 to FBI director James Comey’s letter the previous day to the Congress reporting an investigation of some newly discovered emails. “New Emails Jolt Clinton Campaign in Race’s Last Days” bellowed the two-column all-caps head, flanked by a four-column picture showing Hillary on her campaign plane waving her arms in an odd manner while a clearly baffled staffer stands beside her. Beneath the picture are two more stories: “With 11 Days to Go, Trump Says Revelation ‘Changes Everything’” and “Decision Pulls F.B.I.’s Leader Back Into Political Fray”.

The real story, of course, was Comey’s ass-covering decision to send the letter in the first place, terrified that if he didn’t the Hillary-hating Republicans would cut off his balls in bloody retribution, a massive violation of FBI protocol and poor Hillary’s civil rights, as deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein later explained in his very strange memo implying that Comey should be removed as director:

Concerning his [Comey’s] letter to Congress on October 28, 2016, the Director cast his decision as a choice between whether he would ‘speak’ about the decision to investigate the newly-discovered email messages or ‘conceal’ it. ‘Conceal’ is a loaded term that misstates the issue. When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment.

“[I]f you want to place blame for Trump’s narrow victory over Clinton on someone or something in the information environment,” says Matt, “it’s not the Russians or Facebook or “misinformation” you should be looking to — it’s the most influential mainstream news outlets in America,”, and he’s right. As Matt demonstrates, the mainstream press just couldn’t stop pounding on the Clintons. “What are they hiding? What are they hiding? What Are They Hiding? WE WANT ANSWERS!”

As I have explained many times, much of this could have been avoided if Hillary had used the State Department server. All of it could have been avoided if the Obama administration, with Hillary’s full support, had not engaged in regime change in Libya, a policy that has brought the U.S. disaster wherever it has been pursued.

Sure, Jon, but don’t we have a bit of a pot and kettle thing here?
New York’s often estimable Jonathan Chait covers Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ War on Woke, particularly within the state’s education system, and I agree with about 97% of what Jon has to say. So, naturally, I’d like to talk about the 3%.

While just about everything DeSantis is doing is “wrong”, Chait also ignores the fact that, except in very conservative states, pretty much the entire K-12 curriculum these days is geared towards “exposing” the crimes of the white patriarchy. This, not reading, writing, and arithmetic, is what kids need to learn. The “standard curriculum” in many states is one of explicit indoctrination. Every textbook is assessed on whether it contributes to the deconstruction of white patriarchal myths. Of course, at the college level, the pressure is even worse, with much of it supplied by the students themselves.

And is it really an outrage that some school libraries are removing “gay lit” from their school libraries? Does Mr. Chait ever watch, you know, television? Isn’t everyone in America constantly bombarded with pro-gay sentiments via the mass media? If a child has questions about sexual identity, isn’t it pretty easy to find out about such things on the internet? I mean, isn’t it pretty easy to find anything on the internet? And if you don’t have a computer, is it so hard to go the public library and use one there?

I will take particular exception to Mr. Chait’s statement that critical race theory is “a perfectly respectable academic discipline”. Well, no, Mr. Chait, it isn’t. The whole point of critical race theory is to “prove” that all the ills from which black people suffer in America are the result of white racism, something that Mr. Chait himself believes is false and corrupting to both black and white America, sentiments for which he has often suffered severe criticism from the “left” whenever he has expressed them. It would certainly be possible to teach an “honest” course describing racism in America at the college level, though I don’t know if one such actually exists and wouldn’t be surprised if one didn’t. My own thoughts on the matter can largely be obtained by consulting this 33,000 odd word venting, CRT v. Anti-CRT: Wait, Wait! You’re BOTH Right! Occasionally.

Reason magazine, a libertarian rag that Mr. Chait, I strongly suspect, does much not care for, gives a much more balanced take on the Florida guv’s repeated assaults on the First Amendment and, well, “reason”, here.