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Roger Simon on who shot the sheriff and perhaps why.
“Investigators were trying to determine Sunday what may have motivated a 30-year-old man [Shannon Miles, black] accused of ambushing a uniformed suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy [Darren Goforth, white] filling his patrol car with gas in what authorities believe was a targeted killing,” saith the AP in the newspeak of our time.
Well, I can help them with that. Let’s start with the obvious. Shannon Miles (a black man) is a crazy guy, just as Dylann Roof (the white man from the Charleston church shootings) is a crazy guy and Vester Lee Flanagan (the black man who killed his white co-workers at a Virginia TV station the other day) was a crazy guy. The latter two claimed they wanted to start a race war. No word yet on Miles, but if we believe in what our grandmothers told us — that actions speak louder than words — he’s already more than half way there.
(You will note that I am not using the neologism African-American, which I think is part of the problem, not part of the solution.)
Also obvious, Barack Obama and Eric Holder (and now Loretta Lynch) are to blame for encouraging an atmosphere of racial divisiveness and, yes, hatred in our society. Anyone honest can see — and the polls have reported — a serious increase in racial tension and violence (Baltimore, Ferguson, etc.) since the beginning of the Obama administration. The racist-to-the-core “Black Lives Matter” movement is quite simply their evil spawn. …
… But all is not ill. Maybe we don’t deserve it, maybe it’s a sign of divine intervention (who knows?), but America is getting a second chance. A man is running for president who is a true healer like we haven’t seen since Dr. King. And he’s resonating with the public because I suspect many of us realize he is just what our country needs at this moment (with or without Donald Trump by his side). You know who I mean — Dr. Ben Carson.
Streetwise Professor has found someone dumber than Trump and O’Reilly when it comes to economics.
Yesterday I said Trump and O’Reilly were in a cage match to determine the world champion of economic ignorance. There is another contender of course, the current occupant of the office to which Trump aspires. Actually, I would say that Obama is the undefeated reigning world champ, and that the O’Reilly-Trump set-to was merely to see who might contend for the title in the future.
Obama’s gobsmacking ignorance-served up with a heaping side of superciliousness-was on full display at the “Clean Energy Summit” in Las Vegas on Monday. Time is finite, and my energy is only intermittently renewable, so I can’t possibly deconstruct these vaporings in detail. So I will limit myself to a few high-level comments:
Obama’s claims that his policies on renewable energy and carbon will make a meaningful impact on climate is a massive fraud that would land you or me in jail. Obama’s own EPA acknowledges that the policy will reduce global mean temperatures by an imperceptible and irrelevant .02 degrees by 2100. Farenheit? Celsius? Who cares? It matters not. It is rounding error on any scale.
Obama’s ignorance is on full display when he claims that conventional electricity generation was not characterized by “a lot of innovation.” This is just a crock. Compare heat rates of plants 20 years ago to those of today: in California, for instance, thermal efficiency has improved by 17 percent over the last 13 years. Heard of combined cycle, Barry? There has been considerable innovation in electricity generation. Well, not at the light switch plate, which is probably the extent of Barry’s familiarity with the electricity value chain.
Obama mistakes opposing subsidies with being anti-free market. Welcome to bizarro world. And, as is his wont, he did so in an Alinskyite fashion, demonizing his opponents (the always handy Koch Brothers) in a very personal way. …
Richard Epstein writes on a new NLRB decision that will hamper labor markets. Yet another example of the problems caused by the current occupant that we will have to deal with for a long time.
… the new joint employer rules will likely batter today’s already grim labor market, as they will not only disrupt the traditional workplace but will completely wreck the well established franchise model for restaurants and hotels. As the majority conceded, the so-called joint employer does not even know so much as the social security number of its ostensible employees. It has no direct control over the way in which the current employer treats its workers, and yet could be hauled into court for its alleged unfair labor practices. That second firm knows little or nothing about the conditions on the ground in the many businesses with which it has forged these alliances, which eases the operations for both. Those advantages will be lost if the joint employer rule holds up in court. At the very least, the majority’s decision would require each and every one of these contracts and business relationships to be reworked to handle the huge new burden that will come as a matter of course, leaving everyone but the union worse off than before.
It would be one thing, perhaps, if the majority saw the light at the end of the tunnel. But over and over again it disclaims any grand pronouncements, making the legal question of who counts as an employer a work in progress that will be finished no time soon. Against this background it is irresponsible to undo the current relationships by a party-line vote. That point should also be clear to the courts and to Congress. The quicker this unfortunate decision is scrubbed from the law books, the better.
Financial Times editors call for Hillary to come clean.
… What, at this point, can she do about it? The answer is very little. Several probes are under way. Yet even at this stage, with months of potentially embarrassing revelations in front of her, Mrs Clinton has yet to acknowledge her mistakes. Last week she downplayed the gravity of the situation by making a joke about having opened an account at Snapchat, where messages disappear “all by themselves”. This will not do. Unless Mrs Clinton comes clean and makes amends, voters will rightly doubt her suitability to be commander-in-chief.
Glenn Reynolds writes on Katrina lessons.
It’s been a decade since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. What were the lessons? Here are a few:
1. The press did a lousy job. Forget Brian Williams’ “huge lies.” Though the press patted itself on the back afterwards, in fact, as American University Journalism Professor W. Joseph Campbell writes, “it’s instructive to recall how extreme and over the top the reporting was from New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath.” Reports of wandering bands of rapists, a 10-year-old girl raped in the New Orleans Convention Center, claims that people were shooting at rescue helicopters, sharks haunting the floodwaters, bodies stacked like cordwood — all were false.
Though the extremism generated ratings, and satisfied the anti-American urges of the foreign press, it did real harm. New Orleans, a city battered by disaster, was portrayed as, in Maureen Dowd’s words, “a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.” Dowd used this portrayal to take shots at then-President George W. Bush, and I suspect a lot of the media pile-on was similarly motivated, but it had the effect of stigmatizing victims and, by playing up anarchy and danger, may even have delayed the arrival of aid, as rescuers feared to go in without armed escort. Overall, a horrible media performance. …
Paul Mirengoff posts on the type of reporter hired by the Washington Post.
Yesterday, Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school in Plains, Georgia. It was Carter’s second lesson since he announced that he has brain cancer.
The Washington Post sent Dave Weigel to cover the event. He reports that (in the words of the Post’s sub-headline, print edition) “pilgrims pour[ed] into Plains Ga.” for the event with “an outpouring of good wishes.” When it rains, it pours.
It’s to Carter’s credit that he teaches Sunday school and that he perseveres in his present condition. But the Post uses the occasion to lionize the former president and attack Republicans who dare criticize his presidency.
In Dave Weigel, the Post has identified the perfect man for the job. I can think of no reporter more capable of unctuousness and viciousness, depending on what the politics of the occasion and his personal interests require. …