Politics

Thirty years ago this December 26, the impossible happened. One of the bloodiest states of the twentieth century (a horrific and highly competitive category) dissolved without violence. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had all but ended months earlier, when Russians took to the streets to defy the communist hardliners who had seized the government from an impotent Mikhail Gorbachev. That popular countercoup was itself largely bloodless: the soldiers called upon to enforce the hardliners’ rule refused to shoot their own countrymen. The Cold War is often said to have ended with the toppling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Had things turned out differently in Moscow two years later, the struggle might well have resumed.

The White House thinks you’re stupid Whether things are going well or badly, presidents are almost always awarded too much credit or blame for the state of the economy. As the White House is eager to point out, Joe Biden cannot eradicate inflation or solve the supply chain crisis with the stroke of a pen. What he can do, though, is help. He and his advisors can listen, try to understand the struggles of American households and act accordingly. Faced with this option, however, the Biden administration has instead chosen to stick its fingers in its ears. On the massive spending bill that Congress is set to vote on soon, the Biden administration has not swerved. No recent events have persuaded senior Democrats that anything about the legislation needs to change.

The disinformation delusion This week sees the release of the Aspen Institute’s report on “Information Disorder.” The commission responsible for the publication assembled representatives of the great and the good, including noted Ginsburg censor Katie Couric and First Amendment hater Prince Harry. This latest blast in the war on “disinformation” trots out the usual arguments in favor of greater supervision over the news we all consume. “Merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course,” they argue. By now the double standards and missteps of those who want to “flag,” ban and de-platform their way to a healthier democracy are well established.

There are three basic rules of gun safety: always keep your firearm pointed in a safe direction, always keep it unloaded until you're ready to use, and never put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot. Thomas Binger, the lead prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, violated two of those three rules in the courtroom Monday. Binger, who has built most of his case on Rittenhouse's decision to carry a rifle to the Kenosha riots last summer, pointed a rifle at the crowded courtroom with his finger directly on the trigger. It was a stunning bookend to the prosecution's fantastical argument against Rittenhouse, and the latest reminder that those who wish to take away your right to defend yourself with firearms know next to nothing about them.

Congressman Adam Schiff is crowing. “It’s very positive,” he said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press about the indictment of sometime Trump adviser Steve Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress. He has a point. The indictment was never really about Bannon but about trying to create some shock and awe when it comes to eliciting testimony from other Trump janissaries such as his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Bannon’s predicament, which he can try and spin to his personal advantage by portraying himself as a victim of the deep state, indicates that the January 6 commission is impeachment by other means.

Welcome to the grubby world of politics, Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin. A breathless report on the Democrat blog Blue Virginia on Friday claimed to have uncovered yet another racism scandal involving a Virginia politician, asserting that the new Republican governor hadn’t been “vetted.” But just how damning is what’s been unearthed? “A recently-obtained copy of Glenn Youngkin’s prep school yearbook (Norfolk Academy, 1985) shows that his senior prom, entitled ‘An Oriental Occasion,’ featured white students offensively dressed in ‘rice hats,’ sandals and geisha robes serving their tuxedoed, all-white peers. Youngkin is pictured right next to these racist stereotypes.

“If you didn’t vote for Biden, you ain’t black,” tweeted 2020 Florida Republican congressional candidate Lavern Spicer on Thursday, “I guess you’re a negro.” Spicer, who is black, was referring to President Joe Biden’s latest gaffe. Delivering his first Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery to a nation reeling from the baleful effects of his failed presidency, and amid historically low approval ratings, Biden referred to the 1940s black baseball player Satchel Paige as “the great negro,” apparently because Paige could still competitively play at age 47. https://twitter.com/ForAmerica/status/1458851297378119684 Biden’s history with race is, at the risk of using a woke euphemism, troubled.

Go nuclear, Joe Across the Atlantic at COP26 (which, somehow, is still going on), politicians deliver a familiar, Malthusian script. It’s five minutes to midnight, it’s already too late, the stakes couldn’t be higher. You know the deal. And yet, for all the warnings of imminent apocalypse and wrangling over emissions targets, policymakers consistently fail to act as if they actually take their own words seriously. In fact, all this overblown rhetoric obscures solutions that do not require the “great reset” favored by the Davos crowd or the political and economic revolution argued for by cringey, crusty Greta Thunberg fans demonstrating their displeasure through the medium of performance art on the streets of Glasgow.

“Every man has two countries — his own and France.” A variation of this line, frequently misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, came to Cockburn as he saw the latest footage from Kamala Harris’s trip to Paris. Everyone, he realized, has two accents — his own and French. And so it is with Momala. On a Tuesday tour of the Pasteur Institute, the vice president opted for a very Fraaanch pronunciation in her conversation with zee scientistes. See for yourself: https://twitter.com/AmericaRising/status/1458489403513491460 Now, Cockburn readily admits that Harris’s Franglais (or should that be Framerican?) is a little more subtle than his own garbled intonation when asking for directions on the Riviera.