Latest from Coffee House

Thursday

24 Oct 2019

Silicon Valley: the latest stage for political grandstanding

Silicon Valley can’t catch a break politically these days — from either party. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled extensively by members of Congress this week in a hearing ostensibly about the company’s now-on-shaky-ground Libra cryptocurrency that turned into a broader scrutiny of its ethics and business practices. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning, predictably, went viral, with even a remix that replaces Zuckerberg with Cousin Greg from HBO’s Succession. But it’s not just Democrats — such as presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who’s made Zuckerberg a campaign trail bogeyman — assailing venture-backed billionaires these days. Republicans want a piece of the action, too.

Melissa Chen

The unholy alliance between atheists and evangelicals

The setting was the Gladstone Library, a dramatic, imposing room named after one of Britain’s most cherished politicians, though on closer inspection, its grandeur was somewhat faded. Ornate faïence-tiled columns held up lofty, sculpted ceilings punctuated with chandeliers above mahogany shelves along the room’s perimeter lined with faithful replicas of the 30,000 volumes spanning 17th- to 20th-century political material now safely housed at the University of Bristol. In many ways, this staid, cavernous hall filled with ersatz books at the very heart of the National Liberal Club established by William Gladstone himself is the perfect metaphor for the state of liberalism today.

Roger Kimball

The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is a doomed and desperate time-buying ploy

Oh no! The walls are closing in again on Trump! We’ve reached a 'tipping point.' This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal 'bombshell' that will destroy him. The testimony of Bill Taylor, Deep State apparatchik and acting Ambassador to Ukraine, has given 'devastating', 'explosive' testimony to Adam Schiff. They’ve certainly got Trump this time. An establishment lifer with deep ties to Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was so generous to Hunter Biden, has said that Trump insisted on a quid in the form of probing cokehead Hunter and his dad, Joe, in exchange for the quo of $400 million in military aid. Or was pelf the quid and the investigation of the Joe and Hunter show the quo? Our experts are working on untangling that.

Wednesday

23 Oct 2019

Jacob Heilbrunn

Republican congressmen are loyal enough to storm committee meetings for Trump

Who knew that House Republicans would embrace civil disobedience? About two dozen legislators led by Republican firebrand Matt Gaetz stormed the House Intelligence Committee meeting this morning to disrupt the proceedings, where Pentagon official Laura Cooper was supposed to testify about the transfer of funds to Ukraine. Against all the evidence, the congressmen keep claiming the hearings represent a kind of Star Chamber. They only left after they had the chance to gorge themselves on Domino’s pizza. At least they didn’t order chicken kiev. The stunt probably had President Trump’s blessing, who has been worrying that the Republican dominoes are about to fall as fresh revelations about his attempts to muscle over Ukraine emerge.Trump has good reason to worry.

Dominic Green

How Meghan Markle lost her sparkle — and why Prince Harry will pay

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and dim millennial virtue-signaler, has complained that she and Prince Harry are ‘existing, not living’. We should all be so lucky to merely exist on millions of pounds of taxpayers money in a selection of posh country houses with a loving spouse worth somewhere north of £40 million; with a new baby who is seventh in line to the British throne and whose great-grandmother, according to the Church of England, has a hotline to God; with Elton John’s jet on permanent stand-by to whisk you off to the sunny and exclusive hideaways of the extravagantly rich and famous; and, perhaps most valuable of all, with those keys to the kingdom of a life of impossible luxury: the goodwill of the British people.Not enough, apparently.

Tuesday

22 Oct 2019

Freddy Gray

Trump uses provocative terms because he wants to provoke

We should be bored by now — perhaps we are. Certainly, the anger against Donald Trump’s tweets isn’t quite as vociferous as before. We are used to @realdonaldtrump now. Three years in, who cares if he sounds presidential? But the media outrage machine still limbers up, on demand, at every provocation. Today’s doozy: Trump compared the Democratic attempts to impeach him over Ukraine to a ‘lynching’. Sure enough, the media explainers did their job. Lynching, we are told by every wired copy monkey who has to file 600 words to their line editor, is a ‘racially charged/loaded term’ that refers to — here I quote the BBC — ‘historic extrajudicial executions by white mobs mainly against African Americans.

Monday

21 Oct 2019

Chadwick Moore

Women are sick and tired of receiving nudes on gay dating apps

Time to put it away, boys, the colonists are blushing. Gays might be longing for the days when it was only marauding gangs of bachelorettes terrorizing homosexuals in their native habitats. But step into any gay bar today and you’re likely to find multiple disparate clans of shrieking girls haranguing the DJ and pounding fruity cocktails without even sporting Team Bride tiaras and penis straws. It’s one of the ballsier intrusions in this age of tearing down walls and dictating human sameness. And, inevitably, women have crashed the last frontier, gay sex apps, and it’s not going well for anyone. ‘Send me a dick pic and I will cut it off,’ screeched one women on her Grindr profile, a location-based gay men’s hookup app.

James Adams

The brave new world of 5G

To those who understand it, 5G is the next exciting piece of technology and it is coming to your neighborhood soon. For the rest of us, it is a number and letter that mean almost nothing, but we talk about it as if we really do understand our future and how great it's going to be.The theory goes that 5G is a game-changing new generation of wireless technology, a little like the iPhone of today compared with the old rotary telephone. The scientists behind 5G believe it will, at last, deliver very high data speeds to every connected device and do so with extraordinary reliability.Today, 5G has been deployed in 20 American cities from New York to Atlanta with a further 10 coming online before the end of the year.

Dominic Green

Tulsi Gabbard: a Gandhi in Lycra

Andrew Yang claimed to be surprised that the media dubbed Tulsi Gabbard the first Asian American to run for the Democratic nomination. Of course Gabbard snagged this prize of the higher tokenism, first claimed by Patsy Mink in 1972. Yang may be doing better in the single-figure freakshow of the nomination race, but Gabbard looks better when encasing her policies in a tight wetsuit or engaging in Lycra-clad iron-pumping. https://twitter.com/tulsigabbard/status/1173605168841203712?lang=en This is not all the Gabbard candidacy has set a-pumping. No Democrat so quickens the blood of the red-meat, male-voice choir of Buchananites and Bannonites.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Pierre Delecto 2020?

So Mitt Romney is good for a surprise other than strapping the family dog, Seamus, to the roof of his station wagon on a vacation trip to Canada in 1983. The revelation that Romney has been operating a secret Twitter account under the cognomen Pierre Delecto should come as delectable news to his fans and detractors alike. The hifalutin moniker is sure to confirm President Trump’s belief that Romney, as he put it in an earlier tweet, is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning.’ Not to mention Romney’s resort to French to confirm his hidden identity: ‘C’est moi.

Charles Lipson

The age of invective

A healthy democracy requires free speech and free assembly, tolerance for different views, and peaceful transfers of power among contending parties. It requires honest elections, where losers do more than concede. They acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome, as Al Gore did in a highly-contested 2000 president contest. These fundamental pillars of liberal self-government are now being challenged across Europe and the United States. It is crucial to recognize the challenge, call out the worst violations, and push back. Vitriolic, white-hot rhetoric now paints political opponents not as loyal opponents but as traitors, determined to overthrow not only specific leaders but the democratic system itself.

Friday

18 Oct 2019

Cockburn

Tucker Carlson: Trump is a ‘truth elixir’ and Bill Kristol is a ‘Trotskyite’

On Wednesday, Cockburn stopped by ‘Sovereignty or Submission: Restoring National Identity in the Spirit of Liberty’, hosted by conservative publications American Greatness and The New Criterion at a private club in Washington.There, Cockburn heard a wide-ranging discussion about nation states and governance, featuring Spectator columnists Daniel McCarthy and Roger Kimball, as well as the Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson, the Heritage Foundation’s David Azerrad, American Greatness editor Chris Buskirk, National Review’s John O’Sullivan, and Hillsdale College and Claremont Institute fellow Michael Anton.Over lunch, Tucker Carlson delivered a keynote speech on what he has learned since Trump’s election.

Daniel McCarthy

The Democratic party’s post-Christian America

The new Pew report doesn’t mince words in its headline: 'In US, Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.' In 10 years, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians of any kind has declined by 12 percent. In 2009, just over 50 percent of Americans identified as Protestant; today only 43 percent do. Catholics have declined from 23 percent to 20 percent of the adult population. The biggest declines in Christian identification by demographic group have been among millennials (down 17 points) and Democrats (down 16 points). But dwindling Christian commitments are in evidence across all categories: 'white people, black people and Hispanics; men and women; in all regions of the country; and among college graduates and those with lower levels of educational attainment.

Thursday

17 Oct 2019

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Zuckerberg lays out Facebook’s free speech future

When he created Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg radically changed the world. In a speech today at Georgetown University, he seemed eager to do so again. It is my fervent hope that he is successful. In sweeping rhetoric liberally sprinkled with historical references, Zuckerberg drew a line in the sand, recognizing that ‘the ability to speak freely has been central in the fight for democracy worldwide.’ He bemoaned the fact that ‘we’re seeing people try to define more speech as dangerous’ and committed himself and Facebook to being forces for good in the fight to preserve freedom of expression.In a world increasingly intolerant of dissent, this is no small promise, and I don’t believe it’s an empty one, either.

Ross Clark

Are inside-traders profiting from the US-China trade war?

Of all the 9/11 conspiracy stories, one of the most persistent is the suggestion that al-Qaeda funded its operations by short-selling the shares of airline companies in the days before the attack. Inevitably, airline shares plummeted that day, netting short-sellers vast profits. While there was an increase in short-selling before the attack, no-one has proved one way or the other whether that was history’s most audacious case of insider-dealing or just a reaction to an industry which was already in trouble for purely commercial reasons. But is someone now trying on the same trick with the US-China trade war?

Wednesday

16 Oct 2019

Will Lloyd

Does anyone have a job for Chelsea Clinton?

For a long time now, those of us who have the misfortune to have working eyes and ears have become deeply familiar with the activities of one family. This family is (still) taken very seriously by some very serious people, in spite of the fact that vast numbers of us would rather eat chlorine-flavored ice cream than ever hear from them again. Like some sort of deathless voodoo incantation, the name of this family echoes around the world. It echoes in high-altitude frosted glass conference rooms filled with international bores. It echoes in the frazzled minds of readers of the legacy press.

Ben Sixsmith

GQ is a holy text of woke capital

In general, there is no point in reading articles you know are bound to make you mad. Life is too short. Read a good book. Enjoy a walk with your loved ones. Learn how to fashion something out of wood. Sometimes, though, an article crosses our path and we are gripped with the despair and anger one might feel watching a drunk driver veer across a crowded street.One such article is GQ editor-in-chief Will Welch's introduction to the magazine’s ‘New Masculinity’ issue. ‘When I found out that I would be the editor-in-chief of GQ,’ Welch writes:‘...most people said stuff like “Amazing!” and “Congrats!” But one particularly perceptive friend reacted in a way that I'll never forget. “Yikes,” she said.

Marlo Safi

Enes Kanter, Kim Kardashian and Turkish crimes against humanity

The Hitler of our century, Boston Celtics basketball player Enes Kanter has said, is the president of his native Turkey. In response to Lebron James playing interference for China following Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeting support for Hong Kong’s protesters and their struggle for liberty, Kanter responded with his experience: his outspoken criticism of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s human rights abuses has cost him his family and his safety. 'FREEDOM IS NOT FREE,' Kanter wrote on Twitter, also listing the consequences for his disobedience, including his father being jailed, Kanter’s attempted kidnapping, and having not seen or spoken to his family in five years. Him and his family became pariahs.

Jarvis Dupont

I always knew Mark Zuckerberg was a far-right incel

The #DeleteFacebook hashtag was been trending all yesterday on Twitter after it became known that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been involved in talks with a few well-known conservative influencers in recent months to discuss free speech and partnerships.In a grossly misjudged attempt to keep Facebook a place for ‘balanced debate’ (also known as ‘hate speech’), and free from censorship (which as we all know is just alt-right code for ‘hate speech’), Zuckerberg has inadvertently displayed his true colors. Zuckerberg’s forays into the inner cabals of the Dark Side are a result of Donald Trump’s allegations of 'bias' against conservatives at Facebook and other major social media companies.

Michael Tracey

Tulsi Gabbard was a dove on the warpath

It was never especially plausible that Tulsi Gabbard would follow through on her threat to boycott last night’s presidential debate. Too much campaign energy and resources have flowed into ensuring that she secured a spot on the corporate TV stage, which is a sordid but unavoidable aspect of the modern primary process. But in her first comments, she spelled out the reasons why such a boycott would in theory have been absolutely warranted. The two media co-sponsors, CNN and the New York Times, had just spent the past several days attacking her with a level of brazenness that was shocking even to those well-accustomed to the regularity with which she is smeared by journalistic antagonists.

Chadwick Moore

2020 Democrats shapeshift into moderates in Ohio

Tuesday night’s presidential debates reminded Americans of the opposition party’s greatest superpower, shapeshifting, as the candidates we’ve come to know for race-baiting, fear-mongering, open borders and other Squad-inspired talking points took a dramatic turn toward discussing actual policy. It was the most pragmatic, and therefore least entertaining, of the four Democratic National Committee-sponsored debates so far and seemed to further prove the party’s absolute cluelessness in getting a foothold in this brand new style of wartime politics invented by Donald Trump.

Kelly Jane Torrance

My ride with Rudy

The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has raised many questions. Did President Trump withhold military aid to Ukraine because he wanted the country’s new president to investigate possible 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter? Was the whistleblower who alerted the country to the phone call between the two TV star presidents politically motivated? And what is it like to be Rudy Giuliani, the man outside the administration at the center of it all? I can offer some insight into that last one. The day after House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry, I sat across from Giuliani on a train from New York City to Washington. The three-hour ride was a rollicking one, with the former mayor of NYC indicating he was more than ready to rumble.

Freddy Gray

Elizabeth Warren emerges from fourth debate bruised not battered

How do you know Elizabeth Warren is the Democratic front-runner? Well, the polls give you a clue. But the more significant evidence is that the other presidential candidates went for her at the CNN debate last night. When they turn on you like that, it means you are winning. Warren was attacked by various candidates — by Pete Buttigieg and by Amy Klobuchar most effectively. She wobbled a bit, especially on her vague Medicare plans, but she didn’t falter. It’s clear that she isn’t the devastatingly brilliant candidate establishment progressives so want her to be. She sounds a bit hurt and feeble when attacked: how will she cope with 2020?

Tuesday

15 Oct 2019

Jacob Heilbrunn

John Bolton, avenger

President Trump may be pulling out of Syria, but it’s bombs away in Washington. John Bolton’s likening Rudy Giuliani to a 'hand grenade' has now prompted America’s mayor to fire back that his old chum is an 'atomic bomb'. Both may be right.As the president complains about a lack of transparency in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, enough information is surfacing to make it clear that the testimony of former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill administered another body blow to Trump’s claim that his July telephone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was fine and dandy. Hill apparently testified that Bolton wanted nothing to do with a Ukrainian scheme that he likened to a 'drug deal' and told her to speak with White House lawyers.

Charles Lipson

What Pelosi really wants from impeachment

The most important thing to know about Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is this: it is not about removing President Trump now; it is about damaging him now so he can be defeated next year. Impeachment normally seeks to remove the president (or a federal judge) from office. A successful House vote is only the first step. The Senate needs strong evidence to convict, and House leaders try to provide it with their investigation and public hearings. That’s what we learned in seventh-grade civics. But Nancy Pelosi is not in middle school. She is teaching postgraduate courses, and she knows a Republican Senate is very unlikely to convict Donald Trump without a lot more evidence than has been brought to light along with a groundswell of public support.

Monday

14 Oct 2019

Walter Scheidel

What did the Romans ever do for us?

In 2006, as British Euroskepticism was gathering steam, Boris Johnson published a book called The Dream of Rome, in which he held up the Roman Empire as a successful model of European integration and as a foil to the unlovable European Union. That was a rather peculiar choice. You would hardly have expected the future Brexiteer to yearn for a time when Britain was but a marginal province of a ‘European super-state’, a label that Margaret Thatcher had once applied to the EU, yet which is a much better fit for imperial Rome. But Johnson also failed to realize that it had actually been the end of Roman power that launched Europe’s long, tortuous and unique journey toward modernity — a journey in which the sovereign United Kingdom came to play such an outsized role.

Caroline McCarthy

Andrew Yang is 2020’s ad blocker candidate

Every so often, a political candidate rises to the fore fueled by the grievances of people who are seriously annoyed. Donald Trump, for example, stoked the fires of an America in perceived decline. Ron Paul in 2008 capitalized on the backlash to the costly military interventions of the Bush era. In 2016, Bernie Sanders drew together a coalition of the young, the far-left, and the people who didn’t want to cast a vote for a Clinton ever again.

Friday

11 Oct 2019

Cockburn

Shepard Smith’s last moments at Fox News

Cockburn just happened to be loitering outside Fox News Channel’s Washington bureau Friday when one of the network’s most-talked-about anchors announced on air that his show was ending its run. Shepard Smith’s abrupt departure flabbergasted just about everyone on the East Coast — including, it turned out, his Fox colleagues.‘A personal moment now,’ the anchor said as he closed the 3 p.m. hour’s Shepard Smith Reporting. ‘I’ve witnessed and reported on the events that shaped our reality. Together with my colleagues, we’ve written a first draft of history and endeavored to deliver it to you while speaking truth to power without fear or favor, in context and with perspective. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity.

Ben Johnson

Joe Biden: victim of the cult of youth

Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack, but Joe Biden’s campaign may be the casualty. The 78-year-old Sanders’s physical condition renewed concerns about the 76-year-old Biden’s mental acuity, which had been temporarily scuppered by President Trump’s phone etiquette. Before the Ukrainian controversy, even former president Jimmy Carter hinted Biden had passed his expiration date. Biden’s rivals openly questioned whether his inexact grasp of facts, stilted speech, and apparent memory issues stemmed from his status as a mid-septuagenarian. As with most politicians’ analyses, they properly identify the problems but misjudge their cause and cure. Biden’s hazy habits are not products of senility; they stem from his status as a former idol of America's cult of youth worship.

Thursday

10 Oct 2019

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump, outfoxed once more

President Trump is feeling miffed. A new poll from Fox indicating that a majority of registered voters wants to see him depart the presidency sooner rather than later has apparently bruised his feelings. In his inimitable fashion, Trump dismissed the news as so much hooey. He declared, 'From the day I announced I was running for President, I have NEVER had a good @FoxNews Poll. Whoever their Pollster is, they suck. But @FoxNews is also much different than it used to be in the good old days. With people like Andrew Napolitano, who wanted to be a Supreme....' He concluded, '...

Tuesday

8 Oct 2019

Caroline McCarthy

Facebook’s fake news problem is about more than just ads

It seems like it should be quite the scandal: one co-founder of Facebook chastising another publicly for a business decision that has, allegedly, had major social reverberations. In response to Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren calling out Facebook for loosening its restrictions on political advertising, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes took to Twitter. ‘I have a feeling that many people in tech will see Warren’s thread implying FB empowers Trump over Warren as unfair,’ Hughes wrote. ‘But Mark [Zuckerberg], by deciding to allow outright lies in political ads to travel on Facebook, is embracing the philosophy behind Trumpism and thereby tipping the scales.

James Adams

Would UBI actually work in America?

It seems like the perfect socialist ideal: massive unemployment, inequality in income and jobs along with growing class divisions can all be met by a common income that keeps every family fed, housed and healthy. Such is the current debate that is engaging every country that fears the fallout from the Artificial Intelligence revolution that is likely to eliminate tens of millions of jobs – up to 33 percent of all jobs in the US according to a McKinsey study. At the same time, many students leaving high school or graduating from college may face the reality of never being able to work. With social tensions across America already high, the idea of a Universal Basic Income for all seems like an attractive solution.

Friday

4 Oct 2019

Michael Tracey

Wait, what aid are we actually sending to Ukraine?

Should the United States be sending hundreds of millions of dollars in lethal weaponry to Ukraine? That's not a policy discussion we’ve heard aired in the past two weeks. This seems odd, because the provision of such lethal weaponry is at the center of the rapidly-unfolding Trump/Ukraine/impeachment drama. Trump is accused of withholding ‘aid’ for the purpose of ‘pressuring’ Ukranian authorities to carry out investigations that advance his political interests. At least at first blush, it’s a valid matter for inquiry. But what about the ‘aid’ itself?

Thursday

3 Oct 2019

Jacob Heilbrunn

Whistleblowers give Trump a taxing time

Oops. Donald Trump has another nettlesome whistleblower on his hands that he’s going to have to try and drown out. The latest revelation: a career Internal Revenue Service official has filed a complaint alleging that a Treasury Department official sought to tamper with the annual audit of Donald Trump or Mike Pence’s tax returns. Which official do you think is more likely to have sought to intervene?According to the Washington Post, which broke the story, the whistleblower’s account focuses on 'the integrity of the government’s system for auditing the president and vice president’s tax returns.' Needless to say, the process is supposed to be inviolate.