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Today

Kauaʻi & Fire

On July 19, 1817, Georg Anton Schäffer — unsuccessful in his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi for the Russian-American Company — was forced to admit defeat and leave Kauaʻi. The effort had begun in 1815 as a shipwreck recovery mission but escalated after the German physician in the company’s employ had been played by native politicians. Legal action against Schäffer — considered, after the fact, a bungler (his efforts cost his employer over 200,000 roubles) — proved unsuccessful.

In A.D. 64 on the 19th of July, the Great Fire of Rome began. It caused widespread devastation and raged for six days, destroying half the city.

One thousand seven hundred eighty-one years later, the last great fire to affect Manhattan began early in the morning and was subdued that afternoon. This “Great New York City Fire of 1845” killed four firefighters and 26 civilians, destroying 345 buildings.

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Propaganda Shoved Where?

PBS, NPR, public broadcasting, socialism, Democratic Party, propaganda, censorship

The continued existence of “public radio” and “public television” is out of place in these United States. Not because it’s partisan — all news vendors tend to toe some partisan line — but because it’s partisan and taxpayer subsidized.

Though NPR aficionados tend to downplay the subsidies to NPR and PBS, what public media boosters have more consistently done is deny the partisanship. 

They have no standing any longer — if the evidence of our senses weren’t enough. 

In “The Bell Finally Tolls for National Public Radio,” Matt Taibbi explains how the media behemoth’s CEO Katherine Maher admitted NPR’s and PBS’s partisanship in her defense of it.

That won’t help her case in Congress, though, notes Mr. Taibbi. 

While the New York Times insists that tax-funded “public” media “improves the lives of millions of Americans” and “strengthens American interests” (presumably by being relentlessly progressive), it has no defense to Taibbi’s indictment: the branches of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have taken “the country’s signature public news shows into an endless partisan therapy session, a Nine Perfect Strangers retreat for high-income audiences micro-dosing on Marx and Kendi.”

Taibbi makes clear just how annoying the dish served by CPB/NPR/PBS is, the entities seeing no “problem with taking funds from a huge plurality or even a majority of citizens and pursuing a nakedly politicized, ear-splitting propaganda project in opposition to the views of those people. NPR is the vegetables we refuse to eat, administered up a different entrance for our own good.”

I was thinking about the blight upon our eyes and ears and reason, but point taken.

De-fund National Public Propaganda immediately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Jeremy Bentham

[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 1: “Of the Principle of Utility.”
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Today

Succession?

President Harry S. Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act on July 18, 1947. Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress to enact such a statute, which Congress has done on three occasions: 1792, 1886, and 1947. The 1947 Act was last revised 59 years after passing, in 2006.

Categories
insider corruption partisanship scandal

The Salience of the Switch

Jeffrey Epstein, blackmail, Epstein Island, corruption, power

From the moment the Jeffrey Epstein story appeared, an outrageous quality attached itself to it, like slug-slime on the heel of your naked foot.

Now, as the case is allegedly closing, it’s only getting weirder.

It’s needless to run through the arc of the story again: the rumors, the financing, the arrests, the trials, the documentaries, the books and articles, the “suicide.” Most people are aware. And most know that it was MAGA folks who were most exercised about the issue. 

“Epstein didn’t kill himself” was not a meme of the left.

The idea that Mr. Epstein had fronted a honey-pot blackmail ring to exert control over politics and science and culture was a story that even the mainstream didn’t pooh-pooh much, because, in part, there was so much circumstantial evidence.

Then came the switch, when Dan Bongino and Kash Patel assured us that Epstein did indeed commit suicide. When I commented a week ago, it was Trump switching sides — after years milking MAGA anger over it — that stood out. 

And now it got bigger. In two ways. Trump’s switch got bigger. And the evidence for Epstein’s self-offing got shakier.

The latter is explosive evidence that our leaders may have lied to us. And done a lousy job of it.  The taped evidence said to prove that no one had been to visit Epstein in his cell was first shown to have been clumsily edited, and then all-the-sudden more footage came out!

Meanwhile, Trump took to calling the Epstein File issue a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats — Comey, Obama and Biden specifically!

Do they think we’re stupid?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

E.B. White

Did it ever occur to you that there’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another?

E.B. White, “Quo Vadimus?” The Adelphi (January 1930).
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Today

Wrong Way?

On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City’s first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten (or 26) hours in flight, and wound up the next day in Ireland. Most folks judged his “error” as deliberate, but he never publicly admitted to anything but error. He was nicknamed “‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan,” an affectionate moniker, and received a 14-day suspension of his pilot’s license as punishment for his breaking of many, many regulations.

One occasionally hears the epithet “Wrong Way Corrigan” applied to anyone who similarly takes a slight liberty, skirting official rules or practices — or simply goes the wrong direction.

July 17, 1975, had a very different kind of aviation event, one well-planned: Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 made the first US/USSR linkup in space.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies scandal

The Autopen Question

Joe Biden, autopen, auto-pen

When the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project offered its report on the Biden Administration’s use of the presidential “autopen,” in March, the legality of many of President Joe Biden’s signatures were placed in jeopardy.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and Trump in the White House have been pushing the case that White House staff often used the autopen sometimes without the presidential awareness.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and President Trump have been pushing the case that White House staff often used the autopen and sometimes without presidential awareness.

If so, with the non-stroke of a non-pen, could much of what came out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four years be un-done?

“The full picture of what Mr. Biden did on pardon and clemency decisions,” the New York Times explains, “and how much he directed those decisions and the actions of his staff, including the use of the autopen, may come down to tens of thousands of Biden White House emails that the National Archives has turned over as part of the investigation by the Trump White House and the Justice Department.”

Times reporters investigated some of the emails, offering a tentative-if-predictable conclusion: “the Biden White House had a process to establish that Mr. Biden had orally made decisions in meetings before the staff secretary, Stefanie Feldman, who managed use of the autopen, would have clemency records put through the signing device.”

And of course Biden himself defends the integrity of his administration: “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency.

“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations.” 

Trust him!

The Times has been working to encourage us to trust the ex-president. Its March article, “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral,” clearly shows its bias — a context piece before any real investigation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Jeremy Bentham

It is with government, as with medicine. They have both but a choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.

Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X : “Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society.”
Categories
Today

Ethiopia

On July 16, 1931, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie I signed a new Constitution. Not exactly a model of limited government, the new document proved that the emperor was in keeping with the time, which was a period of weakening constitutional limits in America, Europe, and Britain. A flavor of the document can be gained by its most “rights-oriented” measures:

Art. 22. Within the limits laid down by the law, Ethiopian subjects have the right to pass freely from one place to the other.
Art. 23. No Ethiopian subject may be arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned except in pursuance of the law.
Art. 24. No Ethiopian subject may, against his will, be deprived of his right to be tried by a legally established court.
Art. 25. Except in cases provided for by law, no domiciliary searches may be made.
Art. 26. Except in cases provided by the law, no one shall have the right to violate the secrecy of the correspondence of Ethiopian subjects.
Art. 27. Except in cases of public necessity determined by the law, no one shall have the right to deprive an Ethiopian subject of any movable or landed property which he owns.
Art. 28. All Ethiopian subjects have the right to present to the Government petitions in legal form.
Art. 29. The provisions of the present chapter shall in no way limit the measures which the Emperor, by virtue of his supreme power, may take in the event of war or public misfortunes menacing the interests of the nation.