The Left has been struggling to disassociate the anti-cop hatred spewed by the Black Lives Matter movement from the assassination of New York police officer Miosotis Familia during the Fourth of July holiday. Police Commissioner James O’Neill demolished those efforts in his blazing funeral oration for Officer Familia on Tuesday. Assassin Alexander Bonds “hated the police,” O’Neill said, because he had heard and read “countless times” in conversation, on television, and in the newspapers that the cops were the “‘bad guys.’” That hate “has consequences,” O’Neill warned. “When we demonize a whole group of people—whether that group is defined by race, by religion, or by occupation—this is the result.” Bonds had mental problems, but it’s no coincidence that they culminated in the deliberate slaying of a cop.
The Left denies that the Black Lives Movement is anything other than a reasonable movement for justice and insists that it has no connection with anti-cop violence. Never mind the “Fuck the Police” signs, the “Police = KKK” chants, the “Racist, Killer Cops” tee-shirts. Never mind the exclusive attention to a handful of officer-involved shootings and the refusal to acknowledge why officers focus on minority neighborhoods in the first place, or why they are more likely to encounter armed and resisting suspects there. Never mind the media stampede to justify riots as an understandable reaction to supposed police racism. While any given Black Lives Matter protest, however virulent its rhetoric, enjoys First Amendment protection, it is disingenuous to pretend that the all-consuming anti-police narrative is not making officers’ work more difficult and more dangerous. The anti-cop Left has no explanation for the 53 percent increase in gun murders of officers last year. It turns its eyes away from the growing animosity and resistance that officers now encounter when they try to investigate suspicious behavior on the street. And most important, the anti-cop Left ignores the truth: we are not living through an epidemic of racially biased police killings of black males. In fact, if there is a bias in police shootings, it favors blacks against whites, as four studies found last year. The widely held impression that blacks make up the majority of people killed by the police is entirely a media creation.
Most tellingly, the Left has nothing to say about the rise in black-on-black violence that the demonization of cops has produced. An additional 900 black males were killed in 2015 nationally compared with the previous year, the result of officers backing off of proactive policing. Commissioner O’Neill rightly asked where the demonstrations were in protest of Familia’s killing: “Why is there no outrage?” he wondered. But he could as well have asked where the Black Lives Matter demonstrations were in protest of the mindless and constant drive-by shootings of black civilians. A handful of grass-roots activists in Chicago and elsewhere have protested the slaying of children and the elderly, but not one Black Lives Matter leader has seen fit to organize against the rising street violence. Seven thousand blacks, overwhelmingly male, were killed in 2015—2,000 more deaths than all white and Hispanic homicide deaths combined, though black males are only 6 percent of the nation’s population. Not a peep of protest from Black Lives Matter agitators.
The people who are paying attention are the police, who analyze crime patterns on a minute-by-minute and corner-by-corner basis, seeking to break the grip of violence on a community. When no witnesses will cooperate in solving the latest drive-by shooting, the police work tirelessly to try to track down the shooter on their own.
Commissioner O’Neill celebrated what drove Familia and her colleagues to become police officers—the desire to improve people’s lives. “Cops are regular people who believe in the possibility of making this a safer world,” O’Neill said. “It’s why we run toward, when others run away.” But fewer and fewer individuals are choosing to take on what O’Neill called the “vast responsibility” of becoming a police officer, knowing that the first assumption that the media, the activists, and academia would make about them is that they are implicit, if not explicit, racists. Recruiting has dried up. And many police departments, pressured by the Obama Justice Department, are lowering hiring standards, including clean criminal-record requirements, in order to increase what is speciously referred to as “diversity.”
We can hope that O’Neill’s stirring testament to the dignity and compassion of policing will inspire more upstanding individuals like Miosotis Familia to become guardians of the peace. During Familia’s funeral, however, a teen blasted the rap song “Fuck tha Police” from his third-floor window, in deliberate contempt of the proceedings below. As long as that sentiment has so many elite enablers, the violence in inner-city neighborhoods will continue, taking lives both black and blue.
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No comments on While others run away …
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Two Beatles anniversaries of note today: The movie “Yellow Submarine” premiered in London …
… six years before John Lennon was ordered to leave the U.S. within 60 days. (He didn’t.)
Birthdays today start with pianist Vince Guaraldi. Who? The creator of the Charlie Brown theme (correct name: “Linus and Lucy”):
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This is a slow day in rock music, save for one particular birthday and one death.
It’s not Tony Jackson of the Searchers …
… or Tom Boggs, drummer for the Box Tops …
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Today in 1963, Paul McCartney was fined 17 pounds for speeding. I’d suggest that that may have been the inspiration for his Wings song “Hell on Wheels,” except that the correct title is actually “Helen Wheels,” supposedly a song about his Land Rover:
Imagine having tickets to this concert at the Anaheim Civic Center today in 1967:
Today in 1984, John Lennon released “I’m Stepping Out.” The fact that Lennon stepped out of planet Earth at the hands of assassin Mark David Chapman 3½ years before this song was released was immaterial.
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Max Rosenfeld asks (bold and italics his):
In assessing this pesky Milwaukee Brewers team, I find myself asking a simple but powerful question- why not?
Why can’t these Brewers be for real? Why can’t they build upon their solid first half and win the National League Central? And who’s to say that the Cubs are bound to turn it on at some point?
The Brewers are an unknown largely because they are unexpected. This was supposed to be year three in the midst of a Cubs-dominated era, a season in which Chicago would defend their World Series championship with ease. The Cubs’ only priority would be to win another championship, and with the majority of last year’s cast reassembled it seemed entirely possible. Surely, the NL Central crown was just a formality.
But the Brew Crew have made it abundantly clear otherwise.
Unlike the Cubs, it’s difficult to find a glaring weakness on the Milwaukee roster.
They’ve scored the 6th most runs in baseball thanks to a powerful attack that is capable of putting the ball over the fence at any moment. Although the club ranks 16th in baseball with a .255 batting average, the Brewers are second in the Major Leagues with 138 home runs. This comes in front of clubs such as New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Washington Nationals who are receiving more notoriety due to their well-known stars.
Travis Shaw and company are out to change this perception.
Shaw, a Red Sox castoff, is having a career year. A lifetime .265 hitter, Shaw is batting .299/.367/.570 19 home runs and 65 RBI’s at the break, making him an obvious All Star snub. Shaw is like many of his teammates, doubted by others before given a chance in Milwaukee. The Red Sox moved on from Shaw in favor of Pablo Sandoval at third base. That’s a move Boston General Manager Dave Dombrowski would likely want back.
But despite Shaw’s presence, it’s first baseman Eric Thames who leads the power laden Brewers in home runs with 23. Thames spent the last five years playing in South Korea.
Thames’ success is a microcosm for the entire season thus far for the Brewers. He was brought on by Milwaukee to replace Chris Carter, last year’s National League home run leader. Not much was expected of Thames, and though many were excited to see how he might progress in his return to the United States, his arrival was just that- a transition. A roadblock, even. Because at the end of the day, the Brewers were supposed to be Chicago’s little brother. But after pounding the Cubs to a score of 11-2 last Thursday, Milwaukee sent a very real message that they are here to stay.
It seems that the main reason nobody believes in the Brewers quite yet is because they are caught up in Cubs nostalgia. Most baseball fans expect the Cubs to go on a dominant stretch and surpass the Brewers by season’s end. Like last year’s World Series title, it seems like a formality.
But it isn’t. I’d even argue that it’s more likely the Cubs do not turn it on. A look at the Cubs beyond what we expect of them reveals that they are simply a mediocre baseball club. And the Brewers, with the game’s 6th best offense and 8th best pitching staff, are a good one. A better one than the Cubs.
There’s a number of factors as to why the Cubs aren’t that good this year, and they all add up to a less than ideal outcome on the North Side.
The first thing is that with all of the big names the Cubs have on their team, it’s really easy to forget how important Dexter Fowler and David Ross were to the clubhouse. The value of these players goes beyond tangible stats, even though Jon Lester has a 4.25 ERA without Ross as his personal catcher, the first time he’s had to pitch to someone else in quite a while. Fowler and Ross were glue guys, crucial leaders on a mostly young team.
The second is that the veteran arms on the Cubs are obviously fatigued. Lester, John Lackey, and Jake Arrieta are all putting together their worst seasons in recent memory. This can be credited to the fact they all had to pitch deep into October last season.
Third, we might have over-hyped them to begin with. For all the love that guys like Kyle Schwarber have received, he’s only a career .210 hitter and Javier Baez has a measly lifetime .290 on base percentage.
And last, the World Series hangover can be real, especially for a situation like the Cubs just went through. Between all the press rounds, congratulations, and fan fare that team receives after winning a championship, it’s easy to lose sight of the upcoming season. It appears that is what’s happened for the Cubs.
And so here are the Brewers with only one All-Star (closer Corey Knebel), a bunch of no names, and some castoffs, they are prepared to steal the NL Central.
The first problem is that the Cubs aren’t just going to let the Brewers win the division. White Sox (Sock?) pitcher Jose Quintana, one of the five pitchers the Brewers reportedly were after, went instead to the Cubs (arguably for too many prospects), who also may be after Oakland pitcher Sonny Gray. The Brewers seem unlikely to make a deal, and it’s arguable whether or not they should. Trades don’t always work out (see Gorman Thomas for Rick Manning, 1983), but trades that don’t take place never work out.
And there remains the lurking Cardinals, whose season has been slightly worse than the Cubs. A Cardinals blogger suggests his team could be buyers and sellers in the next month:
They have several players that are now more valuable to other teams than the Cardinals. Top of that list is Lance Lynn. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Cardinals are not going to re-sign Lance Lynn, nor should they at this point. The money they will save by using internal options to replace Lynn next season can go to other areas where the needs are greater, such as first and third base. Sueng-Hwan Oh is another possible victim of his contract situation and could be moved in the next few weeks. Kolten Wong’s return could be the straw that strained the oblique muscle, in this case making former All Star Matt Carpenter the odd man out.
All this trade speculation is fun because few of the rumors or preposterous ideas ever happen. That said, there is one deal out there, that should it become available, Girsh and the Cardinals need to go all in and end their string of second place finishes.
That deal is Giancarlo Stanton, and there are two words that explain why this deal is perfect for the Cardinals. Oscar Taveras. …
In 2015, then General Manager, John Mozeliak, felt that Braves slugger, Jason Heyward, might be the guy, not to fill Taveras shoes, but to build that next core around. As the 2015 season played on, many fans began to believe that as well. Sadly, that was not to be as Heyward opted for free agency and signed with the NL Central rival Chicago Cubs. Though his contributions there were on the meager side, the Cubs did win it all in 2016. Like the Cardinals, the 2017 Cubs are more than one player away from standing up to Washington or Los Angeles in a short series, though the acquisition of Jose Quintana improves their chances to prove everybody wrong.
So who would be an Oscar Taveras like player to anchor the next round of talent expected in 2019 ? That would be Giancarlo Stanton. Though this is his eighth season in the big leagues, Stanton is only 27 years old, two years younger than Matt Holliday was when Mo made his blockbuster deal in 2009. Though he has an opt-out after the 2020 season, Stanton is under contract where Matt Holliday was potentially a summer rental. …
Now let’s look at the reasons to do this deal.
- There is no power or RBI bat coming up in the minor leagues. None. There are plenty of speedy table setters, but the Cardinals still need that cornerstone offensive player – the one that Mo had hoped Taveras would be by now. Stanton’s 58 RBIs would lead the Cardinals by 13. Put Magneuris Sierra, Dexter Fowler, Tommy Pham or Oscar Mercado on base ahead of Stanton and it will be Jack Clark all over again, maybe not to the ridiculous running of 1985, but certainly a more dynamic and fun offense than we have seen in St. Louis in a long time.
- The contract is a big one, but the Cardinals can absorb it and still have room to add other needed players. It will take more than Stanton, to be sure, but with Stanton on the roster, Girsch’s has many options to fill out the 2019 roster. It also keeps the Cardinals out of the Machado or Harper bidding war. Sure, I’d rather have Machado but a bird in hand, so to speak.
- The outfield will be set for years.
- Stanton’s career OPS is .899, his OPS+ is 145. Wouldn’t that look good in the Cardinals side of the box scores ?
Giancarlo Stanton would be the perfect deadline deal for the 2017 Cardinals.
Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish could be considered 2017’s answer to C.C. Sabathia, acquired for the second half of the 2008 season by previous Brewers general manager Doug Melvin. (Or, for my generation, Don Sutton, acquired late in 1982; he went 4–1, winning the final game of the season to clinch the American League East, and won a key American League Championship Series game.) No Sabathia, no playoff berth. Suffice to say that’s not going to happen with current GM David Stearns, not merely this season, but probably ever. As a small-market team with resources inferior to the Cubs and Dodgers, Stearns may well be baseball’s answer to Packers GM Ted Thompson — draft and develop, let people go if they become too expensive, and never (in the opinion of fans) bring in someone new and expensive.
Fanrag Sports has a different opinion (bullet points theirs):
- The Brewers are planning to be buyers. But there’s a question how big they’ll go. They were linked to Jose Quintana in some reports, and they clearly hac the prospects to do it, but one rival said he believes they’ll be “reluctant buyers,” and doubts whether they will go for the gusto. The Brewers have a 5½ game lead in the otherwise disappointing NL Central, but they love their stash of prospects (who wouldn’t? It’s extremely good) and have to wonder if they are ready to compete with the biggest boys yet.
- It’s only his opinion, but he may be onto something. That person said he does see the Brewers bulking up their bullpen. Which would take far less in terms of prospects.
- The Brewers are definitely looking at upgrading the pen. They are checking in on the better relievers available. Obviously Corey Knebel had a terrific first half. But they probably need to augment the pen, especially with veterans, if they hope to stave off the rest of the NL Central, such as it is.
Sometimes seemingly small transitions have big impacts. The other 2008 second-half acquisition was second-baseman Ray Durham, who batted .280 in 41 games, replacing Rickie Weeks, whose season-long slump dropped him to .234. Three years later, a late July trade for Jerry Hairston Jr. brought in a valuable infield backup and pinch-hitter, and a trade for relief pitcher Francisco Rodriguez … well, his Brewers stats: 4–0 and a 1.86 ERA.
Owner Mark Attanasio approved the trades for Sabathia and, before the 2011 season, Zack Greinke. But I’m not sure Stearns is inclined to make a big trade, and Attanasio doesn’t overrule his baseball people. Whether Stearns’ approach is correct depends on how the rest of this season turns out — more like 2011, or more like 2014.
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Alexandria DeSanctis considers how the Democrats have been doing since the November 2016 election:
Democratic candidates have fallen in special election after special election this spring, most recently in Jon Ossoff’s nearly four-point loss to Republican Karen Handel in Georgia’s sixth district, despite the historic $23 million Ossoff raised and the extra millions poured into the race by the national Democratic party.
In the wake of that demoralizing defeat, some have suggested that the party’s top leadership is the main issue, and Democratic politicians in the House have begun openly grumbling against minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Others on the Left believe that Democratic candidates have been losing because they’ve stayed too close to the center, rather than endorsing the increasingly progressive policies some voters desire.
Still others have posited that the underlying issue is the party’s dismissive attitude toward religious values and even organized religion itself. While the problems afflicting the party must stem from some combination of these factors, Democrats’ scorn for religion should be their biggest concern. That scorn is compounded by the party’s sudden and dramatic swerve to the Left on key social issues — abortion, contraception, religious liberty, and marriage, to name a few — in a quest for votes from far-Left, progressive Americans.
Mr. Sanders’s non-Christian background may have hurt him in the South; he did poorly among African-American voters, despite his consistent civil rights record. But he did what few other secular candidates have done: He won a sympathetic hearing from conservative evangelicals with a speech that gave a religious grounding for his economic views, complete with biblical citations. When Mr. Sanders spoke at Liberty University, he did not pretend to share evangelical Christians’ faith, but he showed respect for his audience’s religious tradition.
Williams concluded by arguing that Democratic politicians must convince religious voters that they are not enemies of faith, and they ought to do so by “grounding their policy proposals in the religious values of prospective voters.” This week, in a New York Times column, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf offered an alternative model. The co-authors suggested that Thomas Jefferson’s unique attitude toward religion — which pervaded his contributions to the nation’s founding and early government — could serve as a model for today’s Democrats, especially Jefferson’s vigorous embrace of civil religion and peaceful pluralism.
These debates may provide Democrats a method of attaining electoral success, perhaps even in the near future. But while each suggestion hints at a way of combating negative public perception, neither of these models can eliminate the underlying obstacle: progressivism’s inherent contradiction of religion.
Progressivism has always been premised on the notion that man has a changeable nature and thus is able to achieve perfection during his time on earth. As a result, progressives consistently maintain that government is responsible for transforming men and women into perfect creatures. They develop programs and reforms suited not for man as he is, but for man as he ought to be (and, progressives would argue, for man as he could become, with the right societal structures).
Against that idea, most religious believers contend that man is flawed by his very nature and incapable of perfecting himself without the help of God, and that perfection is in fact unattainable during earthly life. While sects and denominations differ vastly, religion itself — and indeed any dependence on a Creator — is a direct contradiction to the progressive conception of man as changeable and perfectible. In short, progressivism and religion — understood as a fundamental reliance on God rather than on oneself or on other men — are inherently incompatible. Where progressivism asserts that properly ordered government can and should transform
In short, progressivism and religion — understood as a fundamental reliance on God rather than on oneself or on other men — are inherently incompatible. Where progressivism asserts that properly ordered government can and should transform man into a perfect being who lives in a man-made utopia, religion insists that God, not government, is responsible for changing men’s hearts.
To be sure, many religious Americans believe that progressive social programs are helping to carry out God’s work — caring for the world’s poor and needy. But that underlying contradiction remains a stumbling block for many faithful voters, especially when seen in conjunction with Democrats’ increasing repudiation of traditional values. Unless Democratic politicians understand and address those legitimate concerns, they won’t sway those who reject the notion that government should take the place of God.
I’ve stated here before that everything Jesus Christ told Christians to is an individual responsibility of each of us as Christians, not as a group (like a church), and certainly not of government. Pope John Paul II probably had it right when he told Catholic politicians (including U.S. Rep. Robert Cornell (D–De Pere), a priest) to get out of office.
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For anyone still wondering why Middle America’s so angry, just take a look at the guest list for the annual bash thrown by Washington Post heiress Lally Weymouth, currently the paper’s senior associate editor, in the Hamptons last week.
It was full of politicians and power brokers — the ones who pantomime outrage daily, accusing the other side of crushing the little guy, sure that the same voter will never guess that behind closed doors, they all get along.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner partied with billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, who rubbed shoulders with billionaire GOP donor David Koch.
Chuck Schumer and Kellyanne Conway were there. So were Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Ronald Lauder, Carl Icahn, Joel Klein, Cathie Black, reporters Steve Clemons and Maria Bartiromo, columnists Richard Cohen and Margaret Carlson, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Ray Kelly, Bill Bratton and Steven Spielberg.
Oh, and Lally’s uncle, former Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham, and cousin Gwen Graham, who’s currently running for her dad’s old job as Florida’s governor.
Weymouth’s party is the latest reminder that for all the bruising rhetoric, the constant polls showing a deeply divided America and the most polarizing president in history, our battle isn’t red vs. blue, right vs. left: It’s about the 1% vs. the rest of us. They laugh as we take their political theater for real.
“If you believe any of these people care about you, you are mistaken,” Samuel Ronan tweeted. “The Hamptons might as well [be] another planet.”
Ronan’s running for Congress from Ohio’s First Congressional District. His platform? Campaign finance reform and lobbying restriction. We’ll see how long that lasts if he wins next year.
No one’s immune. Even Barack Obama, who once said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” has spent his post-presidency cashing $400,000 speaking fees and kitesurfing with Richard Branson. Hillary’s campaign was compromised by shady dealings with big donors to the Clinton Foundation. Trump won by fighting for the forgotten worker yet advances policies that benefit the wealthy.
The journalists who want to belong are no better. The press is supposed to be oppositional, adversarial — comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as the old saw goes — yet almost every year, otherwise respected reporters jockey for seats at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner like desperate kids playing musical chairs.
In the Trump era, such familiarity cuts both ways. The president was wrong, of course, tweeting insults at MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, but what were she and Joe Scarborough doing at Mar-a-Lago last New Year’s Eve? Why were they so chummy with an incoming president?
In February 2016, CNN reported that Scarborough’s then-friendship with candidate Trump was a major network concern.
“I’ve actually called him up and said, ‘Donald, you need to speak in complete sentences at debates,’ ” Scarborough boasted at the 92nd Street Y in November 2015. A member of the media, ratings bolstered by Trump’s frequent appearances, giving the front-runner advice — often.
Little wonder that trust in politicians and the media has reached historic lows: According to Gallup, 42 percent of Americans trust their political leaders and only 32 percent trust the mainstream media.
At Lally Weymouth’s party, her brother toasted Spielberg for making a film about former editor-in-chief Katherine Graham, their mother, and her superstar editor Ben Bradlee, who made his career on the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Yet throughout his life, Bradlee boasted most of one thing: He may have been a journalist covering John F. Kennedy, but he truly believed they were best friends.
Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status. They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks.
How they’ve managed to do the first task — giving their own children a leg up — is pretty obvious. It’s the pediacracy, stupid. Over the past few decades, upper-middle-class Americans have embraced behavior codes that put cultivating successful children at the center of life. As soon as they get money, they turn it into investments in their kids.
Upper-middle-class moms have the means and the maternity leaves to breast-feed their babies at much higher rates than high school-educated moms, and for much longer periods.
Upper-middle-class parents have the means to spend two to three times more time with their preschool children than less affluent parents. Since 1996, education expenditures among the affluent have increased by almost 300 percent, while education spending among every other group is basically flat.
As life has gotten worse for the rest in the middle class, upper-middle-class parents have become fanatical about making sure their children never sink back to those levels, and of course there’s nothing wrong in devoting yourself to your own progeny.
It’s when we turn to the next task — excluding other people’s children from the same opportunities — that things become morally dicey. Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution recently published a book called “Dream Hoarders” detailing some of the structural ways the well educated rig the system.
The most important is residential zoning restrictions. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York and San Francisco that have housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities.
These rules have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide. Research by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation’s 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate U.S. growth by more than 50 percent from 1964 to 2009. The restrictions also have a crucial role in widening inequality. An analysis by Jonathan Rothwell finds that if the most restrictive cities became like the least restrictive, the inequality between different neighborhoods would be cut in half. …
… and then smacked into a wall of conceit that you would expect from the aforementioned 1 percent …Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.
American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class. They play on the normal human fear of humiliation and exclusion. Their chief message is, “You are not welcome here.”
In her thorough book “The Sum of Small Things,” Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues that the educated class establishes class barriers not through material consumption and wealth display but by establishing practices that can be accessed only by those who possess rarefied information.
To feel at home in opportunity-rich areas, you’ve got to understand the right barre techniques, sport the right baby carrier, have the right podcast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to mention possess the right attitudes about David Foster Wallace, child-rearing, gender norms and intersectionality.
… about which London’s Daily Mail smirks:A New York Times columnist has been mocked after he described taking a friend with ‘only a high school degree’ to a Mexican restaurant after she was ‘anxious’ about his first choice, a gourmet eatery, because of the words on the menu.
David Brooks, 55, was made fun of for his column published on Tuesday titled, ‘How We Are Ruining America’. …
The column made Brooks a trending topic on Twitter, with some users mocking the story as condescending.
‘This is an utterly insane graf from david brooks’s latest column,’ Max Read wrote, referencing the above paragraph. …
‘For any woman who has ever felt overwhelmed or scared by a sandwich menu, david brooks is here for you sweetie. He’ll help,’ writer Eve Peyser tweeted.
‘Me: *takes friend to sandwich shop* Friend: *not sure what to order* Me: Ah, you’re too stupid for sandwiches, we’ll go somewhere else,’ another person said.
‘Another great morning for me, David Brooks’ friend. Time to dig into my pedestrian Mexican lunch and read his latest column…,’ Luke O’Neill added.
Fellow Times columnist Ross Douthat also chimed in, tweeting that he too was intimidated by Italian menus, despite having an elite education.
… which in turn got snarky responses:
So this genius doesn’t know that when you graduate from high school you get a diploma, not a degree?
One of the key characteristics of liberals/leftists/Democrats/Progressives/etc. individuals is the absolute, unshakable certainty that they are both morally and intellectually superior to any who are not like minded. It is this characteristic that drives them to strive to dominate the lives of those that they refer to as “irredeemable deplorables” . They claim that they are doing this to improve the lives of the benighted but, in truth, it is because that attitude validates their self esteem. Moreover, they cannot hold themselves accountable for the failures of their attempts because in all instances they are convinced that the failure is due to the inability of the benighted to rise to the level necessary for their intended objectives to be attained. In this instance Mr. Brooks, rather than admit that in in spite of his superiority he was unable to foresee the unfortunate result of his choice of restaurant, he blames his benighted companion for being benighted.
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This being Bastille Day, it seems appropriate to bring you some French rock music. (Despite my 2.5 years of middle school and four years of high school French, I understand none of the words.)
Outside of France, today in 1967, the Who opened the U.S. tour of … Herman’s Hermits.
Today in 1986, Paul McCartney released his “Press” album:
Other than Woody Guthrie, who was not a member of the rock or pop music worlds, the only birthday of today is Jos Zoomer, drummer for Vandenberg:
Today in 1984, Philippe Wynne, former member of the Spinners, died of a heart attack while performing in Oakland:
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The Associated Press reports:
A proposal that would require breweries and wineries to stop selling their products on-site and instead work through distributors is probably going nowhere, a key Republican lawmaker said Wednesday.
Craft brewers and wineries were outraged last month when a mysterious memo emerged detailing a plan that would require them to work through distributors rather than sell their products directly to customers in on-site tap and tasting rooms. The brewers and wineries feared the proposal would force them to pay exorbitant fees to distributors and the Legislature’s finance committee would slip the plan into the state budget on its last night of work on the spending plan.
Rep. Dale Kooyenga, a Brookfield Republican who sits on the finance committee, said he doesn’t think the panel will make any changes. The proposal doesn’t make any sense and the committee wants to foster craft breweries’ growth, not hamper it, he said.
“I am 99 percent certain it’s dead,” Kooyenga said.
William Glass, president of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild and Eau Claire brewery the Brewing Projekt, said he hopes Kooyenga is right.
“We’re pretty confident, but until the governor’s signature is dry on the budget bill anything could happen,” he said. “It’s politics.”
It’s unclear who is pushing the changes. The conservative group Americans for Prosperity obtained the memo and leaked it to media outlets in June. The group’s Wisconsin chapter director, Eric Bott, declined then to reveal the document’s source and didn’t immediately reply to an email Wednesday asking again how the group got it.
The memo features the acronyms for the Wisconsin Tavern League, the Wisconsin Beer Distributors Association and the Wisconsin Wine and Spirit Institute, which represents wine distributors, on top of the first page. Despite the acronyms, tavern league lobbyist Scott Stenger said Wednesday that the league had nothing to do with the document and someone must have added the league’s acronym.
Stenger said in June that his members can’t compete with craft breweries that are growing into tourism destinations. He said Wednesday that he meant that the league doesn’t want breweries to obtain liquor licenses, which would give them an unfair advantage over bars.
“That doesn’t mean we’re opposed to Capital Brewery having a tasting room,” Stenger said. “But they shouldn’t be doing what we do.”
Eric Jensen, executive director of the beer distributors association, said in an email that his group wasn’t aware of any plan to force craft brewers to sell through distributors and if any such proposal was dead that would be “great news.”
“We have never sought and would not support any effort to require craft brewers to sell through distributors,” Jensen wrote.
He didn’t immediately reply to a email asking how the association’s acronym got on the memo.
Wisconsin Wine and Spirit Institute lobbyists also didn’t immediately reply to emails seeking comment.
But the River Falls Journal reports:
A proposal that critics say could spell doom for taprooms in Wisconsin breweries remains afloat, according to an Assembly member.
Rep. Shannon Zimmerman refuted a Wednesday, July 12, media report that the proposal — which has not been made public — is effectively dead.
“It is my understanding from information shared with me last night that its inclusion in a 999 motion remains a very real possibility,” the River Falls Republican said Wednesday afternoon of the proposal, which reportedly bans Wisconsin’s alcohol producers from retailing their own products without a distributor.
Zimmerman’s assertion follows a media report that quoted Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, saying the proposal will not be slipped into legislation by the powerful Joint Finance Committee, of which he is a member.
Zimmerman said he doesn’t doubt Kooyenga’s opposition to the bill, but fears others on the budget committee might feel differently.
The freshman lawmaker said he couldn’t believe his ears when word first circulated about the proposal. And even though the document hasn’t taken the form of drafted legislation, Zimmerman said he’s warning others of its presence.
“It’s a very real document,” he said.
He and others in Madison are concerned the proposal could be slipped into the state’s budget by the Joint Finance Committee as a controversial 999 motion that’s been used in the past to include legislation that didn’t face public debate at the Legislature.
As for the taproom proposal, Zimmerman said there’s no debate in his mind about its possible repercussions.
“This motion is a direct assault on craft brewers, wineries” and other independent alcohol operations, he said.
Zimmerman makes no bones about the fact that he and his wife own a winery, but said he’d oppose the motion regardless.
According to multiple accounts of the proposal, it aims to ban alcohol producers from having retail operations such as taprooms and winery tasting rooms.
The document, Zimmerman explained, would create an “alcohol czar” apart from the state’s revenue department. That new office would have the authority to enforce a rule requiring breweries and wineries to contract with distributors to distribute their own products.
“Multiple groups” are pushing the proposal, Zimmerman said, adding that the Wisconsin Tavern League “had a part in this.”
He said the bill is being pushed by lobbying interests who “believe there is finite alcohol revenue to go around in Wisconsin.” Zimmerman contends that microbreweries, wineries and distilleries are a regional draw that lead to customers spending dollars elsewhere in the Wisconsin communities they’ve come to visit.
“We’re better than this,” Zimmerman said. “We are simply better than these back-office special interests.”
Russ Korpela, owner of Common Man Brewing in Ellsworth, was one of many craft beer retailers voicing opposition to the document. Though his business doesn’t yet brew its own beer, he hopes to one day. And in the meantime, he relies heavily on craft beer — a product his customers demand.
“This is a continuing push by the major domestic brewers in their war on craft beer and they’re taking a different way to go about it,” Korpela said. “I hope a message has been strongly sent that they’re not going to use the rule 999 to insert it into the final state budget.”
The tune didn’t change in Hudson, where Pitchfork Brewing co-owner Mike Fassino said the proposal could be a business killer.
He said about 80 percent of Pitchfork’s business flows through its taproom.
“It would be crippling,” Fassino said. “It would be virtually impossible, I think, to survive.”
Regardless of which story you believe, this is a proposal that should never have been made. There is no good reason to create an “alcohol czar,” nor is there is a good reason to make microbreweries adhere to the same system as MillerCoors and InBev, which is a system that shouldn’t exist anyway.
It also shows how regulated, despite Republicans being in charge of state government, business is in this state.State law mandates the senseless three-tier liquor system. More generally, the state sees fit to regulate what business must charge their customers (the minimum-markup law), and has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the state. None of those three should exist either.
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Thirty-nine percent of Americans give at least 50-50 odds that “global warming will cause humans to become extinct,” according to a poll released last week by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. This extreme view, unsupported by mainstream climate science, is more widely held than the belief that climate change either is “caused mostly by natural changes in the environment” rather than human activity (30 percent), or else “isn’t happening” at all (6 percent). As if on cue, New York published a cover story on Monday entitled, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” with this grim subtitle: “Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak—sooner than you think.” David Wallace-Wells’s 7,000-word article is so disconnected from reality that debunking loses its thrill within a few paragraphs. Even Michael Mann, among the most strident climate scientists, wrote on Facebook that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The article fails to produce it.”
Mann notes that, in his first section alone, Wallace-Wells “exaggerates” the threat of melting permafrost, while his claim about satellite data is “just not true.” The story next intones ominously about “a crack in an ice shelf [that] grew 11 miles in six days, then kept going.” But the Guardian (no climate-change denier), covering the ice-shelf crack last month, explained it differently: “What looks like an enormous loss is just ordinary housekeeping for this part of Antarctica.”
Wallace-Wells’s article is a quintessential illustration of what I have described in Foreign Affairs as “climate catastrophism.” He ignores humanity’s capacity for adapting to changes that will occur slowly over decades or centuries, inserting the classic catastrophist disclaimer in his introduction: “absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives . . .” But humanity will obviously make significant adjustments in the coming century, especially if faced with the catastrophes he posits. The qualifier undermines everything that follows, just as it did the Population Bomb and Peak Oil prognosticators of the past.
Likewise, Wallace-Wells seems not to understand that the world of future centuries will look vastly different from today’s, and that climate impacts must be understood in this context. Thus, he takes a particularly extreme warning that climate change might reduce global output 50 percent by 2100 and invites readers to “imagin[e] what the world would look like today with an economy half as big.” But the study in question is producing estimates for the world of 2100, not 2017—the loss is “relative to scenarios without climate change.” Even growing at only 2.5% annually, the global economy of 2100 would be seven times larger than today’s. Cutting that in half is a catastrophe, comparatively speaking—but still yields a dramatically wealthier world than we have today. Wallace-Wells claims to have conducted “dozens of interviews and exchanges with climatologists and researchers in related fields,” but he seemingly could not find any to go on the record validating any of his claims. He even acknowledges that the three whom he does quote—one on mitigating climate impacts, one on the history of climate science, and one on past extinctions—are all optimists about humanity’s ability to “forestall radical warming.”
The reaction among commentators to the New York article helps to explain why public attitudes tilt toward catastrophism. Farhad Manjoo, the New York Times technology writer, called it “phenomenal.” David Roberts, the Vox climate writer, deemed it “superb.” Mann was sharply critical, but nonetheless complimented Wallace-Wells as “clearly a talented” journalist. (By contrast, Mann identified no errors in my Foreign Affairsessay but called it “#Koch climate denial propaganda” and then blocked me on Twitter.)
Similarly covering criticism with endorsement, Mashable’s Andrew Freedman laments that “in several places,” Wallace-Wells “either exaggerates the evidence or gets the science flat-out wrong.” But this, in his view, is merely “unfortunate, because it detracts from a well-written, attention-grabbing piece. It’s still worth reading, but with a sharp critical eye.” At The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer reports that “at key points in his piece, Wallace-Wells posits facts that mainstream climate science cannot support” and “at other points, Wallace-Wells misstates what we know about the climate change that has already happened.” Nevertheless, writes Meyer, “this isn’t to say that his piece is worth discarding in its entirety.”
Any article that so badly mischaracterizes the state of knowledge on an issue as contentious as climate science should have been rejected for publication. New York magazine should be posting corrections, not tallying clicks.
I appeared recently on a podcast hosted by John Cook and Peter Jacobs, two specialists in “climate communication” and authors of the famous “97 percent consensus” study claiming that almost all climate scientists agree on anthropogenic global warming. I asked them whether they feel obligated to police overly catastrophic claims, or only what they call “denialism.”
“If you see it, I think it can be helpful to call out,” said Cook. “But I also think that it would be a mistake to try to do a 50-50 where you try to spend half your time debunking exaggerators and half your time debunking denial of the science because I don’t think that’s an accurate picture of what is out there in terms of distorting the science.” But if anything, today’s landscape suggests it is the exaggeration that requires the greatest attention. Scientists and journalists genuinely committed to providing the public with an accurate picture, rather than just the picture most conducive to a preferred policy agenda, have lots of work to do.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 