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FEELIN’ THE BERN IN NEVADA: So at what point does the political establishment realize that it’s not a coincidence that the most popular figures in each of the major parties are the ones the establishment most obviously can’t stand, and start making some adjustments?
(Don Boudreaux)
It is, of course, almost certain that each of these scholars – Cass and Sanders – would reject the comparison. Cass surely doesn’t feel himself to be motivated by the same sentiments that he believes fuel Sen. Sanders’s fires. And Sen. Sanders surely doesn’t feel himself to be motivated by the same sentiments that he believes fuel Cass’s fires. Yet both of these social engineers believe that government officials should be entrusted with the discretionary power to coerce ordinary Americans to support particular American producers that don’t profit in markets.
Both Cass and Sanders fancy themselves to be smarter than markets. (Such hubris is common among the intellectualatti.) Both Cass and Sanders arrogantly elevate, over the actual operation of markets, their own privately formed fancies for the details of how markets should operate – meaning that neither Cass nor Sanders appreciates the information-gathering-and-processing role of market.
Both Cass and Sanders, in short, reveal with nearly every word that they write and with each syllable that they utter an utter ignorance of economics – and also, by the way, a shockingly careless ignorance of history.
Cass and Sanders are simply two of the current shooting stars (along with Warren, Buttigieg, Trump, Biden…) in the long, long, long, and sorry parade of arrogance-saturated and economically uninformed pundits and politicians who, finding reality as they perceive it to be not quite to their taste, think nothing of coercing ordinary men and women to behave in ways that these pundits and politicians imagine will result in a reality that is more to their taste.
This hubris is worse than breath-taking; it’s sickening and it’s scary.
Today is Washington’s Birthday. If we value the principles on which the United States was founded, then Washington’s Birthday deserves to be ranked as our most important national holiday after Independence Day, July 4, for there would be no United States without him.
The relegation of Washington’s Birthday to the shared, ill-named holiday “President’s Day” reflects a marked degradation of his status and of the status of the founding principles of our country.
It should be seen as a half-way mark between reverence for the United States and its founding principles and the contempt shown toward our National Anthem and implicitly toward our country and its founding principles.
As an important step in the restoration of respect for the principles of individual rights and limited government, on which the United States was founded, Washington’s Birthday must be reinstated as a national holiday.
President Trump made history this week after appointing Richard Grenell to serve as acting Director of National Intelligence. The new job, a cabinet-level position, makes Grenell the highest serving openly gay man to hold federal office in United States history. “He is a faithful patriot and an extraordinary student of our national security apparatus and...
(John Hinderaker) 
Historically, French voters have declined to look into the private lives of their politicians. Which, for the most part, has been just as well. But politics in France are currently being roiled by the withdrawal of Benjamin Griveaux, a close ally of President Macron, from his campaign for Mayor of Paris. [Adult content alert] Griveaux’s withdrawal was prompted by publication of a video of him masturbating. The London Times reports:
The roots of the scandal lie in 2018, when Griveaux, who was then a government spokesman, encountered [Alexandra] de Taddeo, a student, online and sent her a video of him masturbating.
Let’s stop right here. Anyone dumb enough to send such a video to a young woman he recently met has no business being the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, let alone Paris.
Alexandra de Taddeo
Ms. Taddeo is now under arrest–the French know how to protect their politicians–but it turns out that she isn’t the real culprit. Rather, there is a Russian angle. Her boyfriend Pyotr Pavlensky, “a [Russian] performance artist who made his name with stunts such as nailing his scrotum to Red Square and setting fire to the front door of the Lubyanka, the headquarters of Russia’s security services,” took the video from their shared computer and posted it online:
In interviews last week, [Pyotr Pavlensky] said that after de Taddeo had told him about the video, he suggested last October that she put it online but she refused. He then waited until she had gone out and copied it from their shared computer to a USB stick.
On February 13, with the mayoral campaign in full swing, he posted it on Pornopolitique, a website he set up last November. A link to the site was retweeted and the images spread.
Pavlensky, who was also questioned by police over allegations that he had stabbed someone at a party, claimed he wanted to expose the hypocrisy of a politician who put his happy family life at the heart of his campaign. It may also have been an attempt to discredit Macron, with whom Griveaux had been close for years.
Conspiracy theorists see a Kremlin plot, an idea encouraged by the French president. In a speech last weekend to a security conference in Munich, a day after Griveaux resigned, he attacked Russia for its online efforts to destabilise France and western democracy.
That doesn’t seem likely, given that Pavlensky fled Russia in 2017 after his various stunts there. Another question is whether the French are getting puritanical:
Griveaux’s fall also prompted debate about the extent to which France, traditionally respectful of the private lives — and peccadillos — of its leaders, is adopting the moralising ways of the puritanical Anglo-Saxons.
How puritanical can you get? Can’t a married guy send a woman he just met a video of himself masturbating without his political career crashing down around his ears? This was exactly the kind of thing the Puritans tried to crack down on.
There are several morals that might be drawn from this episode. One practical lesson might be, master the freaking technology if you are going to use it:
[Griveaux] reportedly used a function of Facebook Messenger meant to make images disappear soon after they have been received, but de Taddeo stored them on her computer.
Shockingly, this is possible. Those who don’t understand this shouldn’t seek high political office. Or, alternatively, they might not want to share obscene videos.
(John Hinderaker)
Um…no. But you could be forgiven if you’ve been following the news and have the impression that there will be beach cabanas in Antarctica any day now. For the record, the average annual temperature in the interior of the continent is -70 degrees Fahrenheit. You don’t need to worry about melting; not from ambient temperatures, anyway. This video by Tony Heller sets the record straight on the Left’s latest global warming effort:
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