France is cooked

The bond market is delivering its verdict on the French economy:

This is a sad statement

Federalist: "Poll: 1 In 5 Undergrads Says U.S. Deserved 9/11, Nearly Half Endorse Violence Against ‘Hate Speech’."

Once you've defined "hate speech," you've given yourself agency to violently shut it down.

Zo can't help it

Bret Stephens in the NY Times: "Zohran Mamdani’s Moral Obscenity"

Finally, it is obscene because Mamdani is the mayor for about one million Jewish New Yorkers, many with close relatives in Israel, who deserve better on a day of grief than to be offered the equivalent of an “All Lives Matter” homily. This is yet another of the double standards through which modern-day Jew hatred manifests itself: Whenever antisemitism is mentioned in progressive circles, it is inevitably accompanied by nods about Islamophobia or other bigotries.

It would be better to have a mayor who, if only on Oct. 7, can say: Jewish Lives Matter. Israeli Lives Matter. Full stop. The lectures about Gaza can come some other day.

If only one day a year.

We can't have nice things

Tulsa: "Ella Langley concert at BOK Center canceled after security threat."

Somebody called in a bomb threat and ruined everybody's night.  I suspect one particular group: "Country Music Star Ella Langley’s Deer Hunt Puts Her in Liberal Haters’ Crosshairs." 

It was always a lie

Twitchy: "Reports About DOJ and Cassidy Hutchinson Make This Jake Tapper Flashback Interview Age Even Worse."

Remember Cassidy?  She was the star witness, the prime-time behind-the-scenes it girl, who testified to Congress that Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his Presidential transport on January 6th.  The whole thing was disputed by the Beast's driver and, um, physics. 

There's zero chance Cornbread Cassidy will go to jail but she may need to give up all the sweet cash from her book.

Hey I agree with El-Sayed on something

Ace: "El-Sayed, Ready to Campaign with Shit-Fingered Midas, Previously Said Obama Was a Failed President Who Left the Country Off Worse Than When He Found It." 

He's doing God's work

Ace: "Nick Shirley Exposes How Bums Sell Taxpayer-Funded Food Stamps to Scammers -- Often "Foreign" -- for Cash to Buy Drugs. - The Homeless Bums Chase Him Down the Street for Exposing the Scam." 

Learning to write is learning to think

This is an excellent post from Joanne Jacobs: "Is writing obsolete?"

I'm a College Professor. "Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think", writes Joe Cruz, chair of the philosophy department at Williams College in a New York Times commentary.  It's not true that writing develops thinking skills, he agues [sic]. Cruz envisions universities in which "ideas are expressed in real time and analytical thought unfolds as a debate or an oral defense or a group discussion."

 That favors the glib, but not the thoughtful.

In "Writing is Good (He Said Controversially)," Matt Taibbi is more blunt about perfesser Joe Cruz's article:

These people are just trolling now. My God.

Can you imagine sending your kid to one of the most expensive private colleges in America and one of the professors is like: "Meh, writing is overrated." 

Mississippi students will take over the country.

Tweet of the day

Townhall on the riots in France: "'"From the River to the Sea" Isn’t So Fun When It’s the Seine to the Mediterranean, Huh?' "

What a great story

Boston Globe: "Squeals, shrieks and hugs. Boston-born Nobel Prize winner shares big news with his overjoyed children."

This story says this guy is 54 but he looks like he's 34.  His daughters are young-ish.  Good for him.

When you're entirely dependent on the government

Unreported Truths: "Europe is in trouble" - "And its crisis goes a long way to explaining why the American left remains a longshot to take power durably, despite the big gains it will probably make next month."

Europeans have seen the heavy hand of government in a way that Americans, even blue-state Americans, cannot imagine. French local and national government spending makes up 57 percent of the country’s domestic product. In other words, taxpayers (or bondholders) pay for almost three out of every five euros of economic activity. Italy and Germany are at 50 percent. (The United States is at 38 percent.)

That stifling bureaucracy makes starting companies in Europe hard and growing them next to impossible.

The trend is most clearly seen in technology, where Europe is not even an also-ran.

That 57% economic activity statistic is just wild: over half of the country's economic activity depends on the government coffers.  

How is this remotely legal?

Just the News: "Jack Smith team tracked Trump defense lawyers’ calls by monitoring his chief of staff's phone - Declassified memos reveal that Jack Smith's secret dragnet, codenamed "Plasmic Echo," monitored senior Trump associates and staff's contacts with lawyers, staff, and journalists during the 2024 campaign." 

Am I the crazy one here?  I thought that wiretapping a lawyer was extremely out-of-bounds unless there's credible evidence he/she is involved in a criminal conspiracy.

Take a wild guess why

Red State: "FlyDubai Attacker Reveals Why He Waited Until the Plane Was Near Israel to Attack Captain."

He was going to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.  The New York Times has described this as an "aggressive landing procedure." 

Undefeated

Washington Post editorial: "The evidence on anti-free-market price controls has not changed - They're still destroying investment and causing shortages around the world."

ICYMI: "Manhattan rents reach all-time high of $6,655/month amid Mamdani’s rent freeze and pied-a-terre tax threat." 

Ah, it'll be different this time.

And yet, Becerra is gonna win

Washington Post editorial: "Who can save California?" - "California, with an economy larger than every country but the United States, China and Germany, is the epicenter of artificial intelligence development. It’s also a basket case, deteriorating at a pace that cannot be ignored or denied in the race to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)." 

This is going to end badly for Jane Doe

Sasha Stone: "The Cornell 7 and The “Consent” Trap - Why We Need Decency and Morality Back."

I didn't know until reading this - but should have known - that the names of the accusers have been released and publicized.  It really was only a matter of time.  As Sasha points out, their pictures are being circulated like "Wanted: Dead or Alive" posters.

But the same goes for Jane Doe.  It will be impossible to keep her name secret once the chatter at Cornell picks up and the internet sleuths are unleashed.  At some point she will have to explain her text message reading "At the end of the day non [sic] of the sexual stuff was illegal" two days after the incident.  It's a terrible situation for all involved but a night of regret is going to upend the lives of everybody involved.

You got Kaepernicked

Red State: "Nike Is the Latest to Discover That Wokeness Doesn't Pay, As Net Sales, Revenue Nosedive."

Socialism is for children

And there's no bigger child than New York's mayor: "Mamdani: Socialism Is Just Dignity."

Like Bernie Sanders, this guy has never worked a real job in his life and has no grasp on how the socialism works in practice.

Killing the golden goose

Ripple: "Can a wealth tax solve our political and fiscal problems? The math says no. - Economists have advocated for wealth taxation as a way to reduce political power resulting from wealth concentration. Here’s why that won’t work."

The most recent poll out of California indicates the margin between those who support and those who oppose the wealth tax is shrinking.  Even Gavin Newsom is whipping against it.  But I think it will pass because there's nothing more alluring than getting "somebody else" to pay for things you want.

Go long on U-Haul futures.

If only there were some signs

GB News: "Omani hijacker who stabbed Flydubai captain is 'religious extremist who refused to shake hands with women'."