Daily Digest |  |
- A year of awakening
- Covid: Worst Enabler of Fraud In History?
- Joe ❤️ Kamala
- Podcast: The 3WHH on DMLA Syndrome, and Other Defects of Modernity
- “All the frequent troubles of our days”
| Posted: 22 Jan 2022 08:20 PM PST (Paul Mirengoff) 2021 was a year of awakening for all but the most obtuse among the woke. It was the year when we realized, or relearned, that inflation isn’t a thing of the past. It’s something that happens when government largesse helps create excess demand. And it stings. 2021 was the year when we realized, or relearned, that attacks on the police and a reduction in police funding, coupled with prosecutors whose sympathies lie with certain types of criminals, produce sharp increases in violent crime. It was also the year when we realized that if people receive money for nothing, they might well decide not to work. And in a related lesson, 2021 was the year when we realized that goods don’t just magically appear on our shelves. They turn up there thanks to a complex system — the supply chain — that depends, among other things, on people being willing to work. Finally, it was the year we realized that bad things happen when the U.S. military withdraws from countries where we’re all that prevents our enemies from seizing power, and that even worse things happen when we withdraw incompetently. My generation learned lessons like these in the 1970s. We learned them well enough that 12 years of Republicans in the White House ensued. It’s unfortunate that these lessons in the obvious had to be relearned, but not very surprising that they were forgotten after more than four decades. It’s probably too optimistic to expect the awakening of 2021 to produce another 12-year period of Republican presidencies. But if Republicans play their hand well, it might put the GOP back on close to level terms with younger voters and on better than level terms with the rest of the electorate.    |
| Covid: Worst Enabler of Fraud In History? Posted: 22 Jan 2022 06:02 PM PST (John Hinderaker) Fraud in government programs is so routine that one wonders how much anyone still cares. Kyle Smith has done some research on this topic, as it relates to purported covid funding. As he notes, it takes considerable digging because “the media aren't terribly interested in stories that reflect badly on Democrats.”
My guess is that the criminality that has been discovered and publicized is a small slice of what has actually occurred. Interestingly, Kyle Smith relies in part on a covid fraud database maintained by the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter. Last I knew, Arnold & Porter was one of the top two or three firms in Washington, D.C., and I am pleasantly surprised that an establishment law firm would publicly oppose fraud in government programs. That is a bold stance for an establishment firm to take. Here in Minnesota, we have done our part to contribute to the cavalcade of covid fraud:
The linked article points out that the two nonprofits involved in this fraud–the second was called Partners in Nutrition–purported to be feeding 1/8 of all of the children in Minnesota, a ridiculous claim. Over a year ago, Minnesota’s Department of Education realized that Feeding Our Future was a criminal organization and cut off its funding, but a state court judge ordered Minnesota’s state government to continue funding the fraud. The Sahan Journal has a detailed article on this fraud. Sahan is a Somali news outlet, and the Feeding Our Future fraud was perpetrated mostly or entirely by Somalis:
No doubt most Somalis are wonderful, law-abiding people. But there are a considerable number–Minnesota has experienced the same phenomenon with child care fraud–who see our governments parceling out trillions of dollars with little concern for where the money goes, or what is done with it, and think they would be foolish not to get in on the action. Meanwhile, American taxpayers are the biggest suckers in world history.  |
| Posted: 22 Jan 2022 04:10 PM PST (John Hinderaker) Kamala Harris might be the only person in the U.S. who has had a worse year than Joe Biden. So Biden apparently tried to shore up her standing yesterday:
Here it is. I assume that the DNC’s “What a team” is unironic:
This exchange pretty well sums up the dilemma the Democrats face. Joe Biden can’t imagine a better partner, and the feeling is mutual. The problem is that voters can’t stand either Biden or Harris. I think the Democrats would like to ease Biden out of the White House once the midterms are over–or would like to, anyway, if they had a viable Vice President to whom they could turn over the reins. But Harris has achieved the remarkable feat of being less respected than Dementia Joe. So what can the Democrats do? Keep faking it and hope that events will somehow change the landscape.  |
| Podcast: The 3WHH on DMLA Syndrome, and Other Defects of Modernity Posted: 22 Jan 2022 10:53 AM PST (Steven Hayward) This week Lucretia really takes it to me for my advanced case of DMLAS (Deficient Meat Loaf Appreciation Syndrome—and we're not talking the baked dish here), which surely must make the next edition of the DSM. But from there we quickly pivot to a recap and demolition of the highlights of this week's news, starting with Biden's disastrous press conference, but moving quickly to the heart of the matter—that Biden's errors stem from the luminous lightweights he listens to that have appealed to his narcissism. (Yes, we're pointing at you, Jon Meacham! Meacham is reported to be the person who wrote Biden's appalling lines about how everyone who doesn't agree with him is Bull Connor.) From there we make what we can of the momentous decision of M&Ms to go woke, to Weber grills for their meat loaf apology, and some reflections on the wider meaning of Jordan Peterson's resignation from the University of Toronto. In between you'll get some dish (but not meat loaf!) on NPR, some advice on proper apology form from Monty Python, and custom bumper music at both ends from Meat Loaf. Plus two teasers about two upcoming podcasts featuring illustrious guests. Pour yourself a double and settle in for an especially fast-paced episode. You know what to do now—listen here, or shake and bake your way over to our hosts at Ricochet (but listen to Meat Loaf along the way).  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| “All the frequent troubles of our days” Posted: 22 Jan 2022 04:17 AM PST (Scott Johnson) Although the text of the book runs to nearly 500 pages, I consumed All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days in three big gulps. I found it a powerful and moving book that was hard to put down. If you want to know what it was like to live in Berlin during the Nazis’ rise to power through the first few years of the war, author Rebecca Donner offers a glimpse through the eyes of her (American) great great aunt, Mildred Harnack, and Arvid Harnack, the German fellow student with whom she fell in love at the University of Wisconsin. The book has been favorably reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. If you think you might read the book, don’t read the reviews. They spoil a little of the suspense. I won’t do that here. I picked up the book hoping it would replicate the experience I had reading In the Garden of Beasts: If you observed Hitler and the Nazis up close at a time when the future was still in doubt, what would you have seen? What would you have heard? What would you have thought? What would you have done? What risks would you have taken? In Larson’s book, we take a seat next to William Dodd, FDR’s ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937. In Donner’s book, we look through the eyes of a woman who formed a small resistance group and, along with her husband, went on to work as a spy to subvert the Nazi regime. Harnack befriended and socialized with Dodd’s wild daughter, Martha Dodd. Indeed, Martha is a prominent character in Donner’s book. I found Donner’s treatment of her more forthcoming than Larson’s. Harnack was rescued from oblivion by Shareen Blair Brysac in Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (2000). Donner’s book draws on surviving letters home by Mildred Harnack and extensive archival research in the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and the United States as well as private family collections, yet there is nothing musty about the story. Donner appears to have left no page unturned, literally or figuratively, in order to reconstruct events as they happened. However, we necessarily remain at some remove from Harnack’s true thoughts and feelings. Harnack did not commit them to paper. Like John Updike in Rabbit, Run, Donner casts her narrative almost entirely in the present tense. It is also broken into short chapters that are themselves broken into fragmentary pieces. It makes for easy reading, though it reflects a high level of narrative art. The book has a compelling forward drive right to the end. Drawing on an interview with Mildred’s (American) courier — then a boy, 89 when interviewed — Donner’s last chapter is little more than a two-page postscript, yet it had me in tears. In part the book must constitute an homage to her relative. Donner nevertheless remains the detached observer throughout. Despite the detachment, this is a book that doesn’t let you go. When you finish reading and put it down, the book continues to haunt.  |
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