As seen in Power Line's "Week in Pictures":
These days you take your patriotism as you can find it. As the WSJ editorialists point out, you might need to look elsewhere than in those museums on the National Mall: How the Smithsonian Lost America’s Plot. (WSJ gifted link)
One of the better causes of the second Trump Administration is its effort to purge the progressive political takeover of America’s national cultural institutions. A case in point is the new White House report on the bad historical turn taken by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
The press is attacking the report as an attempt to censor independent museum curation, but that’s not how we read it. The 162-page “Saving America’s Story,” produced by the White House Domestic Policy Council, lays out in persuasive detail how the museum offers a largely critical view of American history that “no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated.”
Instead, the museum offers the message, captured in one exhibit, that when they founded the U.S., “early leaders envisioned a country that promised opportunity and freedom—but only for some.”
You can download "Saving America's Story" here. The Trump Administration does a lot of stupid and despicable stuff, and there's a lot of Trumpish crap on that page, but the document itself is pretty convincing.
Also of note:
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It's a high bar, but they're trying to clear it. George Will notes Democrats’ extremism and stupidity are catching up with the GOP’s. (WaPo gifted link)
Platner’s campaign was born of the cynicism that permeates the Democrats’ devotion to identity politics. Never mind that Platner is a lout whose work résumé is thinner than his record of sponging off his parents. Rather than assess him as — Heaven forfend! — an individual, Democrats anointed him the embodiment of a category: the working class. He could be their favorite thing, a victim. He could make vivid their simpleminded binary of “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Oblivious of their insult to America’s working class, Democrats wonder why what once was their base has abandoned them.
Republicans, however, should shed any post-Platner delusions of moral superiority. Ten years ago, they turned the louche star of the “Access Hollywood” tape, and the payer of hush money to his porn star paramour, into a president. Conjured from the populism of celebrity worship, he today is frighteningly out of his depth, dumbstruck that his son-in-law, in tandem a New York real estate crony, cannot pacify Iran and end the war against Ukraine.
America’s still-multiplying embarrassments are rank weeds fertilized by the manure of populism. And by populism’s inherent, aggressive disdain for the importance of character in politics. Populism is almost everything rejected by America’s unsentimental Founders, who, a few days ago, the nation briefly, and often uncomprehendingly, celebrated.
"Manure of populism" is a slightly nicer way of saying "populist bullshit."
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Gratitude is fine, but she could also use my Amazon links. David Harsanyi has some advice: AOC Should Thank Baby Boomers for the World They Left Her. (I assume the same advice applies to any boomer-basher.)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she knows why socialism is on the rise: Blame it on the boomers.
"Millennials and Gen Z combined, now for the first time, are eclipsing the number of baby boomers," she explained recently. "Young people overall feel a tremendous amount of betrayal about the world we've been left."
It's inarguable that younger generations feel this way. The notion that millennials and Generation Z are toiling in a uniquely grueling economic era, however, is utterly delusional.
But convincing young people they've been handed a broken world only fostered an unprecedented sense of hopelessness. You are not victims of "oligarchs," unfettered capitalism or any other imaginary monsters.
And our periodic reminder to the youngs: yes, we Boomers got wealth, but we are not taking it with us. We haven't figured out how to do that.
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As it turns out, there was another lie involved. As reported by NPR (and many others) back in 2013: Obama's 'You Can Keep It' Promise Is 'Lie Of The Year'.
But calling it the "Affordable Care Act" was apparently another fib, as the WaPo editorialists document: Of course ACA premiums are rising. (WaPo gifted link) Using small words where possible:
If it wasn’t obvious before that the famous bill passed to make health care more affordable has done anything but, it should be now: Individual plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges are projected to spike by about 14 percent in 2027, according to recent insurer filings.
The ACA imposed a wide array of mandates on health insurance. Those mandates are expensive. To make up for the increase in costs, the ACA distributes subsidies so consumers don’t feel the impact of the increase.
Unfortunately, the editorial writers leave some room for blaming private insurers for the unaffordability. If you missed it, here's Noah Smith's take (blogged here last month): Insurers aren't the main villain of the U.S. health care system.
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Aw, say it ain't so, Chris. The Free Beacon's headline puts my current CongressCritter (and possibly my state's future Senator) in the spotlight's glare: 'Anti-Corruption' Senate Candidate Chris Pappas, Whose Ex-Lobbyist Husband Works for Uber, Sits on House Transportation Committee That Uber Heavily Lobbies.
Rep. Chris Pappas (D.), running for Senate in New Hampshire on an "anti-corruption" agenda against "corporate special interests" in Washington, serves on a House committee that oversees Uber, where his husband, a former lobbyist, serves in an executive policy role.
Pappas, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is married to Vann Bentley, a policy manager for cybersecurity and privacy at Uber who previously worked as a lobbyist for Amazon, according to his LinkedIn profile.
I wasn't planning on voting for him anyway.
Interestingly, the article mentions that Pappas is "running against former senator John Sununu". Who hasn't actually won the nomination yet. But his primary opponent, Scott Brown, goes unmentioned in the article.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
