Monthly Archives: February 2020

Nikki Haley

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Capitalism is freedom, and Americans should celebrate it, instead of apologizing for it, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday.

Many American, even some conservatives, are ashamed of capitalism but, when they should be singing its praises because of the prosperity and progress it provides, Haley said in a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.:

This country has lifted up more people, unlocked more progress and unleashed more prosperity than any other country in history. This is America. And, the American system is capitalism.

Many people avoid saying that word, including some conservatives and business leaders. Some think its a politically-incorrect word.

But, we shouldnt be ashamed of capitalism - its another word for freedom. And, it springs from Americas most cherished ideals.

What good are our rights, if our homes and savings can be taken? Are we really free if we own nothing and the government owns everything? Haley asked, noting that the nations founders understood that economic freedom, just like freedom of speech and freedom of religion, is an essential human right:

We all know the most famous phrases from the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. But, while we know these words, we often forget their meaning. Yes, they mean freedom of speech, freedom of religion and other fundamental rights - but, the Founders knew that economic freedom was also essential.

What good are our rights, if our homes and savings can be taken? Are we really free if we own nothing and the government owns everything? Of course, not.

So, while the Founders never used the word, they gave us capitalism in all, but the name.

Everywhere capitalism takes root, people do better. We should celebrate this, not apologize for it, Haley said, explaining how its adoption has lifted much of the world out of extreme poverty:

But, its not just us. Capitalism has transformed the world. Two hundred years ago, 94 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, its ten percent. Much of this drop happened in the last 40 years. After Soviet communism collapsed in Russia and Eastern Europe, and after communist China adopted sweeping market reforms.

See the article here:
Nikki Haley: We're Not Actually Free 'If Our Homes and Savings Can be Taken' - CNSNews.com

Upon winning the Nevada Caucuses on Saturday, Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist from Vermont, declared on 60 Minutes his admiration for Cuba under the late dictator Fidel Castro.

This romanticizing of socialism by the current frontrunner of the Democratic presidential race is dangerous and delusional. I know, because I have experienced firsthand the human tragedy of socialism in China. Real socialism is cruel, dehumanizing and even deadly; there is absolutely nothing romantic about it.

I was born in 1963, under the reign of Mao Zedong. Sanders and his intellectual comrades, such as New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like to invoke socialism as the cure to economic inequality in America. Under real socialism in China, however, I saw equality firsthand -- everybody lived equally in extreme poverty.

All economic activities were controlled by the government in Maoist China. Private enterprise and market transactions were banned. Profit incentives did not exist. As a result, technological progress stagnated and the economy collapsed.

This is because the state thought it knew how to allocate resources better than the market, but it did not. In Chinese cities, rice, meat, vegetable oil, and even clothing for citizens was rationed. Each urban citizen only had one or two pounds of meat to eat for an entire month. There were frequent supply shortages. On numerous occasions, I had to rise at 4 oclock in the morning to wait in line for hours to buy meat.

From 1958 to 1962, Maos Great Leap Forward, a gargantuan collectivization movement, led to mass famine and more than 20 million dead. Born in the aftermath of this disastrous social experiment, I escaped famine and death, but I could not escape another core element of socialism: political control and repression.

When I was three, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. He mobilized tens of millions of naive college and high school students and called them Red Guards. They labeled Maos political adversaries as traitors to socialism and at times tortured them to death.

In order to suppress opposition, Mao intensified a nationwide class struggle by dividing Chinese people into two groups: the poor against the rich, revolutionaries against counter-revolutionaries. Classified as an counter-revolutionary, my father was persecuted for five years. He endured torture, public humiliation, and forced labor. He lost his personal freedom. My family could only see him a couple of times each year. Subsequently, my grandparents and I were forced to move out of our hometown -- a city with relatively fair living conditions -- to a poor remote village where there was no tap water, no electricity and no medical clinic nearby. A few months after moving to the village, my grandmother passed away from a heart attack.

During that time, China only allowed one type of ideology: socialism and the near-worship of Mao. People were not allowed to say anything politically incorrect, or they risked being arrested. Ancient wisdom was trashed, as most historical temples were destroyed, including those of Confucius, the greatest sage of Chinese history. Worse yet, the state put ideology above practical results and peoples concrete needs. One political slogan read: We prefer producing socialist weeds to capitalist rice.

In other words, there was no freedom to pursue a happy life, let alone think differently. Chinese citizens suffered immensely as a result. By 1978, even socialist China decided that it did not want the equality and tragedy delivered by socialism. Upon Mao's death, the country shifted, embarking upon a path toward market reforms, liberalization, and international trade. Over the last four decades, those policies propelled China from abject poverty and misery to become the second largest economy of the world.

Unlike Mao in China, Sen. Sanders and other socialist politicians of the Democratic Party believe in peaceful, democratic implementation of their policies, not state violence. Nevertheless, in their proposals of Medicare-for-All, free college for students and jobs for everyone, and in their rhetoric maligning the rich versus the poor, Americas socialists sound a lot like socialist dictators of the 20th century. They advocate for massive government control of resources and industries to solve economic inequality, all the while ignoring incentives for efficiency, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Meanwhile, radical progressives in America act very much like Maos Red Guards in one way: They use political correctness as a weapon, suppress different viewpoints and assault Americas founding principles. Those with whom they disagree are no longer fellow citizens with whom to have a civil discussion, but bad people who must be attacked, at times violently.

These developments are appalling and alarming. Sanders and his socialist colleagues in the U.S. Congress have never lived under real socialism; I have. My personal experience in China tells me that the social experiment advocated by Sanders will only lead to human disaster. That's why I was heartened when President Trump declared at last years State of the Union address, America will never be a socialist country.

My experience in America has convinced me that the key principles of democratic capitalism private ownership, free market competition, the rule of law, equal opportunities, and freedom of speech are essential for human beings to prosper and succeed.

Yukong Zhao is a Republican candidate for Florida's seventh congressional district.

Continued here:
What Bernie Sanders doesn't tell you: The devastation of 'real socialism' - Washington Examiner

Hank Azaria, the prolific voice actor best known for his multiple roles in "The Simpsons," admitted that wants to "make up" for voicing the controversial character Apu and that he decided to stop doing so because "it just didn't feel right."

"What happened with this character is a window into an important issue," Azaria told "The New York Times" in an interview published on Tuesday. "It's a good way to start the conversation. I can be accountable and try to make up for it as best I can."

Azaria came to this realization after watching the 2017 documentary "The Problem with Apu," in which comedian Hari Kondabalu explores how "The Simpsons" character is used to perpetuate negative stereotypes aboutAmericans of South Asian descent.

"Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn't want to participate in it anymore," Azaria admitted. "It just didn't feel right."

In the interview Azaria discussed how he drew inspiration for the character from a Peter Sellers brownface performance in the 1968 Blake Edwards comedy "The Party." The Emmy Winning-actor admitted that basing his characterization off of Sellers was "a real blind spot," as he had not been aware that many Indian Americans were offended by Sellers' performance, and acknowledged that he was "joyfully basing a character on what was already considered quite upsetting."

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Although Azaria initially resisted hearing negative feedback about Apu, he drew from his own Jewish heritage to better understand why Kondabalu and others were upset by his performance.

"I started thinking, if that character were the only representation of Jewish people in American culture for 20 years, which was the case with Apu, I might not love that," Azaria explained.

Although the executive producers of "The Simpsons" have not announced what they plan on doing with the character, they supported Azaria's decision to stop voicing him, explaining in a statement that "we respect Hank's journey in regard to Apu. We have granted his wish to no longer voice the character." In 2018 "The Simpsons" announced that they were not writing any current scripts containing the character, and that same year released an episode titled, "No Good Read Goes Unpunished" in which, through the character of Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith), the writers argued that "something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?"

In "The Problem with Apu," Kondabolu described himself as a fan of "The Simpsons" who was disheartened by the show's problematic depiction of Indian Americans. He pointed out that, for many non-Indian Americans, Apu was the only representation of Indian Americans that they encountered in popular culture. As a result, his catchphrase "Thank you, come again," became a derogatory slur for Indian Americans, and allowed Americans to reduce the richness of Indian American culture to a single offensive stereotype.

In addition to exploring his own feelings and unsuccessfully attempting to interview Azaria, Kondabolu reached out to other Indian Americans including Aasif Mandvi, Aparna Nancherla, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, Maulik Pancholy, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Kal Penn for the documentary.

"Whatever happens with the character, to me, is secondary," Kondabolu told "The New York Times" regarding Azaria's change of heart. "I'm happy that Hank did the work that a lot of people wouldn't have. I feel like he's a really thoughtful person and he got the bigger picture."

In addition to his work on "The Simpsons," Azaria is best known for his roles in the films "The Birdcage," "The Smurfs," "The Smurfs 2," "Anastasia," "Mystery, Alaska" and "Godzilla," as well as TV shows like "Friends" and "Free Agents."

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Hank Azaria wants to make up for his racist voicing of Apu on The Simpsons - Salon

Still from Call of the Wild.

The problem with Jack London has always been that while he was a compelling storyteller with a vivid imagination, he was also a racist, or at least a writer who embraced racial ideas about the superiority of Anglo Saxons and the inferiority of African Americans, Asians and Latinos. Most of the racism thats embedded inThe Call of the Wild, Londons 1903 best selling novel, has been expunged from the latest cinematic version starring Harrison Ford as John Thornton, the prospector in the Yukon who cares more for the wilderness and dogs than he does for gold.

Indeed, the 2020 film, which has a computer-generated canine hero, is as politically correct in its own way, as Londons story is politically incorrect at least by todays standards. Still, no criticism of the movie will prevent London fans from watching it and raving about it, flaws and all. To the faithful, London can do no wrong. He might have clay feet, but hes still their god.

I saw the movie in Sonoma, California, where London is a local hero and can do no wrong. Not many members of the audience had readThe Call of the Wild. Also, they dont know much about London himself, but they think they know that he was a great writer.

This is not the first time thatThe Call of the Wildhas been transposed from the page to the big screen. The 1935 version stars Clark Gable, Loretta Young and Jack Oakie. The 1973 remark features Charlton Heston. The 1996 version has a voice over by Richard Dreyfus and stares Rutger Hauer. Each movie carves out a territory of its own, and reflects the era in which it was made. None are true to LondonsWeltanschauung,which he forged from his own rough-and-tumble life in Oakland and from his reading Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx.

The latest version offers a fairy-tale for our own era of global warming and environmental disaster. It describes a world with near pristine wilderness, the abundance of wild species, and little if any degradation of the natural world. Its unreal. In the Yukon in 1898, London witnessed the wanton destruction of the landscape by mining and miners digging, tearing and scouring the face of nature. At the same time, London argued that the Yukon offered unparalleled opportunities for capital and labor to work together to create wealth and jobs.

Screenwriter Michael Green and director Chris Sanders are two savvy moviemakers. While their version is a remake, its also a critique ofThe Call of the Wild.In the novel, Indians kill the prospector, John Thornton. In revenge, Buck kills some of Indianshes an Indian killerand enjoys the slaughter. Monsieur Perrault, the French Canadian mail courier, has been turned into a jolly African-American. His female companion on the trail looks like she might be a Native American, or at least a half-breed, as London would have called her. In 50 books, London never created an African-American character, though an African-American ex-slave raised him and he called himself a white pickaninny. He was cheeky.

On screen, Harrison Ford looks and acts like an old explorer. Hes no longer a youthful voyager in outer space, nor an intrepid archeologist. As John Thornton, he plays everyones favorite uncle who spouts words of wisdom. Youre not my pet, he tells Buck. Do what your want.

Teddy Roosevelt, who was no fan of Londons work, would probably be bored out of his mind with the latest movie. More than a century ago, he accused London of faking it as a nature writer. London took the bait, rose to the occasion and defended the veracity ofThe Call of the WildandWhite Fang.

I endeavored to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution, he insisted. I hewed them to the mark set by scientific research. While he staked his career to pseudo-science, he also touted empire and fumed about the savages of the colonial world. Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, formed The Anti-Imperialist League. London never joined. Others founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). London insisted that colored people had never advanced, that African Americans were closer to apes than humans. 1903, the year that saw the publication ofThe Call of the Wild, also saw the publication ofThe Souls of Black Folkin which the author, W. E. B. Du Bois, observed,The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of thecolor-line.

Ironically, though London is best known for his embrace of the wild, he lived like a highly civilized country squire with servants and field workers on a vast estate he called Beauty Ranch where he ruled the roost paternalistically. In an essay titled The House Beautiful, he argued that he had to have servantsthey were a necessity but that their rooms would have light and fresh air and not be dens and holes. He added, It will be a happy houseor else Ill burn it down. It burned down, anyway, either by accident or arson. By the age of 40, London had burned himself up, but not before he made a fortune as a writer and became world famous on the back of the dog, Buck.

No twentieth-century American fiction writer poured out prose more beautiful than London, and no writer was more attached to the notion that someone had to be the top dog. No wonder that his own daughter, Joan, thought that if he had lived into the 1920s he would have become an admirer of Mussolini. The London faithful will have none of it.

ScreenwriterGreen and director Sanders have made a beautiful movie, and, though its not true to Londons political and social ideas, it does honor the spirit of adventure that pushed him to the Arctic and the South Seas.Moviegoers might enjoy the scenery and the special effects that make Buck look and sound like a real dog almost.

Jonah Raskin is the editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution.

Link:
The Call of the Wild (2020): A Cinematic Fairy Tale for the Age of Environmental Disaster - CounterPunch

The San Francisco Giants will be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of their winning the 2010 World Series with areunion this summer, but one of the key players from the championship team wont be there.

Former Giants first baseman Aubrey Huff was disinvited because of some tweets that the teams management decided were offensive and, he said, politically incorrect.

Three weeks ago, I had a call with Larry Baer, CEO of the San Francisco Giants. He took me by surprise when he told me I was unanimously voted against attending the Giants World Series Championship reunion, HufftweetedTuesday. When I asked why I wasnt invited, he told [me] that the board didnt approve of my Twitter posts, and my political support of Donald Trump.

Huff, now 43, led the Giants in home runs with 26 and in runs batted with 86 during their 2010 championship season. He played two more years in San Francisco before retiring after the 2012 season, in which the Giants again won the World Series.

We reached out to Aubrey Huff to let him know that he will not be included in the upcoming 2010 World Series Championship reunion, the Giants said in astatement emailed to The Athletic, the sports websitethat first reported the snub on Monday. The reunion is scheduled for Aug. 16.

Aubrey has made multiple comments on social media that are unacceptable and run counter to the values of our organization. While we appreciate the many contributions that Aubrey made to the 2010 championship season, we stand by our decision, the team statement said.

In a January tweet about Iranian women that he said was a joke but that has since been deleted, Huff wrote, in part, Lets get a flight over and kidnap about 10 each. We can bring them back here as they fan us and feed us grapes . In a stick-figure drawing that followed, according to The Athletic, one of three women says, Oh, thank you Mr. Huff [for] saving us from the hell in Iran! We will be forever grateful!

Huff said that his support of President Donald Trump is what really angered the Giants board. He also defended his use of locker-room humor, writing that he uses it satirically on Twitter. He noted that it helped the team relax before the 2010 World Series games. The same humor, he wrote, is now the cause for him being excluded.

They loved it then, and it hasnt changed. Thats not the issue. Its politics, Huff said, contending that a politically correct society was threatening the First Amendment and free speech rights.

To the Giants board members who seem to think every Giants fan is a liberal, they arent, he added. I have had thousands of [die-hard] Giants fans reach out to me on my social media platforms to support me.

Andrew Baggarly, the Giants beat writer for The Athletic, disputed Huffs assertion that the teams boards snub was motivated by his politics. Baggarly tweeted Monday that they are not banning Aubrey Huff because they dislike or disagree with his political views. They believe he has crossed the line when it comes to misogyny, vulgarity, and common decency.

Huff told The Athletic he was shocked and disappointed by his exclusion from the August celebration.

If it wasnt for me, they wouldnt be having a reunion, he said. But if they want to stick with their politically correct, progressive bull-, thats fine.

Allison Schuster is part of the Young Leader's Program at the Heritage Foundation and interns at The Daily Signal.

This article first appeared at The Daily Signal.

Image: Reuters.

Excerpt from:
'Politically Correct, Progressive Bull': Aubrey Huff Says Giants Excluded Him Due to His Support of Trump - The National Interest Online

Click on the following to see more info on each film.

PrimaryPrimary follows John F. Kennedy, as he goes head-to-head with established Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey to win the Wisconsin presidential primary in April 1960.

Saturday, Feb. 29 11 a.m.

Love ChildA refugee survival story of an Iranian couple who, outlawed for their love, flee the country with their four-year-old son, Mani.

Saturday, Feb. 29, 1 p.m.

Mucho Mucho AmorThe life of ender non-conforming, cape-wearing psychic Walter Mercadobefore he mysteriously disappeared.

Saturday, Feb. 29, 4 p.m.

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The BandA confessional, cautionary, and sometimes humorous tale of Robertsons young life and the creation of one of the most enduring groups in the history of popular music.

Saturday, Feb. 29, 7 p.m.

The Capote TapesInterviews with friends and enemies of Truman Capote; a fascinating documentary on the author (and socialite) behind Breakfast at Tiffanys and In Cold Blood

Sunday, March 1, 11 a.m.

Picture CharacterA documentary that explores the complex, conflict-prone, and often hilarious world of the creators, lovers, and arbiters of emoji

Sunday, March 1, 4 p.m.

CAMDENA small camp that started in the 1960s in the Catskills by families of children with cerebral palsy is generating the biggest buzz after the 107-minute documentary opened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in January.

For some 40 years, Camp Jened has been a place of welcoming acceptance and fun for disabled teenagers and adults. Jim LeBrecht was one of its teenaged campers in the 1970s and the experience so transformed his life, he made a documentary about it with Emmy-winning documentary producer and co-director, Nicole Newnham in 2019 titledCrip Camp.

Just when everyone is feeling the confines of deep winter, the Camden International Film Festival is bringing the outdoors and sunshine to Camden Opera House withCrip Campas its opener for the three-day mini winter festival called Cabin Fever.

CIFF Founder Ben Fowlie wanted to get his hands on this film and in a local theater as soon as possible after it was scooped up by Barack and Michelle Obama for their Netflix-based production company Higher Ground.

As more films are being acquired by online platforms, their windows for public screenings are getting smaller. We saw the writing on the wall and our Cabin Fever Fest was a way for us to address that, said Fowlie. Our goal with Cabin Fever is to bring films that people are going to be talking about next January to this community, and give our audiences a sneak peek before they appear in any of the major cities like Boston or New York.

Crip Campwon the coveted audience award at Sundance and for good reason. Its just a really powerful film, he said. Its been described as the birth of a movement doc. The experiences camp attendees had -- experiences around becoming an adult, about finding love and experimenting is what draws you in. And watching them transform into the groundbreaking activists is astronomically moving."

A review inVariety Magazinesums up the overall feeling of the film touching on why the title might seem politically incorrect to outsiders, but is actually a code word for inclusivity. According to reviewer, Peter DeBruge, ...the movie succeeds in enlightening without ever coming across as an eat your spinach civics lesson, beginning inside a utopian bubble where people without disabilities are the minority, then broadening the scope to include the more closed-minded outside world to which the campers return an intimidating obstacle course they collectively helped to reinvent.

Fowlie said there are numerous Maine connections toCrip Camp.

The film was edited by Mary Lampson, who is an incredibly accomplished editor living in central Maine. Shane Hofeldt, the assistant editor, also lives in Camden and went to Maine Media Workshops. Ben Levine shot some of the original black and white footage in the film. He's now based in Rockland. [See related story:Creating Social Change From Maine To Mexico.] Theyll all be there for the Q & A afterward.

Beyond the three days of film screenings, Cabin Fever promises live music, special parties and its signature virtual reality exhibitions calledStoryforms, which will be held on the third floor of Camden Opera House, Saturday, Feb. 29 from 12 to 7 p.m.

With Storyforms, people can come in and have eight to 10 different individual experiences with VR headsets, said Fowlie. If you want to kayak around Greenland, this will be your chance to do it."

For us, it's all about bringing community together to experience the power of storytelling, he said.

To see the schedule and get tickets visit:Cabin Fever.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

The rest is here:
CIFF's mini fest opens with 'Crip Camp: a summer camp for the handicapped run by hippies' - PenBayPilot.com

Family watching television, circa 1958(Evert F. Baumgardner, National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia)

Welcome to The Tuesday, my new newsletter. I decided to call itThe Tuesday because I wanted to kind of bake the deadline into the cake and keep this thing on a more regular schedule than Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

In case you missed it, you might enjoy my National Review magazine article on the Aspen housing market, part of a three-story package on American housing and why it is or at least seems so expensive. An excerpt:

The bus stops in front of a house that is for sale not a time-share or a condo but an honest-to-goodness free-standing house, albeit a two-bedroom, one-bath affair that is less than 1,000 square feet. It is listed at . . .$3 million, making it one of the cheapest houses on the market in Aspen. The houses for sale within a few blocks range from $6 million to $31.5 million. One-bedroom condos commonly command a million bucks.

And that is why a family earning nearly $300,000 a year with just under $1 million in assets enough to put it well into the nations 98th income percentile is, in this absurd and absurdly beautiful place, eligible for housing assistance.

Aspen is a city that needs more affordable housing for millionaires.

In the same issue, you can also read Michael Gibson on theBay Areas housing problemsand Kevin Erdmann on The Unbuildable American Home.

Here is my review of Ezra Kleins new book inCommentary, in which I report that the volume contains some interesting social science (choosing sides seems, even for not-obviously-rational reasons, to be deeply imprinted in our DNA) but that Kleins analysis is predictable, unimaginative, and mostly wrong. Look for my review of Eleanor Randolphs excellentThe Many Lives of Michael Bloombergin the forthcoming issue ofPhilanthropy, which published my review ofWinners Take Allin the fall of 2018.And here is my latest in theNew York Post, on Bernie Bros and their blacklisting campaign.

From the archives a few things Ive been up to in the past year or so: An interview inNeue Zrcher Zeitung,which is fun for a Helvetiphile such as myself. (The article is in German.) Heres me being a littleoverexcited on the Bill Maher show. Here is that nice young man Ben Shapiroreviewing my most recent book,The Smallest Minority, inCommentary. And here is a fun essay I wrote for theWall Street Journaltrying to figure out what to think about a man judging him by the books on his shelves.

My National Review archive can be found here.

MyNew York Postarchive can be foundhere.

My Amazon page ishere. You may not have seen:Livro Politicamente Incorreto da Esquerda e do Socialismo (Em Portugues do Brasil).No, I dont really know why, either. I didnt know this existed until I started seeing ads for it on social media. Apparently, theres a Korean version, too, but Ive never seen it. The originalPolitically Incorrect Guide to Socialismremains horrifyingly relevant.

My sense of timing is, sometimes, pretty terrible. I decided to start writing more about language right at the same time the great Bryan A. Garner (author ofGarners Modern English UsageandThe Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, and editor in chief ofBlacks Law Dictionary) began writing about language for National Review:See his wonderful essay on the evolution of they.But Im going to do it, anyway.

This weeks bugaboo: advocate for. Do not write this. The for is already there:advocate=ad vocare, to speak to or to speak for or to call for. Grover Norquistadvocatestax cuts; he does not advocatefortax cuts. Advocate for is a redundancy, like ATM machine or dirty hippie. The question here isnt so much Is it wrong? but Is it ugly and stupid?

Please send your language questions or remarks to thetuesday@nationalreview.com.

Some jabroni atSalonwrites: With William Barr at the Justice Department and Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and Senate Republicans voting in lockstep with Mitch McConnell, living in Donald Trumps America feels like the South won the Civil War.

That is a very peculiar claim.

Bill Barr, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch are men of Irish Catholic background hailing from New York City, D.C., and Denver, respectively: citadels of establishment liberalism, not centers of Confederate revanchism. Gorsuch comes from a prominent Colorado family but moved to the D.C. suburbs for prep school and spent most of his life there; moving away to prep school is not one of the traditional rituals of Southern life. The attorney general is the Manhattan-born son of a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was headmaster at Dalton not an obvious candidate for General Lees army. Barr went to Columbia and GW Law; Kavanaugh, Yale and Yale Law; Gorsuch, Columbia and Harvard Law. None of these is a hotbed of neo-Confederate sentiment.

Senator McConnell comes from Kentucky, which would have been inconvenienced by a Confederate victory in the Civil War, since it was not part of the Confederacy.

Donald Trump is from Queens, but he apparently thinksGone with the Windwas a good movie. If you happen to find yourself in Austin, at the University of Texas, you can see the dress Scarlett made from the draperies at the Harry Ransom Center.

South, in the minds of some progressives, now simply means evil. I suppose we are meant to believe that these men are secret admirers of chattel slavery, which is, of course, preposterous.

Funny thing about Barr and Kavanaugh et al. There are two prominent groups of Americans who believe that there are too many Catholics in public life progressives, who complain that there are too many Catholics in the courts, and the Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps it is not Bill Barr of New York City whose heart beats in a southerly way.

Taking the South as a kind of shorthand for reactionary tendencies in American life is silly and illiterate. But people who write those kinds of sentences might just barely have a point. The more intelligent version of that notion is the idea that some kinds of nostalgia bring with them an odor of repression, that white men who are nostalgic for the 1950s or the 19th century or the 15th century (this is a National Review newsletter) might be accused at the very least of being insufficiently attentive to the daily abuse and humiliation (and worse) visited upon African Americans, women, homosexuals, and others during those good ol days. Thats part of what it is about Make America Great Again that creeps out a lot of people.

Of course, it is entirely possible to indulge wistful and romantic attachments to agrarian life in antebellum Georgia, or to frontier life in the Old West, or to Hoover-era or Eisenhower-era small-town America while simultaneously appreciating that slavery was a genuine horror, that Indian massacres were crimes against humanity, that Jim Crow was an intolerable wrong, that life in the 1950s and now was marked by petty bigotry, recreational cruelty on the part of the powerful, sexual exploitation of vulnerable women, etc. Mentally and emotionally normal adults if you can find them are able to walk and chew psychological gum at the same time.

The same dynamic shapes our conversation about race. There are a great many white people, and conservative-leaning people of all races, who are inclined to say: Things are a lot better now than they were in the 1960s, and racism in the United States is nothing compared to racism in a lot of other places. And thats true. But what a lot of people hear in that is, Why cant you shut up and stop complaining? And they arent wrong to object to implicit chiding. You will encounter much more open, plain, and rancid racism in other countries than you normally do in the United States, where racism of the plain kind isdclassin addition to being sincerely rejected by most people. And the United States of, say, 1970 is very much a foreign country, racially. But at the same time, life remains radically different for white and black Americans. African Americans remain much more likely to end up poor, imprisoned, or sent to an early grave, and if many black Americans are not especially eager to endure homilies on how much progress we have made or how much worse things are in Brazil, it is difficult to fault them for that, just as it is difficult to fault them for being suspicious about the nostalgia of white men.

Nostalgia in politics is a poison. Right-wing anti-capitalists such as my friends Tucker Carlson and Michael Brendan Dougherty are at heart, I think, nostalgists, attached to an idea a fiction about middle-class and blue-collar life in the postwar era. But asYuval Levin and others have persuasively argued, many figures on the Left are nostalgists of the same kind and nostalgic for the same years: the post-war years. They simply attribute the golden character of those years to different things. Conservatives see the 1950s as a time of social and political conservatism, booming business, and American confidence; Bernie Sanders et al. remember those years as the apex of the American labor unions, a time of high tax rates on the wealthy, an expanding welfare state as the New Deal gave rise to the Great Society, etc.

We are the spoilt brats of history. It is true, as I and my colleagues document in the current issue of National Review, that housing has become very expensive in many parts of the country, often for reasons of artificial scarcity. At the same time, I wince a little when I hear men of my generation, or men in their thirties, complaining that their grandparents were able to easily buy a house when they were in their twenties, but that they cannot do the same. In truth, you can buy my grandparents house, or one very much like it, for almost nothing. But none of us wants to live in a 700-square-foot house in Borger, Texas, with no air-conditioning and one bathroom. That 1950s standard of living some of my right-wing friends claim to covet can be had and it can be hadcheap. What cannot be had is the culture and social life of the Eisenhower era. But if it could would you really want it? The iPhone in your hand suggests to me that the answer is not so obvious.

Also: Some of my conservative friends who are always looking to disprove evolution spend their free time researching carbon-dating methodology or the configuration of the optic nerves in domestic chickens, looking for evidence that evolution is false. I would bring to their attention the fact that theSalonjabroni mentioned above is, if his biography is to be believed, the great, great, great, great grandson of Thomas Jefferson.

Today is Mardi Gras, which used to be a Southern Catholic thing (and, hence, a New Orleans thing) but now has joined Halloween on the list of American holidays that are simply a pretext for adults to dress like clowns and get drunk. I am not one to complain about cultural appropriation, but Mardi Gras really does not make any sense without Ash Wednesday and Lent. It may be that the more austere penitential Christian observances simply suit my non-demonstrative personality better than does dancing in the street, but I welcome the quiet of this season.

Winston Churchill, hearing Clement Atlee praised for his modesty, supposedly grumbled, Hehasa great deal to bemodest about. Perhaps Lent is less interesting for those who do not have a great deal to repent of or to atone for. For me, Lent could be twice as long it could be all year. I have a good friend who is a Presbyterian pastor, and he is devoted to Spurgeons devotional. Spurgeon makes good reading: By perseverance, he writes, the snail reached the ark. I identify with that snail. Spurgeon, a man of the 19th century, never got to meet the prophet Tom Waits, who sang, Were chained to the world, and we all gotta pull. Somewhere between those two poles, I think, one might catch a glimpse of the truth.

Until Tuesday,

Kevin D. Williamson

Originally posted here:
The Poison of Nostalgia - National Review

I told this storyin my book. Roughly six months before I broke the income barrier I needed to pave the path to quitting my full-time job, I was dead broke. A weekend of buying my kid a few fish and going to Chik Fil aput my account in the negative.

Even though my side hustles were bringing in money, I had bills up the you know what. Dont care if its politically incorrect. For me, as a man, it felt horrible to feel like I couldnt take care of my family.

Throughout the process of building my career from having to live with my pregnant partners parents to having$10,000 months on auto-pilot, I always knew one thing for certain:

I wasnt going to spend the rest of my life being broke.

Id die first. Literally, I knew in my heart I would die before giving up.

I didnt want to live out the statistics you often see:

I dont look down on people for not having money. In many ways, their lot in life isnt their fault at all.

Society is set up for you to fail. Without question, the gameisrigged. Sometimes I think people dont think I agree with them on that. I do.

You have toescapethis fate, make no mistake about it.

Lets take a look at some of the signs you have a fighting chance to do so.

Complaining about your current position in life is worthless. Have a spine and do something about it instead. Robert Kiyosaki

Nobodylikesbeing broke.

But in order to do the work it takes to become financially flexible, you have tohatebeing broke.

The only people who hate being broke but dont find their way out are the truly destitute. Middle-class people? They just dont want it bad enough. They dont hate the stress of living paycheck to paycheck enough to do anything about it.

I cant tell you how many times Ive projected out a future where I didnt have money and it scared me on a visceral level. Honestly, I was more afraid of being broke than I was inspired to make money.

Why? Because being broke isstressful.

Id have fights with my partner about money, stress about situations like the story I started the post with, and I just observed people who were struggling to get by and I couldnt fathom living the rest of my life like that.

You almost have to have a sense that being broke is beneath you, even though, of course, theres nothing wrong with being broke.

I remember working as a manager at a video store for $10/hr. Id go get tacos and Taco Johns. The sign on the door said hiring$11/hr. I put in all this work to make less than someone making god damned tacos. Nope. Not me. Not forever.

I used to listen to the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, on repeat when I had to put on the signs for the featured movies out in the parking lot. Plotting. Patient. One day, I wouldnt be broke.

Now? Im not rich, but Im no longer broke. And it was worth all the work.

Let everyone else be content. You? Get pissed.Use that frustration to your advantageso you dont quit.

Earn with your mind, not your time. Naval Ravikant

Even if you have a job right now (which is the smart thing to do while you build your side hustle), you know that its impossible to have real financial flexibility and wealth with a job alone.

Youre putting your energy into something you can scale, something with leverage, something that can provide income for you without your direct work:

Having a sole source of income will leave you in a perpetual loop of middle class living at best.

See, its not just the risk,yes risk, of having a sole source of income thats the problem, but also thecounterproductive culturemost wage earners ascribe to:

Its a nasty trap.

If you want wealth, flexibility, whatever you call it, you need your money or effort to go to workfor youat some point.

But how do you put in the work required to build these asset vehicles?

Simple.

The thing about wealth pursuits? Theyre slow. Super slow.

Not only that, but you make little to no money in the beginning.

I talk about this all the time on myYouTube channel. I should just rename it exponential growth.

All the great things in life compound:

Warren Buffet didnt become a billionaireuntil he was in his60s. Those last 30 years or so of compounding took him to insane wealth.

Getting compounding to work is psychologically difficult:

I dont have the exact number, but five years is my educated guess.

If you tinkered around with some form of business, freelancing, or investing for five years without quitting, something good will happen.

Youre Humble Enough to be a Student of Life

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve. Charlie Munger

Ironically, broke people seem to be the most certain of everything. I recently watched an interview with Munger. What stood out most? Every time he wasnt certain or near certain of an answer, he immediately defaulted to saying I dont know.

Wealthy people are often much more intellectually humble than middle-class people. They have coaches, mentors, advisers, teams. They constantly soak in new information and never think they have everything figured out.

Watch this interview withDiddy and Ray Dalio.

Diddy, who has a net worth in the hundreds of millions, asks Dalio, his mentor, advice with a sincere level of humility. Diddy doesnt have to listen to anybody and he could blow money until the day he dies, yet he treats knowledge with a level of respect most content with what they have types cant fathom.

The only thing between most people and more money is knowledge.

Theres no grand conspiracy keeping you broke. Its definitely not the fault of billionaires. If you dont have money, its because you dont understand money. If you dont understand money, then learn how to understand it. Simple.

Just this week Ive started to devour information about:

Im going to eventually move all of this knowledge into my circle of competence.

I dont know much about any of the above, but Ill learn. Just like I learned to make money on the internet with no prior experience and become a professional writer with no writing degree.

How? I read hundreds of books, watched thousands of hours of video, and practiced every day for five years.

Back to the point of time commitment. Spending a decade learning this stuff isnt a problem for me. Why? Because I like to learn and I know that learningcompounds.

If youre willing to learn books, podcasts, courses, YouTube videos you can figure all of this out.

Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. Its thedesire to learnthatsscarce. Naval Ravikant

I dont understand how people who own smartphones with access to YouTube say they have no access to resources. B.S. YouTube is a goldmine most people use it wrong.

At some point, you just have to admit youre being lazy andstop.

In the information age, there are no excuses.

Wake up! No one is going to save you. No one is going to take care of your family or your retirement. And no one is going to make things work out for you. The only way to do so is to utilize every moment of every day at 10X levels. Grant Cardone

If youre good at math, you just know you need a lot of money. Yes, need.

You need millions of dollars to retire on time and successfully. Add in your kids and their financial future, the ability to have amazing experiences like travel, and the time to enjoy your life without needing to work all the time, and youll understand that making money is the only logical option.

Just look around and the way people live. The stress. You need more money than you have right now. More importantly, you need more flexibility and income-earning assets than you have right now.

If youre young like me (30), dont waste any more of your time. I can only imagine what it would feel like to be middle-aged or old with no money saved.

With a modest salary of $50,000 over a full work-life of say, 50 years (2272),you will have made $2,500,000. To make all of that money and end up with little to none of it seems soul-crushingly sad and insane, but it happens. Thinking about it makes me sick.

See, its these people who claim to not care about money who care about it the most. They fuck up the math. They keep up with the Joneses their whole lives and level up their lifestyle as their income increases, piling up debt along the way.

Be smart.

Look at the math it takes to be successful and create a plan. Earn more money and keep your living expenses low. Thats the recipe. Im greedy, but I drive a $2,500 car and live in a $1,300 two-bedroom while people who make less than me drive BMWs and have giant homes.

Ive done the math. Im fine to appear broke for this decade to be wealthy by the next one.

As Marshawn Lynch, who famously spent none of his NFL contract money and lived only off endorsements, said:

Take care of yo chicken.

Let the content people stay blind to financial literacy. Wait them out. Theyll see soon enough.

Stay humble, grind, reinvest in yourself.

Itll all work out.

Ayodeji is the author ofReal Help: An Honest Guide to Self-Improvement. Want a free copy of my first book?Get it here.

Original post:
5 signs you're going to make (a lot) more money in the future - Ladders

24/02/2020 - BERLINALE 2020: We sat down with Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler to talk about Monty and the Street Party and their dramatic change in direction

Published daily in newspapers around the world, the Wulffmorgenthaler comic strip is easily identifiable through its distinctive look and its highly off-colour and decidedly politically incorrect humour. Retaining the look but toning down the cheekiness slightly, the two creators have now ventured into the childrens and family genre, presenting the animated feature Monty and the Street Party[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Mikael Wulff and Anders Morfilmprofile] in the Generation section of the 2020 Berlinale.

Cineuropa: A family film? Readers of your comic strip may be surprised...Mikael Wulff: Actually, Peter Aalbek Jensen at Zentropa proposed an animated feature to us, featuring our usual raunchy stuff. No thanks, we said, but we would be happy to do a family film. By then, we had toned down some of the worst things already, which we did when we got American syndication. But we still wanted to be wild and crazy and silly and imaginative and unpredictable, and in a way that others cant. But this time around, we wanted to do something Well, almost edifying.

Anders Morgenthaler: The regular WuMo thing would be to kill Montys parents and give him some kind of tumour at the end, but not this time around. That said, we still think we have a fresh approach. I mean, how many Pixar or Disney films are there where the main characters parents are getting a divorce and where you get to laugh all the way through? We have drawn inspiration from Scandinavian authors like Astrid Lindgren and Ole Lund Kirkegaard, who could make something entertaining out of a serious theme.

This Northern tradition is rightly held in high esteem internationally, not least by the Berlinale youth film programme, and has been throughout the years. Why do you think that is?AM: I recently read a good piece on Danish childrens films and television, and realised that our position is unique. What we do does not look like anything else. There are no didactic fingers raised whatsoever: we have made some really incorrect and risqu things at times in our corner of the world and its all good. I think thats part of the secret.

The film has thus far only screened in Denmark. How was the reception?AM: Well, a number of children have said that its the first time that they have sat and laughed at a film with a divorce theme and at least half of them have already been through one in real life. The film has sold 175,000 tickets, only in theatres. And lets see what happens here in Berlin

How long have the two of you known each other now?MW: A little over 20 years. We were asked to create animated sequences for a television talk show. I did stand-up comedy, and Anders went to film school. Someone put us together, which turned out to be a great idea. We were very anarchic, very offbeat. Then we submitted a couple of comic strips for a competition held by the Politiken daily using a female pseudonym and we won. Part of the award was that we got to do a month of daily strips for them, which later turned into a steady gig. Technically, I write and Anders draws, but in reality, our ideas go back and forth. We still have fun.

How many countries are you now published in? And could you practically retire on what you make from it?AM: Im not quite sure. Our American agent sells it all over the place. Were in a lot of American papers and on many websites; were in Spanish and in the Bangkok Post in Thailand Easily 200-300 different windows, some big and some small.

MW: As for financial security, not really, although everyone tends to think so. You dont make that much. But we do get some okay money from time to time.

Is there a second Monty story in the works?AW: There is. There are three films in the pipeline, as we like the serial format. The second is called Monty and His Strange Brain, and here, Monty gets a diagnosis and is home-schooled by his mother. We hope to get it out in 2022. Its pretty wild.

See original here:
Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler Directors of Monty and the Street Party - Cineuropa

The 2020 presidential race has got the Democratic Party, the oldest political party in the world, twisted in knots. Its basic character and enduring values its political DNA which have enabled it to rebound from multiple political disasters, may be producing another disaster this year.

Consider the Democrats concept of fairness in representation. The partys delegate allocation rules, not just this cycle but going back years, favor proportionate representation.

This comes naturally to a party that has always been a coalition of out-groups, of segments of Americas always-diverse population that can form a majority when they stick together.

This can be carried to extremes. From its second national convention in 1836 up through 1932, the Democratic Party required its presidential nominees to win a two-thirds supermajority of delegates. That gave each of its various subgroups segregationist Southerners, big-city Catholic immigrants an effective veto over the choice of nominee.

Republicans, a party always centered on a core constituency of people thought of as typical Americans but who are not by themselves a majority, have a different concept of fairness: winner take all. Theyve always given near-unanimous support for a Republican president, even a Republican as initially unconventional as Donald Trump.

Four years ago, winner-take-all delegate allocation enabled the party interloper Trump to go from amassing less-than-50% primary victories to a nearly insuperable delegate lead, even before he got his first 50%-plus win in New York on April 19.

That will be harder for Democratic Party interloper Bernie Sanders. National polling shows him leading with 28% of the vote, but with four other candidates Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg not too far behind with 10% to 18%. Others Tom Steyer, Amy Klobuchar reach that level in polling in soon-to-vote Nevada and South Carolina. Proportionate representation could give each a bunch of delegates.

But theres a catch. Democratic rules tend to require candidates to get 15% to get any delegates at all. That makes sense when there are just two or three serious candidates. But when there are five or six, a poll leader like Sanders might be the only candidate to get 15% and win delegates. Possible result: a Sanders leading in delegates but far below 50%.

Its no secret that Democratic Party leaders and their confreres at MSNBC and CNN consider Sanders a disastrous nominee and are searching for someone else. Unfortunately, at that point they come up against the Democrats traditional professions of abhorring money in politics.

Republicans were never embarrassed by their partys fundraising advantages in the early and mid-20th century. Democrats are embarrassed to the point of denial at their partys fundraising prowess over the past 30 years. They continue to denounce the Supreme Courts 2010 Citizens United decision, which overturned limits on corporate political spending, even though studies have shown its had zero impact.

Democrats still love to see themselves as representing the little guy against the big corporations. But in this century, their presidential nominees have outraised and outspent their Republican opponents, and theyve been running ahead of Republicans in the highest income groups.

Yet as Democratic pols and pundits search for someone to stop Bernie Sanders, whom do they alight on? Not Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, whose support has been visibly waning. Probably not on Pete Buttigieg, whos struggling to win any perceptible support from blacks, or Amy Klobuchar, whose support seems confined to white college grads.

Instead theyre looking to Michael Bloomberg, with his $56 billion fortune. Over the past several weeks, he has passed some $400 million in campaign expenditures the same amount former President Barack Obamas reelection campaign spent over two years.

Bloomberg wasnt on the ballot in Iowa or New Hampshire and isnt in Nevada or South Carolina. But his heavy spending has made him competitive in big states like California and Florida, where no opponent can come close to matching his ad buys.

Even before he has won a single delegate, his backers are calling on other candidates to drop out so he can take on Sanders one on one. But this isnt going to happen at least until after Super Tuesday (March 3), and maybe not then.

In the meantime, Bloomberg may be roadblocking the paths upward for Buttigieg or Klobuchar (or back upward for Warren or Biden), while revelations of his politically incorrect and, in some cases, repellent past utterances may impede his own rise. Which would leave things open for Sanders, who is beating the other Democrats in Yahoo News/YouGovs one-on-one pairings? Feel the Bern?

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

See the original post:
Barone: Democrats' DNA makes them feel the Bern - Daily Herald