RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/18/the-deep-state-will-challenge-the-new-fda-head/

If we are to realize the kind of aggressive, innovation-promoting deregulation called for by President Trump, Stephen Hahn will need to disrupt the agency’s built-in bias for overregulation.

Now that the Trump Administration’s new FDA commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, has been confirmed, he’ll find he has one of the most difficult and important jobs in government. The FDA’s purview is wide, regulating pharmaceutical and other medical, food, and vaping products that account for more than 25 cents of every consumer dollar, over a trillion dollars annually.

Government regulation offers some reassurance to the public, to be sure, but when it is wrong-headed or merely fails to be cost-effective, it actually costs lives—directly by withholding life-saving and life-enhancing products, and also indirectly by diverting societal resources to gratuitous regulatory compliance.

Dr. Hahn is inheriting an organization that is huge, critical, and dysfunctional. The stakes are high. For example, FDA has pushed the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs) to bring a new drug to market to over $2.5 billion. That ensures that many new drugs will have a hefty price tag, and that others will never be developed at all.

Putting FDA on the right track will require toughness and discipline at an agency where more than 99.9 percent of the employees are civil servants who cannot be fired even for incompetence or insubordination. (Did we hear someone mutter, “deep state?”)

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/
In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“I’m Partial to Impartiality,” December 12, 2019) Joseph Epstein wrote, “I happen to be someone who, in politics, yearns for impartiality.” I suspect that that desire for impartiality is common to most Americans – in the current environment, it “is a consummation devoutly to be wished,” as Hamlet would say. Most recognize we live in a pluralistic society, comprised of people from every nation on earth, representing all religions and races. In our homes, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, we speak 350 languages. Nevertheless, we have in common a love of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We favor a middle road, which accommodates all travelers. But, in recent times, with our biases, real and imagined, we struggle for a common purpose and a common morality. Where I disagree with Mr. Epstein, whose mind and writing style I admire and envy, is that he puts principal blame on Donald Trump for the discord that has disrupted our lives. I would certainly agree that Mr. Trump has accentuated the divide, but real blame is more widely distributed.

Politicians have compartmentalized the electorate – youth versus age, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, people of color versus Caucasians, immigrants versus nativists, gays versus straight, globalists versus nationalists. As well, there are those in the industrialized (and former industrialized) parts of the Country who have seen coastal elites become wealthy, while their incomes have fallen or grown stagnant. There are a few immigrants who have chosen not to adapt to the culture of their adopted country, and there are people who have been here for generations who fear a breakdown in the social unity they have enjoyed. A culture of victimization, identity politics and moral relativism accentuates these divides. There are secularized elites on the coasts who cannot understand why folk in rural areas cling to religion and guns. There are those who have hated Mr. Trump from when he first ran for the Presidency, people who will do anything to remove him from office. (Last week, Nancy Pelosi, in a slip-of-the-tongue, said she had been working on impeachment for two-and-a-half years. Yet, hypocritically, she claims it is with great sadness she has advanced articles of impeachment.) And, of course, social media allows factions to gather in greater numbers, with more intense focus. And there are those like me who fear that the decades-long tilt in Washington toward statism, with the acquiescence of mainstream media, risks the fundamentals of personal liberty and economic liberty on which this nation was founded. In good conscience, I cannot remain silent.

Last night five of us- son and daughter in law and my two youngest granddaughters trekked out to Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn to the stately and elegant Brooklyn Museum for a latke (potato fritters- a Jewish culinary tradition) festival.

We were first greeted by a huge illuminated sign that simply said “OY”…the traditional complaint of my brethren. Inside there were hundreds upon hundreds of people milling about and tasting about twenty varieties of latkes- curried, chilied, fruited, traditional, Mexican, Moroccan, Russian, Thai, and laced with a variety of international flavors and spices. It was a joyous and diverse event with very friendly people of differing race, religion,  age, nationality, ethnicity, and religion.

To say I had a wonderful time is an understatement.  rsk

P.S. I make competition ready Latkes! rsk

Progressive Hebrews promote the national liberation movements of all victims of imperialism and oppression…as long as those folks are not the world’s longest surviving victims of imperial conquest and oppression—Jews.

They absolutely love Tikun Olam—healing the world—as long as Jews, as JEWS, aren’t included. And as if believing Jews have not been in the forefront of such endeavors for millennia. The latter are expected to simply remain G_d’s Suffering Servant—as the Bible called Israel. With the above in mind, now let’s proceed…

A good friend asked me if I ever asked folks like “Progessive” professors—especially Jewish ones—why they oppose such things as President Trump’s potentially very positive decision to issue a new Executive Order on December 12th regarding aiding and abetting antisemitism, in all of its overt and camouflaged forms, in academia. The following is a result of that conversation…

President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order on December 12, 2019 which has the potential, if properly enforced, to change “business-as-usual” on too many campuses these days. Unfortunately, this subject brings back very bad memories from my own doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs—which have been written about elsewhere.

Fast forward to President Trump’s new Executive Order…

No sooner than the ink dried, “Progressive” Hebrews condemned it. They did likewise when President Trump recognized the same city that King David purchased for his capital 3,000 years ago—before most other peoples made their historical debuts—as the capital of the sole, resurrected Jewish State…Jerusalem. And then failed to ask them permission to move America’s embassy there as well. 

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/12/just-politics?mod=article_inline

“We have reached a period of political partisanship where people are so willing to suspend reality in order to pursue an agenda that they view real-life events almost entirely through the prism of their own bias. Like football fans watching the video replay of a penalty—one set of people are able to scream that one thing is “clearly” the case, even as the other shouts that it is “blatantly” the opposite. The same footage, the same evidence, through almost identical sets of eyes, is capable of spinning wildly contrasting views. . . . We have reached the stage where manipulation of the facts by spin doctors or government departments is no longer necessary—people take the raw evidence before them and mould it themselves in real time. But what is every bit as chilling is just how effective it is at drowning out reasoned debate on serious subjects.”

In what now seems a distant epoch of pre-history, President Bill Clinton came before a joint session of Congress in 1996 to deliver the State of the Union Address and announced that “the era of big government is over.” Even in 1996, no one thought that the era of big government was actually over, least of all Bill Clinton. But it must have seemed like the right thing to say at the time, in order to show that one was in tune with the popular mood—in fact, leading it rather than following it—by putting into a pithy sentence what people were beginning to think, or thought they were thinking, before they had quite thought it. This happened, you may remember, just after the newly elected Republican Congress, the first in forty years, was forced to knuckle under to Mr. Clinton after shutting down the government in a vain attempt to limit big government–style spending. Thus the President, as it might have seemed, was being magnanimous in victory—making a gesture in the direction of the ostensibly small-government philosophy of his opponents before adding: “But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.”

Needless to say, the reference to “the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves” was as empty of real political content as the claim that the era of big government was over. No one was proposing, as no one would have dared propose, to abolish the social safety net. The President was merely juggling partisan clichés, but in an original enough fashion that the media were inclined to regard it as a political masterstroke, part of his campaign of “triangulation” in which progressive desiderata were introduced cautiously or with an alloy of conservatism (or, failing that, conservative rhetoric) in order to make them more palatable to the centrists in both parties. We disgruntled conservatives used to speak of this as “the triumph of style over substance,” but in retrospect the joke was on us. Bill Clinton saw sooner than we did that, in the post–Cold War 1990s, style was substance—or as much substance as most people wanted to bother themselves about.

Politics, in other words, had become a fashion statement rather than a serious program for governing. The real business of government was already in the process of being turned over to judges and what is now being called “the deep state,” leaving politicians free to posture and virtue-signal without consequence. With the departure of seriousness and responsibility from the political culture, what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences” took over, and the rancorousness and hatred which are now the salient features of our political life have been increasing ever since. Way back in the ’90s I tried coining the name—I’m sure I wasn’t the first to think of it—“post-modern politics” to describe this new, style-centered political culture based on moral preening, but it didn’t catch on. Of course, we had no need for the name once all politics became post-modern politics. It was just politics.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/12/wanted-a-positive-deviant-in-the-trump-mould/

“The ultimate political positive deviant, of course, is Donald Trump.  And, wow, has he been under siege.  Basically, he has thrown a live grenade into the cesspit that is American politics.  He and his ghastly Deplorables.  He has pitched American politics a curve ball.”

Some years back a former colleague explained his theory of “positive deviants”. Simply put, a positive deviant is an employee or representative of an organisation who refuses to go along with the party line and who speaks truth to power within the organisation, and through some form of contact with the organisation’s stakeholders, especially its customers, saves the reputation of the organisation.

Here is how he discovered the theory.  He was at the time living in New Zealand, and as a visitor was having trouble arranging health insurance for his family.  He tried repeatedly to get people at health insurers’ call centres to clarify complex systems, explain options and provide basic assistance.  To no avail.  After a time he figured out a solution.  He began to cut off the call centre folks mid-conversation and, using call centre shortcuts, keep trying different people till he found someone who would offer him practical help – solutions even – sympathetically acknowledge his frustrations and, above all, stop simply spouting the company line.  And really, really annoying him.

He concluded that about one in four employees was actually interested in customer service and not merely in getting rid of difficult complainants – “managing them” – and so making life easy for “company policy”.

Anyone who has suffered from CCHC (call centre hatred complex) – and who hasn’t? – will relate to this story. But my friend went further.  He concluded that these oddball helpful employees who bucked standardised behaviour actually saved companies from the wrath of their customers and helped them to survive.  Absent positive deviants, many an organisation would go bust amid a welter of seething malcontents.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/fbi-corruption-how-dirty-cops-spied-on-trump-campaign/

The falsified documents and the many errors all disadvantaged one side. That’s not bias?

White-collar criminals should hope for one thing this Christmas: that they get to live under the Horowitz rules.

Michael Horowitz has testified that he found no evidence of political bias on the part of the decision makers who, under the Obama administration, relied on hilariously implausible “evidence” and falsified evidence of their own in order to launch a federal investigation of the Trump campaign. Rather than political bias, Horowitz says, the investigation uncovered a series of “basic and fundamental” errors. Democrats are cheering that aspect of the report, because they believe that Horowitz’s words can be used to silence charges that the investigation of the Trump campaign was, as the president charges, part of a politically inspired “witch hunt.”

Here’s Horowitz in his own words:

Errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.

No bias, just honest incompetence. Or so we are expected to believe.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders delivered a powerful speech at the Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, FL (November 14-17, 2019). He sounded the alarm that Islamic supremacist incursion is already advanced in America — and advises the U.S. to learn from Europe before its too late. Don’t miss it!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/geert-wilders-speaks-freedom-centers-restoration-frontpagemagcom-0/

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/07/the-tortoise-and-the-hare-of-modernity-reconsidered/

Hares do not countenance irrational impediments such as “taboos.” Their response to the tortoises who deploy them is a mixture of loathing, hysteria, and contempt. But as a wise man put it, “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

Not to be overly paradoxical about it, but the names Donald Trump, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler will not appear in this essay. Like you, I am weary of that shrill and unproductive static. Let us, then, take a brief holiday and consider a different sort of problem, a problem that stands behind—admittedly pretty far behind—that static I mentioned and which we might do well to think about. Let us, for lack of a better phrase, call it “Modernity and Its Discontents.”

No educated person in the English-speaking world can hear that phrase and fail to think of the memorable English title that James Strachey gave to Freud’s late masterpiece: Civilization and Its Discontents. Pressed to give a single word summary of what Freud concluded about those Unbehagen, those “discontents,” one could do worse than offer the brief imperative “No.” “Sad is eros, builder of cities,” W. H. Auden wrote, and that sadness, Freud thought, followed inevitably from the basic instinctual denials that made civilization possible. 

“Modernity,” it will be pointed out, is not quite, or perhaps I should say “not hardly,” coterminous with “civilization.” If pressed to give a one-word précis to describe the Unbehagen in die Modernität, I might venture to suggest that it centrally involved the diminishment, the attenuation, the abandonment of that imperative denial that Freud analyzed. 

Unfortunately, the loss or—more to the point—the active repudiation of “no” does not necessarily get you to any positive “yes.” 

That’s the idea, of course: that by kicking over the traces, by saying “no” to all those inherited constraints, habits, structures, customs, prejudices, and dispositions that made us who we are, we thereby emerge into a glorious sunlit upland in which we enjoy the cities but dispense with the sadness. 

The reality has been somewhat different. George Orwell gave dramatic expression to one set of differences when he noted that “For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire.”

https://www.steynonline.com/9853/once-more-into-the-fogged-bottom

Yesterday I caught a bit of the impeachment theatre en route to a lunchtime speaking engagement. To be honest, if they’d come round and performed it live in my hotel room, I’d still have fled. If universally respected eminent lifelong career foreign-service bigshots Bill Taylor and George Kent are Adam Schiff’s star witnesses, their chief purpose seems to be to get Democrats pining for the charisma of Bill de Blasio and the self-effacement of John Kerry.

In a functioning system, the head of the government sets foreign policy and the diplomats enact it. So naturally there’s not a chance of that in Washington. When Taylor and Kent whine that there seemed to be a “shadow foreign policy”, the shadow is theirs; they spent a day testifying that everything had been going ticketty-boo for decades just as they’d always done things – and then Trump came along and took a different view. Oh, my! Anyone would think that, as Barack Obama once proposed, “elections have consequences”.

First up was George Kent, the “Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus”. He warmed up the crowd with some extensive biographical material about the “nearly sixty years” of George Kents (I believe he’s George III or some such) who have “chosen” to endow America with the blessings of their “public service”. It didn’t help that he wore a bow tie. Eventually he stopped talking about himself and started talking about Ukraine:

Our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, territories currently occupied by Russia.

Crimea is, of course, familiar to anyone who’s read “The Charge of the Light Brigade”:

Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do or die…

Or, in the case of low-level diplomats who’ve never had a single conversation with the President, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or tender their resignations after first ensuring that their pensions won’t be affected. Instead:

Into the valley of the SCIF
Rode the six hundred hearsay witnesses…

As I said, any Tom, Dick or Harry can bandy Crimea, but it takes a career striped-pants Foggy Bottom public servant to toss in “Donbas” with gay abandon. It would have been interesting to see whether Adam Schiff or anyone else in the room could have found Donbas on a map. The odds of pinning the tail on the Donbas blindfolded are better. It’s bordered to the north, east and south-east by Russia, so it’s akin to the Russian foreign ministry regarding northern Mexico as a vital national-security interest of Moscow’s.